Where in the hell do I begin? 6 months of a hiatus has left me struggling to decide where to....I apologize profusely and I wish it could be attributed to stories of exotic world travels, meditational retreats to Tibet or a huge financial win fall in the form of the lottery....but alas. And don't go checking your mail box for a check just in case....not yet anyway.
Nothing kept me away except pure laziness, procrastination and utter boob tube time. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's start with how I ended 2012 a little more enlightened than I started in spite of my fat ass staying a little less fat. And how I rang in 2013 ...in holey pj's on my couch as usual...but the first time with my husband...and I actually lasted to 12 o'clock....however, I digress....so let's look at what I did manage to search and the following pertinent things about that were found about myself:
-I am way cooler sometimes than I realize
-I turned 30 and the world didn't implode and I didn't suddenly feel different
-I still have very little friends and I am finally ok with that because the few I have are the real deal and are here to stay....even thousands of miles away...or right around the block
-one of those friends is my mother. yes, I am one of those people. But don't expect matching boob jobs or tattoos....just maybe matching broomsticks
-yes, I do want one more baby and it ain't nobody's business but my own....but I will take your suggestions and opinions into consideration...and then move to the deleted box
-my flirtation with veganism is ongoing, but I am a victim to death by cheese and bread
-marriage is a constant work in progress....but sometimes worth the fighting and shouting..and sex
-being unable to say no to the Man led me to a well deserved promotion
-I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up....but growing up isn't something I am rushing to do because I am having one hell of a time as a immature adolescent
-everything happens for a reason. NO DOUBT IN THIS.
Ok-so that being said let's start with the fact that I spent the last six months working my keester off at work, off at home and the laundry still gets washed and folded by someone else. What can I say? I am no domestic goddess. But I had the past few months to experience some really awesome stuff....seeing my name in print for the first time...without some sick twisted fantasy to accompany it. And it is refreshing to write about real people. Ones who aren't as screwed up as the ones in my mind.
It was working towards my daughter coming to terms with where she comes from...and still being strong enough to realize that isn't what defines her. Or what makes her who she is. It's letting her know that being different isn't being wrong. And sometimes this is difficult concept for others to understand...and even more difficult for yourself. And just sometimes that's ok too. For the clawing and scratching it took to get her to find her voice....and use it LOUD AND PROUD...without the rage, anguish and shame that accompanied it for so long.
It was 6 months of money and time wasted to realize that my son is perfectly unique and not fitting into the standards they set for him didn't stop him from showing them what he is capable of...and that's being a super caped avenger who LOVES his PB&J....only on white! It's realizing I need to sometimes listen to my heart and not my head...especially when my heart is so much stronger and intuitive than my head and its voices of doubt. It's becoming more in awe of my own capability to love others especially when faced with adversity and the fierce and overpowering urge to beat the shit out of anyone who calls my kid retarded or different...or crazy. And knowing I could and would win over a 300 lb gorilla because of the sheer adrenaline brought on by said love.
It's marking 6 years with someone whose socks I tolerate in bed and shoes I trip over by the front door....it's 6 years of realizing love is appreciating and relishing in what you do have....and not comparing it constantly to what you don't have...or think you don't have. It's appreciating with highest level of appreciation that sneaked nights out with quiet little dives with real napkins and an hour for hair and makeup fall second to Sunday mornings in complete with pancakes, eggs and eight feet in the bed....
It's recognizing the limitations of my time and body, but recognizing the need to feel the best I can...for myself, for my confidence, for my partner and for my children......so I too can live to be 93 and still drive a car.
It's 6 months of another year that flowed into another and it's just that...another year. Just a calendar. It's realizing that this might not be crowned my year or THE year necessarily, but it's my life, THIS life....and I am going make one hell of an attempt to make it worth something....I'm just still stuck on finding out what that worth, what that something is.
I just hope you stay along for the ride, to accompany me on searching for what it is I am looking for....and letting me know if you find it before me. Or at the very least rub it in my face a few times?
(Notice the missing profanity I normally have....trying out avoiding the f word for a while...see how long I last)
Anyway- I end hoping you got as big a laugh as I did about the whole end of the world thing....You'd think if the Mayans had it right they would have seen the whole Columbus thing....or the Twinkie thing. Don't really know which was more scary.
Monday, January 14, 2013
The lost episode of crazy.....not found in the extras DVD
Let me start this blog by saying that I realize summer is over and I have been achingly and glaringly absent and to my one (and only probably at this point) fan I apologize. I was going to rip off some rhyme about no more teachers dirty looks and so on...you get the gist, but really what's the point? It's been over 5 months since I spout anything worth wasting your time on....and even longer since I spewed anything worth wasting your time on TWICE. Anyone in the mood for pea soup yet? Just the use of spew makes me think of it....side tracking aside, seriously, I don't know what got into me...or out of me...what does that saying "into me" really mean? As if some demon has possessed my skin, and crawled in like some attack of a body snatcher which you would think would control stranger noises reverberating from my mouth and fast seizures of Vatican drama??? Or shouldn't it be "out of me" as if to imply that some piece of my psyche or even a sliver of my brain has seeped out, is bouncing around in the atmosphere and that would explain my forget fullness??? Either way, something is up with me and its the reason I fell of the planet, the reason I failed at completing or following yet another well laid plan....its the reason I sit here tonight at 10:00 pm motivated to get it done....the whole time worrying when I will muster the energy or courage for another.
This growing absence and inability to maintain a pattern or routine is gnawing away at me....I mean here I am going on 2 posts in 5 months and all the wonderful, fantastical ideas that normally flowed straight to paper are now becoming lost in the growing fat cells of my brain, thighs and ass.....and the ass part is especially horrifying seeing as how I will be 30 in two months and had pictured myself ringing in 30 with a more exciting body and life.....
What can I say? I've lost the momentum to keep writing even about the boring and trivial bullshit of adulthood....even I cannot stomach listening to the same things over and over....so I recently I craved for something, a wrench to throw into the monotony....and so it was I managed to steal about 5 seconds for myself and as I stood in front of the bookshelf wondering which literary genre would break me from this spell, I glanced upon a frivolous and spontaneous purchase....the Story of O. Mind you it was 1 am on a Saturday night and FINALLY everyone in my home was asleep. I was just looking for something to break my mommy-hasn't-left-the-house-without-sweats-funk and just happened to fall on it....and no perverts, it wasn't intentional....but wasn't unwelcome either....
It was a frivolous and spontaneous purchase because eons ago when I was a college kid I took a Human Sexuality course, and we were required to do a paper based on something from the required reading list.....well while searching for my chosen text on sexual slavery I happened upon one of the most antiquated bookstores, 1/4 books, tucked away in a little store right before the freeway on Shepherd.....anyway-I was kind of on a roll and decided to broaden my paper (plus flush out the length) by adding more material from other references.The quiet little nerdy mustached book clerk saw me weaving back and forth through stacks and after a quick glance at the growing titles in my arms, he reached behind the counter and plucked a white hardback from a shelf. A simple white and black dusk jacket boldly read the Story of O by Pauline Reage. I am no idiot and have long heard of the scandalous novel and I quivered and trembled in anticipation as he handed me the book.
I purchased it with my other books and spent the next 4 days and nights plowing through my required reading before I finally had down time for O. Needless to say if you have never read the book, you should. The misconception is that it is pornographic-it is, but not in a 21st century way. The book is eloquent and articulate, not crude in describing O's descent into S&M and ultimate enslavement....or is it? The argument that she isn't a slave to Rene or Sir Stephen at all, but they are to her....well anyway-it was a highly intellectually stimulating novel...and it didn't lack in the other department either.
Well 5 years has passed since that original reading....and here I was standing there gravitating toward it and I realized it was just what I needed to get me off the couch....just what I needed to remind myself that I had fallen into some boring pattern, and there I was laying in a cooling bubble bath, sipping my tea, realizing I didn't have to be prey to a boring pattern or routine...
