Setting the scene for my blogging tonight:
1. The Beatles - Across the Universe - playing - really loudly
2. Candles - the mango ones from Ikea. I'm trying to use them up because they smell summery, and it's time for fall-smelling candles, but I have way too many candles anyway (wasn't there a line in Sex and the City where Samantha talks about how candles are the single woman's new version of cats?) and I don't want to keep them all winter.
3. Just got out of a bubblebath and smell like lemon. I like lemon-scented things.
So this is my stress-intervention.
I'm nearly at a breaking point, and I have to do something, so I'm pulling out every stress-relief tip I can remember from the past 17 years of reading magazines, self-help books, personal development seminars, yoga, meditation, etc. I even sat at my Simple Abundance altar - a shelf on my bookcase that has lots of my favorite pictures - me in the greenery of Bath, me in Scarborough, photos by Joe Cornish, a nice little laughing Buddha, a calming dolphin I painted at Color Me Mine 12 years ago, and a stack of these angel meditation affirmation cards I've been lugging around for about 14 years and never really read. I've got to get in the habit of using all these things because here's what's going on:
1) I'm pregnant. As if we didn't know that already. I am seriously suffering from a case of unrealized-expectations. I thought the whole second-trimester thing was supposed to be great. But maybe because I wasn't so bad in the first, or for whatever reason, mine is pretty much sucking. The worst is the insomnia. I'm really affected by sleep - I don't function well on less than 7 hours, and never have. But these days I'm waking up at 3am. My belly is also getting bigger, which is making my back hurt, particularly when I sit. I'm trying to do regular exercise, but with the whole waking-up-at-3am thing, and being exhausted, it hasn't been happening as much as I'd like. It's all giving a distinct gray and nasty color to everything that happens throughout my day.
not the least of which is including...
2) My hubby getting sober. I don't want to say too much about this because it's his journey, and mine is through alanon, but suffice it to say, hubby wants to be sober when Baby T is born, and has 54 days, thanks to AA and the support of an amazing group of men who are standing for him making it one day at a time. I'd like to be proud of him, but it's hard sometimes when he's being a royal sh*t. He's also been in this really intensive 6-month Landmark course, which has been putting him through the ringer as well, so he's got it coming at him from two fronts. That has come to an epic conclusion this week, so I'm hoping that once he can fully concentrate on the twelve steps and not be dealing with himself from so many angles, that he'll be a little calmer. And less grumpy.
And then there are the little daily things that happen to just royally f*ck with your head. Like:
3) My bank account got hacked on Thursday. So now the bank opened a new account and moved everything over, but I won't have access to that account for at least a week or two while the new atm cards are being sent. Stupid fraudsters.
And then today,
4) My car wouldn't start. Needed a new battery, which hubby has procured and put in, which is great, so it's well and happy now, but when it refused to start this morning, I decided it was time for the stress intervention, because I almost lost it.
So here's what I'm committed to doing.
1) Meditating at my altar every day, at least for 10 minutes, if not longer.
2) Journalling
3) Listening to my favorite music, and only my favorite music, all day
4) Drinking lots of water
5) Spending time outside every day
6) Going to at least one alanon meeting a week
7) Learning the things that really work for me, that aren't covered in this list, and putting them into practice. Habits to cultivate now, so that when Baby comes, I will already have a solid foundation of taking care of myself.
On an upshot, I'm really hoping I can make it to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity in DC at the end of October. I had wanted to go home anyway, and it would work out perfectly to make a trip back to PA and then join the Million-Moderate-March. Jon Stewart should be President. Seriously. Weirder things have happened. Like Al Franken, for instance.
Here comes the sun.
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