Walking on the edge

My horoscope claims that I should be living on the edge for the next 28 days.

Unfortunately, I feel more like I’m living in a crevice…and really am not feeling much motivation to get out. Kind of a ho-hum-whatever-ness to my being right now and I can’t seem to shake it. I would say that my current mood is the exact opposite of living on the edge.

So this weekend, my plan is to shake it up a bit. I’m waking at the first sight of dawn tomorrow and traipsing across some knobian hills. I’ve got a 10 mile, 7 mile, or 5 mile path to choose from. All of them include walking alongside the edge of the knobs. Maybe if I physically walk along the edge, it will help spur this living on the edge that I am supposed to be embracing.

We’ll see how far I get.

She’s Officially In

…my head.

Michelle Obama made another appearance in my dream last night confirming that she has officially entered my subconscious as the representative of things (persons?) I would like to emulate.

We were sitting side-by-side listening to her husband talk to a crowd, then we were in what I saw in my dream as my new home (although, it had no real resemblance of the house I hope to close on at the end of this month).

We were talking about women and work and how important it was that we offer our daughters a good example of what women can accomplish.

Pretty high-minded dream stuff.

Anyway, I woke up thinking about her and how chic she appears and calm and collected and SMART and capable. And then I thought about my whole I-don’t-want-to-obsess-or-even-give-a-minute-to-petty-overtures dialogue a few posts back which got me to a new way of looking at things:

What would Michelle Do?

I like this idea. I don’t see her playing a petty card for any scenario at all in her life. Of course, I’m speaking of my celebrity impression of her as I don’t know her personally. But, my celebrity impression will work just fine for me if it helps me reach a tad bit higher in my day-to-day agenda.

This Is Me Being Organized

I’m bulking up my site…from now on you can see all my weekly columns posted on my, you guessed it, the  Weekly Column page. Look up, it’s the tab at the top of this page.

Here’s last week’s for now: Divorce on a State Level.

You can find all of them over on their page.  There is also a new page for my business writing samples, but I don’t recommend it for middle of the day reading…there’s not really anthing that funny over there unless you get a kick out of automated demos (of course, who doesn’t?!).

No More Petty

Not Tom, I still love Tom and his heartbreakers. They have one of the best greatest hits albums (CDs? Downloads?) out there. One of my most favorite talk-through-the-song-lines ever is, “…watch her walk.” (that’s from here comes my girl if you’re not on the tom petty tip.) Another great talk-through-the-song line: Elvis’ are you lonesome tonight. He practically monologues that entire song and it’s sugary sweet fantastic. love it love it love it. But who doesn’t love Elvis, the yummy young love me tender Elvis.

Anyway the petty I’m blogging of is the petty that comes with the day-to-day crapola. The little stuff that crawls under your skin and stays there. I’ve been dealing with one bug for nearly two weeks and was trying my damnedest to let it go. (that was one friend’s advice, just let it go.) But I couldn’t. I tried. It didn’t work. I wrote another friend about it and they just listened and let me vent. That didn’t get rid of it either, but it did get me thinking.

WHY IS THIS STILL BUGGING ME?

So I let myself feel it. I sat in my car and stayed still and kept on the feeling that came when I thought of the experience and didn’t try to push it away or blame it on surrounding parties or do anything with it but feel it. Then I tried to think of the bare basics of it…what was it stirring with me. And then, POOF, I got it. It was an old rattered and torn feeling of inadequacy. It was deep and had dark sides and showed up as of recently as a petty, petty annoyance. When I got to the heart of it, I realized it wasn’t petty at all, or at least the original event, thought, and emotion that it was attached to was big stuff. Stuff that sets your coping mechanisms in motion.

So tonight I took a walk and let my mind go back to that empty, sad place and felt the despair and then immediately felt the why. I got where it came from and I decided that from here on out I would do my best to deal with whatever shows up in my life masquerading as petty.

I’ll find the root issue as best I can and deal with it. If there’s no root issue to be had, then I’m going to let it go. Avoid the petty…that’s the new rule. No petty bickering with spouses. No time spent on petty distractions that keep me from bigger greater appreciations. No petty annoyances that linger in my frontal lobe and keep me from my potential.

We’ll see how this one goes…

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

…or sleeping children.

It’s 8:02 a.m. and both of my children (a 7 month old and a 5 year old) are still out. They look like little zombies who have been drugged. They of course are neither zombies or drugged, unless you count the tsp. of  Karo syrup I gave the baby this weekend to help him poop.

My husband wants to wake them, but I’m kinda like why? I don’t have to be at work right away and it’s not like my daughter is going to get suspended from pre-school for being tardy. When else in their life (besides when they’re teens) is sleeping in on a Tuesday going to be not a big deal. Besides, I can drink coffee and watch Morning Joe instead of Dragon Tales.

And it’s not like they stayed up late either. Maybe 10:00? (I’m sure some of you moms are gasping that I would let my 5 year old stay up past 8:00 p.m., but I just feel like it’s unnatural to make your kid go to bed when it’s still light outside.)

So what am I going to do with all this morning time? Write, of course.

A New Book Recommendation

Christopher Buckley (author, funny guy, child of the arguably more famous William R. Buckley Jr.–his words, not mine) recently published, Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir about his parents after losing both of them (his mum first and then his pup not too long afterwards).

If you have parents–living or deceased–I recommend it. It’s sweet and honest and something worth reading by someone who can name drop with the best of them, and not because he’s bragging, but because that’s just who was around his dinner table.

There’s much to say about surviving your parents (and by surviving I mean living beyond their death and simply surviving their wraths). I’d like  one day to write some stories down about my own, but am not sure how well they would survive it. No matter what, my thoughts on them are a culmination of all they gave me and I like to think (hope?) that if I took count the good stuff would out number the bad.

