Thinking in dollar signs is part of my inheritance that I’ve had the joy of experiencing while my parents are still alive. I’ve been thinking in dollar signs since I was a wee puffy muffin. It made me financially responsible at a ridiculously early age, and the older I get, the more I become aware of how that part of me has shaped a lot of my other parts. Like my big muscled arms. Whoa guns!
Thinking in dollar signs can be dowdy, though. It’s a totally grown-up thing to determine if a decision is practical from a financial standpoint. There is very little room for irresponsibility and immaturity when you think in dollar signs – usually because irresponsibility and immaturity seem to come shackled to a large price tag.
I’ve been thinking in dollar signs so long that I hardly recognize it any more. Many of the decisions I’ve made are rooted in The Big Green – continuing to live in Washington, not upgrading my vehicle, living where I do. I’m not a cheapskate. Oh by some people’s standards (a lot of people?), I would be the definition of cheap or stingy. I am frugal. It’s quite rare for me to not analyze my purchases – partly because I’m careful with my money and partly because I don’t really like cluttering my life with stuff I don’t need (that tendency is courtesy of my other tendency to move around a lot). And because I just really don’t care if I have a set of 16 matching dishes or the best entertainment center.
But I’m not a cheapskate, not compared to the way I was raised. (My parents aren’t cheapskates either, necessarily. They’re just cattle ranchers which takes all the decision-making out of it.) I treat myself. I go on road trips, and I occasionally splurge on frivolous shopping sprees. I got a dog, and goodness knows those things aren’t cheap.
And yet, on the big things, I still think in dollar signs. I look at situations and decisions from all angles to see if there’s a more financially beneficial way to approach them. Generally this is at the cost of aspects that can’t be measured in dollar signs – like…panoramic views out my kitchen window, convenience or a place that fits me better than it fits my bank account.
Maybe I think in dollar signs, because it is easy to measure. You either have $2 in your wallet or you have $8. Black and white. There or not there. But feelings? Emotions? The inner workings of my mind and my heart? Impossible to measure. Impossible to predict. Impossible…just impossible.
Maybe I think in dollar signs because that’s how I was taught.
Or maybe I think in dollar signs so I don’t have to try and sort out my feelings and emotions.
I just reread what I wrote for the title, and I feel I should clarify. I’m talking about my internet children. Not my dog children. Shoelaces for Josie is my first child. I’ve had…it?…for three years now. More than three years. Pert near three and a half! And I feel blog years are kind of similar to dog years. That’s about the end of the resemblance between canines and blogs though – other than perhaps the more time you spend with each, the better they get…hypothetically.
I’ve had this idea stewing in the back of my mind for a long time now, and a month or so ago when I wrote my bucket list (I nearly typed “pucket” which made me think of puke bucket – not the type of feelings you want to associate with a list that holds many of your goals), slot number 14 was given to photography.
#14: Start a photoblog and take one photo a day
And thus, my second child was conceived. I carried it around with me for awhile. I thought about it and talked to it and fed it granola bars and steak. And yesterday, it was born: Shoelace Shots. I waited until it was a whole two days old before I shared it with anyone, because I wanted to make sure it didn’t cry or poop at inopportune times…AKA taking itself off the web, links not working, etc. (Although it is linked earlier in this paragraph, here is the actual web link should anyone need to make use of it: http://photos.shoelaces4josie.com)
It appears…APPEARS…to be functioning and doing a rather squeakless job of that. Should you find any squeakies with it, feel free to contact me at shoelaces4josie@gmail.com. Since I’m the mother of both children, I intend to have only one identity. It’s easier to be one person than two, ya know?
I’m in a bad mood tonight. I know why. I know exactly why, but I won’t talk about it, because this is not the place…I do feel better having said I was in a bad mood though – thanks.
I’ve been in the Bay area before, but Cousin hasn’t so we toured the city – ferry boat ride, walking the Golden Gate bridge, riding a cable car. The top three things to do while visiting San Francisco. And we rode BART – the little metro guy. I wore my cowboy boots, because while San Francisco is one of the most eclectic cities I’ve ever been in, there aren’t a lot of cowboy boots. Not real working ones. And you know what? People stared. I find purple hair and so-mini-they’re-barely-there-skirts to be rather shocking, but I guess cowboy boots are on the same level.
We walked a lot today. Partly because touring San Francisco requires a lot of walking. But also because I couldn’t quite decipher the bus system. I finally asked the driver if she was stopping at Fort Mason. She said it would be her last stop. Last stop? Last of her shift? Last of the day? What exactly does “last stop” mean? I was on the right bus. It said I was going to be carried to where I needed to go. It said it. I know it did. But it didn’t. And so after an hour and a half of riding the stupid thing with a hundred of my closest friends, I got off the bus, grabbed my map and started walking. Buses do not exist in my world, but walking? Now walking I can do, and walking I did.
And now tonight, I am tired. I’m a very active person. I’m probably in the best shape I’ve been in for a very long time, but something about walking along billboarded, crowded sidewalks with heat radiating from the cement while trying to figure out where I needed to go and if walking eight miles to get there was really going to be worth it. And honestly? It wouldn’t have really been worth it for me. I’m getting claustrophobic, being here. This city is so crowded and all the people…there are no spaces between houses! They’ve built on every possible square inch of land in San Francisco, and I’m not even joking.
I’m sorry this wasn’t more exciting for you. Sometimes when I get tired, my fingers get a mind of their own and it’s usually not a very interesting one.
