Since I’m so full of self-pity, I took myself on a little shopping excursion around the internets for stuff I want in an attempt to cheer myself up.  Here goes, in no particular order.

Urban Decay makeup, preferably a lifetime supply.  Because yes, I’m going to still be wearing glitter when I’m 70.  What’s it to you, bitches?

My mouth is totally watering, looking at these friggin’ pickles.

Vintage aluminum Christmas tree with working color wheel

New York Times Crossword Puzzle book, brand new, that I don’t have to share.  With ANYONE.

I have wanted a Cuisinart since the minute I popped out of my mom’s vag.  No kidding.

Frye boots.  OMG, size 9 please.

A super passionate kiss from someone who is as insanely in love with me as I am with him

So cute it hurts my heart.  Can be bought at Broken Cherry Boutique in Chicago.  Just saying.

Growing up in the orphanage, they wouldn’t allow us to have toys.  So I want this dollhouse now, ok?

Total spa day…massage, facial, manicure, pedicure.  Everything except where they wrap you up like a mummy because that sucks.

Full set of zombie dishes.  I refuse to die until I get these.

Hello, adorable little sterling star earrings.

Dig if you will the picture:  Me in my cute pink rainboots and a pink helmet on this little baby.

Ice Cubes chocolates.  I haven’t seen these since I was a kid.

Louboutin leopard print peep toe pumps.  I just stopped breathing.

Le Creuset.  I’d be a much better cook with these pots.

I detonated 2 live grenades when I was in the Army and I fell in love with the feeling forEVER.

More than anything else, I wish that tomorrow I could be at my Uncle Terry and Aunt Carolyn’s house with my entire beautifully insane family, eating Italian beefs and ham and Uncle Skip’s brats and sauerkraut and Aunt Sharon’s pink cherry salad and disgusting Luxumberger sausage and making inappropriate jokes while sitting on Santa’s lap (who, let’s face it, is probably related to me) and watching old home movies and fighting over who Grandma gave the ugliest pajamas and then afterward, playing Trivial Pursuit until we laugh our sides sore. 

Merry Christmas to those who do get to be with their families at the holidays, and a great big hug to those who don’t.  I’m so very happy and blessed and I hope you are, too.

xoxo

Whenever I am feeling unmoored, I naturally return to the books and memories that have resonated in me throughout my life, searching for new insights or drawing familiar comfort from things that have already proved valuable.

As I was endlessly raking and cleaning the land last week, I could not stop thinking of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, one of my favorite books (and for the record, only the Katherine Woods English-language translation from the original French passes muster with me. Don’t even talk to me about the new one). This illustration, in particular, would not leave my mind:

This illustration is from a part of the book in which the Little Prince is describing the danger in not carefully tending to his planet to rid it of the dangerous Baobab seed before it has a chance to grow into a big tree with huge, damaging roots. While the Baobab is young, it is easy to tend to and remove, but the longer one allows the Baobab to grow, the more dangerous it becomes. Here is what could happen if one is lazy and allows the Baobabs to grow unchecked:

This lesson is a new one for me.  My Baobabs have always been ignored or unnoticed, growing larger and larger until they have finally split my planet apart.  How many of my love relationships have been doomed by the quiet roots of the Baobab growing? By the jealousy, the resentment, the little slights I don’t mention until it’s too late, until my love has died?

As I raked, pulled weeds, and carted away dead palm fronds , I found myself strangely comforted by the work. My care for the land was tangible, and at the end of the day I stood and looked at what I had done and thought: “Nope, no Baobabs here.”

Now that I fully understand the risks, I mean to skirt the danger of the Baobab forever.  Don’t forget to mind your Baobabs, too, friends.

Here’s where it came from.

Thanks for bringing that to me, Zannie!!

In the two weeks I’ve been living my new life as an on-site “manager” at a private villa in Tulum, I have faced a number of challenges.

