i obsess.

Moving and Changing In One Very, Very, Very Uncomfortable Fell Swoop

I wrote a post I decided to publish on a separate blog, because it sort of feels more logical to locate it there, and I'm considering posting a whole series on the subsequent actions resulting from - well, just go here and read, and you'll understand what I mean.  And please don't worry, because I think it's going to be a good, great thing, and I just have to undergo an ego surgery, wherein I completely readjust my notions about practically everything, which should be fun.  And easy! 

(Not to brag but I'm really out-of-my-skin excited about being given a Kodak Easy Share camera at BlogHer next week because you can, from what I've skimmed about it, upload photos direct to social media forums and blogs and such, which might signify that I'll actually include photos I've taken specifically about posts and not just leave them to rot in my camera, my NIKON, THANKS FOR NOTHING, NIKON, EVEN WHILE I'VE FEATURED YOUR PRODUCT IN MY TWITTER/FACEBOOK AVATARS FOR YEARS, PLURAL, HULLO, FREE ADVERT AND WHATNOT AND NOPE, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO REMAIN THERE AND YEP, I'M BEING RIDICULOUSLY PETTY BUT DUDE, I'M GETTING A FREE CAMERA.  FROM KODAK.  AND I LIKE IT, AND SO THERE and yay.)

Commence to return to your normal life, and thank you for taking the time to absorb my nutty, clearly-screwed-on-the-ego-adjustment-front banter.

Ciao.

Writing When You Have a Specific Statement to Make (and Even When You Don't)

So you might have gathered from the subject line that I don't necessarily, uh, have something very, very pointful to get to in this post.  And you might be right.  Which kind of pisses me off, that you would so immediately leap directly to such a conclusion when I *could* have been penning one of those lovely guru posts where I list great reasoning for why and what and alla that, only, have you ever noticed how when you begin reading those lists, they're like a dinner from a chain restaurant?  They look like the photo in the menu when they arrive but after you've eaten a few bites you begin to feel achey and the food tastes metallic and the forks are too long and tiney and there's this strange wafting sensation about your ears and the napkins won't stay on your lap and the fries are too starchy and dry in their centres (I'm adopting a Canadian pose for the moment) and suddenly you long to be anywhere but there, reading that post about how to be a better writer or to face writer's block with aplomb or get! more! readers! or have more people fall in love with you with thirty-seven easy keystrokes?

Because there are no real answers.

There are only more questions, there are, this I know, because the Bible misled me so, and I can't help it, I have to be truthful, I have to divest myself of this here information so you, too, can be aware of the lack of awareness that is at the heart of all the very best questions, and smoke-and-mirrors answers, that answers are sad things.  They cannot fulfill, they do not ultimately answer, they sound starchy and hollow if you really listen, if you put your ear into it and get close, close to the source, they're tinny and full of echoes and clanging.

Isn't that sad?

(Don't answer.)

(Well, do answer, if you can, but I can't.  I want to.  I wish I could.  And maybe I could try, but after a few days of hearing that answer promenade itself up and down my spine like a walk in too-tight shoes on a blistering-hot Sunday, I will have to listen to the yowling and angst and a litany of questions in a vomitous string and - and - I DON'T REALLY LIKE THAT.  I find it uncomfortable.  Like a thought-hangover.  More pounding and torturous though because it lasts much longer and it burns in my soul instead of my stomach.  So, kind of in my soul *and* my stomach, and small white tablets stamped "ASPIRIN" don't erase the pounding, nothing does.)

But if you have answers, and you feel good about them, I'm glad for you.

Seriously.

(Though I truly don't see they can sit well in your - wherever answers sit, and sit well, like obedient pets, the kind that don't eat peoples' furniture and rugs and draperies and hair ties and even the edges of their clothes, and especially their footwear, how DO people keep that from happening, I can't help asking, even though I realize there is not a true answer, I know from having been responsible in my lifetime for several different animals and there is no one way, I know this but it does not truss me and bind me from edging toward the well, the trough of knowledge and wisdom which looks so very wise from a fifty-foot distance but DAMN if it doesn't cloud right up when I stand at its surface and beg it to heal my head with those listing queries, DAMN.)

