Gaia Community: tinkonthebrink's Blog

a big new free happy unusual life

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:10:47 GMT

The last week of my life has been...turbulent. I can't even begin to describe it all, but it involved abandoned animals needing sanctuary, a thirteen year old who has never owned a pet caring for twenty animals and everyone lived through it, 8 hours of driving, my son's wedding, falling in love with his wife's family, chopping off my hair and finding this book. It is one of the books I would take to a desert island, or a dessert island for that matter. With cherries on top. I want all of you to go read it right now please.

Nina Wise teaches improv, which is to say, life, and I am in love with this book and I am not a self-help book kinda person but this is in a different realm. Did I mention that you should go read it right now? Hurry up.

Here's some quotes:

from Jack Kornfield's foreword: "I've been told the story of a six year old girl who asked her mother where she was going one afternoon. The mother replied that she was headed for the university to teach her students how to draw and paint. 'You mean they've forgotten?' her daugher asked, amazed."

and this one, from the author, might be my mission statement if I had such a thing: "We can, together, take this moment in human history to wake up to who we already know ourselves to be: a free people dedicated to a sane and just world made up of individuals who celebrate their common humanity and this planet of indescribable beauty through song and dance, poetry, and care for all sentient beings."

This book and me, we're getting married.

Now go read.

Tags: a big new free happy unusual life, nina wise, brilliant, wonderful

sacred space

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:47:56 GMT

I have this problem when I go to the optometrist and they make me choose things - "better here, or here?" - and the little lens flips back and forth and I'm all, like, well, they're both kind of interesting....or worse, "they look about the same". And this poor person has to say, "no, they aren't the same. Try it again." And then after awhile I just pick one to make them happy and to get them to stop asking. I'm pretty sure this is a metaphor for my life.

People say things like "I'm happiest when I'm at the ocean" and I say, "Oh, I LOVE the ocean!." Or "I really like the mountains" and I'm all like, "oh yeah, the mountains are amazing" and it just goes on and on. Mountains, deserts, oceans, lakes, stuck in traffic, sitting on the front porch, pretty much anywhere except the mall and I'm sure that on some level the mall is a sacred space too, I'm just oblivious to that one. Plus malls always smell funny. Not in a laugh-out-loud way, like funny weird. Like cinnabuns and fabric sizing and gluttony and some smell that comes off of bizarre mannequins wearing clothes that promise to make you cool and desirable and you can get 10% off your purchases today if you want to apply for a credit card. But I digress.

It sounds like one of those trite new agey things to say that all places are sacred, but if you can't be happy where you are, where are you going to be happy? If this spot right here, right now, isn't a sacred space, what exactly is wrong with it? Should we blow this particular spot up then? Let me leave first. Okay, whew, that was close. Oh, wait, new place, same problem. Oh look, I've created my own personal minefield of dissatisfaction! So although I'm not usually an all or nothing kind of person, it does seem that it's either all sacred or you have to commit to a lifetime of being almost happy and trying to figure out "better here, or here?" and I don't have the patience for that. Working on that mall thing.

Tags: QaR, peace, sacredness, locations, geography, malls, optometrist

I want to know everything, weigh nothing and live forever

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:54:57 GMT

It's a little daunting to want to know everything, but I don't let that cause me to have some kind of seizure of common sense.

Currently I'm reading Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano, a kind of history of the world and especially the Americas but not like any history you've ever read before. It's very magical and next I want to read it in Spanish because I want my Spanish to get back to being fluent. Then I want to read alI his other books too.

And I want to learn to knit so I can make clothes that doen't look so...normal. Orderly. Ordinary. I actually know how to knit but have never made anything larger than a flute case or a tiny stuffed animal.

I want to figure out how to build the first of the three playhouses we want to put up in our yard, out of salvaged, recycled things if possible.

I always want to know more about food and nutrition and agriculture and how what we eat affects the world around us. I am Michael Pollen's biggest fan. I want to learn which native plants would be a good choice to put in a living hedge around our yard - and which ones turn out to be pests (I've been unwittingly protecting a couple of multiflora roses in the yard even though I now know they're invasive and terrible, but I kept them because they're pretty. I'm sorry!). I want to learn which native plants we can eat (do you know, dandelion greens are $4/lb at the store?? That's crazy.)

