Resisting the Rush

In my post about needing to relax in order to sing, I mentioned that I had spent most of my adult life in a constant state of tension.  That's because I was an adrenaline junkie.

Many people who say that mean they're attracted to danger and spend their spare time hang-gliding, shark-baiting, or jumping their motorcycles over school buses without wearing a helmet.  Not me.  My adrenal glands were always at the mercy of my career.  Insurance may sound dull to most of you, but I was generally managing a department full of rugged individuals, handling complaints from at least one state's Department of Insurance, trying to calm unhappy agents (did I mention some of them were married to the mob?), traveling under harrowing conditions to work-related public speaking gigs, and trying to balance an impossible budget, all within extremely tight time-frames.  For several years I worked 70 hours a week - 9am to 9pm on weekdays, often without a lunch break; at home on Saturday afternoons and evenings; and back to the office on Sunday afternoons.  Fortunately in those days I could afford a cleaning person, laundry service, and eating out.  Not having children turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  At least work was my main bad habit - I didn't have time for substance abuse or power shopping.

Even the years I didn't work 70 hours a week were full.  I may have set some kind of record for how long it takes to earn a master's degree.  My BA is in English and history, so of course I took no undergraduate business classes when I was in college the first time around.  When I decided to earn an MBA I had to go to night school to pick up basic courses in accounting, finance, statistics, economics, IT, etc. before I could even apply to grad school.  By the time I moved to New York I had two years of graduate work under my belt, only to learn that the new grad school I was applying to wouldn't accept transfer credits from ANYWHERE.  Back to the drawing board, and another five years of night school.  With group work sucking up my weekends.

I thought I would finally be able to relax when I retired from insurance, but then came crisis-a-day (or sometimes crisis-every-five-minutes) Barry.  When we were together I sometimes felt like a sprinter at the starting line, waiting for the gun.  Readiness was all.  Coping would be required; the only question was WHEN.

So, for the last two years I have been letting go.  I've had occasional minor financial stress and of course the hassle of getting my parents moved, but nothing approaching the constant demands of my previous life.  Sometimes I have even been able to kick back and do NOTHING without feeling guilty.  Until...

I started working full time for my friend the realtor this winter.  She was busier than any two human beings should be, so shifting part of the load to me wasn't as helpful as we'd both hoped.  Every Monday morning when I turn on my computer and start reading the emails that piled up over the weekend, I can actually feel my heart rate and my breathing speed up.

In my former life, I would have tried to stay on top of everything by working longer hours.  I could easily go back to spending my life on red alert, riding the adrenaline wave until I drop from exhaustion.  This time, though, I'm trying to work smarter, not harder.  I work late only when it's absolutely necessary.  I organize little pockets of chaos so we can find what we need without frantic, time-wasting searches.  I'm evaluating Client Relationship Management software so we won't have to consult a gazillion separate spreadsheets to see if we've done everything we need to do for all our clients.

It's not really enough.  I need to do more to bleed off the tension at night.  I still need to get back into the gym and cut back on my stress eating.  The good news, though, is that at least now I relax enough on the weekends so that I DO feel that adrenaline kick-start on Mondays; I'm not living with it 24/7.

Deep breath...thinking OM...

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it." ~Lily Tomlin

"What were you thinking, man?"

One of my guilty pleasures is Castle, a TV series about a crime novelist.  In one of my favorite episodes, Castle's 70-ish mother Martha sets up a "My Face" page and posts a 30-year-old photo of herself on it.  Her high school sweetheart, Chet Palaburn, sees it and sends her a "friend" request, which totally panics her - what happens if he wants to meet and thinks she looks like (in her words) "Dorian Gray in reverse?"  She finally accepts his request and flips to his page, only to see a photo there that's even older - possibly dating back to his high school days.  Her final words are, "Chet Palaburn.  What were you thinking, man?"

Between my pre-Barry online dating experiences and the ones I've had lately, this (or its female equivalent) could well be THE question for members of the electronic lonely hearts clubs.  Don't people who post photos from 10 years and 50 pounds ago want potential partners to recognize them when they finally meet in the flesh?  One of my male friends showed up for a date with someone allegedly his own age and faded right back out the door again when he saw a woman old enough to be his mother waiting for him.

Old and Photoshopped photos are not the only way in which online daters mislead others.  I've met people who lied about their height, hobbies, hair, and religious convictions.  Perhaps the worst example of bait-and-switch I ever encountered was the man who claimed to be a non-smoking social drinker but turned out to be a chain-smoking recovering alcoholic.  OK, in most of these cases I probably would have refused to meet the guy at all had he been honest - but wouldn't that be better than a personal rejection after the truth comes out?  And no, buying me a drink or even dinner isn't going to overcome the fact that in person he strongly reminds me of one of Santa's less attractive elves. It's all I can do to keep from blurting out, "What were you thinking, man?"

I thought (silly me) that we were all looking for the best possible fit with another person.  I was initially heartened by the number of men who list honesty as one of the key traits they hope to find in a woman - but some of the very guys who insist on an honest woman see nothing wrong with fudging the facts on their own resumes.  WWYT, M?

Maybe it's time to go back to flirting with guys in the produce section of the grocery store.

"For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth." ~Bo Bennett

Coming Up For Air

My mother came from a musically talented family.  My maternal cousin Lola and my mother's half-sister Kay both have gorgeous singing voices; when Kay was in college, in fact, she won the talent contest in the Miss South Dakota pageant.  Unfortunately, although I loved to sing, I always thought I hadn't inherited the family vocal cords.

