How babies are made

Ooo. I do want to know where babies are made. Vintage sex book? Yes please!

Fairly innocuous beginning. Talk about eggs. Good times.

We move to fertilization with an example of a flower. Lovely :)

Holy fuck! I was reading this to my child! Close your eyes, honey.

Oh dear lord. It continues. There is no end to this torture.

Ok, phew. You've redeemed yourself, somewhat, Time-Life Books.

I got into the "Express Lane" today (five items or less), basket in hand on the floor, slowly nudged forward with my foot, enjoying the scenery, happily looking forward to sharing this book with all y'all, when I saw a woman with a fake baby. It was one of those crazy reborn dolls where they're supposed to look lifelike, and then people treat them like they're real. The woman is standing beside the stroller, slowly stroking the hand of the doll, discussing the difficulty she has in finding appropriately-sized clothing, and how she came up with the doll's name. The baby was ugly. This cannot be overstated.

The only time I see people with these dolls is in thrift stores. While in line, I tried to figure out why this is, and decided that thrift stores are the hub for all crazy people (including me), and thus cannot help but attract women with fake babies, showing off said babies to the other crazy people. I began to feel more uncertain of my own identity...

All is well :)

I never want to let go.

The most difficult things I have had to do in my life have been to see people as they really are, not what I imagine them to be, but as they really are. And this process usually ends in tears, tears of regret and grief, and then the ultimate work of figuring how to move on.

A few years ago, I had to do this over and over again, and it almost killed me. And I never wanted to do it again. I never wanted to be disappointed again, I guess. But then, this year (oh God), I've had to do it again. I've had to see the people I love for who they really are, and figure out whether or not I'm going to accept them, or whether I'm going to move on (fuuuuuuuck).

The thing is (and this is the most difficult thing), I don't have a lot of relationships that I've had for over a decade. And that makes me want to cling to the ones I have left, to forgive and forget, to make it work when I'm pretty sure it won't. Because I don't want to go on in my life and leave everything behind. I don't want to leave my younger years behind me. I don't want that part of my life to disappear; I don't want that part of me to disappear. And I'm willing to compromise big-time to salvage parts of my life that have all but disappeared. I don't want to lose everyone, because it makes me feel like I'll lose myself in the process.

Sad day.

What I want :)

To know me is to know I love cake :)

So in an effort to evidence my desire to want more, here is what I've come up with. While I understand that these things may not all occur, I still want them to. So this is what I wrote the day I decided to start wanting things.

I want a house, with a kitchen, a kitchen window and counter space
I want to write a book, a whole book, and then another, and then another
I want sons who climb trees and get into trouble - I don't want a television
I want to learn Spanish
I want to go to Slovenia - I want to live in Slovenia, learn the language, write my book
I want to tell my mother how she hurt me, and let her know that I forgive her
I want to hike the John Muir trail
I want to do a headstand and the splits
I want to take a Northern California thrifting tour
I want to see Lori McKenna with Amy for my birthday
I want to go to the annual San Francisco library book sale
I want to visit my friends in Canada, and in Kansas, and in Switzerland
I want to go to an art conference in New Mexico
I want to go to Vista Academy to see my tile

Another day, I will explain all of these, but not today. Peace out.

Want is a terrible thing.

I wasn't much of a Barbie girl...my poor mother laments this

“[S]he believed that the Buddhists were right – that if you want, you will suffer; if you love, you will grieve.”

-Anne Lamott, Crooked Little Heart

Last week, in between watching the Olympics, reading Jane Austen, and hangin' with the dogs, I thought about some stuff. I generally try not to think too much, since I'm neurotic and thinking too much all the time anyway, but sometimes it's necessary to sit in silence and work to untangle some things in your brain. I probably have done a lot of thinking this summer, since I had no time to think the previous year. Perhaps the thoughts just backed up in my brain, and had to be processed one by one, like items on a conveyer belt coming out my ears.

When I was a kid, I didn't want things. I just didn't. I learned at an early age that wanting was futile, that it only brought pain, and that it was just easier to avoid it entirely. But when things started to happen that were outside of my control - I fell in love, and didn't know what to do about it - I was faced with the question, "How does a person want and not want, love and avoid, all at the same time?" After all those years of not-wanting, the feeling of want became unbearable, so uncomfortable, and I got stuck between the two, not being able to choose either one.

