Just life.

What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?

It is that simple. To look back over the last year. So much laughter, so much love shared and discovered. The private smiles. Planting things and watching them come back for the third year in a row. Seeing the plants I have bought over the years be repotted and realizing how big they actually are. The way my newly formed animal herd has adjusted to me and each other. Just a very uneventful year by most standards. Yet for me it has felt extraordinary. To think in Christmas of 2020 I literally just had my dog and three outfits. To be putting up a Christmas tree and having dressers of clothes. Three new cats in that time. Not forgetting two very large goldfish. The whole year was blessed. Even in its difficulty, it will never compare, to the hell I have passed through to be here. To enjoy the now, ride the ebb and flow of all that my life encompace now. So it not a singular event. The whole year goes down as a first if where my former negative Nacy truly died. Where in the encompassing the inner child’s need for stability has blended beautifully with my teenage fascination for the newest things. Not clothes but how many birds I can get to coexist at my feeders. Same game different level thlype of things. Just my life, my great fully messy past with determination to utilize it as my lantern forward.

Something wonderful

I got a chance to see myself through someone else’s eyes. I was told that I was the rock in their storm. When I have seen the same of this person. My laughter, my tears, frustration and love all seems solace I gained from it, not the other way around. Those reciprocal relationships are the foundation of sanity.

I am truly grateful and excited to hear from the proverbial horse. I have the tears form in my eyes in gratitude and thankfulness. Speechless. Overwhelmed for a pure moment, then blurted, what, your joking right?. No, was the reply. Dead silence for more than 3 heartbeats. As my memory runs, through all the times she was my sanity on the other end of the phone when I was a foster parent. How we would meet for something specific and forget about the reason because we get lost in each others company. We find emotional relief in each other’s presence. The non judgemental space that we hold space for each other.

So something wonderful happened.

Well, it seems silly,

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Maybe even eccentric. Yet, most people don’t ever truly clue into the fact I am hard to like. I have a periferal friend who occasionally seek me out. I am easier to handle in doses. I truly give props to the men who have been in my life. Most things are black and white for me. Having been raised in an emotionally void of chaos leaves me as a very strange individual. I can bluff my way through a lot. I do not pick up on subtle. It takes someone saying something directly as opposed to picking up what’s being put down. Or even better, my little sister says low flying plane to me, more than I want to admit. My dates have told me I’m oblivious. I know I am guilty of coming off as aloof. I carry no shame of it because I am incapable of showing fear. Back to a time, I had just learned to swim. Watching the horror movie of the creature of the black lagoon. My father made me go swimming that night due to how afraid I was of that movie. I am only now grasping, knowing a much more even life.

I will call it a tripod life. Spiritually, physically and emotional. My personal tripod. I am finally happy. So that is something most people don’t know about me.

A bracelet.

Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).

No, not even a Dimond bracelet or a gold one. I designed it. Choose the stones for it, at least the kind of stones. It is still my favorite piece of jewelry. It has a large citrine as the center piece. I have had to have the little stones replaced over the years. It was during the time I lived in California. It was a silent promise to myself that I mattered. I found strength and comfort in it. I have received many compliments on it over the years.

It was made by a local artist who knew it was well loved and cared for. It was a splurge that I never thought about due to what it means to me. Even as I rub the stones absent mindedly. This is confession. I couldn’t afford to do what I did. Yet, I never regretted it.

Rum cake??

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

Well, I forgot the eggs in a rum cake. How this happened I am truly unsure. No I wasn’t drinking. It shouldn’t have happened. I am not a kitchen freak. I don’t always gather all the things I will need when making something. I do not set out butter or oil. I will get the mixer and bowls, not forgetting the pans or silicone molds.

We live in a time that most use box cakes for various types of cakes. I like to use the spice cake mix, and add the rum which is heated on the stove with some butter. Mix it all together and boom, there is cake. I now have a pancake that is rum flavored. I could have used the ginger ale then I would have had rum cake.

I could sit here and complain. Yet what I did do was head to the store. And redid it all. Used the ginger ale. Now I have the pancake soaked in rum and fried in butter as different texture. Plus it adds more rum.

Not so much a fail as a fabulous flop.

