Love Hoodie Love

I always get such fascinating tidbits from one of my favorite blogs:

Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosities (you'll find her in my sidebar of blogs that I follow)

And just look at what she's turned me onto now!

The designer's name is Lindsey Thornburg:

This woman has done what I've lusted over forever- a HOODIE CLOAK.

In three different lengths no less!!! The mid length is the cutest me thinks and I WANT I WANT I WANT ONE!!! Of course as she is a designer one can only purchase her things at boutiques and only in New York apparently.

So I did what any sensible (read: sewing & monetarily challenged) girl would do in this situation. I asked my grandma to make one for me.

Because, while I have every intention of one day learning how to sew I'm not kidding myself by thinking it will be any time real soon and I would desperately love to have one of these by Autumn!! We'll see what she says, my grandmother is a freakin' whiz at all types of sewing though she usually insists that she have a pattern to make it perfect.

I'll have to make sure I purchase my very own fabric though because while she can sew a sweater for the devil himself and make it adorable she has the WORST taste in fabric & colors. I keep telling her that while I appreciate all of the things she has knitted/sewn for me over the years that if she would just make everything BLACK it will be a winner for sure (read: no longer banished to totes in the storage unit). What was the very next thing I received? A pastel pink & mint green knitted throw. Bleck.

If I had to pick one color actually can't stand it would be pink. Pretty much everything she makes for me is some shade of pink. And since she is a bargain shopper to beat all she usually picks up her yarn/fabric out of the clearance bin so not only is it pink it's usually some insanely hideous shade of pink that no other human being wanted.

Oh, I hope I hope I hope she'll make it for me...I should look around online and see if I can find a pattern for this...

p.s. don't hate me for getting excited about Autumn already, I'm in the minority here, I know. At least Giggly is with me on this!

La Mer

I'm missing the ocean.

We went camping this weekend and I did get to float down a fantastically lazy river.....

Alas, all it did was make me miss the ocean even more.

I miss the sound of the waves, the vastness of the sea-as far as the eye can see, the cool salty spray, the plaintive cry of the gulls, the sound of my feet as they make their way across the sand....

I hope one day I will get to live near the sea~

Baby Brain

On the subject of my summer funk-

(Sorry for those of you who are tired of me musing about my quasi- depression)

I’ve been noticing that there is one thing on my mind an awful lot. I’ll give you a couple of hints:

They cry a lot.

They are irresistibly cute.

They must be fed, dressed, changed, molded and loved 24-7.

No, it’s not another husband…

Of course it’s babies.

And for those of you who know through blogging or from our personal relationship, we lost a baby a little over a year ago. What is strange to me is that while I’ve always loved babies and have been a babysitter/nanny off & on since before puberty I never thought I wanted to have my own kids. This sentiment carried on until I actually got pregnant and then I reassessed my reasoning and realized that I do want a baby, what I did not want was to be a shut-in mom like so many I had known before. (It’s such a long convoluted story and I think I already covered this in a subsequent post..)

Suffice to say, I’m on the baby train now. And what makes it even more appealing is that I am working a job that is not physically demanding, has amazing benefits with ample maternity leave. The hang up? We don’t want to have a baby and then immediately after the maternity leave is up ship it off to daycare. My mom has graciously offered to be our daycare when we do have a baby but it’s got to be when we are all finally living in the same state. Now, this is the plan, we are counting on it and working towards it but we are all at least a year off from moving. The husband and I are waiting for our company to relocate and give us our severance package before we move. My parents have had their house up for sale for nearly a year now trying to move....Who knows when this will all come together…

Everyone I see these days either has a newborn baby or is pregnant. My ovaries keep telling me “Just do it. Go for it. You’re ready now. Do it.”
And then my brain says, “What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve got to think this out and do it when the time is right. You can’t afford daycare, you don’t want to send your newborn baby to be raised by a stranger, you don’t know when the company is shutting down so get a grip on yourself sister!”

And so, in protest, my ovaries are staging a riot. They keep barraging my brain with thoughts of babies. Constantly. I find myself feeling resentful of others who do have babies. I feel like the ‘Grinch Who Stole Christmas’, my heart feels very small and lumpy when I find myself being resentful of other people’s happiness. Especially about babies, I feel like some sort of monster.

I had heard about women like me, I certainly never thought I would be one. And yet here I am, getting weepy over cute baby clothes, scowling at pregnant women, talking myself into & out of getting pregnant right now….it’s all so messed up. I buy baby stuff if it’s super duper cute and really cheap. I’m convinced when I do have a baby it’s going to be a girl so if that’s not the case then someone better have one cause I’ve amassed a little pile….

