It has been a lovely few days here at camp.  It has not, however, been without incident.  Wednesday, I worked half a day and we loaded up the car (and the cat!!) and headed out to camp.  Despite my fears, Puddy cat has done amazingly well here at camp and she will be joining us every weekend from now on. It makes life much easier since I can administer her blood pressure medication here & we don’t have to worry about getting home early to make sure she doesn’t go too long without meds.  Also, I don’t have to board her and deal with all that expense and anxiety about her being in a little metal cage with no window and no love.  (She’s currently curled up on the bed with me, blissfully purring away.)

Wednesday night I fired up my netbook and taught my 7pm class successfully. My 9pm class, however, did not go as well. The internet fritzed out about 5 minutes before I planned to end class. No harm, no foul for my students, who still got full credit, but it was one of those straws on the camel’s back for me. I hate teaching at camp because my little netbook has a poor connection to the internet and the wifi out here can be spotty at times anyway.  It makes coming out here early in the week very anxiety provoking for me.

Cor went and helped the boys with the Thanksgiving day prep while I taught – she chopped an entire 10lb bag of onions herself – and all the boys were extraordinarily grateful because they were tear producing!!

Thursday was filled with food, friends, laughter and love.  We had a lovely communal Thanksgiving meal (complete with real place settings!!), a lovely campfire, and we were very thankful for all we had.

Friday, I sat down to do some grading and take some trainings for work and poof – there went the internet again. That was it. I got up, told Cor that I wanted to do the unthinkable… I wanted to go to Walmart on Black Friday.  Luckily, one of the only Walmarts nearby is in Sebring, Fl – a tiny little berg just up the road from camp.  So we toddled off to Black Friday in the backwater of Florida and I bought a new laptop.  (Seriously, they only had one type of laptop available – luckily it was a Toshiba & has worked out very nicely.)  We did a little shopping and then ate at Bob Evans – and we both drank 2 cappuccinos each!!  We came back to camp, went & played bingo, then Cor napped while I went out to the back 40 for a huge bonfire.

Today, I broke out the new computer and did some grading. Cor did a little weekend cooking and Camp celebrated the start of the Christmas season with our very own version of Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade – complete with Santa and Mrs. Claus!  I switched our C-9 lights out from red, orange & yellow to red, green & white.  I staked out some rope lights with the candy cane stakes Cor bought – so now our site is cheery and bright.  We had our normal Saturday night potluck with the rest of the boys and in a couple of hours, the Saturday night disco thumpa thumpa will begin.

Tomorrow, we’ll rest, nap, socialize, and then pack up to head home.  I’ve needed this break and am seriously contemplating looking at my calendar to take some additional time off before the holidays. I need the mental down time.

In random news – I finished reading Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire.  I am not entirely sure what to say about the series.  I enjoyed many parts of it and others were tedious. There are too many loose ends Maguire leaves loose throughout the book for me to feel very comfortable with. I get that he was working with Baum’s world and took liberties to make it his own, but he introduces ideas and never goes anywhere with them. I think I would have been a little more satisfied with his series/ending if he had taken a little more risk and given some closure to the story. As it is, you’d never know this book is meant to be the end of a series – it is left wide open for another book to follow.

In other random television news – if you don’t follow me on Facebook (is anybody NOT on Facebook these days?) – you might not have realized that I found a new TV show I like. Actually, it’s not new at all, but I just found it, so I’m all enamored as if it were new. Which, I’m glad it isn’t because I have 6 whole seasons of it to watch!  It’s Doctor Who – the 2006 to now incarnation, not the one from the 1970s. After we found the back seasons on Playstation Network, we thought it might be cheaper to buy each season on DVD, rather than pay $2 for each episode. Wrong. On Amazon.com, one season retails at $80 … on sale for $40.  Each season has 13 episodes at $2 each is $26 for a season that I can save on a memory card.  You do the math. No DVDs for us.

Finally, I really am truly grateful for all the good things I have going on in my life right now. Cor and I talked about how intensely stressed I’ve been for the past year. It’s been really difficult, and with her upcoming surgeries, I will probably continue to be stressed… but we’re taking steps to take care of ourselves & remember to be grateful. I’m grateful for all the blessings I have – especially the people I love.

