Waterbeds and sausages...the stuff my nights are made of

Well....it's that time again...ok, a little later than usual...instead of 5:30 am, it's 6 am due to a crisis at 3:47 am where I woke up in a puddle...due to my 2 year olds overactive bladder....thus followed changing of the sheets (just as solemn and serious as the changing of the guard), changing of pj's which inevitably woke the terrorist as he is so aptly referred to... and then a restless, tossing and turning for the rest of the night/morning...

So is this an omen for the rest of the day? Starting my morning in a puddle of piss? Or is it just another exciting adventure in parenthood? Either way, its going to be a rough day....one I wish I didn't have to survive without caffeine, but since I vowed it off along with processed food then I have to suck it up and get through today on sheer will alone...and maybe a 15 minute power nap in my car during lunch...

You're probably asking what does one do when woken up in that manner at the ass crack of dawn? Well, in my case you lay awkwardly on your freshly changed sheets (awkwardly because you still subconsciously think they are wet) and you pray that quietly watching Cars will send your rambunctious toddler stepping on your bladder back to the land of Nod...and that you won't be the next to leak all over the bed...but at your age with 2 kids you beg the Gods you don't cough or sneeze because it could be a real possibility....

With all the tossing and turning and then a husband who had to screw it up just as I was slipping back into a quosi mode of sleep by going to shower and turning on lights and shit....I gave up. I gave up on any shred of hope that I would get my 8 hours of sleep, and instead chose to lie silently staring at the ceiling, counting sheep...or goats...or insert your animal of preference here...because then my mind began to wonder and I started thinking about where I was going with this blog...what topics would be more interesting and amusing to the few people kind enough to care what fucked up stuff comes strewing out of my head, my ovary...(like how I worked that shameless plug/tie in thing there??)

Well, I drew a big blank....because let's face it I could spend 365 days posting shit about being vegan and my diet, but even I could tired as hell of hearing it, and then I should contact Whole Foods to start paying ME for all the ad time....Do I keep adding anecdotes of my hilarious and bumpy ride with a 9 year old and 2 year old? Or do I keep it in the style with which it started of just rambling on about whatever I could, would at the moment? Like a stream of unfiltered consciousness?  Hell, I could create an amazing following with reposting other people's hilarious shit from Facebook alone....try this one on for a smile and giggle...seen on a wall of a friend of my husband's...."Men say, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free....Women say, why by the pig for such a little sausage."

If you didn't laugh your ass off at that one or deem it worthy enough to share then you need to stop reading this, subscribing to this, and be ashamed that even if you don't curse or say blasphemous things,   you have to admit shit like that makes you laugh...and the good laugh from the toes to the belly....

I could write stuff about all the FANTASTIC and BRILLIANT minds out there that I am honored to have held an audience with...from the great buddy, Rob, who pushed me along with my BBF (Best Bitch Forever) Danielle to a young singing sensation I used to babysit way back in the day at 5...who's now 19 and still rocking with a kick ass voice....to even my lech of an old man, my step-father, John, who will be making his first appearance on radio on Bayou City Conjure Radio@LiveLocalHouston.com tonight from 7-9pm to talk about his oil guru magic....for those of you who don't already know, he's Pagan, manages the Magick Cauldron...and makes a mean ass green chicken curry I so used to love....

So if you were in my shoes, what you would entice and engage your readers with? Or are you like me, and really don't give a crap because this is your blog and they don't have to read it if they don't want? Or should I remember its all of you that keep me motivated...that keep me hopeful....that make me look forward to getting up in the morning...because it makes me feel validated....makes me tingle with warm fuzzies that people care what I have to say....or type....

I feel my terrorist stirring and need to move quick to avoid catastrophe.....or another homemade attempt at a water bed.....I bid you a great day in spite of the horrible furious weather we have in store....make it worth while....or at the least worth someone blogging about....

