Category Archives: yeah write

One Thing Before 40.

A few years ago, I was obsessed with making a list of things I wanted to do before I turned 40. I saw someone do a 30 before 30 list and I really wanted to do one but I already was 30 so that wasn’t going to work. Thus I came up with the very unique 40 before 40 list.

In retrospect, this was a really dumb idea. You know why doing 30 things before one turns 30 is so much better than doing 40 things before one turns 40? Because 10 extra things might as well be 100 extra things when I have a kid and jobs and whatever else eating up my time. I should have put “go to work” or “feed child” on my list of things. Also, I had so much more energy before I was 30. Now at nearly 40, I laugh at how tired I thought I was at this time 10 years ago.

Below is the list from 3 years ago. With only 202 days to go, let’s see how I’m doing.

1.  Run a 5k. What? No.

2.  Run a 10k. Oh, hell no.

3.  Run a half marathon. Was I out of my mind?

4.  Lose 40 pounds. I tried. It didn’t work.

5.  Make significant steps toward reducing animal products in my diet. Nope.

6.  Finish my memoir. I finished a draft. Does that count?

7.  Publish my memoir. This is really unlikely.

8.  Buy Long Term Care insurance. What a fun concept! Also, yes, I have some.

9.  Visit with a financial planner and map out a goal for retirement. I can’t even plan dinner for the coming week.

10.  Create and utilize a budget. Nope.

11.  Read 50 books. I don’t even know what to say about this.

12.  Redesign my blog under my own domain name. Done!

13.  Sort and organize my mother’s belongings. Nope. They’re still in the basement.

14.  Live a more minimalist lifestyle. I guess so. How does one measure this?

15.  Save enough money to purchase our next vehicle in cash. Uh, nope.

16.  Attend another blogging conference. I did this!

17.  Eliminate my dependence on caffeine. I am literally LOLing at this right now.

18.  Unplug for one full week. Now I am dying from this.

19.  Get a paid writing job. I did this!

20.  Create a usable space in the home office. I did this!

21.  Bag, Board and Catalog comic/magazine collection. I’m still working on this.

22.  Organize CD collection. What’s a CD?

23.  Organize DVD collection. What’s a DVD?

24.  Create usable living space in attic. I suppose something could live up there.

25.  Create usable living space in basement. The centipedes seem to like it.

26.  Organize (digitize?) all old writings. Nope.

27.  Make go-bags for all family members. Um…

28.  Create an emergency bin with supplies. No.

29.  Buy a really awesome, unnecessarily expensive pair of jeans that make my ass look amazing. I can’t see my ass so who cares?

30.  Buy a killer dress – cocktail? ball gown?  I don’t know. This is not very minimalist of me.

31.  Go to some event that requires me to wear the aforementioned dress. I’m not really into “going places” anymore.

32.  Go zip-lining. Except this. I still want to go zip-lining.

33.  Get third tattoo. Done. And the fourth, too!

34.  Climb a rock wall. I did not do this. I still want to.

Notice the list stops at 34. I couldn’t think of anything else.

Here’s the thing: Yes, I’m turning 40. Yes, there’s a bit of mid-life crisis happening. I’m getting the what have I done with my life and what am I going to do next sort of feelings and those aren’t so good. I feel like I should have done more things and better.

But here’s where turning 40 is awesome:

There’s a part of me that’s telling that judgmental voice, the one who compares me to everyone else, to shut the fuck up. It’s the same voice that’s letting me say fuck in a blog post, even though I don’t usually do this so I can appear professional even though the real me says fuck all the fucking time.

So the new thing I have planned for my 40th is to give fewer fucks. I don’t care if I haven’t met some arbitrary goal I may have set for myself three years ago. I don’t care if everyone else wants to do something – if I don’t want to do it, I’m not doing it. And if no one wants to do what I want to do? Well, fuck it. I’m going to go do it by myself then. I’m going to stand up for what’s right. I’m going to fight for important things. I’m going to work for the things I want. Everything else doesn’t matter.

I don’t need to do 40 ridiculous things to prove a point. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.

I’ve spent most of the last almost-40 years doing what other people wanted and what other people expected. I’ve put others before me to the extent that I virtually vanished.

