Quote of the day: “Be yourself. There is something that you can do better than any other. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that.” —Unknown Author
The “new” work has begun. I’m in my third day of a four-day movement workshop and it has been quite the experience already. I’ve completely stepped out of my comfort zone in terms of “work,” and into my artist zone. This is all new territory for me. Well, not really. I need to be honest with myself. I have been doing this work for 8 years now. It just has now evolved into a new form.
There are moments where I am completely and utterly terrified. I begin to doubt my Self, my talents, my expression. I feel consumed by the fear of failure. And then, just when the darkness is ready to seal me shut for good, I muster the strength to reach my fingers, then hands, arms, head, shoulders, chest, hips, knees and feet out from under its curse and I step freely into the unknown. I perform.
Being with my husband, who is a professional artist, for the past six years, has had a tremendous influence on me. I’ve had the privilege to witness the life of a working artist. I’ve joined him in the studios, on the stage, in the classrooms and in the media. I’ve nurtured his growth in this city and state. I’ve been his right-hand woman; there to write press releases, resumes, biographies, grant proposals, business plans, flyers, contracts and invoices; to create videos and a web site. I’ve been with him, step by step, as he’s worked, and I’ve worked, to create the dance center of his dreams.
With all this time and energy spent being his partner, I’ve had the opportunity to learn from him as an artist. I’ve watched his mannerisms, how he interacts with the public, how he presents his work, how he communicates his passion, and how he represents himself as an artist. What most impressed me when I first met him is still what impresses me the most today, and it is his professionalism … the way he trusts himself in his work and his ability to not waiver from it.
What has been my greatest challenge in being partnered with an established working artist is that I’ve never felt there was room for me to pursue my creative passions full-time. I’ve always felt stuck, needing to work the day job to bring home the benefits and steady paycheck. Because of this, I’ve dismissed my own artistic dreams and desires. I’ve compared myself to him and felt “less than,” which has discouraged me on my own artistic path. And, to be fair, though not to blame, he has discouraged me from pursuing such a path, for he has lived the struggles, the highs and lows, free from the romanticized ideology of what it means to be a working artist.
I wouldn’t be telling the whole truth about this internal conflict if I didn’t touch upon the many times I’ve wondered what my life would look like, artistically and creatively, if I hadn’t married a professional artist. Would I have recognized and accepted my creative Self sooner? Would I have developed my talents faster if I hadn’t been putting them on the back seat this whole time? Would I have taken creative risks earlier before the mound of “adult” responsibilities bestowed upon my shoulders?
Don’t get me wrong. I love my husband, and I love being married to him. It’s just that I haven’t found room for my artistic Self in our marriage over the past six years. And I haven’t found the room because I never made it a priority.
Now, it’s a priority, and thankfully, he trusts himself enough to be still as I wipe away the dust from my once adventurous, free-spirited self and reintroduce her to our lives.
Spring Cleaning: To Do List - in no particular order and still in creation
1). Resign from my office job. DONE
2). Get a pug. DONE
3). Take some time off. IN PROGRESS
4). Act on my creative inspirations with movement each day. IN PROGRESS
5). Write on a daily basis. IN PROGRESS
6). Write a book.
7). Publish the book.
8). Plant a vegetable garden.
9). Landscape front yard and back yard.
10). Paint back deck and add flower boxes.
11). Have a baby.
12). Follow my bliss - do what feels good. IN PROGRESS
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Making Room For You
Quote of the day: “Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world.” —Sir Thomas Moore; poet, singer
Today’s quote sums up everything I have been trying to express this week to my colleagues about my resignation. It is now out there, official news, in my office. Whew.
The passing of time is such a fascinating thing. Since January I have been writing about making a big change in my work life. I’ve been working to build up the spiritual, emotional and mental courage to resign from my current position without necessarily having an idea on what I will do for work. And now, five months later, I have verbalized my resignation to my entire office. The day has come and gone. It happened. I did it. My desire within has been spoken. It’s really happening.
What a relief.
How very cool. It feels wonderful now, even though I may be freaking out later, or maybe not.
