Changing and Looking Ahead

Last week I turned down a job I would have jumped all over were I the recent college graduate I was six years ago.

I didn't apply said job. It just unexpectedly (but not surprisingly) presented itself in my inbox late last week. Just one of life's many options drifting through the universe, and an option that I stopped and inspected on its way past, then sent it back on its merry little way bouncing through the world. The timing wasn't right, it was too big of a commitment, and although we never got around to discussing financials, I have a strong suspicion that the pay was below the modest grade I've worked up to and come to expect.

Part of me's still a little astounded at how easily I dismissed an opportunity that I would have fought tooth and nail for six years ago. How could the "future self" I'd projected back in college and the actual "me now" differ so much? Then, on the other hand, how could I have ever expected my predicted self and real self to be identical? (That said, I fully expect my 38-year-old self to totally have all of her shit together. *snort*)

I was listening to a public radio story a while back where the interviewee pointed out that we never really know who we are. Sure, we have names, careers, habits, likes and dislikes, but none of those things are the core of our being. To deal with this mystery of self that haunts us our entire lives, we're prone to adopting labels to trying to push ourselves into boxes so that others can understand who we are.

Accepting the job that floated through my inbox last week would have helped solidify my writer label; it would have helped me define myself to world as "I'm Ada - I write, I edit, I publish." But I couldn't accept a job just because I have a certainty affinity for labeling myself as a writer. I had to look at the big picture and see what was best for all of me and this job just wasn't right.

This recent event was more proof that despite the aversion most of us have to change, we're constantly changing, pushing against our boundaries and stretching in ways we often can't imagine before the fact. But then it's funny to think, how, in those early days of dipping our toes into adulthood how we're drawn to boxing up our personalities and selves: I am a writer. Full stop. How confused my 22-year-old self would have been to think in just a handful of years I would have picked up labels like "manager" and "small business owner", while my writer label is kept tucked under an arm while juggling everything else. Yet with each passing year we gather more and more labels, which can confuse and contradict each other.

I fully look forward the labels I'll add to "me-ness" of my future. But for 2013, I'm also planning to look at some of the labels past "me"s had adopted, labels that have grown a bit dusty and worse for the wear. It's time to polish off the fiction writer label again. On the other hand, the radio commentator label was given a fond, but much needed final farewell very early in 2013.

While I'm not making any grand resolutions for this year that's just begun - after all, New Year resolutions aren't my thing although last year I made a set of fiscal resolutions which I happily kept and continue to keep - I do find January to be excellent time for reassessment and laying out action plans (be it my 2013 Etsy business plan or simply completing monthly blog editorial calendars). And so here I am, pondering the me that was, wondering about the me that will be, but most of all, trying to develop create a most me-ish of lives.

 "Am I living it right?" It's a question that trips us up our entire lives because there's really no right answer. But by taking time to look at the nearly constant reincarnations of ourselves, at least we gain the knowledge that life we lead is one of our own choosing.

How have you changed from the person you once were? What are you looking forward to this year?


 

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We Gardeners Are Fickle Folk

Right now, my mom and I work the same job, although never together. As a result, we share some co-workers.

When we're not at work, we're tending our gardens, which include several rather prolific cucumber plants. (The never-ending fridge pickle container in my fridge has not seen an end yet.)

Seeing as Mom and I are both blessed with cucumber plants that keep giving and giving, we're both prone to share the wealth with our co-workers. So last week, when I was harvesting several pounds of cucumbers for my first-ever attempt at canned dill pickle relish (a success . . . more on that in a later post), I saved the straightest, plumpiest, most beautiful cucumber to give to a co-worker. When I handed over the cucumber, my co-worker said, "Oh yeah, your mom gave me one yesterday." (She still took the cucumber, I mean, it was lovely.)

If you grow cucumbers, you know that the vast majority of cucumbers that you pick don't resemble the straight, homogenous cucumbers you buy at the grocery story. Some of the cucumbers look like golf balls, some look like the letter "C", some are real skinny at one end and super fat on the other. They all taste good; they just all have their own individual style.

When I told Mom that I'd brought this co-worker a cucumber, Mom said, "Yeah, I brought her my straightest, plumpiest, most beautiful cucumber yesterday."

Oh, we gardeners are fickle folks.

We all know our cucumbers come in all shapes and sizes, that our tomatoes have blemishes, that slugs and who knows what else love to munch our cabbages and potatoes, that our peppers, cauliflower and broccoli are often much smaller than what we're used to finding in stores. The vegetables may have some faults and imperfections, but that doesn't diminish their value. Unless, it seems, if we're giving away our veggies.

