I’ve never felt less like writing yet more…..bloated with words. My son turned three. I wrote him half a letter, and there are pictures which, I promise, will make it to the blog. Other things are happening, and our family is in a continual state of just vibrating crisis right now.
I’m tired of trying to nail down the cause of it all, or causes of it all, and I’ve taken to stating loudly the simple phrase “FUCK! I AM IN PAIN!” But that doesn’t seem to change anything.
I think perhaps I’m at at point where it’s just not funny anymore and I’m not interested in trying to make it funny. We’re on a precipice and I’m the only one who seems to notice.
But I do have some funny bits about sniper rifles and handgun training I got from a famous iternet video star. If I’m ever able to write again, boom. Insta-blog entries.
Tags: "writer's block" stress
You may be interested in these related posts:My son pulls me down the stairs: “play with me Mommy, play with me!” and I relent; cut the tie on the new LEGO box and do it. Today I’ll try it with instructions and I’ll build the little scene, how hard can it be. It’s the baby steps LEGO anyway, ages 4+. It’s just my speed. We sit on the floor and I begin.
Halfway through I send my husband a text message:
“screw this shit. Now they tell me I can’t build all the stuff in the book? How can I tell what I can and can’t build once I’ve built the first thing if I don’t know what pieces I have and don’t have?”
“yeah. Can’t build them all”
“OMG FUCK LEGOS”
I’m soldiering on though, reverse engineering some things in the book based on the photos when I get the next text:
“too bad we don’t have a bin of 5000 LEGOS upstairs”
my next text to him reads: “uh, whoops. And thanks for saving me from posting a REALLY embarrassing rant on Facebook just now”
I get the bin and start back to work. An hour later I send another text:
“Can you run this errand for me on the way home? I can’t get away. I’m in the middle of a really important auto engineering project”
Meanwhile this is what playing with Jack looks like: I’m building LEGOS. Jack is watching TV, running back and forth through the pile of LEGOS on the floor. MESSING UP MY PILE. Every so often he’ll pick up something I’ve painstakingly constructed and….break it. Here are some things I said to Jack yesterday, and I’m sure I will hear these things in 20 years or so in family therapy:
“Jack! Put that down! I’m not through building it!”
“Jack! STOP IT! Your messing up the LEGOS!”
“JACK! Quit dumping the LEGOS on the floor!”
“No, you can’t play with it yet. I need to finish the house first”
I’m thinking that I should be fired from this job, really-when my husband and daughter get home and it’s a little more worth it when my daughter goes “MOMMY! You made these?” and my husband goes “awww! Your first LEGO!” and then he let me build the firetruck.
And just because I love you all so much and I just love to hear you all laugh, I’d like to share with you something I said to my husband yesterday:
“Michael! He’s breaking my firetruck!”
Tags: distractions, jack, legos
You may be interested in these related posts:Not much has changed about our general situation in terms of the you know what and and many depths of layers of incredible complicated ways in which this relatively common and mundane sort of boring and predictable and let’s face it… plebeian - obstacle affects our lives. So that’s what I’ll go with as my main excuse for not posting lately, and we’ll leave out the massive quantity of empty coconut run bottles being hurled into the recycling bins located at the volunteer fire department on the road that shares space with the Yulee Primary School as my husband rolls by them on his way to work in the mornings.
Over a year of semi sobriety, down the tubes. Ah, well. At least organic pineapple juice is a full serving a fruit in every glass, and if you mix coconut juice with Green Machine Superfood it’s really pretty good for you. Who knew wheat grass could be so tasty AND such a fantastic component of a stress relief cocktail?
What to do but sling wit, shuttle ourselves and each other to therapy multiple times a week, do our best to maintain a level and courteous tone sometimes through clenched teeth, sometimes while passing a casserole dish (only to the left because that’s good manners) even though none of that matters. Nothing matters. The books you read don’t matter, and the tone you use doesn’t matter, and the words you say don’t matter either especially. You know why? Because whatever you say in English comes out in a completely fucking different language. You dress your face in an expression from Care Bears and what people see is a combat outfit from a RAMBO movie. You put on a kitten sweater and what people see is a great big “Fuck You” in airbrushed script on the front.
