Barnmaven

Fog, lifting.

Today is...what, Thursday?  Yes.  Thursday.

Ironically, I took this picture last week, on the way in to work.  We drove over the big hill and down into the valley between Jump off Joe and Plymouth, and were greeted by a wall of fog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its the perfect metaphor for how I've been feeling.

I have been sick since Saturday.  Sick in that sinus-crushing, chest-gurgling, ears-plugged can't-think sort of way that makes one want to stay in bed for the rest of ones' presumably short life.  I managed to make it to work one day this week so far and God willing I'll make it for the last working day of the year. 

I haven't blogged but once, which in retrospect I probably shouldn't have posted because it makes about as much sense Schrödinger's Box making a guest appearance in Gone with the Wind, and for which I heartily apologize, but I'll simply say in my defense, "It was the cold medicine speaking."

I think I'm starting to feel a little more human, although as luck would have it, the wee man got up from his half eaten dinner last night and ran into the bathroom to throw up. I'm guessing things around here are going to be off the wheels for a good while yet.  Sadly, I'm used to that.

 

 

 

Characters

The holidays are winding down to a close, and mostly the Christmas cards have arrived, with their pictures and their annual letters detailing trips to the coast, braces for Sally, debate team championships for Billy and its off to college for little Susie and Matt.  Faces are smiling, life is good.  I usually write a Christmas letter of my own, I love to do that.  Its a nice bit of fiction, isn't it?  We're happy, we're good, never mind the dust elephants or the piles of dog crap in the yard or the coating of dirt on the windowsill.  

Its sort of like this blog -- it could all be a load of hooey for all you know.  Maybe I'm not really me at all, maybe I'm an overweight 57 year old man named Walter who lives in his mother's basement and has bad skin and a deep and abiding love for frozen pizza, Star Trek collectibles and a real light saber.  OK, well, maybe I'm really me.  But how do you really know that? 

I think the cold medicine is getting to me.  I've been sick since Christmas, actually since Christmas Eve, and I'm beginning to suspect that somehow this is tied in to the fact that I was just not as good as I could have been all year.  Hard to imagine me getting any better, I realize, but there you have it.  I was naughty and Santa caught me out.  Hence, the nasty little virus that's currently creeping its way through my upper respiratory system.   I managed to haul my sick ass into work today, which in retrospect may have not been a good idea as in my current state I'm crabbier than a pregnant sow in August and I've probably managed to spread the plague to every poor soul inside a 50-yard radius.

So my imagination, fueled by two big fizzy tabs of "plop, plop, fizz, fizz, kiss your sinuses goodbye," reads the Christmas letters and wonders what the world would be like if the fiction of 90% of the world's Christmas letters (mine included) were erased, and people wrote about their actual lives.  The parts with the fingerprints on the windowpanes, cat piss under the bed and the crack pipe hidden inside the toilet paper roll.  The lives where spouses cheat, we doubt our sanity, we fail at our jobs and we drink ourselves into oblivion nighly before 5:30 PM.  Where our kids are likely shaping up to transform into carnival sideshow freaks or third world dictators.  Where that cute puppy in the picture is actually a vicious animal who took out half the neighborhood cats this fall and currently sits in a dark, steaming corner, salivating hungrily as he plots ways to take down the guy who reads the water meter every month. 

Hi friends!  Well, I made a mess of everything this year.  My fiance broke up with me in March after he met a cute little redhead in the supermarket checkout line. He's known her for a long time but once she got that boob job he lit out for greener pastures.   I'm trying to keep my head above water, although  I can't seem to pay a bill on time to save my life and my ass grew three sizes. Most days I pick my kids up from school still wearing my pajamas.  I haven't had a real haircut in something like 8 months and the batteries in my electric toothbrush have been dead for even longer than that.   The dog ran off a month ago but I'm not complaining because at least I don't have to buy dog food, although now I do have to clean the cat litter box a lot more now that he's not eating the poop out of it.  The kids seem to be surviving just fine, I haven't gotten any calls from the juvenile authorities in at least three weeks.  I managed to hang on to my job by a fingernail at least through the end of the year and if I'm lucky I'll get a severance package next year when they finally figure out I'm the one whose been stealing the toilet paper out of the bathrooms.  But for God's sake, have you seen the price of paper products lately?   Here's hoping our annual Christmas letter finds you in better shape than we are.  Love always, us.

 

Just blame it on the cold medicine.  I do.

 

Never alone

I was commenting to someone just the other day that since J and I separated I've had more real "alone time" than I can remember since before my children were born.  Two nights a week, when they're with their dad, I am free to do whatever I want.  What's funny about that is that the older I get, the less that sounds like an invitation to PAR-TEEEEE!!! and more like an opportunity to throw a DVD in the player and fold laundry, read a book, or dink around on the computer.

