A Blue Christmas

My husband left for Mexico last night. His mother is sick and they are very worried about her so he went. He won't be back until 2 days after Christmas and it is all very unexpected and I feel strange to not have him here. I'll be okay, it's just taking my mind a little bit of time to adjust.

But of course, it isn't really about me, it's about her. I don't really have a good idea of how she is yet. I will hear more in the next few days. I'm hoping that they are all just being really careful and that it isn't as bad as it sounds, but I just don't know yet. Unfortunately, it sounds like it could be CHF.

Funny antecdote:

The word for Grandmother in spanish is Abuela (Ah-bway-lah). When my older daughter was small she used to call her Grandmother Umbrella (Oom-bray-lah).

Quietude!!

Well, it's so nice to be off of work and have time to just be, I have had no time for this in such a long time. I am thinking about a lot of things that I plan to share but in the meantime, I would like to leave you with a poem that I discovered.
I hope that you enjoy it!! (Hope it isn't too sappy!)

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to the silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth before anyone said so.

The cat sleeping on the ledge is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to the floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not famous at all to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to the shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole,
not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgets what it could do.

Namoi Shihab Nye
in Hugging the Jukebox

and also

"The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere other than where he is excommunicates himself."

Henry David Thoreau

Blah blah blah di blah

Food

I used to love to cook. But with a full-time job and 2 little kids, it got to be too much of a pain. First of all, I worked in the evening and I had to get supper ready before I went to work....no mean feat, I assure you. Second, 'gourmet cooking' involves lots of fresh ingredients and it's hard to go to the grocery store all the time when you are working. Thirdly, my kids turn up their noses at things that are too exotic.

So, I became very uninspired and I threw together whatever was easiest. My family really didn't care but there were lots of nights that I brought what I had made to work and couldn't choke it down.

I'm not working right now and have been trying to find things to do with myself and I have rediscovered cooking. Since I have been off, I finally made Tamales. I've only been saying that I was going to learn to make them for about 7 years now! Tamales take an entire day to make. Or two mornings if you want to cook the meat one day and assemble them the next. They turned out to be pretty good for a gringo or a garbacha as my husband calls me, but next time I need to flavor the masa harina a little bit better...definitely needed salt!

I also finally managed to make pozole and have it turn out good. I've tried pozole lots of times and didn't have a good recipe so it didn't turn out right. It's hard to learn to cook things that use ingredients and cooking methods that you are not familiar with. So, as well as renewing my hobby of cooking, I have been traveling via my senses.

I visited India last week! I made chicken tandori! And it turned out pretty good! I couldn't put cardamon in it because it was $12 for a little bottle, but you know what? I may spring for it someday (or not)! I love Indian spices!

I also made a trip to Italy! I made steak brachiolli (please forgive my spelling errors, I don't feel like running and looking up the spelling.) And I made arborio rice to go with it. I told my husband that when the guys at work talk about what they had for supper that night, he could tell them that he had Steak Brachiolli, Arborio Milanese and a salad of crisp greens in a tangy vinaigrette dressing. He said that if he told them that he would never hear the end of it. I guess its one of those Real Men don't eat Quiche things or something.

I have also taken several nice trips to the French countryside and this week we are going to New Orleans to eat some Jambalaya. Anyone who wants to come over and eat...let me know. Give me a little bit of advance notice if you don't mind though.

Johnny Cash

EOTR often talks about Johnny Cash on her blog. I have never been a country music fan. I hate to say this about myself but I have been very close-minded about it. When I was younger, I just didn't think it was very cool! But since EOTR, whose opinion I respect, recommends him so highly, I've finally started listening. And I watched I Walk the Line the other night as well. And I have become transfixed! Not just with him, but with that entire era. I sat and watched videos last night. Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Jerry Lee Louis, Elvis and Patsy Cline. What have I been missing out on all of these years because of my small mind?

Why do I like them? Because were authentic I suppose. There's nothing that I can add to that, you either understand what I mean or you don't.