On a synchronistic note, this week, the very same week I formally announced my departure to everyone, I received two phone calls about potential dance and drum contracts for me, not Biboti. This has never happened before, partly because I never considered my talents to be noteworthy of conducting such a workshop and also because I don’t think Biboti did either. Now, both of us immediately felt these inquiries were better suited for me and not him. Very interesting…
Soon enough my faith will be fully tested once my magic month of rest and retreat comes to an end and it becomes necessary for me to find a way to earn money. I trust in this process. It’s already happening, I think. I believe in my creative self more today than I ever have. And with this belief comes confidence in there being opportunities for me to express it as part of my work in the world.
Today’s quote sums up everything I have been trying to express this week to my colleagues about my resignation. It is now out there, official news, in my office. Whew.
The passing of time is such a fascinating thing. Since January I have been writing about making a big change in my work life. I’ve been working to build up the spiritual, emotional and mental courage to resign from my current position without necessarily having an idea on what I will do for work. And now, five months later, I have verbalized my resignation to my entire office. The day has come and gone. It happened. I did it. My desire within has been spoken. It’s really happening.
What a relief.
How very cool. It feels wonderful now, even though I may be freaking out later, or maybe not.
On a synchronistic note, this week, the very same week I formally announced my departure to everyone, I received two phone calls about potential dance and drum contracts for me, not Biboti. This has never happened before, partly because I never considered my talents to be noteworthy of conducting such a workshop and also because I don’t think Biboti did either. Now, both of us immediately felt these inquiries were better suited for me and not him. Very interesting…
Soon enough my faith will be fully tested once my magic month of rest and retreat comes to an end and it becomes necessary for me to find a way to earn money. I trust in this process. It’s already happening, I think. I believe in my creative self more today than I ever have. And with this belief comes confidence in there being opportunities for me to express it as part of my work in the world.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Poop Matters
Quote of the day: “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”
—Auguste Rodin; sculptor
Our dearest Charlie has had some challenges with the adjustment to our home. Well, honestly, Biboti and I are being challenged too. Most notably with our decision to not use the dog crate. Boy, was that a mistake.
Technically, Charlie has been challenging our beliefs! Talk about life lessons – our dog is breaking down myths we’ve believed as true. Who would have thought a dog could be so influential?
You see, Charlie has been raised with having to live within in a crate when people leave the house and sometimes during the night when they go to bed. Being that he’s more than 2 years old, he’s quite accustomed to this routine. But on his first night in our home, he totally and completely freaked out when we went to put him in his crate for bedtime (I only did so because I figured it was best to stay with his routine for a while before I tried to wean him off the crate life). So, since then, we hadn’t been crating him.
Let me be even more honest. Biboti and I are/were completely against the “dog crating” concept. We just can’t possibly fathom how a “being,” such as a dog, would enjoy spending its free time in a cage! It feels cruel and insensitive, and even though he’s a dog, it feels inhumane. So when he had his meltdown on the first night, it gave us good reason to dismiss using it sooner than we had planned.
We began leaving him alone for an hour or so at a time. This worked pretty good when I was still on vacation, but when I went back to work and had to also go to the studio at night, this proved to be a disaster.
It first started with us coming home to find all the throw pillows from the family room couches on the floor, including the runner and candle on the coffee table. OK, OK, we thought. He’s just being a little rambunctious. Then, the bathroom accidents became more frequent and I starting finding soiled areas within the house that I didn’t see initially. Then, last Saturday morning, when I had gone back to bed after taking him out at his usual 6:00 a.m. wake-up time to do his business, he decided to water the hardwood flooring in my bedroom and then try to clean it up with some throw pillows from my bed! But the real icing on the cake was when I came home to find Biboti’s favorite pair of sunglasses with their arms ripped off and chewed up. Yikes!
After careful consideration and hours of contemplation, I told Biboti that I think the best thing to do is to crate him when we leave the house. I just couldn’t rationalize giving him any more time to adjust while he was beginning to terrorize the house. And Charlie isn’t a terror. He’s a lover, who goes mad when he’s free to roam the downstairs of Fellows Avenue. His behavior was escalating and I could see that he felt bad about it because he would hide under the table when I would see what he had done. So, he wasn’t feeling good about it and I wasn’t feeling good about. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Our first crating test was on Sunday when we went out to dinner for Mother’s Day. We were only gone for about two hours, but when we got home, he was sleeping peacefully in his bed in the crate. He hardly made a peep when we let him out. And, each day since then, he’s just as content when we get home. Before, when we would leave him out, “free,” it would take him nearly two hours to calm down and be his normal self. Now, it doesn’t appear that he’s changed at all in our departure. We have not been crating him at night, though. At least, not yet.
