I’m feeling feelings. And I don’t like it!

I know not what they’re doing except they’re doin’ sumthin’!

The new flowers remedies. Rather, botanicals. These essences are created from cacti, flowers from a tree, flowers from the ground.

To iterate from a post prior, these are new botanicals from two new (to me) companies. Bach flower essences are the most commonly known; I’ve used them plenty. It was time for change.

Receiving and Creativity are the foci for these alternative remedies. So new remedies, new companies AND new themes! That’s a lotta new! I’m ready to embark on this journey, wherever it leads, and, aware of its significance to record it.

In Day One, they’ve led to:

Emotions.

Locked-up & locked-down emotions. Long suppressed, oppressed and repressed emotions rooted in my early childhood.

Actually found myself crying last night! I make spectacular efforts not to cry. To stuff all tears, and emotions generally, into my stomach so no one knows of them. (You’d think I was a guy by the way I deal with my emotions, haha.)

I am a survivor who’s developed extraordinary skills and means to survive. Not crying is instrumental to that endeavor.

* Vivid Visuals.

Specific and clear memories of themes and incidences from my early school days (i.e., second grade!) and home life. Not one is a good, uplifting or joyful memory!

The ghosts of ghastly experiences are surfacing to be recognized, heard and healed. Not fun. But necessary if I’m to grow and heal. Which of course is the purpose of botanical remedies!

* Moodiness.

Heaviness. A palpable sense of life being weighty and I wearied by it and under that world on my shoulders and back.

Not new feelings and sensations. Not by a long shot! I am simply aware of them and observing.

* Tears.

Swallowed. Know I mentioned it already but there it is again. Like a giant glacier of long-frozen internalized emotions are undergoing heating by a handheld blow dryer. Certainly won’t be a rapid thaw!

I prefer not to feel than to feel. Or perhaps I’ve simply cultivated the habit after too many years of too many traumas and losses and have been forced to forget what normal flowing emotions are. A prospect worth considering as I move forward. Rather, as the botanical remedies move me forward.

* Sadness.

Spectacular sadness.

* Hunger.

For warmth.

* Resistance.

To warmth. Because it returns me to the primal coldness of my childhood mother.

For the human being, and within the human heart, what can grow in frigidity?

Definitely massive mother issues.

* Prayer.

I pray for support as I come face to face with the coldness. One tenuous step at a time.

I hope this journey gets easier as it and I within it go on.

I’m done on Day One of this particular Journey of the Flowers.

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Speak up! They didn’t hear you in Greece!

Her hair’s a curly shoulder-length bob. A mediocre dye job.

Her hot-pink blouse suggests youthfulness but the lines in her face belie her age. Around 50 I’d say.

She sits “alone” at a table in the otherwise quiet cafe on an otherwise quiet cold night after the snow flurries.

Her black laptop and cell phone keep her company. Her cell phone keeps ALL of us company, whether we want it or not. We are privy to all things personal from a Bitchy Blonde who will not shut up.

At her age, she should know better.

Her personal conversation rolls on. And on. Loudly. And on. Still loudly. 15 minutes becomes 30. Still loudly. Still way more personal than the public wants or needs to know.

Only an empty table separates us. After a while, I give her a look. Eye to eye. Not a glare. Not knives hurled from the eyes.

Rather, the look of observation. The look that reveals nothing. The look that says: “I SEE YOU EXACTLY AS YOU ARE. I SEE YOUR BEHAVIOR FOR EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. DO YOU?”

The most powerful look you can give. The most liberating TO give. The potentially most disturbing to receive.

It’s like … catching your kid with his hand in the cookie jar. Say nothing. Just look. It places all burden of awareness on the one behaving badly.

She catches my poker-face direct stare. Turns the volume of her conversation down from LOUD to medium. Turns her back toward the room to face the wall. As if that creates a wall of privacy.

It doesn’t.

Hers is a voice that carries.

Clear across the cafe. I know. Because, fed up, annoyed and disheartened by overall public behavior and hers, I pack up my stuff for a table clear across the cafe. It’s a move of sacrifice. What I gain in distance from the Bitchy Blonde who won’t shut up I lose in a socket for the computer.

