Addendum

One more thought on love. 

We've all heard this trope: 

What a giant steaming pile of diarrhea. Is there anything worse to say to a person who struggles with this? "Hey no one loves you! Quit being so sad!" Do you know how much love I have for Marlon Brando? Infinity amount of love, that’s how much, and that dude filled his self-hate vacuum with women and food until the end. Case in point. 

Now, I understand that confidence is very attractive so maybe that's where this garbage expression came from. Self-love attracts other-peoples-sexy love. LOTS of things are very attractive, though, including kindness and vulnerability and depth, which are beautiful things that can come from anyone at anytime at any part of the self-love continuum. 

I believe a more accurate phrase would be, “It can be hard to feel the love coming from people who do love you until you figure out that you are pretty fantastic and way lovable." Regardless, people will/do love you. If nothing else, I probably already love you a little bit by mistake, so there that is.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Me

p.s. I will never ever speak of love again.

Happy St. Chaucer's Day!

Chaucer maybe made up Valentine's Day, but that's ok! The real St. Valentine probably was a loving dude. Which is what I've been thinking about lately. Just being a real loving dude.

Real quick, I like this from Wikipedia:

While the custom of sending cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts originated in the UK, Valentine's Day still remains connected with various regional customs in England. In Norfolk, a character called 'Jack' Valentine knocks on the rear door of houses leaving sweets and presents for children. Although he was leaving treats, many children were scared of this mystical person.

Norfolk sounds neat.

This week was a little rough. I received news that a handful of my loved ones are facing mortality.  It reminded me of what it's all about. 

My grandpa is having some health issues. He is 81. In my mind, William Norris Eaton has always been the epitome of strapping. He was (is) an athlete. He coached football, wrestling, and track for 30 years. Last year - LAST YEAR - he took me, my bro and his kids on a crazy bushwhacking hike to the top of a ridge in Maine for a view of the sun going down. He could be shwhacking right now for all I know.

Growing up, going to visit Buff & Muff (my mom's dad and mom) was equated with physical pain. "Hey we're going to see [physical pain] soon!" It was always humbling. (I just now realized that most people probably haven't harbored shame their whole lives for being weaker than their grandparents...) I remember biking in the Everglades between a bunch of damn crocodiles when I was eight. I was so worn out and so terrified. Buff & Muff's idea. I remember hiking up Mount Washington with Buff when I was eleven and nearly dying. I distinctly remember thinking on the way up,"This guy has something against me. I'M INNOCENT!" (The irony being hiking becoming a passion of mine). I remember getting cross country skis for Christmas that same year and immediately being forced to use them. On Christmas Day! Cross country skiing is exhausting! Why can't we sit around eating cinnamon rolls?? All Buff & Muff. I could go on. Strapping. 

I love this man. I don't think he knows how much. I didn't get to see him often growing up and don't get to much even now and it stings. I wish I could go off and live with him & Muff up on the farm until he gets better, listening to his wisdom and his stories (his students used to call him Sage), watching him watch sports. I'm sure he's going to be fine. He's an ox. (Strapping.)

Buff wasn't going to be a part of this post, but I'm glad he is. He represents the people in our lives that we wish could be present with us always. Sometimes I wish I could move into my brother Curt's house and nanny his children until I'm old and barren. Sometimes I wish I could live with my brother Jared so we could support each other through our rough times. Sometimes I wish my best friend was a man so we could get married and live happily ever after in a tiny house. But that's not how this works. Our loved ones have their own families or have passed on to the other side or maybe just don't want anyone around. Out of one's control. There's still stuff we can do and people we can share ourselves with.

I watch children for a living. I've had the normal jobs with the more impressive titles, but nothing fulfills me like this does. I get to love tiny persons and absorb their goodness as I study them and attempt to be like them. Children are the ultimate humans. They love purely. They remind me everyday that the point of all this is each other. Serving each other, expressing love in the "constant concern for the well-being of others" sort of way. I'm so grateful that I have been blessed with more than zero loved ones in my life. I have a few friends that, if they did not exist, I would have absolutely descended into a dark and destructive place. I'm grateful to know that I'm not alone when I am alone. I'm grateful I have a strong belief in the hereafter and in the eternal nature of love. One eternal round. 

In the words of St. Chaucer, if you can't be with the one you love honey, love the one you're with. Everything is going to be ok, you guys.

Your Valentine,

Katherine Elizabeth Cardon

Granddaughter of William & Marilyn Eaton

Ten Minutes

Yo yo yo!

