Dr. Virtue and her Prophetic Mythical Creatures

I was in Santa Cruz a couple weeks ago with Debra (more on Monterey adventures soon), and we popped into a earthy spiritual candle-y world goods store for a moment of relief from the pouring rain.

Imagine my shock and awed delight when I stumbled upon these:

I have been feeling a little lost lately; perhaps these unicorns had some answers for me? Or, I found the whole concept of "magical unicorn oracle" cards so fascinating and ridiculous that I could not help but buy them. The cashier, however, was not amused with my amusement.

We rushed to the car and opened the pack. Before learning my destiny, I glanced at the guidebook. From the back:

Unicorns have the purest energy in the elemental kingdom, which consists of magical beings such as fairies, mermaids, and leprechauns. This purity is one reason why children love and trust them. This card deck is written in an easy-to-read language so that those who are young at heart and pure of intention can connect with the magical unicorns' guidance and help. Many of the 44 cards have words and beautiful paintings that were suggested by young Crystal and Indigo Children, making their positive messages even more magical!

Inside, a bit of clarification: All the cards have positive messages that you can trust, because the unicorns want to help you feel happy, safe, and loved. They also want your wishes to come true. (oh, good. these are not evil, menacing unicorn oracles) Unicorns are angelic helpers who want to assist us in living happier and healthier lives. Just think, Unicorns, please help me with this! and they will work with the rest of Heaven to assist and guide you. By working with these cards, your life will become even more magical. The unicorns hope that you enjoy working with them!

and so I thought aloud, Unicorns, help me! and drew this card:
And indeed, a good laugh is what I got. Here are some of my favorites:



These unicorns sure like cats. But I guess dolphins and killer whales are also friendly with these magical beasts - and now that I think of it, I know Lisa Frank would definitely agree.



Thank you, unicorns. Thank you.

If anyone's interested in their own personal reading, let me know.

right coast adventures

I was in New York last week. The whole being-there made me glad. I love that place.

The chronology, in pictures and occasional anecdotes:

27 Dec 007: flew to Buffalo, NY. I'd never been upstate before, and I was looking forward to seeing family not seen in 10+ years, along with feeling bona fide winter weather. Great-aunt Betty and her husband Al picked me up from the airport. We stopped briefly at Uncle Al's sister's house - a not-too-shabby 36-room, 7-bathroom, 4-kitchen, 2-bar, 1-laundry chute joint that took my breath away. Made an excursion up to America's Hat (aka Canada) to see The Niagara Falls. This is a picture of a Giant Wendy Head, with the falls in the background.
We headed east the next day, toward their home in the Finger Lakes district. Along the way, they kindly stopped at a few sites that are of religious significance to me. These included the Hill Cumorah in Palmyra, the printing shop where the Book of Mormon was first published, and a grove near the Smith family farm. Betty and I posed beneath a statue of the angel Moroni (Moroni awkwardly not pictured, but you can see the cat I adopted briefly whilst we were on the hill):
And this is Uncle Al (on the right) with Amy's winter coat warming a cold Wendy (on the left):
The grove in winter - looks, and actually IS, just a nice grove of trees. But what happened there was pretty great.
Betty and Al are very educated and wonderful tour guides. While I was upstate with them, I visited the Women's Rights Museum in Seneca Falls (that's where the first Women's Rights Convention was held in 1848, with Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady and all those ladies who, you know, got things started here in the states). We also visited a number of canal locks on the former Erie Canal, as well as the Canal Museum in Syracuse. This is one lock we saw - sadly, they don't use them in the winter. Freezing water. Go figure.
The Irish neighborhood in Syracuse centers around Tipperary Hill, which boasts the only stoplight in America that has the green light on top (see below). Irish kids kept throwing stones at the red light on top to break it until the city finally gave in and let them have it their way. The Byrne part of me raised my figurative glass of Guinness in celebration of how cool that is.
And then I took off for a couple days in the city. Blessed friend Hyeku was kind enough to let me crash on her floor one night so I wasn't stuck on a wet park bench somewhere. I dropped my bag off at her place early Sunday morning, went to church, then set out adventuring. All the requisite foods were consumed (pizza at my favorite place, hot sausages from the street, Grey's Papaya, Dunkin' Donuts, roasted coconut, meaty Russian pastries and poppyseed delights...I could go on).

