E is for Enlightenment

Posted on April 6, 2015 by joey

No, no, I’m not going to tell you how to become enlightened — like I can even claim to possess such divine knowledge. Do I seem remotely enlightened to you? Am I free from worry? Hah! *cries*

I am a student of life.
I dunno why we’re all here. I do hold the opinion that there is a purpose for everything, but I wouldn’t go so far as to quote Ecclesiastes.

I’ve had gobs of enlightening experiences and epiphanies, and what I’ve discovered is that they do not transfer.

I can tell you certain truths which may be considered universal, but they only resonate with those who are ready to hear them.

Until we’re ready, truths remain unknown.

Here’s one right now: Spending just 20 minutes a day in silent contemplation will change you.

I am hesitant to use the word meditation, although I call it that. The word meditation seems to evoke anxiety and confusion for many people. People get hung up on whether they’re doing it right, or berate themselves for inability to focus, or wonder if they need to chant, or have a guide, or listen to specific sounds, which really only adds stress to a situation that should be stress-relieving, and therefore defeats the purpose.

There isn’t really a right way. There are methods, there are schools, there are types, and you will figure it all out when the time is right. The time will never be right until you begin.

Just be still. Turn off your ringer. Don’t talk. Close your eyes or stare at something beautiful. Think what you like. Don’t push things from your mind. Watch the images in your brain change. The number of scenes, memories, burdens, words, thoughts, and feelings will overwhelm you. Over time, the rapidity of the images lessen. The thoughts and feelings change. The words slow down. You change.

Like anything else you’ve ever done in your life, it might feel challenging and uncomfortable the first time. You may get distracted by the ticking clock, or the dog gnawing on a bone, or that chirping cricket. It may take practice. You may give up.
When you are ready for change, and open to possibility, you will find that 20 minutes of your day is a worthy commitment. Like flossing, or exercising, or prayer, or anything else you do on a daily basis, you might skip a day here or there, and your results will vary accordingly to your practice, as things do when you don’t allot time for them.

I do not promise enlightenment, or revelation, or even the tiniest epiphany. I can’t say you’ll find any deities or answers. I don’t promise more synchronicity or freedom from your body. I can’t say you’ll reap benefits in terms of spirituality or health. But I do promise people have experienced all of these things because of meditation.

I have struggles like everyone else, some shared, some completely my own.
Ones I share with others are better and worse because there are always people to talk to about them.
Ones I carry on my own are better and worse because no one tries to talk about them.
See how that works?

It doesn’t matter how big or small, universal or personal your struggles are. Meditation is free, it’s self-contained, it’s tidy.

The answers really are within you, and I hasten to add, the answer is often acceptance.

Did you need to read any of this today?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A-Z for April, lifestyle, mental-health | 32 Comments

Oooookay

Posted on April 5, 2015 by joey

Breaking from my tradition of disturbing people with my heathen tendencies on their holy days…

Okay, just one picture…

…I decided instead to make rude commentary about other bloggers, from a completely secular standpoint.

The blogosphere is weird, y’all.

Since the first of the month, I’ve been perusing the blogs of other A-Z participants. I must have looked at more than fifty new blogs just yesterday.

At least half of them weren’t doing any A-Z stuff. Some of them weren’t even blogs. Some were those ad sites, filled with pop-ups for entries to win free stuff, and sign up here crap. There were others who had a blog like the favorite of all bloggers: “I’m rich and you can be rich, too! Start here to learn this simple four-thousand-step process to getting rich off your blog!” Some were merely links that send you to other sites.

I also found some crazy ass shit. I wandered into Scary Twitter last week. Scary Twitter ain’t got nothin on Scary Blogs. Oh Unholy What!? Insanity. Bizarre, unknowable madness. For those of you who’ve never wandered into Scary Interweb places, count your lucky stars. Scary Interweb is where something is so strange it must be a joke, so you keep reading, waiting for the punchline, or the piece that ties it all together, but it only gets stranger and stranger — not in a poetic, beautiful way, but in the way that frightens you and reminds you that some people are truly tormented by mental illness. As you squirm in your seat, you reconsider whether exorcism might be a valuable tool after all, and how maybe you should never be kind to strangers ever again, in case they think these things you’re reading. *shudders*

A surprising number of bloggers can’t write. I mean, they can’t string together a coupla coherent sentences. With posts full of misspelled words and an incredibly shocking number of subject verb disagreements, I sought to know if they were not native English speakers. Ah-nope! They all were. And of course, usually American.

