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Adjusted expectations

When setting the tone for 2012, I decided that my word for the year would be leap. Abandon comfort zones. Propel myself into new terrain. Be nervous. All in an effort to prepare for the big changes I expected to set into motion.

Well, one of those adventures is officially on hold. Luke and I won't be putting our house on the market this spring.

It shouldn't have taken a preliminary analysis from our real estate agent to figure this out, but apparently I am that stupid. For instance: Did you know that homes these days are...selling less than what you paid for? By like, thousands of dollars? And there are no fairy godmothers to neatly make up the difference? Also, that you will possibly STILL be expected to do things like repair the roof and pony up closing costs? May I also inform you that the earth is round and revolves around the sun?

It's been an enlightening week for the Frema-Useless Clutter household.

Oh, Momma, but you are a fool! Let us join in a round of laughter at your expense.

All kidding aside, I am surprised I thought the concept of getting the house to market by April was more within our grasp than it actually was. We've known since tax time last year that our 2011 refund would be applied fully toward our credit card debt, our short-term savings is nil, and the dial on our mortgage (understandably) hasn't moved much since we bought this place a little more than three years ago. Of course we'll need to bring money to the table. I just never quantified the amount until Saturday.

Screw books and puzzles! No time like the present to learn DIY shingle.

Before leaving us yesterday, our agent promised to be in touch with more concrete numbers on what we can reasonably expect the house to sell for and how much we might be asked to pay out of pocket, but after comparing last year's list prices to sale prices for homes in our neighborhood, Luke and I already know that we can't afford to sell right now - maybe not even in this calendar year.

At first this was more than a little discouraging. We are so ready to move forward in other areas of our lives, but everything is contingent upon being free of this property (or at least will be made a million times easier). Renting is not an option, and we aren't interested in jumping through hoops for a short sale. Instead, we're choosing to view this setback as an opportunity. 

Really, we should have been planning to go into this process with as little debt as possible, so now we can make that happen. Our tax refund will be used to pay off our credit card balance, and that better equips us to take care of our remaining medical bills (still looking at you, Liam, while also waiting to receive the invoice for my follow-up ERCP). Once that's done, we can make updates to paint, fixtures, and other random eyesores a little at a time instead of all at once. We can investigate other ways to save money (refinancing, budget cuts, etc.). Meanwhile, our mortgage will only get lower, and there is still plenty we can do to get ready for the changes that lie ahead. We are deep in the tunnel, but we can still see the light.

And what if, in the middle of all these preparations, the adventure of a lifetime falls into my (our) lap? I (we) may chase after it, anyway, easy be damned. This year, when pitted against leap, easy is going to lose, every time.

Speaking up for gray

This week I came across a handful of blog posts that turned my blood cold. They were uncomfortable to read and left me squirming in my chair, upset, confused, embarrassed. No longer sure what to think of experiences I made peace with years ago.

Why I Talk About Rape

On being an object, and then not being an object

It should be said.

The rape article was the hardest to get through, but it was a line in Liz's post in her account of a sexual assault that brought me to the computer. A simple sentence, stripped of layers, absent of clever innuendo or metaphors, but it was powerful nonetheless.

I remember that at 17, the idea of waking parents seemed somehow worse than anything.

Let me be clear. I have never been raped. But as a young woman, GOD did that general sentiment ring true for me.

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When I was 17, I landed a job at a laid-back mom-and-pop video store in my neighborhood, a job I chased after for an entire year because I loved the idea of getting paid to watch movies, do my homework, and hang out with friends twelve hours a week. The owner put me off until I was a senior in high school because the store had a...shall we say...robust adult section, and I was underage. But I was an ambitious 17-year-old, and I had excellent references, so it was only a matter of time before I was collecting late fees from local enthusiasts for titles like Hein*feld and Wednesday is Hump Day. 

On one of my last nights there before leaving for college, I was closing with "Frank," a middle-aged guy with two kids and a day job as a paralegal. He was normally a pleasure to be around, very helpful and kind - he always gave me a ride when we closed, saving me a ten-minute walk home. On that night, we were talking and laughing as usual, but on this night Frank had a few beers on our shift. I don't know that this would have been discouraged by the owner, exactly, since he was known to have a can of something in plain sight of customers while he balanced the books, but it was a first for Frank, and you could tell he was buzzing. As the night went on, he became looser with his tongue, and he kept saying how nice and pretty I was; next thing I knew, he was approaching me from the back and wrapping his arms around me in a close hug.

