i obsess.

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

full of piss. and more piss.

You know what bugs the bejesus outta me?  (I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat.)  It's the phrase "these uncertain times."  Like, when people get all twisted up about "these uncertain times," and wring their hands a bunch while sighing and looking morose.  FUCKing HELL.  Show me a CERTAIN time.  Yeah.  I thought as much.

And another thing, while I'm ranting; you know that whole business about how celebrities shouldn't read their own press?  That ought to apply to your own blog comments, as well.  No matter how lovely and wonderful and encouraging it is to get feedback, with the I-must've-just-orgasmed-I-feel-so-glowy vibe that attends a heap of praise in the comments section, you really, REALLY shouldn't read that (awesome) shit.  Because it totally fucking warps your sensibilities about the writing itself.  First, because you get all over-confident and swaggery about it, and after, because you recognize people are, oftentimes, just being nice, and sometimes even just being ass-kissy or using your comments section to pull people to their sites which seems almost cruel but then I've probably done it on occasion.  Probably.  (Uh, probably?  Tell the truth, Debbie.  Okay.  *wrinkles face in disgust*  TOTALLY.  Ugh.)

Anyway, once the whole comment-thing stops mattering so much, which it never does, it always matters, so my full-of-shitness is apparently running the show this evening but I SHALL PERSEVERE, but the comments thing *does* sort of stop affecting you as much as it did in the early days, so as least that's something, it isn't *quite* as painful or soaring or whatever, and you're *kind of* capable of writing a sentence without agonizing over whether certain bloggers will stop by and be amused or impressed or bowled over and subsequently flatter you with their genius responses.  You kind of manage to tune it out, sorta.  On occasion.

But you just shouldn't fucking read it, read them, at all.  The comments, not other blogs.  Although, to be honest, sometimes you shouldn't even read those, either.  You should just steer clear altogether of the blogs you read that convince you to never write, because then you've fucked yourself.  It should be obvious why.  And of course you'll fail miserably at that, you'll read them anyway, because they write like liquid jewelry, the kind you would never tire of, and you love how they think and how they compose and articulate and it thrills you, but DAMN if it isn't dispiriting to recall you'll never write anything approximating what they can, and you just can't manage to coerce yourself to write afterward.  So that's shit.

Because, you love to do it.  To write.  It is, more than anything in this world, what you wish to be doing, at almost every waking moment.  When you're not doing it.  When you're DOING it, you kind of hate it, and hate yourself, and how imperfect your process is.  But when you aren't writing, you kind of loathe everything keeping you from it.  LIke a jealous bastard of a lover who you fucking despise but cannot get enough of, you want to be stabbing them and licking the sweat off their skin all at once.

Anyway.

Yeah.

i should not do this.

So I will.

Post Every Day This Month.

(Watch for regularly more insane updates on a daily basis.)

(Oh, dear.)

*clique, clique*

Or:  The Road to Success is Paved with Assholes.

We would sit on the bench along the rear wall of the dressing room lockers and discuss books and music and film while waiting for our turn at "up-time" - a horrible cat-walk get-the-evening-going system devised by the pimpy manager of the club where we worked, Pure Platinum (yes, that was the real name *gags*).  There were two locations; one sort of along the freeway in the middle of a random strata of San Diego burroughs, and one near the airport.  We worked at the one along the freeway.  It was considered the better of the two, which was laughable to us.  Sometimes, during a table dance (and they meant it, at this joint; the dancing was done in a little circular cut-out on the top of the tables) one would cling to the ceiling for balance during the routine, often meaning that bits of decrepit ceiling would flake off and drift down into one's locks.  Picking them out later was a true delight.

There were several dancers who would sit in the same seats, night after night, in front of the mirror that stretched along the wall just beyond the door into the dressing room. It was as if those seats belonged to them.  They were senior dancers in the club and also usually the best money-makers, and they were entitled, somehow, and no one else dared sit there.  Well, there were nights where those girls weren't working and then a second-tier dancer would take her seat; but otherwise, it was understood.  They got those spots.

We called them the mirror-girls.  When we were together and away from the club, we'd mimic them and their almost-ghoulish behavior while putting on their faces; how they spoke to one another, how they flipped their hair, how much rouge they applied to their decolletage. 

They had a name for us, too.  One night, one of the girls flipped her hair and, turning to give us the once-over while we mused quietly on Hemingway and feminism, said something pointed about our being "the nerd group."

We all laughed, genuinely laughed, laughed so hard the three of us were laying about on the floor in choking spasms.  It was such a filthy floor, too, with anyone's guess as to when it had last been cleaned.  But we couldn't help it.  We really *were* the nerd group.

I was so proud of that.

(I was also proud of the fact that, on an almost-nightly basis, I flashed the bouncer, ready to walk me to my car, and the dancers still waiting in the queue to be escorted out, with my regular bikini underwear, that they all referred to as "granny panties."  The other girls wore g-strings, without exception.  This was in ancient times, or about twelve years ago, so it's funny to think of g-strings being so edgy.  But they were.  Going commando wouldn't become a thing until at least a few years later on.)

I'm pleased when I'm not associated with what everyone else is doing in a large group.  To be different, to be able to distinguish myself from the rest of the inhabitants of a scene, it makes me feel alive. 

As a blogger, I'm glad to not play at being a hipster.  I don't know anymore what's cool in the music world, in film, or the realm of fashion, really, though once upon a time, it was the most important thing I could fathom. 

