my baby and me

she's finally coming home. i'm glad she gets out and about in the world, that she's unafraid. that she's the kind of kid that will just explore. but i'm always glad when she comes home.

there's something about those first few minutes when you glimpse your loved one freshly emerged from the plane. that swell of relief when you hold them again for the first time. the gratitude as you take their bag and lead them to your car. these are the simple things. the things for which i am most grateful.

i finally attended yoga in my area. i do not think i met my sophie, the regular teacher was not there. but i didn't know my sophie was my sophie until some time had passed. so i will give it time and keep going back, as often as i am able.

my body took to the poses easily, it was familiar and welcome. when i came home after it felt like my thighs would pop out of the hip sockets. i had forgotten what it felt like to be stretched out.

side plank, which had been a particular pain in my ass before i'd left for this respite, was solid today, my body felt strong in the familiar pose. but, i knew i hadn't been and it would take some time to get the ease back. just to finally be required to stand up straight again, to point my chest to the heavens, and lay my head back in silent meditation was wonderful.

i had hoped the meditation would be a lengthy sit, but it was not. i have at least come to the place where i desire that to be a part of my life again. so i will try. i'm not sure how it will look, or work out, but i will try to find a place for it.

and for now, i wait. and trust. that my baby will make it home to me safely.

one more to go

just turned in my fifteen page semester paper in my discipline foundations class. i am pretty damn impressed with the paper. i've finally mastered apa formatting. but it took me ages to format it. i spend, literally hours tweaking spaces and line breaks. somehow overriding formatting got imbedded in the paper and i didn't have the time or patience to fix it, so i worked around it. manually centering things, etc. not perfect by any means, but what ever is.

a celebratory toilet scrubbing is in order. true to form, i will reward myself with a good bathroom scrubbing. la vida loca, i'm telling you.

buh buh buh buh buh

i always think of this scene from overboard when i'm overwhelmed today, i got up at five, i made it to work by seven twenty, i did not stop thinking (or using my brain) until almost four. and i just want to veg. but i'm so tired, i can hardly think.

the good news is, my perfect streak (save that one 90%) continues. i am so grateful for this experience, but i still have one more paper to write and one project to finish.

let it end, merciful heaven, let it end. and let me rest. though this weekend i will finally attend yoga followed by a meditation class and hopefully will find my sophie. i miss yoga and i've got my shoulders up by my ears more and more. not good.

track this

this week, i have been attending a training at work, and we discussed technology. just finished my first audio recording. i decided, as a way to enrich the material for my students, i would record myself reading the stories we are discussing/writing about.

i used the garage band software that came standard on my mac, and it was a fairly intuitive process. i even spliced in corrections and edited out moments where i stammered or you could hear my page flapping in the wind. all in all, i think it's a fine product, now to see if my students can access it. i'm waiting for it to convert to itunes, and feeling a bit impatient about it, but it is my first go.

out of the gate, until now, it's just over an hour. so, it's not a quick process by any means, but, very worthwhile, i think.

dun dun dun dun DUN

the twelve page paper came together like a dream, as i knew it would. mind you, it is not always easy to push the fear and dread, which are ever lurking by nature of the world in which we live, aside. but if you can keep your mind clear and trust that you have done your work, and you have in fact, done your work, then you can trust the process.

trust the process is the mantra for my school, and it is probably more ingrained in me than i realize, as i had initially obtained my bachelor's from this school when i first started down this road of trying to write this book, so very many years ago.

flashback to today. i'm done. i didn't go hiking, opted instead to stay in and finish the paper. i wanted a day off, a day away, but i wanted the monkey off my back more than anything.

now i get to go check on my own students, as i try to achieve balance and not put myself last.

turning things in, is such a relief. and i still have one day left in my weekend. huzzah!

t'ard

and i have to remember not to turn a smouldering eye on my loved ones. or my students.

i got up waaay too early today, and have waaay too much to do of late, plus my girl is hopping on the next train outta dodge (in the form of an airplane), and that is always mucho dificil on me. i will try to be okay with it, but something just ain't right when my baby gone. you know what i'm saying. she'll be away for just over two weeks and i will try to muddle through. though i still do it all for her, the little ingrate (i have all kinds of pet names for her :)

but regardless of who they is and what they do (or don't do, as the case may be) we love them more than it would seem possible. that is why we have parents.

and i still call my momma all the time. the breaks between semesters are hard because i don't commute in to work and so don't call anyone. for the past month i've been tending to minutia, and mom has been busily doing her life. well, i'm working again, so the past two days we've jawed on about everything. there is something comforting about speaking with your momma, and if you haven't done it lately, i recommend it.

i wish i could say the same about others i don't speak to, but sometimes it's easier not to talk, and we'll leave it at that. then there are the cases where busyness prohibits talking or being talked to and that is another issue entirely. life just happens and gratefully, mercifully, we are along for the ride.

i'm going to veg a bit now. i've finally begun writing my twelve page paper, i have much work to do, but since i've been up since 3:30, my brain is saying,

game over.

time to veg.

this is one of my favorite shots of me and my girl, taken at beltane this year, where i was able to teach on poetic alchemy. ah, life is so very good.

a good night's sleep

with my learning semester ending, and a new teaching semester beginning, i'm trying to finish and begin strong. it's all clumped together like that of late, my life. the end of this, the beginning of that. before i can catch my breath, it seems something else is underway. and i'm all right with that. but sometimes, sinking into my bed for a sweet stretch of oblivion is what gets me through.

