Playin’ The Edge

Ring the bells that still can ring. 

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

Conversation 1

Angus:  Mom your belly is so big

Me: Yup, it’s big and round and fulla baby

Angus: ha!  it’s big and round and fulla baby! (repeated 100 or more times)

Conversation 2

Me:  You’re weird

Honeybunny: Hey who’s weird,  you’re the one with a human living inside you.

Conversation 3

Angus to stranger putting a baby in a car: We’re having a baby too!  Only our baby is going to be a boy.  And he’s not going to have any teeth just like yours.

Conversation 4

Angus: What color will our baby be? 

Me: I dunno, what color do you think? 

Angus: Probably this color  (grabbing the skin on his forearm)

Conversation 5

Angus examining my stomach - Mom, how will the baby get out of your belly when there’s no door?

I took Angus to the dentist.  It started pretty good, in fact the hygenist was able to take xrays, which was a a first even though he complained about how uncomfortable the cardboard things were in his 4-year old mouth.  And who can blame him, they’re hard as rocks.

Then when she started scraping his teeth he got goofy, playing around, laughing hysterically at his own jokes, grabbing at her mask, grabbing at the sucky thing and yes…..biting her.

Picture her gloved finger between his teeth,  a maniacal look in his eyes and her patiently saying, “Angus let go, I *need* that finger”.  sigh…..

I was doing my best to run interference but there’s just no magic bullet when he’s in that kind of a mood.  He’s hardly even hearing me.

I think he was reacting to joy of the teeth scraping.  I’m not trying to justify here, just explain.  Getting your teeth and gumline scraped with a sharp pointy metal thing is, I dunno, about as much fun as a TRIP TO THE DENTIST.  

Even if you do get a new Cars toothbrush when you’re done.   And bubblegum flavoured sand ground into your teeth.  I hate the scraping too, it takes much yoga breathing to get through it myself.

Speaking of yoga breathing, there was this one time Angus was totally wound and Honeybunny and I  were trying to get him to take a deep inhale in, hold it for a bit and then let it go, to try to settle him down.  So first he exhales and holds it.  Then he figures out the inhale thing.  Does a great job taking in a deep breath, holds it, and then exhales and then immediately says, “Dad! Watch me throw this slipper at you!!” and biffs it directly at his head *and* makes contact.  I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh.  I guess breathing isn’t the magic bullet for him either.

Anyhoo,  the weird thing about the dentist visit is that I wasn’t mortified and hoping that the floor would open up and consume me.  I was like, yup my kid’s pretty crazy, the rest of the hygenist’s day is going to be a *breeze* compared to this. 

I also thought that if she wanted to bail at any time, I’d be ok with it.  We’d catch up in 6 months at the next visit.  But she was awesome, we got it all done right down to the little trays of flouride treatment.

Because the cool thing about kids at this age, it’s good design really, is that their mouth is full of practice teeth.   Sure we forget to brush sometimes, and lord knows how well he’s brushing his back teeth and he always tries to put a bucketful of toothpaste on his brush and probably eats at least half.  But who cares, by the time he’s a good little dental hygene soldier, he’ll have his real grown up teeth.  We’ve got time to get this right.

Someone told me that sodium flouride is an ingredient in rat poison, that it was fed to the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps to keep them docile and shouldn’t be used on humans.  Has anyone else heard this?  I finally found some non-flouride toothpaste for Angus, so that when he does use buckloads he won’t hurt himself.  Although I gotta say, a *little* bit more docile might be nice…..

So he didn’t sit still for the dentist hardly at all when she came at the end of the visit to look at his teeth.  And the dentist high-fived the hygenist for actually getting the xrays, she wasn’t sure how she pulled that off. 

And when I went to the front desk , the woman said, “how’d that go?”  and I said, “well we managed to get it all done” and she said, “I know, we heard”.  Ha!  I almost said - hey I can take my hygenist-biting child elsewhere you know!  But I didn’t.  I’m chill about it.  Besides it’s Angus’ dad’s turn to take him next time.

Tao te ching - True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way.

Things go their own sweet way, whether you let them or not.  The rose blooms without your approval and dies without your consent.  Even though you haven’t issued directions, the streetcar rings its bell, the taxi stops to pick up a man in a grey suit.  The world runs perfectly.  It’s all done without you.  It’s all done for you, whether or not you interfere.  Even your interference is life living itself out through you.  Life continually offers forth its gifts and lives itself out in its own sweet way.  All you need to do is notice.  That’s true mastery.

