Moi, Toi, Nous.

Me, You, Us.

As I was ogling through Cartier on Thursday's lunch break, I picked up a copy of their magazine on my way out assuming it was simply advertisements, but I am heading into collage-making land, personally and for the workshop I’m running in the Spring and need magazine fodder. Turns out that aside from being a long advertisement, there were also several almost academic articles on marriage customs, the heart, as organ, as art, as personified valve, capable of being heavy, light, hard, open.

One of the pieces of ‘heart art’ had the scribbles of “Moi, Toi, Nous” painted on a large heart, with a caption saying this is one of the old ways of inscribing love. Me. You. Us.

In Calling in The One, we are challenged to begin to walk in our lives as part of a “we.” Not just romantically, but as a member of the world. Not “me first”, but us first. How to engage with the world with mutual interest – to perhaps begin to model what it might or could look like in a romantic partnership that could last a lifetime. It’s likely impossible to maintain a “me first” attitude and a successful relationship. Of course there’s a balance with maintaining personal integrity as well, but I feel like I’ve tended to the opposite extremes of self-preservation or people-pleasing, so walking in the world in an “us” manner is different and good practice for me.

Another exercise, which then feeds into yesterday, was to begin to acquire collage pictures that speak to our vision of love in our lives. So, about a month or more ago, I began with a photo of a man and a woman from a Tiffany’s ad, holding hands in marriage garb, walking away from the camera down what looks to me like a Central Park footpath. Calm, beautiful, mutual. But, I also began peppering my collage with photos that I thought I “should” put on. Ones that weren’t as feminine, ones that were more gender-neutral or masculine in nature or in mood. Because isn’t that part of this, to open space for “masculine” energy? So, I put on some stripes of more masculine neutral colors, and … What I’ve come to realize are more drab, dull, and boring.

I wear glasses, and so when I wake up in the morning and look at the wall opposite me, I really only see colors, not images. Over the time that I’ve lived in this apartment and put various collages on that wall, I’ve been able to wake up to vibrant, moving color. But, over the last month or so that I’ve had this collage in progress, it’s been like looking at a bowl of oatmeal! I’ve realized this only recently, how unmotivated I was to finish the collage, and how little I’d been looking at it.

Usually, my collages continue to capture my attention. The phrases I cut out, the images that still move me with their beauty or humor or joy. Every collage I’ve made over the last few years has had teal in it. I didn’t notice this until earlier this year, when I’d made a new one, and waking up, TEAL, there it is. The color of Mediterranean oceans, and somehow, to me, joy. A beauty, an inspiration. I followed this nudge finally, and bought a perfect teal scarf. I’d apparently wanted this incorporated into my waking life as well as my art life. And I love the scarf. It still brings me joy.

So, knowing the power that my collages have to inspire me, and to continue to nudge me, yesterday during my day of cleaning, I began taking down the CITO oatmeal collage. This is not the collage of love, inspiration, joy, fulfillment, creation, happiness. There are a few images I’ll keep, like the Tiffany ad, and a crayon-colored drawing I did earlier this year that sort of envisions … my vision! But, I sat down yesterday and began to cut out new images. Images that made me smile, who cares about masculine or feminine. What I recognize is that if I am happy, I attract happiness. I don’t need to try to manipulate what I think I should be looking for or how I think it "should" look - even on something as "inconsequential" as a collage.

And so, there is now a ton of red – the color of love, passion, emotion – and, of course, there’s now teal. I look forward to putting it all together, and waking up to what feels like a shift in my approach.

Finally, about “Moi, Toi, Nous.”, it reminds me: In Hebrew “Mah Tovu” is a common and gorgeous song and prayer recited upon entering a place of worship. It means “How Good” – How good it is, here, this place, now.

Coincidence? I think not. :) 

Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Chanukah. Love, M.

Hearth and Home

Winter cleaning has begun. The clean laundry that was occupying the “other person’s” part of the bed is now put away. And the cleaning will continue. I’ve decided and recognized that this “free” time off work will be an excellent time to dig out those boxes from NJ and begin to empty them.

First, sure, there’s all the surface cleaning I need to do, and I have a girl coming over at 1 for coffee and chat, so the surface will need to look decent before then. But after that? Today feels like a good day to begin, gently, with the NJ boxes.

