Fair Warning

I was talking about my writing today, and sharing about how I had offended someone in the last post, and so I had stopped posting for a while.  Even though I had tried so hard not to hurt feelings (I wrote the paragraph in question over and over and over on Whatever), I still had done so.  I felt terrible.  It made me so sad.  But, I let that control me, manipulate me.  I let them take my voice.  No one should have that power. 

I was reminded of, and am claiming this for my own:

I will do my best to be honest (and not make myself look like a hero).  I will try (I will write and re-write paragraphs) not to hurt feelings.  I am not taking license to be snotty.  But, fair warning.  This is my story. I will tell it. 

Breaking Up is Hard to Do...

After writing that last post, I’ve been AWOL for a month.  I haven’t quite known what to say.  You see, two days after I wrote that, I broke up with the Big Strong Man.

Since I had just talked about him on the blog, and I was hoping we were thinking we might get back together, I didn’t know what to say on here about anything.  Especially since I knew he would be checking the blog.  So, here’s what I will say:

He’s a great guy.  I’m just not sure that he’s the right guy for me.  The jury’s still out, but in the mean time, I don’t like not writing.  So, you guys will have to be as up in the air as I am about the relationship, but now that I’ve addressed that I feel like I can write about other stuff. 

Phew.  Feels good to get that off my chest.

Ah, relationships are tricky.  And I still haven’t figured out how to handle relationships and blogging.  I wish the blog was a secret (ooh, which reminds me of a funny story about when I started dating the Big Strong Man and the blog…I’ll tell you later.) and I didn’t have to worry about him seeing it, so I could do all of the processing on here that I wanted.  But, it’s not a secret, and he’s alive and well and can read all of this stuff.  So I have to be careful not to hurt feelings. 

Ugh.

Happy New Year!

Wow, here we are at the end of another year. 

2013 was a year full of the duality that makes widowhood such an adventure.  It was full of a growing sense of contentment, and a serious sense of loneliness and longing.  As we pull it all to a close, I can’t say that I’m sad to see it go, but mostly it’s because I’m looking forward with hope to what’s next.

As I look back over the year, some really cool stuff happened.

I got a brand new car.  I’ve never done that before.

I took my first college course (Creative Non-fiction).  I got an A.  It was so much fun, and I think that even though it didn’t help me generate much material for my book, like I was hoping, it helped me to be a better writer, so it was definitely not a waste of time.  I loved it.

I did a major home improvement project and I lived to tell about it.  I love my new bathroom and finally got moved in to the “new” master bedroom!  My brother and dad helped me build a closet and it’s pretty amazing!  I’m getting ready to start a new project, wow, am I a glutton for punishment or what?

You know my furniture-painting obsession?  I refinished eight pieces of furniture this year.   Here’s the really cool, easy to miss, widowhood bravery piece of that story: I live alone.  Furniture is heavy.  I work out every day to make it possible to carry that stuff all by myself, and I have the strength to do it. 

This year, for the first time, I got out my old Christmas stuff.  This felt like a huge accomplishment.  The last time it was put in those boxes, Sawan and I put it in there together, and I just couldn’t bear to unwrap the stuff.  But, I felt ready this year.  I felt ready to greet my old things and face that sadness.  I had a friend come over to help, and I was surprised by how it made me feel.  I was prepared to sort things into a box of “things I’m not ready to get rid of but don’t want to see again for a long time” and instead, I hung those ornaments (like our “Just Married”) on my tree.  Sometimes I shock even myself.

The biggest changes of the year are the subtle ones that are hard to quantify.  At some point, I think that I really started to choose life this year.  At some point, the memories of Sawan became something that I enjoyed again.  It was no longer too painful to remember even the sweetness of him.  Now I can enjoy the sweetness, and the enjoyment, even though it carries the sting of his absence, is worth it.  The sadness that I feel now is the sadness of missing him, the loss of what we had and the loss of all of my dreams for our future, but it also carries with it a sense of longing for what’s to come.

And so, I say, bring it 2014.  I’m ready.

Love to all of you, thank you for reading my words, for being with me for another year.  I wish you all the best in the New Year!

