embracing the ridiculous

(and the dangerous and scary and all other things)

I once had a co-worker ask me what she should do when she visited San Antonio, as I had just been down there for EPIC, an electronic book convention.

I told her that my absolute must do was a carriage ride around downtown. They leave from just outside the Menger, across from the Alamo.

Her response? Oh, no. I couldn't do that. I would look ridiculous, wouldn't I?

Maybe it's because I have pink hair. Maybe it's because at heart I really am five. But if I can figure out how to do something without really offending someone (ie: ask the carriage driver how much without insulting him) then I'm not afraid of looking ridiculous to do something that lets me see stuff I want to see, and do things I want to do.

Without that carriage ride I would never have known about how the city of San Antonio turned down a multi-million dollar hotel deal because it would have cast a shadow on the Alamo. I would never have known about the carrier pigeons who used to transmit the high school football game scores to the newspaper Friday night so people could read them Saturday morning. And I never would have gotten to ride in a carriage pulled by a horse named Fred, who wore a Carmen Miranda-like blob of cherries on his hat...

In the name of the ridiculous, I have ridden camels, stood in front of a giant wooden penis in Barcelona and straddled a toddler's bouncy horse in a Mexican restaurant in South Carolina. I have been to dinosaur parks in Kentucky and weird caves in Colorado. I have bought pictures of myself whitewater rafting, where I look both terrified and exhilarated. I have played nickel slots for two hours on the same dollar to look at cowboys while they played poker.

Just thinking of all the things I would have missed out on for fear of looking ridiculous makes me sad. Try it. You might like it.

lest I seem like all I do is bitch

we have a new patio. We have grass in the back, which the dogs adore. We have a giant chicken. It's glorious. It's in the front yard with the daisies and the marigolds and the glorious agave

I have people who love me, enough food to eat, zumba and yoga and the amazing June to keep me working on being fit.

I have 2 bassets of immense joy, and the crazy granny pibble

I have friends and godkids and a beautiful niece.

I have my family. My dad and my brother and my S and L.

Hell, I have Liam Neeson as a god at the theater and the Sherlock Holmes movie on Blu-Ray. how can life be bad?

sigh

so how far do you have to bend over and let someone f*** you up the a$$ before you're "good people"? I'm sick to death of it. I think I'm going to go back to waiting tables

*insert gibberish*

my brains are leaking out my ears.

Send tim mcgraw tickets

toxicity

I have a slightly toxic liver.

All the years of sugar abuse, really. It gives me gout-like symptoms, and sometimes a little bit of chemically induced crazy. A lot of inflammation.

So I've been trying to detox, which of course means a sugar binge was unavoidable. I am the queen of doing opposite what I'm supposed to do

Anyway, that's actually kind of beside the point. The point is that the sugar detox has got me thinking of how I let things become toxic in my personal and professional life.

I dwell. I know it. I hold grudges. My mother used to stare at me and go, "Lorna, you give people too much credit for thought. Only you are that deep that you think about other people that much"

whether or not she was right, she was right that I need to learn to let go more.

*g* If anyone can just tell me how, I'll get right on that

balance

trying to find balance between work and play. I've been doing a lot more turning off the email after a certain point at night and doing arts and crafts or watching movies.

Guess what? I'm getting more done.

I know! It's amazing. Now to find balance between exercise and diet and total slubbery

Better

turns out a good bit of my crazy was PMS, which considering I started a week early, I can be forgiven for not seeing.

Working like mad. Trying to get shit done and feeling thwarted. I love that word. Thwart.

Cahoots. I've been cahooted...

I haven't really, I just love to sat that, too

okay, work work work

hey new year, ease up huh?

so day 4. Yesterday was kind of awful. Oh, not in that actual emergency way, but in that, my computer is messed up, I had a terrible allergic reaction to something, my mood made people run away way.

So, the not letting things get to me so much? Wow, hard. As always, it's really a matter of my own issues, not someone else's, but yesterday seemed like it was out to get me. I think I might need to go see Amy. I'll get back on my remedy first, for a week or two, see how it goes.

Went to Shawn and Larry's old UU church yesterday. First time I've stepped foot in a church service since the first Christmas Lori and I were roomies...

Everyone was lovely; the service was a little boring, but the ideas espoused in it ostensibly match up with everything I want to work toward. I have to admit, though, that it still made me hugely uncomfortable. Not so much that I won't give it the old college try, but it was church, with all of the attendant rituals, and that gives me an instinctive bad, bad, bad reaction.

Did my feet. Been sticking to the fruit and veggie thing in spirit, which means that iceberg lettuce has sometimes had to suffice as a veggie. Still, it's an improvement.

S got me the best present today! Bollywood shake classes. It looks very cool. It might kill me, considering my half hour foray into belly dance today was tough, man. Arms and hips all hurt. We shall see. ;)

Day 2

I did my feet yesterday, then promptly stepped on something in the garage, and tore a strip of skin off the bottom of one...

I managed the fruits and veggies, but it was harder than I thought

thinking a lot about prioritizing, and about relationships, and some of it is ... surprising

Happy New Year!

My resolutions this year are pretty simple

1) Take care of feet and legs daily to try and improve circulation
2) Drink more water
3) Let things get to me less
4) Eat a fruit or veggie at 75% of my mini meals
5) Do a freestanding shoulder stand in yoga
6) work toward idea financial goal


See? Pretty simple. Easy? I'm not so sure, as some of it isn't so quantifiable... We shall see