Giving thanks

This year I have a lot to be thankful for and this year I really feel thankful, something maybe I've been half-hearted about in the past, to have genuine gratitude. I feel blessed.

Not to say that I have a perfect life, not at all. I have a bunch of things in my life that need sorting out.  I feel unhappy at times, I yell at my boyfriend for bullshit reasons, I want to drop 10 pounds, I'm 35 and never been married, I want kids but don't want kids, I have issues with my past that feel incredibly unresolved (I should probably go to a shrink and sort some of that crap out.) But whatever, I'm human.

I have my health, a place to live, I own a business, I live close to family and friends. Those things are sacred and meaningful. So to what do I feel the most grateful for? It's probably being able to recognize who it is that I really am - and to accept that person. I suppose I'm thankful to me, to where I've been and where I've come to. Am I allowed to give myself thanks?

Well, I'm going to. Thanks Natalie.

Rainy daze

It's cold, it's raining.

I have too many bad memories connected to the rain. The time my brother tried to kill himself it was pouring out, rain was dripping down the windshield. And the time that my other brother actually did kill himself it felt that the rain never stopped.

It's raining now and I try to keep my chin up. It's always hard though, especially in California where rain feels like a special occasion, a day off in some ways. I'm not quite ready for winter. It's a hard time of year for me.

I just spent $400 on sweaters and jackets to get prepared for the winter. I already have so many. If I can wrap myself up with pretty, new, warm items every year during this time then I can feel ok, right? It's fucked up. But somehow it works. You should see my sweater closet.

Five a.m.

I've never liked waking up before my body tells me to. Who does?

In my business - flowers - waking up at 5a.m. has been a regular part of my life. I do it about two times a week, sometimes on big event weeks I'll do it five days in a row which is completely exhausting and just about kills me, but it's how it goes and I'm not complaining.

Since my little boutique opened I've added a new dimension of early rising to my life, antique fairs! This lifestyle can wake you up as early as 4a.m., especially if you're a Bay Area girl going to Sacramento. So now, waking up early happens, or so it seems, all the time. Still I'm not complaining. We find beautiful things at antique fairs because we get there so early and we beat the big nasty crowds.

So together with the flower market and the antique fairs I've created an early to rise, early to bed sorta life. But I think it's the life I was meant to have. As a kid my mom told me that I would tug on her pants and tell her it was my bedtime. As a young adult I could never make it to midnight to bring in the new year. And now, here in my thirties I can't seem to make it past 10pm.

I like my alone time at night - it's the one part of my day that I feel I truly get to be with myself. I don't even let the stress of setting my alarm to 5a.m. get to me. Because really, the only part of waking up early that I don't like is the transformation from warm blankets to hard wood floors. Because really, being a part of those magic morning hours always feels like I'm getting a little bit more out of life - living more - . When I come back home to discover the house is still quiet and not a soul is yet awake after I've been up for three hours, I feel I've just had the whole world to myself.

Curly

My dad has curly hair, my mom has curly hair, and I have the curliest hair of them all.

When I was a kid I received a lot of complements from adults about my thick curly hair.  I definitely thought there was something special about my hair - something unique. But then I grew self-conscious, noticing that all the other girls at my elementary school seemed to have straight thinner hair and I wasn't interested in standing out. I took scissors and locked myself in the bathroom one night and chopped off my hair. Total mess.

As hair does, it grew back. Then in junior high, when I was 13, I shaved the sides of my hair so it wouldn't be as thick. I straightened it every night before bed and slept on it so it would remain flat. It was terrible. I started dying it, coloring it with markers, doing crazy things with my hair. I figured that if I couldn't have hair like the other girls I may as well make it totally stand out. My crazy shaved rainbow hair sorta took over me - shaped my personality a bit. I wasn't a punk rocker by soul, but definitely by vision, so that's who I sorta became, a punk, a smoker, a troublemaker. I hated junior high.

My shaved hair grew back, I remained a pain in the ass kid, but I was growing up a bit, ready to pull myself together and  ready for a more conventional hairstyle, a bob. I found a photo in a magazine of a model that had just the hair I wanted. I took the photo to the hair salon and asked the woman to transform me. Yeah, well, she transformed me alright - it was terrible - she didn't mention once that my curly hair wouldn't quite style as easily (OR AT ALL) like it did for the straight haired model. I was mortified, embarrassed and didn't want to show myself until my hair grew back. I felt really ugly. I started cutting school on a regular basis. I didn't want to be around other kids. It started looking like I might not graduate. I had a really difficult time.

My hair slowly grew back, looked cute even, and I graduated. In my 20's I really embraced my curls. I had boyfriends and I felt cute probably for the first time in my life. And I enjoyed having a special feature that not many others seemed to have. I grew my hair long, really long and then I really started to fill my artistic soul. I painted. I had a muralist boyfriend. I went to galleries. I worked at an art store. I realized at that point in my life that I never wanted to have a corporate job, and that quite frankly a corporate job would never want me. When I think of big companies and imagine the men and woman behind the desks, I never imagine them having curls - they have straight hair. With my curls I was destined to be an artist.

And here I am - in my mid-30's. I've recently cut my hair again, but I don't care this time. I have my own business now, I have a loving relationship, I live in a great community, and I feel inner peace. I no longer define myself by the state of my hair. It may have taken me 35 years to come to this conclusion, but come to it I have.