Positive Signs

A good friend of mine just sent me a really thoughtful email informing me that if I'm going to assert my right to be negative and spiritual then I shouldn't be surprised if some people respond negatively. And, you know what?

She was totally right!

I just never thought of it that way. Her email seems like the perfect segue-way to record a beautiful experience that I had today.

As I've recorded I just started working this week after four months off ... well, being unemployed. It's hard to describe unemployed time off as ... time off. "Time off" sounds like a vacation and that's not how being unemployed feels ... most of the time.

Anyway, I got a paycheck today! I agreed to volunteer before my official start date because my official start date involves a business trip ... that I need to prepare for!

I'm going in for what I thought was my first volunteer day tomorrow ... and they already paid me for it! The 15th of the month is coming up, so they must have submitted it in time for the service to cut a check.

As I was walking out to my car this morning (after receiving the check), I saw this beautiful tiny white feather floating in front of me. It was just suspended slowly in front of me for what seemed like ... ever and I was struck suddenly by the beauty of it all and how grateful I am.

What a beautiful sign. Thank you Angels!!




See, I can be positive ... when I mean it! :D <3

Where's the Sex Machine?

I am recently employed ... and they want me to fly out to California on business trip on my first day. Holy shit! I haven't even had time to write all my deep thoughts about being unemployed and how it started my blog. It was going to be beautiful. In fact, I was actually surrendered to being unemployed long enough to document it.

Then ... whoa! wait! I'm hired?

I'm so grateful and happy ... and this brings me to my being-a-woman-can-make-you-batshit-crazy-regardless-of-your-best-intentions kind of feeling. For men, a last minute business trip means a trip to the dry cleaners and a shave kit. For women, that means

• Going through your entire closet looking for outfits
• SHOES!
• Brows
• Makeup
• Manicure/Pedicure
• And ... I am forgetting something. Crap!

This brings me to the sex machine. Sex Machine by Nars is the perfect lip ... solution ...in a pencil ... or a wand ... or whatever they call the lip stuff in a comically large pencil. I have no effing idea why it's in a pencil (or why it costs $25!). 

For years, I have been looking for a good ... lip solution and, years ago, I found it in Sex Machine. Me. All 300 pounds of awkward, geeky, angel-loving, Joss Whedon fan, couldn't get arrested on a speed date with the policeman's union me ... wears the Sex Machine.

My dilemma is that I hate glossy gloss and I CANNOT tolerate lipstick. Gloss feels like I just varnished my lips with lacquer that won't dry. I have even had a hard time talking because my lips tried to glue themselves together every time they touched. The gloss that isn't like that tends to have no color at all. We tell ourselves that it has great color because we need to but it doesn't. That organic, all-natural lip gloss you paid through the nose for doesn't show up at all. I'm your best friend. The friend that tells you when you make bad makeup choices. Speaking of which, you might want to check your teeth for lettuce.

To me, lipstick smells like a crayola crayon. Also, not to be too morbid here, but that crayola wax/heavy makeup smell reminds me of my mom in the open-casket we had during her wake. My mom died from complications related to diabetes. By the time she died ... something had happened that made the flesh of her face sink back into the bones. The mortician caked on the makeup to try and make her look normal. I could smell the makeup about 10 feet from the casket. Why we didn't just go with a closed casket ... would probably take years of therapy to explain. Regardless, ever since then, I cannot tolerate that heavy makeup smell ... and not right under my nose. Also, lipstick feels like tile grout on your lips. You know it's true.

As a result, I have been looking for an alternative that looks good for years, but never more diligently than in the past week. I have lip stains that are really moisturizing! (according to QVC) Of course, they are neither moisturizing nor do they show up. The worst of both worlds. And glosses that claim to not be sticky ... they're all sticky.

The thing that seems to work best for me is a lip pencil with a great lip balm. The quest for the perfect lip balm is ... a whole other blog. Well, not really. It's Neosporin Lip Health.

I discovered the Sex Machine through what I think was another late-night purchase from the Q far too long ago. Anyway, the color? Perfect! The perfect pink. The feel? Perfect! No crayola smell and I can barely feel it. Me when I first tried it ...

OMG! This is perfect. What is it... wait, is that name for real? No seriously, What?!

