Delicious New Writers that I've Discovered

The other day I was poking around on the Endicott Studio blog, and several people answered the question "What is the best book you've read this year?" with "The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden". I found this book and it's sequel "In the Cities of Coin and Spice" at the library, and I've been working my way through both for the last week or so. They're by Catherynne M. Valente, and they are fantastic, in both senses of the word. Both books are stories told by a girl with tattoed stories all around her eyes-she looks like a raccoon. She lives in the Sultan's garden, and the Sultan's son finds her there and asks her for stories. The stories are nested inside each other like a Russian matryoshka doll. I haven't been this blown away by a writer in a while. I recommend these books to anyone who enjoys mythic fiction, and I look forward to reading more of Ms. Valente's stories and poems. She's also still in her twenties!

I also found a quite different type of book delightful recently, but in quite a different vein than Ms. Valente's work. I was at Parkplace Books with the boys a few weeks ago and bought a book from the children's section called "Larklight" on a whim. It sounded fun, being about Victorian outer-space pirates ;). It was so delightful! I ran right out and bought the sequel "Starcross" the next day. It was about spies, time travel, and curious hats ;). These are the sort of books I look forward to reading to Alex when he's a little bit older. Wonderful adventure stories. I've had good luck with new discoveries lately!

Alex with his chocolate Easter bunny

Silly boy! You're supposed to eat the ears first!

The Pinecone Hunt

We had a nice Easter at our house-Ron's parents came up from Portland for the weekend, and my brother and his family came over for dinner and an egg hunt. It was pouring out, so we had the egg hunt indoors, but it was still lots of fun. Alex loves having visitors, but it can be hard to get him to take his naps when we have guests over-he doesn't want to miss anything. :) Chris had been reading this blog, and he asked about Artemis, so I was able to explain a little of what's been going on for me recently with that particular archetype.

Yesterday Alex did something particularly cute. We went out to play on our deck, and he grabbed an old bucket that Ron had been using to scrub the deck, and he started picking up pine cones and putting them into the bucket, like he was playing Easter egg hunt. He astonishes me sometimes. See the attached picture.

I'm meeting with my trainer again today. Things are progressing well there, but a little more gradually than I had thought. It's good though-it would be hard to go from basically nothing to two hours of working out each day. I do like the trainer a lot-that worked out well.

Alex at the Easter egg hunt

Finding Balance

When I had my first training session at the gym on Tuesday, I was reminded again that I need to keep finding balance in my life as a high priority. I've always been a pretty dominant lefty, and some of the exercises illustrated just how out of balance by body has become. When I had to balance on my left leg, I did pretty well. On the right, not so much. My body is out of balance, as my mind and life have been for some time. However, I'm forced to find a balance now if I want to find time for everything in my life that is important. I can't spend 4-5 hours a day working out (as I did once upon a time), because I also need time to spend with Alex and Ron, to write, to read. I have a tendency toward extremes when I embrace something, but I can't spend all my time doing any one thing right now. So, balance is a focus for me right now.

Moving from Athena to Artemis

Just woke up, but thought I'd get in a quick blog post. Ron has to get into work early today, so I'm in charge solo in about 30 minutes. I have my first real workout with the new trainer today, with the program that she's been planning for me. Ron and I have decided to do the ab workout together each evening-last night was our first attempt. I didn't realize my abs were so weak! Well, nowhere to go but up, right?

I've been trying to focus on the mythological underpinnings of my new attempt to identify with a different archetype. I've always been closely identified with Athena, she who sprang fully formed from her father's head, a goddess of wisdom, strategy, and the intellect, who developed close friendships with men and was never interested in the world of women. In the past few years I've invited the energy of Aphrodite, Hestia and Demeter into my life in an attempt to find balance, and now it is time for Artemis. Artemis is fully in her body, and loves the athleticism of it. I need to find that joy of being in my body, of reveling in it's youth and strength. I need her with me when I meet with the trainer later today, that's for sure. :) Wish me luck.

And, just because I haven't posted one in a while...

Done with the Drama

Lots going on last week. I had my final class of French 1, French 2 starts the first Wednesday of April. 3 weeks to review the material from French 1, make sure I've got it all down solid.

Thursday night of last week was the monthly round table meeting, and it was a great one! Rich showed up (he's in town consulting for the World Health Organization, although why the WHO needs the services of a mythologist was never clear to me). We also had a Nigerian couple joining us. The guy really knew his Campbell-it was a joy to have him there. Unfortunately, he's just in town visiting his girlfriend, and he goes back to Nigeria before the next meeting. We encouraged him to start a Nigerian Round Table-I hope he does it. When those meetings work well they are so much fun, and the discussion can really get interesting. :) Then I remember why I do this, and I'm so glad that I do.

