All Or Nothing

You'll Never Know

People have the right to fly
And will when it gets compromised
Their hearts say "move along"
Their minds say "gotcha, heart"
"Let's move it along"

You can't build a house of leaves
And live like it's an evergreen
It's just a season thing
It's just this thing the seasons do

And if you never stop when you wave goodbye
You just might find if you give it time you will wave hello again
You just might wave hello again

And that's the way this wheel keeps working now


I believe that my life's gonna see
The love I give returned to me.

J. Mayer

Serial Avoidance

Sometimes you say something that's really hard to say, you get a response that makes it even harder, and you decide never mind, you aren't going to stick with what you said because it's just too hard/awkward. But SOMETIMES, you say something that's really hard to say, you get an even weirder response, and then you still stick with it, and tell it like it is. No matter what happens. No matter how dumb you look or feel at the time.

And let me tell you, the second way is MUCH better. For real, I don't know how many others out there are as bad as I am about telling people things you know they won't want to hear, or things that you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, are going to make you look weird/dumb/very uncool, but take it from a serial-avoider - It's awesome to just say what you mean, exactly, tell it like it is, specifically, and not worry about anything else. Not worry about the consequences, not worry about the results. You don't even have to!

It's like, you said what you needed to say, and maybe that was the only battle you ever needed to fight.

Remedial Spelling

At last. Confirmation that I am not alone in the world. Support of fellow spelling activists. Take this quiz and see how you score. If you score really low, don't despair, you're still probably a fabulous person, but please see either Heather or myself immediately for some remedial spelling help. ASAP. We're not kidding :)

Guess what I did Friday

Guess what I did Friday night. I went to Barnes and Noble, right after work, and stayed until nearly 10pm. I read a book - yes, a whole book - and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. What does this say about me? I don't know, and I don't really care, either. All I cared about was not having to study, for a few short hours, not having to entertain anybody else, and not having to worry about one single thing. And the great peach-ginger tea I was drinking. Yum. What an evening :)

Embarrassment

I think that in honor of Adam's recent post and Graham's recent mystery story (that is is so cruelly keeping from everyone - well, at least from me) that I will open this blog to the most embarrassing stories we all have in regards to encounters with the opposite sex. Being the types of people who sit around and blog all the time, we all have to admit to some loser-ish qualities so I'm sure we've all got some fabulously awful stories. Let's see who has the best. Maybe we can even vote on them in the end. I'll even get the ball rolling!

The very first time I went to my ex-boyfriend's house in Garland to meet his parents (a relatively big deal, as we all know) we all ate dinner together. I was pretty nervous, wanting to make a good impression, but not wanting to try too hard and all that good stuff. Apparently, my digestive system felt like the best course of action to take that evening was to cause me to choke. On my cornbread. Which, as we all know, is very choke-able, because it's so dry. I must have done that whole cough-then-try-to-talk-too-soon-and-no-sound-comes-out-and-you-go-into-another-coughing-fit thing about five times. No lie. Then, when they were all asking me if I was ok for the millionth time, after the millionth coughing fit and millionth glass of water, I cooly replied "Oh yeah, I'm fine, that happens all the time to me". Cool, Elise. How does that salvage anything, telling your boyfriend's parents that you have chronic swallowing deficiencies? Anyway, it was not the dinner experience I had been hoping for, to say the least. Now, let me hear what has happened to YOU.

Guest Story IV

Yea! The conclusion of the story is here; I know you all have just been dying to know what happened to poor Eric. Well die no longer, here it is!


Eric stumbled off of his bench and began searching for the water closet, not knowing where to begin to look. He saw a group of women sitting around a coffee table smoking cigarettes. He approached the table and, in as sober and English a voice that he could manage asked, �Pradon me damsels, dost thou knowert wherest I might bind a fathroom?�

Eric was well aware that he was not functioning at a high level, and he knew that he had probably butchered the Queen�s English, and was prepared for the jeering and witty remarks these women would surely have for him. What he wasn�t prepared for was the look of pure and profound pity they gave him instead. They looked at him as if he had just crawled out of a cave in Iwo Jima.

�Ah cheers mate, it�s right down the way,� one of them said in her most saddened voice. �Do take care of yourself now, it can�t be all that bad. Cheers.�

Eric didn�t know whether to feel better or a whole lot worse about it. He opted for worse.

�Cheers mate,� he mimicked. �We beat your country twice. Not once, twice. You can�t even win a war without us having to come in and save you. And you�re telling me cheers.�

Eric mumbled on incoherently to himself for the next few minutes until he walked into a bench and almost fell over. He saw the restrooms up ahead, and by now he was concentrating on two things: walking and bladder control, both of which were giving out on him quickly. He concentrated on the door, and quickened his pace. Right before he reached the door he felt another jolt. He had run into a turnstile. This was no obstacle for him. He began to crawl over the turnstile when a security guard saw him.

