Wednesday Woes II

I love Diary of a Modern Matriarch.  She posted this today at her Primal site, so I jumped right on the complainy bandwagon and well, here we are.  Life is good, blah, blah, blah…and it goes against all my Pollyanna training from my childhood, but I feel like bitching it out.  I refuse to look at the bright side, I refuse to put my chin up.  I am just going to enjoy the suckitude.

• my hips HURT.  My long run on the weekend left my left hip very sore, and now the right is joining in on the fun.  I am just trying to get through to the race before completely falling apart.
• A friend of mine is dating someone that he thinks I “hate” – and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.  I like to see him in the company of people he enjoys and I LOVE to see him happy and the few times I’ve met her, I’ve found her to be wicked-smart, articulate and positively lovely – they’re great together – I don’t waste my time hating anyone because it’s a big fat waste of my time, I just don’t like that it’s affected our friendship in unexpected ways.  He seems to have changed and taken his friendship away since meeting her, and that’s my issue with it.  Doesn’t he know there can be room for everyone?
• Our Dog Nanny has left us, which means I spend lunchtime bolting home to let the cross-legged dog out for a pee.  It also means he is way less socialized lately.  Looking for a new one is making me want to drink.
• It isn’t Friday yet.
• I am not likely to go on a vacation with Man until February of next year.  He is going away in November (on a trip I likely wouldn’t enjoy) and while I know he needs a sunny holiday,  I’m going to miss him like crazy (we’ve never spent more than a week apart in 14 years!) and I wish there had been a little more intention to his vacation planning.  It’s water under the bridge, but it still sucks.
• Tyler Clementi’s story makes me sick.  So does bullying.  I wish he didn’t have to jump from a bridge for us all to realize what needs to be done.
• It looks my last living Gramma has a big tumor in her brain and that she might not be around much longer.
• There are giant spiders in my basement.  Seriously.  I deal with them, but I scream the whole time.

Ok, so maybe I didn’t have that many woes.  In true Me fashion, I will now flip it, even though I didn’t want to do so:

• it is so sunny out that I have trouble dressing in the morning; I bundle up for the morning, but my noon, I’m gleefully ipping off my clothes and opening the sun roof on my car….weeeee!
• I get to go away with Man this weekend to Kelowna for the race.
• Race will be over in 4 sleeps.  Holy crap.
• Man is able to peek in on the dog today, so I can have lunch the way I like it; seated at my desk working
• I ran the fastest 5K in a long time last night. 
• I’m having dinner with a dear friend tonight and I can’t wait to see her
• We have a big exciting month to look forward to: dinners in, dinners out, weekend guests, hot tub soaks, cozy fall stuff.
• I am sure I’ll be getting a PB at the race this weekend, by more than ever before.
• It’s flannel pj season again!
• I’m writing again and it feels good
• I sourced out the perfect furniture for my home office, and it’s even affordable!
• I start my 30 day yoga challenge tomorrow…wee!

What about you? What’s going wrong and right for you?

Coming Soon

It’s been a busy month.  Yeah, I know. What else is new?  I have been feeling off-centre for awhile; started a new job, finished a race and was left with the post-race lull, been wrapped up in lots of exciting things.  This has been nagging the back of my mind, and I have missed writing.  Time to renew priorities…

Here’s some bullets of future posts:

• I am not living the life I want to all the time and it’s pissing me off
• The Lazy Gourmet/How (I like to think) I get away with cooking once a week
• Race Recap
• Training Again
• Stomach Flu Adventures, and how I finally broke through the 25 lb plateau
• Our Adventure in Arizona Nebraska, and Minnesota, and Iowa over a 3 night trip
• What it’s like to live without the cat we both miss terribly
• Summer Plans and Upcoming Adventures
• My Love Affair with the Sunshine Coast
• My Admiration of my Ankles
• The Debate over Barefoot Running
• House Selling 101/Have We Gone Completely Insane?
• Millions of Links to stuff OTHER people have been writing that has been making me feel Lazy
• My New Coffee Mug = Life Changing
• The Minutae of my Big Life

tired…

too tired to even use punctuation…

The weekend in review: 2 naps, lots of writing, 1 dinner out (Italian!), 1 launch event (went well), $400 in business write offs (that still had to come from *somewhere*), 2 happy puppy walks, a dozen sit/stays with said puppy, 1 turkey meatloaf, 1 spinach salad, 2 loaves of bread (the dog ate 1/2 of one), 2 sunshiny days, 2 clean motorcycles, not enough clean laundry (but working on it as I write).  Good times. 

Busy week ahead: boot camp times 4, massage therapy, crock pot dinners, on-line course, and more sunshiny days…

Life feels so ridiculously good, that I often want to stop it all and just savor it, basking in the right now instead of letting the urgent/coming soon pile take over.  I suppose part of being a Responsible Adult is being on this very fast merry-go-round, but I would like to officially lodge a complaint.  Half-speed would be just fine from time to time.

I finish as I started: tired and ready for sleep.

Old loves, rekindled

I am pretty sure I am supposed to be at the grocery store right now, clutching my trusty list as I stroll about the store with my one-wonky-wheel-cart (I have a gift when it comes to picking the exact cart that will make me wish everyone else, or just me, was deaf).  I should be out in the sunshine, or head down in my work of organizing a launch event for myself, or walking the dog.  I’m not.  I’m immersed in a book I discovered approximately 16 years ago and have never forgotten.  The book is Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and it was first introduced to me way back in highschool by one of my favorite teachers, Lorne Thompson, with whom I shared a love of writing.  He’s the same teacher who when I wrote years later that I feared I was going to get scurvy from eating only ramen noodles and KD, assured me that I was going to be fine, and among the list of life rules he proceeded to hand me, was this: always, always have budget for books, for they will sustain you.  He  was brilliant, and I am still sad that he is gone.  In any case, I am rekindling my love with that book, its exercises and my love of writing.

I used to write all the time.  I made time for my “Morning Pages” which is 3 pages written stream-of-consciousness-style, first thing in the morning, I was faithful to it and loved seeing what came out of me.

The book itself is meant to be a series of activities to simply get you writing, to be a channel through which creativity can flow.  I loved to work through it when I first got it, before life got in the way, and it was relegated to the bookshelf to be forgotten for awhile. I was creating my coaching office space last weekend, and came across it – I looked it again this afternoon and was enthralled, once again, by the rules  (taken from the book):

1. Keep your hand moving. )Don’t pause to read what you’ve just written, that’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)

2. Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write.  Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)

3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar.  (Don’t even care about staying in the margins and lines of the page.)

4. Lose control.

5. Don’t think.  Don’t get logical.

6. Go for the jugular.  (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it.  It probably has lots of energy.)

As someone who is always afraid in my creative pursuits to do things “right” and follow the rules, this is liberating and scary, too.  But I am excited to tackle it and dive in.  So that is what I will do.  Start with 15 minutes a day, and see where it takes me. I invite you to do the same.