On Friday, I had my first meeting with my new trainer at Columbia Athletic Club. I'm so excited to be working with her-I really think having a trainer is going to make such a huge difference for me. She wants me working out a lot-30-60 minutes of cardio every day, a weight circuit every other day, ab work every day. Whew! But, this is how to get it done. Alex did ok in the day care-I was a little worried about that. They say he cried a little, but was ok after being comforted.

My big news for the weekend is that I finally did something I've been thinking about and needing to do for a while-I emailed my dad and told him that I needed some time off from our relationship, about 6 months or so. This was a big step for me. I realized recently that I've allowed myself to get caught up in the drama of this business with the lots, but that I don't have to. I DON'T HAVE TO (sorry for the shouting ;). It's like I've been with Ron in a drama-free relationship long enough now to realize how dysfunctional all this emotional garbage that I get into with my family sometimes is. My brother Chris came by for a visit yesterday, and we talked things over. He told me that Dad feels that I tried to cheat him by only wanting to pay the appraised value for the lots, and that I shouldn't think that I was going to get back the $1500 that we already paid toward them. So now my choice is to walk away from the situation completely, let go of all the anger and hurt feelings, and focus on other things. Goodness knows I've got enough going on in my regular life-I don't need this. So, I sent my dad the email. We'll see how things go.

Today

Last night's cooking class was a lot of fun-definitely more fun doing it with Lizzie. :) We've decided to make the entire menu for dinner when our friend Dan comes visiting Seattle from Marin for a weekend next month. I just had to make sure he's not a vegetarian first-the menu is French, and full of meat ;).

I finally heard back from the trainer at Columbia Athletic Club, so I have my first training session at 10:15 on Friday. Yay! I feel like I'm really ready to get serious about getting into shape, and this is the first step toward that. The dog park visits all these months were excellent ground work, and I'm so glad I'm in the habit of walking every day (that will definitely continue), but it's time to step it up. I took the water aerobics class on Saturday morning, and that was really good.

Leah is back from a two week break from babysitting Alex due to our flu and her spring break, so today is a good writing day. :)

Recent Happenings

Shortly after our trip to Maui our whole family came down with a strain of the flu that hadn't been covered by our flu shots. I got it first, then Alex, then Ron. Ron is now finally getting better, but the whole thing drug on forever for us. Glad to be feeling better at last.
This is a busy week for me. Tonight I'm taking a cooking class (French Bistro Cooking) at Sur la Table with my dear friend Liz. Tuesday night there is a local Westmont alumni event, to introduce us to the new college president, at Carillon Point, and I've almost decided to go. I don't usually attend the local alumni events, but I may stop by for this one. Wednesday night is my French class, and Thursday night is the monthly Campbell Foundation meeting, this month on The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology. Busy week for me overall!
I've been in a bit of conflict with my dad recently, and I think this may be the thing that finally gets me into therapy. My grandmother has recently moved into an elder care facility (at 98!), and my dad has been soliciting members of the family, including us, for financial assistance in paying for it. We contributed some, but eventually we offered to buy one of three lots that she inherited from my grandfather that have been in the family for 100+ years, rather than just continuing to give money. We felt that this way the lots would stay in the family, and my dad would have multiple thousands for her care, rather than passing around the hat to everyone in the family each month.
The lots are being used for farming-they are part of a field near Nipomo High School, not far from Santa Maria. They won't be developed until water gets into Nipomo, which there isn't enough of at the moment. My dad is hoping that water will be brought to Nipomo soon, and that then a developer will want to build a subdivision on the field, which would mean the lots would be worth considerably more than they are now. So, consequently, as they're still zoned agricultural, they're worth somewhere between 10 and 20k each at the moment. We are still working on getting them appraised.
My dad wants us to pay quite a bit more for the one we would buy then it is currently worth, which we are unwilling to do. This has caused a conflict between us.
He also wants to have a conversation where he gets to tell us all the reasons that he's mad at us (actually, me), and vice versa. My response is that it's not Festivus ;). (According to Wikipedia, "The holiday includes novel practices such as the 'Airing of Grievances', in which each person tells everyone else all the ways they have disappointed him or her over the past year.") Actually, I think anything like that will be really damaging to the relationship, and I don't want anything to do with it. So, therapy seems like a good idea at this point.