Those who could write didn’t necessarily say anything, and reminded me of students who try to make two-hundred words out of nothing. That left me in the position of trying to comment about nothing, to let them know I’d come to read, but then, I didn’t want them following me back here, now did I? They might see you can write and follow you back to your blogs, too. No one wants to be Blogger Zero, the person who brought crappy to WordPress.

There’s a fine line between weird and boring.

I did find a handful of great bloggers, and I was sorta like that girl who finally has a good date after ten rotten dates… “OMG I LOVE YOUR BLOG AND YOU’RE SUCH A GOOD WRITER AND LET’S ALWAYS READ ONE ANOTHER FOREVER AND EVER!” (I was usually dating that guy, so I get it.) My enthusiasm for people who can write, and with whom I can make connection is genuinely euphoric.
But you get it, right? Cause that’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m reading you.

Thank you. Sincerely.

Posted in Random Musings | Tagged blog | 38 Comments

De Bunnehs & De Baskets — Letter D

Posted on April 4, 2015 by joey

Mr and Mrs Bunneh had a romantic, fluorescent-lit dinner at the place of the best homophobic chicken sammiches ever. As Mr Bunneh put all of his pickles on Mrs Bunneh’s sammich, and tore open her ketchup packet, she blushed at his chivalry.

Since Mr and Mrs Bunneh were alone, they admired the little bunnehs of others. Mrs Bunneh looked at the screaming kits in the playland and smiled smugly about how she no longer carries kit socks in her purse. She dipped a waffle fry in her ketchup and felt glad that not a single Bunneh was now 54″ or shorter and would evermore be too tall to play in the playland.
Catching sight of a kit in electric blue and neon green Ray-Bans, Mrs Bunneh paused to compliment his taste and then asked Mr Bunneh, “Don’t you think Moo would look good in those glasses? In raspberry and neon orange or somethin?” Mr Bunneh agreed.
“AW! Look her wellies!” squeed Mrs Bunneh, when she saw a tiny kit in light up rain boots!
“Too cute,” chuckled Mr Bunneh.

Mrs Bunneh asked Mr Bunneh to drive around Glendale to capture photos for Grandma Bunneh, but that made Mr Bunneh’s fur stand upright with ire, so Mrs Bunneh did her level best to snap photos as they left, grumbling ever-so-snidely, “I tolerate Jesus shit and rifle through the woodpile of The Back 40 looking for the perfect sticks for your mother, but whatever, my mother asks you to join her in drinking the occasional Bahama Mama, poor guy.”

Mr and Mrs Bunneh donated a box to the Goodwill, and hopped off to Target to collect all the bunneh basket fings.

Having begun motherhood with two kits, Mrs Bunneh is a frugal occasion shopper who enjoys buying items specific to each kit. While she admits that occasion shopping is costly when one has a single kit, most of her occasion shopping has been done for four kits, and so she still carefully assesses each purchase to make the most of things.

Mr Bunneh, high on the thrill of chocolateeverything hurled one confection after another into the cart, shouting with glee, “One for me and two for them and one for you and two for me!” And when asked his opinion on chocolate bunnehs, did say something about buying Reester bunnehs for the kits, and then hoarding all the Reese’s eggs. When Mrs Bunneh reached for the Cadbury mini eggs, Mr Bunneh said he already got those, “SEE?!?”
And Mrs Bunneh did see. That he had been collecting enough candy to satisfy all the kits on the block. As Mrs Bunneh put the Cadbury creme eggs into the cart, she spotted another box of Cadbury creme eggs already in there, so she began to put hers back, but Mr Bunneh shouted, “No! Leave it! Now we can all have two!” The twinkle in his eye both delighted and scared Mrs Bunneh.

Mrs Bunneh enjoys a bit of chocolate as much as the next bunneh, but she is not, at any time in the foreseeable future, going to consume three peanut butter eggs, a quarter pound of mini eggs, ten mini peanut butter cups, and two creme eggs. Mrs Bunneh could puke thinkin about it, really.