Sun Shine Down

I have a vivid memory of a specific evening back in 1996.  I was living with my family in Kiev, Ukraine, and I had gone over to my friend Gillian's apartment to hang out for the evening.  I was seventeen, she was twenty-one.  The age gap at that point made her a grown up, me still a kid, but I totally looked up to her and she treated me like I had the maturity of someone that she wanted to hang out with.

I think that maybe the electricity had gone out in the building, which was not an uncommon thing to happen, because I was reading by candlelight, and she was writing.  She had this really beautiful leather bound journal that she liked to write poems in.  We had this perfect flow, like waves coming in to the shore, where we would read and write for a bit, then visit for a little bit, read and write, visit, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.  It was a delightful evening of connection.

She told me that night that she wanted to write a book.  Well, she backpedalled, she said that she liked to write in that journal, and wanted to fill it with her own poems, so that someday she’d have written a book of poetry.  She said it, holding her journal forward.  It was as though saying that she wanted to write an actual book was too big of a dream to even admit to.

Last week, I went on Amazon and ordered the memoir that she wrote.  It came in the mail today.  I can't put it down, it's so good.

When I was seventeen, I had no idea that I wanted to write a book of my own.  It wasn’t even an idea, much less a dream.  But, it is now, and once again I’m looking up to her.  She had a dream, she focused.  She made it happen.  And now, she gets to hold her own book in her hands.  She did it.  I’m unbelievably proud.

First Day of School

I have a clear memory from my childhood of playing beauty shop with my big sister. 

She must have wanted to be the client (as the older sister, it was her right to assign the rolls), which meant I got to be the stylist, and I was thrilled.  I remember it so well.  We set up one of our child-sized chairs from our kitchen set; I shook out a baby blanket and wrapped it around her neck for a cape.  I remember trying to rock the chair on its back legs like it was a hydraulic chair that I was trying to pump up.  I grabbed my safety scissors (remember when they were still made out of metal, not plastic, and they had the rounded, blunted end?) in one hand, and a hunk of the hair from the back of her head in the other.  I twisted the hunk of hair and was just about to put the scissors to it when my mom walked in.  We got in huge trouble.  I tell my mom all the time that this is actually a texturizing technique that we do as hairstylists, and really I was a child prodigy (She’ll reply, dryly, “Think how far you could have gone if you had had family support.”).

My point is this:  Even as a small child, it was obvious that I had watched carefully what went on at the beauty salon, what the stylists did, and I was dying to be one of them.  I pretty much always knew that I wanted to be a hairstylist.  As a result of this, I never went to college.  There was no need for it; it would be a waste of time and money.

As I think about my life now, though, and the fact that I wanted to be a wife and mom in addition to being a hairstylist, and those dreams were sort of ripped from me, beyond my control, what will life possibly look like in the next 20-30 years?  In the areas that I do have some control, what can I do to make a change?  I don’t want it to look exactly like it looks now.  I’m bored.

And so, I’ve decided that I should think about college.

I’m a little concerned about my brain, PTSD has done a number on my short-term memory, and I wonder if I maybe have a little ADD, as well, since I have so much difficulty concentrating. I’m trying to get to the bottom of these things, but I’m certainly not going to let them win, so I’ve decided to start with one class at a community college (creative non-fiction), just to see how it goes.

So, today is my first “first day of school” since my senior year of high school in 1996.  I’m excited and nervous.  Wish me luck.

Walter Reed

I wrote this for my class, and thought I would share it with you.  I’m learning so much about the craft of writing in this particular session, and I’m really enjoying it, but it’s hard work!  The assignment was to begin with details using only the “voice of innocence” (no reflection) and move slowly to using the “voice of experience.”

It’s about a day in June of 2009 where I got to volunteer with American Crew at Walter Reed Medical Center; I did 17 haircuts that day on soldiers who had returned from the war and their families.  It was an incredible day, and I had no idea the influence it would have on me even years later.

I'm in the middle of the back row, with the red bandana.

Walter Reed

I unstuck my legs from the backseat like a fruit roll-up from its wrapper and joined my friends in our matching American Crew T-shirts with matching sweat stains on the sidewalk.  The double doors opened to Walter Reed Medical Center, and I watched a man in a wheelchair with both legs missing go inside, badly needing a haircut.

