A tip and a lesson and a mystery

The tip:

One may think this applies only to women, but I think it does to men, as well.  Lately, I have been remembering to massage my chest while in the shower.  Therapeutically.  And I don't mean this (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I know it's healthy because it feels freaking good.  We can't massage our backs, but our fronts?  Yes.  (And I suggest getting someone else to rub your back.)

If you think of flow (as opposed to stagnation) as being healthy (and natural), then it's not much of a leap to see massaging parts of our bodies as beneficial to our health.  Our chests tend to be static compared to our arms, legs, and even our backs.  I learned awhile ago how good it feels for me to rub the area of my collarbone and upper chest.

And, getting right in there with the fleshier part of the chest?  A revelation.  Leave any lingering Puritanism at the door and give it a try.  You won't regret it.  (This doesn't have to be done in the shower, but the heat of the water/air while showering makes "things" more malleable in a good way.)

The lesson:

I ordered a bunch of Math materials from Lulu this morning.  They have a really good sale till Friday, 25% off any order of $100 or more.  (Math Mammoth books are available as downloads, on CDs, and as printed books.  I prefer to pay up front for the nicely bound printed books.  Lulu does a nice job.)

I saved $46 on my order.  Then, I balked at the $26 shipping cost.  (They used to have a non-trackable low rent shipping method which did not come up as an option today.)  I hate paying for shipping so much that the rush of happy chemicals from saving nearly $50 on my order was obliterated by the chagrin I felt about paying the hefty shipping charge.

The lesson here is what?  How would you put it succinctly?  Focus on the good.  Get with the program of living in an online shopping world and accept shipping costs as an inevitable part of that.  Keep it real and get out of your head.

Sigh.

The mystery:

When I excavated my jewelry box a couple weeks back, I found these earrings and do not remember from whence they came.  It was as if I'd never seen them before.  But, I must have, unless someone else placed them in the box.  I think they're made of resin, probably synthetic, but who knows.  I love how they look like hazy light.

Shred

Last night I whiled away four hours sorting through paperwork.  I didn't realize it...I was in a zone.  Cap took over tucking the kids in for me (a process that can take up to an hour and have a tranquilizing effect).  That was my one bit of pre-planning.

The other thing that helped with flow was watching tv.  I watched an episode of House and a few episodes of The Good Wife.  Stuff you don't really have to pay the utmost attention to to know what's going on.

Much of the work I did last night was separating out the documents with personal information on them from the ones that don't.  The bag above will be going with Cap to his shredder at work.  Most of these are old bills.

I actually have at least another four hours, probably more, ahead of me as I finish the paperwork-y stuff and then move on to reorganizing/decluttering the desk drawers.  I'm hoping to get to that today...though I have some food planning/cooking/housecleaning to do (my parents are coming over tomorrow), as well as, some playdating to do.

Regaining rhythm

We got home late Wednesday night.  This afternoon, I felt normal again.

That took three days.

Though feeling normal was preceded by some raging PMS.

Focusing on the good, the kids and I went to the farmer's market this morning and it was cold!  I was inspired by the hardy and hearty farmers and vendors out there despite the serious chill.  We trotted from stall to stall picking up meats, cheese, eggs, apple cider and veggies.

Snippets of ideas for meals began to form in my mind.

At home, I browsed through some recipes online (Nom Nom Paleo has become a recent favorite) and made a shopping list for Whole Paycheck.  Luckily for the three of us, I was able to drop the kids off at Danielle's for a playdate with Owen (I was very irritable).  Then, I went shopping by myself...which is always enjoyable.

This afternoon, I cooked and baked.  I shimmied to my "As Chill Descends" playlist as I washed, chopped, sautéed, simmered, eyeballed, etc. etc.  I was in my element.

It dawned on me that I had not realized how much being dislocated from my kitchen, and my rhythm around food and feeding, had thrown me.  I felt out of sorts while away, but hadn't pinpointed this very specific reason.

I baked a Paleo bread.  I made turkey-stuffed acorn squash (and remembered the red bell pepper, which looked good, but really changed the flavor...not sure I'm going to include it next time).  I prepped broccoli and bacon to roast for dinner.  I popped the ground lamb in the fridge to defrost for moussaka, which I will make for the first time tomorrow or Monday.

We are having to curtail our use of the dishwasher because it has been discovered that it has a slow leak.  Unfortunately, our landlord cannot begin the process of replacing the dishwasher until after the 14th.  So, we just have to wash by hand as much as possible.

So, I washed dishes, glasses, silverware, pots, pans, cutting boards, knives, you get the picture, over and over again.

Finally sat down with a cup of milky chai tea around 3pm and watched this week's Dexter.