How you wonder did reading an X rated novel get me there? Where did I connect A to B? Well even I cannot tell you without coming off as pompous and an asshole....of which I am neither. Merely it was the fact that I had not allowed myself to read anything that shocking or graphic in so long I realized I was becoming boring myself.
Life is messy and exciting and calm and peaceful, but never boring. It shouldn't be....not the exciting, thrill seeking sort of way that used to keep me as high as a kite, but the exciting everyday is like your last...that everyday has this newness, this vitality, this something about that makes you realize it will never be the same...or rather it cannot be recreated, no matter how hard you try. Anyway, the Story of O reminded me of this and I spent the next three months of summer devouring every book I could squeeze in my free time from my shelf and reacquainted myself to Elizabeth. The Elizabeth who used to remember what it was to feel alive...to feel anything...
That feeling anything led to a rush of emotions and flood gate that crashed allowing me the next few months to find myself again....or to grow up. Whichever sounds more noble....and which led to this September post not making it in until 2013....
stay tuned for the newest episode of crazy....it will premier shortly....and hopefully be way more worth wasting your time in devouring than this one....over six months too fucking late.
This growing absence and inability to maintain a pattern or routine is gnawing away at me....I mean here I am going on 2 posts in 5 months and all the wonderful, fantastical ideas that normally flowed straight to paper are now becoming lost in the growing fat cells of my brain, thighs and ass.....and the ass part is especially horrifying seeing as how I will be 30 in two months and had pictured myself ringing in 30 with a more exciting body and life.....
What can I say? I've lost the momentum to keep writing even about the boring and trivial bullshit of adulthood....even I cannot stomach listening to the same things over and over....so I recently I craved for something, a wrench to throw into the monotony....and so it was I managed to steal about 5 seconds for myself and as I stood in front of the bookshelf wondering which literary genre would break me from this spell, I glanced upon a frivolous and spontaneous purchase....the Story of O. Mind you it was 1 am on a Saturday night and FINALLY everyone in my home was asleep. I was just looking for something to break my mommy-hasn't-left-the-house-without-sweats-funk and just happened to fall on it....and no perverts, it wasn't intentional....but wasn't unwelcome either....
It was a frivolous and spontaneous purchase because eons ago when I was a college kid I took a Human Sexuality course, and we were required to do a paper based on something from the required reading list.....well while searching for my chosen text on sexual slavery I happened upon one of the most antiquated bookstores, 1/4 books, tucked away in a little store right before the freeway on Shepherd.....anyway-I was kind of on a roll and decided to broaden my paper (plus flush out the length) by adding more material from other references.The quiet little nerdy mustached book clerk saw me weaving back and forth through stacks and after a quick glance at the growing titles in my arms, he reached behind the counter and plucked a white hardback from a shelf. A simple white and black dusk jacket boldly read the Story of O by Pauline Reage. I am no idiot and have long heard of the scandalous novel and I quivered and trembled in anticipation as he handed me the book.
I purchased it with my other books and spent the next 4 days and nights plowing through my required reading before I finally had down time for O. Needless to say if you have never read the book, you should. The misconception is that it is pornographic-it is, but not in a 21st century way. The book is eloquent and articulate, not crude in describing O's descent into S&M and ultimate enslavement....or is it? The argument that she isn't a slave to Rene or Sir Stephen at all, but they are to her....well anyway-it was a highly intellectually stimulating novel...and it didn't lack in the other department either.
Well 5 years has passed since that original reading....and here I was standing there gravitating toward it and I realized it was just what I needed to get me off the couch....just what I needed to remind myself that I had fallen into some boring pattern, and there I was laying in a cooling bubble bath, sipping my tea, realizing I didn't have to be prey to a boring pattern or routine...
How you wonder did reading an X rated novel get me there? Where did I connect A to B? Well even I cannot tell you without coming off as pompous and an asshole....of which I am neither. Merely it was the fact that I had not allowed myself to read anything that shocking or graphic in so long I realized I was becoming boring myself.
Life is messy and exciting and calm and peaceful, but never boring. It shouldn't be....not the exciting, thrill seeking sort of way that used to keep me as high as a kite, but the exciting everyday is like your last...that everyday has this newness, this vitality, this something about that makes you realize it will never be the same...or rather it cannot be recreated, no matter how hard you try. Anyway, the Story of O reminded me of this and I spent the next three months of summer devouring every book I could squeeze in my free time from my shelf and reacquainted myself to Elizabeth. The Elizabeth who used to remember what it was to feel alive...to feel anything...
That feeling anything led to a rush of emotions and flood gate that crashed allowing me the next few months to find myself again....or to grow up. Whichever sounds more noble....and which led to this September post not making it in until 2013....
stay tuned for the newest episode of crazy....it will premier shortly....and hopefully be way more worth wasting your time in devouring than this one....over six months too fucking late.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Retina A + hormones + a sprinkle of L. Frank Baum = saga of Wicked Witch
So the last week has been brutal and I am beginning to think the universe has it out for me....Seriously I leave my house everyday wondering if a house will fall on top of me....Which would be a terribly fitting end to the person I am....only instead of glittery red heels I rock some awesome ass hot pink pumps.
I have gone mental and not in a cool biopic tortured novelist kind of way....I seem to be crushing from the weight of the world right now and its all I can do from keeping the seams from splitting and everything to come out in a horrible gush of random discombobulated thoughts and feelings....
From my writer's block to the nagging itch of creative consciousness that is spewing out ideas that I have neither the patience nor budget to keep up with....from personal goals of unattainable svelte figures and small business to paintings to photos to stories with no endings or proper character development to aching longing of a life I never realized further complicated by the one I so vehemently denied and the one I fill space in now.
If that isn't enough to send someone into a catatonic state or at the least render you stupid then you all have more will power than I have that is for sure. Fact is I want more than anything to find a job that pays the bills well enough to afford me the time to write and not just for pleasure or diarying my pathetic life out because it makes me comforted by the thought that its out there. Let's face it. I do this solely now to feel as if I exist, to know someone is listening, to know that someone somewhere cares. And I want more. I want to have people listen to my words and HEAR them with their minds and souls. I want someone out there to have a visceral reaction. I want someone out there to validate my self worth my letting me know how truly righteously creative a mind I have. I don't want to fade away as some half ass hack who had a ounce of talent and squandered it on a lifeless ordinary.
But then it makes me a right bitch and cunt to think for one second the life I am living is anything less. Its more than ordinary and if it wasn't I wouldn't be writing this now because I would be too mundane too stupid too fucking ignorant to see the difference.
I guess today this blog is going to be a little meglomaniacish and completely egocentric because I am in that type of mood. The fruit of my womb seem to be doing a OK, so its mommy's turn to have a moment. The kind of moment where I need to have a complete rant or reminisce about things.
I could try and lie and say its needed self reflection, but I don't know exactly what it is I want to reflect on, so let's just take a trip in a time machine and see where it leads us.
All the way back to 1996-the year my parents divorce was final and 2 years following my cousin's suicide.
So let's start out by discussing a pimply greasy faced 7th grader with hunched shoulders trying so desperately to escape the shit life at home and the taunting of blonde, skinny self righteous bitches at school. Who deep down hoped, prayed, cried for a life so much better than the one she thought she was living. Now this girl befriended another girl who suffered from the same bullshit junior high politics and together they found solace in knowing that someday they would have the last laugh. That someday the tables would turn and their clothes wouldn't end up getting stolen during gym class or their bra straps snapped as they sit in class. Two years of a slow hell was speckled with the most amazingly funny moments, sleepovers, roamings of our local mall and then they were thrust into high school. For one tiny nanosecond there was hope at the end of the tunnel because everyone was an incoming freshman that they were ALL fresh meat, but alas it slowly darkened when they realized it was even worse when you had older more schooled predators with more vicious antics. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but not too far off. With high school came new teachers, new pressures, new faces and new humiliation. In the form of that one unrequited crush who with a straight face informs her she should stick to dating people of her own social class. Stick to dating people on her level. And in her mind this equated her fat ass and she set out to starve herself down to a zero only to be rebuffed yet again. Then the girl's heart was truly broken when the time came for the second girl to move clear across the country, and an aching hole was left in the young girl's heart, and it took everything she had not to burn the whole fucking school down.
