part-time for real

i work part-time and I have been out of school for the last 7 weeks. I love it.
I get to take much better care of my two people, we eat in more often and get buried in laundry less often.

This week i will work a little more but only because last week I worked a little less, twenty three hours to be exact.

I have lost six pounds since school ended. I walk almost every night now, two or three miles, and i count calories. When i started I wanted to lose fourteen pounds. I have eight pounds to go on that, as you can figure out i am sure, and i feel better already. My walks are really challenging and even these six pounds are making all my clothes sit better. I aim for 17oo calories a day, and i aim to burn 300 of them on my walks, give or take a bit everyday.

After all this time, i now feel pretty full after a 500 calorie meal. Today I had something new that was so yum. Do you have Trader Joe's by you? well, if you do, you should definitely try the Roasted Red Pepper soup (sold in a carton). I mixed a dollop of Fage (greek style Yogurt) in and some chives and it was really creamy tasting-- for about 120 calories a cup.

What are your favorite low-fat or low-calorie go-to foods? I really want to know!
I am trying to get used to the idea that i will have to be eating this way for the rest of my life.

Judah has been so much fun lately. I think this will probably be my favoritest year in his life. and it is already half-over. boo!

Chris continues to wait for news that suggests his whole life is meaningful and destined and on-track. That news is hard to wait for and hard to watch him wait for.

I wish i could be friends with you people in the Real World.

love.

Romper Room

if you're reading this, i want you to know

I spent the last thirty minutes reading through old posts and the comments under them and I am feeling so grateful to you all. To all of you
Kristen (yay Alyssa!) and Aola and Cara and Sandra and Becky and Melissa and Liz and Katt and ...well you get it right? YOU.

oh, and you lurkers... you lurking friends: come out, come out wherever you are!

make it beautiful, make it true.

I decided, sometime now long past, that i would be honest. at least with myself.

My undergrad is in Psych and, as you know, I have had a breakdown experience, and along the way I converted to honesty and away from repression. I would think a thought, I committed, I would acknowledge it, no matter what.

even when my chest tightens, and my mind goes vertiginous at the possible implications of some one of my thoughts
i think it through anyway.
I choose to be brave as i walk through my mind.
i choose to look into corners with shadows and cobwebs, and invite the spider to tell me what it knows. secrets.
this is my path, it is singular at all times because only I can really walk it
everyone else is just hearing about it, second-hand.

after years on this road, i have come to a maze, I have come to Wonderland, I have come to ruin, I have come to despair
but
I have not often come to Beauty or Rest
I have not ever come to peace.
This is a deprivation.
every moment's repose has been an effort
so large are the questions
so few, and sometimes frightening, are the answers
I seldom think the thoughts I want to think
i rarely feel the way i always think I should
should...
should:
I would if i could.
My mind, it is a landscape unforgiving and too often bare.
And i know
i know that i am meant to paint it, to paint and to
make it,
beautiful
and true.
I have not yet found my tools.
I am hoping i am on my way.

Lars and the Real Girl was good.

There may be something new on Chris' horizon and he is all aglow in the hope of it. It is hard for me to watch. I don't want him to be disappointed.

Judah and I are going to Texas this weekend. My youngest cousin is graduating from highschool and these kinds of celebrations are better attended than traditional holidays. My ninety-ish year old great aunts will probably be there and i want them to see Judah before, well, you know.

I will be buying a flip video camera to take it in.


Do you believe in Luck?

I don't. I always think good things happen because God loves me, though, strangely enough, I also tend to catastrophize the future. I visualize falling on my face in one way or another constantly. I expect to be found out for the fool I am everytime i make a decision which banks on God, banks on good things happening.

Today Chris tells me he thinks I get preferential treatment. He doesn't say by whom exactly but after ten years, it is well enough understood. Chris thinks God favors me, though he won't make any comment, right now, about Who God is or has been or will be, he won't--- he feels vague about all of that.