Because when I give away my vegetables, I give away only my most beautiful vegetables. I really want to put my best gardener face forward when I gift my vegetables in a gesture that's part generosity, part survival (OMG - I can't use all of this!) and part vanity (Look at how awesome I am . . . can you believe I grew this?!)

The cucumber story not only explains where my control issues come from (thanks Mom), but also shows the twisted value we all place on perfection . . . or rather, "perceived" perfection.

It's amazing how the myth of perfection permiates our everyday dealings. Even when we all know better, we remain tied to the idea that we must at least give off an impression of being pretty close to perfect.

My co-worker probably wouldn't have been any less grateful and gracious if I'd given her one of the more funky cucumbers. It would have tasted the same. Heck, it might even have sparked some conversation or at the very least, a smile.

So where am I going with this post? I'm tempted to say, and who really wants/needs perfection anyway?! But no matter how much we acknowledge the fact that we'd better off if we could just ditch our unattainable notions of perfection, I have a feeling that none of us will really be truly letting go of the pursuit of perfection (despite our best conscious efforts) any time soon.

They say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. But I have a better idea when it comes to our twisted relationships with perfection: laugh at the ridiculousness of it all and celebrate our vegetables all their shapes and sizes. 
 

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Me and the Universe

When I took my current job, I told Andy "Three years. That's how long I give that job."

And here we are, more than halfway through my third season, and I can hear the Freudian slips in the conversation every time I talk about my job. "Next year we'll . . . How I think we'll do it next year is . . . "

Next year, next year, next year.

Next year?? Why the heck am I talking about next year like it's a done deal? I haven't signed any contracts. The year ahead remains an open book.

It's no secret that my current job's potential for professional development is low. As the only employee, I'm both at the top and bottom of the work hierarchy. There's a finite amount that my salary can raise, no matter how many years I'm with the organization. There are only so many job responsibilities for me to take on. While it's not really a dead-end job, it is literally a job at the end of a dead-end road.

And you know, I'm respected and trusted in my job and like any job (especially one that deals with the public daily) there are great days and not so great days. What I'm saying is: really, it's a pretty good deal. It's just not the sort job that you could do year in and year out for, oh, the next twenty years, without feeling that maybe you squandered just the teensiest, tiniest bit of your career potential.

Yet somehow three seasons have flown on by and here I am, still in the woods with limited employment options and I. Don't. Know. What. Comes. Next.

Should I go back to school and get a law degree? No, lawyers aren't getting jobs anymore.

Should I get my MFA or MBA? I don't really fancy taking on that much debt, particularly when I'm so close to shrugging off my remaining undergraduate student loans.

Should I take a government job and relax with (relative) job security and health insurance?

Should, should, should I?

I seem to have a mild obsession with forward motion and upward mobility. But I'm rapidly reaching the end of my plotted out life and the thought of not knowing what comes next is a little disconcerting for this anal-retentive planner and plotter.

It's not that I'm at a crossroads. Rather, I'm barrelling down the freeway and it turns out the exits are farther apart than I'd anticipated.  Kind of like when you're driving through North Dakota, an awful lot of time has passed, but I don't feel like I've gotten anywhere. And once again, I'm dreading the question "What comes next." It's so easy to feel guilty about having an uncertain future. I have a feeling that one result of the Great Recession is a lot of uneasy, slightly guilty feeling 20-somethings.

So rather than feeling guilty, now is the time to embrace the unknown. After all, you can't plot out your entire life on a calendar. Life just isn't much fun if it's lived like a checklist. So in the months to come, I'm leaving the roadmap behind (just for the teensiest, tinest bit) and taking it as it comes.  . . . even if I do find the idea absolutely terrifying.

 

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Bare Necessities

And don't spend your time lookin' around 
For something you want that can't be found 
When you find out you can live without it 
And go along not thinkin' about it 
I'll tell you something true . . . 
The bare necessities of life will come to you

"Bare Necessities" The Jungle Book

The other day, as I was doing the weekly closeout at the work, I indulged myself in a little Pandora listening. The station I listen to has slowly evolved into a somewhat terrifying blend of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Glee soundtracks, Disney, and 80s rock, so it was really no surprise when the Jungle Book classic "Bare Necessities" queued up after "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina." It's one of those songs that's instantly recognizable but which, if I try to sing along, I quickly find I know hardly any of the words beyond the chorus.

