Does that butt kicking come gift wrapped?

“So, what are you going to do about it?” she asked. I had nowhere to hide. She was looking straight at me….as you do when you’re talking to someone and you are the only two people in your house….but that’s not the point….the point is she was looking straight at me and calling bullshit on my little charade.

After a few too many seconds of my best blank look back at her she followed up with….”Look, I know you like to ponder the emotional side of things and the reasons behind everything but that’s not really getting you anywhere is it? I’m a strategy kind of girl and I figure if something isn’t working you come up with a plan to change it”

The following feeling was a weird combination of ouch and fuck I love this woman. As the saying goes in our house ‘only a true friend would be so truly honest’. I’m pretty sure we stole it off a movie but it’s one of those things that we’ve taken and used for so long we feel like it was totally our creation.

My bff (bullshit fighting friend) had just cut straight to the heart of my oh-so-terrible first world problems. She had cut me off mid lament, sending my harp crashing to the floor. She didn’t want to hear how my last 6 months felt like I was trudging through mud. She didn’t want to know the reasons why everything was feeling like hard work because she knew that when I said reasons I meant excuses.

I had not picked this friend for her go easy and sympathetic characteristics because the smart girl in me knew that support isn’t always about agreeing and sympathising. If she had done either of those two things I would been left in the same stagnant position I was in. Sometimes the best support is helping someone get forward motion, and sometimes the best way to do that is with a boot up the butt. The profound difference between what my friend was doing and what some would call being a bitch is that she was doing it with love in her heart. I knew she had my best interests in mind and was tucking me under her wing in her own way.

And so it is. My 2014 theme has been declared as ACTION. Not lights, camera, action…..just ACTION……because I know otherwise I would spend 11.5 months getting the lights and camera perfect and then it would be almost Christmas and action would have to wait until the next new year.

What is your 2014 theme?

My recipe for the Yippee Tree

Heel Click (Photo credit: jonkriz)

You can’t help but notice happy people.  They waltz down the street with a smile on their dial and a bounce in their step.  I love waking up as one of these people.  It is wonderful when feeling happy is effortless.  When it doesn’t matter which side of the bed your feet land on because you are shimmying all the way to the kitchen anyway.  When the coffee is just for pure enjoyment without the added flavours of necessity, survival and kick start.  Those effortlessly happy days feel like a picture perfect, cracking day followings weeks of rain.  I would go so far as to say, those days remind you of life itself.

So what to do on the other days.  The ones preceding that cracking picture perfect day.  The ones where you just want to hide under the doona a little longer……say till about 5pm.   It’s okay to have shitty days.  Everyone has them.  What’s not okay is to let your shit pit overflow into the lives of everyone around you.  That makes you an energetic leech.  It doesn’t fix the problem when you spread your crud around, it just makes their day shit too.  So, if you’re like me, somewhat of a monkey swinging between the Poor Me and Yippee trees, you need to have a few strategies.

My favourite strategy is actually a recipe, but not a food recipe.  While I agree that triple-choc-whatever-you-can-lay-your-hands-on is most definitely a strategy, I find the results are short lived.  I need something a little longer term.  My recipe is a very personal recipe.  A list of all the ingredients that make up my life when I’m in a good place.  The result of lots of observation of myself, noting what I am doing when I’m in the Yippee tree and what I’m not doing when I’m in the Poor Me tree.  I call it my RECIPE FOR A HAPPY KASMIN (genius title I know) and it currently looks like this……..

Bed early, up early:  Getting up when I have to is existing. Getting up when I choose to is living. By choosing to get up earlier brekky is ready, school lunch is done, uniforms are ready, I can have a shower (BY MYSELF!!) and sometimes I even get my hair brushed.  I can wake Master H in a good mood instead of starting the day with “SHIT, quick, get up!”

Water:  I’ve noticed that when I’m thirsty I feel tired, my brain feels foggy, my skin feels yukky and I spend the day at the fridge door.

Writing:  Whether it be journalling, writing blogs, or just writing a list of what I want to do that day/week/month.  I like to do it, I need to do it.  It gets it out of my head.

Reading:  I have a few on the go so that I can read what I’m in the mood for at the time.  Nothing better than delving in to someone elses world, real or not, or finding a book that opens your mind just a little bit more.  Real books by the way, you can’t smell an e-book.

