I'm 0-0 at resisting the gossip sin lately. I think that means something in sports-talk, does it? anyhow, I'm zero wins for lots of tries... well, two that I can think of... I've been trying to squash it in my own home, and that seems just fine, hubsJ not being much on the gossip himself... but I'm getting engaged in it when I'm about town... and I'm meaning the negative stuff, not just storytelling or explaining a scenario in which two people didn't agree, but the expression of dislike, distaste, or, in the easiest way of all to put it, a heap of judgement that is undeserved. (there isn't any other sort, really)
I'm failing.
But I'm also VERY conscious of it, so I still feel like I'm on a right path here... with some more practice maybe I can let go of the massive collection of judgements that I've got for people out there.
Just ask me about something sure to set me off... try me out..I'm going to keep working on it, because while i love to use my wit, it just doesn't seem funny any more, it feels more like I'm contributing to what is running our country into the ground... it just isn't funny any more.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Testing Testing
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday Best
Woke up early and went to church. quiet. beatitudes. mountains, gospels.
Saw the grocery store on my own terms, got home by 9 am. thats right, 9 AM.
Took the kids sledding, had the best time on a sled that I have ever had. a complete turnaround. COMPLETE. Now, I add the 'hill' to the dreamlist of our next living place. honestly, I was the biggest crasher and it was awesome, Awesome.
Now we are home, the kids fell asleep within ten minutes of getting here, the fire is on, the love has been expressed and
this is Sunday Best.
beat that with a bat, jack.
Posted by Kate Hall at 4:31 PM 3 comments
Thursday, January 27, 2011
GO.
Let go of the outcome.
sheesh. seems like a simple sentence. isn't. I'm both optimistic and pessimistic- I want to try something ONCE and have it be perfect. If it is very hard, I figure it isn't for me and I drop it like a hot potato... if I could just let go of the outcome? I could get on with life, try new things and do what it is that I'd like to be doing, free.
(I just typed 'free', in a blogpost, holy smokes... I feel a bit conspicuous... but I also want to run down the street yelling 'FREE!!!' to my neighbors... so i figure this is a bit more tame, actually)
In an arguement with a spouse? let go of the outcome, don't expect an opinion change or a resolution or an understanding... speak clearly. listen well.
In an approach to childrearing? let go of the outcome, don't expect a one-size-fits-all, or a maturity that isn't there ... speak clearly, listen well.
In an approach to prayer? let go of the outcome, I don't know the knowing, I don't know what I should even expect... speak clearly, listen well.
Take action, move, make your choices, have your dreams, but let go of the outcome... be content with your choices...
let go of the outcome. . . that part is out of our hands...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Today I am still here.
Woke up this morning and was all myself. familiar, when patted down, all my parts were recognizable and lovely. . . earthly delights.
brownies, babies, snowstorm coming... good smells all... maybe i'll get the oil changed.
I went back into the archives and read what i'd already written with the 'god' label and you know what? I've been on my way for a long time... good thing He is patient! (or, so I hear...:)
My wrinkles have come back, my skin is my own, again, after having been loaned out for a wild five day ride. I am content to be back, having a concerted and real break from calmness lends one a new perspective on calmness that I was in great need of. what i have is good, amazing even, and in it are lots of nuggets of calm, shinings of the sun and the stars...
earthly and worldly delights, my friends.
Posted by Kate Hall at 9:06 AM 3 comments
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Simple ain't so simple after all. . .
I remember, when I was about two and a half years into the mothering game, going to a mother's retreat/yoga day type thing with my friend D. I didn't own any sweatpants and had to wear my old kickback corduroys from college, as they were big enough to contain the new belly i kept after the second baby... it was my first day in forever away from everyone i birthed. there were some fascinating women there and after we had journaled and yoga-d and eaten some nuts, we sat in a circle and talked about what we wanted next, what we were looking for... most of us, honestly, were sort of shellshocked by the whole mothering game... there were lots of tears, lots of 'i can't believe how hard this is...'... and what i remember saying in the midst, aside from the likelihood of being hit by a truck at any moment (kidtoy truck, not Mac), was that I wanted my faith back... the easy assumption that I used to feel that I was connected to the larger pictures, that I was cared for and looked after by God. I'm going to quit leaving out the o there, because it strains my fingers to find that punctuation. lazybones. I think I"ve spent a chunk of time blaming people for what they cannot do, i.e. take care of me... when really, it is UP TO ME.
