Lawd, I'm Tired

I'm really...done. I'm just done. At least, I want to be done. It's been over two years now of working full-time (plus) and going to school part-time. I once greeted each class with youthful vigor and enthusiasm, but now it's more like fatigue and mild irritation.

The school director is giving me a rather difficult time about missing 2 clinic sessions for the first full-week getaway vacation I've had since starting school. In her words--I couldn't believe--"We can't just say [to clients], 'sorry, all the students are at the beach.'" That made me mad.

A small comfort: I spoke to a student even closer to graduation than I, and it's clear that lots of people are worn out. (Currently, he's being chastised for not having enough "elective credits." I wasn't aware there was a quota. Hope I have enough...) He reminded me that it will all be worth it when we've completed to program.

I sure hope so.

Some Things I Find Beautiful

I find both Art Nouveau and bossa nova to be so beautiful. They seem to me to be beautiful in some similar way, but I can't pinpoint it. Maybe it's their ephemerality.

Wednesday Writing Assigment

I'm done with the cleanse, and the whole universe of eating is again, so to speak, my oyster. But I don't want it. I had millet for breakfast anyway. What the hell is wrong with me?

Tell me about a time you obtained something you thought you really wanted, but then...didn't want, after all.

Tag, I'm It

Emma tagged me. It is my duty.

3 names people call me:
kStyle
KareBear
Hey you

3 screen-names I've had:
kStyle
Mena
HotGrlXXX

3 physical things I like about myself:
lots of thick hair*
strong cheek bones
good qi

3 physical things I dislike about myself:
lots of facial hair (thanks, heritage!)
too much boobs
right knee creaks
*but it's pretty unmanageable

3 parts of my heritage:
Portuguese
Irish
English

3 things I am wearing right now:
funky blue glasses
giant faux-sparkly flower ring
white sweater
*(and hair frizz)

3 (of many) favorite bands / musical artists:
Jamiroquai
Bebel Gilberto
Hall and Oates

3 songs I've been listening to obsessively:
“Waters of March” (as recorded by Bossacucanova)
“Oh Comely” (Neutral Milk Hotel)
“Simplesmente” (Bebel Gilberto)

3--no, several--of my favorite songs:
"Head over Heels" (Tears for Fears)
"Girl from Ipanema" (Jobim)
"Bus to Beelzebub" (Soul Coughing)
"Dry County" (B52s)
"A Train" (The Duke)
"They Can't Take That Away from Me" (Gershwin)
"Crumblin' Erb" (Outkast)
and so forth

3 things I want in a relationship:
shared dreams
laughter
hugs
(I just made myself vomit, a little, in my mouth.)

3 physical things about the preferred sex that appeal to me:
bright shen
smile
a nice back
(Why do I feel a sudden urge to, like, play MASH and peg my jeans?)

3 of my favorite hobbies:
shiatsu
dance
fetch with kitten

3 things I want to do really badly right now:
In this sequence:
1. nap
2. drink hot cocoa at cafe
3. read a magazine. A dumb, pretty one.

3 things that scare me:
Fundamentalists of every stripe (I'm with Emma on this one)
Poor communication (causes most of the world's problems, I think)
Closed spaces
(and sometimes heights)

3 of my everyday essentials:
Warm meal
Exercise
Sleep

3 careers you have considered or are considering:
theater
social work
shiatsu

3 places you want to go on vacation:
Portugal (I want to wander all over the country)
Cuba
And everywhere else.

3 kids' names you like:
(Aren't kids' names you like also adults' names you like? Aren't they just names you like?)
Camilla
Phoebe
Gabriel

3 things you want to do before you die:
Live
Live
Nap

3 ways I am stereotypically a boy:
Practical
Hate clothes shopping
I sometimes don't wear makeup

3 ways I am stereotypically a girl:
can't fix a car
can barely catch a ball
I sometimes wear makeup

3 celeb crushes:
Johnny Depp
Nicole Kidman
Will Smith

3 people to play next:
Eric
Mr. S
Ben

Now, That's Just Nasty

I've tried some new foods this week. I'm a culinarily adventurous sort of person, but, well, there's some bad shit that people eat. Daikon. Daikon is the most horrible thing. You know what could make it worse, though? Bragg's Liquid Aminos.

On the plus side, millet is delicious.

A Strange Cleanse Side-Effect

My poop is green.

Sugar Sugar, Oh Honey Honey

I realized I was addicted to sugar when I worked at the homeless shelter. I was pretty up-close-and-personal with what addiction looked like, and also with hippie vegan shelter volunteers who tut-tutted every time I gobbled down a chocolate bar...or two...and eventually I put two and two together.

Quickly I learned that claims of sugar addiction are not taken very seriously, especially among caffeine-dependent smokers who quit the sauce.

