Frugality: the art of looking at things inside out

One of my odder fascinations has always been with the homely, humble art of thrift. I'm sure it springs partly from my fear of money (more specifically, of living out my retirement years in a shopping cart). Like lots of 60's babies, my young world was populated by adults who lived through the Depression; spend enough time in the Museum of Rubber Bands and Grocery Bags, it's bound to influence you.

But my passion for thrift is about more than saving the odd dollar or being able to wave the flag of righteousness. Frugal living satisfies the urge to create, to conjure. To think outside the box (which can be re-used as an inbox, cat bed, fort for the very tiny or jaunty chapeau for the mad). It's contemplative and giving, not loud and grabby. And as life gets louder and faster, I value quiet, both internal and external, more and more.

I remember the excess of my father's house as just that: excess. Too many things, too much noise, too much churn. TVs everywhere, closets bursting with unworn clothes, new cars before the last ones were old cars, jewelry bought at a premium and given away on eBay. Pointless, inelegant things, like the $300 throw pillow covered in, I shit you not, seashells. Because there's nothing that spells comfy snuggle on the couch like a gigantic coral reef against your head. And how.

I'd blame it on his significant other, who was clearly the shopper in the family, but the truth is, Dad just as down with the always-on, bigger-is-better, 20th century-American lifestyle. Or inured to it. Or something. He lived in those houses, he drove those cars, he chose that life.

Taken too far, or course, thrift veers into tightwaddery, its dingy, B.O.-stained cousin. I've learned the hard way not to cheap out on health care, for example: an early, scary brush with an HMO OB/GYN has kept me on the straight and narrow for over 20 years. And don't get me started on the freezing showers and the three-square allotment of toilet paper of my maternal grandparents' house, a falling-down paean to thrift fondly dubbed "Gloomy Manor" by the ones with the bag collection.

Goodness and greatness both lie, as usual, in the ho-hum middle. What seems to work best for me is a foundation of alert and sensible thrift, gently padded here and there with worthwhile luxuries. As I drill down to the center of the mess that is my money, I get comfortable both with having more and needing less, with conserving usually and splurging occasionally. True, my version of splurging, lunch out at a restaurant just because, good incense and candles, 2-color Pantone business cards on heavy stock, is probably laughably tiny to most of my neighbors in a 5-block radius.

But I don't live in a 5-block radius anymore. I live on a big, beautiful planet.

See? It's all in how you look at it...

xxx c

Image by Richard- via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Life lessons from the IT department

There's a protocol at IT help desks for answering every call for help with computer difficulties that goes something like this:

1. "Is the machine plugged into the wall?" If "yes"...
2. "Is the machine--and something else plugged into the same outlet--receiving power?" If "yes"...
3. "Is the machine turned on?"

It goes on from there. Easy to mock (if you've never seen the email about it, see this site), but there's a great message in there that we don't always apply to our own decision trees:

Try the simplest thing first, no matter how "stupid" or obvious.

This was driven home to me recently. I'd been having problems with my mail.app program's display. I'd done elaborate troubleshooting, reinstalled twice, combed the web for solutions, and after coming up blank, was hobbling along, just living with it and using annoying workarounds.

One morning, I was grousing about it in front of The BF, who is, of course, a computer genius. As in, That Guy You Call when you're F*cked. He hates it. So much so, that I made a resolution to ask only under cases of extreme duress. Which this, of course, was not; it was merely supremely annoying.

A puzzled look came across his face. He walked over to the computer, clicked one (unmarked! unmarked! I swear!) button, and my display was back in action.

For me, the lesson, and the simplest thing, is usually to ask someone first. As someone with dependency issues well before becoming a sole proprietor, i.e., an independent cuss from way back, it is too easy for me to go a long, long time before asking for help. I'm learning to get over this by working with a business coach, yes, but also by being less of a loner: in the past couple of years, I've joined no less than five new groups that have all helped me expand my network, not for money-making reasons (although it's nice when that happens) but for information gathering and mutual assistance.

That's right, mutual. Because I have a different skill set and life experience than the people in my various groups. So what's befuddling to me, what seems like a huuuuuuge favor to ask, may be nothing less than a quick email back and forth, or a ten-second phone call.

And what's befuddling to you? To me, it may be as plain as the nose on your face. Or the cord from your computer, that's sitting just short of the outlet...

Image by Kitwe's Finest via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Nerd Love, Day 20: "A" is for alpha channel

Some days, you just get by.

Tired Fearful Small and crawly

on no sleep (troubles, troubles) and a too-early dentist appointment made in good faith a year ago kept in resignation and out of more fear (bad gums, the family curse).

And then after a day of throwing down too many cups of caffeine (all flavors)

and an afternoon of pushing through too many scary jobs,

tired and fearful, small and crawly

you straggle home exhausted from An Event (really, it was lovely, we were just fagged out and not in a gay way)

and The BF gives you a tutorial in alpha channels and makes all the bad things disappear.

