Life without a car this week.

Lou's 1970 pickup truck is getting new brakes and it has been raining every morning this week so no Harley riding to work for him. It's only 8 miles south of us, the shop that is, but riding in the rain here is suicide! So Lou has been taking my car to work since Monday. It has forced me into a little different routine. I don't mind that so much. I have cleaned things that have been calling out to me for a while. I have taken more walks than usual, exercised a little more and watched more TV than I care to admit. The change has allowed me to relax a little more too. I have been busy with a job or someone purposefully since I was 17 years old. This is the first time in my life that I have been relieved of duty for everyone else but myself. It is very strange. I keep hearing the command from the Universe to "give it time," and enjoy the change. Order will come out of this feeling of chaos as it has for everything in the universe at one time or another. I am getting it. Although I have been without wheels this week I have been in this new mode of freedom since the beginning of the year. Lou and I talked about my sense of restlessness and loss of purpose that I have been feeling since 1. Allene passed away a year ago 2. Katie is now on her own and Ben is settling in with Jill 3. The business is on automatic and my part can be done once a week now. 4. Finally and most importantly that Lou and I are in such a secure place with each other after 9 years of being together. That is probably the most positive influencing factor of all.
I love to have projects going, something with a defined purpose and end date so this has been really difficult these past three weeks adjusting to NOT having any of that. New thoughts have taken hold and I have given myself permission to just BE; no great novel to write, no project to complete, no one to counsel or support. It is lovely. I am beginning to change inside and see another side of myself.
I was out at the dock twice yesterday; once at around 2pm, gorgeous sunshine, breezy, perfect temperature. The New Yorker came and I spent about 90 minutes just reading and sitting quietly. Then after dinner I went out again, this time it was cooler. The moon was full and I snapped the above photo with my phone. I cannot explain my attraction to water, but it is so strong and gives me so much comfort. I feel like I am connected to the big picture (whatever that may be) when I am near or on the water.

Mother of the Groom outfits and sailboats

Ben is getting married in August! He and his gal have been partners for a few years now; buying a house together and bringing a puppy into their little family in recent months. They are clearly nesting and with their age ripe for making babies, I am not surprised that they are planning a wedding. Actually, I am thrilled that they are planning a wedding. These two love to have fun and I love a good party and a good excuse to go to California!

I woke up with a headache at 3:30 am....Lou, my love, was awake too and rubbed my neck and my back to help my $15 migraine pill work. It took a while to kick in completely. Lou, mercifully had gone back to sleep in the meantime and I didn't wake even enough to know when he got out of bed and went to work. He is usually gone by 7:15 am. The phone rang waking me, it was Katie. She was surprised I was still asleep and offered to hang up and let me get my coffee before calling her back. Since it was almost 10 a.m. I wanted to just get up and make my coffee while I talked with her. It is always a nice way to get going in the morning; a chat with my NYC girl! We got to talking about "mother of the groom" dresses. Since she is the pro on weddings, being the NYC Wedding Photographer, she had some recent pictures to share of some nice mother of the bride/groom dresses. She scrolled through her collection of weddings while we talked and I became more conscious with my coffee. In just a few minutes I had a variety of classy dresses to consider. Cool, now I have some ideas!

Ben called the other night to go over the guest list for our side of the family. I suggested that he invite only those he considers friends and send wedding announcements to the remainder. When I got married to Lou 7 years ago some of the family felt obligated to RSVP attendance, but had no intention of attending...that is really, flippin' expensive, because you order a meal for them and it is a waste of money. Go figure!

So I go online yesterday, google women over 50 that sail and voila! A site pops up for this British gal who is single handed sailing as we speak...round the horn at that! I was totally taken in and intrigued and not jealous at all, really! I was in awe of this woman who at 67 years old would have the guts to do that. I started reading her recent blog posts and thought that if I want to do that alone or even with Lou I need to learn A LOT! I am totally in love with her boat too! She is doing this with sponsors for the Marie Curie Cancer Care in the UK.

What I thought is that I might get some sailing lessons to begin with and then just let the Universe take me from there. I know, I know that sounds weird, but I really have come to believe that what happens is what is supposed to happen. "The Universe is unfolding as it should." a quote from the Desiderata Poem that I have hanging on my wall. It is less frustrating for me to believe that because it takes the pressure from the "I should have" floggings that are so easy to inflict upon oneself.

There is a woman I had gone to high school with who had done a lot of sailing with her husband; not a complete circumnavigation, but close to it. I think I remember her telling me that they were gone for about 7 years! So cool. I emailed her to get a little information on their boat and if they had gone round The Horn (the southern tip of S. America). They had not. They started in San Diego area and then headed down the west coast of N. and S. America, over to the Marquesas, Australia, South Seas and then Indonesia, across the Atlantic and stopped on the East Coast of the U.S. They just got themselves a new Beneteau they keep in San Diego. They live in Tucson now.