Pop-pop-pop! Her p’s punctuate the peacefulness . Sssss-sssss-ssss! Her s’s snake through the air.

I plug in earbuds. Crank up Pandora. Still she remains in my peripheral vision. A reminder of selfishness and rudeness of People in Public With Cell Phones.

I rush through the lemon-lavender shortbread cookie I’d intended to enjoy at leisure. Swallow the last of the Americano. (The best Americanos in town are at the Wild Iris!)

I pen a note in my mini-notepad. Tear out the page. Fold it twice.

She’s finally ended the conversation but is not off her phone. She’s mysteriously changed tables too to one near mine. A signal to vamoose.

I pack up prematurely, heave the heavy backpack onto my shoulders. Step over to her table. She’s typing on the phone, glued to it as if it’s her very source of oxygen. Doesn’t even glance up when a complete stranger’s standing before her at her table.

She reeks of self-centeredness and self-absorption. It’s its own scent. A stench really.

I place the folded note on the black laptop she’s yet to crack open. And walk out, glancing over my shoulder to ensure The Bitchy Blonde’s not following me with a raised knife.

The note reads:

“Your personal talk is intrusive and disrespectful. Next time consider taking it outside. Thank you.”

+ + +

Yeah, the new flower remedies (see post prior) — with an emphasis on self-expression — are already doin’ their thing.

Already I’ve gleaned a new purposeful role: As Johnny Appleseed, Spreading the Seeds of Courtesies & Sensitivities Where There Are None.

And instead of a bag of seed, carrying a notepad and pen remains imperative.

Yeah, gonna be an interesting journey on the new botanical remedies indeed!

Flowers & a fellow (who’s not so fine)

Today’s a propitious day.

As concisely as possible, a new flowers regime is begun. Flowers meaning remedies of flowers, cacti, natural elements. The Bach flowers are most commonly known; these however are not from Bach but other companies as yet untried.

I’m super excited to see where these new flowers, botanicals and earthy elementals (focused on themes of Receiving and Creativity) lead.

Having worked with many flower remedies through the years, I can attest to their effectiveness (if the right remedies are chosen) in addressing issues, promoting awareness and growth and heightening one’s vibrations.

Also, I’m “wired for flowers” — and all things in alternative health and healing, including herbs — so energetic shifts are pretty noticeable. Writing on this is a worthy undertaking.

That’s that in a nutshell.

Perhaps the botanicals are speaking already!

At a casual weekly gathering over drinks, I bumped into G, a man around guesstimated 61.

On a Listening Scale of 1-10, 10 being a superb listener (i.e., me, sister) and 1 being terrible, G. rates -10.

He excels, however, in talking. Talking talking talking. He endures and glosses over another’s comments until it’s his turn to speak again. Which is most of the time in his world.

His style of “interaction” is not uncommon. Not by a long shot! Like most yakkers and poor listeners — inseparable traits — he is arrogant, self-centered. He is Mr. Right. As in always right. Mr. Right with interesting stories. I give him that.

As a mate, he’d be gawd-awful.

As a friend, he fares little better. Unless you’re a guy content with talking about common interests. Anything outside G.’s fields of interest, you’d get more response talking to your kitchen table.

We’ve “interacted” on numerous occasions. Today’s took a novel twist. He actually asked what my job is. “I work in radio. Run the board, some announcing, call-screening.”

“Oh.”

That flat. That uninterested. That dead-ending.

Emboldened kindly by the new remedies, I took his lackluster response as a launch into a probing discussion about G.’s favorite topic: himself!

The gist: He’s interested in what others say ONLY AS IT APPLIES TO HIM. Only if he can relate. Only if another’s “share” provides him information or a tool useful to him.

The markings of the self-absorbed, n’est pas?

My style of relating is as far on the other end of the scale as could be! I’m a Walking Ear. Selfless. Interested in all things and all people. I can — and have — spent countless hours listening to others. Including total strangers. Learning about their most private secrets.

And they couldn’t tell you my name or single fact about me!

