My Mondo Beyondo class has come to an end.

The time really flew by and I’m pretty saddened that it’s over and yet completely exulted and inspired.

Mondo Beyondo is a class about dreaming big, about conquering your fears, about all the hippie dippy shit I am totally into. Talk of energy and the Universe with a capital U and loving yourself and setting things free and uncluttering and making room and giving and receiving. All of this revolves around your Mondo Beyondo List, something slightly resembling a Bucket List, huge gargantuan dreams that you wish to come true, ways you wish to improve your life, secret hopes you feel silly for sharing.

I was so inspired by the women and men in this class that I decided to post my Mondo Beyondo list here. I was hoping to hit a hundred but so far am stuck in the mid-80’s. I’ve come to terms with that since I figure the older I get, the more the list will expand and adapt. It’s worthy to note that many things on this list are feasible, many can be accomplished but more important than actually completing the list was my courage to write it in the first place. To simply believe that I was good enough and confident enough to challenge myself in new ways. To put my faith in God and in the Universe with a capital U and most of all, in myself.

This class really picked me up out of a creative slump. And whether or not my Mondo Beyondo list becomes a reality (full disclosure: three items are already checked off!), I feel so grateful that I spent the past five weeks investing in my creative side. That I made space for my dreams and my hopes, that I made peace with the girl I wish to become and the girl I already am.

I loved this class so much that I’m considering taking it again in the future. And should you need an artistic kick in the ass, the next available course begins in January 2010, the perfect time for a clean slate and a big fat list of secret dreams.

And so, here you go, my Mondo Beyondo List circa November 2009. I will post a permanent link to it soon.

I’d love to hear some items from your possible Mondo list in the comments! Should you choose to share. Or…if you had big dreams and they already came true? I’d like to hear that too.

Laura’s Mondo Beyondo List November 2009.

Oh yes.

You will.

Enjoy your last few moments in the outside world because down my throat you shall go.

Oh yes.

You will.

Best,

~LD

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this movie.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it.

If you haven’t, might I suggest you never ever entertain the idea of viewing this movie ever in your life?

You’re welcome.

Let me preface this by saying that

1. I do not watch scary movies. There was that one summer Tom and I watched “The Shining” over and over on repeat but I think it was because after about six times, it stopped being scary and started being HILARIOUS. Jack Nicholson in the maze? Dude, that is comedy.

OH! I also went on a date in high school to see the Blair Witch Project. (They asked for our ID’s because it was rated R and I was only sixteen and I had to ask my mom to buy my tickets before she drove off NO I AM NOT KIDDING,YES I AM STILL EMBARRASSED ABOUT IT.)

Um. That’s it. I think.

I don’t watch these types of movies. I’m not a fan of them. I scare easily. My imagination goes nutso. Uh. Yes. So naturally, when PCG was all EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS SCARY MOVIE! LET’S GO! I was all, DEF! I LUV SKERY MOVIEZ!!1!!1!!

…

Here’s the part where I punch myself in the face.

Also, we’re still prefacing so…

2. I’ve had a hard couple weeks. Work dumped this project on me, I’m there late into the evening, corporate America whine whine. By the time Friday rolled around AKA Movie Night, I was exhausted. I’m talking…delirious. To make it worse, I told PCG I would meet him after Bikram Yoga class. Therefore, I was not only exhausted, but exhausteder, starvvvvvvvving, delusional and stretched out of my mind.

But PCG was looking forward to movie night! And hey! ME TOO! I attempted to rally! I had some dinner! I told myself it was JUST A MOVIE and a movie that didn’t involve zombies ripping people’s flesh off so come on! You’re a big girl! You can handle it!

Guess what?

I couldn’t.

And I was not alone.

I will now give you a few examples of other people in the Queens movie theater who couldn’t handle it, for various reasons:

1. The old guy behind me who was snoring throughout the entire thing

b.) The foreigner next to me who kept mumbling in his native language and then intermittently tossing out a few “IS DIS FUCKEENG REAL?”

#h.) The woman’s baby behind me.

Yes. That’s correct. A woman brought her baby. I’d say about a year old? It was cooing and babbling for a good half hour until one quintessential Queens man turned around and said, ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME WITH THAT BABY?

The baby was promptly escorted out by a mother who looked deeply offended. How dare someone curse at her and her baby. The baby she brought to a horror film in a movie theater.

But hey! Back to me. This is my blog after all.

YOU GUYS?