If you like this genre there is someone I would like to recommend. Her name is Maria Muldaur and the 2 cds that I would recommend are Waitress in a Doughnut Shop and Louisiana Love Song. There are not many like her. She's been around since the late 60's, and she has never gone commercial, that's why you may not have heard of her.

Also, while I am mentioning this I will also say that because of X-dell...I love Prairie Home Companion as well. I was also close-minded about that. I didn't really know what it was, I just didn't like the way it sounded. Silly huh!!! Listen to it sometime if you haven't. There is nothing else like it and it will make you laugh. But always with, never at. How rare is that? If you turn it on and it sounds weird at first, just keep listening. You'll get it!

Christmas

I don't care what anyone says about Christmas. I love buying my kids presents. I don't care if anyone thinks I'm shallow! I try to be careful about what I buy though, I want it to be useful. I'm almost done shopping, but I still have to wrap! Yuck! I hate wrapping presents!

Bellydance

I've decided, I don't think I will ever perform bellydance. Why? I don't like people to look at me. Why learn bellydance only to not ever let anyone see you dance. It doesn't make much sense, does it? And I really don't care. I just want to know how.

This was sort of fun!! I couldn't think of a post topic so I just blathered for awhile. I've sort of had writers block or something so this got me going again. Hope you all are well. I may do this again! (I thought of doing this after I read BBC's blog!!)

INFP

Sorry I haven't been around for awhile. I've been.....doing absolutely nothing, just sort of fretting about what I am going to do with myself now. Frankly, I hate to say it but I've been a little self-obsessed, I really need to quit. Trying to figure things out and is like beating your head against a wall....the future is unknown we just have to make a choice, don't we?

Last night, I went with a woman to a sign language interpreter class so that I could get some sort of idea of what was involved with that. They all had to bring an object in and describe it to the class and the class had to guess what it was. One woman made a triangle shape and the teacher told her that she had actually made the sign for Vagina.

I talked to the teacher after the class and she said that roughly 1 out of 3 people can pick up sign language well enough to be interpreters and that graduating from the program was no guarantee that you would actually be able to be one. She said that she has seen people who wanted it very badly and just couldn't get it. She said that she has also seen people who seemed to just....have it inside of them and it just burst out.

I don't know how I know this but I know that I am one of the second, I just have no doubt that I could do this. I'm not being arrogant, it's just something that I know. I am worried about money of course, she said that it is possible to earn money doing this, that you can earn enough to live on. So, my mind is filled with this right now....is it a good idea?

Well, according to the tests that I've been taking online it is. I am an INFP!!! Introverted, intuitive, feeling percieving....about as right-brained as you can get. So, obviously something like sign language would be something that I would be suited for. And it was also listed as one of the jobs for my type! Wierd! And I thought I was so unique! It is a fun test to take, it is called the Meyers-Brigg personality test! Look it up online, you will be amazed at how completely accurate it is.

I sorta think that this may be my calling. So why do I keep trying to talk myself out of it? I know I would like it, I know I could do it....so why do I keep trying to get out of it? I guess it's the commitment. It's so hard to make a commitment, isn't it?

I forsee that if I were going to do something like this, I would have to start becoming a lot more involved with people than I am now. I am sort of a loner. I'm not really outgoing. I can talk to people but a lot of the time I am stand-offish. In order to do something like this, I would have to force myself to be more outward focused, which I think would be good for me but its scary I suppose because it is the opposite of how I am.

Interestingly, the Myers-Briggs said that around middle age, people start changing and feeling a need to develop the undeveloped parts of themselves. People who are introverted find the need for more connection, extroverted people find the need for more self-reflection etc... Jung said that we were all on a journey to become whole, the journey continues for all of our lives and that it is a need that we have, if we don't develop the undeveloped parts of ourselves, we become stagnant and stop growing. So that's some stuff to think about.

So anyway, I know this isn't much of a post but this is what's going on with me right now. Like a soap opera, I hate it!

Grandma shoplifted!!