The house is silent, mostly - but even then, I'm not alone.  Never really.

Not even when I'm in the bathroom.

I haz help.

They're always there.

Waiting on me.

Waiting for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And because the bathroom is small...

 

 

The big one has to sit outside the door.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone should be as loved as this.

Tonight the house will be full.  My brother will be here, with his two small dogs Gizmo and Tosha.  My ex will be here after he gets off work so he can help play Santa and so that our kids will have both their parents here for their Christmas (we're cool that way and I like how happy it makes the kids).  The kids will be here pretending to sleep and listening for Santa Claus.  And in the midst of all the chaos, I will be grateful for my crazy little family and all of the noise and thunder.  Because in a few days?

It will seem very, very quiet here for a night or two.

But I still won't be alone. 

May you all have a wonderful holiday, whatever you may be celebrating this December. 

 

At the same time

For some reason, its a concept that doesn't seem to permeate my steady state of consciousness.  I forget all about it, and then suddenly, WHAM! - it smacks me on the forehead and I remember.

I remember that it doesn't have to be one or the other.  It really can be both, you know.  My marriage taught me that.  Parenting taught me that.  Winter reminds me.  Christmas reminds me.  My grandmother's birthday reminds me.  My dogs, those present and those no longer with us, remind me.  A lifetime of love and happiness and grief and loss.

Life can be simultaneously painful and joyful, both things can take your breath away and sometimes you won't know exactly what it is that makes your voice catch and your eyes swim with tears, but there you are in the middle of it all, feeling both.  The emotional component of each is different, but the physical reaction can be the same. 

Sometimes, during those years where the marriage cracked and crumbled and eventually dissolved, the feelings were so overwhelming that I wasn't sure what I was experiencing.   Anger turned to sadness turned to grief;  intermingled with these were the joy and the delight over those moments with my kids or with my friends or even with my husband on those days when we could connect in a meaningful way. 

There were times when I though that all I was feeling was sadness.  Or anger.  Whatever the emotion du jour happened to be.  And yet when I let myself just be, in the moment, I realize that emotions are not simple, primary-colored boxes of paint.  They are complex, perhaps shaded darker by the strongest and deeper reaction to what's happening in my life, but many-colored, shot through with strands of the blackest black and silver shining light. 

Maybe that's what my friend Charles was trying to tell me a few weeks ago.  He gave me the analogy of a stack of paint cans - or the dead folks he talks to regularly gave me this analogy, whichever you prefer.  He said that he could see the cans all toppling together and that it might seem like it was going to be a horrid big mess, but that in the end the colors would all turn out right.

Christmas and birthday, I've written about them before.  My favorite and least favorite time of year, simultaneously. 

Birthdays are, for most people, a time of celebration.  At least until you reach the age which you never thought you'd actually reach, the age you consider to be "old," and then they lose their luster...but that's not the crux of the matter for me.  Its the dichotomy presented by birth, a joyous occasion for most people, but not for everyone.  My birth wasn't something that was celebrated, my birthday was a day that brings back painful memories for at least one person that I know of, and for me it was the day that I lost a mother and a family, but unknowingly got a chance at a life much brighter than would have otherwise been possible.  Still, I cannot ignore the feeling of loss.  The loss of what never was, what never could have been.   I mourn the shadow birthmother, the one of my dreams who was perfect and loving in every way.  She didn't exist, really, but in the fertile imagination of my growing-up years, she was a real as I am.  So.  Joy and sadness.  Because I got that loving mother, I just had to wait a little bit for her, and then thirty or more years for events to unfold that allowed me to truly appreciate what an enormous break I managed to get.

Celebration and grief.  Joy and sorrow.  Forever entwined in every life.  The joy of talking to a dear friend on the phone and catching up on life; the sorrow of her terminal illness makes every conversatio more precious.  Finally really enjoying a relationship with a relative and realizing that the years left to have that bond with them are few.  The satisfaction of watching your child teach himself to read, early, comingled with the frustration and sometime hopelessness of knowing the struggles that lay ahead because of his particular issues.  The sweet piercing sensation you get when you look at your breathtakingly beautiful daughter; the tears you shed for her when someone at school whose opinion matters to her doesn't like her or treats her badly. 

Watching them grow and succeed and stumble and fall, all at the same time.  The utter beauty of this wrecking ball of emotions grabs me by the throat and will not let me go.  I am shattered to the core by the depth of feeling we are capable of; no surprise, then, that I spend much of my life doing 'busy things' to avoid that bottomless well of emotion.  Sometimes, though, I must remember to just sit and let the feelings come.  Embrace them in all their beauty and their ugliness.  Its what life is about.  Sometimes the feelings are all we have.

