Sodium Stearate and Glycerin

What in the hell do sodium stearate and glycerin have to do with me - anyone?

In a word, well two, everything and nothing.

Funny things happen when boys have way too much time on their hands - especially gigantic dorks who spends hours on end comparing and researching shaving soap. What, you believed shaving with soap was bad? Oh, do we need to talk. I might be tempted to throw a badger at you!

As far as nothing was concerned with the links between sodium stearate, glycerin and ourselves, one doesn't have to think much. It's pretty evident, at least to one whom has as many dork points accumulated as myself. They are not the key to world peace or educating beauty pageant contestants. An in reality have nothing to do with anything.

Yet, those two simple ingredients have everything to do with life and living. It's really easy for people to lose themselves amongst the chaos of life - I am very much included in that category. However, the essence of existence will perpetually slam itself into our consciousness whether we like it or not. I am far away from my life right now. I am certainly living, breathing, doing -but not living. I need her to truly be living. I can walk just as tall, I can stink just as bad but I need those eyes, for without those I have no purpose, no validation. 

How in the hell did I ever come across sodium stearate and glycerin is a story, but not a long one. Not a fantastic one, but rather a simple one. If one was to attribute attributes to a void, you might come across words like, nothing, empty, blank... the list could go on indefinitely. Yet, that's a bunch of crap... a void is everything - it just engulfs all that reside within it. 

Enter my life. I have school. I have work. Each of which could fill up a week pretty will in their singularity; coupled together equates to a hot mess of angst, worry and apprehension. Still, I find myself with time everyplace. I cannot deal with time and its stagnation - that is all that occurs; it just meanders from one second to the next, producing ill regard for perceived consistency and stomping on emotion. So I feed the void. It is all I can/know how do. The emptiness that inhabits her side of the bed will consume me if I do not feed it. I feed it. I feed it research. I feed it contemplation. I feed it everything I have, except that which is not mine to give - my heart and solemn promise of love and devotion.

Both sodium stearate and glycerin are pretty simple by themselves - not much to mention in conversation certainly, but within shaving soap, one could posit that these are the catalyst for bliss. Without these components shaving soap does not function, it does not exist. 

Without her smile, without her eyes, I do not exist... 

Except in a world where discovering both sodium stearate and glycerin are the bright spots of your day.

I do not need shaving soap.

I need her.

i'm sneaky

Look, it's Little Bear here and I've just got one thing to say. Her posts are boring! All this talk about life and whatever is just mundane and bores me to TEARS! We're gonna spice things up a bit - if ya know what I mean.

Like I said, my name is Little Bear - LB for short and I run this studio while my dad is in NY. My mom is so nice and sweet with her blogging, but I know the real her! She's punchy and always has something to say. I keep telling her she's gotta stick up for herself everyday before work, but she refuses to listen. 

Oh, just to let all the lovely ladies know - I AM available. I am 6 inches long and .4lbs. I am almost three years old [November 15] and live with my mom [she buys me the best yogurt treats - she's got me hooked and I can't leave]. I enjoy a good carrot and mound of corn kernels paired with a good sip of fresh water. I love to cuddle with my mom when she's having a rough day and usually end up making her smile by squeaking my own little tune [she falls for it every time]. I hate traveling, but with my mom and dad living in different states I have to make the long haul to Ohio or New York every once in a while - I just cannot sleep well in the car and sleep is my life... well 21 hours a day at least. I usually sleep until about 11 or 11:30pm everyday depending on what time my momma wakes me up to play. I am a natural athlete and put about 10 miles on my wheel a night - I guess you could say I'm as attractive as they come. Other than running I enjoy my ball, climbing my up my home, nibbling on momma's duvet cover and talking to my dad via iChat video - I miss him so much... we totally see eye to eye about "man" stuff.

I gotta run - literally, but I'll be back soon - when you-know-who leaves my home open again.