I don't know how to wrap this up, but I also didn't know how to start it, and that is probably the point of this post, and if you gain comfort in that, oh, my adorable reader, my splendid, pulchritudinous audience of one, I am glad, because I loathe to inspire similar discomfort in your breast as already resides in my own, I yearn to give you comfort and knowing all the while I cannot, knowing I can only bequeath to you the squalor and mist of my own divinations, knowing nothing, yet wishing to somehow lend you a sense of peace in its midst, I say all of this.

It means naught but that I -- love.  You.  Us.  This place.  Even as it brings great suffering, wreaks greatest pain, I love all of these and am grateful, greatful, glad, heart-glad, for knowing, for being, even given the inevitable at which point I will be silenced and unable to point my divining rod and attempt to communicate what I find.

(I would if I could.)

(But I can't.)

(Etc.)

Berry Be Blue

There is magic, here.  These berries, their blue, periwinkle, sapphire, depths so wise, they wink at me, unabashed, bawdy in their bare skins, as I gently tug at their round, supple bodies and deposit them, gently, gently, in my bowl, I am summoned, my mouth, pursed in unconscious whisper of song, possibly contorted but possibly heaven's gift of unconscious focus on this perfect moment, this nature, these berries, these multi-hued green emerald glints of branches that snap and spring and bounce, they flex and stretch in a show of bravado and the bugs cling and skitter and my song, wordless, now floating up above me as I, steady, think of nothing save my picking pursuit and these gems of blue and of the gray sky and of cool playful air and of this rhapsodic episodic melodic hypnotic similitude.

Sore

I’m awake.  I’ve drifted up from the dark pool of sleep, gently becoming knowing and born into this day, my awareness of the preceding day and the things to come sliding onto my head’s table like a fast-food dinner, ready in an instant.  I feel heavy and sore, and, turning, note that my breasts are painful.  I try to not note just how painful, the level, the specific way in which they are painful, because that will lead to assuming I’m pregnant, and then I will want to tell people that I am pregnant, and if I am not pregnant, then it will all go badly.  I turn a different way and adjust my thought pattern accordingly, according to the stripe of light spread against the exact place where the wall and ceiling meet just beyond the curtain, the light not yet yellow, still white in its early existence, it looks like a race track.  Or maybe the arm of a tent pole.  I consider whether the quality of the light means it’s gray this morning or whether it’s just really fucking early.  I hope it’s early, because I have to get up! And get going!  And run!  Because I said I would last night before bed, I promised him and me and the air around us that I would run today, that it needn’t be a big thing, just maybe fifteen or so minutes of rushing along a sidewalk hurtling toward nothing in particular, well, not true, hurtling toward a stronger, physically abler me, the strength I feel in my belly when I am truly at my physical best, the sense of calm strength, that feeling of knowing if someone tried to hurt me they couldn’t, guns and other such weaponry not being a part of that scenario, of course. 

 

Get up! And get your fucking running clothes on!  I heed.  I say it over and over.  Get up get up get up get up get up get up go! Running!  Go running!  Go running go running go running go running go running go running!

 

I’m listening.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m definitely listening.  I’m just a little distracted by the way my body feels fairly nestled in this slightly-cool blanket and sheet scenario, the perfect pitch of temperature and weight and besides I’m just so goddam lazy.  But I’m still listening to that refrain of go! running! shit and I’m pretty sure I’ll do it but I’m really thoroughly enjoying the stream of a sentence pissing down the center of my head, it’s just the right speed to capture it all, I can feel the words being typed out and I’m not missing any of them, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t take any medication last night?, I think, as I sense my partner’s body shift to grab his phone/alarm clock and discover, I know already what he’s aiming at, to discover the time, I throw my legs out of bed as I mutter, it’s six.  I’ve lied, though.  It’s only nearly six, not six actually.  I feel guilt for having misled him but then I get up and quickly run to the bathroom and check my phone for emails and texts and after I’ve peed I feel deflated because I remember I wanted to check to see if I’m pregnant, and all of that golden morning first-pee is gone down the – well, not gone, yet.  Just, I’m not sticking a goddam test in the toilet, right?  So I don’t.  I feel a little grumpy about the whole thing and slap the hair tie around the wooly mess on my head a little roughly, a little mean.  I think my hair grumbles.  It doesn’t really, I just pretend it does, BECAUSE I’M MAD.  Mad=mental, not mad=angry, just so it’s clear.  I like to pretend, and adults aren’t supposed to, and so that makes me seem mad.  To some people.  Though they’d never say so to my face.