Though I don’t like them — people — I’m fascinated by their behavior both good and bad, helpful and harmful.

I love love love to learn! Mine is a boundless curiosity. Part of what makes me a good listener.

What I learned about G. today is why he’s the arrogant self-centered but also interesting man I recognized him to be on first meeting many months ago.

And anytime ya learn something — be it about someone, from someone or both — that’s always a good thing.

Your mileage may differ. G.’s certainly does. 🙂

Be Wrong and Be Paid!

Know the best job in the world to have?

Weatherman.

You get to be wrong all the time and still keep your job!

I write this as snow flurries whiz past my window in crowded chaos. Looks like the starting line at the Boston marathon when the proverbial gun goes off.

The weather prediction?

Not a word from the Wise Weathermen about the white stuff! Rain, yes. A 35% chance. Predicted temp of 49 F. It’s 44 F, my thermometer says.

They’re in the ballpark anyhow.

This ain’t some rinky-dink forecasting service. It’s weather.com. One of the biggest services around. Tons of high-level technology, satellites, yadayada at their disposal.

So how is it that my eyes disprove them – frequently?

Yeah, that snow that’s nowhere to be seen in the forecast is really coming down.

I’d like to be able to write “I wish I had a job like that. Where being wrong consistently has no bearing on my job or pay.” Rest assured, they make much more than I.

But to write that would be a lie.

I’d fire myself for such incompetency. Honest to god. No exaggeration. My work ethics are that impeccable, my commitment to quality product that uncompromising.

To y’all at weather.com, I wave my hand bye-bye like those flurries waving past that window. The flurries that you didn’t predict! Your credibility’s gone up in smoke. Sailed down the river. Gone with the wind.

I’d say get with the program but I know better. I’d say find yourselves new jobs. Again, know better.

Biggest difference between you ‘n’ me, aside from the big bucks, is that every night I can go to sleep at night knowing I did good at my job.

The night that you prob’ly forecast as day. 😉

Follies on Friday

Some folks simply need to find new jobs.

 

 

Pop! Pop! go the balloons. And my heart.

So the super-duper birthday party last week.

You may attribute my silence to being crashed out on the floor from all the excitement.

I’m on the floor all right! From disappointment and heartache. Because no one showed up.

Was to be a party of four — all March birthdays. To you, four does not a party make. To me, loner that I am and much too isolated for much too long, it is!

The shindig was arranged through Meetup.com. A giant site for meeting people, not dating!

One gal bailed on the morning of the party. No explanation. Just boom, changed her RSVP from Yes to No.

That left three. Still a party, in my book. Still super-exciting since having anyone in my space aside from roommates is so foreign.

Nancy and Debra. Also March babies (like yours truly) and friends to each other. They were coming together.

Until an hour — AN HOUR — before the party, I got a message.

“My friend doesn’t feel like going. Since she’s my ride, we’re not coming.”

Repeat. My friend DOESN’T FEEL LIKE GOING.

Just like that. Like today’s typical self-centered the-world-revolves-around-me 22-year-old. Except she’s not. Guesstimated age: 50.

I wanted to throw up. But I couldn’t. Wanted to cry. The tears lodged in my stomach then hardened into unmovable rock.

My stomach: the lifetime repository for all pains, hurts, angers, disappointments and black emotions. I *really* dislike crying. “Big girls don’t cry” my mother (yes mother, not father — there’s a gender twist!) implored me but not my younger sister, the star child she adored who could do no wrong while I was all wrong for being alive).

So I accept stomach problems in exchange. (Oh yeah. Add hate into the stomach mix. Major mother issues unresolved.)

The party aftermath, it wasn’t pretty. Best leave that alone.

The house, however, it was pretty. Truly beautiful. Sparkly clean. Such mindfulness  in the decorations. Simple, playful and creative. Such JOY in creating it all over several days.

And the food. Did I mention the joy of shopping? In the breaking of bread together?

Consider it mentioned.

Oh, and what of the homemade chocolate torte? That I decorated with the same joy and excitement as the rest of the party prep.

