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Back to the Grind.

So I’m back.

I’m back and my eyes are puffy and my hair is fuzzy and matted to the back of my head and I’ve just been woken from the best sleep of my life by the jarring alarm of an iPhone that, when I think about it, I should’ve thrown against the wall.  But I didn’t want to scratch the paint.  The charcoal paint.

Are you picking up what I’m dropping?

That’s right — last night, my first night home from my whirlwind tour of the east coast, we were able to sleep in our bedroom.

Not the guest room — our room.

Which means that on top of approximately 872 trip photos to sort through and share via witty highlighting commentary, I also need to give you an update on that.  Which I will.  Very soon.

And I would’ve updated you sooner — say, while enjoying a cup of fresh-ground coffee in my aunt-in-law’s remodeled Philadelphia kitchen, but I left the power cord to my “borrowed” work laptop in its sun dappled perch in Erin’s water view Annapolis kitchen.

Which I wasn’t too bummed about at first, because it allowed the excuse of taking a leisurely meander back down the coast instead of the terrifying I-95 past Washington, D.C. in order to retrieve the cord.  But then I was bummed, because I realized we wouldn’t get back in time to retrieve the mutts, which I find considerably more fluffy and huggable than a laptop power cord.  So now I have approximately 47 seconds to hop in the shower and erase the grimy road residue from my body before I head out to pick up the mutts, bring the mutts home, and drive all the way back down to work, effectively arriving an hour late on my first day back.

A fact my female boss — the one I directly assist on a daily basis — seemed none too pleased to hear.

And I have to wonder.  Why is it, when I’m on the road, that everything seems to work out timing-wise, but when I’m home, everything turns into one screwed up fuster cluck of a rush?

For example, when we realized we didn’t have time to get the mutts, we realized that meant we did have time to stop at an Italian restaurant, maneuver to change into dressier clothes in the car in the restaurant’s parking lot, enjoy one last vacation-prolonging leisurely meal, and pick Justin’s car up from where he’d left it at the Raleigh airport.  Good deal.  However, I can already see today stretching into a giant stress ball of running all over town, catching up on work, setting appointments, and figuring out how I’m supposed to fit my grandiose plans into a single, short-lived week.

And that, it hits me, is the reason I love to travel.  It’s like my soul refuses to accept a sense of urgency, because nothing really is urgent.  I’m allowed, finally, to just live in the moment.

I just need to figure out how to do that at home.  After I shower, get dressed, pick up the mutts, go to work, cook dinner, do laundry, finish the bedroom, sort photos, and work on other various projects I have going.

Crap.

(P.S. I did post the occasional photo highlight on my Facebook page while I was away. You can see previews at the right, or click here to check ’em out if you’re bored.)

My Mind is Like… the Most Intricate LEGO Set Ever Designed.

Michael Wurm, who has an inspiring blog and is apparently one of the most followed people on Pinterest, posted something yesterday that made me feel better about myself.

literally, for like an entire second, I felt better about myself.

It’s a quote by someone named Rae Smith that says:

Never be afraid to fall apart, because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along.

I feel like that’s me right now.

Or me for the past couple of years.

This thing — this thing that I’m doing/going through/putting the people I love through is a process.  First, we had the falling apart.  The realization that I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted to live it, and so I started taking the steps necessary to change.  I may have stumbled here and there, but for the most part, I feel like the changes were a step in the right direction.

No matter how crazy others thought I was.

No matter how crazy I sometimes think I was.  Because I have to remember that sometimes I would leave my cubicle, close myself into a bathroom stall, and sit there for 20 minutes to contemplate the meaning of my job.  My life.

Sometimes I would cry.  At work.  In a bathroom stall.

So when I think about how I miss the paycheck and my way-above-averagely-awesome co-workers, I have to remember the bathroom.

I have to remember the bathroom and the sense that if I stayed in that place (the job, not the bathroom) much longer, I might quite literally lose my mind.

Second, we have the rebuilding.  As with any major construction project, the process is a bit slower than I’d like, I’ll admit.  And some of the pieces keep falling off, which indicates that it may be time to invest in some better glue.

