Tag Archives: This Book Will Change Your Life

Day by day, letting go… Day 72

Posted on February 15, 2011 | 8 comments

Day 72: Today is Closure Day.  The book suggests you call up your kindergarten and tell them you have left your favorite toy there, and that you need it for your psychological health.  I sleep with a Snoopy I have had since 1979.  I most certainly did not leave anything behind in my kindergarten classroom.   It’s not my style.  I don’t really do Closure.  Or Letting Go.  I leave the door open.  I hold on.  It’s my nature.

The idea of just “letting go” is foreign to me.  I am the girl that saves everything.  Everything.  Exhibit A.  My mother made my dad get rid of this nasty blue bathrobe when I was eight or nine.  And I loved it.  So I saved it and wore it for another year or so… Eventually it was in pieces, and it had to be thrown out.  And I saved the belt.

(Strange side note, there was a short-lived sitcom Day By Day on circa 1988, I loved that show and the teenage son always wore a blue bathrobe. He was so cute, I just knew he’d love me! And then later he played Greg in all the Very Brady movies…)

Exhibit B.  Deeper in my trunk I find this little gem.  From an old friend on a visit home from California.  This is a pretty fair indication of what 1998 looked like.

I still keep a lot of things, but when I moved out of the house at the beach I learned that stuff was just “stuff.”  The memories I have of the people that have touched my life are no more or less real by virtue of my having a shoebox full of cocktail napkins and movie tickets.  That having been said, I was gifted recently a box of knick-knacks and items I had left behind.  I was grateful that Jer had saved them all these years.

In that box was  Exhibit C.  Folger Shakespeare Library’s production of Taming of the Shrew, circa 1991, they handed out these buttons.  This one makes me the happiest.  Unlike Lucentio, I still “burn” and occasionally “pine,” but I no longer feel as though I will “perish”  without these objects of my desire.

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Day 71: See more of the world today

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 7 comments

Day 71: See more of the world today.  Take a train or a bus one stop too far.

I am not a public transportation gal but I figured I could still participate in the spirit of the challenge.  After all, just being out of the house, off the couch, seemed like a change of scenery.  Em has had the Winter Funk, in the form of the flu and strep, an over achiever already, my girl.  So, we have been cooped up in the house for the vast majority of the last week.

This morning, after I dropped Em at school, I was thinking about how lucky I am.  She was talking about kindergarten and mentioned something about “if we live in Chapel Hill.”  I told her that I suspect we will stay right here.  And as I drove away from school and looked up at the… wait for it…. Carolina Blue sky I thought about how much I enjoy living right here, right now.  And not just because of where I am in my mind right now.

So, off I went to work, with the intent to “see more of the world.”  Small back story, I have a tendency to get lost.  On the way home from the grocery store.  I was absent on the day a “sense of direction” was handed out, evidently.  The GPS has been my savior.  There are four different routes I can take to my office.  One is most direct, and used when I am not taking Em to school and have no errands to run.  Mostly highway-ish and I run the chance of missing my exit.  Or taking an earlier one, because after all the sign I drive by daily sure looks familiar and in a moment I think “Man, is that the road I take to my office?”  And somehow in a strange mind-body disconnect my car is turning and my brain is thinking “No, I don’t think this is right, why are you going this way?”  The other three are all variants that include a stop at Em’s school.  This morning afforded me the opportunity to take my favorite route.  Lots of wide open green space.  Few landmarks.  Many chances for me to look out the window and wonder where the hell I am.

Off we go…. skeptical that I will not get lost.  (I apologize that you can not see my clean colon from this angle, perhaps my glowing epidermis will satiate those interested in following the effects of my cleanse.)

After I turn off of one of the more heavily trafficked roads I get to see one of my favorite trees.  When I eventually finish my back tattoo it will have this tree worked in to in some way.  I love everything about this tree. And the house beneath it.  I’d like to live there.  And have a bunch of kids.  And a rope swing.  And bake bread.

