Having been blessed all of my life with the most irrationally hopeful, joyous and optmistic outlook possible, there are some mornings, just in that instant when my eyes open from sleep, the world tilts slightly, and I feel sad somewhere down where you never look, like something that I cannot express is missing from my life, but I know not what it is, how I can get it, or why it makes me sad to not have it for just that one instant in the morning. It perplexes me for the five minutes it takes me to head downstairs and let Buddy out and start my espresso brewing. Where does it come from? Why does it appear only then and then disappear for the remainder of the hours in my day?
Then I run across something that – as culturally attuned as I often think I am – shows me how little I know and how much I am oblivious to. Anyone else heard of the Big Five? Well, you can go here to see my results. It feels a little unfathomable that anyone who has been reading here for any length of time would be surprised with my results. Please share yours in comments.
And I’m writing this wearing Le Labo Aldehyde 44, which seems to somehow summarize both of those things above. Then I contemplate when Le Labo will release its L.A. city specific scent, and should I get some more scents from Beautyhabit with their 25% off code good until the end of November, and will those new Mark Buxton samples ever get here so I can see if he can do something else besides the same great incense, and why didn’t someone tell me that one of those heated yoga classes with constant movement have better aerobics than running for 45 minutes? I mean, they are freaking killing me in that class, and I can run about 3 miles a day and barely break a sweat. Yoga tips, anyone have them?
But mostly, I want…. cupcakes. I am so seriously jonesing for a cupcake, I could die, and I’m trying not to get one because I’m refraining from that sugar-inhaling activity. So could 11 of you show up at my house tomorrow, and I’ll make cupcakes and give you each one, and then that will leave one for me. Or is there a one-cupcake only recipe?
I say, eat sugar! Sugar is a marvelous thing. I think of once when I saw a giant truckfull of sugar cane rolling down the road in Mexico or the way it is harvested in what’s called the zafra, where the whole field of sugar is set on fire! I make sure I have sugar in my coffee every day.
I, too, wish we could have a cupcake party. Patty, if you’ve had the cupcake you’re getting, take a break from all that yoga and running (wheew.) and tell us all what you had and how it was!
I am wearing Spiritueuse Double Vanille today as my virtual pastry. Strange and wonderful brew it is.
I am going to cry – I just bought the CdG Luxe Patchouli from Barneys at full price. Okay, I also bought FM Dans Tes Bras and as a result got a $50 gift card (and Barneys’ price was $10 lower than Beautyhabit) but WAH! I coulda had a V8, dammit.
Oh well – I am off to take advantage now on the Monocle Hinoki.
Oh, I’m so sorry!!! But at least you got the gift card, which makes it marginally better.
The BH discount is good through the end of November, I believe!
You’re wonderful, Patty. I would share cupcakes with you anytime! Although I’ve found that too much sugar makes me a nasty person. The few minutes of joy bring me much longer negative side effects:( But I agree with annie, go get a fancy cupcake and sit and look at fun magazine that you bought after sniffin’ around all afternoon:d
I guess I diverted from the others by saying sit and enjoy it at the fancy bakery you bought it from. And savor each bite. Let yourself feel spoiled. mmmmmm.
oooh, I know- While you’re sitting at the fancy cupcake shop enjoying your splendid cupcake that’s when you could write in your appreciation journal. See, now it’s guilt free 😉
Oh, thanks, I’d love to have a cupcake group! But I’m making this cupcake thing an adventure for tomorrow.
One big tip for hot yoga: work extra hard on your core! Once you build up the muscles in your abs and back things get easier. I find that cardiovascular actvity generally has little to do with overall physical ability, so those who measure physical ability by jogging may overestimate what they are capable of doing (ie, I run all the time, how hard could a 1-hour body sculpting class be?). If you think about it, you use your legs all the time, so really running is only adding capacity to your heart and lungs. It’s not working all the other areas of your body that you need to do yoga, weight lifting, dancing, etc. And, people tend to ignore the core muscles entirely, because ab exercises are inherently not fun. Get thee to a decline bench!
I believe that as an absolute fact now. I had no idea. So now I’m doing more weight training and core work, which helps a ton.
Ab exercises are boring, bleah.
