Breaking the Silence

My sweet Chester's son and his wife are up visiting from Florida, so they asked if I would come by this evening at 5 to sit with Chester while they went to dinner. I was rather pleased to see him sitting up, his blue eyes brighter than days past.

I turned on the Tigers game and got him a bowl of his beloved M & M's...

"Are you warm enough Chet?"

"Yes."

What?! Chester hasn't uttered a word in over two months, despite my continued efforts. We watched a terrible first inning as I tossed M & M's into Chester's mouth. One thing Chester hasn't lost is his love of candy!

"How many M & M's can you eat, Chester?"

"How many do you have?" He asked.

This guy is not only talking... he's cracking jokes!!

Yes!

Another One Bites The Dust!

What an interesting weekend!

Thursday night I found myself juggling phone calls; an odd experience for my "boring" soul. I was catching up with friends when I received a call on the other line from an old co-worker and friend I hadn't seen in four years or more. I wasn't able to answer right away, and at first I thought she was calling to tell me someone died! I had to call back!

"Did you know Kristin is getting married this weekend?" she asked.

"WHAT?! No I didn't. I had heard she was engaged."

Kristin is almost 40, but lives the life of a wild, irresponsible 21 year-old. She has an incredibly entertaining personality, however, because she spends the majority of her spare time in local watering holes, we haven't been in touch for four years. Of all the people I know, she would be near the bottom of my "Will Get Married" list. And now... well now she's married!

I had no idea what to expect at the reception. I was pleasantly surprised to see many people life had led me to forget. Even though as we get older, our priorities and choices of social activities may change... I don't think our fondness of others truly does. In the end, I was glad to have gone and reconnect with people if only for the afternoon.

But, I was left wondering, "If SHE is willing to "tie the knot," how can I expect to escape it?!"

Egads!

Creative. Thinking. Problem. Solving.

Ah-ha!

I don't have this maniacal brain for nothin'!!!

Compelled by a tortuous, continued state of pondering... I had to find a solution to making the best of my circumstances. A solution to my creative woes.

The window to my soul.

A window!

A simple opening to the magical world outside.

That's all I need!

I have this 1,300+ square feet of house all to myself, and in two years, have yet to find my ideal studio space. A space dedicated solely to appeasing the beast inside. The beast that writes. Draws. Paints. Sculpts. Dreams.

I was on the right track when I had it upstairs; away from the hub-bub of life that lie below... but something was amiss. So almost a year ago, I moved everything downstairs. In the middle of the night, of course. I had a better chance at seeing nature; finding inspiration; or so I thought. But the window of the door was behind me, and the windows in front of me bore a view to the side of the house next door. Needless to say, all my work space does there is collect laundry and mail.

Frustrated and philosophically driven.... I went upstairs and finally acknowledged the literal barrier to my creative freedom. A wall. The room is perfect. The light is perfect. But... I need a larger window so I may enjoy a view of the sky full of stars and snow; the flight of a bird; an angry cloud full of raging lightning.

A window. So simple! I'm going to place a semi-educated guess that my so-desired studio space project will cost at most $500. I need to cut a hole in the house, buy and install a window; build an L-shaped work surface, organize my art supplies, and find a cheery paint color.

Done. At least in my mind it is. And that might mean I can finally go to sleep now...

Do You Know Where You're Going To?

"And do you like the things that life's been showing you... where are you going to? Do you know?"

My little "hiatus" is winding down, and as usual, I'm feeling like I didn't spend my time as wisely as I should have. I needed rest; and I rested. I needed to work on painting the house; and paint I did, albeit just a little in two days. Is my constant need to do-do-do some neurotic, haunting, psychological glitch, or simply a voice of reason I should be paying more attention to?

And so I wonder: do I know where I'm going to? Does anyone truly know where they are going to?

Many people that I know, especially C.F., seem to be hyper-focused, cool-cucumber types, that never appear to ponder the direction in which their lives are going. This year (and a lot of hard work) has taken me to new heights... destinations that weren't necessarily on my itinerary. I'm finally achieving many life goals, although maybe a little too many at a time to truly appreciate my personal success. And yet... I'm still feeling that there is more; so much more I need to do.

