Alabama Living: Brownilocks and the Three Bears

May 28, 2018 / wordbird / Leave a comment

It is decidedly strange and wonderful to slip into your best friend’s life and family like you’d always been there and had just stepped away for a minute. To already know, from a multitude of phone conversations, the flow of life in that household—and then to inhabit it and have it come alive all around you.

In the big picture, my time in Alabama was like slipping on a pair of comfortable shoes. It was a homecoming. At times, however, it also bore a strong resemblance to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (except that my hair is brown).

The first night I slept in Amy’s bed because she was out of town. Her mattress is topped with a thick memory foam pad, which for me was way too soft.

The next few nights I slept in D’s bed (she got to sleep on the floor of her brother’s room, which thrilled her). Although comfortable, her mattress had been cursed with some dark magic that caused the comforter and blankets to continually slide off onto the floor. I was awakened frequently throughout the night, confused about having only a thin sheet to protect me from the subfreezing air-conditioned temperatures.

A slight alteration to D’s bed a week into my trip created my ideal sleeping situation. D’s brother had been yearning for a thick memory foam pad on his bed just like his mom’s—and fortunately that’s precisely what he received for his birthday. The thin foam pad that had been on his mattress was moved to D’s bed and it miraculously solved the problem of the disappearing bedding while also adding a layer of softness. Finally I had found a bed that was just right.

800px-The_Story_of_the_Three_Bears_pg_25

Goldilocks caught in Baby Bear’s bed. Illustration by Leonard Leslie Brooke

Then there were the bath towels. Amy doesn’t splurge on much for herself but she had recently splurged on some amazingly thick bath towels (they seem like distant cousins of her memory foam mattress topper—no joke). As you might guess, they were a little too high-brow for me; they almost stand up by themselves and meet you at the shower door when you get out. The ones in the linen closet, though, that were probably over a decade old, were too threadbare (and we ended up donating many of those). My “just right” towels were the practical fancy ones that had a thick soft pile and were cozy and absorbent without drawing much attention to themselves (and are much nicer than any towels I own).

Other situations fell outside the fairy tale mold but nonetheless illuminated my preferences.

The broom in Amy’s kitchen is the best I’ve ever used. It’s red and has a wide head, something like this:

O-Cedar Angler Angle Broom With Dust Pan**

I’ve typically bought crappy dollar-store brooms that have narrow heads comprised of inconsistent and course fibers that somehow move the dirt anywhere but into the dustpan. Amy’s big red broom, however, made sweeping fun and easy (and induced the realization that I have become someone who is grateful for the efficient and enjoyable functioning of a BROOM. Dear Gawd, who am I?!).

In yet another WHO AM I?! moment, I spent much time admiring Amy’s choice of sponge: Scrub Daddy** (something I’ve seen for years on store shelves and never purchased). I found this happy sponge to be effective and appealing to the touch. In cold water it remains hard and in hot water it softens. Washing silverware by hand is a breeze: just stick it through the smile and voila! Also, it doesn’t get smelly like most sponges and that’s a huge plus.

Then there was the much bigger issue of falling in love with Amy’s Honda Odyssey. Minivans are amazing and I would almost consider having kids simply to justify buying one. I most loved the countless drink holders: the van had no issue accommodating my bottle of kombucha, a water bottle, AND a cup of coffee—all at the same time!

Also, everything I needed was at the touch of a button: I could open and close the sliding doors or open and close Amy’s garage doors. It was like (my childish idea of) being a fighter pilot! The smooth ride and powerful engine only added to the fantasy.

Everything about the Odyssey is in stark contrast to my beloved 20-year-old Honda CR-V. Driving Amy’s van on and off for almost three weeks made returning home to my car…difficult. Before I knew the magic of a modern vehicle, I thought my ride was perfectly fine. I mean, the windows are automated—that’s pretty fancy.

Yeah, no. As I am now altogether too aware…nothing about my car is fancy. It is basically a Fred Flintstone-mobile. The tires might as well be made of stone and it might as well be powered by human legs.

I endanger my own life every time I merge onto the highway because I have to figure out which fast-moving SUV would be best to cut off. The road rage I inspire in other drivers with my I-think-I-can slow car will likely be the death of me.

Fortunately (and unfortunately) this Brownilocks is adaptable and can downlevel disturbingly quickly. After a few weeks back at home, I’ve mostly blocked from memory the smooth, powerful ride of Amy’s minivan. I once again feel pretty fancy being able to roll down the back windows with the touch of a button. And I’m still making strong choices about which cars to cut off.

I still dream of all those cup holders, though…

**I am not being paid to endorse these products and I’m not even sure what brand Amy’s broom is.**

Alabama Living: Damn You, Dryer Vent Cover!

May 4, 2018 / wordbird / Leave a comment

I am not great at handyperson work. I can clean, I can organize, I can approximate cooking even…but you might not want my “help” with “easy” fix-it things around the house.

I’m pretty sure as a child I absorbed the message from my dad that there is no such thing as easy where house projects are concerned. Any time he was working on something, my brother and I knew we’d get hauled to the hardware store at least three times and that my dad would be agitated until the project was done (meaning we knew to get lost).

