Success might actually kill me

People! I am speaking, so to speak, to the 2 people who might actually not have given up on my blog. My poor, sad, neglected little blog. Is it any wonder I don't want children?

Things are a little bit insane in these parts. Delicious Landscapes (the company I formed in November with one of my fellow graduates of the Ball State Landscape Arch program) has taken off this spring, and is suddenly extremely busy. And it is hard to manage all this work.

I feel like I am wearing a million hats:

• client handler
• landscape designer
• foreman
• plant buyer
• accountant
• quality control engineer
• advertiser
• landscape cheerleader/tyrant

...and none of the hats fit exactly right.

I never wanted to do design/build, so it comes as some surprise that I am doing just that. I question this field daily, because it is our first year, and the work is so hard, hours so long, learning curve so steep, partnership so tricky.

But we're getting through. It's simply exhausting, and being a business owner I feel as though I never have any time off. So far, my bank account is not reflecting the hours I work, and that in and of itself is deeply frustrating. But perseverance is key in these things, of course I know that. I just seem to forget when it's 10PM on Saturday and all my friends are out and I am trying to finish a bid for a client that was supposed to be done Friday. Sigh.

I'm not complaining, either. I'm grateful for the work, for the challenge, for all of it. I have a wonderful life and it is important to me to remind myself of this at each and every turn.

This is a strange time, where I am contemplating graduate school (I know, I know...) in California, because my heart still wants to work in international development, and I can't seem to shake the urge no matter how hard I try.

Meanwhile, I am trying to determine whether the answer to this analogy:

my personality is to my current life as:

a cork is to a bottle

OR

a fish is to a bicycle

Chip and I are taking a "month off". What this means is that I am not living in our shared house, and we are not communicating. This is not out of contempt, but rather out of a mutual desire to figure things out and decide if this is where we both want to be, together.

I cannot accurately describe the stress of trying to run a business without the comfort and convenience of our home office at my disposal. It is, in fact, a logistical nightmare, and I can't begin to tell you how much I look forward to moving back into the house next week.

This has been one looooooooong few weeks.

So there, consider yourself updated. One can only hope that my next post is more on the waxing poetic side of things, florid and fruity.

Otherwise, I just want you all to know how much I love you, and life, and all its assorted trials and tribulations. Quite a ride, babies, quite a ride we're on.

Miss Remiss

Dear me, I've not posted in over a month...again. What will we do with me?

As I type, the giant kitchen window (leaking bone-chilling drafts, of course) reveals a spread of sopping wet, nasty snow. Blech.

I know I am supposed to be oohing and ahhing, making slush angels, drinking hot cocoa, snuggling, and generally merrymaking about this anomalous weather. Alas, I cannot.

Cold is not for me. Snow is great, if I'm sledding or on skis (and not where I live). But this wintry mix nonsense? Everyone who claims to enjoy it must have never lived in a miserable northern clime where winter is endless and crushes the joy out of everything for 5 months at a time.

Wait, is that hyperbolic? Surely I jest. No. I jest not.

Viva la jungle!

Which brings me to our next order of business: Carnival.

I was able to take almost an entire week off so that I could attend Mardi Gras in New Orleans this year. Suffice to say that despite a case of the sniffles, I am still reeling from the endless days and nights of false eyelashes, bustles, banquets of beauty, flocks of friends, miles of parades, endless glitter and glitz and glam, and of course love and squalor.

I know that when some people think of Mardi Gras, they think of Bourbon Street and boobs and beads.

I assure you that my Mardi Gras in no way resembles that stereotype. In fact, it is quite the opposite. My experience of this holy holiday in the Big Easy leaves me suffused in the warm glow of realization: my friends are the most inspiring, beautiful, creative, loving, and delightful people one could ask for.

It's good to be reminded of these things.

While day-to-day may pale by compare, I always know that within the folds of my life, there are nooks and crannies overflowing with the bounty of love, the livid colors of life, the inescapable lures of passion and possibility. Just a heartbeat away.