Mrs Bunneh prefers her empty calories come in the form of Coca-Cola and ice cream, which is why de Bunnehs went to DQ, and for the first time since they were teenagers, went inside to order. De Bunnehs noted that the DQ looks nothing like it did in 1989, but now it has wi-fi, so Mrs Bunneh commented that she could work on her novel there, and be lifted out via crane when it’s completed. Mrs Bunneh is certain that Hawaiian Blizzards, blue slushies, and hot fudge sundaes are all inspirational and that they would keep her cool through the entire summer.
Mr Bunneh merely said, “Mmhm.”

my mother made these baskets.
no no, i put the stuff in, she literally wove the baskets.

Our kits are officially rotten now, and there’s a ton of candy NOT IN DE BASKETS! What do de bunnehs get up to at your house?

This post is both A-Z for April & SOCS for LindaGHill

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A-Z for April, holidays, kids, marriage, parenting, SOCS | 16 Comments

C is for Commissary

Posted on April 3, 2015 by joey

The dictionary would have you believe that a commissary is a restaurant. That is not the definition for millions of military families. The commissary, or the com, is a grocery store on a military installation.

If you have a military id that allows you access to the commissary, you can shop tax-free. Except, there’s a surcharge, let’s say $7.55 on $150 spent, which feels a lot like tax, hm?

We have commissary privileges until sometime this summer. We’ve slowly increased our shopping at other stores, not just because we can’t shop at the com forever, but also because commissaries are open fewer days and shorter hours than other grocers. Also, we’re not out in the middle of nowhere, we’re in the city.

However, when we lived at Ft Stewart, highly isolated from city life, >hold me< we used the commissary almost exclusively, venturing out to other grocers only when we couldn’t find something at the com. Like black-eyed peas on December 31.

I started using the commissary while we were still in Indy, but our com on Ft Ben is much less used, considering we probably only have a coupla thousand soldiers at the finance center. (DFAS)

While we were in Georgia, there were tens of thousands of soldiers stationed there, not counting retirees who stayed local. This meant that the com was usually crowded, and certain days of the month were to be avoided at all costs. Of course, it takes a few months for this information to register in your brain, and when it finally does, as you stand 30th in line, at the back of the store, holding 80 pounds of toddlers, next to some granddad veteran, makin small talk, sayin, “Sure glad I got paid today. Really didn’t wanna fish for my dinner tonight. Haha! Man, I love fishin. Y’all ever go over to…” the light bulb goes off: OMG WE ALL GET PAID ON THE SAME DAYS. i must never come here on payday. ever.

that shit is real, yo

And it becomes a thing.
Avoiding the commissary on payday.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged lifestyle | 11 Comments

B is for Baby

Posted on April 2, 2015 by joey

Moo was an ugly baby.
No, it’s true.
When Ross told Rachel that ugly baby judges her, I’m pretty sure he was lookin at Moo’s picture.

that lil black n' white could be moo. lots of moo's photos were taken in black n' white

that lil black n’ white could be moo ~ lots of moo’s baby photos were taken in black n’ white — or later changed to sepia…

Moo was red, like the red of storybook devils. She had some mean lookin lines on her forehead, like she was permanently pissed off AT YOU. She had enormous black hair that would not lie down, like Don King hair. And I don’t mean that’s how she came out, I mean that’s how she stayed for months and months. It is apparently true that if you birth an ugly baby you will not love it any less, but it’s a lie to say you won’t know it’s ugly. I knew.
Mothers of ugly babies know their babies are ugly, they just don’t care.
Day Two with Moo: omagosh this baby is ugly and no one is going to love her right. i will overly love her. i will love her so much.

The other day while we waited for our ice cream we were cuttin up about it. Moo was giggling and snorting and kicking her leg with laughter, so I assure you, she’s over it.

“I know she looks like an angry sunburnt bear, but she’s actually a tiny human.”
“Why is it so angry?”
She says, “I hate it here! I hate the world! The world is stupid and cold!”
“Your baby needs Botox!”
“Whatever you do, do not take off its hat!”
“The hat is there for your protection!”
“I’m just grateful people think she’s a baby, who cares if they think she’s a boy?!?”

Fortunately, during colic, Moo screamed her crazy hair right out (while I pulled out my own) and around six months, she began to look specifically humanoid and approachable.

Don’t worry about Moo now. She’s got my mother’s Seminole skin. She’s got nice thick lie-down hair, the color of caramel.
She’s vain.
Mothers of beautiful babies know their babies are beautiful, they just don’t care.

