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I spoke with my life coach today and I highly recommend her. I went through the list I had just posted on what I want in life and told her that I have been trying to figure out my whole spiritual self in the sense of how I orient myself in the world. For example, do I subscribe to the do all you can and then let the universe handle the details, or do I subscribe to being very specific about what I want in life, something that has come at a great price for me in the past. I knew from my past work with her that I have certain saboteurs that are likely to come up and asking for what I want is a good place to invite those little critters in.

So I read her my list and she thought that I had a different theme in these questions than I have had in the past. These wants/desires are aligned with my core values. In the past, I had said I want a relationship, or a family, and a home but I had not attached my value on any of those – a value pertinent to me. She sees my new list as having my values front and center.

We also talked about who I am. Who are you? she asked me repeatedly. “I am positive energy!” I finally said to her after trying to describe myself to myself – I see myself with a smile and a spring in my step.

There is a good chance that 53 years of having carried the identity as the daughter of an alcoholic and a rageaholic have colored my ability to withstand external circumstances the way some are able to (or maybe everyone has difficulty and some just look to be handling things with such ease).

My life and my interaction with challenges and tragedy as well as joy have also fed my writing as I’ve tried to discover, uncover, recover who I am outside of this long held identity. Who would I be if that identity wasn’t ruling the roost anymore? What if my friend in the Sierra cabin was right – that isn’t love?

I’m getting closer to identifying other parts of me – other than the daughter of the “olics” and the caretaker, and with that is coming a certain peace, a much calmer me, a person more in control of who I am.

Bring it.

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.” – Maya Angelou

I want to be healthy and my hair to grow again.
I want to sell the LaLa and be done with this dream.
I want to learn to take better care of myself.
I want to raise Tin to be loving and loved as well as self-actualized.
I want to live in truth.
I want to stop reaching backwards and forwards for my dreams, and live my dream in the now.
I want my heart to open wide so I may always love with abandon those who are worthy of my love.
I want to surround myself with evolved, loving and supportive people.
I want to be successful in my work to bankroll my retirement and Tin’s schooling and pet projects.
I want to build my spiritual home in a stress-free and loving manner.
I want my home to bring great joy in my and Tin’s life and others who come into it.
I want to travel to foreign lands – India and Africa are tops on my list.
I want to help others who are less fortunate than I am.
I want to smile and laugh every day.
I want to dance and learn new steps.
I want my new blog – transracialparenting.com – to further the conversation on racism.
I want my old blog – dangermond.org – to continue to touch others and help them on their path towards self-actualization.
I want to wake up grateful every day of my life.

E told me the other day that she wants to explore the role of a caretaker with me. The problem in therapy with caretakers is they seldom take care of themselves. I have the solution – Hashimoto’s Disease – it is a relentless reminder to care for yourself even if every fiber of your being keeps going back to the familiar pattern. The reason is that you simply don’t have the emotional, physical, or spiritual resources to take care of others and if you add that you have to care for a young child then you really don’t have anything left over for anyone else.

For Superbowl Sunday, friends came by and this little girl showed up – Demi – I scooped her up and was Mama for a day again to a toddler. It’s amazing how easy that role suits me, having a baby on my hip, running to the store to get the right bottles, and changing her and loving on her. I could almost see me with another child and then I had to catch myself.

Really? Another child?

Lord Today!

So Bam Bam went to a good and loving home. At least that is the way the story was going. When the couple was here speaking to me, the guy asked me what happened to my hair and I told him. He then showed me his scar that went all along his face and head. When he was six years old, some boys hit him with a brick to steal his bike and he had to have brain surgery and still suffers seizures. They just changed his medication and at the same time, his wife just lost her job of many years at an insurance company. I told them I would pay for Bam Bam to get all his shots current. The guy repeatedly asked me if I would do that after I volunteered to do it.

They just had to put down their dog so they were thrilled to have Bam Bam who is part cat, part dog. Only when they let Bam Bam out to check out the yard, Bam ran off and has not returned. They and I have combed the neighborhood looking for him – but no Bam. I keep thinking he will turn up, but that thought hangs out there in the balance.

Yesterday, I spent the day trying to do something to move into the apartment that is still being painted. The painter said he will finish today. The guy I hired to put in the interior doors had come back to mess with them some more. And Rudy had come to hang the copper table for the kitchen and some heavy paintings for me. Only, when we were standing in the apartment he said to me, “Is that the hot water heater?” Yeah. “Boy you’re going to miss that flash heater.” Yeah.

Then he walked outside to where the washing machine will go. There is no room for a dryer. “You can’t get a stackable?” I already have these. I plan to just hang my laundry out on the clothesline. “You need to build something that would go here, and then it would block this off, but would give you ample room here to use this as a porch because you don’t want to have a washing machine here.”

MY HEAD WAS SCREAMING LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!

And so I came back to the house to clean up the mess from pulling the chest of drawers off of the wall in Tin’s room – that has now left holes to be patched and painted, the bedside table that was on the wall in my bedroom that now has holes and needs patching and painting, and the copper table in the laundry cum kitchen that now has holes and needs patching and painting.

