i obsess.

What Today Feels Like

Now maybe you remember I used to write occasionally on my blog. And sometimes post photos. And whatnot.

That was all before.

Before what?, you query.

Before I earned a degree from an actual, real-life, brick-and-mortar-and-blood university. (Great. It sounds like I'm trying to suggest I went to school in Forks, WA. I didn't. Close. Portland, OR. Sort of close. Not that close.

Never mind.)

Anyway! I went to school, and I wrote papers, and I yanked much hair away from my head and into my ever-more-gnarled hands, and there was much anxiety felt up in the Chez I Obsess hizzy (does anyone still say that?). (I'd refer to it as "Chez Gorman" but my husband's name is something different and -- you know what? Screw it. I'm calling it "Chez Gorman." I'm getting off track here, aren't I. Woo! It's old-school me! As opposed to new-school me, the one who has been granted a Bachelor of Arts in English, with a writing minor, SO EXPECT MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS, by which I mean, don't.) So: yes. Much anxiousness distilled itself within our bosoms around here. And we did some moving, and adopted new pets, and gave one of the pets away, and moved some more, back to the first place, and then we moved away again, so two times of moving away from the old place because! we! finally! sold it!, albeit at a great loss, both fiscally and emotionally, and I HATE when writers say stuff like "great loss" and "emotionally taxing" and "words words words" so you know what? No. I'm not going down that road. I'll tell you what: I was sad. So was my husband. So was our kid. It was tough, and none of us liked it, and we didn't have our dog anymore because she died right before all the moving stuff happened, so we overcompensated and adopted a puppy AND a kitten prior to moving into a rental, and the puppy didn't work out, so we gave it away. But the kitten stuck around. He's not so much a kitten these days:

<imagine inserted photo of cat here, though I couldn't get my photo file to open to use a photo of said cat, because I am no good at patience-involved stuff, and it was taking too long for the photo browser to load, so just do some goddamn work of your own using your imaginations, okay, people? many thank yous>

Yeah. That's Bruiser. Whom I named based on the ludicrousness of his being so teeny and the word signifying otherwise.

(What. He's fat. If you'd spent *any* time doing as I requested and imagined his photo where I said you should, you'd already basically know this, because I told you he's a cat, and not a kitten, which equates to his being a ginormous opposite of a kitten-sized animal, which he is. DUH.)

Ha. ha ha ha.

Where was I? Oh. Yes. We moved, and the rental, which I made my husband paint from top to bottom, revealed itself to be rife with ants, and poor insulation, and the constant running stream in the basement (the house sits on a flood plain, we found out) wasn't our favorite, especially when I would fling freshly-laundered items into its watery midst as I was yanking them from the laundry machines, but that wasn't what made us leave; it was the harassy neighbor who drunkenly shrieked at my husband one night for daring to take out the garbage at (prepare thyselves) 7:00 p.m. BRAZEN, no? Yes. Apparently. The guy was all affronted about it and threatened my husband until I told him I was calling the police, which I had no intention of doing, but then he stared at me until I had to actually *do* it, because I was holding my damn phone when I stated my intent to do so. Note to self: when idly threatening to telephone the police, do NOT be obviously HOLDING a telephone. The police came and we filed a report and it was dumb. And then we moved back to the old house, like, a week later, becase we felt gross about the neighbor thing AND also partially because there was no reason not to be living in a place we still technically owned that still housed some (okay, fine, a litany) of our stuff. No reason at all. And! Bonus: no ants. except for all the ones still stowed away inside Jack's cherished pirate ships, the THOUSANDS of little brown ants that look like a bottle of renegade peppercorns when they are floating in a tub after they've been drowned and had drifted out of the toys. There were thousands. Possibly hundreds of thousands. I didn't take pictures so you've got to just trust me like I mean it. Which I do. I really wanted to make an unnecessary reference to the Real Housewives* empire right here, but I don't watch those shows BECAUSE I'M SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU. (Or, more reasonably, because we haven't had the money for real cable. We have the fake kind. You know. Where you get basic network channels and some local access and shopping ones, and Hallmark, and the Span - ahem, excuse me - C-Span, and yada. Or what I *really* mean by "fake cable" is "cable made out of silly string and confetti." Either works in a pinch.)

Yeah, so ants, and moving, twice in less than year already if you're counting, and then the house FINALLY effing sold and we moved AGAIN, but we didn't paint this time because it was an apartment in a building downtown near the university campus and also TIRED. Tired. Yes. Even me, I can tire of painting. It would seem my painting obsession has waned. I am now obsessed with the novel idea of HIRING a person who will apply the beauteous paints I so adore. But the apartment had lovely beige walls that needed no paint. Because, BEIGE. So very completely fine and whatever who cares egh.

And that was kind of awesome, because I'd never lived on campus in the twenty years I've been attending Portland State University. (Off and on! It wasn't like I was taking a class every term for twenty goddamn years. Mostly.) Walking to class! Being late to class because I'd been doing laundry five minutes before! Splashing coffee down my front and being able to run home and change! Golly. The world was all new. ALL FREAKING NEW.

Oh, and if you've been playing along for the last several years of my existence, you know I wanted a second baby somewhere in the midst of all the other sheniganery, <---- yes, I'm doing that because I have a DEGREE, which henceforth legitimizes ALL my nonsense word choices forever and ever, amen, but so with the baby, no. It never happened. Kind of too busy moving and studying and watching confetti cable to get with the busy. The busy of knowing what a new baby would mean. We decided to put that whole thing on hold (because NOTHING makes ovaries fresher than ignoring them into the forties; at least, that is what I'm deciding to believe).

Oh. Dude. You know what I *have* been obsessing over again? Once I finished school, I mean, and negotiated my way through the rainiest spring break on record since the Lewis and Clark fetii were swimming haphazardly through uterus-fed springs? And kept Jack from gnawing anyone's arm off, including mine, which, duh, fine, gnaw your own arm off, kid, but please leave my limbs be, seeing as how I use them for creating unmatchable literary -- yeah, can't legitimately say "masterpiece" at this point and feel remotely comfortable about it. Anyway. Spring break survived, I took up an ancient obsession: Sex and the City. My husband gave me the series for Valentine's Day (NOT VALENTIMES DAY -- and may I also insert a gentle yet pointed headshake and pained eye-widening?) this year, and I was much too immersed in Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt, Mark Twain, and Sherman Alexie to notice properly at the time. But I stuck that pretty pink velveteen box on the shelf next to the electrical thingy that plays movies, and I eyed it. Once in a while. When I would glance up from my Woolf-driven hysteria. And raise an eyebrow en homage to Carrie. SO, as you can imagine, the off-gassing from finishing school is happening, which equates to watching many episodes between resume-sharpening interludes. (I hate my resume. I don't feel proud of it. Which I want to do, and which my husband and other people tell me I ought to do, but I don't. I'll get there. It just isn't happening immediately. Further retooling is required. Along with more alchohol. In fact, maybe I just need to get really drunk and THEN the love for my resume will tumble forth like an unbridled fountain. Gosh. I'm missing my calling. Harlequin! You probably don't need me!, but I'm HERE.

Here.)