I was terrified. I was shaking, I was hiding my eyes, I was cringing, I was begging PCG to take me home. In fact, I almost pulled an Owen and screamed I AM SICK OF THIS right there, in public, in the dark.

That is how much this movie FLIPPED ME OUT.

Afterwards, I couldn’t get the images out of my mind. I drove around Astoria for awhile, I turned all the lights on when we got home, I tried everything. I could not erase it. And to make it worse, PCG wanted to talk about it, thinking it would help lighten the mood.

“Hey, remember that part…”

“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

By that point, I was so tired, so frightened, so sleepy that after a few instances of REMEMBER WHEN/SHUT UP SHUT UP, when PCG tried to make me laugh and tickle me a little bit?

I cried.

Flat out sobbed.

I yelled at him that he was scaring me and that he was a horrible human being while he just stood there mouth hanging open like, “Who is this person and why am I dating her and can I trick her into taking some Paxil?”

I got in bed and slept for thirteen straight hours.

When I woke up, everything was back to normal. No demons were possessing me or my apartment or anyone named Katie.

To be honest, I still can’t seem to shake certain moments of that film. But now that I’m well-rested and have my head on straight, I can bring them up in conversation, ad nauseum, without crying. And so, PCG is constantly subjected to me wanting to reminisce about this movie as if it’s some lovely experience we shared, as if I had the best time of my life, as if I didn’t start sobbing after I saw it because he tried to tickle me.

“PCG?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember when the door…”

“Laura?”

“Yeah?”

“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

Halloween, 1986

My now left-leaning liberal brother Paul as a GI Joe, Mom in her 80’s stirrup pants and me, as an orange Crayola Crayon.

And then I sort of panicked.

The older kids were easy: homework, dinner, books read, light supervision, easy peasy.

BUT A BABY?

A YEAR OLD BABY?

The twins haven’t been babies in YEARS and I thought that I would forget what to DO with one of them.

Not to mention, babysitting for a family that you’re not familiar with can be a little anxiety-inducing. I’ve been with the twins for four years. I know the books they like, their bedtime routine, the snacks they’ll eat, where their pajamas are located, how to tell one kid from another, how much chocolate syrup to put in the sippy cup with milk, which toys cause tantrums and which don’t, etc.

This whole new family was a WHOLE NEW FAMILY not to mention a family that included a LITTLE BABY.

I tried to think of what the twins were like as babies. They crawled, yes. Babies crawl. They got a bottle. RIGHT! BOTTLES! They also threw up a lot due to their acid reflux. In fact, their puking was probably the thing I handled the best. I could tell exactly when it was going to happen, swiftly got them to a non-carpeted area, even going as far as to catch puke IN MY BARE HANDS because that’s what kind of badass babysitter I was, folks. I would then rush to the sink, dump the mess, rinse off my hands, strip the baby down, wash them and get them dressed in new clothes in less than two minutes. BABY THROW UP EXPERT! Holler!

But…

What do I do with a baby who doesn’t have acid reflux?

What if that baby FREAKS OUT when he wakes up from his nap and sees that I am neither his mom nor Alayna and screams his head off for ten hours? WHAT THEN? What if I can’t get him to sleep? What if I drop him? What if he escapes?

I needn’t have worried, which is a constant theme in my life. (THANKS, I KNOW.)

The baby was napping yes but when he awoke, he was the most happy delightful little package of wonderful I had ever experienced. He was all smiles, coos, laughs and these little weird wolf howls he screeches which are awesome, naturally. We played with toys, we read books, we played silly song games, most of which I made up on the spot in a light soprano.

“Ohhhhhhh babyyyyyyyy you are such a…babyyyyyyyyy. So cute and delicious BABYYYYYYYYYYYY. LA LA LA BAAAABYYYYYYYYY.”

I helped the girls make Halloween decorations and then cooked dinner, succeeding on the second try. (The first time, I burned the bagels in the toaster oven.)

The six year old: You BURNED them?

Me: DUDE, in my defense? Your toaster oven heats up SUPER FAST.

The ten year old: Um. Actually it doesn’t.

Me: YOU ARE ALL GROUNDED.

So the burned bagel thing knocked my babysitting ego down a bit but at least people were getting fed and so I count that as a positive. I put the baby in his high chair and alternated some food, seeing which he took a particular interest in. His favorite? Goldfish. Though he tolerated some yogurt and some Cheerios.

He chewed happily and attempted to dump yogurt on his head, smiled and laughed, was just hanging out, eating dinner and then all of a sudden, his face contorted in a way that I knew all too well.

