Why The Universe Can Suck It

Some bidnezz first:

1. For those of you who have asked for pictures of the wedding, they ARE coming.  We are way behind on the post-wedding upkeep (including thank you cards, eek!), but I promise, pictures will come!

2. My new husband (giggle) has graciously agreed to guest blog the Paris half of the honeymoon for Shanti Town, so look out for that this weekend!

Now, ahem...on with the show!

Why The Universe Can Suck It.

So...I was talking through a problem last week with a dear friend of mine who, like me, has a tendency toward the symbolic when working through tangled situations  (or, well, I do this with EVERY situation, not just tangled ones)...what does this mean?  She asked me.  What is the universe trying to tell me?  And I pondered this, seriously, as we spoke.

I thought of all the times in my own life I've searched for answers in little clues.  I thought about the times I've spent minutes or hours or days deciphering some happenstance encounter or phone call or dream or...license plate (yikes!)...pulling it apart, trying to discern it's deeper meaning, it's buried clues.  Why did that car show up at THIS moment with THAT message written on it?!  I thought about how this usually never leads me anywhere but into deepening anxiety.  But how I always feel like I must be doing deep spiritual work, investigating the minutia of my life in this way.  But that deep down I always also sort of feel like a giant goober, letting my day get hijacked by a street sign.

And then I thought about my new mantra:

The Universe Can Suck It.  

(Sometimes it's more strongly worded than that in my head, but this is a family blog so...insert expletives as you see fit).

The Universe Can Suck It, people, not because there's anything wrong with the Universe, not because I no longer believe in the Universal, but because, come ON.  Dude (Universe), if you want me to KNOW something, can you try to be a little less cagey about it all?  I mean, is this really how I think the larger forces in the world, the ones that are supposedly all-good and all-knowing, work?  Do I really think that they're just planting mildly uncomfortable and completely unintelligible signs in my life for me to turn my self into knots trying to work out?  If so, then I have a few ground rules that I am going to need to lay down for this frat-boy prankster of a universe:

1.  If you would like me to know something, please make it clear.  If I'm, you know, "off the path", or about to make some mistake or missing some big piece of the puzzle...just go ahead and lay it out for me.  I can take it, just put them cards on the table.  UNTIL then, until I have clear and unmistakeable clarity about your intentions, please don't be offended if I just ignore you.

2.  I'm in charge.  This means, I make the decisions about my life that I want to make.  I will base those decisions on my personal well-being and present-moment happiness.  If you have a problem with that, I apologize, and please see item #1, above.  In the meantime, I will NOT be searching the world for signs of your approval.  Turns out, I don't actually need your approval to make decisions.  So there.

3.  And this is a big one...I am done with you being cast as some distant mean-girl frenemy in my life.  If you want to be a participatory force in my world (which, you know, I know you dooooo), then you're going to need to work WITH me.  I'm making the decision that my own peace of mind is more important than figuring out what the hell you're up to, so...I'll be over here living my life, and you are welcome any time.  But I'm not going to bring anything to a halt to go chasing you down.  You little snot.

This is what I'm telling the Universe, this is what I told my friend, and this is what I'm telling you, lovely beautiful amazing Shanti-towners...which is: who CARES what it means.  Signs, omens, premonitions...it's all either just one more thing that can hold you back from living your life and living it fully, or it's not.  And I'm choosing not.  Because in my heart of hearts, I can't believe that any of those things, the "signs" that fill us with dread at their possible meaning...none of those things come from the big giant heart of the Universe.  Those things come from the tiny and unimaginative universe, the one that lives in all of our heads, and they are best disposed of quickly and totally.

Trust me on this one, if the Universe wants you to know something...she is going to make it known, in no uncertain terms, and it's going to feel like LOVE.  Not fear.

So the next time you find yourself trying to untangle the hidden meaning of the black cat crossing your path or the cockroach on your wedding dress (don't ask), just tell the Universe...

Well, you know.

An Expanding Tree...

