The heating/AC guy came today to check out my system and recommended I put more insulation in my attic. To cut back on my utility bills and help save the planet. But $1300 is a trip to London, and I think of my mom who was so practical all her life and never got farther from Kentucky than the East Coast ocean when she came to visit me. Even though she could have taken a trip to Ireland, which she longed to see all her life, she never dared. So she ended up safe and secure in assisted living but never got beyond her home town in so many ways, both geographical and emotional. I want to go back to Borough Market, visit the Dennis Severs house, wander the Tate, sit in a pub and write in my journal, but it feels so grasshopperish, which is my true nature. I have all bills on automatic pay, keep my house in good repair, recycle, pay my taxes, look for ways to economize, but oh how I long to hop off to London with new shoes on my Grasshopper feet instead of blowing insulation into my attic like a good little Ant. And at the same time, my shy, retiring Ant side is not unhappy to stay home in bed and read novels about England instead of actually buying the ticket, packing the bag and hopping a plane.

After reading the headlines on the cover of  the new issue of Oprah’s magazine, I can hardly catch my breath. There’s just not enough time to:

* Meditate and Lose Weight
* Clean Up a Mess of Debt
* Transform Your Look, Luck, Life
* Get a Great Job in 3 Steps
* Find Out What Wonders You Can Achieve

Between fulltime work, worrying about my family and counting points on Weight Watchers, I’m already pretty busy. But this month, Oprah is practically jumping out of the cover in her eagerness to give my life a makeover. I wish she would step back a pace or two from the camera. I know her enthusiasm is supposed to be “empowering,” but sometimes it feels a little Calvinistic. Perfect thyself! Make progress! Pull yourself up by your own underwear! With Oprah, there is always a new guru to follow, a new exercise plan, a new Aha! moment, a new thing to know for sure. There is no rest for the unimproved in the world of O. Of course I want to Grow, to become the best possible version of myself that I can be, but what if I’m always the KMart version of myself instead of the Neiman-Marcus Me? Part sow’s ear, part silk purse? A little lazy, a little selfish, a little prone to self-doubt. I know I will religiously read all “178 Inspiring Ways to Change Things Up” in this issue, and I’ll mean to try them, I really will. But most likely I’ll take a nap, skip spinning or read some Jane-Austeny novel instead of Eckhart Tolle. It’s what I know for sure about myself.

“This would be the perfect place to kill someone,” I said to my younger daughter as we were standing on the rim of a cliff in Yosemite while her boyfriend took our photos. “You could just give them a nudge and over they’d go. It would look like an accident if you did it right. I saw it on 48 Hours and of course it was the husband, but they never proved it. He went on to have a whole new family.”

“Mom, that’s the second time today you’ve pointed out a good place to dump a body! You’re starting to sound like Nancy Grace. You’ve got to stop reading Death in Yosemite at bedtime.”

She was right. I was riveted by the true tales of people falling off cliffs and tumbling over waterfalls, even if wasn’t due to foul play, and Yosemite was suddenly fraught with danger everywhere I looked. I already can’t drive down a deserted road without imagining a madman jumping out of the bushes with a machete and chasing my car for a mile or two, until I run out of gas and my cell phone dies at the same time. Horror! My older daughter shares my macabre interest in all things murder and mayhem, maybe because she wants to use her degree to be a therapist to maniacs eventually — counseling normal neurotics holds no interest for her. When we’re together, we see weirdness lurking everywhere. Once, in a small city airport, we became convinced that the man behind us on the escalator looked mighty suspicious and was in fact following us. All of this conveyed in whispers, of course. As soon as we debarked, we both started running for the parking lot as if Machete Man were behind us. I can only imagine what the rental car people must have thought as we pounded down the concourse as if our tails were on fire. Chills! I can’t turn off Lifetime movies starring Valerie Bertinelli or some other faded, formerly fat TV actress whose perfect husband turns out to be a crazed stone-cold killer who woos her relentlessly and then stuffs her in a woodchipper.  Goosebumps! When I was newly married and living in a strange city, my first time away from home at 18, my husband had submarine duty for months at a time. I’d stay awake reading until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer and then fall asleep clutching a baseball bat and a dull paring knife. I’ve come a long way from those days. Now I can sleep with all the lights off (unless I happen to catch a rerun of The Mothman Prophecies, which scares the fat off my fanny), but please don’t ask me to back up just a tiny bit when you’re photographing me on a cliff. I might start to think you’ve taken out a life insurance policy on me and just when I say “cheese” …. over I’ll go! Didn’t that happen to Valerie Bertinelli once on Lifetime?

