what was that?

I'm not even proofreading when I post now, as a way of proving to myself that this is just for me. ha. so there.
I think I will take a nap today. everyone else is sleeping, so why not. took the boys for haircuts this morning, and then out for pancakes, which has become part of the ritual. I didn't realize how long E's hair was until I saw it in a pile on the floor. He was sort of getting a mullet - that much I knew. poor guy screamd the whole time - he didn't do that during his first haircut, but that was at one of those places just for kids where they can watch a clifford video and sit in a chair that looks like a fire truck. today we went to the $5.00 Romanian shop down the street where the barber was quite meticulous if a bit gruff. I kept wanting to say, 'okay - that's fine, we're done.' glad I waited until he had actually trimmed both sides. also, I think e's first haircut was BEFORE he cut his head and had to go the the ER and be restrained while they cleaned and then glued his head, so now anything remotely restraining is not so fun for him.

anyway. at some point, I want to make sense or find a context for what was going on with me before - before, when I started the blog, and then before that, with the depression.
I can see now, now that I've gotten some distance, that doing the cleanse, the garage sale, but big purge(s), was all a way of marking a new beginning. a dear friend of mine is a doula, and in the training for her work, she learned that some people think of the post-partum period as a labrynth, in that you can move away from the birth experience, only to turn a corner and find yourself right up next to it again, as if no time had passed. This meandering, healing, processing period during which the mother finds context and, hopefully, meaning, for her birth experience can last...(when she was first telling me this, at this moment, I thought "six weeks") three years. and then if you have one child and then another and another, it's like you have a labrynth on top of another labrynth on top of another one, with all those twists and turns and corners and weaving toward and away from.
I am not explaining this nearly as eloquently as she, but her discription had such an impact on me.
there is so much pressure in our culure to "get over it and get on w/ it" after having a baby.
all this to say - I had a rough time after having my second child. he's 20 mos now, and I'm feeling much better.
last fall, i think I was getting ready to step out of the labrynth. I was ready to reclaim parts of myself. I didn't quite know that's what I was doing, until now, and of course I'm still not "done" whatever that might mean.
but I was in something and now I feel like I'm out of it. which of course means I'm now in s/thing else.

well, that's enough for today. time to sleep a bit.

just pretending

I'm not really here. I'm just pretending to write this b/c I don't really have time. I need s/thing for myself though, and so I am doing this for me. I know this is a step beyond journalling somehow, but not quite for public consumption. I'm kind of hoping no one reads it. I got so caught up before in trying to get into the loop - to become part of a conversation that had been going on long before I showed up and feeling ignored or not cool enough or like everyone already had enough friends so who needed to listen to me.
it brought back waaaaay to much jr high, in other words. so instead of just saying what I wanted to say, what felt important and true at that moment, I felt like I needed to get everyone's attention, otherwise it's like being on stage in an empty theater. after a while you feel kind of silly.
so, anyway. that was then.
now, I'm just here. doing this. being where I am. I'm feeling really fat at the moment. I've been eating a ton of crap. part of it is the cold. it's a basic biological fact that when it's cold, we want to pack on the fat. it's our body's response to its surroundings, and that's a good thing. we should be glad we have bodies and that our bodies have their own intelligence. it's 6 degrees for god's sake - let's stay warm!
but I don't have to eat sugar and bread. I can eat more protein. but I'm not. I'm eating crap. cake cookies chocolate. it was jut valentine's day, after all.
I keep telling myself "soon." soon I will....stop. begin. eat well. come back to consciousness. part of this is bullshit, of course. but part of this is actually true, and I know that, and I want to give myself permission and credit for getting out of 'control' whatever that means while knowing that i will eventually reign it in. it's just how I operate.
see? there. I feel better already.
meanwhile, I'm doing this new business thing, and it feels strange and right and scary and exciting, and I'm not sure who I am, doing it. does it change me? of course it does, and of course it doesn't. I'm utilizing parts of myself that have never been taken out of their delivery box, so to speak. other parts have been in storage for a long, long time. so I feel different to myself
plus, I've been more stressed and frantic, running my energy at a high speed. I'm not meditating or exercising or, again, eating well. feeling a bit unconscious.
just in the past few days I've felt myself called back home. so maybe that's part of why I'm here, now. waking myself up again. coming back to the slow, grounded parts.
finding balance. there - that's it! I'm finding balance.
so do I post this? why or why not?