And it came with a blush named ... wait for it  ... "Orgasm." Apparently, Nars is famous for their racy names. Why? I don't know. It's not funny, cute, or amusing ... well, it is amusing, but not in the way they think. If you are going to make the perfect color, name it 1.239 or how about "Perfect Pink?" Something vague and innocuous that would never cause anyone to write a blog about it.

Wellll, despite the name, I have worn this lip color out ... to the point where I could have injured myself. I found the nub I could not part with on a frantic search through all my makeup last week.

I think George Bush was president when I bought this. Despite how gross this nub is, I actually tried to put it on for the interview and almost split my lip open on the wood from the pencil.

I had to buy a new one. It's a  new job!

When I found the nub ... as you can see, I could not see the name of the color and had forgotten all about the drama of the name. I was freaking out because I had to have it. I need to talk in an interview which means my lips need to separate.

I was running errands a few days ago and suddenly remembered and then, being me, said out loud wherever the hell I was

SEX MACHINE!!

So, I looked it up online and yes that is the name of the color.

All of this sent me to the mall on Monday - I loathe the mall! - to find the Sex Machine. You know life just got interesting when you're prowling the makeup counter at Nordstrom's thinking,

Sex Machine. Sex Machine. Where's the Sex Machine? I need the Sex Machine!

I made it so Sephora and actually asked one of those black lab-coated Valkyries who prowl the store looking for a commission...

Ummmm... where's the ... umm Nars?

Because why would it be easy to find?

She showed me to the aisle and ... No Sex Machine! I almost had to ask for it. Really! The sweaty panic. The hysterical giggles...

I (giggle) just (breathe) need the (giggle) Sex Machine.

Finally, I found it ... and it's just as perfect as I remember ... and no lip splinters!

(I refused to even look at the Orgasm blushes. Because, you know, my dignity....)

So now, all I need is my Sex Machine and some .... Neosporin.

Oh no!

The Positive Police

The positive police pulled me over for another violation today.

It started with a cupcake. A vegan, gluten-free, chai-flavored cupcake. Yes, you read that right. Someone made that and then someone decided to sell that. I know because I processed the transaction.

Well, I just had to post the following to FaceBook:

I just sold the most disgusting cupcake I never thought of: vegan, gluten-free, chai. To my palette, that's like biting into baked vomit.

Wow. That post is even more harmless than I thought. I didn't mention the yoga center where I sold it, the brand, or make some blanket statement about vegan cupcakes. I just said that I think they're disgusting. Well, I was tactful there, but, here, I'll say it: vegan cupcakes are disgusting. And chai is even worse.

One of my very close friends once spent several hours making chai tea from scratch for me ... and I had to look her in the eye and say, "Honey, I love you, but I almost barfed that up my nose." And she had spent hours making it, out of love. If I'm going to be that honest with someone I love, what the hell am I going to say upon encountering a vegan chai cupcake?!

The gluten-free part is fine. I have had some gluten-free waffles that are the best breakfast food I have ever tasted. But chai? And any vegan baked item? Disgusting. I didn't even mention the yoga center until I got to the comments where I remarked that "sale" was not really an accurate term because it cost $4.

I would like to say that I was very nice to the person I sold it to. I just said, "Wow, that's an interesting combination." She said it was yummy and that was that.

Well, today I get called in by the owner of studio so that she could tell me that she was uncomfortable with my FaceBook post about the cupcake. WTF?!

• First of all, why does she care what I put on my own personal FaceBook page? I thought it was odd when she said she wanted to be personal friends with me on FaceBook. Why is that necessary? To police my posts.

• Secondly, I didn't mentioned where I sold it or who made it.

I mentioned that I have a running joke with a friend about how gross vegan cupcakes are (She loves 'em!) and thought it would be funny to see her respond with "Sounds delicious!" and the battle could rage on.

We just want to make sure that everyone speaks positively about each other. This is a single-mother who is supporting herself and throwing her all into this business. Think about if you were some kid who couldn't have gluten and you could have a cake. And that was all you could have. I'd just like you to broaden your perspective on that. I don't want to carry this around so now I feel better for having told you.

What the hell was that? I think vegan cupcakes are disgusting and now I'm out to destroy a single-mom's business and literally steal cake from a baby?

This shit has got to stop. I do not have to speak in a positive manner about things I feel negatively about. That is not life and that is not spiritual in any way. Policing opinions to only speak positively is just a ... cancer on new age spirituality.

