Ten Reasons That I'm Grateful This Thanksgiving....

OK, I'll no longer pretend that lots of people are reading this blog and it's any kind of serious writing project, so let me subside into senseless navel-gazing like I've maybe always wanted to (if haven't done so, already, in the estimation of some).

I'll just do this list like it's a FaceBook post or my own online journal...on the eve of Thanksgiving 2010. The following Ten Reasons That I'm Grateful This Thanksgiving....

1) Not traveling during this holiday season - HELLO full body scanners and the ongoing cluster at airports! (see links below, some of them tragic video)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/fear_pays_chertoff_n_787711.html
http://homelandsecurityus.com/archives/4249
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFoa0LsqVbQ&feature=player_embedded#!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b_glTGOhaA&feature=fvsr

2) Whole Foods turkey - pre-cooked so all we gotta do is put it in the oven tomorrow for a bit - and all the trimmings...it was expensive, but will (hopefully) be worth it. Just the two of us, but we wouldn't have it any other way!

3) Now old (not so new) job at UNI/CARE Systems and how well it's treating me; new job for David at Nelson Publishing and how well he's doing there already -
http://www.nelsonpub.com/

4) Four days off! From both jobs...and we are so grateful for the chance to relax, to sleep in, to dream, talk, and reflect. Remember those days of mine (last year - this time) when not-working. But I was no-wheres near this happy, so god bless the good life-changes since then - and working! (never thought I would say that, but there it is...)

5) Family (mine and David's) is safe, warm, well-fed, and mostly OK, in Seattle and Milwaukee, respectively. And we'll have requisite phone calls with them tomorrow, at some point. Thankful we're all still alive to see another Holiday season, and enjoy each others' company, no matter how far away.

6) Friends: I've actually re-connected (in October, during visit to Milwaukee), with a very close friend with whom I flamed out in a spectacular way during life transitions, already well-documented here. I'm just so glad to have her back, in whatever kind of new post-break-up shape our friendship takes. As clearly told in a recent email exchange, I'd been missing a friend like her, who always has challenged me to see things in new and different ways:
Oh Christie, I just knew you would have some things to tell me about the post [my most recent blog post] that I needed to hear, that would be powerful and insightful, and this is probably why I spontaneously sent it to you. I so crave that kind of interaction, with someone thoughtful and intelligent like you! It just makes me miss your friendship all the more :)

7) Starting to plan a trip to Key West via ferry for NY's eve -
http://ferryservicestokeywest.com/?gclid=CK-4osP7uqUCFU1m7Aodn0bEbQ
If all the hotels aren't already booked. We'll find out this weekend!

8) STILL not wearing pantyhose! And no dry cleaning bills either, despite corporate jobs resumed. And jeans day every Friday...things are just way more relaxed here, dress-code wise. We love it!

9) Tomorrow's weather - 82 degrees high with 0% chance of Precipitation in Sarasota, FL
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/34231?dayNum=1
35 degrees high with Rain/Snow Showers in Milwaukee -
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/53211?dayNum=1
40 degrees high with Rain/Snow Showers in Seattle -
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/wxdetail/98112?dayNum=1

10) Jonathan Franzen - he is my favorite author EVER! (or maybe just at the moment)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129799680

Seattle Visit - Post-Op

David & I went "home" to Seattle recently for a short visit. As my friend Sara said in her lovely loopy way "why are you here now?" meaning, why then and not one of the two major Holidays that are currently bearing down on us with every available resource, including my paper Starbucks coffee cup suddenly red and festooned with snowflakes, even though X-mas is still over a month away. Gah!!

And the answer was um, frequent flier miles that we couldn't use during black-out dates, and just wanting to avoid the whole holiday travel-cluster. Or something like that. Maybe I just wanted to get it over with?

The visit was hard and in the aftermath I'm trying to understand why exactly. As a default, I suspect it was probably all my fault. I was in an almost continual state of mild to high anxiety, not unlike when we visited last time, but for wholly different reasons. That last visit, back in August of 2009, I was on the brink of moving away from Milwaukee and changing my life entirely. Since then, despite some struggles along the way, it's been working out really well here in Florida. But I didn't know then how it would all go down and I was terrified by the unknown.

