My Chihuahua Lady

Claire curled up in bed with me.
"I don't know what the big deal is about dying," she said.
"You're really just going to another dimension. I mean, I know you miss seeing people but it doesn't have to be that scary."

Come to think of it, neither does living.
I'm thinking my ten year old is on to something.

It's amazing how fearful I can be.
Should I make the phone call? Yes.
What if I can't figure this out, then I'll have to ask somebody for help. So?
What if the school secretary thinks I'm some kind of woo-woo yoga teacher trying to find work? And my point is?

But if I use my life is a river metaphor, well, standing on the riverbank can be beautiful, but if you never get in the water...?

Like the woman who literally swept by my car today while I was loading groceries into the back. She was upon me in a moment, talking about her chihuahuas (they were in a crate in her backseat). Her bleached hair was a long mane down her back, her face heavily made up, two slashes for eyebrows. She was beaming and going on about the dogs.
"They're my babies. I take them everywhere. On the plane to Miami. You see, my mother died and left me a couple of properties. One of the dogs was hers but she got sick, died. So now I have the two. They're just so cute! You won't believe this but I put one in the hot tub the other night. Oh my God, I think he actually liked it but he kept barking and barking. I thought I was going to have to call 911!"

And then she was gone.

I don't recall saying hello to start our conversation. Maybe I smiled. It doesn't matter. I am so grateful for My Chihuahau Lady. Grateful for her blast of alive-ness today, there in the parking lot of MR. Z's.

I drove home happy, past the piles of dirty snow. I'm pretty sure I heard my angels singing a ditty, a little something to the tune of Happy Birthday...It's not scary at all, Life's not scary at all, It's not scary at ALL! It's really not scary at all.

Trust Unflinching

Okay, so I've probably spent a good hour trying to get my name (see bottom left near photo) to line up. I've gone to the HELP bar a few hundred times, okay ten, and still cannot figure out how to click and drag the Betsy so it is sitting next to the Jackson. And then my shoulders really started aching and I thought, this is how I spend my time. Fretting about some small detail rather than jumping in the damn river and swimming. This "cramped and insane feeling",(to quote the fabulous Anne Lamott), has been a life-long habit of mine that quite frankly, I'm sick of.

So, it doesn't matter whether my first and last names are holding hands. And it doesn't matter if something else screws up when I finally hit publish post. Because This Being Alive is about ordinary life which can be funny and heartbreaking all in the time it takes to empty the dishwasher. It is my hope that if even one person can step off their personal hamster wheel by vicariously watching me spin, and occasionally JUMP, then I am happy to be of help.

As a certifiable late bloomer to all things technical and cyber-y, I am starting this blog on this moody first day of March with much joy in my heart. Out of the corner of my eye, on the brown paper taped to the closet door I can see the words I scribbled in bright blue marker:

Trust unflinching in my artist's life.

Here goes.