neelabell.com

I get to have coffee with terrific friends like Marilyn Berezowsky.

I make great muffins.

I’m not afraid to toot my horn on this one. I have it down to a fine art. It’s the only way I can get my kids to eat anything that doesn’t have Dora on it. I sneak in all kinds of thing. They are really like eating a bale of HAY, only with nice juicy chunks of banana and pureed carrots in them.

It’s sort of sad and sort of sweet to know there is one thing you excel at. It is so “clear”. I am not a concert pianist. I cannot speak Arabic fluently. I don’t even know how to make a dinner that doesn’t have at least ONE major screw up in it. (Generally related to over cooking, which I do compulsively and is another story).

I find muffin making to be sort of a zen activity. Like child birth. Like gardening. It’s creative. It’s art and science. I actually coo a little when people tell me how good they are. It’s as if they were opening the lid on my ego and putting in little chocolate sprinkles of acceptance and approval.

That’s it. Nothing deep, or meaningful. Just muffins.

Really GREAT muffins.

So, I promised myself I would write something at least once a week. I’m not feeling particularly inspired by anything other than myself these days. It takes a lot of work to be an evolving human being. You have to read stuff all the time. I’m reading the motivational book “The Big Leap”. Then you have to DO stuff with it. I’m trying to eat better. That means grocery shopping better and eating more organic. I’m trying to focus more and be present with my children. I’m working on listening in my relationship. I’m trying to journal each night. I’m carving out one night a week of doing nothing. (Which, as this post and my night of returning emails, picking up the kids toys everywhere, phone calls and unloading the dishwasher can attest … is harder than it sounds). I’m trying to live in financial abundance and balance. I’m paying attention to my body and taking better care of it. I’m seriously considering exercise.

It’s bloody exhausting being me, some days. I long for the days when I walked around in a complete FOG. Like a zombie. Eating poutine. Hiding out. Fumbling around my inner landscape. Completely ignoring the not-so-subtle messages from the universe (… that usually came in the form of relationship roulette and bad skin). Those were the golden years all right.

Now I stare at the large machine called “PERSONAL WELLNESS!” and sort of sigh. I know it’s the right path. I know it’s the only path that will lead to a sense of peace and joy, which I flirt with now but am not living in fully. It’s just … a lot.

I think I’m going to bed.

So I was having a conversation just before the REAL hallowed treat day (definitely the sophisticated older sister of Halloween) and the subject of chocolate came up. My partner does not eat it unless it’s organic high end dark chocolate. Apparently, the latest revelation in world conscience is that child labour is what drives the major chocolate manufacturers in their factories in the seedier places in Africa. I teasingly refer to it now as “little hands chocolate” because it is hand crafted by children the same age as my TODDLERS. What happened to the old Swiss guys lovingly putting dolup after dolup on sheets of crisp wax paper? They are all working in cubicles now, transferring dolups of MONEY from one Swiss bank account to another.

Sometimes I have to wonder about the world. I know parents all love their children. That fact is not changed by geography or income. I suppose it’s a question of context. If we were starving, I would be grateful that we could eat and that there was a way to make that happen. I’m sure children there (wherever there is) are not cocooned in the luxurious bubble of innocence that my darling twosome are.

So, it all boils down to me and my future chocolate purchases. Voting with my wallet as they say. I need to learn some more about all this new madness. I need to find out if indeed my addiction to Reese’s peanut butter cups is creating tragedies in families not entirely dissimilar to my own. I need to know.

The book. Well, it is a work in almost-progress. Life sort of took a zigzag the last few months and I’m just now returning to the business of getting this manuscript into someone’s hands. This week’s goal: dedicated writing time. Maybe Wednesday.

I was innocently driving through the Toyota lot and the next thing I knew I was driving off with a new car. Well, new to me, anyway. There is something very satisfying about being “approved” financially. Two days later I was driving off the lot with a Matrix. It’s shiny and black and makes me feel slightly hipper than my Saturn did. Today’s adventure is a road trip to Calgary. Hopefully the bumpers won’t fall off. (Maybe it was TOO good a deal?… ) I am bound and determined NOT to let it become the bomb shelter that my previous car became. I’m not sure how I can keep my kids entertained without fish crackers. Stay tuned.