Be the change you want to see.

i have a new tattoo! First stage of my baby sea turtle was completed yesterday, and it's really a good one. jopie_lee made it so this stage is cool to wear and doesn't feel unfinished, but we'll come back to it in a month or so and work on the rest of the details.

i also had a pretty profound endorphins crash. wrenb called it a serotonin crash, she'd know better than i would.

she theorized that after the pain endurance of the tattoo and because I recognized at the time that I was definitely surfing the endorphin rush! that i was likely to crash today, so she checked in.

when i told her i was drinking yesterday's cold tea, she asked did i *want to* and I said "eh, it's easier"

she told the polycule that "whenever Liz or I aren't bothered or don't have the energy to make tea, something's wrong!" which, LOL, called out. But also not incorrect!

so she came over and took care of me, and it was LOVELY. she made all the decisions and just moved through the house like a mother of hobbits, helping and asking and doing and fixing things up "what else do you need to do to feel better" she asks after helping me clear all the surfaces in the livingroom/kitchen. so we (mostly she) folded and put away the laundry piles in the bedroom.

and wrenb found some clothes that were on the way to being rags and said, "do you really need to keep these?" and it was a good question to ask, because No, I don't need to keep ragged clothes, I can actually throw them away, it's totally fine, I have three other pairs of shorts and i don't actually know how many sports bras I have now... and it was GOOD.

All I have to do is finish clearing the bed off before bedtime. I fed myself lunch (potstickers in broth) after she left and it made it a little bit easier to think a little bit more, I'm gonna eat some fruit probably in just a bit and try to get a bit more housework under control.

*slurp* mmmm tea.

my friend Adi asked me why did I need to cover up the old piece. and that was also a good question to ask. I've given various reasons to other people, but to her I said, I got the old one when i was with my ex husband, and I need a new touchstone now. I like that. It has the added benefit of being honest and true without being something I thought too much about.

I don't know how i made it through literal years of thinking about and planning this tattoo without telling Jeff that I had elemental associations for all that big ones I've had planned. the one in the userpic above? the Sun. This one? a water turtle, ahead of my 50th birthday. Next one planned is a crow, mid-flight coming in to snatch a shiny thing. Probably gonna do that one for my 52nd birthday.

Earth, I've not decided yet. I've thought about a crescent moon on the back of my neck. not 100% sure about that.

I Contain Multitudes. =)))

and sometimes you just gotta shed some skin to make the change happen.

well hello there, therealljidol community!

Apparently I'm here in time to say HELL YEAH LAST CHANCE IDOL! WOOOOOO!~~~

*climbs back on the horse*

As kids, we all knew about the pothole down the road that you had to avoid on your bicycle, or which neighbor's yard you'd never trespass in, for fear of a dog perhaps, or some grown-up's anger.

These are workarounds. This is knowing your environment, and keeping yourself from harm.

As kids, some of us knew grown-ups in our lives who had to be managed. Or avoided. Or placated. Or hidden from.

* I remember my fourth grade teacher, who used to hug all the pretty girls. I was maybe nine, and I envied Charlene (*not her real name), tiny and blonde, shy as a mouse, with Mr. M's arm around her. At the time, I didn't understand why she looked quietly miserable, when his hug looked so warm and affectionate.

* I remember my tenth grade English teacher (the third one we'd had that year) who struggled ineffectually to "manage" our class of high spirited and mischievous honors students.
His face is clear in my memory, though his name has faded. I had asked him to please control the class because I, at least, wanted to learn. He shrugged his shoulders and said helplessly, "But, Liz, what can I DO?"

* And I remember my dad. He started working from home when I was around 13, firmly planted in his comfy chair with his cigarettes, newspaper, and yellow legal pads. I remember him commanding me to fetch him yet another beer from the fridge's endless supply.

I was shocked and pleased in equal amounts to discover, some time last year, that someone had coined a phrase for these kinds of dysfunction. "The missing stair". Because some ideas are nearly impossible to understand until you have a name for them.

To deal with a Missing Stair in your life or environment means that some necessary thing is broken and everyone has just gotten used to, adapted around the brokenness. Used to it, enough that nobody talks about it anymore, and the collective assumption is "well, that's just how it always has been, we all just deal with it." Or maybe you've heard it phrased as "It's just part of the culture here," or as "boys will be boys."

*explosive sigh*

I call bullshit on that nonsense.

* My tenth grade teacher needed a mentor, or at minimum, direct instruction in how to manage teenagers in a classroom.
That skill is something that actually can be taught, something that can be learned and practiced. He should have been taught those skills, and he should have been provided with good examples to follow. His teacher training, and our school administration, should have seen to that, and failed to. (I am particularly incensed about this because it was something my own teacher training lacked as well, twenty years later: one of many things that convinces me this brokenness is systemic.)

* My fourth grade teacher, it turns out, was (eventually) reported to authorities and removed from teaching at my elementary school. I did not understand at the time, when the kids were gossiping on the playground, what it meant that Mr. M was no longer teaching at our school. Or why when I asked my parents about it, they made faces and changed the subject.
The silence around this subject is a kind of brokenness that could perhaps have mended by using the story, the true story, as an age-appropriate teachable moment on how to trust your gut instinct, how to be safer around adults, on appropriate or inappropriate touching, or on how to stand up for other people.

