Patricia Danielle

having 2 beers doesn’t make you an alcoholic

just like

having 15 guns doesn’t make you a murderer

just like

having a bible doesn’t make you a christian

another meeting story:

yesterday, during my monthly manager/director meeting, the director who was leading the meeting kept going around the room, calling on people to share their opinions on whatever the topic was.

now, i know i am being paid to think for this company, but sometimes, i just want to be told what to do. sometimes i dont want to give ideas and thoughts and opinions. hard to believe, i know. call me a communist, but sometimes i just want someone in charge to say, ‘here’s what we are going to do. here’s how we are going to do it. and here’s the impementation date. ready? break!’ 

i used to have pretend boyfriends everywhere.

i used to have a pretend boyfriend at church. he went to the 945 sunday morning service and he was super tall. so tall that i could sit on the complete other side of church and still see him over the massive crowd of people. i never even came close to talking to him. i was always a whole congregation away.

then there was the pretend boyfriend that i had to take a drive to see. he worked at the outback steakhouse about 30 minutes away from where i lived and worked. i only made the drive 4 times total, i think. he was a fun one to like. 

i also had one at the grocery store. he bagged groceries at VONS. after 2 years of seeing him a few times a week, a couple of weeks before i left for japan, i finally talked to him for a few minutes. but really, that isnt the point of pretend boyfriends.

pretend boyfriends arent to talk to or be looked at as prospective boyfriends. nope. they are just cute boys to look at and have fun talking about. different than a crush because with a crush, there can be real feelings involved. but pretend boyfriend kind of feelings mirror those of a 2nd grader. its all giggles and smiles then quickly forgotten about.

actually…the ‘quickly forgotten about’ sounds a little like the last real boyfriend….go figure.

Easter was really nice. I spent the night before at marins when I got to marins house on sat ngiht,  there was some WEIRD old 70’s JESUS movie on the TV. Like it was a requirement for properly celebrating the holiday. Or maybe it was supposed to be moses and the 10 commandments. Whoever it was, was walking around in a white tunic and fell and then was dragging themselves around the dirty desert. Poor dehydrated guy.

on easter morning, the first thing marins mom said when she came out of her bedroom on easter and saw us in the living room was ‘he has risen.’ that was hilarious! I guess that’s what they say in the catholic church, but I have hardly ever been to one and it was just cute that it was the first thing to come to her after waking up!

(get ready for a huge amount of ‘thens’) then i went home and took a nap until 2. then my mom woke me up for dinner. then I sat around with my mom and grandma and talked until 5. then I went to ginas for dinner. I had 2 FULL meals in one day. Im not sure the last time that happened. (end of ‘thens’ for now)

this pic is of the eggs gina and I colored. Arent they silly? One is on a skateboard! Stupid. But fun. (isnt it kind of righteous that my yellow guy on the far right has what looks like blood streaming down his head? he was on the skateboard first…….needless to say, he didnt win rights to it for the pic. stupid bullys.)

The other pic is an easter egg cake that gina made in her attempt to be martha stewart. It was cute, looked like an egg……a purple egg. complete with slimy lemon yellow stuff inside.

**dont forget that jesus is the reason for the easter season.

the other night at the nail salon while i waited to have acrylic nails put only on my thumbs (that all day meeting in lamirada REALLY bored me into eating back my thumb nails and picking hard at my cuticles), i called brian to fill in the waiting time. im not good with wasting time……actually, i HATE it.

i told him where i was and what i was doing. he told me that the other night, on the way home, his girlfriend told him that her finger hurt because she had spent the evening picking at her cuticle. he said he didnt know what to say.

now, heres where i come in. i have the most perfect answer for anything. actually, there are 2. it just depends on the situation.

answer 1- “that’s awesome!’

answer 2- “that sucks.”

the only thing you have to do is add in the tone and the emphasis where necessary.

here….you try it….

“i have so much to do. i cant even get away from my desk for 2 seconds to go pee!”

(insert answer 2 here)

or….

“i got a new pair of shoes. theyre a little too tight, but they were only 12 bucks!”

(insert answer 1 here)

you see, it really is that easy.

when people make statements like this, thats all that they are….STATEMENTS! in most cases, they are not asking for an answer. they are not asking for you to FIX anything. they are just asking for you to listen, and acknowledge that you did so.

isnt “that awesome!” ???

as i sat at my desk this morning, i offered the question in my head up for answering by a few of my closest friends:

my question-

“do you think all the traveling and living abroad has ruined our posibility to be satisfied with the normal american life?”

shannon ’s answer-

definitely!  and i think the normal american life has ruined me in general because i seem to get caught up in the trap of materialism and consumerism…not that it wasn’t like that in japan but not to the extent that it is here.  i seem to think that i deserve certain things…and that makes it harder to deal with when i’m not able to get them.  sometimes i think it would be simpler to just live in a hut in africa or india somewhere…

marin’s answer 

I think it opened our eyes to a lot of things…If you believe ignorance is bliss…then yes, it did ruin it for us. I don’t believe in that in terms of what you are speaking of, I could go on forever about this subject. I am proud to be an American, but sometimes I think it’s a little overrated. I’m still down for moving to Europe and living there,,,indefinitely.

caroline’s answer-

actually I think it has helped us to push against what is considered the norm in our american life.  I think it is a combination of biblical training and life experience.

right now i am so loving:

talk radio. cycle classes. rhonda the cycle instructor. beautiful night skies. chapstick. headbands. flip flops. texting. sushi. lichi jellies. free water.  my employees. a clean room. NPR. bride-to-be-friends. ska music. filling up before empty. clear nailpolish. the feeling that summer is just around the corner. mixing up grandmas house to wednesday nights. defending brit. doing anything with kylee. a night a week with friends. clean sheets. saving money.

I know that I b-i-t-ch about it ALL The time, but I really spend incredible amounts of time in meetings and on teleconferences. I really do. Yesterday we had a meeting in la mirada. At one point, everyone was just sitting and waiting for the next topic to be discussed and I was sitting there getting kind of ant-sy about it. I looked at the chick to the right of me and said ‘do you know how much work I could have done in the time we have just been sitting here?’  she  said ’sometimes we just need a break.’ then the chick on the left side of me said ‘WHAT?’ and the other girl answered ‘tricia just doesn’t like to waste time.’ DUH?

Im not the most important person on the planet, or even in the room, but I value my time. Even this morning I decided that I can do my hair in the car on the way to the gym in order to save an extra 2 minutes in the morning. That’s really how my brain thinks. Shaving off time is SOOO my thing. And putting as much into every 32 seconds as possible. During a meeting earlier this week, there was this guy who talks SO fast. He was leading the meeting. I wrote down on my paper ‘I LOVE people who talk as fast as my brain thinks.’ Just LOVE them!