This is why I love being a nerd

This is why I love being in love with one.

xxx c

Image by Colleen Wainwright and Brenton Fletcher

visiting my furniture

I caught up with my past today. More specifically, I caught up with my ex-husband, whom I have dubbed for some time (with affection, usually...sometimes) the Chief Atheist of the West Coast.

I was but a girl of 28 when I met him, which is to say, I was a complete moron with my head so far up my ass, I could have given myself a colonoscopy had the lighting been a bit better. Long ago, I figured out his half of the responsibility for things tanking; it has only been in the last three or four years that I've not only accepted my own, but fully understood it.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable visit, which was not entirely surprising, since we were and are both very funny people. (Humble, too!) What was surprising, and pleasantly so, was the utter and complete feeling of relaxation about the event. For the first time in...oh, 15 or so years, nobody had an agenda and everyone was there to listen. Myself included. I was not always the paragon of communication I am today; in fact, much as Tom Leykis often says he understands the sh*t people do to each other because he has done it all, en route to becoming the communicatrix, I erred in pretty much every way one can when it comes to knowing yourself, hipping the rest of the world to it and sticking to your guns.

The only weirdish part of today's field trip was an unscheduled stop at The Chief Atheist's crib. He'd become a homeowner since we split up and was rightly proud of it, this ain't an easy market for non-millionaires to break into.

The place itself was perfectly nice and not weird at all (the restroom was a particularly welcome sight), but it was mighty strange to visit furniture and mementos I'd spent so much time around in previous lives. The Chief Atheist was a great fan of my paternal grandparents and inherited quite a few pieces when they passed on; seeing the tables and chairs I'd eaten Jell-O on as a five-year-old was more than I was prepared to deal with on a random Tuesday morning.

I am not friends with all of my ex-es. I'm not even sure I would like to be. The Chief Atheist and I agreed that the meeting was nice and that in a perfect world, other such meetings would happen maybe 2 or 3 times a year.

And that was that. I came, I caffeinated, I drove to Trader Joe's, where my conversation with the checker about the ongoing lack of Gerolsteiner (they're mid-repackaging, apparently) was just as drama-laden as the one I'd just come from with the man I was married to for 8 1/2 years.

It was a nice place to visit. Now that neither one of us wants to live there anymore...

xxx c

Photo © Linda Plaisted via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

The cure for spilkes

Now, when I'm happy, I laugh
When I'm sad, I cry
I get my melons in the melon patch
And when I'm itchy I scratch

, from the song "When I'm Itchy, I Scratch"

I always want something; I just don't always know what it is.

Knowing doesn't mean I'll necessarily get it, of course, but the acknowledgment alone can work wonders. I've gotten much faster and don't always need all the steps, but here are all five for when I do:

1. Get very quiet.

2. Close your eyes.

3. Take three deep breaths.

4. Note what surfaces.

5. Acknowledge it.

Of course, sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.

And with that, the communicatrix is retiring for the evening...

xxx
c

Photo by Susan NYC via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Thanks to fellow "itchy" freak Matt Preskenis for coming up with the full lyric

Poetry Thursday: Coda to a long week

Sometimes when you work for yourself for a long time you forget why

And you find yourself working longer and harder because when you started it felt so good

And when you stopped it felt so scary

But sometimes when you work for yourself for a long time you have to say 'no' no matter how much it scares you

No, not today No, not by tomorrow No, not even if the world might come screeching to a halt

Because chances are it won't

And once you've said 'no' make a u-turn for the love shack and some yes-yes-yes

And see if the fear doesn't go back where it came from and the 'why' doesn't come flooding back...

xxx c

I'm off to the big she-nerd conference in the morning, so no timely posts for a bit. I do have a little treat planned for you on Monday, though. So I hope you'll stop by...Brandon.

Image by R. Motti via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

The worst day is the day after the best day; or, "Now what, hotshot?"

Several years ago, when I was still pursuing acting with an earnest vengeance, I did a great scene in class. Did I say "great scene"? Sorry. What I meant was Super Fabulous Tear-the-Roof-Off-the-Sucker, Tear-the-Roof-Off-the-Motherfucker, p-funk All-Star scene.

People who had shunned me suddenly wanted to touch me. People who had been my friends basked in reflected glory, sagely nodding and accepting mad props for having seen It in me all along.

Well, okay, not really. But my scene partner and I seriously kicked ass. It was about as perfect a rendering of that particular scene, the rollicking first meeting between Kate and Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew, as you could imagine. Made Dick and Liz look like a couple of pikers, we did. And felt great about doing it.

Until we had to do it again. Because that's what you do in acting class, like that's what you do in the theater: you do it again. Have a great night on stage? Ring that bell? Ladies tossing their panties at you? Men sprouting wood at your superfabulousness? Okay.

Try that again, hotshot!

You get the idea.