I'm always reading more than one book, actually, more than three minimum, I'm always trying to revive the languages I knew and learn at least a few words in other ones, I periodically only cook Indian food for a month or so, Japanese food went on for several years, French food was a several year experiment, Vietnamese food when I lived in San Diego, Vegan for a while, raw foods for a while - I'm cooking my way around the world. Currently I'm boycotting cooking almost all together and just eating mostly raw again unless we go out. Plus eggs - I have some kind of egg obsession. Either raw quail eggs or runny yolked poached eggs, mmmm. And, inexplicably, sardines.

I've joked that I have adult ADHD and someone sent me to an online quiz on which I scored 81, which is over the top, go-seek-help-immediately kind of score (and I thought I was answering a little conservatively...) so that was pretty amusing. I don't have any complaints about the way my brain works though. It's helpful if the goal is to know everything about everything.

And Internet, you and me, we're BFF's.

Now I have to go do some yoga and take the dogs for a run. Just as soon as I look this one thing up...

Tags: QaR, learning, life, education, exploration, ADHD, food, knitting, fitness, weight

Are you playing enough in your life?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:50:54 GMT

I am playing all the time in my life. Sometimes I play in other people's lives a little bit too, but I try not to be intrusive about it. Is there some other way to be? If so, the instructions must be written in a very foreign language and then they got lost in the mail.

Tags: QaR, playfulness, playing, games

Look at him, isn't he cute?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:51:42 GMT

That's what I said. Those big brown eyes and this look that's weirdly like a house elf. Which is why we started calling him Dobby. I had no idea what I was doing.

We have three other dogs who are all, not by any means well-behaved, but are normal companion dogs. They hang out, play in the yard, go hiking, ride in the car, sleep on the bed (well, not maggie, but that's another story). They can be left safely in the house while I go to work. Even the baby, Lyra, is fairly trustworthy. But this dog...does anyone out there love terriers? I know people must, they breed them on purpose. He's a terrier/whippet mix, so he slinks around looking guilty in that whippet way (don't get me wrong, I love whippets - but you know, the tail-tucked thing, head down) and also goes and does terrible terrible things in that terrier way. He is extremely stubborn and does not care if I'm happy with him or not. He's horrifyingly clever. He turns on the water at the sink (and doesn't turn it off). He opens the gate latches and lets our other dogs out, one of whom is deaf (Maggie, the other-story-dog). If you don't give him what he wants he stares directly into your eyes and pisses on the floor. Then if you shriek and put him outside he slinks around like you're evil Lucius Malfoy and he is his namesake. I swear to you, this animal is here to test me. I keep hoping he is testing my ability to find him a home elsewhere but NO ONE WANTS HIM. No one in their right mind would want this dog. He is not cute in that Marley-bad-dog kinda way. He's just horrifying. And then after he does something terrible, which is about every 15 minutes or so, he slinks around BEFORE you even figure out what it was and looks at you over his shoulder and looks for all the world like Dobby the house elf.

Also, have I mentioned the barking? He has that piercing terrier bark and he will bark through any bark collar correction. We've tried 4 different ones. One of them gives an increasing shock up to ten times ( - I know this probably sounds terrible to some of you but I've tried them on myself and it's just this little buzz, sort of the level of a static shock when you shuffle across the carpet - I'm not electrocuting my dog, I swear to you) but he figured out that if he just keeps barking anyway, they all have a cutoff point, and then he can just keep barking. Forever. Really loudly.

So if any of you are in need of this dog, please let me know. I will pay shipping. And buy you dog food for him. And nominate you for sainthood. Just let me know.

Tags: Dobby, the worst dog in the world

Where are you going?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:59:59 GMT

I'm never sure. I suppose I should know, maybe get a map or make a plan. But I think that kind of thing is a little bit of an illusion - I can pretend that I know where I'm going but where I actually end up is very often unrelated to those plans. I've made friends with being an explorer in the world rather than relying on plans and maps. I respect the usefulness of intentions and maps are darn handy but I find that they are often, for me, just a guideline for what I should deviate from.

When I moved here (north carolina) from california, I left with the navigational tools of a tiny marble imprinted with a map of the world in a leather pouch on a necklace and a kalaidoscope. About 50 miles into the trip my son got out of the truck and bought a map, due to the belief that he was in the keeping of a crazy person. I do respect his viewpoint but I think I would have still gotten here, just driving toward the morning sun while periodically stopping to view the world's largest ball of string or whatever.

