Off to France

Not going to be able to blog for about 8 days (deep breath). Tim and I are going camping in France. We have not planned one thing, reserved one thing and it goes against my planning nature but whatever. Im sure it will be interesting and make us stronger as a couple. It's like one of those week courses you have to pay for to build up relationships. They dump you in the middle of nowhere with your partner and give you some water and a tent and see if you can survive.

Wish me luck......

Soy Butter and Real Milk

Not much to say today. I’ve got about 1600 mg of ibuprofen in me and 2 cups of coffee. I need to get a nicorette patch but my cramps are so painful that I cant get up. Then again, the insane urge to bike to the store and buy a pack of cigarettes is growing more and more intense so Im getting up to put it on before I find myself biking to the local market in my pajamas like a crazed woman, buying a pack of Marlboro’s then smoking the entire pack, two at a time, on the side of the street giving the finger to everyone that looks at me in disgust. Good GOD that sounds amazing. I have been having smoking dreams every night. Last night even Tim was in my dream and was finding cigarettes for me to smoke. Bless him.

I just ate an entire chocolate bar and had two pieces of toast with butter (soy butter) and coffee with milk (real milk from a cow) in it. I know..doesn’t make sense but that is what Im doing. Im acting like none of this is going to effect the weight I’ve lost since my amazing food poisoning diet. I figure If I continue to starve myself the weight will stay off! KIDDING. I’ve been eating a ton and Ive gained some weight back but most of it has stayed off. I think it has more to do with my job then anything else. And the fact that I cook almost everything we eat and it’s all vegan and 90% organic. Anyway....boring....

What else can I bore you with today? It’s freezing, raining, dark, hurricane windy and it’s only 10am. Our flat is a total train wreak and Im seriously missing my friend vicodin at the moment. We have plans to have dinner and drinks with our new friends tonight in Bristol and as sick as I am Im going to muscle it up and go because they are new friends and since I don’t have any and have been working two months to get some.....were going out regardless of how I feel. Hopefully I will feel better by tonight.

That’s about it really. Im feeling desperate to escape my uncomfort. Attempting to sit in it and breathe but it’s not working so Im going to take another Facebook quiz.

We are off to France on Sunday. It’s totally unplanned. It’s how Tim travels. I want to plan and he keep telling me it’s a waste of time. So...Im going to go with it and try not to kill him when we are driving around France looking for a place to say for 3 hours. Deep breathing (and the reason Im bringing my computer ;) I will try to write before we leave.

Gossip in a small village

Im reading my friend Sharon’s blog. As Ive mentioned I really think everyone should have a blog. Im addicted to her blog. I look forward to reading about her adventures everyday and even though Im 5000 miles away I feel more connected to her. Although now that I realize how much I look forward to her blog Im starting to think I should make sure I write in mine everyday because when she does not update it for a day Im so sad and feel like I am missing something. BUT...I do have to say her blog is much more exciting than mine. Hers is about adventures in dating online and it’s a private blog and one that she says “is not for the faint at heart”. My drama??? Well..let me tell you....

The entire village smells like a combination of bile, barf and bad baby diarrhea and it’s the talk of the town. We went to the pub yesterday after work and met up with some friends and everyone has their own story about it. Mine is that I spent about an hour yesterday searching for the dead animal that I was convinced was rotting under a couch or the bed. Our friend’s was that her boyfriend was vomiting the night before so she was convinced the stench was him and was searching the house for “the sick” convinced that he had puked in a corner somewhere and did not remember. What we found out is that a near by farmer has covered his field in rotten curdled milk, thus making the entire village smell like vomit baby ass. And it does not seem to be going away.

Anyway..this is life living in a really small village and I LOVE IT!!! Although in my demented little head I have fantasies of there being a much larger drama that needs to be uncovered. Ohh..I only wish. I will be looking!!

Feeling better today. Day 6 off the cigarette's and feeling good. I even went down to my little area where I used to write and smoke this morning and was fine with my coffee and my pen and paper. Of course my PMS just kicked in so just going to take it easy on myself. Pamper myself and try not to take it out on my adoring boyfriend. Who read my blog entry last night and now is mocking me with his toothpastie wet faced kisses.

We are getting ready for our camping trip in Normandy. Were going to take our car on a Ferry over to France. It only takes us 2.5 hours to get there. We got a super cool propane cooking stove and some chairs and a table and a tent and a cooler and just about everything we need to camp in style. Feels weird camping around the D Day beaches. It’s like having a picnic at Auschwitz. Well...not that bad but still. Maybe it will feel different when we are there. I don’t know. Im looking really forward to it. Then we are meeting up with Tim’s sister and fiance in Honfleur as they will be there celebrating his birthday with his parents (he’s a Frenchie). So..should be fun.

I wrote a bunch more but maybe I will save that for another day. This seems long and pointless enough.

