A Mental Deck Chair

So, the countdown has started. The countdown to my starting a new chapter in my life, that is. So far, everything was in sort of a happy-go-lucky, dreamy, planning stage. Now, the doing phase has begun. And let me tell you, I feel like I am standing near a mountain of huge stuffed bears that were holding up so ever so tenderly, and someone has recently pulled a bear out of the stack, and the whole mountain moved. And I am standing there, holding on to it for dear life, so I’d prevent it from burying me under it.

Overwhelmed and scared is what I feel. I mentioned this before: my motto in life, when I left high school was “I am scared but I like it”. Now, older, and really not much wiser than then, I would say “I am scared and that’s it”. ‘Cause I surely as heck am not liking this!

And I think the issue is control. The stuff I worry about, from everything I have to do in a day is not stuff that I can control. That, the knowing and known stuff, it’s what gives me comfort. I know: it’s a truism: knowledge gives you power – so, you won’t be afraid of what you know. But only now, when I am buried under all the details and all the chores, and under the incredible amount of things that other people have to do for me, I realize this so acutely.

I am not sure what overwhelms me more: thinking all these things I am scared of will happen? Or the fact that things that I can do might not get done, because I have too many of them to do?

Just to give you an idea of what I do in a given day lately: the alarm goes off at 6 AM. I hit the snooze button for at least an hour; I get up at 7:15 or so. Sometimes later. I shower. I dress. I make up my bed “fancy”, since the house is on the market, and it has to look like no one lives here (really, people, who are you kiddin’??). I then clean out my bathroom: fold my towels just so (again, like no one uses them – yeah, right), I put the toiletries away. Then, I climb downstairs. I feed cats. I make breakfast. I pack lunch. I scoop litter, and take the trash out. Every morning. Then, I jump in the car around 8:30-9:00 – already late. Every morning.

Then, work. With all its chores: meetings, documentation updating, answer emails, make sure all you know is in some folder so someone can find it. When I am not there. Being everyone’s spare brain is not easy, ya know! Lunch is always a working lunch: either working at my desk, or running an errand for what I have to do: meeting with the wedding planner, picking up the wedding dress, buying litter for the house, buying groceries or supplies to clean up the patio, vacuuming the car, cleaning the trunk, installing a baby seat in the car, doctor’s appointments, picking up prescriptions. What have you.

Then work, again. Errands again, after work: meet with realtor. Or go home, crate the cats, since I’ll have a showing. Cook dinner, at some point. Somewhere in there, watch what I eat: I can’t possibly allow myself to gain another pound, and there is no time for walking anymore!

Email mom and friends to let them know I am alive. My emails to them are shorter and shorter every day. Got no time for long ones. Then, clean the house some more, of kitty hair and throw up, from over the day. Go to bed around 11 or 12, and try as hard as it may be, to read at least ONE page in a book. One page. Just to pretend I disconnected and I gave my brain a break that day. It doesn’t work. I fall sleep in the first 3 minutes of “reading”.

These are the chores.

For the things I cannot control and which keep me up at night, right after the first 30 minutes of fast asleep-ness… are way more than those… I always worry the people who will see my house will let the cats out, if they don’t call to make an appointment and they come in without me crating them first. They will let at least one, the friendliest of all, out. And I will be devastated if I lost him/ them. I feel like I constantly have my front door wide open, since they put a key in the lockbox for the showings, and anyone can help themselves to my cats, house, everything. Communism instilled paranoia goes a loooong way, let me tell you.

I fear the house will never sell, because of this crappy market, and we will end up paying the mortgage on this big monster for 2-3-5 years. We will be poor and he will hate me for my debt! People get over buyer’s remorse when buying a house or a car in a couple of months. Three years since I bought this – I never went over mine. And now the painful feeling of being “stuck with it” has to be shared with this other wonderful and innocent human being that accepted me in their life! Guilt. Lots of it!

I fear, I will crate the cats, but then they will go crazy, because they really don’t like to be crated, as free as they always are.

I fear that when we drive across country with them for 4 days, they will pant and get crazy in the brain in the crates, and I will have to put them to sleep if they never recover. I fear silly things like these, all the time.

I fear I will kill them one time, by forcing them to enter the crates, although I have had vets teach me how to do it properly, with minimal to zero discomfort to them. But I love them too much, anything “against their will” hurts me.

I try making the crates fun: I sprinkle cat nip and try to hide toys in there, hoping they’ll like it. They look dubious! And I feel, once more, guilty.