I’m thinking I should just retreat to a mountain cave and meditate to ease my extremely introverted, relatively anxious and very, very open to new experiences soul. I’m also fairly agreeable, so I’d get along well w/ random mountain goats and fellow hermits and conscientious enough so that I’d keep everything in order and not disturb the environment up there. But the sticking point would be perfume. And clothes. How would I have new bottles and outfits delivered and would I have internet access to order more? Problematic.
Oh, I could never do that! I used to think I was more introverted, but it’s a natural shyness that masquerades as introversion.
No mountain top for me for longer than a week. No shopping?!?!?
I would love, love, love to finally meet you, darling, and share a cupcake…or two! I loves me a good cupcake, and get those cupcake cravings, too, from time to time. Sometimes I ride it out…but usually I give in to the butter cream!
Yoga…I love yoga, but not the Vikram. Regular yoga gives you the same benefits as hot yoga, without the heat. At least that’s what my yogini says. Apparently, Mr. Vikram developed hot yoga specifically for the Americans, because we like to see results, and if you are sweating profusely, that means you are really burning up those calories, right? On the other hand, my daughter loves hot yoga, but I would absolutely die during a session. They would have to call an ambulance!!
Hugs!
and me you!! L.a. is definitely on my list to go to next year, and we’ll plan a nice long chat with cupcakes.
I like that burning calories thing. I know it’s obsessively American, but knowing that that baked potato I just had got incinerated in 30 minutes makes me feel better. I’ve spent a lot of time not really worrying about my health, and that always catchs up with you, so now I have to really dedicate myself to getting back on track.
=)) at the visual of this baked potato (intact, in your stomach, for this visual) just bursting into flames, undone by the intense caloric wipeout that is Hot Yoga!!!
:-?……..maybe it could incinerate the bag of potato chips I just ate?
xo>-)
Wow, just 5 minutes of existential angst? Lucky thing! As for my test, I could have guessed I’d be a creative, neurotic, introverted misanthrope! I’m an INTJ on Myers-Briggs.
If you can find a cupcake recipe without eggs, it should be possible to make a teeny-tiny recipe, right? Although the proportions don’t always work out in baking when you start halving and quartering recipes (I think it works if you measure by weight, but not by volume).
Yeah, really, just the 3-5 minutes once in a while. I attribute it to my shallow nature that just doesn’t dwell on things that are unpleasant very long. Useful for living with joy, but not very good for being the dark, brooding, mysterious, misunderstood type, which is is more appealing to me. 🙂
I think buying a cupcake is really the way to go. I don’t trust myself to make them and NOT eat them…. ALL
Mine was fun and entirely predictable. Shared the results with our admin ass’t who loves to roll her eyes at me as I ignore the reams of paperwork spilling out of my mailbox to discuss theory with our latest group of interns. She mostly grinned and nodded.
:d
Hey, yours is almost like mine!!! My level of obliviousness to slight clutter ad things that really ought to be done is legendary.
Get thee to a bakery for that pristine singularity of a cupcake. And not just any bakery. Find the best one you can think of, because this needs to be the ultimate cupcake. Eat it slowly, thoughtfully, and with the same passion you reserve for other…err…oral activities. :”> It will indeed kill the craving without killing your diet. I know this from personal experience. lol Only for me, it’s banana cream pie. About once a year.
The French have a wonderful word…tristesse. The dictionary defines it as melancholy, longing or sadness, but I think melancholy suits it best. And I so agree that it is part of the transition from dream life to waking life. Most of my loved ones have passed on, yet my dreams are often peopled with one or another of them. In my dreams they are vibrant, alive, I can feel them, hear their voices, and yes, perfumistas, smell their scent. In those first waking moments, when I realize I’m back to reality, it’s like experiencing that loss all over again. It doesn’t last but an instant. The business of going about my day pulls me out of bed and engages me and the dream is forgotten. But for that instant, my heart breaks a little all over again. Tristesse. What a wonderfully expressive word for those moments.
Yes, ma’am! I will get to the bakery tomorrow morning for one cupcake extraordinaire. Never waste foolish calories on something not incredibly decadent.
That word is perfect, as is your description. I know I’ve had those sleeping moments where some I have/still love and are gone are back and fully present, and it’s easy when I know why I wake up with the sadness, but sometimes it’s not clear. I have to assume it must be one of those or maybe I was out playing with my guardian angel in my sleep and woke up unexpectedly.
But it is just that touch of melancholy regret and loss.