We walked into the un-air-conditioned lobby, the humidity in the air so thick I felt I could leave my mouth open and drink the air like a cup of hot tea.  My naturally curly hair was growing bigger by the minute; soon it would need its own zip code.  We found a stack of itchy, cloth covered hotel-meeting-style chairs, plastic covered carpet, and dim lighting like a seedy movie theater.  It was pretty much the worst-case scenario for doing short, military precision haircutting.

As I did one clipper cut after another all day long, I tried not to think about my brother, serving in Iraq even as I stood in that lobby.  I tried not to think like a wife…were the wives happy their husbands came home, or did they see the defeat in their eyes and wish for a different end?  I tried to resist the urge to call my husband, Sawan, just to hear his voice, to tell me that this wasn’t us, that he was whole.  I forced myself to focus on what amazing things they were doing at the hospital, on the stories of triumph we were hearing, on the hope I saw in some of their eyes.

It made me grateful for my life in a whole new way.  I had seen what I thought was the worst-case scenario, but then went home to my whole husband.  I posted on Facebook: “Thankful that I have a husband with two arms and two legs.”  For two months, I lived in a state of deep gratitude.  I stopped “sweating the small stuff,” unwilling to be crippled by the mundane of everyday life.

Two months later, Sawan died suddenly.  I lost my “better half.”  I realized that I should have been grateful for my own arms and legs, as my limbs felt as though they had been ripped from me, or maybe I had lost half of my cells out of the middle.  I found myself envying those soldiers, with their wounds outside for everyone to see.  My pain was not so obvious, even though I felt as helpless as they were. 

It took a long time to remember that some of them had hope.  That even though they were missing limbs, they had lived.  Eventually, I found their hope, their triumph, and I decided to live, too.

2012: Some of the Milestones

2012 was a pretty amazing year for me.  I almost said that it was a year of healing…but that implies that I healed more in 2012 than I did in the previous years and I don’t think that that’s true.  I think I just finally got to a point where the slow and steady pace of healing that I’ve been going for the last three years felt like I had actually gotten to a place where I could enjoy life again.  So, here’s a little look back at the milestones.

It feels a bit like I should do it by comparison- so let’s compare 2011 and 2012!

Number of first dates I went on in 2011: Two.

Number of second dates I went on in 2011: Zero.

Number of first dates I went on in 2012: Two.

Number of second dates I went on in 2012: ONE!

Then I went on a third date and a fourth…and had a relationship that lasted a few months.  It ended, but it ended as well as can be expected and I am so thankful for the things that I learned.  I’m so thankful for the man that he was and the kindness that he showed me as we were dating.  I ended up feeling like he was a great man, just not the right one for me, and so it ended at the end of October, but it was a huge blessing and I have no regrets.

Number of plane rides Arthur got to go on in 2011: Zero.

Number of plane rides Arthur got to go on in 2012: Two.

Number of parking tickets in front of my house in 2011: A Million.

Number of parking tickets in front of my house in 2012: Zero.  They give parking tickets for street sweeping on the first Tuesday of every month, April-November.  I set a reminder in my phone this year and beat The Man.  *Fist pump*

Number of writing classes I took in 2011: Zero.

Number of writing classes I took in 2012: Two.

I got a solid start to my memoir and I’m really thankful for the friendships that I made there.  I feel really good about the way the book is going and I’m so thankful that I did it and for the community that I’ve found there (one new friendship in particular…such a blessing!).  As a result, I read a ton of memoir, and the best book I read this year was Wild, by Cheryl Strayed.  It was one of those books that halfway through I started being bummed about how many pages I had left and really trying to savor it, trying to time where I would be when I read the last pages.  It was so good.

Number of tattoos I had on my body in 2011: Zero.

Number of tattoos I have on my body in 2012: ONE!  (And I love it and might get another one.  Don’t tell my Dad.)

Number of rooms that still had boxes in the Pink House in 2011: Three.

Number of rooms that still have boxes in the Pink House in 2012: One.  That’s my New Year’s Resolution.  Organize and finally move in to the office (and get this number down to zero).  Boo.

Number of bodies living in the Pink House in 2011: Two.

Number of bodies living in the Pink House in 2012: Three! 

Arthur and I asked Chrissy to move in and she came to join the Pink House family in August.  She is a huge blessing and we love having her here.

