11

My mind is galumphing along at a speedy trot, which is an attitude I like in a mind now and then, as it reminds me that it works. The thoughts that splatter me along this particular mindscape are of quite a few flavors, but mostly they are not unpleasant. I can't complain.

A few days ago, Rachel mentioned that her favorite number has always been x. (No, not really x, but I'm using an algebraic substitution because it's her favorite number, not mine, and if it's to be shouted about, I'd better let her do it.) But, related or not to the fact that x is her favorite, she found 200x to be an especially agreeable year.

I will be forthcoming. My favorite is 11. It always has been. I don't think it had to do with the fact that I grew up in a house numbered 11 (later 611, when the county did some re-jigging of the mail system,) but I know I preferred it well before I selected 11 as my basketball jersey number, or zeroed in on high school lockers with 11 in the digit sequence. Our current house number is 111. It just happened. It was on the market when we were shopping for a house, and we liked it. Next year is 2011. Maybe it will be good. One thing that can be said about 2011 is that I will, like it or not, turn 50 at the end of it.

Long ago, when I was first married, I indulged in an astrological chart consultation with an astrologer who was a great favorite of my parents' next door neighbor. Her astrologer friend was in town for a visit, and my mother-in-law and I, both for the fun of it, signed on. One of the standout moment was when the astrologer-lady got all excited about how the "second half of my life" was going to be super-awesome, I'd become "more myself," and that I'm in some sense "aging backwards." Now I'm not sure how exactly my uniquely giraffe-splotchy face represents a reversal of aging, but let's not quibble. The point is, she seemed to think that 50 would be some kind of karmic blast-off point.

hmmm. All I know for sure is that I set myself a challenge this morning. Sometime, by within the confines of the year 2011, I will have whipped my house (#111) into marketable condition. I don't know what next. Either I will a) move, or b) achieve an unexpected peaceful and satisfactory resolve with the place. For now, I feel like Miss Havisham, languishing in her wedding clothes amidst the rubble of a dream that crashed and burned, and we really can't have that.

Somehow or other, we're going to have to grab that 11 by the little horizontal bits at the bottom, and vault up and over like one of those acrobat monkeys on elastic cord. But without the elastic cord, because that's just limiting. Maybe it's good my brother broke my little plastic monkey toy when I let him try it, back when I was around...I don't know...11. That monkey wanted off the squeezy-frame anyway.