Once Again, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Having a moment to breathe and blog while my car gets fixed.

I want to applaud the genius who put a coffee shop right next door to the car mechanic. KU-DOS! Also, coffee shop plays the best music. A moment ago, it was Billie Holiday. Right now it's Pink Floyd. And the barista looks like the 23 year old version of a great friend of mine.

I really hoped to write my entire show before this Friday, but it's looking rather grim on that front, I'm afraid. It is exciting that I've got this little creativity buzz on. I'm going with it.

We had a wonderfully low-key Christmas. We had an evening celebration at home with Grandma Doris and Uncle Mike and a simple feast, then we drove to Houston to celebrate with the extended fam (my side) at my Aunt Marie's house. Bodhi really hit it off and played well with his cousin Richie, who is just about two years older than Bodhi. They are both very gentle-spirited boys. But boys nonetheless. They wrestled, played with trucks and toys, and went on a rowdy cold outside walk with us.

It's so weird to think of celebrating Christmas,  because we don't go to church, and I don't think Bodhi knows who Jesus was. He definitely knows Buddha, and Krishna, and Santa Claus; in fact, we got treated to a home visit from Santa at our friend's house just before Christmas. Bodhi was hilarious with Santa. He refused to sit on his lap (good going! I don't even need to teach him Stranger Danger, he already knows!) but was fine with sitting *next* to him. And when Santa asked what he wanted for Christmas, Bodhi had a list at the ready in his front pocket. He is going through a SPACE and ALIEN phase. And DRAGONS. Big time. So he got lots of space-related and dragon-themed booty from Santa. It was very cute.

Dragon Costume, Spaceships

Sisters!

 Our drive to Aunt Marie's was uneventful. Fun. Repeated listening to "The Jungle Book," Bodhi's favorite. Both there and back. By the time we were on our way home, Bodhi was READY to go HOME. We stopped at Richmond State School, which is now called Richmond Supported Living Facility, where my younger sister Shanna lives. She is a sweetheart, though very profoundly brain-damaged. She has lived in this place since she was nine years old. We brought her gifts, and my mom and grandmother met us there. We had a little snack and hung for a couple of hours. My preference is to bring her home for Christmas, but it's not always possible. I love my sister so much. It is really hard to see what terrible physical shape she is in, but I'm so overwhelmed as it is I can't figure out exactly how to help her just yet. We tell ourselves she is happy, and safe, and content, and she seems to be, but I would love to have her living closer to us so we can visit her more often. Is it crazy to want that? I do think it's best for everyone if she is not living with us, but if push came to shove I think I could live with that. Perhaps having a toddler has made me think I am invincible.

And maybe I am.

Or maybe I'm just barely making it as it is. 

I did the Maya Abdominal Massage self-care workshop training last weekend, and it was life-changing. Where to begin to tell you. How about that it rocked my world? The techniques are simple, but deep. It is a Mayan tradition passed down from centuries of Mayan healing and medicine. It has been passed down with blessings and with great reverence. The founder of this technique, Rosita Arvigo, has done tremendous work to preserve and save the rainforest in Belize, the site of countless herbal remedies that are being lost as they cut down the vast, dense acreage of the forests. I can't quite recall the statistic, but in a film we saw about her work, they said it was something like less than one percent of ALL the plants the pharmaceutical industry is researching are being used to create all of the known plant-derived pharmaceuticals. GULP!

I guess I'm just reinvigorated to live from my liberal radical environmentalist heart.

So anyway.

The workshop. We learned a self-care belly massage, and great details about the male and female reproductive systems, and the spiritual component of the healing, and the herbal component, all the benefits, contraindications, and anecdote after anecdote about Mayan healing. I'm a huge fan of solving systemic issues by mechanical means; that is, hormonal or digestive issues getting resolved by massage and bodywork with perhaps some support from herbs. Food and nutrition are key, just as they are in Ayurveda. I think if I didn't drink so damn much coffee I'd be a test tube. I'm that clean. Oh, except for french fries and cheese. And the occasional gluten free cookie.

So I've been doing my daily belly massage and well, it made for a very sweet cycle. I was running late on Shark Week, which was BUMMING ME OUT, and she came a mere three days late. Yay! I just want to continue to ovulate and bleed for another five years, is that so much to ask?

My gyno put me on estrogen/estrodiol for a week. I have to admit it seemed to help with my HYPERIRRITABILITY, but I'm considering weaning off everything except the massage and some rainforest remedies. I dunno, it seems worth a try.

I remember getting angry whenever I googled "first time mom over forty" and I got so many hits on "hot flashes and chasing your toddler, etc" I just thought: "That will NOT be me!" So here I am. Hot flashing, night sweating, hair trigger rage, and wrestling my boy. It is a sublimely strange combination. I do envy the younger moms, you know, the 38-year olds, who are not also dealing with the hormonal Grand Canyon. As in, deep chasms of rage/bliss/depression/helplessness/confidence. It's Space Mountain, baby, rolling up and down the hills in the dark.


