Barnmaven

Wordless Wednesday: Eloquent

 

How he got the food bowl to glow with his mysterious doggy mind powers is beyond me.   

Balancing Act

Lately I've been avoiding the phone.  It ring, I pick it up, see who's calling, and set it back down.  I don't want to talk to anyone.  Day after day, ring after ring, the calls go unanswered.  Messages go unheard.  I finally cleared the message queue this weekend and there were fifteen of them.  (Not all friends, though.  You know those "Find out your home's value for FREE"  ads on the web?  Who knew they were trying to sell you homeowner's insurance.  I thought I'd be hearing from Realtors, but no.  Insurance people.  Relentless, annoying insurance agents.  I hate them.  Unless YOU are one, then I love them.  Not really.) 

Thing is, I can't figure out exactly why I'm not answering the phone.  I'm not in one of those occasional crippling depressions.  I'm not happy and I'm not exactly OK, this is true.  But I'm not overwhelmed by sadness either.  I just...I can't explain it really.  Its more of a pervasive sense of Blah.  I force myself to drum up interest in things I should be doing, and am mostly successful.  I'm doing all the right things, being outside, socializing, doing projects, exercising.  I just feel like not talking.   Considering how often people wished I would talk less, maybe this is a blessing.  Hopefully the wonderful friends who have been wondering how long its going to take me to pick up the phone won't stop trying anytime soon.  

I did get to go trail riding this weekend.  It was only my third ride on Miss B this year, and her first trail ride in more than a year.  Its possible this was not a bright idea, two fresh horses, neither of them seasoned trail veterans and neither a comfortable lead horse.  But sometimes you can't wait for perfect conditions, sometimes you just need to ride.  And so my friend Michelle came swooping by with her horse trailer and collected us and we went down to Big Flat, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Habitat Management Unit.  Big Flat is 832 acres of trees, fields, scrub brush, hills and wetlands situated on a small peninsula down on the Snake River.    We rode for a couple of hours, no one got hurt and even though my little firecracker shied at some of the sprinkler heads and the occasional clump of dirt, by the end of the ride she was settled down and not quite the flight risk she often resembles.  The ride was much more than a chance to shake the cobwebs off my saddle.  Spending time on my horse enables me to reconnect with the person inside that I aspire to be.  It grounds and centers me, balances me.  The synergy of working together with my horse, to move as one and at the same time being in nature, among the trees, rocks, dirt and water is more refreshing to me than a week at a spa being massaged and pampered.  THIS is why I moved here, this is what I want to do, to be.  My mother's day gift to myself.

And then there was Mother's Day.  I asked J if I could have the kids through dinner, and ended up keeping them overnight.  It would be the perfect frosting on the cupcake of the weekend to report that I had the most perfect Mother's Day ever - but it would not be my real life if THAT were the case!  True to form, both kids conspired to be just about as maddening as they are capable of being.   I was ready to lock them both in the dungeon by about noon yesterday.  Lucky for them I don't actually have a dungeon.  Instead, I shoved them out the door and locked it. 

I'm kidding.

Sort of.

After a nice long timeout in their rooms, during which I affixed my iPod to my sweatpants and turned up the volume so I could clean the bathroom without being distracted by their whining, I opened the door, pushed them through it, and warned them on pain of dismemberment to play together, outside, without screaming, yelling or crying, until Mommy was done cleaning up the house.  After a morning which was probably as thoroughly frustrating for them as it was for me, it was a pleasure to finally have the inside of the house to myself for a while and to catch up on the housework I didn't get done during the week.  Eventually the kids across the street came home from whatever family activity they'd been doing all day, and the kids went to play with their friends until dark.   Despite a shaky start, we managed to pull through and have a pretty decent day after all.  