This comes to mind partly because Friday's experience, my little time on stage for Subject Line Here, was so much fun, and unexpectedly so. I thank Shane Nickerson, my fellow blogger-performers and a wonderful crowd for that, mostly. Still, my habit of creating diminished expectations was surely a factor.

But it's more pressing here and now after the bizarre triumph that was the 21-gun salute called Cheering the Hell Up™. Not that I reap great, personal rewards from a three-week period of enforced positive thinking, but the indirect and, frankly, far more potent benefit was the mad outpouring of love I received from friends and strangers. And believe me, as a big, fat, commie-pinko liberal, it is magically delicious, if a little odd, having a bunch of balls-out Republicans flock to your site. (Thank you, Pajamas Media...I think).

There's a zen saying that sums this up perfectly. It goes something like "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." Or, to put it another, more modern way, the day after you win your Academy Award^®, you still have to get up and take a crap. That's just the way things work.

So consider this the blog version of taking a crap. Just me being me, here, getting back to the regular-usual, albeit with experience of a couple of highs under my belt. Just trying to try again.

So...how ya like me now?

xxx c

Photo by Johnsyweb via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 18: Laundry Day!

Once a week I get to pretend I'm a guest at the Four Seasons where they give you nice, clean, soft sheets freshly-laundered, every day.

Every Tuesday (or Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Monday, depending) I get to corral all of those musty towels and stinky socks and jeans that could walk themselves to the hamper and with soap and quarters and mechano-magic turn them into puffballs of clean-smelling goodness so that every Wednesday (or Thursday/Friday/Monday/Tuesday, depending) I feel better reaching for a kitchen towel I feel happier slipping on my favorite pair of underwear I feel rich surveying the multiplicity of choice that is my t-shirt drawer.

But the best thing of all about Laundry Day is Laundry Night when, after a long, hot bath or a long, hot shower (depending), I turn off the lights and turn on the ceiling fan and crawl into a bed fitted with clean, soft sheets just like you get at the Four Seasons.

Some people might think it's better at a hotel when someone else does the washing and the folding and the making of the bed.

I say it's probably better to do it yourself.

You appreciate that bed more when you're pretending to be a Four Seasons maid than a Four Seasons guest.

Most of the time, anyway...

xxx c

Photo by Sir Mildred Pierce via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 16: Peace & quiet is the flip side of childlessness

A former partner used to hammer me on the subject of children and the importance of family with the warning that if I chose not to have the former and spend a lot of time with the latter, I would end up alone, and, by extension, miserable.

While the game is (I hope) far from over, I'm fairly sure he was wrong. There is something to be said for blood being thicker than water, but spending a shitload of Sundays splashing around in the gene pool ain't necessarily the answer to the question of happiness; spending time and effort building relationships built upon a foundation of truth and mutual respect probably is. I live a life resplendent with love, friendship and joy thanks to the many who sign on every day with their heads and hearts, regardless of shared DNA.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against children and family; they're just not top priorities for me. Or, if you like, I'm not judging, "I'm just sayin'," as the kids say*.

What has always been top priority for me is seeking truth. For whatever reason, I need copious amounts of alone time to do it, so spawning and/or adopting would be irresponsible. My only regret is that it took me so long to see this and put a name to it. I caused a lot of people unnecessary pain because I was such a clueless doofus. If any of you are reading this now, I apologize.

My wish for everyone is to find the thing that truly makes you tick and run with it. Reorganize your life around it. Make no apologies for it. Make no excuses for staying away from it.

But along with it, consider cultivating an understanding and appreciation for the choices you didn't make, and some understanding for the people who did. If you have questions about how they live their lives, perhaps mull them over to yourself before shouting about it from the rooftops or your AM radio show.

Some of us really need the peace and quiet...

xxx c

*Although having seen the impact of high population on our tiny earth, I'd feel better if some people weren't reproducing with such zeal.

Photo by rbaez via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 15: Sticking a Fork in It

Things you never thought you'd be saying:

The terms of the settlement prevent me from discussing specifics of the case, but the hell is finally over.

Things you have longed to say:

The hell is finally over. Let the grieving begin...

xxx c

Photo by douglucymills via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 12: Abundant abundance

There's good stuff all around if you look for it.

There's rotten stuff all around if you look for it.

If you get enough rest, eat properly (which includes an occasional indulgence), commune a bit with nature here and there, watch your pace (which includes some occasional type-A behavior), love yourself up good and surround yourself with fine people, you have a better chance of seeing the good stuff.

If you deprive your body and soul of the things it needs, you're more likely to take a ride on the RottenCoasterâ„¢.

Right now, there is so much good around me, it's almost overwhelming. Scratch that, it is a bit overwhelming. So I'm taking a few days to pause and reflect and catch up with some of this amazingness the universe has been hurling my way lately. To play catch with the universe, I guess.

I'd better get me a big mitt on the way to the airport...

xxx c

P.S. The universe wants to play ball this weekend in a field with slightly less dependable internet connection; I'll keep you posted where I can...

