Ahhhh

Finally, I'm taking a little time to just stop. Seems like ages since I've been able to sit in bed with the laptop and the TV on, half-watching Martha cook something, I'm not sure what, I'm not paying much attention, just luxuriating in somebody else working. I've got 10 zillion other things I "should" be doing --- my friend says, "there you go, should-ing on yourself again" --- but I need to stop, gather my scattered wits. I'm taking this morning off.

We've been painting and packing. I'm so happy about where our new house is, downtown in Midsizeburg, where I can walk or bike to almost anywhere I want to go in the downtown. But the house is smaller. It's a great size for the two of us, but it is forcing me to finally come to terms with all that furniture and bric-a-brac I inherited when my parents died almost 10 years ago. I've sold or given away a lot of it, but there is still too much. It is as if I am living in a museum to their memory, and it's not a happy memorial --- there are many sad memories tied up with these old things. I don't have an albatross around my neck, it's a china cabinet filled with silver and pinwheel crystal!

Like going through the waves of grief I went through when my mother died (not the same as when my father died, his passing was a merciful relief of misery), I go through waves of emotion when dealing with their stuff:

"Oh God, if they only saw what I was doing, they'd be spinning in their graves!"
"I am SO SICK of this stuff!"
"That's it! This can go to Goodwill!"
"Maybe I can just make a fire in the backyard..."
"Ok, let's go with the auctioneer..."
"I wonder if this might fit in the kitchen?" Fuzz:"Are you KIDDING?"
"I'm keeping this. No, I'm not. Yes, maybe... Rats... "
"Is this actually worth all this grief?"
"Just put it in the box before I change my mind!"
"Wow, this looks really good when you get all the crap out of here!..."

Whew. No wonder I can feel tired even without lifting a finger! However, slowly, things are happening. I'm discovering how dealing with stuff can be pretty satisfying. And come what may, the first week of July we are moving. I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Feel the doubt, feel the fear, spit in its face, and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

And enjoy this cup of coffee.

Taking Time to Listen

Listen. Really listen. What is she saying? It's exhausting. She thinks she's talking about looking for a job, but all I hear is a stream of negatives, "I can't"s, and "They did x to me". Finally I give up and start tuning her out, because she's too busy justifying to listen to any suggestions. I can't blame her, I know I've been locked in that behaviour too, but boy, it seems like there is a lot of pain. Did I really listen or just get locked into "helpful" mode? That's my other default position.

She may have hit bottom. She sounds totally disgusted with her life right now. Sometimes listening helps with that, but it's so hard to not judge.

She's also talking about losing weight. Tried OA, didn't like the God talk. We talked a bit about the whole spirituality vs. Christianity thing.

Funny the things you get into just talking with a casual acquaintance @ Starbucks. on a cold May morning.

Things are Going Well, If Very Fast

This is another of those "on the run" posts. Akkkk! I have to get dressed and all that stuff, we're going over to the new house to look at the kitchen. The vendor actually paid for new kitchen cabinets before she got the news she was being relocated, so we're trying to figure out where stuff is going and what we need changed, if anything. And then there's paint swatches. The house was mid renovation so I can pick what colors I want. Wow. Too much, dude.

Fuzz is pacing. Time to go. Life is faster right now but pretty sane, amazingly. Except I'm not getting enough exercise the last few days. I want to work on that. Good thing I quit my job at the end of last month! A real estate agent comes for a talk tomorrow about selling our house and sometime this week a lady from the auction service is coming to give me some appraisals. Whee...

I'll write again soon. Promise. And I won't talk about freakin' real estate.

Continually Amazed

Well, it happened. The seller accepted our offer, and the bank likes us, and we don't even have to rush to sell our house because our finances are in very good shape. I keep asking people to pinch me. You know, it's just a little modest 2 storey in a downtown neighbourhood that I think is on its way up, no big deal, right? Except the house next door is owned by my best friend (of 25 years) and her partner and daughter. After living for 15 years in "Smallville" and never really finding a community (excepting the 2 years I lived in New York), I am going to be living in a place (shall we call it Midsizeburg) where I think we will find a community. Within blocks live other artists and musicians, and many more of our friends, including Fuzz' brother and wife. Fuzz actually grew up 2 blocks away. Stranger than fiction.

I feel very lucky, but I think we made our own luck by listening to our hearts, putting out the word we wanted to live in the neighbourhood, and asking for help: spiritual, emotional support, and physical help from our friends. It was our friend that told our neighbour that if she ever wanted to sell her house they had someone interested. And then being willing to have fate, a higher power, karma, or whatever do what it would for us. This morning a groggy Fuzz said through a codeine-acetaminophen-ibuprofen blur (he's got a virus) "Boy, your higher power sure was on yesterday!" And he's right. It is amazing when you start clearing out the old emotional debris, I believe a channel opens up that allows good things to come to me that I can't even imagine.