Two slices I had then into the trash it went.

Like I’ve long said: People. They ruin everything.

It’d be on my gravestone were I to have one. I won’t. So consider that my final thought on humanity.

And the party-poppers.

A birthday party to remember indeed.

People in my home. What a concept!

I’m super excited!

For Friday we party!

We = three ladies also with March birthdays whom I’ve never met. I created the party through Meetup.com. (I’m a member of various Meetup groups.)

Okay, I was hoping for a bigger crowd, say 8 or so. But I’m happy for half that! My social life/circle has been nil — or damn close to it! — for way way waaay too long!

My efforts to turn that ship around are strident and sincere. Simply having people in my space is a novel adventure! Well, save for the cable dude or repairman. Having roommates and related dramas and traumas through the years hasn’t exactly encouraged a brisk social life either!

I’m a girl with a plan. A party plan! For the celebration this Friday evening.

First up: Be A Kid!

The guests are requested to bring their favorite food from when they were kids and mom (hopefully) said you can have ANYTHING you want for your birthday dinner!

They’re not to publicly post what the food is! So if we end up with 4 Jellos, so be it! We won’t. Jello wasn’t my fav birthday dish. We could however end up with 3! Point is to be a kid again and surprises! Surprise us with the dish that rings your birthday bell! That’s what birthdays are about. Surprises!

Oh yeah, I am providing cake with candles. Jellos and cake. Okay, not the height of nutrition but hey, it’s our birthday month. Indulge for a day! (P.S. I sure did on my birthday yesterday!)

Next: Get Your Goof On!

Wacky. Tacky. Just plain gross. Bring a white elephant for a gift swap-and-steal. Don’t go into debt for this gift! And if you truly don’t have any white elephants in your closet — I truly do not, minimalist & anti-clutter nazi that I am! — thrift stores are packed with possibilities. Where I’m headed soon!

Next: Bring a sense of humor.

It’s Game On! I loooooooooove fun party board games that both entertain AND engage the brain. (If my brain’s not engaged, I’m out!) Frequent scouring of thrift stores has yielded a trio of classics: Pictionary, Taboo & Cranium. Yes!

Online research returned other huge hits: Wits & Wagers, Balderdash and Cards Against Humanity — which sounds like an ABSOLUTE HOOT! Can’t wait to host a Game Night and play! Soon, soon!

Especially ’cause I’m TOTALLY NOT politically correct AND don’t whine cry and get all offended when someone looks my way like so many Americans do! From all I’ve read, Cards Against Humanity is THE game for people with a SENSE OF HUMOR. Liberals stay home and be miserable.

My vision for parties and play and game nights is a seed longtime beneath the ground. Longtime less-than-fertile soil has prevented that from blossoming.

 

Tide is turning, life season changing, slowly yet surely. The party Friday is a big deal. A turning in the road. A sign of life getting better and fun ‘n’ play, loooooooooooooooooooooong absent, returning!

Three people in the home doesn’t sound like a lot to most people. However, to me, emerging from the Darkness and Isolation and Extended Deep Freeze, it’s huge!

I’m super excited!

And I thank these three ladies for coming! May our party celebrating our shared birthday month be a blast, our laughter a roar, our shared favorite birthday foods tasty. Even if it means a potluck of 3 Jellos!

Yes! I Made It!

What’s there to say today?! Except:

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy Birthday to you!

Happy birthday dear meeeee.

Happy birthday to you!

Did I write “say”? Make that sing!

It is indeed my birthday. March 15. Ides of March. Historically and culturally significant as the day that Caesar was killed.

Not to put a dampener on the day! Wasn’t there, neither am I responsible. Those dudes’ll hafta duke it out and figure it out through their own karmic paths.

Today’s birthday has a little more punch than the norm. It’s the last of my 50s. Next year’s the big 6-0. Wow! Yikes! I’m gettin’ up there in the years!

However, today’s not the day to think that far ahead.  Plenty of days for that.

Today, at 59, I’m grateful to be alive. That simple. That real. That poignant.

That gratitude of simply being alive hasn’t characterized many former birthdays. Or really any, if I’m to be honest.