After visiting my tree I travel a short way and eventually come upon a very, very tiny green sign.  When I see that sign I know it is my turn.  At least 20% of the time I pass it. This is a problem because after I turn it looks like the next picture for about three miles.

And, as you may have guessed, it looks just like that if you keep on driving past that green sign.

This is, oddly, my favorite part of the trip.  I don’t hate that feeling of wondering if I am lost.  Because I can always turn on my GPS and check, of course, but mostly because it makes my morning commute slightly more exciting than it might be otherwise.  Instead of thinking that I am scatterbrained I like to think of it as living in the present.  As I drive along that tree-lined road I wonder if I already turned at the tiny green sign, or if I drove right past it.  And most mornings I really have no idea for about four minutes.

Eventually, I see my favorite car.  And I know I made my turn.  I am not sure what it is about this car.  I love the color.  It is the perfect yellow.

Shortly after I pass the car I pass a teeny, pea green house with a sign out front.  There are several small businesses along the way, a tax accountant, a home day-care, a family selling firewood.  But my favorite is definitely this little Beauty Parlor.  I like to pretend that Truvy is inside with a teasing comb in her  back pocket, pouring cups of coffee for her pals.

It’s right around this time that I start to wonder if I will need to turn right or left at the next stop sign.  I know, intellectually, it is left.  But every time, without fail, right seems like the way that I need to go.  This is an inkling that might have been serendipitous if I’d ever just turned right and kept driving.  Down about another three miles from there is The Barn at Valhalla , the place MQD and I are getting married.  I did not know it was down there until after I had seen their website and we’d decided to have our ceremony and reception there.   I don’t think it’s a coincidence that something makes me feel like I need to keep driving that direction every time I sit at that crossroads.

In case I am getting swept away it is right around this point that I keep my eyes peeled for Big Al’s Cheap Tires and bang a right towards my office.  Once I make that turn my traveling companion perks up.

If we’re lucky we will see a whole bunch of cows and horses in the next mile and a half.  This morning, since I had my camera at the ready and the time to stop, the cows must have been sleeping in and the horses were not up by the fence.

This is either just before or after my favorite farm sign, Kart Wheel Farm.  I like to think that the people that live there have a sense of humor.

Lastly,  I pass one more landmark.  It is a very small sign but it is the sign I draw to someone’s attention when I am giving them directions to my office.  It is a sign that is  actually ironic, a word I have come to find irritating, thankyouverymuchAlanisMorrisette. I know I am less than a quarter mile from my office when I pass the Gone Fishing sign.

A couple of weeks ago I said I was going to commit to shaking the blues.  I think I am well on my way.  I like where I am right now.  I like where I am headed.  I even enjoy the hell out of driving to work.  How’s that for some cheesin’?

 

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Day 69: Downsizing Day

Posted on January 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Day 69: Today fire someone from your entourage.

Today’s challenge was actually accomplished a few days ago.  I laid off my dish washer, my bus driver, my babysitter, my laundry fetcher, my glass of water getter, my “what did we need at the store, again?” remember-er, my dog walker, my cat feeder, my bed warmer, my cell phone phone caller and finder, my entertainer, my audience and my DJ.  All at once.

MQD has been gone since Sunday afternoon and this morning I yelled at the dog.  And at Emily.  I am tired.  I am frustrated.  I am, admittedly, without caffeine, as well.  But mostly I just feel spent.

The picture below was taken on the very first afternoon that MQD kept Em.  I don’t recall now where I was needing to be, work, perhaps , but it was a picture he sent me to indicate that all was well and they were having a good time.  The day that picture was taken I did it all every day.  And today, not even a year later, I can’t remember how to get us all out of the house on time all alone.

Like childbirth, being a single parent is one of those things you forget all about once it’s over.  I’m okay with that.

*I hope you’re having a good time, baby.  But come home soon, ok?  And don’t be alarmed when you get there.  It’s a wreck.  But all the animals slept in our bed.  And Em, too.  And Floppy Dog.  And Snoopy.  I checked to make sure the doors were locked at least four times before I went to bed every night.  We’re safe and sound.   Don’t know how I ever did it without you… For the record I plan to re-hire you on Saturday morning. xo
-Kel

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Day 68: One single hair…

Posted on January 25, 2011 | 2 comments

Day 68: Choose one single hair to grow out one yard long.

