End of a Decade: Part I

I was inspired by Jasie, over at by the seat of our pants, and her retrospective look at the last decade, and decided to do the same over here.  Here goes:

2000:  Moved from Arizona to my parent's house in Western New York to get married.  Ran out of money after the wedding and remained in WNY (not our original plan!).  I taught preschool for $7 an hour and SuperSpouse was unemployed and did the day-job gig at Labor Ready.  We ate a lot of Ramen.  In fact, I had to quit Ramen that year because I ate so much of it.  I've only recently started eating it again, so--hey!--I guess Ramen noodle soup has bookended this decade for me.  Our lifestyle was perhaps a bit humbling for college grads in a decent economy, but when Jurassic 5 released "What's Golden?" a few years later with the lyrics:  I'm labor ready, Rhode Scholar for the dollar/ Work for mines, pay me by the hour, we felt like we could authentically rock that song because of the experience.  And that has made it all worthwhile.

2001:  Plugged along in my hometown.  Our apartment was gorgeous.  The city we lived in was decidedly not.  Although I will always love my hometown like a little lost child you just can't save, it is depressing as hell to live there.  We applied to grad school, got accepted, and took off in December to spend a month visiting the in-laws in the ever-sunny Deep South before moving to the cold, snowy shores of Lake Ontario.

2002:  Rented our first ever house together with just the two of us (we had lived in houses before, but always with groups of students).  It was small, crooked, and up on top of a very steep hill.  We could hear the wind coming across the lake and then feel it shake our house as we lay in bed at night in multiple layers of clothing, using an illegal-according-to-our-lease space heater to keep warm because the upstairs of the house wasn't heated.  That winter brought us 13 feet of snow.  Why the @#$% wasn't the upstairs of that house heated!?!?

2003:  Hubby finished grad school and got a long term sub position as a middle school art teacher.  I started teaching yoga and pilates and decided I didn't want to teach school full-time when I graduated in December, so that I could ensure some space in my life for this newer calling.  Sure, lots of people work full time and then keep a side gig, but I didn't choose LazyBones as my nom de plume for no reason!  I likes me some time to sit and think.  And poverty has always been less of a dissuading factor than an absolutely normal part of life for me, so...part time, yes!  This is also the year I said to my husband: as soon as we get health insurance, let's have a baby!  He agreed.  Little did we know the giggle the Universe was having over that simple statement!

2004:  Moved 45 minutes down the road from the big, cold lake into the nearest big-ish city (or at least bigger than the tiny town on Lake Ontario that was, after just 2 years, both boring and freezing us into catatonia).  I got lucky with a part-time teaching gig that offered health insurance for the both of us; we found an apartment and began to settle in, ready to start "real life".  We even began a house search, and started discussing baby names.  Then I found out my job was being cut at the end of the year.  But wait!  They had another offer for me.  But it was full-time.  And I would be teaching a self-contained class of students with severe emotional and behavioral problems.  Now, I'm a planner.  And this wasn't in my plan.  But after much reflection, I decided to "let life happen to me".  I took the job.  And life happened to me alright.  Life happened to me like a mugging happens in a dark alley, like a two-by-four happens to the back of your skull, like one drink happens to an alcoholic.  The last half of 2004 found me curled up on a daybed alternately sobbing copiously and obsessively watching Sex and the City so I could forget my problems and immerse myself in fluff.  Meanwhile, the long-term sub gig ended for the Hubby and he was fighting his own no-job blues the best way he knew how: with big cans of cheap beer.  A baby was no longer an option because it would force me to keep this job indefinitely and I was pretty sure babies didn't like mothers who came home from work only to cry and watch SATC and fathers who stared sadly out the window drinking big cans of beer.  Wow, 2004 sucked, yo! 