 

Usually when I write I consider my audience, and today I say to hell with that.  Today I write in my secret, secret Word document and feel naughty and especially smart for keeping it to myself.  I still consider my audience a little, though, because Word and I both know I’ll be flinging the contents of this bout, this stint, onto the page of my tepid-ass blog before long.  Word.

 

So now I’ve crept back over to the chair where my running clothes are, and I’m still listening to the pleasant word-piss stream coursing past my brain pieces, so now I’ve decided I’ve time to do my fifteen minutes of run and sneak in a bit of writing before I run, OF COURSE I’ve time, I always have time in this stilted place in my head where I like best to dwell.  And the bra, I predict, will pain me a little bit with its snugness, so I ignore the pain and fuss with the shorts that have no obvious front which is fine if there’s a light on but it’s still too dark and I’m certain they’ll be on backwards once I really wake up in an hour, but fuck it, and I stumble into them.  The tank is inside-out and my fingers resist turning it about, they struggle against their master and – damn, was that cramping?  Uterine cramping?  Jesus.  Maybe.  ?  So the tank is on and I’m in the closet hopefully grabbing running socks, mated ones even, but if those goddam socks have had babies in the night so help me GOD I will – ugh.  Nevermind what I’ll do.  I walk gently as I’m capable of doing back to the kitchen where I dig about in the fridge for a piece of fruit and find the peach and nectarine left in the plastic from last weekend’s camping trip, they’re both soaked in peach juice and one side of the peach is deflated and bruised and I imagine the peach in its giant glory and James and the others scampering about on its top, laughing at the cloud men, and then I scrape the side that’s browned and squashed and wounded away with a steak knife.  It looks alright beneath that brown and I sort of think it’ll be okay to eat and for a moment wonder what my husband would say if he even thought I’d attempt eating it and shiver because I know already, he’s disgusted with me for it so there, I just won’t tell him, I’M SO REBELLIOUS, wow, my right boob is itchy in this bra, specifically the nipple, is it sore?  Because if it’s sore, that’s unusual.  My nipples never get sore before my period.  Boobs, yes.  Nipples, no.  So – I should just – I’m not even late for my period yet.  I should just wait.  So I eat the peach and watch the way the gold morning light is staining slant-angled pieces of trees and grass and house-wall and burnishing the tops of the bushes, and the peach is flavored of sweetness and yet there is depth, there is weight in the flavor, there is heft, it has easily to be one of the best things I’ve ever consumed, and I can hardly contain myself.  I devour its flesh and lick my fingers.

 

I shouldn’t write today, I think.  I’ll get distracted.  I won’t go running.

 

But because I love to defy myself, yes, I will, too. 

 

Sore boobs and all.

It's Ridiculous, Really.

I spent yesterday fatigued, wandering about in a semi-haze, listening to my son as he berated me for not paying complete and total attention to him-and-only-him, but not really listening too hard.  (Turned my hearing aid down several notches, if you're wondering how I managed the trick.)  I wore my workout clothes for several hours before I finally got myself to do the working-out part, and I felt tired, empty, grizzled, instead of energized like I did last week after the workout routines I'd completed.  I thought I could just throw myself into it despite lacking the requisite energy-beans of magic and fervor, and after I had done a half-assed job of following along on the exercise game for twenty-five minutes, I could barely lift my body off the ground.  I guess I just didn't connect the dots; if I feel low and tired and beat-down in the morning and so forth, I probably don't have the stuff to get through a workout without feeling pretty fucking spent.