As I look back at 2012 I think about all of the major things that happened.  New friendships were formed.  Old ones were strengthened.  Lots of my close girlfriends had babies.  Some in my group experienced great loss.  In my family this year, a sibling moved here, we enjoyed a brief time of having all of the siblings living in one city, and then a sibling moved (to Australia, no less!) and we’re flung all over the globe again.  But it sure was a treat for that few minutes.  I also lost twenty pounds in the spring, which has done great things for my psyche (it’s pretty great to look in the mirror and like what I see).  Mostly this year I realized that I could be happy again.  I’m not always happy, but I find myself saying that sometimes (“I’m happy.”), and it is delightful.

This has been a rough month, but a pretty amazing year.  I keep hearing the Counting Crows song in my head, “It’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.”  I said that at the end of 2011 with great hope for 2012, and I say it again with great hope for 2013. 

Thank you to all of you who have been on this journey with me.  For caring to read the words that I write and for loving me through all of this.

Xo

Noel (and Arthur)

Overwhelmed

I spent much of September feeling so incredibly overwhelmed. 

I added more time to my schedule at work.  I decided to do this to take the pressure off of scheduling clients.  It seemed like that would be easier for me to do than to continue the juggling that I had been doing on the phone.  If I added some more time, then at least I would be making money for that time (no one pays me to talk on the phone, if you can believe it).  So far I think it’s been a good decision.

I was deep in my writing workshop, as well.  I think that for me, because I’m a slow reader and a slow writer, it takes me longer than it takes the average person to do the coursework.  So, I knew that I had made a big commitment when I signed up, but it ended up being 10-15 hours a week of “homework.”  I was totally enjoying it, but it also was deep, painful stuff that I was writing about.  I guess I should say at this point, in case you guys don’t know, that I’m working on a book.  It’s a memoire about Sawan and I, about our love story, and then also about what it’s been like to be a young widow.  I’m very excited about it, but it’s a lot of work, on the writing side, and on the emotional side.

Then, I also had so many friends in crisis.  Two of my girlfriends had had babies.  One was in the NICU.  The other was a less than ideal delivery and she had communicated that she needed companionship.  I wanted to be there for both of them.  I also have another friend, part of a couple, where the man is undergoing cancer treatment, and they’re my age.  I wanted to be there for them, as well. 

In addition to these things and being in a relationship, I also had a roommate move in to the Pink house in August.  She’s awesome!  But it also brings a whole other person to relate with regularly.

I want to do so much to make everything better for everyone.  I talked to my counselor about it.  I told him that I didn’t have enough hours in my day.  I wanted to do so much and I just simply didn’t have time or capacity and I was freaking out.  He told me that sometimes what we want to give, what people need, is a million dollars.  So we reach into our pockets and all we have is a dollar twenty-five.  We have a decision to make.  How are we going to spend our $1.25?  What we want to do might be a visit and a meal, but all we can do is a phone call.  Though that might feel inadequate, he still encouraged me to make the phone call.  So, that’s what I did.

In conclusion, September was mostly about putting one foot in front of the other, doing the most I could each day to get to the next day, knowing that all I could do was my best.  I had to be extremely intentional about my schedule and my time.  And, I survived it.  As I struggled through, I was keenly aware of how different this struggle was from the struggle that I had been dealing with for the last three years.  I had so much relationship.  What a blessing. It's what I call a high-class problem.  Loneliness was so far from me, and, even though it was the other extreme, it was so nice to have the reprieve.

A New Space

Wow.  It’s been a while!

It’s not that I’ve not been writing.  I’ve been writing my face off, actually.  I took another class (or actually, it was a workshop) at the same place that I took one earlier this spring.  I think that the process of reading and writing is slower for me than most people, so it ended up being about 15 hours a week of coursework.  I also started working another afternoon a week.  So, between my writer’s workshop and the extra work, I have not had time to update the blog. 

I’m also struggling with how to move forward with the blog these days now that I’m dating again.  I don’t know how to process widowhood without processing it through the lens of a new relationship (holy cow, it brings stuff up), but I also want to be respectful of this new man.  The thing about this blog that has been great is that it’s given me a chance to process my previous relationship, but there was no worry of hurting my love’s feelings.  That is no longer the case, as the man I’m currently in a relationship with is actually living (phew).  So….

I guess, I want to ask you to bear with me as I try to navigate this new space. 

