i obsess.

larnin disabilatee, yor on notis!

I have decided to subpoena adhd with a cease-and-desist warning.  In other words,

I'm through.

Done.

Finis(h).

O.v.e.r. it.

Got that, adhd?  Your days, or possibly hours, are numbered.  (Maybe this would be a good time to sit down and figure out the finer details of counting.)

*****

My therapist has given me an assignment; anytime someone compliments me, I am expected to write it down, long-hand, using a writing implement *other* than something with an electric cord attached to its keys, iow, yes, a pen or pencil-ish item, and paper.  Or, you know, whatever's handy.  Like a receipt.  Those are generally the most handy.  I *have* notebooks and scads of paper in this house, I just don't necessarily know how to locate them.  But the important thing is to trick my brain into thinking I'm worthy.  And stop being so focussed on the negativo.  Which means I'm allowed to go back through all the comments I've ever received on this blog and pull the nicer stuff that you've said to me (even if they were all a heap of lies, real purty ones, but lies, nonetheless), and write it down, with a pencily thingy, on the back of a bar tab a receipt for milk and cereal and local, organic produce.  Also, what Caleb says to me that's complimenty.  And what Jack says to me, like when he tells me I'm nice, and when he says I'm pretty pretty.  Etc.

Now if I can just remember how to fucking write.

voices carry. specifically, mine. it carries. eh.

This morning, at the farmer's market, with my last few dollars I decided to buy the pig-in-a-blanket the pork vendor sells, and after being handed the plate loaded with a pancake and topped with big chunks of scrambled egg, a long piece of bacon and a huge piece of sausage (the round kind), and some forks, and having poured a big dose of syrup all over the top, I went to walk away and dropped one of the forks.  Bending down to pick it up, I forgot to consider the plate and its wobbly contents, and the gigantic, semi-round sausage, coated in syrup, toppled onto my lap, before falling ungently to the ground.  The noise I made after the fork fell was kind of a "mehhh" grunt, but when the sausage doused me in syrup and then landed on the dirty cement, I blurted a fairly ungraceful "DAMMIT" -- and was looking down at the offending syrup stain on my upper left thigh as I did, so I missed that it stopped the surrounding market attendees cold.  When I looked up, it was to see many faces turned my direction.  There I was, already feeling totally ass-ish, coated in syrup, my fork on the ground, my sausage also on the ground, having apparently yelled through a bullhorn the play-by-play, and everyone was FUCKING STARING.  Sans sympathetic smiles.   Just - looks.  From strangers.

I only knew to do one thing in that moment:  crack wise.  Turning to the girl behind the counter who was offering me a napkin with a lamely sad smile (so, see, I lied about the zero-sympathy effect), I said, "Evidently, my pants felt they needed that sausage more than me."  Only, I said it loud enough for the surrounding crowd to overhear.  Some people chuckled.  I just feigned nonchalance, like I'd planned it all.  And the ultra-nice butcher gave me a replacement sausage.  And I commented that somebody's dog was gonna be STOKED (that is some fine sausage they sell).  (A lot of people stroll with their dogs at the market.  Srsly.  Somebody's dog got the STOKE after my mishap.)

Then I ushered Jack over to a nearby bench, but not *super* nearby where the incident had occurred, you know, maybe fifteen or twenty feet away, and we sat, calmly chewing the different elements of the food, until the people next to us, whose little girl, belted into her stroller, began screaming, "MOMMMMYYYYY," after which, the mother turned to us and said, "maybe you could try and be still and zen like that little boy, the one whose mommy had the syrup accident."

See?

I'm FUCKING LOUD.  Gwen and Nora, consider yourselves warned.  Well, except you already knew that, Nora, and Gwen, you already ought to.

Stupid, delicious pig-in-a-blanket (and, ftr, Jack ate most of it.  Nice, huh.  After all I went through for that meal.)

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?

no pretty subject line to lure you with.

I've been fighting, struggling, lashing out at the faceless, formless thing that is adhd ever since I can remember. 