2005:  2005 started out the same way, but took a turn for the better when I resigned in June and we took all our savings and blew it on a cross-country road trip.  We spent the summer living out of our car and visiting family and friends, and returned home in August ready to start over.  Hubs began subbing in a bazillion different districts so he seldom had to teach anything but art and I picked up as many fitness classes as I could to fill my days.  We were even poorer now, but infinitely happier.  I will say that that the experience convinced me to listen to my intuition from that point on.  I'm a planner for a reason.  It's how I work, and it works for me.  My experiment in "letting life happen to me" was not one I care to repeat.  And perhaps I needed to suffer a bit in order to build up the bravery to forge my own path into the future.  I have a policy never to regret the past if I'm happy in the present, and so I've woven that terrible year into a narrative of freedom:  I was chained to a life I hated with chains I chose for myself.  These chains were tight enough to convince me it was worth walking into the unknown, because the fear of what could be became better than what was.  Is that true?  Who knows.  In the end, whatever we tell ourselves becomes the truth, and that's the story I've chosen to tell.  It makes that terrible year make a kind of sense, and makes it worthwhile in the end.  And in the end, what do we have besides our stories?

It's no news to me that I am overly verbose, but in the interest of keeping my audience awake (are you still out there?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Anyone?), I will end this post here and finish the next 5 years tomorrow.  Have a wonderful New Year's Eve everyone.  Goodbye 2009.  Welcome 2010!

New Year's Purge

Owning stuff makes me feel anxious.  I hate to shop, and will put off buying even things I really need for as long as possible.  For some reason this gives me a strange sense of satisfaction.  I spent years where everything I owned could fit in the back of a station wagon, and that made me feel safe, secure, contained.  My husband has pack-rat tendencies, and I am so glad that at some point in the course of our decade together he has apparently been infected with my New Year's Purge bug.  Now we both come down with it annually.  Symptoms include a lightening of the heart, soul and spirit when you throw away/give away as much of your stuff as you're willing to get rid of every January.  The more you get rid of, the better you feel!  That's the cure for the bug.

This year is especially exciting because we have a week off together, at home, and a lot of belongings still in boxes from our move in October of 2008.  Wait, is that pathetic?  Whatever, people!  I never claimed to be on top of things around here.  In fact, things are on top of us, literally: stored behind the wall in the attic.  I dragged all the boxes, bags and storage totes around into categories the other day: paperwork, home decor, baby clothes in sizes other than current, and the ever growing To Be Organized pile.  I can't promise we'll make it through the To Be Organized pile.  In fact, I can probably promise that we won't.  However, we will pull whatever crap we are willing to part with from all the various piles, and make a new pile: Salvation Army.

And--oh--that is the sweetest pile of them all.  That pile, my friends, is the only pile who will whisper in my ear the words I long to hear from all my belongings:  You will never need to worry about me again.  No more cleaning, no more fixing, no more purchasing, no more anything.  Just take that space in your head and offer it to the highest bidder honey, because I am not your problem anymore.  And yes, by highest bidder, I mean free.  Cause while daydreams don't pay dividends in cash, their rate of return is higher than anything else in my current portfolio (and that would be true even in an economic upturn).  And if I can toss an outfit that once upon a time told a story about me that turned out not to be true, or a bunch of plastic toys that appear to be interchangeable and fail to light up my son's face like the morning sun to make more space for...well...it almost doesn't matter what the space is for, in the end.  It's the making of the space that's here, in front of me, this week.  It's the making of the space that I must do.

So this week I'll be all:  Aarrgghh!  as I shuffle and shift, poke and prod, pile and then finally, blissfully, toss.

And then I'll be all:  Aaaahhhh!

Last Year's Totally Unrealistic and Overzealous Resolutions: Report Card

So my New Year's Resolutions last year were a bit over the top.  But I did rework them over the course of the year to make them more realistic.  Let's see how I did:

Originally:  Start both a business AND a blog!  Maybe a few blogs: mommyblog, business blog, teaching blog, the possibilities are endless!  Post every day!  Sign up an entire roster of clients for my business!  Work with them daily, incorporating my son seamlessly into my business model!  Keep my day job and continue mothering, wife-ing and house-wife-ing (I've got an equal househusband, so this should be cake, right?)!

Later scaled down to:  Start either a small business (one client would suffice) OR a blog (as long as there's a post before 2010, it counts).

And:  Check!  Not the right economic climate for starting a business, and not the right time for me to do it, personally.  Finally got around to the blog in November.  And I have to say, it was definitely the New Year's Resolution that forced me to do it.  I only had two months left and I knew my business was a bust before it began, so I'd better get to writing!

