Tag: life

Cleaning as a Way to Destress

What do you do when you feel out of control? I used to just blast music in my headphones until I could push the emotions down. For the sake of my poor eardrums, I’ve been trying something new.

I am a Tornado

If you knew me in real life, you would know that I am not a great housekeeper. I am more of a tornado of creative chaos, whether it be in the kitchen or in my workspace, there will be messes and clutter. As a creative person, sometimes I honestly don’t notice the chaos or clutter around me, I just see what I’m working on and if I have completed my project according to my vision.

It’s not a good way necessarily to go through life, but it is my authentic self. As a kid, this led to a lot of nagging me to pick up and friction with my mom and grandparents because I was not organized or faithful in straightening up my room. The same with vacuuming, dusting, or remembering to do the dishes before my mom got home from work. Now as an adult, it’s an internal battle I wage with myself between the chaos tornado and the desire to keep things tidy.

Over the years of working from home, I’ve learned that a chaotic space is not a productive space, as they said many times before, and yet I’m still a bit slow to do something about it. It wasn’t until watching Business Proposal that I began to connect the dots.

Kang Tae Mu

While watching Business Proposal earlier this year, a now beloved classic in my house, I related to a lot of the main characters. The one I did not expect to feel a kinship with was Kang Tae Mu. He is a young president of a company, he is rich, polished, and in control. The opposite of me. It wasn’t until the mask of perfection cracked and I saw the vulnerable moments of his character, the heartbreak and stress of his childhood, and his perfectionism as a coping tool that I realized we are not so different.

There is this moment, that truly endeared me to his character and opened my eyes to my own poor coping skills. Tae Mu and his friend Mr. Cha go to Mr. Cha’s apartment after work (Mr. Cha is his assistant) and Tae Mu cleans everything. Mr. Cha just steps back and out of his way, while Tae Mu works out all the emotions rattling around his mind in chaotic fractures by cleaning, and later cooking. His character decompresses by putting things back into order when he feels out of order and out of control. I never thought of cleaning that way before.

Gellers and Gilmores

I had seen it portrayed less healthily in the show Friends through Monica’s character. Monica’s character does this in a more unhinged and controlling way. But Tae Mu’s cleaning is so much more relatable. I mean it makes so much sense that tidying things can be a productive way to release the frantic energy of big emotions. In the show Gilmore Girls, emotional outbursts are normal. The characters rant, they yell, they express their emotions with big displays and that is usually how my feelings come out. In big messy paintbrush strokes over my relationships and my little house. I don’t like that anymore. I want to be kinder, gentler, a positive person to those around me.

I know I’ll still have those moments, but I’d like to minimize them and cope in better ways. Like not pushing the emotion into a box and tossing it to the back of my mind or feeling stressed and tense. So I’ve been trying to clean, when I really feel like I’m stuck.

Cleaning to the Beat of Wonderland & Item

I was feeling down in the dumps today, it was just an amalgam of bad communication with my husband, a cold, some other not feeling good things and discouragement. A lot of little things kept going wrong and my highly sensitive personality was feeling overstimulated. I was messing with my ability to focus on my current mitten project, my NaMo WriMo start, and planning blog posts.

I realized the only thing I could authentically change to set my day on a better path was to do some cleaning that had fallen by the wayside while I had been sick. With my earbuds in place and a playlist of Stray Kids’ 5-Star and Ateez hits I set to work on a kitchen deep clean. It is incredible how the first five songs of 5-Star changed my mood. The pacing of the music woke the dopamine centers of my brain back up and I was jamming through my stovetop scrubbing. By the time I switched to Ateez, I felt this weight lifted off. The stovetop was shining, the kitchen floor was lemony-fresh, the dishes were sorted into the drying rack, and the laundry was done with its spin cycle.

My environment was different even if my problems and little irritations from the day still existed, I was less stressed because I was able to do something to release my tension. Something active and productive. I felt like I was running my day, not my day running me over.

Yellow Tree in the Snow | November 2023

Just like that the season has changed. On Halloween night, big fluffy flakes appeared on our door step. Frosting the fallen orange leaves with a marshmallow wrapping of snow. It was magical, snow globe-esque.