And here I am, three years later, just starting out on what is the surest path. Amazing how long it can be, and something simply involving thanks... questions, wishes, submissions... the simplest path to a wider road. one step, one step.
I read somewhere that the simplest way to get through struggling times is to do the 'next right thing'. you eat cereal? next? put the bowl in the sink. run the water. take the bowl out of the sink. dry it. put it away... because it is the natural order of 'right things'... so I want to pray? pray.
get up. do laundry. wash dishes. pray. pray laundry, pray dishes, praypray.
I'm looking forward to my heart lightening, as it does every ten minutes or so, as I am working on how to assimilate all these internal changes...
Posted by Kate Hall at 9:43 AM 3 comments
Monday, January 24, 2011
AMAZEMENT
so, the experience I have had with ChakraCarol and the D is exploding my walnut heart, and I don't know how to proceed. Someone just told me I have lost the wrinkles in my forehead. I think my head has been pulled off, or my final chakra has just ascended to the stars or something,
or
I got pulled out of the birth canal. !
or I pushed off... swam away...
The sections i have just read of Teresa of Avila are forcing me into a new ballpark. well, they are not forcing me... I am forcing me...to get a whole bunch more serious about being a prayer.
yep, a prayer.
fancy hat and all.
be it stetson, pimp, or bonnet, I am going whole hog on the hat-wearing, knee-bending prayer thing.
Wish me well. It is a vaguely familiar territory, but I've not been much for whole-hogging anything for awhile and I'm not sure how it'll fit with the whole rest of the shebangfamilymother life.
And what of it? If I share it, will people think I'm all crazy-like ? I've always been all G-d talking anyways, right? but if I talk about it, does it make everybody all uncomfortable? is that my problem? or yours? or, since I've been writing for me, do I need to change that- or take your comfort level into account?
My God, how do I proceed?
Posted by Kate Hall at 6:49 AM 0 comments
Friday, January 21, 2011
Teresa of Avila, Saint T., to you...
I've been reading lately, and I have almost completely forgotten that I'm trying to get through War and Peace. It sits by my bed and takes up a goodly amount of the space in our bedroom and I still use it to put my glasses on when I go to bed at night and haven't touched it otherwise. But I've read the entire Hunger Games trilogy, and I have to say I'm very uptight about it and don't really want to talk about it except that it must have been good? to give me nightmares and to require my attention until the complete end ( I had to finish it or I would have continued with the nightmares...) I think the books captured the nations' negative energy very well. How else could they be so popular, with the lord of the flies feeling so permeating its storyline... ? agck, i am glad they are over.
I've also picked up Teresa of Avila. The poor saintly lady, so filled with so many things... it is a joy to read if you are able to skim her 'wretchedness' and her gratitudes, although the gratitudes are lovely and the wretchedness is giggle-worthy if you consider what she thinks are big sins would not even fill a raindrop of the pool i think of as 'big sins' these days, some of which are distinctly mine own.
Like most of the saints, she is plagued by doubt and feelings of unworthiness. sheesh. when mother theresa's journals were found, they showed the same thing... doubt, strong doubt.
i should certainly be able to lighten up on myself, right?! holy (no pun intended) smokes.
:)
wmx
Posted by Kate Hall at 4:17 PM 1 comments
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Chakra Carol says...
hee hee. but really, here goes... what carol says and what my mind answers back and what carol suspects my mind is answering back...
1. your struggles are just an aspect of your life, not the whole thing...
WMX: oh... as in long, drawn out, sighing... oooooh.... so, i can still be funny and laughing and good motherly, even though i have this struggle? oh. right.
2. I'm glad you've decided to come more often.
WMX: oh my god, am i THAT crazy/in need of work/totally falling apart? oh my god, i need to go into the nunnery. shut the doors people, shut the doors.
