Things About Things That I Create

So just before Christmas this year, I got all Pinteresty, and I was super proud of myself for making a couple of different flavors of sugar body scrub that was, in a word, miraculous. In fact, it worked so well, that I really ended up keeping most of it for myself. Sorry loved ones. But anyway, this spring, with the advent of an additional 15 pounds, combined with insta-sweat-a-thons, no pants that fit, and Things Like That, I have discovered, for perhaps the first time in my life, that the backs of my legs, and my butt (sorry Mom) look like lumpy bags of nickels, as my Adorable Husband would say. I have cellulite. I am sure I had it last year, but apparently I wasn't looking. Or the year before that. Or I have just lived in Denial for a Really Long Time, because sometimes, it's just better.

Either way, I have come face to face with the (literally) ugly truth, and combined with the gasp* CELLULITE, I have some fancy nerves compressed in my back that are directly related to the outsides of my thighs, which, being larger, are much more inclined to bang them themselves painfully into the corners of couches, and beds, and have small children collide with them, and bruise hideously, which I sometimes tell people is where Josh hits me with the phone book so there are no hand prints... And long story not shortened much at all, my thighs are FUUU-UUUHHH--GGLLLYY this year. And they hurt. And they are all tingly and numb and weird all of the time. It's super annoying. Sometimes I think that my pants are just all too tight because I have, ahem, expanded, but then I come home and wear loose sweatpants and they still feel like they fall asleep as soon as I sit down. It's weird, and I am sure you wanted to know all of that. Probably I am fishing for a miracle cure from someone out there, like dry brushing, or deep tissue massage that feels like what you would pay $60 for but is actually free, or something like....

Coffee Sugar Scrub.

It came to me, like in a dream. Except I was awake and it came more in stages, when I was asking Aunt Tracey to make me some of her awesome soap with coffee (she makes a Turkish Mocha soap, turns out!), and I was wracking my brain thinking of All Of The Ways to make my legs feel better, even if they look like crap. And I remembered my sugar scrub from Christmas, which I just ran out of, and I had an epiphany, like POW! Put coffee grounds in it! I was feeling pretty creative and cocky until I pinterested Coffee Sugar Scrub, and every one and their Aunt Margaret had already thought of it. So much for Denial. But after scanning some of the recipes, and taking mental inventory of my pantry, which was much too far away to walk to for a physical inventory, I just made up my own recipe, so I could be all "what up, Pinterest, I just totally created. Independent from you. so..."

Anyway, I made it. It's awesome. I am thinking of slathering it on really thick and letting it set for  few minutes to see if it works as a bronzer too. I will post pictures of my brown the-dyed skin later. If you're interested in cashing in on the awesome that is my creative power, here is my very own, and clearly far superior to Aunt Margaret's, recipe for coffee sugar scrub:

Coconut Coffee Scrub

2 cups of grape seed oil

(did some research and liked the properties of this oil, I ordered a four pack from amazon that was the best deal I can find, and it's a LOT.)

2 cups of warmed coconut oil

(obviously people like me, concerned with health and stuff, use organic. and also because it's cheap at Costco)

1 cup of coarsely ground coffee

(again, being cool, I used the organic cheap stuff from Costco)

3 cups of brown sugar

(I would rather use the organic raw sugar from Costco, but I was fresh out.)

2 dropper fulls of coconut scent

(this is optional. I also got this on Amazon. you could also use vanilla, or... choose your own ending.)

Things About Predictability

I am consistent in one thing: my absolute changeability from second to second. Maybe it's the Gemini in me, or the 2nd born screaming for attention and independence. Maybe it's the repressed, über-controlled former cult member who never was any good at following the directions. Whatever unhealthy thing is it that motivates me, I am seldom of the same frame of mind for more than a few hours at a time. Maybe that is why I have worked in 56 different job fields since I became the age that should count as adulthood. Maybe that it why we have moved 7 times since 2008 and it took me 12 years to finish an ever-evolving college degree. I have had it flung in my face that I don't finish things, which isn't true - it just takes me a little longer than the average bear and I like to take the scenic route. A friend of mine called me predictability many years ago, when he told me the only thing consistent about me was my instability. It's true, but my changes are small, and they roll in and roll out like storm clouds. The thing that I want, the things that I finish - they don't change as much as my responses to whatever it is that stands in the way of those things does. Some days I am tough, I am strong, I am forgiving and kind. A lot of times lately I am angry and brooding and bitter and frustrated. It drains me and leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and my muscles aching from the hard work of resent. God help me find the will to get over and around the obstacles and make my way with joy.

