Saying yes to a crazy decision followed by an overwhelming sense of calm. Have you ever done that? The sheer moment at the end of the decision-making process brought you peace, despite whether or not the decision itself was a good one? Last Friday I saw a quote from Seth Godin that said, “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” Not having boxes to check scares me. Not having everything planned out meticulously, not knowing what we’re having for dinner, not knowing my schedule for the following week. All of these things scare me. And so, with that, Oscar and I have made the following decisions:
– Sell our four-door 2009 Fusion and buy a 2005 blue on black Mustang convertible.
– Adopt a four year old black female lab that I found at our local animal shelter.
I know that Oscar wants the car and if it will make him happy (and I can see it making me happy, too) then I want to do it. We’ve been going back and forth on having a fun car for the two of us in addition to a practical family car for some time. (Also, it’s a beautiful vehicle. We both really do like Mustangs.) And we’ve gone back and forth on wanting another dog, and we decided that now is as perfect a time as any, seeing as how I’m not pregnant yet, and we’d have at least 9-10 months to get settled before a new baby comes along.
As I typed the above paragraph, I can hear the nay-saying in the back of my head – “Are you nuts? You already have a huge dog. And a cat. And a toddler…Trading out a 4-door car for a convertible Mustang? Do you know how unrealistic that is?” Even though they’re projected as other people’s thoughts and fears, they are MY thoughts. MY fears, coming through as my voice of reason.
So much of my life is planned out perfectly (Get up, get ready for work, drop Grayson at school, go to work, come home, get in bed, repeat.) So much of my life consists of keeping track of checklists and checkboxes and to-do lists, that sometimes, it just feels great to throw a wrench in our perfectly planned out lives and for once, be the couple to make a decision (or two) completely out of the blue instead of calculating everything out perfectly.
I had a realization last Friday morning when I was debating over both scenarios, talking myself out of both – we are boring. We are working-9-to-5-then-put-the-kid-to-bed-then-watch-some-Battlestar boring. Get-up-at-6:30am-to-do-it-all-over-again-until-Friday-night” boring. Neither of us have reached 30 yet, and we have a great home in an awesome neighborhood, great jobs where we both love to work, and we are surrounded by people that we love. Are we financially rich? No, and far from it. But I am proud to say that we’re overflowing with emotional wealth.
Thinking this way is a total adrenaline rush, like getting a new tattoo, and those are few and far between for me these days.(Both the tattoos and the adrenaline rushes.) With our fourth wedding anniversary coming up next week, I feel like making both of these commitments together will remind us why we got married in the first place – because together, we make a great team.
As of writing this, Oscar has gone by and visited several cars and done a lot of research (including asking my Dad, who has near-professional status on buying and selling of cars). Our goal of selling the Fusion is still the same, but we have some more research to do in order to get there.
And Friday afternoon, we stuck Grayson and Leela in the car and headed up to our local animal shelter to see if this new dog gets along with other animals. (Her description says yes, but we wanted to be sure.) She was exceptionally sweet with both Grayson and Leela, and they even tested her with the resident kitty at the shelter to see how she reacts with cats. (Nothing, aside from a sniff and a tail wag.) As of today, we’re heading back up there to fill out the paperwork and bring her home with us. (And what better time than during Adopt a Shelter Dog Month?)
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| (This is her shelter photo.) |
For now, we have fingers crossed that all things work out to be best for us, no matter what, the way they were meant to. We’re going to trust the universe on this one. After all, there is a little more to life than checking off boxes.
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