Sailing my ship a life long journey

Monday, April 30, 2012

“Mondays can be miserable.” Uh huh.

There’s nothing like being informed at 9 a.m. on the first day of the workweek that my home septic system needed to be dug up and repaired.

I would be lying if I said this monkey wrench news didn’t cause me to expel words from my mouth that would count as improper use of the English language.

Even the chickadees and robins went scurrying to the treetops when I stormed around like a steaming locomotive this morning. And all I could hear was my lovely late grandmother uttering the words,  “There’s always something.”

As I sit here on this otherwise sunny and promising Monday, now at 10:30 a.m., as Adele’s voice blasts “Set Fire to the Rain” from my speaker system, I’m still trying to find some blue sky in my mind.

I looked up at a quote I have posted on my desk by Louisa May Alcott, “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship.”

I cranked the music up and thought “Really? I’ve had enough storms for a while, thanks. And as far as my ship is concerned, I don’t need another lesson.”

What I do need is a holiday, by cracky.

By the time this rant is hot off the press, I’ll have but five more sleeps until I step out of my comfort zone and into an airplane with 334 other passengers with an overseas destination.

My luggage (one big old blue suitcase from 1970s) has yet to be filled to capacity. Of course if I did that I’d have nothing to wear for the rest of the week! As it is I’m scrapping about 30 lbs of needless attire from my suitcase so that I can haul home my quota of rocks and sand from the south coast of Wales.

I’m a big fan of travel guru Rick Steves and I have his recommended “Packing List for Women” pasted to my bedroom mirror and another copy of it in my luggage in case I forget what I’m supposed to bring home.

Remember, we are dealing with a clueless green thumb world traveler here. If I didn’t read up on this all this stuff I wouldn’t have known that I am not supposed to dress for travel as if I’m on a photo shoot for the cover of “Vogue” magazine. Who knew! Now I’m free to wear my gumboots and a straw hat as I stroll through the airport in Amsterdam during my 10-hour lay over there.

I also wouldn’t have known anything about the Warsaw Convention, which I understand has been around since 1929. I had managed to get by in life knowing nothing about it (probably because I never fly) until I read the fine print with a magnifying glass, listed under “liability for international carriage of persons, luggage or goods“ on my plane ticket.

I would rather not use air travel and liability in the same sentence if you don’t mind.

Point A to Point B to Point A. Thank you. In one piece. With my suitcase on the carousel at both ends. Safely. That is all.

I can see anxiety medicine in my carry on bag being added to the list, Rick.

But truth be told . . . wait a minute, I always tell the truth. Still . . . truth be told I am about to do something I’ve only ever dreamed about. In my mind’s eye, I could not have predicted a trip to anywhere other than Virginia, Minnesota for groceries, let alone an excursion to Wales for nine days in May.

I’m so excited and full of anticipation I’m going to need gravity boots to keep me from floating.

However, don’t for one minute think I’m also not scared out of my wits. I am. After all I’m a control geek and doing this is not remotely within the realm of what I have power over. If it were, I’d be getting there by canoe.

Oh I see. This is a “learning to sail my ship” sort of thing.

As I wrote in my column a few weeks ago, this is the miracle reward I received from the Universe at no cost to me when I was standing in the shower one night last week thinking “maybe I should start traveling and write 'The View From Here' from somewhere else.

I’ll be doing just that for the next two weeks.

Tune in!!

One more hurdle in the bag before take off

Monday, April 23, 2012

Leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill. I may be free of guilt trips and voyages to “regret-ville” but I certainly haven’t conquered my anxiety when it comes to stepping outside my comfort zone and away from my neck of the woods.

I had best find a way to rest my apprehension. My trip to Wales is but 14 days away and there’ll be no turning back once I’m in an aircraft 35,000 ft over the North Atlantic Ocean.

But like I said, leave it to me to make a mountain out of a molehill.

All I had to do was get in my car and drive to Thunder Bay this past weekend to visit my sister-in-law. I planned the trip about a month ago and yet, as the days to “take-off” crept closer I could be heard having conversations with myself about all the reasons why I couldn’t possibly go.

