Taking better pictures :)

For the past two years, I have been limited in my ability to produce quality photographs for my listings. I have improvised in ways that have been appropriate to my means, and my abilities, but I have known that certain listings have gone unnoticed because of the quality of the photographs in them.

Van over at Thrift Core posts regularly about the quality of her online shop as connected with the quality of her photographs. It took me a long time to get the hint, but in the past couple weeks, I have had some extra energy to spare, and the photograph you see here is an example of what I came up with. I'm pretty proud of myself right now. I like getting better at things.

Taking better pictures means taking them more than once. It means getting the background right, getting the lighting right, and editing appropriately. This is all time consuming, and I'm not one for time consuming tasks. I like the searching and the finding. The photographing and listing are more difficult for me. I've come to a point where I can make it happen, and do it well, but I still struggle sometimes. I have yet to make any clothing look as good as this giraffe looks :)

I'm gonna eat some pizza now.

Vintage Barbie poster - hellz yeah!

When I was young, and something didn't go my way, I immediately felt like all was lost and nothing would ever get better. I would bask in my misery and cry myself to sleep. And that was okay.

But now, I don't have the emotional room to give to freak-outs the way I used to. Maybe I've trained myself to get through all the feelings speedily, or maybe I'm more patient and loving, which is just doubtful (I'm an imperfect person, after all). Maybe I'm well-medicated. Maybe when I prayed for ECT, it actually happened and I have no memory of it. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Sometimes it takes what feels like forever to get what I want. I want to sell the Rabbit, and yet it sits in my driveway, unsold, for over three months. I want my spine to be straighter, but it takes years of daily work to make it so. And finally, I want a proper immune system, but that's not gonna happen, like ever.

Yeah, so now the making of the pizza, but with marinara sauce, because I wasn't paying attention at the grocery store, and I'm just going with it :)

I am bad at being patient.

After waiting two years to find these in my size, when they arrived, all I could think was, "Meh"

So I moved into my new office today, and found that in spite of my saying that "yes, that's okay with me", it did not feel okay to have someone else's things in the office. The previous occupant needs a little bit of grace to move her things out. And in that moment (which extended into a school-day long of feeling crappy and anxious), I realized, "Hey Megan, you're not as patient as you thought you were." Shit. I was afraid of that.

I have waited for a lot of things in my life, and for some of them, I am still waiting. Scratch that. I've been waiting for a lot of things for my whole life. I thought that this waiting was making me a patient person, but in fact, it isn't. I've become angry about the waiting. I'm angry with God for the hand I was dealt. I'm angry at God for not plucking me out of my own life, and giving me a similar, but easier, alternate reality. Instead of being an adult about the whole thing, I've allowed my three-year-old self to run the show, and she's constantly asking, "Are we there yet?" And I don't know what to tell her. "No, we're not there yet. I don't know when we're going to be there, or if we'll ever get there, or if I even know where it is we're supposedly going." Is that what I say?

Whatever I end up saying, I want it to be something that helps me to be more patient, that points me in the right direction, instead of where I am at the moment, the decidedly wrong direction. Somehow, I need to learn to be patient for the things I want. But it's so hard. I want it now!

Also, I'm terrible with change, so that might not be helping the situation. Prescription? More cowbell!

Good Sunday to you :)

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Eleanor Roosevelt

A great thing happened today: I went rock climbing (at a climbing gym) for the first time ever, and I went all the way to the ceiling! It was awesome, and I thought you should know. It seems like the scariest thing ever, since you're hanging onto a wall with your fingertips and the side of your foot, but then you just take one step at a time, and eventually you're there! My friends who took me go all the time (they're fiends), so they were super positive and encouraging, and I felt really supported. I figured out that I don't like being told what to do when I'm in the middle of doing it. I need to be able to focus as much as possible on the task at hand, and voices calling out to me where to put the foot I can't see (on the 2" rock I also cannot see) are simply not helpful to me.

So that was good to know about myself. I hadn't quite put those two things together before. See how much I love personal development? I think everyone should do things that scare them just for the heck of it, and we'd all be better people. Unfortunately, I think that a lot of people do drugs and join gangs in an effort to confront their own fears, and this isn't usually a good idea. So maybe the ethos isn't perfect, but it's worth thinking about.

Peace out.

Credit card debt creation

I really can't figure out what this book is about.

I think I've mentioned that my financial poverty has reached an all-time-low. Seriously, I don't know how low I can go. This is the first time in my life that I have chosen to use my credit card for necessities. In the past, I've baulked at people with credit card debt. "How did you buy that much stuff that you couldn't afford?" But now...I don't know.

