I don’t have a long post to share, not much has happened between being snowed in for five days and attempting to make peanut brittle. I just wanted to share the two most positive things in my life right now that prove the coming year is my year.
Both show no signs of stopping yet. I’m feeling good.
Last time I posted about the things I’ve done to be more eco-friendly and sustainable, I pointed out my new Sustainable Successes page and said I’d post with updates as I accumulated more. So here are the latest:
’Spontaneous Happiness’ by Andrew Weil, MD was a book I had high hopes for. Prefaced with that sentence, you can imagine there’s a ‘but’ in there and there is. However, while much of the book was an enormous bore, there are several things that made me feel like I’d had a concept put to me in a new way that helped it click a little better than before.
Filled with information I either already knew or didn’t care much about (by being overly technical and therefore lost my interest), the elements that I appreciated are the following concepts:
Not the flu bug (though I have had that this year). No, I have been bitten really damn hard by the ‘organizing and need to purge’ bug. I’ve been reading and sorting like a madwoman. I’m exhausted and yet I’m glad to be doing something about the mess. Though, admittedly, sometimes I feel like I’m just moving stuff around!
It’s not true, though. Yesterday I went through all of my papers. This means I recycled a load of items that didn’t have my personal information on it, and bagged an amazingly enormous pile of paperwork to be burned. I can’t tell you how fabulous and freeing it is to be converting to a digital filing system. It’s soooo easy to sort and there aren’t piles of paper everywhere, because I’m notoriously bad at filing. I love that I can have twenty back ups, if I choose, in the blink of an eye with thumb drives.
Started sorting ornaments and gifting paraphernalia today and also began putting together a binder with information I might need at the drop of a hat (like contact information for bills, medical, auto info, etc.) and checklists.
Hopefully I’ll start making hauls to the thriftstore and dump soon. And, with luck, listings on craigslist to clear out the nicer items.
Clearly I’m feeling the spirit of change and I’m loving it. I’ve done so much in three days that it’s no wonder I’m exhausted! Go motivation go!
Since you’ve been gone, I’ve known myself more deeply and been a better person than I’d ever dreamed. I crawled through the darkness of anxiety and self-loathing and on the other side I am happier, healthier, kinder, wiser, funnier, and more hopeful than I ever was with you.
I didn’t know how toxic you were until I cut the tumor out of me. I didn’t know you were a leash, until you weren’t there to hold me back. I didn’t know I was so terrible, until your hatred made me hold up a mirror and burn out all of the ugly things that I found there.
It took a year or two of tumbling down the confusion of the rabbit hole, trying to find my footing, trying to get a handhold. I didn’t make the best choices, I had the worst timing, and I almost ran away from my own life. I didn’t. I took apart the brick house that made up who I am and I put it back together again with granite, craftsmanship, and better security. I learned who I was with you and then I learned who I was without.
And you know what? I’m amazing. I am strong, wise, and hilarious. I am never satisfied with just being okay, I am always striving to do better the next time. I have learned to take blame and how to apologize. I am learning how to handle myself and I am learning how to patch in to others. I am pushing my previous limitations, I am finding new boundaries, I am building a better me out of stardust and dark matter.
There is still a little black monster that hides in a pocket on my still-large frame. It’s the demon that grins to hear about how little you’ve made out of yourself. It’s the shade that feels vindicated that I am evolving while you spiral downwards. It’s the martyr that wishes you’d learn your lesson, see how badly you’ve treated people—how badly you treated me. It’s the little monster I make smaller every day.
I am thankful you tried to throw me into the bitter dust of lonliness, I was alone and it made me deal with myself. I am thankful you hated me, because it made me look at my flaws and change them. I am thankful that you made it possible for me to break away from you after so much time in a caustic relationship. I am thankful that you are the catalyst to the person I am today, the person I am still becoming, and the truly incredible person I will not stop until I am.
I wish you could do the same.
Hoo-boy, talk about the last few days being packed. For ease, I’m going to try to break this up into sections, a.k.a. days.