And though I’ve kind of sort of talked to my mom & my man about all of this I feel so….embarrassed about it I just keep it to myself mainly. I really really want a baby but in order for that to happen right now everything needs to be drastically different. I find myself being snippy with my man and I wonder if I’m not feeling resentful on some deeper level that he’s not as ready as I am? He wants a baby too but he isn’t feeling the big push I am. He keeps telling me he’s got to get his career figured out first and get some financial stability before we get pregnant. Before we actually got pregnant he was the one who was excited for us to get pregnant. Is he scared we’ll lose another baby? How long does he think we have to do this? We’re getting older every day and the thought of having our child graduate high school right around our 80th birthdays is not appealing.

Is this all hormonal? Is this all just yet another cruel trick played out on us women? Are we helpless against the onslaught of our hormones and our conditioning? Is it cellular memory to want to have babies?

Shit, it’s just too damn hot today to continue to ruminate on such things…
Thanks for sticking in there with me as I sort through this mess~

Disconnect

I know what this feeling is.

I’ve figured it out.

There are peripherary reasons I’ve been depressed and cranky and then there is the core reason.

The peripherary reasons are that I do not function well in a mess. Our house is still full of boxes and the impending work and disorganization is driving me crazy.

Also, I’ve stopped exercising entirely. I went from working out every day, taking my vitamins and counting my calories to eating whatever I damn well please and not exercising at all. My old self-indulgent self is back.

The core reason I’m depressed is so familiar, I’m amazed I didn’t see it for what it is earlier. I’ve known this depression before, it’s being disconnected. I’m disconnected from my spiritual life, disconnected from my body, disconnected from my family, disconnected from my creative self, disconnected from friends. I’ve reverted to being a blob. I eat, work, sleep, watch movies and eat, work, sleep some more. I can’t believe I didn’t realize this sooner. Sometimes I feel like being human is the equivalent to trying to swim through mud. Why are we so dense? Why does it take so long for simple ideas to take root? Why do we make the same mistakes over and over?

Infinitely frustrating.

I’m digging myself back out of the hole I’ve recently realized I’ve buried myself in. I’ve got to get my spiritual foundation constructed. It’s absolutely essential. Any advice? Ideas? Do you or anyone you know have a steady, daily spiritual practice?

My homework for ‘class’ this Sunday is to construct a set of pagan prayer beads and come up with three possible mantras. I’ve also been set to the task of researching the use of prayer beads throughout the world religions. So far I’ve done my research and am interested to see nearly every world religion employs some sort of prayer beads. Must be good stuff. It’s a tool that just might be the best idea yet, I’ve got Swan to thank for that, she’s aces.

Crab People!

I've been really crabby lately.

Not sure why.

Is it the heat? Humidity? Summer always makes me kinda cranky, weird I know, but true.

Maybe it's the fact that my house still isn't put together after 3 weeks. I've done almost everything and decided to leave one room to my guy and here we are, weeks later and it's still barely even started. Sometimes I think I'm going to lose it and strangle him. But then I remember that I love him. Emotions are such complicated things. Oh, to be human.

Also, it seems like everyone is pregnant right now and that's really been bumming me out too. It's so super mega lame to feel that way, I should be happy for them but I can't help but feel slighted by it. I know, it's my own trip and I'm a horrible person but dammit, it's true. I can't tell anyone else except for you, blogger- you are my only friend. Okay, so that's not true but I can't admit that steamy little fact to anyone.

I guess I just want to run away from my life for awhile. I know everyone feels this way from time to time, makes me feel a little better.

Okay, enough belly-aching. I've got to pull myself together.

Parking Lot Kids

The biggest downfall to our new neighborhood is our neighbors.

Luckily we aren’t in a scary neighborhood like we have been previously; it’s just more economically depressed than our very last neighborhood. So while I’m not worried for my personal safety I am a little concerned about our house being broken into. But not much.

What worries me the most are the parking lot kids.

There is a whole herd of kids that live in our row of townhouses and they all seem to be raising themselves. I know its summer and school is out but the fact that I see these kids out in what is essentially a parking lot all day every day without any adults around seems crappy. Some of them are pretty young too; the youngest can’t be more than three years old. The older ones are too old to be wandering around with nothing constructive to do- that’s where vandalism and petty theft come a’knockin. Kids will figure out something to do and likely without a positive adult influence it’ll be something they know they aren’t supposed to do. Duh.

