So happy Ides of March!
Spring is in the air here, and I'm excited about it. The grass is starting to turn a crazy, bright green color outside my window, and the sun is peeking through the rain clouds. Everything smells of freshly-rained-on earth. I love that scent. It makes me glad to get out of bed in the morning, and that's no small feat.
Actually, I have gotten a lot better about that in the past couple of years. It used to be that I couldn't imagine working in a job where I would have to be up before 10 AM every day. It was just plain too hard to wake up. Kirstin used to wake up early when she was a toddler, and I would stumble out there, set up her play area, give her some juice and cheerios, and fall back in bed. Later, when Kirstin was in kindergarten, I used to get up in the morning, get her off to school, and go back to sleep after that.
Then I got this job, where I wasn't working nights anymore. Jeff used to force me to get up at 6:30 am every day so that I could drive him in to work, and after a few months, I got used to it. Now I have to get up at 7, and it really isn't all that bad. Yesterday I even woke before the alarm went off. I like waking up in my bedroom, because the sun streams in the east window every morning. The sheer curtains mute the light just enough so that it isn't painful, and everything has that misty, cool blue color. It's soothing, and refreshing.
So the mood was great this morning. I stayed around in bed, not so much because I was tired, but because I was snuggling. I had a great shower, and was forced to rush Kirstin off to school, since she was dragging her heels in a serious way. I was a little crabby about being late, but it dissolved on the drive to work.
Last night contributed greatly to today's cheeriness. It was test night in Tae Kwon Do class. I wasn't feeling very well (and I'm still not). For some reason I had a fever and a pounding headache, and just felt weak all over. I stretched, though, and started moving, and the aspirin that I took eventually kicked in, and I started to feel a bit more "with it". Master Kim said that if I tested well on Palgwe Chun Pubs that he'd let me test on Tae Guks 1-2, and if I did well on those, he would allow 3-4, too. I was fairly confident about that, but still wanted to practice for a while. It's never wise to rush into these things, and I mainly wanted to get my concentration back now that I wasn't feverish.
It seems to have worked well enough. I thought I was pretty slow on the Chun Pubs, but I guess speed isn't as important as getting it right, and I did that part. I knew they must have been okay, because I was asked to test on the first two Tae Guks. I was pleased with how they went, and was able to basically send my brain elsewhere as Forest had advised, so I didn't overthink, and just let the muscles run the forms. Then, without a pause, he commanded me to do number 3, then number 4. At the end as I bowed out, the only thought on my mind was that I knew I had the breathing right. If it was wrong, I wouldn't have been able to do all 4 in a row without stopping and not been panting at the end.
Master Kim didn't keep me in suspense. He sounded very happy, and said "Excellent!" I was really suprised, and said "Thank you, sir." That's pretty high praise coming from him, and I knew he was being tougher than usual last night. Then he said "Well, it's no suprise."
Which immediately put me in a great mood, which is still hanging around a day later. I got straight 4's on the test, which is 100%. It was actually a pretty demanding test, for a beginner, since I had to do all of these things without pause between, so I felt even better for having put in the extra practice to exceed expectations.
I realized on the way home that it's the same feeling I get after any performance. I love when the lights go down at the end of the show, making my final exit, and knowing I did a good job. I don't even care about the audience, or the applause. I like the feeling of fulfillment I get on the inside, when all that work has led to something; when a job is finished. It makes me very, very happy. I think it's one of the reasons I have been always driven to perform somewhere. I've done ballet since I was itty bitty. Then there were piano lessons, church choirs, and bands. After high school I played in a handbell choir for 4 years with a heavy performance schedule, sang in my college Glee Club, and played in band at MSU, too.
I think theatre has been my most satisfying performance experience, though, because it's so closely linked to my own personality, my own emotions. I have to put more of myself into acting than I do into music. Both require concentration, but in music there is a certain precision and logic that must overrule everything, and generally I've played classical music, where it's crucial to stick to the patterns as rehearsed. In theatre, every second I am immersed in creating something, projecting it, and being it. It uses my emotional, physical, and mental powers equally. That's the most fulfulling type of effort for me. Great musicians can use their emotional energies that way, but I'm just not that great a musician.
