Category Archives: addiction

Feeling the burn

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candles

Candles burn, hearts yearn,

Wine fills up the glass.

Eyes glance, loves’ chance,

Time to make the pass.

Hand touches, blood rushes,

Hearts pick up the pace.

Distance lessens, romance beckons,

They linger face to face.

Lips meet, taste is sweet,

Blush is in her cheeks.

Hot breath, sweet caress,

The feeling that she seeks.

Touch sparks, bodies arc,

Passion is in the air.

Energy builds, needs filled,

Souls are laid to bare.

Solved puzzle, bodies nuzzle,

Two seem to become one.

Bodies spent, minds content,

her sky has found its sun.

(image credit)

Kicking it old school

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A flash of white, a black soft-top and four black tires rolled by the only window to the world outside of my office.  I was mesmerized.  This 1976 Triumph TR6 rolled by my mundane, paper-pushing existence and I have to admit I drooled slightly when I saw it.  I was afforded the opportunity to get a closer look and I am wont to say I immediately developed a school-girl crush.  It was in great shape and sounded even better as the throaty engine responded to the shifting gears as it pulled away.

tr6

(image credit)

I love classic old cars.  I don’t know what it is that makes them so much more enticing than the cars of today but I have always been attracted to their sleek styles and rugged good looks.  There is something so alluring about a car that has so much character and doesn’t blend in with every other make and model on the road.

I have always said if I ever win the lottery, I am going to spoil myself and buy a Morgan Roadster.  It has been a dream of mine for a very long time and one that I hope will come true.  Oddly enough, I truly fell in love with the Morgan when I watched the movie “The War of the Roses” with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.  His Morgan was his baby, his pride and joy, and as soon as I saw it I knew I loved it.  It would be years later that I would discover my father in a frozen-in-time photo in Florida standing in front of his dream car – a candy-apple red Morgan Roadster.

morgan2

1957 Morgan Plus 4 (image credit)

There have been many moments of my day-dreaming when I pictured myself tucked behind the steering wheel, the feel of that wheel held firmly in my left hand and the gear shift comfortably in my right.  The wind-stream billowed over the top of the windshield and my hair blew in the breeze. (okay, I have really short hair but you get the idea)

I am a firm believer that if you put the right energy into the universe, that energy will come back to you.  I have been, and will remain, a person inspired by positive energy and will continue to live in the hope that this energy will come back and my dream will come true.  Six glorious gears, British Racing Green and open roads for miles – the energy is out there and now it just needs to come back.

 

Dare to dream BIG

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Dreams come in all forms.  The one I had last night was a prime example of all of the outside forces in my world coming together in a blend of incongruous ideas.  But dreams keep life exciting.  Dreams are the wishes we make for ourselves and hold close to our hearts.

I have several dreams – some seem absolutely attainable and others seem light years from my perception of reality but I hold those dreams as close as the wishes that dangle at the tips of my outstretched fingers.  Those delusions of grandeur make me strive, not only to succeed but, to make my life as close to my image of perfection as possible.

Dreams give us motivation.  Dreams make the mundane tasks of everyday life seem that much more bearable.  Dreams can transport us from reality into a glimpse of a microcosm so far from our daily routine that the mere idea seems absurd. But those dreams give us hope.  Even though those desires convey the impression of being impervious to our concept of life as we know it, we still need to maintain the assumption that dreams come true. The strength of our imagination makes dreams become more plausible and leaves a door open to a world beyond the essence of our day-to-day life.  Those dreams make us breathe.

My dreams have no restrictions.  I dream small and I dream big.  The image below is one of my big dreams and one that I cannot seem to let go.  I want to own a Morgan.  I have had an infatuation with this car since the late 1980’s.  I can visualize it in my driveway.  I can picture what I am wearing when I drive it.  It has gone from passion to craving.  Oddly enough, I was looking through some old family photo albums and came across a picture of my dad standing in front of a Morgan on one of his trips to Florida.  I had no idea this obsession was genetic!

morgan

(image credit: retrothing.com)

I will never give up this dream, or any of my dreams.  The intensity I feel when I think about this car only fuels my desire to make this dream a reality.  Many of my dreams may not come to fruition but that will never quench my desire to make those fantasies become real.  The day I live without a dream is the day I stop living.

Never give up on your dreams.  The day we stop thinking we can have something is the day we give up.  Dreams give us hope. Dreams give us a drive to succeed.  Dreams make us realize that all things are possible if we only choose to believe.

Starting 2015 the ‘write’ way

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I was going to be lazy today and not pull the starter cord on my brain.  I was content to let it sit idle and enjoy the distant hum as it sat listless but that would go against everything I want 2015 to be – creative and filled with stories.  And although I am closing in on the end of a 70-hour work week, I still feel like I should at least try to conjure a few words from the recesses of my imagination and begin the new year the way I should, by writing.

words

I would like my brain to become so flooded with words and images that they spill over each other to fight for their right to be etched on paper.  I want to feel so full of inspiration I can do nothing BUT write to be able make room for the new ideas being born.  I would like to wake up in the middle of the night and rush to the computer to capture those ideas before they escape and trickle down into the abyss of lost thoughts.

