Dailies

Saturday, August 7, 2004
First day of a two-day Work Intensive. It's a Loving-What-Is workshop, basically, in which we all sit around doing inquiry on our beliefs. I'm enjoying inquiry and had been looking forward to this workshop. It didn't turn out so well, though. My back and now my shoulder are still bothering me. I hadn't been able to get to sleep again, and when I finally did it was hard to get back up, so I was half hour late getting there. The leader made a public comment about how one of his beliefs is that people should be on time; is that true? In addition, after I asked a question about facilitating others in the Work, the leader gave me an assignment -- go out to lunch with others and have them do EVERYTHING for me. Including feed me. Three others volunteered to take me to lunch. It was a horrible experience. One, who also was a helper for the workshop, suggested we go to her favorite place, which turned out to be very expensive, very busy and very slow. The three were all full of themselves and so the conversation wasn't very good. Two of them knew each other so of course there was "insider conversation" going on. The service took so long that we were late getting back. As least me and Phil were. The workshop helper who suggested the restaurant didn't go back at all. So only me and Phil had to bear the (silent) disapproval of the workshop leader. After lunch my back and shoulder started hurting even worse, and that made it hard to sit in one place for long, or to think of any other beliefs for inquiry other than that 'my back shouldn't hurt.' I didn't go to the second day of the Work Intensive.

Wednesday, August 4, 2004.
My body has changed. It's collapsing. I'm no longer the beautiful slim girl I was. My breasts have sagged, my waist is thicker, my hips and thighs are spreading. The whole view is becoming more and more unattractive. I want to be beautiful. I'm limiting my calories and working out at the track in order to get a handle on this, but the ravages of age may be more than I can control.

Wednesday, August 12, 2004.
Don and I are doing so much better. It's unbelievable. The reason? We both decided to drop the animosity. That's it. That's all. No teary conversations. No discussing what's happened. We just decided to be friends again and dropped the past.

In other words, the perfect solution for him. He gets sex again without having to come to an understanding of why I've been so upset. Hmmmm. Perhaps we SHOULD have a heart-to-heart after all. On the other hand, I was getting very tired ot being mad all the time, so I was ready to move on. The Loving-What-Is program has helped tremendously, as has tarot study.

Well, anyway, I've been doing an in-depth study of the major arcana. It's been eye-opening. One very important aspect of tarot is that it provides words and symbols for human experience. The Lovers are Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall. No duality, perfect union of spirit, mind and body. Made for each other. An angel (or is that God?) looks and sees that it is good. That's The Lovers. Joe and I may have been that. I'll never know. But I do know that Don and I are not.

Don and I are Temperance. We are the mixing of opposites, the tempering of one substance with another to strengthen it and add qualities it wouldn't otherwise have had. An angel does the mixing, symbolizing the hand of divinity in the union. The path to the golden crown is achieved if the substances are successfully mixed. Having this card to describe my experience makes me feel encouraged and hopeful.

Thursday, August 12, 2004.
What a great day. I took the day off. I hung around the house. I got lots done.

A big hailstorm went through Lafayette last week. The next day, while I was walking Puppy, I found a little finch with a broken wing. It fluttered across the alley right in front of me. I picked it up, which was not easy because 1) it didn't want to be picked up, and 2) the dog wanted to be in on the action. ("What did we find, Mom? What is it? Can I see? Can I see? What are we looking at?")

I put the poor little thing in a box and took it to Greenwood Wildlife Sanctuary, where I take all my injured birds. They said it had a compound fracture and there was nothing they could do. They were going to have to put it down. They'd seen a lot of animal damage from the hailstorm. It was very sad and I cried for the little thing. I felt like God killed it with a hailstone.

I told Rhiannon, and she said, "Maybe it was time for him to go flying where he wasn't limited by the sky."

Friday, August 13, 2004.
I power-walked at the track today. While walking I thought of my finch and was so overcome by grief that I couldn't continue. I imagined it perched in a tree, waiting out the hailstorm, and suddenly bam! Broken. Pain. A death sentence. I sank to my knees on the track and cried and cried. Why does a bird get a broken wing? Why is a fox dead by the side of the road? Snakes are tormented by cats and eaten by eagles. The zebra is devoured alive by the lion. Elephants beat up on buffalos. And humans are no better. We are cruel to the animals we slaughter for food. We ship them, living, in the freezing cold so they freeze to the side of the truck. We cut them up before they are dead. We torture them.

