Meet Trouble as a Friend

Where has Lisa been?

Peeling Foreclosure notices off her front door.

Educating herself on how to file the correct million forms to stay in her house long enough to sell it so that she might be able to buy another one some day.

Delivering flowers in a big white truck she needs a stepladder to climb into and beating off dogs with bad manners to earn a few extra bucks to pay her corrupt divorce lawyer, who likes to stand in the hallway of the courthouse and tell jokes to the other lawyer while the three hours allocated to settling her case with the judge ticks away. 

Wondering when she might wake up from the bad dream that is suddenly her life.

But also . . . . .

Reading inspiring notes from caring friends and relatives.

Developing a stronger bond with her youngest daughter that comes from depending on each other and facing hardship together.

Learning a hundred new skills she let someone else do for her and thought she would never need.

Developing empathy for people who live their entire lives with the demons that she is only getting a glimpse of: depression, poverty and despair.

Learning, like Oliver Wendell Holmes talks about below, to Meet Trouble as a Friend.

“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around.  Wouldn’t be doing anybody a favor.  Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.  I don’t say embrace trouble.  That’s as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

“No, trouble isn’t the scourge of the world.  The world has its ups and downs.  So have people, and all the speechifying that breath can produce won’t change things or make the millennium come an hour sooner.  You can’t run away from trouble.”
 “Accept it.  Don’t worry about it.  Have faith – and do the needful.”

Love is Stupid

My youngest daughter took a trip on an airplane to visit her dad last weekend.

I didn't really want her to go. I knew that they would do lots of  fun things that I can't afford to do with her and that he would buy her lots of great stuff that I can't afford to buy her.

And that is exactly what happened.

She jumped in the car at the airport full of stories of his great new condo where she has a bathroom attached to her room. She pulled darling dresses and new books and art supplies out of her suitcase to show me that he had bought her.

"Dad made me breakfast this morning!" she said, reciting the elaborate menu.

"I make you breakfast every day." I wanted to say.

But instead I just said: "That is great, honey. I'm glad you had fun." Even though, I will confess to you: I was not glad at all.

For a while I have been struggling with the fact that my kids don't blame their dad at all for the breakup of our family. They see the struggles that his actions are causing me, but yet they still maintain their relationships with him. They still seem to see him as the funny, carefree dad that he always was for them.

For a long time this made me really mad. But now I am starting to see what it is about.

They don't want to choose sides. They want to believe that he is a father to admire. They want to keep loving him. And I am trying to be O.K. with that.

I am trying to put myself in their shoes. I think of people I love, who sometimes disappoint me and do things I think are wrong and I remember how I keep loving them anyway because I think of it as my job to love them in spite of their shortcomings.

Somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to do that with their dad, probably when I was hurt one too many times.

But they are still doing it. And it isn't fair of me to expect them to give up their relationship with him in order to prove that they love me.

They are loving past the point where it makes sense. And that is one of the funny things about love.

Rightsizing

This is Chuck and Gerry. Yesterday I sold them my dining room set.

In a couple of months I will be moving from this 3,000 square-foot house, where I raised my four kids with my husband, to an 800 square-foot apartment, where I will finish raising the last one by myself.

There are so many things that are hard about that. One of them that is really hard is getting rid of sentimental things.

Many of them are not even being used. They are stored in the attic and the crawl space for when they might have been needed again: The dog cage from our loyal Basset Hound Belle, the wagon we pulled the kids around the neighborhood in every Halloween, the grave stones my second daughter made with her dad to scare the trick-or-treaters.

Many things have proven impossible to part with: The rocking chair where I breast-fed our four children will get drug around with me for many more years, I think. I'd like to someday pass it on to my oldest daughter Abby, who carried her dolls until she was 12 years old and dreams every day of being a mother.

But there are things like the dining room set that have to go. Emptying the drawers yesterday I found some momentos to keep: Place cards made for the Thanksgiving table by my youngest daughter Bridget and the original receipt for the furniture that we found one day when all six of us took a trip to Amish country.

