New Year's Suggestions

Here we are, on the cusp of a brand-new year. In the first few days of a new year, I always think about the fact that there are twelve whole months of possibility ahead of us. Three hundred and sixty-some-odd days in which we can make choices to do whatever we like. I love this feeling. It's quite a bit better than the "oh crap, I've let another year go by without [insert unkept resolution here]", so I try to hold on to it as long as I can - but I must admit, the tremendous feeling of hope and possible adventure does tend to fade and become a bit tattered around the edges by Valentine's Day. (In fact, usually on Valentine's Day, come to think of it - evil and ridiculous holiday that it is.)

Anyway ...

I am not a New Year's Resolution-maker. I am not, in fact, any sort of resolution-maker. I don't set goals, I don't have a five-year-plan, and I grimly suspect that I will be spending my twilight years in some broken-down, dirty old folks' home, because I cannot seem to start saving for retirement for the life of me. Yep, I'm a grasshopper. Not an ant. Can't help it.

This year, though, I thought up a few things I'd like to try to resolve to do in 2014 ... I'm thinking of them more as "New Year's Suggestions", which really seems a lot more friendly, if you ask me. I wanted to have more than just one thing, in case I got bored and needed to concentrate on something else - but I also thought that it needed to be less than 5 things, since more than that would just overwhelm me. So, here we go. Suggestions for Erin in 2014:

1. Write more on this blog. I'm certain anyone who ever started a blog has "suggested" this to themselves at the start of a year, but I'm going with this one, anyhow. Writing more may mean less interesting posts for all of you ... but hey, let's be realistic. There are like five people who read this! Plus, since I almost never, ever write my blog, then exceeding past performance in terms of quantity is going to be easy, easy, easy.

2. Take a damned walk. I am gloriously and unhealthily sedentary. I suggest that this year, I get up off of my ass and take a walk every so often. Again, I'm shooting low here ... I think a ten-minute walk, versus no walk at all - it's obvious which one is better. (The walk ... right?) I'll admit - sort of hoping that walking springboards into fast walking and then into that awkward sort-of jogging thing and then, maybe, eventually, into running. But - this year, I'm only aiming for getting out of the chair. Small steps, folks. Small steps.

3. Sing. I love to belt 'em out, and I used to open up iTunes and do a sing-a-long about once a week, but I have, sadly, fallen out of the habit. But singing makes me feel joyful, so here's to singing at the top of my lungs in my car, my shower, and my living room. Let's hope my neighbors own earplugs, and I hope I remember to keep my windows rolled up while I'm driving.

4. Model my living space on the average ship's galley. My apartment is the approximate size of a Ritz cracker box, with an animal cracker box tacked on the side (my tiny screened-in porch). While I have much less stuff than I used to, I still seem to always have just a little too much to fit comfortably into my apartment's nooks and crannies. So this year, I am hoping to use Ikea and The Container Store frequently and make everything "ship-shape" ... a place for everything, and everything in its place. Ambitious, I know (as I am a self-avowed slob), but if I make any inroads at all with this one, I will feel most triumphant.

So ... yep. 4 things. Suggestions, not resolutions. I will ease into them with care and apprehension. 
I will only look at them via my peripheral vision, so that I don't scare myself into thinking that the suggestions are mandates, and therefore something I want to run away from. It will all be oh-so-nice-and-easy.

Or not. Either way, glad to see you, 2014. We've got a lot to do this year - just wait and see.

A Man Named Sacleux

So, tomorrow I am officially getting divorced. I feel like that statement should be accompanied by a thunderclap, perhaps – or maybe a drumroll, but actually, this feels kind of anticlimactic. I mean, I haven’t laid eyes on my husband in over two years; how much different will my life really be when this is “officially” finished? Still, it seems as though I ought to mark the occasion in some significant way, so here I am. Writing. Surprised?

I think I’ve always felt that the real moment of our divorce was the morning I rode away from La Canourgue in the back of a car driven by my honorary French parents (who were, at that time, little more than strangers to me). It was November; it was raining and cold, and I have never felt so completely empty – before or since. I wanted to be strong, and instead I cried silently and tried to answer questions that my hosts had for me without sounding all slurpy. I turned around in the backseat and watched the tiny village I had thought would be my home dwindle into the distance, and wondered why I couldn’t live in a book or a movie. If this were a story, then as I drove away my husband would come running out of a nearby building and chase the car down, then apologize with tears in his own eyes and beg me to stay. Instead, I rode silently for seven hours in the back of a car and wondered how in the hell I had managed to screw this up, too. That was divorce.