Image ©2006 ::enrapture::, via Flickr

Wanting something into existence, wanting something else the hell out of it

PART 1: The Wanting In

If you've been following along, reading between the lines (or more specifically, reading the comments), you know that one of the fifty books I'm reading right now is a little tome entitled Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings. Yes, it's a "woo-woo" book; yes, it's a little wobbly in the writing department. And really, it doesn't say anything too earth-shaking, at least, not to someone who's been well-familiarized with the Law of Attraction and spent the last several years learning how to focus on the good instead of the...well, the other.

But reading it does give things a boost in the actualizing-one's-intentions department. It makes sense, really, since the whole magilla basically boils down to what you focus on is what you get. If you look at this from a more scientific standpoint, it's not unlike telling someone to NOT think about a large, white elephant or to point out that there sure are a lot of yellow Hummers on the road today: all that person is going to see on the way home is how many damned yellow Hummers are in the way, and she's going to be thinking about white elephants while she does it.

The extra spin, juice, if you will, that EMYLIW offers is the passionate wanting of something vs. the dry thinking of it. In other words, if you would love a new washing machine, well...LOVE UP THAT WASHING MACHINE!!! Admire it, caress it in your head, feel all the joyous feelings that washing machine will give you. An example: I've been looking for a pair of jeans that fits. (Ladies, you know what I mean: "fits" = "makes my ass look like Jessica Alba's".) This is generally an exercise in frustration, if not futility; even if one is Jessica Alba, one still has to actually try on all of the expensive jeans one's stylist hauls over to one's fabu L.A. pad. And if one is not Jessica Alba, if one is, say, over 40 and cheap as hell, it entails...well, I'll spare you the horrors.

But me? I've read EMYLIW. I'm lovin' up the jeans. I'm thinking about great-looking jeans on my ass and letting it go. I'm looking at other ladies' great-looking jeans on their great-looking asses (my sister has a killer butt) and lovin' them up, too, albeit from a respectful distance, and in my head, only. Oh, wait, I take that back; I actually told a girl at SAKS SFO that her ass looked great in those jeans. Which it did.

But I digress.

So yesterday, I'm walking from the car to a Trader Joe's in the Valley and I see an American Cancer Society Thrift Store. These are usually the worst thrift stores, and I knew this one to be generally overpriced with really uncool stuff. Still, I felt lucky, punk, so I walked in...and found the mirror I've been looking for. And then I found a denim jacket that fit perfectly. And then I found a pair of Ben Sherman jeans, nicely distressed, the perfect waltzing around jeans, for FIVE DOLLARS! I held them up; I put them down. I held them up again. (I hold things up a lot before I will put myself through the agony of trying them on.) I tried them on. They fit perfectly. Perfectly! These stupid jeans in this stupid thrift store I randomly went to because it was between my parking spot and the Trader Joe's in Toluca Lake.

Okay, so I get it. This thing works.

PART 2: The Wanting OUT

So now I am home, typing this. It's 8am. I've been up since 7am. I love the quiet. In general, I love my apartment. It's been a shaky week, health-wise, but still, I am LOVING EVERYTHING UP...ya dig?

Except that for the third day in a row, there is this Cologne Thing happening. As in, at 7:15, like clockwork only with smell, the scent of a thousand European men who have freshly doused themselves in cheap man-cologne is wafting through my window. Or that they shimmied up the drainpipe and tossed a baggie full of cheap man-cologne through the slats of my jalousie windows and it broke on my carpet and now it's like a wall-to-wall sachet of man-cologne badness right under my nose. I mean, it's gag-inducing. I can't figure out why anyone would want to smell like that, much less why someone would want to smell so MUCH like that.

It makes me hate my neighbors, with whom I have enough issues already (noise, poor parking manners, that one dish they make on Slovakian holidays that smells like fried cat shit). It makes me hate Los Angeles. It makes me hate, period, which is not good for the wanting (having bad thoughts = low vibrational energy = attracting the bad stuff).

So tell me, wise ones, what to do? How do I turn this into gold? How do I pull myself out of this low-vibrational minefield and send myself soaring back up into the land of high-vibrational voodoo that nets me great jeans, new headbands and, now that I think of it, really bitchin' parking spaces. Because try as I might, I cannot see the lesson or the gift in this daily morning stink bomb of vomit-inducing cologne.

Other than that I am really, really lovin' up that ceiling fan I had the handyman install three years ago. And that handyman...he was really nice and friendly. He helped me fix up several items around the apartment to make it more liveable. And as I recall, he kind of smelled like...

AUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

xxx c

UPDATE: This is being posted way late b/c the friendly servers at DreamHost (no, I'm not linking b/c ever since I signed up with them they've been NightmareHost, or at least, BadNightsSleepHost) keep crashing. You see? Like attracts like! Again, auuuuuugh! And I'm'a wait to link this post up until the server seems more stable.