Chuck and Gerry are moving to Texas to be near their son and his grandchildren. For Gerry, it will be the first time she has ever owned a formal dining room set.

She is excited about the family being together at the holidays and eating meals at that beautiful table.

I am trying to remember that the table is going with her, but the memories of our many meals there are staying with me and can never be taken or sold.

I am trying to remember that my life isn't just getting smaller, it is getting more authentic.

I am counting on the fact that one day there will be for me another home, and another special table where I will gather on special days with all the people that I love.

Make A Date With Your Kid

Due to recent unforeseen and ridiculous circumstances, I am raising my 16-year old daughter by myself.

That is O.K. She is a very nice teenager and she is taking it very easy on me.

But we don't have the kind of relationship that some of the mothers and daughters in my favorite movies have.

You know, they are best friends and tell each other everything. The daughter does not forbid her mother to sing in the car or talk in front of her friends. The TV daughter does not "borrow" her mother's favorite sweaters and leave them in her locker at school.

Sometimes, when I am eavesdropping on conversations she is having with her dad, I get upset to hear her telling her all the details of her life that she never mentions to me.

A friend of mine watches T.V. every Thursday night with his three kids. Two of them are living on their own, but still they show up to watch their favorite sit-coms with their dad. Every Thursday I get a little bit jealous thinking about the three of them spending time with their parent voluntarily.

So, last week I decided to be a copy-cat and get some of my own one-on-one interaction with my teenager. Since it was clear she wasn't going to spend time with me voluntarily, I pulled the parent card.

I told her that every Thursday night from now on we were going to have dinner somewhere. She had to leave her cell phone in the car. We were not going to Dave's Cosmic Subs every Thursday. We were going to have long dinners at nice places. We were going to spend some quality time together.

So last Thursday we ate outside at a nice restaurant in town. Many nice things happened:

She learned how to put her napkin in her lap at the start of the meal and to not chew her ice.
She learned her mother was not annoying to everyone when a semi-attractive man sitting at the bar sent me a over a glass of wine.
She told a couple who stopped by the table her plans for college (who knew?)
I learned her favorite dessert was creme' brulee and she learned mine was chocolate mousse.
We both had fun.

I think I am really going to like Thursday nights.

You can do it!

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The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

I went to the movies this weekend. I hardly ever do that. It feels a little too luxurious to me, like I am wasting time.

I kind of have a problem with that. I wake up in the morning and I try to lie in bed and pet my cat and meet the morning, but in my head the giant list is already talking to me. It knows I have just an hour to:

Start the coffee
Make the kid a hot breakfast
Water the plants
Feed the cat
Pack a lunch
Make my bed
Get ready for work
Drop the kid at school

Even on a morning when I have the day off I am up-and-at-em:

Cleaning the workshop
Shopping for groceries
Doing the laundry
Paying the bills
Writing the blog

Sometimes when I am emptying the trash at the flower shop where I work, I see a couple across the street about my age sitting and talking in their chairs on the front porch. I wonder why they get to do that while I am working. When I get home, I see two women I know walking together through my neighborhood while I am pulling weeds by my mailbox. I am puzzled: Why aren't they pulling weeds at their houses?

But finally I have figured it out: They are resting because they choose to. They have given themselves permission to do something I haven't. And that is what my friend Jimmy calls Playing at Life.

In the movie I saw called Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts goes to Italy to recover from a divorce. She meets a lot of Italians who eat too much pasta and sit around with their friends talking with their hands. She is accosted by an older Italian man who says that Americans work too much and can't appreciate il dolce far niente, which is Italian for The Sweetness of Doing Nothing.

I think he is right.

I worked really hard all of my life to get to an end that I won't get to have anyway. Looking back it seems like I probably should have let the weeds go and taken a few more moments to Play at Life.

It is late, but it is not too late for that.

Yesterday I watched Jeopardy while eating ice cream and walked a community garden just to look at the flowers.

Il dolce far niente I say with my hand in the air.

Can I Get a Smile Here?

I did something I never do today.

I quit a job on the first day.

