The First O-E-L

 The first Christmas that I lived away from home, my mom sent me a bunch of things to help me celebrate away from them and in my new place.  There was an advent calendar full of tiny things to open each day, a VHS tape of her and my sisters baking cookies and showing me the tree, and some holiday decor of four trees that spelled out NOEL and ended in hearts.  I will admit now that I opened all of the advent calendar things the day I got it and watching them bake without me made me cry.  But, that decorative NOEL, I have put out every year at Christmastime for thirty years.  This year when I took it out, it no longer spelled NOEL.  Somewhere between this Christmas and last Christmas, between Texas and Illinois, I lost the N. I put it up anyway and my person and I laughed about celebrating our first O-E-L here in Illinois.  Then we laughed because if you say "O-E-L" fast, it sounds like "oh, well."  Forget Christmas!  We are celebrating OEL! Lost the N? Oh well.  Freezing cold but no snow?  Oh well.

The First O-E-L in Illinois

It has me thinking that this missing N is a common thing at holidays though.  Not necessarily the N but the feeling that we are missing something.  The feeling of holidays past we can't quite seem to replicate or the physical presence of someone who is no longer there to celebrate.  It can be a smell that we miss or a feeling or a place.  Sometimes, it can be missed enough that the rest of the holiday seems pale or passes by as just a day.  Sometimes, we try to plan in advance for what we will miss by doing something completely different than usual.  Sometimes, that works.

For the longest time, I missed holidays absolutely packed with people in a too warm house and not enough bathrooms.  I missed impatiently waiting with my cousins for Snoopy and the Red Baron to play and signify that we could finally open gifts. When I had my own kids, we made new holidays and I didn't miss the holidays of my childhood as much.  There is nothing, nothing, like the magic of a Christmas spent with small people who believe in Santa.  The sparkle! The joy!  The enchantment!  And yes, it's true that when my son found out there was no Santa, he smiled, patted my arm, and thanked me for "faking his childhood."  Still worth it when I remember him in footy pajamas shaking with excitement and my daughter waking us up at 3am to say "SANTA WAS HERE!"

After I got divorced, I spent quite a few holidays missing my kids because they were at their dad's or missing the way holidays used to be as a whole family unit.  It took awhile to get over the missing "N" and focus on what was left with my "OEL".  I will miss my kids this Christmas. I will miss them so much that I had Amazon deliver their presents to me so that I could wrap them and write "Love, Santa" with my left hand and mail them on.  A silly way to spend an extra $25 but oh, well.  My daughter texted and asked for the recipes for cookies and knowing she will be making them there, that she wants to carry on with the smells and tastes of her childhood memories, that really makes me happy.  

I think that with holidays and memories stored mainly in the heart and not the brain, it is so easy to get caught up on what seems to be missing.  You might be searching for a loud house, the smell of Crunchy Fudge Sandwiches, snow, kids waiting for Santa, a certain movie to watch, a person to hold.  You might want those things so very much that you can't picture this holiday with out it.  Like my NOEL, minus the N, it looks sort of the same but not as good as it once did.  I hope that even though your N is missing, that you get the chance to step back and see that the OEL is still there.  It might be way too soon for you to really appreciate your OEL with no N and that is okay too. 

I am happy that I have something from my first Christmas away that has survived at least one million moves.  It reminds me of how much I was and am loved by the family I moved away from.  Putting it up reminds me of how many Christmases it stood by as my kids were born and grew up.  Putting it up and laughing about no N with my person makes this new place feel more like home.  

I know we have more moves ahead of us and despite moving 170,000 times in the last five years, I also do not always pack the best.  So many of the ornaments that have ears lost their ears in this recent move.  There is a very good chance that more letters could fall off of the OEL.  I also know, it could lose all it's letters and be down to the string and I would still put it out.  I would just think "oh,well" as I stood in front of a beautiful tree of ear-less ornaments and smile about all the Christmases past.

Baby, It's Cold Inside

 The other day, it was 14 degrees when I left my house.  This is very cold, but it was okay because I was bundled up. I had on a hat and the coat I bought at REI this summer.  (this coat is amazing and I feel warm every time I think about the fact that it retails for $250 and I got it for $20!)  My person and I went to a new park to walk around and we were pretty much the only ones there.  We saw a ton of migrating birds, pelicans included(!), and with our layers and wool socks, only our cheeks were cold.  Sure, 14 degrees is cold, but look at us!  We were in it!  Embracing it!  Loving it!

pink cheeks, big smiles, can't lose

I was feeling pretty confident that winter was going to be just lovely until later that day.  Later, when I couldn't get warm in the house.  Later, when the cold seeped up through those wool sock and my toes said "Brrr!"  Later, when even my nose and fingers were cold. In the house.  It was then that I remembered that winter means always being kind of cold, even in the house.

Wait, you are saying.  Aren't you from Buffalo?  The place that had two feet of snow this weekend alone?  I am, however, let us remember though it has been one million years since I actually lived there.  Dinosaurs had recently stopped roaming the earth, my high school had a terribly racist mascot, and the Bills just had fans, not a mafia behind them.  I've spent the last three decades sweating and this body doesn't seem to know what to do with all this cold except continually say helpful things like "Brrrr!" and "It's cold!"

Also, how did I forget how dry skin gets in the cold?  Oh my God, I am like an iguana, but a saggy iguana whose skin just sort of feels terrible, flakes off, and falls like ashes to the ground.  I brave full-on cold to lotion up after a shower to no avail.  This skin is parched, cracked, and parchment-like.  My nails are brittle.  My hair is limp and doesn't really curl anymore.  I could apply lip balm every three minutes and my lips still feel like they are cracking off.  I am a limp-haired, saggy-iguana-skinned, no-lipped human, and it is only the first of December!

actual photo of me taken this morning.

I texted my brother my cold cries and he told me to bake something, make some, soup, and turn the heat up.  I did one of the three things: I made soup.  When I drink coffee or tea or eat soup, I am not cold!  Those mugs and bowls of beautiful warmth make my fingers and insides warm again.  I didn't bake this time because I was afraid I would try to eat the cold away in cookies.  I also didn't turn up the heat because heat is probably expensive and our apartment is really lacking in heaters.  We have baseboard heaters, one in the living room and one in each bedroom.  This means that out of 24 total walls, only 3 have a heater on it.  I am not great with math but this seems woefully inadequate.