Instead she chose to harden her heart, and rip it straight out of her chest, leaving a gaping hole that no one, nothing could fill, and she liked it that way. The freedom to be void of feeling, to be void of anything because it was easier than having the responsibility of giving a shit to only be knocked down over and over. To be disappointed, to be ashamed of everything she wasn't and horrified by everything she was. Well, that was way too much heavy shit to lift, so she stuck to coasting through school, and getting the endless stream of criticism from counselors and AP teachers, all the while becoming a human garbage disposal for anything she could get her hands on in the way of drugs. She lingered long enough to make her presence forgettable and then due to a number of bad choices stemming from a number of bad days she ended up graduating without her peers in a school a 100 miles away in a city where no one knew her name. And the funniest part is that stupid bitch two days after graduation packed her car and hightailed it back to the same town she wanted to drop a nuclear bomb on. And so it was the rest is history.
Well that was well over 16 years ago when this tale started, and that pimply faced greasy 7th grader is still trapped in my fucking mind. She still lingers inside gnawing away at my innards for lunch, squirming and wondering if she is ever good enough. I feel it every time I look in the mirror, every time I pinch the fat on my thighs, every time I look at my kids and wonder if I am doing everything I can to be a good mom. With every word that comes out of my mouth I cannot snatch back and every word I write on paper, bleeding through, wondering it its ever enough.
And then I slap that silly little whiny cunt back into check because who doesn't feel the same way? Or at the very least who remembers and holds onto that shit? What about that boy all those years ago who looked down his nose at her? Does he even know who the fuck she is now? Probably not. And that girl who moved so far away is just a plane ride away, the one friend who held on so tightly, fiercely when all others slipped away. Something tells me she isn't dwelling on the past, and she is here because she wants the now, the present of what life has.
Why do you ask am I even worrying about this stuff? Well that little spoiled pathetic self loathing girl has reared her ugly head and is slowly trying to make her way out....is this because I have had a horrible time at work lately with people who act like petty teenagers? Or is it because I am having a post 30 crisis and wondering what the hell happened to me that I worry what others think?
There is this saying that the age you first smoke pot at is the age you stay at. Thus your maturity level is indicative of your first attempt to regress or stunt this said maturity. That being said I should be a 17 year old perpetually-which I would give anything to fit into the jeans I did at 17.
lol. All joking aside, I think about this now because I wonder if this has something to do with my strange digression into memory lane, the paths twisting and turning, but never crossing. I am not blind to the fact I have so much to be thankful for. And the list will never stop, but sometimes its surreal, words that get lost in an echo down some far off hallway, trying to explain, stumbling, and bumbling how I wish I knew what I was. that I wish I knew where I was going and where I had been. I wish I knew what the world had in store for me beyond this.
I know one thing is for sure. I have been trying my damnedest to find out these last few weeks. And all I can equate myself to is some bitch who carried a broom, and got her life snuffed out by some perky breasted chick with a lapdog and no GPS. And she stole my damn shoes as well. And still had 3 dudes following her around everywhere she went.
High school all over again.
I have gone mental and not in a cool biopic tortured novelist kind of way....I seem to be crushing from the weight of the world right now and its all I can do from keeping the seams from splitting and everything to come out in a horrible gush of random discombobulated thoughts and feelings....
From my writer's block to the nagging itch of creative consciousness that is spewing out ideas that I have neither the patience nor budget to keep up with....from personal goals of unattainable svelte figures and small business to paintings to photos to stories with no endings or proper character development to aching longing of a life I never realized further complicated by the one I so vehemently denied and the one I fill space in now.
If that isn't enough to send someone into a catatonic state or at the least render you stupid then you all have more will power than I have that is for sure. Fact is I want more than anything to find a job that pays the bills well enough to afford me the time to write and not just for pleasure or diarying my pathetic life out because it makes me comforted by the thought that its out there. Let's face it. I do this solely now to feel as if I exist, to know someone is listening, to know that someone somewhere cares. And I want more. I want to have people listen to my words and HEAR them with their minds and souls. I want someone out there to have a visceral reaction. I want someone out there to validate my self worth my letting me know how truly righteously creative a mind I have. I don't want to fade away as some half ass hack who had a ounce of talent and squandered it on a lifeless ordinary.
But then it makes me a right bitch and cunt to think for one second the life I am living is anything less. Its more than ordinary and if it wasn't I wouldn't be writing this now because I would be too mundane too stupid too fucking ignorant to see the difference.
I guess today this blog is going to be a little meglomaniacish and completely egocentric because I am in that type of mood. The fruit of my womb seem to be doing a OK, so its mommy's turn to have a moment. The kind of moment where I need to have a complete rant or reminisce about things.
I could try and lie and say its needed self reflection, but I don't know exactly what it is I want to reflect on, so let's just take a trip in a time machine and see where it leads us.
All the way back to 1996-the year my parents divorce was final and 2 years following my cousin's suicide.
So let's start out by discussing a pimply greasy faced 7th grader with hunched shoulders trying so desperately to escape the shit life at home and the taunting of blonde, skinny self righteous bitches at school. Who deep down hoped, prayed, cried for a life so much better than the one she thought she was living. Now this girl befriended another girl who suffered from the same bullshit junior high politics and together they found solace in knowing that someday they would have the last laugh. That someday the tables would turn and their clothes wouldn't end up getting stolen during gym class or their bra straps snapped as they sit in class. Two years of a slow hell was speckled with the most amazingly funny moments, sleepovers, roamings of our local mall and then they were thrust into high school. For one tiny nanosecond there was hope at the end of the tunnel because everyone was an incoming freshman that they were ALL fresh meat, but alas it slowly darkened when they realized it was even worse when you had older more schooled predators with more vicious antics. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but not too far off. With high school came new teachers, new pressures, new faces and new humiliation. In the form of that one unrequited crush who with a straight face informs her she should stick to dating people of her own social class. Stick to dating people on her level. And in her mind this equated her fat ass and she set out to starve herself down to a zero only to be rebuffed yet again. Then the girl's heart was truly broken when the time came for the second girl to move clear across the country, and an aching hole was left in the young girl's heart, and it took everything she had not to burn the whole fucking school down.
Instead she chose to harden her heart, and rip it straight out of her chest, leaving a gaping hole that no one, nothing could fill, and she liked it that way. The freedom to be void of feeling, to be void of anything because it was easier than having the responsibility of giving a shit to only be knocked down over and over. To be disappointed, to be ashamed of everything she wasn't and horrified by everything she was. Well, that was way too much heavy shit to lift, so she stuck to coasting through school, and getting the endless stream of criticism from counselors and AP teachers, all the while becoming a human garbage disposal for anything she could get her hands on in the way of drugs. She lingered long enough to make her presence forgettable and then due to a number of bad choices stemming from a number of bad days she ended up graduating without her peers in a school a 100 miles away in a city where no one knew her name. And the funniest part is that stupid bitch two days after graduation packed her car and hightailed it back to the same town she wanted to drop a nuclear bomb on. And so it was the rest is history.
Well that was well over 16 years ago when this tale started, and that pimply faced greasy 7th grader is still trapped in my fucking mind. She still lingers inside gnawing away at my innards for lunch, squirming and wondering if she is ever good enough. I feel it every time I look in the mirror, every time I pinch the fat on my thighs, every time I look at my kids and wonder if I am doing everything I can to be a good mom. With every word that comes out of my mouth I cannot snatch back and every word I write on paper, bleeding through, wondering it its ever enough.
And then I slap that silly little whiny cunt back into check because who doesn't feel the same way? Or at the very least who remembers and holds onto that shit? What about that boy all those years ago who looked down his nose at her? Does he even know who the fuck she is now? Probably not. And that girl who moved so far away is just a plane ride away, the one friend who held on so tightly, fiercely when all others slipped away. Something tells me she isn't dwelling on the past, and she is here because she wants the now, the present of what life has.