I grew up not knowing most of my family, I knew them by reputation only and their reputations proceeded them. So compelling were their reps that though I didn't even know them, still they had a great influence on me. They were always with me.... I had no faces to attach to them, scarcely any memories to go with them, only the stories. And the stories weren't many, but they were very intriguing! But my mom refused to talk about her family, so I didn't ask.

I didn't ask, but I'm sorry to say I snooped! I was so curious that I could not resist. Sadly, my snooping did not pay off. All I found was a few pictures. My mother had them in a box in her closet. They did not jibe at all with the stories and impressions that I had gotten. Somehow, I expected neglected, half-starved children but instead, they were beautiful and well-tended. This only added to the mystery and intrigue.

And so I continued to try to solve the puzzle of my family, the family who were distant, mythological figures to me. The stories that I heard of them, whenever I did hear a story, sounded so wonderfully romantic. I filled in the rest that I didn't know about, which was most of it, with little snippets of knowledge that I had obtained here and there. Overheard conversations, the few times that I had actually met any of them and what I remembered from those times and of course, the snooping and thus the myth was born. And like most myths, it was all true in its way.

The story starts with Grandma, who was and is a flamboyant, colorful figure! There were 4 children and my mother always said that my Grandmother, who had grown up the pampered only child of a Doctor, just wasn't ready for the responsibility. I never really understood what she meant by this, because she never told me.

But I did know that my Grandma used to like to shoplift! My mom said that she never went into a store without walking out with something extra. Once she shoplifted a poodle skirt which I think is hilarious! It was rather strange because my Grandpa, her husband, was a physician as well so obviously, she didn't need to do this. She apparently did if for the thrill. Grandma was apparently very outrageous!

She missed the flapper era by a few years. But since I'm not sure what they called the girls like her from her generation, I will call her a flapper. She smoked, drank, cussed and of course....shop-lifted and I suspect, may have been pregnant with my mom when she married my Grandpa. And now at 90, when she gets mad, she strips off her clothes which only serves to illustrate the uncompromising integrity of her character.

A lot of people on my mothers side, probably suffer from some kind of mood disorder, my Grandmother being one of them. Not much was known about this type of thing in time for it to help her, but Grandma had some money, so she was considered eccentric, rather than crazy.

My own mother has a love-hate relationship with eccentricity. But she's had to learn to live with it because I don't think that anyone in my family really has any choice but to be slightly eccentric, it's in our upbringing, or maybe even our blood.



*******************

I have gotten away from blogging recently, as you have probably noticed. While I was having problems, I spent so many weeks hunched over my keyboard that I sort of needed a break. I have been working on this post for awhile and it is coming very slow, so I decided to publish the first part, even though it is not even close to being finished.

A mixed episode

I've been reading old posts that I wrote when I first started blogging. I'm surprised to see how hard my stuff was to read. My sister says I've gotten better since then, I hope so. I found this one and decided to transfer it to this blog. I've had a few people ask me about bipolar disorder and I thought it might be helpful to them. I know it was helpful to me when I wrote it. I was very sick when I wrote it perhaps that explains why it was so disjointed. Anyway, I've edited it, so hopefully it will be easier to read.

A mixed episode

In the beginning, I seem to have an increase in goal-driven behavior. I want to do everything and it all seems feasible when in reality I could never do all of those things unless I stopped sleeping. I want to learn Spanish, I want to do artwork, I want to start working out, I want to cook...and on and on I go.

It is a good feeling a charged feeling. Your supposed to go and see a doctor when you start showing these symptoms but it's the last thing you want to do. You feel so wonderful, how could anything be wrong? And honestly, you don't want it to end.

You begin to feel like there are no limitations, no barriers to anything, everything seems possible. You can't imagine why you ever felt depressed about anything, Now you can't even fathom why you ever thought that you had limitations at all. If I could bottle this, I could make a fortune!

I smile a lot, become very friendly and outgoing and talk to people like I never met a stranger. But a lot of my conversation will become this sort of 'stream of consciousness'. I prattle on and on, my ability to censor what I say goes away, I'm often embarrassed and ashamed of what I said afterwards.