During this visit, it felt strange to be back, on the other side of the unknown, having survived that jump off a cliff but not being so much different or better because of it. I guess I thought or had hoped that we could leave our old lives and transcend the limitations and trivialities involved, inventing something completely brand-new & wonderful. Something I almost couldn't imagine (part of the fear), but definitely more interesting (and peaceful, I think that was the word) than what we had known.

So, this visit I think I felt like a little bit of a let-down, to myself & to others. And my anxiety seemed to be all about the trivial - worry about my still-new job, not being sure of myself there yet, the bonus of David starting a new job as soon as we got back to Sarasota, and basically just wanting to be in a better space when seeing friends & family for the first time in over a year.

Thinking about how they perceived me/us, especially after all our grand pronouncements last visit, about moving to Panama and the new life we were starting, when all we've done so far is land in the sunshine state and get jobs very similar to those we had in Milwaukee, we're just a lot warmer and I don't have to wear pantyhose to work (not a small thing, mind you).

Being somewhat vain, those extra 20 pounds I put on in the interval didn't help. What I felt, on the deepest level, was was something like "am I ok, am I really OK, please tell me I'm ok?!" And something more - about my mother's house, and my family, how well or not well we are all doing, at this stage in our lives, and how it looks to others.

But I'm also newly grasping that this has always been my disease, my problem, and part of the darkness in my soul: anxiety. Worrying WAY too much about what other people think, wanting some kind of approval to bolster my sense of sort-of security. Maybe we all do it, to some extent, maybe I'm not the only one? I thought I sensed a bit of this in my Seattle friends too, but it's sometimes hard to tell: what's the reality and what's the negative/depressive/anxiety-ridden lens through which I am realizing I tend to see the things around me? What is true?

I had a hard time seeing what was true, in Seattle at my mother's house, with the clutter & chaos (and all that it signifies) that I can't even begin to describe because you wouldn't believe me, and her deteriorating health and she's still so young, she could be making so much more of her retirement!

She is my "model of womanhood," as all mothers are to their daughters (not to sound too psychobabbley), and I don't want to end up like that. It makes me sad, and I worry about her, but I feel I can't really do anything to help and there's also a selfish part of me that just doesn't want to. I flee back to Florida, leaving my brothers to deal with it.

My older brother Dave commented upon how strange it is that my sister Stephanie and I both live so far away - she in Texas, me in Florida, which is about as far away from Seattle as you can get in the continental U.S. in case you haven't noticed - and said that he couldn't imagine living anywhere else besides Seattle. Maybe Portland, at a stretch. I sat there in his car speeding to the airport for our flight back to Sarasota and thought/voiced that I was trying to imagine feeling that way. I just couldn't.

I can't relate to feeling like Seattle is my Home anymore, which is somehow strange to say. And I don't know anymore if that's because of the places life has taken me, or my choices, or just the fact that Seattle felt so very cold, dark, damp and muddy to me during this visit; we usually visit during summer, when the weather is better, but I think we've also become rather thin-blooded from living in a much warmer climate.

All I know is that in thinking about this visit, my mother, her house, my whole family and how I breathed a huge sigh of relief upon returning to my mostly clean and definitely uncluttered apartment, I feel guilty.

I watched Grey's Anatomy the other night and totally identified with Alex Karev, when he talked about going home to Iowa and dealing with the chaos of his family. He felt like he didn't do anything - or he didn't do enough - to help them and, worst of all, he didn't stay. If you missed the episode or just for commentary on Alex's situation, you can check out the post on the Grey's Anatomy writers' blog (always a great read) -
http://www.greyswriters.com/2010/11/bill-harper-on-somethings-gotta-give.html

Near the end of the episode, Alex confesses: "I'm the ass who can't stand to be there." That's me too I guess - or that's what I feel like, on a bad day, when the lens of depression/anxiety is sharpened. OK. So. Now you know.