Four decades of red shoe regrets, resolved

I've had a love hate relationship with red shoes for so many years ... stalking them, loving them, lusting for them, even buying them again and again, only to find myself unable to wear them because they're just way too red. There are at least three pairs stashed away right now in a box in the garage that I've never worn, even though part of me still loves looking at them. I even get them out to try on every once in awhile.

Anyway. Today I break my long blog silence to announce that the curse has been lifted: I've found some red shoes that I love, that I can actually wear. Check 'em out!

OK, so maybe they're not the height of fashion ... I actually worried as I was ordering them that they might look like clown shoes, or children's shoes. But they don't (well, maybe a tiny bit, but in a good way). I'm happy with them. They're red enough to be red, without being TOO red. I love the slight platform, the soft thick leather, the comfortable strap. And you can't tell from this picture but they're very wide across the toes, just like my feet. I plan to wear them all summer.

What else? I still think about blogging every day, but so much of what I think of saying seems kind of unnecessary to say. That's a spell that seems to have been broken lately too – my decades-long compulsion to document my experiences, rather than simply living them. I think that practice helped me, more than anything else I've done, to learn how to really inhabit my own life. Writing it all down – and paying close attention to myself, so I can be accurate in my account – has taught me to love it all. I read something the other day that rang true to me:

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa once said, "An artist is someone who never averts his eyes." In 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake killed 100,000 people and destroyed Tokyo. Kurosawa was just 13 years old and walked amongst the devastation of human and animal corpses. When he tried to turn away, his older brother instructed him not to avert his eyes. As a result, Kurosawa came to believe that looking at the whole of life was a way to defeat fear.

That's a big part of what I've been doing until lately with this blog, and with journaling in general. Learning to defeat my fears. I can't say they're totally defeated, or that I expect them ever to be, but I do feel safe in my life and in the world right now, and that makes me feel generous and strong, like I have more to offer than this inward-turning exploration of my own ego. I guess that's why I'm not writing much right now. I'm feeling more like expressing myself in other ways.

While I'm quoting people, here's another quote I've been meditating on for awhile, that I feel I've finally internalized to the point where it's truly how I see the world. I have it on a little card on the refrigerator and have been painting it in calligraphy on little cards to leave around town ... just for fun, and maybe to share the blessing it's been to me:

Hm, what else? It does seem like a long time since I've written anything down. Just for utilitarian purposes, I'll go ahead and document some highlights, in no particular order.

1. I'm about half way done winding down with the antidepressants. They did their job for me again, and I'm grateful. Once again however they did cause me to gain weight – about 20 lbs since August – and that is not good for me. Actually, I don't think they directly caused the weight gain; what seems to have happened (again) is that they make me sleepy and hungry, and hungry specifically for carbohydrates, so that it's very hard to exercise and eat like I know I should. So I'm weaning myself off them and forcing myself to do what I need to, even though I really, really don't feel like it.

2. The job is still going great. I don't think it's possible to overstate how much I love it. This, too, I think, is a huge part of why I'm feeling so good these days.

3. Not that everything is perfect. I don't feel like cataloguing everything I don't like, though. It's all just normal stuff, no different than what most people have to deal with in one way or another.

4. We found out last week that Tater has diabetes insipidus. It isn't the same thing as diabetes mellitus ("sugar" diabetes – the kind I have) – it's caused by a deficiency of a different hormone, and isn't life-threatening; it mainly just means his kidneys can't concentrate urine properly so he needs to drink a ton of water, and pee a lot (that's how I realized something was going on; he was just drinking soooo much water). We're starting him on a medication that should help. Other than that, he's still doing great, enjoying his food, toys and walks, and even inviting Bea to wrestle with him every once in awhile, just like a big puppy. He'll be 13 on June 1.

5. Bea is just a wonderful, wonderful little dog. We're doing an agility class together, and she's also evolved into a major ball hound. That's fun for both of us and makes it easy to exercise her – I just throw the ball for her for 20 minutes a couple of times a day and that about does it for her.

