Butterfly on the Wall

Nurse Betty

I have a new assignment for the next week or so as home-based nurse while my mom recovers from a knee replacement.  This is a house with *choke* no internet. 

GAH!

Luckily I don't have to deal with open wounds or anything, because I have a very low tolerance for bodily fluid ewww.  I can't even pick ticks off my dog.  One of a long string of reasons why I intend to remain childless.

In the hospital this week they had her hooked up to a little machine that would beep madly if her she forgot to breathe.  I'm going to see if there is a wrist version available because I forget to breathe all. the. time.

See you in a week or so.

Real men cook in teddy bear aprons

He's been known to carry my purse on occasion, too, if necessary.

And HE IS OK WITH THAT.

One of my oldest and dearest friends is coming for dinner tonight with her husband.  Though we only live about 35 minutes apart, we don't get to see each other as often as we would like.  With two kids and her own business, she is very busy.  Unlike me, who just sits at home and whines a lot.

Back in high school, she taught me horseback riding and gave me emotional ownership of one of her horses since me having my own for reals was out of the question.  I was at her house after school a lot.  Mostly eating.  Because her mom bought cool junk food and mine didn't.

She is one of those people who has known forever, without a doubt, what she wanted to do with her life and she made it happen.  I am so envious of people who have that knowledge and don't allow anything or anyone to knock them off their path.  A beautiful thing.

Pulling myself up out of the angst-filled pit

This could be an angst-filled pit.  But it's actually a Mayan grave that I am desecrating.  My eyes are closed because I'm in an ecstatic state of wallowing bliss.  Mmmmmmm, aaaansgt.

I had a big, long angsty post half-written, but in the interest of declaring this blog an angst-free zone because I'm so sick of myself a wee bit stuck on that, I'll give the distilled version:

The tax fairies were good to us this year.  Probably to make up for all that unemployment.  And for once, their beneficence didn't have to be funneled directly into a pre-existing hole. 

So.

My Love and I, we both have dreams.  His involves a standard, socially acceptable path of formal schooling with a pretty good guarantee of a career on the other end.  Mine involves self-love and self-development in a form that looks suspiciously like a frivolous vacation and has no promises of paid employment.  But, in its way, it is every bit as important and necessary to my future well-being as his.

Is his dream more important than mine?  

Because apparently I believe that it is.  Ever since we put it in the savings account, my little reptilian brain has been silently handing over my half of the green fairy juice to him to pursue his dream, while I wallow in an angst filled pit. I keep saying that it's "our money," while stepping aside as if I don't count.

Why am I automatically giving my Self away? 

And it is me.  Because I have hounded him to death discussed this with my Love many times.  He knows how much this means to me.  And every time I say, "This is what I think I'm going to do," he says, "Ok.  We'll make it work."

And here's where I get into trouble.  Because his reaction doesn't look exactly like I want it to.  My expectation is that he will say: "Bebe!!!!!!  That is so great!!!!!  What will you do, exactly?  Tell me every single detail, even if it means that we talk long into the night and I am too tired to function at my job tomorrow!!!!  You know, the job that I work that is supporting your ass right now.  And then I can't pay attention in my night class, the one I'm taking to reach my own dreams.  But my comfort does not matter, for I am only focused on you!!!!  Oh please, my angel, tell me!!!!!!!" 

Or something along those lines.

But my Love rarely speaks with an exclamation point.  Let alone a string of them.  That's just the way he is.  He cares, he is interested, but he is not effusive.  So because I do not get my expected reaction, the one that would (supposedly) assuage my guilt/fears, I trip on back to my slop pit of angst-mud and roll around, telling myself how very selfish and irresponsible I'm being for wanting something very, very important to me.  No, no, I'm much more comfortable here, really.

This is my tired old script, and my Love the unwitting lead, like Truman Burbank in The Truman Show.  My expectations set me up to replay it on an endless loop, which I suppose, is the goal.  Because then I don't address my ingrained feelings of selfishness and my fears that he will leave if I do something very important for myself.