So I've decided to want things, and unfortunately (oh boy), wanting means suffering. Wanting inevitably means not having, not getting. And at some point, I might get the things that I want, the big things, or maybe I'll get different things, things that are better for me than the things I want (thank you, Mick Jagger). But I'm tired of believing that I don't deserve the things that other people have, that for whatever reason I deserve less because I am less.

Oh geez, sometimes I sound like a makeup commercial.

Saving the World

I am super frustrated today by people unwilling to budge a little to admit a bit of responsibility and do something to solve a small problem.

It is my belief that I am an unexceptional (though awesome) human being, and that everyone cares about other people and systemic functioning as much as I do. But time and again, I am proven wrong. Should I trust people selling me their used car? Probably not entirely. Should I assume that other people want to help as much as I do? Probably not. Perhaps I should pay a little less attention to global problems and a little more attention to my own.

I didn't become this way on accident. I was raised to depreciate my own health in the interest of the well-being of others, and this seems to be an issue I'm still working through. Now, my occupation is evidence that I care a lot about other people, and it offers me opportunities to continually manage boundaries, but it is also evidence that my "helping others before myself" attitude is not easily ignored - it's something I deal with regularly, and something I often have to keep in-check.

Call me a fascist commie, but I think that we, as human beings, need to pay attention to one another a little more, and ourselves a little less. We need to think about how our actions affect others a little more, and our smart phones a little less.

The truth hurts.

1974 Vintage (Tattered) Holly Hobbie Doll

So I'm listening to Taylor Swift on repeat. It's a beautiful thing. I don't know why I get hooked on stuff, but she is definitely my current fave. I'm also hooked on having lots of thinking time. 108 degrees will do that to a person. Don't you wish that thinking actually helped a person? That somehow we could think our way out of problems? But no. It doesn't work that way. We have to talk, communicate with others. We have to be in relationships with other people, and that's where it gets tricky.

Yesterday, I received a lovely email from a relative telling me what a terrible person/daughter I am, etc, etc. Now, unless you begin to fret, I'll let you in on a secret: I've received at least a hundred of these things in my lifetime, and do not intend to have a freak-out on account of other people's misplaced anxiety. That being said, 100 of these nasty things can make a girl tired, and in 108 degrees, just done. So, even though I usually throw them away and move on with my day, this one stuck with me, as they tend to do every so often. And in a rare moment of clarity and temperance, I responded.

Nasty emails should not always be responded to. I find that filtering my email (along with various other accounts), allows me to completely avoid the nastiness that other people like to send my way. But sometimes the truth is necessary, and needs to be said. And you know what? Oftentimes the truth hurts, because the truth often just sucks. And that's just the truth.

But use with discretion, like alcohol.

Belt buckles - Booyah.

Mim Di N (what does that even mean?!) belt buckle

This afternoon, my nurse practitioner, who is in charge of my diabetic care (obviously second in command), told me that something has happened to me that is so interesting, she is going to bring it up in her next case conference! How cool is that?! She said that one of the doctors at the practice is a diabetes nerd. I said, "I'm a psychopath nerd". She laughed. She got it. We had a moment of shared understanding. It's weird to have to be in school so long just to do what I want to do, the thing that my soul knows how to do.

Solid Brass-Made in Israel.

I made a thrift stop on the way home and have already listed everything I bought! How awesome is that? I was so productive today. I cleaned the yard for my party. I had help. We were amazing. Me and my tall friend made that yard our bitch. I was so proud, I had to keep going outside to look at it. There was so much dust, I kept blowing my snot all over the place. Disgusting. I was sneezing like a mofo.

Just to emphasize the awesomeness of this feat, I did not, as a rule, do yardwork until about a year ago when I found that it was cathartic. So me, doing yardwork, and getting injured (I got a palm thorn stuck in my hand) was some kind of proof to the world (and my parents, who am I kidding) that I'm not a loser. I'm a grown-up who does yardwork.

Booyah.

A challenging task

 

I am not feeling so great about myself right now. I feel like people are judging me for having a masters degree and not having a solid plan for my life. And these aren't imaginary people - these are people I love! So I'm sitting here trying to convince myself that somehow it's more important to be myself than it is to be who other people expect me to be, even when those people are the people I love most in the world. That's a challenging task.