First, in the span of a week I decided to pack up and leave Playa for Tulum. And then I actually packed up and left Playa for Tulum, just like that; no fanfare, no crying, no going-away parties. Mostly I think this is because I don’t really feel as if I went away—it’s not like I moved to the moon, or whatever. The majority of my business is still Playa-related and I’ll see my friends often enough. My friends don’t even really like me that much, anyway. Plus, with the internet and Facebook, I’m able to keep in touch with them about as well as I kept up with them when I lived in Playa.

Second, I have had to learn to live completely alone. While I’ve always been a bit of a reclusive person, enjoying my alone time to an embarrassing degree, I’ve never been in a position where there was absolutely no chance that I could be with another human if I wanted to be. I live and work on this property and cannot leave it unattended, so without someone to relieve me, I don’t leave. Days could go by without my ever stepping foot off this land or seeing any people other than those who stroll by on the beach. What I find most interesting about this aspect of my new life is how well it suits me. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’m not the Kaczynski-hermit type who’s going to go mad someday and either stalk some D-list sitcom star no one cares about or mail shoe bombs to ex-lovers (oh, who are we kidding. Like I’d waste a perfectly good shoe.). People who once met me at a party will say, “Wow, well, I always knew she was a little different from other people, but I sure didn’t see this coming.”

Finally, I’ve had to tweak my desperately-held desire to view myself as a delicate little flower. Go ahead and laugh—I’m a 5’9” big girl with shoulders a HS linebacker would covet, so this desire to appear feminine is a tall order, especially when it’s totally incongruous with the stubborn mule in me who refuses to admit she needs help or that there’s something she can’t do. For at least the last 15 to 20 years, I’ve presented myself as both a giggly, know-nothing girl who can’t fix things or program her DVD player without the help of a man and an inordinately strong ox of a woman who can carry a refrigerator on her back and can change her own tire, thankyouverymuch.

What has been the best part of this dual-personality? I have historically been able to call in the girlie-girl when I just haven’t felt like doing something “guy-related.” But now, here in Tulum, I have to do it myself. The palm trees don’t give a shit if I don’t feel like hauling all those fronds over to the burn pile and the gasoline can isn’t going to weigh less and not be so spilly just because I sink to the ground and squeeze out a couple of girlie tears.

So basically, I’ve had to learn to suck it up, and in the process, I’m learning how much I can do. I’m afraid of heights, but I have climbed up a ladder onto the roof many times. I don’t like reading boring-ass equipment manuals, but I had to when faced with the initially-daunting prospect of running the generator and the water pump. Did you know that if I have to, I can move mattresses by myself? And that I can go an entire week without looking in a mirror? And that my hands smelling like gasoline doesn’t even phase me?

All of this has reminded me that this isn’t the first time I’ve been out of my comfort zone and succeeded. I was once a high school cheerleader and pageant queen who joined the Army, where I became my platoon’s machine-gunner, grenade aficionado, and competitive-as-fuck Soldier of the month.

Living here has put me back in touch with that fierce girl determined to show everyone what I am capable of, but at the same time, I refuse to coarsen my soft, flowery side. So while I’ll dress up pretty for you, cook you dinner, and give you a massage, it is at your peril to forget that I was also trained to kill. I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to.

Now, would someone please buy me this stuff for Christmas?

I wish I was kidding.

(pregnant pause for effect)

…yeah, you heard me right. I moved out of Playa del Carmen, where I have lived and worked and sweated and played and cried for the last 5 and a half years or so, and now I live in a place on the beach in Tulum that is so secluded, if I see 4 people in a day I’m feeling overscheduled.

Dollfaces, the short version is this: I was offered an incredible opportunity to live on and care for a gorgeous beachfront property in Tulum while still fulfilling my other work-related obligations. How could I say no?

The months following the end of my relationship in PdC proved to be an interesting snapshot of what life in a “small” town can be (and by interesting, I mean “petty” and “pathetic”). Rumors abounded, as rumors will, and I found myself dreaming of a simpler life. Gentle readers, I have found it.

I wake up at 6.30 am or so and am in bed by 10.30 pm or 11. I rake, clean up fallen coconuts and dead palm fronds. The sound of the waves crashing onto shore has become the audio equivalent of a screensaver.