So when I find myself falling into the rut of my new job (new? I’ve been there since August), I have to remind myself of what it is that I’m really after and how this job can help get me there.  It’s home photography practice.  It’s writing practice and people skills.  It’s a portfolio-builder in many ways, and while there isn’t a lot of extra floating around, it helps pay the bills.

Photo I took for a house flyer.

It’s flexible, and for the most part, allows me time to work on other things.

I just need to force myself to do it.

By the way, I made it to the finals in a writing/photo contest to win a trip to India.  I believe that winners will be announced later this week.  And while I realistically understand that the guy who’s made it to the finals 4 times as opposed to my 1 time has a better shot, I’d like to keep it positive up in this mind.  You know… better glue.

If Life is a Contest to See Who’s The Most Pamperedest Chef, You Win. I Give.

What is it about getting older that makes us feel like we need to slap a theme on something in order to make it fun?

Take, for example, renovated house reveal party my bosses are planning.  It can’t just be a classy affair with an amuse bouche or two, some tapas, and a cocktail bar — it has to have a theme. “Sangrias at Sunset” sounds simple enough, but in reality it requires coordinating the food, music, and even colors to make everything fit a predetermined Spanish vibe, even though nothing about this home in a historic downtown Fayetteville neighborhood has anything to do with Spain.

It’s undue stress, I tell you, and if they’re not careful, the end result will likely be some mishmashed medley of weak catered sangria with cheap wine, bright garish table cloths, and streaming mariachi music.

The house will be beautiful, but I wonder if anyone will see it.

Themes can be fun when they’re original, like the “Ugly Sweater Parties” from a decade ago.  But did anyone notice the mass surge of ugly sweater parties during this past holiday season?  It became the it thing to do, and suddenly the act of hunting down an ugly sweater became a chore — it no longer entailed a quick trip to the Goodwill, but an all-out hunt for the best worst sweater in town, sometimes requiring the payment of retail prices in department stores which were stocked with colorful Santa and reindeer knits designed specifically, it seemed, for parties honoring the art of the ugly sweater.

It seems like all adult social parties, once we reach a certain age, have to be designed around a theme.  Especially the social parties exclusively for women.

What is it about turning the big THREE-OH that apparently makes us lose our ability to gather with a group of women to enjoy some good drinks, sincere laughs, and stimulating conversation without the crutch of a theme?

Or worse, without guilting each other into buying something?

Every single women-only event I’ve been invited to since turning 29, with the exception of the book club and a much-loved “girls’ night out” or two with former colleagues, has been a ruse to get me to buy something I neither want nor need.  From jewelry to bags to kitchen gadgets to chip dips, my social world has turned into a support network for home-based pyramid schemes businesses.  I can no longer go to my local wine shop without feeling a twinge of guilt for not purchasing bottles from someone with a home-based wine selling business.  I can’t make my own fresh ingredient soup without thinking about the just-add-water bag of powder still sitting in the back of my drawer.  I can’t comparison shop for health products.  Test my own makeup.  Buy my own non-fugly patterned lunch bags.  I can’t even purchase inexpensive Wal-Mart brand room fresheners because they might soil the specialized plug-in warmers that cost me a 2-week grocery budget and a contract for my first-born child.

I don’t mind supporting my friends, but when I’m guilted into attending these “parties” where I’m forced to fake enthusiasm for a collapsible polka-dot thermal picnic cooler and spend $50 on powdered drink mixes that will be doomed to take up back-of-pantry real estate until we move, I’m not gonna lie — I find myself wondering how much Im supposed to spend in order to qualify my friendship.

I say this not to insult those who earn a living supporting these companies or those who genuinely enjoy the products and purchase on a regular basis.

I say this because I’m concerned about the fact that these are the only gatherings that seem to exist after a certain age — these, and baby showers.  And I’m sorry, but unless they involve Kahlua and stroller races, I’m really not going to get excited about them.

Why can we not get together simply for the sake of getting together?  Why can we not gather at a friend’s home and cook a collective meal?  Talk about the books we’ve read?  Watch the latest Nicholas Sparks film and outwardly ridicule the main characters while secretly wishing we were them?

