It’s February again!

Posted On February 4, 2009

And COLD! My god it’s cold. I won’t be complaining though. I’m trying to make complaining a thing of the past. There has been fuel for complaint around here lately, but I find that it is rooted in my inability to control a situation or know how it will turn out, and so I think I could also just breathe and have more faith. Jeff taught me this grounding exercise where you envision this green light going from your heart straight into the ground, pushing it as deep as you can. I thought it a little on the hokey side at first, but now I find myself doing it in all sorts of places when I feel a little flustered. While rocking the baby to sleep, driving somewhere, a public bathroom… you know, just anywhere. I always emerge feeling a little refreshed.
Things like that are becoming more and more useful to me these days. Just following some direction and doing some kind of ritual. It helps. There’s this book called The Four Agreements. I read the book a while ago, and was not that into it because the writing style was really distracting. It’s hard to explain, there’s a language barrier and stylistically it just didn’t work for me. But the meat of the book is good, and I wish I had given it more stock at the time. Anyway, this is straight from their website:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

I’m trying to dissect them slowly, and think about them in terms of real situations in my life. It’s making a lot of sense now, revisiting them. I like that, how sometimes something you hear or see doesn’t mean all that it will to you later. I recently came across this song for the second time, and I feel it so much more personally now than I did several months ago.

I especially like this part of the song:
"don’t let the sellers of stuff power enough
to rob you of your grace
love is all over the place"

It just… resonates. I’m feeling really open lately to learning and improving. Sponge-like. I find that I’m just absorbing information and ideas like I’ve been starving for it all. Maybe I have been. Maybe it’s just February. Every February is interesting for me, in one way or another. Speaking of which, I can hardly believe my little sprout is about to turn one next week. She’s my love.

Vera things:
She’s been dancing like crazy, and I love love love it. I play music just to watch her dance, multiple times a day. She’s entered this sweet place that I hadn’t seen from her before. She’s giving us hugs and kisses and smiling and patting us. She has been reaching for other women and showing them affection, and her aunts (both blood and otherwise) have been feeling the love. She’s eating much more, and it’s been fun to watch her discover food in a new way. She’s smiley and laughs this great laugh that I don’t think I could explain. It’s almost like a gasp… but I dunno. Anyway, she’s my baby. What a year, no?

The house is well on its way now. We’ve finally got things moving again after an unanticipated interruption (some guy at the seller bank quit and so we were just waiting around until someone picked up our case again and faxed some stupid papers). Now we are looking at closing on Friday or Monday. But I’m not holding my breath. We’re on our way again, and that feels good, especially because it’s not that fun to live in boxes. I’m hoping we’ll be all moved in by, not this coming, but next weekend. I want to have a birthday party with family for Vera.

Anyway, I promise I’ll do pictures soon. It just hasn’t been my average few weeks.