When I began CITO, it asked us to make space, literally, for a partner to come into our lives, and so I emptied a drawer in my closet and a shelf in my bathroom, and I bought silvery grey sheets, which felt gender neutral, but also pretty sexy.

My place began to feel lighter, like I was creating space, and allowing for “Nature abhors a vacuum” to occur. Then, I sent back 6 or so boxes from NJ. They have pictures, and old school notebooks, and old poetry, and old journals. A girl friend of mine called me up earlier this month to say that she was taking a page from my book when she goes home for Christmas and wanted to know what I did with my old journals.

I said, nothing. That’s not entirely accurate. I packed them up in NJ and shipped them here to SF, uh, Oakland, I mean. I knew that there was enough emotional upheaval to not want to or be able to process what to do with them when I was in NJ, and so I just packed them up and shipped them here, and they’ve been in my closet since October.

Which is fine. And I don’t yet know what I’ll do with them. There’s the part that wants to honor what they hold, there’s the part that knows that the childish records of who was in a fight with who and who was wearing what in 9^th grade are not things I feel tempted to keep, but they are funny too, now, and so, what to do with them?

There is a lot of sadness in them too. When I was home, I was doing some sifting and sorting and discarding, and there’s poetry from grade 2 and 3 that is already about loneliness and isolation. So, I think there’ll be some spiritual work or process or ritual I want to do around them. Maybe my friend and I can do something around them together.

When I got into grad school last year, another friend of mine encouraged me to do a ritual of thanks for the gift of this opportunity. We wrote down old ideas that no longer served us, and burned them. Then we wrote down one idea that would carry us forward. I still have it, in my closet. It says, “We can.” Sure, a little reminiscent of the whole Obama campaign, but it still speaks to the same sentiment I’m continuing to address: I don’t have to do things on my own. I don’t have to deplete my own limited resources; there is a world of abundance around me of people, resources, help, and love, if I avail myself of them.

So, I’m not sure what I’ll yet do with the old journals. I know there’s a reading series in Oakland where people submit from their jr high era journals, and then if chosen, get to read them – pretty hilarious stuff, I hear. One that comes to mind reported to me – I haven’t been yet – is a girl who wrote, “Maybe if I got a pig they’d like me.” ;) She apparently grew up in an agricultural setting...!

It also feels like an appropriate “end of year” activity, to clean the closets, to put my apartment back into “other person” readiness. Nature isn’t the only thing that fills in a vacuum, and I’ve begun to encroach on the newly emptied space I cleared, filling it back up with my crap.

There’s plenty of other stuff in the boxes to go through and set aside, organize, or discard, and it takes me a long time to decide whether some things are worth keeping, as you sift through old high school photos, which do you need? What is “for posterity” in my drawings, poems, items? What is now simply junk?

But, I will recall the belief I want to carry with me - I don’t have to do this alone - and I can call on some guidance, clarity, and a heavy dose of lightness(!) while I sift through the remnants of my childhood.

Wet Concrete.

Today is the last day of work before the winter break. And although mine is polka-dotted with gorgeous adventures with wonderful women, what i’m really looking forward to is sleep! And cleaning my apartment.

There’s some kind of shift happening, or a solidification rather. I feel the cement getting stronger beneath my feet. As though I have poured the foundation, and it’s looked messy and strange – like getting a degree in poetry, putting together an art show, cleaning out my childhood home for sale, getting out of a relationship, beginning to audition for theater. I haven’t known what any of these pieces have meant as they’ve come up and I examine them and lay them down, like Indy choosing the right chalice at the end of Last Crusade, hmm, consider, lay aside. I’ve just been picking up these pieces with curiosity.

And now they’re all poured into the mold of my life’s foundation, and I can’t explain to you why, but there is a joy that is arising that feels so uniquely new and pervasive, that I know these are associated. With a stronger foundation to stand on, I’m freer to explore, create, test theories, fail, try. I’m no longer standing on quick-sand, undermining myself as soon as a notion crosses my mind or path.

I also know that there are likely a thousand more things that will go in this foundation, that it won’t ever be “complete,” but isn’t that the point of life? (She says with any idea like she knows what “the point” of life is!!)

But, I tell you, something is happening. Which is a good thing, because I can spin out into “I have no idea what’s happening/going to happen”-land really quickly.

