Summertime

First - I am wowed by the number of people who read these words. Thank you for stopping by, for emailing me or leaving comments.


This is a picture of a corner in my backyard that is presently in nearly full bloom. I took this a few days ago, and now the peonies (the dark green plants with the raspberry-colored buds in this pic) are in full bloom and are lovely. I like the way the plants in this corner complement each other. Also, those shrubs with the silvery blooms? They are a summer lilac, a late blooming lilac with silvery pannicles of flowers and a strong lilac scent - I'm not in love with the flowers, which lack the charm of true lilacs, but the scent is heavenly, and makes the yard awash in the scent of lilacs for another three weeks. So I thought I'd share.

Sometimes friends who also garden are surprised that I'm not familiar with the botanical or latin names of my plants. To me, at least up to this point, gardening isn't about that. I remember the common variety names (the hardy geranium in the picture is called Johnson's Blue - it's fabulous), and I research the hell out of plants before I buy them. But once planted, the latin names are just details. What matters to me is the act of planting, nurturing.

I WILL bike tomorrow. And for those of you who have heard my uneasy/displeased voice saying that I'm not writing...I'm writing again. Day two, but I'll take it.

It seems to me that one of the reasons I find myself unable to write, or sometimes when I find myself flirting with depression, it's because I want to stop wanting what I dream of, and be happier and content with what I have. I wrote last year about this - about being satisfied with what we have - but this is a shade different from that post. That one was about accepting and being satisfied with the path you've followed, not reliving and retracing the path that brought you to now. What I'm speaking of here is my dreams - the future me.

This isn't some brilliant new revelation - passionate people want to throw themselves into whatever it is that they are passionate about. I want to write, garden, bike, dance, sing, read, teach, drink wine, travel to the thousand places I want to see, cook meals for a kitchen full of friends and family, laugh often and hug strangers who look like they could use it. But I need to also work at a job that pays actual money, clean my house, eat sensible meals comprised of foods that are less convenient, juggle finances and doctor's appointments. Did I mention work at a job that pays actual money?

Lately, things have been too much for me. I see that NOW. :) But in the moment, I often do not know it. I'm too busy dealing with the necessary next steps. That makes me good in a crisis, good at coping with ambiguity and change, as they say on my performance reviews at work. But. BUT. It's all fine to cope well with crises so long as I'm remembering to measure them against my needs. This is the wisdom I seek these days: know when things are too much, and reset my priorities. Now, not six months from now, or "when this crisis is over." The crisis always wins, and there will always be another. Being happy means living in the now, and the now includes any number of simultaneous crises. I'm pretty good at differentiating real crises from "someone else wants me to freak about this, isn't that cute" crises - but even so, the real ones can arrive in pairs or triplets. So I need to live in the now and keep my priorities, those that feed my soul, intact. Otherwise, I stop doing things that feed my soul - see the "i want to" list above. I sacrifice, as the person who is my "other me" describes them, the parts of me that are my essence. Unacceptable. Yes, I'm aware this is something we all do. I'm just the one talking here. :)

Tomorrow is Father's Day! If you are a father, enjoy your new grill/tools/books/home store gift card/special breakfast...whatevah. And for the fathers who read these words - thanks for all you do to make your small people happy, healthy, safe and loved.

Good thoughts!

~ Patti

TGIF

It's been a while since I welcomed a weekend as heartily as I'm welcoming this one. I've been working a lot, and trying to catch up on things that slipped around the house while I was working a lot and teaching. And then the foot...grrrr...the foot.

I'm pleased (relieved?) to announce that this morning I walked three miles of my four mile loop. I skipped the hill, and it was a wise decision. Any more detail would be TMI. Trust me on this. There was supppppposed to be a 6 AM training session with our team in India, but as is often the case in transoceanic virtual meeting rooms...the key person's technology failed. The cancellation gave me a chance to walk, so it was a win/win.

My sister is coming to visit Idaho at the end of the month for a family wedding in Stanley. Stanley is a rustic mountain "resort" town. Do not remove the quotes there. I'm very excited she's coming, she hasn't visited since I moved here uhm...22 years ago! I have tickets to our Shakespeare theater for a night that she is in town, and will generally just enjoy showing her "my town."

So - wanted to post some happy "I'm walking!" thoughts tonight. Hoping to get some garden pictures tomorrow, have recharged my boat-anchor camera and am poised to snapsnapsnap. It's so cool here it feels like April, not June. But summer is coming, I'm sure of it.

Peace and good thoughts to you!
~ patti

June

Today is my baby brother's birthday. Happy Birthday Michael!

Trials probably do make you stronger - or more resolute, or more clear in your thinking. Not the legal kind, though I'm certain they can sometimes have a similar effect. I'm talking about the kinds of life events, sometimes your own and sometimes those of a loved one or acquaintance, that strip away all the silliness, or reveal it as silliness, and give you perspective.

I'm thinking of big trials - those are like a spotlight, illuminating everything in the vicinity in impossibly bright light, so clear that they cannot be denied. My friend Pam's brother, Larry, had a very large tumor removed from his face a few weeks ago. He's home, recovering well, in the care and love of his very close family, and in the prayers of the faithful that Pam's life is filled with. And guess what? Every person that Pam let share in this incredible trial in her family's life knows a little bit more about family, and love, and faith. We are grateful for our family, and we either are roused by or marvel at the faith. It's impressive, and humbling.

But I'm also thinking of the smaller, wearing trials. Those that, left unspoken in the dank dark space under the stairs, grow big and acid, eating away at your confidence and your joy. Chronic illness, chronic pain, the disappointments of a lifetime - it's this kind of trial. Each moment is bearable. No problem. But they take a little, take a little - and then you find yourself without a reserve of hope, facing the big ugly thing that the moments have made in your heart. It's not inevitable, but it is a real risk, and it takes a real effort to keep those moments at bay, in perspective. Like weeding a garden, or cleaning a house - keep up with it, and it's a small matter to tidy. Let it grow unchecked, and you have a big project on your hands. Maybe blisters, certainly thorns.

I'm an evangelist about this stuff any more. I have the fervor of the saved about tending your heart as you would any other precious growing thing. Don't count what you do not have, but what you do; this is the simplest path to joy. Don't say you can't, or that you'll try. You can, so do. Find a stretch of minutes each day to tend your heart - the small trials that vex you. Yank 'em before they take root.

My big learning this month? The stretch of minutes I tend my heart are apparently the same minutes I spend walking my 4 mile loop, bellydancing, or riding my bike. Action and clarity come as one for me. So as my owie foot has been hampering my movement (it's healing - yayyyyy!), little weedlets of discontent are sprouting. I sat on my deck tonight, it was a little drizzly and cool. I looked not at the few flowers I have not yet planted, but at the expanse of beautiful blooming spaces, the plants that are like living paintings to me. I breathed deeply, and drank a glass of wine, and found ease.

