Monthly Archives: July 2016

Change

11 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Personal, R

≈ 4 Comments

R came home for the weekend, which was lovely.

We went out for sushi at our favorite sushi place on Friday night. Saturday morning he slept in. For breakfast, I took small slices of some melon halfway between cantaloupe and honeydew and topped them with prosciutto and a sprinkle of ginger. I saved him some so he ate a little of that when he woke up and then we had a big brunch of bacon and eggs*, scrambled with sautéed onion, cilantro and avocado. Plus coffee with coconut milk and cinnamon.

We watched a movie while we ate. Inception, I think, with a break in the middle to swim and read in the sun. Then we ran some errands: another load of stuff to Goodwill and also a run to the storage unit. He went out for a while and when he came home, we watched Ocean’s Eleven, and ate salad with roast beef, sweet corn, radishes, cucumber, avocado, and a dressing of balsamic, olive oil, italian herbs, fresh cilantro, and finely diced red onion. I’m sort of into the diced red onion salad dressing. It’s got a really nice but subtle kick.

On Sunday, he woke up late, then went out to lunch with a friend. When he came home, we watched Interstellar. Afterwards, he helped me drag some stuff out to the curb — his box spring and mattress, an old washing machine that’s been in the garage for the past seven years.

We put Serenity’s name on her. He’d been joking about my spaceship since he first saw her, but when he looked at the name lettering I’d gotten, he told me I’d picked a very Christian font. I was a little taken aback, but he viewed this as a good thing. He said that when I was broken down by the side of the road, people would be inspired to want to help me.

We talked about Ireland and his job, his thoughts for the future, ideas about plays he’s writing and his thesis, places he wants to go, and the movies we were watching. Whether Christopher Nolan can get away with anything. A show he’s watching on Netflix that I would really hate but that makes him laugh. Game of Thrones, which neither of us watch, but both of us know much too much about.

And then he got into his car and drove away. And I will not see him again until 2017. And we will probably never live in the same house again. And I am so sad.

Also completely congested, eyes puffy, face tear-stained, and so, moving on. Change happens. It’s not always easy. This change is enormously better for me than sitting in this house, waiting for him to visit, so I know it’s right. But a little grieving, that’s right, too.

*Cooking note for future reference: I cooked the eggs in red palm oil, which is supposed to be a butter substitute. It worked pretty well. They’re not kidding about the “red” part, though — it turned my onions orange and gave the eggs a deep, rich color. It doesn’t have much taste, which is a positive, I guess. Eggs cooked in olive oil or coconut oil are definitely flavored with the oil. Well, as are eggs cooked in butter. Funnily enough, though, I think I’ve adapted to eggs cooked in coconut oil. They give the eggs a flavor of sweetness that I missed. I’d still prefer butter, though, if only dairy didn’t make my immune system crazy.

Letting go of expectations

07 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Boring, Meditation

≈ 5 Comments

The search for happiness begins with letting go of expectations.

I can’t remember where I read that (and I probably mangled it, since I can’t find the link) but I was thinking about it this morning while I was practicing meditating. At first I really thought it was one of those bullshit philosophical sentiments that make absolutely no sense with a closer look. Like, really, one of those “you will only find the thing that you are looking for when you stop looking” ideals that may be occasionally true, but is mostly not helpful. Sure, I’ve had moments when I’ve given up on finding my keys and suddenly remembered where they might be, but most of the time I find my misplaced keys by looking for them. And not looking, while it might eventually work, does not get me out of the house on time.

But while I was meditating and my thoughts were roaming, as they do, I realized time and again that what I was thinking about was an expectation. Example one, things to do. I had a moment of realizing that I still didn’t manage to do a two-minute job for a friend, felt guilty, resolved to do it immediately, or at least as soon as I stopped meditating — and then realized that my plan was an expectation, an expectation for what I would be doing next. So I reminded myself to let it go. (I will still do it, of course, but I let the pressure of needing to do it immediately and the guilt of not having done it yet go.)

Next I started worrying about Serenity. The dealer called yesterday and they couldn’t find anything wrong with the air-conditioner. Not an okay answer. But worrying is just another expectation, an expectation for a future that will be the way I want it to be. There’s nothing I can do to influence either what’s wrong with Serenity or what will happen next, so what value does worry have? It is entirely contrary to my nature to try to let go of that kind of worry, but I did it anyway. I thought of it as an expectation and tried to let it go.