It's an honor to be friends with other bloggers who, while possibly not the edgiest, are the most genuine, the most sincere.  I'm humbled by their continued search for their truth, whether it means their traffic fluctuates or just plain plummets.  It's what makes them the very most edgy of us all.

And FUCK you if you think you're so cool you can't speak to something because it's beneath you.  Even when it's presented by someone who is lovely and genuine and a hundred times the writer, a thousand times the person, that you could ever be.  Especially then.

May your beloved mirror give you the unending pleasure and validation you apparently seek.  But don't assume there aren't people mocking your every move while you absorb yourself into its depths.

Oh, there are.

quick, quick, out with it before it quicksilver-slithers away.

I'm living in a hovering state of panic about blog posts; reading them, writing them.  I'm filled with a daily-more-noxious sense, the threat of my ability to do either will be snuffed out, those wee licks of flame that still tease the bottom of the cylinder in which they reside in my core.

I cannot seem to write.  I cannot seem to tease out those flames, lure them into a cascading roar-and-echo, my leaping store of faith in my ability, diminished, diminishing, to forever put words together on a page, knowing they will succeed once they have joined up, like a militia, well-ordered and shining bright with their buttons and filigreed elements in the fiery light of the reader's eye, shins connected to smooth shoe-tops that come down clean and firmly-planted on the firmly-packed dirt of the trail, the trail that leads, winding, into the middle-distance of harps and furies and a smoky-amber'd ether.

It's thanks only to the efforts, hard-fought, I'm sure, of those who I rarely brave reading, it's thanks to their more quietly exerted, yet exceedingly exquisitely wrought, perfectly-tumbled gems, set to their most lovely angles in supple lines and worshipful sentences and passages of humbling brilliance, that I am even capable of 'fessing my fears of reading of writing, of hearing of their perfect, poignant, gripping telling of things such as:  pain, and the resulting discomfort, and of their experiences with shocking, raw beauty.  I owe them a debt I'll never repay, not because I lack the desire; merely the means.

But here is a game attempt to say it, to thank them for their work, their constant polishing and laboring over their love, for sharing it, bravely, regularly, in a way that I cannot.  For whatever reasons that I may or may not remember just now. 

i wanna be medicated.

Can't get an appt. to see a psychiatrist until the middle of July.  The 16th, to be precise.  Iow, the day before I leave for the SF BlogHer conference.  Prolly isn't a good idea to start dosing on something unknown the day before I reconvene with a thousand crazy-a$$ bitches and behave in the expectedly ridonkulous fashion that I will do.  (It's the hyper aspect of adhd - kicks in whenever I'm even mildly mentally stimulated by something in my environment.  Give me a thousand shimmery, brilliant stimulants?  And I'm dancing like a marionette on trucker speed.  For untold hours.  It's - annoying.  And embarrassing.  And tiresome.  And unpredictable.  Etc.)

I'm tired.  So tired.  I don't care anymore.  I don't.  It's all just so nuts.

Lying cuddled together with my kiddo a minute ago, because he had come into the room, suddenly, demanding a hug, and upon returning him to his bed, I discovered his playmates, some toys he's not allowed to go to sleep with - because he *doesn't sleep* when they're present - and then we sang some songs and snuggled.  And I felt his length, even with legs curled all pretzel-like around my knees, feet stuck randomly between my knees and thighs, hand curled around mine, and my breath halted, quick, brief, because - it's all happening.  So fast.  Too fast.  Blazes of light and *poof* and he's growing, growing, grown.

And I will have done nothing throughout his growth but bemoan my own beleaguered state, my own incapacities for things that - well, that I just am not, and cannot have, and cannot be, and yet I reach, I reach, waggling my fingers 'til they're outstretched to the point of pain, and my son, this beautiful, amazing creature, this creation, he is turning tricks and cartwheels and pulling rabbits out of hats all 'round me, and still I reach, and bemoan, and waggle, and pine for things.  Unknowable, invisible things.

And soon he will, too, be invisible, this smallness, this wee synapse of time, this sharp echo against the rocks of the ages, his once-tiny hands and feet and legs and elbows all crescendoing and I see its harmonic rise in such finite, too-fleeting, too-few moments.

Is nothing in life what it ought to be?

this one is for the writers i hate to love.

I've just noticed it, again, today.  Again, the bile rising in my throat, ever so subtle, but present; the knowledge that, somehow, I've fallen down in my awareness of the parent-blogging world.  Fuck.  Fallen down is such an anemic nod.  More like, DIED SEVERAL TIMES in at least as many obnoxiously embarrassing and varied (couldn't leave out varied!) styles.  [dying with style.  hmmm.  does that include interesting texture along the tunnel full  of light, and high-contrast metallic designer wallpaper on the pearly gates?]  Shit.  Style.  Can't even come up with a better mode of explanation than that.

Which is my entire point.

I've found new blood in my blogging body for this genre; new sap in my veins, sap that steadies me as, filled also with trepadition, I gently re-enter (I tried, okay, tried to keep that un-dirty, but dude, it just didn't work; look at my options:  re-insert, dirty, and explore anew, TOTALLY dirty in skeezee Harlequin fashion, and -- so anyway, dirty is what you get, where at some other blog you might get lyrical or laced-with-whimsy, and I apologize, sorta, but not to the haters, never to them, to them I only devote that one dance I made up the other day, and only Michael-Jackson style, booYAH, haters) the stream of mind-bendingly good writers that pen their brave, barrier-breaking pieces in weblog form. 