Why does there always have to be a premise?

The next time you attend one of these themed gatherings, ask yourself if you’re having fun.

And if you think that you are, ask yourself if you really are, or if you’re just faking it.

Because there’s something that happens as we get older and more domestic.  Something bad.

Somehow somewhere along the line, we start telling ourselves that it’s okay to fake it.

That fun isn’t fun unless it’s forced.

That we can’t really laugh, because our laugh is too loud.

Our jokes are too crude.

And our meatballs must suck because there are still some left on the tray.

We leave feeling inadequate.  Ridiculed.  Or the coolest member of a club we never wanted to join.

And when I think about it, I realize that I have no energy for pretense.  There are too many fun things to do.  Fantastic people to meet.  Wonders to experience.

So maybe it’s the domestiphobe in me, but I really don’t think I want to do this anymore.  This faking it thing.

So I think that I’ll stop.

Because really, if my laugh is too loud, then I’ll stop getting invited.

And I’ll have more time for the people and things that make me laugh for real.

Everybody wins.

What about you? Think you have a little domestiphobia in you?

I Wish the Internet Worked in Candlelight.

Yesterday and the night before, I had no internet.

I didn’t realize quite how much my world revolved around internet until I didn’t have it.

Kind of like when the electricity goes out for a couple of days, and you think it’ll be fine because you have plenty of leftovers you can just pop in the microwave for dinner, except oh yeah, the microwave doesn’t work and so all meals henceforth, including your morning toast, will need to be cooked on the grill out back.  And I don’t mind not having television (since we don’t even have cable anyway) so I’ll just read, except reading by candlelight is much more difficult and less romantic than expected, and so not worth the inevitable squinting headache at the end of the night.  And you can forget about hot showers because it’s electricity, my friends, that heats the water.

In Costa Rica we couldn’t even flush the toilets when the electricity went out, but somehow not being able to poop near common living areas during power outages there seemed a lot less inconvenient than not being able to make toast here.

It’s like that with the internet, too.  The internet is my baby.  It’s my connection from this secluded suburban pocket to the outside world.  It’s how I stream Dexter and Downton Abbey and The Bachelor.

It’s how I talk to you.

Anyway.  This is my long-winded way of telling you why I haven’t posted.

Well, if we’re going to be honest, the internet thing isn’t the only reason.

See, someone commented not too long ago that if I don’t have something worth writing about or can’t put together a coherent post, maybe I shouldn’t write.  Maybe I should wait longer between posts.  And I’ll admit that jarred me a little — I thought, maybe I shouldn’t just throw all of these inane thoughts out into the vastness of the internet where anyone can see.

But then I quickly remembered that thoughtfulness and coherency are not what this blog is about.

So.  Speedbump hurdled.  (Thanks for talking me through that one, Rhome410.)

The third reason is that my job — not career, but job — has suddenly become more stressful.

Despite the fact that my boss and I came to a mutual agreement that I would not be working full-time for him, I was shifted into the position of my other boss’s assistant, which is, I’m finding, pretty much a full-time job.

Yep.

I think I’ve been manipulated.

Worse, I’ve been manipulated into a respect-less, opinion-less role of subhuman dignity, where apparently the idea is for me to work my ass off in order to make someone else look good and collect all of the money.

Yet.

I don’t hate it.

Yet.

The world of real estate is a pretty shallow, bitchy, self-righteous place full quirky and interesting characters.  From the extreme end of clients who think that in hiring a realtor they’ve invested in some form of legalized slave labor, to the extreme end of agents who think selling real estate is akin to saving the manatees and all the rest of you would-be manatee savers better back the f*ck off because I’m the only person allowed to save manatees in this town — ME, my days are filled with interesting sociological observations of the extremes and the dawning realization that no one, no matter how old, experienced, wealthy, or intelligent, really knows what he or she is doing.

My job is anything but mundane.

And that’s what makes it work for me.

There are some atrocities, however, that I find difficult to move past.

