blog thoughts

It's really weird writing this thing when it's not anonymous.  I find myself really censoring myself..as if what I put out there somehow defines me...It's just weird.  I'm not sure I like it.  I like it when I have something "important" to say..but when it's just me?  It's weird.  I want to figure out a way to write a blog but not make it about me.  But everything I have learned or am going through is because I am me, living through this body, feeling through this soul.  I wish I had a *niche* or a specialty.  I try to think of what I am good at, what I naturally find myself doing. And in the online world it's more responding to others, connecting with others, asking for help or helping those who are asking.  So what the hell do you do with a blog?  Because I feel like that's my thing: being alive. people. souls. feeling.  There are plenty of psychology blogs out there, and I'm just a girl learning how to understand all my parts and love them. and love others'.  So what, do I post my journal-girl-swingset poetry shit?  Do I talk about my journey with anxiety (it's been done before), or what I'd have in my dream kitchen?  

I know I want to be here.  I've wanted a blog for a long time.  I just don't know what to *do* with it, how to help people with it.  How to make something better somewhere.  It's kinda hard to write about things without automatically putting yourself in a superior position (because you are the one writing, the one talking) and I hate that.  I don't ever ever ever want anyone to think I'm acting like I have my shit together and let me smear my golden, sugary lifestyle all over your screens...No way.  

For now I'm trying to figure out what people need that I can give.  (doesn't that sound so ick, so self righteous??) but that's not what I mean.  I guess I need to think,  what am I good at that others are interested in?  Hm.  Still thinking.....hmmmmm.  I'm kind of just me and I like to take care of things.  So?

I guess it's just Saturday for now.

sick.

I've been sick with some flu thing for two days.  It always comes at the worst times...It could have been last week when I only had one class..but nope, it's this week where I have four and have had to cancel appointments..

Yesterday I slept allllll day.  I had no appetite which NEVER happens.  This is the first day that I've had the energy to go online and I'm on the couch awake.  Watching Lifetime, taking meds, reading old posts from A Practical Wedding.  And wishing I had a butler here to make me tea and take the dog to daycare so she can get some exercise.  At some point I should shower. . .

three months

So we are THIS close to being done with our invitations, as in, ordering them.  I am soooo not a computer girl.  I haven't had an ounce of stress about the planning stuff until last night when we got an email back from Minted saying we had to replace/fix two of the pictures we are using.  After spending hours on Tuesday trying to find pictures that fit their requirements...I'm letting J handle that.  I wanted to throw their email to outer space.  Little things like that really stress me out.  Britney without underwear? No stress.  But having to "resize" or contact a photographer about using a picture...GO AWAY.  It will be such a relief when these suckers are sent out; I'll feel a lot less behind.  Three months!!

Also getting really close to finalizing bridesmaids' shit.  They're going to look so cute and cool.  I'm excited about being a bridesmaid in the future.  I told Squish (my best friend) that I can't wait to be hers; I will do all the fucking planning - I'll be Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada but the nice version and there will be floral wallpaper.  I felt like I was an expert at all this stuff since I've been reading A Practical Wedding going on 2.5 years..but when it's on YOUR plate it feels a bit different.  But I really do love it. I love wedding stuff.  I just wish I had bridal troops.  I wish my best friends lived there, and I know J feels the same.  It would be nice to get to plan *with* your bridesmaids instead of emailing from so far away.  But I'm so lucky I had two of them to go dress shopping with me.  Ohmygod am I still rambling about this?? Sorry, there's coffee involved.

In case you're having a rough morning....

you came in with the breeze

It's a really beautiful Sunday morning.  The mornings are my favorite time of the day.  They are so hopeful and still and right now I can hear the birds out the window and the chickens across the street.

