Confession: I’ve gotten a little too comfortable with the ugly

I’ve been working from home for four years now, but this past year, since starting The Travel Belles, my once fashion conscious self seems to have run away from home. I’ve looked and looked can’t find her anywhere!

Although making it easy for me to always be comfortable, the way the line has blurred between pajamas and acceptable day wear, has led to me finding myself midday in some pretty atrocious get-ups. As I make my way as a member of the stay at home work force through the weeks and years, I fear I’ve become more unable to see my downward spiral away from the hip mom with the really cute wardrobe and straight into gauzy-scarf-and-pajama-and- ponytail-clad-weird-eccentric-aunt-territory.

I’d share pictures, but why the heck would I do that? Although it won’t actually match the full glory of reality, right this minute I will tell  you I look like a demented Raggedy Ann yoga princess. If I were to put on a normal shirt, I’d look okay to answer the door, because yoga pants apparently are the new ball gown. But I’m not stupid enough to answer the door in this condition. On the other hand if I were expecting a package from Amazon and answered the door and instead encountered a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’m pretty sure I would give them good reason not to come ‘a calling on this yoga pant wearing Raggedy Ann/Eleanor Rigbee in the making.

Fortunately for now anyway, I only look as if I’ve lost my mind, and am not about to answer that door. Thankfully I have a window to look out to be sure it’s all clear, before answering and pulling in the box from Amazon.

Here’s the thing that really grinds me: I know if I had to put on real clothes each morning I would have lost the five pounds (or so – gulp) that I put on over the holidays by now.  These damned yoga pants are both a little too flattering and a little too comfortable. I feel similar towards them as I would to a bad boy teenage crush. I do believe Joan Jett said it best: I totally hate myself for loving you. (“totally” addition totally mine)

That’s it. I’ve had enough. This week I’m going to get up in the morning and *gasp*, put on jeans, you know, that less comfortable ball gown from the last decade. Sure they might cut off my circulation and leave permanent marks around my abdomen, but I’m through my child-bearing years, so I think it’s pretty safe, physically speaking.

So wish me luck! It may take a couple of days, but when I can breathe again in my jeans, I plan on putting out an APB for my once fashion conscious self. I’ll keep you posted on her whereabouts. And please don’t hesitate to check up on me and ask, “What are you wearing?” I won’t think you’re a strange feign of some sort. I’ll know better.

It didn’t matter so much that I told a few people that I was going to start blogging again at Life in the Short Lane, because they, of course, had enough sense not to believe me. Heck I didn’t either.  But when I ordered my new business cards to go to the Blissdom Conference in Nashville, and implied it in print right there on them, albeit in a vague way, almost exactly nine months after launching The Travel Belles, I think I had already made up my mind to it.

Sometimes a part of me acts without consulting with that other part that thinks too much. The thinker loves saying, “No,” while the rogue’s job is to always stay a step ahead. The rogue is why I do things I’m not altogether comfortable with.

Of course the fact that it was nine months, the time it takes to grow a baby isn’t lost of me. This is just the kind of thing I, as an over-thinking creative run with, spend days pondering and dreaming on, writing cryptic notes to myself on sticky notes that I find stuck to the bottom of things, never to be seen again, until I find them stuck on the bottom of something else; their purpose hopefully accomplished nonetheless.

I squeeze meaning out of things like nine months, enjoy working words until their head hurts and my heart aches, totally in love with the concept of such an awesome metaphor for my entrepreneurial journey so far in starting my magazine about travel for women. (And to get the question out of the way, yes, you can call yourself an “entrepreneur” even if you’ve yet to earn one bent penny.)

I’m looking forward to writing about a few things I’ve learned during this gestation and whatever it is that I will be working my way through next. Most days I have no idea what that will be, but I’ve got a need to be here and write and unless the way the world tilts suddenly gives us an extra hour or two in a day, not very much time to do it, at least not the way I am prone.

But the deal I’ve made with myself is this: There is no time for word wrangling. None.

Blogging here has to be on a schedule just like everything else.  I’m going to practice getting what I write here stripped down to the essentials, but without the luxury of the stripping part. No building up, just to break back down. I’m going to attempt to write in a manner totally devoid of the fruits of excess thinking.