Oh, a homeless man hit me up for money. He came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder and said something I couldn’t understand. I probably couldn’t understand, because he startled me so badly I nearly jacked him in the face. Not because he was homeless; because he was all stealthy, secret agent about it…tomorrow will be better. I half-promise.
I didn’t have television growing up – nothing except PBS, so all I got to watch through those formative years was Lawrence Welk. Every once in a while, I got to spend the night at a friend’s place and we’d always watch Full House. I loved that show. I thought it was amazing. And funny. And doors banging and fast-paced and all cool and stuff. It was set in San Francisco, of course. All Golden Gate bridge and crowded streets and bay windowed houses.
The thing is, San Francisco really is like that. Sort of. It’s got crowded streets and the Golden Gate bridge. Bay windows and doors slamming. California can be a funky place and not just because of the purple hair. Things move at a different pace here than where I grew up and, while I can exist in this different-rhythm world, it’s far removed from the laid-back swing-style way I live my current life. And that’s okay. It’s not wrong or bad or weird. It’s just different…just different.
But it makes me miss my home. It makes me miss having a road wide enough I don’t have to check all three mirrors eight times every second while driving. It makes me miss being able to step out my back door in my skivvies without having an entire street document the fact I haven’t shaved my legs in four days. It makes me miss the smell of clean air and freshly-turned dirt. It makes me miss being able to wrap my arms around my pillow, watch the stars through my window and listen to the crickets sing.
It can be hit and miss, this longing for home. I’m not sad I’m here. I’m not sad I took this trip or that I’ve spent the last several days living out of a suitcase, staying at sketchy hotels and driving thousands of miles. Knowing everything I know now, I’d still take this trip without a second thought.
But tonight, in this very minute, missing home is more on the hit and less on the miss. Or would that be more on the miss and less on the hit?
I am in a city. The kind where people drive really fast, change eight lanes at a time and have purple hair. The kind where driving a car like White Flash is pretty difficult because it is SO BIG. Even though it’s not as big as it could be. Oh city, California city…there’s really not much else that convinces me in less than two seconds that I am indeed a country girl. And dang glad of it, I might add.
We had a leisurely 7-hour drive yesterday. It really was quite leisurely until we hit the Bay area traffic. I’ve driven in cities before. Even real cities with six-figure populations. And I did okay – like, we’re alive and stuff, and that’s, like, totally awesome. *hair flip*
Anyhow, I am in San Francisco. Visiting my seester, the BIL and the wild-child. Does San Francisco make anyone else think of Crisco?
Hail. Rain. Snow. Sunshine. Wind. All in a day’s drive when you’re cruising across the panhandle of Idaho and the mountains of southwestern Montana.
Cousin and I started a road trip this morning. We threw some things in White Flash and nosed down the road. She’s sending a postcard home each night. To Husband – her husband, not mine – that would be awkward if she was sending a postcard to my Missouri husband. How would I explain that to people? “Why…yes…we sleep in separate bed rooms.”
But she’s sending postcards each evening, talking about the day, jotting down details to remember the adventures. I’m not writing postcards. I don’t have a Missouri husband to send them to nor a Washington husband. Postcards seem like the type of thing a person would do if a person had a husband. But I liked the idea, so I thought I’d send a postcard to myself each night. A little spark of sadness flickered in my heart though, and it quickly spread to the tippy ends of my toes. I thought about those postcards sitting lonely and cold in my mailbox. I thought about those postcards not being anticipated, read, reread.
So I’m going to blog. I’m going to blog my trip, and maybe somebody will read it. Maybe it won’t be sad and lonely in a metal box with a door that won’t close all the way.
Today, the first day of my road-ramblin’, roadie-toadie, 2010 Western Tour took Cousin and I down the grade, across the meandering road through the Idaho panhandle and into the great expanse of Montana. As I said, it hailed, rained and snowed, but what beautiful country, even in the middle of all that. Kinda powerful, I’d say. A lot rugged and a little wild. A rebellious young man holding a cougar by the ears. Cattle country, God-must-be-here country, feel small country.
Nothing spectacular happened. I drove. I stared out the window for a good chunk of the day. I breathed in, and I breathed out. And it was okay.
I didn’t let go. One thing I learned growing up was to not let go of the rope unless you are on the rim of expiring from life into death. Any other action meant you were no longer on the rim of death, instead free-falling straight into its abyss. And so last night, in the raging battle front of Doc’s First Haircut at the WTT, I refused to let go. Even when Doc finally burst into a million little bundles of firing energy, exploded from underneath me and drug me several feet across the yard. Face first. Through the pile of hair I’d already managed to relieve him of. Fifty pounds of dog with every tiny little piston in his body on overdrive.
I’d been irritated before. An understanding, gentle sort of irritation. He was scared. Unhappy. Insecure.
But getting a mouth full of dog hair that is still tickling my throat this afternoon? That made me mad.
It also effectively signed Doc and I both up for an hour and a half hair-cutting session that unfortunately ended in me resorting to the house scissors to get his hair hacked off. All because I didn’t want the poor little poochy-poo to get too hot under all his furry-ness.
This is pre-haircut Doc. Playing with a giant stick. Oh please, don't feel sorry for him and his lack of toys. Sometimes I get really crazy and give him a leaf to play with.
This is the battle front. Most of it. We didn't exactly stay rooted in one spot.
So! Much! Hair!
Post-haircut Doc. He looks a little bit like a muppet wrapped in a 30-year-old shag rug that's been run over 18 times by a semi.