Dot that represents me <-------------------

Sex and the City is funny to watch again. The last time I did was in 2005 when I was pregnant with Jack. Too sick to do much other than lie face-down and moan, I spent the first trimester swaddled in a cloak of resistance to my future while watching Carrie and Co. prance about in their early-2000s fashions. While eating plain bagels and cream cheese. Enhanced by the occasional tomato. I can say with poignant remorse that the show's writing isn't holding up very well. I'm having a good time tracking the fashions and how they've shifted since approximately ten years ago, and occasionally feeling pangs of sadness for how completely insipid it seems to be a young person who pines for marriage and coupledom. I keep trying to assess the show based on what I believe about feminism and current feminist values, and I keep being distracted by all the SEX. Not because it's so terribly hot; it just seems -- odd. Out of place. Forced, almost. I don't know. I can't remember my single years well enough to say with certainty that any of us, even the most industrious, got laid all that often. It isn't believable, though. It's sort of more a catwalk of sexual events being paraded for the audience to rate and compare, which doesn't seem particulary feminist-positive. I'm very much for women having sex in the circumstances that are appropriate for each individual woman. I'm just not sure I'm convinced these women are even remotely realistic. Of course, the show doesn't purport to be realistic on any level, so why do I want them to portray the sex as somehow more real than the rest of it? I. don't. know.

I'm going to keep after it, though. Once I slog through this whole learning-to-love-the-resume thing. And once Gwen (whose visit begins in approximately seven, SEVEN, hours) has split the scene, I shall send resumes off with one hand while television-remote slinging with the other. Maybe I should make myself a remote-holster. That would be ironic. Because hipsters are notorious TV haters. And holsters are for guns. Another odious unhipster item. The two things pared make for a hipster's dream of horrific items married in so unholy a manner as to be appealing to hipsters. Right? Do I know hipsters or do I know hipsters?

Fucking Portlandia.

So, to recap: moved. I haven't even revealed where we moved after the apartment, because I am not ready to. And I'm not placating you about it, either. But move we did. A total of Four Times (FOUR TIMES OMG) in less than eighteen months. There's a head-mounting wall plaque with my name on it hidden in the bowels of my husband's box of stuff for when I suggest we move again in the next several lifetimes. But yeah. I also returned to school in that time and finished, and I won a writing award, and Jack grew up some, and we got a cat, and my dad was diagnosed with stomach cancer and he's had a lot of chemo and radiation and so far, he's doing much better than expected, as in, he's still alive, and really, in itself that is nothing short of miraculous because they gave him the 3-6 month business last November, so he's kicking cancer ass, woo! Go, dad! And my husband has been extraordinarily patient with me while I finished school and now with the job search, and the only thing left is how concerned I am about Jack's having to be a full-time aftercare kid, but it'll be okay.

Right?

Sure.

 *I had honorable intentions of getting back to the RHofW(herever) after I wrote it, I did, but I just didn't make it happen. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me, you, my lone reader, my lone beloved? Please. I beg you.

Something About Something

I wrote this for my creative writing course yesterday.  The assignment was to create a scene based on talking around the theme.  You know.  Elephants.  Rooms.  All that.

Anyway, I liked what I came up with (although I'm terribly aware of the overlong initial sentence and of my age-old addiction to indulgent overlong sentences and that I should've cut it).  You don't have to.  Like it.  Conversely, you're welcome to like it.  I DON'T CARE.  MEH.  (Except we both know I'm full of bull pucky, and that I am henceforth only to be known as "butt tube TM (pending)."  A butt tube TM (pending), if you must know, and you must, is my replacement word for pussy, because I don't like the association of weakness/lameness with a woman's vag.  I simply don't care for it.  Butt tube, meantime, forces association of weakness with the sack o' crap that everyone, regardless of gender, must bear.  You're allowed to use it, so long as you give me full credit.  LOTS OF CREDIT.  FOR BUTT TUBE. TM. PENDING.

What is wrong with me?

Ahh, yes.  I know what is wrong with me.  I am stalling.  So.  Fine.  Here's the damn story already.  READ IT.   OR DON'T.  FEH.  OR MEH.  WHATEVER.

(I'm having some trubs addressing the whole "critique" portion of the creative writing course menu.)

************************

 

She lay with her face pressed into the bed and she tried to cry, she tried to get it over with, the way you try to get done when you’re on the toilet and you don’t really want to be there, and nothing, no tears, which is exactly what she expected but was also really hoping she could push past and into tears anyway.  She wrinkled her face up and tried again, and still nothing.  The blanket smelled.   She inhaled deeply to discern the subtle elements lashed together within its fibers, settling on the prominent ones: cat and dirty socks.  The key turned in the lock on the front door and she lay and listened to the crumbly sounds, wondering if she should get up.

“You okay?”  He was obviously standing in the hallway, the way his voice came out over the sound of a coat being removed and hung on the hook.

“What?  Yeah.  I’m fine.”  The blanket was still pressed against her face so her words were muffled.

“Sure?”  He came in and sat beside her, resting his hand on her right shoulder blade.  Hesitant to move now that he was there, because she didn’t want him to get up, she held her breath for a second.  She had to flip over a little though when she ran almost completely out of breath.  It made him shift away from her.

“Eh.  I’m fine.  I don’t know.”  Grabbing a pillow, she pulled it toward her and lifted her head up with its bulk so she could be minutely closer to him.

“I talked to Richard about Heather today at work.”  He shook his head.  It looked uncomfortable, his sitting like that, she worried.  She leaned up so she could push him onto the other pillow.  She couldn’t look at him sitting all upright and awkward that way.

“Oh.  Did he say anything about Joanna?”

“Nope.  But guess what?  New baby.  They just found out last week.”

“Oh!  That’s hilarious.  Good for them.”

“Yeah.  I know.”  He stuck his hand on top of her hand.  The weight burned into the skeleton and the tendons and the veins, she could feel her veins throbbing.  She could feel them doing a dance.  It was a Katy Perry booby-shaking dance, no.  No it wasn’t.  It was Beyonce with the ring song dance.  Where you shake your hand and maneuver up and down.  Just like when she was dancing with John last weekend at the club with all of the gay boys and everyone was whooping and hollering because it was their favorite song, and they were all shaking their hands and moving up and down like they were on broken escalators and she was too drunk and she fell over, she fell off of her escalator, and she embarrassed John and she couldn’t stop talking to the drag queen who was that night’s DJ, she kept telling him how fierce he was.  He wasn’t even that fierce. 

“Hey.  Listen.  You already said you were gonna call and make an appointment with Amanda’s acupuncturist.  You’re still gonna do that, right?”  He picked up the wet piece of hair on her cheek and gently pressed it into the rest of her hair.  She nodded a yes.  She nodded a really small yes.

“Good.  I’m glad.  I think it’s a good idea.  Definitely worth a shot.” 

“Okay.”

“I love you, you know.”  He smiled down at her head. 

“I have to go make dinner.”  She stood up quick so he couldn’t see the lines from the blanket all squished on the other side of her face that made her ugly.

“I said I love you, you know.”  He pulled her hands toward him and she stumbled into him and kept her face turned a little away.  She cried.  She nodded again.  Small yes.

“Yeah.  I know.  I love you too.”  Her voice was shaky.  She laughed at how she sounded, she thought it was funny that she was being a little hysterical.  She sounded phlegmy.  She got up to leave.

“You sure you’re okay now?”

“Yeah.  I’m fine.  I gotta get dinner going if we’re ever gonna eat tonight, babe.”

“Okay.”

“Chicken okay?”  She said it over her shoulder as she walked down the hall into the kitchen.  The light in the kitchen was too white.  It felt too sharp.  She didn’t want it in her eyes.  She turned it off with a quick jab at the switch.

Flipping it back on, her hand resting on the button, she squinted around the room.   She had missed the light when it was off.

The Inside of My Face

Am still unpregnant, if you've been wondering.  Casey wrote a post that brought my lately-buried feelings about unpregnancy to the fore, and I would rather say it than pretend I don't care, like I've been lately doing, even to my own face.  (The inside part of my face, not the outside.  I can do that.  I'm inside of it.)

