The Journey Begins With One Step

Thursday Thirteen #16--Favorite Snapshots

2008-07-24T11:02:00.011-05:00

Thirteen Cool Snapshots from my trip to San Antonio, Texas!!

It's an easy squeezey list this week since I started my new job and haven't gotten into a new routine yet!

Here are 13 of my favorite shots off the camera from the trip to San Antonion last week. And no, we didn't do ALL of those things, but we did do the ones we felt like doing once we got there; and by goodness, we enjoyed the time away!

The view from our hotel room (17th floor!) facing west down Commerce:

The lovely and luscious Riverwalk boat tour scenery:

Just one photo doesn't do it justice:

This really great-looking building across the way from the Alamo:

The chapel door at Mission San Jose:

A view of the mission I would love to paint:

A view of the Alamo enclosure wall I would also love to paint:

The fountain in front of the Crockett (yes, as in Davy) Hotel:

The best dessert of the weekend--tres leches with meringue on a carmelized disk of sugar:

The Tower of the Americas (wow was it windy up there!):

Me and Mr. Rex...believe it, or not!

Me and the man who made all the fun possible (and yes, we did ride all the big coasters, including the largest wooden coaster in the country!):

And for all the blogger ladies out there who love him....Mr. Johnny Depp:

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Muah! =)

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Thursday Thirteen #15--Goin' to San Antonio

2008-07-16T09:05:00.013-05:00

Thirteen Things To Do and See in San Antonio This Weekend!

Yes, that's right. I'm off to San Antonio with my hubby this weekend and this girl just wants to have FUN! Let's just get right to the photos of the places I plan to go then, shall we?

Oh, and let me just apologize ahead of time for the dinky thumbnails. They were not displayed that way when I saved them, and I just didn't have time to go back and figure out what I did wrong. (yes, I pack at the last minute too!) So perhaps I'll have MY OWN pictures next week and we'll just call this a preview! =))

I hear the mission bells....

Mission San Jose:

Mission San Antonio de Valero:

And, of course, The Alamo:

La Villita:

The Botanical Gardens:

The Japanese Tea Garden:

The Riverwalk (complete with boats to avoid walking...):

The Streetcars (again with the no walking):

The Rollercoasters at Fiesta Texas (oh yeah baby...never been...can't WAIT!):

Ripley's Museum:

The Tower of the Americas:

The Rivercenter Mall (oh, the shopping--I'm excited about it and I'm not even what you'd really call a "shopper"!):

Well, off to go pack now! Hope you all have a great weekend!

Muah! =)

Thursday Thirteen #14--A Random List

2008-07-11T10:10:00.006-05:00

Thirteen Random Snippets from Last Week

What do you mean it's Friday?

It can't be Friday yet because I haven't even typed up my Thursday Thirteen for this week!

*sigh*

This is what happens when blogging is only in the top ten of a girl's priority list. You see, life happens, and then blogging gets bumped!

Really...grading papers happened. Ninety of them suckers. In five days. All at least 600 words long. A significant portion of them requiring helpful comments to explain the grade of B, C, D, or F.

I stopped explaining the A's. Now I just say thank you for following my instructions. Because honestly, that seems to be all it ever really comes down to. There's some kind of correlation between a student's ability to process complicated instructional material and the ability to produce readable (and enjoyable!) prose. That said, of course I am overgeneralizing. But nobody could convince me of that as I yelled, "No, no no! Why didn't you listen to what I said in class about this very type of thing?" at more than several of the papers that kept me company over the Fourth of July weekend (and beyond).

So yeah. There was that. And getting a new job at my favorite health food store! Woohoo!

So here are a few random tips or, at least, some things related to the grading/teaching I did last week that kept me so busy I look like a dork being late with my Thursday posting...and also a short list (can't come up with 13 yet) of substances to avoid if you want to start changing your diet from the Standard American Diet (SAD) to the Gorging Lusciously American Diet (GLAD). Ok, so I made up the second one, but it works I think.

When you are asked to perform a specific task in a specific way, it's usually not a good time to decide that the way you've always done it before must be better. Learning is changing, so be brave enough to change. At least a little. Ok? Please?
Blowing "word smoke" at the person who must evaluate your actual performance only makes you look like a smoke blower in the end. And most people aren't particularly keen on smoke blowers. Actions speak louder than words, as the pat expression goes, so if you say you are going to make something better, please be certain that you do.
When someone tells you up front that the next five weeks or so are going to run "like a freight train" (ie. rough and fast), and that if you don't keep up, you'll feel like you were run over by it, chances are, you should keep up with the task schedule. Getting run over by the freight train and then complaining that it hurt is kind of like whining. And whiners are appreciated about as much as smoke blowers are.
Oh, and similarly, don't wait until the very end of the line to acknowledge that you have been run over, expecting your injuries to be miraculously healed (is this analogy getting old yet?). I'm not Jesus. Take this valuable, yet painful lesson and go and sin no more, ok?
When you catch yourself complaining that the world runs as it normally does, you need to take a step back and stop taking everything so personally. That's my lesson. I know that there will be casualties on each train ride, er, semester, but it still isn't any easier to watch it happen just the way I say it will. I have to remember that it's merely a matter of cause and effect. I'm responsible for so few of the causes in a student's life that I just can't make it all better, all the time.
Grading sucks. As much as it sucks to be graded sometimes, I think it sucks worse to be grading. Thirty nervous people hand me their work, and now I have 30 chances to say the just the right thing that will enhance learning. Or not. Ugh. I'd much rather just help them write better and give them a pass/fail at the end. I'm not strong enough to be the gatekeeper (or the keymaster...hehe), and so, I now have a new job.
Let's be GLAD now. Please, please, please stop eating these things. They are so not good for your body, and many of them are linked to the current epidemic in diseases like: obesity, diabetes, cancer, and the big one...heart disease (which kills more than all other diseases combined). Ok ready? It's a short list, but when you start checking your labels, you'll be hard pressed to eat much that comes in a package. I tell you only because I care.
Partially-hydrogenated oils. This is in almost EVERYTHING in a box or bag. Start reading those labels! There are a few brands of crackers and chips that don't use these. That's IT!
High fructose corn syrup. If it doesn't have partially-hydrogenated oil in it, your packaged food probably has this instead. I only found one...ONE...kind of bread in a bag that didn't have HFCS in it: Mrs Baird's Sugar-Free whole wheat bread. And that included all those fancy $4 a loaf breads that LOOK like they are better. So, know that there are certainly more like the Mrs. Baird's, but be sure to look. This stuff is a sign that you're being manipulated into eating something that is no good for you.
Sugar (processed), Aspartame, Sucralose, Saccharin...you know...all that "unnatural" sweet stuff. Try raw sugar, honey (local), agave nectar, real maple syrup (have you read the ingredients in the fake stuff? oy vie!)...you know...the "natural" sweet stuff.
I know I'm going to be called unpatriotic for this one, but I'm not saying you can NEVER have the stuff...it's just that the quantity in the SAD(iet) is so so so high. Ok, so, carbonated beverages? As in soda? (Just think though, it's got that "unnatural" sweet stuff in it too!) It's just a suggestion. And one my husband, who used to drink nothing but Diet Coke, has finally taken (and it only took me ten years to convince HIM!)
Table salt/sodium. This is one nobody really talks about anymore, but all signs still point to it being something your body doesn't process well because it's no longer in its "natural" state. Try some sea salt instead (it really does taste better, and your body does need some salt...your insides are bathed in saline solution after all).
And lastly, the two substances that are the most beloved: caffeine and alcohol. Yeah I know. Now I'm a quack. Alcohol seems much easier to regulate than caffeine. And I really have nothing against them, although I can't have caffeine because I have some super-sensitivity to it (in other words, if you wanted to kill me, you might try pouring Red Bull or Monster down my throat), but I'm just sayin'. These two are just not that "healthy" for you in large doses. AND, if you're megadosing while eating the other stuff on the list, well, it just all works together to cut down your health and longevity.

Well that may not be the most satisfying list. Kind of a downer I suspect. But hey, when that's what the week was like, what's a girl to do? I guess I'm still in "teacher mode," only, that's starting to feel like "stick-in-the-mud" mode. So onward and upward and maybe I taught you something new, maybe you sympathized with me (or my students), and maybe I just got to blow off some steam and you were kind enough to be a friend and listen.

Now that thought makes me smile. Hope you have a great weekend!

Muah! =)

Thursday Thirteen #13--Fabulous Quotations

2008-07-02T19:02:00.007-05:00

Thirteen Fabulous Quotations

As I've mentioned recently, I've been teaching freshman composition at the local community college this summer. Since I began teaching college classes in 2001, I have yet to teach during a summer session. Part of the reason was that my kids were too young to be left unattended, or that I had to take wondrous summer trips to Cape Cod instead. But the other part was that I just didn't believe that I could accomplish in just over five weeks what it normally took me fifteen weeks to do.

I have three more days of class left, and I have to say that I'm amazed at what can be accomplished in five weeks. But I'm certain that the list of things I normally do, that I wasn't able to do, are still important and I miss them. All told, though, it was more of a success than I had hoped.

Why am I introducing quotations with my thoughts about summer school? Well, I thought I would "teach" one of the things I learned in college that was minor to most folks, but major to those who spend their days, nose to the student essays.

It's one of those stuffy grammatical things that English teachers have to know to show their true street cred. I jest. Well, a little.

I just thought I would share because nine out of ten people who ask me what I do then say, "Oh no! That was my worst subject in school. Yuck." So I wanted to share how yucky it can be to have to lug around all these rules in my head; rules most people would live normal, happy, healthy lives without ever having to worry about.

Oh heck. It's just a silly way to introduce this list really. So on with it I say!

Ok. So a lot of folks call quotations, "quotes," but I was told, by a very precise professor or two, that "quote" is the verb and that "quotation" is the noun. In other words, if I were to quote you, I would write down what you said. And then, what I had written would be a quotation.

I know. Boring. (any wonder then why I'm looking to change careers?)

On with the show! Here are some good ones that I've gotten in my daily quotation emails.

“A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.” —Barbra Streisand

“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” —Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944), writer, social activist

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” —William G.T. Shedd (1820-1894), theologian, teacher, pastor

Whatever you're thinking about is literally like planning a future event. When you're worrying, you are planning. When you are appreciating, you are planning...What are you planning? Abraham-Hicks

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” —Melodie Beattie; motivational author

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” —Thornton Wilder (1897–1975), playwright, novelist
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ” —Thomas Edison (1847–1931) inventor, entrepreneur
“Better keep yourself clean and bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.” —George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) playwright, political activist

“Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.” —David Star Jordan, (1851-1931) educator, author, peace activist; exerpt from "The Philosophy of Despair"

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” —William Faulkner (1897-1962) author, winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature

“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.” —William James (1842-1910), psychologist, philosopher, author

“ The best way out is always through. ”- Robert Frost (1874-1963) American Poet Laureate 1958-1959

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American poet, lecturer, and essayist

Hope you enjoy those. I love me some good ol' inspirational quotations.

Muah! =)

I Like to Call It Hollywoodized

2008-07-01T15:50:00.009-05:00

Ever since the open house last Thursday, I've been looking around my office at all of the other things I've accumulated or put on display here. It's interesting to see what I surround myself with and the little things that make me smile and reminisce.

I have postcards, photos, and prayer flags; fortune cookie messages, refrigerator magnets, and tiny stuffed animals; CDs, bookmarks, and handcrafts made by my kids. There are typed, handwritten, and "plaqued" quotations, magnetic poetry in a box, and even a pearly white curly ribbon "bow" from a recent birthday present.

I even noticed, with new eyes, my collection of refrigerator magnets.

But then there is this picture that I keep at eye level, tacked to the corkboard just to the left of my computer monitor. Any idea who this couple is? (There's a clue in the photo.)

Well, if you haven't guessed, I can't tell you just yet, so let me tell you why I keep this photo first. (I promise to tell you by the end of the post!)

I keep this photo to remind me, more than any "stars without their makeup" or "stars at the beach after firing their personal trainers" photos have ever been able to do, that, well, we're all human...all average...all just regular people who can go unnoticed without all the fuss that it takes to create a more glamorous, camera-friendly, audience-appealing version of a regular old everday human being.

You see, I've been cursed with the desire for "feminine beauty" ever since I was a young child (like, preschool?) when people would say to my mom, "Oh what a cute little boy."

Dammit, people!? The dress should have been a clue...I don't care if it was pale blue! And I couldn't help it that I didn't have hair long enough for pig tails, pony tails, or even those cute little colorful barrettes with the flowers or animals on them. And that was long before my mom cut my butt-length hair (sorry Mom, don't mean to bring that up AGAIN!) into a Twiggy-esque "pixie" because either there was no such thing as detangler or she wasn't into the stuff. Oh yeah, and the whole tomboy thing after that.

So, all that to say that I had a gender-unspecific childhood and was always curious about the feminine beauty techniques that never got passed down, for whatever reason, and it made me insatiable to understand how "beauty" was made. And I suppose there's a lot more going on in there, but that's a book in progress I think, so suffice to say that I always felt like I was being measured by a standard that I neither understood nor was certain I cared to understand. And yet. There it was. An undercurrent of confusion in my self image that persists until this very day.

I still remember the first time I did happen upon one of those "stars without their makeup" tabloids in the checkout line. (I don't know if you remember, but for a long time, celebrity beauty was wrapped up in the mystery. Now there's a relentless push to "catch" stars looking, "ewwww....normal!"...a sort of backlash from the old Hollywood glamour I suppose.) It was at that point that I became aware that the flawless beauty ideal that was all around me in the consumer world was just an illusion...slight of hand, tricks of lighting, and camera angles; oh, and air brushing. What a relief.!

But still this nebulous idea of "feminine" beauty persists in my psyche, not nearly as dramatically as before though I suppose. At any rate, to combat this ghostly sense of not fitting in, I keep that couple's picture where I can see it every day. And I look at it. And I think, "If Sharon and Ozzy were normal before they were Hollywoodized, then all any of us is missing is a trip to Hollywood where the imagicians could work their magic on us too. And who needs that? Really."

(Who am I kidding? Just knowing it's a possibility is enough.)

But seriously. Just knowing that, without the imagicians, even Sharon and Ozzy would look like anyone else I know, is always a relief.

Call me crazy, but it's how I get around one of my weaknesses. =)

Thursday Thirteen #12--My Heart on Display at Home

2008-06-27T09:23:00.008-05:00

Thirteen Things about My Heart on Display at Home

I may have just missed out on a fabulous opportunity provided by Mrs. G. over at Derfwad Manor, but I'm going to press on and hope that folks will still stop by from her home and visit mine too.

So this was supposed to be my Thursday Thirteen as well, as you can see, but Thursday, when I thought I would have time to do this, turned out to have other plans for me.

Without further adieu, then, I present to you the room in my home where my heart is. It's not the hub of the family, but it does house the spirit of the woman who is the hub of the family.

May I present....my office:

The full view:

The painting section. Painting is wonderful. It's one of my favorite things to do, but I still have hangups about doing it. You know. That perfectionism thing. That and the thing about doing things that are just for your own, individual, solitary pleasure? But when I let myself, gosh, I just can't imagine why it took me so long to give myself permission again. But I'm working on this issue. Oh, and ssshhhhhh...this is what I've been working on for a while now:

A close-up of my painting supplies, that probably need to be dusted at the moment, unfortunately. Like I said, I'm working through this. Once I have finished summer school, I'm going to be all about painting. Having to grade papers all the time has really kicked my yearning to paint up a notch. Make that about five notches. Ah....a pallette and paint and brushes, oh my:

The painted pony ornament I bought on my solo trip to Albuquerque in the summer of '06. This one is called "War Paint," and was the one, out of the available ornament ponies, that I felt captured my Native spirit...not the war part though...well, I just think warrior...as in warrior of Life.

The carved Willow Tree angel by Susan Lordi, titled "Thinking of You." Oh the expression. The hand on the heart. The ear to the shell. This is me, dreaming of love and the ocean.

My hand gathered cotton bole from Mississippi. Cotton is the most amazing plant. I couldn't believe it when I saw it for the first time. It proved to me that there just had to be a Higher Power taking care of us little naked human beings. Cotton. On. A. Plant. Now it reminds me of the idyllic days I spent in college in the Mississippi Delta, meeting the people who would change my life forever...for the better. And it's where I discovered poetry. And not just literary poetry that's been put in a book with a halo over its head. The poetry that is the kind that makes life worth living. Really, it was a recognition of the poetics of life. Call me a Romantic. I won't be offended.

Ah, my Cape Cod shells (some of them) and my Walden white birch bark, right in front of Thoreau, Emerson, The Transcendetalists, and so forth. This is home. I grew up in Massachusetts, but didn't discover the Transcendentalists until I made it to Mississippi. That's when I learned who I was and where I fit in...and how the transition between those two geographical locations was like a birth canal from heaven to seeing the light for the very first time.

This hand made oil lamp was thrown and glazed by a friend of the family who I always admired. I've never used it because I broke the oil holder one day trying to get it ready to put oil in it. Now it sits and looks lovely in front of my grandmother's collection of Rudyard Kipling volumes.

And now that I've mentioned a few of the books on my shelves, here are some close-ups of my favorite sections. This is the feminist section. Everything from Lizzie, written by my journalism professor at Delta State, to Susan Faludi's Backlash, to a really cool compilation of woman-centered science fiction called, Women of Wonder: The Classic Years. (And that's my Queen Power tiara sitting atop the lot of them--my wonderful friend from Mississippi sent it to me as a gift.

And here is my Native American collection, as well my Latin American, Asian American, philosophy, Romanticism, and others that seem to fit here. The book Spirit Walker came from an undergrad class in, you guessed it, Native American Literature, but it was like taking a philosophy and religion classes (heck, all the literature classes I loved were like that though), but what happened was that I fell in love with this book. It's gorgeous. It made me want to paint. I made me want to write poetry. It made me feel like Native American philosophy must transfer in the genes (felt like home). And it made me want to visit New Mexico, where both author, Nancy Wood, and artist, Frank Howell, were living at the time. And so I did. Quite a few years later, and not Taos, where they lived, but I did go to New Mexico. Alone. And I had an amazing experience with a mountain and a town called Albuquerque that is still one of the best things I've ever experienced in life. I just have to remember the trip to smile and feel peaceful. Like nothing in this world is big and bad enough to make me forget how big and beautiful this life and this planet really are. The trinkets from the trip are all in front of the books (still no picture in the adobe frame!):

There were a whole lot of other things I could have taken pictures of I suppose, but this one makes me smile and actually feel like I've accomplished something outside of the home. No, not the diploma hanging on the wall (it was in the first picture with a flash reflection on it!), but this nifty little plaque that a student anonymously recommended I should be honored with. Being that it was anonymous, I wondered if it were a scam, or a joke, but then I found out how the nominating process worked, and so I figured I could at least take it as a sign from the Universe that I was on the right track. Most days I feel like I don't know enough to be teaching, but then I remind myself that if I teach everything I know, including how to be nurturing to the mind, then I can feel good about my abilities. And as the saying goes, I've learned more as a teacher than perhaps my students do. It's the wonderful two-way exchange that makes teaching such a blessing. (That I have trouble remembering only when my eyeballs are falling out, I'm tearing my hair, and mumbling to myself about, "Is anyone listening when I talk?" But hey, I remember eventually.):

My life just wouldn't be the same without vanGogh's work. I've mentioned before that when I see his paintings in museums, I am overcome with emotion and cry. It's like seeing a soulmate across the distances of time and space. I just understand something when I look at them. And I feel what he's expressing. I really believe that his emotions are still in the paint, at least, that's what I feel I pick up on when I regard them. So, since I don't have enough money to buy the real things to gaze at around the house, I settle for prints, notecards, and whatever else...like this box that the notecards came in...and yes, vanGogh makes me want to paint too:

This is the only living thing in my office, besides me, and this little thing is just a little bundle of personality. Really. The picture shows that she is just a loyal friend to a human who spends way too much time facing a monitor these days. Normally, like right now, she's gruffing out the window at the FedEx or UPS trucks, people walking by, birds, squirrels, stray dogs, butterflies, and the elusive nothing, running back and forth from one window to the other and back to her spot and then back down again. Sometimes it's annoying, but when I haven't heard anything for a while, I turn around, and there she is, waiting:

So thanks so much for stopping by today! I have a million other things I need to go do now, but seeing these 13 pictures of the place where I spend most of my time, second only to the kitchen (a girl's gotta eat, right?) or the bed (and sleep?), well, I just feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It was nice having you over and showing you around. Hope you enjoyed your visit!

Hope to see you again soon! Muah! =)

Thursday Thirteen #11: Home Remedies?

2008-06-19T15:35:00.007-05:00

Thirteen Things about Home Remedies I've Used

I just spent the last week and a half with "The RhinoVirus from Hell." Hence, no TT last week. I was teaching that Thursday morning/afternoon, thinking it was all but gone (after three days of the stuff). But then I came home, felt instantly exhausted, went to bed, and woke up three hours later with a fever and the chills.

I still haven't kicked it out of me completely, only farther up into my sinuses it seems like. So today I was thinking that I actually had a moment, and I could breathe properly, and it was Thursday, so, what the hay, I'll write a blog! And since I was just so darn grateful to be able to breathe, I started writing about that.

Well that turned into a diatribe of home remedies from my childhood and I hadn't even started anything that looked like a list yet, so I decided to put all the remedies and their accompanying stories in list form. I used a piece of paper to jot some down and got up to nine, so bear with me. Even I don't know yet if this is going to get to thirteen or not! I'll give it the ol' college try though!

Oh, you want to know where this penchant for the mundane came from? Well, in a family full of nurses and "health-nuts" and chiropractor visitors, we were all about the diagnosis, the prognosis, and the best remedies God, Mother Nature, the Pantry, or the Medicine Cabinet had to offer. You could say it is a bit of a family tradition.

Flat gingerale and dry toast. Sometimes it was fun to get sick. I mean, I have always, always, always loved ginger ale, but soda wasn't something I could have just any old day. In fact, the bottle of ginger ale was usually around for mixing into cocktails on very special occasions. But if I got sick to my stomach, I knew that once I stopped vomiting profusely, the ginger ale would follow. (I didn't HAVE to throw up to get it, mind you, but if I did, it was always a consolation in mid-heave to think about warm ginger ale--yep, flat and warm and I still loved the stuff!) These days, I drink extra ginger, ginger beer when I'm sick and it always makes me feel happy, even if I don't have a tummyache!
Vicks Vaporub--on my chest, neck, upper lip, inside my nostrils, and even a little spot on my pillow case to sniff, just because I loved that stuff. I've always been a sucker for an upper respiratory virus it seems, and the Vicks would come out right away so that I could breathe enough to get to sleep at night because nobody likes to be up all night with a whiny, sick kid. Those were the days before OTC decongestants remember. To this day, the smell of Vicks just makes me feel safe.
The Misting Humidifier. Another one of those magical remedy machines of old. Sure they still sell them at the pharmacy superstores, but does anyone use them for anything other than babies or older folks? Perhaps. I had one for a little while when the kids were little, but I guess they just weren't as sick as I seemed to be. (This list is making me see what a little sick kid I really was!! Good memories surrounding regular illnesses? No wonder I'm so weird!) Did I mention that the white noise of the thing was so wonderfully soothing? Yep. Weirdo.

Peroxide and Mercurochrome. Ok, so on to the injuries for a while. I was a wild urchin of a child. By that I mean that I spent any inside time watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, or The Lone Ranger, or Grizzly Adams, or Rin Tin Tin, or Tarzan episodes, so that the REST of the time, when I was outside, I was in a state of Zen. I was one with Nature. I was in the sandbox, in the trees, hanging upside down from the swingset (and regularly knocking the wind out of my lungs when I would inevitably fall because I swung too far out), exploring in the woods, eating the local fruit (blackberries, grapes, crab apples, beans and carrots from the garden, you name it), and even--do I dare say it?--following the "call of nature" rather than have to go inside (mostly because I had a lot of room to explore and I always waited until the last second and just couldn't make it back in time!). So yeah, all that to say that I got my fair share--and then some--of cuts, scrapes, bruises, and scratches. Three out of four of those required peroxide first (loved the bubbles...) and then, if I were really hurt, the red stuff. Man I loved to be really hurt! The red stuff was like war paint. Bandaids schmandades! (And whose idea was it to make mercurochrome CLEAR??!! It's totally ruined now. I guess it must have had some horribly toxic red dye in it or something. Figures.)

I am stuck on Bandaids, cuz they frickin' stick on me! How cool is THAT?? Ok, so I liked me some bandaids too. This was war paint you could wear acceptably to school. And what kid isn't facinated with tape? COME ON! So something that sticks to you? Sweet. And I didn't get any of those fancy Disney character bandaids. Nope. Plain old bandaids. (Maybe Scooby Doo snuck in eventually, but maybe that was at a friend's house) And I always wanted to try the round bqndaids, but there were only a few, and it seemed like Gram always horded them "just in case." Because you know, nobody ever seemed to have a booboo that those worked on. Never. And so, I kid you not, when I was old enough to buy my own bandaids, I bought the pack with the round ones and used them the first chance I could. They didn't stick very well though. Live and learn.
Butterfly Bandages. We've got us a theme going now! These were THE COOLEST bandaids of them all. If you had to have one of these puppies put on your booboo, you had a wound, ok? I think I had an obsession with being wounded. (Hey, in my family, it was an acceptable way to get sympathy and attention. If anything were wrong emotionally, well, sorry Charlie, go get yourself a good scrape and then we'll talk!) So the story is...I had this horse on springs. You know, the "hobby horse" I believe they called it. And it was a big contraption, and it was noisy and annoying to grown-ups (and probably came from my dad...just kidding), so it had to go outside on the patio. Well, it was exposed to the elements, and all the springs got rusty, and finally, one broke. I am here to tell you that a three-springed hobby horse is still a lot of fun; until your mother gets a bright idea to ride WITH you on it. Ok, picture this CPS agents. Mom's on, facing front, "riding" normally. I'm on behind her, facing backwards so that if I do fall off, which, we all pretty much figured I think, I can slide off and land on my feet. One problem. The broken spring is in the back. So off I slide, as we are all laughing and hooting (because it just wouldn't be dangerous fun if the whole family weren't involved--aunts and grandparents and all!) and I feel something hot on my leg, but I'm still laughing. Then I feel wet on my leg and look down. I AM BLEEDING like nobody's business. Well don't all the nurses on the floor react like, get her inside "Stat!" So then we can't stop the bleeding and the peroxide bubbles run pink for what seems like forever and people start whispering something about "stitches," which makes me freak out. "Fix me here," I plead. So then Gram says something solemnly about "butterfly bandages," and I'm yepling, "Yes! Please! Butterfly bandages!" having no earthly idea what that means but, knowing how beautiful butterflies are, it HAS to be good. Well, long story long story, the bleeding relented, the butterfly bandages held, and I still have a half inch wide scar on my right calf and a story that makes my mother cringe to this day. (No need to tell you the second butterfly bandage story here.)

