Getting ready to move again...fantasy version

I can't believe we're moving again. Enough already!

But since there's no getting out of it, I think I'm going to take a few minutes to create my ideal, fantasy version of this move....

First, all of those already-full boxes and totes in the closets and on garage shelves would instantly resize themselves to fit inside of an oh-so-adorable Container Store box. You know, one of those brand new boxes made to look several decades old? And they would tumble into the box neatly, with nary a spill or a need to rearrange them. All I would have to do is close the box and set it aside for the movers (more about them later.)

All the contents of the kitchen cabinets would suddenly stack neatly, with no need to wrap each and every #$#@ glass and cup and plate lest they break on the one mile journey (yes, that is how far we are moving. Actually just under a mile.)

My home office/studio contents would fit in a tidy pile in one or two totes. Ditto for all the clothes, shoes, coats and other haute-couture fashions from the best stores (cough...TJ Maxx...cough), makeup and toiletries. A petite pile of totes in the front hall.

Upon removing the furniture, all carpets will be found to be perfectly clean, and all walls will have nary a scratch or chip.

The team of 10 clean, hard-working, skilled movers will be oh so careful, and will know exactly how to handle that fragile antique rocker and 19th century jelly cabinet without anyone biting nails or standing by trying NOT to scream. Or actually screaming.

Upon arriving at the new house, everything will be spotlessly clean and ready for our things. The movers will accurately read my carefully written labels and place everything in the correct rooms. Not even once will I find garden tools in the bathroom or a box labeled "Fragile!China and Crystal" under three boxes of books.

The landlord of our old rental will thank us for taking such amazing care of his home, and exclaim in wonder at the decade-old carpet stains we managed to remove during our brief stay. Then he will immediately hand us a check for the full amount of our deposit.

On the first night in our new home, we will have a wonderful candlelight "picnic" in the living room, where we will sit contentedly among the boxes and eat gourmet food while we picture how great the house will look tomorrow once ALL the boxes are unpacked.

Ahhhhhhh.....

Moving isn't so bad....no, wait! Oh, heck....

A place to call home

Our front door in autumn

When we moved here last summer, it was hard.  Of course, some of the big things I wrote about, like the  losses I had gone through, and tyhe dear friends left behind.  But there was also the move itself...the endless packing and sorting and packing more.  And then the unpacking.

The whole thing left me exhausted.  But I do love the house Lance found for us to lease until our house in Florida can sell.  And a few weeks ago, I started making it home.  Putting up pictures.  Finally unpacking my craft supplies and setting up my craft room.  I started to relax just a bit.

But the universe didn't seem to like me feeling too comfortable, because the very day after I set up my craft room, the owners e-mailed to tell us that instead of leasing the house for two years then returning, they have decided to sell it at the end of our lease in early June.

So once again, we must pack up everything, and sort, and pack some more.  We need to find another place to lease, and we need to do it quickly.  And then we have to hope that the owners of that house don't decide to sell 6 months later.

It's hard for me to deal with this kind of uncertainty, especially with everything else.  Should I bother to unpack at the next place?  Should pictures and art work come out of boxes, or just stay in storage?

I want to feel like I have a home.  And more than that, I want my daughter to feel like she has a home.  I just don't know how to make that happen.

To Everything There is a Season...and Sometimes That Means New Blogs

Austin at Sunset ©Lindsay Shugerman 2011 All Rights Reserved

For now, my season is to be in Texas.  Sure, I'd rather be in Florida.  And I hope that things will work out so we can return home, sooner rather than later.  And I plan to make MANY, MANY trips home in the meantime, to see my friends and my family and my beloved places.

But I have to face facts.  For now I am here, in Austin.  And I can make myself miserable, or I can learn some new things, meet some new people, and work on myself while I'm here so that the person who returns home will be better, more interesting, more sure of herself and have greater depth than the person I was when I left.

This is hard for me.  If I find joy here, I feel like I'm being disloyal to home, and to those I left behind.  I worked hard to get back to Florida after so many years away.  I reconnected with those I had missed for so long, and I met new kindred spirits who also loved South Florida and called it home.

Sailing off Miami ©Lindsay Shugerman 2010 All Rights Reserved

But now I am in a place I do not love.  Where there are no precious memories or dear friends with whom I can reconnect.  I lived other places over the years...and each time, once the dust had settled, and the excitement of exploring a new city, a new state was past, that old familiar call home would begin.  But during those "honeymoon" days or weeks, I had built some connections, found some favorites in the new place.