My layers are many, my socks are wool, my cups are filled with warm liquid, and I am still cold.  I mentioned in the lunch room it was sure cold and someone said not to worry, it would warm up come April.  So I stabbed him.  Well, only with my eyes, but still.  My brother also mentioned something about toughening up.  I ignored him because I thought he was rude, but now I get it!! My skin is sloughing off because underneath this Texas-baked exterior is someone who will love the cold!  Someone like my neighbor who went out to the trash the other day Cousin Eddie style: robe, no shirt, or pants, and wearing slippers.  I saw this from where I was curled on the couch, under a blanket, with a hot coffee in both hands, saying helpfully to my person that "BRRR. It's cold." Yes!  This is it!  When the last iguana layer peels off, I will be reborn into a shiny, smooth, hydrated, winter goddess!  

This is great!  This will help me see past the fact that the sun begins to set at 4:30pm. I am going to be a winter goddess!  I am going to love the cold and the wind and wind chills and snow boots!  I will delight in the gray skies and bare trees and dead grass.  I will radiate happiness to my fingers and toes and that happiness will feel like warmth.  This is perfect!!

I feel so much better.  I was worried that I was wimping out very early into winter but now I see the process.  Slough, shiver, repeat.  And, if I know anything from watching every season of Alone, it is that shivering burns calories, so I am going to go ahead and bake those cookies after all!

Autumnal Awakening

 If you have never read Kate Chopin, let me highlight a little about her and her book "The Awakening".  Chopin wrote feminist literature in a time where all that was required of women was to be feminine and play their part.  Chopin couldn't play her part as her husband died and left her penniless so she wrote and she wrote about what interested her and what interested her was women living a life bigger than they were currently allowed to. In "The Story of an Hour" the main character dies of a heart attack upon learning that the husband she thought was dead was really alive.  Boom, dead.  That is a fun story to read with 16 year old students.  In "The Awakening", her main character has an affair with a younger man (scandal!) and then commits suicide by walking into the lake with her heavy dress' pockets filled with heavy stones.  No weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth like Flaubert's whiny Madame Bovary.  Just a straight walk into a cold lake with heavy pockets and a heavier purpose.  In between the affair and the death part, the character experiences her awakening.  Her sense of purpose in the world and what it meant to be a woman in her time and place.  I find that as I live up north for the first time in decades, I too am having some kind of awakening here.

Younger man?  My person is a younger man! (highly recommend).  Suicide in the sea? No, thanks.  If I am not 98 and wizened and holding a sharper tongue that I do now, I don't want to know. Three hairs left on my head and four on my chin sounds about right.  (I imagine my person reading this right now and sighing.) No, my awakening is coming with the splendor of autumn all around me.  

The splendor!

Texas does spring really well but there's nothing to say about fall down there.  Hot until November, sweaty til December, two brown leaves fall down, and it's over.  The visual cornucopia of reds, and oranges, and yellows of autumn in IL just batters my eyes until I want to weep for the stunning beauty of it all.  It is afire!  It is resplendent!  It is glorious to behold and I am beholding it! I am driving to work and want to beep my horn for the joy of the tree-lined streets of yellows and orange and red. I do not because we only beep our horn up here for impatience or anger, not joy.  I want to stop and take a picture of every tree I am finding beautiful, but that is every tree!  The prairie grasses also change color!!!  Who knew?!?!? 

This little guy tried to turn every color!

It's not just the visual either.  It is the pleasure of kicking through leaves and hearing them skitter ahead of you on the sidewalk.  The crunch as you step through them.  The sweet smell of decaying leaves and grass and somehow a little apple released and swept into a nose used to dusty grass and ragweed.  The crisp taste of apple cider that matches the crisp feel in the air.  The air that feels clean and bright and crisp all at once.  Where a soft layer is all you need and all you want.  You want to feel that fresh fall air fall over you.  Autumn is assaulting all of my senses and I am awake!

I know.  I know all this autumnal beauty is the precursor to winter. I remember. I know that both the sky and earth will be grey and muted and dead. I know the sun will barely rise before it sets and I will hibernate in the house and eat all the carbs and feel pale, and lumpy, and misshapen.  I might wear the same hoodie for days and feel that scurvy and rickets are only a day away if the sun doesn't come out again soon. I know that the air will be biting and brutal.  I know the snow will  a pain to clean off of a car and scary to drive in. I know and yeah, I know.  None of that matters because after 30 dormant years of no fall at all, I am having an autumnal awakening of epic proportions.  I am so excited about this autumn that I would hang up one of those "Happy Fall Y'all" signs and mean it.  If my kids were here, I would drag them into the woods in matching flannels to have a picture taken.  But only after we picked apples and sang some kind of autumn song and sipped cider and carved a pumpkin and had a leaf fight and smiled. (I am picturing my kids reading this and thinking how glad to not be here right now.)

If you are in a place that does autumn like this, get out there and have your own awakening!  Smell it, see it, feel it, taste it! It is too good to not carve some time out to revel in it.  Let it wash over you until you are smiling at leaves and grinning into the wind.  If you live in a place that is still flesh-eating hot, I am sorry.  I am trying to send you some of my autumn through my words.  If it isn't working, come and visit me next autumn instead!  We will crunch through leaves and eat apples and wear flannel and behold all that is autumn and feel really, really happy inside.  Oh, we will also smile while singing at autumn song, so come prepared.

Side note: I have no idea what an autumn song is, so come really prepared.

Sigh.

It's All Good

I guess because I am in a new state and working towards making new friends, I am thinking a lot about the first friend I made the last time I moved to a new state.  I was much younger then and working my first full-time job at a Harvey Hotel in Dallas.  I am not sure if I had a title other than Office Helper and I gathered faxes, filed, made copies, sent things UPS for guests and answered phones.  I do know that I did not have a desk and spent most of my day standing in the small copy room in my JCPenney dress and hose and heels.  Most people who came in would give me a smile and make their copies and go but one person from Accounting always talked to me.  I remember Mark wearing a brown suit and peach shirt and tie a lot and I remember him always commenting that maybe one day I could also have a desk.  It was never mean-spirited, just a pleasant way to remind me that I didn’t have a desk and it soon moved us onto other things to talk about.  Three months later, I was promoted to Accounting (despite claiming in the interview that I was not good at math) and sat next to Mark for the next eighteen months and that was it; first new friend made.

