Enchanting Juno

that's a LIVE chicken......

Apparently I don't blog anymore. All the things that once would have been blog posts are now IM conversations and tweets. 
I don't mean to leave you, Lucille, but well, in the immortal words of Crash Davis, we're dealing with a lot of shit.
Work, destiny, future, safety vs.satisfaction, responsibility, moral values, finance and oh, the siding fell of a part of my house.  And some of it involves privacy and some of it involves other people and some of it....well, who wants to be a whiner?

But I still love you and to prove it I will tell you a story.

OK, I TRIED to tell you a story but it went kind of sad and creepy and so I will, as the man said, sum up:

My calves have a stalker.  Some odd fellow who doesn't understand gym etiquette or boundaries and to whom I will have to be terribly rude if he starts following me around the gym again, has a crush on my calves.  Not me, my calves.  Just my calves.  He told me they were most beautiful and then stared RIGHT AT THEM in a pervy way while I was working out.  I had to tell him to stop. 

Also, if you do three big sets of calf extensions for the first time in months, you will, when you go to yoga the next morning, make a very sad involuntary noise every time you go into downward facing dog. much less try to put your heels down. Ow.

And then, when you try and get out of the car at the diner for the egg and hash brown fuel you require, you will be unable to extend your hamstrings sufficiently to achieve fully upright bipedal status.  Which will make you laugh really, really hard.

What else? 

The siding really did fall off my house and I FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE.  It's shaming really.  There's a bit of my house which faces the neighbor and I cannot see at all because of the fence and apparently for years the leaf bits from HIS maple tree have been getting behind the boards and rotting the supports until one day all the rotted fresh compost exceeded the strength of the remaining nails and half the siding fell away at a 45 degree angle, held on only by the bottom fasteners. 

Repairs are underway as we speak, but at least I shall have an unrotted and shiny new fence at the end of it.  Thus removing my excuse for neglecting my garden.  Three cheers for my friend T and his contractor's license.  I left him cookies this morning.

And now I need to go do a bank deposit.

Scenes from a life

I am very attached to green vegetables - I must tell you about the nutrition cow I had last week - and so I stopped at the cute cheap gourmet place with the local produce on the way home from yoga.  Because I et all the ones I had last night.

I am in line behind what I realize slowly is a very cute man.  Plaid flannel shirt, nicely fitting, in flattering autumn shades, flat cap worn well, nice shoulders.  Unfortunately, a beard, but a handsome and well maintained example of the breed.  I am deciding if he is old enough to hit on and if I want to bother, all post workouty and rumpled as I am, when I notice his groceries.

Bread.  The good square Pepperidge Farm white that makes beautiful toast.
Sausage.  The exquisite gourmet breakfast links I have admired but refused to shell out for in the past.
A dozen eggs.
A jar of nutmeg. 

There is no way I am getting the attention of a man with those hopeful groceries.

He leaves and the sales clerk starts to ring up my broccoli and I say - "That guy?  SO has a date tonight.  One he is very optimistic about the outcome of."

And she grins at me and says "Oh yeah, that is a love breakfast if I have ever seen one"

And we look at him getting in his truck and I say - "good luck, dude, good luck"

But we cannot figure out the nutmeg.  Can you put that on eggs?

Hai!

I got distracted there.  I always do. 

So thank you for all the hosting recommendations.  I looked at a bunch of stuff but in the end the awesome Sweater Project David led me to Google Apps which let me set up a free account WITH my domain name and then forwarded it to my regular gmail account so it's all seamless and shit, at least once David explained what an MX record was and how to update it. Yay for David.

And yay for google which better stay not evil because I dunno if I can give them up

For those have you who have experienced my incredible bouncing email account, this should all be a thing of the past.  Email at will. 

The only channel that ever has anything on is BBCAmerica.   And yet I am watching a Nora Roberts Lifetime movie.  I used to like her books but either my perspective has changed or the translation to film is awkward.  Everything seems imbued with a kind of fake-gothic-quasi-hardboiled demeanour that's hard to take seriously.  Also, there are a lot of hostage events in this (apparently) medium sized town.
Not that this is stopping me from watching.
OK she just shot her own car in frustration.  Not that I don't sympathize.  But really.

She's got some great sweaters though.