6. I think I am officially turning into the nutty middle-aged dog lady. And I'm pretty much OK with that.

7. My latest obsession is finding the perfect underwear to wear under summer dresses. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to figure out how to make it myself, and I have a plan. It's based on a pair of ladies' old-fashioned silk combination underwear from the 20s that I found at a vintage shop a few years ago, and is basically a full slip with a camisole top and a long-ish split skirt at the bottom, and possibly some kind of drop flap at the crotch (this is the part I'm still working out, how the crotch needs to work in combination with the longer legs. The piece I have is more like tap pants on the bottom, but I wanted something that will work better on a bike). The goal is to create something that is loose, cool and comfortable, with no clinging waist band or straps to fall down, and with two legs so you can ride a bike without worrying about the whole thing flying up over your head.

8. We've been putting up birdhouses all over the property this spring and as of this weekend we have over 90% occupancy.

9. My early morning yoga experiment lasted exactly one day, at which point I pulled a muscle in my back (in an un-yoga-related incident) and was out of commission for almost two weeks. By that time I'd basically given up on the whole idea of my spring practice period, and decided to just do what I can, when I can. I'm still going to my class at the gym and practicing a little bit at home each day. I want to do more and when I can, I will!

10. The early rising thing was not a total loss, however. I'm learning how to go to bed earlier and gradually it's getting easier to wake up earlier without such a struggle. Part of the problem, I've realized recently, is Mr. A's schedule – he's up between 3 and 4 a.m. every week day, and even though I sleep in my own room, with ear plugs, I always seem to wake up at least partially whenever he's up and about. Synchronizing my sleep schedule with his, at least a little, has helped some; instead of going to bed at 11 or 12, I've been trying to be asleep no later than 10 p.m., which gives me a chance to get into and out of one good solid cycle before he wakes me up at 3. It's not a perfect solution but I think it's better than before.

11. I got through the whole winter without knitting a single thing and am now getting involved in summer sweaters, and tiny little pink sandals for newborn babies in Japan. This is not just any baby, but the baby of my first true love from high school, who's lived there for almost a decade now and is having a daughter in just a couple of weeks with his adorable Japanese wife. Apparently nobody does baby showers or shares baby clothes over there, so they are having to outfit the entire enterprise alone ... Except, they're not really alone – I'm crocheting furiously .... Wishing I had had the time and inclination to do more of this kind of thing when my own nieces and nephews were being born, but I guess better late than never.

12. Speaking of family, I've been more homesick for my brothers and sisters and parents over the last several months than at any other time I can remember since I left home at 18. I'm not sure why. I just love them so much, and miss them so much, and wonder sometimes why I'm still living out here so far away ... except that I love my family here – Mr. A and the dogs, and my friends – and I love my job, and the landscape, and the plants and trees and beautiful clean fresh air ..... Anyway, I'll be traveling to Utah at least once or twice this summer, and possibly to a few other places too. Looking very, very forward to that.

P.S. One more thing – I'm on the lookout for an extremely wide-brimmed straw hat, for gardening. The biggest one I have right now is about 18" across and I would love to have one that is at least two feet across, or even wider. Almost like a parasol for the head! Oh wait – maybe this? I'm actually picturing something more a little rougher, more rustic ... Let me know if you see something like that, won't you?

Bumps in the road

I swear I never set out to make this my online catalog of complaints ... But. I do need to record that I'm sort of taking a nosedive right now. So much so that my therapist is insisting I get back on meds, at least for awhile. Which I am going to do starting this week.

Depression sucks. I still have such a hard time accepting it as an illness that is not my fault; symptoms like hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, anxiety, complete and total physical and mental exhaustion all feel like things I should be able to "get over" with positive thinking, exercise and a healthy diet. The fact that I can't only makes me feel like more of a loser.

So I hope the medication helps.

Other than this one big black spot on my heart, things are going OK. The house and garden are looking good, the dogs are awesome, I'm exercising every day and getting out with friends and eating mostly pretty well. Bea went in for her spay surgery this morning, which I've been having very mixed feelings about. Not that I want her to have puppies, because I definitely don't. It's just that she's my little girl, and this is major surgery, and I've never had a girl dog before and I really hate the thought of anyone cutting into her poor sweet little puppy belly for any reason. I dropped her off this morning and cried all the way home.