That I struggle.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Even now after 50 yrs around the sun, I struggle. With speaking out, with not making myself a villain. I have been told I come across as gruff and formal. I will watch someone in the first interaction. It’s the side smile when something is said that the only one to hear. Usually not the most political correct. Yet, true. Most people make assumptions on my resting bitch face. I am not usually the one to say hello first. I nod swiftly in recognition. It is life. I like being alone. Being able to share space without feeling tread upon, is a true treasure. I am a very beautiful and depth filled soul only slightly burned from this world.

2 types

When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

There are financial successes, and there are successful humans. Mostly, the financially successful people love to show it off. Like telling everyone they are in a house that has maid quarters. The ones I look to are personally oriented. The ones who walked through the fires of trauma and come out with a voice and deep empathy for themselves. We are all pointed toward treating others like we do others’ stuff. George Carlin said it best when he describes the perceptions of others’ stuff as shit, yet your shit is just stuff. I like people with flaws, not a self depreciation, which most times shows a self worth issue. I am talking about accepting the darkness as essential as the light. Knowing one and not the other is a misbalance. Acceptance of self elevates not just the vibration but the distance between the self hatred and self acceptances. The smaller the distance, the more self is integrated. That is my definition of a successful.

Writing.

What have you been putting off doing? Why?

I always have this dichotomy inside myself. Self doubt. Wondering. I put it off because I have to kind of feel compelled. Pushed to sit and collect all the intellectual glitter I collect through research on things. Sometimes, it is just a reluctantance to succeed. I am unsure if it is because school was easy for me. In my early days I would make side money by helping others with their papers.

I have the beginnings of a story, published on wordpress. Noone has ever read it, call Nyx’s journey. It is an adventure about a kitten who is asked to help the fairies. Noone has read it I did send the link to not only my family and Facebook page. My niece who hasn’t read it, told me I put it on the wrong app.

I also have a 68 page single space book on a drive it is also flash drive. So fearful of but wanting so bad to succeed. It is a war, that somedays I win and others, get my ass beat.

When I turned 50.

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

I have a hard fought for my outlook on this life. So beaten down by my 30s, I was lost in tranquilizer, pain killer fog. My 40s were spent in regret. The extremes explored numerous times. I never felt like a grown up. Couldn’t hold others accountable for the behaviors shown to me. Wearing rose colored glasses having them on so long I believe that it a part of me in a weird way.

Being brought to tears over ballons, reservations, and a very nice present. It was a truly romantic and sweet night. I was overwhelmed and excited. My birthday falls on Easter every so often. My family took to celebrating my birthday on that holiday. So having someone else plan and execute a plan for my birthday, is monumental on my personal journey. I feel the shift, especially after yesterday’s eclipse.

So adjusting my rose colored glasses to turn its powerful gaze to me. I always take my feeling into account. I don’t run for the emotional cliff, but will walk to the edge. Meandering along the edge. This is adulthood to me. To be self possessed yet having not just the harshness of that but the lovingnesss of the child.

I wonder, if…

What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.

This world could handle that type of thing. The word guarantee is somewhat disheartening. This world runs off impossible physics. A delicate dance of atoms. We are nevr guaranteed tommarrow. So in the face that, we turn away. We create an elaborate approach to this insane existence. We make plans. Long-term plans and short plans, we plan meals and events, sometimes years in advance. Yet, we have zero guarantee of waking up. There are contingency plans upon contingency plans. We, as a species, are only a spark, like fireflies on late summer evenings.

There really is no guarantee. No tomorrow’s is promised, but we must live as if it is. The best part of my day is I woke up today. So try everything. I regularly eat new food, expanding my taste buds. I try different ways home. There is no path I haven’t tread. No depths I have forsaken. I have lived. Every emotional scar that I have, I own. I point to physical scars and tell you how and what was going in. So failure is truly in the eye of the beholder. I have won. Putting it into words, setting it out there wild and naked in its own harshness. The game is set, and if you really own that, it is simple. Everything is a learning curve. We can hedge all we want. Studying for tests. Saving for something. That is your guarantee. The action. The movement toward it.

Physics is a strange and twisted thing. The butterfly effect in action. I do something good for me, and others I will never meet are blessed by it. So it comes down to, there really is no way to answer because there is no guarantee of anything but this moment.