I’m my own damn sunshine

 

Two thoughts: I love a monochromatic moment. And I need to bring my ring light up from the basement  

Yesterday we saw the Barbie movie. I bought this dress and cardigan at Walmart while I was processing my feelings afterwards. Everyone says that they cry at America Ferrara‘s speech, but I held out for Rhea Perlman at the end.

Movie review: lovely to look at but beats you over the head with the themes. 

Anyhoo, let’s do a health vs work update, as I need to see about getting packed today.

STORYTIME

I’ve been diagnosed with dysautonomia for a bit now. It literally means my autonomic nervous system doesn’t work properly. It is a neurological condition that may be autoimmune, but is most often discovered through cardiac expression such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.

Liver disease, Lipidema… pick a body part, and there’s probably something wrong with it.  

I already had celiac, but now I have diabetes and coronary artery disease - getting a stent next month - so you can imagine that my diet is just delightful these days.

I am currently in the process to find out if I officially have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and/or Chiari malformation.

This may come as a shock to people who knew me way back when, but I have actually had an extended period of being bedbound and now use mobility devices, depending on how any particular day is going. 

On any given day, if I am going anywhere bigger than a Walgreens, I am using a rolling walker with a seat and anything larger than a grocery store is going to require my power wheelchair.

You can imagine that this has had an impact on my employability. 

Now my employment consists of working a few hours a week at my church and doing event planning, on my own schedule, for music education retreats. 

I have a virtual assistant who lives in South Carolina, who does 90% of the event work for me. I am the conductor and she is the violin. This provides me with a bit of a safety net when I am not feeling well, because as we go, she is learning how my decision making process works and how to respond to things independently.  In theory, even if I were to get very ill for an extended period, she would be able to keep things afloat and even bring them to a graceful end. 

Music retreat is happening this coming Sunday through Thursday so I need to get packed for that.  I’m now a solo disabled traveler. That’s funny… that packing used to be about picking outfits and now it’s about predicting which mobility aid will be the most useful in the planned environment. 

I’m grateful that I’ve been able to set things up to be able to do this, though. Not working at all is soul sucking. I’ll hang on to this for as long as I can. 

Barbie Movie Day

 

Today in my life as mostly a housewife, I’ve decided to take myself to the 1pm Barbie movie and so of course I have to wear pink. 

I purchased this dress at Loft Outlet last week. It is a medium weight satin that feels of very nice quality. There are no pockets but I’m willing to live with that.  I got the earrings and necklace at the same time. 

Everyone tells me that trainers with dresses are the new style but I’m pretty uncomfortable with that so far.   Someone suggested lacy socks. Darlin, I am 47 years old. My lacy sock days are in a previous century. 

The jacket (labeled GALLERY) was thrifted many years ago and today it’s just to protect me from the air conditioning at the movie. I’m dainty.

I am going to a theater that is close to our new house. We have lived here for less than two months. 

Rather than do a decades worth of an update, I think I will just pepper in little updates as I post. 

STORYTIME

I had no intention of buying a new house in this area. The plan was always that we would retire to northern Wisconsin, which is where my husband is from. (He is eligible for retirement next Thanksgiving.) 

However, when you have kids, plans change. 

My stepdaughter is a single mom. She and our grandson moved in with us when he turned 3, after living with the other grandparents previously. It didn’t work, because the open structure of our old house did not allow my stepdaughter to really exercise any parental autonomy. My grandson kept looking to grandma and grandpa to override his mom’s choices. 

Also, she is an adult and would like to date and fall in love and that’s difficult in an open floor plan with your parents. 

So they moved out… a whole two blocks away… and we didn’t like that either. She was paying like $1200 for 700 ft.²  Like everywhere else, housing costs have far outpaced earnings.   

So we started looking for some structure that would suit us all. No easy feat.  All the duplexes are in questionable school districts.  Everything in good school districts is open floor plan or all the bedrooms clustered together. 

We even signed a build contract for a lot in our established neighborhood, but we wound up canceling that contract and buying our current home. 

It was an absolute whirlwind.  We bid 20k over asking, 2 weeks extra they could stay in it after closing, and a pass/fail inspection.  And we got it!! 