Cut to Alabama last week when I was drying some laundry and the machine kept shutting off and throwing an error code. I finally mentioned it to Amy, who calmly wondered whether I’d googled to find out what was wrong. Duh! GOOGLE ALL THINGS!!

The googs came back with: “If your LG clothes dryer is showing error code d80, d90, d95… this means there is an issue with AIRFLOW EXHAUST LINT BLOCKAGE.”

One point for technology! Thank you for telling me what you need, gorgeous and smart modern dryer!

I can clean out the exhaust line! That’ll be EASY!

And it was…at the start. I pulled the dryer out from the wall and cleaned out both where the vent pipe attaches to the wall and where it attaches to the machine. Easy peasy—look at me.

Then I went outside to battle the end of the line:

My finger is holding up the flap to reveal the screen.

As you can see, there was a pileup of lint on the screen. I had tried vacuuming it the previous day, but it wouldn’t budge. Being then left to my own clever devices while Amy was at work, I decided I would remove the entire vent cover—so I found a box cutter and carved into the clear, thick silicone caulk holding the cover to the house. It took a minute but finally I extricated it.

With only a naked exhaust pipe before me, I was able to stick my arm in up until about my elbow to pull out what lint I could reach. The bits I could see much further down the pipe I dragged out with the handle of a broom. All told I’d liberated at least four giant handfuls.

And then I got a text from Amy: “Advice from the guys at work is to clip off the mesh of the screen. Apparently most dryer vents do not have them.”

Ruh roh.

Me: “Oh. Too late. I cut all around it and pulled the whole thing off. But that’s a great idea. Wish I’d thought of it.”

I forced the cover back onto the pipe as it had been (trickier than you’d think because of siding butting up against the top of the pipe) and called it a day. It would need to be replaced or recaulked, but at least now I could get back into the laundry game!

————————————————-

A couple days later I had time to revisit the issue and here’s what I learned: It’s far more effective to clean out the exhaust pipe when the dryer is ON! (I don’t know that it’s advised, but it sure seemed to work!)

The dryer just happened to be running when I scaled the ladder and removed the vent cover (the screen of which had already become covered over again with lint). I was at eye level with the tube and of course looked directly into it. The hot air rushed at my face—followed by a massive pile of lint! (Oh to be a neighbor witnessing my surprise…)

Realizing I was onto something, I grabbed a mop whose head fit perfectly into the tube. I pushed it in as far as I could and when I pulled it out, another giant pile of lint blew swiftly into my face. (It was like a game to see how much I could dislodge and how much I could coat myself in lint dust.)

Later that evening, the friend who gave Amy a ride home from work was sweet enough to let me pick his brain about the new vent covers I’d purchased that weren’t fitting. Within minutes he had it sorted. He took a pair of regular scissors (I thought I needed wire cutters) and cut the screen out of the original cover. Then he drove home, returned a short time later with silicone caulk, and reaffixed the cover to the house. Done and done. Yeah!!

I learned more about dryer vent covers than I ever thought I’d know in my lifetime. And now you do, too: They should not have screens on them.

Alabama Living: The Minimalist Warrior

April 28, 2018 / wordbird / Leave a comment

I’ve been in Birmingham, Alabama, now for almost two weeks and I’m scheduled to be here for one more. I’ve officially embedded myself into my friend Amy’s family. (For the backstory on the history of our friendship, please refer to a previous post called The Move-In Day Miracle here.

Amy is renovating her kitchen and flooring so I’m here to be project manager, warm body in the house while workers are here, personal organizer, purging cheerleader, errand runner, design consultant, and backup responsible adult (in case of emergency only). And by purging cheerleader, I don’t mean I wear a short skirt, bounce around, shake my pom-poms and have an eating disorder. I mean that I’m cheering Amy on as she makes a zillion choices every day to get rid of stuff.

She’s the master of letting things go—she just needs me to harass her late into the night (I don’t have her attention until about 9:00 p.m.) with questions like:

“Hey, how attached are you to this?”

“Where did this come from?”

“What does this do?”

And all followed by some variation of:

“Can we (and by we I mean you) get rid of it?”

I ransack closets and pantries and drawers and make a horrible mess constantly—all in the name of eventually making it all pretty and (hopefully) easier to maintain.

As a single mom with a tremendously adult job who commutes through fiery rings of traffic hell, Amy has come to appreciate the importance of not wasting her time attending to her stuff. Her time with the kids is limited enough after 10-hour days, so her first priority is to maximize every moment she can with them. Too much stuff equals scattered attention, frustration, and overwhelm.

Amy is a warrior of minimalism fighting to rid her house of evil clutter. And damn is she brutal! With me to do the grunt work, she’s able to make the tough choices and then move on—I take it from there by counting, packing, and hauling the items to the garage.

Her goal for this year (2018) is to get rid of 2,018 items.

