All Or Nothing

Is it like riding a bike?

Sometimes we forget what makes us US.

I mean, things happen. Life happens. You get so busy, so extremely busy, and so stressed. So very stressed. What do you like? What makes you feel? What makes you laugh? What would you do if you could do anything you wanted? If your only answer to that question has become something like "Escape", then I would venture to guess that you and I are in the same boat.

Writing is cathartic for me. it always has been. So is music. I LOVE music. I haven't written in months. I haven't listened to anything, I mean REALLY listened, in even longer than that.

I like to go to bookstores and buy a cup of peach tea and sit and read their books. For hours. I like to look up from a page and observe the couple arguing over self-help books, or watch the expectant mother rubbing her growing belly as she loads up on What To Expect literature. I like to smile at the girl who looks just how I always want to feel, wandering around, with all the time in the world, browsing fiction and travel and art, all categories of equal interest, not settling on anything yet because she doesn't HAVE to.

I like to sit and ponder what my life would be like if I would have chosen differently. Where would I be living? What would I do there? Would I be caught up in a whirlwind romance or would I be happily settled or would I be triumphantly single? Would I be completely content, or would I be pensive?

Probably pensive.

I'm always pensive.

I don't think it really matters where I am, or what I'm doing, or how whirlwind my romances are or not. I also don't think that I, as a human being, would change all that much regardless of where my choices led me. Would I?

Wouldn't my basic qualities still find their way to the top and spill over and eventually constitute whatever "life" I was living? Wouldn't those basic qualities be the same regardless of where I lived; what I was doing; who I was with?

Does our essence ever change? Is it a guarantee that no matter what, no matter how long it's been, someone who really knows me could eventually find me if they just searched out enough bookstores, asked around about the local music scene, or perused the internet for any trace of my writing?

If all this stress doesn't end soon, will I make it through as the same person?

Will I come out on the other end and still be me?

Because it feels like I'm already forgetting. How do you hold on to yourself?

An End Of Year Salute

So, everyone has been checking this page religiously, waiting for a new post, daily wondering when I'll be back, but never wavering in loyalty?  Wow!  That is SO nice of you guys.  I totally appreciate it.  And to show my appreciation, I am going to write you a nice, lengthy, interesting post.

All two of you.

At least that's what I would guess.  Maybe two is pushing it.  But the post is coming, nonetheless, so here goes:

I am sitting in my office, listening to the FedEx truck splash by in the alley.  It's cold back here in my stock room, as I think any functioning air conditioner or heater has long since been moved to the storefront.  I am surrounded, and I really do mean on all possible sides, by post-it-notes, bills, stock photography, line sheets, and merchandise that needs to be sent back to the manufacturer.  Like this boot that has a shoe nail sticking up into the sole.  And my picky customers don't seem to want boots with nails sticking into their feet!  Imagine!

Christmas music is still playing up in the store, but other than that all the lights have been turned off for the evening.  I am all alone here in my store, and it's times like right now when I really think about how my life has turned out this way.

Last year at this time I was living in Las Colinas with three boys, one of them my husband, preparing to move back to Tyler, which I was, to say the very least, NOT excited about.  Well, we moved alright, into a tiny, one bedroom apartment, but decided the space would be no problem because, after all, we were only going to be there for a few months, as the House would soon be completed.

Fast forward to today, still in the apartment, surrounded by even more stuff than the storeroom of the store.  Boxes, clothes, papers, and way too many chairs litter the floor.  We are blessed in abundance with chairs.  And the countertops, oh the clutter.  And the tabletops.  It's been a little over a year since we started working on the House, the House that must be Capitalized, must be given the Respect it deserves for taking up SO MUCH TIME.

Time.  That might be the theme of 2005.  Subthemes would include Where Did It Go, Why Isn't There More, When Will I Find It and, my personal favorite, THERE ISN'T ANY!

We have been building a House, and I don't mean contracting a house to be built, or dealing with problems like what brand of plantation shutters we want someone to install.  Someone who we are paying to install them. 
"Who will we choose, Chaz?  We can't just pay ANY old installer." 
"I don't know, Glenda....this is going to take us at least 30 minutes to ponder and discuss over dinner and a bottle of wine...." 
No, that problem would be a luxury.  WE would make the plantation shutters from scrap wood that we harvested from an old shack in the woods, and then we would take those shutters, sand them, paint them, put them up, and then move on to the next task, which would probably be something like, oh I don't know, laying all the wood floors, tongue and groove  with a nailgun, no glue-down for us, or, wait! putting down tile!  Of course!  Maybe installing the World's Most Efficient Air Conditioning System, complete with NON-flex ducts.  Did you know about those?  Well, you ought to.  They take about 60 days longer to install than flex ducts.  60 days instead of 1 day.  But it's worth it!  Of course!

Me. Running a business.  Doing the advertising, marketing, budgeting, buying, merchandising, hiring, firing, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, dealing with Evil Past Owners, and dishonest customers.  Loving and hating something so much, at the same time.  Feeling pulled at all times to be at the House helping and at the store working, and being riddled by guilt for not being able to do so.

Cody.  Starting a practice, knowing that new practices are hard enough when you devote 100% of your time to them, and he in the same situation as me, with the House calling all the time, never stopping, a ceaseless, tireless calling.  FINISH ME.  WORK ON ME.  Only Cody always has more to do than me out there, always has the hard jobs, always takes the brunt of the labor and the blame for things not yet done.

This is because I am supposed to be keeping things straight at home.  You know, doing the little things like laundry (currently spread in a perfect 360 degree radius around the apartment), cooking (ha! let me tell you the contents of the fridge: beer, salsa, condiments, soy milk, eggs, and three week old tamales), and cleaning (you don't want a parenthetical comment on this, trust me).

Celebrating our first year anniversary of marriage.  Trying to be everything to everyone and even more to each other.  Maybe the 72,000 presents under the tree addressed to either Husband or Wife are something that a therapist might like to analyze.

Books and restaurants and New Orleans and wine and used cars and financial records and patients and customers and sheetrock and friends and cats and friends with cats!  Airline miles and oops the milk's gone bad again and family and new cordless drills and lots of coffee and super glue and christmas trees and oh so many paint chips and a refrigerator with a dent? who cares!  Hunter ceiling fans of course and west elm light fixtures and law firm jobs and hand sanitizer and year old wedding cake and a niece or nephew on the way and pretty fabric and the south beach diet and fourth of july dramatics and nailguns and where did you put the keys? 

Here's to hoping that 2006 is a little less hectic, a lot less chaotic, and even half as high on love.