]]> http://fridaville.com/my-scary-summer-vacation/feed/ 4 http://fridaville.com/is-there-a-starbucks-at-the-top/ http://fridaville.com/is-there-a-starbucks-at-the-top/#comments Fri, 23 Jul 2010 01:03:22 +0000 nikki http://fridaville.com/?p=560

I’m headed to Yosemite tomorrow to visit my younger daughter, who’s the park anthropologist, and I’m looking forward to real hiking instead of the metaphorical kind. 2010, while far from being my annus horribilis, has been a process of gaining a foothold and losing a foothold, over and over, until I feel I’m right back where I started in January. I’ve been disappointed in myself more often than I like to admit and exasperated to tears by the people around me at times. Who am I and why don’t I know what I’m doing?! It’s ironic that I started the year jauntily declaring that 201o was going to be my year of Change,  but I didn’t stop to think it might be difficult, upsetting and bewildering change! I followed all the good advice I read in blogs and books (The Happiness Project, The Year of Wishful Thinking, Living the Creative Life, etc. ), did my Wildly Improbable Wish list, took workshops, practiced waking up spiritually — and then got kicked in the ass by the Universe, which was wearing steel-capped boots. Not that any of those books and blogs were wrong — they just weren’t right for me. Or maybe they were, but I wanted easy change because I thought I was doing all the right things to attract it. I was a caterpillar curled up waiting for a metamorphosis, a Saturday-afternoon-at-Saks makeover for my life. What I didn’t reckon with was that my year of change would feel more like being locked in an industrial-sized laundromat dryer than emerging from a cocoon with pretty wings. It’s forced me to take a close-up look at myself, my work, my past, my present. To pull myself up only to slide back down again. It’s kind of a relief to recognize it, admit it, lie here at the bottom of the mountain and just stop struggling so much. Who knows — maybe I’ll find another path, one that goes around the mountain instead of straight up and over or find that the whole point of change was in the struggle, not the outcome. The future is a mystery, but even so, I haven’t given up hoping for my own kind of  annus mirabilus along the way.

I’d buy Indian summer and keep it all to myself. When it’s dryer-lint humid in South Carolina and so hot that dogs won’t put their paws down on the sidewalk, I’d have my yard air-conditioned.  I’d downsize my boobs and raise them up so I wouldn’t need a bra in summer. No more underwires. In fact, I’d stop wearing underwear at all — if you’re rich you don’t have to be respectable. I’d hire someone to exercise for me so I wouldn’t have to sweat. I’d never sweat again! I’d put a ceiling fan in my car to move the a/c around. As we all know, it’s easier for a camel than a rich man to go through the eye of a needle (I always wondered why either would be forced to do that–wasn’t there a side road they could have taken?), but sometimes it’s nice to dream, to want, to imagine. I can almost feel the shock of cold water that suspends my breath as I slip into that pool, the weightlessness, the lifting of  a burden off my shoulders and the lift of water wings replacing them. But, dear Guardian Angel,  since I’m not rich and there’s no pool waiting for me at home, I’d be happy just to have an automatic ice maker/dispenser on my refrigerator door someday.

