CafeKel

I don’t normally post on the weekend, but here I am, up bright and early on a Saturday morning with my kiddos happily playing in the background.  I look back at this week and wonder where the time has gone?  Where are the words that I wanted to write?  The moments I wanted to capture and freeze in time?  They were there and yet, they are not here.

I am not sure what happened to my life recently but it has changed.  Things that used to matter and be the center of my attention span are not quite as big as before.  Then there are things like work, that has always been there (sometimes more demanding than others) that hasn’t extended past my normal 8 hour work day since I stopped working for company “I’m going to work you to death” that is now changing. 

There are things that I wanted to change in my life that I can see are now different and I am enjoying them and there are things I wanted (or thought I wanted) to change that now I can see, perhaps I shouldn’t have.  There are also the changes that needed to happen and I wasn’t ready to admit and yet here I am - facing a new day.

I am learning, I am growing and I am happy.  I found out something truly interesting about myself in a recent trip I took.  I took a trip(for work) with another person, I don’t normally spend much time with, who has a different outlook on life than I do.  I don’t know if I’d consider myself a truely positive person, but I would like to be and try to not focus on the negative.  This is a practice I’ve been doing for sometime and still kind of felt like a ‘fraud’.  Somewhere along the way, this act of being more positive became less of an ‘act’ and more of who I am and I never knew this until I was sitting day in and day out next to someone who’s outlook on life was a lot more grim.  Grim is not bad and to each their own, I say, but for me…it just wasn’t what I wanted to surround my self with.  I had become the girl I had wanted to be, ‘pretended’ to be and never really knew the transformation had happened.

When did I become the woman of today?  I don’t know…but I do know that things feel like they are moving in the right direction and everything feels right.  I am happy and even thought I am not around as much as I’d like to be…I hope you have some ‘happy’ in your life too these days!

~Kel

Can you keep a secret?

Are you the type of person who can sit silently in a closet or around the corner just waiting to jump out and scare the bejeezus out of an unsuspecting subject?

Do you delight in seeing someone elses face light up when they receive something they never expected?

Do you like being sneaky?

Well if you can answer yes to one or more of the questions above, you might be good at surprises.

I however, well, my intentions are always there, but my execution typically fails.  I LOVE to give surprises…I DO NOT like to receive them.  I am not the type of person who can wait patiently (patience is not a virtue I possess) to catch you off guard, however I am quite sneaky when necessity calls for it.

So, lets travel back a few weeks, The new year has just begun and I am on the hunt (hint hint - daily discussions on what the hubby wants for his upcoming birthday) for the perfect b-day gift for the hubs birthday at the end of the month.  I mean - what do you get for a guy who is half geek/half grown kid and pretty much already has what he wants?  Well this is when I come up with the bright idea that I could throw a surprise ‘celebration‘ for him with a few of his friends…drinks, dinner, music - good times!

It is his 35th and that number doesn’t usually constitute a ‘big’ celebration so I should escape his thoughts of being ’sneaky’ hence, less lying = better chance of keeping the surprise.  I set off to do what any self respecting geek girl like myself would do…I facebook an invitation.  I booked a reservation downtown at a local hot spot and sit back to await the RSVPs.  A few start rolling in and it all looks like it is going according to plan, hubs seems unaware and the cake has been ordered when unexpectedly I find out that I will be flying to Virgina for a few days for work at the end of the month (a few days before his birthday).

DRATZ!  Now I’m concerned I will miss the b-day and that cannot happen.  My initial (and biggest) fear was that the east coast weather would strike and I would be stuck there longer than expected.  On the upside…I would be gone so there would be even less chance he would figure out I was up to something so…away I flew with all the details of the party finalized.

I should note - we only have snow for a few days out of the year.  The weather gets super cold during the winter, but snow does not happen often and when it does…NO ONE ventures outside their homes.  I mean - the water and bread have vanished from every store and the town looks like its been abandoned until the last drop of snow/ice has melted.  No one said the ‘deep south’ was ever willing to drive in snow - so yes, businesses close down too.

Anyhow - I’m busily watching the weather while I’m away  mere days before the party.  Stressing the entire time if I will beat the upcoming storm back home before it hits.  Suffice it to say that our plane landed without problems last Wednesday Night with weather as clear as could be.  Thursday the bad weather was ‘expected‘ to start, but despite our hourly network popup warnings of the ‘impending bad weather’ not a single drop of liquid fell from the sky.  The day ended and then the skys opened up.

The rain started falling.  The ice started falling.  Everything started freezing.

Friday was greeted with more of the same - our roads looked like slushies and then the bakery called to ask if I would be willing to ‘reschedule’ my cake pick up to a date later than Saturday.  It just went down hill from there…….

1) Cake was finished and ready for pickup Friday (party is Saturday) so now I have to bring it home where the hubs is

2) Despite my optimism that the “sun would come out tomorrow” and melt the ever increasing sheets of ice so we could go downtown - the hubs was busy trying to increase his life insurance policy, convinced I was trying to kill him before he was 35.