I basically ended up saying I love my life, I love my boyfriend, I love the small village I live in and the friends I am making and I have never in my life felt so at peace. It is truly a blessing to have no stress in my life at the moment and Im going to ride this feeling as long as I can.

Attaching pic's of the village that I stole off the internet. There is the pic of our church, the pub I was at last night, an overhead shot of the village and a shot of a dog with a beer. Just because it was there and I believe was shot in the pub I was in last night.

Day 5

So Im seriously loosing my little no smoking Zen mind. Embarking on day 5 without one cigarette and Im about to rip someone’s head off and eat it for breakfast. I remember the last time I quit I thought I needed to go somewhere all alone and scream and throw glass bottles at a brick wall for the first two weeks. It’s unfortunate I did not decide to actually do that this time. My jaw is so clenched that Im afraid Im going to give myself lock jaw or grind out all my fillings in my teeth. Im annoyed with everything and everyone. From the ducks that were so charming a week ago with their constant quacking now sound like they are mocking me with their laughter and I want to go down stairs to the pond and break their little duck necks, show them a thing or two. Tim...Im doing my best to not take out anything on him. So I hold it all in. Everything. Things about him that never bothered me before...little things, like he does not use a napkin when he eats or dry his face after he brushes his teeth so that when he kisses me after he comes out of the bathroom my face gets all wet. These little things I thought were cute are now making me want to kill him. You are all lucky you are a good 5000 miles away from me at the moment. It’s the little things. Big things I can handle. I can get my mind around a crisis (to bad I live in a small village and there isn’t one), I can work, keep my brain and my body occupied, but it’s the small things are making me want to seriously go postal (for the English, that means going insane. Long story short there was a man in the 80’s in America who worked at the post office and one day walked into the post office he worked in with a machine gun and killed everyone he could....so when we say “go postal” it just means go crazy, insane, let loose on everyone around you sort of thing). Don’t worry..I do not have a gun so everyone is safe...for the time being :)

The good news is Im on day 5 and Im not going back. This is absolutely wretched and Im never putting myself through this again. These are feelings I never feel. Im typically so easy going and am not bothered by much, if anything. It gives me great insight to people who have a chemical imbalance, or who can not control their temper, or who always feel like this. It must be a horrible way to live. I hate having these feelings. I know they will go away soon and feel blessed that Im not always like this.

I also have this feeling of dread. That nothing is ever going to be fun again. I dont want to drink, because it makes me want a cigarette so Im not going out (not like I have a huge social life anyway), it makes me not want to write in the morning because I used to go down to my favorite spot by the garden, have my coffee, write and smoke. So I can’t go down there for a couple of weeks, until my mind re-associates that place with a healthy one. I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning because I know that I can’t smoke. I remember when my brother quit smoking years ago. He called me and said, “I just feel like there is no point in life right now, there is no more fun” and I laughed. I think I had just quit smoking and knew exactly what he was talking about. We both laughed at how ridiculous it was but it’s true for me at the moment. Im glad I have the experience of not smoking for years because I know this is not true and it will all pass. It just takes some time. And I’ve chosen the perfect time to quit. When I have no stress in life, no stressful job, not many people around me and a small peaceful village. So...perfect place and perfect timing and hopefully soon this feeling will go away. I do not crave smoking at all. I don’t want to put that toxic shit into my system but I do crave getting out of this feeling. The thing I do know is this..if I don’t sit through my feelings and feel everything the feeling stays put like cement. I don’t get to pass through it. So rather that being stuck in this purgatory Im going to feel it all, my anger, my annoyance, Im going to do what I want and not do what I don’t want to do (like the laundry today) and just breathe, feel it all and move through it. It will pass.

Okay...enough of my bile for the day. Just had to get it all out there. If anyone is reading this send me some good peaceful energy. Im in desperate need of it at the moment. But Im going to stay strong, stop being a baby and get through this. For my body that I love that I want to give me a good life...I have to do this for her.

I love quitting Smoking sooo much!!!

Okay....so day 2 of seriously quitting smoking....AGAIN. I can't believe that I was so stupid to pick up a cigarette again after not smoking for over 5 years. BUT...rather than beat myself to a pulp Im just going to suck it up and tough it out. If Im seriously thinking about the second half of my life and changing it I also choose health. I realize it's not about dying or getting lung cancer or what it's doing to my face (although those are also on the top of my mind) but more than that it's about what it takes from me in my youth and in my health.

When I smoke I really believe that Im shit. It's such a masochistic thing to do to my body. It steels my life breath, my prana, and makes me feel like SUCH a hippocrate for being a yogi and living a vegan macrobiotic lifestyle. None of which I do anymore (and contribute to the smoking). I know it’s got to do with the fact that when I smoke there is a part of me that feels I do not deserve to be healthy because Im smoking. Im putting all that toxic garbage into my body, my lungs, my cells and then my body is like “F you! Your going to treat me like this? Well then in turn Im going to trick you into telling you that you are not deserving of a healthy life. Just have another drink and eat a bunch of crap and you know what? Let’s not do yoga anymore because it is exhausting and hurts our lungs when you breathe that deeply so let’s get up, grab a cup of coffee and smoke 4 cigarettes before 9am instead.” And that is exactly what I have been doing.

