Picking Bones

I looked at my calendar today and realized it's July 27th, which means I have approximately 15 days to accept the fact that swimsuits are tools of the Devil designed to make any woman, whether she weighs 92 pounds or 300, feel like she's being stuffed into a sausage casing and paraded around on a conveyor belt while robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people peer over the tops of their oversized sunglasses and purse their lips as much as their collagen will let them, silently judging and making notes on scented paper before deciding who looks acceptable and who gets tossed in the bin of people waiting to be selected for The Biggest Loser, and that there's nothing I can do about that.

That sentence doesn't even make sense, does it. I can just hear Mrs. Wilcox, my 6th grade English teacher (back then it was called Language Arts) sighing and lecturing us about run-on sentences.

During the second week of August I'm going to Massachusettes with my Best for her bridal shower and while I could not be more excited to A) take a vacation, B) finally get to visit Boston, and C) spend some much-needed girl time with said Best, this trip will involve a trip to the beach.

I'd be lying if I said I've ever felt comfortable with how I look and yes, I know this is starting to read like a 'Cathy' comic strip, but it's true. My weight has gone up and down and occasionally sideways so much the past few years that I'm quite close to having a muumuu surgically attached to my body. Yes, it's shallow. Yes, it's pointless to obsess over something that you only have limited control over. And yet, here I am.

Part of this mental crisis is coming from the fact that ever since we've moved, my work-out schedule hasn't been nearly as strict as it used to be. Before we moved I was up at 4:30, at the gym by 5:15, and working out until 6:20 or 6:30. Now that I've moved 40 miles away from the gym, I've given up the membership and have started furnishing a small gym in my basement. I've let myself sleep in until 6, and have resolved to workout after work instead of before. It's worked, to a degree, but I still feel awfully out of shape. More so than I'd like to.

I guess what this all boils down to is that I'm stuck between wanting to be healthy and not wanting to fall victim to either an eating disorder or this nation's obesity epidemic. I've tried Weight Watchers, but when they started throwing around sayings more commonly heard on pro-anorexia sites, that kind of dimmed for me. I've tried methods that I'm not going into detail on and I'm afraid of getting into this destructive sneaky self-hate spiral.

It's all about choices in the end and as I sit here, re-reading this and trying to figure out if I spelled 'Massachusettes' right (I didn't), I am choosing that I'm not going to let robotic Anna Wintour-type insect people determine my self-worth. If I were meant to be waif-like, God would've made me that way. Frankly, who wants hip bones that stick out? All that does is make it really hurt when you get yanked off your feet and pulled across a high-school gym by a parachute. Don't ask me how I know this.

Frankly, the robotic Anna Wintour-type insect-people can kiss my grits.

Looking Glass

We've been in our house for about 5 weeks now and we love it. I love pottering around the inside of the house, trying to figure out where the best place for a 10-year-old sentimental Orangina bottle really is while my husband is waging his own personal war against our weed-ridden lawn outside. I love coming home and knowing it's ours; that we can do whatever we want to it instead of being able to do nothing because our landlord was...well, a landlord. Just try and stop us (well, me really) from painting the garage fuchsia, Landlord. Just. Try.

People have told me it takes years for them to be truly unpacked and settled and whatnot. Frankly, as someone who's been swimming in boxes and stray, cat-chewed pieces of packing tape since the middle of May I will not have it. I have goals, and for once in my life they will be met. The house will be unpacked before the end of August.

Gosh. What else is going on...oh, right. It's almost August, which to some people means the start of back-to-school shopping, the NFL pre-season, and inexplicable Christmas shopping. To me, it means that every single weekend from here until Labor Day is booked. Between having company over, going to Massachusettes (which remains the only state I cannot consistently spell correctly), my Best's bridal shower, my husband's birthday, parent's anniversary, and my nephew's guaranteed-to-be-awesome pirate-themed 4th birthday party, my schedule and memory are going to be weeping. I've already decided that come Labor Day, I'm not doing a blessed thing except reading whatever book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series I happen to be in. And laundry. Probably laundry.