The moral of the story is: What I believe to be true and free for me is not the same for others, including animals.
This may seem silly, but Charlie has shown me that my sense of freedom isn’t his. He loves the confinement of the crate. It feels comfortable to him. Sure, it may be all he’s known and a mere product of his conditioning, but it just is. His reaction to being along and not contained showed he suffered great distress, which didn’t serve him or us.
It may seem odd that I’ve used this situation with my dog as teaching tool, but I can’t help but to do so. I guess that’s part of my quirky personality. It has most affected me by making me wonder how many beliefs I feel to be true that I will offer to my children to only find that they are not true for them at all. I can only hope that I am able to accept them, as I have done so with Charlie, without doing too much damage to my kids and our relationship in the interim.
And on another life-lesson note … a few posts back I mentioned how during The Columbia Girl reunion, we discussed our issues. Well, the discussion around me was my resistance to trends … the biggest being technology. However, circling back to the dog crating, my other challenge with it beyond the “freedom” piece was that it seems unnecessary. For generations people have owned dogs without using a crate. It irks me how suddenly we all need to crate our dogs as if our history was irrelevant. This is such an issue for me … whether it be trends, or progress, or modernization. I don’t know what the exact issue is, but it all comes back to the same thing.
Maybe that’s why I married an African man who was raised in the village, following the traditions of his ancestors, but spent his formative years in the city, learning the ways of modernization. He’s a balance of both. Just what I need.
—Auguste Rodin; sculptor
Our dearest Charlie has had some challenges with the adjustment to our home. Well, honestly, Biboti and I are being challenged too. Most notably with our decision to not use the dog crate. Boy, was that a mistake.
Technically, Charlie has been challenging our beliefs! Talk about life lessons – our dog is breaking down myths we’ve believed as true. Who would have thought a dog could be so influential?
You see, Charlie has been raised with having to live within in a crate when people leave the house and sometimes during the night when they go to bed. Being that he’s more than 2 years old, he’s quite accustomed to this routine. But on his first night in our home, he totally and completely freaked out when we went to put him in his crate for bedtime (I only did so because I figured it was best to stay with his routine for a while before I tried to wean him off the crate life). So, since then, we hadn’t been crating him.
Let me be even more honest. Biboti and I are/were completely against the “dog crating” concept. We just can’t possibly fathom how a “being,” such as a dog, would enjoy spending its free time in a cage! It feels cruel and insensitive, and even though he’s a dog, it feels inhumane. So when he had his meltdown on the first night, it gave us good reason to dismiss using it sooner than we had planned.
We began leaving him alone for an hour or so at a time. This worked pretty good when I was still on vacation, but when I went back to work and had to also go to the studio at night, this proved to be a disaster.
It first started with us coming home to find all the throw pillows from the family room couches on the floor, including the runner and candle on the coffee table. OK, OK, we thought. He’s just being a little rambunctious. Then, the bathroom accidents became more frequent and I starting finding soiled areas within the house that I didn’t see initially. Then, last Saturday morning, when I had gone back to bed after taking him out at his usual 6:00 a.m. wake-up time to do his business, he decided to water the hardwood flooring in my bedroom and then try to clean it up with some throw pillows from my bed! But the real icing on the cake was when I came home to find Biboti’s favorite pair of sunglasses with their arms ripped off and chewed up. Yikes!
After careful consideration and hours of contemplation, I told Biboti that I think the best thing to do is to crate him when we leave the house. I just couldn’t rationalize giving him any more time to adjust while he was beginning to terrorize the house. And Charlie isn’t a terror. He’s a lover, who goes mad when he’s free to roam the downstairs of Fellows Avenue. His behavior was escalating and I could see that he felt bad about it because he would hide under the table when I would see what he had done. So, he wasn’t feeling good about it and I wasn’t feeling good about. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Our first crating test was on Sunday when we went out to dinner for Mother’s Day. We were only gone for about two hours, but when we got home, he was sleeping peacefully in his bed in the crate. He hardly made a peep when we let him out. And, each day since then, he’s just as content when we get home. Before, when we would leave him out, “free,” it would take him nearly two hours to calm down and be his normal self. Now, it doesn’t appear that he’s changed at all in our departure. We have not been crating him at night, though. At least, not yet.
