Pea in a pod

Next year I'll be 52. I have never been married and have no children. I have never been pregnant, and at this stage of my life, I don't think I'd want a baby anyhow - even if I had any good eggs left, which is doubtful.

But I would like to be married. I'd like to be with a man who is like a pea in a pod with me. Not that we wouldn't have our different likes of various things but that at the core, we were buddies and just cut from the same cloth who delighted in each other's company and shared an abiding, deeply rooted faith in Christ.

If this man were appoximately my age, I would suspect he had been married and divorced at least once (because statistically it wouldn't be likely for him to have never married), and if he had children, they would likely be grown or at least in their teens. If by chance he had no children, then I could be very content to just make a life with him and have it be about the two of us. If he wanted to drive a motorcycle across the USA or Europe, I'd happily sit right behind him the whole way. I have a friend who is married to a film director, and they are both a few years older than I am. They have been married at least 30 years and have never had children, and they are completely delighted to be with each other at a moments notice, even all over the world. They have no children or pets to tie them to a location, although they do have a home here in Los Angeles. They are two peas in a pod.

So where is my mysterious pea in a pod? Sometimes God gives one person of a future twosome a revelation, but the other person doesn't receive the revelation. In the Bible, Mary knew long before Joseph did that she would be the mother of Jesus. It wasn't revealed to Joseph for months later. Why? I suspect because Satan was on the prowl and the timing was wrong.

So, I believe it is also with me. The timing is wrong even though I have the revelation, and despite what I believe, it is not a shared belief. God has shown me that I have issues to work on as well... my own issues of being a woman and finding the femininity of my heart and soul again.

One of my issues is my weight, but not for any assumed reasons, because I wasn't an overweight child, teen or even into my early twenties. In fact, I was so thin I used to wear long sleeves all the time because I was embarrassed at how skinny my arms were, how my elbows stuck out. I was just long and lanky, no particular curves in the waist or hips, just sort of straight. Guys made passes at me all the time. All the time. They weren't interested in the inside of me, just the outside package. I thought for a while of buying an inexpensive wedding band set just to try to get some of it to stop. I was disgusted by the cheap way it made me feel to be advanced on all the time. One time I was walking to work and a guy yelled out the window, "Do you put out?" Now, I didn't know what he meant because I'd never heard that term before, and I said, "Put out what?" When he told me, I laughed him off and said "no!" but inside I wasn't laughing. I didn't dress provocatively then and don't to this day.

It wasn't long after that that the weight started coming on. It was very gradual at first, and over the years it just sort of kept adding up until I am where I am today - at about 263 and steady. Guys don't make those unwanted advances to me anymore, that's for sure, but neither do they also try to get to know me as just a person.

So if I lose the weight, and my future someone suddenly finds me attractive, then I will find that shallow of him and unattractive to me, and even now I am a little ticked off just thinking about it. I think with any weight loss, there is residual, inherent anger on the other end... People who will say, "You look great, you look fantastic, etc.," well, that's going to be very painful... because I look great now. If they can't see and love the person I am now, then they won't see it then either. It's all shallow and vain, and it turns my stomach and brings tears to my eyes.

Regardless, God has gently nudged my heart that I don't need the protection of weight anymore to keep away the unwanted advances because I am at a completely different place and level of maturity than I was 25 years ago when it all began.

I am loveable and worthy of being loved right where I am, just as I am.

Hydraulics

My desk chair just won't stay at a proper seating height anymore, and even when I adjust it, after a while I find myself at a level that makes me feel like I'm in a kiddie chair. So I get up, pull the lever under the seat, and the chair rises back to proper height again... for a little while.

Last night I packaged a giant piece of Lilliput Lane. The thing must have weighed 20 lbs, and it is double boxed and wrapped like a mummy. I just hope it gets there in one piece, even though I will send it insured, of course. Tonight I have to package 8 charger plates from Fitz & Floyd, and then over the weekend I have to package about 35 pieces of English crystal stemware from Stuart - the Beaconsfield pattern. Yikes. When we sell our two big Lladro pieces, I'm going to have a major panic attack because I have no idea how I'll ship those.

