prayer to jackie wilson.

today i ran through the 600 degree humidity of washington dc. i listened to some kelly clarkson, some fergalicious, and some will smith, intermixed with some other delightful tunes. as i was finishing my run in a ridiculously sweaty state, i found a little gem on my friends ipod. jackie wilson--your love keeps lifting me higher. though usually nothing can make me run faster than sk8r boi and behind these hazel eyes, this tune elevated my pace to a sprint and i broke into spontaneous dance and pelvic thrusting. i ran with an enormous smile on my face. my bluebird was singing. my heart was rejoicing. i was a free bird in our nation's capital. i was being lifted to new heights. i was soaring above the rush hour traffic and the ambulance sirens in the distance. i decided this song is what love is. i decided this song is what love should make you feel.

i am queen of loving men that treat me bad. i am queen of loving men with mental derangement. i am queen of not liking nice boys, for absolutely no reason other than apparently i am just not that attracted to them. i am queen of never loving normal people. i am queen of analyzing texts, analyzing emails, analyzing men, dispensing advice on whether calling them is too forward, on trying to understand why i come home crying every other night, on justifying why its my fault the relationship isnt going well. but as i listened to this song, revelation came to my mind. love should make you feel good. thats the point. no one will ever understand you completely. no one will ever complete you, because you should be complete on your own. no one will ever change you into a new person or give you new talents or change who you are. but hopefully they will help you discover it. hopefully they will help you see the treasure you have within. hopefully their love will lift you higher. not drag you down.

perhaps to some of you it sounds rather ovbious. but to me, it wasnt always. i think im learning. i dont think love is all you need. i dont think relationships dont take hard work, flexibility and sacrifice. but i think if you are second guessing yourself, never sure of where the other person stands, if you are constantly analyzing what is going on in hopes of figuring it out, costantly justifying how the other person acts, then i think you should flee. flee like the wind. like a kid that has to pee. becuase love should lift you, should make you want to run down the streets of dc dancing like nobodys watching, should help you know yourself better and love others better, and i think its that simple. it is good. it is great. it is the foundation that glues us together as human beings, as people. kelly clarkson didnt get it right. jackie wilson did. in a song that repeats the same 2 lines over and over again, and keeps lifting me higher.

can i get an amen?

quote from the shawshank redemption that is reminiscent of my homeless/sodie experience.

Red (n): And that’s how it came to pass that on the second last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of ‘49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o’clock in the morning drinking icy cold Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
Captain Hadley: Drink up while it’s cold, ladies.
Red (n): The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy, he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.
Heywood: Hey, want a cold one Andy?
Andy: No thanks, I gave up drinking.
Red (n): You could argue he’d done it to curry favor with the guards or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me? I think he just did it to feel normal again, if only for a short while.

amen red.

prayer to sodie. sodie for all.

this last week i had to order millions of dollars of catering for my job. i could tell you about the millions of disastrous events that occurred in the process of acquiring the catering including an enormous tidal wave of coffee spilling all over a taxi and the taxi driver telling me "your boss is a cheap man" while he tried to convince me it would cost 100 bones to clean his precious automobile, but all of that is beside the point. the point of this post is to tell you about the magical experience i had with the leftover catering.

there were millions of sandwiches, cookies, etc. left over from the extravaganza, and my boss told me i could take them and go feed homeless people in the park. im pretty sure no sentence could make me happier. what could be better than taking gourmet sandwiches, cinnamon rolls and happiness to people who get none of the above on a regular basis? i thought nothing. and how wrong i was.

because though they enjoyed the sandwiches, cinnamon rolls, and happiness, the best part of the whole grand adventure was passing out free sodies. as well all know, i love sodie. my sister didi tells me it is my self prescribed medication. having a bad day? stop at chevron for a quick fix. mad at the world? time for 32 oz of joy to make it all better. little did i know that the homeless and i would have such a beautiful bonding experience over the appreciation of this cancer causing carbonation filled beverage. they were grateful for the sandwiches. but they were ecstatic for the sodie. as i asked them what their poision of choice was (sprite, coke, or diet coke), their faces lit up. they grabbed the can gleefully. their eyes sparkled a little brighter. giving them food was fun. but giving them sodie? it made me feel like mother theresa.

in one hot spot, there were 5 men perched on a curb, and they had just been fed by a nearby homeless shelter. i almost didnt stop, because i knew they had been taken care of. but something made me turn and have a little chat with them anyway. in the process, i asked them if they'd want a sodie or two. pure joy radiated from their faces. all of a sudden i was being swarmed. homeless people all around, desperate for a sodie. after i passed them all out, they just sat and sipped for a minute or two. finally, one toothless black man named vick turned to me. "honey," he said, "you are a gift from God."

as i reflected on my magical sodie adventure, i realized why the whole experience brought me so much joy. the homeless get food on a pretty regular basis from nearby shelters, outreach programs, etc. but how often do they get sodie, a treat with no redeeming health benefits and chock full of cancer causing agents, a food item that is simply consumed for the pure joy of its deliciousness even at the harzard of its partaker? im willing to guess the homeless shelter has no sodie fountain.

i guess this all sounds pretty silly to the non-sodie drinker out there. but think of your weakness. purple skittles? mike n ikes? nerd ropes? double stuft oreos? sleeping in too late? cracking your knuckles? biting your nails? they may all be bad for us, but sometimes it just feels good to do something that has absolutely no purpose except for the pure pleasure of the moment. reminds us we are human. reminds us we are real. and that, my friends, is something the homeless deserve too.