Time to self:  I can hear every mother going YES!  Those rare nights when both kids are asleep before I am and I can sit with a cup of tea are bliss. I can feel myself getting excited thinking about it.  I still fist pump every time Master W goes to sleep just so I can do things with two hands.  When husband is home and takes over kid duties I waste the first hour of ‘me time’ like an excited puppy going in circles not knowing what to do first.

Barbie time:  I don’t care who you are, it is hard to feel great with an unintentional afro or fry-an-egg oily hair.  It’s more than hard to feel dead sexy when the hairs on your legs are gripping the inside of your jeans that you’ve worn in an attempt to hide them.  Yes, a mono-brow brings attention to your eyes, but not in a good way.  No, you are not smoking in those grandma jocks.   Surprisingly, the more you let it go, the less the care factor gets.  Bad, bad, bad.  The start of a slippery slope into trackpants and thongs in the school yard. Make an effort.  Get out of your flannies and make an appt with your beauty friends, or at least your tweezers.  Repeat after me, I am worth two eyebrows.

Exercise:  No explanation needed really.  It feels good.  Do it and everything else falls into place.

 So, that’s my recipe.  I’ve fine tuned it over the years and it lives centre stage on my clarity board.  Simplicity is key.  Don’t make it twenty points long because you’re going to be looking at this from the pit and it needs to seem achievable, not like another list of failures.

I would love to hear what you have put in your recipes.  If you don’t want to share publicly, it would make my day if you emailed me instead 🙂

avagreatone

The awful way I finally got grateful

I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.  It took my breath away.  A school friend posting a funeral notice for his baby boy.  Oh please no!

I don’t even really know this little ones story except that he was born early and his parents never got to walk out of that hospital showing him off to the world.  They never got to do that first drive home with the precious cargo that makes you feel like you are speeding at 40kms an hour.  Fuck.  Reality check considering my most recent musings.

I didn’t know this baby, I had never met him, but that didn’t stop the tears.  The fact that I never met him didn’t stop me thinking about his little feet that would never walk in this world.  It didn’t stop me thinking about how his little hands would never again wrap around some adoring relatives little finger as they goo’d and gaa’d over him.  It didn’t stop me thinking about that little neck that his mum and dad would never get to nuzzle into. I  don’t know his Mum, but I am gutted for her.  I haven’t seen his Dad for years but I want to reach through the space of time and send him all my strength.

It was the last straw.  One too many stories that didn’t seem quite right.  Suddenly everything had snapped into sharp focus.  A realisation of the fragility of this life.  It’s a clarity that I’m not sure I wanted at first.  The last shred of invincibility stripped away.

At first I thought the feeling I was left with was fear.  A swirling in my stomach and heaviness in my heart that left me staring into space for days after.  Then I realised it was something much more than that.  I realised that I was staring because I was seeing the world anew.  It had a new wonder because I was no longer taking it for granted.  The sparkle of the afternoon sun through the long grass.  The dance of a whirly wind across the paddock.  The way that the music seeped right through my body.  The fluffiness of flannelette sheets on a chilly morning.  The light rest of my husbands hand on my knee.

It wasn’t fear I was feeling.  It was intense gratefulness.  It was gratefulness to the point of overwhelm.  It was a gratefulness that put things into perspective. It was a gratefulness that made me want to get up and make sure I was living.  It was a gratefulness that changed my tone of voice and I now hoped it wouldn’t end.  Surely his life, and mine, is worth more than a moment of this.  Surely I owed it to this boy to continue to live like this.  Surely I owed it to myself.

I have a clarity board at the foot of my bed that has on it pictures of all the things I am grateful for or want to make a part of this life of mine.  I’ve also made a portable version of it using pinterest so I can have it with me always.  This little boy is now on my board.  I added him first.  I added him to give me that little kick in the guts each morning.  Maybe the first kick is one of fear, I’m not sure, but if that’s what it takes to make everything I see after it that much more powerful than I thank him for it.

All we ever want in this life is to make a difference to someone.  We try our whole lifetimes to achieve it.  That little boy did it in a life of less than 2 months, without words, without a touch, without a sound.  He did it just by being.