The wild and wacky, the miraculous, the all-purpose Ace Bandage. Notice by now that we didn't have off brand items either. This was back in the day when Bayer meant aspirin and Tylenol hadn't been invented yet--ok, well at least not offered to the general public anyway. So ACE Bandage it was. Now it's something like brown, stretchy bandage I guess, but then, it was Ace, and that meant something. The Ace Bandage was like Vicks. It was a source of comfort in an otherwise uncomfortable emotional landscape. So, I pit myself against the physical landscape, and how, and often came out with more than just a bruised ego. I think my grandmother understood this relationship between me and the Ace Bandage, but my mother was not as willing to hand it over any time I said ouch. She was always worried that I would lose the little metal thingies that held the loose end on. I can't blame her. I'm always at least one short to this day. But hey, I'm all about if this little bandage makes you feel better then go for it sweetheart. Ouch I twisted my ankle jumping off the big rocks in the backyard; I need the Ace Bandage. Ouch I hurt my wrist hanging off the swingset; I need the Ace Bandage. Owww, my knee is bruised and sore from falling off my bike on the sidewalk; I need the Ace bandage. Oh, how I love Thee, Ace Bandage!
The Homemade Splint. I REALLY am starting to feel like I was more of a "tomboy" than I ever thought. Like I said, I was Nature's Child. If I was not outside running around until my cheeks were red and I was salty and sticky, then I was miserable. I think this is why I always have had such trouble sitting still to read books, and why, out of everything else I've ever done, I have stuck with my dance lessons for so long (I know, a year, but STILL, this is ME we're talking about here, people!). I just LOVE LOVE LOVE to be on the go. And, apparently, at one time in my life, I was fearless. Gosh I miss those days. So, what happens when I get stuck in the house with all that energy? Well, if I couldn't have the card table to build a fort, or go play "Cherries Are Ripe" on the piano for an hour, then I would just have to jump off of the couch until I hurt myself. And oh, let me tell you, I did not get much sympathy for this one because NOBODY liked it that I jumped off the couch (it's like tape people...kids like to fly through the air to feel how cool it is to get "up high" again), so when it looked like I might have sprained my pinky finger, all the screaming in the world wasn't going to save me from the "now maybe you'll stop jumping off the couch" lecture. There were pained expressions and whispers of "x-rays" and "expensive" and "what if it's nothing and she's just making all that noise for attention." So I got the homemade splint. Colored toothpicks all the way around, held securely against the finger with first aid tape. Too cool. And no, I didn't need an x-ray. In fact, it didn't hurt after a few hours, but since it had been such a big deal, I was afraid to say anything until about 24 hours later. But 30 years later, when my daughter actually DID break her pinky finger (volleyball, not couch jumping), I was the mom who put a tongue depressor splint on her finger and sent her to school the next day. (Hey, in my defense, it didn't LOOK broken...you know, blue, swollen, throbbing, ouch ouch ouch all the time. That took a day to happen. Gosh I felt horrible. Kinda erased the whole hobby horse story, huh? CPS agents, are you still reading?)
Teabags and Clay Masque. Let's go back to the more calm and gentle stuff, shall we? Teabags and clay masque are useful when you have something under your skin that you would like to draw OUT of your skin. In other words, a foreign object of sorts. Usually accompanied by pain, redness, and swelling. Like a huge pimple with no head in sight. Or a wasp's stinger. Or an ingrown pubic hair (Ew!). Or what you think is a huge pimple with no head, but what actually turns out to be a sebacious cyst that finally gets infected and grows to a ginormous size and hardens from all the evil bacteria and pus inside of it. That requires surgery because you kept applying mask and teabags just knowing that any day now they will work their magic. That leaves a ginormous scar on the only part of your body visible in a bathing suit that, until now, did NOT have a scar on it. So large and ugly of a scar, in fact, that you, who never even considered getting a tattoo, see before and after pictures of a woman who had a tattoo put over her tummy scar, so you start picking out one for your back. The moral of this story is, try the teabags and masque for a few days, and then go see a dermatologist. STAT!
Saline Sinus Flush: Makeshift, Neti pot, or the Anti-Gravity Kind. I didn't know what a Neti pot was when I put salt in a plastic party cup, got in the shower, filled it with warm water, and poured it into my nostrils until it came out the other side and/or went down the back of my throat (no swallowing of course). It's the Texas Rhinovirus from Hades that made me do it I tell you. I'd never been so overwhelmed with mucous and sinus pressure in my entire life--and then again this past week of course. This time, I got the anti-gravity flush and used that. Ahhhhhhhhh. Basically it's a squeeze bottle with a hole in the top and a "straw" sticking into the bottle so that you can slowly squirt nice warm salt water (salt packets included) over your raging sinuses and clear them out without blowing your nose off. Twice a day is recommended. In the throes of the mucous, I sometimes did it once in the middle of the day as well. Works like a champ, as my husband would say.
Two B's, Two C's, Two Cal-Mags, and an E (and sometimes a Zinc). This was the Shaklee-inspired mantra for combating the common cold. My mother got on the "natural health" bandwagon when I was still in elementary school, so there have been vitamin supplements in my world for almost as long as I can remember. Gone were the Vicks and humidifier remedies of my early childhood. Now it was up to the vitamins and forced fluids and the avoidance of dairy and wheat to cure us of the common ailments that keep OTC drug companies in business. Us, well, we kept Shaklee in business. The nice thing is that Shaklee was the all-natural solution. Back before anyone really spoke of organic food and even before "health food" became a nationwide sensation, we were walking hand in hand with Shaklee's organic vitamins, minerals, makeup, detergents, cleaners and various and sundry other items. I was the only person I knew who took Calcium-Magnesium for menstrual cramps rather than Midol or some other thing. Thanks Mom! =)
Parsley and Candida Cleanse. Ok, so we've kind of grown up here and now the scrapes of the little tomboy have evolved into the yeast issues of the grown woman. But I'm not just talking about the kind of issue that everyone is probably thinking right now. I'm talking about recurring urinary tract infections or a sluggish loss of weight (the plateaus so many women find themselves upon in the battle against extra pounds for instance). Some urinary tract infections can actually be cause by an overgrowth of yeast. With a little intuition and some internet research, I figured out that was what was happening to me (accompanied by mild dehydration from the Texas weather) and I went to my favorite health food store and got some parsley extract and the two week Candida Cleanse (Gaia Herbs) and I haven't had a problem since. As mentioned, yeast overgrowth can also keep people from losing weight AND can CAUSE intense cravings for sweets (those little buggers can actually make you crave the food they crave!). And I'm not talking about the yeast overgrowth that is female in nature and obvious. I'm talking in your gut. One of the surest signs is the intense craving for sweets, even when your willpower says you really don't want them. I mean, some of us have sugar "habits," but if you have a combination of symptoms, and wicked, wicked cravings, it might just be the yeasty beasties! (Check it out online!)
Traditional Medicinal Teas. These are just lovely. When I used to smoke, I always had a box of "Breathe Easy" on hand. It's great for the upper respiratory crud too. It tastes good plain AND has noticeable effects on your breathing health. The others I have right now are "Daily Detox," for the liver and all those "toxins" everybody is always talking about; "Throat Coat," for the sore, scratchy throats in the world...soooooo soooooothing!; and "Ginger Aid," for the tummy, better digestion (or to soothe indigestion), or just for the cleansing properties of ginger...it's GREAT for you! The best way to make it is in a big Eeyore mug (ok, you can pick what's on your mug) and let it steep, covered (I use a salad plate or a saucer), for a full ten minutes. I even leave the bag in until I'm done. And don't add anything except maybe a little raw, local honey. Yummmm!

Wow! I'm always amazed when I get to the end of my Thursday Thirteen lists. Thirteen is A LOT! And thanks for reading all the way to this point by the way because, wowsers, that one was a doozey, huh? I'd love to hear from you--anything from a "hey" to a "here's my favorite home remedy!"

Have a great week! Kiss the booboos and stay healthy y'all!

Muah! =)

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

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For Phyllis

2008-06-11T16:32:00.005-05:00

The Queen of Memes has struck again! This time, she was all sly and tricky and said, "I'm not going to tag anyone, but..." And then in the actual meme there's the part where she lists two people she hopes will fill it out too, and guess what? My name was one of the two.

So since Phyl is such a cool ebuddy, I immediately wanted to make her wish come true! =)

This is for you, dear Phyllis!

Two Names You Go By:
1. Darling
2. Mommy

Two Things You Are Wearing Right Now:
1. A new pair of cream colored capris with matching satin belt
2. My comfy, leather, Sketcher flips.

Two Of Your Favorite Things:
1. The Ocean
2. My Books.
(I left people out altogether and just picked "things" to be fair to all those I've loved before...hehe)

Two Things You Want Very Badly At The Moment:
1. To not have this sinus thing that is making my ear canals itch!
2. For someone to make me food and put it down in front of me and say, "Enjoy!" because I'm hungry and too tired/sick to want to make myself something to eat after teaching all day.

Two Favorite Pets You Have Or Had:
1. A Jack Russell Terror, I mean Terrier, named Emily. (Have)
2. My very best friend as a kid, my loveable mutt Freckles. (Had)

Two People You Hope Will Fill This Out:
1. Eeney
2. Meeney

Two Things You Did Last Night:
1. Slept through my dance class time because I was feelin' so wretched.
2. Prepared for today's class...I made my students a fill in the blank outline to HOPEFULLY help them get organized to write their next essay.

Two Things You Ate Last Night:
1. Green Goddess Juice (Romaine, Cucumber, Celery, Pear, Ginger and Garlic=good for colds)
2. Raw peanuts in the shell. Well, I shelled them first. =)

Two People You Last Talked To:
1. My Hubby, to whom I was ridiculously cranky with and have since apologized.
2. The friendly lady working at Walgreen's.

Two Things You Are Doing Tomorrow:
1. Teaching for the last day this week.
2. Going to swing dance club!

Two of Farthest Trips Taken In The Last 5 Years:
1. NYC
2. Cape Cod, Mass.
(And there was a trip to Daytona, FL too...not sure on the mileage there!)

Two Favorite Holidays:
1. My oldest daughter's birthday.
2. My youngest daughter's birthday.

Two Favorite Beverages:
1. WATER
2. Is tequila a beverage? =)

It's true, all I drink is water or tequila. WAY more water of course!!!! I don't count green smoothies or fresh made juice as beverages, but maybe I should. In that case, they would be my favorites.

Eh, voila! C'est moi!

Thursday Thirteen #10: My Life Changed

2008-06-05T15:51:00.002-05:00

Thirteen Things about My Life Changed

Over the past year or so, I've been making changes so that my life "on the outside" looks more like what I feel like on the inside. I had an awakening, through a series of events, that made me realize just how much of my life so far had been a compromise.

What I mean by that, I think, is that I had given up my own ideas about how I wanted my life to play out in order to remain "safe" in some way. I had given up freedom of choice in order to be saved from my least favorite uncertainties.

I wrestled with this idea for a long time...still am if you want to know the truth...to be sure that I wasn't just being ungrateful or some weird version of spoiled. And really, there probably is a touch of both in the mix and that's why I can't be sure. But what I do know now, without a doubt, is that too much of my life has been a giant wimp-out in the face of challenges, commitments, and chance.

It's one thing to choose safety and security and to derive great comfort from those states of being, and another entirely to be angry all the time because "this isn't at all what I had in mind."

Wait! Don't run away! The list is positive. I promise. I'm just having one of "those" days, and I need to get to where I take action...the next step...and forsake the wallowing guilt trip. I think making myself write out this list will do the trick.

Ok, so here's a quick list of small steps of action I have taken to move towards what I DID have in mind for my life. =)

I have changed my eating habits. I am now a near vegetarian and high raw foodist. (I have a post called "Have a Chat with Your Fat" coming up soooooon!)

I have installed energy efficient lightbulbs in my home. I don't know that I can tell the difference yet, and now that the air conditioners run all day and all night, it won't matter a WHOLE lot, but it feels good to know they are there.

I switched to an eco-friendly electric company. This was one of the first big steps, and it feels great knowing that "my" energy comes from wind power alone.

I switched my kitchen and bathroom cleaners. This one is tough. I'm still trying to get the knack of it, and I still need to find something that scrubs the hard water deposits (but they were always a problem anyway). Laundry detergent and bath soap are next.

I started taking dance lessons. Yes, I am amazed at myself! I have been dancing twice a week for a YEAR people!!! Here's one commitment I have no problem keeping!

I have started exercising more regularly. Got a gym membership after I took that weight training/fitness class and I really enjoy going. Now that school is out for the kiddos and I am teaching, it's more difficult to get there, but I still have TurboJam for when I get stuck on this side of town and it's on the to-do list for tomorrow.

I lost weight. This is a byproduct of #1 and #6, but it's also a state of mind that I have chosen to commit to. I've really been working through my "food issues" (i.e. addiction). I watched to see what my triggers are. I noticed how I felt when I ate. I also went so far as to have "a chat with my fat," which I'm looking forward to detailing in a post in the near future.

I took more responsibility for myself. Ok, this was so HUGE! I mentioned this before, but it's soooooo goooooood! Here's my new mantra when I start feeling sorry for myself: "Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistake. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others."

I got off my husband's back. Mostly. And using the mantra. I had to finally look myself in the eye and say, "YOU are the only person who is responsible for your happiness." It's that whole, "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" idea (thanks Eleanor Roosevelt!). Plus, it's not his responsibility to make me happy. It's mine. Mine, mine, mine!! All. Mine......Muahhahhahhahaaaaaa!

I forgave my mother. Ok Ladies, you know who you are. How many of us drag that trunk of junk from our childhoods around with us for years and years and years? And even the stuff from after childhood that resembles the stuff from childhood! Taking responsibility for yourself has a magic side effect: you let OTHER people take responsibility for THEMSELVES too! Poof! Amazing.

I started expressing how I really feel. Yep. Lumps and all. No more trying to nicey-nicey, smiley-smiley, it's ok, don't worry about it, no problem, your wish is my command for me. It's the difference between being my own person and being a doormat for others. What a breath of fresh air it has been to just. say. NO!

I am gathering information. I've been following up on anything that interests me. Organic farms in Oregon? Check. Raw food chef training schools? Check. I name it, I'm looking it up. And soon that will include hands-on investigation. I want a new adventure once my chicks are out of the nest, and I have lots of exploring to do in the meantime.

I am writing more. This cute little meme has gotten me thinking all the time: "Ooh, I could talk about 13 of this or 13 of that!" And it's gotten me into the blogosphere more often and I've made a few friends so far and hope to make more. God Bless the Internet!

So that's my happy list of changes. And I bet there's more, but those were the ones that came up today. I'm sure I'll have a new list before too long. There's always room for change, after all.

How about you? Been changing lately, have you? Way to go!

Muah! =)

First Day of School...

2008-06-02T15:27:00.003-05:00

I haven't taught college English in a year and a half, but the summer session started today. Gosh it was fun to be back up in front of those bright, shining faces again! And, as usual, I gave "The Sponge Theory of Success" demonstration, showing them what they already know to get them focused for a rip, roarin' 22 class meetings in five weeks.

In honor of today, I thought I would "reprint" this entry I wrote the year I formulated the sponge theory of success. Hope you enjoy!

S—P—O—N—G—E--!!
What’s that spell?
Sponge!
What’s that spell?
SPONGE!
What’s that spell?
SPONGE!

Doesn’t that word look weird now? Isn’t it funny how looking at a word too much can make it look like gobbledygook—or at least like it’s spelled incorrectly? When that feeling of assurance that the word you are looking at is indeed the word you understand it to be disappears and your mind hesitates and questions—you second guess yourself.

I started back as a face-to-face teacher last week. I make that distinction because I also teach in the highly unsatisfactory online environment. Really though, it isn’t the environment that is so unsatisfying—it has more to do with being caught between the corporate, money-making administration’s minions and the disgruntled students who have been thrust into an online writing course against their will—it’s required. But I digress, and I won’t be talking about the very different issues that those students face. No, instead, I thought I would share my newfangled approach to teaching.

I’ve been asking myself the “difficult” questions lately—What do I want out of life? Why? How can I get more of it now?—and one of those question and answer sessions had to do with teaching. It’s what I have been doing for the past four, going on five, years now, and it hasn’t been an incredible source of inspiration and joy; I needed to know why. What am I drawn to and what repulses me in relation to teaching?

Well, for starters, I love the first day! It’s like giving birth. Shiny new faces, assumed potential, a wellspring of love in the heart for the challenges and the nurturing and the growth to follow. I get to have that “new baby” feeling twice a year. It’s addictive. I have to say that I pastor my flock through my courses. I break down previous mythologies, assuage fears, release past guilt, and lead them to the Promised Land.

The rest is good parenting. I am compassionate and I care and I praise and coach and cheer and sing halleluiahs to move them from point A to point B. I set up clear boundaries of expectation, blow on and bandage boo-boos when they fall, reprimand them when they should know better. I have multiple roles: pastor, shepherd, care-taker, boundary setter, locater of the lost…surrogate mother.

That brings me to what I don’t like. I don’t like wiping noses or changing diapers or spoon-feeding. After all, these are adults—or at least quasi-adults! When they ask for too much, which is often, I balk, and rightly so of course. And sometimes, parenting or shepherding 50+ quasi-adults can get downright exhausting! My “good-naturedness” spills over into enabling. Or their quasi-adult status plummets to infancy. Whatever the case may be…they push, and I fall over.
So I thought I should have better boundaries. More enforceable guidelines. More logical consequences and fewer exceptions to the rules. But what to do? I mean, this is a life theme…not just a teacher theme…and it’s THE BIG ONE.

But still, I thought that teaching would be the place to start experimenting. I had a clear external motivation for change, a captive audience of guinea pigs, and any tangible results might spur me on to a more personal success in the same problem area. Basically, I was looking for insight into this condition, and because I recognized myself in my procrastinating, detached, overwhelmed, and forlorn students, I thought that if I could convert them, then I could do the same for myself. This might be backwards, and it’s definitely a conservative approach, but I thought I would do well to practice “on camera.”

I have to perform as a teacher. It’s my job. It’s what I do. I am accountable to at least 50 other scrutinizing people. Here is where I can prove to myself that it is possible to succeed. So I asked myself what differentiated the successful students from their unsuccessful counterparts. We all know that the answer is never as simple as “intelligence.” In fact, we all know that sometimes, the smartest folks are the ones who just can’t seem to move forward at all. So. I came up with the general stuff...prepared for class, plans (and works) ahead, has drive, is committed…did I mention “doesn’t procrastinate”? Yeah…that’s the big one. Slow and steady wins the race.

All this thinking led to a metaphor or analogy that I “acted” out for them on the first day. These are children of the visual world, so I must be a visual Girl. I set three clear plastic cups on the desk. I produced a bottle of water from my bag and said:

I am this bottle. The water represents everything I know about writing and teaching writing. The cups are your learning environment—the classroom, if you will.

I poured some water into the cups. I set another cup off to the side and told them that this cup represented the “real world”—the world out there that they were striving to get to by going to college. I continued:

I create the classroom environment by sharing my knowledge with you. You bring yourselves. There are three basic kinds of students—Student Rock, Student Sand, and Student Sponge.

I showed them the students in representative form and asked them to guess which student was most successful in the classroom environment. They knew! Just like you do. Student Sponge. So I demonstrated to reinforce the point.

Student Rock comes to class and is hard-headed and impenetrable. I don’t need this class. I’ll never have to write once I’m out of here, so I just need to pass and move on. I already know how to do all this anyway. Hmph!

I put Student Rock in one of the cups. Nothing happened. I took Student Rock out, shook it, and said:

You see. You can’t even tell that Student Rock was in the class. Nothing has changed. And when I put Student Rock into the “real world,” it brings nothing to that environment. It is the same rock it was before and has nothing new to offer.

Then I picked up the bag with Student Sand in it, and explained that it was made of the same material as Student Rock, with opposite properties.

Student Sand can’t get it together. It comes to the classroom in scattered pieces that can’t find their way back together in the classroom. Student sand is bewildered, fears failing, believes that it cannot accomplish the goals of the course, for whatever reason. I swirled Student Sand around in the water. Student sand is overwhelmed by the environment—it can’t make use of the environment because it has no form, no discipline, no consistency. It may try haphazardly, but fails because it is constantly at odds with itself.

It rarely makes it out of the classroom into the real world intact. It can’t synthesize and utilize the knowledge it is exposed to.

Student Sponge appears in my hand and everyone is ready to be a sponge. They are imagining sponge-ness. Who wants to be a rock, or sand? (Students may peg themselves, but they may vow to be more sponge-like; after all…most people don’t set out to fail on purpose!) I smile at Student Sponge and hold it up, examining it.

Look! Student Sponge comes to the classroom PREPARED to soak up the learning! It’s READY before it gets there. It’s function…it’s purpose… is to learn.

In goes Student Sponge. It swells with water.

“Look!” I say. It’s taking knowledge out of the classroom! And when I put Student Sponge in the “real world,” it has something to use, to share, to draw on…something to show for its time in the classroom.

I squeeze a little water out of the sponge into the real world cup.

There! It’s contributing to its new environment! It’s obvious that Student Sponge has learned something and taken that knowledge with it into the new environment! So what makes Student Sponge ready?

It is…
Serious,
Precise/Prompt,
Open-minded,
Not willing to quit,
Genuine, (and)
Enthusiastic!

I won’t go on about how those qualities translate into the composition classroom exactly…you can pretty much guess…but I will say that I linked those qualities to the expectations inherent in my syllabus so that they could see that I wasn’t just spouting rules at them. Oh no. I was showing them what to do in order to be a successful student.

And now they had this visual in their mind’s eye of a sponge taking water from one cup to the next. And every time I see them, I can say: “I hope you are all feeling like sponges today because we have a lot to learn in the next 80 minutes!” And they will be immediately transported to the visual center of their brains and remember and understand what I mean in a primal, limbic way.

It’s already working for me. I use the sponge mantra on myself. “Are you feeling like a sponge today, Nicole? I hope so! Because you have a lot to learn today! And you need to take it with you in order to get to the next level…to reach those goals of yours!”

How about you?

Of course we’ll all have rock and sand days from time to time…but OH! to be a sponge most often! That is my goal.

Hopefully it is working on my students too. I’ll keep you posted!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

Thursday Thirteen #9: Life Is Precious, Life is Fragile

2008-05-22T13:30:00.004-05:00

Here I sit, not having started this list, not starting much of anything yet today. I am so ashamed that I can't discipline myself to even get up and go PAINT for crying out loud. And then I see this headline in my surfing stupor and I am shocked wide awake: "Steven Curtis Chapman's Daughter Killed in SUV Accident."

So in lieu of any silly list I might come up with today, I invite you to go and read what the Chapman family's day was like yesterday and get down on your knees and thank God that you're here and that you still have time to get around to doing what you would like to do with your life, and I'll do the same.

The video on Maria's page is also very sweet. What a lovely snapshot of a family that lives life to the fullest, all the way down to the youngest member of that family.

May you all have a blessed day of gratefulness. Perhaps you can make a list of 13 things you are grateful for today and meditate on it. I'll be doing that. It's the least I can do.

My condolences to the Chapman family. Steven's music and example were always an inspiration to me when I was paying attention. Thank you and may God bless you and keep you through this time of trouble and make your hearts glad again one day soon.

Thursday Thirteen #8 -- I Found Out!

2008-05-15T10:22:00.008-05:00

Thirteen Things I Found Out This Week

I've actually started getting things done in my real world space, so this week's list ~~after much brainstorming for something "brilliant" to say to the world!~~ will just be another random look at what's going on in my world (I paused for about ten seconds wanting to say "in my head" while I tried to convince myself that it wasn't JUST in my head, but was, in fact, part of my observable reality!). Ok, so if that introduction doesn't give you a clue about what my life is like when my kids go stay at their dad's house for extended time, maybe the list will help you understand what life without any major routine looks like! =)

I found out from a couple of bloggy friends that not only does my favorite flower flourish in Oregon, but that they are blooming RIGHT NOW! Lilacs, how I love thee! Here I come!

I found out just how many people (or should I say how few?) on my notification list actually want to read my blog regularly when I asked them to sign up for email subscriptions instead of getting emails from me. Alas.

I found out how the raw foodists were right when they said that changing the way I eat would change my whole life...for the better! Everything. From how I look, to how I feel, to how I behave, to how my connection with others and even life itself would change. I'm so glad I started in the spring, too, because my new blossoming is right in line with the seasons and it's truly a joyous combination!

I found out that we have Jimmy Buffet's "Boats, Beaches, Bars, and Ballads" box set on MP3 and I am listening to it today as I get things done. Jimmy is definitely a contender in my stuck on a deserted island music list. He's such a poet philosopher. Really. I think he's also one of the people I might say I would be if someone asked, "If you could also be anyone else in the world, who would you be?" (I'm a big fan of thinking it would be really cool to get to life swap to see what it's like...we all live vicariously from time to time, no?)

I found out that I CAN live without animal protein every day. I used to think I could not. In fact, I thought about making this list into thirteen new things I have learned to eat since "going raw," but the general concensus of my readers is that it's just too weird, so I'm going to probably just post that on my new raw food blog instead!

I found out that after about two months of eating mostly fruit, vegetables, seeds, and nuts, no dairy, no wheat, and very little meat, and exercising more regularly, that I have lost about eight pounds and have tons of energy!

I found out that what I like most about my new lifestyle (eating really is a lifestyle) is that I don't feel bloated and swollen and droopy-eyed tired anymore. And I love the food I get to eat! See, I love food, so this really works for me because I get to eat "dessert" for dinner if I want to. Last night, I had four jumbo fresh strawberries cut up and sprinkled with hemp seeds (they taste like moist sunflower seeds but have the highest protein of any nut/seed) and topped with banana "ice cream." That means a frozen banana, four dates, a swirl of agave nectar, a dash of vanilla, and a handful of ice cubes (and a little H2O for mixing purposes since I don't have the best blender). It was luscious! And filling. And good for me.

I found out that I've finally hit my stride and can eat much less than I had when I first adopted this style of eating. I know...this is the last one...but I was really worried at first because I just felt so empty eating just raw food. And then I had to go through all kinds of withdrawal feelings and actually DEAL with my emotional eating patterns to get here, so I'm really excited about it!

I found out that focusing on being the change I want to see in my marriage is a miracle of Biblical proportions. (hehe) Seriously though. And now I'm reading The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz, and it all makes perfect sense because of the revelations I've been having in my own life lately. I recommend his books. I also just checked out his book of Prayers and have the companion (handbook?) to The Four Agreements. Ancient wisdom. Funny how things don't REALLY change...just new faces and new gadgets!

I found out that my computer doesn't respond well to power loss. I was halfway through the last item and the power went out. It was rather funny, actually, because I finished typing a sentence at the same time that a Buffet song ended and them BAM! out went the lights! So, now, about 30 minutes later, I'm back to finish this list that is STILL taking way too long! =)

I found out that I still love Turbo Jam. It's fun. Like dancing. In fact, cheery Chalene Johnson actually gives little breaks between sets to just "get your groove on" freestyle. She's a lot of fun, and very encouraging. I can't watch people who are just making a tape, you know? This lady has a heart you can connect to in her videos. (I liked that about Billy Blanks too, but I like Chalene more!)
I found out today that Blogger's wacky glitches have a whole lot to do with why blogging takes too much of my time. Three times now I've had to close out the browser completely (this last time using alt+F4!!!!) because the dang link button gets stuck in the "on" position and keeps popping up a window no matter WHAT I click on....save, exit, anything!!!! GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!! Guess I'll have to use html AGAIN to bypass the mess. Oh, and need I even mention the crazy addition of spacing everywhere when I have to leave and come back?????? Hmph!
I found out that I really love my life. I'm really learning to stop beating myself up for being a housewife who "needs a job/career" and started just being grateful for the fact that my husband works hard and likes it, that my kids have me around to take care of them since we don't live close to many family members, that I can go and work part time teaching and make some money if I need to, that I have this wonderful time to find my next true calling. I read something about "life's work" on a friend's blog yesterday and thought, "YES! That's exactly right!" Being a mom has absolutely been my calling all this time and when I haven't seen that, it's because I've been thinking I needed to be someone else for someone else (not just one person!) and that's just not who I am! So thank you Zenmomma for your wise words yesterday!!!! =)

And thanks to YOU for reading my Thursday Thirteen!

I've also found that I can do this once a week blogging thing without TOO much trouble. It gives me a focus and just enough incentive so that I don't walk away from my blog for too, too long.

Like I said, there's been a lot going on here lately, and I am preparing my life to be conducive to writing about it more often. Needed to get some things taken care of first, though, and I'm happy to finally be making some major progress. I guess I literally had to start from the inside out and learn to fuel my body so that it will cooperate with me in getting things accomplished!

Have a great day...weekend...and week! May you be grateful for your life--it's the only one you have, and not everbody gets to stick around as long as they would like, so enjoy every day, even if you only enjoy MOPING for the day, ok????!!!!!

Muah! =)

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

Thursday Thirteen #7--Favorite Romantic Comedies

2008-05-09T16:31:00.005-05:00

Thirteen of My Favorite Romantic Comedies

Ah yes, I know promised a blog more like the old days, waxing philosophic on some random topic perhaps. Well, then this week happened, and this is all I have for you. A break between a crying smile-fest that is compensating for my feminine slump in front of the television. It's just been one of those days. This is my life.

Without further adieu, thirteen of my favorite movies to watch when I'm in, shall we say, a Lifetime or a We kind of mood--the catch is, they have to be on my movie shelves:

The Wedding Singer
13 Going on 30
Must Love Dogs
Say Anything
Enchanted
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
The Princess Bride
You've Got Mail
When Harry Met Sally
Never Been Kissed
Forget Paris
My Best Friend's Wedding
The Wedding Planner

Yep, I just watched 27 Dresses and that's what gave me the idea. I didn't feel up to writing anything at all, but then I thought, "Oh, surely I can make a list of 'chick flicks' that fit my current mood...I'd hate to TOTALLY miss a Thursday 13." The theme this week was gross, using any interpretation, so let's just say this is what I like to watch when I'm feeling ~~like a wretch of humanity...ok, how about~~ a little blue. (Oh look, it's my very first strikethrough!!! =)

Gee, I just realized that "wedding" is in three of those titles. (Oh, and a bride too!) Revealing, no? Hey, the tradition of the comedy is to end with a wedding, so it's no surprise really. Humanity has always loved its "happy" endings!

Enjoy the weekend, y'all!

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Meet Pepe!

2008-05-06T14:30:00.002-05:00

This post is a completely lighthearted tribute to my favorite Muppet I mentioned last week. For me. For fun. Because he makes me happy, and I was bored the other day and found all these cute YouTube videos of him.

