Last month’s nude photoshoot did something to me.  I finally looked at myself and came to an important realization.

I’m fucking beautiful!

I am curvy and sexy and absolutely fucking beautiful.  And in some weird twist, this realization has motivated me to lose weight and get my ass back in shape.  I never really understood it when people would say that you have to love yourself how you are now before you can improve yourself.  And I still don’t completely get it, but I feel it!  And I guess that’s all that really matters.

I want to be well, and go hiking, and rock climbing and go out and DO things.  I want to go dancing an turn heads.  I want to bring my cholesterol down and be healthier. 

Yesterday at my birthday stuff I didn’t want my cake.  No, not even the icing.  It was too sweet and I knew that it wasn’t the right thing for me.  That felt good.  I feel good.

I have lost 20 pounds since moving to Virginia, now it’s time to really kick this into gear and double that.  Hopefully even triple that.

Rock the Fuck on People,

~Cecily

Me all hot and sweaty after the gym.

Time and time and time again

What a time it was

A time with no innocences

All consequences

We all closed our eyes

And turned our heads

We were bystanders

No motivation

We turned on our TV’s

And plugged in our phones

With nothingness

With our lonliness

So David and I were feeling very lazy the other night.  He had worked really late, and I had had a long day myself, and we were tired.  The youngest had been fed and put to bed, the eldest was in her room doing her teenagery things, and the middlest was at her mom’s.  So we decided to go grab some fast food.  This is often tricky as David prefers McD’s, and I prefer BK.  Luckily, where we live now, there is both a BK and a McD’s right next to each other.

So off we went in the night on a search for crappy comfort omg-i’m-too-tired-to-do-anything-else food.  I order all my stuff, and the guys says it’s nine dollars.  This the sort of thing that strikes me as odd, because how often do you get anything and it comes out even on the dollar?  Not Very.  So I think it’s neat and rare and we go over to the McD’s and order David’s food.  It was NINE DOLLARS.

This I am sure is almost a sign of the apocalypse.  I am just waiting for the next nine dollar purchase to know for sure that the world is going to start tumbling into chaos.  I mean everyone says the number of the devil is 666, but if there wasn’t any little lines under numbers when it was first read, I think it is quiet possible some idiot just read it upside down and the real number of the devil is 999.

Then today on our drive home David is trying to find something to listen to in the car.  We were listening to one of my mixed discs and Aerosmith’s Dream On comes on.  Not wanting to hear it he changed it to the radio.  Not only was Dream On on the radio, but it was at the EXACT moment that we were on on the disc.  Surely the universe insisting that you must listen to Dream On is also a subtle sign of the Apocalypse.

Now I will be paying more attention to those little things that we often shrug off as just coincidences.  That way after the impending Apocalyspe is over, I can help write the new book that everyone will turn to for answers and references for the signs of the next Apocalypse after that.

Love and Chaos,

~Cecily

Ok not new hair per say, but I do have a new haircut!  And I don’t have a picture to put up here yet, but I will put one up when I do.

I’m such a tease.

~Cecily

That is to say, I don’t really like any of them.  What I have found though, is that none of them is worse than any other.  Point in case, Thanksgiving.  Pretty much everyone I know LOVES Thanksgiving.  I don’t.  Same goes for Christmas, with the exception that Christmas drains any and all extra money and adds social stress and annoyances like only Christmas can, which makes it slightly worse than the other ones. 

I don’t need a day on the calendar to tell me to be thankful, romantic, or express my love with physical gifts, any more than I need it at all.  I mean Thanksgiving just gets my knickers in a twist.  Why oh why if you are thankful for someone or something would you need to be reminded to feel it or express it.  I am grateful everyday.  And when I start feeling “poor me”, I start up another chapter in my gratefulness journal.  Then I can see just how poor I am not.

When it comes to Christmas, I would really rather we had a societal norm of giving, instead of a focused greed fest at the end of the year.  Why not if we see something we think someone would love, we get it for them.  No pressure, just because.