Do you have any ugly baby experiences you want to share?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Moo, parenting | 27 Comments

A is for Anything I Want

Posted on April 1, 2015 by joey

Last year’s A-Z was such a pleasure, because I wrote each letter as it occurred to me. Mostly I wrote about my favorite things, like yellow, and umbrellas. According to my search terms, everyone loved Pretty Pussy Cats Perching *achem* yes, yes, or parts thereof. I wrote all about anxiety, and I think that post must have been helpful, because it’s still read often.

This year I thought about a culinary theme, but I didn’t want to write a post about xanthan gum. I thought about a travel theme, but I’ve never been to Zimbabwe. I considered lifestyle, but then I didn’t think I even had twenty-six things to say about lifestyle. So I went with what I do best, personally, which is wing it as I please.

Join me as I plunge ill-prepared into Anything I Want.

Anything I Want today is everything, all the time, forever, which is what I said to The Mister when he asked me what I expected from our marriage.

The Mister always did ask me the worst questions, like “Where do you see this relationship going?” I will follow you to the ends of the earth.
And so I did.

He still asks terrible questions now, like “Where would you like to go eat?” I would like to have eaten at three places we’ve long since passed, so now I’d like to go where they have cocktails the size of my head.
And so we did.

Does this cocktail look like Anything You Want?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A-Z for April, marriage, The Mister | 22 Comments

The Doors (and not the groovy kind)

Posted on March 31, 2015 by joey

Some of my fellow bloggers post pictures of beautiful or interesting doors on Thursdays. I’m over here writin about door fail on a Tuesday.
Home improvement bloggers are all, “It’s such a relief to have changed all my doorknobs to oil-rubbed bronze!” and I’m all, “Bitch, you don’t know my pain.”

What can I say, I enjoy not quite fitting in.

Old houses come with quirks. That’s part of their charm.

All of the doors in this house have charm.
All. I’m not exaggerating!

Before we’d really moved in, The Mister and I had been keeping long hours at the house, painting and cleaning. One afternoon, we lay down on our mattress-on-the-floor to take a nap. When I woke up I realized we were locked in our bedroom. IN. As in, the lock is in the hallway!?!

omg omg omg lemme out!!!

Huh? So we should ask the kids to lock us in when it’s time to sex? Fortunately, The Mister got us out and fixed that right away, but the door still doesn’t make good connection with the jamb. If we don’t lock it, the wind can open it.

A week or so later, we discovered we hadn’t been given all the keys to all the locks. How did we find that out? Well, we got locked out of our own house, that’s how. And not just any ol time, either. No, we found out we were locked out late at night, and we still didn’t have wi-fi, so finding a locksmith was a real struggle.
We got a new locking doorknob on the front door around midnight that night.
Still doesn’t change the fact that the deadbolt is ridiculously hard to turn, or that the storm door is hung opposite the actual door. That’s right, the handles are on opposite sides.

locksmiths charge more after 6pm you know

That’s why we often use the back door, where at least the handles agree with one another. Of course, the locks on that door are unbearable to someone with arthritis, and they also turn the wrong way. Or one of them does. I dunno. I struggle. It hurts. I get confused and flustered. Maybe one of them is upside-down, or they’re both upside-down and one is backward. Did I mention it hurts me? Additionally, the tension spring has come off the back storm door, and it’s slightly crooked, so ya gotta kick it — it’s called a kick plate for a reason. Then when it opens, you gotta latch it, or the kitten will run outside. I’m advocating a keyless entry and no storm door.

I’m also in favor of removing our beautiful-but-painful porcelain tile back there, because the door is so flush to the floor, we can’t have a properly-placed rug. Sill the crooked door features a gaping hole in the corner of the frame. It’s great for those days when you need an arctic breeze, or when you want to host a June Bug family reunion.

The pantry doorknob constantly fell out, and I didn’t have a pretty enough screwdriver, so we bought a new doorknob and The Mister replaced it.

About a month after living here, The Mister re-hung the bathroom door and shaved off several crooked slivers from the bottom. It’s so much better. Now it almost opens all the way, and it closes properly. It won’t lock. It gives one the curious impression that it’s locked, but it is never locked. It doesn’t latch properly enough to lock. Talk about a false sense of security! It’s so not latched, that if one of our pets wants to watch you do whatever you’d like to do behind closed doors, you have no choice in the matter.

Door to the master bath has a lock that doesn’t work, either.

at least we can close ours…

It’s a good thing we’re not really a closed-door type of family, especially since most of the time it’s just us girls. We respect closed doors and always knock, but when we do want privacy we often make announcements about it. I’m not even kiddin.

