Caution-Woman at Rest
Hello Friday.There are a million things that I could be doing today and it would bore you all to list them all here. I may do one, two, possibly three. No, not three.
But today is the last day before the week off spring break which is sure to be a very busy time in my house with me playing, Julie the Cruise director to my family. No matter how many times I tell them that is not my title or role.
So today I’m going to take some time for myself to think, meditate, write, and rest. Block out a little Kwana time. Sometimes you have to steal it where you can.
photo taken at Kykuit Rockerfeller estate
I hope you have a good day.
Best,
KwanaAlter Ego Hotness
Don’t ya wish your Alter Ego was hot like me? Don’t cha? Well she or he can be. Just go make one for yourself. I’m so thankful to my buddy Mel Francis (her book Bite Me is ready for pre-order now at Amazon yo!) and her Month of Mel challenge for sending me over to The Hero Factory to create her. Isn’t she the Hottest. Too bad I’m not feeling quite up to her kick butt status just yet.
I went to have my back checked out and the doctor feels I have a pinched nerve. The lesson here is listen to your body. Really listen. You see I’ve been having a problem with my big toe on my left foot for quite a while that has taken me off track with my running challenge. Giving me annoying pain that has me saying, Hmm… I really need to check this out… someday. Well, yesterday while barely being able to stand in the doctor’s office without holding the wall and having to have my DH help me to the bathroom. I said to the doctor, this is probably unrelated, but I have this crazy pain in my toe. He tell me it’s not unrelated at all. The nagging toe pain was a symptom of my pinched nerve.So all of you ‘do for everyone else in the world first’ out there folks take a cue from me. Listen to your body and get things checked out. Make yourself a priority. Those little things may be telling you something big.Best,KwanaSophomoric Reading
Thankfully Mr. Electric came by with his silent partner and saved the day. Fixing the faulty plug and quickly pointing out that we had a potential fire hazard in the ancient wiring. Whew. Just call me grateful.
To celebrate I took the kids to the not so free movie night to see Coraline. Yep, they were the oldest kids in the movie and the DS made a good show of protesting, saying he wanted to see Friday the 13th, but admitted to enjoying it all the same. The DD liked it plenty since Coraline was one of her favorite books a few years back and she was actually looking forward to seeing the movie. Especially since she has a creepy painted over crawl space in the back of her closet that we have never been able to open. It’s all very Coraline. Before the movie the Dear Twins and I went to Barnes and Nobel they both had to pick up books for literary circles they are in for their English classes.Check out what counts for 10 grade reading these days:
This is what the DS is reading. The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
Synopsis
Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another woman’s house. In Sera Dubash’s home, Bhima scrubs the floors of a house in which she remains an outsider. She cleans furniture she is not permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is not allowed to drink. Yet despite being separated from each other by blood and class, she and Sera find themselves bound by gender and shared life experiences.
Sera is an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage. A widow, she devotes herself to her family, spending much of her time caring for her pregnant daughter, Dinaz, a kindhearted, educated professional, and her charming and successful son-in-law, Viraf.
Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, has worked in the Dubash household for more than twenty years. Cursed by fate, she sacrifices all for her beautiful, headstrong granddaughter, Maya, a university student whose education — paid for by Sera — will enable them to escape the slums. But when an unwed Maya becomes pregnant by a man whose identity she refuses to reveal, Bhima’s dreams of a better life for her granddaughter, as well as for herself, may be shattered forever.
Poignant and compelling, evocative and unforgettable, The Space Between Us is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world. Set in modern-day India and witnessed through two compelling and achingly real women, the novel shows how the lives of the rich and the poor are intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and vividly captures how the bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of class and culture.And here is t
he DD’s is Prisoner of Tehran by Marina NematSynopsis
What would you give up to protect your loved ones? Your life?
In her heartbreaking, triumphant, and elegantly written memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, Marina Nemat tells the heart-pounding story of her life as a young girl in Iran during the early days of Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal Islamic Revolution.
In January 1982, Marina Nemat, then just sixteen years old, was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death for political crimes. Until then, her life in Tehran had centered around school, summer parties at the lake, and her crush on Andre, the young man she had met at church. But when math and history were subordinated to the study of the Koran and political propaganda, Marina protested. Her teacher replied, “If you don’t like it, leave.” She did, and, to her surprise, other students followed.