Photo by amanky via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

The amazing head-exploding properties of CREATION

Apparently, that murky, fallow period I was bemoaning only weeks ago has passed, because I'm now neck-deep in corn, rushing madly about the fields trying to harvest the fucking stuff.

Part of it is my own doing. I put it out there*, this desire to work towards something new, and the willingness to let go of whatever was no longer serving. So what happened?

That show I was collaborating on that I never could quite get it up for? Turns out my writing partner felt the same way. Buh-bye, #1 & #2; hello, six-month coaching project (which the tax return is financing) designed to get my money-making business(es) off the ground.

I wanted to act again...sort of...I thought...maybe. On cue, THE STRIP rose from the ashes...and crashed to the earth in a fiery wreck four weeks later, just as it dawned on me that maybe it wasn't the acting that was attracting me to acting anymore. Lo and behold, not one but two performance opportunities popped up in the rubble. Ahhh, performance, not acting. Me being me, telling my story, instead of me being (character name here), telling someone else's. So that was what all that climbing up on stage was really about...

I also started putting it out there, literally. For someone who spent the last six years avoiding contact, turning phone calls around via email, holing myself up in my hut for weeks on end, I have been a veritable social butterfly: Parties. Events. Classes. Seminars. SXSW. Last week, I stood up at a college alumni networking event and boldly proclaimed my reason for being there: to help cure me of my introversion. This I did in a hip-length, kelly-green corduroy jacket, shiny high-heeled boots and a black miniskirt (Tanya's, although I let the hem down about five inches). Apparently, not only am I starting to Get It; I'm also getting comfortable with Working It. And when you work it, especially when you work it with a song in your heart, the universe practically bombards you with the things you want.

Which reminds me: those things you ask for? You really do get them. So remember to work clean, kids, and be vewy vewy careful about what you let flit through your head and heart...

xxx c

Photo by Steve Rowell of Underspring Studios, new home of Not A Cornfield and the possibly the greatest neon sign ever fashioned

*I also got my hemoglobin count back up (thank you, chopped liver) and went back on meds. Occasionally, it's about external forces as much as internal ones. Or as my Favorite Ex-Boyfriend likes to say, "Sometimes, two things can be wrong..."

What happens when I lose my shit

About three weeks ago, I lost it.

I didn't plow into some a-hole in an SUV on that stretch of Rossmore that narrows to one lane, even though they were honking up the road and totally deserved it.

I didn't call out some a-hole at the grocery store who jumped into the newly-opened lane ahead of me even though I was next, or push someone into the poop their pet just left on our parkway or sidle up to some loud, self-important, cell-talking loser at Marshall's and cut a ginormous fart. Oh, no, nothing so plebian and tawdry as that (although where urban civility has gone, I'll never know, and as a civilian who's sick of loud-talking, SUV-driving, poop-leaving a-holes, I'm not promising I won't in future).

I cleaned The BF's laundry room. With a vengeance. And without his express permission.

I'm not a particularly neat person, or even a particularly clean one. L.A. Jan, whose own apartment has been known to be liberally sprinkled with cat hair upon occasion, confessed to sometime repulsion on coming into proximity with my cooktop; suffice it to say there are several hundred things I'd rather do than clean my appliances, including emptying my own trash. It's just that I have a certain threshold for dirt and/or clutter (which is pretty high, by the way) and every once in awhile, it's exceeded. If I happen to be somewhere it would be ill-advised to touch anything, I hightail it out of there. If not...

I try to time these freakouts to coincide with some necessary task chez communicatrix, but since I spend a great deal of time at my country house (a.k.a., The BF's), sometimes it happens there. Three weeks ago, it was a blocked laundry room passageway (note: no one needs more than ONE gigantic Hefty bag full of rags); today, it was a bedroom door that wouldn't yield for all the stuff hung on the backside of it. First, a door that won't yield; next, a pantry cabinet full of expired medicines. Pretty soon you're wandering around a battlefield of moldy dry cleaner bags and ancient Tupperware.

Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how, I managed to make my gumption even out with the piles. It is not always thus. In my own little place, I am living with the neatly stacked manila folders that house the start of a major familial photographic overhaul, along with several other begun-and-abandoned projects. There are shelves that await relining, crap that awaits eBay-ing, dirt that awaits removal. No matter. I hit my ceiling today, opening a door that wouldn't quite.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll trip over the manila folders that hold my 1099s and blaze through my taxes.

One can only hope...

xxx c

Photo: Me as the Weird Family Mom in Peace Squad Goes 99

Illness as meditation

I had a smallish chunk of communicatrix carved out of my shoulder yesterday. It's not a particularly alarming event; given I get more sun walking from my front door to the car than most of my ancestors got in a lifetime, these occasional hinky patches of skin are to be expected.