I wasn't going to. I mean I hated my new job. All of the people there were so crabby. There was a shop cat and even he was crabby. He got yelled at for drinking out of the toilet and the water buckets.

I knew exactly how he felt. I got snapped at for far smaller sins all day.

I mean, is it so hard to just explain in a nice voice how you would like things done? I am a flexible chick, I can change the way I do things.

Still, I was going to go back tomorrow. It might get better, I thought. It is possible I can cheer the whole place up.

But then I started thinking: "Why is that my job all the time, to try to make everybody happy?"

It would be a nice change of pace if people were worried about making me happy.

Then my very good friend, who always makes me happy, suggested that I didn't HAVE to go back for more punishment tomorrow. He pointed out that I have not given notice at my other job. I could just go back to the job that isn't perfect, but where my boss treats me with kindness and sometimes buys me a fruit and yogurt cup from McDonalds just to be nice.

So that's what I have DECIDED to do. For now.

Decisions, Decisions

I didn't write much last week. Sorry about that. I was doing something very important. I was DECIDING.

The last year has been full of so much deciding.

Deciding to leave an unhealthy relationship. Deciding to close my flower shop. Deciding to move out and then back in to my house. Deciding to sell almost all of my possessions.

 Let me tell you something about deciding: Deciding is very exhausting.

If you are a careful person like me who likes to have a plan, deciding carries a huge amount of weight. Every decision seems like it has the ability to change your entire life.

I have the additional problem of being a people-pleaser, so any decision that hurts or disappoints another person has added difficulty.

Today I start a new job and this afternoon, if all goes well at the new flower shop, I have to tell my old boss, who is also my friend, that I am leaving.

The pay is better and there are benefits. It is the best decision for me and my kids.

Still, all last week I worried it might be the wrong decision. What if it was too hard? What if my boss was mean? What if leaving my old job was a big mistake?

I told my teenager about my worries.

"Just do it mom," She said. "If it doesn't work out, it's O.K. God will give you something else."

O.K. Here goes another new beginning. Wish me luck.

Welcome Aboard to my old high school buddy Chris Hughes.

First Things First

Today should be a good day because my youngest child turned 16 today, the sun is shining, I don't have to go to work and try to make beautiful arrangements with half-dead flowers and I can now fit my car into the garage.

But you know something? That wall of worry that I try to look over is very tall today.

On the table are bills that need to be paid.

On my phone is a gloomy message from my divorce lawyer.

Upstairs are baskets of clothes that need to be taken to The Wash Tub to be cleaned and folded.

And in the basement lots and lots of crap that I didn't accumulate but still I have to get rid of.

But there is a coconut cupcake waiting for me at my friend Angela's house and there is a birthday girl waiting to be picked up this afternoon to buy a new birthday phone.

So I have to go. There is a wall that needs climbing.

Thank you to my newest follower Jim Ras. Thanks Jimmy. My goal is 100 by Christmas.

Thank you to my newest follower who is not related to me and is reading voluntarily: Patty Burley

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

It has been a year of big losses for me: Marriage, financial security, dignity and dog. And here comes another one that for me is the worst of all: I have to break up with my house.

Worse that a marriage breaking up you say? She cares more about a house than a relationship?

Well . . . .  yes.

Because I am still in love with my house.

Not really my house exactly. After all, It is just a bunch of siding and nails and the source of huge electric bills.

I am in love with what my house holds. It keeps the memories of four wonderful children who were raised here. It keeps countless birthday parties and magical Christmas mornings and brand new kittens and a loyal dog.

It keeps the story of the mysterious end along with the wonderful beginning.

Every room tells me a hundred stories. In the garden are a thousand smiles. Three of my children are gone, but here I still see them every day.

Really I can hardly imagine life without my house.

But here I go because I have to.

It is hard to think there might be another home I might love someday, but I am hoping for that.

And hope is something I plan to always have.

It's all in the attitude

I went to my first professional baseball game the other day. I think the Cleveland Indians lost, as they usually do, but I didn't really care.