For now, today is my last day of 2011 working at a job I enjoy. I’ve been asked to come back on January 3^rd when the office reopens, and it has been suggested to pay off my credit cards with this money I’ll earn, instead of ear-mark it for a car, … but we’ll see ;) My credit cards don’t have high balances (no one ever trusted me enough to give me too much credit! – including myself), but the interest rates are exorbitant, and one of my tasks is to call to ask for a lower rate. I’ve done this before, and they’ve said no. I’ve done this recently, and they’ve said no.

But the woman who suggested it said that this is one of those holes that needs to be closed up. Why pour water into a sieve? In order for me to hold abundance in my life, there are places where I need to be ready to receive it. So, this is one of those action places, a place where the foundation can become firmer. The woman also suggested a script for calling them, some key phrases and an attitude, that scare the crap out of me. Because they mean taking true accountability and responsibility for myself and my finances by letting someone else know that this is not okay. Paying almost 20% on a credit card, and not touching the principal is (apparently!) not okay. And I need to close these holes. I also will let go of the results, because they may still say no, but the action of taking action to care for myself and respect my own boundaries is the lesson, and the trial.

I get reflective around the turn of the year, and around my birthday. For all the floundering I sometimes believe I’m doing in my life, the truth is that progress is being made. It has not been the easiest year, and the hardships have variously set me to a variety of tasks and new things:

• the breakup caused me to lean on my girlfriends, and have the experience of getting through that “slammed by a mack truck”ness of early breakup;
• the breakup led to rebounding, which produced my best painting yet (in my opinion) – lol;
• the japan disaster prompted my friend to host an art show with donation to japan at which she asked me to read my poetry, for my first time in public outside of the school community;
• my bitterly harrowing lack of income over the summer caused me to get in with a community of people who work on financial security and abundance issues;
• later, working too much caused me to come up against boundaries of self-care and are helping me to say yes and no with integrity;
• packing up my childhood home for sale caused me to root out the sadness and grief that lived there, and here in my heart, and to begin to perspectivize ;) it with more serenity;
• having that wonky conversation with my mom over the summer caused me to take space to reassess how I am able to engage with her in ways that feel mutual, responsible, respectful, and loving to us both;
• being single caused me to pick up Calling in the One to help foster love and care within myself and help to radiate outward;
• my grandmother, my dad’s mom, is dying, and this is causing me to see my dad with more compassion than I have, perhaps, ever, and to listen to him as a person, not as “Dad” with all its attendant baggage and expectations.

So, there’s just some reflections which come immediately to mind. There are more. But as the saying goes something like, "out of every season of grief, when life seemed heavy or unjust, new lessons for life are learned and new resources of growth and courage are discovered." And for me, these seasons of grief were simply filtering out the junk in the pouring concrete. 

Errands

So, are you also feeling a bout of “senioritis” at work lately? Like, duuuude, it’s almost the winter break, I’m here in body only, my mind is with egg nog and ice skates and Jewish Christmas (movie & Asian food) land?

Where my body did get to go yesterday was some pretty wonderful and fanciful places. My temp job is downtown SF off of Union Square – this is, to use a terribly evocative phrase, Ground Zero for SF shopping. The (fake) enormous Christmas tree, every department store you can imagine, and jewelry stores that make me stop and ogle just the mastery and beauty of what the earth produces.

Yesterday, we needed some fancy ribbon to wrap the fancy presents for the fancy clients of the fancy place where I’m working. So, I was asked to go down to Britex fabric store. I’d been there once last week, and felt like a kid walking into FAO Schwartz. Colors and patterns and buttons, oh my! And yesterday was no different. I felt like saying “Thank you, Mood!” on my way out. I found a gorgeous double sided satin crimson ribbon and walked slowly out of the store, stopping by the display of beaded and lace appliqués for wedding dresses, and some that would make any drag queen’s costume sparkle with glamour ;)

After returning the ribbon to my boss, she applied it to a wreath and asked me to take it across the street to the hair salon that the “big” boss goes to. I’d looked up this salon last week, just out of curiosity as I was logging in contacts into Outlook, and the website says they do free haircuts for volunteer models. So, I put my name in. But yesterday, when I was there, I mentioned that I’d seen the invitation on the website, and the woman asked me to write my name and contact info down – so, looks like I may get a fancy haircut sometime soon too!

Now, lest you think that I’m in the lap of luxury, the times when I was at work, I’m in their library cataloguing all of their books… They have one that looks like it’s out of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast! So, it wasn’t all joy, and in the skirt I was wearing, I wasn’t really feeling getting down on the floor to the bottom shelves.