I also posted last week about slowly moving away from my meat eating ways, but I don't know that I could completely give up seafood...forever???!!!. Tuna for the dolphins' sake? No problem. But what about raw oysters? And what about shrimp? No offense Pepe.

But wait! Pepe is not a shrimp! He's a King Prawn, ok?

Watch him and see if you think he's cute too! (If you feel like it. I know at least one person out there who doesn't like Muppets, and I apologize for yet another reference to them!)

A video personal dating ad...

A few scenes of Muppets from Space, where I first met Pepe...

Pepe auditions for a Long John Silver's advertisement...

See you Thursday for a more spiritual, philosophical version of the Thirteen meme! =)

I got tagged by Phyl!

2008-05-05T13:13:00.004-05:00

My pal, Phyl, tagged me for this meme! She's the queen o' memes! This one's for you girlfriend! =)

Here are the rules of the game (post these first).

1)Each player answers questions about themselves.

2) At the end of the posting tag 5-6 people.

3) Post their names and then go to their site and leave a comment telling them that they have been Tagged. Then ask them to read your blog.

4) Let the person who tagged you know that you have completed your posting.

LET THE FUN BEGIN!!

WHAT WAS I DOING 10 YEARS AGO:

Let's see. At the beginning of May of 1998, I had been officially divorced for about two weeks. I believe I had just had my first bout with Houston influenza that had me dizzy with my head in hand while my kids hunted for Easter eggs outside in the super hot humid weather! I had quit working for Merry Maids because of said flu, that I came down with on Good Friday, WHILE AT WORK, cleaning one of those horrible first time houses that the supervisor would say, "Oh, it should only take y'all a few hours." After four hours, with much more to go, a fever, aches, and the chills coming on hard and fast, with dog hair lodged in my sinuses from the NASTY house, I knew I'd had just about enough of that job. I can STILL see the inside of that house. I think my mom was coming to visit. It was a pretty crazy time in my life. In fact, I have a picture of my kids from when my mom was visiting on my fridge, and I looked at it last night and cried. I could see my little babies on the left and then look up and to the right and see my teenage girls at Disney in December. They looked so much the same, but so different. I just cried the mommy cry. So yeah, ten years ago. Wow.

WHAT ARE THE 5 THINGS ON MY "TO DO" LIST:

Literally on a to-do list:
1)Organize my office: bookshelves, drawers, cabinets, filing. (Can you say ugh?!)
2)Mop the floors.
3)Clean the bathrooms.
4)Organize the kitchen still better to accomodate my new style of eating (i.e. RAW!)
5)Prepare to teach summer school classes next month. (eeeegads, I have less than one month now to get ready!)

On an inner-personal level:
1) Read and take notes on the books I have accumulated on inner growth.
2) Get this office organized so I can read, write, paint, and teach from it with peace of mind AND the ability to find what I need and use the space effectively!
3) Complete to-do list to eliminate stress (SAME AS PHYL ON THIS ONE!)
4) Start walking daily (AND HERE TOO!)
5) Find a source of income that works with who I am inside, and not just as a paycheck to get by and create more stress in my life.

3) SNACKS THAT I ENJOY: Carrots and guacamole; celery with raw almond butter; and yes, ok, chocolate...but I don't feel good AFTER I eat it!

4) THINGS I WOULD DO IF I WERE A BILLIONAIRE: Oh the money I could give away!!!! One dream I have always had is to create some kind of program for teenagers to become more involved in society...obviously, teenagers who do not have the resources to do so. Ultimately, I would want to help motivate them scholastically, politically, environmentally, emotionally, spiritually, and ethically...all at the same time. Hey, if I'm going to dream about being a BILLIONAIRE, it's got to be BIG, right? I truly believe that teenagers are one of the largest untapped markets of creativity and change. Really I think it all goes back to feeling so useless as a teenager myself. And not feeling like I had anyone to show me the way to BE useful. I know there are plenty of things out there that teens can do, but I want to reach the ones who don't have access. Oh sigh, I just want to change the world, you know? Like, let's just revamp the entire education system and make it community oriented instead of consumer and convict oriented. Again, there's so many MORE kids who are left out than who gain from it all. I would love to change that. So there. =)

5) PLACES WHERE I HAVE LIVED: Uxbridge, Douglas, Sandwich, Hyannis, and W. Yarmouth Massachusetts; Vicksburg, Cleveland, and Greenwood, Mississippi; Houston and Humble, Texas. Oregon and California, here I come!!! =)

6) BAD HABITS THAT I HAVE: Refusing to believe in myself more often than not; being a little bit late almost all the time; making to-do lists and then blogging or surfing the internet instead of accomplishing my goals; avoiding household chores more often than ever before; buying too much food; avoiding routines that would make my life less stressful.

7) JOBS THAT I HAVE HAD: restaurant worker (register, food prep, food service--fast-food style in several restaurants), hardware store cashier, factory worker (packed the styrofoam trays that grocery meat etc. comes on), kennel worker, office aide, writing tutor, high school English teacher, (not so) Merry Maid, college English teacher. And my calling so far has been motherhood, although now that the kids are almost "done," I am sad that I didn't do more. Ah well, that good old hindsight added to a perfectionistic bent...what else is new?

Ok, so let's see, I have to tag some folks....um....well, maybe I'll let this one end here for now. I didn't have much luck last time with the tagging part!

Have a blessed day my readers!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

Voters, Delegates, and Superdelegates--OH MY!

2008-05-05T10:38:00.004-05:00

I read Mrs. G's blog this morning, and then the comments, and then followed a link in the comments to Jon Stewart's Daily Show site, and then kept watching related videos, until I saw this. Goodness, what a mess! Maybe the Democratic electoral convolutions ARE what keeps getting in the way of Democratic progress when all is said and done?

Hillary's changing take on voters, as demonstrated in this video at least, is exactly why I just can't vote for her. She accused Obama of dismissing the frustrated voters of Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) by his statements, but here, she sees them as even LESS than frustrated voters who turn to their comforting principles to decide their votes. To me anyway, it seemed like she pretty much called them ignorant, or at the very least, uninformed?

Oh Democrats...will ye ever get elected to the Presidency again? Do ye deserve it?

All I have to say is, "Barack the vote!"

"Meet Your Meat" Changed My Life

2008-05-02T16:33:00.005-05:00

A little video, available at YouTube, called "Meet Your Meat," changed my life, although, the transformation took a little time to percolate.

I've been mentioning raw food lately, and it's been an interesting path that has led me here finally. It started a long, long time ago when my mother became, what many friends and family members jokingly (for the most part) referred to as a "health nut." But that story is too long for today, so I'll cut to the chase.

Somehow today I came across Pam Anderson's video (honestly, I think it was a link from a link from a blog or some kind of internet surfing scenario) about "Kentucky Fried Cruelty." It seems PETA is after KFC to change it's torturous treatment of chickens. If you love animals at all, you'll agree it's torturous.

See here:

Watch more videos at KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.

But something bothered me. Why was it only KFC?? What about Chick-fil-A? Church's? Popeye's? Yes, the South runs rampant with chicken "joints" that serve up lots and lots of chicken. (In fact, my husband brought some Popeye's home the other day, much to my dismay, and yet, I was weak and I ate of it and am ashamed.) So I did a little searching, and REALLY, it's the chicken processing plants that are doling out the torture, the biggest offender allegedly being Tyson. Now, all I could think of were all the people who made their living at the Tyson plant down the street from where I lived in rural Mississippi! People or chickens, people or chickens?

Ok, so chicken "farmers" and processors are to blame. So again, in my searches to find more answers, I came across the "Meet Your Meat" video that I had stumbled upon two years ago. I tried to make myself watch it again, but after about four minues or so, I was in tears. And then, I heard a line I had forgotten. Narrator Alec Baldwin said, "If you drink milk, you are supporting the veal industry." And that made me come here to just get this off my chest.

I've lived my whole life feeling guilty if I ate veal, and have only done so about 3 times (a couple of the parmesan variety, and a picatta). And I've heard BUNCHES of folks say, no, they don't eat veal because, awww, it's a poor baby. Well guess what? Apparently the milk is making the veal, so to speak. And it makes sense, but I never thought of it (and apparently didn't remember it after the first viewing!).

To keep milk production going, cows are routinely impregnated. The calf is taken away almost immediately and "raised," confined in a "stall," until it is auctioned off and/or slaughtered. Ugh. Now, I did finally switch to organic milk, but I don't know if this is across the board for milk production or what. My uncle's family owned a dairy when I was a kid and I loved cows, and we would visit them, and I never knew that it could be a bad thing. But this was an independent dairy that still DELIVERED fresh milk in glass bottles, so I don't believe it was anything like what is in this video. These cows roamed the fields and ate grass and hay and came home at night, so it seems to be "industrial" in nature. I would think organic dairy farms are more like those of old with cow pastures and all.

So anyway. All those folks who don't eat veal, not because of it's price tag but because of some love for baby cows, beware the milk. Oh goodness, I digress?!

I'm about one step away from being an ovo-vegetarian (my eggs are organic free-range--and now raw!). Before that, any meat I ate was mostly chicken, sometimes a ground turkey spaghetti dinner, an occasional Texas-raised beef steak, and an even rarer pork chop. But I slowly became more and more repulsed when handling meat. Especially chicken. And I was buying Pilgrim Farms "all natural" (no hormones or antibiotics, but not organic though). But after watching this Pam Anderson chicken video and starting "Meet Your Meat" again, I think I'm ready to quit (no, it wouldn't have been very kind to say "cold turkey").

There are all kinds of other statistics out there about the amount of crops raised just to feed the "meat" being so many times the amount that could feed everyone on the planet...cutting down rainforests to do it...CO2 emissions from animals...blah blah blah.

I'm not posting this to change your mind. I'm posting it because I'm simplifying my life and finding my connection to the Great I AM, and the common level of avoiding the truth in our "modern day society" just isn't cutting it for me anymore.

Ghandi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," and so I'm practicing being the change. I'm giving myself permission to live the way I believe without worrying about what other people think. I've lived too long hoping that nobody thinks I'm "weird," or "different," or "too sensitive," or that I "think too much."

Well, too bad, I am all of those things according to the inherent peer pressure of acceptable norms I find surrounding me on a daily basis. I would like to experience balance. And peace. In my opinion, there just isn't enough of that in the world these days.

Love baby. That's where it's at. Love ourselves. Love each other. Love the animals. Love the planet that sustains us. For God's sake, if not for our own?

Amen.

Thursday Thirteen #6--My Randomness

2008-05-01T11:45:00.015-05:00

Thirteen Random Things about MOI

I'm hoping that this will cover the "7 Random Things" tag from Ute AND this whole meme theme over at the Thursday Thirteen headquarters.

I know I blog and stuff, but specifically setting out to reveal things about me makes me a little panicky inside. All that insecurity stuff. It's easy to say "I like Oregon" and show pictures, or to talk about the things I like about someone else, or even to discuss how I feel or what I've learned, but venturing into the realm of personal stuff, well, gives me the heebeejeebees.

However, I will face this fear and insecurity and just do the dumb thing already! And remember, it's random, so that means it's off the top of my head and is probably not as significant as all the worry would suggest.

Enjoy? =)

I absolutely love the Muppets. As a kid I watched Sesame Street, and the Muppet Show, with glee. And I still can. In fact, the Muppet Show DVDs are in my Netflix queue and I had them on my Christmas/birthday list a few years back. When my kids were little, we had Sesame music CDs and we knew all the songs, which I still quote to them on occasion. ("Carribean Amphibian" comes to mind.) Here's my favorite new muppet. (Oh, and I named my daughter Zoe BEFORE there was a muppet on SS with that name! That did bug me a little bit, but I got over it.) So, again, here's my favorite new muppet, ok?

Pepe, The King Prawn
I love books. I love them in stacks and on racks. I love them on shelves or by themselves. I love them here. I love them there. I love books everywhere. Do I read them? Occasionally. And when I do I love them even more. But there's something so dang comforting about the books on the shelves in my office where I spend most of my time reading on the internet. This is a secret source of shame, and one I hope to alleviate within the next month (the time I've given myself to "get it together, once and for all"!) Here is part of my library.

I think I hate the Blogger interface. Compose mode always messes up the spacing. Adding pictures is a nightmare. In fact, that may be the last picture you see today because I'm tired of sitting here KNOWING there has to be an easier way that I haven't learned. I haven't even searched for blog help yet, so if any of my lovely readers has any idea where the best place to go for help is, I would be oh-so-grateful for your comment to that effect!
I started to go off on a rant there, but I saved you. Maybe. Let's see, did this work? Ah, saved. See number five for what just happened.

Did I mention I dislike the Blogger interface? I just gave up on that last one because I couldn't get the typeface color to revert back to normal, and the last time I messed with it, it ended up some weirder shade of green. Let me go check the html code. Yes, it appears that I know just enough HTML to drive myself BATTY!

This year marks my 20th year of life post high school graduation. Did I imagine that I would be here? Doing life like this? No, reader, I did not. And so this also marks the year where I let that IDEA of a life go and just start living the one I have--and making changes as I see fit. To wake up to the reality that you have created and realize that the dream is over can be simultaneously crushing and liberating. I'm rooting for liberating to win!
In light of my van Winkle-esque discovery this year, I now have a motto of sorts. From the Tao Te Ching:
"Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others."

I have a list of things I want to do that is so long that most times I become overwhelmed and do nothing. Or blog. However, blogging is one of the things I want to do, I just don't want it to take over my day (see #4 and #5). Here's some of my list: Wait, better yet, let me just make it part of the 13 and be efficient! =)

I want to paint. Every day I see my easel, holding the canvas with the outline of an Albuquerque scene on it, or the painting above my monitor that needs a few more tweaks, or the one leaning up against the file cabinet that needs another go of detail, and I think, yes. And then I come out to lock the front door at night before going to bed and I see the paintings in my office, and I think, no. Again, I have so many ideas swirling around in my head about what I want to paint, I let it get overwhelming. Or, I'm the meany and say, "Not until you get your work done!" which never seems to happen to a sufficient degree to allow for such reckless play. I am determined to make a schedule for myself that includes painting, no matter what.

I bought myself two journals...well, a sketchbook and a journal. Large, hard-bound. One for pictures cut out of my favorite magazines...places I want to visit, things I would like to do, clothing or decorating styles that make me smile. A sort of "vision" or dreams notebook. (Gotta get some new goals to work towards!) The other for quotations I like...any kind. I've started cutting out photos and I have the rubber cement. I have some quotations on slips of paper in a pile, and I have the rubber cement. Now, to make the time to do this...a little each day.

I am absolutely fascinated with raw food recipes. I have eaten so many new kinds of things. Like last night for instance, I made "pasta" with pesto sauce. I used my handy-dandy Pampered Chef mandolin and sliced up some zucchini strips (the long way). Then I massaged some sea salt into the strips until they were soft and "noodle-y." Then, I put a dollop or two of homemade pesto sauce (basil leaves, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil) on top and mixed it in. SO GOOD! You wouldn't believe! My husband loved it! Oh, and I've sprouted my own mung beans about four times now, and they ROCK! And my kids' favorite so far are sunburgers, made with sunflower seed and flax meal as a base. Awesome! Here's a picture...breakin' all my rules about adding photos cuz it's soooooooo gooooood! That's raw corn "salsa" on the side, and on top, raw catsup and homesprouted mung beans! (No, it's not difficult to make!)

I have a compulsion to be super organized, but I fight the battle constantly. Right now, next to my chair, there are piles of stuff that migrated here from elsewhere in the house as the last stop before being sorted properly. I cannot keep paper from piling up. I am good at hiding things in closets, and no matter how often I reorganize them, there always seems to be chaos waiting to happen. When I lived in an apartment, I didn't have these problems. I keep trying to implement that strategy here, but it's so difficult to "fool" myself into thinking, "I just don't have room for that." The garage is living proof there's room for that SOMEWHERE!!!

My dog Emily is my constant companion. Faithful. Dutiful. Under foot. Pesky. Annoying. Troublesome (She ran out the door to chase--A ROTTWEILER--when I tried to let the cat in the other night! Thank goodness it was the most mild mannered Rotty I've ever met!). Cuddly. Piggy (She eats the cat food if she doesn't have grazing food in her bowl...well, sometimes even when she does, so she can save hers just in case!). Neurotic (umm, guess that would by my fault?). But she's my girl, and she has kept me company during all those hours when I've been home alone, like now, and bumping into me as I bump into myself, trying to get organized!

Having said "trying to get organized" just now reminded me that I must remember Yoda's words (which are not only his, but hey, I would rather hear it from a Muppet!): "Do or do not. There is no try."

So, I'm going to go do some stuff on my list! Have a happy Thursday and a WONDERFUL weekend! (And wish me luck because I'll be making myself a schedule over the next few days! Woohoo! Baby steps of doing, here I come!)

Muah! =D

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Thursday Thirteen #5: Oregon Vistas

2008-04-24T10:04:00.011-05:00

Thirteen Things about OREGON's VISTAS

I hope I'm not starting to sound like a broken record here, but my blog is one of the ways that I work through how I feel about my life, and this Thursday seems like as good a time as any to throw out some ideas, ok pictures, about my dream for the future.

I've been watching the weather buttons on my blog, and listening to a few Pacific Northwest bloggers, and I would have to say that the weather up there is making me a little nervous about living there. I will definitely have to visit in the winter/early spring to see what that actually feels like. But I'm still pretty sure that I can handle wearing gloves, scarves, boots, and jackets as long as I get to see the world looking like the photos below. Yeah baby, I want glorious natural landscapes!

And there's also the issue about how far away it is, but, well, I never let that stop me before. And I don't have to stay there forever, I suppose, but I do feel an intense pull to the West Coast, so I'm definitely going to go that way. I think I might find my village there. I can't tell you how many people from Oregon have started popping into my reality...authors, bloggers, drivers in front of me. Yes, it's true! I have NEVER seen an Oregon license plate until yesterday. My kids asked, "What are they doing HERE?" I looked at the big SUV and thought, "Oh, they've come to the right place if that's what they are driving around in!"

But seriously, I just wanted to kick back and look at some beautiful scenery today, so I went to Google's image search and typed in Oregon. Here are 13 vistas I would absolutely love to witness, in person!!!

I love, love, love, love, love the ocean. And this is rugged ocean. With rocky formations for the waves to crash against! Ahhhhh!
And here's one in a bluer hue...
And here's one after a storm at sunset...
Oh, and this one showing the crasshhhhhhhh...
We now interrupt the coastal photos for the idyllic farmscape... Have I mentioned that I have always wanted to live on a farm?
Back to some water, but this is falling water... falling over lush greenery...*sigh*
And now for some snowy mountains and flowering meadows... are we in heaven yet?
Even the manmade Janpanese Gardens are exquisite, and since Japan is farther away than Oregon...
Mountains and meadows and rocks, OH MY...!!!
A river, cliffs of rock, and evergreen forests anyone...???
A majestic waterfall perhaps? Height is proportional to "majesty" I believe...
And we can't forget the mesmerizing Crater Lake...
And finally, one more luscious waterfall for good measure...

This photographer calls the Oregon Coast "nirvana." I absolutely agree. Check out HIS righteous photos from a week-long trip down the coastline. And, as always, may you be blessed this week--with visions of the desires of your heart. May you follow your dreams in perfect joy! (Yes, you may have perfect joy. Ask and ye shall receive. Believe, and it is so.)

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I've Been MUGGED!

2008-04-21T01:15:00.005-05:00

My new blogger friend Phyllis tagged me for this fun little meme!

Lois' Morning Mug Meme Rules:

Most folks drink some sort of a morning beverage, be it coffee or tea, and most likely from a mug.

1. Please share a photo of your favorite mug(s).
2. Tell a story about how it became your favorite. Include what you drink with this mug.
3. Be sure to link to Lois and the person who tagged you for this meme!
4. Leave a comment for Lois so she can follow her meme.

Ok, so here we go!

My first favorite mug is a replacement for my all-time absolute favorite mug that they don't carry at the Disney store anymore (and couldn't find it on eBay). The original was poorly made and the bottom broke off. However, I think I forgot and ran it through the dishwasher or something. Anyway, that one was pink inside, white outside, with Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, AND Eeyore on the front of it. It was beautiful. *sigh*
So now I have this lovely, uncharacteristically happy Eeyore mug that I just love. Isn't he cute?? I used to drink tea out of this mug but then I started using a tea pot to steep my herbal tea, so now I just look at this one. Oh, and I don't drink hot beverages in the morning. I am allergic to caffeine, so to speak. I don't break out in hives, but my adrenal glands get completely overstimulated. I could have a SIP of coffee in the morning and still be up until 2am. Oh, and after prolonged exposure to caffeine (I got addicted to Dr. Pepper a couple of times...gosh I love that junk!), I become depressed. I figured this all out at 18, luckily, so I've been caffeine free all of my adult life (except for those two forays into Dr. Pepper's land of fun).

My oldest daughter and I love Eeyore and we each got this mug one day when we went to the Disney store. (She also got an Orlando Bloom [aka Will Turner] pillow, but I didn't think I could get away with that one!) See, we even got to meet Eeyore in person at Disney! =)My other favorite mug in the whole world, that I've had for a long, long time, has one of Gary Larson's Far Side comics on it. I think his are some of the funniest comics of all time and I can laugh over and over and over at the same ones. This one I loved, and it was a constant reminder that I really needed to quit smoking once and for all, which I finally did about seven months ago. (I'd quite TWICE before for three years at a time, but I know this time's the keeper because I finally replaced a bad habit with a good one--DANCING! Yay me!) So, without further adieu, here is my favorite "comedic" mug.

"The real reason dinosaurs became extinct"

I've probably had a variety of beverages in this puppy, but I remember hot chocolate the most. Oh, and yes, in case you were wondering, I know for a fact that I did use it WHILE SMOKING, just to add to the irony.

Thanks Lois and Phyllis for the fun meme!

Thursday Thirteen #4: Ryan Turns 18!!!

2008-04-17T00:00:00.008-05:00

Thirteen Things About RYAN!

I have known Ryan since he was seven years old. Tomorrow, April 18th, he will be eighteen. I just can't believe it!

Ryan is my husband's youngest son from a previous marriage and he lived with the two of us from the time he was seven until he was fourteen. We've missed him a lot these last four years, and we are grateful when he can come and visit. He is here with us this week, for his birthday, and so I thought it only fitting that this week's thirteen would be about him.

Ryan...

inherited his father's soft, sweet, sensitive, loving heart. (As well as his ability to wear pink and look good! You'll see what I mean at the end!) He's just as mushy on the inside as he can be, and it's just one of those things that really sets him apart from most people.

said he wanted to be six feet tall, even though his dad is 5'8" and his older brother topped out at about 5'6"...and he did it. I believe it was sheer force of will. (Ok, that and he took after his mom's side more and his uncle is tall too, but still, short runs in the family way more often!)

earned his letter jacket in high school swimming, which made me very proud because I had been there when he first started out on the neighborhood team at the age of 10 (I believe), cheering him on from the sidelines.

loves people. He loves to be around them, to hang out with them, to talk about the fun he has with them, to listen to them if they have troubles, to support them if they need him. He's the kind of guy who, if he sees you a half a mile away, will run up to you waving and yelling, "Hi!"

loves to help people. He would get up early on a Saturday morning to help the man next door make chili for the "Frontier Days" festival at the neighborhood park when most kids his age were home in bed. And he was first in line any time there were fundraisers in memoriam of James, his favorite four year old who died in a tragic accident.

has a bit of a temper. But that is because he feels everything so strongly. His emotions are always visible. He cannot dissemble in appearance. Even if he doesn't say out loud what he is feeling, you can read him like a book.

has big brown eyes and a mop of curly brown hair that make him irresistable in that cute puppy kind of way. (You just want to pinch his cheeks, even if you have to reach up to do it!)

loves his family dearly. He clearly values them above all things. Oh, and he is hopelessly and completely wrapped around the pinky of his adorable niece Layla.

is extremely loyal...to his family, his friends, his sporting teams, his country. Once you are part of his life, he'll go to bat for you any time.

is a very giving person. He'd give you his heart if he thought you needed it more than he did. To have Ryan as a friend is truly a gift.

is also a typical teenager who has to have his cell phone and iPod with him at all times, or else he feels "naked." The boy can text with his phone in his pocket for goodness' sake! Oh, and of course he can check his myspace and send email on his phone too. Did I mention video games? He also seems to have acquired a taste for brand name clothing!

is incredibly responsible. He goes to school, works over 20 hours a week, maintains a car, buys his own clothes and electronics, and still has time to nurture multiple friendships. When he was a kid, he used to say he was going to get a job at CiCi's Pizza...sure enough, that's where he works, and where he will probably still work once he starts college in the fall. Can you say responsible with a capital "R"?

is an all around "good kid." He has no vices...well, except maybe eating too much fast food. He doesn't break his curfew (I don't think!). He's not a trouble maker in any sense of the word. He'll joke around, but he knows when to be serious. He'll cut up and play, but he knows when to stop. In other words, he has really grown into a fine young man.

I'm really proud of Ryan, and I'm so happy that he's here, spending time with us like the "old days" because we surely don't get to see him nearly enough now that he lives so far away and works so hard. But, I suppose that's the way it goes no matter what, now that he'll technically be all grown up. I have no doubt that he will continue to make us proud to know him as he continues finding his way in this world. I sure am grateful to know him.

Happy 18th Birthday Ryan!

Senior Prom, April 12, 2008

Muah! =D

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Twelve Months of Personality

2008-04-16T09:26:00.007-05:00

Hey, I've been "tagged" for the first time! Thanks Mrs. Brownstone!

Now she made a really nifty couple of paragraphs out of her list of traits, but I'm going to wimp out and just highlight the ones that fit. Wait. Hey, who made this list? Is someone stalking me? Usually the descriptions of "Aquarius" are pretty close, but this "February" list is eerily familiar to me. Ok, so I'll comment--a bit:

Abstract thoughts. (Um, check.)

Loves reality and abstract. (Yes, and isn't this an odd pairing? I mean, just because something is abstract, doesn't mean it isn't reality, so what is this really saying?)

Intelligent and clever. (So I've been told, although, often, I feel quite the opposite.)

Changing personality. (Ask anyone who has known me for more than a year. I cycle. Don't ask my husband--he might start muttering something under his breath about "Dr. Jekyl and Ms. Hyde.")

Attractive. Sexy. (I have moments when I believe this.)

Temperamental. (yep)

Quiet, shy and humble. (Often painfully so.)

Honest and loyal. (Absolutely.)

Determined to reach goals. (Ok, here's a sticky one. When I have a goal, yes. Working on having them again. Been slapped down a few times in this department.)

Loves freedom. (It's my second middle name.)

Rebellious when restricted. (OMG, yes. Ridiculously so I'm afraid.)

Loves aggressiveness. (This is one of those weird ones...like, wait, yeah, I think I do. To a point. When it's used to fence me in though, watch out, it's Tasmanian Devil time!)

Too sensitive and easily hurt. (God, yes. And this one I would love to grow out of? Please? Soon?)

Gets angry really easily but does not show it. (Yes, the G.P. --general public--is rarely alerted to the underlying fuming.)

Dislikes unnecessary things. (Another one that surprised me...yep.)

Loves making friends but rarely shows it. (Um, rarely shows it because she is so "shy" that she doesn't make friends as often as she would like, perhaps? It's a slow thing. Trust issues. Wah wah.)

Daring and stubborn. (Uh-huh. Stubborn times ten to the nth degree I'm afraid.)

Ambitious. (Not sure. This may be another subverted trait. I know I used to feel ambitious.)

Realizes dreams and hopes. (Slowly?)

Sharp. (Ouch. Sometimes. Especially in arguments involving "logic," or so I've been told.)

Loves entertainment and leisure. (Too much?)

Spendthrift. (But a thrify spender. I'd rather come home with 100 bargains than one thing for 100 dollars.)

Tries to learn to show emotions. (Gosh, ok, who the heck is in my head? Yes, it's true. It's all true. I have difficulty showing emotions. Trust issues, ok? I know. Wah wah!)

Ok, so that felt totally revealing to me on the inside. Wonder what it looks like out there. Hmm?

Back to the business then, and here's where it gets tricky. I think I know 12 people who blog! (yep, here comes the shy stuff) So, here I go!

If you read this and I did not tag you, and you would like to play along, leave me a comment and let me know you are willing to accept an "indirect tag"! =)

Have a great day!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

TAGGING RULES:

1. Mention the person who tagged you and create a link back to them.

2. Copy-paste the traits for all the twelve months (see below).

3. Pick your month of birth.

4. Highlight the traits that apply to you.

5. Tag 12 people and let them know by visiting their blogs and leaving them a comment.

6. Let the person who tagged you know when yours is up!

The Twelve Months

JANUARY: Stubborn and hard-hearted. Ambitious and serious. Loves to teach and be taught. Always looking at people’s flaws and weaknesses. Likes to criticize. Hardworking and productive. Smart, neat and organized. Sensitive and has deep thoughts. Knows how to make others happy. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Rather reserved. Highly attentive. Resistant to illnesses but prone to colds. Romantic but has difficulties expressing love. Loves children. Loyal. Has great social abilities yet easily jealous. Very stubborn and money cautious.

