In making roads on my inner self (more deets coming in another post, soon), I decided to spend five minutes in the morning just being.
For someone who comes from a long line of Type A personalities, who can’t leave her bedroom in the morning before making the bed BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE (this also includes making said bed with dog and husband in situ), just being is hard. It means I have to reject the voices in my head that are whirling dervishes, I have to reject the twitching of my body to go do something, anything; it means resisting the urge to open up one eyeball to peer around the room. It means being still for the sake of being still.
Originally I planned on 15 minutes but if the mediation game on the Wii and yoga classes have taught me anything, I have not yet earned that freedom to do 15 minutes. Five I can be grateful for and accept, which I did wholeheartedly. Wednesday, however, was not amused and decided that if momma was going to sit on the yoga mat in the middle of the room, she was going to go sit on the new leather couch across from momma, the same couch she’s been barred from a million times over.
This morning’s ritual was slightly painful in learning to be still and reject everything around you, including internally, which creates a lot of energy in doing. When the timer went off, I slightly scowled. This should not be a game, there is no competition.
Another lesson I must teach myself that it is for the inner good and the prize is living longer, better, more meaningfully. I may not have sat as silent as I wished this morning, but I can only continue to try to be better than I was before. (Yes, yes, that in and of itself is a competition, but shhhh. We’re in denial.)
This evening, while baking cookies, I found myself with a few extra minutes on my hands. We had finished dinner, kitchen was cleaned and I was just waiting for the batches of cookies to be completed. I had 00:05:53 left on the clock – enough time to walk to the mat, sit down and try this mediation thing again. Wednesday joined me as well, but this time instead of shedding all over the purple leather couch, she laid down in front of me, protecting me while I sat lotus-style with pretty hands on my knees. This time it was far easier than in the morning. I imagined white light around myself, the dog and the house. I paid attention to the sounds going on around me. The sound of my breathing, the sound of Wednesday’s snort breathing, the sounds of my Of Courtly Love and Bawdiness Pandora station playing in the kitchen. I listened to what the house was saying, what the world was saying.
My mind began to clear. There is still whirling dervishes of thoughts but those were held back against the tide of light. Even for a few seconds, it was nice to just be.
Author: pookiebear
136 different kinds of weather
In the spring, I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. -Mark Twain
I’ve been circling around my blog for the last few months like a vulture to prey. I know that I should update because so much has happened since we closed on the house but I can’t find the will (as it were) to do the actual writing. So as the dead prey decomposes, so does this blog.
It would seem that my life is in flux, our life is in flux, though we have permanency (we closed on the house on 1/7/11, moved 1/13/11, TheHusband’s birthday), I have some sort of an income (I’m now working as an adjunct librarian at our local community college ) and our long laid plans are finally coming to fruition. We have started plotting our edible (fruit/veg/herb) and non-edible (flowers/shrubs) garden. I submitted a short story to a local contest. The pug, Ms. Wednesday, has had a few health scares but those seem to be under control. We are not poor, by anyones standards, and can enjoy the luxuries of roof over our head, clean water in our taps and the ability to purchase food. It’s hard to complain about our first world issues (shoes recently ordered were not the same color as on the website; I can only find our favorite bottled water in plastic bottles, not glass; etc) because in the larger scheme of things, they seem so trivial. So stupid.
I know the reasons TheHusband has been restless: this winter has been long (we woke this morning to find a dusting of the white stuff everywhere and it has been officially spring for a week) and most (if not all) of his hobbies are based out of doors. Cabin fever? Maybe. Lack of constant sunlight? Very much so. After living in California for over a decade, shuffling off to the greys of Michigan is a switch his body is not prepared for. He needs to feel the dirt between his fingers, eating the fruits of his labors.
We are depressed and that depression feeds back and forth to the other. I’m tired of being cold, of wondering when we will have a day when the sun will be out and it will BE warm and not an illusion as it is today. Regrets of why I, we – us, did not pursue living somewhere south or warm. Friends on social networks talk about flowers blooming, wearing skirts and flip-flops and all I can think of wrapping up in layers of clothing and drinking hot beverages to keep myself warm, inside and out.
In flux.