Byron Katie

You’ve heard about Beginner’s Mind and about being in your Don’t Know mind but lately when my thoughts have been driving me crazy I’ve been working on my Never Mind.

These days I’m getting lots of practice what with being pregnant and all. 

I remember being in a training thing and we were introducing ourselves to the class and one woman was five months pregnant.  This was when I was still on the fence about having kids.  And she said that she was excited about having a kid but it was really stressful.  And I thought - what’s so stressful?  You want a kid, you’re on your way, what’s there to be stressed about?

Ah, so naive I was.  Because of course there is lots to be stressed about.  Just because you can get yourself knocked up doesn’t mean you’ll make a good mom, or enjoy being one.  What’s the saying - buying a piano doesn’t make you a concert pianist?

A woman once told me she got pregnant because it was banana daquiri night with her partner and it seemed like a good idea at the time.  But here she was at an all day yoga thing with a baby at home.  She was exhausted and quietly napped in the corner for the afternoon.  I was suspicious that she didn’t come to the yoga thing to get caught up on Yoga and Physiology, but to get caught up on her sleep.  It shows to go you, what seems like a good idea under the influence of banana daquiris does not always look that way when you can’t tie your own shoes anymore.

And I didn’t plan this pregnancy at all, so yeah, for me there’s been a lot of Never Mind practice going on.

Telling myself to “Never Mind” helps me hit the pause button on my worrying and catastrophizing.  “Never Mind” is a reminder to have faith in the gift of time.  That some part of my worry will likely dissolve before it becomes reality.  Or that a solution will come to me while I sleep.  Or that I’m just having a rough day.  Or that I’ll know what to ask for, and heck, might even get it.  Never Mind means cutting myself some slack and trusting.

It’s definitely not about denying what’s going on.  I don’t want to do that.  But it does mean making the committment to find a bit of space where I can breath and believe it will work out somehow some way.  Sure, there’s still a huge possibility that the catastrophe I’m imagining will come to pass.  It will be horrible and life will fall apart around my ears.  Sure, and that would suck.  But Never Mind tells me that I want to also be open to the possibility that there will be some Yuck mixed in with the OK, mixed in with the ‘This ain’t so bad’.  In other words, Never Mind, you don’t know how it’s going to pan out so just breath.
 
Whatever I’m obsessing about probably won’t kill me.  And on my really dark days I think hell if it does then I won’t have any of this to worry about :-)  Sure it’s dark, but whatever gets you through the day right?

I’ve been reading Byron Katie who has a great process that she calls The Work.  It’s about dealing with the thoughts that drive us nutty crackers.  Basically you question the thoughts or “reality” that is driving you crazy and force youself to call it into question enough that you can chill out about it.  The questions are:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

#2 reminds you that you probably can’t absolutely know the reality that you think you know.  And #4 let’s you see how you might be without the thought, so there’s a little incentive to letting go.  You find yourself saying - hmmm, if I’d be calm and sane without this thought maybe it *is* worth trying to let go of it!  It’s great stuff, I’d highly recommend it.  She takes it to all kinds of places.

In another book she talks about ‘loving what is’, not resisting things and not just living with them but *loving* them.   Here’s a quote:

A lover of what is looks forward to everything: life, death, disease, loss, earthquakes, bombos, anything the mind might be tempted to call “bad”.  Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven’t undone yet.  Nothing outside ourselves can make us suffer.  Except for our unquestioned thoughts, every place is paradise.

So there are still days when I think - what if this kid is Devil Child?  What if we don’t like each other?  But most days I’m able to tell myself - Never Mind, let’s meet him, because it just might be OK.

I was talking to a friend who’s Aquarius this morning and she was grooving on her horoscope for this week from our favorite horoscope dude.  It’s about forgiveness. 

I find it so amazing in the personal ecosystem I call my life, how my past experiences of being hurt by people can be such a trap.  I seem to believe it gives me permission to wallow in being a victim.  I get to tell myself about how the big bad people were mean to me and I couldn’t help it.  I can be powerless and smug.   I don’t have to do a thing.  And of course that’s utter crap.