This last year I really thought about these things a lot in the holiday season.  I needed to make sense of it, come to terms with it, and figure out how to have it occur with or without me and not be negatively affected by it.  This is what I came up with.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, any of them, they aren’t about telling you you have to do this then, they are simply days set aside to give you the opportunity to.  Sometimes our lives become full of day to day life.  We spend weeks working on that one project.  We get wrapped up in ourselves and our own issues.  So I think the point of these days on the calendar are simply there to help us refocus.  They are there to say, “Hey, have you been working late for two months straight and possibly neglecting someone you love?  Here’s this opportunity to do something special.”  Yes we have the opportunity everyday, but sometimes it’s ok to have a special day too. 

We have special days for all sorts of things.  Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries.  You don’t have to celebrate any of them, and you don’t need any of them to remind you that you love the person your married to or your best friends life.  They aren’t there to taunt you or mock you or to tell you that you aren’t do a good enough job the rest of the year, they are just special days.  Days for celebrating and happiness.

So I choose to respect that they exist and not let their existence impact me negatively.  Sometimes, I even let them impact me positively.

Love and Silly Valentines,

~Cecily

I am not ashamed to say that I have difficulties reading.  Always have.  Not only does it take me time to read, but I often have to go back and reread because what I just read I didn’t comprehend.  This led to a childhood of incomplete books.  When I say books, I mean those with chapters, I could read the shit out of some Dr. Suess, but I never finished books.  Not until I was 15 and I read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  Yes that’s right, the first time I ever finished a book was 15.  It took me about 2 1/2 weeks.  Not of every once in a while picking it up reading, but of serious sitting down and working on it. 

All I wanted was to be IN Narnia.  For the first time reading something, I got carried into the book.  I wanted to exist in this magical place where there was this harmony between animals and humans.  This place where dryads and fauns still existed.  That was the world for me.  It was the first time I connected with an author.  It was the first time reading wasn’t so hard it frustrated the hell out of me.  Yes I still had to reread a lot of parts, but I didn’t care.  I loved it so much, within the next six months I had finished all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia.

It wasn’t until I was in my early 20′s that someone told me they didn’t like it because of it being a Christian book. WHAT?!  Narnia wasn’t Christian! What the hell are you talking about?!  Well apparently my naivety was shinning through again.  I felt…I felt…well I couldn’t explain what I felt.  Yesterday while reading Neil Gaiman’s Journal, he expressed exactly how I felt.

“I was personally offended: I felt that an author, whom I had trusted, had had a hidden agenda. I had nothing against religion, or religion in fiction — I had bought (in the school bookshop) and loved The Screwtape Letters, and was already dedicated to G.K. Chesterton. My upset was, I think, that it made less of Narnia for me, it made it less interesting a thing, less interesting a place. Still, the lessons of Narnia sank deep. Aslan telling the Tash worshippers that the prayers he had given to Tash were actually prayers to Him was something I believed then, and ultimately still believe.”

That was it.  Down to the fact that I had bought and loved The Screwtape Letters, well as much of it as I had read.  It was another one I had failed to finish.

Now I need to look into G.K. Chesterton, and I should probably finish some of the books I have started recently…

Love and Reading,

~Cecily

PS- The Chronicles of Narnia should be read in the following order

1. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Silver Chair
5. The Horse and His Boy
6. The Magician’s Nephew
7. The Last Battle

Please disregard any other inane order the books are numbered in.

I have decided to pull away from social networking, well specifically, Facebook.  I have found the people on there, meaning friends of friends, tend to become very verbally aggressive.  And it bothers me. It’s not always directed at me.  Actually it is usually not directed at me, but it gets me all worked up.  I don’t need that in my happy social free time, virtual or not.  So I will check in there, because I know a lot of things will still go through there, but I am going to make a concerted effort to not be on Facebook very much at all.  I will stay on G+, for the meantime, but if it shifts to the unhappiness that I feel on FB, then I will leave there too. 

Sooo, if you want to reach me, do so on G+, or email, or even a phone call/text.

Hopefully this removal of, what often ends up being a waste of time, will also help me fill my time with more creative paths.