(Don't be jealous.  It's as gross as it sounds.)

(Although you can probably do it, too, just, with your own face, not mine, and that's -- as it should be.)

Um.

Casey says what I haven't wanted to, although I *have* wanted to, I just haven't WANTED to.

So read her post and then you'll know what the inside of my face looks like.

 

Aren't you excited.

Truly, Madly, Exhaustedly

I'm really not into being a big, old whiner -- at this moment in time, anyway -- and so I've avoided this joint like the proverbial old-school demon-inspired illness for a little bit.  There's so much to whine about, is the thing.

But I'm okay, and I'll be okay-er soon enough.  Gotta wade through alla the red tape of getting Jack enrolled in Kindergarten and finish moving and figure out where I'm gonna work and sell the (unnecessary) second vehicle and and and.

See?  Loads of things to complain over, and I. JUST. DON 'T. WANNA.

(I'm sure you're all, oh, BUT DEB, COME ON!  I LOVE IT WHEN YOU BELLYACHE!)

(I'm sure of it.)

So give me a little time, will ya?  Stop pressuring me so silently and not-at-all-ishly from wherever you are, you know, that place where you weren't thinking of me even a tiny tetsch, JUST STOP IT.  I'll manage this scene and get ta messin' around on the writing front again.

(Whether I ever post photos from the rambunctious times that were had at Blogher '10 is another story.  The story of was-the-Kodak-freebie-camera-a-blessing-or-a-curse, in prose.  Because I can't get the damn photos to upload, for whatever reason, and SIGH.)

Love,

Crazy.

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.

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.

VROOM! and Other Such Things, Besides. Now!, With 10% Extra Steeple!

Living near a freeway for the last, well, *nearly* three years has been -- an experience.  The routine of the sound, that sheer wall of sound, of its force, has been both an underpinning of our existence here, as well as an unmooring.  I never thought my life would feel so damn noisy.  I sometimes feel angry at nothing in particular, not JUST because I'm insane, but also because of those wretched motorcycles and the police cars that chase them, and we're several blocks from a large hospital, so we get all of the emergency vehicle sounds, too.  Oh, and there's a church *literally* in our backyard, with a big, open parking lot that goes unmonitored for most of the week, especially late in the evening, where some local fucknuts choose to burn their tires idiotically and spin cookies (seriously?  people still do that sort of stupid crap?  even when there ISN'T snow on the ground?).  One day as someone was industriously out there, screeching their tires and revving their engine and generally being a fucking nuisance, I stood on the lip of the broken hot tub and yelled, "HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE ENERGY CRISIS?  YEAH!  THAAAAAT!"  And felt very smart and righteous about it for, oh, a few seconds.

Then I got down and thought of how grandly assish I must have looked to anyone *else* who may have heard me or noticed me yelling and shaking my fist and bloviating at people screeching their tires and roaring their engines while *inside* their car, and I blushed painfully and a lot.

That moment occurred just a few months after we moved in, and while I haven't leapt to the highest point in my yard again to shriek awkwardly at people who can't hear me, I have raged inwardly.  More at myself for being such a massive idiot than at them for all of the noise.

I won't miss that noise.  I'm resigned to possibly living somewhere that's *also* noisy, in its own right, but these particular qualities of freeway (seriously, we're approximately three blocks off) + emergency vehicles + motorcycles + church parking lot cookie-busting I WILL NOT MISS.

Not at all.

*looks pointedly at future self and punches the air*

(I also won't miss the variety of conversations that living behind a church, with its giant steeple, has wrought.  Especially between me and the youngest person in our household, given my rocky past with regards to church, especially their structures -- which is to say, in shorthand, I loathe them.  The sole exception is his imitation of the "here's the church" preschool sing-song with the hands and wiggling fingers that came up whenever he noticed the steeple.  STEEPLE.  You can't even SAY the word without wanting to bust out the song.  See if I'm not right.  Say it.

See?  HERE'S THE STEEPLE.

Yo.)

Toy Story 3: After Which, I Am Left a Beautiful Wreck.

No spoiler in the title of this post for the film, unless you *haven't* seen the trailer, in which case, see the trailer, and then all will be made clear (the spoiler, yes, is that Andy, the kid from the original film, leaves for school as a grown-up boy).  My heart was smashed in the process of watching a little boy grow up and leave for college.  Smashed and made whole and smashed again.  And cycled.  But I didn't come here just now to tell you about the movie.  Instead, I must report on the viewing experience, *my* viewing experience of Toy Story 3.

Some background is required.

Toy Story was the first truly beloved Pixar film in our house.  Before my kiddo was born, my brother, in the Nineties, loved Toy Story.  He collected several film posters, which were all left behind with the rest of his things when he removed himself to crazy-people-who-hang-about-under-bridges lands.  My parents, when my son was very small, asked if we'd like to have the blue-and-white-clouded homage to Woody and Buzz art from the collection of posters.  I said, oh, lordy, yes, because Jack was already besotted with those two.  In fact, the only things we gave him for his second birthday were the Woody, Jesse, Buzz and Bullseye dolls I spent much time earning on ebay in advance of the day.  He was mad about them, too.  Still is.  Still plays with each of them.  Ironically, though we've been to Disneyland three times since he began his idolization of Woody, we have yet to encounter him.  Well, not entirely true.  The second trip brought us face-to-face with Woody and Jesse but the line for photos had been closed only a moment before we discovered them.  Disappointing, but we figure we have lots of times left to find Woody and get some photos with his kindly yellow-plaid Sherriff's arm draped about our kiddo's shoulder.  (And honestly, we were thrilled on our last trip to find both Buzz *and* Jesse and get some snaps.  And by we, I DO NOT ACTUALLY MEAN ME.  Please know that I haven't lost my mind to that extent.  Jack was the happy one.  I was only glad to participate in his excitement.  You believe me, right?

*sigh*)

So this movie.  I cried for about the first ten minutes, give or give ten + more minutes.  SHUT. UP.

It's good.  I know you've heard about the positive reviews on rottentomatoes.com.  WE ALL HAVE, LADY IN THE THIRD ROW OF THE THEATRE WHO WAS PROUD TO KNOW THINGS THAT GO ON ON THE INTERNET.

*ahem*

(The lady in the third row wasn't, in case you were wondering, me.  Probably.)

So after I got through crying and focused on the moment, because I did a quick mental check and realized I was doing what I already do in life, I focus so hard on how it will end and how I need to be prepared to feel about the ending I forget to be here, now, living it.  I kind of feel like I'm not alone, here, with this manner of dealing with how life comes at us, tsunami-style, but it's something I'd like to change nonetheless.

Then -- the movie.  The improvement on the art alone is worth the price of entry.  The story is, well, it's Pixar.  You need feel no less trust in their ability to take your heart and shine it up and then drive a freight train over it and then lovingly kiss and clean it and shine it back up again, good as new, no, BETTER, than you ever have had before.  

THEN I kept having to shush Jack.  He was randomly talking VERY VERY UNQUIETLY during the film.  At first I simply said, babe.  We need you to whisper if you have something to say.  But his stage-whispers shook the seats, they were so ALSO UNQUIET.  After a few repetitions of the whisper-requests, I simply started to say, also in not-so-quiet whispers, WE DON'T TALK DURING THE MOVIE.  But then, he said one thing more, one last statement, and -- I thought about it.  His comment was a reference to the film's action taking place.  After I shushed him, I heard, *really heard* his sentence.  It broke through.  It wasn't "MAY I HAVE PLEASE HAVE SOME MORE LICORICE PLEASE" and it wasn't "I DON'T WANT ANY MORE WATER THANK YOU" and it wasn't "I HAVE TO GO POTTY DADDY/MOMMY."  It was (and here I am refusing to spoil with recognizable plot line references) a comment on what was taking place in the film.  And he said it loud.  Not because, I slowly realized, he had forgotten to whisper. 

