to kvetch or not to kvetch, that is the question

Ahhhh, it's a nice morning here at Casa de AmpuTeeHee!

MyFavoriteKid is off with his dad for the weekend (he left last night with TheEx after the play). TheMostImportantGuy came up and spent the night, so at present he is all tucked in and snoozing away (we chose not to get up at 5:30am to go to the zen center for a change, but instead to get some much needed sleep and practice here). RileyTheDog has already been outside to make sure his buried cookies are safe. The kitties are now out there, too...probably hunting for slow moving cold blooded animals. The snails are in the garden slowly eating up my dinner.


Wait. I don't like that part.
Let us move along, shall we?
This is to be a pleasant morning.

I am sitting here on the sofa, shades pulled up, looking out into my very quiet little neighborhood, watching the fog lift, listening to the birds going about their morning business, sitting here with a nice cup of hot coffee....ahhhh....time to myself and an opportunity to write something decent for a change. The gears in my brain are slowly beginning to grind, and the topics I could and should write about are slowly starting to organize themselves, and what keeps coming to the forefront of my mind....

....are complaints.
Gah. Hate that.

Okay. SO. A week or two ago, was it? I posted about responding to the question, "How are you," as I found I was blurting out things like, "Coffee cup!!" Remember that? (okay, so it was 3-1/2 weeks ago. time flies. here's a link to it).

Anyhow, I don't know if I ever followed up and told you, but after a little bit of a thought, and a whole series of inappropriate tourettes-like responses ("eating cheese!" ..."getting in my car!!"), I finally found a phrase that I could use to answer the How-Are-You question that felt genuine. It went:

I am good. But at the expense of much effort.

Whaddya think? Good one, eh? I think it's great.
Yes! Things are good! Or, alternatively, things are not good, but I have become good with them not being good. But! The good things in my life right now? Or the good attitude I have developed about the not so good things? Dang! I had to put in some serious effort to get it that way!

I like this response. Lots. It suited me. Nobody backed away from me slowly ("buying tomatoes!!"), and I wasn't lying. And it kept me present, in the moment, and in a strange way, appreciative and thankful to myself for my contributed effort towards making this world (ok, my little world) a better place.

Of course nothing lasts forever in this lovely little cauldron of suffering and impermanence we live in now, does it. (gotta love the buddhist description of things, dontcha?)

So I was brewing my cup o' joe this morning, and realizing that if you asked me today, right now, how I was, and I said, "Good. But at the expense of much effort," that this would be incorrect. A lie, actually. I'm not quite sure what the answer is today (or even just this second) but it's probably closer to..

I'm expending much effort, and things are not good, because even though I am expending much effort everyone and everything else is getting in my gosh-danged-mother-frickin-fracking WAY..and now (please) go away and quit raining on my GOOD little personal parade for-cryin-out-loud. SHEESH.

Something like that. Not as elegant a response. To be sure.

Okay, so I have like 18 things in my life right now that are going this way. And so now what...do I write about them? (It's this very question that has me posting something stupid like a quiz or a photo or a link, btw....in other words I basically just do nothing or as close as I can get to doing nothing while still keeping up with Blog365). Do I just make a short and sweet list here? Get it out of me so I can blast through the writers block, but restrain from ramping myself up into kvetching mode? Do I just go full-frontal-kvetch on yer arses? A couple paragraphs for each of the 18? Or 18 full page posts in a row? A topic a day? Do I just shut up and post cute photos of the dog and/or little quizzes about what flavor toothpaste you are, and wait until the impermanence-thing kicks in like it always does (which could happen any moment now, umm are ya hearing me out there, life?).

I mean who knows.

*takes another sip of coffee, looks out the window and checks the status of the fog*

List. I think I list. I think the exercise of the day is to play with acknowledging the facts, but not splattering my feelings and opinions all over it. Not sure I can do that. I'm kinda opinionated. And f-f-f-feeeeeling. But yah, a list.



Oooo TheMIG just shuffled out here half asleep, sat next to me, made a little giggle sound and said, "It's fun waking up with cute girls in the house." I think that concludes my typing for now LOL.


I have an afternoon meeting with my co-dance teachers to work on some stuff for our class, but the evening and tomorrow morning are free....so the list, I shall create. And then tomorrow afternoon? It's the San Francisco Ravelry Meet-Up! So Monday I can make the list sorta disappear under a loooong photo heavy post about fun times and fiber-fumes ;-)