I just couldn't do it yesterday - it was too sudden, too soon, too much. And after the awful start to the morning, he seemed okay after we got home. Sort of. I felt rushed. The girls needed time to comprehend what was happening. I needed time to love on him just a little bit more.
The dog who had barely eaten in two days wolfed down the T-bone I grilled him, and gnawed on the bone off and on throughout the evening. Mostly he just lay on the pillows and blankets and yoga mats I'd laid out in the living room for him, breathing in a way that didn't quite sound right to me - too shallow, too raspy? - his body trembling the slightest bit with each rise and fall of his chest. We picked the girls up early and explained as best we could what was happening. I think they get it; we're reminding them to talk and ask questions and that it's okay to be happy and sad at the exact same time. When the sun came out, we all went out to the front yard and he meandered and sniffed and then went to lay under a tree. That was his favorite tree back in the day, back before we had a fence and he always went outside to the front yard on a tie-out - he liked to lay there and smell the air and watch the world go by. Friends came by to love on him one last time, to tell him what a good boy he's been - and to love on us, because they know how awful this is.
Eventually he decided he was ready for bed, I guess, and he went and lay in the middle of the floor in the girls' room. He would move from side to side, but was not interested in getting up for any reason for the rest of the night. We talked about how it would maybe be better if he just went to sleep and didn't wake up. Jimi and I stayed up listening to folk music that somehow was all about losing people you love and reminisced about our lives with him - all the crazy antics that drove us crazy and infuriated us back then - things we wish he could do again.
He had terrible separation anxiety in the beginning. He bent the bars of his kennel trying to escape it. He destroyed all of the blinds in our houses - the one we lived in when we got him, and the one we moved into the next year - trying to get to us when we'd leave for work. We took the best walks through the parks together, and he scared the kids because of his one blue eye and one brown eye. "Ghost eye," Jimi called it. He was always sweet and dopey, though. He was always the best boy.
He loved to explore, and I spent the first 4 years in this house chasing him through the neighborhood when he'd escape through a hole in the fence; once, there was a foot of snow on the ground and I was in slippers, until I lost a slipper. Then I was just in one slipper. Fucking dog. When we'd go to camp, I'd irritate the shit out of Karen because I was constantly yelling "FIIINN - AAAA - GAAANNN!", trying to find him after he'd wander off into the cornfield or around the corner to someone else's camp over and over again, coming back covered in something stinky and gross more often than not. Using a tie-out was a pain in the ass out there - he'd get wrapped around stuff or tangled up, and besides, what dog wants to be tied up out in the woods?
He loved to be with us. If we weren't here, he loved to be with our things. At first, when he was little, he'd love our things too much with his mouth - we lost a lot of shoes. Eventually, he just wanted to lay with our things. He'd make a pile, in the middle of our bed, of shoes and shirt that we'd worn most recently, and then he'd lay there. All day. Waiting for us to come home and scold him for making a pile of our things in the middle of our bed again. Nah, we never really scolded him for that - we'd scold him for the shoe he'd destroyed or the harness he'd cut through again with his scissor-like teeth or the bag of bread he'd shredded and eaten while laying on a pile of our things in the middle of our bed.
When G was born, we sent the little cap they first put on her head home with Stacy, who was keeping Finn for us. She gave it to him, and says he carried it around with him everywhere for the next few days, whimpering. When we came home, he watched over her constantly. When I'd sit in my spot on the couch and nurse her, he was there, right there next to us, with his head next to hers. He showed extraordinary patience with both of the girls, and was almost always exceedingly gentle with them. (He nipped at G one time, but she deserved it. We used it as a teaching moment to remind her to be kind to her puppy brother.)
He did an awesome job keeping our floors crumb-free, though he did contribute what I feel is probably more than his fair share of mess in the form of hairs shed.
He was the best boy.
I slept in the girls' room, so I could be close to him, in case he needed anything in the middle of the night. He didn't.
We got up late today, just before 7. G turned the light on and told him good morning and kissed his head - he thumped his tail a few times. I gave him a few minutes to wake up, then asked if he wanted to go outside. He got right up and headed for the door, more steady on his feet than he seemed yesterday. He went straight out the door, down the steps, into the yard. He peed, sniffed around a bit. Stood, sniffed the air. Then he came up the stairs and stopped, stood for a moment, then his back end started to wobble and he fell over on his side. I caught him and helped him down. He was panting, but not too heavily. He lay there for a few minutes before he was able to get up again, but he made it back inside on his own and lay down on his bed. He drank some water, seemed okay. Just okay. It was so obviously time.
We had to wait for the vet's office to open at 9. I cooked him another steak and he ate the parts I'd cut from the bone, but didn't have any interest in the bone itself. He drank some more water, rested his head.
I pulled the girls together and explained again what was going to happen. I told them to go tell him they love him, that he's been a great puppy brother. "Goodbye?" Geneva asked. "Yes, baby, goodbye," I answered.
We'd talked about taking the girls with us, about having someone keep them both, or just Cora, but in the end, I decided I wanted to do this on my own. The vet's office has tiny examining rooms, for one thing. And the chaos - I just wanted my boy to be able to go in peace, and when we come as a group we bring the chaos. Usually it's fine - this wasn't one of those situations, though. So Jimi said his goodbyes, the girls gave their last kisses and hugs and belly rubs, and I asked, "Hey Finn, wanna go for a ride?" He perked up, ears alert, and got up. He trotted across the living room, down the short hall, through the dining room and kitchen. He hesitated at the steps, but only for a moment, then he was down them, through the gate, sniffing in the yard. He didn't try to jump into the car, but he was waiting patiently for me to lift him into it. I opened all of the windows and we drove the short drive. There were lots of people in the small office already - I'd left him in the car to let them know we were here. After checking in, I went back out and let him down onto the ground to sniff - there are great smells for a dog in the parking lot of a vet's office, I imagine, and that's before you factor in the chicken place next door.
When they were ready for us, I carried him into the small room. They lifted him onto the table. I held his face and looked into his eyes and told him how much we loved him, how he's the best boy, how thankful we were that he was part of our family. It felt like he understood. He was not scared, he was not panicked, he was not stressed. As the medicine took effect, he lay down on the table, into my arms, and breathed a few last deep breaths, and then he was still. It was done. And it felt okay. Deeply sad, but okay.
That's how I feel. Deeply sad, but okay.
I'll miss that good boy. He was the sweetest boy.
Showing posts with label sad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sad. Show all posts
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Sunday, March 12, 2017
My new addiction.
I spend too much time reading the internet. Reading about things that don't directly impact me, or things that do, but they all have something in common - I can't do anything about any of it. Well, not much, at least. I'll meet with a group of women later today to bask in political conversation, in a place where we can yell and bitch and gnash our teeth and complain and cry and be aghast and angry and motivated, where it won't be a huge social faux paus to say things like "Who gives a shit how the soup is, our President is a Russian puppet!" We'll talk about how scared we are and how small we feel, how helpless and impotent. We'll talk about the things that scare us the most, the issues we feel need the most immediate attention - and then one of us will remind the rest that we ARE NOT ALONE. That I may be one person, but when I join my voice with theirs, we become a chorus, and there are choirs practicing this particular song all over our country today, right now. And we will feel less alone, and a little less afraid, a bit less weak, a smidge stronger. And we will start to write. We will each write a letter or a postcard to our representatives on each topic each woman identified as the one most important to her, and we will mail our choir song to the people whose job it is to listen to us sing...
And that makes me feel a little bit better. It doesn't feel like enough, and it isn't, not by a long shot, but it is what I can do today, while I also do the other stuff, the real stuff, the stuff I should be concerned with, the stuff I was concerned with before the political took over my brain...you know, the real stuff. Like loving my husband, loving my children. Raising them to be good people, teaching them to give a fuck about other people. Because that's what we do as parents, right? We try to teach our kids to be good people, to be compassionate. Be super smart and funny and awesome in every other way too, but from the get go, at the start, be a good person. That one thing is the most important.
I don't know how to balance. I don't know how to stay woke and not be deeply depressed and sad and angry. I don't know how to reconcile my love for my Trump-voting fellow humans at the same time I am vehemently hoping for the worst of his policies to have the worst impacts on his voters just as a big fat "WTF WERE YOU THINKING I TOLD YOU SO!" I am angry at the people who voted for him. I am angry at them for putting our country, our safety, our very freedom at risk. I am so angry - and not just on my own behalf. I am terrified for my children, and I am pissed at his voters for stealing a bright future from them. See? I can't balance. I'm all doom and gloom - as I see it, unless he's forced out of office quickly, and our Congress mostly replaced in 2018, we're fucked. Who needs clean air and water, anyhow? Who needs our rich history of welcoming immigrants with open arms? Who needs a respected leader believed to be ethical and moral? Who needs separation of church and state? Who needs educated citizenry?
I cannot compartmentalize, this shit leaches into my thoughts during every conversation. I could easily turn every exchange into a lecture about current events. I am not fun at parties anymore.
Every day I tell myself, "I'm just not going to go down the rabbit hole today, I'm not going to Twitter or Facebook or Reddit..." but I do, and I am like a fucking junkie, getting hits/new tweets/statuses every time I pull that page down to refresh, getting more enraged and outraged and indignant and shocked with each new blow dealt by digging journalists or overreaching strategic advisors...
My dad told me a few days after the election, "The United States has survived the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression...it has survived bigger things than Donald Trump." Sometimes, for a few moments, I'm able to step out of the noise in my head and look at it from thirty thousand feet, and I can see that he's right, and it makes me feel better. Sometimes I tell myself that I am a married white woman with a comfortable income living in a comfortable middle-class home, with plenty of food, access to affordable healthcare, with reliable transportation and two happy healthy little girls to raise - stay the fuck out of politics. Why do I care? Why can't I just bury my head in the sand like so many of my friends and not read the shit, not pay attention, pretend it isn't there? It's not like I am actively working to change anything - I haven't been to any rallies or protests or community events. I'm just reading shit on the internet and getting pissed off, occasionally releasing a little tension with a bitter tweet or facebook share. WHY?
When I'm driving alone, usually I'm trying to find the answers to all of these big issues we're facing - how do you convince people that insuring everyone is the only answer to our healthcare problems? How do we get people to stop being afraid of each other and realize we're all the same? How do we convert coal- and oil-industry workers into entrepreneurs in the renewable energy fields? I'm asking myself how I can be part of the solution. Sometimes the answer feels like the big obvious one - run for office if you want to make the laws. That feels way too scary and hard and like something that couldn't possibly be something I could be successful at, though, so I keep digging and thinking and trying to come up with something, anything. And then I remember that I can't even get a handle on my laundry situation, so I'm really wasting energy focusing on the wrong shit here.
I got up at 4:30 this morning, on a Sunday, so I could sit alone in the dark with my cup of hot tea (can't grind coffee beans at 4:30 if you want everyone else to stay asleep) and read Twitter and WP and Reuters and NYT in the quiet stillness, without interruption. I was going to sit here and bathe in the bad news, just splash all around in it. I'm glad I came here instead. I think this is probably better for my mental health.
And that makes me feel a little bit better. It doesn't feel like enough, and it isn't, not by a long shot, but it is what I can do today, while I also do the other stuff, the real stuff, the stuff I should be concerned with, the stuff I was concerned with before the political took over my brain...you know, the real stuff. Like loving my husband, loving my children. Raising them to be good people, teaching them to give a fuck about other people. Because that's what we do as parents, right? We try to teach our kids to be good people, to be compassionate. Be super smart and funny and awesome in every other way too, but from the get go, at the start, be a good person. That one thing is the most important.
I don't know how to balance. I don't know how to stay woke and not be deeply depressed and sad and angry. I don't know how to reconcile my love for my Trump-voting fellow humans at the same time I am vehemently hoping for the worst of his policies to have the worst impacts on his voters just as a big fat "WTF WERE YOU THINKING I TOLD YOU SO!" I am angry at the people who voted for him. I am angry at them for putting our country, our safety, our very freedom at risk. I am so angry - and not just on my own behalf. I am terrified for my children, and I am pissed at his voters for stealing a bright future from them. See? I can't balance. I'm all doom and gloom - as I see it, unless he's forced out of office quickly, and our Congress mostly replaced in 2018, we're fucked. Who needs clean air and water, anyhow? Who needs our rich history of welcoming immigrants with open arms? Who needs a respected leader believed to be ethical and moral? Who needs separation of church and state? Who needs educated citizenry?