And it’s not like I haven’t done a Thunder Bay run and other trips by myself before this, but there have been none since Jon died and yet I didn’t expect the doing would be such a mountain to climb.

If I could compare this hump in my road map to anything I would liken it to being on a boat cruising out to the lake to fish.

I expect to coast along for a while with minimal effort when suddenly the boat motor quits and the trolling motor goes on strike. I coax the motors, talk to them, and reason with them and still I get nowhere. Eventually I have to paddle my big boat if I want to get where I’m going—never mind try to paddle AND fish at the same time.

That’s what my trip to Thunder Bay looked like late last week. My motor quit and my trolling motor folded its arms and gave me the flat stare of a 16-year old teenager who I just asked to take out the garbage.

I hotwired my trolling motor going over the Causeway and yes! got on the road but it kept failing and eventually I had to resort to paddling and paddling down the entire highway.

I hadn’t realized what a comfort zone this little town and my little world had been for the last three months—where everything was predictable and I always was safe at home.

But you know me. I took the wheel and made it from Point “A” to “B” thus deciding that I would use the trip as a trial run for my clueless green thumb world traveler-self who need a fast learning curve on how to pack for nine days in May.

I knew this for sure because I was hauling three-quarters of my clothes closet and 16 pairs of underwear for a day and half trip to the city.

Thankfully there was a hydraulic dolly in the barn that bore the mammoth bag out of the house and into the car’s trunk.

I’ve been reading travel blogs and travel wikis and travel advice columns for all the latest recommendations for what to pack. I challenge myself daily to pack less and less junk (save the giant Toblerone and must-have chocolate bars in case I get stranded on an island with Tom Hanks).

Yet in the trial to pare down the piles of underwear et al, I will not give up my compression stockings. Yes folks, compression stockings.

I may be aging gracefully above my chicken neck, but below the knees not so elegantly.

Thus, seated in an airplane for eight hours while my lower legs dangle helpless and motionless as the blood tries to jump past the faulty valves in my calves, means I have to wear therapeutic high density trouser socks made for travelers with varicose veins. (There I said it).

And if you think that’s a media shocker, you are very lucky you didn’t walk by my car on Saturday in the parking lot of the home health store in Thunder Bay while I was trying to put one of those compression socks on my foot.

Never in my life had I such an experience. I used to think tummy control pantyhose was a hard haul on to my body until I tried to stretch that black sock out far enough so it would fit over my toes.

Anyone who wondered what was happening inside my car that day would have thought I was being devoured against my will by a 12-inch black eel, as I writhed in the front seat.

By the time I got all five toe digits kidnapped in the compression sock and pulled and stretched the rest of it up my leg, a big fat blue bulging vessel had popped out between my eyes.

Please tell me I don’t have to buy something similar to compress my head before I travel.

Getting that evil sock off at night was like firing a boomerang from a slingshot in a small room—but that’s another story.

I like it simple not messy

Monday, April 16, 2012



I woke up in the wee hours of Monday morning to the clicking sound of my dog’s toenails in failed stealth when he tried sneaking into my bedroom to catch a floor nap before dawn. 
“Cash” knows better, but who am I kidding. 


This is the same dog that kisses the bottom side of every skunk that pays a visit to my neck of the woods each spring. No amount of skunk squirt ever will be enough to teach that dog a lesson in boundaries.

The world was darker than usual that early morning when I walked through the house to make sure the dog hadn’t peed in the living room or some such nightmare. Dark is really dark when you live in the country and when the power goes out—as I discovered it had that morning—I had my arms outstretched so I wouldn’t slam into something at eye level.


Unfortunately that posturing didn’t guarantee where I put my foot as I stepped into a warm and gooey pile that oozed between my bare toes. 
I took up an impressively difficult pose that I have to master in yoga class and balanced precariously on my clean foot as three messy possibilities were considered.


Dog poop, dog vomit, or cat throw up?


I’d pick the latter because cat throw up isn’t quite as disgusting on your foot as the first two. Trust me. 


I forgot however that I’d recently fed my cat worm pills and wondered if what I had just stepped in were the half-dead beasts he’d expelled onto the kitchen floor.

