Day 343: That’s Not My Mom & Dad, Is It????

Monday, August 25

The alarm clock, albeit a Zen gong, started ringing at seven.  Ugh.  I don’t like to wake up before eight.  But I had to be at the winery by nine, so there you go.  I dragged my sleepy bum out of my cozy bed and sauntered down the stairs for a bowl of Leapin Lemurs cereal.  What can I say, the sweet yumminess of gluten-free chocolate-peanut butter cereal clears away the early morning blues.I hurried along, feeding the cats, cleaning the litterbox, and getting myself ready for work.  I spent most of the day at the winery while a producer was filming segments for a video.  I kept the time to keep things moving along.  The last quarter of my day was at my desk busily working through a long line of emails. 

When I got home, I changed and went to the gym.  On my way, I stopped by my mailbox and opened up a letter from my uncle in Florida.  In it was a fantastic photo taken of my parents from the late 60′s or early 70′s.  My mom has this huge black chignon or beehive, a little red velvet dress, looking wiped out a la Amy Winehouse style, and she’s sitting on a funky sofa (with colonial images like George Washington on a horse!) next to my dad who looks handsome in a black suit, only his eyes are totally closed.  He’s either very, very bored and tuning out his surrounds, or he’s passed out!  On the coffee table in front of them are two empty cocktail glasses.  I couldn’t stop laughing. 

My uncle is hilarious!  He included a funny note with the photo.  I’m going to have to frame this photo!  While it’s funny to see my parents in this era, and questionably sober, it’s also just cool to see them in a moment that’s so honest and real – not perfectly prim, proper and posed.  I don’t have any other photo of my parents like this, at all.  I do believe it’s now my favorite.

It’s also quite remarkable how much I look like my mom.  Aside from the black hair.  When I learned that the photo was taken in 1971, it dawned on me that I am four years older than my mom was when that photo was taken.  She had an adopted three year old little boy (which explains why they look so spent!) and, they didn’t know it at the time, but their soon-to-be adopted little girl was about to be born.  I wasn’t even a thought in the universe for another three years.

I called my mom and learned that she has to now give herself insulin shots.  Her voice was hesitant as she mentioned this.  I remembered practicing giving oranges insulin shots when my diabetic grandmother was still alive.  I knew this day was coming.  Her pills never seemed to control her irratic blood sugar.  I have worried about this, which is so fitting.  My mother spends many waking hours worrying about her children.  It’s quite the role reversal, but, I have worried about her diabetes for awhile.  But, part of me was a little relieved.  I figured the insulin shots might actually make her feel better.  This, I decided, was a good thing.

I made a thick and very cheesy two egg omelet stuffed with crab for dinner.  I had a very leafy green salad for lunch.  So, I was craving protein.  I had two organic sausage links with my omelet.  I then fixed a cup of Yogi India Spice tea, which is so darn good, with one third of a Dagoba dark chocolate bar.  I also ate two Ener-G brand gluten-free donut holes.  My sweet tooth was calling. 

Alas, I noticed a few ants around my kitchen sink.  I was pissed.  I spent days cleaning up the kitchen to get rid of the buggers.  I kept mumbling under my breath, not again.

I flipped through the latest New Renaissance book shop catalog and dog-eared pages to listings on a couple events I’m interested in attending this fall, including Images & Inspiration from Tibet – a talk and slide show on Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse, a tradition providing many pathways to enlightened being, which is scheduled for Friday, November 7th.  Another talk that I marked was Spiritual Discourse with Anam Thubten Rinpoche, a heart-to-heart dharma dialogue and exploration of the truth that is always available to us.  This class is scheduled for Thursday, November 13th.

As I made a note on my calendar about these events, I thought about my spiritual compass.  I haven’t been going to mass, still.  It’s been a couple months.  Maybe even more.   But I am still hung up on the fact that the Catholic church will not allow persons with celiac disease to take a gluten-free host for the Eucharist.  This is so offensive to me.  As if people with celiac are just trying to make a stink.  The bread is a symbol, which mean it’s not literal.  Which means Christ isn’t really wheat, water and yeast baked to crusty brown perfection.  C’mon!  It’s a sacred symbol.  I might as well have been excommunicated, as far as I’m concerned.  I’m not able to let go of this.  Communion was such a sacred, deep connection I’ve had with my faith.  It really meant a lot to me.  There are some Catholic churches out there that welcome a gluten-free host for those in need.  But, unfortunately, not mine here in Portland.  So, I’m a little bitter.  I am more or less ditching church until I am able to take a gluten-free host for Communion.

Meantime, I am exploring other spiritual options.  This isn’t really to replace my Catholic faith, but to keep my heart, mind and spirit refreshed and fulfilled.  I miss going to Mass and feel a void in my life, but I’m taking my own stand.  So, because I enjoy the philosophy and spiritual teachings of other faiths, anyway, I have been seeking out other ways to experience spirituality.  I had been on hold, spiritually, for awhile now, checked out, even.  Perhaps these Tibetan talks will feed my spiritual needs until the Catholic Church decides to be more inclusive to all, including those with celiac disease.