Okay, there's more, but I have to put some energy toward getting my resume done and writing my show, This Body of Words, Spoken: A Post Partum, Pre Menopausal Quasi Retrospective.

Details HERE:
FRONTERAFEST! 
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26th @ Hyde Park Theatre.

Thanks, Thanks a Lot

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, the second one we've hosted at our home. Since we moved in just over three years ago. I love throwing parties; for me that means gathering a huge amount of food, various friends, setting up tables and chairs and music and then...waiting. For whomever to show up. I was a little bit surlier than average this week because of it, but other than that it was a pleasure rather than a stressor. And I have discovered the joys of RECIPES.

I went gluten-free almost six months ago, with the occasional transgression bringing about an itchy, swollen tongue, spaciness, and a general feeling of dis-ease. I tested it out last weekend during our anniversary dinner with some French bread -- yep -- and then again last night with some cornbread stuffing. Yep. Don't know yet what it all means, except I definitely don't miss that feeling. And I really don't miss gloo-tang.

I also took Bodhi off the G; after his teacher told us she thought he had sensory integration issues, a trusted advisor suggested it, and I researched it, and my SIL put her autism-spectrum-disorder sons on it to great effect, so...we did it. And as far as I'm concerned there's no going back. He also had a taste of G during dinner yesterday, and was almost immediately out of control. For a couple of hours.

Listen, it could all be my imagination. The food industry wouldn't knowingly add ingredients to what we eat if they could cause any harm, right? Food hasn't changed since we were kids in the seventies, right?

In lighter conspiracy theory musings, when I posted on FB that my "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner list of ingredients included such items as dry mustard, hemp milk, and sweet rice flour, a friend living in NYC responded that "GF is so trendy in NYC right now I couldn't find sweet rice flour anywhere; the Whole Foods shelves were empty!" Which made me laugh.

All of this to say we had a wonderful, barely fractious gathering of family, friends, and fantastically delicious foods. We even ended up playing Cranium with my cousin Missy's two daughters.

On a sad note, I often feel like my family has mutated since my Dad died. We have jokingly said, "Surely Dad wasn't the glue that held us all together!" But I think it is proving to be true. My mother spends more time chasing after her own  mother these days, and my brother is a little bit missing in action. He's lost three jobs in the time since our Dad departed, and I only ever speak to him if and when he returns my calls. I miss him.

It is interesting how connected I feel to my cousins after giving birth to Bodhi; I'm the oldest girl of six girlcuzzes, and all but one of the eligible five after me had already had kids. (Several of the boys have been fathers for a while.) I'm excited to get Bodhi together with his second cousins now. He digs it. My cousin Missy and her family just moved to right outside of Waco, about an hour and a half's drive from here. She has made the trek to visit us at least half a dozen times, and I love it. She is a strong, compassionate woman. Been through some harrowing shit in her day. Just became a GRANDMOTHER, of all things. She's the first of us to do that. Theressa, born just recently. I love that Missy has reached out to me and that we are more connected now. Her knowledge of herbs and supplements and food is admirable. Though of course since she is my cousin I have to get huffy and competitive about it. (I can be a dumbass like that sometimes.) We love that we're holding down the vegetarian end of our carnivorous clan.

What my body needs now is a yoga practice. I woke up having dreamed of doing backbends! I'm all in love with Inner Spiral right now. Oh sure, I've spent some time with I.S. but lately it's been a lot more intense and important.  It's like suddenly realizing that this great friend I have is actually sexy, and now we wanna be together as More Than Friends. Like that. It's the Expanding Spiral. So not only am I making more room and creating more freedom in my own body -- it's also the ultimate principle for Fertility, I've learned -- but in my Life as well.

Yay for that.

My body continues to change, post partum. I had a regular period last cycle, the first one in a year. I felt so relieved, so complete again. Then with this cycle came intense abdominal pain, an ultrasound, a gallbladder cleanse and intensive acupuncture and herbs. And no bleeding. Until today. Almost two weeks later than expected. Hot flashes all last week and stress through the roof. Also a couple of loving, uplifting yoga practices and a massage. So changing is just riding the rollercoaster a little better. And eating a lot more green and fresh food. Except of course for cornbread stuffing and French bread.

I still dream of having another baby, which is still an argument with my husband that no one can win. Perhaps my fears about Bodhi growing up and older alone without a sibling are part of my motivation to connect him with his family. He seems to love it, though, as I did when I was small. I just think, sometimes, that as an older parent I may not be around another 46 years to see him through some tough times. Though I hope to.