I have been romanticizing smoking since I started over a year ago. I keep visualizing myself as some young French girl who is sitting at a cafe sipping her cup of coffee and contemplating life while puffing away. I was in Turkey and everyone smoked so so much and I was justifying my smoking there by thinking all these people just live in the moment, enjoy their lives, sit and drink tea and smoke. It’s so romantic. They are not worried about their death or what it’s taking from them, why should I? BUT..the fact is...Im an American woman, no longer a girl (though will always be on in my mind). Ive spent over the last 10 years of my life in California where if you smoke people want to tar and feather you and make you a public spectacle of who not to be. I love my health, I love yoga, and I just hate smoking. Let me not forget one of the Turkish guys was telling me that the life expectancy in Turkey is early 60’s for men because of all the smoking they do...OH YEAH..duh..smoking does kill. I know this first hand. I have been ignoring that little fact as well. Oh...the bliss if living in a fantasy.

I do feel so much shame around it. I am suppose to be this healthy person and here I am smoking 10-15 cigarettes a day (on a bad day). It goes against everything I believe in. I used to smoke 2 cigarettes before I taught my yoga class then wait until I knew none of my students were anywhere near me then light up a cigarette after class.

I want health and eternal youth and a great body that works for me rather than against me. I want strength and energy. All of which smoking takes from me. It makes me tired and lazy. So....Im quitting. Im going to start doing yoga again every day rather than force myself to do a pathetic 30 minute set once a week IF that and Im going to start reading my macrobiotic books again. The ones I brought out here to read but have been collecting dust because all they talk about is eating food and preparing it in a way that is healing and I don’t feel worthy of it because Im smoking.

I also feel like I do have another motivation factor. And that is Tim. I want to stay young and healthy for him so that I don’t rot away as he stays forever 11 years younger than me. In my appearance but also in my body and energy. I want to have the energy to do things and be healthy and go on bike rides and run around. I don’t want to be dragging an oxygen tank around with me 15 years from now when Im 54 and he’s 43.

Smoking also takes away my moment. It keeps me moving and doing something rather than just taking my time in what Im doing. I am always looking forward to that next cigarette so I do things fast so I can go out and smoke. I rush through the dishes and cleaning the house because as my reward for all my labor...I get to have a cigarette. I end conversations before they should end because I want to go outside and have a cigarette. The addiction is running my life. I remember the last time I quit I felt so free. This addiction had ruled my life for so long. Im at the airport and want to run outside to smoke before I get my connecting flight (SUCH a pain in the ass to have to go through security again), I just want whatever Im doing to end so that I can go smoke. Addiction is a wicked thing really and it does rule your life. It’s constantly knocking at my door needing me to get out of where I am and give it attention. It will make me give up this life of wanting to cook and write and run back to the advertising world. It thrives in that chaos and drama. It’s really just not my friend and it’s kinda the devil taken form of a little white stick with tobacco and loads of other chemicals. So...Im quitting. Day 2. For me, for Tim and for my future. I want to stay on my path.

I just picked up this macrobiotic book called Glow. It’s about the rejuvenating powers of food, Chinese medicine and the yin and the yang of food, our bodies, and living with the rhythm of the planet rather than just walking around on it completely checked out. I’ve been a little checked out over the last year. It’s time to dive back in and live 100% and feel everything rather than smoke through my feelings then feel nothing. Im at an amazing place in my life. Ive taken huge risks and I wont be able to feel any of it if I continue to smoke through it. I wont be able to use this opportunity to grow. If I don’t feel everything, I don’t experience it, I don’t grow.

So...here I go. I must love to constantly challenge myself. I think part of it is I don’t know live with out addiction or drama and chaos. I always get so close then do something to stir it all up again. It’s life. Im not perfect. I never will be, don’t want to be and do not strive to be. I do strive to enjoy my life though. In a guilt free way. I’ve been feeling so guilty for smoking and what it’s doing to my body so THE END. I am done. I have a hard time posting this one because I feel so much shame around my smoking but Im going to put it up anyway. Why not...I put up all the other shit that is floating around in my head.

Okay..so I like to post photos on my blog. Im a visual person and I don't really like to read anything unless there is a picture somewhere so I googled "smoking" and thought I would share some nasty ass photo's. Can you believe those little kids?? I guess that is the yin and the yang with China. They have this great medicine and thousands of years of great healing but I guess the newest fad in Hunan is kid smoking. Holy SHIT. They are like 4. And that lady smoking through her neck. I seriously have photo's of me pretending to smoke from my neck from last time I smoked. I used to joke that I would never quit smoking and smoke through the hole they are going to have to create in my neck. It was funny when I was drunk and 25. This image...not so funny. And I just thought I would throw in that image of the dude trying to make the book of world records...I guess that is what he's doing??? Or just showing off ;) I dont know but Im sure by mid day today Im going to want to be smoking what he is. Guess I"ll just keep looking at the old lady with the smoking out of her throat. Good lord have mercy.