I have those 5 minutes in the morning too, and aside from petty bourgeois irritants at work have nothing to be sad about (life isn’t perfect but it isn’t tragic either). That’s when I do my gratitude practice and pray for strength for a minute or two, and that usually gets the panic to subside. But I hear you.
I retook the Myers-Briggs again recently and came out as an INTP, after previously coming out as an INFP. Same diff – an internally motivated, theory and arts driven person wary of confrontation and people who try to control others. That explains my odd fit into my business job…….
What a great way to handle that! I think I’ll try that. It’s better than just leaping up and forgetting it because it’s not a bad feeling or one that horrifies me, it’s just so… unlike me.
I’m an ENFP on M-B, and I used to be an ENTJ, I think. The ENFP actually is closer to my personality now.
About the Yoga– Hot Yoga Kicks your ass hard. Try to go back to the class within 24 hours so you don’t completely die.
I found that drinking a little gatorade or water with a pinch of sugar, pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon (add a vit. C electrolyte packet and mint if needed) helped me to keep going. After awhile your body kinda craves going to hot yoga. Wish I could go right now, though my bun and midwives say it’s not a good idea. sigh. You’ll get very stretchy and lean looking!
I’m just in warmish yoga now, which feels hot to me. I can’t even contemplate hot yoga yet.
When are you due? and congrats!
I’m extremely open-minded, relatively disorganised, extroverted, midway between calm and tense and disturbingly agreeable.
Eat a bleedin cupcake wouldja… I won’t be (have put on 6 pounds from who knows where since October – darn viruses…)
I occasionally wake up with a sprinkling of melancholia, even though I’m a happy-go-lucky depressive… Not sure it ever means much. Normally tired grouchiness. This morning though, I leapt outta bed. Go figure.
What in the world is a happy-go-lucky depressive? I had no idea such a thing could exist, but if it does, you would definitley be it.
All right, I’m going for the cupcake today or tomorrow. No sense in delaying it much longer, but the anticipation is really pretty delicious.
As I told March yesterday, I realllllllly miss you guys, so I am checking in. For the test, I am
I’m a O96-C74-E79-A38-N90 Big Five!!
Pretty close to March, actually. I think I lied about how agreeable I am.
Yes, other than being marginally less disagreeable than I am, we are close! 😉
The agreeableness thing — obviously in the test they went at that issue several ways. I’ll say that I was trying to be emotionally honest, but that there’s disconnect between the way I may *feel* and my (more socially correct) reaction. So I’d say (unless you’ve been in a fight with me!) most acquaintances would describe me as “agreeable,” as I would describe you. Agree or disagree? :d
Um, oh, . . . now you are trying to activate the neurotic side of me, which, as you can see, is very dominant. I will pick–agree!!! I think, really, I am not mean or rude (and neither are you, of course), but (in my mind and among friends, at least) I can be very critical–and I know I am sometimes quite argumentative (and once started, I have a HARD time stopping). My mother used to say (quoting Henry Clay, I think) that I’d “rather be right than president.” Wellllll, I mean, who wouldn’t? :”>
Missed you, missed you, missed you!!!!!! Hey, any time you have a couple of seconds just to pop in and say hi is a great day!
you’re not disagreeable at all, at least not to everyone who loves you.
😡 I am really envying your calm self at the moment.:)
Hey! I’m open to new experiences, high strung, extroverted and disagreeable! Their test must be accurate. Also nitpicky, aren’t they misspelling extroverted?
I’m a O70-C83-E83-A10-N87 Big Five!!
I did hot yoga (the really hot one, right? Bikram yoga?) 2 years ago and it was amazing, kicked.my.ass. Did great things for my body. But. The heated workout aggravated my rosacea so much, on my next visit to my derm for something else she said, wth are you doing to your face?!?! Stop it!!!! Also, the studio near me is really, really skeevy. Oh, well.
Buy ONE really good cupcake. And eat it, guilt free. 🙂 I’d say make 12 and freeze them, frosted, so they won’t nuke well and you have to defrost one a day slowly on the counter, but will they call to you from the freezer?
Finally — the sadness thing. The other day Hecate got up and told me she was sad. She seemed not quite there. I said, what’s up? She said, oh, mommy — my dream is still talking to me. I think there is often something inherently mournful in that transition into consciousness. @};-
~~my dream is still talking to me~~ Very cool!
