Moving

In my quest to write I have decided to move to word press sight. I have some new posts there and thought I would invite those who read me here to join me there. so here I am The new blog is called Platypus pondering here is the link:   http://platypuspondering.wordpress.com/

Nourish

I have been working on a healthier life for my self and have found it interesting how much I try to make my self suffer for it. Not just in depriving my self, contrary to popular belief people who weight more than they are supposed to do medicate with food but also are very much into making them selves suffer in it.   I found a saying the other day that is sticking with me. Fear makes you cling to the strangest things. This is true in this fear of failing makes me not eat all I am supposed to eat of the good things and when I do this that makes me spin off into unhealthy behaviors. This is so true for me in life not just trying to be healthy.

                   I wonder what life would really be like if I treated my self well nourished my self well and lived well. not extravagantly that would just be uncomfortable for me but well. I am on a mission to find out taking what I need not just the scraps I allow my self out of a lack of care or business really taking time to care and do what is right for a good life. Even writing that I feel the need to disclaim about not being selfish and self centered how sad is that. Just taking time to actually take care twists in my head to being something abhorrent to me. (sigh) Maybe one day this will be second nature to me but as for now I am setting alarms to eat lunch take a break in the after noon to stretch and enjoy 10 min minimum to care for my self. I am hoping making these appointments with my self is a good step in the right direction.

The Others

           I have been thinking this morning about a challenge a friend of mine made to me to think of  the 10 things that are most important to me. with all the things going in politics here in WI and around our country I am thinking of Arizona and North Carolina as I write this One jumps to mind I wanted to share here. I have been noticing it all day in looking at the propaganda posts of all sides the cartoons and "news" posts is that the old ways are still effective. Making some one other than us makes them distant and then we can cast all our fear and negativity on them. It is dangerous in my mind to do so all propaganda has started this way all hate lives here. When someone is unlike us we distrust them because after all if they had the same information as us they would believe as we do, and if they do have the same information they must be stupid or evil wanting destruction of us all.

                 Look at the stereo types placed in cultures The Indians wanted to kill us, the Micks were rats taking over. IN our own day look what is said about people that are Arab, Black, or of Hispanic decent in the name of saving our people / protecting our borders or gay marriage. They are going to bring the destruction of us all. We will live in jejad, and the Mexicans are going to over run us, and the gays will bring about the down fall of marriage. The call for this is is that they are other than us they are not like us, their values are different so they are flawed. This has all been said before Russians in the cold war, the Irish in the turn of the century were going to over run our nation The end of slavery and Jim crow laws were going to bring down our economy and letting couples from other faiths or races marry was going to bring down the institution it self.

                               If the border thing is so true why is it always the southern border we worry about I am closer to the Canadian border both our our allies there are as many Canadian people here illegally as any other.  No one disparages the  pick up hockey team from there, or the very polite people at the coffee shop, But the very polite people buy salsa are so different? The equality of all people in our nation has done so much to enrich our lives as a people so many people from other cultures have added to us as a people not taken away.

         Couples inter marry with other religions and races (my self being one) and very live happy lives. This was not so in just the generation before us. Hundreds of thousands of Arab people live in our country and want it to do well for their children and them selves because it is their land too. That actions of a few horrible people should not taint our view of all people. Most serial killers have been white do other people need to worry that we will go all Dexter on them?
              The moment we make someone different from our selves an "other" it makes it ok to do things say things we could not do when we see them as our selves as valuable. It allows fear to rule us, fear makes a poor ruler. If someone is valuable even if they are different from us, if not only that but they can offer us a wider view of the world then we hold in our singular look at it. Giving perspective and wisdom to us that other wise would be lost showing things we would not want to see or would gloss over, makes us stronger. It takes hate out of it. How can you hate someone like you how can you hate one of us. Hate never rings perspective never brings growth it keeps one trapped. I listened to a TEd talk the other day about being wrong and the one thing that stood out to me in it is that being wrong has no feeling it feels very much like being right, till we are proven wrong. If all we do is hang out with those like us there is so much we could be wrong about and never know. I am a firm believer Love wins every time Love is stronger than hate. In Love for others there is not room for making someone other than your self they are like you human. Love can cast out fear, there is no reasoning with fear and hate. It does not make us free it enslaves us limits who are as a people: makes who we will be smaller then who we could be. Both as a nation a people and human-beings.

Should I stay or should I go now

FOr those that do not know I am Dyslexic, now there are many types of dyslexia mine happenes to be eye hand cowardination on
top of moving letters and numbers around. so sport and physical activity has always been torcher for me. Gym class was a nightmare. Exjock jerks running the class with drill sargent mannerisums and sencitivity of a sociopath. Not exactly the warm friendly place that invited one to try and fail or try and not do as well as you could. To top that off I grew up with a sister who was very athletic and just naturally good at those things. Never able to live up to the sister I admired and so wanted to be like, but never could. I started to view those kind of activities as torcher. Competion became viewed as someone standing over me saying you suck and stomping my throught. So for most of my life  I have avoided those type of activities and became kind of judgmental about those that took part in them. I so had the Revenge of the Nerds view of the world. Oger was going to humiliate me if I ventured out and tried so why try.