Day 1, Birthday: Starting after 10 the night before, I pack up my car to leave my mom’s where I’d been house-sitting for a week and… my car won’t start. It tries, bless it’s little Mazda heart, but it just won’t do it. Because I wanted home and had a full couple days, I kidnapped my mother’s car and went home (don’t think I didn’t do a lot to try and get my car working first, it was a last resort.) After some snafus and brief unpleasantness, I get to Seattle intact, get my ticket for that night’s show, grab Roxy and go have ‘dinner’ at Macaroni Grill. It was 2-ish and it was my first meal of the day (it ended up being the only meal of the day). We didn’t win a trip to Italy or vespas or anything else like that, but we did get 30% off the bill and I got my chocolate cake for dessert free because it was my birthday. BIG score.
Being T-day eve, and pouring buckets, traffic was insane. It took at least an hour to get back to the area where VnV was playing. However, it ended up being perfect timing to snag parking out front, and since it was also when the venue’s lounge opened, we got ‘first in’ passes for when ticket holders begin being admitted.
The show: fucking amazing. I have never been to a concert that affected me as much as this one did. I was so present, so involved, and so connected to the music and the people that I’ve been very emotional in the days following. It was the best night ever. Two encores and lots of love and laughter.
Day 2, T-day: Got out of the concert so late there was no hope of catching a ferry. Crashed at Roxy’s for three hours and woke up insanely early to catch the first ferry. Got home and ended up dozing very briefly on the couch before I got to work making the deviled eggs I’d been assigned.
Glammed myself up and went over to the parents’ house early. Ended up being helpful in the kitchen, got a few birthday cards and an awesome/thoughtful gift from my dad, but otherwise the evening was very normal. Neither amazing or bad, just pleasant and comfortable.
Day 3, today: Something needed to be done about the car situation. Gave my mom a ring, she said she could look at cars with me, I called up a few craigslist ads and arranged a couple visits. Got spoiled with the first pricier one and was disappointed by the cheaper one after. (Though mom insists that not wanting all the defects the car had to offer, including a winshield with a crack running the entire perimeter, was not bing spoiled.) Went back to the first car, a Grand Marquis, and bought it.
I now drive a luxurious land yacht.
Oh, at this point I have run the turkey carcass through one batch of broth-making, landing 7.5 quarts of dark, tasty juice.
Day 4, Tomorrow: Was invited to go to some amazing fish place called Spuds with the fam. Need to catch up on, well, everything. Will need to start the day handling the second run of broth and contemplate a third, though at this point I’m not sure I have the room for a third batch. I’m also hoping to finally go grocery shopping.
I tried to compress all of that as best as I can. I hope I didn’t bore you to tears.
So tomorrow is my birthday and I have quite the day planned. At risk of Lady Luck smacking me upside the head for being hopeful and sharing my plans, I want to gush a little anyway.
Because of a clandestined coincidence, my best friend was walking downtown by Pike Place and noticed that a little venue there is hosting a performance by VnV Nation. I know that most people now in my life wouldn’t understand the excitement caused by this, because it harkens back to the days I went to goth clubs. VnV is one of the bands from those days that I still listen to today and the irony is that I always seem to miss them. Being a German EBM group, they don’t travel around the States as much as one might like and through my years at the goth e-zine, or later on down the road, I have missed them by mere days and been crushed to have done so. It seems I always find out about these things too late or something comes up.
But not this time. This time they’re here and it’s on my birthday. It’s all such a fantastic coincidence: her being there because of visiting family, her being the only person I know anymore who knows them, it being a performance on my birthday, my already spending my birthday with her across the sound. It was meant to be. So I bought my ticket and I eagerly await getting to see ‘old friends’ (they certainly feel like old friends).
VnV isn’t until 8pm, however, so other plans include sleeping in (ahhhh…), getting fancied up, and hopping the ferry over to Seattle to pick up the ticket because they won’t let you pick it up after 4 (what’s that all about?). Then I’ll drive all the way over to Everett to eat salad and hot chocolate cake at Macaroni Grill and use up the two contest playing pieces that could win me a trip to Italy or a Vespa, and so on, but will probably only win me free dinner or dessert. Then a jaunt over to Jared’s for miss Char to check out my grandmother’s emeralds and see what can be done about resurfacing them before, I thought, we’d head back over to Seattle. I’d like to visit Uwajimaya again, maybe Elliot Bay Books, maybe Marcus’ Martini Heaven, and then over to the Showbox to chill in the lounge until VnV begins. I love that you can be there the 2 hours before and do some drinking! The plan is a little liquid, but I think that’s important for a good time. The only hitch in the master plan is the hour detour to take Rox home and get to the ferry, whose traffic will be impossible because it’s the night before Thanksgiving and the last ferry is at 11:45pm.