He was trying to reassure himself that everything was going to be okay.

After that, I took his hand and I said, "babe, everything is going to be okay.  Remember, Woody and Buzz and Jesse and Bullseye and the others are all smart and awesome and they love each other and they're GOING to BE OKAY."  (Guess who felt better after hearing that.  It wasn't the child whose ears were the objective of the statement.  *points with thumbs at self*)

Then I held his sweaty paw and we watched.  It got kind of scary, I suppose, if you're a little kid.  I mean, it *definitely* got scary if you are a little kid whose parents haven't let you see the Wizard of Oz yet, or even the old-school Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  (We are NOT that overprotective.  We're just waiting until we know he can handle seeing those images and still sleep that night and for the rest of the week's worth of nights after *that*.  What.  Okay.  We *might* be a little overprotective.  Of our nighttime rest.  IT'S JUST WE REALLY LIKE SLEEP.  DO.NOT.JUDGE.US.)  It's a wild ride.  A great, exhilarating, thrilling, SCARY wild ride.  During the most intense part I took Jack onto my lap and held him close while he sobbed and shook.  I wanted to be a part of the action for my own sake, in that moment, but I wanted more to care for him while he rode out the difficulty of it.  I let go of my own needs, my own desires, in that moment.  And cried harder than he did again at the end when I was still holding him and Andy was saying goodbye and leaving, though Jack sobbed quite surprisingly hard in his own right.

(It was also interesting and eye-opening and heart-saddening to think of my brother while I watched, because I know he loved the original Toy Story and I can't help thinking of his having left boxes of things at my parents' house, never to be reclaimed.  I would give anything to pass that poster on to *his* child.  A child I know won't ever exist.  So -- that's pretty sad.  It's also comforting, somehow, to know that at least I have the child who loves those films.  And that my brother can take some random, unknowing comfort in his presence on Earth fractalized and carried on by my kid.  Jeff, if you ever read this -- yeah.  That.)

And all of these epic revelations and epiphanies, it's because of a Pixar movie.  The Toy Story 3 film.  The one that took me beyond myself. 

If a movie can do that, uh, yeah.  It's a pretty good movie.  Go see it.

I have a lot to (un)learn. Probably.

I think I need to stop worrying so much about writing.

If I am not meant to write brilliant, earth-shatteringly great prose, I should be okay.  The only reason I fancy writing at all is that I love reading good writing so much.  The good writing burns into my fingers and propels them toward writing implements themselves, and I am helpless to impede their messy progress.  Sort of.

I don't remember too clearly why I began this blog.  I mean, it was one thing and then another, it was me trying to get a small business off the ground (crafting/embroidery/etc) and it was me trying to connect with other new moms, new parents, kindred spirits, inspirers, and it was letting those words burn through my fingers and into the screen of my laptop and not letting them get stuck.

What gets confusing, though, is telling stories without the potential for invective.  Not a deliberate kind, but an inadvertent one.  Where I talk about my life and it crosses over into the lives of others around me, the ones who might wish to refrain from having their existences poured out onto the pages of the internet like a bottle of spilled wine, softly sticky and spreading rapid across the space.

I love to write.  I hate reading my writing.  I love reading.  I hate feeling the urge to do same, only to trace over those curlicued language annotations later and recognize their dissimilarity to anything I had tried to say.  I love when people I know manage adroitly to capture something, whether it was their intent or they allowed their voices free reign, that they captured a vibrance, a living breathing ALIVE being in their grasp as they hurried their fingers to the finish, wherever that may be, I love when I am able to read the capture as it happens, live-action style, the literary version of the sports channel.

I want my words to live.

Without hurting or killing anyone already living in the process.

But how?

things as they stand, or, in this case, tremble weakly and collapse.

This is one of those posts I'll write where I'm playing catch-up the entire time, typing a dozen letters only to see them magically appear several seconds later, in a stuttery string.  I guess it's one of the reasons I get frustrated when I compose my posts here in the Typepad pre-set box rather than in a word document (although it isn't necessarily any better there, because my hard drive, she is not your prototypical clean slate, and doesn't afford an open countryside/open skies feeling when doing anything, rather, it's all multi-family structures up in here, with lots of very compact studio apartments and some walk-in closets that double as single-living units, so it's crowded in the lonesome west is what I'm trying to suggest in very overstated terms).  I get frustrated writing at any time, is the matter-of-fact truth.  It's the daily battle with adhd.  I want so badly to write the fantastical things that cross through my head but get that window up on the screen, and it's - no, it's just the action of opening the laptop that kills it all dead.  I've tried writing in the morning before anything has distracted me but even there I overthink it and distrust my instincts (ironic or no, I just incorrectly typed "destruct" instead of distrust).  I want to figure out how to trick my mind into, never mind aiding me at writing in a disciplined, consistent way, merely standing aside while I go about the business of writing.  It obstructs me at every turn.  Fools me into thinking I'm bad enough that it's not worth it, I'm not sufficiently brilliant for it to matter, I could level all the words at the screen I wanted and it still wouldn't work, they'd all melt into a gray mass, a dull, ineffectual lump.  And I fight it, I write anyway, and I think, okay, someone (or several someones) will comment that I've written nothing, that I've only penned another ode to the meta of writing.  And if no one does, it's only because no one's even commenting, or even reading.  And why should they?  I've all but rough-stitched several rows of barbed wire, the kind with teeth, along the border of this land, my tricksy brain insisting no one wants to know what goes on in my head.  It's bland and tepid in there, it whispers.  It's of no interest to others.  There are no good stories.  Nothing compelling.  Only misery, deep, vast, endless, with just enough texture to make life difficult for the body controlled by its contents, not enough to satisfy any onlooker. 

Yet I've lately had these dreams, these wild, startling dreams, these visions of consequence.  They are sharp, detailed, filled with contrast.  I outstrip my rivals and enemies in these dreams.  I face cliffs, sheer walls, and I flit upward without strain.  I float and fly, I dance in the air above those who would take a foot and pull me downward, but though they struggle, they cannot close the distance between us.  There are deep-ember'd browns and reds, shocking chartreuse and emeralds glowing and deep.  Violent violets.  Flourishing fuschias.   Glorious, rusted oranges.  

These dreams, they're these meals where I get some of it on my clothes and come away with a stained mouth.  They're awesome.

Remember that book, The Secret Garden?  I know you do.  I just wanted to know if I could refresh your memory about the way it ends, because I'd hate to introduce a topic you weren't comfortable with.  Please check the appropriate box.

*waits*

So The Secret Garden ends with the idea that people can decide to hold positive thoughts in their heads or they can think negative, brooding ones.  I know there's a current popular ideal based around the same principle, but I'm getting at the notion in the old book because I just read it (The Secret Garden, not The Secret) to Jack recently, well, some of it, but I didn't think he was quite grasping it so I ceased reading it to him and read it to myself for fun, but before I finished, it somehow got into the dread Tower-of-Babel book-stack next to my bed.  I only just noticed it again several decades later, or, a few days ago.  I wanted to purge it from the stack in case the stray passersby who find themselves wandering about in my bedroom should notice it and somehow think less of my highly-refined tastes for literary genius (which is why there's still season 1 of Alias shoveled in there on top of a copy of Pickwick Papers and beneath a Nora Roberts classic eighties tale of mystery and intrigue about a cat burglar that I'm pretty sure is a direct rip-off of the Grace Kelly story) and I only had a few pages left to dash through.  I read them as I finished my coffee while Caleb and Jack got haircuts at the barbershop where they have popcorn and TV at each station.  It felt pretty silly to digest because I've read it so many times and am no longer at the sixth-grade reading level, plus it really is pretty juvenile, but there's this quote in it.  It's something like the following (because NO, I'm not going all the way upstairs to fetch the actual book just so I can look up the damn quote):  "where a rose is tended, a thistle cannot grow."  Then it  was illustrated in a way that made sense.  That where one thought is already existing, a separate thought cannot intrude.  If the thought's a good one, a positive one, then the bad one withers away.  Unless the thought-holder allows the bad one to dominate.  So it's a decision to be made at every step.  And the thing is, I'm passive about the thoughts I allow myself to entertain.  I don't really bother making active choices to push away the bad stuff, I just -- let it all flow in like a giant faucet that I never monitor or even attempt to control. 