Then, I retrieved the kids and we started picking up the living room and their bedroom.  Running the vacuum this weekend would be a very good thing.  Dusty, dusty.

For dinner, I roasted the broccoli and bacon (it was amazing), cooked up some frozen haricots verts, and grilled a rib-eye steak for the first time.  It was a good dinner.

I am feeling like a much better mother this evening.  I've drawn baths for the kids, made them Cold Prevention tea with honey (a Master Lu blend), and am starting a new routine of rubbing them both around 8:30, before I get too tired and shut off.

Here are the boys before they headed out for local trick-or-treating last night.  A red cat and an Enderman.  They had fun.

Tomorrow, I am going out early to hear Silke's Early Music recorder ensemble play between services at a local church.  I'll be with Sag at a Learning Pirates practice (his Lego Robotics team) all afternoon.  There is still much to do to get the apartment in order (less because of the power outage/dislocation and more back to what we were dealing with before with the push to declutter and reorganize).

We host common meal again next week which means it has been a month since we started the process with the living room...which we still haven't finished.  Stand down, stress, stand down.

I've been awake since 5am...looking forward to going to bed...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Two days ago I started a second post about flow that I couldn't finish.  Maybe I will later today.

Yesterday was supposed to be a beach day (celebrating a common meal friend's birthday), but Sag had a stomachache and fever so it turned into a quiet, healing day. 

Gem caught up in his Math (he expressed satisfaction and pride in a way that, upon reflection, he doesn't often get the opportunity to) and scored an 89% on the chapter test (I joked with him that that was an 'Asian F'...he didn't get it...anyone else watch Glee? ;-)

I finished 100 Cupboards, a YA novel that Daniel recommended.  I loved it.  I have put in a request to the library for the second book (it's a trilogy).  I nursed some GI difficulty myself later on in the day.

Sag took it easy.  He played on the iPad, he played Minecraft (it took some perseverance, but we figured out how to upload the latest pre-release update), and he strummed on his electric guitar (a child size one we gave him a few years ago).

We enjoyed a cozy evening watching Ice Age for the first time.  It was funny and delightful.

This morning we have already been food shopping and are nestling in for the rest of the day.  Sag's almost completely better, my gut showed itself to still be sensitive while we were out and Gem's system seems to be holding it together for now (after a slightly fragile evening).

It's tough to really sink into Dragon's Way while tending to two kids sans partner.  But, I have continued with the walnuts and honey breakfast, have cut out coconut juice entirely and am drinking only herbal tea with honey.  I've been finishing off the leftovers I've had in the fridge that don't conform to the guidelines (ie. the chimichurri is raw, the ground pork I cooked up mid-week).

Tomorrow, I will transition more completely to Level 1 food.

I mentioned I was hungry in my last post.  I realized later on that day that despite feeling "hungry" (and, really, just the awareness of hunger feels like "hunger" to me because I am so unaccustomed to that feeling...) I had plenty of energy.  I went about my morning and was very productive, very much in flow.  No weakness, no dizziness, etc.

After eating a more substantial lunch, I was tired!

It's almost as if I also don't recognize this more quiet energy as "energy" yet.  The more frenetic, buzz of energy that I recognize, is an ultimately tiring kind of energy...  Interesting...I am relearning what it is to feel certain, authentic and primal things.

One of the things I've never quite gotten my head around is how Master Lu talks about eating until 70% full.  The ability to sense this accurately feels completely foreign to me.  People can do that?!  But, this time (I think this is the third time I am doing DW), I am beginning to see that I can feel something between "hungry" and "full"...and that I can achieve this after eating.

I don't eat slowly enough to really feel it while I'm eating yet.  But, I can definitely manipulate how much I eat, visually and mentally, to put me on course to eat till I am 70%ish full.  I can still feel the pulling on my mind that what I see on my plate is not "enough" food.  But, the calm in my mind is stronger now and I eat and then I feel...satisfied.

When the calm is pushed into the background and I have my mind on things like finishing food off, like the loaf of Paleo bread that finally came out without being undercooked in the center, which I do not want to throw away, but I don't want to freeze it either...or my mind is whirled about in a dance of creative fantasy and I think the leftover ground pork needs to be nestled in sautéd shallots and softly scrambled pastured eggs...as they say in Project Runway, my editing skills are railroaded...and I feel stuffed...I go over the top.

And, as I mentioned above, I feel tired afterward.  (As my digestive system churns up my energy to work on the overload of food.)

Things are better, though.  When I'm tired, I am not tired for as long as I used to be.  I am also not as completely tired.  It can feel global, but after some rest, I am able to move on much more quickly than before.

I am sleeping so much better.

My moods, which can still pop up or down unpredictably, regulate much smoother and quicker after those rushes or dips.