To see some visual evidence, I direct you to my facebook profile (click on pictures of me, and then let your fingers do the walking):

http://www.facebook.com/francescafury

31 and having FUN

So, even though my birthday is not until Wednesday, I feel as though it has already come and gone. You see, I had a little get together slumber party at my favorite paradise in Texas: King spa and Sauna. In case you haven't heard, this is a little prelude to heaven, right here on earth. But don't take my word for it, see for yourself:

http://www.dallaskingsauna.com/index2.php

It's a Jjim-jil-bang (say that 5 times fast!), a traditional Korean spa. What that means is that it is a split-gender bath house, with a lady area and a man area, where you get into your birthday suit and enjoy the delights of hot tubs, steam rooms, cold plunges, and scrubs and massages. Back in the mixed-gender area, everyone wears spa-issued pajamas (pink for girls, gray for boys) and lounges around in the many dry saunas, the restaurant, movie theater, karaoke room, and well, lounge areas.

It's very Korean. But super friendly and welcoming to us whiteys. Which is nice, because it would be a lot less enjoyable if you were dealing with discrimination in the place.

Me and something like 22 of my dear friends met up there and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. I loved it! It was like a birthday for everyone!

Anyhow, birthdays are funny. Last year, I was very concerned about celebrating my 30th. It was ridiculous, me getting all pouty because things weren't working out perfectly. Not to mention that I was insanely broke, stressed out, unemployed, and injured.

This year is completely unlike last year, in almost every sense.

I still don't know the future, but then who amongst us does? (and if you do, don't tell me, I want it to be a surprise!)

Things aren't perfect, but they are pretty wonderful. My outlook is sunny, I am surrounded by people I love in a city that brings me joy. I am doing work that reflects my interests and values, using skills that I went to school to learn.

What are birthdays for then, if not remembering how far we've come in the past year, and evaluating what we want, who we are, and how things are going?

I'm doing well and trying to do good, too. I hope you all are in the same boat, because right now, from my birdsnest, it looks like pretty smooth sailing.

Resolved

I'd like to be a less crappy "blogger". I neglect the hell out of this thing, which is either a mercy to those of you unaccustomed to long, rambling sentences bloated with florid phraseology, or a tease to those of you who cannot get enough of said sentences.

This year is off to a jolly good start.

Of course, I can't keep up with correspondences, but I can spell remarkably well, and my business is booming. Someday, I'll even direct you to our website.

I love landscape design, but can't help but wonder if I will be forced at some point to succumb to the nagging inner voice that tells me that my talents are being wasted on residential landscape design. I'm not entirely sure that they are, but there is a part of me that thinks in broader, grander terms and often wonders if I should be looking at graduate schools and applying myself to international aid work, or at least international development.

I mean, that was my plan at the outset. I never meant to be here in Austin, designing landscapes for whomever is willing and able to pay for my services.

I'm pretty sure that happiness (and the ability to support onesself) is the goal here, in which case I am doing relatively well... but there is always the question of whether I am doing enough to help my fellow man.

The Haiti thing, well, we all know how horrific all that is, right?

And the search for answers is not even remotely forthcoming. But it begs many questions. And those questions birth more questions, an endless flood of them oozing from the skin of this issue: where do you start? and with whom? and who administrates?

I've studied all this for years and still find my probings only able to yield more questions, and no definitive answers.

Meanwhile, I got the flu last week. It was thankfully brief, but terribly uncomfortable. My fever peaked at 103, and it made me quite nervous for a short, delirious spell.

I knew I was better when I began cleaning, compulsively, all the things I'd been too sick to lift a finger to take care of before.

And when I began to think, "oh my god, this is what it feels like to be healthy, not in pain, and functional!"

So here it is: healthy, not in pain, and highly functioning. That is my week in a nutshell.

And me, I couldn't be happier if I tried.

Sending love,

~F

The New World

While there is, I admit, an arbitrariness to time, to it's measuring and meting out, the naming and defining of it--- I love submitting to this system of notching our sticks, of charting our courses by the ever-shifting positions of the heavenly bodies making their impossibly distant celestial rounds. Of sifting through the sands of our lives on an annual basis. Of remembering.

It's good and right somehow to have these milestones: birthdays, holidays, New Years. Anything to recognize yet another anniversary of our spinning blue planet making yet another revolution around the sun. I adore this.