�Sorry mate, it costs two quid to use the closet. Cheers.�

�Cheers indeed you lousy redcoat.� Just the thought of red made Eric sick to his stomach. �No wonder we left the mother country,� Eric was now mumbling again. �Tyranny isn�t dead in England; you can�t even piss without paying King George.�

Eric felt like the seal was about to break. The pressure in his mid-section was dominating his every thought. He quickly looked for a place to steal away and relieve himself. However, the place had become quite crowded as the morning traffic had arrived. Anywhere he went would have probably upset the pompous citizens, as he would have unavoidably left his mark on at least a few of them. He was drunk, but not that drunk. So he decided to appeal to the generosity of the masses, and see if he could cop a couple quid off of someone. He saw a friendly, portly looking woman, and decided to charm a couple pounds out of her - money, not weight.

�Cheers darling, cheers. You wouldn�t havven to hap a couple pounds so I can use the restroom? Cheers?�

Hoping for the pity he had evoked earlier, he was feeling good. Except for the drunkenness and wretched smell and lingering threat of internal combustion, that is. She was not as friendly as he had hoped.

�No I don�t, and you aren�t allowed to be in here,� she said resolutely.

�Why not? Because I�m American?� Eric was feeling confused. �I have a passport,� he helpfully added.

�You aren�t allowed in the train station because you are a beggar. You could be arrested and thrown in jail. If you want to beg, you have to go outside.�

And there Eric Fillmore, the Missouri farm boy, off to make his fortune and dreams come true, realized just where he had ended up: begging for money in a train station. He had always seen people down on their luck, and never cared one bit because everyone knew that if they weren�t able to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, they deserved it. And then she said it; the eight words that now excluded him from the rest of society.

�You�ll only use it to buy booze anyway.�

�Cheers,� Eric said dejectedly, admitting defeat. And he walked away.

Now not only did he feel about two steps away from death; he was late for his train. He had to find a restroom, or at least somebody to pay his way to get into the totalitarian nazi public restroom. Eric was in a good deal of trouble.

He looked at the digital clock next to the arrival/departure board and it read 7:28. He had run out of time. He was either going to board the train and fight all odds to make it to the next stop, or he was going to miss his train, find a restroom and hopefully catch his flight by some other means. One ran the risk of the total and complete humiliation, shunning, and possible incarceration that a grown man wetting himself in public would result in. The other meant he might have to stay in London a few more hours. Eric took his seat in the farthest row in the back of the train.

As he sat, he watched a redheaded woman walk down the aisle and take the seat next to him.

�Could you please move somewhere else?� Eric was not in the mood for dramatic irony.

�What�s the problem?� she said. �I�m not going to steal your wallet or anything. You can trust me.�

Eric laughed in her face as a small wet spot on his pants began to enlarge, run down his leg, and trickle onto the floor of the train.


The end

Guest Story III

ok, ok, I will just post half of the remaining story here and then the other half tomorrow. I am not calloused, I hear my public's cries :) BUT, it's going to be long, so don't say I didn't try and spare you the length, O Skimmers of Posts.


Eric found Kristine, no points awarded. By noon on Thursday, Eric had given up on any surprise, and instead elected to call her. He decided that the simple fact that he was in London and ready to see her should suffice for any amount of surprise element he had wanted to include in the deal. London was looking dreary as usual. He stepped out of the rain into one of the little red phone booths that were scattered across the city. As nice as it was to be out of the rain, the smell in the phone booth quickly overwhelmed his senses.
�If my luck doesn�t change soon I might be sleeping in this wretched thing,� he thought as he searched for her phone number.

As he began to dial her number, his eyes were drawn towards some of the advertisements that were tacked up in the booth.

�How despicable it is that women would do this to themselves,� he thought as he was reading about the newest adult attractions in the city. �I mean what sicko even wants to see the red dragon performed once only by Kristine Joh��.�

The face matched the name. And everything else, to Eric�s utter revulsion, matched the face. He was not feeling as amorous towards life as he was before. He wrote down the address and time of the attraction, just as someone would write down a description for a police report of how their wife was murdered. He trudged down to the tubes, minded the gap, although he really didn�t want to, and made his way to the seedier district of town. He began to notice that London really had an awful smell to it.

�Probably from all the bums and smut,� he muttered to himself as he stepped over a sleeping vagabond.

