ten on tuesday

Let's try this again, and see if I get to 10 this time ;-)

Ten On Tuesday
10 Things You're Really Good At

1. Knitting.

2. Buying yarn when I don't really need it.

3. Jumping from irritation to anger.

4. Critiquing restaurants.

5. Cooking and entertaining.

6. Empathizing with other people.

7. Noticing the tiny little things in life that belong on a gratitude list.

8. Putting my foot in my mouth.

9. Creating paper bags full of unopened mail.

10. Wasting time.

..........oh, there is a #11.
Pick myself apart.
Into little itty bitty pieces.

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I wrote this out quickly, and let me tell you, it's pretty revealing in that it is showing my current state of mind. I am very quick to find fault with myself these last few days, I have noticed. I don't particularly like being in a phase like this, but that's where I am, so might as well sit with it for a few and try to find out why.

My investigation started yesterday when I was driving over to the city to see TheScarDoctor. I realized that I have a whole list of things about myself that are slightly bugging me, or that I would like to change or work on (but am not). They were all small things, but once I noticed they were so many, I realized I had this big massive ball of I'mNotReallyLikingMyself right now. Not so good. It's one of the keys to the depression door, and I'm not real keen on stepping inside that room if I don't have to.

My appointment with TheScarDoc was great. It's really interesting how all that self-loathing resides in the body somewhere, and what happens when you can experience the gift of having someone help you move it all around and maybe get rid of some of it. It helps that as a practitioner (and as a person) he's a really uplifting guy. Besides the bodywork, he also really makes me laugh. There is no better way to avoid opening the door to the DepressionRoom but to just laugh yer arse down the friggin' hallway.

Anyhow. Later in the afternoon yesterday, MyFavoriteKid and I had a parent-teacher conference with his math teacher. I think maybe I have mentioned here on the blog that he's having some trouble, but maybe I haven't. Who knows. I can't keep track. Anyhow. Things aren't going so well for him, particularly in math. I'm not going to bother hashing out all those particulars here, but I do want to get to the part about how I ended up feeling about it all.

Mother-frickin' incompetent.

I know in my head that I'm a good mom. I also know, logically, that it's my first time being a parent (just as it is his first time being a kid), and so in my head I have nooooo problem cutting myself some slack as I muddle my way through parenting. But my insides?? Dudes. I'm a mess. I feel stressed and confused by not knowing what to do. I feel like I am floundering and failing. Add to this the fact that MyFK and I push each other's buttons when the homework-shit-hits-the-fan, and then I get angry, and then gets upset, and then I feel worse for being a bad parent and a bad practicing buddhist who gets so angry all the time.

I am not on some sort of downer or pitty pot at all....IN MY HEAD. Too bad my gut does not agree. My thoughts are fine. The emotions? Oy.

I know I am not the only parent who has this situation. I know what help is out there (I also know what help is not, ie TheEx, but that's a whoooole 'nother post). I am on the path to getting help and support, gaining a few new parenting skills, and....just basically finding my way. MyFK and I are communicating well, and we are loving each other, and we are working on our button pushing, even between all the frustration. ON THE OUTSIDE this is being dealt with. This dilemma is is par for the course, we are making progress in the right direction, and all is good.

The OUTSIDES of the situation are fine.

It's my INSIDES I am worried about.
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snaps on saturday

The Moon.



She is very full :-)

ten on tuesday

Sometime last year I signed up to get weekly notifications from Ten On Tuesday, just in case I ever needed 52 bits of blog fodder. Obviously I did not, and preferred to ramble aimlessly with no direction or focus. I never did take myself off the email list though. I just got the weekly email this morning, and since I no longer have to post....wel....I thought I would.

10 Things You Want To Do In 2009 Similar to your new year’s resolution, but more of a “to do” checklist rather than things that you want to do to improve yourself…

1. Visit my grandma up in the Seattle area.
2. Plant flowers or plants in the box outside the back window.
3. Knit another sweater.
4. Travel more in the van.
5. Get a bike (ok, a trike).
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

~ I chose to focus on the word "want" and tried to avoid listing things I "need" to do or "should" do. You know what? I am finding this very hard! I can come of with a list of probably 27 things that I need to do....but it is a struggle for me to do this when it comes to thinking about what I want!! I find this odd. Part of me is happy that I am not wanting for much. Par of me feels very uninspired. Sheeeit, even now that I look at the 5 that are up there, even they have elements of should attached to them! ~

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I have no idea if I will continue doing these weekly throughout the year, 'cuz I'm fickle like that ;-)

I'm kinda thinking I might stick with the Snaps On Saturday thing I did for most of last year, though....or some version of that.

resolute

While I sit here doing more thinking about yarn, I might as well tell you about a couple of other things I'm tossing onto my "resolution" pile this year.