I feel expansive, almost as though some boundary between me and others and even the universe has melted. I experience it as a metaphysical merging with everything. I begin to see synchronicities everywhere and feel somehow as though I can follow them and be led to something wonderful. I have an anticipatory feeling, though I don't know what I am anticipating. I begin to feel as though I am chosen for something, like I'm meant to do something special.

As an aside, I am not entirely convinced that the spiritual aspect of all of this is a false perception. I sometimes suspect that when one ones consciousness is altered, as it is with bipolar disorder, that one is actually perceiving things on a heightened level and that the things they are perceiving might be a version of reality that we are not aware of when in a normal state of mind. I've heard other bipolar people say the same thing.

The downside to all of this, is that I can't stop. And then, there is my temper. I have had a horrible temper most of my life, starting when I was a teenager. It went away when I starting taking medicine and this is how I know I was diagnosed correctly. I used to be like a wildcat when I lost my temper. I still had enough self-control somehow not to hurt other people, the violence was turned toward myself. I felt so ashamed of myself, ashamed of my lack of ability to control myself, ashamed of how I treat people. The shame that I felt made me punish myself.

Things begin to spiral out-of-control. I expend a lot of energy trying to apply the brakes, but my brakes are almost out. I begin to ruminate on things, on my past, what someone said to me. I get very worked up about these things. I brood and worry.

My thoughts begin to feel like wasps buzzing in my mind. They begin to spin so fast that it is no longer fun. I begin to lose my ability to concentrate. I try to do something and my mind is 10, 100, 1000 paces ahead of the task that I am on. On to the next and the next and the next; in the space of 30 seconds my mind has left me in the wake of it's dust. I have a pen in my hand, it is gone as though it evaporated, I have no memory of putting it down. I go to the store and buy things that weren't on my list and forget to buy what was on my list.

Right before I finally got medicated, I locked my keys in my car twice and locked myself out of the house twice. Altogether combined, this costed me $200. It's so frustrating. I knew that I shouldn't be at work but I didn't know that I had a choice, so I would go in anyway and screw everything up. One time, my younger daughter needed her diaper changed. I asked my older daughter to get me a diaper and when I went to change her, her diaper was already changed. I had changed it and I had no memory of doing it.

When I try to think about something, it feels like it does when you look into the sun and afterwards everything you see, appears to have a hole in it. That is how my mind feels....holey. It feels like a sieve that everything runs through. As I still have to function and I still have all of my responsibilities, everything becomes overwhelming.

I become very irritable, very tired. But I can't sleep. People begin to get on my nerves. Everyone seems like they are moving too slow. When I am in traffic and I am in a hurry, I get so tense. Everything seems overwhelming. I just want my mind to stop and it won't.

I feel like I did some bad angel dust. I have all of this adrenalin coursing through my body. It is a very physical, somatic experience. I can't sleep, my stomach hurts. I stop eating. I read every chance I get. Reading stops the thoughts, it calms me.

People with loud voices or people who talk too fast irritate me. I want to leave the room, they get on my nerves so bad. They drive the wasps inside of my head into a frenzy! Everyone seems stupid and they all get on my nerves. A store with loud music playing bothers me really badly, even lots of bright colors bother me, everything makes a discordant noise in my mind.

Then begins the depression. I haven't slept much for such a long time. My become hypersensitive. I begin to be paranoid. Things people say seem to have hidden innuendos. I don't know when to trust my own perceptions. I am tired and only want to go to sleep, but I can't sleep. My dreams become disturbing and atmospheric so that when I wake up, they stay with me throughout the day, coloring everything.
I feel very hostile, and luckily I am somehow able to, for the most part keep this a inside of me. But energy I expend doing this causes me to be infinitely weary.

Thank God they have medicine to help people with this and I'm so lucky that it works for me. Apparently the medicine doesn't help everyone. When I get stressed out, I get really scared because I'm afraid that it will all happen again, but so far since beginning the medicine, I've never gone into a full-blown attack.