I cannot compartmentalize, this shit leaches into my thoughts during every conversation. I could easily turn every exchange into a lecture about current events. I am not fun at parties anymore.
Every day I tell myself, "I'm just not going to go down the rabbit hole today, I'm not going to Twitter or Facebook or Reddit..." but I do, and I am like a fucking junkie, getting hits/new tweets/statuses every time I pull that page down to refresh, getting more enraged and outraged and indignant and shocked with each new blow dealt by digging journalists or overreaching strategic advisors...
My dad told me a few days after the election, "The United States has survived the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression...it has survived bigger things than Donald Trump." Sometimes, for a few moments, I'm able to step out of the noise in my head and look at it from thirty thousand feet, and I can see that he's right, and it makes me feel better. Sometimes I tell myself that I am a married white woman with a comfortable income living in a comfortable middle-class home, with plenty of food, access to affordable healthcare, with reliable transportation and two happy healthy little girls to raise - stay the fuck out of politics. Why do I care? Why can't I just bury my head in the sand like so many of my friends and not read the shit, not pay attention, pretend it isn't there? It's not like I am actively working to change anything - I haven't been to any rallies or protests or community events. I'm just reading shit on the internet and getting pissed off, occasionally releasing a little tension with a bitter tweet or facebook share. WHY?
When I'm driving alone, usually I'm trying to find the answers to all of these big issues we're facing - how do you convince people that insuring everyone is the only answer to our healthcare problems? How do we get people to stop being afraid of each other and realize we're all the same? How do we convert coal- and oil-industry workers into entrepreneurs in the renewable energy fields? I'm asking myself how I can be part of the solution. Sometimes the answer feels like the big obvious one - run for office if you want to make the laws. That feels way too scary and hard and like something that couldn't possibly be something I could be successful at, though, so I keep digging and thinking and trying to come up with something, anything. And then I remember that I can't even get a handle on my laundry situation, so I'm really wasting energy focusing on the wrong shit here.
I got up at 4:30 this morning, on a Sunday, so I could sit alone in the dark with my cup of hot tea (can't grind coffee beans at 4:30 if you want everyone else to stay asleep) and read Twitter and WP and Reuters and NYT in the quiet stillness, without interruption. I was going to sit here and bathe in the bad news, just splash all around in it. I'm glad I came here instead. I think this is probably better for my mental health.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Politics makes me sad. The world makes me sad.
I want to post something political, but I don't actually want to have a political conversation, I just want to convince everyone I know to not vote for one particular candidate, and we all know how super successful those facebook posts are, right? So I won't. I'm really terribly sick of this election; it is too scary to think too long about the potential outcomes. I skim over the articles I really want to click on because I know it'll just depress me more and I can't control a bit of it so why should I even give it any space in my head?
******
That being said - you're not going to vote for Donald Trump, are you?
I am a mother of daughters, two sweet little girls who I want to have every opportunity in this world I've brought them into. Therefore, I cannot vote Republican. It's a moral issue. Republicans, the ones who make the laws, at least, do not empower women. I will not vote for one, or for anyone who is pretending to be one.
I believe in science, from climate to reproduction - there are people who go to school for a long time to know a whole lot about that stuff. Republicans, the ones who makes the laws, at least, ignore these people in favor of religion and the alter of the almighty dollars. Therefore, I cannot vote Republican. It's a moral issue.
******
I said I don't want to talk politics, dammit.
There is so much awfulness in the world. Why do we allow ourselves to be inundated by it?
I'm going to practice keeping myself safe. I think it's going to require stepping away from the internet. Facebook, specifically. Maybe until the election is over? Maybe forever? Maybe for just the next hour?
I have to find a way to not worry about things I cannot control. Syria. Syrian refugees. This fucking shitstorm election. Cops killing brown people for being brown. Homeless people. Broke single mothers. Rich hating the poor. Men hating women. Women hating women. Me learning to hate people I used to respect because they're fucking sheep.
I need to not give the awfulness space in my mind. Andrea told me once, "If I can't do anything about it, I just do not give it any space in my thoughts." I cannot for the life of me figure out how in the fuck that works in actual daily life, but I have to figure it out. The sad seeps into everything.
I am at the top of my game - everything is going my way - and I'm not happy. I don't think it's because I'm doing anything wrong, or because I'm lacking something. I think it's all the noise. I think it's just too much sad and terrible and tragic and awful, and it gets into my brain and I can't shake it. I worry constantly about things I cannot control or fix or help, and I feel guilt and more worry because I cannot fix or help or control those things. Maybe I need a therapist. Hi, person reading my blog. Welcome to my most recent therapy session. Today I'm discussing my particular version of crazy.
******
I just want to make the world a happier place. A safer place. I just want us to all take care of each other. I don't understand why we're all so afraid of each other. We're all fighting the same battles, trudging through the same trenches. Why do we try to hold our neighbors down? Don't we all rise together?
I don't want this path we're on to be the legacy we're leaving for our children.
That last sentence sounds trite, but I have never written anything with more truth behind it.
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
The awfulness is just too much.
I just wanted to chill out for a few minutes, let my mind go numb as I scrolled through the bullshit fluff on Facebook and reddit. Except the horrors of the world popped up, a little baby, bloody, crying, thank goodness the sound didn't play. Syrian horrors. Oh God, those poor, poor people. What the fuck is wrong with the world that we allow things like this to happen?
Jimi gets frustrated with me. I think about it too deeply, I go down a rabbit hole of depressing that you can't logic your way out of. There's nothing he can say to make it better. It is awful and it is and it always has been and always will be and of course that's depressing as fuck because just think about it for a moment. Sure, war is in the Bible. I'm still mad about that time Jesus said there would always be poor people - couldn't God just fix that problem? So no forgiveness here, no understanding on my part. Why, if God so loved the world, would he let us tear ourselves apart and destroy each other? For the same reasons we have things like childhood cancer and pedophiles, I suppose. A just and loving God, you say, eh?
I want to go somewhere where things like this don't happen. We don't have bombs killing babies in the US, right? Oh. Wait. We do, don't we? We're not safe here, either. I mean, I guess technically, the bombings here are pretty rare. The police are way more dangerous. Especially if you're black, especially if you're a black male.
What I really want is for all of the killing to stop. That's all. I just want world peace. And enough food for everyone. And a safe place for everyone to sleep. And for everyone to have a best friend. That's all I need.
Jimi gets frustrated with me. I think about it too deeply, I go down a rabbit hole of depressing that you can't logic your way out of. There's nothing he can say to make it better. It is awful and it is and it always has been and always will be and of course that's depressing as fuck because just think about it for a moment. Sure, war is in the Bible. I'm still mad about that time Jesus said there would always be poor people - couldn't God just fix that problem? So no forgiveness here, no understanding on my part. Why, if God so loved the world, would he let us tear ourselves apart and destroy each other? For the same reasons we have things like childhood cancer and pedophiles, I suppose. A just and loving God, you say, eh?
I want to go somewhere where things like this don't happen. We don't have bombs killing babies in the US, right? Oh. Wait. We do, don't we? We're not safe here, either. I mean, I guess technically, the bombings here are pretty rare. The police are way more dangerous. Especially if you're black, especially if you're a black male.
What I really want is for all of the killing to stop. That's all. I just want world peace. And enough food for everyone. And a safe place for everyone to sleep. And for everyone to have a best friend. That's all I need.
Monday, December 17, 2012
30.5 - A Nightmare
My second appointment with the midwives. The nurse drew some blood and gave me a long stick with a brush to *ahem* insert, for a culture. She had me pee on a stick - it looked like a pregnancy test, but tested my beta/hcg numbers. I watched the numbers go up to 1000, then back down to zero, and I knew something was wrong. She gave me a pregnancy test to pee on, a square with a little circle in the corner that I was supposed to aim for. I peed on it and waited for the plus sign to come up in the middle - instead I got a weird line that looked like it may have been a plus sign one time, but the horizontal line was broken and misplaced. I was starting to panic. I went to the lobby and got my Mom - "Something's wrong, please come sit with me." The midwife came in with a doppler and put it to my belly and there was silence. "Are you sure you're pregnant?" she asked doubtfully. "Yes! I'm 30 weeks!" The tears started to fall, and suddenly I was having a hard time drawing breath. As the midwife readied the probe to do a vaginal ultrasound, I looked at my mom and started to cry. "The baby's dead, Momma. Oh Fuck. How could this happen? She's been moving! She was fine!" I was becoming hysterical. My world, my life, it was in shambles.
*************
When I woke up, I knew it was just a dream. Still, it took every ounce of restraint not to panic and become as hysterical as I'd been in my nightmare. I put my hand to my belly and felt the lump that is my daughter. I pushed on it, then again on the other side, trying to wake her up, urging her with every ounce of my being to move, just a little kick, sweetheart. She complied nearly immediately, and relief flooded through me. I lay there for a moment, trying to slow my racing heart, then got up for another trip to the restroom. When I made it back to bed, I tried to push the dream out of my mind - "It was just a nightmare, it's not real, she's fine," but I was too shaken to let it go that easily. I reached over and touched Jimi's shoulder, hoping that he'd already be awake. He wasn't. I considered leaving him be, but in the end I couldn't comfort myself. I spoke softly, "I had a really bad dream." He was awake immediately, and rolled over to me, asking if I was okay. I told him that the baby had died in my dream, and he shushed me, told me it was just a dream and it wasn't real and everything is okay. He pulled me to him as closely as my nest of pillows would allow, and kept his arm around me, kissing my head and whispering sweet words to make the tears go away. I was asleep again within minutes, onto another dream that was much less emotional and horrid.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
I wish I had a cherry pie.
Jimi came home a few months back with a set of books about John Carter - some fantasy series written in the early 1910s. Then there came the trailers and previews on TV; obviously, Jimi can predict Hollywood.
tosh.O is hilarious and offensive and horrible and awesome all at the same time. I feel like this describes Drunk Natalie a lot of the time, too, but not at all on the same plane. Unless someone wants to pay me for that shit.
Jimi's bowwowing with his amped up ukulele. Decipher that shit. Bowwowowowbowwooowwwowwwowowowowbow...
I feel an immediate desire to delete everything I post on Facebook, for fear that I've made myself sound like an idiot. I'm getting real close to feeling that way about my words here, but I'm working through it by writing the dumbest random shit that comes into my head. THIS IS ME. This is all I've got. Some days are better than others.
I feel like that a lot after social gatherings, too. The morning after a party inevitably begins with me waking and groggily piecing together the night before, focusing on my self-defined faux pas and social missteps and missed verbal cues and awkward statements and embarrassing interruptions of the general flow. I wake up after a party and wonder why anyone likes me at all, and then I'm ashamed until I remember something I did worse at a previous gathering that they've apparently forgiven me for and then I move on and avoid going out until I absolutely have to because it's been so long and when I see my friends again they tell me how much they miss me and how much they love it when I come out and I feel so awesome and good and I wonder why I don't go out more...
I just finished reading a very feminist book, and it's shifting my perceptions of the men around me. It's also made me furious with the Mormon church for their despicable anti-Equal Rights Amendment movement during the late 70s. (Picture Prop 8, but nationwide, and geared toward denying equal rights to women rather than homosexuals.) I look around and see the same battle for equality still being waged today, 30+ years later, and I'm shocked and ashamed and shaken to my very core. It's like all the things they taught me in school were complete bullshit.
Jimi's now using the ukulele to mimick Purina jingles. I was just starting to get riled up, and here he comes with that.
I'm getting close to 700 blog entries. Whoa. A lot of bloggers I read celebrate blog birthdays and such - I don't remember when I started this blog exactly - 2007, maybe? 2006? My original blog was one I started on LouisvilleMojo - I poured my heart out there for years. And then my ex-husband hacked that shit and deleted it all. I'm not even making that up. Anyhow, nearly 700 entries. I went back and found a cache of drafts from late December that reek of sad. Better to come across them on this side.
