Archive for February, 2013

From flu to stomach flu and purging only what doesn’t belong

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

On Sunday, Tin woke up sick and was sick on Monday, went to school on Tuesday, came home peaked, went back to school on Wednesday and picked him up very sick, last night he had stomach flu. Tin: “What’s diarrhea?” Mom: “That.” And so has gone this week. As I’ve had this sudden opportunity to be unable to do any of my to do list, I’ve been able to revisit and recycle things that have inspired me in the past. This is one of my favorite inspirational poems by Robert Bly:

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It might be a little hard to read as it is pasted into my scrapbook. So here is what it says:

Things to Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it’s been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

~ Robert Bly ~

Recycling Inspiration

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

I found myself yesterday in a quagmire and it was such a similar one to what I had experienced many years ago that I knew what to do – swallow my pride and flip the coin. And so I was able to move on from that point instead of getting stuck in it because it doesn’t matter sometimes who is wrong or right, it just matters that you don’t stay stuck in the quagmire, no matter who created it.

This morning I woke from a night of dreams and I knew that everything is going to be okay because I’m going to be 54 this year and I’ve been through a lot of this stuff before and I’m not going to say I know what is coming, because I don’t, but I’m going to say without a shadow of a doubt that I know the best is yet to come.

I’ve always been uneasy about transitions because I’ve always been trying to get to the next thing. You know the drill, remember back to a time when a job ended and you weren’t sure what you were going to do next and you stayed instead of still and relaxed, in a panic, worried about what was going to come next and then something came and then you regretted not having enjoyed those days of not knowing. This is the universal dilemma. We’re all trying to go somewhere, get somewhere, instead of being.

That’s why I love my shotgun apartment because it reminds me so profoundly of the many transitions in my life and how many times I’ve been around the block. So I found myself recycling some of my inspirations and affirmations and came across my all time favorite one – this is probably the first that I kept in my scrap book, it’s one I left on the desk of a loved one a long, long time ago, and it’s one I truly believe but often times forget I believe.

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Paralysis gets you nowhere

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013

As I’ve channeled my energy towards acceptance and openness since this weekend instead of the boots on the ground I expected when I started this week, I’ve found myself in some sort of somber mood that is something short of paralysis. I don’t know what to act on, so I’ve become motionless, still, and sort of calm.

Today though, I began my day in a heated argument on the bayou and ended the night with a note left on my car calling me an ASSHOLE – I sort of shrugged it all off as if I was on some mood altering drug.

And I’m not.

I started meditating again and I have become passive. It’s sort of where I am and it’s fine. It’s calming, it’s different, and it’s like being a zombie only different.

We’ll see how long this lasts. My friend who called on Monday told me that not getting out of my pajamas after noon was a sure sign of depression and I said, I actually feel quite good.

Paralysis gets you nowhere, but maybe nowhere is where you want to be.

Check it out

Monday, February 25th, 2013

Ta Da – the new blog:

Transracial Parenting

Filling in the grid

Monday, February 25th, 2013

One of the things that I found hardest about trying to be a fiction writer was not the rejections – I actually enjoyed reading the rejection letters – instead it was the rewriting. It’s why I found the format of a blog to be so aligned with who I am. I wanted to write from a rawness not rewrite to flawlessness. The energy that goes into what first spills out is often refined and rehoned so that the original feeling that put the sentiment down gets whittled away – into a cliché perhaps, into a more palpable feeling.

Yesterday, I began my day believing that I had put certain elements in play so that this year would be about building towards something, and despite the fact that my work with my life coach has been about staying centered while meteorites come at me, and my spiritual work has been about waking up with faith that the day will provide and the night will find me grateful, and my work with my therapist has been about identifying the patterns that keep me from growth – yesterday I found myself face to face with my demons, my fears, and more importantly uncertainty.

I woke after a sleepless night wishing my father were still alive and taking care of me because although he was not a conventional father if one of those actually exists, his presence was always comforting to me, as a child – a familiar comfort.

Yesterday, I kept pulling my tools out of my tool belt – I walked with Tin over to Maple Street and bought the Power of Now (my copy had been lent to a friend), I told myself I always land on my feet, I made a commitment to my meditation, I chose not to panic, I summoned my faith, and I kept battling my fears and saboteurs like the good warrior I’ve become.