This time, the excitement never happened.  So now I need to learn a new way to see the world, and my location.

No, it's not going to turn around over night. I will still be homesick, I will still call Florida "Home." But I need to work at finding some reason to like it here, even if "love it here" never happens.

One way I am going to try and make that happen is with some new blogs.  One, which I started in November, focuses on the details I see in the world.  That one will allow me to bring in images I've collected throughout my travels, as well as new things I find here.

The second one will be about Texas style in decorating.  I love texture and aged finishes, and if there's one thing Texas is excellent at, it's aging finishes.  Think of this blog as shabby-chic meets Texas practicality.  I am looking forward to working on that one.

The last one is a family project, and will be all about Austin and the surrounding area.  We've been working on that one, and are almost ready to launch.  By the way, if you're an Austin-area blogger, we will be looking for guest bloggers on that one.

I will still keep this blog, because this is where I share my thoughts, my joys and my sorrows.  I've been neglecting this blog because I was too sad to write, and got tired of seeing my own whining. So  I wrote and deleted, wrote and deleted, without ever hitting that publish button.  Time for that to end.

Watch for links to all three new blogs next week.

2011 -- A Bittersweet Goodbye

It's time to say goodbye to 2011.  And this year, it's a bit harder than usual to say so long to the old year.

It's not that it's been a good year...it's been difficult.  But there were some things in 2011 that are now gone forever, and that makes it hard to crack open the bottle of ginger ale and toast to the new year.

In January, my mom passed away.  Our relationship went from rocky to none, and we never got to say goodbye. She chose to not have me around at the end, and that remains incredibly painful almost a year later.   But even with all of that, I am sad that she will not be on the planet to see the arrival of 2012.  She did a lot of good for a lot of people in her lifetime, and it should have been longer. Knowing that 2011 was the last year she would see makes seeing it go even harder.

2011 also saw the passing of an uncle I had become close to after years of not seeing him,  I am grateful for the chance I got to finally live close enough to feel that we knew each other, but sad that the time was cut short.  He was great guy, with a dry but always ready sense of humor and a love for Hershey Chocolate bars and black licorice.  Like my mom, I wish he was around to great the new year,

2011 was supposed to be the first full year my new husband and I would have together...a chance to learn about each other and build our marriage.  Instead, he had to take a job out of state, while I remained in Florida to ready the house for renters and wait out the school year.  The result was 6 long, stressful months apart.  The coming together again was wonderful, but we are still recovering from each others absence and the unique stresses it caused for each of us.

And even the reunion was bittersweet, because it meant leaving behind my beloved home state of Florida, where I have dear friends, family and a lifetime of memories.  The move to Texas meant no more late night suppers on the patio of Flashback with Polly and Karen, no more snorkeling trips with Jimmy and the rest of JAC, no more lunches with friends from work who had become such dear friends, no more driving past my high school every day on the way to work, no more running into old friends at the grocery store, the mall or a concert.  Yes, change can be good, it's also difficult when it's not chosen.

So forgive me, 2012, if I don't greet you with open arms and a cheerful countdown.  I need to hold on to every last minute of what will never be after 2011 fades away. 

Free fall and trust

Image from Samma Samadhi

I will admit it.  I have a problem with trust.

No, not with the little things, like trusting someone else to make the dinner reservations or drive the car pool.  But with the big things.  Like trusting friends to be around when they say they will, or trusting in the universe to provide.

But most of all, I have a problem in the whole idea of trusting someone to take care of me, when I need help.

I won't go into the reasons why.  There are several, and they have left me shaky in many ways. But the why is not important.  It's the effect that matters now.

I am about to leap into a free fall.  And it will involve trusting someone to be there, to take care of me, until I can get my bearings, and find a new direction.  And I am scared.  Really scared.

I love the man I am trusting to catch me.  My husband is an amazing person, a strong, gentle, loving, caring man.

And yet....it's freefall.

I'm scared.

Moving offices -- a parallel to life

It was recently announced that in a giant corporate game of musical chairs, almost all of us will be shifting from one office to another.  And with that statement, most of us will be leaving behind the offices we've come to know as home for 9 or so hours a day...longer than we spend at home and awake on a typical weekday.

For some of us, that rearrangement also means leaving behind the comfort of a big office with a closed door and moving into a cubicle...that most wretched of corporate creations, clearly modeled after someone's long-ago rat maze experiment in a dark, damp college psych department basement. I would bet they got an "F" on it, by the way. Cubicles are their revenge.

