Be the change you want to see.

After thirteen years of partnership, thousands of miles together, three teacher training weekend commutes over seven years, dozens of dance events, bbq's, picnics, clothing swaps, renfaires, goodwill and grocery and recycling runs, schlepping friends and family, trips to Tahoe and Burning Man, i relinquish my car Percy to a new phase of life. Singing along to the radio and CD's at the top of my lungs, (and chair dancing too). Talking out loud about my problems, worries, and concerns as though the car could hear me and respond. There were several truly *awesome* dates with epic makeouts in the back seat, including my first date after separating from the expouse where i lost that one diamond earring...

She ws scratched and scuffed (my fault and stupid mistake) but she was mine. My first nearly new car. The first car with payments. The first car that felt truly *safe* to drive, where i wasn't chronically worried about something breaking, or running out of gas, or how can i afford to make the repairs.
Percy was SECURITY. Percy was FREEDOM. Percy helped me achieve my goals and help hundreds of students.

Best car for my thirties. What a great car she was.

Im torn between wanting to chase down the tow truck driver and get her back and an ever increasing relief that she's now someone else's task and problem. She started enough this morning to drive 10 feet over to the tow truck so hopefully she will prove useful and bring a decent donation to the Big Brothers Big Sisters which is where we decided to donate the charity credit.

Oh. Having some feels about my car that isn't my car anymore. Brb, some dust in my eye.

Not sure how to make this post coherent. Perhaps a list.

• Test results received late last night/early this morning before I went to bed. Congratulations, it's Diabetes! =(
  
• Congratulations, it's also high LDL cholesterol! (fuck.) At least Triglycerides and HDL were where they're supposed to be.
  
• Good workout today with Tal, and I told her about the blood tests. She is being strict with me, she wants me to up my gym visits to four times per week, to make SURE I do ten to 15 minutes of interval training on the treadmill Every Time I Come In, because cardio is my big challenge. We talked about Metformin and researching my situation (which is both hypothyroid/Hashimoto's and diabetes) and about seriously building my stamina and strength.
  
• as a matter of fact, one thing Tal said deserves its own bullet point. I'm not to use the elliptical anymore for my warmups, I'm to use the treadmill and do the interval work for fifteen minutes because "the elliptical is fine for people who are just starting or who are recovering. You are neither." This pleases me MIGHTILY.
  
• Wonderful to run into wrenb at the gym, we had time for a cup of coffee and a chat that I found very nourishing and therapeutic.
  
• On a related note, my brain weasels are still telling me that DIABETES=DEATH (because my dad had diabetes when he died) so I will encourage EVERYONE to share diabetes success stories if you know any. Stupid damn brain weasels. At least I know they're there, so I can deal with them.
  
• Feeling strong and warm and sore, had a wonderful workout Wednesday and today, and a serious chiseling-out massage yesterday because Danniel is back working at Massage Envy. And he's added some new strokes to his repertoire. And I gave him a double tip yesterday because that was aMAzing, and because I could. Whew, I was flying on endorphins!
  
• I've gotten some links from sarahmichigan re: hypothyroid and I'm working on finding reliable info on diabetes and "eating diabetic".
  
• Doctor's office has me in for three appointments next week: I get a blood sugar monitor and a lesson on how to use it, I am seeing the optometrist or opthalmologist (not sure which) so they can check out my eyeballs and (one assumes) start a baseline, and there's a class on, I think, diabetic nutrition. I'll be busy looking after my health next week, what with extra workouts and everything.
  
• And, since ten things makes a list, I'm going to go find something delicious to have for lunch. And now I know how to balance the plate: 1/2 vegetables, 1/4 protein, 1/4 hopefully complex carbs.
  

Life. Is complicated. I've never been so happy to be unemployed in my LIFE, except when I had the knee surgery and could just spend my time recovering and doing PT.

