In an earlier post – Got Your Goat – I ended saying that I didn’t know of an appropriate goat quote. I just walked into my living room to a Julia Roberts movie where she said, “Happiness isn’t Happiness without a violin-playing goat”. So there you go. You can thank Julia Roberts for that. Who said Notting Hill was a complete waste? 😉

Cheers,
R

Or possibly better titled, Get your fingers out of your mouth and stop touching my damn food! Or, possibly, Raina actually is a freak when it comes to germs, and may be judging you while you eat!

It’s no secret to those that know me that I have an aversion to germs, especially that coming from people’s mouths (blah)! I have considered lysol-ing the incessant cougher on the bus who was clearly too ill to be in public. Let me take you back a few months to what was probably a prime example of how I can’t do germs, or floor crunchies. I’ll follow that up with a delightful tale of a full bore bat shit break down. If you’re squeamish, you may just want to skip this one.

During a recent training at work, we were asked to learn and apply mindfulness as a method for reducing stress in our Veteran population. We spent a lot of time doing deep breathing and other similar activities (I know, I know-hard job, right?). Part of this process was something called Mindful Eating, where you eat a raisin, and focus on mindfully looking at it, smelling it, and ultimately eating it. I get it…slowing down and savoring your food? We could all use some of that..

So began the experiment. Step one: Pass around a container of raisins, and everyone grab one.

With their fingers. Out of the same container of unwrapped, sticky, raisins.

D’oh.

Now…I am about half way through this line of people waiting patiently for their germ riddled treat. “I can totally do this, these are my coworkers…it’s ok”, I think, as I grab my (still germ riddled,  but I am damn ok with it) raisin.

And the exercise begins.  We hold it up and look at it (I’m ok at this point), we turn it over in our fingers (got it, I’m still cool), and even smell it. We’re being deliberate with our food, and I am totally behind this. Then the leader says “Now, place the raisin in your mouth.”.

Insert screeching tires of a big-ass Mack truck coming to a halt.

Huh? There’s god knows what on this sticky thing. Eek! Up until this point, my eyes and the eyes of all of my coworkers have been closed, but upon hearing the news that I had to throw what is now (I’m pretty sure) a mechanism of germ warfare into my mouth, I was up, alert, and my mindfulness spell was broken.

Not wanting to appear ass-ish, I continued to look at it. Mindfulness is Mindfulness, right? Now, I am pretty into my raisin, and am looking at it when I hear a soft whisper next to me: “Crap”.  Apparently my coworker dropped his raisin. This is seriously not conducive to mindfulness, so I help. We eventually find it under the desk and he goes back to his mindfulness activity, and pops the raisin in his mouth.

Whole. Lee. Shit.

He shrugs and chomps along merrily, while I stare in both shock and impressed awe. “You ate floor crunchies!!”, I whisper. No matter, he is clearly more Zen than I.  I eventually rub the raisin on my pants, take a nibble, and throw the rest in my tissue, hoping to high hell no one I work with is ill.  Needless to say, this activity-not my favorite.

So, by now  you have a good sense of how my brain works based on the past blogs (you may want to read the one about home improvement, if you have other questions. You can find that here). And yes, I do realize that this is plain silly and that one raisin probably won’t kill me (at least we better hope!!)  Flash forward to this past Sunday. Let me set the scene.

A Moroccan restaurant in Belltown, a 50th birthday party for someone I don’t know and 20+ of her friends, mostly softer science social workers (think crystal healing, Reiki, Qigong therapies), clinical social workers, dog park friends-a good smattering of the people I spend time with in real life. Just…well, strangers.

Let me also take time to note a few things:

• I drove in downtown after not eating for way too many hours
• I wasn’t planning on drinking
• You eat with your hands at this place. With Strangers. And their hands.

Blame it on last night’s trip to Baron, or that its a lazy, sunny Saturday and I have the house to myself, but I am feeling plain lazy. It feels good. I spent my morning reading blogs. There’s a lot of awesome ones-check out the side bar, bottom right, for a selection of great blogs I like to follow. Recently, someone asked what I do with my time…I seem to get stuff done, and by all outward appearances, have the whole adult-thing on lock down. I smiled and nodded, wanting to say that I wake up, brew the perfect espresso and go for a morning jog. But instead, I ventured into a discussion of how I actually roll:

I can’t believe it is only Tuesday. TUESDAY PEOPLE!!!  This may be one of the longest weeks ever. It may also be that I am coming off of being sick,and not working a full work week and that I had a great weekend. Meh, either way, Friday sure could hurry up and visit. That would not break my heart.

Speaking of the weekend-it was lovely!
Friday brought around a decision to get a goat. Of course, the decision was spurred on by two things: Beer in an unspecified amount, and this picture from Twisted Vines Farm:

Seriously. How can you not see that face and THAT SCARF and not want him or her?!  Sigh. I convinced my loving and ever so slightly beery partner that i wanted this, nay, NEEDED this goat (or any goat). He reluctantly agreed. Its not 4 full days later, and I still think this little guy may be the coolest thing ever. For the love of Pete, he has a smirk! He’s a sarcastic goat with a scarf. Its like he was made for me. Also, he looks very soft…not like cows, which (and no offense to cow lovers) are not soft. At all. It broke my heart to find out cows weren’t soft and this was maybe 10 years ago. I am still pretty pissed about that. 😉

But I digress. I did not get said goat. As much as I would love a fuzzy critter crapping in my back yard, I do have neighbors, and a job. I did have some very salient points though, had my drunken decision resulted in goat-buying. For instance, I would tell my neighbors:

• He IS wearing a scarf. He is clearly a civilized goat, not like that sneaky goat behind him!
• He could be a she (I didn’t check into it that much), if that were the case, there could be milk.
• If there was milk, then there could be cheese!
• I could make yarn (or is that just sheep? Hmm…it is pretty apparent that I didn’t plan this out)
• If its a boy goat, then, he would be fierce and goat-manly and defend things. He could be a security goat.
• He would eat weeds – this may be the only well thought out and truthful item on here.

Currently, the title of this post is Pants-big girl and otherwise. I’ll probably change it by the time I finish jotting my thoughts down. It seems fitting (pun only slightly intended), that I use that title, and here’s why:
Pants, in the literal sense: I have been sick the past few days, and have been living in pajamas. Seriously. I haven’t left the house since late Sunday and have been working from home. I have big hair, a cough, and it ain’t pretty. Be glad you’re not here to witness it!
But it also means Big girl pants. There’s been change happening, which has required big girl pants to be worn! After 5 (quite) long months, my mom moved into her own place. I am really proud of her for venturing out and getting her own place, but am so, so glad to have my craft room back.

Speaking of….I’ve almost finished my first quilt. Its not the one I have been working on for eons, but a pretty blue one. After I finish this post, I’ll be putting the binding on. I am so excited to see this project done 🙂

No big news on my end, just a quick germy update 🙂

Hope all of you are doing well! And hey, look at that, the title stayed!
Cheers,
Raina