Take, for example, a would-be client who currently can’t get approved for a mortgage.  Is it because he has questionable history, late payments, bankruptcy, or any other blemish on his credit report?

No.

It’s because he has no credit report.

The bank will not give him a loan because he has no debt.  He’s financially responsible.  He pays for everything with cash, therefore ensuring that he never buys more than he can afford.

In other words, because he doesn’t owe the bank any money, they won’t loan him any money.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to experience other countries.

Even if I’m not allowed poop during thunderstorms.

All I’m Sayin’ is You Probably Don’t Want to End Up in a Pie. DO You?

It occurred to me over the weekend that some of you might find it odd that Justin and I are taking a separate-yet-together vacation.  That we’re married, and yet we would opt to arrive at the same destination via different means.  That I, the girl, would choose to toss my bags into the back of the Tracker and take a week to meander my way to Philly while Justin, the guy, will pop a couple of Dramamines and ask the stewardess to wake him up when they get there.

The difference in our travel philosophies is obvious.  For Justin, it’s about arriving at the destination as quickly as possible so he has more time to enjoy it.  But me?  I don’t like to be rushed.  The trip itself — as long as I’m not stuffed into a cramped plane cabin full of crying babies and plane farters — is a part of the vacation.

Especially when I have the chance to see other interesting places and people along the way.

So.

After nearly nine years together, we’ve finally figured out that there’s really no need for one of us to conform.  If he prefers to fly, he can fly.  Since I prefer to drive, I will drive.  (Though I’ll admit this idea doesn’t seem quite as brilliant as gas prices creep closer to that $4.00 mark.)

Anyway.  Just because we’re married doesn’t mean we have to become the same person — some oddly morphed amalgamation of the individuals we once were.

Nope.

I remain stubbornly independent.

It probably stems from my first real date.

See, I wasn’t the most popular girl in high school.  And I never really did have a boyfriend.  But there was this boy, we’ll call him Todd for reasons that will become obvious in a minute, whom I met while painting the set for our high school’s production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona or some other Shakespearian work we didn’t understand, in a junior year last-ditch effort to involve myself in the place so it would look like I cared on my college applications.

Todd was a senior who worked on the lighting, and I remember the flutterbies when he held my hand in the dark on the catwalk as we lay side-by-side on our stomachs, watching the play through the metal grates from above.

He asked me out not long thereafter, and it felt surreal when the night arrived.  A real boy was picking me up in a real car and taking me to a real dinner and not just a movie, but a play.  A college play, that was going to be performed in-the-round with a revolving set inside of a big black box and we’d be parked in the seats, not the catwalk, though I thought maybe I’d miss our aerial view from the catwalk a little.

The play had some silly name, Sweeney Todd or something crazy like that, weird but easy to remember the way it rolled off the tongue.

He said it was about a barber.

Now.  It’s important to remember that this event occurred before Johnny Depp brought Sweeney to mainstream culture.  So.  Imagine my surprise when Benjamin Barker cuts the first victim’s throat with a razor blade, red blood gushing oh-so-realistically as he pulls a lever on his specially crafted chair, turning it into a rigid slide of sorts, and the body, a once-jolly chap who’d only wanted a shave, falls through a hole in the floor and down into Mrs. Lovett’s kitchen where she grinds him up and turns him into a pie, of all things, and sells him on the street as the delicious individual pastries for which she soon becomes famous.  And they sing about the pies, people, about the human meat pies in a song called, God, that’s Good.

Source

And I thought about the hamburger from Ruby Tuesday’s I’d just devoured, and I realized at that moment that maybe this whole romance thing was overrated.

So when Todd (the one I dated, not the one from the play) started to get a little clingy — showing up at my house when I told him I was spending time with my girlfriends and calling incessantly — I thought maybe there was a chance that Sweeney Todd had been a warning.

And maybe, no matter what happens in this life with the menfolk, I shouldn’t try to change who I am to fit someone else’s personality.  Nor should I expect them to change for me.  Sometimes the solutions are much simpler than what we make them.

And I definitely should never pay anyone to shave my neck.

Hey.

My life is full of lessons, people.