I used to blog a lot, about everything, all the time. And then I became conscious that other people are reading this sometimes, people I know in real life or may one day hope to meet. And it scared me for a minute, the fear that they would judge me based on what they read here - the highs, the lows, the bliss, the tragedy, the language, the judgements, the fears, the bitching, the politics, the opinions. Sometimes I post things and feel an immediate need to delete them for fear that I've made myself sound like an idiot, but I'm starting to remember that's perfectly fine. THIS IS ME. This is all I've got. Some days are better than others.
tosh.O is hilarious and offensive and horrible and awesome all at the same time. I feel like this describes Drunk Natalie a lot of the time, too, but not at all on the same plane. Unless someone wants to pay me for that shit.
Jimi's bowwowing with his amped up ukulele. Decipher that shit. Bowwowowowbowwooowwwowwwowowowowbow...
I feel an immediate desire to delete everything I post on Facebook, for fear that I've made myself sound like an idiot. I'm getting real close to feeling that way about my words here, but I'm working through it by writing the dumbest random shit that comes into my head. THIS IS ME. This is all I've got. Some days are better than others.
I feel like that a lot after social gatherings, too. The morning after a party inevitably begins with me waking and groggily piecing together the night before, focusing on my self-defined faux pas and social missteps and missed verbal cues and awkward statements and embarrassing interruptions of the general flow. I wake up after a party and wonder why anyone likes me at all, and then I'm ashamed until I remember something I did worse at a previous gathering that they've apparently forgiven me for and then I move on and avoid going out until I absolutely have to because it's been so long and when I see my friends again they tell me how much they miss me and how much they love it when I come out and I feel so awesome and good and I wonder why I don't go out more...
I just finished reading a very feminist book, and it's shifting my perceptions of the men around me. It's also made me furious with the Mormon church for their despicable anti-Equal Rights Amendment movement during the late 70s. (Picture Prop 8, but nationwide, and geared toward denying equal rights to women rather than homosexuals.) I look around and see the same battle for equality still being waged today, 30+ years later, and I'm shocked and ashamed and shaken to my very core. It's like all the things they taught me in school were complete bullshit.
Jimi's now using the ukulele to mimick Purina jingles. I was just starting to get riled up, and here he comes with that.
I'm getting close to 700 blog entries. Whoa. A lot of bloggers I read celebrate blog birthdays and such - I don't remember when I started this blog exactly - 2007, maybe? 2006? My original blog was one I started on LouisvilleMojo - I poured my heart out there for years. And then my ex-husband hacked that shit and deleted it all. I'm not even making that up. Anyhow, nearly 700 entries. I went back and found a cache of drafts from late December that reek of sad. Better to come across them on this side.
I used to blog a lot, about everything, all the time. And then I became conscious that other people are reading this sometimes, people I know in real life or may one day hope to meet. And it scared me for a minute, the fear that they would judge me based on what they read here - the highs, the lows, the bliss, the tragedy, the language, the judgements, the fears, the bitching, the politics, the opinions. Sometimes I post things and feel an immediate need to delete them for fear that I've made myself sound like an idiot, but I'm starting to remember that's perfectly fine. THIS IS ME. This is all I've got. Some days are better than others.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Aftermath
I didn't chicken out, and I didn't embarrass myself. Our meetings went well, and bossman set up my sales pitch for me, telling our customers how vital I am and what a good job I do and singing my praises. I wasn't pushy or forceful, and Jimi says I didn't close the deal, but I made my point and hopefully it was heard.
I'm sure you've heard about the tragedy in Southern Indiana due to Friday's crazy tornado weather. I was cut off from the weather reports all day - I knew we were expected to get storms, but we get storms all the time. No big deal. When I got home Friday night, about 7 o'clock, after having seen the damage we'd seen, the TV showed the real destruction. I knew my office had sent as many home early as possible; Jimi's office also sent everyone home several hours early. I really had no idea how serious it all was until well after it was all over.
Bossman and I were only 15 miles north of the hardest hit areas when that shit rolled through. One of our drivers was sitting in his rig at the Henryville, IN exit, stopped in traffic because the State Police had closed I-65, when the massive storm dropped softball sized hail and several tornadoes on the area; thankfully, though his truck needs some pretty extensive body repair work, he was uninjured - he said he nearly hid under his bunk, and I'm certain I would've. When bossman and I finally made it to that spot, two hours later, the temperature was 62 degrees and the hailstones were still the size of baseballs. I've never seen anything like it. Houses along the the interstate were pocked with holes from the hail that had treated their siding and windows as if they were flimsy like paper. A tractor trailer was on its side, draped along the guard rail as if it were ribbon. A trucking business, just off the exit, was reduced to rubble of lumber and siding, with a truck perched precariously on top, as if to mimic a cherry on a sundae. The devastation was amazing, and not even the tip of the iceberg - I'm stunned by the images I've seen coming out of those towns that were so horribly destroyed.
If we'd finished our appointment 15 minutes earlier...
It blows my mind sometimes how dramatically different one moment can be from the perspective of one person to the next. There's a book I got when I was 13 called A Day in the Life of America; it's a large glossy book of photos that were all taken on the same day by several dozen photographers in towns and homes and businesses across the United States. This photo shows a funeral, this one a wedding, this one the birth of a child, this one just another day the office. All different events, in different lives, all happening at the same time. Like Friday - I'm just cruising along, asking my boss for a raise, explaining to him why I deserve it. Fifteen miles due South, an entire family is wiped out of existence. The same moment in time.
A reminder of why we need to make the most of every moment? Try to not sweat the small stuff? Rejoice in even the most minor pleasures? Be thankful every day for the good things we do have? For me, at least.
I'm sure you've heard about the tragedy in Southern Indiana due to Friday's crazy tornado weather. I was cut off from the weather reports all day - I knew we were expected to get storms, but we get storms all the time. No big deal. When I got home Friday night, about 7 o'clock, after having seen the damage we'd seen, the TV showed the real destruction. I knew my office had sent as many home early as possible; Jimi's office also sent everyone home several hours early. I really had no idea how serious it all was until well after it was all over.
Bossman and I were only 15 miles north of the hardest hit areas when that shit rolled through. One of our drivers was sitting in his rig at the Henryville, IN exit, stopped in traffic because the State Police had closed I-65, when the massive storm dropped softball sized hail and several tornadoes on the area; thankfully, though his truck needs some pretty extensive body repair work, he was uninjured - he said he nearly hid under his bunk, and I'm certain I would've. When bossman and I finally made it to that spot, two hours later, the temperature was 62 degrees and the hailstones were still the size of baseballs. I've never seen anything like it. Houses along the the interstate were pocked with holes from the hail that had treated their siding and windows as if they were flimsy like paper. A tractor trailer was on its side, draped along the guard rail as if it were ribbon. A trucking business, just off the exit, was reduced to rubble of lumber and siding, with a truck perched precariously on top, as if to mimic a cherry on a sundae. The devastation was amazing, and not even the tip of the iceberg - I'm stunned by the images I've seen coming out of those towns that were so horribly destroyed.
If we'd finished our appointment 15 minutes earlier...
It blows my mind sometimes how dramatically different one moment can be from the perspective of one person to the next. There's a book I got when I was 13 called A Day in the Life of America; it's a large glossy book of photos that were all taken on the same day by several dozen photographers in towns and homes and businesses across the United States. This photo shows a funeral, this one a wedding, this one the birth of a child, this one just another day the office. All different events, in different lives, all happening at the same time. Like Friday - I'm just cruising along, asking my boss for a raise, explaining to him why I deserve it. Fifteen miles due South, an entire family is wiped out of existence. The same moment in time.
A reminder of why we need to make the most of every moment? Try to not sweat the small stuff? Rejoice in even the most minor pleasures? Be thankful every day for the good things we do have? For me, at least.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Bouncing up and fucking down.
It's like a weight has been lifted.
Sometimes you just need a good cometoJesus to release your soul, all the pent up sad and crazy and worry. I thought I was saying the right words before, but maybe I wasn't. "If we didn't have this talk tonight, if I didn't say these things to you, if you didn't propose within the next year, I would leave." I said it. That evil thing that was building in the back of my mind, that poison that was tainting my utopia. I said the words - the ones that needed to be said, "This is what I have to have to be happy. This is what I need. We have needs and wants in relationships, and this is what I need."
We came together, we drifted, we wandered far apart, but in the end, we met in the middle, with love and understanding, and we're back in the place we've always been. We're good. We're safe. All is right with the world.
I cried myself to sleep last night, sick in my heart with fear and sad. Tonight, I'm light like a feather, knowing we're good, having confirmation of that fact I knew in my heart but needed to know with my ears.
Tomorrow I'll spend several hours in the car with my boss. I'm feeling mighty brave and strong tonight, Friends. I have my power outfit planned and ready, down to the comfy no-line panties and the bright pink argyle socks. (Those are just for my particular comfort, for the record. I'm not planning to show our customers my panties or my socks. But you never know. My boss hired me because I showed him my socks during my interview...)
I need a raise. I've been stewing about it for months, and the time has come where I've just got to ask or I'm going to build up so much resentment that I'll grow to hate my job and I don't want to hate my job because as crazy as it is, I fucking love it there. I do. I get pissed off all the time and frustrated as hell, but I love it, and I don't want to go anywhere else. But I need to be compensated for the work I'm doing, and that's never going to happen if I don't make my needs known. See, in relationships, all relationships, we have needs, and we have wants. The fact is, for me to continue my happy relationship with my employer, I need to make more money. They want to make as much money as possible, I need to make enough money to play well when I'm not there making money for them.
Does any of this even make sense? I don't really care if it does. I'm pretty sure I'll understand it when I read it again tomorrow. A weight has been lifted. I'm feeling pretty fucking invincible. I'm going to make an ass out of myself tomorrow and I'll come back here tomorrow night crying about how I thought I had this but I really didn't.
No I won't.
I won't write again for days because I'll be all embarrassed and then I'll write about something totally dumb because I'll want to pretend I never wrote this entry.
And if I'm not engaged this time next year, I'll come back and delete this shit, too.
I read something the other day that said that in ten years we won't need resumes, we'll just use our online profiles when applying for jobs.
Fuck me, I hope I don't have to ever change jobs again.
Sometimes you just need a good cometoJesus to release your soul, all the pent up sad and crazy and worry. I thought I was saying the right words before, but maybe I wasn't. "If we didn't have this talk tonight, if I didn't say these things to you, if you didn't propose within the next year, I would leave." I said it. That evil thing that was building in the back of my mind, that poison that was tainting my utopia. I said the words - the ones that needed to be said, "This is what I have to have to be happy. This is what I need. We have needs and wants in relationships, and this is what I need."
We came together, we drifted, we wandered far apart, but in the end, we met in the middle, with love and understanding, and we're back in the place we've always been. We're good. We're safe. All is right with the world.
I cried myself to sleep last night, sick in my heart with fear and sad. Tonight, I'm light like a feather, knowing we're good, having confirmation of that fact I knew in my heart but needed to know with my ears.
Tomorrow I'll spend several hours in the car with my boss. I'm feeling mighty brave and strong tonight, Friends. I have my power outfit planned and ready, down to the comfy no-line panties and the bright pink argyle socks. (Those are just for my particular comfort, for the record. I'm not planning to show our customers my panties or my socks. But you never know. My boss hired me because I showed him my socks during my interview...)
I need a raise. I've been stewing about it for months, and the time has come where I've just got to ask or I'm going to build up so much resentment that I'll grow to hate my job and I don't want to hate my job because as crazy as it is, I fucking love it there. I do. I get pissed off all the time and frustrated as hell, but I love it, and I don't want to go anywhere else. But I need to be compensated for the work I'm doing, and that's never going to happen if I don't make my needs known. See, in relationships, all relationships, we have needs, and we have wants. The fact is, for me to continue my happy relationship with my employer, I need to make more money. They want to make as much money as possible, I need to make enough money to play well when I'm not there making money for them.