I've worked my butt off this month, going through all my old inventory, photographing, listing. I don't know what else to do. What happens when a store just stops selling? This has been an okay month sale-wise, but between graduation last month, and the car breaking down this month, and my shop 2-3x as full as it has been all year, I'm pretty much just hoping that this will blow over, and that in the end, I'll come out okay financially.

Okay, thinking time is over. Now it's coffee time.

Helga.

My parents have a cleaning lady. She is disorganized and is constantly misplacing important things. The conversation goes, "Oh no! Helga will be here in 15 minutes. Hide your stuff!" Seriously, it's ridiculous. I have told them a dozen times that they need to let her go, that she isn't doing a good job, and they shouldn't be paying someone to do such a terrible job. Yet she remains.

I just spoke with my mom, and the issue of Helga came up. She is up to her same old shenanigans (though she is not Irish), and I think I'm now reconciled to this reality. She cleans the house. She does a bad job, but she does it, and they need the help. They both work constantly, and need someone to come in regularly to make sure that they don't get buried beneath student papers.

This woman is unemployable in any other situation. It's a gift to allow her to be herself and not demand that she change who she is, or become a person different from who she is (Don't even get me started on how she doesn't bring her own cleaning products). Anyhow, the moral of the story is to allow people to be who they are. I don't exactly believe it in this instance, but I do appreciate the fact that my parents are far less judgmental and stingy than I am.

Thrift Share Monday :)

Pretty much, as a rule, I always buy Vogue patterns when I see them. What a fun idea for a kid's room or a classroom-fake animal skin rugs. Also, I just realized that these are vegan-friendly animal skin rugs! All the pleasure-none of the pain.

There was no publishing date on this book, just a copyright date of 1918. But then I got home and did some research-the book was not printed in 1918. What can I say? I just got it on a whim. It was early and I hadn't eaten breakfast (it was also dark and rainy). In general, I'm just not good at buying books. No matter what, I don't do it well.

Toner cartridges. These were also purchased on a whim. I think I've lost a bit of mojo in the past couple weeks. I've been buying and selling a lot, but no big ticket items. Sometimes I go through phases where I just want to get rid of stuff. I get tired of seeing the same things for longer than a week. I want movement! But then I start selling, and I get tired of low prices, and I settle down a bit. It comes and goes, I suppose. Right now, I'm definitely in an impatient period.

This was a pretty boring thrift share, in my opinion. I apologize. I will try to do better next week.

Linked with Apron Thrift Girl.

I rock.

Gardening has always been a non-pastime of mine. The past weeks have been so kind as to teach me that it may even be dangerous for me to work in the yard without supervision. But today, with the odds against me, I trimmed the crazy shrub outside my front door that was days away from gouging my eye out one sleepy morning.

This afternoon, a friend came over to help me install some shelves. My place is so small, I figured that was a swell time to get some things done outside. I got me some tools (sharp ones!) and I went to town. It was laborious. A very large weed had taken over the small square-foot dirt plot, and I needed to get it out.

There was a moment, after I'd been trying to get at the huge ugly thing with the hooked clippers, that I thought, "I should get a saw." I went into the garage, found a chainsaw, picked it up, pushed some buttons, and realized I needed an extension cord. I stood there another moment and realized, "I am the clumsiest person I know. Plus I really like my body just the way it is. I would not like today to be the day that I lose a hand." I put the chainsaw down and went back to the clippers. Eventually, I was able to dig [insert constipation sounds here], locate the root, and pull the whole thing out with my bare hands. It felt amazing. There should have been fireworks. I am awesome.

Today, I did yardwork, and I was successful. Someday future-Megan will be climbing some mountain thinking, "This is nothing compared to that darn root." And then I'll stand on one foot or something equally amazing (because seriously, my feet are the opposite of flat, and sometimes, in yoga, everyone is cemented in their perfect poses and I pick one foot off the ground, and start falling all over myself).

Did you hear that, World? I rock.

Mental health day

I have so many things to do-important things to do-things that must be done. But I don't have it in me. I don't have anything in me. I don't know where it all went, but it's not here. So I'm going to sit in one place until it returns. See you when I see you.

Note: Today is Drug Disposal Day. Go here for a nearby location to drop off your unused and/or expired medications.

Want isn't everything

I am not always going to get what I want. It just isn't going to happen. My life is about accepting what is given to me, and acting accordingly. I cannot always choose the path my life takes. I can do my darndest, but sometimes, even when I give it my very very best, and I know deep in my heart that I do know what is best, that doesn't mean that the best thing is going to happen. This realization kills me.

