I'm not a crybaby, I'm passionate.

How often do you cry at work? 

I'm a crier; I cry at weddings, at funerals, at baby showers, during sappy movies, during a sappy scene in a bloody movie, in response to a particularly warm jewelry commercial, when a baby is born on TLC's A Baby Story.  I cry when I laugh really hard, I cry when I'm super happy.  I cry sometimes because I'm bored, literally, to tears. 

But at work?  You're not supposed to cry at work.  It's like baseball.

I cry at work all the time.  It's gotten better - we're down to maybe 3 times a month; when I was promoted to this position in May of 2008, I cried daily for the first 6 months.  Not because anyone was mean to me (well, not EVERY time at least), or because anyone called me names or because someone yelled at me - this isn't that sort of environment or that sort of place.  I cry because I'm frustrated.  I cry because no one seems to take things as seriously as I do.  I cry because it feels, a lot of the time, like I'm banging my head against the wall.  That's my excuse, at least.  That's my reasoning. 

The truth is, I'm emotional and I have a hard time holding those tears back, even though crying at work is the absolute last thing I want to do.  I'll feel them coming on and I'll will them to stay back, but they ignore my wants and spill over anyhow.  I'll be trying so hard to look and act the part I've been picked to play, but my eyes will start leaking and betray me.  My boss is used to it - I don't even feel embarrassed or awkward when I trickle all over myself in front of him anymore.  I try to keep it hidden from my non-office co-workers; they're not the sort that cry at work or the sort to understand and tolerate well when they've got a crybaby in their midst. 

The Boss keeps reminding me that I need to "pause when agitated", "take a deep breath", "don't react with your emotions".  He's right.  Oh, but it's SO hard!  I tell him this, and he says "Try harder".  Okay, boss.  I'll try harder to not care so much, to not be so passionate about my work.  I'll try harder.  :)

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's off to the Farmer's Market I Go...

I went to the Farmer's Market with Angie yesterday.  She facebook-messaged me out of the blue Friday afternoon and so we made a date for 8 a.m. Saturday.  I'd never been to a farmer's market before - it was everything I dreamed of and more.  I expected the potatoes and squash and the free-range eggs and maybe even the apples, but I was pleasantly surprised by the turnips and cabbage and carrots and pork and chicken and beef and cheese...oh, the cheese!

I'd planned on taking $20 from the ATM, but I followed Angie's lead and pulled $60 instead. I'm pretty sure Angie went home with nearly $20; I have a single, solitary dollar bill left in my wallet.  I don't care, though; I got a hell of a bounty:

one pound of chorizo sausage
a dozen farm-fresh, free-range jumbo eggs
two turnips
two pounds new red potatoes
three bulbs of garlic
a head of cabbage
a bunch of carrots
a round of fresh goat cheese
a wedge each of brie, aged cheddar, and smoked gouda
And a bigass bone for Finn-dog

The cheeses were the most expensive, of course, but man, I love cheese.  Cheese is my favorite.

They gather every Saturday, and next on my shopping list will be beef, bacon, mushrooms, and local honey.  (Local honey can help prevent allergies - have you heard that?  I'd like to test the theory.)  And this is just the winter harvest!  I can only imagine what next summer will bring.

This makes my inner hippie so happy.

I'm a bitch.

It's not easy to write about being a bitch.  I want to have this thing as a place I can record all my crazy, even the sort that puts me in a not-so-good light, but it's not easy to write things that I know make me ugly.

Our good friend and former roommate called with news Friday night.  She's 28 weeks pregnant.  Allow me to take this moment to remind you that she just found out she's pregnant like 2 weeks ago; we'd thought she was maybe 20 weeks.  PANIC.  7 months without prenatal care, 7 months without vitamins, 7 months without watching her diet, 7 months without abstaining from all those poisons we put in our bodies - be it alcohol or Ibuprofen.

But her baby, thank goodness, is healthy and right on track to make an appearance in late February.  And it's a Girl!

And I am jealous as hell, and I can't make it stop.

I'm happy for her, please don't misunderstand that.  I'm scared for her and excited for her and hopeful for her.

But I want what she has and it makes my heart hurt if I think about it too much.

