stretching and decisions

this is a picture of a few friends and me doing some morning stretching on top of a mountain in guerneville, california. we were there for our friend's weekend wedding. every morning we woke up, ate our granola and yoghurt, drank our hibiscus tea, and went out to stretch in the sun like hippies.

when this picture was taken i was feeling so beautiful. i'll admit it. i felt hot in a yoga way. i felt strong and healthy and happy-- and then, when my friend sent me this picture all i could see was my belly, 4 months pregnant. see, now i'm imagining people reading this and, out of the corner of their mouths, saying "try 5 months."

i'm getting another tattoo in a week. over lunch my mom told me that she'd had a dream about my tattoo and woke up feeling bad about it. don't do it, rach, she said. it just feels like it's about compensation.

so, what is it about for me? i'm not happy with my body. i want to decorate it and make it prettier. i want to feel more proud of it. and putting art on my self makes me feel celebrated.

and i'm a victem of trend.

and i'm impulsive.

and i'm most definitely compensating for something.

i've made the decision, i told my mom. you know, when you make a decision like that it's just made. it's a done deal.

no, it's not, rach. it's not. she said. it hasen't happened. why don't you take this as an opportunity to think about what you're compensating for.

this is not exactly verbatim, as my mother is so much more eloquent than i am and would never end a sentence with a preposition. she said it in one perfect, straight to the heart sentence.

anyway, i'm getting the tattoo. i want to. i'm choosing to. but i hear my mom. i know she's right on.

as i've said before, it's just so easy to not listen to yourself. it's so easy to just ignore yourself. it's all about decisions. when i want another bowl of cereal in the morning, and i know that i've already eaten a portion that the box would consider approxomately 86 times what it should be, there's that 5 seconds where i make the decision to pour the extra bowl. it's a decision.

random as it all is, that's what's on my mind tongiht. also, as you can see, i've figured out how to i t a l i c i z e.

whole grains and chazzy,
rach