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There is a great line in Scarface, well there are many great lines, but one is when Al Pacino – Tony Montana says, I want what is coming to me. His bud Manny asks, What’s coming to you? Tony says, “The world, chico, and everything in it.”

I juxtaposed that line against another line from a poem, The World Is Too Much With Us:

The World is Too Much With Us
by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

A dear friend told me the other day that she had seen this shaman in New Mexico, a kahuna or the likes, who was wild and crazy and inarticulate but who told her, “When you ask the world for more my dear, specify, specify what you want, because if you want more money, and you just ask for more, you just might get more mosquitoes.”

I was walking home from City Park and ran into a neighbor who I had wanted to talk to about helping out with the Bridges, but then I had to write him and say I was stepping down from the Bridges to focus on me. He asked if I was okay, and then he proceeded to tell me a story that now has a familiar ring. He had thrown a party, one that has now become a tradition, and it has now gotten out of hand. He had spent the evening cleaning up the trash and serving hundreds of people he didn’t even know who had trod all over his house and made it and him a wreck. He said, “I’m done.”

This morning in City Park I ran into a dear friend who has been a consummate friend to animals and she told me that she had recently considered moving to another state because she can’t take on anymore, she is once again overcommitted to animal welfare to such an extent that her own is suffering. She said, “I feel done.”

I used to be proud of my Cat in the Hat behavior and had no shame in taking on the world:

“Look at me!
Look at me now!” said the cat.
“With a cup and a cake
On the top of my hat!
I can hold up TWO books!
I can hold up the fish!
And a litte toy ship!
And some milk on a dish!
And look!
I can hop up and down on the ball!
But that is not all!
Oh, no.
That is not all…

“Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me NOW!

My last husband said I was like those Army commercials where “before you rise, Rachel has done the laundry, paid the bills, walked the dogs, cleaned the house, made the breakfast, and found a bargain online, while writing ten thank you notes” – the super heroic, the Wonder Woman of the ages, she does it all. Whew.

And now Ponder Woman has inhabited my earthly being and sits here wondering why I can’t smoke (everyone else does), why do I have to do this or do that? Why don’t you take care of it yourself?, her inner Ponder Woman shouts in a whisper. “What was I thinking?” Ponder Woman responds to those who compliment how handsome her dogs are she is walking in the park.

Life is a roller coaster – up and down – they say, but I say round and round – we rarely have time to pop off and change costumes so given this ultra fabulous opportunity to shed my Wonder Woman golden star and slip on this elastic, cape-less Ponder Woman one, I should find more time to repeat the mantra, “I live in my own little world, but that’s alright, they know me here.”

There is the hypothyroidism making me tired, there is a three year old who won’t nap making me tired.

So let’s revisit what it is I want to do – SLEEP, REST, RELAX.

Yes, in that order, I want to get sleep, I went to feel rested, and I want to relax.

But no dice.

“If the child is protected from the overwhelming hustle and bustle of life, his natural impulse to be content with less can grow as a habit pattern for life.” Nancy BLanning

I was reading in a book about Rosa Parks. Do you know the story behind her. She had boarded a bus after working a long shift and sat in her designated place. She did. But the rule then was if the white area filled up the blacks had to vacate their designated space to give it to white people. She didn’t. She made history because she refused. Thank you Sister Rosa Parks – your history is our history and in our music now.

Today Barak Obama said he believed that gays should be able to enjoy the same legal rights to marry as any other people in this country. Do not underestimate that the United States has a black president, who has just said he believes that gays have the right to marry. Anyone who doubts that a single drop of water exerts the most force, is underestimating where we have come.

The Times Picayune front and second section was filled once again as it is daily with people killing people, parents killing babies, and the whole onslaught of how corrupt governments are, but there are times when other news cast a greater light than the shadows that lurk and cling and darken our lives.

I spent the evening at the house of friends, our kids playing, we counted our losses, three dead parents since Katrina, trials and tribulations, and then we counted our blessings.

On the scale, the good outweighs the bad. And so we begin another day.

Tatjana gave me a massage with our favorite therapist for my birthday among other gifts. When I went to see her she said she looked up alopecia to see what its spirit meaning was in the universe and in a word it is Humiliation. And its deeper meaning is “I never get to do what I want to do. When is it going to be my turn?” So the affirmation or mantra associated with it is “I move beyond old limitations and now allow myself to express freely and creatively.”

I’d have to say in a word – indeed.

Having lived so long in a world of doing and taking care of others and wearing myself out from the whole lot of it – I’m sick and tired of those constraints and deserve to be the free spirit my mother gave birth to me as – somewhere I got stuck in my own dogma.

Now to lead myself out, one step at a time.

Last night Tin and I went to a board meeting for his school and on the way home I had a pity party – I don’t want to be bald anymore I said through my welled up eyes. I am tired of being nauseous in the morning and the evening due to Synthroid. I have no motivation to exercise and just want to lie down all the time – boo hoo.

When I got home I prepared Tin for bed and once he was tucked nicely in, I went upstairs and tucked myself in and began reading my Frankl book that my friend sent me, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl begins his book recounting his life in Auschwitz.

Since there is nothing that can even be said about the horror or atrocity of that experience, I read till I was falling asleep and then entered a deep slumber.

Life has a way of inconveniencing you sometimes, but these push and pulls are avenues that allow you to look deeper into your patterns of behavior and stay in constant reassessment.

A man pulled up to me yesterday when I was walking the dogs and said, I like that look – alluding to my bald head. I wanted to frown and say, well I don’t, but instead I smiled and said thanks.

My motivation for just about everything has left the house – oh where oh where did it go?

I spoke with my new life coach – yep, I hired her – and we had an interesting talk about what really matters. We didn’t get far in our introductory sessions but two of the things that stood out right away for me are friendships and intellectual stimulation. I was speaking to a friend who quit her job because while she was working with nice people, she didn’t really like any of them. Working with people you enjoy being around, who support and care for you, are essential to any relationship whether it is for work or fun.

Intellectual stimulation is a little harder to get when you’re past school, developed an expertise in your career, and in general have to really pursue it because it is not happening around you naturally.

A friend’s husband was explaining why their infant and toddler sons don’t sleep, he said when he was young he thought sleep was for the weak. My friend said but then you miss out on all those people and places that you encounter in your dreams. And that is the truth. Last night I slept the sleep of the dead, sound asleep by 9:30 and up at 6 – dreaming of places, people and things, I woke with such calm that I felt I had been to a spa.

Similarly, Mr. No Nap Tin was crashed at 8 and now nearly 7 is still sound asleep.

To sleep, perchance to dream, makes for a more exciting life.