Sunday, July 7, 2013

Sunday Morning stuff

  • I like my face better without makeup but when I put on mascara I always think, whoa that looks pretty good.
  • So far, I've learned 5 forms out of 108 in the Tai Chi style I'm practicing. I love it.
  • I went to the movies yesterday and managed to sit through the whole thing without getting up to pee. Yahoo!!
  • My 4 month old grandson has the face of an angel.
  • I've been living with chronic pain for 5 months now.  I have a bone spur on the back of my heel and nothing is helping.
  • I read three books last week. I could not stop and spent every single free second with my head in one of them. I read at stop lights, lunch breaks, till bedtime, past bedtime and upon waking.  Obsession comes in many forms I guess.
  • I went into a head shop and bought an e-cigarette. Holy Scmoley the things they sell now!!
  • My girlfriend from Oklahoma is coming this month for a weekend.  We plan on getting new tattoos. We are both in our 50's.  Don't judge.
  • Today, I am going to focus on gratitude. Focus, practice, delve into gratitude for every hour of this day.  When I forget to do this, and I will, I will simply step back on the gratitude track and start again.

Friday, July 5, 2013

4th of July-new tent cover

Getting ready for the kids to come for the 4th yesterday.  Look how old my Theo is getting!



Love my new tent thing!




Saturday, June 29, 2013

Just thinking out loud

Have you ever noticed some really major flaws in someone and discovered that it made you love them more?  Sometimes seeing the human-ness in a person just touches my heart like nothing they can say or do.

It makes me wonder why we pick the particular mask we do.  I want to tell some folks that their public mask isn't nearly as lovely as the person they are trying to mask in the first place.  I think that something as simple as wearing stylish clothes against ones instinct of what style they would like to portray is a mask also.

I wish we could all wear our hair exactly as it grows out of our head.  That is a frightening thought to a lot of us, but after a while it would be a great conversation starter, just seeing all the different hair types.  It seems uncivilized to walk around with our hair all crazy, but it seems uncivilized to care about such things also.  I think it would help us all see the human-ness in each other if we just wore what was comfy and let our hair just "be".  We would all be clean of course!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Beana_7

Dear Spiral Notebook

I wanted to write down about outhouses and such but that seems kind of vulgar, but I figure that writing about it can't be much worse than the living through it.

From the time I was 10 years old until I was fourteen, it was my job to empty the slop jars every morning.  Even now, I have no idea how that chore got assigned to me.  By this time we was back in Houston again, back to that little old house.  My oldest brother Bobby, had stayed back in East Texas with my grandparents and my oldest sister Sissy, had runned off with an older man named Boots.  Didn't none of us ever see her again because he took her back to his family place way up north somewhere and she died a couple of years later in her own bed trying to birth twins that were laying wrong in her belly.  She and both babies died.  There weren't no money to go up there for a funeral or anything.  Funny, but I don't recall any of us ever really talking about that.  Mama just kept on with her gardening and hoeing and cooking and cleaning.  Surely she must have cried somewhere in private, but I don't recall anyplace private in that little house.  Oh yeah, I was going to write about the outhouse and slop jars.

Outhouses, if you had one built right weren't a scary place.  The men folk, cause they took longer in there, would sometimes carve pictures and words on the inside and it gave you something to look at.  The smell was just something you sort of got used to.  I never much minded it.  The downside was the size, color and sound of the flies.  They was big and green.  Nowadays they call those horse flies, but we just called em' shit flies.

I don't know a child one, even my own children and grand children who would empty out a slop jar without calling the police or children services on their parents.  It was an awful awful job for a little girl who's daddy drank and deposited the worst of a nights drinking in a slop jar.  No body would help me do it and that is the memory that sticks out in my head, not receiving compassion or help for that job.  That's the reason for this notebook writing today, a memory that taught me a little something about compassion for the burdens of others.


Friday, June 14, 2013

Friday

It's Friday, but I'm not so sure if that is good or bad anymore.  I find that just as many distressing things can happen over the weekend as do during the week. If I could go to work in my house clothes (yoga pants) I would be happy to go in seven days a week most likely.

I'm growing weary of foot pain.  I'm good with pain for just so long and then I'm not.

I revealed a conversation from one daughter to the other.  I don't know what made me do it.  It wasn't a big thing but I broke a trust no matter how small and I feel the sickness inside from doing so. The self disappointment that comes with bad behavior.

There are days when I grow so bored with my own company, so tired of the same mistakes and guilt trips. 

I am going to have to stay in the day, I can see that from just these few sentences.  I know how to do that.  Practice doesn't always make perfect but it does make it familiar.

God continues to think I'm "somebody", though I am not able to live up to his expectations.  His grace follows me around like a shadow.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Lousy Blogger

I'm a lousy blogger and house keeper.
There.
  • Yesterday was my sober birthday.  Twenty-two years.  Thank you God.  I practiced compassionate living for the day and felt at ease when I went to bed.
  • My two daughters are haveing an extraordinary bonding experience over the new baby.  It is awesome to watch and has done my heart good.
  • My oldest grandson graduated from the 8th grade this week.  He was accepted into a magnet HS for science and engineering and he is a precious sweet boy.
  •  I went to my first Tai Chi class on Sunday.  It is an hour drive both ways (I live in a big ass city).  I joined the class as an avenue to help me love myself.  My lungs are screwed, yet I continue to smoke like a burning house.  I've gained fifty pounds yet I continue to eat whatever I crave.  I am trying to find ways to love my body and lungs again.  So, I'm practicing what I learned on Sunday.  I've started walking again, and I have set a calorie goal for each day.  So far, so good.
  • Letting people be who they are continues to be my biggest stumbling block in life.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Beana_6

Dear Spiral Notebook

I heard little parts of Miss Ola's life from her growin' up stories she shared with me but it had a different spin to it when I was grown and heard more about it from others.  By the time I came to know Miss Ola and her  sisters, Dorthy and Joyce May, they were old women. Joyce May was the only one of the sisters to get married and she had four sons. I can tell you that one her grandsons is a retired agent with the FBI.  I actually was privileged enough to get to answer some questions from a government man who came right into my home and sat down with a pen and paper.  I offered him some coffee as I recall but he said "no mam" very politely.  I think they have to refuse refreshments when they are working.  I answered all his questions that I had answers for concerning Kevin, her grandson.  That kind of sticks out in my mind as a very important thing I did in my life.  I don't know why really, but being a part of helping Miss Ola's' favorite nephew become something so important as an FBI agent made me feel real good.

Miss Ola liked to tell about the wonderful weekends she and her sisters had with their father while they were growing up.  He taught them to read and write and plenty of arithmetic skills too.  She said that he and her Mama would read them to sleep and teach them songs and that he brought presents every single weekend to their house.  I myself, felt kind of jealous about living in a house where your Daddy only came a couple of days a week.  She said he had a very important job that kept him away during the week.

When I was bigger, my grandma told me that Miss Olas' Mama had been a very beautiful colored woman who could sing like bird.  Miss Ola's Daddy was the president of the only bank in the county, and a white man with a white wife and 5 white children.  When he died, he left 100 prime acres to his three half colored daughters and some kind of trust thing that made it possible for Miss Ola and her sisters to just spend their lives out in the piney woods of east Texas.  It seemed to me that Miss Ola thought her life was just fine but my Grandma told me that they had sort of lived their whole young lives with a big ol' secret lie just hanging over their heads about their Daddy.  I think Miss Ola must have just made peace with it all, cause she was always tellin' me not to hold grudges cause it just gives you the "runs."