I've been having crazy dreams all week with about a million story lines.  Last night's involved Rachel Maddow in a wetsuit in a shopping mall as a tsunami crashed through the walls.  So there's that.  I haven't had the dreams where I wake up uneasy in awhile, but this week my imagination has been going wild on the playground.  They don't really bother me anymore; I wake up and kind of say "I know, psyche...things are changing, it's huge" and go make coffee and breakfast for the fiance.  I mean, I do love Rachel Maddow though, but, you know.

We hit our three month countdown two days ago- holy crap, we still have lots to do.  I'm so ready to do this already, I just want to be married! And pretend to go buy a house in Nashville and "live off the land" and get to be Southern all the time.  J was looking at houses on Trulia (as we usually do for fun) in Nashville and geez the prices there are soooo friendly.  A big ol house (heck, even a small one, I don't care) with land, bunches of rescue animals...lots of sweet tea...WINTER, a fireplace, oh my.  Although I have always thought being close to the ocean was always a necessity for me (and J too probably).  I'm sure it's just the grass is greener syndrome.  I do love LA.  It's my home.  I take the beauty with the bullshit and the dreams with the douchebags.  I like being somewhere I can, for the most part, count on being progressive and having opportunities for art.  I like the idea that people move here from everywhere to follow their dreams, and eventually, end up on the street selling meth after one too many lip injections....

Adorable...and this house would be twice as much (at least) if it were in LA.  One day I will have a wrap around porch.

the wedding i'd have if I was marrying myself

Luckily my fiance and I have similar tastes and have been agreeing a lot throughout this whole process, but there are still a few wedding things that, since there are two of us here, I recline back in my chair and nod (the head-tilt kind of nod) and pretend there aren't glitter machines going off in my fantasy-head.  But a girl can daydream.  Here are what some of those daydreams look like.  And a lot of it comes from the simple search of: wedding + glitter.

 This is the perfect cake. Gets me every time.

 And just because I've been in love with this dress for years..

 So basically, I'd be a ballerina.

And I would definitely be wearing this if we were getting married in the winter...Oh geez, a Christmas wedding, slay me...

And if you don't like glitter...

Of course Garbage would be mine and mine's wedding band.

Oh what? More pink, and gold, and glitter???

 Extreme Southern.

 And this tablecloth....!!!

Basically, I would live in a dollhouse and the wedding would be a tea-party.  Although now that I look at all of this together I'm getting a bit sea-sick.  I used to dream of this awesome Washington state wedding in the forest and at the reception bands would play and everyone would have little x's on their hands as a salute to my youth...sigh...And then in between sets people could go up and play if they felt like it. And it would be a big music fest with tequila and tacos. More on nostalgia later.   I've actually realized that music aside (since it looks like we are having a DJ instead of a band- but hey, we can make them play whatever we want), our real wedding is seeming more and more like my Washington state wedding, minus the forest, add the flatirons.   Oh shit.  What would be awesome is if everyone jumped in the creek afterwards and we got amazing pictures of it at night, under the moon...

ash wednesday

So today is Ash Wednesday.  The start of the Lent season.  I'm no Catholic, despite going to Catholic school for many years, but I do love the idea of having a set time to look at your life and your habits and spending quiet time evaluating what's serving you and the greater good of the universe and what's not.  I want to challenge myself, ugh this is going to be hard - it's hard to just type it, to not complain for the next 40 days.  I know that makes me sound like a whiny little girl, but I mean I want to stop the negative talk and thoughts.  I want to challenge myself to see every struggle or fear as an opportunity for growth.  I want to force myself, as hard as it may be, to replace the worst case scenario with the best case scenario....and I've been trying to do this in general with my fears and anxiety, but scratch all the description - I just want to give up complaining.  Because I do believe that I can choose to learn from everything and that a lot of times complaints are just another way for our psyche to protect us from the pain of rejection or fear of failure and so on.  So yeah, I want to stop complaining.