~LB

simple observations

To me, simple things make me happy. I like when someone waves when I allow them to go first when driving or when the sunshine comes in my window at work. I find joy in watching little bear give himself a bath and how cute he looks when just wakes up.

But since I have already established that I enjoy the little things in life, I think now I want to talk about little things in a different light. As I sit here at 12:31 in the afternoon after only just waking up not even two hours ago I realize that I would not have done this had I been with my other half. Most Saturday morning I was up at the crack of dawn [and nagging, i mean politely] asking Sam to wake up and start the day with me. Whether it is the sub-conscience awareness that your actions at home on a Saturday morning have little affect on the rest of the world, let alone your significant other or if it just the slight hint of constant sadness that looms and dulls life just that little itty bitty amount I am not sure, but I certainly feel it. 

For example, the space between my bed and the sofa is about 3 feet wide. The vacuum that I used last Sunday has been occupying that space for the last week. When living with Sam, we had our own little system - I'd vacuum and he'd wrap the cord and stow it away. Is it my hope that he will travel 621 miles from Rochester to simply put the vacuum away for me? No, not really - that would be unreasonable, but something within me sticks to that thought like a dog on a mailman. 

Distance does make the heart grow fonder, but further more it challenges static life. People, in general, are comfortable with what they know. We find happiness, in most cases, with the pleasures we know will give us, well, pleasure and happiness. Change, therefore is less than pleasurable, for most. I remember my mom babysitting one child. He loathed anything that disrupted his schedule or altered what he knew as stable. This child's mom knew this and often talked about it with my mother about solutions to get away from this way of thinking. In a similar example, my father. About my father: 100% Italian - need I say more. The man despises change - on any level. As an example of his inability to change is the fact that he's taken the same days of vacation for the last 7 or so years. Every year he takes off the day before labor day weekend and a week in November to go hunting. He's combed his hair the same way since, oh, the beginning of time and absolutely does not try new foods. My mother on the other hand is just the opposite. She loves new things and is really, in every way the complete reverse of my dad. She is the exceptions and sadly, I must admit I follow more in way of my father rather than mother. 

In moving to Chicago, I have been asked by life to change. New home, new state, new job, new grocery store [ohhh, Wegmans how I miss thee] and a life without a readily available hugs from my soon-to-be husband, friends and most importantly family. 

To be honest I have not found the balance between these two yet, but I am looking.

everyone has 'em

Yup, that's right - bad days. For the most part, we can't help them, but they just kind of mosey along creeping up ever so slyly, striking with a slow and then rapid attach until before you know it little things like the broken stapler you have to use jamming seem like earth-shattering ordeals. 

Well, if you have not guessed it, today I had a trying day [it would be quite silly and illogical of me to talk about bad days if in fact I had a wonderful one... ]. Where I work I manage print and direct mail campaigns. I basically work for a print brokerage, but we don't really like to say those words. The company I work for also does not use the term "junk mail." Working in a stressful environment there are A LOT of bad words - all of which are not even on the same level of vulgarity as muttering those two little words above "junk mail". The "SGi" politically correct term to use is "direct mail". So please, make note of this in your daily diction when cursing the masses amounts of "direct mail" received unecessarily and of little effectiveness (oh, just an FYI - the average "direct mail" campaign at most generates a 2% response rate while spending litterally hundreds of thousands of dollar usually). 

Okay, okay, okay... enough explaining. I manage print projects. I don't love it, but that's only because I am filling the stocking the copier and tracking 5,231 UPS packages more so than I am doing any actual "management" of said projects. Anywhoooo... I had to cover some jobs for a coworker who took the day off. The jobs are by no means difficult or challenging, but this combined with my own deadlines and work to complete made it quite difficult to stay sane. And yes, I was actually "managing" projects today [ yip-pee :) ]. As always, when she was explaining to me [aka talking down to me about what I HAD to do for her all without a simple "thanks" or "thank you" at then end of her schpeel] she forgot to mention a few items that would have been quite helpful just after lunch came around. She forgot to let me know that one of her projects was not running on-time. And furthermore that there was a truck scheduled to pick up this job of over 60,000 pieces for one of our biggest clients! Soo... today I got a call from one of our vendors telling me this! I was trilled - and not to mention literally exhausted from all the emailing and phone dialing I had to do to figure out what in heaven's name was going on! For the next 2 hours I was being pulled back and forth into my bosses office to discuss what we could do and go... all the while that my own projects sit motionless in their little manilla folders on my desk. This was a very trying day...