Why do you ask am I even worrying about this stuff? Well that little spoiled pathetic self loathing girl has reared her ugly head and is slowly trying to make her way out....is this because I have had a horrible time at work lately with people who act like petty teenagers? Or is it because I am having a post 30 crisis and wondering what the hell happened to me that I worry what others think?
There is this saying that the age you first smoke pot at is the age you stay at. Thus your maturity level is indicative of your first attempt to regress or stunt this said maturity. That being said I should be a 17 year old perpetually-which I would give anything to fit into the jeans I did at 17.
lol. All joking aside, I think about this now because I wonder if this has something to do with my strange digression into memory lane, the paths twisting and turning, but never crossing. I am not blind to the fact I have so much to be thankful for. And the list will never stop, but sometimes its surreal, words that get lost in an echo down some far off hallway, trying to explain, stumbling, and bumbling how I wish I knew what I was. that I wish I knew where I was going and where I had been. I wish I knew what the world had in store for me beyond this.
I know one thing is for sure. I have been trying my damnedest to find out these last few weeks. And all I can equate myself to is some bitch who carried a broom, and got her life snuffed out by some perky breasted chick with a lapdog and no GPS. And she stole my damn shoes as well. And still had 3 dudes following her around everywhere she went.
High school all over again.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Getting back in the swing of things...and not the black furry sex toy on back order....
I want to start out today's blog with a heartfelt apology because it has over 30 days since my last one and God knows I humor myself into thinking maybe some of you actually religiously check back to see if I post something and then are felled with disappointment because I haven't... If that isn't the case....well humor me anyway and allow me the delusion of an occult following.
I mean how can I call this Rambling of an Ovary when said ovary has been silent....coincidence that I was over a week late and ovulated twice this month? Probably a little TMI but then something tells me the silence of my womb mirrors the silence of my mind....
That being said, its time for me to get back into the saddle and get my groove back, my mojo, if I ever had any...and I am talking about the charismatic and witty flow of my ingenius postings, comments, and otherwise spectacularly cool diatribes...I seem to have lost it in these recent weeks and I have stuck up those annoyingly grainy lost posters all over town to no avail....so here's to hoping it can make its way back to me.
I want to preface what is about to follow with a couple of things. A) I adore, love, would kill, maim and completely eviscerate those who harm my children, and would sail the 7 seas, walk at a fat girl pace through fire for them. B) regardless of what I write, what I say, I am genuinely a kind person who absolutely craves, needs people to understand me and they cannot or choose not to and sometimes it because otherwise problematic especially in my professional life.
That being said Charlotte and I have had a somewhat rocky past few weeks....further disappointment from 1/2 of her DNA donor, followed by doctor's visits, and then a grueling Lemonade Day and she and I both need a vacation from the life that is ours......Like this mini vaca with fun mani/pedi and lots of girly giggling and cuddling and movie watching.....but then there is the fact we would have to come home at some point and that is the problem.
Sometimes I wonder if its not the geography of it, but rather the fact that I cannot change who I am and that seems to be a resounding echo in my personal and professional life as well as my head. Not in a crazy I hear voices, although I admit I sometimes talk to myself, but in a self degradation kind of way where I hate myself, loathe myself, and yet blow myself away sometimes with what I can do. Like I learn to set the bar low, so when and if I succeed I am able to relish in it even more.
Don't get me wrong, I have flaws, I am learning to accept those flaws, and now I am learning to even embrace them.See, I strive everyday to be the best mother I am able to be. That may not be gauged as the best mother to some or reach some marker that is set by textbook standards, but its my personal best, and I give it my 210%, I give it my all. And sometimes, just sometimes, it is grueling, backbreaking sweat work that leaves me simply drained....too drained to even keep my commitments to my family, my children, myself...I keep the ones to my job because its the bread and butter and we would starve otherwise.
So in a nut shell the past month saw Charlotte raise $384 for charity which she selflessly gave away to a homeless shelter and a homeless veterans program....it saw Max putting sentences together....and repeating holy shit from his father. We know I am not the culprit because he hasn't said fuck....that being said he graduated out of ECI services and is doing better at school. I still have vowed not to cut his hair and it flows like golden hippy locks around his cute chubby face....and what a chub he has become....
Charlotte is away at her first week at church camp and loving from what I can see from the pictures online from camp.....she has gotten TONS of mail even from my father and she is going to make tons of friends...how can she not with such an infectiously sunny personality?!! She doesn't get it from me...She made it out of the 3rd grade with stellar grades, and is moving on the 4th and is a little nervous and yet stoked. As class parent I compiled a classroom cookbook that kicked ass! It rocked! I stole the idea from another mother and stripped it down to the basics to make it my own. Instead of fancy schmancy recipes I decided I would have each parent submit their favorite kids recipe. Totally worth it....despite some lazy ass parents who didn't give a shit it was awesome! And cute as all get out. Gloating aside, the teacher cried, the kids autographed it for her, and it will be a keepsake for the books for her. And me. Gave me a slew of ideas for family stuff and gifts...
So I took a vow of veganism for the summer and have been cheating...I hate to admit it, but my affair with cheese is getting our of control and I need to reign myself in and break it off.....I mean I am going to lose the last 20 lbs I want to, I am going to go back to feeling good and by God I miss that goddamn glow I had in lieu of this spotty, oily combo skin due to humidity and bad hair.
That being said, I have decided to burden my plate with yet another project....One I hope will skyrocket to the moon so I can quit my job....which since i last left you has only become a tad more intolerable, but less detrimental to my mental health....due in a large part because I don't give a fuck.
So what is this new idea you ask? You didn't? Well-I am going to tell you anyway. I have begun using a ecological-vegan-cruelty free mineral makeup out of Oregon...heard about it on The Kind Life blog...tried it and loved it. Found something so amazing for my skin I could go on and on and on but I am not a pusher..at least not if I don't get paid. Anyway-I ran out and had to order more. Its fairly cheap in comparison to makeup counters and Sephora etc. but the shipping is what kills. So I Googled to find a store, boutique, anything with this line of makeup. NOTHING IN TEXAS. Can you believe that? Not even at Whole Foods Market where they'd jack the price up even more and steal my wallet and pension at the same time. Nope. Not even commericalized hippy hell has it.
So I started brainstorming and thinking and researching. I have not been able to find a "green" makeup store that carries facial products and bath products and different lines of makeup. I thought even further and got to thinking I could carry hemp clothing or eco friendly hand crafted fair trade clothing along with conflict free artisan jewelry....long story short, the Green Man's Daughter is born. And if any of you fucking jack that name before I register it I swear to the gods I will hunt you down and kill you. Maim you. Poke your eyeballs out. and maybe even gut you.
On top of all this stuff the most exciting personal tidbit I left out....I am going to get to interview and write a piece for the second issue of Act Badd!!!!!!!!!! Totally stoked...something about seeing your name in print is so glorifying and ego stroking.....def beats a good piece of chocolate cake and sex.....ok, so maybe not the cake, but close!
I know this was short, but I will do more later....I PROMISE, I SWEAR-I have to...my mom's been bugging me about it because she doesn't have shit to read in the car in the morning....(and obviously she isn't doing the driving if you all just read that and had a panic attack looking for some woman in Guatemalan pants in the EZ tag lane, Kindle in hand, eyes diverted....)
I leave you with a fortune cookie I found in the bottom of my purse on a day I especially needed this mass produced with lotto numbers included affirmation:
I mean how can I call this Rambling of an Ovary when said ovary has been silent....coincidence that I was over a week late and ovulated twice this month? Probably a little TMI but then something tells me the silence of my womb mirrors the silence of my mind....
That being said, its time for me to get back into the saddle and get my groove back, my mojo, if I ever had any...and I am talking about the charismatic and witty flow of my ingenius postings, comments, and otherwise spectacularly cool diatribes...I seem to have lost it in these recent weeks and I have stuck up those annoyingly grainy lost posters all over town to no avail....so here's to hoping it can make its way back to me.