That sounds like a lot but I don’t think she’ll have any trouble hitting the mark. When I start “exploring” a new area and arranging like with like, it becomes obvious really fast which types of items are out of control. For example, the kitchen pantry had over a dozen lunch bags/boxes in it because her daughter LOVES lunch bags. She loves the kind that zip, the kind that have her art on them, the kind that have stripes, the kind that have handles, the kind that don’t have handles, the kind that are padded, and the kind that have a special pouch for an ice pack. The girl loves her bags! Fortunately she’s also chill about letting them go, which is fortunate for all involved.

The lunch bags have now been reduced to this:

Lunch bags are in the purple tote. Plastic storage containers were also out of control!

Undoubtedly the stickiest items are the ones inherited from beloved (and now deceased) grandparents. Amy’s hesitancy to let something go is typically code for “that came from my grandparents’ house” or “that was my grandmother’s/grandfather’s.” In this case, I remind Amy that she has dozens of gorgeous items from her grandparents on display all over the house. And if they’re on display, they’re obviously meaningful. Now that I know where to look, her grandfather (who was an amazing human being) is all over the house—represented in items like this gorgeous creation he carved by hand:

St. Francis of Assisi, yes?

Anything he created has his energy and love in it through and through. That’s the stuff of magic to keep and cherish. The stuff he just happened to own? In most cases it’s clutter (if not useful or brings great joy).

The purged items count is currently at 600. It’ll be fun to see how high we can get it before I leave.

For this weekend, however, we take a break from the house projects and head to the beach.

(More Alabama stories to come…)

The Many Tiny Things

April 26, 2018 / wordbird / 1 Comment

Since Chester’s passing I’ve started listening to an American Public Media podcast called Terrible, Thanks for Asking. My cousin Rachel mentioned on Facebook that she was obsessed with it, so I looked into it. Here’s the description:

After the first couple episodes I was unclear about whether it was helpful or harmful to be listening. (I have a tendency to make poor choices about my media consumption when I’m feeling vulnerable.) I kept listening and eventually noticed that the episodes about grief felt like a cold compress on my swollen heart.

In the show I’m halfway through today, a woman named Holly is in day one of widowhood, having lost her husband after a prolonged illness. She shares that in the shower one day, shortly after her husband had become non-responsive, she melted onto the floor crying about not having written down the two recipes that were in his repertoire. He could make two amazing meals and she had no idea what was in either or how to prepare them and therefore could not pass this knowledge on to their son.

She mentions that if she were to share this heartbreak about the lost recipes with a “normal” person, they would think she was crazy. Nora, however, totally gets it and explains that we are all the sum of the many tiny things that make us who we are: our recipes, our jokes, our smiles, our quirks…so of course Holly should cry about those two recipes. That is loss. When we lose someone, we lose the many tiny things.

And that’s it. Regardless of whether we’re grieving an animal companion or a human…we miss the little things. And we miss the biggest thing: the physical presence of that particular body animated by that particular soul.

I walk into my room and miss seeing Chester’s food bowls on my dresser. I open my closet door and expect to see his litter boxes. For weeks after his death, I held a stuffed animal while falling asleep the way I used to hold him. It took me weeks to get rid of the short glass on my bedside table that provided his primary source of water. His pillow with the soft purple blanket still resides on the bed next to my pillow (though it was weeks before I could bring myself to wash it).

The Costco trips have slowed almost to a stop because I no longer buy a rotisserie chicken for him every week. When I pass the pet food store, I have to override the muscle memory that would turn my car into the parking lot to get him more of the protein and gravy pouches he loved.

Yesterday I took a short nap and my friend’s cat perched on me for a few minutes and purred. Tears ran down my face and into my ears because I was reminded how much I miss having a purring Chester lying on my body like an extra appendage.

And that’s grief, right?

I miss his smell, I miss burying my face in his chest, I miss the way he lounged atop my body like it was as much his as mine, I miss his voice (both his regular meow and the gruffy meow-yell it became near the end of his life), I miss the softness of his fur, and I miss the way he could become a kitten in the blink of an eye and start chasing his tail.

As Nora said, it’s the million tiny things that we lose.

But what can never be lost is the love.

The Catch-Me-If-You-Can Workout by Chester!

April 5, 2018 / wordbird / 1 Comment

From the moment I brought him home, Chester was a great companion for Beautiful White Princess. They were fast friends and their temperaments complemented each other well. One time I even saw them curled up on the bed together!

I bonded with Princess by brushing her perfect long hair and telling her stories of her beauty—of how it was legendary far and wide. She tucked me in every night by lying on top of me, her face inches from mine, and letting me scratch her cheeks and head while she purred and kneaded my chest and licked the sheets beneath my chin.

I bonded with Chester by chasing him through the hallways of my apartment building—a game he invented for us. I lived in a front second-floor unit of a small three-story building with basement. One night Chester was pawing at the door asking to go out. Being the sucker I am, I let him out to explore the hallway. (Princess had done this in my previous apartment building but she never went more than about 25 feet.) Instead, he disappeared into the front stairwell and was gone—like totally and completely gone in an instant. Like Harry Potter disapparating kind of gone.

Screenshot-2018-4-5 59 Ogden St Denver, CO 80218

This is what the hallways look like now (since being renovated).