As morning dawned the fall livelry was swapped for a dazzling white coating my little world in snowflake robes. It was crunchy beneath my shoe, squeaky even.

From the gloomy shades of autumn and their spooky splendor to the bright, starkness of winter in one night. A remnant of autumn hangings on in the trees beyond my street. The lovely yellow leaves I saw through my window. A bright, hopeful contrast from the pine, the branch, and the white. This was my inspiration.

Do you enjoy snow?

#38- Kanji, Milkshakes, and Tokyo Highway

It’s been a while since I did a proper catch-up blog post, months actually. I should probably stick to a content calendar, anyhoo, hello! How have you been? I’ve been busy, but it has been a good busy. I made a big push to get most of my winter and fall wardrobe sewing for Kyle and myself completed in September and October. I have made headway in my knitting projects, having the basic items I needed either ready to wear or near ready to wear. I’ve been sketching and planning out artistic endeavors for the rest of the year, and where I would like to go next year. I see myself painting on canvas on the horizon.

This flurry of activity has been a good thing for my social life. I’ve been spending time with my mom, like I used to, which is insanely good for both of us. When our relationship is out of whack, our mental health plummets. I don’t feel a dark cloud over me which I am incredibly grateful for. It’s an answer to prayer.

Because we’ve been hanging out in person, she’s been taking me to places back near my hometown that I’ve missed. Including The Milkshake Factory which sells dairy-free milkshakes! This is not the usual thing where I live. Since I discovered I could not consume dairy or beef anymore, going out with family and friends has been tricky. I don’t have the same capacity anymore to eat wherever and explore new restaurants. I didn’t realize how much of a toll this would take on my mom and I’s relationship until I couldn’t go out and eat anywhere or drink anything. Constantly needing to know the ingredients and the possibility of cross-contamination takes the fun right out of trying new dishes. For a few years, our relationship was pretty mundane and we were at a loss of how to spend time with each other because the way we bonded had to change. Going to The Milkshake Factory brought a piece of that puzzle back to our relationship, and it was wicked tasty. Seriously, I began to question if it would make me sick it was so good.

But, my mom has learned to adjust and be willing to explore things that I can do. Like going with Kyle and I to Hobby Express because Kyle and I wanted to look at car models and board games. I was really proud of her for going with us and actually getting into the store. She loves puzzles and trains and has a joyful appreciation for clever hobbies. After a while, she was exploring the store on her own and getting into it. It was a great trip with some new board games and models to show for it. I found two new board games on sale – Ticket to Ride Poland and Tokyo Highway which is a game I’d never heard of before but have absolutely grown to love it.

It’s a straightforward game, you build highways with sticks and columns, and for every road that crosses your opponents’, you get to place a car. Each turn you either go up a level or down. With a 3-4 player you add buildings as obstacles to the board and the game is different each time you play like Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan. The part that truly endeared me though is the tweezers that come with the game, they are ESSENTIAL as the game progresses. If you knock over your opponent’s road, you must fix it and surrender the amount of materials you knocked over from your stock to your opponent as a penalty. I highly recommend it if you like tabletop games. The best part is that it was created by a Japanese company and a Japanese game designer. My history nerd heart skipped a beat when there was a history of the Tokyo Highway system included with the game instructions. Now only if you received a Kei car if you win, that would be the dream.

Speaking of Japanese, I’ve been slacking on my lessons and seriously need to get them in gear if I want to finish my first lesson book by the end of 2023. To get back in the swing of things, I’ve made Katakana and Hiragana flashcards to make myself practice. I also started learning Kanji yesterday and wow, I love it. The pictorial nature has me sold on how amazing it is. I’d so much rather write longer sentences with Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji than this Roman character alphabet. Japanese just flows compared to my culture’s writing system. I get hand cramps while taking notes in my lesson book because of how much more effort writing in English takes compared to the sections where I practice writing in Japanese. Have you had this experience of learning a new language? I didn’t expect to prefer Japanese to English, but I do.