I’m just here to pass them to you.

And This Is Why You Should Never Do Anything Nice For Anyone Ever.

This weekend, I broke my boss’s television.

Yep.

Welcome to my world.

I know these things don’t just happen to me, right?  You told me these things don’t just happen to me, like the time I flashed my co-worker, boss, and pretty much the entire city my skivvies in broad daylight.  (Because, you know, any other time of day would be perfectly acceptable.)

It was one of those moments when, clear as crystal, I had an epiphany — we really should lie the television down while we move it, I thought, rather than balancing it up on its stand.

Of course, as is common in these types of scenarios, I was having that epiphany as I pressed the accelerator when the light turned green.  In the forward momentum, the backwards-facing television decided that it would rather stay at the stop light, so it fell, face down, and landed on top of a file cabinet.

And I got that feeling.  You know that sickly feeling when you feel like life is playing a joke on you?  Like any second time is going to rewind itself to the moment before The Incident happened, and you’ll have time to change the way things went down?  Like this really can’t be happening, and we’ll just stop at the office to drop off the filing cabinet, and then there will be plenty of room to properly arrange the large, not-inexpensive flat screen television in such a way that basic physics won’t lead to its ultimate demise?

But wait.  That already happened.

And now I have to explain to my boss, when we show up at his new house to which we were helping him move his family’s worldly possessions from his old house, why, exactly, I broke one of the two things I was responsible for transporting.

After that thought crossed my mind, a more primal instinct took over.  I’m not exactly sure, but I think this is the conversation that took place in my car:

Me:  We could just keep driving.  We could just keep going and start over with nothing but this Tracker, a filing cabinet, and a broken, flat screen television to our names.

Justin:  That sounds great, except for the part where I get arrested for ditching the military.

Me:  We could just throw it out the back of the Tracker and tell him we got mugged when we were driving through a less-than-savory part of town.

Justin:  We didn’t drive through a less-than-savory part of town.  He’ll only believe that story if we tell him we got mugged by a McDonald’s employee or grass-fed prep school children.

Me:  It could happen.

Justin:  And the only thing they stole was the flat screen?

Me:  What else are they going to steal?  Mixed CD’s from 1998?  A pack of kleenex?  The copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull I bought in a used bookstore in Canon Beach  in 2003 that’s been sitting in the pocket of my door ever since?

Justin:  Good point. But we’d have to file a police report to make it believable, and I refuse to get involved in that type of scandalous affair.

Me:  What, they didn’t teach you that in Catholic school?  That it’s okay to file false police reports on your wife’s behalf so she doesn’t have to tell her boss that she broke his expensive television?  That you BOTH broke his expensive television?  Don’t forget, Mister, you were in the car.  That makes you an accomplice.  And I’m your wife.  Catholics are totally into that idea of doing-whatever-the-spouse-wants-no-questions-asked, right?  I mean, it’s for the good of the marriage.  I could be carrying your CHILD.

Justin:  What?  You could?

Me:  No.  It was a hypothetical.

Justin:  …

Me:  Let’s talk about something else.

In the end, my boss wasn’t mad.  Or at least he did a good job of hiding it.  I console myself by saying it was an older flat screen, and he said he’d been looking for an excuse to buy a new one anyway.

That, and the fact that I work for a bargain.  And he knows it.

And we’re the only people who showed up to help him move.

And we did it for free.

So hey.

You get what you pay for, right?

I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson to be learned here.  Something like… don’t do nice things for other people because it will likely bite you in the ass.

Or something like that.

I’m still working on that one.

I’m So Cool — Too Bad I’m A Loser.

A couple of days ago, I found myself slipping. Bemoaning the lot in our military life that’s landed us in the same place for so long.  I was doing something meaningless — dropping flyers and a lockbox off at a new listing, driving through the usual drudgery of pawn shops and Asian markets and the suffocating stench of fried food and giant southern truck exhaust.  I was headed west, and I knew that if I kept going, I would eventually race along the south side of the military training lands, where they shoot stuff and drop stuff and fall from the sky like little turds from a bird only they never land on anyone’s head.

