Sunday Report

Procrastination Pays Yet Again: I headed up to my local knitting shop yesterday morning to take a class on felted slippers--I hadn't signed up in advance and figured if it were full, I'd just get going on some Christmas shopping. The situation was quite the opposite--no-one had signed up and the class had been cancelled! However, the nice gal running the shop got me all set up with the pattern, yarn, and needles and we sat and chatted while knitting for a few hours. It was quite pleasant and I really appreciated having an expert on hand for a few questions. She was quite the talker--I heard all about her timeshare on Kauai, her twin daughters, her experiences raising puppies for Canine Companions, and various characters she's met at the shop. She gave me her phone number and said I could call her anytime before 9:00 p.m. and she assured me she could talk me through any knitting problem! Talk about service. I try to shop there often anyway, now I'll make an extra effort. And I saved the class fee!

After knitting yesterday, I met M and one of his classmates for a Thai lunch in the mall, did some Christmas shopping, came home to nap and walk the dog before our evening out: we attended the college staff holiday party. It was held in the home of the college owner and his wife, out in the boonies of Sebastopol. We were expecting a fairly large swanky pad, and it was--but the splendor was frozen in the early-1970s. Fantastic bathrooms--one tiled in batik-y browns and blues with robins-egg blue tub, toilet, and sink; the other, part of a lovely guest room, had all but the toilet in a large open alcove carpeted in classic 1970s brown penny tile. The sunken living room was dominated by a floor-to-cathedral-ceiling fireplace done in that sort of stone I associate with googie-style restaurants in Southern California. The walls were various wooden treatments. There were a great deal of Christmas decorations--swags, santas, scenes, crèches, a small train and tree out on the entry porch--which the hostess has gathered over the years. (I've spent way too much time trying to find photos illustrating the type of style--sorry I couldn't find anything that was close enough.)

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This was my horoscope for the week of November 29:

First let me make it clear that I'm not predicting you will face difficult events in the coming days. Not at all. Second, I'm not saying you will have to endure more pain than usual. Third, I believe your suffering will be about average -- similar to what normal people bear in normal times. Having said all that, though, I encourage you to be aggressively exploratory toward the pain you feel. Have long talks with your murky fears. Gaze bravely into the parts of your life that make you sad. Why? Because it's a favorable time to search for treasure that's buried in the shadows -- to enhance your psychological health by dealing with what's not so healthy. Recall Carl Jung's wise words: "The foundation of all mental illness is an unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering."

When I first read this, my reaction was that I truly feel that I've addressed many of my painful memories and habits, and I'm really not unreasonably sad about anything in my past ("unreasonably" being the operative word there). (I'd also like to note that "unreasonable" has a new meaning in my life since M started law school.) It's true I haven't completely conquered my negative body image thoughts nor my fear of abandonment (you'd think that an introvert like me would welcome being alone…but there's alone, and then there's *alone*…). Nor my very bad critical/judgmental decrees against myself and others. Though I'm working on 'em, really I am.

Then I had a pretty rough week at work last week, and I realized that one of the biggest fears I still wrestle with is the fear of failure. Which maybe is not such a bad thing unless it's accompanied by paralysis--fear of failure is so great that nothing is attempted, since that's a guaranteed avoidance of failure. And I am guilty of that lack of initiative/action sometimes, but I do want to work on that more.

Maybe I'll work on a New Year's Resolution around that. Others I'm already trying to adopt:


Drink more water
Breathe deeply more
Floss more often


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Happy Birthday, Katch! M and I are heading down to Berkeley this afternoon to have dinner with her and some other friends, should be fun.

Now, time to walk the dog and buy milk before we go…