I'm looking forward to autumn and winter. We actually have trees now. Mature trees that will, with any luck, turn gorgeous colors in a few months and will retain a stark kind of beauty come winter. Oh, winter. I miss you and all your dark turns.

Bombardment

Is this what buying a house is like every time it's done? I thought that if I could get through the pre-approval and offer acceptance, it'd be smooth sailing from there.

Boy, am I stupid. We're supposed to close 2 weeks from Friday and it feels like there's still so much that's up in the air. Where's the closing happening? What time? Is our mortgage 100 percent without-a-doubt approved? What happens if something's missing? Why can I not get any straight answers? RAAAAAHHHHHHHHH-

Ok. Here's what we'll do. We'll just never move again. Provided all goes well and my ne'er-do-well brain is just fretting for the sake of fretting, we'll just stay in this house and add on to it as need be. Sure, it may wind up looking like the Weasley's house but if it means not having to do the Tango de la Mortgage again I'll be thrilled.

Calm Waters

This week.

Oh, this week.

If this past week was the angry, frothing bull, my husband and I have been the novice riders trying to not get our spines compacted riding it for a mere 8 seconds.

Where to begin? How about the beginning? Ok?

Ok.

After a surprisingly short search, we found a house. We liked it, we could afford it, it was lovely. So we put in an offer and waited an interminable 29 hours for a response. The sellers countered with a price a smidge higher than what we offered. We were ok with that. We accepted. They accepted our acceptance. We accepted their acceptance of our acceptance.

Hooray!

That was last Monday. My husband scheduled our home inspection for this past Saturday and we gleefully spent the next 5 days in Homeowners Elysium. It's lovely there - there are acres and acres of yards to be mowed and landscaped, patios to be decorated, soft, warm, rainy days to sit and watch the water drip off the leaves of the magnolia bush in the backyard. We looked at paint samples, looked to see how much a new lock set would be, toyed with where to put furniture. In short, we were excited.

Then came Saturday and the inspection.

There were the normal amounts of dings and dangs in the house. The garage needs a new roof. There's some siding that needs replaced. Nothing major. We thought we were in the clear until we found out about the Foundation. Capital F. It warrants a capital F simply because of the magnitude of the problem. Long story short, the Foundation at one point was starting to bow so whoever was living there at the time had it fixed.

Poorly.

The repairs failed.

So long story shorter, the inspector said that in order to fix this the entire basement would have to be torn out and newer, stronger, Tony Stark Iron Man metal beams would have to be put in to brace the Foundation to keep the house from sliding into a parallel dimension through our TV. It would be quite costly, and the problem is considered a deal breaker. So we started moving ahead to break the deal.

Haroo.

We were disappointed and maybe a little heartbroken. It felt like we'd been stood up on Prom Night by a date we maybe didn't want to go with after all. They always had something stuck in their teeth, y'know?

That lasted until this morning, when our realtor called and said that the sellers may be able to fix this. Apparently when their realtor said 'They have no money to fix anything', she meant 'Ohwait they might. We're not sure. We'll get back to you.'

Haruh?

I don't know where we are right now. We're waiting on paperwork; waiting to hear if the sellers are going to fix this; waiting waiting waiting.

I've also been dealing with a bout of the stomach flu that everyone and their mother (including my mother [hi Mom]) says is from the 'stress' of house-hunting and whatnot. I'm not stressed. I don't feel stressed. I haven't taken on any stress-related tendencies. In fact, what's stressing me out most of all is everyone else telling me how stressed out I either am or am supposed to be. It's like a giant, horrid recursive cycle of self-perpetuating stress.

There is a house out there for us. Whether it's the Foundation house or another, it's out there. My stressing and worrying about it won't help us find it. Your stressing and worrying about it on my behalf won't help us find it.

Just relax, and watch the water drip off the leaves of the magnolia bush.

Papercuts

I take after my dad in respect to not wearing shoes at my desk. I'm not wearing them right now.