We were young and dumb and poor and working hard to prove we were real adults.  We talked about everything and nothing and I proved I was indeed bad at math as Mark proved he was really good and started to climb the management ladder.  We soon grew from work friends to meeting out.  We drank and danced and Blue Oyster Cult raged in the background.  The thing I quickly realized with Mark is that if you were his friend, his circle of friends became yours as well.  He would talk to me about his other friends like I knew them and by the time I met them, it was like I had always known them.  He was welcoming, caring, and constantly upbeat.  He created this world of interesting, funny, caring people and if he knew you, you got added to this world.

Mark is a giver.  Like the most generous person I know.  I really know this because at loose ends, he let me live with him in a one-bedroom apartment for eight months.  We had both moved onto different jobs and he traveled all week and home on the weekends.  I slept on the couch when he was home and when I did finally get my own apartment, I declared I would never sleep on a couch again.  Mark taught me not to be sad on a Friday night with nothing to do.  It was a night for a party of one.  We would go to Eatzi’s and buy a healthy dinner, a bottle of wine, and either ice cream or cookie dough and eat/drink it all while watching a movie and talking through most of it.  (The party of one came in when I realized I could do this on my own as well).  We lived together and still went out together and the only time I remember Mark being mad at me was when I couldn’t lift an entertainment center up three flights of stairs with him and we had to flip it end over end to get it up there.  

Mark is gracious.  He has sat in lawn chairs at a table to eat lasagna I made and didn’t tease me about it until years later. He brought me to Easter at his Nonna’s house with his entire family, who, like Mark, took me right in.  Except for Nonna.  She did not like the look of me and any time I asked anything, she would reply that “there was more sweet tea” in the kitchen.  I drank a lot of sweet tea that day.  Mark went trick-or-treating with me and my kids when Will was very tiny and cried the entire time we were out and it was not much fun at all.  He went and stayed and said it was “all good.”  Because he loved me, he loved my kids and they loved him and Uncle Mark has been their friend too.

Mark is funny.  We did couple-dinners once a month for years with other friends and our table would drink a lot of wine and laugh and laugh.  Laughter until you can’t breathe.  Laughter where tears pour out of your eyes and you look around with blurry vision and think ‘this is life.” Laughter where other tables close by either hate you tremendously or wish that they knew you and were laughing too.  Mark’s humor is a lot of self-deprecation, saying things you wouldn't think would come out of his mouth, making the best out of the worst, and just his delivery.  There is only one time I think his humor failed and maybe the only time I remember being mad at him.  We ate a lot of free cake at the hotel we worked at and after a year of it, I looked like I ate a lot of free cake.  I was describing the bathing suit I had just bought and said it showed my stomach.  Mark, a forkful of cake an inch from his mouth, wrinkled his nose, sneered, and said “Girl, I have seen your stomach.”  As I write that, I realize I might still be mad at him for that.

Feeling cute, might drink some beer, high-kick a bee....

For thirty years, Mark Miller has been my first friend and my always-friend in Texas.  He has been there in all of my good, bad, dramatic and I know he always will be.  He will call me and talk about this or that or anything and I will laugh and do the same.  Recently, he texted to ask if I had a few minutes to talk. I was instantly nervous.  I thought it must have something to do with his parents.  (Side note: no matter how many times I move, his mom sends me a Christmas card and handmade peanut butter eggs at Easter and I love that woman).  I guess I forget how old we are and that bad news can be about us now too.  I called and listened to Mark tell me he had cancer.  Probably renal cancer with a tumor and nodes and other gross cancer words.  And I froze thinking about how this wonderful, beautiful person could be filled with this.  Alternating between tears and laughing, he explained what had happened, what would happen, and when.  He is, of course, upbeat.  He will have his kidney removed on Monday and more treatments after that.  “It is what it is,” he says.  I want to instantly fix it for him.  I tell him maybe being down a kidney will equate to a good 5 pound weight loss.  I ask if he needs me to come down to Texas and he tells me he has all the good-intentioned, overbearing women he needs right now.  

So all I have is my words to tell Mark, and everyone, what a joy he is in my life.  What a difference his friendship made to an out-spoken, brash young girl from Buffalo.  I hope that everyone has a Mark in their life and if you don’t, I will share mine, because if anything, Mark has shown me there is always room for one more friend.  And if you do have a friend like Mark, you remember how special that is and how good this world has been to you.  I told Mark I would call him every few days and tell him weird things that happen teaching middle school during his recovery.  This week alone, a student told me he was allergic to my talking and I tucked my dress into my underwear and didn’t notice until I was out in the hallway.  I really hope that when I do tell him that story that he sneers and says “Girl, I have seen your legs.”  I won’t be mad this time; I will laugh and be thankful that he is there to listen and keep me humble.  

 

Shiny and New

 Today, I went to the DMV to trade in my Texas license for my Illinois license.  I was unable to do so because I needed my birth certificate or my passport, both of which I somehow threw out while purging for this cross-country move.  Yep.  Tossed them along with my SS card, the kids' birth certificates, my marriage certificate, and divorce decree. I am still mad at myself for doing that. I could have gotten an ID, but not a verified ID, and everyone needs a verified one by May and why on earth would I come back to do this again in a few months?  I was also unable to change my plates over because I needed a ridiculous amount of paperwork I didn't have.  The woman looked me in the eye, sighed, and said "Welcome to Illinois."  I went to my car and sighed and then cried and missed Texas.  My heart was wailing like Sandy Cheeks in a Spongebob episode, "I want to go h-o-o-o-o-o-me, to Texas."