I laughed and guessed he’d gone up a floor, so up I ran. No cat. Hmm. Down a floor. No cat. Down another floor. Ha! There he was, sitting in the middle of the hallway staring boredly as if he’d been waiting for hours. As I ran toward him laughing, he turned and sprinted into the back stairwell. This time I saw that he’d gone up. As I was more than halfway to the back stairwell, I increased speed and followed him up. But did he go one or two levels? A quick stop on two revealed no cat. I ran up to three and there he was in the middle of the hallway again, bored and watching me. By this point I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe–his nonchalance was killing me! As you can imagine, as I started to approach him he turned tail and sprinted into the front stairwell again. How the EFF was I going to catch this cat?!

I don’t remember how the game finally concluded (any of the times we played it). I might have had to shut front and back stairwell doors strategically to be able to trap him. Or maybe he finally just let me catch up to him. That game cracked me up—every time—and we played it almost nightly. I had already known he was magical at understanding what I was saying to him and now I knew he was faster than the speed of light. He was a trickster with a dry mischievousness.

We played that game for many months until I came home to a note on my door from the apartment manager. She said she’d received complaints from a neighbor who was deathly allergic to cats that my cat had been spotted in the hallway on numerous occasions. So as not to kill this neighbor, I was expected to keep my cat in my apartment at all times.

Dumb.

I would need to think of a way to give Chester more opportunities to run and play and change altitudes within my apartment…

Eventually I would land upon the brilliant idea of building him a cat tower.

How I Became Chester’s (cont.)

March 20, 2018 / wordbird / Leave a comment

Did I leave you hanging with that last post? Yes. Yes I did.

Lemme guess: You’re thinking, “Okay, so you have a healthy cat at home (in your one-bedroom apartment) and a (potentially chronically) sick cat in your car. What’s the plan now?”

pickle

Indeed I was in a pickle. I had rescued this guy by hook and by crook, but I hadn’t expected he would be ill.

We headed first to a veterinary clinic. (I’m starting to think I adopted him on a Monday because I remember taking him straight to the vet and most vets are closed on Sundays. Perhaps the security guard backdated the adoption paperwork?)

According to my records I took him to Washington Park Veterinary Clinic, a place I’d never been. (I would have sworn I took him to Firehouse Animal Hospital—this is starting to freak me out. Why can’t I remember my own life?!) The staff was incredibly understanding and didn’t even charge me for the exam. They drew blood to test him for FIV and leukemia and sent me to the lobby to wait for the results.

While waiting, my mind was flooded with worry about what I’d do if he was found to have a chronic communicable disease. The Ragdoll had tested positive so it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that he might also.

When the tech came out and told me that he was absolutely fine except for a terrible case of kennel cough, I remember trying to choke back tears of relief (which I’m fairly certain I failed at). The amount of emotion I felt was overwhelming and caught me completely off guard. What sway this cat had over me already!

I was given a liquid antibiotic for his kennel cough and I was told he’d be okay to be around other cats in 7 to 10 days.

With tears streaming down my face I explained to him in the car that he was going to be just fine once we cleared him of his nasty cold.

But…now what?

next move

I couldn’t take him home for risk of exposing Princess to kennel cough. I couldn’t take him to Rebecca’s because of her two cats. Who did I know who didn’t have any animals and might love me enough to care for my sick cat?

Katie!

Despite her cat allergy, Katie readily agreed to take him in and care for him for the 7 to 10 days it would take him to recover. So off we drove to her tiny one-bedroom apartment in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

What a strange experience for this cat! To be adopted by one person but then taken to stay with someone else for the first week. I told him about Princess and about how excited she would be to meet him… “But I can’t risk you getting her sick the way some other animal in the shelter got you sick. So we’re going to Katie’s house. She’s my best friend and you will love her; everyone loves her—she’s delightful. But maybe don’t love her too much, okay? I’ll be over to visit as often as I can. Your only job is to rest and to heal. We’re going to have a great life together—you, Princess, and me. You’re going to start feeling better really soon. Katie is going to give you a medicine that will help you be able to breathe easier and open your eyes wider and not be such a sneezy-head.”

And so it went. This sweet man started to be called Chester and he recuperated in Katie’s apartment. She subsisted on Benadryl while sharing her bed with this cuddly, swollen-faced cat who sneezed a lot. She will forever have my undying gratitude. ♥

Chester many years later with Miranda, who clearly adored him (as did all the ladies).

How I Became Chester’s

March 19, 2018March 19, 2018 / wordbird / Leave a comment

At the age of 26 I had just moved into a one-bedroom apartment with my four-year-old cat, Beautiful White Princess. I had a new job and was spending time with my girlfriend, Rebecca, so Princess was often alone…and seemed lonely.

Beautiful White Princess in Repose

I decided she would be happier if she had a friend, so Rebecca and I went to the Adams County Animal Control Center to find her a cat. For the life of me I cannot recall why it was so specifically THAT place…but given that it was a long drive to get there, I know it was intentional.

To get to the cats, we first had to walk down THE LONGEST CORRIDOR EVER of dogs. Behind the chain-link fencing of their cage fronts they barked, jumped, smiled, or danced—so excited to see people who might take them home. This was traumatic for both of us because we knew we couldn’t help any of them, so we averted our eyes (with only moderate success) and walked like speed racers.

