Directionally-Challenged

Do you ever feel lost? Not necessarily as dramatic as the children of Israel wandering in the desert or Dorothy telling Toto “…we’re not in Kansas anymore”, but just realizing that you’re in an unfamiliar place in your life and you’re not sure how to navigate it? Searching for directions or an instruction manual, or even a North Star to guide your way? Well, life has lately thrown me a circumstance in which I am definitely swimming in unfamiliar waters. A place where I am unsure whether the right turn I made shouldn’t have actually been my other right, or that the current I’m swimming in isn’t really just taking me around in circles. And even though I know that full-fledged mermaids are excellent swimmers, this mermaid wanna-be is frequently feeling the need to pray that God throws me a life jacket.

Navigation has never been my strong suit – when I lived on land I often admitted that I could get lost just backing out of my own driveway. And unlike some (we all know at least one), I have no pride lost in asking for directions. But sometimes there are no clear directions to be sought - everyone else’s compass seems as out-of-whack as mine, they all disagree on whether to swim upstream or down, or honestly, they just have no experience making this particular journey.

So, for now, I take it one day at a time and pray that the destination I hope for will be reached in calm seas, with as few storms as possible.

Friday's Mermaid Morsel

Still working on growing my mermaid locks so I can pitch the bra. 

Hair isn't the only thing that should be blowing in the wind on a sailboat 

Flashes of Hotness

Airport people-watching: a twenty-something artfully beach-haired blonde nymph wearing skin tight Levi’s, a wife-beater crop top, and no bra needed to harness her perky puppies. Me watching from my seat at the gate: a sixty-one-year-old gray-haired would be mermaid, wearing baggy Levi’s, a sweatshirt I bought at Goodwill, and an industrial strength sports-bra that works overtime to hold up the puppies while simultaneously smashing them flatter than a mammogram machine. My husband: unsuccessfully trying to pretend that he is oblivious to the twenty-something barely-dressed nymph.

A glutton for punishment, I unnecessarily point out the nymph and ask my husband if perhaps I should trade-in my saggy, baggy, over-sized jeans for a pair that lift my bum and squash my belly with only the clear trade-off of vasoconstricting the circulation in my lower extremities. He not only honestly agrees with my facetious suggestion but advises that I completely overhaul my travel wardrobe by trading in my sports-bra, crew-neck t-shirt, sweatshirt, jean-jacket, and wool scarf (I find airplanes to always be freezing) for a puppy-freeing, midriff-baring, wife-beater. After all he says, while I have long-passed my age of menopausal hot-flashes, in his eyes I still have flashes of hotness.

I have a long-held theory that mature women who wear uncomfortable, unflattering, skin-tight, skin-baring clothing aren’t doing so because they love the risk of breaking a hip while walking in stiletto heels or because they don’t own a full-length mirror. Nope. She wears those ridiculous clothes because someone who views her through a lens of love told her she looks hot. After all, who cares what the world thinks if my partner finds me to be a vision of loveliness?!

Thank you for the suggestion honey, that is so sweet. Now can you please help me on with this jean jacket?

Pressurized Rats

A fellow sailor recently came upon a cute boutique during her boating travels. She texted me this photo saying it brought sweet memories of me to her mind. (OK, that’s perhaps not a direct quote.)

I responded to her by reluctantly admitting that the sentiment expressed on the shop door might need to be reversed for me - my mermaid swimming is frequently spent in the shallows due to my inability to equalize the pressure in my ears when under deep water. A clear and simple reply, right? But through the fault of fat fingers, flawed vocabulary, and the hazards of text message autofill, my response instead read “my living is pretty shallow" because "I can’t pressurize my rats”.

Now, my dear friend would never confess to me that she thinks I might spend any inappropriate amount of time in shallow living. But she did respond with her fear that the occasional dock rat might have invaded our boat!

In the good-ole-days (i.e., long before the internet) we played the game of “gossip” – someone would create a short story and whisper it to the next person, who would whisper it to the next, and so on down the line. Eventually, the last person would repeat the story, which would have us all roaring with laughter when the initiator shared with us the original version. No resemblance whatsoever.

As a blogger and sometimes Facebook scribe, I do enjoy my social media (mostly). But while admittedly a silly example, I think my texting story points out how easily texting and social media can create and perpetuate a rumor or mistruth. With a few simple “shares” the world would now be mortified by my shallow living in a boat overrun with pressurized (see my earlier instant pot post) rats.