I love Twitter.  Unfortunately, it diverts potential blog ideas into 140 character snippits.  I have a short attention span. 

Today was really beautiful.  Driving with the windows open and great music on the first fine spring day of the year is one of life's great pleasures.   I car danced and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I ate too much Indian food today and it gave me a headache.  I've noticed this about sugar recently, headaches.  I had a food aversion during the kidney stones and ended up caffeine free - which has stuck - and sugar free - which has not, particularly during PMS. 
But now when I over do it, I get a headache.  So is there sugar in Murg Tikka Masala? Navratan Korma? There BETTER not be sugar in the lemon rice, cause it rocks my world. 

New favorite beverage:  Filtered water with a lot of lemon juice.  I know, do I know how to party or WHAT?  Hydration is my new religion.

I tried to explain to my mom that lip and nose piercings aren't even all that radical anymore and I should totally get my nose pieced for my 40th.   She was...unconvinced, shall we say?   I can't decide if I was serious or just winding her up.  I guess we'll see.

I'm in love with yoga.  I'm going four times a week and rearranging my life to make it five.    I have this weird leg/hip problem that has been a problem for like, 4 years.  Gone.  I can sleep in any position I want now too, which my spine has been unwilling to discuss for  - 5 years maybe?  Plus I feel amazing.  This is after three weeks.  I am crazy with curiosity to see what happens over the next six months.  (Yeah, yeah, I KNOW you told me I'd love it.  Times and season, my dear, times and seasons.)

Reading: Titus Groan (slowly) (very dense and very good)

Knitting:  Baby Cables (also slowly)

Watching a bit too much TV cause jumping from weights once a week through kidney stones into weights once and yoga four times per week has left me a tiny bit wiped (by 'tiny bit' you should understand I mean utterly flattened), but energy is coming back up.  Soon I will dig out of my couch nest.

Hope you are all well.

I have a sense of humor again

and I'm wearing perfume for the first time in 10 days.  By these signs I declare myself healed, more or less.  Let the games begin!

Thank you for all your good wishes and affection and wild extravagant compliments and such.  And for telling me some of your own stories - that's my favorite thing.

I have only been receiving about 1/2 my comments and I hold my email host responsible.  something about the code on comments and replies to comments flags their spam filter, they can't fix it, 50% of everything bounces and it makes me homicidal.  What is the point of an email host that cannot adapt to one of the most common blog platforms around? 

GoDaddy is dead to me now.  Any recommendations?  I need really, really basic domain hosting and email with no known comment/reply compatibility issues.

Fat, Female & 40

So I had a very interesting week.  It began Monday with what I thought was a case of food poisoning that just would not quite clear and than clarified into acute abdominal pain on Thursday.  I know doctors mean acute in some kind of diagnostic way, I mean it like, fuck that hurts.  Oh wait, fuck, it hurts even more.  Is it hot in here?  I need some air.  ow.Ow.OW. 

Of course we are in the middle of switching health insurers, just to make things more complicated.

Eventually I drove myself to the emergency room, shouting incredibly colorful things at anyone who dared stop at a light in front of me and garnering stares from a woman walking by, as the windows were wide open.  Since, as I mentioned, it was hot in here. 

While I was being evaluated by the nurse he said, "probably gallstones".  My GP had said the same thing on the phone when I talked to her earlier and I asked him why everyone was so convinced of this on no more evidence than it all seemed to have started when I ate something greasy.

And he said "well, you can't sit still", which is true, I was pacing and standing and sitting and bending and kneeling and walking, "but mostly you're the right type."

Type?  Sure, he said.  A woman, forty (39 I said) and...small pause...not slim.

I was amused.  "Tactfully phrased"

"There's a phrase we use, a mnemonic.  But I'm not telling you"

Eventually I achieved a kind of weird yogic prone lotus on the exam room bed - it's funny what pain does to your sense of self consciousness - that was semi comfortable and remained thus until the doctor came in. 

"I think you have gallstones"  he says. 

Exam, blah, blah.  Tenderness in wrong location for gallstones, possible appendix?  He still thinks gallstones and sends me for an ultra sound, not before giving me a big fat syringe full of something just delightful in the line of an anti-nausea med, as well as something equally delightful by way of a pain killer.  I really could not tell you which one I liked better. 