3. Sometimes what comes into your mind is true.
WMX: HOLY SHIT. I AM IN VERY BIG TROUBLE.
4. There is a blockage here.
WMX: that is the unholy walnut heart problem. let me put my hands on that sucker for you... sucker, crack!
I need your damn involvement here.
there was a lot more, but i can't remember right now. Didn't have to talk about my hearing, which is a marvelous escape but also just wasn't on my agenda. . . . issues? hm. My appointment was at 4:30, a time of day when I am usually crapulent, and ready to shut everything down. I was home for supper and full of a very good energy, worked on it, baby, worked on it...
Posted by Kate Hall at 10:45 AM 3 comments
Monday, January 17, 2011
Out of body, check me later...
I've been working on it... coming back from the no-man's land of the super-exclusive club of self-flaggelating self-centeredness. yep. and verbosity.
I'm back to my waking early and trying my minutes of meditation before the family rouses. I'm back to reading, although i'm really uptight about what I am reading, but have to get to the end or it will track me down through my dreams (again).
The tree is down, the lights are up- albeit locationshwapping all around. I am awash with the knowledge that the kids are changing so so fast and while their time is swishing around, so is mine, it is just a matter of perspective that their changes look so much bigger than mine. what is there to hold on to? hm. the times they are a changing.
today we had the rock channel on in the car, seems like oldies, hello 60/70s, but the kids were crankin it out to the beatles 'come together' and it cracked me the hell up. as it should.
thats all. i'll come back with something more soon, i'm sure. just touching base.
do i use this like facebook? oh boy.
Posted by Kate Hall at 6:52 PM 5 comments
Friday, January 14, 2011
Trappings
when I make a post, I am trapped by it for the day, trapped in the thoughts that led to it, if it were a weighty one, trapped in the desires for response, trapped in the constancy of 'checking'. its not so good right now, for me, and I don't like all the forced-ness that I feel to keep it up, to make something interesting in my words. so I am typing, but resisting... wishing it were more fulfilling.
on a note to satisfy chakraC and the crazy of my head... today hubsJ absconded with my car keys. . . and I was SO upset, after two days bound-in the snow and loving that time (mostly), I had one off to school and an actual plan. and then bereavement at the no-key state I found myself in. I was so crazy upset, internally, convinced that it signified a lack of respect and consideration on the part of HubsJ that EVEN I recognized it as wacko. I got out my Byron Katie, people. Byron of the crazyheads Katie. and I worked it. Is it true that HubsJ does not value ME because he took my car keys?
no.
okay. give me three reasons why it isn't true. 1. he calls me precious. 2. he wants to share his poetry with me sometimes. 3. He worries about my diet. 4. He is driving them home to me already when I call.
the guy probably loves me.
go figure.
untrapp-edly yours,
wmx
Posted by Kate Hall at 1:36 PM 1 comments
Labels: byronkatie, chakra, mind
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
STAR
Posted by Kate Hall at 12:01 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Video... and a radio star
Look, I have a five year old who is very cool. super. cool. frequently a bit oversensitive but cool as a jackrabbit, cool. And when he gets his hands on a video game, he turns ugly, like his brain can't process the speed of the flickering lights. SO, I ask you techno junkheads out there, when he goes to a friend's house and they play videogames of the Mario persuasion for a couple of hours and then I have to deal with a returning demon, do i need to let him go back to that maelstrom the very next day? what do you do when they beg and plead and will not be consoled ... and its something you do not believe to be a good influence? The kid is FIVE, not eight. . . he has years and years in which to turn into a fat sofaslob teenager. . . and years and years in which to work his way back out of that hole...
We don't have handhelds, the last game i played was a pokemon something on a trainride across the country... before children... I have let him play games on the computer at http://www.pbskids.org/ and that is fine, but i have to literally pull him off of it, or he'll play all night. . .
is this the new crack- the new meth we are giving our kids? keep em quiet and 'busy'? the new benadryl? OR is it just my kid that can't handle the stimulation of that sort?
OR is my quest for simple making this an unsupportable action and so i'm coloring all the events around me to support my quest?
WHAT?