The moral of the story is: What I believe to be true and free for me is not the same for others, including animals.
This may seem silly, but Charlie has shown me that my sense of freedom isn’t his. He loves the confinement of the crate. It feels comfortable to him. Sure, it may be all he’s known and a mere product of his conditioning, but it just is. His reaction to being along and not contained showed he suffered great distress, which didn’t serve him or us.
It may seem odd that I’ve used this situation with my dog as teaching tool, but I can’t help but to do so. I guess that’s part of my quirky personality. It has most affected me by making me wonder how many beliefs I feel to be true that I will offer to my children to only find that they are not true for them at all. I can only hope that I am able to accept them, as I have done so with Charlie, without doing too much damage to my kids and our relationship in the interim.
And on another life-lesson note … a few posts back I mentioned how during The Columbia Girl reunion, we discussed our issues. Well, the discussion around me was my resistance to trends … the biggest being technology. However, circling back to the dog crating, my other challenge with it beyond the “freedom” piece was that it seems unnecessary. For generations people have owned dogs without using a crate. It irks me how suddenly we all need to crate our dogs as if our history was irrelevant. This is such an issue for me … whether it be trends, or progress, or modernization. I don’t know what the exact issue is, but it all comes back to the same thing.
Maybe that’s why I married an African man who was raised in the village, following the traditions of his ancestors, but spent his formative years in the city, learning the ways of modernization. He’s a balance of both. Just what I need.
Friday, May 7, 2010
The Wisdom in Weeding
Quote of the day: “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” —Marcus Aurelius; roman emporer
Even though my postings are becoming sparser, let me be clear it is not a sign of me losing commitment to this journey. It is just that I am in a transitory phase of the journey, like when the baby is beginning to drop and head into the birth canal (if that is even how it goes; I don’t have children yet).
My days at work are numbered. It is official. I am leaping on July 9. With this being said, there are a number of tasks I need to complete and projects I need to wrap up before I leave. I need to get a whole issue of the magazine I am in charge of done. My days are busier with this end date in sight.
It is also official that I will be leaping without a place to land, unless something drastic happens within the next 6 weeks. The Communications Manager position I had interviewed for a few weeks back decided for me that it wasn’t the direction I should take. However, I was on the university’s HR web site yesterday to inform myself on benefit information and decided to pop on over to the “Jobs” section. I don’t why I continue to do this to myself.
Well, I saw a posting for a job that would have been PERFECT for me just a few months ago. It is the ideal “office” job for me at this university, if there is such thing as an ideal office job. It is actually in alignment with my passion for one of the university’s major initiatives, and a follow-up position to one of the many meetings I had on campus. I even meet the qualification guidelines. Who knows if I’d even get an interview, but if this was the past, I would have submitted my resume within hours after discovering the posting. Yet, it is the present, and I am so close to passing on it. So close.
Actually, let me go read the posting again right now and see how I feel. It’s a new day. I’ll be right back…
OK, I’m back, and still conflicted. My feelings haven’t changed. On paper, it’s perfect – working in the public arts field with 80+ colleges, organizing regional meetings and a national conference, writing/editing publications and papers, working on grants, and most importantly, teaching a course on the initiative with the director. Wow. Could it look any better? Oh, yes, it would definitely be more money too.
Why the hesitation on my end? Why not at least apply? After months of meeting with various people and departments on campus, introducing myself and inquiring about a position such as this, why suddenly the change of heart? One of my meetings was actually with the director of this position.
Because it is still an office job … someone else’s office. The structure of my days would remain the same. There may be some flexibility that I am not aware of, but it is listed as standard university hours. I would still not be addressing the fact that I do have my own business to run, which calls me during the night hours, wondering why I don’t give it my all.
Sometime, over the past few weeks, a shift occurred within me. It was triggered by the contemplation of the Communications Manager job. As I daydreamed about taking the position, I couldn’t help but to wonder why I keep utilizing my skills for other companies and initiatives while I put my own company and initiatives on the back burner. I continued to ask myself, why do I resist working for my own company, full-time, giving it 110%?
I received an answer. It’s not just my company. It is also my husband’s and the “working together” has been and currently is my main source of resistance.