I am keeping an eye out on the numbers on the scale.  I don't need the number to tell me whether I am feeling good or not, but dropping the number on the scale has been a part of this experiment for me from the start (the numbers of my blood work, too...for my next birthday, in January, I am planning on having a meeting with our family doc to see where all my numbers are).

The plateau is over and I have dropped five more pounds.  Breaking the 160 barrier was something.  I was about 160 when I became pregnant, both times.  I've been in close vicinity of 160 most of my adult life.  Times I've traveled above that have been stress times, times I've sunk below that have been stress times, too.

When I began this latest experiment of modifying what I eat/do, I was above 160 (by 15).  My blood numbers (most recently taken three+ years ago) were elevated, too. 

Going to Barcelona, in May, opened my eyes to the fact that I was, at core, stronger than I would have expected.  I withstood ten days of international travel (crossing time zones, very little sleep/jet lag, lots of walking despite normally being sedentary, different eating/food routines) with no issues.  No aches or pains, no GI problems.

When I turned 40, I embraced the beginning of the rest of my life.  Now, at 45, I am grabbing consciousness close and sculpting myself...inside and out, to better enjoy the rest of my days.

I am grateful to be experiencing some very real changes.  Thanks for being a part of it, with me.

Peace and love.

Slow-mo

The work...the process of sifting through stuff and dust to reorganize and streamline...it was indescribably tedious yesterday.  I am sensitive to flow.  When I am part of it, I am juiced.  Thrumming with Life, with Energy, it feels amazing.  When I am not, I feel out of sync, disjointed.

Yesterday, I felt like was I moving in a molasses flood.  I was acutely aware of the blanket of DULL which lay over me and the room.

But, I kept going.  The ducking and denial that I would step into the past did not happen.  That's how powerful this recent shift within me, is.  I was in extreme slow motion, but I never stopped.  I was in somewhat-agony, but it never reached unbearable-pitch.

Rather than filling bags with stuff-to-sort-out-later, today, I will be going through old bags to clear them out of my frakkin' way.

I'm not feeling positive...yet.  There ain't nothing "good" about tedium in my book.  And the sense I got at some point yesterday evening, that keeping a clutter-free and dust-free space is relentless (not to mention being the head cheerleader of sorts when it comes to maintaining said space thusly)...well, that's an indication right there that I am not in flow.

But, in-between is okay.  Actually, it is so much better than any of the negative "d" words of the past: down and out, denial, depressed, dragging...I'll take it.  With a smile.  Which tips the scale towards plus.  Nice.

Looking pretty good 24 hours later!  The old shelf, a hand-me-down from Basha when she moved from Boston (for you old timers) will not stay there under the window.  Where it will go next is TBD.

This spot on the computer table, also known as, my desk, tends to fill up quickly with the minutiae of passing hours and days (foot tall piles are frequent guests).  I am curious to see what happens this week.  It doesn't really feel my desk most of the time.  Adding these little touches may help.

We picked up four of these red plastic bin inserts at Ikea the other day.  (The other two have been inserted into the white shelves.)  These bins contain smaller game containers and game accessories.  We love how it gives the shelf a cleaner look, while, hopefully, keeping the dust factor down.  (Our game shelf is the same type of shelf, Expedit, we bought for homeschooling storage, just a different color.  They don't make this color anymore.  Our first choice color for the homeschooling shelves were unavailable, but we actually really like the way the white looks in that corner.)

The silver lining to Gem's new environmental allergy situation (his symptoms continue to subside) is that we have a new impetus to redesign and manage our space with a critical eye towards keeping the space as dust-free as possible.  The less stuff we have, the easier it will to be clean frequently!

Reflecting on yesterday, I can see a greater Flow in place.  Fills me with gratitude and peace.

Pinch me

So, the new financial thingy I am doing is this: every day I write down in a notebook what any of us spent money on that day.  I started September 1.

It is scary to see money flow "out".  Though, of course, we are gaining things with each spending.  With this kind of clarity it is impossible to shop mindlessly.

About a week ago, I was wide awake in Plympton having had some delicious coffee too late in the day.  I climbed over my sleeping children and grabbed the iPad.  I opened Evernote and began typing in my first Notes.

The past few days those Notes have been coming into fruition as I have referred back to them and accomplished them.  Most of these items have been connected to homeschooling and the start of our new quarter...which, truth be told, is like the start of a new year (the September-school connection remains strong in me).

It is remarkable how Cap and I have been making decisions around spending so smoothly.  This area used to be a huge trigger for us to get into tense arguments and debates.  I can't believe how normal it feels to be financially organized and empowered.

Just continuing to take it one day at a time...feeling very lucky and happy.

Peace.