Three-out-of-five sets of sliding closet doors were removed right around the same time, because they didn’t have floor tracks installed to keep them in place and re-hanging them was a bit constant and therefore maddening. Honestly, downright dangerous to Moo, who could easily be injured by heavy falling doors.

Sassy’s door had a crack in the jamb, which I fixed and then The Mister re-fixed, and her lock doesn’t work, either. Additionally, when you open the door, it scrapes across her plush carpet with resistance, because it’s hung a bit low.

Moo’s door has a charming gap under it. Her lock works, of course. Moos love to run to their rooms, slam and lock the door, and cry themselves to sleep before dinner’s done, so that they can wake up at 0430 and try to nap as their sisters get up for school.

The hallway closet also has a large gap under it, which is where the wood floor stops abruptly, with much ugly.

i guess they had the same floor guy!

The laundry door features the same gap, and is a bit tricky to close. Gotta give it a bit of a slam. This isn’t hard for me as I’m often eager to release some anger when dealing with laundry, cat boxes, the furnace…

In the kitchen, we have a broom closet, and it works properly. Okay, it swells noticeably in the summer, but wood does that, and a lil soap on the edges helps. The cute thing about the broom closet is that it locks from the outside. You know, in case you’ve got one of those brooms or mops that like to sneak out at night and work without you. A girl can dream.

Even our garage doors have charm. By charm, I mean, they need to be replaced.

wow. okay, ours is better than this one…

Hey! I think the shed doors are good!

We’ll probably live with these charming quirks for years to come. We probably won’t ever replace the doors in the back hallway. They’re old, solid wood beauties.

Do you find some quirks more annoying than charming, too? Do y’all have door issues? What home projects are lowest on your list?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged home, home improvement, lifestyle, Moo, Sassy, The Mister | 37 Comments

A Mother’s Love — Spread the Love Challenge

Posted on March 28, 2015 by joey

It’s not that I do not write poetry, it’s that I do not share my poetry. I don’t write it for anyone, but today I did, per my assignment from Prajatka, at An Armchair Perfectionist, who challenged me to Spread the Love/ Love in Ten Sentences Challenge. I accepted, although, I found proper sentences to be quite a strain, so I used lines instead.
I like rules because I like to break them:

1. Write about LOVE in ten sentences of four words each

2. Share your favorite love quote

3. Nominate fellow bloggers

…

frog in my hand
boy-child impish, charmed delight

thumb in her mouth
caught a soft curl

flap hands, ask why
scrunched, freckled button nose

you can’t catch me
twinkle eyes flicker mischief

grow, grow, grow up
never always lose them

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” — Agatha Christie, The Hound of Death

I nominate any one of you to participate.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged mother, parenting | 19 Comments

Not As Bad As I Used to Be

Posted on March 28, 2015 by joey

I’ve been…introverting. Or avoidant. Or busy. Whatever.
I’ve been extremely productive at my house.
I’ve been fairly productive with my novel.
I’ve been adequately productive with my yard.
I’ve been exercising more.
But what I’ve really been doin well is thinkin.
Mullin.
Dwellin.
Ponderin.
Wallerin in thought.

And that’s why I’ve been a little distracted.
It’s a special kind of neurotic who can hoard mental energy and then eventually harness it into physical endeavors. The trick is to not overthink. And of course, not to think yourself right out of doing things.

It’s a matter of self-preservation, really.
My anxiety has been outrageously high lately. I do not know why. If you’ve read my Oatmeal post, or you have anxiety disorder, then you know it’s both important and impossible not to ask why. When I get like this, I remember how bad I used to be.

You see, I used to be a skosh bit obsessively obsessive. I couldn’t stop moving. If I stopped moving, I might have realized that despite my concentrated efforts, nothing was perfect, not even me. I had to learn to stop tryin to fix. I had to learn to stop cleaning. I had to learn to stop and smell the roses instead of just pruning and feeding them. I had to learn to sit down. I had to learn to sleep. I still struggle with all these things, but I’m not as bad as I used to be.

I always feel better when I’m doing stuff, but it’s equally important to take time to be.

I’ve been given a lot of food for thought over the last few weeks, and I needed time to chew on it.

Fortunately, Prajakta has given me a writing assignment, which will distract me from myself and allow me to focus on love.
I’ll be workin on that today.
Homework for my soul.

This post is part of LindaGHill’s SoCS