There were other reasons for my exhausted state besides just having not slept well the night or two before, but I'd rather not divulge them here.  Suffice it to say, I'm very sad for a friend of mine whose life is being torn asunder, the foundation reduced to rubble, and my heart feels heavy and sore for her sake.  And for my own.  And for us all.  Because life, it's so goddam painful sometimes, and here we are, supposed to carry on, face set, jaw in determined line, head and chin raised aloft like flags, and we are not to deter from our courageous facing of these hurricanes and gale-force winds that tear at our souls as though they are so much flimsy paper.  And I ache for us in this conjoined struggle.

I felt like a bad mom yesterday.  I can't be perfect and I don't want to be, because it's a ridiculous, impossible goal and it sets a bad precedent for my kid, to see me attempt such a stupid feat, I don't want that for him, to think I can only settle for perfect, but I also hate myself when I'm caught in the web of "must-be-this" and "blew-it-there" and the emotional clawing I do at my own head and at my own breast when I am failing him, even as it occurs, even now, as I type, and he says in a sing-song refrain, "ready, Mom?  Are? You? Ready?" because he is forever asking me if I'm ready, and I am, no surprise, not.  I never have been ready, not for anything, certainly not for this, and it is a moment-by-moment punishment for having never learned quite how to, if not *be ready*, then deal with and accept and encounter the notion of readiness and why I'm not, ever, and how to be at least somewhat ready, for his sake.  Or maybe Suebob was right when she told me once that it's okay if my son grows up aware of his ADD mom's habits, because he will be compassionate with people who possess similar traits, he'll know how to interact with ADD, understand it, and so I suppose I'm teaching him.  And I don't want to teach perfect.  So I guess I'm doing just as I would approve of, if I could take twenty-seven steps back and away and see it through a less-prismatic point of vision, this rearing, this raising-up of a fern-frond-leaf of a person, this kid-elevating business of which I am so heavily and weightedly invested.

And why does "mom" always, whenever I come upon it in a sentence, first remind me of "monster" before I recognize it as "mother"?

It shouldn't.  It should remind me of "moth."  Or "month."  Or even "monkey."  Maybe "mob."  "Mobster."  "Mod." 

"Moo."

Personal Space, Public

They sat, she, composed, her book on her knees, his attempts to converse with her quietly, gently rebuffed.  His unease a soft yellow powder wafting around her.  She always knew when people wanted desperately to speak, couldn't contain themselves.  She came from people of a similar bent.

Nevertheless, she firmly maintained a separateness, having earlier in the span of lessons been caught in his conversational grasp like a fish eyes bulging, no breath to maneuver her way free.

They watched the children.  She nodded at her son whose occasional glances toward her she was able, this time, to intercept, and the water went round and round and round all blue and light-filled and the stillness she had super-imposed over her person somewhat realized.

Sounds of childish squalor and water smacked and swaying were neatly contained within the walls of the pool's housing going up, up, up and the scent of pool chemicals redolent throughout.

Doin' It and Doin' It and Doin' It -- Well, As Best I Can.

The thing about being perceived as thin is it messes with your head.  You think you should never say anything about how you feel physically crummy or tell people when you're having a squishy day (which can be especially glaring with the wrong pants).  And people are RIDICULOUSLY critical of thin women.  They scan every inch of those narrow bodies for any potential flaws ("problem areas," as the more horrible of the grotesque "women's" glossies will inform us).  I've seen it done.  Hell.  I've done it.

The Risperidone is working wonders.  I haven't wanted to breathe a word of its effects through - and this is pretty tragic, given what the medication is supposed to fix - utter paranoia that it would cease having positive effects if I told the internet that yes, YES, it's (kind of?) working.  Look.  It's not perfect.  It's trying.  It wants to help me.  Also, if I wanted it to really help, I'd take two every day instead of one.  But two - I tried to do it.  Two, or maybe it was three, different times I attempted to double up, as per the recommendation of my physician, but I just couldn't hack it.  It was uncomfortable.  And there's this fear of the potential to have some random muscle seize up and then freeze, just up and quit, which obviously increases with the higher dosage, and even though it's rare, It's still a possibility.  I can't handle that thought.