When he comes back to tell me what next I am high enough to say, "explain the gallstone conviction to me.  Why does everyone start there?"

"You're the type."

"And the type is?"

He would clearly rather not tell me.  I insist, in my charmingly narcotic persistent way.

"Female, 40 and...another word that starts with F"

For some reason I found this hilarious.  Female, Fat & 40.  

Well, ok, fair enough.

Fat is a word I have been avoiding my whole life, treating it like something between a moral judgment and a declaration of low value.  But in the end, it's just a description.   We forget that, there's a lot of other baggage attached.  Higher body weight has some straight up medical consequences that are based in biology and chemistry, not opinion.  No matter how much we might like that to not be true.

To my mother, fat is the most important thing about me.  It's both a judgment and a fear, she sees her own weight problem as the root of her life's dissatisfaction and monitors others as harshly as she monitors herself.  I grew up hyper aware of fatness.
And of course people who love me, if I say I'm fat will say, no, you're curvy or no you're above your ideal weight or no, you're big not FAT. 
What they mean is that I am not unattractively fat, that I'm healthy and fit and pretty and smart and they love me.  And it has always been very, very important to me that they say that, that they believe that.  So I can believe it myself.
It's always been important that I not have any health conditions associated with obesity too.  Cause then, you know.  I'd be FAT.  And have no self worth.

So you would think FEMALE FAT & 40 would be the worst thing I ever heard.  But I thought it was funny.  And not just cause of the opiates, because I still think it was funny.  Also the way everyone tip-toed kindly around it so as to not be mean was really sweet.   Silly.  But sweet.  Though I think now, they were waiting for explosive denial and anger.

I'm just so over it, working so hard to pretend I am other than what I am.

I was dating this guy last summer, and one time we were in my bedroom and I was getting dressed and he stopped me and said "you have such a beautiful body" and my jaw crashed onto the floor, like do not pass go, WHAT?!  Because he was entirely sincere.
And eventually I pulled myself together enough to say "thank you, I don't ever think of myself that way but, um.  Thank you" ('cause of course I need to file the disclaimer on the compliment WHILE accepting it)
And he said "well, why not?"
And I'm like "well, uh, um - I'm kinda of fat, you know?"
And he said the most remarkable thing I had ever heard.  "Does that really matter?"

Do you mean to tell me someone could like me not in spite of my weight, but because my weight is irrelevant to my attractiveness and worth?

Weird. 

I tell you what too.  When I was sitting there all drugged up and waiting for the cat scan the nurse who checked me in came to hang out with me.  I mean, he checked vitals and stuff, and we had a long and probably not as witty as I remember conversation about the blood pressure cuff and how if it was accurate I was probably dead and he got it working and what have you, but I think he was getting off duty and came to see how I was, 'cause he wasn't the nurse assigned to me or one of the floor nurses in my section.  He just liked me enough to see how I was doing. 
Even though he knows how much I weigh. 
He was cute too, I should have asked him out. 

This maybe doesn't make sense, but it just felt like a really powerful moment, a tipping point.  I've been fat my whole adult life for lots of reasons beyond the simple I like to eat too much.  I don't really have much belief in plain old simple reasons.  But I've never been able to say it without bracing myself, or explaining why it's only sort of true or flinching deep inside. 
And how can you thrive if you flinch whenever you think of yourself? 

But moments of pain strip off the bullshit always, and it just all seemed so stupid in the ER.  It still seems stupid to think of myself with an asterisk next to all my good qualities, a footnote that says, *but she's fat, you know.  Why on earth would I need to tell a man who is looking at me naked that I'm fat?  He's had sex with me, he knows what I look like. 

This isn't a fat acceptance thing really, I have some problems with the way that discussion is framed, and no, I don't think obesity is just as healthy as thinness, save your breath.  I...
I guess I'm officially done flinching.  And yeah, I'm fat.

Oh, and no, it was not my gallbladder.  Kidney stone.  Don't recommend it.

A step at a time.

I have noticed this before, but it is so worth noticing again - you all are terrific.   I find it awfully heartening to find out that there are (obviously brilliant and perceptive!) people out there, ones who know me in real life, and ones who only know me from the blog, who think well for me, as well as of me. In such a beautifully thoughtful way.