Back to the move... as I inwardly (okay, a little outwardly, too) complained about the move, I realized that this kind of shuffling is a lot like life.

We get comfortable somewhere.  We go through our days, adding our own personal touches to our lives, in the belief that we are the master's of our destiny...or at least our daily life. ..

...and then WHAM, something completely out of our control sends us completely out of our comfort zone.  And in a flash, everything we expected to do each day is shifted...or gone.  And odds are we complain, and gripe as we pack up our old life and move somewhere else, whether it's a new location, a new relationship status or a new set of daily focuses.

But here's the kicker.  We complain and resist that change, EVEN IF IT'S SOMETHING GOOD!  Something better than we had before.  Now we're not talking somewhere down the road good, I mean even if it is "Slap you in the face and no mistake about it good."  We're still hanging on by our proverbial fingernails to what "used to be."

I want to try to break that pattern with this move to a new office.  So here are the pluses....

1) I will have a window -- a big window -- for the first time with this company.
2) The move will force me to look at what I need in my office, versus what ended up there, and that will clear the energy by clearing the clutter.
3) If I can create the right attitude, I will be one step closer to non-attachment to unimportant things.

Not there yet...I am still mourning for the office-with-a-door that I'm leaving, and I still think it's a mistake to uproot people like this.  But I have a glimmer of hope that come Wednesday morning, when I sit down and look out the window at the beautiful Florida sky, watch an airplane fly overhead, or maybe spot the family of raccoons I've been told play there, I will be on my way.

Do you remember when you saved my life?

Every day we meet people, talk to people, interact with people. It may be a passing comment to the barrista who makes our morning coffee. Or a casual hello to a coworker.  It could be a comment left on a blog, or an e-mail sent to a friend.  We seldom pay attention to most of those simple interactions, as we rush on with our busy days.

But Debbie, at The Mosaic Magpie, reminded me today that those tiny gestures could mean everything to someone. The same idea was beautifully portrayed in an episode of the TV show "7th Heaven," where Reverend Camden goes to heaven, and finds out about all the people's lives he has changed with small gestures, many of which he did not even remember.  Perhaps you have received one of those life-changing or even life-saving moments.  A word spoken when you were down, a gift when you were desperate, a gesture when you had given up hope.

I received at least one of those.  It was early December, and I was living from dollar to dollar.  My daughter's 6th birthday was coming up, and I knew I could not afford to buy her anything.  Nothing.  I was heartbroken, but I said nothing to anyone.

Then I opened the door a week before her birthday, and there was a box on the doorstep, from someone at her elementary school (that was the only information on the label.)  It was full of pretty, just-the-right-size, new winter clothes and some new toys for her...gifts for a birthday that would have had none.  I never knew who arranged for it, who sent it.  No one would claim it.  But that gesture saved us, maybe in more ways than I know.  Probably in more ways than the giver ever knew. It gave me hope, the hope that carried me through to a better life I have now.

Before you watch this clip of one of those life-changing gestures, stop and think for moment.  Someday, when it's time for an accounting of your life, will you be greeted with someone who says "Do you remember when you saved my life?"

Dream house? Why not?

The other day, I posted a link to my dream house on my Facebook wall. It's a beautiful home in Boulder. The view?  Well, you can see the view.  Perfect. Just perfect.

So why did I post it?  It's not that I have $2 million in the bank, and can buy it today.  I posted it because I could at some point, have 2 million in the bank.  Or 10 million. Who knows? I posted it because it's good to dream, and to remind ourselves what it is we dream about.

It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day, focusing only on meetings at work, the grocery shopping list and what the kids need to do for homework.  Days, weeks, months or even years can pass by without us lifting up our heads (or our hearts) long enough to look at where we're going in life -- or remembering where we want to go. Some people forget their dreams for decades, only to realize one day, maybe when this life is almost over, what they once wanted to do and be but never got around to trying.

So here is my challenge for you today.  Take some time and think about something you want.  Something you dreamed about.  Make it a big dream. It could be a trip you wanted to take.  A degree you wanted to complete. Or a house on a mountain side you wanted to own. Find a picture that represents your dream, and post it somewhere.  On your wall, your door, your bulletin board or your Facebook wall. Tell the world what you dream about.  And then -- and here is the really important part -- tell yourself about it. Feel it. Dream it. Make it real, and see it happening.  Dare to challenge the universe -- and yourself -- to make it happen.

