#gratitudeNow: You're wet, too.

So this morning...

I'm surfing the internet in bed, from my phone, like you do.  I stumbled onto a short film called YES, GOD, YES.

Here's how the film-makers describe it.  "Fifteen-year-old Alice has always been a good Catholic, but when an innocent AOL chat turns unexpectedly racy, she finds herself suddenly obsessed with masturbating."

This film is brilliant.  It's literally a coming-of-age story.  If you watch it carefully, you can see subtle, artful skewering of all sorts of social conventions and hypocrisies.  And, without giving away any spoilers, Alice, after floundering some, really finds her sexual agency, really takes responsibility for her own ideas around sex.

Don't take my word for it.  Watch it!

One last, weirdly bizarre moment of grace or something about this film.  After I saw it, I just knew I had to blog about it, because of this weird little thing about how Karen Maine,  the film's writer, director, and producer uploaded the film.

"Uploaded by Karen Maine... via MAKO UPLOADER."

I'm super grateful films like this exist.

#gratitudeNow:Refangulation by Panties

So, about 25 years ago, a college friend of mine, Rob embarked on a secret, lifelong mission with me.  It's been long enough that I feel I can finally come clean about it.

We were both fascinated by the word "quiz" and its unusual origin.  It had been more or less injected into the english language as an exploit, back in the late 18th century.  Being two stalwart academics with an eye toward both nerdishness and tomfoolery, we decided we would do our own guerrilla assault on the English language, inserting our own nonsense word.

That word is Refangulate.  It's a verb, meaning to measure by relative means.  You know how a cubit is from Pharaoh's tip of his finger to his elbow?  That's refangulation.  How about how a smurf is three apples high, or how a horse is so many handspans tall?  Yup, refangulation again.

I have subtly used the word in conversation for over two decades, trying to get it to catch.

The reason I'm coming clean about it today is that this morning, as I was getting dressed, I caught myself in an unwitting act of self-refangulation by panties, as I was getting dressed.

Two pairs of my underpants.  Technically only one pair is a pair of panties.  Cat (Yang) included for size comparison.  Which I suppose is a form of refangulation itself, so, a double!

I'm going through my underwear drawer, like you do, picking out what I want to wear for the day, while I dodge the loving underfoot antics of my cats.  As I'm going through the drawer I notice the pair on the lefthand side of the picture, which are relatively new, and which I bought several months ago.  When I first got them they were just a bit too small on me to even be worn.  The pair on the right are a pair of panties my wife bought for me, a long while back.  

I kept both of these pairs of underpants because I like them, and because I knew I wanted to fit into them.  I'm down almost 33 pounds now from when I started doing keto back in mid-March, and they've both become QUITE comfortable.  I'm slowly shrinking into underpants I really like, and which will soon become too big to wear.

I realized that I've begun to measure myself by panties.  That's a refangulation I can really get behind.  Or into.  Or something.

#gratitudeNow:Fathering Discomfort

I've touched on this before in my blog, but my feeling around my dad are rather complicated, because he was a great and terrible presence in my life.

My dad was a narcissistic, antisocial monster, who emotionally abused and abandoned me, and who did some astoundingly terrible things to my family, including emotional blackmail, embezzlement, fraud, and manipulation.  He destroyed my grandparent's family business, stole money through fraud from my ailing grandmother, cheated on my mom multiply over the course of more than 20 years, and faked having leukemia to coerce the family into giving him pity, money, and resources.

He was also a genius.  And, he did many great things for me in my life.  I had a stellar education, travelled the world, and materially, wanted for very little for most of my childhood.  

When I was in my early 20's, much of his machinations began to come to light.  I went from yearning for his approval and attention up through high school, being confused about what was even real about him during my college years, to an outright seething hatred and resentment for him as an adult.

I flew overseas to deal with his ill health when I was in my late 20's, and discovered through a series of misadventures that he had faked having leukemia.  He was deported back to the states not long after, and spent the next 15 years in a state of decline.  He was on the edge of homelessness, saved from it only by the good graces of my aunt. and some effort on my part too.  

Despite his change in circumstance, he still continued to play games, manipulate and toy with everyone around him.  He remarried multiple times, conned many people, and got to me in all sorts of ugly little ways for a while yet.  

That's him.

I used to be fairly saturated in anger for him.  Eventually I did make my peace with who and what he was.  The last time I saw him alive was back in February 2006.  

He died three years later.  I went to the funeral, spoke at it.  

Since then, I actually have to struggle to remember when his birthday was, what year he died.  

As I'm sure you can imagine, all this makes father's day problematic for me.  But that's not the end of the story.  

During my first marriage, I was a father myself.  I was the step-father to my ex's son from her previous marriage.  He was a good kid, and we connected easily and well.  I taught him a lot of things, and we were a huge part of one another's lives.  When his mom and I split, we kept in contact, and nurtured our relationship.  I took him out for his first beer.  We went on a trip to New York together to see The Blue Man Group.  We were in each other's lives.

He married into a very religious, very conservative family, and things began to get a little weird.  He would post these very cringe-inducing things on Facebook about Caitlyn Jenner, and about homosexuality.  

It became a problem between us.  We negotiated a careful detente, and then broke the heck out of it.  Two years ago we had a throw down over Facebook over something, and that became it.  We were done.  I texted him a message on his birthday, months later, and got a very terse reply, "Thank you."

I have a general sort of weirdness around holidays to begin with, that I work hard to overcome.

So, here's the funny thing.  