So then I end up thinking something outrageous, like that I should kill myself.  Because I'm not cautious, not selective, not remotely savvy about what I let in.  It's like a fucking FIREHOSE up in this cranium.  Everything.  All of it.  Logjam thoughts and noise noise noise and it's neverending.  Is it any wonder I have to take pills to sleep?

If I can figure out how to trick my brain into comprehending that I can control the faucet, and tend roses so thistles have to slink off, ashamed, maybe I can trick it into letting me do some writing.

One thing at a time.

good, not great, post about my almost-suicide yesterday.

I hesitate to share this.  I worry.  I worry that I holler “wolf” and you say, oh.  Sure.  Heard it.  And then you go away and watch something more entertaining, where people commit to things and follow through and do so with quiet determination.  You know.  Interesting behavior.  (That’s what the director of my acting school said, that the actors who are most absorbing to watch aren’t the ones who give in easily to crying; it’s the ones who *fight* the tears.  Struggle to keep from losing their composure, losing sometimes for a moment, but mostly managing to keep a stiff upper-lip.  Face the hardship with stalwart strength.) 

I didn’t choose to apply those lessons to life on the stage.  I decided to use them for real life.  I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME TELL YOU WHY.  Me, the girl who delves to the part inside where there is poo-flecked flotsam, where there is detritus and sturm-und-drang and there is also a misplaced key from that one apartment where the memories are haphazard and patchy and drunken and stumbly.  Where the world revolved around sleeping until 3 p.m. because of working at a strip club until 2:30 a.m. followed by a tired-toed exodus to the nearest Denny’s where a few of us would gather to eat questionably-cooked eggs and laugh at the torrid events of the night, sometimes rejoicing over our good fortune, sometimes despairing over where next week’s rent-and-utilities bill money was to come from. 

The reasons for applying acting lessons to life would make sense if I were to unravel them.  I shall.  (I shall try.)  Jeff, my brother, was never normal.  Neither were my parents.  I looked to them for behavior cues in the early stages but recognized the discomfort those behaviors caused in the people around us when I got to be, I don’t know, grade-school age?, and thereafter did my level best to act like anyone else (with, need I mention?, little success).

Enter acting school.  Use it for acting?  WHY?  When I could use it for something far, far more imperative: fooling others into appearing normal on an everyday basis.  DUDE, sign me UP.  I took the lessons from the classes and incorporated them into my daily life.  I don’t know what kind of actor I was (though I did enjoy it, I think, but that wasn’t what I was there for and never pretended it was).  I only know that it taught me how to blend, and that’s what I sought.

I almost took my life (took it where?  Took it to the park?  To the zoo?  The department store?  A movie?  Grocery shopping?  For coffee?  On a personal journey?  Oh, ahhahahhHAHAHAHhaha, I slay me) yesterday.  I stayed home from work, and, against my husband’s beseeching request, as he readied himself for work, remained in bed until nearly lunchtime.  I slept, mostly.  But when I woke, nothing was more logical than the thought of getting up and walking straight into the kitchen where my adhd medication (generic Adderal) resides, stoic, in the cabinet alongside the other medicinal soldiers, the whole regiment a little imbalanced because some of the bottles will simply not click into place, being round, or some daredevils who resist squareness and maintain their rectangular-yet-slightly-oval’d shape, WEIRDOS (aspirin – *sigh*), I thought-counted them into my hand, gingerly, careful to amass the even amount, ten, or twenty.  Yes.  Twenty would do it.  But maybe ten would do just as well?  And if I could get by with ten, why waste the others?  I’m not a fan of overkill.  KILL, yes.  Overkill, no.  (Shut up with your pointing and hand-covered mouth to the gigantic, neon “irony” sign right there in the way of the rest of this post.  I see it too.  Who could miss it?  I don’t WANT to miss it.  I want to ignore it.  Fucker.)

(The sign.  Not you.  I dislike your pointing and guffawing but I don’t dislike you.)

Seventeen pills, though, is messy.  I like even.  I like aligned.  I dislike imperfect, I abhor unfinished.  I’m unfinished.  I can’t finish.  Anything.  I am an utter failure at all I lay my hands on.  This blog is a relevant example.  I’ve never been consistent in my blogging.  When I can really write.  Write well.  I can.  I know I can.  (Today I know.  Yesterday I didn’t, and I won’t tomorrow.  But today, I know.)

So ten or twenty it had to be.  But the decision, another roadblock of Everest proportions, the decision of which, I could not make it.  Instead, I lay there, pondering the pills, wondering at their color, a dusty teal-blue, sort of oceanic, but dusty, so maybe what the ocean would look like if it were covered in desert sand, where the sand was stained, tainted, ruined by the ocean’s heaving bosom of color.  The crosses stamped on their wee roundness.  Crosses.  So tidy.  So easy to parse.  So easy to hang from.

And I decided, but I needed Caleb to know what happened.  Only, I didn’t have the balls to tell him.  I had to tell someone else.  I don’t have Jenny’s number anymore since I accidentally erased my entire phone book in my phone a few weeks ago when I updated the software and didn’t back up the contents (oh.  Hi!, i-do-dumb-things), but I would have probably called her if I had it. (And if you click through the link you'll see why I feel so stupid about complaining that I'm miserable ONCE AGAIN, because I've blogged similarly so often and for so long. 

I cannot stand myself.) 

I do have Gwen’s number, so I called her.  Partly because I knew she would answer (even though she’s in Switzerland, it was after the girls were in bed and she’d be home and have time to talk).  Partly because I knew I could ask her to contact Caleb, even if she just used twitter to DM him.  I could tell her.  She could tell him.  She could explain.  Explain why.  She’s so logical.  So capable of translating things from illogic to logic.  I reasoned thusly, dry-eyed.  I felt no compulsion to cry.  What’s sad about something so smart?  So sane?  I would finally free everyone from having to bear the burden of me.

It wasn’t until I called her to tell her that I was going to do it that I cried, not sobbing but still, choked up, and with tears running, ugly, down my cheeks and into my hair.  Onto my pillow.  I heard myself, how lame I sounded.  How weak.  How defenseless.  I knew I would resent Gwen for having to hear it.  I wished I hadn’t called her.  But then, somehow, she got me to laugh and think of something else.  And then my crying was more coughing, and I wasn’t as fixed on the dusty-blue cross-stamps on the Adderal, I was agreeing that it would be good to put on pants, to brush my teeth, to go and stand in the middle of Trader Joe’s and drink a smoothie and watch, watch the people in all their imperfect glory as they wheeled by on their ordinary errands of sustenance and routine and wonderful prosaic chip-and-salsa banality.

