Merry Musings and Hot Chocolations

This post read goes well with Sufjan Steven’s I Saw Three Ships and drinking mint tea bag steeped hot chocolations. Hot picks derived from the writer as this is what she is doing as she contemplates this Holiday Season with virtual pen.

Like when opening a present and the next thing you know you’re debating whether or not to recycle wrapping paper packages that have been ripped to shreds. That’s somewhat how I feel when I try to gage how rapid the holidays will and have flown by.

This year’s Christmas letter came and went. As did the house gatherings, the excessive endorsements for egg nog – a concoction I have never truly understood, the mad dash around the local shopping emporium. The baking, the wrapping, the singing, the counting. The candlelit Christmas Eve Service. Reflection on Christ’s birth: everything.

What I most look forward to most every year are what is said when my family gets together. There are always gems of entertainment in what is said.

The best quote sample of the Hagglund Holidays 2009:

“Mom, if you don’t march upstairs right now, I’m going to write about this in my blog.” - The activities in question will be omitted for her sake.

“Do you know how long it’s been that I haven’t been able to grate cheese?” – Joel Hagglund as he proceeds to open a much needed cheese grater for his new kitchen.

“That’s the finest sifter I have ever seen.” – Mary Ellen says upon enviously inspecting her son’s dollar store purchased sifter.

“How come it’s not ringing anymore?” Mary Ellen says upon her iPhone connecting to the number she had dialed on her Christmas present.

“I have no more room for any more new technology.” – Mary Ellen after a few lessons on learning how to use her new cell phone. December 27, 2009 Mark it in your calendars folks. The day my mother decided to not learn anything new. It’s going to be another rough 50 years from here on in if this is truly the case.

“I think I would have to be Jewish and male to truly appreciate that.” – Kelsey Hagglund in reference to watching a skit called Tur – Mohel’s Evil League of Evil which involved plenty of jokes about circumcision. Highly recommended by Barry Hagglund.

“My plan to spite Kelsey isn’t going so well.” – Joel Hagglund as he proceeded to be beaten at Bohnanza.

To name a few. Merry New Year. Bring on 2010 for more fun, friendships and funny quotes.

Snooping Through the Epicentre of Chaos

Who would have thought that cleaning your room can revolutionize your life?

All those years of tuning out when my mother reached the shrill octave - a frequency that young dogs and small children in trouble tune into - I now have a grand appreciation for the perfected reminder in a song that I wasn’t willing to listen to.

For the longest time I have been living out of a suitcase not literally but as a state of being. The suitcase ready-to-leave-for-my-next-adventure state of being. I am not one to ever settle down anywhere in particular. Up until recently I have always just had things in a state of slight disarray to a point where I am never entirely too comfortable in wanting to stay wherever I reside. That's just it: I have never been one for total comfort to the point where this situation would inevitably force me to charge over to the nearest coffee shoppe because I didn’t even like my own space.

I think it partially has to do with the fact that I haven’t lived anywhere for more than 4 years of time. Yes, I have lived in certain neighbourhoods, certain countries for entire decades but never in the same locations or under regular circumstances.

My wise roommate one day sauntered into my room. The Epicentre of Chaos would have been the title of the movie my room would have starred in had it been personified as la vedette. Tina stood in the doorway and quietly waited as it took me a few minutes to appear from behind the stack of papers I had going on for one of the clients I was working with.

“You know what we need to do?” She asked.

I knew full well what was going to come out of her mouth next but I wasn’t ready to hear the words breathed into existence just yet. Silently I was cringing in the nest that I had created in the corner. The we was really singular.

Pieces of paper for shavings, a little spinning desk chair, there I was, caught on the hamster wheel of life.

The we that Tin Tin was referring to was meant to be me and I knew that I was going to have to conquer the self-perpetuated mess.

Then, she started to describe how it needed to be placed and suddenly my room – in the context of how it should be in theory - just made total sense, an utter lightbulb moment; it allowed for a sense of freedom to overcome me.

So a month later after I managed to clear my schedule there I was, going through a spacial makeover. Everything changed places. Not a thing stayed the way it was.