It’s not fun.
You see, it has always been his dream. I was merely the student, the administrator, the communicator, the secretary. And, within these roles, I found myself feeling resentful towards him. Not to mention I also felt unbelievably burdened because my lifestyle became daytime = job; nighttime = job; marriage = business.
I have a whole bucket of messy feelings I’ve been using to paint my experience with the dance business. My real “Aha” moment came last week when I was on vacation. I was weeding out my garden, getting it ready for planting, and I began to settle into the feeling of managing my own time. Ah. With this feeling, my spirit instantly aligned with the dance business and I began to feel joy. This is when the answer to my question arrived … I guess I wasn’t only weeding the garden.
As life would have it, later in the week my husband and I got into an argument at the studio. He was upset about something and was not fully informed on how I had handled the situation, so he jumped to conclusions and lashed out at me. I, in return, picked up my bag from under the front desk, and walked out. I refused to be spoken to in such a manner. I would never tolerate that from a boss at a day job, so there was no way I was going to tolerate it from him and he’s not my boss. Can you sense my attitude? :)
Later that evening he apologized and we entered a long discussion about our challenges in working together. There was no official resolution at the end of our conversation, but it was the first time I verbally expressed to him the root of my resistance, pulling on the day’s conflict as a perfect example of why I feel the way I feel. He listened, although it wasn’t easy for him to hear. I have never been so honest with him and myself before.
Getting back to this amazing job posting, as much as I believe it could be so right, working within the world of arts and academia, earning a larger salary, publishing papers and teaching a class – oh my! – I still can’t deny how wrong it feels. What feels right is the phone call I just received, asking if I could do a movement class with parents and their children and a dialogue session about mind/body connection. This, within less than minute, I said, “Yes! I can do that!”
Movement. I need movement…
I do have until May 10th to apply. We’ll see what happens over the next few days.
‘Til then … Aloha.
NOTE: The literal meaning of aloha is “the presence of breath” or “the breath of life.” It comes from “Alo,” meaning presence, front and face, and “ha,” meaning breath. Aloha is a way of living and treating each other with love and respect. Its deep meaning starts by teaching ourselves to love our own beings first and afterwards to spread the love to others.
Even though my postings are becoming sparser, let me be clear it is not a sign of me losing commitment to this journey. It is just that I am in a transitory phase of the journey, like when the baby is beginning to drop and head into the birth canal (if that is even how it goes; I don’t have children yet).
My days at work are numbered. It is official. I am leaping on July 9. With this being said, there are a number of tasks I need to complete and projects I need to wrap up before I leave. I need to get a whole issue of the magazine I am in charge of done. My days are busier with this end date in sight.
It is also official that I will be leaping without a place to land, unless something drastic happens within the next 6 weeks. The Communications Manager position I had interviewed for a few weeks back decided for me that it wasn’t the direction I should take. However, I was on the university’s HR web site yesterday to inform myself on benefit information and decided to pop on over to the “Jobs” section. I don’t why I continue to do this to myself.
Well, I saw a posting for a job that would have been PERFECT for me just a few months ago. It is the ideal “office” job for me at this university, if there is such thing as an ideal office job. It is actually in alignment with my passion for one of the university’s major initiatives, and a follow-up position to one of the many meetings I had on campus. I even meet the qualification guidelines. Who knows if I’d even get an interview, but if this was the past, I would have submitted my resume within hours after discovering the posting. Yet, it is the present, and I am so close to passing on it. So close.
Actually, let me go read the posting again right now and see how I feel. It’s a new day. I’ll be right back…
OK, I’m back, and still conflicted. My feelings haven’t changed. On paper, it’s perfect – working in the public arts field with 80+ colleges, organizing regional meetings and a national conference, writing/editing publications and papers, working on grants, and most importantly, teaching a course on the initiative with the director. Wow. Could it look any better? Oh, yes, it would definitely be more money too.
Why the hesitation on my end? Why not at least apply? After months of meeting with various people and departments on campus, introducing myself and inquiring about a position such as this, why suddenly the change of heart? One of my meetings was actually with the director of this position.
Because it is still an office job … someone else’s office. The structure of my days would remain the same. There may be some flexibility that I am not aware of, but it is listed as standard university hours. I would still not be addressing the fact that I do have my own business to run, which calls me during the night hours, wondering why I don’t give it my all.