She says I owe her the Elton John song, “Someone Saved My Life Tonight,” at karaoke in New York at the BlogHer conference this summer.  (If I go.  I may go.  Money is sketchy.  Let’s not talk about it.)  I agree.  She knows it’s funny for me to sing something so obvious.  So do I.  (And I have to fight against the urge to spew the opposite of the truth, or, that is, to deliver the wretched rejection of someone who held me by the hand as I scrambled my feet in gravel on the ledge, rather than the heartfelt gratitude I know I owe.  But: to owe someone to that great height, it's horrible.  I know she understands and won't rub it in or try to take credit, will lightly dismiss the whole business as having been entirely up to me, and I tremble at the thought of thanking her when I recognize my own future possible desire to erase her from my life so as not to have to remember that phone call, I AM A FUCKED UP FUCKWAD, <---evidence.)  I think keeping such awful desires obvious, keeping the light focused on them, is really important.  It’s only when I begin to pretend that I’m not going to occasionally long to (say it, Debbie, JUST SAY IT) -- kill myself (ugh!, shudder!), to act as though I’m fine, I’m doing fine, to act this pretend-part of fineness,

to act,

that I lose the essential piece of connectedness to whatever keeps me from foraging for an even number of the instruments of potential self-killing.

So I’m not consistent.  So I’m uneven and probably as bipolar as I’ve denied that I am to myself for years after the labored diagnosis of bipolarism (combined with adhd, which makes it all so much more confusing, like the bipolar is multiplied by the adhd to the fourth power, or vice-versa) in November of 2000, so I don’t finish things and I quit and I have uneven commitment to all the things I have professed, once upon a glorious time, to love.  So I do all of this. 

It doesn’t mean I am going to quit trying to live.

I’M NOT GOING TO QUIT TRYING TO LIVE.

Okay?  Okay.

*

And then I did a brilliant thing and submitted this piece to Brene Brown's amazing blog, A Week of Worthiness, in answer to her request for pieces on working to be okay.  Which I'm doing.  Just, well, some days are harder than others.  This is the best I could do yesterday.  Which means I! WIN! (for now).

(Good enough.)

*

Updated to point you here: ADHD mommy.

(Because it's a thank-you card of sorts.)  (I am crap at saying thanks and feeling it's remotely sufficient.)

you people in there inside the internets over there: get ready for some crazy-pie. (crazy DELICIOUS, and you know this.)

*I wrote this last night.  I was un-sober.  Go forth and read, if you dare.

Jersey-Shore-speak has embraced my tongue, it would seem.  Like a snake dry-humping a mongoose clothed in a colloquialism.  And you thought I was gonna say codpiece.

I'm sort of enchanted by that notion.  There's an exoticablayciousness imbued in the image of a snake wearing clothing.  Snakes don't strike me (YES! score) as the most sartorial of creatures on their good days, let alone the first couple bites at an all-you-can-eat lunch.

You know something weird and completely unrelated to the above?  (Because I'm sure you are ready to shiv me for leaving behind the thing about a snake at a buffet joint wearing golfing pants and a short-sleeve button up.  Polyester takes the lead!)  It's this:  Writing funny, writing in a deliberate, pointed fashion gets -- heyyyyy.

I just figured out something that's about twenty-five (okay, I LIKE even segments of time, GWEN, I appRECiate them because I'm a dullard, THERE) layers of everyone-including-my-four-year-old-knew-but me - namely, habits:  THEY'RE HABIT-FORMING.  My god.  Semantics knowledge, even in a limited amount, would've been tasty in my broham sandwich, back there.  HEY SEMANTICS, YOU WEREN'T HAM.  YOU WERE KRAFT SLICES.  NO.  NOT PLURAL.  SLICE.  SINGULAR.   

*laughs at Semantics' weak baby-tears*

(Semantics, as it happens?  NOT SO TOUGH AFTER ALL.)

I came here by way of the idea to post about Ella through this.  I know, technically, how it's going to feel to lose my pet, my dog, my family, but I don't know how to

/

/

/

I don't know how to lose another pet.  Not with a kid to watch me break down.  Break down.  I'm gonna break it down.  Imma make a workout video.  NO.  I'M GONNA MAKE A WORKOUT VIDEO.  Only I'm serious.  And it's gonna be me, working out to my gorgeously lame mom music that was hip anywhere from 5 to 20 years ago, and the only current thing I know about is Lady Gaga, which, seriously, I challenge you to find five people who haven't heard of Lady Gaga who aren't simultaneously in comas from watching other people in comas who were married to the people who invented comas.  But where was I about my fucking rad idea to make a workout video where I dance to my momtunes and make breakfast and call that a workout?  Like, I truly believe I've worked out?

YEAH.  THAT SHIT IS GONNA BE INSANE.

I should go.  I should note before I do that tonight, Ella went to sleep on Jack's bed.  Validly so.  Where he was asleep before her.  I SAID, HE was asleep. BEFORE HER.  *historic annotation here*

She lifted herself up after he went to sleep and lurched down from the bed, then trotted downstairs to hang out with her human dad.  It's weird to say that.  But he is.  Well, if not dad, pack-leader, then.  Important figure in her life.  Person who gives her food.  Dude who used to let her sleep on all the furniture before pack-mom put her foot down.  FELLOW DOG WHO WILL ALSO SLEEP ON EIGHTEEN-WEEK-UNWASHED SHEETS.  There.  It done got said.  As is proper.

I like her, okay I love her, I'm terrified to lose another dog.  Buffy (shut up my mom's fault not mine) was our dog from when I was eight until I was twenty four.  *soft whistle*  In some ways I'm *still* recovering from that loss.  I was scared to get another dog.  The thought of loving another creature even nearly so much as I did Buffy feels like curdled milk in my throat.  Jesus.  And in some ways I've kind of totally held myself away from her, always with the oh, the dog hair and the oh, god, the stank, and the get-out-my-way!  Not wanting to have to say goodbye in twelve or fourteen years.  And this - it's not been eight yet.  She's too young.

When my grandpa Ray died, he was eighty-four, he was (limp)armed and ready.  He had lung cancer and that's what killed him, but he was tired before its advent.  He died in our living room after lunch on a Sunday, and we put our dog down the next morning, skies gray as wet cement.  Buffy had been so ill, infirm, incontinent, my dad carrying him outside to piss and shit for over a month.  They didn't want to prolong the thing.  They'd actually kept him alive for Grandpa, who was staying with us during the last stages of his cancer, Grandpa, who loved the shit out of that dog.   And the shit, it was coming out.  Poor Dad!  Carrying Buffy!  Several times a day, even. 

And they'd already decided.  When Grandpa went, so would Buffy. 

It fucking sucked to mourn them both and not be sure who I was crying about.

I know, now, that even though I was incredibly angry with my parents for that decision cast in red-hot-poker-pointed iron, pressed to my skin, to my brother's dog-devoted flesh, I can't be so angry with them.  I find, again, my hypocrisy rearing its head and growling at my aware-brain when I see that I face a similar choice, a situation beyond my control where I must make a snap judgement and a split decision and it's for my family, this group of fellow travelers, I no longer have the liberty to point and say, you, you did this.  Because the finger hits me dead-center in my gut.  Golly.  That shit hurts.

I love my mom and dad even though they've hurt me.  I wish they accepted my non-acceptance of their religion.  If they could see it, see my choices, recognize their validity, 

that would be awesome but it ISN'T GONNA HAPPEN LET IT GO GEEEEEEEEZ.

I need to close.  Nothing's coming to complete this outline-for-the-lay-of-a-madman's-mind and wrapping-up hour hath arrived on wings of nascent taco chips (I had these KICK-ASS taco chips today from last night's burrito dinner and taco chips sound right now like kind of the next best thing to eating a roll of sour candy from the flat of Andy Samberg's palm. 