And I'm really not up to it.

(Let's be honest, shall we?  -- I never was.)

My envy, though, gives way to shining admiration when I'm capable of battling the envy-harpies, their shrieking banished for a time.  I read, captive, and my eyes grow wide at the ability, reined by needle-point-sharp focus, of so. many. writers. alongside me.  I can't understand -- how is it managed, their skill, their focus, their trained, steadfast courage to hew on under often, but more likely always, difficult circumstances?  Life constantly getting in the way, but not preventing the cleverly etched beauty, the fragile wonders, tended by these gardeners of words, gardening in the midst of sunless cement and black dust and deep tunnels?  The bounty of their work wending its way through to the light, to moisture, to air, and breeding stunning curlicues and tendrils and shoots and sprays of myriad-colored worded symphonies? 

Talk about making lemonade outta lemons.  These people do it using dried husks of old shoes.  And they don't just make lemonade.  They make LIFE.  They sustain life, they breathe life, they are full to bursting with life.

This is what I envy.  This is what I struggle with, slipping past the harpies, beyond their well-trained eyes, to a place where I can simply sup on their offering, quietly, with pleasure.  Without thinking, why not me?  Why am I not equally capable of honing my talents so brilliantly, in such -- yes, magical ways?

When I am capable, I do not hate to love those writers.  I simply love.   Love them, love the gift of life, their gift, that they extend, having wrought their genius and exerted themselves to a fine degree of acute vision, freely.

And, in these moments, I am thankful for their dedication, and only too happy to recognize that I was able to buck the wretched harpies of envy, if only for a little while.

(If those harpies land on you, they totally make your skin itch like you're a freaking crack addict, is one of the main reasons they're so irritating.  Because, screw envy, it's all about not looking like Tyrone Biggums scratching his arms off.)

now where'd i set that glass of champagne?

Hate, HATE when I lose my drink.  Especially when I'm the only one drinking, and the only one in the house.  And it's only slightly after noon.  I mean, dude, I should still be alert enough from the coffee to be able to find the glass, or at least, theoretically so.

(I'm toasting to this being the date of my beginning foray into blogging, two years hence.  C'mon.  Who wants to drink before 5 with me?  Where my fellow alcoholics partiers at?)

Also, it's post #501.  Here's to the new blogger-frame of politics as major tone.  Only, just when I feel like it, which may or may not coincide with drunkenness.  Like you care.  You're just jealous 'cause I look skinny when I'm drunk.  To me.  In my fun-house mirror.  In the hall bathroom.  With specifically adjusted lighting.  But this is all unimportant, because we are drunk!  Er, we are celebate.  Celebrate.  Celebrating.  There.

*wipes drunken brow*

Sadly, this is not my best drunk post, but it's all I got for now, little loversh.  (I am secretly only pretending to be drunk, but I'm so good at it you'd never know if I hadn't just told you.  Huh.)

Apropos of not much, did you know that John McCain is playing us?  He wants us to think he's an American, when in fact, he's a Republican.  Even *I'm* not too drunk to miss that gigantic detail.  Look and see for yourself.

I lovse you.  Each and every little, teeny punkin-pie one of you.

And, btw, I reserve the right to interfere if someone's child begins abusing mine (or, hell, someone else's, for that matter) in public, like at OMSI or the zoo or a park.  I will most definitely step in and get annoying if somebody's kid is punching or scratching or smacking or otherwise abusing somebody else's kid, and no other adults are preventing that kinda crap from going down.  That shit ain't right.

Yo.

the conversation might be legit this time.

Thinking about going off-line with my journaling again.  I'm feeling kind of dumb about the whole thing - I mean, how many times have I broken up with blogging, only to go right back to it with an almost-intensified vigor?  Lots.  Too many times to count.  So let's not. 

I don't have anything to say anymore that isn't reminiscing, that doesn't remind me of the high-school-hair phenomena (when you can tell what year a person graduated by their 'do); it's all throwback.  We're in a lot of financial trouble at the moment because we bought more house than we could afford - well, no, the house itself wasn't the problem; it was the gory-and-still-growing-gorier size of the remodel list that brought us to our strawberry-ho knees, something we just really couldn't have foreseen, like the furnace that we were told we could just maintain but then found out that it was dead tired and had to go; and the windows because of the arctic breezes that passed straight through their sad, little panes, etc.  Anyway.  We. broke.  And always sick.  And who wants to listen to me whine about that?  *I* don't even want to.  Plus I don't feel like talking about it, and then there's all the time I should be spending trying to eke out some kinda living from the stuff I do that's supposed to be making us money, that I often put into blog-writing, that makes me feel often stupid and sidelined since I don't get that buzz I always used to when I first began the thing.  I haven't gotten a huge following after all this time; a zillion commenters on every post, some trolls, none of that - hell, lately, it's petered out to around, what, 3, or so?  Which just makes me say, why the fuck am I doing this pleasure-less thing that no one is bothering to read and I'm hating the writing of?  I have friends, real friends who I've made because of blogging, and god but they help me get through some bullshit, like Suebob, the woman is a godsend, she's ALWAYS there when I'm low, and Gwen, and Ruth, and Kristen, and Steph, and Jozet, and Mignon and Nancy and Katherine and Dawn, and Kristin, and feral mom, and Izzy, and Jaelithe, and Andrea, and Julie, and Julia, and Paula, and Kristie, and Mrs. Chicky, and Sarah, and Emily, and Pattie, and TNG, and Jenn, and Lily, and Sandra and Kittenpie and Jana, and Marcie and Binky and Anne, and Joanne, and K (Motherbumper), and kgirl, and Stacy, and Toyfoto, and Lotta, and Mary and Jess and Jen, and G, or you know, Bub&Pie - although she's kinda too busy with having been mentioned in a magazine by Catherine Newman (Ben and Birdy fame) to stop in much these days - *wink*, and of course my sweet Jenny-pie and dodo and Mel and Cristina and Nina, who will always be my friends no matter where I'm writing, even if it's only on the back of receipts and on the palm of my hand, old-schoolio.

