Cocooning

It's coming, I can feel it - change is in the air.

With the ACT last weekend, my schedule is opening up. I have enough business (and savings, if necessary) to pay the bills, especially since there's not as much bespoken each month as there used to be. I am meeting my own personal deadlines here on this page, as well as hitting other benchmarks - I reached my weight goal on Tuesday after eighteen months of work, and I'm well into the yard sale/thrift shop weekly groove. I've even (finally) attended my first mineral club meeting (fluorescent minerals, very cool!), tried my first belly dancing DVD (muscles I didn't even know I still hurt), and am nearly finished clearing our finances up.

It's time to add something new to the mix. But what?

My strongest option is to put a book proposal together. I've been kicking a fantasy series around for nearly twenty-five years. Whether I choose the longer, edgier, adult version or the more streamlined, cleaner, young adult version, I could write three chapters of the first book and the "bible" for the series. It would mean spending a few months shopping it around while I finish the novel, and - possibly - failing to sell it or even to get a nibble. That kind of "wasted" effort strangled my enthusiasm for writing before - I'm a double-duty, impatient Bunny - but maybe I'm ready to give it another shot (just not in the foot).

My second strongest is to go after a "regular" job. This economic climate, combined with my quest, has made me yearn for a source of benefits for myself. An employer-matched 401K would be nice, as would subsidized life insurance. Sick leave. Vacation pay. Even medical insurance at some point. Like many people, I have none of these in my job, but the Big Lug has always made sure we had them so I've never really felt the pinch. If he retires earlier than scheduled, however, we will either lose or pay more for most of that which I take for granted ... unless I bring them home. A quick survey of solid jobs tells me that I have options. Not high-paying (at first) options, but things that will quickly pan out to a more acceptable level.

Whatever I decide, nothing major will shift until after the first of the year, maybe as late as Spring - proposal-and-or-resume writing takes time. With the holidays just around the corner (and Left Field coming in with his partner) I can only do the best I can do, which probably means to take a single step somewhere, see what feels like True North and what is just a Deep Ditch, then go on from there. So far, I've been pulling myself together - streamlining life and money, dabbling at various fantasy jobs to get out of the box a little - but this is putting myself out there for real. It's a much scarier proposition, but it's one that's been coming on for years - a wildly colorful, Bunny-tatooed butterfly waiting to break out.

Let's see how she does this winter.

A Halloween Tale

Saturday was a strange day, a dark and rainy day. My first tutorial wasn't until 9:30 am, and there was this rummage sale ...

I saw the ad the night before, and though it started at 9:00 am I figured I could spend 15 minutes inside and take 15 minutes to get to that first student, no problem. The lure of the hunt throbbed in the air - especially since this one was actually billed as a "Treasure Sale." When I entered the church that fateful morning, a quick glance at the tables told me the label wasn't vanity or exaggeration - porcelain vases and dishes, silver and silver plate, crystal and craquelure, and lots of art met my hungry gaze. I snagged an elaborate Victorian brass desktop set with double inkwell (beautifully done, though no liners) for $10, and a couple of pretty but practical household things before I spotted the jewelry. Well, actually, I spotted a ring of women, leaning like willows in the wind, and assumed there was a table full of either shoes or sparkly things. Since I could plainly see the footwear in the opposite direction, I headed to the crowd.

I towered over the circle of heads and shoulders. Oddly, the display seemed pretty sparse for that dense a cluster of hunters, but I thought that perhaps donations were down - the usual grab-fest was more shuffle than snag, as if they were ... waiting. Strange, yes, but who questions luck? I shrugged and began to reach gently in and over, toward whatever caught my eye. A pair of silver dolphin earrings (tarnished so cheap and unclaimed) went into my hand, then a ring, both of which I would look at in a moment as soon as I'd picked up anything else of interest. A shoebox lid across the table held a pair of CZ earrings, so I leaned in, twigged it with two fingers - and gasped as a woman snatched it back and took a swipe at my fingers, as if to slap them, then went back to work all without a word or even a glance in my direction. My astonishment (and fury) deepend as I realized that the container was not part of the display at all but had been and was being methodically filled to overflowing by that ... that harpy.