The best part of the whole game was the entertainment.

First of all, some crazy talented five year old, who still had a little problem pronouncing her Rs, belted out the Star Spangled without missing a word or a note.

I thought about how much confidence she had to have to stand up in front of so many people and sing like that. But maybe it's easy to have a good attitude when you are a beautiful little girl with a beautiful singing voice and a beautiful future.

For someone like The Hot Dog Man, a good attitude is something that is a challenge every day.

The Hot Dog Man is a vendor at the game. He walks up and down the aisles sweating and wiping his forehead and maybe thinking that this isn't quite the job he imagined himself having. Maybe he was laid off from his desk job and took the job selling hot dogs as a way to pay the bills.

Probably when he is getting dressed in his red and white shirt for work every day he thinks of the life he was supposed to have and wonders why it worked out for other people, but not for him.

But then he does something I really admire. He shows up at the job that he is too smart for and puts all the other vendors to shame. He puts on a crazy show for all of the folks who are tired of watching their team drop the ball.

"You want a HOT DOG!," he yells to a row.

"Seventh inning! Buy a HOT DOG!" he demands.

And then he sees me and my companion.

"YOU'RE HUNGRY!" he tells me.

BUY HER A HOT DOG! he screams at my date. "SHE WANTS A HOT DOG!"

I don't want a hot dog. But I want the attitude of The Hot Dog Man.

Dream a Little Dream

Well I am getting older. At least that is what the mirror tells me.

Sometimes I don't recognize the person looking back at me. I think: "Who is that old chick with bags under her eyes? She should catch up on her sleep and then maybe have some fun."

But even though the body has some miles on it, and life has lately given me some crushing disappointments, can I tell you something? I am always dreaming a little dream.

I get a few "big ideas" every day. I kind of toss them around and think of all the reasons they might not work and then usually throw them out of my brain due to their impracticability. Some of those have been: running a marathon, (the 5K almost killed me), becoming a foster parent (you have to give the kids back) and buying a little house in Tuscany (the buying part was a problem).

My daughter Abby says that these constant big ideas are the fault of my adult ADHD. She likes to diagnose things. My mom calls it "flight of ideas." She is trying to keep me on track. My friend J. calls in genius, but he also has ADHD and flight of ideas, so he perfectly understands.

For instance, right now he is considering making movie about the life of a cow.

So he doesn't see anything weird about my newest idea, which is to become a dahlia grower.

 I am pretty convinced this is actually going to happen, because I have been tossing this idea around ever since I met Marvin the Dahlia Grower at a nearby farmers market several weeks ago and it is still in my brain just waiting for a reason to be thrown out.

Every Tuesday I drive about a half hour just to talk to Marvin and to see what beautiful dahlias he has brought to sell for 50 cents each. There is a white one with yellow striping on the petals, A pure white one as big as your outstretched hand and a cinnamon-colored one with tube-shaped petals that are the kind of perfect that makes you believe in God.

I have this whole dahlia-growing thing figured out. I already have a green thumb, so I know I can get them to grow.

I have signed up for two sunny community garden plots to grow my dahlias in.

I have researched all about growing dahlias on the amazing Internet.

I have placed dibs on some of my favorites of Marvin's dahlia tubers.

I have even found three flower shops that want to buy my dahlias.

My dahlia idea was still up there in my brain a couple of nights ago, just looking for a reason to get thrown out, when I noticed a gorgeous red dinner-plate sized flower growing in the front flower bed of a little ramshackle house while I was out for a drive.

I turned around and drove back to get a better look, pulled into the driveway hoping the owners didn't have an attack dog, and snapped a picture of that amazing flower.

 And in that moment my idea turned into a dream.

You guessed it. That flower was a dahlia.

I Tell You I'm Qualified!

I am looking for a job. Me and half of the rest of the world.

The last job I applied for used to belong to my friend Wendy. She purchased fruit and ordered lunches and answered phones and sometimes wrote letters for a Public Relations firm.

She was basically the PR firms' mother.

Then she got promoted to finance and told me that her former job was available.

