Caffeine Conundrum

I picked up the Buffalo News today and Charity Vogel's section caught my eye..."Caffeine craze stirs thoughts about needs" http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/718156.html Incase you forgot I mentioned in one of my blog posts about how i should just open a coffee shop...oh the blog on "the switch"... because the finacial raping at college was not my cup of joe (haha pun intended). I went on to say how college students are getting criticized for being hooked on caffinee, how we need it, want it yearn for it... but she twist it to a perspective I didn't think of... we can afford it! Think about it, college students and old people are the most loyal customers at coffee shops. These two catagories have time and little money (some less time than others but still more time than a mother of 3 working full time, yea kno). Anyway, everyone needs to get away, and that's what Vogel points out; a mom just "getting away" for 6 dollars a day... it's worth it and its relatively affordable (although 6 is too much for me a day, maybe 6 once a week).

In todays economy it is hard for a student putting themselves through college to find somewhere to just relax, wind down, or socalize (especially if they aren't into the keg parties and beer pong). I realized that I was, and am that student. I'm not a partier in the sense of college parties (i like good clean fun with a drink or two, but perfer to remember my night and not wake up face down on someones lawn with a dog peeing on me (true story). I like the atmosphere at Spot coffee, and have for several years. I get a chai, or jet tea or carmel machioto, and life is grand... I just sit, sip, read, repeat, or find a friend and sit, sip, chat tat tat. Old people are the same way, just with more time. If they are retired and want to get out they aren't going to bar hop or get crazy, they are going to sit down with a coffee or tea, maybe get an indulgently fatty donut and enjoy the morning/afternoon/evening with their other retired crew members. Money shouldn't limit having time to get away, which is why most people with less money to spend on extraneous things than some go to a coffee shop. It doesn't mean we are addicted (although it comes with time, unless you change it up) but that we find it as a sanctuary to relax and enjoy a small, simple, luxury for around $3.

Now I'm really thinking. Since I moved into an apartment in they city, four blocks from my once santuary (Spot Coffee), I find that I rarely go there. I go at the end of the semester during finals just to get out of the house and into the world to do my work, and maybe once in a while with a friend I haven't seen in a while, it's a good location for any situation that could end up akwardly, or so well that it leads to something more exciting!!!

Okay, real quick, I have a improptu promo for a newer coffee shop... It's on the corner of Lexington and Grant (just a couple blocks from my place) and it is amazing!!!!!!! It's called... SWEET_NESS 7 CAFE. All organic, all environmentally friendly, all affordable. It has a wonderful, friendly owner, cool employees, eccentric yet homey feel, and artsy decor not to mention a great Chai soy latte. So here a GREEN CAFE... Coffee conundrum solved!!! I can be green and delight in a great cup of luxury in a great atmosphere with fellows like myself...eccentric, earthy (but still clean), friendly people who care about what happens to the environment...LOVE IT!!!!

The What If's...

A person can be driven mad by thinking of the what if's in life. Everyday there is a what if... what if i ate an apple and toast for breakfast instead of chocolate chip pancakes with powdered sugar on top? heheh well i know that I would not have had a stomach ache afterwards, but it sure was tasty! I mean sure something as simple as breakfast doesn't have enough of an impact to drive a person mad, unless they are on a diet and regret it all day long. Even then though it is not that maddening, however what about those instances or those people or that choice you made... all those kind of things wind you through life, if one was different... your whole life could be different.

For me it's people, not so much choices i've made, because I think with people come choices, each person has a path to take you on, and it's your choice to go or not...

Here's my conundrum: After we make a decision do we just accept it and forget, NO, at least I don't... I ponder and ponder and have a personal qualm until i get so distracted that i forget i even made the choice... YES... wait, there's more...So put simply, we make a choice, wonder if we made the right one, then forget about it...UNTIL...something randomly pops up out of nowhere and reminds you of the decision you made.

