Posts (page 2)

Whatitis

Allowing things to be how they are. Considering the fact that there is no other choice, it is surprisingly difficult to do this. My mind wants to figure things out. How can I fix everything RIGHT NOW. Um, I can't. At this moment, reality is precisely what it is. No amount of wishing or trying or calculating or turning my head to a certain angle will make one iota of difference to the present reality.

I feel like there's something missing. Some feeling I had once. There isn't. My life is complete, 100% full, absolutely perfectly full... of this. Just this. This is it.

And yet, one moment passes and Everything Changes. Oh, it may not really. The same thoughts come back... the external circumstances probably haven't changed much unless there was in that moment some huge Life Changing Event. But that doesn't happen very often (thank goodness). And yet I am one tiny click closer to something, and one tiny click further from something else. From the wide angle view I am closer to death and further from birth... that's pretty much the only given. But everything else in the universe has shifted... in a non-linear way. Nothing stays the same. Ever.

All those things I want to change? Already changing, whether I like it or not. Stagnation is an illusion, and one that we usually perpetuate by clinging to The Way Things Are. And yet the way things are only lasts for one infinitely small frozen flash of NOW. And then things are different. And then more different... and so on.

Decisions are like adjusting the rudder on the white water raft... we try to avoid the big rocks and sometimes that works, but our little rudders are no match for the river.

I don't have everything I WANT right now. Probably, some of the things I want and don't have will come to me if I keep up my rudder adjustments. Probably some won't. Is that OK? Does it matter what my opinion on the matter is? I can let it destroy me, that's up to me. Or I can laugh.

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." - Mae West

If it would stop being flippin' 90* out it would be nearly Sock Season. I love the beginning of Sock Season even more than I love the end of it. I love changing out of cold wet socks and into warm dry ones when I come home.

Some years ago, as a perk of my marriage, I became addicted to quality socks. Mostly, I wear SmartWool and Thorlo walking or hiking socks... My feet are my primary form of transport.  I have bike socks, running socks, knee-high stripey socks, silk stockings, trouser socks, sock liners, and soccer socks (no, I don't play but I like their length).

One thing I don't have at the moment is a pair of socks. They all are all stuffed into their generously large drawer in no particular order. On my ubiquitous To-Do list, as per usual, is the item "organize sock drawer," which I willfully ignore on a daily basis. I have to do it once or twice per year... dump them all out on the bed and start the match game. I match them and put them away in some sort of attempt to keep certain types of socks in their own corner of the drawer, so that just maybe I can find a pair of running socks in the morning in less than ten minutes.

It would save me all kinds of time if I just put my socks away properly after I do laundry, but after so many years of noble efforts to form this habit I have finally stopped worrying about it. Spending my precious emotional energy on socks is just plain not worth it, no matter how much time I waste.

It's just one example of a corner of my life where entropy and apathy converge to produce chaos. I thought of socks while I spent two hours removing dupes from my iTunes library last night (although to be fair they were a technological anomaly, not due to negligence on my part... but still, I have been avoiding my iTunes library issues for months at least).

Maybe I'll watch a movie and do my socks tonight, now that iTunes is more or less sorted. Next thing you know I'll be visiting the lost world in the back of my closet. Fall cleaning!

sock_drawer

Well,

1. The weather has been absolutely perfect. Two days of torrential rain and now cool & sunny. Perfect.
2. Letting myself sleep in. Ultimately I want to be getting up before 7. But for the moment 10:30 is ok.
3. MI-5. A TV show compelling enough to capture my attention and keep my mind from wandering.
4. I have some yummy meals planned for myself this week: acorn squash stuffed w/ italian sausage, quinoa, kale; mediterranean eggplant with feta & polenta; a big juicy steak
5. Getting back into running. This is my favorite time of year for it.
6. Yesterday I did a pseudo-fast (only water, tea, and veg juice all day), which always gives me more energy. Maybe I'll do this once a week?
   
7. Taking this week mostly off. My business partner is house-sitting, and I'm feeling under the weather, so I'm just laying low and allowing myself to be totally unproductive for once.
   
8. Preparing for the GRE gives me something useful to focus on that is not quite as daunting as my other projects.
9. I seem to be over the worst of the anti-depressant withdrawal period. 
10. As of yesterday, I will not be drinking alcohol until October 8. I've decided to take two 30 day breaks per year as part of my moderation scheme.
11. Taking some time for myself, by myself.
12. Almost to page 700 in Infinite Jest. Aiming to finish this month...
13. Hot bath every day!
14. I heart tea.

Unwell.

