ragged cuticles.

When I stare at my torn cuticle on my finger,

I see you.

I see you in that city walking without me.

Laughing without me.
Living without me.

Stress and ragged cuticles go hand in hand.

Stress can cause cuticles to go ragged.

I see this torn cuticle and I see you without me.
I see that you are okay with that.
And I feel how much that I'm not.

christmas tuneage and i hate the word tuneage.

Kaleena's list of most hated Christmas songs:

1. Santa Baby

2. Felize Navidad

3. Baby, It's Cold Outside. 

4. We Need a Little Christmas

Kaleena's list of most loved Christmas songs:

1. Silent Night

2. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

3. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

4. It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

5. Last Christmas

so this is christmas...

And what have YOU done. If you say that line in a villian/malicious tone, it sounds like an entirely different song. Try it. 

Dear PersonWhoDrivesMeSoCrazyThatItPutsMeInABadMood,

I don't want your artificial answers or responses when we have a conversation.
Every response you say doesn't sound genuine or honest.
Everything you say sounds rehearsed.
It seems like you choose the most favorable response and say that.
Don't tell me what I want to hear.
I want to hear your honest thoughts and truthful opinion.
Do you even have any?
I like people who have different thoughts and opinions than me. It's more interesting that way.
I would prefer someone to be blunt and honest rather than holding back to preserve feelings.
It's so liberating to be honest.
It is so agitating to hear your lack of opinions, lack of passion, lack of depth.
You are shallow. Not the shallow where you only like a girl if she is pretty and wears short skirts. The kind of shallow where there isn't anything beneath your surface.
You teach me a lot. A lot about someone I don't want to be.
You don't feel the rain. You only get wet.

-AGirlWhoFeelsMeanByVoicingTheseFeelingsEvenThoughItsTheTruth


Those words seem a lot more harsh typed out in front of me on the screen than they felt just floating in my brain... but it's probably the most honest, non-filtered thing I've posted on here in a while. That's what i've been working on lately. Having no filter and speaking my mind. This doesn't mean it's all harsh or negative. I've just lived too long being shy and holding everything back. I need to be free. I think the first step to freedom is freeing your mind and spirit.

Last night I was in bed and sleeping before midnight. I think it was 11:45pm if we are going to get all specific about it. I woke up at 7:55am for work and I felt... happy. For once, upon waking up I felt really happy. Surely it's because I had a full night of sleep as opposed to my normal 3-4 hours.

Think of how happy I would be if I slept and never woke up... ultimate and infinite happiness. WOW I meant that as to how much happiness infinite sleep could cause but it sounded straight up morbid. But somehow, I think I still mean it. 

happiness is...

...when you take a large risk and it ends up working out perfectly and rewarding.

...when you open your eyes from your bed and see your bedroom is dim with faint streams of 7-in-the-morning sunlight.

...when you learn a new vocabulary word and shortly after get the perfect opportunity to use it!
"it seemed like an auspicious loophole."

...when you wake up and realized there is a bruise on your bum from the night before when you tried sitting the in the front seat of a car with your friends even though there were only two bucket seats and you sat in the middle with the gear stick jabbing for 40 minutes but it was worth it cause you were in the front seat with your friends.

...when you are laying on the floor while your bunny Lou is hopping around and he does a big hop and almost lands on your head.

what would a brain taste like?

What would a brain taste like?
If you could taste my thoughts, they would taste like you.

I hate nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a reminder of everything you don't have but once did.

I miss when directions or addresses served as just directions or addresses.
Now, everything is a place we once went or you took me to show me something.
It's a nostalgic grid that I can't find my out of.

71 years ago today...

...I wasn't even alive.

But Jim Morrison was born.

So just another reason why December is just a dandy month.

Happy birthday, Jim Morrison. Thank you for everything you and your music has given me. And thank you for changing my life and the world.

I feel like I miss you and I didn't even know you or ever get to meet you. That's just how powerful your poetry and music is. 

I love you.

Here are my favorite words of his:

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

when will i grow up....

When I was a little girl, I always thought I would be "grown up" by blank age. 

Be a certain person by blank age.

Have everything figured out.

But the more I grow up, the more I experience, the more I "learn"...

the more I realize I don't know CRAP about ANYTHING. 