So I guess my answer here is, I don't know, surprise me.

Tags: QaR, life, travel, journey, path

Where do you belong?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 29 May 2009 09:32:21 GMT

Wherever I am. Not meant flippantly, but in each moment, wherever I am is exactly where I belong. Sometimes I tell myself that I don't belong here or there, I don't belong in line at the DMV, I don't belong in the sad low-life grocery store just down the road here, I'm better than all that. And then I have to remind myself all over again to stop being a snob and stop being semi-conscious and to really be in the moment I'm in, in the place where I am, with the people around me. And what I find kind of amazing and magical is that once that transition happens I get my magical powers back. I can make the grumpy and unhelpful person working at the DMV smile and have a much better day, I can transform the weird old lady at the store into a charmingly eccentric person, I can transform the world into what it's been all along, which is actually quite an advanced magical power. But available to everyone, because all of us are exactly where we belong, all the time.

Tags: Q&R, belonging, comfort, self, identity

What have you been procrastinating about?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:07:31 GMT

Recently I've been procrastinating about pretty much everything in my life except making this door that's going in our kitchen. I didn't want it to look ordinary and it needs to have a cat door in the bottom and it started as a wooden screen door so I cut pieces of wood to frame out the cat door (which is lockable so the cats can be banned from the kitchen while I'm cooking, which is one of the reasons for the door) and I had this ornate metal grate that I found at architectural salvage place a long time ago. I'm going to suspend it in the top screen with copper wire. But before that, there's been the painting. Primer, mottled black acrylic, two washes of burnt umber the second one streaked with a little black while wet, a transparent bronze glaze, then the torn pieces of handmade banana leaf paper then a thin wash of umber again to age the paper then the sealer. Then the same thing on the other side. Paint the hinges and the mending plates I decided to use for the wood frame around the kitty door - now they're old looking, copper and brown and they got just as many coats of paint as the door and then sealer. Drying time for each step. Paint the kitty door black because everyone knows that makes things invisible (?). Wood everywhere, sawdust, the dining room table covered with paper and hinges and metal plates for days now, the living room table used as a work surface for the door. The kitchen piling up with dishes, nothing else getting done except going to work for half of each day with Little Bit and doing my notes. Monday night I took time away and played cards with Krissy and Albert. I felt a little guilty but I've gotten over it. Last night we went out for dinner at our favorite dive and played pool. Night before last I only slept about an hour. It's gone from "let's put a door on the kitchen" to this insane art project obsession now.

When I'm done, which might actually be today, I'll post a picture of the door.

For now, I'll just tell you that it kind of matches the bathtub (although I have to say, that's a terrible pic of the tub. It is not that shiny or bright at all, the colors in the photo were very oversaturated, but that image is stored in Krissy's computer because that was a dark time when my computer was unwell and I'm just too lazy to go get into her computer, send myself the pic and color correct it. So just imagine it looking much darker and less shiny than that shot).

Okay, back to the door now.

Tags: QaR, procrastination, avoidance, delay, kitchen door, art projects

What are your favorite 15 minutes of the day?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:51:10 GMT

I love all of my minutes, and I especially do love waking up, cozy under quilts, dogs tucked in and cats piled on top, hearing the first birds outside our window, the early birds out getting their worms, and looking over at Krissy who is always still asleep at this point, all sweet and warm. Sometimes I prod her a little bit to get her to start sleep-talking and sleep-singing, which she does every time even though she doesn't believe me when I tell her about it later. She sings these little mumbly hard to identify melodies in her sleep-voice and keeps right on sleeping. She is a very good sleeper. I am a very good waker and I love those first morning moments a lot.

Tags: QaR, minutes, time, day, favorite times

What question would you liked to be asked each day?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:31:39 GMT

What was your happiest moment of this day?

I just talked about this with someone the other day - it's an excercise Elizabeth Gilbert gave during an interview when Eat Pray Love came out. And the point of it, at least for me, is that I spend all day looking at each patch of sunshine and shadow, each hug and each kiss, each delicious meal, each tiny exchange and moment as "is this it? Is this the one?". With a little side order of "how can I make this moment THAT moment, the one?" and suddenly the magic is everywhere. It is my favorite question, even on the worst days. Especially on the worst days. And maybe especially on the best days too.

