Shit Talkin Pee Foot & 10 Self Likes/Opportunities

I would like to start this blog entry by calling attention to the fucking incredibly amazing, supportive and ridiculously sweet people in my life.  Whether we’ve seen each other recently or not and some of you, we haven’t even talked in years, the out pouring of kind words, encouragement, compliments that have brought tears to my eyes, anecdotes, questions, pieces of validation and just everything else awesome that has flooded my way has been so fantastic.  These are things I’ve learned I don’t need, I don’t crave and I don’t expect but getting all of this just helps my happiness shine brighter and my smile get that much bigger, and I have a small mouth so it gets streeeeetched!  .  I’m so thankful to know each and every one of you and to be able to call you a friend.  Fuck!  My peeps are awesome!!  Thank you all, sincerely and honestly from the fullness of my open(ing) heart.  You all make me feel like exploding into bits of rainbow glitter goo.

On that note, let’s talk about shit talking, shall we?  Have you ever noticed that when you make a declaration to stop doing something, you become REALLY cognizant to just how much you do it.  I’m not talking about the obvious action ceasing like me making a declaration to stop eating sugar because I’m well aware of my absolute addiction to all things deliciously sweet.  I’m talking about saying you want to stop doing something just because you feel it’s something that you should affirm but you don’t think you do it all that often.  Like… “I’m going to stop making grunting noises when I’m struggling w/ a deuce.”  You don’t think you do it, but you know that you shouldn’t just because if you’re one of those who brave the task in a public facility, discreteness may prove beneficial.  Once you actually say you’re not going to do it though, every time you visit the porcelain seat or squatter, as the case may be for those of you in the east, you feel like your brain is going to burst because ALL you want to do is let out a little vocal assistance?  So I made one of these declarations in my own head about a month ago and it was spurred by my experiences with Vijay and all the random people who would ask me about my experiences.  I would speak as candidly as I felt and usually that was vocal diarrhea out of the mouth kind of candor.  One of the four agreements, actually the first, in the book Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, is “be impeccable with your word” so I decided to adopt this little ditty and stop talking shit!  I wanted people to make up their own mind about him and while I felt like I was originally doing a service by being a walking Yelp review, I also realized some people really liked this guy, even though I couldn’t think of a worse teacher.  This new declaration didn’t go just for Vijay but for anyone, because you know, I didn’t consider myself much of shit talker in the first place but it was just something I knew was good to not do.  OH MY BLOODY GOD!  You know what I realized? I’m a HUGE shit talker!  HUGE!  Ok, maybe not that big but I’ve had a few instances where I’ve met a couple of new people who drive me absolutely up the fucking wall and all I want to do is share my thoughts about these people with others and sometimes I feel like I’m about to convulse into a hysterical tizzy holding back.  Jesus!  I’ve managed to hold to my word but I’m finding out it’s not as easy as I thought.  There is also a very fine line between shit talking and experience sharing, I find, or maybe there isn’t and I have just justified things I’ve said in the past because it’s “story telling” and not exactly shit talk, or at least I don’t think it is. Then you add gossip in there and it’s just a whole different area to figure out.  What’s the difference between “shit talking,” “gossip” and “experiences”?  Claudio and I were trying to figure this out at dinner last night but we didn’t come to any definitive answers or understanding what’s ok and what’s not.  As you can tell, I haven’t quite sorted this out but it’s new.  If anyone has any insight, it’d be much appreciated. =) 