I keep telling myself that it will come to us, all in good time.  I remind myself that I don't want to experience a third trimester in the humid, sweltering, Ohio Valley summer (which is what would happen if I got pregnant now).  I say, "Well, I want to be able to canoe in May, and I can't do that if I'm pregnant."  I list all my blessings (see: previous entry re: my ridiculous jealousy), I remind myself that I already have so much, I remember that I don't need anything more in my life to be happy.

Oh, but I want, I want, I want.

I've got to get over this.  I've got to stop coveting things that aren't mine.  I've got to stop feeling as though I've been cheated by the Universe.  I've got to accept that life goes on, and that the pregnancies of others are not a direct attack on me or the Universe's way of punishing me; they have nothing to do with me.  Successful, happy pregnancies are the way it's supposed to be, and one day it will be my turn too.

I think the biggest contributing factor to my insanity is the fear that something will be wrong; I'll have scarred tubes or Jimi's sperm count will be low or my womb will turn out to be an inhospitable wasteland.  If I could just have some reassurance that yes, one day it WILL be our turn, then maybe I'd not freak out so much and turn quite so green every time someone announces a pregnancy or birth or first birthday party.  It's the fear that that one pregnancy was a one-time fluke that never should've happened; that we'll fall into the world of infertility...and, well, that scares the shit out of me.

I hate the way I sound.  I hate complaining and whining and bitching.  I had one miscarriage, after an unplanned, unexpected pregnancy, and now it feels like my desire to have a baby is consuming me.  I can't write this without feeling like an asshole; I read blogs every day written by women who have lived my worse fears - learning they'll never carry a pregnancy to term, or having miscarriage after miscarriage, or trying for months and months and months with no results and no financial means to seek medical advice.  I know this shouldn't invalidate my feelings or my concerns, but it certainly makes me feel a little melodramatic.

But I can't help the way I feel.  And until I get pregnant again, until I hear that baby's heartbeat, until I see its image on the ultrasound screen, until I give birth to a perfect little blend of me and Jimi, I'm probably going to keep feeling this way every time someone announces a pregnancy, a birth, a first birthday.  But I promise, I'm trying to get better at hiding it.  I'm trying so hard.

Love, and things like it.

Do most people have fights with their partners that involve yelling, name-calling, screaming, throwing things, breaking things, scratching, choking, hitting, punching, biting?

Is that how most of you handle disagreements in your home?  Is that how you deal with someone not giving up the remote control or refusing to stop drinking or not emptying the dishwasher or lying about a secret fling on the side or spending too much money or not having enough money?

I was in a relationship like that once.  It's soul-crushing.  I blame my willingness to tolerate such horror on my young age and ignorance.  The ignorance plea doesn't fly, though - I was raised in a home with two parents who love and adore each other, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard them raise their voices to one another.  Physical abuse?  Forgetaboutit.  My father would rather cut off his own arms, and my mother has far too much class to resort to raising her hands.

But it's everywhere.  It's all around us and we don't even see it.  People are hurt every day by the people they love most in the world.  The one who is supposed to love them unconditionally cuts them down with hateful words and mean glares and cruel actions.  That's not love.

Love is a building up of one another.  Love is support and safety and security.  Love is a mutual give and take that comes from two people being kind, keeping confidences, helping, giving.  Love is rolling your eyes and swallowing the smartass remark when the sink is full of dishes and the dishwasher hasn't been run.  Love is negotiating control of the remote in exchange for use of the laptop.  Love is being so angry you want to scream and yell and throw things and push and hit and say hateful words...but you swallow all of that because you love that person more than anything else in the world and you've promised you'll never do anything to hurt them and so you stomp down the hall and slam a door and when you cool off you say "Okay, let's talk about this".  Love is respect; basic human respect.  Love is never saying anything in anger to your partner that you wouldn't say to your boss or your employee or your best friend.  Love is rising above emotions and remembering the greater, sacred emotion that connects your heart to theirs.

Love is so much more.

I'm a little sensitive, okay?!

When I was a child, about 10 or 11 years of age, my Momma bought me an outfit from one of those fancy children's clothing boutiques.  I can't remember the reason - if it was for a birthday or Christmas - or if I was with her when she bought it (I seem to think I was).  I just know it was, at that point, the most expensive outfit I'd ever been given (Momma spent close to $100 on it), and I loved it.

