Post 20 of 92

4:06pm.  Realized the other day I have picked up a new habit.  An annoying habit.  I sigh.  I sigh a lot.  I sigh with a small yet audible noise.  At the top of my sigh, I vocalize. 

Perhaps I have taken the maxim 'Breathe' too much to heart.    Never used to be aware of when I was holding my breath or breathing with short shallow inhalations.  Yoga has helped with that.  But I'm sure shallow breathing wasn't supposed to morph into sighing. 

Just googled the word sigh and find the word was at its most popular around 1815-1820, took a big dip in the 1970s and has been on the ascendent until 2010.  Sighing, according to dictionary.com as a 

verb (used without object) is:

1 .to let out one's breath audibly, as from sorrow, weariness, or relief.

2 .to yearn or long; pine.

3. to make a sound suggesting a sigh:  sighing wind.

 

Suspect I sigh from sorrow.  Sorrow is perhaps too strong a word yet things have changed pretty dramatically in the past year, much of it excellent, much of it sad.  And 'things' are accelerating, noticeably accelerating.  So I sigh.  

 

Which is better than crying so perhaps it's not such a bad thing after all.  If I'm a little sad, a little sigh acknowledges that.  Maybe that's a good thing.  

 

Or not.  I don't know.  Sigh.  

 

4:25pm

 

 

 

 

 

Post 19 of 92

3:13pm.  Watched a program last night about abdominal fat and its link with the development of type two diabetes.  Dr. Michael Mosley was on Insight talking about food, fat, diets and diabetes.

I'm not obese but I do have abdominal fat, more so than ever before.  My body has changed quite a bit since menopause although my weight is roughly the same.  I have muscles from yoga, the gym and lots of walking but not much of a waist.  In fact the bulge of my stomach is starting to rival the bulge of my bust. 

Not a good look.

Nor a good feel.  For a long time now I have been less than pleased with myself for my lack of willpower.  Why have I got this gut when I eat well and exercise a lot.  Easy answer.  Too much of a good thing, or in this case, many good things.  Since learning to cook, most of my meals, although vegan, or nearly vegan (honey might sweeten) are tasty, even delicious.  (I did have a spectacular disaster a few nights ago however).  So I have large helpings of creamy cashew kale or vegan caesar salad or spicy coconut peas and rice or whatever else is going.  Beyond that, I snack afterwards; roasted almonds with grapes, a rice cracker with honey, carrots dipped in soy wasabi and mayonnaise sauce.  Even writing this I am ashamed all over again.  What a Guts who deservedly now has a gut.  And almost always feels bloated.

My sister is diabetic.  Abdominal fat puts me at risk too.  What to do?

Two days a week of 500 calories or less.  Easy. 

Wasn't hungry for breakfast, still feeling bloated from the night before.  Lunch a bowl of carrots with soy sauce and wasabi dip.  We drove to Brunswick Heads (with Mikaela, bless her well behaved little self) and had Earl Grey tea at a cafe for smoko.  Tea will be more carrots or celery or both, perhaps with some chopped cabbage.  Plus two coffees with honey.  Still comes to under 500 calories and I'm not hungry. 

More than that a weight has lifted because of finally taking control of myself.  I quit smoking over 6 years ago.  I do have willpower when I chose to use it.  I can do this. 

Hell, I might be able to see my toes again!  3:28pm

Post 18 9f 92

8:57pm....plus two glasses of wine.  

Have noticed a new habit of mine.  No idea how long it has been in the making but it is surely full blown and mature now.  I sigh.  I sigh a lot.  I sigh with sound.  A sort of female, faint keening sound.  Had no idea.  Amazing how one's state of mind is mirrored in physicality.  Had no desire to sigh, did not look to sigh, then found to my chagrin that I do sigh... often and with sound effects.

So this is rather sad.  Sighing is another form of breath, a specialized sort of breath.  Before I exhale with sound effects, I have to inhale and inhale enough to make the sigh with sound.    So what does this say?  Whatever sighs say.   Is it the resignation sigh?  the sad sigh?  the relief sigh?  I think I might know.

What I do know for sure, however, is that sighing frequently as I was, is damn annoying.  And I don't like not being involved and cognizant of my own life - so this sighing business is sort of a wake up call.

So I'll just take a deep breath, which feels wonderful, and sigh off.  9:03pm

Post 15 of 92.

4:37pm.  Ah, this is the one that I brought the page up and never did a thing with it.  It was late, it was dark and I hadn't cooked dinner yet - and after dinner the only thing I do is draw or read.  Thinking is too much effort.

Waiting for the rain to pass to take Mikaela for a walk. 

Thought I should add a photo.  That day we took her to Pottsville beach where dogs are allowed.  Unfortunately we couldn't let her run free but she was so happy to be there she jumped straight up in the air, like all four legs were pogo sticks.  Didn't know greyhounds could do that.