Driving on the left and baby puppies

I had my first English driving experience yesterday. Basically a recipe for a panic attack but I did it. My panic attacks happen when I drive all the way to the left (long story but it’s true). All you do here is drive on the left, exit on the left....everything is on the left left left. Except of course the drivers seat, that is on the right. Seriously...makes no sense and it’s absolutely horrifying and totally backwards. I don’t think I will be driving on any major highways anytime soon but I do need to learn how to drive at least through the villages if Im going to live here. Even if we are going to go back and forth between the US and here...I need to know how to drive. So...I did it. Sitting on the right side of the car, driving on the wrong side of the road and shifting with my left hand because the gear shift is on the left. It felt like I was standing on my head with my eyes crossed.

Oh...and I also just had beans on toast for breakfast. Im just sooo English this week.

Im attaching some pic’s of Tim and I. We were running around last night doing errands and stopped at a pub for a drink then went to the cafe where I work as Tim had some work to do there as well (see pic of the statue). He’s so cute..I just have to share with all my girlfriends how adorable my boyfriend is. I know...gag but were doing so amazing, were so in love and I forgot what it was like to be this in love. I forgot it was possible. It comes so natural for us when we are together. It’s like we are both just home. I feel like I’ve always known him. Always been with him. We treat each other like royalty. We would do anything for one another. I honestly did not think it was going to happen for me. I had so much hope and I was not going to give up on love but it truly did come when I least expected it with a man that I did not think it was possible to do it with. So...my only advice to all my girlfriends on the search (because I know there are many ;) is to keep your minds open. Don’t say no because of age or money or location or because he does not have everything on the list. Just go with how you feel and listen to your heart. We have all these things working against us and yet it’s the best thing that has ever happened.

I remember when we first met. I was like, “what does this 27 (now he’s 28:) year old boy want with me? Is he crazy? He thinks he’s in love with me and I could practically be his Mother and he lives 5000 miles away. This is absolutely impossible.” Yet in my heart, that day that I drove away from him in Mendicino it was breaking and I knew that there was something special there. Even if I did not want to admit it. And Im so glad that he did not listen to me and my fears and kept calling and pursuing me. He was fearless. I was full of fear. I kept thinking, “what? am I going to quit my job and move with you to your small village? That is ridiculous. Or are you going to leave your life and move to San Francisco where you don’t have a job? Even more ridiculous.” And here we are....and I have never been happier. Except for the extreme homesickness that I have from week to week. Anyway... there is someone out there for all of us. I used to walk down the street and see people together and think, “what makes them so in love? Why is that couple together?” And I guess we all just do have our match. We just need to be patient and love fearlessly. It’s what Im doing right now even though it’s horrifying. Because seriously...my demented head has me writing all this beautiful stuff about me and my amazing man and our beautiful love and then my imagination throws a vision at me a month from now. Im writing in my blog that I just found out that my amazing beautiful boyfriend is actually a crazy lunatic who eats puppies at night and I have to take back everything I just wrote because in reality I feel in love with a maniac. Just throwing out my fears ;) Im sure he’s totally normal...but I am going to start looking for small shallow graves in the back yard.

Okay..short and sweet today. I have a shit ton of baking to do today. Tim offered up my vegan cake and Pico de gallo for a barbecue we are going to tonight. Plus I seriously have to die my hair. Lots to do today. Busy busy day for the stay at home girlfriend.

Ohhh...The Goddess

Im doing my best to not create a “list” of things to do in a day. It’s like quitting smoking. It’s SO HARD. Because if I create a list, then Im off all day running errands and tasking then obsess about checking off all the boxes and if all the boxes are not checked off at the end of the day Im extremely uncomfortable. Now that Im not creating daily lists I just feel like there is always something I am forgetting. Then again.... all I did yesterday was bake a cake, took a bath, did yoga and finally got out of my pajamas at 4pm just so Tim would not think I was in my pajamas all day. Hummm...maybe a list is in order. Im finding Im not an extremely motived individual on my own. Which now that I think about it, I’ve always known about myself. If Im not under a forced deadline I’ll just do nothing. Sit home, watch a movie, take a nap, read, write, cook and eat. Guess that is not such a bad life...for the moment.