I'm through with it.  Seriously.  Angst-free zone.  Starting now.  One change a week, two days early.  Because I'm so good at sticking to that.

(Yes, that was distilled.  You're welcome.)

FAIL.

I had fried eggs this morning.

No excuse for it.  I woke up at 4 a.m., after getting up to go to the bathroom and then falling over my dog in the dark.  Both of these things are very bad omens.  If I get up at 4:00, then I am upset about something.  If I fall over the dog it is the cherry on top of the upset sundae. 

Then I lay in bed for an hour, painfully awake, all blocked up in my psyche and turning myself in knots, so I got up and I caved.

"This will make me feel better," I said to myself and maybe to Invisible Viggo Mortensen too, though I think he probably was still asleep at 4 a.m.  

"Oh go ahead.  Who cares, really?" I whispered, so as not to wake Invisible Viggo.  "Gooey, runny egg yolks are a panacea after all.*   Just eat them.  Then everything will make sense."

Hahahahahhahahahahahahahahaha.  No.

My Love on the Mayan ruins in Honduras in a "I'm King of the Mayans, bring me slaves to sacrifice" pose.  But I'm reclaiming it today as "Why, oh why, oh why? Why, oh why? Oh, the humanity!  Make it stop!  Aaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!" 

Things swirling in my head at the moment:

• My writing voice and how I declared with such vehemence that "I am not a writer!" but then sometimes think, well, maybe I am.  Just not when I feel pressured.  Which is pretty much all the time.  So, I'm not a writer.  But I am.
• Priorities in my life, for myself.  And how I keep going in circles.  Are you getting sick of this yet?  Because I so am.
• The pursuit of "Lifestyle Design" and perfection.
• Being genetically socially inept, goat-girl that I am.
• My discomfort in the face of uncertainty and making decisions.
• There is the neutral zone and there are new beginnings.  There is thinking things through and not thinking enough.  Borders? 
• What, exactly, constitutes a "rash decision?"  Is it rash if you've been whining thinking about it for months, but have only just come to a conclusion?  Or is it rash because you have no other justification for it than "I want to.  I don't know why, I just do.  And I'm hoping it will lead to something that I can't predict right now." 
• I keep waiting for conviction, but perhaps one needs to cultivate, or maybe even go out and find conviction?  Or just recognize it when its already there?

The eggs aren't working.  I need commiseration.  Anyone else got something you can't seem to get resolution on?  How are you working on it? 

*What?  You didn't know?

One Change A Week

I'm instituting a new policy around here. 

In the interest of moving towards what I want to be (or think I want to be) my natural inclination is to go BIG.  Because I'm impatient like that.  I want things to happen immediately, if not right now. 

Sometimes I accuse my Love of looking back on my year of unemployment as a wasteland of empty, useless days and beg him please, for the love of God! Stop pressuring me because can't he understand?  Change does not happen overnight! 

Then its like...oh.  You didn't think that?  You mean that was me, projecting onto you, pressuring myself? 

Ahem.  Oh.  Well.

And then he goes, "Hmph" with tight lips and sideways glance through lowered lids which is his classic sound and expression of disapproval, because though he wasn't disapproving before I laid into him?  Now he is.

Whoops.

So, Self, remember (and there's no need to bring in all that drama), I have made lots of progress, just not exactly in the areas or ways that I thought I would.  But getting to the root of my feelings of shame, learning to trust my intuition, and beginning to outline what I authentically want out of life are actually big accomplishments.  Granted, we're not exactly rushing to notify Oprah about all this, but still.  These things mean a lot to me.

-------But wait, there's more!--------

I have some smaller intentions that I want to incorporate on my way to the New Life Plan, and I know that huge, important changes often start with just one step. Like the beating of a butterfly's wings....

So here are my baby steps: One Change A Week.

I am so brilliant!  If not original.

