I need friends. And I need hipster glasses. The two aren't wholly unrelated. I lost my glasses, so I need new hipster ones. I got three jobs so I lost a lot of time, but hopefully, that doesn't mean I lost friends. I know that doesn't mean I lost friends, because they come into my work and hand me back a bit of the time I lost. They brush the dust of the pavement off of it, because that is where I dropped it. They understandingly say, "Here. Here's some time. It's not new, but we know you are trying. We are going to make fun of you anyway, though. Because we know you will laugh, and we'll laugh too." Here's the catch. They don't say that out loud. I still hear it, though. That means we are friends.
They come into my work, wearing a baseball cap and a candy-circus dress.  They write notes on blank receipts and yellow sticky-notes. I'm covered in tape and laughing til I cry. I lost my glasses, and I lost a lot of time. My friends gave me back some time..... Maybe they can get me some new hipster glasses?

Yellow roses people

The world loves yellow roses. Because
They are pretty
They stand out, but they are still common; they aren't too surprising.
They are eye-catching
They smell nice... We can't forget that they smell nice.

So, the world loves the yellow roses people. Because
They are pretty
They stand out, but they still fit in; they aren't too surprising.
They are eye-catching
They smell nice.... We can't forget that they smell nice.

Sometimes what a girl needs is a pretty dress and a really great pair of shoes to go with it.

Branches

There is a tree; a tall oak tree. The branches twist and snake over and around each other as they reach outward. The roots run deep. This tree does not have leaves.
It has a sun, though.
And a moon.
And stars.
 Hanging from it's branches is the circus,
 a ferris wheel,
a friend
and a red front door.
There is a toppled suitcase, it's contents traipsing down through the branches of the tall oak tree. It's roots run deep. From the branches there hangs a lemon,
 a sailboat,
a pumpkin
and a bike.
There is music that hangs from the tree and there are balloons. There is also a girl in this tree. Maybe she is important, maybe she is not. You have to search to find her. Does that make her important? There are possibilities on the branches of the tall oak tree. You just need to pluck one off. There is life at the ends of the branches of this tree.

String and Clay

I work at the dry cleaners and that is where I met you, because you work there too. You weren't what I was expecting to fall in love with. You have a charm. You don't know you do. Well, you know you're charming but you are charming not in the way that you think you are charming. And it's not the 1950's-lettermans-jacket charming. It's your very own brand, like Tide, or PF Flyers. But those are my brands. Your brand is the brand where you tell me your plans, your problems, and you wear your imperfections on your sleeve. I wish I could do that. And you show me knew things that you know, and I don't. I love to learn though. I like to think about what you tell me. I especially remember the day where the store was slow, and we weren't busy.  It was just me and you and there were no Audreys and    Danielles or Carlys to get in the way. I liked it, but it was a bit scary for me, and maybe boring for you. But that's why it was scary for me. To be in the dry cleaners with just you and me, with not much to do, I don't want you to be bored of me. I want to be interesting. I want to be the maze that you want to discover. I want you to uncover my soul piece by piece until you uncover the entire painting. I want you to think it's beautiful. Like the Sistine Chapel.  They say we create ourselves. I want you to think I am a Michael Angelo with my own spirit. I think that's why I remember that thursday at the dry cleaners. It's because it was my first chance to show you a lesser-known part of me, and to see if you liked it. I choked though. So instead we cut out Roxberry banners from their flyers, and then we took those knives and cut up cardboard boxes. I built houses out of the pieces you had already sliced in thirds. You chuckled at me, and teased me a little. So I threw the pieces away. "Too young..." I muttered in my head regretfully, "too young." You never knew that, though. And you went on and told me about the world and what it needed and how you were going to change a bit of it.  Well, you changed me. I am now in a state of recreation, where what I was has eroded because you showed me a different walk of life, but I can't accept your walk of life either. Not now, anyway. So I am in a period of recreation where I am taking bits and pieces of clay and string and forming something that I am not sure what it is yet. God knows. But He's not telling me everything about it. He just gives me hints and lets me discover the rest. It's a restless game of riddles we play. Restless because he gives me straight answers and I confuse them myself and solve them again only to find that what God said in the first place was right all along. But I wanted the experience so I took the tiles an made a rubix cube and solved it again. I can't even solve a real rubix cube. Only metaphorical ones. I'm in the middle of one right now and you are one of the sides. I don't know which color yet, but it's still up for grabs, I guess. You told me your favorite color was deep purple. There's not that color on a rubix cube. You'll have to choose a different color or not be on there at all, I suppose. Maybe you are the tricky extra color, the joke square that someone put on so that I could never solve the rubix cube. Do I want to take it off, though? Do I mind if this puzzle gets solved? Maybe not. Maybe that's why I write in a notebook now, and why I kept the Roxberry banners we cut out.