But this time, for whatever reason, I really listened to the lyrics. (Maybe because it was the end of the week and the closeout was not without its frustrating moments.) And I was struck by the lines I quoted at the top of the post.

For a while now, I've been pretty convinced that we make our own happiness and that we have to find the goodness in all that surrounds us, rather than living our lives on a quest towards "happiness." "Happiness," and whatever we may imagine it to be in all of its "air quote" deserving glory, is pretty much just another pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But while we're all susceptible to some "black dog days" every now and then, I think for most of us, a simple inventory of our lives and all that fills them is enough for us to feel happiness, or at the very least a sense of well-being and gratitude.
 
"It's so true," I thought as I listened to Baloo and Mowgli belt it out. "It really does all boil down to the bare necessities." 

You see, Andy and I have been trying to live a little more simply this year. Not that we were living so large and extravagantly before.

But with some large financial goals looming (hello you beautiful Emerald Isle, you) and rising grocery prices, we've been carefully keeping our discretionary spending in check. Our spending hasn't extended far beyond the bare necessities: groceries, gas, rent, et. al. We haven't gone out to eat in nearly two months and I haven't bought myself so much as a skein of yarn or book in months.

And you know what?

As extreme and "no fun" as it sounds, we haven't exactly been feeling deprived. We've been eating a ton of delicious home-cooked meals (many of them featuring produce from our garden), I have a stack of borrowed books so high it'll take me until winter to get through them all,  and enough yarn on hand to, well, open an Etsy shop. Besides, it's kind of fun to sock the money away, rather than frittering it away on meals out that neither our wallets or our waistlines need.

It's satisfying, really, living with the bare necessities. (Keeping in mind of course, we're not exactly roughing it here.) This morning, it felt wonderful to can four pints of blueberry pie fillings, knowing every single berry I canned had been picked by my own little hands. And there's no greater thrill than looking out the window when you're washing up the supper dishes to find a big bunch of tomatoes ripening up in the shade of the bushy plants. Granted, living with the bare necessities requires more effort and labor, but the extra effort has also comes with richer rewards - like a fatter bank account and rows and rows of home-canned goodness and a garden bursting with produce.

When you strip it all down to the bare necessities, you find there's very little you really need, because, when you think of it, actually, you already have quite a bit.

 

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That Time I Forgot I Was In a Relationship . . .

Sometimes I forget I'm in a relationship. It's no big deal. It's not like I'm running around having affairs. I just sometimes make decisions that really should require both our points of view all by myself.

This winter I was so busy dreaming of this: 

Croagh Patrick - Ireland's Holy Mountain

County Mayo back road

Southern Clew Bay at tide out - Clare Island in the distance

That I failed to considered how Andy might feel about me jetting off to a foreign country for a week and a half this coming April.

You see, there's part of me that still feels like that headstrong, strings free, recent college grad who boldly makes her own decisions without any considerations beyond self. Back in those days, I jetted off to London for six months without a second thought and once I was back in the States, I took not one, but two vacations within the year: a weekend in Vegas and another in Seattle. Considering my uncertain employment status back then, all that jetting around on a whim wasn't exactly fiscally advisable and now that I think of it, I was in a failing long-term relationship when I started (but not when I ended) my stint in London.

So maybe I've just always been selfish and far too willing to sacrifice the health of my relationships for something I want. Erm . . . that's kind of an uncomfortable thought. 

I'm not sure we millenials were well conditioned for relationships. As children of the 90s, we were taught we could have whatever we want and not to let anything stand in our way. This was especially true for girls of my generation. (Hello girl power!) As a generation trained to take life by the balls, relationships, which really do require give and take, can be baffling at times. So what happens when an aggressively independent generation enters into relationships? 

I should say that Andy and my relationship isn't exactly hard work. It's really too best friends shacking up together. But like any relationship, it's still a balancing act as we learn and respond to each others' wants and needs. Decisions like moving, large purchases, or even switching jobs work best when we make them together, or at least discuss them at length. Despite still keeping separate finances, the line between yours and mine has blurred over the course of this nearly four -relationship.

We have plenty of shared interests to keep everyday life together amusing and far from dull. But I see no reason to let go of our unshared interests either. In fact, considering the amount of time we spend together in a small cabin in a very rural area, I think it's okay if our interests and priorities pull us apart briefly every once in a while. It helps keep the cabin aired out, you know?

 If Andy doesn't care to go to the Cities to take in a "Broadway Across America" performance, that's fine, I'll go by myself. If Andy's saving priority isn't a trip to Ireland, that's fine, I'll pinch my pennies and go without him.

