Tap Dancing Nekkid Down the Street

You ever have a moment when you're just frazzled? Like "Holy shit, I have to be someplace by 6:30, and I have to stop at the grocery store, and I have to load up the car, and I have to pick up my sister, and I have to be all the way on the other side of town by 6:30, and dammit, what possessed me to answer my phone at 5:02, as I was shutting down my computer? That always leads to at least a 10 minute conversation! Shit, I'm never gonna make it by 6:30!" (I was still a few minutes late, but such is my life. I was actually a lot close to being on time than I thought I would be!)

So, as all these thoughts were swirling through the old noggin, I was walking into the grocery store (to get some snackums for a lovely ladies night of drinks, snacks, chubby baby cheeks, laughter and wedding craftiness. That's another post for another time ;-) and I'm relatively sure that I had a crinkly, intense look on my face and I am almost 100% certain that I was talking to myself. But in spite of my crazy lady persona, another woman was walking out the door and said a very simple sentence: "You look really pretty today!"

Now I had never met this woman before, and I'll most likely never see her again (or if I do, I won't recognize her, because I was so far into my frazzle that I couldn't pick her out if she went tap dancing nekkid down the street), but that one simple, unexpected compliment put me in a totally different headspace.

This morning I went to yoga and breakfast with my buddy Ru again (Apparently we have deep conversations. I guess that's what sunshiney yoga'll do to ya!) and we got to talking about how, as a society, we have stopped having connections with people. **This came about because we were sitting outside the North Market, where they have picnic tables that can easily seat 8 people. A guy walked by and seemed exasperated because there were people sitting at each table, but none of them were even close to full. Hell, he could have sat at our table. We were the only 2 sitting there, and while I know that we were two stone cold foxes in our workout gear, we clearly make awesome dining companions!

But when's the last time you actually spoke to a stranger? Do you text people for 2 hours to get the same information that could have been ferreted out with a 3 minute phone convo? When you're by yourself in public, do you bury yourself in the latest igaldroidberry gadget and have no clue what's going on around you, or even do it as a deterrent to keep strangers from talking to you? Guilty. Let's change that! The next time you see someone wearing a fly ass pair of shoes or you hear someone with a great laugh, tell them! You never know who you'll be breaking out of their frazzled brain cage :-)

A Change in Scenery

Well, the dishwasher is running, all the food's put away and we're getting ready to hit the hay after today's dinner and a movie. A couple months have gone by since Danny and I decided that we wanted to have better connections with people, especially the folks who are important to us, because who knows what may happen in life, right?

I have been much better about talking to my sisters and family in general on a regular basis, and hanging out with my girlfriends more often. We've got some dinner and a movie action happening. Danny and I applied to be a part of A Date 2 Remember and we were selected to participate in the fashion show/date auction in February, so we'll be all about making new friends and connections for that!

So today I'm thankful for being able realize that life isn't about just getting stuck in your daily grind with your usual stuff. It's about being able to try new things and go places you've never been. It's about inviting people into your home and having a good time. It's about bringing people together who may not have ever known one another otherwise. We're going to have a house full of people for Thanksgiving this year. Every other year, we got into our annual habit of going to either Cleveland or California, and that was our holiday. It's always been a great time with family, but that's not what's happening next week. I never would have thought that our house would be a holiday dinner house, but this year a lot of things are different. And different can be good.

GOOD 30 Day Challenge: Days 1 and 2

I ran across this challenge from a friend on facebook, called the "GOOD 30 Day Challenge." Each month GOOD (an organization focused on creating a community for people and businesses who want to live well and do good. Their tag line is "For People Who Give A Damn." I mean, how awesome is that?!?) has a 30 day challenge, and September's task is to create connections with people. Since it is September 2, I have already missed day one, but I'll backtrack to that one. Here's a link to the GOOD 30 Day Challenge, if you want to learn more about it.

Here we go so far:

Day 1: Send someone a postcard - I'll get back to that one, as soon as I get some postcards! (If you want one, I will send a postcard to the first 4 addresses I get. Even if we don't know each other. It's nice to get real mail in this age of digital communication and junk mail.)

Day 2: Have a conversation with a service employee - I try to be friendly to everyone I come in contact with, especially if they are doing something for me. I found this fun little coffee shop in the course of some of my random wanderings on the internets, so I decided to go check it out. When I went in, I chatted with the man behind the counter about how I found the coffee shop and then we had a nice conversation about the different types of coffee he has, which led to teas that we both like, and then he walked me through how he brews each cup of coffee to order, which was pretty cool!

(**Side note: I have the attention span of a pickle, so whenever I set out to find something specific online, I inevitably have to drag myself away from something so far off topic that I can't even figure out how I got there. It's like those Family Circus comics where Little Billy has to go someplace close by and ends up taking the most ridiculous route to get there, as documented by a thick black dotted line swirling all around the panel. I was looking at the Experience Columbus website to see if they had any jobs available, they had a blog, 7 entries in, the blog mentioned this coffee shop. And here we are. Sitting in said coffee shop. Writing about it. Weird how that works out, huh?**)