Honey, eeyore42? I'm sorry I'm not working but I'm glad I can narrow my focus and Deal With This as completely as possible.

Hadn't been to visit a cemetery for many years. Got an artistic wild hair to go for a walk through one in my neighborhood today.
Really interesting. Gravestones have *fashions*. You could study the gravestone styles in a given graveyard and then learn more about artistic styles of a particular decade or era. That could be very fun.

Beautiful huge trees in this particular cemetery. Well established. One magnolia tree had roots which had encroached upon and embraced a particular black marble family marker. It was lovely, and oddly reassuring to me. (I've no idea if that makes sense to anyone who's not me.)

We don't even have any TRULY old grave markers, this area has only been settled by the kind of folks who mark their graves with tombstones, for about 200 years. And yet I came away thinking two contradictory things.

One, humans are mayflies. We are born, we live, we die, and then we are dead for a *really* long time. Same as we weren't born, for a *really long time...
Two, humans can make a giant impact on the world. Why are more of us NOT doing so? NOT improving the world, not helping other humans to live happier, healthier, more loving and compassionate lives? (mainly, WHY AM *I* not doing more to improve the world?)

Life.
Life changes.
Life changes constantly.
Life changes unexpectedly.

There is no wisdom here. This counts as an "everybody knows this" maxim.
But it's certainly SOMETHING to go look at your beloved year-abroad University from 20 years ago (this year) and discover (on Google Maps) that there is STUFF there, structures and reputable companies, that POST-date my tenure there... That even the NAME of the university has altered.

Everything.
Everything changes.
Everything changes constantly.
Everything changes unexpectedly.

But then,
the change which is unexpected to the outside observer,
no doubt feels perfectly inevitable to the individual, company, or group experiencing the change.

If this then is about expectation,
perhaps the Buddhist suggestion to release expectations is one of the best advice ever.
perhaps the Buddhist suggestion to cultivate Child-mind is one of the best advice ever.

Struck me rather suddenly today, that animal-taming might make a good metaphor for overcoming personal fears.

Bear with me a moment:

When you begin, the animal (the fearful part of self) is skittish, angry, violent, in pain, unpredictable (add your own adjective here). You don't know what motivates it, you aren't sure how to help at first.

So the first step is to gently build trust. You do gentle things, comforting things, calm, quiet, predictable things. Perhaps you find ways to nourish the fearful animal, as frequently they are hungry. You do this until the fearful animal calms down a little, and you begin to have positive interactions. Perhaps at this point you can start to explore what is causing the fear: is there an old or current injury? Is it a habit of thinking or behaving that can be changed? Perhaps it is something as basic as a self-reinforcing loneliness. (not that THAT is easy to cure necessarily but knowledge of the problem is half the battle to solve it.)

Trust is building, it's an ongoing process. Like Androcles and the Lion, trust itself is often its own reward. If the fear-animal is internal to self, learning to trust the part of yourself that does know better, that does know that fear is a chain that binds you to old ways of living and thinking which no longer serve you and which even hurt or harm you, well. Learning to trust the part of yourself that wants you to be stronger, happier, and more free, and is willing to work for the privilege... that leads you closer to wholeness. Closer to real health.

You have to be brave to work on your fears, work with your fears. You must be gentle in parenting the fearful child within, firm and reliable to train the fearful-animal to strength and reliability within itself. Think of animals that have been poorly trained and how they behave. Think of children that were parented unreliably or who were victims of neglect and abuse. Now, if you have fears that behave like bratty or desperate children, fears that mark their territory like feral cats or piss the floor like (you'll forgive me) my mother's dog, fears that cling to you and don't let you Get Stuff Done?

You may have to start from the beginning. And you may find that no matter how much Work you Do, there is still more to be Done. You may find that even once you are firm, reliable, gentle, loving, and consistent? There will still be days (weeks, months, years) when your inner feral cat or terrified toddler re-emerges and leaves messes all over the landscape.

