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Creativity

I’m going through something big. I just came out of a month long “Dark Night Of the Soul”…. yuck.

One of my favorite recovery saying is “suicide is a permanant solution to a temporary problem”. I refuse to put my family (however estranged some of us might be) through another funeral! Every problem has many solutions….. Sometimes the solution is to just sit tight and wait for more to be revealed. Never give up! Never loose faith! Everything changes. Life is change and sometimes shit has to fall apart before it can fall together…. sometimes as is the case right now, my life looks like a kitchen remodel. Thank the universe for a 10th step. Everyday i take my own inventory and ask myself if ive done the best i can. And i asked myself if i owe myself or anybody else an amends. Today so far im pretty clear that its a successful day!!! Im clean/sober, single, lonely for a good man, have a splitting head ache…but i got chocolate chip pancakes made for my kid and her friend who spent the night…
Got to watch a flour throwing party unfold in my kitchen as we were making pizzas last night. Flour is a beautiful thing when thrown. It makes a pale misty cloud…of course it also makes a heck of a mess hahaha!! But i had planned on cleaning the floors really good last night anyway. So then the girls decided to make flour snow angels on the kichen floor. It was priceless.

I miss so many of those priceless moments because working full time and doing it all alone means im frequently in a hurry or stressed out about money. Time and money are always in such short supply!!! So last night was a precious rare moment.

Im grateful.

And i finished my first project yesterday. Its drying at the clay studio. I will start on the next one today. Trying to get my hands and my heart to remember how to do it, praying thatlo i can do it- that i can make a better life for me and my daughter….that i can make it.

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Fried Chicken

I am so computer retarded….is it possible to change a blog’s name?

For heaven’s sake, everytime I open wordpress and see wingsofbreath’s blog…. i think of wings and breasts…which makes me think of the last time I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken… on the way to the beach in July….lovely road trip. And its fracking February this weekend and snowy and icy in the driveway still….wtf?

I don’t want to think about July and Kentucky Fried chicken in the effing dead zone of winter! I’m trying to find some acceptance here for goodness sake!

Wingsandbreast’s bog. Sheesh. Worst blog ever lol ;0)

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Creativity and vision

“If I see it I’ll believe it!” Was my mantra but now its the other way around….

Seems like those slippery little beliefs that hide around the periphery are often the ones that shape my thoughts, feelings and choices?!! I am trying to refrain from succombing to shyness… im really hoping I can let go of all  this social anxiety i carry around…. the beliefs are so sneaky and skillful at remaining just out of arms reach. But i know theyre there because I act out on them daily. They are like tiny invisible parenthesis that keep me marginalized at all times. I think being raised by a narcissist may have played a part in setting up that pattern…staying in the margin and out of the spot light meant survival. But now that the war is over, I find that I cant get my soldiers to lay down their weapons or come out of their foxholes. It might be a beautiful summer day in a grassy field populated by children flying kites…. but parts of me would never even see it all because the fear of stepping out and picking up a kite is so strong sometimes….. and yet I dont want my kid to be afraid. So… i feel it, breathe thru it and dive in.

Todays dive was a big one….I played my flute again today to support the “church” choir. I use quotation marks because this place is open and embracing. No judgement. Anybody is welcome. All loving traditions are respected. I like it a lot. Anyway… I hadn’t played since the last time i went (which was a month ago..) The length of my absence was probably due in part to a need to recover from playing in front of sooooo many people for the holiday performance last month… So today I gave it another shot. And flubbed up the entry solo but it was ok…I hope…no one kicked me out 🙂

The nicest thing has happened tho since I turned 50

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Creativity and vision

“If I see it I’ll believe it!” Was my mantra but now its the other way around….

Seems like those slippery little beliefs that hide around the periphery are often the ones that shape my thoughts, feelings and choices?!!

So I played my flute again today to support the church choir. Hadn’t played since the last time i went which was a month ago…. i flubbed up the entry solo a little but it was ok…..Im hoping.

The nicest thing has happened tho since I turned 50. I feel differently about mistakes. The risks seem so much more worth it these days. Maybe its because im in the last half of my life. Or maybe minor flub ups just seem pretty minor now that I’ve lived long enough to make a bunch of true major flub ups. Its all relative…

I got a 50 minute walk in, thanks to my neighbors. There is a pleasant buzzing in my musclrs and a shriveled brown leaf stuck on my shoe. I have just enough time to paint for a few minutes before its tim eto fold laundry and start supper. Not a bad ending to an all too short weekend before my cluster-fuck work whirlwind starts in th emorning. I love my work but single parenting is physically demanding, wih or wihout work on top of it all. My mantra this week is….
Just for today, I will do somehing creative and take good care of myself…

Taking care means:
Sleeping enough
Moderating sugar and caffeine
Staying out of worry!
Praying and meditating
Being creative
Stretching on the yoga mat daily
Squeezing in a few phone calls to friends…
DOWNTIME…EVEN IF ITS JUST 15 minutes to regroup….

Wish me luck and many blessings to all

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Turtle Shells and Deep Wells

Most of the time, I love what I do for a living. I think if I wasnt parenting completely single handedly I would love my job all the time. As it is though, I feel tapped out on most days…

Singley parenting is tough… no one who has an equal investment is available to run things by…to share the lode of tasks and appointments, risks and failures…no one to rejoice with at the wins and milestones…holidays and birthdays…long nights. Ug…I am depressing myself!!! But on the bright side!!! There is no one to shuttle my kid off to for days at a time… no one to ague with over value differences….no one to have to cooperate wih and compromise with….

Maybe being alone has a few silver linings. Ad things could certainly be worse….my kid is alive and well…slightly spoiled at times…has a heart of gold and a laugh more beautiful than any song bird’s….