Nobody better ever pick on the Internet around me, because I tell you, it has brought me more than I can ever possibly measure.

Spent the week paring the corners off my budget and exploring different ways to expand my business.  I have some ideas and got some notions from others; unfortunately everything takes time, so let us hope for slightly looser pocket strings in my existing customer base while I try this out.  
Oddly, I feel better.  Faced this set of my own failings, working on a plan....if it succeeds that's great, and if it doesn't, well......then I'll have a new life.  And that will be OK too.  Transition sucks, but you know me well enough now to know how I love me some evolution.  Plus I had a revelation while thinking about it, a good one, though that's a post for another day.

And I stand corrected.  I am a creative person.   I will make sure not to doubt that again.

In the meantime, I went for a walk this weekend.   I have such a mixed relationship with walking.   The very first time I ever walked in the woods I was in first grade and I went with Rob-from-my-class and his family and by the end of the day I had a gorgeous worm-eaten walking stick that I kept for years and a crush on Rob, which was more likely a crush on Rob's mom, who was the yoga-teaching hippy mom at my school.  They lived by the lake and fed the geese and thought about the environment and were the first people I ever knew who had those 5 gallon bottles of water for drinking and cooking.  It was like going to another, very, very cool planet. 

But other than that first experience, and walking by the ocean at my aunt's house - I hated it.  Walking out of doors?  With the bugs and stuff?  And sweat?  (I was a very girly little girl).  Even when I was young and limber and well able to walk the lead for a day, I got through hiking by shutting my head down and going on auto pilot.   Which kind of misses the point, yes?   Walking in NY is ok, cause there is ALWAYS stuff to be amused by and usually friends - walking and talking is great.  

These days the bugs don't bother me so, and I have rediscovered the beauty of discovering what might be under a leaf, but I am older and creakier and less fit - it takes a half an hour for my hip to loosen up and stop hurting and about an hour UNTIL my foot starts to ache.  So I have tended to avoid.   But more and more I hate being limited to 'indoor girl' and the aches and pains which once seemed like a reason NOT to do things now seem more like a reason to DO something. 

Ferociously determined is just another way of saying obstinate as a pig and 40 can bite me in the ass if it thinks its going to make me LESS.  Not that I have a plan.  More an inclination.  I like inclinations better than plans anyway.

So I went for a walk in the park near the canal with a friend and had a fine time and my foot never even really hurt much after an hour and a quarter which is huge thing and it was only a little bit sore this morning and we saw naked trees and people with happy wet dogs and geese and ducks and no squirrels which is odd, and reproduction Durham boats and a spinning wheel through a window and watched the river current and I wore her son's hat cause I forgot my own (bad knitter!) and it kept sliding up until I looked a complete dork, and that was funny too.   And at the end we were walking by the canal and there were three ducks, one white and two green headed, and the white one was diving for something tasty and I do not think there is much in the world I like better than a duck's ass pointed at the sky with his little orange feet paddling hard to balance him.

Which led to me calling out to the duck - loud - "do it again, baby".  And then to his friends, "Give me some mallard ass, lemme see your duck ass".   Which they did.

My friend, needless to say, laughed.  But seriously.  What is better than diving-duck butt? 

I'll tell you what's better, is a few minutes later when a small group of four landed in formation, wings back breaking and slicing the water like art.

 

Trout for thought*

Sheep & Goats at large, I am frightened.  I know I am not alone, but the fear is so large now it is sort of preventing me from talking about anything else.  Have to say it aloud to start maneuvering around it.  So here I go: I am scared to death of what comes next.

I was going to tell you a funny story about the cat, but well.....that would be a kind of bullshit, yes? (It was a good story though)

Business is bad.  We've had three of the worst months ever - a term I keep having to redefine - in the last 8 months.  Our single biggest customer hasn't made a substantial order from us in a year.  Yesterday I cut people's hours 20% and my own salary for the second time. 

Today I have to rewrite my personal budget and decide if I can still afford to fund 100% of the healthcare coverage I offer the people who work for me.

Some of this is not my fault - the lack of liquidity in the marketplace is a far more effective illustration of trickle down theory than actual trickle down economics ever proved to be.
But the most paralyzing thing about what's happening is that some of it is my fault and that is not something I need to make any more excuses about.  I don't mean that in a self-immolating way, but yesterday I was hit in the face with the wet trout of truth.