I almost broke my 2015 blog promise to write one more post before the end of the year! Ten minutes until 2016. I'm excited for it to come. I feel like this year was a bunch of hard emotional/spiritual/physical/lyrical/spherical prep for 2016. Which is gonna be off the hoooooooooook! My bestie sent me two quote recently that I'm making my 2016 mottos/mantras/tramp stamps:

Numero Uno
"Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible."
-Doris Lessing

Zwei:
"Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final."
-Rainer Maria Rilke


I'm excited to fail and get my heart broken and be lonely and scared and feel all the things in 2016. Also in 2016, I will never say "off the hook". I do promise you, but more importantly me that.



HAPPY NEW YEARRRRRRR!

Kass

My How Things Have Changed - End of 2015

Hi Roxanne! 

And anyone else she may make read this! I just saw that this blog has gotten like 6000+ hits to date which doesn't make any sense. I know 26 people tops. I think what may have happened over the years is that "Kassie In The Raw" sounds vaguely like a possible porn website and folks maybe have come here by mistake. But if that were the case, the blog would have millions of accidental views. It's a mystery.

Anyway, two-ish years since the last post! I reread the past couple of ones and I gotta say I have seen progress in Ol' Kassie. Which is fantastic! I'm pretty much doing what I want to do and living where I want to live and being who I want to be. So that's ok. Good Lord this is boring.

I may fire up the blog engine again! At this point my journal is like, "Blech Kassie quit trying to be funny I'm exhausted." I will commit to at least one more post before 2016. Lucky yoooooooooou!

The Sofa vs. The Square

Lately I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself. Whether or not the reasons are valid is immaterial (we know the answer to that); the point of this blog is going to be PERSPECTIVE. Sometimes I need to take my head out of my a moment to look outside my tiny universe for one damn second. But first...

The Sofa

2014 thus far has kinda been a ¡Qué perra vida!-themed affair (I'm learning español. Duolingo, holmes!). The sofa was not in and of itself a spirit-breaker. It was sort of the penultimate straw on this camel's back.

Roommate Allison and I moved into our new apartment Friday, January 4th, 2014, the day after The Blizzard of 2014. I don't wanna talk about it, except that I found this steal of a sofa on craigslist 30 minutes after it had been posted, and as we own no things, I was going to make this happen. What ensued thereafter involved hunger, exhaustion, a rented conversion van, un-plowed roads, darkness, premature elation when Allison and I perfectly execute couch-retrieval, snow banks, spinning wheels, darkness, resourcefulness, cardboard boxes, premature pride when I find broken-down boxes, darkness, dumpster, blunt force trauma, my head, rivers of blood, darkness. And then of course one still has to return the rental van.

I packed snow into my pre-frontal lobe until the gushing subsided, and Allison sacrificed her scarf to turn me into a fashionable Rambo. We were in Williamsburg so I may have unintentionally started a new trend. I'll have to go back and check how the ladies are wearing their scarves these days.

Post-victory, exhausted, un-showered (day three), and ready for that Oreo. The next day I had a nice canyon forming from the gash and a forehead that resembled that one dinosaur in Jurassic Park with the - hold on I'll google it, brb - pachycephalosaurus. Kassycephalosaurus. 

I was going to have my picture taken for an acting thing two days later. This is what I worried about almost immediately. What an idiot. I should have gone as Kassycephalosaurus. It made my face so much more interesting. The things I choose to focus on ughghghgh. Vanity, ladies. It's not just a river in Egypt. Speaking of Egypt...

"The Square"

NPR gave me a head's up about this documentary that was filmed in the trenches of the revolution happening in Egypt. It was released on Netflix yesterday and today it crashed my pity party and burned it to the ground. I would gladly give everyone in this documentary an opportunity to punch me right in the face. I don't have the right to utter ¡Qué perra vida! - not only because I am not cool, but because I live ¡La dulce vida! ¡INDEED!

I'm annoyed that I get so self-involved. I'm annoyed that I just made this about me again. I'm also annoyed that I can't help my humans in other parts of the world. I can't fight the regimes, I can't save the dolphins, I can't stop the bullies. I guess I can just spread the word within my little circle of influence. That's how the revolution started in the first place, right? 

Watch the film. Everything will be ok. Scars are cool. 

Kassie 

North and Norther

Last week, I bussed it up to Mass & ME to be reacquainted with Nature and with some of my maternal home fries. This is what they look like:

(Maine Nature)

(Nantasket Beach Nature)

(Kono the Dog)

I love that damn 80lb. puppy. We just laughed and laughed, Kono and I. I also spent some QT with the moms and the grand 'rents, etc etc etc. It was fantastic! I didn't talk as much as I expected I would because I was quite overwhelmed with the clean air and panoramas and lack of humidity and being around so many people who remember when I used to poop my disposable pants. I was fully occupied with soaking it all in. I sat on a porch facing the White Mountains for probably 75% of my visit, just watching the hills and the birds  (rose-breasted fancy lady finches...female mourning doves...little bitty brown hoppers...). Why does bird-watching work?! It's a mystery. I was enthralled.