2009 will go down in history as one of those pivotal years where everything changes, not only for myself, but for many others as well. It's been up and down, beautiful and tortured. And now, like every breath we've taken thus far, it is behind us.

I'm already in love with 2010. I like the squareness of it, visually. One box that fits neatly inside another, like those nested Russian babushka dolls.

In lieu of proper resolutions, I have a few simple goals and one overarching desire for this year (and possibly every one hereafter).

• Learn to properly ride a horse.
• Do more tango, and dance in general
• Let the important people in my life know that I love them more: be a better friend, daughter, partner, artist, and just an overall better person.

But the most important desire for this year is simple, and one I'd like to share and challenge everyone I care for to join in...

I want to experience happiness not as a fleeting feeling, but as a discipline. I believe that happiness can be practiced, cultivated, and perfected.

This year I long to focus on the blessings that have marked my life, rather than that which I do not have, or have lost. I aspire to meet obstacles with a smile, to give more than I take, and to do so without expecting any reward aside from the experience of manifesting joy.

Life is short, justly difficult, and beautiful.

I'm really glad we're all in this one together.

Let's make this year the best one yet.

Oh Autumn!

This time of year always turns me a little moody and introspective. Not, mind you, in a gloomy way, it's just the way of autumn. Leaves are turning brilliant and preparing to depart for a season. Jackets come out of closets. The holidays sneak up on us.

I wrecked Chip's car last week. It was the second accident I've had in the past 6 weeks, and the first I've ever been at fault in.

The first was a hit-and-run. I'm not angry anymore, because I understand that the guy who hit me was either an illegal immigrant or had a warrant out, or both.

Mainly, I'm relieved that I wasn't hurt, and that my truck wasn't completely wrecked. It was pouring rain and I was afraid that I would miss my dear old friend's wedding because of the accident, but it all worked out.

Wrecking Chip's car was not scary at all. It was the most minor type of accident that exists: the rear-ender. Sadly, because it was a sedan (me) hitting an SUV, the car is most likely going to be totaled.

When I went to get an estimate, I stopped to give a couple of ladies a jump start. I had to pry the smashed-in hood open to get to the battery. Minutes later, on the freeway, the hood popped open and smashed the windshield while I was going about 70 mph. THAT was scary.

I'd like to never experience anything like that ever again.

Chip already bought a new (old) car, an 80s turbodiesel Mercedes that he will run using biodiesel, made from spent fryer grease. It's free, save for the time spent collecting and processing it.

Speaking of biodiesel-- my friend Ryne just moved here to join forces with me. Behold, the newly formed: Delicious Landscapes LLC. We have this enormous, shiny work truck that runs on diesel. We will be running it on biodiesel in no time.

I'm swimming in work right now. Loads of it. Feeling grateful for the flood of work. Trying to keep my head above water and not get overwhelmed by it all.

See, I told you I would write something newsy, not too florid, and utterly straightforward.

The holidays are coming. Ain't that something? I'm pretty excited to see everyone. The difference between childhood and adulthood for me has been this: as a child, the holidays were thrilling because of presents and food. Now, they are exciting because of family. (this is the part where the live studio audience goes "Awwwww"). But it's true. So true.

Sending out love in every direction.

~F

Six Months. One Year. An Eternity

Six months ago, tonight, was the last time any of your friends ever saw you. Resolute, you went home and left us all forever. I'll never understand your decision.

One year ago, on Halloween, we attended the same party. I was unaware of your spectral figure looming over me, until a friend whispered in my ear, "Steve is right behind you, staring."

I spent the rest of the night glancing over my shoulder, avoiding you at all costs.

~~~~~~

I'll never see you again.

In this past 6 months, I've swum through an ocean of "ifs," piercing the surface like dorsal fins.

I have lived through a season of the conditional tense: would'a/could'a/should'a.

The heartbreak is unending. But you taught me more, in this one act, than I could have possibly learned in years of making my own mistakes--about forgiveness. About love. About life.

Like the supernovas whose glowing deaths have revealed untold secrets about the heavens, about distances between stars and the age, size, and weight of the universe...

In your wake, it is a different word, a world where love is the objective, where acceptance is requisite, and where memory is precious. I know we are never over.

I just wish we lasted a little bit longer, and hoped a little harder.

love, ~F