Im doing what I came out here to do though. Im getting in a lot of travel (for me), Im cooking constantly and always creating new things and my cooking is developing in a really great new way, and Im writing a lot. I want to write a book but it’s totally overwhelming and Im not sure what to write about. Is it my life story? And if so who really gives a crap. Seems so narcissistic to write it down but then again people have asked that I do it. I’ve also been obsessing about the whole Goddess thing since Turkey (thank you my girlfriend Claudia) and went into a near by town called Glastonbury that is a total hippy town and bought a bunch of books on The Goddess. They are really interesting books. It’s so great to read them and I wonder why we are not taught this information. Women would truly feel like an important part of history rather than a spec of history. Everyone who writes the books has the same common theme. It’s not all about women power and squashing the man, which is always the problem I had with the 70’s and 80’s women’s activism. Although, don’t get me wrong, we needed that to get to where we are today. These books are about balancing the masculine and feminine in ourselves and on the planet. We have been male dominated for the last 4000 years and because of that we have an imbalance in ourselves and on the planet. I found out that when people worshiped the Goddess and God equally there was a balance on the earth. They respected and saw women as “Mother Goddess” or Mother Earth and treated women like they treated the earth. Viewed us both as the same. As life givers and so in turn gave to the earth rather than just took from it. Because we have ignored so much of our history and focused so much on the masculine we have just built and taken from the earth and now our earth needs to be built back up again, as does the feminine and once there is true balance between the two the earth will be back at peace again. Ta Da!! Easy ;)

This is also what the Age of Aquarius is about which is what we are in the cusp of now. As some of you know Im a also a bit obsessed with 2012 which coincides with the Age of Aquarius. There are a million different belief systems out there on what is happening right now in the world and where we are headed. On a purely scientific level they are predicting that every 26,000 years all the planets align, which happens to be coming up 12/21/2012. They feel when that happens the earth’s poles will shift making this planet a much different place than the one we are used to. Then there are the Mayans who’s calendar, which we base our entire day, month year and clock off of suddenly ends 12/21/2012. No one knows why? Did they just get sick of plotting out time? Were they just like, “dudes, Im tired, we have been plotting this time thing out for years and were done.” or is there a larger meaning behind it? Then there is the yogi perspective. That the earth is changing. That our poles are gently shifting. That we are made up of exactly the same thing the earth is made up of and as the earth changes, we change with it. On a purely subconscious level. One we don’t really see but if you look around you can see the changes. More people are doing yoga, trying to find meaning in their lives rather than just accepting the rules that were laid down by the generations before us. People are starting to feel different, they are starting to feel their intuition and follow it rather than just blowing it off thinking that it is our “imagination”.

The yogi’s believe that we are moving into a feminine rule rather than the rule we have been in before which is Piscean and masculine ruled. So who knows. Whatever the belief system I personally believe we are headed for some sort of a change. I think the change is happening now and will continue to grow more and more intense as time goes by. I believe we are headed for a kinder world. Where we help one another rather than watch people rot on the street or starve. A place where we truly believe that we are all one. We are all connected and to treat someone or the earth or another animal different than we would treat ourselves or a family member would be to create a crime. You would not walk past your Grandmother or Grandfather on the street and not look him or her in the eye and give them food or money. You would actually pick them up and bring them home with you and take care of them. I know..it’s unrealistic to bring home a crazy person off the street and let them live with you for the rest of their lives but wouldn’t this world be an amazing place if we actually did do that. Lived for someone else rather than ourselves and our small circle of friends and family. Believe me....I wish I was that person. Im not. I fight my fears as I look a person that seems “crazy” on the street as I hand them money then think about what sort of sickness I might have picked up from them and run to the nearest bathroom and wash my hands. It’s fucked really. I always think about Jesus healing the Lepers. He was not afraid to touch them, to help them heal and he never got sick and he brought so much healing to so many people. So I try to bring in some Jesus when I start thinking that the person who smells and is sleeping on the street just needs some love. Love they probably have not felt in years if ever in their lives. I think about how they may have never had a Mother who loved them or held them and it’s been years since someone actually touched them or held them or told them they were beautiful. I think about the times when I have been single and how demented I became just by not having human contact for months on end. I would go get a massage or a manny petty or a haircut just so that someone would touch me because it had been so long and I was so lonely. Take that and times it by 1000 and you have your homeless person, or your old person who has no one and sits home alone. Another great quote by Paulo Cohelo is this, “someday we will cure solitude, which is worse than hunger”. Or something close to that. I don’t have the book in front of me but it struck me. What would this world be like without loneliness? What if everyone had someone that they could depend on, live with, love.

I thought a lot about this in Turkey. I saw very few homeless people in my travels. I asked a Turkish person about this and he looked at me like I was crazy. “We do not have homeless here. We take care of our people and our families. You will not find many homeless in this country.” He said sort of appalled. And this is a country where people are so poor. I saw old women carting buckets of water up large hills in 100 degree heat. Pushing around wheel barrels of dirt and rock into their dusty home that had no toilet or running water and inside saw entire families living in one small hut. And I was in the tourist part of Turkey. Im not sure what it was like on the outskirts. A girlfriend of mine is in Africa right now. She sent me an email saying that they were traveling in small villages where entire families and their cows would all sleep together in one mud hut and they were all so happy, smiling, kids running around. They were not bothered and they were all together. I don’t know...Im off on some tangent now but some things to think about. Things I think about for a moment then get back to my life. Where I need to die my hair because the grays are showing and buy some Maple Syrup (which is like liquid gold in this country - no maple trees here) so that I can bake another vegan cake for the barbecue that we are going to tomorrow and I forget all about what is happening in the rest of the world.