I am very glad to be here with my person and doing this adventure with love and laughter and a beautiful partnership. The part with him and being new and doing this together?  Beautiful. A+. Chef's kiss.  The flip side where absolutely everything in our life is new?  That is where it gets sticky.  New is exciting!  New is an adventure!  New is scary!  New is also exhausting.  Where should we eat?  We don't know!  Best place to grocery shop?  Still can't tell! Should I grind my teeth into oblivion at night or find a dentist?  Obviously, I made an appointment but I did spend some time thinking about how I don't want to find a new dentist and that this one better not try to pry all my old fillings up and tell me I need new ones like the last new dentist.  Scary was finding a new hair person and eyebrow threader.  I'm no more vain than any other middle-aged woman whose body is falling apart, however,  I was moved into action by not wanting to look like a sea witch with a unibrow.  I am loyal when I find good service and I have had my eyebrows threaded by the same amazing woman for at least fourteen years. I felt like I was cheating on her even if she is 1000 miles away.  My hair turned out and my eyebrows did too. I am sure the dentist will be fine and the new doctor can sign their name on my much-needed Zoloft refill as well as my last doctor.  

New choice after new choice after new choice is not as liberating as one would think.  Last week, we found an amazing Indian place to order food. We were thrilled with dinner and I obsessed about the cauliflower all week long.  My person mentioned it was expensive but I was chewing in bliss and missed that, I guess.  I went to order it again last night and sucked all the air out of the room when I saw how much it was.  That is a once-a-month treat, tops, not every Friday.  I sat there and just wanted food I knew.  I wanted tasty, inexpensive Tarka.  I wanted a Chicken Fundido taco from Taco Deli.  I wanted to sit with a bowl of Torchy's queso on my lap and swim tortilla chips through it and ingest 10,000 calories before I even opened my taco.  New is fun, but after a long week of work, sometimes you really just want to eat your weight in queso.

School is all new too.  We have gone from teaching high school to teaching middle school.  Honestly, some days it feels like teaching in an entirely new language.  Yes, my personal children were once middle schoolers and I remember that age.  However, I was never in a room with 26 of them following their lunch and trying to get them seated, not touching each other, and not yelling weird words they made up across the room as I tried to impart directions.  The transition time is a nightmare and don't ever, ever let them have a moment of downtime. They can also be very sweet and I am enjoying how they actually listen to what I have to say one-on-one.  That is really nice.  And that most of them actually read during silent reading time!

I am also getting used to knowing everyone I worked with very well to being the new person no one knows well.  It speaks a lot to my school that so many people have been there 10, 20, 30 years. It also makes me feel very new and finding where I fit.  Everyone is welcoming and kind and I eat lunch with people but I miss the sense of familiarity that came with working in the same place for eleven years.  The way I knew students and staff and they knew me.  I am not saying I was a rock star but a B-list celebrity for sure.   I feel very lucky with my school because my person's school is not as lovely as mine and he has to do a million more new teacher things and all that new is exhausting to even hear about.

I realize I haven't mentioned my kids.  That is not a new missing; I've been missing them for a few years now.  But I do miss them in a new way.  I am trying to decide how to do the holidays and when I come back and where I will stay and should it be right at Christmas or before?  Do I fly to Dallas and get the boy and drive to Austin?  Or fly to Austin and have him choo-choo train there?  All new choices.  All new feelings to the holidays and they aren't even here yet.

I know that things will get settled.  That we will find a place for queso and another for Indian that isn't so pricey.  We will find dentists and doctors and all the service people we need.  And we will like some more, some less, and everything won't be new, new, new. Things will start to feel familiar and comfortable and not as exhausting.  Until then though, I will just let all the newness swirl and swirl and swirl until I am overwhelmed and then cry like Sandy Cheeks when I need to. Because after I had a good car cry, I took myself to Starbucks and got something familiar.  After that, I came home and crawled back into bed with my person and told him about all the things and ended up laughing and that felt very right.  

 

This Ain't Texas

 Overall, many things about this move have been so very good.  I am with my person, we both have good jobs, and the weather is GLORIOUS.  I know, I know, my time is coming, but right now, OMG!  I open the patio door each morning and am greeted with a cool breeze that seems to say "I am glad you are alive, here is some fresh air".  This is much nicer that the air in Texas in August that yells "Suffer for the sins of the world" while blasting heat non-stop, day and night.  I will take this.  Also very good are the neighborhood walks.  We can both walk and drive to beautifully maintained trails that circle ponds and lakes and rivers.  The flowers right now are insane and the wildlife is abundant.  

See?  Pretty!

Also good was my dinner last Friday night.  I do try to eat healthfully most of the week but it was a long week with back to school and all new work people and students and a treat was in order.  Look at this plate!  This is my dinner!  Is that Cheez-Whiz squirted into a cup as a condiment?  I think it was and I dipped each fry into and thought two things: processed cheese and yum.  The Italian Beef Steak?  Nothing healthy on there.  White bread, red meat, salty and vinegary peppers.  I may have cried a little each time I had a bite.  So, so good.  I was very proud of myself for not eating it all at once and finishing it for breakfast.  All about the balance.

Thank you, Portillo's.

Many new things to still try and see and do but I am really stuck a little on three things that remind me every day that I am not in Texas.  First, driving.  Everyone driving here is in a terrible rush.  Got to go fast!  And if you are not driving fast, or on two of four wheels, or dare to make a complete stop at a stop sign, the honks begin.  I have been honked at more in the last two weeks than in the last ten years.  No exaggeration.  Traffic is always heavy here and I guess everyone is going so fast to make that one light, that one turn, in the hopes of getting just a tiny bit ahead.  In Texas, they also drive fast but no one honks.  They might flip you off or run you off the road but all without touching the horn.  

Alongside driving is gas.  Shoooooeeeee the cost of gas!!  Is there not an oil reserve in one of the Great Lakes we could tap into up here and reduce the cost of gas?  Also, all the signs at gas stations lie.  You think you are paying the giant number displayed but you really pay the tiny number underneath it.  The savings is for their members.  The hell I am going to be a member of a gas station.  I pledge my allegiance to whatever place means I don't have to change lanes or get across the street.

$4.29!!!! A gallon, not total.

