Kelsey called the other night. She was somewhere where there is snow and is skiing for a brief pre-Christmas vacation. From the sound of it, she was liking the sitting around reading part more than the actual skiing part, kind of like what I would be doing if forced to go somewhere really cold where people strap skis on their feet and hurl themselves down mountains.
"Can I take our daughter skiing?" Arny asked after he got off the phone with Kelsey. "Awwwwww, that's so sweet" I said. "Of course you can take her skiing". Like he needs my permission, but that's what I love about him - he asks these things. "Will you come with us?" he said. "Oh No!!!!" I thought, picturing being carried off the kiddy slope being surrounded by 5 year olds asking "why was the old lady on our slope, anyway?". But, being the agreeable person I am said feebly "OK". I figure I have a couple of years to come up with a really good excuse....or, enough courage to actually do it.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Horoscope for December 20
Daily Sagittarius Forecast:
You'll soon get word from someone in a distant land. They want you to come visit!
You'll soon get word from someone in a distant land. They want you to come visit!
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Parental Toys
Sometime after the Toys"R"us adventure, Arny and I discussed the whole subject of toys and decided we would only buy for our child what we would want to play with. Not what we would have wanted to play with when we were one year old, but what we would play with now. Hence the Fisher Price alphabet blocks listed on our baby registry. Those things are so cool..I digress.
Shortly after that, we received the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, a cornucopia of adult toys, and we both found things we wanted - me, a race track, with little tiny Formula One cars and over 35 feet of track, and him, a flying remote control helicopter. Instant Christmas presents!!! Yes, we decided those would be our Christmas presents to each other. Except, my birthday happens to be December 12th (for all of you who knew and forgot, shame....) and Arny was so excited about the race track, he decided to buy it for my birthday present instead.
It is now set up and taking up our entire living room area - we have to step through and around it to get anywhere, but we are having loads of fun. It is a real test of the stability of one's marriage to jointly put together a track with 5 zillion pieces and not kill each other:
"Honey, pass me an "e" piece?"
"sure sweetie, just tell me which is the "e" piece"
"it's like the "d" piece, but shorter"
"ok, but what does the "d" piece look like"
"it's right there on the instructions"
"they look the same to me"
"here, use this one"
"are you sure this is the right piece"
"close enough"
Ok, so we had to put it together twice, but it works. But alas, it will only stay up until we leave to bring home the baby. Why, you ask? Because, silly us, we forgot about the choking hazard present with something that has 5 zillion pieces - some of which are quite small. Poo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps I'll have to go out and get those alphabet blocks a little early....
Shortly after that, we received the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, a cornucopia of adult toys, and we both found things we wanted - me, a race track, with little tiny Formula One cars and over 35 feet of track, and him, a flying remote control helicopter. Instant Christmas presents!!! Yes, we decided those would be our Christmas presents to each other. Except, my birthday happens to be December 12th (for all of you who knew and forgot, shame....) and Arny was so excited about the race track, he decided to buy it for my birthday present instead.
It is now set up and taking up our entire living room area - we have to step through and around it to get anywhere, but we are having loads of fun. It is a real test of the stability of one's marriage to jointly put together a track with 5 zillion pieces and not kill each other:
"Honey, pass me an "e" piece?"
"sure sweetie, just tell me which is the "e" piece"
"it's like the "d" piece, but shorter"
"ok, but what does the "d" piece look like"
"it's right there on the instructions"
"they look the same to me"
"here, use this one"
"are you sure this is the right piece"
"close enough"
Ok, so we had to put it together twice, but it works. But alas, it will only stay up until we leave to bring home the baby. Why, you ask? Because, silly us, we forgot about the choking hazard present with something that has 5 zillion pieces - some of which are quite small. Poo!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps I'll have to go out and get those alphabet blocks a little early....
Monday, December 12, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Anonymous is one smart cookie...
"Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging onto a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments, I'm hurtling across space in between bars. Most of the time I'm hanging on for dear life to my trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along at a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while as I'm merrily swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance and I see another bar swinging towards me. It's empty and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart-of- hearts, I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present, well-known bar to move to the new one.
Each time it happens, I hope and pray that I won't have to grab the new trapeze bar. But in my knowing place I realize that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and for sometime I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing, I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss -that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer an alternative. And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of "the past is gone, the future is not yet here." It is called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.
I have noticed that in our culture this transition zone is looked upon as a nothing - a no-place between places. Surely the old trapeze bar was real and that new one coming towards me, I hope that's real, too. But the void in between? That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting "nowhere" that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and that the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void where the real change, the real growth, occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored - even savored. Even with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth filled, most passionate, most expansive moments in our lives."
And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the transition between trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar...any bar...is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void --we just may learn how to fly.
--Anonymous
Each time it happens, I hope and pray that I won't have to grab the new trapeze bar. But in my knowing place I realize that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar and for sometime I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing, I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss -that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantees, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer an alternative. And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of "the past is gone, the future is not yet here." It is called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.
I have noticed that in our culture this transition zone is looked upon as a nothing - a no-place between places. Surely the old trapeze bar was real and that new one coming towards me, I hope that's real, too. But the void in between? That's just a scary, confusing, disorienting "nowhere" that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and that the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void where the real change, the real growth, occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored - even savored. Even with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth filled, most passionate, most expansive moments in our lives."
And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the transition between trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar...any bar...is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can also be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void --we just may learn how to fly.
--Anonymous
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