She has adjusted well.  She knows the routine now.  She plays, sleeps, eats and is more and more blase about the cats.  And the cats are getting better with her.  She is so large that she intimidates just by being in the room.  She looms.  She doesn't mean to and if she looks playfully at a cat, with ears pricked and a happy tail - only wanting to play - just saying her name stops her.  She means no harm but the cats need more time.

Richard still hasn't learned her name.  His mind is failing and seems to be failing faste than before.  Perhaps he's just in a bad phase.That's what I'd like to think.  I try not to worry.  Worrying.  A new thing for me. Am trying not to master the art.  No point in dwelling on how things are.  We're still the lucky ones.  I'm still a lucky one.  I remind myself of that when we are walking, when I'm taking a yoga or art class, when looking out the window behind the monitor at a wall of green.  It really is ok.  Have always believed we are never faced with more than we can deal with.  So when things get bad, I'll have the strength and will and energy and patience and LOVE to deal with it.  4:51pm

Post 17 of 92

4:14pm.  Trouble getting and staying online although the gaps in posts is not entirely due to that.

Anyway.  The other day I downloaded Writer software.  Had it before and used it briefly to write something utterly forgettable.  In the past I have written one and a half novels which mercifully have been lost forever to cyberspace.  Wrote them to prove I had the discipline to write which I did.  What I didn't have is the talent.  So now I think, with this challenge of two minutes a day for 92 days, why not write something, something fictitious.  Maybe a short story rather than a novel.  Great idea save for one tiny little problem.  I haven't the slightest idea of what to write about.  Real writers constantly write.  Their life is a book written in their heads, every person, every situation is organic matter for the compost heap from which something grows.   After a lifetime of drawing I see with an artist's eye.  I see colour and form and texture that probably the non-artist never notices.  Mom told me years ago that if I made art I would never see the same.  She was right.

But a writer I ain't.  Still that Writer software with the black background and the green lettering beckons.  Perhaps something will bubble up from the recycle bin.  4:20pm

Post 16 of 92

8:37am.  I am going to stop buying eggs.  As a vegevegan (my own poor term for a vegetarian who would like to be vegan but hasn't given up eggs or honey) I allowed myself to believe that free range chickens fed an organic grain diet lived a good life and I shouldn't be guilty for eating their eggs.

I was wrong.

I was kidding myself.  Like I did with dairy.  Like I did with seafood.  Like I did with chicken livers.  Like I did with red meat (going backwards in the order in which I gave up eating those animals or animal products).  Two days ago the ABC reported a story of a Victorian abattoir which killed their chickens by boiling them alive. 

Someone snuck a camera inside and filmed it and sent it to Animals Australia.  Being the coward I am I couldn't watch.  I ran from the room crying.  Just the thought of it makes me cry.  That abattoir is only one of probably dozens (hundreds?) which operate in Australia.  There is one here in Murwillumbah.  I buy chicken necks and chicken frames and chicken mince for Mikaela from it.

And that's a conundrum.  Because I have a dog and three cats, animals are killed.  Whether it's dry food which bears no resemblance to the original animal, or necks which are heartbreakingly small and fragile and all too reminiscent of their owners, in order to feed my pets, animals suffer. 

But for me.  I don't need eggs.  Only used them in Caesar salad dressing, egg foo yong and the occasional frittata.  I'll learn to use egg substitute.

8:46am

Post 14 of 92

8:52pm.  My ex-husband, who died, I believe, in 2006, would have turned 62 today.  Since we separated and divorced I have always thought Happy Birthday to him on his name day.  Not knowing he had died until this year, I was still wishing him all the best even when he had passed on.  Actually, however, it makes little difference whether he is alive or dead because he is all of a one in the scheme of things...at least he is in how I see 'Reality'.  So today I wished him a happy 62nd birthday. 

We were ultimately unsuited and far too young to have married (as Mom pointed out but which I ignored as I, naturally, knew better).  Nevertheless my ex was a good man, a caring man who had a great love of children, something which I was never going to provide him, and animals, which I would've in abundance.

Happy Birthday Wayne Darling.  We were young but we loved and we did our best.  8:57pm

Post 13 of 92

4:26pm.  It's not that I've forgotten or given up...just haven't made the time, that measly two minutes to set aside, for this.

Sitting here with a cat sitting on me.  Had this long involved post in mind from Ken Wilbur's The Spectrum of Consciousness but would have to remove Matisse, who is feeling a little needy now that Mikaela has come and demands much of my time, so it will have to wait. 

But as per usual, I couldn't remember the name of the book so did a quick web search to find it (without removing Matisse) and then read a piece about the rise and fall of Ken Wilber and Integral Psychology by Mark Manson who found his hero was wearing clay socks after attending a weekend workshop.