In a way, the weekend itself is a perfect snapshot of how I dig out of the flatline my life has been in lately.  Toss the salad and you find chunks of perfection, slices of crabby and cranky, and big flat leaves of tired contentment.  Like many of of us, I am often guilty of focusing on too narrow a piece of things to be objective about the whole.  If I think only about the things that I don't like, I don't appreciate the things that I love.  If I focus too much on the parts I love, I get surprised by what doesn't go well.  But when I add up the perfection of a beautiful ride, the frustration and challenge of parenting two very strong-willed, sensitive and active children, and the satisfaction of some productive alone time, I see in the whole of its parts a life that is full.  And good.  Last night, while the children played across the street, after I finished cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming floors, sweeping, dusting, folding laundry, I enjoyed a glass of wine in my backyard, watching the horses graze and the dogs run around the yard, and I realized how very blessed I am. 

I'll start picking up the phone soon, really I will.

 

More than biology

Growing up my family was always open about how our family unit was formed.  Its become such an embedded part of our lives that I have to remember to talk about it with my children sometimes because I forget they weren't born knowing that their mom and their uncle (and their dad too) were adopted.

When I was old enough to ask, I was given all the information that they had, and when I got older and said that I wanted to search, I got nothing but support.  I hope never to take this for granted, because I realize not every adoptive family is this way.

Every so often, at a Sunday dinner or over cocktails, we'll talk about my sister or my cousin.  There was a time, after I found my birthfamily, that my dad would ask "Have you talked to your mother at all?"   My mother and I would glance at each other and I would once again remind my dad that "my mother" was sitting right there in the room.  I think he's finally understood that I reserve the title of "mother" for only one person in my life.  She is not the person who gave birth to me, she is the person who had the much more difficult job of raising me to adulthood, of instilling a moral code into me, loving me, protecting me, helping me to learn my value and place in the world, of finally, reluctantly, releasing me.  When you think of all that being a mother encompasses, you can't help but think that the title is completely oversimplified for the job it entails.

Mom and her parents, Ketchikan AK circa 1942

 
Mom, California, 1945

Back in Ketchikan, 1950

Kay-Hi Graduation, 1955  

Mom grew up in Ketchikan, Alaska in the 1940's and 50's.  She went to Seattle after graduation to attend the University of Washington, but met and married my father just shy of her four year degree. 

The road to parenting is easy for some, harder for others.  I understand because of my own struggles with infertility in my twenties and early thirties, the quiet panic and desperation when biology doesn't work quite the way the instruction manual tells you it should.  For my mother, the journey came with more than its fair share of pain and difficulty.  After trying to conceive for a while, they adopted my brother, then when he was a toddler my mother lost two babies.  The first was at 18 weeks, and the second was even more painful and devastating at 27 or 28 weeks.  And so they adopted again, and their family was complete. 

Family Life, 1966

My brother was the odd man out in family portraits.  Mom and dad were both brunette, dad with gray eyes and mom with brown.  With my brown hair and gray-green eyes, unless someone knew our family history, they had no reason to think I was anything other than my parents offspring.  My tow-headed, blue-eyed brother was the one who was clearly the swan in the nest.  I remember laughing with my mother when some poor innocent who was just meeting us for the first time would say "You look just like your mother!"  or "...just like your father!"  Our peals of laughter would elicit confusion, then we would explain, and just like that confusion morphed into a wonderful teaching moment about the different ways families could be made.  We tried not to be elitist about how special we thought our family was, but we really loved those moments of solidarity.  We were US.  And we really did know we were special.

1967

Its not just that she comforted me when I hurt, that she nurtured me and tried so hard to share her values with me.  Its not that she saved and sacrificed her salary to make sure that not only did I get a college education but that I got to do the extra things too, like join a sorority and go to concerts and dances. Those are the things that make her a regular mother.  We all do those things.  My mother is so much more than that, though.  My mom believes in her deepest heart that our family unit is the most important thing in the world, and that it is her job to nurture and protect her family. She treats my brother and I as special and unique people, gives us her undivided attention when we need it and when we talk to her, she really truly listens.   All of my life the one person I can always count on to listen to me, to afford sympathy, to give me hugs, to understand more than anyone else what's bothering me, is my mother.  There have been times that her instincts were so attuned to me that even when I have been miles away from her, her "momdar" has gone off and she has known that something in my life was wrong, picked up the phone, and called me at exactly the time that I needed her most. 

