power

 what is my power?  what is the source of my power?  my homeopath doctor asked me to ponder this as i am trying to get over a cold that is just lingering and driving me crazy with coughing.

here is all i could come up with:

• love 
• when something makes sense, i get it, and i wake up easily.  
• digging
• patience
• resting

i asked david as we were getting in bed this night what he felt the sources of his power are.  he was like, 'huh?'  i explained.  i told him i felt his power came from being open.  when he is open to whatever is around him, he seems more powerful, his presence has a nice effect on all of us around him.   ( i know that's not very detailed, and upon rereading it, i cringe cuz i mean,  whose presence is not nicer when they are open and not resisting?  whatever. )  i told him that, and then he told me where he felt my power lies.  he said first, when he saw me that morning respond to olive,  right as she was waking up and having a tantrum about a sore spot on her gums (?), and his instant reaction was 'geez olive, how dramatic can you be?', seeing my reaction, which was to scoop her in my arms and baby her up and meet her right where she was, he felt that was a big source of power for me.  when i am in my compassionate maternal self.   when, key word.  then he said when i am in my feminine self, and not trying to control everything, but flowing with it.  and lastly he said, when i am gardening.  hmmmmmmn.  such nice reflections.  such a sweet little spiritual connection to make with my partner.  you might give it a try.  whether you have a cold or not.  

two days later and i am kicking this cold. i think.

random bit of sharing:


still bill


oh my.  that is the best documentary ever.

theme

first off....i get worst mom award in shopping store today.  lost my cool on biggest and littlest in public,   middle wasn't there or i'd have lost it on her too.  people were watching.  and i didn't even care.  but i do now.  working on the anger.  since it already happened, i'm letting it go mostly.  letting go is hard work.  forgiving myself.  yikes.  so hard.  shopping has the potential to be so much fun.  and it often ends up being extremely hellish.  whatever.  got what we needed.  except for tights.  the girls still need those.  getting all fancy for the upcoming bat mitzvah for my niece.  three sets of feet no longer fit in their old dress shoes.  tights are run.   sweaters that were once dressy are now dingy.  new stuff must be sought out.  nordstrom rack is nuts with kids!  it's nuts alone, for that matter.  yikes.  famous footwear was cool, but they were out of all sizes we needed.  what kind of shoe store is out of all sizes we need?  a weird one i guess.  i would have gone thrifting, but this is a black tie kind of party.  nbd.  that's my new favorite thing to write.  nbd.  i know where to go for cheapish new stuff.  for myself, anthro sale room was pretty kind to me.  and a friend just randomly bought me some new high heel fancy fancy shoes to go with my outfit. i was sending her photos of me trying things on, and she goes and finds me shoes to go with my clothes.  ha!  so funny and sweet.  they're being shipped, so i don't even have them yet.  i kind of want to share photos of it all.  we don't get fancy like this very often.  zhi was commenting on that yesterday...  that we only get dressy in baltimore.  well, i reckon you're right babe.  you're dad and i live a pretty casual lifestyle.  and there have been some fancy occasions in baltimore this past year.  grandparents 50th anniversary party, pawpaw's memorial.  i still can't write that easily.  i feel like i'm betraying him somehow to write that he had a funeral.  i don't understand why, though, i just feel that way.  he was planning to come to this bat mitzvah.  sigh.  

these photos are all from david's camera.  having an out of sorts afternoon with change of plans and i'm using his computer for a bit.  so i went digging into his i photo for a while.  crazy trip down memory lane.  maybe i kept noticing the ones of me, cuz i rarely see them from his perspective.  

well, i'll caption a few, and that will be that for today.  

sweet buck.  david came home recently from hiking and brought me one horn.  i feel like it's from this guy.  looks just like that. 

subway riding in brooklyn with sis

                                          david having fun with the camera and a kaleidoscope

                                                    the boy and me hiking last summer

love.

so glad some of you got something from my last post.  so so glad.  i did too.

here's an abraham lincoln quote:

~people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

hmmmm.  sounds a little like the dalai lama's message in the art of happiness.  

mind training.   

i need to learn more about abraham lincoln i'm thinking.

reading gifts

 this may be a door for me, the fire door (?), for coming back to this space with all of my heart and soul in tact....big thanks to andrea, this blog friend, for the suggestion to simply share about what i've been reading.  THANK YOU.


