Birds, pianos, and dessert

Let me begin by saying that I have to leave the Entibidore family. Unfortunately, these are people that both my neighbors and I will interact with. Since they are personal friends of my neighbors, and now neighbors of mine that I will actually talk to, I'm finding it difficult to speculate on what their life may be. Hopefully I can find some new people to be curious about soon.

On to other things. I was standing at my kitchen sink earlier today eating some chips and watching the birds at the bird feeder. The one right outside the window was being frequented by blue-jays.

(I have recently figured out how to put pictures in my blog. yay me, and how exciting for you.) I've decided that it would be very stressful to be a blue jay. They can't just sit and eat and be relaxed and enjoy their dinner. After every bite, they hop to the edge of the feeder and look around, or they turn their heads this way and that. I can only imagine that they are looking out for attackers and other evil-doers. I don't think I would like being on edge like that all the time. When I start feeling like that, then I think it's time for me to take a break....much like I think the blue jays need one. Those of you who have read my other blogs have heard me talk about mental health vacations before, so I apologize for my redundancy. I think they're important, though, and I really think the blue jays could benefit with one. Although, if they did let down their guard and got attacked by something, I would feel badly. For those of us who are humans, however, mental health vacations are good to have, and sometimes almost a necessity. I think that people spend too much time worrying about other people and not enough time getting to know themselves. Granted, a person could spend too much time in their own head, something which I am quite guilty of. I prefer to think I'm doing everyone else a favor by staying in my head, though....:) I think that by getting to know oneself, you are allowing yourself to live less selfishly when it comes to your actions and words towards others. It's one of those things where you have to do something extremely (in this case, you need to be very selfish) in order to prevent doing it in the future (acting selflessly). By getting to know yourself, you are able to be secure in who you are which in turn enables you to worry less about how other people's actions are affecting you and more about how your actions are affecting other people. When I take a mental health vacation, I turn my phone and my computer off, and I just spend time doing things without outside interruptions. At first it was hard, but after awhile, it gets to the point where I am almost always thinking about what I'm doing at the moment, and no longer think about what has happened or worry about what will happen. When I find myself no longer able to live in the present, and constantly worrying about other things, that's when I know its time for a break.

In other news, I took my piano apart today. Some friends of my dad's gave me their piano and I decided to teach myself how to tune and repair it. Actually, I started out just teaching myself how to tune it, but then I broke a string so I needed to teach myself how to repair it. This is an upright piano, so to get to the strings some parts of it need to be removed. I decided to just go ahead and take everything out because then I would know how to put it back together and just exactly how a piano works. Given that I teach piano, it's helpful to be able to competently draw and explain what happens. This is what my piano looked like before I took it apart (see left) except for that's not in my house, so just ignore everything but the piano. There is not an adequate picture to show what it looked like after I took it apart, although I did chronicle the process with my digital camera. I just can't find the cord to hook it up to my computer, otherwise I would post those. But to the right is a picture of my favorite part, the piano action. Actually called the piano drop action assembly, but other things like guns have drop action assemblies as well, so its also called just the piano action. It is currently on the floor in my bedroom just waiting for me to do something exciting with it....like maybe put it back in the piano. Or maybe not. Anyway, this whole taking the piano apart thing kind of rejuvenated me. I'm getting really sick of winter and closing in on myself, I think. I'm not always the best at sharing my thoughts/feelings, except with people who know me very very well, or on a blog where I'm not actually speaking them, but I'm realizing that that is maybe not the best way to be. It can hinder relationships, but then again it can help them grow. If I lay everything out on the table in the first few days a person knows me, well then there is no place for the relationship to go. I've said before that I disagree with the statement that people are like onions (as Shrek said), mostly because it implies that you can peel part of them off and see what is underneath. But we can never peel part of us off, all of our "layers" go together and feed into one another. I think people are more like a trifle (again, something I've said before, but for some reason I think that I need to be reminded of this). A trifle is a very good dessert. It's topped with whipped cream and as you eat through the trifle, you run across several different layers. But the good thing about a trifle is that the layers repeat themselves, but always have something else added. You're reminded a few times of the different layers you went through, and when you get to the bottom you realize that getting through all the layers was a lot of fun, and now it makes sense. At the bottom is the culmination of everything you've just eaten through. So you don't get to the bottom and forget what attracted you in the first place. You get to the bottom and are reminded of what attracted you in the first place, and you're also reminded of everything else you saw and liked....and maybe disliked. Regardless, at the bottom of a trifle, you have all the good things and all the bad things...much like a person. If we didn't have layers, or didn't save some things for the people most important to us, or even just for ourselves, it would be like walking around with our autobiographies tattooed on our foreheads. That's no fun for anyone. And it takes away from relationships....it takes away from having special people in our lives.

That's all for now folks.