The mister and I had to take a last-minute trip on Sunday to his home-town in Oregon to attend the funeral of his paternal grandmother, who passed away last week.  She was 90 years old, of sound mind and, right up until the end...of sound body.   She was survived by 4 children, 10 grandchildren, countless great-grandchildren, and a multitude of others.

I, Shanti-towners, have not been to many funerals in my life.

In fact, if you don't count the memorials at my high-school gymnasium that were held for the one or two kids who died during the course of my time there--I haven't actually been to any.

I also (and I think this is partly why I've not been to many funerals) have a rather small family.  It's growing now, with the marriages and children of my brother and sister and myself (no children yet for me, don't get all excited), but when I was growing up, there weren't very many of us.

Paul's family, in comparison, is large and lovely and full of aunts and uncles and cousins and kids and grandparents--it was only his father's side gathered for the funeral, but the night before the service there must have been 30 of us all gathered together to eat and drink and prepare.  I felt, I have to say, like some buried childhood dream was coming true for me: to feel in some small way a part of this big--brood!  We had a whole room of the restaurant reserved just for us!  The other end of the table felt like it was a mile away, and all evening long people just kept...arriving.  During dinner, the kids of all the cousins (the great-grandkids) played trains and darted in-between the chairs of the adults.  At one point, one of the smaller girls sidled up to my chair and asked me, in her adorable squeaky voice, "are you my dad's sister?"

To which I had to reply, "no, sweetheart...I'm your dad's cousin's fiance."

Heh.

As for the adults, we ate steak and drank wine--cousins who hadn't seen each other in a while caught up, aunts and uncles congratulated Paul and I on our engagement, and everyone shared stories.  They shared stories of Paul's grandfather, who had died several years earlier and who was, without question, the head and center of that side of the family.  He was a baseball player and a salesman and a master storyteller himself, and though his passing had been difficult for all of them those four years ago, it seemed even more final now, with the passing of his wife.  They told stories of her, of how much more complicated their relationships were to her than to him, of how much less they felt they knew her, deeply, than him, but yet still how much they loved her.  They told stories of family holidays past, of the swimming pool at the grandparents house that all the grandkids were magnetized to during their teenage-hood, and they marveled at what it would mean now for all of them that these two--the hub of the family--were both departed.

And at first, I have to admit, as I listened to them all telling stories and reminiscing...I felt a little envious.  I want this, I thought.  I want the big family gatherings and the kids underfoot and the summertime boredom stories to share with the cousins.  I want to have so many people in my family that the little ones don't even know how everyone is related.  I want to sit around in the living room the day after someone important has been buried and reminisce about who wrecked the car when we were kids and who got blamed for wrecking said car.

But as the ceremonies progressed, as the meals and the funeral and the reception all came and went, I suddenly realized...wait a minute, I DO have this.  This family is now...my family.

(insert sound of rapturous choir singing here)

And as I thought more about it I realized, my god, not only is my small little family of origin beginning to grow and blossom, with nephews and step-siblings and step-nephews and nieces, but now, wonder of wonders, all of these people, this enviable large family--I'm now a part of it.  Our children, my and Paul's children, on both sides they will get this extravagance of relatives.  They will have this feeling of being rooted somewhere, of being known.  They will (unless all the other kids are grown up by then!) get to chase their cousins around the dinner table and gripe about grandma and grandpa in their later years..

And it seems fitting, as my wedding quickly approaches, to take a moment to acknowledge the size of this particular gift.  Just to get to marry Paul is enough of a boon to last me (my god, I still marvel at just THAT), but to also get to join my life in some way with this big brimming restaurant-room full of Willis'...it's a pretty sweet deal, folks.  

And I am so very, very grateful for it.

Self Diagnose This!

Do not ever Google "adult loose tooth". Even if you've reached into your mouth to check out an achy molar and discovered that it's a little, um, jiggly and want to know what that means about the general health of your mouth.

Don't. Do. It.

Actually, don't--no matter what is bothering you, in what area of your mind or body--don't google it. And never, never ever ever, go to WebMD.

