Month: May 2018

Couple of things to bring you up to speed on:

1.  Did you know Zac Efron sings songs?  While listening to Pandora this morning, a pretty song came on I hadn’t heard before – turns out it was Mr.  Efron and someone else from the circus movie – now I kind of think I want to see it – It’s called the Greatest Showman or something like that and many people have said it was good.
2. I have finished the first 6 seasons of Call the Midwife on Netflix.  I know feel sad and can’t wait to watch season 7 as soon as I figure out how.  It really is a great show and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
3. I ended things with Andy this week.  I know you were all wondering how it was going.  I did it.  In an email ( hey – don’t judge – at least it wasn’t a text) because I wanted to say somethings and didn’t want to get flustered or put him in an uncomfortable situation.  He really is a sweet guy, just not the right one for me.  And like I always tell Bailey, the whole point of dating is to get to know someone to see if they could be your forever person.  I had known that for a little while that Andy wasn’t going to be that person and didn’t want to waste his time just so I could have “someone”.

It’s funny though, the ink on the email is hardly dry and people are all like, “get back out there!” and I’m like hold on.  Just because I broke up with Andy doesn’t mean I don’t have some sadness about it too.  I hurt someone, and I don’t take that lightly.  Plus summer is here and let’s be honest, I don’t really need anyone interfering with my travel and pool time.

Ok – fine, the real reason I don’t want to hop right back on the horse is because I don’t want to.  I don’t want to be responsible for another person and their feelings.  If I don’t want to answer my phone for 3 days, I don’t have to.  I don’t want to deal with the awkwardness of getting to know someone right now.  I want to swim, sing loudly to the radio, conquer my fear of charcoal grilling, listen to the birds in the morning while drinking coffee, sleep in the middle of the bed and just enjoy feeling joy again in everyday things without having to share it.  I just want to savor it for now, I mean, it’s been a long road back to this place –  the last few years I was with Steve I had lost my joy, so I deserve this time for myself and I’m not giving it up.

I believe in fate and karma, so when the time is right, the next one will come along and how knows, he might be a keeper…

Let me tell you friends, it has been a busy week. First things first – I’m super excited as I finally hung my framed post cards from Florida up in the bathroom and have

that all situated as I want it.  It’s always so amazing how just some little touches can make a whole room seem new and exciting.  See – it’s totally a tropical paradise now.

I also am super excited that outdoor pool season is slowly beginning here in Wisconsin.  I was quite delighted to learn the outside pool at my gym opened this week, where it was warm and sunny almost every day.  The water is heated so it was good to go.  I spent a lovely afternoon there this past week with two creepy old men.  I mean, I didn’t actually talk to them, they were just the only other people there, which was not bad, I would take quiet creepy men at the pool to a pack of loud kids.  Holy shit – that’s something an old lady would say.  Whatever, it is what it is, we all know I’m no spring chicken.

Even though Steve and I broke up, I’ve been trying to keep up my relationship with Bailey because it’s important to both of us.  So long story short – Bailey has decided he wanted to be baptized in his church and this Sunday, today in fact, was the big day and do to my relationship with him, I needed to be there.  This also meant I would be seeing Steve, which, as I am sure you could imagine, caused me quite a bit of anxiousness and apparently, I wasn’t the only one concerned about this because Bailey talked to me a few weeks ago and made me promise his dad and I would not have it out in church.  I assured him we were grown ups, and this would not happen, but told him his dad and I would sit down ahead of time and talk over coffee or something so that the air was clear in church.

SO… Friday night Steve came over and we sat on the porch and over beers, caught up and talked about a laundry list of things. (on a side note, he had on an earring – in 7 years, I had never once seen him use the pre-existing earring hole in his lobe.  I nearly lost beer through my nose when I saw that)  I will spare you all the conversational details but here is the conclusion I have come to – he was a really important part of my life to a long time and we had some really good years together and I think there is part of us that will always care about the other BUT, I’m not the same person I was when I was with him and he is not the same person I fell in love with.  I’m not going to lie, it was nice to see him, he’s familiar, we can talk about things without having to give a back story but it doesn’t hurt anymore to see him.  When he left, it felt right that he left and then I was home and content without him being here.  I didn’t long for him like I had months ago.  I think the best thing to compare this to is the following – we all have our favorite Target Store – we like it because we like the things they offer, we know where things are like the good candy and the hemorrhoid cream, but if it burns to the ground or we move to a different neighborhood, we won’t stop living, we don’t stop eating candy, we find a new store, maybe a Wal-mart, maybe a new Target and we make those places the new normal and familiar places. Because as we discussed more than once, life goes on.