Now I’m not minimizing the hurt or saying that it doesn’t matter.  Of course it does.  But until we find a way to shake ourselves out of being the victim, nothing changes.   And the problem is that it’s not just there - we relive it.  We remind ourselves of the past event when we’re feeling lousy.  We ”re-feel” all the yuckiness, all over again.  We allow it to become a pattern in our lives because we tell ourselves we can’t help it.  So wait a second, now who’s become the big meanie?  

When we recognize the ‘hurt/victim’ pattern it’s a signal to jump in there and work on changing it.  It’s not about saying disingenuously - wow the meanies are awesome!  The forgiveness is for us.  And it’s tough work.  But I like D.K.’s formula:

“I forgive myself for allowing myself to choose this painful experience. I forgive myself for mistaking the past for the present. I am willing to let go of all negative emotions around this and step back into my natural abundance.”

The ‘natural abundance’ thing reminds me of something else.  When I’ve been able to start the forgiveness process,  I get carloads……no, boatloads of perspective about the situation.  All this new information comes along about myself, the “meanie”, the situation, you name it.  Stuff I never would have seen or heard while locked smugly in victim mode. 

It’s like the situation was black and white and then there’s a rush of all the grey stuff that makes up most of life.  The contradictory, ironic, ‘who’da thought’, complex story-bits, the kind you get from a good HBO series. 

It seems like in return for the work I do, I get the gift of being able to understand the situation with a dose of brutal clarity.   And then the really hard work of forgiveness can begin.

Pregnancy is the best cure for insomnia. 

I was at the Atlantic Yoga Conference a couple weekends back and we did Savasana in a number of the sessions.  Each time,  the minute I got comfortable I was gonzo.  Dead asleep or deep in a meditative state, however you want to view it.  I’d wake up at some point and check the yoga mat for drool.

The other day I had a nap and midway through got heartburn.  It’s common these days, I’m just about through a Costco-sized bottle of Antacid.  But it was no biggie,  I just piled my 6 pillows up against the headboard, nestled into them, and promptly fell back to sleep, sitting up in my bed.  I tell ya’, some days a girl just needs her 12 hours beauty sleep - every 24 hours.

But it’s been wacky because I’m normally a busy person but being pregnant I have those times where it’s like, nope, regardless of the million things I’d *like* to be doing my ass needs to find a couch and *now*.  There is nothing left.  And I’ve liked it.  It’s like mandatory chill-time. 

Abigail Thomas  says:

Live each day as if it were your last, Nana has heard them say, but she says rubbish. Live each day any way you want. Take a nap if you feel like it.

I’m getting better at it.  And then I ran across an article on faffing, also known as ‘doing nothing’:

Faffing is good. It is an important part of life. Faffing is when we disconnect from the matrix and idle for a while, like a car. Our body and spirit know deep down that human beings were not made for constant toil so subconsciously creates space through the mechanism of faffing.

So his expert advice is:

Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden. Go to the shed with the intention of tidying up and instead fall asleep. Make mental notes. Read every single word of the newspaper - even the job ads - before getting down to work. Lose yourself in erotic reveries. Pat your pockets. Resolve to be more organised in future. Be useless.

I resolve that even after I meet this baby and my belly and energy have gone back to somewhat normal levels I want to hold onto this.  I may lose my skill for sleeping sitting up, but I plan to stay committed to the faff.

 Are you willing to recognize that thoughts are simply thoughts, beautiful and horrible in their scope and power, yet inadequate in their description of who you are?  Are you willing to investigate this?  If so, I invite you to stop thinking, just for a moment.  Not as an act of repression, but as a refusal to continue feeding whatever thought arises, to stop building thought upon thought.  Whether it is a thought of grandeur or a thought of worthlessness, stop feeding it and recognize it as just a thought.

What can a thought do?  It can define experience.  It can classify and relegate experience.  It can generate experience.  But it cannot be experience.  A thought has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The absolute truth has no beginning, no middle, and no end.  It does not appear and then disappear; it is always here.

I am not against thought.  What would be the point of that?  Thought is here.  Thoughts can be a glorious expression of creativity and understanding - to recognize thought for what it is, is to be neither for nor against it.  But when you are free of the bondage of believing that thoughts are reality, you are free to enter into the direct experience of who you are.  Who you are cannot be captured through thought.  The mind cannot capture its source because the mind is only an aspect of the source, not the whole.  You are the source, and since you are the source, you can discover yourself as that.

