Not Quite Through the Looking Glass

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Meditation From Dummies
2007-07-21 02:59:00
So, lately I've been reading some Pema Chodron, and some of her friends and co-authors, and for the first time in my life -- all due to their knack for translating these things in the Western terms, and describing the inner furniture of my mind -- I began to understand what I'm supposed to do when I sit down and meditate. And why I should.Now, I don't mean understand on any deep and abiding level. I mean in any basic way -- at all. I've always thought I "should" meditate, and sometimes I'd try it. I'd sit down, maybe on a pillow, maybe light a candle, and try to concentrate. I'd sit, and "focus" for a while, and my mind would run rampant, and then finally, the timer would go off, and I'd feel a little smug because I did it. And also a little stupid, because I knew I had no clue what I was doing.Then, I read Chodron, and some of one of her colleages in a book called "How to Turn Your Mind into an Ally," or something close to that. And it explained in the clearest of terms tha...
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hard to believe
2007-07-11 06:18:00
So, sort of out of the blue, a sort-of family member sent me a photo from my cousin's wedding. Five photos, actually. And in that sort-of-meddling family way, they included a photo of my mother. Who was at the wedding. But we didn't talk to each other, just like we hadn't talked to each other for the previous, oh, maybe five years? I had been horribly unprepared to encounter my mother, but I wanted to be at my cousin's wedding, so I went. And at the last minute I dragged along my husband as moral support. And I barely made it, but I made it. I was also prepared if my mother should choose to talk to me, though she didn't. So I spent the whole night without actually seeing her, since she was seated behind me at the ceremony, and in a dark corner at the reception. I left without seeing her, even though we shared the same room all night.So the relative sent me this photo, and I see that in the photo, my mother is old. I mean, OLD. I mean, her hair is white. And thin along the part,...
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Today ...
2007-07-04 03:29:00
I sent my response to Very Big and Scary company who sent me the C&D letter. So, eventually I will find out if they truly merely want me to cease and desist, or if they prefer to squish me flat, because they can. It was hard to send that letter, because it led to the next step of finding out the answer.
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Business Ain't Going So Well
2007-06-28 19:07:00
It's weird ... a lot of kind of bad things at once. Bad customers, the kind that don't read the descriptions (at all), and then get mad. And then a few mistakes I've made, like orders that didn't get placed, somehow, and labels I didn't enter properly in the vendor's site. One vendor who screwed up their page and stopped tracking my sales, while another vendor changed their feed so it wouldn't import, and I spent two hours trying to track down the problem. And then, a C&D letter from a very big company ordering me to cease selling several of my most profitable products, by far. All this sort of at once. Am I being sent a message? On top of this, I can't concentrate on or throw myself into work like I used to. I can't program like I used to. I feel kind of useless, and it's harder to concentrate with that maniacal single-mindedness I used to have.I mean, I felt COMPELLED to work before in a single-minded way that sometimes kind of scared me and wore me out, but now, I f...
More About: Business , Well , Going , Sine , Goin

Soooooo ...
2007-06-20 09:55:00
I just joined this online group for borderlines who want to learn life skills, which focuses very heavily on learning to get more control over our own  minds, which is a doozie. Anyway, I have that car-crash fascination with most of the emails that go through this list because almost every. Single. One. Describes the same tortured process my mind goes through. The ones you could never describe to anyone else. But I don't have to describe it to them, because they understand.So anyway, I've been having a really tough time with that seeming big selfish patch my husband's been going through. It really took the wind out of me because I'd been moving in some uncomfortable ways (everything's uncomfortable for me, especially normal intimacy) in my efforts to be more of a couple. I had taken some big steps under a leap of faith that we were working toward being a closer team and less of two independent satellites, and then I got slapped in the face with a big bout of "your nee...

