On this pale Sunday afternoon…

Pink and Bushmills and yes, garlic in my chili please…

Momma’s hot glue gun and broken (now fixed) Halloween decorations…

Kitty ghosts chasing me through half-asleep dreams…

October time.
November time.
December time.

Already waiting for Spring…

 

~Our beloved Hooter, may she rest in peace. 10.09.09~

“Because after a while that’s just what you do…”

But how long is “after a while”?

 

I keep getting caught up in “why”

which I’ve finally realized is a stalling tactic for just doing…

but I look around in the dark

and I can’t see the red line

and I don’t know which way to go

or what to do

I can’t even find my voice to sing a sad song anymore….

and I find myself smiling wistfully when my little girl spins her stars…

 

“Try doing something different”, he says….

and I know he’s right

and I thought I was

but maybe doing this all by myself

just isn’t going to ever make a big enough difference

so that I can be

the lady who paints dreams and sing songs and who never runs out of hugs…

 

I want others to look at me and see their own light.

I want to show them their stars.

but I can’t do any of that from down here…

and I’m afraid that if I take a step in the dark I’ll just fall down deeper.

 

If I’m so smart

and I can see so much

why do I let myself live this way?

#1 Sign That You’re Becoming Addicted to “The Food Network Channel”

#1. You’ve developed a crush on Chef Bobby Flay.

#2. You start pondering how people cooked before Ziploc bags were invented…

My Favorite Things

I’ve been being mindful of my thoughts lately.  Trying to think more positively and such…(new therapist’s suggestion).  Sometimes I’ll find myself dwelling on what I’m missing rather than what I have.  When I catch myself doing this I think of the things I’m thankful for and will even make the occasional list to remind myself.

Other times I find myself dwelling on past events , some of which aren’t all that far in the past just yet (today it happened in the grocery store of all places), and I get to feeling really down.  When that happens I do something different.  I think about my favorite things…which is a bit different than just things to be thankful for.

And for some reason, it seems less revealing to share my favorite things than it does to reveal the things that I’m thankful for.  Weirdness, I know – but here are a few of my favorite things:

• Brightly coloured collections, like looking at pottery or paintchips or brightly coloured vases (scrapbook paper is wonderful that way too…).
• Playing “bike horn” in echoey places with my little girl (this usually occurs in public bathrooms (yes, that was us (hehe))).
• Good wine (I collect the corks too).
• The smell of harness leather (or anything equine).
• Clothespins (especially ones with faces like alligators drawn on them) and the things you hang up with them like: freshly laundred sheets or paintings strung across a window (okay, I might be the only person that does that).
• Kittens and most all baby animals.
• Argentine Tango.
• Chasing dew drops (literal and figurative).
• Seeing beautiful skies.
• Walking on beaches.
• Just “being” with friends who get how to “be”.
• Singing “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral” to my little girl every night.

And yes…I love brown paper packages tied up with strings (the best things come that way you know).

From Elephants and Mechanical Engineering to Tango

talks on combining tango and salsa leads to:
universal oneness
center
dancing
i love african music
(did you know that latin rythyms originated out of africa?)
youtube
vistas
nature’s song
elephants
how fast do they go?
do they run?
really?
who knew?
reading mechanical digests
thinking about that chapter in science class that covered the workings of a diesel engine
remembers when diesel was cheaper than unleaded
remembers when unleaded was under a buck a gallon
thinks that with the price of hay being what it is it still might be cheaper to drive
which doesn’t really make me miss my horses any less
but there’s a bleu on on the table…
and tango doesn’t have to include the brass band
especially as the night goes on

Places you are…

there was so much music
and laughter
and tears

there was so much love
or so it seemed as if
but i’m not so certain anymore

there was quiet and stillness and offerings
and large white elephants in the rooms
and beautiful white sandy beaches
and small star-shaped flowers
in my hair

there was music
so much music
but the notes are all fading now
and turning sour

i don’t want to hear the notes fall
i’d rather just forget
but if i have to remember
i only want to remember

the music

Here Again

I don’t get it…
How I can just be walking along…
And then all of a sudden I’m here again…
Sitting at the bottom…
I mean, sure…
I get all the stress that I’m under…
But it’s no different from yesterday…
Perhaps it’s just because it’s another day on top of another…
And I still can’t see the end.
So, I remember a touch and a scent…
And I search for the red thread.
It’s surely going to have a balloon on the end of it…
Maybe even a bright yellow one.