What is alarming, and annoying, and frustrating, is having the lines of my physical limitations redrawn so abruptly. Like any 'illness' that descends swiftly, there's no time to adjust from being the together, go-go me who can burn through a to-do list with amazing speed to the sad-ass gimp who is continually making adjustments and compromises to get by. Instead of just reaching for a can of tuna, my Quasimodo-pressure-dressing hump and I have to wait for my left hand to drag the stool to the shelves, step up and grab it, then hand it off to the (gimpy, for all intents and purposes) right hand.

One of the most annoying aspects to my five-month recovery from Crohn's disease was having to sleep on my back. (There was simply too much gastrointestinal activity to risk stomach sleeping.) Last night, my hump and I had to sleep not only on my actual side, propped up with pillows all around like a baby on a king-sized bed, but on the wrong side. Suffice it to say it was not one of my more restful nights, and was mainly filled with odd dreams of attending a veddy British country wedding, with lots of pomp and changes of clothes. What-ever.

On the other hand, the hump is a good reminder to see things differently. Of necessity, I must slow down. And it's prepping me for the even more annoying task of being almost better: while the hump comes off tomorrow, I still have to baby that shoulder for the next eight days if I don't want to rip it all open and bleed on the furniture. Having a governor preps me for driving without one, which is a good thing when your tendency is to live your life with the pedal to the medal.

So I'm going to an audition today as a meter maid with a hump; after that, I'll head over to the printers (slowly) and play graphic designer with a hump. I suppose later on, I'll see if I'm up to play humpy freakshow at the Trader Joe's, and figure out what kind of dinner me and the hump can put together without using the cast iron pans. (I don't know; I'm thinking scallops in some kind of lime, chile and butter sauce.)

And in between, or during, I suppose I should say, I will probably see things I haven't seen, and hear things I haven't heard, just because I've slowed down enough to see and hear them. With every move, if my experience so far is any indication, I'll appreciate the movement I do have so much more, just as when I was imprisoned in the IBD ward at Cedars, I relished the few hundred feet I could walk outside in the courtyard every day, rolling my IV stand alongside of me.

Audition. Printer's. TJ's.

Hell, they're as good as Disneyland, when you get down to it.

xxx
c

How to get to happy

What are the things that make up happiness? What does happiness look like? Forget the fleeting kinds of happiness; they're pretty easily recognizable. I mean the deep, abiding kind: the kind that separates the people who pulse with joy for life, seemingly regardless of circumstance, from the ones who don't.

My own path to happiness has been a bit on the winding side. My mother's side of the family has more than its share of depressives, some diagnosed, most self-medicating with alcohol. And Dad's side? Well, they put on a good face, but I fear there were horrible pangs of what-ifs that buzzed about them in their final hours.

While I'm far from There yet, since my whack upside the head a few years ago*, I pretty much bound out of bed every morning (provided it's not too early), eager to greet the day. I find I worry less than I used to, and complain less, too. In fact, a highly unofficial poll of the people who know me pre-Epiphany and today reveals that I am far less of a pain in the ass than ever I was before**.

Anyway, anyone who knows me at all knows I am the last person to claim Buddhic-like contentment. On the other hand, anyone who knows me at all knows I cannot help but spill it if I have something inside I feel might be of any kind of use to anyone.

So, without further ado:

1. Get to know your owner's manual

Before you can identify where you want to go, you gotta know where you are. What makes you feel heavy? What makes your heart truly sing? Start small, if you like: keep a running list of what you love to do, or what you're looking forward to. Or start with what you dread. The important thing is to look at all of it. Which leads us to...

2. Don't even try to lie.

The Truth is big and scary. The Truth is small and encouraging. But the truth of the Truth is that, once you make it your friend, it will never, ever let you stray too far from the state of happiness.

3. When things look bad, focus on what's good.

Never underestimate the power of gratitude. Nothing snaps you out of a funk faster than realizing things could be far, far worse, and probably are for someone, somewhere. Shifting your focus is at least as important as gratitude. Which means the corollary of this rule is...

4. Look at what you're looking at.

If you're feeling good, see how you're seeing things. If you're feeling not so good, see how you're seeing things. Attention can be a good teacher. So, of course, can unpleasantness.

5. Let the yucky be your teacher.

There's a huge temptation to skip over parts of the process that one finds difficult, but really, you never skip steps: you just delay them. Lather-rinse-repeat may be a part of your own growth process, of course, but ironically, you can probably get to Happy faster if you take the "slow" road. (I wouldn't know; I'm a step-skipper from way back. It took me 40 years and a whomp upside the head to get it.)

6. Understand that happy may not look like what you thought it would.

Starting out in your tiny, one-room log cabin, Happy may well look like a bling-filled crib to the stars. On the other hand, if you live in a bling-filled crib (and aren't happy), you may fear the road to happiness lies in renouncing all of your beautiful possessions. Neither is true. Money and happiness are neither mutually exclusive nor hopelessly intertwined. Good news, I think.