“I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty, oily, greasy, fleecy, shining…” you know the drill. HAIR!!

I do not.  Want Hair!  My mother would beg to differ. She subscribes to the secret rule that after a “certain age” your hair shouldn’t be “but so long.”  I am not sure what this age is, exactly.  Or how long even “too long” really is… but I do know that my hair is too long and I am past that age.  For a short time after Em was born I felt like I was masquerading as a grown up.  Like in spite of the fact that I had a kid hanging on my boob twenty-one hours a day I was not really a mom, not really a card carrying Grown Up.  So, I cut  my hair.  As you can see, my shorter hair did nothing to grow me up, or to discourage me from wearing a pirate eye patch while out to dinner.

And then my short hair made me feel like I was pretending to be a Grown Up.   Not only was I carting around this kid, and trying to get my act together but I was starting to actually behave like a grown up.  So I put a stop to that promptly.

There’s nothing like Manic Panic to make a girl feel like she is in touch with her juvenile roots.  All of this to say that the subject of hair and whether or not one lets it grow is a subject I spend a fair amount of time thinking about.  And while I am currently in a stage of defiantly having “too long hair” I can say with absolute certainty the hair on my legs is not party to this plan.

I shave every day.  I can’t stand it when I don’t.  It’s not for anyone but me.  I think if I didn’t shave my legs a shower complete with face wash, shampoo, conditioner and moisturizing soap rub down would max out at about four minutes.   MQD stays in the shower for twenty minutes on a day he is in a hurry.  I have never understood what exactly long showerers do in there.  Perhaps my need to shave my legs every day is just a way to necessitate being in the shower a full seven minutes.    I don’t think I am less clean than the long showerer.  I’d guess I am lazier, maybe.  I do love an extra snooze.  Or two.  But even when I am not under the gun of getting out the door at a certain time I don’t dick around in the shower.  So today?  Today’s shower took six minutes.  But Em was in there with me.  Saving water and all.

And I didn’t shave.  I’m nuts.  I’m wild and free.  And I am shaving tomorrow morning.  I feel weird.  And as for growing out one single hair, I’m gonna go with the one that means I am Grown Up when I cut it.  Because that’s just not happening anytime soon. So lemme know if you know which one that is.  Because I should probably cut the rest of them.  What Not To Wear and my mother say so.

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Day 66 & 67: Save Water & One Day Detox

Posted on January 24, 2011 | 3 comments

Day 66 is a simple challenge.  Save water. Day 67 is fairly simple, as well, a one-day detox from your substance of choice.  As has frequently been the case as I work my way through this book, they are both well timed challenges.

As for saving water, we can safely say that my household is  saving water this week.  Quite a bit of it.  MQD is gone this week, embracing his METAL roots, so Em and I are on our own.  Which means our water usage is down BIG time.  No showers for MQD, none of his laundry and since Em likes to be glued to my side when he is gone she has managed to sneak in to the shower with me for the last two days. But the big picture?  I have upped my water intake.  Drinking at least 100 oz of water a day for the last three days in preparation for… day 67!   So… good thing we are if an “if it’s yellow…” household.

Today is day one of my 21 day detox and cleanse.  It was suggested to me by my cult leader, I mean, chiropractor. So, I am on all raw foods, fruits and veggies for ten days and then will slowly add in lean proteins.  Slamming down three bark-flavored protein supplement shakes a day.  I am itching to get back to the gym but will try and take it easy for another week or two.  Just in case you are playing along at home, my back is feeling better every day.  I slept last night, pinned between my dog and the kiddo, and still woke up feeling rested.

To the lucky folks expecting mail from me, it should be headed your way by the end of the week.  Envelopes addressed, pictures ready to be scanned and printed.

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Day 65: Memorize a poem

Posted on January 20, 2011 | 1 comment

Today’s challenge is simple “Memorize a poem.”  I will review some Shel Silverstein tonight with Em and pick one to memorize.  Although, I am not certain that I don’t know damn near all of them.