Then there's the weight gain.  It hasn't been *super* dramatic.  I've probably gained around 8-10 lbs.  (I don't weigh myself on the regular on purpose.  My theory has always been: my clothes fit, my body looks fine, and I eat alright and take my Geritol.  And I get loads of exercise shaking my cane at young people.  Why should I have to know my fucking weight?)

But there's all this damn agitating going on on twitter about working out and exercising and training, and Stefania wrote a super-fucking-inspirational post about having been influenced by the twitter mass-exercise-movement, and Kristen started a blog for the Gang of  Four Shredheads (my way of paying homage to her is through reference to a somewhat obscure punk-rock band.  You know.  She's punk-rock.  Old-school.  *shakes cane*) and there's Catherine's incredible efforts for her nephew, Tanner, with the tutus, and by gum,

I am gonna do it if it means I strain something.  Several somethings. 

And, okay, yeah, I may not have a *super* long way to go to be physically ready for a 5K in a month; I was a stripper for several years (it requires an assload of endurance to get through a ten-hour shift, believe it or not) and I snowboarded regularly from 1992 - 2004 (pregnancy/motherhood took me completely out of the game for several years but we plan to get back up there this coming winter, I say that knowing full well it probably won't happen but an old lady can dream, right?), plus I used to run several miles at a go, three or so times a week, back in my early twenties, so a three-mile run isn't gonna kill me.  

But dangit!, if I'm not nervous I'll quit anyway.  I really want to do this.  I really want to run the 5K at Blogher.  And I want to wear a damn tutu.  (Checklist: buy a damn tutu.)

Wish me luck.
 

Send Geritol.

******

p.s. If you're going to nyc for Blogher and you want to participate in the 5K + #tutusforTanner, here's the 411.  (JEESus.  Does anyone even know what that -- uh, 411 -- *is* anymore?  *hangs up hat* *picks it back up because of the running and the supporting Catherine and Tanner and the getting-in-shape and the Geritol*)

Swimming

He leaps, he cavorts, he bobs up, then down, then back up, one of the bright orange buoys that dot the gray-blue edge of the swimming holes in lakes and along the rims of the no-swim zones, gulls calling, wind rippling the uppermost layer of tossing waves.  He is a blur of wet and of trunks and of lime-green goggled joy.  He aims with all sincerity to be part of the group, yet his taste of the water and its allure, that slippy excitement, that floating and that weightlessness, it proves too much.  He is unable to heed any but his own joy.  He is a moist, alive, fish creature.

And now, now he is zealous.  He is avid, he is desperate to win the admiration of his instructors and his peers, it is all-consuming.  His kicks as the instructor draws him around in a circle from behind and just below his head and neck, they are surprisingly fluid, impressively steady.  His mother, her third eye blinking, now loosened from its capacity as recording device, wavers.  She is taken out of her reverie, and suddenly even more so, as he has finally at nearly five years of age jumped without aid into a pool.  Splashing down, head beneath blue waves, fully immersed, and as he rises back up, he is, no, not sobbing, not choking, nor gasping, nor grimacing -- he is smiling.  Smiling a big, voracious, wet-faced grin.  A beam, a Ray himself, that Ray, shimmering in the shiny splashes of water leaping about him in an age-old dance as new and ancient as the things that have always been and will continue on being.

As is she.

Authoritize.

Tonight at dinner, while my husband and I discussed details of a matter between himself and a person with whom he and his company does business, Jack tried to join in as often as possible.  Finally, he informed his father, in clear terms, that he should write a letter, and what it should say.  I couldn't help taking the dictation.  (I'm a born secretary.  Don't question it.)

Here's the letter:

Hey!  Man!

You are not being nice.  You are not the Captain of anyone.  You are just a man.  You are not the King.  Stop acting like the King of the Wizards.  Please don't act like a mean old wicked Wizard.

Signed out by Jack.

