My fortune cookie from tonight’s dinner said, “A bold and dashing adventure is in your future within the year.” Gee. Ya think? I’d say the adventure is already afoot. Unfortunately, my cookie’s fortune, a nice little confirmation of the leap I’ve taken, was the best part of the date I just went on.
My date, doing what people do when you are trying to be witty and fun at a Chinese restaurant, said, “You have to add ‘In bed’ after the fortune.”
Little did he know that whatever future adventures I’m going to have in the next year, or in bed, would not involve him. Look. I’ve got no plans for any adventures “in bed” until I have health insurance. (I’m still questioning why I changed the last of my eHarmony subscription/profile to Lakewood, Co when I had little interest in going out with anyone while I was still in Long Beach.)
Yeah… Can you tell health insurance is my big fear demon right now? Seriously, I can’t even think about being “in bed” with anyone until I know I have a regular prescription for birth control coming again. Leave it to me to be adventurous on practical terms. (Friggen wuss.)
Actually, I’m being a bit harsh about the date. The date recap goes like this: Interesting conversation, mostly. Smart, smart guy. COMPLETE gentleman. (Seriously, a total gentleman. He even stood up when I got up to go to the bathroom. Love that!) We had a lot in common, as far as being health conscious and mostly vegetarian. He was tall, Greek, and handsome. He had great lips. Kissable lips, even. And, I could have been physically attracted to him, and wanted to be, and kind of was, but, then again, wasn’t. Mostly, I wasn’t interested because I hardly laughed (which is a major deal breaker for me).
I have to laugh. I must laugh. It’s what I do. If I am not laughing with someone, laughing at life (good or bad) with them, I can’t see myself doing “it” with them. Every man I’ve ever fallen for had me snorting from the start. It’s just how it is. It’s just how it needs to be.
It’s not me. It’s not them. No one is funnier. The funny is just part of what works when it is going to work.
Also, there was that thing he did, where he blew on the straw in his water glass, smelled it (I think), and seemed to need to become one with the straw before he took each sip of his water from that straw. That freaked me out a little.
I’m sure it was an unconscious quirk, and probably not a big deal, and just part of the intensity his overall personality seemed to exhibit. But, to me, the straw thing appeared to be the tip of the personality iceberg. His toe tapping, his calculated conversation, his seemingly obsessive need to be the perfect gentleman—the well executed conversationalist—and the at-the-ready display of knowledge, came off to me as a discomfort in self that goes beyond straw smelling. There was a perfectionist brewing there. And this baby girl, while a comfort and routine craver, ain’t no perfectionist.
Sure. Who am I to judge? I not only have my quirks, I’m basically jobless and so far from my norm, of being set in my ways, that I might just give myself a heart attack. I’m also questioning how durable I am. I had to drive in the rain to get to my date tonight. I wanted to cancel. I don’t like weather.
Yet, I’ve moved to Colorado. Talk about forcing yourself into getting it done, that dream of finishing the book. Tell me that isn’t quirky, and a bit insane, and not exactly attractive, that I am afraid of driving on any road that isn’t dry and offering me sunshine ahead.
Oh, yes. Give me time, maybe even another day; I’m probably going to have some major freak outs about how much I’ve messed with the balance of my life. But, while I am searching for a sense of home, locationally and vocationally, and while I’ve felt homeless in my heart because I have not been pursuing my passions, I’m okay with my mess. (I wish it was fixed yesterday, but, while I am fighting against it, I am not fighting to find me.)
I like who I am. I know who I am. I accept my messy because I accept and know myself enough to know what I want my life to look like on the other side of this adventure.
This guy? You can forget that most of us can’t control how we get somewhere, for the most part. But not even having the slightest idea of where you want to end up, or where you want to go, or who you are while you are getting there, or who you’ve been to end up where you are now, while that’s a normal human experience, and an acceptable plot in life, it’s not an energy I want to combine with my adventure. A man in that state, wondering if he should be a photographer, a psychologist, or a sommelier, is just not “grappling with” material.
Also, in my world, if spending time with a person makes you feel like you are boring, holding back, not even wanting to be yourself, and what few laughs you get feel forced, that means that you and that person are about as suited as a kiwi in a grilled cheese sandwich.
Nuf’ said.
It’s time to sleep and to figure out if I am going to go on the next two dates with the two other fellows that are supposed to call me next week to set a time/place. (Do I really have time to be dating while I’m in the middle of my beautifully orchestrated and chaotic mess?)
Anyway, if I blog nothing more about internet dating… I didn’t go on either date or neither date was interesting enough to report on and I’m over it.
See? At least that part is settled. I know myself. I’ve chosen my messy. But, I still believe that the right people come into your life at the right time. If this is my time for love, it will be. If it is not, it won’t be.
So, thanks, age. It’s nice to wear you as a badge of honor. It’s beautiful that you’ve given me enough of a sense of me that, even with the upended adventure I’ve chosen, I’m good at knowing me and knowing what I want.
That, in and of itself, is fabulous. It is nice to know me.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Crazy Making Day
Jen left for a couple hours. I've been alone with the girls. I can't get any writing done when I am alone with them. I'm freaking out about health insurance. I'm just having crazy making day.
You can F' off, health insurance!
You can F' off, health insurance!
Monday, May 9, 2011
The Long Haul
Family? Friends? Are you there? Check, check, 1 2 3. First, let me start by saying that I could feel your love and support every mile of my journey to Colorado. (I can still feel the love.) Thank you all for remaining in constant contact with Jen and Lyn as I gave them updates on my “road” whereabouts. I also want to thank each and every one of you for being such a great part of my life. Without you I would not have had the strength to take the kind of chance in life that I am taking right now. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without my friendships. (Yeah. Yeah. We’re not at the academy awards here. I know. Enough, already.)
What I didn’t tell you all, and would not have told you, because I didn’t want you to worry, is that, while I put about $800.00 into my Nissan Xterra to get it road ready, even after the full tune up, a new timing belt, a new water pump, and a new radiator, I still wasn’t sure my truck could make the trip.