Oh, that's it, I've hit on the thing to close on.  Shy Ronnie. 

Have you ever even HEARD of such a piece of middle-age-lady-bait as Andy Samberg?  You know what that last sentence needs, there?  It needs a term that defines "middle-age-lady" in fewer syllables.  Gosh.  I surely wish there were one.

Poo.)

(But seriously, have I ever regaled you all with my vexing almost-toxic lust for Seth Rogen and all of his weirdbeard, Geeky with a TM friends?  I have a problem. 

I may be Stiffler's mom.)

Phew.  And you were worried this was gonna get sappy all over again.  I wouldn't do you like that, Boo.  I would not.  *kisses fingers, lets kisses ooze from hands like ladders of blood from an open wound*

self-pity is a wondrous thing, in triplicate.

she arrived on the scene

mis en scene

slick and lean

low and mean

(no, that wasn't her, it was the others.  well, it was some her, too.)

like a three-eyed cat.

scatter that.  scatter it this way,

and that,

and after,

recall the bruised rose of her skin

and her eyes,

shudder.

sputtering on the water

in the filthy cup

rings on the counter

toothbrush jammed halfway into the rack

unpack and unpack

and never get to the bottom

of it.

where you were,

where you are,

it smacks of disloyalty.

of royalty.

smile and charm and bend and coo,

oh, you,

your love abates.

its imperative repetitions

replete with crucial recall

or not crucial at all

possibly.

but you wish it were so.

and so, and so.

there is a scent of finality,

of trivial pursuit,

wafting astride the distinct odor

of ham.

what's a pig got to do with it?

everything.

pigs are, after all, in zen.

zen's where you've got to

once you've dismembered the beast

and remembered you've shorn the sheet

(they are fleece).

sheer rage is what you once felt,

and now there is only a recollection,

a heartfelt hearkening back

to the there that wasn't really.

and the alcohol confused you, anyhow,

and you think, yes, sure, and certain,

i drank too much.

too often.

i still do.

i mean to keep up with it,

as i've little enough to show for these years,

this wear,

this tear,

fallen angels have nothing on me.

did you get that one, big brother?

it's a joke for us to share.

we share so little, these days.

so, uh, fuck you.

For the longest time I've been writing like there were people standing immediately behind me.  I couldn't shake the "who's reading?  Who's reading?" vibe.  Which puts an automatic kibosh on producing anything that isn't either kiss-ass or straight piss, given the ensuing attempts to pander and/or simply avoid offense.

Then again, I'm not certain that being at least minimally aware of an audience isn't a good thing, either.  For all the moments when it drives me to drivel, the knowing, there are an equitable amount of pieces that shake in, in good part, because of that awareness, because I'm trying to produce something with a person or people in mind who motivate me to write well.  Which seems like a good thing.

But what's true?  What's the good, the best thing, the most honest thing?  For me?  I don't know.  No.  That's bullshit.  The best thing is for me to write true, write honest, and when I have to stop and check my rhetorical mirrors I slow myself down -- mostly -- in a way that ceases being true and becomes pandering or worry that offense is being committed. 

I've always held to the don't-tell-if-it's-not-my-story notion.  Don't talk about someone else's stuff.  Which permits me to instead unpack my gut, or make up beautifully-embroidered nonsense.  Sometimes unpacking my gut means telling my husband's story, or my son's story, or even my parents' or brother's story.  Which fights with my main edict, though it hasn't always stopped me from the telling. 

Lately I want to talk about our -- see? -- troubles.  The things that make our lives, our conjoined story, a tough row.  But I can't, thanks to my own fucking rule.  And that keeps me mum.  *points to pressed lips, widens eyes in frustration*

I can't pretend about all of that stuff.  It's very hard, and it's sad-making, added to the seeming secondary infertility, a thing I didn't even know existed until after last summer's miscarriage.  I can't discuss it, and I kind of don't want to, but it's like this hurdle, there, in my way, and writing around it -- I'm not very practiced at writing *around*.  I write *through*.  I cannot lie.  Not with my fingers.  (Which probably means I should never take up sign language.)

It's annoying, this not knowing how to pretend those things aren't obstructing my writer's view.  I've been calling it a block to myself, because it looks exactly like one, but it's not that blank, white cube of invisible repulsivity.  It's just -- in my way.

Get out of my way, trouble!

Where I Obsess Over My Body's Inability to Conceive.

I want a second baby.  No great secret.

The part that is a secret?  That I'm obsessed.  It's been over two years that we've been at this, only for a long time, it wasn't too serious.  We weren't TRYING, we were just not NOT trying.  

Now, we try.  And every month I watch my cycle with eyes and thoughts trained, intent.  Another period comes and I think maybe, maybe it's not my period.  Maybe I'm spotting.  Only, that night, I recognize that I've lost too much blood for it to be spotting.

This last one was the hardest yet.  It's so hard to not be there yet.  And after last summer's miscarriage I dread losing another baby if we do manage to achieve maximum pregnancy.

I'm tired of being sad about it.  I keep thinking, well, maybe this is my body's way of telling me, NO FUCKIN' WAY, bitch.  And maybe I should just let it be.  Get in shape.  Start running again.  Endeavor to find me a good hobby.  (I have the perfect one in mind, too.  I really want to start photographing the ins/outs of midcentury modern homes, and feature them on a portland-specific midcentury modern home-worshipfulness site, aka blog.  SHUTUPICANTOOWRITEYETANOTHERBLOGTHATIMAYINFACTCONTRIBUTETOONOCCASION.)

Uh.

I write, btw, for my living these days.  You're aware of that, most of you, but if you aren't -- well, now you are.  It's pretty kick-ass to write for my supper, but I hunger to write for fun, if I only could find the leftover supply.  And I even *dreamed* of the midcentury homes blog last night.  It was pretty insane.  I was really into the photographery.  (Why leave it at "photography" when I can throw in two extra letters and make it wrong and longer?  WHY, INDEED.) 

Thing is, just as I begin to see all of that as a good way to be, I realize I really miss that baby who isn't here yet.

Shit.

WAHM v. SAHM smack-down: or, further evidence of my schizophrenia.

I had enough ideas for blog posts this weekend to keep me knee-deep in 'em for months.  (Especially at the rate I've been going, lately - it would have probably taken care of my quota through early fall.)

But -- time.  Time!  Where was that going to come from?  From my clear-out-the-dog-hair-sea allotment?  From the window of laundry-and-more-laundry?  From the oh, cripes, I don't want to list the minutiae, it's bad enough that I have to spend most of my "free" time doing it to begin with.

Mostly, I get really angry when I come up with something mind-boggling that I yearn to scribble down and just can't get the minutes to do so, because I'm too busy doing all of the mindless shit required of me, and never feeling adequately caught up, when I know these ideas, these beyond-myself thoughts are what make me feel alive, bigger than the laundry/dishes/grocer/bed-making, beyond the drivel of what I do at work, at what I do probably 7/8ths of the time.  

And I know I had more time when I was at home during the day, even though I didn't realize it then.  Because I work now, I get to see what my Fridays at home with Jack vs. my Monday-Thursday spent rushing about are like, via comparison.  And I get really resentful of people who try to unfairly occupy my precious minutes who aren't directly related to me or married to me.  I get ANGRY.  And then I want to delete these people from my phone directory and never speak to them again.  ESPECIALly when they don't work.  I'm thinking specifically of an old/kinda refreshed (thanks a BUTTload, fb) relationship with someone, a person who doesn't have a job aside from caring for her one kid, who recently tried to make me feel guilty for not leaping to respond to her request for my attention on some random fucking item, I just can't begin to elucidate my reasons for how irritated I get when this sort of thing goes down.  Even when Jack was newborn, I was working.  I worked all the time.  I was terrified of our not being able to survive financially and I labored after labor at money-making (the embroidery machine was my gauntlet, my master, its software my bullying Minotaur).  I rarely had a week free of some work requirement, especially once I began selling things for fadiddle (at which I mammoth-failed, *sob*, moving on, deep breath GO!), and it affected my focus on my child, affected my ability to be present with him, and lots of other things besides, BUT.  Even given that, I still had more time than I do now. 

