Practice

So I went to yoga today for the first time in probably three years. Went straight for the advanced class, which means I spent an hour and a half making a fool of myself. My muscles may be wimpy, but no one can say I don't have moxie.

Yogi man said something worth sending out, though. He said, "Move through this pose slowly. When you find a weak place, stay there for a while. Try to make it stronger. Too often we turn to momentum to get us over weak spots. But if instead you go slowly and master all the weak spots, you'll get to know yourself quite well as you move. And when you get to the final pose, it will be real and earned, and not just momentum."

I think about relationships, of the friend kind and of the love kind, and how often I'm flung into them by all that moxie and momentum. Easy to propel myself right over the surface of weak spots in myself and weak spots in a relationship, just trying to hit the end-pose. Better maybe to stay in that uncomfortable shaky-muscle place for a minute longer, trying to make a weak spot become a little bit stronger.

Practice, and all is coming.

the kind of woman

I'd like to be the kind of woman who takes injury, insult, and hurt, absorbs it, heals it, and turns it back out on the world as kindness and love.

I'd like to be the kind of woman who decides to move to Maine and plants a blueberry farm--a woman with a blueberry farm and a bed and breakfast, or perhaps a tiny chocolate shop in southern France. A woman who tends sheep in Ireland. By a lake. I want to be brave enough to choose that kind of purposeful, centered life for myself. The kind of woman that maybe other people call "gutsy" but that down in her heart knows is just peace-seeking.

I'd like to be the kind of woman who forgives, and who never says anything out of turn.

I'd especially like to be the kind with smile lines, the kind who says only kind things.

I'd like to be the kind of woman that secretly knows all sorts of crazy stuff, like how to speak languages and how to make sfogliatelle and how to play Auld Lang Syne on the piano at New Years.

I'd like to be the one with a husband who I hold hands with and send secret smiles to.

I'd like to be the kind of woman with light and love and the honey of human kindness in her words, instead of venom, revenge, judgment, and self-pity. I'd like to be the kind of woman who is trying to heal others, not trying to ruin.

(originally written the first of October 2012)

November and life looks like

Well, it finally happened. I mean I knew the grapes tasted funny when I started eating them, but I hadn't thought that the lavender chemicals from the Mr Clean Car Wash potpourri sachet would actually permeate the grape skins. In any event, the Poison Control lady was very kind.

My coworker brought a box out to me and said, "Don't scream, don't scream." He then announced that our Norwegian nativity had come and it had been sitting behind us waiting to be opened all morning. I ran into the office and whisper-screamed.

I mean, that nativity is all I've talked about for the last month after all.

Saturday found me at the Home Depot. Well, me and all the rest of the town. I bought a lemon tree. A lemon tree and a strand of promises from the Garden Expert Lady that it would blossom and produce fruit all year round, so long as I was sufficiently tricking it into thinking it was living in a subtropical climate. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's tricking plants into thinking they're living in a subtropical climate.

I also spray painted a small shelf and hung it on my wall. Three cheers!

To say nothing of JRR Tolkien's Christmas Letters to his children arriving in a parcel tonight at my house. Come to think of it, it has been a day of magic, hasn't it.