TI♥T: Flirting

You know how the other day I mentioned I was back?. It's been a summer and autumn of changes, of stressors and releases, of ups and downs and hopes and follies. Of forgetting who I am and letting others forget who I am. I stopped doing the things I do consciously for me - walking to work, minimizing my sugar intake, going to bed on time. I stopped taking care of myself. 

But I also stopped doing the things I unconsciously do. And because they are unconscious things, I didn't know I wasn't doing them, I just knew something was missing. 

Until last Sunday. Until a smile flickered in my eyes, and an unbeckoned lilt lit my words and I knew. And, I'm gonna guess, so did the man I was speaking to.

I am a flirt. I'm a girly-girl who likes being girly when I interact with manly men. I like to tease and banter. And to be teased and bantered with. I miss having hair long enough to play with as desired. And I love the heat of a blush - in my cheeks or his.

Until it came back I didn't realise that for a while I hadn't been flirting. It's not something I think about doing - it's just there a lot of the time. Until it wasn't. And now it is. And holy doodle did I miss it. It gets me in trouble sometimes, but chances are good that at 42, I'm not going to outgrow it.

I am a flirt. And one of my favourite moments this week was when I recognized that rush of lightness and playfulness that came with the batting of my long eyelashes and the sassy tilt of my head.  

TI♥T: Spontaneity

It's been a great week. Okay - half week. Being an all or nothing kinda girl, since getting my wind back I've been booked every night and working extra hours to catch up. Today I was looking forward to an art night with some new friends, and it was cancelled.

AND I WAS SO HAPPY!

I'm really excited about having new friends to be creative with. But having a whole free evening pop open meant that I got to pick up some chicken & salad, head to SC2's house, and sit around in comfy clothes watching TV. It was so spontaneous and easy and fun.

Sometimes the unplanned are the best plans. It almost makes me want to throw out the multiple calendars and the spreadsheets and the strategies and ... oh heck, who am I kidding. :)

PS - I'm the guest blogger & 'Lovely Lady' on my friend Jodi's blog today - exploring my vivacious side and trying to get comfortable with the camera.

Aaaahhhh, that's better

I don't know what happened the last couple days, but all of a sudden I'm me again. Powerful. In action. Happy. Dancing and singing and taking no guff me. I hate when that goes away, but boy is it great when I start to shine again. When everything shines.

Which (you saw this coming, didn't you) reminds me of a very me-in-this-moment song from my favourite newfies :)

just one thing

There are a great many blogs out there that I enjoy - some I've listed on the side panel, some I pop over to when I think of it. Some I click when I see the link on Twitter. Some I stumble down a rabbit hole, read voaraciously and can never find again. But there are only two blogs that I have delivered to my email so as not to miss an update, and the king of those is the handsome and erudite Jonathan Fields.

Today Jonathan addressed one of my pet peeves - bucket lists. It's not that I have anything against bucket lists per se. It's just that in the last year or two they seem to have become so commonplace as to be cliché (and there's nothing I despise more than a cliché). Too often they are either, as Jonathan addresses, a someday/maybe kind of experience. Or, the worse offence in my opinion, they are simply an occassion for pretension to being learned, being adventurous, and being accomplished. They are yet one more modern expression of self-indulgence. I've rarely seen a bucket list that says something like "I want to be the kind of friend someone can say anything to and know it is safe," or "I want to comfort a grieving widow just by listening to her stories," or, "I want to inspire someone to finish or return to school."

This may sound like sour grapes, to some, and I'm sorry if you hear that. I've actually had some pretty amazing experiences in my life and I look forward to a great many more of all sorts. But as much as I love being a world-travelling adventure, it doesn't define me, and writing out the things I am looking forward to experiencing won't inspire me to do them any more than buying organic produce inspires me to eat well (what's with that??).

/End Rant/

You can imagine then that when Jonathan's post titled "The Bucket List Lie" arrived in my inbox, I was already a believer. My favourite blogger blogging against my pet peeve? This I had to read! Although I'm less convinced than Jonathan that few people manifest the items on their bucket lists, we're on the same page overall. Even if people do cross off some items, I still see the medium as fundamentally flawed. And that's where Jonathan comes in. Never one to condemn without offering a solution, Jonathan suggests a great alternative: the List of One:

... make a List of One. A single, meaningful action you’re going to take before the end of the day to move you one step closer to a single, deeply meaningful quest.

Don’t go to bed tonight until you’ve completed your List Of One. And done one other thing, made your List Of One for tomorrow.

Do this every day for a month, long enough to begin to inculcate the habit.

If it feels manageable, turn it into a List Of Two. And so on, and so on.

Execute on your list consistently over time and you’ll begin to make magic unfold. Not “someday,” but everyday.

The timing is perfect. I had been looking for a personal challenge to take on in November that would move me closer to my goals of being healthy, wealthy and wise. And since I have a tendency to take on 14 things with vigour and then give up, and REALLY wanted to avoid that this time. The List of One is simple. Elegant. Perfect.

Just one thing. One act of love and generosity. One moment of self-care. One item crossed off the list of things I normally ignore. One step in the direction I intend my life to go.

So I declared my One Thing for today and went for it. I half succeeded, and felt the joy of playing. And I will play again tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Just one thing.

Now, if you could do Just One Thing tomorrow, what would it be?

The Birth House: Review

Although it's been a while since I read Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, I expected when I picked up Ami McKay's The Birth House that the latter would remind me of the former. And in many ways it did - both books explore psycho-sexual-reproductive aspects of women's bodies. Both create spaces in which women's bodies and relationships are developed. And both focus on strong young girls who transform inside the stories into powerful young women after their debuts into these spaces. One could stretch a little and suggest that the two books also share being deeply tied to a particular time and place - The Red Tent being in Old Testament Canaan and The Birth House being in an isolate Nova Scotia village circa 1920, but those times and places are so far apart it's hardly worth comparing.

View on Amazon

Stylistically, the books couldn't be further apart. As I said, it's been a while since I read The Red Tent yet I remember the vivid, even gory, scenes of menstruation, birth, rape, murder. It's surprisingly violent for a 'women's book' (that's really a whole other discussion). On the other hand, while The Birth House does not shy away from the dark edges of life, it does so with what I can only somewhat shame-facedly describe as a 'feminine' energy. Lightness. The power of the women in The Birth House is also the power of community and friendship.

Dora Rare, the heroine of The Birth House,  - like Dina before her - is the only daughter in a string of brothers. In Dora's case, surviving the rough and tumble world of being raised with boys has made her wily. She uses cunning and sometimes even a paradoxically innocent guile to survive the men who rise up against her. She has the flexibility and strength of bamboo as she adjusts to the vagaries of life. She inspiring yet grounded in the author's great research.

I loved reading The Birth House. I love that it ends happily and without bowing to convention. It was the kind of book that felt like a friend. And couldn't we all use more of that?