MY Dream Life Movie Script (2 of 2)

I’m sitting on a bench in front of my eight-harness floor loom, working on another spectacular piece of fiber art for a rich client. The loom is strategically placed in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of my studio, which is located in the upstairs of our 3000 square foot cedar A-frame in the Cascades (we have spectacular unobstructed views of fine snow-capped mountain peaks.) This is one of our three homes. We also own a seventeenth century cottage a few hours drive from London, and an apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. I have complete studios in each home.

Wonderful smells are drifting up the stairs from the kitchen, where the girl who "does" for us is fixing a light lunch. She is also making up something to put in the fridge for us to warm up for dinner. She comes in three days a week, does the cleaning and cooking. We have a lovely gourmet kitchen that is to die for, and I like to cook…I just don’t want to have to.

I get up from the bench and stretch…it’s time to change into my bathing suit and go down to the (indoor) pool to do my workout. I want to get it in before lunch. This evening, the community choral group that I’ve organized is coming over for a practice session. We’re going to be entertaining at a school benefit in a couple of weeks, and we’re trying to master some new material. Before they arrive, I’ll go out to my greenhouse to putter in my hydroponic vegetable garden…we get fresh lettuce and herbs, even in the middle of winter! Then out to the yard to check all my bird feeders.

We have forty acres here in Oregon, and we have several outbuildings for guests…in fact, there are three full guest houses, 1500 square feet each. My family comes up often to stay, sometimes for a month at a time. The husband’s family visits often, too. We have huge two-family reunions in the summers, with scads of kids, animals, and general hubbub. And then they all go home and leave me in peace to work on my weaving.

My Friends

Just got back from a short road trip with the husband, to explore a possible venue for my business.   Over the last two days, I've spent seven plus hours one on one with one other human.  I tend to get chatty during these trips, on a myriad of topics--ancient and recent.  We explore all aspects of his job.  (I give him advice that he ignores...  But I figure, if he wants to talk about it, I'm entitled to an opinion.)  I bring up old old OLD stuff, like old girlfriends (boyfriends) and our parents' reactions to our marriage.  I CAN go on...

This morning, I found myself waxing philosophical about some of the aol journallers, as if they were people I KNOW.  This one and her husband, some other one worried about her kids doing so-and-so...  Like they were actually my friends.  And it occurred to me, that I DO know these women, probably better than I have known many people I've called "friends" in my life.  (It's kind of pitiful, because journals constitute 95% of my social life at the moment.)  I'm afraid I'm assigning a little more emotional weight to my "relationship" with other journallers than is intended.

Reading Angela's (readmereadyou) farewell (for now) entry the other day, I started thinking that perhaps I needed to follow her in that direction.  Back gracefully away from the journal scene and "get a life."  That old spectre that has always kept me from getting too close to anyone---the fear of looking foolish---is raising its head, howling and flailing at me.  But, I don't know....how can caring for people be bad, even if they don't know or care?  There are worse ways to invest one's emotional energy, I think.  

So, please forgive me if I leave comments that seem like I'm taking for granted a relationship that doesn't exist.   I like you ladies.  I find you interesting.  You inspire me, you make me laugh, you bring tears to my eyes...  Sometimes you make me want to don my super-heroine suit and fly through the phone wires to come to your aid.  Sometimes you dry my tears and stiffen my backbone.  Is it all right if I keep thinking of you as my friends? 

Very Old Poetry

Poring over the old journals, of course I came across the old poetry.  There was a time when my journals were filled with more poetry than prose.  A LONG time ago. 

But when I go back and read it, I still like it.  Most of it was melancholy, since most of my writing comes from an empty, confused, or hurting place inside me.  But I'll share one here that wasn't quite as sad as the rest.  I like the "weaving" metaphor.  I used to weave...In fact I still have a loom up in the rafters of my garage that I can't bring myself to throw away...

It is past time to choose

a dream to weave

through time’s prickly warp

          The colored yarns of fancy

          each warm, rich, and promising

          are set high on the merchant’s shelf,

          within inches of a stretch…

Where is the stepstool to the dreams?

                                                                                             

Backing Up The Memories

After writing that last entry, I had to go back to my old journals to see what I had recorded about the year I wrote about. This is so funny! Here I am, almost thirty years later, waxing nostalgic about how this was the best time of my life…. But apparently it didn’t look like it back then:

7/26/75 (One week after my twentieth birthday) "…Since I’ve been out of school, things have gone from bad to worse to awful to unbearable, with varying degrees of disaster in between." I was referring to my initial forays into the male-female relationship market, most of which were total disasters. (At this time I was only about a month past the disastrous finish of the latest contest.) And the fact that I had been fired from my job.