Now, lest you think I’m ungrateful, I really hope I’m not. I gave my boss a bottle of wine (which was given to me by the people I babysit for) as a thank you for throwing this work my way. And as I’ve said before, I know that not all temp jobs are like this one – and I’m truly grateful for it, and for the people who work there.

So, that interruption aside, will you let me gush a little more? Indulge me, the poor student who got thrown a bone by the Universe? :)

In the afternoon, I was asked to go pick up the gifts from Neiman Marcus and Macy’s. These are fancy presents for the big boss to give out. And while I’m waiting for the makeup counter lady to get all the things on my list, I get (easily) coerced into letting a makeup person slather me with foundation and some blush.

Sure, my skin looked flawless, but it also looked so fake. I’m a makeup wearer. Dyed in the wool MAC fan (my mom took me to the original MAC store on Christopher Street in NYC for my 14^th birthday for a makeover – I was later told at school that I’d be remembered as the girl who wore too much purple eyeshadow) ;P But, needless to say, I’ve worn a lot of makeup of different kinds, and though I looked like a china doll, it covers up all that is there. The freckles that appeared on the top inch of my forehead after I got badly sunburned while snorkeling the coral reef in Cairns, Australia in 2006. It blistered and was all bad – when one half of your face is in the water, there’s still one half exposed to sun – be warned. They’re age-spots, or sun spots, and they sometimes make me worry what they’ll look like when I’m older – how much “worse” they’ll get. There is the increasing crepe-yness of my eye lids, and she doused on a ton of concealer under my eyes.

And, I felt fake. It was fine – it wasn’t a day ruiner by any means(!), but it helped me to reflect that I don’t want to be like this 60 year old woman with caked on foundation to look like she’s 20. Because even me, 30, I don’t look like I’m 20 – and really, I’m cool with it. My eyes are crepe because I’m alive and healthy and going through the world, not sequestered from it behind a masque of anti aging. My forehead is dotted with freckles (that no one else can see by the way!) because I was on an adventure in f’ing Australia.

I’m all for makeup, enhancing my looks, playing around – my face was my first canvas in many ways. But, I still want to be Molly, with my entire history.

I walked out of Macy’s with a few free gifts they threw in for me too, and back at work, wiped off some of the foundation, and saw again my face, not “what I want you to see.” What I actually want you to see is that I am many things – young, yes; lived-in, yes; happy – well, how about that? – yes.

I got to be surrounded by beauty on my errands yesterday, fabric and fashion galore – but the very best moment all day, was when, in Macy’s, a gay manboy at the Benefit counter said to me, “This (insert hand gesture up and down) is really working for you. You look great.” As I warm up to myself, it shows, in how I hold myself, present myself, and choose to acoutrement myself. This really is working for me. 

Weird Science.

Winter solstice approaches. So despite the dwindling hours of sunlight and what feel like dwindling hours of productivity, change is on the move. I love thinking about stuff like that – my brother is an “earth scientist” – basically, he’d steeped in physics, chemistry, and biology, and at the moment is working as a cleaner upper of this here our earth.

He once sent me a text photo, when he began his job last year in environmental remediation, of a teeny tiny little frog balancing on my brother’s blue hazmat gloves, with the note saying, "I’m cleaning his home." :) It was the very sweetest thing.

Once, Ben and I heard the rumor that on the equinoxes in spring and fall, you could balance an egg on its end in a window of like 3 minutes, and it wouldn’t fall over because the earth was positioned in such a way that the gravitational pull was completely equal. – It worked! It totally balanced on it’s little fat bottom end for about a minute or two before it lopped over onto its side like all other days of the year.

We used to sit at home on the couch, and he’d basically translate what he’d just read from Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell, and we’d talk about the expanding and contracting of the universe, and about black holes, and just science-y stuff in general. It was great. I rarely, if ever, get to talk to people about stuff like that, mainly because I’m so novice, and also, it just doesn’t come up – so, did you hear about Pluto doesn’t really count! (And p.s. I feel bad for Pluto’s demotion!)