I think people confuse my whiplash way of doing things with indecision, or not knowing what I want at any given time. They call it discontent and ungratefulness, and while I am certain that I have all of Those Things, I would have to insist that I know EXACTLY what I want at any moment in time, but it happens to change Very Suddenly And Without Warning. And also, quite often, EXACTLY what I want is EXACTLY what I can not have. I am not sure if that is so much my temperament and personality as it is my human nature showing through. Every morning I wake up, determined to CHOOSE to love the life I have, and everyone in it, and everything about it, but usually within 17 minutes I forget my resolve when someone uses all the hot water in the shower or makes a comment about me having too many clothes... a subject very sore to me right now since only 5% (and the  most recently acquired 5%) of my wardrobe fits. And if that doesn't happen then certainly within 17 minutes I remember that 95% of my wardrobe is too small. And oh yeah, I am fatter than I have ever been, and it doesn't feel good. And all of my muscles hurt from working out, and my stomach is growling from counting calories the day before, and my back is Just. Plain. Broke. And nothing seems to help. And even though everything in my head knows how very much worse I could have it, I find a way to block my well-meaning conscience and feel sorry for myself.

Nobody ever promised that life would be a long timeline of everything-you-ever-wanted, but somehow I watched enough Disney movies and read enough bible verses to actually believe that all of my dreams would come true and I would have the desires of my heart. And truthfully, I have. Some of them. They are wedged in between failures and frustrations and moments of Absolute Despair, which fall at strangely coincidental times of the month... or what used to be times of the month until I lost certain internal organs and now I have no idea when I am being irrational or when The Other Party is just being a total poopface. I have come to assume that if a crazy fit of sweating and chills accompanies the Absolute Despair, it's fairly safe to say that I am being irrational and I should let my hormones heal before I make any life decisions. But if there are not hot flashes combined with the mood swings... Well, let's just say The Other Party feels like he's living in a lot of uncertainty, which maybe isn't as uncertain as he's hoping it is. With any luck (for both of us), I will mellow back out to a monotone lasséz-faire take on life and the living of it.

It will help when I am not spending a large portion of my time every month for a $400 paycheck. I mean, even for a high school kid, it's kind of a ridiculous slap in the face. Even if I did miss two weeks of work. $400? For a month? Jeez. No wonder my self-worth is crying quietly in the corner. I don't mind my job. Some days, it even resembles something that could be rewarding, in an I-changed-the-world kind of a way. But other days, when parents of Very Difficult students hand my rear end to me in a tongue lashing for something that was either A)nothing I did, B)something I did do with the BEST of intentions or C)something I plan on doing because it's the thing their gosh darn kid needs to survive the week, and I just want to hand them my four hundred dollars, kidnap the poor kid and hope the parents get lost and starve to death in their own pot field. It is surreal to me how un-parented some kids are. I know that we are there to teach them, but some days I swear it's also the only place they are loved. For all of my lost mom-of-the-year awards, after seeing what I have this year, I will be the first to say that not only do my kids have it pretty frakking good, but they probably ought to swap roles with some of the students I work with for a week or two before they tell me again how I hate them and I am ruining their life.

I don't even know what I am complaining about really. Again, I have it good. Really good, depending on the hour, and the day. And who I am hanging out with. Or NOT hanging out with sometimes. And if the sun is shining, or it's raining like Olympia in October. I am predictably inconsistent. But I am always that way. I always have been. I DO know what I want, and eventually, I will get it. My goal is to get there without killing anybody. Or hurting anybody. Or heck, maybe even helping a couple of people out here and there. Maybe leaving behind the world a better way. Maybe a few more smiles. A laugh or two. I remember when I was a teenager and I was "witnessing" to a heathen that I worked with and I posed the poignant question to him of what he wanted people to say about him when he died. I expected a somber and confused response, as it dawned on him that he didn't have the Light of the Lord to share with people that they could proclaim from the pulpit at his death. But instead, he looked at me, without even pausing, and he smiled a big goofy smile, and he said, " I hope they say that I made them laugh." I think that I was the one saved that day, a thousand years ago behind a subway counter late at night. It became my goal too. If I can't revolutionize the whole world, maybe they can laugh at my instability and predictability. Lord knows I do.