An Unmarried Woman

Yesterday I decided to forego shaving my legs. I haven’t inherited a small fortune or the pain tolerance level to switch to waxing and I am not advocating a more natural look. I simply ran out of time. Has that ever happened to you?

To be on time for a dinner date a decision had to be made: do I go another day engaging my muscles only to sit upright at my office desk or do I step out…and up? I bolted for my front door and the stairwell a few energetic strides beyond it.

Eleven flights down, 15 up, 15 down and 11 up. Pick the right tempo of music for your iPhone or iPod and you’re done before Van Morrison or Michael Buble can sing about a third affair. Some music has even inspired me to toss in a few upper body and hip Zumba movements during my assent.

I am motivated by a craving for endorphins during rainy season and less jiggle to my thighs. Fact is, it’s a cheap, convenient, effective workout. According to ehow.com, “A focused 30 minutes of step climbing can burn almost 300 calories.” The site goes on to list other benefits: increased fitness level, low-impact, lower cholesterol levels. I repeat…firm thighs and endorphins.

Last July I started climbing stairs at the suggestion of my friend Mary Hinckley to increase my endurance on trail hikes around Multnomah Falls. It’s bottom up on those trails; downhill sections start after the summit.

Get out and climb a few stairs, forge a few streams. It’s a great pick me up.

Trix

1.9.2010

This is a story about coming of age at 51. The heroine in this madcap adventure is me.  Someone, by recent disappointments, made smarter, wiser and better able to appreciate what comes my way than I was at say 21. The setting: my two cities, Portland, Oregon and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The story is of surviving and hopefully flourishing by embracing not just another man, but LIFE.  Think of what that means. Auntie Mame described life as a banquet. I don’t intend to be one of those fools who starve when so much is within reach. I am hungry.

As I see it, this is the time to live loudly in order to find my true center. By loudly I mean boldly, uninhibited by who might be watching or judging even when faltering frequently is a certainty, as in ending a 25-year marriage to one’s first boyfriend.  Don’t we usually applaud and cheer on the brave soul who willingly risks making mistakes, dusts herself off and jumps back in the game?  I do!  Gotta love someone with spunk and passion, even if guided by a compass absent a true north. What better, more endearing role model is there?

This blog will be a dialogue (between you and me) about artful, thoughtful exploration and living. I will share the good and the bad of all manner of discoveries (food, shops, activities, books, art…) and reflect periodically on the nuances of changing status from “married” to “unmarried,” including what I recall of the events leading up to this outcome.

Stats reveal in 2005 “unmarried head of household” became the USA majority. Hoping my writing might strike a chord with an occasional visitor is the powerful motivation fueling this endeavor.  Scribbling in a journal might be ideal therapy during a parting of ways, but as it is for many women, doing something solely for myself frequently kills its chances from the start.  I am a giver, a person defined by her relationships. I make a home, feathering my nest, intending it to be a place for others to visit often.

January is an ideal time to slip between the covers with a good book.  Shall we start with a few suggestions for winter reading or ask the question, “Why not stay married to your best friend when the spark is gone?”

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Alan Cohen

As always, Trix