Unless, of course, they plan it that way.

But I didn’t keep going, because I had things to do.  A right turn to make, into a tiny pocket of suburbia tucked just off of the main road and into a deluded fog of quiet seclusion and community togetherness.  I tapped my brakes, and that’s when I saw it.  Due west, straight ahead, the biggest bird in my sky at that moment — probably a C-17 with a 170 foot wingspan and 4 bulky engines carrying its unlikely hulk above the tree line over the rise ahead.  And then they started dropping, the turds from the bird, only way, way cooler.  They seemed random and graceful the way they fell, one after another after another, then pop pop pop went their parachutes almost immediately, seeming precariously close to one another and then falling, falling and from this distance looking like so many tiny Mary Poppins silhouettes gliding down across the setting sun and over the London skyline comprised, in this case, of the tallest Longleaf Pines.

I can’t find a credit for this photo. If it’s yours, please let me know.

It was stunning.

And, no matter how many times I witness this surprise display of Paratrooping prowess, it will never get old.  Never.

It will never not be cool to me.

Which is comforting, because in this life, it’s so easy for things to fall off of our radars, whether because someone tells us it’s no longer cool to like these things, or we outgrow them ourselves.  And sometimes it feels like this race — like we drop one trend, clear the overalls and jean skirts from our wardrobes, and just a short 10 years later, we’re filling it up again.  Denim, denim everywhere!

Doesn’t it get tiring?  This constant struggle to look the right way, say the right thing, be the right person?

I mean, really.  If we all loved the same things, there would never be anything new to discover.  And stores would constantly be sold out of yoga pants.  And we wouldn’t procreate because Scott Bairstow is taken.

And I realized that day that to me, no matter what anyone else tries to say, these things will never stop being cool:

The Toadies.

Absolut Vodka ads.

Harry Potter books.

Bangs.

Geography.

Billy Joel.

(Every voice heard in this song is his.  The only instrumental accompaniment is a bass guitar.  Tell me that’s not awesome.)

The Tracker.

So.  What’s your list?

*Thanks once again to the Barenaked Ladies for providing the post title. I couldn’t do it without you.

Happy Frickin’ Valentine’s Day to You, Too.

In light of the fact that Justin and I celebrated Valentine’s Day together for the first time 3 years into our relationship and bought each other a marriage “game over” t-shirt and the complete box set of Carmen Electra’s Strip Aerobics (can you guess who received which gift?), you would think I’d be over this V-day thing entirely and that this year we’d kick back on the couch, trough some sloppy joes, and practice opening beer bottles with our butt cracks.

However, I’ll have you know, romance isn’t entirely dead to me on this day.

In fact, this year we’re doing something super romantic.

That’s right.

We’re working on our master bedroom.

Well.

Technically we worked on it over the weekend and I will be painting the walls on my day off tomorrow, so really tonight we might hang the light or something, then sit on the floor admiring our handiwork while eating sloppy joes — the homemade kind, not the crap from a can.  Because we’re crazy like that.  And to me, nothing says love like ground beef on a bun.

Anyway, we are making progress.  Justin primed and painted the ceiling, and I cleaned and painted all of the baseboards, door and window trim.

*NOTE: If you’re going to take on a room painting project and the trim needs to be painted as well, start with the trim FIRST.  Just trust me on this.

FYI, cleaning a room after popcorn removal and ceiling sanding is not an easy task.  It requires a shop vac, a regular vac, patience, and some elbow grease.  Guess which one of these 4 I don’t have.

While Justin was at work last week, I got started on the grungy baseboards.

You can see how bad they were, even post-scrubbing.

Ignore the “special” trim brush I’m using and my creepy red hand.  My hand isn’t really that red.

I hated that paint brush.  When I did the rest of the trim over the weekend, I found it much more effective to use my usual Wooster shortcut brush.

That big flat spatula tool that Justin had used to scrape the ceiling worked wonderfully to hold down the carpet while I painted the baseboards.

I was meticulous about not getting paint on the carpet.  That is, until I got paint on the carpet.

Lots of it.