It was still raining, and it was still cold, and Eric decided that while he was in London he might as well take up their national pastime. He stopped at a side store and bought a pack of cigarettes, just to ease some of the pain. After smoking half a pack, the pain didn�t feel like it had been eased too much, and Eric had already arrived at the �club� where he could find his �girlfriend�. He paid the cover charge, glanced scornfully at the bouncer, and put his wallet back into his pocket, halfheartedly laughing to himself that if any dieting pocketbooks could only see before and after shots of his wallet, they would surely be encouraged to persevere.

It didn�t take him more than five minutes inside to see everything he needed to see to end all hopes at a reconciled relationship. It was one thing if Kristine was down and out and had to do what she had to do to pay the bills. It was another thing entirely to see what he saw. Suffice it to say that Kristine took full advantage of the less stringent ethical laws in the United Kingdom, and derived some very obvious pleasure in doing so. Eric was unquestionably the last thing on her mind.

So that was it. His trip, his money, three years of his life had been wasted. Not to mention the shame of having to tell his friends what had happened. Even if there were some explanation for the repulsiveness he had witnessed only moments ago, it was just way too much for him to handle at the moment. He had already sucked down all but three of the cigarettes, and he felt like he was about to throw up. A sudden intense feeling of loneliness came over him as he stood in the rain, a complete stranger to a strange world. A few quick phone calls in another red booth allowed Eric to arrange an earlier flight back home at some additional charge. The only problem was that the airline was telling him that the only way to get on a last-minute flight would be to take a train to Oxford, board a plane, fly to London, and then back home. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever to him, but he figured it was worth it.

�If someone else is charging things to my credit card right now, I might as well get in on it while it lasts,� he thought disdainfully as he hung up the phone.

As he left the booth, littering the floor with the incriminating fliers he had ripped from the walls, he decided that anything was worth getting out of that filthy, contaminated city.

If somebody had noticed Eric as he was walking back to his hostel that gray evening, they would have been moved either to pity or to laughter. He had already taken on the distinct European body odor smell, he was wearing the same clothes he had come in, he was running out of money, he was soaking wet, and he was nursing a cigarette that was constantly being put out by the rain. Eric decided that it was going to take more than a cigarette to get him through the evening. He stopped at the same side store he had previously been in and bought with his last remaining money the cheapest, strongest drink they had. Eric had never made a habit of drinking, but then again he didn�t make a habit of smoking or dating strippers either. Eric had never felt worse in his life.

Thursday night left him with little consolation. He sat in his hostel, drinking, looking out his window at the city around him. He could see Big Ben standing majestically a few miles away. The Thames River was snaking its way through the middle of the city, and Eric wondered how many other people had taken in the exact same view he was looking at. If he had been in lighter spirits he would have said that London has its own distinct form of beauty because after all, that is what everybody says about an ugly place that they love. Eric decided, as he was looking at all the lights in the city, that he wasn�t going to quit drinking until he saw twice as many lights as he could at the present.

�Then maybe London will look a little warmer,� he said out loud.

The fornicating couple on his left paused for a moment, stared at him, and continued.

When Eric finally fell asleep, for the first time in two days, he woke up shortly after. It was four a.m. London time, but by his clock it was the middle of the afternoon. Coupled with that fact, he had been undergoing severe emotional trauma, sleeping in wet clothes and sharing a room with the Marquis de Sad. It was time to wake up. He was still only half-drunk, but luckily for him, so was his bottle. His plane left at nine, and his nightmare would soon be over. All he had to do was walk three blocks, get on a train, hop on his plane, and say fare thee well to this loathsome place. He decided that he would leave immediately to make sure he could be there well on time. Besides, he could probably get more sleep at the train station than he could in his room. He finished his bottle, grabbed his umbrella, which was actually a week old magazine he had found in his room, and bid farewell to the dirtiest place he had ever been.

When he arrived at the train station, he was almost all alone. The station was much bigger than a subway station, but it was still partially underground and covered. It was lighted by huge halogen lamps hanging from the rafters, and when trains would come and go the vibrations made the lamps sway ever so slightly from side to side. This made every shadow also sway slightly, and the whole place had the feel of a big, high-ceiling cavern that was poorly lit. It was also very cool inside, and it smelled like a large stale pretzel. It had an ominous feel to it. There were also a number of shops and food courts and restaurants inside the giant warehouse. The trick was that once you went in the station, you didn�t want to leave and re-enter or else you would have to pay to get in again.

Of course Eric was not noticing any of this as he, after walking past it twice, found his way into the station. It was just past five in the morning, and the only people traveling were the late-night partiers and the early morning workers. They were not difficult to distinguish from one another. Eric did not resemble either of these two groups as he slouched down on a bench waiting for his 7:30 train. He decided that he was no longer feeling as badly about everything as much as he was feeling dizzy about everything. He had not developed much of a tolerance for alcohol, and it was definitely beginning to take effect. It was also very early to be drunk. He must have dozed off for a few minutes because the next thing he remembered was hearing a lot more voices around him. He also realized that he was in dire need to use the restroom.