Freudian Dreams of the X-rated kind

Its 5:45 am again...and feels exactly like yesterday. Perhaps I need to go back to bed and then re-awake to see if its me or maybe just the day? I don't know, but either way if this is how the day is going to start out I need to make sure I put my big girl panties on to face this Titillating Tuesday...(like my attempt at alliteration there? I couldn't think of a curse word that started with 'T')

aw schucks...I shouldn't be so negative right out of the gate when I have been so positive, but I am tired from a rather odd night where I had rather disturbing dreams....and now am sitting in the dark analyzing what it means...as if this is going to change the fact somehow I had the dream in the first place..

Let me start out by saying I am happily happily happily married....as happily as someone can be who chose to put up with a person who leaves the toilet seat up so at 3 am you fall in (which coincides with using the last of the roll and not replacing it), who has some anal retentive way he likes his shirts folded so won't let me touch his laundry....wait, scratch that, that's a good thing, one less thing left on my to-do list.  A person who hasn't ever been in a relationship long enough until now to understand "fine, dear, everything's fine" is code for "why don't you fucking figure out what you did wrong before my foot meets your ass or you take a temporary vacation to the island of the couch?" 

No...I am happily married because it's all these things I can laugh about as I annoy him with rubbing my feet against his at night for warmth (which drives him insane in the membrane! love it) and he's understanding enough to see my crazy rants and diatribes for what they are...creativity untamed....

So you can understand why having a dream where I appeared as Kim Kardashian having sex with a stranger is over the top in curse words alarming! I mean WTF?????   Somehow I went from dreaming about being pregnant with a 3rd child, which scared me like no get out because Max wasn't even out of diapers, but then it montages into me and a stranger having sex, and I get a glimpse at myself in the mirror above us (why is that the case in dream sequences like this? like its standard to have a rotating bed, mirrors and a bow-chicka-bow-bow playing in the background) and I am KIM FUCKING WHORE KARDASHIAN!!!!! I mean come on people! At this moment I wake up covered in a chilling sweat and realize I have no idea what the hell I realize, what this means or should I even mention it to my husband without him asking me why I'm thinking about a 3rd kid when we've barely made it to the 2 year marker on this one?

It wasn't due to consumption of spicy food because I had a plant meal for dinner-think I am going to stick with this whole herbivore thing-and so does this mean I watched something shortly before bed that was retained in my consciousness that then made a starring appearance in my dreams? But I don't watch anything with her in it nor do I even watch the E! network since they stopped running True Hollywood stories of people like Robert Downey, Jr. and replaced them with Katy Perry and Justin Beiber (come on, how much of a 'True Hollywood' story can you have even if you still claim to be a virgin and we all know Selena Gomez is shagging what looks like a 14 year old girl)...

So I guess that leaves me....with nothing unless it's some fucked up way of telling me I have some subconscious desire...and not specifically a sexual desire, but a desire to just not be me for a day.   Why my brain chose to relay this message is such a graphically disturbing  way complete with shameful character casting I will never know...but that's the message...I think. At least its the safest one to deduce that won't later equate another divorce...so given that, how do I SAFELY and NON SLUT like choose to , well, not be me for a day??? How do any of us try not to be us for a day?

I mean let's face it...I am not some prize winning thoroughbred, but I could win a pie eating contest and that ain't so bad...it's still a ribbon or trophy...or a gift certificate to Luby's .   So I'm different and have a bitch streak that few have honed as a craft such as I, but is it that bad being me?  What would I change?

If I had to think about it the obvious shouldn't come as a shocker with the desire to  not having to report to my cramped cubicle, not having to do laundry...wait, scratch that. I pay the laundry mat $.80/lb to wash and fold it...so I'd be cheating is I said I did it myself (and I am not a lazy bitch...it makes me a frugal multi-tasker to save to mark that off my to-do list by delegating)...I would however give anything not to have to clean up the strewn Tonka trucks every night only to find them back spread out over the expanse of the living room within hours of him waking...or to take something longer than a 5 minute shower for fear the kids will kill each other or the dog or both in that time span...or to go to the bathroom with the door closed...and no little person visiting me, whining about what we made for dinner or another one bringing me actions figures of Elmo on the pot....

If you had the opportunity to not be you for a day, what would you do? I hope not star in your own porno film as a Kardashian...she already has one selling like hot cakes down at the Megaplex anyway...let's not fuel their empire of trash....no, seriously, what would you do if given the chance?  Handed to you on a silver platter, not to be you? Or do something completely unlike you? How many of us are content and satisfied enough in ourselves to pass that up? 