Tomorrow, I just have to go stand in front of a judge and answer a few questions. He will sign some papers, I will take them to a clerk and arrange for copies to be sent to my ex, and then that part of my life will be done. Over. I will even have my own last name back. It will be as if I never met Patrick, never fell in love with him, never moved across the Atlantic to try to build a life in France. Only, I don’t think that I can ever pretend that any of this just didn’t happen (no matter how that man chooses to behave). It makes me question my sanity a little. Will I ever look back on this time in my life fondly? Oh, God, I hope I can grow into that, because the bitter taste of the loss is still in my mouth, and I truly don’t want to keep that with me forever. It’s not there every day, but it lingers … kind of like black licorice-flavored things. Ew. You’ve gotta do a lot of mouth-rinsing to eliminate those. Yep.

It seems such a big thing, getting married. (At least, it did to me.) I didn’t do this and then think to myself, “Well, there’s always divorce!” I intended to stay married, to live with my husband for better or for worse (and the house in France was “for worse”, believe me), to adjust to being part of couple instead of eternally single. And here I am. Life is just a fucking hoot, isn’t it?

I know that, at the very least, I will feel immeasurably lighter after tomorrow morning. A task which has been waiting to be finished for two and a half years will be completed, and there will be a sense of closure with that, and perhaps even a small sense of accomplishment. (Filed divorce papers? Check. Stood in front of judge? Check. Sent copies of documents to ex-hubby? Check check.) But I will still have all of the same questions in my head about why I did this in the first place, why I agreed to move to a foreign country, why I loved him, and why, ultimately, he didn’t love me. These are questions that have no real answers. I will live the rest of my life without ever knowing what that man was thinking or feeling within the context of our relationship. I’ve gained enough distance and perspective, I think, to say that having no answers: it will be okay. It will be okay because it has to be. I have gotten all the closure I am ever going to get, and I just need to be thankful that things didn’t turn out any worse than they did. I’m a little bit broken, but it’s the kind of broken that eventually mends. I’ll be all right, because I’m me, and because I have the most amazing and supportive family and friends, and they will continue to love me and laugh with me and simply be there to help me up when I fall down. Not everyone has that kind of support system, and I am so, so grateful. The people in my life are a gift – thank God I am near them, and not far away across the ocean.

So bring on the courtroom, then. I will go, I will become Erin Andress once again, and I will officially shake off the shackles that bound me to a man named Sacleux. In case you didn’t know – he didn’t deserve me, anyway. Vive le divorce!

It's Just a List, I Think

I love lists. Big ones, little ones .. any size at all, really. I make lists in notebooks, on my phone, on Post-It notes that collect in the bottom of my purse like dust bunnies. I can't seem to help myself. Most of the time, my lists are just standard jottings of what to pick up at the grocery store, or the errands I need to run on Saturday; sometimes I really go wild and make a quick list of upcoming birthdays that I need to buy cards for - which I never get around to doing, by the way. (I just make the list and forget about buying the cards approximately 15 minutes later.) Occasionally, however, I make a different kind of list. An out-of-the-ordinary list. A mysterious list. A list that defies definition (and interpretation). Intrigued?

I found just such a list about a month ago, hanging around on a mini legal pad that I use at work for all sorts of odds and ends. I can't remember writing this list, and there was no title at the top to help me figure out what in God's name I was thinking while I composed it. It is, quite simply, just another list in a long list of lists, but I keep coming back to it because I can't figure it out! Why did I make this list? How are these things connected? Is it something I brainstormed, or did I copy this list from another source? Why didn't I put any sort of heading on it, knowing (as well as anyone can know themselves, I suppose) that I wouldn't frigging remember anything about this within a week of penning it? It is a total mystery and completely infuriating.

And so, I return to the world of blogging to beseech all of you - my dear readers - to tell me, based upon the list I've included for you below ... what is this a list of? Why did I make it? Of what possible use was this list going to be to me? Because though it is in my handwriting, I have absolutely no recollection of thinking about it or writing it down ... and it's driving me nuts.