Since this is our 40th anniversary year of graduating from High School Dorothy, my sailing friend, is going to try to get our other classmate Dee to host another St. Bernardine Class of 1971 reunion at her beach house on Balboa Island in California. We have done two other reunions there and it has been a lot of fun!

It is hard sometimes to believe all things work together for the good, but I have reached a point in my life where I can look back and see the puzzle pieces fitting together in ways that I could have never designed. I spent a lot of time fretting that they wouldn't fit, but I didn't actually make them fit together. There is something much larger than myself that makes that happen and I am relieved that I have come to understand that in a very immature sort of way. That immaturity can grow so I don't even put too much energy into worrying about it all. I have things that the Universe wants me to do. If I am jealous of someone it is because I am not doing what I should be doing. That is all. There isn't a product from jealousy, it is only a directional signal that points to the very thing that needs attending to. It is comforting to know that is what that feeling is, otherwise it is all consuming with confusion and anger; a result of immobilization from fear! I refuse to be a victim of that.

Is it the "Whiskey" talkin'?

I hung up the phone and felt this welling up in my chest that took all I had in me to force it down. Tears were right there wanting to spring. Often after I talk to my daughter, I go find Lou and tell him about the latest adventures of our NYC girl. This time, however, I sat there alone with the TV blaring whatever it was I was anesthetizing myself with and just stewed. I was freaking jealous! Not jealous of my daughter and her amazing life she was etching out in NYC, I was jealous of two people she had casually mentioned. People I don't even know! One was a fellow that was at a recent holiday party wrote freelance for The New Yorker..."Oh, interesting, Lou and I just ordered it online last night." was my reply. Then she went on to tell me how when she was talking with this young fellow she congratulated him for his success at such an early age, 24 I think she had said. I had commended her on being able to say that to people who are successful and not just pretend it was such an everyday occurrence for someone that young to have such a great job; making most of their money from freelancing for the New Yorker! Then as we talked our conversation was interrupted by a voice I heard her greet on the street, as she had called me on her cell phone on the way to run errands. This woman had just had a book published after blogging about it online. She had the book tour and her book was now on sale at Barnes and Nobel. She too was young! The green monster grabbed me around the throat! I asked my daughter what her book title was and she mumbled the reply, I asked again, trying desperately to sound interested and not annoyed that she would say it so fast as she usually does; as if I am not important enough to know the details, just important enough to know how important her life is...really that is bitchy, but I was in a bitchy mood! The third time I got only the middle word out of her and didn't dare to ask again for fear of turning this conversation into an annoying moment for her that could come from her certainty that I was a confirmed nerd and idiot. Which I feel like I am most of the time when I speak with her these days! Then my daughter said the worst thing; well the worst thing she could have said on that day when I was in "a bitchy because my life is boring mode," with the green eyed monster sitting on my chest poking his finger into my sternum! She said "you probably don't know what that means anyways!" Ok.....deep breath...I kinda knew, but her words made me doubt that I knew anything at all. I hung up as quickly as I could then googled it and sent her the URL with the subject line: "nothing new under the sun!" So there! Then I googled the only word from the book title I could get out of that annoying conversation and with the little I knew about the author I actually think I found the book she was talking about. "Psssh! I could write something like that!" I thought, but I never have and why? The difference between that young girl and me wasn't just years it was passion. I read a few excerpts on Amazon.com and it was the unashamed passion and refreshing cynicism for the subject that drew me in, not the subject...which is as old and dusty as the hills. I didn't order the book yet, but I probably will.

What do I have passion about? I have passion about telling the truth and hearing the truth from other people. I have passion about loyalty and I have passion about paying my bills. What else do I have passion about? I am 57 years old for God's sake! I have passion about writing. But I need to have passion for something to write about it!

Well, I did have a clue....I just listed them above, but I didn't think any of those things were worth sharing. Why not, I thought....then it occurred to me that life had given me an opportunity, by being jealous of a couple 24 year olds, to take a look at what I wanted, really wanted. Not what other people wanted, not what my husband wanted, not what my relatives wanted, not what my kids wanted, what I wanted. It was a new concept and an uncomfortable one at that!

I fearfully allowed myself to think about what I have passion about for the first time in my life. What dreams do I have? I spend so much of my time worrying about juggling finances, worrying about retirement, how we can get back to California. This wasn't about wanting: a new house, a new pair of shoes, a nice gift for my kids or a vacation for my husband, this was about me....whoa...that is so foreign! But I did it for a day, a whole day.