Three of the cat room’s four walls were comprised of perfect rows and columns of individual metal cages, each with a tiny litter box and a bowl of water. There were little cat faces surrounding us from low to high like a feline version of The Hollywood Squares.

My mom had gravely and adamantly warned me away from selecting a male cat because of…reasons I can’t quite recall (but likely pertained to the possibility of spraying). Whatever she’d said, likely multiple times, had influenced me enough that I was only open to adopting a female.

The first one to capture my attention was a tiny Ragdoll who clearly was not well—her eyes and nose were runny and she seemed to feel puny. She was sweet as could be, pure fluff with only the tiniest body hidden under so much long fur. Perhaps because her need seemed the most dire, I decided uncharacteristically swiftly that she would be my new cat.

Also of note was an orange tabby who was putting on a huge show by meowing and purring, rubbing his face all over the front of the cage, and sticking his little paws out in an effort to grab us. He was so freaking cute…but unfortunately male.

I told the staff member I wanted the Ragdoll and was told that because she was ill, she would need to be tested before they could release her. I left empty handed, waiting impatiently for the phone call that would tell me she was okay.

When it finally came later that evening, the news was devastating: She had tested positive for either FIV or feline leukemia (or both) and would be euthanized per shelter procedure. I grieved a cat who had been mine only in my imagination—such a beautiful sweet tiny creature!

And still I needed a cat for my cat.

The next day was Sunday and my only chance to return to the shelter until the next weekend—and I didn’t want to wait that long. Rebecca couldn’t go with me but also didn’t need to: “If he’s still there, get the orange tabby—the guy who was rubbing his face all over the cage and reaching his paws out. He’s been on my mind since we left the shelter. No matter what else I might be thinking about, his face pops into my mind. He’s the one.”

“But he’s a boy!” I protested.

“I know, but apparently he wants to be your boy.”

I didn’t question Rebecca’s intuition; I had taken her with me for a reason and I trusted that if she felt so strongly about one of the cats, I couldn’t go wrong to follow her guidance. She had two gorgeous sister tuxedo cats, Miranda and Alexa, and I greatly respected her knowledge of and connection to felines.

I made the long drive back to the shelter, marched to the front door with my cat carrier, and was confused when the door wouldn’t open. I peered through to a darkened lobby and noticed a Closed sign hanging on the door.

“Wait, what? How could it be closed?! There are animals in there who need homes!” I was swept up in emotion, mostly frustration and mild panic. What if my cat gets adopted before I can come back? What if he isn’t even here now?

Right then a security guard unlocked and opened the door. It’s possible I was crying, or at the very least looked incredibly pathetic, because he asked if I was okay. I explained that I’d tried to rescue a Ragdoll the day before but that she’d been found to be ill and had to be euthanized so I was here to get the orange tabby (sniffle sniffle wipe tears sniffle). “I drove a long way and this is my only day off this week and I’m just here to pick up the orange tabby.”

He was incredibly sweet and obviously cared about animals because he said, “Well, I don’t work directly for the shelter but I’ve been around here long enough to know the process. Come on in, I think we can get you your cat.”

The guard walked me down the long dog corridor and hollered for someone once we got to the end. It was a different experience this time because all the lights were dimmed—like during a power outage when only the emergency lights are functioning. A young man with Down Syndrome appeared and walked me to where the cats were.

Although a room different from before, I beelined directly to the orange tabby who was, as before, meowing and rubbing his face all over the bars of the cage and reaching out with his paws.

And then he sneezed.

F#@k!

And then he sneezed again.

Noooooo!!!!

The shelter worker didn’t seem to notice or care about the sneezing as he opened the cage, grabbed the cat, and transferred him to my hard-sided carrier. Then he left the room to continue with his normal duties.

I leaned over and looked intently into the cat’s eyes, which were only tiny slits because his face was so puffy. I said slowly and clearly, “Rebecca delivered your message to me, so I’m here to take you home. Here’s the deal, though: They are not supposed to let me have you if you’re sick. And obviously you are sick. I need you to do everything you can to NOT SNEEZE in front of the security guard.”

During the entire walk along the dog corridor I spoke insistently and repetitively above the barking: “There’s only one thing I need you to do: You cannot sneeze in front of the man. You must be totally quiet. I’ll get us out of here as fast as possible. Your only job is to be silent.”

I must have told him 50 different ways that silence was imperative in front of the nice man.

When we got back to the lobby, the guard was waiting with a clipboard of paperwork for me. I set the carrier on a bench near the door—as far away as I could without drawing suspicion—and then stood at the counter writing as fast as I could on form after form. I paid $8.00, made sure all was good with the guard, thanked him profusely, and then exited as quickly as I could without breaking into a run.

Upon reaching my car I placed the carrier on the passenger seat, shut my door, and:

SNEEZE!

SNEEZE! SNEEZE!

SNEEZE! SNEEZE! SNEEZE!

For the next five minutes he sneezed nonstop.

Clearly this guy was something special.