I had to keep kicking my partner under the table to keep a straight face while reading the letter back to its author.  I failed at getting all the way through it without laughing, I'm ashamed to admit.  After all, he composed the thing with sincerity.  Who am I to criticize, even find humorous, such good intentions?

Do NOT Get Me Started.

I mean it.  I'm like a bad engine, all full of smoke and exhaust and things to be impaled upon.

I had my phone stolen yesterday, right from beneath my nose, and I spent all of these countless, never-to-be-regained hours at the phone store, buying the wrong phones, because MY BRAIN, IT HAD BEEN THIEVED, and the stale bits still rattling about under my hair are useless, FUCKING USELESS, I am vexed.

Vexatiously.  (Far less sexy than it sounds.)

But beyond that, Jack has begun asking these ridiculous questions lately, questions like, MOM, WHAT'S THIS?, and it's the blueberry jam we use every day, no, seriously, daily, it's what he eats for lunch without end, peanut butter and jam, and he's made his own sandwich several times when we've been home together and he wanted a sandwich, HE KNOWS WHAT IT IS, is all I'm saying.  He knows it's the blueberry jam, so why's he messing with me?  When I just had my phone stolen and I've asked, NEARLY BEGGED, to be allowed to write my husband an email to let him know that I'll be temporarily out of reach, that I might be graced with a modicum of silence while I write, Jack starts up the whine machine, and gets into my face with this incessant repetition about the jam, and I'm like, ARE YOU FOR REAL?, which is I think what bothered me most.  I couldn't discern why he was asking the question.  Was he just saying it over and over because it was funny to him?  I mean, he knew the answer.  What was the point?

And this morning, with the supposed tooth pain, the pain that was SO AGONIZING he couldn't finish - get this - a banana.  You know.  Bananas.  Those rock-hard, cumbersome, flavorless, torturous items of food packed into a rotting carcass, those things that devastate the mouths AND LIVES of young people, HOW COULD I ASK SUCH A THING OF HIM, WHEN HE WAS IN SUCH PAAAAAIN?  And, oh, dear heavenly father, the tears.  And the sobs.  And the horror of it all.

And when I told him he could chuck the banana but that he wouldn't be able to have any fruit at Grandma's later, he said, oh, but I don't think strawberries will hurt my tooth, mom.  I don't. 

WELL, OF COURSE YOU DON'T.  BECAUSE YOU WANT TO WATCH AS I BEGIN CLIMBING ON PRECARIOUS HOUSEHOLD ITEMS AND BUILDING A TOWER WITH THEM AND ATTEMPTING TO ESCAPE INTO THE ETHER.  Evidently, that's some funny shit.

But good golly, why?  Why must he do it?

And there's all of this, and it gets layered on top of other irritating morning elements within, say, a grump-laden span of time involving rushing about and not enough coffee and horrible hair and showers that just don't really quite do it, you know, IT, and clothes that ought to have been washed by the laundry wench but weren't, who sucks hard at getting the right things laundered in a timely fashion, and we shant point out her lameness in organizing the stuff she does manage to launder or her inability to get them into folded patterns (folding patterns?), we just shant, poor wench, she tries, honest she does,

and also there's the beginning-of-day spousal tension and the OH JESUS PLEASE GET OUT OF MY WAY in-the-kitchen Tango, IT'S A DELIGHT, and we're supposed to somehow, beyond all of that, beyond all of those items + having to face, in that half-peering way, the kind of sidelong, slit-through-a-plate, solar eclipse kinda way, where we will at some point have to do work, and talk to random assholes and pretend we're thrilled to do it, and face the boss, and deal with the minutiae of business, ALL OF THAT AND THEN ALSO WITH THE QUESTIONS, THESE SEEMING-ENDLESS, NONSENSE QUESTIONS THAT ARE PLIED ON OUR HEADS MERELY TO PISS. US. OFF (Or not.  But if not, then -- *whyyyyyyyyyy?* *soft soft whimper*), 

and,

?

Really?

Because, oh.  God. 

It's gonna be a  l o n g  summer.