Turns out, I was wrong, but right. My truck made it all right, but it smelled like truck-working-too-hard-ass most of the time. Plus, because my truck smelled like ass and I was trying to baby it, every mile, I got to be an asshole for most of the drive.
You know what I am talking about, don’t you? You know what it is like when you are on a long drive, and you are so feeling your speed, so in your driving groove, and then, Oh, look. What’s with the asshole going 35 mph, blinking up the road with hazard lights, who is slowing my shit down?
Do you know how much that physically hurt, that every time my little truck tried to climb a steep mountain road I couldn’t even drive 55? There were times my speed got down to 15 mph. It was not only frustrating, it was freaking me out. Each time I was praying that Sammy Hagar wasn’t coming up behind me, going 125 mph, and wouldn’t plow me over.
So if you were traveling on either the I-15 N or the I-70 E last Monday or Tuesday, sorry. That was me you passed and it was me who was jealous as hell of you that you flew by me like lightening when I felt like a turtle in need of an enema. That was also me conducting my mountain-range-preserve-the-truck-towing-a-trailer routine: Roll up the windows. Turn off the radio. Listen to the strain on the engine. Change into the lower gears accordingly. Take a breath. Take another one. Um…now you need to let both of those breaths out. Steady. Steady. You are almost done being the “Slower Traffic Keep Right,” sign.
Actually, I was that “Slower Traffic Keep Right” sign the whole way to Colorado. I was the slowest traffic of them all. There were only three times I passed someone on this haul and each of those passes were made on a decline. One of the passes I made was strategic.
These two guys in a red Datsun truck, who were towing a green Jeep Cherokee behind them, were going a bit slower than me when I first came upon them (which is sad, considering we were both only going about 15-20 mph), so I decided that I’d rather have them in back of me than in front of me, that way they could buffer any Sammy Hagars coming through and they’d get it up their end instead of me.
It wasn’t long before I started to wonder how smart it was, being in front of these guys. It wasn’t just how much they were swaying all over the road. Every time we, our new little group of uphill deficients, hit a decline these jack holes were so far up my ass I could have spit them out through my mouth. I would have had to have gone faster than 55 mph in order to shake them. But, I was too chicken to go faster, which is, obviously, why the drive took responsible me two days. (Going 30-45 mph through most of the mountain range stretches wasn’t doing much for my timing either.)
So there I was, day one and day two, hauling myself to Colorado wearing a pitted out gray t-shirt, a baggy pair of faded jeans, and my favorite black flip flops, and trying to find good radio on the way. And, now that I have officially flipped through several of Utah’s radio stations, I have a question for Utah.
Really? Is this how it’s done? Did I hear your radio commercials correctly, Utah? Did you really ask: “Got a silencer for that kill?” Did another commercial say, “Get out doors this weekend; You know you want to hunt and kill something?” Also, did I understand it correctly, that when yet another commercial, with a voice that was intended to sound like inner thoughts, said, “I will get out doors this weekend. I will use my bow and arrow,” it was meant to be inspirational? Yes? Am I right?
Can I just tell you something, Utah? Your radio commercials freaked this native southern Californian out. I can’t think of any commercial (radio or TV) I’ve ever heard in my entire life which started with a question like: “Got a silencer for that kill?”
I don’t know. Maybe I heard it all wrong. I’m now convinced that sitting/driving too long cuts off the blood to the brain, so I could have just made that part up. Except, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. These commercial quotes, while written in napkin short hand, are in my road notes. Each with question marks after them.
Was it just culture shock I was experiencing? Does it really bother me to hear a commercial about how to hunt things down without making any noise? After all, I can totally appreciate how much a loud gun shot could mess with your ear drums, so killing quietly makes complete sense. But, killing anything isn’t something I think I can ever get used to.
I come from a land where people use re-useable grocery bags and don’t want to talk about how their chicken breast got onto their dinner plate. Non-vegan Californians are sheltered creatures that way. One might even say they’d rather let the Utah hunters do the dirty work and would prefer not to hear, on a radio commercial or otherwise, how it all went down.
But, now I am wondering. Is Utah just more honest than California? Does California prefer to pretend that the meat they eat comes from meat fairies? Maybe it’s better to put it out there. The reason you are eating your meat is because someone killed it for you. We all know I’m not a vegetarian, but, instead, a cut-back-atarian (or, as Jen says, a me-atarian, doing what I want). So, being relatively conflicted I’ll have to give up on this thought on move on.
On a more positive note, Utah’s St. George is beautiful. That’s were I thought I could take a road nap to refresh. Jen never said anything to me when I told her that I was going to try to pull that one off. But, after I arrived at her house, we both laughed at how ridiculous of a notion that was. How the hell is the girl, who needs white noise makers, four pillows, her own bed, a sleep mask, and (on many nights) some kind of a sleep aid to even fall asleep, supposed to get a nap in her car during the middle of the day at a truck stop?
But, I tried. Who cares if I was trying to nap during one of the most stressful road trips of my life? I gave that damn nap a go. I parked along side of a big truck already putting off some decent shade. I climbed into my passenger’s seat, reclined the seat, put my favorite baseball cap over my eyes, and I told myself: Okay. Fall asleep. Get refreshed. Let’s go.
Not one spec of me listened. I actually became a little panicked. My mind started whirling: I can’t fucking sleep here. What am I thinking? I don’t even want to sleep. I just want to get there. But I need to refresh. I’m tired. I’m really, friggen tired. This is BULLSHIT! I’ll find a hotel a little ways more down the road. FUCK! Now I have to back this damn trailer up. Son of a…
It was amazing. Once I got back on the road I felt invigorated. But I am sure I was running on pure adrenaline. Let’s get real. Who puts 90% of their life, all their possessions, into storage, and loads up U-haul with their bed and the remaining 10%, does it in one day, and then thinks she can make a 17 hour drive as a straight shot the very next day? Insane people think that way. Or, people who have forgotten that they are no longer in their 20s, which is when such feats are even remotely possible.