Life is relative to where you are and what you are doing but I do think that it’s changing and is going to continue to change and we have to change along with it. Embrace our feminine side. Balance the masculine and feminine in us. Here are some feminine traits. Things I try to focus on to embrace the feminine in myself.

Spontaneity, feeling, instinct, intuition, unity, nurturing, childbirth, life giving, fertility, earth.

Here is a description of the Mother Goddess from the book I am reading. This is the Goddess that was worshiped for thousands of years up until about 4,000 years ago. “The Mother Goddess, wherever she is found, is an image that inspires and focus a perception of the universe as an organic, alive and sacred whole, in which humanity, the Earth and all life on Earth participate as “her children”. Everything is woven together in one cosmic web where all orders of manifest and unmanifest life are related, because they all share in the sanctity of the original source.” “Life giving, nourishing and regenerating powers of the universe.” They felt this was the Feminine because of our monthly flow and how it corresponds to the moon and we wax and wane with the moon and we can give life as does the earth. So they thought we were one in the same.

Pretty cool eh? I think so. And I have not lost my mind...just have some time on my hands to actually dive into what Im interested in.

Okay...enough babble out of me today. I’ve seriously got to get out of this house before noon and go for a bike ride. Otherwise I will stay here, take a nap and then it will be 5pm.

Attaching a photo from the Goddess figures they found from the Paleolithic Times. This is one they found over 20,000 years ago. She was known as the Mother Goddess and was worshiped by all. Yes ladies...what a different world this would be if men worshiped this type of body rather than the 15 year old model body?? We could eat all the chocolate cake and cheese we wanted.

Im starting to feel a bit settled in our little village and with Tim. Im so grateful for this experience and that I had the courage to do it. It’s such a great reminder that we truly can do anything. That we are not stuck. I forgot that. I thought I had to stay in my job and do my life a certain way and even though I still have a hard time with it, it’s getting easier to swallow. I of course do need to find something to worry about and so am choosing to worry about what in the hell Im going to be doing come December when I have to leave this country. Im going to start researching how I can stay today. It’s my project. I don’t even know what my options are but the living here is so easy I would like to stay for a while.

Im sitting outside right now. Tim set up a little area for me outside so that when it rains I can still stay outside and write. Im sitting under my little fort now and I love it. It’s about 8am, it’s raining, warm, I can hear the ducks quacking, and the sheep doing their thing and the rain coming down. It’s completely lush here. Everything is a deep shade of green and the skies are grey. I love love love it. I have nothing to do today but write, do some yoga and bake a vegan chocolate cake. We had to go into the “big city” for me to get the right ingredients this weekend but that’s fun too. What else are we going to do?

I’ve started to make some friends. We have plans for a barbecue on Wednesday night and our new friends are taking us out in Bristol as well. And they are my age (clap clap clap). I am still in desperate need of at least one girlfriend but Im sure she will come along soon. I hope so.

I got my first taste of living in a small village the other day. I mentioned to Vicki, that I would like to stay here and write my book. That I got an idea for it when I was in Turkey and wanted to find a way to stay here. The next day someone came up to me and asked me what my book was going to be about. Then Tim went to work and his boss asked him about my book. Word seriously travels fast around these parts. It’s a trip. I don’t care. I’ll vomit my life story out to anyone. You know me. Even if you don’t want to hear it I’ll tell you anyway.

Im uploading some more pic’s. Tim took me on a little pub crawl this weekend. Meaning two pubs, two drinks then we both came home and went to sleep ;) But it was fun. One pub we sat outside and the other we were in doors. This old English pub built God only knows when and it was cranking really bad 80’s music but the scenery looked like my Grandmother’s old house. Totally confusing. We sat and talked to the bartender and realized we knew some of the same people. This is what Im talking about. Small small small. Everyone knows everyone. Even me.

Living here, being with Tim...it makes me rethink everything about my life. I think about getting married again (third time is a charm right??). I can totally see having children here. Both of which I did not think I wanted 6 months ago. I thought I wanted to live in a big city, have a great job making alot of money and taking my two weeks a year to travel. I do miss my old life but I really love this one too. I think the thing I miss the most is being able to walk to the corner and get some Ethopian food and call a girlfriend to join me. New challenges.

