Great philosophers

I like great philosophers. They summarize complex bundles of feelings and emotions into meaningful sentences. Today I am feeling blue. For no apparent reason. Or reasons I do not care to explore in a ranting, one paragraph blog. It is not consistent blueness but a withdrawal into my head about what direction I want to be going in my life. For the record, I have a good life. I watched penguins yesterday. Little baby penguins dance into sprays of water. I met Myrtle the Turtle who could live to be over a 100 years old. I ate a gluten free brownie in a downtown bakery. I was picked up and swung around on a Boston city street. I barrelled down a hill in the wrong type of skiis and screamed with joy while doing it. I even had the opportunity to get caught up on lazy stay in your pjs and watch online TV for the evening. And still I feel sad. Here is where I arrive at philosophy. Spinoza. Baruch Spinoza. What a cool name. Wikipedia introduced me when I googled sadness. That's right. I freaking googled it. And here is what he or she (the name could be either for all I know!) Oh wait, I can google that too. A seventeenth century male philosopher. Go figure for that time period. I digress. HE defined sadness as the “transfer of a person from a large perfection to a smaller one.” How well, um, 'perfect' is that? It doesn't dilute the feeling or make you feel a bit nutso for feeling sadness but calling it what it is. Who doesn't want their life to turn out like they imagine? Mine certainly hasn't yet I am not saying that's not a good thing. However we really need to give ourselves time to catch up with the reality of the situation. My new mantra is living in the moment. I'm not giving up on that goal. What I am giving myself permission for is the wallowing. The embracing the sadness and figuring out what I am sad about. I still dream about a better tomorrow and great loves and mind blowing bouts of sex and laugh out loud funny moments and really yummy chocolatey syrup over really good vanilla ice cream. I can dream about happy, goofy, silly, warm sun on your face moments and at the same time, sulk and mope about for the last three hours in my pjs and listen to songs playing on Grey's Anatomy asking if love is alive. YES! I just wish I felt it wrapped around me in moments when I am feeling blue. LIke now. Now would be nice.

Heat...Scented Heat.

Picture it...Frenchie bundled up in her blue fleece, trademark North Face hat, mittens and a backpack going on an adventure. It's below freezing out...well below...just above ZERO and she's braving the weather to walk a whole TWO blocks to purchase laundry detergent. She really wanted to take her car. She actually wanted to start it up for 30 minutes, wait inside her apartment while the inside got toasty and warm and THEN drive it two blocks but no way Jose! She's being responsible to her environment. Plus its not good for the car. Her good friend challenged her on this and was WRONG. That's right, google it or better yet, ask a mechanic, they will back Frenchie up! Oh AND there is only parking on one side of her street and she just so happens to have a SWEET spot on the correct side. Whooopie! She digresses...THE ADVENTURE: Her nose is running within 5 feet of her apartment. The sidewalks are covered in ice, the snowbanks like granite blocks, and still she walks. And here is where it gets interesting...she's trudging, desperately trying to stay upright on the ice and now at 20 feet from her door BLAM!! HEAT! Not only heat, but SCENTED HEAT! People...Frenchie almost SMILED. Write this down mes amis! Lesson of the day: If you are walking in BELOW FREEZING weather, make sure your route has a LAUNDRY MAT (not the eco-friendly one Frenchie is walking to for her enviro-friendly detergent) but the BIG industrious ones that blow off HEAT. This an oasis while trekking in a frozen tundra! An oasis of steam and lavendar, a fresh spring scent. Onward mes amis! Frenchie made it to her destination, bought the goods, stocked up on quarters and anxiously went back out in the cold to find her oasis again! Life is good. Well, it has seconds of good in freezing cold temperatures.

Newbie

Holy crap! That was it? That is all it took? Just like that...POOF!...I started a blog. One resolution complete. I'm sitting in my apartment listening to WCLZ and realizing I have zero memory for song titles and the artists. Oh well. I really wanted to make this first blog entry spectacular. Um yeah. So here's some interesting daily activities that transpired today.

First, I woke up at 2 am and never went back to sleep. Not fun. I finally bounced (yes bounced)out of bed at 6ish and bounded out the door without iphone. Yet again. You see, I always have to leave something behind. My signature trademark. Well, one of them. I decide to let out all my pent up sleep energy at the gym. I grab a treadmill and start running. I'm sluggish but this guy who is easily twice my age next to me is running faster than I am! I then realize that not only is he running the same speed (I sped up), he's on his 5th mile. I sometimes use my shortness to make up for how people run faster than me. At five feet zero inches,I usually take 4 steps for every 2 steps of anyone taller than me. It's infuriating when I am sweating my ass off and the guy next to me is running a 7 minute mile and looks like he is prancing across a meadow in a Disney flick. I digress. This guy, NOT TALL! My height.

I leave the gym feeling less than inspired and really wish I braved the weather and ran in the snow. I head over to my mechanic for a $300 tune up on my car. Yipppeee! Not really. I am not excited. My consolation is this car will last me 800,000 miles. That's right. A long way!

The interesting part of my day? I was interviewed for a book. McKay Jenkins (real name) is writing a book on toxins and considering I am one of ten participants of the Body Burden Study (http://www.cleanandhealthyme.org/Campaigns/TheMaineBodyBurdenReport/tabid/55/Default.aspx), he wanted to meet. My mom and I were actually tested for toxins together (I talked her into it) but she was not up to snuff today. The conversation went something like this:

"Frenchie,it's mom, I'm sick, it's coming out both ends....BLLLLEEEEEPPPPP."

Me: "okay, BYE!!!"

I almost threw up myself. So here we are, McKay and myself in the North Star music cafe. I am sipping on a soy milk steamer and ranting. I rant for about an hour and a half while he pecks away on his mac laptop taking notes on my words. I'm not a very linear thinker and it amazes me when someone makes sense of what I am saying. Don't get me wrong, I said interesting things but I tend to be quite random and need someone else to organize my thoughts and tell me what I meant. Okay so not entirely true but I do find it helpful when my thoughts are summarized in another voice. Now I sound schitzophrenic. And that is probably not how you spell schitzophrenic but its how it should be spelled. Regardless...he's writing a book, I may be in it and I want to write a book. If he can write a book, I CAN too!

Now I am sitting here with the realization I can now go to bed. Its no longer 6:30, I've eaten a kick ass roasted veggie dinner I made myself (more on my cooking ability in a future post), dishes are done, table is cleared (of paper, not dishes), and I'm fried. Frenchie just crashed and burned in the middle of her first blog post. Later.