Category: deep thoughts

  • thoughts as I sat on the toilet this morning…

    1) Gotta clean the bathroom floor–the workers who snaked the tub drain on Tuesday left some messy places in the corners.
    2) [while gazing at shower curtain map] Colombia–why does it have such a drug problem? Is it geography-related? And why is Chile such a freaky-long skinny country?
    3) Thinking about recent netflix, Maria Full of Grace. Trying not to feel quilty for buying cut roses even through the Colombian rose plantations exploit workers and tempt them into drug-running.
    4) Must grow my own roses, then. Must go the garden soon…where are those garden catalogs?
    5) Remember that workers who snaked tub drain didn’t return basket of mags to bathroom. Must finish putting bathroom in order again. But really should clean the floor first.

  • 5ives

    from 5ives…
    Five good things to absorb while you’re still young:

    1. a lot of hippies are selfish, unpleasant, and not particularly funny
    2. people who argue well aren’t necessarily right
    3. cars are kind of a weird thing to spend a lot of money on
    4. people will do things for you if you ask them as a favor
    5. angry waiters totally do things to your food

  • full spectrum


    This post is inspired by runlulurun and by my Mom, whose favorite color is beige….

    When I first married I wanted an all-white house. White couches, white carpet, white duvets and fluffy white feather pillows. Prior to my wedding I hand-quilted an all-white ‘whole cloth’ quilt with intricate designs of overlapping rings and leaves. Staring into the lines of that quilt I saw the beauty and possibilities of the future. It was as if my life was a blank, white slate and I only needed to weave my life’s pattern among the whirls and circles of the future as it lay wide open in front of me.

    When I turned 30 I changed 180 degrees and started wearing black most of the time. Perhaps it was the awareness of getting older, perhaps it was the cumulative depression of too many years at home as the full-time caregiver of my kids. Perhaps it was the 10 pounds that sat on my hips and belly that didn’t show quite so much when I wore all-black. Oh, sure, I occasionally wore a white blouse or a grey skirt. But the bottom line was that I almost always wore black. Black jeans, black jumper, black t-shirt, black shoes, black socks…

    Well, lately the most amazing thing has happened. As if I woke up one morning and discovered that there was color. A few months ago I bought a bright orange wool coat–not a timid burnt-orange, mind you, but _bright_ orange. I acquired T-shirts in apple green and peacock and peach and salmon and slate. I bought a skirt with a white background and a whimsical flowered pattern w/not one black line to be seen. My favorite jackets are navy, tan, and baby blue. I’m wearing a chartreuse cardigan when it’s chilly in the house instead of a black one.

    Now, not only am I wearing brights, but I am wearing them willy-nilly–mixed and matched, all at the same time. Orange and pink and watermelon all in the same outfit. Peacock and baby blue layered over each other. A button-down maroon shirt with a pale pink tank top underneath. A brown skirt with any of the above colors. I still wear black sometimes–especially my favorite pair of black dress pants, and my long black tiered skirt with layers of frothy chiffon ruffles. But I love that the black section of my closet is quickly being overpowered by layers and layers of COLOR.

    A part of me wants to analyze this and figure out why I am changing. But another part of me doesn’t want to. Instead I want to don a multicolored scarf, my latest rainbow outfit and head out the door. For I am certain that adventure lies ahead.

  • it’s a miracle


    Two weeks ago Sunday I was sitting in one of the wing-back chairs reading and I casually remarked to John,

    “When Toby becomes old and fat someday, I hope she becomes a lap kitty.”

    As I said this Toby walked by where I was sitting and stretched–a long lean cat stretch that only this petite little not-even-5-pound kitty can do. She reaches out her front legs and elongates her trunk until you are sure she’s going to snap in two because there’s only a skinny little ribcage w/about a 3″ circumference pulled between front and back paws.

    John sort of guffawed, as if to say “Yah, right. Toby’ll never trust anyone’s lap.”

    Toby truly lives up to the name “scaredy-cat.” The first months of her life are a mystery, but we do know that our neighbors adopted her from the local shelter when she was about 4 months old. But she didn’t acclimate well to life with two small children and took to living in our garden instead of with her owners. Toby, smaller than most of the bunnies and rats who live in the garden, held her own against the coyotes and hawks until our friend Karen caught her for us. I had tried to catch her myself, but gave up after having my neck shredded a couple of times.

    Karen, cat-handler-extraordinaire, bundled Toby in a sweatshirt and brought her to our house. Toby immediately decided that E was the only human she would even allow to come near her and promptly took up ownership of E’s bed.