I have met a few people that chalenged my mind set people with huge hearts that ran marathons and took on physical chalenges just for the chalenge. A part of me always waited for the inner Jock from the 80's movie to come out and regect me as the art geek or just plain geek. This is so imbarising to actually write down but it is what is going on in my heart every time I choose as a women with more fluff than stuff to step out and face excersize and the riducual I was sure to face. So 4 months ago I asked the Lord to help me with this, I was ready to step out and make some healthier changes start to walk every day I really wanted to. So the next day a friend of ours asks my husband to be a part of the tough mudder. Incase you have never
heard of this it is 10 mile run laced with 25 crazy obsticals that are stupid hard like 12 foot walls not just wall WALLS, run through
fire, climb a greesed half pipe, and elctroshock staion and so much more things I never want to do. So my husband who had never even just taken a walk for fun started to train for this. I was afraid of so many things first that he would change from the loving funny warm hearted man I fell in love with to Oger who would abandon me for a short little beautiful blond bimpo after mocking me to a bloody stain on the floor. Needless to say my part of the "I will do this with you" happened so much less as the fear rose up in me. He would faithful get up almost every day and head to the gym or for a run and I would both cringe and be proud of him waiting for the shoe to drop.

So four months later we are heading for the event. He is all ready to go in full Nacho Libre costume on I tyed off the mask and he runs 3 miles to the starting line of the 10 miles race with 25 obsticals while I pay his parking pull out my chair to watch. I was with my sister, my soul sister and their children. After finding out how far away the start is and registration It slowly dawms on me I am not going to make it all day and my husband just gave me his keys, money and glasses 2 of which he can not drive home with out. I
enjoyed waching the chalenges and seeing people help each other  over very hard things they could not do alone but the stranger or team memeber next to them helped them do it. So my sister takes the kid to find a bathroom while my soul sister and I walking slower start off in what we think is the starting line, but soon becomes more a death march for me in the heat. We flagged down one of the carts driving around and I was going to ask for a ride but as I walk up looking in the eyes of the jocks sitting in it I was
unable to ask my voice shrank backand I froze up and they looked at me and said "we are working no people on the carts." and drove off. In my mind the laugh minacally as they did so.

So we marched on unknown to us taking the longest way posible to the next obstical and I was done. there was shade there so I set up and my soul sister went off to find the kids, my sister, food, water, and the start line. a few min later a clever sassy text for a friend of mine that was uable to come pops into my mind so I go to pull out my phone to find it gone. Alone with jocks and no smart remarts to be typed. I really started to watch I saw a few people I was dreading run by but the majority were people helping each other cheering each other on chalenging and celbrating togeather. I was shocked the first time I saw this at the greezed half pipe but convinced my self they were just helping their friends and it was a fluke. But as I watched the people I noticed some of the strongest people giving a hand to people they odviously did not know. It turns out watching this that the thousands of people who signed up to torcher them selves spent the time helping everyone around them running jumping and over coming fears. It was the best example of comunity I have ever seen. My husband came across a 70ish year old women taking on this chalenge and she was
stuck on a high jump unable to jump down in the water her friends had all asked her to jump with them and jumped she was stuck up there he held out his hand and said I am a super hero jump with me and she did, she let go of her fear and took the leep.

Wow what an example of life and how we are suposed to live.
So sitting on the sun watching this we had to leave before my husband finished I was just a short time away from hitting the ground and not getting up again. Littereally as we went to the parking lot I felt my eyes closing and I was going down. My sister dumped water on my head and the air in the car revived me. When I talked to my husband and I heard all the stories and how he finished I cryed I was never so proud of anyone ever in my life. He then told me he had called my phone and one of the mudders was going to mail it home to me, I hold it in my hand now a few days later.

So now I am left with a chalenge to my Ogger jock look at sports and those that do them. I am left with the chalenge to take up the chalenge and run at the wall trusting someone will be there to catch my arms and help me up.
 Can I venture on to the course?
I  am willing to try I am willing to trembling step by step venture into a world that has mocked me and made me feel small all my life? 
Could this mudder type world be for me too or just for others but I can watch but never be really excpted by.
This is the place I stand do you feel this way in places of your life like all the wall is there and your bloody from running into it but there is no way around it. I feel the thunder as I step on the feild with a close up lens on the camera each blade of grass curling around the shoe the contrast of colors very evedent will I dare to go?