I also stopped by my old house, which happens to be just across the street and down a bit from my vet's office. The property has been on the market for at least seven or eight years and it finally sold, so right now it's sitting empty and as luck would have it the doors were open so I let myself in and spent a half hour or so walking through and remembering how much I loved the place when I lived there. I was lonely there a lot of the time, but it was such a sweet little house, all French doors and windows and a little stone fireplace, with flowers and vines and roses everywhere and beautiful trees all around. It's been sadly neglected, and painted some pretty god-awful colors, but the plum tree I planted ten years ago is doing great and so is the lemon verbena, and the fencing I built when Tater was born is holding up well too. I don't know who bought it but I'm guessing the whole place will probably be bulldozed before too long, since nobody who could afford to buy it would ever consent to live in it, and it's too far gone now to offer as a rental. So that was kind of sad too, though I'm glad I got a chance to see it one last time, empty, instead of full of ugly crap "antiques" for sale like the last time I stopped by. It will always stay in my memory as one of my favorite houses I've ever had.

It feels weird to be here with just Tater and me. Bea is staying at the vet clinic overnight. It's a foggy, cold morning; the fog never did really burn off yesterday and maybe it won't today either. I really should get out and go for a long walk, try to metabolize some of these stress chemicals ... or maybe I'll just go back to bed for awhile and walk later.

Moss gardens, blue boots and other assorted miscellanea

I didn't take this picture myself and I don't know where it came from, but I had to post it because it so gorgeously illustrates my latest obsession – the moss garden. I've been collecting little pieces of moss everywhere and storing it in jars, making little tiny terrariums, tucking it in under the feet of house plants ... It's just the most beautiful color, and so fuzzy, and I love the different forms. Some look like tiny little ferns; others grow in clusters like stars, or miniature aloes or succulents. And for some reason in this driest of winters in as long as I can easily remember, it seems prudent to keep in my mind's eye the image of the lush, green, wet winters I hope will soon return .....

Here's a selection that Mr. A collected for me yesterday from the flower beds next to my office. Two different kinds, plus some oak leaves. The little one on the top right is one I got out of the creek bottom today – slipping on a rock, smashing my knee and destroying a new pair of tights while simultaneously landing with one hand right in the middle of a dried up blackberry bramble. Yowch. Totally worth it, though.

They're resting at the moment on my favorite blue and white plate, by the way – the only one of its kind, which I liberated from the Bauhaus when I moved out in 1986 and have carted around with me like a sacred relic ever since. I've eaten dinner on that plate almost every day for almost 25 years! Not tonight, though.

In other news, this afternoon I went to the plant nursery to see if they had any button ferns in two inch pots (they did not, but are going to get me some by next weekend) and on the way back I decided to finally stop and check out the shop that's now open in the little house I lived in for almost nine years, across the valley on the highway into town.

I almost never even go over to that part of the valley anymore and when I do I make a point of Not going past my old house. It's true it was shabby and ramshackle even before I moved in, and didn't improve much in terms of structure or stamina in the time I lived in it, but I loved that little house so much, and took such care to make it my own space – I knew every tree, every flowering vine and bulb, every bush in the hedge, and planted so much more while I was there, including perennials and herbs and several fruit trees that are now producing beautifully (according to my friend who still keeps a studio in the back of the lot) – it sort of broke my heart to leave it, even though it was what made sense to do at the time, and still does.

So for almost three years I've avoided even looking at the house, preferring to remember it as it was when I lived in it. I could see from the road that the subsequent tenants had ripped down all the jasmine and climbing roses from the front porch and roof, and even that was more than I wanted to know. I also heard from two different sources that my beloved ancient walnut tree had been cut down, and the back of the lot down by the creek was being used as a dumping ground.

Anyway – I guess enough time has finally passed to secure my memories against the threat being overshadowed by a new view of the place ... So I decided to stop. Since it's now a shop that nobody lives in, I was hoping I would be able to actually go into the house and snoop around, instead of having to guess what was happening to it based on what little you can see over the fence, from the road.

Maybe you're one of those romantic types who's expecting me to say that I was pleasantly surprised – charmed, even – by the changes the new tenant has made. Maybe you think I'm going to say that I made my peace with the place at last, and was finally able to release my jealousy and wish it happiness in its new life with its new people ....