This is after instinctively glopping (because that’s a word) the bulk of it up with some paper towels.

See, I was wedged between the wall and the dresser, and in my haste to get out from the confined space, I spilled the paint.  And while we’re going to replace the carpet eventually, I’d rather not have a huge paint splotch constantly reminding me of my inadequacies until that day arrives.

So, after hastily consulting Facebook on my phone, I went to work dumping water onto the spill and soaking it up with a towel before reading the responses.

Turns out this was a wise move, since my oh-so-helpful Facebook plea responses included: gum, bleach, peanut butter, scissors, an ice cube, carpet colored paint, a rug, and urine.

Thanks, guys.

Really, though — this is why I love my friends.  They make me laugh when I kind of want to cry.  And there were definitely some useful tips too, like water, a carpet shampooer, and this stuff.

Fortunately though, the water/towel method ended up working just fine since I didn’t let the paint dry, and there was no need to pull out the ol’ shampooer or overnight myself some latex paint remover.

Whew.

Remember how I told you that every DIY project takes much longer than you would expect?

Well.

I’m starting to think it’s just me.

So.  Are you doing anything special for V-day like hanging a ceiling light or watching paint dry?

It’s not that I have a problem with Valentine’s Day — it’s just that I’m not really into the typical accoutrements (hearts, candy, flowers, hearts, sappy cards, and hearts) that come with it.  Now.  If Justin were to bring home… say… 2 airline tickets to the Galapagos Islands, we’d be in business.

I’m a simple girl, really.

I know.  He’s totally got it made.

Pre-Coffee Philosophical. Because I’m Crazy Like That.

You know how sometimes you can be in a place — a weird place inside your head — and you’re sitting there wondering whether you’re doing the right thing? Whether you took the right exit. Whether you’re following the right path. Because everyone else seems to think that it’s wrong. That you’re falling. That you’ve lost your ever-loving mind.

And then something happens. Some little thing — a well-timed news story, a word of encouragement, a tiny sign of camaraderie from Life — its way of letting you know that while others might not “get it,” the two of you are still on the same team.

Maybe it’s because we look for signs when we need encouragement, and these nudges would mean something completely different had we chosen another road.

Maybe.

But sometimes, something speaks to you, and it’s too loud to ignore.

I no longer remember what series of internet rabbit holes led me to this article or why, instead of depressing me, it made me feel encouraged. It’s written by Bronnie Ware, author of a book called The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying.

Okay, let’s just get the uncomfortable part out-of-the-way first. Yes, dying sucks. I hate it. You hate it. It makes all sad when someone does it. Mostly because we don’t understand it, and that makes it scary. That, and the sense of permanence.

That said, it’s important — so, so important — that we learn in this life the lessons people are willing to teach.

You know, so we don’t have to learn the hard way.

Okay. How many times, since you were a child, has someone tried to save you from learning something the hard way?

Eight hundred seventy-nine million?

And how many times has that stopped you from trying something yourself?

Once? Never?

That’s what I thought.

As a species, we’re relatively hard-headed. Especially when we’re young, when we’re so thirsty for not just knowledge but experience that it matters not that our parents told us not to drink too much. We’re still going to go out, take too many shots from a bottle of peppermint schnapps, become far too honest with too many people, empty our stomach contents all over the bathroom floor, and forever after suffer from an aversion to toothpaste flavored anything.

What? That’s just me?

Well. The irony is, we just become more stubborn when we get older. Only instead of it being about experience and going our own way, it somehow turns into going the right way — the way everyone else is going. We think decisions are no longer an option — that we’re too far caught up in whatever stage we find ourselves (marriage, children, retirement) to think about straying now. We’re flabbergasted and inspired by those who fall from the assembly line way of living and yet, somehow, we think it’s not an option for us. That those people have something special.

But they don’t.

And according to Bronnie Ware, dying people know this all too well. They know they could have done something different, but they simply didn’t. Fear of the Unknown kept them on the straight and narrow, and it wasn’t until they were faced with death that they realized, really, that there was nothing to be afraid of. It’s just Life. So the regrets, apparently, are fairly universal:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

The article offers really nice explanations of each, so I won’t expand. But I think, maybe, that they speak for themselves.