The seller and even the seller's father seem extremely happy, because she was able to sell her house in 2 days and now can concentrate on moving to her new job out west in July. One major headache out of her way.

I was doing the "Mr. Bean Christmas Morning Happy Dance" yesterday, or was it the "Snoopy" along with lots of high pitched squealing. Maybe not the best idea, because it's easy to bonk your head dancing and jumping around with your eyes screwed shut!

When we got home last night I was still adrenaline filled, so I got on the treadmill for an hour's power walk. Then I lay down on the couch with a little cantelope and Letterman, thinking I might follow it up with some hot milk. The next thing I knew, it was an hour later, the cat tucked under my chin. I crawled up to bed and slept like the amazed baby I am.

Anybody want to buy a charming 90 year old house with a custom designed art studio & craftsman workshop in small town Canada? Such a steal!!! ;))

Sleep, Puleeze...

Maybe there is something to my doctor and therapist's suspicion that I may suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. During my checkup on Monday I realized I'm sleeping much less than a month ago and didn't feel nearly as sluggy as in March and February. I have a feeling I'll be trying one of those light therapy boxes next winter.

Tonight (it's coming on 5 am as I type this) I've got the opposite problem, sleeplessness. Major stress going on right now as we are trying to negotiate a private sale on a house. It's kind of small and needs some cosmetic work, and the basement, hooboy, don't get me started, but I love the location. Suddenly all our moving, selling and buying plans are notched up about 5 clicks. As Fuzz pointed out, it's much easier to be motivated when you have an concrete object in sight. About a million things could cause this to fall through, but it's a trip we've gotta try, sleepless night or not.

Let's see, today I have to investigate a storage locker and ugh, phone the bank for a talk about financing. Big fear around that last one, but Fuzz is up to his eyeballs in work, and this is something I can do. Fuzz is hilarious, he's absorbed enough of this "higher power" stuff from my work with Overeaters Anonymous to get it, he keeps saying, "If our higher power wants us to get this house, we will, it's out of our hands." It helps with the stress, but he still looks a little strung out over it too.

I guess this is what a healthy life looks like. Yesterday, my computer geek partner made a concept map (kind of a flow chart) of all the things stressing him out about this! I chose the low tech way and cried for a while, feeling completely overwhelmed and ashamed of how incompetent I felt, and then got on with life: Community choir rehearsal, made a roast beast dinner for us and Fuzz's folks, packed a couple more boxes last night with one eye on the Law & Order CI season ender. I just did ---what do they call it in 12 step circles? --- oh yeah, "the next right thing". Speaking of which, I think I can sleep now. Oh joy, one whole hour before the alarm goes off!

Body vs. Head

I have to admit, once again, that I am a complex creature. "No no no," screams my brain, "I want everything to be simple! Why is everything so damn complicated!" Grr! Spit! I am considering the relationship between my head and my body, which is probably pretty similar to most women: torturous at best. I wonder how many women I know do not look daily (or more) at another woman (3D or 2 dimensional) and find their own body lacking? And honestly, I also have the other distasteful trait: looking at someone and thinking "well, at least I don't look like that." I would like to think myself above all that, but I'm not. I fight it, or accept it as remaining evidence that my self esteem is still lousy. In other words, it's my head that's the problem, not the body. Pretty common disease in our culture, and not confined to women.

My therapists have called it shame. Yuck. What a word. Just writing it makes me shiver.

But like I said, it's complex. I also have pride in my body, and there are bits I am just discovering. Like my toes --- I had my first pedicure ever last week and what a treat it was! All this soaking and massaging and buffing and stuff, wow! Best Friend, an old hand at this spa stuff and big fan of the french manicure --- something I just don't get--- had hers painted a subtle blush taupe, but not me! Like a kid in a cosmetics store, I went straight for the fuschia. It took me almost 45 years to finally get there and needed BF to make the appointment and accompany me to keep my nerves at bay, so I went for the brightest day-glo color there to proclaim to the world, "Hey! I got my toes done! Aren't I a girly girl?"

My question is, what took me so long? Why did I have to lose half my body weight to honor my toes? Maybe it's because I now actually like people looking at me, because I no longer wish to be invisible, I am discovering my body. It's like running, also a new pursuit, discovered just last fall. I like sweating now. Before it just made me angry.