Thinking really hard, really intently, about the quitting subject.  It might even be past due.  I am nauseated by the thought of writing, lately.  I've said it all, at least the stuff I'm willing to say out loud, the things that matter.  Whatever comes out beyond this is sort of just bile, and is therefore kinda painful x pointless.  I'm not being brilliant and wild-eyed-artist-ish, I'm not painting some fantastic 'scape, some mind-boggling thing of pure crazed art for people to blow their minds over.  When I first started blogging, I had only recently left the realm of the living, I still had a fresh-scented sheen of having recently been on the scene, and thinking crazy, exciting things about fashion and music and film and parenthood and stuff turned on its head and then not-quite-sideways, and I brought a new sound to the thing.  I was a new, interesting voice.  These days, oh, dear me.  I'm driving a minivan.  A free one.  *shakes head* And the really terrifying-because-it's-not part is that I like it.  I'm quite fine with minivan living.  I'm not the fresh, interesting, loudly strange voice anymore.  I have become what I knew I would, only even less so-much-so than people who are doing this shit honestly deserve to be described as.  I'm barely even motioning in my motions - and yet they make me sick, somehow, despite that.  And then there's this blog:  I'm just droning, yo.  About my fucking laundry and the shopping and the broke-ass-ness and the sickness and the laundry.  Did I say laundry already?  But it bears repeating because it takes up so much goddamn time.  Pink eye lingers, and the getting-it-gone requires a lot of washing with scorching-hot water and lots of it.  I've gone through many boxes of detergent and enough water to green up several lawns in the last few weeks.  It's sad.  And, see what I mean about the droning?  I. am. a. laundro-bot.  This. sentence. is. my. legacy.  *bleep-woozle-tweet*

So.  No worries about this.  I know who my friends are out there in faceless land, and I think you all rule the school.  You don't have to breathe a word about how true it is, how I've pushed into a really tepid, lame place with my nada-sense, because it's resonating all around me - my very life is in that place.  I can see the writing on every wall, and all the mirrors, too.

You don't have to hold my hand.  It'll be okay.  I'll still read you guys.  When I can.  You know, basically never, but once in a while anyway.

I think this might really be it.

Take care of yourselves, beautiful dames and fellas.  I meant well.  I tried hard.  I think I'm just tired, now.  What was the line from War Games?

Okay, dug it up on imdb:  Joshua, the computer, says "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

I get it, now. 

Off to learn me some chess.

trepadition-y.

Between recently learning of the even giant-er maw of corruption and degeneration within the Republican-strong-armed Federal Government, because for Republicans, apparently, just *some* corruption isn't nearly enough, oh, my, no; and of having become better-versed in the scary truths regarding the massive and growing ever-more-so meltdown in the mortgage industry (and all of the people who are losing their homes and the potential kamikaze-ripple effect that it might have on the economy as a whole), as well as having been sucked back down into the fascinating/terrifying political rabbit-hole now that we're nearing the elections, I haven't much felt like posting.  Especially given what my posts have been devoted to, lately; my selfish rantings about my broken brain, and the unnecessary makeover in the kitchen, even if it did feel totally necessary; was it really?  I mean, I just feel kind of gross.  And selfish.  And gross.

It's pretty, and it's almost finished, and it's gross.  And I'm a horrible selfish oaf who deserves to spend all my time filled with horror over just how bad things are getting everywhere, for everyone, and if all the stuff I mentioned above isn't enough fodder to convince the nearly sane and rational among us, then how about what I just learned last night re: world drought records, records that keep growing exponentially, that Atlanta, Georgia, for instance, may run out of water rather, well, SOON, possibly before the end of the year, and then there's that whole section of Europe, and look at SoCal, with the wildfires that ravaged the area only lately?  And also, Australia, a land mass that I was not aware was referred to as the world's breadbasket, only, um, maybe not so much anymore.  Because of drought.

Do you mind if I sort of, uh, can't stand being alive for a little while?  Even if I should be thankful for being not only alive, but healthy, and fortunate enough to live in a place that receives decent rainfall on a regular basis, and my family is also healthy, and even our stupid dog is healthy, even if her fur sheddeth over on an all-too-regular basis?

I can't believe how lucky I am, and how grateful I ought to be, and how hard it is to be grateful, knowing how many people aren't as fortunate.  Rather, are instead, homeless.  Ill.  Family lost in a completely pointless non-war.  Being driven insane by memories of having experienced a tour of duty in a completely pointless non-war.  Facing drought.  Facing hunger.  Facing all kinds of horrible situations.

I feel like I might be very close to closing down the i obsess.  Because I have too much to be thankful for, and too little to obsess about, other than the fear of what may be, when the reality is so much truthier.  And also, it seems to be trendy, lately, to quit blogging, and I do love to surf a trend.

okay, OKAY.