Or is that we just never get that chance and it was safer to come out in my dream if even albeit in a crude, vulgar and horrible shameful way?

Who knows. Hopefully, I won't have any NC17-rated daydreams at work, and if I do...well, I think I will program a marriage counselor on speed dial just in case....or my divorce lawyer...

Here's to more dreams of changing diapers because I would take those over the nightmares of the alternative any day.....just don't tell my husband I have baby fever....

Hell awaits with a quarter pounder and no map

It's a little later than my planned nooner, but we all know how it goes when you have plans...inevitable something or someone happens and its all mucked up....or pushed to a little later...or never...

anyway-back to me. and my predicament about meat and my soul searching trip down Nirvana lane...It's as if it I made it onto the right path, but haven't figured out how to quite work my compass to find where to setup camp....

I made it past these 21 days, and have to say the end was somewhat anti climatic for me...its not as if I am entirely naive or ridiculously moronic when thinking I should have felt something....anything...its just, don't we usually feel some sort of elation when accomplishing things...maybe a rush of endorphins or a heart palpitation...something?????   I just..well I guess that's the problem. I didn't feel. I acted. I moved through the motions of this diet and the physical changes I have found and did not put too much emphasis on what i was feeling inside that blackened dry thing I call a heart....

So what did I feel or feel now when forcing myself to evaluate? I feel more peace...more settled...more calm if that's possible for someone who can over analyze an email to the point where "come see me" is now an angry boss with a cardboard box with all my shit off my desk and everyone eavesdropping,  snickering in the hallway...when its really about something so mundane as my W-2.....

I feel...I FEEL. That's the point really....I feel something which I haven't in a long time and that's pride in myself....I feel motivated to make myself worth knowing, worth loving, worth being...not just another oxygen thief this country has enough of....I feel I want to be remembered....Remembered for something if even for completing some hippy diet or penning some irreverent (new fav word for the next few days...) and crass blog...

So do I continue this journey and see where it takes me even if its days of hiking, days with no direction....? Or do I stop and go back to meat...and thus my life before when I feel, I know I wasn't worth knowing?

Where am I going with this circular rant you ask? Well, I'll tell you....after 21 days I feel petrified and completely scared shit less to go back to meat....I can make a concession to eating dairy to some extent, but even that feels like cheating the cows and chickens we rob of yummy goodness...so I am stuck at a crossroads and wondering if I continue down this road of another 21 days what will become of me? Will I revert back to oxygen thief mode and pray that no one notices or realizes I am a blank? Or will I suck it up, stopping being a little bitch, and realize I wasn't so bad to begin with? Besides how fucking crazy must I be to think a diet changes me that dramatically...or is that I so desperately want it to?

A friend passed something onto me this morning and I look at it now and can hope, pray (chant for those more spiritual and less into organization) that whatever path I choose to take doesn't make me see the gates of Hell approaching any sooner....and makes me worth talking about even after I am dust..or kitty litter depending on my kids preference at the time.

Taking a cue from the Bangles this morning

It's 5:45 am and I sit here in a completely SILENT house and I am silently running through all the things I HAVE to do today and then start daydreaming about all the things I WANT to do today....do any of you ever have that feeling that we buy too much into the whole frazzled Monday where everything won't go our way? That this is the day its all piled on?

    

Everyone stop and if you managed to make it through the weekend to this wonderful soon-to-be manic Monday give yourself a pat on the back....hopefully your weekend was spent doing something awfully productive like saving abandoned kittens from trees, feeding orphans or finding cures for cancer....wait..who am I kidding? It's difficult enough just trying to balance and finish the things we already have on our plate without attempting to save the whole planet...and who gave us that damn big a serving any way?