Dreams do come true.  But first you have to have the dream.  Happy dreaming!

One man auctioning off his life -- what would yours be worth?

A man is Australia is literally actioning off his life. His home, his car, his possessions, indeed even his friends and job. Man auctions his life | Oddly Enough | Reuters

Reading about his choice -- one made following a bad divorce -- I began to wonder what my life would be worth on e-Bay. But I immediately ran into a problem. My life -- the only things of value in my life -- are my children, my soulmate, my health and my faith. None of them have an e-Bay value.

Once upon a time, I did have a life that I wanted to leave behind. Also connected with a bad marriage. But aside from the house, which was sold and the money divided, I gave much of that life away -- furniture and clothing to friends, neighbors, charities, recycling. Dishes and household items as well. Gone. Left behind.

Maybe I missed the chance for a more memorable and dramatic exit. A public auction of a poor choice on e-Bay. So Ian Usher, I tip my hat to you!

I hope your sale is a symbolic and actual new start for you. Only wish I'd thought of it first!

Dealing with failure

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett



I think from the time we're young, we're warned NOT to fail. Whether it's unspoken, as in rewards for A's, while C's, D's and F's go unmentioned, or clear and overt with shouts, threats or put-down's, the message comes across.

Succeed, and you are good. Lovable. Worthy.

Fail, and the world begins to look like Caspar Friedrich's painting* above...dark, threatening, maybe even hopeless. We BECOME failures, and wear our mistakes as labels.

That's why Beckett's quote jumped out at me.

It was not yet another empty platitude, telling us that success awaits our efforts. No, he acknowledges that the result of trying again may be to fail again.

But in an amazing bit insight, he give two kinds of advice. First, never mind the failure. What? Fail without BEING a failure? Is that possible? Our culture would say no, but is it right?

The second bit of advice is even more radical. When you fail again, "Fail better."

I would love to hear what you think he means by that. How can we "Fail better."? I have some ideas, but I would like to see what you think.

Is his advice good? Is it healthy? Let me know your ideas?


*Man and Woman Observing the Moon, 1824, Berlin

Going home to someplace you never knew was home

(Written in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania)

A year ago this past April, I loaded up my car and my two daughters and the most precious of our possessions and left Central Pennsylvania for Florida. I am from Florida. It's the place where I grew up, where I know every road and shortcut and the best beaches and the best places to play hooky from work on a beautiful day (thank you Pam Houston for teaching me how important it is to know where to misbehave!)

I was never very happy in Pennsylvania...I knew that the people who lived here were generally from here and I thought they had no interest in newcomers. I saw the sky as usually grey, and winters felt cold, damp and long. I was glad to get back to Florida, to the land of beaches and palm trees and festivals outdoors all winter long. I've been happy there. My career is doing well, my daughter who faced the challenges of Juvenile Arthritis is doing better and both girls are excelling in school.

Friday I came back to Pennsylvania for my son's high school graduation. He lives with his dad up here. And since I arrived, I've discovered something disconcerting.

This place that I could not wait to leave in the rear view mirror, feels like home.

I am confused.

Or rather I was. As I sat high atop a hill overlooking the green valleys and farm land below me, a cool fresh breeze blowing the trees gently, I realized the truth.

View looking down over Elizabethtown

It was not the place I did not like. It was my life in this place.

When I lived here, I lived in a big 227 year old house that needed an endless amount of work. There were electrical, plumbing, heating and maintenance challenges. There were always too many things to fix to ever allow for spending money on things of beauty or comfortable furniture. The walls and ceiling and floors seeped 200 plus years of dust and dirt no matter how often I swept or vacuumed or wiped or scrubbed.

In the summer the house was hot. In the winter it was cold.

And for most of the time here, I was in a very bad marriage. It was sad and ugly and destructive to my self esteem and happiness. Peace and happiness were elusive.

And last but certainly not least, I was broke and financially dependent.

The combination of all of those factors made me hate where I lived. Made me run as soon as I finally gathered the strength and the money to go.

And now I am back. Visiting. And perhaps finally seeing this place for all it really is instead of as a part of my miserable life.

View from the Masonic Home

It is beautiful.

In my haste to escape, I overlooked so much of the beauty. I turned my back on good friends and even more potential good friends I could not see through my struggles.

For the past three days, I have been the recipient of countless hugs. In stores, restaurants, schools and homes, I have been asked over and over if I am back. Even the woman who handed me my iced tea at Wendy's was glad to see me and asked where I had been.