We’re so worried all of the time that people will judge us. That we can’t be loud and silly at a party. That we can’t make hot sauce in Costa Rica. That we can’t talk about vaginas at the dinner table.

But it looks like, in the end, that you only have one judge to worry about — the one sitting at the bench inside of your head.

The one who’s been toughest on you from the start.

Regrets, I think, are unavoidable. There’s always something more you could have done.

But tell me.

Isn’t the biggest always that you waited to start?

Look. It’s Not Like I Wore It Playing Football or Cut It Up and Turned It Into Curtains. But That Would’ve Been Okay, Too.

I must apologize to the guys out there for a minute, because I’m going to talk about something a little girly.

Nope.  A lot girly.

See, Stephanie over at My One Precious Life got me thinking about wedding dresses.  Obviously not about buying wedding dresses since I’m already married, but about selling them.  (Not for a living.  Trust me, I have not done all of this soul-searching for the past 2 years only to discover that my one true calling is to sell wedding gowns to blushing brides and their overextended pocket books.  Blech.

No offense to anyone who sells wedding gowns.)

She, like me, decided to sell her dress post-wedding.  I mean, why not?  This way you make a little cash, and some other lucky girl scores a gown at a bargain basement price.

Seems like a win-win situation, if you ask me.  If you ask anyone else, however, you might run into some contention.

What?  You SOLD your wedding dress??  But it’s your WEDDING dress!  You know, the one you wore to your WEDDING!

Yep.  I know the one.

Bu-but… don’t you MISS it?

Look.  I only wore it the one time.  And it served its purpose well.  But, if we did this thing right, I’ll never need a wedding dress again.  Missing it is kind of irrelevant.  And keeping it, at least for me, is impractical.

Well what about the memories?  You have all kinds of memories in that dress!

Yes, and that’s what photos are for.  I find them to be more compact.  And less poofy.

And your daughter!  What if you have a daughter and she wants to wear that dress??

Okay… so I’m supposed to keep this dress hanging around on the chance that I produce a daughter or a slim cross-dressing son or even have a kid at all.  Then, I’m supposed to push all of these expectations on her:  She needs to be exactly the same size I was when I got married at 23; she better like the not-exactly-traditional style I picked 3-4 decades earlier and it better be  a formal wedding, since this is a formal dress; oh, and she has to get married.  Has to.  That’s her only option in life.  Because I’ll be damned if I paid to have this dress preserved and hanging around this 1,600 square foot house for over a quarter of a century just so my nonexistent daughter can go do something crazy like ignore my inadvertent wedding gown guilt trips and live her life the way she wants.

No way.

Well.  You don’t have to be all snarky about it.  I just don’t think that I would have the heart to do it.  That’s all.  I’m not cold and calloused and heartless as you.

Really?  Because you’re the one keeping it locked away in a dark closet somewhere, and I’m the one who loved it and let it go — set it free to dance another night.

ewww! Kissy photo!

Okay.  So a dress is an inanimate object, obviously, so don’t start feeling guilty if it’s locked in your closet.  Especially if you’re super sentimental about it.  There’s nothing wrong with that.

But that’s just it — I’m not the sentimental type.  At least not when it comes to stuff.

I’m a purger.  We do a massive gutting of our closets at least once per year, and with the exception of a few choice childhood mementos and reasonably sized wedding trinkets (like the Air Force garter hand-made by my mother-in-law), anything that sits untouched for a lengthy period of time that I know the chances of me needing again are slim to none, is a goner.

It just feels good.

Keeps me sane.

Like clearing out the junk from my closets is akin to chucking the mushy contents of my mind with an ice cream scoop and starting fresh.  With a clean bowl.

And clearly my sanity is more important than a gown.  A gown that, while I loved it, just as easily could have been a flowy white linen dress I wore standing on a beach at our destination wedding, had I gotten my way.

And you know what?

I probably wouldn’t have kept that one, either.

*All photos taken by Jeff Pope of Iconic Photography.