You know, I'd feel bad about up and leaving Andy next spring, but currently Andy's working six days a week so he can bank extra days off to use during this fall's deer season. . . .

Maybe I'm not forgetting I'm in a relationship. To each his own, right?

 

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No Regrets, Except . . .

I like to think I have a fairly regret free life.  Sure, it would have been fun to have channeled my inner Rory Gilmore and gone to an Ivy League College. And perhaps an English major was just a touch too romantic. A high paying (permanent) job with a magazine or newspaper would have been nice and I would have loved to have lived on the East Coast for at least a little while.

But for the most part, I'm where I am today as a result of the decisions I've made; some which simply seemed like the best choice at the time and others that I'm pretty darn proud. I don't have much time for the "shoulda, woulda, coulda" nature of regrets. As much as I'm sure we'd all like to fiddle a little with our past, in the end, all any of us can do is deal what we have at our disposal at this very moment.  

You know, carpe dium and all of that crap.

But during the summer months, when I head back to work full time, I become plagued with regrets. Regrets of a very specific nature:

Source: etsy.com via Rachel on Pinterest

I am always so sad to miss it. Always.

When you only work full-time 24 months out of the year, additional days off have less than great fiscal results. (Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, eh?) And when you work weekends and just happen to be the only employee at your work place, you end up with one inflexible work schedule. (Swap shifts, what?) It doesn't matter how far in advance you send your "Save the Date" card; if your special event happens on a weekend during the months of May - October, chances are, I won't be able to celebrate with you. (Btw: whatever happened to December weddings? I hear they're lovely *hint, hint, nudge, nudge*)

I was listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation earlier this month, when Jennifer Ludden talked with Charles Wheelan about his 10 Things You Won't Hear At Commencement. (If you haven't bumped into this list somewhere on the internets already, it's worth checking out.) In the essay, Wheelan points out that the most valuable time we spend at college probably isn't doing homework or attending classes, but instead is time we spend connecting with our peers over extracurriculars and building friendships that will extend well beyond our college days. At the end of the day, our social connections will add much more value to our lives than the number on the right side of our pay checks.

But we Americans have sneaky habit of valuing work out over friendship. As Wheelan (or some caller) pointed out in the interview, we wouldn't think twice about canceling a coffee date if we needed to work overtime at work. But cancel work for a coffee date? Ha!  

Even though my hands feel tied when it comes stealing away from work during the summer months, it gnaws at me that work always get the upper hand. When I send my regrets, it feels unavoidable and inevitable and yes, regrettable. . . to me. But how does it feel to the recipient of my regrets? 

I worry that when I send my regrets, I'm sending more than just a response to an invitation. I worry that I'm also sending a message to the sender that their friendship doesn't mean enough to me for me to clear time in my schedule to attend. Busy schedules excuse absences for a bit, but when you consistently miss friends' big days? It's enough to make us all wonder where my priorities truly lie.

So no, I don't have any regrets, except the ones I'll be sending to your baby shower, bridal shower, anniversary party, birthday party, wedding ceremony, bar mitzah, (etc. etc.) over the next five months.

And in so many ways, those are the very worst kind of regrets a person can have. 

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Never Leave Your Heart Alone

And it's open for distraction 
You found all the words you need 
Well, I found nothing 
I just grumble 
'cause I don't know what I feel 

The moral to the story goes 
Never leave your heart 
Never leave your heart... alone 
-Butterfly Boucher 

Last month, my uncle had major heart surgery: a valve replacement, a bypass, and a pacemaker installed. One of his valves had actually never functioned properly and because his heart condition was something he'd been born with, rather than something he'd developed, his physicians recommended anyone else in the family who had something slightly "off" with their ticker look into getting an echocardiogram. As luck would have it, I was born with heart murmur and my mom was adamant that I inquire after my needing an echocardiogram at my next doctor appointment.

After having my annual physical last week, here's the boring good news: my heart murmur appears to have resolved itself sometime between my preteens and now. Although I seem to have a mild tendency towards hypertension, my heart is just fine.

Even if my heart's ceased murmuring (and to be honest, it never made any cool "swishing" sound, it was just really loud) this is no time to stop listening to my heart.

And lately, that heart has been whispering, quietly and persistently, that it's time to shake things up a little bit, that it's time for . . . change.

I've been re-reading some of the Anne of Green Gables books lately. (Okay, not the best example of change since I've been reading these books over and over since I was ten.)  I stumbled upon a little nugget of wisdom in the final chapter of Anne of Avonlea:

"'Changes ain't totally pleasant but they're excellent things,' said Mr. Harrison philosophically. 'Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy.'"

