The tides have turned

I’ve been in the moon lodge for the past couple of days.  Please read my earlier post “You can’t changethe tides” if you don’t know what that means.  I began my time at the lodge with acupuncture.  I walked in there thinking about what a lunatic I’ve become, actually pondering if I was indeed losing my mind.   I walked out feeling as if I’d been on a morphine drip.  I was contemplating an end to the blog, thinking I’d said all I wanted to say.  The Indians say “the veil is thin” when you are in the lodge.  I was curious what the Master would reveal.  My first image was of me on a giant bird, with giant wings.  Mother Goose like.  We began to soar.  And then I fell asleep.  I decided the message was to keep writing.  Because my exact words when I started the blog were “I’m letting it fly.” 

Besides that  I needed to rest and focus on me.  I ate chocolate covered strawberries after dinner because it was Tuesday.  I splurged on a bouquet of flowers.  I bought rose oil and put it in a diffuser.  It’s supposed to help stabilize emotions.  I hope mine get stuck right where they are now.  As an added bonus, the smell reminds me of my grandmother.  I thought briefly about the fact that Dave can now spend time with her.  I drank sparkling Italian water instead of faucet water because I’m Chardonnay.  Chardonnay doesn’t drink from the faucet.  I replenished my supply of vitamins and krill oil, the things I never run out of but had indeed run out of weeks ago.  I cried on the phone for one hour with my sister.  The next day I sat on the porch and smoked a cigarette and talked with my girlfriend while we enjoyed a spring breeze.  We discussed summer plans and I began to get excited about summer.  I flipped the calendar from February to March.  Strangers responded to my blog saying they had thought of suicide before, but would never think of it the same way again.  Others said my words were helping to repair their broken lives and grief.  That was never my intent, but I’m so incredibly humbled by it.  God is indeed the Master of Spin.  I stopped being mad at God, and I resumed my prayers.  The sun came out while I was in the lodge.  I did my best to reconnect with nature.  As best as one can do in the city.  I used power tools.  I blew millions of leaves into a pile and then mulched them with my lawnmower and scattered them into my flower beds.  I bought hedge clippers.  Because my neighbors think I hate them due to the 20 foot hedge growing between our homes.  I tried to explain that I’m not always prone to dressing properly.  And I never close my blinds.  I can’t close them because I love the sun so much.  I need the hedges.  The woman yelled at me that they weren’t twisted Peeping Toms while the old man gazed down my blouse.  I gardened.  I need a manicure anyway so I did it without gloves.  I wanted to touch the earth.  I didn’t care that it was in my nails.  All the exercise felt good.  I thought about how I do secretly like to do ‘man stuff’, like landscaping and using power tools.  I love blowers and pressure washers most of all.  I thought about how it’s funny that I do it in wedge flip flops.  How I’m like a tom boy, but perhaps a transvestite tom boy, because I still love pink and anything sparkly, I get excited over trendy jeans and handbags and shoes.  I thought about Angelina Jolie’s leg.  I’m not so much bothered by the leg, as I am concerned with her arms.  I’m concerned with her arms because she has at least double the number of children that I have, but her biceps look nothing like mine.  And I know why. It’s because she doesn’t hold her kids.  And that is why people should be talking about her arms and not her weird leg.  I can only hope she has some awesome nannies with biceps that look like mine.  We passed a garden center on the way home, and middle darling said “Mommy, look at all those pretty flowers!”  Big darling laughed and said, “Don’t try to get mommy all sucked into that!”  Dave and I, we used to garden together.  A lot.  Before we had kids, our backyard was a lush landscape of trees, shrubs and flowers in every color; perfect rose bushes, bird baths, winding brick pathways, ponds.  It was a lot of work.  We were slaves to it.  But for a while it was our hobby and it kept us out of bars.  Over time we became slaves to our kids instead.  The big backyard was lost for a bigger house.  And we lost that thing we used to so enjoy….together.  I think of him constantly when I garden now.  But I’m not going there….this is not going to be sappy or sad because I’m at peace right now.  I thought today about the 3 little darlings who gardened with me yesterday.  After I lopped five feet off the tops of the shrubs, I turned around and realized Dave wasn’t coming behind me to pick it all up.  But it was ok, because they were.  The baby amused us by walking around and snipping tiny leaves with my kitchen scissors, big darling used the loppers, and truthfully middle darling didn’t help at all.  He stayed inside and helped by beating levels on wii.  My housekeeper angels were scheduled for yesterday as well.  So my house is clean and sparkly, my shoes are neatly organized, my pantry is organized like the shelves of Whole Foods, and I’m one happy mutha.  A wood floor that smells of Murphy’s Oil Soap…well…it excites me.  We had Jimmy Johns for dinner (thank you Drew Brees) because I didn’t want to dirty the sparkly kitchen and I was happily tired from battling the hedges.  As I cleaned up from supper by simply throwing away some bags, my Girl Scout cookies were delivered by a neighbor and friend that I love.  I hid them from the kids immediately.  My sister showed up unexpectedly and bathed the little ones while I picked up big darling from soccer.  I ended the day by slipping into clean white fresh sheets that smell of the slightest hint of bleach.  When they told me the grief thing was like a roller coaster…they so weren’t kidding.