Between getting the morning parade on the road, and the morning commute, and slamming as much work into the slice of time I have to get it all done (which is never, ever enough, and I'm rarely caught up) before I need to leave to pick Jack up by 3 p.m. (later than he or I like, as it's after the bulk of his friends have gone home and late enough that I don't feel like we have much time for anything), get home with him, possibly (probably) stop at the store for essentials, fight traffic, feed the dog, get Jack a snack, unload the dishwasher, fold some clothes, pick up junk on the surfaces, sort the mail, deal with bills/other daytime-specific phone calls to annoying call-centers, make other necessary appointments, get the dinner ready if I'm making it (Caleb and I try to trade off, when I'm in not-too-crippled-by-ADD mode, which can last for weeks and sometimes longer, hooray!), then wrap up dinner, get Jack into his bath, post-bath, etc., do dishes, clean kitchen, fold some more laundry, pick over Jack's current clothing and assess what needs to be got rid of (too stained/ripped/small) and replaced, or some other benign-yet-important task, and then possibly do a little more work or else fade into a pile of gray lumps on the sofa for an hour before I drag my sorry ass to bed, I'm lucky, LUCKy if I can find a few spare minutes to email/blog/tweet/chat with friends.  When I get the chance to leave the house and meet someone for a drink, which I do on a regular basis but ONLY because I have a really supportive partner who allows me that free time as often as I want it, and I generally want it at least twice a month, I almost always have to push myself to go because I'm dithering just before I leave, always.  It's that last ten or so minutes before I walk to the car.  I get so grossed out at the thought of leaving.  Leaving my family, leaving my husband to deal with the dinner/dishes/bedtime routine, leaving my kid for those last minutes before bed, and he's not getting any younger, this I know, leaving with those pants sitting strangely on my post-holiday-pudge bottom, with this new set of wrinkles under my eyes, around my mouth, with this permanent exhaustion in my chest and belly and wreathed around my shoulders and down through my arms and wrists and curled in my tired fingers.  But I go.  I go, I see, I hug, I cherish.  It's good to go.  To come home to the family I love.  To appreciate, to be new and fresh. 

But I don't like the strain on my time, and if people try to make me spend more of it than I like through the assy means of threatening me with guilt, by expressing to me that I somehow owe them something, they have just written their ticket to fuck-off-ville.  My family is the only entity to whom I owe ANYthing.  They claim me, and that's where I license the guilt-factory, if there were one. 

I'm not warning any one of you, my friends, who might read this and be timid with me henceforth through some confused sense that I was speaking to you.  I'm not.  I'm being very specifically upset with someone who really never did relate to me, but especially does not now.  I have always worked from home since Jack existed, but now I work *away* from home.  I was never really a true SAHM.  'S okay.  I don't mind.  I think it was beneficial for me, in a twisted, can't-go-back so-what-the-hell-anyway kinda beneficial.  But hell's bells.  If you haven't got any kind of job aside from wiping peanut butter from around mouths and wiping poop from tiny bottoms, I SERIOUSly don't expect you to compare your life to mine, and I'll dismiss you from my friendship ranks without so much as a quick backward glance if you threaten my ability to care for my family by taking precious time and energy from me with cunning use of guilt and machetes. 

But especially the machetes.

*This is not a -- oh, hell.  I don't care how you perceive it.  I work away from home.  I've also worked-at-home with a paying gig *while* being a SAHM.  I am a mom.  I have a right to think all of this stuff.  If you don't likee, fine.  Express yourself in comment-form.  Anonymous assholes, prepare to be disemvoweled.  Everyone else, have at it.  I guess I just don't feel like explaining myself any further.  I don't owe it to anyone. 

Though it does feel good to get it all said.  It's been bothering me for so long.  I feel guilt for not being a regular blogger anymore.  See?  Cunning use of guilt.  Way to go, BLOGS.  You're worse than Jesus for guilt-weight.

**Written while on coffee/lunch break at work, ftr, hence the rambling and general tangential incoherence, WIN

***This is really just a massively over-worded exhortation to remind people, me included, to not assume we know just what anyone else is handling, what's on their schedules/lists/plates, and certainly to not think that they owe us.  They don't.  Besides, real friends understand the rule of mellow with regards to communications in adulthood-land; we communicate our desire to hang, to chat, to be involved, and then we sit back and wait until the person we're communicating with reciprocates.  And we don't pressure, because -- why the fuck should we?  We're friends.  It's chill.  Trust exists for such times as these (that can last many months, I've discovered in recent years).  Our friendship will continue to exist for as long as we can stand it, so long as we give each other room to manage our families and whatnot.  Pressure is bullshit. 

I was not, and am not, judging harshly those whose only job is running a household/caring for kids.  That shit is exhausting.  Just -- understand that my life is different from yours, is all.  And the good ones?  You do.  You didn't even need to read this.  /blather

it's none of your business.

I don't want friends.  Because I can't control you.  I can't make you say what I want to hear, and I can't make you interact with me in the way that I choose (e.g., safely, or what I perceive to be safe in a given, specific moment, that could change on a spinning, flinty, shimmying dime bag flown in from somewhere southern and leaving me with the spins), you are dangerous. 

You heard me.

(There's more; there's ALWAYS more.  But I don't have time dangling from my fingers like dead leaves shriveled from age and wanton use by the sun and its minions, I can't spare you any explanation, at least any further explanation than I currently offer in this wee, spare diatribe passed through the eye of my needling you.  Or your needling of me.  I HATE NEEDLES.  NEEDS.  FUCK.)

I love you.

In a completely non-sexual way. 

Probably.

abcess absent absolved. ABS! also, ABC!

First, you need to be sure, BUT SURE, that your heart has been broken.  You need to examine the remnants.  You need to pick them up and caress them, note the shape and size of the various bits, and lightly kiss each piece, but without the appearance of concern (else someone should notice how much of an impression you made as your lips connected with the chunk of aorta or ventricle or chamber, and judge you).  You need to sweep up the too-tiny shards that sparkle, dark, and gather along the edges of your cupped, damp-bloodied hands and, without a discerning tremble, deposit them into a bin and dust your palms against one another, sliding them back and forth, back and forth, in a sawing motion.

You need, suddenly, to focus on something else, and lean, breathing hard, against a wall as you do.

Then you need to determine whether the break matches older breaks.  Hold up the pieces, after having placed them back together, puzzle, puzzled, puzzling, press a little harder here than there, resist the temptation to squeeze any particular piece.  Acknowledge the black ridges of scar tissue, note the ashen spots of old bruising and dead particles.

Then lean some more and get rid of the shuddery achey thing that just tore through you again.

You need to lean in, furrow that deepening line between your eyes just above the ridge of your nose, try not to get your stinky breath on the pieces because CHRIST!, they need to get back into your chest at some point and let's hope they won't be beyond salvaging *and* smelly once replaced.

You need to compare and contrast.

SECOND.

You will want to have a large plastic bag that has a zip closure, not necessarily any particular brand, and you will worry whether that brand name is going to affect the safety and security of your heart's pieces as you place them, one by one by bloodless one, into that bag.

You will note the pulsating and you will wonder.