There is much more to tell, but since this opportunity/decision came on so suddenly, I’ve not yet sufficiently regained my footing to tell the tale. I’m caught in a huge wave, loving the roar of the surf and the sensation of weightlessness, but unsure yet I’ll be able to right myself like a cork on the sea’s surface. Stay tuned to see the outcome.

Oh, here is what I’ve got to look at every day. Disgusting, right?

The last almost-five months since the breakup have been an enormous learning curve for me.  For the first two months, I felt like someone awakening from a long coma who had to relearn how to walk, talk, smile, swallow.  Although I have always been a person who enjoys her alone time, at times the loneliness has been crushing, and feelings of guilt at hurting someone I have cared about for nearly a decade weighed upon me like the lead apron the dentist uses to protect you while taking x-rays.

The third month, I started to feel somewhat better.  Although I could not go out, could not see people, didn’t want to blog, didn’t want to work, didn’t want to talk about it, I started to improve.  I spent my afternoons in the pool and my evenings alone, reflecting.  In the last two months, poco a poco, as Mexicans say, I have crawled out of the depression and started inching back toward the self I knew I really was…one grain of gratitude and happiness at a time.

I’m happy, though I still suffer at night from time to time when I lie in bed in the dark and think about how this happiness has been selfishly won by hurting another human being.  There is no joy in what I felt I had to do.

But there is joy, and this is something I had resigned myself to thinking was not meant for me.

Chicago is a beautiful city and holds a place in my heart that no other city in the world will ever begin to touch.

Marina Towers

Had no idea there were water taxis in Chicago.

I thought it was cool the way the other buildings were reflected in the glass of this one.

I find this one strangely gorgeous.

To paraphrase Sharon Olds, “The el still slides by with that ease that made me bitter when I wanted all things hard as your death was hard.”  Amazing, the heady mix of memories that can be conjured up when witnessing something you find incredibly beautiful.

River City condominiums.  Super weird, but interesting homes.

Good luck trying to get people to call it Willis Tower, jackasses.

Trump Tower.  Not as heinous as I thought it would be.  In fact, I kind of like it.

Trump Tower juxtaposed with its architectural anti-twin, the Wrigley Building.  It works somehow, right?

I was pretty damned cold for much of this tour.

I love you, Chicago, for all you have to offer and for every single ghost of my life I’ve left you to care for until I return.

I’m just back from a week in Chicago, where I had important banking business to do to help make it easier to transfer/receive client funds, but I also managed to fit in some fun stuff.

Thanks to the genius that is Ben Wahhh at Deluxe Tattoo in Chicago, my Virgen de Guadalupe tattoo is finally adorning my left arm. I couldn’t be happier with it.

Several years ago, I decided to get this particular tattoo to honor my time in Mexico, and when thinking of an image that represented Mexico to me, nothing was more perfect than the Virgin. Plus, I’ve always liked religious imagery (although I am not religious myself) and well, look at her…she’s gorgeous. Another thing I love about this tattoo is how it is already bridging a gap between me and the Mexican people I live around. It’s a great conduit for conversation, smiles, and positive comments; I’ve been home 2 days and have already talked about it so much.

By the way, now is the time to come to Playa del Carmen, airfare is GREAT and this flu nonsense is under control.  I have my own theories about why all this was blown so far out of proportion, but I’ll keep them to myself for now.

Back soon as I can be, I promise.  I miss you like crazy.

We found it.  I’m so in love with it.  It reminds me of antique, art-deco type of jewelry and I can pretend it was handed down to me from family.

I’m in correspondence with the independent jeweler on etsy (my FAVORITE site!) to see if we can get this delivered by May.

OMG, I’m such a girl.

It’s a 1.65 carat sapphire (my birthstone) surrounded by diamonds, set in white gold.  I’m embarrassed at how pretty I think it is.

Check out the jeweler’s store on etsy:  EidelPrecious Her work is GORGEOUS and the prices are fair.