i tell myself

things i am grateful for from the past few days

• my friend reminding me of the beauty of a life of service.    for me personally, how i related to this, is looking at how my life as an adult, is now devoted to my children, and all that driving i do that makes me feel crazy some days, is service.   it was a reframe.  a beautiful reframe.  i am grateful  to friend for helping me reframe....
• her also reminding me of how good it feels to cater to my own desires here and there too.  yeh, no biggie, she's just going to new york for a two week workshop this summer.  inspiring me she is!!  
• all the friends i've run into on the path these past few days.  random runnings into.  spring is funny that way.
• the friend i hung with thrusday night, my 'women's group' night,  and the long winding talks we have.  sharing our crazy happenings like we are just old ladies talking about the weather.  with tequila in hand.  understanding.  laughing.  being exactly as old lady friends be.  
• that i seem to be alive.  i am.  right?  i got hit on the head so hard the other day, i had an hour or so where i thought that was it.  woozy and dilated.   stupid screen vent from the top of the fridge just fell directly onto my head.  heaviest screen in the world.  but that wasn't it.  i am alive still.  so intense to think that might have been it.  
• i seem to be feeling more and more inclined to a vegetarian diet.  i made a lentil soup this weekend  that felt amazing to eat and have in my body afterwards.  indian spices!
• and then it does happen, that i feel i need a large serving of meat at some point in the month.  well, not large, but a meal of it.  i wonder if as i get older, i will want meat less.  
• the heeled shoes a friend gifted me with last week that gave me such rise, both physically and vibrationally,  as i wore them around the other day with jeans and my newly made dress.   serious stuff.
• the baby wallaby that lifts our spirits throughout the day.  speaking of service.  he seems to be living a life of service for us in a way.  i am so excited to get him a buddy in a year.  a friend who is traveling in france right now, sent me a photo of this beautiful acreage she visited, where the folks had wallabies living on the land.  i know it is very controversial to be raising australian wild life in domesticity.  and so all i can do is say my experience.  and pray when judgment day comes, i am not doomed for my part in raising this sweet animal.  it's come to the point where i feel so guarded around sharing our experience with him that i am just not sharing it on the blog.    not for now anyways.  but i can't help but to acknowledge my gratitude for this beautiful being we spend our days with now.   ( i randomly met an austrailian yesterday who had joey radar and spotted leonard on a walk in our neighborhood, his head poking out of the pouch.  his personal experience with wallabies/kangaroos, was so sad.  he said they are seen as vermin in so many parts of their native land, and hunted just to get rid of them. )   we do understand the delicacy of the issue of keeping them as pets.  we do.  and we love this guy to pieces. 
• that i make it.  it seems almost everyday, i feel at some point that i just can't go on.  it's too hard.  i'm usually just exhausted and that's where this feeling/thought comes from, but then, somehow, i go on.  i try to lay down for 10 or 20 minutes to refresh when it's really bad.  that is so cool to do.  
• my intuition
• my newly learned from the dalai lama definition of love.   ~an utter, absolute, and unqualified wish for someone's happiness regardless of whether he does something to injure us, or even whether we like him.   (from the art of happiness)
• the way my kids and i, but the girls and me especially these days, go in and out of tension, but come back to love over and over.  the forgiveness we give each other is a thing of beauty.  
• these photos from the big party.   i am a photo junkie.  yep.  i. just. love. photos.  i am not gonna get into my silly drama over the dress i wore to the bat mitzvah party.  i will say very simply, that the outfit i brought to wear was not approved of by the other women in the family.  not formal enough.   after some tears and i guess a bit of embarrassment, i went and bought a new dress.  that my mother in law so kindly paid for.  i love the new purple dress.  i am grateful to have such a lovely garment.  and such fine fun dancing shoes.  (that are not from target after all, claire.)   end of story.  (will i forget the drama if i don't go into it?  wishful thinking!)   
• the realization i had last week about how helpful it is for me to write things out.  the memories writing helps me to keep.  i am super into that.  that realization is helping me to keep going with the blog.  
• the intermediate class on bee guardianship david and i took on sunday.  i cannot stop thinking about it.  i had insomnia a long while last night, and just thought and thought on bees.  the more i learn, the more mysterious important and magical it all seems.  also, the help my mom gave us with the kids so we could go to the class.  i feel i have a whole post coming on learnings from the class.  or a half a post maybe?

things i am not grateful for

• ha!  am i allowed to do that?  or is it sacrilegious to be ungrateful for certain things?  you know, the farmer's luck story.  yeah.  i won't go there right now.  