The worst part of making choices is knowing that you'll never know what could have been... yea know, like you meet a person, you click, you talk for a while without seeing each other then just fall out of touch... at first you don't realize it happened, then you randomly say... huh, i wonder how so and so is... then you go ahead and wonder... what if we didn't lose touch? Ding Ding Ding, there it is... the WHAT IF... it may be a month before the what if, or it may be a year, or heck maybe even four or ten, the time doesn't matter. Are the what if's in life meant to drive us nuts or tell us something... like a lesson, because obviously a what if still has a presence in life so it must matter... somethings, life breakfast obviously don't but school choices, career paths and love lives definately hinge on the what if's at some point. For the most part we all just let the what if slide out of our minds and that's fine, all is well and happy, i still have to wonder though... WHAT IF. I wonder what if on everything and imagine every scenario, the problem is I can imagine anything, just close my eyes and dream it up...but if someone told me to dream up where i'd be today five years ago... ha i would have never guessed! I'm sooo happy but it's nothing i imagined, i sometimes still try to figure out how i got here doing what i do, being who i'm with, learning and living what and where i am... its crazy and they all mesh together and it was the otherside of the what if's that got me here!

I love the craziness in life but when the what if's pop up i often find myself imagining life in other ways, not that i'd pursuit them like some whim but just pondering...Writing this i realized another what if... What if I weren't happy? then i'd have all my other what if's to go back and chose the other (to some extent) crazy huh, the sam what if's that drive me nuts may some day set me free!!!

I thought of all this because of two things. Last night I was sitting in front of a fire on a beach in Canada, drinking out of my nalgene (just water), eating a hamburger paired with a hot dog and potato salad, hearing the gentle tide roll in and seeing the pink sky reflecting in the water, surrounded by people I never knew before that night... and it was spectacular.

It was almost like this ironic things because earlier yesterday I randomly heard from a friend from Canada and is not in the states for a while, then don't you know it, my boyfriend and i get a call from his friend offering a ride up to canada for a BBQ. We had no idea where, or what, or when we'd get home, but we just hopped on the motorcycle and went, turns out we met amazingly generous and kind hearted people who were friends of a friends friend (did you get that) and had a monday night i never would have imagined... what if we said no, that 7 was too late to hop on the bike, and that we'd just stay home??? frankly I don't know, maybe we'd of won the lottery or were inspired to do something even greater? It doesn't matter, I was happy, he was happy, everyone was happy... it was spectacular. On the same note, what if we got there and it was horrible, what if something happened, well... they very well could of, but they didn't, we took a risk we normally don't make on a monday night because of early work schedules, but we did it...ahhhhh, part of if was the beauty of the outdoors, again reinvigorating....

I challenge everyone reading to do something, take risk (within reason of course), and do something you'd normally not do, who knows it may set you on a happier path of life???

Namaste until another day : )

Good green or gross green?

Odd conversation from work that I will expound upon you... How many times do you use your bath towel before washing it? 

Well, of course they (being all republican guys) ask "eco-kim" first... that is what they nicknamed me because I yell at them for burning furniture and tires, throwing away pop can's etc... and i answer, "two weeks ish." They did not like that attttttt allll! Every other guy said about 3 or 4 times... WHAT... one guy even said "once, just once"... ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! ONCE. If everyone used their towel only once soooo much water would be wasted. 

We continued on the conversation and they realized that I may keep the same set of towels for 2 weeks but I don't use them everyday because I don't shower everyday. I'm a girl darnit I don't smell!!! Boy's smell at the end of the day, girls (well not all girls, but some) don't. If I don't need to shower then i won't so it worked out to be about 6 times that I use my towel (days after I run, because then yes I do smell... after 6 or 8 miles... anyone smells hehehe. 

The whole point that I was trying to make is this... you are clean when you get out of the shower, that's why you take showers; to get clean. If you are clean and you use a clean towel to dry off how nasty can the towel get? I understand it gets odd, but I use one towel for my face (which i use twice daily if not more...oily skin, and that i do switch out more often) then I have a hair towel (what girl only uses one towel, wet hair drips down our backs and gets us wet again, you have to wrap it up) and then a third towel for my body... everything is separate. If I were to wash them all after 3 uses... that would be ridiculous... so i don't... i wait 2 weeks or so, becasue they don't get nasty!!! Anyway... i was seen as smelly hippie chic for a while but thats what i get for being honest heheheheh.