Today turned out to be a wonderful day in spite of the loosey-goosey church service – no disrespect to those of you who appreciate a contemporary non-denominational service but as a girl who’s church experiences during the formative years were Catholic, a service with no Lord’s prayer and a tambourine, was way outside of the box for me.  Bailey was so excited about taking this step and I was so glad to be there to support him.  After church we all  had lunch at Rocky’s with Bailey where Jenny and Mark introduced me to the most delicious pizza I have even eaten.  I would like to formally endorse the motherlode.  So much cheesy goodness.  It was a nice time, and I’m glad we were all able to create a nice family memory for Bailey.

I think that is probably enough happening for one week, who even knows what this week holds. But with that, I will sign off here as I must do some laundry now because I’m currently wearing the last clean pair of underwear I own and all my swimsuits are one pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I should probably preface this with the following information – I have been sucked in completely to that show Call the Midwife on PBS ( it’s available to binge on Netflix).  One of the things I love most about it is that although, it takes place in the 1950’s, it shows in both obvious and subtle ways, the strength of women and their resilience.  For me, I find it quite inspirational.  Although I am still wondering about avocados pears.  Are those just avocados but got the pear added at the end because of their shape?

It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, I thought it was quite possibly the end of the world, well at least my world as I knew it.  I had been sucker punched in the gut so hard I didn’t think I would ever recover, that I would ever get to the other side.  But somewhere inside a voice I knew, but had not listened  to in a long time, told me to keep putting one foot in front of the other, breathe in and out and that the passing of time would smooth the rough edges of the wound and that if I could just sit with the pain for a minute, it would subside.

Like most people I know, I often have to deal with folks from a call center in India for work and at times, it is quite obvious that English is not their first language and more then once, in an email with a request for something, they will say, “please do the needful thing”.  Although this is probably a poor translation for please do what I need or the like, I think the phrase itself has merit.

I needed to do the needful thing , to move on, to heal, to feel whole again.  For me, the needful things were the things that I wanted least to do, but needed to most – to grieve the loss of the life I thought I had, to let go of the sadness and anger and at times, feel the bad feelings and not try to numb them a magic yellow pill or a date with the Captain Morgan, to remember who I was and what I enjoyed.

On any given day, you can scroll your news feed on Facebook and see like 40
“inspirational” memes about being strong and trusting your inner voice and ya-da ya-da.  I mean, they can be inspirational but they don’t mean anything if you refuse to listen to the voice inside you.  YOU know what is best for you, YOU know your dreams and goals, YOU are strong, YOU are resilient and yet for some reason, trusting ourselves is the first thing we let go of when things get tough.

The small still voice in all of us comes to us from God, our mothers, generations of women before our time and comes from a place of love and knowledge that we carry with us.  It comes from the sunshine and the rain.  The joy and the sadness.  It will help us do the needful thing when feel like we can not.

Before I explain the title – favorite thing someone said to me today, ” he likes everyone, he’s not smart like a dog”

So as long as I can remember, I always get a kind of “spring fever” when winter finally is gone for good and we have those first glorious days of sprummer ( yeah – I mixed spring and summer together because it’s all one season now) when you can bask in the sun and it doesn’t occur to you to be annoyed with the heat yet, the green every where is fresh and clean, and that delicious smell of meat cooking on a charcoal grill gently fills the air, and you have no choice but to just soak it up and it’s a little bit of heaven.  I always have this renewed sense of energy and purpose, usually giving up my need for an afternoon nap and early bedtimes and being oh so productive.