Next up on my "this is weird", people throw absolutely everything away in the dumpsters.  I am used to Austin where it takes a signed letter from the governor and two donated pints of blood to put anything in a dumpster besides a bag of trash.  As I moved in at the end of the month when people were moving out, the dumpster teemed with all kinds of furniture.  Like furniture, furniture meaning entire couches, living room sets, etc.  My absolute favorite day was when the piano made it to the trash pile.  A piano!!!  I was so tempted to roll it inside and proudly show my person that I got us a piano just to see his face.  Imagine coming home to me playing Chariots of Fire on a piano that was not here when you left.  (Chariots of Fire because I memorized it at age ten and can't unlearn it:DGABAF#.) Too much work for a moment of silliness, so I didn't.  But a piano!!

Piano proof!

The final thing that really almost has me in an uproar is that I cannot get a library card anywhere!!  We apparently live in an unincorporated area that no library will claim.  I am unsure what unincorporated means and keep waiting for Doc Holliday to stroll by saying, "I'm your huckleberry."  (Actually, I am kind of always waiting for that.)  I can get a card at the closest library to our apartment but because I am unincorporated trash, I have to pay a portion of one month's rent.  It would be about $300 for something that should be free! I think that is usurious and I won't do it.  If I was an e-reader it might not be that big of a deal.  I like a real book though. I need to crack the spine and dog-ear the pages and hold it close to my face and smell the paper and glue and author's sweat and tears.  So, don't tell me about the good books you are reading, send them to me so I can start my own library.

Big moves mean big changes; good and different and bad.  I am really only putting the price of gas and no library card under bad though.  I love the dumping dumpsters!  What freedom!  The end of the month is coming up and I am going to be on the lookout for treasures.  And this time, if I find another piano, I will absolutely roll that thing in the house just to be funny.

There's a Tear in My Beer

In the past few weeks, I have noticed that I have been listening to country music a lot.  Spotify suggested it, I clicked on it, and that has been my go-to car listening for weeks now.  I haven't listened to country music since the first year I lived in Texas and most songs seem to revolve around the artist spelling words out for us or songs about fun rivers and county fairs.   This Spotify-made list has classic songs from Dolly and Willie on there as well as new artists.  I cannot get the song "Last Night" by Morgan someone out of my head.  The song starts with the chorus!  Bold move! "Last night we let the liquor talk", I mean who can't relate to that? "I can't remember everything we said...".  Can this man see into my troubled soul and know that when I wake up hot and sweaty in the middle of the night after drinking too much I immediately wonder where my purse is and what came out of my mouth?  "but we said it all."; that is me any day of the week, drinking does not have to happen.  As I wondered why I was listening to this song yet again, I began to put it all together.  I am coming to the end of my Texas era, it is only natural in would be country music playing me out.

In four days, I will move to IL to be with my person!!  I am so excited!  We both have jobs!  A nice apartment! He has spent the summer finding hikes and walks and places to shop at and go.  I can't wait to be there with him and do this life with him.  I am giddy, and anticipatory, and excited!  SO excited! But, I am also sad.  And I know I can be two things at once because my friend Liz has told me that two things can be true at the same time.  And because I am.  I have lived in Texas longer than I lived in NY.  Like a decade longer.  I am not one of those people who say, or have cross-stitched on a pillow in my home, that I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.  I don't say it because it is annoying and I don't have it cross-stitched because the only thing cross-stitched in my home says "Sucks to Suck", because it does.  I also don't quote Davy Crockett and say "You may all go to hell and I am going to Texas" because that is such a sick 1800's burn only Crockett should say it and because, well, Texas didn't end so well for him.(ahem, Alamo)

I am sad I couldn't put picture with Crockett and sexy eyebrows here instead, but it wasn't free.

So while I am SO excited, I am also taking time to see how I will miss Texas.  I will miss its tacos and BBQ.  I will miss its beautiful spring weather and wildflowers.  I will miss how everyone is always speeding.  I will miss a lightning storm that lights up the sky.  I will miss a glorious sunset spreading itself over a soccer field. I will miss my cozy classroom on the third floor.  The thing I will miss most though, after tacos, is people.  People I have been friends with since my kids were little.  People I have worked with.  People who have seen me at my best and my worst.  People I shared beers and stories and holidays with.  I cannot even start to think about how I will miss being close by for my kids.  

I have spent a good portion of the last week running around town and seeing people before I leave.  We talk and laugh and cry a little.  We hug and say "see you soon".  I didn't get to see the first friend I made in Texas so long ago when we were both paid $6/hr to dress like we were going to a funeral and work in a hotel, but Mark will always be my first friend in Texas and will always be my friend in Texas.  And I realize that all these people I am hugging goodbye will still be my friends in Texas.  And I can come back at any time and see them and eat tacos!

It is hard to close out an era.  It is sad to not see people you are used to seeing.  However, you can't have adventure if you stay in the same place.  And in this case, adventure also means love.  Sigh.  Swoon!  One friend said "it is like a fairy tale!" and another said "Man, you really wore him down".  Again, two things true at the same time!

I came to Texas a 20-year old kid with big bangs and believing that Taco Bell was Mexican food.  I have learned and grown and moved from all around Dallas to all around Austin.  I have marveled at a beautiful Texas hike and cursed the August sun.  I have raised my kids here.  I have really lived a good portion of my life here and a good life here. People have asked why I moved to Texas and I tell them that it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Thirty years later, I can say it was a great idea.

Trip, Trap, Trip, Trap

On a trip to see my sister and family in NC last week, we went on a very sweaty hike.  It was a pretty NC hike forested with green trees and carpeted with pine needles. There was some incline and decline and a lake and a whisper of a breeze off the lake which we needed desperately because while it was not incredibly hot, it was insanely humid.  There were a couple of small bridges to cross and as we got to the first one, I did what I always do when crossing a small foot bridge: I said "Trip, trap, trip, trap" and my sister laughed right away and knew I was talking about the troll from "Three Billy Goats Gruff".  (which if you have not read this amazing piece of literature daily to children from the ages of 2-5, you are missing out on a grumpy old troll and some very smart goats and the compulsion to say "trip, trap, trip, trap" any and every time you cross a footbridge.) We hiked on and at the end of the three miles everyone was glad we had a small adventure and I said I only hated five minutes of that hike and we got ice cream to celebrate all the calories we had sweated off.  A perfect Sunday!