Last night, I chose to retire to my bedroom early, and searched for something intellectually stimulating to watch on the T.V. As you all know, this isn't an easy task. Reluctantly, I chose to watch a movie about Georgia O'Keeffe on Lifetime. I try to avoid making a habit of watching Lifetime for fear that I'll wake up to a house full of cats and a closet stocked with elastic waistband pants. But, Ms. Georgia O'Keeffe was an artist, and more importantly, a rather spirited woman who seemingly remained respectfully committed to her need to create. And so I watched...

As usual, the storyline and acting left a little to be desired; however, I found myself enthralled with Georgia's life. At one point in the film, she had written to her lover/husband something similar to "although I will miss you terribly, I have come to realize that to do what I need to do, I must be alone." I found myself pondering her thoughts and finding them to be oddly the same as my own. She also said that she had all of these visions and thoughts in her head and she just had to get them out. Ah. I can completely relate to that!

I'm not claiming to be as amazing, nor as monumental in the world of art as Ms. Georgia; but I will confidently say that I am blessed/cursed with the same brain function. As a young girl, I was immersed in my creative kingdom; drawing, painting, writing, dancing, acting, and "singing."And I was happy.

Along the way, without familial support, and throughout school systems obsessed with academics; I became lost. After following the advice of a counselor, some dear friends, and the driving force of my being... I slowly reconnected with that creature inside me and began creating again. Wouldn't you know it, I'm happy again.

I have now achieved official "author" status via published articles and a 100% success rate with grant writing. I've ticked another item off my "bucket list" and have a couple pieces in an art show currently. But there has to be more! However, where I live... where I am bound to the financial ties of my home, is not truly conducive to any true success as an artist. A writer? Yes. Thanks to technology, one can write anywhere. I'm taking a sculpting class to enhance my skills in ceramics and I'm writing fairly regularly... but is that enough? Is it too much? Is accepting full time hours at my job to find my financial freedom in order to pursue these things more seriously in the future... cheating me of the present? Where do you draw the proverbial line? Am I supposed to have some sort of plan? Is that what "successful" people do?

Do you know?

Mandatory Hiatus

I've gone and done it now! I worked so many long hours pulling together our team for the community-wide competition (part of my work project), that I was "forced" to take three days off. "If I see you before Monday, you are going to be in big trouble," my boss said with a smile.

A normal response would be one of excitement... mine... mine was one of resistance. I really wanted to get the event photographs together and send them off to all of our team mates; which would have led to more emails, press releases, post-event planning... and alas, more long days. Had I not been extremely exhausted from our two-day conference out of town, I might have fought harder, but in hindsight, I'm glad to have my mandatory hiatus.

I earned it!

On the way back from our conference, we got a call from one of the girls that had somehow beat us back to the office. It seems the highly competitive grant I conceptualized in the first few weeks I worked there, was awarded to our organization! Not only is it super cool that we got such a prestigious grant, it's super cool that I now get to keep my job! What a ride this year has been!

Tuesday night was the first night of my "Sculpting the Human Form" class. I was so frickin' exhausted from the weekend of competitions, the art show, and the conference, that I strongly considered "skipping." Not only was I tired, I knew there would be a nude model! Could I behave myself? Would I behave myself? Is it a woman? A man?

As it turns out, our model is a man wearing nothing but flesh-colored high cut briefs. Surprisingly, I kept my giggles to myself, even when I was forced to sculpt his buttocks! Ha! And let me just tell you, that if you ever want a flattering sculpture of your ass... I'm your girl. I can make a mighty fine ass out of wheatstone clay! I'll be taking my camera to the next class just to prove it!

Wednesday... Wednesday was a napping marathon; one my body needed desperately. I had finally come down from the stress and anxiety of months of solitary planning for work, combined with the uncertainty of funding for my future employment and a back full of torn muscles from a tug-of-war tournament. I was giving Rumpelstiltskin a run for his money!

Today... I slept in until 9:30 and made myself blueberry pancakes that I ate in bed. After becoming fed up with my state of sloth... I went outside and primed part of the last side of my house to be painted. I'm so very close to finishing this mammoth project, but so very very over it! Can't I just be done already!?