I hope wherever you are that you are having a wonderful day and that you will remember that you are special, and deserving of love, and I appreciate you. Until next time ❤

Jack-O-Lantern Lounge Pants

One of my favorite memories from childhood is carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns with my Papa. Together we would plan out our pumpkin design, and like the pals we were, we would set to work! Papa would carefully place the gourd on newspaper and we would ponder the sides, choosing the perfect canvas upon which to carve. Then with Mom and Grandma in toe, we would gather around the kitchen table to begin our masterpiece. The very same table I sit at now as I write this.

The kitchen table with my sewing assistant, Bones.

Papa would handle the knife and I with a spoon in hand was in charge of scooping out the seeds and pumpkin flesh. Like an assembly line, Papa would cut a small piece from the top, which was attached to the stem making a lid. With my mind-filled young curiosity, my hands would dig into the pumpkin, into the cold cavern of seeds and orange squishy goodness, wondering if would it be as fun as last year? Would it be as squishy? I still love squishing my hands between the seeds and the pulp. My Mom and Grandma sorted the seeds from the mess, rinsing and soaking the seeds to later roast in the oven. The memory of this process still lingers in my mind at the taste of salted pumpkin seeds. It was something I looked forward to, a hallmark of October.

Each year the pumpkin face was different, spooky and goofy, the way we liked our Halloween festivities which consisted of carving this pumpkin and the neighborhood trick-or-treat. The pumpkin carving happened a few days before trick or treat. I remember getting excited when the night came because I knew that meant I could dress up and wander the neighborhood with my friend a few days later, collecting candy as we went. When I saw this fabric at Joann’s it tugged at my heartstrings of those memories of childhood. The faces of these pumpkins look just like the way we would craft our jack-o-lantern. It was nothing too fancy, we were far from experts, but the expression carved from a kitchen knife had a certain charisma that I loved.

Not only did the pattern call to me, but the fabric was incredibly cozy, being made from a heavier flannel. I had to buy it. In true me fashion, I cut one side of the pants upside down, so my trademark pattern-matching mishap carries on into my fall-winter sewing escapades. I think at this point I should just embrace it. I’m not sure if we will carve a jack-o-lantern this year but here is our proud pumpkin friend from 2019. Happy Halloween!

My You’ve Got Mail Moment

Do you remember that scene in You’ve Got Mail when Kathleen Kelly and Joe Fox are at that dinner party, and he is antagonizing her and all she can do is stare at him? Later on, she emails NY152, and Shopgirl reveals how frustrating it is that she happens to freeze when someone pushes her buttons, and instead of having anything in reply her mind goes blank. I was thinking about this scene over the weekend as I had not one but two encounters with rude behavior.

The first was on Saturday, in Joann Fabrics. As I browsed the clearance fabric in a narrow aisle cluttered by overhanging fabric bolts making even one person in the aisle feel cramped, a woman who was probably a Gen-X to my Millenial, pushed her cart down the aisle and proceeded like a flash flood to move forward. Not saying anything, she kept walking, and walking, until I felt her cart in my leg and then she started saying in a syrupy voice “So sorry, excuse me.” She continued to push until I realized, she wasn’t apologizing, I was going to be moving or getting run down by a cart. The idea of not physically moving me out of the way did not exist in her mind. At that moment, all I could think of was “Where am I supposed to go?” which was ignored and I skedaddled out the aisle and watched her not even look at the section I was in and carry on to the next aisle where she did the same thing. I was baffled. I thought the behavior was coming from a pushy desire to get the fabric I was looking through, and now I think she didn’t even noticed that it was there or that other people existed in the store.

Now reader, the reason I am sharing this is not to rant or put her down, but to discuss the frustration I have in my own mind that I freeze in these situations. My mind goes blank like Kathleen Kelly and I wish it didn’t not because I want to be a mouthpiece of malice towards people I find rude, but instead to have any way of voicing a change. To have the maturity and the wherewithal to speak in wisdom and inspire people like this to re-think their behavior so that instead of being the person everyone in the store was avoiding, this woman could be a person bringing warmth and good energy to the group. But I can’t think of a single thing in those moments. I can’t even stand my ground respectfully without getting scared. I wish I could be a better person.

