Thankful 2011

I am thankful for...

1. My amazing family. These four people brought five other amazing people into my life and I love every minute I get to spend with them. We are extraordinarily ordinary.

2. My health-though I don't always take as good care of it as I should.

3. A job I love doing and people I like and respect to do it with.

4. A beautiful and peaceful old farmhouse to call home...for now.

5. The guts it took to finish my MPA.

6. My mother's stuffing-there is nothing like it in the world.

7. Skydiving.

8. Living in a place with four seasons, and enough clear nights to see the stars.

9. My friend Elizabeth who gave me Nantucket, chocolate boxes, the Nike Women's Marathon and so much more.

10. Having loved and lost.

11. My passport, my backpack and all of the adventures those two things provide.

12. My Mac and my iPhone. I love Apple.

13. Self reliance and independence.

14. Running, yoga, hiking, zumba and anything else that keeps me moving.

15. NPR.

16. Josh Groban. (That's not true, I just wrote that to make Libby laugh.)

17. Guinness (a pint, stew, gingerbread, floats...)

18. Monty Python-for never failing to made me giggle.

19. Skype-I get to hear Evan say "Ove you Auntie"- he's working on his L's.

20. George and Saoirse-they don't ask for much but they're good friends.

21. Mostly I am thankful for being raised with a great capacity for love and hope, for always having enough, and for the incredible amount of laughter and courage from my friends and family.

Wishing you and your family peace and joy and a delicious dinner!

Restless

I am battling my nomadic nature.

Now that my Master's degree is done I am feeling the restless pull for change. And yet I am not in any position to make many changes, at least not the kind I am used to. For example, I have moved roughly 20 times since I graduated high school. That encompasses 6 states and 3 colleges and 9 jobs. The desire for change is now manifesting itself in other ways. I briefly contemplated getting another cat. You know, shake things up a bit in my little household. I had already squashed that idea when my younger sister gently informed me that another cat would qualify me for "crazy cat lady" status. (She herself has 4 cats, but she's married with two kids so I think they cancel each other out in the crazy cat lady equation.)

I love my job, so I don't really want to leave. It's not where I want to spend the rest of my career so that door always remains unlocked, but I don't think I am ready to walk through it just yet.

This past weekend, Jessica showed me the most incredible property for sale in Middlebury. It's a beautiful old farm house from the 1800's. It has these magnificent (original?) pine board floors, funky pocket doors, and a charming little reading nook. It sits on 7+ acres with a pond, and beautiful woods. But the best part about it is the smaller farmhouse for sale right. next. door. In my dreams, I win the lottery and buy both houses so that I can live in this idyllic setting next to my sister. I could garden, adopt a dog, teach my nieces and nephew how to skate and swim...but I know even in that scenario I would get wanderlust.

So what's next?

I think I need a mini top ten list for the next year...to keep me focused.

UPDATE:Here's the mini top ten...

10. Take a sign language class.

9. Learn how to make crepes.

8. Visit Mary and Cagle in MD.

7. Outline the book Jess and I want to write. (and maybe work on the first chapter?)

6. Find a local half marathon, properly train, and PR it.

5. Get all of my belongings under one roof-which means cleaning out the crawl space and attic at my parents.

4. Pull out all my empty picture frames and either put pictures IN them and hang them up or donate them.

3. Continue to learn how to snowboard.

2. Play Christmas Elf to at least 5 people. (and never let them figure out it was me!)

1. Plan my next trip abroad-even if I don’t have the money to do it for several years.

Trilogy, Trinity, Trio.

I have amazing sisters. And for the 2nd year in a row we got together for what is bound to become a long-standing annual tradition: Sisters' Weekend. Here are this year's highlights.

1. Jojo's scrambled eggs for breakfast.
She makes amazing scrambled eggs. Her kids even prefer them to pancakes. Jessica and I coaxed her into making them for us both days.

2. Walking around the Pheasant Lane Mall-counterclockwise to ensure we saw every store.
With almost military precision we managed to walk past every store in the mall. I have no idea why this became important, but it did. It reaffirmed my extreme dislike for mall shopping, but where my sisters go-I follow.

3. Jessica attacking us with the Pig Popper Doll in Brookstone.
She found this toy:

and proceeded to follow us around the store pegging the little balls at us and then squealing-if you'll forgive the pun- with glee. She wanted to get it for Nella until Johanna reminded her that "shooting" toys may not be the best gift for a 3 year old.