If I wasn't a true believer, this would not bother me so much. This would just be a blog post making fun of another new age kook and that would be it.

However, I am a true believer with a ton of deep spiritual experiences that I have yet to get to in this blog. In fact, just prior to this "discussion," the Divine Mother and my own deceased mother had come to me during the meditation at the end of the yoga class. They each put one hand on either side of my face and looked me in the eye to convey how proud they were of me for deciding to take the riskier path in my career. That they believed in me so I should too. I felt so much love that I damn near wept in front of everyone.

THAT is what's real. THAT is the power of spirituality and, more importantly, spiritual practice.

• I do not speak in only positive terms about everything no matter what I really feel.
• I am not skinny.
• I do not eat vegan.
• I do not to do yoga in tiny little spandex "outfits" and $40 camisoles.
• I do not stare if into space like I just dropped in from another planet and spout nonsense about karma or dharma or whatever.

AND I DON'T HAVE TO! These are not requirements on the path to God. Enlightenment doesn't come from this kind of nonsense. If fact, it keeps enlightenment at bay and prevents people from even trying. It turns the spiritual path into a joke. I tell a lot of jokes and I know funny, but this is not funny to me at all.

You do not need to eat vegan cupcakes to hear your angels, your guides, or your Creator. You can be loud, inappropriate, and a total mess and Creator is still eager to connect. Fuck it, you can even curse like I do and it's not going to stop Divine Mother from dropping in with a blessing.

And you know what? The positive police are just afraid of their own negativity. That's why they police everyone else. To connect to Source is to be unafraid of darkness or negative feelings because Source gives you the strength to cope with them and, more importantly release them.

How is policed positivity any different from the dogma of the churches we all grew up in? Don't offend God's ears! As if that's even possible. It this is how we're going to be, let's just be crazy Christians. I don't know about you, but I think I could rock one of those bedazzled crucifixes on the back pockets of my jeans. Well, when I've lost enough weight to fit into my jeans ... but I digress.

My point is that we're supposed to know better. We're supposed to put it into practice. We're not supposed to say we're helping people find themselves by asking them to become someone else. Someone who only speaks in positive terms about everything when their depression is about to swallow them up. It doesn't help and it would be laughable if it wasn't so damn sad.

Dear God .... How Could You Do This To Me?

I have been unemployed for about four months. And I had two real prospects 2.5 months ago where the pay was so low, it was laughable. I had to walk away. (I'll blog about those two morons another time.) Since then ... nothing. It was like I was a leper and Jesus was on permanent vacation.

Then, two companies contact me on Monday, one interviews me on Wednesday, the other today (Thursday) and both want to offer me a job. It's a compliment, but good Lord! What the hell happened? Last time I checked my shirt, I still had the same boobs, no implants, no lifts. Did I get hotter all of a sudden?

When all of this happened on Monday, I was volunteering at a yoga center. Well, "volunteering" is a loose term. When I was on those phone interviews, no one was getting helped. Thank God, no one is in there on Monday afternoons but the instructors. 

As I was telling the head of that center I might have to leave soon for one of two jobs, she was not surprised at all. 

"You took your energy away from it, accepted that it would take a while to find a job, and focused on other things. Then, it could come to you."

Well, ain't that some shit? Really, God, is THIS how we do things? I've always been the kind of person to hold on to a task with a vice grip until it's done. Isn't that what the world tells us to do? See it through. Be consistent. Never give up.

The truth is that it's better to go do something else and take your energy off it ... whatever it is. God, I guess you need space to work your magic. I was suffocating You and You needed some bro time to just chilllllll.

Who knew that you were supposed to take your eyes OFF the ball to hit a homerun? Nobody ever tells you that shit when you're growing up. Our culture has too many overachieving assholes who - not surprisingly - give horseshit advice.

Less insightful but certainly well meaning was the valley girl napping in the back of the yoga center who woke up, then interrupted my regaling her with my white girl problems to offer, 

"It's, like, karma? You're here, like, on an energy exchange, like, riiiiight? Well, that's like good karma like coming back to you."