How to describe, then, when on the surface everything looks fabulous but you’re in misery? Misery is probably too strong of a word, more like conscious of the missing element. Something is missing and has been long before we made the move, bought the house, obtained the job. I’ve talked with friends who also feel it, that sense of self that seem to have locked itself away for awhile. Is it, then, a search for self? Everything I have long worked for is finally coming together, do I simply just need a new big life project to feel happiness? Maybe. It is, perhaps, about being centered about what it is I’m looking for? Probably. I have found that I am not alone in feeling as if they are missing the element of something in their lives when everything else is robust and happy. But we don’t want to talk about it – not to each other, not in our blogs, not to agony aunts. We keep it bottled up until we burst forth like an uncorked bottle of soda that has fallen. Some of it is about finding the center of ourselves, others it is for a search for some kind of meaning. The internet was to bring us close together, to commune with those like us and yet, when it comes to the inner parts of our soul, we hide and seek because retribution of differing opinions on these topics can be brutal. But it seems that for all the social networking we do to be connect with others, at the end of the day we are still alone in some fashion or another.
I wonder why that is? No one has an answer. Bourgeois, aging Generation X syndrome. Far too young for AARP, too old to think waking up in my own drunken vomit is a good thing. A slew of generation problems that go beyond the basics. To harp on comes off as snot nosed, spoiled Western brat. To ignore, causes distress and pain.
That is my confession.
SnowMIGeddon 2011: 14″ and still falling
Drift and fallen snow on our front porch.
The argument about Michiganders and snow can run both ways – “OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO DIE!” and “It’s Michigan. In winter. Of COURSE it’s going to snow.” While it has seemingly felt like it has not stopped snowing for the last month, we were caught in the snoMIgeddon of 2011, a storm front that ranged from southwest diagonally across the midwest and heading to the north-east. In Grand Rapids, coupled with the lake effect, we’re at 14″ and counting in the last 12 hours. Last night, when the storm started, TheHusband and I watched enthralled as the winds (clocked between 30-40mph) were bending some of the smaller trees nearly in half. This morning it was eerily quiet and the world was completely blanketed in white.
I have a small set onFlickr of the snow and our extreme shoveling from this morning. We haven’t attacked the driveway as of yet and that may wait until tomorrow.
Throbbing Manor: Exterior, Backyard (during, staged)
SnOMGeddon is coming, of course, starting tonight.
Of course.
Spring, where are you? Please hurry!
Throbbing Manor: Bootlegger’s Ballroom (before)
Throbbing Manor: Living Room (during)
Throbbing Manor: Dining Room (during)
Throbbing Manor: Exterior (during, staged)
As it is seemingly typical in those who live in all season states, when it’s one season we long for it to be another. I moaned, lamented, whined, whinged, complained and whatever other adjective you could possible use about the lack of snow here in the mitten state at the beginning of winter. That is, of course, until we got teased with snOMGeddon a million times (this is what lake effect weather will do to you) and while we aren’t technically in snowpocalypse, it just hasn’t quit fucking snowing.
With all that being said, Carrie (@librarybug) recently commented that it was only 60 more days until spring!, which cheered me the fuck up. After doom, gloom, dry skin, slush and mush, anything resembling the next season of course makes me happy. That is until I moan, lament, whine, whinge and complain that it is too goddamned hot in the summer and oh boy, can I not wait until fall/winter to arrive. Rinse, lather and repeat.
As part of the staging process of the house, the flipper dropped some cash on having the entire property (front, side and back) landscaped to nearly an inch in its life. This is, I hope, what we have to look forward to as the temperatures warm (with a few minor tweaks by us, of course). I’m now adding these exterior shots to remind me that spring really isn’t that far away.
Throbbing Manor: Master Suite (during, with some furniture)
Inspired my by fabulous friend Carrie Anne, I took the que from her when we started shopping for furniture to start looking at thrift/antique stores for pieces. We found a lot of really great pieces at amazing deals and now most of the pieces in our home have a story that goes beyond being mass produced. It gives them character and I love that.
Unintentionally we set out to do the master suite in mid-century modern, which started when I found the period credenza at lamb, who were selling off interior pieces of their store due to an upcoming remodel. The color of the credenza, which is now a dresser/tv stand, matched the family of colors on our sheets. The bed is a king platform bed, in slate, that we got from Overstock and we assembled ourselves. I also found an antique mid-century modern period dresser with the same lines/design at BlueDoor in “harvest apple gold”, also known as THE GREEN of the ’70s. Turns out they were discounting the dresser and coupled with a modest fee to repaint it in a color of our choosing, the final price is essentially the original retail price of the dresser.1
1. Yes, I’m aware I sound like a douche bag but what we paid for both dressers, including the repainting of one and delivery of both is significantly cheaper then buying one dresser even discounted from a mass produced furniture place. So while I may be or sound like a douche bag, I’m a douche bag whose saving benjamins.
Throbbing Manor: Hotel (during)
Almost the entirety of our living quarters at the hotel we lived at for nearly a month, save for our sleeping space.