Remabulous

Item #10: Go to museums in LA, the Natural History Museum Edition

So... I'm a bit behind on posting this, but I did check a Museum off the list of #10. Am getting a little panicked on getting this one totally done as there are a huge number of Museums here in LA. Huge. Terrifyingly big.

So, I shall share those I plan to get to before the clock gets reset on August 30th with 33 for 33, and then I shall share the amusing photos I got while at First Fridays two weeks ago...

Yay!

The "I mean it, I'm going" Museum list.

• The Skirball
• Norton Simon
• The Hammer
• Getty Villa
• The Annenberg (technically a gallery, but I love photo, so I'm going.)

I've already conquered:

• LACMA
• MOCA
• Museum of Jurassic Technology
• Getty
• Natural History Museum
• Artwalk in Highland Park
• Huntington Gardens and Library

Feels good to have a whole list!

Here we go with the photos...

Getting stared at by a Croatian.

I had heard a lot about Braco, a Croatian healer from various sources that I trust regarding his visit in April this year. So... when he came back, I was more than eager to check this out.

Thankfully, the ellipses over with the gentleman caller, we decided that this was something we needed to check out.

After all, when else do you get to reply "getting stared at by a Croatian" when someone asks what you're up to that day. I loved it. I told everyone. It never got old.

OK. So he doesn't actually stare. It's more of a gaze. But still. Being gazed at implies things I didn't think were part of the picture.

So... as the gentleman caller lives over towards the westside,I picked him up on the way to the airport and convinced both him and his roommate that a documentation of the "before" state was required.

Here is us before the staring:

OK. So maybe I suggested we might want to hang towards the droopy side in order to convey the transformation. But still... We've been stressed lately with work, so it seems fair.

Off to the hotel ballroom for the gazing!

Bless the ellipses.

#6 has turned out to be quite the saga this year. Honestly, I only put something to do with relationships on the list in the first place was that I thought I needed to be more specific after the 31 for 31 list's "Have sex" item failed. 100% no action of any kind last year. So "Find Love" seemed like a better way to approach it.

And in many ways I have been delighted with the result. I am more open to what love means right now. I am so aware of how much I love my friends, my family and my city. I do love LA. It surprises me to think this, having been such a die hard Bay Area citizen for such a long time, but I do.

And during this tricky phase with the gentleman caller, I heard I love you from friends and family almost every time I spoke to them. The support was incredible. And even though we were experimenting with being apart, he and I still said we loved each other in what we wrote back and forth and when we spoke.

Ultimately it seemed silly to feel that way so clearly and not be together and figure out what that means as we go.

You don't have to swallow a challenge all at once. You can take life in little bites. I like this better.

It was a beautiful thing to trust what I believed was possible and to see that trusting in myself and my beliefs was the right thing to do.

And perhaps this painful period of time was a way to really get to the deep bottom of #6: Find Love. I know that I have more knowledge than I did before.

And it feels good. But next time, I have informed my gentleman, we're going to do this in a less traumatic way. Phew!

Two or three things I don't know for sure.

I have been dealing with feeling scared about writing on here for the first time almost since I began the site almost four years ago.

Things I don't know for sure right now: what my next steps are in certain areas of my work... I have some pulls to offer new things in a new way. It's a little scary and a little wonderful and the voice in my heart tells me it will all work out ok.

This voice is a little faint right now. It's been hard to write because I disappeared when I found a relationship to dive into and was reveling in that and now, in the last week, it's suddenly been put on pause. I don't know if I'm dealing with an ellipses or a period.

What I do know is that we hit a wall. It was sudden and huge and startling. The beliefs that have ruled us for years came up and there wasn't a way to see past that. I wanted to hang in it and he needed to step back. And the voice in my heart couldn't do much but cry for several days.

I'm listening for hope now. I do feel it. Whether or not this ends (or doesn't) the way I want it to isn't really in my control. But I do think these moments all go back to one of the Nick Cages in Adaptation, the one who loved the girl who didn't love him back. "I loved her," he said to Nick Cage #1. "And no one could take that away from me, not even her."

It's nice to hang with love and not let anyone else drive that bus. I trust that. It feels better to be in limbo right now than to force an ending. I keep thinking of Rilke on all levels of my life right now, because he seems to get it solidly with the quotation from Letters to a Young Poet:

...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903

I couldn't say it better. So I won't try. Off to bed now...

Trapeze!