I want to preface what is about to follow with a couple of things. A) I adore, love, would kill, maim and completely eviscerate those who harm my children, and would sail the 7 seas, walk at a fat girl pace through fire for them. B) regardless of what I write, what I say, I am genuinely a kind person who absolutely craves, needs people to understand me and they cannot or choose not to and sometimes it because otherwise problematic especially in my professional life.
That being said Charlotte and I have had a somewhat rocky past few weeks....further disappointment from 1/2 of her DNA donor, followed by doctor's visits, and then a grueling Lemonade Day and she and I both need a vacation from the life that is ours......Like this mini vaca with fun mani/pedi and lots of girly giggling and cuddling and movie watching.....but then there is the fact we would have to come home at some point and that is the problem.
Sometimes I wonder if its not the geography of it, but rather the fact that I cannot change who I am and that seems to be a resounding echo in my personal and professional life as well as my head. Not in a crazy I hear voices, although I admit I sometimes talk to myself, but in a self degradation kind of way where I hate myself, loathe myself, and yet blow myself away sometimes with what I can do. Like I learn to set the bar low, so when and if I succeed I am able to relish in it even more.
Don't get me wrong, I have flaws, I am learning to accept those flaws, and now I am learning to even embrace them.See, I strive everyday to be the best mother I am able to be. That may not be gauged as the best mother to some or reach some marker that is set by textbook standards, but its my personal best, and I give it my 210%, I give it my all. And sometimes, just sometimes, it is grueling, backbreaking sweat work that leaves me simply drained....too drained to even keep my commitments to my family, my children, myself...I keep the ones to my job because its the bread and butter and we would starve otherwise.
So in a nut shell the past month saw Charlotte raise $384 for charity which she selflessly gave away to a homeless shelter and a homeless veterans program....it saw Max putting sentences together....and repeating holy shit from his father. We know I am not the culprit because he hasn't said fuck....that being said he graduated out of ECI services and is doing better at school. I still have vowed not to cut his hair and it flows like golden hippy locks around his cute chubby face....and what a chub he has become....
Charlotte is away at her first week at church camp and loving from what I can see from the pictures online from camp.....she has gotten TONS of mail even from my father and she is going to make tons of friends...how can she not with such an infectiously sunny personality?!! She doesn't get it from me...She made it out of the 3rd grade with stellar grades, and is moving on the 4th and is a little nervous and yet stoked. As class parent I compiled a classroom cookbook that kicked ass! It rocked! I stole the idea from another mother and stripped it down to the basics to make it my own. Instead of fancy schmancy recipes I decided I would have each parent submit their favorite kids recipe. Totally worth it....despite some lazy ass parents who didn't give a shit it was awesome! And cute as all get out. Gloating aside, the teacher cried, the kids autographed it for her, and it will be a keepsake for the books for her. And me. Gave me a slew of ideas for family stuff and gifts...
So I took a vow of veganism for the summer and have been cheating...I hate to admit it, but my affair with cheese is getting our of control and I need to reign myself in and break it off.....I mean I am going to lose the last 20 lbs I want to, I am going to go back to feeling good and by God I miss that goddamn glow I had in lieu of this spotty, oily combo skin due to humidity and bad hair.
That being said, I have decided to burden my plate with yet another project....One I hope will skyrocket to the moon so I can quit my job....which since i last left you has only become a tad more intolerable, but less detrimental to my mental health....due in a large part because I don't give a fuck.
So what is this new idea you ask? You didn't? Well-I am going to tell you anyway. I have begun using a ecological-vegan-cruelty free mineral makeup out of Oregon...heard about it on The Kind Life blog...tried it and loved it. Found something so amazing for my skin I could go on and on and on but I am not a pusher..at least not if I don't get paid. Anyway-I ran out and had to order more. Its fairly cheap in comparison to makeup counters and Sephora etc. but the shipping is what kills. So I Googled to find a store, boutique, anything with this line of makeup. NOTHING IN TEXAS. Can you believe that? Not even at Whole Foods Market where they'd jack the price up even more and steal my wallet and pension at the same time. Nope. Not even commericalized hippy hell has it.
So I started brainstorming and thinking and researching. I have not been able to find a "green" makeup store that carries facial products and bath products and different lines of makeup. I thought even further and got to thinking I could carry hemp clothing or eco friendly hand crafted fair trade clothing along with conflict free artisan jewelry....long story short, the Green Man's Daughter is born. And if any of you fucking jack that name before I register it I swear to the gods I will hunt you down and kill you. Maim you. Poke your eyeballs out. and maybe even gut you.
On top of all this stuff the most exciting personal tidbit I left out....I am going to get to interview and write a piece for the second issue of Act Badd!!!!!!!!!! Totally stoked...something about seeing your name in print is so glorifying and ego stroking.....def beats a good piece of chocolate cake and sex.....ok, so maybe not the cake, but close!
I know this was short, but I will do more later....I PROMISE, I SWEAR-I have to...my mom's been bugging me about it because she doesn't have shit to read in the car in the morning....(and obviously she isn't doing the driving if you all just read that and had a panic attack looking for some woman in Guatemalan pants in the EZ tag lane, Kindle in hand, eyes diverted....)
I leave you with a fortune cookie I found in the bottom of my purse on a day I especially needed this mass produced with lotto numbers included affirmation:
Monday, April 30, 2012
The death of a salesman selling martyrdom and the unrepenting sinner who slammed the front door
Let me start out by saying that this almost 2 week hiatus was a very much self imposed exile...me on a deserted island some where far off and after 2 weeks I felt like I was going to start talking to a damn volley ball or worse, cannibalizing myself...or it can be more accurately described as self inflicted because it felt like i was a cutter and the burning slices through my skin were a choice....maybe that's a little extreme and in no way is meant to undercut the severity of cutting...I mean hey! if you're having to wear turtle necks in July, and buy razor blades by the dozen or hoard broken bottles in your dresser drawers then please seek the help you need. I could give you the names of a few health professionals......
Either way...I needed those 2 weeks because I had reached a point of no return and felt my body slowly shutting down....a silent dark cloud was drifting over me, and I know I know...you would dub me Cymbalta and make some crack about depression, but it was much simpler than that....being burnt out has nothing to do with depression or anxiety or anything else a tiny little pink or blue pill can relieve for hours at a time....its about a way of life that is burdening you emotionally and in this case physically, so you find yourself drifting mentally at work, bored on the ride home, and tossing and turning on a heating pad for your hip that seems to be aching from the nothingness....
I had last left off chewing the ears of helpless Cadbury critters, and a lot has happened in that time span....let's start with a little musing on families. As you know from previous posts I can pontificate and dissect and analyze the whole dysfunctional family concept until the cows come home to graze.....but cud is cud, and it doesn't make it any less nasty. Neither does trying to figure out what the hell families are made of...what they should be....and what they aren't...
And so it was that the weekend of Easter Marcus' grandfather Nazario passed away....first lets preface this by saying he fell ill and had to be hospitalized and Marcus didn't get the call until he had been in the hospital for a week....and by then he had pneumonia, and it was Wednesday.....Three days later I was fielding calls from a distant aunt in Portland that he had taken a turn for the worse aka stroke and was now in a coma....by afternoon a text simply announcing "Grandpa died" was the only communicating line between a scattered group of misfits....
Mind you the back story may shed some light on the whole family dynamic....abusive, alcoholic father finds God and changes life for the better once being saved....but only after irreversible damage is done to now grown up children who scatter to the 7 winds and make every effort to NOT conform to the way of their father's new found salvation in Jehovah....
Please keep in mind I am a very open, very liberal person in regards to religion...my mother and I are devout Episcopalians, my step father is a Wiccan, my sister is an amalgamation of Episcopalian principles and jaded agnostic views almost bordering faint atheist....and my father picks and choices aspects of the Anglican faith melded with hippy dippy self help books....we have Buddhists and Catholics, and holy roller Baptists....I am quite familiar with the Latter Day Saints aka people on bikes, and I truly believe we all have the same idea.