I'm kind of going through one of my please-don't-look-at-me phases.  I'm sorry.  I totally realize I don't owe any explanations.  I am fully aware of the implications of my need to distance myself, once again, from the magically-frustrating blogging realm.  And that I don't have to spell it all out to anyone who might occasionally happen by to note my drivel. 

But, DAMN, if it doesn't feel satisfying to say it anyway.  I mean, I get this deliciously full feeling right at the top of my neck when I'm writing the things that are generally unnecessarily stated.

Why?

(Other than that I'm nuts.  Don't bother with that chestnut - oh!, Lordy, do you see what I did there?  Puns are just the best, aren't they?  Mmmmm.  *wipes eyes, breathes out softly*)

But, really, I have to wonder why?

And, to state for further unnecessary purposes, that I switched therapists.  The first one was turning out to be kind of a douche.  Look.  I know I've kind of self-banned use of terms that imply that the female anatomy, or anything related to it, is good fodder for a swear, and I generally stick to that rule.  But a girl's occasionally entitled to laze out, right?  I like to think of this laziness as being like that of the vegetarian occasionally sneaking out for breakfast at a truck stop in the so-late-it's-early hours, with eggs and bacon and hashbrowns and country gravy slopped heavily across the surface of it all.  (This is a true story.  Not mine.  A girl I knew, lots of years ago.  She'd hushed us to secrecy.  Looks like I blew it.  But I kept it for so long!  I got tired, okay?  Anyway, I always think of that story when veggies get mighty and self-rhapsodic about their steadfast adherence to the religious tenets of the Vegan deity(ies?).  And I snicker.  I'm kind of an asshole.)

So with the douche-y therapist.  After the third session of him sitting blankly on his duff while I tore myself wide open as the ocean in order to aid him in clarifying what medicinal requirements I might have, and at the wrap-up, which was that horrible, grisly, rude interruption during a stream of heavily-bound-up-in-that-gross-series-of-events that I hate, HATE discoursing on, i.e., his saying, "Oh, I'm sorry - our time is up," at which point I burst into tears, despite having held steady throughout the hour-long spiral of words that I hesitate as a general rule to even linger over in my mind, those stories and broken memories that rasp sharply against my spirit like a cheese grater, not one drop of wet left my eyes before he interrupted my forced wanderings in the blackened, burned past, but then I sobbed.  I tried quickly, as I wrote the check with unsteady hand, to explain how much I need him to stop needing more evidence, that this is dire, it's past dire, it's been past dire for weeks, C'MON, see it, dude.  He simply shook his head, as I explained about the fighting in our house, and how much it hurts me to see my kid's face when we go around and around in the grip of our anger, I tried lamely to convince him that -- that he had to DO something, help me, somehow, and his response was the same as before.  That he had to eliminate other potential disorders/disabilities/disses in order to prescribe the correct medication, or risk giving me something that would be incorrect.

I called my HMO on the way home, as I sobbed, my head stuffed full to the brim with phlegm and congestion like a bacterial fiesta, my skull the pinata, it was hard to drive.  I called them and insisted that I needed the mental-health triage number again, because I need a specialist.  Someone who's willing to push up their sleeves and wade into my nasty, phlegm-choked head and diagnose.  And not just keep me spinning my old, dusty 45s replete with scratches so that they can bolster their selfish-ass income.

I felt weird, initially, thinking of him as less than the quintessential therapist, because the whole therapy pyramid rests delicately on one's acceptance of one's therapist as being, well, capable and helpful and willing to aid a crazy person with -- help?  And with the discernment to see when said crazy person needs to, oh, be medicated, or maybe checked in.  Etc.

Now I'm just bummed that I wasted the last month-and-a-half, waiting for the first appointment, then going to them, and wading through all that emotional sewage, but without a resolution.  The sewage that surfaced and now I haven't a clue as to what to do with it all.  And so things actually got worse, not better, and I have to start over with a new therapist, but at least he's an ADHD specialist.  Plus he's actually heard of a blog, and even apparently knows how to refer a girl to literature that might be helpful, and gosh.  I think I may have made the right move.  It's so unlike me, I can't quite tell whether I'm still inhabiting my skin or if the phlegm queen's minions moved me out to make more room for her Squishiness.

So I'm feeling weird and porous and the whole blogging gig has got me over a barrel, again, sigh.  What's new.  I just can't handle the stress of knowing how many visits I owe, and how neglectful that feels, and how few people really give a rat's behind at this point, because I've sung this tune for so long, yet so tunelessly as to really empower people to avoid le Deb.  Bummer.  I like so many people out here, out in this vast space built of a series of tubes.  I miss so many people.  I think of you, so many of you, often throughout my days.  You bolster me whether you're aware or not.  I smile when I think of a story you've told, and I wince when I remember some of the bad stuff you've shared.  I bring my shoulders in real tight when I consider how many bellies are growing full of babies, friends I've made, and their babies, growing beautiful and thunderous and bright, I wish I could do that, maybe.  Maybe again.  Once more.  I don't know.  I can't now, anyway, whether I were ready or not, because of this mess in my head.  I have to straighten it out.

I hope you're all taking care of yourselves and each other while I remain at arm's length, perpetually, in a steady rhythm of perpetual distance, only a little closer sometimes and then even just that much, a hair's breadth, further again, because I want the ocean in my hands and under my toes and in my lungs when it carries me out that final time, I want to love and care but I want more to feel those spaces, those stretches, spans, to know how far I can be, because far is safe, especially in relation to the size and span of my love for you all.  I can see its vastness when I am far, and I like it that way. 

