Nailed It! Monday Morning Check-In Post

How Are YOU??!!

Remember when I said that I was probably tempting fate (paraphrasing here) by ordering a laptop during Mercury Retro that needed to be built in China and then shipped here all in the last few weeks we are living in this house?

Yeah

I’ll never get back the many hours I spent on the phone with HP and FedEx.

It was supposed to be here last week. It left a day late and then it got stuck in Japan.

Every person I spoke with gave me incorrect information, every single one. I know this because the next one would cancel out what the one before had told me. I am waiting to see if the last person I spoke with at FedEx was correct when he said it would be delivered today, as in TODAY, meaning, IF it happens, all of those calls and all of those emotions were not needed. See, nailed it!

(It’s out for delivery, tracking was just updated, and I am so excited!).

Jon will be on laptop delivery watch while I’m with clients. It’s my last week of working in this house. So, if you attend my event on Thursday, maybe I’ll be broadcasting from my new, super-powerful laptop with the very fancy camera.

Merp.

Meanwhile, our new lives in Chicago are already planning themselves for us before we’ve even arrived. We’ll be feeding our neighbor’s cat the first week of June as they all head to California for a wedding.

Heather, one of my dearest friends since high school, was up here in Ojai from Los Angeles this weekend visiting with her nine-year-old daughter. We played with the dogs and went to see our friend Christine Brennan’s amazing art show, had some scoops at Ojai Ice Cream and ate some noodles from the Ojai Noodle House, got Faerie readings from the nine-year-old and had a long conversation about faerie portals and orbs, merped a lot (you’ll have to ask the nine-year-old and Jon about this), AND made plans for them to potentially visit us in Chicago next month. Heather’s mom is in a play, and they are strongly considering flying in.

Exchanging gifts and hugging them goodbye was way less sad knowing we’ll probably be seeing them next month and if not then for sure in a couple of months when the whole family heads to Chicago for their annual summer trip.

Other Chicago friends are reaching out with offers of help and invitations for coffee and it’s all falling into place. Part of me feels like I am already there, while I am also still here needing to focus on work and packing and cleaning and the selling off of most of our physical items. The big sale is this upcoming weekend (please stop by our driveway if you’re local), and the furniture and appliances will need to leave next week at some point.

This is the thing that is currently stressing me out the most. Selling off the big stuff, even though I already have three different contingency plans for anything that does not sell.

My next planned worry will be, “Will all that’s left fit into the shipping pods?” I’ll keep you updated, and yet here is the thing that I keep forgetting due to anxiety about the bigness of the unknown, everything always works out, somehow.

“HENSLOWE: Mr. Fennyman, let me explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster. Believe me, to be closed by the plague is a bagatelle in the ups and downs of owning a theatre.
FENNYMAN: So what do we do?
HENSLOWE: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.
FENNYMAN: How?
HENSLOWE: I don't know, it's a mystery.”
― Tom Stoppard, Shakespeare in Love: A Screenplay

My life as an actress continues to serve me in moments like this. I once opened a play I was producing with two dollars left in my checking account thanks to a last-minute Haily Mary from one of the cast member’s flush-with-cash roommate.

Yesterday was going to be my last trip to the Sunday farmers’ market and it was raining, like Chicago-style weather, cold and grey and wet. I went anyway for some last avocados and pixie tangerines, fava beans, spring garlic, and all of the other springtime delights.

“You’re a known person in the valley,” someone replied to me as he and I were chatting about the beauty of the rain and I asked him whether or not we’d met at some point.

Yeah, a lot of us “known people” can no longer afford to live here in this place that’s been populated by healers and artists and performers and craftspeople and organic farmers and so many others that make it unique as the money moves in displacing us.

“If I had not bought my house 20-30 years ago I couldn’t live here either,” is something we’ve heard again and again over the past few months.

Once more I feel late, so late. Yet it does always seem that living my life the way I do always offers me a way to be right on time.

Yesterday ended with another going away gathering for us on our block with people we have known for many years. We are all filled up again with so much love and support.

Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp!

How are You? Please drop me a comment below and let me know. (Apparently, the settings were wrong on this post and set to “subscribers only” for commenting. My thanks to

Helen C Giles

for shouting out about this. Everyone can now comment).

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