Broke

Disclaimer: This post is a reflection of how I am feeling at the moment and is subject to drastic and sudden change. Particularly after I have consumed enough rocky road ice cream to induce gestational diabetes.

 

I'll admit it. I'm a light-weight when it comes to stress. It doesn't take much to render me dysfunctional. In fact, I'm rarely fully functional. I'm sure our current financial circumstances are meant to teach me a few lessons on endurance and rising to the occasion and relying on the Lord and simplifying my life and finding out what's really important and blah-biddy-blah-blah...I'm over it. 

I know there are people who have had it much, much worse and gone through life with much, much less but today I don't care. I want my old life back. So, knowingly assuming the risk of sounding whiny, and high maintenance, and patently ungrateful, I am posting this list of demands for my happiness.

1. Cable.

2. A savings account with a balance of more than $2.48.

3. Regular pedicures.

4. Buying new baby clothes and feeling no guilt.

5. Not having to ask for help. 

6. Private school.

7. A husband with hope.

8. A real vacation.

9. Paying more than the minimums.

10. A 'frivolous' shopping spree with a receipt over $20.

11. Doing hair just for the 'fun money'.

12. A mom who is more stable than me.

13. Being able to afford the dentist.

14. Having the option to spoil the kids.

15. Friends who don't worry about us.

 16. A desire to pray.

CC

Another Edie

More than anything, I want to be creative. Not great casserole recipe, scrap-book, or baby-making creative. Those things are too practical, too useful. Nope, I want to make art for art's sake and get lost in the creative process. I want to look at something I've created and feel accomplished. I want to be recognized publicly (and not posthumously) by other creative experts for having exhibited some measurable level of creative genius.

The problem is I'm just OK. I'm an OK singer, an OK writer, an OK designer. I have no real outstanding gifts. I'm just generally decent at a few things. I know enough to recognize real creativity when I see it and I can't fool myself, I don't have the 'it'.

I do, on the other hand, have a lot of the stereotypical temperaments of a creative person. I'm impassioned, unorganized, emotional, impetuous, and messy. Shouldn't these flaws come with some consolation prize? Shouldn't I be able to look at my health-code-violation of a bedroom and at least have the solace of some attained creative super-achievement?

I've seen "Grey Gardens." I know there is a danger in the unrealizable dream. I'm afraid of ending up like the Beales. An old woman living in squalor, wearing panty-hose over my shorts and sporting a jaunty skirt-cape, spending my days feeding bread to the raccoons in my attic and manically rehearsing my dramatic routines.

Take away the estate in East Hampton and the lost millions; the Beales are a lot like me. More than anything they wanted to be creative. And they were OK at it too. 

CC