Even if I do miss cheekily commenting around like a cheeky commenting slut that I haven't been for so long.  It's fun to do that.  I bet, once I publish this, I'll even suddenly revolt against my self-distancing, but I'd better shut up if I want it to really happen, lest I jinx it.

Plus I have to watch The Office, or at least 30 Rock, before bed.  Tina Fey is quite possibly the most brilliant person currently in the entertainment industry.  And Jim and Pam.  Ohhh!

G'night.  Sleep tight and all that comforting nonsense.

plain/plane.

You know how sometimes you walk around pretending everything's dandy, with that flat expression on your face, and you're busy enough/everyone in your little world is simultaneously busy enough to not really notice the flatness?  So you get away with it?  You don't bother to voice what might be just beyond that flat space, even to yourself?

It doesn't work if you're a blogger.  Because you have to explore the space beyond the flatness all the time, which = not being able to get away with going to bed every night under the smooth, unbroken counterpane with smooth, unbroken thoughts that don't bend at the edges or smolder threateningly in your direction if you look at them for a few seconds too long. 

Which is all to say that I can't.  Open the space beyond the flatness.  Not right now.  Which = crappy blogging.

Sorry.  I just want to go to bed at the end of each day, at least, I have for the last few of them, and maybe will continue to want to do the same, to slip beneath the unbroken, glass-smooth covers and slide seamlessly into the edge of darkness and come away from it in the morning without working out the details.

For now.  For the next little while.  Until something catapults me away from that need for seamlessness.

Please forgive the flat space here in the meantime.

Love, Debbie

post-happy, evidently.

I'm one of those bloggers, the kind that keeps the longest possible blogroll imaginable, the one that trails down into the wispy ether, because I'm loathe to actually learn how to use bloglines.  And feeds.  And the like. 

Here's my point: I know I've met lots of new bloggers through my comments section, among other locations, in the last few months, and I would like to add you to my never-ending 'roll, but I have this ADHD thingy, and it impairs my memory, which means that, while I totally think you rule, and haven't ACTUALLY forgotten you, I have forgotten your blog name. 

Please, please, comment with your link intact, if you would be so kind, in order for me to get you on my blogroll, because I'd like to know what the hell you're doing.  And I can't do that if I can't find you.  'K?  'K.

tres coisas.

um:  I am moving tomorrow.  I am leaving this house behind me, leaving it in my wake, with not an overwhelming amount of sentimentalism (which is pretty crazy given my typical richtering levels of such over just about everything in my world).  This house is merely a box we've lived in, because we wanted to buy in and it was the best house we could get for the money at the time.  I'm not bummed to leave.  Even though we brought our wild monkey-boy home to it as a newborn, and there are all those memories of his first two years bound up in its walls.  You know what?  I'm transporting the memories, and the crazy kidlet, with me when I go, and this house?  Can be someone else's box for livin' in.  Welcome to it.

dois:  I keep getting all of these spammy greeting card emails in my yahoo inbox, and I'm starting to assume that it's the new wave of spam.  It was kinda bothering me until I realized it was just a hoax, but I'm worried I might've infected my pc anyway with trying to crack one open before I put it together.  Argh.  Anybody else getting wacked over the email-head with these suckers?  So. annoying.

tres:  Slouching Mom and Binky both awarded me with niceties that make me scratch my head and wonder what I did to deserve their liking-of-me enough to think I merit such things, but I know - learn to take a damn compliment, Debbie, geeeeeez.  Thanks, you guys.  It really gets me right here.  I mean it.  I can't get treacly today because I haven't got time.  I'm moving tomorrow (oh - did I mention -- ??  also, hi!  I'm into redundancy!).  But I am so grateful. 

bonus points:  I'm also thankful as hell to all of you who comment on my blog even when I suck balls at getting around to your blogs or even just responding via email to say how much I appreciate your words of comfort, your time spent devising those thoughts for me to mull over and feel warm-fuzzied by, your big hearts.  I feel like my brain is about to spin off into the ether because of all the crazy shit we're treading into headlong, but I am so so thankful for your care and compassion.  I promise to either get back to you in some form in the next several days (but! we'll be sans internet until the cable people get over to the new homestead to hook that shit up, and you can't know how much it's killing me just to type that) or to have thought that you deserve crowns woven of roses and sweet peas for being so lovely as to write such ridiculously nice things to me.  Now go put your crowns on and admire yourselves in the mirror for a second.  You beautiful American foxes.

xo

please understand.

You guys know why I don't comment much, right?  Or why I barely even make my way to anybody's blog, ever, at all, even on the rare occasion?

(This is where you tell me it's okay and pat my back and walk away, thinking, what a needy mess.)

Anyway, I was attempting to reverse that whole business a little bit in the last few days, and I not only read many good posts, I even got a chance to comment a little.  Mind you, I shouldn't have been doing so.  I have work to do.  There's a job, which = actual money, sitting on my desktop immediately beneath this very open mozilla window full of my blog's business.  I've adroitly ignored it for the last two and a half days.  I won't make excuses, though.  I just -- needed to see some of you.  It's pretty selfish of me, given my current life situation.  But I had to know how you all are.