 Originally:  Not only will I get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, I will get below it, and be in the best shape of my life, incorporating cardio, dance, weight-training AND mind-body into my routine.  Also, drop a bunch of the exercise classes I'm teaching so I have more time with my family.  Soooo, maybe breastfeeding will just melt that weight away!  Or I'll pick up a bunch of new fitness hobbies, like skiing and ice skating.  Maybe I'll do fitness DVDs?  One way or another, I'll look and feel better than ever before!  Notice the appealing vague fuzziness and inherent contradiction of this resolution.  Yeah.  Foreshadowing, anyone?

Later Scaled Down To:  Never really got scaled down, or squared with reality.  I dropped a bunch of my exercise classes, and then did nothing in their place.  My son decided he hated his jogging stroller and would prefer to scream without ceasing than to enjoy a nice walk in the neighborhood.  I worked longer hours all summer and then came home to relieve my poor husband from all day baby duty.  Then fall came, the weather cooled and I decided to try to get pregnant again, so I was snuggling in at home for delicious romantic dinners with the hubby and whoever said coitus burns a lot of calories was probably behind that myth about breastfeeding melting the baby weight away as well.  That lying bastard!   

So:  Fail!  And even worse:  In the last few months instead of getting pregnant I've eaten my way back up to the same weight I was when I was released from the hospital.  Right after giving birth.  Almost eighteen months ago.  Ouch.  Epic Fail.  I'll be, um, tweaking this goal for this year.

Originally:  Send a beautiful, personally created photo album to every member of both sides of our extended families each and every month this year, accompanied by a personally crafted letter. 

Later scaled down to:  Send some pictures to our parents and grandparents every month or so.

And still:  Mostly Fail.  I think I did this twice.  This is last year's overzealous resolution that morphed into this year's monthly scrapbook for every extended family member, depicting the various stages of my son's growth complete with coordinating background layouts and adorable labeling.  I do have a few ideas about how to scale this down to something feasible.   Maybe I'll aim for seasonal instead of monthly (yeah, that still won't happen).  Or get a family Facebook page or something (now I've got my thinking cap on!).  But seriously, wouldn't those monthly albums/scrapbooks be so cute?  I do love me some New Year's Resolutions that envision a whole new life revolving around a skill-set I do not even possess, and a commitment level I have never previously demonstrated.  It's the imagination that keeps us young, people!

And Speaking of the Imagination...

...Bonus Totally Unrealistic and Overzealous Resolution for This Year:  I will write a Cookbook.  Yes, it's true I don't cook anything but pizza, and I've only been cooking pizza for the past few weeks of my life, but I have a fabulous idea for a cookbook anyway.  It will incorporate local, organic, seasonal foods, and my husband and sisters will test-cook everything before publication (on me of course!).  I'm seeing bright, colorful photographs by the SuperSpouse and a sales rack at our Farmer's Market.  Needless to say, I'll be raking in the dough.  It's a very popular Cookbook, or will be as soon as it hits the streets.  Yes, I originally said I'd write it in a week, but I'm already backpedaling (It's not even January 1st yet.).  By this time next year I'll have decided that as long as I've planned one recipe for my unwritten Cookbook we'll call it good.

Moments of Resolution: Last Year's Delusional Drunken Elderly Fellow versus This Year's Overly Earnest Spiritual Seeker

Last year we celebrated the end of our holiday trip with two days of driving twelve hours with a five month old, returning home from visiting my in-laws.  He cried for the last three hours of the drive, inconsolable in the carseat.  We arrived home, he looked around, let out a huge sigh, and finally went to sleep.  I collapsed on the couch with relief and sat staring out the windows at the light snow falling.  I drank two glasses of white wine and my stomach was empty and I was immediately overcome with such a feeling of goodwill toward man and rollicking hope for the future, I can only describe it as wildly delusional.  The comparison is crass, but the most apt I can come up with:  I imagined myself an old, old man, out at a pub, surrounded by the most nubile young women, like delectable delicacies to me: tired and sunken in to my everyday routines.  Two drinks in, and I am feeling certain I am going home with one of them tonight.  The night is young and I am old, but I am deliriously delusional, young and virile again for one evening.  I felt so grateful to the universe for allowing me to feel the delusion of youth, of rebirth.  I felt, for at least those moments that night, like I could accomplish anything.  I looked at my life and I thought:  I can do anything!  This will be cake; it will be beautiful; and I will do it perfectly.  That feeling carried me through most of the past year, and I'm still intensely grateful for it.