I am stealing this from Ice-T: "You are either a good person or you're a bad person". Essentially he hit the nail on the head....all religions regardless of tyrannical and oppressive attributes and varying dress and rituals all have the same sort of idea....live a righteous life, live a good life for the benefits of others.
However, this is also not a free pass once you find your path or the light or have been saved to take the high road and preach to others. This also does not unfortunately ever erase the damage done by prior sins...
And so it was that we made the decision to take the ass numbing journey to Longview because only one of his four children had planned to go....someone from his past needed to be there in his present to represent the future he left behind...or maybe I was fooling myself, and just wanted to go out of curiosity to see what people would say about a man I had only met a handful of times and could never communicate with because of the language barrier....but still sent a card to every holiday...
So we stuffed ourselves into the car and made the journey, snacks and juice boxes keeping us fueled until we hit the 903 area code. And then it went downhill. Let me start out by saying we all can find flaws in our in laws and families....its more than the ha-ha joke of the dreaded mother in law or groping drunk uncle.....its while we might despise our own family, somehow we hold them on a higher pedestal than our spouses and somehow what is normal to them, is completely utterly despicable and debauchery to us....its a fact. Admit it. You do it too....
But most of you are probably smart enough to keep it hidden in the recesses and fat folds of the grey matter between your ears...
For those of us stupid enough, callous enough and vile enough to say those things....well it makes situations like this even more tragic. My mother in law is nice. Do not get me wrong in that I can honestly state she is very gracious and boisterous and overall happy go lucky....But she is as selfish as selfish come, and being a mother was an oversight on her part....it was an inconvenience that has seemed to resolve itself when my husband made his way to adulthood, and somehow the idea of grand motherhood is an idea better left on paper...she also finds it difficult to not fill her day with drinking round the clock and this lifestyle has deteriorated her since I last saw her at our wedding....from weight loss to the fact she doesn't even know our names.....
In that single moment standing in a dead man's house to change clothes, I felt like I should have stayed at home....it was this eerie out of body experience where I was watching the dramady of another family and did not recognize the players, the lines or even why the fuck I was sitting there watching it...
That was the tip of the ice berg. I felt since he was a Jehovah Witness, and was cremated that black was not necessarily entirely the protocol for this occasion, and decided to wear a dark taupe pants suit with heels. Very demur and yet classy with a brass button top.....think a sergeant pepper type jacket....at least that's what Marcus calls me. Well I had no clue that pants are frowned upon. And so I walked into the Kingdom Hall ignorant and basically offending a number of parishioners...or Witnesses...or followers. I am ignorant to the lingo, and as ashamed as I am to say this, I was always one of those teach your kids moms that you slam the door shut or hide so they don't leave a copy of the Watch Tower at your door..
Second to that offense is the fact that everyone speaks Spanish, not English and except for my mother-in-law, his widow, wife #2, Marcus and the kids and I, not a single other family member came. Over 250 people attended his memorial especially since it turns out he was an Elder, like standing room in the hall over the intercom, sobbing, emoting and I sat there completely emotionless because I didnt' feel right....plus no windows and no crosses or religious icons of faith sent me into a catatonic state of disbelief.
I find my religion, my faith is rooted in my personal relationship with whatever that belief is and while I love the feeling I get from genuflecting at church and taking Communion, I don't feel that my personal religious purpose is to absolutely dedicate my life to the church....it seems so strange, so alien to me to live your life being told what to do, when to do it to the point of losing your own identity.
But then I accept the fact and was in awe really of the dedication these people have to their religion....I mean maybe in some ways I feel its almost on the verge of a Jonestown type atmosphere, but I didn't see any Kool-aid so I know it was at least safe for now...
Fast forward to an ass numbing ride back and then we are here busy preparing for Charlotte's birthday party....a really nifty and groovy spa day in Katy with 8 little girls who in one overnight at the Sheraton West taught me how great medical science is to have evolved with birth control. That the NuvaRing is the next best thing since the Bacon Shake at Jack in the Box, and the best part of the whole awesome fun filled weekend....2 things. A) I got to send all those snotty ass bitches back to their snotty ass mothers and B) I now have a deeper and complete with heaving sigh of relief moment because I realize Charlotte is not nearly as screwed up like these other kids....not only was she on her best behavior and completely thankful, but the crap these kids say....let's just say mommy and daddy don't want to know their little bitty blow habit, parental bickering, and kids in therapy moments were shared as if discussing the next Justin Bieber video. I mean maybe its me, but every time I wish I was rich, I have to reconsider because the issues these kids have make me happy that we're poor...And most of all it made me realize (I guess I am managing to weasel in #3) that my mother blows my mind with the sacrifices and shit she does for me, my sister and my kids....she made this one of the best birthdays that Charlotte has ever had...hands down. For that moment on Saturday sitting in that spa, Charlotte was the girl all the others envied....and it was wonderful to see her enjoy something I couldn't otherwise have given her.
Needless to say we were exhausted when we hit the sack on Sunday, and I think even the anticipation of her actual birthday on Monday wasn't enough to keep her from falling asleep at 7:30 at night.
Then Charlotte rang in her 9th birthday the next day, Monday, and I lay there that morning thinking back to that day at 1:45 am when I finally pushed the little bugger out, and remembering in that moment that everyone in the room (save for the asshole whose DNA she shares) came together...it was like I had given my dad, my mom, John, and most of all myself a purpose to life we hadn't had before....Don't mistake this for some noble holier than thou attempt at idolizing myself for having a child...I won't start popping them out right and life because its my purpose or because its God's will....But in that quiet moment in that delivery room I felt like this shift in balance, and I looked at my parents, and then into her deep blue eyes and I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing would ever be the same. Ever. And it scared the living shit out of me. And she still does. But in a good way. Like in that put your arms out and spin until you cannot spin anymore and fall over keeling with laughter....
That day was her day to shine. Because she is walking, talking, laughing proof that of my salvation. Because she is absolutely unequivocally the reason I am alive today. Because she is one of the most awesome kids you will ever meet, and she deserves that one day to be the center of it all. So many days, so much of her life is played out being some fixture in the background of everything else, and between having Max, and the shit at work, and PTA, and her dad, and just time to breathe, it can be completely fucked up and unfair that she is left out in the cold. (not literal in a CPS knocking on our door with frost bitten kid way).
It would have been even better if she had gotten a call from her father....and not at the last minute as an after thought as what happened while we were eating dinner at CPK....She spent the rest of last week waiting for a card that never came, and the sinking realization he didn't really give a shit to begin with....Don't get me wrong...she got the Toms she was so desperately wanting, and the feather in her hair, and some cool stuff...none of it made a difference. It was the thought. It was that her Paki, my dad who I have numerous times bitched about his selfishness called her at 7 am, my parents, her great-grandfather, her baby brother, her step dad all celebrated in some way with her....we all remembered...how can we not? Our lives wouldn't be the same without her..
Two weeks of no entries, now going on 3 and I don't know if I still have your attention, but if I do then know this isn't going to be that much longer....My hand is getting tired and I need to wrap it up so I can actually write about something fresh and cool...and maybe a little funny? Anyway-the week ended with this awesome opportunity, thanks to a great gal, Jennie Orellana, to write a hip hop blog for Act Badd Productions...something that seems totally the polar opposite of me, but is really part of my former drug addled self I can mesh and merge into my life now...besides, it gets my foot in the door of something so much more with my writing.....if you know me, you'll know I would give anything to write for the Houston Press or some awesome publication..
oh-and that neighbor who got shipped off to rehab leaves a vacancy in my complex and God knows I could use the extra $200 referral money to buy more birth control or feed the kids I have, so if you need a place let me know!
Otherwise....peace out, dawg....ok-so that was a half ass attempt at using cool lingo and I better just stick to old school style....so please stay tuned tomorrow when I get back on track....say a few Hail Mary's for me .....