I found out some amazing things.  I read Mrs. Chicky's interview in the Boston Herald, pride rippling through me, face beaming, as I scrolled down.  I lingered over Ruth's and BubandPie's and Jana's accounts of summer, regret interlaced with pleasure because our summer has so little resembled their experiences.  (I'm sorry, baby boy - next summer will not be this -- harried?  Rushed?  Ugly?)  I made the usual leap from giggling to sighing to teary-eyed (corny but true) while reading another in the very long line of beauteous, vision-inducing, literature-worthy posts by Binky.   I felt moved by Suebob's meta-discussion about comments, and Mrs. Chicky's excellent addition to the conversation. 

Mostly, though, I experienced a deep sadness for this horrid business of the growth (brazen!) of our children.  While reading Mama Tulip's complex, lovely post about her son's second birthday.  Slouching Mom's depth of feeling for her sons in the many tributes to their acceleration through life.  Wordgirl's explanation about her behavior regarding her firstborn's college-bound momentum, her inner turmoil palpable (although she manages the writing of it with grace and humor and the lightest, deftest touch, a la her usual astonishingly brilliant style).

How do we allow our babies to grow up, to become fully functioning adults?  To leave our sides, never to return to the soft, fragile beings that needed us so desperately?  Okay, fine, so maybe the desperately needy part is a little overkill, but -- god, it tears me APART to think that there will come a time when my son won't place his glorious little hand in mine and squeeze my fingers, and look at me, his sweet face inches from my own, and shout MAMMMMAAAAAAA!!! ear-shatteringly.

How will I live after these days have passed through my hands?  These hands, so willing to rush past every moment because it is too much, almost, this existence as it stands, this constant nightmarish pace, slap-slap-slapping my cheek (quite rude, actually) as it flits through the middle of the hourglass?  I berate myself for not taking every drop of perfection in the moments we have here together and swallowing them whole, because I'm too tired, too dismally self-centeredly exhausted and fucked up in the head to really manage it.

*lays head on desk and sobs quietly*

contrary to popular opinion, hangovers are teh suck-ass.

Owwie.

My head feels icky.

Dumb Debbie.

Who said the cage could burst open and let the batty part of me out?  Huh?  Did I say that?

And now I'm all confused and can't remember where I'm supposed to go or do and I need some water and don't particularly feel like dropping 8 bones on the nicely huge bottle situated next to my hotel room bed.  Iow, I oughtta get out and buy some, or maybe I ought to have done so last evening, prior to the uncaging.  (Seriously.  I danced for a long time in a bar where there no other people dancing.  That has to be a good hint as to my lampshade capabilities.)

Everyone is, these amazing blogger people here, as gorgeous as they sound in my head when I read their words.  I mean, wow.  And I think I may have officially scared the divinely lovely Mrs. Chicky with my lengthy diatribe on nothing in particular, glittering in its extreme dullness.  And oh, super-adorable Motherbumper?  I hope I didn't terrify you into running away from the bar.  Although I'm pretty sure I did.  And Rebecca?  Really is a stone-cold hottie.  They all are.  Wow.  I don't wanna go to the conference today.  I have that bad, awful hungover eyeballs thing and -- also there's that tongue-tied business that goes on when it feels like the alcohol has stripped you of pieces of brain just when you need 'em the most.

But I guess I'd better get a move-on if I'm not gonna mold away quietly in my room for the rest of my stay here.

Which = uh-oh.  Decision time.  Crap.

p.s.  For the record, I hate turbulence.  It is not my friend.

i'll take Meme for 200.

Nina came up with this one and I think it's genius, 'specially when I have little spare time and am simultaneously facing not much creativity in the brain-stacks.  She shared things about herself that people oughtta be prepared for when meeting her in Chicago in a few weeks.  I think I'll do the same.  You can totally pick up here, Ruth, and also Jenny, and also Jen, and Mrs. Chicky, too, and Motherbumper, pretty please.  And don't diss me on this, ladies, or I'll be so royally pissed that I may not share my favorite lip gloss with you almost ever, for almost the whole weekend.  So, there.  Nyahhhh.

Um. 

Heh.

I'll come up with something.  My brain isn't producing much more than soft static, but it's gotta have DREGS in there, fer crying out loud.  After all, I only just informed Nora this morning via Ma Bell that "when I make the keychain version of [her], it'll be positive euphemisms all the time."  The brain that coughed up that furball should have a few more of those stashed somewheres.

So.

*drums fingers*

Oh!  Got one!  Alright - I'm a total dingbat when I'm nervous - I can't focus for shitttt.  I'll get three words into a sentence and look shamefaced, and the blood will drain away and I'll stammer and hum and wonder whether a complete sentence will exit my mouth again, ever, and you'll think - gosh.  She seems so proliferate online.  Huh.  (And then I'll start again and it'll nevereverever stop and you'll be like, oh, riiiiight.  She IS that proliferate.  Plus twenty times more annoying!)

And - um.

?

Oh!  I also say randomly insulting things due to nervous rambling, but rather than realize that I'm being rude and STOPPING IT, I go into rudeness-hyperdrive and the flux capacitor invades my rudeness and I'm light-years ahead, ruding it up, and the other person is standing there gaping at my rude fucking mouth, and I CANT. MAKE. IT. STOP.  It's lovely.  I'm a total joy to speak with for the first time.

On the other hand, I'm randomly quippy and funny in a new setting.  Nerves make me wryly observant.  So long as I don't get on a rude tangent.  Otherwise, it's rude city.  And not the cool ska kind, either.