I fear everyone will arrive for the wedding (because everyone but me is flying in, and no one from a drivable distance, really!) one or two days late, and all our schedule for the wedding week will be shot. I fear my future husband will be late, again, coming into town, and we will not have time to get a marriage license … I feared till yesterday that they’ll burn my dress at the alterations place and where am I going to find a beautiful dress that fits me again?? Well, they didn’t burn it. In fact, it turned out beautifully, and I am so tickled to have it in my possession now, all fit and ready to go!

I fear (still) that my nephew will get very sick again, and my sister will not be able to make it to the wedding. But, alas, she has plane tickets now, and she at least has that “insurance” for my troubled psyche …And he has felt so much better lately, bless his heart!

I am a constant knot of emotions, thoughts and fears. I sound like a crazy person, I know … And this is, like I said, the beginning. And these are all things that will get sorted out with time, patience and a clear mind. But alas, I do not have time for clarity right now. Just for shear panic, it seems.

I needed to at least lay them down on paper, and let them fly into the world, so they will leave my brain and heavy chest.

With all this running around during the day and being awake with nutty thoughts at night, I have grown to enjoy even the little bit of waiting at the traffic light! Even the wait in a doctor’s waiting room, which normally grinds my nerves. I don’t even read there anymore. I can’t. My brain is on overload. I need to let it just rest. Just be. Just have no purpose at all for a minute. Or two. I enjoy waiting lately – and I don’t even recognize myself as typing this!

Did you hear what they’ve been doing in New York City now ? They have blocked off streets in Times Square – yes, as in the busiest, most crowded and happening square possibly on the planet – closed down the traffic, and let people sit there on deck chairs. Just stop and sit on deck chairs - take a break during their crazy days: they have street artists, even yoga, and lots of nothing, but sitting and chatting, and being. The Budget Travel magazine editor ended her editorial about this wonderful initiative with “somewhere, there is a deck chair with your name on it”.

And ever since I read that, I keep praying that I’d find mine. For even just one second, I can block off “the traffic” which is now my life and just sit. And do nothing at all. But sit on a mental deck chair. I hope I find it soon, or else my “mental” knees will give out. And I do need a rest. The long road is just ahead!

Gypsy, making peace with the cat carrier - but not quite.

Happy 100K Miles!

My one and only car, the 2001 Toyota Echo I have had for now close to seven years (where has the time gone?!) has turned 100,000 miles old this weekend. It’s hard to believe, looking back, that I have had it for that long and that I have put about 68,000 of those miles on it myself.

March 7, 2010 - Greensboro, NC

I try hard not to get attached to things. People, sure. Pets, definitely. But “things”, I tell myself, are so elusive and so ephemeral! But for some odd reason, I get attached to cars! Sometimes I think I get more attached to them than I do to houses! I am not sure why: maybe because cars take me away and I have lots of memories going fun places in them, or maybe because the road is quite a lonely place to be, and you’re looking for comfort more so than in your house, where comfort just lives, and where it’s easier to take for granted. I don’t know! But I do develop these “relationships” with my cars.

I still mourn, some days, the death of my SAAB, my first car, which I totaled. I still miss my Camry, which was bullet proof, but had to be given away for being too old (about 192,000 miles old)… The Echo has been with me everywhere between Atlanta, GA and Cape Cod, Mass., anywhere from The Outer Banks of NC to West Virginia. Is it ready for the upcoming relocating trip to Utah?! – I wonder. I hope so, because I’ll expect it to be.

It’s been my vehicle, and my tent, when I was too lazy to put up one, my waiting room for doctors’ appointments, and my reading room for my lunch breaks. Boyfriends and bad dates came and went, but the Echo stayed. Houses did too, and it stayed also. It handled trips for my mom, my aunt, even my sister and her whole family, many a friends, with nothing but ease.

It’s been hit about four times, and it’s still running like a dream. And other than new tires, new breaks, and a new battery, it’s been asking for not much more than oil and gas. I would say that’s pretty good for a 9 year old car. And I don’t even want to start talking about how great it feels to fill up the tank once every three weeks, maybe, or forgetting that it does need to be filled at all! I would be here all day, if I did.

You never know what the future brings in anything, but life is that much more relative when it comes to cars. One thing I know, though: looking back at all these years, and judging alone by those, the Echo will remain one of the more reliable cars in my life.

Happy birthday, little car! And happy roads, too! And many, many more healthy birthdays to come. Hope to see The Rockies together, soon, and beyond …

Small Bites of Happiness

My life has been not much short of chaotic lately. Not by my own choosing, but sometimes decisions are made for us, and we just need to follow the path through brush and thorns before we get to the clear road. I have not been able to keep my very organized routine of a life; my mind is in 1000 different places at one time, and I feel like I am spiraling out of control sometimes, trying to follow a hectic schedule and to accomplish 100 things a minute, which is what’s expected of me.