So I ask you, how long is too long to use the same towel? think green here, not OCD, hehe. 

Namaste till another day : )

Where does time go

First things first... sorry about the lack of inspiration in the blog design.. I'm workin on it...slowly. Just watch, soon it shall change into something perfect!!!!

Now onto something a lil' more interesting...

Chew on this... if tomorrow is the future, yesterday is the past and today is the present what would be NOW? Because if one minute ago was then, wouldn't two seconds ago be then, making one second ago then, making every millisecond then, thus the past and not the present or the now. So even what seems to be our present is no longer now but then. Yes confusing, re-read, one more time...get it now? (ha now)

It really just boogles my mind to think of time. Because really who says it is morning and night, noon and midnight, one day, one week and a year. Are we fooling ourselves? I have included a little note for all yea all to ponder... just another conundrum I often think about. It may not be a green conundrum but time and ones sense of it really does effect ones thought of the green movement because so many people feel we are losing time, that we are running against the clock to turn around our destruction... but we'll save that for another day. Enjoy the following:

Where does the time go???
Time really is an illusion, a man made illusions, are we fooling ourselves?
Does time spiral, does it recycle, does it just begin and end?Does it cycle within spirals?

With every pendelum swing we lose another second of our life but gain a second into our future.
Change happens, our now is not now, our now is our past.
Our present is our past, and our past may one day come back to bare face in our present.
Do we need to decide whether or not to value and abide by time, or can we just say screw it, who needs it.

We count our days...sun comes up, sun goes down, one day has past...yet the sun never really goes away, we only get the illusion that it goes away, so can we still call it a day?

Our days are limited, unless we recognize that days are not days but moments in time, better yet moments in life...Forget time, forget age, just don't forget the past, and always look ahead, know where you stand, and who stands with you...notice whose always been there, when no one else was...these are the ones to really love and who really love you...these are the people that you spend life with... the others are the ones you spend time with...

Sunrise morning

Book, Chai soy latte (delicious tea with vanilla soy milk), mexican blanket, the sun and a sleepy city... what a relaxing, beautiful, rejuvenating morning. That is all I can say for today... I'm too happy, and it's too nice to blog. Promise something intriguing tomorrow. Namaste till another day : )

Love being Eatin to bits

So all, I had my day, my green day, my go barefoot, walk in the woods, slip in the ravine have a pp&j sandwich, toss your apple core into the trees, throw the crust into the creek and watch the bugs and fish eat it day!!! It was spectacular.

I ventured out to my hometown (no quick trip : ( and spent hours just being outside... During our lunch break though I was viciously attacked by blood sucking mosquito's hehe. I'm pretty sure they found there way up my pants leg, through my shirt and onto every part of my body because it looks like I have the chicken pox! It reminds me of when my best friend and one of our good friends went slip n'sliding after work one day. We were all recreation counselors and decided it would be perfect to bring left over movie day juice and triple time it down the slope on an old billboard sign (it is not just an ordinary slip n'slide... IT IS HUGE!!!) i'll have to find some pictures later, idk. So we lay out two signs that are each like 40 by 80 or something (long and wide), connect a sprinkler to the hose, wet it down, run from the road (150 ft) then slide all the way down. You go so fast that you fly off the end of this 160 feet slide into the grass which has become quite the mud pit because of the running water... You can imagine: a hot day, mud, grass, bugs... we were eatin alive!!! But again, it as worth it : )