At first I handled it all very well. I was calm, cool, collected... until I realized all the other work I had to accomplish by the end of the day, then I just became depressed. 

Is it not justified to assume that when you respect another individual you should receive that same respect from them? Is this thought wrong. No, I only think this thought is human - from an actual person who cares how they interact with the world and the impact they understand that they have upon other people. I believe that people can take two routes when pursuing what they want. A. Courteously, clear, respectful, understanding yet assertive. Or B. Disrespect, very much not understanding, rude and a b*&tch. I choose the first and I am completely aware that I am in the minority where I work. I refuse to yell at vendors to get what I want. I try my best to not be condescending. However, I always say thank you [actually it is a compulsion of mine - I must say it or I will have trouble not thinking about the fact that I did not say "thank you".] And most importantly I understand that we are NOT perfect machines, but merely human. We are human when we speak out of line. We are human when we get into a fender-bender. We are human when we hurt the ones we love. WE are ALL human. Perfection is not an option or choice but a unreasonable expectation- at least not for me or anyone I've ever encountered. 

I may be called weak and a "pushover," but my soul will not allow me to stomach or tolerate rudeness or vulgar language of myself in order to get what I need or what. I'm sorry, but I just will not do it. End of story. No, really... end of story. 

hugs to all :)

erica

Ohhh... the first post. So much pressure to say the right thing and post the right picture. How should I begin this blog? What should I say? This one post could really define all the subsequent post I make - I better make this one a good one! No, no, no... wait one moment. First impressions are exactly that. They do not call them first impression because they last forever - they are truly that... first impressions. Yes, we are all guilty of it. We judge based on what we see first. Judgement is something that we all struggle with - judgement of ourselves, others and well... just about anything that we come into contact with. So much of our lives are just packed to the brim with make decisions about people that we know so little about, but have experienced a "first impression". 

Judgement of ourselves is, in some ways all consuming. Do I look fat in this? Will he like what I make for dinner? Are my kids smart enough? Constantly... all day long we compare ourselves with others. What would a world be like without "first impressions" or any other silly comparative practices? Probably pretty nice - but that is just me. 

Growing up, I had a very limited view of judgement. I don't know if it were because of my mother singing to her own loving tune or whether I just plain oblivious to what was going on around me. To give you an example... I did not know there were such things as fall and spring fashions until I was about twenty. Up until now, at the ripe ol' age of twenty-three and soon to be married, I did not know that people actually picked "colors" for their weddings! First thing people ask you when you tell them you're engaged is when is the date (which currently I do not have) and what are you're color (which I refuse to have). But back to my point... judgement. It is only now in my life that I have started to find myself wishing I had more... more like "everyone" else. But!!! Wait a minute, (with my index finger pointed up in the air, as if I had come upon the very best idea ever) I do have everything that I need. We are bestowed, at our birth, with everything that we could possibly want - life. We may not always have love, money, a nice car, the most expensive clothes, but we will always have just what our creator intended us to possess. 

What more could you possibly want? :)

But then again... we are human. And to be human is to want, to envy, to judge AND to be imperfect. Perfection for a human is like... well... a perfect human - it just does not happen. We all struggle and we all hide what we are ashamed of in our lives. With so many areas of our lives - work, home, self, marriage, parenting, and well we can't forget religion... it is truly and entirely unrealistic to hold within ourselves the perceptions that ourselves OR others possess any level perfection.

I wish you perfect days filled with all sorts of imperfect actions so you may grow, strive and become a better person each and every day here on forth.