I had been reading "The War of Art." I am almost finished with the third go around with that book and something new keeps jumping out at me, it seems, when I need it the most. I have been writing every day since September, but I have only been doing it as a hobby...an hour or so a day. I picked up the book and read another chapter and right there as if by design Steven Pressfield says to just show up to write as if it were your job then the Muse will honor your passion. So I did! The next morning I sat down at 9am and wrote until 1:45 pm....first time in my life I had ever done that.
Sure I wrote essays for college, poetry for assignments and letters I write once in a while, but this was different. I wrote about the past five years we have been in Florida because it has been a roller coaster ride from beginning to end. In essence I attempted to make some sense of my life by recounting the crazy last 5 years.

The Cliff notes version:

2003 Summer- I marry Lou Keister in Calif; only child of Allene and Louis Sr.
2004 Spring-we buy a house close to my office; Lou leaves his job of 20 yrs to work on new house
2005 Spring- his mother, in Florida, is diagnosed with lung cancer
2005 Summer-I am sick out of my mind of the insurance business I say we should go be near his mother; sell my family home I still own in the mountains, but just close up the new house near the office.
2005 Fall- we're off like Mr. and Mrs. Joad from the "Grapes of Wrath"
2006 Spring- come back to calif for 6 months realize his mother is going to live forever and we have no job and cannot live with her another day
2006 Fall - we buy a house in Florida near her house so we can take care of her; start looking for work
2007 Jan-no work to be found so we take our retirement and buy a machine shop, Lou had been a machinist for 35 years at that point
2008 machine shop pays us back for our investment about 80%
2009 machine shop pays us back again about 110% whooo hooo things are looking good
2010 Winter-Lou's Mom passes away, we rent an apartment closer to the shop and turn our home into a vacation rental
2010 Summer-vacation rental is a disaster; people are pigs, we can't deal with it. All 3 of our kids are making their own way financially and we are just the two of us for the holidays.

2011 Ok, here we are just the two of us and I am totally lost. I have been planning, caring, putting out fires, juggling life for everyone including myself and now all I have to do is get up, exercise, clean house, plan meals, shop, bank, go the the shop to have lunch with Lou and watch TV in the evening. I am dying here!

Kids don't call because they are busy with their lives. I am happy that is the case. I think maybe I want a pet....that seems too much of a bother. Our friends in California are drifting away....No one, but Maggi has made the effort to visit....the kids all have visited several times though. We have one couple we have sort of become friends with, but he grabbed my ass one time after we had dinner together and it took away all desire to hang with them anymore! It is just the two of us on this big lonely planet of our lives. I am not content anymore and I am beginning to grouch at Lou for no reason. He has something to do all day and I do the maid service! Well, at least that is how it feels sometimes! I decide that I am going to do something wild and crazy like write! So I am.

I am home from the dentist with my lip and tongue not working, writing in my lovely living room and thinking I would much rather be on a sailboat sailing around the world right now. That is my passion, sailing to far away places! Whenever I talk to Lou about that, he always says he'll email me a lot while I am gone.....so what would a year apart make of our marriage. Is it strong enough to handle it?

Sometimes I am convinced that Lou will always be a bachelor in his soul. I actually like that about him and it gives me some comfort knowing he knows how to take care of himself, he did it a long, long time before I showed up. He doesn't share a bathroom with me, he has his own "train room" he sleeps on the couch half the night because he wakes up a lot and is afraid to wake me. I have always seen these things as endearing and livable; never have I been threatened by these indicators of bachelorhood. But leaving for a year, that is scary, but when I sat down and went over what it is that I have dreamed about in my life it has always come back to sailing. I don't want to break trans Atlantic records or circumnavigation times. I just want to be on the water, sleep with the rocking of the boat at anchor and catching my dinner from the sea. Sailing along with rainbows over the islands and dolphins at the bow. (I have experienced that!) The idea of learning to read charts, learning celestial navigation and making my way from Tampa Bay to New Zealand (where hopefully Julie and Bryce will still be living!) , that is what makes my heart race and my palms sweat, not out of fear but out of excitement!

I have been saying for years even before I met Lou that when I sold the insurance business I was headed to the Caribbean to wait tables and live on a boat....I wouldn't even want to wear a bra! (most people would be appalled by that, but it sounds so lovely) I want to own one pair of cut offs, one sundress, and a windbreaker and about 10 bathing suits. That's it! I don't want to own much! A 25 foot boat would be fine. I would tear it down to the bulkheads to make sure it was watertight and seaworthy and put enough equipment on it to stay healthy and safe, but nothing more. I would be fine to do it alone.

Steven Pressfield claims that providence takes hold once you make your first step of showing up. I wonder if even writing about doing that could open the portals for the Muse to enter and actually take me there. I'd like to experiment with that.

So dear cyberspace....stay tuned for the Adventures of Eileen..