Life eats life. The fox eats the mouse, killer whale eats the seal, the human eats the cow and the pig and the chicken and just about everything else. We are all dementors. We suck the life from other living things. Life on this planet is not peaceful. Life is killing. Life is death.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004.
Sometimes I'm happy and sometimes I'm not. sometimes I feel fulfilled and sometimes I don't. I suppose it doesn't matter. Either way is fine. Happy sad, fulfilled, empty; it's all good. It's all one.

I've purchased yet another book -- Selected Essays by Montaigne, a sixteenth century writer who was apparently very influential. He owned a 1000 volume library. Mine is only about 600. I'm also listening to Rogue Warrior, an autobiography by Richard Marcinko, who has become my new role model. He's completely different than me, which makes him a good choice. He's an egotistical, fearless, foul-mouthed, ass-kicking, hard-working, super self-confident bastard. Excellent.

Thursday, August 19, 2004.
Meetings, meetings, meetings. Here at ITS we have endless meetings, most of them a waste of my time. The few that aren't are boring boring boring. It's all I can do to keep my eyes open. I've created a game to amuse myself using the candy that we serve to ourselves at the portal meetings. I take four M&Ms, ask a question and release the M&Ms onto my notepad. Logo up is 'yes', logo down is 'no'. I usually ask 'Should I call Joe today' and the answer is almost always a resounding and unequivable no.

I wonder if you can make chocolate milk out of M&Ms and boiling water?
Answer: Yes, but it's too sweet. At least for me. I drink mine unsweetened these days, like the Aztec did.

Tuesday, August 24, 2004.
So I come home from work to find the girls have not done their chores. Now I have to be the heavy, the mean mom, the chore Nazi (as Kendall's friends call me, apparently).

I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to have to follow surly teenagers around the house harping at them get their chores done. No one wants to pitch in, but everyone wants to take my money. They want me to buy them clothes and computers and animals and art supplies, but help with the work? Forget it.

I don't want to have to spend so much money supporting everybody anymore. And that includes my husband. He's just as much an irresponsible teenager as any of the children. It costs a bunch to keep this lazy bunch afloat. I want to get a small apartment in the big city, something that is as inexpensive as possible. My food bill would drop; my utility bill would drop. I could save a bunch. I'd find a place near a big library, an all-night cafe and a community college. It would be so perfect!

Thursday, August 26, 2004.
I watched part of a nature program about elephants on TV today. I came in just when a little baby buffalo had got himself separated from mama and wandered into the midst of the elephant herd.

The elephants are not happy to see him. They whack him with their trunks and make him go flying. Whack! Whack! Things aren't looking good for the little fellow when mama shows up. She runs through the herd, distracting the elephants and giving her little guy a place to run to. Together they run out of the herd and back to their own people. The elephants aren't ready to forgive and forget, though. One follows. A bull buffalo stands his ground, warning the elephant to back off (and making me feel very proud of menfolk everywhere for their bull-headed bravery). More elephants come, shoulder to shoulder, trotting fast and looking something like an runaway train as they bear down on the buffalo.

Right when they're about to bowl him over, the footage ends. "The encounter ended without incident" says the commentator. Like heck it did! I wonder if the buffalo got away okay. And why can't they all live and let live? One would think that the two species could live peacefully together side by side. But no, racial discrimination exists in the animal kingdom as well.

Saturday, August 28, 2004.
Grandpa's birthday party, held at Broomfield Waterworld. What a great place! I got a couple of pics of Michaela and Kendall in their bikinis, which I will post so you can drool at them. I'm so proud of my beautiful girls. I didn't swim, but I took little two-year-old Julia all around. She didn't want to go in the water or even put on her swimsuit, so we started small. First we dangled our feet in then gradually got more and more wet. At the end of the way she'd put her suit on. Aunt Cathy was successful!

Sunday, August 29, 2004.
I've begun a fun new project, which fits right in with what I'm already doing.

I Thought You Loved Me More Than That; ExplodingDog.com

2003

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