Walking – Theme Friday

I’m walking. Pushing past protesting muscles that beg me to stop. Breathing labored and proving my sedentary tendencies.

But the sky is blue and the sun sinks into the cold place that lives inside me.

Walking hurts. Blisters form. Hamstrings shriek like sad violins out of tune. The dog drags me along—a little ox of industry, anxious to see the world as the ever exciting place it is. The hill rises slowly but challenges me still.

But walking keeps me alive. And proves that there is life beyond my four walls. And that the world is filled with freedom-seeking creatures. Birds streak across the horizon. Butterflies and bees dart in a nectar-crazed dance. Black-eyed Susans sway and nod with the breeze and smile good morning.

There is space. Life does go on despite hurt or pain. Joy is fleeting but can be known. Happiness sows its seeds and when tended can grow. I could make it grow and live. I could. I have the will…. Only a promise and not a certainty.

The calm spreads slowly and warmly like good cognac in quiet moments. So I walk…and keep walking. Eschewing thought. Worry. Sadness.

It is hard to be bitter in the sunshine. Hard to hate the world when you see it through unjudging eyes. Hard to surrender hope when your body is moving. So…I walk and keep moving. And follow the peace that lives out there.

copyright 2010

Where is Christine walking?

Irish Blessing

Good Sunday morning to you. A friend sent me this Irish Blessing and I wanted to share it.  A great way to start the day if you ask me. Have a good one.

W.C.

Delerious

Okay gang, so the sleep deprivation has finally caught up with me and the adrenaline has run out – so if you see something dragging, don’t step on it cuz  it’s my ass. (sorry old joke)

I am in fact, home, once again. It feels great and my pets are happy too. In fact, in less than 24 hours things have already begun to turn around. The problem though is that I am starting to hallucinate a little. Do you know how scary it is when imaginary people walk into the room? Don’t try this while you’re driving either. Yikes.

I was so exhausted and so happy to be home yesterday once I dragged all my stuff (and for a person who has nothing, I sure have a lot of shit) over that I couldn’t sleep last night – so…the adventures continue.

I hope that by the time you read this, I’ll have gotten some sleep and can find my way around the blog neighborhood. Thanks for your understanding not just for this but for the whole fiasco that has been the last several months.

Hugs and Kisses

Annie

Signs Your Landlady Wants You to Move

Since I’ve moved seven times in the last 9 months I fancy myself an expert on the ‘signs’ that tell you that you’re moving again. As a public service, I offer the following indicators that your landlady wants you to move:

1. She stops stocking toilet paper in the communal bathroom, which you generally discover at 3 in the morning.
2. You can no longer enter the house from the front door because your ‘new room mate’s’ drums are blocking the entrance.
3. When you return to your room after having been gone, the lights are on and your cat is missing. (Everyone denies any knowledge)
4. You come home to find that the door to your room is blocked by someone else’s moving boxes
5. Your room mates have the uncanny ability to multiply overnight.
6. The microwave now requires a code to operate, which you do not have
7. She ‘forgot’ to mention that band practice is every Tuesday night until 4 a.m.
8. Complete strangers are piling their belongings in the driveway
9. Random belongings of yours mysteriously keep ending up in the trash.
10. A no parking sign has been posted at your usual parking spot overnight.
11. Your room mates pretend they have never met you when you run into them in the hall.
12. Someone has painted a bullseye on the back of your car – and apparently has been doing target practice.
13. Your canned tuna has been ‘donated’ to the neighborhood stray cats
14. The food you had in the fridge has been tossed to make room for two cases of beer for a party to which you’ve not been invited.

While there may be other signs, these are a surefire indication it’s time to get outta there – and fast.

Deja Move

Hello again, yup I am back and yet I’m not…let me explain. It all started when I decided to move from the West Coast to the East Coast. There were garage sales and last time lunches, planes to meet, car repairs and in the end I was left with one blue car, one small dog, one fat cat, all that my trunk could hold (which turned out to be quite a bit more than I had thought), a very small amount of cash and an already weary boyfriend -plus some free road maps.