I know that I need a job that is not high-stress. They say that stress makes everyone sick but it kills me. Bipolar disorder is truly a destroyer of souls. I wouldn't wish it on my worse enemy. But I know that I am strong simply for the fact that I have survived it relatively intact. Bipolar disorder has the highest rate of suicide out of all the psychiatric disorders. I truly believe that I am lucky to be alive.

I'm lucky that I have my kids, my husband, my sister..I'm lucky in a lot of ways. I lost my job and I am still lucky. I've been given a new lease on life and I am so grateful. But the bogeyman never goes away entirely. I am very afraid of losing control. Maybe as time goes on I will become more confident that this won't happen. My life has been very hard but I've had gifts too and I choose to concentrate on those.

One of the things that I'm really proud of is that I have not let this make me a bitter person. There are things that I am angry about, I'm angry that the professionals that were supposed to help me didn't, until I was 40 years old. But I am grateful for the understanding that it has given me.

It's bad and it isn't. But I'm happy, not deliriously happy, but I'm working on it.

Big Butts and Immigration

I started my second session of belly dance I on Wednesday. I was a little disappointed because we aren't learning any new moves but I need to practice the ones that I have already learned so I guess I'll just have to deal with it. I've discovered that I am at a decided disadvantage in belly dance because (hope this isn't too much information!) my butt isn't big enough! We all shimmied for awhile and though my shimmy is adequate I just can't get those coins jingling, I'm just not 'juicy' enough!

We actually discussed this during the class. Though the teacher didn't outright mention my butt, I think that she noticed my wimpy coins and she said that people who are thinner don't usually have the same affect when they hip shimmy and have to concentrate on the movements that require muscle control....the undulations etc ...

For awhile I thought of just trying to eat a lot more food trying to make my butt bigger but hell....who am I fooling! If my butt isn't big after 3 kids it just probably ain't gonna happen. I guess it's undulations for me. (Honestly, I will understand perfectly if no-one wants to touch this one with a ten foot pole.)

So, I will go on with my next thought, one that you will perhaps feel more comfortable commenting on. So, here I was all high on belly dance, driving out of the parking lot when I noticed that the bumper sticker of the car in front of me which belonged to a lady from the class, said 'Immigration! Border Patrol!'.

On the surface, this is a technically neutral statement. It's not like it said 'Drown all the Mexicans in the Rio Grande'. But it has been my experience that people who are pro-Mexican rights don't tend to have these bumper stickers. So, now I am in a class with someone who probably thinks that my husband is here stealing jobs from Americans, someone who probably thinks that people like my husband are turning our country into a 3rd world country. And Blah! Blah! Blah!

And that's okay. I don't agree with her and she doesn't have to agree with me, I respect her opinion limited though it may be. (That's respectful, right?) I'm used to it, I've been married to him for 10 years. I had some idea of how things would be when I married him though I didn't forsee 911 and everything that ensued from that.

And my husband and I are not blindly 'pro-Mexican' either. We both realize that the situation can not continue in this way, that there are going to have to be changes and perhaps consequences as well.

We are for Amnesty. We feel that they need to be offered a way to become a part of the system and that penalizing them is not the answer. The United States has benefit ted from Mexican labor for years, our economies are intertwined and we have benefited more than they have from this relationship.

We need them and that is why they have been allowed to come over. This stance that we are being taken advantage of by them is only a partial truth, we have taken advantage of them as well. They would have been more than happy to have a legitimate means for coming over here and working and not having to do it illegally and we have never offered them this option.

Good thing my husband isn't overly-sensitive. He prints USA Today and he is bombarded with all of the arguments. He says that sometimes he catches people talking about him because he is Mexican but when they see that he has noticed, they smile this false, bright smile and try to pass it off. He has never been hassled by the police but of course, we have this fear that one day this will happen.