That is thrift: accepting what comes your way and making the best of it; recognizing that it is impossible to find happiness in things; and loving people above all else.

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given it a place in my heart.' ”

― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Lots of labored breathing

My backyard is a mess; years of neglect combined with an "organic" mindset have created a minefield of cockroaches, old trash, and layers of dead grass. I've been going through it a little bit at a time. There is something so therapeutically cathartic about hacking away at the dirt and tearing out weeds.

I was on my hands and knees today in mud trying to dig an old root out. There is something on my hands now that won't completely wash off. The root is still in the ground.

Sometimes I suffer for change and growth. I work my butt off trying to make my life pretty and manageable, but in the end, life does what it wants no matter how hard I work, even when I'm up to my elbows in mud.


I used to want to always be in a restful quiet space in my mind. I thought that guaranteed that I was right with God.

But to live in the world is to live in a discordant place, full of chaos and unpredictability. It is unwise and naive to think that we can clean it up at the end of every day. Sometimes things stay messy. Actually, life is always messy. To think otherwise is to live with blinders, rose-colored glasses, etc.

I'm hoping that this time will pass and that life won't always be as laborious as it is right now, but I know that I have mere moments of tranquility to look forward to, not years. Life is hard, and long, and I am human, and flawed.

Hang in there.

I'm no splurger

I do not splurge. Splurging is outside of my zone of proximal development. But sometimes, when I feel light as air, no worries on my mind, I do something silly, like buy a plane ticket to Hawaii to see friends, or gather my girlfriends to see a movie at the $3 theater (!).

When is thrifty awesome, and when does it start to ruin your life, or take you away from your best possible life? When do decisions you make for the right reasons, become the wrong ending without your consent?

A few years ago, I decided to sell my car. It had bad juju. I went carless for a month or so, which was a huge pain because I lived far from everything. Then I bought a wonderful old VW Diesel Rabbit, and it was so awesome, for twelve hours. Then it was undriveable.

The last three years have been the same. It will be wonderful, then it will be $2000. I am in a financial pit because of my car. Well, not so much a pit, as a desert. But I don't have the capital to buy a new one, so I'm stuck. I'm stuck between changing who I am (i.e. not a person who goes into debt or a person who makes car payments) and being somewhat unhappy. My car is fully functional. Don't get me wrong. I love my car. Everyone who sees my car loves my car, but the upkeep on something of its age is unbelievable. So I'm stuck.

A fellow student bought a used hybrid at auction. She gave me the price tag of $6500 to shoot for. That seems manageable, not manageable for me, but not astronomical. So right now, I'm just sitting, and thinking, and fantasizing about air conditioning and power steering and NPR in the morning and taking road trips to San Francisco on a whim. The fantasy keeps me going sometimes. It's hope for a better tomorrow, when today is unmanageable.

Thrift Inspiration

Bad dreams. Fleas. Paperwork. Work, work. More paperwork. School work. More bad dreams. More fleas.

But then I rescue something absolutely beautiful, and I am inspired to continue.

Also, I got a good night's sleep.

Biggest Freakin Yard Sale Ever!

I walk out my front door this morning to a street fair, also known as the yearly yard sale that spans the mile of my street. The place is packed with people, and strollers, and cars. A man asks if it's okay if he can park in front of my driveway. "Um, no". There are four families in my front yard. A ten-year-old girl asks about a bed that's already been sold. I tell her that someone has already bought it, and she responds with appropriate pre-pubescent attitude, "Well who bought it?" Um, I don't know, not you?

I walk a couple doors down and see a boxer mix puppy that I instantly fall in love with. He's adorable, and licks my face. He's only $25 because they're trying to get rid of him. It seems that he doesn't get along well with the female in their home, or the female doesn't want him on her turf. I want to take him home and make him mine SO bad, but there's just no way I can get a dog that big. My place is not big enough.

Another block down is a couple selling pomeranians for $650, then another block after that is the man with the yorkies for $350. I miss my dogs so much (We went on a walk a couple nights ago then snuggled for a little bit. They were alone in the house when I got there and they both had baked bean breath from going through the trash).

I start walking in the street because the sidewalk is so freakin crowded. I begin to think that there need to be rules like in a really crowded marathon: no dogs and no strollers. Every other house has a restaurant in the front yard. Most of the food is Mexican, but I saw some chow mein, and I think I'm going to walk down in another hour or so. I was really wanting Chinese food last night, but ended up eating cake instead (Whose friends made her vegan cake for her birthday? This girl!). I also had vegan cupcakes for lunch because I thought that would be my birthday cake for the day. Ha! My nutritionist would be so proud of me for meeting my caloric goal for the day.