With this we began a trek toward ‘home’ new for me, old for him – with a couple of stops – and a pretty grueling driving schedule. By the time we arrived in the promised land I was ready to explode or maybe it was implode- if I never saw the inside of a car again it would have been all right with me. Once we got out of that torture chamber I was loathe to return to it.

The next couple of days were spent shopping for food, the neighborhood tour, sleeping, eating and other pleasant activities. Life was good once again. Then Black Friday rolled around and we were back at it again-because you see I am moving yet again. Well, I am not moving, I suppose technically I haven’t really moved yet, simply found a holding station until ‘we’ move.

On Friday, I did get over to our new house and unloaded everything that was in the blue car, cleaned a lot and organized what there was to organize. Took a walking tour around the neighborhood which is pretty good and has many nearby shopping locations which can provide for pretty much anything we need- which is good news for my cardio and my fat ass.

Saturday, back to the new house with some boxes and things from his place- and installing new locks on the doors -setting up temporary tethering for aforementioned small dog and discussion of placement of various belongings and workstations as well as getting doggie familiar with space.

Today it is raining not a good moving day kind of day – so we get boxes and box things today. Must be there early tomorrow to meet cable person for tv, internet & phone and then I guess it is flat out moving. I really am hoping that once we move this time, it really is for good and there will be no surprise or guest moves because I would simply have to kill someone if there were. We did manage to get a bed over there and I got some daffodil, iris & crocus bulbs(with appropriate hand tools) which I will plant along the front fence, around the guest house and around the deck for some wonderful springtime color and delight.

Tomorrow, we spend our first night in the new house which I suppose will officially make it home, though truth be told it will be days before we get everything over there. Anyway, at least I should be operating from the desktop instead of this measely little laptop-praise Jesus!

Again, will try to stick my head in to say, ‘hi’ but can’t promise much. So, how was your weekend?

The Zen of Moving

I know that most people hate to move, and I am certainly among them. You get used to being in a certain space and surrounded by certain familiar objects and material possessions. Even if you aren’t particularly happy in that space or with those possessions, there is a security in the constancy of it.

When you decide to move you introduce change into the scene and even though it will be better for you in the long run, the short term does get to you. There is all the initial having to move things around, boxes, trucks, yard sales, all the not so fun stuff. Your once peaceful space becomes chaos and it’s easy to feel like your life is chaos too, even though it really isn’t. It’s simply changing.

No matter what people say or think they think, the truth is, we don’t like to change, not if there is any effort involved. We like things to stay the same, stay predictable. I know in my case that is true – at least in my living arrangements. I like that sameness and not having to think about it much. It enables me to go and do other things, things I deem more important and interesting. Know what I mean?

However, there is another aspect to all this change and moving that is interesting to me. I find that once I get through all the effort of getting my butt into gear, get into action about things, that a kind of nice change comes over me. A sort of zen experience if you will. There is something good for the soul, I think, to every now and then get rid of everything that isn’t absolutely essential in your life. It’s very freeing and you can even feel physically lighter. As though you have much more mobility and aren’t tethered or harnassed. And I have to say that’s a pretty cool thing.

And as I now am rapidly approaching the actual move date and I’ve condensed my belongings down to one pretty small pile, I feel myself lightening up. Feeling a bit freer and more open to change and new adventures. In this case, for me, that certainly will be the outcome.

Sure there will be more effort – the drive, moving all our stuff into the new place, finding stuff that we need, arranging and rearranging and then the settling into the safe predictable space once again. But for now, I’m grooving on the zen and it ain’t bad. Ain’t bad at all.

Please Buy My Crap

So, yesterday was the big garage sale. The fact that it was the the hottest, windiest day of the year and a forest fire was blazing just five miles away didn’t stop me. Nope, I was up at 5 am and dragging crap around in front of the house.

Now there is a special way to lay out a garage sale when you’re in 25mile per hour winds. Have to be extra careful of glass items and God forbid you don’t anchor the clothes to the trees, just right. You know? So much for a nice display. I was just trying to keep everything from flying over the hill onto the freeway, lest I be the inadvertant cause of a 20 car pile up.