Mom's always been active and engaged in the life around her.  She's been a city dweller, a hobby farmer, a fitness buff, a hiker, a world traveler and a working woman.  At the age of 73 she still walks 3 miles almost every day, goes line dancing, lifts weights, and recently started doing another, even more complicated dance class.  She is an incredible grandmother to my children, the kind who cuts paper dolls, bakes cookies, does puzzles, blows bubbles, has fudgesicles in her freezer and reads stories.  And yet this is the woman who, when I received the Congressional Angels in Adoption Award in 1999, told me that I was HER hero.  Imagine that.

It is said, with a fair amount of accuracy, that Mother's Day is a made-up holiday, that every day is Mother's Day.  All I know is that every day in some little way, my mother touches my life in a million different ways.  From emails to babysitting to shared meals, small gifts and mementos, hugs and smiles and genuine caring and concern, my mother is the one person in my life who has always been there for me and who has loved me with the kind of whole-heartedness that only a mother can understand.  Our relationship, which has forever meant the world to me, became even more rich and meaningful when my own children entered my life.  I think only when I felt that breathtaking surge of fierce, protective, die-for-you mother love, did I truly understand the depths and breadth of the love that mom has for my brother and me. 

On Mother's Day, mom, and every other day of the year, I thank you and I honor you for everything that you mean to me.  I could not have asked for a better mother, mentor, fan or friend.  I love you so much.

Wordless Wednesday: Accessorizing a Flu Bug

 

Listless Monday: Butchering the Language(s)

The song in Act One of Avenue Q says it all:  What do you do With a BA in English?

If you're like me, you enter a career in transportation and logistics from the bottom side up and spend the rest of your life critiquing the writing of everyone you meet.  Its a really annoying lucrative bad habit character trait that will really piss off impress your friends.  I promise.

Trolling Hanging out on the Internet in various newsgroups, forums and blogs has exposed me to the endless ways in which people are capable of butchering language.  Nothing causes the pain points behind my eyeballs as much pain as when otherwise well-educated and literate sounding individuals misspell and mis-colloquialize their way through an email, forum message or blog post.  If that makes me a snob, so be it. 

Take heed, people.  If you want to write as intelligently as you think you do, here's my top ten list of frequently butchered words and phrases.  Take notes.  Memorize.  Go forth and be henceforth grammatically correct.

1.  Voila!

This is, of course, a French word, so technically not a "butchering of the English language."  However, when you are going to utilize a foreign word to add that certain je ne sais quoito your post, my suggestion would be that you do not spell it PHONETICALLY.  The word isn't WAHLAH!  or WAULA! or even WALA! 

2.  For all intents and purposes

I know that you write this as "for all intensive purposes" just for the joy you get when you see me choke on my crackerjacks when I read it. Don't tell me you don't.  I don't know what the hell you think "intensive" purposes are, but I'm pretty sure when you purpose to make me choke on my food, you're being pretty intense.  And if it your intent and your purpose to make me choke on that kernel of caramelized popcorn?  Dude, that's just mean.  You should seek therapy.

3.  Regardless

That's right.  There is no "Ir-" preceding "regardless."  IRREGARDLESS?   NOT A WORD. 

4.  Moot

As in, "the point is moot."  The point is NOT MUTE.  The point is MOOT.  MOOT, damn it.