On the long drive home from today's interview, I had a talk with my guides. I'm one of those intuitives that receives great information from my guides and angels when I'm doing something else, something other than asking them  or "tuning in." It never comes to me when I'm asking but later when I'm doing some kind of .... something, usually driving. (Thanks for that, by the way! How useful to get the guidance to sort out your life while your fucking driving and can't write it down or record it in any way. Speaking of which, this blog entry was so much cooler in my head on the way home than it is now, but I blame You for that.)

The thing is that it's all about choice. Being intuitive and having psychic friends offers no insulation from difficult human choices. For example, two weeks ago, a psychic friend of a friend of mine actually texted my friend to tell her to tell me that there would be two jobs coming my way and that one of them was really right for me.

ONE of them. Not which one. Just ONE.

Awesome!

I still have to decide. It's like Harry Potter taught us, it's our choices that make us who we are. The psychic part helps - I sure got my resume together and started sending shit out after my friend relayed our psychic friend's message. But now the ball's in my court.

No matter how good you are at hearing your own angels, spirit, guides, whomever, it comes down to you in the end. And, it's supposed to.

Choices and consequences. It's what makes Joss Whedon stories so great and life so difficult.

Also, not all blessings feel like blessings at the time. Again, what makes Joss Whedon stories so great and life so difficult. (By the way, good job on that guy! He really is a genius. I know he doesn't believe in You, but most atheists are atheists because they understand You better than believers. And pop! goes the can of worms. More on this subject when I am not overwhelmed with white girl problems.)

I am so grateful to be in this position ... so damn happy that I am giving myself chin acne just like Tina Fey. She summed up my life best (even though she doesn't know me) by saying,

"My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne."

in Bossypants (which everyone should listen to!). I have a big zit above my lip now, so close enough...

In conclusion, God, thank you. No really! The abundance of your blessings ... can be measured in puss above my lip.

(I know, I know, I'm doing it to myself .... blah, blah, blah ....)

OH! EM! GEE!

Setting up a blog is truly a pain in the ass. As a technical writer by trade, I cannot express how much it galls me to see a setup this bad and help with no instructions.

How can you have help with no instructions?

Easy, let the Dbags in marketing review your work, tell you it's too long, and try to pitch features and bullets, which they then force you to put in the instructions. What you wind up with is a help page that contains the following sentence:

"Google+ pages interact in the Google+ world similar to the way that regular Google+ profile owners do"

Uhhh.... which means what exactly? I have set up a page and I can't seem to do anything with either of them ... even track comments. I can't even figure out how to tell people there's a new post.

Thinking about all this is giving me PTSD. See why I needed a spiritual path?

The quest for God and all the funny shit that happens along the way

This blog is about my life. Specifically, about my spiritual path. However, as I can no longer tell the difference between "being on a spiritual path" and just being human ... I guess it's just about me and all the ridiculous, hilarious, and profound things I've experienced in my quest for Creator.

There are two things that define me: I'm really funny (ok, sarcastic) and really spiritual. Typical Sag, right? (That's "Sagittarius" for the uninitiated - look it up.) The funny part - most people know. The spiritual part - I have tried to keep hidden for much of my life because, well, people get weird about G-o-d. However, if I am ever going to be a whole person, it's time to put them together.

I have always felt too sarcastic to be spiritual and too spiritual to be sarcastic - the mean kind of sarcastic anyway. No matter how much I mediate and pray, I'll just never be Doreen Virtue. I'll never be able to sit through a drum circle with a "shaman" (whose really a white lady in Native American drag with no sense of rhythm) without making jokes and laughing. I couldn't even get through the description without doing it! On the other hand, I respect every drag queen's search for Source. Shake that rattle off the beat, sista!

Disclaimer: I would like to state that I am a true believer. I have been profoundly intuitive and psychic since I was a child and have been actively studying meditation, energy healing, connecting to Source, and angel healing consciously for the past 15 years. Despite my sarcasm, I would never mock or disparage Creator, the angels, my spirit and universal selves, my guides, or all the beings of light from Source that have and continue to support and sustain me.

As much as this is a "spiritual" blog, it's about human beings and humans being spiritual ... whatever that means ultimately. Let's face the music and dance: we are pretty ridiculous in a contradictory world stumbling and fumbling for the Light. As much as I'd like to think my path is a beautiful modern dance, the reality is more like Prancercise, camel toe and all.

Namaste (no really - I don't have an OM tattoo or anything, I swear!)