Tags: QaR, question, values, life, reminders

What choice would you like to make?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:28:51 GMT

I'll have the strawberries, and some sliced bananas.

I want the funny brown pottery cup this morning.

These red sandals made from recycled plastic are officially the cutest shoes in the world.

Where did I put my favorite pen? Addicted to those G-2's.

I think today is a pink-and-purple-skirt day.

I think today I'll cook carrots and kale with the animal food.

The lupines should be planted over there. And the daylilies next to them.

Krissy is the sweetest, nicest, best person ever. I'm going to go kiss her, right now.

Tags: QaR, choices, decisions, options

Where, or what, would you like to finally surrender?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:36:10 GMT

Well, nothing. If I wanted to surrender it I'd do it but I'm clinging to my shreds and illusions out of sheer love. Aren't you?

Tags: QaR, surrendering, self, letting go

for your consideration

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:13:20 GMT

When people split up it sometimes happens that they get very angry and vindictive. I'm on good terms with everyone I've ever been with (although I've lost contact here and there) except for my ex-husband/father of my child who was furiously angry that I would leave. There's really no way to control someone else's emotional reactions and people will say and do some pretty intense things out of pain and fear and anger. It really doesn't do any good to blame them for that.

But sometimes that reactionary thing ruins lives. For example, women are most at risk of violence/death from abusive husbands when they leave. People do crazy stuff when they're desperately miserable and craving their outlet. Another example here, John's partner, Jeff, has an ex who decided that if he was leaving her she would suddenly decide he had been exposing himself to their child/child's friend. Now, I don't know Jeff, or really know John for that matter, but this seems to clearly be a very angry ex who wants to blow up someone's life because damn it, he ruined mine and why the hell not? Personally, I would have to say the why not part is because anger and vindictiveness poison the person who holds them much more than anything they can do will harm anyone else, even if they land them in jail, even if they literally kill them. It's such a miserable, toxic thing to take on. I am so sad for someone who chooses that, as sad as I am for Jeff being stuck in a florida jail, as sad as I am for John and Lala.

If anyone who reads here doesn't follow John's blog, the post about Jeff's dilemma is here. MamaSue has set up a chip-in widget here, and although I wouldn't ever push anyone toward monetary contributions, especially via this site, go with your own inclinations. It's there if you are so inclined. I was.

And in the comment thread is Jeff's address if you would like to send encouraging snail mail. I will.

Good thoughts for all involved.

Tags: John, Jeff, Satya-Seer, angry ex, fear, anger, recrimmination, hope, help

Do you find it hard to assert yourself?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:01:03 GMT

Oh my, no. I don't mind the challenge of having to be tactful about it, but most of the time what goes through my head comes right out my mouth - some kind of thought bulimia. Surprisingly, this hardly ever gets me into trouble.

I didn't use to be like this. As a child I was very quiet, out of self-preservation. Then the what-the-hell switch flipped and I should have legally changed by name to "Blurt" from that point on.

I'm saved I think partly by having a sense of humor and partly by not really being meanspirited but I have been known to tactfully point out at meetings connected to my livelihood, "well, that's stupid, isn't it?" just in case people weren't getting that policies or plans were idiotic. I'm also saved by generally having very nice manners and I think this is underrated. Shaking hands and knowing the social rules and saying please and thank you will take you quite a long way. Thank you, catholic grade school. You finally were good for something.

If Albert ever shows up on this site again he can testify - I have no problem asserting myself. Krissy could tell you too, but she's a mime. God, they sound like imaginary friends at this point, don't they? I'm going to go pester Albert now. (He has computer access issues when he is at school which is only a problem because he doesn't come home often enough. See how tactful I am?).

Tags: QaR, self, assertiveness, needs

What are your legacies?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Sat, 16 May 2009 11:09:52 GMT

In any group of people, even a group of weird people, I'm always and obviously the weirdest person in the group. I don't mind that anymore - in fact, it's now become a badge of honor. And a whole lot of that is because of how I grew up.

I'm an only child of a reluctant mother and a father who was generally absent, either because he was at work or else absent when present. My mother was not very forthcoming (I was in high school before I found out she had been married before she married my father. And her husband had died in bed with her.) so it took me quite a while to figure some things out. This was complicated by my having a prolonged illness as a child that left me somewhat isolated with crazy mom, during which time I formulated the theory that this was normal, all mothers are like this, these were just the rules for life. I've mostly gotten over that but every single day I still do things that I know come from my very eccentric mother.

