movement.

it’s 9:00 pm.  the house is dark and quiet.  i have turned off the lights and shut my door.  the girls are in bed.  if i strain i can hear Jim Dale’s voice coming from their room reading them another in the series of Harry Potter on CD.

it’s spring (it feels like summer) but it’s spring and i’m ready to get moving again.  the girls and i walked a mile tonight after dinner just before dusk, but it  left me wanting a little more.

so i closed the door, put my Peter Davidson channel on Pandora and stuck my legs up the wall.  i never know where my yoga practice is going to go in the evenings.  i know there are certain series of poses i can do.  i used to wake up everyday and do sun salutations and close the evening with a relaxation series.  for awhile i followed this weekly schedule diligently.  now, i find though i just want to listen to my body and this is the way i start.  maybe it’s because my first yoga teacher always started us off with legs on the wall.  after a long day of work, rushing to feed the kids and jumping in the car to class, this was the perfect way to start, and so i still do.

and then i just let my body tell me what it wants and i just enjoy the quiet time listening and moving.  i’ve enjoyed good bouts of cardio many, many times.  it helped me lose 25 pounds last year, but my favorite thing in the world is the slow movements of a good yoga practice that put you in tune with feeling the muscles of your body working.

right now i’m putting special focus on my shoulders.  i had my first massage two weeks ago and the therapist was appalled at my upper back and shoulders.  apparently i haven’t just been carrying my tension there, it’s moved in and tried to make a permanent home.  in all the chaos that is my life, i was prepared to beg her to just let me take a nap on the warm table with the dim lights and the twinkly music, but alas, she knew there was work to be done.

now this past week i’ve been watching my shoulders like a hawk and  i’ve found at ALL points through the day they rest somewhere right beside my ears. so i’ve been doing this little twitchy movement each day, all day, as i recognize my creeping shoulders and force shrug them back down.

so they’re getting  a little special attention right now.

the last part of my practice is always the same too, savasana, oh sweet savasana.  looks so easy.  so not.  but so worth it.  in class we started by tightening every bit of our body and slowly letting it go.  have you ever tried to relax your cheeks?  let your eyes sink into the back of your head?  but it works and anyone who is doing yoga practice, please enlighten me as to how many times you’ve actually fallen asleep in this pose.  maybe it’s the fact i do it at night in the dark and i’m always tired, but it’s a common occurrence.

i wrote this whole post in my head as i worked tonight, but somehow sitting here now on the floor with the screen in front of me the beauty of the words i had then have left me. i’ve resolved to post the thoughts that are in my mind most evenings.  some nights as with this night, perhaps it will just be a diatribe about yoga.  oh well, some of you will get it.

it was a long winter this year.  in a way i fell off my path during those long months.

but i feel it coming back and each time i wonder, why has it fallen away.  this is such a wonderful part of my life.

i love my practice, but i’m missing yoga classes.  there’s so much more i want to learn.  no time to fit it into my schedule right now.  so it sits with the tai chi classes and the mountain climbing classes that line up behind it on the wish list.  let’s not talk either about the whole catalog of knowledge that could come from the kripalu or omega catalogs that have made their way to the mailbox the last couple weeks.

in the meantime i’ll just keep moving.

here

 

here is where he was standing, waiting for me to find the perfect shot.

again and again and again.

patient.

always waiting for me.  to find my way back again, to find my way across the mountains and plains, to find answers to the questions that hang there between us.

he is a patient man.

i never want to wait for anything.  impatient.

he says 58 days is not so long.

i roll my eyes.

here.

here is where he waits.

here is where i can’t stop thinking i want to be.

here is where i found bliss

in the feel of his hands stroking my hair,

in reaching out and having someone’s hand to hold,

in waking in the night assured he was there.

here.

in that one spot,

that spot where i rest my head

and know that everything is okay.

that place where my head fits into his neck

and i know i am safe.

and i know that here

is defined only as

this place,

this spot.

my safe place.

here,

this spot.

is where i can call home.

 

 

Processing

I’m still trying to take it all in.  It might be a bit before I have the words.  How wonderful it was to travel.  How amazing it was to be carefree, to rest, to relax into a slow pace.   How easy it was to be with him.  How beautiful it was there.  How much deeper things have gone.   How much I think I learned about myself and my life in just five days.  Each of these is a post in itself.  I’m sure it will be coming.

roller coaster ride.

{looking forward to some reading during flight time}

It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride this week, physically and mentally. Daily life has been busy, two of the three of us have been plagued by mysterious stomach ailments and then there is the trip, and on top still fighting off the cold.