Once, a few years ago, I was having weird heartburn (which I never get) and at the same moment in time I just happened to be having squeezey tingly pain in my arm, and I decided to WebMD my symptoms:

Heart Attack.

Over and over again...WebMD told me I was having a heart attack. And though I KNEW with every fiber of my being that I was not, in no way shape or form having a heart attack...it still gave me the willies all day long.

Likewise, having googled "adult loose teeth", I found out, much to my horror, that I apparently have late-stage serious gum disease, and or some kind of major infection in my jaw that I could just feel was, at that moment, spreading to my brain, just waiting to kill me in my sleep.

And so, realizing that I had a full-fledged actual toothache on my hands, complete with loose and therefore life-threatening molar, I went into the following downward spiral:

1. This is going to cost me a lot of money, whatever it is.

2. Of course this would happen to me just as I'm getting a hold on all my finances and trying to squirrel away money for my upcoming wedding. Of course.

3. Why is this happening? What have I done to deserve this?

4. Oh my god, what if it's something really awful? What if I have to have a tooth removed and walk around looking like a homeless person?

5. I should have known this was coming. I've just been ignoring this...I should have gone to the dentist months ago.

6. Well, THAT'S obviously WHY this is happening. The universe is trying to show me that I can't ignore things without them blowing up in my face.

7. Oh my god, what else have I been ignoring?!

8.  I'm a bad person.

(Okay, I know that jump from #7 to #8 seems like a big one, but somehow in my mind this all seemed like a perfectly logical and obviously TRUE train of thought.) And this is when the D-R-E-A-D set in. For reals.

Luckily, I was not alone (or this could have escalated into full-scale Lia vs. Lia fight to the death) and my very wise (and very understanding) fiance advised me to, um, chill. And likewise advised me to just take logical adult action like, I don't know...finding a dentist?

But you see, Shanti-towners, I had a moment, even while he was telling me these very reasonable, logical things...I had a moment where I just felt like, "no, you don't GET it. I knooooow how these things work. I know how the body and the mind are linked. I know that illness and physical wack-a-doo-ness has a symbolic meaning! So, you just don't get it, man who loves me...something is WRONG not with my tooth, but with ME!"

And then I took a moment. And, I paused. And I asked myself, very simply: is this a helpful way of thinking about this?

I thought about my future children, the ones I hope to have someday, and I asked myself, are these the kinds of lessons I want to pass on? Do I want my poor hapless children to get an ear infection and, taking after their mommy, assume that it's some kind of blemish on their character?!

Um, noooo.

Do I actually believe that the connection between my emotional and mental life and my physical one should be wielded as a weapon? Just one more reason for me to feel BADLY about myself? No, no, and no.

So, okay. So I dropped it. I dropped it, I popped some advil, and I sat down in front of my computer to figure out how to get myself into a dentist's chair that very day. (As I still wasn't totally convinced that I didn't have a deadly brain infection). I called on some friends for recommendations, I called on Yelp for some recommendations, I called on 1-800-DENTIST for some recommendations and by 2pm I was in a chair, being shown x-rays of my throbbing tooth by a very sweet and lovely dentist who informed me that my tooth wasn't loose...the crown on my tooth was loose, and that yes, I had an infection, but no, it wasn't in my brain.

And the dentist was so NICE, and the receptionist was so NICE, and the guy at the pharmacy when I went to pick up my kill-the-infection drugs was so NICE and everyone, all day, was so helpful and encouraging that by the end of the day, not only did I not feel like my toothache was a curse, I was totally convinced it was a BLESSING.

My tooth will get fixed, which obviously needed to be done. I've found a dentist who I really like (whose dad, the senior dentist in the office, has been doing yoga all his life, fun fact). I'm finally going to get some low-cost dental insurance for me and my man, which is definitely something that needed to be done but which in no way would I have gotten it together to do had it NOT been for my achy face.

All good things.

And so it turns out, that if my sudden toothache had any message at all, it may not have been: you're a bad person who is ignoring things and this is your punishment, but instead: here is a gift, what will you do with it?

