Bee’s Musings

Don’t we all? Really?

I remember my grandmother telling me about her father saying how a man cared for his horse is how he would care for his woman. As society changed, the caring for a horse turned into caring for a car.

Some men take good care of their cars. They wash them, and wax them. They get the oil changed and tires rotated and every checkup. They park away from the building so that they don’t get door dings, and they don’t let just anybody drive them. They’re seen as a valuable, important part of their lives.

Some men don’t take care of their cars at all. They’re dirty, they have balding tires, and only get an oil change when the light comes on. Their cars are simply utility vehicles that are usable and disposable, like a razor blade or paper plate. They’ll run them into the ground and look back with no regrets when its time to move onto the next one.

I can’t say that there aren’t exceptions to this rule, but more often than not, it does hold true. Men who care about their belongings, including their cars and homes, seem to care more about their relationships. They take better care of the women in their lives as well. They understand the value of people and relationships - they understand that in order to have quality things in their life, they have to take care of them.

So for the girls who read this, take a quick glance at your guy’s car. Would you let yourself be seen the way his car is - perhaps disheveled and filled with trash; or clean, shiney, and smelling like new?

And for the guys: this isn’t purely superficial. Take a look at how you value your property, and the people in your life Are you giving it them the attention it deserves?

What a great idea… A company in Tokyo is allowing employees to take paid time off to deal with the end of a relationship. Most people jsut call them sick days, or personal days, but I think most people have been guilty of doing this.

Read more about heartache leave - and a couple of other new days they should give us: WalletPop

So… let me start this off by saying that I am not engaged, have not been engaged, and am not calling off an engagement. I just saw the headline on CNN (yes… CNN) and thought it was an interesting question.

Their take… well, it depends on where you live and the circumstances in which the ring was given. You can read all about it “Engagement’s Off”.

I’ve had a couple of friends who have been engaged a couple of times - and in most circumstances they kept the ring. In one case, not only did she keep the ring, she wore it on her right hand while she wore her current engagement ring on her left hand. I’m not sure what the point of that was, but it just seemed tacky to me. If you’re going to keep the ring, at least get the diamond re-set into a necklace or some other sort of ring. Or, do as one couple did, and sell the ring, and split the proceeds. If the groom gets the ring back, he should definitely not try to give it to the next woman. Nobody wants that kind of recycled ring. Its not a family heirloom. At that point, its just baggage.

While I was reading my post about emotional baggage and luggage, it got me to thinking about how we carry our pasts with us. We all talk about how our hearts have been broken and left scarred.

I have a new proposition to make. Instead of counting those as scars, lets look at our hearts as passports that allow us to travel through this life, and experience all it has to offer. Your heart allows you to feel love, joy, passion, sadness, and pain. Without any one of these things, life wouldn’t be complete.

Sure, we don’t always want to experience those things, but they are the things we need to.

And for every life experience, we get another stamp in our passport. Rather than seeing these as flaws, we should treasure them for the marks of passage that they truly are. Display them proudly - every story has highlights of goodness, and fleeting moments of sadness. So does every trip.

I’ve been thinking about relationships a lot lately. Maybe its because most of the strangers I encounter seem to feel the need to comment on my relationship status. I’ve gotten a lot of “Your boyfriend must have so much fun with you!” or “He’s a lucky guy” comments. Even the guy in the Sonic drive-thru one day commented on it.

So, of course, lots of thinking about relationships leads to lots of talking about relationships. With every relationship comes baggage. And I don’t mean the cute kind that you proudly take through the airport while you’re going to Bora Bora on your dream vacation. I’m talking about the kind that weighs you down and makes you feel like if you were really going to Bora Bora that they’d have to build another island just for all the “stuff” you’re going to take with you.
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I’ve heard a fair number of guys lately say “I wish I could find a girl like you.” Well, newsflash guys… you found me. Here I am. Single. Available. Not Attached, as one of my t-shirts says.

I don’t really know what it is that makes me so appealing to these guys. I’ve been told its because I’m the kind of girl you can bring home to Mom. I’m “marriage material.” And guys in my age group are supposedly ready to settle down and get married. (No, that doesn’t mean that I am. That’s not what I’m looking for. If it happens, that’s fine, but its not what I’m seeking out.)
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Cheesy as it sounds, I was watching old Will and Grace reruns tonight on Lifetime TV, and saw a commercial for their new show “Side Order of Life.” The blonde lady is dating someone new, and she says “If something is too good to be true, it probably is.” Her best friend just looks at her and says “You deserve too good to be true.”

My question is this: where do you find a friend like that? I think we could all use one.

“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we’re afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we’ll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy.” ~ Richard Bach

Just an interesting thought. Do we need love, especially romantic love, to be happy?

Tara and I were talking tonight about relationships - and about how fast some of the relationships around us seem to move. People go from barely meeting to spending long weekends together in the course of a few weeks. I, for one, am not really that type. Maybe its because I’ve gotten burned before, but I seem to try to take the slow and steady course. Tara’s the same way.

While we were talking she said to me… “We’re just crockpots in a microwave world. It takes us a while to get hot, but we do get there, and what happens when we are cooking is worth the wait.” First, that made me smile, because there’s hardly anything better than putting a few key ingredients in the crock pot before you leave for work in the morning, and coming home to a nice hearty, hot meal. Of course, I live in the microwave era, where if it can’t be nuked, it may not make it into my house.

It made me think though… because we do live in a microwave era. We do live in a time where even the deepest relationships are really temporary. Are people likely to take the time on the crock-pot relationships? (I said crockpot, not crackpot. This isn’t about being crazy. :)) Or are we going to have to find a way to heat up fast just to keep up?