Moving Up, Out, In, and On: One More Trip Around the Sun

Greetings, Dear Reader. It's been a month since we last met, and I have had so much to tell, but I have been holding my breath. I've been waiting for the right moment to exhale, the moment when I can trust that everything is actually happening just as it should, and in the most wonderful way. I think that the moment to exhale is now. So I breathe out. I want to sing and dance and shout with delight from rooftops...instead, I exhale. Whoosh. I exhale, and I write.

Suddenly, I don't know where to begin. There is so much tremendous, unbelievable, wonderful stuff happening in this middle-aged divorcee's life right now! It's all so interconnected that I can't really tell it in chronological order, though. I think I can sum it up with three different champagne celebrations that all happened in the same week, starting with my birthday. Just try to follow along, as life is happening at lightning speed.

Champagne Celebration #1 - Veuve Clicquot

 My 41st birthday was two weeks ago. I wasn't really planning to celebrate for a couple reasons: my birthday was on a Thursday, 41 is not a milestone like 40, and although close, it's not yet the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Really, 41 is just a prime number that signals the start of The Forties. So, I was happy to keep it low-key and accepted a friend's invitation for birthday dinner at her house after work. When I got there, though, I found a whole party with surprise guests, ice cream cake, balloons, a confetti cannon, champagne...truly the best birthday ever! It was my first ever surprise party, but I have always wanted one. Now that it's out on the internet, though, I pretty much expect surprise parties all the time for the rest of my life. Just sayin'.

Champagne Celebration #2 - Perrier Jouet

On my birthday weekend, I went to the casino and gambled for the second time in my life. As a math teacher, I basically subscribe to the old adage that gambling is a sport for people who don't understand mathematics. However, I am evidently living a charmed life, so I won. Clarification: I didn't just win, I haplessly won BIG.

Here's how I did it. I sat down at the Super Fun 21 table and changed $40 that I was fully committed to losing into eight $5 chips. (Step 1: don't bet anything you can't afford to lose.)  I dutifully placed $5 bets until I had 16 $5 chips. Then I made a little stack of my original eight chips and vowed not to touch that pile. (Step 2: set aside the money that you were committed to losing.) From that point, I set little rules for myself: If, and only if (my math peeps will love this: IFF...), I won at least two hands in a row, I allowed myself to add a single $5 chip to my bet. If (not IFF) I lost a hand, I removed that $5 chip. (Step 3: Take a loss as a sign, and take action immediately.) As you can see from the photo, my friend T and I both walked out as happy winners. To be precise, the $320 in my hand is what remained after tipping our dealer and buying the celebratory bottle of PJ on our way home. MathMercy ultimately made ten times her initial bet, walking out with $400 from her initial $40 investment.

Champagne Celebration #3 -Moët & Chandon

This is the big one. This is the huge one. This is the "holy shit life is good" one. This is the one that really symbolizes the rest of my life. A little back story: about a week before my birthday, my casino/surprise birthday party friend was looking at rentals because, for the second time in as many years, her landlord decided to sell her house. She had wistfully strayed from the rentals and was looking at real estate. Around 9:30p on that fateful Thursday, she asked me "Do you want to buy a house?" I sent an email to my parents at 9:58pm asking what they thought about me entering a home-buying partnership. Less than 48 hours later, we had financing approved and were well on our way to gathering what was needed for a down payment on a mini-farm on the Peninsula.

We didn't end up getting that first mini-farm. Thank goodness, because we found another house for $50,000 less that is absolutely perfect for us. Because I am a woman, and women navigate using landmarks, I have to landmark this path. It started on June 8, 2013, when my ex-husband walked out on me. At the time, I was totally blind-sided as the life that I knew came crashing down around me. On June 8, 2015, exactly two years to the day since my ex-husband left, we placed an offer on the house. The next day, our offer was accepted, so now we are just waiting on the sale to close. I bought the Moët & Chandon to celebrate, and to reflect on landmarks.

Life happens, and man, does it happen fast. When I went to the credit union to essentially liquidate all my savings for the down payment on the house, I had a moment of panic. I have worked really hard to build a savings account in these past two years of being a single lady, and withdrawing all of that money was scary. However, it wasn't nearly as scary as the fact that exactly two years prior, I was visiting one of those "cash for gold" places to exchange my single earrings and broken chains for gas money.

As it turns out, when you are living a charmed life, good things happen to you. When you choose to surround yourself with supportive friends and family, you have everything you need. We have been able to utilize friends and family for everything from temporary storage to our mortgage loan to our real estate agent, and it has been so easy. I am reminded of a book I had to read back when I was a dancer, called Zen in the Art of Archery. Clicking the link will download a pdf copy that you can (and should) read. The book teaches that in order to become an archer (or a dancer or just about anything else), one must learn to breathe properly with no knowledge of breathing, to Be without Being. I adapt the lessons for myself as Buy a House without being a Home Buyer. Perhaps after we close, I will write "Zen in the Art of Home Buying". (Step 1: Find a friend with whom you can live for the next 30 years....)

Two years ago, I thought life as I knew it had ended, and I was right. What I didn't realize is that I needed that life to end so I could discover the life that I am meant to live. I am meant to live a life of delicious risks, surrounded by kids, love, chickens, honey bees, friends, family, and walls that I OWN. I feel like I'm dreaming. Every day is the first day of my rest of my life, and I simply can't wait to wake up to greet each morning..