I would've loved it if that had happened. I guess in a way I did make peace with it, but not in the way I expected to. First I will say that the stuff they're selling there is not so much in the line of "antiques" as it is more run-of-the-mill "dusty and chipped old junk that smells like mold." They've broken out part of the fence and opened up the French doors from the kitchen onto the patio, which is piled up on one end with soggy old couch cushions, mildewed books, broken lamps and other detritus. The entrance to the shop is through these doors, and from there through the kitchen, which is somehow much, much smaller than I remember, and which looks broken down and depressed now that it's no longer being cooked in by candle light and lovingly cleaned with my special homemade lemony cleansers and filled with climbing plants and flowers and beautiful one of a kind plates and cups and crystal – from there you go into the living room, which is also much smaller than I remember, and similarly depressing in its garbagey clutter, dust, and smell of neglect. The stone fireplace is covered with black smoke stains that they haven't even bothered to remove.

Looking out the French doors into the front yard all I could see was more broken, rain-ruined junk strewn and stacked around, and a 20-foot eucalyptus tree that has sprung up right next to one of my Santa Rosa plums, close enough to kill it if they don't take care, which it doesn't appear they intend to do.

They've nailed up a plywood door in the bedroom doorway, so I wasn't able to see in there.

I did notice that the walnut tree has NOT been cut down, which made me happy. And my favorite little flowering almond in the front yard has buds on it, so at least I know they haven't killed that one yet (though most of the other things I planted are no longer there).

The positive side of this little excursion is that I've finally freed myself from the image I had in my head of that house as being the perfect place for me, that I had to abandon for love. Which it was, at the time, and which I did – and which I'm still glad that I did. But now, when I look around the house I share with Mr. A – which in my mind has never really measured up to the cottage I loved so much – I'm seeing it more for what it is: a solid, well-built house that is slowly being transformed more and more into a place I'm coming to love just as much as I loved that cottage. It's true it isn't as charming as the old house, but it also isn't falling apart – it isn't on a noisy highway – the rooms are bigger, the doors actually close, the water pressure is good, it has amazing views in every direction, and I'm not living in it alone, waiting for a good man to arrive in my life. He did arrive, and here we are together.

I still love the years I spent living in that little house, though. What I remembered today is that I'm loving my time in this house, too. I think allowing myself to take a good look at how that house has moved from the past into the present has helped me see more clearly where I really am right now, myself. I can't wait for Mr. A to get home so I can tell him about it.

As for the blue boots – there are two other buildings on that property, and right now all three of them are occupied by vintage retail shops, one of which is a new place specializing in hip western stuff and amazing boots. The pair I almost got were an amazing turquoise leather with a tall shaft and a low heel, and so close to a workable fit – but in the end I reined myself in enough to admit they were really at least a size too big, and so long I would've been constantly tripping over them. I know this because more than once or twice already in my life I've fallen in love with boots that are too big for me, and every time, I've lived to regret it. Once I came close to losing a tooth when I tripped while my hands were full and landed face-first on the pavement. Those were the cherry suede shearling-lined Dansko boots that stained the cuffs of my jeans red ....

So – no blue boots for me today. Besides, boot season is almost over now. Soon it will be time to start scouting for clonky platform sandals again. Actually I guess that time is already here – so let the stalking begin!

P.S. He also had these, which were too small – unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how much you would've loved/cringed at seeing me tear it up at the next farmer's market dance party in leopard fur platform shortie boots.

Ding dong

I will admit it: I do at times resent, just the tiniest bit, the behavior of some of the rich (they must be filthy rich) folks on our road who live here only on weekends or holidays – the ones who think that keeping a nice little $1.5 million cottage on acreage in the Wine Country is the perfect way to give the kids a place to play where they can make as much noise as they want for a change, without disturbing the neighbors trying to sleep just eight feet above and below them (not to mention the ones on each side).

"Y'know," I sometimes daydream about saying, "I know it must seem very private and remote to you out here, compared with your place in the city, but in fact you are actually not the only people around. We can hear you! Keep it down!"

I guess there might be two varieties of people who go to live in the country – those who want to surround themselves with peace and quiet, and those who want to be able to make lots of noise without risking a citation. I have to say, I've had one foot on each side of that fence at different times, and I do love being able to turn up the speakers in the back yard sometimes when I'm out there – not super loud, but louder than I'd dare to have them in town. But in general (prepare yourself for the shock) I think I mostly belong in the first category – the ones who like it quiet.

I've come to really love the quiet over the last ten years or so – really, I remember first starting to love it in 1995, when I first moved here and was living way out in the redwoods with neighbors even farther away than the ones I have here. I could get KPFA out there, but we couldn't get any television – which was fine, since I wasn't in the habit of watching it – and any trip into town took a minimum of an hour ... and the guy I was married to started drinking heavily almost as soon as we'd moved in, and sometimes disappeared for several days at a time without calling, and I was still temping and had not a single friend within almost a thousand miles ... yow! I haven't gone there for awhile. That was a really painful time.