    Since that day 2 years ago Toby has made some strides in becoming more comfortable with our family, but she still rarely tolerates any sort of affection and DOES NOT LIKE BEING HELD. I say this in caps, because if you ever come to our house you’ll remember not to reach over and pick up Toby. It’s oh-so-tempting because she’s barely bigger than a gerbil and has the softest fur ever. But BEWARE THE CUTE KITTY. She’s got fangs (I mean, uh, claws) and she knows how to use them.

    So…last Sunday you could’ve knocked me over w/a feather when I was sitting up to the table typing on my laptop and Toby, ever-so-matter-of-factly, stepped off from the table and onto my lap, purring as if she was a teakettle boiling dry, and curling up in a ball. She’s done it several times since then, even just now as I am typing on my laptop at the sewing table in my bedroom. I still can’t figure out if she thinks my lap is attached to me, or if it’s just some type of chair that happens to follow me around everywhere. I can hardly imagine that she’s actually trusting her body to come in close contact with a human, much less a human that isn’t E.

    But what I really hope is that she heard my wish two weeks ago and decided that it was time to show me how much she loves it here, and to say thanks for the cozy bed to sleep in and the magic kibble bowl that’s never empty. :)

  • write right


    I rarely handwrite anything anymore. All of my schoolnotes are on my computer. I correspond with almost everyone via email.

    But sometimes it is a joy to actually put a pen in my hand and write. I like making notes in the margins of my books, and every once in a blue moon I handwrite a note or a letter to a friend.

    Most of the times when I write I reach for a ball point pen. Ball points are smooth, they dry quickly, and they don’t smear when wet (a big factor when it’s raining or when I’m writing a check). I prefer fine-tipped ballpoints for taking notes, a thick tip for my signature. My favorite ballpoint ever was a graduation gift from my Uncle Bill & Aunt Sharon: a very slim Cross pen with a gold leaf pattern embossed around the center of the barrel. It was a heavy pen, but quite feminine. The black finish was smooth, not glossy. I haven’t seen that pen in at least 12 years, but I still think about how much I liked it and how it felt in my hand–the perfect weight across my fingers….

    When I am annotating school materials I prefer a felt-tip pen. John turned me on to ‘Staedler triplus fineliner’pens (available in a wide variety of colors) for notetaking. My favorite colors are apple green, sky blue and dark grey. The sepia brown color is also a nice choice. I’m almost addicted to these pens. Often I can’t wait to buy a new color–rewarding myself with a trip to the UCI bookstore with just that goal in mind.

    When I was an undergrad I went through a phase where I used calligraphy pens for writing–even my schoolnotes. My favorite was a green flowered pen (a gift from my Japanese sister) that I filled with pale green ink cartridges. It could be messy at times, but I felt cool writing with such a pen. It gave my mundane notes an added importance.

    I have a writing desk at home where I keep my stationery. In it I have an old fashioned quill pen that John bought me in England. I also have a bottle of sepia-colred ink. Every once in awhile I pull them out and write something. How tedious it to dip the pen in the ink every few words! But, oh, how elegant my writing looks with that particular pen! :)

  • profile


    me, March 2006
    Originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    I think the prettiest part of me is my neck and shoulders. I’m not sure why I feel that way, but it might be that 19th-century girl inside of me that is attracted to the romantic cameo-style cutouts of that era.

    It’s funny, though, that I had forgotten I had dark brown scars across the back of my shoulders. Because I never see them [they aren’t showing in this particular pic, but are in some of the others that john took]. It was deja-vu-ish to look at them in a picture after so many years of forgetting. The scars are from a particularly nightmarish bout with morphine–a drug I was given to ease the pain after my amputation. For some reason one day I “wigged out” and started clawing at my own shoulders, leaving deep welts where my fingernails cut the skin. The cuts never healed well because I was on chemo at the time and all the new cells in my body–even those that were ‘good’ cells–were killed. Thus, the scars are still there.

    My body tells so many stories–mostly sad ones, I think. Almost every part of me bears a scar from some kind of medical procedure. But, despite that I do love my body. It’s soft and warm. It’s very strong. When I am stressed out, the smell of my own skin calms me.

    So John took this pic yesterday. I always feel I can trust him and the camera. He makes me look like I feel.

    I tweaked this picture (and a few others)in photoshop–mostly just softening the background. I want to learn how to manipulate images better–to add artistic effects and fix errors. It’s not an intuitive process for me. I get so frustrated when I can’t figure out the ‘layers’ or the tools don’t work the way I want them to.