 

Someday when I know how

Someday when I know how to be a better parent...I'll be one.  I won't yell so much. I'll be more patient.  I'll stop folding the laundry and enjoy playing hot wheels with my son.  I'll let the bathrooms get worse than horrible and I'll make a snowman.  I'll worry less about making the bed and more about making cookies with my Amazon girl.

Someday when I know how to be a better friend I'll stop having anxiety attacks when people need to talk for a while and ignore all the other things I think I should be doing. I'll learn to listen better.  I'll learn to give more and take less. I'll stop worrying about what people need from me and start thinking about how I can be a better friend to them.

Someday when I know how to set better boundaries I'll stop living in fear, stop making exceptions and stop living a life that doesn't quite fit me.  I'll live honestly and lovingly, and that will include loving myself. I'll honor my intuition, and my self esteem won't be dependent on what others think of me.

Someday when I know how to be grateful I'll know how to thank everyone who has been there, who has listened, who has given.  When I know how to express my love and appreciation in ways that are meaningful, the people that I love will know just how much I really do...love them.  I'll remember to be thankful to my God for all that my life contains, even if its something I don't feel grateful about today.

Someday when I know how to relax, I'll stop fretting over the unwiped counters and the unswept floors, the dust bunnies under the oak hutch and the cobwebs in the chandelier.  I'll enjoy reading my book, enjoy relaxing with friends and family, enjoy a few minutes roughhousing with the dogs and just BE. 

Someday when I know how to open up, all those things that I've been holding in my heart, afraid of sharing because you would think I'm weak or silly or strange, they will pour out of my mouth and out of my fingers and you will know who I really, truly am.  And I won't be afraid of your reaction.

Someday I will know how to do these things.

Until then, I hope they know that I'm trying.

Its all something

I actually wrote this post several weeks ago.  Then my post about my junk-punching child was syndicated by BlogHer and then TodayMoms.  I forgot about it until I was trying to think of something coherent to blog about this morning.  Interestingly enough, it wasn't even about that event or even some other current events, but it seems to fit somehow.

 

I'm a fan of overused cliches.  "Its all good."  "It is what it is."  "You're entitled to your opinion."  "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."   They're the things we throw out when we either can't say how we really feel or don't care enough to have an opinion about something.

But that last one, that "don't say anything at all," that's the one I often am drawn to.  Maybe that's a byproduct of my generation's upbringing.  Maybe it means that despite the fact I'm often an opinionated, blunt, annoying pain in the ass, at heart I'm really a softie.  

I love LOVE the blogosphere.  I'm a social networking junkie.  I read a couple of handfuls of blogs at least a couple of times a week.  I have daily favorites and blogs I catch up on once a month or so.  I love to follow some of the controversies that explode in the Twitterverse between the A-listers.  There's such a cast of characters out here, and really, its high entertainment. 

Some blogs I read because the writing is so incredible.  The words on the screen evoke images and feelings and smells and pull childhood memories up from long-forgotten places.  These are my guilty pleasure blogs, the ones I just can't stay away from simply for the beauty. 

There are the bloggers who have special needs kids, who I read because we often live the same lives, deal with the day to day crazy that having these wonderful kids can be.  There are the bloggers who I started reading because of a circumstance in their life that drew me to them - a loss, illness, a challenge - and I keep reading because I want to know how they are doing, I want to see how their story unfolds. 

There are the people who question things, stir things up.  Get people talking - sometimes heatedly - on topics controversial or around this blogging world.

All of them - I love them.  I feel like I know them, just a little. 

One thing the internet invites is The Crazy.  Its constantly lurking out there, in people who don't blog but froth at the mouth in other people's comments, people who DO blog and whose posts and comments around those posts become unbelievably twisted and angry and horrifying. 

If you're someone I really care about, I"ll be as kind as I can with my words if I don't agree with something, but more often than not, if I read or see something that doesn't entirely click, I'll just leave it be.  Its not my job to tell people what to write, how to write, what to share, how to live their lives.  I enjoy as much as I can and for the most part, I leave the rest.

I have a few things I have opinions about.  One or two issues I have incredibly deep-seated issues about.  Things I'll gladly hoist myself on my own petard over.  But for the most part, in this crazy world of blogging, rarely do I see anything that I feel I must get so upset about that I would leave a comment or send an email to a blogger that was hateful or just outright crazy-mean. Or feel like I was somehow the person responsible for setting them straight.

Something about this strikes me as scary and unstable.  That there are people who have such deep-seated control issues that they think they have to control the internet, of all things.  That if someone has a differing opinion, they're either mean, or a horrible person, or somehow committing a crime.  