But!  This lets me relax because I don't feel I have to do everything ohmygodallatonce.  Because I have a plan, right there in my sidebar.  It's small.  It's manageable.  There's no need to panic because I know I'll get to it all, one lovely little step at a time. 

That is, unless I DIE.  But let's hope for the best here.

And pfffft!  One thing?  That's all I have to do this week?  I am so on it.

These are not the ones I ate this morning, because I forgot to take a picture before I scarfed them down.  So this file photo of eggs from say, 2007, is all I've got.  Like you really care.  Shut up, Stacia.

For my first week I'm starting with something easy: replace the morning fried eggs with hard-boiled.  I'm cooking them the night before so they're all ready when I wake up starving, and the shells come off easier because they're refrigerator cold.

Sunday is now designated One Change A Week Day.  Mark your calendars.

My Birthday - I'm still leveraging it

So last night--3 days after my birthday--my mom, my Love and I went to the only remotely fancy pants restaurant around here for dinner.

Eating at good restaurants used to be one of my greatest pleasures in life.  It is also one of the main reasons I used to have over $10,000 in credit card debt.  Well, that and no self-control.  But it is also how I learned about good food.  So it was sort of like a student loan, maybe.

Anyway, my Love was very disappointed that the restaurant didn't have the duck and he was slipping into grumpy so I had to say, "Whose birthday is it?" reminding him that the only person who needed to be pleased that night was ME, and grumpiness would make Us most upset.  And then he kept not ordering extra things like salad and dessert because he was paying for everything, even though I was going to make my mom pay for her part, but he got all noble and wouldn't let her.  He is always showing me up like that.  

This is the first time we've eaten out at a place with $20+ entrees in about 3 years.  We hardly ever eat out, especially at places like this because ever since we spent two years paying down our monstrous debt, spending decisions are weighed much more carefully.  And really, most of the time its not a hardship.  We like my cooking way better than any of the cheap restaurants (see? that "education" wasn't a total bust) and now, dropping over $100 for one meal?  Well, there are just so many things that are more important to me than that.  I mean it was good and all, and I wouldn't be able to replicate it at home.  But was it that good?  Not so sure.

On the other hand, sometimes I think we're way too practical and that I'm missing something by not being frivolous on occasion.  Sometimes we/I need to splurge a little so as not to feel deprived.  Left to his own devises the Cuban can be very spartan.  Like: "I don't need desserts, ever" says the man who can suck up a whole flan in a three days if one happens to just, you know, magically appear.

My first flan!  The Cuban declared it perfect.  High praise indeed.

It's just that the list of things I truly madly deeply want is much shorter these days.  And if its something small, I go ahead and buy it.  And the other things that I really want just can't be wrapped up in bows and (recycled) pretty paper. 

Because they mostly involve inner peace. 

Or livestock.

MY TRUE BIRTHDAY WISHES

Riding in Florida 2007

I want a pony.  There are horses here at the landlords' farm that are rarely visited by their owners.  Pretty horses.  They should be mine.

Colorado from Juniper Moon Farm - this is one of my most favorite sheep pics ever

I want sheep.  It used to be goats, but after seeing tons of sheep photos on the various farm blogs I follow I'm now in love with the sheep-ehz.  But if I had goats I could learn how to make chèvre......mmmmmmmm, chèvre.  I guess I could have asked for chèvre itself but that is a fleeting pleasure.  Give a girl chèvre and she eats for 15 minutes, tops.  I can inhale that stuff a day, teach her how to make chèvre (and give her a goat) and she eats for a lifetime. 

Habana Vieja, Cuba, 2008

I want to travel to other countries.  I don't think mom's $50 birthday contribution will make much of a dent in the budget.

I have no illustration for this next one because I cannot fathom its existence right now.

A job that pays decent and doesn't suck.  Oh boy, I'd really love one of those.

And more chickens.  One can never have enough.

Happy Birthday to me!

