Thought:

With the right story telling, you will always be the villain in someone else's movie.

When it all catches up to you...

4 countries, 2 continents and 16 hours of travel later, I returned from Sweden this Wednesday afternoon. It was a whirlwind trip, as most of my travel seems to be. I landed in Sweden on Saturday night, without my luggage. That was fun, nothing makes travel more fun that flying all day and night, only to be left with nothing to change into the next day. Luckily, a coworker of mine is the exact same size as me and brought me some extra clothes. My luggage did arrive eventually, on Monday evening, just in time for me to leave Tuesday night. At least I got to look good for the last day and a half of the trip.

Sweden: Far enough away to mess up the internal clock, short enough trip to not adjust fully, back in town dragging my ass through the rest of the week.

I played the last hockey game of the season on Wednesday night, I don't know where I got the energy for it. I even scored a goal on my first shift. I think I set the bar too high because I did nothing worth mentioning for the rest of the game. We lost, in OT, the championship went to the most hated team in the league, which makes it sting that much more. We got over it shortly after with pitchers of beer and a variety of pub food.

I don't think the jet lag hit me until Friday night. I was getting ready to head to the gym (I've recently take up running), and I thought I would wait out the crowd for about an hour. I made the mistake of laying down to watch some TV, then all of the sudden it was 10am the next morning. I can't remember the last time I slept for 16 hours in one night. I guess I was tired.

You would think the weekend would be the best time to relax and chill out, but while I was traveling 10,000 miles around the world, I missed 4 birthdays at work and another one this Sunday. My weekend is full of baking. Cupcakes, lemon tarts, a 40th birthday cake and a fourth dessert that I haven't figured out yet. What else could go with the other three desserts? I almost feel like I should offer a healthy treat to balance out all the sweets, but it's a birthday. There's no room for carrot sticks and broccoli next to cake and lemon tarts. That would just be weird.

On top of all the baking, I'm trying to piece together the ruins of my aunt's patio cushions in an attempt to make her new ones. I guess 'patio cushions' isn't the right description. They are really the seat cushions to a swing that she has on her patio. Having never seen what the cushions looked like before, it's hard to envision how all these pieces are supposed to go together. The really hard part to figure out was the padding. Instead of the seat portion just being one single piece of foam, it's three. One really long one and two that are half the size. The long one sandwiches the smaller ones to hold them together. Personally, I think one thick piece would have been the better way to go. In fact, it completely baffles me as why it isn't just one thick piece. Three pieces just causes me to readjust over and over again to get it all straight and flat. I will never understand why people make things so difficult....

So after a whirlwind trip, I have a whirlwind weekend. I'm aiming for next weekend to relax...

BTW - Happy May!

~Bean

The Moment...

It's 5AM, in Sweden, which is where I am. I think I have slept for a grand total of 3 hours since leaving Vancouver on Friday at 5PM. Despite how tired I feel, I can't sleep. I think it's because my baggage didn't make it. I don't like not having my stuff....

Anyways, 4:30 AM is a great time for thinking. I had this thought, that turned into an internal argument and the final result was this story:

Her soul walks into the room,
She glances his way.
Intense eyes meet hers.
Flooded with images
A walk, a dance, a journey.
A loving embrace, slowly replaced with crossed, defensive arms.
A single tear is shed, followed by the downpour.
She stares back, at her love.
Representing everything that was
And will never be.
Her heart sinks, at least whatever is left.
A moment, true clarity.
Her soul walks out of the room,
Leaving behind the shred of a man she once loved.

Is there any point to me trying to sleep now?

~Bean

All it takes...

"When you've reached the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

~ Thomas Jefferson

You know those times, when you've reached your breaking point and absolutely nothing could possibly make your life any worse? We've all had them. The moments when we break down and cry over the stupidest things, like dropping a box of pins or burning dinner. Maybe it's just girls who do this, boys probably just punch things.

Anyways, in this moment, what does it take to turn it all around? Does it have to be something big, like winning the lottery? (BTW - I won $10 the other day) Or can it be the smallest gesture, a smile, a pat on the back...

I'm not having a rough time, at least I don't think I am. (Now that I've said that, I am probably going to get railroaded tomorrow) But I'll admit I didn't feel like things were great. No need to get into specifics, but I just felt like something was missing. Maybe a lot of things. Probably a lot of things. Yet, I still felt stretched, doing too much in too little time (god damn Easter baking...). All I needed was to get to this weekend. Yes, it was a long weekend, but that's not what made the difference.

Once a year, a fantastic group of people trek up from Portland and we all get together and kick ass on the ice. Ok, last year we didn't kick so much ass, but this year we were awesome, to say the least. We play in a coed tournament in Coquitlam and it's a blast. I can't express how much fun I had and how refreshing it was, at least for me. And it's not the winning, or even the hockey that does it. It's the people. They make me smile, laugh, celebrate....all the things that you should do daily.

Even if we lost, it still would have been the best weekend in a long time. And that is saying a lot, because this weekend was trying! The wheel fell off my truck, luckily right by my house and not on the highway where I was headed. This was my breaking point. I pulled over, got out and saw my tire. It was angled at about 30 degrees, jammed into the wheel well. Oddly enough, I had JUST has this checked on Monday and was told that it was fine. I went into my house and just started freaking out. What if I had been on the highway? I could have died... In reality, I wasn't on the highway, so I tried not to put much thought into what could have been. Should I call a tow truck? My mechanic? My boyfriend? (oh, no, wait, single...right....damn) I called my mom. Moms always know what to do. Her thoughts were pretty in line with mine, leave it on the side of the road until other people (her and my dad) were around to help figure out what to do and take my dad's car in the mean time. By the way, as soon as I started talking to my mom, I dropped my box of pins and burst into tears. It was pretty pathetic. Once I recovered, I moved my gear into my dad's car.

