cookie

-photo by renee lewis

there's something about baking..not that i do it much, but i do love the process and result. of course, the best part is the aroma when something delicious is in the oven.

watching todd turn into a teenager reminds me of baking. i've been so, so impatient for him to get there. to see how he turns out. to watch him rise through those pivotal years into a young man. but now that it's upon me i can only wish i'd savored the process more because all too quickly it's passing in front of my eyes and soon, like a batch of fresh cookies, he'll be gone. already he's gone a lot more..

i'm in luck though; because although he isn't as pliable and doesn't smell as good as he used to, i still have the sweet, sweet morsels and a little more to sink my teeth into.

d: patience with the process
b: never mind my inexperience, i make a damn good cookie
g: the crumbs i get are just as delicious as they ever were

winner

last week i had two training clients make quite opposite but both powerful insights about themselves. one woman told me that she needed to be pushed because she doesn't believe she can push herself beyond "hard". fairly common refrain in personal training. even other trainers have told me they regularly hire trainers themselves to get that extra push beyond the comfort zone. i firmly believe we are predominantly limited by our minds..our bodies have much more capacity than we give them credit for.

the other woman though said something i have never heard from another client and regrettably don't often experience myself. she said, "I hear what you're asking me to do, and I think 'no problem', envisioning myself doing it with ease. But then, I try and my body just isn't cooperative." i reassured her that her body would catch up quickly but as we worked through the next set, my mind really went to work on that idea. it truly is the mind of an athlete. one who believes they have ability beyond what they see. this woman may voice embarrassment about her current fitness level, but the picture she has of her body's capability carries much more weight.

without a doubt she will be successful.
without a doubt she will master the challenge she faces.
without a doubt, because her mind's eye already has envisioned that reality for her.

this weekend we spent hours on the sidelines of luke's soccer tournament. of course i love watching him play, but the young female athletes always impress me too. part of it is no doubt a longing for something I missed as a kid, but setting that aside, i simply enjoy these young women and their energy. their feminine sides merged with this primitive, masculine drive to compete and win.

a little girl, about luke's age, was taking a pit stop with her parents beside me and I overheard..
"You make a good argument.."
"I know. That's why I'm going to be an attorney...not that it's my dream but I'm still going to," she replied to her dad, matter of fact.
...a few minutes pass...
as if remembering, or suddenly catching up with the dialogue, her father says, "What's your dream?"
"Fashion design."
no comment...another few minutes pass.
"I'll see you later."
"Bye honey. Don't wear yourself out before the game.."

bye honey. no time for dreaming.
bye honey. back to business now.
bye honey. win.

admittedly it was a snippet overheard. i have no idea the real nature of their relationship. i have no idea if the pre-teen aspiring fashion designer has a different dream every day. but never mind all that because this conversation happens all the time with children and parents and adults and supervisors and students and teachers with the same moral.

do what you know. play it safe. far fetched ideas about ourselves are for children.

i reject that notion. i believe far fetched ideas about ourselves..our potential.. our dreams: they are for athletes. and i, for one, am an athlete.

d: big dreams come true
b: i am an athlete
g: athletes are winners

thawing

for the past three days i've been itching to write. i've opened my computer at night and considered putting my disconnected and jumbled thoughts and feelings to words. and then, because my fingers wouldn't move, i didn't.

and i don't mean 'wouldn't move' in the figurative writer's block way. i mean, 'wouldn't move' as in stiff as little twigs and unable to bend. or maybe a better visual would be popsicles.

last weekend we enjoyed the last of the fall weather i suppose. it was glorious for halloween. i was able to build a fire and wear a short skirt on sunday night and neither felt out of place or uncomfortable. the skies were clear and warm during the day and mildly cool in the evening. but monday morning, we woke to a rainy winter.

i quickly got on the phone with the natural gas company because the forecast showed temperatures dropping into the 30's with freeze warnings for the latter part of the week. [side note: our 'new' old house uses gas only for the furnace, so no need to turn it on until..umm... now.] of course, i couldn't get an appointment for another five days, so for the past three we've frozen.

i've found myself on a couple separate occasions sitting in the drive way or a sunny parking lot in my car. reading. napping. eating. just being warm. and i've vowed every which way from sunday that next year i'll turn the damn gas on in august, just to be safe. because nothing makes a house feel less like a home than a temperature that makes you want to torch it.

with all that in mind, i have much to say. i've just finished a tremendous book. a tremendously dog-eared book now. i cried and laughed and cried my way from cover to cover and then felt a bit depressed that it was over. i will write about it. i've seen a movie that i'm still marinating in. and i watched a new tv show that's on my mind as well. did you hear that portia de rossi has a new book out about her struggle with eating disorder? the interview i heard with her moved me to tears in the car. the book is ordered.