Sometime, over the past few weeks, a shift occurred within me. It was triggered by the contemplation of the Communications Manager job. As I daydreamed about taking the position, I couldn’t help but to wonder why I keep utilizing my skills for other companies and initiatives while I put my own company and initiatives on the back burner. I continued to ask myself, why do I resist working for my own company, full-time, giving it 110%?
I received an answer. It’s not just my company. It is also my husband’s and the “working together” has been and currently is my main source of resistance.
It’s not fun.
You see, it has always been his dream. I was merely the student, the administrator, the communicator, the secretary. And, within these roles, I found myself feeling resentful towards him. Not to mention I also felt unbelievably burdened because my lifestyle became daytime = job; nighttime = job; marriage = business.
I have a whole bucket of messy feelings I’ve been using to paint my experience with the dance business. My real “Aha” moment came last week when I was on vacation. I was weeding out my garden, getting it ready for planting, and I began to settle into the feeling of managing my own time. Ah. With this feeling, my spirit instantly aligned with the dance business and I began to feel joy. This is when the answer to my question arrived … I guess I wasn’t only weeding the garden.
As life would have it, later in the week my husband and I got into an argument at the studio. He was upset about something and was not fully informed on how I had handled the situation, so he jumped to conclusions and lashed out at me. I, in return, picked up my bag from under the front desk, and walked out. I refused to be spoken to in such a manner. I would never tolerate that from a boss at a day job, so there was no way I was going to tolerate it from him and he’s not my boss. Can you sense my attitude? :)
Later that evening he apologized and we entered a long discussion about our challenges in working together. There was no official resolution at the end of our conversation, but it was the first time I verbally expressed to him the root of my resistance, pulling on the day’s conflict as a perfect example of why I feel the way I feel. He listened, although it wasn’t easy for him to hear. I have never been so honest with him and myself before.
Getting back to this amazing job posting, as much as I believe it could be so right, working within the world of arts and academia, earning a larger salary, publishing papers and teaching a class – oh my! – I still can’t deny how wrong it feels. What feels right is the phone call I just received, asking if I could do a movement class with parents and their children and a dialogue session about mind/body connection. This, within less than minute, I said, “Yes! I can do that!”
Movement. I need movement…
I do have until May 10th to apply. We’ll see what happens over the next few days.
‘Til then … Aloha.
NOTE: The literal meaning of aloha is “the presence of breath” or “the breath of life.” It comes from “Alo,” meaning presence, front and face, and “ha,” meaning breath. Aloha is a way of living and treating each other with love and respect. Its deep meaning starts by teaching ourselves to love our own beings first and afterwards to spread the love to others.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
The Tale of the Mighty Dog and Traveling Sister: Parts 1 & 2
The Tale of the Mighty Dog and Traveling Sister: Part 1
It has been one heck of a week. This is the longest I’ve gone without posting since I started the blog, which can be attributed to me being on vacation, bonding with my new dog and spending as much time as possible with my visiting sister.
Let me first start with my visiting sister, Jodi. She lives in Montana, which is the opposite of close to New York. Air travel to and from her state can span the entire country. Flying direct is not possible. She has actually flown more West to eventually come East. Very strange.
Jodi normally visits us once a year for a short four, five-day stay. She works in the service industry, so getting away is unpaid and trying to find someone to cover her shifts is never an easy thing to accomplish. Even though we only have her with us for a few days, it is worth it.
Because of the length of her visit, we pack a whole lot of visiting with friends and family into the mix. My sister’s wish of coming home and taking a day trip to the Adirondacks for a hike never seems to come to fruition because of all the visiting, but she accepts this fate. She enjoys the countless hours spent talking, laughing, drinking and eating with those who love her and miss her.
We almost fight over her. Well, I almost do. As cliché as this sounds, Jodi is so much more than just my sister. She is a soul sister … a dear, dear friend.
What makes my friendship with her so unique is that we have this incredible history together … our childhood. Jodi and I love to discover the deeper treasures in our lives and our Selves. We love to reflect on who we were as children and who we are today. We relish in the memories of us, and our family and friends, playing in the backyard our version of the Olympics, kickball, softball, volleyball, gymnastics, trackball, soccer, marco polo and manhunt. We laugh about our college days when those games in the backyard turned to flip cups, boat races and beer pong.
