kadairk

Never.  ;)

I figured out the whole Santa thing when I was around 9 or so, I think, though I never ever had a conversation about it with my parents.  Because when I figured it out, it made my mother even more special in my eyes:  that she went to such great effort to create magic for me.  THAT was the true magic.  That said love to me.

My first Christmas home from college, I was helping my mom get the last minute things done late on Christmas Eve, helping her with my little sister's gifts and even her stocking.  My mom started to fill my stocking, and I stopped her, "What are you doing? I have to be in bed before Santa comes!"  And I went to bed.

My first Christmas with my husband, I wanted to recreate the things my mom had done for me.  I blustered into his family traditions, bringing a load of presents and joy and Christmas spirit.  I secretly bought things for our home, hiding them all over the place.  I made excuses, and thanked the powers that be that he was a heavy sleeper, and I made the magic happen.  He was blown away when he woke up on Christmas morning, and he felt the love.  What I didn't realize in all my taking over, his family had stopped really enjoying the holidays many years before, when his father fell very ill and died shortly after Christmas.  I brought it back to them, and helped them all get a little more closure in grieving.  That was Santa Claus' magic.

Now my kids are 17 and 14.  They will ask for things, look at me, pointedly adding "Santa" to the end of their request.  It's an ongoing gag in our family, as I reply, "I don't know what you're talking about."  They may not have quite the same strong feeling that I have about my mom expressing her love as Santa, but they get it, and they know it's love.

In second grade, a classmate asked our teacher if Santa Claus was real.  Mrs. Porter answered, "He's as real as your mom and dad."  And I still believe that.  I love you, Momma and Daddy.  Thank you creating the magic for me, and for gifting me with the power to create the magic for others.

I read a lot about food:  politics, health, social implications.  I have a weird obsession with cookbooks, but I don't much care for cooking shows or magazines.  I don't call myself a foodie, probably because I just don't like the word.

Recently, I've become overly interested in detoxing, trying no fewer than three differing approaches to detoxing since October 2009.  ( Friendly cut to save space on your Friends Page )

By the time he was eight he knew he would never be a Great Actress.
~Hello Darling, Are You Working?  by Rupert Everett

Why is that my favorite opening?  Because it's FREAKIN' BRILLIANT!  :)

"If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words." This clever soundbite has shown up on my Facebook multiple times this week in the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson and the resulting discussions of gun control. Clever sounding, certainly, but it's yet another fallacious argument. The concept of course is that of personal responsibility. The person using the gun or the pencil is the one responsible for what the tool has done. This is inarguable. I am very big on personal responsibility. However, the pencil was invented to put marks on paper. The gun was invented to put holes in things, specifically, living things, in order to kill them.

( Shooting guns can be a lot fun. )

Note:  I am screening comments from non-friends not to keep people from saying things I don't like, but to keep people from posting porn and spam on my LJ.  This has become a problem recently, one I've been working around by locking down my entries, but I want this one open.  So, post away, as long as it's not unsolicited pix of genitals, I'll clear your comment through.  Thanks!

I've had some amazing experiences this week, some in good ways and some in not so good ways.  I am overwhelmed by it all.

But I am amazingly happy, and I have an incredible life.

I will write more soon.

Must write about the Empress now.  The Priestess is not yet done, but I am tired of the story line.  I will finish it another time.

But the Empress ... I've got nothing.  Nothing nothing nothing.  I'm going to attend to laundry, pick K up from tutoring, and go to Half Price Books because it's coupon week, and hopefully something will trigger the story for me.

***

Random:  I "checked out" the mp3 of "Wuthering Heights" for the iPad from my library, and started listening to it yesterday.  It is AWFUL.  Just wretched.  Not the story; I didn't get any further along than when I tried to read it, oh, in 2006, I think.  Still in the early exposition.  But the person reading it is wretched.  Her cadence is all wrong, emphasizing the wrong words, and if that were not enough, she does this horribly over-the-top brooding accent for Heathcliff.  Now I know Heathcliff is in fact horribly over-the-top brooding, but her accent sounds like a Saturday Night Live send up of gothic romance.  Seriously.

I can't listen to it.

***

Laundry.  Right.

National Novel Writing Month begins at midnight.  I'm doing it again this year, after taking last year off.  I did it successfully in 2006, 2007 and 2008, though 2008 was a bizarre and torturous exercise in writing 35000 words in 3 and a half days, after quitting early on and changing my mind on Thanksgiving night.  I wanted the shirt.

(I only allow myself to buy that year's shirt if I complete NaNo.  I really wanted that fucking shirt.)

I haven't written fiction since that ridiculous long weekend.  I have a great title, courtesy of flamingsword .  Once upon a time, I had an idea of what the book is about, but now I've completely forgotten.  The more I think about it, the fewer ideas come.

I am terrified of facing the blank computer screen tomorrow.  (Maybe I should write by hand.  lol)

I don't know why I've stopped writing fiction.  The bug to write just hasn't been there recently.  Maybe my life is too fulfilling to need to spend time in a place where I'm making things up.  I know once my sex life rocketed off the charts, I stopped writing erotica.  (But when my sex life returned to what most people would consider a more normal place, I didn't resume writing erotica.)