I have been reading The Fluent Self on and off since JoVE first mentioned it and I find it a weird combination of compelling and repellent, in the way of things that have a message you do not want to hear.  I have been talking about feeling stuck for months.  Years really.  And the Fluent Self is about destuckification.  Terrifying. 
So I read and then avoid, read and avoid.  Yesterday, I read "It's Not the Economy" and this I cannot avoid, this is the wet trout between the eyes. 

Read it, I'll wait.

I have this love/hate relationship with my business - love the independence, really not  interested in the product.  Hate the responsibility, love the flexibility.   Wish someone else was holding me accountable, can no longer imagine working for any one else.  Unable to visualize how to transform it into something that is weighted more to the plus than the minus. Stuck.  Much rather think about yarn and perfume and books and love and friends and sex and cooking and the cat and family and ......

What I am living is more than duty and less than commitment, a fucked up middle ground that has bred a kind of panicked paralysis where I can come up with 1000 reasons why changing it for the better is impossibly out of reach and then sit there for another six months screwing around on the internet and seeing it get that much more out of hand.

I think I have been waiting for the universe to make the decision for me. 
My therapist often reminds me that silence is not empty and now I need to add the correlary that inaction is a choice.

I had this revelation yesterday as I read up on marketing consultants: everything I respond to in the material I am reading is aimed at people in creative fields - people selling their ideas and their work rather than goods.  I am not a creative person, but I do not need to be an artist to work in a field with more congenial values.  I need a new career.  But instead of letting this one implode and losing years to self-loathing, maybe I can transform it so I am not hanging my employees out to dry, so I can close or sell or grow it so it gives me more options, not fewer.

(Message to the universe:  I am looking (actually, actively, looking as opposed to hoping vaguely one falls from the sky into my parking lot) for a non-sleazy marketing consultant/business consultant with a perspective that straddles both my industry and my personality. 

And as long as you are looking into stuff, Universe, a yoga teacher. The right kind.  kthxbye)

*title belongs to the goddess Claudia

By the power of Graystoke! Knitting!

I have been very, very worried about something.  I have been working on the same sleeve for months, about three stitches a week.  I hate it. 
I have this scarfy thing I started months ago too.  About 1/3 done.  I hate it too.

Since my shoulder went kaflooey (and yes, yes, yes, I will  have assorted medical persons look at it.  I swear.  Big knot in my trap, and as it has eased the soreness has worked its way up my neck and triggerd this arm thing.  No worries.) I have slowed down to nothing though I have been spinning, 10 minutes at a time.

It's been a slow 12 months for knitting - had a lot on my mind - and I have been worred that the stash was going to become objects d'art around the house only.  Worried I didn't like it any more.
Had to make myself pick it up, make myself take a stitch.  But feeling like I had to finish SOMETHING before I started anything new.  Locked into a little spiral of stupid.

As I mentioned I've been in a bit of a mood for the last little while and this weekend I hit the wall of cranky with the speeding Ferarri of self pity and wailed, I wanna knit cashmere!  My arms hurts!  I hate fat needles!  Woe!

And a little voice said.  You have cashmere.  DK weight cashmere.  Lots of it.

And you know what? I do.

I made a little swatch. 

I LIKED it.

And tonight I cast on.  My arm IS sore, so I can't knit long.  But the 4mm needles are way easier than the 5.5 and 6.5 ones I've been arguing with for months.  I really don't like knitting on anything bigger than the 4mms (4.5 maybe) with or without my little spasm.  I prefer the garment I get at the end too, for comfort and wearability.  It's taken me a long time to accept my fate as a fine gauge knitter.  I may still resist sometimes, for the sake of exceptionally beautiful yarns and handspun, but it is clear to me now. 

I even found myself picking it up without thinking and working another row.  You know how LONG its been since that happened?

(Yarn is DK 70/30 geelong merino/cashmere from the Colourmart.  It's verra nice.)

Pride & Prejudice is still amazing too.   This day is ending better than it began.

Interlude.

I am starting to understand the ways in which basic rules for civilized life serve a purpose, no matter how stuffy or pointless they might seem.