My daughters have never been treated badly. I'm not capable of being objective about my kids looks. I just don't know if people can tell that they are Mexican when they see them or not and if things might be different if it were more obvious. And I'm not trying to implie that I want to 'pass my kids off as caucasian'. I would never do that. I hate that!

I have had people ask me if they were my kids or not. One lady said, "Oh your kids are so beautiful. Are they yours?" KInda funny! And my husband is usually treated nicely. If anyone is mean to him, it is usually one of those random encounters, my husband is likable so when people know him they don't give him any trouble.

Some of the things that we deal with are just funny! Some times little kids practice their Spanish on him! They are so proud when he understands them! One time a little kid called my daughter a taco and his parents were so embarassed! Once my husband went to subway and this girl put so many jalapenos on his sandwhich that even he could hardly eat it. She thought she was 'being down', I guess!

The guys at work have a lot of fun with my husband. He has a viscous sense of humor and they like playing with him. People talk to my husband like he is a child sometimes though because he has an accent. I always wonder if this doesn't sort of batter him on a subliminal level but what can you do? They don't mean anything by it, they probably don't even realize that they are doing it.

Anyway, given our experiences, I tend to think that people aren't really as bad as they sound when you read the editorials and listen to the people who call in on talk radio. Becasue those people really scare me!

But we often have this feeling of people talking out of both sides of their mouths at us. Smiling and nodding to your face and then making a snide remark when you are not there to hear it. And really, they can think whatever they want. I haven't really spoken to too many people who are militantly anti-immigration who are really very well-informed. I would be more than happy to talk to someone who is well-informed who has opinions that are different from mine on the matter. I would be interested in knowing what they think. I haven't found this though.

It's funny, this woman (I haven't figured out which one it is yet) is probably a nice womean. She probably had no wish to offend anyone. She probably takes the truth of her convictions so for granted that she probably had no idea that it would offend anyone. Or if it did offend someone it wouldn't be anyone who she was in bellydance class with. It would be offensive to someone who is over there, who isn't the same as her on any level. Oh well. It gave me something to ponder.

Slackers and the Zen of Belly Dancing

Wisdom calls from every corner. When will you listen?

Where I grew up...girls are girls and men are men. (And the cows are nervous!) The girls all seem to ultimately become nurses. The Valedictorian of my sons graduating class, (he graduated from the same high school that I did), went to the local community college and became an RN. If you live where I live, its very difficult to believe that there is actually a nursing shortage.

Many of the people commute to Saint Louis, they have specific jobs with specific titles. Others work for local companies driving trucks, doing construction etc..
The adults around me, (besides being farmers) were accountants, an occasional lawyer, teachers and of course, nurses. Everything is all spelled out for them and it is all very practical and they seem to find it very soothing. I'm not like them. It isn't soothing to me at all, it sounds like a jail sentence to me. (Oh Jessie, I'm not talking about you!)

Since I read a lot, I was aware that there were other things that one could do that weren't so specific, which in my mind has always meant the same thing as limiting...but I had never seen anyone do any of these things. It always felt to me like these things were beautiful myths or romantic fables, they were unlikely to happen to me, they only happened to the few and fortunate.

If I had told someone where I grew up, I was going to become an archaeologist or a cultural anthropologist or anything that sounded slightly interesting...they wouldn't even have understood, not even most of the adults. Actually, they might have even laughed at me..to my face or behind my back. They didn't think that these things were possible either. Who cares what they think, right? Unfortunately, I did.

I am an imaginative person but sadly my imagination failed me in such a big way. I don't know if I'll ever fully understand how or why. But even more importantly, and this may be what I need to understand, my faith failed me. Remembering back, I know that there was no feed-back, no guidance, no examples,no-one to lead the way, ....not there. The guidance counsellors had this list of acceptable occupations and there were about 20 or 30 listed and these were what you were guided towards and that was it.

I went to college undecided about what I wanted to do. None of the list of professions that my counsellors had told me about sounded appealing and as I said, I didn't have the faith to imagine.

