I wish I…

Was trained at some type of martial arts.

Knew how to play drums really well.

Lived in more than just 2 countries.

Was tidier.

Could drive a truck and/or a motorbike. (Don’t ask – I’ve wished this since I was a teenager I think!)

Lived on my own private island.

Had more kids. (Well, sort of. A girl, or 2, really.)

Knew how to sew.

Was an awesome photographer.

Spoke more than just one language fluently.

Could supply constant happiness to every single child in this world, or at least take away any suffering.

Had the secret to world peace hidden somewhere under all the clothes on my bedroom floor, and when I clean up later today I could discover it! (We can hope, right?)

Was able to give birth to Transformers, because I fear one day my youngest would realize that he’s just human and he wouldn’t know how to live with the disappointment.

What do you wish?

Speedlinking & a pic of my friend

The hope bracelet has a new home with my beautiful friend, just because she is very sweet, and I think it looks prettier on her hands!

I don’t know why, but I really love cute ribbons, and these are like “super cute ribbons”!

“Seeing the Everyday” looks like a fabulous magazine, and you may also want to check out all the other magazines you should be reading.

Bizarre but very intriguing.

I love bamboo socks, if you haven’t tried them, you really should!

And in case you were keeping track, now I am reading The Soloist.

a complicated kindness, indeed

I don’t usually do “sad” – sad movies, sad shows, sad stories, sad books, I try to avoid “sad”, like the plague.

I read a complicated kindness and I know I’ve only been doing this reading thing for a short time, but this is possibly the best book ever. It’s completely heartbreaking. I finished it with the overwhelming urge to just sit and cry for a few hours.

Although sad, the story was brilliantly told, it was amazingly funny, and I could possibly start reading it again right now. Yeah, it was that good.

“My neighbor came out to look at it. She’s an unhappy housewife with the flattest ass I’ve ever seen. Swaths of fabric allocated for a person’s butt billow emptily around hers like a sail.” pg. 100

I totally and completely appreciated all the analogies.

The underlying story was about love and loss. Dealing with loss, I guess. Told by a teenage girl, who’s mother and sister left, as she and her dad try to make sense of their lives. They dealt with the loss very much like most of us deal – block it out, pretend everything is okay, try really hard to figure out what happened, how you’re supposed to move on, and privately grieve a whole lot. It’s a remarkable reminder that we can never win when we have to choose between the “right thing” and our happiness, there is such a fine line, and I guess that’s why most of us hold on to faith and hope so desperately.

And in the end, she asked a question I ponder every day almost, “Is it wrong to trust in a beautiful lie if it helps you get through life.”

And for no particular reason

a picture of my hand.

Well, I tried to show the bleeding knuckles for the lovely and thoughtful Mand, but they weren’t bleeding anymore – it’s the first 2, you can see they are darker than the others. Also, I have a scar, which just sorta showed up one day, out of nowhere. But, I think it looks cool – I prefer hands that have character.

One of the bracelets I’m wearing is for War Child and the other says “hope”… because, really, without hope we don’t have much.

Talk to me & great money-making schemes

So my boss and I decided that selling lotion to people on the street would be an excellent money-making business. Seriously.

Last week some day, my hands were so dry that my knuckles started to bleed. Yes, bleeding knuckles! Anyway, I knew that my boss had 2 bottles of lotion on his desk, so I headed over there to “borrow” some. Only, he thought that I should tip him instead. So, I said, “hey, maybe other people would want to buy lotion too!”, so we quickly hashed out a plan. The set up was that I would go out into the street and solicit people to come up into the office and pay him for some lotion.

It all falls apart though, because our office is 14 floors from the ground, and I am only there 3 days a week. Clearly we would never make enough money for this to be a viable business! And I don’t know that it’s really fair because I feel like I would be doing a lot of the work, while all he did was buy the lotion.

This kinda reminds me of a time back when I was in high school, in Trinidad – my friend and I decided that selling mango chow was a good way to earn enough money to purchase a car! Yeah, that didn’t really work out either, sadly.

What crazy money-making plans have you hatched over the years?