I went back to trying to focus on my breath and still my noisy brain, but my nose was dripping. It’s tough to be peaceful when you have a runny nose. So then I started questioning whether I was sick or allergic and running back over all the things I’ve eaten recently, trying to figure out what I could be reacting to. But that’s another expectation, in its own way. I’m expecting that something I ate might be making me sick. And really, what difference does it make? My runny nose is going to stay the same, regardless of whether it’s caused by a cold virus or injudicious dairy intake. What benefit does deciding that I’m to blame possibly give me?

At that point, I was totally into the idea. Every thought that came up, I looked at and tried to see how it could be labeled an expectation. As soon as I defined the thought as an expectation, I tried to let it go. Unexpectedly, I got happier and happier as I did so, until the bell rang and I finished my meditation on a pleasant glow.

I was talking to a parent friend a few weeks ago who’s struggling with her adolescent daughter. She’d snapped at her daughter, “Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?” Her daughter’s answer, “Right, of course!” I think wanting to be right is expectation-thinking. I’m not sure I can express it better than that, but for today, I’m going to try living without expectation (to the extent that is even possible for an obsessive, controlling, perfectionist type) and see where it gets me. Because I think at this point in my life, I’m grown up enough to decide that I would rather be happy than right.

More about moving

04 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by in Boring, House, RV

≈ 12 Comments

This morning, while I was sitting out on my lanai, enjoying the early morning breeze (early-ish, it was maybe 7:30), I had a million ideas for blog posts. (<–hyperbole). Two hours later, sitting in my room, having done an assortment of organizational and internet-related tasks, all of those ideas are totally gone. What did I want to write about again? Oh, right, Serenity first.

I picked her up last Wednesday, YAY!, and when I wrote my blog post last Thursday, she was sitting in my driveway, feeling something like an overwhelming Christmas present, needing to be unwrapped but almost too scary to touch. So much to learn, so much to do, so much stuff to move in and organize and…

…that all became irrelevant Thursday evening, when in the midst of a torrential rainstorm, I discovered that it was also raining inside Serenity. I am trying to count this as fortunate in so many ways — it happened while I was here, still with a dry bed to sleep in. It happened in a big way. If the weather hadn’t been so extreme, it might have taken me weeks to realize that a few drips were a symptom of a serious problem. It happened before I’d moved much stuff into her, so she could go back to the dealer without inconveniencing me unduly. All good things. Of course, they’re sort of counter-balanced by the rather bad thing of it raining inside my future home, but hey, glass half-full. It could have been so much worse. I would have been very unhappy to learn that she leaked at 3AM when I was sleeping under the leak.

So, yeah, Serenity is back at the dealer and I’m really, really hoping to get her back sometime this week. Obviously, one of the dumb issues that I’m going to have to figure out how to deal with when my home needs repair is that she’s also my vehicle. I need to find a ride to get back to her, a ride to get home when I drop her off. It’s not so convenient.

In other things — my weekend felt bizarrely chaotic and overwhelming. The house is a mess and I’m still needing to get rid of more stuff. I’m definitely at the point where the decisions get harder and harder. I have approximately 50 shirts. This is too many shirts. In so many ways, this is too many shirts! But I’ve already said good-bye to all the ones that I didn’t really like, that didn’t really fit as well as I wanted them to or weren’t as flattering as I thought they’d be. I’ve also gotten rid of all the ones that I loved, but that were showing signs of their age. (Almost all of those, a couple are going to get worn until they’re literal shreds. I have a Lehigh University t-shirt that is probably fifty years old, maybe older, faded, with holes, and I still love it.) So, yeah, hard choices about stuff going on.

Also much trying to plan. The house closes three weeks from today. Where am I going to sleep that night? For that matter, where I am going to sleep the night before that? I will have needed to get the furniture out of the house before closing, because it’s not like I’m sticking it on a truck and moving it to the next place. But Serenity needs power to run the air-conditioner, and the guy who showed me around warned me that house power (i.e., not 30 amp) was not sufficient to run the AC. And in Florida, in July? I need the air-conditioner. I can run it on the generator, but probably shouldn’t all night. So the house closes in three weeks, but I need to be staying elsewhere before then, and elsewhere needs to be close enough that I can conveniently come to the closing. Decisions, decisions.

And yeah, somewhere along the way, I’d really like to get back to writing regularly. I’ve missed too many days in a row, because of the distractions of camper ownership, camper repair, and house chaos. But one day at a time, right?

Today’s goal: well, some words would be nice, but I need to get simpler than that. Email! I don’t know how many emails are stacked up in my inbox right now but far too many of them are real emails that deserved real replies. So today’s goal–clean out my inbox, do some more work on cleaning out my house, and remember to enjoy the moment that I’m in. Also, yoga. It’s been at least three or four days, which is too long to go for something that always makes me feel more settled and joyful.

Happy Fourth of July!