The Western New Year shouldn’t have that much impact anymore. It’s one of three major New Year’s celebrations in Los Angeles – the Chinese New Year is a big deal here, as are the Jewish High Holy days. It seems ineffective to choose January 1st as the day to start a new life, because it is a new calendar year – assigning significance to a day that was arbitrarily chosen by record-keepers in Rome centuries ago. Yet we all keep it, and use it as the turning point at which to evaluate our lives and begin again the regimens that will make us into whoever it is we want to be.
I’m no exception, because I get caught up in the resolution/evaluation culture. And with that, I look at my life, and I think, yes, everything is actually just…right. I’m here. I have Paul and Ben. I work, I see my friends, I live this life that is absolutely right, in which so much fits me, and where I fit into so much. Paul is the other half of me I didn’t know was missing until I found him in 2006. Ben is the baby we were meant to have, the little boy who combines so much of us with so much of his own quirks and personality. My mom is here, for the winter, which also feels weirdly right, having her so close by. I talk to my sister daily in one way or another, even if its only a text message. My work is going well – I fit in well as a vital part of the organization I work for, at least. I have my friends, all those people life brought me to over the last few years. I have learned to be more comfortable in my own skin, in the way I dress, in the way I handle my weight. I feel like I have become who I was meant to be, over the last few years, and it’s a very comforting idea…to know, everything is in its place.
There’s a line in a Matt Good track, well I have a psychic and she says I’m lonely / she says my destiny is turning out all wrong, and I remember feeling like that…and not knowing how to fix it. And then, I went back to UBC and to Vancouver, and everything started changing back to where it was supposed to be. I don’t know quite how to express the inverse of that concept – of my destiny turning out all right. But as 2010 starts up, as this new decade starts that we’re all celebrating, that’s how I feel. Especially when my little boy grins at me, or my husband holds me…I don’t believe love like this exists unless everything around it is in the right place.
There are minor blips, of course. One of those right now is the Reappearance of Big Scary Mike. Well, not so much him as his parking tickets and a collections agency. Alliance One would like me to pay those, because I was co-registered on his car during the timeframe when the parking tickets – and subsequent non-payment fines – were issued. And if it was a reasonable amount, I would, but it’s well into the four figures here, and I am not taking away from my husband and son to pay the debts incurred by an ex-boyfriend. Nor do I intend to let it be reported to the credit agencies so that it costs us more on our mortgage. And that’s also why I’m not going to go into details of the sheer stupidity Mike’s displaying in all this (“parking tickets don’t HAVE names on them,” he tells me…which is why they assign them to the person registered to the car). This may well go to court. In Seattle. I’ll go after the collection agency first, and see if I can just get myself removed from the situation before I have to go to court on a personal level. But hey, if it comes to that, maybe I can swing up to Vancouver while I’m up there!
Yes, it has been eight years and change since I broke up with Mike, which means that his credit problems have affected my life for almost three times as long as the original relationship (which was only just under three years, and was a mistake from the get-go…I learned that the next year.) I’ve had this recurring blip of a shadow on the edge of my life, affecting my credit and my finances, for years. I keep trying to figure out why this latest round has come back to haunt me, and what possible purpose the universe could have in throwing it at me. There’s certainly no lesson to be learned from it that I haven’t learned already. I’m starting to think that the collections accounts and black marks that showed up on my credit over the last eight years is a sort of payment to the universe, a little bad luck and undeserved problems to make up for all the good luck that has augmented my life in the last few years. Or it could just be that bad things happen to good people, especially those who were too nice and naive for their own good ten years ago, when I co-signed on that stupid car. I wish I could go back in time and tear up that paperwork. That mistake has brought me more misery than I thought possible ever since.
So. That aside, everything continues to sort of chug along here. My mom is here, subletting in WeHo for the time being (until February). She was over today to Ben-sit, which was a HUGE HELP. I actually managed to get my desk cleared and organized, while Paul installed some much-needed Ben-proofing. Ben LOVES his Nana as well, which is also a big plus. They read stories and played and went for a walk while we tried to tidy up and rest a bit. I’m exhausted today because I was out past midnight last night. Combined with the workout yesterday that has put my entire body in pain, I had to take some of that time to lie down and read. But Paul and I didn’t leave the house at all today, except for an abortive trip to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market, which ended before we even got off the 101 due to Ben passing out early for his nap.
The house is much tidier now though. Paul and I have been running on constant cycles of clean and organize, as we’re always optimizing the house a bit more. You know how piles of random stuff – mail, papers, books, magazines – pile up places, and then you stop noticing them until you really look? Maybe this only happens for me. Something will sit out that makes the place look & feel more cluttery, but I have to stop and really look at it to move it or clean it up or organize it. I went around the room today doing just that with some of the shelves and the stuff on my desk, and it’s a big psychological improvement on the headspace.
Yesterday, I was actually relatively busy. I went to Pop Physique in the morning. I still have a couple classes left from the Groupon I got last summer. Pop Physique is hard to explain, because it’s a sort of mix of Pilates and ballet barre and resistance training that pushes your muscles hard in the best way possible. It would actually really help me tone up if I kept at it. But then, after that, we went to lunch at Souplantation, and then went home for Ben’s nap, and then went back out to go to the post office and the library and have dinner with Mom, and then I went out again later on to go to Talya & Joel’s farewell party…and it was just a ridiculous day. So this morning, when I woke up, I was slightly hung over and exhausted from not going to sleep until 1am, and then I realized I was stiff & achy to boot from the class yesterday. The party effects wore off by noon, but it still hurts my abs to sneeze.
Now though, I feel the effect of all this activity, and it’s time to crash. Tomorrow is a weekday, and there is very little room for error in those anymore. In the mornings, I wake up, try to get to the Wii for a short cardio workout, play with Ben when he wakes up, shower, dress, help dress Ben, pack lunches for me and Paul, eat breakfast, and drive to work. In the evenings, I get home, play with Ben for a bit, make/feed Ben dinner (or help Paul with it), help Paul give Ben a bath and get him in pajamas, read Ben a story, give him his bottle and rock him to sleep, get dinner going for the grownups, work out with the EA Sports Active “game”, eat dinner, go to sleep. Occasionally I ditch in the evenings for a social event, or I sleep in and miss the mornings, but that’s generally it. Everything may be right in my life, and everything may fit…but free time isn’t one of those pieces I included there.
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