Be the change you want to see.

Had a hugging dream this morning. At a gas station, I run over to Lefty (dream-you gives good hugs too) & then realized I had no mask, went yikes, and woke up.

The other mini dream I had was less fun
In the dream Donaldo trumpissimo wanted to have sex with me. And I was taking refuge in the extremely formal language that I use to keep distance from unwelcome people, and in the dream I looked around the oval office (in retrospect I'm surprised I wasn't feeling regret that This was how I got to see the oval office) and I remember feeling extremely cautious about how I might successfully exit the room unassaulted, fully expecting that secret service and other guards would be no help in getting me out of the situation.

After I woke up this second time, I lay there still feeling cautious and on guard, and I realized something about the "grab them by the pussy" remark which is incredibly obvious in retrospect.
Trump said "they just let you do it"
And I realized that was simply a "freeze" reaction, of the "fight, flight, fawn, freeze, fuck" series.

And most women I know got trained out of their bodily autonomy before they were out of grade school. Poisonous culture.

More to chew on here. No solutions, not yet.

Life is good.
I am grateful for all the blessings Providence has offered to me,
there is abundance in every corner of my life.
I am one of the luckiest people I know.

Thank you, Universe, for your part in this.

Just Three Things I'm taking away from this week of substitute teaching.

1) Speak professionally and spartanly with high school students, be precise in my language and in expressing my expectations & standards, and work to not over-share. (jessica's waldorf-kindergarten challenge to not speak until spoken to by students, would work surprisingly well in another independently-motivated high school classroom.)

2) Do The Right Thing, always, even if it's a day or two delayed.

3) At the end of the day, Doing More Good is actually a pretty simple balance to maintain. Respect, helpfulness, friendliness, and taking care of the students, are why I'm there. Substitute teachers are a necessary gap-filler, we serve an essential purpose. Good to remember.

that's all I got right now, the nap earlier this afternoon is still Sucking What Little Brain I have after a weekend of Waldorf lectures on "Man as Symphony of the Creative Word", but yay, butterflies. (yes that sounds like a random tangent; ask me later if you see me.)

<3

In other life news, today finishes the second full week of the summer Waldorf teacher credentialling session.
I am STARVING. I am always starving when I come home after classes. AND I eat like a pig at snack (11:00) and at lunch (1:00) ... but I'm not changing shape at all, unless i'm gaining a little bit of muscle ... I suppose it helps that we are dancing for an hour every morning, and doing sculpture in the afternoon, and I'm THINKING like a hard-working thinking-thing the rest of the day (my Creative Writing teacher and Program Director, Dorit would have FITS about that description, not to mention all my parenthetical habits and multiple-adjective descriptors, hee!)

Other teachers and students refer to the work we are doing as spiritual work. And that it's HARD work I do not deny, nor do I deny its spiritual nature. But spiritual work burning this many calories, is just something I have to make an effort to wrap my head around.

Snack and lunch are incredibly tasty affairs at summer session. Today the snack table had berry scones, a variety of bagels, cream cheese, corn bread with honey butter to spread on it, melons and berries in an attractive display, hummus and sliced peppers and cucumbers and tzatziki... plus very tasty coffee with honey, brown sugar, whole milk and half-n-half, and a variety of teas, both caf. and decaf.

Lunch has been fresh, organic, and varied, and incredibly tasty as well.

I love my sculpture class. Ken Smith is also our Art History teacher, and he's built like a short balding blacksmith, with a gentle New Zealand accent and a puckish sense of humor. Really devoted to his subject, and very heart centered. Unfailingly polite and helpful, even when our class is feeling our oats and we start to talk over him. I thought sculpture would be kind of scary, you know, new means of expression, but he's so approachable, it's very easy to ask questions and get help.

I love my eurythmy (dance) class. Glenda was born in South Africa, has lived and worked all over the world so she has this intriguing mixy accent, and she's SO graceful and warm and welcoming and sweetly funny. I told her today what an amazing "stage ninja" she was, backstage (behind a simple curtain) at the first Wednesday night performance... she was unnoticeable, and I was LOOKING, and on top of that, managed to change costume back there, utterly unobtrusively... the way she walks is amazing, the variety of movement styles, accents she flows between, the real gentility of her manner... wow. I will be sad when I no longer get to work with her every day. I will really miss her. And I love the range of movement she has us doing, and doing beautifully, in class. She is unstinting with praise and warm eye contact, and I love that about her also.

I love my Language Arts class. Roberta is an experienced Waldorf teacher, having ushered two classes through from first to eighth grade, and now teaches teachers and, I believe, works part time in another Waldorf school with students having reading difficulty. She's profoundly deaf and relies on hearing aids, which gives her speaking voice a kind of metallic, flat affect, but her enthusiasm and encyclopedic memory for verse, rhyme, game, and story makes her a real force to be reckoned with. I hope my mind is as sharp and my will as enthusiastic by the time I'm her age (which I don't know, but she's got white white hair and an 8 year old granddaughter, so...)