I was fed fresh vegetables from gardens! Chicken from outdoor grills! Homemade breads! When I retire from the career I have yet to establish, I will happily move up to the North Country, [have someone] plant me a garden, buy a mountain lake, and sit in my hand-whittled rocking chair and proceed to slip blissfully into senility (I predict my brain will start slipping shortly before my 40th birthday). There are way too many days between this day and that day.

Thank you soooo much, family!! For the familial love, the hospitality, the stories told, the wisdom imparted (and absorbed), the patience displayed. I'm a lucky, lucky gal.


Kass

KONO 2012!!

A Word on Woody Allen and Me

I just finished the Woody Allen documentary that came out last year, and I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I have a crush on him. On the youngish him. I feel shame. But I feel much more adulation and bizarre attraction. I challenge any woman to watch him in "Manhattan" or "Annie Hall" and not maybe resign to his charm. And to Diane Keaton's charms! They don't make them like they used to! Or maybe they do...*winkwink*...(me?). I need to watch his earlier stuff. "Bananas" is next on my list. This is all. I yield the rest of my time to a severely overdue update.

Hey guess what? Sorry that I haven't blogged in literally a year! I signed in again today for the first time and there's all this new stuff! I changed the format a bit. My big ole face is in the background. It's this self-promotion stuff; I'm trying to get the hang of it. I hate it. Was that the correct use of a semicolon?

So there were all these stats listed when I signed into my moth-eaten blog page, and turns out this thing has had over 2200 hits! WTF?? Who are you people? I was certain only a handful of family members looked at this thing and maybe the outlier roommate and/or stalker (just one before I die, please, God). Me and Woody are completely baffled. That being said, I am all ABOUT you creeps checking me out! Do it! I've made a mid-2012 goal of blogging regularly. I would say that I accomplish my goals greater than 50% of the time. Things are looking good!

This is the story of the past year of inter-web rogueness: Hot damn Ray LaMontagne is a sexy voodoo man! He's the ambience music this evening. He will, without fail, put me in the mood. For blogging. Note to self, fellas...(hahahaaaaa@nomalesreadblogs) Aaaaand we're back on topic - Here's the thing - I did long and thorough standup comedy research, and I have come to the conclusion that I am too well-adjusted a woman and/or I harbor too little self-hatred to be a successful stand up comedian. I don't have a stand up brain. I seem to have more of a comedy improv leaning. I have to say that I'm pretty relieved I won't have to stand in front of 25-75 unfamiliars in sundry stages of inebriation who have come either to mock me or to ignore me and concentrate on getting laid. I'd rather just spontaneously make my roommates giggle in our living room. Other than research, I quit my job at a leading technology-based, fruit-promoting juggernaut, got off the Facebook, got sick, got poor, got milk, got poorer, and then got hilarious & adorable children to watch part-time for entertainment, enrichment, and frankly financial purposes (I don't own them - they are rented out to me by their legal guardians, usually their parents, on a weekly basis with the tacit agreement that I will do them no harm...basically I'm a pediatrician.). It's been great! But it's also been creatively not entirely fulfilling, so here is what is happening now - Ostensibly, it's time for me to "start my career". I know. I, too, am rolling my eyes.

I'm getting back on Facebook! It's gonna be more of a professional lady page (not no stop it), but really that just means I won't have a wall, in case a casting director or whoever decides someday to browse the FB page. Casting directors are a thing, right? Walls should really be called Public Restroom Surfaces. PRSs. I want to avoid any "for a good time call..."-type situations. AND I'll be joining Twitter soon blargh which makes me throw up in my mouth a little, but apparently it's a necessity. These are all of my internet things. Tell all your friends!!

I'm gonna be doing a music thing! I went to an Ok Go concert last week and it made my whole body ache which can only mean that I, too, must Ok Go. I wrangled a friend into reteaching me guitar skillz and we all know I have the voice of ten thousand angels and the lyrical stylings of one Bobert Dylan, so we shall move forward from there. I also have a drum player who is fantastic looking AND hilarious! Just what every band needs!! We have no drum set or rehearsal space - baby steps. It's all a process. Madison Square Garden concert dates TBD. Stay tuned.

I'm gonna be doing act-y stuff! I've been procrastinating starting the whole audition/agent-search/resume-bedazzle game because it has seemed overwhelming. I'm in a fetal position, naked, rocking, as I type this right now. But, meh, it's gotta get done so I am initiating. It's probably about time that I become comfortable admitting to myself that I am an actor/singer/performer. Ugh I'm a slashie. Acknowledge and accept, Cardon. There have been suggestions of podcasting. Well, we've come up with a podcast name. It would be called The PodKass. Roommate Abby is the pun queen.

More to come!! Thanks for looking here! Lookuphere lookuphere!


Kassie

p.s. I learned how to do this!