oh-that's right....ourselves...sometimes our own worse enemies...sabotaging our success before we even start the race. Or picking some winding, mountainous trek through the Himalayas as our "beginner" level track as if this is some speed racer game in an arcade, when let's face it, some of our lives more resemble a  poorly scripted version of Grand Theft Auto minus the pimps, ho's, and emphasis on ethnicity (or the pimps and ho's are our kids or neighbors...its a complicated world man)...so how do we try and make the things we wish to achieve more manageable without straying from the whole hearted wholesome goodness of being unselfish in our actions (christ...this is starting to sound like a PSA announcement or worse...an ad for LDS...) and still keepin' it real?? (that's that Grand Theft Auto for ya')

Start small and dream big....every baby step is progress and leads to great things...eventually....it's not like Neil Armstrong came haulin' ass out onto the moon, taking gigantic leaps...shit, he even said "one small step for man, one giant step for mankind"..course, don't over analyze the fact that this is grammatically incorrect because man and mankind mean the same friggin thing...but I think you see the gist of what I am saying....

I can sound completely righteous and indignant and remind you saving the planet starts with things like recycling (does my grandmother saving every empty butter container for Tupperware count? because when she died we ended up with the largest collection since someone on Hoarders..), carpooling, energy conservation, anything and everything in reducing our carbon footprint before we start picking things off the Nobel or humanitarian list...but what am I saying...Nobel's are handed out like Skittles nowadays, and what constitutes a humanitarian list of good deeds? I don't think saving kittens from trees or feeding orphans is high on that list...unless you're Angelina Jolie and can just adopt them and the kittens...

no, realistically things like that for some of us is making sure the orphans of this country aren't running around stuffing those kittens in the trees to begin with because they were burned with cigarettes or called stupid one too many times...its things like the 300 lb sixth grader diagnosed with diabetes...or the crazy mom who drowned her kids when she should have just been sterilized from the beginning...or had the guts to tell her husband no more.....or the signs advertising your very own neighborhood landfill because we are running out of space everywhere else...ok, so maybe that one thing on the list can go back to the baby steps of recycling and all that jazz, but where do we start on the rest?

Start this manic Monday by making it not so manic, and picking one thing you can follow through on without setting yourself up for failure that will improve our quality of life, those around you or just you if you're that goddamn selfish and make it count! Whether its vowing to kill that one miserable asshole at work with kindness (cuz remember...if they're were assholes Friday they'll be assholes Monday)....or starting a recycling bin at work...or if there is already one, remembering its for RECYCLING and not just anything you don't feel is worth lifting the lid of the trash can....reuse your paper clips or keep the ones that recirculate at work and hoard them rather then reorder....walk to a nearby place for lunch..you might run into a kitten that needs saving and then you will have taken 2 big baby steps..

Or for those of you slackers without jobs...try volunteering somewhere...or going through your closet and donating anything you haven't worn in 6 months to charity...or a family or person who doesn't get paid enough to constantly order shit off Ebay, Etsy or run to the nearest mall...

Fuck, let's all try and do something productive today for the benefit of someone other than ourselves...that's all I am aiming for...set the bar low and its easier to accomplish it I always say....

My goal's to do something good today...I won't specify what on the freak off chance I run into Angelina Jolie and get invited to help aid in any of her causes which will elevate my status form wannabe tree hugger mamma to full blown philanthropist....but on the off chance it doesn't happen I am going to keep my options open so I don't create disappointment in myself or you...

And for those of you who give a shit...I made in through the full 21 days, feel better than ever, and am going to continue for another 21....just to see what happens....at noon today I will be posting a discussion on my flirtation and subsequent body numbing fear of eating meat...comments are appreciated...

Life Interrupted....by a not so Sunday and a case of the farts

In contrast to yesterday, I am sitting in the dark at 6:30 am with Madd Maxx who has a tummy ache and gas watching Kung Fu Panda 2 for the umpteenth time when I would have loved more than nothing than to be finishing the last book I downloaded to Charlotte's Kindle...from two months ago.... and I am reminded that life isn't always how we plan it, no matter how hard I try....Lazy Sunday will now be more laundry, a trip to the zoo and hopefully a nap from both my hellions so I can catch a moment to breath....