This year we ended our holiday trip with a three hour drive home from my mom's house, arriving in the early afternoon.  I drank two cups of coffee, and then Sun declined the generous parental offer of a nap in his very own bed, and dashed my hopes of cleaning the house with my caffeine buzz.  I looked around at the bags to unpack, the mess my son was currently creating with a whine, while overtired and teething, the afternoon already beginning to grow dark and get away from me, the unspent caffeine buzzing in my veins and I felt frustration rising.  I went into the kitchen, made a pizza and put it in the oven.  While it cooked, I went upstairs and sat alone in the attic.  Our attic is converted; it's a bedroom with diagonal walls, built into the roof of the house.  I lay on the futon we keep upstairs for guests and stared out the window at the thick, white, fast falling snow.  My husband called up to tell me that we were in a storm and would likely be snowed in through tomorrow afternoon.  As I watched the cold, winter weather from the safety of my warm, wood-colored attic, I felt my frustration melt away, and turn to awe.  I felt humbled by my luck and my blessings, and my earlier feelings seemed petty, unworthwhile and easy to release.  I felt deeply humbled by the blessing that is my baby, unworthy of such a gift, and I rushed down the stairs to hold him, to breathe in his scent, to carry him to my husband and clutch his hand, and to kiss them both.  I was overcome with a feeling of deep commitment to doing the best I can, not just for myself, but for them: for my family.

This feeling was so different than last year because last year I felt:  this will fall into place.  This will all fall right into place.  It will happen like magic.  I can see over vistas and into the heavens from right here on my couch and I can smile and make magic happen.  This year I feel like:  Now it's time to work.  Now it's time to climb.  Gather my loved ones close, and count my blessings.  Now I must earn this, create this.  I feel a calling this year to reach outside of myself in some way that I haven't defined yet.  I'm still sitting with the feeling now, and it may end up taking some time to define, but last year I sat atop a vista and this year I'm in a valley, and I may have some climbing to do once I gather my bearings.

My New Year's Resolutions flowed from the moments described above.  So last year's were a bit delusional and over the top, but I did eventually scale them down and achieve some of them, or steps toward them.  Others I failed completely.  And I think this year will end up being more of a recommitment to the day-to-day work of the same dreamy ideals I conjured into fancy last year.  With, as will be my new annual tradition: a few wild and unrealistic dreams tossed into the mix as a shout out to my Inner Old Perv, and a wink and a thank you to the Universe who nurtures us, Old Pervs, delusions and all.  Happy New Year!

Offroading and Other Possible Topics

Because I am a list maker, and because I am too scatterbrained to focus on a single post this evening:

• Traveling:  Hated It!  (Disclaimer:  Family:  Lovin' them!  Just hate traveling!)    
• Got Fat:  Whoops! 
  
• Owning Things/Anxiety/New Year's Purge/Aarrgghh!/Aaaahhhh!
• Back Home: Snowed in!  Lovin' it!  Snow, You Beautiful Devil, You!
  
• Resolutions: Last Year's Delusional Drunken Elderly Fellow versus This Year's Overly Earnest Spiritual Seeker
• Being In The Body:  Yoga as Spiritual Exercise
• Real Gifts Attempt #1:  Hardware Store
• Real Gifts Attempt #2:  Cable?
• Totally Unrealistic and Overzealous Resolutions:  Scrapbookin' for everyone important in my entire life, monthly.  Doesn't it sound like such a good plan though?  I am always so single-minded and disciplined in my Unrealistic and Overzealous Resolutions.  I like to have at least one each year.  Two this year:  Writing a Recipe Book This Week.  If you know me, you know this is hilarious.  But I am SO excited about my Recipe Book, you guys!  It's going to be awesome.
  

Oh, and about our getting-on-the-road-plan from my last post?  I am pleased to announce that we got on the road at 2:15, making us a scant 15 minutes late for the plan, which I am more than pleased with.  I keep my standards low;  I'm happy more often.  It's win-win.  Happy New Year Everyone!  I'll try to return to the list above for elaboration when my brain has settled back in for a long winter's nap.  Any requests?

On The Road Again

Tomorrow we get on the road to go to my mom's house for Christmas.  The plan is to get everything done in the morning (laundry, cleaning, packing, wrapping, showers, baths, meals and whatever the hell else we think of along the way), and get on the road in the early afternoon, allowing the little one to sleep as much of the trip as possible, and arriving on time for dinner.