She was about 5-foot-nothing, twenty-ish, with long, black hair and brown eyes, my exact opposite in every way, the opposite of all of my friends. Yet something about her was ... familiar. It wasn't the build or the clothes or the moves that caught my eye, but ... what? Yes, the expression! The hawklike intensity and rapaciousness! I knew it from somewhere!

No, it couldn't be ... not that, anything but that!

The impulse to yank the earrings from her grasping claw drained out so fast it left a dizzying vacuum. I couldn't think, couldn't see, couldn't do more than blindly snag that pair of earrings when she - after a contemptuous glance - tossed them back into the center of the table. Surely it was a trick of light! For a moment it was ... me!

I clutched my finds and backed away in horror, mouth at half-mast, unable to shift my gaze as this blood-chilling Mini-Me finished her gluttonous raid, tossed a few pitiful crumbs to the hovering ladies, and paid the attendant. So transfixed was I by the train wreck of my imagination that I couldn't even overhear her total or get a glimpse of what I'd missed out on by not getting there early.

That's not me, I told myself as I pumped the cash lady for information. Never in a million years would I be that ruthless for something as silly as a pile of whatever it was (no one could tell me for sure, the witch was too fast). And I'm not that obsessed, not any more. I even walked away with just the three jewelry items before going to pick out a print for the Big Lug - one I did not pluck from beneath the hand of another woman who, though she was hardly there before me, hurried past my reaching arm to get there first. And, yes, I thought good "put it down" thoughts right at her, but I stood patiently the entire ten seconds before she set it back on the chair. Okay, so I had it before it touched wood, but I wasn't rude - I smiled and even said "not at all" when she apologized for her obviously abrupt behavior.

I released the fear that had frozen my veins. Not me. Not me. We're all kind of crazy this time of year, and with the economy the way it was now ... yes, she probably wasn't a harpy at all - she's just as strapped as the rest of us, and trying to find gifts for her friends and family for the holidays. Or maybe she's just another hunter, one without my scruples or my restraint - I'd run into dealers before, even ruder than she was. And two of the three pieces I'd bought were fine sterling items - the ring turned out to be a Mary Engelbreit original, which I'm wearing even now. I know that if I were meant to have the other jewelry, I'd have gotten to them in time.

But it was weird, that instant of recognition, wasn't it? In another universe it would be one of those moments that parents warned about, the Twilight-Zone cautionary kind meant to scare little kiddies into eating their oatmeal and keeping to the narrow path. I have nothing to worry about. It wasn't real; it was simply an illusion, the Halloween spirits at play.

What else could it be?

Making It Look Easy

One of the things I hear a lot in my classes is "you make it look so easy!" Well, duh - test-taking is not just something I've researched and practiced for well over a decade, it's something I was good at to begin with, something I love to do, even for fun (twisted but true).

Oddly, I hear the same comments about my cooking, my weight loss, and even my marriage, too. That's weird to me, because not only did it take a lot of struggles and failures along the way, it takes the strength of Hercules - on a moment-by-moment basis - to make it run at all, much less smoothly. Easy? Not in a million years. But looking easy? That's a different story.

Every time I open a magazine or turn on the TV, I am bombarded with images of perfect bodies, perfect homes, perfect dishes, and perfect lives. Always have been. From Leave It to Beaver to Cosmo, there's nothing but happy, delicious, satiated, and wise people - easy. The stupid thing is, even though my father has been in politics and advertising my entire life, I believed everything I heard and saw. Rock-hard abs and buns, filet mignon in cracked pepper sauce on a bed of new potatoes, vacations in Madeira and the Riveria, husbands who worshipped me and (better) cleaned the house and were wizards with repairs (and other things): all these (and more) could be mine in only 5 minutes a day. I believed it. Until I tried it. And when couldn't make it happen that way, when it turned out to be illusion, I was furious - at myself for falling for that line of crap, at "them" for feeding me that line of crap, and at everyone else for failing to live up to that line of crap.