The Diamond in your Pocket, Gangaji

I collect old cookbooks.  When my grandmother passed away we were at her house and people were hauling things off.  I have no idea what was so interesting, my grandmother lived pretty simply.  Her idea of jewelry was some old Avon stuff with some of the fake stones missing.  Bling just wasn’t her thing. 

Someone asked me what I’d like and I said, “um, can i have a couple cookbooks?”.  I got a whole box and I just love them.  Her handwritten notes on recipes for casseroles with crushed up potato chips on top?  Priceless.

One of the old-school recipes that my grandmother and mom used to made is Half Hour Pudding.

I’d forgotten about it and then found it again in an Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens cookbook I picked up somewhere.  It’s a collection of traditional recipes and it’s fun to look through them.  There are some classics I want to try like ginger snaps and oatcakes.  But some of the recipes are more entertaining. Can you imagine making a cake with pork fat?  Yeah me neither.

Sometimes I read the recipes and think, wow they considered that food back then.  Like the recipe for Spruce Beer literally starts with instructions on boiling 7 pounds of tree until the bark falls off.  I guess if there’s no beer store you’d have to get creative.  It’d probably taste like Buckley’s cough syrup though….whew.

Anyhoo Half Hour Pudding  is “pudding” in the sense that the brits use it - ”dessert”, not chemically sweet drippy goo from plastic containers.   The classic recipe is a cake made with raisins and cinammon baked with a brown sugar sauce but I had an urge for chocolate one day and thought, why couldn’t one make a *Chocolate* Half Hour pudding? 

They’re darn easy to make (I mix mine up in the casserole dish I bake it in), you throw it in the oven as you’re about to eat dinner so that it’s piping hot at dessert time, and it’s not all that bad for you fat and calorie-wise.  My theory is - if you’re mood for dessert go for it, just try not to kill yourself in one sitting.

So I tried the following and thought it was pretty similiar to those nasty molten chocolate cakes I’ve had at restaurants.  I’ve wanted to make them at times, but I look at the recipes and feel my arteries harden as I read about all that grated chocolate and all those eggs going into one dessert.  This one is a lot less rich. 

Chocolate Half Hour Pudding

1 TB Margarine or butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup flour

3 Tbsp cocoa

1.5 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 Tbsp chocolate chips

Mix the ingredients in the order listed.  Put in an 8×8 pan or a 1.5 quart casserole dish.  Then pour the following over:

2/3 cup brown sugar

3 Tbsp cocoa

1 & 1/2 cups boiling water

2 Tbsp butter/marg in 2 dabs (don’t worry it’ll all melt and mix up)

1 tsp vanilla

Bake in a 350 oven for 30-40 minutes.  The cake part will be a little floaty in the sauce, but check that the center has some firmness to it before taking it out.

When you’re pregnant you get to go for a million trillion blood tests.  Sometimes I’m convinced the pregnancy doctors are subsidizing their practices getting kickbacks from a league of vampires in exchange  for vials of my precious red stuff. 

I sit there with a needle in my arm thinking, couldn’t you be doing today’s tests on the 15 vials of blood I gave here *last* week?  At what point are they helping my health and at what point are they “helping” me to the point of causing me to pass out in the parking lot in front of an oncoming car.  I’d be all pale and weak and not even have enough blood to create a gory accident scene.

Anyhoo, I put on a brave face and do what I’m told.  I tried a new blood sucking place last week.  The nurse takes me into her office and as she’s hauling blood out of my arm I feel a little woozy so I’m reading the stuff on her walls. 

She’s got a ton of stuff on her walls.  A lot of her own work related notes.  Also a lot of bad photocopies of those snarky funny things that get passed along dissing bad customers and opinionated people.  And then I spy the note on paternity tests.

It turns out that a paternity test is $595 and every “alleged parent” after that is $70.  I assume one potential dad and the definite mom are included in the first price, what a bargain. 

I found it funny because I am so not a good candidate for anything but monogamy.  I’d get everything mixed up and use the wrong names and nicknames every chance I could get. 

I’d be the one saying, “hey I got sushi!” and then go, “oh right, *you’re* the meat and potatoes guy…..”  It’d be bad.  It’d be *moments* before I put my foot in my mouth and another 30 seconds before I crammed the second one in right behind.

But now I know there are other advantages to monogamy too.  Here’s to a few extra dollars in my pocket and one less blood test.