Martial arts fall into that second category, with music. I use my physical and mental energies, but keep my emotions largely in check. Actually, keeping emotions in check seems to be a pretty important part of martial arts in the first place. There's no anger involved... but there can be joy, and many other emotions. It's strange. But last night was a nice reminder to me of how much I love the feeling of a successful performance of any kind.
I need to get my ass on stage again.
Last night and tonight, I'm in the mood to celebrate. I really don't care that I don't feel particularly well. I've taken Tylenol, and this will be a quiet day in front of my computer. Forest and I are planning on going out to dinner to celebrate his students' tests and mine. (Well I am his student, but I just meant to say that we both had things to celebrate.) I got extremely dressed up for the occasion, because I was rather revved up at the idea of an evening out with my favorite adult. After dinner we're going to Wharton to see the show, and Wharton is a relatively dressy thing.
I'm even wearing the one pair of heels that I own.
I don't feel like working today. I feel like running out of here and doing anything but.
Forest stayed out inordinately late last night with his friends, and woke me with a rose when he came in. He really enjoyed himself, and I'm glad. He hasn't felt like he's been spending enough time with any of his friends. Today he realized that really, we have two different ways of looking at things. His friends are friends individually first, so they happen to get along as a group. My friends are a group first, and friendships among individuals tend to come after that. So when I think he's seeing a lot of James, because I see James a lot, it's not the same thing as Forest's definition of seeing a lot of James.
It would be like if I needed to spend time individually with Shelly on a regular basis. We did that for a while, but it wasn't a "need" thing. It was because we wanted to. We weren't disappointed in each other if we only met in the group on a given week. Matter of fact, with Shelly and I it's probably a good thing that we can just exist in the group when we need to, because we occasionally shut down on each other, and hanging out as a pair then just doesn't work out very well.
Forest's friends see that individual time as a "need" thing. It's strange to me.
Maybe it shouldn't be, though. Maybe this is just a bizarre way that I detach myself from my friends. Nah, I don't think so. Pretty much all of my friends are like Shelly and I. We're closer sometimes when we want to be, and distant sometimes when we want to be. It's much more like family than a group of friends. It also allows for a lot of admittedly ego-centered people to have each other to rely on. It's strange, but true.
Odder things exist in nature. The elephant-nosed shrew. The duckbilled platypus. That sort of thing.
So the end result of this is that I feel on some small level that his friends reject me, when in fact, they just don't exist in a group like mine do.
This also applies to the situation with Bridget. The way I feel is that she and I ought to have some mutual feelings and knowlege so I can trust her a little bit. Right now she's basically a stranger to me, and I'm uncomfortable with that. So Forest wants to get the three of us together sometime so I can feel some reassurance, and I'm grateful for that.
Most of my friends don't *have* friends they see on a regular basis that they don't share with me in one way or another. It sets off all sort of bad juju and is basically an alien situation in which I'm not comfortable. I'm glad we're going to do something about it, now that I know what was bugging me about it.
Last night Kirstin stayed with Forest's mom while I took my test. That's a little bit of a strange situation, and I'm not sure what I think about it. She's encouraged Kirstin to call her "grandma". Kirstin's whole life I've taught her to be flexible with labels, so of course she doesn't see anything wrong with that. I let her call Kathy "mom", and my stepmother is "grandma," too. I made a conscious choice to teach her in that direction because I felt that there was no sense in limiting someone's role in Kirstin's life by attaching a title to it that puts it relative to another person's role. I've always taught her that anyone she wants can be her family. She can have as many brothers and sisters as she cares to have, and aunts and uncles, too.
So I don't care what title she uses for Forest's mom, or whether she uses one at all. Forest, however, isn't comfortable with that, because he would prefer his mom waited until speaking with us about it before introducing that idea.
And since I want him to be comfortable in his relations with his folks, I will stand behind him on it. It's much more a boundary issue than anything else, I think, and I know it's important for families to work these things out.
An evening among adults. Mmmm.
{She waltzes off into the sunset, leaving only her Darth Maul action figure and a pair of shoes behind.}