Now the next day, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic due to road work, the unthinkable happened. We were merged into the left lane due to the right lane closure for road work and a woman who was old enough to be my mom, screamed down the right lane refusing to merge until she ran out of pavement. That is when she began to throw her Audi SUV, not a cheap vehicle, into the two-foot gap between us and the next car. We had nowhere to go and she continued pushing. She stared us down and began telling us that she was getting in and that’s that. She came within inches of taking off the right front side of our car, and it was only prevented by the traffic in front moving forward at the exact time. I was verklempt and rising in anger at the wastefulness of her actions. I don’t know the financial situation she has, but paying off my car has never felt easy. Making the progress I have has felt like a miracle because I bought it used in 2021 and it was marked up due to the car shortage, but we needed a running car. I would never willingly use it as a battering ram because I have to be first in a merge lane, because it is worth too much to me to treat it like an expendable accessory. It gets me from point A to point B and I am grateful to have it. I would never want to take someone’s transportation away to get one spot ahead in a merge lane.

That situation was just a bad moment, that happens because people can be pretty crappy, but I’ve replayed the moment in my head and wished there was some way in those crazy highway moments to diffuse people. Make them see reason and remember that these big life-altering actions, don’t have to happen. You can back off and apologize and people will respect you for it. How can we inspire change on the road and inside the aisle of the store? I wish I knew.

#36 – Gratitude and Growth

This year has been weird, weird because I tried something new. I took a step back and let something that had felt out of my control for years be out of my control. I stopped pushing, trying, fighting, and shape-shifting. Instead, I waited. I took my hands off of my relationship with my mom and submitted it to God. I was at rock bottom, our relationship hit an all-time low in January. We were no longer Rory and Lorelai, we were Emily and Lorelai careening towards Emily and Gran. Things were bad. Our communication was broken, and both of us seemed to be unbothered by the problems, allowing it to be the status quo. For just shy of a decade our relationship had been in a bad place. My life took a wrong turn when I was in college and never righted its course. We were no longer pals, but secretive enemies.

I thought this was the final destination for our relationship. I was not hopeful. I put it down and left it. For months I barely spoke to my mom. For six months we did not see each other. It was the longest break we ever took. Even when I moved 14 hours away, we saw each other within 5 months. The distance was too far. This year it felt like I lived on the other side of the world. It pushed me to be still to process what I was doing wrong and to realize what I wished our relationship could be like.

When my mom had surgery this summer, the thought of a complication taking her away woke me up out of this experiment in distance. I visited her and it was strained, but doing a normal thing, like visiting your mom after surgery, seemed to bring a little normalcy back to our unbridled mess. As she recovered our relationship ebbed and flowed like tides. One day we’d be comfortable, warm, and friendly. The next it was cold, distant, irritating. I began to wonder if the small bit of hope was just that a small taste. That maybe it was what it was, and I needed to adjust my expectations. Could we get along in my adulthood? I was uncertain and began to think that maybe my mom was my best friend as a kid because I was young and different. Like my personality and needs have changed and that was how it was. I began to encourage myself to accept it, but I didn’t like it.

But then August and September came and something changed. They came to visit us, and we went to visit them. We stayed for the weekend and went to a familiar fall haunt, the Antiques in the Woods show in Ohio. I had fun, I remembered the past times we had together at this event, and I met a friend of my mom and grandma’s who told me how much they loved my mom. They told me stories of moments I missed over the past decade when I was not interested in spending time with my mom and painted a portrait I hadn’t seen in a while. They reminded me of who my mom could be and why I was always so proud to have her be my chaperone on school trips or invite friends over to my house because my mom can be really cool and a sweetheart. All the baggage of grief, growing pains, family fights, moves, it had all clouded my vision. I was seeing through the eyes of pain and past, I wasn’t seeing her in real-time.