That was my pattern the entire first day traveling to Colorado. Every time I got off the road I felt clobbered. Every time I got back onto the road I felt alive. The most alive I felt was just outside of Grand Junction when Katy Perry’s song “Firework” came onto the radio. I’d never really listened to the words before, but when you’ve got a lot of gray asphalt stretching out in front of you, and you are all alone, there isn’t much else to do but what one does on the road: Drive. Think. Listen.
Then, I cried on the road. I felt the song become a personal anthem. I have been feeling paper thin and wanting to start again. The stress from that job and the life I’ve existed in was making me feel like the house of emotional cards I was stacking could fall at any moment. I have wanted another chance and I have never forgotten how much fire I have inside.
I do want to show what I am worth and believe in what the future holds. There has to be a reason I felt like all the doors in my life were closing. Hopefully I will be opening up one that leads me to the perfect road. (Thanks, Katy Perry, for your song lyrics—which I just switched up—and for your song at the perfect time.)
And thank you, all of Divinity, for Utah’s exit 62 off the I-15 N. Had I not stopped at this Shell station, had I not gone inside to ask the gal working behind the counter, “Where, up the road, is my best bet to stop for the night?” I might have ended up as one of those unfortunate stories, the ones you see in movies, where someone is out of energy, out of civilization, out of gas, out of whatever, and I may just have found myself sleeping (trying to sleep) in my car out in the middle of nowhere whether I liked it or not.
Without hesitation, this cute counter gal, a young, pretty brunette (who looked to be about 17, but turned out to have kids and an ex-husband in Colorado, so I am now putting her to be at least early 20s) told me, “There is lodging just after you make the change from the I-15 N to the I-70 E. Since it was pretty early in the afternoon, I asked, “Is there anything fun to do there?” If I was going take a load off in Richfield I wanted a little min—adventure on my big aventure. “Are you kidding me? This is Utah,” she said.
Partial Stop…
Here is a little advice for anyone traveling alone to Colorado from California on the I-70 E from the I-15 N. After Richfield, you’ve got about four hours of touch-and-go civilization and if you don’t do as I do on all road trips, and get gas everywhere you can, even if you’re just topping off, you might create your own bad story. So, stay in Richfield if you don’t have two drivers. Love up the nothing-is-there-ness of it. Eat, sleep, and top off that gas. It’s just better to be safe than sorry.
Back at it…
A couple of miles before the Richfield exit sign Jen called me. She confirmed Richfield was the place I should stay. Once I got my hotel key from the young blond clerk, McCall, and she said, “Your room is just down the hall. You can park your truck and U-haul along the curb just outside of your room,” my body confirmed Richmond was the place I needed to stay. All of my adrenaline drained out of me. I was so road weary I couldn’t even finish my sentences with clarity. Frankly, I felt as if I was drunk.
I didn’t even care that, because this Comfort Inn did not have room service, I’d have to get something to eat at the Wendy’s fast food restaurant next door. Give me the damn chicken sandwich and the French fries, please. But, spare me the soda and handover the bottled water. I’m dehydrated from stress. My nails are breaking. And, by tomorrow, my lips are going to look like a dry lake bed, all cracked and scaly.
I had no idea how famished I’d become. While sitting on my hotel bed, with my more-than-likely Utah-killed-chicken sandwich being crammed into my mouth, I watched more of the news on the Osama bin Laden kill. Between the news and how fast I was eating, it’s not surprising that I got a belly ache. That’s when it occurred to me that I’d never forget what was going on in my life and where I was when I heard the news about Osama.
The first announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed came the night before I was to start my haul for Colorado. It was about 7:00 pm and I was at my sister’s house sitting on the couch with my 7 year old nephew. After seeing the look on his face from what he was hearing on the television, I asked him if he understood what was going on and if he had any questions that I could answer.
He wanted to know if we were safe. I assured him that he and all of his friends and family were safe. Then I did my best to explain that a very bad man who had hurt a lot of people has just been killed and that while someone’s death should not be good news since so many people were afraid of him doing more bad things we can all feel a little safer now.
Personally, I can’t say that I feel completely safe. I admit that I am afraid of the retaliatory acts that may be coming from Osama’s followers. I do, however, feel wonderful about how much closure this brings to so many people that were affected by 911, including myself and Jen. Jen’s father, who used to be a United Pilot, was working that September 11th day in 2001. He could just as easily have been piloting one of those hi-jacked planes and could have been among the cherished that perished that day.
The next news I’d get about Osama’s death would be in room 124 of the Comfort Inn in Richfield, Utah. A Utah reporter said, “I’m glad they killed him. I don’t care what anyone says.” Yes. Utah tells you like it is. So thank you, Utah. Thank you for your magnificently beautiful red rocks. Thank you for a place to stay so I could get a fresh start in the morning and be way more invigorated the whole second day of my road haul to Colorado. Thank you for being so real. And, thank you for being a part of the journey I am on in life.
Now, having this road haul behind me, I have made a few observations…
Observation #1: Never expect to get fresh fruit from a gas station or convenience stop. Observation # 2: Those are not hay-fever (seasonal) boogars in your nose. Those are road boogers. You can’t drive over 1,000 miles with the windows open and expect to keep a clean nose. It ain’t gonna happen.
Okay, I can’t continue to name my other observations and road experience collections, so I am just going to put a couple more of them out there…
* It was awesome talking to a couple of bikers just out of Vegas. It was even better to learn that one of them was a blogger, like me. (That’s just bitchen.) Paul? Are you out there? Did I get your name right? (Shit. That was one of the stops where the convenience clerk told me that I looked like I needed sleep. This she tells me without even knowing what I’d packed up the day before or how I got a 3:30 am start.)
* I need to watch that Oprah episode again where Oprah and Gayle hauled a trailer. What I especially want to know is: Did Oprah and Gayle have 50 people, a crew, around them who could help at any time? Just curious, because they didn’t seem that stressed pulling an even bigger trailer than what I just pulled.
*I now want it noted that I never want to have to need to use my hazard lights again.
