You can't take just Anyone

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Last week my sister calls me up and says she has a coupon for two 1/2 price admissions to Lagoon.  Heck yeah!  I love Lagoon.  I'm a big roller coaster junkie.  They can't make 'em high enough or fast enough for me.  And I'll take Lagoon over six flags or Disneyland any day.  It's cheaper, closer, the lines are shorter, and I'm sorry, but Disneyland doesn't have good coasters.

But you have to have the right partner to go with.  A group of friends works well (as long as there's an even number) 'cause then you can mix things up and have some good laughs between you, but when it's just one other person, there is a lot of pressure to always have clever or insightful things to say.  Since a visit to any amusment park mainly consists of standing in line, people have to resort to amusing themselves about 95% of the time.  Looking through my phone directory, it was interesting how few people I consider good friends I would actually feel comfortable enough with one-on-one for that long.  It's not that I don't like them, it's just that I don't want to put that kind of strain on our friendship.  There's only so much of Shaun you can take in one dose!

And Lagoon is really an awful first date, unless you're doubling or you know the person already.  Imagine that dinner you had with the guy who couldn't seem to get past the small talk except it's 7 hours in the sun with nothing on the table like straw wrappers or salt shakers to distract you.  Un. Pleasant.

Final choice: family.  I went with my cousin Danny:

Who ironically had just returned from a trip to Disneyland.

This is why having a family is awesome.  They don't care if you aren't scintillating, or if your hair looks bad after having been tangled up by the wind rushing through it, and they will absolutely make fun of you for sitting in a wet spot on the Log Flume 'cause it looks like you peed your pants.  ;)   If someone can make fun of you when you look stupid without making you feel stupid, you know they really care.

Family are also really great for having important conversations with.  Danny had just been through the wringer with his ex, so we commiserated about heartbreak for a little bit.  I'm such a sharer it's always nice to have a new person to tell my stories too.  It helps me process things, and amusement parks bring back a lot of memories.  It's not really that surprising how many analagies can be drawn between relationships and roller coasters.

To celebrate 125 years of business (holy cow I hope none of the rides are that old), Lagoon built a new rollor coster: Bambora.  I was really looking forward to checking it out, but when we got there, it wasn't on any of the maps.  We got directions from a bored and bemused game worker who couldn't have been older than 14.  He left his headset/mic on while talking to us, and it was kind of funny listening to his half of the conversation simultaneously on the loudspeaker. We finally found the line for Bambora and joined it in time to realize it was about twice as thrilling as Puff the Magic Dragon.  Not that I have anything against Puff, I was just hoping for another big-kids' ride.  We rode it anyway, just for the experience.  Some poor little girl entirely clad in pink was sobbing the whole time.  Poor thing.  Oh, well.  We did get to the park early enough to ride Wicked 4 times in 30 minutes.  Not too shabby.

Bumper Cars, Colossus, The Samurai, and the classic "White Roller Coaster".... All in all it was a pretty cool day.

So!  The bounceback coupons expire tomorrow.  My three or four friends I hand picked to invite back with me failed out, so I guess I'll be staying home.  I really can't bring myself to go with just anyone.  Much as I love rides and cotton candy, the place that is "what fun is" isn't the place to take someone you don't really click with.  It's really not as fun without the right person.

Just Happy

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In writing the title of this post I'm beginning to wonder if I use "just" too much.  Yeah.  I think I am.  I remember now having to go through papers I write looking for repetitive "just"'s.  I'll need to add that to the docket of things to improve on.

But right now, I am just happy.  :-)

You know how there are times when you are in a funk and you really don't know why but everything in life looks grim and your outlook on the future is dismal?  I do have those, but I also get these times when I really just love life.  I could be doing anything and still feel a general sense of pleasure in who I am and a contentment with my lot in life.  Like yesterday, I sat down to put my shoes on and just loved the fact that I am who I am; the kind of person who wears stripey socks and red convers.  Driving in the car, I get a whiff of the summertime that is really almost here (I hope!) and life just strikes me as supremely enjoyable.  Little things, you know.

I used to think these happy times were more rare than my grumpier funks, but anymore I'm not sure that's true.  Discomfort is so much more noticeable than ease, and negative emotions are much more disruptive to my life than positive ones.  I'm pretty sure I've been having these cheerful episodes several times a year without realizing it.  I think I have been percieving the good times as what life "should" be, and bemoaning the bad times because things were going "wrong" in my life. 

Hmmm.  There's something wrong with that.  When did I get so arrogant as to think that I deserved happiness and sunshine all the days of my life?  I've complained about the things in my life I'm not extatic about, and merely accepted the good things I have as my due.  How have I not at least been noticing the good stuff as well as the bad?  Well, I'm noticing it now.  My life is good.  Dang good. And I am happy.

Illustration: I have a wonderful family.  I am blessed to be connected by blood with the best group of people I know; and by marriage to choice, "salty", step-families I couldn't imagine my life without.  I just love these people.  A bunch of us got together last Saturday to commemorate Biz's baptism.  The weather was gorgeous, we had food, and dessert, and lazy conversations while all the grandkids played around the yard.

Couldn't imagine a better way to spend my weekend.

All the grandkids on the Weight/Ricks side but one.  Kirsten couldn't be there 'cause she was hanging out with her boyfriend :)

Thuffering Thuccotash

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So...I went on a date with a guy today (at least, I think it was a date. Those of you who are also single will understand the processes that lead to this sort of lack of clarity.  But, he asked and he paid, so we'll operate under that assumption for the purpose of this discussion).  As I'm sitting there, trying to think of things to say that are funny and charming yet still socially appropriate and reminding myself that everyone takes a little getting used to, and that you have to get to know a person before you really start warming up to them--I start to wonder if I even really want to put energy into trying to get past the first date. 

I've been through roughly 8 legitimate boyfriends, some of them pretty serious ones, and a few other smaller less substantial relationships which may be described as somewhat romantic.  None of them have ended successfully, and all of them have ended--quite predictably--with me angry at myself and questioning my value and generally feeling heartbroken that it didn't "work".  I feel like i've sort of "experienced it all" at this point.  I've read through every option in this Choose Your Own Adventure novel, and I know what happens if I turn left instead of right.  I also know what happens if I turn right.

Sitting in a restaurant, staring across the table at yet another option that will lead to either heartbrake or heartmauling I'm rather inclined to put down the book.

Later, snuggled up at home with an empty bowl of ice cream and the credits rolling on yet another predictable and only mildly satisfying girly movie, I decide to drown my sorrows in an incredibly productive foray into the recesses of online social networking and I come across this quote by C.S. Lewis:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

Gotta love Clive.  He really knows how to bluntly outline what is wrong with my rationale.  It's rather ironic that in order to avoid hell, you have to constantly be putting yourself through hell, but that, as they say, is the work.  Here is my problem with it: I have thrown myself head-first into every relationship I've ever had and regretted it every time.  I keep telling myself that I need to be smarter; more thoughtful; more reserved--less stupid, basically.  But here's the rub: now that I've somewhat achieved a sufficiently detached emotionality to make smarter relationship decisions I feel so much more disconnected from the love I really want and the person I really am.  I don't want to go through hell again.  Please, anything but that again.  And yet, there is no other way to heaven.

urgh.

Nothing to do but act with reckless abandon.  I rather feel like the cartoon character who, recognizing the unavaoidable, hits himself over the head with the anvil. 

Here I go.  Yipee.