Thursday I leave for Colorado.  It’s a trip I’ve been counting down since the day he left in December.  85 days ago.  It seemed then an unbearable amount of time to go without seeing each other.  A very depressing amount of time.  Difficult to lose someone for twenty years, find them for eleven days and then they are gone again.  But somehow we’ve made it and 48 hours from now, I will be there.

I am excited.  Beyond excited.  Excited to have this time to spend with him.  Excited to have this time for us to be alone.  Excited that I will actually have four full days without the responsibilities of work, motherhood, household.

But right now I am tired.  Tired.  Tired from the responsibilities of work, motherhood and household.  Tired from preparing myself and my home for this trip.  Tired from worrying about whether the girls will be okay, thinking what if something goes wrong with them or with myself.  And so today I have asked him, only half-jokingly, if it is okay if I just sleep curled up next to him for the first 24 hours.

The girls seem fine, quite excited actually that Grandmom (my mother) is coming to stay for five days.  My mother is quite content that everything will be fine, but I have NEVER been away from these girls.  This is the mother who agonized over the divorce and not being there to watch over on Wednesday nights and Saturdays.  So for me, there is a bit of stress over leaving them at home.  (I won’t go into the letters I’ve written them in case something should happen to me).

But again, part of this journey is about me.  About me finding myself, my happiness and part of my happiness right now lies in Colorado.  Part of my journey is about seeing where this road is leading, and some of that needs to be explored between the two of us.

So right now feels like a roller coaster.  And in two more days, I imagine it’s going to feel a bit like bliss.

And then I’ll be home and we’ll start the countdown again.

39.

 

the last year of my thirties begins today.

 

two weeks.

72 days down.  14 to go. 

 

Just Now 3.6.2011

current time: 7:58 a.m, in bed listening to the girls up already, playing Scrabble in the next room.

in my mug: did you think it would be a hot cuppa tea?  well, you are right, although there is an emptly glass of Chardonnay on the bookshelf leftover from last night.

in my belly: roasted vegetables and crusty bread from last nght, dinner for one.

in my ears: “Amber” by 311, and the sound of rain on the rooftop, ushering in Spring (i hope).

on the nightstand: ipod, a dollar bill, a scholastic book order, and a fly, guess spring is coming.

on the editor: a new blog header i’ve been working on, an  upcoming project perhaps i will see through

last watched: this movie, a random Itunes rental, but I fell in love with it.

feeling good about: 18 days until i hop a plane to Colorado.

feeling bummed about: my grandmother, suffering some medical troubles

last thing that made me laugh: listening to one of my grandmother’s stories in her living room in the afternoon.

and think: someone said last night regarding the health care issue “the problem is you see it as a right, i see it as a privilege”, is that the true nature of the problem?

singing loudly and badly.

i have no photos for this post.

be thankful.

a lot of times i lament on being alone.

sometimes it’s not such a bad thing.

right now i am sitting in a hot bath bookmarking every blog i’ve ever been interested in on my laptop.

i’m drinking a mocha frappuccino.

and i’m singing an old song very loudly and badly, with no backup music.

and no one is here to raise an eyebrow.

did i mention i had a bag of potato chips for dinner?

when you are home alone, no one cares how quirky you are.

and the kids aren’t home for another hour.

perfection.

{i have been playing a lot with words lately}

I had a bit of a meltdown last Thursday.  I had been sick and worn down.  Dotoomuchitis and bugbityouitis.  I have a problem, I want everything to be perfect.    I am a failed perfectionist.

I have tried to let go a little this past week and let myself just be.  Some days have been easier than others.  Tonight, I happened across an article in an old Yoga Journal entitled, “Making Peace With Perfection” and it was this line from the article that stood out to me:

“In Sanskrit, one of the words for perfection is purna, usually translated as fullness or wholeness”.

So now I am wondering, if I strive to define perfectionism as feeling full or whole, will that bring me closer to feeling peaceful with myself ?  If I don’t define perfection as everything being in it’s proper place, the undone sitting, whispering, failure, failure, failure to me every night will that bring me closer to feeling whole or well?

Perhaps.

Perhaps perfectionism is finding a balance between the work that needs to be done physically and the work that needs to be done mentally.  I do have enough sense to know that life should be about balance.

I don’t have enough sense to pay attention to my body before it gives me a swift kick in the ass.

In my ever ongoing  journey to balance my life I have come up with a new plan.  I am giving myself half a day Saturday and Sunday to do the need to’s.    The rest of the day is my time with no expectations to DO anything. No chores on weeknights, dinner, homework, a possible workout, and a chat with my honey is enough.

