Alignment

This is what it looks like, and it feels great.

Good week.

The tortoises are hatching.  When I left for work Tuesday we had four babies.  When I got home, We had nine, and I found another in the pen.  Baby tortoises and milkweed still covered with caterpillars.  Nothing feels more like abundance to me.

My baby's 34th birthday was Tuesday, and he let me take him for Indian food (Curry Leaf, best anywhere) last night.  We talked tortoises and Star Wars.  My whole geek community, which includes my son and his friends, is quivering with excitement for the new movie.

 Found a feather on the way to my classroom.

Students very cooperative.  Got most of one class' assessments graded and they did great.  Mostly A's, and this was hard.  Proud of all of us.

Nice.

Last night I started eating Halloween chocolate bars, an old favorite.  They tasted awful, but I still ate them until I asked myself, "Does this feel like self-love?"  Because the answer was "No" I trashed the rest of the bag.   I've been reading - and getting ready to start the workbook for - Gay Hendricks' Learning to Love Yourself.  From a quick read I pulled this: Negative emotions break down to fear.  Fear happens when there's something I want or need that I'm not getting.  And it's important to feel the feelings, right down to their core.  So today as I found myself reaching for a cookie, I realized I wasn't looking forward to it.  Before I took the first bite, I asked myself, "What are you feeling?"

The answer surprised me.  What I was feeling was defiance.

My list of wants and needs I'm not getting is pretty long.  I'm not ready to try to pinpoint which number was triggering the feeling, just accepted that "Damn it, if I can't have that (whatever that is) at least I can have this cookie."  And realized it's pretty much the story of my adult life.  And not how I want the next decades to go.

The cookies went into the garbage disposal.

After work I headed out on errands.  Costco first.

Another feather on the way in.

I needed mixed nuts (my son's new staple food, since he's given up most animal products) and a set of plastic shelves.

I bought a set of these shelves last summer, and wanted another set (if they still had them) for my garden shed.  I've needed to pull everything out of that shed for probably four years.  Make a repair.  Purge and re-arrange.   Haven't been able to make myself do it, then recently realized that I didn't want to simply clean and re-create what it already is.  A set of shelves to help me go vertical with the various fertilizers, sprinkler fixtures and small tools is the inspiration I've been waiting for.  Fingers crossed, I headed into the store.

Nuts were easy; they're always on the way in.

I got the LAST set of summer shelves on the pallet.  At the end of the aisle on the way out I spied a favorite color in the clothing section.  The siren call.

A few years ago, I bought a sweater in a jewel blue that was almost-but-not-quite a purple.  I got lots of compliments when I wore that sweater, but made the mistake of washing it incorrectly and in the end it was too small for comfort.  THAT's the color I saw, and I almost danced in the store when I got to it.  Sweaters.  Lady's sweaters.  COWL NECK sweaters.

My favorite ever sweater was a cowl neck tunic - lumpy knit and way too big- that I've worn holes in.  The catalog I bought it from never carried it again or I would have stocked up.  I have the same catalog, with some lumpy knit tuttlenecks that I was going to settle for, but I don't have to settle, now.  $19.99.  I got the blue AND a black/gray.  Then headed to the registers, passing another display of cowl neck sweatshirts for $14.99.

Traffic was heavy on the 101 south, but, as usual, a football field-sized hole opened in the lane I needed to merge into as I needed to merge.

After Costco was Trader Joe's.  Last week I bought a couple of HoneyCrisp apples.  All during the candy/cookie drama I kept thinking how delicious, how downright luxurious that apple had been and today I hoped they had some more.  Which got me to thinking that, weather aside, it is fall and maybe my favorite d'Angou pears might be in.  Nah.  And then, there they were.  Organic. And around the corner, the apples.  Organic.

And it felt like self-love.

Final stop was my favorite Mexican place.  I've stopped there most Thursdays for about five years for a chili verde burrito, wet, all meat.  That thing helped me lose over 80 pounds.  I've eaten my way through two rough years (or maybe three) and have gained over 30 of them back.  But I know how to do this, and do it again I will.  With the help of my Thursday treat.  Parking can be tricky on Ventura Blvd in Old Town, but not on this day.  Just as I was about to the restaurant, someone pulled out of one of the three spaces in front of the place.

Home to a happy dog and a check-in on facebook.  My son and his family are back in their own place and ready to Skype me an introduction to my new grandson.  A new facebook friend in Santa Rosa is willing to trade brugmansia cuttings with me.  That a-hole who jacked the price of an important AIDS drug combo from $13.50 to $700 a pill met his karma when a San Diego pharm company developed another combo pill using the same ingredient drugs that they plan to sell for $99 per hundred.  And while I'm a Bernie fan, I was pleased to see how well Senator Clinton did in her trumped-up hearing today.

Going to be a good week, a good weekend, another good week and then a weekend taking my mom up the coast.  Quilt shops, butterflies and elephant seals.

It may be a little life and I'm needing and wanting some stuff, but overall my little internal sparkler is purring right along.

All is well with me.