*I am also amazed at how much I wanted to file my broken nails during the whole drive. I just wanted to have a moment to breathe and to file. That’s all. Incidentally, between packing up the last of my stuff, moving it all into storage, packing up a U-Haul, and driving to a dryer climate, I only have one nail left to break. (So, there’s that.) The worst part of it? I don’t think of myself as persnickety. But, apparently I am. I don’t like jagged nails. Short nails are fine. Jagged nails on the road: not so much.
*Maybe Chad and Heather’s friend—what the f’ did I name him, Ike? Is that right?—was right about me. I’ve been set in my ways for way too long. Well, then, Ike. How do you like me now?
*I’m glad that Jen didn’t tell me ahead of time that there would be road construction between Georgetown and Idaho Springs and that I could expect at least a 20 minute delay where I would be at a dead standstill on a 6% decline for, exactly that, 20 minutes. Question: Why is it that your bladder is fine and you don’t have to go pee when your car is moving, but, the second your car stops it’s code yellow?
Observations over. Changing gears now. And, as you may have already figured it out, I am doing one of my blong posts.
I was going to separate “The Long Haul” post and what’s coming next (which I have not officially titled), but, I’m think’n: No. Emotionally, this next part feels like an equally long haul, so let’s just call this “Part II” and name it the “The Emotional Haul.”
Part II-The Emotional Haul
Since I have gotten here, to Lakewood Colorado, to Jen’s house, Jen has been worried about killing/spraying the dandelions in her front yard. (She’s now Utah and want’s those dandelions gone.) That said, I realize that so much of what I write from now on in this blog is going to be influenced by Jen and by her two little girls, Summer and Sparrow.
So here goes the gear shift…
Life takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Every bit of it. There are those seemingly small moments, like when you were a kid and you blew on the delicate, white cloud of a dried out dandelion, on what used to be the bloom of a wild yellow flower, brighter than your innocent, young, sunlight smile, and you hoped on hope for a wish to come true, but you didn’t follow through. The wish was done. You were a kid. When that spray of a thousand fairy white flowers went to the wind, you let go.
You didn’t question divinity. There was no asking for signs above. Did I wish it right? Do I have the might?
You weren’t even thinking about the fact that your one little blow of a wish on a puffy cloud at the end of a green stem, nature’s perfect representation of the cycle of life, started something. Sure, those fairy white flowers would have found a gust of wind soon enough to come along and help them spread their seeds. (In the scheme of things, a bigger picture is always in play.) But all you knew, in your youth’s mind, was that your wish, a sweet, solitary whisper into the wind, was just your prayer.
Then, as you got older and you took worry onto your back, and you started to weigh the sum of things, you didn’t wish any more. Instead, you started to fret. You stopped trusting and you began questioning. Is this, my Now, the crux of me? Why don’t life’s moments seem small anymore? Am I the one making everything seem so large, sometimes insurmountable?
Sigh… Youth has taken a back seat and life has gotten heavy. Gone, baby, gone are the days of dandelion wishes and mom’s kisses on boo boos. It’s on you now; all of it. You’re older.
I know. It’s a lot. Trust me. I get it. Sometimes it’s hard to breath. Welcome to life.
In my case, I guess I should be saying: Welcome to changing your life. No. That doesn’t seem like enough to say. How about: Welcome to turning your life upside down so you can see what shakes out of the pockets you’ve been to afraid to look into.
Change is still change, though, isn’t it? Whether the change is big or small, and whether you are five or fifty years old, when a metamorphous becomes necessary, I don’t think we are any different than a dandelion or a weed. We have the same needs. Like a weed, we will push through a crack in sidewalk to find a way to live and to find the best way to Be. We will kick ass to persevere.
Who are we kidding? This blog post, from the beginning, has so been about the physically long haul I just took moving from California to Colorado, but, equally, and just as, if not more, importantly, about the emotional haul I have ahead of me to get to where I am going.
I know I am going to find myself in some emotionally uncomfortable moments where I feel like I’m getting swallowed up by the journey my soul has yearned to take in order for me to follow my dreams, but I am okay with that. I’ve been asking all along: Are life’s challenges not here to teach us, to remind us, that nothing is bigger than our connection, bigger than us?
And, one rarely gets to where they want to be without effort. I have always known that I wasn’t going to find that place in life, where I am living from my passion instead of my fear, until I faced and conquered some of my biggest fears.
If only pulling a 5’ x 8’ U-Haul Cargo trailer behind my silver, 6 cylinder Nissan Xterra, as I went up and down several winding roads, was what scared me the most about changing my life. Yes. For me, pulling a trailer was really fucking stressful, but easy-peasy compared to what I know I have ahead of me emotionally.
I know me. I am already challenging myself in ways I never have so I will be facing things I’ve never faced. My demons will come out and my hope is that I will slay them.
More importantly: Will I ever pull a trailer again? Yeah…not unless the truck I’m driving has a powerful engine and I’ve got someone with me who will do all the backing up. You should know, I’m still marveling at the fact that I was able to drive over a thousand miles, from California to Colorado, and, by my design, I only had to back up two times.
What now scares me more than hauling a trailer is how much faith and trust I have found to step into my wish. While I am a very spiritual person, and always see the connectivity in things, there is just as much of my nature that fights against me and that doesn’t always know how to believe or to accept that things will all work out.
And, for an independent girl who has always done it on her own, it’s a big deal to put myself in the position of counting on someone’s generosity. It’s a gift that Jen has let me move in rent free so I can just get a part time job, which will be enough to cover my personal basic bills, and will have the time to finish my book. But, now, barely a week into this shift, it’s a gift I still don’t know how to completely accept.
Not being the one to always do it all for me and instead rely on others, really, that is one of my biggest fears. This is something I need to face. I need to fight off every last residue of resistance and embrace what Jen has done for me by believing in my dream even more than I do.
Plus, I’ve read Stephen R. Covey's book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and I know that in order to be interdependent, in order to achieve that which cannot be achieved alone, I must learn to work within the paradigm of cooperation. I can get my book done on my own. But, something I have not been able to do on my own is believe in myself enough to do what it takes.