I hate being called a liar.  With a passion.  I work so hard to make sure that I am always honest.  To the point of having people that avoid me or just don’t like me because I don’t tend to beat around the bush.  I respect people that are honest and up front with me, even when it hurts me.  It’s a big thing to me.

Yesterday I got an email from Tom, where he called me a liar.  Not in those exact words, but it was his message.  So I of course could not get to sleep because of this.  So I threw on a robe, went to the garage, and started digging my way to the little plastic filing cabinet we have buried under other things.  I got there, despite the ‘help’ of two cats.  I couldn’t get the drawer open all the way.  So I pushed and shoved and strained and got to the Verizon folder.  Then proceed to go through years of bills hoping that just one would show that I had called him.  Unfortunately it appears that sometime ago Verizon stopped putting all of your calls on your bills.  I am guessing that happened with the switch to unlimited long distance calling.

I decided that I would contact Verizon and see if there is anyway to get the phone records for our old phone.  This seemed to appease the nagging in my head to find proof. 

Then I decided to try to find the old email I had from one of David’s friends with the list of Thomas Gordons in PA.  That way if I could find the records I would have the number and know what I was looking for.  I had looked for this before and not found it, but I did last night. Awesome.  I would be able to prove it.

So then I lay there in bed being angry about other things.  Why hadn’t he called me to ask me to come visit between the ages of 12 and 16?  Why was it me that had to do the calling when I was 16?  Even if he left our meet up then with the impression that I was going to call him, why not make the extra effort and call me instead?

He said in his email that he had expected me to call him and give him info on the play I was in.  I remember that he was to call me.  Does it really matter?  Neither of us called.  Both of us wanted the other person to be the one to make the effort.  Can I see myself at 16 drawing a line in the sand a deciding that if he really wanted to be part of my life that he would make this effort?  Absolutely.  After all I was the one that finally broke the silence between us.  I was the one that called him to see how he was.  Why did I have to do all the work?  Why couldn’t he call?

I am sure that argument plays out very similarly on his side.  She wrote that awful letter, why should I call her, she should call me.  I drove down there to see her.  Why should I make more effort?  She will call me if she really wants me.

I think we were both standing off with each other without telling each other and we both failed each other.

Then as I lay there more and more angry, I realized it didn’t matter.  All I need for us to work on a future knowing each other now is for him to recognize that he played a part in our ordeal.  That it wasn’t all me.  I need him to take responsibility for not trying as hard as he should have.  But I also realized something else, I don’t need him to do that in order for me to let go and forgive the past.  I am going to work on letting that all go, for me.  And if he does want to work on us, if he does want to try to clear the slate and get to know me now, then great.  But I no longer need his apology to heal myself.  I am in control of that.

I was all set this morning to try to find the phone records, but I no longer feel a need to prove that either.  I know I tried, I also know I didn’t try hard enough.  When I found the list of Toms, his info was at the top of it.  I have had it this entire time.  I could have called more.  I could have sent a letter.  I could have driven up there and knocked on the door. (probably best I didn’t do that, but I could have)  I tried just enough to say “I tried”.  I should have tried harder.  Maybe I wasn’t ready.  Maybe I was still too scared of rejection.  I don’t know why and I can’t change the past, but I can move forward.  He will need to make a leap of faith and believe me when I say I did call his number.  Whether he does or not is up to him.  I know I did, and I know I don’t need to prove it.

(For my daughters)

Never be ashamed to say you love someone,

Only say it when you mean it though.

Give it away freely and without strings attached,

But not so freely that it feels insincere.

Hold it warmly when it is given to you,

It is a precious gift and should be treated as such.

If someone loves you and you do not love them in return,

Be kind, because that is a hard place to be in.

Do not lie about your feelings to make them feel better,

Because in the long run, that will hurt them more then help them.

Try not to fall in love with love itself,

That is a dangerous path to travel.

Remember that even when you give part of yourself with love,

That part of you is not lost, it is merely shared.

With great love comes great risk,

If there is no chance of you being hurt, there is no chance of loving greatly.

When you do get hurt, and you will,

Remember the pain will not last forever, and it is not without it’s purpose

The most important thing I can tell you about love,

Is I love you.