Of course, I write even this as if they are all still living, which is false. I’ve lost one parent over thirty years ago. Some days I still struggle with his death. Other days I find my clarity and realize that it is not his death I struggle with, but my own presumption that should his life had continued, it would have fulfilled me in ways that I am incomplete. How big of a what-if is that!? Too big to place on one man for sure.

Sometimes I like to think we are all just people and remove the familial roles to remember that mistakes get made. And as we go through this life, most of us some how turn from child to parent and then to child again with our own children following in suit. It’s life and it is best to be thought of as a playground. Have fun. Do. Say your sorry. Admit when you’re wrong. Be accountable, but don’t dwell. Blah, blah, blah. I’ll stop being a preacher-woman now.

Wait, one more, go buy Buckley’s book. It’s a good read to take on vacation.

Letter for Graduates

E–I wrote this for you! Consider it your graduation present.

The rest of you can forward it to new graduates you know. It’s my column from this week.

A Graduation Letter to Myself

By Amy Gesenhues

Backyards were full of graduation parties this weekend. Balloons on mailboxes, back car windows graffiti’ed with ‘Class of 2009′ and dads standing in front of grills. The high sense of accomplishment floated through the air along with the faint odor of grilled meat. An entire population of soon-to-be-adults are setting out to start the rest of their lives.

I graduated from Floyd Central High School in 1991. I’m not going to do the math to figure out how long ago that was because it will probably make me nauseas. I started the rest of my life wanting to be a writer. Somewhere between then and now, I made some wrong turns, but learned a whole lot. Still there are a few finer points I wish I could have given myself a heads-up about, specifically three finer points that would have made things a bit easier for me.

Climbing My Way Back

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been off the writing grid for awhile.

Not sure how to explain it except that maybe the whole house thing got me in a bigger funk than I could have predicted. It feels selfish, callous, and shallow to admit that the house closing/selling/buying not going my way upset me in the ways it did. And I kept writing about how I was going to go with the flow and let things be as they may. But I guess no matter how much I write to tell myself to get over it, there were (are?) parts of me that wasn’t ready to move on.

Regardless of whatever funk I’m feeling,  it’s time to write more. Consider myself back now. And speaking of funks:

My high school sweethearts last name was funk. So when I say I’m in a funk, what I really mean is that I feel 15, super-self-conscious, want big hair, and have a burning desire to call someone and hang up just to see if they’re home. Yep, I was that 15-year old girl.

Fancy Don’t Let Me Down

…as in the Reba Mac’s song about prostituting your daughter:

“Here’s your one chance, fancy, don’t let me down.”

That’s what it kind a feels like just before a showing of our house when I do my last walk through to make sure counters are clear of clutter and everything is tucked away behind a cabinet door or in a closet. Clean, orderly, open spaces sells homes.

We have our second viewing today since our home went back on the market and I’m trying to whore it out so that it shows well. Reba’s song keeps buzzing in my head. Which is funny because I had another country song jabbing my cerebrum just this weekend. I’m not much of a country music lover, but what can you do?

Here’s the column that was motivated by a Statler Brother’s tune:

She Let Herself Go

Published in the May 27, 2009 issue of The Tribune.

I once heard a man comment that his ex-wife had, “ … let herself go.” Hmmmm … I thought, I wonder where she we went. She could have gone to the grocery, list in hand, picking up all the foods that she was going to spend the week going to her kitchen to cook

Maybe she had gone to her 4-year-old’s pediatrician’s office to a prescription of antibiotics for the ear infection that kept her daughter (and her) awake all night.

She may have gone to school, to work, to daycare, to the vet, to Target, and to the million and one other places where women spend their days completing the endless tasks that go along with being a mom.

If she had let herself go, then she must not have been going to the gym, the salon, the nail place, or anywhere else that would offer the slightest bit of pampering for her own needs. What we often fail to see during the honeymoon stages of being a mom is that we’ve signed up to let ourselves go. It’s the nature of being so consumed with someone else that we forget to take care of ourselves.

I remember when my daughter was first born, I felt more comfortable taking her with me everywhere, carrying her around on my hip as if she were a badge of evidence to explain why I had gained so much weight. “Yes, my jeans are three sizes bigger, but look what I created,” was my thought process.

Women complaining about weight issues are about as fun to listen to as tax lawyers talking about their work. I tend to avoid writing about why I don’t love the way I look, but a song by the Statler Brothers came across my radio waves the other day and sparked an angry fuse in me.

Oops…I meant to put this up yesterday

After the whole we’re-not-closing-on-our-house after all issue, a good friend helped me turn my negative thought process around by telling me, “Don’t think of it as something that has happened TO YOU; think of it as something that has happened FOR YOU.”

She’s a wise one. Not only did she shock-wave me out of my pity-party, she gave me a column topic which I’m always in need of! Here it is for this week. Enjoy!

It’s All in How You See It

Published in the May 20, 2009 issue of The Tribune.

After getting some hard-to-swallow news recently, a friend e-mailed me to say, “Don’t think of it as something that happened to you; think of it as something that happened for you.”

It was the same line I dish out frequently — the idea that everything happens for a reason — but her spin was more original. It caught me off guard and made me rethink my situation.

When I received her e-mail I was smack in the center of my disappointment and frustration. I wanted to fume. I wanted to find blame. I wanted to let my ego stomp around and make a bunch of nasty door-slamming, fist-pumping noise.

If you have read anything I have written in the past, you know that I try my best to practice rational, clear thought. Just a couple weeks go I wrote how it works best to, “Go with the Flow,” (that was the actual name of the column). But every now and again my ego checks out because it has had enough of me. It wants its own stage to display its own juvenile emotional outburst. My ego was not in the mood to reconsider what had happened. It wanted to punch someone.