(i just noticed the fire extinguisher sitting there behind the candles.  nice!)







what i'm getting from the art of happiness/ things i'm happy (hee) to share in my experience with it:

• to look at my motivation for what i do.  any of it.  all of my doings.  if my motivation is pure and in the heart of kindness, and not harm, to myself and others, it is all good and i can go forth.  
• that my inherent nature as a human is happiness.  i went digging to check this out, after reading his declaration of this over and over in the first couple chapters.  i actually wasn't sure i agreed until i really felt into my deepest stillest point.  i'd never pondered this insight before.  i am finding that i agree.  drum roll............................my true nature is happy.  
• as is yours i bet.
• tenzin is one cool name.  is it pronounced like it looks?
• to look at my relationships, and look at what their foundations are all about.  what are they made of?  to be simple here, i have applied this to my relationship with this blog.  the foundation of this blog is made of:  joy, truth,  reflection, love, and sharing.  that was really helpful to me, to go and look and see what i stand on, sit on,  when i come here to write and expose my thoughts and photos.  if it were built of other materials, ones that i discovered not to be so helpful for me in my quest for happiness, i'd just have to rebuild.  
• what makes people happy, when you break it all down to the basics,  is being kind loving and compassionate.  to themselves.  and others.
• mental hygiene.  i have not really heard these two words together before, or if i did, i didn't take it in.  i'm now finding them so interesting put together.  i find that doing some of the practices in the book on training the mind out of its habitual negative thought patterns, feels exactly like these two words together.   it feels clean.  i feel like i am beginning to feel what a clean mind can feel like.  a worked~mind.  working it.  
• i first saw the book at the library a few weeks ago.  i don't remember where it was, or why i picked it up.  i usually go to the new book shelf area and peruse all the titles for a while.  very fun thing to do.  fiction.  nonfiction.  all of it.  more fun even than at the bookstore for some reason. but this is not a new book.  sometimes there is a table set out near there with somebody's picks on them.  maybe it was on that table.  often i bring a dozen or so books home and don't look at any of them.  or, often i look at one or two of the dozen books  for 5 minutes total in the three weeks i have them checked out.  rarely do i read one front to back.  it's weird i know, but it's just what i've noticed, and i keep doing it, cuz it's not hurting anybody right?  i hope not.  if someone wants a book i have out, they can put a hold on it.  well, whatever was happening in my stars, had me pick up this book at the library, check it out, then pick it up over and over at home for three weeks.  and then, i went to renew it.  someone had a hold on it.  ha.  i returned it on tuesday.  i thought i would just wait till it came back in and check it back out.  but being without it for 10 minutes, as i drove away and thought about going home, i just felt a big no.  a big, if at all possible,  i really really want that book with me tonight.  i had 80 more pages left.  it is so juicy.  i was just getting to the part on ways to look at anger and hatred, and anxiety and fear and worry.  i drove 4 blocks,  told the kids to wait in the car for a sec, and ran into the trident, knowing they'd have the book.  they did, used, and in perfect condition.  all shiny and sweet, so nice to see the photo on the jacket in that way, compared to the dinginess of the one i'd been staring at from the library.  the kids were eagerly waiting to hear if i found it when i got back to the car.  so cute of them to care.  then we all ate some cookie from the bakery on the drive home.  celebration of the small kind.  loved that.  
• our truest natures are rooted in happiness.  that doesn't mean we will always feel happy, but it does mean, that it can be the baseline we return to again and again.  that is so radical for me to consider, i can't even say.  it fills me with something like hope, but not exactly.   it's more like giddiness.  IMPOSSIBLE!  over the years, i somehow came to this place, from experiencing my own, and seeing others', suffering, so much of the time, i came to this place of thinking sadness is just my baseline.  and that happiness was like an orgasm......fleeting, lucky if i get one a day.  one a week even.  or even less if i'm telling the whole truth.  this book has flipped that thought/belief upside down and inside out.  my chest feels like butterfly wings are flapping out from it as i think about this.  the baseline of happiness.
• the quote i chose to share last week, is still one i stand by as my favorite, if i have to pick one from the book.  the key to all this, is practice.  the master key.   to the many doors of happiness.  (i am being corny, huh?)   that is almost depressing to me, even though it is one of my favorite things to take away from the book.   the butterfly wings retract a little as i write about this practice piece.  retract completely actually.  but that's ok.  i just have resistance to work sometimes.  nbd.  mental hygiene practices will stop me from pouting on that.  the cool thing though, is that in reading his, the dalai lama's,  accounts and examples of the practices to do for different negative mind patterns, i am inspired and humbled by the brilliance of them.  the way they cut through to what's really going on.  potentially having the power to bypass the need to get cathartic all the time with my processing and healing.  yet without brushing anything under the rug.  that's why i say brilliance.  
• if i want to get cathartic, by all means, i will.  if i am made happy by processing that way sometimes, there you go.  happiness.  but it's not the only way out.  that is pretty readical for me to consider....  radical.  heh.