prayer to the crocalicious gods.

the croc family was perfect. i was walking home from work, tired and a little worn out of hearing about immigration and wondering who the heck is going to solve the world's problems, and there they were. fanny back wearing, camera toting, visor sporting tourist family decked out in I (heart) DC shirts with severe nose sunburns and the enthusiasm only a young tourist family can have. the 6 year old boy had an enormous head on a stick thin body swathed in tie dye. he loved to pick his nose. his younger sister had gone too far with a bedazzler on her eyeglasses and almost blinded me in direct sunlight with her sparkling vision correctors. she loved rhinestones. the father was holding his young sleeping infant like a sack of potatoes in his arms. his glasses could hardly stay on his nose in light of the enormous pools of sweat that were gathering all over his face. the mother's visor was beautiful, dawning the NYC logo, so as to make sure everyone in DC was aware their vacation included several states. The youngest sister had the knobbiest knees I had ever seen. Her hair had some sort of purple sticky substance in it. Perhaps some sort of candy treat she had been rewarded with earlier. They walked at the slowest rate of all time. They were holding up street traffic. They were beautiful. The best part about this little tourist family was their footware--they all donned the all purpose and all durable croc, in various sizes and shades. It comforted me to know that even though it had been a long day of touring the capitol and dragging screaming children through the smithsonians, their feet were not feeling the pain. their feet could breathe, but at the same time felt the comfort of a supportive arch and a sturdy sole. i like to think their matching crocs were one of the reasons that, at 5:43 PM on a day when the temperature reached upward of 90, the whole family was still smiling. Though I had been feeling a bit down, I perked right up at the thought of one day purchasing 6 pairs of crocs, in various sizes and shades, so that at the end of a hot, humid day full of tantrums and dropped ice cream cones, my future family and i can all look at each other and smile, basking in the comfort of it all.

Sharing is Caring. Pop Rocks can Save us.

This is my friend Yolanda from when I lived in Mexico. Her dad is a migrant worker that illegally crosses the border to work so he can have money to buy her food.

This:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/07/14/immigration_rally_planned_in_iowa_meatpacking_town/
is making me super happy today. It won't let me link to it, I don't know why, but you should copy/paste it into your browser and read it, because maybe it will bring you a bit of happiness too. and i, for one, am all about bringing happiness into the world after i find out things like ladies being chained by their heads to men for two straight years are happening on this planet (if you don't know what im talking about, you should pick up a newspaper maybe. or if you don't want to know, which is understandable, avoid all news stands and don't journey to colombia anytime soon).

when people Care (yes with a capital C, because it deserves it) it makes my heart happy. im interning right now for an immigration/refugee assistance/policy lobbying organization in dc, so you will probably be hearing a lot about it from me. by hearing i mean seeing. and by seeing i mean you will be seeing me passionately tirading, or whatever it is that i do about sadness and suffering and children not having candy and toys. it all began with my save the donkeys in tijuana campaign at the age of 11. ill probably post more about my crusade to save the spray painted donkeys in the future. it culminates in me insisting my entire class bring in all of their spare change and begging my mom to drive me back to mexico so i could buy the donkeys. i was a ridiculous and stubborn child. also a chubby one. right now it will suffice to quote my love dr. seuss: "if someone like you doesn't care a whole lot, nothings going to get better, its not."

anyway, of course i couldnt just post the link because i am the most long-winded person on planet earth. if you made it this far, i salute you. i wish you peace and giggles all day long. i challenge you to spend an extra 15 minutes asking someone questions about their life today and for real listening, not just fake listening and thinking about what you have to do, or anonymously do an act of service, like buying your co-worker pop rocks. im pretty sure we severely underestimate the power of pop rocks to help combat the world's problems.

i found my heart in gettysburg.

i went to gettysburg. i bought a ring. it looks like this. $1.75 of endless joy.

i promised myself i had to cut down on accumulating junk in mass quantities, so i withheld even though i really wanted the $4.75 bullet necklace. the confederate flag heart ring was enough for me. the abraham lincoln bobble head will have to wait for another time.

gettysburg was bomb. i dont feel like describing it except for to tell you that it was bike week in gettysburg, meaning there were millions of leather clad men on harley davidsons. my other favorite thing was going to general picketts all you can eat buffet. a chuckarama with a civil war theme and murals of the confederate troops on the wall? im in love. its fatal flaw was lack of a frozen yogurt machine. the battlefield at gettysburg made me appreciate those that have come before and paved the way. freedom is incredible. we dont appreciate it as much as we should. it is a beautiful and precious gift, one that we should use wisely. i cant imagine what it would be like to be at war in those days, looking into the faces of men you will soon kill or that will kill you. it was so much more personal in those days. now we can just press a button and blow people up. that is probably more scary than anything. look into people's eyes once a while. i think its good for the soul.

it was a good trip. maybe ill post pictures. most likely not. the weekend was weird for other reasons. reasons that made me appreciate my friends and family, and realize that no matter how far you travel, there is no place like home. which is funny, because i wasnt even home. but its good to know that in this great big world, you will always be connected to the people that love you, and that in your darkest of moments they are only one phone call or gchat away. and that my friends, is better than the banana cake at general picketts. maybe as good as a bullet necklace.