instead of an ungratitude list, i'll ponder something that nags at me from time to time:

the difference, the fine line, between being inspired by and feeling jealous of,  the beauty joy and art i see in others' lives.   what causes one or the other, is what i am curious about.  if i had to guess, i'd say it's my own state of mind.  am i feeling open and receiving, or closed and guarded?  am i tired and looking around through a filter of fatigue?  if so, i will probably get jealous of some innocently happy person, simply because they don't look tired.  or because they look tired but at peace.  if i am rested and eyes are wide open, i know i see others' joy and art as purely inspiring.  it is good  for me to identify this all.  yup.  if anything, i can send myself to take a rest, and then go back to see if i can find inspiration somewhere, anywhere, instead of just the nagging judgmental jealousy i tend to conjure up from the depths like a big black sea monster.  i kind of feel it is important to look at this monster within.  why does she rear up and feel 'unlove' for others sometimes.  as in, NOT wanting happiness for others.  what the hell is that?  poor sea monster within.  she just wants a taste of it.  a taste of art.  and then a little joy on the side.  all with a big tall,  half~full, half~empty,  glass of beauty to gulp down.   no harm in desiring those things.  nope.  just harm in harnessing up ole upside down coyote, thinking others are jerks for the happiness they've cultivated.  i'm too smart to keep doing this.

i could spend a lifetime studying happiness.  i would be smart to do that.  and since i've declared my smartness already, i guess i'm going to!!   i was told by a friend yesterday of this book, how we choose to be happy.  may be the next one on the list.  she said she could not get into the art of happiness.  that she tried years ago and it wasn't suited to her but she couldn't remember why.  that is strange to me cuz i love it so much, but i also love this friend's recommendations so much.  she has turned me onto many booky gems since i've known her.  so, i'm very excited to read this next one.

love.  the love state of mind is the bomb!

go rest for 10 minutes if you're not feeling it.  and try again.  i tell myself.  

inspiration

i had all this inspiration last night.  maybe from wearing the dress i just finished, imperfections and all, i was feeling very into choosing the next pattern.  super inspired.  i had creating on the mind in a fresh motivated way that felt blissful.  then.  what happened?  i don't even remember what it was.  something with david.  grumpy ness......his grumps my grumps just came out of nowhere.  and zapped my creative bliss.   w a h.  why is it so easily zappable?

i was thinking about backlash last night too.  cuz of that zap crap.  well, yesterday in general i was feeling the pulls of sadness.  everything seemed to have a tint of sad to it for me yesterday.  i worked hard not to go too far into it because it felt pretty mental.  not like something important i needed to follow so as not to bottle it up.  it was just some mental weird sad thinking.  after a while i remembered this concept of backlash that a parenting advocate/coach/teacher/therapist taught me about once.  when we are feeling like we're breaking new ground within ourselves, she said,  a pattern that seems to often come along with the new growth, is the backlash experience.  it's something about the pull, the momentum, the gravity, of the older well~grooved pattern, and there's some kind of physical cause and effect like thing that goes along with growing out of that old groove.  we can grow out of it, but the amount of time we have invested in it, has made it a habit.  a well~known~to~our~(solar)system habit.  to bust out of that old orbit is a big deal.  at first, we will inevitably fall back into it.  time and time again we will.  but if we are seriously charting new territory and plowing/planting into new land, new tracks, new orbital patterns in the mind, the amount of fall back, back lash will lessen over time.  it really will.  we gain new strength!  hard work pays off.  and so i was feeling like i was having backlash yesterday and telling myself that's probably all it was that was painting sad all over the day.  i woke up this morning, and felt some relief from it.  relief.  love relief so much.  don't love the backlash really.  keeping my mind about me, and naming it for what it was, helped a lot, though.

imperfect dress report now.

looks fine from the back to me.

okay from afar, especially when i'm moving and staying in motion.

i like the neckline.
i'm not so into the airy chest space.
david says it's fine.  he asked me what my deal was.  he says, ' are you entering a fashion show i don't know about?'  ha..

i've done a bit of work around the midline, doing some very make~it~work like tucks.  i'm thinking i may do even more.  it's nbd.  i'm mostly having fun with it, that is, when i get out of the groove where i beat myself up for FUCKING up a project.  getting out of that groove is key to my ability to creatively work with the problem!!   i sewed this pattern without first taking into account that one inch larger than me in the bust would really make a difference.  what's the difference between 32 and 31, i initially thought?  i don't wear a bra really, so i'm not so clued in this.  i am so tiny people.  i wish i had more friends in town who sew.  i want to take a pattern making class someday.  if i had a friend to motivate me and do it with me, i'd do it sooner, i'm sure.  motivating the self, by the self, is hard work sometimes, huh?

on the bright side:

i love the linen.  simple joanne's fabric linen.  gonna go and get some more yards of the stuff so i can try and try again with any pattern i want.  muslin shmuslin.  the little florally waist band is some old cotton lawn from my stash that i adore.  black background with flowers.  can't go wrong there.

i've also been in cahoots with a fellow friend who is tiny like me, and talking bras.  even though i don't really like them.  a padded bra would fix this whole airy chest issue.



i used this old vintage pattern butterick 6109....




::::

well.  i wrote all that a week ago.   we've since been to baltimore and back.  i wore that dress to the bat mitzvah services at the synagogue with some tights and black dressy shoes and felt great in it!  i'm wearing it today again with jeans, and after its first washing, it fits so much better! yay!!!  what i wore to the bat mitzvah's party that night is a whole other story.  phew.  big one.  ha.  maybe i'll tell it another time.


love.

feeling that sewing mojo again.  hoping no grump attacks zap my creativity and inspiration anytime soon!  but if they do, i could just read my own blog and feel assured it's nbd.

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.