Today, however, I feel the winds of change beneath my feet. Lifting me with my bare feet ever so gently off the ground and moving me forward. Like an invisible walkway they’ve got at airports.

Moving me along, in a slow glide, away from the Darkness. The Darkness (most acute 2008-2011) that nearly killed me, destroyed me.

Yikes! Such painful words to speak on this birthday! Let them be spoken and immediately cleansed from the air!

swwwwiiiiishhh swwwwwwwiiiishhh sweeps the cosmic featherduster!

There! Done!

59.

Who am I? 59 begs the question. Food for contemplation for sure. Much could be written, expressed, revealed.

In greatest brevity, I’m a storehouse of stories.

Now’s not the time for more.

It’s enough to say, simply:

I am alive!

I thank my mother for being a part of the process and plan, the grander plan that ALL of our lives are.

I thank my father, too, for his part of the process and plan and, most of all, for wanting me to be born. (Not a sentiment my mother shared; can, does that wound ever heal?)

I thank me, my spirit, for having the courage to return to the planet for another lifetime. This lifetime. Took a lot of guts and fortitude to take that on.

Is there still work to do? Uh-huh uh-huh! Give me the strength and grace to do it. Do it all!

I am grateful to be alive.

And on that closing note … cake!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birthday Me! Almost. Game’s On!

Balderdash. Cards Against Humanity. Wits ‘n’ Wagers.

In alphabetical order.

Have I got an opinion? Nein. Have I played these? Not a one!

These party games get rave reviews! On that basis, the trio’s soon to arrive, thank you, Amazon. 🙂

Today’s the eve-eve of my birthday. The Ides of March — 50 points if you know the historical significance of March 15!

So few Americans know! Then again, too few can write a basic proper sentence or know the difference between your/you’re, there/their and its/it’s — do not get me started on that one!

There’s a lot I wish to create and accomplish in this coming birthday year.

• Writing for pay. Supporting myself through meaningful and creative work. Life-purposeful work. Top of the list.
• Play! The era of living under the dark cloud is passed. (Past) time to let the sun into my world.
• Shine! Me. (Past) time for me to shine! To come out from the grave, from under the rock and be. Just Be. Without fear of reprisals, repressions, repercussions and severe punishments that defined my childhood. Learning to Be and Become: big yes!
• Social connections. Friends. A support system loooong denied me. Also on the Birthday Wish List.

Say hellooooooo to Game Night!

I’m birthing it as we speak.

I loooooove fun party games! Up until recently, I didn’t have a board game. Hell, I didn’t even have a bed! The nomadic life of me and the Subaru dictated what goes with in my umpteenth move.

Now is the chapter of acquisition. Of learning to have. And to receive instead of constantly constantly giving away and giving to others. At many dear personal costs.

The Season of Balance is upon me.

Balderdash. Cards Against Humanity. Wits ‘n’ Wagers.

Have been searching thrift stores for a while hoping to find any or all of ’em. Not a one to be found!

So on behalf of my birthday and the FUN I want to bring into my life — nee, my life desperately needs! — I bit the $ bullet and ordered ’em online.

Whether they arrive in time for the birthday bash on Friday the 18th, only the delivery man knows for sure.

If they don’t, it won’t be a party-pooper.  I did find other super-fun party games, according to widespread reviews, at a thrift store:

Taboo. Cranium. Pictionary.

So let’s get this party on! Play! Laugh! Outwit one another! Lie to one another! Outdraw or outdo one another with fabulous clues!

I’m ready to roll! To leave the Darkness of the past IN the past, where it belongs, and ENJOY life again!

Yes Me! Yes to me in life! Yes to all the good and abundance that the Divine has in store for me!

In this year, the wrap-up of my 50s. Make it matter! Make it count! Make it about me in the best of ways! Creative. Purposeful. My path — not my dad’s or my mother’s or anyone else’s. Me and the Divine.

Make it about my growth, not me helping everyone else achieve theirs while I languish and shrivel and go unheeded and unseen in the background.

Let me live! Shine! And play play play!