Love to all the tens of you!

*I'm going to attempt to catch you up on what's been going on in my life in the past couple of months...here goes!

Yard Projects: Beginning the Back Yard

The back yard was such a mess!  There was a whole bag of sand that had been dumped on the concrete section of the patio that I had just never gotten around to cleaning up.  There were still little branches that were all over from the lilac project. 

Before.  Gross.

Over Memorial day weekend my friend Sara came over to help for the day.  Remember this story?  She asked if bikini tops were necessary to work in my yard.  I told her this was the Nail household.  Bikini tops were optional.

She is the gardener extraordinaire.  She actually worked on real farms in Washington.  She started a community garden non-profit project where people could come and work and earn their community service, and they employed people that had formerly been in prison.  She’s pretty awesome.

She and I cleaned the patio, moved planters from the front to the back, moved some cement planters from their weirdo spots under the lilacs to more appropriate places around the patio, changed out the soil in them, and planted colorful flowers.  Then, she taught me how to plant vegetables (tomatoes, basil, mint and squash).  It looks so much more clean and cheerful!  We also moved a wisteria vine that had “volunteered” from the back to the front where it can grow along the picket fence.  It was a great time to catch up and visit with my longtime girlfriend, but I also learned so much.  It was just so good for my soul.

After.

One of the cement planters, filled with begonias and herbs.

I still have a lot to do in the back, but I keep changing my mind about what the plan will be.  Initially I had wanted to do all of it this year, but now I’ve decided that I need to know exactly what I want before I start investing in it.  So for the rest of the summer my plan is to extend my brick patio to the garage so that there’s a walkway that will make it easier to get my trash cans out to the alley (Anything to ease the alley pain…I’m secretly scared of the alley, and I say that it “closes” after dark).  I also have a little retaining wall that goes around only five of the lilacs, and on four of them they have bricks stacked two high, and on the fifth they’re only one high.  So I want to extend that all the way around all of the lilacs and make it all match at two-high.  The space of dirt that it will leave will become a bed of some sort.  That’s all that I plan to do for the rest of the year.  No big deal, right?

I only use cute gardening gloves.

It only being May, I’m still totally enjoying yard work (we’ll see how I feel in July).  I love being outside.  I love that I’m a little tan.  I love that it makes muscles hurt that I didn’t know that I had.  I love that even though I’m a prissy girl I enjoy getting dirty.  I love burning calories in a real way that shows results!  I’m having a great time, most of the time.  Sometimes it's lonely and makes me feel widowed.  That's why I love having people come "help" even if they want to just visit and watch me work, that's helping.  I’m also having a bit of a hard time finding balance.  I’m not sure how to have an awesome yard, a clean house, work, write and have any sort of social life.  So the writing has suffered.  But, the yard looks awesome!

Yard Projects: Front Yard

I know I haven’t been updating around these parts lately, for a while I just felt like I had nothing to say.  Then, I got out of the habit.  Then, I started working my hiney off on my yard.

I thought I’d do a few posts on my yard projects!

Arthur, rolling around in the grass.

My favorite project was the flowerbeds in the front yard.  It made such a huge difference and was such a fun way to spend the day with my mom.  She’s awesome at garden stuff and I learned so much. 

The bed on the side was so seriously overgrown.  It was full of blue salvia that had grown wild, grass (what were they thinking?) a rose bush, some ivy, and lots and lots of weeds and rocks.  We (and by that I mean her) turned over all of the dirt, and then as she pulled stuff out I transplanted it to other places in the yard.  We moved a second rosebush into that bed and then I bought one more, so that there’s symmetry.  I added ice plant and flox, so that will grow in and fill out over the years and be really beautiful.  I’m also going to add some peonies from my sister’s yard; it’s the perfect place for peonies with all of the sun it gets.  I realized as I added two flats of plants that I had never put those kind of plants in the ground before.  I had only ever done containers.  It takes about thirty seconts to add plants to a container.  I thought that's what it would take to get them into the ground, too.  Wrong!  It took about an hour per flat.  I had to use a real shovel instead of my hand held spade.  I had to add compost.  It was so fun to own my own ground to put them into.

Before.

After.  Flox on the edge.  Ice Plants in corners.  Rose Bushes in the middle.  I changed to a smaller planter to allow more sun to reach the climbing rose bush in the corner.