In the meantime I have read and reread a piece of prose all day.  I have kept it printed out in some form or another in my wallet or my jewelry box or my glove compartment for almost as long as I can recall.  Someone mentioned it today and I remembered that in the midst of all this thinkin’ I should stay focused on the big stuff, not get lost in the details.

Failure is the monster under my bed.  Making this one of the most meaningful paragraphs I have ever read.

“So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you’ve any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.”

~ Tom Robbins

I don’t know about reckless anymore, but I would sure as hell settle for free….

 

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Day 64: Live MAIL! Free Money!!

Posted on January 19, 2011 | 19 comments

Day 64 has me smiling!  Because it’s fun, back in the spirit of the book and the challenges.  Smack dab in the middle of PMS Town, no less, I am grinning.  Go, me.  Day 64’s challenge “Today send a letter at random with a  photograph of yourself and  a $5 bill with no return address, see what comes of it.”

So, if you think I don’t know your address and you’d get a kick out of a five spot and a picture of yours truly leave me an anonymous  comment that will make me keep smiling.  I’ll pick one of you at random and drop you a line, a picture  and enough cold hard cash for a cup o’ Joe.  I’ll delete the comments immediately so your address isn’t out on the interwebz for all to see.  And you can put a BS email in the email line.  Actually, come to think of it, anyone that bothers to give me their mailing address in the next day or two will get something in the mail.  But one of you lucky ducks will get a five spot.  Shit, I ought to pay you for reading.  It’s still cheaper than the therapist.

I’m waiting on you…



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Day 63: World’s Biggest Asshole

Posted on January 18, 2011 | 6 comments

Day 63′ s challenge encourages you to try and break a Guinness World Record. If I was eight or nine and it was summer time there’d be no question as to what I’d do. I’d pogo stick my little ass off.   I held the Highridge Street record for pogo-sticking, very likely for time and mileage.  I could pogo stick (uphill, mind you) all the way to the Fischer’s and back three times.    For all those unfamiliar with the neighborhood layout, it was a good .25 miles to their house.  So there and back three times, we’re talking a smooth mile and a half.  Via pogo stick it was at least 45 minutes.  Maybe longer.  At 8 or 9 years old I had time to kill.    Nowadays… not so much.

So, on my way to work this morning I was doing two things.  Contemplating my Guinness Book entry and listening to a book I’d downloaded. Pretty common, for me.

I like to listen to books in the car when I am by myself. I don’t get enough time to read so I enjoy it.  But because I tend to listen in ten minutes increments I listen to my fair share of “light reading.”  I am about 3/4 of the way through Life, Keith Richards’ memoir, but it is 700 hours long, or so it seems, so I thought I’d break it up a bit with something amusing. A friend mentioned reading Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell recently and I remembered that it was kinda funny, the excerpts I had read, anyway.    I downloaded it knowing absolutely what I was in for.  If you’re not familiar – Tucker Max is a jackass, Duke University law student.  He started a website where he told stories of his late night carousing, stories of booze fueled hook ups with idiotic college girls and what not.  There are some admittedly hilarious parts of the book…and a whole lot of reasons for anyone with even a minor feminist inkling to find it appalling.  His website took off and he has since made a career out of behaving like a douche-bag college student well in to his thirties.

That was a lot of back story… all to tell you that this morning I finished his book.  And in five hours of listening to this fuckwad talk about women in a degrading manner it was his mispronunciation of the word absinthe in the final thirty minutes that made me bonkers.  He pronounces it with the emphasis on the last syllable.  I thought at first I could let it go.  And then he just kept saying it.  And saying it.  And it made me crazy.  And I started thinking, maybe Tucker Max is NOT the World’s Biggest Asshole.  Maybe I am.  Because in five hours of listening to him spew forth his garbage, this was what made me crazy.  Mispronunciation of an alcoholic beverage.

So, I was giggling to myself that maybe I’d post that I am the World’s Biggest Asshole.  Because evidently misogyny is fine by me so long as you can pronounce your drink of choice properly.