Guess what?
*sigh*
We are the grown ups now. We are the ones who can choose to take charge, to put those gentle, loving, trust building routines into place. We are the ones who get to build our own internal strength and improve our personal discipline. and to keep ourselves fed so we can Do This Work.

But keep the end goal in mind. Remember the hunchbacked, starving, irritable, cringing, unpredictable, even vicious 'animal' you first knew?

Think of a beautiful, well fed horse running in green fields and coming to eat apple slices from your hand, snuffling warm grass-fed breath into your face. Think of an intelligent, clear eyed dog, attention focused on your face and your hand-commands, waiting eagerly to fetch the ball you just threw, knowing ear-scruffles and praise come after their expected success. Think of a child so funny and smart and upright and trustworthy that your heart aches when you see them achieving their real potential, when you watch them soar high above anything you have ever achieved previously.

That could be you. You can DO THIS.

Stand up straight. Take the first step.

No hobbled horse is joyous. No chained-up starving dog has perked up, laughing ears.

Take the chains off. Be the reliable, loving, gentle friend your inner child needs to grow strong and free.
Love them. Love YOU.

... and if you're already there? Lend a hand with someone else's animal taming.
I haven't met anyone who couldn't use the help.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle..."

So I came to the conclusion that one of the not quite verbalized reasons I was drinking was to dull down my Weird. And maybe my Wyrd as well, but that's another post entirely...


I am also realizing that drinking dulls my Anger. And my Perception, Insight, Outrage, Frustration, Pathfinding, Desire (both in the YaGottaWanna and the Hello,Nurse! contexts...), my GitErDone, my GetOuttaDodge, just a lot of motivational feelings and urges, all dulled down.

So yeah. I'm angry. and frustrated, and outraged. I am perceptive and insightful. I have a lot of good qualities that are coming back up to the surface where I've been drowning them. Maybe for years.

I'm still trying to let this whole Paradigm shift thing work its Mojo, trying to clear the way for it without, yanno, pulling the carrots out of the ground to measure their growth...

it's partly the not drinking and partly the Waldorf practices and meditations and partly it's just TIME for another big shift. And partly cos I WANT things to change, shift, consolidate, get more concrete, get stronger, more intense, sharper, brighter, clearer.

I don't want to be dull anymore, in any sense of the word.

Continue watching this space for further developments.

Hi LJ!

Been offline for two days. It's been surprisingly good; rewarding and productive. My house looks better than it has since we moved in, I cleared almost all the surfaces (including the floors, I could actually sweep in here and probably will in honor of Samhain before I leave for class tonight...) I threw a bunch of stuff away, recycled a bunch of stuff, and took at least 40 pounds to goodwill (my mom's trivet collection was HEAVY... *g*)

Saw the podiatrist yesterday for the pain I've been feeling in my right foot. It's been on the top of my foot and making me limp a bit, enough that I was worried about doing my back an injury or insult again. (it's happened before when I have been gimpy!) We looked at my x-rays and nothing was broken. *whew* and wow, what they can do with x-rays now! they were sent directly to his computer, like 15 minutes after they were taken, and he could tweak the resolution to clear up the picture in case the tech only took a mediocre picture... measure my bones in their real sizes, right there on the screen, it was pretty wow.

he manipulated my Rt. foot a bit before we looked at the x-rays, and a bit more afterward... he also checked out my calf and shin for a bit, and then he explained what he could see on the x-rays.

The places I was feeling more pain were metatarsals 2 and 3, though all 4 of the smaller metatarsals were sore! (as I discovered once he was pressing firmly on each one and I was yelping! And this is true on BOTH FEET!) On the x-rays he measured and showed me how 2 and 3 (the bones just next to the big-toe bone) were measurably thicker in the dense, structural bone, than 4 and 5.