3) Guests started calling to cancel because they were already iced in.

By Saturday morning - the guest list was down to only a few and we (ok, so just me) were going to be there NO MATTER WHAT!  It was at this point that I realized I was pretty much defeated and broke down and told the hubs about the SURPRISE plan that was foiled by mother nature.

In the end, there were a handful of us who made it downtown for a little get together.  It was not the surprise I had hoped and planned for, but it was the best I could hope for considering the circumstances.  Ultimately, I like to be the surpriser and not the surprisee….in this case my surprise was a FAIL and instead I got one of my very own.

…it will definitely be a birthday worth remembering for years to come.

There’s a song th by the Rolling Stones that says  “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try you just might find that you get what you need.”  This song is my ‘pick me up’ song for those days where it seems like nothing went quite as planned.  But what happens to those moments when you actually DO get what you want? 

What if you wake up one morning and find yourself the recipient of a large sum of money that you never expected and yes, you’ve always wanted this ‘dream’ to come true.  Who doesn’t like to think that maybe they’ll win the lottery or some long lost rich Aunt or Uncle will pass and leave millions to you.  Imagine how good it would feel to have all your bills paid off or to take that vacation you’ve never been able to afford or know that you can send your kids to college and you won’t have to work until your 80?!  But…what if in your new found fortune, the people you’ve called friends or family change and no longer are you a ‘friend’ in their eyes but rather a walking ATM with requests for loans and expectations that you will share your ‘wealth’ with them because you are ‘friends or family.’

What if, at some point in your life you are hurt…deeply.  I am referring to the type that changes who we are because a small piece of our reality has been shattered by the realization that people can be hurtful.  The type of pain that cannot be brushed aside in a single wave of the hand, but rather it drives us to wish (however briefly) they too would feel some type of pain.  Regardless of right or wrong, we wish for payback and can only hope that we live long enough to see their faces the day they get ‘theirs’, because what goes around comes around, right?

What ifregardless of the scenario…we wake up one day and find out that what we’d ‘wanted’ all this time…the thing we wished would happen but truly never believed it would was staring us in the face?  Would you find it satisfying to finally get it?  Would you feel vindicated by seeing someone else suffer as you had once before?  Or would you simply feel saddened, because with every new realization life brings…a little more innocence is lost and our view of the world changes with it?

For me…I received something I had asked for previously.  It was not a ‘gift’ but rather I was there to see it happen.  I can remember the day I realized I wanted it, I can remember the day I first said the words outloud…just like it was yesterday.  I sit here and I tell myself, I never really wanted any of this, never truely believed it would happen and yet here I am sitting just this side of the events taking place.  I watch like an onlooker watches a play and am left feeling saddened by what I see.

What goes around, comes around and in someway… that too will affect the person you are continually striving to be.

On Friday I asked a rather simple question…

Do you think looks affect a persons ability to ‘get away’ with certain things such as being a smart mouth, but not being called on the carpet about it or having ’special’ treatment? 

Due to the lack of response, I was thinking perhaps it wasn’t such an ‘easy’ question, but then I looked at my stats and well…lets just say there weren’t many to respond.  Regardless of that…this has been bouncing around in my brain for about a week now all because of my own stereotype.  Yeah, I admit it…I’m the person who thinks someone has it easier because they are ‘pretty.’

I don’t look at myself in the mirror and go “whoa, baby - your looking pretty cute today” - rather instead, I look at me and find all the minor flaws and think “I sure hope nobody notices that.”  Sure we’ve all heard the stereotype that ‘you can get by on your looks’ but I can’t say I ever really believed that until I was about 18. 

18 for me, the world changed and I realized that while I considered myself  ‘intelligent’, no one really cared about that.  I could argue my point with the best of them and never get my way, but the second I started playing ‘less’ intelligent and playing more ‘cute’ the more I seemed to get my way.  Fast forward a good many years in my life and I still love playing the ‘cute’ factor to get in the door, except this time I’ve perfected the intelligent part of it and I love to sneak that in when you least expect it.  Do I always get my way?  Nope, but I never start out doubting that I will.

All that being said…I don’t believe anyone should be measured on their looks, but rather by the brains in their head.  I am a fan of never judging the book by its cover or believe you can’t have brains & beauty.  I just tend to see this attitude when I look around, which brings me to the beginning of this question all together.  Last week, the hubs remarked how very ‘demanding’ and vocal Little Miss was.  “Come here, daddy!”  “Go there!”  “No, Sleep - I sit wit U!” and then he followed up the comment with “She is such a little YOU!”  I glared at him for a moment and then said, well at least she’s ‘cute en0ugh’ to pull it off. 

Yep - I said it. I propagated the whole twisted thought process and backed up her ‘vocalness’ with her ‘blonde curls and big blue eyes.’  Then I felt really, REALLY bad for doing it.  I don’t agree with the logic, but I was wondering … what do YOU see out there in your world?  Does it work like that where you are?