I’m nervous about tomorrow.  I finally agreed to let my dentist replace my old metal fillings with new ones. I only have 2 tiny fillings but it still involves a drill and shots in my mouth.

And I teach 2 classes tomorrow night.

Nervous.

About an hour or two after we ate, we had a small miscommunication issue. Out of nowhere, my anger flared to a point where I literally got up and went to bed. I laid there for hours, unable to sleep but also unable to turn off my brain or my anger.  I started to realize a few things as I laid there seething – first, that I felt horrible physically.  Like I wanted to die – and my digestive system was taking me out. Second, the issues I was angry about had nothing to do with the miscommunication but were reflective of some communication issues that I wanted to address.  I finally fell asleep and had trouble dreams.

I woke up and I wasn’t angry. I still had all the insights I had gained in my frustrated state but now that the emotions weren’t roiling, I was able to figure out how to approach the conversation without it feeling like an indictment, blaming, or any of the other issues that come up when I try to process immediately (in the throes of anger).

Come to find out, we were more on the same page than I thought – and it really was just a miscommunication issue!

So, thanks for letting me have my little navel gazing sessions – I really do learn from them (and any/all feedback I get from you guys)!

Sure, that’s part & parcel of the whole supervisor gig, but I’m trying to do it more often and make it more of a habit in all spheres of my life.  Now, let me qualify that for a minute … I’m certainly NOT going to take responsibility for something that I shouldn’t or don’t need to own.  Part of this whole realm of growth involves me identifying, hopefully accurately, what is mine and what isn’t mine… and enforcing some good boundaries if necessary.

But on the whole, it feels good … it feels good to say, “Hey, I totally get that we screwed that up and I am genuinely sorry – to the point that I will personally put measures in place to help ensure it doesn’t happen again… to you or anyone else.”  Yeah. That’s a nice feeling.  The small down side, which I’ve discussed here before, is that it also has the potential to set me up for a sense of battle when those boundaries get crossed or if someone tries to blame me unfairly.

Awareness – damned double edged sword.

I started off the day on a very slow simmer – which has escalated through a series of events – into a full rolling boil. The little things I can see in hindsight were me being overly sensitive and I will readily admit to and cop that apology. Mea culpa. But some of the bigger issues, the ones that set my teeth on edge and have everything to do with my inherent sense of truth, justice, ethics, etc … how how how do I find the resources to see past my rage and try to be a peacemaker and solution builder?

(Obviously, I do my best, but that pit of lava in my guts tells me that there are still some unresolved emotions down there.)

Maybe, just maybe, I’m guilty of taking life too seriously. Of taking myself too seriously, perhaps, as well?  Would I be offended if I didn’t care what other people thought about me or my reputation? Would I be knotted up if I remembered that people stir drama up to avoid dealing with their own emotions & that it all blows over in one form or fashion? Would I be so upset if I allowed natural consequences to occur instead of trying to always control everything?

I just felt the boiling pit die down a notch, so I take it that I’m on the right path. Now, to try to keep this awareness when I’m in the thick of the boiling… that’s a bigger task.

Where’s my clown nose when I need it?

As I sit here, enjoying the breezy morning, the red and green head of one of my caladiums is dancing. They make me think of my father and our house in Pinehurst. He had huge caladiums planted in front of the house in all different varieties. He and my grandparents had spacious greenhouses behind their homes with all manner of hanging and potted plants. I didn’t inherit the green thumb but it did foster a healthy appreciation for beautiful growing things.

When we drive out to camp through the fields of sugar and corn, I always smile and mumble “high as an elephant’s eye” in honor of my grandfather. I loved joining him on his morning walk around his property and vividly remember one morning when a snake crossed our path as we traversed the cement garden wall. He stopped me and we silently watched the little creature cross and slither down the wall and into the neighbor’s property. There was no fear, just an appreciation and respect.  When the snakes go about their business here in camp, there’s a similar respect and fascination – we watch them but do not disturb. They are residents just as we are.

