We are here!

“We are here! We are here! We are here!”

Last night, for the first time in 27 years, I put glasses on. I didn’t know my vision was bad, in fact I thought I had the eyesight of a hawk. I thought I could see everything – but I was wrong.

I have never been particularly vocal about politics, mainly because I don’t like to create confrontation and I have never understood why people bicker back and forth knowing there will never be any resolve. I am passionate about a few political subjects and tend to favor feature focused articles over hard news stories. I'm a pacifist - or so I thought.

Yesterday afternoon I drug a handful of friends with me to the Texas State Capital to witness the scuttlebutt that had dominated my Twitter feed all weekend. We ambled around the Capital Rotunda and patiently waited to be seated in the gallery. Having no extensive experience, or knowledge, on the political process (outside of West Wing and The Good Wife) it took me a few beats to feign understanding. 

Senator Wendy Davis stood, in a room of predominately male counterparts, and read letters from the people of her state. Most of the stories were firsthand accounts of personal experiences with abortions, and others were simply words of encouragement and support. I brought Gabel, my 10year old son, with me to give him the opportunity to witness something outside of his normal scope. Like any kid in his age bracket, he glued his attention to the iPad. It wasn't until the second call to order that his interest shifted and he watched the verbal strategy unfold on the Senate floor. He was fascinated, and overwhelmed me with questions. "Who is that? Why won't they let her sit down? What is a filibuster? How will we win?"

The democratic support Davis received in her attempt to plight SB5 was outstanding. Senator Watson, of Austin, fought for his colleague and her ability to administer a successful filibuster. Davis was served unsubstantiated and bogus (in my most humble opinion) calls that cut her 13 hour performance shortly after 10pm. But with the help of her fellow Senators in blue, and the audience in orange, Texas successfully put SB5 to bed. At least until Perry calls a second secret session (which, sources state, will commence July 1st). What I find most amusing is the republican party's earnestness with which they upheld Davis's adhering to the rules, yet they attempted to submit and pass their vote AFTER the midnight deadline. Rules are rules, no? My 10year old understand that.

On the way out of the Capital, Gabel took my hand and admitted, "mom, I don't really understand what happened. Did we win?" While the topic discussed on the Senate floor was, in my opinion, too delicate to explain to a 10year old, I still felt he deserved an honest and educated answer. So I explained to him that we were fighting for the woman's right to choose: to choose what happens to her body and to choose what will be best for her. He seemed to understand that. He then said, "So, it's kind of like the Civil War? I mean, with two American parties fighting one another?" I didn't put much thought into it at the time, but as we came home and I tucked that sweet face into bed I couldn't put the simile to rest. I sat in my room for a long time last night, mulling the analogy over. And you know what? My kid is a genius. 

The fight over Senate Bill 5 in the Texas Senate is similar to the Civil War. The war on slavery, and civil rights 100 years later, is nearly identical to the battles we are waging against women's health care. In 1861 the Union and the Confederacy shed blood all over the south in a fight to abolish slavery. It was a fight over whether or not another group of American individuals had the right to make decisions for themselves. Now, 150+ years later, the government is engaging in intellectual and judicial battles of the same caliber - whether or not a group of American individuals should be allowed the right to make their own choices regarding their body, their health care options, and their future. "The white man" is a common slur pointed at the male members of the republican party, and it isn't always a founded dig. But when an army of southern men determine whether or not I have access to certain health care options - I have a problem. Men have no business putting their hands, or their laws, inside MY vagina. Unless you are doing a pap smear and delivering my baby, keep your mits to yourself. Senator Leticia R. Van de Putte of San Antonio asked, at 11:44pm, “Mr President…I would like to know how many times a woman Senator on this floor must raise her hand in order to be heard above the voices of her male colleagues?” How appropriate; she questions the obvious disregard for female participation while arguing a bill discussing women's ability to voice their own choices. 

Life opportunities such as this are the best learning platforms for our children. I am unorthodox when compared to other parents, but I believe that my son should experience the elements of life as they present themselves. I tote him around everywhere with me, and as a result he is well-balanced and constantly curious about the things building around him - two qualities that will mold him into a fine young man and maybe, just maybe, send him to the house to represent the voice of his generation. 

