oh, is that so?

This was the Buddhist tip o’ the day from Beliefnet yesterday. I just got it this morning:

“He who knows that all things are his mind, that all with which he meets are friendly, is ever joyful.” - Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa.

I am having a really hard time believing that today. Fuck friendly. I want to tear shit up. So it’s time for a bitch session. Yeah, yeah, check the moon cycle, I know.

Last Saturday was ladies’ night at Buffy’s. Tons of fun. Too much, according to my body. I hadn’t eaten much that day because she had promised us her avodadalicious homemade guacamole among other treats. When I got to her house I indulged in twenty minutes of rare warm yoga, then emerged to the promised guacamole and a lovely bottle of Shiraz and I’ll be damned if I can remember the name. Suffice to say it was highly drinkable.

Sam, Heather and I retired to the back porch so Sam could gift me with a haircut and the relapsed smokers (including myself) could get a fix. It was an unseasonably warm night. There were lots of stars. And then there was Heather’s voice saying, “Hi, there. How ya doing?” She was looking at me from a very odd angle – kinda perpendicular – and from way up above, as if I was – oh, I dunno, lying down or something.

Which I was. Apparently I had bent back over the railing to look up at the stars and come up a little too quickly. The general consensus was that the wine, the lack of food, and a couple of other factors had combined to product a significant drop in blood pressure.

So yeah, I passed out for a couple of seconds. I am told that it was a lovely, graceful faint, which is some small comfort given the restricted movement of my right arm from the “blunt force trauma” – as H the nurse put it – of my shoulder hitting the deck.

It doesn’t appear to be getting much better, but this is probably due to my inability to stop using the blasted thing. Today I discovered that the pain is directly proportional to the extent I reach outward from the body. This has helped some.

I’ve registered for a three-hour Flow into Spring yoga workshop next weekend. I’m not sure I’ll be going now. Bloody freaking karma. Some lessons I just haven’t learned yet, apparently.

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Monday afternoon, Duckie came down with a feverish, snotty cold, which resulted in two days at home – one with Dad and one with Mom. Yesterday was my day. The weather was sublime, so we went to the WNC Nature Center and got a rare treat – the bears were awake and lively.

Things I learned at the Nature Center:

Bears really can climb trees, and damned well, too. A land surveyor in a western North Carolina wilderness area would not do well to climb a tree to get away from a bear. Brian had told me this, but I had to see it to believe it.

Black bears go dormant during the winter, but they don’t actually hibernate.

The small, downy feathers on a barred owl’s face direct sound to their tiny ears. (We got to see one up close.) The tufts of feathers on other types of owls (like the Great Horned Owl) are only for show – they’re not actually ears at all. They’re meant to break up the predators’ silhouette for better camouflage in a dark forest.

Trying to carry a stroller down natural granite steps with a bum shoulder can easily result in a twisted ankle.

Duckie’s back in school today. I went in early early early this morning to escort her to the nightly bathroom break and found an empty bed. Suspicous sounds in the kitchen – might be the cat, I thought, but probably not.

She had made herself a little den of sorts on the kitchen floor (we keep low lights on there at night to prevent injuries as we stumble bleary-eyed towards the light switches.) Her bear blanket down first, of course, because it’s much warmer than the cold tiles, part of her tea set, her impossibly soft musical lamb (it’s a Gund, can you blame her?), her new markers, and the basic mandala design we had been working on that afternoon. She had almost finished it.

“It’s ok, Mom,” she said. “I’m in here.”

“I see that,” I said, going for the camera.

“I’m almost done.”

“OK.”

Yup, I thought, trying for a low light picture with 400-speed film. She’s going back to school tomorrow.

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Last week’s impending mid-life crisis has resulted in some interesting responses and developments. Sam mentioned that perhaps some of the more cosmetic urges (haircut, hair dryer, new lipstick – I mean, I’d be kidding myself if I thought I’d bother with much else) has to do with the coming of spring. Point to Sam.

Many people have agreed that it’s sad to see talents go unused and abandoned – their own and those of people they love. I have been observing my borderline unhealthy urges to pursue several different subjects at once (a bit of OCD mixed with incipient hypomania is always an interesting combination.) In the process, I’ve come to see that what I’ve been doing over the last few years has not been the most exciting of activities – but it’s practice for life. By consciously practicing happiness and contentment and peace (not always easy), I might be able to walk down some of these paths and resist the ever-present specter of perfectionism that, in the long run, causes stagnancy.

I’ll be forty in a couple of years. So if I live to be eighty (which would be cool) I still have a few decades to grow and change and share my gifts with the world. If I get all panicky about it and focus more on what I haven’t done than what I could do, I won’t do anything at all.

Which is kinda where I was to begin with, you know?

Working with a different paradigm. Parenthood, partnerhood, yoga, brushes with death – you know, it all makes a difference.

(Un)Relaxed Dad, in comments, mentioned that his boy Dudelet is three, and that he’d been experiencing some similar thoughts (and icky dreams, too.) It sparks a bit of curiosity about the changes parents go through as their kids grow.

*hey, (UR)D, how's he doing, by the way? I can't check your blog for updates. GRRRR.*

So much to think about today. Happy to get the monthly bitch session over with. I'm gonna go eat some chocolate now.

Namaste, y’all.