I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have mapped out plans for life only to have a wrench thrown in them in the form of a nasty little habit which landed me in NA, a poor choice in dating, a bipolar ex-husband, a single mother trying her hand at college only to take on husband number 2, and then baby number 2.....to put college on hold for that J-O-B we all so despise... wait. Let me stop there because it sounds more like this is turning into a pity fest with wads of tissues and lame ass excuses as to why I haven't finished yet another thing I started...

Let me say I chose to put school on hold for the sake of my sanity....because right now juggling everything on my plate I would in no way focus on making the stellar grades I once did in the past..because I felt it slipping away for the sake of everything else, and need a moment to step back so  I could focus on motherhood and have learned I'm not entirely successful at that either...what can I say, its that whole unrealistic expectations thing...making plans that seem ridiculously impossible..I will go back...its just a matter of time...and I am feeling that 7 year itch so I know its soon...

so I set out this year to forgo plans or rather reduce them to nothing above a certain caliber...I am going to take charge of my destiny, my life, hell the overweight, greying slob I have become and whip my own ass into shape, and take charge of what remains of my life today....but in such a way I can actually succeed and check this off as done on my to do list....

a wise great man once said "Assume responsibility"...hell, it's even available on t-shirt from Cafe Press and permeated in the brains of numerous clueless students who left his class at semester's end a little more confident and a little more focused and informed on who they could be, who they were and where they were going.....I say a little because sadly sometimes there would be that one who proved even hopeless for someone as influential as him.   What started as a degree requirement turned out to be better than the $125/hr therapy I was getting twice a week in West U....I managed to tap into a part of myself and my brain I never used or even thought of using and touching onto topics I have only ever explored in my wildest dreams...or doodles on paper....

Finally there was a method to the craziness that has been churning in my head all these years, to draw on all the fucked up things I seen, experienced, and done...in one semester he showed me I had something so much bigger in me than what I thought, and that now when I spoke, when I wrote, someone was listening....most of all he taught me that if I wrote something worth a shit, then I was a shit worth listening to....and this resonates with me now, sitting in bed next to my gaseous 2 year old, and I feel just a little better about myself today...it makes me eternally grateful I took his class in the first place...and motivated that much more to show him his time, his guidance, his faith in me and my writing was not a waste, and that I will show everyone one day what is in me, what I am capable of....just as soon as I know what that is...

As for someone who I know has found the path that Aimone so gently guided him to explore in himself, check out his series of plays on YouTube...this man is going somewhere even if he doesn't know the destination....I'm serious...I secretly aspired to be him when we were in class together and personally saw him as one of my competition to try and out write....if something like that could had even been possible...so here's his linkhttp://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fplaylist%3Flist%3DPL4CB0675AABF381C8%26feature%3Dviewall&h=sAQFzmU7L-this is a shout out to Rob, my #1 fan !  (inside joke....wouldn't that be damn sanctimonious of me to put that after I came off as posting some self degradation -what a bitch I'd be, right?)


Well...my little spitfire ball of farts and now giggles is requesting pancakes, so I have to rise and face today...today which on a quick note is my 21st day of my vegan kick...which I am thinking of continuing simply out of the fear of wrapping my head around having to go back to eating meat....but that's a post for another time...

Back to this not so lazy Sunday and all I am going to make it offer me....or I'll threaten it with leaving the 2 year old behind....

Dazed and confused...until I found clarity

Today we woke up to the foggy overcast smog filled skies of Houston and I rolled over and didn't want to get back out of bed...can you blame me? That description alone of the weather is enough to have an adverse effect on anyone mildly melancholy....and while I am not much, I do feel the desire pulling me back under the covers because it feels like a gray lazy Sunday and not a Saturday....

But alas, I have too much shit to do today and cannot let something like that have any bearing on the endless to do list I have stuffed in my pocket....so it is with this mindset, and a little mantra a la the Little Engine, that I usher my kiddos out the door at 7:30am, bright eyed and bushy tailed, on the road yet again to Waller...I feel like I need to make that my theme song because it seems like I spend half my life in the car as do my children...and I know I read some study somewhere that this exponentially multiplies dependent on the number of household members and activities...suffice to say that 2 children and the lack of committal from my daughter to just about anything gives me hope there is a light at the end of the tunnel....

