Headed to the beach!

Yes, friends, in less than 24 hours, I will be wiggling my toes in the sand and sipping umbrella drinks on the beach in Florida. This is a long-awaited vacation with my buds that cost me an arm and a leg in skymiles, but will be well worth every mile flown in the FOUR years it took me to save them.

How much do I love vacation? Loads. We get Molly's uncle's house for next to nothing, we buy groceries and alcohol for the week, and we cook, drink, swim, play and bike our little hearts out. We also read great books in advance so we can talk about them, we pile on each other with magazines and movies, we frolick, we lounge around and we generally get ourselves into all kinds of Liquid Sunshine mischief. (I'll tell the LS story later--it's worth the wait, I promise.) Let's just say that last time we were there, we went skinnydipping in the ocean at 3am, under a full moon, in an almost still ocean... It is absolutely divine.

Because I heart the weather channel so so SO very much, you bet your butt I know it'll be 83 degrees when I step off the plane. I am so excited I can almost taste the salty air on my lips and feel the ocean winds whipping around my oh-so-bald head.

I also have to say, I have discovered THE best album on the face of the planet for wrapping up work in the last few hours before vacation: Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra. This album first came into my life when I lived in Belfast 10 years ago, but it wasn't mine, and I didn't realize how much I've missed it. Cheers to Andrew for re-introducing it, on this very day. Perfect.

Transformed and always transforming

So... this is a little awkward to share on the blog--and actually type out in words (because it's so embodied)--but...

I've shaved my head again.

Eek, just to say it feels exposing.

But that's what it's all about these days. A deep inner journey of transformation that often intertwines itself with my outward journey. And sometimes to delve there, and stay there, we have to slough off the outer layers, the pretense, the ways we traditionally (and acceptably) present ourselves to the world. Sometimes we need physical, tangible reminders of the journey we are on, lest we forget ourselves and get lost at the surface...

So part of me wants to tell-all and do a big expose for all the world to see (or at least my blog-reading world) and share the hundred things that this time in my life--and this particular shaving--means. And another part of me wants to just tiptoe, tiptoe, tiptoe up, and peek out quietly (as these first few days of baldness always find me doing), and say to the wide world only - Okay, I am here... It's new but it's still me... It's me, but it's not... because I am new, and always new...

Presbyterians (or maybe Protestants in general) talk about "reformed and always reforming." But for me lately, it's more like "transformed and always transforming."

Can I just say it was 63 degrees here yesterday?

That's all I got. Pure love for 63 degrees.

Always new

A new quote now graces the top of the blog. That section doesn't allow me to format it in a way that honors the poet (or the whole poem), so I would like to share it here:

the soul, like the moon,
is new, and always new again.

and i have seen the ocean
continuously creating.

since scoured my mind
and my body, i too, lalla,
am new, each moment new.

my teacher told me one thing,
live in the soul.

when that was so,
i began to go naked,
and dance.

- lalla

Feel the love

I love it when life just amazes you.

I received not one, not two, but THREE gifts of granola yesterday:

- Fritz and Mary shared with me the granola in their cupboard.
- Catherine made me some granola (recipe please!).
- Jenny gave me a granola bar.

It's all so yumptious I have eaten three bowls already.

Friends, you truly are amazing. I'll be sharing the love right back atcha... as soon as I get that oven cleaned out!

Hooray!

I don't have to take high blood pressure medicine!

Three months ago my doctor laid down the law: I either get serious about bringing my blood pressure back towards normal, or start medication. (Up until a few years ago I'd always been a steady 120/70. Who knows why it changed.) So, not being a fan of unneccesary medication (especially not for hyptertension--a condition somewhat in my control--at age 30), her words finally got my ass in gear.

Our appointment was today, and oh how numbers mean everything.

My blood pressure is a very satisfactory 124/76.

Two weeks ago it was 139/82.
In November it was 158/98.
In September it was 146/102.

I am thrilled!

Top 10 Reasons I Should've Gone to Knitting

10. The women (and one man) that gather are fantastic folks
9. It's like the only time all week I actually knit
8. All the stuff I thought I "needed" to do didn't get done anyway
7. I wouldn't have yelled Shit! so loudly in my mother's ear
6. I wouldn't have burned my hand
5. I wouldn't have stepped on the cat
4. I wouldn't have inhaled so much smoke
3. I wouldn't have had to open the windows and feel 36 degrees inside my house
2. I wouldn't have wasted a ton of oats
1. I wouldn't have caught the oven on fire

Yep, that's right. Trying to squeeze in a "quick batch" of granola--among the hundred other things I tried to get done while ignoring my instincts and skipping Knitting group--I ruined not only the granola, but the entire evening.

On the phone with my mom, I absently measured ingredients, stirred to perfection and opened the oven door. Not realizing it would hit a drawer perpendicular to it that was slightly open, the oven door bounced right back up, catapulting the tray of carefully laden granola out of my hand and all over the inside of the hot oven. Being coated with oil (and all kinds of yummy spices), it quickly began to burn. I jumped off the phone, stepped on the cat, frantically tried to un-stick quickly burning oats from the oven floor, burned my hand, dried my eyes out with smoky heat, and generally fell apart. It was the stuff of a good hard laugh, I'm sure, to see me there in the mess.

Needing to salvage some part of this project lest the whole thing end in failure, I cleaned everything up and decided to continue ahead as planned--with the granola that didn't burn.

Ah, how hindsight is 20/20. Silencing the very wise voice in the back of my head that said, "Some of the oats fell through the oven floor to places you couldn't reach..." I thought, "They'll be fine!" I turned the oven back on, inserted the much-smaller portion I thought could be salvaged, and promptly proceeded to move on to the next project. That is, until I realized black smoke was billowing out of the oven and that large flames were leaping up from the They'll-be-fine! oats that, being coated with oil as they were, had commenced to catch fire.

With visions of the gas oven exploding me to smithereens, I quickly turned it off, filled a quart full of water and madly threw it into the oven. Which, thankfully, turned out to be the one successful thing I did all evening.

So I learned something last night, skipping knitting and catching the oven on fire:

When I feel out of balance, I don't need to merely switch activities (i.e., trade Activity A for Activity B)... I need to STOP. Altogether. No activity. Nothingness. Rest. Nada. Zilch. I need to cease the forward movement, take a deep breath, get still and quiet, and re-center.

It's a tough lesson. My house is still smoky, my hand and the cat are still sore, the granola is still not available for breakfast, I have charred remnants still to clean out (in a part of the oven that has to be dismantled before I can use it again), and I still feel off-kilter. And dagnabit, I miss my knitters! But, it's a lesson learned.

A little wisdom from Anna

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

- Anna Quindlen