my scramblings & ramblings
Dude. I got the coolest email yesterday. The nice folks over at Skinny Scoop decided to feature ME as their Coffee Break: Blog of the Day.
Pretty awesome, right? Skinny Scoop is a pretty neat site, and if you like making lists (I do), then get prepared to fall in love with another total time suck (and I mean that in the nicest way possible)!
Earlier this evening, I stumbled across something that irritated me in a big way. Without going into detail, I can tell you that I was wishing, even while I was experiencing the emotions and venting to a few people, that it didn’t affect me like it did. And I kept going for that and going for that, trying to flush the feelings out.
You see, I don’t like to stay with certain feelings. Feelings like depression? I can get with. I’m comfortable there. But anger? Nope! I’m not comfortable with anger and I always feel guilty when I experience it. Anger is violent and out of anger arises the desire to harm. Harming isn’t necessarily physical. It can be in mind and speech and well, and let me tell you, it definitely was there in my mind and speech. I didn’t like it so I worked to get rid of it. But then I realized that I needed to experience the anger before I could let it go.
I dug through some of my notes from teacher training (because this was echoing in me, like deja vu) and sure enough, one of the Sutras is Ahimsa: Non-Violence. I am trying to practice non-violence in my life. The way I acted, although I didn’t go out and beat the crap out of someone, was violent regardless. I gave into the anger and let it drive me to say and think harmful things. And those thoughts echoed in me, making me feel uncomfortable and icky. And yet, I know that if I’d have tried to tamp it down, it would have popped up another way, another day.
So where do I find that balance?
I have to practice compassion and love for myself. I can’t do anything about the thing that annoyed me this evening. The situation is out of my control and frankly, not worth my time. But I can learn from the way I reacted to it, and also NOT punish myself for reacting as I did. But going forward, I know better. I need to learn how to experience emotions like anger without letting them drive me to act in ways that are hurtful. It’s not the emotions themselves that are bad. But giving in to the desire to hurt as much as I feel that I’ve been hurt? Nothing good ever comes from that.
‘Til next time.
YAY! This is my first year participating in the Ultimate Blog Party at 5 Minutes For Mom. Cool.
If you’ve popped by from the party, WELCOME! 🙂
I’m Ronni.
I’m a 30-something mom living in Chicago. I’m a freelance copy editor, a big reader, and a wannabe author. I’m currently in training to be a certified yoga teacher, and my favorite colors are purple and pink.
This is Adam, my husband.
He’s a ghost tour guide, an author, and all around smart ass.
This is Aidan.
He’s nine years old and most definitely the BEST kid in the world. Smart, resourceful, creative, kind, and funny. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be famous one day.
We are a happy family. And we love going to Disney World.
We have three cats: Helena, Crookshanks, and Fi.
Adam and I live in Chicago all year, and Aidan lives with us 1/3 of the year. (He spends the rest of the time with his dad in Ohio.)
It’s nice to meet you. Sit back, relax, and stay a while. I hope you subscribe and come back again. In the meantime, let me know you stopped by!
Happy Friday! 🙂
Bleah. I am still tired. I wonder if it’s the change of seasons. Or something. I remember feeling this same way right after Thanksgiving. I don’t know, but I don’t like it. I want my energy back.
I’ve also not been feeling very well. My stomach’s been sensitive the past few days, and my appetite’s not been so good. My cravings have been off (did I tell you that one night I turned down sushi? I KNOW RIGHT??), I’ve had some nausea, and I’ve been extra thirsty, so I’ve been drinking a lot of water and juice. It’s weird. Although, Wednesday night, Cassidy and I both had bottomless pits for stomachs. We ate a ton for dinner, then we ate dessert from the bakery on the corner, and not even an hour later, we were both seriously hungry for another dinner. We managed to hold out ’til we were in the movie theater, but it was hard! Ever since then, though, my appetite’s been weird. I’m avoiding anything too rich.
The pain that I had in my right side last April is back, so that means going back to my Omeprezole regimen until I feel better again.
Despite not feeling 100%, I have a lot of reasons to be happy. 🙂 Adam’s family visited last week, I got some more hours in at VSA, I got to see The Hunger Games again, and Friday, Aidan arrived!!
He’s been getting a LOT of use out of my iPad. As I expected he would.