Does any of this even make sense? I don't really care if it does. I'm pretty sure I'll understand it when I read it again tomorrow. A weight has been lifted. I'm feeling pretty fucking invincible. I'm going to make an ass out of myself tomorrow and I'll come back here tomorrow night crying about how I thought I had this but I really didn't.
No I won't.
I won't write again for days because I'll be all embarrassed and then I'll write about something totally dumb because I'll want to pretend I never wrote this entry.
And if I'm not engaged this time next year, I'll come back and delete this shit, too.
I read something the other day that said that in ten years we won't need resumes, we'll just use our online profiles when applying for jobs.
Fuck me, I hope I don't have to ever change jobs again.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Brother
I was talking to Stacy one night about Brother, and the guilt that I carry with me for not being a better sister to him when he was small.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever forgive myself for the things I did, or didn't do, as a child.
(And then I realized that if I carry this much guilt, how must my Momma feel?)
Brother needs a job in a bad way. Brother has a past that is fighting against him, turning leads into dead ends and favors into smoke. Brother's trying, but his frustration is palpable, and I worry for him if someone doesn't give him a break soon.
We all need second chances. Third, fourth, fifth chances, some of us need.
Of course, when we talked, I said all the wrong things. I always do. I forget myself. I forget the lens through which he sees me. I wish he didn't think I had my shit together. I wish he didn't think I'm old and out of touch.
I wish I'd been a better friend to him when we were young.
He was upset when we hung up the phone yesterday, and he didn't call me back. Of course, I was in bed at 9:45; his night was probably just getting started. I am old and out of touch. His voice is what I heard before I went to bed last night and as I was becoming conscious this morning.
He could sure use some positive thoughts sent his way, or prayers sent up on his behalf. If you've got a moment today, would you spare it for him please?
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever forgive myself for the things I did, or didn't do, as a child.
(And then I realized that if I carry this much guilt, how must my Momma feel?)
Brother needs a job in a bad way. Brother has a past that is fighting against him, turning leads into dead ends and favors into smoke. Brother's trying, but his frustration is palpable, and I worry for him if someone doesn't give him a break soon.
We all need second chances. Third, fourth, fifth chances, some of us need.
Of course, when we talked, I said all the wrong things. I always do. I forget myself. I forget the lens through which he sees me. I wish he didn't think I had my shit together. I wish he didn't think I'm old and out of touch.
I wish I'd been a better friend to him when we were young.
He was upset when we hung up the phone yesterday, and he didn't call me back. Of course, I was in bed at 9:45; his night was probably just getting started. I am old and out of touch. His voice is what I heard before I went to bed last night and as I was becoming conscious this morning.
He could sure use some positive thoughts sent his way, or prayers sent up on his behalf. If you've got a moment today, would you spare it for him please?
Monday, February 27, 2012
Positive
I've heard recently that watching TV and/or staring at the computer screen right up until you go to bed can negatively impact your ability to sleep well. Last night, half an hour before bed, I turned off the TV, walked away from the laptop, and spent 15 minutes stretching and breathing deeply. I told myself I was going to sleep straight through the night, that if I woke up I would roll right back over and drift right back off to sleep. I told myself over and over again that I was going to get good sleep, that I'd awake feeling refreshed and be ready to start my day. I told myself that I'd have a good day today.
I slept nearly straight through. I know I woke a time or two, but I don't remember fighting for sleep to come back to me, the way I usually do between 2 and 5 a.m.
I keep telling myself that today is going to be a good day. I'm trying to not focus on my frustrations, but rather on the fact that they are temporary and passing and will not matter in a few hours.
Remember when that book "The Secret" was all the rage? SPOILER ALERT: The secret is that your thoughts become things. The power of positive thinking; it's not bullshit, it's fact.
When I have Teh Sad, positive thinking is the hardest thing in the world. How am I supposed to remember to be grateful for everything I've got when I'm so sad about everything I don't have? How am I supposed to go to work with a smile when all I'm thinking about is how unfair everything is?
I can be sad, and think those sad thoughts, or I can tell those sad thoughts to STFU and think about this happy shit over here for a while. The sad stuff is still around, but I'm going to put it in this cabinet over here until it's smaller and not so overwhelming.
The sun's out. I'm going to spend more time in it.
I slept nearly straight through. I know I woke a time or two, but I don't remember fighting for sleep to come back to me, the way I usually do between 2 and 5 a.m.
I keep telling myself that today is going to be a good day. I'm trying to not focus on my frustrations, but rather on the fact that they are temporary and passing and will not matter in a few hours.
Remember when that book "The Secret" was all the rage? SPOILER ALERT: The secret is that your thoughts become things. The power of positive thinking; it's not bullshit, it's fact.
When I have Teh Sad, positive thinking is the hardest thing in the world. How am I supposed to remember to be grateful for everything I've got when I'm so sad about everything I don't have? How am I supposed to go to work with a smile when all I'm thinking about is how unfair everything is?
I can be sad, and think those sad thoughts, or I can tell those sad thoughts to STFU and think about this happy shit over here for a while. The sad stuff is still around, but I'm going to put it in this cabinet over here until it's smaller and not so overwhelming.
The sun's out. I'm going to spend more time in it.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Dreaming reality
Blue skies and sunshine are dancing on a cold breeze outside my window - I want to go out and soak it all in, except that it's cold out there and I'm pretty warm and cozy right here, with my peppermint mocha coffee and my space heater and my yoga pants.
I dreamed last night that I had dead bamboo in vases all over my house. I didn't realize it was dead, though - someone came over, a stranger, and I saw my home through their eyes and then I spent the rest of their visit trying to use my body to shield their view of the dried up brown stalks. So I got up and cleaned the kitchen mess from where Jimi spent the day yesterday roasting tomatoes and peppers and making chili, and then I moved some furniture in the living room and vacuumed. And I really do have a stalk of dead bamboo in a vase, so I guess I'm going to throw that out today, too.
I dreamed also of my ex-husband, and it was a very realistic, very lifelike scene - it felt like I was in the room with him again, having that final conversation. His hair seemed shaggier, but the height of him, the gravity of him, it was right. I don't dream about Bob; there's very little from our marriage that I mourned when it was lost, and it's not uncommon for me now to go days or weeks without thinking of that period in my life. Last night, though, we were in that awkward place where we've called it quits but we're still together because it takes time to undo what you promised you'd make last forever. We were separating the details of our life together, tying up the final loose ends - and I wanted break-up sex. He turned me down, a few times, and my feelings were hurt in a way I remember so familiarly; he turned down sex a lot during our marriage. I asked, in my dream, if there was someone else - he said, "There wasn't before, but there is now." Oh. And then he was gone, and I was confused because I was sad and I missed him.
As I was waking, I focused on that confusion - what I remember mostly feeling when he told me he wanted out was relief. This wasn't going to be my life forever! I'd spent years walking on eggshells, not knowing what the right move would be to please him, to make him happy, to make him look at me in favor, to make him not say no and push me away when I moved in for a kiss or more. I was sad when my marriage ended, and I was scared of what that fact meant about me. But I was mostly relieved.
Six years later, and I'm realizing in my bad times, my dark cloudy days, I make Jimi walk on those same eggshells. I punish him for the madness inside my mind. I let him cajole and plead with me to cheer up and not let the small things ruin the whole day, but I turn my back to him and fall into my tears and think bad thoughts about him because because his efforts only make me feel worse because they don't make me feel better.
He never does that to me. I would hate it and be miserable if he did that to me. Why in the world am I being so fucking mean?
I may not be able to fully control the crazy in my head, but I can control the way I express it. I can control the way I treat others, even if I have to fake the funk to get through until I can be crazy by myself for a while.
I dreamed last night that I had dead bamboo in vases all over my house. I didn't realize it was dead, though - someone came over, a stranger, and I saw my home through their eyes and then I spent the rest of their visit trying to use my body to shield their view of the dried up brown stalks. So I got up and cleaned the kitchen mess from where Jimi spent the day yesterday roasting tomatoes and peppers and making chili, and then I moved some furniture in the living room and vacuumed. And I really do have a stalk of dead bamboo in a vase, so I guess I'm going to throw that out today, too.
I dreamed also of my ex-husband, and it was a very realistic, very lifelike scene - it felt like I was in the room with him again, having that final conversation. His hair seemed shaggier, but the height of him, the gravity of him, it was right. I don't dream about Bob; there's very little from our marriage that I mourned when it was lost, and it's not uncommon for me now to go days or weeks without thinking of that period in my life. Last night, though, we were in that awkward place where we've called it quits but we're still together because it takes time to undo what you promised you'd make last forever. We were separating the details of our life together, tying up the final loose ends - and I wanted break-up sex. He turned me down, a few times, and my feelings were hurt in a way I remember so familiarly; he turned down sex a lot during our marriage. I asked, in my dream, if there was someone else - he said, "There wasn't before, but there is now." Oh. And then he was gone, and I was confused because I was sad and I missed him.
As I was waking, I focused on that confusion - what I remember mostly feeling when he told me he wanted out was relief. This wasn't going to be my life forever! I'd spent years walking on eggshells, not knowing what the right move would be to please him, to make him happy, to make him look at me in favor, to make him not say no and push me away when I moved in for a kiss or more. I was sad when my marriage ended, and I was scared of what that fact meant about me. But I was mostly relieved.
Six years later, and I'm realizing in my bad times, my dark cloudy days, I make Jimi walk on those same eggshells. I punish him for the madness inside my mind. I let him cajole and plead with me to cheer up and not let the small things ruin the whole day, but I turn my back to him and fall into my tears and think bad thoughts about him because because his efforts only make me feel worse because they don't make me feel better.
He never does that to me. I would hate it and be miserable if he did that to me. Why in the world am I being so fucking mean?
I may not be able to fully control the crazy in my head, but I can control the way I express it. I can control the way I treat others, even if I have to fake the funk to get through until I can be crazy by myself for a while.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Sad
I don't notice how poorly I sleep until I have a night where I'm not up every hour, tossing and turning and glancing at the clock to see if I've been asleep for any real amount of time since the last time I glanced at the clock. When 7 a.m. rolls around and I haven't seen midnight, one, two, two thirty, three fifteen, three thirty, three fifty, four thirty, five o'clock...it's refreshing, and I wonder how much better I'd be if I could sleep every night.
When something unexpected and unpleasant happens to me, it feels usually as if a switch has been thrown. All my happy, all my smiles, all the sunshine - it's turned off and can't be turned back on without a reset. (Reset = brand new day.) Last night, it was a fountain Big Red, spilled into the floorboard of the drivers seat of my car. Switch flicked off. It was an accident, a mistake, completely unintentional, but it didn't matter - I was wearing Big Red and my floorboard was sopping wet and red and my night was ruined. My good mood was ruined. Even though we were headed to hang with friends, I couldn't climb out of my funk; we left after only an hour, and I'm sure I was miserable company.
I hate those moods. I hate that I force Jimi to walk on eggshells while he tries to feel out my mood and my boiling point. I hate that he tries so hard to pull me out of the quagmire of sad, but his efforts only make me sink further in. I hate that I don't have words to explain my feelings and thoughts because the only explanation is "I'm really sad and I don't know why because it's just soda."
I'm trying. I'm trying really hard.
When something unexpected and unpleasant happens to me, it feels usually as if a switch has been thrown. All my happy, all my smiles, all the sunshine - it's turned off and can't be turned back on without a reset. (Reset = brand new day.) Last night, it was a fountain Big Red, spilled into the floorboard of the drivers seat of my car. Switch flicked off. It was an accident, a mistake, completely unintentional, but it didn't matter - I was wearing Big Red and my floorboard was sopping wet and red and my night was ruined. My good mood was ruined. Even though we were headed to hang with friends, I couldn't climb out of my funk; we left after only an hour, and I'm sure I was miserable company.
I hate those moods. I hate that I force Jimi to walk on eggshells while he tries to feel out my mood and my boiling point. I hate that he tries so hard to pull me out of the quagmire of sad, but his efforts only make me sink further in. I hate that I don't have words to explain my feelings and thoughts because the only explanation is "I'm really sad and I don't know why because it's just soda."
