Babies....

The innocence of a young child can envelope your soul. I'm sitting at a table in the back of 2nd Street Bakery in Gainesville, FL, watching the most adorable 12-month-old boy. He has wispy blonde curls and pudgy cheeks and his wide-eyed wonder makes my heart want to laugh and sing.

His soft and kissable-looking cheeks, his pudgy limbs, his downy hair, his round face, the innocence and helplessness that surrounds him, his curiosity, and the fact that he stands at the beginning of beginnings makes me smile. It makes me want more children.

The time I spent with Issac at this age seems, in memory, as if it were perfect. Time stopped for a period of two years after he was born. The world could have stopped spinning and I wouldn't have noticed or cared. I was in rapture. His innocence became my own. It was a lot like falling in love. Music was in my ears the entire time.

It's good to remember this.

Once Again...

I am up too late. I know it can't be good for my beauty sleep, but I feel this deep, driving urge to get my life in order. That takes priority over the needs of my body.

A girlfriend came over tonight. I fed her pot-roast and potatoes. Then, over tall glasses of chocolate milk, we caught each other up on the events of our lives. Totally stoked that she is going to the Eric Clapton concert in Orlando with me on Friday night! I still can't believe I got lower section tickets at the last minute. Yes!

Then, before tackling the list of receipts and bills I needed to total, I smoked a clove on the porch. It would have been relaxing except for the fact that there was a large dragonfly who kept throwing himself into the porch light, which made a jarring, electric noise each time he hit it and fell to the ground. When I went inside and turned off the porch light, he started flying into the windows.

Then I settled down at the desk to take a look at my finances. I'm horrible at this. It's the first time in two months that I've done it. I'm really trying to improve in this category, because I know my current approach is not very intelligent, which is to get paid every 14 days, know how much is in my account, and then spend it all with complete and total abandon. When the tally in my head gets close to "there's only about $100 left in your account," I stop spending until my next paycheck. Yeah. Like I said, it's not really working for me. Um, I think I need help.

So, in the name of self-improvement (and intelligence), I am keeping all my receipts. Then I am categorizing them so that I can see my spending habits. Until I did this, I had no idea that I was REALLY spending over $300 per month eating lunch at work.

If I was smart, this would be going to a retirement account, or to an asset line.

Grrrr. I'm so stupid. One day, I shall have this all figured out. I hope.

Imagine This

Issac is wearing long johns. He has big, blue, felt slippers on. He is also wearing a red beanie, and orange visor, a red felt cowboy hat, and a life-vest. He is marching around the house, singing a song about firetrucks. I laugh, realizing that one can never be too ridiculous. Ridiculous is good.

Issac has also taken to a new turn of speech. He, very innocently, has been practicing inserting the phrase "What the hell?" into his conversations. An example: this morning, he says to me "Mommy, that's a pretty green shirt you're wearing. You look very pretty today. What the hell?"

Kids. I swear.

Why Ballet Is *NOT* For Thirty-Somethings


Okay, so I'm not thirty-something, or even close to it. But I might as well be. As a gift to myself, for the past three months I have been taking a weekly ballet class. Actually, it is a private lesson, which means that an entire hour (at first it was 2 hours) of my instructor's time is devoted solely to me, as she to asks me to move my body into unimaginably excruciating positions (Toe out! Hide heel! Open hip! Shoulder down! Tight the Butt! Up the stomach! Higher the leg! Head up! Fingers down! Arch back!)

Aside from feeling completely lost as I try to piece together a combination (Chasse, chasse, ville le vei, passe, plier, passe, arapasselongue, pique, chasse chasse), I resemble an elephant in my white tights and black leotard. It might be better if the tights were a more slimming color, but white? Gone are the days of ballet as I remembered them--when I was eleven years old and my body was lithe and nimble and spritely. When I could remember things and when my mind and my body were united as one, as though they had never been separated. And when my body never hurt like it does now. As I write, I've already passed several weeks where my legs were sore, but those days are gone and now it's my arms that feel as though they weigh fifty pounds each and my back and neck both feel too weak to support my head. Ugh.

So why do I do it? Because my body has never felt more alive than when I'm dancing. Because my instructor moves her body like a beautiful bird, and I want to have that grace. Because I realized that I don't know my body anymore: I don't listen to it, I don't appreciate it, it doesn't do what I want it to.

But now we're changing all that.