I am so grateful to have a home tonight wih heat and running water. More killing cold weather is headed our way tonight. The folks I have worked with this week so far have had so much anxiety about the possibility of being back out on the street…. i can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices- panicked, desperate.

I know what that feels like…to be in that place where their seems to be no hope, trapped, alone, surreal- haunted. I feel a level of sadness this year that is deeper than other years. The state budget was cut by republicans who have taken over… they slashed our staff numbers and cut down the number of beds we can fill…

So now at noon everyday, i walk down an empty wing on the women’s dorm. Their is a strange and sterile echo off of the cinder block walls down the hall…walls that have been covered in one ghastly pastel shade after another, year after year for decades. It used to be that I would go to the dorms at noon and the halls would be full of music and  laughter and occassionally tears. Sounds of women on the phones in the lobby… talking to their children or mothers or marginal boyfriends…loud, braying announcements from over head used to annoy me and now I miss them so much. Its like trying to work inside the decaying carcass of a horse. The power and beauty of it slashed to bits.

So. Many. Addicts. Will.  Die.

Republics took over North Carolina and in their quest for fame and generational wealth for themselves, they are creating and perpetuating generational sickness and suffering for the “have-nots” in our state. Didnt Jesus say something about “he who takes care of the least of these”? IMHO, if we dont take care of our addicted and/or mentally ill brothers and sisters, then calling ourselves a nation of faith is a joke… knock knock….whos there?… Jesus…Jesus who? Indeed.
People are sitting today in North Carolina in positions of great power and luxury doing outrageous harm…Yes folks, we have an example of elite deviance at its finest.

All the women that I was able to refer to CASAWORKS Programs and the children of those women have been given an amazing opportunity to heal and become productive and healthy members of our society. Some of them have gotton word back to me that years later they are doing well and that their children are healing also.

But now that our census has been lowered, I wonder how many women this year will die or end up in prison because they were unable to get the help they so desperately needed? And what about their children and their childrens children? How can some people just not get it, not see what is happening here?
If this isnt some kind of class warfare, then I
dont know
what
the
f*!#
is.

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Water

Ah. So the noise I heard coming from the pipes was actually a gasping death sound after my neighbor’s buddy ran over the pipe, somehow bursting the line.

Rats. I saw a river flowing down the street as I tried to get my dog to poop. I assumed it was coming from up the street. At 2°, I wasnt in fact finding mode. I was in ” dammit hurry up and poop already!” mode…. Of course the river of water was coming from our duplex. Hahaha! Nothing funnier than two single moms with kids and crabs and birds and dogs trying to wing it with no water.

Its going to get ugly. Well, uglier…I am grateful to have water on a regular basis. I know that the truth is many people all over the world have to walk long distances for water on a daily basis. I still feel pissed to not have water right now. Tonight I dont care about third world countries. I carre about the fact that if the temps dont go back to normal, they cant fix the pipes. And I may be wearing “Depends” under my sexy, puffy snow pants that I wear to work so as not to literally freeze my ass off as I go from one building to the next.  Have some Gratitude you might suggest to me…. Yeah, yeah I get it.

However it all “depends” on your point of view. In other words, I bet you took a shower tonight and were able to flush. 😦

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It’s cold as frozen crapola outside ! !

Ok…. So the term “cold as a witch’s titty” …. it’s never been a favorite of mine. But honest to goodness, that one came to mind tonight as I stood outside begging my dog to hurry the f*%# up and poop already! I think its 2° before the wind chill factor here! (Why, oh why, do I not live in Hawaii? ?)

At any rate, I still have this obsession of finding a way to create a sustainable system to heal homelessness. I wasn’t sure~ I thought maybe the obsession would evaporate. But nope. Still in there. And I am dreading tomorrow. Been off for a while. Single parent. School break is over. Time to go back to work and face the music…so many people need housing right now. It’s a matter of life or death here. Addicts freeze under bridges, in holey tents or roll down hills into oncoming traffic. No one knows if those rollers were accidental deaths or suicides. Sometimes it seems like no one cares.

I might have a dozen tough cases tomorrow waiting for me to come back and give them some kind of hope… 😦
Only so much I can do!!

And meanwhile, I may have used up my last paid day off today because the school was closed because of the cold (wtf???) And I have no family for back up childcare and no friends that are well, off work etc etc etc…… So my pay will start getting docked now… I surely hope I dont end up homeless here soon!!

So how can I stay focused on solutions? I already know what the problem is, so no need to dwell there…
Well I guess I need to get off my sweet ass and finish this sculpture Im working on and start on some smaller, more marketable wall tiles to sell…hopefully to sell.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

And what the heck. If it turns out I can’t, at least I can say I did my best and had fun trying…

I want my kid to know how to have hope and faith in the face of huge obstacles. I want her to know there are always solutions- just sometimes they are hard to see. How can I expect her to ever have these traits if I dont role model them myself?? Addiction runs in both sides of her family. I have model recovery as best I can and hope that she never has to go down the road I got off of 23 years ago….

Just for today, I will have faith that there are more solutions than I can imagine and if I just dont give up, eventually I will find a way…

Yup. The pipes are making horrible noises, yikes…. 

“Cold as a witch’s titty” is a saying that freaks me out. Probably this is so because growing up, my mom’s.favorite saying was this : “tough titty said the kitty- the milk’s gone dry!”….. not that I was ever held or nursed much as an infant.

But life has taught me that not all mothers are good and not all witches are bad. Please, universe help me be a good mother, a good friend and a good advocate for my folks this week and please… please, please, please….. keep that milk coming.