10/3/75 (Six weeks into our "wonderful" eight week trip) "…And so my observations and experiences of the past six weeks and a day have brought me to a conclusion—I want to go home. Or, at least, I want to have the things that home offers. I [want] the rest of my clothes, my own bed, my records…roots, familiarity, a sense of belonging… It’s an adjustment I can’t make, to immerse myself in someone else’s lifestyle because there isn’t the space or the opportunity to exercise my own…" (We were staying at my grandfather’s house at the time.. Though he was a sweet old man, he WAS an old man…)

Oy, could I whine back then! I had refined it to an art! I realize that it is the perspective of the years that makes me understand the pure value of those months, and those trips. It was the "free-est" time of my life. Even though I kept screwing up, in the love department and the "getting along with others" department, and suffering for my screw-ups. And, now that it’s been twenty years since the last time we drove across country, I know that I would be in the car, seatbelt on and map in hand, before you could say "road trip." If only we had the time. If only…

My Year of Living Dangerously

What year of your youth was your favorite and why? Remember?

July of 1974 through November of 1975.

Worked in a restaurant that closed at 2 am, stayed after hours, sometimes all night, drinking beer, playing strip poker. Home at 6am, sleep for three hours, back to work by 11, eyes feeling like sandpaper. Got fired from the job (which became a recurring thread in my life!)…NOT for hanging around drinking beer after hours, though, hard as that is to believe.

Made THREE cross-country road trips. The first one was in August of 1974, with my sister and her jerk of a boyfriend, when she moved to Oregon. (Heard about Nixon’s resignation on a car radio somewhere on the back roads of Arizona, and wondered in a detached sort of way if the world was going to end.) I left Chris in Medford, living in a tent, and flew home to resume my life.

Then in May of 1975, I drove to California with a guy from work…to this day I don’t know why the hell I decided to do this. It wasn’t meant to be a romance, and turned out NOT to be one after all, though it sort of almost kind of was for a few days. The highlights of this trip were sleeping under the stars at a forty-five degree downhill angle, on a mountainside above Salt Lake City, with patches of snow within arm’s reach. And getting a speeding ticket, also in Utah. I hate Utah.

In September, my sister Donna decided she needed to move to Oregon, too. So three of us---Donna, Lauren, and I—planned a "grand tour" road trip that would land us in Oregon so Donna could check out the possibilities. We left Illinois in September, and were on the road for eight weeks. Three girls, three sleeping bags, a tent, a Coleman stove and lantern, and my guitar. Crosby, Stills & Nash…Dan Fogelberg…John Denver. Drove to California through Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona (the Grand Canyon!), then up the coast of California, through Big Sur, Carmel (sigh!) Landed in Eugene in early November, then rode the train home just before Thanksgiving. (Donna left her car in Oregon to bolster her resolve to return.) The greatest time of my (unfortunately NOT misspent) youth.

About two weeks after our return home, this good-looking guy who worked at Kmart with my sister Lauren, started calling me on the phone… And so ended my days of footloose wandering!

Flowers and Mountains and Dogs (Oh my!)

Well, that picture is pretty huge, isn't it?

Remember about a month ago when I was complaining about the horrid ice, snow and cold we were having?  I went outside and took a picture of the  brave little Japanese Iris shoots coming up in my fountain garden, despite (or in defiance of) the hideous weather.  They are blooming now, along with some little purple crocuses I have planted.  And there are buds on all the daffodils...they'll be bright and cheery in a couple more weeks.

Just got back from taking Lucy for a walk up the hill behind the house.  We went up a road we've never taken before.  Would have been a beautiful view of Mt. Hood, but for the clouds in the east.  Only a small bright spike of it was glowing above the clouds in the evening sun.  When the slanting light shines on the mountains, they look like they are lit from within.  It never fails to take my breath away.

One thing I DO find irritating around here when I go walking...  People out in the country often feel it unnecessary to control their dogs.  Other dogs hear the jingle of Lucy's tags from a mile away, it seems, and they know exactly what it is.  We'll be striding along, minding our own business, and some fierce, slobbering wolf-like creature is suddenly tearing down a driveway toward us.  And my dog...she hides behind me. It's my job to scream like a banshee to try to scare the damn things away...or get eaten, I guess.  I've seriously considered carrying peppper spray when we walk...but I'd probably end up macing my own dog. 