I'm trying. I'm trying really hard.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
pretend this is my first post of 2012
GAH!
i just don't have any words, i guess. got nothing to say. not a thing.
i get locked up. i have all these thoughts inside my head, but when it comes to putting them here, in words, i get stuck. i can't say anything, and everything i try to say comes out all wrong and dumb and so i delete it or just flip back to facebook and pretend i didn't have anything i wanted to blog about anyhow.
which i don't, or i'd do it. i think.
i'm four days late and not pregnant. there's no way i can possibly convey how thoroughly this is fucking with my head. i thought i might have been, for a second. thought maybe our timing was right. maybe i'd be huge this summer. i had a dream, you see - there was a little fat baby boy in my living room under my love tree and in front of my fireplace at christmastime, and i was confused, because, of course, there's no baby. but then i turned (still dreaming), and i was facing myself in the mirror, and i had a realization: i'm pregnant, it's a boy, and his name is braden. it seemed crazy when i woke up (i'd never name my boy braden, unless i had turned out to be knocked up, in which case it would've seemed dangerous to name him something else), but it also gave me a niggling hope in the back of my mind. false hope, turns out, which is typical, but this four days late thing is mean and i hate it and i just want to get the fucking thing over with already.
and today my boss fired the dude who replaced the last guy who left - remember a few months ago when i was all "yay! opportunity!"? well, it's turned into a lot of extra work that's resulted in me feeling, again, like i suck at my job because i don't have enough time in a day to get it all done. i had these awesome plans to take us on an awesome vacation when i get my bonus this year, but i didn't accomplish any of my goals for the year, well maybe one, so the bonus i was counting on is right out the window and so's that awesome vacation. and what's the point anyhow, because when i'm on vacation, i still have to check emails and take phone calls and go into the office to do billing, so what's the fucking point? may as well just go to work. and now he's fired the guy who was taking up at least a little of the slack over there and joked "ready to do some more work?" ha ha. hi-fucking-larious. i'm terrified i'm going to end up laughing my way to the poor house when i quit or the nut hatch because i stay - actually, i've got insurance that covers mental breakdowns - and if it was work-induced, that'd be a worker's comp thing, right? hmm...
i shouldn't joke about mental illness, but i was feeling pretty good until i started writing all this shit that's been bothering me, and now i'm crying again. i think i've got the winter blues bad. i don't even have a real reason to be sad - boo hoo, poor me, i have this job with lots of responsibility and a steady income that i can spend however i wish because i don't have any kids that have to be diapered and put into daycare.
i am crazy, aren't i? fuck.
may as well throw it all out there - part of my dive into the sads was in part due to the fact that there was no proposal this past holiday season. i had that hope in the back of my head too, like the baby thing, whispering at me from the dark hidden corners of my mind where i force shit like that to go and live. i asked for a will for christmas, one that protects my interest in our home if he dies. i told him it was the only thing i wanted. when i learned it wasn't going to be under the tree, i allowed my dumbass to think, for a moment, that maybe he had something better planned? nope. he just didn't get around to getting a will made. fuck. he's not the type to disappoint me, but i was disappointed, and hurt, and very deeply sad.
this is getting borderline too personal, and for me to recognize that probably means i should stop writing about it.
so yeah. that's where my head has lived for the past week or so. while i was sick. at home. on "vacation", with no computer.
mostly. that's mostly where my head has lived. there's been good, too. like, i've taken finn for a walk every day this year, except monday because it was bitterly windy and cold and i just couldn't bring myself to do it. i haven't smoked since monday, either, which is awesome and GO ME! and i got on the scale the this morning and i'm down to 169 - that's the lowest number i've seen on a scale in, oh, i don't know, like 8 years? GO ME! i'm encouraged and feel like losing another 25 lbs maybe isn't impossible...i lost that much in 2011, i could do it again in 2012, right? and i know he loves me; he shows me every single day, in a hundred little and huge ways. and we spent new year's eve with angie at the chinese restaurant featuring a mix of mad men and jersey shore clientele and then shot off six bottle rockets in the front yard at midnight, and we spent new year's day with my momma at the flea market. and my house is pretty clean. and we did get the computer back. and i've got like 6 bottles of wine from trader joe's, and i can drink it all if i want because i ain't preggo. (but i won't, because i really do see a correlation between teh booze and teh fat. i lose more weight when i don't drink an extra 600 calories each night. duh.)
life is good. it is. it gets hard sometimes, and then i get sad, and then i come here to bitch and cry and whine and moan, and then i remember how good it is, even when it's hard.
happy new year, people who are awesome.
i just don't have any words, i guess. got nothing to say. not a thing.
i get locked up. i have all these thoughts inside my head, but when it comes to putting them here, in words, i get stuck. i can't say anything, and everything i try to say comes out all wrong and dumb and so i delete it or just flip back to facebook and pretend i didn't have anything i wanted to blog about anyhow.
which i don't, or i'd do it. i think.
i'm four days late and not pregnant. there's no way i can possibly convey how thoroughly this is fucking with my head. i thought i might have been, for a second. thought maybe our timing was right. maybe i'd be huge this summer. i had a dream, you see - there was a little fat baby boy in my living room under my love tree and in front of my fireplace at christmastime, and i was confused, because, of course, there's no baby. but then i turned (still dreaming), and i was facing myself in the mirror, and i had a realization: i'm pregnant, it's a boy, and his name is braden. it seemed crazy when i woke up (i'd never name my boy braden, unless i had turned out to be knocked up, in which case it would've seemed dangerous to name him something else), but it also gave me a niggling hope in the back of my mind. false hope, turns out, which is typical, but this four days late thing is mean and i hate it and i just want to get the fucking thing over with already.
and today my boss fired the dude who replaced the last guy who left - remember a few months ago when i was all "yay! opportunity!"? well, it's turned into a lot of extra work that's resulted in me feeling, again, like i suck at my job because i don't have enough time in a day to get it all done. i had these awesome plans to take us on an awesome vacation when i get my bonus this year, but i didn't accomplish any of my goals for the year, well maybe one, so the bonus i was counting on is right out the window and so's that awesome vacation. and what's the point anyhow, because when i'm on vacation, i still have to check emails and take phone calls and go into the office to do billing, so what's the fucking point? may as well just go to work. and now he's fired the guy who was taking up at least a little of the slack over there and joked "ready to do some more work?" ha ha. hi-fucking-larious. i'm terrified i'm going to end up laughing my way to the poor house when i quit or the nut hatch because i stay - actually, i've got insurance that covers mental breakdowns - and if it was work-induced, that'd be a worker's comp thing, right? hmm...
i shouldn't joke about mental illness, but i was feeling pretty good until i started writing all this shit that's been bothering me, and now i'm crying again. i think i've got the winter blues bad. i don't even have a real reason to be sad - boo hoo, poor me, i have this job with lots of responsibility and a steady income that i can spend however i wish because i don't have any kids that have to be diapered and put into daycare.
i am crazy, aren't i? fuck.
may as well throw it all out there - part of my dive into the sads was in part due to the fact that there was no proposal this past holiday season. i had that hope in the back of my head too, like the baby thing, whispering at me from the dark hidden corners of my mind where i force shit like that to go and live. i asked for a will for christmas, one that protects my interest in our home if he dies. i told him it was the only thing i wanted. when i learned it wasn't going to be under the tree, i allowed my dumbass to think, for a moment, that maybe he had something better planned? nope. he just didn't get around to getting a will made. fuck. he's not the type to disappoint me, but i was disappointed, and hurt, and very deeply sad.
this is getting borderline too personal, and for me to recognize that probably means i should stop writing about it.
so yeah. that's where my head has lived for the past week or so. while i was sick. at home. on "vacation", with no computer.
mostly. that's mostly where my head has lived. there's been good, too. like, i've taken finn for a walk every day this year, except monday because it was bitterly windy and cold and i just couldn't bring myself to do it. i haven't smoked since monday, either, which is awesome and GO ME! and i got on the scale the this morning and i'm down to 169 - that's the lowest number i've seen on a scale in, oh, i don't know, like 8 years? GO ME! i'm encouraged and feel like losing another 25 lbs maybe isn't impossible...i lost that much in 2011, i could do it again in 2012, right? and i know he loves me; he shows me every single day, in a hundred little and huge ways. and we spent new year's eve with angie at the chinese restaurant featuring a mix of mad men and jersey shore clientele and then shot off six bottle rockets in the front yard at midnight, and we spent new year's day with my momma at the flea market. and my house is pretty clean. and we did get the computer back. and i've got like 6 bottles of wine from trader joe's, and i can drink it all if i want because i ain't preggo. (but i won't, because i really do see a correlation between teh booze and teh fat. i lose more weight when i don't drink an extra 600 calories each night. duh.)
life is good. it is. it gets hard sometimes, and then i get sad, and then i come here to bitch and cry and whine and moan, and then i remember how good it is, even when it's hard.
happy new year, people who are awesome.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
For crying out loud...
One of these days, I won't have to lock myself in the bathroom and have a little cry when I learn a friend is expecting.
Right?
It's not all about YOU, Natalie.
The last time Jimi and I had a come-to-Jesus about fertility and pregnancy and potential parenthood, I explained my feelings toward Stacy these days - "I watch her rub her little baby bump and I'm so happy for her, I'm so glad they finally are getting the one thing they wanted so badly, but at the same time, I'm so jealous I can hardly see straight." It's true.
A few months back, a friend sent me a very kind message in response to one of my "omg what if i never get pregnant" posts and confessed she and her husband were trying to conceive, and that she was scared because nothing had happened yet. I was touched that she reached out to me on this very personal matter, (and flattered, as I always am, that someone is reading my blog - especially someone I know in real life!), and I offered her the sincerest words of encouragement. Today, she announced her pregnancy on Facebook. I gasped, "Ellen's pregnant" and Kim was all OMG until she realized I was talking about someone we know, not ELLEN. I'm so happy for my friend, I really am. I got a little teary-eyed, remembering our conversation, and how I'd just been thinking about her yesterday and wondering if they'd had any luck yet.
And then I got sad for myself and had to go to the bathroom and have a little cry. And then I felt like a complete asshole, because IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU, NATALIE.
Her happiness has nothing to do with me.
I hate that I made getting pregnant a New Year's resolution. I hate it so fucking hard.
I hate that I'm only saying that because it didn't happen for us this year.
I hate that I don't know if it'll ever happen. I hate that this shit makes me all sad and cry-y.
I don't want to care. I want to be completely fine if I never have a child. I want it to be okay.
I know it will be okay, no matter what, but I don't want to be so fucking scared of it.
I'm thrilled for my friend, I am.
But right this second, for reasons I can't explain or justify, I'm sad for me. I can't help it.
Right?
It's not all about YOU, Natalie.
The last time Jimi and I had a come-to-Jesus about fertility and pregnancy and potential parenthood, I explained my feelings toward Stacy these days - "I watch her rub her little baby bump and I'm so happy for her, I'm so glad they finally are getting the one thing they wanted so badly, but at the same time, I'm so jealous I can hardly see straight." It's true.
A few months back, a friend sent me a very kind message in response to one of my "omg what if i never get pregnant" posts and confessed she and her husband were trying to conceive, and that she was scared because nothing had happened yet. I was touched that she reached out to me on this very personal matter, (and flattered, as I always am, that someone is reading my blog - especially someone I know in real life!), and I offered her the sincerest words of encouragement. Today, she announced her pregnancy on Facebook. I gasped, "Ellen's pregnant" and Kim was all OMG until she realized I was talking about someone we know, not ELLEN. I'm so happy for my friend, I really am. I got a little teary-eyed, remembering our conversation, and how I'd just been thinking about her yesterday and wondering if they'd had any luck yet.
And then I got sad for myself and had to go to the bathroom and have a little cry. And then I felt like a complete asshole, because IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU, NATALIE.
Her happiness has nothing to do with me.
I hate that I made getting pregnant a New Year's resolution. I hate it so fucking hard.
I hate that I'm only saying that because it didn't happen for us this year.
I hate that I don't know if it'll ever happen. I hate that this shit makes me all sad and cry-y.
I don't want to care. I want to be completely fine if I never have a child. I want it to be okay.
I know it will be okay, no matter what, but I don't want to be so fucking scared of it.