And I walked a good...240ish blocks, because that's what I like to do in my favorite pedestrian city on earth. While I was walking down Broadway, I encountered a dancing toilet. She was beckoning me to go inside and use these Amazing Charmin Restrooms Set Up Just For the Holidays! I could not refuse. I marvelled. There were photo op areas. There was a huge line. There were dancing bears (dancing because they had to pee, of course). What were they dancing to? Oh, the Charmin NY Bathroom Theme Song with accompanying music video, naturally. Lyrics referenced 'dancing cheek to cheek'. I was indeed amazed enough that I bought a commemorative shirt.
I walked through Chelsea and Greenwich Village, with the goal of eating an early dinner in Little Italy. After buying 2 cannoli from my favorite bakery Ferrara's, I settled on a place to eat. I walked in at the same time a group of 13 folks was about to be seated, and I wound up joining them. Basically, this was one of the best things that happened in 2007; this Italian clan from New Jersey, comprised primarily of families relating to Toni-Ann & Joe, and Joe's best friend of 30 years Mike, and Mike's fiancée Denise, were ridiculously funny and warm. I had the best meal and the best time and the best pasta sauce recipe that Denise wrote out for me to try upon my return to Cali.
Joe also made friends with the restaurant owner and Sicilian wine distributor, a guy straight outta The Sopranos who tossed off phrases like 'fu-ghed aboudit' and had slicked back hair and a wry sense of humor. He gave us a bottle of wine, then told us we had to go up the street to Caffé Palermo, where his brother Baby John made the best cannoli in the world. So, I went. I bought 4. I ate them as I walked through Chinatown in the rain...
...finally stopping on the Brooklyn Bridge to finish the last one. It was really rainy, so the bridge was empty of people. Wonderful!
The next day, I returned to the Brooklyn Bridge. I decided to climb up one of the cables. No one said anything, except for one fellow who, running by after my descent, said it was 'beautiful to watch'. 'twould not have been so if I'd slipped, but I did not slip.
I went to Brooklyn. That's where Aunt Betty & my grandpa come from. They lived near Coney Island and Brighton Beach. Brighton Beach is all Russian now, and I love visiting it, seeing all the older Russians walk along the boardwalk in their furs.
I also visited the Green Wood cemetery in Brooklyn for the first time. I enjoy wandering around graveyards, and this one proved pretty great, not least because as I was walking on one hill, I realized I could see the Statue of Liberty in the distance:
As it was New Year's Eve, I decided to treat myself to a nice meal. Betty had told me of a steakhouse her father had taken her to often, and I found out it was still open. The Old Homestead is apparently NY's oldest steakhouse, and it suited my needs just fine. I dined on the most expensive self-bought meal of my life, but the rare house signature filet mignon on the bone was like....like.....like Pavarotti was singing to my tastebuds, or something. And Whoopi Goldberg came in for her New Year's Eve meal as well, so you just knew the place was good, right?

When I'd finished there, I went walking to find a diner where I could get dessert: red velvet cake (a Comptron New Year's Eve tradition) and a Brooklyn egg cream soda, which I'm sipping below. I did not wear that hat in the steakhouse.
After midnight celebrations watching fireworks on the Brooklyn Bridge, I made my way back to California.
I heart NY.

celebrations of yesteryear

december was a celebratory month. things i was happy about:

making 17 cardboard christmas monsters with kat,
then climbing telephone poles,
trees,
and even light poles (with exceptionally fabulous stranger Chris) in order to gift holiday public art to some of our nearest and dearest amigos.
merry christmas, indeed.
other pseudo-criminal activities involved having friend jrum kidnapped, bound, thrown in a trunk, and dumped off at the century city mall...
where friends engaged him in a variety of tasks in order to receive the 27 gold pieces he needed in order to get a moustached cab ride home.
happy birthday, indeed.
wearing that red dress pictured here a whopping 8 sundays in a row, and having exactly 2 people notice and question the repetition.
learning the wonders of the magic bullet by blending up a sweet potato pie and subsequent protein shakes with mom.
time with papatron and jäger,
captaining a ship with mushy after failed attempts to prove our athletic prowess on the nearby baseball diamond and basketball court,
having same sister remember aisle antics from years before AND give me memorabilia from previous lion-carcass-slaying endeavors,
but mostly, the glee of a comptron family (almost) reunion. look at that happiness. just look!

Timber! or, How We Do the Christmas Shake.

A CompTron/Delora family tradition: cutting down a big Christmas tree at the Rosedale Christmas tree farm in Bakersfield.


Here you can see PapaTron, accompanied by little Mush and RyDog, felling our tree in 1992.


Note how shiny and new MazdaTron once was. Also note lanky blond Wendy, second from the right.

Uh, the Rosedale Christmas Tree Farm got axed, so to speak, 5 or 8 years ago. It's gone. We haven't cut down a Christmas tree in a long time. Until 2 hours ago.

Christmas Conifers, Moreno Valley:
a CompTron Sister Adventure.


Miraculously, Mush and I were able to select and saw down a suitable fir-or-pine-or-something-deciduous-and-christmasy, get it up to her apartment and into a stand. We're about to put lights on it. I love December! I love Mush! I love that my hands are covered in sap.