And then I started thinking.  I might actually be the World’s Biggest Asshole.  MQD is home today with his back all out of whack.  (I know, isn’t it me that is supposed to be the bad back have-r in this relationship?) And as I walked by him this morning, flat on his back with an ice pack on the floor, I made a joke.  And kind of acted like a jerk.  You’d think I’d not do that.  Considering.

After a few minutes doing that kind of question and answer with yourself that you can do if you’ve been through any therapy at all (“And why do you think you do that?”  “How does it make you feel when you behave that way?”  “What is your desired response?” ) I had a mini epiphany.  I think I am an asshole when he doesn’t feel well because it scares me.  We joke about “The Diabetes” but in all sincerity…. I love that guy, crazy love.  And when he doesn’t feel well I can’t help but look in to the future.  And it scares me.    There’s a sea of “what ifs'” for all of us.  But his are more overwhelming to me.  So, yeah… I act like an asshole because I love him and I worry about him.  That wasn’t a very fun epiphany.

So, once I realized I was the biggest asshole of all time I spent the rest of the day cheering myself up, admiring my shiny ring and my painted fingernails.  All this “self discovery” takes its toll.  Sometimes you need a little shallow.

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Day 62: Rock me, mama, like a wagon wheel…

Posted on January 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Day 62 asks you to “prepare convenient circles everywhere you habitually go.”  The circle in this case is meant to invoke a protective spirit.  In the morning I had a chiropractor appointment and it seemed like as good a place as any to cast a circle of protection.  I thought about this for the rest of the day.  About the pleasant sense of peace I had this morning as I walked in the door, on my way for my fourth visit.  “They” say you only need to do something three times in order for it to become a habit.

And as I got out of the car this morning and drew a circle around my feet I giggled as the receptionist walked by and lifted my head and said “Good morning,” dropped my chalk in to my purse and locked my car.

Right or wrong.  I have made a decision.  I have a Plan.  Six more weeks of adjustments.  A detox and cleanse of my organs.  (Incidentally if you see me mid February please be sure to compliment my respiratory system, my gastrointestinal system and my urinary tract.  They should all be sparkling clean by then.)  A plan… it feels good.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I don’t have the confidence part down just yet…. but I am goin’… and I’m dreamin’…

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Day 61: How Symmetrical Is Your Face?

Posted on January 12, 2011 | 7 comments

Day 61 asks you to measure your face with string and to calculate the distance between your center line and each pupil, the corner’s of your mouth, etc and ultimately determine just how symmetrical is your face.   Several years ago a study was released that showed that “attractiveness” can essentially be measured across cultures (and species) by determining  just how symmetrical a person’s physique is or is not.

I tried to measure my face with a piece of tape (this was highly amusing!) and quickly became frustrated with my process.  And as a person that was secretly concerned that she was going to do all these calculations only to determine that she was actually ugly… well, I wasn’t trying to spend all day getting it done.  With a little googling I found a website that could help me out.

I think I might have had better results if I’d not taken the picture myself, since it is virtually impossible to get a full frontal (heh) face picture without a little tilt.  But here we go….

My original picture: (showcasing the marks on my nose from my glasses, the dark circles under my eyes from lack of sleep and my crow’s-feet, proof positive that it is in no way touched up.)

face

And here’s what I’d look like if both sides of my face looked like the left side:
faceleft

Like a pinhead… which is not really that far from the truth. But a pinhead with a kind of cute cupid’s bow, no?

And the right side:
faceright

So what did I take away from this assignment?  A few things.  One – I need to invest in some decent under eye concealer.  Or kick everyone out of the bed for a night or two and get some sleep.  Two – My bangs are really growing out finally… it almost looks like I have these layers on purpose.  And three – I kinda think the right side duplication pretty much looks like me.  Leading me to believe that my face is pretty damn symmetrical.  Thus… in the least few  days I have determined that I am not crazy and that I am beeeyoootiful.  Or that  a primate would likely mate with me.  Or something.

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