* And of course, there was my dad. The lessons I could learn from his life are manifold. But whatever it was that he needed, well. I don't know.
What I've learned from his example, I've had to unravel, unlearn, and relearn over years of ACoA meetings, journal writing, talk therapy; and my own year of total abstinence from alcohol.

Shame and silence NEVER solve these kinds of broken. The Missing Stair effect occurs in large communities and inside our own heads.

Problems like these fester and persist in the darkness and the silence.

Acknowledge the broken stairs. Point them out.
Please.
Talk about them. Research. Offer assistance, if you have it to give.

Because if one of us has a hammer, and another has nails, and someone else has some solid boards, and someone else actually knows how to fix a stair?

We will never know that the stair could actually be fixed, until someone says, "Hey, I have this thing that might help fix that missing stair..."

and I am so fucking tired of jumping over the broken places.





Hey y'all? I have this thing that might help fix that missing stair.
(listens for responses)



This has been my Week Two entry for therealljidol, and the prompt was "The Missing Stair".

Beta-readings done by chippychatty, wrenb, and violaconspiracy! Thanks, guys, you definitely made this better.

Please go read and enjoy my colleagues' entries here. To vote for my entry, find me at the bottom of the second poll, link is *here*.

Thank you for reading!

If you always do what you always did,
then you'll always get what you always got.

Yeah, today it's hard to get out of the house, but I've promised myself that I will go seek exercise pants and then spend at least 45 minutes at the gym, even if I am embarrassed about how long it's been since I went.

I'm no longer needing to have a Kleenex box next to me 24/7 (for which much YAY) and my joints are feeling creaky. Must move. Must needs schedule some gym time so I can start checking out the available classes at the gym: they have Zumba and Nia and Pilates and Yoga, and that is also full of Yay.

My friend Kim just posted a video to FB about a guy in NYC doing a "Dance-Walk" thing with his iPod. Such dorky fun... but shameless though I am I do not have *quite* that much shamelessness.

Okay, here I go.

Ridiculous and inconceivable that tomorrow is my last day of Summer Session for the Waldorf teacher training.
I won't get to see my friends every day? I won't have dance and art history and creative writing and speech classes every day? I won't get to hang with the incomparable Ken, my sculpture teacher? I won't be learning new songs on the fly every morning with Lisa?

*WAAAAAHHH!!!*

This has been wonderful. I am entirely sorry it's almost over. I will survive the transitions necessary, but for now I have to kick my own ass to get there.

I get to bring a lot home with me. My Main Lesson book from Roberta's class, with art and poetry we created together. Some of my sculpture work. A LOT of literature to read and share, including a great article on the Waldorf philosophy of reading in elementary school. I have work I want to continue to refine, including writing and speech exercises, some of the art in the Main Lesson book, and I have a bit of clay I can use to be creative, and which might last a long while if I am kind to it.

Tonight I have to make a card for Glenda, another for Anne-Marie (my class secretary), and try to do a bit of practice for Saturday's assembly: the skit, the speech exercise, and the eurhythmy performance.

Gonna take the husband out to find some food he finds appealing. Right now he's feeling better enough to play piano, which is a VERY good sign.

Love ya, read y'all later,

Liz

If I don't take the time and energy to meet my own needs and take care of my self, why would I believe I could meet the needs of others?

If I don't weed out the cankerblossoms from my own soul, won't they set root and even seed out new cankers, new miseries, new heartaches? New misunderstandings?

If I don't show respect, how can I expect respect?

If I don't live the love, why would I expect love to be given to me?


***


I failed to plan. I failed to set my priorities and my plans in order to meet those priorities.
I have been failing to plan.

It is time to use the Big Brain and work out the Most Important Things and how to achieve, become, or work toward them.

I start again today.

Bit pensive today. It's quiet, just the laundry thumping round, and I've got lots and lots to do or that I should be doing, but... But.

I wonder what home is.

Part of this has to do with the fact that I am indeed, technically homeless.
I mean, god bless Laura for taking me in. But it's not MY home. It's hers.

Is home some random apartment I don't yet have possession of?
Is home a domicile at all, or is it as large as a city I know my way around... and am comfortable travelling thru?
Is home the Starry Plough, or the Fair Oaks Tudor Faire?
Is home the living room of a dear friend who's having me over for dinner and a heart-to-heart talk?

One former lover and still dear friend talked about places wrapped around people. For me, Aberystwyth is more than a medieval Welsh town, it's Spiky John and Pete, Big John and Andrew, Shasta and Rachael, Sarah, Stephen, the girls in the dorm, my teachers and the shopkeepers, the other students we'd play billiards with, go to the pub or the football club/dance hall.

Berkeley is still Kevin and Ammy, though neither of them has lived there in over 2 years (?).

Sacramento is my mom (and dad, though he's dead), my sister and her husband and my nephew, my high-school friends, and many of my pagan friends and Faire friends.

I'm in this weird limbo-space. Or a weird gypsy space, perhaps.
Heather Alexander's CD, "A Gypsy's Home" has a title song with the lyrics
Don't tell a gypsy she has no home...
My road is wide and my sky is tall
And before I die I will see it all...

At the moment, I don't feel like I'm supposed to put down permanent roots.
I feel like those plants my mom keeps in vases and glasses for YEARS before she puts them in dirt, if ever.

The potential of my current life is strange and wonderful. There is no fixed horizon, no concrete path.
It's a beautiful, terrifying thing.
But I won't "settle," not ever again.