That day, I also put in the new climbing rose bushes.

One of the climbers.

While Mom and I worked on that project, my brother also came over to mow the lawn for me.  Awesome, right?

Remember last year how I was trying to rehab my front yard, “Wes”?  This year he came back much fuller than last year, but still had some major bald spots.  I over seeded him again, and then used plugs from the grass that we pulled out of the flowerbed (plugs are basically like hair extensions).  That worked so well and made him look so handsome that I decided I needed to fill in the rest with extensions from a piece of sod.  So I bought just one piece for $4 at home depot and gave him some more.  He’s looking pretty great.  Plus, the new baby grass seeds are still growing, so I think he’s going to look pretty awesome by the end of the summer.

Wes, with hair extensions.

Stay tuned for more!

My Inspiration

Yesterday, I found out that Vidal Sassoon died.  He was one of my heroes, in a big way.  He had a profound influence on my own career, and on my entire industry.  I had always hoped to meet him one day.  It saddens me to know that now that that will never happen, but he certainly lived a full life.

The following is something that I wrote for my writing class earlier this winter/spring, the assignment was to write 500 words about someone who inspired me.  I thought now would be a good time to share it.

 Vidal Sassoon: My Inspiration

I wanted to be a hairstylist my whole life.  I remember watching the commercials for Vidal Sassoon hairspray when I was little, with the perfect bob that swung from side to side, and thinking, “I’m gonna do that.”  I didn’t want to be the girl (although I wanted that hair); I wanted to be the stylist.

When I began my career, I had a pretty clear image of what I wanted to do.  I wanted it to be glamorous. 

I got one of the most sought after jobs of my classmates, working for Heinz Schaeffer, the European uber stylist.

A week before I was to start, I took a vacation to LA, and my goals solidified.  What I really wanted to do was hair for the movies.  I could have my name in the credits.  I could be a member of the Academy.

 I began doing the things that I felt would prepare me.  I excelled at styling, I could blow dry the curl out of anyone’s hair.  I built a portfolio of editorial work.  I was published in Passion Magazine (the industry’s most prestigious publication) at 22. 

Then, three and a half years into my career, my boss thought I should get a little bit of “ongoing education” at the Vidal Sassoon Academy in Santa Monica.  It sounded fun, and I loved LA.  He didn’t have to twist my arm.  I thought this would be a great way to “network” anyway, to maybe get some connections for going out there to work at my dream.

But, after a week at the academy, everything had changed for me.  Vidal Sassoon had changed my life.  I was fascinated with his story, and it changed the way I did hair forever.

Vidal Sassoon first started changing the world in the sixties.  It was the age of roller-sets, Beehives and Bouffants.  He looked at the women in salons and realized that the only people with good hair were the ones who could afford to go to the salon and have their hair done once a week.  This didn’t seem right to him.  He began to ask questions.  “What if we taught women how to do their own hair?”  “What if we cut hair to work with the natural texture, rather than fighting against it?”  They say that he started a revolution.

Because the industry is so different now, it’s hard to fathom what a difference he made.  But let me put it to you this way:  Without his ideas, we wouldn’t have the hand-held blow dryer.  We would all still be the women in beauty shops, getting our hair set once a week under the hood dryers, sipping pink lemonade.  He changed an entire culture.

And I no longer want to be a hair stylist to the stars.  I want to make real people beautiful, and teach them to love the hair that they have.

My Hero!

On Tuesday night, I did one of the funnest things I’ve gotten to do in a long time.  I got to meet one of my biggest heroes.  I got to see Anne Lamott in real life.

She did a reading and book signing at the Tattered Cover here in Denver and my big sis carved out some time to go with me. 

Anne is such a big deal that she won’t sign personal notes to anyone on their books; she’ll only sign her name.  I told Cori that maybe someday she’ll be such a great writer that she will only have to sign her name, too.  She said the same thing to me, but I only want to write one book, so I’m sure I’ll have to sign personal notes in that one.  That’s ok.

Annie was delightful.  She was smaller than I expected her to be.  She had a hilarious sense of humor.  She was scatterbrained, and kept switching from topic to topic rapid-fire.  She was obsessed with Twitter.

