Having A Sail

Went on the annual "yaya" sailing trip on White Bear Lake today. As always, it was perfect in every way-- sunny skies, moderate temps, light winds, good food... This is Jim, Sue's husband and our ever faithful (read; long-suffering) boat captain. He's never been captured on film or otherwise. His name may not even be Jim.....
This is me demonstrating my rendition of Michael Phelps's "Help- my mouth is too big for all my teeth" smile. I also dislike having my picture taken, despite all bloggular evidence to the contrary.

These are the fabulous yayas. Actually, I don't really use that name-- yayas anymore, although I'm pretty sure some of the rest do. Shortly after we began meeting 12 years ago we all read that book-- you know the one, "The Divine secrets of the yaya sisterhood," and like throngs of others drank the koolaide and decided we needed to form our own tribe of yayas too. You know how I get about popular things-- boooooo. Now I just call these my "wed night girls". They are divine though don't you think? -- artists and / or writers all. From the left me, Sue (who lets us ride in her boat), Lynn, and Kris.
The group formed around a workshop organized by blondie over there (my genius writer pal Kris) based on the book "The Artist's Way". If you are creative in any way, and sorry to discriminate but female-- (it's not specifically for women, I just have a hard time seeing a guy "go there" on many of the exercises-- Consider the gauntlet flung down dudes.)-- I highly recommend it.

I was going through another "out of the box" analytical phase when I hooked-up with these gals.

Since about age eleven I'd been running from one open gate to another in an attempt to create a life without fences. Nothing was going to tie me down once I broke for open ground. I'd dropped out of college and worked my way up the ladder of retail (you could still make yourself indispensable enough back then, if you worked really hard and had a brain, to circumvent a degree to some extent) without considering where the ladder was going-- into a box. Yuck.

For some reason I poked my head up long enough to take a good look around and pull the plug. What was the point of every chance I'd ever taken if I was going to wind up in a life I couldn't stand? It wasn't an overnight transformation. There have been a lot of missteps and pit stops along the way, but that book and these gals came along at a very pivotal point for me, and I'll always be grateful.

It's your life. Don't chicken out.