I hope to get something out of doing NaNo this year, but I don't know what I'm looking for.  Of course, I feel like this is kind of an analogy for my life right now.  I hope to get something out of my life, but I don't know what.  *sigh*

December shall be spent figuring out where I'm going, because right now, I feel a bit stationary.  I suspect there will be Tarot in my novel.  :)  [Oooh, maybe I'll write a Tarot novel, retaining the amazing title I have.  I like this idea!]

This morning, I feel like I am finally "home".  As I've mentioned so many times even I am sick of it, I suck at moving.  It takes me forever to pack, I find it painful and stressful, and it takes me forever to unpack, finding it slow and unfocused.  Last night, I tried my notion that the skinny, unstable bookcase made by my ex-husband would make a good altar.  It is even better than I anticipated.  It screams ME to me, and made me happy upon retiring to bed last night as well as upon rising this morning.  My room feels right now.  The lowest shelf currently holds my journal, which I haven't written in in ages.  The second shelf has a sarong folded up as a covering, with my oil burner, my collection of nature tidbits (a white feather, a pine cone, a tiny sea shell, a snail shell and a rock), my chakra stones, my silver rattle and the SCAD box my courage ring came in.  The third shelf contains my incense burner, a small candle and holder that looks like a hibiscus and my tea cup from Japan, which is currently filled with my pins (which may or may not one day be put on my cool new messenger bag.)  The fourth shelf has my sun mirror hanging from it, and my Tarot cards and books on the shelf.  The top shelf is empty.

A dear friend is also in the process of moving, and finding challenges I cannot fully relate to.  Another friend pointed out to me that she has always left some of her energy in the places she's lived, and I believe this is what my other friend is struggling with:  leaving a part of the self behind.  It occurred to me this morning as I searched for why this altar makes me so happy that I don't leave my energy in the physical buildings and surrounding grounds, but rather I imbue my "things" with my energy, which is why I have so much stuff and find it so hard to part with my stuff.  The things I touch contain a tiny element of me.  The more I touch them, or the more significant the moment of touch, the more of me they contain.  I also make mental webs of meaning with things, and the item in question becomes the key to the web.  For example, the white feather.

"White Feathers" is a song from the 80's by Kajagoogoo, of "Too Shy" fame.  I was one of  the three Americans who bought their album, not just the single.  :P  A white feather always reminds me of my teen years, because I built a connection on this song.  It's not a great song, it's just a song I liked.  There are a few layers there, touching on my sexual awakening, and gender identity, that are wrapped up in bands like Kajagoogoo and Duran Duran.  But the white feather holds ANOTHER important element of my self.  Some time in 2006 or 2007, I read "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott.  This book is a writer's reflection on the joys and struggles of writing.  It is brilliant and hilarious and poignant and inspiring.  At the time I was reading it, I was taking the train and bus to work.  One morning walking to my building from the bus stop, I found a white feather.  THE white feather.  That feather then became a symbol for my writing as well.

That is a lot of self and energy in one fragile, tiny feather.

My struggles with moving are not so very different from my friend's, except I CAN bring most or even all of my stuff with me, and thus my energy, and my friend HAS to leave the physical house behind.  I can only hope that my friend can see the energy that is left behind as a gift to the next person who lives there, a way to touch another person in ways that can never been seen or appreciated.  My friend has a good and caring and loving soul, and that energy will fill that house, long after ze has moved.

I decided on Friday that I was tired of feeling crappy all the time and ready to step off the vicious cycle that has been the last 6 weeks or so of my eating habits:  I'm stressed, so I eat badly; I feel bad because I've eaten badly, which leaves me without enough energy to do anything, which adds to my stress; my stress leads me to eating badly ....  get the picture?

I'm not good at saying, I'll just eat better!  Well, I'm good at saying it, not good at doing it.  I need a regimen, a plan, an external motivation.  So I decided to do the Liver Cleansing Diet Heidi (whose name on here I suddenly cannot remember) suggested to me months ago.  I bought the book in ... April?  I even toyed with it when I bought it, but only did it for a day or two, and not even fully then.  So I spent Friday night planning, and Saturday shopping at 4, yes FOUR, stores to get the needed foodstuffs.  This is not a particularly radical diet.  Mostly, it's no dairy, no fried, little to no sugar, limited meat.  You know, the way we probably SHOULD eat.

( TMI )

I find myself unable to complete emails and comments to people tonight, people I very much would like to share my thoughts with.  I'm getting blocked again.

On the other hand, I was Miss Socialpants all over the NaNoWriMo boards today ... where I don't actually know many people.  Interesting, I can speak to strangers, not to friends.  Something to mull over.

I also have something all mucked up going on with my digestive system, and am starting a liver cleanse tomorrow.  It's an 8 week program, which is a long fucking time for me to not have dairy.  This damn well better fix my gut (or at least stop the gall bladder attacks I've been having recently.)  Hopefully I'll get my energy balance back in place as well.  I'm going massive grocery shopping tomorrow, at farmer's markets, Whole Foods and/or Sprouts and maybe Kroger for some of the stuff that doesn't have to be purchased at specialty stores.  But I'm going to need to go to Kroger again, probably Monday, for food for the kids because I doubt they'll want to eat what I'll be eating.  And I'll spend a good chunk of the weekend cooking.