4. Cement-eating pumpkins.
It's harder to explain this one-but Johanna still has her pumpkins out on her front steps. We'd noted how they were a bit past their prime. As we walked in the door one time Johanna tested the largest one's rigidity with her foot and it leaked pumpkin juice all over the steps. The next morning the cement had a huge crater in it. Spooky.

5. Olive Garden.
a. So. much. food.
b. Laughing so hard we annoyed our waiter-he clearly doesn't have sisters....or a sense of humor.
c. Just when we had composed ourselves, something else made Jessica laugh and she spit a mouthful of water all over Johanna and I. Seriously.

Run, Green Bean, Run.

I'm not a great storyteller. But I love stories. One of my favorite NPR offerings is The Moth. They bill it as true stories, told live, without notes. People, famous and obscure, get up on stage and share a story, relating to some overarching theme of the night, to a live audience. They are funny, insightful, heartbreaking and affirming. (If you can't listen to it live on an NPR station because some silly politician took away all of their funding and now you're lucky if they can broadcast anything but classical music, then you can always download the podcast or 'like' them on Facebook to get your fix).

These are some of my favorites:
Mike Destefano: Both "Franny's Last Ride" and "The Junkie and the Monk" are amazing.
Mike Birbiglia: "Sleepwalk With Me" -You'll never say Walla Walla, WA the same way again.
Brian Finkelstein: "Jewish Blood, Irish Heart"-He spends a weekend with one of the Chieftain's and makes you wish you had his luck.
Steve Osbourne: "Mug Shot" Thick NYC accent, incredible story about being a police officer.

I looked for links to these and others, but some I only have on podcast so I can't help you out. (If you simply must hear them, let me know and I'll make you a "Moth Mix" on cd-cause I am that awesome.)

The story that prompted this post is called "Green Bean Queen" which thankfully you can watch right here: Green Bean Queen.

It's time to start running again. And there are all of these old tapes that start playing in my head about how hard it is, how out of shape I am, blah, blah, blah. I challenge myself to stay positive and focused but it is good to be reminded that we all should only ever be the best little green bean we can be.

Me and one of my favorite fellow green beans, Nike Women's Marathon, 2005.

Next up is Pub 317's Run to the Pub in Bozeman, MT with another fellow green bean, Kim.
13.1 miles to a pub on St. Patrick's Day.
That's my kind of race.

Married, Dead or Crazy.

Funny story.

Not really 'ha-ha' funny. More 'oh, sweet Jesus, is this really my life?' funny.

So, I'm driving back home after visiting my mum in the hospital, I was lost in thought and weary from travel and worry. My cell phone rang, forcing me back into the moment. It was an old boyfriend-well, boyfriend may be too significant of a label-we dated for a brief time many years back. We've stayed in touch on and off given that since we both left CT, we haven't lived anywhere near one another, and he is a submariner in the Navy and spends six months out of the year underwater. There were a hundred reasons why it didn't work out, distance being the least of our differences. He is a lovely guy, he just wasn't the guy for me. But he very much wanted to be the "the" guy for someone. And so when he called the other day, it was to tell me that he was going to propose to his current girlfriend. (He even texted me a picture of the ring.) Even though I was genuinely happy for him, I have to admit, I was surprised that he wanted to share this news with me before he had even proposed. I mean, I know his sweetheart will say yes, so telling people isn't a gamble. But think to yourself a moment...you're in love and you want to spend the rest of your life with this person. You pick out the perfect ring, you start planning the perfect moment...and before you've had a chance to ask your beloved for his or her hand in marriage...you make the all important phone call to...your pseudo-ex.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous or disappointed and I don't feel like I missed out on anything-I am perfectly happy that he is happy. However we are merely acquaintances now. I don't even think he actually knows that much about my life anymore. Perhaps he just needed someone to be happy for him. And that someone got to be me. Ultimately, this is par for the course in the bizarro world of my romantic life.

So I share this strange conversation with my sister and she just chuckles. I tell her that, with one exception*, everyone I've ever dated will now be married. She says "Really?" I think for a minute and then I reply "Well, you know...married, dead or crazy." And we both burst out laughing because this is absurdly true.

This remark isn't meant to be irreverent of the amazing man I loved who lost his life. And it isn't even meant to disparage the man I loved who was later diagnosed with a debilitating and cruel psychiatric disorder. It just highlights the supreme amount of ridiculousness that has defined my love life.

Jessica swears that I'm due for a nice, normal relationship.

To be honest, I'd happily settle for being the last to know about my ex's nice, normal relationships.