Without further ado - "The List":

If you cannot view the above picture, "The List" reads as follows:

1. picnic table
2. purse
3. candy jar
4. bookend
5. building block
6. birdhouse
7. piggy bank
8. desk organizer (?)
9. vase/planter
10. Halloween candy collector
11. drawer dividers
12. magazine stands/rack
13. a really tall hat ?
14. Kleenex keeper or toilet roll keeper
15. a really hard pillow

There is no title; there are no notes other than these numbered items, and there is nothing written on the back of the page. I am completely stumped as to when or why I made this list of seemingly unrelated things.

You know, if I was going to be possessed by an evil spirit that caused me to write something in my own handwriting that I had no recollection whatsoever of writing, I had kind of hoped it would be something more along the lines of "The body is buried in Greenwood Park" or "Beware men with red hair unless you wish to DIE" ... but I guess my automatic writing was just me being distracted, not any message from the beyond.

Anyone who comments on this with an appropriate explanation (and yes, of course I alone determine "appropriate"!) will receive a surprise gift in the mail as a token of my thanks. (You will have to give me your address for me to do this, as my list-making mania unfortunately does not extend to anything so organized as an up-to-date address book. Ahem.) I'd love an explanation for why I took the time to make this list, and I just can't come up with one. Since I discovered it here at work, I've been carrying it around in my wallet. I take it out and look at it at least once a week, but no bells have rung.

Any and all suggestions are welcome. Really. Help me solve the mystery, or at least make up a lie palatable enough to make me stop thinking about it!

10 Things That Scare Me

As usual, I start this by apologizing. I think about writing blog entries all the time, but, as my brother and I recently agreed, our family motto ought to be "I'll do it later" ... and so thinking is often as far as I get. Oops.

Also, just lately, as I have been increasingly consumed by responsibilities at work, I get home at night and feel like I might have enough energy - just - to make myself dinner, read for an hour, and then fall into bed. Sometimes I don't even get to the dinner part - I eat a bowl of cereal and call it done. I wonder if life will always be like this. On the whole, I think not - I am still getting used to being single again - but I do lose myself in the day-to-day scramble, like everyone else. Creativity is tough to mine in these conditions.

And so, in thinking what to post next, I thought, "What am I scared of?" Whatever the topic ends up being, it's not as if I have some giant readership - just family and friends, people who roll with the punches as I throw them. I try to write with your entertainment in mind, but this blog is also therapy for me, of a sort. And where else to admit what freaks me out? Yep, that's right - here, with all of you, and hang the consequences. You'll understand - you always do.
 

What Scares Erin (in no particular order):

1. Roller coasters. That breathless feeling you get on the drops? Frightens the pants off of me. My palms are sweating just writing about it. 

2. The thought that I will not be able to quit smoking, ever. I am smoking right now, in fact. Cold turkey, gum, lozenges, cold laser therapy, stop-smoking pills, electronic cigarettes - I've tried it all. And here I am, still puffing. It's ludicrous and stupid and willfully blind.

3. Cockroaches and alligators. Both are scary and prehistoric, and I can't figure out why either of these horrifying creatures has not been wiped out by some evolutionary twist. What do we need either one for? Yech. One is always lurking behind baseboards and under toilets- waiting to surprise you and give you the willies, the other looks like a log, but can actually outrun you on flat land and chomp off your leg when it catches you. Urg.

4. Being forgotten. Whether it's being left out of a party invite or ignored by an absent spouse, what is more terrifying than believing you're not important enough to remember? We're all the stars of our own lives, but I worry, as time marches on, of losing all of the connections that came before. Who have I forgotten, and who has forgotten me?

5. My comfort in my current cat-lady state. I feel like I should be much more anxious to find a partner in life, but boy, is living alone with just the cats a relief'! If I start talking about increasing the cat-count, or begin to mess around with a lot of potted plants and take up knitting clothes for said cats, can someone please come over and make me go out? Thanks.

6. Driving long distances by myself. I am, despite what you may have heard, a VERY good driver, but hours on the road alone? Not freeing, not exciting, not at all. I always imagine scenarios that end with me and an exploded engine and a dead cell phone, on a dark and deserted stretch of highway. Even when I'm driving in daylight ... I know. Completely mental.