When I came in for a break, I was mindlessly searching the Internet. One of my exes came up in conversation a few weeks ago, so I Googled his name... only to find out he may have fled the country in lieu of litigation against himself and his company for "ponzi-like" schemes!! I always knew that guy was a schmuck! I had met him several years ago during a bout of weight-gain induced self-esteem loss from a back injury that forced me to drop out of college temporarily. At first, I thought he walked on water... and then I found out he just simply walked on people. He was obsessed with money and constantly trying to convince me that my way of life was for fools; that working for him was the only path to my financial salvation. I was drowning in tuition debt at the time, and gave some consideration to joining his company... but when I wasn't satisfied with his weak explanation of what exactly it was that they did, I thought better of it. And boy am I glad I did!! I stuck around for a few years trying to make him a better person (I'm so glad I broke myself of that idiotic habit) and stayed in touch with him sporadically until just a few years ago. Oddly enough, I remembered his birthday this year, and almost called him. Now, after reading posts that he may have fled the country, I'm curious as to whether or not he still has the same phone number, but I'm not going to risk being investigated by the feds just to appease this curiosity. This comes as no surprise, considering he wouldn't even donate a mere $5 to my fundraising efforts years ago. He was a shitty tipper too! Tricking people out of millions seems right up his alley.

I suppose I'll have to spend tomorrow working on my house. Either that, or I'll have to go shopping for new knee length boots. I might even have to meet a good friend for lunch too. Saturday, I'll be reunited with Chester, whom I've been on a mandatory hiatus from due to the holiday weekend, and then our big three-day competitions. Sunday? Who knows.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

As I grow older (and hopefully wiser), I can't help finding cliches a little funny. What a timeless testament of the stubborn state of mind we have in our younger days. Cliches used to annoy me! I found them to be a thoughtless, cheesy way to trick people into thinking things weren't as bad as they seemed.

And now? Now I realize why these statements have withstood the test of time... they're true! I also realize that my acceptance of their validity, combined with my need to profess such validity, makes me a genuine "old person!" For years I have made the following declaration: "You know you're 'old' when you find yourself giving someone else the very same advice you didn't listen to when you were young."

What provoked this blog is that I stumbled across "evidence" that my ex is indeed seeing the woman that his friend's girlfriend felt compelled to tell me about. (It's also raining, which means I can't paint my house and have nothing better to do at the moment.) Not lacking in intelligence, it was obvious to me that I had been traded in; just as the girl he had dated before me, and the girl before her. He was a serial dater. An eager to commit, yet afraid of commitment guy. A mess, you could say, and none of that bothered me a bit. What I found irritating, and, quite frankly, sad, is that at 41 years old, this guy just couldn't admit it.

Far from perfect, I'm a very understanding person. Things change. People change. People want different things. People don't know what they want... and on and on it goes. But why do people confine themselves to tangled webs of untruth? Did he really believe I didn't know? Did he actually believe that the little stories he concocted would somehow transform reality and change the facts? He could have saved himself two weeks of excuses and months of awkward hellos in the hallways if he had just simply told the truth. But considering he did the same exact thing to the two women he dated before me, I suspect he finds some type of unhealthy reward in the drama that results from his overlapping of women. In fact, his "m.o." with me v.s. the girl before me, was almost exactly replicated in the me v.s. the girl after. His wooing is practically scripted, and creepily repetitive.

Regardless of my discovery of who he (un) truly was, our life goals were so very different that a long-term relationship had little chance to be successful. It was fun when it was what he told me it was, what I thought it was. And if he had had the courage to tell me the truth when he should have, I may have still had fond, untainted, memories of him.

I won't say that I have never bended, twisted, manipulated, or recreated the truth in my own life. My confused late teens and early twenties seemed to demand that you do so. I'm not really sure when this revelation occurred; when I discovered that the truth was the quickest end to most any situation. But since that discovery, it is a very rare occurrence for me to deviate from the instant escape that honesty provides.

The truth. It really does set you free. It sets you free of those internal expectations to be super-human... perfect. Speaking the truth means you have peace of mind, courage, and respect; that you may have even... made a mistake. (GASP!) Truth is the one-stop, direct way to resolution, a kind of conversation convenience store; whereas lies require a never-ending creation of cover-ups and fear of exposure. Not only is telling the truth the "right" thing to do, the reward is instantaneous... which means our American instant-gratification-seeking nature should embrace truth. Masses of people should be crowding the city streets shouting:

"I cheated on my SATs!"

"I only married my husband because I was afraid of being alone!"

"Homeless people mean nothing to me, I just like the attention I get when it looks like I care about them!"

"My socks haven't been washed in three days!"