Soon it will be real summer - hot, dry. But for now, it is early summer, with all the promise that holds, and air scented now with late blooming lilacs mixed with early roses, the faintly floral scent of my crazily blooming clematis vines, the dark smells of good earth and compost drifting through. It's good to see - really see.

Next time I'm here I WILL be telling you about my morning walks making me smile, my bike being the fastest thing since my banana seat Schwinn, and my new bellydancing scarves making my shimmy even shimmmmmmier. But in the meantime, I'm smiling.

Don't try. Simply do.

~ patti

The Painted Veil

Strength does not come from physical capacity.

It comes from an indomitable will. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I watched the film "The Painted Veil" with Edward Norton. Naomi Watts is also good, as is Toby Jones as Waddington and Diana Rigg as a Mother Superior - but next to Norton every other actor in the film pales. The film is equal parts love story and historical period piece - the story of a British newlywed couple in 1920's China. The cinematography is fantastic - the film is very beautiful, with long lush shots of Chinese countryside and moody shots of Shanghai, stark shots of the orphanage/hospital where much of the action takes place. You can feel the heat of the place, the languor of unrelieved heat and humidity and the joy of bathing or swimming in such heat. If you watch it, write me whether you notice anything about the way the color blue is used in the film. The plot has just enough surprise to be satisfying - but the biggest treat for me was rediscovering the character of Walter Fane. He is the stuffy scientist with a core of fire, the accidental hero who drags his wife and himself from Shanghai to an inland China hospital during a cholera epidemic. It is a dark film with moments of sparkle - lighter than the novel, but true to the spirit of Maugham. I read the book when I read a whole lot of dark, quiet novels by W. Somerset Maugham, and this film gives the novel a new relevance, in that the scientist in Walter offers up a new way to view the ways that we "help" countries who wish not to have our help. Fane and the Colonel in charge of the village under siege have an exchange where Fane says "I've not come here to take from your people," and the Colonel replies, "I think China belongs to the Chinese - and we would rather that we could take care of this ourselves."

It's also an interesting take on finding love, on growing up, and on forgiveness and redemption. Plus - sigh! - there is a moment when Walter and his wife are undressing, they have separate bedrooms. They are rooms apart, but through a series of doors can see one another in the half-light of lanterns. She turns to him and drops her dress, and he goes to her with such Norton-esque passion, made more dramatic for the reserve that Fane exhibits much of the time. It's Norton you watch in this film, despite the interest of the director in showing us Naomi Watts - it's his smile we long to see restored, his hope. And the film made me think of the Gandhi quote above - it is a film where the indomitable will of several characters carries them into strength.

I don't want to give away the whole story - but there is one more quote I'll have rattling around my brain for a while. "When love and duty are one, grace is within you." There is much to think of in that sentence. I wonder what Maugham meant by it, and what I would make of it...it's one of those sentences that sounds lovely and rings with truth, but it also is abstract in that in order to really understand it we must agree what "love" is and what "duty" is - and it occurs to me that once we've sorted that out, the quote is obvious and perhaps not so perfect.

Now, I'm off to plant more flowers. Yes, more. Also more Garden Claw action. Whoooot! I have a perennial geranium plant, the variety is Johnson's Blue - it's in stunning bloom, in a quiet way that I quite love. I'll try to take a decent capture a picture of it, I've planted it hugging a rock border, next to a bank of lemon-leafed Lamium plants, in front of some dark green peonies just about to burst into flower. Lovely.

Be well and happy!

~ patti

Mixed Bag

I just finished grading my student's portfolios and posting their grades. They were, predictably, a mixed bag of quality, intention, care. What is great for me is to see how far they've come in the course of the semester as writers, and as readers. I love that. At this point I'm not sure if I'll be teaching in the fall, and I'm easy in my heart about that.

What I'm uneasy about is my continued podiatrist-induced pain. My foot continues to have me hobbling about, which keeps me from walking, bellydancing, biking, even from being able to walk easily from my car to my office. But what's worse? It keeps me from my shoes. With each week that passes, my desire to wear my cutest, least-appropriate-to-an-injured-tootsie-footwear grows more acute. I sat in my room trying shoes on my "good" foot (the right one, for the record) for a long while this weekend. Plotting which pair might be back in the rotation first. I've come to hate my tevas and my privos...must wear pretty footwear soon....ohmmm. Pitiful, eh?

I'm also not at ease with my air conditioner. It has to be replaced. No amount of charm could convince the repairman to pump it full of ozone-depleting CFC-laden freon...the thing is shot. Turns out 12 years is not an unusual life span for an air conditioner in the desert. I felt so OLD...ranting about how it was "just broken in."

My new job is so busy...soooooo busy. Crazy. But rewarding in the way that you're rewarded when you clean a really dirty house. To make this comparison work, you would have to need a backhoe to clean the dirty house. One thing I'll say about working for a Fortune 100 company - the big problems are BIG problems. Messy. I keep running into former coworkers from my days at OreIda, when we were allllll a lot younger. I was the baby back then. Technically, among that group, I still am! :)

I'm thankful for the good thoughts of friends all over the world who are trying to help me find my writer's mojo again. To friends who know nothing of THAT but who help me stay hopeful. And I'm thinking piles of good thoughts for a friend who is MIA, another who is healing from a surgery in Oz, another who is wrestling an alligator of an exhusband (seemingly while wearing a steak strapped to her head to make him want to BITE her), and an almost-birthday boy with a thang for terminally white cake.

Here is what I'll say about the air conditioner - not having it when it was 95 this weekend was not pleasant. But with the bedroom windows open, I slept all night in the scent of my lilacs, and woke to birds chittering in the spruce tree. Played hell with my allergies, but it is nice to remember the world outside the walls, the windows.

Summer will be here soon, and there is plenty of time to bike and bellydance and walk my loop in the mornings. Ease is a state of mind that one chooses.

~ patti

Integrity

I've usually define integrity simply: doing what you say you will do. I, therefore, am often quite hard on myself about this quality. I chronically overbook, I chronically and with the very best of intentions commit to things and then cannot, truly cannot, complete them. I've scolded myself about this far too often to think it's just a habit I can break. It's something else - some desire not to miss things, not to miss experiences or opportunities to help or share or laugh - or dance. But the net result is the same. I manage to complete the truly necessary things, but I often let smaller commitments fall.

