Forget spring cleaning....this is a late summer super-scour!

Yesterday was a big day in my process towards becoming the happiest and most fulfilled version of myself before my 30th birthday. I started out the day by loading up my friend Mikey's truck with trash and clutter and recycling that I had removed from the house and the front porch. It was a lot of stuff that had been in my way, items that no longer served me that were literally blocking my path from my front door to my porch to my steps leading to my car. When I had only a scooter, I had no way to take these items away, and then once I had a car again, it grew to be more than I really thought I could fit in my car. Finally last week, I reached out to Mikey and asked if he would come help me haul it all away in exchange for a night of babysitting his daughters.

So much came up while I was loading everything into the back of the truck. I had a lot of anger sneak up on me. A huge portion of it was his stuff, his trash, his cans and bottles that needed to be recycled. I was feeling resentful for having to pick it all up and clean up another person's mess. Then I realized I was actually really angry at myself for allowing it to sit there for so long....for allowing it to be something that stressed me out every single day I saw it.

About mid-way through the process, I picked something up and a wasp flew out of it and stung my right hand. It is so swollen right now that I can't bend my finger or move my hand very well. It is my middle finger, so if you see me around town today, please excuse me in advance for flipping you a bird. It isn't intentional. There was something that felt very symbolic about the wasp sting in the middle of this giant purging process...I haven't quite worked that symbolism out yet though. Maybe it was to pull me out of my anger spiral? Although I've been reading that it is important to allow yourself to be angry when grieving. In the Codependent No More book, she writes that we have to stop thinking of anger as being a bad feeling or something that is wrong to feel. You are allowed to feel anger. You just shouldn't let it consume you, and you aren't allowed to dwell in it for too long. I am not an angry person, so it has been a challenge to allow myself to feel this particular emotion. Maybe the wasp was meant to rile me up even more, so I couldn't stop feeling angry, so I'd have to walk around with a big swollen middle finger to the world for a few days? Ha.

So, we got everything loaded and drove it to the recycling center, and what couldn't be recycled went to the dump. As we drove out of the facility, I let out a deep sigh. I felt like I had just lost 300 lbs. Why hadn't I done that sooner? It doesn't matter. What matters is that I did remove all of that stress and those things that were blocking me from feeling my best.

Then I went and dropped off my beautiful antique diamond engagement ring to a private estate jeweler that I bought it from. She is doing me a favor and selling the ring for me, and thinks she can get me all of my money back! (I paid for the ring. Don't worry. If I hadn't, I would have done the right thing and returned it.) I have to admit, that felt like a huge moment in this whole process, and it wasn't easy to hand her the ring, but after I was walking back to my car, I felt another release of stress and knew I was moving in the right direction.

On Saturday I started drinking some great herbal teas blended specifically for me by a local herbalist. (I'll write another blog about these soon.) One of them is a metabolism boost tea. Yesterday I also started a superfood smoothie/juice detox/cleanse. I normally eat really healthy and live a healthy lifestyle, but I've felt for a few years now like something was just off with my body, with the way I've been gaining weight and having low energy, etc. Yesterday my favorite thing I made was this blend: strawberries, blueberries, hemp protein, flax seed, spirulina, kelp, udos oil, almond milk, keifer (for probiotics) and green tea. I wasn't sure how it would taste, since I just made the recipe up, but it was delicious & I've lost 2.5 lbs since yesterday! This just might be waking my body up and pushing me in the right direction.

There are exactly 7 weeks until I turn 30!

(Pictured above is my morning smoothie today 8/3/11...next to a plant....next to a jar of quinoa.)

Discovered a perk of being single again....

I had to go get some closet organizers for a client I've been working with lately. I wandered over to the shower curtain aisle from the closet organizer aisle at Target and saw this really pretty shower curtain. My first instinct was, "I can't get that. It is too feminine." I guess I had gotten really used to trying to make the decorating in the house look gender neutral and only pick out things that we would both like. All of a sudden, I realized I can get whatever damn shower curtain I want!