Here is a gift of a throbby tooth...how will you handle it? Will you freak out and decide that rotten tooth = rotten you, or will you cup it in your hands, thank the forces that be for this unexpected present, and squeeze from it all the goodness it can possibly yield?

From here on out, I will try to remember to take option #2, thank you very much.



Yours, the responsible and newly-dentist-ed,
YogaLia

Happy Birthday(s)!

I have been a very bad blogger these past few weeks, but I have good reasons, I promise!

1. I was planning a surprise party for my fiance's 40th birthday (don't worry, it's done now...it all went swimmingly) but who knew planning a party required so much...planning.  I'm considering a practice round for wedding planning.  Which, ladies and gentlemen start your engines, begins NOW.

2.  I was simultaneously trying to decide what on earth to do for my 30th birthday (which was yesterday, thank you very much)...because it was my big 30 and ALSO because it happened to fall on 10/10/10.  Which also equals 30.  Which means, I assumed, that on that day I would FINALLY become enlightened.  How does it feel to finally be enlightened?  Feels good, people, feels good.

and 3.  Because I've actually been teaching more and more (hooray) and I'm still learning the fine art of time management...

Anyhoo...the birthday weekend just happened (Paul's on Saturday, mine on Sunday--I know, how nerdy!) and it was a great success.  On Saturday we WALKED ACROSS LOS ANGELES.  No joke.  We walked from Los Feliz to Santa Monica.  And then we just fell into a little heap on the sand.  It was INTENSE.  There will be a future blog all about the crazy journey from total optimism to total physical torture that occurred during those 8 hours, but for now I want to talk about day two...Sunday...my birthday.

We, being totally sore and exhausted, decided that my birthday would be a bit more, um, relaxing, and I had several things I wanted to do, but no plan.  Purposefully, no plan.  At first I thought the plan-less-ness was a hindrance, or that I was somehow failing my own birthday, but as the day arrived I suddenly realized that the "no planning" for my 30th birthday was exactly how I want to enter into this new decade: relaxed, plan-free, spon-tan-eous.

The day began with coffee on the sun-deck of the motel where we stayed, evolved into a daring swim in the ocean (at 8am folks, because I am amazing), and then a hobble (you should see Paul's poor feet!) to the Santa Monica promenade where I bought some of my favorite green tea.  We had planned, then (plans!) to take a cab back home, but at the last minute decided (no plans!) to take a bus instead.  So we hopped on the first bus that we thought would take us near where we wanted to go, or at least to downtown where we could then take another bus...and as the bus pulled up at it's final destination, we saw across the street some kind of festival.

We pondered it and realized it was probably the Olvera Street market, which I'd been wanting to go to for quite some time, so we decided to check it out.  But upon further inspecition we discovered, to my delight, that it was in fact this big mole festival "Feria de los Moles" that I had been reading about and bemoaning not being able to go to (I LOVE mole)...and here we were! Right smack in the middle of it! On my birthday!  We promptly joined in, waiting in a long line in the hot sun for some amazing mole, and marveled at the magic of coincidence.

And as we sat on the sidewalk, eating our plate of black mole, I said to Paul that I was going to take the symbolic significance of our little adventure as confirmation that my 30's was going to be about not planning...and still ending up somewhere great.  Ending up, in fact, exactly where I wanted to go.

Paul Willis, Inventor

I have had this extra-large extra-heavy Manduka mat (the cadillac of mats, people) for many months now, but have not, until now, had any way to carry it, except slung under my arm.  Boo!  I have been lamenting this fact for nearly as long as I've had the mat, but not doing anything about it because I just can't bear to shell out the $50 for the mat bag that will fit this behemoth. 

This is where the I'm-the-luckiest-girl-in-the-world part of this post comes in, because...my dude took one look at my mat, made a trip to the hardware store and by the time I was home from class had built me the masterpiece you see above.

Not only was this solution only $10, it is also so cool and industrial and unique I can barely stand it.

And made with love.  Siiiiiigh.