1. I feel off. Cold? Allergies? H1N1? Lingering hangover? Med withdrawals? Anyway, I'm trying to sleep it off.
2. My financial situation is frankly scary. I have used every bit of what tiny "safety net" I had, and I am currently depending on the generosity of the state to keep me alive until I'm "back on my feet." It is not a good feeling to know that at some point this subsistence money will stop and I don't even have room on a credit card to buy groceries. I grew up living on state assistance and food stamps and I am deeply afraid of going back there, even if there's every reason to think I will be making money for myself again before long. *shudder*
3. My floors need a real cleansing, and I just don't feel motivated. It's come to the point that it's too gross to go barefoot.
4. The feeling that I need to stop drinking for my own well being. It makes me feel like a loser, even though I realize this self awareness and ability to stop mean I'm really not out of control.
5. The need to distract myself from my own trains of thought. Time to renew my pursuit of mindfulness and meditation.
6. I would prefer to hide in my cave for the foreseeable future, but I know that's not realistic or healthy.
7. I would not want to date me. This means that if I date anyone else I will be looking for someone who "puts up with" my state, rather than someone who admires me. And that will never make for a good relationship. So I think it might be a "while" before I'm on solid enough ground to be boyfriendable again. And by that time I may be so used to being alone that I won't be able to make those connections anymore. Irrational, I know.
   

I've often had fantasies about changing my identity and starting a new life far away from anyone I know. This idea formed itself in my teens when I was deeply depressed and wanted to escape what seemed like a pointless existence... See, I had already made a deal with myself at age 12 that I would never consider suicide. No matter what. So what's the next best thing? A Brand New Identity.

Of course I now realize wiping slates clean is not as easy as pretending to be someone else. It still sounds like a lot of fun, though. In a very painful sort of way.

Thus my latest TV obsession: MI-5 (Spooks). I love a good spy story, especially the ones where someone has to take on a whole new identity in order to gather intelligence. But what does all of this lying and pretending do to their relationships outside the agency? It shreds them. Not to mention their relationships with themselves. There's something supremely calming to me in watching these fictional people fall apart.

A brief excerpt from my childhood memoir, near the beginning...

****************

The chair in grandma’s living room smelled of wood smoke, cigarettes, and jam. It was wedged in next to the wood stove, at an angle so that it faced the television. The upholstery was a dark green corduroy over lumpy stuffing that was starting to spill out around tears on the arms after years of children’s fingers pulling and prodding. There was an ottoman for stretching out adult legs, but at two years old I could easily fit my whole self in the chair’s embrace, wrapped in a musty afghan.

I was there - in that chair - on a crisp, clear November night when Grandma answered the phone to hear Mom hysterical on the other end of the line. She needed a ride to the hospital, but was vague about what had happened. Her head was bleeding and she was at a stranger’s house on 9th Street. Grandpa grumbled whenever he had to go get his kids out of trouble, but he always went. He put his boots back on - he had already gone through his ritual work boot removal before the evening news -  and roared off in the pickup. I could hear the familiar sequence of gears shifting noisily and wide tires crunching gravel as he drove up the hill away from Lost Avenue.

Grandpa took Mom to the ER and left her there, since it looked like it would be a while.  My dad went to pick her up later, straight from the bar. The doctor got annoyed that Ernie was making glib jokes about “knocking some sense into his old lady,” and tersely reminded him that she could easily have been killed. I stayed over at Grandma’s that night and didn’t see Mom until the next day when she came to collect me. She had a white bandage wrapped around her head with dried blood visible on the back. She looked pale and tired and sat on the sofa beneath the pink flamingo mirror to tell her story.

She had left her job at Guy’s cafe at her normal time on foot with a bean-bag snoopy she’d bought me at the toy store downtown on her lunch break. She went by the newly-opened Garden of Health for some groceries and started walking up Lakeside Avenue with two heaping bags. The night was crisp, clear, and full of stars. Chimneys were alive with calmly drifting smoke to fill the air with a scent of autumn comfort.

Around 7th Street Mom noticed a figure a few blocks ahead, pacing back and forth between houses. She got the impression he was waiting for her. Although Coeur d’Alene had never been a town where women were afraid to go out alone at night, something felt off, so she decided to walk toward Sherman, the main drag through town, and turned down 9th Street before she reached him. 

The man started following her and asking if she could help him find a house on 10th Street. She told him that she was really tired and didn’t have any idea where this house on 10th Street might be. She noticed that this guy looked like a “bad guy” one might see in a movie, with a black leather jacket, a pale pock-marked face, greasy dark hair, and empty eyes. He kept his hands conspicuously behind his back.

As Mom started to walk away, feeling bad about dismissing him so sharply, she turned to ask his name. As she was turning toward him he brought a crowbar down on her head with full force. The doctor at the ER told her that if it hadn’t been a glancing blow the force would have cracked her skull open and killed her. As it was, she fell to her knees and screamed. And screamed again. People on the block started peering out of windows, and her attacker turned and ran.
Blood and tears were pouring down her face when the people inside the nearest house opened their door to her. Were you in a car accident? They asked. Mom kept repeating that there was someone out there who needed help. I think he really needs help, she told them. Eventually she calmed down enough to call for a ride to the hospital.

