Happy birthday, dear pancreas

I spent my birthday riding my bike all over creation, sniffing beautiful flowers, opening sweet gifts, sharing lunch with friends, reading cute cards, and playing with a trio of French bulldog puppies a woman walked past our picnic table at the park. Oh – and working. Always working. But it's been a good day, a gloriously clear, warm, blue and gold summer day in Northern California, and it ain't over yet.

In the spirit of celebration, I've decided to move back over here and just continue writing where people know how to find me. I am leaving the archives unlinked for now, maybe just for a few more weeks ... Not for any especially compelling reason, except that I just feel like it, so I'm doing it.

One interesting thing about this whole mini-drama is that it's really highlighted for me how exhausting it is to hide. I guess I'd somehow never realized that before; it always just felt like the thing I had to do to feel safe, and feeling safe was such an overwhelming relief that I never noticed how tired I was.

Anyway. It feels good to be writing here again, and I've moved over the entries I wrote at the "secret" location, just so I'd still have everything all in one place.

As for my health issues, I think what might be happening is that I'm not eating enough carbohydrate, and my liver is trying to compensate by dumping glucose into my blood. It can do that, you know! Sugar gets into your blood not only from the food you eat, but also from your liver (which technically gets it from food, too, but let's not over-complicate things). It's a wonderful organ, the liver. Probably my favorite one, after the heart, brain, and of course (now) the pancreas. Love that pancreas!

In fact, I spent about a half hour today googling for pictures of the human pancreas .... looking for photographic images I could use in my meditations to support the poor little beleaguered thing. I didn't find much that was inspiring – most of them were of animal pancreases (pancreaii?), or human ones that looked pale, shabby, flabby and dilapidated, presumably from cadavers – not the radiantly healthy pink glistening pancreas I want to envision. So I'm just going to paint my own picture of it (with glitter!) and use that. At least now I know what it looks like!

The other thing that seems to be happening is that I'm not eating enough calories. That's an amazing thing for me, the person who just a few months ago was always ravenous, and had been for years. Not that that's really changed – I'm still hungry all the time. It's just that I never really feel like eating anything. Or maybe it's more that the things I would usually eat when I felt really hungry are more or less off limits to me now forever, and thinking up new things to eat seems like more of a bother than it's worth. But I now know that that's not a good enough reason to Not Eat when I'm starting to crash. So I'm putting together a schedule – eating times, menu items, exercise times, testing times .... This is where my boring tendency to establish and maintain routines (some might call them ruts) will serve me very well, I think.

My horoscope has had this to say lately:

Last week: How well are you capitalizing on this year's unique opportunities, Cancerian? Now that we're almost halfway through 2007, let's take an inventory. I'm hoping that six months from now, you'll look back and make the following declaration: "I can't believe I'm saying this, but this year I realized in many colorful ways that limitations are my friends. The obstructions I faced eventually forced me to become far more resourceful than I'd ever been before. The wastefulness I uncovered showed me how important it is to shed my trivial wishes and focus intensely on my top priority desires. The confusions I encountered taught me valuable secrets about how to master my emotions and dissolve my superstitious fears."

This week: Welcome to Part Two of your outlook for the second half of 2007, Cancerian. We're checking up on how you're progressing with the long-term tasks you were assigned six months ago. I hope that by now you're better organized and more disciplined than you've ever been in your life. The astrological omens suggest that the year's best rewards will come if you're relentless in clearing out clutter, working with maximum efficiency, and having precise and well-formulated plans. If done right, your intense attention to detail will help win you access to profound new levels of inner peace.

So yeah! I'm liking the focus on efficienty, precision, planning ahead, attention to detail, and especially that last bit about profound new levels of inner peace. I'm looking forward to that.