That being said, there is a social circle out there who still listen to vinyl records, who hunt flea markets and obscure music shops for LPs and 45s. One of the radio stations where I live will occasionally have a show that plays nothing but vinyls. This social circle says the sound is warmer, more genuine and deeper. They say that with the invention of CDs and MP3s, music has lost its soul.

I used to think they were just being snobby elitists who didn't want to get on the technology bandwagon, but then I realized: I'm the same way with books. I would rather have a broken, creased, dog-eared book in my hands over a Kindle or iPad or anything like that. There are two books that I can think of off the top of my head that I will probably carry with me for as long as I can.

One is The Princess Bride. I grew up with this movie and didn't realize it was an actual book until I was in middle school. My sister had a copy of it in her room that I adopted when she went to college, and within a few years I'd read it so many times that the book literally fell apart right between chapters 3 and 4. I was devastated, but that didn't stop me from reading it over and over and over again. Finally, I stumbled across a roll of packing tape, hatched a little ingenuity, and had the book more or less in one piece.

Fast forward a few years. I'd moved out of my parent's house for college, and decided that it was high time to replace my ratty, taped, and worn copy of The Princess Bride. I toddled onto Barnes & Nobel's site and found hey, a hardcover version! I bought it, but when the time came to actually read it I couldn't. It didn't feel right. It felt like I'd turned my back on an old and reliable friend for the new hotness. Before long I'd popped it on the shelf and had returned to my ratty, taped, and worn copy. It felt a little like coming home at a time when I wasn't sure where home was. My parents had built a new house shortly after I graduated high school, and that didn't feel like home yet. At the same time I had moved into this charming little apartment, albeit with a psychotic queen of passive-aggressiveness for a roommate and even though I had my room and all my things arranged just so, that didn't feel like home yet either. Something about the way the tape between chapters 3 and 4 cracked, though, that felt like home.

The second book is The Simarillion. I was introduced to that book by someone I dated in high school and while the relationship didn't work out, I am glad it happened because otherwise I never, ever would've read this under my own duress. It's by Tolkien, and it's essentially the mythos of Middle-Earth. It tells all these grand, epic tales of the creation, how the sun and moon came to be, the old gods, ancient wars, tragedies, romances, dragons, good guys, bad guys, so forth and so on. On paper it sounds about as exciting as a tube of toothpaste. Some argue that when you read it, it's like reading a tube of toothpaste. It did take me a little while to get used to the language and the names (oh, the names. I pretty much just cough through them in my head to this day) but it is one book I am glad to say I've read and will continue to read.

I went through sort of the same thing with The Simarillion as I did with The Princess Bride. My copy was getting worn out and the thought of losing it was heart-breaking. I bought a hardcover copy to replace it and have not touched it. Sure, the ink on my paperback is getting a little smudged and the binding is broken, but what does it matter?

There are other books that are starting to show their age - the copy of Pride and Prejudice I found at my grandparent's house and kept on a whim, The Lord of the Rings which I saved for and hemmed and hawed over actually buying, various Harry Potter volumes. I'm really hoping that some day I can pass these books onto my kids and tell them that when I was their age, books had a feeling that wasn't plastic. They had a texture, and a smell, and a sound. They gave you papercuts and took up room in your backpack but you could hold them. They had a soul.

And then I'll probably tell them that I also had to walk to school uphill both ways against the wind with my feet wrapped in barbed-wire for traction in the winter, and to go take out the garbage, and to stop picking on their sister, and to not make me turn this van around...

Knit one, purl two

This weekend I was at my parent's house, helping my mother decorate the nursery and toddler room at my father's church. I'm hesitant to say it, but...oh this hurts...I...I liked the crafting. I liked the painting and lining up of big fabric flowers on the wall and painting flower stems under them (even if my stems were wierd and lumpy and possibly genetically erred) and Heaven help me, I liked using a glue gun. A GLUE GUN. I can hardly sew a button on to a pair of pants and I enjoyed using a GLUE. GUN.