This year, taking full advantage of working from home, I have set aside about 45 minutes every afternoon about 2 PM where I go outside, sit in my chair with my feet up and bask in the sun.  Today while doing this, I also read my book – The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  It was one of those free classics you could get for the Kindle and I thought I should start reading some more classics, you know, in case I end up on Jeopardy.  So I’m reading this and he is a “fancy” writer – like I don’t find the style to be straight forward, it’s kind of windy and long winded, nevertheless, I am sucked in to the story.  So after a bit,  I put my Kindle down  and I am sitting there in my chair with my eyes closed, listening to music and then there is the most gentle and welcome breeze.  And then I start having weird thoughts about writing a poem about the breeze and how it like love  ( that is so not me – where is a vomit back when I need one?) and I realized that I might have finally replenished my vitamin D stores that were probably low from the long, long, dark winter.

In the last days, I have actually felt, content, almost bordering on happy and after the last year, this feeling is unfamiliar but oh, so welcome.  I can’t give all the credit to the sunshine though.  After a couple pretty rough months of being stuck, sad and tired,  I talked to the doctor, who put me on an antidepressant.  This is nothing new for me, I have been on and off them many times in my life, with great success.  But I was embarrassed because I thought I should push through, I should be able to make it to the other side without a pill.  And then my friends scolded me and gave me the old “if you were diabetic, you’d take insulin, wouldn’t you?” talk and reminded me that sometimes, we all need a little something.  I know that this disclosure sometimes falls under the category of “private stuff” but I feel so much better now after a solid 6 weeks of pills and sunshine, that I want you to know that there is no shame in needing a bright orange pill ( or pink or yellow or even white) to balance you out.  The human body is a complex mixture of chemicals, hormones and moving parts, each of us different and susceptible to something not working perfectly.  We are here for such a short time, and to miss any of it living “stuck”, is time wasted.

So sit in the sun – I even do it without sunscreen sometimes ( insert audible gasp from the elders here) – enjoy the breeze – let go of what is holding you back from getting what you want.  Who cares how you get there as long as you arrive?

 

 

 

Finally, Tuesday morning rolled around and it was time to make the “quick” trip home.  Lori was excited to get home to her husband and I was excited to get home to… well, let me think about that one for a minute… I don’t have a pet – not even a fish, I don’t have a plant, I worked on the road, so really I guess the best I could come up with was that I had made my bed with fresh sheets on it before we left.  Oh and it would be nice to have printer access again while I worked. On the way home, which was a trip we made in record time, we only made 2 super quick stops, crossed 4 state lines and were back in Middleton by 2:30 PM thanks to the hour we got back by crossing out of eastern time – so basically, we time traveled.  The day started grey but the time we were home, it was bright and sunny.

So then I was home.  After months of excitement and planning and spreadsheets and travel packets and checking and rechecking the pricing for all our rentals, the trip was over.  Although that first night home in your bed is always such a luxury, all too quickly, real life sets back in. There is work to be done, milk to be bought, laundry to put off doing, a DVR to clean up, I think you get the picture.

I’m not going to lie, I was a little sad when I came home. I mean, I don’t even have a plant would die if I wasn’t here.  And truth be told, I did call one of my friends who always has a barn full of cats to see if I could get a matched set of kittens, but I quickly came to my senses when I realized how lucky I am.  For the last however many years, I was always tied to home. The cat – the dog- Steve – all that responsibility – all these reasons I couldn’t do what I wanted.  But now, I can do exactly what I want, when I want – I can go to Sedona and visit a vortex and clear my chakras – I can spend a winter month in Florida – I can camp all the time – I can spend days with my family.  But even as I think of all the things I can do,  it’s weird being on my own at an age where everyone else is pretty much coupled up.  I’m not married, I don’t have kids, I  mean sure, I’m still seeing Andy but we’re definitely not at the listing each other as emergency contacts phase.  It’s hard not to look at what my friends have and feel longing for what I thought I had for all those years.  It’s not easy to always look on the bright side but I’m afraid if I don’t, I will miss my life wishing for things to be different and miss out what could be great right now.

The girl across the hall from me is pregnant. My sisters have toddlers that are simply the cutest kids that have ever lived.  My college roommate has a nineish year old boy that is so sweet and smart. Other friends have teenagers and on any given day – any one of them tell me that they can’t wait until their kid is a certain age so that they are past some age related issue but here is the lesson for the day – we need to quit looking for the future so much that we miss today.  So even if you come home after being gone a week and the only thing waiting for you is a freshly made clean bed, that’s ok, because after all the days of being gone, it actually was pretty amazing AND you don’t have to clean up after it.