Free for a song and a dance
In my mind, the ritual of Spring Cleaning is one of the most physically and mentally cleansing experiences ever. By Spring Cleaning, I don't just mean the chore of scouring the house with dustcloths and brillo pads-- though I do mean that too-- I also mean clearing away emotional cobwebs, scaring away ghosts, and rearranging life so that chi flows more freely throughout the internal 'house' as well as the external. Spring Cleaning is a ritual about facing all the scary things that have been shoved away in closets, taking them out into the light and realizing that they aren't so scary after all. Sometimes it's about removing the dust from old thing and polishing them up like they're new again even if it makes them sting a bit. Most of all, it taking baggage off the shelf, sorting through it, checking to see if anything can be thrown out or taken out of storage and then rearranging it all much better than it used to be.

It's hard to get started with Spring Cleaning when the weather insists on remaining so shitty. I'm beginning, slowly, to enter the process of change again. I'm gonna run around the house with a broom and sweep away all the little heebie-jeebies that scare me. I'm gonna scrub the apartment from top to bottom. I'm gonna set up my altar, light some incense and open all the windows to let the air flow around the house. I'm gonna take down the winter walls and push myself into accepting where I am as a blessing, even if it's not the place I ultimately want to be. I think for me Spring Cleaning is initiated by the equinox, set in motion by Daylight Savings and really begins on Easter, the one Christian holiday I actually enjoy. Spring is a restorative time and Cleaning is a difficult process, but one I enjoy immensely.

And when the hell did I become so new-agey? I know I've always had "tendencies" toward the fanciful, the spiritual, the abstract and the "alternative" but it's really been within the last two years that I've actually affirmed my off-kilter paradigm. Sometimes it makes me feel a little silly and childish but overall it feels a lot more "real" than the socially affirmed, banal rationality of the world.

***

The first weekend of the term is always so much less busy than the rest. In some ways, I almost feel guilty for not completely filling my time with homework. But I didn't really HAVE any... and what little I had to do I finished fairly quickly. I did run a lot of errands this weekend, driving all over the planet to pick up groceries, accessories for my camera and other things. I'm rather embarrassed (and ticked-off) to say that I was in such a state of enthusiasm to pick up a 256 MB memory card for my camera that I purchased an overpriced card from Shutterbug before checking how cheap (and how soon) I could get one online. And I could have seriously saved $50. Fleh. But there's not much I can do about it, being that I've used the card and I lost the reciept (of all the 1,000s of reciepts I've SAVED over the last year, I had to lose THIS ONE a DAY after I got it....). Eh. Whaddayagonnado.

Saturday Justin mauled his finger on a Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup can and we had to drive to the store for band-aids and Neosporin since we didn't have either in the house. And, funny enough, we've never needed band-aids until this accident. With all the sharp things we have in the house, someone got hurt on a soup can. Heh.

Saturday night I went to the ballet with our married friends, Cole and Andrea. Beforehand we went out to a very nice dinner at the Koho Bistro, a little restaurant over by Churchill. On the pricey side... but I wasn't buying. =D The ballet was Stravinsky's Firebird, preceeded by two other short pieces. The costume work on Firebird was amazing to say the least. Honestly, though, I'm not a HUGE fan of the ballet. I'm not even sure why. I feel like I should have some obligation to enjoy it to remain a 'cultured' individual but I sort of just feel neutral about it. I did enjoy the shirtless men in one of the shorts though. God DAMN did those guys have abs. And they had a lot more meat on them than the women did. All the ballerinas, while elegant, looked far too emaciated to be attractive.

Cole and Andrea's season tickets got them an invite to the post-ballet reception, a schmorgasboard and chance to mingle with the dancers. It was hard to refrain from making jibes about bulimia when in the middle of a flock of ballet dancers picking at fruit and cookies and probably wondering what they were going to be able to eat now and purge later. I felt evil for even thinking that but after having dealt with my own image esteem issues and having read so much in the past year about eating disorders (including the pro-ana/ pro-mia forums), it's hard for me not to look at any very skinny person and assume that they don't have some sort of problem with undereating or overexercise.

Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm going with this laundry list of my weekend, because there isn't much to say now about the rest of it. I hate daylight savings time but I seem to have adjusted already to the time delay. Saturday I ran another shitload of errands and talked to Alex for a while about some "Spring Cleaning" issues. For once, I didn't manage to talk myself into some bloody awful depression. It felt good to take a load off my mind.

Last night I *gasp* went to bed early and without staring at the computer or televisioo for hours. Justin and I just packed our asses out of the study and lounged in the living room under blankets before heading to bed around 11. I don't know what crack I was on last night, but I had some WEIRD dreams about going to battle with this weird tribe of peopel (with swords and maces and stuff) and this creepy guy who was trying to kill me. I kept trying to figure out how to knock him out or cripple him without having to kill him but the more I tried the harder he came on and the more I realized that I'd have to kill him, the harder it became for me to actually do it. Eventually, I ended up screaming for Justin to help me and we tried to subdue the creepy guy by bashing him in the head with a war hammer or a mallet or something but it just bounced off his skull like it was a wiffle bat. Stupid South Park-Seattle Knights crossovers.

So err, I guess I'm still a violent individual after all. At least the dream didn't have any creepy lingering effects. I feel good today and not terribly tired.

And today is our three year anniversary!