If I can do this every day, if I can play my metaphorical flute and conjure those words like a snake,  writing will become a need, a desire much more passionate than just wanting to write.

Day one – success.   Happy New Year everyone and may all of your wishes come true in 2015!

 

 

The fat lady began singing last night

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The holidays are always an emotional time of year.  This year was no exception for me.  But something else happens every year, always between Christmas and New Years, that leaves me heavy-hearted and very melancholy.  Last night, the regular season of the NFL ceased to exist for 2014 – time of death 11:32 pm.

fat lady

I am a self-professed NFL junkie and I have been since I was a kid.  For seventeen glorious weeks, I am content to sit on my couch for 10 hours on Sunday and watch the pigskin travel across the gridiron.   That is my happy place.

About ten years ago, I took charge of an existing football pool and grew it from approximately fifteen participants to the seventy-one we had this year.  With a fairly substantial buy-in, this pool has been a great success over the years and has given me the much-loved moniker “The Commish”.   Running the football pool has not only been a great challenge to perfect the spreadsheets but it has introduced me to many new friends.

There is an overwhelming sadness in me today.  Although the playoffs begin this weekend, I will miss the sixteen game roster every Thursday to Monday.  Knowing the culmination of the entire season will arrive in five short weeks makes me want to stop time and rewind it back to the beginning of September….or change lyrics to songs from old musicals…..

Raindrops on grass fields and whiskers on backers,

Cheering the Chargers or watching the Packers,

Receivers that run like their feet sprouted wings,

these are a few of my favorite things.

~~

*Sigh – they should make a pill for this!

Under his spell

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lempicka-saint-moritz-1929

What wouldn’t she have done for his love,

for the forbidden taste of his lips,

for the soft caress of his fingers tracing lightly upon her skin.

She savored the memory of his smile,

she recalled his sweetness as he spoke his words of love,

words that were meant to only fall on her ears.

But his carefree words deafened the ears of the spoiled.

Those words were never meant for her.

His life had been promised to another.

And now her soul was trapped,

forced into everlasting damnation,

compelled to bear witness to his life with another.

Their black magic hardened on her skin like a crust,

holding her face in sadness for eternity.

Her body now a statue,

held fast in its place,

her eyes meant to watch him,

reminded every day of what she cannot have.

Her consciousness banished

to a lifetime of anguish and melancholy.

In the darkness he would sneak out to visit her,

his touch was just as warm and his words of love, just as sweet.

~~

Written for the Grammar Ghoul Challenge – combining the above painting, Saint Moritz, by Tamara de Lempicka with the word prompt:

Crust (noun):

A hardened layer, coating, or deposit on the surface of something soft

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Until death do us part (fiction)

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In his mind, she was perfection.  Every line, every nuance of her face was so aesthetically pleasing to him he knew his plan had to be flawless, just like her.  He would spend the time really getting to know her, find out her likes and dislikes and do everything in his power to have her all to himself.

Each day that she passed by him, she became more beautiful.  Her eyes became a softer, more enchanting green.  Her smile held such true emotion and, as the days went on, she seemed to recognize him as she walked by the coffee shop where he waited for her each morning.  She was the first to say hello and he felt a great sense of pride, and victory.  His diligence and his patience were paying off.  He tried to contain his excitement as he met her gaze and nonchalantly said hello back.   He quickly diverted his attention back to his book, hoping she wouldn’t notice his hands shaking with the elation he was feeling.

He silently chided himself for his adolescent behavior.  He could not make one mistake.  He slowly lifted his eyes from his book to see her turning to get one more glimpse of him before she rounded the corner.  Things were going better than he anticipated.  A level of trust was being established and he was counting on that trust to help him be the guy that gets the girl at the end of the story.

Sign to Nowhere

His memory of those days was so vivid.  He replayed those early days over and over in his head, reliving them like it was just yesterday.  The car jostled along the dirt road and pulled him from his reverie.  He lowered the visor in the car, allowing him to look at the photo of her angelic face smiling back at him.  The sign loomed ahead, drawing him to her once again.

His journey had brought him back to his haunt and he opened his folding chair to face the beautiful landscape.  The grass and wildflowers that he had positioned so carefully had been doing their best to conceal what lay below.  He knew she must still be alive because the rocks had moved and the sign had been pushed further out of the ground.   It was only a matter of time before she ran out of oxygen and would truly be his forever.

~~

Written for the first challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press.  I was excited to see this challenge and not quite sure why my brain went in this direction.  I blame the cold meds!!  Click on the button below and go check it out.

gg-wkbadge-e1411321572196

 

Enough is enough….have some water

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I have officially reached the next echelon of my ‘personal limit’ pyramid. Having worked in the resort and restaurant business for most of my employed life, I have seen the full spectrum of mortal behavior and potentially every single human emotion at its highest velocity and its lowest hum.  I have met people from all walks of life, people from each position on the financial scale and every personality type described in psychology textbooks.

