Moving On

This past week I received some excellent news that one of my dearest friends bought a house! HOW EXCITING!!!!! I was ecstatic upon receiving this news and anxious to see her new home that her and her significant other invested into. She asked another friend and I if we could help her move out of her current apartment, and as the three of us cleaned, vacuumed, moved around furniture and freaked out about lizards on the porch, I realized then that we are no longer little girls. We are no longer the little girls who attended a private school which we referred to as the little house on 68th street, we no longer dance "15" (Quinces) and have our mothers drive us around from point 'A' to point 'B'. My friends always tease me because I am frequently saying how old we are getting but this weekend I think they finally agreed with me. As we continued in our efforts to get rid of stuff and put away stuff we came across the closet, we tried on some old clothes that we have no idea how we fit into once upon a time, but I guess as time passes our weight increases. We have been grown up for some time now and life keeps moving forward whether we want it to or not, it does not stop for anyone! I can't help but think where does the time go? It seems as though only yesterday I was a bridesmaid at a wedding in which I watched another friend take a vow to be with someone for the rest of her life. In a few days it will mark the anniversary of their wedding day. I can't help but think about the things we have gone through as a group of friends and as individual women. We have gone through horrible conflicts with one another, with past relationships, with family, and even with ourselves, but yet we have always managed to be there for one another regardless of where we live, whether it is in the same state or across the country (on a beautiful island). We fall, we learn, we open certain doors and we close others, we move on! We move on to the next chapters of our lives, on to new discoveries and to new lessons.

I love you girls!!!

Dog vs. Cat

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I adore my dog Puchie, I love her as though she were an actual person, she is literally my baby no doubt about it. Lately it seems as though Puchie feels a little neglected because of the new addition to our family, Kitty! She seems to be a little jealous of Kitty and Kitty only adds to her insecurity by fighting and teasing her. They are constantly at each other’s throats; I guess they are still learning how to get along. If you touch Kitty Puchie is ready to attack and eat her if given the opportunity, but if you leave Kitty alone Puchie will be fine and treat her normal. We decided to cut Kitty's nails to keep her from ruining our furniture and poking one of Puchie's eyes out, but that has only made Puchie more confident in knowing that now Kitty cannot defend herself. What a dilemma to have your pets constantly getting at each other! I leave them alone together all day, and I have yet to find a dead animal when I get home, so they must be getting along well enough. They are literally forced to get along, so what do we do when we are placed in a situation that is uncomfortable and nothing can be done to change it? What do we do when we are forced into things we have no control over? Do we kick and scream, run and hide, or do we just deal with the situation at hand? Could it be that the reason we are placed in certain situations is so that we can learn something about ourselves and about others? Could it be that God wants to teach and show us something that we will only be able to see and learn in that given situation? Sometimes our emotions are so visible to others that we cannot hide them no matter what we do, we let our anger get the best of us and when this happens we fail to see the lesson behind all the madness. So how do we move out of "A" versus "B" or "you” versus "them"? Do we always have to be on one side or another? My first guess would be, is to stop seeing the other person as an enemy. We tend to reject people that are different from us when perhaps what we need to do is embrace those that are dissimilar in order to see that maybe they are not all that different after all. Its funny how people pick sides and segregate things, we pick sides based on similarities, proximity; things we can relate to or things we believe in and stand for. Not everyone views things the way that you or I do, and I believe at times we forget that, we only see "me" or "I" instead of "us" or "we", we forget that there are other people on this planet beside ourselves. We become so focused on the negative or bad things that other people do to us that we make the situation worse by drowning in our anger and bitterness due to the injustices we are encountering. I guess we would really have to know the person, know their quarks and quinks so that they cannot get to us. We could always take the nonchalant approach and go to Publix and buy a tub of Vaseline and rub it all over ourselves not literally, but figuratively speaking! Or even the juvenile approach and simply state I am rubber your glue and whatever hits me bounces off and sticks to you, but whom are we kidding? We cannot go through life with these attitudes because things do not always slide or bounce off of us so easily. My mother has always given me the advice of "knowing" a person. If you know the person you will know how to deal with them accordingly. So I guess when we are stuck in these situations where we cannot do anything about the people we have to deal with, what we need to do is keep in mind who they are and handle them accordingly. Have you ever thought there usually is a reason that some people are very difficult? More than likely, part of the problem is that they don’t have anyone to love them or even enough love to give in return. So think of it like this, hopefully you are lucky enough to have people love you and love them in return, but what if we were kind to those who where rude and loved those we disliked. Wouldn't the world be a better place if we took that approach instead of fighting like cats and dogs?

Personality Differences

This past weekend was an interesting weekend for me, not because anything out of the ordinary happened or anything extravagant happened, but because I was given the opportunity to hang out with many different friends of mine. The thing about hanging out with these girls was that I mixed all of them together. Its funny how you can see personalities more distinctly when you put them around others they are not necessarily comfortable with, yet! I guess you could say it was a girls weekend since everyone was having some kind of dilemma in their relationships, as we all do at times. It is amazing to see how everyone has a different point of view, or perspective on things. How people give different advices that one or the other may or may not agree with, but somehow we can all relate to. So I sat there giving everyone advice as though I had all the answers when in reality I do not, but I guess we all use our own experiences to help others out with theirs, my purpose that weekend was to offer my friends support and strength. Its funny how we all give each other advice when we are going through stuff but then we cannot follow that same advice when we are struggling. I guess that is why we have friends to bring us up when we are feeling down because lets face it we all get down from time to time. We fight with people we love and care about because we are different, and thank God for that! Could you imagine what it would be like if were all the same? How boring would that be? The key is to learn about each other so that conflict can decrease and not increase, so that we can be better prepared when conflict does arise. We as human beings have distinguishing qualities and personal characteristics that define us, that make us who we are, and although we have our own personality, and it probably meshes better with certain other personalities, there is always someone we do not always see eye to eye with. Through each friendship and relationship we learn more and more about ourselves and how to deal with each other. I believe fighting or arguing in any kind of relationship is just a way of learning more about one another. The question is do you really want to learn about the person or people we are currently doing life with? Do we want to learn about them to the extent that we can overcome obstacles because of our individual differences or particular arguments? Can we even compromise? Life is really all about dialogue, and without it we get no where!