I have no routine for meals, cleaning the house, bill paying and seeing friends anymore … It’s just a rush to the finish line every day.

And some days (most days) some things don’t get done – which makes tomorrow’s “to do” list longer and adds more stress and self criticism on me …

So, because I move mechanically lately, and never think anymore – very unlike me – I have been forgetting the simplest things … For everyone that knows me, it’s common knowledge that I never forget things. I have a dear friend back home who says about me: “you are the kind of person who never loses an umbrella”. I just don’t. I rarely misplace things. I rarely forget to do them at all.

Well, because of the whirlwind I have been thrown in lately, I have been forgetting a lot. A lot more than I forgive myself for. A lot more than I find manageable! I forget everything from putting my watch on in the morning to paying the cell phone bill, or the power bill, from emailing friends to eating dinner … Long, short time memory – doesn’t matter …

It took last night’s happening to jerk me to my core though. It’s a small thing, maybe, for some, but it was huge for me. I went to the grocery store, late, after yet another consecutive, 11 hour work day. Before I was rushing home to house chores at 8 PM, and I checked my purchase out myself, I also drew some cash out of the machine, at the cash register. Only, at the very end, after I picked up my receipt and before rushing out to life again, I forgot to pick up the cash from the machine.

I forgot so “well”, that I didn’t actually remember that I didn’t pick it up till this morning. Looking back on yesterday and trying to think about what I did, I could never remember actually picking up the cash from the “cash dispenser” as the machine calls it. So, I panicked and hated myself for it.

Dubious that Harris Teeter will trust my story, receipt in hand and all, I went back to the store today, to see if I could recoup the money I meant to withdraw. It turns out that a Good Samaritan customer found the money in the dispenser and turned it in to the attendant. Yes, they needed my receipt, and they needed to check the video tape to see if the times concur, but they gave me the money the customer had returned.

They told me also that this is very rare: if the attendants don’t find the cash themselves (in which case they are required my their job to turn it in) and it’s the customers who found the cash, they almost never return it.

It was not a lot of money to some ($40), but you have no idea how grateful I am today for that kind stranger out there, with a clean conscience and a good heart that returned the cash. In the chaos of what it is my life today, this small thing of forgetting my brain one more time would have been enough for me to brood in low self esteem and self-fed-up-ness for another week or so.

In the land of negativity and sometimes hopelessness that I live in lately, there was this beautiful rainbow this morning. Life can and is beautiful, after all. Even by small bites. And this good deed was my reminder. Thank you, kind unknown person: you will never know how much you helped!

And I know to put on the brakes for now, and think twice, hopefully, before I act. Even delayed in my thousands of engagements, taking the time to do them right the first time will work wonders for my sanity. Even through random brushy woods, one must step slowly, carefully and ... mindfully.

About a Song

After two years ...

“The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound but the loss cannot be repaired.” (Robert Southey)

This week’s been hard. This week, of every February, has been very hard for the past … three years. It bears the mark of one of my most amazing friends , whom I (and the rest of the world) have lost to a brain tumor in 2008. Or should I say, it bears the mark of his diagnosis (in 2007) and death, a year later?!

Things are never pretty when death comes, and they are certainly more ugly when it comes to sever a young life. They are unbearable when it hits so close to home, as it was when Jeff passed, two years ago.

In two years, things have not changed much. For me. I still miss him every day, just the same. I miss his smile. And his dimples. His humor and wit, his healthy laugh. His down-to-earth-ness. His class. His ever so proud left handedness. I still miss our arguments and our dog walks… I miss his passion for living, most of all. His gusto with which he threw himself at each day. His complete lack of wishy-washy-ness. His determined driving.

I stop for a moment, every night to pray for his strength, wherever he is, just like I promised him two years ago. I still listen to his voice mail – the last one he left me… I miss him still, with this sharp pain in my chest, when I want to share sports or political news with him, or when I take a trip or when I have to tell him what else is new in my life. This sharp pain of a sigh when I reach for the phone to dial his number, and I catch myself - he’s no longer there.

Maybe this is why this song (see link below) spoke to me so loudly. One morning, this past week, I was driving, like I do every morning, by the hospital. And just like I do every time I drive by the hospital, I thought of Jeff. The minute my car stopped at the light on Elm Street and Northwood, this song came on, and I swear I had this out-of-worldly feeling that he turned this song on the radio himself, just for me.