This move to Colorado, this allowing of interdependence in my life, this is forcing me into doing what it takes and into believing that I have what it takes. Soon enough I will have my editor, my fact checker, and my found-that-jacked and wayward grammar checker.
Until then, I can no longer escape the reality that every human being is an interdependent creature. I have to accept what I’ve known all along. People need each other. At this time in my life, and because of where my life has been going, I can now admit without reservation that I needed not to be alone anymore. I have needed my friends to believe in me more than I have believed in myself.
I can also admit that this is the scariest thing I have ever done, and I don’t mean the moving part. A city, is a city, is a city. You can change your city any time you want. I’ve done it many times. Not lately. Not in 13 years. But I did move plenty when I was younger.
No… what terrifies me more is following my dream of being a writer, especially of being the kind of writer I am and want to be. Everything I write has me on the page. And here I am again, exposing myself, asking myself if I have the talent, or if I just have the guts and I am also a little bit nuts.
But the reality I’ve come to is that I’d rather fail at trying then fail to try. I’d rather fall on my ass in front of everyone than face myself alone at night knowing I have never given myself a chance.
I think I’ve known all along that if I didn’t attempt this leap of faith, if I didn’t put myself into the position of having nowhere to turn but to my writing, to my dream, I would have kept my dream as a place to escape rather than as a place to live.
I want to live my dreams not dream about another way to live.
But, again, being this daring, this brave, or this fucking stupid, has a price. I will have my moments. I’ve already had several of them including the first night I got to Jen’s house.
I arrived to an empty house. Jen was picking up the girls at their day care. I knew I was drained, but I’d made it. That’s when, even with wobbly legs and a new altitude high, I couldn’t wait until 6:30 pm, for Jen’s boyfriend Dirk to get off work and for him to help me unload my U-Haul.
It was 4:ll pm and I wanted it done. So, with the exception of unloading my bed, which Dirk did do for me around 7:00 pm, I got all of my shit out of my truck and trailer in slightly less than an hour. I was already feeling that thing I feel where I need things just so. (In other words, I needed to set down my ways.)
Once Jen got home, and Dirk got off of work and set my bed up for me, that’s when it hit, what I’d just done. I had just up-ended my life. I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.
Attack averted. It was time for Summer and Sparrow to go to bed. The story was read. The girls were tucked in. The good-night kisses were exchanged. I was about to combust, but, instead, a 5 year old girl, Summer, broke through the frantic fear that almost over took me.
As I lay next to her on her pink patch-work quilt, and just after I told her “Goodnight, my love,” she brought her petite little hand up to my right cheek, cupped it, and said, “Aunt Lev? I love you staying here.”
So now I ask you: No matter how afraid we are, doesn’t divinity always give us what we need in each moment? That little girl saw through to me and knew what to say. So why shouldn’t we trust a little more and worry a little less?
I’ll try to be fabulous at it if you will…
Ready?
What I didn’t tell you all, and would not have told you, because I didn’t want you to worry, is that, while I put about $800.00 into my Nissan Xterra to get it road ready, even after the full tune up, a new timing belt, a new water pump, and a new radiator, I still wasn’t sure my truck could make the trip.
Turns out, I was wrong, but right. My truck made it all right, but it smelled like truck-working-too-hard-ass most of the time. Plus, because my truck smelled like ass and I was trying to baby it, every mile, I got to be an asshole for most of the drive.
You know what I am talking about, don’t you? You know what it is like when you are on a long drive, and you are so feeling your speed, so in your driving groove, and then, Oh, look. What’s with the asshole going 35 mph, blinking up the road with hazard lights, who is slowing my shit down?
Do you know how much that physically hurt, that every time my little truck tried to climb a steep mountain road I couldn’t even drive 55? There were times my speed got down to 15 mph. It was not only frustrating, it was freaking me out. Each time I was praying that Sammy Hagar wasn’t coming up behind me, going 125 mph, and wouldn’t plow me over.
So if you were traveling on either the I-15 N or the I-70 E last Monday or Tuesday, sorry. That was me you passed and it was me who was jealous as hell of you that you flew by me like lightening when I felt like a turtle in need of an enema. That was also me conducting my mountain-range-preserve-the-truck-towing-a-trailer routine: Roll up the windows. Turn off the radio. Listen to the strain on the engine. Change into the lower gears accordingly. Take a breath. Take another one. Um…now you need to let both of those breaths out. Steady. Steady. You are almost done being the “Slower Traffic Keep Right,” sign.
Actually, I was that “Slower Traffic Keep Right” sign the whole way to Colorado. I was the slowest traffic of them all. There were only three times I passed someone on this haul and each of those passes were made on a decline. One of the passes I made was strategic.
These two guys in a red Datsun truck, who were towing a green Jeep Cherokee behind them, were going a bit slower than me when I first came upon them (which is sad, considering we were both only going about 15-20 mph), so I decided that I’d rather have them in back of me than in front of me, that way they could buffer any Sammy Hagars coming through and they’d get it up their end instead of me.
It wasn’t long before I started to wonder how smart it was, being in front of these guys. It wasn’t just how much they were swaying all over the road. Every time we, our new little group of uphill deficients, hit a decline these jack holes were so far up my ass I could have spit them out through my mouth. I would have had to have gone faster than 55 mph in order to shake them. But, I was too chicken to go faster, which is, obviously, why the drive took responsible me two days. (Going 30-45 mph through most of the mountain range stretches wasn’t doing much for my timing either.)
So there I was, day one and day two, hauling myself to Colorado wearing a pitted out gray t-shirt, a baggy pair of faded jeans, and my favorite black flip flops, and trying to find good radio on the way. And, now that I have officially flipped through several of Utah’s radio stations, I have a question for Utah.
Really? Is this how it’s done? Did I hear your radio commercials correctly, Utah? Did you really ask: “Got a silencer for that kill?” Did another commercial say, “Get out doors this weekend; You know you want to hunt and kill something?” Also, did I understand it correctly, that when yet another commercial, with a voice that was intended to sound like inner thoughts, said, “I will get out doors this weekend. I will use my bow and arrow,” it was meant to be inspirational? Yes? Am I right?