7. Speaking French. Yeah, this one's kinda obvious ... I know the words, I know the grammar, but put me in a situation where I need to chat with a native speaker, and the stage fright and shyness that plagued me as a child tie my tongue in knots! I end up talking about the weather, every time. Il fait beau will only take you so far when trying to make friends, believe me.

8. Having kids. Or NOT having kids. Well, both really. It's completely scary, either way.

9. Energy drinks, especially Red Bull. They make me feel like my head is going to start spinning around like in The Exorcist. I am pretty sure that no one needs QUITE that much energy. What is the attraction with these things? They taste like fluoride treatments at the dentist, and make your ears buzz. Ew.

10. Boa constrictors. This one's completely nuts - I will probably never see one in my life, other than at the zoo, but I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was a kid about a boa constrictor eating my grandpa whole. I have no idea what the hell that was about, but a fear of them has pursued me into adulthood. Well, we all have our idiosyncrasies.

Thanks for reading, folks. What scares the pants off of you? I must admit, there are a lot more things that frighten me ... but like when we were children, sometimes the naming of something gives it power, and I don't want to do that. So I name only what is listed above, and I defy the rest.

Erin Confronts Her Mortality

Holy crap, it's happened. The first one this past weekend, and now another today. I can't believe it.

I have found the first grey hairs on my head.

There I was, just minding my business, checking my reflection in the bathroom mirror after washing my hands ... and a glint caught my eye. A glint of silver. I tilted my head, thinking that the bathroom light was just playing tricks. My mind stubbornly thought, that can't be ... but it was a grey hair. A long one. Right there on top of my head. Winking at me. My mouth went dry, my heart started to pound. And then I reached up, almost without thinking, and yanked that bugger out. (Took quite a few other strands, too, to be honest. Kind of hurt.) I walked out of the bathroom, determined to forget it.

Only I couldn't - because, today, at work, I found another. Just as long, just as silvery. I suppose I should be thankful it wasn't growing out of my left nostril or my ear - but truthfully, I'm not feeling too thankful here. I'm thirty-five! (Okay, a month shy of 36, but who's counting, really?) Grey hairs are for OLD people! Is this it? Have I just crossed the threshold from "still young" to "getting up there"? Holy cats, when I was 10, I thought that grey hair equaled "old". No ifs, ands, or buts. Shamefully, I don't think I've ever really revised that world view ... but now I have to. Paradigm shift! I am on the ropes here, people! Reeling and punch-drunk, at the mercy of a couple of strands of stuff that are measured using words I don't even know (microns? miniliters? harrities?). It's the stuff of nightmares - wait, should I go to sleep tonight? What if they multiply? WHEN will they multiply?!

I always imagined myself aging "gracefully"; obviously, I was delusional. Will I get used to this? It's bad enough that gravity is slowly dragging my ass earthward  ... now this! It's self-indulgent and wacko to go on like this, I know - it's just so weird. I've never liked my hair, but I don't think I fully appreciated the fact that it was soft and shiny, at least. If these two initial hairs are anything to go by, I will soon have a head full of toilet brush bristles. And, let's face it, men who go gray just look "distinguished" - women don't often have that adjective applied to them. I am envisioning something more along the lines of a mangy zebra. Where are the good adjectives for that? Well, shit.

My conclusion? There's only one answer here, folks: L'Oreal. On my way to the store now, for some preventive maintenance. Wish me luck. Perhaps it's time I found out if blondes really DO have more fun. (Just kidding ... or am I?)

When I am an old woman, I will NOT wear purple ... I will wear a damned hat, and visit my colorist twice a month. So there. Graceful, my ass.

Tiny Apartment, Big Freedom

Faithful blog readers, I’m sorry I have left you alone for so long. I have no idea why on earth I wait so long between posts … I think there’s something in me that holds on to the idea that if I do not procrastinate as long as is humanly possible, then the ultimate, completed task is just not worth it. Or, I could just be tremendously lazy. You pick.

I’ve been reveling, just lately, in my tiny apartment. I moved in at the end of May, and I’m now completely settled in. I don’t know how many square feet it is – before you even ask -, and I’m not sure I would even know how to begin to measure it to find out. The point is, it is delightfully small and cozy, and it is all mine.