I think the transition from sleep to consciousness can be both mournful and comforting. For me, it depends on my dream time travels. There have been mornings where I wake up and feel that everything is as it should be, and in spite of life’s challenges, the Plan is working beautifully.
Patty, agree with the one good cupcake theory. :d
They DID misspell extroverted. And because of that I don’t want to take the test and I don’t trust it. Which tells you exactly where I would fall on most of those scales more efficiently than if I had. 8-|
It’s considered an alternate spelling–not a popular one, but not really a misspelling, either.
We work up to hot. Right now I’m just at warm. Considering I either run outside in 40 and 50-degree temps right now or upstairs where it’s maybe 60-70, going into that 90-degree studio is freaking warm! But I see why it would work. My second session was a lot better than the first, so I think can improve quickly, and it’s a great way to stretch the crap out of the muscles that I’ve been beating up.
Spelling error, of course.
That’s it! I think it’s that your mind is running free in sleep, and sometime you wake up in mid-run, and it is just sadness because you won’t finish that thought/place/thing where you mind was, and it must have been lovely. Next time it happens, I’m going to just hang in bed for a while and contemplate.
Hi Patty!
I think those first five minutes are important to listen to-at first wakening, we have our guard completely down, and there’s information popping up-just as if we wake from a dream. I’m of the “just note” school of examination on these brief thoughts.
Dang, eat a cupcake! But a really good one =p~ The purpose of a low/no sugar regimen is to help us completely enjoy the slips :d/
The Big Five (and other “trait/personality” tests) are always fun, though I can’t find the research off hand to back this one. I’ve used the Myers-Briggs a lot at work, and some in relationships, and I think it’s well worth playing with. A couple of valid insights usually pop up, especially on retesting over time.
I got my Mark Buxton samples yesterday from FIF, and am playing with them. Only two stand out-an incensey number (Angel something?) that is Buxton all the way; and English Tea, which is a (surprise!) tea/spice number with enough depth to keep me interested. I was particularly amused by “Unnamed”-heck-did he run out of numbers :d/ ? All the set seem quite fleeting, though I must retest to be fair to each individual scent 😕
Oh, yeah, yoga, baby. Anyone who thinks it’s just “stretching” needs to join my Sunday class. Works every damn inch of me, leaves me completely sore and wrung out. I adore it @};-
Hmmm, did a quick trait analysis from that link. Stronger areas: Extroverted, Open, Free Spirited; weaker but still present: Agreeable, Emotional. Minimally present: Conscientious, Stable, Reserved, Traditional, Independent. Sound right, buddies? (hey, there’s that quietly co-dependent side, no?). Would I hire me? not sure on that…/:)
I think that’s it. It’s not every morning, so I think it is in relation to a dream or some thoughts going through my head, and it is more melancholy (love Teri’s suggestion of tristesse, which seems to fit perfectly) and a very poignant longing, knowing it will never be filled. Hey, it’s better than a nightmare.
Okay, the MB tea thing sounds very promising, I’m glad atleast one other that wasn’t incense seemed good. Come on, FIF!
Yup,yours fits you. 🙂
Hey I’m a freak! That seems best to suit me 8-|http://www.outofservice.com/freak/results/?unique=75.87&nonconform=86.67&dissent=81.53&overall=80.47
8-|OK,guuurl…go to a REALLY great bakery…buy yourself ONE cupcake…leave quickly…savor said cupcake. Now,you have not sinned terribly,and if you wait,you may end up baking 12,at 2AM one morning,and eating them ALL…TRUST ME….I know….signed The Enabler.:)>-
Okay! I know where to go to get this. And I will get just one and enjoy it with my whole heart, and I’ll run and yoga tomorrow, and the equilibrium of the world will be back in balance.
Yes?!?!?!
I’d be happy to come over and eat your other 11 cupcakes tomorrow. 😉 The test was fun but I turn out to be rather irritable (eek!). Maybe it’s just a late-night mood. Is there a secret to getting the code for BeautyHabit? I’m glad that you only have those 5 minutes in the morning. The espresso is probably what does the trick, I know it works for me, caffeine, at least.
Okay!!! so the code for BG is posted on MUA (I never get them via e-mail at all, even though I sign up for their newsletters) is BHCANDY, good for 25% off.
Thank you, thank you! I just ordered CdG Luxe Patchouli which I’ve been lusting after and could not resist at a whopping $71 off! I owe you big-time, shall I send you some cupcakes? 😉