Today, I had to get the oil changed in my car. It was 95 degrees and I’m sure even hotter down in that oil-change pit. As I was talking with one of the guys who works there, I realized all over again how undeservedly lucky I am. My big preoccupation today was my continuing battle with insomnia, not a minimum-wage job in a sweaty shop. Not oil ground into my skin so deeply that I can never completely scrub it away. Not customers who expect me to screw them over or avoid looking directly in my eyes–just get my car finished so I can get on with my important life. I thought about it all day. So what if I can’t sleep — it might be unhealthy but it gives me more time to be aware of being alive, to be thankful for the Tempurpedic mattress I was able to afford, to be cozy and content with a book in bed. And even though I might get The Dreads in the middle of the night, I’m learning how to breathe through them and know that in the morning I’ll have a job to get up for and work I love when I get there. Some of my family are struggling in this recession, not only to make a living but also to find that trail of breadcrumbs that will bring them safely home. I saw that lostness in other faces today and vowed to value what I often take for granted. And to scatter more breadcrumbs.

1. Scorpions in my shoes…it could happen.

2. What did I say about the Brazilian wax at the barbecue when I was a little drunk?

3. How can I make more money?

4. Where is that bracelet I lost last year? And my red glasses? I should get up and look for them again.

5. Why did I buy/open/eat the ice cream?

6. My dirt yard is so hillbilly. I need sod right away. How can I make more money?

7. Why isn’t my sleeping pill working? What if my doctor gave me a placebo?

8. What if I have sleep apnea and have to wear a Hannibal Lector  mask?

9. Why don’t I have any grownup clothes? Why do I have a princess bed? What possessed me? My whole life is badly, sadly decorated.

10. Do they give prescriptions for medical marijuana brownies to treat insomnia? I wish I hadn’t eaten all the ice cream.

]]> http://fridaville.com/midnight-madness/feed/ 8 http://fridaville.com/spinergy/ http://fridaville.com/spinergy/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:28:48 +0000 nikki http://fridaville.com/?p=527

When I was in spinning class recently, I felt like I was working hard enough to generate enough energy to run a hair dryer or a lamp. Or maybe even recharge the battery on my cell phone. A little whimsy to keep me from whimpering in pain.  And then I  thought how it would be even better if I could send the energy I was generating out to people I know who are in trouble. I visualized neon electrical ribbons flowing out and recharging them with the power to change their lives, to get up every day and go out into a world that is beating them down, to generate more faith in themselves. My energy would simply be overflowing into their lives from afar, but without the onus of rescue, enabling, codependency, guilt or the fireworks that result when I try to intervene or control. When I was spinning that day, I was doing good things for my body, but I was also thinking of the ones I love, willing them to keep pedaling, keep breathing, keep trying, keep safe.

Just a day after I was rejoicing about being lucky to be alive, I was losing my temper, yelling at coworkers and family and sobbing as if my heart had cracked open like a dam all the way home from work. It made me feel like a wild animal suddenly unmasked, and I know it’s because I rarely let myself feel angry and then I blow.  I want to learn how to live with that wild animal — not kill her spirit but not let her kill others’ either.  I hate that I’m not always honest with myself, that I’m afraid of the dark inside, that I’m always wishing someone would kiss a hurt and make it go away–when deep down I know I have to be both the hurt and the healer. Why isn’t real life like a blog? Full of epiphanies and arty insights and latte-thoughts to live by instead of the raw skin and scars that come from rubbing up against our own and others’ humanness.

This past weekend I was out on a friend’s boat in the creeks that run all through the marshes where I live. Porpoises were feeding next to our boat, great blue herons landed on the banks like majestic Concords approaching the runway, and it felt like we were living in Wind in the Willows. No fish were landed except baby sand sharks that got thrown back in to grow up and scare  the pants off people on the beach, but there was wine, a constant breeze and glorious sun blessing every pore and and wavelet and blade of grass. And no oil slicks. Yet. It’s extraordinary that one company has managed to destroy, maybe beyond restoring, a huge part of our coast. (Be sure to go to skirt.com or the print issue of Skirt in July to read “Deepwater Feminism,” a wonderful essay by Stephanie Hunt .) When will women exercise their voting and consumer power to protect Mother Earth instead of fighting each other? Emily’s List or the Susan B. Anthony List — why not one list of ferocious women devoted to healing the planet?