I loved college! My dreams woke up! I was taking lots of different classes! I was enjoying myself so much! I was lit up! I was enthusiastic! I looked forward to my days! I looked forward to my future!

And inexplicably, I ended up giving up. I was with someone who criticized me all the time and I believed him. This is no excuse however, my real enemy was inside of myself. It the demon that destroys us from within, and the one inside of me was legion and it kinda got loose and went on a murdering spree inside of me and damn near killed me.

I listened to the bastard and I got trained for a job with a specific title and with specific and limited duties just like they always told me to do. And whoa! I was respectable! What a heady feeling, no longer the wild gypsy. I was appropriate and conforming. The gypsy was banished but she trudged away muttering prophetically...."Just wait! You'll miss me one day!"

It didn't take long actually. I no longer felt enthusiastic about the future, my job was something to be tolerated until it was time to clock out and I could come home and could spend a little time being who I actually am. And there was never enough time to be who I was because who I am is pretty big! There seemed to be nothing in front of me but an eternity of sadness. I crammed time for 'my real-life' in between the lines and told myself that this was good enough. I was putting food on the table and a roof over our heads and after all....many people in this world don't even have that so how indulgent of me to complain.

I stuffed it inside and ignored my own pain and told myself that I was immature...that I wouldn't be mature until I could let go of these childish dreams. You can't just run off and join the circus when you have 2 small children! I felt that I had no real choices. Of course, there are always choices...I know that but I have kids to feed and they will have to go to college one day and I don't need a buch of loans to pay off when that day comes. Ultimately, I lied to myself and we know that that doesn't work forever.

"Most men live lives of quiet desperation." I used to love Thoreau but now he really pissed me off! I had this strange, irrational feeling that he was chiding me. I was one of those miserable people living a life of quiet desperation and he had my game and he thought I was a real coward. He would dare to judge me! (Talk about being sensitive, eh!) But I had my defense. His words were those of a slacker. He was sort of the anti-bellum version of Garth and Wayne, his generations version of the guy living in his parents basement.

But of course he was right and I knew it even then, The people who are self-actualized, who have made it to the top of the mountain, they are the ones who can see over to the other side and lead us to what is ahead. Thank god for them.

The Zen of Belly Dance!

I started taking Belly dancing lessons. I hooked up with an old friend, we have known each other since we were three. We are a lot alike but she followed her muse and I didn't. She is a belly-dance instructor and has her own studio. I have post-traumatic stress disorder.:) She is so happy! I feel like I am recovering from a long illness. I think meeting up with her was one of those synchronicity thingies. Just at the time in my life that I need to learn this lesson, there it is.

I want to be happy! I want to be deliriously happy! Don't tell me it isn't possible, I don't believe you! I want to leap out of bed with a song in my heart and go bounding out of my house to meet the world. I want to be so happy that people look at me jealously and say, "She can't possibly be for real!" I don't even care if they think that I am on drugs! At the very least, I don't want to wake up and pull the covers back over my head dreading the rest of the day before my feet even hit the floor.

When I started the Belly dance lessons, I was a complete klutz. Sometimes I was knock-kneed, sometimes I went the wrong way and practically knocked people over and now I can do a dance. A whole dance! And I can do it passably!

Do you know what? I think that it is so good for my daughters to see me doing this. To see me doing something and looking like a complete dork and continuing on with it and actually accomplishing it.

Know what else? I want my girls to see me be happy and to do what I love. Not just belly dance, but everything! I want to live my life as an example to them. I don't want them to have a mother who sold out and did the safe thing and spent her life desperately snatching little moments of joy. I don't want them to live like that and I will have to be the one who shows them that it doesn't have to be that way.

I said that I was being responsible by putting bread on the table. However, perhaps there were other ways that I was not being responsible. Ways that aren't always thought about when one hears the word responsibility, Perhaps I have been irresponsible by not living my life and raising them to think that this is okay. So, I am now working now and I am sitting at home like a lazy slacker being responsible. How's that?



The Hanged man has a different perspective, he sees the world from upside down.