Welcome in to my glass prison...

I am feeling sad and quite alone today. I'm no stranger to these emotions (I was once told that I was a walking sad-ism) but they are never any easier and I don't like them.

My niece was here for 10 days and just went home yesterday. The house seems much quieter now and it's a little sad, especially since she told me at least 50 times that she wanted to stay with me and not go home. She is such a happy child; I think she is like me in most every way but that.

I have seen very little of my partner the past few months. This is unimaginable difficult for me because I am so used to us doing everything together. The serious abandonment issues I have don't make this any easier either. Hopefully we'll be together soon.

At the zoo the other day I found that watching all the families walk past made me suddenly realize that I am in my late 20s. Not to say that I have a ticking biological clock but I have always wanted a family and a daily routine, the sort of boring and mundane things that typically go unnoticed. I don't exactly want children now but I want to not feel transitional. I would like to finally finish my BA that I've been working on for 8 years now. I would like a house with a garden, a place to invite the people I love and make them feel at ease. I just want to feel content with where I am in life.

All my life I have wanted to be old. Not older like when kids want to be 13, 16, 18, 21...whatever, I wanted to be 65, 70, 75. I want to be retired (by which I mean work for fun and not money), I want to have big family dinners with children and grandchildren, I want to take that family on a vacation to a new place every year. My mother has always said that I have an old soul, maybe it has something to do with that and maybe that is why I have always felt like I am waiting for something, for someone... maybe for the someone I want to be.

Lucky #13

Jerrica and I have been playing Go Fish and Crazy Lady (which is my version of Old Maid) constantly for the past 5 days. Today we played 10 or 15 times and at least 80% of them ended with each of us having 13 pairs of matching cards.

I am regularly visited by repeating numbers: the time, my change at the store, addresses, number in line at the bakery, et cetera. Now, when I say regularly I mean very regularly. It varies of coarse, there are some weeks when it will happen twice or so and then there are times when I will see them up to ten times in a single day. It's been happening like this for about 5 years.

I looked and looked for an explanation. I checked philosophical, religious and spiritual references but couldn't come up with anything specific behind the meaning of the repeating numbers and just lived with their presence but not knowing what their significance was in my life, until Emily found the answer. As you might expect, somewhere on the world wide web someone has written an explanation for the meaning of repeating numbers in one's life - as with anything on the web, authenticity is not guaranteed.

So, about the number thirteen, this is all it has to say:

131, 1331, 1313, 3311, 1133 - These signs indicate a Cosmic 'Yes!' - these thoughts are on your path.

5 Things to be Happy About

1~ Lunch date

2~ Yoshi's 1st Birthday...today

3~ Jerrica visiting

4~ A larger enclosure for the elephants at the DC Zoo

5~ Upcoming road trip

Hot & Bothered

I worked a full day today, pretty much that means nonstop from 7:30 am until 11:00 pm. I do this about twice a month but it feels like a lot more. Today was particularly annoying because TD from NYC was leaving and, as usual, that can never be an effortless process. To top it off, there were 12 arrivals and the weekend emails which I just couldn't touch after about 2pm.

It was hot out all day and I was miserable. Plus, my niece Jerrica is here for a visit so I feel somewhat compelled to entertain her. Luckily she is an amazingly awesome kid and is happy doing the most mundane things. Even so, things just weren't going my way. But then the clouds parted.

First, Emily came over and brought dinner (mmm...Jyoti) and was great company for Jerrica while I was cleaning up TD's mess. Then we played 3 rousing games of Go Fish. A lovely visit, as always.

A couple hours later I was working on the garden, yet again, when a long lost friend called and said she was across the street. Well, it's not that Lyric is long lost but we are both busier than one armed paper hangers and never get a chance to chat or visit. So it was a fantastic surprise to see her today. As usual she was gorgeous from head to toe and I was covered in sweat, dirt and mulch which is my usual.

My day may not have been great to start with but thanks to a couple of friends, it got a whole lot better. Thanks ladies!

A Spoonful of Sugar

My step dad has been in the hospital this week with a blood infection. Mother says he is getting better now and should be released to go home tomorrow. His status this morning was not so pleasant. There had been virtually no change and the doctor he was assigned to was planning to call a specialist.

To me, this is typical of the western medical method...take an ER admitted patient, toss them in a tiny room with basic cable (upper channels for an added fee), plug in an IV or two and feed them a regimen of painkillers, antibiotics, jello and turkey sandwiches until they finally realize things aren't getting any better so they call in a specialist and/or a surgeon. Very little attention or thought is given to the patient, only their ailment - as if they have no connection to one another.

I must say that at one time I had no problem with this. I worked for a few years as an emergency vet tech when animal ultrasound was beginning to be more commonly available. I thought it was a waste. Why spend all that time and a client's money when you'll probably just end up cutting them open anyway? That's what I thought about it then, until I was in a car accident and couldn't get off the couch for a month. I was completely obsessed with discovery health and all the quirky medical shows.

As my leg healed and I saw lots of ancient medical techniques from around the world I was amazed at the ability of the body to completely heal itself if given the opportunity. My leg had been smashed and there was necrotic (dead) tissue that needed to come off. I was advised to have a plastic surgeon do a skin graft. I was only 19 and though it was best to trust the doctors, I mean they are professionals. I have regretted it ever since. I lost a big chunk of the muscles on the front of my right leg and can't really stand for an extended period of time anymore. If I could do it all over again I would elect to have maggot therapy.

5 Things to be Happy About

My friend Ariel does this on her blog and I love it. Hope you don't mind my borrowing it. ;)

1 ~ Finding a parking spot

2 ~ The return of a friend

3 ~ Lunch with Megan

4 ~ Help in my garden (thanks Emily, Anne & Suzi!)