The older I get, the more confused I feel. 

I think I'm growing up wrong.

The only advice I can offer to people is...
-Watch Breaking Bad.
-Anything bunny related.
-The best locations to get Mountain Dew deals (especially the limited edition ones).
-It's not a bad thing to ask for help.

And that's... about... it....

IN OTHER NEWS:

I have a magnifying glass that I play with and take pictures because they make the photos a little distorted and goofy. Is this the Pioneers version of the iPhoto Booth before it was invented?

you.

i began to have symptoms of you.
i began to think and talk like you.
i laughed like you, i walked like you and i even began to
smile like you. i missed you so much that i became you.

and as the years passed, i heard
rumors that you became me too.
and when we finally crossed, we 
stood silently in front of each 
other and i felt like i fell off
the edge of the earth.

i knew what we had was not over,
we were not done and we did not
know how to make our love end.

r.m. drake

today is one of those days where...

I'm having a bad hair day... just terrible. Why is my hair doing this? Fly aways but also looking really flat.

I'm having a bad outfit day... ugh.

I woke up wearing heavy boots... as Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close would say. I felt like I was feeling every feeling there is to feel but exhausted and defeated where the most dominant.

The minutes are crawling by.

It reminded me of the Chuck Palahniuk quote: "“Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.” 

In conclusion... can this day be over yet?

bits of my weekend.

 I told you I would start doing bits of my weekend again. So ha. In your face.

Reader, please be advised that all of the following photos in which you are about to see were taken with an iPhone 4 camera.
Expect some grainy, low quality pictures. Perhaps this segment should now be called "grainy, low quality bits of my weekend"

This clock! I've wanted to make an entire wall of a variety of clocks for a few years now and I found this one and I want to create that wall even more. Everyone was like "ummm, that clock would be kind of hard to read..." 

Those people are nay-sayers and I say nay to nay-sayers. Let's be real... It's not like people are actually going to look at the wall of clocks for the time. It's 2014 and even though I am guilty, most people look at their phones for the time (even if they are wearing a watch).

This is a captured moment of me being bored and trying to get creative with the lighting of the street light and the shadows from a chain link fence. The moon was pretty and I tried to incorporate that into the shot but it looked like a mere smudge. Ugh.

The pretty moon. With the pretty sky. With a single solitary white house.

Palindrome! Happened on my way home and I love number patterns in any form. Even while going 35 MPH, I always need to capture it. 

Pumpkins. My first thought when I saw all those pumpkins was... "Well, Cinderella sure is going to have a hard time finding where she parked..."

And then my second thought was "it's 2AM and no one is around to share a laugh..."

a list because... just because.

Here is a list of mini goals I am making for myself. Mostly for this blog and a few just because I need some goals. And because I used to posts lists here daily and I should bring that back. Should I make a list on why I need to make more lists? Haha no, okay.


My list of goals:

1. Don't be afraid of the dark.
2. Stop calling your friends in the middle of the night because you are scared of the dark and are 100% sure you heard something in the hallway.
3. Grow up. (see #1 and #2)
4. Bring back "bits of my weekend"
5. Take pictures for "bits of my weekend"
6. Go for a walk around the lake once a day. Either morning or night.
7. Don't focus on the past. It's okay to remember the good things from my past and smile and treasure them, but I can't keep dwelling.
8. Use my cameras more.
9. Find that idiot who broke into my car and stole my camera and aux cord and beat him up. Or just get my things back.
10. Stop comparing my life to others. It makes me feel like i'm doing something wrong when I'm not. I like where I'm at right now.
11. Clean out my closet and get rid of the clothes I have sentimental value with. Well, I can only keep a few with the sentimental value... it's not necessarily hoarding. I just like to keep the memory on them.
12. Start my wall of clocks.


That's it for now. 

a song nobody else could hear.

Have you heard this quote?

"You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear."

And let me tell you, that song is my favorite song...

only one post to show for a terrible year.

I looked at this and saw I only have one post for 2014. And oddly, I'm okay with that. 2014 has been a shitty year and I've been super occupied elsewhere. And I thought 2013 was my worst year yet...

 But I honestly should have been documenting it anyway. I have a little in my actual journal.