Soon she was arrested with hundreds of other youths who had dared to speak out, and they were taken to the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Two guards interrogated her. One beat her into unconsciousness; the other, Ali, fell in love with her.
Sentenced to death for refusing to give up the names of her friends, she was minutes from being executed when Ali, using his family connections to Ayatollah Khomeini, plucked her from the firing squad and had her sentence reduced to life in prison. But he exacted a shocking price for saving her life — with a dizzying combination of terror and tenderness, he asked her to marry him and abandon her Christian faith for Islam. If she didn’t, he would see to it that her family was harmed. She spent the next two years as a prisoner of the state, and of the man who held her life, and her family’s lives, in his hands.
Lyrical, passionate, and suffused throughout with grace and sensitivity, Marina Nemat’s memoir is like no other. Her search for emotional redemption envelops her jailers, her husband and his family, and the country of her birth — each of whom she grants the greatest gift of all: forgiveness.
Both look delicious and I want dive into them too. I think I will.Best,
KwanaLet There Be Light…. please.
Hello Tuesday. Thanks to all of you for your kind comments on Jack’s Obamicon yesterday. I hope you all had a nice President’s Day holiday.I got to spend a few hours alone with the DH while the Dear Teen Twins went their own ways. Sadly, it was not bliss, as on Saturday night, in the “now what else can go wrong?” category, our electricity went out in the kitchen and dining room. No, I don’t know why there is an ancient plug upstairs in the DD’s room that controls my kitchen’s power. Ask them.
No, the electrician does not work on Sunday or a holiday. And no, I do not want to pay extra for an emergency worker that I don’t know and who does not know my old 1940’s house.And Yes, all I thought when I first saw it was “aww pretty,” smart huh?
illustration by pve design
Cut to me on Sunday throwing out bags and bags of now spoiled food. Sigh. And No, I didn’t remember there was a carton of Chocolate ice cream back there in the freezer. Eww.
Today, I hope Mr. Electric comes by and doesn’t break the bank or a wall. All this in time for vacation week with the kids. Grrrr… way to keep it stress free.In another funny but really not so funny moment, cut to me again, in the neurologist office as she tells me how I’ll feel so much better and less stressed if I got in more exercise. It works for her getting it done at 5am before her children are up. Yeah, like turning over works for me at that hour. Where do these pod people come from?
In the “keeping it light” category. Remember way back when how I was going to try and stay positive? Snort. The new Vogue comes out today with First Lady Michelle Obama. I can’t wait to get a look see! I know she will at least look calmer and way more put together than I feel today. Love her style.
Best,
Kwana
Stealing Magnolias
What’s Jack up to? Oh you know Jack he’s into a bit of everything, but yesterday he really came in handy when this soliciting dude, looking quite chatty came to my door ringing my bell. Don’t ask me how he had the nerve to get up the steps because as soon as he hit the driveway Jack was already losing his mind. Barking, snarling, jumping, Jack was having none of this guy. He gave me the perfect out to say, through the door, “sorry, wild dog here. Can you just leave your literature on the porch and go? ” What a good dog I have! Thanks so much for all your comments to my marriage vs. motherhood post yesterday. I loved reading them. It really can be a sticky subject and I agree with the very honest point made that motherhood can make a marriage harder. So true. Also Children’s ages can make motherhood harder. I am a different thinking woman than the one I was when my children were 4 or 5 as opposed to now 15. Just like I’m a different woman than the one I was when my husband first married me. Hmm… now I wonder how much the men actually change. I have to think on that a while. A post for another day perhaps?
It seems that Steel Magnolias was a real favorite with this group. So I went on youtube to look for a little clip to post here today and found this funny winner. Enjoy.