FEBRUARY: Abstract thoughts. Loves reality and abstract. Intelligent and clever. Changing personality. Attractive. Sexy. Temperamental. Quiet, shy and humble. Honest and loyal. Determined to reach goals. Loves freedom. Rebellious when restricted. Loves aggressiveness. Too sensitive and easily hurt. Gets angry really easily but does not show it. Dislikes unnecessary things. Loves making friends but rarely shows it. Daring and stubborn. Ambitious. Realizes dreams and hopes. Sharp. Loves entertainment and leisure. Romantic on the inside not outside. Superstitious and ludicrous. Spendthrift. Tries to learn to show emotions.

MARCH: Attractive personality. Sexy. Affectionate. Shy and reserved. Secretive. Naturally honest, generous and sympathetic. Loves peace and serenity. Sensitive to others. Loves to serve others. Easily angered. Trustworthy. Appreciative and returns kindness. Observant and assesses others. Revengeful. Loves to dream and fantasize. Loves traveling. Loves attention. Hasty decisions in choosing partners. Loves home decors. Musically talented. Loves special things. Moody.

APRIL: Active and dynamic. Decisive and hasty but tends to regret. Attractive and affectionate to oneself. Strong mentality. Loves attention. Diplomatic. Consoling, friendly and solves people’s problems. Brave and fearless. Adventurous. Loving and caring. Suave and generous. Emotional. Aggressive. Hasty. Good memory. Moving. Motivates oneself and others. Sickness usually of the head and chest. Sexy in a way that only their lover can see.

MAY: Stubborn and hard-hearted. Strong-willed and highly motivated. Sharp thoughts. Easily angered. Attracts others and loves attention. Deep feelings. Beautiful physically and mentally. Firm Standpoint. Needs no motivation. Easily consoled. Systematic (left brain). Loves to dream. Strong clairvoyance. Understanding. Sickness usually in the ear and neck. Good imagination. Good physical. Weak breathing. Loves literature and the arts. Loves traveling. Dislike being at home. Restless. Not having many children. Hardworking. High spirited. Spendthrift.

JUNE: Thinks far with vision. Easily influenced by kindness. Polite and soft-spoken. Having ideas. Sensitive. Active mind. Hesitating, tends to delay. Choosy and always wants the best. Temperamental. Funny and humorous. Loves to joke. Good debating skills. Talkative. Daydreamer. Friendly. Knows how to make friends. Able to show character. Easily hurt. Prone to getting colds. Loves to dress up. Easily bored. Fussy. Seldom shows emotions. Takes time to recover when hurt. Brand conscious. Executive. Stubborn.

JULY: Fun to be with. Secretive. Difficult to fathom and to be understood. Quiet unless excited or tensed. Takes pride in oneself. Has reputation. Easily consoled. Honest. Concerned about people’s feelings. Tactful. Friendly. Approachable. Emotional temperamental and unpredictable. Moody and easily hurt. Witty and sparkly. Not revengeful. Forgiving but never forgets. Dislikes nonsensical and unnecessary things. Guides others physically and mentally. Sensitive and forms impressions carefully. Caring and loving. Treats others equally. Strong sense of sympathy. Wary and sharp. Judges people through observations. Hardworking. No difficulties in studying. Loves to be alone. Always broods about the past and the old friends. Likes to be quiet. Homely person. Waits for friends. Never looks for friends. Not aggressive unless provoked. Prone to having stomach and dieting problems. Loves to be loved. Easily hurt but takes long to recover.

AUGUST: Loves to joke. Attractive. Suave and caring. Brave and fearless. Firm and has leadership qualities. Knows how to console others. Too generous and egoistic. Takes high pride in oneself. Thirsty for praises. Extraordinary spirit. Easily angered. Angry when provoked. Easily jealous. Observant. Careful and cautious. Thinks quickly. Independent thoughts. Loves to lead and to be led. Loves to dream. Talented in the arts, music and defense. Sensitive but not petty. Poor resistance against illnesses. Learns to relax. Hasty and trusty. Romantic. Loving and caring. Loves to make friends.

SEPTEMBER: Suave and compromising. Careful, cautious and organized. Likes to point out people’s mistakes. Likes to criticize. Stubborn. Quiet but able to talk well. Calm and cool. Kind and sympathetic. Concerned and detailed. Loyal but not always honest. Does work well. Very confident. Sensitive. Good memory. Clever and knowledgeable. Loves to look for information. Must control oneself when criticizing. Able to motivate oneself. Understanding. Fun to be around. Secretive. Loves leisure and traveling. Hardly shows emotions. Tends to bottle up feelings. Very choosy, especially in relationships. Systematic.

OCTOBER: Loves to chat. Loves those who loves them. Loves to take things at the center. Inner and physical beauty. Lies but doesn’t pretend. Gets angry often. Treats friends importantly. Always making friends. Easily hurt but recovers easily. Daydreamer. Opinionated. Does not care of what others think. Emotional. Decisive. Strong clairvoyance. Loves to travel, the arts and literature. Touchy and easily jealous. Concerned. Loves outdoors. Just and fair. Spendthrift. Easily influenced. Easily loses confidence. Loves children.

NOVEMBER: Has a lot of ideas. Difficult to fathom. Thinks forward. Unique and brilliant. Extraordinary ideas. Sharp thinking. Fine and strong clairvoyance. Can become good doctors. Dynamic in personality. Secretive. Inquisitive. Knows how to dig secrets. Always thinking. Less talkative but amiable. Brave and generous. Patient. Stubborn and hard-hearted. If there is a will, there is a way. Determined. Never give up. Hardly becomes angry unless provoked. Loves to be alone. Thinks differently from others. Sharp-minded. Motivates oneself. Does not appreciate praises. High-spirited. Well-built and tough. Deep love and emotions. Romantic. Uncertain in relationships. Homely. Hardworking. High abilities. Trustworthy. Honest and keeps secrets. Not able to control emotions. Unpredictable.

DECEMBER: Loyal and generous. Sexy. Patriotic. Active in games and interactions. Impatient and hasty. Ambitious. Influential in organizations. Fun to be with. Loves to socialize. Loves praises. Loves attention. Loves to be loved. Honest and trustworthy. Not pretending. Short tempered. Changing personality. Not egotistic. Take high pride in oneself. Hates restrictions. Loves to joke. Good sense of humor. Logical.

Thursday Thirteen #3: Things I Could Have Blogged This Week

2008-04-09T19:23:00.008-05:00

Thirteen Things I COULD HAVE blogged about this week!

So I think I want to be a blogger. For real. Talkin' up my random life, online, and hoping that it's somehow interesting. Heck, or just to keep track of my own darn self, you know? So for two weeks, since I started this Thursday Thirteen funfest, my brain has been buzzing even MORE than usual about what to blog, to blog, to blog, or not to blog!?

Thoughts like, "Hey, I wonder if I've diluted my original flavor with this little list that seems to have taken over. I wonder if I really can just talk about anything. About all those things that get stuck in my head, banging around, driving me crazy. Wouldn't it be fabulous to just send them on their way and get on with thinking new thoughts? Yeah, I think so!"

So this list is probably more for my benefit again. It's a reminder that I have plenty of things to say, I just don't find the time to sit down and let a little randomness out on the page.

Here's an idea. If ANY of these sound halfway interesting, please stop by in the comments and give me a thumbs up, ok? Then, I'll work on writing a nice short and snappy (yes, this is my curse) explanation and get the thought monkeys out of my head so you can hear them. I warn you, though, it may not be pretty.

But it might be FUN! =) Let's see:

I COULD HAVE BLOGGED ABOUT...

...what the first two weeks (as of today) of eating an almost completely raw diet have been like: physically, of course, but also mentally and spiritually. As far as physically goes, the dirt is that I think I "cheated" with only a handful of items. Let's see, I had two BBQ chicken thighs, two 3oz. pieces of medium raaaare steak, a few Hershey's truffle kisses, a Cadbury cream egg (hello Valentine's and Easter candy...holiday candies are evil!), some yogurt pretzels (found them when I cleaned out my pantry. Gosh I love those things!), and yeah, that's ABOUT IT besides fresh fruit, veggies, raw nuts & seeds.

...how much I love Mrs. G's Derfwad Manor and that it pained me to discover that a femiNazi had emailed her anonymously with a "shame on your unfeminist blogging practices" tirade in the dead of night. It's funny how one small, ignorant voice, even in the midst of many enlightened ones, will almost always give us pause. (hrmph)

...how I am slowly but surely working through Step Four on my own and in my own way, learning more and more about my responsibility in creating this life I'm living. Oh me, oh my, I have been the poster child for blame!! But, better to be awakened to an ugly truth about oneself than to go on living in ignorant misery (hey, if it were bliss, it might not be so bad, but it was/isn't!).

...all the new foods I have tried since starting to eat only raw food. Always wondered what fennel bulbs were all about. Now I love them and have to have them. And how many of you have ever put raw spinach in your breakfast smoothie? You are definitely missing out. It RAWks! (I know, cheesy, or, in raw foodie talk, cheezy.)

...how I managed to inadvertantly alienate myself from the raw food forum I joined. By being myself for a change. Um, yeah. I guess it's that whole "tone in writing" issue? Thing is, usually I'M the one misinterpreting tone, and this time, even I missed the tone coming back at me. So it was an interesting tale. No suspense and intrigue I guess, but it was yet another learning experience.

...the fact that I'm giving my dog parsley and megagreen supplements to help her naturally through her second "false pregnancy," which unfortunately means I will most likely have to get her spayed after all. She's eight and a half years old. I know, I know. I bet I could get some serious hate mail for my pet care philosophy.

...how I "grounded" myself from the internet for a whole day because I am going through my addictions, one by one, and starting over one day at a time with healthy behaviors instead.

...how the day I was grounded from the internet, I read a whole book on eating raw food, including every recipe. The book is Ani's Raw Food Kitchen:Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes, and it's my favorite so far. I would love to have my very own copy! She also has a few videos online that show how to prepare some of the recipes too (but I found those the next day, lol)! Check OUT this raw apple pie. Please? It's sooooooooo beautiful. And GOOD for you! Look at it. Look! =)

...how love can surprise you, just when you think you might have given up hope that anything will ever change. Well, maybe I wouldn't blog about that specifically, but maybe I could. It's still tough for me to put myself out there in plain view sometimes. But hey, I could try. After all, there's hope that we can all change, right? Ok, enough with the suspense already. My husband did and said things this past weekend that I'd been wishin', and hopin', and prayin', he would do. Woohoo, teamwork!!!

...how I changed out the downstairs thermostat by myself and felt really accomplished afterwards. I've had some experience with tools, so it wasn't such a big thing I guess, but it seemed so different, um, such a male-oriented thing to do? (crap, is that sexist?) Seriously though, I told my daughter I would rather do electrical work all day than clean toilets and vacuum. In my opinion, men have the brawn that gets them the better household chores sometimes. Of course, this from the woman who has painted almost every room in her home by herself (or with her DAUGHTERS), so maybe my life is way skewed on household task division; I don't know. (Ok, so I admit it, my husband takes out the trash now and everything else is mine...Christmas lights, exterior painting, lawn & garden, blah blah blah!) Not sure how that one came off. lol

...how my husband surprised the hell out of me last weekend by doing things...wait...I said that already, right? Wow, it was just too cool! And now he can say I mentioned him MULTIPLE times in my blog. (hehe)

...how a guy from my graduating class went trolling through myspace and sent me a message, not really remembering who I was, but just goin' through the list and playin' "look at me now." Well, I vote him "MOST CHANGED" since high school. Yep, this here's the year of the fabled 20th reunion, which I will most likely not be able to attend, although I would love to because I'm a curious FREAK who still remembers more than half of the kids in my class because I used to LIVE IN THE PAST and regarded my yearbook much too often during the first ten years after graduating. *sigh* So yeah, I didn't recognize him, but his age and location made me think, "Get the yearbook!" and I did, and, well, this definitely needs to be a blog, huh? (Hi Honey...didn't get a chance to tell you this story yet. I was going to though!)

...how not only my husband has surprised me, but that I have done things in the last two weeks that have been on MY to-do list for WAY too long and I've been ticking them off, one by one. I attribute this windfall of personal power to the #1 and #3 working in tandem. Boy, food addictions are sneaky. They are often the last reserve in our highly addicted society. In my own experience, almost everyone I know has food addiciton issues. Becoming transparent to myself and admitting my fears, foibles, and addictions is really transforming my life from the inside out. Honest authentic living is where it's at. I hope I can put some of the transformation process into words and share. I know hearing other folks talk about their revelations has helped me get to this point, so I hope I can pass on a little of that.

Well, dear readers, I certainly appreciate your time and your thoughts, and your returns to my humble online abode. May you be blessed this week. Perhaps you will get to see something new in yourself or someone you love, and may you find great joy in the discovery!

Muah! =D

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Thursday Thirteen #2: I Heart Houston!

2008-04-01T12:17:00.044-05:00

Thirteen Things I Love About Living in Houston

I don't know about you, but when I start looking in a new direction, I like to spend some time reminiscing about where I've been, and how good it's been. So, now that I have officially set my eyes on leaving Texas, and The South, behind, well, I've done gone and got myself all nostalgic about it.

So far, I have lived in Texas for almost right at (I'm using my Texas lingo, can ya tell?) eleven years. Exactly nine of those have been at the same residence. Folks, that's the longest I've EVER lived in one house. It's home.

But that home is in the Houston suburbs. So, really, I feel more like a Houstonian than a Texan. (The only time I feel like a Texan is during an election, or when someone brings up where the current POTUS lives. yeesh!) So yes, Houston is home. And I have loved Houston all the while.

Here's why:

1. Proximity to Galveston

Yep, that greasy grey Limpopo version of the Gulf of Mexico coastline that made me choose Houston over Dallas, sight-unseen, when I had to choose where to live in Texas. I knew I wanted to live in "the big city" for the first time ever in my life, and, being a child of the ocean, and all things aqueous, I had to know that I could get in my car and in less than two hours, find myself toes in sand, wind in hair, surf in ears, regarding the limitless blue horizon. Ahhhhhhh! Voila...Houston!

2. The University of Houston

Ah yes, the alma mater. She taught me much. Met way cool people. Learned SO much about writing. Read LOTS of great books. "Learned" how to teach freshmen how to write better than they knew before (this was my major goal...teaching them to learn how to write excellently caused more stress...precision was up for grabs, progress was inevitable!) Oh, and got to wander aimlessly in awe while becoming intimately acquainted with the most fabulous library I have yet to lay eyes on (this in NO WAY implies that I've been to many, but it does reinforce that "small-town girl meets the big city" thing that happened to me here!).

3. FOOD: Vietnamese Noodle Soup

Forget chicken soup. If you have anything that calls for a bowl of healing soup, THIS is the soup for you. The spicy (jalapeno or serrano pepper), pungent (ginger), fresh (basil), alive (bean sprouts), flavor of this slow-cooked force of nature will have you breathing easy in no time, and feeling fine. (Did I mention it has noodles? That's the comfort part of the soup...ahhhhhhhh!)

4. ASTROWORLD (in memoriam)

Oh me, oh my! We had season passes at least two times that I remember and we loved the heck outta that place! My husband and I loved the rollercoasters (and my girls grew into them all and loved them too!). But the whole family's favorite event was Fright Fest. Every year there would be a giant black widow spider mounted on the country's oldest, and largest wooden rollercoasters, The Texas Cyclone. Eerie greyish lights illuminated all the rides and ghoulish faces covered the top of the "six flags" poles at the entry gate. Blood flowed from all of the fountains, and zombies chased you (or just stared menacingly at you, while standing in your personal space) around the park. And then there were the haunted houses. Such fiendish fun! Our very last visit, before the park closed, was on a Fright Fest night. We made t-shirts for the kids to commemorate. We miss you AstroWorld! You were a most fun friend in town!

5. The MFAH (Museum of Fine Arts Houston).

Can you say "free Thursday"? Yep, today and every Thursday, you can view the general collections for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. The building is located in the gorgeous, live oak tree-lined Museum District of Downtown Houston, right down the street from the lovely triple fountain, The Houston Zoo, The Museum of Natural Science, The Children's Museum, The Health Museum, etc. etc. etc.

6. FOOD: Sushi/Sashimi

I will never eat a California roll from the supermarket EVER AGAIN! As Dr. Seuss would say "Oh the Places You'll Go" in Houston if you love sushi, or WANT to love it. My three favorite places are: Shogun (fun for the whole family, and the family's wallet. And they have "live," hibachi dining there too--where the chef throws his knives around to impress you while cooking your food in front of you.); Sushi King (For a romantic and nearly orgasmic meal tete a tete with your schweetheart. There was much moaning and eye rolling here when hubby and I tried the waiter's recommendations. Oh, and there's a piano bar too!); and Zake Sushi Lounge (a hip, happenin' modern nightlife spot with low light, high music volume, and the most mouth watering sashimi--just fish, no roll/rice--sampler presentations.).

7. The Harris County Public Libraries

What, you ask, am I talking about? Oh yes. I love me some books, and these libraries are just a little slice of heaven on earth for bibliophiles. Singly, they aren't large, but collectively, they ammass quite a fortune in books, videos, CDs, DVDs, books on tape, and the like. And if they don't have the one you want at the branch near you? No problem. Fill out an online request form, tell them where you'd like to pick it up, and they will deliver it for you. Gives a whole new meaning to inter-library loan. My favorite one also has an amazing set of computers available to the public. We spend a lot of homeschooling time there!

8. The Dump, and other stores like it

No, it's not full of refuse. It's a giant warehouse store for designer furniture and decor at closeout prices. All the top retailers send their remnants to The Dump, and every weekend (they only open Fri., Sat., Sun.), you can go find some amazing furniture at amazing prices. I have been once to check it out, once to torture myself with longing, and once to find a nice rug to cover the pet stains in my living room carpet that should have just been taken to the real dump! Houston has lots of great outlet retailers. It's a really inexpensive place to live, and live well, in my opinion, because of places like that.

9. FOOD: South of the Border

Did you think I was snubbing? No, no, no! What would life be like without thin, warmed tortilla chips and fresh, roasted salsa, a salty and cold Margarita on the rocks, and some of the rockin'est food you've ever eaten? There's Cuban, Venezuelan, Salvadorian, and yes, Mexican food galore. Ole! That being said, I am not a big fan of the average stuff: enchiladas, tacos, fajitas. I love that stuff, but I can make that at home. When I go OUT, I'm gonna get specialty stuff. Ok, and fishy type things. The grilled tilapia (mild, but meaty white fish) dishes alone are to die for. Usually they have a lovely cream sauce with mushrooms, tomato, avocado, and some crawfish tails on top. Or maybe it's ceviche, with lots of lime juice and cilantro. Or maybe some fried octopus dipped in chili sauce. Yuuuuummmmmmm. Whatever you want in this category, Houston has got it all.

10.The Weather

I really have loved not having a winter, in terms of low atmospheric temperatures anyway. I have missed snow terribly. Skiing. But I haven't missed having three to four sets of seasonal clothing selections, buying new winter coats ( I do have gloves for those two weeks when my hands get too cold), snow tires, shoveling--that kind of thing. My birthday is in February and it was always cold, and I was always sick. Here, once I became immune to the Houston influenza (had that the first three years), I could enjoy being outside in the warm sun with only a t-shirt on in my birthday photos. We won't mention July, August, and September. I just think of it as our reverse winter, with no shoveling. Woohoo!

Birthday in Feb. Family Foto:

11. Neighborhood Swim Teams

This goes right along with the weather. Living in suburbia, there are not just neighborhoods, there are "housing developments," and those almost all include swimming pools. And almost all of those pools are equipped to become competition pools with lane ropes and portable diving blocks and built-in flag pole (for the backstrokers) inserts in the cement decking. Very nice! And my kids loved to swim, so there ya go, their signature sport, right in the neighborhood. Funny though, it only lasts about 10-12 weeks, from the end of April until the first Saturday in July usually. But it's great fun! And then the kids can swim on the school teams...starting in junior high. Amazing.

12. FOOD: Seafood

Ok, so I spent the last five years of my life in Massachusetts on Cape Cod. My family owned a seafood restaurant. I worked there. I love seafood. Needless to say, I was biased when I came to Texas. Having said that, I have to admit that I am a convert to Texas style seafood. Can you say Gulf Shrimp? Oysters on the half shell? Crawfish boil? Although nothing can beat Maine lobster, and you can't find a clam to save your life down here, seafood in Houston ROCKS my world! (Remember, I almost always get the fish dish at the "South of the Border" restaurants I go to.)

13. Lonestar College, North Harris

Formerly known as North Harris College, the first of the North Harris Montgomery Community College District campuses, this is the place I got my first "real" job after earning my Master's degree. I will be there again starting in June, and I'm excited. I really do love to teach, I just hate giving grades and getting paid half of what a full-time instructor gets paid to do the same job. But hey, it's "home" to me too, and I am looking forward to meeting all of my new students!

So there you have it! Thirteen good ole reasons for making Houston home. Hey, by the time I skedaddle on outta here, I will have been here for a little over thirteen years!

As one of the "fattest" cities in the country, it should really be of no surprise to you that four of my reasons are food. Honestly, I could have (maybe I should have...hmmm...) done a whole list just on food. It's just that good. And we have eaten so much of it. We have wondered if we'd like it so much if it weren't for the food sometimes, but that's why this list has other things on it--because there ARE other reasons to live here than to stuff one's face!

Where's your favorite place to live? Please leave me a comment to let me know you stopped by, if'n you got the time, ya hea? (Ok, so I laid it on a little, but trust me, it sounds like home.)

Muah! =D

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

(Sorry so late again...computer issues!)

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Thursday Thirteen #1 -- "Happies"

2008-03-27T17:17:00.025-05:00

Thank you to Zenmomma for turning me on to the Thursday Thirteen tradition.

This is my first installment, and already I'm afraid of commitment (no surprise!), but I've decided that blogging is something I want to explore more fully, so might as well amp it up with something that resembles structure, huh?

For my first episode, I would like to just highlight 13 things, in no particular order, that float my boat these days, or, what I've alluded to in the title: Happies.

Here goes!

1. Discovering HAPPIES !

Couldn't have the list without the discovery, now could I? (And it just wouldn't be my blog if I didn't have a lengthy intro, am I right???)

This is a word I learned in Mississippi, and I would have to say that learning it not only made me "happy," but discovering a land where people had a name for small tokens of pleasure, most often bestowed on someone else unexpectedly (and, hence, intensifying the happy effect), made me feel like I'd finally found an oasis of light in what felt like a interminably dark life. Ok, so that's a bit overdramatic (a bit!), but it was such a ray of sunshine.

I wish I could remember what the first happie, labeled as such, was, but now I forget. It seems to me though, that it had something to do with goodie bag items at a birthday party. Like, "Don't forget the 'happies' for the party!" And it's so true, isn't it? I love to walk down the happies aisle at party city and bounce a few balls, tousle the fringe on those little fringy thingies (happies, by their very nature are better observed than described!), slap the little clapper hands a time or two, eye the jacks, roll some oversized dice, and imagine the smell of the playdoh in the little, party sized cups! Whew. Are ya happy yet? I'm smilin'!

And lo and behold, when googled, there's even a BLOG dedicated to recounting some of the things that fall into the category of "happies."

2. Valentine's cards still on display in my room. I mean, aren't these the cutest? Are we not thinking the same way?? Awwwwwww!

HERS HIS

3. Raw food diet testimonials like THIS and THIS and THIS.

My oldest daughter and I are researching how to eat to take better care of ourselves and save us from our food-related health issues. Nothing too major, but not the optimal health we both crave. My younger daughter is cautiously interested, but is still in public school, so she's leaving it up to us for right now.

4. Raw Food: Is this not some GORGEOUS food? Oh, I'm so hungry! =D (Thanks to Raw Glow for the pics AND the recipes! Can't wait to try them all!)

5. The idea of moving to the capital W, West, capital C, Coast. Preferably Oregon. Perhaps a good ole University town like Corvallis, in fact. (We'll see.)

This is news to many, and will probably start haunting future blogs, but I'm going public now. Suffice to say, I'm ready for a change in scenery AND lifestyle, and I'd prefer to live the second half of my life, well, WHERE I choose. More later, I promise, but for now, just say, Ahhhhhhh! (Thanks to Oregon.com for the pics!)

6. Hangin' out and home "schooling" with my 16 year old daughter!

Getting to know your "quiet" teenager is a wonderful thing. Most days I believe that she finds getting to know her kooky, quirky, "quiet" mother is pretty kewl too! I won't reveal any of her secrets, but I've watched her relax and get started on becoming who she REALLY wants to be now that she's free of the public school system that taxed her to the point of despair. YAY for following her own inner guiding star!

7. Watching my younger daughter blossom into a wonderful young lady, earn her letter jacket (ouch! thank goodness she lettered as a freshman so it will get some wear--although, this is the tropics, so, who knows!) in swimming, and celebrate her "six month anniversary" with her sweet boyfriend.

8. NETFLIX!

Even though I looked at how many movies I had rented in the last year and realized that I'm still spending major chain prices per film. But you know what? Sitting at home, sifting through a bajillion titles, and renting independent films is AWESOME and is not part of the chain store experience (ok, so I know that one of them does this, but still.....). Not having a deadline to turn in the movie (commitment phobe that I am???)?!!! PRICELESS!

This arrived today:

9. Dancing.

Just can't get enough of the stuff. I'm so ready to take private lessons and try my hand, and, er, feet, at some beginner level competition. Woohoo! Just need to come up with a creative way to FUNd said fun. Ah, the challenge!

10. Friends.

Old ones, new ones, easy ones, tough ones, virtual ones, real-life ones. It's just so great to have you all (they tell me they read this thing anyway...lol)!!! My goal is to become even better at BEING a better friend and not just HAVING friends.

11. Painting.

Just thinking about painting (which is all I've done for a while, but that's ok for now...) makes me smile. I love, love, love having a hobby that lets me regard the results. I don't watch myself dance (and don't know that I would want to just yet), but to walk in the front door every day and see my paintings, well, it just makes the day feel brighter, and gives me a case of the warm fuzzies.

I hear a lot of painters (ha...well, the ones I've met in class etc.) or should I say artists (know more of those in total) criticize their work. Like really dog it. Mercilessly. And that makes me very sad. I can definitely look at my paintings and see lots of places to improve, but I honestly just love to stare at them. I guess I still just can't believe that I've actually done it, but more than that, it's like looking at my kids. I created them and added a few brush strokes, but there they are, with a life all their own, beautiful for just having existence in the first place.

Is it ok to love your own paintings? Perhaps it just means that I'm not a "true" artist? Or maybe I'm just an extremely forgiving one.

I love the energy of creation. I don't need to judge the form to be happy. Looking at art , to me, is like looking at a landscape: WOW! Amazing! Look at that.
(Ok, so I PREFER some over others, but still, in general, I'm a live and let live kinda gal!)

12. Vincent van Gogh.

Speaking of painters. Standing in front of this man's work has never failed to bring me to tears. The joy and the pain in those paintings is palpable to me. I love his work, not because it's acceptable so to do, but because it freakin' MOVES me, man.

And looking at the prints around my monitor, well, that always makes me smile.

I wrote in a guest book at an exhibit that included some of his paintings (at the Houston Museum of Fine Art), "I don't think I ever knew color before I saw a painting by van Gogh." Amen.

13. BLOGS!

I just LOVE blogs! There are SO MANY cool, cool women (and men, but truth be told, there's only one or two that I read, and they don't post all that often) out there. They are so amazing and creative and they blog so REGULARLY! Oh, I want to be like them when I grow up! Here are a few new ones that I've been reading lately (If you knew how many blogs I've read in the last month...oh boy...well, all in the name of research, right???):

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
Derfwad Manor
Zenmomma's Garden

Sorry so few, but I'm late for dinner and I'm sure you must be late for SOMETHING by now!

And hey, please have a great week! If I can at the very least post once a week, then I'll be one step closer to taking my second and third and fourth steps in a row and making a go at having a "real" blog. I REALLY want to learn to write some SHORT posts, too! (heehee)

Thanks for stopping by, and if you have ANY time left after this monster, please say hi in the comments section!

Muah! =D

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Open Letter To A Friend

2008-03-13T12:41:00.009-05:00

Dear Friend,

I wanted to write you this letter because it's difficult to find the time to tell you in person, now that you are so busy with your new love relationship and we rarely spend any time together, just the two of us. I feel overwhelmed with the strangest sort of anguish over you these days, as I watch you compromise everything you told me you had dreamed of, and always offering some kind of half-assed justification in response to my concern that you have deviated noticeably from your dream.

