Here's to a bit o' luck today

Day again

The long road

I am on a deadline.  Yes, another sleepless deadline.  I will need some luck and inspiration to pull this off, so I'm beginning with a few images depicting the magic of a long, sleepless, solitary journey.  A feeling I know well and have come to love.

Day

 

 

Evening

When midnight comes

Homemaker highway to heaven or hell: your choice

I can do it at work, but can I do it at home?  I had a breakthrough today. In the middle of a deadline day I took 2 hours to clean up my mess: home, laundry, bills.  I have a 3 floor place and it's just me to take care of it, on the side of mothering and grad school.  As my hero J.K. Rowling once said in reply to how she managed to be a single mum and write a book:  "Well, I didn't do housework for four years. I'm not superwoman.  Living in squalor, that was the answer!". And it has been my answer too.  But squalor can be a subjective thing and I have just decided to redefine mine. Normally, everything at home piles up (including late bills) until one 5 hour stint of house wars puts it mildly back in order -- about once every months.  The problem is, my stress increases exponentially with the mess I try to function in at home. Also, not keeping any systems going means I can't force my kids to help because what to do is always changing:

"Mum, where is a clean towel?"
"Can't you find one yourself?  It's in the dryer--hall closet--upstairs bathroom--downstairs bathroom--hanging in my closet--or on your bedroom door!"

So today, while on a short break from numbing my brain to the ins and outs of building a mouse model that recapitulates human kinetics of disease progression from myelodysplastic syndrome (del5q) to acute myeloid leukemia, I decided to clean my highway to hell.  That would be the path that leads from my basement door/laundry room up to the main floor kitchen/entrance way/guest bathroom and again upstairs to our second bathroom (which happens to be the most used areas of the house).  As I had been wallowing in self-pity rather than homemaking of late, I also needed to throw in a fridge clean out, basic laundry and bills (including a mother effing parking ticket summons).  Here was the genius part, when I just decided to do what I could quickly in the worst areas, I managed to restore almost all of our household's basic needs in 2 hours.

• kitchen tidy (well from third world to post-frat party) with fridge clean out
• basic sanitize: 2 bathrooms
• laundry collection and one load through for tomorrow
• vacuum of worst areas
• beds made
• garbage out
• bills paid

I feel like a fucking genius -- or at least Rosie the Riveter.  From now on I'm going to tie my hair up in a polka dot handkerchief and keep my highway to hell on a short leash, kids and all. 

Vintage pin up rewards

July 16th is my target date for feeling fucking gorgeous.  To help keep me focused I've decided to set dates for two events: 1)  a vintage pin up photo shoot starring me and 2) getting inked where my neck meets my upper back.  This will require pricing/booking a photographer and designing a tattoo.  Very inspiring pastimes...

Mantra

I had a breakthrough in the sauna tonight.  I had just rocked out cardio and a return to free weights before spending a glorious hour plus in the hot tub/sauna/steam room when enlightenment came to me -- I'm able to pray and/or meditate in hot water and steam.  Hot water therapy has always been my Mecca.  It's a place of solace and hope that I return to time and again, no matter the circumstances and no matter how long it's been since the last time I entered steaming water.  It feels best post-workout and it forces me to drink copious amounts of crystal cool water.  I always feel soothed and detoxified after.  I often feel emotional once my body reaches a certain temperature and I've been known to cry out whatever I feel tortured over -- strangers staring at me be damned!

I've always known meditating could benefit my much beleaguered mind, but I've never been able to do it.  My nervous system is generally too shot to be quieted by breathing and silence.  But in hot water, it shuts up long enough for me to hear myself think.  And tonight, spontaneously, I began chanting a homemade mantra while in the sauna:  I am RockStar beautiful, I am PunkRock passionate...I am RockStar beautiful, I am PunkRock passionate...

Over and over and over, and I wished for rosary beads.  It felt so good.  It felt genuine --  a self-help stereotype confiscated and made my own. It ain't fucking deep, but it works.  So fuck it, I'm going to rock it! 

Rock star fitness

This post is brought you by the body and soul of Emily Haines performer.  I do not purport to know anything about the true soul of Emily, but I derive great inspiration from her performer soul:  her songwriting, her dancing, her keyboard instrumentation, her outfits and above all her legs.  Fucking hottest singer/songwriter legs on the planet.  So many of the women who inspire me are creators, singers, writers -- women who express themselves. And looking at them, one thing is striking, none of them have an eating problem, they are too busy expressing themselves. It makes sense: repress = eat, express = dance.

I began this post thinking I should write about moderation so I could invite it into my psyche -- a quick internet search later I was laughing my guts out ...

...and I realized that moderation is just not in the vocabulary of my PunkRock soul.  I need extremes -- in love, in parenting, in self-expression, in intellectual pursuit and in physicality of all forms.  I need to dance, exercise, give and receive human contact extremely, rock star style.  So I'm going to tweak my life plan, acknowledge my inner rockstar and invite expression instead of moder-repression into my psyche.  I hereby state that:

1) I have fucking gorgeous legs -- time to break them out of storage i.e. fat and pants.
2) I dance, dress and love with rockstar passion -- time to continue and celebrate these traditions daily.
3) I eat poetry, music, movement and passion and live off coffee, dark chocolate and the tingle of fingertips absentmindedly caressing my back.  No more moderation.

here's to my Inner Emily

Let's talk melodrama

Okay people -- there are a few of you who have splashed down in my blog of wanton self-pity, but not one of you has complained to me about reading my blogorrhea and how it wasted precious minutes of your life and how you wish I would stop polluting blogger with my hysteria.