Maybe I’m just struggling with this now since I meet so many new people and usually I click with them but for those who I don’t, I can’t seem to escape them because I live in such a small place!  I guess that solves the question I never asked myself though - would I ever want to live long term in a small town?  I can now, definitively, say, HELL NO! City living gives you some sense of anonymity, which, after living in Arambol for just a few weeks, is nonexistent and as social as I am, sometimes I just want to tuck into a dark corner of a restaurant by myself, sip my chai, read and pretend no one else is in the room with me.  I find complete serenity in being by myself surrounded by the hustle and bustle of strangers much more than I do spending time at home alone.  When Mr. LA walks into the chai shop though and yells, “HEEEEY! I go somewhere different for breakfast but here you are for lunch!  Let’s talk about how I know the difference between men and women and how I know everything about gay women,” that bubble of solitude bursts into an explosion of dread as I look up at him, look down sadly at my loving Kindle and close it so I can begrudgingly engage.  Dammit!  There goes a wee bit of shit talking.  I’ll mess up along the way. =)  I’m quite transparent though and as one of my loving friends in the Pi Beta Phi house said to me one night over a decade ago, “Jess, it’s like you have a laxative in your head, your face hides NOTHING,” I’m pretty confident my displeasure for the company of certain people is far from hidden, for better or worse.  So much of me wants to talk about these interactions with someone else but why?  It won’t change anything and I’ll just get my feelings off my chest but why do I need it off my chest?  It’s better to just let people be and then go about my own business without paying any mind to them, right?  I think one of my friend’s 2 1/2 year old daughters said it best, “just worry about yourself mom!”  Regardless, it’s been a bit more challenging than expected.  Now, if I meet someone amazing, I’ll grab a damn megaphone, climb to the nearest rooftop and proclaim their awesomeness for all those willing to hear, which I find much pleasure in doing.  I quite enjoy those moments and I’ve had quite a few of them over the last year, with those new and those not new. 

I peed on my foot last night at Double Dutch.  I wonder if that is one of those “life events” I should log on Facebook on my fancy “Timeline”?  I’ve mentioned how Goa is well, not really India.  I’m not a well seasoned India traveler, nor do I think I want to be but I can say, of all the other places I’ve been there is one kind of toilet and almost one kind of toilet only, Squatters!  Along with those squatters are restaurants were there are no chairs but big, lumpy, uneven, well worn cushions on the ground to rest your tush and a low height table to maneuver your legs around to get to your food, laptop, book, chai or joint.  All of this allows for one to open the hips, sink a little bit lower, meaning your ass, and after a few days time, manage to properly use the toilet without any mishaps. I came to love the squatter when I was living in Dharamsala and I was so pro by the time I left I wanted to add to my “wish list,” for the house I will never purchase again, “squatter.” It will fit lovingly into my eastern style restroom where you can brush your teeth, shower and poo all at the same time thanks to no separation of any of the aforementioned amenities.  So this leads to me to Goa, where it’s so western, down to the toilet and the toilet paper that is actually provided by every establishment, I feel like I’m in a dirtier version of Hawaii.  I felt this, until I actually had to use the bathroom at Double Dutch last night, which is a lovely dinning establishment with probably the best deserts in town, all over western style, but their bathroom is a SQUATTER!  I was tickled pink with excitement as I made sure anything that could drop itself into the hole in the porcelain was zipped up and contained and I started doing what you do after drinking about 5L of water.  Even with as much yoga as I’ve been doing, apparently, nothing replaces the action needed to successfully use a squatter like squatting.  I don’t mean “hovering” like women in the west do, getting pee all over the seats, I mean deep, calf stretching, shin flexing squatting.  All of a sudden I felt a splash and looked down and bloody hell, my ass wasn’t low enough to channel all this appropriately and I had pee on my damn heals.  GROOOOSSS!  I didn’t have many options so I just finished and washed up everything as best I could, used the soap that smells like the stuff we used in Lesotho (god that brings back memories), and joined my partner in crime for the evening for dessert.  I made sure I didn’t tuck my feet onto my chair, which everyone often does here, and as soon as I got home and washed the hell out of them some more.  I do have to say, this last act is actually part of my routine every time I come into my room because my feet are perpetually dirty, walking on all of these dirt paths covered in only god knows what.  I may not mind being filthy while I’m out an about during the day, like when I’m noshing on my fruit, muesli and curd, drinking my apple, carrot, beet, ginger juice, covered head to toe in dirt after a morning of Aerial but my room, and me in it are always immaculate! Each day, along with my Moolabandha exercises, aka: keggels, I’m going to work on my squat so this never happens again!  So if any of you are planning a trip to India or anywhere in Asia, EVER, do yourself a favor, do yourself some squats and you’re welcome!