And I’ve made a pact to not go to bed later than 10:30 on a weeknight.  I’m getting better at it and mornings have been slightly more peaceful.

I’m still working on the perfectionism thing though.  And really I would like to throw the word out the window and away from my vocabulary.

Fullness and wholeness though.

That has a nice ring to it.

I think when I reach those rare moments when I feel that way I will just block my sight from everything else and sink in.  Because how often do we take the time in a blissful moment to stop and say, “this is perfection”.

Maybe that’s the answer.  Finding your bliss.

Or maybe I’ll just let go of the whole thing and just stop thinking.

That’s probably the best option of all.

hating the house moms.

**disclaimer, after I wrote this post I took a hot bath and did a 30-minute yoga practice that inspired me to write a much more positive post.  I almost considered deleting this one, but decided it was a part of me, so look for the uplifting yoga post this weekend.

 

Not really.  I’m serious, I’m not a hater.  Okay, maybe just a little bit.  It’s nothing personal, trust me.  It’s not specifically  you that I dislike.  It’s not your hair or your personality, or your habits.  It’s just that you are there and I bet you are there with the kids.  And I bet you are not trying to cram bills and laundry and housecleaning and homework and dinner planning and photography and blogposts and a fifteen minute hot bath into one night or one weekend.

And I bet you would die to get out of the house right now.  Perhaps one of your little ones has been sick for four days and you would give anything just to run away and go to the grocery store, alone.  Or maybe your thinking, she has no idea,  she gets to have adult conversations, no one screaming “mama”  four hundred times a day.  I bet she actually gets to read on her lunch hour.  AND then she gets a paycheck.  Every two weeks.

It’s been a rough week.  Again, it seems.  Every week is hard and no amount of planning or organization can defeat the frustration or the tiredness.  No one said motherhood was easy.  No one said balancing work and home life would be easy and NO ONE said  running a house and a family alone would be easy.  I love Karelyn so very much more than life itself, but if someone would have made me pause and say “wait, before you add a second child to your almost two year old, you need to know you’ll be doing this alone in about four years”,  I might have rethought my position. (if you know me at all, you’ll say “she’s just tired” and know that I would not).

I know staying at home with your kids can be tough, but right now, I cannot help but think if I just had one month to  focus on house and home, my family and my art, goodness what could I accomplish?  What would my house look like?  What would I actually be able to remember on a day to day basis versus the flying in ten directions and saying a prayer we are remembering everything.  And this is with paper calendars and multitudes of lists and appointments scheduled in my cell phone.

Today, I had to have multiple reminders and I practically forgot one important thing.  I actually DID forget to reschedule Emily’s dentist appointment, but that wasn’t the important thing, that would be almost forgetting to call home and find out which house the girls would be at this afternoon when their grandmother on their father’s side picked them up tonight.  

Then there was the fundraiser.  I had to pick up the school fundraiser.  The only notification came as a recorded message last night.  Good thing I got the message, because as the fundraiser is frozen food, if it was not picked up by between 4pm and 6pm tonight then it was to be donated.  Are you serious?  This is the forgetful woman’s nightmare.  So I had it written on my calendar, my friend at work wrote it on a post it note and paperclipped it to my bag.  Then I scheduled it on my cell phone and let it beep to remind me every five minutes between the time we closed at work and the time I pulled into the school parking lot.

I planned on working out tonight (hahahahahahahha).  I just want to go curl up under a blanket and eat chocolate chip cookies.  I hid all my dirty pots and pans in the dishwasher and they might stay there until Friday night when this work week is over.   I’m going to ignore the cat litter box and the unswept floor and the hidden dishes and the broken closet door and go climb in a hot bath for a bit.

So I’m sorry.   To the class mother who knows every child in my daughter’s class who I never even knew your daughter was my daughter’s best friend when I met you at variety show tryouts.

I’m sorry, mother who is scrapbooking every moment of her child’s upbringing and creating cute slideshows to music.

I’m sorry, mother with the ability to actually carry a camera and complete a 365 project.

I’m sorry, mother about ready to publish your first book, that you worked diligently on while the children were at school or napping.

I’m sorry, mother who is posting daily Flickr photos of her everyday life full of cups of tea, or pretty flowers arranged neatly on a table or of kids eating homemade, nutritious lunches or creating amazing crafty projects from ordinary household items.

I don’t really hate you.  I’m just tired, and cold, and bitchy and lastly I’m just jealous.

How did you end up with my life?

Sometimes the one I ended up with seems ridiculously hard.