I was taken off guard; what the hell did I know about inappropriate? It's not like he was grabbing at the waistband of my pants or even trying to kiss me. And it was over as quickly as it began, so I don't remember how I acted in the moment aside from making some lame joke while sliding out of his arms. He was such a nice guy, after all, and not himself from the beer, and he still had to drive me home. Because of course I let him drive me home.

I reflect on this now, and I'm angry. I'm angry that a grown man thought it was okay to throw a few back on the clock in the presence of a teenager who assumed she could get through a four-hour shift without having someone's hands on her hips. But I'm also so sad for the girl who felt that she had to act like it didn't happen, who felt obligated to get in the car with him, EVEN THOUGH HE'D BEEN DRINKING, because she didn't want to be rude, and who made light of the whole thing when he called to apologize the next day. (See? Such a nice guy.)

Sometimes, Breain, it's okay to be impolite.

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When I was 20, I had sex when I didn't want to. He was older, and I was intoxicated with the attention. In previous conversations, I'd told him I wanted to wait, but in the moment, I never said no. When it was over, I didn't know how to react except roll over and cry. All he could do was apologize for misinterpreting my body language. I could see that he meant it. I knew he felt terrible.

If I would have pushed him off me, said WAIT, STOP, I'M NOT READY YET, I know he would've done it. But we'd been fooling around night after night for almost two weeks, and I sure did like him a lot, and I didn't know how to switch gears. How do you talk through such an intense situation when you're physically trying to recover from it - literally catching your breath, pulling an arm through a shirt sleeve, waiting for your half-asleep eyes to adjust to the light? And that's the problem, I guess. I was more concerned with the awkwardness of the after, with the proverbial waking of the parents, than the hurt I would feel from the during.

He and I went on to date for almost a year, and nothing about our relationship was coersive or forced or any of the adjectives typically used to describe a violent situation. He is even someone I call a friend today. Looking at that one night, though, from the perspective of a grown woman with a daughter of her own, I wish I hadn't cared about the after. I wish I'd been strong enough to say no. 

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The posts I linked to at the start of this entry describe ecounters twenty times more heartbreaking and terrifying than mine. But I think that's what drew me to share. It's so easy to write off those experiences we believe to be less than someone else's. But not every incident is that black and white, and there is equal value in talking about the gray. I don't want the women in my life thinking they ever have to tolerate the less than. And I hope with all my heart Kara never gives a thought to waking me up.

Happy is as happy does

After posting two entries' worth of pep talks, I wanted to share some of the ways I'm trying to bring more joy and perspective to my day-to-day.

This is especially important right now because Luke and I are too busy paying down debt to account for anything grandiose - we've already scrapped our plan to upgrade the family car, for example. Anything we take on over the next year has to be free or non-commital (i.e., pay-per-use or of the "cancel at any time" variety). So, really, free. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Journaling

l adopted this habit over the summer, inspired by Gretchen Rubin's stab at a gratitude journal. Her original intent was to write daily, but after finding it to be more of a chore than a stress reliever, she switched to writing one sentence a day about those in-the-weeds moments that tug at your heart but are likely to fade over time. Learning from her experience, I started my own journal as a combination of these ideas  - I focus on what I'm thankful for, but I don't write every day, and I don't limit myself to any kind of subject matter. Sometimes I've got pages of bullet points, and sometimes just a few lines. Sometimes they're big picture, like having enough money to pay our bills, and or they're as simple as the name of Kara's imaginary dog Bingo Benjamin (Bingo from Ladybug Girl, Benjamin from Liam's middle name; isn't that something you'd want to remember?). I don't want to lose these moments any more than Rubin does, and I can think of no better way to frame them than through a lense of gratitude. Plus, the fewer parameters I set for myself, the better my chances of keeping this up.

I do, however, have one restiction: I'm not allowed to pat myself on the back for house cleaning. It's important to me to keep up on things as best I can, especially now that Liam is frog-hopping everywhere and crams whatever he can into his pie hole, but I don't want to delude myself into thinking the ninety minutes I spend scrubbing down bathrooms is equal to an afternoon playing Memory with the kids. That's not what I want to reflect on when I go through these books five years or even one month from now. Not every "good" thing needs to be documented.

Quotationing, Information Collecting

Rubin had another reason for starting a notebook that I found really appealing. She talked about her love for the physical act of note taking and how journaling provided an outlet for this. She also talked about writing for its own sake and forgetting about results. As in, it's okay to collect information and not know what to do with it. It's okay to jot down ideas just because it's fun.

