Today’s prompt was pyramid and I had this idea in my head of an Egyptian pyramid and I was going to write about how I decided (at age 7) to become an archaeologist because of the Nancy Drew book ‘Secrets of the Forgotten City.’* The book is about an archaeological dig (although not in Egypt) and for me it tied archaeology in with detective work and drew me in. I remember telling my Mom that she shouldn’t count on me having her grandkids because it would be too dangerous for me to having them crawling around in tunnels with me on my digs.*

Meanwhile, it turns out that I could not reproduce the image I had in my head and instead I ended up with this odd shape that I couldn’t do anything with. Sooooo, I started thinking about other types of pyramids and came up with my hierarchy of needs.

Ever since I was introduced to it in university, I have been interested in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. And I find it weird when people expect people who are unable to get enough food to find the mental space to be philosophical. I am grossly oversimplifying it, of course, but it is good to remember that humans have very real physiological needs that MUST be dealt with before we start branching out into other areas. That’s an oversimplification, obviously, but still.

Anyway, a few years ago, my friend Megan Francis posted a mother’s hierarchy of needs  which borrows from Maslow’s but adds some things very specific to parenting. That was a really huge connection for me. OF COURSE, we can’t function well if we haven’t slept well, if we aren’t eating properly, but until she laid it out, I had been expecting myself to just function the way I wanted to, no matter what the circumstances. Once I saw her pyramid, I stopped being so hard on myself about quite a few things.

So, today, when I messed up my pyramid vision, my mind wandered to the hierarchy pyramid and I started thinking about the things I need for my own personal satisfaction. There are lots more things I want and need in my life, of course, but these are the things that popped up for ensuring my own satisfaction with how my life feels from the inside.

I’m curious now, though, what would be in your hierarchy of needs?

*As an aside, one of the most fabulous gifts I have ever gotten was a copy of that very book. My dear friend Krista remembered that I had lost my copy years before and knowing that it was important to me, she picked it up on her travels somewhere.

**Funny how my 7 year old self assumed that 1) I would obviously work after having kids 2) the kids would automatically be with me all the time 3) all archaeologists spent a lot of time crawling around in dangerous spaces.

I’m doing another challenge!

This time, it’s the Index Card A Day challenge and basically, all you have to do is produce something creative on an index card every day until the end of July. I love index cards and I love having a reason to doodle so I am running with it.

I’ve decided that I’m going to use each card to tell a little story. Some of them will be fiction, some with be true stories about things I remember and some will be based on stories I like to tell when I perform.

I may or may not use the prompt each day (or the weekly theme) but I did use it today.

Here’s my ‘mixtape’ index card.

And here’s the story.

I know that some people used to make a VERY BIG DEAL out of creating and receiving mixtapes. That wasn’t a thing for me per se but there was one tape that was very important for me.

Before The Man and I are starting seeing each other, we were just friends. I had gotten out of a horrible relationship that took a huge emotional toll on me and it was a bit of a struggle for me to remember who I was outside the context that my ex had constructed for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Man’s company though and we would drive around for hours most evenings with me lying down in the passenger’s seat, looking through the sunroof at the streetlights zipping by and pouring my heart out about how hurt I was, how empty I felt, how much I felt cheated by the time I had lost in that relationship. The Man listened, reminded me that I was kind and good and not at all at fault, and when I had cried it all out for that evening, we would turn on the music and just listen and drive.

We listened to all kinds of stuff. I remember listening to Tom Petty, to Concrete Blonde, and to hours and hours of radio. Then, at one point, a couple of weeks into this routine, The Man puts a mixtape into the machine in his car and lets it play.

Now, to be fair to me, I was never the kind of dame that guys made mixed tapes for. And the songs on the tape were playing on the radio on a fairly regular basis. And we listened to all kinds of tapes both of us had already owned – stuff recorded off the radio, stuff from other tapes at home – so it didn’t occur to me that this tape was special in any way.

In fact, we had a little routine of jokingly arguing about one song from the tape. I don’t remember the whole list of songs but I remember enough for the argument to make sense.

In my opinion, Level 42’s ‘Something About You’ didn’t belong with Sting’s ‘I Burn For You’, U2’s ‘All I Want Is You’ and Bryan Adams’ ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ because it was a whole different tempo, a whole different style of song. There was fun, but no yearning, in that one – at least in my mind.

