It's The Economy, Stupid!

While I have been neglecting you, I have been attending to my house. Here's the story behind the headline (and oh, parenthetically, forgive me if I'm repeating myself...). My fact finding trip to LA revealed these two facts.

1. Regarding my career as a Marriage and Family Therapist: The internship in LA would/will be a fantastic opportunity and I am still jazzed about it. Basically, they train you and mentor you and guide you and etc. etc. you in creating a private practice. Bbuuuttttt, it doesn't pay for the first three months. And then it pays a portion of the fees you take in from your clients. And you pretty much have to find the clients, which is indeed a major part of building a practice and you get lots of support, etc. etc., but it takes time. And the current economy is not one in which people, even in LA, are lining up to see their therapists. "Let's see, shall I put gas in my car or pay my shrink?" So we're talking three months without any income and then however long with however limited income.
   
2. My foray into the rental market in LA revealed, as I've told you, the fact that I've passed the point in life where I'm willing to suck it up lifestyle-wise. That being the case, I would have to pay about twice what I could get for renting my house to lease a "do-able" place in LA. Ah, but you over the in the corner, waving your hand wildly: Why, you ask, don't I just sell my house? As Husband #1 used to say, "Good question, Batman." (Isn't it funny the things that stick with you decades after a relationship is over?) And the answer is that I live smack in the middle of the most depressed housing market in the United States. If I could sell my house, it would mean pricing it to compete with all the foreclosures, which (a) would mean a HUGE loss, and (b) wouldn't be enough to buy a place in LA.
   

So you do the math. No income plus major outlay for rent equals gross spending of capital--or as I have come to think of it, major money down the toilet.

Having done the math myself, I came to the conclusion that I must stay put until the market evens out. I have to be able to take enough out of my house to buy a condo in LA. That's not an unheard of exchange of real estate; I just need to have patience. And surprisingly, having made that decision, I am feeling quote hopeful--about, I dunno, my life or something. Which just goes to show you--something. Or not, as the case may be.

Movus Interruptus

...well, it sure as hell wouldn't be coitus now, would it. Seeing as I haven't been near a coit in I don't know how long.

I've got half-filled cartons and a lack of will to finish the job. It's an odd thing that happens to me; or maybe not. Maybe it happens to everyone and no one ever talks about it. When I get out of my comfort zone, I become very uncomfortable. Discombobulated, one would say. I actually have a hard time feeling myself, and certainly I can't tell what I want or don't want. Beyond, let's say, the corned beef sandwich, rather than the borscht and sour cream.

Does this make any sense? No? Of course not. The disparate thoughts are united only by proximity in my brain. That is, I was in LA and out of my comfort zone. That I was breathing was merely a function of my autonomic nervous system (or is it the central? I get them mixed up). I am trying to describe what it feels like to be, as I say, discombobulated. It is as if I am plodding through some murky cherry jello. No, not cherry; lime perhaps. And it's jello before it has set up, when it's still mostly watery with just a bit of the jel beginning. I am able to keep on keepin' on because my brain is telling my legs to move. And I am not totally without decision-making powers in that I can order from a firm preference the corned beef on rye at Canter's Deli. And eat it, the whole thing, more bread and meat than I am used to consuming at one meal. But it goes down because I cannot feel myself and so I don't know that I am full. Until afterwards, when I am in great pain from a severely distended stomach. Not to mention great shame from having Gorged on The Whole Sandwich (plus a couple of pickles).

This discombobulation is why I don't get out a lot. I'm much better spending my days and evenings alone. Even though I say I'm not. Even though intellectually I know it's not such a good thing for a person to be alone so much. But you know, it's safer. I don't discombobulate myself. Other people do it to me.

So movus interruptus, according to the dictionary definition, is when a person says they're moving, buys moving boxes, puts things into those boxes, and then loses the will. Was it anything specific that happened when I was in LA? On my fact-finding trip (my recce, as the Brits call it)? Well, perhaps. Let me just vomit it all out there and you try and make sense of it. Or not, as the case may be.

I stayed with my friend M. She lives in the house next door to my old house. Was it weird being next to my old house and it not being my house? One would think so, wouldn't one? But I felt nothing. Nada. Zip. Is this because I am so over that house. Or is it that my feelings are such that I cannot allow them even an breath of life? I don't know. Either one is pefectly plausible and therapeutically correct, at least in terms of an analysis.

M's house is similar to the state of my house when I lived in it. Late 1920s, Spanish bungalows. Cute. Not without charm. Crumbling infrastructure. I walked around making judgment after judgment about peeling paint, jerry-rigged plumbing, sad floors. M's animals are geriatric as well, which may have something to do with the sadness. Making do.

I went to see the apartment I'd hoped to rent. It was a box with windows that faced interior walls. It smelled like a bar at 9 a.m. the morning after, in the days when we could still smoke in bars. The complex was built in the 1970s, and upgraded last year. But there's just so much you can do changing out a granite slab for formica. If you watch any of the Flip My House programs, you know what can be done on the cheap. I couldn't live there.