Can I just tell you something, Utah? Your radio commercials freaked this native southern Californian out. I can’t think of any commercial (radio or TV) I’ve ever heard in my entire life which started with a question like: “Got a silencer for that kill?”
I don’t know. Maybe I heard it all wrong. I’m now convinced that sitting/driving too long cuts off the blood to the brain, so I could have just made that part up. Except, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. These commercial quotes, while written in napkin short hand, are in my road notes. Each with question marks after them.
Was it just culture shock I was experiencing? Does it really bother me to hear a commercial about how to hunt things down without making any noise? After all, I can totally appreciate how much a loud gun shot could mess with your ear drums, so killing quietly makes complete sense. But, killing anything isn’t something I think I can ever get used to.
I come from a land where people use re-useable grocery bags and don’t want to talk about how their chicken breast got onto their dinner plate. Non-vegan Californians are sheltered creatures that way. One might even say they’d rather let the Utah hunters do the dirty work and would prefer not to hear, on a radio commercial or otherwise, how it all went down.
But, now I am wondering. Is Utah just more honest than California? Does California prefer to pretend that the meat they eat comes from meat fairies? Maybe it’s better to put it out there. The reason you are eating your meat is because someone killed it for you. We all know I’m not a vegetarian, but, instead, a cut-back-atarian (or, as Jen says, a me-atarian, doing what I want). So, being relatively conflicted I’ll have to give up on this thought on move on.
On a more positive note, Utah’s St. George is beautiful. That’s were I thought I could take a road nap to refresh. Jen never said anything to me when I told her that I was going to try to pull that one off. But, after I arrived at her house, we both laughed at how ridiculous of a notion that was. How the hell is the girl, who needs white noise makers, four pillows, her own bed, a sleep mask, and (on many nights) some kind of a sleep aid to even fall asleep, supposed to get a nap in her car during the middle of the day at a truck stop?
But, I tried. Who cares if I was trying to nap during one of the most stressful road trips of my life? I gave that damn nap a go. I parked along side of a big truck already putting off some decent shade. I climbed into my passenger’s seat, reclined the seat, put my favorite baseball cap over my eyes, and I told myself: Okay. Fall asleep. Get refreshed. Let’s go.
Not one spec of me listened. I actually became a little panicked. My mind started whirling: I can’t fucking sleep here. What am I thinking? I don’t even want to sleep. I just want to get there. But I need to refresh. I’m tired. I’m really, friggen tired. This is BULLSHIT! I’ll find a hotel a little ways more down the road. FUCK! Now I have to back this damn trailer up. Son of a…
It was amazing. Once I got back on the road I felt invigorated. But I am sure I was running on pure adrenaline. Let’s get real. Who puts 90% of their life, all their possessions, into storage, and loads up U-haul with their bed and the remaining 10%, does it in one day, and then thinks she can make a 17 hour drive as a straight shot the very next day? Insane people think that way. Or, people who have forgotten that they are no longer in their 20s, which is when such feats are even remotely possible.
That was my pattern the entire first day traveling to Colorado. Every time I got off the road I felt clobbered. Every time I got back onto the road I felt alive. The most alive I felt was just outside of Grand Junction when Katy Perry’s song “Firework” came onto the radio. I’d never really listened to the words before, but when you’ve got a lot of gray asphalt stretching out in front of you, and you are all alone, there isn’t much else to do but what one does on the road: Drive. Think. Listen.
Then, I cried on the road. I felt the song become a personal anthem. I have been feeling paper thin and wanting to start again. The stress from that job and the life I’ve existed in was making me feel like the house of emotional cards I was stacking could fall at any moment. I have wanted another chance and I have never forgotten how much fire I have inside.
I do want to show what I am worth and believe in what the future holds. There has to be a reason I felt like all the doors in my life were closing. Hopefully I will be opening up one that leads me to the perfect road. (Thanks, Katy Perry, for your song lyrics—which I just switched up—and for your song at the perfect time.)
And thank you, all of Divinity, for Utah’s exit 62 off the I-15 N. Had I not stopped at this Shell station, had I not gone inside to ask the gal working behind the counter, “Where, up the road, is my best bet to stop for the night?” I might have ended up as one of those unfortunate stories, the ones you see in movies, where someone is out of energy, out of civilization, out of gas, out of whatever, and I may just have found myself sleeping (trying to sleep) in my car out in the middle of nowhere whether I liked it or not.
Without hesitation, this cute counter gal, a young, pretty brunette (who looked to be about 17, but turned out to have kids and an ex-husband in Colorado, so I am now putting her to be at least early 20s) told me, “There is lodging just after you make the change from the I-15 N to the I-70 E. Since it was pretty early in the afternoon, I asked, “Is there anything fun to do there?” If I was going take a load off in Richfield I wanted a little min—adventure on my big aventure. “Are you kidding me? This is Utah,” she said.
Partial Stop…
Here is a little advice for anyone traveling alone to Colorado from California on the I-70 E from the I-15 N. After Richfield, you’ve got about four hours of touch-and-go civilization and if you don’t do as I do on all road trips, and get gas everywhere you can, even if you’re just topping off, you might create your own bad story. So, stay in Richfield if you don’t have two drivers. Love up the nothing-is-there-ness of it. Eat, sleep, and top off that gas. It’s just better to be safe than sorry.
Back at it…
A couple of miles before the Richfield exit sign Jen called me. She confirmed Richfield was the place I should stay. Once I got my hotel key from the young blond clerk, McCall, and she said, “Your room is just down the hall. You can park your truck and U-haul along the curb just outside of your room,” my body confirmed Richmond was the place I needed to stay. All of my adrenaline drained out of me. I was so road weary I couldn’t even finish my sentences with clarity. Frankly, I felt as if I was drunk.