Tin was sick yesterday and while he was napping, a friend stopped by and I sat on the stoop and told her what was going on. She said, “Are you crying?” I said, not really, I’m just weary from the uncertainty. She said, you just need to have faith that everything will work out. And I said I’m working on it.

I stopped by a friend’s house to say hi last night after transitioning Tin to the Blue House. I asked her if she believed in signs and she said she wasn’t big on that because she never could actually interpret what the signs were supposed to mean. She said to me I always land on my feet and I should be aware of that fact.

It’s hard to know what to do next when you don’t have something specific you want to happen. We all want to be comfortable, for things to feel right, for our true self to shine in our relationships, our work, our love. We want to be confident in knowing the ease of when we are where we should be, with whom we should be, and we are who we should be.

My friend sent me this in the morning:
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Life is confusing when you don’t have a roadmap, but its even more confusing when you don’t have faith that the grid will fill itself in and that’s the way I’m trying to fly here – freer, less me-directed and more open and allowing for development of all the things that I can’t know about, because I don’t know everything now, more is being revealed, and I’m open and receptive to me becoming.

Fortuna’s wheel is spinning TOO fast

Sunday, February 24th, 2013

Up and down on this life’s roller coaster and I wonder to myself, was it meant to be this way? Yesterday, the mail brought a stalker’s letter from some guy in prison who saw me in the paper who said, “I consider you one of HIS greatest gifts to me.” Hmmm.

Then a missive that stopped me in my tracks – COLD – stop, not pause, just STOP, COLD. I called a friend, she said, “Thank god …, Thank god … ., and I said, yes thanks, FOR WHAT? OMG.

I am summoning courage, I am summoning the POWER OF NOW, I am summoning the will to continue on, soldier on, marching on – from whence will this courage, soldiering, marching come from though, I wonder.

A friend posts this on Facebook:

Name Withheld
Wondering how things will be from here on out….
Unlike · · 2 hours ago near New Orleans ·
You like this.

Name Withheld “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.” -Emerson
about an hour ago · Unlike · 1

Clarity tells me that I will make the most of this – that this is an opportunity – my gut tells me OH NO, NOT AGAIN.

And so begins Sunday, godless Sunday.

Spoke too soon

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013

Well I thought I had found my daily rhythm but last night’s thunderstorm seems to have jangled up things. This morning as I was stepping into the shower, I ended up stepping into a toilet overflowing and then spent the better part of the morning plunging my way out of the shit show that was threatening my day.

Finally, showered, we raced to La Boulangerie to get pastries for the Open House at Tin’s school, and we double parked to grab the pastries when unbeknownst to us Dominique wanted to show Tin the bread making machine and we were delayed by him and a line we weren’t anticipating. So that when we came out two elderly couples began cursing me out for blocking them and all I could say was, “I’m sorry,” but that wasn’t good enough so they continued to rant and rave about how rude I am and finally, I said, “Look, I said, I’m sorry, I don’t need a lecture from the likes of you.” To which the elderly man made as if he was going to get out the car and, and, and, what? Beat me? I just looked at him and shook my head.

My horoscope:
February 23, 2013
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
No matter how cute you think someone is today, their personality will put you off. Arrogance, after all, is a very ugly accessory. There is no need to tolerate a rude person, no matter how attractive they are or how powerful they may be. If someone displays an attitude of undue superiority, feel free to give them a piece of your mind. Taking them down a peg or two will feel good, and will earn you a lot of respect from someone who’s been admiring your style for quite a while.

I arrived at the Open House to learn that I am going to be in North Carolina presenting a seminar on how to do Outreach and then wearily came home to find the enormous bill from the legalities that took place in my life over the last month – this sent me into a deep dark mood.

So tonight was stay in night – we made pasta pesto, I drank the rest of the Oroppas I had opened last night, and we read eight books and now we are all going to bed.

Tomorrow begins my new sweet rhythm, today is being thrown in crumbs to the squirrels.

Settling into a new routine

Saturday, February 23rd, 2013

It poured down rain last night and the thunder and lightning roused me from my bed to turn off the computer. I haven’t had a moment here in the Red House where I’ve woken up and gone, “Where the hell am I?” It’s felt as comfortable if not more to be here than I would have expected.

I spoke to a dear friend yesterday, someone who is part of my three wise women who have supported me on this difficult transition in my life. She’s someone I’ve known the longest and it always seems when I call, there is drama in my life, and she listens and gives good counsel and then we speak again in months if not sometimes many months later. Lately, I’ve felt the drama subsiding in my life and so I was receptive to hers. It felt good to be able to give back what she has so generously given over the years.