At the airport the next day, I was thinking about this trip and other trips to see my sister.  It is always a good trip.  We eat good food and drink great wine and do small adventures and, as it turns out, a lot of sweating.  Hot yoga, hot hikes, etc.  On a trip prior to this one, we drank alot, alot of red wine at night and the next morning went to aerial yoga.  There I was, hungover, and hanging from a silk scarf from the sky while contorting my body into weird positions.  I would file that experience under "do not recommend."  That trip, like this one, was a good trip where I spent time with some of my favorite people.

As I waited at the gate for my plane though, I couldn't help but feel a little trapped.  Trapped among too many people, trapped waiting for things I was not in control of, trapped waiting for a restroom.  I only fly Southwest so I was in trappings that I knew, but traps nonetheless. Trapped waiting for my letter and number.  Trapped waiting for people who haven't flown in twenty years to board and stow their luggage.  I like to sit closer to the front so I often take a middle seat and am trapped between two people I have never seen before.  On both flights, both sets of people were real armrest-hoggers so I felt even more caged. 

Squished between two healthy strangers, I closed my eyes and thought about my Western adventure last year.  A trip to see family and then trapped with the rest of America to seek adventures.  Trip, trap, trip, trap.  I didn't want to experience the beauty of nature or national monuments with other people and especially not hoards of people who obviously hadn't left their own home in ten years and were raising feral children.  I am not sure when the rest of America became so abhorrent to me but it does make me wish I could plan trips when everyone else is too busy to go.  As I write this, I realize I am very similar to the grumpy old troll wondering who is trip, trapping over his bridge.  In my case, I am wondering why all of these people are here too.

Trip, trap, trip, trap.  In order to take a trip, you risk the trap.   Maybe it's the trap of the interstate, or plane delays, or forced small talk with a chatty seat mate.  Maybe it's overpriced food or wondering why you can't have an entire can of Diet Coke and only get that Dixie cup full on the plane.  Maybe it's too many people wanting to do the same things or the hurry up and wait that makes you feel trapped.  In those trapped moments, I like to close my eyes and think of the trip ahead of me or behind me.   When I open them, I can see good things happening in the sea of humanity ahead of me and that helps: people helping strangers, families laughing together, an older couple still holding hands.  

When I fly to Chicago next week to see my person and am so impatient with the trap because I just want to be there and with him already, I will try to think more of the TRIP than the trap.  Because, really, the TRIP always outweighs the trap.  TRIP, trap, TRIP, trap.  Time with people you love, some minor inconveniences, taking adventures and making memories, crying kids on planes, wanting to die at aerial yoga, no arm rests.  I think that in addition to saying "trip, trap, trip, trap" at every footbridge in my life, I will also start saying it as I walk down the jetbridge to my plane.  If nothing else, it will make me think of reading to my kids when they were little or my sister.  And, if I say it out loud, people might think I am really weird and not sit next to me and I can get an armrest!

Always worth the trip and the traps.

  

She's a Good Girl

One day, about twelve years ago, I left my house to go to my part-time library job.  When I left, I had one dog and when I returned, I had two dogs.  To be fair, I did receive a phone call about maybe a puppy with excited kids clamoring in the background and I believe I was neither excited that it should happen or adamant that it not happen. Ambivalent, I guess you would say.  Until I got home and saw this face.

OMG. And those ears!!

And just like that, I was in love.  I loved her stinky-sweet puppy breath and her fat little belly, and the way she would bound through the grass outside. I loved how she snuggled in tight and the way she shouldered disappointment when the older dog wouldn't let her snuggle in tight; she would just go look for a person instead. She brought laughter and merriment and alternated crazy puppy energy for sweet puppy naps.

Austin Pets Alive said that she was found in a farmer's field all alone and we sighed about her rough start.  Poor Bailey!  We wondered if that was why she was so afraid of rainstorms and thunder.  It did not explain why she hated balls being tossed at her.  She did not love a game of catch, that is for sure.  We tried.  She would watch our other dog, Grommit, catch and return and looked like she wanted to join in on the great dog fun.  You would throw it to her, she would watch it fall close to her, and then run.  Grommit would look at her with complete disapproval.  Maybe her abandonment in a field also made her the nervous girl she was.  In addition to rainstorms, she didn't like other dogs, a lot of people, being pet with two hands, car rides, anything thrown in the air, or being alone for too long.  

Austin Pets Alive also said Bailey was a lab mix.  I think every stray they have in there is labeled lab mix.  Bailey was definitely a German Shepherd and something.  Probably some kind of herding dog.  She had a nose that would poke you from here to tomorrow, or her favorite, from bed to her food bowl.  Poke, poke, poke.  100% of her strength was concentrated in her nose.  She would use it to poke open doors, to poke on doors, to poke you where she wanted you.  Poke, poke, poke.  She eventually learned not to poke her nose and head into bushes on a walk when she poked her nose in and got a cat scratch to the eye.  For a time, we even thought she must be part cat because her favorite place to lay on a couch was along the top of it.

Just lounging.

Bailey took over our home with her sweet face, love of being pet, and ability to bring joy.  She became a reading buddy to Will and would lie next to him patiently as he read to her from a book.  She became a confidant and consoler to all.  Kids could confess their heartaches to her and she would lick away their tears.  She was my constant companion and ready for a walk at any time for as long as I wanted.  She loved all food, especially popcorn, and loved to be in the way in the kitchen.  All of my recipes included the extra step of "Step over Bailey".

The thing she hated more than thunderstorms though? Squirrels.  Oh, she waged a war on squirrels when we had a backyard.  Bark, run, bark, run, bark, climb trees, bark, run.  No exaggeration!  This dog climbed trees on her hunt to eradicate her home of squirrels.  It was always a shock to look out a window and see her casually coming down a tree.  Twice, this dog went into the backyard whole, and twice she came back with terrible cuts that needed stitches.  Both times, we had no idea what happened.  The second time I took her, I am sure the vet was going to call the CPS version of animal care on me.

Only tree-climbing dog I have ever known.