Thanks to my friend Michelle, I was inspired to put returning to the trapeze on my 32 for 32 list. I took one lesson years ago in SF with my then-roommate, Suzanne, and had a blast. But I never went back. Hmm. Time to correct that. My trusty assistant, Jen, was game to come along with me... so here we are:

Pay it forward...

Hey all!

You know I cannot resist a challenge... so I was very excited to jump on the bandwagon with Jill Brown of the Duchess, who has started the very exciting "Pay it Forward" blogging project...

We're going to be undertaking a challenge to do something kind for someone else during challenge days and posting it on our sites.

I am so excited to get going on this. We're over the 6 month mark on 32 for 32 and I am planning all the rest of the pieces to get them done by the time the big day for 33 for 33 begins in August again, but it's fun to have a refresh with some new ideas at this point in the year. Yippee!

And the super fun thing? You can totally join in, too.

Want to do kind things for people and write about it? Check out the Pay it Forward project...we'd love to have you in the club!

The Happiness Project

I started reading Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project this morning in bed. I had a bit of a grouch fest last night and felt like it was time to dive in. I've made it through the first two chapters and I'm loving it.

I am a list maker, and it's always exciting to find someone in the same boat. The level and refinement of lists made my simple 32 list seem a little feeble by comparison.

Not only does Rubin have lists- she has broken them down by theme, assigned them to a month, but she also has commandments and a principle by the end of chapter 2. Wow. I'm going to have to step up my game next year, I think.

There is something lovely about thinking that writing things down on paper and referring to them frequently can change your life. Fortunately, my experience, and the experience of clients I have worked with has proven this to be true. How amazing!

It's funny how suspicious we (and I definitely fall into this group) are of simple solutions. Want to be happier? Make a list of things you suspect would work, print out charts and have at it.

"It can't be that simple," we think. Notice I did not say easy. Following through with the items on this list is rarely easy. Sometimes it's not even easy to write the damned list in the first place- just ask my mother about her 59th birthday when I spent the entire dinner prying her list out of her. Charming.

Still, as Rubin helpfully pointed out in the intro, it's often the idiosyncratic and highly personal story that helps to show how something can be accomplished rather than a general list of universal ideals. I think the universal is harder to live up to and often impossible to relate to.

But when I read about Rubin struggling not to snap when she is irritated with her husband even though she loves him dearly? That is inspiration I can work with. Immediately, in fact during a phone conversation this morning with my gentleman caller about whether or not I am feeling better after my brat fit last night when he had to postpone plans due to an unexpected work deadline.

Out there, on the opposite coast, I know that Gretchen Rubin is biting her lip and breathing as she knows her husband is doing the best he can, so I am able to answer "I'm fine today" when I get the concerned call. And I mean it.

How to write about #6?

So. It's been about two weeks since I posted about the 32 for 32 adventures. I know all of you are loyal and have the entire list memorized, but for those of you newcomers, #6 was a risky one to put on the list: find love.

I didn't really think this one through in terms of what it would mean to write about as it happened on here. 

Two weeks ago, I had coffee with a blind date. Since then, I have thought about writing something about how I think I might actually succeed at #6 this year, but I have wanted to be cautious.

Realistically, I am not thinking much about other items on the list. I am lucky enough that this illustrious date two weeks ago and the dates that have happened since happen to have been with someone who is very excited about making cheese (#), is a big foodie who is down with learning knife skills (#), lives on the west side so I can get to those museums at last (#), and is vry enthusiastic about a trip to Big Sur.

So progress is being made.

I feel very lucky and humbled about all of this. It's very new and yet it feels so old. It's a great thing- when someone is very new to your life and you want to hear story after story and learn as much as you can, while at the same time it's impossible not having him in the picture.

Very good feeling.

But I don't want to hang my love laundry out in the wind.

I shall discover as I go. For now, I just wanted to say that all is well...we'll just keep some blinders on for all of you so I can share a little bit.

Happy weekend...

Pitfalls on the way to the Silverlake run...

SO. One of my lofty goals for this year was to run around Silverlake Reservoir. For some people, not such a big deal. It's about 2.2 miles. I have a friend from middle school, Michelle, who has two kids and when she had just her first daughter ran a leg of a relay marathon the morning before meeting the rest of us for brunch and then attending another friend of ours' wedding. So she walks on water pretty much. Seriously.

I don't. And I certainly don't run on water. Or at all, lately. My gym delight has been assuaged by yoga, cardio on elliptical machines, light weights, swimming, and jumping on my delightful rebounder.

I need to get back into running. I want to do this goal justice and I want to do it especially before LA becomes a den of heat every day.

However, I have been slighted in my quest. Big time. 

Required watching.

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