Her mother was french, my mom spoke a little french but by the time I was an adolescent my french was better than hers and mine wasn't that great. But I didn't figure out until much later that so many of her odd behaviors came from a different culture. No other mothers gave their children bowls of coffee and milk for breakfast with a slice of a baguette cut in a very specific way and the butter had to go perfectly to the edges. Now add to this that the mysterious first husband was greek and my mother worked with his family at their restaurant. My mother is the only person I've known who made their own phyllo pastry. Now add to that that she was completely crazy. When she developed alzheimer's the doctor asked us "how long has she been like this?" meaning the bizarre random behaviors, and my dad and I said, "well, she's always been like this." As an adult, I now think she was one of the craziest people I've ever known, and she was so completely confident in her craziness that it was difficult to question. This was a bit challenging to take on as a child but now I'm kind of glad for all of it. She sent me out to play in tornados and let my drunk uncle pull me behind his car on my sled in the snow. She was horribly hostile and mean sometimes and unpredictably so, and other times entirely charming. I never knew what I would come home to and became very adaptable, and very private. I grew my own world and I've carried that world with me ever since, but a big part of my world today comes from these people - my eccentric mother, my absent but very charming father, my grandmother, the first husband I never knew my mother had, I carry all of that in who I am, every day.

I wonder sometimes how things will spin for my own child, what he will congeal out of his childhood as he keeps going on through his life. But I can't know. I'm a different sort of parent than the parents I had, but he shares with me having a not ordinary childhood. I hope he takes that and runs with it. It's a privileged position, being the weird person.

Tags: QaR, life, legacies, past, childhood, family, ancestors

Where would you like to go deeper in your life?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:07:48 GMT

Yes, well I have a problem with wanting to delve deeply into approximately a bazillion things and of course that kind of thinking will have you waking up at 4am not able to sleep, like now for instance. And internet, you are no help at all with this affliction. But everything is so interesting, and I think there are supposed to be some people who know a little bit about a lot of things. We're the ones you want on your team for trivial pursuits - the game, I mean, but also probably real life trivial pursuits. In fact, that could be the title for my life, trivial pursuits.

I apologize to anyone with real ADD for jokingly saying that I have it. Actually, I don't think I have an attention deficit. I have an attention surplus. But I just woke up from a very ADD dream where I was trying to make an ice cream sandwich for someone who asked for one and I would go to get the cookies and forget the spoon then go back for the spoon and forget where I'd put the cookies down then a friend came in and we started talking about living in california and american beauty and an imaginary pie shop on the corner then I couldn't find the ice cream and then I noticed that I had a pet I didn't realize I had which was some kind of lemurish thing and through it all I kept going back to trying in vain to assemble this ice cream sandwich - mind you, all that was required was to spread ice cream on a cookie and squash another cookie on top but there were too many interesting things going on to get through it. It was a lot like real life, except in real life I wouldn't have any problem with completing the sandwich. But still, the same condition: a surplus of interesting things.

Now, with this in mind, can you imagine how renovating our house is going? My fear is that maybe in real life I WON'T get the damn sandwich together. In fact, I think the dream was probably actually about our house.

Having said all that (and if you're still with me, you're tenacious, aren't you?), I'm happy about being interested in everything and never ever bored. I've accepted that I will never stick with one thing long enough to become a rocket scientist but I have skills that will get me by in almost every area of real life. I could build a house (which would be easier than renovating this one while living in it, but this is fun), do the wiring, everything but the plumbing which I am just awful at, I could make my own clothes, grow food, cook the food, live pretty well on a deserted island except for getting lonesome. I can turn out unembarrassing artwork, take a decent photograph, write a research paper with proper footnotes, edit, write copy, do maths, speak a little of a couple of languages and an awful lot of english, do a very nice tattoo with bamboo and ink, knit a little, build a kite, suture a wound and sail a small boat. I'm fluent in medical terminology, could deliver a baby if there were no or few complications, open a surgical suite and scrub everyone in, identify and hand off the instruments, give an injection, start an IV, prepare IV admixtures and I type like a demon. I built a great kid who is a lovely adult who types even faster than I do and I can make a mean pot of veggie chili. This is not a resume that will get me into Rocket Scientist School, but you know what? I don't care.