In the Coeur d’Alene Press the next day there was a tiny photo of Mom with a bandaged head next to a police sketch of a man with acne scars and empty eyes. He was believed to be a Satanist who had vandalized the car of a daycare worker and killed a young woman in the woods, by hitting her over the head with a crowbar. He was never seen again in Coeur d’Alene, and he was never caught. Not long after this I started waking up in the middle of the night with the sense that there was a bad man outside my bedroom window. I never saw anyone there, but I sometimes had a feeling of evil very close by.

My mom's family shares some distant French genealogical link with the Bouvier family (of Jackie O fame), which I found funny when I finally watched "Grey Gardens" (the old documentary version, not the new Drew Barrymore film)... because I can see a lot of the eccentricities of my mom and her sister in Big and Little Edie. My aunt is very seriously cultivating her own Grey Gardens-like "estate" already. The conflagration of weird antiques and mild squalor is well-established inside the old house. The garden continues to expand to jungle-like proportions on the 2 large lots around the house, and includes such features as an outdoor bedroom under a canopy, a claw-foot tub for soaking on hot days, and a non-functional VW Bug.

As I was washing my dishes for the first time in, well, a while this afternoon I realized that I am already way too comfortable with squalor, and it is only getting easier to live with the longer I live alone. I fear I may become impossible to live with or worse end up living in a big old house with my mom and my aunt, just like Little Edie.

Ok, maybe not just like her. I'm not nuts. Yet. I think.

Of course it's a bit far-fetched to think that there might be a genetic correlation between, say, the hoarding of cloissone boxes by my aunt and Little Edie's porcelain figurines. Or my mom's 18 necklaces and 12 rings she wears at once and Edie wearing a sweater as a skirt. And it's even more far-fetched to think that a bit of laziness about housework means that I may end up living in a house containing 52 cat corpses. It's an amusing thought, though...

Inspired by M-----l I googled images of myself. Wow, there are a lot of picture of ME on the internet! But most of the photos that come up when I google my name are:

1. photos of people who are in meetup groups I have joined (wtf google)
2. sculptures of Hello Kitty in Ireland
3. inexplicable pieces of furniture

:-)

1. It finally rained, after like 2 months. We are amphibious in the Pacific NW. We get cranky when dried out. Or at least I do.
2. So far, so good on the new exercise regimen. I just have to keep at it until it "sticks" (there comes a point when it feels like more of a burden not to exercise... that's where I am aiming for, again).
3. The miraculously fast replacement of my debit card means I don't have to trek across town to get cash. Spending isn't really "on" right now anyway, but I do need to pick up some meds & stuff.
4. My mom was so pleased with the Eco Bella lipstick I sent her for her birthday that she called and thanked me for 5 minutes straight. She really really enjoys a new tube of lipstick. A trait we share.
5. I have set up my stereo inside my coffee table, so I can operate it without leaving the couch. Leaving the couch is bad.
6. Provided no one else dies or has a birthday, my biz partner and myself are back in town for the foreseeable future & may actually get this business launched in the next 45 days sometime.
   
7. I have a schedule for eating and exercising, so I don't have to decide anything.
8. I finally found my checks. I've been looking for them for months, and I swear  I looked in the box labeled "checks"... but there they were. Gremlins.
9. No alcohol on weekday evenings means several extra hours to be "productive".
10. I am cashing out an IRA that was originally a 401K entirely funded by my employer in 2000. Therefore, it's like free money, kinda. It's not much, but it will cover rent.
    
11. Gorgeous little bud vase gift from friends just back from San Diego. I love little unexpected whatsits.
12. Recovering from the hot spell, finally. Heat makes me absolutely miserable. It's like having an ambient flu.

:-(

1. I have too many projects, and my time seem tragically fragmented.
2. Eating at home everyday means way more dishes to wash than I find reasonable.
3. New living room arrangement cramps my yoga space a bit.
4. The footage of lunacy at town hall meetings over healthcare reform is bumming me out. Mostly because these people are yelling about things that are patently untrue. At least complain about the real content of the bill, if you're going to complain.
   
5. It's time to clean the floors again. I don't have time to clean floors this week.
6. I keep hitting little technical walls in developing our website. I am not a developer, but I limp along...
7. There's a possibility I will have to find a short-term job to cover my arse. I hate even the thought of whoring myself out again (um, not literally).
8. I had a coffee this afternoon. I may never get to sleep tonight (but here I am predicting the future... maybe it'll be fine).
9. There's something missing.
   

But due to a spending moratorium and a rigorous diet and exercise regimen I have to wait. How long I wait depends entirely upon how well I do not spending money on other things in order to get caught up of rent & bills... or at least rent. I will be back "on track" by September if all goes well. As on track as I can get until my income goes back to a semi-normal level. Living on roughly 45% of my previous income is proving more challenging than I had imagined... but yay for unemployment insurance anyway!

Part of my diet and exercise (and spending) plan is not drinking alcohol during the week. And I want sake when I want sushi. So maybe if I do really well this week I will reward myself  this weekend. Sushi, after all, is not fattening.

Ugh. Deprivation.