Haunted House

It just sunk in. I've been distracted by the anticipation of a dishwasher, low rent, a patio for a grill, etc., and I didn't stop to fully consider what this means... I'm taking over the house that houses my childhood.

I had distanced myself from the difficult parts of my past by no longer thinking of it as mine. But now when I walk in, bits of memory and emotion jump out and nip at me at unexpected moments. With the familiar hop up the front stairs and the smooth door latch in my hand. With the familiar creak of each floorboard. With the unique sound of each door - which I can hear before it even swings. Like the back of a hand I thought I had amputated. Surreal memories from a past life. Plenty good. Plenty hard. Lots that just were. All of which surprise me with their force as they surface. Not really sure what was real, what was imagined, or what I've long forgotten.

The closet I open and expect to still see clothes that I wonder if my sister will notice I borrow. The bookshelf that housed the encyclopedias confirming my suspicion about Santa Claus (after one more quick look at the word "mythical"). The wood floors that I could never clean up well enough to not leave a mark when they got wet. The storage loft that was my private safe haven. The bathroom where I was perplexed by tampons but too ashamed or too proud to ask for help. The room in which I spent hours flirting and making out with high school boyfriends, but also spent hours holding my favorite dog while she was dying. And, of course, the kitchen where it became clear my hunger was an unfortunate and unsatisfiable urge.

A vortex. Where I am all of those parts of my past selves again at once. Where I can't always remember the difference between who think I am supposed to be to fit in and who I really am. Where the constant fear I may be doing something wrong still lingers in the air.

Can I be an adult in my childhood home? Will the substitution of my grown up stuff and some new color on the wall make it my (grown up) own? Will the legs I finally stand pretty steadily upon still hold me up when I walk in the door every day? Or will I wake up terrified of that same old boogie man outside every dark window.

I'm not sure I'd trade any of what that house has held. The wounds healed over stronger. I can see the undeniable love, now that I've learned to interpret it. But I'm bracing myself. Anticipating getting briefly knocked off-balance by the whirl of old selves.

I figure my only defense is to just immerse myself in whatever the house throws at me, messy as it may feel. Welcome the ghosts. Listen to what they have to say.

Then maybe have a cleansing. Burn sage. Gather friends to bring in new energy. Fill it with music and laughter and new life. And get ready for the selves yet to come.

Nina Luna Goes to Church

One Sunday morning after I heard I was losing my cute little house and felt like I needed a safe place to go, I surprised myself and joined my mom at her church. And then I went back - several times now.

It's a tiny "Community" church (actually Baptist, but not really advertising it). Very casual and intimate. Enthusiastic young minister. Lots of music. Relatively diverse population, though I stick out as the sole representative of my particular demographic - without kids or gray hair. This whole impulse has made me think of rekindling my long abandoned "church shopping" to Unity/Unitarian type churches thinking they would fit me better, but this one has stuck so far.

I'm still not convinced by the whole Jesus thing. Sitting there, I wrestle with the uncomfortable memories of my own blind enthusiasm about Christianity growing up and with feeling limited by this one point of view. But I've long suspected it is mostly the language that I stumble over. So much about the themes, ideas, and human experience are universal. So I try translating as I listen... God=the life force of the universe. Bible=one form of ancient wisdom. Prayer=energy/meditation/reflection. And that gets me pretty far.

Don't worry, my social and political liberalism are still fully in tact. And psychoanalysis will probably always be my first line of defense when trying to figure out issues of life/love/soul. I am just feeling drawn to looking for other kinds of wisdom as well. A place to think and talk about it. How to exist in the world. How to love and be loved. To connect with things greater than my own problems. Be part of community, with people of all stages of life. And sharing an important connection with my mom feels wonderful.

Not sure what it means yet or how long it will last. But it feels good for the moment. And I may have just signed up to sing in the choir...

Checking Out

So I'm at my local public library to return my most recent items (researching ironwork design for tattoo ideas), when a cute boy with no ring on his left hand catches my eye (the stealth with which I can detect a band amazes me). My nerdy self thinks: library?! How freakin' wholesome and lovely would that dating story be.

I can't see what he was checking out (literally) without obviously & intrusively craning my neck. So the obvious conversation starter was out. What the heck do I say? How's the weather?! Don't online book reservations and automatic checkout stations really take away the personal relationship we used to have with our librarians? Do you have trouble remembering your PIN? My six year old nephew knows his whole 13-digit library number by heart! Somehow I don't think that would be it. I need to check out a book with pick-up lines for real people...

Is lack of conversation topics just an excuse to superglue my lips shut? Was I not feeling up to the risk at that moment? Or just not needing to force anything that doesn't happen spontaneously?

