What did I do? I watched a lot of TV, saw some movies, went to the beach and floated down a river.
Oh. I also went to work.
I had planned to go on an individual retreat to a monastery out in the islands -- to sort of kick off the reinvention of self. But the fucking nuns who run it canceled on me. I probably shouldn't say "fucking nuns" but it does point out the dire need for self-reinvention. It also gives me scapegoats for the lack of reinvention. Or scapenuns. I think they have goats, though.
Anyway, don't worry, because I am still percolating. I have watched a bunch of motivational speakers on PBS and also have looked at weight-loss websites, and even donated some money to Kiva, where you make micro-loans to folks in developing countries. So, you know -- it's a start.
I thought of making this blog a riff on the Julie and Julia conceit -- and maybe cook my way through the Better Homes and Gardens or Betty Crocker cookbook from, like, 1960 or something. It would be so wasteful, though, and no one would want to eat a Crown Roast of Spam, or a "pineapple" made of liver pate and glazed with gelatin. But it was a thought.
I could also make it about my children, but I am trying to get a life apart from them. But you should know that they are remarkable. Well, remarkably good to me, anyway. Which is all that counts.
I guess you can see that I am sort of floundering as a single, empty-nest 50-something woman. But I am not going to keep floundering. Is it "floundering" or "foundering"? Now I will have to look that up. One sec.
"People often confuse the verbs founder and flounder. Founder comes from a Latin word meaning “bottom” (as in foundation) and originally referred to knocking enemies down; people now use it also to mean “to fail utterly, collapse”: The business started well but foundered. Flounder means “to move clumsily, thrash about” and hence “to proceed in confusion.” Thus if John is foundering in Chemistry 1, he had better drop the course; if he is floundering, he may yet pull through."
OK -- I will stick with "floundering" because I am not quite ready to drop the course. Of life.
I do not have a clear, well-thought-out plan. I think I might have to go sifting through my past (gah!) to look for clues about what I should do.
While THAT percolates, I will tell you about floating down the river.
I went to Spokane (well, a place near Spokane) for a friend's 60th birthday. This friend was in a book club I was in for about 16 years or so. So several of us went over to Spokane (where she moved to some time ago) to camp (not a thing I do) and celebrate.
She recently found out her husband of 33 years had been having an affair for the past few years. We sort of assumed, that being the case, he wouldn't be at her birthday camp out. But there he was -- pretending he was sex on a stick (if sex looks like a skinny, stringy-haired, snaggle-toothed, bald, hairy-eared, hairy-nostrilled old man) and nothing was amiss.
We got permission from our birthday girl to be as mean as we wanted to Mr. Stick.
So the Main Event was to float down the Little Spokane River on individual flotation devices such as tiny rubber rafts, tubes, etc. Birthday Girls told us it would take about 3 hours.
Five and a half hours later . . . yeah. It was nice for the first hour, and then I hated it. My friend Joni and I floated together for a lot of the time, and it was a slow, shallow river -- trickle -- whatever. We passed some of the time by thinking of all the ways that river was like life. We pretty much exhausted the river metaphor, but it boiled down to the fact that once you're in it, you just have to stay in it until the take-out point. At the beginning it's nice and lovely and novel -- then it seems like it's just more of the same damned thing over and over and you pretty much hate it.
Anyway, Mr. Stick kept floating up to us and trying to be all jokey and friendly but we were having none of it. Finally Joni said, "If you don't shut up, I'm going to shove this paddle up your ass." Then he left us alone.
By the end, I had a headache and was nauseated -- probably from twirling around and around and being in 100 degrees all day.
It did make me remember though, that when I was a teenager, I loved being outdoors and thought I wanted to have a job in the out of doors. In fact, I had applied to Prescott College -- known at the time as "Kayak College" -- and now I can't remember why I wanted to do that.
I have lost touch almost entirely with the person who wanted to work outdoors.
I will put that on my list of things to explore in the reinvention project.
I will also make a pledge to write weekly.