Well ...
2007-06-19 07:13:00
My husband is being SO selfish. Or more accurately, has been being a selfish prig in some really important, significant ways for some time now. This always happens when he stops with the 12 step meetings, sooner or later. It is also partly my part for focusing way too much on him; on trying to self-soothe by making everything all about him, by trying to make him my security blanket by giving him too much and asking too little. Much too little. Of course, it's possible that I have totally lost perspective, and am sort of destroying our relationship. It is always very, very difficult to tell. Am I recognizing boundaries and asserting my needs, or am I being a psycho bitch throwing out unreasonable demands? You wouldn't believe how hard it is to be sure. The only way to find out sometimes is to see what happens, down the road. I recently came across the realization that I have an honest-to-god personality disorder. What this means is daunting. It means my brain is essentially, p...
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It's times like this when I wish I had a mother,
2007-05-04 05:01:00
you know, the Dream Mother , the one I could tell hey, guess what? I just walked down the street and donated $4000 to the local library, and I didn't even feel the pinch, or have to move money around.The one I could not-say-but-she'd-get-it-instantly, I'm becoming the kind of daughter you'd be proud of.In real life, of course, my mother and I are Not in Contact, and probably never will be.In real life, my real mother was never able to muster up much love for me, and her relationship to my relationship to money was to see if she could get some of it.And yes, that's sad, and yet it's possible to imagine a different kind of mother, who would be proud and gleeful even. Who would say just the right warm kind of thing and a few tears would spring to my eyes as I let it sink into whatever gooey part of my innards that link to the tears. Maybe she'd send a little notecard a few days later, just to back it up.
More About: Wish , Times , When , Like

I just donated to the local library ....
2007-05-02 23:53:00
$4000 to be exact.I've never done anything like that before.And I didn't even have to move any money around to do it ... I was able to just suck it out of what was sitting in checking.The feeling is ... great. They're a small outfit (who have gotten me scads and scads of wonderful books at no cost), and 4K makes a big difference in their operations this year.
More About: Library , Local , Nate , Libra , Loca

untitled
2007-05-01 15:38:00
The bright coin of the moonsurprises the black wateras we ride by, lightless,unprepared for whatever longingkept us on the road even afterthe ducks skidded into the marshes,complaining, and the beaver splashed off the banklike a show girl, then patiently pulled the threadsof water to the other side.
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Tomorrow
2007-04-19 08:20:00
... or today, actually, I'm quitting coffee again. It's time to stop the madness! My skin is dry, like fish flakes, and I'm breaking out from the overdose of adrenalin going night and day.Fun, fun.
More About: Tomorrow , Morrow , Tomo

One more through the looking glass, fer sure ..
2007-04-18 08:00:00
I haven't been blogging (remember way back when, when blogging wasn't a verb and only compulsive Dear Diary types had one?) for a while because I've been e-commercing, a hellish process that I now have second thoughts about -- wasn't it easier just to let Paypal handle all the (insert EXPLETIVE CHAIN) details? I mean, it's ugly: merchant account, payment account, extra relationships and fees for Visa/Mastercard, way less fraud protection, interstate taxation nightmare, security fears, and a typical two-month process to get the powerful but very, very-unsuitable-out-of-the-box shopping cart going which, incidentally, is also a favorite target of Estonian hackers or something. WTF was I thinking? Really? I think it might have been a big mistake. Big, big. Especially since I don't want to be a shopkeeper. I just want to be a marketer. There's a theme song in there.Also, Chris left my car window open meaning the electric bits were ONCE AGAIN subjected to 2.5 days of constant...
More About: Glass , King , Through , More , Sure