Well, "half-assed," that may seem harsh. And who am I to talk, really, but that's just it. Don't you see? You remind me so much of myself, only you had it all figured out. You had a plan. You had a dream. I listened to your dream and I heard you tell me, "Please let me know if I get off track because love relationships have always muddied my thinking a bit in the past. I'm cool with work relationships and family relationships now, but it's time to try out a new love relationship, and I am sure I will need guidance."

Don't you see? You asked me to say this to you. You made me promise to tell you what I see as an objective outsider. And I've tried to tell you here and there. Mostly the big standout kind of stuff really. You seem to be happy and all, why would I want to rain on your parade? But I feel like a crime is being committed and I'm not calling 9-1-1. It's affecting my own life, not telling you what I feel in my heart about what you keep asking me to comment on, knowing that you don't really want to hear anything that will burst your bubble. Not like I feel comfortable with this role. In fact, I've tried to distance myself from it all, but each time I make an out-loud declaration to myself that I am walking away and not looking back, there you are telling me something new that I just can't listen to, that just eats me up inside because I feel like I'm obligated to say something.

But I've kept my silence mostly because I fear projecting myself onto you. You remind me of myself, but you aren't me, after all. You are you. And who is to say that if you do something similar to what I did that it won't end up quite differently? But it's so complicated for me.

You see. You were my hope. My hope that HAD I gotten myself and my life together better before getting emotionally involved that I would have made better choices, for better reasons, with better results. Love, after all, is rarely the problem. That's the good part. But I've learned that we can love a lot of different folks, for good reasons and not-so-good reasons, with good results and with not-so-good results. And I can't help but feel like I'm watching myself make the same kinds of fearful decisions all over again when you tell me why you are changing your mind about what you wanted so much.

As the objective outside observer, I hear your fear and feel your weakness. You're so afraid that if you wait for more of what you want, that you will lose what you already have. I hear you explaining away a Faustian bargain by saying, "But it will be so much easier," and that you are "just so tired of worrying" about these other things that it makes the compromise worthwhile.

How can I convince you that it won't be easier, and that the compromise will haunt you mercilessly forever? I promise. I have much experience with exactly the type of situation you describe. As your friend, I absolutely have to tell you that giving up what is important to you, my dear one, in order to feel like you are getting ahead financially is the oldest trick in the devil's book, Tricks for Stealing Human Souls.

You can brainwash yourself into thinking that if you just give up this, and this, and this, and this, then you can have all that you have ever wanted, but you will be utterly mistaken.

Oh, and any woman who gives up so much to have round-the-clock companionship and financial security, may get those things, but at what cost?

If your goal is to save money to travel, but you live with someone who hates change and won't go away for the weekend before you move in together, will the easiness of paying the bills make up for the fact that you have to travel alone, or don't want to because you want this companionship?

I've heard and read over and over again lately (because I've been asking for answers to my big "Why is my life like this?" question) that any woman who gets involved with a man, thinking that things will change, is a fool. Some things may change, and yes, miracles do happen, but when you have the facts staring you in the face and you choose to believe that those facts will magically change when the nature of the relationship changes, well, you're dead wrong. Now, most veterans of long-term relationships will tell you that things do change, but rarely for the better. The things we overlook now will be there with a vengeance a year after you move in together.

Relationships do require "work" and lots of communication, to be sure, but if you are the emissary of "let me make your life easier for you now so that you will return the favor to me later when you are feeling better," you will most certainly always be on the short end of the stick. And giving you financial support is nice, but it's also very easy. It's easy for the man to bring home the bacon. It's hard-wired. But that's bacon that gets spent on what he likes to spend his bacon on, especially if you're the one making all the compromises (and even if you aren't a lot of times...).

Oh Friend, this is worse for me than if you were one of my daughters. Why? Because I would pay my daughters' rent, offer them a room in my home, help them find a roommate, help them find a new job, sit down and discuss how to make the most of their own money....ANYTHING I could do within my power to keep them from feeling like they would just be so RELIEVED to not have to worry about money that they would give up on their dreams at the first hint of a bite on their love line. And why? Because I did this twice. Which is not to say that I did not love, but NOTHING was EASIER because I made the decision on financial relief/security because I thought it would just be too tough to do it on my own for a while. And not forever, mind you, just for a while, to be completely sure and settled. To give myself time. Just for me. Just because.

I know I must be some kind of horrible friend for saying all of these things, but I have to get it off my chest. I truly have started to feel like I'm in hell, watching myself wimp out on the big screen, over and over again, like Prometheus getting his liver eaten over and over again. I feel like I have to give you the, "it's not you, it's me" speech and break up with you. I just can't watch and listen. It hurts too much.

I know you love this guy, and that's great. I just can't watch you give up on just about everything you told me (and not only me) you wanted for your life. I can't watch you compromise like I did. And I've waited and waited, hoping NOT to feel like this. (Waiting for some hint that you aren't the only one compromising at least.) I've practiced focusing on your happiness and the love you share with this man. But every time we talk, you tell me of a new compromise, and your reasons for them are so close to home I want to scream and cry and gnash teeth and rent garments. I mourn for your dream because it was my dream too. And you were my hope. And I feel like a shitty friend for feeling so desolate about something you seem convinced is a good thing in the end.

I hope that it is. I really do. I prefer to envision a day when you come to me, shining and happy, content and loved, sunburned or windburned or waterlogged from your latest adventure, telling me how wonderfully all those compromises turned out in the end.

But right now, I can't believe it. My life won't let me believe it. My heart won't let me believe it.

I hope you can forgive me.

I wish you the best of everything.

Love,
Nicole

PS--Please read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert before you give up your lease. I'll give you my copy. I just know too many women who waited until they were comfortable with being alone before they found peace with the love of their lives. If you need him to take care of you, you'll always be playing the need game. It isn't worth it, in my opinion, but this is YOUR life, and I'll get out of the way the only way I know how. I've never felt like this before, and I hope that if I'm crazy and/or just plain wrong, you can overlook it and forgive my shortcomings!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2008, all rights reserved.

Farewell Fine Freedom

2008-03-05T11:56:00.014-06:00

Have you ever been really sad to part with a favorite possession? Ever sniffled? Eyes watered? Maybe even shed a bitter tear? Heck, maybe you bawled your eyes out like me! Ok, so I exaggerate a tiny bit, but you get the idea.

We really think we can get attached to our stuff, but I disagree. I don't think that's what is really going on. I'm inclined to believe that we are attached to the idea of the thing, or to the memories, thoughts, and intense feelings associated with that particular thing. The energy of it. The part of a thing that can actually touch the core of our being, our soul.

That makes much more sense, right? In that way, the thing does really become a part of who we are, and all of us are pretty attached to ourselves; whether we find that to be a positive or a negative thing matters little. So what though if our stuff is all about us? Why is it that sometimes we can part with something with a smile, and other times, we can't help but cry?

Here's what I think, based on what I'm going through at the moment! I think that we have unfinished business or regret when we are sad, or, "overly nostalgic" about letting something go. For some reason, we feel like we are losing that energy, losing that part of ourselves somehow.

Take my life for example. This afternoon, a man is coming to my house to buy my 1982 Honda Nighthawk. My motorcycle. My baby. Sure, I posted the ad on craigslist. I was the one responsible. But it was one of those "take action" things I've been putting off for a long time. I posted the ad on Monday morning, thinking, ok, so, this weekend I'll charge up the battery, start her up, "blow out the cobwebs" riding around the block a few times, and maybe by then, someone will be interested and maybe I'll even sell it and have some money to pay off that pesky credit card I want to cancel because they keep charging me a yearly fee until I call them up and complain. Blah. Blah. Blah. Meanwhile, I'm doing something about my garage full of junk AND my debt, all in one fell swoop on a Monday morning. Pat, pat, pat on the back.

Well, I was rudely awakened from that lazy reverie when about 30 minutes after posting the ad, I received an email from someone who wanted to buy it. First problem. Ad says "runs," yet I know that it's at least a battery charge away from that being entirely true. Uh-oh. So I backpedal a little bit and start sweating. It's all happening way too fast for my apathetic self!
By the end of the day, I have three emails about the bike, an as-yet-uncharged battery, and heartburn. I can't reply until the thing is actually RUNNING! And I didn't have time planned into my busy day to make it so. (The unwatched pot boils violently???)

Tuesday comes: Vote. Go to bank to make deposit and get paper notarized for courthouse. Go to courthouse to present paperwork for defensive driving course (another blog entirely!). Go home and hook battery to charger (can't leave that puppy unattended!). Pray. Post more stuff on craigslist! Re-attach battery to bike. Pray. Turn fuel switch to on. Wait a sec. Push ignition button. (Holy crap, I should have pulled the choke!) Push ignition button, pull gently on throttle. Sniff. Sniff sniff. Uh-oh. Look down. My foot is in a puddle of gasoline. Switch fuel line off. Cry.

Great. The carburator is leaking, was leaking, finishes leaking, all over the floor of the crowded garage. I have to clean it up. I have a non-running motorcycle. I go to craigslist and pull the ad. I cry.

And yet, there was a glimmer of hope. The third email was from someone I wanted to sell my motorcycle to. I mean, I had to sell it to the right person. The first person wanted motorized transportation. I know this bike isn't suitable for him. The second person didn't read the ad well and was antagonistic: "'Don't have time to work on it?' Does that mean it doesn't run?" Obviously not the right buyer there. No, my ad was written for the person who would want my bike in spite of its flaws, who would love it like I do.

The third email just said, "Please tell me when and where I can come pick up this bike."

I had told my husband that I thought this was the guy. So when I stood there whining because I took the ad down and now I had to take the carburetor off again and see if I couldn't get this problem resolved so that MAYBE I could sell it, he said, "What about that one guy?"

"You think I should still call him?"

"Why not?"

I thought, "The answer's no if you don't ask, dummy, follow your gut and call this guy!"

So I called.

Sure enough, he wants it. He wants to restore it, and HE CAN. I always dreamed I would "someday," but it's 12 years later and I'm not much more of a mechanic than I was back then, but this guy can and will do it. It's what he does. I actually spoke to his father first. Apparently, they have a long happy tradition of restoring classic cars and dad here owned a Nighthawk in the 60's when they first came out. They thought for sure I would have called Monday night and they were ready to come that evening with cash. I knew my bike had its perfect new owner. So why did I get off the phone and cry?

Oh for me. For me, for me, for me.

I cried for the first and only motorcycle I've ever owned. The one I actually learned how to ride on. The one I bought for myself as a college graduation gift. The one I bought after I said, "Ok, so I've always thought about wanting to ride a motorcycle and now I'm 26, I have two kids, and if I don't do it soon, I may never do it." The one I practically dreamed into existence: I want an older model, affordable, Honda. (When I finally said it out loud, I saw it on the corner of a street I drove down daily, about a week later, with a for sale sign on it.) The one that I couldn't even drive home by myself, that made me cry (while on the back learning to ride) because I was so afraid to take a turn! The one that I could eventually ride, weaving between the reflectors at a good clip, with a gleam in my eye. The one with the smell, the sound, the feel of riding right above the power to GO! The one that always meant freedom, in every way, to me.

I cried for the memories. I cried for the dream. I cried for who I was when I bought it, who I thought I'd be by now. For the trip to Sturgis that never happened. For the mechanical ability that wasn't cultivated. For the wind in my hair and all that cliché, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance kind of spiritual awakening and connection stuff that happened when I rode along for miles at death-defying speeds (which isn't very fast on a bike, btw!). For the joy of the days when it did run and made me feel so, so good to be alive.

Yes, that one.

Is it no wonder, then, that I cried?

My youngest daughter said, "Mom, you never ride it anymore anyway."

"Don't be mean to me," I said.

I don't know that anyone truly knows what that bike means to me...even sitting in the garage. Just being able to sit on it and hold on every now and again.

"Making way for the new one," my husband said.

"Yes, the new one," I smiled.

But later, when I was alone and driving in the car, the hopeless romantic in me imagined the new, perfect owner driving away with my baby in the back of his truck, and I cried again. The new one will never be the old one, the first one, the most "romantic" one, and that's ok. I'll be able to console myself that I still have all the feelings and the memories safe here with me.

Oh, and pictures!

Vaya con Dios, my darling!

Yeah Baby, I'm a Swinger!

2008-02-28T10:35:00.011-06:00

No, not that kind of swinger. The dancing kind. Specifically, west coast swing.

I LOVE IT!!

So I realized that I've been dancing for about ten months now (although I've only been a west coaster for three) and most of the people who read this blog don't know and probably won't get to see me dance until I start uploading competition videos, and I'm guessing that won't happen until my kids are grown (a few more years).

So anyway, since I had no idea what west coast swing was until I saw folks dancing at the club, I figured most of you don't know either. Well, being the sharing kind of blogger that I am, I thought today would be perfect. If you have a little time, here are several videos for you to sample.

Let me just say this first. What really draws me to west coast is that it is most often danced to the kinds of music I like best, and it has the added benefit of being a partner dance. So it's club dancing with flair. Or salsa toned down. Or rockin', bluesy, sexy, fun to move to the music, kind of dancing. When I tried to describe why I love this dance, I thought, this dance is how I feel on the inside. You know, that part of you that isn't embarrassed or afraid. The part that is just alive. Yeah, that's what it is to me.

So the first video starts with the most basic (I can do all of those moves), and then there's one I'm aspiring to now that I've joined a swing club on Thursday nights. The third one showcases the instructor couple I'm dying to take lessons from (but they are on the other side of town, so for now, not yet), and the final one has some national champions just cutting some serious rug (like wowsers...and to think they were in Houston last weekend and I missed them)!

Enjoy!

Oh, and let me know what you think, ok?

Forest and Yolanda at Waltz Across Texas, in Houston, Oct. 2007
(event sponsored by Texas Two-Steppers...my dance studio peeps)

Unnamed Improvisors
(This is my goal for my one year dancing anniversary in June!)

WARNING: Video camera operator is enthusiastically loud,
watch your volume!

Lisa and Damon D'Amico (my dream teachers), in Seattle

Michael Kielbasa and Jennifer Deluca
1st Place Winners at America's Classic, Houston, 2007

Aaaaaahhhhhh....it's good to be Swing! =)

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Valentine Award

2008-02-15T12:34:00.004-06:00

This year, Valentine's Day was very good for me, and that's saying something! No, actually, it was/is FANTASTIC!!!

This year, I had my lovely daughters to dote on, friends to dance with (our west coast swing club meets on Thursday nights) and exchange cards/gifts with, a husband to pamper and be pampered by (we are having a COUPLE'S MASSAGE tomorrow! WOW!), and something else that was just the sweetest thing I've ever heard.

My younger daughter, Miss A., has a boyfriend. She is a fourteen year old freshman. I know, I know. But I've been open minded, open-eyed, and open-eared. And our motto for boyfriends is that they are boys, who are friends, and who add something happy to life--no drama allowed. The short version, "If it's not fun, it's not worth it." Not in high school. Heck, not ever. But you get the idea anyway.

So this boy, Prince R., has been nothing but dreamy with my little girl, and, reader, they will have been "going out" for FIVE MONTHS before February closes. So, always and ever watchful, I was waiting to see how Valentine's Day turned out. Mostly because this young lad is a gift giver...genuinely, thoughtfully so.

She got a bevy of classis Valentine's adornments: a dozen red roses, a bear clutching a cloth red rose with a small mylar balloon and a small bag of chocolates, and also a one pound Hershey's chocolate bar. But there was one more thing, and this is the thing that I just thought was so wonderfully sweet.

Apparently, earlier in the week, Miss A. had been complaining of feeling "ugly." Now, this is more of a state of mind than anything, sometimes we call it feeling "wimpy." Miss A. has given up makeup application for Lent. Earlier in the week, she had a prominent zit and was feeling red-nosed and under the weather, and she would normally use a little cover up and move on, but she couldn't, so she was feeling a little self-conscious, and telling her boy who is a friend about it. She did, however, admit that, "Mom, I was exaggerating a little bit." For some sympathy. This mother understood her daughter's very feminine dilemma.

So anyway, Prince R. of course told her to "Stop it!" Happily telling her that not only did he think she was beautiful, but that he bet just about anybody at school would sign a petition declaring her to be the most beautiful girl ever. (Ok, so am I a sap? I can't help but wonder what his parents must be like together for this young man to be so sensitive and complimentary...and communicative!) So anyway, Miss A. told him to stop and that was that. Or so she thought.

Yesterday, he had a mysterious paper hanging out of his pocket. When asked about it, he said it was an unfinished poem and she could not see it. Then she witnessed him showing "the poem" to other people! She even saw people writing on it. She decided, oh well, he'll show me eventually and forgot about it.

After lunch, and before they parted ways for the rest of the school day, he handed it to her. And lo and behold, it was the petition signed by about twenty of their girl and guy friends.

I got to hear the story on the way home. She pulled out the piece of paper and was smiling and smiling at it.

"What's that?" her sister, Miss Z. asked.

"Nothing," she smiled.

Looking over her shoulder from the backseat, Miss Z. said, "It looks like a bunch of signatures."

"Yeah, it is. Ok, so this is what happened..." She was giggling and beaming at the end.

Her story just made me smile too. What a great gift of affection and appreciation, no?

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Twelve Things I Learned (from My Sponsor)

2008-02-12T09:42:00.000-06:00

Definition for the day: IRONY- 3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity. (source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony)

My daughter and I were talking recently about how life seems to be almost predictable in its flair for the ironic. It's almost cliché, really. In other words: frustrating as hell. Let me tell you a story about irony.

My sponsor thought that it was ironic for someone with a Master's degree in the "communicative arts," such as myself, to have such a difficult time communicating with loved ones. This was the first pointedly derogatory thing I remember her saying to me, or at least the first time I noticeably took offense at something she said. And I still think it's a misguided thing to say. Now let me tell you why I think it's even worth mentioning.

The first reason is that it's just flat out wrong. Having a degree in literary analysis is almost always a surefire way to appear ridiculously obtuse to the general audience. Some folks start making comments about the vocabulary you use. Some people think you won't be able to relate to "younger students" because that much schooling makes you useless to young people. Others even say things like, "Well, maybe on your 'higher plane of reasoning' that makes sense." And, as a general rule, many people come at you with apprehension due to their own insecurities, usually based on past experiences with merciless English teachers who bled red ink all over their schoolwork. Like those folks, for instance, who, after asking me what I do, make self-effacing comments about watching their grammar around me (and it's even worse when there is email correspondence involved). So, you see, right from the get-go, a person with an English degree can be at a severe communicative disadvantage.

The second problem, for me, revolves around the study of rhetoric, Aristotle's idea that understanding one's audience and appealing to the hopes and fears of those listeners, or readers, can provide the well-trained rhetorician with incredible powers of persuasion. Rhetoric is something I honed to a precision (mostly in writing) that surprised even myself at times. A lot of it is intuitive. The rest of it is pure calculation. Have we not heard enough politicians' carefully crafted speeches and debate responses to have that feeling of being manipulated, both emotionally and logically? So, being good at persuading people (or making a solid argument, whether they agree with you or not) isn't always a good thing when it comes to personal relationships. You can acquire a bit of a reputation: "There's no arguing with her." Being as logical as Spock doesn't always make for good communication in a relationship of the heart.

All that is to say that yes, I was very good at rhetoric, but no, I was NOT very good at the language of love. Unfortunately, they don't teach you that in graduate school. And I felt that my sponsor, in pointing out her idea of a discrepancy here, was being unhelpful at best. I certainly didn't ask for a sponsor to treat me like I should already know what it is I was obviously lacking. That sent me straight back to childhood, straight back into pure emotion with no logic to speak of. And that was the beginning of the end of my sponsorship.

I met with my sponsor in person just twice after that, and her style continued to spiral down into the realm of personal attack. At first I thought it must be some kind of "tough love" tactic, holding the mirror so close it hurt to look. And there was a lot of truth coming at me, but there was just too much coming at me. I just sat and listened. And her tone became more and more shrew-like, more abusive, more "you should know better by now." It got to the point where I literally couldn't ask a question about what she was saying or disagree without being accused of "playing the victim." Or she would say, "Well, if you want me to just be warm and fuzzy and agree with you, then you are wasting your time here."

I was trained as a child not to expect warm and fuzzy, so this seemed like a rational thing to say. And by now, I sure knew that I had issues, so here she was, doing me a favor pointing it all out to me over and over again. It wasn't until the final visit that I became conscious of the disparity between why I was there, and what was happening. I felt good about something and she twisted it into some diseased thing. All this time, she'd been talking about loving the child within and finally, here I was, the adult, listening to her abuse that little girl, sounding much worse than my mother ever had. The adult chose to leave. But my sponsor followed me to the door to get one last barb in before I left: "Yeah, go ahead and just add me to the list of people who have victimized you all your life." I knew then that I was lucky to have regained consciousness and found the strength to get up and get out of there. I said, "Ok. Thank you." She might have accused me again of trying to get in the last word by responding at all, but I didn't have to hear it this time.

In my opinion, this situation was mercilessly ironic. I placed my trust in a woman who said she saw herself in me and was sure she could help me because of it. Instead, it seems she saw a little bit too much of herself (or not enough?) and some of her old issues came up as a result. Nobody's perfect, after all. At least, this is the scenario I console myself with since I know she has literally sponsored hundreds of people, with better results than this. Which, I know for a fact because that was one of the things she was trying to shame me with during our final meeting. But, really, the true irony comes from the fact that it was she who taught me to recognize abuse, to recognize the difference between my adult self and my petrified child self, and to tell people who hurt me that I can't be around them. I can thank her for that, now.

As always, trauma brings obvious lessons. But what began as trauma has become much more comical than tragic for the very reason that she had taught me so much about how to look at my life and see the truth of the situation. So, in honor of the helpful relationship that we did share for a short time, I offer another list: twelve things I learned from my sponsor.

Hats off to you, B.W.!

1. Write to know, to discover, yourself.

2. Write from the heart.

3. Be honest, and direct.

4. Commit to reality--to the truth.

5. Respect yourself first.

6. Refuse to play the victim with others.

7. Refuse to play the victim with yourself.

8. Stand up to bullies (even if it means walking away).

9. Ban abusers from your life.

10. Love the child within.

11. Be the adult.

12. Take action.

Ok, one last dose of irony for the road! I'd been working on recognizing the truth of my relationship with my mother. We'd had some serious communicative issues over the past year and were essentially only communicating on a superficial level for birthdays and holidays. Well, like I said, my sponsor's tirade on that last day struck me as so much worse than anything my mom had said that I promptly went home and called Mom. I admitted my fear about talking directly about the issue and said I was ready to hear what she had to say. We said our peace, which was really quite simple. We aren't perfect, but the lines of honest communication are now open. We admitted that we have a tendency in our family to say what we think the other person wants to hear. (Sounds like I first learned a little rhetoric at home!) We promised not to do that anymore, and we agreed that we would accept and encourage the other person in the quest for genuine feelings. In other words, we have given each other permission to be ourselves. And I also forgave anything in the past that I was holding onto...and promised not to use the past against her in an argument. Whew! It was such a relief.

I think my sponsor would be glad to know that I finally took action--even if it did take me a couple of months.

God grant me the Serenity
to Accept the things I cannot change,
the Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Be well.

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Another Year Older

2008-02-04T12:16:00.001-06:00

I felt the urge to acknowledge the traditional marking of the passage of time known as my birthday with a blog entry. I've been reduced, you see, to needing a special occasion for logging my thoughts. So here, the day after, is my own commemoration of the passing year.

Just to make things even easier on my uninspired self, I thought I would make a list of experiences that stand out in the past year. Bear with me, it may just be navel-gazing stuff and neither cosmically revealing nor helpful to readers, but it is, at least, completely keepsake worthy.

1. I took the Science of Mind "Heartfelt Living" course with my husband last February-April. I learned about affirmative prayer. When I practiced this learning, I had tremendous results. My life is still changing as a result of those initial prayers, but I have lacked discipline and have been immature about my spiritual life since then. But I definitely learned a lot about my husband, and a whole lot more about myself and what "pains" me, so to speak. This course was a fantastic catalyst for the rest of the year. I also had the privilege of making a brand new, wonderful, loving friend--the kind to keep for a lifetime!!

2. I started taking two-step lessons in May. I was prepared to go alone, but an acquaintance from church found out I was starting and joined me, saying she'd been thinking about doing the same thing. Then we met another woman who started brand new like we did, also by herself. From there, we became the Dancing Divas or the Tres Amigas and we've been taking lessons and practicing our dancing at least twice a week since. In the meantime, I learned a little polka and a teensey bit of waltz, and discovered the dance I now love the most--West Coast Swing. So now I take WCS lessons twice a week and practice on Friday nights! Dancing and spending time with my friends brings me so much JOY!!!

3. I finally made it through Julia Cameron's book for struggling artists, The Artist's Way, after trying several times over the course of oh, nine or so years. I was able to do it because I joined a focus group in the summer. This, in turn, inspired me to take a painting class where I found out that I love painting! I also made a fabulous friend from the group; a friend who is a practicing artist, a photographer most often, and an appreciator of art--including mine! What a fabulous adventure and reward!!

4. I took classes at a community college that were "just for me." I took Design, and Painting, Jazz, and Weight Training. As mentioned in #3, I discovered that I LOVE to paint. I also loved Jazz, but didn't like being the oldest student; I did, however, decide that I love all kinds of dance! Lifting weights definitely produced results, but the surprise was that the cardio training got me running up to a mile and a half....and liking it! My easel is set up at home, with my current painting in progress, but it's still tough to find the time like I had in class to devote to it. Something about the undivided attention of three hours to paint really helped. But, it's all ready to go when I can get back to it. Priorities may change, but the love won't, and now I have a beginning where before there was only a dream. Huzzah!

5. One of my Amigas told me about Codependents Anonymous. I started going to meetings in September. I started the twelve step program in October. I'm on step four: Make a searching and fearless inventory of myself. Ouch. Well, I have a sponsor who doubles as a life coach and I am workin' this step, and let me tell ya, it's tough. I recently described my revelations in a statement something like this: "I've discovered that it has been my own lack of imagination and courage that have contributed to any unhappiness in my life." In many situations, I have believed myself to be a victim of circumstance, or of people who have had power over me, or of a lack of choice, or even of being prone to being a victim. Waking up to the knowledge that my life is exactly the way I made it is startling, and it's very easy to beat up on myself for not having known this sooner. I mean, I thought I knew it, but I didn't really know it, you know? (ha) To feel the impact of this revelation just knocked the wind right out of me. I'm still trying to breathe. This is one of those pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go out and do something about changing yourself moments.

6. My family went to DisneyWorld for Christmas vacation. This was yet another dream that gained substance. Although I had been there before, it had been nineteen years prior to this trip, and so it was new and different enough that I loved it again. And my husband and two daughters, who had not been before, were enchanted as well. We tend to be an Edu-Tainment kind of family, so we soaked up a lot more than just thrill rides. The memories we made will be little mental islands of paradise I can visit anytime. I love those kinds of memories, don't you?

7. My girls both started this school year in high school! My girls are 14 and almost 16 (Feb. 22nd) and I have been having some serious mommy nostalgia of late. The "where-has-the-time-gone-it-was-just-yesterday-they-were-so-little" kind of nostalgia. But then I also have these moments where I just watch them, like I'm having an out-of-body experience and I'm just amazed at the young women they have become, and I am just filled with love, love, love for these wonderful ladies in my life. They have, and continue to be, lovely to behold in every way. I'm so grateful for the love and life we share. They will always be the best part of being me in this lifetime. I wouldn't trade them for anything. Ever. It's not a new feeling, per se, but it is deeper and different these days. Something about seeing them at eye level I presume.

And so I'm completely exhausted now, WOW! That's a great year right there I would have to say! Thanks for reading. Talk to you soon.

Here again are those lovely ladies I was telling you about:

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Officially Switching to Keepsake Blog

2008-01-03T08:55:00.000-06:00

Hey Readers! I've been hankering for a more informal blog so that I can post just any old thing (like the many blogs that never get past the first paragraph or so because I decide it doesn't "fit" with my idea of the theme). But this new year is about doing what I REALLY WANT to do, so I'm going to post anything I feel like posting. No expectations other than communications from myself. It's not a diary or a journal, but this one is going to just be full of whatever. And really, anything is a "step," so I've really just opened myself up a bit more. Yeah, that's the secret. I'm just going to say whatever and stop trying to say just the right thing in just the right way.

Yay me!

So here's what I'm happy about today--our family vacation to DisneyWorld. We didn't get to bring all the kids, but my hubby loved it so much and regretted waiting so long that he vowed to go again when the grandbaby is a little bit older.

In a word, we LOVED it. I was the experienced tour guide, but even I got to do new things since it's changed a whole lot in the 19 years since I last visited! We didn't see EVERYTHING, but it was pretty close.

My TOP TEN LIST of attractions would go something like this:

1. The Broadway musical style NEMO show. (I cried. It was soooooo beautiful!)

2. Expedition Everest Rollercoaster

3. The Hollywood Studios Tower of Terror Elevator ride

4. "Soarin'" (yet another Disney feat in 4-dimensional entertainment!)

