BulgingButtons

July 3, 2014
by BulgingButtons 18 Comments

Happy Birthday to Me!

I’ve reached another milestone. I’m another year older. Yay, me! Each year is a celebration. I have added to my life experience. No ill fate has found me. I AM ALIVE! That, my friends, is worthy of praise.

I generally reflect on a few different things on my birthday, one of which is the mysterious circumstances of how I came to be. Ok, it’s not a huge mystery. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl have sex. Girl gets pregnant. Girl has baby. Pretty standard, actually. But who were the boy and girl (or man and woman as the case may be)? How did they meet? What were their plans? Apparently not raising a child together, since I was surrendered for adoption at birth. What ended up happening to them? And what about my half-siblings? My very sketchy paperwork suggests that I have at least three. What of them? All a mystery. Maybe I’ll write the story myself and turn it into a best seller and a blockbuster movie starring Camryn Manheim as me. Why not?

The other thing I generally reflect upon is the past year and the ups and downs it brought. Let’s see…

Positives:

1. I sold my house successfully and moved out.

2. I taught at my new school for a year and loved it.

3. My relationships with my sweetheart and my son are positive and loving.

4. I wrote a manuscript.

5. I lost a few pounds and tried out lots of different types of exercise.

6. I connected with several friends.

7. I was offered a great summer work opportunity that turned out very well.

8. I participated in a year long collaboration project that also turned out well and will continue next year.

9. I found and bought a new house.

10. I’m happy.

Negatives:

1. I’m still fat.

2. I still have to take medication.

3. I still have bad habits.

4. I still procrastinate.

5. I still haven’t met most of the 47 for 47 goals.

Oh well. I’m over it. Really, I am. I like those goals. I think they’re worthy goals. I think I’ll keep them. When I reach them I will celebrate, but I won’t beat myself up about them. I’m being kind to myself, because if I can’t even be nice to me, why should anyone else be nice to me? I know I have stuff to work on, but I’m ok with that. I’m not perfect, and I never will be, but I have goals to work toward, and right now that’s enough.

In the meantime, won’t you have a slice of virtual chocolate birthday cake with me? It’s as delicious as you allow yourself to imagine, and not a single calorie will pass your lips!

July 1, 2014
by BulgingButtons 6 Comments

Who WAS the First Guy to Eat Lobster?

Last night my sweetheart took me out for an early birthday dinner date. We went to this funky old seafood restaurant and I indulged. Every few years I have lobster for my birthday dinner, and this was one of those years. No, it’s not exactly on my diet, but it’s been a stressful couple of weeks, I reasoned, so I deserved it. Crazy talk, I know, but I don’t care. It was delicious. It always is. But how would you know that?

How would anyone know that within that weird and somewhat scary exterior a delicious bounty resides? Who took a look at a lobster and said to himself (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a woman), “hmmm, this looks tasty, think I’ll give it a try.” Who? Someone who was either an adventurer, or a lunatic, or on the brink of starvation. It doesn’t look like food, and it’s not exactly easily accessible without a rock or some other tool. It’s not like seals boil lobsters and eat them with drawn butter. Someone had to figure the whole thing out.

Whoever that guy is, I want to think him. As horrifying as I find the whole look of the lobster, I’m able to get past it as soon as the first sweet delicate morsel passes my lips.

I want to be like the guy who figured it out. I want to be able to see opportunities where other people see madness. I want to make a gourmet feast out of a weird and scary looking situation. I want to go beyond what is obvious and take it apart to reveal that which is magnificent. I want to be that explorer, that risk taker. I want to discover the next lobster dinner, but I don’t want to get food poisoning along the way.

June 30, 2014
by BulgingButtons Leave a comment

Moving Meltdown

Yesterday I walked through my house for the last time. By the close of business today it will no longer be mine, and I’m really okay with that. In fact, I’m glad. It took a long time to sell that house, and I’m ready to move on.

Why, then, did I lose it when I said goodbye to the house yesterday? You would think I would have been doing the happy dance out the door, but nope, I was boo hooing instead.

Maybe it was the heat. After all it was 107 degrees out yesterday (yes, literally) and we worked all day packing up the last odds and ends and cleaning up after ourselves. Two trips to storage with random items and then two carloads at the end to take to our temporary home took its toll in the heat, right?

Or it could have been that I was just plain tired. Friday night I was up late preparing for the movers, who arrived very early on Saturday. The whole weekend was a whirlwind of activity with not enough rest. Maybe that’s what lead to my emotional state.

Then again, it could have been the relief that I felt that we were finally closing the door to this chapter so we could move on to the next. The development that is being built across the street is moving along, and I feel like we’re getting out in the nick of time. That’s not really the case, after all it’s not a detox center for psychotic baboons or anything like that, but it is an eyesore.

I’m sure that all of those factors came into play, but what hit me hardest were the memories that we made in that house. We weren’t there long, just two and a half years, but we lived there at a huge transitional time in my life. I was on my own after a long marriage ended, and I was starting a new relationship with the man I wish I had met twenty years sooner (but neither of use was ready for the other then, so it all worked out). My son and I moved in on our own and made the place ours. I wrote the manuscript for my first novel in that house. We celebrated birthdays and Christmas and even Thanksgivukkah there! That house was a haven and I will always remember it with fondness.

I guess it’s not surprising that the tears started flowing yesterday. They say that moving is one of the most stressful events in a person’s life. It seems silly in my case, since I moved by choice, but it still took its toll. Thankfully I have a little time to recover before we close on our new house and do it all again. Somehow, though, I don’t think there will be any tears on that particular moving day, unless they’re tears of relief and joy.