The baby/family urge has been quelled for the moment (perhaps satisfied vicariously through pregnant friends) and activities in my life are in full swing so I usually welcome being home alone (rather than the empty no-one-to-go-home-to feeling that sometimes takes over). Could being more connected to my family through my housing situation be filling some of that hole?

A friend who was breaking up with a boyfriend once told me, "I'll just need to find other ways to get my emotional needs met." Which kind of blew my mind at the time. Is it possible to get all that feeling of connection and belonging from friendship and family? Isn't there something unique and irreplaceable about romantic love that we need? Am I looking for everything in a man when so much of what I need is right in front of me?

It could be possible that I use the excuse of not having a romantic relationship to check out of relationship all together. Certainly safer that way; no way to get hurt. I thought I had shed that defense way back in The Dark Years. But my connection with other people seems to be up, and the loneliness I have been attributing to the lack of a man is down. Maybe I still have been pinning it all on Him. Interesting...

Long Time No Blog

No need for public introspection in the last month? Unlikely. More like I stopped being able to steal high speed internet from my neighbor and have been banished to the realm of DIAL UP. And I've been using Facebook for my virtual social interaction (at least that's slightly more two-directional, right?!). But lucky for you, the impulse to pour my heart out on the internet has flared up again.

Since I've been gone...

Budget: pretty darn good still. Amazingly. How glad am I to already be on the right track when things like suddenly have to move and global economic crisis hit?! And I actually feel like I have more money now, by knowing how much I actually have. Though, I still often wish "how much I have" was more...

Food: lovin' cooking things from the Farmers Market. Slowly building my competence and confidence in the kitchen. Did you know you can turn on the oven to 400 degrees, spritz with a little olive oil and salt and pepper, and roast just about any vegetable to perfection? Just a matter of knowing when it's best to pull it out. Why didn't someone tell me that earlier?!

Health/Fitness: looking into it. Not loving the post-injury waistline. Not cute - even when we call it the "sympathy bump" for one of my best friends who is pregnant.Goin' easy on the knee; still frustratingly temperamental. Played some volleyball OK last week. Yay.

Love Life: sucks. Pulling myself together after some quality time only being attracted to people I can't or shouldn't have. Apparently, I refuse to pursue the one lead on a possibly mature adult I've gotten - yet, I reserve the right to complain.

Moving Shock: recovering and adjusting. Big News... I'm moving into my parents' house. My parents have pretty much moved out to the beach full time, so their cute little house sits empty. They've offered to move out of the main part of the house and just use a bedroom in the basement via the downstairs door for if/when they do want to stay in town. Will it be a safe refuge while I get my own "house" in order? Or opening an old can of worms?! We'll see. Maybe both. Luckily, I have until the end of November to actually move.

Current state of mind: hangin' in there. It's that time of year when everything/one starts getting crazy busy - all the while talking about needing S.A.D. lights for our Seattle depression. (I already have one, btw.) I've started living on Emergen-C to try to avoid the munchkin germs.

And the instinct to turn inward for the winter has begun.

Rug Pulled Out

My landlord is selling my house. My beautiful little house in the trees. With the secret staircase to the studio/sewing room. And the tool bench. And the Catrium. (I can't bare the loss this means for the kitties.) My beautiful little house close enough to ride my bike to work on sunny days and walk to the Farmers Market. The little house that I rent for way less than should be possible. The little house that made me feel like I had room to breathe.

And the news came at a particularly bad moment when I was already teetering on the edge of losing it, mourning other loss and disappointment.

Suddenly, all I see is injustice. There is no way I can ever find anything comparable in the same price-range. At least nothing I'd want to live in. I'll end up in a dark cramped basement. My cats will hate me even more than they already do. And all my work on my budget will be blown. I won't have enough to live on. I'll plunge back into debt. I will never get ahead. And why me? I don't want to have to pack up my entire house and move right now! Why do I even try? Or so the Chicken Little in my head tells me.

After a generous amount of denial, tears, and wishing reality was different, the news is settling in. I am adjusting. I have at least two months. More if it doesn't sell right away. Maybe it is time for change.

Farewell Catrium...

Greatest Love, Biggest Fear

It's been a while, but I finally got back out there.














I was ready for it. Mountains. Trees. Waterfalls. Wildflowers. Little scurrying friends. (Luring them with our best marmot impressions.) Views so wide you can breath deeper than you knew possible.

Except for the good old-fashioned panic attack in the middle of the first night when I woke up and freaked out that I was in the dark woods without walls to protect me from boogie-men. Vulnerable and exposed in the big dark unknown. But that's why you have best friends who you can show all the dark corners of your soul to. Who have seemingly limitless patience right when you need it, even in the middle of the freakin' night. Who tell you funny stories until the tranquilizers kick in.