7. Staying fluid helps. A lot.

Some people are naturally more relaxed and open. Flexibility is something I had to learn, both literally and figuratively. Stretching and yoga helps the physical part of it, and something about it (probably the slowing down necessary to do it right) also helped me to be more flexible in my thinking. But really, happiness in huge part involves embracing change, something that not all of us (ahem) are naturally good at.

8. So does having fun.

This one sounds really self-evident, but it's easy to get all serious on The Pursuit of Happiness and suck the fun out of it. Unless you're in a critically depressive phase (in which case you should seek professional help), Getting To Happy is a life's work. So relax. Whoop it up, even. Think of this as the MG in the garage you'll be tinkering at for a lifetime. No biggie.

9. Doing trumps reading about doing.

Yes, it's helpful to find good books and articles and thoughtstarters and motivational quotations and links and a million-billion other things. You know they're no substitute for doing. Go ahead and do your reading, but also do something. One thing, every day. Make it a little project for yourself, if that helps. (Of course, if you're a do-er and an anti-reader, the opposite advice is probably true, but I've a feeling if you're on squidoo, you fall in the former camp.)

10. Put on your own oxygen mask before attempting to place the mask of the person sitting next to you.

This is a tricky one sometimes: we need to balance our need to take care of others with our need for self-care. I guess I'm hoping that native common sense will prevail here: your happiness should take a backseat to your child's getting fed or clothed or comforted. Period. (Perhaps you could even derive some happiness from knowing your child is well-cared for.) But striving to find one's identity, or love, or self-worth, through the making-happy of someone else? Well, I've taken that detour. It's the road to nowhere.

11. When in doubt, get quiet and look within.

It's a big, loud, noisy, distracting world. It can be hard to make the time for quiet ventures that don't immediately pay off in goodies like money or fame or power. Thus is confusion born. Take a step back, take a few deep breaths and look at the problem or the situation or the confusion again.

12. Be nice to yourself.

When you fall, pick yourself up kindly. If you make a mistake, take the steps you can to correct it, make a note of where you erred, and move on. Be as gentle and sweet to yourself as you would a baby or your beloved. You are both. You make the world shine bright like a brand new penny. Treat yourself thusly.

xxx
c

*Whack provided by an acute onset of Crohn's disease back in 2002 which landed me in the hospital for 11 days. You can read a little more about the experience here and here.

**A highly unofficial poll of my shrink revealed that at one point, she had not only considered me a lost cause, but was ready to dump me outright into the lap of the nearest dispensing psychiatrist she could find.

Photo by carf. Check the Creative Commons license before sharing, please.

TAGS: happiness, personal+growth, self-actualization

The city mouse and the inner-city mouse

The BF grew up on a farm and hates nature; I grew up in downtown Chicago and have quaint notions about how great it would be to live in a small town, i.e., someplace with a smattering of the goods and services I need within walking distance, adjacent to a shitload of nature. You can see the potential problem here.

Right now, we're both still relatively young* and able to cross large, busy intersections before some turd in a Hummer mows us down. But I can see the day ahead when I'm going to be over the filth, done with the congestion, and stranded on that tiny island in the middle of the street, clinging to the traffic light for dear life until the 'walk' sign comes back on. Not a pretty picture.

Plus I want to make sure we are compatible for the long haul. The BF is adamant on the issue of city life; I am adamant on the issue of The BF. Could someone, somewhere, be kidding herself here?

Fortunately, in a stroke of Christmastime serendipity, my blog doppelganger, Samantha Burns (I swear, it's like we were separated at birth, 20 years apart), came up with the answer: the Where You Should Live Quiz.

I took it immediately and pressed The BF to do the same. Surely this rigorous scientific measuring tool would provide us with the answer to our future, something more actionable than "ask again later".

The eerily-true stuff

Relatively speaking, The BF is, no surprise, The Yuppie of the relationship. He is constantly dragging me out to breakfast, lunch and dinner at charming neighborhood eateries when there is perfectly good food in grocery stores lying there uncooked and on special.

Also, the test mavens see him in a loft; so does he. I, on the other hand, lived in a crap part of Brooklyn for two years, and have had enough pee stink and garbage to last a lifetime (although I do miss the 'F' train). And he definitely has a better job than me, The Bohemian Gentrifier, or, as my friend, Scott Ferguson, used to call our little cohort, the Downwardly Mobile White Trash Who Make the Neighborhood Safe for Land Speculators.

The not-so-true stuff

Contrary to test conclusions, The BF does not think he is cooler than everyone else: he thinks he's cooler than everyone else...in Indiana, which is probably true.

The BF is also less likely to patronize a chain store of any sort than I, cheap bastard that I am, and I think he'd rather eat moth balls than a Big Mac. Me? If SCD allowed it, I'd still be enjoying my monthly Extra Value Meal #9, a.k.a. Filet-O-Fish with fries and a Coke. Supersize that baby and I'll meet you at the vomitorium.