In the end, people handle crisis in their own way. Some of us handle it in different ways at different moments during the day. Me? Round 10 a.m. if I can slip out of here and evade Jack for a moment and/or corral him in an appropriate closet, I’m at my favorite indie coffee pusher mainlining a rocketfuel straight up while someone makes me a perfect plain latte for the ride home. By noon I might be posting something along the lines of “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere” in French on Facebook, which as it turns out does not keep my husband guessing for very long and probably makes him almost nervous enough to bail out on work and come home to check on us. Too bad (or phew!) he’s a kindergarten teacher and can’t leave his classroom! I’m not a lush though, sillies! I still like to run! Running relieves stress like a mofo.
I have this great blue checked apron that belonged to my grandmother, and I keep planning to put it on with some red lipstick and start having drinks every afternoon at like 4:30 with lots of ice…rattle the ice around in the glass, walk around the kitchen in high heels while I cook dinner, maybe bark at the kids a little bit here and there. Even though I’m not a routine person I crave the routine of a good cocktail hour.
But therapy, both in-home and individual, plus court appearances, doctor’s appointments hither and yon and rides to and fro (why oh why do we live in a town with no sidewalks or buses!) keep me sober and clod in sensible shoes more than I’d like to admit. My poor apron. My poor red lipstick.
Ah well. We still manage to survive the apocalypse, day by day. Happy hour by hour.
You may be interested in these related posts:I’ve cleaned out my closet because I’m a fan of metaphor, and because I don’t have a magic grief reliever or pregnancy disappearer or fast forward button for our lives.
And also- I’m going to say this because I’m tired of dancing around the issue and being afraid of losing friends: I’ve lost a SHITLOAD of weight. I not only lost enough weight to get into the small-size clothes I’d stockpiled, but I lost it so fast that I never even got a chance to wear those clothes.
In the end I decided if you’re someone who doesn’t want to be my friend because I’m thin or I enjoy running too much, it’s a good bet we’re not real friends anyway and if you haven’t already dumped me because of my love affair with running, now’s a good time. (by the way, that link left out the other kinds of thin people: people taking medications, chemo patients, parasite victims, people with food allergies, metabolic disorders, and others. Or maybe we could STOP ASSUMING WHY anyone is thin or or thick and move on with our lives without giving a shit)
It wasn’t on purpose, I don’t have a secret. My new med cocktail has side effects that pushed me back down to my pre-Avery weight, and the running appears to have done the rest by changing my metabolism. It was cool at first. Now I miss my ass, and I’m tired of every single cashier at every single store asking if I feel OK. Yes, I am aware that I wasn’t overweight to begin with. Yes, I am aware that I am very thin now. By the way: I ate a pint of ice cream at 11 p.m. last night. The side effects that caused the weight loss are over. Maybe it’ll all come back. Such is the life with bipolar meds. You go up, you go down. So I’ve stockpiled 2 sizes up in all my pants.
Clutter is the enemy. Everyone says so. The Zen mind is a peaceful mind. People make better decisions in an uncluttered space. People sleep better in an uncluttered bedroom. An uncluttered desk is more productive.
I say my life is really simple and streamlined. I’m lying though because while I try not to have much to DO, my mind is full of noise and this week I arbitrarily decided that most of it was coming from the closet.
I don’t like 500 cable channels and I don’t want 60 pairs of shoes or 22 pairs of jeans. I want 6 channels that show good stuff ALL the time. I want 4 pairs of awesome shoes that go with everything. One pair of perfect jeans. A closet full of 20 useless pairs of pants is BULLSHIT! I mean seriously how is a body supposed to manage a life with a closet like that looming in the corner of their bedroom? That place provokes anxiety every time I look at it. My closet: a perfect reflection of my noisy noisy life. Full of disorder and clutter and a few perfect things hidden by chaos. Mostly hand-me-downs, hoarded items I couldn’t bear to get rid of because I’m too scared to get caught with a need and no resources to meet it. So I sat on 10 identical pairs of slacks in similar colors, (I don’t even wear slacks. I don’t have a job.) cocktail dresses I’ll never wear, stacks of layering shirts. But I take what I’m given. I work with what I have.
I clear out some noise. Things that don’t fit, don’t work for the life I have now. What happens when I rid my closet of the noise is I’m left with space, and quiet. There’s very little maintenance in my simplified closet full of clothes that are only what I truly love and what works for me. I still need some things, but I’ll wait. The maintenance that I have to put into my wardrobe now is worth it. I do this work with no resentment, because I know my return is high. These clothes won’t sit mocking me in the closet, won’t languish on the shelf, won’t hang off my body or disappoint me when I look in the mirror, won’t fail me when I get out into the cold. What I’m left with when I carefully select what actually works for me is a perfectly matched wardrobe of tasteful pieces that won’t fail me because I’ve invested well. If something rips, I’ll mend it. These are not throwaway clothes. I don’t shop like that anymore.