5.  Effect/Affect

"Affect" is a verb when used with an object.  "Affect" means to "have an effect."  You see the difference?    "Effect" is a noun.  When something causes you to feel or do something, it either AFFECTS you or it HAS AN EFFECT on you.  It doesn't EFFECT YOU.  It doesn't HAVE AN AFFECT on you.  Ex:  Cold weather affected him intensely; it had the effect of making his teeth chatter and making his lips turn blue.  So if something does something to the something, it "affects" the something.  The something that happens to the something is the "effect" that it has.  You got all that, right? 

6. Toe the Line

I've often seen this written as "tow the line."  Tow?  You mean take the line and pull it behind your boat?  What in the world is that a metaphor for?  "Toeing the line" comes from any manner of military, prison or school scenarios, in which the unlucky recipients of the drill sergeant's/warden's/nun's (all the same thing, incidentally) regard are forced to stand toe to a real or imaginary line on the floor.  Sometimes for hours.  It's a colloquialism for adhering to the rules.

7.  Bated Breath

One's breath, when one is waiting with great anticipation, is "bated."  It is not "baited."  "Baited" means the trap or hook has been made more inviting to the prey by the addition of something tasty or wanted.  I hope to GOD your breath isn't baited, dear one, or you have some stinky-ass air coming out of your mouth and I'd offer you a tic-tac but I'm not sure it'll do the trick because good god, your mouth smells like a sardine can.  When your breath is "bated, " it is hushed, quiet, lessened in intensity. 

8.  Backpedal

Pedal is the forward action one's feet participate in when riding a bicycle.  Peddle is the act of selling something or some things.  So when someone is forced to eat the words, or move backwards, as it were, they aren't backpeddling.  They are backpedaling.  See the difference?

9.  Predisposed

When my birthmother wrote to tell me that she had a bad test result on a pap smear (because OMIGOD ITS PROBABLY CANCER AND YOU SHOULD FEEL GUILTY FOR NOT TALKING TO ME BECAUSE LOOK!  I'M DYING OF CANCER!) she cautioned me and my sisters in her 9 page single-spaced typed letter to go immediately to our gynecologists and get screened.  Because, you know, since she had a bad pap result, it meant we were all "predispositioned" to get cancer.  Thankfully in the 30-odd regular annual checkups I've had since I started getting them in my college years, I've not once had a pap smear come back with bad results.  Neither have my sisters.  So, despite my "predispositioning" and my birthmother's OMIGOD I'M DYING PLEASE TALK TO ME plea, I see no reason to pick up the phone.  I'm sure she reads my blog anyway.

10.  Well, there aren't ten.  Because I was going to use spit and image which is the original use of the phrase to mean that someone or something looks exactly like another someone or something.  I've always taken exception to "spitting image" because I feel it is modern slang.  But upon consideration, I have accepted the words "shizzle" "moar" and "kitteh" into my mental dictionary, so I guess I can live with spitting image. 

So I lied.  These aren't my top ten.  They're my top nine. 

What are yours?

**Today's list inspired by Anna Viele at abdpbt 's "Listless Monday" project.  Do one of your own!

 

To her

Somewhere in time's own space
There must be some sweet pastured place
Where creeks sing on and tall trees grow
Some paradise where horses go,
For by the love that guides my pen
I know great horses live again.
~Stanley Harrison

My horse's feet are as swift as rolling thunder
He carries me away from all my fears
And when the world threatens to fall asunder
His mane is there to wipe away my tears.
~Bonnie Lewis

And Allah took a handful of southerly wind, blew His breath over it, and created the horse.... Thou shall fly without wings, and conquer without any sword.  Oh, horse.  ~Bedouin Legend

Because I'm incapable of saying it any better.  Godspeed, old mama horse.  Thank you for every minute of every second wherein I derived pleasure from brushing you, from leaning into your neck and breathing in the scent of you, from twisting my fingers in your mane.  Thank you for every warm whuff of breath as you checked my pockets for treats.  Thank you for all the times my cares melted away in hours spent with you. 

Wine and Twitter - the downside of social media

I am SUCH an ass sometimes.

