One post is only an hour or so old and I already need to apologize for it. Deep seeded Catholic guilt trapped in my DNA? Mayhaps. Realizing what a shallow, whiny brat I sounded like? Definitely.

I’m a lucky, blessed, and thankful girl. I’ve worked damn hard more than half of my life. I’ve collected a lot of great friends who understand me (even when they don’t) and I have an amazing man to share my life with that understands me too (even when he can’t stand me).

I am thankful for APE and that they allow me to stick around and lend my ::snicker:: talents to their cause in my free time. I’m thankful that I get to take pictures of people and places I care about. I’m thankful that my body still works given that I’ve neglected and abused it over the years. I’m thankful that my brain still works and that I can afford hosting and a domain name to purge my thoughts.

And right now, having spent the last 30 minutes working in a damn spreadsheet, I’m thankful that I can say in approximately 9 months (provided I maintain the current trajectory, which I may increase/improve) I will be completely debt free.

Effe yeah, that feels gooooood.

I started backing out of things and trying to explain to friends that I just couldn’t do it anymore. I’m not sure they understood. If I was them, I’d have thought I was being dramatic.

In baby steps, I stopped writing for Atlanta MetBlogs and stepped down as city captain. After a year of successful Atlanta TweetUps, I stepped away from hosting them. I stopped making as many dinner play-dates during the week. I regained focus on my finances, my relationship and myself.

Last weekend the weather in Atlanta was perfect for errands and spring cleaning, it was one of those prefect early non-winter days that have everyone in the city out playing in parks and holding hands down the street. I did both and then some. I ran errands with The Mc which included us picking out new glasses frames for each other (be afraid) along with seventy other things and actually made for quality time. I paid off an old lingering debt with thanks to a nice tax refund and a baby bonus from [redacted]: LIBERATION! I cleaned the loft and consolidated my to-do lists. Even after a day of errands and chores, the list still a mile long…how is that possible?

What’s left that’s still filling my yellow sheet? Does it matter? There’s more, there’s always more.

I tell friends there will be crap in their inbox when they die, and there won’t be anything on their tombstone about how much they got done, or with what efficiency – what’s my problem?

Meh. I’m not trying to be a selfish a-hole, it’s just working out that way. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss you or I’m not thinking about you, because I am. You can probably feel it.

I’m working diligently to make it so that one day very very soon my to-do list will be shorter, and that I’ll be a better friend and blogger. Truth is: I miss you. I also miss me.

I wonder if you’ve ever been where I am, and how you got out of it. Backing out of commitments clearly isn’t enough, and not loving as many people as I do isn’t an option…and OMG can someone get me to stop COMPLAINING about this boring, boring crap?!

I sold my condo and moved in with him, then he sold the big house later a year later and we eventually bought a loft. Part one of the plan: complete.

Part two proved considerably more difficult. How do you begin a collaborative painting on an empty canvas when one of you has an affinity for Romanesque and the other worships Dali? When one wants to buy 30 acres of land but can’t decide where or what it should look like (on the water or the side of a mountain with a view? North Carolina, Georgia?) and the other just wants to get. it. done.

One conversation at a time, during long road trips of knitting, podcasts, and debates that shouldn’t be engaged in when you’re trapped in a vehicle moving 70mph. I created a second blog with no links to this one, where we tracked our progress and posted ideas for the future.

We made an offer, we had a survey done, we rescinded our offer. We made another offer, we had an inspection done and we rescinded our offer. I fell in and out of love like a tween in heat. Each one “could be it!” became an annoying anthem, which could have only been worse if Celeine Dion had been the one singing it. I started thinking the blog and the conversations with friends were jinxing our plans – because you know that me talking caused that one house to have polybutylene pipes.

We changed our minds about where and when. We drew lines in the sand, set deadlines and missed them. We fell disheartened, discouraged, deranged. We had Sir Isaac Newton moments where we were clunked on the head with red apples shining from sea to sea – but were they Newton’s apples, or Adam and Eves?

Something happened new years eve as we were about to leave for the night that had us giddy and scouring real estate website search results for a particular area – we’d had an epiphany about where. Now: when? Things started to fall in as it should, as you could only hope and dream and wish for, as you can only truly appreciate when you’ve worked and looked and had your hopes dashed. Disappointment breeds gratefulness?

Less than two months later (last Thursday), we closed.

We’d found it – rather our agent found it for us. It’s a 1ac lot, not 30. It’s on a finger of a lake, not on the water itself and not off a goat trail. It’s in a gated community with a 24 hour guard, so he doesn’t have to worry when I go up by myself. There are 3 lakes for me to drop my kayak in. There are 30 miles of groomed trails for me to walk and run, there is a fundamental love and respect for nature there – where we’ve seen deer, grouse, turkeys and even a wolf on our visits. There are a number of other bits to be giddy about but mostly this: it’s ours.

We are (almost) officially city mice and country mice. Now we just have to decide on our cabbage (cottage + cabin) design and make that part happen. It could take the rest of our lives, but I doubt it…we’ve got momentum now.

“With every goodbye we go to seed again, this is how we come to make family from strangers, this is how we learn ‘always’, we are candles lit from each other.”

I’ve butchered a poem that held me enraptured in my teenage years, one that resonated with me and made my bones vibrate with an understanding of grief I didn’t realize anyone else was capable of. Here it’s like cheap beef stew meat in a styrofoam boat – still delicious but not nearly as much as if you’d been given the entire mess of meat to do admire.

Just the same, the words are still there. Sixteen years since I lost my mother, fourteen since I lost my father. Now I stand on the sidelines of life’s gymnasium – watching people I love find their rhythm in the dance of the mourning. I’m just the awkward girl with the glasses, the lazy eye and the ill-fitting dress, they’re the football quarterbacks trying to figure out what to do with their hands and attempting to look relaxed.

We all suck at this. We’re supposed to. It’s not supposed to be easy or come naturally, it’s supposed to ravage us and spin us around, and when we get our equilibrium back in check, when we can focus on the horizon again without tipping over, we’ll see a present there with pretty little bow.

If there’s one gift those I’ve/we’ve recently lost have graciously and silently granted, it’s their example of this: live. Work hard, and live the life you want to live.

Bill spent the last 20 years on a lake almost every day, fishing. He shared his passion and his love with his grandchildren, his friends, and his wife of 60 years. Karleen spent the last 16 years cooking, baking, visiting with friends and family, and driving her sister half mad (*giggle*). She died in the same house she was born in – the house her father built, on the farm he owned and worked, and it was exactly how she wanted it to be.

While I’m still trying to figure out how to balance the greedy “want” from the soul filling, world rewarding “want” and what that means for my actions, activities, hobbies, etc., I’ve found yet another quote to pin to my mental lapel (in hopes others will see it even without seeing it):

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.” – Ernst Fischer