August 2008, Cuba.

At the pig roast family gathering this was my "birthday" cake and they sang Happy Birthday and everything.  Very sweet. 

But the realist, intellectual, can't-believe-someone-would-do-something-for-me joy-kill in me kept saying to my Love, "But it's not my birthday.  Do they know my birthday is in March?  Why do I have a cake and all?" 

He never gave me a complete answer, which I took to mean: Just shut up and go with it.

So I did.  And if I stopped trying to think too hard, I might realize that it was probably a way of welcoming me to the family, and in that sense, it was a kind of birthday.  I felt special and included and that's most likely "why."

Of course I also felt I was now a member of the family by the way they kept asking when we were going to start having babies, but whatever.

I think I may make this my theme for the year.

Just shut up and go with it.

(P.S. Read under Random Facts on my About Me page for an explanation of why the cake says "Felicidades Ana.")

Changes (or not)

I am feeling a bit discombobulated today.  A little sad.  A tad drained.  A bit like I want to rip my uterus out of my abdomen with my bare hands and a butter knife because I'm that desperate to get rid of the pain. 

The hurt goes all down my legs, through my joints and into my feet.  When I woke up my Love this morning, I asked him to rub my feet for a minute and they buzzed around for a while.  Literally buzzed, like electricity.  Now I wish I could get him to do my legs, but he's at work so, no.

But it makes me think.  I vaguely remember reading something that Dr. Christiane Northrup wrote in Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (and I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the book and this was long ago) that the degree of menstrual pain could be relative to what emotional distress a woman had or had not processed.

Now here we go with a bit of woo again.  While I do think that bodies are a kind of machine and are bound to have some faulty wires and parts, and things naturally will break and go wrong and that's just the cards that we were/are dealt, I also think that our mindset has an influence and sometimes emotional issues manifest physically in the body.  Growing up and into my 20's I used to have headaches almost daily.  While depressed I had not a one, and I rarely have one now.

So it's interesting that I have so much pain in my legs and feet.  Instruments of motion, feet symbolic of grounding and personal strength.  Honestly it feels like energy is pooling there with nowhere to go.  And here I sit, feeling emotionally paralyzed when it only takes a few small changes.  A few steps.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I want to move, literally and emotionally.  My body and my house and all the rest.  I feel that I'm on the cusp of something and I will not turn my back on it again.

Monument Valley.  Not Arizona, but close enough.  And look!  It even matches my blog color scheme.  Destiny.

Speaking of butter knives I'm also thinking about my emotional addiction to bread. It's one of those habits that I realize has total control of me.  Being a slave to your compulsions feels very dis-empowering and therefore icky.

When we spent two glorious weeks with my Love's family in Cuba in 2008 I hardly ate bread or any other flour-based food.  Two small pieces with homemade butter in the morning, but that's it.  The rest was loads of tropical fruit and avocados, tons of beans and rice, syrupy Cuban coffee and way more pork than I could handle so I often passed on that, especially if it was fried.  Some guava pies and fried sweet plantains, but that was it for desserts.  Many Cuban desserts are cold and custard based, which I don't much care for so no temptation there.  Good chocolate and ice cream are hard to come by.  And really, the sheer variety of fresh tropical fruits, many of which I'd never tasted before, made any other sweet craving obsolete. 

Fuzzy picture of my Love doing the pig carving honors in Cuba

Whether it was the change in diet, the novelty of travel, or that my appetite shrunk out of excitement and the August heat I don't know, but in one week I began to feel lighter and cleaner somehow, and by the time I came home I had dropped back down to my mentally unstable, pre-move anxiety weight.  (When I'm anxious, I actually eat better and less.)  All my big-girl clothes are this size because that's the last time I had a job that required them.  Now I'm back up to where I can technically still wear them, (and I do because I'm not buying new when I don't know what sort of job I'm going to have) but it's not attractive and actually is rather uncomfortable.