OH....and this is the other thing I have been worrying about lately...my age. I keep looking in the mirror and seeing new wrinkles and Im starting to fear getting older for the first time. I see my 28 year old boyfriend and he’s so young. I don’t even think about our age difference until I look in the mirror and remember how old I am. I remember once a friend of mine’s Mother said to me, “Hilary, Im 55 years old and I forget all the time. I look in the mirror and Im shocked that Im actually looking at myself. I forget that I’ve gotten older. I still feel like Im 30.” She told me this when I was about 21. And now Im starting to feel like her. I look in the mirror and think who is that girl? I used to be all puffy, with puffy lips and smooth skin. I look at girls that are Tim’s age and feel jealous for their puffiness. I am grateful for my wisdom and where Im at in my life but it’s strange getting older. I don’t think I minded it that much when I was with someone my age and all my friends were my age but now....I think about it. I know age is just a state of mind and all that bullshit but in reality.....Im 39. Im going to be 40 in less than a year. Can I have kids? Can I somehow stop the aging process?? It’s strange getting older. I guess there is just not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it but embrace it. Keep myself healthy and hope that love concours the effects of age and that my 34 year old boyfriend wont mind my 45 year old body when that day comes. Again....why I don’t stay in the present I will never know. All those years of meditation and The Power of Now and Im worrying about what Im going to look like 6 years from now.

Gobble Gobble

Im home, In my head, in my heart, Im home.

The airplane landed in London and my heart sank. I saw cloudy sky’s with the threat of rain, rolling lush green hills and listened to the chaos of English accents as we all tried to get off the plane. I wanted to land in California. That’s where I always land when Im coming home from a vacation. I wanted to land in a place that I recognized as home. Sun, Americans, SFO, the taxi stand I knew, and my old apartment with Sugar and Sylvie waiting for me to get a snuggle and to be let out side onto the patio. I wanted to be home.....not London.

I have been in such a foreign land for the last 10 days and what truly seems like a month away. I wanted something, anything familiar, I wanted Divisidaro street, Hayes and Pierce, dogs and Alamo Square Park and my friends. I wanted to go home and call my girlfriends and go out for wine and dinner and tell them all about Turkey. But that is not my reality. Instead....I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, swallowed back my tears, grabbed my bags and remembered that change was good. This is what I wanted. I was ready to figure out how to get to the train station that brought me to the bus station that would bring me home to Tim and the beautiful village we lived in....even though my heart was still sinking and I could practically taste San Francisco, my old neighborhood and my friends in my mouth.

After 30 minutes of immigration interrogation, further reminding me this was not my country and adding to the sting of my homesickness, I finally got out of customs.

The romantic in me had fantasies of Tim waiting for me at the airport in London. He would be there, leaning against the wall with a big smile on his face. He would grab me and hold me and kiss me and welcome me home. I shut that vision out of my mind as I walked through customs thinking that there is no way he would be there. It’s 3 hours from home and a nightmare with traffic.

BUT...there he was. Standing there, just like in my day dream. He grabbed me, kissed me and held me and washed away all my feelings of homesickness and I remembered that my home has always been where my heart is. And it’s here with him and our journey together. Though don’t get me wrong. Since this paragraph is full of clichés that are making even me want to vomit...I did leave my heart in San Francisco as well and I do miss my friends and my life there so so much. Okay...enough of that (barfing in my mouth now).

And so Im home. After 10 days in Turkey. It was amazing. We went to Istanbul and saw everything we could in 3 days. The Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia, the largest standing bazar in the world, some nightlife, and ate great food. Istanbul is chaos. Thousands of people. Its like New York during Christmas. Streets jam packed with every kind of person. Women covered in all black with nothing showing but their eyes in the sweltering heat with their husbands wearing nothing but a t-shirt, some shorts and flip flops. Its strange to see the women with the outfit of generations that has not changed with the times and their men in modern day clothing. Watching the younger generation of women in tight jeans and tight shirts rebelling against tradition. People from all over the world muscling through the crowd while getting harassed every 5 seconds from a vendor wanting to see their goods or get you into their restaurant. Its amazing really. I thought being in England was old. Seeing things from the 12th century but then going to Turkey and walking through buildings that were built, by some miracle, in 526 AD and then walking through ruins that were created over 4000 years ago. You can feel the history there. In the people and as you walk through the buildings and ruins.

Then we headed to Cappadocia which is in the middle of Turkey. A volcano erupted there about 10,000 years ago leaving a land full of these “fairy chimneys” and caves where people used to live thousands of years ago and still live today. We stayed in a cave a couple of nights when we were there. It was a great change from Istanbul. Very quiet and still. The heat was even more intense and unforgiving. 100 degrees with not a cloud in the sky. The Turkish people are amazing. They are incredible hosts and want to invite you into their homes and tell you about their people and their history. We were invited to one mans house who lived in a cave and we drank wine with him and talked about life. We were invited to another home for a full moon barbecue and watched the moon dance over the fairy chimneys as Turkish men sang songs and played guitars and fed us food as we watched the moon create shadows over the chimneys.