This is why, I think, that in times of stress I often withdraw. Because I am almost pathologically unable to ask for help, and worse - unable to not offer my help to others (illogical, you say? nah, see, my stresses are always, in my own mind, short-term - I'll be "over it" in a few days, week at the most). So, sometimes I think I should try to work on this, moderate it a bit, tinker with the uhm...intensity, maybe. But, frankly, this habit of not asking for help, and nearly always offering? It is....one of the qualities that I most like in myself. It's more than habit, it's rooted in my core beliefs. I don't just have a "can-do" attitude because it is trendy, or because someone told me it was a good way to be. I have a can-do attitude because I am a freaking, bloody, battered, against-all-proof-to-the-contrary optimist. I talk tough sometimes, and I often plan for the worst, but at the end of the day? I believe most things, most important things, can be done, and that more to the point, I am wearing the boots to get them done.

But still. I grow weary of apologizing for missing small things that ARE important, but not AS important as whatever crisis reared up. I grow weary of withdrawing instead of saying "I'm up to my ass in alligators, but I want to see you so you can remind me I'm worth knowing - 15 minutes, coffee shop?"

So. I've been checked out again for...when's the last time I posted here? I'm not apologizing, more announcing.

Since then I visited my family in Michigan, which was fantastic. My arrival was strange, and all weekend we laughed about the line "you have a beautiful mouth" - but it was NOT an omen. My sister's girls are smiling and lovely and have all found appropriately great (no pressure, Luke and Mike...great for the moment is fine, too) men. Rachel and John have a beautiful baby! My brother's family is growing, and it was fantastic to see them, too. We played euchre and ate great food and talked, talked, talked. At one point on Friday night, Mike (not-my-brother-but-Allison's-amour) said he loved how noisy it was. I laughed, and said "talk to me in three hours." Almost clockwork, we're sitting at the kitchen table in a LIVELY game of euchre (it's for the honor and the glory in my family, not mere money), and he said "it's so loud I literally can't hear myself think." So then he learned my secret - talking UNDER the cacophony. It's served me well my entire life. :) My nephew Andrew told me inappropriate jokes he found on the net, so inappropriate I was afraid I'd be sent home in shame. It's a family that's meddling and loving both, in sometimes equal measures. It was very good, VERY good, to be home.

I finished the big rollout at work, which was a nail-biting success. It's not perfect, but it's quite awesome. I took a different job at the same company, one back in IT as a Senior Technology Analyst. I'm excited about the reason the position was created - to solve a messy problem. I'm wearing the boots.... :) More money, good experience.

It's been a hard time, though, with many demands. So tonight, I was watching a television program, Paul McKenna's "I Can Make You Thin!" and most of the program's content was on the topic of negative self-image, negative self-talk, what I used to call "old tapes" (those voices from your past that you let in your head, the ones who tell you all the ways you don't measure up). I don't have a lot of negative self-talk. I'm not a person who will call myself names, for example. Please, the world does enough of that. But damn, I do love watching people learn to stop doing that. But one exercise McKenna did tonight hit a nerve. He said to think of someone who loves and respects you, then imagine that person in front of you - get into their head and look AT yourself. What do they see?

I've certainly given that advice to a lot of people, often women at a shelter where I sometimes volunteer, or people (often women) I've coached over the years as a mentor or manager. Here is the thing: I need to try to do it for myself. Because I know that I don't see the me that those who love and respect me see. I'm surprised by who they see.

So, I see a woman who overcommits, can't live up to her commitments, and risks her integrity. Others with gentler eyes see a woman who does a lot, both in the sense of being productive and in the sense of giving. Writing that makes me blush. But I promised someone I love that I would write it here, and make it part of my permanent record, so to speak.

Love and gentle thoughts to us all. It is Spring in my valley, early and cold, but here.

~ Patti

Hiding behind hipscarves?

First off:
I was sent some angry email after my post about vanity - there is some politically correct notion that fat is not ever bad? I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that there is a range of healthy and happy weights - my definition is probably less stringent than the Weight Watchers list. But ther is absolutely a point at which excess weight is in the way of life's enjoyment, is in the way of bodies doing what bodies are meant to do: move. So send me more hateful email...I'll take it. It's self-delusional to pretend that being very overweight isn't an unhealthy and unhappy way to be.

Now, on to the actual post....
I'm just in from walking, and it was a cold, clear, spring-is-coming day. Lovely walking weather. I've been playing catchup after an 80 hour week at work, doing laundry and domestica. And it is already Sunday night, darn it.

While I was out walking, I was letting my mind wander. I was planning a post I wanted to write here about the movie Away From Her - I cried many tears today watching it. It's a complicated film, based on a short story by one of my favorite short story writers, Alice Munro. It's lovely, and harsh, and difficult to watch. It has people compromising themselves both selfishly and unselfishly. It's fantastic. But I don't want to write about it today. Any more today. :)

Instead, I want to write about something else that occurred to me. It is hard to be perfectly honest and direct, even in this almost-anonymous space. I have been thinking about my bellydancing blog posts. And then about my vanity post. They are all true, and they are honest. But they are only part of the story. The surface, happy, glancing part. Here is at least one other part: I seldom recognize myself in mirrors, in motion, in photographs. Well, I do - but only after a moment, a long pregnant pause while I try to reconcile the image with my own self-portrait, my internal self-awareness.

I have heard this is common, but I think there is something peculiar in this for some people - it seems to me that it is related to the fact that I gained a lot of weight with almost no negative panicky moments. Quiet dismay, yes. Quieter adjustments of clothing, purchase of new clothing, yes. But not panic. I gained a lot of weight - a disfiguring amount of weight. Why didn't I panic? Because I think I just quit looking at myself. I looked in mirrors to apply makeup and style my hair, and that was just about it. From the neck down I was a mystery. No, not true. From the neck down I was some image I burned into my brain, a plumper version of my "real" self, but not a woman who lost herself in pounds.

Also, to the kind and usually loving people who read this and don't post comments but instead email me - please don't send me an email saying "you're being too hard on yourself." I'm not, honestly. I am not attaching a value judgment (it was "very bad of me to gain this weight") to this. It simply happened, and I'm trying to understand how. I was distracted by big huge questions in my life, my husband's health...but still. Did I gain the weight to hide, to make myself inert at a time that inertia seemed necessary? Did I not look because to look would have made it real, would have pressed me to change something? I honestly think not. I think I didn't look because to look might have made me ashamed, or afraid - and in my life those two emotions have little purpose. I can ill afford either, and I don't know how to be my true self when I feel either.

Last summer, I walked through the lobby of my then-office building, an all-glass affair with glass doors, foyers, windows everywhere, and mirrored columns, and I saw myself reflected in a whole dizzying series of images. Distorted to appear taller and thinner by some, shorter and wider by others, oddly wavy in yet others. Two things were remarkable to me that day. I did not choose to "believe" either the least flattering or most flattering image. And, I saw myself. Clearly. It was a good, healing moment. Until today, I only shared that moment with one other person. I was confused by it - wondered why it felt so big to me. He seemed to get why, and I wonder if he'll chuckle at this entry should he ever read it.