The time stood still for the five minutes the song played, and I swear I could hear him breathe next to me, in the passenger’s seat. It was eerie. It spoke to me because I felt like I heard from it the very words I could say to him. Now, and always. I cried, as I drove off, and as I have learned to do for the past two years: just move on, one day at a time, as life would have it, with the past, and the pain inside of my heart.

Rest in peace, Jeff , and thank you, again for the gift of you. Because of you, Februaries are never going to be the same, and neither will my life; but then again that is the true mark of a great man: they live and die to make a difference.

Love always, your G. A. …

A Dress, by Any Other Name …

I feel about weddings like most people feel about “don’t shoot me” orange clothes: they might look good on some people, but not on me!

For some odd reason, I have never liked the big, fat, party central type of weddings. And more than the huge parties where people you don’t know get fed and drunk on your life savings, I hate the dresses. Like I said: I hate them for me. A white, puffy dress that looks like belongs in the 18^th century does nothing for me. It’s uncomfortable, it’s too white, and you can’t drink your coffee comfortably for fear of not spilling and ruining the day, and on a terribly short person like me it looks ridiculous!

And I never understood why women want to look like in a masquerade ball on their wedding day! It’s the beginning of your new life: will you look like a jester in your new life? Or will you look like you, every day?! I want to be me. Me, at my utmost. And I am never me if I am uncomfortable.

A guy can wear a suit, which is something they (some) wear every day. Women have to wear “gowns” and not breathe during their wedding. Now, I have an issue with that! It’s a principle issue here! Somehow, what’s good for the gander … you know what I mean! And yes, I know this is a minority’s point of view. But it happens to be mine.

So here I am, hating all this, and trying to put together the wedding and buying the dress for it … I have managed to keep the wedding the way I have always wanted: small and symbolic, not huge and blurry. But the dress is giving me nightmares! For the millionth time, people in Retail, I do not want a GOWN! No gown! No puff! No train! No lace! NO! NO! NO! I want a dress I would not wear to work, so a little bit more chic than that, yet comfortable, as if I could wear it anywhere. I don’t want to be afraid to sit, or stand in it, I don’t want underwear showing, nor have to lose 10 lbs to fit in it. I want it simple, elegant, small and HERE! NOW!

And finding a white or an off-white or a black-and-white dress that’s my size has been virtually impossible! I find the right cut in the wrong color everywhere. Always the wrong size, but I have even stooped low (for the budget oriented me) and talked myself into alterations … I am a nervous wreck ! I dream about wearing nothing on the big day but a rain coat! I have nightmares that my dead grandma (who was a very, very fashion-savvy seamstress and spoiled me rotten growing up because she would custom make everything I wore the way I wanted it!) is scolding me about my dress … I started to hate my stature and my body and people in retail stores.

And Holy Mother of Jesus, are those bridal stores intimidating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You get a “consultant” (?!? – please, people, I have bought clothes before, all right?!), you have to see yourself in the mirror with 10 thousand strangers fighting for the mirror space, gawking and looking at you! And please, don’t tell me there are no petite brides left in the world! You have TWO size 2 dresses (a bit big for me, but like I said: alterations) in one cut, and one full aisle of size 18W! Really??? That’s what most of the brides out there wear?! Oy!

And the prices! Oh, Lord! So, you cross the aisle in the bridal gown area, you pay at least $400 for a white dress. The same dress, in yellow, across the store, for brides’ maids, is $100! I might not be a fashionista (or whatever kids say nowadays), but I know common sense!

And asking advice from your friends and family is even worse, because you don’t want to disappoint and you know you will when you’re not main stream about these things. And every one of them seems to just see herself in front of the altar when they share opinions on dresses! Has no idea that this is ME, ME- who hates weddings, ME- who hates dresses, period, ME – who hates puff, ME - who is looking for a dress! So much help is that! I am sure they mean well, and I admit I have quirky and unusual taste … but honestly – I got no help there …

I am exhausted! I am not quite sure what I’ll wear, but I can tell you – it will probably be an impulse buy once I have reached my limit. The most important thing about the wedding is that I have the right man. And that’s a definite. And I know he is the right man because he, also agrees with me on “small wedding and a comfy and simple dress”. And also like me, he doesn’t believe in what “you should wear on your wedding day”, but in “wear what you want. Always.”. So, I’ve got my mainstay for the wedding. Everything else, including the dress, is just haphazard!

Thank you, everyone, but mostly Aa., for putting up with my extra-neurotic self these days…