Venus and Mars Collide

I cannot think of a time I was more embarrassed than earlier this year when my attempts at showing appreciation of one of my friends went terribly sour!

At the dawn of the new year, as you were making your new year's resolutions all of which by now are broken, I was doing something far more exciting. I did a thorough inventory of my friendships and came to the conclusion that there was one friend I was treating particularly shabbily.

This particular friend is quite resourceful in a profession that I am new to, so from time to time, I call him up when I need technical help. This is not a bad thing, of course, what are friends for? However, the problem is I had only looked him up specifically when I needed help, and never otherwise (tsk! tsk!)

So, in the spirit of new beginnings and making amends, I purposed to call him up when I don't need help and just have a good old chat. This seemed like a perfectly grand idea to me until the last minute of the evening we were supposed to meet up for a drink and a chat when this friend balked!

After replaying the incident several times in my head and with a few consultations here and there from member of the less fare sex, I think I may have unravelled the mystery. He thought I was hitting on him! A single unattached woman, on a mission, offering rather assertively to buy him a drink, out of the blues, and not asking for any favours as was the custom, may have been all too much for him!

I have since abandoned that mission and set out on one that I hope will be greatly beneficial to the entire human race, well, perhaps the entire woman race - an in depth analysis of the theory that men are from mars and women from venus. Any volunteers, guys? I promise, I won't offer to buy you a drink!

Life is a Bitch, and then you die

For some reason, today I am reminded of a very foolish business venture I once undertook at a time when I had no money to loose. Not that I ever have money that is designated "to loose".

Anyway, I committed a tidy sum of money, tidy, considering my financial state at the time, to taking part in an exhibition that was supposed to make me lots of money and give me contacts that would help me sell my hundreds of handmade cards. (If y'all are really nice, I might show you my handiwork sometime). The idea was all really brilliant, an exhibition of different arts and crafts in an up-market residential area where people supposedly have a better art-sense and yes, have deeper pockets. There was only one problem though – not enough publicity was done for the event!

So there I am on a Saturday afternoon, having spent the better part of my morning selling nothing, and watching the dark rain clouds gathering. (I thought that only happens in movies). Life sucks, right? Wrong!

If you asked me how my day had been, I would honestly have said "great!" And it had. You see, there was this handsome guy with a voice to die for, who had paid me special attention the whole day (girls, stop rolling your eyes on me, you know what I mean). I mean, the guy did a double take when he saw me, despite my faded jeans, hustled look and no make-up. And after that, he spent most of the time at my stand, talking about the cards, my work, his life, and I don't know whether he was so funny or I was suffering a heatstroke from the day's earlier sun, but he made me laugh a great deal.

The moral of the story? Life is a bitch and then you die...or life is an exciting adventure packed with unexpected twists and turns. You choose. I did.

Only change is constant!

I have a famous quote I coined...well maybe I didn't really coin it...but I like to quote it often, like my personal mantra. I could have said this to you before and I will probably say it again

"The only thing that remains constant in life is the fact that things are always changing"

or more simply put,

"The only constant in life, is change."

Yet, for some reason we all fear and resist change with all our might. We lift our cheeks, colour our hair and cling to people whom we should have let go of a long time ago!

Yeah, letting go of people can be one of the hardest changes to accept. Perhaps if we borrowed a leaf from nature, then we would move through life more gracefully.

Just like trees shed leaves in fall to put on new ones next spring, whether we resist it or not, when a person's season is over in your life, they may need to be shed.
Now, before you go ahead and decide to shed me, remember, that not all people in your life are leaves! There are always some people in your life that are meant to be there forever. They are like buttress roots, holding you firmly to the ground.

So go on – find out what season it is in your life, figure out what part the people and things in your life play – then boldly embrace change!

My Pet Dog, Procrastination

You would not believe the number of blog entries I have written in the last month. They are absolutely numerous!

Ever since I begun riding the blogging wave, every conversation I have, any discussion I hear or any argument I get into is a potential blog entry –

You: "Ethel, how soon can you print my cards?"
Me: "Ah! Cards! Now, that would make a good topic for blogging!";

You: "It looks like rain today!"
Me: "The weather...hmm...I think I can still create an interesting twist to talking about the weather"

You: "I broke up with my boyfriend last night"
Me: "Relationships! What curious things they are....I will definitely write about falling in and out of love!"

So where, I hear you ask, are all these amazingly interesting entries? Ummmm, well....my dog ate it! Honest, he did!

I didn't get to blogging right away, and somehow the Procrastination ate up all my ideas and now I cannot even remember what I was supposed to be saying in the first place...So you are reading the rumblings of a mind that is exhausted from searching for what it had been thinking about yesterday, and the day before and before that.....and before that.......

You are as old as you feel

I seem to have a penchant for quoting very cliché quotes... But bear with me please, I got some really funny stuff about age I just have to share with you!

The other day I got an email forward from a friend. I am not really a fan of forwards (please note, friends!) but this particular one really tickled me. Perhaps because it hit so close to home?

It was a really long one, but I will just pick out what I thought were the choicest parts.

One of them goes like this:

Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids? If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about ageing that you think in fractions. 'How old are you?' 'I'm four and a half!' You're never thirty-six and a half (and all the ladies in the house said....).

Another one said this:

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. 'How old are you?' 'I'm going to be 16!' You could be 13, but hey, you're going to be 16! And then the greatest day of your life .... . You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony. YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!! But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?

It went on and on through the different landmarks of age, but the part that really got me in stitches was this one:

You get into your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime. And it doesn't end there Into the 90s, you start going backwards; 'I Was JUST 92.'

Now back to the moral of the story - You are as old as you feel or as young as you wanna be. My advice to you? Throw out all the non-essential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.