So I will tell all of you now: standing in that belly dance studio, with the heartbeat rhythm of the music loud and the hip scarves shaking, in a room with mirrors on two walls, I could not escape myself. At first I didn't want to see - do we all imagine ourselves more beautiful in motion, more graceful? Or is it that we only see our flaws at first, never quite spying the beauty of our motions, or our rhythm? I don't know - but at first, I did not want to see. I closed my eyes, in fact, until I could find my natural hip circle, my natural shoulder shimmy movement. But practicing head slides - well, you must look. You are moving your head back and forth, no shoulders, around an imaginary line on the mirror - you must look. I looked, and I think maybe I saw my real self for the first time in a long time.

I like me. She's crazily imperfect, and she is not the woman I keep in my memory, the one fit from biking and hiking, laughing into the camera at her 35th surprise birthday party. No. The me I see now has more lines on her face, there is something darker in my eyes, but my gap-toothed smile is still bright, and I still laugh with the joy I remember having since I could name memories - the giggling, life-full joy that I insist is a living tribute to my parents. I can't see my face in laughter without seeing my mother and my father - his coloring and eyes and mouth, her nose and the too-proud snippety-ass lift in my chin.

Let spring come soon, please. Very soon.

Peace and good thoughts ~

Patti

Shoulder Shimmy is the Bomb

Here's how it went down: serious game faces, concentration as we tried to remember how to do first and second transitions with our leeeetle dancing feet and our shake-shake-shake hips while moving our arms in new ways and doing, gulp, head slides. Yeah. I may love dancing, but I'm more your free form girl. Go figure, me preferring to shake my booty in my own damned way. :)

But. I wanna be able to master the prescribed steps first, then raise my nose a trifle and dance my own steps. Which brings us to the move of all moves - grapevine and reverse grapevine with shoulder shimmy. It has a real name. Something mideastern-y and old. But reallllly...it's all about the shoulder shimmy, with extreme attitude.

I still love the way the hip scarves accentuate parts of our bodies that we'd normally hide. I love the way the teeny-tiny-hipped woman in the front row truly cannot roll her hips in a figure-8, and giggles the whole time in utter glee anyway. The small and almost secret smiles of women when our instructor says "hip circle, find your own..." and then "that's your natural movement - own it." I love touching fingers in a circle and dancing, giggling your other right to the girl next to me, the sweet but clumsy one who keeps stepping on my toes.

Yup. Sigh. Grapevine and reverse grapevine with shoulder shimmy. My hair smiles, it's that kinda happy. Enough about belly dance for a moment.

I am trying to figure out if I can hurry up a cutover at work so that I can climb in a car Friday afternoon with my go-anywhere-do-anything friend and drive a few hundred miles, spend the night at a haunted hotel, drink wine and see geysers, talk about books until we want to pass out. Road trip!!! She is giving a workshop and reading - I would be the roadie. :) It is fun to think about, even if it doesn't work out.

In two weeks I'll be flying to Michigan! Yay! I can't wait to see everyone, and meet the new baby. Here's hoping for some pleasant weather. It's March in Michigan...but hope springs eternal, you know.

Enough for today...I'll try to be back more often now that this project is winding down.

peace and good thoughts!

~ patti

Heart Day

The bellydancing was fabulous! The instructor, Sidonia, showed up with a rolling travel suitcase filled with part of her personal collection of be-coined and sequined hip scarves, and each of the 20'ish women in the class chose one to wear. It transformed us all from yoga-pant-wearing workout participants to wimmmmin, all of us with colorfully-wrapped hips ranging from squared and tiny to full and very rounded. Most of us in the middle of that range. We learned a few basic steps, we learned a few basic arm movements, then we strung them together in short dances. What was fabulous? Women not judging one another. Laughter. The beat of the music, some of it like a heartbeat, familiar as a heartbeat, filling us. The three or four moments where the steps felt so natural that I forgot it was a class, forgot I was "stepping" and just moved. And, of course, 20 butt-shaking women's dancing coins makes a sound that is, simply, fabulous.

Women are hard on other women, in my experience. I've been working at losing weight for about 22 months. It's slow going, and I no longer think those who bemoan the difficulty of losing weight once you pass 40 are slugs and laze-asses. For months, as the weight scraped itself off a pound at a time, in fits and jerks, there seemed no outward change in my appearance. Only I seemed to notice that I was fitting into, then shrinking out of, a series of sizes. But lately everyone is noticing, as though the last few pounds I've lost were the magic ones. I'm not done losing and I'm sure there will be more on this topic in future posts, but I have been musing about the questions of weight, body image, vanity.

The women in my family have generally had healthy doses of vanity in their characters. They were of that "type" that put on lipstick to make breakfast. They wore high heels with shorts. They didn't leave the house without checking their hair, lipstick, powder. I grew up thinking all women naturally smelled of AquaNet, lipstick and face powder with a light-to-liberal spray of some specific perfume. These women poked and prodded at their bellies and the thin pads of fat on their hips. They did not work out, they did not know about the muscle loss that attends aging without efforts to fight it. They merely drank more coffee, ate smaller pieces of pie and wished for their old bodies to return.

But - they were not, generally, heavy as women of my generation can become heavy. Most of them were not. The epidemic of obesity that is sweeping our country would have apalled these women. Not because of the health risks. I can't tell you how many times I heard "we're all going to die of something..." - the mantra of my smoking, cocktail-drinking, butter-eating predecessors. No - they'd be motivated not by health, but out of the risk to their wardrobes. I fought my weight as a girl - and I never remember my mother worrying about my health. I was the smart one, not the athlete. No sports. I sang, and acted in plays, and read books. I wrote stories and did math, memorized the periodic table and made people laugh. My mother worried about my looks, my ability to wear hip huggers or short skirts. I later realized that she worried about the world not seeing ME beyond the imperfection of my body. She marveled that, though I truly did WANT to wear the short skirts and tight Calvin Klein jeans that were "the" thing when I was in high school, it wasn't the kind of desire that moved me. I didn't discover that desire until my 20's, when I realized I liked the way being fit, and exercising, felt. Stubborn, I know.

My point? Most people are not motivated by fear. They are only made fearful, and frantic. Vanity seems to me to be born of fear, a fear that you don't measure up or that you will lose the measure of beauty you have. Pleasure and joy motivate. So what works for me is the simple thought that I will feel better and it will show in every line of my (imperfect but pretty awesome anyway) face and body if I simply move my body often and eat well. Great shoes do not hurt. I'm not immune to vanity's tug! :)

Still, there have been moments that I wished to possess a bit more of that vanity. It would maybe stop me from losing track of my physical self when my life gets crazy, or upsetting. Note to self: Life gets crazy, it always will. Must not react to that by abandoning the pleasures of movement.