Emotional Feet Stamping

I have written and erased the same 3 or 4 sentences three times. I've got a bee in my bonnet but I'm not sure why. I just feel restless and discontent. I'm not sure what is going on in my fevered noggin, but it seems cyclic. Could be a body cycle, or just a reaction to things going ok, neither great nor awful. And I know tomorrow it will probably seem different. Isn't it amazing that today's emotional tailspin will likely evaporate to such an extent that tomorrow it will be hard to remember just what was so awful?

Last night I mentally went through a checklist of all the good things I had accomplished yesterday. I had to do this because I hadn't helped Fuzz with a home reno project he really wanted to get done. That was his job, but I felt a lot of guilt for not helping him. Instead I cooked meals for us, cleaned out the stinky (whoof, what died in here???) leaves and guck from the pond and got it functioning for the season, tidied my studio some more (no wonder it was hard to move around with 3 bicycles and the back seat from the van in there!), mowed the lawn for the first time this year, whacked the weeds, cleaned the kitchen, bought food, and wrote. All good and worthy things, but because I wasn't helping him, I felt guilt. He never even suggested I aid him. That's just the script in my head. It's so hard for me to stay with my own stuff. As soon as I feel I "should" be doing something for another, it's as if my brain has been snatched from my body.

It's a constant source of amazement for me how someone who used to weigh over 300 pounds and is still about 145 and 5'9" can feel so ephemeral, without substance, when confronted with another's issues or agenda. It is as if the binge eating was an unconscious effort to feel real, as if I existed.

I'm going to the gym later, and I think I might combine some weight training with a run outside since it's such a beautiful day, sunny, with just an edge of crispness as we edge toward summer. I think I'll run along the lake and around the campus. It will likely improve my mood, maybe release some endorphins. Instead of eating to feel as if I exist, I will make myself physically stronger. I still like that odd ouchy ache I sometimes get when I move after exercise. It says, oh yeah, those muscles got used for something. After years of physical inactivity, it's nice to feel my body talking to me on occasion, just a little tweak here and there, not big pain. Speaking of tweaks, I'm not even getting that as my body is into its 3rd month of healing from the hysterectomy today, and I'm feeling about 98% recovered, with about the only symptom being a slight lag in my energy reserves.

One thing I am feeling anxiety around, but also flashes of joy, is being in the studio to give my friend art lessons. She wants to come back for more this week, so I have some prep to do. Another small step taken in my journey doing something meaningful that I love. Now that is making me feel alive! I'm thinking of things to work on while she paints... uh oh, might be time for another self portrait. That's usually what I do when I haven't been painting for a while and need an utterly fascinating subject to get those juices flowing again...

Listening and Recasting God

At the beginning, and at the end of many OA meetings they say the "Serenity Prayer". It is a shortened variation on the original prayer written by an American Protestant minister and theologan Reinhold Niebuhr, and the version we use is: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. " Then---and I know this is where we differ from other 12 step fellowships and maybe even from OA in different regions--- we add the sentence "Thy will, not mine be done."

The wording of much of the original 12 step literature passed down from the early 20th century AA founders was originally a stumbling block for me when I started attending OA meetings. Raised Catholic, I'm someone who has avoided most organized religion for most of her adult life. That being said, over a decade ago I realized I wanted to have a community to consider my spiritual life with, and so I'm a member of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, a very liberal faith community that is bonded by that desire to explore spirituality without being told what we must believe. I found a lot of good people, but for some reason I never went much deeper in my search. I still stayed angry at God and scared.

So I have trouble with the G-word. Or I did, until I was told that I could conceive of God, or "a higher power" in any form I wanted. It took me a long time to realize how stereotypical and unhelpful the image of a higher power I had swallowed early on was for my emotional and physical health. The God I had created for myself was punitive and angry, cobbled together from the attitudes of the family and community I grew up in, and the popular culture. God was invoked to keep us in line in the church and me in line in my family.

As I meditate now on the possibility of a higher power that might want me to be "joyous, happy and free", I realize that this means I have to change my conception of what that higher power wants me to do in my daily life. Like this morning.

I was lying in bed with my usual dose of guilt: "Oh ugh, I should vacuum, I should rake the leaves out of the basement window well, clean out a closet, blah blah blah..." when what I really wanted was to sit in bed, drink coffee, turn on the CBC and surf the net and write. Then that phrase "Thy will not mine" floated into my fevered coconut.

I wondered "what if Thy will is for me to sit in bed with my laptop?" Not what my parents would say, but maybe by absorbing their sad conception of a higher poser (that was originally a typo but maybe it was a freudian typo) was one of the things that made my life so awful. Evidence that this may be the case is that when I do shove everything else back and do just that, I'm more in touch with my feelings and the rest of my life goes much better: I eat better, I obsess less about food, I get exercise, I keep myself straight with valued friends, I discover the joy of pedicures and running and belly dance, I get into the studio more. And paradoxically, enough of the other stuff that needs to be done, basic housework and stuff like that, seems to get done, if not enough for my old Fake God. I need to fire Fake God, and for the time being, do it daily.