Just about a year ago a woman from my parents' church choir heard me singing in the congregation and talked me into joining the choir myself.  I was frankly astonished that they took me, but hey - they were desperate for additional bodies.

Since joining the choir I've learned a lot about singing, the most important of which is this - having the vocal cords isn't enough; good sound is based on air flow.  This last year has been the first extended period in my adult lifetime when I wasn't either managing other people or coping on a daily basis with Barry's Asperger quirks.  In other words, this is the first time I haven't been living in a constant state of tension.  It's no wonder I couldn't sing when my entire body was always clenched like a fist.  Now that my throat and my diaphragm have relaxed, I have a much bigger voice than I ever expected.

The choir is a small, close-knit group and I love them all, but I am particularly grateful to Vonda, the woman who originally recruited me.  Sadly, her wonderful husband Glenn - one of the kindest people I've ever known - died last week.  His memorial service was this weekend, and I sang one of the solos that Vonda had requested.  It was hard to get through it without bursting into tears, but it was the best way I could think of to partially repay the friend who has given me this incredible gift.

"I should like to see you free as a bird, singing for the joy of it." ~Joan Aiken, The Five-Minute Marriage

Shopping for Beefcake

I've never believed in astrology, or Fate with a capital F, or even God as an entity with a close-up and personal interest in me, but sometimes the stars do align and events arrange themselves to herd me inexorably in one seemingly inevitable direction.

Take my move to New York.  The very day I was turned down for a major promotion at my last job in the Midwest, I came home to find the National Underwriter in my mailbox with an ad for a New York job I was qualified for on the back cover.  Less than a month later, I was working just off Wall Street.  Had I received that promotion, I'd probably still be living in South Dakota.  Had the ad appeared a week earlier, I wouldn't have given it a second glance.  Had it been a few weeks later, I might have been reconciled to my passed-over state.  But no, it showed up when my sense of injustice was at its white-hot peak, and the rest is history.  Kismet?  Well, maybe.

Something similar has been at work this last month.  First I took advantage of some awesome after-Christmas clothing sales to augment my work wardrobe with sharp new stuff.  Next the staff at the church whose website I maintain hounded me into getting my picture professionally taken for the church directory, and it was way better than I expected.  Then I tired of trying to figure out how to squeeze the gym into my schedule and bought a folding exercise bike I can use at home, which lets me exercise in two ways - by pedaling while watching TV, and by muscling it in and out of the closet and setting it up and taking it down.  And after all that, Barry (with whom I technically broke up almost 2 years ago) finally realized that I was never coming back and found a new sweetie.  I am - O joy! - forever off the hook with regard to his computer and personal problems; he said he wants to make "a clean break."  Free at last, free at last...  So I signed up temporarily (for free) with OurTime, the dating website for people 50 years old and up.  Just to window shop, you understand.

As I've mentioned, Barry and I met through Match.com, so I've done the online meet and greet thing before, but it's different this time.  Then I was trying to be as open-minded as possible.  The guy was three inches shorter than me?  Fine, I'd wear flats forever.  He lived on the other side of the greater Phoenix area?  No problem, I was commuting most of the way there already.  He was supporting a deadbeat child and a houseful of grandchildren?  How nice that he was a family man.

PB (post Barry), this is no longer the case.  Life with him seems to have permanently depleted my supply of tolerance.  I am surveying the offerings emailed to me as if they are plastic-wrapped trays of hamburger labeled "Manager's Special."  Why are they there?  Are they too close to expiration?  Like a fussy shopper I sort them into the "Yes," "No," and "Maybe" buckets on the site.  I throw smokers, short guys, sports fanatics, East Valley residents, and guys who can't spell or hate to read into "No" faster than I would discard a package of ground beef with an off smell.  Call me shallow, but I don't want to settle; I want someone who is a good fit in as many ways as possible.

The one area where I'm still being lenient is looks.  Many people don't photograph well, and I'm more interested in what's inside the guy's head than outside it.  Mind you, I wouldn't be UPSET if the right guy turns out to be beefcake too...

"I've been dating since I was fifteen. I'm exhausted. Where is he?" ~Kristin Davis

Going, Going...NOT Gone

So where have I been for the last month?

Working on my parent's house.  Blowing the yard, replacing light switch plates, cleaning the last few pockets of grime, and...PAINTING.

The house was built at the tail end of the 1970's and the kitchen countertops are then-trendy mauve laminate.  The previous owners embraced the color and installed cabinet pulls with rose (the flower) painted ceramic insets; Mom and Dad replaced the hardware with plain brass, but they painted the kitchen blue, which made the counters look even pinker in contrast.  I said from the start of the selling process that we might end up painting the kitchen beige to make the counters look browner and less dated, but the rest of the family poo-pooed that idea.

Then the stager saw the kitchen.

Three coats of paint and two weekends of my time and my sister's later, the kitchen still looked faintly blue in some lights, but we declared it as good as it was going to get and my parents finally listed the house with the realtor I've been working for.

They received an offer almost immediately (within 24 hours!) and we have spent the last couple of weeks trying to keep the place clean and the plants alive during a record cold snap until the closing.

Unfortunately, due to that record cold, the buyer's inspector was unable to test the air conditioning system, so the buyer wants an A/C service company to test it.  Since we are still in the middle of the cold wave, calling a service company out to look at the system would be an exercise in futility, and Dad refused.  So, the sale has fallen out of escrow and we're starting all over again.

I just hope the place sells before it burns down or the citrus trees are seriously damaged by the frost.  I'm also hoping that the next buyer doesn't look the place over and say, "Could you paint the kitchen blue?"

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” ~Edgar Degas