i have much to write about. but tonight is the first weekend haley and i have had alone in a month and she's on her way home. so it will have to wait another day. our now warm house is about to get hot...

d: candles on. phones off.
b: my homework and my housework are done. (the dryer makes an excellent space heater in a bind - make note.)
g: heat.

dis-comforted

they say there's comfort in numbers. they say that misery loves company.

today is election day. today is foreclosure day. one has a silver lining and the other doesn't seem to. (yet)

i've been at the old house several times over the past few weeks. thinking each time that i'm done and then discovering another nook of memories unsorted and uncollected. the scent of the house was the most poignant and debilitating when i first returned. though empty and unoccupied, it still smelled of us. i lived there longer than any other house in my life and every part of it was chosen by me, from the dirt it was built on to the roof line and everything in between. for a person whose childhood homes outnumbered her years and her control, it was my first sanction of stability and independence.

and yet that stability slipped out from under my feet like quicksand. and my sanctuary turned albatross. and today, foreclosure day, when i finally have the utilities turned off and have relinquished ownership of 3910 embassy way i'm choosing gratitude over guilt and hope over shame. because the stability and security i imagined bound to an address has put down deeper roots and bolstered my spirit in a home i only lay the faintest claim to.

and i take comfort in numbers. one in ninety-eight households in atlanta are involved in a foreclosure. that's the latest data, just released a few days ago. as a city we should be feeling very comforted, very comfortable indeed.

as an american citizen on election night though, i'm feeling very uncomfortable this evening. i turned off the play-by-play coverage instead electing to take my medicine in one disgusting swallow tomorrow morning.

and in a city where the three metro-est congressional districts, and the ones surrounding and encompassing my entire life, are represented by democrats i take little comfort in the adage: misery loves company; for the misery outweighs their company tonight.

d: a miraculous final tally
b: discovery that stability and security are not defined by brick and plaster, but rather the love within
g: closure by way of foreclosure

easy

well, it's been ages since i've written anything. at least anything worth publishing. and honestly, i don't know that this will be any different; but i'm going to give it a shot at least.

luke and i just joined my mom for four days in our nation's capitol. my earliest memories are of that city so it's a special treat to go back and share it with my boys. the only two visits i've made there since i was five years old have been these excursions with my own children. the significance and energy of the city was lost on me thirty years ago, as i'm sure it is on them too, but the magnitude has made an impact on me that i have a hard time articulating.

the trip to dc was sandwiched between pride weekend, which coincided with haley's birthday, and a trip this upcoming weekend to arkansas to celebrate my parents' thirty year anniversary. to say i'm overwhelmed with celebration would be an understatement. the wave of serotonin is crashing on a beach of sleep deprivation.

but, all things considered, i'm finding things easy. travel usually isn't. party throwing usually isn't. being a major contributor at work on top of all that, usually isn't. and balancing the whole stack of plates, usually isn't.

but it is.

i'm not sure where to attribute the ease. i don't think there's a single source, but if i had to guess i think haley characterized it last night in an unrelated comment she made. she told me that she can sense herself feeling like a simpler approach to her wardrobe would be just fine. she chalks it up to aging, (she's aged exponentially since her birthday apparently) but i prefer to think of it as maturity. (not that we're all that mature, granted.) but when she said that, it made me smile and it made me happy. i could relate, not really in the wardrobe department so much, but just in general. and together...

easy does it.

i think i've mentioned before that i'm drawn to the energy of middle aged women. i always enjoyed the company of my mom's friends when they were in their 40's and 50's and admired the peace with which they move through the world. the wisdom of their experience. the accomplishment in their lives. now it seems that more of my own friends are in that age bracket and it feels very warm. very comfortable. (perhaps we are aging exponentially after all!)

easy does it.

unfortunately, it seems that easy doesn't stimulate me to write as much as i'd like. something to work on. and so here i am.

d: more words on paper.. er, or pixels.
b: simplicity..maturity.. easily
g: a wave of serotonin

hurry

today i went by my old house to check on things and fill the fish pond. i hadn't been there in a week or so and it's always a treat to see what the neighbors have lifted off our property in the interim. this time however it wasn't the neighbors (i think everything has already been taken that's not tied down), but rather the bank.

we're slated for foreclosure next week barring the miracle of a buyer or the megaball in friday's drawing. i've resigned myself to that possibility over the past six months as i watched my realtor drop the price and drop the price and drop the price and still nobody, not a single soul, even coming to see it; let alone making an offer. but today when i showed up at the house i was not expecting to see that the bank had jumped the gun a bit. i found two of the three locks changed. the utilities (which i'm still paying for) turned off. and the house officially 'winterized'. gee thanks mr. mortgage company.

apparently they are in a goddamn hurry. and now their hurry has killed my fish and spoiled the food i still had in the freezer.

