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The word of the day is arbitrary and this sort of ties into what I was broaching on yesterday’s topic as it pertained to the article in the Atlantic. Our emotional buttons are not arbitrary but there are ways to rewire everything that comes at you.

Last night, I spent a fitful sleep contemplating again – contemplating a feeling of being a microbe adrift in a sea of fluorescent green jello. My body actually had a physical reaction to this emotional state – my legs kept twitching, my arms felt heavy, and my neck felt like it was a log connecting a balloon to a plank with springs attached to my extremities. I thought about taking something to help me sleep but instead I rode the wave of anxiety, fear, and overall disgust because by morning I knew I’d have an answer.

I woke this morning to this as my horoscope:
December 12, 2008
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
Today, share your thoughts with someone who has frustrated you a lot lately — and see how they react to what you have to say. Total honesty is required if you want to do this right, so don’t be afraid to fully disclose how you’re feeling about them or about what they did. The sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll know what’s next for the two of you. So now is not the time to pull any punches. You don’t have to be confrontational, you just have to be firm.

And not that I put all that amount of weight into a random horoscope for Taurus but I do believe in a world of connections and so since the horoscope for me today answered exactly the question I was asking myself, I thought huh.

Later, I was speaking to a friend who was disgruntled about a similar situation and she said to me, “I am not sure what is going on but don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s rain.” And again, from this random universe came another answer, arbitrary though it may be, to my question.

By mid morning, I knew that no matter what the universe throws you – whether it is a Mardi Gras bead or a curveball – you have one obligation in your life and that is to be true to yourself. In that truth, you cannot fear that you will lose anything, because you have only one thing of value to hold onto and that is you.

And I would give up the LaLa, and give up my job, and give up any other material object I own in the world if I had to be other than myself. And so, arbitrary though a horoscope may be, or as amusing and catchy as most Southernism indeed are, my word of the day is truth, not arbitrary – and my advice is if you are backed into a corner, smile but be honest.

Word up.

A friend sent an article from the Atlantic about how your last sensation is the one you perceive the strongest, so that sometimes what you think you experienced was not what really happened.

Today, I woke still peaked from this virus and looked out the window to see snow. Then the electricity went off and as the house grew colder, I finally took Loca outside to see what the snow was all about. My neighbor had made a snow woman with stones for nipples and radishes for eyes so she had this druggie aesthetic about her look.

My other neighbor came out and wanted a photo of herself in front of her house. Then I had her take one of me – only I was swaddled from head to toe so she could have been taking a photo of a coat hanger for all it mattered.

Then the electricity wasn’t coming back on but I was able to heat my tea on the gas stove.

Then the clocks were all wrong but I realized I was running late for a doctor’s appt as my doc had managed to slip me into a cancelled appointment – and when I got there it was jamming as no one had showed up in the morning and had all come apres snow!

They had to do this procedure on my sore ears that are inflamed from this virus and that sent my equilibrium on tilt.

At some point this felt like the longest day in the world but I realized that it was because nothing about it was familiar from start to finish. And for that reason, the sensation of time was elongated and my sensory system was being constantly engaged from staying warm to seeing white to having my ears prodded and almost fainting.

So when I read the article, it was a perfect summation of a mind-bending day.

The Times Picayune is conducting an opinion poll about oil and gas drilling in Lake Pontchartrain.  Please call (504) 826-3779.  You will get a recorded message that asks, “Should Lake Pontchartrain be open to oil and gas drilling”.  Please press 2 to vote NO.  Please vote today and forward this message immediately to your email lists.
 
Thanks so much,
Anne
 
 
Anne Rheams
Deputy Director and
New Canal Lighthouse Keeper
(504) 836-2236

The last two days of being laid flat out has given me a lot of contemplation time – I can’t read because my eyes burn, I can’t think because I have a headache, and I can’t move because I feel like a freight train ran me down but I can contemplate. And here are a few things that I am penciling in for my New Year’s Resolution:

1) Quit using Google. I realize that I am not alone in doing this, as a matter of fact women in general have a predisposition to do this and that is instead of filling out the URL with what I know is the name of what I am looking for, I search for it via Google. This practice makes Google extraordinarily powerful and gives them lots of information about me that I don’t necessarily want them or anybody to have – like my behavior.

2) Cash only – get off the credit card and the I’ll make this up somehow. Ever since I spent two plus years on the remodel of this house, I got used to writing out checks for enormous sums and it was always a mental stop gap to not really digest what I was doing or I would have to not do it, but plow ahead I did and I’m grateful everyday for the house and how it came together but now, given the tenor of the overall economy, my age, our plans to raise a child, it’s time to modify my living and austerity might be the new luxury.

3) More contact with friends that is not email or text messages – email and text are ways to avoid conversation, I’m convinced of this. So my resolution is to spend more quality time with my family and friends and quit trying to connect via soundbytes that often lead to more confusion than actual interaction. Gone are my social graces – I need to brush up on them.

4) Give back – I have been so blessed in my life to have so much that it is high time I started paying back to the world all that it has showered me with and I’m not talking with my pocketbook – I’m good on doling out money and supporting businesses and charities but I’m talking real time, real action, real giving. Ho, Ho, Ho.

78° two days ago and suddenly snow!

I spent another day yesterday in the sick ward and got up this morning still peaked but then looked outside and it was snowing!!! It never snows in New Orleans.

It has been grey and pouring rain all day in New Orleans, and it is getting colder. Yesterday it was 78° and now we are dropping into the 50s I believe. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because outside is reflecting inside – I’m sick with some bug that jumped on top of me and sucked the life out of me – much like a chupacabra but instead of just my brain, this bug took my guts too!

Even in the midst of all this gloominess, we had a brief encounter with someone who might potentially be important in our life in the coming years – we met our first mother. This meeting made this day one of the most special days we have had in a long long time.

That’s the word of the day on my Yahoo home page, but the word of the day is actually blech. Yesterday, around 2:00 PM, I got hit by a bug that took over my whole body and sent me horizontal for the last fourteen hours plus. It’s almost as if my entire being knew I had too much to do so it said, oh really?, you’re not doing anything – ping.

If I could have divined that my entire Tuesday night would be given over to illness, I might have been better prepared with movies to watch or more cough drops, or at least Advil Cold & Sinus, instead I had home Croatian remedies of throat spray, numbing lozenges, and a tin filled with old ColdEase.

Blech.

The meaning of life is to live it and so it goes that fearing things you cannot control just produces gnarly chemicals in the body that do you no good. There was a great article in the NYT this Sunday about the Skinner box and the thrust of it is to not be a fearmonger and to avoid people who are overly pessimistic about the economy and tune out media that fans the emotional flames.

The collective fear, which is the thread that runs through most conversations these days is not healthy. No more than the elation of making super money in the stock market was healthy in the mid to late 90s.

But what grabbed me in this article is that when people fear losing something they are attached to they ascribe it greater meaning. I learned this through my divorces – emotional weight is given to inert objects and suddenly not having gotten the chair in the agreement or the soap dish is tantamount to having lost everything.

So the best thing we can do is just forge ahead through these uncertain times. Prepare ourselves of course for rainy days yet to come, but don’t give into the OMG factor. Because honestly, here in New Orleans, we had the OMG factor and quite a few of us lost every single thing we owned, but we came back, we rebuilt, we retooled, reinvented, renewed. And you know there were many silver linings – our school system, our courage was reforged, our hope was restored.

If we can do it, you can do it!