Move it on over

Good morning, sweet peas! What a beautiful quiet morning it is, here in the Lowe house. Torie’s at a friend’s, Scott’s sawing logs in the bedroom, Horatio is curled up adorably on the back of his chair, the ambient fire is merrily popping and crackling in its television hearth, I’ve had my morning cup of coffee, and I’m feeling jim-dandy.

It’s interesting, though. Even though emotionally I’ve been in the pink, I’ve had a lot of body sensations the past few days–lots of sickness-type symptoms rushing through me, visiting one part of my body and then another. Nausea, aches, neck pain, dizziness, as well as interrupted sleep. This would be confusing if I hadn’t been reading about process meditation lately.

Quickly, process meditation is when you pay attention to the ‘distractions’ that emerge while you’re meditating, instead of paying them no heed and allowing them to dissipate. It’s very western in its approach, as opposed to eastern, which emphasizes, more, emptying the mind. I like both ways but am finding amazing relief and insight from allowing myself to switch channels.

With this in mind, I know that my body is trying to tell me something my brain is just not picking up yet. So what I started doing yesterday and continued this morning was to pay attention to whatever I was thinking when my stomach started feeling heavy and sick, or if I suddenly got a sharp pain in my neck, or even–to move away from body sensation–I became aware of some background noise that drew my thoughts to it. Anything that jars me awake is a message from my subconscious, an alarm that I’m getting close to something that’s bothering me, a reminder to stop and look.

After doing this for not very long, actually, I was able to come to the understanding that I haven’t been wanting to fully acknowledge my nervousness about going to visit my brother and sis-in-law and nephew this week! They’ve recently moved to a town that’s about an hour and a half away and it’s mostly freeway getting there. I am really not a freeway fan, especially when I’m the one driving. No. So I’m going somewhere I’ve never been before via a road system devised in the very bowels of hell. Plus, I’m going to spend two days and one night there and I’m nervous about that because for me, that’s a long concentrated time to spend with someone no matter how much I love them. I feel silly having these phobias, but hey, I have these phobias. My job is not to cat-o-nine-tails myself to shreds for having them, but to move through them into the things I love on the other side of them.

Realizing that this is the reason I’ve been feeling sick helps me a million. Now when my temples spontaneously explode into headache, I can immediately visualize a peaceful drive to their house, a lovely walk with Sherrie, laughing over dinner with Danny, asking Henry about how he’s liking college life, that sort of thing, and begin to feel better, in touch with what’s really going on. Being closed off to my emotions in that area was causing mayhem in my body! My good friend body, doing its best to wake me up. If I hadn’t become aware of this, I would have focused on “being sick” and would have stayed home in bed instead of taking the risk that will allay my fear. Now I’m one step closer to my goal of a whole and balanced life. Huzzah!

Today is Torie’s 21st birthday! This is almost as big a deal to me as it is to her (well, not really, but still a big deal). My youngest child is now a proper adult. Wait, that makes me laugh. No, she is NOT ‘proper.’ Torie is as real as it gets and I absolutely love her for it. Here’s an example of how much she hates insincerity in any form. She recently got a job at Geren’s Farm Supply, a wonderful place to shop and work because the atmosphere is so light and bright and friendly. We got Horatio there, from the kitten cage: a large multi-storied enclosure that houses kittens that people bring in daily to give away and pick up at closing if no one’s taken them home. It’s a good system, and there’s a constant supply of cuddlies, I’m telling you.

Anyway, back to Torie. One of the things she’s required to do, when she uses the intercom at the register to talk to the guys doing the hauling in the back, is follow every request with please. “We need a 50 pound bag of goat feed, and a duck, please.” They’re to respond with “Thank you!” When she rings up a customer she has to say, “That’ll be $28.72 please.” Torie’s a naturally friendly person, so it’s not the please and thank you that’s the problem, but the idea of being forced to say them. The first few days, during training, whenever she forgot, her trainer would lean forward and whisper into her ear, “Please.” Hello, I would want to hit somebody too. (But she loves it there now.) To celebrate her special day, we’ll be giving her Beyonce’s new CD and lunch out with the fam at Chang’s Mongolian Grill. She’s going bar-hopping with Van, Jess, Amber and whoever else later and she’s so excited.

It’s going to be a very long day for me because I was up at the whopping early hour of ONE-THIRTY A.M. I love the wees, but that’s ridiculous. Still, I always try to make the best of these early early early days. I even fixed a couple things in the living room that have been bugging me, mostly straightening crooked items. I have a hard time with crooked items. Crooked pictures especially, lamps that lean to the left… we even contemplated buying a house once that was so old that none of the junctures where the walls met the ceilings were straight. It was like the house that Jack built. Yeah, we didn’t buy it. I bet it was haunted, too. I’m especially satisfied because I thought of a very creative way to straighten this huge mirror that we’d put over a dresser in the living room. It’s supposed to go on our bedroom dresser but the configuration of our room meant it would have to cover the windows and that’s, just, not going to happen. Anyway, it leaned back too far behind the living room dresser so I stuck a D cell battery I found in the junk drawer behind it to push it forward and now it’s perfectly straight and no one’s the wiser, except you, aren’t you the special ones? It was genius. Pat pat pat. Time for breakfast now. Have a great day, you guys. Love! xo