I have seen the mountain-- and it's ME

Just took off to the local department store to check out clothes. I am NOT a shopper, and I suspected before leaving that the store's prices (and possibly clothes) would be a turn-off, but I've recently come to realize that just taking action is sometimes preferable to sitting and waiting for the proper opportunity. So-- off to look at clothes, at least, to start the process of rebuilding a wardrobe to the point where I might be able to look decent-ish on a regular basis.

So, yeah, I'm back, with no new clothes. Liked their sweaters but otherwise their fat-lady clothes leave a lot to be desired. But I'm glad I actually DID something. (My major problem with fat-lady clothes is that they make me look fat...Whoops. Re-realized for the umpteenth time that BEING fat sometimes correlates with looking fat. And being a lady kinda correlates with looking like a lady. Fat-lady. Oh well.)

So I mostly avoid studying myself, full-body, at great length. I look at my face in the mirror everyday--mostly my eyes-- but I kinda ignore the total-body, full-effect reflection.

I looked at it today. My reflection, I mean. Whooee. I have a lot of work to do! I am officially, as of today, a work in progress. I HAVE to be, 'cause that lady in the mirror just can't be the me of forever and always. That has to be me in a moment in time, soon to be eclipsed by a better-- at least more toned, better rested, hopefully a few pounds lighter, me.

I need to stay encouraged so I can keep moving. From now on, I'm going to do my best to note my progress, however small, in the me-overhaul dept. Today, I got a realistic visual fix on the problem. It's me, and I'm dumpier than ever and look like I got run over by a truck (that's the lack of sleep showing-- think I was up until 2:30am last night?) I have seen the mountain and it IS me.

So. Bravo to me for getting moving on slowly resurrecting myself in the self-presentation dept. Bravo to me for seeing myself somewhat realistically and for remembering that this is just a moment in time and for committing, somewhere in my head to moving forward. It's always good to be moving forward if you find you don't like where you are standing.

Onward, upward, Lisa!!

That Will Happen Only When the Fairies Sing

My little believer and my (slightly older) skeptic:

We were walking home from "Family Sports Night" at the kids' school-- which was, by the way, about 100x more fun than I expected it to be--and we passed a patch of Lilies-0f-the-Valley. I stopped and showed the kids the little tiny bell-shaped flowers and sang them the song my mom first taught me, in her lovely clear voice, when they popped up next to our garage one spring--

White coral bells, upon a slender stalk

Lilies-of-the-valley deck my garden walk.

Oh, don't you wish, that you could hear them ring...

That will happen only when the fairies sing.

Me: "So do you understand the story the song tells?"

7-year-old: "Yes, the bells can't ring until the fairies sing."

5-year-old: "Well, how come I can't hear them singing?"

Me, trying to keep it going: "Probably because it's raining. Fairies don't sing when it's raining."

7-year-old, muttering slightly irritably out of the side of her mouth: "Mama, there ARE no such thing as fairies."

5-year-old, on the other hand, doesn't hear 7-year-old...

and starts a long, earnest monologue about how tomorrow if it's not raining she's going to come and listen and hear the fairies singing, and if it is raining, we'll have to come another day and listen, and then she'll hear the fairies singing...

I kinda hope she doesn't grow out of this one quite yet.

Maybe I will be able to write, after all...

What would happen if I just wrote, just put one word after another? Here's what Louise Erdrich said in an interview with Bill Moyers, it spoke to me immediately...

Louise Erdrich, on writing: How do I do—I don't know. I've—my sisters have seen me. My husband has seen me. My kids have seen me every day, and they don't know how it happens, but I suspect it has to do with a small, incremental persistent insect-like devotion to putting one word next to the next word. It's a very dogged process.

I make myself go upstairs, where I write, whenever I can, no matter how—one thing about this is I never have writer's block, because I—if I went up there and I had writer's block, I think I'd lose my mind. You know, I have to get up to my papers and my books and my notebooks. I jot things down all the time. I just keep going.

What if I just put one word after another? Wrote for 5 minutes and then came back to it as necessary? Thought in terms of incremental progress-- not even "progress," really, but incremental writing simply for the sake of writing?

Then writing would not be a monumental task, but instead, something I just love to do and get to do in dribs and drabs here and there 'cause I want to, not toward a goal at all but about the journey....and if and when I arrived somewhere, that would be the exciting side benefit, not the reason for any of it...