Anyway, my point in bringing it up was just to say that living way out there in that house all alone so much of the time really taught me about the power of silence to heal. Or I don't know if it was the silence exactly, but maybe just the way the lack of other distracting sounds helped me calm down and start to notice everything else that was going on around me – the whole world was just humming along in perfect order, with no help from me, and my sadness or happiness didn't really change anything for anyone except me. In other words, there wasn't any pressure anymore to try to pretend everything was okay – because nobody cared.* The redwoods didn't care. The birds didn't. The apple orchard didn't. They didn't care; they just witnessed it. And I learned to witness it. Without judging. Because there's a big difference between "I'm a terrible person who deserves to suffer because I did something stupid by marrying this person, and now I need to stay forever no matter how awful it gets, or risk exposing myself as an impulsive, shallow person who doesn't want to honor the vows she made in marriage – which she should honor," and "Wow, I'm so heartsick I feel I might actually die." The first statement is all opinion and judgment. The second one just describes what's happening. It's not an emotional statement, it isn't loaded. It doesn't demand to be argued with; it demands to be acknowledged.

* Of course I always knew that my loved ones cared – I just mean there was no person actually sitting with me on that porch who did.

Living in that silence I started learning to really listen to myself. It was also the beginning of my involvement with mindfulness meditation, and that was the other really exciting thing that happened to me during that time. Even with all the heartbreak I was feeling, I always knew that sitting in the shadow of the giant redwood in the front yard and watching big fat orange dragonflies hunting insects over the spring tank in the last shaft of sunlight ... would make me feel better. Sometimes I would hike out to the point at the end of this long, tall spine of rock that fell over a hundred feet from the top of the ridge to the bottom of the creek bed below. You could climb (carefully!) about six feet down the face of the cliff and there was a little ledge to sit on, from which you could see the whole little canyon stretching out toward the big valley floor, and the mountains rising up on both sides covered with lush, beautiful trees, and if you leaned forward enough to look down, you could see the back of what looked like hundreds of tiny jewel-green backed swallows swooping and soaring through the air above the treetops way down below, like minnows darting around in the bottom of a deep, clear pool of water. I'd love to go there again someday.

So yeah. Bleah. Earlier they were playing a game that I actually sort of enjoyed (the neighbors, remember?). No idea what they were doing, but I was out deadheading roses as the sun went down and I heard them – some sort of talking for a minute or two, and then the clanging of a bell, like an old-fashioned hand-held school bell. It was a haunting sound in the falling light ... Voices saying something unintelligible, crickets and the occasional frog or screech owl making evening noises, a warm breeze, the smell of dry roses, and then ... this bell ... dogs barking in the distance ....

Anyway. Feeling kind of nostalgic, I guess. It's September first, which to me always feels like the first day of fall even though I know it doesn't officially begin for three more weeks. Usually I buy a box of new pencils around this time of year, and sharpen them all and give them away, just because the smell of newly-sharpened yellow pencils always reminds me of going back to school, which I always loved.

In other news, I started decorating my bike today – took off the bottle cage, which is a cool turquoise blue one given to me by Mr. A as a special present, because it's a very nice one and he's had it for a long time – so I took it off and painted it with purple stripes all the way around, so now it's turquoise and purple, and on my beautiful shiny black bike it looks just so handmade and subtle, but then it's actually really well-done and intriguing, so somehow it really holds my attention, even though I know it's only a bottle cage – because the design is unusual and it somehow forces me to keep looking at it, the way you would keep looking at a dog with two tails – you recognize it as a dog, and a dog is not an uncommon thing to see, but there's just something different about this one that your brain takes a minute to register.

Well, maybe it isn't a freaky as a dog with two tails. It's still kinda cool though.

Also, I've been reading some of the new memoirs this summer (I have a friend who brings them to work for me after she finishes them) and have been struck by how much at least two or three of them read like blogs. Exactly the same kind of self-conscious blathering that I do here, and the writing really isn't any better – though their lives are certainly more interesting to write about (and presumably to read about). Still, it kind of shocks me to think of the book deals these people must be getting – two of them have been on the bestseller lists!