5. Mission: SPACE (Wanna feel a sliver of what the astronauts do? Be sure to pick the "more intense" Orange Team option: "Mom, look what happens when I try to touch my cheeks!")

6. The EPCOT Illuminations: Reflections of Earth laser lightshow fireworks extravaganza, Christmas holiday version with TWICE as many fireworks as any other time of the year! WOW!!!

7. The Rockin' Rollercoaster with Aerosmith (it's like cookies and milk, speedin' and rockin' in a Cadillac limo!)

8. Any of the 3-D (really 4-D) shows we saw: "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" in the Imagination Pavillion at EPCOT, "Muppet Vision 3-D" at Disney's Hollywood Studios Park, or It's Tough to be a Bug" under the Tree of Life in Animal Kingdom.

9. "DINOSAUR" the ride, at Animal Kingdom. Think Jurrasic Park in a roving Time Machine. Wow. Kinda scary, but lots of FUN!

10. Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor at Magic Kingdom. An interactive comedy cartoon. We lucked out and had some great "characters" in the audience and everyone laughed until the tears ran and the sides hurt. A surprise winner for sure!

And, of course, it wouldn't have been OUR vacation if there weren't lots great food involved. My favorite was: The Hawaiian all-you-care-to-eat sit down buffet (they bring more of everything...even the jumbo boiled shrimp!) at O'Hana Restaurant in Disney's Polynesian Resort Hotel. (Great meal-side entertainment too, especially if you have little ones!) Runner up this time was Les Chefs de Paris. C'est magnifique!

And hey, those were just our FAVORITES! Everything else was exceptional. Oh, and hey, the Johnny Depp animatronic manequins were dead on...sigh. All the girls love a handsome pirate, no?

We all still get stars in our eyes when we mention Disney. It was just what we needed and more than we hoped for!

So here are a few of my favorite pictures to go with the list of favorites:

Nemo and friends, and family:

People are friends, not food:

Us girls with the girl behind the Mouse (notice Aubrie's pirate ears):

Us girls with Figment, as in, of our Imagination:

And finally, our family portrait, EPCOT style:

Hope you had a GREAT holiday too!

Photos and Copy all © Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

NaNoWriMo Update

2007-11-21T10:53:00.000-06:00

We apologize for the inconvenience, but this update will be interrupted so that we might bring you the preceding spiritual growth update:

This year has been the year that I have discovered (repeatedly) my tendency to commit to things I thought would be long-term that do not turn out that way because, essentially, the committment was not necessarily my best option.

Or maybe I should say that in attempting to commit to certain long-term projects, I have learned a valuable lesson and moved on quickly.

For instance, a business venture that provided me with a kitchen full of lovely cooking aids and motivated me to redecorate (hanging curtains was the big one) my home and make it homey again did not provide me with the business opportunity I had originally imagined it might, and so I let it go to pursue other, more exciting opportunities for personal growth.

Or, in this particular case, a month-long novel writing project lasted three or four good solid days and then dissipated like a mist. However, I will note that I also got my daughter on board and she now has about 40,000 of the 50,000 word goal completed...not to mention a story that sounds really compelling!

Those are two larger examples, but this kind of thing has been patterning in my life this year. I start something, thinking it will lead one way, and I follow it down a rabbit hole of discovery and learn something almost completely unexpected.

In the past, I might have labelled these outcomes as failures, being the rabid perfectionist I had known myself to be, but now I have a greater appreciation for these kinds of things. It reminds me a little of the MasterCard commercials that have become part of our collective unconscious. But rather than dollar amounts, I find myself listing experiences that lead to a cumulative discovery that is "priceless," or that, in other words, I would not have experienced had I not had the benefit of the other seemingly tedious accumulation of events.

So for now, I'm trying to just go with the flow that these experiences suggest to me, and I realize that I have learned a valuable lesson in courage. Previously, I would have been too terrified to even start the larger projects, but I have now given myself permission to try things out and decide if they are "for me" or not. Some things have not been for me—for instance, writing a novel in November (in a year when I have company and am cooking for Thanksgiving no less!); but some things have absolutely been for me—such as, painting and dancing!

I'm also forgiving myself for all the times in the past that I berated myself for starting something and deciding it wasn't for me and calling it "quitting." I've learned so much about how it is absolutely necessary, for an authentic and joyful life, to follow your own preference. You may say, "Well, elementary my dear Watson," and you would be right, but sometimes people get lost when they don't have a history of support for their preferences. I believe I may have been one of those people. Luckily, I have found my way out of the maze of people-pleasing and into the bright, verdant meadow where I can happily chase the butterflies of my personal preferences.

It's such a relief to know that the earth will keep spinning even if I do things that other people don't approve of or judge me for, and to be released from the tragedy of trying to fit in with others' expectations of what a life should look like.

But wasn't there supposed to be an "update" on my writing progress?

For now, we'll just say I wrote almost 6,000 words, discovered a great character, released a lot of pent-up dramatic thoughts, and chose to focus on the six or eight other things in my life that I prefer more. This November was not my month for a novel.

And that's perfectly O-K!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

So I Said I Wanted To Write...

2007-10-23T13:38:00.000-05:00

I am continually surprised and encouraged by the way that, if I am listening, the Universe is constantly answering my questions, or offering me advice, or just plain looking out for me.

Ah. So I said Universe again. I could have said Universal Love, or God, or God's Love, or the Inimitable Life Force, or Great Spirit. What my heart feels when I use Universe is majestic, magnificent, wide-open and ever-increasing spaciousness. The amazing Consciousness that we all inhabit as Sentient Beings. In other words, all that Is. The Great I AM. But I digress.

Just yesterday, I told a friend that I had signed up for the NaNoWriMo challenge (National Novel Writing Month) of 50,000 words, in the shape of a novel, in 30 days. I told her that I'd had lots of "book ideas" and lots of ideas about what writing is or could be in my life, but that I'd never felt confident enough to really start anything.

Fear monkeys. You know. (Remember this one?)

So this collaborative frenzy of writing takes the pressure off...AND gives you a deadline. You basically just write. Fast and Furious: Imagination Drift, as it were. No pressure. (ha!)

But seriously.

And if you are able to write the 50,000 words, you upload the scrambled file to their servers' counting machine and it pronounces you a winner and you get a certificate! Neato, right?

When all is said and done, you don't even have to let anyone else read it, let alone publish it. And edit the thing? Foggeddaboudit! You don't ever even look at it again if'n ya don't wanna. You just have to let your guard down and allow your creative mind to let loose and write.

So, I also told my friend that I'd heard, here and there, throughout the years, that all you have to do is "write what you know." You see, I've wanted to do science fiction in the past and quit because I thought I had to do all my research first and then write. Well, the serendipitous part of this digressive tale happened today at lunch while I read my Writer's Digest magazine. (This is the magazine I get in the mail without ever having asked for or paid for it, to my knowledge. One day, it just started coming. Go figure!)

The writer of the article, "Falling Down the Rabbit Hole," said that only writing what you know can limit the writer to her "conscious mind...stuck in the straightjacket of [her] conscious perception of reality. This is totally contradictory to creativity, which by definition brings into existence that which hasn't been before. Your experiences can be a jumping-off point for your writing, but the key is to not be a slave to the known."

That was a useful clarification for me, but in addition to another article in the same magazine that discussed the tandem efforts of the left and right brain during the writing process, I felt like the Universe had given me a pep talk and then winked at me. So I listened to much of the advice in this issue with the focus: "Get Creative Now: How To Fuel Your Writing." And I thought, "Yes. I am doing the right (write?) thing by signing up for this novel marathon session."

It's good to feel like your on the true path, right?

So I have this germ of an idea that is a deep, dark and hidden idea. I've thought about it before but the artistic censor in my mind says, "Don't you dare! You write that and you'll be putting a pseudonym on that puppy if, and I mean IF, anyone even wants to publish that rubbish!" (Yeah, my censor is gooooooood at what it does!)

But now, picture me all squinty-eyed, with a set jaw, staring down the censor like it's "Church Lady," a comic character I can almost laugh at, saying, "You dare me? Are you talking to me? Yeah? Well just you watch. Say hello to my little friend, this novel idea, see. I'm gonna make it happen. You watch. You'll see."

So. Am I determined? You bet. Am I scared? You bet. But I'm ready inside in a way I haven't been before. Because it's all for me. You may never read what I write next month, but that's ok. It's the writing that matters most. To me.

I'm ready to write for myself! And that makes me proud. YAY!! It feels great to know you're growing and to know that Universe is right there on your side when you decide to say YES to the desires of your heart. And that's SUCH a good feeling.

(Even though I'll be writing 2,000+ words a day for myself, I'm guessing I'll still have things to say about the process at the very least, so I'll keep you posted!)

In parting, I share this quotation with you to remind myself again of the truth about writing (I used to tell this to my writing students too...it was SO encouraging to me to hear this from a writer I truly admire!) :

All first drafts are shit. You must allow yourself to fail. You only write a first draft in order to have something to revise. ~Ernest Hemingway

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

What's Behind Those Six-Pack Abs (Literally)?

2007-10-16T13:30:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to share a fitness tidbit with you today.

So I'm in that weight training class that's mostly cardio, right? Well today we went through a practice run of the weight training fitness test. (Thank goodness we did the practice cardio fitness test first...my muscles are on the wimpy side when it comes to these "norms" that are expected of us!)

There are four tests for women: bench press (55lbs.), lat. pull (50lbs.), arm curls (25lbs.), and sit-ups (incline bench). For all of you who read that and thought, "Yeah, and?" I congratulate you on your physical prowess! For the rest of you out there groaning along with me, let me tell ya, I'm groaning the loudest right about now.

I did all but arm curls today. And the repetition "norms" for a woman of my weight (142lbs.) are as follows: bench press (13 reps), lat. pull (23 reps), arm curls (21 reps), and sit-ups (26 reps). For those able to meet the norm, an 80% grade awaits. That's right folks. To get an "A" in this category, one must exceed (and how) the average number. But enough complaining. Really, looking at it now, away from the gym, it doesn't seem quite so bad I suppose. But keep in mind that there is no age adjustment for these norms, only weight. Ok, I think I'm finally finished whining!

So the thing I wanted to share with you specifically related to the sit-ups. I did ten, People, ok? But what I noticed again is that my abs tend to bunch up in a ball when I do sit-ups, and I know that's not good, so I wondered about the physiology of that phenomenon. And then I wondered what effects my "classical" or longitudinal c-section might be having on my AB-ilities.

That sent me off to the library for some online research. I started with the effects of the c-section on the abs and came across a published and lauded professional who suggested that crunches can actually distend the abdominal muscles because they only work the rectus abdominus, or the long muscle extending between the ribs and the pubic bone, aka. the "six-pack" muscle (yes, it's one, big, long muscle). And even working overtime on the obliques (side muscles) isn't enough to offset the pouchy look!

Apparently, there is a much more important group of muscles that lie deeper and are responsible for flattening the abdomen—the transversus abdominus (and less so, the lumbar multifidi). These muscles are often ignored, or at least undertrained. And one thing I have learned in my weight training class is that if you're going to train one set of muscles, you must equally train those muscles which perform the equal and opposite movement.

For example, if you train your hamstrings, you must also be sure to train your quadriceps—the idea being that the muscles work to move the bones at the joint and that the motion goes in both directions. An imbalance in the muscles causes instability in the joint, and instability is the "bad word" when it comes to physical fitness. Now there's no joint in your abdoment, of course, but there is a push-pull relationship between the outer abs and the inner ones.

So not only do these hidden abdominal muscles stabilize the lower abdomen and back, but they also (especially the transversus abdominus) cinch the waistline and pull in the gut. And the basic exercises for this inner group are isometric, meaning that you hold a static, or unmoving, position and then release, so they are somewhat "easier."

Perusing ten or so websites related to exercising these muscles, I saw the repeated recommendation to cease the other ab exercises, like crunches and sit-ups, for 4-6 weeks in order to allow the underdeveloped muscles to catch up, thus creating a much greater strength and stability, and possibly even reducing the waistline in the process (sources say percent body fat in the region contributes to exterior evidence of the effectiveness of these exercises)!!

The really cool thing is that you can do the most basic of the exercises even while driving, and I do an awful lot of driving!

If you're interested in the one easy exercise, click here, or if you'd like a range of exercises with a suggested program, click here. But please remember that old addage: before beginning a new exercise program, do consult with your trusted health practioner. I am only sending you off on your own research starting point by providing these particular links. Always do what's best for you, ok?

I'll keep you updated, so if you'd like to wait and see if it really works, I volunteer to be your guinea pig!

Keep smiling!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Food for Thought

2007-10-11T13:58:00.001-05:00

Ok, so I know it's a cliche, but it's all I could come up with at the moment that the little box labelled "title" beckoned to be filled. I think we'll survive it.

So for the past few days I've been thinking a lot about what I eat and trying to decide if anyone cared or if there was some larger significance to my thoughts dwelling on what I was ingesting. You'll have to let me know if you care or not, and I will write a while and see if there is, in fact, any larger significance to my recent preponderance of mental energies. (Overly dramatic words are fun sometimes, ya know?)

I guess I recently started thinking about food even more because I had to think up something new to eat for breakfast. You see, I eat eggs just about every day for breakfast, and have for several years (lets say four) because I am pretty much useless if I don't have a significant amount of protein for breakfast.

Now before you start thinking, "But eggs have so much cholesterol!" let me assure you that my cholesterol levels are fine and I have no issues there. Actually, eggs, like avocados, have gotten a bad rap in this country for being "bad for you." Well. The people who say things like that get paid to keep you sick and pumped full of pharmaceuticals, so be careful who you listen to.

But if we weigh all traditional breakfast protein items, eggs, in my book, win every time. Think about it...what do we eat (in America) for breakfast protein? Sausage. Bacon. (This order is based on the Southern pecking order to which I am now completely accustomed.) Oh, and ham or Canadian bacon. Did I miss anything? Compared to pork, fatty pork, or fatty salty pork, eggs come out on top, right?

The other problem with people eating eggs is that most people have trouble eating eggs without cheese (based on my observations). In fact, most people eat their eggs in breakfast sandwiches from fast food restaurants (eggs plus super fatty fake cheese--partially hydrogenated vegetable oil patties is more like it--and gobs of bread) or in huge omelettes busting out with other meats (see above, oh yeah, and add cheeeeese!). I guarantee that if you ate two eggs cooked in virgin olive oil with only spices, fresh herbs, or vegetables in, on, or next to them, you would be fine--assuming you didn't already have cholesterol issues (and I mostly say that because I don't want anyone to die from listening to me).

But I suppose that's only for those folks who are useless without protein for breakfast and not everyone is like that, so this may only be trivia for those type of folks.

But as I was saying, I was tired of two eggs for breakfast, which I most often have with fruit, and so I went on a mental quest to find another source of protein. Well, we eat grown-up chickens A LOT for lunch and dinner, so chicken was definitely out of the question. And beef is rarely on the menu at all, so that wasn't making the list either. What does that leave? You guessed it! FISH!

So my oldest daughter and I (the younger one reports she's one of those people who doesn't need protein for breakfast) experimented with "breakfast fish."

Like I said, I usually eat fruit with my protein and I've tried fish with fruity sauces and toppings before, so that was my logical conclusion: fish with fruit. That week at the grocery store, there just so happened to be the most appealing family-size packages of tilapia sitting in the refrigerated case. I thought, Hmm. Never noticed that before. It must be fate. Back at home, looking through the pantry, I came across the jar of Harry & David Sweet Mango Chutney (they don't make it anymore!) I'd been saving for just such a fortuitous occasion. And so it was settled. Fresh tilapia with mango chutney it was.

I pan-cooked my fish in a large, glass-covered skillet, lightly coated with virgin olive oil, on medium heat. When the fish was halfway cooked, I slathered the thick, sticky chutney on the tops of the fillets and continued cooking until it was white and flaky (in total, about 15-20 minutes). Voila! Breakfast fish. Of course, I could eat this fish at any time of the day, but it goes down nice and easy in the morning with that fruity flavor.

Did I mention that my oldest daughter doesn't care for fish but she will eat this with a smile? Mmm-hmm, it's THAT good. We liked it so much, we ate breakfast fish probably eight out of the last ten school days. And that frees me up to have boiled eggs for lunch!

Well this turned into a long musing on fish, and I still have other food on my mind, but I guess that's good enough for now. And I would have to say then that the larger significance may only be that same message that keeps coming out of me in different forms: start with something you love.

You can't stick to the humdrum routines and find joy in your life. Sometimes you just have to break out and break it down to your own personal basics. You need a diet? Start with the food you love...well, the food you love that you know is good for you anyway, capiche? Who knows what you'll be eating for breakfast when you choose from the list of what you like and what feels good rather than just the "acceptable" list of breakfast foods.

All this talk about food is making me hungry...and I've got two more hours before lunch. Oh yeah, and my lunch is boiled eggs, so you know what that means. I ate breakfast fish today.

Hey, let me know if the subject of food is as interesting to you as it is to me, ok? I love food. Eating is one of my all-time favorite things to do, but it may not be the best thing to write about. I'm willing to accept that.

Have a great day and eat something you love that is good for you! You'll be happy that you did.

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Standing on a Hill of Diamonds, Looking for the Gold Mine

2007-10-08T12:33:00.000-05:00

We say "diamonds are forever" and "worth your weight in gold" so it's no wonder that when I first read the line that I have taken and used as my title for today, I just didn't get it.

I thought it was a win-win kind of thing. There you are, standing on all that long-lasting stuff, like building your house upon the rock, setting your sights on the gold—of accomplishment, of experience, and yeah, sure, of value.

Nope. Unh-uh.

What Anne Wilson Shaef, author of the daily devotional Women Who Do Too Much, says is that we don't see the forest for the trees. In other words, we go striving for what we already have, yet fail to recognize. So in this particular case, she suggests that, all things being equal—like diamonds and gold—we tend to go searching for the mere hopes of finding the richness we, in fact, already possess to excess. It's easy to see that a hill of diamonds is a ready resource of measurable proportions, whereas rooting around for a gold mine which would then require extraction efforts, in the face of the guaranteed fortune in front of us, would be a titanic waste of time, energy, and life itself.

It reminded me of what I said the other day about not being consciously aware of the magnitude of the gift of the human body, mind, and spirit. It's a hill of diamonds we stand on quite frequently, looking off into the distance to find those perfect accessories to go with it. Face it, we all do it. We ask ourselves, "What good is it to be trapped in this body if I can't have/do/be that?"

Ok, now I'm not saying that we can't take our human organism out for a drive and see what she can do. No, what I'm seeing as the distinction is that yearning that we beat ourselves up with. The literal, "What good is it?" The idea that what we have right now isn't good enough and what's the point anyway? It's the difference between following the joy and the passion in your heart and being driven by wild desire (or being driven wild by desire) for something that seems unreachable--but that's either because we expect perfection or we want instant gratification, or both!

I'll use myself as an example.

I love to dance. Now, at 37 years of age, I take dancing lessons. (You hear the judgment already, right?) And boy is it ever easy to sit back and watch people who have been dancing for five, ten, or even twenty years or more and think, "Well heck, I kinda suck! Will I ever learn this stuff so I can dance as effortlessly as they seem to?" (Or forget watching...try dancing with an experienced partner and having these thoughts come racing in when you inevitably flub it up!)

But if all I focus on is the end result and I allow myself to be discouraged because I don't have it right at this instant, then I miss out on the joy of dancing now. The fact is, I dance like someone who has been taking lessons for less than a year. And that's the truth...it's just a matter of fact. I have to allow for the journey. Right?

Repeat after me: "Life is the journey, not the destination." (Have we all heard this enough times now that it's about as "out of the box" as that worn out tag line itself?)

And I have to say that I dance much better when I don't think about doing it perfectly but rather let myself feel the dance...to be the dancer, dancing. (And I won't even get started on how my golf swing improves when I just do it!)

But it's so easy to forget the diamonds under the soles of our shoes (I nod to Paul Simon) as we trudge behind the pillar of clouds in the distance that always remain in the distance. The secret to loving the heck out of our lives is to live them right now. To find the perfection in each moment. To just "be" our way along the path.

That's what we're really looking for anyway. The hill of diamonds is there for us whenever we live right from where we are at any given moment. It's not out there in a land far, far away. It's here. And now.

Still not sure what that means? It's taken me a good ten years or so to really understand this idea for myself. Now I'm in the practicing phase. Are you practicing?

On that note, I would like to share a quotation with you from one of my favorite inspirational authors, Mr. Mike Dooley:

Live your dreams now, to any degree that you can. With every purchase. Every decision. Every hello and goodbye. Every assignment. Every conversation. Every meal. Every morning, afternoon and evening. And never, ever, ever look back.

Really.

Go on.

Do it now, and have FUN!!! :))

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

In Awe of the Human Organism

2007-10-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

Today I decided that I want to track all kinds of steps I make on my journey. I want this blog to become more of a journal of my emerging life of well-roundedness.

In other words, I'm going to get out of my head every now and again and tell you what I'm doing and not just what I'm thinking!

So today was an amazing day for me because I had a physical epiphany that went something like this...

My weight training class includes a cardio fitness test at the end of the semester that could be one of three specific tests: a 3 mile walk, a 10 mile (I think) stationary cycle ride, or a one and a half mile run/walk. Any of these needs to be completed within an acceptable amount of time according to a chart which varies based on age alone. Certain times also fall within certain letter grade levels.

I chose the one and a half mile run for my fitness test, and, of course, I wanted to run it in the "A" range, even though I am not being graded. Competing against averages and my "potential" according to the chart is ok, right? At any rate, I wanted to run, and I wanted to run fast enough for a gold star.

Now I chose the run because I love to run. My abilities before the class began, and my penchant for cigarettes, would have said otherwise, but the spirit of the child within me adores it. When I was a young girl, I ran and ran and ran. In elementary school (4th-6th grades in particular), my friend and I were the fastest runners and we would play "chase" with the fastest boys and routinely outrun them--for a while at least. And, back then, neighborhood tag was the out of school game of choice and we just ran EVERYWHERE! The wind was always in my hair, and cooling off my overly red cheeks (the Irish in me perhaps?). When I was running, I was happy, and when I was happy, I was running. And since then, most of the happy dreams I've had at night while sleeping involved running just for the pure joy of it.

So that's why I chose running. And I also quit smoking and told myself I would run instead. I didn't know how, after all these years, but I just knew I wanted to run again.

The very first week of classes, we went out to the track for our initial practice run...not even the full distance, but just to see where we were. Now, setting aside the fact that on that day there was at least a 100% humidity level in addition to a temperature above 90 degrees, I could not run one time around the quarter mile track. I don't even think I made it halfway. I'd quit smoking less than two weeks before that day and I could feeeeeeeel it. Ouch.

So it's been approximately five weeks since then and we went out today for a full practice run. The weather was fabulous--for us here in tropical Texas anyway. It was just under 90 degrees, and the humidity was more like 50% (aaahhhhh!) and there was even a BREEZE! It was lovely! And I was ready! I'd been practicing on the treadmill ever since that first day of doomed running. Two days ago I had run a mile in less than twelve minutes, and I could feel the power rising up gradually even from just the week before. But I was worried that running outside would slay me because the treadmill felt so much easier.

You must know that good news is coming...you did read the title after all, right? :)

Ok. So I'm totally proud of myself today because I ran the whole mile and a half (no walking) in just under fifteen minutes! YAY!!!! And yes, dear readers, that is in the "A" range! Woohoo!

I was amazed that my body had come so far so fast. I observed a moment of silence, when I could breathe quietly again, apologizing to my body and saying a prayer for having abused myself for so long with cigaretts. And then I thought, "Look what I can do in six weeks' time!"

Now it's not like I'm running marathons or anything, but I would venture to guess that I have not run a mile and a half straight since before puberty. Not even in track that one spring in tenth grade when I tried to be athletic and ended up with shin splints that were so debilitating that I quit. And when I did run, briefly, for the team, I was a sprinter...fast, but not for long. So I feel like I have a whole new body and I'm almost forty!

My next goal is to do a 5K. Unfortunately, I can't make it to the Run for the Cure race this Saturday because I have golf class, but maybe the next one in town. (There's always a 5K in town!)

But truly, this accomplishment, for me, is the kind of thing in life that can change it forever. I mean, I'm just not the same person I was six weeks ago. Taking care of myself from the inside out gives me such a feeling of strength and perseverance. I had the thought afterwards that we just don't realize how fortunate we all are. We could have nothing but the skin on our bones, and yet we would still have so much!

The human organism, not just the body, but the whole package of mind, body, and spirit, is an outrageously fantastic gift that we each possess. And we have complete freedom over how we will utilize that total package. Think about it. Nothing you could buy is as intricately designed, created, or functioning as the body you inhabit for your whole life. Even on a bad day, or with limited functionality and/or resources, we are all just miracles of life itself inhabiting the earth.

So yeah, today I'm just in complete and total awe of the human organism, and I can't wait to see what I can do with myself next!

Namaste!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

When the Three-Finger Rule Stalks Me

2007-09-28T13:33:00.000-05:00

Do you ever feel like the Universe is trying to communicate with you about the mystery of your own existence?

Do you ever feel like it is conking you on the head with that information?

Yeah. Me too.

The thing that keeps conking me on the head is this "three finger rule" I talk and blog about fairly regularly. I mean, I get it, ok? When I point my finger at someone else's behaviors or faults, those three other fingers are unmistakably pointing right back at me, telling me I do it too, and how, and reminding me that I need to shut up and worry about my own business.

Please put down the finger and step away from the condemnation and nobody will get hurt.

So WHY OH WHY do I keep pointing fingers? Why, I ask you????

Human nature...blah...nobody's perfect...blah blah...momentarily taking the attention off of your own flaws...blah blah blah!!!

As always, there's a sticking point. (If there's one thing you can count on in life, it's the sticking points!)

I believe the reason I keep pointing fingers is that I honestly believe I've discovered that one fatal flaw in others that I simply don't subscribe to in my daily living. Ha! You can hear it sticking already can't you?

So yeah. I'm pointing my finger because I still can't see myself. I'm still hopping around, like my anti-hero Rumpelstiltskin, thinking I can't possibly be mistaken--that surely I've outsmarted the Royalty and I will get my way at last and have the last laugh.

Not so my friends. Not so.

The more convinced I am that I do not possess the dreaded trait, the more surely it is sublimated most deeply in my life. In other words...I just can't see it because I've hidden it so well. Not just from others, but also from myself.

All I can say is that I'm so glad I didn't post the draft of the blog where I lambasted the world around me for being devoid of this one particular quality. Eating one's own words is never a pleasant experience. And it doesn't help with the personal credibility either!

So trust me when I tell you that the more you shriek and stomp about how something really pisses you off in others because you are soooooooooooo good at not doing the same thing yourself, the more the Universe is waiting to boomerang-toomerang-zoomerang you.

BOP!

Right in the head. From behind or right between the eyes. It matters not. It's still a humbling zinger nonetheless. And I promise you. Your time will come. It's a law of human nature to project disdain onto others for the purpose of diverting attention away from the only being capable of making a change. We do it to make ourselves feel righteous, but if we would just put on our spectacles, we would see that the specks in our neighbors' eyes don't compare with the wood in our own.

The bottom line is that we have to be still and pay attention. Notice what we want to point at and then notice our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Finding our own flaws is rather like sneaking up on a wild animal--let's say a big cat who lives in the dense jungles. First we find evidence...the scat of our behavior. What do we leave behind...what are the residuals...the by-products? What do we keep pointing at? Once we know the big cat lurks nearby, we have to watch, watch, watch for signs. They won't be obvious, but they will be there if we are patient and keep our eyes peeled.

Eventually we see the glowing eyes, the pearly teeth, and hear the low rumble in the chest that lets us know the cat is right here, right now. We see the wild thing in our nature that needs taming. We see the dark side of ourselves. We see where the other three fingers have been pointing all along.

Only then can we stop pointing elsewhere and either acknowledge that we are all flawed somehow or start working to tame the tiger. Either way, the focus is back where it belongs...on the one person whose circumstances and responses and actions we can actually do something about.

So quit pointing and take a safari into your very own soul. You won't believe what you'll find in your own jungles!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Low Pressure Area*

2007-08-12T22:49:00.001-05:00

Hey y'all, do you ever hate to do something just because it's expected of you? Is there a name for that particular condition? Label or no, I am a complete lame-oh when it comes to what I now use quotations to call "responsibility." Commit to something completely? Ok, but only if it's fun, man, and not if anyone else can have expectations of me.

Dude, like WHAT is my deal?

I mean, I feel like a complete washup as an "adult in society" but, maybe my husband is right--for me it's just a matter of redefining responsibility to fit in with what it means to me rather than what society-at-large "says" responsibility means. Which I guess is a nice way of saying I don't fit in, but what I know deep down is that I haven't gotten comfortable in my own skin. Haven't formed my niche yet. And the more I keep trying to play by someone else's rules, the more I rebel. The more I try to discipline myself, the more I dislocate or disassociate from the world at large. Sure, I may not be "normal," but by the same token, "normal" may just never work for me and faking it sure as heck is NOT cutting it.