Dirt in a Glass: The Beginning of a Meaningful Love Story

March 28, 2016March 28, 2016 / wordbird / 2 Comments

In my last post about not moving to Salida, I left out a fairly critical thing—quite intentionally. I chose not to mention that a couple weeks before I hit the snag with my loan, I’d met a woman.

She’s breathtakingly gorgeous, vibrant, smart, hilarious, athletic, sweet, and playful (among 80 other things I could say about her). Basically, she’s dreamy. And we’re courting—like, legit old-school courting. She’s masterful at it…and I’m smitten. At this point we’ve been dating for about 6 weeks and I’m just now to the point of ALMOST being able to concentrate on a task for 30 seconds without thinking about her and swooning.

swoon

When I was in the throes of making the to-Salida-or-not-to-Salida choice, she was insistent that I NOT be influenced by her sudden presence in my life. As far as she was concerned, it was all good either way and I should make the best choice for me. While I can’t quantify how successful I was at honoring her wish, I did my best—and that’s why I didn’t mention her in my previous post.

Another reason I didn’t mention her was because, while I’m not generally superstitious, somewhere in my brain there’s a gem of a thought that says, “Don’t write about her!! If you do, it’ll all be over!”

Looking at this in the light of day, I recognize it to be a totally ridiculous thought. And as a thought chaser, I’m intrigued. Where does this come from?

First of all, there’s the obvious: If I pour my heart out about her and then it all goes to hell, I’ll feel like an ass and there will forever be a commemoration of my adoration of her on my blog. Meh, I can live with that. There are worse things than being smitten with a phenomenal woman (such as, for example, being smitten with an a-hole woman, which has also happened).

Beyond the fear of making an ass of myself (a fear which I’m happy to report is falling more and more by the wayside as I near the big 4-0), I realize that it’s simply more vulnerable to write in the present tense because I.don’t.know.the.ending. How can I wrap meaning around circumstance to form cute little giftable bundles of story if I have no idea what’s going to happen?! It’s much easier to look back on situations and read into the signs and circumstances whatever meaning I can glean/craft in hindsight. (I think I was unduly influenced by shows like The Wonder Years and Doogie Howser, M.D.)

For example, if I HAD moved to Salida, the signs would have meant that I was called there—and that would have been true and made for a great story. If things had worked out with the woman I was dating in Salida, it would have been so much fun to tell everyone about the time when we were first dating and both had a katydid (an insect that looks like a green leaf) on our front doors on the same day (and neither of us had seen a katydid in years until that day)! Of course that would have meant that we were meant to be!

sign

I’m mocking myself and the joy I find in making meaning of things to underscore the point of discomfort I’ve achieved by realizing that nothing necessarily means anything. My current woman (I’ll call her Goddess) and I have the START of a beautiful love story—which is SUCH a fun place to be: with the flirting, the verbal banter, the playfulness, the competence of Goddess to return ANYTHING I volley into her court. And with all that, there’s the simultaneous awareness that all I can do to give this the best shot at success—whatever that will come to be—is to be present.

I am being called to be present. I am being called not to make anything mean anything.

The check returning my earnest money on the house in Salida was written with my last name as the combination of mine and Goddess’s. As it turns out, our last names are only one letter off from each other’s. The check writer obviously wasn’t sure which was correct, so she wrote the check to accommodate both our last names. The one letter of divergence was written as a W (mine) overwritten with an R. Or perhaps it was an R overwritten with a W. It was both hers and mine—almost as if to have invented a new letter altogether. And do I want to make that mean all kinds of things about our future together? Hells YES! Will doing that be helpful? Hells NO! Doing that will project me both into the future and into romantic delusion—neither of which is ideal.

I am being called to be present. I am being called not to make anything mean anything. I am being called to sit in the discomfort that being in romantic relationship can create and to allow it and to be aware of it and to use it as a chance to release that which no longer serves me.

Being single is easy. I’ve mastered being single. I’ve mastered doing what I want, when I want, with whom I want. Though I’ve grown a lot in my singlehood—which those friends know who witnessed me in the years just after my nine-plus-year relationship ended six years ago—it’s now time for new growth.

I attended a training this weekend in which one of the leaders likened being in relationship to water filling a glass that has dirt at the bottom of it. As the water pours in, the dirt is disturbed and starts to churn and rise up in the glass. If enough water is poured into the glass, the water will eventually run clear—but first the dirt needs to churn and rise.

I’m in the thick of the rising, churning dirt storm. And it’s okay.

Dirty water

Every insecurity I have is being churned up. And it’s okay.

If I can see myself through to clear water, with the help of lots of love from all around pouring into the glass, I will be that much more present and that much clearer to share all of me. And then, regardless of what happens in the plot line of this love story, love will have won. And I’ll be right there to assign it all meaning…from the future…in hindsight.

The Move I Almost Made

March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 / wordbird / 4 Comments

I’m pretty sure my lot in life is to learn the most obvious things in the most difficult ways. And of course by “most difficult” I mean “really not that difficult, but because I have a blog and I LOVE to exaggerate, I’ll make it sound difficult.”

While you might assume this post to be about dating, it’s actually about the move I almost made to Salida, Colorado.