I prepped for it, grabbed a papertowel, held out my hands and sure enough, that’s precisely when that little baby gagged a little bit and then proceeded to throw up all his food all over me.

Covered in regurgitated Goldfish crackers, I emerged from my night of babysitting TRIUMPHANT!!!!!!!

Forget that I had given him a bath and washed his hair without making him cry. Forget that I had given him a bottle, had rocked him to sleep, had made him giggle.

I CAUGHT HIS PUKE!

And I realized at the end of the night that I was indeed one KICK ASS babysitter, burned bagels and all.

Be back when I retrieve it.

Peace Be With You,

~*~*~*Laura~*~*~*

I was wrong.

The twins have never made it through more than a half hour of a movie in a movie theater. Ever. Sometimes they get scared but mostly they get bored and annoyed. I still have no idea how Ratatouille ends. Please do not spoil this for me.

The twins weren’t really spooked by the wild things themselves. It’s not like they were okay with the movie up until that moment. Rather, they were emotionally agitated from the beginning, the scenes before the damn wild things ever showed up—Max getting picked on, Max screaming and fighting with his mother, running away. I believe by the time Max took a super scary boat ride in the middle of the night and nearly capsized and drowned before arriving on the magical island of wild things, they had had enough.

I know this because I have very important nanny intuition.

I also know this because when Max arrived on that island and started climbing the rocks, Owen put two hands over his ears, shut his eyes and screamed at the top of his lungs, his little voice echoing around the movie theater, I AM SICK OF THIS NOW.

We promptly got up and left.

I will attempt to go back and revisit this film without children in tow as I rather enjoyed the first bit of it. Owen and River? Not so much.

However, the photo booth in the movie theatre lobby?

Two. Thumbs. Up.

I will watch the stress bubble up, the anxiety cloud over, the anger, the hurt, the awkwardness, the embarrassment. I have done this before, of course, and then I have reacted the way I learned how to—I shut down or I lash out or I get defensive, etc. But lately, I’ve been watching myself become aware of a better option, a wiser choice to make. And then, astoundingly, I have watched myself make that choice instead of defaulting to my old and comfortable Reactive Self.

This, my dear friends, is blowing. my. mind.

…

Traveling with somebody is very akin to living with somebody. There are people in your life who will make compatible roommates and people in your life who are best kept in the Non-Apartment-Sharing Friend category. Traveling is the same and possibly even more intense when you happen to be romantically involved with that person. There is more pressure for things to go perfectly, two very specific people with two very specific expectations of how things are going to unfold. And hey, guess what? Sometimes those things don’t match up.

We checked out of the hotel later than we should have on Sunday, due to the fact that I procrastinate when it comes to packing and also have a tendency to make a hotel room my home, leaving objects on pretty much every surface. PCG had wanted to make the twenty minute drive south to Ogonquit one more time for lunch and for an addictive hot caramel apple cider we had found two days before. I was on board with the plan until I realized it was almost 12:30 and we were due back at the airport with the rental car no later than three o’clock.

I gently mentioned that it might be better to swing up to Portland for lunch, right near the airport as opposed to driving south and then turning around and heading north again. PCG assured me we had plenty of time but I nervously watched the clock and tapped my hand on the window of the passenger seat in a pitch perfect imitation of my father, a bundle of “IF WE ARE LATE, WE ARE PROBABLY GOING TO DIE, THE WORLD WILL END.”

“We also have to fill the rental car up with gas before I return it,” I blurted out one more time.

“I know! We’ll be fine!”

But it wasn’t fine. I could feel burning agitation rising up in me and all the anxious ‘what if’s’ racing through my mind as I stared at the clock.

Surely more people were traveling home on Sunday, meaning longer lines through security. What if there was a line at the rental car return like there was when we arrived and we had to wait? What if there was an accident on the highway and traffic was backed up for miles? What if we missed our flight?

I poke fun at myself and my dad because we tend to be those typical Type A’s, easily wound up and eager to control. It’s amusing later because it’s so absurd. But in the moment, our concerns are very real to us. And I wasn’t trying to be funny when my mind was racing through that checklist of all the possible scenarios that might delay us. It was upsetting to me in a very intense way.

I decided that I had a few choices. I could yell at PCG and make him turn the car around. I could berate him for not listening to me. Or I could shut up and stay present.

I chose the latter.

We had a lovely lunch though the service was a bit slow. PCG got his hot apple cider; I got a small soy latte. As we pulled onto the highway, our roles immediately reversed.