Our new house was a custom build from the 90s, and only had one owner. They built this house as multi generational housing so they could look after their aging mom. It is kind of like a duplex, even though it is zoned single-family.  

The total structure is massive, at almost 6000 ft.², of which my stepdaughter has 2400 ft.². She pays in her $1200 and we handle the rest.  We can each dog sit and trade off cooking dinner and look out for each other, but we also have space and privacy.  

This house needs a lot of repainting - you see that amazing/horrific 90s sponge paint in the picture above - and our new roof will be installed this coming weekend. But we are so very happy here. It was a crazy choice, but the right one. 

It’s been a literal decade.

 Damn.  

Vacation!

We just got home from a 7 day cruise, which I've documented at my new blog:  http://gfvagabond.blogspot.com/

I plan on going back and writing entries about our trip to Paris and Dublin earlier this year as well.

Hope to see you there!

freeda

Happy Birthday Edith Head!

The Google logo for today is this...

Cool, but nowhere near as cool as the real, classic, elegant looks she created on some of the most gorgeous women who ever lived.

with Sophia Loren

Grace Kelly

Mae West

Even her concept art was stunning and regal.

And you can see how that left side drawing translated when executed into a garment.

Audrey Hepburn

Before Google, had you ever heard of Edith Head?

The legend herself.

Here's an interview with her.  It's long but interesting. 

Playing dressup

Wasn't I just saying that I haven't blogged clothes in the longest time, and that I'm pretty well over it?  Well, yesterday it snowed for the first time.  I rotated some clothes out of storage from last winter, and since I was running short on hangers, spent an hour or two making outfits on one hanger apiece, to free up some space.

What fun!  It's been a while since I just played with my clothes.

Silly story... a couple of weeks ago I got some food on my top when hubby and I went out to dinner before my chorus rehearsal.  Since he was headed home and I still had to spend a few hours with adults, I took his shirt right off his back!  I showed up to chorus wearing a plaid men's shirt, and one of the ladies said "Oh, I didn't recognize you at first, since you always dress so nicely."

Personally I didn't think there was that much of a difference, but others do!  And it's really nice to hear, after years of this blog project, that I routinely look "nice".

Long term planning - to run away.

I'm 37 years old.  That's past the point many people are thinking about starting a career.  Many of my friends, and my husband, are starting to look at their retirement now.  Not me.  I'm just getting started.

My primary goal is, and has always been, to leave.  Go.  Run away from home.  Start a new life.  Be vagabond.  See the world.  Probably not a surprise, as I was raised on Rick Steves travel shows.  Yet, barring a few months here and there, I've never lived more than 300 miles from where I sit now.  Having had a child at 18, I've never been able to make the huge leaps I would like to.  Now that children are no longer in the picture, I'm free, in the largest and sometimes scariest sense.

Why is social work the key to the world for me?  Three big reasons...

• Social work is one of the soft sciences on the NAFTA list, which allows you to work in Mexico or Canada with much less red tape.  
• It's also an in-demand career in the EU, which is otherwise a very difficult area to seek employment as an American citizen.  
• Finally, it's one of the often listed overseas jobs in the VA healthcare system.

Now, this isn't the simplest route to live overseas.  The simplest route is just for my husband to take a job transfer to a base in Europe, and be a lady of leisure.  Only problem with that?  Leisure and I don't get along.  I have a busy mind and need problems to solve and people to talk with.  (Another problem I despise acknowledging is that it would also make my entire life and livelihood dependent on my husband.  Not a position I am comfortable with.  I want to know that if things get stupid, that I can still take care of myself.)

Here's a story of a young lady who did it in England.

So now all I need to do the schooling and go from there.  My elderly dogs should pass away before I'm ready to roll, leaving me with just a cat to care for.  Ideally, I will be able to get a job in the same area hubby can take a transfer to, and we can live happily ever after.  Then he can retire as soon as he is eligible (12 years from now) and we can go from there.

This plan will take a few years and a lot of work to execute.  But I think it will work.  I think there's a whole new life waiting out there for me.  So I think I'll just go get it.