Back from my sidetracking moment, A peace day outside with the thunder in the distance and the cover of the trees to keep you dry was the perfect way to get back to my spirited self. You see, I ended up withdrawing from one of my summer courses. A day too late! Apparently the great education system at, well I won't bash it, says that in the summer you only get three days to decide to drop a class, or no money back!!!! So bye bye $800... I'm petitioning it. It's junk, three days is like telling us to give up before trying... what a great idea! NOT! I stuck with it for a week, made my decision because honestly the class wasn't a class it was speed chemistry for hyped up caffine addicts who think learning doesn't require any time to sink in, literally you were supposed to hear something (in russian accent... not super heavy but heavy enough) and two minutes later be a pro at it... HELLO I'm not programmable!!!! Anyway, the awful class wasn't worth my happiness, money, time, or brainpower, because it would have never taught me anything... trust me. So bye-bye $800 for class, hello life lesson #237 (random number): Do not give up your personal health to money hungry college who wants to shove 16 weeks of info into 3 weeks!!! nope, nope, nope!!! behind the lesson is a moral, don't ever sacrafice personal well-being (aka happiness) to be stressed out, frustrated, unhappy and in debt... It was not easy to cope with the lost money that I work my booty off for but if it means I get to be happy now and enjoy the summer then by golly I'll do it : ) My REALITY was warped, but my PERCEPTION told me how to solve my CONUNDRUM and now all is swell.

Go have yourself a green day, play in the rain, sing in the sun, twirl in the breeze, roll down a hill till knees are green and say "I am sooooooo happy!!!!"

Namaste for another day :)

Taking a Green Day

Running, biking, picnic and exploring in the woods... I'm so very excited

Through years of over doing it I am finally coming around to just doing it... meaning I don't have to be superwomen and do everything all the time, it's the summer... I'm going to enjoy it.

I have one summer session class now instead of two, I'm still working, but glory be I see have some days for me!!!! Today is one of those days, my wonderful, life effecting friend is in town and I'm going to spend it with her... after my run of course and before work, but day nonetheless.

Namaste till another day : )

The Switch

The switch from modern day hippie to 7 days a week faux career women was one that swept my feet out from under me. Unlike the damsel in distress being swept OFF her feet and into the arms of her gentleman I was like snow white who had her junk together until her evil step mother ruined her... yes I know there's more to the story; I'll get there.

Our society seems to have become a society that no longer finds weekends and holidays important. Don't get me wrong, Valentines day, Swedish day and all other hallmark holidays are not to be held with high importance... personally i hate them (no i was never dumped on v-day, nor a hater of love... i just think the whole big deal is useless and usually a cause of tears, fights or ego enlargers) Back to the point- our society has changed into a machine. College students used to be able to concentrate just on school, nowadays it's "crap, tuition is how much!?" "Shit, I need me a job or two... can I do three?" A student can no longer concentrate soley on college. Many, like me I'm sure, have at least one job, I myself have two steady part time jobs and a third job at certain times throughout the year. Oh then you need volunteer work and internships and college activities to be considered for scholarships, internships or jobs. REALLY. I didn't realize we all became superhumans with the power to be in three places at once or turn back time to do errands, study for a test, do a paper, go to work, help some lil' children stay on a positive path, and run a PRSSA meeting, not to mention eat something, call your family so they know you're not dead, and have time for a tiny social life... wow we are good, hehe. Then we get mocked by older generations because we are hyped on caffinee or dragging our feet... I'd like to see them do it all. I'll tell you something... I would love to run a coffee house becasue at the rate we are going as a society it's the only necessity we're going to need... screw decaf...screw hot coca... double expresso with a ginseng shot is where we're headed....

Now, we may not be adults yet but we are still human. We are forced to choose. I chose to live on my own, pay my own bills, work 50 hours a week, and carry a 3.98 GPA... so the question is what did I give up? CONUNDRUM I gave up my greenness. Not my participation in decreasing my carbon footprint (that I still do, it's a habit at this point, a great habit) I lost my personal greenery. My free time to wander, time to respect nature and encourage others to do the same. I find it once in a while but not very much. Like our society I am becoming a machine. A weekend and holiday off are a rarity, i have bills to pay and still have some to save for my future.

Like Snow White was shafted and poisoned by her evil step mother, Americans are being stripped of their joy and wellbeing by the demands of our economy and the workplace. My hope here is SnowWhite was waken up from the deep eternal sleep the poisioned apple left her in by her prince charming who, of course, swept her off her feet. Where does that leave us, are we in a deep sleep, being hunted by the evil step mothers woodsman, or being taken to safety by the dwarfs or about to be kissed by the prince?