It was a knee-length skirt (again, I was a kid) and a jacket made out of shiny black vinyl that I pretended was leather.  The jacket had cool silver zippers and buckles and snaps that made me feel "tough" in a "I'm a pretty princess" sort of way.  The shirt that went under the jacket was stiff, 3/4-length sleeved, and lime green.

I had the outfit for months before I finally wore it.  The more I remember, it must've been Christmas when it was gifted to me - I think it was too cold to wear it at first.  I remember it was a warm day in Spring when I finally pulled it out of the closet and decided "this is the day.  I'm wearing this today."  I was a, um...stout child.  I wasn't fat, but I was never skinny.  The outfit was a bit snug, and I really did recognize that my favorite closet-dwelling get-up was made of black vinyl, not leather.  And I knew I didn't see a lot of kids out and about wearing black vinyl.  But I felt SO COOL when I wore that skirt and jacket around the house.  I had to show it to the world; I had to share it with the world.

It was a Saturday.  I was brave, but not brave enough to wear that outfit for the first time to school.  My best friend Brooke, who lived 3 doors up the street, came over to play.  She loved my outfit.  I beamed.  The day progressed, and at one point we had to go to Brooke's house.  Her mom was weird, and kind of a bitch, so I stayed outside rather than following Brooke into the house.  Her mom came to the door to talk to me anyhow.

Brooke's mom (I can't remember her name, of course) was a big woman.  The sort that if you hug you'll kind of sink into, but she wasn't a hugging sort of person; she used her size to intimidate.  She always had a helmet of box-colored red curls always perfectly styled around her head - that remained the case until her firefighter husband left her a few years later, after which she would sometimes answer the door in her pajamas with half of those curls matted to one side, even at 3 in the afternoon.

So she came to the door to talk to me after Brooke disappeared into the depths of her home in search of her Ken doll so we could even up the odds back at my place or to get her My Little Pony board game or maybe to grab her electric razor because she'd forgotten to shave her legs that morning and suddenly realized it needed to be done RIGHT NOW.  (Brooke was a year or two older than me, and she did shit like that.  She was a little odd.  She also had a missing tooth, with a fake on a retainer that she liked to take out and use to scare me.)  The woman stood on the stoop of her porch, looking down on my 10-year-old self standing on the walkway below her, and she said,

"What are you wearing?"  I knew from her tone this was not going to go well.  I willed her to not say it.

"This is my new outfit.  My Momma got it for me.  Do you like it?"  I'm chanting in my head now "don't hurt my feelings, you mean witch.  don't make me cry.  please don't be mean to me."  I'm just a kid.

Brooke's mom sneers.  "It looks like a garbage bag."

My heart was crushed.

I laughed as if she'd made a joke.  She said some more words about the material and zippers I was wearing.  Brooke appeared from inside the house and walked back with me back to my house, where I quietly changed out of my skirt, out of my jacket, out of the stiff, 3/4 length sleeved, lime green shirt.  I hung them in the closet.  I never wore them again.

I felt guilt for years when I thought of that outfit.  Guilt because my Momma paid so much money for it and I only wore it that one time.  Guilt because she and Daddy worked hard to earn that money and it was only worn once and then hung in the closet to moulder for years before finally being donated to Goodwill.  Eventually the guilt turned into anger.  Anger at Brooke's mom for being such a raging bitch.  Who says shit like that to anyone, much less a child?

So yeah, yesterday, when a grown person made a rude comment regarding a sweater I found at the Burlington Coat Factory on sale for like $12 last winter but happen to really really like even if it is kinda awkward and funky, I was floored.  And the more I thought about it, the more angry I got.  Because I know that I'll always second-guess and doubt myself when I wear that sweater now.  I'll never feel pretty in it, never be completely comfortable wearing it.  And that makes me mad.

But I'm not going to retire it.  No I'm not.  I'm not giving another person that sort of power over me again.  I'm going to keep that sweater in rotation and when I wear it, I'll make sure it's on days when he'll see it.  I don't care about his opinion; he's rude anyhow.