Call me shallow.

Tags: QaR, life, exploration, insight, intuition

What are you sensitive about?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:58:19 GMT

I'm feeling a little slighted that this QaR never appeared in my email. I double checked and did a search and nope, not there. I got Tara's response and went and found the question. Hmmm. I'll try not to take it personally. But I am feeling a bit sensitive about it.

"What topics or circumstances are you more sensitive about than others? What life experiences have helped you relate to others who've been through the same?"

I hope I'm sensitive to most things. I hope that all my life experiences help me relate to others, whether we've been through the same or not. I mean, you don't have to break your own bones to be a compassionate orthopedic surgeon, do you? Or have cancer to be an oncologist? I hope I use the experiences I have to relate to others whether we're in the same boats or not. I hope. I don't want to miss things.

Tags: QaR, sensitive, experiences, life, sensitivity

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:38:22 GMT

I want to be Glinda the Good Witch.

I'll settle for being the good faerie.

But that whole "growing up" thing, that throws me. When I look back on things I wrote when I was 13 or 14, I was the same person I am now. I've learned lots of stuff, but I was the same person. When my son was 13 or 14, he was absolutely as smart and articulate and funny as he is now - although he's learned tons of things, of course, since then. When I'm around kids I try to keep that in mind now. I try not to ever ever talk down to them and the flip side of that is that I try not to think of my life in terms being a grown up.

I guess what I want most is to avoid becoming hardened into patterns that violate who I really am. It's so easy to settle in, physically and mentally and emotionally. People start to slouch and slump and sit more than walk and walk more than skip or run or dance and get used to eating burgers and fries and suddenly they're surprised to be old and grey and stiff and stuck in their uncomfortable hardened bodies. But things continue on the trajectory we set in place.

I like to do math without a calculator unless I'm in a big hurry and I like puzzle games and games of all kinds and I love video games. I would rather read the book than see the movie, although I'll see the movie later.

I don't want to be cool or in control or to stop having questions. I want to be unguarded, I want to have naked eyes, I want to be open to the world.

Sometimes when I look at old people I do really have to struggle to see the person underneath everything that hardened into their shell. I don't want that.

Oh, do you know, Billie Burke was 54 years old when Wizard of Oz was filmed? I was surprised. And before the film was made she said

" It's a divine part.

There's child enough in all of us to be thrilled with the
settings and the feeling
of this picture.
It has terrified me a little
to think of living up to
the children's idea of
what a Good Fairy must be.
But I can only hope
with all my heart
that I won't disappoint them."

I guess I want also not to disappoint - maybe when I grow up.

Tags: QaR, adult, maturity, development, future, self

What aspects of yourself do you deny or reject?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:59:42 GMT

I had started to post this response which was way too long and my cat wisely shut my computer off.

So here is my much more concise answer: I can't possibly answer what it is I'm in denial about. By definition, I'd be the last to know.

And I don't think I reject aspects of myself. Some things I want to improve or learn or change but I don't reject who I am now or the life I live now. That would be silly.

Or maybe I'm just in denial about that...

Tags: QaR, self, personality, identity, shadow

In what areas of your life do you feel you're running?

http://rapunzel.gaia.com — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:47:23 GMT

I think it's more wandering about than running....

Today I've wandered through making food for the animals, doing several loads of laundry, cleaning out the fridge, washing all those emptied containers (and the fur folks got the goods), doing half a dozen loads of dishes, shopping for tofu chili components and making a gigantic pot of this delicious stuff, going to get Little Bit and working with her, cleaning litter pans and scoopin dog poop and the day's only half over. Spliced in between things has been talking to friends on phone and IM, answering emails, glancing into a book that I don't have time to read yet and contemplating cleaning out the back seat of the truck while not doing so because it's raining and I think if I stall I can do it non-drowned-rat style. Krissy's niece will be staying with us again tonight (and I'd be happy if she stayed here always)

We're starting a 21 day cleanse in our household today - no animal products, no caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar, no gluten. Fun! I do love to play with my food.

Now I'm trying to figure out how I want to paint the chair I found on the side of the road. I'll post a pic eventually. First I have to even the legs out though. The chair's I mean, not mine.

Tags: QaR, running, escape, excitement, future, fear