Journey of the Beasts

I do not mean to make people angry. I have spent a long time in life being upset, disappointed or otherwise emotionally suffering.

I saw my landlord/neighbor outside about an hour ago. I am trying to be more sociable but I don’t really like socializing when there is a chance for upset. It is not like I expect upset but if you have been burned by milk you will blow on yogurt. He gets upset. I don’t mean to make him upset, but he gets upset. Maybe he is never upset unless I am around (which I doubt). However, I don’t like conflict. I don’t like to cause it and I don’t like to participate in it. So I do the only think I know how to do. When a situation is out of control, I remove myself.

I don’t like talking about work any of the 40 hours I am not there. This means I don’t want to talk about other peoples jobs, especially if that means you are going to be upset and yelling at me and I don’t even work with you.

He was getting entirely worked up over a camp not inviting the park where he works to give talks to the kid campers anymore, that is at least not for the last 10 years or so. I suggested maybe he call and see if there might have been some kind of problem or reason they weren’t interested in inviting the park to participate. He raises his voice and is like “I am not asking them. They can either invite us or not. We have a busy season and it doesn’t really matter.” and I am like….well, maybe they have a reason for not inviting, maybe kids did not give good reviews (idiotic me is thinking that since he is the boss that he must have had other staff give the talk – I used to work for him so I assume he didn’t give it.) or maybe they don’t have space, or maybe they had a change in staff and they accidently forgot you. This makes him even more mad. He starts yelling about how people are always screwing up and how this other park screwed them out of a talk because they didn’t follow the announcement correctly and that it is their fault and they probably blamed his park and etc….. I am like “wait…. maybe it isn’t a blame game and rather an honest mistake” and he is like “well, it is THEIR fault – someone has to take responsibility for it”. To which I totally disagree.

It is not our duty to point finger and make people take responsibility. If a person has done something wrong and it is obviously wrong, they already feel guilty enough. They will either apologize or make damn sure they don’t do it again. If a person doesn’t realize they did something wrong and it is your place to correct – then by all means go head but follow the rules of people management. If you are going to correct do so, but do not leave the person feel like crap. Tell them something good to follow the correction, or else they will start to despise you and it will get worse each time you give a correction. But if you correct and give a supportive compliment such as, “Steve, I looked over the article you wrote, and I wanted to make some corrections to the information you provided on kissing the bosses ass. If you could make the corrections as marked I would greatly appreciate it. Also, I like the format of the article, clever having it in the shape of Jennifer Lopez’s ass – clever! Keep up the good work, mate.” This is isn’t rocket science. Fortunately, we are all human and if we try even just a little we can understand that people like to be treated humanly – they actually like to be treated the same way you like to be treated – save you are not a masochist or something.

He was getting carried way and I like – please, people don’t need to be criticized or faulted. A mistake happened…. and he interrupt with “YES THEY DO!!! If they are wrong they need it shoved down their throats – pulled back up and stuffed right back in their pie hole!” Okay, it wasn’t that descriptive but his physical response was such that this is what it said to me. I pleaded, “please don’t be angry, this isn’t something I want to talk about, it’s upsetting me and I don’t want to be upset.” and he says “WELL, IT’S UPSETTING ME!” and I am like, “I am just going to go inside.” It all reminds me how it was working for him.

My heart breaks for him. I think someone must have been really cruel to him at some point and for a long time he has felt as if the way to even the playing field is to pass off that negative energy to someone else, everyone else.

I did remove myself from the situation. I came inside with my dinner, put it down, and headed for the car with dogs in tow. The best thing when conflict gets too intense for me is to leave it behind. I am a surviver. I have dealt with a lot of conflict in life and I hate it. I always want to run deeper into me and sometimes that means running deeper into the isolation of rural life – and as if where I live now isn’t rural enough I think about going even further, deeper and away to places where no one knows and no one would look. Logically I know it is not the answer. But conflict is about the most miserable experience for me. It is like facing a monster in an alcoholic rage.

I took the dogs for a walk down the river. Just out about three miles, two miles past where the pavement ends, and let the dogs out. I too got out. We could all use this walk. And walk we did. I don’t like to think about conflict while running as I don’t want running to have those kind of associations. But walking is different. I can think logically, less emotionally. I came home and started this post. Midway through I sent him an email message, simple and to the point. “I am sorry. I understand you are hurting – I don’t understand it, but I can understand from having had my own pain. I did not listen to you well. For that I am sorry.” That was pretty much it. I hope it helps.

I love people and I love learning about communication and it is frustrating to me when people think they know how to communicate and honestly, they really are out of practice or have been practicing all the wrong things. When a person has life conflict or work conflict they aren’t their best for learning but we have to. Some people think they have all the answers (sometimes me….but I am constantly learning my faults) – I just don’t like to have them shoved down my throat, pulled back up and shoved down again. and I only think people do this when they are not satisfied with their own life – that is pass on your pain to someone who looks like they could take a little.

Truth be told – no one can take it. It ruins people.