The day was spent reconciling seven bank accounts that haven’t been looked at since July. That’s right, I’m meticulous about reconciling everything to the last detail, but all of this had gotten whooshed up in the drama that became my life in summer of 2012, which was only the culmination of what had started in summer of 2011. A year and a half of my life going on whirly bird tilt.

Now with my head rising above the flood waters, I’ve noticed the beauty of the cupola atop Our Lady of the Rosary and the quaintness of this bayou neighborhood again. It’s really a lovely place to live. The guy who came to fix the washing machine told me as he was leaving, “You have a nice place here and this is a great neighborhood.” Yes, it is, I said and have thought. A lovely place to be.

We’ve fluffed our nest here at the Red House and made it comfy cozy. We’ve chosen to ignore the negativity of our neighbor who scowls and frowns when we see her. We’ve been there before, and know there is nothing like a smile to turn a frown upside down. And her guy friend who sat on the stoop and watched this fifty year old bald woman lugging a large roll of carpet in and didn’t offer to help – I took to be an alien – and possibly the cause for some of that scowling.

In the meantime, I’m raising my son in the Red House and he’s turning four very soon. My bills are paid. I’m putting my head back in the game with work. And my calendar is starting to fill up with fun things to do. Ahhhhhh, life is settling back into its sweet rhythm.

Worthy Ambition

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

This morning is about making a difference, whether that be with a kind word or a kind thought. It’s about finding a way to crowd out what is wrong with the world by holding what is right up on a pedestal. The first thing I read this morning was a Facebook post by Mudd Lavoie recognizing a post by Cupcakes and Cauldrons on encouraging other people and that fell right in line with what Tin and I were discussing over breakfast that went something like this:

“I don’t like rain,” Tin said.
“I love rain, it greens up the grass and feeds the animals and us, and makes the air seems fresher.”
“But it’s wet,” Tin said.
“Rain, rain, go away, come again another day, Constantin wants to play.”
“Can I rap that song?” Tin said.
“How about we give thanks this morning. Let’s start with TGIF.”
“Thank God I’m Fabulous,” Tin said.
“Right. And thank god for Ms. Karla, our friends, and our loved ones.”

It’s a worthy ambition to get up in the morning and figure out how to make the most of your day and life, by first recognizing all those people that help make your world so wonderful.

Amen.

God has learned a lot since Leviticus

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

I went to the Steiner study group last night as we are still reading Education as a Force for Social Change. Someone asked me what I felt, as a Jew, with Steiner’s repeated mention of Christ. I said that I didn’t imagine the Jesus Christ that I had held at arm’s length my whole life, but instead I imagined what Steiner meant was the divine in each of us.

That is what Waldorf has been for me – to educate my child where the teacher is teaching to the divine in him – his greatest potential – not just another kid, or his race, or his gender.

With the group and other avenues, I am working spiritually on developing absolute trust for what is coming to me in the future. This is a very difficult step in my development. I’m trying to wake up and trust that karma will unfold benevolently and that when I lay my head down at night that I have an attitude of gratitude. That is the most any human could hope for.

Yesterday, as Tin had his first playdate here at the Red House, the adjoining neighbor began her rash of complaints. Or let me call them irrational. It is not rational to believe that someone can share a wall and keep a 4 year old quiet during the hours of 5-7PM.

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At the same time, my eyesight that has been a huge issue I’ve been avoiding recognizing took turns towards the worse. I’ve had difficulty seeing and keeping my eyes moist and of course, Graves disease was the threat from months ago and now I find myself worrying myself sick over whether I am flip flopping between Hashimoto’s and Grave’s as was originally feared. So I decided to stave off anything negative in my life and focus primarily on my health.

Which right now is the singularly most important thing besides Tin.

In a conversation about God in the study group, we began again by talking about Christianity vs other religions and about how the world has moved more and more towards intelligence at the sake of body and soul. And a quote surfaced and floated around the table regarding the Jewish notion of a God in progress – and a movie about a Gay Orthodox Jew where the character was asked about his feelings towards his religion responded: “God has learned a lot since Leviticus.”

We all have learned a lot. I have learned to put my needs first – I learned this but didn’t take a stand on it till yesterday afternoon. And it feels right wearing this cloak of self-concern for the first time.