One of the upsides to being single and having shared custody is that I get a night a week to myself.  At times, though, that's also the downside.

I'm having a really hard time with having to put Missy down.  Except that I don't do a very good job of having a hard time with anything.  I don't know if its growing up around with a father who believed we should be stoic about everything, but I suspect that has something to do with it.  I have a deep fear of people thinking I'm needy - but at the same time I'm needy and I want people to reach out to me.  I'm sure you can see how this inconsistent dynamic works against me.  I was the kid in school who when I got my feelings hurt (which happened a LOT, I'm extremely sensitive and I cry at the drop of a hat) who would then run up to the kids who hurt me and throw a rock at them. The thing was, even in that action I was conflicted.  I was angry for being hurt, but I also saw that no one recognized how I felt, that I was hurt, and I wanted them to understand that I had feelings.  I wanted their attention in a positive way, but I acted in such a way as to draw the exact opposite. 

One of the most awesome things about blogging and social media is that I get to meet funny, intelligent, articulate people who write the coolest things.  They make me laugh, they make me cry.  Some of them actually come read my blog and they say nice things to me.  But the dangerous part about blogging and social media is the possibility that someday I will slip and everyone will realize I have The Crazy. And they will run away screaming, possibly, or maybe come after me with pitchforks and torches. 

So the post that I wrote on Thursday about Missy, I didn't toss it up on Twitter like I usually do.  I didn't link it on Facebook.  I knew some people would read it (and you did, thank you), but I was struggling so much with  my feelings around it that I didn't want to draw too much attention to it.  So I just posted it, and let it go.  And I got some very warm, compassionate responses.  They helped so much. 

Last night the kids were with their dad.  My mom had a little surgery on her wrist, so I volunteered to bring dinner over.  I took Hercules with me, its nice to have the old guy with me when the kids aren't around.  He loves outings.  So we had a nice dinner, and we talked about my horse and what was going to happen.  And of course my dad is very matter-of-fact and he's glad that I'm goingto have one less mouth to feed because money's so tight.  I didn't want to get into how upset I was feeling, so I just kind of left it at that.  But on the way home, in the car, stopped at a stop light, Hercules put his head on my shoulder.  I hugged him and started to pet him, and then I just started to sob uncontrollably.  I am overwhelmed with guilt and sadness over this.  Having control over the life and death of a companion animal is the worst part of ownership.  Its compounded by the knowledge that if I only had enough money I could probably keep Missy moderately comfortable for a long time.  Possibly I could afford treatments - medications - injections - chiropractic - things that might help alleviate her pain and give her some comfort for a longer time.  Maybe she'd get another year or two.  But those things are out of reach and so I feel horrible guilt. 

Anyway, Herc and I came home and had a glass of wine and then another (there might have even been another after that, I'm not sure at this point).  I cried a lot more. I talked to one friend online, which helped, then decided I was going to go to bed.  Except I didn't.  I felt like I was falling into a black hole of sadness and grief.  I didn't know what to do with myself, so I reached out.  To Twitter.  Believing that people might care.

I linked the post I hadn't linked before.  I wanted someone to see me. 

 
And I waited to see if anyone would notice.  

Twitter was apparently having a lot of Friday night fun.  And likely my tweet didn't get seen, maybe everyone was already in bed.  Or drinking their own copious amounts of wine but in a very different way, a happy way, and they didn't see me. 

After an hour, I got mad. And hurt.  And I threw a rock.  At Twitter.

 
And I hauled my soggy drunk ass off to bed. 

This morning, I had direct messages from two very kind souls who who noticed my little twantrum in their feeds, they were so nice and kind.  And I lost a follower or two.  And I deserve that.

Maybe next time I'm drinking wine alone at home on a Friday night, someone should just disconnect my keyboard and hide it somewhere that I can't find it.  Would anyone like to volunteer for keyboard hiding duty?