Forgiveness

Time to forgive him.  Time to forgive me.  Whatever our mistakes, we have loved each other well.  We love still.  My bitterness is only poison.  As calm and wise as he sounds on the phone, he doesn't really hear me.  He doesn't really listen.  It makes perfect sense.  He is on a tough road to complete for himself what he has been on the verge of finishing for years -- what he must finish for his own self worth.  He has a fresh start coming, there is no room for the past now.  And I wish him a magnificent finale.  So please take the bitterness out woman.  Take it out of every disappointment you have ever felt from anyone in the entirety of your life.  Drink faith, drink sweetness, drink joy.  Though he may have been right about many things tonight, he went to the heart of the matter only once, when he asked if I felt better just because we had talked.  Yes I did -- I do.

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.