I didn’t even care that, because this Comfort Inn did not have room service, I’d have to get something to eat at the Wendy’s fast food restaurant next door. Give me the damn chicken sandwich and the French fries, please. But, spare me the soda and handover the bottled water. I’m dehydrated from stress. My nails are breaking. And, by tomorrow, my lips are going to look like a dry lake bed, all cracked and scaly.
I had no idea how famished I’d become. While sitting on my hotel bed, with my more-than-likely Utah-killed-chicken sandwich being crammed into my mouth, I watched more of the news on the Osama bin Laden kill. Between the news and how fast I was eating, it’s not surprising that I got a belly ache. That’s when it occurred to me that I’d never forget what was going on in my life and where I was when I heard the news about Osama.
The first announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed came the night before I was to start my haul for Colorado. It was about 7:00 pm and I was at my sister’s house sitting on the couch with my 7 year old nephew. After seeing the look on his face from what he was hearing on the television, I asked him if he understood what was going on and if he had any questions that I could answer.
He wanted to know if we were safe. I assured him that he and all of his friends and family were safe. Then I did my best to explain that a very bad man who had hurt a lot of people has just been killed and that while someone’s death should not be good news since so many people were afraid of him doing more bad things we can all feel a little safer now.
Personally, I can’t say that I feel completely safe. I admit that I am afraid of the retaliatory acts that may be coming from Osama’s followers. I do, however, feel wonderful about how much closure this brings to so many people that were affected by 911, including myself and Jen. Jen’s father, who used to be a United Pilot, was working that September 11th day in 2001. He could just as easily have been piloting one of those hi-jacked planes and could have been among the cherished that perished that day.
The next news I’d get about Osama’s death would be in room 124 of the Comfort Inn in Richfield, Utah. A Utah reporter said, “I’m glad they killed him. I don’t care what anyone says.” Yes. Utah tells you like it is. So thank you, Utah. Thank you for your magnificently beautiful red rocks. Thank you for a place to stay so I could get a fresh start in the morning and be way more invigorated the whole second day of my road haul to Colorado. Thank you for being so real. And, thank you for being a part of the journey I am on in life.
Now, having this road haul behind me, I have made a few observations…
Observation #1: Never expect to get fresh fruit from a gas station or convenience stop. Observation # 2: Those are not hay-fever (seasonal) boogars in your nose. Those are road boogers. You can’t drive over 1,000 miles with the windows open and expect to keep a clean nose. It ain’t gonna happen.
Okay, I can’t continue to name my other observations and road experience collections, so I am just going to put a couple more of them out there…
* It was awesome talking to a couple of bikers just out of Vegas. It was even better to learn that one of them was a blogger, like me. (That’s just bitchen.) Paul? Are you out there? Did I get your name right? (Shit. That was one of the stops where the convenience clerk told me that I looked like I needed sleep. This she tells me without even knowing what I’d packed up the day before or how I got a 3:30 am start.)
* I need to watch that Oprah episode again where Oprah and Gayle hauled a trailer. What I especially want to know is: Did Oprah and Gayle have 50 people, a crew, around them who could help at any time? Just curious, because they didn’t seem that stressed pulling an even bigger trailer than what I just pulled.
*I now want it noted that I never want to have to need to use my hazard lights again.
*I am also amazed at how much I wanted to file my broken nails during the whole drive. I just wanted to have a moment to breathe and to file. That’s all. Incidentally, between packing up the last of my stuff, moving it all into storage, packing up a U-Haul, and driving to a dryer climate, I only have one nail left to break. (So, there’s that.) The worst part of it? I don’t think of myself as persnickety. But, apparently I am. I don’t like jagged nails. Short nails are fine. Jagged nails on the road: not so much.
*Maybe Chad and Heather’s friend—what the f’ did I name him, Ike? Is that right?—was right about me. I’ve been set in my ways for way too long. Well, then, Ike. How do you like me now?
*I’m glad that Jen didn’t tell me ahead of time that there would be road construction between Georgetown and Idaho Springs and that I could expect at least a 20 minute delay where I would be at a dead standstill on a 6% decline for, exactly that, 20 minutes. Question: Why is it that your bladder is fine and you don’t have to go pee when your car is moving, but, the second your car stops it’s code yellow?
Observations over. Changing gears now. And, as you may have already figured it out, I am doing one of my blong posts.
I was going to separate “The Long Haul” post and what’s coming next (which I have not officially titled), but, I’m think’n: No. Emotionally, this next part feels like an equally long haul, so let’s just call this “Part II” and name it the “The Emotional Haul.”
Part II-The Emotional Haul
Since I have gotten here, to Lakewood Colorado, to Jen’s house, Jen has been worried about killing/spraying the dandelions in her front yard. (She’s now Utah and want’s those dandelions gone.) That said, I realize that so much of what I write from now on in this blog is going to be influenced by Jen and by her two little girls, Summer and Sparrow.
So here goes the gear shift…
Life takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Every bit of it. There are those seemingly small moments, like when you were a kid and you blew on the delicate, white cloud of a dried out dandelion, on what used to be the bloom of a wild yellow flower, brighter than your innocent, young, sunlight smile, and you hoped on hope for a wish to come true, but you didn’t follow through. The wish was done. You were a kid. When that spray of a thousand fairy white flowers went to the wind, you let go.
You didn’t question divinity. There was no asking for signs above. Did I wish it right? Do I have the might?
You weren’t even thinking about the fact that your one little blow of a wish on a puffy cloud at the end of a green stem, nature’s perfect representation of the cycle of life, started something. Sure, those fairy white flowers would have found a gust of wind soon enough to come along and help them spread their seeds. (In the scheme of things, a bigger picture is always in play.) But all you knew, in your youth’s mind, was that your wish, a sweet, solitary whisper into the wind, was just your prayer.
Then, as you got older and you took worry onto your back, and you started to weigh the sum of things, you didn’t wish any more. Instead, you started to fret. You stopped trusting and you began questioning. Is this, my Now, the crux of me? Why don’t life’s moments seem small anymore? Am I the one making everything seem so large, sometimes insurmountable?