In school, I had a teacher who scared me, and no matter how much time I spent with this person, I never felt truly accepted. I felt small, and insignificant; not enough. As time went by, I realized that even though I respected this person more than I respected myself, I had to let go of the need to be accepted by them. In order to maintain my own sanity, I had to throw away the idea that my identity somehow hinged on their perception of me, even though that perception was super important to how I saw myself as a person and professional.

So now to be faced with that same dilemma in any form is only a stiff reminder of how important it is to love myself first. I will crumble if I allow an imagined perception of someone else's judgement to determine who I am, even though my faith tells me that other people are more important than me.

Ideals vs. reality

Today was not a good day for me personally, but it was a pretty good thrifting day. I spent less, which is always great. I didn't take care of myself as well as I should, though. I'm losing steam, and making unwise decisions, or maybe I'm just being thrown complex problems. Who knows?

The dog and I are not a good fit. We're just not. But I'm caught between the ideal of never going back on an agreement, and the reality of a dog who needs a different structure to thrive.

Can someone bring me some ice cream? I think that ice cream would make me feel better.

Love one another.

 

Be the kind of person who is never silent about evil.

Me.

Discerning the truth is a difficult thing. Religion often gets in the way, makes us hate eachother instead of loving one another. We use religion to hurt people, instead of help them. We use religion to do harm instead of good. We use religion to avoid people instead of embrace them.

Hate is evil. When you wish harm on another person, for any reason, you perpetrate evil. When you silence another person, you perpetrate evil.

When something goes horribly, horribly wrong, it did not happen overnight. There were signs. People saw them. Some people chose to be silent. Others were silencers.

And we are all complicit.

My pending memoir :)

Retreats are awesome! Every once in a while, I should find a place and just go. Of course, this time, I'm working the entire time and I'm physically and mentally exhausted, but someday, I will not be a student, and maybe I can write a novel or my ever-pending memoir. Imagine the possibilities! Blue sky outside the window, maybe a beach, or some other wonderful view. It's lovely to be with someone you love too. It makes the whole thing enjoyable, even if it's work.

Also, the television show that I'm newly hooked on at this particular moment-watching it at the end of a long day is all the sweeter after so much mind-numbing paper-writing.

A writers retreat :)

So, a friend and I have decided to create a DIY writers retreat this weekend. I have a tendency to commit a day or two to something, but then sit in my apartment the whole time and get nothing done. Well, my senior paper, my final paper of graduate school is on the line, and from my general reticence over the past couple months, I think we can all agree that some serious writing needs to be done, and it needs to be done soon.

Today was a long day. It was full by itself, but it was also the first day I'd been out of bed since being sick. My caloric intake still needs to be increased for a couple days to make up for the under-load, as it were. I'm going to take a couple days now to write, and eat, and not worry about money, or the future, or anything else. I hope it works.

Vulnerability...the true monster

Love with your whole heart, even when there is no guarantee. Be grateful; to feel vulnerable is to feel alive. And always remember, you're enough.

Those are not easy things to do, so read that list through a few times before you walk away.

I'm done hiding my crazy.

 

My new motto is just to own the crazy. "Do what you feel!" I say. There is only so much emotional health I can cram into my body. Eventually, I have to just roll with it.

I've spent the past few decades over-analyzing every thought and feeling, and I'm just done with it. So I love someone I shouldn't love. What of it? I was in love with my ex-boyfriend for ten years after we broke up, and I spent way too much of that time thinking about it. I never did anything about it. I never talked to my therapist about it. It just sat in my gut, and in the dark parts of my brain, embroiled in guilt and shame. By the time I broke down and confessed it, it made no sense to anyone because I'd never been honest about it. I'm done with living that way.

Now I'm going to be honest. I love who and what I love, and not everyone understands, but I'm done hiding. The honesty isn't always pleasant, but it's way better than holding onto secrets because I'm so afraid of what people will think, or what it means about me as a person.

Oh my goodness! Who cares what it means about me as a person?! It's just a feeling. I'm not any crazier than anyone else.

So I'm just leaving behind all of the extra crazy that comes from thinking I'm crazy, and just owning it. Everyone can think whatever they want to think. I know who I am, and I'm okay with it.