I'm thrilled for my friend, I am.
But right this second, for reasons I can't explain or justify, I'm sad for me. I can't help it.
Monday, December 5, 2011
And then we came to the end...
I put on a good drunk Saturday night, could you tell?
I had gone to the Mexican joint up the road with Angie for margaritas and cheese dip (it was her birthday, it's not like I could pass up the opportunity), and when we got home, Jimi had picked up a case of cheap beer, and I was all PARTY ON!
I sat here at my laptop after Angie left, wearing earbuds and jamming out to Ben Harper and The Beatles and Allison Kruass. Jimi said the house was completely silent, except every now and then I'd blast out some lyrics, or do a drum solo on the coffee table. It was fun.
I was feeling all nostalgic and shit, the way I do when I've got a good buzz and too much brain time. I was thinking about how many awesome people I have in my life, and how lucky I am for that. I posted to Facebook:
I had gone to the Mexican joint up the road with Angie for margaritas and cheese dip (it was her birthday, it's not like I could pass up the opportunity), and when we got home, Jimi had picked up a case of cheap beer, and I was all PARTY ON!
I sat here at my laptop after Angie left, wearing earbuds and jamming out to Ben Harper and The Beatles and Allison Kruass. Jimi said the house was completely silent, except every now and then I'd blast out some lyrics, or do a drum solo on the coffee table. It was fun.
I was feeling all nostalgic and shit, the way I do when I've got a good buzz and too much brain time. I was thinking about how many awesome people I have in my life, and how lucky I am for that. I posted to Facebook:
Friday, November 18, 2011
Love always leads to heartbreak.
Last year, during the week I knew I was pregnant, there was a night when the smell of the litter box was really getting to me. I asked Jimi to clean it; he said he would, then went back to doing what he'd been doing before I'd asked. I'm sort of a bitch in that when I ask someone to do something, I sort of expect them to get up right that minute and go do it; Jimi makes me crazy, because he NEVER gets right up and gets on it. He asks me for a glass of water, I'm up and getting it before he finishes the last word in his request; I ask him for a glass of water, and 2 minutes later he's still sitting there so I just get up and do it myself. That was the way it went the night of the cat box, too. I asked, he acknowledged and didn't move, so I did it myself. Once he figured out that I wasn't waiting for him to get to it in his own time, he ran downstairs and took over for me, lecturing me on how I shouldn't be messing with cat shit blah blah blah. "Yeah, but I can't stand smelling it, either, and if you weren't going to clean it, then someone had to."
Fast forward over a year, to last week. That pregnancy is long gone, reduced to nothing more than a handful of shattered dreams and a line of demarcation in my life of "before" and "after". I think about it all the time, of course. Last week, I was explaining that to Jimi, how I can't make my brain turn off the baby switch, how I obsess with the idea of getting pregnant again but can't really picture life with a child, how I blame myself for the loss of a ball of cells that we already loved. "I blame myself too," he told me, and I looked at him through the tears I cry every time we talk on this subject. I was confused and surprised; he's never mentioned guilt before. "That night, with the litter box? I wonder if things would've been different if I'd just gotten up and done it when you asked me to. Maybe that caused something, you know?"
People write about heartbreak as a literal pain in their chest at the moment something tragic happens. I know that pain pretty good, I've felt it a few times - when I found out my first live-in boyfriend was cheating with a 17 year old mother, when my husband told me (over the phone, as I was driving to work, when he was 700 miles away) that he wanted a divorce, when my Momma told me (as I sat at the airport gate, waiting to catch my flight home to see her one last time) that my Granny had died. When I realized I was losing my baby. And then, when Jimi told me he thought it may have been his fault.
How could something so small, so brief, lead to all of this hurt, all these tears? If things had gone differently, would the end result have lead to an equal amount of happiness and laughter?
Fast forward over a year, to last week. That pregnancy is long gone, reduced to nothing more than a handful of shattered dreams and a line of demarcation in my life of "before" and "after". I think about it all the time, of course. Last week, I was explaining that to Jimi, how I can't make my brain turn off the baby switch, how I obsess with the idea of getting pregnant again but can't really picture life with a child, how I blame myself for the loss of a ball of cells that we already loved. "I blame myself too," he told me, and I looked at him through the tears I cry every time we talk on this subject. I was confused and surprised; he's never mentioned guilt before. "That night, with the litter box? I wonder if things would've been different if I'd just gotten up and done it when you asked me to. Maybe that caused something, you know?"
People write about heartbreak as a literal pain in their chest at the moment something tragic happens. I know that pain pretty good, I've felt it a few times - when I found out my first live-in boyfriend was cheating with a 17 year old mother, when my husband told me (over the phone, as I was driving to work, when he was 700 miles away) that he wanted a divorce, when my Momma told me (as I sat at the airport gate, waiting to catch my flight home to see her one last time) that my Granny had died. When I realized I was losing my baby. And then, when Jimi told me he thought it may have been his fault.
How could something so small, so brief, lead to all of this hurt, all these tears? If things had gone differently, would the end result have lead to an equal amount of happiness and laughter?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
My fingers threw up. All over the place. Sorry.
I got a new phone. I haven't even gotten to play with it much yet, I've been so busy tonight. Well. Busy is a relative term, I guess. I went to Melinda's to decorate our reception Crocs (more on that later), and then I came home for my hot date with Sookie and Eric and Bill and Niall. I've finished book 9...now I wait until Rick's finished with 10 so I can put the entire series to rest. And the raccoon is back in the attic. No, we never did anything about it this summer, and now he's back. Oh fucking boy.
I feel bad when I blog about religion - like I'm destined to offend someone. It's like how I want to blog about how I feel about some personal shit, but I can't because maybe those people will read my blog and then they'll know what I'm too chickenshit to say to them and they'll be mad at me so I don't blog it at all. Do I have to be that way with religion too? Even though I'm trying to work it out for myself?
There's a lot I don't say; mostly because it'd be too many words and I'm lazy as all get out. I get tired of trying to explain myself three paragraphs in...
I don't know where else to say the things I think sometimes.
My pee stinks. I haven't had asparagus lately; I wonder if it was the wine?
Oh, and that personal shit I don't blog about? It's not about you, Kim. Swear. Promise. It's not about Jimi, either. Or work. It's just stuff I want to blog about desperately but can't because I'm afraid I'll hurt someone's feelings...
I fucking hate it when bloggers do that shit, don't you? Gosh! Alright, here's the thing - not in my household, but there's a baby on the way and there's no money and there's a lack of a lob involved and maybe not a lot of job hunting? and I'm just really frustrated and worried. I can help some, but not enough, and I have reservations about some gestures... (Do you offer to pay the electric bill, or do you just invite them over extra for dinner to spare them that expense?)
I work in an industrial park near a college campus. There are street walkers, prostitutes, hookers (pick your moniker) that populate the area - lately I've come to notice a couple in particular. One was a lady I saw last week, and today, for the first time, I saw the hooker with the walker - the one my boss refers to every time I mention the hookers on 4th street. The hookers on 4th street are not attractive ladies; no no, rather, they're the picture in the dictionary next to "rode hard and put up wet". Everything about their face looks tired, and it's heartbreaking. They carry themselves with a certain manner - head down, eyes up, shoulders forced back, but you can tell they're faking the "I'm awesome" vibe they're trying to send. Their faces are weathered and worn and craggy with lines that tell stories that would give us nightmares. I can't see them without picturing, only for a moment, what they will be doing in an hour or two, what they've chosen as their craft, what they've been reduced to doing to make enough for a meal or two, or maybe the rent.
The woman with the walker, she's maybe 27 or 29, but she looks 50 from a distance. Her coat is blue, U of K blue, and it hangs, too big for her, down to her knees, the sleeves past her hands. Her pants are too big for her emaciated waist. Her face is full of those lines of which I spoke earlier - her eyes have a sort of vacant far-off look to them, but then, I've only seen her as I've driven past, and that was just a moment, even though I turned my eyes from the road to watch her as I passed. She doesn't use the walker in the traditional manner you've seen your grandpa use his; she shoves it ahead of her with her left hand, her right hand held out to her side to balance, and then pulls her feet forward, one at a time, slowly, very unsteadily, as if she's going to topple over at any moment. I wonder when I watch "why doesn't she use it as it's intended?" and then I know that if she did, it would block "the view".
I don't know how we know they're hookers - the neighborhood, they way they carry themselves, stories that've made their way into the office from the workers in the plant; they all paint the picture and once you lay eyes on these women, you can see it as clearly as if they were wearing signs advertising blow jobs for five dollars and straight sex for twenty-five. (I have no idea what their pricing structure is like; this is pure conjecture on my part. Insulting, I know. But maybe not. If you saw them, you'd know what I mean.)
My heart breaks for them. How did they end up there, on the corner of 4th and Central, stumbling along, willing to suck off any random dude with a stiff cock and a wrinkled bill? What in the fuck must've happened in their lives to land them here, abandoned to the men who find their love on street corners and in dark alleys? I almost hope it's drugs - if it's drugs, maybe they're still finding some joy at the end of their day. It's almost too awful to imagine it any other way.
I didn't mean to go off on a tangent about the hookers, I just can't seem to stop thinking about them today. One of my biggest fears in the world is being raped. I can't even watch rape scenes in movies - if I've ever come close to knowing what my friends who suffer from severe anxiety feel during a panic attack, it's how I felt when I watched that movie where those kids break into those rich peoples' house and make the mom take off her clothes in front of her husband and her kid and they're about to rape her...I had to leave the room. My heart felt like it'd blow up. My whole body was tense, and I was shaking with the fear and awfulness of the idea of that happening in reality, knowing it happens all too often, though obviously not quite like that. So yeah - what're the odds that those women have come to the point where they are without having suffered sexual trauma and abuse? That's what I think of every time I see them. And then my heart breaks all over again.
The Yellow Tail Riesling is really much better after you've had half a bottle. That first sip is a little sharp, but the 25th or so goes down quite nicely.
It's so late. It's getting easier to stay up later and harder to get up earlier - it has to be the season change. Right? Must force myself to get up early and walk the god. Dog. I know I fucked that up, but it made me lol, so I'm leafing it. That one too.
Maybe it's time for bed. OH! And plan on seeing much more of me, because as I said, I totally got a new phone and it's got a badass camera on it so I can take like real pictures and stuff and I can totally get on the internet and like twitter and shit. It's my first Android; I'm super excited.
Oh, and Dan, are you reading this? If you are, say "I love blueberry muffins".
I feel bad when I blog about religion - like I'm destined to offend someone. It's like how I want to blog about how I feel about some personal shit, but I can't because maybe those people will read my blog and then they'll know what I'm too chickenshit to say to them and they'll be mad at me so I don't blog it at all. Do I have to be that way with religion too? Even though I'm trying to work it out for myself?
There's a lot I don't say; mostly because it'd be too many words and I'm lazy as all get out. I get tired of trying to explain myself three paragraphs in...
I don't know where else to say the things I think sometimes.
My pee stinks. I haven't had asparagus lately; I wonder if it was the wine?
Oh, and that personal shit I don't blog about? It's not about you, Kim. Swear. Promise. It's not about Jimi, either. Or work. It's just stuff I want to blog about desperately but can't because I'm afraid I'll hurt someone's feelings...
I fucking hate it when bloggers do that shit, don't you? Gosh! Alright, here's the thing - not in my household, but there's a baby on the way and there's no money and there's a lack of a lob involved and maybe not a lot of job hunting? and I'm just really frustrated and worried. I can help some, but not enough, and I have reservations about some gestures... (Do you offer to pay the electric bill, or do you just invite them over extra for dinner to spare them that expense?)
I work in an industrial park near a college campus. There are street walkers, prostitutes, hookers (pick your moniker) that populate the area - lately I've come to notice a couple in particular. One was a lady I saw last week, and today, for the first time, I saw the hooker with the walker - the one my boss refers to every time I mention the hookers on 4th street. The hookers on 4th street are not attractive ladies; no no, rather, they're the picture in the dictionary next to "rode hard and put up wet". Everything about their face looks tired, and it's heartbreaking. They carry themselves with a certain manner - head down, eyes up, shoulders forced back, but you can tell they're faking the "I'm awesome" vibe they're trying to send. Their faces are weathered and worn and craggy with lines that tell stories that would give us nightmares. I can't see them without picturing, only for a moment, what they will be doing in an hour or two, what they've chosen as their craft, what they've been reduced to doing to make enough for a meal or two, or maybe the rent.