So again I will don my spectacles and quote the eloquent prose of Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who - "We are here! We are here! We are here!"

The nook.

A sigh carries the weight of a million emotions.

The nook, what a lovely place to be.
Nestled against the temperate tuft of your chest is where I find
the quiet contentment that lulls me to sleep.
Legs entangled,
and bodies twisted together in the jigsaw
fashion that matches my being to yours.
The nook is love; it is that place between dreams and sleep
and whispered conversation that deciphers the diction of my skin against yours.

I love that place of safety, and I crave it
after tireless weekdays and work induced stress.
I find comfort, and ease in the embrace of the nook.
It is settling. It is intoxicating. It is paradise.
It is pressed into the space between your neck and your chest -
against your collar bone and curled into your side.
With every moment of my cheek against your skin,
I fall deeper into a satiated place of absolute love and affection.

And here, I sigh, and kiss away the weight of a million emotions.

[rewind] Drink Your Wine

I wrote the excerpt below in the spring of 2009. I recently uncovered a forgotten blog, and this piece was one work that stood out. It is now four years later and I still have these philosophical convictions about life, my life, and where it's going. For an extrovert, I am pretty closed off when it comes to dealing with my own emotions and the stressors in my life. For whatever reason, I find the easiest course of action against defeat is solitude. I think that it is easier to self-destruct and push your emotions to the extreme than it is to take pause and really reflect on your demons. But read, and develop your own opinions.

Breath taking moments, require no introduction. 
A leap of faith sends chills down the spine of an irresponsible lover. Momentary lapses in judgment have left this heart brash. Immobile. And fierce. 

Irony should be drunk like wine; appreciate the crisp bite as it transcends through your being and casts a thick fog of doubt over your beautifully correlated plan. Life is a plan, whether you choose to acknowledge the itinerary or not. Each moment breaks into the next – strung like beads: ornate. Unique. But patterned together for a larger purpose. Building blocks of the future, so cliché and generic that these moments slip into minutes, and hours that consume years. This future draws rapidly and leaves in a blink, dusting memories in its wake. Life is measured in discovery, anniversaries, and achievement. It is the girth between beads and the substance of our purpose. As young adults, we plot success. The world waits, bated, at our fingertips. Our minds are full of ideas; innovation inspires confidence, and a ‘can-do’ attitude that fuels this ego and pushes the belief that we can conquer the world. And we do. The top of the mountain blazes, and draws to it an army of creative minds. The early years fly, and the victory found in achievement creates frenzy. Having tasted the brevity of success, we feel exalted and push forward. Drive and ambition are powerful traits of a person's character, they define an individuals ideals and create a divide between those that DO, and those that DO NOT. Face it, we're not all crafted for victory. 'The road less traveled', so to speak, rears greater reward. But the journey is perilous and not all are crazy enough for the challenge. So these peers find comfort in their lack of ambition and fall into a monotonous wasteland. For them, it is easier to live in chaos than it is to try and tame it - they settle. This portrayal of the comrade and the fallen is evident in every generation. 

This journey consumes a lifetime - and in a breath, we stop. We measure our gains in losses and achievement; our life has been threaded together in beads and bracelets. The moments of the inbetween, at the time, seemed so tedious and penniless. But upon recollection, those moments come to life and curve the lips upwards into that small, private smile. To appreciate life, or to understand success, we must overcome regret and pay acknowledgement to the smaller details. Insert irony here. Years spent focused on the prize end in nostalgia, and recollection of life's more minute bringings. Drink your irony, and embrace its pithy. Paint your portrait in shades of vibrance; this is your life, Live It.

That boy's got my heart in a silver cage.

"....the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape." -Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape

I spent hours of my youth pouring over melancholy music and crying my way through teenage angst. I didn't have a "real" boyfriend until high school, but I still tortured myself with the sing-song lyrics of Tony Rich Project, Stone Temple Pilots, and Jann Arden. I longed for love, even as a pre-teen - I longed to feel the emotion that serenaded me to sleep every night. I begged God, on the rare occasions that we spoke, to deliver a boy to adore me. And love me. And make me mix tapes. I wanted to feel the brutality of love, as I had come to understand it through boombox speakers.