There's really no way to know your body more intimately than by dancing. Together, my body and I are going through a transformation, and neither one of us can make it there without the other. My body will have to change and strengthen in order to become a dancer, and my mind will have to do the opposite: to soften, and stop "thinking," to start feeling the motions and the music more intuitively and less intellectually. In order to be succesful, my mind will have to rely on my body, and begin to trust that it will do what it is asked to do. My body and my mind will have to unite once again. For me, this is the most difficult task.

This, really, is why I dance.

Today I Savored Something


I would like to take this moment to thank God for the delicious strawberries that Issac and I ate after our dinner tonight. They were the perfect strawberries, the ones I have been searching for all my life--you know the kind, ripe and soft while still being firm, deep deep red, juicy, fragrant, just beautiful, and God knows I haven't enjoyed a strawberry like that in a loooooooooong time.

In fact, too much of my life has been passing by without any stawberry-like moments to make me stop and say "my-oh-my isn't it a glory to be alive." But tonight, beginning with my strawberry-juice drenched tongue, my entire being breathed a deep sigh of relief and cried out "hallelujah!"

Today, I savored something. And I would just like to say "Thank God." Because life becomes so difficult for me when I forget to savor things, or I'm too busy, or too tired, or too overworked-stressed-out-depressed- self-involved- lazy to find the moment to savor something.

I was feeling guilty about not savoring the life around me. I've been thinking, at different times throughout my day, "Geeze, I really should be savoring this moment." But you can't force savoring. Just as you can't force inspiration, and you can't force creativity. The world around me has seemed dull and colorless. I haven't been too excited about it. Just bummed in general, even while cognizant of the abundant blessings in my life.

Until tonight. Those were the best strawberries in the universe. And they awakened something in me, even if for just one short moment. In fact, they were so good that Issac and I were spontaneously moaning and groaning about their goodness as we tasted each and every bite.

(I would also like to thank God for Sarah McLachlan and homemade pizza, the two other ingredients that made tonight better than most nights I can recently remember.)

Amen.

The Entire Last Year

One year ago, I started my first "real" job. "Real" as in meaning a job that will not tolerate 30 seconds of morning lateness, "real" as in meaning that they will not tolerate any visible tattoos or body piercings, "real" as in meaning I negotiated a salary, "real" as in meaning I have a manager who "reviews" my performance twice a year. Understandably, during this time, I haven't posted much.

It would help the postings if I had a faster computer at home. The old machine is getting bogged down with too many programs and not enough space. It takes about fifteen minutes to get it up and running. At this point, I'm too lazy to do much about it.

My next investment, my mother says, should go straight into my retirement account. I tend to disagree, and have decided that my next investment will go toward a surfboard.

My second-to-next investment will be a new computer.

This should give me a vital lifeline to the world that my generation lives in. These days, a girl is only as good as her computer, right?

But in the meantime, here are some pictures that should tell a little bit of a story of the last year. You know, the basics--winter, spring, summer and fall. Here, you'll find a little Christmas, some Thanksgiving, a Birthday, some Summer Beach fun, and some Spring May Pole. Next year, God willing, there will be commentary. I'm getting accustomed to this early-to-bed, early-to-rise life I've been living.

I spent last night on a train. This morning, the light streamed in the window at 4:30 am and I turned over on my top bunk and moved the curtain to one side of the window and propped myself up on my elbow and looked out at the countryside. We were about 2 hours from Kyib (Kiev). I stared at the little houses nestled in the countryside, and at the wild roses, and the little gardens that are planted along the railtracks, in small, tidy, square little plots, the little sprouts rising in the dark black soil in tidy long rows. I stared at the fog rising from the ponds and I watched the sunrise. A most pale, beatiful, pink--the gradual lightening of the day. I thought about the two men I have ever been in love with. I think about why I'm talking to one after seven years of distance, and why I'm not talking to the other. Then I stop thinking about it and just stare at the countryside, and rock with the rythm of the train. Then I put my head down and go back to sleep.

Today is my last day in this beautiful, magnificent country. This beautiful country that does not sell postcards. I finally found some today in Kiev. Today is my last day. I have been here for two weeks and it has been my first vacation in almost a year and it has felt wonderful. I have been working at an orphanage and I am in love with these children and now Issac has 350 brothers and sisters. I cried when I left Urak, the neigborhood that had been my home for two weeks. I am far too sentimental.

Well, now I am out of time at this internet cafe in Kiev. I have to go. I will write more later.