Push

Every time I look at you the world just melts away
All my troubles all my fears dissolve in your affections
You've seen me at my weakest but you take me as I am
And when I fall you offer me a softer place to land

You stay the course you hold the line you keep it all together
You're the one true thing I know I can believe in
You're all the things that I desire, you save me, you complete me
You're the one true thing I know I can believe

I get mad so easy but you give me room to breathe
No matter what I say or do 'cause you're to good to fight about it
Even when I have to push just to see how far you'll go
You won’t stoop down to battle but you never turn to go

Your love is just the antidote when nothing else will cure me
There are times I cant decide when I cant tell up from down
You make me feel less crazy when otherwise I'd drown
But you pick me up and brush me off and tell me I'm OK
Sometimes that’s just what we need to get us through the day

 

You're all the things that I desire, you save me, you complete me
You're the one true thing I know I can believe

 

Sarah McLachlan

From the album Afterglow

Wearing colors

For almost two years, my wardrobe consisted of dark and plain hues.  Grays, whites, blacks.  A few months ago, I decided to wear pastel.  Mostly green and old rose tops.  Nothing loud.   

 

I welcomed 2007 with a closet clearing exercise and a paradigm shift.  

 

I decided to keep or give away some items especially those that I have not worn over the last year. 

 

But I also did another thing. 

 

I took out those items that I kept when my father passed away.  The red blouse, the pink shirt, the orange shirt…  In the process, I wondered if I could wear them again.  I would have worn them earlier but I wanted to respect the sensitivities of some people particularly my relatives. 

 

In the end, I returned most of them in the storage bin but placed my favorite pink shirt in a hanger. 

 

With all due respect to the preferences of people who have lost loved ones, surely mourning is more than just wearing dark colors.  Nothing can express grief and sadness. 

 

As I face this year, I have decided to wear my ‘happy’ colors again. 

 

As I face this year, I prefer to remember my parents in a different way. 

 

Usually, thoughts of them would bring me to the last days that I saw them alive.  Their last days in the hospital.  I recall the contraptions that sustained their lives.  I remember the smell. I remember the weary look in our faces.  The faraway look in my mother’s days.  The heavy,  ragged and frequent breathing of my dad.  I remember them all.  And so I end up with tears in eyes.

 

This year, I will choose to remember their lives.  Not their death.  I will choose to remember the memories of their younger days, not just the last few months that they lived and breathed.  After all, they are more than just the sickness that took their lives. 

 

I looked at my pink shirt that I placed in a hanger. 

 

One ‘happy’ shirt at a time.

Meeting-itis

A common corporate irritation, where one loses large blocks of time throughout the workday, seemingly without cause. Early symptoms of the ailment include red, dry eyes, stifled yawns and proneness to notebook doodling. More severe cases result in increased apathy and stress, lower productivity and employee satisfaction, and a prolonged disdain for ready-made sandwich trays.

I got it from one of the articles in our company website.  Similar to the Free email Day experiment where we were encouraged to pick up the phone or walk to someone else’s cubicle instead of clogging the system with emails, this article is another creative way to remind everyone to manage office time wisely.   I chuckled when I read it the first time.  Most of us carry this sort of virus I think.

 

I am posting it to make sure I keep this definition at hand.

Clam Chowder Soup for the highly strung

Subtitled:  Food for a drifter’s heart

 

1)                  Learn to turn off the control freak mode.

2)                  Saying “No, I can’t do that right now” is necessary on certain occasions.

3)                  You are actually MUCH bigger than a cockroach.  Well, except that it can fly!!!! Yikes!

4)                  You only need one notebook for your list of to do’s -- not three.

5)                  Go ahead, call your old friends!  It’ll do wonders to your heart.

6)                  Accept it, blogger.com is blocked and you barely have access to bloglines.  Better have a plan B.

7)                  Plan B:  Save up on that laptop!

8)                  Reading the user guide of a newly purchased gadget will actually help you..really..Now, if you could only find that manual.

9)                  It helps to have friends who are lawyers and/or doctors.  Or, at least have friends who are friends with a lawyer or a doctor.

10)               Daydreaming while walking will not help you develop your sense of direction.

 

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