Now, here I am in my mid-twenties and I don't know much more than I did as a girl with tear-streaked cheeks. My relationships, the few that I have had, have all spiraled into unsuccessful paint spatters and irreparable disasters. I suppose the only common denominator in each of those scenarios is me, a fact I accepted after my last horrific breakup. And I suppose that no relationship is really "successful" until he puts a rock on your finger and coaxes you down the aisle. But is that how success, with love, is measured? I would like to think that marriage isn't the only peg tilting the abacus. There has to be more - something, anything, more.

In 20 years I have aged, but I haven't really grown up. Despite my cynicism and inner battles with dating, I still just want a boy to listen to music with. I want a boy that will listen to tracks, and in my absence, think of me. I don't know if it is the music, the idea, or the need to feel validated by song - but I think my obsession with love stems from an inability to lower my unreachable expectations. Expectations that, ironically enough, have been built on lyrics. Tony Rich taught me to keep my turmoil inside, and hide my feelings from everyone but myself. STP preached skipping town on a southern train, and Jann Arden told me to chase and change insensitive men. Conflicting? Absolutely.

For me? Say Anything. Hold a boom box over your head and stand outside of my window. Stake your claim - in my life and on my heart. Stuff vulnerability into a casette tape and hand pick your emotions, only to lay them out - track by track - in a wildly romantic demonstration of love. I am convinced that texting and tweeting and - dare I say - Facebooking has pickled the concept of bravery, especially in regards to the heart. Phone calls are replaced with sms messages, and Valentine's cards come via email. Mix tapes? Extinct. And without a viable substitute. While I am, admittedly, a social media drone I still cling to the idea that love exists beyond your laptop, iPad, or cell phone. Technology and the instant gratification of the Internet have put a hex on the already-delicate world of love, and dating. This era, or generation xxyyzz - or wherever it is that we are - has created one million more stressors and obstacles to eradicate in the quest to find love! It is exhausting.

I will close with this:

"I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work, so I called him at home. And then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell. And then he emailed me to my home account. And the whole things just got out of control and I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering maching - and that one answering machine had one casette tape, and that one casette tape either had a message from a guy or it didn't. And now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It's exhausting." -Drew Barrymore, He's Just Not That Into You

Amen sister. To be continued..

casual goodbyes.

I haven't had a summer romance in, what seems like, years. I have always confessed to being a pathetically hopeless romantic - and the depth of my belief in cheesy, irrevocable love is unending. At 26, I have probably felt real love once in my life. Just once. But I have had countless brushes with butterflies; butterflies being the precursor to love. Butterflies being, in my opinion, the best part of love. I am an addict for that feeling. I am shamelessly hooked on the body rush that accompanies the heart's lust for another beating body. However, in my brief and very limited experience, I have learned that no encounter will ever match your first "high". The subsequent, and fruitless, flirtation with butterfly wings will never amount to much more than exactly that: lust.

I can't explain how it feels, or how it makes ME feel. I would have to slip out of the trench coat of my skin and offer it to you, in order for you to understand how love, for me, feels. There aren't enough adjectives in the English language to describe how my heart quickens, and stubbornly lodges itself in my throat - how that feels. It is maddening. Unpredictable, uncontrollable, and addicting. The mere mention of love's name, his name, sends a circuit of firecrackers over my skin; bottle rockets erupt in succession, and blanket the circumference of my body in tremors, and instability. It is incredible. It is more than loving someone for their qualities, or fine personality quirks. It is loving someone because of the way they make you feel. Not just happiness, or contentment, or even joy - the way they make you feel inside of your body. Inside of your skin. That feeling is the heart of what makes my heart turn somersaults beneath my ribcage. It is the rhyme behind love's lack of reason, and its presence in my body. In my life. The absolution of knowing that I would do anything for the person, the source of my love and adoration. The certainty I feel in his presence, and the unyielding desire to secure and ensure his happiness. That feeling is the source of my addiction, and damn does it hurt once it escapes.