5 ~ Fresh lettuce & cucumber

The deoderant experiment

Concerns about the dangers of Aluminum Zirconium Tetrachlorohydrex GLY (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_zirconium_tetrachlorohydrex_gly) and the nasty stains I get on my shirts sent me on a search looking for natural deodorant options.

Years ago I used Dove for a while and it was nice but I am a heavy sweater and I looked for something stronger. I took up my mother's philosophy of getting whatever is on sale or has the lowest retail price. This had disastrous results and I just ended up passing them along to my thrifty mama. I moved on to Degree which worked well for the sweating but I prefer to not have the scent of fragrance additives and my underarms were not very soft (like they had been with the Dove) so I kept looking. I tried Toms, Kiss My Face, the rock crystal and common brands without the antiperspirant ingredient but noting worked the way I wanted. I was either flapping my arms like a psych ward patient to get the liquid kind to dry or reapplying because it wasn't very long before I was sweating again. I was thoroughly annoyed and thought there must be a better solution. I tried using baby powder but that made a huge mess in my bathroom, and you know I can't have that. Plus, I am not crazy about the idea about breathing that in.

With all he gardening I've done the past several months no deodorant was gonna stand a chance anyway, so I gradually just stopped wearing it. It seems my body has learned to regulate itself. My skin is softer and I am shaving more often to keep down the odor. A good friend brought it to my attention hair is designed to hold scent as that is how we would naturally identify one another.

I recognize that this is not for everyone, not for most even. However, I would love it if you would consider other, hopefully more natural and healthy options in your own health and beauty care regime. I like to check here for research, http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/.

The secret life of me

Actually, I make an effort not to have secrets in my life. There are certainly things I am not fond of recounting and there are more than a few people I wish knew nothing at all of my life now, but I abhor secrets.

I felt surrounded and consumed by them as a child and in my early 20s I made every effort to rid my life of them. I didn't feel like I was being given the truth by those around me, I was being conditioned to be a liar. Lying was easy for me and seemed even to be preferable to the truth. You give people the answers they want to hear and it makes them happy, they feel at ease. I am a top notch people pleaser (Gemini) with decades of experience and have always put more import on making other people happy. But the weight of knowing things and having no one to talk to about them, no one to share them with was killing me. I was miserable. I didn't realize at the time that it was also killing Truth. Neither of us could breath under all the mis-tolds and un-tolds.

The biggest and most complex secret in my life I carried from the age of 13 until 18 or so. It was the one that, when it came out, was treated like 'no big deal.' Everyone suddenly acted as if they had all known the whole time and I'm sure many of them did and had been sitting on it themselves...that is the WASP way after all. But it was a big deal for me and it broke my back. Like the proverbial camel, it was the straw that did me in. I just couldn't do it anymore. I started to become a truer person. I realized that almost no one actually knew me because, in my efforts to appease them, I hadn't been honest about who I was and what I felt. I began learning how to live inside my own Truth.

I chose philosophy as my major and found that I was equally drawn to and frightened by the idea of Truth. I felt like we (Truth and I) had been estranged for so long that our relationship would always be tattered. But it wasn't that way at all. We were out of step, that was for sure, but nothing had been torn asunder. It was hard to get things going (old habits and all) and I hurt some people (one person mostly) but I stuck with Truth and that person stuck with me.

I have come to believe that Truth is an expression of Love. If you want to love someone you have to be honest with them about who you are so they can make a completely informed decision about the kind of person you are. When you keep things hidden or outright lie, you are not allowing them all the information they need, you are holding them back and that is not what Love is about.

This is not to say that there are no blemishes on my relationship with Truth today. I still question and sometimes struggle and occasionally I stumble. But Truth remains important enough to me that I make every effort to fix the things I might break along the way.

All around me are familiar faces...

I often see people who remind me so much of people I know that I find it quite unbelievable. Here are a couple examples...

I passed by a woman walking with her toddler and her mother down Connecticut Avenue. It was a nice day and the three were in no hurry to get to where ever they were going.

The mother strolled with her hands gently coupled behind her back. She was the picture of ease with her dark hair loosely resting on her shoulder blades and her white t-shirt tucked into her navy blue lounge pants.

The grandmother wore glasses and a large, straw summer hat. Her hair was white but had been dark brown or even black at one time. She was a foot or so shorter than her daughter so her stride was slightly quicker to keep up but she was certainly not in a hurry or struggling.

The toddler, whose legs were by far working the hardest, wore sandals and pants that were not long enough to reach the ankle but still below the knee and a cap that had certainly been put on by it's wearer from the off center placement. Not yet having mastered the art of walking at any pace, the little feet could not slow themselves down and had a hard time of pointing in the right direction and they soon failed the child. No worries; just a brief stumble and catch by the knees, a bit of assistance from mama and the feet were off and moving again.

When I saw this mother, I immediately thought of my Aunt Sheryl. The have the same hair, the same body shape and size, the same jaw line, but more than that is was how the mother walked gazing at everything around her but still catching her child as it fell. It seemed intrinsic and accidental all at the same time.

All of this happened within the span of some 10 seconds and was at least a year ago, but I still think of it often. How funny that our memory holds tight to certain things and others slip through quite unnoticed.

The other moment was much more recent and reminded me of another aunt, my Donnie.

There was a woman who came to the Inn this weekend to get some information and I couldn't stop staring at her. She looked so much like Donna! Her hair was longer & a bit reddish and her skin was a little darker, but they could have seriously been sisters. She even dressed in the same style that Donna does. I'm sure she thought I was completely strange for staring but I just couldn't help it...she was so pretty.