It’s also one of the first strong connections I remember being consciously aware of as a feminine ritual. I can remember my mom getting a box of a set of Amway nail polishes. She picked out an orange color (though I desperately wanted the bright blood red) and painted my nails with it. I can remember the cool feeling of the wet brush as she touched it down on my first index finger nail. There was me before nail polish and me after nail polish. I felt like I had been initiated wordlessly in that moment, accepted into an endless world of making pretty through art.

This all came to me tonight as I was painting my nails with this new Julep color from the Essence Beauty Box called Jess. It is a chocolate brown and it occurs to me that I have painted my nails every type of color you can think of but I have never painted them a chocolate brown. It really does feel like painting my nails with chocolate. Mmmmm! Imagine!?

LOL!

Painting my nails is a ritual that I never felt was foreign to me. The minute my mom painted my nails for the first time that day, I took to it like a duck to water and have never looked back. Sometimes I can barely wait for my next nail polish fix. I’ll do my nails a color I don’t even love just to be doing them. There’s something about the act of doing it that’s almost meditative to me, the whole process. It clears my head. It puts me in a zone. And at the end of it I have pretty, sexy shiny nails.

I know that my inclination towards being “artistic” counts for at least 60 percent of why I love doing my nails. I like to use sparkles and sprinkles on them as much as the primary color. But everything about doing my nails also feels sensual and delicate and beautiful, at least when it’s being done right which is most of the time when I’m doing it for myself. I do like my share of manicures when I have the time and $. I might be one of those rare customers who tends to watch every little thing my manicurist is doing and having paid close attention for years, I know who is really good, who is professional and who is an artist, hopefully all three.

I’m not perfect at it, but I’m pretty darn good. And it’s one of the few things I don’t compete against myself to be good at. I just do it for fun, because it feels good, because shine and colors are pretty and literally therapeutic for me. To me the makeup and cosmetics table at Sephora is a potential artist meet up. I go for the inspiration, transformation and creativity which is at the core of feminine energy.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a kind of online morning ritual creator for non-morning types like me where you could type in a few of the things that would get you to look forward to rising in the morning, something that would just crank out the perfect morning ritual customized just for you? Ritualcreator.com?

I’m sure there will be soon. And until then, I will be creating my own.

I’m not a morning person, but this year I’m going to become one. Because this Mercury Retrograde month is finally making me realize that I can’t afford to be out here, getting up in the morning with no plan, no sense of what to wear, how to feel, just scrambling at the last minute and ejecting my half-awake self out into the cold world with nothing but random music to fuel me and yummy breakfast to look forward to.

Nah-uh. That’s not gonna work for me this year. This year has got to be about getting my life in the morning before I go out to face the world. I deserve that and so does the world.

My sistah at Soulsistah4real has had a great morning ritual down pat for a few years now. It’s evolved to where it is now and I’ve always admired and kind of envied her for it. But like I said, I’m not a morning person at all so I have come to this finally over a period of years and years of resistance. And since the time we hung having great conversations about nurturing, honing and evolving our feminine tools out at Spa Castle a week ago, I’ve been thinking about what kind of morning ritual would work for me.

First I think about why I hate getting up. I like being warm and snuggly and don’t like the idea of being pulled out of that. So I have to create another kind of warmth for myself that will make me look forward to getting up in the morning. Namely nice sounds, tea, and or warm water with lemon and a neat clean cozy living room. I’m thinking some movement and stretches should come first, since that’s the last thing I want to do in the morning. LOL!!

Then I will settle down with something warm to drink and do some journaling and intention setting. I’m still searching for some daily affirmations. After that I will start getting ready the way I normally do, shower, dressing, make up, cuddle the cat, pack my lunch and head out.

Let’s see how it goes. I’ll try it for about a week and report back. In the meantime I’ll do a little research on the morning rituals of other happily functioning people.

I’ve always had a thing for fathers, probably because I have such a great relationship with my own father. Ever since I can remember he’s been a friend, a comedian, a caretaker, and nurturer to me. He’s made me feel loved, safe, protected, valuable and beautiful always.

I remember when I was in college being on campus with a man I was in love with and seeing him pick a little girl he knew and spin her around until her feet left the ground. I didn’t know it was possible to fall deeper in love with him but at that moment I did. He was the first person whose children I wanted to have, though that was not to be. But I knew he wanted to be a father I knew he loved children. And it was important to me.
When I was a girl I was in love with Michael Landon who played Charles Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie” not just because he was handsome, solidly built with a great mane of thick dark curly hair and could fix anything. LOL!! But also because he loved his family and would do anything for them. It didn’t hurt that he shared a very special bond with daughter Laura which I understand now reflected my own father’s love back at me. He engaged her curiosity, imagination and love of play and learning. My other favorite TV dads Graham, from “My So-Called Life” and yes, Heathcliff Huxtable from the “Cosby Show” demonstrated the kind of sensitivity, humor, patience and courage needed to deal with children at various stages of their development with the help of smart, understanding, sweet multitasking, no nonsense wives.

My favorite reality tv dad? Rev Run. I could seriously watch “Runs House” all day. “Rev Run’s Sunday Suppers,” “Rev Runs Around the World.” I love it all.

This morning as I was getting dressed for work, Obama’s teary face appeared again on the news as they recounted his gun control speech and I just thought about the beautiful powerful message communicated in his ability to shed tears on camera, how powerful it has always been and will continue to be for future generations. He doesn’t try to hide his feelings or demonstrate a fake tough exterior. His toughness is real and so is his vulnerability. He is a father and tragedy that strikes at children anywhere is something he clearly responds to from a heart space because he is a loving father.

Good fathers are a blessing and an inspiration and as much as Obama is known for being the children’s favorite President right now, I believe that the powerful influence of his devotional example is still on the rise in ways yet to seen, heard and felt.

From the beginning it was clear that two principal elements informed Murakami’s fiction: a focus on some internal being or consciousness that worked with the conscious self, sometimes in concert, other times antagonistically, and the nearly constant presence of a magical ‘other world’ in which this internal being operated. 

-Matthew Carl Stretcher

The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami

This may sound a little odd but on occasion I go out with no definite goal in mind. I’m not shopping or looking to buy anything, not meeting anyone, not attending a talk or class or workshop. I just feel the need to go out and see what happens. In most instances this would be a nature walk with my camera but since it was too cold out today, I didn’t envision myself strolling through Central Park. I just wanted to get out and I had no idea really where I wanted to go. I just knew the sun, which seems to have taken a break for a few weeks was out. And I needed to get out while I could still see the color of the sky.

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