To be concluded tomorrow......

Guest Story II

"When Eric arrived in London, he decided that he was positive he had never felt better in his life. It didn�t matter to him one iota that his luggage was accidentally sent to Rome. He could borrow some clothes from one of Kristine�s friends. He was young, about to propose to the love of his life, he was traveling the world, and he was doing it on his own. He barely even noticed the forty-degree weather or the cold rain that everyone complained so much about. He had originally planned to marry Kristine in the summer, move back to Missouri, and start their life together. But after seeing the vibrant London city-life he decided that maybe they could spend the first few years there. She already knew lots of people there, and he could tell her that he was going to fall in love with the city. What would all his friends back home think then? To think of Eric Fillmore, a purebred Missouri farm boy living with his wife in a flat in London put a smile on his face. No need to rush back home where he knew everything that life held in store. He and Kristine would be different. It would happen for them, he could feel it.

Of course it didn�t happen for them. In fact, nothing of the sort happened for them. What did happen was that Eric spent Wednesday night in a hostel where he paid more money than he should have paid, not sleeping because two of his roommates must have thought that hostel translated to brothel in Italian, trying to find out why Kristine was decidedly not at the address she had given him. Thursday progressed much the same way. The only difference was that it was colder, rainier, and Eric�s credit card, which he had been told was to be given as a deposit for the room, was not being returned to him at all. Incidentally, the manager of the hostel was conspicuously nowhere to be found. He was tired of getting lost in the tubes, tired of being wet all the time, and he was flat out exhausted from lack of sleep. He couldn�t help but feel a little bit aggravated with the situation, but he assured himself that once he was finally able to find Kristine, it would all be much better. He might even get extra points for all his suffering."


To be continued......

Guest Story I

As a change of pace, I have decided to post a story on this neglected blog. And, so that I will have several days worth of material, I will only post some of the story at a time. Also, this will enable you people to tell me if you are interested in the story and want to hear more. This, in turn, will feed my self-image and help me feel fulfilled and like a better human being. Well, not really, because I didn't even write this story, but maybe it will still let me feel affirmed in some weird indirect way. Anyway, here it is! Enjoy :) And tell me if you want more.


"Eric Fillmore was in a good deal of trouble. He had a total of three hours sleep since Tuesday night. It was now Friday morning. His clothes reeked of sweat, cigarette smoke and alcohol. He was late for his train, and he was drunk.

Normally, Eric would have been able to address each of these problems in an orderly fashion. Perhaps on a good day, under the best of circumstances, he could have tackled them all at once. However, the fact that he was currently penniless and in a foreign country was presenting some unprecedented challenges to his typically good problem-solving skills. Eric had spent the last two rainy, cold, fruitless nights in a run down hostel in London, and he was headed back to his home in Missouri, a prospect that was looking more attractive by the minute. His trip to London, one he had been eagerly awaiting for months, had gone decidedly south.

Of course some of it probably was his fault. He had disregarded everyone�s advice. When he told his friends that he was going to propose to Kristine, their jaws dropped halfway to the ground. The remaining distance of jaw to ground was covered when he told them that his plan of action was to fly out to London and surprise her. This, they overtly warned, was a world-class mistake. It wasn�t that Kristine was unsuitable, because she was suitable and rich, and it wasn�t that nobody liked her, because she was well liked by all, it was that she was a redhead.

The general rule for redheads was to never trust them, not for any purpose. Eric had diligently followed this rule all of his life until Kristine came around. They had dated for several years already, and she seemed trustworthy enough. Her dream was to be an actress in London, so when the opportunity came about, Eric was nothing but happy for her. However, she was a redhead and had already challenged just about every rule in the book, the last of which was the cardinal, never break at any cost, Don�t-Surprise-Visit-Your-Significant-Other-While-He-Or-She-Is-In-A-Foreign-Country-Doing-God-Knows-What rule that Eric was about to breach. Eric, like any other deceived individual, had insisted that his particular circumstance was different, and that his friends had nothing to worry about. So when he spent his year�s income on an engagement ring and plane tickets to London, all his friends could do was wish him good luck and hope for the best."

Friends

Sometimes, when things are all looking down, something happens (or even doesn't happen) and they all start looking up again. It might be hard to explain, because it might be something so elusive as a change in the weather, or a movie you hadn't yet seen but were always planning to - It could be some books you've always dearly loved and yet never owned - It could be a trip imagined and yet never actually taken. Any way it goes, good friends are hard to find and their value is inestimable.

"A friend loves at all times..." Proverbs 17:17

Thanks.