Sigh… Youth has taken a back seat and life has gotten heavy. Gone, baby, gone are the days of dandelion wishes and mom’s kisses on boo boos. It’s on you now; all of it. You’re older.
I know. It’s a lot. Trust me. I get it. Sometimes it’s hard to breath. Welcome to life.
In my case, I guess I should be saying: Welcome to changing your life. No. That doesn’t seem like enough to say. How about: Welcome to turning your life upside down so you can see what shakes out of the pockets you’ve been to afraid to look into.
Change is still change, though, isn’t it? Whether the change is big or small, and whether you are five or fifty years old, when a metamorphous becomes necessary, I don’t think we are any different than a dandelion or a weed. We have the same needs. Like a weed, we will push through a crack in sidewalk to find a way to live and to find the best way to Be. We will kick ass to persevere.
Who are we kidding? This blog post, from the beginning, has so been about the physically long haul I just took moving from California to Colorado, but, equally, and just as, if not more, importantly, about the emotional haul I have ahead of me to get to where I am going.
I know I am going to find myself in some emotionally uncomfortable moments where I feel like I’m getting swallowed up by the journey my soul has yearned to take in order for me to follow my dreams, but I am okay with that. I’ve been asking all along: Are life’s challenges not here to teach us, to remind us, that nothing is bigger than our connection, bigger than us?
And, one rarely gets to where they want to be without effort. I have always known that I wasn’t going to find that place in life, where I am living from my passion instead of my fear, until I faced and conquered some of my biggest fears.
If only pulling a 5’ x 8’ U-Haul Cargo trailer behind my silver, 6 cylinder Nissan Xterra, as I went up and down several winding roads, was what scared me the most about changing my life. Yes. For me, pulling a trailer was really fucking stressful, but easy-peasy compared to what I know I have ahead of me emotionally.
I know me. I am already challenging myself in ways I never have so I will be facing things I’ve never faced. My demons will come out and my hope is that I will slay them.
More importantly: Will I ever pull a trailer again? Yeah…not unless the truck I’m driving has a powerful engine and I’ve got someone with me who will do all the backing up. You should know, I’m still marveling at the fact that I was able to drive over a thousand miles, from California to Colorado, and, by my design, I only had to back up two times.
What now scares me more than hauling a trailer is how much faith and trust I have found to step into my wish. While I am a very spiritual person, and always see the connectivity in things, there is just as much of my nature that fights against me and that doesn’t always know how to believe or to accept that things will all work out.
And, for an independent girl who has always done it on her own, it’s a big deal to put myself in the position of counting on someone’s generosity. It’s a gift that Jen has let me move in rent free so I can just get a part time job, which will be enough to cover my personal basic bills, and will have the time to finish my book. But, now, barely a week into this shift, it’s a gift I still don’t know how to completely accept.
Not being the one to always do it all for me and instead rely on others, really, that is one of my biggest fears. This is something I need to face. I need to fight off every last residue of resistance and embrace what Jen has done for me by believing in my dream even more than I do.
Plus, I’ve read Stephen R. Covey's book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and I know that in order to be interdependent, in order to achieve that which cannot be achieved alone, I must learn to work within the paradigm of cooperation. I can get my book done on my own. But, something I have not been able to do on my own is believe in myself enough to do what it takes.
This move to Colorado, this allowing of interdependence in my life, this is forcing me into doing what it takes and into believing that I have what it takes. Soon enough I will have my editor, my fact checker, and my found-that-jacked and wayward grammar checker.
Until then, I can no longer escape the reality that every human being is an interdependent creature. I have to accept what I’ve known all along. People need each other. At this time in my life, and because of where my life has been going, I can now admit without reservation that I needed not to be alone anymore. I have needed my friends to believe in me more than I have believed in myself.
I can also admit that this is the scariest thing I have ever done, and I don’t mean the moving part. A city, is a city, is a city. You can change your city any time you want. I’ve done it many times. Not lately. Not in 13 years. But I did move plenty when I was younger.
No… what terrifies me more is following my dream of being a writer, especially of being the kind of writer I am and want to be. Everything I write has me on the page. And here I am again, exposing myself, asking myself if I have the talent, or if I just have the guts and I am also a little bit nuts.
But the reality I’ve come to is that I’d rather fail at trying then fail to try. I’d rather fall on my ass in front of everyone than face myself alone at night knowing I have never given myself a chance.
I think I’ve known all along that if I didn’t attempt this leap of faith, if I didn’t put myself into the position of having nowhere to turn but to my writing, to my dream, I would have kept my dream as a place to escape rather than as a place to live.
I want to live my dreams not dream about another way to live.
But, again, being this daring, this brave, or this fucking stupid, has a price. I will have my moments. I’ve already had several of them including the first night I got to Jen’s house.
I arrived to an empty house. Jen was picking up the girls at their day care. I knew I was drained, but I’d made it. That’s when, even with wobbly legs and a new altitude high, I couldn’t wait until 6:30 pm, for Jen’s boyfriend Dirk to get off work and for him to help me unload my U-Haul.
It was 4:ll pm and I wanted it done. So, with the exception of unloading my bed, which Dirk did do for me around 7:00 pm, I got all of my shit out of my truck and trailer in slightly less than an hour. I was already feeling that thing I feel where I need things just so. (In other words, I needed to set down my ways.)
Once Jen got home, and Dirk got off of work and set my bed up for me, that’s when it hit, what I’d just done. I had just up-ended my life. I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.
Attack averted. It was time for Summer and Sparrow to go to bed. The story was read. The girls were tucked in. The good-night kisses were exchanged. I was about to combust, but, instead, a 5 year old girl, Summer, broke through the frantic fear that almost over took me.
As I lay next to her on her pink patch-work quilt, and just after I told her “Goodnight, my love,” she brought her petite little hand up to my right cheek, cupped it, and said, “Aunt Lev? I love you staying here.”
So now I ask you: No matter how afraid we are, doesn’t divinity always give us what we need in each moment? That little girl saw through to me and knew what to say. So why shouldn’t we trust a little more and worry a little less?
I’ll try to be fabulous at it if you will…
Ready?
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