When I was in college, heading toward, well, I wasn’t always in my right mind, I was taking a physics course, and one of the classes was on relativity. And in the “Whoa, man” state of mind I was in, after class, we’re all outside waiting for the bus, and I don’t really know anyone in the class, being an English major, and I say to one dude as the bus approaches, isn’t it crazy, the bus is moving relative to us, but we’re moving on the spinning earth, and the earth is moving in orbit… You can see why lots of stoners get blown away by such concepts ;P

But, it – science, math – comes up for me. Strange as it may seem. My brother was a double major in geo-physics and music theory. Art and science aren’t as far apart as they may seem. All my painting is is increasing the viscosity of a pigment to deposit it on another surface ;) One thing that came up repeatedly for me over the number of times that I did the Artist’s Way was to take a math class. Weird, I know. But we’re asked several times throughout the course to list – without overthinking it – 5 classes we’d want to take if money and time and fear weren’t an issue. And each time, math would be on that list.

I was proctoring an SAT exam about 2 years ago for some extra cash, and I was looking at the test in the aching silence of the room as these poor students are having meltdowns and panic attacks about their future, and sine and cosines swim in their graphing calculators. It was actually fun. To feel these very old creaky wheels in the back of my brain trying to remember the formula for triangles and circles. I didn’t remember the harder stuff, but there was an inner perking up of, hey, I know this stuff, and hey, do we get to do this. (I actually did better on my SATs in math, twice, than I did in english, so…)

I don’t know what it means, but in keeping with listening to my inner nudges, and knowing that this math/science thing has come up several times over the last 4 or 5 years, maybe it’s time to listen. I actually looked to see if I could do one at my school, but they are waaaay advanced, and I need like algebra 1 again! Not lecture and lab. Math can be fun. Science was way fun the way my brother and I used to talk about it. The way that he would explain these concepts to me, and we could converse about them.

Keep ‘em coming, little nudges. I don’t know what yet to do with you – but I have utter faith that I will. 

Today's Lesson: Love. (Don't Vomit.)

Today is affirmation day.

Per the last exercise of Calling in The One workbook/coursebook/spiritual revolution catalyst, today, I’m supposed to affirm my availability and openness to Love and to meet love, not just in a romantic partner, though that is an aspect, but to meet love within myself, my life, and in all other people.

When I got sober, I used to hear people say “We’ll love you until you can love yourself.” At the time, that sentence felt like I just got slimed on Double Dare. No way, dude. Get it off me. Keep that gross thing, “Love” you’re calling it?, to your own damned self.

At the time, “love” to me was a series of fabulously tragic relationships and an invitation to be hood-winked. I imagined love was like The Simpsons’ Nelson, asking me to sit in this lavish chair, and just as I was bending into it, he’d pull it out from under me with his catch-phrase “HA HA!” I can hear it. Love was not to be trusted; love was a lie; love was an invitation to be hurt.

So you can imagine, that when people also said that “G-d is love”, I threw up in my mouth a little bit, every single time. I still think it’s an extremely gooey phrase, but I don’t get (as much) acid reflux from it anymore.

For quite some time, I used to say that I received compliments like one of those lamp-light bug zappers. Compliments, and we can extrapolate “love,” would only get so far toward me before ZAP! Dead. You ain’t getting in here, no way no how.

One of the meditations in the workshop I went to this weekend asked us to envision the light from various teachers and positive sources coming into us, and to then to allow that light to pour out into others. I did this meditation a few years ago, about 3 or 4 I suppose. At the time, I vividly remember that I wasn’t going to let these people’s “light” come anywhere near me. I’ll send light out to those behind me, sure, but keep your light to yourself. I would send from my own bucket, tap from the (limited) source within myself. I didn’t need your light – I can do it on my own.

This past weekend, however, sure, I recognized I still was very uncomfortable accepting the light from these loving sources, but I let it in. It was like slipping into a fur coat that’s been in mothballs for years – comforting but icky. ;) That said, to know that I was a) willing to accept light, and we can substitute the word “love” here, from others was a huge shift, however uncomfortable I am to receive it, I was willing to do so; and b) I didn’t have to send my love/light to others by depleting my own reserves. Instead, I could be a funnel, a filter, a channel, as is often said.

So, here I am. 30, single, hesitant to believe in a thing called love (to quote the song with a cringe) ;P but opening more to it. There’s been a level of conceit which says I’m able to give love and you’re not allowed to give it to me; a level of conceit which says I know the right way to love and you’re giving it to me wrong. These have kept me quite alone over the years.

