Can you calculate the value of joy?

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It has been awhile since I wrote anything of substance. I found out a few people read my blog from whom I'd prefer to shield myself, but I guess that's the price I pay for belonging to a public forum. Though I have hesitated to speak, it is not my nature to skim the surface. Too, the last thing I want to appear to be (as I was talking about to a fellow blogger recently) is having a glossy presentation. You know, those bloggers with the perfect life, perfect husband, perfect kids...sew up perfect projects in an hour after preparing perfect meals...yada yada yada. If your eyes glaze over and you choose not to read this because there are too many sentences and not pretty pictures, that's fine. If you choose to get down and dirty with me, then the more the merrier.

I don't have cable at home, so consequently when I house-sit, watching tv is a huge treat. Recently there wasn't much on, but I wanted the background noise while I figured out the piecing on my next log cabin pillow. I ended up, of all things, on the CMT awards, and was surprisingly moved. I don't loathe country music, but I don't often listen to it either. Anyway, I seem to be highly emotional lately anyway, but Brooks and Dunn's "I Believe" had me in tears. I guess coming from someone who will cry at a Coke commercial, maybe that's not life shattering...but still. The odd thing was that the lead singer looks a lot like a guy I dated a gazillion years ago. I mean, we're talking decades, even though it seems like yesterday. Yet even now he holds the power to stir my heart. Funny how some people just snag your heart and never let go. It's embossed, welted, indented...it carries their mark. He and I actually got back together a few years after it ended, and as the saying goes: you can't go back. Just wasn't the same. Yet still my heart skips a beat anyway.

Funny how these moments, memories, emotions remain. It's like panning for gold, only your mind pans through past experiences and somehow optimistically performs a sifting... leaving a residue of good times, while emotional deletion of the bad. Not just with relationships, but family and friends and things we did growing up. Don't you wish you could go back in time and truly value the regular moments? The moments you thought would go on forever but time brought change, death, entanglements? It's such a quick ride we're on. There were so many moments, at least for me, that had potential of being spectacular...but were clouded with insecurities, doubt, hesitation. Will I ever learn?

One of the really interesting things about house-sitting is that I temporarily live in places surrounded by smiling photographs, trinkets, mementos...glimpses into the importance of family and connection that is unfortunately lacking in my own. In the midst of all the gloriousness, sometimes it's difficult. Sometimes motivating, invigorating. I know never to covet anyone else's life--you never really know what the truth is. A home really does have a certain energy too. Some are more comfortable than others. I have been known to refuse to house-sit again if I felt uncomfortable.

But it's really important for me to analyze, to be introspective, to pour my heart on my sleeve. I honestly can't fathom living any other way, nor would I want to. One of my best friends and I finally called it quits after 25 years, because I couldn't play the game anymore of scratching the surface, of not asking questions, of not truly knowing one another anymore. She was tap dancing, playing perfect, running ragged. In the meantime I felt abandoned in a sense. There was no time for me. In words, yes, in action...no. And asking for a little time from people is not being selfish.

It's needing to be welcomed.

Starin' out into the wild blue yonder
So many thoughts to sit and ponder
'Bout life and love and lack of
And this emptiness in my heart

Too old to be wild and free still
Too young to be over the hill
Should I try to grow up
But who knows where to start

So I just ...
Sit right here and have another beer in Mexico
Do my best to waste another day
Sit right here and have another beer in Mexico
Let the warm air melt these blues away

first portion of "Beer in Mexico", by Kenny Chesney