Things About Change

 
I wasn't going to post in this blog anymore. I feel like it's time to shift gears and move into a new space. But I have been a little bit emotional lately and sometimes my feelings feel better when I give them words. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s hormones. Maybe it’s that I’ve been to Mexico, Washington DC, Denver, celebrated Christmas with The Whole Family, bought a house and moved, had hip surgery and commuted over 5,000 miles in the last month and a half. Who can say exactly why I burst into tears at random intervals or the minute I hear anything by REO Speedwagon. It’s a mystery for sure.

All I know is that I feel awfully fragile, and not in a completely bad way. Just… RAW. Ready to feel all the feels and work through them. The sadness of moving away from the town where I have lived for the better part of 20 years and (mostly) raised my kids. The excitement of starting fresh, on my own, as a homeowner. The struggle of trying to decide whether to let my old Truck dog go be with Jesus or watch his frustration over a new life in a new house with limitations that I never enforced on him back in Northport, much to frustration of the baseball coaches and custodians of the school next door.

I am feeling all the tearing of the transition of my kids from children to adult, weighing out how much I can and should help them in the fight to become responsible humans. Sorting through how much is My Fault and what I have to let go for them to figure out. I am riding the waves of happiness and uncertainty that a fairly new relationship pushes toward the shores of my heart. Most moments I feel lost. Some moments I feel joy. All moments lately, I feel fear.

But what I do know is that all of these feelings, the good ones and the bad ones, are meant to bring me to the place where I belong, wherever that is. Fear and uncertainty protect me from wandering recklessly off course, bringing caution along as a guiding light of stability. Sadness and grief remind me of how very much I have been given in the happy years I have had at my old place and with my old dog. Glimpses of joy give me hope that the steps I am taking are the right ones, headed in the right direction. And stress and anxiety, well, they give me gray hair, and I guess I am about due.

For every time my heart cries out silently to the universe for help, I turn back to face the battle and the help I need is there. Not always in the form I expect in. Not always in a surprise check for thousands of dollars or an army of strong backs, although those things have happened for me, but sometimes in the showing up of a friend with a story, or in the plight of another friend who has much larger hurdles to face than I do, and a way that I can help them with the flood that is drowning them.

Amor Fati. I am in love with the fate that I am given. It is not always beautiful, but it is always mine. And while I question my decisions every. single. day. I feel overwhelmingly blessed that I have decisions to make, and they are mine entirely. There is no wrong that cannot be made right. There is no obstacle that cannot become the path, and even now while I can’t lift my arm, I can say that there is no pain without purpose, even if that purpose is a speedbump.

I will slow down. I will take only the responsibilities that are mine to bear, and no more. I will listen to MMMBop on repeat and cry wantonly if it gets me closer to peace. I will write the stories to pay the bills to make the life that I have chosen. And I will always be thankful that I can do that with a beer in one hand.

Things That Stretch

He bought a shelf. That probably seems like no big deal, but for Somebody who has a System, buying a shelf that alters the System is a big deal. The shelf is so I can have some stuff in his bathroom instead of spilling in my duffel bag, which is where it has lived for the last 11 months, pretty happily, except when that menthol infused arnica oil spilled into all my clothes for the week and left big oil spots that smelled like a sore shoulder. But now my spilly things can live on a shelf, and his System will be changed. This is a big deal because it's about stretching, and growing, and doing the things that aren't as comfortable as sitting on your couch under a woobie and pretending nothing ever changes.

Stretching is painful. Like skinny jeans when you first put them on out of the dryer and haven't done any squats in them yet. It's hard. You're not always certain you'll get up out of that first squat or if the skinny jeans will throw you down on your ass and laugh at you for forgetting to not dry them. Stretching is awkward and embarrassing and uncomfortable.

So he's stretching with shelves and I'm stretching with words like "mortgage" and "budget" and "amortization" and the worst of all: "spreadsheet." It's not comfortable. I want to crawl head first under the woobie and die a thousand deaths before I go meet a realtor today and make an offer on a house. But I will keep stretching. If he can get a shelf, I can spreadsheet. I even asked my mom how to quit making all of the cells say the same thing. It wasn't as hard as I thought it was, when I stopped doing it wrong. That's the other thing about stretching, it's way more painful when you're not doing it the right way. Or if you're doing it too much, which I have done and why I need hip surgery. Well, too much stretching and also too much couch/woobie time.

Wrong stretching is things like biting off more than you can chew or more than you can pay for, or more than you can live with, and instead of a shelf, trying to get a whole new life. Wrong stretching is not just skinny jeans out of the dryer, it's high waisted skinny jeans out of the dryer that are too small and push all of your love handles into your lungspace and make you want to pass out.