And I'm making some cookies on top of all of this. Craziness!

This weekend I hope to photograph at least 100 Lilliput Lane pieces, but it's going to rain all weekend which means really poor lighting, so I'll have to see. Otherwise I'll wait until next week. I've got giant bins of the stuff cramping my living room, and now my bedroom, so I really want to get this stuff moving.

Must find something to do today for the feminine side of me...something to enhance me.

Potpourri

My work situation is odd, but here's how it goes. I help a disabled woman. She pays me from her checking account, but not with her money. I sell things from a doctor's estate, and the doctor is her best friend, and that money pays for my salary plus I get a little commission as well.

So the doctor's home finally sold and the last two weeks have been a scramble to make sure all the cupboards and drawers were empty. We have actually slowly been emptying the house for months. Some of the furniture was sold with the house, and we never had to worry about that, but all the sellable stuff was removed. There is another person involved in selling who is completely separate from my deal, and she has the lion's share of the things. However, my selling has been in massive volume and has far surpassed her totals.

Anyhow, I was busy making trips to the house which is an hour away on the freeway, loading up, and bringing back stuff. At the end, it was truly a potpourri (with actual potpourri included) of stuff!

I never buy potpourri and that wasn't something we would have resold. No, that went into my bathroom... a bathroom that has always been remarkably devoid of scented, feminine things like that. Now, however, it will smell lovely. I even got a square florist's vase from the pantry where there were tons of florist vases, but I left the others. I just liked the square one. Again, not something sell-able.

There was an entire dresser drawer full of candles, some from Party Lite, so you know those spelled good, plus there were many other scented candles.... and I brought those home as well... otherwise they would have been in the garbage. Now my home smells of cinnamon apple and cedar... lovely.

The rest of my apartment... well, it's a mess.... HUGE containers of David Winter and Lilliput Lane cottages to sell. I have 8 containers in my living room, two giant ones in my car and 3 more still coming. These are things I will be selling for the next few months along with fine crystal stemware, fine china and other stuff. I still also have about 130 miniature books (and I do mean MINIATURE), and they sell extremely well - so indeed we have a potpourri of things to sell.

Other items I came home with include a huge lot of classical CDs... that would have been tossed. Be still my heart! I couldn't let that happen. I have a philosphy that one can never have enough good music, even if I don't currently have a place to put them. I also have a few DVDs, and after I've watched them, I will sell them. I got some "new" baking dishes and some other odds and ends...

Life goes on

So, my beloved cat, Rinksie, has been put to sleep. I cried my eyes out afterwards, then came home and took a shower, and I feel a little better, but I will miss her terribly.

Tonight I tried watching the movie, "Becoming Jane," but somehow I just couldn't get into it, so it's going back to Netflix. It's just bad timing, that's all. I know in the morning I'll take my cat in to have her helped gently out of this life and into the next. She can hardly stand up now. She doesn't eat or drink, and she's become listless. But still, if I put my finger under her paw, she'll grab onto it and hold it. I'm her momma, and she's been my little baby since she was 10 weeks old. Maybe I'll try Becoming Jane again in the future. For now, there is no comfort, no escape from what is coming in the morning. Perhaps she'll just pass quietly in the night. I'd prefer that.

Today's sadness

What will I do for myself as a woman today? What special thing will I do? I don't know. My life is sort of on hold while waiting for one of my precious cats to tell me her time is up. I am sad, exhausted, not really wanting to cry. She is 17-1/2 years old and not eating. She is barely drinking, and her weight is about 4 lbs. She is a bag of bones. But she rallied a little overnight. Perhaps she just wants a little more time. I won't deny her that.

So what is a Year of Perfume going to be about? Well, it's about me as a woman. I have set my femaleness aside for a long time. It's not that I haven't cared about myself, but that life sometimes is much more pressing and important than having on makeup or making sure my clothes were feminine. While my body is female and my sexuality is female, I look in the mirror and don't see female. I just see a person whose external sex is irrelevant to the being. Somewhere I have lost that part of me.

In the Bible, Esther perfumed herself for a whole year before being presented to the king. This is my year of perfume. This is my year of finding the woman in me again.