GreenEye Wire

And so burned out of it. I’m going through stuff that I don’t use and getting rid of it. I learned *after* I moved in that this place has no usable storage space to speak of. So, I’m purging, and it is taking longer to go through all those boxes than I thought.

I have an issue with living in boxes. Let me tell you a true story.

I remember when my parents moved us into our “new” house back in 1977. Before that, we lived in a trailer house, so it was a big deal that Mom would get her own sewing room, and Dad would get his own shop. And, this was their first house they purchased as a young couple.

Mom’s sewing room was in the basement, and it consisted of her sewing machine and a 10 foot high stack of boxes. Dad’s shop had boxes lined along one wall. There were probably 50 packing boxes total. And each of them had holes in them where one of my parents, upon looking for something, peeked inside to see if there was an item they needed.

The reason for the holes was simple: the boxes were packed from their move from California back in 1972.

We had those boxes until Dad built his bathroom of Mom’s sewing room in 1984. I’m not kidding.

This experience has made one thing very clear to me: I refuse to live in boxes. Because most of the time, if you have something that you keep in a box, you aren’t using it and you may as well get rid of it.

I’ve already gotten rid of half of my books. If I want to read them again, I’ll go to the library. I’ve donated the clothing that doesn’t fit me exactly *and* make me look good. I had an extra set of dishes and large punching bag that I’m selling at a yard sale. Really, the only thing I’m attached to and I won’t get rid of is pictures. A picture is a moment in time, and that cannot ever be replaced.

At first I didn’t like the lack of storage space that my new place has, but it has shown me how much attachment to useless crap that I’ve hauled around since forever. This place is forcing me to look at my stuff and really think “Do I love it enough and use it enough to move it somewhere else?” Often times, the answer is no, so I get rid of it.

And I like that.

Through facebook, I recently got in touch with one of my friends from high school.

Yes. I know it is shocking. I actually did have a friend in high school.

Anyway, talking to her got me to thinking a lot about change and how I always struggle with it. Yes, I realize the only thing that really stays the same is the fact that things change, but for some reason, I fight change. I stay in relationships long after they have gone sour. I try desperately to put humpty back together long after the pieces are ground into dust.

Even small changes are a big deal to me. Like hair color. But more on that later.

My friend Angela, on the other hand, has always sailed through change. It’s something I’ve always admired about her. She changes hair colors so often that her three kids have never seen her real color in their entire lives. If she had the day planned a certain way and things change at the last minute, she doesn’t have a crisis over it, she just sails through it. Sort of like a chameleon who changes colors to fit the landscape, she changes as she needs to to fit her environment.

Perhaps it is her artistic nature that causes her to want change. I remember when we were growing up, she was always drawing something in class, either for an art project or just in the margins of her notebook. She wore what she wanted, said what she said, and if you liked it, fine, and if not, ok too.

But it wasn’t just her flexibility I admired, it was also her independence. She never seemed to give a damn what others said about her.

I spoke to her about what she has done since high school. After two failed marriages, she finally found her true love — who happened to be a friend to her all along.

And for some reason, I admire the fact that she has two failed marriages. I don’t see the two failed marriages as a failure, I see that in her life, she has always been true to herself, and she followed her heart, and when something went wrong, she changed her life and moved on. In other words, she didn’t stay stuck in a failed marriage, she recognized it wasn’t working and believed enough in herself to get out of it.

She lived. And maybe she has some battle scars from it, but she really lived.

She showed me a picture of her and her beloved that she took on a recent ‘naked bike ride’ to the desert in Utah and she was the most happy and beautiful that I’d ever seen. (Yes Bill, the naked parts were out of camera shot.) I never would have thought of taking a bike ride to be with nature in the buff, but can totally understand how she’d be comfortable with herself enough to do it.

She follows her heart. And sometimes, the path she takes is a dead end, so she turns around and keeps moving. She never seems to stagnate.

I told her about how difficult it was for me to change hair color, and that I was afraid my hair might weaken and fall out. Her answer was simple “It’s just hair, it’ll grow back, and if it falls out, well, you don’t have to mess with styling it.” So poignant.

Since I’m experiencing a big life change right now, finishing up a divorce that probably should have happened a long time ago, I decided to change my hair color to red. I doubt I’ll keep it this color for very long, but I guess that’s the whole point.

Thank you, Angela.

We’re supposed to get lots of rain and high winds today, but I’m on high ground so I should be ok. The hurricane is supposed to reach our area around noon.

I think, however more than just Texans are going to be affected by this storm. It is said that 25% of the oil refineries are located off the Texas coast. There are already places that are advertising $5 gas.

I found this huge mushroom growing in the children’s play area of my apartment complex. I put it up against a cantelope to show how large it is.

No idea what kind it is, though. Sebastian found the area where the mushroom was growing to be very very interesting. He sniffed the ground and started digging immediately. I nearly couldn’t pull him away.

Buy some landrollers/ roller blades/ skates/ skateboard and then attempt to have your dog pull you. Or, if your dog won’t pull you, he’ll stop when he feels the leash tighten and then stand in front of you so you crash.

So far, Sebastian isn’t hopping on board with the idea that he is supposed to pull me when I’m when wheels are on my feet. This is both a good and bad thing: he stops when he feels the leash tighten. This is a good thing when one walks so your arms don’t come out of your body. This is not a good thing when you want him to pull you on skates.

The fact that I haven’t put skates on my feet since the late 80′s doesn’t help matters either. I am able to skate fairly well. I am not, however, able to stop without crashing. (I seem to remember that the “stop mechanism” for skates was on the toe of the skate, not the heel of the skate.)

And it doesn’t help that I’m not that athletic anyway. Sure, I can do repetitive tasks like running or cycling, but if I have to do anything athletic that requires coordination or a ball, I’m pretty much screwed.

I went to a hip hop dance class at the local 24-hour fitness today and learned just how uncoordinated I am. I spent the entire class in the back row fighting my white girl genetics. Strangely enough, I realized that when I stopped thinking about it, I actually did a little better. I flashed to the head cheerleader in high school and realized that maybe the reason she could dance so well was because she was dumb as a post and the very act of thinking was too difficult for her to manage in the first place.

In fact, the whole class sort of felt like high school. There were little groups of people who gathered together and gossiped about this and that, and then there were the loners like me who were on the outskirts of all the chit chat. And, this time, I didn’t give a rip that I was making a fool out of myself. I just went with it and had fun.