Jodi and I are only two years apart and one of the major themes to our sisterhood was the fact that we looked so much alike, twins even. When we were younger, and even into the early years in high school, people had a hard time telling us apart. Of course, Jodi and I could never see the resemblance. In my defense, I was a giant 4” taller than her! And in her defense, well, I don’t know what that was :), but I do know we used to get so mad about being seen as the same. We were somewhat in each other’s shadows.
As life happened, particularly in the early post-college years, we eventually grew more and more into our Selves, which created a healthy separation of identities. Both of us began to soul search, looking for greater meaning in our lives, yet the beauty of this was that we were able to grow together on this journey while walking on our own paths.
Shortly after Jodi graduated from college she moved to Colorado. The Rocky Mountains called her spirit and she was exuberant about living the ski life. Her bold character drove her to the West with a friend, and weeks after my graduation, I accompanied her.
She stayed in Colorado for many years, skiing, hiking, running, kayaking and working. Although my time in the Rocky Mountain state wasn’t as long as hers, we continue to share a love for high peaks, blue-bird skies and powder days.
When I lived on Kauai, Jodi came to visit me and quickly decided that the island was her next destination. One month after I left Kauai to move to NYC, she landed on the Garden Isle, hoping to heal the wounds to her soul that she endured from simply being a human. Kauai is a special place that can help us to release our personal afflictions. It had done so for me, and it eventually did so for Jodi, which then brought her to Montana.
As with every visit home, it eventually begins to wear on her, as the gifts of nature are her source of health and renewal, not constant chatter and gossip. By her last night here, she’s ready to get back to her life in the great outdoors.
I miss my sister already. Today, I say with great joy and pride that I do feel like she is my twin … the other half of me who can understand from a place like no one else my thinking and feeling. Even though we are separate, we are undeniably connected as one.
The Tale of the Mighty Dog and Traveling Sister: Part 2
My dearest Charlie … the new love of my life. He is a 2 ½-year old Pug (see photo above). I picked him up from the rescue society last Saturday, on the first day of my vacation. We drove immediately to the groomers for him to be cleaned and to have his nails clipped. While he was getting beautified, my mom (the new grandma) and I shopped around the pet store and picked up a few new gifts for Charlie: a round bed, chew toys, elephant stuffed animal, dog biscuits and food.
Charlie’s grandma began to spoil him within hours of his arrival. This was a prelude to how grandma will be when she eventually gets a human grandchild. I already told her that my kids won’t NEED 10,000 toys! She laughed and happily obliged.
After getting all clean, I placed Charlie on an old sheet in the passenger seat of my Subaru. He sat there so calm and content. I would pet him as often as I could while driving, just to keep him relaxed. I also played some great African music to get him accustomed to his new family. He seemed to like it.
When I brought Charlie into his new home on Fellows Avenue he was soooooo excited. He ran into every room and smelled every corner of every room. The only thing he wasn’t thrilled about was our stairs heading up to the second floor. He sat at the foot of them, whimpering to show his fear.
In what felt like minutes, Charlie already began to show signs of attachment to his new mama. Every where I walked, he followed. Every time I sat, he either jumped or motioned to be up on my lap. When I was at the rescue society, they showed me how he likes to be held, and yes, it is like a baby. He is a full-on lover, snuggler, be-as-close-to-a-human dog. He’s perfect.
So far, there have been two big surprises: (1) His reaction to the dog crate; (2) His reaction to men, including Biboti.
Charlie has been trained for more than 2 years now to live within the world of a crate, so I felt it was only appropriate to have one for him when he came home to keep some sense of normalcy. Personally, my hope has been to wean him off the crate because I’d like him to be an old-school dog that can be free to roam in the house WHILE staying behaved. This is how our dog was growing up, and this is what I always envisioned for my own dog.
On his first night in the house, Biboti and I were getting ready for bed, so we walked him into the back room where his crate is and motioned for him to go inside. He didn’t respond. I then gave him a little nudge on the behind to get in there and he put on his front breaks. I was shocked by his resistance. I proceeded more aggressively and placed him in there. I shut the door and Biboti and I went upstairs.
Within seconds, we could hear him whimpering.
“Let’s give him a few minutes and see what he does. He supposedly ‘loves’ his crate and is used to living in it, so he should be fine,” I said to Biboti.