I hate calling them resolutions, really. They're more like intentions or goals, and they certainly aren't tied to it being a new year. I think what happens with me is that December is always so danged hectic, non-routine, and gluttonous that I see things glaring at me that need adjusting, but I know I don't have time to do anything about it until the holiday chaos and vacations are over. Make sense?

Anyhow, I already wrote about "less time/money on bodywork, and more time/money on working the body". It's still my plan, but of course I've been sicker than shit since I came up with the lovely idea. No working of the body going on over here, unless Marathon Coughing counts. Oh, well. I'll get there. I did at least meet the other half of the goal. I canceled and/or rescheduled bodywork appointments so that there are less of them, so I'm halfway there. The easy half, true...but I'll take what I can get.

Then there was my second intention to clean out the garage to make room for a bike, the third goal about of learning to spin (which at the moment is scheduling-wise in direct conflict with doing some dance rehearsals...so I have to think about how I'm going to make this work). Then there was writing less posts and reading more blogs (got that one handled...it's successfully in progress).

What I forgot to add to my list the other day is that this is the year I will FINALLY keep my word to myself and to all of you and....

REPLY TO YOUR COMMENTS
(you will find them within the comments section)

I keep saying I'm going to do this, and I do it for a stint, and then flake out again. And I cannot stand how I feel about myself for leaving my blog and your thoughts in a vacuum. It haunts me. Makes me feel icky. My notion is:
a) if I could pull off posting every day for a year, isurely it should be cake to reply to comments for a year.
b) if I am posting less now, this should be even easier.

We'll see how this works out.

If 57 of you post comments today I'm gonna kick yer arses ;-)

Then again, I suppose I'd have to suck it up, because John made it known that it is International de-lurking week through the 10th. So have at it, I guess.

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Okay, then there is a goal/resolution that I made mid-year last year, and I want to keep-on-keeping-on with it this year. I don't think I ever wrote about this here, but whether I did or not, it feels like an important part of continuing the behavior for me at this point is to shout it out loud, because I felt myself slipping a wee bit in December.

Sometime in the late summer I think, I realized that I was feeling anxious every single morning.

Now, I've been prone to occasionally just sort of falling into fight-or-flight mode ever since the accident, and I have really figured out that is usually not an obvious thing that gets the wheel turning.

Well, there was this one morning back then when I started feeling the gears beginning to grind, and all of the sudden I heard loud and clear the background music of my life:

television news, or news radio

I was waking up every morning and first thing popping on the TV news. Not really for the news, but for the weather update and the traffic reports. But I'd get the report, and I'd leave the TV on.
Then, when that 1/2 hour of news was over??
I'd still leave it on!!!
FOR BACKGROUND NOISE (I know. I am not very swift.)

So from say, 6am to ohhhhh 9am, the news would be on...and this is the key....with the same half hour of news being repeated every 30 minutes. I mean, I'd be listening to the same horrific tales about child abuse and murders and the economy over and over and over and over and over and over. THEN!! If I got in my car?? I'd turn on the news radio! Same thing (let's not point at that the traffic always comes up every 10 minutes on the 8's, so it's real simple to get that info and skip the rest. Like I said. Swift.) And then guess what!!! If I was around, I'd catch the noon news, or maybe the evening news, and oh....I would ALWAYS catch a half hour of news during the late night somewhere.

People: I DONT EVEN LIKE HEARING THAT MUCH NEWS.

I think I just like hearing people talking or some shit. I dunno. I never quite figured that part out, but I think mabye hearing people talk makes me feel less lonely or something maybe?? Possible. I dunno. WHATEVER. I didn't waste my time wondering.

So I cut myself off. Since then, I now allow myself a half hour in the morning. I didn't cut myself off cold-turkey, but I probably could do that now, and just get what I need on the internet. I mostly still do the half hour report. But the second I hear a story being repeated? Off it goes. I am now listening to more music, or....get this one (especially you, mom)....I LISTEN TO THE SOUND OF PEACE AND QUIET.

Dudes. My life has changed dramatically. I cannot believe that it took me so long to notice, but honestly, it had just become a habit and a background noise. It just no longer seemed out of the ordinary, and I can see how I overlooked it. But, DUH. Anyhow I saw myself lapse a couple of times last month, and like I said, I'd like to keep my new habit in tact, so I'm brining it back up to the forefront of my mind again, because apparently turning the shit off is not quite automatic yet.
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The last resolution/plan/goal/cockamamie idea I am working with right now is about the yarn, but again....I'm still thinking. I don't think I can come up with a plan around fiber that I can realistically work with until I have figured out what and why I do what it is I do with yarn in the first place (both the working with it and the purchasing of it), and that's the pondering piece going on over here.