Those days are over.

This is yeah write’s nomo writing challenge Day 3.

Featured Image Credit.

Ebb and Flow.

There are words and phrases that, when I hear them, they are like sneaker waves, knocking me temporarily out of whatever moment I’m in and transporting me back in time. Thankfully, Foley catheters, baclofen and Hoyer lifts don’t often come up in casual conversation.

I was watching a comedy special with Tig Notaro the other night which seemed like the perfect antidote to my melancholy mood. A comedy special should be safe, I thought. But it wasn’t. Someone approached Tig to share something along the lines of, “When you had cancer, that’s when I was diagnosed, too.” And there it was, hiding in my “safe” comedy special, the phrase that I just cannot hear without stomach clenching.

I was diagnosed.

After my mother got sick, she said that all the time. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was diagnosed with MS. When I was diagnosed…

Night after night, phone call after phone call, she told people she was sick. She said it like she was announcing what was for dinner or what she’d watched on TV the night before.

I was diagnosed.

There are so many other ways to say what she obviously needed to say and yet she chose that one phrase every single time, saying it so casually that I wanted to scream at her, “Stop fucking telling everyone you know that you’re sick! Stop saying it like you scraped your knee.”

When you’re fourteen, the more you hear something, the more true it is.

For the next 20 years she said it to anyone and everyone, her voice only growing calmer, more relaxed as the disease stole her strength. As her illness progressed, it wasn’t like a minor injury anymore. She said it with the appropriate level of devastation, but by then the damage was done physically, mentally, emotionally, that her inflection wasn’t necessary to feel the weight of it.

Now I can’t hear it without a sea of ordinarily repressed memories flooding back to me. I was diagnosed can collapse my insides faster than anyone knows but I’ve had lots of practice pretending my skin is enough to hold me up; I can react like a normal person most of the time.

It’s five years today since she’s been gone and longer than that since I’ve heard her voice. I’ve almost forgotten what she sounded like but when I hear those words, no matter who is saying them, they sound like my mother. I don’t want to forget her but I don’t want to remember those parts anymore.

I don’t know if using the words will ever take away their power. As I type them now I feel like my organs are being scooped out; I’m systematically hollowed. I wonder if next time it won’t be so hard. I wonder if remembering will ever get easier.

I wonder if I’ll ever stop being tricked into thinking the ebb of grief won’t be followed by the flow of its return.

Home Sweet Home.

The house I grew up in was green. Not green like grass or pine trees, not seafoam or hunter or Kelly. No, my house was puke green. When I got a bit older, I started referring to it as the color of bile. I felt like that sounded more sophisticated.

The whole house was falling apart. There wasn’t a single room that wasn’t in need of repairs, though some areas were worse than others. The kitchen was a disaster, with the sink falling into the cabinet that was supposed to support it and a leak in the ceiling from the bathroom directly above. The basement took in water every time it rained. On a good day it was only up to my ankles and on a bad it was up to my knees, but every time something would go floating by while we bailed and I’d wonder why I’d thought I could store anything down there in the first place.

There’s more, but I won’t bore you with the details.

From the outside one might guess at the condition of the interior but could just as easily assume it wasn’t so bad. The house needed a paint job and some updating of the doors and windows, but it wasn’t unlike many of the older homes in the neighborhood.

When we sold the house, we were cited for the illegal wheelchair ramp my grandfather had installed so we could get my mother out every now and again. The ramp was too short and steep, a hazard really, and one frosty winter morning I fell off of the side with no railing and nearly broke my elbow. When it rains I can still feel that injury nearly 20 years later. It’s just one of the ways home has stayed with me long after I left.

The town inspector also slapped the garage with a bright orange sticker, officially marking it condemned. We joked that we were surprised that the whole house wasn’t slated for demolition. It wasn’t really a funny joke, but rather the kind we would make amongst ourselves to deflect from the sting and stigma associated with living as we did for so long.