(this is how you do the Christmas Shake)

an aerial burial

these are my shoes. i bought them around the year 2001. i was wearing these shoes when i ran 2 miles for the first time ever. i wore them in my first 5 & 10k races. i wore them when i thought i was going to be a marine. i wore them when i pretended like i was a marine in the volkslauf mud run. they have served me well. they deserve to be laid to rest with honor.

this is my 'hood. i've lived in palms 90034 for 4 years and 3.5 weeks. these are the streets i roam at night, the nonexistent parking spots for which i'm eternally searching, and the many active dog-walkers milling about.

these are my shoes - and a pair of kat's shoes that were retired as well - which received their well-deserved honorable aerial burial late last night.

everyone will know this is mine and kat's territory now!
enter at yer own peril...

a li'l tribute

Tamara Joann Delora Crompton is my mom. I never remember how to spell her middle name, but we call her Tammy Jo, and I think she's pretty great.

A woman of many talents, she's gone from sewing matching clothes for the family...
...to being able to bench press 300 pounds. yeah. she's a rock star. she owns her own personal training studio now in bakersfield.
She just had this article thing published on the Bakersfield Californian's website, and because I'm super proud of her, I'm posting the link here.

http://people.bakersfield.com/home/ViewPost/37755

the article discusses her lifelong struggle with weight loss. it's oprah-friendly material.....

life, crashing, dancing. installment #1 of the bad blog series, inspired by real life events.

preface: earlier this year, sparkle and i both read a dreadful blog posting by a mutual acquaintance. sappy analogies, overwrought emotion...it had the feeling of a melodramatic high school journal entry wherein the relationship between love and the development of a flower is explored. it left us gagging a bit - and then quickly deciding that we needed to do our own bad blog-off.

i detest melodrama more than just about anything. i try very hard to be logical, grounded, pragmatic, and real. so, i felt somewhat chastened this week when, after some particularly trying events, i found myself crying cinematic tears alone in my truck, thinking of the different ways in which my life reminded me of the movie "crash". the calmed-down, rational voice in my head intervened. 'wendy', i said to myself, 'you're starting to think in the style of that really bad blog. pull yourself together. play some of that led zeppelin on your ipod. stop viewing this week in such broad cinematic strokes.'

so i've calmed down. senses have dulled. but, i figured i might as well write the first mini-installment of the long-awaited bad blog-off anyways.

"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something. "

Crash. That movie touched me soooooooo much. this week, i have felt so low, and so lonely. it's weird how you can be surrounded by people and still feel so alone. on tuesday when i was driving from work to school, i got in an accident on the 10. it was so weird. it should've been so much worse, but somehow the three cars involved - well, everyone was okay. it was frightening, put things in perspective. three different people brought together by an accident that was wholly unremarkable for this city, but that still had the possibility of altering or even ending our lives. i felt a lot of grace, like someone was looking out for me, and for lloyd and raquel too.

i think people are brought together in really unusual ways sometimes. that book, 'the five love languages' - it's so true. i speak two languages - the language of touch and of quality time. and i've been aching lately, for real human contact - nothing extraordinary, just something normal and genuine. and an arm around my shoulder or something. someone who's willing to come into my space, penetrate whatever barriers i must be putting up, or whatever barriers are so common to the people in this city. and...somehow, there was a strange connection b/w us, victims, as the city continued to drive by indifferent to the change that had just occurred in our lives. lloyd and i spent a lot of time talking in his office the next day. he felt like it was some strange cosmic thing that had brought us together. we're friends now. when i left, he gave me a hug. the night of the accident, i crashed - figuratively - into a homeless man name lovell. we shared a meal at burger king. he was amazing, so human, and our interaction so real. we held hands for a moment before we parted ways. i needed that touch, and the universe provided it for me in really unexpected ways.

(cue strings): i think life is like that, you know. full of accidents, full of the unexpected. it looks chaotic and messy up close. but there's someone looking out for us, someone who cares and knows what we need, and we find those needs met by other humans in small ways, in ways they probably don't even realize. humans are messy, and we hurt each other, and we don't get out of our own heads and experiences often enough to see how we affect each other for better or worse. and like garth brooks said, if we knew how it was all going to end, we might have chosen never to get involved because of the the pain we'd experience. but, opposition in all things, right? "i could've missed the pain, but i'da had to miss the dance." life really IS a chaotic, messy human dance, but i'm so grateful to be in it, part of it, dancing.

note: i did get in an accident, and i am okay. i did hug lloyd, and i did hold hands with a homeless man, and i have been feeling lonely. that does not mean, however, that it is ever okay to write an essay on the truth of garth brooks lyrics as applied to your own life. blogs are supposed to be fun, not the sort of thing that could have the 'pearl harbor' music as its underscore. the end.