Again, more coming soon. I just need to do a bit more reflecting.

Which of course, does absolutely nothing to put the yarn in the direction of becoming any form of knitted item.

Y'all are soooo glad that the 2008 version of Blog365 ended and that I jumped off the bandwagon for 2009. Had I ran with it, you'd have been staring at 4 straight days of kvetching. I kid you not.
I am soooo sick!!

I started feeling poopy last Monday night, and it's been escalating ever since. It has been the oddest cold. I keep hoping that I'll go to bed and wake up feeling better in the morning. Instead, I wake up feeling worse in the morning, but by mid-day I feel like I'm on the upswing. Feeling better of course, I am then able to see the piles of used tissues and empty soup bowls, so I set myself to cleaning up....or let's be honest....embarking on other projects. This of course, makes me feel run down again. By nighttime I am exhausted, but then when I actually lay down in bed and put my head on the pillow, I cannot sleep! The angle kicks the cough up something fierce, even if I prop myself up. I toss and I turn, coughing and blowing my nose all night (I have been coughing so much, I can barely speak--which I am sure have a few people in my life just tickled pink). Then in the morning I get up and do the whole routine all over again. So. Much. Fun.

I've not just been plain old sick, either. Other points of interest involving my physicality this week were flipping my wheelchair over (with me still sitting in it, obviously) and cranking my neck into some twisted knot of doom....and thennnnnnn (you'll love this one) I was closing a kitchen cabinet door the other day and I konked myself in the face so hard it literally cleared up my sinuses. But now I have a headache. It's really something to have a headcold and be blowing your nose all the time when one side of it is all swollen and bruised. Whee.

ANYHOW, even being sick (and mute), I have managed to get a few things done during this last week of MyFavoriteKid's winter break:

* Broke down the holiday decorations, and got them back out into the garage (which is a freakin' mess, and I was going to work on reorganizing that this weekend, but was too sick to be out there in the freezing cold). I usually add a piece or two each year to my holiday collection. This year it was a felted snowman and tree that I bought from Chimera on etsy (yes...I realize I could have made this myself, but really...was I ever going to? Probably not. Did I already have the materials? No. So I chose to support a crafter). This year during the post-holiday sales, I also went on a quest for a Light Up Lawn Deer. You know, the kind where the head bobs back and forth? Well, I went hunting, but no deer. But I did score a moose for 80% off ;-)

* The reinstatement of the semi-annual purge of MyFK's bedroom. He and I used to do this together twice a year. Once in June before his birthday, and once in early December before the holidays. We'd go through every bit of his room and get rid of stuff he no longer used or needed, and we'd also comb through the closet for clothes that were worn out or no longer fit. We'd make a run to the donation place, and then he'd have space for incoming gifts or clothes that would fit. Only problem? We broke from the twice a year tradition when we moved here, and that means we hadn't done it in a year and a half (well, we'd done the clothing....but not the other stuff). His room wasn't a mess really, but there was no way he was going to have room to store anything new, especially bigger things like a basketball and a skateboard, which he got this year from Hannukah Harry.

* I knit a hat. I'm actually spending all of my knitting energy right now completing my last (and sadly long overdue, at this point) PayItForward Project. I am very close (it requires a ton of finishing work), and I will not stray off on other projects until it is complete. It is, however, a project too cumbersome to travel with, and it is freezing cold here (literally), so I started a hat to fiddle with while sitting at MyFK's basketball practices. This is my second hat in this pattern (you might recall the first one, which fit my friend better than myself):

Meret The 2nd (link to my ravelry project page)

* Starting to catch up on blogs. In no particular order of importance. I do have to show you one photo I ran into over at Kris Carr's blog:

A sheep with a prosthesis!!

* Teaching the Kitties About The Great Outdoors. Not that they need to be taught, mind you. They are both strays that were plucked directly from the great outdoors. I just haven't been letting them out since they came to live with us because of the hawks that fly around the hill behind the house. Well, the other day they bolted out the door one morning, so I was forced into it. They've been out for a bit every day since and the dog babysits.

L to R: Gaara (well ok, Gaara's butt...sorry), Mr.Darcy & Riley

Last, but not least, I have spent some time:
* Thinking about yarn. Just thinking about it. Like about how much I have and what to do about it. I'm still in the thinking stage, but I have some ideas.

More on that in another post, though.
I've already gone on too long.

See? If I was blogging daily, you'd just have gotten this same exact post all chopped up into little daily bits.

Nothing has changed here but frequency.

So go ahead. Pass me that can of Shut-The-Fuck-Up, will ya'?? ;-)
hahaha