Sugar is pervasive. It's delicious. Combined with chocolate, it's a powerful medication for maladies from the old-fashioned blues to PMS to broken bones.

Listen. I couldn't get through the afternoon without a sugary treat. I needed to have dessert after dinner. NO, FRUIT DOES NOT DO THE TRICK. I've heard there are mythical enlightened beings who can eat a square or two of a chocolate bar. I am a voracious predator: if I hear the crinkle of foil in the underbrush, the whole bar is doomed.

I've tried shaking the sweet monkey off my back before, but it never worked. What's different this time? Whole foods. I'm not eating white bread or pasta. I'm not eating foods laced with sugar by the Corporate Food Man. I didn't even eat grains for a few days. It's the same reason that the (dubiously healthy) Atkins diet worked for so many Americans: We are a nation addicted to sugar, and it's in everything we eat. Like my homeless coffee-drinking smoker friends, who must avoid the Near Occasion of Alcohol, so too must we avoid pasta sauce sweetened up with evaporated cane juice. Oh, c'mon, it's just a little cane juice. It can't hurt you. Live a little. Nah man, if I hit the cane juice, I'm gonna end up eating a few Snickers. Then the wife'll kick me out again.

I've heard that sugar dulls the senses. Not eating it this week, I think I can see better. It's nice. Of course, I want a chocolate chip cookie, but I'm Not. Having. One. So there.

A Few Strange Habits

Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a little idiosyncratic. Not Sandwiches Are The Devil Idiosyncratic, but I have my own neuroses. I must reunite infinitives that have been torn asunder by homewrecker adverbs. (Those whores.) Making tea, I always rinse out the mug with hot water before I add the tea bag and fill it. Must must must. I brush my teeth at work after lunch. (Well, that one's just good hygiene.) Ummmm....that's about it.

Maybe I'm not that idiosyncratic, after all.

Wednesday Writing Assignment

Sticking with the cleanse theme, let me steal one: please tell me about a happy food memory. We could all talk all day about bad food memories, but I want a happy one.

March in May: A Post about the Weather

Allow me to complain. Today, May 15, is 52 degrees, overcast, and damp. Damp and chilly. This is the shit I expect out of March, not May. Even the flowers, whose purpose in life is to spread cheeriness and bright good feelings, look forlorn.

The last three weeks have been miserable. Miserable and horribly cruel, because Mother Nature sees fit to pour down sunshine, mild temperatures, and general gaiety Tuesdays and Wednesdays, working hours only, and then blanket us in chilly gray dampness the rest of the time. I'd like to impeach her.

The Cleanse: Not Going So Well

Yesterday, the first day, I felt great: my heart was lighter. Today, however, I'm exhausted, tense, emotional, and sick of vegetables. I cracked and ate some tofu. I don't know if I'm going to finish this thing.

Cleanse with Me!

New plan: Let's make it a giant week of Wednesday Writing Assignments. I'll share with you the questions that arise for me as I do the cleanse. You are welcome to answer here, in your own journal or blog, or not at all. I will probably answer the questions once I've finished the whole cleanse.

Jumping right in, here are the questions dancing in my mind during this precleanse transitional phase.

Food Peer Pressure
There's a lot of food peer pressure in our culture. People with food allergies or vegetarian diets deal with it almost daily, as do noticeably overweight people. For me, it mostly manifests in the endless string of "coworker lunches": It's his birthday! She's getting married! They just earned their masters degrees! Let's take her to lunch! I'm not usually into spending my lunches cooped up indoors eating overpriced, dead-feeling food, but I feel a lot of social pressure to do so. Family gatherings are another source of FPP. I don't want to appear rude or ungrateful, but I know I won't feel well after a heavy, fatty, starchy (delicious) meal. (I usually eat it.) What kind of food peer pressure do you experience and how do you deal with it? How do you say "no" and what happens?

Mental Clutter
I feel like I have lots of mental clutter. It's too easy to pour information into the ole brain constantly, from TV, books, radio, television, and our friend the Internet. We're so wired and information is so accessible that I feel guilty when I tune out the news for a few days. I'm hoping that this simplification period will reduce the chatter. How's your mental clutter? Does the media feed it?

note Question 1 relates nicely to what Emma's been writing about lately, and Question 2 to what Ann's been writing about lately, but I am on that link-unfriendly computer now. I'll try to link 'em up later.

My 'Pinions on E-Pinions

Anyone here dug around epinions much? Who are these people who have time to write hundreds of 200+ word reviews? One of the top E-pinions reviewers is, she is proud to note in her profile, also a top Amazon reviewer!, and, I would guess, unemployed.

(I didn't link to the web site because, really, you shouldn't waste your time.)