Without even realizing, I became a part of this town. I had a home. I just never knew it until now.

I cannot regret leaving. I think I needed to go away to find my footing, to understand my strengths and weaknesses and learn to trust myself. I need to go to the place I always thought of as home through all my years away to find out where I already had a home.

Is it time to come home for good?

My 70 year old friend's new boyfriends

I spent the evening with my girls and a very special friend. "T-" will be 70 next month. She's a musician, a guitarist, a singer, an avid karioki participant and my best friend for outdoor concerts of all sorts. She's become an adopted mom/grandmom to us.

She is my advisor on questions about raising my kids, dealing with friends and matters of the heart. And when I was dating several different men last year, she would often claim she needed a score card to keep track. But she always listened, and always had some insightful advice to offer.

Well, guess what, T-? Now that I have narrowed my own field down to one special guy (I smile just to think of him...always a good sign!)I need the score card for you!

Popular wisdom says that love and romance are for the young. Old age, we are told, is for memories and preparing to move on. Thank goodness my friend is wiser than popular wisdom!

Just weeks before her 70th birthday, this amazing woman spent over an hour tonight telling me about the new men in her life! She smiled, laughed, described and wondered. She enumerated their talents and even commented on one's especially nice buns in a pair of jeans he often wears. She radiated happiness as she talked about the possibility of a future with one or another.

Thank you, T- for showing me that love and affection and even excitement don't end at some arbitrary age. That there is no "manditory retirement" for matters of the heart. And that happy-ever-after love can come at absolutely any age.

Praying with all my heart... and hearing an answer

Sometimes in the midst of everything falling apart, prayers can be answered. Prayers you never expected to see answered.

Someone you thought would be a part of your life forever and ever, and then one day, was gone...

Someone you imagined suddenly finding on your doorstep late one night, or seeing in your favourite cafe on a sunny afternoon...

Someone whose car you thought you saw at the market or the next lane over a few cars ahead on the freeway...

Someone whose name called out by a stranger in the mall made you stop and look, on the off chance it was him (or her)...

Someone you finally left in the past, after long nights of tears and countless futile bargains with G-d, or whatever you imagine the powers in the universe to be...

Sometimes, somehow, one day, you might be standing in the post office line or paying for groceries or answering e-mails in your office -- something ordinary and every day, and your phone rings. And instead of the almost-anybody-else-in-the-universe you thought it could possibly be, it's him. It's that voice you recognize from a single hello.

And you stand there, stunned, all the words you once imagined saying if you ever had the chance have suddenly vanished from your brain. And you feel like you're 10 years old and a grown-up expects you to do something that you just don't quite get. Like talk. So you squeeze out a squeeky hello, and then you wait...not having any idea what the next words should be.

You babble. And odds are they babble. They ask what's new. And even if you have a new job, new house and dozens of other new things in your life since they left, you say "nothing." Because for that instant, you are back where you were when they left and nothing really has changed.

And after only a few minutes, you hang up. Even if you used to talk for hours on end and have saved up years worth of things to say, you say good-bye. You promise to talk again. Soon. And you stand there.

Dazed.

Because the call you once prayed for every minute of every day came.

And you didn't know what to say.

Over the next day or two it sinks in...and then you start to wonder. What about the life I have now? Do I want to go back to who and what I was then? Haven't I changed and grown and learned since then. And you don't call back. And he does not call back.

And you look at the people you have in your life now, and you imagine leaving them behind. And you can't. Because they are the ones you choose to be with now. The ones who might have caught you as you fell, or met you when you arose, like the pheonix from that past sorrow...and they saw you soar for the first time as the new being you are now.

That call came on Tuesday, as I stood by my car, juggling mail to take into the post office. I almost didn't answer. It was not a good time. That it could have been him on the other end never occured to me. But in the end, I answered. I'm dealing with some legal issues left over from my now several years old divorce and thought it might be my attorney. The area code was right for it to be her. But it was not her. It was him.

And one hello was all I needed to hear to know that.

So the question is: now what? I am not who I was when we parted a year ago. I have changed. I have grown. I am stronger, sadder, happier, weaker, smarter, more confused, more contemplative, and more impulsive than I was then. I look different to myself when I look in the mirror. The sorrow has aged me, I think. But my eyes are more peaceful than I remember them looking when we were together.

For now, we are 1700 miles apart. And I cannot see that changing any time soon.


Tonight is a night for the beach. For quiet conversations about here and now and maybe even tomorrow. I think I've looked backwards long enough.