GOALS CAN KISS IT

Cat, Meg, Lo, Whit, Hay, Mal

These—these are my bitches, my broads, the dames I adore, mes soeurs, my sissies. For the first time in more than a year all six of us were in the same place.

I’m just home from a week in the ‘Tah where I got to see Mally’s new house, buy my nieces with $54 worth of candy, eat Whit’s stupid-good buttermilk cake, visit Cat’s new saloon, talk my parents’ ears off, go up American Fork Canyon with Amber, laugh so hard with Haley and Caitlyn that I couldn’t get my eyes to open properly, drag race on State Street, drop in at Lo’s new apartment, envy Ashley’s charming pad, and teach some yoga to my ma’s church gals. All the things: I checked them off my list.

On Monday I subbed a yoga class wherein a student inadvertently guilted me into, at the very least, slapping together this post. She is a literature teacher at the university. We got to talking Englishy things, and based on the kinds of questions I was asking about her job she queried, “So did you go to UNR or something?” I ended up confessing that I, in fact, have a Masters degree in writing. Of all things.

“Do you still write?” she asked me. (That hateful little shit.)

“Uh, well . . . ” and when a sentence starts out ruefully with an Uh, well you don’t need to hear the rest, for it certainly conveys a big fat Of course not.

The question irked me. Do you still write? Still? Did I ever? And is that a thing that you just up and stop doing? Evidently, yes. But here’s the thing, yeah, I did feel a certain amount of guilt when I answered that no, I don’t write really at all ever (except in my head which I actually do count just a little bit, because, and few non-writers know this, when a writer is sitting staring out a window, they’re actually working), but the guilt didn’t overwhelm me because that’s just not where I am in my life right now. And that is fine. I’m hoping that the copious amount of time I spent writing for school is kinda banked somewhere and when I seek to dust it off it won’t be totally worthless. But for now, in this meantime, however long I choose it lasts, I’m writing rarely and that is okey dokey.

As a nonfiction writer I’m living now what I’ll write later. I spend my time teaching yoga, doing yoga, enjoying the effing hell out of my a-damn-dorable, doting husband, being spoiled, growing my hair, and playing house (read: buying shit with which I decorate and redecorate the abode, a spectacular and spectacularly expensive hobby that my indulgent darling indulges).

I saw a post on Humans of New York a bit ago where the dude's quote was something like, “I’m taking a break from setting goals right now.” I’m doing that! I’m surely goal-oriented and I can’t successfully live any one day without a list of what I need to get done, but the big goals, the lofty things—I can’t believe I’m saying this—right now I don’t need them.

I want to be a better yoga teacher than I am now and that takes two main things: practicing my yoga and practicing my teaching. So I take and I teach as often as I can. And I want to be the best wife I can be because the man I’m married to merits all I am plus some.

Day in and out I can’t understand why Jim thinks I deserve all the good he is and does. But here he is being all amazing and shit every day, loving me even when I’m wholly unlovable. The man’s a certifiable lunatic who wakes to spoil me. And don’t misunderstand, unabashedly, I love it.

Any sentence I begin with, “Jim do you think we could—” or “Jim, let’s—”“ or “Jim, I think I want—” he immediately interrupts with, “Yes,” “Okay,” “Sure.” without even hearing what I’m asking. I have to be careful what I mention interests me; he’ll get it, make it happen, shift the moon and hand me the sun.

Honestly, I don’t talk about a lot of that amazing stuff because my friends get nauseous and jealous, and it makes the two of us loathsome and incomprehensible. It’s a small price for a life that’s pretty damn perfect. [Insert your—totally understandable—eye roll here.] So while life is real and has its inconveniences, you could be safe in saying that we’re still in that delirious newlywed phase. I mean, guys, I just heard him start his ear-splitting snoring in the other room and it made me smile. Cuuute.