I was encouraged when I got some early birders who bought stuff right off. But there were long lulls of dry winds and nobody coming by. I listed the sale on Craigslist (everybody knows craigslist, right?) but I doubt any of the people who came by had anything to do with that since you end up so far down the list so fast that it ain’t funny. Luckily Roomie was in a good mood and made signs and kept going out to scout new places to hang them. I’m sure that’s the only reason anyone came off the beaten path to check out my wares. And he kept me company too (for part of the day anyway) which helped.

What was really strange is what sold. I expected things like furniture to go quickly but it didnt. In fact, most of my weirder stuff sold. Like the little elf suit I bought my dog last year so I could take pictures of her in it for xmas. A cheap clip on lamp – my old boom box, purses, costume jewelry, vhs tapes and cassettes.

To my utter shock and dismay nobody bit on the furniture – nobody needed a desk or a hutch or bookshelves, apparently. I guess if it wasn’t weird they didn’t want it. Go figure. God Bless Roomie for loading all that crap up in his truck and dragging it down to the thrift store for me. I have a trunkful of odds and ends to drop myself but there you have it.

Considering few of the ‘big ticket items’ (if one can say such a thing of a garage sale) sold, I did okay. I mean, what can you expect? You are essentially asking people to buy your crap and well if the weather isn’t nice and you’re not on a freeway off ramp, it is rather inconvenient for them to come by and pick through your possessions like black crows on a roadkill, you know? So, I got some pocket money and some gas money and I guess that is something to be grateful for.

The funny thing is that even though it feels a little weird to sell your stuff and sit on the floor in a nearly empty room, writing a post with the keyboard in your lap, it is kind of freeing to let go of all of it. Something about being down to few material goods does something for me every now and then. And really how hard is it to replace things that have no true sentimental value to you?

Though by the time 1 o’clock rolled around I was exhausted and every muscle in my body ached. I slept nine hours last night, which was good since I really needed it. I still feel a little creaky and that I’m too old for the crap but I’ll get over it.

Today, I clean and clean and then clean some more. Yay, one of my favorite activities. At least I’ll have breffy with Zelda first and a quick trip to Target for moving supplies. I love field trips, don’t you?

Anyway friends, I’m that much closer to kissing L.A. goodbye and moving onto my new life. And that’s a good thing.

Lock, Stock & Barrel

My blogging career, such as it is, has been quite the ride and I’ve really loved every minute of it. I had no idea when I started this thing up how much fun, laughs, tears and thought-provoking moments I would experience. The people I’ve met over this last almost two years are all amazing and you couldn’t be more blessed than to have met all of those I have.

The fact that total strangers have become dear friends – more than friends, family in fact, never ceases to amaze and humble me. Never in a million years would I have thought such things were possible by hooking onto this whacky ‘fad’ called blogging.

Not long ago, it dawned on me that I have done everything I can in this place. From jokes to midnight confessions. And then of course, the next thought was, ‘what next?’ The obvious answer is to move on. And that’s just what I’m doing. No, I’m not giving up blogging – I’m just taking the next step.

I’m moving, lock, stock and barrel, to a bigger, and hopefully better blogohood. Yup, I’ve taken the plunge to self-hosting. It’s not really a very far drive but I have to tell you the view is amazing. I hope like the dickens, that you’ll all be visiting me at my new home. The directions are here. And the drinks are free. 😉

And really, I just want to say thanks to everyone who ever walked through the door of this blog. Everyone who read, chatted, left a comment, gave me a link, blogrolled me – I’ve never encountered such kindness and friendship and it’s truly touched me and enriched my life. And a big thank you to WordPress for giving me this free platform for my rants and thoughts too.

So – hope to see you at the new place – real soon. Like now, would be a good time.

WC

PS: I did send out invites and I apologize to anyone I may have missed, I tried to get everyone, but I’m sure I may have missed a few.