I started drinking this dong quai tea. I have PMS like... I become a monster, you wouldn't believe. I hate feeling that way. I start wondering what "real" and "normal" is. I don't know which of my problems are relevant or just hormones. I blimp out, sometimes gaining up to ten pounds (!) of water, I'm irritable, angry, I want to fight constantly. So I picked up the menstrual health tea.
I had some weird moments at first. I felt my uterus cramping. I hardly ever have cramps, and I wasn't on my period, so this was super odd. But then I looked it up, and apparently it does make your uterus contract a bit in order to strengthen it. Or something. It wasn't horrible, but it did concern me, that and the tender nipples. But also - joy! - I felt wonderful. I was happy and horny, even in the car, and the cramping uterus sometimes made me feel yummers. I thought I looked good, too, and I didn't care what dong quai did to my hormones if I could just go an entire cycle without once clenching my fists because of how Mister Aran was breathing.
But this morning I woke up and knew it wasn't a cure-all. Ah, crap. I snapped immediately, had the same ugly yucky body stuff that always happens around this time. And because I'm all action action action, control control control, I decided to fight. I took a shower, I treated myself a bit, and I reminded myself: Attitude. Gratefulness.
I shouldn't have eaten so much and I should've worked out. But I did go shooting.
About a month ago I bought a simple but good bow, some arrows, and some leather stuff and started learning to shoot. I put a TV box out in the gully between my group of houses and the next group of houses over, lined with trees, with lots of eyeline; I stuffed it with an old cushion and some styrofoam and started twanging arrows at it. And oh, it does me so good. I don't know how to meditate. I don't like to be still. I know there's purpose in meditation and in napping but I just don't wanna. I want to punch holes in things. I want evidence. And archery does this for me. There's eighty things to think of, so that your mind has to be right there, and then there's a moment when you're in position, the string drawn back, your body locked in that T. You breathe, or you don't breathe. You count: one, two, release. That moment, I call it California Zen. You know, zen without all the decades of training and shit. We get our zen down here in hour-long increments. My friends go to Bikram Yoga or whatever and get all zenned. We're too busy to actually zen. I'm verbing zen on purpose, by the way, I like it.
So archery for me is all about that One. Moment. Where I'm still. I took up archery and realized that's why I liked kickboxing so much, because there's nowhere else to be but now when someone's about to hit you. But there's less getting hit in the face, in archery. Hell, I might quit the kickboxing gym and just go to the range every weekend for the same price, just have running and spinning and circuits be my workout.
I'm going tomorrow to the park to hang out with the SCA dudes who do archery. I'm nervous, man. Geeks are tough. I haven't been doing this very long. I don't know what I'm doing. Plus, after I'm done with them, I'm going straight to the Faire, and I'm going to shoot there, too, but after I've drank some cold port from my horn. I will feel better after some drinks.
I'm jittery now. I want to play video games, I want to argue on forums. That's what PMS makes me do. I'm refusing. I don't know how to make this better. I think if I just turn out my little lap desk's light and try to sleep, I'll lay here and stress, and write forum arguments in my head. I get the evil eye from that shit, though. When I've been particularly combative on the internet, I can feel all those people's energies stabbity stabbing at me. So today I promised I wouldn't log in, I wouldn't do it. I worked on my vampire story instead.
I just went into my dark office and pulled some books from the shelf (I lit my way with an open DS, I refused even to turn on the light in there, lest I get tempted to turn on the big machine). I have Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott on my bedside table now. I've put off reading it because the beginning is all such liberal doom and gloom and no matter how true it might be, I just don't WANNA. Mmk. Maybe I'll skim over that, because she does always put me in the right mindframe, and she makes me want to laugh at myself. Then I got Danse Macabre by Stephen King because I am, after all, writing a horror novel. Mister Aran got it for me forever ago and I knew there'd be a correct time to read it. This must be it, because I'm done with all the Sookie Stackhouse novels, dammit! I want Charlaine Harris to write a novel a day, because by god that's how long it takes me to read them, and I am all itchy now that I have to wait for another one. I did order the HBO DVDs of the first season of True Blood, so that's something to look forward to early next week. I've never seen it. I'm nervous, like anyone is about seeing the adaptation of books they love, but I've heard it's pwn.
My writing tonight was (ugh) expository, I think is the right word, where style just falls flat because I'm trying to get something out. Can't look back; style is for the rewrite. Just gotta pound it into the keys. Here's a paragraph from tonight which made me smile. And after that, I'm going to read. I think.
"You were nothing, you are nothing," says Sebastian calmly as he circles the pile of maimed, dead flesh, staring at it with blank eyes. Bryce's gaze follows him. "I swear upon her ashes that you will always be nothing. Yes." He looks up at One with half a smile, almost cheerful. "She is dead. I have never been so strong. You are out from under her spell. Rodrigo did this, and he stole her – interesting that he took the time to create this sculpture, an act of war, really – and her body is gone, and her blood's power has flowed to the rest of us, likely strongest to Rodrigo himself." He does not look up to see One crumple onto the floor. "Which means she is not the first." He steps gingerly to the mirror he'd punched into shards and bends over, peers into the largest of the pieces and combs his fingers through his hair.
posted by Samus @ 11:11 PM
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