We depart one hour later than planned nearly every time we travel to my mom's.  I've tried planning for an hour before the real plan.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  I don't think it will work for tomorrow; there's really just too much to do.  In fact, I think I'll do the opposite this time.

I would like to leave by 1pm tomorrow.  Even saying I'll leave by noon is obviously a total lie, so I'm going to reverse it and say we'll leave by 2.  We might even make that plan!  Okay, the pressure is on!  Ready...Set...Christmas!

P.S.  I got some scrapbooking skillz!!!  No, I will not post pictures, because compared to other people in the wide world, I most likely have no skillz whatsoever, but in the privacy of my own family, where no one else scrapbooks:  I got skillz!

Things I Have Been Doing Instead of Blogging

• Digging through 17 months worth of disorganized digital photographs to compile the cutest possible collection of chronologically organized photographs ever to fill a photo album for all sets of Great Grandparents.  Luckily, they live in four different states and will never need to know they received identical gifts.  I'm applying the Henry Ford assembly line approach to Christmas gifting.  Great Grandparents get the basic photo album model, perfect size for pocketbook storage and easy retrieval.  Grandparents will receive the luxury model photo album with an extended cab of extra pages and premium upholstery with full leather trim by way of basic scrap-booking layouts and catchy photo captions. 
  
• Realizing that I have never scrap-booked in my life, and perhaps the time to learn isn't the week of Christmas itself, practicing on the only actual gifts I have planned for my parents and in-laws.  Shrugging about that unfortunate reality.  Continuing to allow time to pass with no new plan.  Imagining how cute my imaginary first scrap-books will be.  Remembering what a mediocre craftsman I really am.  Telling myself to shush, so I can go back to imagining my adorable scrap-books.  Making no moves whatsoever to actually create said scrap-books.  Staring out the window, drinking tea, waiting for scrumptious scrapbooks to create themselves.  Imagining incredulous and grateful expressions of love pouring forth from parents and in-laws when they behold the perfect specimens that are my first and only scrap-books ever.  Blocking all thoughts of actual effort involved in scrap-book creation in favor of wild fantasies about fabulous finished products.  Pouring a new cup of tea.  All this thinking is hard!  Mama needs caffeine!
  
• Refusing to stress about my total lack of preparation for Christmas.  After all, if I got Baby Jesus and Santa on a conference call (which I totally COULD if they saw how perfect my pretend scrap-books are!), I feel certain they would both support a stress free holiday season.  Well, Jesus would anyway.  He was a hippie, and hippies are chill.  On the other hand, Santa's probably stressed as a motherfucker right about now!  But I'm not Santa (well, okay, technically I AM Santa now, but I haven't mentioned Santa yet to my son, so I can keep my big, red suit in the closet for another year.  And eat even more snacks so it will fit better next year!  Yay!  Pass the cookies!), which seems to me another reason to celebrate the season in the de-stressed manner befitting the dignity of a first time scrap-booker suffering from a seasonally induced cookie coma.
• Enjoying a few beers with my sis and her boyfriend who are passing through on their way from Boston to my mom's house.  In our typical family fashion of unpreparedness and last-minute-itis, she called to let me know they were coming.....an hour before they got on the road.  In our typical family fashion of unpreparedness and last-minute-itis, I decided that cleaning the house for guests is an unnecessary contrivance and took a nap while they drove here.  In typical Irish fashion, the four of us split a twelver and ate a giant shepard's pie when they arrived, and no one gave a hoot about the fact that we had to eat sitting on the living room couches because the dining room table is currently acting as repository for any and all mail received in the past however many months, plus some bowls of fruit.  And three small pumpkins from Halloween.  Sorting through all that is on my to do list.  I shall get to it when I get to it, y'all.  These are the holidays and shall be enjoyed with a nice india pale ale and some lentil shepard's pie.  
• Digging?  Realizing?  Refusing?  Enjoying?  It must be the end of one year and the beginning of another; calendar years love to go out in a burst of togetherness, intensity and ritual, like the burning of a pyre, and new baby years love to waltz in on the wreckage and beauty of it all and sweep clean the slate for the start of another cycle.  Today was the solstice, the shortest day of the year.  It's all brighter from here on out, y'all.  Happy Winter.  Happy Holidays.