A very wise man once told me ” Do not criticize, no one wants to be criticized.” I will not forget this and I will try and live by it. And I do believe he is correct. We should finds ways of communicating that provide; positive results, change and individual worth.

I might actually be starting to understand the wordpress blogging. It is to be noted that this is my first photo of the great whites.

I have a love of lingerie, burlesque costumes, corsets, heels and feminism. However, somewhere my wires have been crossed about what is appropriate where for women. Jeans and t-shirts, trousers and button ups or the little cardigan over the tank… are fairly acceptable wear but nothing overtly sexual. However, we can pretty much sexualize any type of female clothing, and if not sexual enough someone is surely going to let the top of their stocking peak out or the top of their tongue.

I don’t believe sex belongs in the work place. Social networking already has made most of less productive in the average day we don’t need an added distraction of sex.

I used to work for the Park Service and I wore a uniform…that’s right, I was a uniformed Park Ranger – of education programs but still the gray and green and the hat! There were days when men could not help themselves. We made it a running joke about how many business cards I would be given in a day. Plus, it was summer so people are already thinking only with the little head as the head has fried the other. Some men were utter dogs, giving me the business card when the wife and kids were out of sight and asking me to call them when I was in the city. Um – NO! however, I took the card with a smile and then pinned it to the corkboard in the lunch room. Ha! Do not give me a hard time about this. Wife and kids – now that I am a wife I can tell you that if my husband did something like that, he’d be in the dog house…but probably not until I teased him physically and maybe even to the point of demanding so much sex that he couldn’t even possibly think of another woman. Then I would stick him in the dog house.

But most summer days passed without me thinking so much about what I was wearing under the uniform and for some reason one of my summers I didn’t wear underwear….the pants are wool/polyester after all and underwear just made the whole experience hotter than hell.

I am getting off track. Sex doesn’t belong in the work place. However, as a woman I enjoy the pleasure of sexy underwear and slips. But I don’t need everyone knowing about it. However, in some work place environments women are no longer dressed professional but rather to a degree that they capture the attention of every male before the work day is over. I don’t think it is fair. Especially not if they are trying to attract married men.
But likewise…I don’t think it is fair for a man to assume that a woman is trying to capture his attention because she is wearing animal print pumps with her pencil skirt.

However, I do want a job where I can wear animal print pumps and a pencil skirt. I want to wear sexy slips that only my husband sees and everyone else has to wonder where my sexy lies….the sex that sexy girls keep from the world. Truly sexy women – I believe- do have a secret.
I want to be a secret keeper.
However, I want this secret to be on my husband’s mind…often.

He let slip a little fantasy and I will out do the fantasy because I enjoy the challenge. And when that is done I can plan the next one….I forever want our life to have this sexual adventure. I love the adventure, I know he enjoys it and I never want our physical relationship to dwindle – I don’t care if he wants to look but it is also important to keep my own interest aroused.

I pay attention. I just do. I love the world around me. Though, this paying attention could come from more years in college than I care to admit. I majored in the natural sciences. I loved the information. Yet, I wanted to major in English. However, my advising prof strongly suggested I say in the sciences – but I was so unhappy. I should have changed schools, but again, the same adviser wanted me to stay. I know realize that the department got more money for having me there…not me in specific but generally. The more students in classes, the more income for the department. My adviser was a very intelligent woman and I could never stand up to her. The education I got was fine….mostly I learned a lot of really interesting things. How practical was it? well, I am going to say not so much. I think it makes me interesting at cocktail parties and could have served me well if I weren’t so intrigued by everything else around me…so intrigued that I would have rather been writing and crafting these visions into something to share. As it is, I still haven’t settled on a career. I work in the natural resource field. It’s fine, but I get bored with paperwork after a while and feel the need for adventure, for letting my brain be creative. So, from time to time grant writing fills that void…but my dreaming is bigger than that. At some point I will take the leap…it’s coming, at least it is in the planning stages.

But here I am, I drive 90 miles round trip a day to an office that I thought I would only be working in for about 2, maybe 3 months at the most. But here we are 5 months later, though I think it will come to an end in a month or two as I hope they will have hired their forever project manager. I am not as excited or productive as I used to be and that isn’t fair to me or to the office.

In this 90 miles I typically listen to books on my iPod. There isn’t much traffic, sometimes I pass a combine or hay baler, the occasional road cyclist, dangerous gazing tourists that don’t realize other people use the same road for more than sight seeing – though the sights are beautiful, but do everyone a favor, pull over for the gazing, it is much safer for everyone involved – oh, and look both ways before you decide to run across the road.

Today on the way to work, I passed a bailer and a combine, as well as a motorcyclist tourist that was driving about 40 the whole way – he signaled for me to pass on a solid line – not something I would normally do but I could see and was running about an hour later than normal because for some reason I can’t actually seem to get enough sleep or I am tired all the time regardless of how much sleep. About 2 miles after I passed the combine, I passed a freshly bailed alfalfa field, however there was something strange….four white legs straight up in the air. Yep, a dead cow. Cows can get too much of a good thing and in this case it probably chowed down all night and then foundered with no one around to help…of which you can completely save the life of a cow in this situation by sticking it in one of the four stomach chambers, but I forget which exactly. Once you make the cut, the trapped gas will be released. I hear it is pretty smelly business, but it saves the life of the cow and about $2000 or so for the farmer.