Salida is a rural town located two-and-a-half hours southwest of Denver. It’s a small Mayberryish town filled with incredibly interesting people. The landscape is stunning; the town is situated on the Arkansas River in a bowl that’s surrounded by mountains.

downtown-salida-colorado

Here’s what the Colorful Colorado website has to say about Salida (these photos are from their site as well):

Salida is the county seat of Chaffee County and its largest city, with a population of approximately 5,300. The city is the service, supply, and tourism center for the Upper Arkansas Valley. Salida is a REAL Colorado mountain town. Beautifully nestled between the Sangre de Cristo and Sawatch Mountain ranges, this central Colorado Historic downtown at 7,000 feet elevation boasts a liveliness driven by artistic minds and outdoor enthusiasts.

People here wear smiles, the sun shines almost all the time, and you can bike, raft, hike, fish, climb, chill, whenever you want, any time of year. The townspeople are diverse so you don’t get just mountain bikers, skiers, and kayakers, you also experience Colorado ranchers and old miners, artists, and farmers, so just about everyone fits into this Colorado lifestyle.

salida-colorado-aerial

I’ll point out that the Spanish word salida translates to “exit” in English…and that certainly was an element of what I hoped to achieve by moving there. Certainly I was looking forward to escaping the cockroachy invasion of 100,000 people each year to the Denver metro area (and that might be a low estimate). Annoyingly, I really like all the recent transplants I’ve met, which melts my bitter native stance a bit. (I’ve learned to have audio books and/or podcasts in my car at all times and to work odd hours in order to avoid the worst of the traffic.)

More than running from anything, however, I was running toward something. I was excited about the lifestyle I would have in Salida: the dog walks up S Mountain (not its real name, but what locals call it), the clean air to breathe, all that room for my spirit to expand and roam free.

My soul-family friend and muse/spirit animal, Jenn, was going to sell me her house. I love this house. It might be considered small by most people’s standards but it seemed HUGE to me (being someone who dwells in a less-than-500-square-foot place now). What I could do with another 300 square feet and a back yard! I had plans to make raised beds so I could grow some of my own food; I would create a nook where I would start every day by sipping my homemade latte and writing; I had a vague idea of colors to add to the walls, and I imagined all my books nestled into the built-in bookshelves. I was fairly sure I would add a pedestal sink to the bathroom along with some wainscoting. I would check for hardwoods under the carpet. Having spent many nights in the house, I knew exactly what it would be like to wake up in the morning and lumber to the bathroom and then to the kitchen to let the dogs out.

Here’s the sketch I made of the house to help me figure out how to arrange furniture (clearly, I was not messing around):

I imagined what it would be like to work from home. I imagined the few friends I have in Salida popping over unannounced just to say hi. I knew it would take time for my nervous system to adjust to the slower pace. I loved that I’d be able to walk everywhere. I loved that I would prepare most of my own meals, rather than being tempted to drive thru any of the 80,000 fast-food places I pass on my way to and from work every day now. I imagined the inspiration I would get from the landscape. For months I had been living parallel lives: my current life here (in my body) and my future life in Salida (in my mind).

There were many months from when I was under contract to buy the house until the time I knew I could occupy it. This large amount of time was a tricky thing for my mind. It gave me lots of time to worry about whether my choice was a smart one. On the macro level: “Will I miss everyone in Denver and find myself living in Salida but wishing I were in Denver?” “Despite the home being an amazing long-term investment, will buying it make me house poor and how will I feel about that?” “Will my 18-year-old car hold out for all the trips I’ll be making to and from Denver (for work and to see people)?” “If for some reason I needed to find a new job, could I find anything in Salida that would pay what I require to make ends meet?” “Am I committing relationship suicide by moving there?” (I had dated the one lesbian I knew in the area and that hadn’t worked…so who else might there be to date? What were the odds of importing someone?)

I found the doubts creeping in. My enthusiasm for the idea slowly and very subtly started to wane. I could hear it in the way I was or wasn’t telling people that I was planning to move soon. By then I was committed, though. I was under contract, I’d had the house inspected, my boss had given me permission to work remotely, I’d mentioned to my landlord that I might be leaving, I had my mom on board to put me and the dogs up whenever I was in Denver…

And then about 60 days from close, as I was in the process of locking my loan rate, the process hit a glitch. Not a totally insurmountable glitch, but one that could pose danger to my friend’s ability to buy her next place if I couldn’t overcome it. And the most telling thing for me—the information I most required from my own soul—was the full-body sense of relief I got when I heard I might not get the loan. It was the weight of the world lifting off my shoulders. It’s exactly the feeling I got when my ex and I finally decided to call it quits on our relationship. It’s a feeling that unmistakably means this is the right thing.

And this is where the hard part came in: letting that feeling of relief be all I needed to know. My mind felt left out! It chimed in very loudly about many things—mostly with worry about how to tell Jenn that I’d changed my mind. On the positive side, I knew that she’d make way more on the house by putting it on the market than by selling it to me, and I knew that telling her right away would give her plenty of time to find a new buyer. I also knew that telling her would be the end of the dream—one that she and I had co-created together.