Of small and large

I think I'm afraid. I'm afraid of being passionate. I'm afraid of being passionate because I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of failure and ridicule from, I don't know who. My family. Maybe my friends maybe nobody. Maybe I'm afraid that nobody will scoff at me because that means nobody saw me try. That means that maybe nobody saw me succeed. If you succeed but no one was there to see it, did you really accomplish anything? Is it possible that I'm afraid of success? Or maybe I'm just afraid of change. Success in our society is often measured by how much change took place. Andrew Carnegie, for example would not have nearly the renown he does today if he had gone from rags to a peaceful middle-class home. His passion took him beyond that, in almost every way, good or bad. He gained so much, but he lost a lot too. Passion is what propels us forward, and evokes powerful changes. What humanity often forgets is what falls by the wayside in our powerful pursuits. There comes a point on everybody's life where they have to decide to pursue their biggest dream and fill their life with that, or whether they are going to follow a gentler road, and fill the void of a forgotten dream with the smaller graces of life. Perhaps one path is better than the other; who's to say? Maybe it doesn't really matter. What matters is what each of will choose for ourselves, and when we do, can we ever turn back? Is a discarded dream lost forever to only be taken out of the attic and dusted off every now and then? Or can it age like wine and become riper with aging? Events like passions and dreams are so independent of each other, yet so intertwined. You cannot generalize people's desires, yet as society we always try to. I cannot say much for the dreams and passions of the world. I can barely say anything about my own. I can say this, though. Whether you lead a life of one strong passion or many mild ones, do not let fear govern your choice.

Sarcasm and Silly people

Today I experienced a rather awkward moment. It was one of those iconic moments where you text someone in your contacts, and unbeknownst to you, said person has changed their number, and so you end up having a very ambiguous conversation with someone you don't know, trying to figure out whether you really have the wrong number, or if your REAL friend is just playing a ridiculous joke.
Well, I sent a text message to what I thought was my brother, with just some standard small talk, and I ended up having the following conversation. I've put in my thought process during this conversation in order to clearly make my point. *ahem*

Me: "Stacia Hardy says hi."
Mystery Not-My-Brother Man: "Who is that"

Me: "She was Chamber with you, right?"                    
MNMBM: "? Wrong number?"                                    (Well, I hope not because then that puts me in that stupid situation where I have figure out whether or not this is Drew, and then it's super lame if it is him, and super lame if it isn't. Especially since I've had his number in my phone for the past, well, eternity.)


Me: "Wait. This is Drew, right?"
MNMBM: "Goodbye stalker"                                 (goodbye stalker? ok either my brother inherited my Dad's warped sense of humor and it's only just now manifesting itself after a quarter of a century, or this dude can't give answers that make sense.)

Me: "Arrrgg! What is wrong with my life?"
MNMBM: "?"                                                          (yeah. That's how I feel right now, too. Just like one giant question mark. Help me out here, buddy. Are you my brother or not? Hey! maybe I should write a children's book about that and call it "Are you my brother?" Haha! Oh I crack myself up sometimes.)

Me: "This is my brother, right? Andrew Forbes?"
MNMBM: "Nope"                                                         (....... You couldn't have said that the first time?)

Me: "Well. This is awkward. Sorry about that."
MNMBM: "Is this hannah brown?"                                  (Seriously? Hannah Brown? Have you not been paying attention?)

Me: "Obviously not, since, well, my brother's last name is Forbes. Who is this?"
MNMBM: "No, its your mother, jk lol this is barack obama"      (Ok. A: Just tell me who you are and then we can both move on and sleep in peace. B: jk? lol? Really? Who uses those anymore? C: You honestly couldn't have come up with anyone better than my mom and the president? Sheesh. Some people's kids.)  *At this point I can feel my IQ physically dropping. In an attempt to maintain some sort of intelligence, I resort to sarcasm.*

Me: "Ha. Ha. You are cracking me up right now."
MNMBM: "Bcuz ima BAUSS"                                              (jk and lol were bad enough. bcuz. ima. bauss. I cannot believe this. Why am I even still talking to you?)      *My Braincells are now reaching critically low levels. Some sort of intelligence must be established in this conversation.*

Me: "Who is this really?"
MNMBM: "BARACK OBAMA"                                         ("You wanna stick with that lie or choose a different one" - Mr. Birrell and Ms. Woolsey.)


Me: "Ok. You're not the president. He would actually bother to spell the words 'because', 'I'm a' and 'boss' correctly. Nice try, though. If you're not going to tell me, I'll just go. Bye."  (Fairly rude, yes. I probably shouldn't have, but it had just the right combination of sarcasm and sass. I really couldn't help myself.)  *Brain levels of activity now begin to adjust back to normal.*

All in all, it was definitely one of my more sarcastic moments in life, and definitely not my noblest, but it was just one of those times where you're rolling your eyes and "SERIOUSLY??" is stamped across your brain in giant, bolded, size 294 sans-script font.  Anyway, it was rather satisfying to let my unbridled sarcasm dictate the converstation, but I'll try and reign it in next time. I guess I should go figure out Drew's real number now.