The realtor called to say the plumber had found the leak in the tub, it was a pretty easy fix only they had to cut a hole in Tin’s closet and approach it that way. A hole, that will need patching and painting.

Where is Bam Bam? I have Blacky running ramshod all over, scaring Tin and waking me at all hours. But Bam is nowhere to be found. I called the couple last night to see if they had any word from him. The guy said as an afterthought that he needed money for his meds, could I front them $40. So he came over while it was pouring down rain and picked up the cash while I made pasta pesto and asparagus for Tin.

Zumba had been cancelled – it was the only thing I was looking forward to yesterday.

So again, today, there will be packing. There will be cleaning what I can of the new apartment. There will be preparing for the move. Today would also have been five years that Tatjana and I were together. Another hole that needs patching and painting.

A friend stopped by and said, “You’re going to miss this view.” I’m pretty sure there is a lot I will miss, if I could just get through this week intact.

I’m moving in a week and Nicole at New Orleans Petcare posted a note because I can’t take the cats with me. But so far there have been no takers. Today I was jumping into the shower and heard someone speaking to Bam Bam outside the front door. I wrapped myself in a towel and saw this couple sitting on the bricks talking to Bam Bam.

I opened the door (yes, in my towel) and said, “Do you know Bam Bam?”

They said yes, they came by every day to visit with him because he liked to visit. I said you know I am moving and I can’t take … – before I could finish what I was saying, they said WE’LL TAKE BAM BAM!!!!.

OMG!

I’m telling you when you break the bad spell – you break it for good – woo hoo and BAM BAM.

I loaded up the wheelbarrow and wheeled all my succulents and cacti over to the new apartment – they are still painting and roofing and god knows what and so I’m just biding my time to get in there and clean and start moving my stuff in. As I walked across the Magnolia Bridge with my wheelbarrow full of plants a woman said how great it looked and I said I was headed to my new home. And how great it felt – gloriously great. I love my new place so much so that it makes me downright giddy.

When I got there, the painter, who just happens to be the father of two musicians (sons) around town, said he wanted to see which house it was and so we stood at the front door of the apartment and looked across the bayou at the LaLa. I said I’m leaving that dream for the next one. He said life comes in many phases. Indeed.

This phase is bounded only by my love for Tin and my growing appreciation of my self.

A friend of mine says she only dates a man with facial hair, well I’m here to say that having no hair makes you very hair conscious – not in a good way – ear hair, nose hair, a wild hair – all of these things appear glaring to a bald woman. In an era where young men are shaving their testicles as a part of their daily grooming habits, why can’t the rest of the men get to their barber, an aesthetician, or a magnifying mirror and take care of the grooming.

February 02, 2013
Taurus (4/20-5/20)
You locked eyes with someone recently who you are going to see again very soon — are you nervous? Don’t be. They are more interested in you than you think, although probably not in the way you envisioned. When it comes to getting to know them better, don’t overdo it. Don’t share everything about yourself in the first minute and a half. Let things unfold slowly and naturally. You should be evaluating them just as much as they are evaluating you.

Is it morning or night when you wake up at 3AM? I’m not quite sure. But this morning, I was up and so I packed about seven boxes full of stuff. Stuff that I’m inclined to believe I have too much of despite a major purge back in October of 2011 when we first started renting via VRBO. Stuff that also has attached memories to it, much like the view out of my window this morning.

Another beautiful sunrise across the bayou courtesy of the LaLa, the vacation home in a home, that never really felt like a vacation. Sometimes things are what they seem or what you dream them to be. Interestingly enough, a friend text me early today saying that she had seen her therapist yesterday and was encouraged to opt out of all the stuff that has been keeping her down under. So she has chosen Superbowl Sunday, the most testosterone laden day of the year to burn all of the dreams.

How coincidental I told her since I too saw my therapist yesterday who encouraged me to hold a ceremonious goodbye to all the pieces of the dream that went into this house upon my exit from it. I had burned Nick in effigy back in 2006, and so I thought of burning the LaLa in effigy as well – ceremoniously – I’ll just have to find another long pole to do this and a friend to write a poem about it as they did for Nick’s erasure.

The good news about the sunrise this morning is that it came after I had watched two episodes of In Treatment. One about a couple with a child who are splitting up after therapy – Gabrielle Byrne described them as having “radically different notions of a relationship,” which was so close to home. OUCH. The other was Byrne’s own therapy after he has a panic attack when he tries to have sex with the object of his desire from the past year. Another OUCH.

I’m so excited about my shotgun apartment I could spit. Truly the best transitions in my life have happened upon moving into a shotgun. When the first love of my life (now dead) committed himself to a mental hospital, after my first divorce, and now upon entering reinvention number (who could count) whatever. The little shotgun that can hold all that I (we, including Tin) need to be happy and free.

Let us now bless shotguns.