My husband has this crazy yellow Hawaiian shirt that he likes to wear on hot days.
I don’t think it’s meant to be ironed, but I can’t look at him in a wrinkled shirt! He was wearing that shirt today, and all day, I kept beating myself up over this very odd rippled wrinkle on the shoulder area. I continue to be very low on funds at the moment, and I’m totally out of dryer sheets. So perhaps it was just static? No. It was a very bad wrinkle, and it was all I could look at when I was sitting across the table from him…
How in the world did I miss a wrinkle that big when I was ironing? Are my standards slipping? Who am I without my ironing standards?
Clearly, the wrinkle was bugging me.
Then…just before bed, when my husband was pulling off the shirt, out flew a pair of my Jessica Simpson panties! The little green undies with gray dots had been missing from my rotation for about a week, and I’d been wondering where they were!
Three mysteries were solved in one moment: My panties were found – it was static! And, I’m still really good at ironing… (Whew!)
The idea that my underwear was having a day out and about on my husband’s shoulder is pretty funny to me now. But being wired the way I am has made the past decade of my life a lot more difficult than it’s needed to be. There was a time when a pair of stow-away panties could’ve dissolved me to tears.
When I had a lot of money, I was pretty tightly-strung, and I had trouble settling for less than perfection in my life. I didn’t realize back then how rigid and narrow my thinking was, and in many ways, it’s been a relief to let some of my perfectionism die off. But you should know this:
Even now, I’m not laid back.
I’m a Virgo with a healthy splash of OCD woven into my DNA, and it’s not easy for me to let things go — especially when it comes to my environment. I like things clean, pressed and well organized, and, I love it when things smell good, too. My favorite aisle at the grocery store is the cleaning supply aisle. I could spend a good half hour just sniffing, pondering and considering the cleaning merits of every product lining the shelves.
But when you have a financial setback that is as significant as the one my husband and I went through starting in 2008… Well, let’s just say I’ve had to learn how to skimp. I’ve had to learn how to “make do.” I’ve had to settle for way less than perfect, and then find the grace inside of my heart to believe that’s still OK.
When what I used to think of as a “basic” suddenly became a “luxury,” it changed everything about my favorite aisle at the store. And most of the time, I’m better off if I just don’t go there anymore. As my sister once wisely pointed out to me when I was living with her in college: “Sonja. Man cannot live on cleaning products. You must buy food!”
It turns out, my sister was right about that. Food trumps lavender scented organic floor cleaner when you’re broke.