*For the record, the 'exception' told me that he and his girlfriend might as well be married, but it's not a priority for them. So I'm counting him among the unhitched for now.

The List

I love lists.

Grocery lists, Christmas lists, chore lists, work lists, book lists...you name it. There is a profound sense of accomplishment for me when I get to cross something off. I'll make lists mid-project just to cross of the tasks I have already completed. Many years ago, my very dear friend Kim inspired me to make a list of things I wanted to do before I died. This was long before the movie "Bucket List" came out. She made a list of four things she wanted to do when she was 9 and accomplished almost all of them before she left college. They included:

Driving to Florida
Going to Alaska
Hiking the AT
Biking to Maine (which she did with her mom when she was 11!)

My own list has 10 things on it (Thank you, David Letterman). I think this is circa 1997...

1. Complete an advanced degree (Master's or PhD.)
2. Own a home in Ireland
3. Skydive
4. Parent a child
5. Run a 4:30 Marathon (Amended after I ran my first one)
6. Set foot in all 50 US States and all 7 Continents (only 7 states and 5 continents to go!)
7. Write and publish a book
8. Learn another language
9. Hike the VT Long Trail
10. Be invited back to speak at my alma mater (Castleton State College)

Skydiving was the first thing I checked off of the list. In fact, if you watch the video of it, you can hear me verbally check it off when I land. (Who knew that these years later I would feel compelled to go back and do it again and again.)

I can now say that I have completed my Master's degree and therefore another check mark. As I look at the list I see how monumental some of them are-own a home in Ireland? Right. We get paid so much money working in education that it should be noooooo problem. Yet, I don't have the heart to remove it. These are my dreams and I want to remember I had them rather than water them down with what only seems plausible.

Recently, I was talking to my sister about this list and lamenting that the one that seems the most unlikely (yes, even more unlikely than owning a home in Ireland) is 'parent a child'. I'm almost 40 and the old ovaries ain't what they used to be. And her response was one of the most generous things anyone has ever said to me. She commented how much time and energy I spend with my nieces and nephew and said "you know, in way you do parent these children." It's not the same as actually being a parent and we both knew it, but it was such a gift for her to see me in this way and to be willing to share that role with me in a small way. And if I don't have children, I might someday feel like I could still check this off-but we'll see how Nella, Evan and Callie get through their teenage-years first.

So, the Master's degree is done, and I'm left to wonder what to do next. It was really hard to finish, much harder than I thought it would be. When I first submitted the final draft of my thesis I had this panicked thought that maybe I would be like those retirees who stop working and drop dead. (God forbid, I celebrate. No. I have to go to the dark side.) I spent so much time working on the degree and worrying about working on the degree that when it was done, I was afraid my body would go into shock with all the time I had on my hands. But tonight as I finish the last component- a PowerPoint for my thesis presentation-I'm surprised at how emotional I am. There were several moments in the last two and half years when I thought I might not be able to do it. I'm pretty smart, but academic work has never come easy to me. I'm too right brained. And I'm a bit of perfectionist. Not the high-functioning kind that really does everything perfectly. I'm more of a intense-fear-of-failure-so reach for-perfection-and-thereby-shoot-myself-in-the-foot kind of perfectionist. This time, it almost cost me my MPA. Oddly enough, there is something incredibly liberating about actually failing-facing and embracing it. The world didn't end, everybody who loved me before still loved me, there wasn't any drama attached to it at all. It just was. And as much as it sucked, it wasn't so scary anymore. I picked myself up and went back to work. And the next thing you know? A big 'ole check mark.

And so I am thankful for my list-for all of the hope and fear it represents.

I think I'll start working on that 4:30 marathon.

NOTE:
Apparently, Kim and I also made lists of the the things we wanted in the "perfect man". I found mine written on a bar napkin (which will tell you a lot about my state of mind when I was writing it):

Must have a sense of humor, and think I am funny.
Preferably tall and strong (not Ah-nold strong, just 'capable' strong)
Loves to travel
Knows how and willing to cook
Willing to hold hands in public
Ability to hold long, interesting conversations
Knows when to work and when to play
Must be gentle and kindhearted and sarcastic (yes, I actually wrote this)
And lastly, must have nice eyes.

Reading it now, I think I have a better chance of having children than meeting this person. If I ever have a daughter, I will advocate for imagination and fantasy, but steer her away from fairy tales. It's so much better to love the imperfections, and yet nearly impossible to make a list of them.

Every streetlight a reminder...