I packed to come home in two minutes. I drove the 300 plus miles in six hours. I am breathing again. I can feel myself. I am home. Amid the boxes.

The Newly Single Woman Starts Over Again

So I've been to LA--tra la! tra la! Here's what I found:

• When I wake up in the early morning--or late night--with panicked thoughts about my life, I need to PAY ATTENTION. There is a difference between taking risks and conquering fear and going askew from where I'm best meant to be. In other words, I'm stepping on the brakes, pulling on the reins and sliding to a gravel-spinning stop with this move of mine. What I found in LA is that I'm trying to do it too fast.
• Like it or not, living in a brand new place has ruined me for going back to living in whatever. I need my clean, spacious shower, my nice kitchen, my high ceilings. I can't bear cracked tile, crumbly gray grout, make-do bathroom fixtures. Consequently, I can't just pick any old place and move in. I'm old enough that I need what I need, and if I have to wait a while to get it, then so be it.
  

This thing of being in midlife and starting all over again is "interesting." Fill in the blank for what the word may mean. Actually, it changes depending on the day, time, and situation. So I'm going to chronicle it here...because that's what I always have done with my life, write about it, and because it may be helpful to others who woke up one day in midlife and found the rug pulled from under them and the floor beneath not too firm. I'll write it as it happens--and if you want to know anything, just ask.....

A Warning...

So I have been less than attentive this past weekend for which I do humbly apologize and warn you that there is probably more of this to come. August is here. I am packing. By. Myself. And. Freaking.

When I freak, I tend to hide. Curl up in a proverbial ball and shut my proverbial eyes. If I can't see the world, then the world can't see me. Right?

But I don't have that luxury this time. I must keep moving because I am packing. By. Myself. And anticipating moving. By. Myself.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. It's the anticipation that will get you everytime. Gotta stay in the moment, in real time, here and now. Do this today. Do that tomorrow. Day after tomorrow will be what it will be whenever it comes.

And breathe. Also a good idea.

My yardsale was relatively successful in that I (a) made some money, and (b) got rid of some stuff I wanted to get rid of. The rest of it I'm shit-canning.

Molly is at Betty's getting beautified. We're going to LA tomorrow. Getting my hairs cut on Wednesday morning. Going to CGI to hammer down the internship position on Wednesday afternoon. Seeing a place or two to rent on Thursday. Further ahead than that I cannot go....

Los Angeles, San Jose, or Elk Grove

The subtitle for this post could be, "To move or not to move; that is the question." Not exactly Shakespearean, perhaps, but vexing all the same to me. The other day Karen of MidLife's A Trip posted a piece on Choices on MidLifeBloggers. It spoke to me because I've got this whole where shall I live thing going on.

When D left, much of my reason for living in Northern California slithered out the door as well. We moved up here because he hated LA. I didn't; I loved it. But dutiful wife that I was (so sayeth I!), I went along with the selling of the LA house and the buying of the Elk Grove house and the subsequent moving of much shit and a few good things to our brand-spanking new Elk Grove house, where we were supposed to live--tra la!--happily ever after.

I don't want to rehash the whole thing, but suffice to say the happy part was very short-lived. For him and for me. I never feel like one of The Gang anywhere I go, but up here in what is basically a suburb of Sacramento (which, forgive me, should really be considered be suburb of the Bay Area), I am that proverbial Sore Thumb.

However, I am a determined Sore Thumb and so I have, over the past almost three years, worked hard to make a place for myself here. And I have not been unsuccessful. Thus, when D left and everyone thought I'd hightail it immediately back to LA, I didn't. I bravely stayed put. I earnestly believed I was DOING RIGHT by make a new life for myself here, in my house, with my stuff. Then the housing market tanked and my new house was right in the middle of the implosion. Now it seemed important to me not to sell my house at a significant loss. So I've kept on keeping on.

Except that along with the housing market, the economy has now tanked and my house just sitting here minding its own business has lost considerable, VERY CONSIDERABLE value. That's equity, people. And speaking of same, that's what I'm living on, basically, 'cause the job, she is not coming. I'm starting to get a wee bit concerned. (I'm also starting to sniff Molly's dog food to see if I could actually eat it if I had to.) The fact is, I need to be earning money, and while I did cash my first BlogHer check the other day (hooray!), it wouldn't keep Molly herself in dogfood for a month. So what to do, what to do, what to do....

I'm not just telling your all this to entertain you (you're laughing at my misfortune, are you?). Rather, I'm telling you all this because in the next couple of days, I'm going to lay out the pros and cons of moving and not moving. I'm doing it because I believe your collective wisdom is exactly what I need right now. So will you please come along for the ride? It will be a short one, and while there's no prize at the end (okay, I could come up with something if you insist), you will have the tremendous satisfaction of knowing you've helped a pal along the way.