Mind you the back story may shed some light on the whole family dynamic....abusive, alcoholic father finds God and changes life for the better once being saved....but only after irreversible damage is done to now grown up children who scatter to the 7 winds and make every effort to NOT conform to the way of their father's new found salvation in Jehovah....
Please keep in mind I am a very open, very liberal person in regards to religion...my mother and I are devout Episcopalians, my step father is a Wiccan, my sister is an amalgamation of Episcopalian principles and jaded agnostic views almost bordering faint atheist....and my father picks and choices aspects of the Anglican faith melded with hippy dippy self help books....we have Buddhists and Catholics, and holy roller Baptists....I am quite familiar with the Latter Day Saints aka people on bikes, and I truly believe we all have the same idea.
I am stealing this from Ice-T: "You are either a good person or you're a bad person". Essentially he hit the nail on the head....all religions regardless of tyrannical and oppressive attributes and varying dress and rituals all have the same sort of idea....live a righteous life, live a good life for the benefits of others.
However, this is also not a free pass once you find your path or the light or have been saved to take the high road and preach to others. This also does not unfortunately ever erase the damage done by prior sins...
And so it was that we made the decision to take the ass numbing journey to Longview because only one of his four children had planned to go....someone from his past needed to be there in his present to represent the future he left behind...or maybe I was fooling myself, and just wanted to go out of curiosity to see what people would say about a man I had only met a handful of times and could never communicate with because of the language barrier....but still sent a card to every holiday...
So we stuffed ourselves into the car and made the journey, snacks and juice boxes keeping us fueled until we hit the 903 area code. And then it went downhill. Let me start out by saying we all can find flaws in our in laws and families....its more than the ha-ha joke of the dreaded mother in law or groping drunk uncle.....its while we might despise our own family, somehow we hold them on a higher pedestal than our spouses and somehow what is normal to them, is completely utterly despicable and debauchery to us....its a fact. Admit it. You do it too....
But most of you are probably smart enough to keep it hidden in the recesses and fat folds of the grey matter between your ears...
For those of us stupid enough, callous enough and vile enough to say those things....well it makes situations like this even more tragic. My mother in law is nice. Do not get me wrong in that I can honestly state she is very gracious and boisterous and overall happy go lucky....But she is as selfish as selfish come, and being a mother was an oversight on her part....it was an inconvenience that has seemed to resolve itself when my husband made his way to adulthood, and somehow the idea of grand motherhood is an idea better left on paper...she also finds it difficult to not fill her day with drinking round the clock and this lifestyle has deteriorated her since I last saw her at our wedding....from weight loss to the fact she doesn't even know our names.....
In that single moment standing in a dead man's house to change clothes, I felt like I should have stayed at home....it was this eerie out of body experience where I was watching the dramady of another family and did not recognize the players, the lines or even why the fuck I was sitting there watching it...
That was the tip of the ice berg. I felt since he was a Jehovah Witness, and was cremated that black was not necessarily entirely the protocol for this occasion, and decided to wear a dark taupe pants suit with heels. Very demur and yet classy with a brass button top.....think a sergeant pepper type jacket....at least that's what Marcus calls me. Well I had no clue that pants are frowned upon. And so I walked into the Kingdom Hall ignorant and basically offending a number of parishioners...or Witnesses...or followers. I am ignorant to the lingo, and as ashamed as I am to say this, I was always one of those teach your kids moms that you slam the door shut or hide so they don't leave a copy of the Watch Tower at your door..
Second to that offense is the fact that everyone speaks Spanish, not English and except for my mother-in-law, his widow, wife #2, Marcus and the kids and I, not a single other family member came. Over 250 people attended his memorial especially since it turns out he was an Elder, like standing room in the hall over the intercom, sobbing, emoting and I sat there completely emotionless because I didnt' feel right....plus no windows and no crosses or religious icons of faith sent me into a catatonic state of disbelief.
I find my religion, my faith is rooted in my personal relationship with whatever that belief is and while I love the feeling I get from genuflecting at church and taking Communion, I don't feel that my personal religious purpose is to absolutely dedicate my life to the church....it seems so strange, so alien to me to live your life being told what to do, when to do it to the point of losing your own identity.
But then I accept the fact and was in awe really of the dedication these people have to their religion....I mean maybe in some ways I feel its almost on the verge of a Jonestown type atmosphere, but I didn't see any Kool-aid so I know it was at least safe for now...
Fast forward to an ass numbing ride back and then we are here busy preparing for Charlotte's birthday party....a really nifty and groovy spa day in Katy with 8 little girls who in one overnight at the Sheraton West taught me how great medical science is to have evolved with birth control. That the NuvaRing is the next best thing since the Bacon Shake at Jack in the Box, and the best part of the whole awesome fun filled weekend....2 things. A) I got to send all those snotty ass bitches back to their snotty ass mothers and B) I now have a deeper and complete with heaving sigh of relief moment because I realize Charlotte is not nearly as screwed up like these other kids....not only was she on her best behavior and completely thankful, but the crap these kids say....let's just say mommy and daddy don't want to know their little bitty blow habit, parental bickering, and kids in therapy moments were shared as if discussing the next Justin Bieber video. I mean maybe its me, but every time I wish I was rich, I have to reconsider because the issues these kids have make me happy that we're poor...And most of all it made me realize (I guess I am managing to weasel in #3) that my mother blows my mind with the sacrifices and shit she does for me, my sister and my kids....she made this one of the best birthdays that Charlotte has ever had...hands down. For that moment on Saturday sitting in that spa, Charlotte was the girl all the others envied....and it was wonderful to see her enjoy something I couldn't otherwise have given her.
Needless to say we were exhausted when we hit the sack on Sunday, and I think even the anticipation of her actual birthday on Monday wasn't enough to keep her from falling asleep at 7:30 at night.
Then Charlotte rang in her 9th birthday the next day, Monday, and I lay there that morning thinking back to that day at 1:45 am when I finally pushed the little bugger out, and remembering in that moment that everyone in the room (save for the asshole whose DNA she shares) came together...it was like I had given my dad, my mom, John, and most of all myself a purpose to life we hadn't had before....Don't mistake this for some noble holier than thou attempt at idolizing myself for having a child...I won't start popping them out right and life because its my purpose or because its God's will....But in that quiet moment in that delivery room I felt like this shift in balance, and I looked at my parents, and then into her deep blue eyes and I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing would ever be the same. Ever. And it scared the living shit out of me. And she still does. But in a good way. Like in that put your arms out and spin until you cannot spin anymore and fall over keeling with laughter....
That day was her day to shine. Because she is walking, talking, laughing proof that of my salvation. Because she is absolutely unequivocally the reason I am alive today. Because she is one of the most awesome kids you will ever meet, and she deserves that one day to be the center of it all. So many days, so much of her life is played out being some fixture in the background of everything else, and between having Max, and the shit at work, and PTA, and her dad, and just time to breathe, it can be completely fucked up and unfair that she is left out in the cold. (not literal in a CPS knocking on our door with frost bitten kid way).
It would have been even better if she had gotten a call from her father....and not at the last minute as an after thought as what happened while we were eating dinner at CPK....She spent the rest of last week waiting for a card that never came, and the sinking realization he didn't really give a shit to begin with....Don't get me wrong...she got the Toms she was so desperately wanting, and the feather in her hair, and some cool stuff...none of it made a difference. It was the thought. It was that her Paki, my dad who I have numerous times bitched about his selfishness called her at 7 am, my parents, her great-grandfather, her baby brother, her step dad all celebrated in some way with her....we all remembered...how can we not? Our lives wouldn't be the same without her..
