Happy Holiday Musings

Yule was lovely. A made it home after driving from LV in time to enjoy the day, B joined us for the day and was his usual fun, charming self. My Tam went to spend some time with her Mom (last minute guilt tripping by T's Mom, but T and I made it through it with no game playing or hurt feelings. Yippee! I have to admit that as much as I detest family drama, I do so enjoy not participating in it.)
My Mom joined us for parts of the day, popping in and out in her PJ's (pretty cute, really) and sharing her somewhat eccentric enthusiasm at the opening of every gift. Tam and I made a simple meal of baked ham, mashed taters w/gravy, and steamed zucchini. It was nice to have only a small kitchen mess for a change!
B spent the night so my F could use his truck to go to her OB yesterday. The ultrasound was done and DR. is reasonably sure it's a girl. If F is disappointed she's hiding it well. I of course, am overjoyed that she's having the 6th generation in a matrilineal line of first daughters.
The worst thing about these holidays for me is that I've pulled my head out of the sand once again to start paying more attention to what's really going on in our world. I have this habit of doing this. I go along for months playing ostrich because I just can't stand it. The war, hunger, disease, human suffering and cruelty, ignorance...
I remember during the so-called "Gulf War" (isn't this just the same ongoing war without end??) I broke out in shingles. From the stress. Big ol' tough woman like me, and I'm a freaking marshmallow. In the past I have become physically ill when I allow myself to pay attention to the truth. The horror of the truth of american politics, of hate and bigotry, of the crimes perpetrated in the guise of religion (no matter what religion), of ignorance, of persecution and separation...
So anyway, it seems that I have decided once again, to see if I can live in awareness without the horror of it all overwhelming me. I'm spending alot of time at Clipmarks.
I'm hoping that I can do some small good by clipping bits here and there, taking action and helping spread the non-main-stream-media truth, without getting buried in it. I'm also posting alot of my clips at Yahoo 360, but I'm not really sure where they're ending up. I haven't really figured the site out.
This might be nuts, but I'm going to see if I can somehow separate my politics from my life. I mean, that's always been my problem. I get so caught up that I get ill. So I just go along, doing what I can, (recycling, reusing, speaking my truth and refusing the silence that implies consent whenever physically confronted with hate, ignorance, bigotry and so on; living my life openly as a woman, a lesbian, a witch). What I'm going to do/try this time that's different, is continue to BLOG my life here in my journals, while being active elsewhere. Occasionally I may post political bits here, but overall I'm thinking if I can force myself to separate things, I may be able to avoid the overload that always eventually makes me run and hide my head in the sand.
I don't know. I may only be kidding myself. But I want to try, again. Of course, if it works, my non political readers will never know, because my BLOGS will just go on (or on n off) as usual. And if it doesn't, only my Clipreaders and such who check in on my BLOGS from time to time will know, because I'll disappear from the political postings and readings and activism.
An experiment for the New Year!!!

My New Year's Resolution:

To seek and find balance. Balance between my inner and outer lives. Balance between living my life and the responsibility of living as a fully present human being. Balance between planning and doing.

OCD, self destructive behavior and growth...

Well, I am feeling like shit this morning, and it's pretty much my own fault. Again. This particular FMS flare-up to be fair to myself, started with driving the truck. But it's continuing, I believe, because I am caught in another OCD and self will run riot episode of late nights.
What really sux for me about this is that this time of year, I can pretty much bet on having some ocd-manic time getting ready for Yule. But it's a little early, if I wanna feel even half-way decent on the day.
It should be starting now. *LOL* And not on top of a flare up already in process, dammit!!! So here it is, the Solstice, and my back and hips are screaming at me so I can hardly walk, and my knees hurt so bad from trying to protect my back going up and down steps, that they are inflamed and feel like they're going to buckle every time I take the 2 steps down to our bedroom. Damn!!
B came over to visit, yesterday. We had a blast all day being iTunes whores and copying music to our iBooks and visiting. But then as the evening wore on we settled into talk of spirit and psyche and space and time and before I knew it, it was 2am, again!!! I don't think I've gotten to sleep before 3am but once in the last week. And I know how hard that is on my body!!!
I've gotten so much better over this last year at listening to my body and taking better care of me, but I still go through these crazy episodes where I know I'm doing too much that's not good for me, and I can't seem to stop. Too much coffee, too many ciggs, to many late nights in a row, allergy foods in excess....
Talk about OCD and manic behavior. And how self destructive or self defeating is it?? Or is it?? When I'm like this I feel like "I just wanna be normal!! (Well, normal me, anyway)" I get so frustrated with my limitations, and then, like a good alcoholic, I'm on a binge!!!
Well. Not drinking, but the metaphor is apt. In AA we say "It's the first drink that gets ya drunk" We understand that to mean that the first drink kicks the obsession into overdrive and we're off. It's much "safer" to just not take the first drink.
These obsessive, self injuring behaviors of mine seem much the same. Just like my allergy foods. Once I pull an all nighter drinking coffee and working on the computer, or tattooing or crafting or whatever, it's like I enter into "control" mode. I have to, or I'm off on a binge, so to speak.
Now, if (If what a big little word. "Op zoboba hat gehort, ern zeida ben ein zeda!!" [translation from yiddish: If Grandma had balls, she'd have been Grandpa]). *LOL*

cool site

Clipmarks. When you're surfing the web abd find bits that interest you and would like to share them without copying and pasting the whole thing. It lets you clip and save bits. They are posted at the Clipmarks site and you can read snippets that other people clip. You can also import them to your BLOGS like this. These are my current ones.
My Clipmarks

Loss. How acute it is, despite space and time. I think we were bound by magickal ties...working magick, living together in cyber/astral space for so long. I feel the tug of her spirit depart. All love and light to you, Fairich. Goddess-speed, love.

It's been a wierd day. Started my morning with too much truth to stomach. Remembered this icon from my GJ and thought I'd bring it over.

Hmmm. It doesn't seem to be animate. Hopefully it will upon posting. That top bit isn't even the important part.

Darn it!!

So now, after getting the Deepest Sender" foxfire client to work, I went and changed to this damned Beta and it won't work!!! Grrrrrr! I still haven't figured out how to use the client with my Braveblog, either. Waahhhh! Why can't anything be simple?! All I wanna do is make one entry and post it to 5 BLOGS. What is so hard about that??

test 2

So this is kind of a double test. To see 1), if I've got this client set up correctly, and 2) to see if these images uploaded with the FTP client imbedded in Firefox. So far, this Firefox with OS 10 is pretty awesome. I must admit though, that I'm having a bit of trouble finding my way around this very Windows-like interface. OS 10 is a little wierd for we oldtimer Macusers

Yikes!!! Waaay too big (But it worked *happy dance*)