Today I pray…

• That my husband finds work soon.
• That we make the right decision on where to accept said employment.
• That we don’t make the decision to not move just because I’m afraid but take all things into consideration.
• That we find a way to clearly communicate about this without arguing.
• That it becomes clear to me if now is the time to go back to school (it seems as if the Universe is against it but then it may just be making me prove my intent).
• That the insurance for whatever job he gets kicks in quickly so that I can the needed surgery on my ankle.

It’s a small town that they want us to move to.  About 3,500 people in the town itself and 5,000 in the whole county.  It’s the third largest county in Oregon.  It’s a three hour drive to ANYWHERE from there.  There’s no tango but more importantly, there’s no massage school.  Sure, the money would be great – I wouldn’t have to work; I’d have time to paint again and maybe write a book or two (still working on those ideas) but then it’s not like our marriage has been stellar lately and just four weeks ago the agreement was for me to go back to school so that I’d be better able to support myself when we separated.  This seems to really circumvent that whole series of events, let alone I’d be in a pretty isolated area.  I’m not quite the cowgirl I used to be but the idea of having a horse or two again is tempting.  It’d be such a change though.  Such a drastic change.  I don’t handle drastic changes all that well (even if I do have a love for the dramatic).

He might be getting a job offer up in the BIG CITY again.  It’d be back to that darn commute though.  It takes up so much of his day that there’s precious little left for us and what is left goes to our daughter.  I’m not opposed to us staying married if things continue to improve (things have strangely improved since we agreed to separate) but I don’t see where spending four hours on the road is going to help that.  Maybe the pay increase would be enough that we could move further north IF we could get the house sold (we are in a declining market as most of the country is) or maybe we could wait until next year, which would allow for my schooling to get completed.  I’ve got to get it started first though…

*sighs*

We’ve managed a way to make the coming mortgage payment.  That’s a relief.

I’m still playing the whole daycare arrangement by ear.
Thankfully my boss is keeping my job for me at this point.

Today I did a less than stellar job handling all of this when it came up as I was trying to dash out the door to work.  I’ve since apologized…

I really need to get some needed ’stress relief’ attention.  Dancing on my aching ankle isn’t cutting it anymore.  I’ll add that to my prayer request above.

I know it will all be okay in the end.

It’s always okay in the end.

I’m ‘Walkin’ in Memphis’….

…or maybe it’s just my shoes that are. (At least that’s where FedEx says they are (not that I’m incessantly checking the tracking number or anything like that (‘coz only people with ‘issues’ do things like that (right? (hehehe!))))

They’d better not be though.  They’re supposed to be on a truck, on their way to me.

“I want, I want, I want…….”

Oh, and KT….they’re red.  *big grins*

Afternote:  Fixed the vid.  Did ya’ll know I had a thing for Elvis?  I was born just four days after he passed away…  Of course, you can beat the original…it just won’t let me embed it here.

Gravity (or something like it)

So, I’m standing naked sideways in front of the mirror practicing my pelvic pilates tilts like my rolfer suggested (it is helping my lower back in amazing ways).  I’m back-lit from the light coming through the doorway so I could see my whole silhouette.  I used to really enjoy looking at myself from this angle.  Not having much of a waist this was the one angle where you could see my curves (I do have a nice ample rear-end for a girl of European descent).  I’m not a tiny person or even a thin person…it’s just not in my body’s makeup to be thin.  Never has been, never will be (though if I can jinx myself by saying this here I don’t really mind).  Goddess comes in all shapes and sized though right?  So, I’m beautiful even if the fashion industry doesn’t think so.

Anyways, here I am working on my pelvic muscles and I noticed something.  There’s an extra lump at the base of my rear-end.  There’s only supposed to be one lump there, my rear, and now there’s another!?!  When did this happen!?!

Maybe it’s the tango dancing.  It’s brought my rear back up one inch of the two it dropped during my pregnancy.  Maybe this is just a left over inch?

*sighs*

I dunno….
I’m not despairing or anything…
It’s just another reminder that I’m thirty I suppose…

Yup, wearing polkadots today.