During each new experience dealing with behavior I find intolerable, my patience wears a little thinner and I don’t handle myself as gracefully and tactfully as I once was able to do.  Call it experience, call it aging or call it exasperation – in the depths of my mind there is no excuse for some of the behavior I have witnessed during my career in hostility hospitality.  Today was no exception.

Being a server in restaurants and a bartender at an upscale eatery, you learn quickly how to carefully deal with the clientele who don’t know when they’ve imbibed enough in their alcoholic beverage of choice.  I have learned how, over the years, to go from politically correct to obviously blunt and the message still never reaches the target.  I have handled my fair share of disgruntled guests throughout my journey but I have yet to master the fully intoxicated.  Sure, the few whose cocktail of choice is a mixed drink are the easiest to help.  A quarter of a shot instead of the full ounce goes unnoticed in a glass drowned with sugary syrup after the blood has already been saturated.  But those who drink beer or wine are tougher to fool.

Today, more than ever, drunkenness wreaked havoc on my composure.  What should have been a pleasant afternoon turned into a side-show at a forgotten carnival.  The generosity of one became the  over-indulgence of another and I didn’t know whether my emotion should be anger or sadness.  It was neither my battle to fight or my place to speak.  I could only sit back and hope the situation wouldn’t end badly.

water

Water, water everywhere – and nary a drop he would drink.

(image credit)

 

 

 

 

If it’s broke, stop trying to fix it

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“Each relationship nurtures a strength or a weakness within you.” ~ Michael Murdock

Have you ever had that moment?  The moment when you hear a quote and it sums up an entire period of time in your life that you had yet to define?  I just had a moment very reminiscent of that.

My marriage was a great learning tool in the school of my life.  I do not hold any ill-will towards my ex-husband but there were moments early in the marriage that I knew our relationship could be the recipe for disaster.  I allowed myself to ignore those blatant warning signs, took the wrong turn and careened along the highway of our marriage at full speed.  The bumps in the road got worse as the journey continued.  Soon, I couldn’t even navigate the straight stretches of the journey without getting dizzy.  It was then I realized I was on the wrong road.

Everything about our time together nurtured my weaknesses.  It became easier, as time went on, to not confront those weaknesses and keep some peace in the house.  After several months of pulling in my head and playing “turtle” I began to realize some very important things, not only about him but, about myself.

After spending a lifetime trying to “fix” the broken people in my life, I succumbed to the fact that I couldn’t fix them.  My ex-husband and the roller coaster of our marriage made me realize that.  This relationship which flagrantly displayed my weakness in the past now nurtured my personal strength.  When I finally awakened to that reality, once that awareness had seeped into my brain, my resolve was filled with a growing sense of power.

I took that power and changed my situation, and my life.  That relationship which initially nurtured my weakness came full circle and devoted its influence to my strength.  I would never have fully appreciated that strength had I not been weak at that fork in the road.

I’ll take a bowl of Super, please.

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Broncos   VS.  seattle-seahawks-team-logo

My most favorite and least favorite day of the year has arrived!!  The culmination of a great season of football and some hard-fought battles with the pigskin bring us to the moment that the Vince Lombardi trophy will be awarded.  My efforts as “The Commish”  in a 17-week long football pool as well as a playoff pool also come to an end at the pinnacle of the football season.  It is a bittersweet day.

Superbowl Sunday is like my Christmas day.  I awake excited knowing what the day will bring and can’t wait to unwrap the gift of football.  Unlike Christmas day, however, I fidget throughout the day in anticipation of the moment I can sit in front of my television set and scream obscenities at will.  My dog has had four weeks of pre-season, seventeen weeks of regular season and three weekends of playoff games to learn how to properly tune out the expletives that undoubtedly cascade from my lips.

This year’s rivalry between Denver and Seattle should be a close game and a well fought battle.  The pure, raw desire for each of these teams to reign supreme is evident on the field and the energy is palpable from both sidelines.  The deeply etched scars of the carnage on the field are proudly worn as badges of honor, but there is another carrot dangling ever so close to Peyton Manning besides putting his lips on the Vince Lombardi trophy.  Should the Denver Broncos emerge victorious, he will be the first quarterback in the NFL to win a second Superbowl championship throwing for two different teams.

Superbowl Sunday has become one of the most anticipated sporting events.  There is something so enticing about the spirit of Superbowl Sunday.  Even if you are not a fan of the game, the camaraderie and the game-day snacks are enough to draw in a crowd, if only to nibble the offerings and watch the commercials!

When the game is done, the trophy is presented and the celebration is carried on beyond the cameras, there should be a rehabilitation program for dedicated fans, like myself.  I admittedly feel a sense of loss and wander aimlessly on the Sunday following Superbowl trying to overcome that loss.  The sudden deviation to absolutely no football requires an intense effort to fill those weekend hours and I am forced to find sufficient entertainment to fill the void.  Thank God for blogging!

But for now, I will focus on Superbowl XLVIII – the throw down between the Broncos and the Seahawks.  It’s gonna be loud, it’s gonna be tense and it’s gonna be the Broncos 34 and the Seahawks 28.  Happy Superbowl Sunday!!

PS: If  you’re looking for me next Sunday, I will be signing up for an out-patient program for football withdrawal.