When it was done, it was a masterpiece – in fact it still is. I want to be in my room. I desire to be organized and to know where I put things. I am busier than ever before in my life it just took that extra push to get me to reach that next level of efficiency.

Sam Gosling wrote a book called Snoop, what going through someone’s stuff says about them. He’s a psychologist that follows social behaviours and essentially he talks about what you can learn about a person by the state of their personal space before you meet them.

A good friend of mine and I were discussing this recently because he came out to visit me a long time ago and my room was in utter chaos. Like disgusting, I never wanted to be in it, didn’t really feel welcome, wanted to put my bed up for sale and sleep on the streets, kind of messy. A Massive State of Embarassment – one bigger than Alaska.

I watched Sam’s lecture recently and this put my life into a new perspective. There are three types of people: those that are organized, those that are unorganized and those that want to be organized.

I think I fall under the category of those that want to be organized. Although, I am more organized than I always gave myself credit for. And I attribute this to something that I learned while watching the lecture.

Sam made an interesting point to evaluate homosexuals’ spaces while they were in the midst of announcing their lifestyle to the world. His observation was that each space had no continuity. His attribution of this observation was that their lives are in a state of transition.

That’s when it hit me: I have never actually moved in anywhere because I am in constant assumption that my life should be in transition. Not in a lifestyle choice kind of way, but more in when’s-the-next-adventure kind of way - that I won’t be staying anywhere for long. It all makes a little more sense amongst this symphony of chaos. Who knew me and my proud friends that parade would have that in common? We are all human after all.

Check out the lecture. Fascinate your senses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfRgjW4hFcU

The Material Rapport with the Cashier

I stand, mouth gapping open. Lost in thought. Rather out of it, dazed but not confused. Or at least until the cashier brings me back to reality. I'm trying to decide whether to pay with Debit or Visa.

Typically I'll look up to find a kid with contoured zits that would make the local ski hills jealous. He'll respond in a squeaky voice and ask me if I want a bag. I know if he were Jewish, the barmitzfah has not happened yet.

Everything from a cashier's mannerisms to the phrasing of the question screams the general consensus of the public; plastic bags are an evil evil thing. So evil, that the word needs to be emphasized by writing it twice.

"Do you want a BAG for that?" They inquire.

Of course, I stand empty handed and I have to calculate. The output of energy over the amount of items needed to juggle divided by the number of doors I have to open singlehandedly to the weight times the amount of residual patience. I say yes please.

I know deep down they have taken the piece of chalk and gone up that wall of primitive tally of bags used and wasted that very day. I hate to remind them that there is someone behind me that is going to buy yet another clothe bag that apparently breeds bacteria to somehow save the planet. It will make them look more eco-friendly while making them one more unit of spending closer to being in debt. But it's a small price to pay for having an ego the size of Alaska when you know that both you and the cashier know that your eco footprint has the "inferred" suggestion of being smaller than everyone else's. But it's a well-kept secret because your neighbours know that you live in a mansion that is lit up 24/7 and that your Hummer is the older model that is more of a gas guzzler. But don't let anyone know. They might miss that huge tank of a vehicle barreling down the road side-saddling the curb and the road.

But really it is only suggested by the fact that you bought another clothe bag. That clothe bag was also used to purchase only frozen foods that are all individually packed and processed. The bag is quantifiable.

It will make its way also to a dump site.

However, you have just built a fifteen second friendship with the cashier because they are the ultimate environmental consultant when it comes to reminding you just how bad of a person you are for having purchased a 20 cent plastic bag.

For a fraction of approval if the item that you are purchasing is smaller than a bread box, you'd rather make the cashier smile and look like a total bafoon cradling the items under your forarm and your armpit out to your car, than risk the scathing stare when you reply that you will need a plastic bag. You mine as well have suffocated their goldfish.

So to end on a positive note and just point out merely an observation more than anything, that we hate to be hated at the check out, either shop at a store that still does paper bags - after all it is still a renewable resource (a shout out to Thrifty's) or never buy anything that you can't carry out of a store if you happen to forget that stack of bags from home.