Bailey moved and moved and moved one more time with me.  Always my constant companion.  She slept at my feet every night and would move until her toes touched mine.  She was comfort and familiarity in every new place.  She would melt into the kids when they came back to visit.  Just sinking into them and sighing and I knew exactly how she felt.  Bailey accepted it when we got two kittens.  I don't think she was ever excited about them but she was very tolerant.  The boy cat loved her so much and followed her everywhere from day one to the  point where we now believe he thinks he is a dog.  He answers to his name and comes running when the door opens.  I thank Bailey for that.  

It had become apparent this last year that Bailey was slowing down.  She was losing weight.  She didn't want to go for walks as much and definitely not as far.  I commented it was like living with an old woman who was very furry and surprisingly agile at times.  And she was an old woman.  She was 12.  She had raised kids and watched them go off to start their lives.  She had moved and moved and moved.  She still hated squirrels but now it was harder to get up and bark at them.  

It is always hard to know when it is time to help a dog move on.  My own selfishness of wanting Bailey with me probably delayed my decision a bit.  She is eating and pooping and all is well, I told myself.  Until I left for a week and came back and saw her.  Really saw her.  Frail and small and hurting.  This dog who had brought us endless joy was now suffering and that wasn't fair at all.  And so it was decided, and it was done, and I am just so sad.

I know it will take awhile to get used to a house without Bailey. I hold my breath a minute as I turn the key in the lock to remind myself that she is not running to greet me. I dropped food on the kitchen floor and as I bent down to pick it up, I cried.  I haven't had to pick food up off the floor; Bailey was always there to eat it up.  I haven't vacuumed yet because her tumbleweeds of fur will be gone and no more will be dropping to replace them.  The boy cat is taking it hard too. He meows looking for her non-stop.

Dogs give us so much in this life.  They give us that constant companion, that built-in best friend, that touchstone of belonging.  They make us interact with other dog people or people they sniff inappropriately as we walk.  They teach us patience, they help us keep a schedule, and they teach our kids responsibility.  There is no dog without a lot of poop to pick up.  They bring out what is best in us because they see it.  They love us when we look bad, feel bad, and even smell bad.  They fill a house with their muddy feet and fur and toys and treats.  They fill our hearts with joy and laughter and love.  They show us what unconditional love looks like.

Everyone talks about dogs and cats crossing the rainbow bridge after death and leading an idyllic life.  No pain, no sadness, just them living their best lives.  When I am not being selfish and thinking how much I miss her, I do like to think of Bailey living her best life.  I know for her it would mean finally catching a squirrel.  So maybe tonight when I go to bed and stretch out my feet and don't feel hers push back, I will think of her in a tree, catching her squirrel and feel a little less sad.

Constant companion.  Best Girl.

School's Out, Really Out

 I have always liked the cyclical nature of a school year: the excitement of the beginning, the drag of mid-year, the sweetness of the year coming to a close.  It feels very normal and I know what to expect and that each school year I will start off tanned and happy and relaxed and end each year tired and kind of fluffy and ready for a break.  Sometimes, though, there are surprises within the cycles. Things like global pandemics, or new leadership, or district initiatives.  Sometimes, I am more excited for the end of the year than the beginning or more sad at the end than I anticipated.  There is a constant amidst the change and it is comforting.  This year, though, I am throwing a real wrench into the works; I am saying goodbye to a job I love, with colleagues I think of as family, and I am leaving.

Oh, I must have a new job, you are thinking. Well.  Not yet.  But I will.  Am I crazy, you are asking?  Maybe.  I have never left a job without having another job lined up, mostly in place, and ready to go.  Would I be shocked, horrified, and completely anxiety-ridden if one of my own kids did this?  Yes. 100%.  But I am not a kid.  I am an adult and there are very good reasons for leaving, even if it is hard to leave.

I have applied to over 100 jobs on LinkedIn and various sites trying to reinvent myself as a designer, a trainer, an HR professional in some capacity.  I was hoping for a remote job with lots of money.  About rejection 85, I started to remember, and was reminded by sweet students sad about the year being up, what a good teacher I am.  That what I am doing is important, that the connections I make with kids help them and fuel me.  All of the jobs I looked at had some sort of teaching aspect to them; it is what I am drawn to. I can think about other jobs and I can wish that I made more money. I know what I do best is teach.  I feel pretty confident that I will be able to get a new teaching job and start the cycle of the school year again, just in a new place.

My person, who I have mentioned before but not often because he is a private person, has moved and I am going to move too.  And we are going to live together and teach wherever and have a life together outside of Chicago in Naperville, IL.  When we left to drive him up there last week, we laughed and laughed about how neither of us had a job or even a confirmed place to live.  We firmed up the apartment when we got there and the jobs will come too.  The important part is that we laughed on a long road trip with a howling cat.  We laugh a lot.  He is very funny, I am hilarious, and we find humor in the weirdest things.  He is so many things and my best friend and yes, of course, I am going to move to a very cold place with bad traffic and some very bland food if it means we are together.

There are worse places to move.

It is hard to leave my kids, even though they are up in Dallas and will be for the foreseeable future.  Mom-guilt is real but I remind myself that they are 22 and 20 and they are about to start their own lives too.  And that I am still their mom no matter where I live.  It is also hard to leave the school I have been at for eleven years.  Walking out of my classroom felt surreal.  I left a lot of things on the walls because it made me too sad to take them down. Sorry to the next teacher who moves in there.  I love a lot of the people I worked with, liked most of the rest, and compiled  a few into my nemeses pile.  They watched my meteoric rise from library to teacher to coach and accepted me in every new position.  They helped me get my own kids through high school there.  

So while I will not be having my usual summer adventure based on trips to CO, I will have an even bigger adventure getting ready to move. I have lived in Texas longer than I lived in Buffalo.  No, I am not ready for a Chicago winter.  It was 65 and rainy when I left there yesterday and I thought “Brr!”  I am nervous, I do wish I already had a job lined up, or that I could tuck my giant, grown kids up under one arm and make them go too, but mostly, I am excited!  I am ready to start the school-year cycle at a new school. I am ready for a real fall with crisp air and leaves that change color.  And I am really ready to be there with my person as we acclimate to living up north and laughing together while we do.  