Its something I have no answer for.  Part of me wants to gently ask people if they might need to be taking better care of themselves, if they're getting help, because truly, being that angry and upset all the time just isn't healthy.   There are causes and there are causes -- there are things we tackle in this life because doing so makes a difference in a way that's meaningful and reasonable.  But how do we know the difference between pursuing justice in a way that's meaningful and just simply bashing ourselves against the wall in a meaningless display of frustration? 

****

Now, join hands and sing with me.  You know the words.  Kum-ba-ya, my Lord, Kumb-ba-ya....

 

 

 

Oh, by the way:  There are amazing things that happen on the internet, where all of us come together and do something important.  Yesterday, Jenny the Bloggess wrote a post with a giveaway of gift cards for people who were struggling financially around the holidays.  And you know, after the number of cards she had to give were gone?  A lot of people stepped in to keep the giving going.  And its still going.  Beautiful and amazing, and heartwarming.  Tear-worthy.  Go check it out.

 

How...lovely (sort of nsfw)

"Mommy, I made an angel for you!"

"Oh, baby, that's so nice.  How sweet."

"It has a picture of baby jesus on one side."

"That's wonderful, C."

"And the angel's on the other side.  Here you go, Mommy.  I love you, Mommy!"

"Thanks buddy.  She's...she's...ummmm..."  awkward silence.   "...are those boobs?"

"Uh-Huh!"

"Why is your angel naked?"

"She's not naked!  She's wearing pants!"

"I see."

"Pants!  And an invisible shirt!"

"Um, thanks C.  I really love it." 

"Uh, C?  Could you maybe not draw boobs anymore?  For a while?"  Til you're like, 30, maybe?

 

Because there will be plenty of time for boob pictures when he's NOT IN KINDERGARTEN.

 

Things worth doing

Emptying the dishwasher.

Folding the laundry.

Making lunches.

Sweeping floors.

Cleaning stalls.

Mending fence.

Mundane, ordinary tasks.  Things I think sometimes I'd rather not do, part and parcel of all that living my life entails. I resist, find a thousand reasons small and large to avoid them, but regardless of my procrastination, they remain.  Waiting for me patiently, for my hands to lift, fold, hold, tie, accomplish.

With my hands tethered to the task at hand, my mind is free to wander.  That's when I am reminded once more of the opportunity afforded me by these small chores.  This is time when my mind is not being distracted by the parenting, the work, the internet, the television.  This is time when I and my thoughts can drift quietly, considering, remembering, planning, absorbing. 

I hold imaginary conversations.  I carefully consider problems that need solving, and in the simple patterns of my chores, the bigger problems seem somehow easier to resolve than they did when I was embroiled in them. 

I have this time, too, to be in my feelings, to let them come without resistance.  They overhwelm me less, the motion and purpose of my tasks soothes me and comforts me.

And now, completing my chores, I am grateful for these small offerings.  The chance to engage my body and to send my thoughts inward.

My tasks accomplished, I view the results with satisfaction.   My world is a little straighter, something's fixed or completed and there is relief in the completion of the things that need doing.  I send my thoughts back out into the world, a little clearer and in some odd way, as cleared of the clutter as my physical environment.

And the next time I'm procrastinating over doing my chores I somehow know I'll forget the value in them until I'm forced to tackle them once again.  And once again I will find the meaning and the pattern of my life, and wonder once again why I was so unwilling to do so.

Back to normal...whatever THAT means

Life seems to have been fast-tracked lately, on all fronts.  In my line of work, the fourth quarter is the busiest time of year.  Right around the time the first babysitter quit, one of my employees found a really great job closer to home, and since she has small kids and wanted to less of a commute, she gave notice.  My other staff member and I have been frantically trying to stay on top of everything and not lose our minds.  Now add holiday stress, babysitter stress, trying to iron out one child's IEP and medications and then top it off with a nice coating of how my online life went insane last week, and what do you have?  A woman who is really enjoying her employee discount at the winery.

The new guy starts on Monday and the babysitting situation seems to be ironed out for now, my blog traffic has finally returned to normal and my kids don't seem to have noticed that their mom was dangerously close to imploding, so I suppose all is well.

Now we're back to the regular old chaos of life.  The kids are playing in their rooms, pausing every five minutes or so to fight about something, Roscoe is barking his head off at every Sunday walker that goes by the front window, the laundry needs doing, I lost my debit card, my car is overdue for an oil change and I still haven't done my Christmas cards.  Yes, life is back to normal.  Nice and quiet, just like I like it.

 

See?  Normal.

For the sake of posterity

Because this might never, ever happen again:

Never in a million years. 

 

 

And because the picture's fuzzy, that's my post.  Linked under Lifestyle news on the FRONT PAGE OF MSNBC.  Holy crap.  Pardon me while I go have a moment....