My point is, are we all sacraficing to become a part of the machine America is becoming?

What does Green Conundrum Mean?

Green Conundrum... can not be defined by any terms simply. It is more of a feeling, a place in my life where I realize how happy I am when I get to run through the woods or watch the sunset. It is sharing with others that life is more than just work, school, and money. It's more than material possessions and status. Life is nature and nature is the purest element you will ever discover. Nature is honest and innocent, yet many do it an injustice by taking it for granted.

Green Conundrum is pulling my stories from the time I realized how amazing such simplicity can be, through all my adventures and into the times when people (even a tree hugger like me) can lose sight of what is important. It is finding a balance between what one has to do in life and what one wants to do in life and hopefully, one day, combining the two... We all strive to be happy and successful, or just plain happy. The more I experience life the more I know I am happiest in nature, sleeping in a tent with no pillow or climbing a tree barefoot because you get more grip, and knowing that if I tomorrow had no home I could survive. Also with more experience, I find myself being caught in a web of "this is what you are supposed to do." I am a free spirit and this page will hopefully be my reflective spot to remember my true soul, and a spot where others can draw inspiration or insight.

I promise nothing, but guarantee honesty, reality and my sense of perception. I may not always be 100% correct, but I am still learning and look forward to learning from others, for what good is a world without opinion or openness to something different?

From the Beginning...

It seems that people often forget how to live. I have forgotten how to live. Not in the means on breathing and functioning. I am by no means depressed. The live I speak of is one of freedom.

When I was little I stayed inside, all day, everyday. I hated getting dirty. I wore my white dress with pink accent ribbons or my light pink jumper my grandma had made for me with white doll shoes and hot pink hair ribbon... I was a girly little munchkin.

As I grew older the confines of my living room watching Cinderella were no longer satisfying, I moved on to the Little Mermaid and, as odd as it may sound, I watched Ariel go on exciting adventures, ones Cinderella never got to go on, and I realized... I am no Cinderella, Prince Charming is not just going to bring me my slipper from the one day I left the house hehe. I realized (yes at the age of 12, yes I still watched Disney) that I wanted to make my own story, and create my own adventures... and maybe i would save my Prince Charming.

Already at the age of 12 I had insight that made me who I am. One day I remember going over to my best friends house (she was a major Tom Boy, always outside playing in the mud, in the woods and pretending to be a TMNT, while I played April and sat on a clean chair waiting to be saved, and occasionally getting into some trouble, hhe. How we got along... I don't know). So I'm at my best friends house and I suggest we go out and run barefoot in the creek. WHAT! THIS HAVE NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE! "You mean you don't want to play pollypockets and sit inside!" she ranted. I truly didn't. I wanted to LIVE.

Have you ever walked barefoot in a creek, or ran through corn fields, climbed a tree so high you could see over any roof tops and into the horizon? To me these things had become my life. I made a huge turn from a comfortable life... movies, snacks, playing mom, and being rescued by my tom boy friends, to living a life I never PERCEIVED as being my REALITY.

Here's the CONUNDRUM. I became this girly adventure girl who wanted to go out and explore the woods to see what I could find and let my feet dangle in a creek before squishing the mud from the bottom between my toes. I was not used to it, but had this urge to do all. I joined sports and became a leader in athletics, school, drama, you name it, I was there and showing everyone up. From 12 to 20 I had the world at my feet, but right before I squished my toes in the mud... the mud squished me.

The world is not what it used to be. What once was butterflies and rainbows is now textbooks and work schedules. Where is MY LIFE! This conundrum is not only mine to solve but all other college students or professionals who feel that life has become a job and not a freedom. My green ways are still inside but my eco-adventure chic is getting pushed aside for a degree and money... qualms with which I have both.

My point: easy, as life continues we get stuck in a ebb and that ebb sticks us with challenges to face until we move back into the flow of ourselves. When our reality is our perception our conundrum ends. My green conundrum has just begun... where is my free wild soul I lost a little more than a year ago?

Namaste till another day