This Apartment Life

 You know when you are in your twenties and you are moving every year and it is exciting and fun because three friends and a pick-up truck will move everything you own for a pizza and some beer?  You are generally moving in with someone or moving out on your own, or moving to a better place and the move is part of the excitement. You are showing the world that you are succeeding, you are conquering, and you have the square footage to prove it!

Can I just say that moving in your late forties and at fifty is absolutely none of these things? I had a wonderful, beautiful, peaceful apartment I would have stayed in for years had the owner of it not wanted it back to let her mother live there.  Good luck on those death stairs, old woman, I thought bitterly as I crept down the death stairs for the last time.  It had windows on windows and the light streamed in and two patios: one if I wanted to have weird conversations with passing neighbors and one if I did not.  It was insulated, it was convenient, it was pretty, and I had to leave it. It made me almost physically sick thinking of taking all of my belongings, putting them in boxes, and carting them across town for the third time in four years. Running low on energy, time, and the will to keep looking, I jumped at the next apartment rental that looked decent.  I moved and not any of it was exciting and none of it made me feel like I had a lot to show the world, even with the increased square footage. 

Said death stairs

If you haven’t lived in an apartment for awhile and maybe are waxing nostalgic about it, you remember nothing about apartments.  Apartments are loud.  They are filled with people you can hear sneeze through the walls but won’t look you in the eye in the parking lot.  Apartments are mailrooms and a gym that looks promising but also holds magazines from 2017.  Apartments are not knowing why the power keeps going off or why the water is so hot one day and cold the next.  It is hearing people come home and leave and yell and live their lives on top of yours.  It is someone wearing cement shoes living above you and you being the person with cement shoes to the people below you.  It is communal living without the community.

I am not a fan of this new place. They really saved on insulation when they built this place because they just didn’t use any. I can hear everything, everything, EVERYTHING.  My next-door neighbor has terrible sleep apnea.  I know because I hear him snore through our shared bedroom wall.  My cement shoe neighbor upstairs has taken on an exercise regime that has him run back and forth, back and forth, open the sliding glass door, slam the sliding glass door, drop something heavy and repeat. I hate him almost violently and I am not 100% sure what he looks like.  I believe him to be the guy who looks like he played a lot of rugby and lost but am not entirely sure.

We have had a lot of boiler issues here and the hot water is touch and go.  This weekend it is entirely gone. As in, I have no hot water until maybe Monday when the part they ordered comes in.  When I called the office to ensure I really would not have hot water until Monday, the stressed and bored woman there told me they were going to open up some empty apartments for people to shower in.  I laughed and laughed!!  I don’t speak to these people in the parking lot; no way am I showering after them.  I am supposed to queue up behind cement shoes and sleep-apnea guy?  No thank you.  When I told her that I pay way too much to live like I am camping, she passed along the email to her manager so I could let him know how this boiler issue is ruining my life. He will be getting a lengthy email from me complete with how he should not charge me for water this month.  I might include such lies that as a teacher, I can really only use hot water to its fullest on the weekend and now he has ruined that for me and that after a week of serving others, I came home to a cold and cold-faucet only apartment.  

As a woman of inadequate means, apartment life is going to mine for a long, long time.  I will try to focus on the perks of apartment life.  I will list the things I like about this apartment.Nah, not today.  Today, I feel like looking up curses to immobilize cement shoes (just temporarily; I am not a monster) and use zillow to see where my next move will take me.  I hope that they have a “hot water” option to minimize my search.

Another Year Over

I have been trying for the past few days to come up with a good way to describe and wrap up the past year. I wanted to make it shiny and fun and poignant. I wanted to unveil to you a McMahon Unwrapped much like a Spotify Wrapped with Best of, Favorite, and hours spent living a life. And while I do have best of and favorites, hours spent living a life requires a calculator, so that is out. I keep coming up with a year that was kind of good, kind of bad, and, overall, just a year. 

I’m grateful for this year. I had small adventures and large ones .I got to see amazing new places in WY, CO, and SD. I got to see all of my siblings and parents at the same time. I had adventures that I wrote about and some I have kept to myself because, well, they are mine. I have had joy and laughter and a milestone birthday surrounded by friends. I have had wins in the sports I coach and any day I can get a teenager to put down their phone and listen to me talk about literature is also a win. I have had happiness and contentment settle over me and leave me feeling peaceful and smiling. I have wondered at the beauty of snow, ice, mountains, and rivers. I have climbed and walked and hiked and moved through this Earth to see and do things. I have had excitement and wonder and anticipation. I have laughed with my head thrown back and for the world to hear.

I have had losses. I have cried and hurt and healed. I have cried and hurt and remain hurting. I have heard bad diagnoses; I have seen what it can and will do to a person I love. I have heard words I would rather not hear. I have felt inefficient, confused, and lackluster. I have felt like the things I do are not enough. I have felt tired to my very bones and depth of my soul. I have seen terrible things and heard worse. I have missed my kids until it hurts and keeps hurting. I have simply sat and stared and sighed. There are times where I just existed. Times when I forgot I was important or what I was doing was important. I have felt my heart hollow out. I have been scared, afraid, and hesitant. And with all of these things, just like that, another year over.

this tired.

There are always things we hope for when one thing ends and a new one begins. We make a big deal of saying “this year I will…” or “I will never…”. I don’t seem to have any of those right now. I wish for the things I always wish for: healthy, happy kids, a Bills’ Super Bowl win, and someone to stumble across my blog and offer me silly amounts of money to write for them. I wish certain things wouldn't happen: a hot summer like the last one, Donald Trump on any kind of ballot, yet another move to yet another apartment. 

I make no claims on this upcoming year. I know it will be a year, like the last one, where the good and the bad both attend. I will love and be loved. I will hurt and be hurt. I will laugh and cry. I will grow and feel stagnant. I will be an adventurer and a homebody. I will make friends and lose friends. I will delight and offend. I will succeed and fail. I will know things and learn things and forget other things. I will be confident and nervous. I will have great fun and great anxiety. In all of this, I hope I am present and acknowledging both good and bad as it happens and making room for what comes next. And in experiencing all of these things, in being a mom and a partner and a teacher and a coach and a human, I know it will seem like no time at all before this year is over too.