As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. She took the news like a champ, because a) she never ceases to amaze me, and b) she’s an Aquarius and can roll with literally anything life throws at her. I mean, she runs a circus for a living!

It took a couple weeks to stop waking up every morning in Salida and to stop walking my dogs up S Mountain on my lunch break. I had to let my future life in Salida slowly recede from my mind.

Here’s what my heart had to say about the choice NOT to move there:

You can draw on the energy of Salida any time; it is a supportive energy for you… Change is good and moving is not necessarily required. You could do a major purge of your apartment, a deep clean, maybe get a new desk to write at… Your apartment is a blessing until the next EASY thing comes along. That which you imagined creating for yourself in Salida you can do from where you are. Cooking your meals, maybe doing yoga, long walks with the dogs, writing…

Ahhh, so here was the obvious-not-obvious wisdom in all this: I can be NOW everything I projected into the future Salida Erin. I can be Salida Erin in Denver. I can create a space and a ritual in my daily life for writing. I can draw on the inspiration of the energy of Salida at any moment I choose. I can merge the parallel lives (current Denver Erin and future Salida Erin) back into Erin-Being-Present-in-Her-Life Erin.

And the other huge lesson: I came to be even more grateful for what I currently have in my life. I have an apartment where I’m allowed to have my animals. I have an apartment I can afford. It’s near one of the most beautiful parks in Denver. I have a job working with great people I’ll still get to see every work day. I’ll still get to have weekly date nights with my bestie Michelle to watch crap television. I’ll still be near my other bestie, Katie, whose existence in my life has shaped my life more than I’ll ever truly know (and who I dislike the idea of being far from).

And most importantly, I still have Salida. I can go there whenever I desire. And when I’m there, I’ll get to spend time with my muse/spirit animal, Jenn, soaking in everything about her that inspires me and helps me live a more authentically creative life.

So thank you, Project Move Erin to Salida, for being everything I needed you to be.

It’s Okay to Loosen Your Grip

February 17, 2016 / wordbird / 1 Comment

In my mid-twenties I worked for a brief six-month stint on the graveyard shift at the local blood center. Two things remain with me from that time.

First of all, I still cringe when I stumble across Public Radio International’s The World on Colorado Public Radio. I was awakened for every shift by its theme song:

This music inspires within me a wave of adrenaline and a wave of dread—simultaneously. It wasn’t my favorite job and the overnight shift took some getting used to. Waking up at 10:00 pm to go to work? Ugh!

But there was this one night…

The back doorbell buzzed, indicating a delivery. It was common for couriers to deliver body parts at all hours of the night in little coolers (usually eyeballs, as I recall). One night while I was signing in a cooler, the courier observed, “Wow! You hold your pen really tightly when you write. It looks like you’re actually cutting off circulation to your fingers.” I said, “Oh…yeah, I do have a tight grip. That’s just how I learned to write, I guess.”

Before

This launched us into a conversation about graphology and I learned that this sweet white-haired man was trained in handwriting analysis. He didn’t need to analyze my handwriting, though, because he knew everything he needed to know about me from watching me hold the pen. He left me with [something approximating] these words: “I promise that your life will change when you learn to hold the pen more loosely.”

When he said this, I had that thing happen that happens when I’m hearing deep truth. It’s a split second of time standing still with a bit of fuzzy eye focus and lightheadedness. This means, “Erin, pay attention!”

I heard him. I heard his gentle implication that my tight grip on the pen was a manifestation of my mistrust of life. (That liberal arts degree pays off when attempting to discern subtle implications!)

I didn’t yet know that I don’t have to be in control of everything—that I CAN’T be in control of everything.

I won’t lie. It took me a long time to re-learn to hold a pen after almost twenty years of using a death grip.

After

My handwriting suffered greatly for years but has finally found its way back to being legible. I still resort to the old way if I’m holding a crappy pen that won’t write, though I’m quick to notice it. I’m also now a pen snob and eschew any pen that’s not gel. I assume that as I grow more eccentric, I’ll one day be using an ink bottle and quill.

So why am I sharing this? Because during a recent coffee and coloring date with friends I realized I was using my old strangle-hold technique. My friends were holding their colored pencils oh so gently as we chatted, their arms and hands and shoulders relaxed…while I was overexerting and muscling and bullying. (Coloring loses a bit of its therapeutic effect when doing it the way I was doing it.) I became aware that I‘ve worked to write differently but not to color differently, which lit my mind up with questions.

In what areas of my life am I exerting too much control?

In what areas of my life am I in total allowance, trusting that I am fully supported?

Which areas of my life are in color? Which are in black and white?

What am I holding onto too tightly that I need to release (literally or figuratively)?

And, in case you’re wondering, the courier driver/graphologist was correct. There has been a pretty significant shift in my life since learning to lighten up my grip. It has lightened me up in other ways and it allows a greater flow of goodness into my life. I’ve been blessed with numerous situations in which letting go and trusting allowed just the right job/person/animal to enter my life…exactly on time.

And now for a quick coloring break…to practice lightening up.

A Patch of Sunlight

Musings on Life, Love, and Magic

Author: wordbird