Best,
KwanaWandering Mind
What’s Jack up to? Jack’s doing his Monday thing? Perched on top of the couch so he can look out the window and wonder where the gang got off to and bark at any strangers that have the nerve to pass in his field of vision. Good dog. Humph.I hope everyone had a fine weekend. Mine was spent doing the mom thing through a fog of migraine pain that is still clouding my vision. I’ve been a migraine suffer since I was a kid and I now take daily meds for it, but there are times when no amount of prescriptions will stop it once the train has left the station. It just has to take the full agonizing trip which can go for days. I often say labor was easier because I knew it wasn’t going to last more than 24 hours. I was right. It was only 13. Ha.I try as much as possible during these times to continue as normally as I can because falling into the pain doesn’t do anything to eliminate it. Besides things still have to get done. My name is Mom isn’t it? So I do. Between doing, sometimes I practice breathing and visualization. Sometimes serene visualization, sometimes not so much, like this Frida Kahlo painting from 1943 called Thinking About Death. The upside of this beautiful, but disturbing painting is the symbolism of rebirth in the skull and the thorns in the background. Frida spent many of her days confined to a bed and in pain most of the time so lots of her art expresses her pain and her desire to break free of it.Where does your mind wander when you want to break free? Do you take the time to let it wander?This marks my 400th post. That’s a lot of wandering. Thanks for traveling with me.Best,
KwanaI’m Shuffling as Fast as I Can
What a week this has been. We started out with one president and ended up with another one entirely. Hooray for new beginnings!
This girl is wiped out. All the celebrating combined with my usual running around and the the winter that just won’t quit and now I think I may have the beginnings of something sinister. A cold, flu or whatever. All I want to do is hibernate. But sorry that’s some other woman’s life. Me? I’ve got dishes to wash, a dog to walk, kids to chauffeur and oh yeah…writing to do. That’s my “job” right?
If we could just get a few days in a row above freezing and this darn snow would melt I’m sure I’d feel better. The word is it will get above freezing today then a steady drop back down after that. Oh well. At least the holly tree outside my bedroom window is pretty.
And Jack sure is cute if not extremely high maintenance. Hey, you plan on calming down anytime soon, Dude? No? Ok. I was just asking. Moving on. I’m getting up right now. No need to keep shaking the bed.
Have a great weekend everyone. If I think of anything moderately interesting to say, I’ll share. Heck, if I think of anything to say at all, I’ll share it. You know I can’t hold my water.Best,
KwanaIn my dreams…
I’m as cool as this woman.
Taken from here. Don’t we love The Satorialist?
Of course to achieve this level of coolness would take a complete lifestyle change which would begin with me running away from my current life and jetting off to Paris to go underground (see yesterday’s post below). Some days that sounds like a pretty appealing idea. If only there were a mommy protection program? But freakin’ Big Brother is always watching so we can’t get escape the grid, at least not this fashionably, I’m sure.
Best,
KwanaFirst Monday
What’s Jack up to? He’s back to looking out the window with an unobstructed view now that the Christmas tree is down. I’m thinking he’s wondering where everyone’s gotten off to since the kids are back to school and we once again can get back to a bit of a routine and have the house back for a few hours of the day. Yay! Oops, I’m sorry was that un-p.c. of me?So
how are you on this first Monday of the New Year?Are you excited about it or does it feel like any other Monday?I feel a certain amount of wide eyed optimism that I guess any hopeless dreamer always has. A full 360 days to tackle my goals of writing, diet, exercise, my home, my family the list goes on and on. But you know what? I’m not going to think about those 360 days left in the year. Way too daunting.
I’m going to take it one day at a time and remember to dream a little each day so I can stay optimistic and not get too bogged down.
How are you going to tackle this First Monday?
Best,Kwanaimage: Pablo Picasso ‘The Dream’
The Past is Past- Happy New Year 2009!
Happy New Year to all my blog friends. Welcome 2009!
So it’s a new day and a new year. Are you all pooped out? I know I am.
I vowed to myself a while back that I would not make my usual resolutions so that I wouldn’t be disappointed in about a months time. Way too much pressure that I just don’t need. Besides, I already know what I need to do and I talk here so much that you know it too.
So no resolutions for me except to try and be better than I was last year, do my best and stress less. But last Sunday I got to hear a reverend at our church preach that I had never heard before. One thing she said that she lives by, which I’m going to try and adopt (and this will be really hard for me) is this:
“Don’t bring your yesterday into today.”She spoke about attacking each day with new eyes and a new spirit and letting go of the hurts of past and moving forward. Something to think about on this first day of the new year.
Have a wonderful today!
Best,
Kwana