But this is not just about weight, because I'm talking a fluctuation of only about 10 pounds here.  Plus I eat pretty healthy at home, too, having slowly changed my diet over the years to weed out what made me feel yucky while slowly incorporating more of what made me feel better.

But I know I would feel even more better if I were to tweak these last things which are the hardest:

• cut down on the flour (dare I say, eliminate?  Gasp, shudder.)
• cut out the fried eggs in the morning
• eat lots more fruit
• cut out the sugar in my tea -- as much as I drink this adds up to way more than you'd think
• decrease my wine intake and food portions -- I eat past full.

This is not about achieving a certain number on the scale, or looking skinny, or getting into a smaller clothing size (though I'd like my pants to fit.)  It's about what everything else in my life is about right now: self-discipline, self-control and self-determination.  Being captain of my own ship and all that. 

I know--deeply know--that if I tweaked these last few things in my diet AND developed a steady routine of bodywork that my worldview and therefore life would change drastically.  And now, with no job to suck up my time and attention, is the perfect time to do it. 

The best way I know to kick myself in the ass is to pick up and leave.  (Thus the Arizona post.)  I have a really hard time altering time-worn patterns and my comforting routines while still in the same environment.  I love the newness, the exploration, figuring things out, seeing different things, establishing new rhythms.  Physically changing location shakes me awake, helps me see things differently.  It's why I love to travel.

And it does work for me.  Each time I've moved over the last 10 years, I have effectively sloughed off old behaviors and ways of thinking.  I don't just fall back into doing everything the way I did before. 

Maybe its just the sensation of my life force draining away today, but I'm feeling stuck, stuck, stuck and tomorrow is my birthday and I want to feel the dawn of a new era.

Over the red desert rocks of Arizona.

Ok, still Utah and not Arizona, but whatever.

These are desperate times.

When I had the Job I Loved, I was sometimes asked to fill in for the receptionist in the gallery (or clean the owner's vacation rental or walk his dog or take his granddaughter to lunch, but whatever).

Though only for a day or so at a time, this was the Job I Loathed.  I fell into administrative assistant-type jobs after college (I have a history degree and no I didn't want to teach, thank you very much) and never managed to get out of my rut.  Well, except for fundraising, which is a whole 'nother circle of hell to me.  

I really, really hate the administrative/receptionist thing.  I'm also not fond of "the public."  I promised myself I would never do this work ever again.

But my unemployment runs out in a month and, well, these are desperate times.

Job I Loved I could do while listening to podcasts like Bob Edwards Weekend and Fresh Air.  All day. And I didn't have to talk to a single soul if I didn't want to.  Ah, production work!

From this paradise they'd drag me up front where it was low light and gloomy and I had to try to please impatient customers who could drop more than I made in one year without thinking about it.  And I had to look busy when, if you're filling in, there's not always a lot to do.  Because if you weren't busy the owner might have you do things like pick clay out of the carpet fibers with a sharp knife, and well, no.

Anyway, they called me back to fill in for the receptionist this week, and I am because of course I need the money.  But oh how I wish I were taking his granddaughter to lunch!  They wouldn't call me in just for that though.

And I think I'm allergic to the gallery.  Seriously.  I worked a day a couple of weeks ago and the day after I thought I was getting a cold because my throat was scratchy and I had this annoying little cough.  Then it went away.

Now I have it again. 

Sigh. *cough*

Yay!

I was thrilled to find this, though in watching this one and some others before trying it myself I got a wee bit distracted by the boobies.  While they are lovely, I'd feel a bit better if there was a sports bra keeping everything under there cause I really kept expecting them to pop out.

I am also expecting my Pilates for Beginners DVD from Netflix today or tomorrow.  Breathing is key for this apparently, and I'm hoping I don't end up snorting dog hair when I get down on the floor.

Also.  This was fun to learn.

Spanish word of the day: el zapatazo: Blow with a shoe. 

As in Zapatazo al presidente Bush.

Who knew?