Finding My Medicine Song

Jason pointed me to a wonderful album on my quest for a new medicine song. (Scroll down to "Aquarius" on that last link.) It was an adventure finding the album. I stopped at the tiny independent record store on my way home and requested Neutral Milk Hotel. "Neutral Milk what?", asked the proprietor. He asked why I was so keen on Neutral Milk Hotel. I explained that a trusted friend had recommended it. He offered me albums from other bands: The Shins, Modest Mouse, and so forth. I declined each gently. He thought it strange that I was adamant to purchase an album I'd never heard, no substitutions. I suspected it would seem even stranger if I explained the spiritual quest handed me by a horoscope, so I thanked him and left. He was very pleasant and I'll go back next time I want some 60s-era music.

The next afternoon I tried the big commercial chain record store in the town where I work. (It's not the funky big commercial chain record store, but the mainstream one.) Although the young clerk had never heard of NMH, he tried to help me find it in the stacks, but my grasp of alphabetical order was better than his. As I pulled the lone copy of my treasure from the bin, his face read, "I'll be darned, they do exist". He, too, was amazed I was buying it sheerly on recommendation. (But it's Jason's recommendation, I wanted to say.) The other clerk noticed my purchase and almost swooned: He loves that album and didn't realize they carried it and "it's one of those albums that becomes part of you" but his copy was stolen from his car a year ago. Then First Clerk offered me a discounted magazine subscription and I joked that I already had so many I was having Yoga Journal rerouted to my mother's address, which led us to a chat about tai ch'i and ended with me writing down my shiatsu school's URL for him.

Then I drove away with the CD playing in my car and, as to paraphrase the Bible, I heard that it was good.

Thank you, Jason.

Going Amish

I’ll begin my spring cleanse Thursday evening. These last few days I’ve been prepping myself by drinking more herbal tea, eating more veggies, and avoiding (OK, reducing) caffeine, sugar, dairy, alcohol, and processed foods, including white flour. I’m eating with an eye toward food combination: veggies and carb or veggies and protein, but not carbs and protein at the same meal; fruit apart from meals. The cleanse will be simple: a few days of Fruits and Veggies Only, followed by a few days of produce and whole grains, and then adding protein near the end.

I’ve been told that a dietary cleanse is not just a dietary cleanse. Even as the crap gets dumped from the intestines, so the crap gets dumped from the psyche. How will stress feel unmedicated by chocolate? What happens when I can’t attend the string of coworker birthday lunches I don’t really want to attend anyway? How can I nourish myself better? I wonder what life will be like for 10 days, stripped down and simplified, ordered around food. I’m nervous that it will be difficult finding time for the food preparation required (homemeade vegetable soup takes longer than pasta!), that I’ll be hungry and irritable for over a week, but I suspect life will seem easier when I order my days around nourishment.

I feel like I’m embarking upon some strange voyage and I’m not sure I have enough ship biscuits. Clearly, I will need to journal during my experiment. This, however, is not the place. I’d like to cleanse myself, a little, from the chattering of the Internet—I need to monkify, to Amish-up--for the next couple of weeks. When it’s all over and I emerge with glowing skin, butterfly wings, and a shiny new aura, maybe I’ll tell you about it.

Which brings me to...

Wednesday Writing Assignment

As I prepare to cleanse, please tell me about a time of cleansing, purification, or simplification in your life.

Listen Up. I'm Only Saying This Once.

Seems like everyone is constipated. (Literally, I mean.) The cure is simple.

1. Start the day with a glass of warm water with lemon in it 15 minutes before you eat anything.

2. Eat cooked veggies every day, no excuses. Raw veggies can be too rough on the digetive tract. Cooking them helps them sliiiiide through.

Got it?

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Go! Right now! And join your local CSA farm. For about $300, you can buy in to a local farm and then you'll receive fresh veggies every week during the growing season. You'll support local farmers, have a connection to your food, positively impact the environment, and enjoy some fantastic produce.

Healing on Deep Levels

It sounds melodramatic, but that's basically what's been going on with me lately. Unfortunately, it does not make for very good blogging. It would make for...narcissistic blogging. So I'll stop here.

Sorry This Is Lame Lately

Home DSL is down; work is busy. Let's do a quick rundown of highlights:

1. Next week, I'll be doing a spring diet cleanse based on the guidelines set forth by Hale Sofia Schatz. I'm terrified.

2. Luna the Psycho Kitten's new habits include jumping in the fridge and dishwasher.

3. Mercury is no longer retrograde, making life infinitely easier. When that little planet spins backwards, all hell breaks loose. Someone should stop it next time. (That's why the dinosaurs are extinct, you know.)

4. Eric is still 30!

Need a New Medicine Song

According to the very brilliant Rob Brezny (http://www.freewillastrology.com), I can attain new levels of consciousness this week, but I could use a new medicine song to aid me in my quest. Any suggestions?

(This Mac doesn't let me link easily.)