Then he explained why that is: my calves (and I assume by extension, my hamstrings) are SO TIGHT that they are putting stress on the arch-bones of my foot! (No shit, there I was!) Mind-blowing...! He also explained that the reason I love my Chakos (and by extension the mules from Keen) is the slight heel (on top of the arch support); calf muscles like that make the body want to walk on its toes all the time (hum, that explains why I sit with my heels up on the chairlegs all the time when I'm on the computer!) The stress from the muscle constantly pulling works to strengthen the bones, but taken too far, you can get stress fractures... and DO. NOT. WANT.

The PT for this crazy tension, is to do those calf-lengthening stretches, hanging your heels off the kerb, sort of thing, but this morning I've been exploring my body's flexibility and it feels like, well, EVERYTHING is tight - hams, obliques, quads, the IT band, adductors, abductors, and the little trapezoid-shape over my lower back... (let's not even BRING my shoulders and neck into it right now...) Had a lovely massage from a new guy at Massage Envy Wed night, but you couldn't prove it by me today. (Ow.)

So yesterday after coming back from my appt, I did some more housework and organization, put some Rush on (Snakes and Arrows, for those who know) and was trying to dance and move around the place. Yeah, all kinds of muscular tension, ALL OVER.

I've been saying for a long time that I wanted to get fit, get strong, inhabit my body more, but now I have literally SEEN what it does. WOW. Sitting on my ass for too long is double-PLUS-ungood!

You'll see me moving a lot more in the upcoming years, and for the rest of my life. Thank goodness I'm in the Waldorf program, it's really about learning BALANCE between the realms of your life - artistic, physical/kinesthetic, mind, spirit, social...

My habits are changing. Which means folk won't find me here QUITE as often, but _I_ will DEFINITELY be healthier for it.

And now I think I will get dressed and go for a walk to the grocery store.

I wouldn't have thought (or realized) that a Stick of Whapping could be such a satisfying and reliable gardening tool.

heh.

I have an old chair leg (the rest of the chair went bye-bye but since the leg already fell off, I was like, why not?)... and I have had several bushes in the back yard that died (or mostly died) some months ago when the pump for the backyard well failed for several days last summer.

how satisfying to whack the hell out of old dead brush, have it break and splinter and fracture, to aim blows for the joints of the dead plant and see limbs go flying, stir up dust (ok not that so much) and make something that's literally only in the way of progress, get smaller and smaller.

I think when the shrubs are finally gone I'll dig a nice big hole and plant sets of bulbs, or bunches of herbs that grow well in damp soil and indirect light.

Paradigm Shift.

If I cease to be what I was,
What am I NOW?

What do I Want To Be?

If I open the Gates of Possibility, do I walk through them?
Or does the Flood emerge, engulf me and destroy all I once thought I knew?

I have gnawed off a bite too large to consume;
Ere I choke I must spit it out. Perhaps anon I could try eating the elephant, though in smaller bites.

Promises, contracts, shares and stakeholders.
And if options are beautiful, as some have said, then I have beauty before me...

but this kind of beauty is just short of terrifying.

Here yawns the Abyss.

I heard an echo from childhood today, a memory with repercussions:

"No, not YOU!"
"It's not ABOUT you!"
"As if YOU know anything aBOUT it!"

And this is why I fell a little in love with Jeff; I said "Evanescence is a cool band, I recently heard an album of theirs..." and he downloaded everything he could find by them by the time we had our next date next week.

*jaw dropped*
You did this because _I_ said they were good?
he sort of smiled, with that one eyebrow raised and said,

"Your words have an impact, you know."






Everyday I struggle between feeling invisible versus trying to influence people's thinking.
I realized during tonight's concert that the echoes of childhood can go away now.
I will feed the wolf of kindness and consideration and of trying to do the right thing.
I will work to believe that people find my company and my time valuable and worthwhile.

And I will work toward treating myself as if I am "a keeper", worth the maintenance costs and upkeep.

A little bit every day.
A little bit every day.
A little bit more every day.

I will.