At the end of the street is a Spiderman bounce house with a sign that says, "Bounce for Free". I don't quite know how making it free does anything for their yard sale, since it took up the whole yard. Right next to that house was a full-on Earth Festival-Bob Marley-Reggae tent.

Mostly, this thing is one street-long flea market. I've been to better street-long yard sales in my city. This one is mostly food and crowds and nothing I want to actually purchase. It is important to note that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, and that I'm just overloaded in general, so even though I had a good time walking up and down the street, I'm much happier now in my quiet apartment listening to Car Talk. Honestly, I don't even want to answer the door, but then I would have missed one of my favorite people, so sometimes life is not exactly what we want.

Speaking of wanting, and the state of my crazy life over the past month, well, not much change and still a lot of heartache. But life goes on, and work goes on, and the sun keeps rising and setting, and sometimes, even when it seems like God couldn't possibly let one more thing through the floodgates, they pour through unbidden anyway, and the void remains...it remains.

Discounted NON-local produce

Me at the store, last Saturday morning: "Blueberries? Yes please...Oh no; they're from Canada. Sad face. No thanks...[Two aisles later] Blueberries from Canada on the half-off shelf? Yes please! (zero guilt)"

Local is great. Organic is great. Organic from Canada, or local with pesticides? I have gone through this produce department dilemma many times, hungry, tired, and frustrated. And I'm not alone-there are others. A friend told me the other day that she's stopped caring about food ethics. How can a person care about absolutely everything that comes under this label, and do all of the wonderful things we were made to do, like watch Bachelor Pad and any reality show with the word Kardashian?

So what do people do? People who are imperfect and don't love kale (obviously not me, dear sister; I love my greens). They need to know that just because they don't have a vegetable garden, they aren't going to hell. They need to know that if they eat cheese, Jesus won't cry. They need to know that if they don't ride thirty miles to work on a commuter bike, angels won't lose their wings.

Vegan righteousness is off the charts. That's why I have no vegan friends (Note: If you are my friend, and also happen to be vegan, know that I say this because that is not who you are to me). Because when I'm invited over for dinner, and there happens to be feta on the all-squash casserole, I'm still going to eat it. And if the host wasn't terribly kind and thoughtful and put tofu in the dip instead of yogurt, I'd still eat it. Because people, every single time, are more important than your pious food choices. They're your choices, after all. Own them.

I am powerless, aren't I?

My best friend says that of all ethnicities, I probably shouldn't marry an Italian or a Latino, because there is no room in my person for machismo. I can get pretty fired up when men try to assert their implied power over me.

A while back, I got into a power struggle with an older (not by too much-ten years tops) Latin man. He felt ostracized by me and the group I was working with, and responded by impinging on my personal space, staring us down, expressionless. This made me feel so physically anxious that I demanded that he leave; he didn't, so I did. The other men in the group tried to get me to calm down, but I saw it as harassment and I wasn't going to back down and let him believe that what he was doing was okay. There was another woman in the group who felt similarly, not to as great an extent, but similarly.

Then, even though I'd left, I couldn't let it go. Suddenly, I was incredibly concerned about this person's ability to work with other people in a pastoral or therapeutic context; I kept ranting about it. It was like a switch got kicked on, and I had no control over my emotions.

Sometimes I react like that in situations where others are less affected by the same circumstances. Maybe it's a post-trauma response, but that's certainly not something I want to touch without the presence of a professional. When reactions are out of proportion to reality, there's usually something deeper going on. But when I'm in the moment, I don't feel like I'm overreacting. I feel like I'm reacting appropriately, that the situation warrants an extreme response.

This isn't the end of the road for me. I am not an emotionally whole person. I am stable, but not perfect. Sometimes I think that I need to be perfect to be lovable, that somehow even though everyone else is flawed, I need to be less flawed. I really believe that, even after all the work I've done. I still think I have to be better than you just to be okay. This totally sucks.

Thrifters of the day

1. Toothless smelly woman dressed very well combing the shelves and talking to herself about how everything in thrift stores is getting so expensive (and I agree) and how she'd been going around town trying to find a good deal but hadn't been successful. She kept saying, "Where are the red and blue tags?" really loud as she combed the racks (Note: Red and blue tags were half off).

2. Incredibly kind woman working behind the register trying desperately to have a cigarette, but every time she went outside and lit up, someone would end up at the counter. She kept going back and forth.

3. Man comes in to give an employee his mail because "He used to own my house two and a half years ago and his mail just keeps showing up. If I didn't know better, I'd think this place was a boarding house!" The employee kept trying to explain to him how to write Return to Sender on the envelope, but the man wouldn't have it. Again, I was trying to imagine myself creating workshops for thrift store employees about mental health issues. I think it would help them to understand what they're looking at and make them less likely to treat people unkindly.

