Day 1: Project 365

I needed something warm and cozy. This scarf took about 2 hours to make - P hook with Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick yarn - two skeins.

Beginning the re-building

Today is a new day. I have been torn down from all directions.

I'm at rock bottom emotionally, physically and mentally. It's an effort to walk the dog. I'm winded climbing the stairs. My insides are curling up on themselves and I'm tired of it. I'm lethargic, sad, melancholy, listless, lifeless and puffy.

It would be so easy to stay like this and rot, but I can't. I would be destroying everything I have worked for up until this point in my life.

So tomorrow starts a new chapter.

I have to get out and do. Not just be. But I have to be comfortable with me and the direction I'm going, even though I feel like I'm blindfolded and hobbled. Maybe that's the best way considering I would be scared out of my gourd if I were to take a look at all of the details. I'm naturally a planner and I have to let that go. I need to see that which is in between the black and white.

I have to say that every once and a while, I see a glimmer of what I am to be. It feels like every time I reach for it my hand gets slapped. So I need to try another path of self-discovery and be willing to veer off the path of a bit. Maybe a better one will be there.

So much

There is so much going on I have no idea where to start. I've been keeping a list of blog topics in my iPhone for future use as they pop into my head.

These past few weeks have been very overwhelming - full of anxiety, triumphs, successes, a set-back or two, good news, bad news, much thought and planning. Thankfully, my head has been level and I'm moving forward.

My thoughts are getting in order and they will soon make their appearance here... promise.

A shining accomplishment

With everything negative that has been strolling through my brain and life in the past few weeks, somehow this amazingly positive experience slipped through the cracks. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to teach myself how to bake. I gathered up my tools and ingredients and gave it a shot. The results were amazing: warm, sticky, golden brown caramel apple sticky rolls. Holy crap. My house smelled heavenly for days.

I got to use yeast and sugar and cinnamon and everything. I made such a mess. There was flour and butter everywhere.



The thing that makes these rolls so special is that there are diced apples laced through the gooey caramel sauce. The recipe says that you can add apple liqueur to the caramel. I think I may try that next time for a more intense flavor.

Letting them rise a second time before baking. What you don't see is the huge, beaming smile on my face.

These rolls are fabulous. I'm going to make a variation of them for Christmas gifts for friends and family. Minus the apples but with a crazy yummy coffee maple glaze instead.

This recipe came from Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman fame. Her link is in my sidebar. Big thanks to Tony (again) for the amazing photos and help with the clean-up. He was well rewarded!

Getting my brain in order

Holy moly, it's been in interesting few weeks. Just trying to wrap my brain around a sliver of it is too much to bear some days. In some ways, I see exactly how far I have come, but in others, I see exactly how far it is I have to go.

There are many difficult things that people have to do in their lives. There are many lessons to learn and changes to make. Some are considerably harder than others. Yesterday, I did the absolutely most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Above and beyond getting out of an abusive relationship. Harder than having plans for a healthy child blow up in my face and dealing with the fallout. Harder than getting my center back. Harder than being confident in myself.

I took a stand against my abuser. I filed paperwork to change a wrong into a right. Nobody has ever told the truth to his face, including me. And there it is on paper for the world to see now. He will be served tomorrow.

I am terrified, but I am sick of being bullied and belittled. I am done walking on eggshells and keeping my mouth shut. I'm finished with letting him walk all over me. I will not let this person become the blueprint that my child will study as he becomes a man. No way.

There are so many reasons why.

Seaside walk

Yesterday morning, I asked Tony to show me how to use his camera. It's not just the little cutesy metallic green point-and-shoot cameras that most of us mamas have. Oh no. It's one of those big black ones with all the buttons and knobs and it has all kinds of attachments like lenses and lights and things. And a big black bag that he carries it all around in and God help him if it ever got stolen or damaged. I have never seen my Zen Master of a husband angry, but I'm definitely sure that steam would pour out of his ears and quite possibly lightening would stream down from the sky and zap an innocent grandma in the wazoo.