I also toyed (toyed? since when did I start using that word??) with the idea of giving up gluten or sugar..but I've been really mindful of my gluten intake anyway and sugar...well...that can maybe wait till next year.  Ohhh and giving up social media would be amazing but I am too weak.  But someone else should totally do it.

on being a girl.

So this past week has been a little crazy.  And by that I mean high panic on Thursday, car wreck on Friday, pedicure-gone-bad-resulting-in-swollen-big-toes on Saturday, talk with the mother on Sunday, and here I am soaking those toes in epsom salt after just watching my dog poop out a whole tampon.  Yes, that's right, and I am so sorry for sharing that and I hope you aren't having as hard a time refraining from vomiting as I still am.  It's just those things don't happen everyday..and you know..I thought I should share.  

I was getting over an awful period ( the only kind I am used to) and during the lovely days where my body shows me how awesome and powerful it is, I was struggling to find grounding in the restlessness it brings.  I've noticed that there is so much resistance to being on my cycle; I get angry at my body, I shut out the world (to avoid killing them all), every single month I say "this is so not fairrrrrr, I don't get it, how could this happennnnn whattttttttt ugggghhhh".  Since I was also in a highly anxious state, I felt the familiar pull to try to connect to myself and find a different relationship with my cycle.  

Way too long ago, I read the book Cunt by Inga Muscio and it changed my life.  Really the best book I have read about..well, being a female.  It taught me a lot about feminism and ashamedly, more than anything, it taught me about my period.  Now why did it take reading a feminist book at the age of 20 to learn about my period?!  It wasn't until then that I learned that our menstrual cycles are run by the cycles of the moon.  And I bet the majority of women don't even know that.  I'm sure my mother doesn't.  How is that not taught in Being a Woman and Getting Your Period 101?  Oh wait, that class wasn't offered to me.  Sure, my mom presented vague positive associations toward the red sea - "it's what lets you have children" and "it's God's gift" etc...but other than that, the period was something to be tolerated.  To tip-toe around, to be discreet about.  Heaven forbid mentioning it like it's the weather, or you know, a natural part of your body and the reason everyone is on this Earth.  I remember hiding my pads (and then tampons) in my pencil case at school and sneaking off to the bathroom.  It felt like a curse.  (WHY is everything natural about women treated as a CURSE?!?) Basically, if you are woman and your body functions - you have a period, your boobs make milk for your babies, you have cellulite,  you grow hair (imagine!), and suddenly all of those things are the very things that are wrong with you, things that we must pay to correct or hide or diminish.  I mean, that subject is far too big for this little blog post..but it drives me insane!! 

Anyway.  My point is that basically everything we as women are conditioned to believe about ourselves is formulated by men and corporations and sold to us under the disguise of "empowerment".  I literally just watched a Midol commercial about "beating Mother Nature" - right, because that's the problem. Geez La Weez.  In doing a five second google search, it's so easy to read about what really happens on our periods- psychologically as well as physically.  When we are on our cycle, we are most connected to the flow (pun intended) and rhythm of life, of existence.  We are plugged into the portal of creation, touching God.  We yearn for stillness; we are called to turn inward and listen instead of abandoning ourselves in the outside world as usual.  When we resist the pain, resist the ache of the earth, of life and of death brewing in our insides, we deny ourselves the ability to hear the sacred whispers coming from the Heart.  As I was in lots of pain this past week, I tried changing the dialogue between myself and the pain.  I tried gratitude.  I placed my hand over the heart and gut and allowed the sadness, the pain, and the sorrow of being alive into my awareness.  Yes, the shedding of the walls inside is painful, but looking at it in a ritualistic way changes the meaning I give it (or neglect to give it).    It's begging for me to stop, to feel, to let go, and repeat.  It's a cycle, a cleansing, a rebirth.  And when I treat it as such the pain and I understand each other better.  I know how she feels and I mourn with her as we prepare for new life, for clean eyes and renewed freedom once the cycle is over.

We don't need fixing.  We need celebration.  and the moon. and tacos, for me.