My birthday wishes … even before any candles are even lit!

Which reminds me. While I’m working on my birthday, there will be cake. I’ll see to that myself — and trust my workmates to consume.

Stay tuned for cake. Chocolate chocolate chocolate!

For now, cheerio! Oh yeah, if any of you has played any of these games, your commentary is most invited!

Dawn, dang nabbit!

Not every day I see it.  Or any.

The light of early morning.

Lemme tell ya, it’s a whole other world!

I’m a creature of the night. Always have been. In childhood, it was difficult to unwind and get to bed at the appointed time (that my father enforced in no uncertain terms as he did all rules, believe me!) for school the next day.

Adult living didn’t change that. Neither did jobs. Most people think 9 o’clock’s a reasonable time to start work.

I agree. If there’s a p.m. after the 9!

My start time at jobs have run the gamut. From 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. The differences are extraordinary — beyond those obvious in dawn or dusk.

From physiology to mental prowess to alertness to general wellbeing, as I’ve oft said, it behooves me and an employer to have me on late shifts.

Except graveyard. Don’t want to work — and shouldn’t any 2 to 10 a.m. shift! I could — by circadian rhythm. But that returns its own brand of deleterious effect.

I’m wired like a vampire. I need to be in the dark in bed before daybreak. Otherwise, I do melt and smoke. In my ways.

I’m blessed to have a job (PT) I love AND the late shift! Wacky schedule. Some days I work just 4-5 p.m.; others 4 p.m. to midnight.

Today I saw a whole other side to the day and radio station operations not normally seen.  By virtue of filling in for someone from 8 to 9 a.m.

Again. a.m.!

I admit. I cringed and gritted my teeth when the boss inquired. His fallback plan, while doable, was shy of ideal.

I’m a team player. A fiercely individualistic, autonomous and self-motivated one but a team player nonetheless. The good of the whole — task, business operation, work needs — trumps all else.

So I sacrificed: sleep — some 4 hours of it — to do call-screening for an hour.

Set the alarm for the latest possible minute. 7:23 a.m. Big deal! most of you. are say. So what?! I get up before that every day to go to my job!

But remember, I’m nocturnal. My day doesn’t really get rolling ’til 2 p.m.

My normal bedtime’s 3 a.m. But I’m known to get a second wind at 2 a.m., which too often leads to lights out at 4 or 5 a.m. if I’m not careful.

Normal wakeup time pushes 11 a.m.-ish. High noon’s greeted me in the mornings way more than dawn! Like today.

I hardly recognized the view out my window when I auto-piloted my way out of bed … to the kettle to boil water for the filter and cup in wait. Set that all up last night knowing my brain’d be comparatively useless at 7.30.

The radiant fresh light showering the trees and their fresh arrivals: tender springtime leaves. The blue of the sky awash with white light. The crispness and cleanness of it all. It was beautiful.

It’s enough to make ya wanna be a morning person Not!

Funny, the significance of light. I’m exquisitely sensitive to it. Not only in a photographer’s eye but the holistic brain/body connection.

Not everyone’s that tuned in; I get that. That whole pineal gland thang is so ramped up & functioning at a high vibration that I can’t help but notice the finest most subtle differences in light and dark, day and night.

I’d be lying if I wrote that I couldn’t wait to get up at 7.24 this morning. Thankfully insomnia (of which I’m highly prone) didn’t weasel in so I was able to get a few hours of shut-eye!

Time now: 11.11 in the morn.

Normally I’d be just stirring into alertness about now. Yet here I sit, in a cafe, already nearly 4 hours of daytime already under my belt. Yiiiiiikes! Don’t even know what to do with myself for the next 5 hours before the 4 p.m. shift at the station.

I love this chunk of free time. Yet I’m weirded and wired today. Jet-lagged without benefits of travel. Zombied. No relation to “The Walking Dead.”

Its quite the sensation. Like being under sedation, to quote from “Rocky Horror.” Now there’s creatures in kind and kinship.

‘Night now. I mean, see y’all down the road to Transylvaaaaniah … ahah…

yes, master creature of the night