I have spent the last few days processing the time that I had and the talk that she gave.  She often talks about being disciplined to sit down and write every day.  Just get your butt in the chair and write.  She said that no one cares if you write or not.  It only matters to you.  I thought that was great, and extremely useful.  She says not to worry about the quality of your work at first, she’s famous for her quote from her book, Bird by Bird, about writing shitty first drafts.  But, part of me felt so overwhelmed by her, as well, that I can never dream to write like she can, so I have not written at all since Tuesday night (until this, I suppose).  I have not put my butt in my chair and written any shitty first drafts.  I’ll get over it soon.

In the end, we got to go up and meet her, and I got to tell her that as a widow, none of the usual books for grief had been useful to me, even C.S. Lewis, but hers (Traveling Mercies) had been the only one that I had been able to get through, and that it was meaningful to me.  I thanked her.  She said she was sorry for my loss, and thanked me.

It was such a fun night.  I hope that all of you get to meet your heroes someday!

After the photo was snapped, Anne asked, "Is it cute?"  I think it is, but Cori and I both have punky haircuts these days, and in 20 years we'll look at this photo and say, "What were we thinking?"

Spring Cleaning

It was my plan to get some writing done today, including a blog post.  First on my list, though, was a little spring-cleaning.

I did 10 loads of laundry.  I even put them away (for two weeks I had had three laundry baskets full of clean clothes on my bedroom floor that I kept rifling through for clean underwear).  I started with clothes and then did sheets, and several loads of rugs, blankets, and stuff that doesn’t usually get washed.

I did all of the floors in my house. 

I dusted.

I cleaned both bathrooms, and did this fun project (I read about it on Pinterest): I haven’t been able to get the soap scum off the shower since I moved in.  I was showering next to someone else’s soap scum and I had to do cartwheels in my head every morning so that I didn’t get too sicked out to get in the shower.  The trick I read about was like magic.  Using equal parts white vinegar and blue Dawn dish soap (heated for 1 minute in the microwave) I sprayed it on my shower and let it sit for two hours.  Then I wiped (read that, no scrubbing) it down with a scrubby sponge and rinsed it off.  My tile is clean for the first time in a year.  That’s it.  It. Was. Awesome.  I was thinking about renting a power washer (I'm not kidding) and if that didn't work then I was going to have to have it re-tiled.  It was that bad.

I changed four light bulbs, and successfully broke the upstairs light fixture, making a big mess, but also an excuse to replace it which is good, because it was ugly.  Luckily it was before I did the floors.

I cooked dinner, then opened up a can on my kitchen.  I wiped down every surface.

Then, I gave Arthur a bath, took a shower, put the clean sheets back on my bed, and promptly got in it, even though it was only 7:30.  I’m exhausted.  I’m too tired to write anything more than bragging.

I actually shouldn’t brag…now that you know that I spent hours cleaning you know how disgusting it was beforehand.  Yikes.

Fallow

As a girl I loved to drive by the corn fields on our way to school, I loved the way that driving by at a certain speed, the row of corn next to the divot of space next to the row of corn conjured a Rockettes kick line in my head. 

We lived in Billings, MT, and even though it’s the biggest city in Montana, it was still somewhat rural.  It didn’t take long to get out of the developed areas, past the church, then the golf course, and then to the cornfields.  On a recent visit, when I drove down roads that were once familiar, I was saddened that strip malls had swallowed up the cornfields.  Development inevitably has a way of digesting the open spaces and while it feels on some level like progress, it feels sad at the same time.

I didn’t grow up on a farm by any stretch of the imagination, but I went to school with kids that did. I guess it’s because of these friendships that I understand some of the concepts of rural life.  Somehow I must have gotten it through osmosis, or maybe conversation, the way it must be to work with large animals, to grow crops, to own more than just the yard around your house, but acres as well.

So, when I was reading a friend’s essay recently, the idea of “taking a break from love” to let “loneliness lay fallow on her tongue” hit me so dramatically.

The concept of letting a field lay fallow is to let it rest for a season, not to have crops growing in it taking from the soil, but giving the soil a chance to catch up, so to speak, to soak up nutrients, to receive before it gives back.

As I’ve been thinking about dating again, I’ve felt so impatient.  I feel like I need to hurry up and meet someone, I’m ready to just “get on with it.”  But I don’t get to choose.  I don’t get to decide when.