So, really there are no gurus.  Many fingers point at the moon and we mistake those pointing fingers for the moon.  The experience, the wisdom, the search is all ours. 

On another cat on my lap free day I will quote the pertinent paragraphs from the book.  This is the book I read before which made me stand up and take notice and I was feeling a little disappointed that I wasn't having the same experience. Those few paragraphs...when you have to reread something several times in an effort, not to understand, but to perhaps breakthrough the logical rational understanding to the gut understanding of what Wilbur was saying, well, that's worth a bit of a blog.

4:48pm

Post 12 of 92

3:28pm.  How many times does one start out with high hopes for a project, a creation, only to find one hasn't the skills to complete the vision.  The first time this happened to me - and what a cruel loss of innocence it was! - was when I was elected to paint the scenery for the third (or was it fifth) grade class play.  Have no idea what the play was about but remember vividly the moment I realized I did not have any idea how to make a sunbeam out of paint and construction paper.  I saw the finished backdrop so clearly in my mind's eye yet there I stood, with the weight of failure bowing my head, scissors and pale cream paper in my hands.

It was, and is, a pivotal moment.  Every time I start a drawing or a painting and SEE, in my mind's eye, this glorious vision made real, I feel again that same dismay and disappointment when I find once again, I haven't the talent or technique to carry it off. 

The good thing is, with experience one knows that the failure is only a projection of my own idea of what I should be -- the inner critic -- that bitch that keeps me from trying things.  I don't listen anymore.  Or at least not much.  So high hopes may not be as high as at the beginning, but hope prevails nonetheless. 

3:40pm

Post 11 of 92

9:08pm.  Nearly forgot.  Easy to do.  Thunderstorms coming.  What a loaded sentence that is.  Thunderstorms.  And I hear a plane passing overhead.  Between storm cells.  What a view they must have, in the night with flashes of light before and behind.

But the greatest view would be of the ... is it sprites?  those flashes of light seen from space of electrical discharges above thunderstorms?  What a view that would be.

And just a note before I close (it's already 9:11).  Mikaela might just be the greatest dog that ever lived.  I am a cat person first and foremost.  A bird person second.  A horse person third and a dog person last of all.  Mikaela might change all that.  This morning, with some cheap dental tools I got from somewhere years ago, I chipped off some plaque from her teeth.  Her teeth are pretty good, especially for a greyhound, but there is a bit of plaque.  Mikaela stood like a statue while I chipped away.  I didn't do much.  Why make a problem where there isn't one?  Even so, her beautiful manners are breathtaking.

As is her love.  She is the most loving dog I have ever met.  Loving without slavishness, if that makes sense.  She doesn't throw herself upside down at your feet and whine.  She isn't needy in that way.  There's a quiet dignity in her affection; a laying of her head in my lap or against my chest.  Giving and receiving.  She affects me more than any dog I have ever known.  And that is in less than two weeks.  9:22pm

Post 10 of 92.

4:27pm.  Actually forgot to write yesterday.  Remembered then forgot.

Further to what I've been thinking/writing about:  This lack of excitement over ideas, the lack of desire to quest after truth.  I'm not sure it's a bad thing.  Another thing I notice with age is the growing appreciation of and being in the now.  Of course, I still spend hours other than in the moment that I'm in yet it is less so than before.  Rather than racing after answers that will forever elude me, I find it is the small things and being in and the noticing of the small things which somehow provide answers of their own.  If I walk, I walk and if I don't waste that walk thinking of things other than the walk, the time is beautifully and, surprisingly, satisfactorily spent.  There is a sort of peace which comes with the mere doing of what I am currently doing.

And maybe that is enough. 4:32pm

Post 9 of 92

5:45pm.  There seems to be a trade off that comes with aging.  Some good, some bad.  There are the familiar good things, like a bit of wisdom that comes with experience.   Not getting het up about the small things, more patience (although that is something I struggle with still), being less inclined to emotional upheaval. 

And the bad things, mostly to do with the mind being willing but the body unable or slow to respond.  Perhaps illness too. 

But one of the things I miss is the excitement I used to experience about ideas.  I don't mean being cynical (although I can be!) or world weary, more of a viewing the idea through a veil, it not having the stark revelatory spark of something perceived the first time. 

I'm rereading a book, The Spectrum of Consciousness by Ken Wilbur, that just had the WOW WOW WOW factor when I first read it.  The ideas put forth were ones I was familiar with through other works so it's not that they were new, but they way they were presented, condensed, explained which captured my imagination the first time.  Now it's as though I just can't get excited about The Meaning Of Life anymore.  It's as though I am so mired in the temporal, the physical, the Realtiy of the day to day, I can no longer remember that I once aspired to the Eternal and continually quested and questioned.  And got excited.

Now it's, bleh.  Like I've given up.  Rather than aspiring for the penthouse suite, I'm just glad to have a bed with clean sheets.

6:01pm