today i have to draft a paper, twelve to fifteen pages. i am getting a slow start, but will make quick progress when i begin. how do i know. because that is how it works for me. i seem to delay my start until i can't anymore, then blam. i'm gone. the words tumble out of me like a waterfall after a heavy spring rain.

yesterday i came across some research that will help my paper, but i'm walking a fine line. as mystical as i am and love to be, this is not a mysticism paper. i am not in school for that. so while i will nod in that direction, i do not want to buy a lot and plop myself down in the center of it. i am seeking to articulate a scientific angle to my process, and that is what is new for me. the best i can do is try.

mercifully, my professors are agreeable and i am still 100, save one 90, across the board in all three of my classes. i am waiting for a paper back from the prof who gave me a 90, hopefully that will come through today. and when i see that 100, it will encourage me. not that i'm flagging, but a writer can always use a boost. i know what i'm doing with character on page, the trick is, am i communicating effectively in this new forum. there are a lot of things to consider. objectivity has never been my strong suit, but i'm trying, really trying to step back from being wed to my process and evaluate it from a different perspective. i know i can do this. now it is just a matter of getting it done. but isn't that always the case.

burned in the shade

the heat was so oppressive today, that even though i spent all my hours at the beach today parked under an umbrella, i still burned. i could feel the heat encroaching on my arm as the sun shifted in the sky, i would shimmy into the shade, until it got so windy that i had to take up residence in the sunchair to anchor the umbrella. at least my pumbercella didn't go backward on me, or fly away and nearly impale someone like i saw other people's umbrellas doing. it was interesting to watch latecomers trying to set up their umbrellas in the wind.

on the way home, it started raining again.

the only thing that helps with this heat is the rain, but we have had so much rain i'm not entirely sure it's doing any good at this point. i've never lived in such a wet climate and i hadn't realized moving just a few miles south east would alter the climate so much. not that it didn't rain where i lived before, but i'm in the thick of the brush now, it's an entirely different situation. i love it, don't get me wrong, but it's a learning curve for sure.

minutia

i've cleared away the clutter, in a few cases, tucked it out of sight, out of mind, so i can focus on my papers once again. the way humid nature of where i've moved, and coupled with the endless rains of late, have conspired against my pony, and yesterday it wouldn't start. i could tell it wanted to. so thankfully, i had roadside service. the guy showed up and cranked her hard, he had the hood open and told me straight away what was wrong.

your engine is soaked

true, i had been parking on the grass, and true, i hadn't started her in a week, as i'm in that curious between semester lull, in which i tend to all the details of my personal life. but i had never seen this.

she was sopping wet. like someone had taken a hose to her. it took some time, and an air compressor to blow the water off her plugs and wires, but she started up. coughing (not literally, but not sounding smooth as she always does).

and in my anxiousness to dry her out by opening her up, i pulled out of the driveway and proceed to stall out, right there halfway in and halfway out of my driveway. fortunately i live on an unbusy road, so i just slipped her into neutral and pushed her back into the drive. it's a bit of an incline so before i got back in to pull the parking break, she was nose to the white line in the road. i started her up again and sat there for about five minutes. she coughed and sputtered like i do when water goes down my windpipe.

and finally, i heard her begin to purrr again.

what a relief. i pull out onto the road, wondering what will happen, and she dries herself out with the heat of her engine and we are off.

the mechanic who came to assess the situation said,

she'll be fine. just give her a half hour to dry out, then start her up. let her run for ten minutes and she'll be fine. i do recommend a tune-up as soon as possible though.

so i drove her around town yesterday, glad to have her back. i made an appointment for her for friday, and parked her in a new spot, on an incline which will help her stay dry.

with all this rain we've been having, who would have ever thought it would affect an engine like that. i'm just grateful that i started her up this week and not next when i'm setting off for school in the wee hours. everything happens for a reason my friends, and everything happens when it must. i believe that.

come together

if i have learned anything about writing, it is this, the muse comes to me when needed. mind you, when i say muse, i am not objectifying my creativity into some deity, i am simply acknowledging the sometimes seeming transient nature of that which i have come to love and breathe and draw my life from.

i go back and forth about diminishing the artist by virtue of calling creativity a muse, but sometimes, i just don't care. i do not feel, in the least bit diminished. and when she does, in fact, light upon me, it is as if she has returned and i welcome her. i always welcome her.

i cannot explain the curious events of these past weeks or even how my writing has evolved to a sort of mathematical complex which i am certain i can figure at any given time, provided the circumstances are right and the lighting is just so. that's not to say it is all so dependent on externals, it is to say, that sometimes i just know it will work, and sometimes i know it won't.

i trust. regardless of where it comes from or why. i trust.

i have made the distinction oft, that it is not in whom i trust, but that i trust. i am not, again, giving away my power, nor am i hoarding it, but i am willingly trusting. does it have to be in something. does it have to be objectified thus. i do not think so, at least, as far as i can, i try not to objectify it.

so what was it then, that i learned, the initial purpose of my writing, aside from killing time until dinner and keep my mind off my tumbling stomach.

my purpose was to state that it is coming together. and so many times, i am amazed. mind you, i am always amazed that i am amazed. my surprise is eminently surprising. so when i put off this paper or that paper, when i trust it to come together as it will, and when it does, i am humbly, and gratefully, amazed.