All posts tagged: woman’ish

Over the Overwhelm

Published by

Welcome to my 5 5 5 series. The objective of this exercise is to write five lines five times a week for five weeks about anything. Habits don’t create themselves, after all. The frequency & length remains from post to post, but the topics will be varied. Read my introduction here.  Wk 2 Post 3 The heart of the matter is getting organized, because until you do, you won’t be able to take the internal pressure of not knowing what you’re doing much longer.  Start a notebook for listing out everything you know you have to do between today and the end of the year, writing small progress notes in the margins, and using tabs if you need to.  Map everything out on a calendar using  color coded pens to keep things clear and time sensitive.  Set alerts on your phone & stick updated  post-it reminders on the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator, on the shoe closet door, and on your remote control.  Tell your friends, “I am soooo over being overwhelmed,”  and need to bow …

Being a Damsel is Distressing

Published by

Wk 1 Post 5 Like those whiny damsels in disaster, for whom lines like: “Let’s leave her behind, man, she’s slowing us down,” were written, I blurted out, “I can’t!” “Always say ‘I Can’ even if you can’t,” the most rigid of my instructors replied to me while I flailed on the mat. “Teachers don’t let their students think they can’t,” she said with conviction. “Even if it doesn’t look right & it feels like you can’t do it,” she went on, while circling the room, “why not just tell yourself that you already can & keep working on it?”   Jolted by her words about yoga (& life), I thought, “True- I’m too old for this damsel in distress sh*t anyway.”  Welcome to my 5, 5, 5 series. The objective of this exercise is to write five lines five times a week for five weeks about anything. Habits don’t create themselves, after all. The frequency & length remains from post to post, but the topics will be varied. Read my introduction here.

Not in Sweatpants

Published by

Photo source: The Daily Mail Two months ago, my neck froze up, my traps were knotted tightly, my right shoulder would not rotate, and my wrists and hands burned from carpal tunnel tightness.  Daily indulgences in very refined gluten and dairy free versions of bread, chips, and muffins with small cartons of coconut ice cream on the side plus  a dip or two into a very verboten take out box of carne asada fries later, I woke up one morning completely in pain, sick to my stomach and knowing (in a very Gwyneth way – natch) that my body was saying, “This has to stop. Clean it up or keep getting kicked in the ass by your own ass.” A series of physical therapy appointments alternating with acupuncture, modified yoga and barre mix classes, a new prescription vitamin supplement and two sessions with my beloved cognitive behavioral therapist later,  I am on the mend. Feeling less than normal, it would be very easy to start schlepping around town the way subjects in PEOPLE Magazine do at the gas station and in …

That Girl

Published by

I am that girl who asks the questions she really can’t handle the answers to. I am that girl who misplaces her neck cream and finds it days later under her bed. I am that girl who plays imaginary Go Fish with invisible cards at a table of two year olds. I am that girl who gets nostalgic each time she makes a smoothie in the blender she received as a wedding gift. I am that girl who lives for heels but lives in flats. I am that girl who hoards paper and stationery. I am that girl who used to paint and draw. I am that girl who buys fresh ginger week after week just to find them all shriveled on the kitchen countertop month after month. I am that girl who has half used tubes of lotion and random lipgloss in each and every bag. I am that girl who can pull splinters out of tiny hands with her finger tips, pick tan bark out of a preschooler’s nostril, and clear pebbles out …

If These Shoes Could Talk

Published by

My intention was to buy a top.  A top for my new spring pants.  Walking past the shoe salon proved challenging.  I poked around to jog my memory for what to pull from my own shoe closet.  We all know it never ends there.  It hardly ever does end at looking, does it? If these shoes could talk, they’d say: I go with everything. Barre and Pilates classes, even if taken four days a week, won’t get you standing taller than I can. Yes, they WILL notice. Does it really matter whether or not you can stand around or dance comfortably in me? After a few drinks, you won’t care. Even if you  convince yourself I am similar to another pair you have, you want me anyway. I don’t cost THAT much. Yes, you deserve it. Well that settles that, doesn’t it?

Nobody Said It Was Going To Be Easy

Published by

Sometimes I wish I were that girl who didn’t make the right choices.  It is so much easier to be the one who does what she wants and doesn’t think about consequences or other people.  Life appears smoother to the one who never needs to wonder about long term consequences, never feeling the responsibility to positively affect change in the world, or wish to be more in touch with her higher being.  I wish being my higher being or best self didn’t involve having to make hard ass choices.I wish it were easier for me to turn a blind eye … to say to hell with it. I am thankful though, that I do think bigger than myself. Nobody said it was going to be easy.  So I need to stop being surprised when it isn’t. Making hard ass choices cause us to question our values.  They challenge our conviction.  They make our shoulders feel lighter, but make our chests close up, and make it hard to breathe.  Making hard choices that are good for …

Why I’m Not Sweating My Late-r Thirties

Published by

Over the weekend I was so so so excited to buy my first real overnight serum.  I felt so sophisticated.  So mature.  So adult.  You’d think I was getting my first bra!  I have always done as much as I can to take care of my skin, but I am at that point in my life where it is time to add a serum to my arsenal of “you-have-so-many-products-and-you-just-look-the-same-anyway” …  ugh, pipe down, husband, nobody asked you.  He’ll be thanking me years from now when I still have the complexion of someone who eats wild salmon, instead of one whose skin texture and color resembles a wild piece of dead fish.Today I felt very grown up when I got to work, happy that my fancy new shampoo is working to treat my scalp and condition my hair, thrilled the fruit acid pads might be doing the trick for my trouble spots, and exhilarated that the eight hour eating schedule I am trying is giving me the mindfulness & metabolism reboot I am desperately needing. Reading …

Thirty going on Thirteen

Published by

I am not surprised to hear full grown women admit to only feeling like they are still twelve years old.  Living for years outside of our parents’ houses, building careers, paying taxes, wading through schools of fish in that sea of love, buying property …. and still feeling a bit … twelve. Rachel and Kate, chatting about still feeling “twelve” and other girly topics over tea. RZProject S3-5 When I first moved away from home half way across the world,  I was already twenty six years old.  I rationalized it was the perfect age for me to head to San Francisco because I was old enough to make big changes, and still young enough to change things again if it didn’t work out.  At that point in my life, I had been working for a few years after college, experienced being truly in love, experienced betrayal, was the guardian of four preteens for a summer overseas, and managed to determine with the help of supportive friends and my dear parents, what it was I needed …