So I wrote a clever cover letter and sent a padded resume and it has been two weeks and still they have not called me.

What? I mean seriously, I rock at buying fruit and ordering lunch. I have been doing that for 20 years.

The job market is tough!

First of all, there is a job just writing job descriptions to make them look impossible, I think. (By the way, I would also rock at that job).

All of the entry level full-time jobs on the site I visit have a huge list of requirements that you must meet to even be considered.

Just to be a nanny you have to speak two languages. I got all excited about that one until I found out that Pig-Latin, which my sister Kate and I are awesome at, does not count.

You must "be proficient" at a whole bunch of computer programs that I don't even have on my computer.

You must have "at least" three years experience doing whatever it is the entry level job wants you to do. So then, not really entry level, I think, kind of mid-level.

I keep checking this site every day hoping to find a job description that reads:

"Must be good at motivating unmotivated people."

"Must know how to divide day lilies."

"Must be proficient at acting positive while feeling negative."

"Must be able to design and plant a kick-ass front porch container."

"Must know how to create dinner using a half-rusted head of lettuce, a pound of bacon, a can of black beans and a half package of tortillas."

"Must be able to remove gum from from the seat of a pair of jeans."

Does anyone need a mother? Oh, by the way, medical benefits and at least a week of paid vacation would be nice.

The Wash Tub

I had these two friends. They were so reliable. I could really depend on them to be there whenever I needed them. They always helped me look clean and fresh.

Then one day a mean man took them without asking.

I really miss my washer and dryer.

It turns out that they are irreplaceable due to my current deplorable economic situation.

So now I do my laundry at The Wash Tub. 

In the beginning, I was afraid of The Wash Tub. To me coin laundries had all the appeal of biker bars and fast-food restaurants. But can I tell you something? The Wash Tub is not such a bad place at all.

I do my laundry there on Monday mornings. There is a little old couple there that I like to watch. She is the one in charge and bosses him around a bit and will only let him fold the towels. I can't really blame her, though. There is a fine art to folding shirts that I don't think the male gender really grasps.

It is his job to carry the baskets out to the car when they are full. It is a team effort that is heartwarming to watch.

You can pay a little more to leave your laundry there and have Helen, the attendant with a very bad blond dye job and the high-pitched voice of a five-year-old fold your clothes for you. But I happen to know that Larry the welder, with just one leg, gets this service done for free. It is pretty clear that Helen has the hots for him.

I get a lot of compliments at The Wash Tub. The clientele seems fascinated by my agility in folding while at the same time keeping an eye out for when a dryer turns off. They like how I stop mid-fold and run to plug more quarters into the machine. One woman was dazzled when I removed some items that were dry and continued to dry the remaining items in order to get the most from my quarters.

"I've never tried that," she said. "That is very clever."

In the easy days, I did my laundry in between other household chores. Put a load in, unload the dishwasher, wipe down the kitchen counter, pack a lunch, put the clothes in the dryer. Get dressed, put on my make-up, fold the clothes. Clean the cat litter box, water the front flower pot, shove the basket on my hip and bring it upstairs to unload.

Now it is just the laundry all by itself until it is done. It is one thing now that can't be hurried. And there is something kind of nice about that.

Populars, Geeks and Jesus Freaks

I don't know what it is about teenage girls, but they seem to like placing themselves in a social group and sticking to that from about seventh grade until Junior year in high school.

After that, they have figured out who they are and settle into just being themselves.
I am rearing my third teenage girl now, and as gung-ho as her oldest sister was about boys and dances and friends and her second sister was about vocabulary words and the exact decimal point of her GPA, that girl is gung-ho about Jesus!

It all started about six months ago when she attended a youth group meeting at the church we attend (sometimes). She met some kids she really liked. They were nice. There were some cute boys there. There was some cool music. And so she began to attend all of the youth events, which took place pretty much every night. And now she is a Jesus Freak.