Most days, i admit, I do feel like God is interested in me, listening to me, helping me, observing. But i don't feel special, per se, like i have been singled out. more like i singled God out, constantly seeking an audience with God when i was younger, now has grow into a sort of continuous investment in the world as I experience it. So, where I used to closet myself in darkness to seek out God's voice, now i venture into the streets to figure out what Life is revealing to me, speaking to me, wanting for or from me. I've matured, but i am still the same girl.

and while i do feel like God pays attention, the special thing about me is only that I realize it.

Disconnect

I hope that one day you read this, and i hope that you know that i love you, no matter how we've passed the last twenty years, no matter what highs or lows govern the landscape between us.

I see you already doing the things i might do myself if I were you and
there are things i want you to know about what you are predisposed to do.


I think you gravitate toward inaccessible people, people whom, for whatever reason, do not actively seek you out. You energetically try to engage people who, for their own reasons, tend to be slower or harder to engage and who, if engaged, tend to disengage faster than others, faster than you would like...
you are so vulnerable and sweet, Judah.

you work hard to connect to me, but i am not the only one. i wouldn't make a generalisation about this if it were only me.

i have never known myself to be so thoroughly limited as when i am with you. you always want me: you want to snuggle, you want to play, you want to sleep in our bed, you want to stay up as late as we do, you want to go to work with me. You can totally overwhelm me.

i feel an enormous need to be alone. I stay up really late to be alone. I can't make a judgment on it right now.

Don't always be trying to connect , Judah. Don't always be trying. You are worth seeking out. You are worth finding.

Though, right now, i don't know how to be as emotionally present to you as i want to be.

I am not a bad mother, not a terrible mother. you are brilliant and chubby, generally smell good, and you show the beginnings of a sturdy self-esteem. recently someone told you that you are handsome. you sighed, looking a bit annoyed, and said " I know."

Hopefully, you will read this and be shocked. you will say--- you, mom? you felt like you weren't "there" enough for me?

But if you aren't, and you feel some sort of emptiness between us. . .please know i have never wanted to be More for anyone more than i have for you.

I never got into Sex and the City, FYI.

This morning i put Judah on a plane with my mother. It wasn't that difficult for me, though I have been walking around in a melancholy state for the whole day and night. IT is quiet here and although I seriously dig that this is a BREAK! it really just feels like the party is someplace else. I miss my little Party.

Ofcourse I shopped all day and went to a movie with Chris tonight. Like I am a single girl with a boyfriend.

Now that the semester is over I feel incredulous. I feel doubtful that i will be able to make much of anything out of myself. I feel deluded, maybe delusional.. I also feel certain something good will come of my efforts, though they may not seem like so very much to anyone else. They have felt monumental to me.

In other more cheerful news: we get to go on a mini-vacation. We'll essentially be going to pick up Judah, but we'll get to spend a night in Dallas. I have lots of fond memories of Dallas, places i still think about haunting, and I am readier than ready to go to La Madeleine.

It'll be the first time Chris and I vacation without Judah.

Chris and i dated in Dallas. we had our first date at La Mad, ate BBQ at Pappas Brothers, shopped for too expensive groceries at EatZis. We strolled Highland Park Mall, I lost my purse in its little movie theater. I fell in love with Maggiano's and PF Chang's and my boyfriend in Dallas.

I'll try to post some pics.

turn turn turn

new things happen in soil of my soul. Things sprout up that i hoped for, but i don't remember planting.
Last night in our townehome was the night i always hope for but can never generate...

I had the time, energy and mental wherewithall to play outside with Jujie. To throw and catch the yackleball, to chase and play Scooby Doo. He was velma and i was shaggy. When we made it back to our house after having outrun the monster, i told him that he was such a brave and cool girl.

He said, yeah, I am .

Chris made dinner, I vacuumed the living room, I bathed Judah. We went to bed on time.
Like Becky said: satisfying.