                                                    sweet library copy


end of book report for now.....

junk drawer and spice/knife drawer

  these drawers recently had their child proofing lock things removed from them.  by me.  this post is starting to freak me out!  the photos of fire, and the kids.  and the unlocked drawers full of DANGER....  the fire door.  what the heck????  i don't know.  i am not planning this.  it's just what's coming out.  a funny thing that david pointed out when i asked him to open these drawers upon arrival home one night, to see if he noticed anything different, my small practical joke of sorts, is that i unlocked the drawers with the potentially dangerous items in them, yet left the drawers with the napkins and saran wrap and baggies, and then the pots and pans cabinet, locked and child proofed.  hahahaha.  no idea.  weird mommy brain actions.

love.   well, that was fun to write.  phew.  maybe i still have it in me.  we'll see if it comes again......

thanks.

where are the doors?

i cannot figure out how to be here!!!!

one minute i am writing one thing and the next i'm writing something that feels contradictory.  then i can't seem to feel like posting anything.   i kind of want it to all go away.  this blog world of mine.  just my own.  not any of yours.  but then i keep being reminded of the great connections i have made through l & m.  just yesterday i got a package of cds from old blog friend farmama.  i am one lucky girl with lots of new music now.  thank you sara.  how nice it is the perks of blogging.  what is my deal people?  what is my freaking deal with blogging lately?  why am i weirding out?

answer:

it's a process.  i am in some sort of deepening process.  some sort-of reclaiming my space.  my self.

that is cool.  sometimes deepenings throw everything up in the air for some powerful reevaluations.



this envelope i pulled out of our junk drawer the other day.  it is perfect for how i feel right now.  i've got this MASTER key but i don't know where the fucking doors are!


max captured me reading recently.  i like this photo...





love.  deepening.  that's what's going on.  takin my time.

real

not feeling it.  still not feeling it.  smiling as i write that.  so that's good.  in accepting the lack of inspiration for my writing, i'm able to feel happiness.

so, a little report, i guess of small tiny things that i am feeling/noticing.

• mirrors.  keep looking till you get to where it's real. 
• just keep looking.  switch mirrors if you have to!   it's all a mirror.  i think?  
• yesterday, i had strong pms.  because of this book's, the art of happiness, with the dalai lama, perhaps, ideas in my mind, i noticed that it kept being particularly funny, the reactions i was having to the people in my day.  i didn't stop having them, but at the same time as feeling infuriated by someone's seemingly idiotic request or statement, i felt my fury to be hilarious.  i would say that is a rocking way to pms.  i don't know if i've ever pms'd quite like that.  it was almost fun.  can you feel what i mean?  hilarious fury.  
• here is a small excerpt from the book that i like:   ~no matter what activity or practice we are pursuing, there isn't anything that isn't made easier through constant familiarity and training.  through training we can change, we can transform ourselves.  .....p. 43.     i looked for a while to find a quote that just oozed power to share here.  it was hard to do.  the  book is oozing richness for me, but taking a quote from it, isn't having the same effect.  but there you go.  there's an attempt. 

springing

openness.

i can't find a way to write anything that i am not instantly fearing will be judged.  i haven't felt this way in so long.  so long i can't remember.  i can't even post a photo right now without this large fear about how it will be interpreted.  what.  the.  fuck.