Yesterday on my way home from work, at the stop sign where the small road meets the main highway, and I where I make my turn for the last 31 mile drive home, I saw a little party of three skunks. I was stopped and here they come. I wanted to jump out and take a photo…but of course, where is the camera when you need it? Home! I watched them for a moment, of course as I checked the rear-view mirror for cars – I don’t want to be the gazing tourist. As the three little skunks rambled off into the bushes, I made my left turn onto the highway.

The day before yesterday I drove to Bend, OR to have one of the beasts groomed and to wash the other myself at the self wash because they got into something insanely smelly and well, I couldn’t stand the smell of either of them and one was getting so matted from lack of grooming I was feeling like an abusive parent. On the way home, about 40 miles from my house I saw my favorite creature of the wilds – a coyote. I realize they aren’t a favorite of many but I love them. I love seeing them. They are beautiful and smart and mostly down right crafty. This coyote was small, a youngen, not sure how young, perhaps just a year. He was running across the road from the left to the right and he was carrying something. I so badly wanted to get closer to see what it was….but I slowed a little when I first saw him – mostly out of awe and of course because I don’t want to kill anything, let alone my favorite creature of wildlife. But as he started up the bank on the right side I saw it – he was carrying the front half, that is the front two legs, shoulders and head of a deer fawn. Just as I saw it, he dropped it! Oh! come back little guy. It’s okay…dang. I do hope he got it, a find like that isn’t easy to come by, especially small enough that he could carry it all the way back to his den.

And now here I sit in my office, my education taught me about observation of wildlife and fishes and the world around me. So sitting here isn’t something I do easily.

Part of having a new blog for a while is to learn to write with more meaning and good hearted intention. However, I find that when I am struggling the most that I want to write, yet because of this new rule I have given myself – I don’t.

I have not been very loving these past few days, let’s say about 4 or so.

There could be and might be all sorts of excuses but I don’t want excuses. I don’t want to be unloving and selfish.

The routine is off, sure, but that shouldn’t be any reason for me to pull back my love. But I have. I know this is not the way that God says we should live our lives. We need to be loving to other people, they deserve this, and in turn I am to believe that all people deserve this and at some point, maybe even me. But I don’t feel connected to my husband or God. I don’t feel connected to myself. I want to get lost on a trail or in a good book. But I haven’t been able to let myself and am I not sure why. There are excuses but no real answers.

I can hear The Beast…or at least what I think he would say or what books he might suggest for me to read in order to find my joy or restore it. However, this isn’t helpful as I am trying to be me and not plagued by his past or his friends. I want to learn about things because they are interesting to me and not because some book is by an author he likes….which turns out to be a book “she” too liked. I don’t want to be reminded of the depth of his friendships before me because it makes me feel like I am in the way. Plus, I am not sure that some of his friends are even people I care to know..that is on my own accord, I wouldn’t befriend them. Which is also to say…sometimes there are things I just do not need to know.

Life feels ugly and heavy – currently.

I know this shall pass, or I hope it does. I can endure a great amount of frustration but I feel like I am reaching a threshold.

I think this happens when I have been gone far too long and also when I try to edit my verbal diatribe into something readable.

I am eloping, or so says the FH.

I never thought about it like this. I say I am having a wedding and no one is invited. I am saving everyone the trouble, including myself. There will be no conflicts and no bad comments from cousins or sisters, even inadverent comments that might hurt my feelings. My mom died 15 years ago June 30th. Today when I was picking my dog up from my dad’s house (yes, I leave one dog with him while I am at work as I live 45 miles away and this way the dog is happy and my dad likes having him around) and I was herding the dog into the car, my dad came outside with this little box.

He asked me if it belonged to me. Um, no. But I do love old jewelry and well, I love things that look like they have been loved before. When I opened the top of the box it was a pin, A PIN!!! I can use it for my bouquet, that is I put it on a ribbon and use it as my something borrowed! which is the only element I was missing, as I even have a real six pence. The pen is missing the pin, I know, but it has two bars on the back and I can slid my ribbon through them and then wrap the bouquet. The pin is antiqued gold with 3 orange diamond shaped stones. It is badly tarnished. Will be looking up ways to clean it. I honestly don’t know where it came from. He might have found it at a garage sale a million years ago, it’s possible. It could have belonged to either of my grandmothers. He doesn’t remember (ah, the curse of being almost 70) where it came from. And you know what, I don’t care, it came from him. And I am thrilled to be able to put the wedding of my dreams together all free of conflict and with a gift from my dad walking me down the aisle.

I went from one blog to another…I need a layout where I can post links and photos. Any wordpress geeks (and by geeks, I of course imply that you are a hot geek…is there any other kind?) that would like to help?