I had no electricity to shine a visual on my predicament and the flashlight was in the other room. I was afraid to move for fear of the unknown for my other foot so I just stood there in the dark making improper use of the English language.


“Press 1 for Yes or 2 for No,” said the computerized man-voice.Sometimes I think the Universe likes to play games with me. I was static in my predicament when the lights came on and the phone rang.

Still perched in a contorted tree pose I reached out to grab the phone and was greeted on the other end by the recorded voice from the power company checking to see if the lights had come on.
I pushed “1” but wanted to leave a voice mail that said “352878273 spells Flat Stare!”

Of course with the lights back on, it was all I could not to look at what I’d stepped in.

They say curiosity killed the cat. Curiosity also killed my appetite for a good breakfast when I squeaked open one eyelid to see that what was between my toes looked like the unknown byproducts in a can of dog food after it went through a blender. I don’t really know what it was or which end it came from.

By the time I had hopped to the bathroom and showered hot enough to cook a bird, Monday’s dawn had peaked over the horizon and I saw the white bane that is Mother Nature’s prerogative after a lovely stretch of warm weather.

My new wicker couch covered in a layer of snow white looked especially forlorn out there on the bank of the creek and I lamented it all until I turned on the television and saw the deadly twisters that tore a strip through the U.S. Midwest.

Besides, I refuse to be crabby about this small inconvenience when I see how entertaining it is for my dogs.

All I have to do is let them out and watch them tear across the yard, romp and play and shove their snouts into the same spots as yesterday, tails wagging as they find new excitement and new smells in the unexpected cover.
I remind myself that the canine capers in my world are better models of adaptability and upbeat outlook than most people I know, myself included!

It comes as no surprise that I admire simplicity and positivity in life and the kindred spirits out there who are nodding their heads when reading this probably have dogs or cats that keep them grounded even though the pets they love occasionally leave gifts on the kitchen floor.

In a rare disclaimer, I do however acknowledge that pets are not required in order to be an optimist.
But they sure do make a difference in my neck of the woods.

Weighing in with less baggage

Monday, April 9, 2012

On Saturday, my college kid and I filled 126 plastic eggs with goodies and hid them outside in the farmyard. The little peppers and their moms and my parents were expected for Easter dinner that night and the first annual “Granny’s Easter Egg Hunt.”

Easter this year was an extra fine celebration of gratitude for me even though I was missing a certain someone.

It was one of the first years I had stepped forward and offered to host Easter dinner and as cook I had beginner’s luck whitewashed all over me that day.

My glazed ham, orange-glazed carrots, and homemade hot cross buns emerged from recipes unscathed and to the table in fine order, along with my mom’s yummy specialties of scalloped potatoes and deviled eggs.

 I don’t think I could duplicate the perfection of that meal nor the groaning satiable comments that followed.

Afterwards came the “Hunt,” which I planned post feast to avoid “The Hunger Games” sequel playing out as little children poked in all those jellybeans before eating a proper evening meal.

The dogs were outside while we devoured our supper, and to my recollection, with their noses pressed to the screen door pining for a scrap of ham or flung bun from a highchair.

What I didn’t know as I poured over my meal with saliva and a smile, was that “Dot” was indeed pasted to the screen door, while “Cash” was no where to be found.

I expect that during a pee break, Cash had sniffed out the scent of sweets emanating from the 126 grassy-knolled eggs we had placed them in.

More than 20 of the prizes were scattered from their hiding places, snapped open with the precision of a chipmunk’s dexterity, and emptied of their contents into the canine stomach.

Skulking dog syndrome ensued as I shook pointed finger at big black dog and uttered some lower form of improper English to the mutt who clearly had no clue what he’d done in the 15 minutes prior to my madness.

He just sat there burping up sweet fragrances of strawberry and pieces of purple gummy bears.

Life changes in an instant every day. More and more I’m learning to accept that some changes have few better options under my control than my attitude towards the thing.

I still get caught up in the muck and buck like a wild donkey sometimes but I really work on my outlook these days.

I remind myself of the outstretched pointed index finger of “Celie” (played by Whoopi Goldberg) in “The Color Purple.”

“Everything you done to me has already been done to you.” 

It’s my wisdom warning statement that reminds me that my reaction to the actions of others or to life in general is my karma.

