Yeah...and so, anyway...

This is as close as I'll get to candy this Halloween. I used to think this song was so cute when I heard it on the radio. The video is even cuter. Young guys talkin' about love...isn't it sweet? Yeah...that "love" thing...

I had what I thought was great idea for a blog yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, it was lost to the puzzling haze that functions as my brain these days. What was it? Too many changes, I guess. But I wouldn't have it any other way. At least I think so. It's hard to tell what I think because all manner of toxic stuff is leaving my system. I was too sick to go to work for most of this week, and when I came back today, I was a bit overwhelmed. There were all the regular students in the tutoring center, plus what seemed to be a hundred more. Like I said, it's hard to think. I don't know if it was ten or a hundred. Whatever the number was, it was too many. Luckily, I was called in to do a workshop called "Preparing for the Writing Proficiency Exam". I could do the presentation on automatic pilot because I'm very familiar with the topic. I used to score that test when I was in grad school the first time. Not to mention that there were only two stu...

This says it all for me right now. It can only get better. Recovery, my life, relationships, my health, this planet. I believe this today. Thank you, Pearl. Indeed you are precious. (Yes, I do love this retro 80s song!) And thanks to the High Tide for his support, and Rose, Alice, Claire, Catherine, Cindy and Mari for being there on the phone when needed. Ya Baha'ul Abha'! Keep your head to the sky!

The sunshine is gone. All right, get out of your system--one, two, three: "Ain't no sunshine when he's gone..." Yeah, I know Bill Withers said "she", but in my case that pronoun doesn't work. But the sunshine is literally gone today. Cloudy, overcast, drizzling rain. Pretty much fits my mood. I guess if I'm going to be depressed, I might as well enjoy it. What else can a woman do on an overcast Monday afternoon at work when even her usual students aren't coming in for tutoring? Cue the melodramatic violins. This is Angela who's been two months without chocolate and five days without her other addiction. I didn't even know I STILL had the other addiction until this morning. I think I better dig out all of my old co-dependency self help books and re-read them. There's some concepts that either I didn't understand or unconsciously skipped over because I wasn't ready to face them. But that's life. When you are rea...

I wrote this for a creative writing class that I'm taking this semester for fun. The assignment was to write a piece of creative non-fiction, which was called "new journalism" back when I was getting my bachelor's in English. But it's been a great experience to be a class and writing in this genre again. My instructor advised that I do a hybrid graduate degree in journalism and English because that would create more job opportunities for me. Since I was a news reporter before children and I loved that job, I think I'll follow her advice. Summer in the Philippine Islands can be extremely pleasant. I remember the warm and humid days, but often there was a breeze blowing inland from the massive Pacific Ocean that kept the temperatures from rising into the triple digit range. The skies were clear blue and nearly cloudless, a personal requirement for a perfect summer day. From 1966 to 1968, my family lived on Luzon, which is considered to b...

Forget saying it flowers...the damn things die too fast. I've always said keep the flowers; give me the chocolate, but I can't say that anymore. So don't bring anything. As you can probably guess, I'm in a mood tonight and the moon isn't even full. Be thankful, world. You're safe. So instead of howling and transforming into a snarling, pissed off-hungry beast (which is what I was earlier, before yet-another-salad-I'm-so-sick-of-lean-protein-and-vegetables), I want to invite YOU, dear reader, into the treacherous and uncharted regions of my moods. It's Angela's Saturday night, and she's not feeling all right. It's a test, I know. And I'm saying prayers through clenched teeth. The following is a musical jaunt through one of the most terrible days I've had in a very long time. Let's start with this morning. I woke up in a state of alarm to the phone ringing: "Angela, I just wanted to remind you that there's a LSA...

In part, we're afraid to face the fact that daughters with eating disorders are carrying their mother's disowned pain and anger. Mothers have a powerful effect on their daughters' lives because girls watch their moms' every move. No matter how much mother's try to cover up their pain, they still serve as models for womanhood, and their daughters have a keen and vigilant eye. Too often the mother-daughter wound is based on unconscious enmeshment, a blending of boundaries, a failure to see where you begin and your mother ends. This failure creates self-destructive behavior that is played out on the plate. Preface to Women and Food Obsession: Fat and Furious by Judi Hollis, Ph.D. I was getting ready to leave for work one morning when my mother lifted her head off her pillow and pushed herself up from the pull-out bed in my living room where she spends most of her time when she isn't in the hospital. She looked at me with her eyes shining with an inexplicable mi...

Yesterday, the area that I live in held its annual convention to elect a delegate to the National Convention of Baha'i in the United States. Every year, the convention seems to get better and better for me. I'm understanding more about how the process works these days, and that is a blessing. I used to go to what was called district convention for years, and wonder why I was there. It wasn't that people weren't doing what we were asked to do during convention. It's just that my head was so cloudy at the time with all of my overeating, I really couldn't comprehend much of anything. That I was able to not only understand what was going on at convention, but also fully participate in the process is, to me, a miracle and testament to God's transformative power. I never realized how much overeating affected my thinking process and interactions with other people. The way I know that now is that some clarity has arisen from the act of remaining abstinent ...