But that only put a little damper on the enjoyment of the walk.  I feel a little better now than I did yesterday.

Retirement Stinks

It’s been an odd last couple of days. Been suffering a bit of depression over returning from a too-short vacation. Why would I need a vacation? It’s not exactly like I’ve been working too hard. In fact, that’s part of what’s bothering me.

It’s funny to read other women telling how busy they are…how there aren’t enough hours in a day to do all they need to do. My problem is quite the opposite. I can’t keep busy. Actually, it’s not that I couldn’t tear my whole house apart and clean it from top to bottom. Or get back to work on the decorating projects I suspended last spring in order to get outside and get some yard work done before my season started. I have a whole litany of things I could be doing. But I’m just not inclined.

I have this way of jerking along in life… Things will be rolling smoothly on oiled wheels, and I’ll start to think I’ve finally got this "life" thing figured out. And then I just….lose it. One of the wheels falls off, or something. I lose interest, I get overwhelmed with my inability to really accomplish anything. And then, suddenly, I can’t do anything. I can spend hours these days drifting from task to task, not inspired to finish anything…so I don’t. I never used to be like this when I was working. I was so high energy, I was always doing something…there was always something TO do.

I think it’s the lack of urgency that kills it for me. For the most part, the only person who is affected, negatively or positively, by anything I do or don’t do, is ME. This doesn’t seem to be enough incentive to get me excited about anything. I wonder, is this the kind of thing that retired people go through?

I joke about being semi-retired.  Like it's a good thing. I’m sure there are people who think they envy me. But I’m too young to feel this useless.

Postcard from the Grapes

Well, this is what the vineyards will look like in a few months.  The picture below is what they looked like this past weekend.  Doesn't matter that the vines are embryonic...the view from the vineyards is always spectacular.  Wish this was a better picture...didn't have quite enough sun.  But at least it wasn't pouring rain....

We spent most of our time in tasting rooms, not out trekking around the fields.  The tasting rooms are always beautifully turned out, and usually have seating that spills out onto a patio or deck, for when the weather is fine.  The weather wasn't perfect...it was kind of chilly and a little on-and-off rainy...  but we checked out the outdoor seating anyway.

Yes, it was the quintessential Oregon yuppie weekend. But we really did have fun

(Seems my stinkin' pictures STILL aren't working.  Let's see what I can do about this.)

(Okay....look at the above entry to see the pictures I'm talking about here.  And shoot me if I ever try to copy and paste pictures into a journal entry again!)

We're back...

I just spent a very unsatisfactory hour trying to post pictures from our mini-vacation.  Copy and paste doesn't seem to be working, and I can't get into my AOL webpage to download the pictures onto it.  And the "Live Technical Help" website is not responding.  Could it be that a million other AOL users are experiencing technical problems?

I'll have to try a different method...the one I used for my "walk" montage below.  This involves creating a page in my greeting card program, downloading it to my website, and then adding it to the journal.  With all the problems going on today, I don't know if that will work, either.  And it takes a long time to do...I don't know if I have enough time to get involved in it right now.

Anyway, to all you visitors who expressed a dislike for camping...  You know, it's hard to call it camping, anymore.  I have a better microwave in my trailer than I do at home.  We have a built in CD system, a three-burner stove with an oven, a big fridge with a freezer.  Also the whole toilet/shower thing.  And a furnace that keeps us cozy at night.  I find it much superior to staying in cheap motels (that aren't cheap and you never know who's been in the bed...)  And there's the added bonus of being out there among the wildlife. 

Living in Oregon, camping is the best way to take advantage of all the natural beauty that surrounds us.  If we drive an hour east, we're in the Cascades, among peaks such as Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood.  A couple hours west, and we're at the spectacular Oregon Coast.  State Park campgrounds are well-kept, open year-round, and relatively inexpensive...compare $18 a night for camping to $75-$100 a night for the cheapest motel rooms or cabins.  It doesn't pay NOT to own a trailer!

See You Monday

Well, we're off to a "romantic" weekend...camping with my sister and her husband.  (How the view of romance changes as you reach middle age!)

Actually, we plan to have a grand time. We're going to do a winery tour on Saturday (husband will be designated driver...he doesn't drink.)  Then out to a nice dinner at a restaurant promising romantic piano music for the evening.    Throwing the WW points counter out the window for the weekend!  Also leaving the laptop at home (sigh)...my man deserves my full attention for a couple of days!

Happy Valentine's Day to all, and thanks for reading!