Things are growing a bit mossy around here. It's been two years of the same job, same house, same boy . . . and these are good things. This spring will likely mark the second spring without any major travels. And as  someone who spent her first few years out of college in a new house every six months, there's something discomfiting about two whole years of sameness.

As it appears that I'm not destined to become an overnight fiction writing success nor are millions of dollars are going to rain down from the skies to allow me to spend my days canning, gardening, and writing in the comfort of a home I actually own, there's little I can do but keep plugging away. As an acquaintance told me the other day: the only way to keep moving forward is to keep moving forward. The issue with moving forward at this point in my life is that sometimes that forward motion happens so slowly that I begin to suspect I'm just going in circles.    

They say a rolling stone gathers no moss and so when my friend Betsy ask me in all seriousness -not in that dreamy, sighy "oh wouldn't it be lovely" way that we're so prone too - if I'd accompany her on a trip to western Ireland next April (2013), I listened hard to my heart. And in the possibility of returning to Clew Bay and the little hamlet where I spent 14 weeks as a college student, a place not far from my Irish ancestors' hometown, I found that change in the everyday, that something "big" to look forward to that I've been searching for lately.

 Is there money for such a voyage? Not yet. Is it too far out to really, really be scheming about such things when so much could change between now and then? Probably. Is it a good investment? Not from a literal "portfolio" sense. But as investment in myself, in dragging myself out of the "blahs," and keeping the aforementioned hypertension at bay? Yes. Yes it is a good investment.

Hang on Ireland. I'm coming home.

Never, ever leave your heart alone.

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Life Without Television

I feel like I talk a big talk about the fact that we don't have a television. I feel like I've lead people to believe that we lack a t.v. because we prefer more intellectual entertainment such as listening to NPR or sipping boxed  fine wine and having compelling discussions about foreign politics over dinner. Perhaps I've lead you to believe that our nightly entertainment is annotating the margins of literary classics.

And I wouldn't be lying if I told you that MPR is on at least once every single day in the cabin or that I've spent the last three nights cuddled up on the couch reading an increasingly tattered copy of Anne of Avonlea.

But here are some truth facts about the whole "sans tv" situation.

• We don't have room for a tv.
• I don't want to pay the bills the service
• I prefer to get my TLC and Bravo fix in short but intense doses when visiting others.

And remember that Netflix account?

Yep, this weekend Andy totally upped our Netflix account so we can have three DVDs at a time.

Can we claim superiority over all t.v. owners out there? I think not.

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Being Thankful

I went to a Benedictine (Catholic) college. The college shared property with a monastery and it wasn't uncommon to have a nun as a professor. One day, in the class that was supposed to be prepping us for a J-term in Rome, the Father who was teaching the class asked a nun who had recently visited Italy to come speak with us. For whatever reason, we got on the topic of prayer.

"What's the most common prayer?" the nun asked. We all looked at each other. Umm, the Lord's Prayer? The nun cleared her throat. "When we pray, we're usually asking God for something," she explained. "Every once in a while, it's nice to say a prayer that just says 'thank you.'"

It is, isn't it?

Whether you're talking to the man upstairs or whether you're b.s.ing with a friend, sometimes we just need to stop the ongoing, droning monologue about everything we wish we had and step back and realize what we already have. If we don't take a minute to say "thank you" we risk going through life with blinders on and missing the big picture.

So today, I'm saying thank you. Not just because it 'tis the season, but because, truly, I have so many things to be grateful for.

I'm thankful to share my life with a funny, talented, thoughtful man. After more than three years together - two+ spent living together - it's hard to imagine life without my partner in crime: Andy.

I'm thankful to live in a beautiful part of the country, in a lovely little cabin on the edge of a gorgeous lake. (Sorry about all those adjectives.) Seriously, day, every season here in the woods brings something new to marvel at.

I'm thankful for self-sufficiency, for being able to stock our shelves and line our freezers with food we've picked, grown, or hunted. On a similar note, I'm thankful for no credit card debt and limited student loans, which allow us to carve out a simple life all our own. I'm thankful for enough to go around. I'm thankful to have a degree.

I'm thankful for more than enough firewood to keep us warm during the long, dark winter that's nearly upon us.

I'm thankful for enough time for hobbies, be it gardening, knitting, canning, berry picking, writing, or what have you. I'm thank to be able to use my writing as an income source. I'm thankful to have a contract sitting on my desk for employment next summer.