I had never seen any of the parents until this weekend. The youngest little girl I’d seen was talking to this woman who was on her way somewhere. I don’t mean to come off sounding like a prude but the outfit this woman was wearing was….scandalous to say the least. Everything God gave her to identify her as a woman was hanging out for the world to see. There was a man waiting for her in an Escalade with a boomin’ system. The woman is waving the little girl away as she’s reaching out for her and following her. The look on the woman's face tells me she’s irritated that the little girl wants her attention and she’s ready to go have fun with her man friend. It’s 85 degrees in the shade outside and she wants the little girl to just leave her alone and go back to sitting in the concrete parking lot, alone. The little girl finally turns around to start walking back towards the houses and I can see she is devastated. She’s crying so hard she can barely see where she is going. The lady stops for a second and watches her, finally I see her face soften a little bit and she walks over to the baby girl and pats her on the shoulder then turns back around and walks to the car and leaves. The little girl is sobbing. It’s so heartbreaking watching her, all alone, crying. How that woman could walk away without picking her up, holding her, drying her tears….I was even crying for heaven’s sake! I felt so bad for her, here I am, listening to music in the a/c, making delicious cookies, having a great time and there she is, all alone and crying out in the hot sun.

Throughout the day I see all of them, just wandering around, trying to amuse themselves. They don’t have any toys, only a couple of them have bikes, absolutely nothing to do but be invisible. I don’t even know if there are actually adults home or not. I’m not sure if they are sitting inside watching t.v. or at work or hangin’ at the bar with their friends or sitting inside getting high…who the hell knows. I don’t really know what to do.

I keep thinking about calling child protection services. But is that the right call? I don’t know that taking them away from whatever parent situation they have is right, what is waiting for them after that? Foster homes? Putting a child in the system at such a young age….I just don’t know if that is the right call. I don't want to turn a blind eye and be another person who lets them slip through the cracks. I also don't want to take away what little security they have and send them into a foster care world that I have serious reservations about. I guess what I’ve decided is that I am going to call child protection services and just see what happens when someone reports someone else. Anonymously of course. I don't want any of that action knocking on my front door. I don’t know a thing about how the system works and educating myself firstly would probably be the best way to go about it.

A whole generation of inner city kids are raising themselves. And we all watch the news and look at the crime in our neighborhoods and wonder how it all go so messed up. Parking lot kids. It just breaks my heart.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I apologize for my long absence, we haven’t had internet for nearly a month now and likely won’t have it for a couple of weeks more. I am able to get online where I work but have been….trepidatious about posting here. Everything we access online while at work can be monitored, whether or not it actually is- hard to say. Paranoia has gotten me pretty far in life without too many slip-ups so I’m always inclined towards the paranoid.

It’s been so long since I posted though and I’ve been itching to get back to it so I’m just going for it. I don’t have much on the Wicca front to speak of- which is initially why I shied away from writing (before the move and loss of internet.) I had all of these big plans for how organized and efficient I was going to be in the new house. A lot of those plans included my revamped study/practice regime for my Wiccan studies.

So far we are still wading through boxes. What we have gotten done I am very happy with- we’ve been pretty on top of figuring out ways to maximize the space we now have versus the lack of shelving/storage. It’s nice to be in a town-home again as opposed to the one bedroom apartment. Our other place was very cozy and it was nice to have it just be the two of us but luckily we’ve got a wonderful roommate who is easy to live with and a very close friend so all’s well.

Our actual place is pretty nice, there was quite a bit that needed to be done with it upon moving in, every one of the sinks were leaking, there was little to no cleaning done by the previous tenants upon move-out and we’ve got far too much stuff for the space but all of these things have been being worked out.

One thing I’ve been loving is our kitchen.

It’s much bigger than our last kitchen and I’m finally able to have all of our appliances within reach (even though I’m still not able to have them all in the actual kitchen…sigh). I’m getting ready to launch my big cooking/juicing campaign. The farmer’s markets are getting into full swing again and just in time too cause my scale tells me I’ve been gaining back the weight I lost before the wedding. BOOO, HISSS!! We’ve got to recommit to eating right (and not eating out for nearly every meal) as well as working out. We dropped the gym membership to save some money and so it’s up to me to figure out a home work out plan that does the trick.

So, very little actual info here, just a big long rambling post about being in transition. I’m so ready to get cooking, painting, crafting, studying, all of it. But it looks like I must be patient a little longer.