This past weekend, over father's day weekend, Missy and I went to visit my girlfriend, Alissa in Chicago.  Her kids got to spend part of it with us, and then the rest of it with their dad.   I had good connecting time with the kids, who love me, and whom I love very much.  And mostly, the fact that it was father's day came and went without it meaning much of anything to me.

Later still, as we were traveling home, and I read Facebook, I saw this great outpouring of sentiment, good and bad for the day, including people looking to express all sorts of painful feelings about the day there.

And I made the conscious choice not to add to that.

Why?  Because it doesn't serve me.  A huge part of my practice is recognizing that I am not my thoughts.  Also, that pain and suffering are a part of life, and that they're transient, like all experiences.

There's this thing I'm always going back to, time and again, a quote of the Dalai Lama's.

"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot.  When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy."

The thing about that quote is, it's not perfect.  I think there are other words than "fault" that fit there better.  One in particular, that I learned from The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck really jumps out at me: responsibility.  It may not be my fault my dad was so awful, or that my stepson and I don't have a relationship anymore.  But it is up to me, it is my responsibility to decide what I'm going to do about it.

And what I've picked to do, what I consciously do about it each day is this: nothing.

My dad was who he was.  My stepson is who he is.  And I am who I am.  That's not to say that who I am doesn't change.  I'm in a near constant state of change.  I have no idea whatsoever if my stepson and I will ever be on good terms again, and that's okay.

It's not that it's not sad, nor painful.  It absolutely is.  I'm very glad that I got to raise him for as long as I did, and that he mostly came out the other side of that okay.  Who he is now as an adult, that's not my responsibility.  That's up to him.  

In the meantime, I have other things going on in my life, other connections which are vibrant, valuable, and which tap that call to nurture and be nurtured that's inside me.

I want to say, too that I don't begrudge anyone for wanting the validation of others, and posting how they feel about the day, their dad, or being a dad.  I'm not better than them, nor worse than them.  I just embrace my responsibility for my feelings in a way that works for me, and that's very different.

I hold no universal truth about this stuff.  But I do know myself a whole lot better than I have before.  I'm grateful for that. 

#gratitudeNow:My friend Gram & the speed limit

This morning I woke up, jumped out of bed, and startled to hustle about.  I had a lot to do this morning, and was obsessing over some things.  Financial stuff, business stuff, day job stuff, health stuff.  My mind was a whirling storm of must-do's, shouldn't-do's, wants, expectations, all sorts of shenpa.

I took some time in the shower to follow my breath, and detach from my thoughts, to observe them.  Slowly, the storm in my head began to settle.

I reshuffled my priorities, realizing I could work on Project Drummond tonight, and that I really wanted to pack my lunch.  That's because hunting for keto friendly food near my office is a pain in the ass.  It's also expensive, and I like having the control over what I'm eating.  That way I can make good choices before I have to eat.

So I resolved to make myself a leftover salad.  Roast beef, cheddar, romaine, lettuce, tomatoes, and some olive oil, salt and pepper dressing.  

I used my awesome kitchen scale to measure everything in grams.  That was amazing, because my scale does grams easily, and every food in my carb tracking software, Carb Manager Pro, seems to have a listing for it by gram.  It was SO easy.  As you can see, with a 2g breakfast, and a 7g lunch, I'm totally rocking staying inside my 25g limit for the day.

The nice part of that whole process was I got to focus and slow down even more.  I chopped vegetables, tore lettuce, weighed ingredients.  While I was doing all this I most certainly was NOT thinking about all the storm-tossed-items I'd awoken to.  It's not that I was consciously avoiding thinking of them.  Rather, I'd put them aside to be in the moment.

There's this saying of the Dalai Lama's I quote all the time that everyone should meditate for 30 minutes a day, unless you really don't have the time.  In that case, he advises, you should meditate for an hour.

It's true.  As I sit writing this, I'm calm.  Yes, I have a lot to do today, yes, it's going to be busy.  And I will deal with what I need to do, one thing at a time.  But I don't have to worry about that now. 

I'm present, here.  (Except for a tiny pleasure seeking shenpa about how good that salad's going to be!)

#gratitudeNow:Scarfing down memories

On Saturday, before Missy's birthday party, I was running around doing some errands.  I stopped in at a grocery store to pick up some things.  As I got in line to pay, I saw this elderly woman in front of me.  She had a kind face, a gentle demeanor, and was wearing this beautiful Chanel scarf that very much reminded me of my grandmother, Phyllis.

Phyllis loved scarves.  She often wore these very fancy Hermès scarves.  She didn't do so to be fancy or pretentious, but just to inject a little style and class into her everyday life.  My grandmother was a character.  She had a zest for life, a certain panache and flair that made even the tiniest, quietest little moments special.  

I hadn't thought about her in a while, and seeing that woman's scarf reminded me of her, powerfully.  It made me very happy.  So, I decided to strike up a conversation as we waited.  I complimented her scarf, told her how it reminded me of my grandmother.

She told me that she too, was a grandmother.  She said that generally, being a grandmother was a good thing, except of course, for the age, and how the past is gone, and the future coming on all too soon.

I was wearing shorts at the time, and pointed to the tattoo on my leg, which is the first stanza, first verse of the Tao te Ching.  I explained to her that maybe there was a different way to see things, that there's no such thing as the past or future, just this very moment, right here, right now, and that that moment goes on, without end, forever.

She brightened up, and said she'd never thought about it that way.  She smiled at me widely.

That reminded me of my grandmother too.  

She felt good.  I felt good.

It kind of set the tone for the rest of my day.