I'm thankful for wonderful and slightly ridiculous friends who remain an important part of my life, even when the miles between us are long. I'm thankful I'm still invited to be a part of these people's lives. I'm thankful for laughter. I'm thankful for the sense of community blogging has created in my life.

I'm thankful to be able to watch things grow. 

I'm thankful for family nearby to provide support, and occasionally, a bed to sleep in. 

I'm thankful for much more, but I wanted to end this before you were thankful that I'd run out of things to be thankful for.

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving season? I'm linking up with the "Give Thanks Party" over at Ashley's, After Nine to Five.

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This is hard!

I spent this past Sunday afternoon catching up with two old friends. Although we all live within a two-hour radius of each other, it seems our paths rarely cross. We're all busy doing our own thing and once in a blue moon, we pause to take a few hours and catch each other up on life and all its happenings.

One's married and having her first baby in less than a month's time. The other's still figuring out what exactly her post-college life will hold, what direction her career will take, and how a relationship might figure into all of those big questions. Then there's me. I have a stable relationship and, for the most part, a stable life, but I live at the ends of the earth and as Andy so nicely put it a couple weeks back when I was bemoaning where all my money disappears to: "Ada, you don't have a spending problem, you have an income problem."

We're all at different stages of our young lives, but we all shared a common consensus: this is hard!

A bloggy friend, Amanda, just launched her first e-book, The Grad Meets World Ultimate Guide to the First Year Out of College. The book's jam packed with all sorts of things I would have liked to have known during that first year out of college and it got me thinking. When I graduated back in the stone ages of 2007, I'd decided on taking a gap year and waiting out a tempestuous job market. (Surprise: it got worse!) But I found even when I decided I was done with the transient gap year, my transient days were anything but behind me.  Now, nearly five years out of college, I have yet to have a 40 h/w, 52 w/y, we pay for health insurance and sock away some that paycheck for your retirement sort of job. 

And I'm okay with this. I'm proud to have made as much progress as I have with my freelance writing and I'm happy to have a day job that keeps me in groceries, if not total sanity. Still, it's hard not to sometimes feel like there might be something else out there, lurking just out of reach, the golden key if you will to worry-free living.

Just this evening I was watching the Sex and the City episode where Trey turns to Charlotte and says, "I'm 43. When does it start being easy?"

As the three of us talked on Sunday afternoon, it became apparent, no matter what path you choose, it's no smooth sailing at age 25 and 26. And if Trey says it's still hard at 43, I think I'll believe him, even if he is a doofus. Heck, I beat it's still downright rough at 92. 

But then again, if it weren't difficult, things just might get a little dull.So here's to perseverance and holding our own during all life dishes out. No one ever said it was going to be easy. That's just a silly notion we all seem to pick up sometime during our undergraduate years.

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Watch out: Mercury's in retrograde

I'll admit it. I don't take astrology very seriously. I find it amusing and occasionally coincidentally enlightening, but I definitely have a "grain of salt" attitude towards it.  

I think astrology, for the most part is about as scientifically accurate as a fortune cookie. On the other hand, Andy's a Scorpio (and Pisces and Scorpios are supposedly good love matches) and two of my closest friends have the exact same birth date (albeit, a year apart) so I'm not above thinking that the time of year you were born does affect your personality and how you interact with the world. . . slightly.

I'd love to blame all my shortcomings on the fact that I'm a dreamy, somewhat impractical Pisces. However, it strikes me that all of the supposed personality "faults" associated with the sign are things we can overcome with a little diligence. The biggest downfall of astrology signs is the fact that they provide us a label (something we're all more comfortable with than we like to think). We can slap on an astrological sign and suddenly our faults are fate and thus, out of our hands.

Despite my qualms about all this, I have grown to dislike when the planet Mercury goes into retrograde. In astrological speak,  "The planet Mercury rules communication, travel, contracts, automobiles, and such. It goes in a retrograde motion—or motion that makes it appear to be going backwards in the night."

Many people associate Mercury retrograde with mass miscommunications, delays, difficulty contacting someone, car and other technology problems, and angrier people.

In fact, it's recommend that you avoid any of the following: 

• Start anything new
• Make important decisions
• Buy computers, appliances, TVs, radios, etc.
• Travel without back-up plans
• Sign contracts
• Buy a car
• Negotiate a contract
• File a lawsuit
• Start a new job
• Begin a new class
• Go on a “first” date
• Expect things to move quickly
• Take anything for granted

Instead, astrologists recommend you spend the time revisiting and renew projects and other things which may have been sit by the wayside for a while.