And since I figured out what I'm fighting against, I've been kind of coasting.  Or, at least I feel like I have.  (I flip-flop about it, though; some days, I thrash and flail as hard as I know how, coughing and spitting and gasping as I struggle to be like all the successful people, the disciplined, ordered, organized career-holders that are my adult peers; so it isn't *completely* true that I've only been coasting.  It just feels like it, most days.)

Fucking adhd.  I hate you.  I hate you so much I wish I could strangle you.

(And this is not one of the days where I want to be reminded that I have "so many special gifts!" - because today is one of the days where I'm so totally enraged that I'm mentally disabled, today I hate the force that wars against all of my attempts to do -- anything.  Everything.)

Fuck you, you stupid fucking nothing bastard-thing.

musically challenged.

Yeah, boy.  I'm putting it on wax.  Well, technically, not really, because my record player's still on the skidz (less yeahhh, more wahhh), and I'm slipping all of today's playlist over the hot eye of the cd player that hangs about in my kitchen or dining room, depending on how kold-krazee shit's getting around here.  (iow, I listen to music in the kitchen when I'm cooking, and in the dining room when we be MAD entertaining the poppin'-off gentry in our lokal, or, you know, Jack's friends' parents from school - we're just insane/wack that way.)

But here's today's playlist, including my badass mommy skillz-on-the-tablez (kitchen *and* dining).

(I had to go downstairs and shift the laundry and wound up digging through the boxes of cds we still haven't relocated since we moved LAST FUCKING SUMMER, and heaved a load of 'em upstairs.  Who KNEW I had such -- moldy taste in music?  But, to me, still awesome, and that's all that fuckin matters, yooooo.)

(now ya have to picture me with my lips all screwed up in a wicked-killah pout, one eye squeezed shut, throwing signs.)

(or you can just picture me sitting quietly, working, as the music gyrates wildly in the background, and makes me look ancient as I spin, hunched, over the keys, the loom spindling rapidly in the other room - er, alright, the embroidery machine.

yeah.)

Oh, also, if you really like music, and are into reading about peoples' personal musical journeys, which I totally am (i.e., I'm a nosy fucker), especially super-ruling types like Feral Mom, then you will dig, but DIG, her fascinatingly cool tour of the hinterlands of sound during her growin'-up years.  Start with her introduction to The Beatles, or her awesome cover of love for the kick-ass (and Northwest natives!) band Heart.  I heart Heart.  And you should, too.  And then you should read the rest of her adventures, musically and non-musically related.  She's a funny betch, that one.  Hell.  Ya might even learn somethin'.  (I'm personally holding out on declaring my favorite in the series until she reaches Superchunk.  Ahhhh.  Superchunk.  That good, old Chapel-Hill sound.  Laura, the hotness, on bass.  Driveway to driveway, it's the same old cracks, you slack motherfucker.  Total bastardization of a few of their songs' lyrics, but I can, and, as has been previously noted 'round here, I WILL.  Gee.  I'm such a badass.  *  sigh  *)

Beastie Boys * Licensed to Ill
Superchunk * No Pocky for Kitty
Sloan * One Chord to Another
The Apples in Stereo * Tone Soul Evolution
Simon and Garfunkel * The Concert in Central Park
Cat Stevens * Footsteps in the Dark
Patsy Cline * 12 Greatest Hits
Beulah * The Coast is Never Clear
The Kinks * The Kink Kontroversy
James Taylor * Greatest Hits
Hepcat * Scientific
The Promise Ring * Wood/Water
Harry Connick, Jr. * We Are in Love
Stand By Me * The Soundtrack
Joni Mitchell * Blue
Hall & Oates * Greatest Hits
David Frishberg * Live at Vine Street
Stan Getz/ Joao Gilberto (featuring Antonio Carlos Jobim) * Getz/Gilberto
Stevie Wonder * Talking Book
Led Zeppelin * II
The Beatles * Revolver
The Best of Parliament * Give up the Funk
Hot Snakes * Automatic Midnight
Beach Boys * Greatest Surfing Songs!
Spoon * Girls Can Tell
Miles Davis * Porgy and Bess
The Smiths * Louder than Bombs
Billie Holiday * Fine and Mellow (1935 - 1941)
Eric Dolphy in Europe, Vol. 2
Ben Webster * The Soul of Ben Webster
Rolling Stones * Some Girls
Michael Jackson * Off the Wall
Os Mutantes * Everything is Possible!
Operation Ivy * Operation Ivy
Peter Tosh * The Toughest
The American Analog Set * Know By Heart
The And/Ors * Will Self-Destruct