Happy Heart Day. I'm thinking of rounded and gorgeously imperfect hips wrapped in fuschia and red and purple and black hip scarves, all stepping through a grapevine step, in a circle, while our hands and arms move in Pretty Lady sweeps, to music as familiar as a heartbeat, punctuated by laughter and the cheerful jingle of tiny coins.

Peace and great good thoughts!

~ patti

Me, a Bellydancer? Really?

Sorry I've been away.

Here is the thing: I hate my belly. I've always hated my belly. At one time I hated being my height, having all these damned curves...but by the time I hit my late 20's, I had narrowed and focused my hatred: I merely hated my belly.

So. Tonight I'm taking a bellydance class. Because I love to dance, and I think it looks like fun, and I'm thinking maybe, MAYBE I'll like my belly more if it is useful, or if I can see it in a new way, maybe as not-horrible...even (gasp) - pretty? Nah, too much. Baby steps.

Also: today, February 11, was my mom's birthday. I woke up happy and have been smiling for her all day today. I wore red for her (she liked me in red). And between conference calls and munching my tupperware-packed salad (healthy!), I am remembering all the funny things about her. I thought of her smartass humor and her giggle. And I remembered the way she thought her kids were pretty much perfect. Especially my brother, Michael. :) (He is pretty awesome, I must agree...but the girls aren't bad, either.) I remember her temper, the way her chin rose when she would say, in disgust, about someone or some agency that "they can just kiss my ass." Seems that MIGHT be where I got this idea that being ladylike does not require quiet acceptance. :)

I'm remembering her snappy blue eyes and her fiery temper, and the way she drank half-beers (they add up, I'm here to tell you), and tapped her feet to music, and picked out songs by ear on a piano. That piano thing still to this DAY amazes me. I'll sing her a song on my way home, and maybe tell her about this bellydance thing. And maybe, though she never learned it, she'll understand when I tell her that I'm all done hating parts of me. It's just silliness.

Peace and shimmmmy-essence to you!

~ patti

Sunday

Here is the baby! My niece and her husband used a family surname as his first name....and I find that awesome. He is gorgeous, and though you can't see it, he has dark hair. Lots of it. Yayyy! He also has two sisters and two parents who are a tiny big gaga, and a whole bunch of cousins (I'm not gonna even try to figure out the first or second cousin business....COUSINS, close enough). It makes my heart smile to see them all so happy.

It made me damned homesick though, and I'm trying to plan a trip home this spring or summer. It's not enough - I need to live somewhere nearer. Working on that...

It's been a week already? Hunh. I had a busy week at work, a clarifying week that will have my resume shined up before the day is out, and updated resumes posted on Monster. My stories are doing what stories do in the world of literary journals - being read and rejected with sometimes-encouraging comments. My writing is ARGH. Kicking my ass, but I keep kicking back.

Here is something I told a friend recently, and that seems important as I plan to make some big decisions. I will circle and analyze until I'm certain further analyzing will do me no good - then I decide, and commit, and I'm happy with what I choose. I dislike deciding without that time to think it through. I dig my heels in if someone tries to rush me. But generally I don't second guess my decisions and am not wistful about them. To what end? 'Tis done - move on. This is apparently a key characteristic of "happy" people.

Just finished watching a film titled "Antonia's Line," which won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1995, apparently. The film is earthy and sensual, playful, painful and lovely in turns - telling the story of Antonia's life after she returns to her small village. It has powerful female characters, something of a celebration of matriarchy. There is love, and brutality, and ambition - sigh. It is excellent, but that's not what I want to write about today. There is a moment in the film when Antonia has had a great loss, and is mourning. She says "Ehhh...there is nothing to be done but get up. Life must be lived." Indeed, it must. Dinners must be cooked, laundry washed, children raised, lives lived. Because time moves, regardless of our readiness for it to do so.

What I'm wrestling now is how the pieces of my life fit together, or fail to. I need more time to write, I want to have or make a family and my days are not being spent in support of what I say is important to me. It seems that everything touches everything else - like dominoes with teeth. Every change creates a ripple in the little pond of my life. Some people in my life are cheering me on - make the rippppplessss....., while others enjoy that smooth water. I am closer to the former than the latter. Change is good, and necessary, and it is inevitable. So, at some point, I will need to make some ripples. In fact, if you're not much of a swimmer, you may want to strap on your life vests - I'm seeing a potential cannonball in my future. :)

Good thoughts and peace to you!

~ patti

Monday

Officially, today is a holiday for my company's Idaho site. The rest of the company, however, does not observe this holiday, so it was "suggested" that it might be a good idea for us to work the holiday, reserving this day for some future date when we need a day to keep us from running screaming from the building. Sigh. Have I mentioned the part where I need a new job? :) It's on the list.

My sister's middle daughter is having a baby. Today! She is overdue and verrry pregnant, and today IS the day. I'd love to be there, and I'm very aware of the distance between me and the people I love today. Over the weekend I talked briefly with my sister, and was joking with her about this conversation I keep having with the therapist - he gives me the depression test, I say "Doesn't frustrated ranting indicate a lack of depression???" Now I smile as I say it...but I mean it. He laughs, reminds me he has to ask the questions, and then we talk about living with depression, next to depression. My husband is fighting depression along with, and in great part because of, his physical challenges, you see. Or therapist-dude tries to talk the hard-headed me into believing that some small distinction of the difference between anxiety-induced behaviors, addictive behaviors and compulsive behaviors matters. For the record? In my book - they do NOT. They may come from different places in our minds, but they FEEL the same. Your life, your actions, your behaviors are not authentic to who you are. I keep telling him - your job is to know what caused the problem so you can fix it. My job is to tell you you're not doing that great a job yet. :) It's okay, I'm charming and I say this stuff with a smile and a relatively light heart, and so that comment makes him laugh.

This weekend, while talking to another friend, we wound up talking about the things we always thought we would do that we are not doing. She is a single mom, and I am...well, I am not where I thought I would be. Here was our short list: camping, backpacking, snowshoe weekends, international travel, impulsive road trips (that one was mine). Seeing a pattern here? Uh...it's all about escape, babeeee. So we went digging into our Campus Rec calendars to find low cost opportunities to do this stuff. We're going to go snowshoeing in a few weeks on an overnighter (there will be no snow camping, a lodge and someone else cooking will definitely be involved). I'm going to take a belly dance class. We're going to find some group to try backpacking with. It's so easy to accept limits when you are tired, isn't it?