I have spent the day in my bathrobe after a bad night's sleep - a muscle spasm in my shoulder that has been my unhappy companion for 6 weeks or more, causing odd pains to run down my right arm and inevitably waking me after four hours.
I arose cranky at 10 after several disjointed sleep segments, read and made lunch and read Pride and Prejudice until my lids drooped and napped - ironically the couch upon which I slept one night to cause the initial spasm is also the only I can prop myself for comfortable sleep at times - until awakened by a very upsetting dream in which a person whose place in my life I currently doubt did something to rather confirm those doubts.  Thanks ever so, unconscious mind.

Now I am sweaty, cross, mildly depressed, premenstrual, feeling like all my ideas come only from opposition rather than creation, and suffering from that vague feeling of not being entirely upon the earth that sometimes accompanies a day when you do not dress or move around enough. 

If I were the kind of person who never lay down in her clothes or always did the dishes and never let the housekeeping get away....well, I supposed I might take to secret drinking instead, and would not be me anyway, so the speculation is useless.  
But the thing that strikes me in the between the lines reading of Lizzie Bennet's life on this trip through is how much ritualized boredom there is, particularly for the women.    Of course, we have ritualized boredom too, it's just noisier.

Nothing profound to say, really, just trying to get back in the habit of blogging and of not being so guarded.  Maybe, like in the folktales, I hope that naming my mood will destroy its power.  A shower might help as well.

imaginary friends

I am passing my Friday night with the The Annotated Pride and Prejudice.  Cause that is the kind of wild woman I am.  Mixed grains and broccoli with a side of classic literature.

I don't recommend it for your first reading, the footnotes are totally spoilers, but for a lit geek like me who read Pride and Prejudice (unannotated version) for the first time at 11 and eleventy times since then, it is brilliant.  I'm good with words and well able to submerge myself in the sense of other times, but still. Knowing that a piano was a status symbol as much as it was a form of pleasure or entertainment, adds a tiny bit to several key scenes (Lady Catherine, I am looking at you).

I know that Emma * and Persuasion ** are 'better" books in the opinion of many but Lizzie Bennet is my girl.  Quick, clever, at peace with herself, wise and foolish, witty, warm, hasty and yet evolutionary over all, she and Harriet Vane*** are the women in literature whom I love the most.  And watching Lizzie navigate her world and assess the people in it always makes me think again about my own shallow extravagances and quick judgments and odd convictions.  I find it - settling and thought provoking at the same time.  Which is one of the reasons it is a great book.

True story:  Years ago I was working as an educational consultant and this wonderful girl was a client, also called Lizzie.  She was fantastic - quick and self aware, with a clever small face and dark hair that swung straight to her shoulders.  She was articulate and creative and independent  and interested in communication and literature and one day we were talking about favorite books and I said mine was Pride & Prejudice and she made this face, squinched with distaste and perhaps a bit of regret at having to downgrade me from "cool for an adult" to "adult".

You do not care for Jane Austen?

And she said - wellllllll, I haven't read her, but........

Old fashioned, about marriage, girly, dusty, stiff,  mannered, etc, etc, etc.  A bit how I feel about Richardson really (reading Pamela was one of the more painful experiences of my degree).  (Followed immediately by Daniel Deronda , which, I admit, I only read part of) (Sorry, Professor Roy).

And I grinned and said, I PROMISE it's not like that.  I am willing to go so far as to bet you'd like it a fair bit.

And that, I thought, was the end of that, because the chance that a high school student, even an unusual one, will listen to one such as I beyond the sphere of my usefulness, is fairly small. 

Until one day she came by the office in a complete state.  Oh MY god, I'm reading that book and I love it.  I love HER.  She's one of US. 

Which - although I now see her as a younger woman rather than a peer - is pretty much it.  Lizzie is my girl.  Home with her is about a million times better, more useful and improving as well as flat out more fun, that 90% of anything I can think of right now (I had a very bad date last week, no doubt my percentages will change as the horror fades).

Getting back to it.......

* Not a huge fan

** Anne Elliot, of Persuasion, is a heroine who has grown on me as I have gotten older and slightly more battered about the edges.  Less witty, more human.  Excellent.

***Harriet Vane is a character in Dorothy Sayer's Peter Whimsy books.  Which you should read IMMEDIATELY.