I’m assigning myself a word count and a time limit. Getting over some of the crap that is still left in my life to get over. Halt the trudge towards a  perfection that I’ve long known doesn’t exist, but sometimes just feels like the fun and easy option.

It may seriously suck. But I’m going to work to under think. ”It’s not like it’s brain surgery,” the cynical say when discussing the relative usefulness of creativity, but maybe doing it a new way, for myself anyway, kind of is.

You thought I’d ditched it here forever, right? Yes, I’ve been busy getting The Travel Belles, my online travel magazine for women, going, but I don’t intend to stop posting here. I’m just not sure what I’ll be posting and whatever it is  may come in fits and starts. Recently I’ve been working on my fiction mostly when I have the time, so I thought I’d share some of my initial bursts and ramblings with you. The following is the beginning of two of the main characters in a novel I’ve just started working on. Since some of you have known me much longer than I’ve had this blog, I feel it is important to add: No, this is not autobiographical. Yes, this is fiction.

I’m sorry, but it’s too red, I told her, because admitting the truth of what I was really thinking, even to myself was uncharted territory in the mother/daughter relationship. I never have liked red clothes though, and that’s how it came out.

Red clothing reminds me of many things that frighten me: the Midwest, republicans, sports fans, accountants. I became aware of my aversion the first time I went home with Todd to meet his parents over Christmas 1989. Incidentally, it was in Cleardon, which just so happens to be in the Midwest. I struggle with the idea of those geometric states, days drives from ocean. I never knew anyone from the Midwest before Todd and I’m sure I got my idea of them from television shows, those happy simple comedies with laugh tracks, and women with done hair and dresses and Betty Crocker cookbooks.

For any Christmas, the color red plays a big part.  Now it’s obvious that red is not the reason for the season, but for Todd’s family it was huge, this thing about wearing red. Some green may have been thrown in for good measure but, mostly the family wore red. Red shirts, red sweaters, red hats and scarves. All of it freaked me out a little. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s not my color.

It’s not Jayne’s either, but here she is in the Dillard’s dressing room with an armful of clothes and I’d say at least half of them, probably more, have more than their fair share of red, much more, if she were to consider how bad we (meaning her and me) look in it. It  goes beyond me just thinking she looks like the treasurer of a young republicans club. It washes out her complexion, muddies her green eyes (Barney taught her when she was a toddler that when you mix red and green it makes brown. Doesn’t she remember this?), and draws attention to the fact that her hair isn’t really even that blonde any more. If I wasn’t such an advocate for resisting the influence of the media on todays teenage girls, I’d have her in the highlight chair in a minute.  Here we’ve raised her in a city and she, in spite of my influence seems to want to look like someone who thinks all the best books can be found in grocery stores. She probably even thinks that wall to wall carpet is superior to hardwood.

She peeks  from behind the curtain handing me the one clothing item she had back there that made any sense to me. I actually may have found it for her – an adorable pucci baby doll dress of purples and blues, perfectly suitable for a girl her age. If I still had the body I had when I was 15 and I knew what was in store for it in the coming years, I swear to you I would have put on not just this dress, but the bikini closest to the size of a postage stamp that I could find. I’d then parade around everywhere: to school to the mall, to stand at the bustop for as long a possible. I would have interviewed for college in the thing.

“Honey, why didn’t you let me see it on  you?”

“The belt was all weird, I couldn’t figure out how to tie it. And I think it was a little short…”

“Come out when you have the next thing on, I want to see.”

Reluctantly she exits the dressing room. She has on khaki pants. (where on earth did they come from, besides the 80s, I mean what rack?) and a white collared shirt under a sweater as red as the reddest apple you could pluck from a tree in Washington state – apple red, not tomato, not merlot, but fire engine, primary color red.

She appears to be shifting dirt around under her fingernails. I don’t say anything even though I want to about that.

“Well that looks okay, but don’t you think it’s, well….”

“Well what, mother?”

“It’s a little….”

“Red. Is that what you mean mom?. That you think it’s a little red? How is something a little red anyway? When it’s red, it either is or it isn’t.”

She shifts from foot to foot turning her body as if she were inspecting a prom dress and not the most boring red sweater I have ever laid my eyes on.

I notice the time and if we don’t get out of here soon, I’ll be late for my noon juvaderm injection.

“It’s great honey. Seriously, it’s perfect. Just your color.”