The woman with the walker, she's maybe 27 or 29, but she looks 50 from a distance. Her coat is blue, U of K blue, and it hangs, too big for her, down to her knees, the sleeves past her hands. Her pants are too big for her emaciated waist. Her face is full of those lines of which I spoke earlier - her eyes have a sort of vacant far-off look to them, but then, I've only seen her as I've driven past, and that was just a moment, even though I turned my eyes from the road to watch her as I passed. She doesn't use the walker in the traditional manner you've seen your grandpa use his; she shoves it ahead of her with her left hand, her right hand held out to her side to balance, and then pulls her feet forward, one at a time, slowly, very unsteadily, as if she's going to topple over at any moment. I wonder when I watch "why doesn't she use it as it's intended?" and then I know that if she did, it would block "the view".
I don't know how we know they're hookers - the neighborhood, they way they carry themselves, stories that've made their way into the office from the workers in the plant; they all paint the picture and once you lay eyes on these women, you can see it as clearly as if they were wearing signs advertising blow jobs for five dollars and straight sex for twenty-five. (I have no idea what their pricing structure is like; this is pure conjecture on my part. Insulting, I know. But maybe not. If you saw them, you'd know what I mean.)
My heart breaks for them. How did they end up there, on the corner of 4th and Central, stumbling along, willing to suck off any random dude with a stiff cock and a wrinkled bill? What in the fuck must've happened in their lives to land them here, abandoned to the men who find their love on street corners and in dark alleys? I almost hope it's drugs - if it's drugs, maybe they're still finding some joy at the end of their day. It's almost too awful to imagine it any other way.
I didn't mean to go off on a tangent about the hookers, I just can't seem to stop thinking about them today. One of my biggest fears in the world is being raped. I can't even watch rape scenes in movies - if I've ever come close to knowing what my friends who suffer from severe anxiety feel during a panic attack, it's how I felt when I watched that movie where those kids break into those rich peoples' house and make the mom take off her clothes in front of her husband and her kid and they're about to rape her...I had to leave the room. My heart felt like it'd blow up. My whole body was tense, and I was shaking with the fear and awfulness of the idea of that happening in reality, knowing it happens all too often, though obviously not quite like that. So yeah - what're the odds that those women have come to the point where they are without having suffered sexual trauma and abuse? That's what I think of every time I see them. And then my heart breaks all over again.
The Yellow Tail Riesling is really much better after you've had half a bottle. That first sip is a little sharp, but the 25th or so goes down quite nicely.
It's so late. It's getting easier to stay up later and harder to get up earlier - it has to be the season change. Right? Must force myself to get up early and walk the god. Dog. I know I fucked that up, but it made me lol, so I'm leafing it. That one too.
Maybe it's time for bed. OH! And plan on seeing much more of me, because as I said, I totally got a new phone and it's got a badass camera on it so I can take like real pictures and stuff and I can totally get on the internet and like twitter and shit. It's my first Android; I'm super excited.
Oh, and Dan, are you reading this? If you are, say "I love blueberry muffins".
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Tales from Ten Years Ago
The sky was clear and blue - the sort that makes you stop and take a good long look, a good deep breath. I don't remember what I wore, whether it was short-sleeved or long, and I don't remember what the temperature was outside. I remember that sky, though, and how beautiful it was.
I listened to Howard Stern on 100.5 The Fox on my drive to work, as I did every weekday morning. I would get mad and have to turn it off sometimes, particularly when he was spanking naked women with dead fish, but 85% of the time, Howard amused me. I pulled into the strip mall where our office was located and parked in one of our designated spots just before my assigned start time of 8 a.m.. I was 21 years old, and this was my first office job; I was a "Legal Coordinator" for a company that gave high-interest car loans to people with bad credit. My job was to skip trace the ones who didn't pay, then prepare the paperwork so we could sue them. I also handled all communication between our office and the attorneys who worked for us. I made $8 an hour and thought I was pretty awesome. (Except sometimes I'd be skip-tracing and come across a debtor whose credit report was 5 pages long, all full of medical bills due and owing to oncologists and clinics - my heart broke a little and I moved on to the next name on my list. Those people had enough to worry about without getting hassled by some loan shark.)
I'd been at my desk probably 30 minutes when our general manager came in with Starbuck's for everyone, and casually mentioned that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center. I, of course, was an expert on flying, seeing as how I was sort of on a break with the pilot I'd been dating for the last 10 months, and quickly listed off things that could've gone wrong causing that pilot to make such a terrible error. We didn't have a television in the office - we weren't aware that New York had the same clear-blue skies we were seeing in Kentucky that morning. We talked of weather conditions and instrument failures - and then the GM's wife called his cell phone and told him a second plane had struck the second tower.
"There's no way that was an accident," I stated the obvious, still the flying expert.
We still had no television. We all rushed to our computers, to CNN.com, to whatever web page we could find, desperate for information. Remember how slow the internet was ten years ago? My phone has faster load speeds now, and I compare it to dial-up on the regular. Not only was the internet slow on a good day, but on this day, with the world crashing to a halt, it was useless. Pages wouldn't load, websites were frozen, and the ones you could access had nothing to share other than that same image of both towers with gashes in them and smoke pouring out.
I don't remember when I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon, but my blood ran cold when the news reached me. Kat. Kat was in the Army, stationed near Washington, D.C. Was my friend safe? I typed out a hasty email - something to the effect of "I know you're probably busy, but please let me know you're okay as soon as you can." I heard back from her pretty quickly; she was on base, which was on lockdown, and she was safe. Sort of. If you call being huddled in a windowless room with your co-workers, scared for your life every time you hear a fighter jet overhead, safe. No one knew who was safe at that point.
I took a smoke break and went out to my car and turned on Howard. He was in New York, after all. There were dozens of reports of planes hijacked and missing; the world was in chaos. There was an order to ground all planes. The towers fell.
Bob. My ex-husband, Bob. He was my sort of on a break pilot boyfriend Bob, at the time. He was in the air somewhere, flying from Michigan to Indiana to Michigan. Was he safe?
Momma. I want my Momma. I called her, told her I needed a hug. I left the office and went to the grocery up the street. The driver of every car I passed looked shell-shocked. The world felt silent. The piped-in Musak in the grocery seemed to have been muffled somehow, as with a pillow. The strangers I met in the aisles all looked at me with the same pleading gaze I had on my face - we wanted desperately for someone to tell us this wasn't real, this wasn't true, this wasn't happening. Everyone was kind and gentle with one another - we were all very scared, we were all very vulnerable, and we were all very conscious that we all felt the same way.
I bought my lunch and went to Momma's office. It was the first time I saw images of the devastation, the first time I saw the planes hit, the first time I saw those buildings fall in on themselves. Momma's co-worker joined us for our meal, and we all held hands and prayed before we began eating. My food had no taste, my body had no appetite.
I went back to work. By now it was considered official that some assholes in the Middle East were responsible for this, and that meant gas prices were about to sky-rocket. My boss sent us each one at a time to the gas station up the road, where we waited in line for 45 minutes to fill our tanks for whatever the price was that day - $1.35 or some other unbelievably low number. We didn't work a full day.
The small suburb in which I grew up, Jeffersontown, hosts a festival every year called Gaslight. The county-fair-like rides are set up the Saturday before, then there's a parade on Thursday, and the festival kicks off at noon on Friday and goes through Sunday evening. On my drive home that afternoon, a sign on the edge of a ballfield announced that Thursday evening's parade was cancelled. It struck me as odd at first, but then I understood, and the enormity of what was happening rolled over me again.
The gas stations I passed on my way home displayed prices as high as $5.35. A year later, when the Gaslight Parade did happen, flyers were passed around, listing all of the stations that had raised their prices immediately after the attacks and publicly shaming them for gouging their fellow Americans. Most of those stations were out of business or under new ownership before the next year's parade.
Eventually I talked to Bob. He'd been forced to land in Ft. Wayne, IN and was staying at a motel across from the airport until the no-fly restrictions were lifted. He'd finally gotten in touch with his mother, and she'd driven to his apartment to rescue Jack, the Jack Russell/Rat-Terrier mix Bob and I had adopted "together" 6 months before. I later learned Bob, who had somehow managed to convince himself that he was really good at hiding from his parents the fact that he was a pack-a-day smoker, had left an ashtray out on his coffee table, and his mom had seen it. She said to him, "I'd rather you smoke marijuana than smoke cigarettes." Of course, that was convenient, seeing as how he was a pilot and all, and they are drug tested like every other week. Bob was stuck in Ft. Wayne for 3 days, without a change of clothes or underwear, without cash, without the ability to cook a meal, without a toothbrush. He washed his socks and boxers in the sink in his room; the hotel supplied missing toiletries; strangers made sure he ate.
I didn't watch much television coverage. My Momma was glued to the TV. I remember how proud I was of her when she called and donated $50 to the Red Cross.
I stood outside. It was so quiet. No planes. Very few cars - everyone who was able huddled in their homes with their loved-ones. I went to the bar. Commiserated with my other drunk friends. Tried to get a buzz, but couldn't. It was just too horrible.
We wore red, white, and blue for the rest of the week. I bought a magnetic American Flag and affixed it to my car trunk.
When the flying ban was lifted and Bob was able to get back to Michigan, he hopped in his truck and drove straight to my Mom & Dad's house. He arrived Friday afternoon, right after I got home from work, and told me to pack a bag and we went to a hotel for the night. The next day, he went through my phone and we fought because of a name he found there. He got on his knees in front of me and, with tears in his eyes, asked me to move to Michigan, to live with him, to share my life with him. I told him I would, but only if we married within a year. I moved to Michigan the next month, and married Bob at the beginning of the following summer.
I make rash decisions when I'm emotionally vulnerable.
It's hard to remember what the world was like before. I didn't fly commercial back then, so nearly all of my airport experiences have involved taking off my shoes and being randomly selected for additional screening. What were the major political talking points, if they haven't always been terrorists and wars? Did I really only pay $0.98 a gallon for gasoline?
And that's just my sheltered little life. When I try to imagine what this day must mean to women my age, living in a war-torn country on the other side of the world...how their lives surely have changed, because of something they did not cause and could not control and cannot stop...
I don't. I don't try to imagine it, because I'm terrified of it.
My TV is off today. I can't immerse myself in the awfulness.
Today, I'm making crock pot potato soup and laundry detergent and homemade Febreeze and dishwasher detergent. And I'm going to go visit my brother. And then Stacy's coming over for soup and I'm going to try this sopapilla cheesecake recipe I found on Pinterest for dessert.
Today, I'm going to spend my time doing things I enjoy with people I love. I'm not letting the terrorists win.
I listened to Howard Stern on 100.5 The Fox on my drive to work, as I did every weekday morning. I would get mad and have to turn it off sometimes, particularly when he was spanking naked women with dead fish, but 85% of the time, Howard amused me. I pulled into the strip mall where our office was located and parked in one of our designated spots just before my assigned start time of 8 a.m.. I was 21 years old, and this was my first office job; I was a "Legal Coordinator" for a company that gave high-interest car loans to people with bad credit. My job was to skip trace the ones who didn't pay, then prepare the paperwork so we could sue them. I also handled all communication between our office and the attorneys who worked for us. I made $8 an hour and thought I was pretty awesome. (Except sometimes I'd be skip-tracing and come across a debtor whose credit report was 5 pages long, all full of medical bills due and owing to oncologists and clinics - my heart broke a little and I moved on to the next name on my list. Those people had enough to worry about without getting hassled by some loan shark.)
I'd been at my desk probably 30 minutes when our general manager came in with Starbuck's for everyone, and casually mentioned that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center. I, of course, was an expert on flying, seeing as how I was sort of on a break with the pilot I'd been dating for the last 10 months, and quickly listed off things that could've gone wrong causing that pilot to make such a terrible error. We didn't have a television in the office - we weren't aware that New York had the same clear-blue skies we were seeing in Kentucky that morning. We talked of weather conditions and instrument failures - and then the GM's wife called his cell phone and told him a second plane had struck the second tower.