The heart wants what the heart wants; logic has no dog in love's quarrels. Only in the wake of destruction does logic surface, and smirk. Hind sight is 20/20 - cliche, irritating, and true. I am still grappling with the I-told-you-so's; my own stubbornness is relentless and causes more internal chaos than necessary.  How do you free yourself from that? That feeling of uncontrollable possession that masks itself as love. It is sobering to witness one's own coveted cache of physical, and spiritual emotion, unravel one tear at a time. Detox is so painful. So painful, that it seems easier to attempt repair than to endure the hemorrhage of heart's defeat. I am guilty. I have dug out my hard hat and charged into the operating room; I have sewn, and bandaged, and pleaded, and promised things I didn't even have. All for fear of losing that fleeting, and unmatched desire for another human being. All for that high. If I could bottle my addiction into a mason jar, I would. I would do so, only to open the lid before a hurricane and mimic the paralyzing rush that had once consumed me in love's presence. How is that for hopeless?

I suppose it would be one thing if love's rush to the exit were self-inflicted - it would be easier to wean from its intoxication. But it isn't self-inflicted. It is surprising and disappointing and confusing when love is ushered away by the object itself: by the lover himself. His sudden absence from your life begs questions and stirs emotion that would have otherwise stayed dormant. For me, the loss of that power has never made sense. If the energy of love isn't between you and that person anymore, where has it gone?

I wish I could control how I felt. I wish I could stabilize the fluttering of my heart - at least that is what I tell myself. If I could dictate the language of my lust, and of my love, would I coax myself into loving a little less? Or prevent myself from loving at all? The fear of never feeling that first high again is terrifying; the fear I have of letting go is crippling, and obviously irrational. But it is there. It cowers in the corner of my subconscious and gloats in private - but I still feel it. It is taxing, it is exhausting, and it fills a space that I didn't even know was empty. It is funny how quickly a storm can change direction. Though, I am not laughing.

Summer romance? Maybe. For now, I will just chase butterflies.

Fitness: Day Three

Every single day, I eat the same five things. Surprisingly, I am not bored yet. But this is only day three. And, tomorrow is cheat day.....!!!!

I have noticed that my energy levels are a little low. I am learning this is from lack of protein. With the level of activity I have been inflicting on myself in the studio and in the gym, my body needs a lot more protein then I have been giving it. Otherwise, I just get sleepy.







Afterthought: I allowed myself four delicious glasses of Pinot Noir, as I didn't take advantage of the two glass allotment on Thursday. I worked my rear into a sweat at the gym Friday morning, so I rewarded my hard work and indulged, just a little ;)

Fitness Journal: Thursday, August 2nd.

Holy glutes and hamstrings. My lower extremities are definitely standing at attention. I signed up with my trainer (again) and spent about 45 minutes on the stair master this afternoon. I am every salesman's dream: you're selling fancy air? I'll buy! Overpriced water? Sold! Consumerism at its finest ;) I was happy to learn that my body fat percentage has not risen, and is still in the healthy range (27%). I would like to drop it to 23-24%, which would be right on par with the 6-8 pounds I wish to eliminate from my rump.

In addition to my quick stint in the gym, I made a presence at Ballet Austin's pm Hip Hop class. I haven't seen the inside of a studio in awhile, and I forgot how awesome dance makes me feel. I also forgot about the bruises and blisters my poor little pads incur after an advanced Jazz class (Wednesday night). I have vowed to attend four dance classes a week - not necessarily for the awesome cardio workout, but for my supreme mental health. Dance is where I have always gone to recharge, and work through my stress. Oddly...breakups and work chaos have always sent me pirouetting into the studio. Why "talk" about feelings when you can just sweat them out? I digress..

Below, my super boring caloric intake. I am going to need to up my protein, I am not getting nearly enough to balance my physical activity. I picked up some Muscle Milk lite (I hope it doesn't taste like dirt) in an attempt to keep my muscles nourished. Fingers crossed....!!






Side note: I tried my hand with homemade refried beans, as I have learned that beans are a good source of protein. Let me tell you, they were delicious. Quick, easy, and great for a snack. One can of pinto beans, dash of garlic (freshly minced), salt&pepper with a pinch a cayenne pepper and chopped red onions. YUM!