the goal is to open.  but i can't force it.  at least i don't want to.

but it's my practice.  opening.  and i'm at a point in my practice where i can't open on up here so easily.

being patient is all i can do i guess.  feels like something might be changing.  it's hard not wonder if i'll ever get that urge again to write out what's in my head/body and share it.  i've kind-of been forcing it for a while now.  my bet is that i will, though.  i mean, i've been doing this for so long.  and i've gotten so much joy out of it for so long.  but i'm not so much anymore.  probably just need a break.  maybe a long one.  i have no idea.  in combination with that fear stuff, i also though, have not been feeling like saying much at all.  and i guess when i do get the desire, i get kind-of weird and just don't feel it anymore.  not feelin it basically.  weird weird weird.  but it's okay.  i have a little plan.  it's called read.   i don't want to go nuts without my normal routine of all this.  gotta figure out what to do instead.

love.

well, I'm gonna allow you all to judge the hell out of these two photos, and these words.  but i am gonna try really hard not to fear the judgement.  ha!

practical

eliphante.  and again.

i just randomly discovered that place from this library book i checked out.  i am so inspired by many of the homes in it, but something about eliphante made me high.  makes me want to go scrap together some rolls of wire and some cement and get busy.

here's my girl.



my love bucket.  she rocked it out as dopey dwarf!  her confidence in performing for an audience is so much greater than last year.  she was awesome last year too, but this year, i could tell she had some fun.  relaxed fun.  after the play, on the way home, she told me that was the best day ever.  and then at home, she said, 'you know, i could do that play all over again right now.  i just need 25 more people.'  mmmmm.  she was feeling that great feeling people feel after doing a big thing.  along with a big ole sugar buzz from the after play party.   breaking my heart with the joy and love.  joy and love totally break hearts.  which means breaking hearts is what we're after.  that certain kind of break.

yay.

some things i want to do over spring break:

• sew on my dress.
• get some photos printed, and put them in frames. switch out a few old ones with come current ones.  keep a few old ones up of course.  but we need fresh current photos on the walls.  i want that. 
• do a trip to the recycling center.  i did a little today.  but there's more.  
• make a new garden bed with the pile of cardboard i've had breaking down outside since last summer.  it drives david crazy.  i like it. i like to to drive him crazy in harmless ways.  he does the same to me.   i like it to seem as if the yard/house is in a constant state of evolution.  not all neat and perfect with a bow around it.  david likes the finished feeling thing.  
• feel into my feelings about max's schooling for next year.  he's missing out.  he didn't get to be in this play this year, because we decided to send him to a better school for him academically.  a private school for kids who aren't learning and keeping up with the rest of the class.  a school where there are 4 kids in a class.  4 kids 1 teacher.  he could actually thrive in a one on one situation.  but 4 to 1 is cool.  but another way my heart broke coming home after the play last week, was in feeling how max lost out on that opportunity.  that really hurt my heart.  and max and i both got pretty sick the next day.  makes me wonder.  how can i give him the best of everything?  howhowhow?  it feels like it's killing me sometimes.  i feel like focusing on the bright side of how things are going for him is my way.  that's what's gonna help me keep my balance while feeling into what is best for him for next year.  yeah.  feeling it.  fuck.  makes me crazy how hard it is.  
• read.  read.  read.
• cook?  whatever.  i couldn't care less right now about cooking.  
• watch lots of tv.   do some serious lounging.  we need to lounge.  
• play.  i have a friend to visit with. an old lovely girlfriend.  she's back in colorado now.  we almost hung out saturday but max was sick and then i turned out to be.  
• make leonard a new pouch.  improve design.
• play some more with another friend.  she suggested the kids hang out and care for leonard, and watch us sip tequila.   sounds nice!
• play a few practical jokes on david.  that sounds good.  and on the kids too.  googling practical jokes.  it's like thrifting.  not so easy to find slew of treasures all together.  geez!  
• take a break from posting posts.  ha.  i thought about no computer at all, but that isn't feeling so fun.  but i would like a break from my own blog.  mmmmmm.

if you know of any awesome practical jokes, please tell me.  i'm in the mood to make some laughing happen.   why do they call them practical?