Anyway, I have been encouraging my close friends to keep a journal. I brag at how well I am at documenting my life. I've been keeping a journal since 9th grade. I feel like people get discouraged from keeping a journal because they don't know what they will write about or think they won't commit to it. But I promise you... the thoughts and feelings you have now are going to be ones that you want to remember when you are older. You think they are just dumb thoughts you have in your dumb head on a dumb daily basis... but you aren't going to be this way forever. They are more valuable than you think. I bought a journal for Josh and Brennin and I still need to get one for Spencer. 

Something that is great yet painful about a journal is everything you were at the time of your life is captured onto a page. I was reading my journal from 2008-2009 and I instantly remembered how I felt at that age. I was so passionate and bold about everything I thought and did. I was laughing at some of the things I put but it made me realize

 I'm not that girl anymore.

 I'm not that funny anymore.

I'm not that bold anymore.

I'm not that original anymore.

I don't know the reason for it. Maybe the things we go through in life do have that much effect on you and that's what changed me. But I'm a firm believer that I never fully recovered from that first heartbreak. It makes me think of that quote from the movie, Stand By Me:

"In all our lives, there is a fall from innocence. A time after which, we are never the same"

Heartbreak changed me and I don't think that Kaleena is ever coming back. And that's not so much a bad thing... just a bitter realization. I liked that Kaleena. I feel like I don't know this Kaleena anymore. 

I'll be around more. 

Promise. 

my fingers are rusty.

Right now I'm just sitting in my room. On my bed. With music playing. Bunny drinking his water... which happens to be one of the loudest noises that you would think wouldn't be so noisy. And i'm drinking water out of a mason jar... not because I'm hip and have these chic ideas on how to turn old junk into cute household items but because when you live with five people, sometimes an old jar is the only thing you can find to drink out of. So that's my Saturday.

I worked today. Which is something I'm not going to cry about. Yeah, it's not the ideal way to spend a Saturday but I get paid extra for working on Saturdays. And let's be real... what else would I really be doing.

Right now I'm really loving coconut oil. I put it all over my face and it makes it soft. Unfortunately, coconut oil doesn't give you a new, better face. But it does give you a face that is at least soft.

I just heard a lyric that made my insides shift sudden and low. It said

"when I see you again,
and i'm greeted as a friend,
it is understood,
we did all that we could."

I didn't really have a reason to start this post, but I just felt like my head and heart were very full and I needed an outlet. Before I started typing this I was just looking at my blog. I sat and thought as I stared at "Just Add Kaleena" in rainbow at the top of the page of this blog. The top of my stories and thoughts and feelings, and it suddenly registered to me how many different times I have logged in here and all the things that have happened to me since. The first time, that rainy Saturday when I was laying in (at the time) mine and Steve's bed and decided I should start a blog. Kaleena, why didn't you start this sooner? There have been so many special and precious moments these last six years. But I guess you can never truly know the value of a moment until it is a memory. When I think of this blog, what I see in my head is our (mine and Steve's) old apartment living room in the Avenues lit by the floor lamp that we bought together from Big Lots, me on my laptop - Steve on his. Family Guy/Scrubs/Fraiser on TV. Either super STICKY hot or teeth chattering cold-hiding under layers of blankets, and typing on here. Occasionally Steve and I would glance at each other to share a laugh at what just happened on TV. Some people would look at that and think "you guys just spent time on your computers when you could have been doing so much more" but no. Those times, to both of us, are our most treasured times because Steve and I were so connected that we felt connected and at peace with each other no matter what we were doing. It's one of those things that we could spend the whole day in silence but at the end of the day feel like we've had the best conversation. They were comfortable silences. Not everyone can understand that. It's something I am certain I will never share with anyone else in this life. It is so rare and I'm so grateful I got to experience that feeling with another human, even if it was just for a short time. Our time together was short but it was the best time of my life. But was it cause it was our first love? Or because we were just in sync? I don't know. Other times when I logged in here it was after I just had the worst day, emotions all over the place and needed to put it out into words. And other times was just when I was silly and wanted to be silly on the internet. And now to this time.... me alone, reflecting on my past and realizing that nothing around me is permanent. Everything is temporary except for the love in your heart. I don't know where all this is coming from... there is a good chance that when I read this tomorrow I will just scratch my head. But sometimes the best way to understand how you are feeling is to write it down.