After a while, The Man and I stumbled into a conversation that led to THAT CONVERSATION and we realized that our friendship was something more than that. Something a lot more. Something that is, to this day, one of the cornerstones of my life.

It was years later, when we were driving across the country to move to Winnipeg for me to go to grad school and we were listening to every tape in our collection, that I finally heard the message that was in the mixtape.

He was right, of course, ‘Something About You’ fits in perfectly.

I may not have gotten the message from the tape, but, luckily, I got the message very clearly from the man.

And, there is still ‘Something About’ him that makes this whole adventure work very, very well.

I have two challenges for myself in May.

I am learning to take better care of myself and I am doing the Story-a-Day writing project.

I already know that I CAN write a story ever single day – I have written 2000 words per day since January 1 – but what I want is to complete those stories and get them ready to submit for possible publication.

Here’s the image I am using to remind myself of my priorities this month:

Yoga mat and notebook – tools of the word warrior.

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and I thought I had posted it. I also thought I would get back to the A-Z challenge. Things don’t always go the way I hoped. I am getting better at being okay with that.
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So, on Tuesday past, my oldest son, a.k.a. The Boy, was diagnosed with diabetes and we spent the rest of the week in hospital learning how to manage this new part of our lives.

Obviously, the A-Z challenge took a backseat to that.

He is okay, we are home from the hospital and getting used to our new normal.

This post is part of the A to Z Challenge. I am super sleepy so I hope this makes sense!

G is for green.

Green is my favourite colour. It hasn’t always been, I did a yellow phase at one point and probably some other colours before that. I really settled into green in the past maybe 15 years. In a way I think it’s kind of silly to have a favourite colour but there’s something about the colour green that just speaks to me.

I have a green tattoo, I feel better when I wear green clothes or jewelry, my bedroom is green and I own a lot of green things. In fact, I have so many green things I actually feel a bit strange when I go out in the world and I’m not wearing anything green. I’m not sure if that’s about my connection to the colour or if it is about me feeling like I am not being ’truthful’ because I am not wearing any when so many people know that it is *my* colour. It (oddly) feels like I am misrepresenting myself as someone whose favourite colour isn’t green (yes, I am very strange).

Anyway, so green is my favourite colour and when I go to the stores and I see something that I like say office supplies in green I also feel like I have only just as a matter like a testimony to it being my favourite colour and to my sisters or my son will often point things out with me that to me and think all that one must be your sweater- it’s green- or there’s your stapler – it’s green- and, even though they are joking, sometimes I find it really hard to resist buying that green thing.

Meanwhile though, I don’t fit in very well with green as a metaphor. I am not particularly naive – at least as far as I know. I can usually figure out the subtext in a given situation and I usually don’t get in over my head. So I am definitely not green in the sense of being unfamiliar with the way that the world works.

And, I am not particularly environmentally inclined, so I am not green in the planet saving way. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for being environmentally conscious and I think those issues are important – but I only have so much energy to give and I pour mine into other areas. I will recycle and try to reduce and reuse and I will act when I can, but it isn’t a driving force for me.

I do love the way the colour green makes me feel though. My green coloured notebooks vibrate with extra energy, my green jade necklace feels like it brings me back to myself, my green scarf feels imbued with power. I love it when I can put a touch of green on anything at all.

And, recently, I bought myself a green tiara so I could feel like I was channeling two different types of power at once. It’s silly but hell, it serves me well, so I will use it.

What about you? Do you have a favourite colour? What is it? Do you find that objects that colour feel different to you?

*It’s kind of odd for me to have favourite for anything actually. I don’t really have a favourite meal or favourite book or favourite song. I have lots of things that speak to me for different reasons or that I go to for different reasons. Some things remind me of certain people and then they are my favourite in that moment, but I don’t have an overarching favourite in many many many many categories.

So I find it very complicated to pick something that’s my favourite and I often try to avoid the question or add qualifications about why I need to be able to have multiple answers. Interestingly, my sons have the same problem. When they are asked in school for their favourite part of the book or their favourite character they are often reluctant to answer the question. I asked them about it and they have the same trouble as me with the idea of a favourite – it seems so final and they don’t want to give a ‘wrong’ answer or one that is less than completely true. I had to remind them that the point of the exercise is the writing, not the accuracy of their answers about their favourites, and I have to remind myself the same thing a lot of the time.