It’s over now. The slacks are off to a new home where hopefully someone who leaves their house on a regular basis will use them, and the cocktail dresses will see the bright lights of the big city sometime soon. I could probably fit a chaise lounge IN the closet now and make that my new reading nook.
You may be interested in these related posts:How utterly perfect this anniversary was for the place we are in our lives. We’d planned a quiet dinner alone. Takeout and a movie like always, because that’s how emotionally depleted we are. We can’t even be bothered to get dressed (that’s more me) and leave to go to dinner. The movie usually turns into “What’s TIVO’d?” and devolves into “I’ll be right back I just have to check one thing on the computer”
Hannah was supposed to be gone all weekend with my dad; the kids would be in bed. Dad couldn’t make the trip. Then, my dad got sicker and for the first time in the history of the universe was too sick to take the kids to his place. On my anniversary. Then I hit a boiling point with Stalemate 2010 and we had Peace Talks with Hannah which were tearful, intense, emotionally draining, and lasted hours into the evening. Our favorite Italian place, which is so expensive that we rarely eat there and never eat in because we can’t afford the wine or tip, wasn’t doing takeout because they were so busy. I was so disappointed (spoiled) that I didn’t want any other takeout. By the time I was supposed to be “picking a movie” (he was in the mood for a comedy and this was my cover for the Big Reveal) I knew this video was going over like a baby ruth in a pool.
May god strike me down with a bolt of lightning for even sullying my TV screen, my retinas, and my eardrums and the internet with it but I need to share a piece of wisdom I heard with you . A little nugget I mined from a pile of steaming feces called the Real Housewives of Orange County. There’s only one person on that show who ever says anything remotely sane, and on the reunion show she let one rip. Speaking about her marriage to Don and her Love Tank she said “It’s full right now. It’ll be empty again someday” and some asshole quipped “nice optimism there Vikki’ and she’s like “What? It’s a marriage. It goes up, it goes down. Peaks and valleys. That’s what marriage is.” If I were a religious woman, I’d say God finds a way to get the messages to me no matter where I’m looking. But since I’m not, I’ll say that when my mind is looking for patterns or messages, I find them.
Our long lost wedding video: rendered to DVD with sound for the first time ever. Happy occasion, no? We’re about to hear Steve’s best man speech for the first time since the wedding, after believing it was lost to us forever, and being especially heartbroken about this since last June when he died and it sunk in that we’d never hear his voice again. We’re watching the endless possibilities on our 10 year old daughter’s cherub face as she dances on Steve’s shoes. Yeah, super happy. Baby Ruth. Verdict: We’re just really glad we have it.
In a perfect illustration of the last year of our life, we sat three feet away from each other on the couch, watched our wedding video and cried; we sat apart from each and separately grieved/celebrated. We’re not just in a valley. We’re in separate valleys. I mean who pats their husband on the shoulder and says “hard stuff, huh?” when he’s grieving?
That would be me.
They say you’ll hit some years out of the park and some will be the white knuckle years that will make you want to kill the writers of every single romantic comedy ever written. (I really thought we were through the white knuckle years after the kids started sleeping) I will say this about hard years: while they may amplify struggle, they also amplify strength. In my darkest hours, in my most frightened moments, what I notice about my husband is how completely perfectly he compliments and tempers my Crazy.
If I were a religious woman, I’d thank God that he sent me Michael, who somehow sees beauty in what most people would pick apart and spit out in therapy. (I’m sorry did I say would? I meant have.) I’d thank God that I married someone who hasn’t an aldulterous bone in his body, who holds friendship his highest priority, and who always sees the big picture. Who can stand in a valley, look up, and keep walking.
Since I’m not a religious woman, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all four of his parents and his incredibly nurturing circle of friends for all of the above, and so much more.
And although it sounds a little empty to say “Happy Anniversary Baby!” this year, I think we’ve earned a little “Hell YEAH”, a high five, and possibly a heavy weight champion belt or something because this year was HARD. I can’t say for sure, but I have a feeling we’ll look back on this one with great affection because it signifies a battle we fought hard to win. Are fighting. Will win.
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