Feel Good Thursday

"Life is too important to be taken seriously. -Oscar Wilde

A few things that just make you feel good:

Reading a good book on a sunny day in your backyard. Scented candles when the power's out. Coffee dates with the girls. Chocolate chunk cookies. Summer thunderstorms. That feeling you get when the plane lifts off the ground. A hug from mom. A homecooked meal. Catching up with an old friend. Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Music, especially an old favorite. Being able to pay your own bills and do your own taxes. Locking eyes with a cute stranger. Quoting old-school Disney movies or Looneytunes. Singing out loud without fear of embarrassment. Bright red nail polish. Freshly shaved legs against clean sheets. Sleeping in past 10. Staying up late. Traveling by train. A good dark beer/red wine/favorite adult beverage at your favorite pub. A three-day weekend. Vacation. Day trips anywhere but here. Gilmore Girls/Big Bang Theory/Chuck marathons. Making smores. Falling asleep under the stars. Alaska summers. White Christmas'. Cute firefighters. Driving faster than you should on a deserted backroad. Grabbing five or six redbox movies just because they're a buck. Eating out more often than you ate at your own place for a week/month/forever. Traveling like a local. Seeing places you've only read about. Planning trip based on where your finger lands on the globe. Taking a motorcycle instead of a car. That feeling you get when you've come home after a long trip. First kiss with a new person. Changing into your pjs after a long day at work. The smell of fresh-cut grass. Spring flowers. Fall leaves crunching under your feet. Swimming in a river/lake/ocean. Watching a young child discover something new. Feeling a summer wind on your face. Belly laughs. Happy tears. That person who you can vent to no matter what. Being with family and friends. BBQs. Guilty pleasures. Warm towels right out of the dryer. Finding that perfect whatever and discovering it's on sale. Snowball fights. Running through sprinklers. Sparklers on the 4th of July. Blowing bubbles. Playing on the swings in the park no matter how old you are. Bowling on a Saturday night. Singing karaoke really off key. Remembering a really good dream. Finding $20 from last year in your winter jacket. Frozen hershey kisses (trust me). Remembering that no matter how much a day may suck, there's still a lot that can make a day better again. :D -kp-

Living life as I know it

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.

-Albert Einstein

Sometimes things don't go quite as you had planned. Sometimes your plans seem trivial once you finally get to them. And sometimes, if you're like me, there are no real plans. I'm a go-with-the-flow kinda girl. I make lists that I never look at once the last word's written. I don't ask for directions. I don't like being told what to do. I certainly don't like it when people ask me "Why aren't you married yet?" or "Why would you ever think of leaving here again [the town where I grew up and where I find myself living once more]?" To say it nicely, I'm a bit of a strange breed in this town. I am single, 24, and in no rush to settle down.

I grew up in this town [BTown, I'll call it], when it was still considered a town. Now it's a city with suburbs and sprawl, pollution and congestion, and the conservative undertones that come from a rather vocal religious affiliation. Most of the people from my high school graduating class are already married, some on their second marriage, with kids and mortgages and soccer games. I'm here with two roommates, three cats [mine came with the house, the other two with my roommate], and more takeout boxes in the fridge than actual ingredients. I went away to college, lived abroad, fell in love, earned a degree, fell out of love, worked on a boat in Alaska, and then made my way back home to spend some time around my family. The idea/'plan'/hope was to move back abroad after a while to see more of the world before settling down. That was a year and a half ago. I'm beginning to see that hope fade. I'm stuck in a rut like many twentysomethings who can't seem to find their footing in the real world. It doesn't make it any easier that we have set out to find ourselves in a world when the economic situation could be better. I've read that we could become the 'lost generation'. Isn't that a pleasant thought? Feeling like this for the rest of our lives? Awesome.

So I'm here. Staring at the computer screen late at night after getting home from work and trying to figure out just what I'm going to do with myself. And just when life begins to fall into the same routines, something little- like a staredown with a good-looking stranger across the street or an impromptu road/plane/train trip just to get away- makes life seem a bit brighter or, at the very least, more entertaining. Anyone else feel the same way?