My whole life seems like stretching right now. All the people I know are stretching. My kids are stretching as they put up with my stretching and not being there for some of the Big Things, like the last day of volleyball districts or Fall Sports Awards, which are important, but happen to fall on a day that I have been scheduled for a project for work weeks ahead of time. So they'll stretch, and I'll stretch, and there will be more awards banquets, like the ones that I have been to in the past.

My kids have pretty much been stretching with me their whole lives, as I rush from job to job and thing to thing and keep seeking for the Right Place at the Right Time with the Right People, trying to Pay the Bills and Do the Things and not make anybody mad, missing the boat pretty often but always with the best intention of catching it along the way somewhere.

But all the stretching makes us stronger, better and more interesting people. I can wear the sweatpants all day long, but if I want to make my mark outside of WalMart, I gotta keep working on the skinny jeans. The stretching makes us able to bend without breaking when the waves of bad things happen, and also the good things. Because I am learning lately even too many good things is a lot of stress and it's had me bent pretty hard. Good things like All the Jobs, Money to Budget, Smart Kids to Help, Him, Skinny Jeans, and growing, learning, stretching.

Things I learned this weekend:

1. Moving still sucks. 

2. Josh is more awesome than I thought. 

3. I don't need to be concerned about Halle being addicted to prescription drugs since at 17, she still can't open a childproof pill bottle. I discovered this when I asked her to get one of the many pulls I have been taking for me since I was driving and texting and changing the music while drinking coffee. Clearly my hands were full. I was forced to give up the phone and the music to open the pill bottle myself, whereupon I found that she had reduced all of the pills to powder in her attempt. Luckily this particular drug absorbed faster as a dissolving powder and is easier to dose in this form than cracking apart stubby round tablets.

4. Grandma's really stink at laser tag, especially when the opposing team is comprised of cute and semi-innocent looking small children. In addition to her guilt aversion to shooting the little guerrillas, her perfectionist streak caused her to save ammunition for only the most clearly successful targets, which meant she only reloaded once and her score was indicative of the same anti-family-fun apathy that Kizzie was demonstrating when she realized the laser vests made her look fat. Not that Grandpa was much help either, since the mystery of how he scores NO points at all was solved after someone pointed out that he may have been holding his gun backwards the entire time. OK, not really, but he did die unreasonably often. 

5. I should probably be concerned that Kizzie was the only family member who knew what a "Charlie's Angels" pose was when we took family laser tag portraits. Clearly we need to watch more questionable TV. 

6. Mini Reese's peanut butter cups melt instantly in temperatures above 63 degrees Fahrenheit. 

7. Mini Reese's peanut butter cups ate possibly MORE delicious when eaten with a spoon. 

8. Eating extra pizza after you are full, pizza for four consecutive meals, or midnight snacks of pizza do not actually help with a digestive issue that has lasted a fortnight. Even veggie pizza doesn't fix it. Next time I am trying extra butter sauce. I feel certain that therein lies my cure. Thank goodness there is a Papa Murphy's on the way home. I think I'm having pizza withdrawals. Dangerously, I still love pizza. 

9. Taking the Lord's Name in Vain has a great many interpretations which can be discussed at great length on an hour long car ride to play mini golf since none of the mini golf courses less than an hour away has coupons. Coupons are vital for the appreciation of family activities. 

10. Saying a game was stupid, throwing a major tantrum, yelling at your sisters and hurting grandma's feelings by pouting about which games you didn't get to play, or get to win, or had to play.... None of these actually fall under the banner of "complaining", "ungratefulness" or just being plain old spoiled, according to teenage wisdom. 

11. Arcades are perfectly safe places for a nine year old to get lost. Especially when you drive a mini-cooper, because the trunk is much too small for kidnapping. Again. More questionable Television MIGHT be a good idea. 

12. Six and a half foot teenagers that are all legs, bad attitude and underdeveloped intellectualism do not make good copilot a in a Mini Cooper. 

13.  Knees actually can bump a shifter out of gear. 

14. Sometimes the people that you think you know the best, and truly want the best for, offer you a wake up slap that really frakkin stings. 

15. The people that talk the most about hating drama are sometimes the best propagators. Which is why I admit openly that my life is a swirling vortex of dramatic terror. This being said, if there's some that I can leave behind, I will gladly do so. That's why Kizzie is now living at a rest area outside of Ellensburg. 

16. Self-protection is the single most powerful human instinct. 

17. Being able to rise above our instincts is the only thing that separates us from other animals. 

18. Growing up is really hard. At every age. 

19. Even Avett Brothers are people who make mistakes. 

20. I have absolutely everything in the world to be grateful for. 

P.S. 21. Dogs eating out of compost piles before a prolonged road trip is a very very bad thing.