I'm so excited for this!

My Clothes Don't Match.

As always, I woke up this morning. My days usually start out this way. I like the predictability of it. It took me awhile to actually get out of bed. I think I spent about 15 minutes convincing myself to get up and get moving instead of resetting my alarm. I reset my alarm anyway and got out of bed 30 minutes later.

I swung immediately into action and started on the 3 hour process of baking bread. During the first rise, I showered and attempted to dress myself. "Attempted" is the best word I can conjure up for what happened this morning. I spent time looking for clothes that I couldn't find, putting on and taking off clothes that didn't quite fit the way I wanted them to, and feeling utterly frustrated by the amount of time it was taking me to get dressed. I stomped my foot and exhaled loudly. I threw my arms up and threw my clothes on the ground. I couldn't do it. I couldn't dress myself. I walked away from my closet wearing a shirt and pants that didn't match. In my brain I fumbled about, letting self-destructive thoughts take hold.

It was then that I found myself standing in front of Dave; mismatched with my hair dried funny. He looked at me with the complete acceptance of a person who loves you so much they see past your awkward moments. Unaware of the temper tantrum I had in the other room, he asked how I was doing. I fumbled around in my brain again, then confessed "I'm having a bad morning." He asked why. "I can't dress myself," I replied.

I can imagine it would sound silly to hear a grown person say that they can't dress themselves, but Dave didn't laugh. He walked towards me and pulled me close. I cried as he held me. There's something about being held while you're crying, it's like someone else takes the responsibility of making sure you don't burst apart physically while you're bursting apart emotionally.

Even though it was a silly thing to cry about, it meant a lot to me to have Dave there. I just wanted to take a minute to thank him and all my friends who have loved me even when my clothes have not matched. I love you.

Floo Blah Tutu Le Blah

"Bonjour! Comment ce va?" I exclaim with my red beret smartly positioned on top of my head. "Ce va," the kindly French person says in response, smiling at me--an American who took the time to learn her native French language. I walk on, feeling as though I made the world a better place through saying "Hello, how are you?"

This is how I envision my time in France; me wearing cute little French outfits and speaking with a perfect little French accent. I see the French people looking at me adoringly and accepting me as one of their own. I sit at a cafe and tut along with them as a woman with large hair waves her arms and speaks with a southern drawl.

In my imagination I am quite the snob, which is not like me at all. That's why I like my imagination. I get to try on different people and test out different scenarios. What I don't like about my imagination is that it can make some things seem more important than they really are.

The reason I want to go to France is to see the Louvre and the many other lovely buildings filled with art and history. I want to sit in a cafe and sip tea while drawing the people that pass me by. There is a romantic quality to France that I want to capture, and it has nothing to do with the people or fitting in. It is more about being mysterious and wandering around in unfamiliar places.

I would dearly love to go to France one day, and while it would be helpful to speak French for the two to three weeks that I'm there, I don't know that I would find any other use for speaking the language. I might find a lost French woman in Portland, but she would inevitably speak English and I would sweetly smile at her as she said, "Hello, how are you?" with her cute French accent.

It's hard for me to admit, but I can't justify learning French right now. I will just have to settle for the French-gibberish I speak in my imagination. It goes something like this, "Floo blah tutu le blah." It's really quite elegant in my mind.

Supermarket Folly

I just stuck my finger in my eye. That wasn't the bad part, it was the stinging that came afterward and wondering what I had on my finger that could sting my eye so much. As I walk through the morning I remember clearly washing my hands after using the toilet, but not after applying my make-up. Make-up should not sting your eye like that, but I can't think of anything else that would.

Alas, I didn't sit down to write today because of my eye (that just happened as I sat down to write). I am writing to ask for solutions. Does anyone have clever ideas on how to avoid plastic? I'm wondering where to find tortillas that don't come in plastic bags? Does vegetable oil even come in a plastic-less container...or should one completely convert to olive oil (that always comes in fancy glass containers)? Is there a way to make one's own sour cream and yogurt so that one might avoid the plastic container that it comes in? And I just thought about one's cheese!

Why does everything in the world have a plastic option, but not everything has a plastic-less option? This to me is folly. If plastic and disposable culture are causing the damage that I'm told think they are, why is there not some larger change?

I was thinking about McDonald's yesterday and how many fast food meals they've served (they brag about it on their signs). Then I thought about all the waste that has been created from a restaurant trying to come up with a cost-effective solution to not giving out proper plates and silverware to every Tom, Dick, and Sally that come to the drive through and expect their meal served in under 3 min. That is a lot of waste, but it's a waste that will biodegrade quicker than plastic.

When I look down the aisles at a a grocery store and see the amount of food being sold and the amount of plastic used to package it, I wonder about attacking a cooperation like McDonalds. Our grocery stores shelves are lined with plastic. I feel like I'm being dramatic. I don't like to feel that way, I want to find a solution and not blame the man. So dear reader, what ideas to you have?