But how many of us spend our lives like this? I mean if I had to add up the weekends I didn't have to drive, travel (code for I make my husband drive) or show up somewhere at the crack of dawn, puffy eyed, caffeine jolted, I could use one hand...and that's while giving the middle finger at the 18 wheeler who cut me off 290 too.....

How does this allow me the time, the dedication to improve upon myself as well as work on my writing, my pursuits, my hair...a pedicure or finishing the US Weekly I am not ashamed to say I purchased when the kids weren't looking at CVS because who doesn't need a good trash mag to escape reality???

So-I am protesting from here on out giving up my Saturdays to ass numbing rides in the wagon to far off places, frantic trips poorly planned when you realize you have 3 diapers and no Walmart or Target in site, whining kids who pay attention to the electronic distractions or noses buried in books versus hanging out the window like a Golden Lab, soaking in the wind in their face and the landscape passing them by.....of course realize I mean this in the metaphorical sense of missed opportunities and hope CPS doesn't read this and think I let my kids hang out car windows...

I steal a quotation from one of the most inspiring movies in my household....Pixar's Cars, and it goes something like this..."Cars didn't drive on it to make great time...they drove on it to have a great time." Well shit, all those cars are filled with people, and those people are rushing , rushing, rushing and missing out on some many other things... how many Ernest Hemingways or John Lennon's are wasting any free time they could be creating or exploring life when they have their brows furrowed on another level of Zelda or trying to watch for Exit 97A?

So I have made a pact with myself to leave my Saturday mornings free to mornings walks, sitting on the patio with a smoothie, sock puppets and of course, streams of new ideas I vow to finally put to paper...which will hopefully take fruition here in the near future...

I bid you adieu and tell you to check out a friend of mine, one of the original classmates from lectures with the awe inspiring Joe, and see what he's managing to accomplish with all that extra time NOT sitting on his keester driving somewhere...http://www.youtube.com/user/MrStraycat7.   Talk about a person whose height and substance of literary work I aspire to achieve...and I ain't just saying that because he likes my writing too....just check it out and see for yourself.....

Back to my muggy Saturday/Sunday and here's to hoping the sun starts peeking out soon....

Matches

You are yellow.

A burning, fiery white hot yellow that is blindingly pure and leaves me mesmerized. It’s sometimes as if everything you touch is set on fire, a sweeping flame blown by the Santa Ana’s and I find myself standing as far back as I can to avoid the licking flames, fear of myself being consumed.  And all I can do is watch you burn until there is nothing but ashes and it is my job to scoop them up. I scoop them up and I scatter them to the earth and I pray. Pray for the day your flame no longer consumes but ignites, for the day I can touch the flames without being burned.

From the moment the life you are came spilling out of me I knew. I knew then you were dangerous. And I was right.  Tearing out my heart and giving me a soul, in that moment you took your first breath a match was lit and there was no extinguishing its glow….the years have found us both standing side by side, but with this space, a gush of wind blowing away the words we wish we could take back, the things left unspoken, and I reach for your hand and pull back singed fingers. The tips barely graze and you run, and then you are gone.

I have chased you through the years, through the fires set, from house to house, the walls burning and pulsing with the lives we have started and shed…everyone has come and gone and here we stand, waiting for the last embers to die out, and I cannot stop the tears. Tears I spill for the divide that becomes greater and greater between us because he isn’t who he promised you he’d be…because I am not who you want me to be…because you fight what you are becoming.  A river that flows and weaves a trail between the raging crackling sparks, and yet fails to cross paths, fails to douse the destruction that is you…

I fail to rein you in, my sweet sweet girl, fail to catch you, and the day has now come when you have consumed everything in your path except me…and I feel the licking flames creeping, stretching across wide open space, and I close my eyes and I stand. I stand, hands in air, as the burning heat can be felt against my neck, the palms of my hands, the wind catching and teasing the strands of singeing hair and my tears are eternally dry, and I realize that it isn’t you I am chasing, but a version of my former self, and I fear there is no end to the damage we can both do. In that moment I grasp your hand and we stand in the center, burning as bright as the sun, and I open my eyes. And I see you for what you are. And it makes me love you that much more.

Yellow. You will always be yellow.