"This isn't really my hair, it's a toupe!"

Okay, maybe mass public confessionals would be a little disturbing. However, I think a little more truth in everyone's lives would truly be...

liberating.

Laws of Physics

Who knew that complicated physics class I took several years ago would haunt me, perhaps as long as my student loan balance!?!?

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Remember that one?

As I've worked tirelessly beautifying the exterior of my home, it appears the interior has gone to hell! There is a step-ladder with a small chunk of earth stuck to one leg leaned up against my dining room table, a fistful of hot mustard and soy packets strewn about my coffee table, my laundry room has laundry in it all right... in baskets, in piles, and probably the dryer; and I think there may be a blue bra on my bathroom vanity.

Remedying this situation won't be as exhausting as it seems and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to get to it right now. My sun-kissed-and-mildly-burned skin is dotted with paint and primer and my back is killing me but I only have one day left! I hate starting the work week with a messy house! But, if I use up what little energy I have left... will I have any hope of surviving another Labor Day Weekend labor-a-thon outside? Ah the conundrum.

My fabulous brother finished scraping and wire-brushing the side of the house, and I got 3/4 of the back scraped and primed. By the end of the day tomorrow, I may very well have all of the major painting done! All that will remain will be the tedious detail work of window trim, shutters, doors and stairs.

I missed the sales on my door and shutters! Days of paint-fume inhalation led me to mistakenly believe today was Saturday. Instead of hitting Lowe's and Menard's, I had to settle for a brief trip to ACO simply for more painter's tape. There are more doors on sale now, and surely there will be more sales on shutters. I think I'm gonna be okay. (I'll go shopping tomorrow.)

That's it for boring babble tonight...

Labor Day (Night and) Weekend!

Ah another "holiday" weekend. Labor Day weekend is when people pack up and go camping, boating and sailing for the last time... the grand finale of a fun-filled summer. At least that's what I hear!

I've spent mine priming siding, painting siding, painting trim, painting spiders, scraping paint off of windows... and my new talent: patching concrete. One of the three different guys that said they would cut my old iron railings off of my front steps finally showed up around noon today. I seriously would have baked a cake and bought party hats to celebrate their removal if I knew he was actually going to show up to do it today! Even though my front steps are white with primer and dotted with concrete patch... not having those tired, older-than-me black iron railings attached to my newly spruced up house makes an amazing difference.

The sun against the white primer and paint was blinding, and the heat combined with the inability to remain hydrated led to my falling off the ladder twice. Deciding it was time for a break, before I had a bone break... I stopped at the garage sale my neighbor was having. They had two great Adirondack style lawn chairs for $4 a piece! And... they match my trim color almost exactly!!! Yessssssss! Score! The guy manning the cash box said, "Oh you're that girl that has been doing all of that work to your house all by yourself with no man around." "Yeah. In hindsight, I should have gotten married for the summer." I replied in jest.


Not afraid of hard work, I'm actually rather proud that I have done 95% of it completely on my own. This is my first time doing exterior painting, and aside from trying to gently coax a bazillion spiders out of my eaves, I have enjoyed it. Doing it yourself, especially as a female, lends a sense of incredible pride. My goal is to finish by the end of the holiday weekend... if I don't fall off the ladder again, that is.

Tomorrow, I'll be off to the hardware stores. My shopping list includes a 32 inch door to replace the one on the back of my garage. The existing one is beyond salvation, and after painting all that surrounds it, it has become, perhaps, the ugliest door I have ever seen! I'll also be picking up three pairs of shutters for the upper level windows; although I have no clue how the hell I'll get up there to hang them. Then I'll be picking up two little necessities: a mat for the garage right outside the door, so I can quit tracking in dirt and debris, and a new thistle feeder to replace the one that was broken when the feeder hook tipped over this morning.

Up until a second ago, I was being tormented by a very loud cricket chirping in the kitchen. It seemed that this noisy bugger was behind my stove, but he hopped out into my vision and I have since scooped him into a cup and escorted him outside. My hope for a good night's sleep has been restored.

Shamefully, I can't recall a single Labor Day Weekend since turning 15, that I haven't worked. I made a very poor attempt at scheduling one day at the beach to break up my remodelling marathon... but considering the nearing change of weather, and my mildly obsessive need to "finish what you start," completing as much as I can around my house has to be the right thing to do. Right?