So...I'm reading a book called Atonement, by Ian McEwan, recently made into a film. I've owned the book for a while, and when I began reading it again, I remembered trying to read it once before. It is lovely. Lush prose, surprising observations in a WWII setting, the lens of today on a time that is at once familiar and unfamiliar to us now. What makes it hard to read is the act of a child, a precocious and smart and headstrong child, that shapes lives. McEwan circles the moment of this act with precision and grace until it is almost unbearable to read it. Books do that to me. My dance with the written words of a book, or of letters, or emails, create such a vivid place that I feel I inhabit it. Unlike, completely unlike, the experience of film, where I am clearly an observer. In any case, one of the things I'd rather do than work today is finish this book. Tomorrow night my teaching career resumes, with a nighttime beginning fiction class. I am both excited and wondering how I'll manage it. So, another of the things I would rather do today is work on my materials for the class - my syllabus and handouts and schedule and...all of it.

Most of all, I'd like to spend the day writing. I have a story that is aching to get out of me, that I'm pacing around like a caged lioness, afraid to start, burning to start. The act of writing these stories is so involving, though. I lose myself for a time, and it can be almost frightening to do that. Right now, it feels both seductive and a little scary. But irresistible.

Find peace, stay warm and smile often.

~ patti

Once

Sometimes when I watch a film or read a book, I realize that it has come into my life at exactly the moment it needed to. I think this happens often, actually, and I'm trying to wrap my mind around the idea that everything happens when it should as it should, if we but let it. Actually, it's more my heart and spirit that fight that notion than my head, since in my particular experience trust often costs something.

Once was just what I needed to see right now. It's one of those indy films that makes me remember why I like indy films - actors with imperfect features and great presence, a quiet storyline with heart, people with thwarted desires, quirky and breath-catching moments of real drama. And this Irish film also has fantastic music and many reminders especially heartening for the frustrated and disheartened artists of the world. Here is what I am thinking right this minute: what you get can make you truly happy if you stop clinging so stubbornly to what you want. I don't know that this is always true, and especially not in matters of love - but it often is true of life's paths, and limitations. Most of all, when it comes to things not of the heart, but of the world - letting go of wantwantwant frees your arms and fingers to grasp some other wonderful thing, some undreamed of opportunity, that comes your way.

I know this, and I live this, and in my gut it is the unquestioned truth of how I see the world. But as I recently told a friend - of course there are moments when disappointment threatens to become bitterness. When frustration feels like it wants to seduce me, to stew inside me to resentment. It might be disappointment at my own life's limits, or frustration about the pain a loved one feels. For me, either can whisper darkly when I am tired. As the Cormac McCarthy quote reminded me just a few weeks ago - I'm in the camp of those who will find a way to be happy. What I have to allow myself room to do is accept disappointment and then move through it. Because, simply put, and plainly enough to anyone with eyes: sometimes it's hard to compromise your hopes against reality. Sometimes.

Once reminded me of that, too. The main character rediscovers hope, and he fills his mind and his minutes trying to fulfill his soul's desire. As in all things, it's the journey.

So. Speaking plainly now, because who really reads these entries? Sometimes I simply want it easier. Quieter, more laughter, fewer troubles, simpler, with less drama and pain and angst. When I realize that's what I want, I have to self-scold a bit. I have to ask myself why I think I deserve it easier, when in fact my life is in the cushy paradise section on the sliding scale of human possibility. I'm capable, smart, loved and blessed with much.

Other times, the word I would use is not easier, but settled. My father used that word as a kind of catch-all to ask how I was doing. And of course, there is no state of "settled" that can be attained. Had he lived longer, I would have loved to talk about that with him. As soon as we feel we are settled, the world (which is NOT rotating around me, dammit!) is bound to offer up another challenge, another opportunity, another distraction. It is about feeling settled in your heart, let the world send the salvos it is bound to send.

Feeling settled isn't an accomplishment, it's another kind of journey. Plan and execute and build lives all you like - my knowledge of the world is that it's all at risk, all the time. All you have is the journey, the knowledge that you can make it again. And again, if needed.

Hey, if you read this? Mostly, mostly I do. I'm always walking that space in the center where feeling settled sits in a field of lavender and daisies just up a hill to my right, and giving up sits in a dark, fallow space an easy downhill tumble to my left. Stay to the right. Always to the right.

Hope and light heart to you.

~ patti

Straight Man

Finished this book over the weekend, and I caught myself smiling about a quirky funny moment while out walking last night. If you aren't familiar with this writer, Richard Russo, you should check out at least Nobody's Fool. He won the Pulitzer for the novel Empire Falls, but for my money NF has richer humor and human drama.

I am an opinionated snippetybitchet, am I not?

I'm not sure what I think yet about this book. Russo's prose and style is an almost-perfect counterpoint to Cormac McCarthy. Russo writes about minutiae of our modern lives with the sort of detail and focus that we grant it - and thus draws attention to how silly are the ways that we spend our days. While McCarthy goes straight at the big questions, such as the nature of evil or the source of joy in a life, Russo tends more toward the sidelong glance. He writes small towns with small dramas writ large, and dissatisfied middle-aged men looking for their true selves, often in bars or diners with other men who are older or younger versions of themselves. Yet from the small dramas Russo pulls large truths.

One of this book's truths is about fathers. Much of the drama centers around William Henry Devereaux, Jr's (call him Hank) discomfort with being abandoned by William Henry Devereaux, Sr - 40 years earlier. The father is coming to live in the small town that Jr. calls home, and they are both academics, both English professors. But much of the wisdom comes from Hank's insight into how his wife feels about her father. I was laughing about a paragraph in the book where Hank says "every time she spends time with her father, my own stock rises. I hate to think of him staying with us for an entire summer, but by the time he leaves, I'm going to look pretty good to Lily."

But now, writing this, I'm more interested in this idea of the sidelong glance. Maybe that's why I like Russo (not everyone does, and especially not every writer does). His characters, who sneak up on the things that scare them, who look and then look away - they feel true to me. It is a strategy that is very helpful when the thing we need to face is truly frightening, worthy of a respectful, slow, careful approach. But it can quickly become a habit.

I'm off to write some fiction. Happy Thursday!

Slip Slidin' Awaaaay....

I've been described by some as stubborn. I once received a lowered performance review score on tenacity, based on being too tenacious. It was a tenth of a point on a 100 point scale, intended by my then-manager to illustrate that sometimes it is good to let gooooo....but I debated his reasoning as illogical. Eventually I won...but only after I admitted over a drink that he had a point. See, I can learn. :)

Not stubborn. Tenacious. Determined. Filled to the brim with midwestern, middle-class stick-to-it-iveness. But not stubborn.