I like what Julia Cameron says about the difference between discipline and enthusiasm, which I conveniently and, for me, appropriately, translated into obligation and inspiration. It's the difference between external motivation and internal motivation, and for some reason, the lesson I have chosen to be confronted with in this lifetime until I get it "right" is how to choose enthusiasm and inspiration rather than mere discipline and obligation. There's nothing wrong with being disciplined and obligated, as long as it is with and to something that is your heart's desire. I am determined to discover and to live an inspired life—guilt-free.

Aye, there's the rub. Guilt-free.

At any rate, here's what Julia says in her lovely book for guilt-ridden, blocked artists, a.k.a. The Artist's Way: "[Enthusiasm] is a spiritual commitment, a loving surrender to our creative process, a loving recognition of all the creativity around us. Enthusiasm (from the Greek, 'filled with God') is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life itself. Enthusiasm is grounded in play, not work. Far from being a brain-numbed soldier, our artist is actually our child within, our inner playmate. As with all playmates, it is joy, not duty, that makes for a lasting bond" (153).

And so that's exactly what I'm a-gonna do! I have signed up for a variety of continuing education courses at the community college and I'm going to jump in and just do some of the things that I've been dying (literally) to do for YEARS!

I'm taking two art classes, one is Design (line and space) and the other is painting. I have had dreams of Painting for years. (Running too, but I have to stay off of the cigarettes—and I pretty much quit the day I signed up for my classes, no coincidence that happiness equals no desire to self-destruct!)

I'm also taking a Jazz class because I've learned lately that I just LOVE to dance, and Jazz will not require a partner—the only frustrating part of taking Two-Step lessons these last couple of months! And then I will be taking a full semester of Tennis and six weeks of Golf because I love to be active and have always felt unable to be involved!

And, I'm also taking a Yoga class that meets only once a week for an hour because that's another class that has been calling to me.

My first thought was, "My goodness! I can't possible do ALL of those fun things in one semester can I?" Silly me I told myself. OF COURSE YOU CAN!!!! And I purposefully am taking these courses as continuing education because I don't want a "grade" put on my creativity. I just want to DO and enjoy the DO-ing! Low pressure.

My second thought was, "You're spoiled!" Silly me I told myself. IT'S ABOUT TIME, RIGHT???!!!! LOL! I mean really. My inner Censor was working overtime to try to get me to put the pressure back on myself and conform to misery. To avoid choosing what I really want right now, just because. I have "permission" for goodness sake! In other words, there's no reason why I can't enjoy the heck out of my life for a while. Low pressure is what I wanted and now I've got it!

Can't wait to start the DO-ing. One week from today I will be in the path of following my bliss. And hey, I may not LOVE everything, but gosh it's gonna be fun to find out what unfolds!

I'll leave you with an image. Hopefully you've had the blessed opportunity to see this and enjoy it—I know that not everyone was a follower of Jim Henson after all, but this is just so contagious!

I have described myself as feeling like this on the inside from the moment I decided on which courses to take and hit the make payment button. Remember and imagine if you will, Kermit the Frog, especially the Kermit of The Muppet Show era, when he is joyously excited about something (usually a guess introduction) as he throws his wiggly arms up over his head which is thrown back with his mouth wide open shouting, "YAAAAAAAAAY!"

That's how I feel. No pressure. Just JOY!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

*The whole post was inspired by the lovely Texas weather (I always start with the title). All I've heard about for months is the Low Pressure Area hanging over Texas that has kept our grass from drying out and burning but has kept other people soggier than they would like to be and seems to be egging on the hurricanes that are forming this year. Yeeeehaaaaa! I don't so much mind it, but it has been in my mind meteorologically as well as psychologically! :)

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

A Whole Lot of Something

2007-01-31T09:56:00.000-06:00

I’m sure you’ve all used the expression, “a whole lot of nothing,” but have you ever thought about what you’re saying? Personally, I’ve always thought about it in terms of not getting much in return, or in terms of unfulfilled expectations, or, on a positive note, what to do on the perfect relaxation vacation! But today I began to think of it in a more substantive way.

My sister gave me a book for Christmas called Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much so that we could be “thinking about the same thing every day,” if only briefly. That way, when we talk on Tuesdays, we might bring up something that stood out during the week and we’d have a similar frame of reference as a starting point. (Not that we ever need help thinking of things to talk about, mind you!)

I thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t really believe that I was a woman who did “too much.” I knew that I tried to tick off several items on my daily list, but those were “normal” things that wives and mothers and teachers had to do every day for heaven’s sake!

It wasn’t until today (Jan. 30th) that I came across the meditation for Jan. 28th that got me a-groanin’. Right away that should sound suspicious. Yes, it’s true. I was several days behind and read all the missed days this morning to “catch up.” And what hit me first about that particular meditation was that it sounded like something my husband needed to hear, (which, btw, is always a big clue to me that I need to hear it three times as much as he does), so I set it out where he would see it, making sure the book mark was on that page, and, sure enough, he read it by the time I got back from my morning errands (I could tell because the book was flipped over). So, I picked it up and read it again…to gloat a little at how apropos it was for the man who hadn’t gotten to bed until 3:30am that morning because he lets his job rule his life…and that’s when it hit me!

The author, Anne Wilson Schaef, labeled the meditation with the words: "Expendable, Control, and Fear." She says that the fear of being expendable is what drives people to become workaholics—that in making themselves “indispensable,” they convince themselves that they are in control and cannot be “let go”; in a word, they are SAFE. In other words, a man, like my husband, might think, “If I do everything that is asked of me, and then some; and if I check and recheck everyone else’s work and pick up their slack so that everything is done just so, then it doesn’t matter how many hours it takes because ‘this is my job, after all,’ and I don’t want to LOSE it!” But Schaef says that people who are “truly passionate about their work” take the same approach to their other interests—time for “play” or even some good old alone time—whereas the workaholics “work out of fear and try to convince [themselves] that [they] love it.” She says that this kind of fear-motivated behavior is self-abuse and is common in the over-achiever types.

So I asked myself, “How does someone who doesn’t have a job and has commitment issues (me) fall into the ‘workaholic’ category? What do I do so much of anyway?” The answer skewered me to the spot immediately. I do A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING! I do so much nothing that I never get the great big SOMEthing(s) done! My ability to avoid and shirk and dance around big projects with little nuisance-y things has been what has kept me from balancing my life and my time. The little nothings of my average life have been consuming me and keeping me from getting ahead: in my career, in my writing, in my reading, even in my parenting…in everything I say I want to do with my life.

Now, I already knew that this was the do-or-die year for focusing on me and what I want and how to get it. I had my tag words “Discipline” and “Commitment” looming in front of me like my pillar of fire to lead me through the dark wilderness of my present existence into the milk and honey shores of my envisioned promised land. But I just didn’t see that there was “Nothing” standing in my way. All those obstacles I saw between me and what I want for me were just a mirage after all, only, I was creating all of them for myself. I thought that the journey had to be arduous and lengthy in order to be real, but here I was, presented with this “beam me up” reality. The life I want is just a moment away.

One decision is all it takes. Sure, I may have to make that decision repeatedly because it’s an idea that challenges my ingrained habits of perception, but it’s a decision that gets easier and easier to make. This is a profound realization for me because it has such metaphorical connotations in my mind. I’m trying to avoid talking “in circles,” but basically, the idea is that nothing and something are completely subject to our perception, and all that truly matters is that we choose to create the somethings that we want and not waste our time making somethings out of nothings.

For example, it is true that my family needs to eat and that I am the person who hunts and gathers (and cooks) in the family, so grocery shopping is, indeed, something that I must do; however, in light of the reading and writing that I want to do, it is much lower on the significance spectrum than I tend to make it out to be. So, if I don’t read or write on the day I go shopping because I’ve managed to expand that task to the point at which it interferes with my high priority tasks, then I am letting nothing become something and have nothing of substance to show for my dream pursuits.

(This made me think, Oh, the laundry needs to be changed out and I almost stood up! Like I said, I just had this Shazam! moment a couple of hours ago, so it may take more than a day for it to sink in!)

So in other words, if, at the end of the day, my goal is to have “something to show for” my dreams, then I must continually make decisions about what is “nothing” to me and what is “something” to me—or else change my dreams! I say that only because I’ve also learned that there are fantasy-type dreams and there are vision-type dreams. A fantasy for me would be that I would love to be an Olympic figure skater because when I watch them skate on TV, I just know that to feel that amount of power and grace would be fantastic, but I have to admit that figure skating is a sport for younger athletes who have trained copiously since childhood, and, realistically, this does not describe my situation—at least not in this lifetime! On the other hand, a vision for myself, me, in this reality, might include being a published writer. That isn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination I don’t think.

But that’s part of what this year, especially, is all about for me: finding my vision. And that’s what this blog is here for—to chronicle the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the overs and unders of my journey to becoming what my friend, and author, Allyn Evans means when she says “Queen.” I am learning to establish dominion over my own life and to fill it with fabulous somethings, all of my own divining. So…

I hereby crown myself a “Queen-in-Training” (QT) and banish the somethings that are actually nothing!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2007, all rights reserved.

Lyrical Universe

2005-09-20T21:08:00.000-05:00

“Mighty Aphrodite” is the title hand-scrawled in black Sharpee ink on a home-made CD of music I was listening to last night. I vaguely remember the movie with Woody Allen and Mira Sorvino by the same title, but the two words together…the sound of it…stuck with me more. We English majors and that Greek mythology you know!

So, Aphrodite…Greek goddess of beauty and love…chosen to be the most beautiful in the first beauty pageant, winning the golden apple, and becoming the Miss Universe of the goddesses…becomes a kind of metaphor for my musical messages from the spiritual universe.

True to form, the women singer-songwriters on my aptly named disk speak the Universal Truths to me. I can listen to those songs over and over again without thinking a thing about the lyrics, and then some days, well, the lyrics just kind of hit me over the head and I hear the message I need to hear.

I had a rather detached weekend. I felt myself slipping out of the frenzy of accomplishment and goal-setting. Losing sight of the reasons to be happy in the moment. Feeling like I was living for an uncertain future.

One of the big decisions that I have made recently is to move “home.” And that’s home in every sense of the word—into my parents’ home, in the town where I spent my high school years (my daughters will graduate from the same school as their parents), to that part of the country that seems slightly foreign now, but oh-so-real-and-familiar. Comforting. Where there are roots long-buried in the land. Still, it’s a scary prospect sometimes.

I’ve been away for 15 years. I’ve gone back to visit, on average, less than once per year. But I reached a moment when I realized that home is where my heart is. I’ve grown enough to understand the past. I no longer fear the ghosts of it—as much. But since I’ve decided to go back, I’ve had to take another look at some old specters I’d thought were laid to rest.

This weekend I beat myself up for not “grabbing the Queen Power” sooner. The little voice said: “Look at all you haven’t done. Look at what your kids have missed out on because you didn’t. What were you thinking? How could you? Why didn’t you learn your lessons from your past…from your own childhood? Why didn’t you overcome this a long time ago?”

But then I heard these lyrics by Edie Brickell and I heard them for what seemed like the first time:

If a child lives with money, he learns to spend his time.
If a child lives with crazy, he goes out of his mind.
I didn’t live with nothin’ that’s worth talkin’ about,
But I didn’t live with nothing, no I never went without.
But there is one thing that I really need to know
What do you have to live with before you learn to grow?
[…]
I’ve taken giant steps; I've walked far away from home,
But I need a little help—can I make it on my own?
Some days I can and some days I can't,
And some days I just don't know where it is I'm at.

I thought, “Wow. Yeah…that’s me. Some days I can, and some days I can’t.” I reminded myself that I don’t have to be perfect to be powerful or Queenly. And I have plenty to be thankful for, even if I feel that there are ghosts of pain hiding in the shadows of my past. And I am growing, so I’m actually better off, perhaps, than the speaker of these lyrics.
While other songs played, my mind chewed on those lyrics…that is, until Tracy Chapman told me something I needed to hear to temper the feeling of loss from the weekend and from Edie’s song. (Did I mention my mom’s name is Edie? The song’s title is “Mama Help Me.” Interesting…).

But here’s what Tracy said:

You can look to the stars in search of the answers,
Look for God and life on distant planets,
Have your faith in the ever after,
While each of us holds inside the map to the labyrinth
And heaven's here on earth.
We are the spirit, the collective conscience.
We create the pain and the suffering and the beauty in this world.
Heaven's here on earth:
In our faith in humankind;
In our respect for what is earthly;
In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding.

I’ve heard this song for years, and I’ve understood the words, but I heard them with new ears last night. I think we all continually remind ourselves of this Universal Truth. We know it, but just like Rule Number One in Cherie Carter-Scott’s If Life/Love/X Is a Game, These Are the Rules books, we forget Truth—as a rule.

If forgetting the Truth is built-in, then all we can do is create mnemonic devices to help us keep the forgetting down to a minimum. We need to schedule encounters with the Holy. Set ourselves up for success, and fall into its pillowy softness with absolute abandon. Read, write, eat, breathe, beat, and sing our way to the Truth. One of my favorite ways to remind myself of the Truth is to listen to music.

Edie and Tracy always sing the Truth. Their songs capture and hold the Truth…save it…store it in memory for me, so that every now and again my heart hears what it needs to hear. Making my own CD of Truth keeps me from dipping too low into an intolerance of my humanity. Edie reminds me that I can ask my parents for help, or that growth is a struggle—she keeps me humble. And Tracy reminds me that “Heaven’s Here on Earth” during those times when I start to think that my goals are outside of me or beyond me; she reminds me that I’m special. She reminds me that “Truth is Divinity.”

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

The Sponge Theory of Success

2005-09-09T21:15:00.000-05:00

S—P—O—N—G—E--!!

What’s that spell?

Sponge!

What’s that spell?

SPONGE!

What’s that spell?

SPONGE!

Doesn’t that word look weird now? Isn’t it funny how looking at a word too much can make it look like gobbledygook—or at least like it’s spelled incorrectly? When that feeling of assurance that the word you are looking at is indeed the word you understand it to be disappears and your mind hesitates and questions—you second guess yourself.

I started back as a face-to-face teacher last week. I make that distinction because I also teach in the highly unsatisfactory online environment. Really though, it isn’t the environment that is so unsatisfying—it has more to do with being caught between the corporate, money-making administration’s minions and the disgruntled students who have been thrust into an online writing course against their will—it’s required. But I digress, and I won’t be talking about the very different issues that those students face. No, instead, I thought I would share my newfangled approach to teaching.

I’ve been asking myself the “difficult” questions lately—What do I want out of life? Why? How can I get more of it now?—and one of those question and answer sessions had to do with teaching. It’s what I have been doing for the past four, going on five, years now, and it hasn’t been an incredible source of inspiration and joy; I needed to know why. What am I drawn to and what repulses me in relation to teaching?

Well, for starters, I love the first day! It’s like giving birth. Shiny new faces, assumed potential, a wellspring of love in the heart for the challenges and the nurturing and the growth to follow. I get to have that “new baby” feeling twice a year. It’s addictive. I have to say that I pastor my flock through my courses. I break down previous mythologies, assuage fears, release past guilt, and lead them to the Promised Land. The rest is good parenting. I am compassionate and I care and I praise and coach and cheer and sing halleluiahs to move them from point A to point B. I set up clear boundaries of expectation, blow on and bandage boo-boos when they fall, reprimand them when they should know better. I have multiple roles: pastor, shepherd, care-taker, boundary setter, locater of the lost…surrogate mother.

That brings me to what I don’t like. I don’t like wiping noses or changing diapers or spoon-feeding. After all, these are adults—or at least quasi-adults! When they ask for too much, which is often, I balk, and rightly so of course. And sometimes, parenting or shepherding 50+ quasi-adults can get downright exhausting! My “good-naturedness” spills over into enabling. Or their quasi-adult status plummets to infancy. Whatever the case may be…they push, and I fall over.

So I thought I should have better boundaries. More enforceable guidelines. More logical consequences and fewer exceptions to the rules. But what to do? I mean, this is a life theme…not just a teacher theme…and it’s THE BIG ONE. But still, I thought that teaching would be the place to start experimenting. I had a clear external motivation for change, a captive audience of guinea pigs, and any tangible results might spur me on to a more personal success in the same problem area. Basically, I was looking for insight into this condition, and because I recognized myself in my procrastinating, detached, overwhelmed, and forlorn students, I thought that if I could convert them, then I could do the same for myself. This might be backwards, and it’s definitely a conservative approach, but I thought I would do well to practice “on camera.”

I have to perform as a teacher. It’s my job. It’s what I do. I am accountable to at least 50 other scrutinizing people. Here is where I can prove to myself that it is possible to succeed. So I asked myself what differentiated the successful students from their unsuccessful counterparts. We all know that the answer is never as simple as “intelligence.” In fact, we all know that sometimes, the smartest folks are the ones who just can’t seem to move forward at all. So. I came up with the general stuff...prepared for class, plans (and works) ahead, has drive, is committed…did I mention “doesn’t procrastinate”? Yeah…that’s the big one. Slow and steady wins the race.

All this thinking led to a metaphor or analogy that I “acted” out for them on the first day. These are children of the visual world, so I must be a visual Girl. I set three clear plastic cups on the desk. I produced a bottle of water from my bag and said:

I am this bottle. The water represents everything I know about writing and teaching writing. The cups are your learning environment—the classroom, if you will.

I poured some water into the cups. I set another cup off to the side and told them that this cup represented the “real world”—the world out there that they were striving to get to by going to college. I continued:

I create the classroom environment by sharing my knowledge with you. You bring yourselves. There are three basic kinds of students—Student Rock, Student Sand, and Student Sponge.

I showed them the students in representative form and asked them to guess which student was most successful in the classroom environment. They knew! Just like you do. Student Sponge. So I demonstrated to reinforce the point.

Student Rock comes to class and is hard-headed and impenetrable. I don’t need this class. I’ll never have to write once I’m out of here, so I just need to pass and move on. I already know how to do all this anyway. Hmph!

I put Student Rock in one of the cups. Nothing happened. I took Student Rock out, shook it, and said:

You see. You can’t even tell that Student Rock was in the class. Nothing has changed. And when I put Student Rock into the “real world,” it brings nothing to that environment. It is the same rock it was before and has nothing new to offer.

Then I picked up the bag with Student Sand in it, and explained that it was made of the same material as Student Rock, with opposite properties.

Student Sand can’t get it together. It comes to the classroom in scattered pieces that can’t find their way back together in the classroom. Student sand is bewildered, fears failing, believes that it cannot accomplish the goals of the course, for whatever reason. I swirled Student Sand around in the water. Student sand is overwhelmed by the environment—it can’t make use of the environment because it has no form, no discipline, no consistency. It may try haphazardly, but fails because it is constantly at odds with itself. It rarely makes it out of the classroom into the real world intact. It can’t synthesize and utilize the knowledge it is exposed to.

Student Sponge appears in my hand and everyone is ready to be a sponge. They are imagining sponge-ness. Who wants to be a rock, or sand? (Students may peg themselves, but they may vow to be more sponge-like; after all…most people don’t set out to fail on purpose!) I smile at Student Sponge and hold it up, examining it.

Look! Student Sponge comes to the classroom PREPARED to soak up the learning! It’s READY before it gets there. It’s function…it’s purpose… is to learn.

In goes Student Sponge. It swells with water.

“Look!” I say. It’s taking knowledge out of the classroom! And when I put Student Sponge in the “real world,” it has something to use, to share, to draw on…something to show for its time in the classroom.

I squeeze a little water out of the sponge into the real world cup.

There! It’s contributing to its new environment! It’s obvious that Student Sponge has learned something and taken that knowledge with it into the new environment! So what makes Student Sponge ready?

It is…

Serious,
Precise/Prompt,
Open-minded,
Not willing to quit,
Genuine, (and)
Enthusiastic!

I won’t go on about how those qualities translate into the composition classroom exactly…you can pretty much guess…but I will say that I linked those qualities to the expectations inherent in my syllabus so that they could see that I wasn’t just spouting rules at them. Oh no. I was showing them what to do in order to be a successful student. And now they had this visual in their mind’s eye of a sponge taking water from one cup to the next. And every time I see them, I can say: “I hope you are all feeling like sponges today because we have a lot to learn in the next 80 minutes!” And they will be immediately transported to the visual center of their brains and remember and understand what I mean in a primal, limbic way.

It’s already working for me. I use the sponge mantra on myself. “Are you feeling like a sponge today, Nicole? I hope so! Because you have a lot to learn today! And you need to take it with you in order to get to the next level…to reach those goals of yours!”

How about you?

Of course we’ll all have rock and sand days from time to time…but OH! to be a sponge most often! That is my goal. Hopefully it is working on my students too. I’ll keep you posted!

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

Hurricanes of the Heart

2005-08-30T21:01:00.000-05:00

The first line of a poem came to me again when I sat down to write this blog, so I thought I would share it with you. I present to you, John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God”:

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.

One of my final courses in graduate school was a 17th Century poetry course, taught by the chair of the English Department at the University of Houston, and John Donne was one of about 10 poets whose work I came to know more intimately. The poets of that time were very much concerned with the nature of the Christian God; they needed to understand, as many of us still do, the relationship between God and “Man”…humans…persons. God, in this poem is “three-personed,” which I find very comforting…God with us…a God like us. But more interesting is the relationship between that God and us—and how apt this poem is in the 21st Century…in my life…in relation to my journey.

In the poem, the human spirit struggles between a love for God and a natural tendency to turn away from that saving Grace. “Reason,” the faculty which reigns in God’s stead in the human mind, is “captived, and proves weak or untrue.” The idea of freedom here is the freedom from temptation…the freedom from the weakness of the human condition…freedom from imperfection in love. The speaker of the poem asks that God storm the human castle and take the soul captive, in order to truly free it from a sinister bondage—that Earthly curse requiring the pain of repeated error and incompetence in things spiritual, loving, and good.

The professor who taught this course is a paragon of intellectualism…known as a GPA “buster.” I took the course, frankly, because it was the only available offering that fit with the final course requirement I needed to graduate. I knew I liked Donne and Herbert and Wroth, off the top of my head, and I love poetry, but the course itself didn’t sound too exciting—it was listed as 17th Century Non-Dramatic Literature—and, as I mentioned, the man had a reputation, and I was determined to beat my undergraduate GPA. (I missed a 4.0 by the equivalent of one course—a story for another day!). Let’s just say that I regretted that I had missed the pinnacle by so small a margin, and so each successive "perfect" semester compounded my secret longing into an ever-increasing goal to surpass that mild disappointment.

And so, I took the course, and it turned out to be one of the best courses of all those I took during my three year stint at the University. It was a small seminar of five women, plus the instructor. Finally, I was able to speak!!! In seminars of 18-22 students who were seasoned and much more talkative than I, my opportunities for contribution had been severely limited. Here, I felt like a graduate student. And I worked harder in this course than in any other. Perhaps I could have done more, but I had two other courses that semester, and I was graduating, and I did the best that I could at the time. In any case, I earned the dreaded A-minus.

I know, I know. But all of you perfectionists out there are groaning with me …I know you are. So, did I mind? Sure, it’s still a thorn in my paw sometimes…that feeling that I JUST MISSED out on something really exceptional. And a wry expression comes over my face when I think about how my GPA’s match. In fact, if I’m really in a self-flagellating mood, I will think that it just goes to show I’m not quite good enough, or that it's part of the Universe's plan to keep me humble or wanting more. (I told you those little mean voices are nasty!) So what does this have to do with my journey now? Well, that brings us back to the first line of the poem, inspired by recent events, meteorological and otherwise.

Previously, I likened the Queenly awakening to being “born again,” and just as the newly converted are often quickly tempted by the old lifestyle, habits, or “wicked ways,” the newly crowned Queen is quite vulnerable to the slings and arrows from those around her who are threatened by her changing attitudes and behaviors. A new Queen, when she discovers her dream, must make decisions about her life: What will she do? Where will she go? Who will be in her court? The natural consequence of decision is change, and change can be unnerving, to say the least. So, I made a “First Things First” kind of decision of seismic proportions, with long-lasting repercussions, and as the devastating weather stormed into the Gulf Coast shores, my heart was being battered by a hurricane of its own creation.

I apologize for being vague here, but the last thing I want is for my journey blog to sound like a soap opera. Suffice to say that I listened hard to the voices of my dreams and stepped out into the fury that I had avoided for so long. I realized, as the waves came crashing over the levees around my heart, that I had, on a fairly regular basis, “protected” myself out of a life of my own creation. I think that’s where the line from the poem emerged. A friend had told me that life was falling into a pattern of “the same old, same old.” I responded with news of my decision and wrote:It’s brought up all kinds of things. I think it’s been part of the relentless ache in my heart all these years, but I was unable to recognize it as such because I’d mentally convinced myself that things were “better this way.” And, still, in some ways they were. Now, it is merely the right time. So…not really the same old same old over here. More tumultuous than the weather really. Hurricanes of the heart.

After writing those last two lines, I started hearing the refrain of “Batter my heart, three-personed God” run through my mind. Now, in this particular case, I am not struggling with my religion—although I know that it is on "the list" of things to address on my journey—but the essence of the poem that I hear right now, in this situation, is that in order to be truly “free,” we must allow that love and passion to overcome us. We have to be willing to be stormed like an enemy castle, or battered as by a storm. We have to weather the transition from the realm of fear and indecision into the Promised Land of strength, conviction, love, and plenty.

Those evolutionary storms of passage may be large, small, or merely imagined, but succumbing to the paralyzing threat is far worse than choosing to live through the turbulent paradigm shift(s) in our lives. And I promise you—once you find the true path, you will move out of the damaging winds and heavy rains and into that dead quiet center where nothing can touch you. When your “eye” and your “I” align, you can see the future, and the fear will leave you. Each true decision you make will show you the way.

Welcome the storm that leads to the peace of understanding…or, if you will, the peace that passes understanding…but don’t let it devastate you. Rather, let it refine your senses and clarify your thoughts, ideas, and dreams. Let the winds blow, the rains plummet, the hail pelt, the lightning flash, and the thunder roar, but stand in the calm center of your being and dare to dream in the face of it all.

Note: My heart goes out to everyone affected by Katrina—this storm of Nature completely surpasses the gravity of any hurricane of the heart I might be living through right now.

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

Where Am I? How Did I Get Here?

2005-08-23T20:28:00.000-05:00

Have you ever awakened from a dream, and peered out between your lazy, drooping eyelids, only to feel a sudden chill or thrill of energy run through your entire body? You might even have reflexively braced yourself with fingers splayed and flat palms clapping down on the mattress as you passed through that initial moment of confusion…of feeling as though you are waking in a strange place. Sometimes that happens to us because we are actually away from home, and during the night, the memory of the unfamiliar has been replaced with the warm fuzzy feelings we associate with sleeping at home in the comfort of our own beds. But sometimes it happens in our comfy beds at home, surrounded by everything we know, with all as it should be—or, at least, as we think it should be.

I suppose it is much the same as the archetypal dream of entering a crowded room filled with strangers, acquaintances, and perhaps loved ones…who suddenly begin to laugh at us and point. Yes, you know the one…the naked entrance dream. Dreams like that one have played out in so many of our minds because we are concerned about how others feel about us. I think that the feeling underlying the “where am I” dream comes from that same primal reservoir of fear—it’s a fear of being lost or forsaken, perhaps even a fear that our concept of reality is not true—we aren’t where we think we are in life.

More often than not, however, we have the sensation of “where am I?” during waking moments of introspection. It is the signpost we encounter when we begin to seek a conscious path towards a goal that, at first, may only seem like an inner longing or a stirring of our soul. We may say, “What is that uncomfortable feeling?” Many of us ignore that discomfort and hint of desire brewing deep down inside—for years. But oh! When we finally hear it, and cock our heads slightly to the side and listen to it…. When we let it speak, and engage that small voice in conversation…. When we truly hear what the voice has to tell us, then the whole world opens up!

That is the point at which you join me here. My whole world just lit up like daybreak at midnight! Previously, I’d heard bits and pieces of what the voice was saying, but I manipulated it like a Magic 8 Ball, asking it for speedy answers to essentially yes or no questions. I hushed it when it tried to suggest another alternative, or to remind me of my true heart’s desire—in its desperate attempt to save me from martyring myself with the limited choices I regularly used to barricade my dreams. I’d heard other Queens speak of that magical, transforming moment…the point of no return that they could identify as signifying surrender to their heart of hearts’ desires, but I just never felt it. I thought that I’d had mini-breakthroughs along the way, but nothing ever seemed truly life-altering or long-lasting.