“I didn’t realize how late it was,” PCG said, glancing at the clock.

“We’ll be fine!” I reassured him. And I meant it.

But PCG was stressed. It was raining, he was concentrating on the road, he was thinking of the fact that we still had to stop for gas for the car and it was after 2:30. He was doing what I had just done an hour or so earlier.

I will tell you right here and now (and I am not proud of it) that what I wanted most in the world was to say I TOLD YOU SO. I wanted to snap that everything would’ve been fine if we had done things my way. I wanted to feel validated and above all, I wanted to feel right.

I watched all of these things rise up in my mind.

I once again realized that none of them mattered.

I let them go.

I turned my devotion and attention to PCG.

I reassured him. I calmed him. I collected all the wrappers, papers and empty cups that littered the car and put them in a bag to throw away. I folded up the maps, made sure our luggage was ready to go. We got gas at 2:45 and pulled into the airport at 2:52. Eight minutes to spare. Only one person ahead of us at the rental car checkout. The line through security was decent-sized but on our way through, we overheard that our flight was delayed ninety minutes due to weather in New York.

We breathed.

We walked through the metal detectors.

We came out the other side in socked feet, no belts, no rings, no shoes.

We looked at each other.

We laughed. 

My relationship with PCG constantly pushes my communication boundaries to places that sometimes feel almost uncomfortable because they are so new. In many of my previous relationships, particularly those that occurred when I was younger, communication was sort of like:

HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY *SOMETHING PISSES ME OFF* ——-> I PUSH THAT THING DOWN AND PRETEND IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME *SEETHING SEETHING SEETHING* WHAT’S WRONG? NOTHING. WHAT’S WRONG? NOTHING. YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT’S WRONG. I DON’T. WHAT. *FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT CRY FIGHT CRY LIST ALL THE THINGS THAT ANNOY ME ABOUT MY PARTNER FIGHT* RECOVER. HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY …

I do not think I possessed the capability to articulate my feelings. (I can give myself a break for some of that, the relationship at 17, the relatoinship at 20, maybe even 22…) If I ever DID feel like communicating, I did so hesitantly, afraid that the other person might think I was crazy or might leave me or might scream at me. I didn’t feel comfortable voicing concerns to a significant other because most of the time, I didn’t think those concerns were valid. I didn’t think it was okay to HAVE concerns. I thought relationships were supposed to be perfect all the time.

Um.

Ha?

PCG and I have possibly the maturest relationship I’ve experienced. Instead of HAPPY - PISSED OFF - STUFF IT DOWN - FIGHT IT OUT - ERUPT AND POINT OUT EVERYTHING YOU HATE ABOUT THE PERSON - CRY - RECOVER - HAPPY,

It’s more like:

Hey, your tone of voice just hurt my feelings.

It did?

Yeah.

I felt like you were snapping at me.

Oh! I wasn’t. I was thinking of that rental car salesguy being a douchebag.

OMG! He was such a douchebag!

I know!

I’m sorry.

Me too!

LOOK AT THOSE PUMPKINS!

Etc.

Our relationship is steadier, more even-keeled in a way that makes me feel incredibly secure and optimistic. I know that when I have something to tell him, he’s going to listen to me. He’s not going to throw it back in my face later, he’s not going to laugh at me (in the moment at least), he’s going to try and understand. I respect that about him so much and I feel really grateful to have someone who is open to improving themselves, to bettering themselves and in turn, improving and bettering me.

I feel a little silly writing this post, in the event that most couples just naturally have those types of calm conversations about hurt feelings and disappointments, mismatched expectations and annoyances. It’s just that this kind of relationship, this kind of communication was never accessible to me before. It was almost easier to be ignorant, to be miserable, dramatic, exaggerating, fighting mean because at least that was comfortable to me.

This is new. And while it’s a little uneasy right now, I think it’s because I can feel myself actively growing and maturing. Dudes, that is a WEIRD THING TO FEEL. But it also feels amazing to think that I don’t have to settle on being the Laura of a year ago, two years ago, ten years ago. And just when I feel like I’m making the same old mistakes and stuck in the same old rut, I suddenly realize that I’m not. Not at all. It IS possible to change and grow and that my capacity for love and compassion can only increase more and more with every passing day.

I can’t express how dumbfounded this makes me because I didn’t know that. I didn’t know I was capable of this much change. I didn’t know it was possible. I’m so glad that it is.

Looks like we went from moderate to HIGH! It’s not quite peak, but it sure ain’t moderate!!

The bad news is:

Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Hmph.