Another potentially gross fact – a razor hasn’t touched my legs since I left Seattle.  I know I know, some of you lovely hippy friends of mine don’t shave and I don’t think you’re gross, only your legs but I hate body hair, anywhere, except on the head, and even then, only where appropriate. Like these Indian guys with hair on their ears AS LONG AS my hair before I shaved it… what is UP with that?!  And I feel like the time I’ve saved on scull hair maintenance is directly proportional to the time I’ve added making sure my eyebrows are always lovely and I’ll be damned if they EVER look like Iyengar’s.  Omg, man, you’re a yoga legend, I’m sure SOMEONE wouldn’t mind taking some scissors to those beasts atop both of your eye sockets.  Anyway, the reason I haven’t been shaving is because I just got back from my full leg and bikini waxing that cost me a whopping 390 rupees, which is less than $8 USD!  I find it hard to justify wasting the one pack of decent Gillett disposables on my leg hair when I can get waxed for less than it cost me to buy those bloody razors.  Divya has a little air-conditioned shop just across the road from where I stay and I’ve been to her a few times and she’s quite a lovely lady as is her assistant.  Aside from the ridiculously cheap cost of getting my legs done, it’s a little too efficient.  See, I’m used to paying my $130 (ish and I think that included tip) at the good ole Gene Juarez in Bellevue with Basila (GO SEE HER!!  She’s so lovely and wonderful and tell her I say hi!), and spending a nice hourish chatting it up, having some wax put on and than having some wax and hair ripped off.  There was always this nice recovery time when Basila was smoothing the luxuriously warm and soothing wax onto my legs where I could try to enjoy my time with her before the torture ensued seconds later. The moments were short but they were such a nice reprieve.  Divya and her assistant DOUBLE UP!!  While one is not to gently using the hard spatula to wax me up with her homemade raw honey wax, the other one is ripping the shit somewhere else on one of my legs.  God forbid the wax application is so efficient that they both rip at the same time or one right after the other.  *riptearyankpullripripripRIIIIP* one right after the other.  In those awful moments, it feels like the reflexes of pain coursing throughout my body are going to make me go into a seizure on the table.  That’s about when I start to sweat profusely from every single sweat gland on my body and she has to reach for the remote control to crank up the air conditioning, sometimes even double whammy it with the ceiling fan.  I’m a fiery slippery mother fucker, to say the least and based on her reaction, I’m apparently a drenched anomaly in her world.  Maybe I should try this sattvic diet for my damn pitta body (it’s auryvedic shit, look it up).  That all said, I’m in and out of that place of torture in 30 minutes and only $8 poorer so I’ve made a vow that while I’m in India, I’ll be waxing exclusively, as long as I can find a beauty salon with air-conditioning. =)

Peace out bitches!

Xxxx
Dirty

P.S. Time for the 10 self likes and opportunities! Wheee fun!

March 10 Self Likes/Opportunities

10 Self Likes

• I allow myself ample “me” time and understand it’s invaluable importance and necessity
• When I don’t succeed immediately, I keep trying, as long as it’s something I love and really, what’s the point for something I don’t?
• Away of body limitations and not so subtle messages
• Give myself appropriate rest when needed
• Healthy attachment/detachment with new relationships in my life that I’d like to translate into ALL  relationships, in all its forms
• Enjoy a healthy routine that’s flexible enough for spontaneity
• I’m proud of all I’ve done, good and not so good and the lessons I’ve learned from all of it
• I’m patient with myself when learning new things, like AERIAL!!
• If I want to do something, I do it!  If I don’t want to do something, I don’t do it!  If I NEED to do something I don’t want to do, I change my attitude about it and do it.
• I’ve showed immense restraint with accumulating any new material possessions

10 Self Opportunities

• Be more aware when on the verge of reacting and take the time to mindfully act
• Bloody get your sugar fiendishness under control, woman!
• Be nicer when in the presence of someone whom I rather were not around
• Empathize with other’s issues but don’t take them on myself, in anyway
• Find ways to help from regressing to old habit patterns whilst pmsing
• Be more diligent in focusing on the now when I catch my mind where it shouldn’t be
• Listen more and actively and talk less
• Spend more time reading, studying and meditating and less on my phone
• Have more patience for others
• Set up and keep a budget