He wasn’t.
After about ten minutes, the whimpering escalated to barking and since it was around midnight, we both thought it wasn’t appropriate to allow him to continue to annoy our neighbors (NOTE: barking isn’t a common thing for him, so this was alarming). We went downstairs, let him out of his crate, took him with his new round bed, blanket and elephant stuffed animal, and brought him upstairs into our bedroom. Because he was scared about staying downstairs alone, he completely forgot about how scared he was to go up the stairs, and he did, so fast, all by himself.
We first placed his round bed away from our bed, near the door. This didn’t work like we had hoped because it was still too far away from us, well, from me. Thankfully our bed is high, so he can’t just jump up on it, but he places his front paws as high as he can reach on the bed, which allows us to see just his black face. He began to do this repeatedly on my side of the bed and then would get annoyed because I would push him down, so he would go over to Biboti’s side and do the same thing. He continued this behavior for about 20 minutes.
Because our upstairs is all hardwood flooring, we could hear his little nails pitter pattering across the entire upstairs. He was traveling into the other bedroom, the bathroom, then our room, then back through the hallway … over and over. At one point, I heard what sounded like a guitar being strummed (which there is one in the other room), so I got up to see what was happening. Potty-trained Charlie had gone poopies right near the guitar because he had gotten himself so worked up.
We then got smarter. I placed his round bed and elephant stuffed animal at the bottom of our bed near my side, so he was that much closer to me. After a few more rounds of him trying to jump up on our bed, he eventually put himself to sleep in his new bed. Thank God.
This whole bedtime process took about 45 minutes. I went to sleep that night praying it would get better with each night, and thankfully, it has. On his second night, it only took 5 minutes for him to put himself to sleep in his bed, which still rests (a week later) at the foot of our bed on my side. Now, I tuck him in his bed with his blanket, so he is snug as a bug, and he falls right to sleep. He’s such a good boy.
The other big surprise was how Charlie reacts to men, and in particular, to Biboti. As I had written about before, Biboti is a fan of dogs, but not the Pug breed. He doesn’t see how cute their ugly face is and he has never spent time with one to know how their personalities can be so funny. I basically begged him to be on board with me getting one, which he was, but my only thought was about Biboti needing to fall in love with Charlie, not Charlie needing to fall in love with Biboti.
When my mom and I first brought Charlie home, Biboti was working. When he came home, he entered the house with joy and jubilation in his voice.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie! Helloooooo Charlie,” he said.
Charlie freaked out. He barked right in his face and actually stepped backwards, away from him. This was the FIRST time I had heard him bark (NOTE: Now, Charlie only barks when people enter the house, as if to say, “Who are you?” or “Hello!” or “I missed you” or “Stay away from my mom!”) Biboti was startled, as was Charlie. Biboti tried to pet him and Charlie coward down like a scared puppy. He continued to stay as close to me as possible.
I could see Biboti’s feelings were hurt, and then suddenly it dawned on me—
What if Charlie doesn’t like Biboti?
Yikes!
I could tell by the way Biboti welcomed him that he was completely open to loving him and it was my dear Charlie who could possibly screw this whole thing up. I began to panic, just a bit.
Little by little, Biboti began to spend more time with him. Charlie loves to be held, so Biboti picked him up and placed him on his lap. This seemed to help. Then, Biboti took him for a walk/run around the block, which Charlie loved. Progress was being made.
A week later, Charlie is still a mama’s boy, but he loves his dad too. And, Biboti loves him so much as well. He even took Charlie out this morning for his usual morning routine and fed him—always a good sign. They both seemed very content when I got out of bed.
Because I have been home for the week, we’ve taken Charlie to do just about everything. We’ve been feeling him out in different settings. We run errands with him and leave him in the car, on the front seat, but not for too long. He does really well. We had a birthday party for my mom at her house with 25 guests and Charlie was there, hanging out with all the people, like he was a member of the family for years. He was great—mellow as can be after all the male guests arrived. That always seems to prompt a bark or two. And, we’ve left him alone at home when we’ve gone to work at the studio, free to roam the downstairs. So far, so good.
Yes, Charlie is a dog, but he is my new baby. It feels so good to have him around. His presence definitely fills a void while also invoking a new found joy in my heart, soul and life.
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