A Better Grip on Reality

Christmas Day is over. Praise Santa.  My fun, fabulous Fall culminated in a Birthday trip to New York and a Church Open House 2 days after our return. Everything looks like a Saks Fifth Avenue Window in my imagination when I’m five weeks out. Five hours out I am scrambling like  the crazy boob vying for camera space on the Today Show Plaza. Ok that was me too. Because I thrive when given a deadline the inner-dialogue went like this:.”The house will be decorated, our people are chill, it’ll be great. I’ll have Saturday to cook, no sweat.”

Perfect plan had I not gone on a Pinterest jag and selected four recipes I had never tried. There was that one grown up grill cheese recipe I vaguely remember and that Hawaain roll ham & cheese Pyrex pan of pleasure, some crazy marshmallow brownie bliss and the baked potato dip which always slays. Always. It made sense that I could fly in Thursday Night, work Friday, bake Saturday & host Sunday. No margin, no sweat. If there’s a day on the calendar of course I can fill it with whatever I choose to do.

Just as we retain the physical image of our younger selves as we age, (once the vision fades you’re totally golden.) Likewise, we retain the unrealistic idea of what our capacities of time, treasure & talent are. I still assume I can paint an entire exterior of a house in a day like I did in my 30’s. Super funny story: so John left a red brick house and came home for lunch and the brick was grey. I’d do that and still have dinner on the table and be early to the business meetings to catch the deacon’s heads spin around 360 degrees at FBC, Alternate Universe. I was that good.

I am no stranger to the split personality. Instead of an angel on one shoulder competing against the devil on the other it is much more a game of degrees. I should be well-versed in saying no but people be sneaky these days. They come into my office and flatter my crafting skills and boom I’m doing the science fair styrofoam model of the life stages of a ferrel ground squirrel. Oh the line in the sand we passionately draw when hopped up on tryptophan and drunk on Hallmark Movies. Who IS this bizarre personality wrinkle and how are we blindly lead to the slaughter by such? You know the manic one who convinces you to volunteer to help people move.

This WILL happen because what I lack in self-discipline I more than make up for in Southern Veneer. As a bridesmaid for Cindy Greeno’s wedding in Atlanta in 1993,  I gave the seamstress measurements 2 inches too small as an “incentive” for me to get in shape for the wedding. Amazingly despite an actual girdle (pre-Spanx era) I still could not breathe. Thank God for the Herculean bouquet as it was the only thing to come between the general public and the thoroughly butt-sprung burnished lamé straight skirt.

I still think I’m 13 and can stay up til 4 working on Colleen’s Birthday Scrapbook while plugged into my Walkman until the double A batteries lag and turn Steve Perry into a baritone. I did it for love then and I do it all for love now. Of course our people came and were happy to be there and even ate my food (and some even left a bottle of wine for us to enjoy.) I am grateful to have more ideas than I could possibly complete, more marrow to suck from life and more adventures to come. To thine own self be true even if you must play mind games now and then.