This will probably be my last blog entry for the next week. I leave on Sunday for the Foundation Workshop near Dallas and don't return until next Friday. I am really excited, and for some reason nervous, about this workshop. I have been wanting to do it for ages and in all honesty I cannot even articulate why. I just have this feeling it is going to change things for me. I have no idea what form that will take either. I know almost nothing about what we are going to do there and that is intentional. I want to go in with no preconceived idea of what to expect.I feel like I have been stuck in some kind of rut since Ben was born almost five years ago. But if I was really honest it has been even longer than that. I struggle so much to find my own path and to not feel pressured to do things a certain way. My parents were all about the 'certain way' in life. I think that they felt success lay in keeping up with the joneses and dotting your Is and crossing your Ts. And when I fell short of that, which I inevitably always did, I didn't know where to turn. I had no model of what else life could look like. I apologize if I have told this story on the blog before, but one of my favorite anecdotes is the first time I met my birth mother. My parents are neat freaks. You could eat off their floors. Every time we kids put something on a counter my dad would say "Put this back where it goes". Everything was spotless. I was not good at spotless. For years I would have fits of neatness followed by spurts of slovenly living and then back again. The day I met my birth mother I went in to her house in Eureka and when I walked in I thought, "This explains a lot". There was stuff EVERYWHERE and I mean EVERYWHERE. Stuff made up additional furniture. There was a pile of used diet coke cans that almost filled a room. It was INSANE. My mother would have broken out into hives if she had seen that. And suddenly the 'chaos followed by order' cycle seemed a little less crazy. It was nature/nurture in action. I carry this perfect ideal in my head and as soon as I fall short of it, I let everything go. I am all or nothing. I exercise every day or not at all; if I eat one Haagen Dazs bar, I eat them all. I desperately need some moderation in my life, but seem unable to find it. My life has spun out of control lately. My head and my house are so full of STUFF that I cannot see anything. But sorting it all out seems like an overwhelming task. There is the very famous saying about "a journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step," but I am unable to take that step. All I see is the enormous mountain top in front of me and I decide to take a nap instead. My dear friend Mollie is superficially the opposite of me. Her house is perfect, her clothes are perfect, she is beautiful and always looks so put together. I have had periods in my life like that, but never able to sustain them very long. I know that Mollie is not perfect. In personality I think we are more similar than different. I could use a little more of Mollie's togetherness and she could probably use a little more of my laid back ways. When I met my friend Tara for the first time I felt this crazy kinship with her because she was as laid back as I was. She didn't care what she wore or that every hair was in place and yet she exuded a strong sense of confidence that I also share. I KNOW my value, but I want to feel as outwardly confident as I can be on the inside. And really this is mostly a problem of perception, isn't it? I always have people say to me, "You seem so together" and I almost spurt my Diet Pepsi out my nose. Or they come over and say how neat my house is (in that case I think they are just being polite). And then I wonder what matters more--the fact that I read three novels a week or the fact that my house is a disaster zone? I think it all comes down to the fact that I need to stop thinking life is an either/or proposition. Anyone who has any advice gets a chocolate bar sent to them. I would send a cocktail, but that would be messy.