So continues my battle to not be held prisoner by fear of the dark. Determined not to let my love for being outside be taken away my fear of being outside.

Even after living through a nightmarish visit from my own private demons, morning always feels fresh again. Thank god. We set out on what was supposed to be a relatively good, but super easy day hike (trying to be easy on my knee), but we slightly misinterpreted the hike description and serendipitously ended up in THE most beautiful picnic spot I've ever seen. We ended up with a 360 degree view of Baker, Shuksan, and other peaks all around us. Magical.

Later we tried to figure out how the Yellow Aster Butte trail head could have dared to actually lead us to a place called Yellow Aster Butte instead of the other place called Twin Lakes that we thought we wanted to see. Yes, we are that stupid sometimes. And that lucky.

Screaming Like a Girl

I've always thought of myself as the kind of girl who is made of sugar and spice but also keeps her cool in the face of snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails. A thoroughly modern, well-balanced, active, capable young lady, right? But apparently even being of a post-feminist generation with a naturally adventurous spirit only gets you so far when it comes to dead rodents.

Friday night, as I am trying to recover from being sick and prepare for a weekend trip, my friend calls me up in a panic (which immediately makes my heart jump because she is 5 months pregnant). "You have to come over! There is a mouse in a trap under the sink, and I can still hear it moving around..." Her husband, of course, is golfing and not answering his phone (thanks, Josh). The urgency in her voice and my desire to be the kind of friend who will drop everything in a time of need propelled me out the door before I could really think about what I was getting myself into.

I arrived to a frazzled friend, two agitated dogs, and a wooden spoon through the handles of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. Luckily, we had established that my role was mostly moral support. Or I may have turned around as soon as we peaked in, screamed a few times, and saw the huge dead mouse body. Aaaahhhh. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck.

What do you even do with that?! We don't want to deal with that! With great emotional intensity, we brainstormed possible solutions and searched the house for carcass extraction implements... I was very clear on the fact that there needed to be something rigid and opaque for transporting the body from the house (there would be no dead rodent floppiness on my watch). We decided BBQ tongs could be effective, then thrown out. Maybe the gardening hand rake? And maybe hazmat suits.

Finally, using a combination of tongs, broom, and brown paper bag, my friend coaxed the mouse corpse from the back of the cupboard as I screamed at the top of my lungs over her shoulder (aren't I helpful?!). Then tiptoed the bag across the alley to the industrial dumpster (shh).

Didn't retain much dignity, but got the job done.

Just When I Think I'm Getting It

Why, when I am so sure that I know what I want, am I pulled in other directions? I spend so much time trying to learn to listen to my heart. Then when I listen, it leads me astray. Attracted directly to people I can't or shouldn't have. Not fair.

Why, when I am so sure I have a clear head about certain old issues, can they still blow me over with one small puff? I can't/don't want to spend money, so where does that longing go? Back to Food, apparently. Perfect timing for it to be the hot topic all around me. People finding the answer to their problems by controlling what they put in their mouth. Perfectly awful timing.

Solution: quit being so sure. (?)

Big Girls Don't Cry (at least not in public)

It's official. STP left without me. There was no way my knee could even make it to Seward Park, much less Centralia, much less Portland. At least that made it an easy decision. But sad.

My big plan to reclaim the weekend was to hang out with my aunt, make gnocci (hopefully, a more accomplishable item on my list) and take a sewing class I had my eye on. Unfortunately, the class turned out to be last month (oops), but time with my aunt in the sun was perfect and I'm planning on having a go at the gnocci.

Since the signs were pointing towards my not being able to do the ride for quite a while, I was able to ease into the reality and the disappointment. But it came flooding back when I went to the "Send Off" party the other night. I felt really left out as we heard all of the last minute logistics. It didn't help that the program coordinator pointed out someone else who was injured and couldn't ride, but didn't mention me.

So one of my worst fears snuck up on me. Suddenly I'm crying in front of relative strangers. And to make matters worse, they didn't seem to know what to do with me. So I put my sunglasses on and slid out. It was an important cathartic release. But uncomfortable. Only slightly less embarrassing than several years ago when my favorite dog was dying and an instructor lightly criticized my "creative" knitting technique - when suddenly I'm bawling in the middle of knitting class. They didn't know what to do with me there either. I didn't even know what to do with myself that time, so it was a mess.

They're just tears. You've seen them before. And will undoubtedly see them again. Why does it make us so uncomfortable? Though, I can't really blame them; I'm often the same way.

Just give the girl a hug, people.

Holding a Number in My Hand...

Another blind date?! Eek.
I just don't want to call. It's too hard!
Why so hard?