My perception of the world, how certain activities should (or shouldn’t) be done, all I am and know are products of interactions and experiences with others.

There’s an image that has been shared lately on Facebook that really struck a chord for me:

I think this little saying has a powerful message but that message is a double edged sword. Not only does it tell us that we should value ourselves and our love as something worthy and precious, but it also reminds us that we must remember to reach out to those we love, so that we express how valuable that relationship is to us as well.

Over the past several months, I’ve come to realize that I see my close relationships differently than I did in the past. In the past, I felt a desperation when it came to make sure I stayed connected with people I cared about. I attribute it to having many losses and overcompensation for those losses… but behind it was also a sense of insecurity.  I thought that if I kept reaching out to them, maybe I’d be important to them. Maybe they’d care about me the way I cared about them.  But that wasn’t quite the Truth.

The Truth, that I discovered, was that I wasn’t valuing myself enough. I thought that if I connected with enough people, their value of me defined my worth. I have realized, over time and through the genuine and authentic love of some incredible and true friends, that I can set appropriate boundaries and that (gasp) everyone doesn’t have to like me. I learned that people we loved and were close to in the past, aren’t necessarily the people we are close to now – that those connections, while meaningful and special, don’t have to be permanent and life long.  That I can still love them and they me, even though we have grown apart and away from one another.

As I write this, part of my brain is looking at the words & saying, from a nice safe distance, “well DUH!!!” and rolling it’s eyes like a teenager who knows everything. It feels like a Dorito moment (the moment, as an adult, when I realized that corn tortilla chips were actually made from ACTUAL corn tortillas, cut & fried) – yeah… like that.

There are times when I want to sit down and write for hours, because if I don’t, I feel like something within me might explode due to the pressure of too many thoughts and words building up inside somewhere, and other times when I sit and my mind is blank – devoid of a single solitary coherent thought.

I feel like a study of polar opposites, of extremes. There are moments I will feel content with the entirety of the Universe and others when I feel a mountain of anxiety & uncertainty. Times of joy and contentment when my confidence is so high I feel like I could fly and when it seems all is against me and the concept of hope seems foreign and alien.

And then there are all the in-between times when I simply exist. When I am. There are no disturbances in thought or emotion – no sense of positive or negative – just simple and pure being. And I wonder, is this the same for everyone?

so far, i haven’t lost a huge amount of weight, but i’ve lost most of my taste for carbs. i still crave the occasional sweet treat and i have found that larabars (the ones with chocolate chips) do the trick for a nice little sweet reward. i am changing how i look at exercise too. i need want to make more time for exercise, but not out of a sense of duty or obligation – but because i like to play. i feel good when i move my body and when i don’t, my stress piles up on me like dirty laundry in a dark corner.

last week we were supposed to be on vacation in the Keys, but our RV had some major water damage & we had to end up trading it in and getting a new one (financial win-win but we didn’t realize it on the front end & the stress was HUGE). i ended up working the first part of the week while sweetie was at camp getting everything put away. i knew i needed to work & get some things done, but i knew i needed to get away from things for a while too.  once i finally got to camp, it took a good 12 hours for my head to get right.

i’m back home now and in a much better head space than i was this time last week. there’s a local family farm not too far from here that sells raw milk. i sent them an email. we stopped on the way home from camp at a little family farm that raises goats & sells queso blanco. we’re looking into finding grass-fed local meat. sweetie isn’t really doing the paleo thing with me, but she’s trying to be as supportive of my choice as possible. she even bought me a huge tub of salted cashews to munch on.

i have been paying myself lip-service for a while now – telling myself that i need to take care of myself, make better choices, etc… but when i tell me that i *need* to do anything, it feels like an obligation – like i’m currently doing something *wrong* … not terribly motivational. right now, i feel good. i feel happy, whole, and strong. i am not sure where this journey is going to take me but all i can do is stay open to where it leads.

there are parts of me i feel like i lost somewhere along the way.  have you ever felt that? i’m not sure if i’ll be able to find them or discover other parts of myself… but i’m terribly curious about where those parts went (and why i feel like i lost them).