Uh?  I'm kinda just as tall as I would seem, I think?  Nina?  Feel free to chime in on this one.

And my hair takes up more space than it oughtta.  I probably should consider renting it its own trundle bed.  And maybe buying it a drink once in a while. 

Um, and I tend to flaunt my freakish physical characteristics when I'm embarrassed about how I can't SEEM TO CONTROL THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE, so I turn to my oddly well-formed muscles and demonstrate pump-you-up poses so as to detract from my mouth.  It doesn't play out well from there.  As you can probably imagine.

If I drink too much I'll try to pretend I haven't and I may get real braggy-pants at a certain juncture or other.  I can usually keep it together enough to get my sad-clown-girl-self outta the joint before it descends too far into the abyss of mouth-hell.  Again I refer to Nina to act as witness regarding this and other nonsense a la Deb.

Oh!  But I have been informed by Nora that I'm good at compliments.  So I may pay you some nice ones if you can withstand the bombardment by me of the other annoying verbal missiles.

Welcome to the Molotov cocktail that is me.  With a sugar rim.

Your turn, sisters du sledge.  Give it.

(And if you're going and you wanna participate in this meme say so in the comments and I'll add you to my aforementioned taggees.  It's all embarrassing and crazy from here anyway - do you really even WANT to participate?  'Course you do.)

p.s. Nora, I promise on my child's eyes that I'll meme it up with your baton-pass next.  Swear.  The G-rated kind.

ironic? or just oxymoronic? or just moronic?

I had to add a randomizer code thingy to the comments, and I'm sorry about it, because I've always enjoyed the freedom my comments section offered previously.  Sort of trusting and stuff.  But in the last few days, I've been getting all these nasty porn-y comments that are obviously bot-placed, and I just find it kind of funny that it comes only after having posted what I did in the post immediately preceding this one.  I've gotten four nasty comments since Saturday.  And none before I wrote a post about being molested.  None.  Not one.  In over a year.

Weird.

because i'm a seven-year-old with a propensity for self-pity.

I know it shouldn't hurt to visit blogs I really, really dig, blogs that make me feel and think and wiggle around in my computer chair, and shiver and giggle and press my hand to my heart over; it shouldn't hurt to see that I've been removed from their rolls. 

But it hurts.

It makes me want to quit blogging.

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

Update: A chunk of an email I wrote in response to whether the offending (i.e., de-linking) blogger had been she, because I think it explains further my motivations.

actually, it was not a big time blog, nor was it a blog I REALLY loved.  in fact, it was just one of the many not-huge bloggers with whom I feel I've connected, b/c I'm one of them.  I'm not huge.  I don't have a big readership.  It isn't important to me whether I do, because I've cherished making connections with people I get, and people who get me.  you're one of those.  if you'd selectively deleted me from your blog list (and you didn't; you rid yourself of the cumbersome thing completely, something I've considered often), I'd be hurt.  this is just what has happened, more than once.

I'm not mad at someone who would do that.  I don't even pretend to understand a person's individual motivations for anything they do.  it just hurts, like in the second grade when your supposed best friend after last weekend's sleepover snubs you in line and chooses someone else to link arms with and spend recess alongside.  y'know?  it's teeny, but it stings.  and it reminds me of why this is ultimately an exercise in minutiae, this business of commenting and making connections through blogs.  I've made some awesome ones, but I recognize how easily they slip away, too. 

guilt - why doesn't it come with its own carrying case? with wheels?

'Course, I'd probably throw it over a cliff if I could wheel it there.  As is, I have to lug it around inside my chest, and it's getting heavier, just like J, and the two together are -- I only wish they equalled a thorough exercise regimen, because I would be in better shape than those crazies on the dancing reality show.  (Tivo was set for a few minutes earlier than Lost in the fall, to catch extra stuff if the timing was off - I got an eyefuller of the dancin' than I really would've liked.)

My guilt is about blogging.  This time.

I don't even visit my favorite blog friends anymore, because of the guilt.  I am mortified that they'll notice I visited on their sitemeter and didn't comment.  My own neurosis is to blame for that feeling, not anyone's having informed me that they just hate me and my ass-face for reading and daring to not drop a comment in the box.  I just assume that people hate me for not saying lots of stuff like I used to, even though I'm really busy all the time, and I spend around five minutes every few days on blogging now, I can't convince myself that you aren't all ready to spurn me hotly if I were to show up at one of your parties, even if I had an armload of cake made of cookie dough and topped with fudge and whipped cream to proffer. 

I also don't visit because I'm ashamed of my negligence.  I'm ashamed to see that everyone else is carrying on as usual, saying nice things, paying compliments, giving hugs, being caring and compassionate, and I can't do it anymore.  I don't know why I feel like I have to explain myself - I should probably try very very very hard to believe that you all understand how busy I am, what with running around after J all day, and squeezing laundry and dishes and meal-making and customer service and digitizing and grocery trips and post office runs and website fulfillment and once every several days, a shower (or at least a good face-scrubbing) into the giant daily burrito.

Now I'm depressed again.  This is all so overwhelming, and no one has been more supportive of the utter overwhelmingness of it all than you, my blogging compadres.  I've never met anyone more sympathetic and compassionate.

And I can't get you back.  My hands are tied.  I'm only going to get more busy, so I can't lie and suggest that I'll eventually re-emerge in the scene.  I won't. 

And I won't lie about having cried about it, too, when no one is around, and J is down for a nap.

I miss you.