People always used to tell me that she looked just like me, like one day I just spit and there she was. She is changing and I’m not sure what to do about it. Maybe I’ll just forget about it. There’s always my other daughter. She doesn’t look much like me, but who knows, maybe at least, she doesn’t like red.

I’m holding a contest over on my new blog, and I’ll start by asking you this:

Do you know that feeling of having a party and thinking that no one, except maybe your best friend or mother, is going to show up?

That’s EXACTLY how I feel about doing a giveaway. (For the record I’m fine with others doing giveaways.)

I say I want to do something for my readers..

(I feel like a bit of an arse even referring to “my readers.”)

But assuming there are any. Readers.

Not that I’m assuming there are or anything.

What I’d like to do is give Nikons and cashmere sweaters

to everyone.

Does holding a giveaway make me a subscriber whore?

Goofy, and out-of-line?

Answers: Yes. Yes.

Apparently I want to be Oprah.

And I don’t like Oprah.

What’s with me?

Oh, sorry, I mean, “What’s with you?”

{I may not be giving away cashmere sweaters and Nikons, but I’ve got a gorgeous necklace from LuShae and a rolled canvas from Uprinting. And for each entry I’ll be making a donation to ECPAT/USA (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking)}

OMG, I just realized that this all sounds like Oprah.

So come on over and enter. Please.

Now for the next topic: The College Roadtrip

Dolly and I are going on a college roadtrip next week. The other night we made a list of colleges she’s seen that she’d likes, and a list of colleges she’s seen that she didn’t like. I noticed that I wasn’t there for the colleges she likes, and that I was there for the ones she didn’t like.

You don’t think these things are related, do you? Well,  just in case they are, I’ve decided that I’ll go to the information sessions with her where I’ve promised to sit on my hands and not ask questions, but not on the campus walking tours. This is fine with me – all those young people walking backwards make me nervous. Her enthusiasm in letting me know this is fine with her too, leaves me doubly convinced that aliens have indeed abducted my child from her body. If I close my eyes I can still feel her tiny hand in mine as we walked into our first day of pre-K.

I’m concerned I’m making all kinds of bad decisions. When figuring out what schools to visit next week, I ruled out one college because they had nature sounds playing on their website. I feel as if the past 17 or so years have been building up to this and now that I’m here, I’m behaving like someone else’s mother making decisions based on things like how  a student tour guide walks backwards and chirping birds. Like a mother who is crazy and thinks her child is in 10 years old because that’s about how many years it seems have gone by.

And yes folks, she’s only a junior. We’ve got at least a year of “they grow up so fast”/pre-empty nest syndrome posts ahead of us. (If the aliens are out there and can hear this, please let her know that we miss her dearly on her home planet and look forward to her safe return in a couple of years.)

Any advice? And did I tell you about the giveaway I’m hosting over on The Travel Belles?

The Travel Belles, my new travel blog is now open!

When some of you heard me say I was starting a new blog about travel,  I bet you didn’t think I meant I was undertaking an extended outer space mission. But as with many journeys in life, you never know exactly what you’re getting in to until you step out and try.

So I’ve stepped out and  am trying.

It’s exciting and scary. Dreams along the lines of finding myself naked in a room full of strangers keep me awake at night. It taps into all my insecurity driven, perfectionistic, overthinking tendencies. During the many moments I feel like bopping myself up the head, I’m saying unlovely things to myself things I wouldn’t slap on my worst enemy. Things along the lines of  “Who am I to be trying to do this when there are so much better, more worthy, more talented, more deserving women out there?” Except not so politely.

I had no clue I was still riddled with all that. No clue that I am a walking poster child for women in need of  this Marianne Williamson quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Other than that I’m having a blast. Seriously.

A week or so ago I was thinking about leaving Life in the Short Lane behind. But even though a blog does not a person make, I don’t see how it can be  cast aside any easier  than a part of my personality.

And I doubt visitors to a travel blog want to witness my bipolar blogging methods, of one day funny, one day, not so much.  Posting here may now come in fits and starts, but I’m sticking around.

When I started this blog, there were probably  around 50 clicks between the blogger dashboard, and going live.

I can safely say that with The Travel Belles there have been many more than that. Will you do me the honor of checking it out?

Much love,  xoxoxo