I can paint my bathroom hot pink (not that I plan to)....but I could! Then my second instinct was, "I can't afford that shower curtain. It isn't a necessary item. I have a goal of getting out of debt." As I was rattling off excuses to myself, I looked down, and saw the shower curtain I wanted "repackaged" and discounted about 70%! Someone had shoved it onto the bottom shelf. I took it as a sign that I needed that shower curtain....if for no other reason that to reclaim my ability to be as girly as I want to be! I have always wanted to replace the tub here with a clawfoot tub, but we couldn't agree on that. Now, I have my eye out for an inexpensive one I can refurbish & paint. I'm digging these colors.

A friend just sent me this tonight.....

“Because it is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something - perhaps not much, just something - of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the force that created men distinct from trees. Something of the inaudible music that moves us along in our bodies from moment to moment like water in a river. Something of the spirit of the snowflake in the water of the river. Something of the duplicity and the relativity and the merely fleeting quality of all this. Something of the almighty importance of it and something of the utter meaninglessness. And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment, of time, and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being - not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses - but a human being, we call it poetry.”

-Ted Hughes

"Until you make peace with who you are, you will never be content with what you have." -Doris Mortman

My morning revelation about codependency...

For the past two years, I have felt like I have been standing at the edge of an old stone well, with a bucket the end of the rope. As time went on, the bucket kept filling up with something very very heavy that I couldn't lift. Sometimes, when I had the energy, I would strain with all my might to pull it back up. Sometimes, when I didn't have the energy, I would just brace myself and make sure I didn't let it slip any further. I was sure if I could just somehow lift it out, everything would be fine. I was resisting. I was refusing to just let go out of fear, I guess. What would happen then? What if I needed what was in that bucket? What I am beginning to see is that I spent so much time looking down into that well that I forgot to look up and around & notice that this well is located in the middle of a lake! I will be just fine if I let go. I won't run out of water. I don't need to stand there anymore. I don't need a bucket or a rope to survive. I just thought I did. The bucket doesn't contain water anyway and you can't drink lead. Silly me.

Thai restaurant. Manhattan. Breakfast. 2006.

This photo makes me think of perception. I took this image of a man (Khristoph) who was sitting on the other side of the table from me. In his spoon he was upside down to himself, but right side up from where I sat. It makes me think of how we would sometimes rather find something that reflects, but distorts reality in a way that we want/makes us more comfortable....not the way it actually is. How sometimes we'd rather look at the reflection of a person than the actual truth of a person. Something about being with my grandparents makes me feel safe, happy and like I can do anything. I was driving back to Nashville, feeling optimistic. Those happy thoughts were aimlessly flying around in the car, looking for something to land on....until they all simultaneously latched onto my relationship. GASP!

All of a sudden, I felt like, "I can fight for this again. I can fix this. Life is too short. We just have to do this and this and that and then everything will be great." I found myself immediately back in that old, unhealthy and untrue thought cycle of trying to control and fix. I saw what I was doing, but I didn't care. Last night, I just wanted to believe that I could make this miracle happen. I wanted so badly to force the whole damn thing onto the face of a little silver spoon and make it look right side up to me again. I was looking at the situation, not as it actually is, not taking into account anything that has actually happened, but as the stubborn image of the way I sometimes think I want it to be. I wasn't even really taking into account the other person....it was more the idea of a relationship I wanted to fight for. I would have tried to save the world last night, but details transpired in a very interesting way to make it so I just went home and read a book. Sometimes the universe lets us make mistakes. Sometimes it loves us too much to allow it.

(For the record, that was not the case with this photo though....Khristoph rocks.)

My horoscope for 7/29:

Look for a financial increase then try to relax a little. Maintain the status quo but put off pushing anything new just yet. Differences today can be overcome. Just remember the "M" word (moderation) in celebrating a victory.

Got a message last night that I had a paycheck ready to pick up. Read my horoscope this morning. I thought the check was for a smaller job I did about a month ago, but when I stopped by the office on my way out of town this morning, I found out it was for a much bigger music video job I did a few weeks ago. I wasn't expecting to get paid for another few weeks! That definitely decreased my stress level and means that I can stop obsessing over how I am going to cover the mortgage for August. That part of the horoscope was right on.

I spent the day eating squash casserole, so maybe that counts as putting off pushing anything new? We celebrated a birthday, which I guess is a kind of victory? Ok, I'm reaching now. Time for bed.