Today I awoke to unexpected snow - three or so inches of fluffy white. I drank coffee and watched it out my windows and let my soul calm. Also, I stretched my muscles a lot, sore from a grueling aerobic/weight workout. Oh, and did my characteristic wince-giggle move every time I stood up. I was moderately sore.

But I'd planned to walk today. It's on my list. The list of priorities. The sun came out, and some of the snow melted, and I ran some errands...so it was late afternoon before I laced up my shoes. That's right, punk. Walking shoes, because I don't own snow hikers. Please. This is the first winter in 13 years that we've had enough snow to use a snow shovel. Now, you might be thinking "hey, you could go to campus and walk in the Rec's climate controlled comfort" - and you would be 100% correct. Except that I wanted to breathe outdoor air, clear and clean. I wanted sunlight and cold air on my face.

So off I went. Ipod, cell phone, tissues, lip moisturizer, ear warmers, sweats, fleece vest, long underwear shirt, that amazing nothing-moves workout bra, socks, gloves, scarf. Yeah, I love winter. Thing is...it's cooling off, and the snow that had melted? It was returning to a frozen state. Only not snow, of course. Standing water forms ice, see.

By the first mile, I'd mastered the technique: small steps, stick to snowy areas where possible (ignoring the snow on ankles), watch for idiots in vehicles. But then...the snow disappeared. The next mile was all skate, and it was fun, actually...yeah, fun. The way a county-fair rollercoaster might be fun when you've seen the carny who put it together last night, and he really looked like he wanted to get back at the world for what it owes him? Yeah, like that.

It's getting dark now, and I manage to get past the icy section. Take that, angry carny-guy messing in my karma. It's all good. I'm smiling a lot, rocking out with the Boss on my Ipod, listening to the MTV unplugged album, and a car passes from behind, so I step over further in the parking lane (no sidewalks, Boise has the MOST screwed up system of sidewalks you can imagine). I am skirting a parked car, another car is approaching from the front...and then a horn blasts behind me. It's loud. Really loud, like a percussion on my body. There is a moment that I'm pretty sure I'm going down. My heart is in my mouth suddenly, and I recognize how stupid it is, how stubborn and not tenacious this walk is, how it's maybe possible that I am self-destructively-stubborn/tenacious/determined and the time has come to pay up for my folly - so I freeze, flinch, try to decide whether to flatten myself into the parked car or take a flyer onto the hood...and then nothing. I turn around, and an idiot female person in a truck is parked in front of the house I just passed, honking at someone to come out of the house. Seriously. So uh, a few hand gestures come to mind. I go with the hands raised, palms up, incredulous look -WTF??? She points at the house, laughs, smiles. Across the street the guy I always see running in the summer when I walk in the early morning is in his driveway, clearly trying not to laugh. He is in his sweatshirt and looks ready to watch a football game. Comfortable. Bastard. "You want I should kick her ass, or explain the world to her?" he says, and then I turn to face him and the two of us just grin.

Yeah, so then I realized. No, I'm not self-destructively stubborn/tenacious/determined, and there is no payment due for any so-called folly.

Seriously. But it's possible that next time it's this snowy I'll go to the Rec. See? I told you I can learn.

Yours in the spirit of tenacity. (Truth told, I LIKE stubborn.)
~ patti

Feeling the Love?

Well. I read in my local paper today that most people make sweeping resolutions that they abandon within weeks. They are going to lose 100 pounds, train for a marathon, get out of debt, find a career that satisfies them... Okay, problem number one: I'm reading that list and nodding, even taking notes (ohhh...a marathon, good one). And then the part about how impossible those resolutions are, and the likelihood of failure and abandonment fills three or four inches of column space.

Sometimes, and by that I mean freaking often, I am annoyed by the fact that anytime people dream big, they're told that they are being escapist. Not really. We dream big, I think, because the level of our discontent has never been so high. And it's not - NOT - because of thwarted consumer desires that we are reaching for more. Nope.

A friend and I, each of us raised in relatively (?) religious homes, talk often about the visible levels of panicky consumerism, the crazed casting about for stuff that we see in our neighbors, our families, ourselves. He and I talk often about questions of faith. We aren't wholehearted fans of blind faith...or maybe we're just not able to grasp it. But lately, those talks circle back to what we see substituting for the faith of earlier generations. We are desperate to make meaning of the world, to find meaning, and not simply to subsist. We are told, often and charmingly and sometimes quite loudly, that meaning might be found in a bigger house, or a better sofa, new car, a sexier computer or...you get my drift. Sometimes, for a moment, we do find happiness in objects. There is pleasure and appreciation in finely made objects, in lovely possessions, and in beautiful spaces. But it is fleeting, and the cost is often high (and interest-laden). And most importantly - it doesn't stand in for the greater pleasures, the deeper pleasures - being elsewhere - and that is the quest.

I think our resolutions are often about this frenzied quest - so I say dream BIG. Put the marathon on the damned list. Put debt free on there. Put "new life's work" on there. And then go make them happen. Break them down, attack them, but don't start by turning your dream into a shadow of itself. The world is likely to do that, but you don't need to help it in the effort.

My list? Yeah, here we go:
* Lose 10% of my current weight. My diet is excellent - no resolutions there. (Bite me, no numbers will be offered)
* Walk or workout most days each week.
* Snowshoe weekend with the chicks I love. Bike 1/2 century ride with those same women.
* See more of my family. I suck at that. They can't find Idaho on a map, either. :)
* Volunteer as a court appointed special advocate. This is the year.
* Finish the three stories necessary to complete my first book of stories.
* Submit the four finished stories everywhere in the known universe for publication.
* Change my job. More time - I need more free time, more flexible time.
* Keep my center. Always. Big love goes out to the one who helped me find my center this year. Your faith gave me faith.

So, that's it. And it IS doable. I'll prove it.

Seek peace.

~ patti

New Year's Eve - Crack the Champagne?

I have a bottle, and I'm making a list of reasons to raise a glass.

It is quite amazing to me the things I learn about life from writing, in the act of finding language to create meaning and sensation. Here is one I'm pondering today: in editing, I often spend too much time trying to correct symptoms of underlying issues. For example, I'll say that a section of dialogue is stilted, when the real problem is that the character is underdeveloped. That sort of thing. Guess what...I do that in life, too. I react to symptoms and try to fix them, instead of taking that single breath and step backward to be sure I'm correcting the right thing. I've been working on this pretty hard in 2007, and I've made a lot of progress but dammmmmmit...I keep slipping up.

I forgive myself...but I really wish I would stop it. No: I will stop it.