Monstruous
2007-04-12 00:51:00
Chris is on spring vacation, which means I write a lot less.Things have been really topsy-turvy, both on the work and home fronts. Tough, really. On the work front, I made $100 mistake today and upset a partner (a partner, however, who I sent thousands of dollars of business to). I've spent thousands of dollars on ad buys, I'm spending about a thousand more on a decent shopping cart and all the toys that go with it, and my whole goal is to make a ridiculous amount of money over the summer so that I can have my house worked on -- an actual office built, actually. I'd like to have pretty things in my house by summer's end, and that means making bank. Installing a complicated shopping cart, installing an SSL certificate, getting a merchant account and a payment gateway -- frustrating. But probably the right direction.On the home front -- I can't really even begin to describe things, except in a long therapy session maybe. Things have been very tough here too. Tough with Chris, as ...
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Whew ...
2007-04-06 17:59:00
I'm just about to splash out 5 grand on web advertising and text link buys. And I know in the world of advertising, that is not a lot. Still, for me, this is big. A big commitment, even though I already spend about 5K a year on celebrity news.Big big big.

Fighting Food and Being Dead
2007-04-03 21:17:00
What Chris worries about: money. Ex-wives. What I worry about: well, it varies from week to week.This week it's food issues. I have a long history of them. We had moved halfway through my junior year, my never-strong family began falling apart in earnest, my father left for another state, and I was trapped deep in the heart of miles of suburbia for the first time in my life. Before this, I'd been surrounded by wilderness -- literally -- and I covered miles on an average day, but now I felt there was nowhere to go, at least after a few halfhearted attempts to jog down the sidewalks of the ugly strange neighborhoods I lived in now.I began to put on a little weight, but I couldn't do that, so soon I became a real bulimic. My problem with actually binging in sticking my finger down my throat eased a bit after I left home for college, though it took about a year to start tapering off. After that my weight was pretty stable, except it began to climb during my truly awful first marriage...
More About: Food , Fight , Fighting , Dead , Bein

When Being Yourself is Actually Good Enough
2007-04-02 05:39:00
I discovered one way to have a PR 7 blog that's capable of supporting an entire family today. Look like a supermodel, write like an angel, take photos of your photogenic mutt everyday, have a wild and crazy history in LA, and be so naturally amusing that your posts about your baby daughter's bassinet sheets take on an epic quality.Back to real life. In my DIY fervor, I slapped a bunch of primer over these downstairs shelves my stepdaughters have been using as a giant dollhouse. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the primer was oil-based, something that made itself pretty clear when I tried to wring the roller clean with a little soap and running water and ended up gloving in my hands in insoluble oil paint. Sadly for me, we had no "mineral spirits" in the house, although I was able to rub off a bit of the paint with vaseline. Not the smell, though. Lucky for Chris. Hope my wedding ring somehow makes it.
More About: Yourself , Self , Your , Enough , When

$96,820
2007-04-01 23:55:00
That's what I pulled in in income for 2006. Not bad for my first real year in business. The year before I made something like 25K. After business expenses, deductions, blah blah blah my AGI was something like 55K. But all told, a stunning success. My accountant was muy impressed. And I'm paying FAR less in taxes than I feared. Which means I have a bit of money to spruce up the house this year. Not, like, buy a heated indoor pool or pop the top money. But a solid 10K, which buys a lot of DIY stuff. I started by ordering a pack of router bits off Amazon. And I bet I'll even learn to use them this year.

That Seven Year Itch Makes Sense
2007-04-01 01:11:00
The fun part about marriage is that eventually, all the things that made dating such a wonderful escape -- the new sex, the feeling that someone has finally gotten you and can never misunderstand, the feeling that someone in the world is literally waiting by the phone for you to call -- totally disappears after marriage, and what's left is what you had before ... you. You have all the same fears, the same selfishness, the same secrets you might not admit even to yourself, the same prejudices, the same tendency to reduce other people to black and white, the same abilities to misconstrue even your spouse's choices as ones intended to be hostile toward you. You're left with yourself, but your spouse is a better mirror than anyone else.Friends and acquaintances can be fooled, but even the most high-in-the-sky husband or wife eventually comes down to earth, and knows who you are. And you betray them, because you're human -- not necessarily with infidelity, or even any malice, but bec...
More About: Sense , Hat , Seven , Make , That