Mercury goes into retrograde three times a year and each retrograde period lasts three weeks. Nine weeks is an awful large chunk out of the year to put your life on hold. It's hard to believe a distant planet could really hold that much sway over us.

Still, it was one week filled with miscommunication and misunderstandings at work this past week. Nothing major: but invoices no one could make sense of, vendors sending us the wrong products (or not sending the product at all), people who linger longer at the museum door, deciding whether or not going through the museum is "worth it."  Yesterday, one of my volunteers couldn't make in because of car troubles.

So when I got a phone call last week about an exciting new freelance job, I knew I needed to find a way to not sign that contract until the 27th.

Mercury retrograde ends August 26. For now, I'm off to the studio to finish up a project I should have wrapped up months ago.

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Me and My Nose

(Today, Of Woods and Words is featured over at For The Love of Blogs. If you're swinging by for the first time, welcome. I hope you'll make yourself at home and stay a while!) 

For long as I can remember, my nose and I have not been on good terms. The other day, when I was taking pictures of myself for my sweater post, I was reminded yet again of what a large nose I have.

My inheritance of a very Irish "whiskey nose" was probably inevitable. (Thanks Grampa.) And while I'm perfectly capable of acknowledging my face's less-obvious, yet more attractive facial features, it's always been my slightly crooked nose that, well, sticks out to me. Since my earliest days, I've longed to just shave off a bit of the excess off the front of my nose. You can imagine my depression when I learned noses and ears are the two body features that continue to grow during your entire life.

Over the years I’ve learned that some angles are more flattering than others

I haven't exactly kept my discontent with my proboscis to myself.

“Would you really get a nose job if you could?” my mother asked when I was a teenager.

"Of course," I would, in that wonderful, self-assured teenage way that I haven't been able to find again since I turned 20.

Now, given my priorities if I suddenly "hit it rich", a nose job is not exactly in my Top 10 must-have spending sprees. Or my top 100. Or top anything. Heidi Montag Spencer of "The Hills" fame has been a pretty powerful example to all girls my age for why our bodies are absolutely wonderful the way it is. Thanks Heidi!

Now my nose is a joke. Especially since I discovered its amazing talent once I reached drinking age. Turns out when I have a drink (wine in particular), my nose turns bright red, the blush slowly seeping out across my cheekbones. I’m like the Pinocchio of Sobriety.

We spend so much time feeling jealous, insecure, uncertain about pretty much everything. We worry about our bodies, our careers, our life decisions. My nose is the least of my worries. I have bigger fish to fry. I'd rather focus that energy on something I actually can change and improve.

Still, every once in while I catch a sideview of my face in the mirror and think to my nose "whoa, you're still here, aren't you?" After all, that nose of mine isn't going anywhere. In fact, it’s probably growing a little bigger every day.

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Book Club Friday . . . Eat, Pray, Love style

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End the week with bookish chat. I share what I'm reading, you share what you're reading. If you've written a bookish post yourself in the last week or so, slap the above book club button on it and link up below!

I don't expect to make a habit of this, but today I'm writing about a book I haven't even finished yet.

I'm about a third of the way through Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, which is to say, she and I have just finished up a wonderful four months stuffing our faces with pasta in a whirlwind tour of Italy and are now just disembarking in India. If you missed the hoopla about Eat, Pray, Love which kind of "re-blipped" last year when the Julia Roberts flop of a movie edition (or so I've heard) came out, the basic premise is this: Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful, published short story author and magazine writer, decides to recover from an emotionally draining and long-drawn out divorce by spending a year traveling and living in Italy, India, and Indonesia. (Her publisher contracted Eat, Pray, Love before Gilbert even set foot on foreign ground . . . lucky.) 

So here I am again, reading another wildly popular book I was initially hesitant to delve into. Honestly, I was even more hesitant about this one than I was with The Help because in Eat, Pray, Love's case, I'd actually heard a bit of negative comments about the book, mainly that it was far too self-indulgent. The fact that it drew comparisons to Under The Tuscan Sun (which I detested didn't care for) wasn't exactly winning it any points either . . . Still, my curiosity was piqued. So I retrieved Eat, Pray, Love from the "to-be-read" stack.

It's no secret that I've been in a funk lately. Eat, Pray, Love may be just what the doctor ordered. Even if I'm not traveling this April, I get to go off gallivanting with Gilbert to mixture of new and familiar places around the world. And obviously Gilbert's mess of a divorce is way worse than any personal dissonance I might be experiencing around or in myself lately and acknowledgments of that nature always cheers me a rather morbid way. 