I can't even wrap my head around it. I'm not a crafty person. I'm not an artistic person, or musical. There's a very real and tangible reason why I stick to the written word. If I tried another medium I would probably wind up explaining it to a fire marshal or paramedic. But I think I could do a little crafting. I could glue a magnet on to the back of random household objects and before long, BAM. You too can have a wooden spatula, 4 salt shakers, and the top to an empty box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch stuck to your refrigerator, holding up emails from professors you haven't talked to in 6 years and recipes for cornbread-based taco bakes.

It's 9:06 on a Monday. I'm sitting here, blogging about glue guns and tacos, watching the Hallmark Channel (?!), and sewing a hem on a pair of work pants. This is it. It's finally happened.

I'm 27 going on 93.

Yes, yes, Wilford. We can go to Denny's for the Early Bird Special. Just let me get my orthopedic shoes and we can race our Hover Rounds around the parking lot.

Small Corrections

There are three things I remember about my sixteenth birthday. The first was that my dad was in Jerusalem. He called me from the Wailing Wall that day, and bought a hand-made silver and turquoise necklace from a shepardess outside Bethlahem along with a silver ring with my name engraved in it in Hebrew for my birthday. I still have both of them but for the life of me, I cannot figure out which way the script on the ring ring is supposed to face.

The second is that I didn't have my driver's license, nor had I gone through Driver's Ed.

The first two things I remember play a good deal in the third. Since my brother and sister had long since moved out and my dad was halfway around the world, it was just going to be my mom and I. We decided to fly down to Texas to visit my grandparents. They live about an hour west of San Antonio where it's stopped being flat oil fields and starts being a hazy hill country that in November turns brown or purple. They have a cattle ranch and at the time, my grampa still had cows there. Now he rents out the land to a neighbor who grazes his cattle on it. Circle of life.

Since I didn't have my driver's license, I obviously had very little behind-the-wheel experience. By 'little' I mean I wasn't aware of the fact that when you put the car in drive, it goes somewhere. Honestly. The first time I went driving that was a major shock to me. So one morning when my grampa asked if I wanted to drive in to town with him to get the mail, I said sure. We always did it, every time I visited. We'd climb in his old, tan truck with the cracked leather interior that smelled wonderful and trundle on down the long gravel driveway and winding, narrow country roads.

That morning, though, he asked if I wanted to drive. Bear in mind, by now his old tan truck had been replaced with a dark blue diesel leviathan. This truck was the size of New Hampshire. I must've said yes, because the next thing I knew he was talking me through backing it out of the carport without hitting the electric cattle fence, my gramma's car, the house, or the hundred-year-old oak in their front yard. I did it, and managed to drive to the post office without killing either of us. He kept saying 'Small corrections, just make small corrections.' to me, almost as if he knew that any time I played a racing video game I'd treat the steering wheel like a creature that needed its neck wrung. 'The truck will want to go straight by itself, so you don't have to steer hard as long as you make small corrections.' And he was right.

The memory of my normally-gruff grampa, paitently keeping me on the road, has been popping up a lot lately. Not because my driving skills are abysmal, but because I have no patience. When I start a task I want immediate results. When I turn a wheel, something should happen, dang it! None of this waiting nonsense. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that.

I'm trying to start running at the gym in the mornings. I've never been a runner. Never. Put me in the water and I'll go all day but ask me to run a block and I will most likely laugh at you. Hard. I tried it a few months ago, and it worked pretty well but for whatever reason I stopped. I can't remember why (which in itself is funny because I remember what I wore to dinner on my 16th birthday - a grey skirt and sea-green t-shirt. I had no fashion sense, and also chlorine-bleached hair.). I've started it up again though. Something about running, even for a few minutes, seems to set my mind right. I feel organized when I get to work, and less likely to want to take a nap in my car about 1:30.

I am disappointed that I'm not better at it. It seems like some sort of basic human survival trick to get up and run for an undetermined amount of time. If I lived 3000 years ago and was being chased by an invading army of whoever it was that was invading 3000 years ago, you bet I'd be able to run.

I need patience. I need to be able to tell myself that I'm not going to run a marathon next week, nor am I expected to. As much as I may wish it, there is not an invading army of Huns chasing me down with spears and stones and the Black Plague. I am, sadly, only human.

I am only human.

See? Small correction.