What I’d really like to do is have an amazing birthday and collapse into my bed at the end of it. That would be perfect. Wish me luck, my lovelies.
Today I thought it would be great to catalogue my progress reducing waste and becoming ecologically friendly the same way that I catalogue the books I’ve read. So if you look at my tabs above and to the side, you will now see one entitle ‘Sustainable Successes’ where those things are being kept track.
For ease of reading, I’m going to occasionally post entries to update what I’ve managed to try out and then make stick, so that you don’t have to go clicking on the tab all of the time to see if I’ve gotten anywhere. It’s just a convenient little click away if you (but mostly I) want to see it all in one place and maybe try some of them out for yourself.
So today’s list (all that I could remember):
There are other things looming, but they are so new that it’s unfair to list them since they are on the cusp of being started and therefore not tried-and-true.
I know everyone has experienced moments like this: You hardly hear of a certain subject, and then all at once it seems to be everywhere. It seems clandestined, kismetic, and other synonyms for ‘meant-to-be’. Lately, in my case, it’s been the Great Depression. However, I think it’s something that’s surfaced quite a lot for everyone these days, as our generation hovers between a recession and depression of our own.
I’m also one of those people who believes in remembering the past and keeping it alive. It’s a tragedy to hear about traditions and memories lost because someone’s grandmother died and no one else bothered to learn from her before she was gone. Recipes, stories, wisdom; vanished because modern human beings usually take time for granted.
Now I’m not going to go into a big lecture on the importance of keeping a record of knowledge and experience—I think most people who would read this entry already understand the concept—but I would like to share some of what I’ve found and what it led me to learn.
My search for frugality and home-made caused a leap frog effect to occur the other day. I read through a blog because I loved the voice of the author who had posted the delicious gnocchi recipe. Through reading her, I discovered another blogger (and book author) who learned to be healthy and frugal because she’s the mother of ten children. And in reading through her blog’s tips about frugality (to tide me over until her book arrives), she linked to a truly beautiful woman named Clara.
Clara is an incredibly sweet ninety-five year old woman who is sharing with the world, through YouTube videos and a published book, her experience of living through the Great Depression. Through stories and recipes, she gets across how rough it was to get through the week sometimes. Yet, her family was also happy, because ‘we didn’t know any better’, she says. They couldn’t afford to despair any more than they could afford school clothes or meat.
With Clara in mind this morning, I watched my grandmother eating the breakfast I had prepared for her, and I asked her what it had been like for her.
I asked her what the best and worst parts of it had been, and whether she had grown tired of the cheap staple foods that repeated themselves ad nauseum. I remembered her saying once that she’d had too much bread when she was young, so that’s why she didn’t like bread. The same went for potatoes and apples. I asked her if that was because of the Depression and she nodded. “Yeah. Daddy wouldn’t let us leave the table unless we’d had our bread.” She said that her family had made a deal with a nearby farmer that, if they labored on his farm, that they could have half of the crops, but that some days they had biscuits and gravy four times a day because they couldn’t afford anything else. She said the hardest part was most especially the last year of the Depression, when she was fourteen, because by then it was only she and her father working the farms. She recalled walking the planter up and down the field planting peanuts, and that when the planter fell over she’d had to pick them all up and start all over again. When I asked her about the good, she said having a boyfriend had meant a lot, although it hadn’t lasted long. She got a far away look in her eye as she said she had really liked him. She also said that last year she had really wanted a dress, but that they couldn’t afford one. And then she said her father bought it for her anyway, because she worked so hard with him that he believed she deserved it. When I first asked about a good memory, she told me that she remembered a really nice party she’d gone to with other kids her age, a peanut boil, where they spent the night shucking and eating the peanuts, just having a good time together.
I loved the last story, because all I could think was that it was the definition of irony: her best memory and worst memory both involved peanuts. When I pointed it out she just laughed and laughed.
I felt really proud to have the opportunity to learn a little about what that had been like from someone who’d been there and to learn a little more about her.
