Archive for the ‘Lifestyle’ Category
Week four. By this point I had so hoped to have a record of aha moments at which I finally made good choices, or realized the potential for skill building, this being the 30th day into a 60 day opportunity for growth and rebounding. I had wanted a firm list of realizations about FOOD: why I eat what I eat and how to stop doing so damn much of that all the time, MONEY: why it’s always gone and how to stop spending all of it and, EXERCISE: well, how to get some with an infant, six year old and concurrent goals of world domination, vacation property and a revived music career.
But the thing of it is that getting a firmer footing into my ability to make good choices seems like the most ultimate bore, I can’t even muster the strength to consider the content of such a post while I’m in the shower, which is where all good posts are born.
I will mention the only interesting development, which is that I’ve been moderately vegan (GASP) for the last two weeks; moderately meaning not all the time, which I realize would horrify most vegans. Vegan with an occasional side of egg and fish. I’m just not craving meat or dairy much at ALL suddenly, and I’m running with it. I had an ear of corn and french green lentils for dinner tonight and was completely satisfied. This is after a childhood spent running home and preparing a time-worn well treasured afterschool snack: BACON IN A GLASS so, you know, it’s huge.
Change is always such a lovely, inspiring thing, and if I have to shave off my knuckle with a cheese grater (oh you bet I’m still talking about it) to realize it’s time to just GET IT TOGETHER, I am going to see this one through. I’ll spare you the exercise log, budgeting, the analysis of emotional eating. It’s just so.. yawn….
After a truly horrific day of incessant kid whining, floor scrubbing with enzyme cleaner (don’t ask), and general sourness, I’m setting myself up for a decent evening here with a movie about heroin addiction. Though it may sound like fuel for today’s fire, I have this little ongoing obsession with films about substance abuse. Adaptation. Basquiat. Igby Goes Down, House of Sand and Fog. All my favorites. All deeply resonant because it’s something I feel like I’ve experienced directly, yet know nothing about. My wife works with families who struggle under the weight of homelessness, one that’s exacerbated by drug abuse and untreated mental illness (and self-medication). My own neighbor is suffering, and I’ve been around to hear the years of forced laughter and sidewalk parties (or caterwauling, as we call it), then her children’s screams when the police come at night to threaten to remove them, and finally, the eviction notice delivery. The dysfunction is staggering.
But I have also lost a close friend, a brother in law, and a partner, a true love to the disease. I think it’s that by reliving the experience onscreen of watching someone descend, and all the sacred bonds of love, family, and loyalty be broken, thread by thread as they float away in the dark, I feel a smidge better, because it makes my own losses not feel so impossible. Better might not be the right word. Validated, perhaps. It validates old, deep wounds.
It’s difficult to render a similar emotion from an average day in my life, to the one that comes when someone you love is just out there, literally lost to you, living a life you no longer belong to, and you can’t do anything about it. You’re still holding the phone, and you’ve got your heart all unwrapped for that person and little inside jokes you know will get a laugh, and the line is suddenly empty. And you’ve still got it to your ear with the cord all wrapped between your fingers expectantly and you feel like an idiot. And then you feel ravaged and helpless, and there’s a long, heartbreaking process of hanging it up. Sometimes for good.
When I lived in Portland, Oregon and all the ultimate frisbee guys were riding trailbikes around town, goatees a-flying, I instead wanted a scooter.
When I was a preschool teacher in Santa Cruz, watching the summer tourist stream of traffic clog my daily commute up into Felton, I wanted a scooter.
When I was still but a spring chicken in San Francisco, newly minted lesbian in search of the girlfriend who ultimately married me, I wanted a scooter.
Said girlfriend has been so used to hearing me talk about it, she was almost surprised when I actually bought one and spent three days bouncing around the living room doing happy dances. REALLY happy dances.
Through the miracle of Craigslist, I have my very own 1993 Yamaha Jog scooter. It is RAD and gets crazy gas mileage as I’m putting around Oakland picking up lunch, running errands and getting funny comments from pedestrians because I’m also wearing platform heels.
I have named her Michelle Obama because she’s hot shit, wicked smart and totally classy.
Here’s something I found on the sidewalk the other day. I think it’s kind of beautiful somehow. (Click to enlarge)
Burnt shoulders, check. BBQ sauce on my fingers, uh huh.
The ease and delight of summer is here and I’ve climbed on board. The last six months of baby stress have eased somewhat, and recently I’ve begun to participate in normal activities that don’t involve financial fiascos, anti-depressants or mad-dash runs for diapers. I’ve been walking cautiously among those of you with normal sleep schedules and children who at least drink from sippy cups and trying to blend. I’ve even looked cute once or twice, though credit for that is likely due to the new clothes I keep ordering because I’m so deprived of normalcy I can’t remember what’s in the laundry basket, much less keep up with emptying it into that machine in the garage that makes whirring noises.
Sure, I’ve appeared normal to the parents at morning school drop-off. For months, I’ve managed to be chatty and cordial with the friendly parents I know, and aloof in an “I’m staring at my iPhone because I’m receiving critical information in my important job where I run the whole world” way, with the ones I don’t. At work, I’ve appeared as though I easily remember casual requests and have infinite brain capacity and patience for new challenges, even though my to-do list has been the size of Arkansas for months and I often forget whose number I’ve dialed, just as they are picking up.
I have walked the line. The long dark hallway of sleep deprivation and infant-rearing. And it’s high time we got back to business around these parts. It is warm and lovely. I want my life to feel warm and lovely again, not crunchy and gloomy and on the verge of disaster. I would like for my brain, body and level of self-actualization to resemble that which attracted my wife in the first place.
I’m on this kinda-sorta stint of maternity leave and feeling like this is the perfect opportunity for a quickie life makeover. But rather than one where I turn out drastically different, improved and fabulous, like an 18 year old Vespa model in Greece (though, come to think of it, that would work too), I just want things to GET BACK TO NORMAL.
I would like to be able to move my ideas forward, instead of wishing them along on the couch while I do nothing but watch some awful rerun of Laguna Beach and listen to the baby monitor. That’s the jist of it; forward motion. I’m crying out for it. To-do list items crossed off, for once and for all. No more mulling things over. Action time. The house will be lovely, I will take care of myself fully and listen to good music again, actually cook new things instead of relying on standby and brought-in foods and, above all, regain the ability to examine my life.
This will require sleep, breathing fully, eating as though I have more than three minutes to spare. It will require the time to make conscious decisions, rather than issuing quick fight-or-flight reactions. The kind of decisions one makes when one isn’t living in a constant state of panic. I do recall this state of being, but everything has changed with the new baby and now I’ve got to relearn these basic ideas. Like a remedial class on, well, living.
It all begins tomorrow. With the BBQ.