Wow, was I an idiot, or what? And yet this happens more often that any of us wish to admit. We expect our finances to magically grant us the life we deserve (and they do - just not the life we think we deserve). We assume that just because we could eat doughnuts and ice cream every day of our lives that we will always be able to eat doughnuts and ice cream every day of our lives (until we bark at the cleaners for "shrinking our clothes"). And we know our spouses can't possibly be that sloppy or selfish or careless or clueless, but when they are we use them for target practice - mostly for being themselves (and not psychic). We don't even try to see the airbrushed photography or the heart of the person or the behind-the-scenes tricks at work, we just go for the jugular or we cut them off at the knees or we walk away from whatever has disappointed us (which alleviates the frustration but solves nothing). It's as if we're all living in Never Never Land, where anything we can see - the easier and more self-indulgent, the better - becomes real.

I don't know when, exactly, I stopped clapping for Tinkerbell, but I know it was the day I became an idealist.

You heard me - an idealist. You'd think that's what I was in those bad old days, right? Nope. I was what happens to people who buy into the hype, who believe in fantasy not potential, and then try to force everything around them inside the lines of their desires. Idealists are not by definition "realists," but we don't usually have unrealistic expectations. We tend to be firmly grounded in what is possible - we dream of the flawless but we don't count on it, especially in the early days. And we don't throw tantrums (often) when our vision doesn't match the fact (this time); we forgive, we refocus, we do our best to see what could be in what is, and we move forward again. The silly thing is, though we might take only baby steps for years, we usually get much closer to our bliss than most people, because we take as much pleasure from the journey as we will from the outcome.

Someone once told me a cynic is a disenchanted idealist. Bull. Been there, done that, got the aneurysm. Trust me, a cynic is a thwarted control freak, someone who wants the world to bend over, grab itself, and form-fit to her image of what it should be - in other words, someone who's too lazy to work on something that doesn't dance to her tune.

I was all that once upon a time, and both my marriage and my life sucked - I believed it was going to be so, and so it was. When I started believing that anything is possible, the world became my oyster. My husband was suddenly more loving, more attentive, more helpful. My body became a trusted friend instead of an antagonist. My home was more comfortable and warm, my bank account fatter and slower to deplete - heck, even my cooking improved.

"Right," you say, "all that really happened." Yep, it did - over a period of time, with many tiny steps and a few startling leaps, it really did happen.

So how did I do it? Well, first, I stopped reading so many magazines, watching so many TV shows, and listening to the multitude out to sell me their own personal perfect. Then I stopped trying to reshape everyone and everything like some mad potter throwing clay into my own image of it. And then I changed just one thing, the only thing I really ever could change. Me.

Some day I hope that someone, somewhere will tell me, "retirement, huh? You make it look so easy." Because now I have proof, here, that it's not.

But the dreaming - the ideal - is. And it's infinitely possible.

Surrender the Green

Chili is simmering on the stove. The makings for a meat loaf are out and ready to be assembled and put in the oven on "delay bake." And a small pan of ham-and-bean soup is just finishing up for my lunch. I'm all domestic all the time today. I have to be. I've been a little ... difficult to live with recently.

Focus can be a dangerous thing. Hyperfocus, my laser-intensity, take-no-prisoners talent, can be deadly to relationships. I know. I've always been able to concentrate on a single task to the exclusion of all else. When the kids lived here, when they were my responsibility 24-7, I had to be aware of a hundred tiny things all at once so I used my superpower only during times of great stress, or great selfishness. But my flair for targeting the singular, my inability to multitask easily, is proving to be a bigger liability than a strength lately. I'm so intent on my mission that I can't seem to make room for anything - or anyone - else.