What's on your list today?  (jesus.  that sounds just like a fricking grocery store commercial.  which is why i'm leaving it.)

what a relief.

And to think I was considering *actually* finishing my degree (in English Lit, w/a poss. minor in Communications).

Good that I didn't consider Dance as a major, though, of course, there's that little business about my having skipped the major and gone straight to the big leagues of stripperdom.  So, phew, no wasted class work *there*.

And, finally, art.  One of the first things I thought about trying to get an education in, when I was still in high school, and officially alotted the dream-time of "what shall I do?" without seeming like a total wanker. 

(Found the link to the above site at candywrapper.)

the only thing missing is edith piaf on the radio, tinny and scratchy.

Saturday morning goodness. 

(After a successful trip to the downtown park blocks farmer's market; rain dripping from the lip of each vendor's awning, basil, fragrant as hell, parsley that *smells* like parsley, carrots that melt my nose with their wild, intoxicating allure, spinach with big, bright green leaves, strawberries - oh, my, the strawberries.  There's a reason that only about 5% of Oregon's berry bonanza actually make it out of the state each year.  And it's not because they aren't sought-after.  No, no no no.  Also:  fresh, free-range, hormone- and additive-free alder-smoked pork sausages, and fresh, free-range, veggie-fed eggs.  Eggs sold to me by a nice, older fellow, baked out of his gourd at 8:40 in the morning.  Fabulous.  Dude.  If I raised hens and sold their eggs for a living?  I'd be baked outta my gourd at 8:40 in the morning, too.  I would.  You KNOW I would.  Oh, and one last yummy item:  a baguette from the Pearl Bakery's stand.  Tomorrow's french toast.  AWEsome.)

Eggs scrambled with basil, sausages cooked to a turn, strawberries beautifully arrayed, a dollop of sour cream on the berries to balance their gorgeous sweetness, a sprinkling of parmesan on the eggs, and a warm beverage (coffee, chai or hot chocolate, dependent on the party consuming said beverage's preference/ability to manage caffeine).

La Vie en Rose, indeed.

p.s.  Ultraman Love.

(And, yes, that's a very good vodka.  Local-y, too.  I'm getting to be quite the locavore snob, kinda, huh.  Only, not really.  Just - mostly.  It feels good.  Right.  And I do adore being right. 

Or so my partner tells me.)

nuts and bolts.

And screws.

Dear Mom,

I woke up yesterday morning and it was all clear, the bell's clarity was resounding all through me, it was this crazy-rapid series of images that gently lifted me from sleep and brought me to rest on a cradle of understanding. 

I believed in your magical voodoo, I was taught to believe it, so of course I did, that the *safe* people were the ones who professed to believe the same voodoo as you do (okay, sorry, but that's just kind of really funny and I couldn't not), but then -- when I went outside of that fold, as I had to do, because that is where reality exists, I discovered I was ill-equipped to defend myself. 

I was raped and molested on multiple occasions, beginning at age three, by a boy, the son of the woman hosting your bible-study group.  Did you know that?  Me neither.  Not until I was older and the soggy, blurred edges of the memory sort of took hold and I understood what that watering can (or maybe it was a small oil-can?, like, one for his mom's sewing machine?, something like that, anyway, it had a protrusion from whence the container's contents would pour out, and, uh, yes) was doing in the mix.