I find myself wanting to describe this transformation by likening it to becoming “born again.” I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories of people who have attended church for years, out of dedication, habit, or just plain love, but who never feel a fire burning inside. Good people who start out good and continue on that path, being servant-like and pious, but not finding that deep spiritual connection.So that was me. Queen Camellia told me about Queen Power, and her friend Allyn, and how really great women-sharing was happening and was inspiring to her. So I checked it out and thought it was pretty nifty! But I was worn out and didn’t feel like I had time to “play” on the forums. I gave myself a queen name and said hello, signed up for the newsletter, and downloaded the ebook, Catch Your Dream and Live It, read a little bit, but then that was pretty much the end of it. Low and behold, though, Allyn needed a newsletter editor and Donna recommended me. She knew I needed something and knew I’d be amenable to that kind of assistance. So, I became the editor.

Now I had an “official” reason to read the newsletters—from head to toe, and without fail! I really enjoyed them! And I always thought to myself that it was nice to have a “reason”—in my busy world—to read them each week. I started soaking up the message…this Queen thing really made sense, and it sounded great. But it was easy to slip back into that voyeuristic mode and my Eeyore doldrums and think, “Those women are so much better than I am. I’m not like them. I can’t live my dream…heck, I don’t even have a dream. Dreams are frivolous when you have to take care of two kids on your own.” But I kept listening—secretly. I let the Eeyore part of my brain complain and the dreamer (Pooh?) imagine how lovely the honey would taste if I could just stick my whole paw or muzzle into the pot!

But I got to the point where a little voice started to rebel. It said things like, “You’re always helping everyone else do what they want—you never DO anything yourself. You’re always the maid and the cook, and the sidekick, the grader, the editor…you aren’t WRITING your own stuff.” Of course, that voice was quickly countered with, “Well, you don’t have anything to write about anyway. These women have it all covered. And that science fiction book you want to write? Bah! Kid’s stuff. Besides, you don’t know how to write a book, and no…you can’t learn now, it’s too late. I don’t care what those women say, it doesn’t apply to YOU.” Ouch, huh? Mean and nasty little critter voices in there!

I started to walk away from Queen Power because I was busy…because I thought my “dream job” was in the wings…because I felt so darn inadequate and out of the queenly loop. But even as I began to pull away…I realized I missed it. And then when the job didn’t materialize, well, then something wonderful happened—Queen Power sponsored its very first teleclass! I thought about listening in, and I almost chickened out, but Queen Me said the right thing at the right time, and I made it a date!

Christine Louise Hohlbaum talked about finding a dream and living a passion-driven life. Everything she said made sense, but it was what I didn’t expect her to talk about that caught my attention. The discussion turned towards how to deal with negative people. Christine said, “The people who are the most negative are the ones who want what you have. They are jealous.” Wow! My mind whisked back over all of the little nasty voice words I’d heard in my head about me not being like the other queens, and I knew! I was a negative person and I was jealous because I wasn’t living my dreams! (I was boo-hooing on my end of the muted phone line by this time!)

One of the other ladies on the phone had worked with Christine to find her passion—her dream—and she had had to make the discovery that she did NOT want to teach—it wasn’t her dream. I heard that, and I thought of myself, but I said, “NAAAAH! Now you are just thinking that this stuff has to be complicated. And you’ve just spent all this time convincing yourself that teaching is your dream! And besides, you aren’t like them and everyone can’t be a writer just because they want to!” (Darn those little voices!!!) Well, Christine also happened to mention an author she respected a whole lot—Cherie Carter-Scott, author of If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules, among others.

This is where the full miracle began to unfold. I looked Cherie up on Amazon.com and saw that she’d written a book called Negaholics. I took the quiz online and scored 98 out of 100—with 100 being a sure sign that you are entirely engaged in a negaholic lifestyle! More tears!!! So…off to the bookstore I went. To make a long story a little bit shorter, I ended up plopping myself down on the floor in the self-help section of Half-Price Books and browsing. I bought two of Cherie’s books, Stephen Covey’s First Things First, and the book that is helping me snap out of my Eeyore ways— Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement, by Kenneth W. Christian, Ph.D.

After reading Negaholics and starting in on Your Own Worst Enemy, I could feel something wriggling to break free from the mental chains of my mind. And then it all came to a climax when I started in on the written exercises. My first response was “UH-OH!” when I got to the freewriting exercise that asked, “What would you do that you are not doing now, or have not done, if success were 100 percent guaranteed?” In my 90 second allotment, I wrote that I would write—that science fiction story/novel, poetry, blog articles, a dissertation. It was all about writing—not teaching. I was actually astonished to find out that my mind quickly divulged that secret, and the unrecognized motivation for avoiding writing. I was afraid to fail! No wonder I couldn’t write!

Suddenly, it was as if I were dying… my whole life seemed to flash before my eyes. Ok, not the whole thing, but all the decisions that had taken me away from my dreams AND all the dreams I’d ever spoken that had to do with writing. I even saw, all together, all the times that I became semi-conscious of the fact that, through teaching, I was helping my students overcome the obstacles that keep me from writing. Or rather, I should say that I was constantly frustrated when they did NOT follow my advice and exhibited behaviors that I now see as a mirror reflection of my writing issues—waiting until the last minute, avoiding, not revising, waiting for perfection to come out rather than writing lots and lots of whatever and then playing with it. And I also could see that I so admire the students who play and explore and write like they never knew they could write after taking my advice. Advice I wouldn’t even take myself!

You know…I think part of the reason Queen Power was so attractive AND so intimidating to me is because there are so many women who write. (What a way to put your hidden dream in bas relief!!!) And so many successful women! I felt very small. But you know what? These women felt small at some point, and they remember that. They are generous and gracious and sharing—there is so much to be learned here! Everyone has a different dream, but the common thread is pursuing that dream! I thought I felt left out because I wasn’t a “success,” but I’ve realized that it was because I didn’t know what my dream was. And it can take a while to find it.

I am still working steadily on defining my dreams and turning them into goals with action to back them up and achieve them, but I can tell you that it feels like I live in a whole new world now that I am allowing myself to dream. I wouldn’t give up my teaching experiences, and I will be teaching until further notice from my dream plans, but now I know that it’s not just ok to have a dream—it’s imperative! Again…like the conversion refrain in that familiar hymn: “I once was lost, but now am found—was blind, but now I see!”

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

Angels, The Voice, and Pooh

2005-06-09T12:35:00.000-05:00

This is actually from May 11, 2005

I wanted to share my insight for the day. My sister, Kelly, sent me a forwarded, echain mail message, but rather than cast it aside, something said "send it." So, listening to the Voice, I compiled my list of folks to send it to, but then felt that I needed to send a kind of apology/acknowledgment about the "chain feature" of the email, and then a whole bunch of other stuff started coming out right behind it, so I went with it. I didn't know until I was finished that I'd had a flash of insight...that, perhaps, I had already heard the message that the chain promised to deliver. Here's what I sent, but then I'll finish up on my epiphany after that.

Subject line: Angels, the Voice, and Pooh

Forwarded message: This morning when the Lord opened a window to Heaven, he saw me, and he asked: My child, what is your greatest wish for today? I responded: "Lord please, take care of the person who is reading this message, their family and their special friends. They deserve it and I love them very much." The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its beginnings but not its end. This message works on the day you receive it. To some it may sound dumb, but the person who sent this to me was impressed with the time. Let us see if it is true. ANGELS EXIST, but sometimes, since they don't all have wings, we call them FRIENDS, SUCH AS YOU. Pass this on to your true friends. SOMETHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN TO YOU TODAY AT 11:11 IN THE EVENING. SOMETHING THAT YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING TO HEAR. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, SOMEONE WILL CALL YOU BY PHONE OR SPEAK TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING THAT YOU WERE WAITING TO HEAR OR AN ANGEL WILL GIVE YOU A MESSAGE IN YOUR DREAMS. DO NOT BREAK THIS CHAIN; SEND IT TO A MINIMUM OF 7 PEOPLE.

Nicole’s message: I hate chains, but I love the idea of the Voice that tells us something we need to hear. But don’t assume it has to be at 11:11pm, or even tonight…just start listening and you’ll hear the Voice whispering to you and you will know what to do. I belive that our pain in life comes from imagining our existence as a tightrope act. Sometimes we even imagine that God is our net, but this too is unclear thinking. There is no tightrope. Step to the left…it’s ok. Step to the right…it’s ok. Step forward…backward…it’s ok. Stop for a minute? It’s OK. The only thing required of us is that we make honest decisions about when and where to step. By honest decisions, I mean that we need to be honest with each other and, most importantly, to be honest with ourselves. Now THERE is the complexity!!! Self-honesty! Self-honesty—to operate from a center that we know, understand, and love! Does it seem elusive? Non-existent? Well, guess what? It’s right there—waiting. We have to TRY to ignore, avoid, or abuse that center. If you can remove the striving for something outside of your center, then you have found your center. In other words, the intention of your steps must be toward a goal (active) and not merely to avoid an unpleasant outcome (passive).

Think of Winnie-the-Pooh, lost in the Hundred Acre Wood. He, Piglet, and Rabbit circled round and round, always ending up where they started—-at the Pit. Once they decided to stop trying to avoid the Pit but rather to intentionally walk back toward it, they made it out of the woods effortlessly.(Well, Pooh and Piglet did...Rabbit had a "whole nother" lesson to learn!)So today, if you find that you keep ending up in the place you are trying hardest to avoid, ask yourself: What do I REALLY want? Do I just want to avoid the “pits” in my life, or do I want to go Home? You see, when Pooh and company were merely trying to avoid the Pit, they went in circles and essentially went nowhere. We do not go “home” by avoiding the “pits.” When we face the “pits” head on and deliberately take each step, acknowledging and embracing the existence of the Pit, we find a new path that leads home. Now, I seem to have muddied the meaning of Pit, haven’t I? But wait! Listen. The Pit is really our center. Think about that. The pit is not something “bad” or “wrong” (although the connotations can work that way), but rather, it is where we are. You are here—at this Pit. Being “lost” in our lives is a refusal to work with where we are right now. Only through an acknowledgment of the Pit and the full intention of walking toward it, can we move forward and find the path that leads home. So stop striving to avoid your center! Take a deep breath. Smile. Laugh. Feel the truth of your existence. Know it. It is love. It is perfect. It is never-ending. There is no falling--only the next, intentional step.Have a blessed day!Nicole

OK! Wow! Did I learn something? YES! Is it something I already knew? YES! But it's that lovely space where an old idea becomes new and more beautiful because it suddenly seems deeper or makes even more sense--or really, perhaps it is that now it doesn't just make sense, but that your gut finally gets it?? So, my problem with choosing the big rocks in my life has been that I was trying to choose rocks that would lead away from my Pit(s). I visualized goals that were superficial, avoidance goals and not what I really want for me, at the Pit, goals. What does that mean? Let me see if I can articulate a specific example.

I wanted to be more efficient--to plan my days more--to have a "schedule" so that I could get more things done, but I could never do that. It hurt my brain to try to divide up the day into time slots that were next to inviolable and to work at those times and play at others. I thought, I MUST get this work done during this time during the day and have all the other time for things other than work. I also thought that the reason I balked at this was because I was just a rebel without a cause and that I was undisciplined and lazy and a horde of other negative adjectives that clearly proved that I was not a "normal" person--or at least, not "one of those successful people." I still want to think that I have to be like that...like it's the "best" way to get things done. Even when I coddled myself and said, "You're just different and unique and your artsy/creative and it doesn't fit with your personality," I was patronizing myself and still beating myself up with the idea of a perfectly scheduled person. I had had a few glimpses though, especially since grad school, of how something in me knew exactly how much time I had to get things done. I ALWAYS finished things by the deadline and they were always done well--not as perfectly as I might think they SHOULD be, but well done. There was no external evidence that I had not planned out each stage or that I hadn't done the work thoroughly. I had started telling my husband, when I put off things like grading or lesson planning, that my subconscious was aware of how much time I had, and since I didn't feel compelled to do them, then I must still have enough time. And then something happened the other day.

I thought that I had surely run out of time to grade. It was Mother's Day...the pile of papers was too much...I didn't want to do it...so I sectioned them up and picked a stack and started grading. While grading, my brain percolated and I began to see a plan of action forming. Wait a minute! I could grade these by tonight, those tomorrow, and then I have time during and after the final exam periods for these other ones I thought I had to do by the end of today...etc. So, I figured out that I had plenty of time to grade and that I hadn't wasted my weekend and that I had done the right thing all along! I had made the right decisions for my time (when to play, when to work), but all the while, I had been beating myself up about the pile of grading I had to do. From the moment I realized that I had this time, and stated my plans out loud, I have gotten things done according to plan and the time has been sufficient for everything! And I relaxed.

Now, it's not as though I'm still not busier with some things than I would like to be...I feel like there are other things I want to be busy with...things without deadlines (uh-oh...those are the tough ones!)...but I am seeing that all this time, I have been trying to avoid the Pit of subconscious, deadline-related planning that is at my center, and I've been doing nervous and self-abusing circles around the issue for years. So, rather than try to cramp my true self (oh, it's SO hard to admit that it might be ok to be this way!) into the box of perceived successful organizational strategies, I have committed myself to listening to my inner Voice of planning. Again, it's not like I don't make lists and order events and what have you, but I was going too far in the extreme. I will never be a Day-planner person, and it's really ok. (sounds a little pathetic now, but this is a huge load off my back!) Anyway, I now can see the difference between walking intentionally toward my planning Pit as opposed to failing circuitously and continuously by avoiding my natural planning ability. You see, I was operating under the idea that I did NOT plan and that there was "the" way to plan, but now I see that I DO plan (quite a bit actually...it takes a lot of internal planning to get everything done well by deadlines!) and that it fits with what I want better than I imagined--it's not just that it's easier or lazier, but that it keeps me creative and happy. So, to recap, mostly for myself...

Today I realized that I have been "stepping out" in avoidance of my center--my "I am here" place--and trying instead to avoid myself in order to be like some perfect person I imagine. I have been abusing my center with name-calling and belittling under the guise of "self-improvement" in the "I must be better than THIS" kind of method. So really, starting every attempt at progress by saying that I have a "problem" to solve, rather than a "desire" to follow, sets me up for failure each time. Every time I think I am starting to help--or improve--myself, I am essentially rejecting my current center. I am immediately sabotaged by perceiving myself as lacking something, and by putting myself down. I suddenly feel as though this is elementary my Dear Watson because it makes so much sense to me. Here's an analogy (I thought of my mom and a conversation we had about losing weight): It's the difference between saying, "I need to lose weight; I'm fat. I shouldn't be fat, so I should try this diet and lose weight"; and saying, "What do I want right now in my life? I desire to feel healthy and energetic and I want the clothes I have in my closet right now to not feel so tight on me. I'm going to look at what I might be eating (or why) that makes me feel less healthy/energetic or might be contributing to some abdominal weight gain. I'm also going to see if I am sleeping enough and if I need some vitamins. The weather is great, so I think I'll start walking in the __________ (to wake up, to relax before bed, to revive before the evening stuff I do, to hear the birds singing, to hear the crickets chirping, to see the stars, clouds, to feel the sun on my face). It's a holistic approach. There's another dream. I wanted to be a practitioner of holistic medicine at one point when I asked myself what I really wanted. But that's for another day! The point of today...the blessed, wonderful, amazing, stepping stone for the day is that I feel an old lesson in my bones...it's truly mine today. It really doesn't matter what I do at all. It only matters why. If every step I take is an honest and centered step, then I am on the path home. But even better is that if I don't make the next step, I can refocus and step again, and again, and again. There is no falling. No reason to fear the step. Any step taken in the absence of fear--in faith--is the right step. Here's to stepping out in faith!

And just in case you haven’t read about Winnie-the-Pooh in a while…here’s the part I was talking about."The fact is,” said Rabbit, “we've missed our way somehow."They were having a rest in a small sand-pit on the top of the Forest. Pooh was getting rather tired of that sand-pit, and suspected it of following them about, because whichever direction they started in, they always ended up at it, and each time, as it came through the mist at them, Rabbit said triumphantly, "now I know where we are!" and Pooh said sadly,"So do I," and Piglet said nothing. He had tried to think of something to say, but the only thing he could think of was,"Help, help!" and it seemed silly to say that, when he had Pooh and Rabbit with him."Well," said Rabbit, after a long silence in which nobody thanked him for the nice walk they were having, "we'd better get on, I suppose. Which way shall we try?""How would it be," said Pooh slowly, "if, as soon as we're out of sight of this Pit, we try to find it again?""What's the good of that?" said Rabbit."Well,” said Pooh, “we keep looking for Home and not finding it, so I thought that if we looked for this Pit, we'd be sure not to find it, which would be a Good Thing, because then we might find something that we weren't looking for, which might be just what we were looking for, really.""I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit."No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn’t. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it on the way.""If I walked away from this Pit, and then walked back to it, of course I should find it.""Well, I thought perhaps you wouldn't," said Pooh. "I just thought.""Try," said Piglet suddenly. "We'll wait here for you."Rabbit gave a laugh to show how silly Piglet was, and walked into the mist. After he had gone a hundred yards, he turned and walked back again. . . and after Pooh and Piglet had waited twenty minutes for him, Pooh got up."I just thought," said Pooh. "Now then, Piglet, let's go home.""But, Pooh," cried Piglet, all excited, “do you know the way?""No," said Pooh. "But there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard, and they've been calling to me for hours. I couldn't hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk, but if nobody says anything except those twelve pots, I think, Piglet, I shall know where they are calling from. Come on."They walked off together; and for a long time Piglet said nothing, so as not to interrupt the pots; and then suddenly he made a squeaky noise . . . and an oo-noise . . . because now he began to know where he was; but he still didn't dare to say so out loud, in case he wasn't. And just when he was getting so sure of himself that it didn't matter whether the pots went on calling or not, there was a shout from in front of them, and out of the mist came Christopher Robin."Oh, there you are," said Christopher Robin carelessly, trying to pretend that he hadn't been Anxious."Here we are," said Pooh.

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

Stumbling Towards Ecstasy

2004-11-09T11:57:00.000-06:00

That's a play on words of an album I think...Fumbling Towards Ecstasy? Sarah McLachlin? Ah...the internet. I miss my fix. I just looked it up. I'll tell you, I surely and sorely appreciate the numerous questions that I and my daughters have during the week because they often go unanswered without the electronic oracle in my new home. As of Thursday, that will change however. Now I just need that part-time job! :) So, just for fun, I verified the title and songwriter and looked at the lyrics to see if anything applies and would account for the allusion save the cool sound of it and the fact that my blog is about "steps," and so stumbling fits more than fumbling, which implies hands to me. Gee...do ya think this fits?

All the fear has left me now/I’m not frightened anymore/It’s my heart that pounds beneath my flesh/It’s my mouth that pushes out this breath/And if I shed a tear I won’t cage it/I won’t fear love/And if I feel a rage I won’t deny it/I won’t fear love/Companion to our demons/They will dance, and we will play/With chairs, candles, and cloth/Making darkness in the day/It will be easy to look in or out/Upstream or down without a thought/And if I shed a tear I won’t cage it/I won’t fear love/And if I feel a rage /I won’t deny it/I won’t fear love/Peace in the struggle/To find peace/Comfort on the way/To comfort/And if I shed a tear/ I won’t cage it/I won’t fear love/And if I feel a rage /I won’t deny it/I won’t fear love/I won’t fear love/I won’t fear love...

So today my daughter has missed the fourth day of her first seven days in public school this year. And I forgot to call the school. Yesterday they called me and I called back. Today I was running around to class, calling the doctor back (we went yesterday) because she'd given me a note saying she was ok to go back to school but then she wasn't and I HAD to have a doctor's note because she'd missed more than the limit and they send parents to court here when the kids are "truant," and I just forgot. When I remembered, I felt embarrassed and didn't want to call. Stupid. I hope being sick isn't truant, but you never know. And I just don't want to break down and tell the whole world my business. I guess I'm still ashamed. I'm really just confused and I don't want people to ask me questions...don't want to hear judgmental tones or see eyebrows raised or experience negative body language. I am too fragile right now. Whether I should be or not is not the point. I am. And Ken Keyes says that we should avoid acting when we can't be clear. I don't know how to get clear. I still feel like the sky is falling. The dominoes have been set in motion and I'm watching them fall around me and there doesn't seem to be much to do but wait until they stop. Stepping away would be best, but I took the wrong pill and fell down the rabbit hole and I'm smaller than the dominoes. What do I do to get big again?

So for today, this is all I have to offer. I'm mid-step. Taking deep breaths and believing that serenity is available. I can only do what I can do. I can't take my sick child with me to look for a job or else she won't be well enough to go to school tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day and I will start again. I am not in control of anything but my actions and reactions. I will take care of my sick baby and look for a job tomorrow. I will not be thrown out on the street. I have support. I can only do so much and that is perfectly okay. Asking for help is not an admission of failure or incurable weakness. Plenty of people ask for help more than I ever have and they are not horrible beings. Right? See...I still don't believe it in my heart. That is the saddest thing for me. This need to be something that I can't even describe yet. I don't know what it is that I'm not measuring up to--I just feel the despair of not getting there yet. Where is my now? Where is my lily of the fieldness?

There are so many things to be thankful for. And I am thankful. So thankful that I feel "guilty" for having as much as I do when I feel like I don't deserve it. That's why asking for anything else blows me away. So I will just fake it until I make it for a while. To poorly quote another guilt addict in recovery: "I'm good enough, I'm nice enough, and gosh darn it, people like me."

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

What I Want!

2004-11-04T10:00:00.000-06:00

I could start by saying that I moved out of my four bedroom home into a two bedroom apartment with my two daughters and that although it felt good to follow through and become "independent," I was embarrassed and felt punished when we walked in to begin unloading the UHaul truck and it stank to high heaven from previous pet refuse deposited on the carpet, and how I thought that I was handling it reasonably well by not telling anyone who might judge me or feel pity on me (parents/other family and friends who can give off those vibes from time to time)and by saying, "Something cool might come out of this because it's unexpected," but then I pretty much had a meltdown the night that they finally sent someone to clean it and he left it wetter than normal to let the enzymes work only I'd had to shut the windows and when we came back it stunk so bad again I thought my life was ruined, but I'd rather talk about something else.

What I'd really like to talk about is the release I felt the day after the meltdown, when the carpet was almost dry and it was cool enough to open the windows and I got some things on my neverending to-do list accomplished without much trouble, and when I realized that not telling people was a sign that I was walking around with shame. Now, I did tell some people, but I judged who would respond to the current situation of my life in a positive way. I didn't allow supportive friends and family to be supportive. I isolated myself in shame and played pretty all by myself, which didn't work because the whole time I was thinking that something cool might happen I was clenching my jaw thinking, "It'd better, or I won't be able to call anyone and say anything nice about my apartment!"

I edited my life experience for rated G audiences. I said, "If I secretly can't handle the fact that my carpet reeks, through no fault of my own other than that I am trusting and when they said the carpet was wet and we shouldn't walk on it the day we stood in the doorway to get the keys from the cleaning people and I smelled a musty smell with the smell of cleaners, I didn't worry that it might still smell the next day when we showed up with the truck because I'd specifically talked to the management representative about what they considered to be 'used' carpeting because they rob you by charging you an extra $50 a month for new carpet." Mind you, I hate carpet to begin with, but for 50 bucks a month, they should put hardwood flooring in it for me!!!

So, what I was saying was that I wasn't really preferring something different, I was demanding it in my head while paying lipservice to the preferring part. I even thought, well, I am doing something about it because I don't like it, but it's cool because I'm waiting for my miracle.

So what did I learn? I believe that I truly did think that something cool could come out of it, but I didn't acknowledge that I had set the bar and the time frame for the coolness that was to result from the inconvenience. Apparently, I had a cool spiritual lesson coming my way. The funny thing is that it took the meltdown for me to see it, so I have to remember that it is through living imperfectly that I come to understand peaceful perfection more clearly.

It's not really learning the hard way, as I've always thought it to be, it's just learning. I learn by doing and no matter how many books I read that tell me that if I am on a spiritual journey, lessons will come that will teach me what I need to know, I still have to learn that through experience. So now, instead of saying that something "cool" may happen, I might just start to think that the cool is now...it's the process of perceiving the threat to what I want so desperately.

In recognizing that I demanded that I move into a clean-smelling apartment, even though the carpet was not new, I had perhaps set myself up for this very lesson. Perhaps even the question about how bad they let the carpets get before changing them alerted the spiritual lesson angels and sent them scurrying to put me in an apartment where my ideas of clean/new versus dirty/old carpet were in opposition to the management company's ideas. And that gut feeling...that little voice that said "Make sure you go see your actual apartment BEFORE you move in because it would be ludicrous not to!"...that little voice knew what was ahead and I was intimidated. So now I am on the level I have reached through much hands-on learning...I am asking for what I want after I get what I don't want.

But, don't get me wrong; I asked for this apartment. I just left out the carpet. I settled for used carpet because I trusted someone I didn't know. And the signs were there. I did know that this person was sneaky because of a few other things she said. I knew that she was the type to pit people against each other. My radar was just running low at that moment of change in my life. I would much rather have a smelly carpet that can ultimately be "fixed" and have everything that this particular complex offers me than be anywhere else with new carpet.

Normally I would think that the carpet is a sign that I can't have everything because I'm just not good enough. Ok, so I thought it. I thought it a whole lot the day I lost my temper about the carpet. When I just wrote that, I started to write "when I lost control...". How revealing. So I was controlling my response to the carpet--a situation beyond my control at that point--and lost it. I want to believe that what I want is ok. I don't want to cry every day when I drive to work 25 miles away because my children leave after I do and walk to school alone (right around the corner!) but have no phone to call me and nobody to turn to in this new place yet. It's so so so so so all about control.

When I started reading The Handbook to Higher Consciousness--really the condensed recap in the workbook--I recognized myself immediately in the Power-related separation emotions. I wonder if I am on my own right now because my husband and I battled for power and control and I ultimately wanted to win, or if I'm right in thinking that I wanted to STOP battling and admit the struggle, but he just wouldn't see himself in it. He kept calling it "your baggage." That's what my first husband said in different words: I love you, but you have a problem. Yeah...well, without going into all of that...suffice it to say that I don't want to live that life any more. It doesn't work and I want to grow and change and the relationship was not allowing for that growth and change.

Way down deep I've been hating myself for not believing that I can take care of myself. It's just something I want to do for myself. It's no longer about he said/she said. It's all about building a life on my personal preferences as opposed to allowing my circumstances to stifle every creative urge in me.

Now I expect I will start to learn the difference between trying to control the uncontrollable and being in control of my life...that phrase that just means that I make choices as opposed to being tossed hither and yon because I have no idea what to do with myself other than to latch on to someone who wants to do the controlling for me. I'm guessing there may be a bold line and a fine line to this lesson. I would prefer that this learning be joyous recognition more often than tearful realization. :)

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved

What is a Step?

2004-10-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

I started this blog today for myself. I hadn't intended to start one; I had merely gone to view a friend's and clicked a few buttons and found that I wasn't invited like I thought and that I needed a membership to continue. So then I signed up, thinking that it would just allow me to post or what have you, but it asked for a blog name and here I am. Sadly, the thought that ran through my mind was that I could use this place as a private journal. My thoughts would be safer here than on my own computer because my husband, like myself, tends to snoop when he feels threatened. I'm leaving. He feels very threatened. I don't want to talk about him anymore.

A step is a decision. A decision small or large, emotional or rational, "right" or "wrong." For years I have lived a life of paralysis brought on by the fear of making the "wrong" decision. I have had no faith to step forward and live. I have sat, huddled in the corner with fear and left all my decisions up to it. (I would say him, to characterize how I have used men to "save" me from my fears or her, to characterize how my own fears have kept me immobile, but I am distancing myself from fear and stripping it of its power and so it is now an IT!) I have taken the easy road. Each time my heart and soul screamed for the road less travelled, I ran toward the beaten path with a vengeance. I never gave myself permission to make my decision and trust that the outcome would follow. I feared negative consequences brought on by my personal desires. I thought that the only right decision was the selfless one. I thought of everyone else's needs and made a decision for my life. To a certain extent, I still feel that need. I still feel as though it is sacrilege to follow my own heart or my own dreams. But I'm not moving forward.

Today I feel a foreboding dread. I am not afraid to live on my own. I am not afraid to leave, but I feel a tug that makes me feel nauseous. Something is still not right. Perhaps it is just nerves. Perhaps it is that my husband is helping me move and I am taking on his mood swings as we pass from step to step, decision to decision. He is very unhappy and quarrelsome. Or I am very impatient and cannot be as considerate as he would like me to be in his hour of need. Or probably a little of both.

I hope to keep track of my steps here. Any size. I want to be conscious of my decisions and for the reasons I am making them.

I dare to dream a world. Some people say this is not a good thing, but if the world is merely our perception of it, then I dare to dream a perception that isn't run over by someone in my life who wishes to control me inside and out.

Oh, it hurts.

© Nicole J. Williams, 2005, all rights reserved