"There's no way that was an accident," I stated the obvious, still the flying expert.
We still had no television. We all rushed to our computers, to CNN.com, to whatever web page we could find, desperate for information. Remember how slow the internet was ten years ago? My phone has faster load speeds now, and I compare it to dial-up on the regular. Not only was the internet slow on a good day, but on this day, with the world crashing to a halt, it was useless. Pages wouldn't load, websites were frozen, and the ones you could access had nothing to share other than that same image of both towers with gashes in them and smoke pouring out.
I don't remember when I heard about the plane hitting the Pentagon, but my blood ran cold when the news reached me. Kat. Kat was in the Army, stationed near Washington, D.C. Was my friend safe? I typed out a hasty email - something to the effect of "I know you're probably busy, but please let me know you're okay as soon as you can." I heard back from her pretty quickly; she was on base, which was on lockdown, and she was safe. Sort of. If you call being huddled in a windowless room with your co-workers, scared for your life every time you hear a fighter jet overhead, safe. No one knew who was safe at that point.
I took a smoke break and went out to my car and turned on Howard. He was in New York, after all. There were dozens of reports of planes hijacked and missing; the world was in chaos. There was an order to ground all planes. The towers fell.
Bob. My ex-husband, Bob. He was my sort of on a break pilot boyfriend Bob, at the time. He was in the air somewhere, flying from Michigan to Indiana to Michigan. Was he safe?
Momma. I want my Momma. I called her, told her I needed a hug. I left the office and went to the grocery up the street. The driver of every car I passed looked shell-shocked. The world felt silent. The piped-in Musak in the grocery seemed to have been muffled somehow, as with a pillow. The strangers I met in the aisles all looked at me with the same pleading gaze I had on my face - we wanted desperately for someone to tell us this wasn't real, this wasn't true, this wasn't happening. Everyone was kind and gentle with one another - we were all very scared, we were all very vulnerable, and we were all very conscious that we all felt the same way.
I bought my lunch and went to Momma's office. It was the first time I saw images of the devastation, the first time I saw the planes hit, the first time I saw those buildings fall in on themselves. Momma's co-worker joined us for our meal, and we all held hands and prayed before we began eating. My food had no taste, my body had no appetite.
I went back to work. By now it was considered official that some assholes in the Middle East were responsible for this, and that meant gas prices were about to sky-rocket. My boss sent us each one at a time to the gas station up the road, where we waited in line for 45 minutes to fill our tanks for whatever the price was that day - $1.35 or some other unbelievably low number. We didn't work a full day.
The small suburb in which I grew up, Jeffersontown, hosts a festival every year called Gaslight. The county-fair-like rides are set up the Saturday before, then there's a parade on Thursday, and the festival kicks off at noon on Friday and goes through Sunday evening. On my drive home that afternoon, a sign on the edge of a ballfield announced that Thursday evening's parade was cancelled. It struck me as odd at first, but then I understood, and the enormity of what was happening rolled over me again.
The gas stations I passed on my way home displayed prices as high as $5.35. A year later, when the Gaslight Parade did happen, flyers were passed around, listing all of the stations that had raised their prices immediately after the attacks and publicly shaming them for gouging their fellow Americans. Most of those stations were out of business or under new ownership before the next year's parade.
Eventually I talked to Bob. He'd been forced to land in Ft. Wayne, IN and was staying at a motel across from the airport until the no-fly restrictions were lifted. He'd finally gotten in touch with his mother, and she'd driven to his apartment to rescue Jack, the Jack Russell/Rat-Terrier mix Bob and I had adopted "together" 6 months before. I later learned Bob, who had somehow managed to convince himself that he was really good at hiding from his parents the fact that he was a pack-a-day smoker, had left an ashtray out on his coffee table, and his mom had seen it. She said to him, "I'd rather you smoke marijuana than smoke cigarettes." Of course, that was convenient, seeing as how he was a pilot and all, and they are drug tested like every other week. Bob was stuck in Ft. Wayne for 3 days, without a change of clothes or underwear, without cash, without the ability to cook a meal, without a toothbrush. He washed his socks and boxers in the sink in his room; the hotel supplied missing toiletries; strangers made sure he ate.
I didn't watch much television coverage. My Momma was glued to the TV. I remember how proud I was of her when she called and donated $50 to the Red Cross.
I stood outside. It was so quiet. No planes. Very few cars - everyone who was able huddled in their homes with their loved-ones. I went to the bar. Commiserated with my other drunk friends. Tried to get a buzz, but couldn't. It was just too horrible.
We wore red, white, and blue for the rest of the week. I bought a magnetic American Flag and affixed it to my car trunk.
When the flying ban was lifted and Bob was able to get back to Michigan, he hopped in his truck and drove straight to my Mom & Dad's house. He arrived Friday afternoon, right after I got home from work, and told me to pack a bag and we went to a hotel for the night. The next day, he went through my phone and we fought because of a name he found there. He got on his knees in front of me and, with tears in his eyes, asked me to move to Michigan, to live with him, to share my life with him. I told him I would, but only if we married within a year. I moved to Michigan the next month, and married Bob at the beginning of the following summer.
I make rash decisions when I'm emotionally vulnerable.
It's hard to remember what the world was like before. I didn't fly commercial back then, so nearly all of my airport experiences have involved taking off my shoes and being randomly selected for additional screening. What were the major political talking points, if they haven't always been terrorists and wars? Did I really only pay $0.98 a gallon for gasoline?
And that's just my sheltered little life. When I try to imagine what this day must mean to women my age, living in a war-torn country on the other side of the world...how their lives surely have changed, because of something they did not cause and could not control and cannot stop...
I don't. I don't try to imagine it, because I'm terrified of it.
My TV is off today. I can't immerse myself in the awfulness.
Today, I'm making crock pot potato soup and laundry detergent and homemade Febreeze and dishwasher detergent. And I'm going to go visit my brother. And then Stacy's coming over for soup and I'm going to try this sopapilla cheesecake recipe I found on Pinterest for dessert.
Today, I'm going to spend my time doing things I enjoy with people I love. I'm not letting the terrorists win.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Fucking work.
There was a time in my life where, if I'd had the sort of morning I've had today, I would've walked out of the office and never come back. (Except maybe to pick up my last paycheck.)
I've grown up since then, become an adult. Responsible thoughts like "What about health insurance?" and "But you don't have a week's pay held back - if you leave today, there's no more money coming after your vacation pay" keep me from walking out and completely fucking up my financial peace.
Oh, but in my heart - in my heart I'd love to make a grand exit complete with lots of yelling and "fuck you!"s.
That's not completely true. In my heart, I'd like for people to stop attacking me and treating me like I'm an asshole when I try to come up with solutions to the problems we face. In my heart, I'd like to be able to ask a question and get a straight answer. In my heart, I'd like to be able to discuss complicated situtations like professional adults, rather than listen to yelling or attitude or bitchiness.
I'm losing hope that the things I want are possible. I'm realizing that it is time to drum up a new resume and start to put some feelers out there. I'm realizing that the perks of my job aren't necessarily worth the cost of my sanity.
But I'll be a grown-up about it. I'll do the right thing. Not because it makes me feel better or because it's the right thing to do, but because I can't afford to go out any other way.
I've grown up since then, become an adult. Responsible thoughts like "What about health insurance?" and "But you don't have a week's pay held back - if you leave today, there's no more money coming after your vacation pay" keep me from walking out and completely fucking up my financial peace.
Oh, but in my heart - in my heart I'd love to make a grand exit complete with lots of yelling and "fuck you!"s.
That's not completely true. In my heart, I'd like for people to stop attacking me and treating me like I'm an asshole when I try to come up with solutions to the problems we face. In my heart, I'd like to be able to ask a question and get a straight answer. In my heart, I'd like to be able to discuss complicated situtations like professional adults, rather than listen to yelling or attitude or bitchiness.
I'm losing hope that the things I want are possible. I'm realizing that it is time to drum up a new resume and start to put some feelers out there. I'm realizing that the perks of my job aren't necessarily worth the cost of my sanity.
But I'll be a grown-up about it. I'll do the right thing. Not because it makes me feel better or because it's the right thing to do, but because I can't afford to go out any other way.
Friday, September 2, 2011
It's just a bottle of pills.
I bought a bottle of prenatal vitamins about a year ago, the day I peed on a stick and it showed two lines. I was so excited. I bought a pregnancy book, too, which promptly scared the shit out of me and was banished to my bookcase. (Who knew ham was bad? Holy crap!)
My surprise only stuck around for a week, and then a week after that it was all over; my life was back to "normal".
I banished the prenatals for a couple months, then my hormones went into overdrive and I could think of nothing but getting pregnant again; I dug them out of the closet and started taking them nightly, so I would be prepared, covered, all set when the next set of double lines appeared.
It's been almost a year; the vitamin bottle is empty, the book has been passed to my pregnant sister/cousin, and if peed on a stick right now, there would only be one line.
I think I'm okay with it all, with the way everything has played out. I'd say "no big deal", but then I'd have to ascribe another cause to these tears welling up.
I thought I'd be a mom by now. I really did. I thought for sure nothing would go wrong and everything would be perfect. When things went wrong, I was shocked. How cruel reality can be.
Then I was going to be pregnant by Christmas. When that didn't happen, I thought, "Surely by summer." It's September.
I'm accepting that maybe "parents" isn't a title we're destined to claim. As I type those words, I'm thinking in the back of my mind, "but I'm only 31. Lots of women have babies at 32, 33, 34..."
Getting pregnant is something I always thought I'd be able to do whenever I decided I was ready to do it. Even now, I still hold this little thought that says, "If I bought some of those ovulation predictor things, or charted my temperature; if I really TRIED, I'd be successful." Maybe it's true. The fear that maybe it's not is what keeps me from taking those steps.
I thought we'd be parents by now. I thought for sure it was our reality.
I believe things come to you when you're ready for them; that the universe has a way of putting people, places, things in your life at precisely the right moments, just when you need them, or maybe not until you're able to cope with them. I hope it's just not our turn yet, not our time. I fear it may never be our turn, but maybe there's something different, better out there for us. The not knowing is the hardest part; I feel like I could accept the answer either way, if only I could just know what it is.
My surprise only stuck around for a week, and then a week after that it was all over; my life was back to "normal".
I banished the prenatals for a couple months, then my hormones went into overdrive and I could think of nothing but getting pregnant again; I dug them out of the closet and started taking them nightly, so I would be prepared, covered, all set when the next set of double lines appeared.
It's been almost a year; the vitamin bottle is empty, the book has been passed to my pregnant sister/cousin, and if peed on a stick right now, there would only be one line.
I think I'm okay with it all, with the way everything has played out. I'd say "no big deal", but then I'd have to ascribe another cause to these tears welling up.
I thought I'd be a mom by now. I really did. I thought for sure nothing would go wrong and everything would be perfect. When things went wrong, I was shocked. How cruel reality can be.
Then I was going to be pregnant by Christmas. When that didn't happen, I thought, "Surely by summer." It's September.
I'm accepting that maybe "parents" isn't a title we're destined to claim. As I type those words, I'm thinking in the back of my mind, "but I'm only 31. Lots of women have babies at 32, 33, 34..."
Getting pregnant is something I always thought I'd be able to do whenever I decided I was ready to do it. Even now, I still hold this little thought that says, "If I bought some of those ovulation predictor things, or charted my temperature; if I really TRIED, I'd be successful." Maybe it's true. The fear that maybe it's not is what keeps me from taking those steps.
I thought we'd be parents by now. I thought for sure it was our reality.
I believe things come to you when you're ready for them; that the universe has a way of putting people, places, things in your life at precisely the right moments, just when you need them, or maybe not until you're able to cope with them. I hope it's just not our turn yet, not our time. I fear it may never be our turn, but maybe there's something different, better out there for us. The not knowing is the hardest part; I feel like I could accept the answer either way, if only I could just know what it is.
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