I, too, love note taking, and anyone who's known me longer than five minutes knows I have a pen in my hand almost all the time, just waiting to desecrate a blank piece of paper with my scribbles. (Remember my yada yada yada banner?) So I started a second notebook to serve as a random repository of all things Frema. I've written down books I want to read, movies I want to see, plot points for a TLF part three (when I thought about tackling National Novel Writing Month in November), and quotations. Pages and pages of them, mainly because I get Rubin's "Moment of Happiness" daily quotation delivered to my e-mail and ninety-five percent of them are ones I don't want to forget. Here's a gem from last week:

Also, no, I'm not being compensated for my repeated references to The Happiness Project, why do you ask? I've only cited it eighty million times in this entry.

Reading

One of my goals this year is to read more. Pretty lofty, right? And yet, there it is. Books have always been a huge part of my life, but with all the new demands on my time these last few years, I've been lazy in making them a priority. Part of the problem is that I think I need more time to keep up with reading than I actually do - i.e., I don't have to set aside an hour before bed to wind down with the Dalai Lama. I can grab twenty minutes at lunch or five on the john. (TMI?) All of those minutes will eventually lead to one finished book.

I'm not aiming to hit a specific number of books because that seems overwhelming, but I know that I need some measure of accountability to help me stay on task. Thus, my bookroll was born. Here's to tearing that bad boy UP come December.

I'm also trying to limit the amount of guilty-pleasure reading I do - less Soaps in Depth, fewer sensationalist blog posts that were clearly written to drive traffic or stir controversy. Half these sites aren't any different from the grocery store mags that recycle headlines every 18 months. This is much harder to do, because junk reading requires such little effort, but I'm trying to remind myself these things don't bring me happiness in the long run. I'm ready for something new.

Blogging

In case you haven't noticed, I've been trying to return to a regular posting schedule - as in, posting at all, period. This is mainly because I've always enjoyed working through my thoughts and feelings online, and I've missed being an active member of this community. I won't lie, though; I'm also still trying to figure out if this space can pave the way for other freelancing opportunities. Whether it can or not remains to be seen, but even if it doesn't, I'm having a great time, and that's all that matters in the end.

Churching

After almost a year-long hiatus, Luke and I are back in the habit of attending church, and we are both so happy about it. When Kara was a baby, we were going to an Episcopal church we liked a whole lot, but then we bought our house and moved to a new part of town where the Anglican congregation was wonderfully kind and generous but essentially in preacher limbo, having gone without a full-time pastor for almost two years, and it showed. When a pastor did finally sign on, despite her being a lovely person, Luke and I weren't as happy with the sermons or the way Sunday worship was organized, so we decided to explore other options. Since Kara and Nathan were already attending preschool programs at the local Methodist church, which is known for being super active in our community, we went to a service late last fall and have kept going ever since.

This is the first time in my adult life I'm continually excited and inspired by going to church. As someone who grew up in a conservative Catholic family with extended relatives who weren't exactly tolerarant of other faiths, even Christian ones, it's been an eye-opening process to evolve from Guilt-Ridden Catholic to Nervous Catholic Light to Full-Blown Protestant. The nice thing is that all three traditions? PRAY TO THE SAME JESUS. It's true! Plus, I can let the most fulfilling parts of each experience inform my overall relationship with God and faith. I never could have predicted the spiritual journey in store for me back when I first started debating my religion, but I couldn't be more thankful for where it's led me and my family.

Less Yelling

I constantly tell people it's a good thing tLuke is the at-home parent in our marriage because my level of patience fluctuates wildly when it comes to the kids. I'm making an active effort to find other ways to handle these situations, because when I do, the results are worth their weight in gold. I just need to do it more.

Sleeping, Exercising

Actually, these are the only ones I'm NOT doing yet, but I want to be. I'm sold on the why when it comes to both; it's the how that holds me back. How can I go to bed when there are pages to read / journals to update / blog posts to write? On the flip side, how can I get up to Shred when I was up until two o'clock reading, journaling, and blogging? You see where this is going. In the end, I need to accept that I can't do eight things in a day, pick the two or three that need the most attention in that moment, and hop to it.

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I am trying so hard to focus on improving the "little" parts of my day, because really, isn't that the bulk of our lives? It's not often we're keeled over by outlandish moments of grandeur; I need to enjoy each day for what it is and explore happiness in my current set of conditions, instead of hitting the pause button until all obstacles have been overcome. I've made significant progress in this area in the last year and a half, but I can always do better.

How are you doing on your 2012 goals and resolutions? What are you doing to keep happiness at the forefront of your life? I would love to hear from you.