We hung out with them again recently and went to Erie Bluffs State Park. I remembered how much I loved traveling with my mom. When the trip began my plan was to show her Erie in hopes that she would like a place I was considering moving to, but instead, I felt this pull to not leave again. I felt this peace to remain where I am and be comfortable in the familiar and close proximity to home. To not be afraid of staying close to home and not be scared or ashamed of my roots. I’ve learned a lot this year and I feel immense gratitude for the process of how I learned because if I had not fully walked away, my eyes may have stayed clouded in the lens of the past instead of looking toward the future and appreciating what is right in front of me. My Lorelai to my Rory, my home that still remains, the ideal mom-dad-dog-plus a husband that fits like a missing puzzle piece, the family I always wanted. I just needed to wait and be open to things getting better.

Will we probably fight again? Oh most definitely, but have I learned you can repair what is broken. Yes. And that is what I am grateful for. That might be the most important life lesson because it teaches resiliency.

Scenes of September | 01

I know Autumn is knocking on the door when I see these purple flowers in the fields around my town. The goldenrod may make me sneeze but the sight of the yellow, gold, and purple makes my heart sing.

The Details:

Slea Head, Dingle, County Kerry | 01

A memory from 2001, the drive around the ring of Kerry. This is a view, near Slea Head looking towards the An Fear Marbh (The Sleeping Giant/Dead Man) Island. A quick sketch made with chalk pastels. At the time, I didn’t understand the grandeur of what I was staring at when I was eight, but now the beauty of Ireland’s scenery lives rent-free in my mind.

The Details:

Who Are You Listening To?

After Daniel and some prayer for direction, I landed on 1 Corinthians as the next place in the Bible I felt the Lord leading me to wander through. The first chapter of 1 Corinthians, a familiar book, really stuck out to me; honestly, I haven’t been seeing things the same way since. I’ll explain.

A little background on this book and my faith journey, when I was a kid I got this book and the book of Chronicles confused all the time although they are about vastly different things. The Corinthians being addressed here are members of a church in Corinth, an ancient city located in south-central Greece. This is one of two letters written to the church by Paul. He knew the people and addressed specific issues being raised in communication between him and the members. It is also a look into how the early church navigated living in a multi-cultural world in the Roman Empire that was not a Christian culture. It is an example the modern church can use to look to for direction in our current-day issues that are not unlike the ones faced by the Corinthian believers because we are all fallen humans, so there are bound to be problems in how we live in community together.

Therein is the rub. Some modern believers take the conversations in the letters of Paul verbatim and copy and paste the ancient scenario into their current day with mixed results, sometimes as a weapon and sometimes in love, it’s a complex thing that gets oversimplified based on who is teaching it. Actually, it sounds a lot like the passage I read in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17.

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.  For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?  I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,  so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.  (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

1 Corinthians 1: 10-17 ESV

I tend to be less excited when I start reading through a book of the Bible when it is a book that pastors and teachers seem to loop through, like the gospels, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Romans, Acts, 1&2 Thessalonians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians and 1&2 Timothy, etc because those sermons feel like they are washed across the pages like a lacquer keeping me from getting in the pages and their intrinsic message from God. The new level of podcasts and social media commentary on the Bible being shared at rapid fire is making it worse in my opinion. There are so many people’s hands on it and their words of interpretation live rent-free in our heads more than God’s understanding.

Now I’m not trying to pick, obviously, the word needs to be taught and all these tools we have at our disposal should be utilized instead of ignored. People are literally doing their best and I appreciate them for the work that they do and acknowledge that it’s a tough thing to understand and teach. I guess what struck me from a place of frustration was the inward conviction of – well if you weren’t understanding My Word through the words of other people and were following me first, the teaching and opinions of others second, maybe you wouldn’t have this problem, hm? Ouch. Yeah, I’m guilty of that. But thankfully those kinds of moments of conviction from the Holy Spirit are an invitation to dive deeper, there is a way forward to get back on track and I love that about the Lord. He never leaves us where he finds us, we choose not to move forward but His hand is always open to take the next step.

This was kind of a short reflection on my read through 1 Corinthians 1, but I hope that it encourages you in its conciseness. What I gleaned from it was simple. Follow me.

I hope wherever you are you are safe, loved, and know that your creator sees you. You are special. ❤ Until next time.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