Making Room for the Brain to Breathe
2007-03-27 12:39:00
It's always a trip when my brain starts reprogramming itself, because the dreams get crazy... and exhausting. Not bad, just tiring, so that by 5 a.m. or so it's easier to wake up and just wait until I get tired enough to really conk out. Last night the dreams were about being in a small clear pod with a few other women, tumbling out the back of a pickup truck at high elevation, and plummeting far, far down to the ground while I screamed, "God protect us! God protect us!" right before the others informed me that we'd already hit the ground. And then, the one about being in the same pod, rolling down a conveyor belt in a dark tunnel toward a sign that said, "RADIATION." And I dug my way out of the pod with my fingernails and press the alarm button to make the conveyor belt stop, again and again... which it did...That sort of thing.This all started when my mother-in-law died, on February 21, I think. It started off a long chain of processes which forced me to compare how people in m...
More About: Rain , King , Breath , Brain , Room

It Ain't Easy, Being Married
2007-03-26 20:38:00
Filling out the "interest" section of the profile seems kind of revealing. It's like being a pre-teen again, taking those little quizzes in magazines, and feeling like you learned something. Oh, so I am the kind of person that likes John Lennon, wants to have a certain kind of wedding (cheap), is childless but wishes she weren't, comes from a dysfunctional family, benefits from a lot of good therapy. I am the kind of person who thinks marriage is hard. Not surprising.I go to very expensive therapy, usually about every two weeks. I say "very expensive" with pride because I found the first therapist who was ever able to help me (and here I am, almost 37 years old) and I still can hardly believe that I'm better than I was. My first marriage was very damaging; 10 long years of one Dark Night of the Soul after another. I chose a man who would dump me on the roadside without a thought (and did), and took on armies full of problems that were his, and tried to solve them, at great cost. ...
More About: Easy , Bein , Arri , Being , Married

As much as I'd love to finish off my taxes tonight,
2007-03-26 06:08:00
I am just too damn stupid, so I'm going to bed.I will say that without this propitious combination of Quicken, gmail that gives away a ridiculous 2 gig of email allowing me to save everything I ever received, bank accounts that keep check images for a really long time, and free CSV-to-Quicken converters, I would be really screwed about now.
More About: Love , Taxes , Tax , Night , Tonight

Letting it All Hang Out
2007-03-23 21:25:00
Ah, the freedom to write what I want, and not worry if an ex-husband is reading, or someone anonymous who may/may not be a friend, or people who I'd just prefer not to know. It's like upgrading to a larger house. Which speaking of ...... as mentioned, there's a little financial tension Chez Nous over finances. And money looms large as I go over my zillion-entry accounting records for tax season 2006. Accounting is never been one of my strengths, and I pretty much ignored it all year. You'd think the fallout would be fatal, but it looks like (thanks to gmail) I've reconstructed about 95% of those blank-faced entries, pretty accurately. And I've got religion at the moment, so for a while at least, my 2007 records won't be such a stinking pile of crap.I'm taking a vacation this week (other than taxes). It's a delicate state of mind. Also, the universe is conspiring, since none of my potential interviewees have responded to any of my e-mails, which is rare. And then, spring spr...
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A Slapdash Intro -- Hi!
2007-03-23 04:32:00
Hello. :)This is my first time here, because I finally got tired of some wicked privacy invasions involving my old blog, which I meant to be anonymous, but wasn't careful enough about. I whittled it down to password-protected posts, and gave the password to only two or three people, but this morning I got a look at the stat counter and find my latest reader is an attorney from DC, and I definitely didn't give him the password, and what's worse, someone mailed it to him, someone I trusted with the password in the first place.Eh.So here I am, starting as if this blog began years ago, which it did in another universe. I'm kind of glad that's gone. Because now is much better than then.Still, now falls something short of perfect. I made a lot of money with my business last year (100K?), but it seems like I won't get to keep any of it after I pay taxes. Like, none. And that's so disappointing because I'm a frugal black belt. I drive a 1995 car that's creeping up on 200,000 miles....
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