The final result: a lifetime of mutual bliss, albeit the urban variety

Fortunately for our relationship, The BF and I still enjoy significant areas of overlap: both of us loathe resort vacations; neither one of us would feel one whit safer if the government and military were the only ones armed (especially under this particular administration); and, despite living in the American city that most resembles one, we are united in our hatred of the dreaded suburbs.

In fact, my acceptable population-to-land-mass ratio is only slightly lower than The BF's, and I'm in the 81st percentile for my age and sex, making me an utter fucking freak as far as lifestyle choices go:

Perhaps that's a good thing**. If I think about it, I'm just as happy with my fellow citizens not knowing, or, more accurately, not caring, whether my recycle bin clanks on the way to the curb and how much I like my nooners. God bless my gay, hophead neighbors.

And yes, that goes for you guys, too.

xxx c

*Quit laughing Neil, Jenny, Brandon and the rest of you baby-something punks. You are so much closer to the senior citizen discount than you know.

**It's definitely a good thing for The BF, who has said flat-out that one of the reasons he likes me is because I'm a freak.

Where You Should Live Quiz by TwelveFloorsUp, a city planner from Arlington, VA.

Quotation of the Day/"Bling is Stoopit" Edition

"Beware of the "golden handcuffs." Beware of a profession that pays you so well in money that you enter into a lifestyle (house, cars, a great deal of stuff) that traps you. You may end up in a vicious cycle of trying to earn more in order to maintain the material things that give you less and less pleasure." , John December, on taking care of your money, in his eBook Live Simple

Wherein our heroine learns to avoid the damned street entirely

My friend, Mary Ellen, and I go way back to my advertising days; she was one of the first people I met when I moved back to Chicago from New York, and I still make fun of how relentlessly and Midwesternly cheerful she was when she poked her head into my office for the first time to invite me to lunch.

She is still way too nice to remind me of what a dark and twisted troll I was, but 20 or so years later, she's simmered down, I've cheered up and we've met in a new middle ground. Our semi-/annual conversations have become important to both of us because we serve as touchstones for one another, showing how we've changed and where we might still need to. And, since Mary Ellen forsook advertising for psychotherapy instead of something idiotic like acting, it's basically like I get a 90-minute session free, or for the price of a phone call, which, since I switched to Vonage, is almost free. Ha, ha, Mary Ellen, I win!

Anyway, after the brief-but-requisite foray into the piteous state of national affairs, we launched into the more important topic of boys boys boys. Specifically, what we were doing with ours and how it all was going. (Mary Ellen and her husband have been together 15* years, during which timeI've divorced one guy and slagged around with a bunch of others, so there's always lots of touchstoning action there.)

I'm happy to report that things are tip-top back in Illinois; I'm guessing that by the way I natter on like a schoolgirl about The BF, everyone reading this knows things are hunky-dory here in sunny California. But it was not ever thus. Which got us to talking about two things: whether mileage logged**, solo or in tandem, is responsible for things going more smoothly or whether there really is a more-right-for-you type than those hilariously inappropriate jackasses you couldn't get enough of as a girl of 30 winters.

Here we sharply diverged, with Mary Ellen taking the highly uncharacteristic "life is short, life is shit/soon it will be over" viewpoint (i.e., there is no one type of person more right for us and relationships are, at their best, "a crucible, or cauldron, depending on the day" for personal development) and me staking out the cute boy – debilitating mental illness = reasonable shot at happiness position.

However, we both agreed on one thing: time do make the difference, both in knowing what is and is not tenable and speeding up the loosening of one's monkey-like grip on the latter. This is why I'm happy to be a craggy old crone of 44 rather than the juicy scoop of 20-something I once was. Also, I have excellent genes.

Mary Ellen even supplied the poem of the day: a lovely offering by one Portia Nelson, whom you may know better as Sister Berthe in the film version of The Sound of Music (or, for you 70's hipsters, the Law Office Receptionist in the only version Can't Stop the Music). I'm being glib, but I'm actually rather moved by Portia's story, having read up on her via her lovingly crafted website and read her poem, "Autobiography in Five (Short) Chapters" on the INS (yes, the INS) website. I guess self-actualization is a hot topic of discussion among potential immigrants to the U.S.

The poem is contained in There's A Hole In My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery, and is, apparently, quite as famous as any Von Trapp in its own right. The book (and contents) are copyrighted, so I can't but excerpt a bit here, but it resonated deeply with me, and I must needs share a stanza here, the one I got stuck in for a good 15 years:

2. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place.

But it isn't my fault.

Yeah, right.

On the one hand, where else could you be from ages 18 - 40?

On the other hand, let's hear it for 44.

xxx c

*Mary Ellen says it's actually closer to 11, but my position is if you make it past 10 years together in this farkakte world, you might as well call it 20.

**Intelligent, aware and awake mileage, that is. Just making it to age 170 is no guarantee that you will be any smarter than the average 12-year-old, and probably less smart if that 12-year-old has learned things like "don't stick your hand in there unless you're sure that thing is unplugged".

Photo by novon, used under a Creative Commons License