    But John is a patient teacher. :)

  • deep thoughts…

    –As if we all needed another reason not to do fast food, eeuuuuwwww! And just after I found out that Chipotle gives free beverages to anyone with a student ID! :)
    –I can’t say how happy I am to know that the Chinese are clamping down on spitting. After spending a gruesome 2 hours sitting across from a woman in the Beijing airport who was spitting and blowing her nose onto the floor [read: at my feet], I’m happy to know that such behaviors will no longer be allowed…
    –UCI made headlines today. Glad to be attending such a contraversial school. Hah.
    –finally, a humane mouse trap. But what I want to know is how to adapt this for catching garden gophers…

  • for me and thee

    “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

    I’ve been meditating on this quotation today. Profound stuff.
    A call to action.

  • eulogy

    Will y’all join with me in mourning the loss of my favorite sweatshirt?

    I first acquired this item while an undergrad at UCI (way back in the 80s). I spent a few of my hard-earned Zot-N-Go dollars on this heathered gray sewatshirt w/the UCI logo written in navy blue across the front. I wore it while I was pregnant w/ both kids, while riding on the ferry at Balboa, and toted it on trips to Colorado, Bakerfield, and Portland. It was a favorite accessory during the chilly fall & spring in Utah. When I was curled up reading a book, this sweatshirt was often the only thing that made me feel really comfortable. Every member of my family has borrowed it at one time or another and loved it about as much as I do.

    But two weeks ago I accidentally left it in my garden and by the next morning it had disappeared. I put out a desperate notice to all my fellow gardeners to PLEASE return my favorite sweatshirt. But to no avail. I’m now starting to reconcile myself to my loss. But it’s not easy. I miss it. I suppose I always will…

  • sour

    Note to self: next time John gets you your favorite super-sour gummies for Valentine’s Day Eve, squeal when he presents them to you. :)

    However, do not proceed to eat said gummies while wearing a low-cut top and reading scholarly journal articles because sour gummy powder will then accumulate in your, um, cleavage while you are concentrating on the arguments of the very stimulating writings of 19th-century historians.

    And then you’ll wake up in the middle of the night w/ cleavage sore and burning from said powder and you’ll have to teach the next day while trying to ignore that you want very much to scratch that particularly irritated area….

  • Things that don’t inspire me to work out at the gym:

    1) The bowling tournament that is showing on the TV above my exercycle.

    2) The girl with the bandana and the braids who is at the nautilis machine next to me and is listening to her ipod and singing along as if she were in the shower by herself. Her eyes are closed so she can’t see that we’re all staring at her.

    3) MTV on the bigscreen. Some girls have just taken the blacklight to a guy’s bedsheets (Euuwwww….)

    4) Bryan Adams’ “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” being played over the ARC’s soundsystem.

    5) The way the three firemen (wearing their cute matching OC firefighter tees and shorts)on the last row of the treadmills are all looking at the butts of the girls on the stairsteppers in front of them.

  • I’m so vain, the post is going to be all about me…

    Got a surprise package in the mail yesterday. It was a bundle of old letters that I’d written to a former beau (D). This particular guy I dated, off-and-on, for about 7 years.

    At first I was delighted. The silly little cards, odd stationary, the doodles drawn in the margins and the photos (yah, this was all back in the stone ages when long-distance romances had to be carried out in paper and not via email or voice messenging). Fun.

    But then I was horrified–for awhile I had, um…ditched D in favor of a mutual friend. The ditch was mean and purposeful. And I gloated about in my letters to D afterwards. (Ok…I have to say here that the ditch was short-lived and D and I were soon back together, but I was, nevertheless, quite cruel in my letters.)

    So, hoping to feel some sense of redemption, I mentioned to John that I thought I had changed a lot since I was 16. I made the comment hoping for a bit of validation. Something along the lines, of “Yah, you’re nothing like that nowadays.”

    Instead, John said something more like: “Jana, you can be completely self-centered. You think the world revolves around you.” [Note to readers: John’s comment sounds tough here, perhaps given the context–he’s actually a super-supportive husband. But he’s also good at guiding me through moments of self-introspection].

    That stung. But deservedly so. I realized that I hurt people every day through my self-absorption. I have a huge ego. I am cocky and smug. My little jabs at D about the other guy might be old news now, but I do similar things all the time. Like answering emails while my kids are begging for my attention, continuing painful threads of conversation w/John even after he asks me to stop, not giving extended family members attention until I need something from them, dominating conversations with my opinons, taking over meetings where I’m not in charge, asking others to do errands for me that I can do myself, etc.

    So, for all those people out there that I hurt with my selfishness, I’m sorry. I can’t erase awful things like the foolish letters I wrote 20 years ago, or undo the biting comments, or take back my moments of inflated self-importance.

    For those whom I have hurt, please accept my apology…I’m sorry. I’m sorry to have caused you pain. I promise to do better. To be less self-focused. Less of a drama queen/ heartbreaker/ selfish person.

    And to D: thanks for the letters and the CDs (such memories!). Thanks for not holding it against me. :)