Posted by Kate Hall at 12:47 PM 5 comments
Labels: parenting
Monday, January 10, 2011
Self-Esteem-O-Rama
Okay, I have some serious issues surrounding my own self-worth. SERIOUS. I have to assume I am not the norm in this. . . Correct me if I am wrong, I probably am. . . heeh.
Examples: call Chakra Carol to make an appt for an afternoon, be POSITIVE, ABSOLUTELY positive that I'm going to inconvenience her by: 1. calling during someone else's appt. 2. ask for something she cannot give 3. take her away from something important for a stupid phone call.
OKAY? so, here is the flip side of my personality, the reality/practical/life experience side: 1. She runs a business, she won't answer the phone while she's working, I doubt it actually rings during an appt. 2. She won't/can't give anything she can't. 3. Who am I to say what is important to Chakra Carol?
At some point in my high school life, I read that keeping your eyes lowered is a sign of respect. SWEAR TO YOU: it was at least a year before I looked anyone in the eye. THAT IS CRAZY.
okay, we can grant teenagers their nutsyness. or, i can.
I am a massive enabler/co-dependent in my home life as well, I think, with hubsJ. I am not so much with my kids, mostly because I don't want them to be like me. AGAIN WITH THAT?! holy cripes. Typing things like that makes the crazy in them stand right up.
And seriously? the whole hearing thing? the risk that it might just go all away again? I'm convinced that I will be absolutely worthless, worth nothing, as a mother if I am deaf. How can I be a good mom if I can't talk to my kids, hear their stories? hmm? how.
We've been off and on talking about this, me and HubsJ, lately. When I lost it that February 4, its the only time I've ever been suicidal, and there wasn't any drama in it, no hysteria, just conviction that everybody would be better off without me. And I didn't feel that way the second day and never since. . . but I remember it, the certitude. HubsJ remembers it too.
How do you find answers to these things? or if not answers, how do you hold these feelings while you have them and still walk the walk? how accept them and still face the people you need to face with a different certitude? How?
Posted by Kate Hall at 11:37 AM 0 comments
Friday, January 7, 2011
Trite, and then, on fire...
blah blah, we've been sick, fights were had...the headache returns, goes away... I parent just as well in pajamas, evidently...from the fold-out, two school pick-ups, the fires were made... the laundry languished, the dishes stacked precariously...
and all still alive.
and i was dazed and confused and sat down alone in front of the woodstove and stared into the flickering flame. we've gotten this wood from my dad which is very confusing to me, and if you're a woodsman, don't bother to educate me because i cannot bear more cotton in my soon-to-be mounted top, please. so these logs have been confusing to me, they just freaking will not catch fire. seriously. wood! which refuses to burn. downright refuses. It'll steam, and it'll turn black, and eventually, it just sort of falls apart but it will NOT crackle, lick, flame, or glow with the rest of the bad selves having their ways in the big black box.
what the hell is this? who are you ? who the hell am i ?
Is there Will which makes us deny what we are? do we applaud it? do we bemoan the loss of a chance to glow, provide warmth, flame with the glory of all the goodness in creation? crack ones skin open in veins of lava? go prematurely grey in the hopes of hiding the fire within? nurture and succor the flames growing above us? succumb to the flames all around us? OR refuse. hold fast to the deep grey of our wetness? is there a condescension? a rebellion?
who are you? who the hell am I ?
Posted by Kate Hall at 11:56 AM 1 comments
Labels: fire management, sick, wahwah
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Sorry, I've got nothing...
And my brain is in a sort of no-man's place, free-floating in nothing much and I just have had a hard time rallying to 'quip' here. so i haven't.
I made a resolution last week, though truth is, it is less a resolution and more of an 'i would really like to...'
but here it is. i would like to 'make' more things, and when asked if i considered this writing a thing made, i was completely sure that it was 'no'. nope.
an offshoot of my days, but not a making.
so- while we all are sick and moping (me, they, the dvd player) i'm drifting about. . . when you don't really have the energy to 'parent', its amazing how infrequently the kids lose their minds. I guess it helps that they are sick too. yeah?
Posted by Kate Hall at 2:46 PM 0 comments
Labels: sick