So I suggest we begin a dialogue...what was your lowest moment-o-melodrama?

Another sign!

The universe is answering with Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes and the rising sun pouring into my face through the cafe window at the exact same instant.

Put one foot in front of the other

I did it.  I broke the silence and sent an e-mail request to my prof for an appointment to go over my research proposal tomorrow.  It is the first step and I feel released, I feel able to work and finish it today because I've come out of hiding.  It was a gesture of trust in the universe, trust in me, and trust for my place within it.  I feel positive and it feels oh so good.  I am not trying to manipulate the situation, explain or beg -- I'm just showing up as plain, worthy me. 

Post as prayer

Two days late(er) and I am still working on the research proposal.  Nerves, it's all nerves plus life.  Family, not just kids but sisters, parents and man, always come first for me.  Mental, emotional and physical exhaustion comes next.  Then school -- which is a completely mental process hindered by my constant emotional preoccupations.  I feel tortured that I am tortured.  I feel guilty that I am not 100% a mom nor 100% a brilliant, committed grad student.  I feel resentful that I am not a pampered home-owning homemaker too (doesn't this all sound So punk rock?).  The common theme is anxiety and a vicious cycle.  As I type this my insides are in knots, I am having to hype myself into my day, I already feel the clock ticking and I feel paralyzed.

So this post is a prayer -- to who or what I'm not sure.  I pray for mental and emotional peace, release from self-judgment. I want to let myself off the hook.  I want to believe that for me, showing up is all that matters.  Since I began grad school, I've felt that it was time for me to step up and compete in the world, or rather pull myself up by the scruff of my neck and get to it.  I've shied away from competition my whole life and my insides still revolt against it.  In undergrad I was just happy that I made it through, suddenly in grad school I am in constant fear someone is going to point a finger at me and say "You, you don't belong here!".  But the truth is they haven't.  Maybe just showing up is all that matters.  Maybe I can let myself off the hook.  I am not a traditional grad student.  I am on my own with two kids and it isn't just the physical time I spend taking care of life for all three of us, my head and heart are on constant overflow.  And yes, part of that is because I am such an emotional person.  But do I really want to be someone else?  My answer up until this minute would almost always have been yes -- but not the moments that each of my children were born, and not the moments I fell in deep, deep love, and not the moment I strode across the stage and picked up my degree.  And you know what?  Not now either.

Thank you me.  Thank you, thank you.  Time to show up...    

PunkAssWarriorWoman

Today I am a Punk Ass Warrior Woman and I derive my inspiration from Florence Welch.  Hail to Florence.  I will strengthen my muscles and flex my creativity, I will tap into a joan-of-arc like belief in my purpose and my ability.  Today I will lead my army of dreams up to the 15th floor and shout from the roof top in a silent inward prayer to burst open my heart (kpow @#$%!).  I will contemplate the edge today and imagine leaping into a warm accepting void, a buoy of air. It begins with a commitment to a warrior woman schedule for the next 90 days (see Contract with my PunkAss self page) and dying my hair red.  Day 90 promise to myself:  warrior woman schedule kept and one research proposal e-mailed by the witching hour.

Power Post (one)

A collection of influences that I aspire to.

Beauty and yearnings

Recovery from love addiction

Well, I tried to take control of my life December 22nd by kicking the love of my life out of our home in a last-ditch effort to wake him up and get him caring about and acting in the best interest of our relationship.  Of course it was doomed to fail -- however, it did preserve my sanity.  I would have murdered myself and him by now if we had continued to function under the same roof.  But it did nothing for my happiness or my belief in myself or the world.  Next, I attempted to fake my way into self-generated happiness with a commitment to lose the 20 or so pounds I ate myself into during the last 3 years of emotional desperation.  But really I was trying to fill my time while I waited for him to see the light, the result was lots of pretty words and promises traded back and forth while I secretly stuffed the Easter reserve of candy for my kids into the fat bags I like to carry on my back and around my waist and hips.  And still I get out of bed everyday, and still I try to get the basics done.  But I constantly feel like a criminal, a fugitive, an outcast, a failure within my own life.  I hide, sneak, pray and slip in under the wire. This is not life, this is a very gray zone.  And still most of my energy is spent in shock that the love we had didn't grow and didn't die.  It is a hairshirt I put on willingly everyday.  I've resorted to calling him and extracting apologies on a daily basis for everything he doesn't understand and therefore doesn't take care of.  I have to go, I have to, and yet I don't want to.  This was the real thing, this was the drug of being in love, this was the best I've ever felt in life.  How could it not have been that forever?  What is left for me now?  It's all so cliche -- I feel empty, I feel unlovable, I can't fully enjoy what I normally love, I feel lost.  All of my willpower is gone...