Christmas lessons learned

I finally booked my ticket to go home to Boston for Christmas. I haven't been home for Christmas for ... 3 maybe 4 years... I can't really remember actually. I do know that I didn't go home last year because I had just moved to a new apartment days before and the year before that I spent the holiday alone and sick to the edge of death with the flu.

In fact, now I am remembering that I didn't go home the year before that either - because both of those years the wonderfully efficient Santa Barbara Post Office "lost" all of my presents that were sent to me from home and didn't "find" them until days after Christmas.

That was kinda sad - two years in a row it was kinda sad - so there I lay on the couch, sick to the edge of death with the flu (sad because I was all alone and had no presents... pity party for one... anyone....)

After the second year that I had this horrible repeat performance of no-show Christmas gifts that had been sent 3 and a half weeks in advance, I went to the post office and talked to the manager. I told him my story, I went into great detail about my flirtation with death over the flu and my sad, very sad, story about being all alone with no presents for Christmas - I stayed calm but firm. I wanted them to know that their actions hurt someone...

All of a sudden he STARTED TO CRY! HE CRIED!!!

That's when I realized it - I had weathered the storm of the flu - I had eventually received my gifts from places far away from everything other that my heart - and it was the holiday season.

To top it all off, here in front of me was a stranger, a man, crying and apologizing to me, empathizing with me in a way I neither expected nor could actually register because it had shocked me so.

Here was the true face of my "Grinch" that had stolen my Christmas not once but twice in a row and he was crying for me...

I melted immediately, my resolve to be indignant and righteous fell away like a coat of sugar in the rain. I looked him in the eye and said "Thank you for understanding my pain."

Lesson learned I guess.

This year will be different. This year will be filled up to the top with family and friends and hopefully no epic battles with the flu.

Constant Inner Battle

As I get older, and as far as I’m concerned more concious of myself and the world around myself, I am becoming more and more aware of the energy that surrounds people.
Some people I know are constantly giving off a positive energy charge that effects the people they come in contact with.
For example, I have this friend that I have known since college - she has had more than her fair share of uncomfortable times in her own life yet miraculously every time I interact with her in any way she is amazingly positive and supportive and a consumate friend.
I always walk away from our interactions feeling as though I have just gotten a little lift and definately always feeling reassured at the fact that no matter how much or how frequently the world dumps it’s crap all over me I, lucky dog that I am, have out there at least one true friend who just also happens to be a pure and kind soul. Someone that I am proud to proclaim that I know and love.
I count myself extrmely lucky when it comes to speaking of my friends. There are a few women out there that I have known and closely counted as true friends since I was a young girl in Medway, Massachusetts. A few of those women are truly amazing and inspiring to me. I am proud of them and proud of the fact that I am lucky enough to be part of their lives.
And yet - after all of this… there are others. Others whom I have known for a very long time as well. Their friendship fits like an old worn-in glove the same way as the positive energy girls -except that their glove makes your hand all sweaty and stinky when you pull it out.
These are the ones that bring forward a negative energy. Everything is a complaint - every comment contradictory - you find yourself constantly trying to defend yourself or your ideas or your very own thoughts! These people pull your energy away.
Here’s the thing. Sometimes I look at my own energy and I wonder… how am I perceived? Am I a friend that my friends look forward to interacting with because they feel a little lift… or am I an energy sucker?

Little Birdy

This morning I was standing on my patio - overlooking the morning. It is soo quiet out there in the morning - just as the sun is coming up, before most people really get moving.

I began to hear a noise, a rustling, a persistant rustling.

I looked over the edge of the patio and there on the patio below me was a little bird. This bird had flown in and landed on the patio of my neighbor and now could not get back out. Surrounding all of our patios is a glass half-wall - only about 3 feet high but surrounding nonetheless. This little birdy had flown in easily enough, yet now he was trying desperately to fly through the glass to get out. His wings fluttered and rustled as he repeatedly tried to fly right through the glass. Then he would get tired and would land on the patio again.

He kept trying.

I stood and watched him repeat this three times in just five minutes - he was determined to say the least. Or maybe it just never occurred to him that he couldn't, eventually, and with enough determination, make it through.

I wanted so desperately to help him, to lift him above the glass - but I was relegated to watching him struggle.

I guess it is all about perspective in this world. If the little birdy had just had my perspective... well, things would have been completely different now wouldn't they.

I was thinking that perhaps that was my perspective "wake-up call" - I was shown a little birdy struggling soo hard to go through a foe that could soo easily have been gone over...

hmmm...

I named myself after my cat...

Well, I finally got myself my very own blog. I'm pretty excited about it - I feel like a little kid at christmas with a shiny new present. A present I want to touch and stare at and hide in my pocket when I go back to school after Christmas break and during the day I wanna sneak little peaks at it because I like it soo much.

I guess that I should really start this blog with some of my thoughts on the blog title I've chosen (A blog title, by the way, which makes me laugh out loud a little every time I look at it). I think I might be laughing because it is so strikingly accurate even in it's obvious absurdity.

Well, I had this cat. Wait.. I'll back up a little.

My parents have owned this birdwatching store for years. They usually leave the front door open whenever Massachusetts weather permits. One day when weather permitted and the door was indeed open a little kitty walked into the Backyard Birdwatchers General Store and promptly decided that it was her new home.

This little calico kitty, now named Rusty, is truly the sweetest little kitty that you've ever encountered - she lives in the birdstore and her top priorities are sleeping on the birdseed and making sure that she gets up in the face of all of the customers so that she gets all of the loving attention that she can. One could pretty safely assume that if this cat had any litters every kitten would be sweet as my mother's apple pie (which admittedly is extremely sweet) and for the most part one would be exactly right in that assumption.

And then there was Sarafina.

Sarafina was a completely black cute little kitty. At the time I got her I was living in Boston with a friend of mine. We brought her home and named her carefully after studying the baby name book as though we were expecting a new human instead of the fur ball that was to come. Sarafina is what we decided and that pretty much changed everything.
Pretty quickly we came to realize that when panicking or when extremely upset at the cat or with something she had done, the word sarafina was much more than a mouthfull, she soon became sasa, sha sha, sassy. Shortly after that her name began to get inexplicably longer, sasafeefa, sha sha fee fa foofie, sasafeefifofum etc... Eventually we settled on sasafee...

I guess I got a case of short story long huh?

Anyway, sasafee soon became an absolute terrorist which would violently attack you (me) for no reason at all, leaving me perpetually covered in long ugly scratches on my arms and legs.

I began to hate the cat.

I hated the cat.

Right around that time I made the decision to relocate to California to go to Brooks, and I certainly didn't want to bring the cat - but at that time I kinda felt like I was supposed to want to bring her so I had to pretend I was upset that I "couldn't". My roomate swooped in and saved me by suggesting that maybe Sarafina would be happy staying with her parents at their house. I almost jumped for joy.

Also right around this time I got my first email account and well, to be honest, I was a little wrapped up in the cat issues, so when I had to choose a username... guess what I chose.... that's right, the most difficult email to spell out to someone verbally... sasafee - try it over the telephone if you think I'm joking.

Through the years I have molded to the name sasafee - to me it has come to represent an attitude - sassy, girly, a little bitchy but extremely loving.

I guess little sasa served her purpose in my life. And from all I hear she's very happy at her "new" home so it has apparently worked out well for her too.