I was trusting.  Because I was told that *certain* people, *certain* men, would be safe.  Were safe.  Perfectly so.  And maybe you didn't say that in so many words, and maybe you even tried, brokenly, to explain something else entirely, but your actions spoke so much more loudly than the broken verbal communique.  Your behaviors, the prayer over me, nightly, where you asked, "Oh, lord, dear jesus, put a hedge about our sweet, precious baby girl, lord, god,"  and I could see the hedge; its thick screen, its spicy scent, its surround of me, and I was safe.

But I was not safe.

Was I?

I'm fairly certain that the answer is no.  Unless, to be safe means to never understand, sort of like those women and their children in the Texas Mormon sect, the ones that the Texas courts have determined must be returned to their families, which seems pretty cracked out to me, but then, I would've wanted the same if I were a kid in that situation.

Safe.

Hmmm.

The business, given to me by too many to count, is this:  I did not possess the tools to face the meanness and cruelty of the world, and your ongoing blindness in this is painful.

And I am pain'd.

And I forgive you.

I think.

telephone game.

Me:  Jack, have you seen my phone?  

Jack: Yes, Mommmmmy.  *sing-songs the words while pounding on the wall with a play hammer and nails*

Me, trying to sound patient, because I know that I turned the ringer off so as to not disturb us during the naptime that wasn't, which means I am not going to be able to easily locate it simply by calling myself from the other phone:  Did you take my phone and put it somewhere?

Jack: Yeahhh... ? *looks slightly confused, but gets up and walks confidently toward his room, so I assume he's going to fetch it, which, I tell myself, signifies that he must have removed it, and it wasn't just that I misplaced it somewhere, like, in my bum*

Me:  So, you know where it is? *smoke curls trailing from my nostrils, but still clinging to a calm tone*

Jack:  Yeah, mommmmyyyy!!  It's in da office, mommy.  Let's go in der.  Because, it's pwobabwy in der.

Me: Jack, are you sure you know where my phone is?  

Jack: Yes!  It's downstaiws.  It's pwobabwy in my secwet spot.  Somebody pwobabwy put it der.

Me: *audible breathing, fingers clenched on pant legs, following child impatiently toward downstairs playroom*

Jack: Oh, mommy, it's not in hew.  Somebody pwobabwy took it.

Me: Jack, who would've possibly taken it?

Jack: Pwobabwy the monstews.

Me: The monsters?

Jack: No!  No, mommy!  Not the monstews.  The SPIDEWS took it.

Me: Jack, I need you to help me find my phone.  Can you please, Jack, please help me find my phone?  Can you try to remember where you put it?  Where did you hide it?

Jack: But, no, mommy, I cannot, because I do not know where it is.  Because I didn't take it, mommy! 

*child runs off, sing-songing*

Me: Ah, hell.  *hopes no one of mild importance calls, pours flagon of wine, begins drinking*

And then I console myself by thinking, "If I could just have these, it would all be alright."

(Told you this was a mommy blog.)

to the unsuspecting eye.

While it may not be obvious, I dig through my repetoire of pain and anguished memory in order to save my child(ren?) from having to endure the things I have done.  To comprehend the madness, understand its angles and contours, see it for what it is, expose it in an uncomfortable series of essays and exposes and unhappily rendered portraits that render it weak and rattling in its feeble grasp on my soul.  I do this for my son, for Jack, and I do it for any other children I may (or may not, ...) have the pleasure of knowing, vis-a-vis, I do it for those whose children must eventually battle dissimilarly similar creatures of dark, haunting personal treason, and I do it, even, for some of the other parents (and non-parents) who find themselves in battles akin to my own.

And, so.  Though this weblog, more often than not, has the quasi-tangible feel, the sense, of a worn, pock-marked personal journal, rather than that of a mommyblog;

don't be fooled.  This is a MOMMYBLOG, coming and going.

You see, through it all, I hope.  I hope for the things to come. 

And, thus, I wage on in my ever-tiresome, yet never-ending battle.

(Beats hell out of describing all my intrepid, albeit minutiae-enriched, introspection as naval-gazing, huh.)