This ship has sailed

I would like to state here and now that it is my personal theory that being raised Catholic has made me superstitious. I think it is because Catholicism in general is based on a lot of fishy stories about signs from God, but you have to take them seriously otherwise God will make you sacrifice your firstborn child or something. So, you know, when you see a burning bush it is not just a strange anomaly that needs to be photographed with your crappy camera phone, that is God telling you that you need to give away all your worldly possessions. Or in my case, that you are never going to see Tibet. Let me explain.

In case you haven't noticed I have been feeling a little fraught lately. I am not sleeping, I have drugging myself willy-nilly (who knew that Advil PM could be so wonderful-Thanks J) and I pretty sure that most of my family thinks I have one foot in the bin. All of these things tend to make me susceptible to retail therapy. So I went and got my nails done, and I will admit that my favorite part of anything spa related is trashy magazines. Five minutes in I found that schlocky self help article that informed that my whole problem in this life is that I want it all and as a result am doing nothing. Normally I would have shrugged it off, but literally hours earlier my sage husband had informed me of the same exact thing while I was attempting to convince him that Olivia could TOTALLY handle Mandarin and Spanish lessons in the Fall. His exact words were, "There are only so many hours in the day and the sheer fact that you two want to learn everything on this Earth by Christmas doesn't change that fact." I promptly dismissed him and got put on the Chinese school's e-mail list. But the article, people that was the burning bush.

The article encouraged me to fill out some obnoxious worksheet about my life goals and then rank them in order of priority and then be honest with yourself about why you are not achieving them. Then start taking small steps to achieve them all. Remember our life lists from last year? When I looked closely at it I realized that I had to chop off the whole bottom half of the list. This was really hard for me because I had to be realistic about what was fantasy and what was reality. It is was also really hard for me to accept that I cannot accomplish everything given enough time and work ethic. I blame this on the feminist movement that raised us to believe that girls can and should do everything they want. Goddamn Barbie, she didn't give me unrealistic body image problems ( it was pretty obvious pretty quickly that I was not blond) but she totally gave me unrealistic career aspirations, I cannot be a mommy, an astronaut, a ballet dancer and do it all in pink heels. So I gave up Tibet, I hate to fly and totally have no interest in travelling to a country where I cannot identify any of the main protein sources. it feels like an expression of defeat to say that given enough time and kicking myself in the ass that I cannot become this person. I consoled myself with a totally cute sweater from Anthropolgie, maybe kicking the habit of retail therapy should go on the list.

So the above photo is step one. Took Olivia sailing and introduced myself the the kite sailing instructor. He promptly informed me that kite sailing is the most dangerous water sport in the world right now and steered me toward snow kiting. Equally kick ass, much safer. I'm on the wait list.