Now the fun thing with my dad's car is that there is only one FOB to disarm the alarm system. Naturally, he took it with him to the island. So, my options were to either not lock the car, or deal with the alarm until I could manually shut it off, once inside the car. I went with option B, because I felt that facing the embarrassment of my alarm going off was a far cheaper price to pay than buying my dad a new GPS system and probably some other stuff he has hidden in his car. Luckily, I didn't have to experience this too often, I think 4 times in total.

So, the car problem was pretty much solved, so, as traumatized as I was, I was feeling a bit better. Off to hockey I go, only to get hit by a train. Not a real train, but some jerk on the ice who thought there was a Stanley Cup at the end of this tournament. I, or rather he, rattled my brains a little. I went into the boards, fairly awkwardly, smacked my head first, then my shoulder and hip. Put my new helmet to the test, I'd say that it works well enough. It took me a moment to get my head on straight, get up and skate to the bench, where I almost dropped my pins again. I don't like it when I get hurt and on my count, that was two near death experiences in one day.

I reached my breaking point around noon on Saturday with my phone call break down to my mother, but by the end of the first game, I felt on top of the world again. A dazed, spinning world, but I was still on top of it. We won our game, that jerk got a penalty, and I got free potato skins! The next game was a nail biter, but I scored a freakishly good goal with 2 minutes left to put us into the lead and the finals. It was awesome, or so I am told, I didn't even see it go in. I actually heard it hit the post and automatically assumed it didn't go it. Oh yeah, and then I won a bamboo blanket for being the game MVP.

In the beginning....worst day ever. In the end.....best day ever. What turned it around? The hug I was greeted with at the rink. A small, tiny gesture that turned my world right side up. That's all it took. And that's all I could ask for at that moment. Just a hug. The smiles I got later also helped and the free potato skins, but it all started with the hug.

Maybe if everyday was filled with laughter, smiles, hugs and celebrating the small things, we wouldn't get to the breaking point so easily. What does the end of the rope do when you are not hanging onto it?

~Bean

Do We Ever Recover From Our Tragedies?

The worst moments in our lives....are we ever really over them?

Think back to what you consider the worst thing that has ever happened to you? Do you remember how you felt? More importantly, do you know how it affected you? How did it change you?

Physical pain is often forgotten. Of course you remember that it hurt and that it made you wince and cry out in agony, but the actual memory of the pain is minimal. This is kind of trauma that doesn't mess with your head.

Mental agony, I think, stays with you forever. It fades over time, but all it takes is a trigger to bring it all back, as if it happened yesterday. This is the kind of pain that stays with you forever.

And how does tragedy shape our future? I think everyone can agree that the past is what brought you to where you are. Everything that has happened to you has made you into the person you are today. Cliche, yes. But it's true. I think this is why all time travel movies warn the character not to change anything. Messing with your past does nothing but bad things for your future.
Anyway, I've been giving it some thought lately, scattered thought at least. It's hard to gauge what 'could have been' without knowing 'what could have been'. Does that make any sense? I guess I wonder how different one's life could be if a certain tragedy had never happened. And to what degree does it change the course of our lives.

I don't really know what I'm getting at, it was more or less just a thought. I'd like to think that when something bad happens, it hurts, you grieve (for however long needed) and then you grow from it. We never necessarily let go of what happened, but we get over it, in the best cases. I don't want to forget what has happened, and I hope that it makes me better in the future.

I posed this question to a friend, and his response was:

"My belief is that the past, present and future are like this....events in our life, are what create our beliefs about us and the world around us. Thus our beliefs affect what we "choose" for our present, and those "choices" create our future. So, as in the event of being hurt in a relationship, we create a belief. If I love, I can be hurt, and I don't want to hurt again, so the we put up walls. Therefore, our future has less love in it. Every event, tragic or not shapes what we believe. What we believe shapes what choose, and what we choose, unveils our future."

He is a very wise friend. =)

So, what do you take from tragedy? Take the thoughts, the experience, the love and the pain and turn it into something better.

~Bean

I'm still not a photographer...

It's a good thing my camera is so good at taking pictures!

Do you ever wonder if technology is making us all good at everything? Advances in technology opens up more doors to everyone. Anyone with a camera can take an amazing shot. If it isn't amazing right away, then you can download a program to turn it into something better than it was before. I'm not a photographer. I own a camera and like to play around with different settings. Every once in a while I snap something cool. When I don't, I turn it into something cool, like the shot above. Seriously...before the post work, I was flesh toned in that picture!

Kids are getting smarter younger, athletes are faster and stronger. So much pressure to do things better than the last. Remember when there were less than 30 channels, no one under 35 had a cell phone and the only time you used a computer was to write some god awful school report and it printed on a dot matrix printer? Ahh....those were the days... Now there are over 500 channels (and still nothing to watch), it's practically a crime if someone can't get a hold of you at any given moment and ink jet printers are minimum standard.

I can't complain about technology. If it weren't for technology, I'd just be muttering to myself most of the time, rather than writing on here. I'm pretty sure my job would be a lot lamer and I would have to rely on my own imagination way more. =)

Can we live without technology now? Has it made us weaker or stronger?


~Bean

Lao Tzu is my Hero...