The late mystery thriller writer Arthur Somers Roche once penned, “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

I concur.

At 7:30 a.m. on Monday April 12^th in my diary I wrote, “I am struggling to compose myself in the face of my afternoon counseling session today. This is causing me the most turmoil I have felt in nearly 12 weeks.”

At 10 p.m. that same night I wrote in my diary, “My counsel session was not as bad as I anticipated. I cried and said it out loud [my undelivered communication to Jon] in front of my counselor and I felt better immediately. Immediately.”

I’ll be the first to admit I was a skeptical about this part of the healing process of recovery through counseling but I’m also the first to admit it’s been a life-changing event for me. I am—by my owning it—free.

Truly I am free.

I’ve worked very, very hard since January to find some peace in the face of the half-stitched scars that ooze unspeakable pain following a suicide.

If my brain and my heart could form calluses from working a program so hard, mine would have them.

Not only am I one of the many “left behind” by the tragedy. I was the one who came home at 4:30 in the afternoon that day and found the dark truth.

Suicide shreds the soul and slashes hope and creates unspeakable black crypts of self-doubt.

The nine minutes that followed that hour as I waited for the ambulance to get to my neck of the woods were the longest of my life. They have been weighted and judged on self-deprecated scales along with the 402 days that preceded it as I searched desperately to directly blame myself for what I did or didn’t do that affected Jon’s choice.

In the end I come up empty and I am filled up with gratitude.

Thanks to loving myself enough and to Riverside Counseling Services all of this horrid treatment of myself is over and I am free to experience this process without guilt and remorse and regret.

I am free.

Coming clean cuts like a knife

Monday, April 2, 2012

It’s Monday morning and I have a hell of a lot to write about and a whole lot of it that I really don’t want to write about, some of it that I do, and some of it that I am compelled to write about. 

So in lies my dilemma.

Last week I was bemoaning the dry spell and burn out that had arisen from perpetually pulling my heart out of my chest and letting it do all the talking as I wrote about life in the weeks since Jon committed suicide.

And I was tired. I really was creatively burned out, used up, parched of emotions, and ready for a break. So I just quit trying to find all the answers at the end of my fingers on a keyboard. 

Little did I know that the Universe once again was conspiring to assist me in the next leg of my journey. I think it always knows what I need. I just have to be open to it, stand back, or just plain ask the right questions of myself.

But of course there are no next steps in life, truly, until a lesson is learned or, as I am about to discover, until I cough up some undelivered emotional communication.

That’s going to happen for me today at 2 p.m. when I take all the positive and negative events that I have discovered (with help from my counselor) in my relationship with Jon and communicate and complete them with out loud apologies, statements of forgiveness, or statements of emotional significance. 

It all sounds big and wordy but what it really boils down to is about me moving towards being complete by coming clean. I would be stupid to think that I do not have undelivered communications to my dear late Jon in all three categories that I need to release to the Universe.

I readily admit however at this very moment I would rather have dental work done through my backside than open that gate just so I can close it. 

Just thinking about saying these things out loud to my counselor makes me run to the bathroom as if I had food poisoning. 

But if I don’t do my “me” work I do not heal and I do not get to pass “GO.”  This I know for sure.

I also know for sure that yoga is the new bomb for this green thumb mat monkey. 

If I’m not already taller from all that stretching, then I am well on my way to becoming the tree I want to be in my next life. 

I am learning the true meaning of “focus” and “breathe” AND although I’m still falling over while attempting it I am learning to hold a pose I’ve only seen in the movie “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”

And although this next statement begs to be expounded on in many more columns—and it will be . . . 

“I am going to Wales in the United Kingdom for nine days in May.”

This is the miracle reward I received from the Universe at no cost to me when I was standing in the shower one night last week thinking “maybe I should start traveling and write 'The View From Here' from somewhere else.”

The next morning I had a random, “pulled the rabbit out of the top hat” email from a world traveler I know who was important to me even before I received the ticket money to “go smell the salt sea air and wash away my past and get healed.”

The quote I have on the wall above my writing desk that says “Today is where your book begins . .  the rest is still unwritten” just fell off in my lap. 

Thank you.