From there we headed to Patara. A beautiful beach and also met amazing people and watched the sun set on the beach and the moon rise over the dunes. We were blessed enough to be there during the full moon and everyone celebrates it and drinks it in. I can’t describe the beauty we witnessed there. Im not a good writer that way but it was an amazing experience.

We then headed to Antalya for our last night and spent time in the part of Antalya called “Old Town” which seemed more like Prague than Turkey. Though Ive never been to Prague I imagine that is what it looked like.

I had some amazing adventures there and some even more amazing awakenings. We ended up getting food poisoning on day 4. Which you would think was a curse but ended up being a blessing. It forced us to slow down and it gave me a couple of experiences I was not planning on. The day I got food poisoning I had a temperature of about 105. I was alone. Lauren went on a tour and I decided to stay at the hotel and get a massage, hoping that would make me feel better. Whatever that woman did to me it kicked in my illness. I was freezing. It was 100 degrees outside and I laid under the hot sun, covered in blankets and went in and out of conscious. Intuitively I truly thought if I feel asleep I would go into some sort of fever induced coma so I struggled to stay alert. I had visions of myself as Tim Robbins in Jacob's Ladder. That part where his fever was so high and they threw him into that bath of ice cubes and he was hallucinating. It’s exactly what happened to me but I was in the heat with blankets :) I had been reading The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho and in the book he and his wife were traveling through the Mojave Desert seeking to see their angels. So that was in my subconscious when I was in my near death experience (yes, Im being dramatic :) But I was hallucinating. And I saw my angels. Two of them. One was clear, like water but I could make out all of her features. She was there floating on one side of me whispering in my ear as the other one, who was all white and gold with long blond hair and a white and golden dress with huge wings with feathers like swans floating on the other side of me. They were telling me that I could not go back to Apple (which Im taking to not go back to Advertising or to the corporate world). To continue on my journey. That all the experiences in my life were preparing me for my next life and I was to become an angel like them. That I had to write about my experiences and find my courage and my strength and remember who I was. Who all women were. That we are all amazing, intuitive creatures that are so powerful and so beautiful and that we have all forgotten who we are. That we are Goddesses and that we must walk this planet knowing this. I came to from my haze and every day after that something happened to me to confirm what they were saying. More than anything I had this amazing experience and it is giving me the courage to stick to this path I have chosen. Not take a 6 month break and then dive back into my old life. But life this one and stay open and do what feeds my soul and my heart. There are a few quotes from The Valkyries that I want to share that are great reminders for me to listen to my soul, to my heart and not allow my fear of financial insecurity or my fear of truly speaking from my heart real me back into being checked out and running back to my old life, the only one I know, and to continue on this journey of new experiences and live my life in a way I have never lived it before.

“Remember that you are a manifestation of the absolute, and to do those things in your lives that are worth the effort. Only those who do that will understand the great transformations that are yet to be seen.”

“Seek out the love of others. Even with fear of rejection, or severe glances, or of the harshness of heart, do not permit yourself to give up the quest for love.”

“We are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We are the warriors of the light. With the strength of our love and our will, we can change our destiny , as well as the destiny of many others.”

AND ONE MORE - and my favorite because I forget that I do not have to be perfect to live a full connected spiritual life. I don’t need to go around preaching it or telling others about it or be 100% clean with no faults. I always thought for me to deserve a connection to the universe I had to get up and do yoga for 2 hours everyday, be sober, not smoke and pray every day. Granted, I do need to quit the smoking but I dont have to walk around like Gandhi to have a soulful life. And I don’t need to stop being me either. Or stop having fun. I just need to speak from my heart, believe my experiences are real, believe my intuition and the messages from the universe and from angels and whoever else wants to throw out some words of wisdom to me and stop discounting it as imagination, or that Im crazy (well...I might be but its better than being normal anyway :)

“if what we want to do 1st is heal ourselves so that we can heal others or go in-search of our dreams we will never reach paradise. If on the other hand we accept all that is wrong about us - believe that we are deserving of a happy life then immense love will enter.”

So...no...I have not lost my mind. I just got to wake up again. It took quitting my job, being in loads of fear, challenging myself and this new life I have created, and having food poisoning in Turkey (and a huge fear of ending up in some Turkish hospital in the middle of nowhere Turkey) to knock me upside the head and remind me to live fearlessly. To speak from my heart and my truth no matter what and to move forward. Not go back. To write it all down and to believe that we are all truly amazing creatures. All of us.

My brother is gagging right now :) He just sent me an email saying: “Hilary, I love you but you have a chick blog, no really...tell me how you REALLY feel” I laughed my ass off. This is a total chick blog. Probably to chick for even some of the chicks reading this ;) But whatever. This blog is my practice to voice myself fearlessly. Maybe it will help me to write that book that I have been threatening to write for years now.