In my quest for learning how to do new things, I asked him a whole bunch of questions about what makes a good photographer. I mean, two people could take a picture of the same thing and the image by the everyday tourist would look just OK and the other by the trained photographer would capture the pure essence of what that object is inside and out. What makes the difference? We spoke about angles and lighting and lens types and composition and editing. I get the lingo because I have taken many a college art course and studied Art History more than most people would care to admit. I've dabbled a bit in photography, but that was many many years ago. I never really took to it because I didn't like turning into a bat and bumping about blindly in the darkroom. No thank you. Since then the whole digital revolution has come about and that is something entirely foreign to me. USB cables and Photoshop and who knows what else.

So we hoofed it down to the Oceanside Pier and Harbor. The pelican is Tony's shot, but the other three are mine. He tinkered with Picassa and here are the results. Hooray me.

This pelican was showing off for a little crowd of squealing children. He had it pretty good, seeing as it was the end of the day and there was little to no luck in the fish-catching department. He got the spoils of the left-over bait. Lucky duck... I mean lucky pelican.

This is a shot from under the Oceanside Pier. The waves were still rather large from the remnants of the Samoan earthquake. It was really something to see them crashing through the posts. Tony added a sepia tone and adjusted the sharpness and contrast. There was a small tweak on the angle as well.

There was a bike rental shop just below the pier. This image was cropped just a bit to focus on just the lines of the bike frames.

This shot was taken over by the Oceanside Harbor. I like the two blues with the sharp white trim. Just a small crop on this one.

The nature of things

The last few days have been a cluster of great successes, feats of strength, hearing difficult truths and in-my-face tests of my year of PTSD counseling. I would have to say that my therapist would be so very proud of me. Maybe I should give her a call. I have to say that I am giving myself a whole-hearted pat on the back for not losing my resolve or falling back into that dark place that I was dragging about with me for the better part of a decade. I am stunned that I am able to look back to those days without emotion. If I feel anything, it is sorrow. Not for myself - I cannot change the past and only look upon it as a source of lessons in moral character - but for others who have yet to witness the full wrath of what I experienced. If anything, the past week has proven to me that I am strong enough to take a stand for what is right and that I will be OK. Maybe scratched up a little bit, but for the most part come out on the back end a better person for it and thereby stronger as a final result after the wounds heal.

Several nights ago, I met with someone who needed me to tell her the truth. She had a list of questions and wanted brutally honest answers. I gave them to her. Not to be malicious or hateful to the person we were speaking of - I really and truly have no energy for that anymore - but to paint a very vivid picture of what the sad reality of the situation is. We talked at length over Niçoise salads and Merlot about the fact that the question of "why" cannot be answered, that we can only move forward and make ourselves whole again. There was a great desire on both our parts for the person in question to get help and to get that help quickly. However, the issue remains that the pride and ego that is present will not allow him to do so. It was concluded that he is embarrassed and ashamed of who he is down somewhere deep in the recesses of what he experienced as a child and that he feels the need to paint some sort of surreal picture of who he thinks he should be. It makes us both so incredibly sad as we both see that the potential in this person is immeasurable. Truly it is. He just refuses to see it and actually live it. Over the years, it has gotten covered with a very thin facade that is now crumbling about his shoulders.

What I had to say was very hard for her to hear, but it confirmed her suspicions of what she had thought all along. The most difficult thing for me wasn't talking about the past, it was watching her experience the same things I had. I could read it all over her face. No words needed to be spoken.

She is such a beautiful woman. So opposite from me in the physical, yet I know that if the circumstances were different, we would have been great friends. She is a strong, opinionated, athletic, savvy, smart, sharp and witty woman. She is successful, financially responsible and can wield the iron fist if necessary. The thing I like best about her is that she is brutally honest and is not afraid to call a spade a spade. She has the desire to know the truth and heaven help you if she finds out you are lying.

It has taken me the better part of a week to pull this post together. Since I have started it, I have been through another cycle of my black cloud moods. I had some time alone and was able to process everything that has occurred and work myself into a lather over it all. Yesterday I had a much needed chat with my amazing husband and we worked through the knotted up emotions that were clogging up my brain. A few tears, a small pity-party, a plan for action on my part to help relieve some of my anxiety and three wonderful hours walking the seaside cured most of the crud. I feel pretty much back to normal today.

I am a strong believer that everything happens because we need it to and that there is a lesson to learn so that we might be able to grow and thrive in our lives. I am seeing very clearly that I have made the right choices and that in and of itself is amazingly comforting.