 

 

 

 

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Day 322: When You Drink & Facebook…

Monday, August 4

I was asked by an editor of a local food and wine publication to write an article on the gluten free, Celiac experience, highlighting which restaurants are best prepared to accommodate the gluten free diet, to include the safe beverages to imbibe, by way of wine and spirits.  I am excited to get to work on the story.

While at work, I got a message in my Facebook inbox from a guy I hardly know who I met when I first moved back to Oregon in October.  He was actually responding to a random message I had sent him the night before…

There are those flickering moments of slight inebriation that just happen to happen to some of us every now and again.  I really don’t drink that much.  I limit myself when it comes to alcohol consumption.  Mostly, to be easy on my stomach.  But, I had people over for dinner last night and drank a few glasses of wine in the safety and comforts of my home.

And sometimes, in those flickering moments, the firecracker in me comes out.  She can be at times a little confrontational, part revolutionary leader, part underdog and part feminist Queen.  She’s  a trip.  She’s stoic but with a sense of humor. 

Yeah, she came out on Sunday night after the dinner party dwindled down, after a few bottles of wine had been shared.  Some people drink and dial.  She drank and Facebooked.  A discussion came up about who was that random guy who’s face emerged in the “Friends” section set amongst the faces of a few of my female friends – all who were actually, well, friends.  I laughed and said I hardly knew.  Truth be told, I know all 198 people who make up my friends, except for this guy.  Which is no biggie, but it is pretty random.  And last night I wrote him to let him know I thought it was weird that he was in my group of Facebook friends.  Which, today, seemed pretty funny to me.  I really don’t care one way or another about his status in my friendship list, but, well, he just so happened to be the guy who’s photo showed up in a mix of my friends, so he got the roulette message.

What can I say?  We’re all fallible.  We’re all a mess, really.  That’s human nature.  Not the neat perfection we’d all like to be packaged in.  We’re complicated, layered and unpredictable.  And, often, it’s in our stumbling moments of our most painful or embarrassing and obvious imperfections that we get to really know ourselves better, more intimately and most authentically.

 

Am I mixed up woman who drank and Facebooked, or was there something else going on?

Well, for one, I can laugh at myself.  I don’t usually make such an ass of myself.  I mean, I didn’t exactly Amy Winehouse myself.  This minor goof was funny, not pathetic as one might find it to be – though the smug, judgmental person out there might think otherwise.  But I’m really not concerned about that person.  No, I prefer to not be so uptight or mortified.  And, thus, I have learned that I have a sense of humor about myself.  An ability to laugh at and forgive myself.  If there was a pattern of bad behavior, well, I might consider therapy.  But this was random and for that, even more hilarious to me.  It really was my very own Sex & the City moment – the funny, humiliating ones like when Carrie Bradshaw does something over-the-top ridiculous in the name of love.  It’s endearing.  It’s human.  And we have all been there.

This also forced me to look at what was going on in my head, aside from the wine.  In my conscious world, I am not lonely.  But, maybe in my subconscious I really am.  That’s a hard thing to admit or to discover, and it rocks the boat a little.  I confess that this unsettled me a little.  I could get past the silly behavior.  I wasn’t so sure about the abstract self analysis.

I left work at 6:40, a long day, and changed into my workout clothes when I got home.  I headed over to the gym for a good 30 minute run.  I stopped over-processing the latter thoughts about my drink and Facebook action last night.  I allowed myself to get pulled into the latest news of Brangelina’s new baby names.  Good God.

Back at home, I made the left-over foccaccia pizza for dinner, with a lovely mixed greens salad topped with more gorgeous heirloom grape tomatoes.  I finished with a nice cup of Yogi chamomile tea with local honey and 3 Glutino mini chocolate cookies.

While preparing my dinner, I kept looking at my flowers – which I loved!  The purple and orange tulips looked so pretty, fully open as if commanding look at me!  I never buy myself flowers and was delighted to have them in my kitchen.  I want to give myself more delight.  Less disappointment, judgment, criticism, the stuff that is made up of a chorus of negative voices that can bruise and damage.  Instead, I think of Randy Paush’s widow’s wise words – not helping.   What does help – bringing yourself flowers.  Bringing delight into your life, delight or the light.

Before going to bed, I had picked up my copy of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose and I found myself re-reading the parts about the ego.  There’s the section about Identification with Things (p. 35-38), highlighting our attachment to material things, to consuming. 

Tolle writes, “when you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore.” 

He also writes about our obsessive preoccupation with things, attachments created by the ego.  He goes on to write, “Being must be felt”.  He explains that “[most people] were looking throughout their lives for a more complete sense of self, what they were really looking for, their Being, had actually always already been there, but had been obscured by their identification with things,  which ultimately means identification with their mind (p. 43).  And that “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.  How do you know this is the experience you need?  Because this is the experience you are having at this moment” (p.41).

I continued reading the sub-sections about Wanting: The Need for More, Identification with the Body and Feeling the Inner Body.  What’s great about this book is that it makes me slow down and really think about my ego, my obsession with material things and consumerism, and my trials with finding my Being, and, ultimately, how this behavior prevents me from getting and having what it is I really want and need in life – whether it’s regarding financial security, success in my career, success with my writing, and my relationships or lack thereof.

Heavy stuff.  I should probably meditate on it.  Instead, I’ll bring my flowers into my writing room and enjoy them for the moment.  In the moment.

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