Over the years I’ve had little occasion to drive by the home I grew up in. It wasn’t on my usual route and that was just fine. The house is situated on the corner of a dead end street and on the other end of that road is a parking lot for some offices. My dentist is in that office and sometimes after an appointment I’d walk to the far side of the lot and look down at the street that was the playground of my youth. I’d look at the houses my friends grew up in, the one where the man allegedly hung himself from the exterior second floor balcony, the house that caught fire and was rebuilt, the house whose number ended in 1/2, which I always found amusing. My old house isn’t visible from the parking lot but I know it’s there.

Lately I’ve driven through my neighborhood more frequently. Life takes me down that way and I look at the house from time to time, wondering what’s going on in there. It’s a tasteful yellow now, not too bright. There is a new front door and a new garage. The retaining wall on the east end of the property is still falling down, a throwback to the old days. Whoever lives there looks like they take care of the place.

Sometimes I think about going up and ringing the doorbell, asking if I can come in and see how things have changed like you see on TV. I don’t know if it’s owner occupied or if it’s being used as a rental. It’s been thirteen years since I’ve set foot inside and it’s possible the people who live there never knew what it was like back then. Of course, it’s equally possible the owner lives there and would know my past. Thinking about that stops me from approaching the house.

There’s little to be gained from seeing who lives there now, whether they are a happy family or miserable like we were. The structure may still be weary and battle-scarred from all that went on inside its walls. A morbid curiosity leaves me wondering, but my practical self knows that house is still haunted and some things are just better left alone.

Orange Is The New Identity Theft.

It looks like I’m going to have to go shopping for new clothes in the very near future. I decided to revive this old post about one of the last times I had to visit a retail establishment to procure appropriate clothing. Shopping is a very dangerous affair, you guys.

This was originally posted on December 24, 2013.


As someone who is simultaneously lazy, fat, and cheap, my clothes simply must last. I hate shopping. All that walking around, trying stuff on, it’s too much. I don’t like paying money for new clothing in a size I don’t want to be. I need my clothes to just hang on indefinitely until I’m either wealthy, well-rested, and/or thin, preferably all three.

My unwillingness to shop has resulted in me owning only three pairs of jeans. Since I work from home, these jeans are all I wear. Well, except for the one pair that doesn’t actually fit. I don’t wear those. One pair was purchased in 2010 and I have worn them about four times a week since. The other pair is relatively new, purchased in May after my other jeans purchased in 2010 got a huge split from excessive wear and girth.

The seams of the old pair had been threatening to give way for some time and recently I decided that it was time these jeans caught a break. At least I had the pair from May to wear. I could wear those into the ground and go easier on my dying pair. Maybe I could even lose a little weight and fit into the inappropriately named skinny jeans that have taken up permanent residence in the drawer of ill-fitting clothing. It seemed like I dodged a bullet. I was not going to have to walk around bottomless OR go shopping. Everything was fine for a mere twenty four hours when my plans came crashing down.

I had to run a load of laundry so my kid would have a uniform shirt to wear to school the next day. I grabbed all the clothes that required laundering and I threw them in the washer, then transferred them later to the dryer. When the cycle was done and I opened the dryer door, I saw an empty, but still intact, crayon wrapper. I frantically examined each article of clothing, feeling relief that most of the orange smudges I found were in hidden places or clothes we don’t wear outside.

But my good jeans were not so lucky. It would appear the jeans scooped up that crayon in one leg and saved the rest of the load. My only decent pair of pants – the only ones that fit, the only ones without a giant crotch tear – had martyred themselves for the sake of the child’s wardrobe and my husband’s boxers.

After several days spiraling through the five stages of grief, I was in a place where something could be done. I attempted to Goo Gone the crayon, but the goo did not go. I Oxi-Cleaned the pants, but the stain was still there.

I had no choice but to enter a Target on a Sunday afternoon, ten days before Christmas, to buy new pants. I psyched myself up, got new not-on-sale pants and went home relatively pleased that only one person gave me the finger in the parking lot.

This story would have had a happy ending if news didn’t break a short time later that Target had a massive data breach. 40 million credit and debit card numbers may have been compromised over a 19-day period and my card became one of them around 4 p.m. on the 19th day.

These pants are nice and all, but they may turn out to be the most expensive pair I’ve ever purchased.

 

I’m submitting this post the challenge grid at yeah write. Please click the badge above to read the very best work of other writers joining the competition this week.

Featured image credit.