Those of you who have lived in a house or apartment all by yourself, I ask you: isn’t it friggin’ marvelous? In the past, I have always had family or roommates (sometimes both!) as a part of my living space, and I didn’t even think of the possibility of living alone. Now that I’ve taken that step, I don’t know how I’ll ever live with another person again. I don’t care if I have to live on pasta and lentils because all my money goes to the rent and the utilities! The ability to vacuum or to cook breakfast while clad in only my underwear is one of the greatest satisfactions I have ever known. I never realized how luxurious it is to leave your bathroom door wide open ALL of the time.


Some days I simply sit on the floor of my tiny living room and smile at the silence and the mine-ness of it all. My cats prowl around ceaselessly, enchanted with the small screened-in porch, and I can hang the paintings and curtains that I choose, with no regard for anybody else’s feelings or wishes. It’s liberating. I can’t believe I made it to 35 years old without ever experiencing this before … it’s like discovering diamonds in the bottom of your sock drawer! A precious treasure hidden under things you have pawed through a million times … this definitely feels like a gift.

After spending so much time last year with someone who needed, for some reason, to make me justify the ways in which I chose to spend my time, it is a beautiful thing to, just now, owe explanations to no one but myself. If that sentiment is selfish, childish, or any other –ish … well, that’s fine and dandy. My tiny apartment and I – we understand each other. I’m finally starting to once again feel at home in my own skin, and to realize that the core of who I am isn’t at all broken, only a little battered. As the magnificent Ms. Gaynor told us, “I will survive”. And I’ll do it in my miniscule apartment, wearing only my undies. So there.

Weird Robot Baby

Someone at work this morning brought up the subject of dreams. She said that she had a “weird” dream last night, which turned out to be a nightmare of sorts that involved an aspect of her job and her supervisor. The adjective “weird” threw me a little, as a “weird” dream for me is something a little different than anxiety about my job translated into dream form.


For instance, one of my own dreams last night concerned a married couple that I know, who for some reason were living in my old high school. (?) The baby (which is not, in real life, due until the autumn) had already been born, and I was visiting them. After I saw the baby (who had no teeth and couldn’t walk but was already speaking in complete sentences like Stewie on The Family Guy), I realized that (gasp!) he was a robot child. I didn’t see any wires or anything, but the kid knew that I knew. At first, I tried to hide this fact from my friends, but as the kid got weirder (and after I discovered his owner’s manual and remote control in a box shoved in a corner of the gym), I tried to warn my friends about him. Understandably, they got mad and told me to leave. As I walked out of my old freshman English classroom, I turned around. My friends’ backs were to me, but the robot kid peeked over one of their shoulders and smiled toothlessly and evilly. I woke up.

I’m sure there are all sorts of psychobabble explanations that could decipher that dream, but I choose to think that I have a tiny, tiny file clerk inside my brain who runs around at night, desperately trying to organize my head files before I wake up. My dreams are just different files getting pulled from one place and re-filed in another. If I tried to interpret every one of the dreams I have, there’d be no room for anything else in my life. (Especially the dream about the room with thousands of pictures of oranges taped to the walls, or the one where I was sitting on a walrus in some kind of circus act … I had a spangly outfit on in that one, with a big headdress. Awesome.)

But … the robot baby example is a completely normal specimen of dream for me. Am I wacko? I was always under the impression that most people’s dreams were like mine – a jumble of things and places and people that are in their heads and get let out of their cages to dance around together while they’re sleeping. My co-worker’s explanation of her own “weird” dream makes me re-think that conclusion!

Does anyone else have the wacky dreams regularly? By this, I mean – without eating spicy foods or being sleep-deprived or taking loopy drugs, do any of you dream vividly and frequently? Outside of my family, I’ve never really asked anyone about this, and I wonder. I don’t often have lingering visual memories of my dreams, but it’s pretty common for a feeling or phrase someone said in it to stay with me until I next go to sleep, or sometimes through several days. I guess I thought that was how it worked for everybody.
Drop me a comment and tell me, do you dream of tiny purple doughnuts and tap-dancing tigers? Of everyday places, people, and things? Or do you simply never remember your dreams?