It reminds me of the power of literature to transport us to places far, far away from our everyday existence or stir up memories of places visited a while back.

Rome J-term 2006/2007

 The book reads as a bit self-centered, I suppose. Then again, I'm not sure what a book billed broadly as "a journey of self-discovery" is supposed to be and as a blogger, I'm as guilty of overusing the "I" pronoun as the next bloke. Sure the plot grows a little dull when she goes on about failed love affairs (maybe those are only truly interesting to those who have lived through those particular relationships?)  but she was such a large, charismatic cast of characters flitting through the scenes that I'll forgive her for maybe harping on about David just a little too long.   

If for nothing else, I am falling in love with Eat, Pray, Love for how honestly she deals with the same worries I do, especially when it comes to the "baby, baby not" conflict which seizes all females with a (presumably) working uterus: 

To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother's family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent -- at every stage you know who you are, you know what your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. But what if, either by choice or by reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time's passage without the fear that you've just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant?

I can't wait to see what India and Indonesia will bring Elizabeth and I. Nothing like some good "armchair tourism" to help the funky days pass!

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If you really knew me . . . .

You'd know I was homeschooled.

I know I've mentioned the fact in passing a couple times in the blog before, but here's the skinny: when I was in third grade, my parents decided they were done with public school for my brother and I and from fourth grade through high school graduation, I learned at home. The reasons why my parents decided to homeschool us aren't really worth the space or time to explain, but suffice it to say, we were probably the only family in 100-mile radius who didn't homeschool for religious reasons. Which made the whole homeschool family gatherings kind of awkward. Really, my trolls with jewels in their belly buttons are the devil's playthings and attempting to suck out my soul? Really?!

Real homeschoolers don't play with troll dolls

For the first few years my parents served as my instructors, but from middle school through to graduation, I enrolled in the North Dakota Division of Independent Study which allowed me to study in the comfort of my own bedroom. It was correspondence study, so each "semester" I was shipped textbooks and study guides. After reading assigned texts, I'd complete worksheets and write essays, then send them off to a teacher in Fargo to be graded. I really do have a high school diploma (rather than a G.E.D), from North Dakota, which was a state I'd never visited until Andy and I took a road trip out to Portland, OR, in 2009. 

Ah, beautiful North Dakota. Not a tree in sight. .  .

In the early days of homeschooling, I always figured I'd head back to public school for high school, but I was good at the independent study thing (except for, you know, math) and my mother's piano teaching business, along with plenty of extracurricular activities, kept us interacting with our peers on a regular basis. My senior year of high school, I took a college-level history course with some of my public school peers, so I figured I had a vague idea of what a typical class room setting was like before heading off to college in Fall 2003. And luckily, I had a cute new haircut to guarantee I blended right in with all of the traditionally schooled kids at college. . . .

I should have sued my stylist . . .

By the time I got my degree, my hair had grown out and the fact that I was homeschooled had become a laughable excuse for why I wasn't good at something. ("I can't do _______; I was homeschooled!") Two other people who worked on the college newspaper with me had been homeschool at some point in their lives as well and offered a sense of solidarity. I wasn't the only homeschooled jungle freak out braving the real world! The newspaper's last issue every year is traditionally a gag edition filled with fake news articles and in 2006, we published an article about socially maladjusted homeschooled kids taking over the newspaper. 

Omigosh, were those kids HOMESCHOOLED? Quick, go get them some social skills!

Now that I'm pretty firmly planted in the world as an adult, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my homeschooling past; it has very little impact on my everyday life. And I don't really think that I missed out on anything by not having the traditional high school experience,but one look at my movie collection indicates I'm still trying to identify with the four years of life that everyone else is most trying to forget.

How else do you explain the fact that I own 10 Things I Hate About You, Save the Last Dance, Orange County, and Mean Girls, or that as of late I've become obsessed with Netflixing Glee?

"Is that what it's like?" I'll ask whoever I'm watching the particular high school movie/show with when a particularly dramatic incident occurs.

"Yeah, no so much," they'll say.

"Well, what is it really like?" I'll ask.


They shrug their shoulders. "Not like that."

That so does not answer my question.

It's looking like I'll never really know what high school's all about. So until someone wants to spell out the knitty gritty details, I'm going to keep believing it's a place where Rachel McAdams is the queen bee, where you go through a metal detector when you enter the building, where Lily Tomlin is the guidance counselor, and where people spontaneously break into song in the hallways.

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