The reality is that I haven’t fallen in love with an addict, alcoholic, unavailable, or taken man in a long long time. Doing these things helped to cause my belief that love was a cruel trick. I haven’t had proof of this for a long time. Instead, what I’ve been given evidence of as “love” has been self-less, light, thoughtful, and consistent, and this love has come from many people, not only lovers or boyfriends. I’ve begun to give myself the same respect and consistency, and finishing this course (and because I mainly just read through it with lots of underlining(!), and didn’t complete all the exercises, I will now go back through – there are a bunch which I know want my attention to help sever these old ties of beliefs) – finishing the course, going on my date with myself, not dating jerks, all of these are helping to firm up the new system of belief which is that your love (and my own) is not going to injure me, but rather it is going to bolster me in my climb out into the sunlight.

For all that, I thank you, friends, readers, little secret gnomes, who are sliming me with the support and generosity of love. 

Best Date Ever.

So, if, as has been said to me, a first date is simply an interview for a second one, then I totally nailed this interview.

The date began with ice skating. Now, I almost talked myself out of it, seeing that there were mainly families on the Union Square Ice Rink, but after checking in with my date, I knew this is what we were there to do.

And I had a blast!!! It was so much freaking fun. I didn’t fall, but I certainly flailed. I laughed and grinned and was a terrible skater having a wonderful time. It was incredible. The Christmas music on the speakers, I barely heard over my squeals of delight and intense concentration to not knock into anyone. People standing outside the rink watching laughed and smiled at me as I laughed and smiled. They were as delighted to see I was having such a good time at being awful as I was. :)

After making it for only about 40minutes though, having worked up a bit of heat, and my ankles not nearly as strong as they needed to be, we called it quits, but we were both cool with it.

I’d promised my date that we’d go see Hugo in 3D, that Martin Scorcese kids’ film that was supposed to actually be pretty good. But what we needed first was … hot chocolate.

After trying to corral my date into being okay with stopping in Ross (the discount clothing store) for a minute for some socks, I agreed this was not what I wanted to be doing either, and we left, to get hot chocolate with whipped cream. Now, I would never normally do this, the sugar factor for one, and the cool factor for the other. I was in line very tempted to get a chai latte with an add shot – seasonal and fun, but adult, you know? But, when I went up to order, hot chocolate it was. It was delicious. I really felt like the old days.

My “crazy cat lady aunt” as I’ve been fond to call her, but realize perhaps it’s time to stop calling her that. It’s pretty mean. But, you get immediately the type of person I’m talking about. Well, she lives in Manhattan, as she has all of my life, and each year growing up would take me to Rockefeller Center. There, was Teuscher’s Chocolates. And in Teuscher’s chocolates were something called Champagne Truffles. Now, I haven’t had them in a few years, I had one about 4 years ago, but wasn’t sure if that was “okay” on the whole sobriety front, so I don’t have them anymore, but that one was as divine as I remembered them to be.

My aunt, for all of her foibles and human fallibilities, really loved/loves me and my brother. She took us to see the famous tree, to see the Radio City Rockettes, to stand on the lines to go see the holiday windows at Sak’s Fifth Avenue – which were monumental in our day – themed and mechanized and just opulent. 

She, in fact, wrote me an email about 2 weeks ago entitled “The Return of Kevin,” and said she was flipping through the channels and came across Home Alone, and remembered vividly, though I don’t, when she had taken me for tea at the Plaza hotel (she loved to do these totally chi-chi things, like we went to the symphony, and she took me on my first airplane ride). Apparently, standing out front, I said “I’m standing where Kevin stood”, with such a look on my face of joy and radiance that she remembers it to this day. Now, sadly, I know this must mean that I was referencing Home Alone Two, because that one takes place in NY, and loathe though I may be to admit it, I’m sure this story is completely accurate.

So, I love all the shlock of Christmas, holidays, even the pushy crowds. When I left the ice rink yesterday, the smile and sheen of joy coming off me was palpable. I was so happy I went.

My date ended after Hugo in 3D with buying a package of sugar-free hot chocolate on my way home (the invasion of sugar from earlier was not kind to me), rented a comedy and came home to curl up with some tea, and, hey, here’s honesty, to "spend a little time with myself," to quote Tom Waits.

You may have guessed much earlier than this, that my date was with myself. And it was awesome. Part of the whole Calling in the One thing and my path in general is to become a woman I’d want to date. And, judging from the careening, fanciful, contented joy of yesterday, another date is sure to follow.