After working for almost 5 straight weeks to train our student leaders and to open the College in the midst of the worst tropical storm Vermont has seen in almost one hundred years, I was ready for a break. After a little more than 48 hours with the most energetic child I have ever known...scratch that...she is one of the most energetic human beings I have ever known, my body didn't feel like I'd actually had a break, but my head and heart did.

As I was driving back home late on Sunday night, I threw on an old mixed CD I had made seven or eight years ago, and hadn't listened to in a long time. One of my favorite things about mixed tapes or CDs is that they often capture a time and place in my life better than any journal or blog could do. Like so many things in my life, if I like it, I will listen, watch, read, eat, or do it over and over and over until I'm bored with it. So each CD is a commentary on who I was, what I was doing, how I felt, etc about that moment in time. I have one mix of Sting, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Frank Sinatra, and the Rolling Stones that I listened to over and over during my road trip to Montana to visit my sister in the summer of 2000. Whenever I hear Desert Rose or Motorcycle Drive By I can smell the smoke of the forest fires, see the Tetons, and recall rolling around on the floor laughing with my sister. (If you know my sister, you can feel free to ask her about the time I tripped on the stairs up to her apartment....and well, I'll let her tell you the rest. It was so embarrassing, but so funny-and just one of the many reasons we were rolling on the floor laughing.) And don't even get me started on the Destinationless tapes...White Rabbit by Jefferson Starship, Diet Cokes, Marlboro Lights and one of the best friendships you could ask for...but I digress.

The CD I was listening to during this drive home had some BoDeans, Coldplay, Radiohead, Billy Bragg and The Killers on it and I had titled it "Making Dinner" which brought me back to the time I first met Voldemort and I was still a bit smitten. More than that, it reminded me of time when I was feeling strong and directed-life had resumed a sense of normalcy after the death of BL. And then came track 14. I knew it was there and yet wasn't expecting it. One of my favorite songs ever-one of the songs I have never become bored with-Nightswimming by REM. You were hoping for something more profound? Well, I put this song on almost every mix I ever made.

It takes me to so many different places in my life I feel like I must have been singing it since childhood. It really started with late nights in Wilder at J's apartment in the early 1990's, where I escaped some of my teen angst and quietly rebelled against my goody-two-shoes image by smoking cigarettes and staying up late. (I know, right? I was sooo out of control.) That whole album, Automatic for the People, represents the beginning of my journey down the road less traveled-off the path everyone thought I would take. Perhaps that is why it is so profound for me.

The road less traveled took me to Silver City, New Mexico. While most people in their late teens and early twenty's re-evaluate their world with alcohol, weed or some other recreational drug. I decided to become a flower child. If you know me now, you just choked back your laughter. Its ok, I understand. But I was a flower child who didn't drink or smoke pot. I just bought a lot of second hand clothes and stopped shaving my legs. And I spent a considerable amount of time at the Mimbres Hot Springs Ranch, a modern day commune tucked away in the mountains of southwest New Mexico. The families that owned the land built their own houses, grew their own food and had some of the most incredible and luxurious outhouses I have ever seen. They also had natural hot springs that they had tapped into and built small pools around so you could soak all of your cares away in the dry southwest air. When the spring water was too hot, you could hop out and jump into the cool, refreshing waters of the small swimming pond adjacent to the upper springs. And because we were flower children, we swam naked.

It always felt liberating and scandalous at the same time. Like I was completely comfortable in my own skin (indeed, I was only wearing my own skin) and yet I knew that this person would be unrecognizable to my friends and family back home. When and if I spoke of it with them, they rolled their eyes, smirked as though they thought I was trying to be subversive, or shook their heads...sometimes all three in the same moment. I couldn't explain it then, but for me, this song illuminates everything that swimming in the pond at the Ranch, under a clear night sky full of stars was to me.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
I'm not sure all these people understand.
It's not like years ago
The fear of getting caught
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away
replaced by everyday.

You, I thought I knew you.
You I cannot judge.
You I thought you knew me
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath.
Nightswimming.

It occurred to me as I was driving home, listening to this song, how in those days and nights at the Ranch I was the most pure and authentic person I could be. I wasn't less full of doubt, I just embraced all of the possibilities with less calculation.

I gave up my flower child status a long time ago. I routinely shave my legs and can't imagine swimming naked with people I barely know. But I love that for a brief time I was that girl because she taught me so much about how to live my life. And I am grateful for a song that helps me capture that moment when I need a little reminding. I hope you all have that song.