And I can't tell him why.

That's the part that kills me. If I could talk to the Big Lug, explain everything, it would make him stop looking at me as if I were a stranger, or worse, as an opponent. My oversimplified version - that I have projected our finances into the future and found our retirement plans inadequate - just isn't cutting it. I've invested and allocated our paychecks down to almost nothing twice this month, and I become positively maniacal if he colors outside the lines I've drawn. And since my bookings are way down for the this time of the year - tutoring and extra classes aren't usually weighed above food and shelter - I'm more than a little concerned for the short-term outcome of this quest.

So, in a perfectly logical turn of events, I'm walking away from all things money. I am not a Master of the Universe investment guru. I'm barely a stay-in-the-budget, don't-fall-deeper-into-the-red novice. I need to admit defeat, or at least a yield.

It's time to spotlight the Big Lug, to fix on things closer to home; time to quit the Dorothy routine, staring at the far horizon so much that I can't see what's in front of me. I want to shift focus, to explore what I have again, on what I can fix up, on what I can give away, on what I can sell. Not treasure hunting, but treasure salvaging. No more CNBC at 6am. No more fretting over bailouts and stimulus packages. No more ... well, okay, the jewelry is for me as much as anything, but no more schedules and quotas and straining to make everything fit my narrow plan. I have about as good a start as I'm going to get. I think I'll let it ride for awhile and have some real fun.

Because contrary to all appearances, I do remember what - and who - my real treasure is.

Growing Pains

Well, I did it - I changed the account through which all of our day-to-day money will funnel, leaving my paycheck for savings, investments, and outstanding loans. I knew it would be a big step for me. I didn't know I would hyperventilate when I took it.

Fear or not, the shift is necessary. I want the elves around here to be working for me, not the bad guys. I want any found treasure to help the Big Lug, not the corporate bottom line. I want - I need! - to give this gift without any strings, any catches, any quicksand already in place. That's going to hurt a little. Maybe a lot.

Which isn't a bad thing. I don't learn lessons with kindness, only with road rash and sweat and pain. "Bull-headed" is just one of the words used to describe me by anyone who's around for more than five minutes. "Stubborn" doesn't play well with "easy lesson." Hit me upside the head with a 2-by-4 and I just might listen, or give me a task with a tag line of "you can't do it" and I'll do my darndest to prove you wrong (no matter how hard I have to slam into that wall). But give me a gentle reminder - or, God forbid, a reward - and I look around for the hidden knife or the falling sky.

I know, it's stupid. What's worse is that I gave myself this crazy mission - I called the lightning from the sky and dared it to strike me - so I shouldn't snivel or quake because it's working, should I? Because it is. Despite the downturn, I've paid off four accounts and put several thousand dollars into an IRA I didn't even have before April. I've restructured what's left so that I could work part time at retail (if I have to) and still pay the minimums. I've found hundreds of dollars in gold and silver and stones for a fraction of their value. I've even taken a real vacation, and paid for it in cash! And I'm getting a panic attack? How nuts is that?

So, maybe this isn't anxiety after all, at least not the kind I'm used to. It's been awhile since I've stepped out of my comfortable box, and I've spent the past eight months discovering I don't have one but many boxes - nested like those Ukranian dolls - and I've spent most of that time leaping like a salmon up and out of those fragile and foolish boundaries. My weight dropping to within four pounds of that on my wedding day... setting and keeping my deadlines ... our cash flow redirected and moving without obstruction for the first time in our marriage ... travelling and fasting and reinventing and sampling and wanting and getting ...

Dang, I didn't call down the lightning, I reached for the moon. I really can't crab because the stardust is barbed (can I?) because (to me) sharp means learning - growing pains this time not road rash - and upward and outward means hurdle and pitch, charge and attack. I can do that. This Bunny has claws.

Bring it on.