Here is how I slip up most: not measuring opportunities FIRST against how they match with my priorities, and THEN by what else they might offer me. I'm very lucky in many ways - opportunities come to me. People who love me say that's because I work hard. Ehhh...I think it's some sort of balancing act for the crappy stuff that's been thrown in my direction. Either way - when opportunities arrive, it is hard not to be persuaded by the priorities that OTHERS have for me. More salary, more "prestige" - these aren't on my priority list. More time, more focus, the time and energy to write and to care for my body - these are on my list.

Oh, wait. Maybe how I slip up most is in overbooking myself, overcommitting my time. No. I'm getting better about that. Progress.

So, I'm withdrawing from consideration for a job that has a great title and pays better (and does get me to the side of the country I'd prefer living in) - but that advances none of my priorities. Whew. I'm getting better at this.

It occurs to me that if my priorities are attained...I'll likely find myself a healthy, fit, poor-but-happy writer. That's okay - I'll still have my shoes. It will be better than okay. It will be perfect. :)

That 12 week thing started today. So this morning, after a healthy breakfast, only ONE cup of coffee and a couple of glasses of water, I bundled up and went out to walk my 4 miles (including the breath-stealing hill!) in the chill air. It felt great. And now I'm here...and soon I'll go give myself a pedicure and get semi-snazzily dressed to ring in the new year. I'm wearing the shoes, I think...even if they are a super impractical choice for the quieter celebration we're planning.

And today, tonight, tomorrow - I'll be making my list of things to be grateful for, 2007 milestones and great moments, people to thank and connect with. And I will also be working on my plans for next year.

Be safe and joyous!

~ patti

Merry Christmas Cormac McCarthy

This morning, around 9, I started reading No Country For Old Men, a novel by Cormac McCarthy. He is a brilliant writer, and his prose thrills me even when his material troubles me. But it's Christmas Eve, so I expected to read a few chapters, then set the book aside and read something else. Something Christmasy. Lighter. Like, say, maybe...Dante.

Oh, my. Nope. Read the whole book in one sitting. Straight through. What a novel. It raises big questions about the nature of faith, the aims of our country, the aims of each one of us - questions it doesn't answer and that it raises without approaching preachiness. The characters are complex and simple, honorable and flawed. Lovely. You will, if you know me, hear about this book for a while. But tonight, I am moved to quote one section.

So as not to ruin the book's lovely and quiet surprises, I'll not say where this section is from, or who the speaker is. He's smart, tough, and wise. He is not educated, and is, as they apparently say in Texas with great reverence, "common as dirt." He has not had an easy life, and he is speaking to another character about the nature of regret in a life. He says this:
"I ain't got that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things you might think would make a man happier. . . You can make up your own list. You might even have one. I think by the time you're grown up you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it."

My, yes. I've known people who never got the hang of it, either, and this passage rang with such immense and simple truth to me. I've known people, smart people, who sniffed at happiness as the playground for the simple-minded. But in the end, that's just not true. It may be, arguably, harder to stay happy when you can see the complexities of the world's problems. But in the end, you're going to find a way to be happy with today if you are so wired. You're going to smile at some touch of nature in your life, or the sweet smile of a child, or the taste of something simply delicious. And it will not matter, really, if you do that from a chair surrounded by sunshine and daisies, or from a place that is darker. Because for happy people the darkness is transitory. It simply is.

I'll tell you, this gives me pause. You have to try to place yourself when you read something like that, don't you? Out walking tonight, in the cold and clear darkness, I thought hard about this. I have had a series of hard times, unrelated to one another, but piled on top of one another, such that I became an essentially happy person who began to doubt that the darkness was transitory. Or, as one of my friends says, the "little donkey burdens all added up." I didn't even really know that I was losing my faith in the light. And then, then a lot of things conspired to lift my head up. I was reminded that the darkness could be lifted. I remembered, and I believed. That memory made me kick for the light, in a way that reminds me, still, of kicking for the surface of a lake when my lungs ache for air. One never knows what you'll find at the surface, or in the clarity of bright light, but the happy person is certain it will be better than burning for air, or fumbling in darkness. Rediscovering the light has been such a gift - it's hope and happiness all in one.

Merry almost-Christmas to all those who helped me to find my light this year, and those who waited while I did. Thank you, a thousand thousand times over.

~ Patti

Snow Falls on ChainLink....

My house sits on a corner, across the street from an old, private golf course. I always say I have the cheap seats - the lush open space spread out and filling the view from my windows...just across a rather busy street, and on the other side of a chain link fence that is almost invisible. Until the snow outlines each rectangle with teeny drifts of white that glisten in moonlight. Still...it's nice, almost decadent, that expanse of groomed earth. In summer it's too green for this desert climate, and in winter it feels like a private park.

It snowed last night when I was out walking. First it was that icy kind of sleety rain-snow, and I was laughing to myself about being so hard-headed that I was 1.75 miles from home, in the dark, in the sleet, without a hat but with both an Ipod and a cell phone. Nice. But then...the snow changed to the heavy, dense curtain of flakes - the kind that falls straight down in a silent press of white. And I smiled at it, tipped my face up to let it strike my skin and thanked the universe for sending it. It made me MUCH less homesick to have the snow falling. I might have dialed my cell to share the news with someone...but it was as sweet, I think, to send my thoughts out into the dark night sky and trust that they would be felt, if not heard.

Yeah, this 12-week thing? Uhm....I'm thinking maybe I started with a four week maintenance warm-up kind of plan, and then I'll leap right into the 12 week weight loss cycle. Yeah. I have changed my habits a lot, and I'm no longer at risk of just piling on pounds when I let my guard down. I have habits that involve uh...vegi burgers and whole grains, instead of my old standbys of french cheese and delightful breads. Thus - it is okay to be in a maintenance loop for a few weeks - it IS. It is a long road, this life road. And I'm under direct orders to treat myself with love and respect. To which I say...whatever...and then try to honor that request, because it came out of love and care.

Love and peace to us all - it's just a few hours from Christmas Eve day here, and I'm enjoying the silence and the glow of my late-decorated but lovely Christmas tree.

Peace and love ~ Patti

Twelve Weeks

I was manhandled by one of those "free gift" offers into buying a book titled Body for Life for Women. The book is a little inspirational (galleries of before and after photos, success stories) and quite blunt. If you're over 40, you are on a fast track to a higher percentage of body fat and less lean muscle unless you work hard at reversing the process. Ugh.

One element I like quite a lot is one that I've followed rather unconsciously the last few years as I worked to lose the pounds I'd piled on: 12 weeks of focused weight loss effort, and then 12 weeks of maintenance at the new lower weight before losing more. I like this. It works for me, and it makes sense to me.

So, today is day 1 of a 12 week weight loss segment.

I ate wisely, drank lots of water (that part's always easy for me) and, joy of joys...walked my 4 mile loop, though without taking the hill that steals my breath. It felt awesome. Yay, me.

Happy December.

Peace to all ~ patti