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Went to yoga today and Michele read from one of her guru’s books – a list. A list of issues. Don’t I know that list of issues! Anyway, the guru had responses that were interesting.

1) I don’t have enough money.
Response: Be radically generous with your money and assist others with your time for no money

2) I want to be in a relationship
Response: Respect other’s relationships and do not interfere with them.

3) I feel so unattractive.
Response: Don’t carry anger around. It makes you unattractive.

4) I feel so lonely.
Response: Befriend a lonely person.

5) I can’t seem to eat right.
Response: Help someone learn to eat better.

6) I feel so tired all the time.
Response: Give yourself to others and they will give back to you all their wonderful energy.

7) I worry about my health.
Response: Be caring and understanding with someone else who isn’t feeling well and help them to feel better.

I’ve never known a German Shepherd so intimately before but they are very unique dogs. Wolfie doesn’t walk like Loca (who actually doesn’t walk, but instead jumps) instead she sniffs her way down one end and up the other. A friend of mine always said her dog was checking his pee-mail when he did that, but Wolfie is more like Shepherd CSI since she sniffs so intensely each blade of grass and then goes back over the whole scene several times with such interest.

Loca has more of my cadence and when we walk, we really cruise, not stopping for anything, but Wolfie forces me to slow down and smell with her, to savor each blade of grass as I have never seen it before.

I was walking the dogs and ran into a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in a while. Then I saw him again on the other side of the bayou. I had stopped to say hi to Ms. Marie, and he had too. He told me he grew up with her son. Then Ms. Marie said she was going to be 94 this June 22 and we both told her she was in great shape. She said it’s because she goes to mass every morning and that living near a church is what kept her young.

I thought about that as I walked to the other side of the bayou – Ms. Marie is a young 94 for perhaps all of these reasons: she walks every day, she has something of interest (church) to do every day, she had little work stress (although five members of her family lost their job in one week during the depression of the 30s), and she most likely didn’t grow up eating processed food because of her age.

But also, I choose to believe that looking out at the bayou, where I saw a turtle raise his head last night as I was washing to the dishes (hmm, same one that I saved the other day?), instills us with a sense of peace and place and contributes to a long life.

Yesterday morning, we were slow to get out of bed – I think we have the summer slam because we are getting our eight hours, but not eager to wake up. We lay there about how fast time is going, like we wake up and the next thing you know it is time for bed.

It’s not as though a lot doesn’t happen in between – work, meals, walks, exercise, entertainment – [by the way, we just finished Disc 2 in my Janus collection – Andrzej Wajda’s Ashes and Diamonds – fabulous] – but yet all of that seems to whiz by in a blur by the time we get in bed to sleep.

I find myself going to sleep like I’ve been run over by a MACK truck, then I wake up groggy, and next thing you know we are hitting the ground running. I try to carve out a moment for thinking, reading, reflecting, but feel the pull of doing, going, finishing.

Time is running out or time is what it is, whichever it is, I want to harness it, feel it is plentiful, enjoy it.

My laundry list of ills includes hot flashes that are debilitating, a mother who won’t stop punishing herself (or me), a high mortgage, and a seemingly endless capacity to be thick around the middle these days – not to mention the grey – hey, in trying to get the red out, I brought the grey out – BLECH!!!!

Double Blech!

So I’m going to put my right foot in, take my right foot out, put my right foot in and shake it all about. I’m going to do the hokey pokey and turn myself around.

Because that’s what it’s all about!

I guess I should be thankful for dreaming because whatever is in the back of my mind that has my thoughts teeming at night has to be processed somewhere. My work has me stressed because of the industry I cover – it’s just that time of year when I feel like I am about to miss something big if I don’t stay on my toes.

So I go to sleep and I toss and turn and toss and turn and by the time I wake up, I feel as if I have been through the wringer.

I remember at one point in my sleep I was telling myself (maybe aloud) to relax, to just let it be, that I have no control over the outcome so to just be one with the flow.

I must have slept through it.

The last day of our trip to the beach, we were sitting on the terrace right off the bedroom and a rainbow appeared in the sky. I was in the midst of my book – Grace and Grit – and I was thinking about acceptance and how simple a concept it is and how difficult a practice it is.

Today, on my second doctor’s appointment with my mom – helping her walk feebly from car to building – watching her shake as if she was a late term Parkinson patient – seeing her wheeze – I just kept reminding myself to be kind and supportive.

After the last round, as we were walking out to the car, she said, “I’m sick of this.” And I said, “Only you can do something about it.”

When we got back to her apartment, she barely made it up the stairs, and almost immediately inside the door had to throw up. She was sweating, shaking, and pale as a ghost.

I asked her if she would entertain detox.

She poured a glass of wine and said she was feeling better.

So now, back in my beautiful house that I had to go back and forth with the therapist on to feel like I deserved to live here, I really feel as if I have moved no closer to acceptance or understanding than I did when I was five years old and watching my father pour liquor down the kitchen sink. A lot of turmoil. A lot of yelling. A lot of anxiety. And yet, nothing changes.

The only thing that has changed is that I don’t get upset anymore, I just lose something of value inside me each time I go through this. I lose the hope that it ever will change.

I woke this morning to the church bells at 6AM and here it is 6PM and the bells are clanging again – in the meantime, I’ve done little to stretch and bend beyond this computer and desk chair.

NOT GOOD.

The front page of the Sunday NYT has a picture of a baby in a freshly dug grave. Poor medical care is taking its toll on mother and infant in Africa.

Here in the U.S., it’s the same old story – kids in the system with biological parents who won’t release them to families, agencies charging $26,000 to just match with a potential infant, and then there is the whole pay as you go until the mother changes her mind at the last minute phenomenon.

All of these don’t and do make sense.

Wouldn’t it make sense if there was one organization designed to give better medical care to the poor women in third world countries (deploy doctors and nurses strategically), one system designed to put babies and children in the homes of parents who are capable and want to parent (around the globe), and a system that puts the money into the resources that make this happen?

Polly Anna indeed.

As we were in line for the Ferry going over to Dauphin Island yesterday, an older man with a craggy face walked by and he had a hat on that said WORK SUCKS! with a fish lure hanging out of it. Days go by and the lines around my eyes and mouth increase. I’m trying to get the unnatural red out of my hair and get back to my own color (hard to know what that is right now and meanwhile what I see in my part is grey grey and more grey – not a color in my opinion). I’m working on stretching and flexibility as my body pulls tighter into a fist. I’ve got a ten pound spare tire around my belly that is not budging.

Stress sucks.
Relaxation rules.

For everyone else there is yoga. Ommmmmmmmmmm.