i do plan to set them straight in the morning, for what it's worth. that house is still mine and they have no business changing the locks or even stepping foot in there until that's not the case.

after that fun discovery at the house i went for a run at the park, mega's leash around my waist and her relentless hurry motivating me over the hills and around the strolling pedestrians. i corrected her too, as i wanted a jog rather than a sprint.

on the way from the park to pick up todd at taekwondo i saw a man drive away from a gas pump and take the hose with him. it ripped right out of the machine still in his truck's gas tank. apparently he was in a hurry. seems to be going around, sort of like the back-to-school-cold.

i have a close friend who's found herself in a different kind of hurry. rushing a relationship to maturity before its time. it's caused her some heartache and my heart has broken in empathy over the past week.

slow down.
slow down, my friend.
slow down, my pet.
slow down, my bank.
slow down, strangers in your cars.

our days are so full this fall. the boys have earlier school alarms and later bed times. in between there are more lessons and practices and homework. i have more varied obligations and passions. and though the agenda is multiplying, the hours are not.

and even so, i'm choosing to slow down. each minute, even when there aren't enough, is felt more tangibly and deliciously when i don't hurry it away. i am reminded of this tonight. the air is crisp. the windows are open. fall is leisurely rolling in. this season between the scorching and the freezing is nature's reminder to me that there's no need to hurry.

d: less hurry
b: more delicious minutes
g: fall's reminder

vroom

vroom. tonight my mind is racing and i'm trying hard to keep up.

todd has a friend over and the only thing that they've found to entertain themselves with is some abduction role play; to which i've now put a firm foot down upon. the sound of falling bodies, hysterical laughter, and the ensuing eruption of ferocious barking bedlam quickly alerted me that i needed to intervene. now they're playing some sort of game which involves a buzzer, but even that's preferable to the whispers of 'we need more duct tape' that i heard half an hour ago.

vroom.
on my last road trip with the boys they spent a good hour or two asking me 'this or that' questions about high priced sports cars. the questions went something like, 'bugati or aston martin?' to which i'd reply, 'umm, can i see pictures?' then they'd google up some photos on my phone and i'd carefully choose, 'the red one.'

my education on two seater cars that reach stupid high speeds in milliseconds and cost stupid high dollars hasn't been very thorough, i have to admit. but really, i haven't noticed. currently driving the sportiest car i've ever even considered, a mustang; i spend more time daydreaming about an outback station wagon with four doors and all wheel drive than a bigger engine and less seats.

but i do try to take note of things that show up in my life and today has been strangely synchronistic on this topic.

this morning at luke's soccer game todd and i were eavesdropping on the parents sitting on his other side. it was hard not to because in between the 'great shot max!' cheers, one of the fathers was waxing poetic about his deliberation over which ultra high end sports car he was going to buy. or maybe he already had. i couldn't follow it. i did glance over todd's head to see what a person who had six figures of purely disposable spending cash looked like and honestly, i think the man may want to consider something with a bench seat rather than a bucket. that aside, he and his friend were honest-to-god debating the pros and cons of brands that i've only heard mentioned by my children and the guys on top gear.

i didn't think twice of it after the game, until haley and i pulled up behind a sparkly, shiny red ferrari. i'm sure it's not the first one i've ever seen, but perhaps it's the closest i've ever been. i even took a picture to show the boys.

vroom.

and then, a few hours later, walking out of publix i see a car i've never seen before. not in person at least. i watch the breathtaking black sportscar pull into a parking spot far from the door and immediately i ready my phone to take a picture. it's a lotus.

vroom.

i'm fairly observant when it comes to cars, mostly because i'm looking at their tags for messages and their bumper stickers for solidarity, and i see a representative sample of expensive cars here in midtown. but i do not see ferraris and lotuses (loti?) on any sort of regular basis. and so i took note.

and my mind started racing (appropriate, no?) to land on the symbolism in this entertaining synchronicity..and it hasn't stopped. along the way, i considered the possibility that perhaps we won the megamillion last night. (because an overpriced sports car is definitely at the top of the boys' lottery wish list.) so, i dutifully went to my car (again, appropriate eh?) to retrieve my weekly lottery ticket. pulled up the numbers on my computer. and though we didn't win the jackpot, we did in fact match on the megaball (finally the dog comes through: $2!).

vroom!

speaking of cars, my car recently had the best type of transmission failure. the kind that requires towing, loaner cars, and the entire thing to be replaced. at 97000 miles with a 100000 mile warranty. indeed, the best kind of transmission repair.

so i'm still racing through possibilities.. wondering what my three brushes with automotive opulence signify...and i'll let you know when i get there.

d: more automotive abundance speeding my way.
b: i'm paying attention and picking up speed.
g: i splurged on the extended warranty.