So I love the idea of my heart being fallow.  For this season, until the right one comes along again, I’ll think of it not as impatiently waiting, but as letting my heart lie fallow.  I’ll let it soak up the rain, gain richness from its surroundings.   Yes, I like that idea very much.

A Strange Visitor

I spent my day today getting ready for my writing class, finishing up edits on my assignment, writing my notes for my critiques of the other ladies in my class, and doing some much overdue housework.  Plus, it was my turn to have my essay read tonight, and I submitted my re-worked “August 24,” so I was deep in grief and thought all day.

I had it all planned out.  I needed to leave at 3.  I got in the shower at 1:30, then needed to finish up all of the writing, mostly just get it all printed out, but, there never seems to be enough time in the day, and I felt that I was running a little behind.

I got out of the shower, and, not knowing yet what I was going to wear, stuck my sweats and my Race for the Cure t-shirt on.  I didn’t have make-up on yet and my hair was soaking wet.

I heard a knock on the door.

I never get visitors.  Pretty much the only people that ever come to my door are either my family, on an announced visit, or the pizza man.  So, I was a little curious as to who could be there, and also very relieved that whoever it was was coming after my chores were done (if my mom had come in before, I think she would have been thinking, but too polite to say, “Who raised you?!”).

I answer the door.

It’s a man with an old-school David Beckham soccer player haircut, where it’s shaved on the sides and has a long ponytail.    He asks if I am the woman of the house (in my condition I probably looked like I was about 14 years old).  He asks me if I have any work that he can do around the house, he lost his son, his baby (and his voice breaks), and needs money for the funeral.  He tells me a specific amount that he needs, and how much he’s gotten so far, from people in the neighborhood, that he feels so blessed by the way they have come alongside and helped him out.

I wonder if I’m the biggest sucker in the world.  I tell him to hold on.  I went inside, prayed a quick prayer of “Ok, should I do this?  Is this safe?  Am I a sucker?” But, my internal “creep detector” is pretty good, and it wasn’t going off.  Plus, Arthur didn’t freak out at the door, and he always freaks out.  I felt that the answer to my hasty prayer was, “This is one of the ‘least of these’.”

I gave him a little cash.  I told him that I had no idea what it was like to lose a baby, but I had lost my husband unexpectedly two years ago, so I understood unexpected loss, and I was so sorry.

He was so grateful.

It has me thinking.  Thinking about loss.  It has me feeling so grateful for my own friends and family during my own time of loss.  I’m so grateful that I didn’t have to go door to door and ask for help.  I can’t even imagine.  And yet, I’m moved by the way that the neighborhood has helped him, the way that you would have expected them to do fifty years ago, but not today.

So, I made it to my class on time, despite the interruption.  I went about my day just like I would have, my world is still the same, even though his is forever changed.

Resolutions

How’s everyone doing on those New Year’s Resolutions? 

I’m going to brag for a moment:  I only really made the one that I wanted to take some classes to make my blog better.  I started last Wednesday.  Suckers!

I just started taking a writing class.  I’m slightly overwhelmed by the amount of work that it is, but I’m super excited!  I really, really loved it when I went last week.  It is my first non-hair related class that I’ve taken since I took Russian as a second language the year after highschool.  I felt tempted to cover my “text book” in brown grocery bags and have someone take my picture since it was the first day of school. 

Doing prep for this class looked slightly different then the last time that I took a class, though, I enjoyed lots of coffee in my French press.  It kept me company while I read other’s essays to give feedback on and wrote all day on Wednesday.

 

That's right.  I brought them all up to my nightstand so I could read and write in bed.  And, I am so high maintenance that I require two kinds of cream for my coffee.  Mostly plain Coffeemate, but a tiny bit of the flavored kind.  

I’m thinking I might forgo the photography class.  I’ve been doing some research and don’t like any of the options that I’ve seen.  I think what I need to do is some practice before I take a class.  Plus, I’ve been doing some reading about the actual photography and think that I can improve with just some suggestions that I’ve read, without actually taking a class yet.  So, that’s on hold.  I’ll keep you posted.

I hope your “resolution keeping” is right on track.  I hope you’ve let go what you need to (be gentle and kind to yourselves!) and decided to do what you need to, not because it’s New Year’s, but because it’s what you need.