I am having a time of it in the creative writing class. *wry*
Dorit, I am discovering through the grapevine, lacks certain social skills like tact and communicating the parameters of an assignment. She knows her subject, that's for sure, but when her way of telling you how she wants you to write an assignment consists of saying, write three sentences using these subjects, and then proceeds to just rip every body's work in front of the class? Hm. So she's letting everyone make their natural mistakes first, then bringing examples to the class for correction and suggestions... which is not too bad, everyone can give suggestions for improvement... kinda makes her the bad guy, but she's almost gleeful about it (funny, for a melancholic personality!) so yeah. She's maybe harsh but I don't see anyone crying on the way out of the room so it's probably all right.

And honestly? if anyone can break me of the remains of my codependent habit of trying to please authority figures? It'll be Dorit. Nothing I do seems to please her, I seem to irritate her somehow (no, really I have evidence) and tbh she's starting to irritate me also, though I'm trying to be compassionate about it. I'll work to stop trying to make her notice me and just pay attention to doing the work properly. And I have to admit I haven't given it as much thought as I have the other classes, cos hey, I can write already! I am a Writer. </ poncy pretension> heh. I need to give those assignments decent focus and not dash something off as I have been doing. I need to go ahead and draft something, work on the draft and change and experiment and fix things... I need to really friggin' WRITE, and do myself proud.

Lots of progress being made now. This is the halfway point, I can't believe we're already half-over, it's gone by swift as the wind over the El Sobrante hillsides...

I. Am. Loving. It.

Hi LJ!

Been offline for two days. It's been surprisingly good; rewarding and productive. My house looks better than it has since we moved in, I cleared almost all the surfaces (including the floors, I could actually sweep in here and probably will in honor of Samhain before I leave for class tonight...) I threw a bunch of stuff away, recycled a bunch of stuff, and took at least 40 pounds to goodwill (my mom's trivet collection was HEAVY... *g*)

Saw the podiatrist yesterday for the pain I've been feeling in my right foot. It's been on the top of my foot and making me limp a bit, enough that I was worried about doing my back an injury or insult again. (it's happened before when I have been gimpy!) We looked at my x-rays and nothing was broken. *whew* and wow, what they can do with x-rays now! they were sent directly to his computer, like 15 minutes after they were taken, and he could tweak the resolution to clear up the picture in case the tech only took a mediocre picture... measure my bones in their real sizes, right there on the screen, it was pretty wow.

he manipulated my Rt. foot a bit before we looked at the x-rays, and a bit more afterward... he also checked out my calf and shin for a bit, and then he explained what he could see on the x-rays.

The places I was feeling more pain were metatarsals 2 and 3, though all 4 of the smaller metatarsals were sore! (as I discovered once he was pressing firmly on each one and I was yelping! And this is true on BOTH FEET!) On the x-rays he measured and showed me how 2 and 3 (the bones just next to the big-toe bone) were measurably thicker in the dense, structural bone, than 4 and 5.

Then he explained why that is: my calves (and I assume by extension, my hamstrings) are SO TIGHT that they are putting stress on the arch-bones of my foot! (No shit, there I was!) Mind-blowing...! He also explained that the reason I love my Chakos (and by extension the mules from Keen) is the slight heel (on top of the arch support); calf muscles like that make the body want to walk on its toes all the time (hum, that explains why I sit with my heels up on the chairlegs all the time when I'm on the computer!) The stress from the muscle constantly pulling works to strengthen the bones, but taken too far, you can get stress fractures... and DO. NOT. WANT.

The PT for this crazy tension, is to do those calf-lengthening stretches, hanging your heels off the kerb, sort of thing, but this morning I've been exploring my body's flexibility and it feels like, well, EVERYTHING is tight - hams, obliques, quads, the IT band, adductors, abductors, and the little trapezoid-shape over my lower back... (let's not even BRING my shoulders and neck into it right now...) Had a lovely massage from a new guy at Massage Envy Wed night, but you couldn't prove it by me today. (Ow.)

So yesterday after coming back from my appt, I did some more housework and organization, put some Rush on (Snakes and Arrows, for those who know) and was trying to dance and move around the place. Yeah, all kinds of muscular tension, ALL OVER.

I've been saying for a long time that I wanted to get fit, get strong, inhabit my body more, but now I have literally SEEN what it does. WOW. Sitting on my ass for too long is double-PLUS-ungood!

You'll see me moving a lot more in the upcoming years, and for the rest of my life. Thank goodness I'm in the Waldorf program, it's really about learning BALANCE between the realms of your life - artistic, physical/kinesthetic, mind, spirit, social...

My habits are changing. Which means folk won't find me here QUITE as often, but _I_ will DEFINITELY be healthier for it.

And now I think I will get dressed and go for a walk to the grocery store.