4. Thrift store employee shyly showing a woman all the different phone chargers and computer cords. She's looking for a specific one and telling him, "Thrift stores have everything!" after he tells her that she might be luckier at the dollar store. I don't think he sees a lot of girls and she was making him very nervous. It was cute.

How stubborn is too stubborn?

My stubbornness is quite strong. It's like I don't think that giving up is ever an option. But it gets me into crazy difficult situations. How do you deal with someone who won't quit? How do you deal with someone who hangs around long after you've told them to leave? When is stubbornness just delusion?

When I love people, I find it very difficult to give up on them. I am also very bad at taking hints. In the past, I haven't read social cues very well. I'm getting a lot better at it now, trusting my instincts and all that, but I probably still fall on the lower end of the social intelligence spectrum. Sometimes I think everything should be simple. Life shouldn't be complicated; relationships should be easy. But that isn't the case, and I do my fair share of making it complicated.

I need some strong-ass hope right now to get through this rough patch. And my version of this is fierce stubbornness, an unwillingness to quit, and a impenetrable belief in a person's ability to change. When I do this to the extreme, I can find myself in the fetal position when all open doors are closed. Is this the best way to live? I don't know. I suppose I should look at the pros and cons of the issue.

When is God speaking, and when is life just sucking at one particular moment? When is a door shut and when is life just hard?

When is enough, enough?

There was a time, in the early part of my illness, before I knew about my semi-retarded pancreas, when I gave up hope. I actually gave up. I stopped taking my medication. I stopped caring about what I ate. I gave up. This was a pretty short period of time, but I remember it seeming like longer. I wanted to stick it to all the people who thought they knew what was going on, who thought I was lazy and manipulative, the people who called me a liar. I don't know how not taking care of myself showed these people much of anything, but I remembered feeling powerful. I was taking control of my own life.

Feeling in control has become a hidden, but vital, part of my self-concept. When I feel in control, I feel calm. I feel like I know what's going to happen, and I don't have to be afraid. Relinquishing control to other people, letting other people drive the car for example, is difficult for me. Being in the driver's seat gives me the satisfaction of knowing that all will be well, and if it's not, I can blame someone else...or myself; this isn't really a well-thought-out personality structure.

Within intimate relationships, I am black and white, all or nothing. I get what I want or I don't get anything at all. These two extremes are both satisfactory options. But this is an impossible way to live. No one, I repeat, No One, can successfully live this way. No one can be in control and in relationship with other people. This brings me to my current predicament.

I want it all. I want it all right now. And if I can't have it, then I'm going to forget about it, because in the middle of black and white is longing and pain-painful longing. That gray area means that some things are not set in stone, that circumstances and people may will change, that I don't have control. My heart aches at the thought. I am one who needs firm plans: What are we doing; where are we going; and when are we leaving. I won't die if I don't have the answers, but I will feel some anxiety. I'm working on that.

Putting my life on display means relinquishing control. It means allowing people to judge me, to create opinions of me, and even speak those opinions to others. It means setting aside my ego and allowing people to be people, me to be me, God to be God, and knowing that somehow, in the midst of all of that, everything will be okay. I'll keep you updated.

"I am one who has seen affliction"*

Have you ever been so sick that you wished you were dead? I got really sick when I was in junior high or maybe early high school. I don't think I've ever had a headache so bad. I don't remember anything but the pain. I remember looking out the window and thinking, "Death would surely be better than this." And then a couple years later when I had my heart broken for the first time, the pain was different, but I had that same wish again.

I figured that as I got older, pain would be easier to bear. I would be stronger, healthier, maybe even smarter. But today, as I feel some old pain flaring up, I realize that pain is pain no matter how old or young you are, and that a heart can be broken at any age, and for any reason, however strange.

My good friend reminded me today that the pain of grief is not something to run from. When we look outside ourselves to find ways to ease the pain, or numb it, or disassociate from it completely, the pain sticks with us. We may think that we're outsmarting it, but the opposite is true. We are only delaying the inevitable. The feeling of your heart, dead in your chest, cannot be escaped. "Can't go over it...can't go under it...must go through it!" the bear hunt song goes (circa 1987, at least, because I remember it from kindergarten).

So now I begin the process of bearing my pain without hurting myself or others, or trying to escape from it. Funny enough, this is the best way. The pain will pass, eventually. Even when you feel like you can't breathe and you're crying on the shower floor, it will pass.

*Lamentations 3:1 (NRSV)