Don't get me wrong. I am down with Jesus. But I am one of those people who believes in moderation. Some Jesus in the morning and maybe some Jesus at night before bed. But Jesus all the time kind of tires me out.
My youngest daughter reminds me that Jesus does not like swearing or yelling. He does not like it when you say something mean about someone who is torturing you, even if it is completely true.

But there is a silver lining to being the parent of a Jesus Freak:  Jesus Freak teenagers are pretty respectful to their parents because of my favorite bible sentence: Honor your father and mother. That one is saving me from all the back-talk and disrespect that I got from the other sisters.
Thank you Jesus!

Flowers Can't Fix Everything

Flowers can fix a lot of things.
Like sometimes, when I wake up in the morning and walk past the dining room and see my beautiful cherry furniture where we used to sit with our four kids every Thanksgiving and Christmas which I just sold to a nice, not divorced couple who are coming to pick it up and bring to their new home in Texas where they are moving to be closer to their grandchildren, I can keep on walking right out to the deck and look at my orange zinnias blooming and remember that there are pretty things mixed in with all the ugly things in life.
But when a man calls the flower shop and wants to send birthday flowers to his wife and - by the way- they are going through a divorce, I know that is something that flowers won't fix.
But still, I ask what her favorite color is and he says he doesn't know and I feel really bad for thinking: "Well, you idiot, maybe if you paid attention to things like that, you wouldn't be where you are right now."
But instead I tell him I will make something very pretty, and I will sign the card "I'll Miss You" just like he has asked me to.
And I decide to make the bouquet all yellow.
Yellow like a brand new day.

Sugar really does help

So yesterday I had to run a check to the university where Mr. Nice Guy goes to school. Seems the X "forgot" to pay his tuition, and all of his classes would be dropped by the end of the day if a large installment was not paid. So I drove a half hour to the college and signed my life away.
Back in the car on the way to get some unneeded matching notebooks and folders for my youngest child to start school with, I listened to a voice mail from the auto body shop where I had left kid number three's car to have some inexpensive work done on the muffler. Turns out the brakes and exhaust were bad to the tune of about a thousand bucks.
Now normally this would cause me to have a breakdown. But over the last year I have had to put out a lot of fires, financial and otherwise, and instead of having to go out and do some major retail therapy to get myself back happy, I have discovered a much cheaper mood-altering substance: SUGAR.
Yesterday it was a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate from Dairy Queen. Not only was it yummy, but it brought me back to the days of my youth when my biggest problem was a brain freeze caused by a Mister Misty from the local DQ in good old Sioux Falls South Dakota.
It turns out I am not the only one using sugar to bring me out of the doldrums. My friend got in a fight with his daughter yesterday and confessed that he made himself feel better by eating a muffin. "A muffin is really just a cake in disguise," he said. True that, and you know, I don't feel so guilty because that ice cream was once just a harmless glass of milk.

Enough Stuff

This is my garage. The X moved out and left a bunch of crap behind. Then I moved back in and brought a bunch of my crap back. Believe it or not, I have already gotten rid of a lot of crap.
My grown-up son, who I call Mr. Nice Guy, says if you have too much stuff you don't own your stuff. It owns you instead. He is very wise and throws away his couches every time he moves. That may be because they have beer spilled all over them, but still . . .
So now I have to get rid of some more stuff. Like the basketball hoop I purchased to entertain my nephew for one weekend when he came to visit. I need to remember that when I was a child I played with sticks.
I need to remember my sister Anne's mantra for when you go shopping and see a two-for-one sale on sweaters that you kind of like but don't need at all: Two of crap is still crap. Only she uses a different word that gives the phrase a bit more punch.
Here's to you Annie. The next time I post a picture of my garage, there will be space in it to park a car.

What the hell, why not?

I used to have a blog. It was kinda funny. Lots of people read it. Then I got divorced and nothing seemed funny any more. Everyone was like: "I miss your blog!"
I wanted to say: "Yeah, well you think of something to write about when your life is falling apart." but instead I said something like: "I just don't have time for that any more."
But you know what? I miss my blog too. And now things are so ridiculously awful they are sometimes funny again so here it goes. And remember that you asked for it.