Other random stuff:
– After we got Aidan on Friday, we ate Home Run Inn for lunch. Their pizza reminds me of the pizza at Pizzafari at Animal Kingdom at Disney World. It’s pretty good for a chain. Probably because it’s a local chain rather than national, huh?
– It rained in our kitchen today. It did it a couple of weeks ago, and all I could think was “Oh no, it’s like Yaxley’s office!” Fortunately, we know the solution and we’re friendly with our neighbor upstairs, so we got it resolved without a mess.
– I love Downton Abbey so much that I want to watch the first season all over again. But I keep going to episode three of the first season for some reason. Curious, that. At any rate, my iPad has Netflix. I just sign in with Adam’s account, and I can watch it in my room and not bug anyone.
– I still need to organize my playlists on the iPad. I only have a few songs on there now. I should at least have some of my favorites.
– Adam’s observing Passover–or Passover Lite more accurately. We didn’t clear out all the stuff or anything because I don’t observe. (Getting rid of all the spaghetti? Can you even imagine, though?) He’s just avoiding everything leavened. It’s been a challenge, as he craves pizza all day every day as it is, and now he can’t have it, so I can only imagine what the cravings are doing to him now. He’s been making matzoh pizzas: matzoh crackers, mozzarella cheese, and tomato sauce. Tonight we had matzoh ball soup for dinner.
– Aidan won’t let me sing along to Bekah Kelso because he says he’s trying to draw another Meta Knight and he needs to concentrate because Meta Knight is “really hard” to draw. But he’s already drawn one?
I think he just wants me to stop singing. And also play AlphaButt (a song by Kimya Dawson).
– So fine, he won. I played AlphaButt and now we’re listening to random songs from the Doctor Who soundtracks.
We watched that new Muppet movie the other night. I thought it was OK. I did tear up in a few places, but there were some things I found REALLY problematic about it and some of the messages–I am not sure I’m comfortable with Aidan internalizing them even though he won’t really even realize it right now because he’s a kid. And I don’t know if I would have noticed them as much if I’d not been forewarned, or if I wasn’t extra sensitive because of recent events… but I probably would have.
Oh well. This entry has no point, but I really felt like blogging. But now I am going to take a warm bath and relax. I have a busy week coming up (Aidan’s here, a phone call tomorrow, yoga teacher training on Tuesday and a lecture on Wednesday, and a sattvic nutrition workshop on Thursday (Aidan is SO looking forward to that–NOT!). This’ll be the first week since coming back from Disney that I haven’t been in an office at some point, so as long as nothing comes up, I get to be nothing but a student and a mommy for the next week or so.
Til next time!
Let’s just face it. I can’t pass up any meme that allows me to talk about myself. And I was tagged again for the 11 Things meme by the awesome Krista from Army Wife Style.
So, here are my answers to Krista’s questions:
Where would you live if you could live anywhere?
HA. Well, it would be somewhere that never gets a winter but also no violent storms. Actually, the weather would be a perfect 75-80F every day, blue skies, light breezes. We’d get rain, but only at night. Never any thunderstorms.
It would be near all my favorite people. Like, on the same street.
There would be great public transportation.
Taxes and prices would not be insane.
My home would be a nifty brick townhouse with lots of rooms and definitely more than one bathroom, a dishwasher, and a library.
I’d live walking distance to a library, Moksha yoga studio, a grocery store, a post office, a cupcake bakery, a train station, and a diner.
Civil rights and personal rights would be a GIVEN.
There would be a horse farm nearby.
And lots of trees.
What is your favorite color?
I have two. Pink and purple.
What has been your favorite vacation?
Disney World!! All seven times!
Strangest thing you ever ate?
Rattlesnake.
Have you ever punched someone in the face?
Nope.
Your strangest habit?
I can’t even describe it really. But it’s weird.
Biggest pet peeve?
Rude people. That includes people who smoke in nonsmoking areas, people who blast music and/or TVs at all hours of the night, people who scream and yell and laugh loudly in the middle of the night, people who interrupt, people who cut me off on the road….
Do you judge people who wear pajamas in public?
Depends on where we are.
It’s 10 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?
He’s at his grandmother’s.
Favorite alcoholic beverage?
Amaretto Sour, followed closely by Moscato.
Favorite toy in childhood?
He’s still my favorite. 🙂