Not a Bad Day - Now There's an Understatement!

Yesterday was interesting. I think it went well. Lots of anxiety, but overall it was ok, and so far, so good. Sorry, I'm mystifying you with all these cliches.

What happened was I made a bargain with one of my closest OA buds: she would help me pack up some of my three china cabinets in return for some art instruction. Yes, I said three china cabinets: One rustic one I want to keep, one made by my father-in-law that I will probably end up keeping as thankfully it's small and quite pretty, and then there is the behemoth: a massive dark victorian (I think) which is likely the most valuable, but it is huge and is like a black hole that sucks all the light out of a room and a lot of my energy with it. Filled by my mother's china and crystal, various fiddly cups and saucers and odd brick-a-brac, I want to sell it, but it is just so huge. And unmanageable --- hmmm, nice metaphor for how my life seems most days! It's got a lot of emotional baggage stuffed in it, one of those things I inherited when I cleaned out my parents' house. Perhaps you have one of those emotional albatrosses hanging around your neck? I don't know exactly what I will do with all of it, but getting it all organized and ready to move to storage in preparation for selling the house is a good first step. One foot in front of the other, doing the next right thing... ugh ugh ugh.

Anyway, we only managed to pack up a sixth of the behemoth in a couple of hours, but Mom's china is now washed, catalogued and photographed, carefully wrapped and in numbered boxes.

Then it was on to my studio, a somewhat daunting task for both of us as we both regularly fight with the perfectionism monster. But after another hour or so, we had a couple of ideas about what she would like to do and some homework in preparation for her first painting in acrylics. Sometime in the next week we'll go shopping for her first stretched canvas, and I'm so excited! Maybe this is the artist's equivalent of being a mother--- I'm sighing, just thinking of the delight of that first canvas. Hm... do I remember mine? Yes, I think I do, oh the delight of that springy stretched fabric, existing just for the touch of my brush, and all that luscious paint... Wow. I believe I may be having my own little epiphany here, and have just experienced a flash of the true joy of teaching, of being able to convey what really thrills me about art.

HOLY HANNAH! THIS IS GREAT!!!

Now this is why I quit my job. Oops, gotta run. I'm getting my first pedicure at noon! Whee!

Add This to My "Never Again" List

You may think me terminally antisocial, but I think I have reached the age where I can declare with some certainty that I would appreciate never having to attend another shower: bridal, baby, jack and jill, buck and doe, jack and jack, jill and jill, whatever. I don't mind attending a wedding, particularly if there will be cake and dancing, but for a shower please just accept that I'll send a gift (no, actually, I'll just send a card and money) but I don't wanna go. Obviously it's been a long time since I went to one, because I forgot how much I dislike them until yesterday when I went to one for an OA friend. She's a very nice woman, all the other women there were very nice and normally a lot of fun, there were no lame shower games, but there is just something that is just so stilted or dated about the concept.

Maybe it's because we're living in a time where we are well aware that prince charming is a myth and happily forever after is too, or that the apex of a woman's life is not necessarily her marriage. Babies are probably another matter, but don't ask me because I am happily child-free. Even there, most mothers who haven't been nipping at the Amontillado during Oprah will admit that being a mommy isn't always love, flowers and Mr. Clean moments, more like 15-20 years of sleep deprivation, debt, driving to karate, soccer, ballet, homework tutors, teacher conferences or parole hearings.

Of course, this just begs for my best friend, who seems happily settled in non-married monogamy with her partner of almost 10 years (and 6 year old child) to have a mini stroke and decide she needs two extra toasters and a fondue set or five and I'll find myself in shower organization hell...

What this has to do with my compulsive eating is: it's just so easy to self-sabotage my efforts to be there for myself. I left that shower about 2 hours after I should have, and in a foul mood. While grinding my teeth on the drive home, I realized that I had once again abandoned myself at some point during the day. Instead of leaving after the first hour and a half of not having much fun, I stayed for hours of increasing tedium. I got locked back into my default "duty" mode, you know, the one I learned eons ago as the dutiful daughter, dutiful granddaughter, dutiful student, dutiful wife, dutiful friend.... Oh God, Oedipus didn't poke out his eyes because he had slept with his mother, he blinded himself because he had become her! I was practically a Stepford, I was so not in in my body, one of those things that in the bad old days was regularly soothed by a dozen doughnuts or another half pizza.

That's it, showers are going on my abstinence list!