Two weeks of no entries, now going on 3 and I don't know if I still have your attention, but if I do then know this isn't going to be that much longer....My hand is getting tired and I need to wrap it up so I can actually write about something fresh and cool...and maybe a little funny? Anyway-the week ended with this awesome opportunity, thanks to a great gal, Jennie Orellana, to write a hip hop blog for Act Badd Productions...something that seems totally the polar opposite of me, but is really part of my former drug addled self I can mesh and merge into my life now...besides, it gets my foot in the door of something so much more with my writing.....if you know me, you'll know I would give anything to write for the Houston Press or some awesome publication..
oh-and that neighbor who got shipped off to rehab leaves a vacancy in my complex and God knows I could use the extra $200 referral money to buy more birth control or feed the kids I have, so if you need a place let me know!
Otherwise....peace out, dawg....ok-so that was a half ass attempt at using cool lingo and I better just stick to old school style....so please stay tuned tomorrow when I get back on track....say a few Hail Mary's for me .....
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Restless late night rendezvous' with tasty ear less rabbits by fridge light...
Let me start out by saying that today is not going to be anything of significance. It will not be a funny, ha-ha leave you doubled over with a stream of chortles and giggles echoing down the hall.....it won't leave you wiping the snot off your nose, and rubbing your achy eyes from the sappy emotional stimulation you get....it won't probably leave you feeling anything....except maybe disgust from the path this seems to be taking....I mean like get out the puke bucket now type of disgust....or maybe pity. And I can tell you right now I don't want, need or even care about shit like that now.
I have hit rock bottom and my indulgence, my drug is stale marshmallow Easter bunnies I stole from my kids baskets....obviously not vegan approved and so I am sitting in the privacy of my closet sucking them down in guilt....at least its better than falling off the wagon...or at least the more severe wagon like snorting or shooting up..no, now I'll just be constipated for 2 days.
See, I have had a really shitty week, and quite honestly the only things keeping me sane are my 2 kids and even those are beginning to wear me down a little....even those little fingers pinching my cheeks are not enough to keep the flood gates from crashing down. And the crashing came last night as we sat snuggled on the couch watching Ramona and Beezus....and I just lost it....at the scene where Picky Picky dies...you know the one? Well if you haven't read the book, but at least seen the movie or vice versa...well you know...
Little girl with big sister having to bury family pet in backyard....especially given previous drama and sisterly fight between the two prior to this bring together moment...well-it got me all worked up....and then I just couldn't stop it once it started and then it just kept coming and coming and coming.....try explaining to an 8 year old and 2 year old how something like that epitomized your current situation on so many levels....but who has time for a much needed cry anymore? I had to suck it up, and dry my eyes and usher little heathens to shower and beds, and exhausted I lay there last night unable to sleep...
All I wanted to do was cry until my eyes and heart dried up....I just wanted to be numb. Strangely, this is what drove me to drugs the first time around and now I am driven to secret rendezvous with the Maytag man and his contents.
I just don't have it in me to cope with anything anymore...and not because I want to be a defeatist or failure or someone who gives up....I just cannot stomach it. I cannot mentally handle it....my brain is going to explode....I could spend an entire hour sitting here trying to come up with something witty to say....some anecdote to relay, something worth reading....but all I can do is lay at night and just toss and turn, staring at the ceiling wondering who the fuck I am and why am I so miserable?
I mean let's start with item No.1: my sister. Or lack thereof.
We have never been close. Blame it on difference in personality. Blame it on me wanting a brother and not a sister. Blame it on the fact that she chose one side and I the other. And the side she hates. Blame it on unhealthy sibling rivalry. Blame it on people pitting me against her in some battle of who is a success versus the black sheep. Blame it on our genetics. Blame it on environmental reasons. Blame it on me. Blame it on her. Just accept it.
Whatever the case may be, the fact remains we are distant....and yet in the past 2 years I was working really really really hard to make it work. I quite honestly can admit I had found a friend I never knew I had in the one person I resented and disliked the most....ok, second to my father, but still. We had forged this strained bond that left us for some moments coming together for just the present. To spending time together, to frantic crazy phone calls only us Uresti's would understand for even crazier advice. To weird inside jokes that will leave me laughing for years. I had managed to find a way to relate to someone who is totally unrelatable.
Mind you, I will be the first to admit how envious of her I am....I think I would be a big fat pants on fire liar if I said I didn't get somewhat green thinking of all that she has going on, all that she has accomplished and wondering if I didn't have children would I be the same. But then I realize no. My 1st child saved me from overdosing, and my 2nd has only reinforced it, and so I would be fooling myself and the world if I ever thought I could measure up to half of what my sister is in her professional and academic life. Hell, even her personal life seems way more blissful than mine right now.
But regardless of said envy, I truly had begun to feel like she gave a shit about me and my petty little life. The reality is with law school, tax journal, internships, booking classes and being the all around "good one", there was little room for the mundane and ordinary aspects of my life in hers....but even so she had made this quantum leap into building something...I don't yet know what....and as luck would have it will never get hte chance to....
I mean lets face it....may be it was meant to be short lived....however fleeting, I will never forget her being there in the room when Max was born (grey, traumatized and all), I will never forget the few moments we have had the past year between phone calls and much needing venting over lunches....
But the truth is it wasn't enough.....here she is four months later still ignoring me, casting me out of Eden so to speak because of some unforgivable sin....an extremely "you know what you did and you must apologize" hissing, and there I was. Alone. Sisterless. Completely alone. And people wonder why the hell I would have chosen a brother over this bullshit.
The reality is that I don't know what it is I supposedly did, I am not going to apologize, and I don't give a shit. And yet none of this makes me feel any better. None of this makes me sleep any better. And none of this changes that I do in fact give a shit. More than a shit. And so I toss and turn. And toss and turn.
item No. 2: my job. I go everyday and work everyday because I have to. Because it's my duty, its what I have to do. Because I am caught up in some lame ass cycle we all are as hardworking Americans where we take on financial obligations and lifestyle changes and sometimes after 2 or 3 or fuck, 20 years working with no substantial change in your salary, and the finances rising and rising.....well you can see how it can be a daunting and bleak outlook on life....I mean I said it before and I will say it again. I am worth more dead than alive.....and lately that dead doesn't look too bad.
I am listless and tired and just plain burnt out on the job, the people, my routine. my life. I would give anything to stay home with my son, be there with baked cookies when Char gets off the bus, and volunteer 20 hours a week at a soup kitchen or a co-op or something. But spiritual and moral fulfillment never equated keeping a roof over my kids heads....and nowhere in the employment handbook does it talk about passion and being synonymous with your career.
Nope, here I am stuck in a dead end job surrounded by people who laugh at me and wondering how the fuck did I get here. Oh, that's right. I didn't finish college. I didn't gain better employment skills. Or maybe not better but more varied. And I didn't want it bad enough to change it.
And that keeps me tossing and turning some more.
item No. 3: my baby boy. ECI has determined although he is wickedly smart, he is socially lagging behind...say 8 months behind...and speech isn't that far off....so in a nut shell he is 36 month level with his gross and fine motor skills....and 20-22 months on speech...and 16 months socially....
what does that mean you ask? It means he is basically unable to relate to kids his age in any setting....can rough house and play with an 8 year old, but is frustrated to tears with another 2 year old.....
so behavior therapy will take place 45 minutes every week, and the school is still adamant he isn't good enough to stay.....mind you 3 other kids are being seen at that school by ECI services....so we are caught in limbo....every other school whose list we took his name off when getting into this one has a 6 month waiting list....I don't know if we can wait that long....factor in further that he was placed in a class where every other kid is 6-8 months older than him...so now we might move him to the class below the one he's on....which a child we personally know who is only 4 days younger than Max is in.....
I lay awake wondering what I did wrong....whether I ate the wrong thing....skipped a prenatal....do I have bad genes? was it because I couldn't get him to breast feed as long as Charlotte....was it the fact I didn't get to stay home with him? Is it the fact that the gap between him and Charlotte is enough that they both exhibit signs of only child syndrome? Who the hell knows...all I know is that I roll over and watch him sleep...his soft curls, his chubby cheeks, and I ache inside because I don't know if I am mentally equipped to handle this....but I have no choice, and I would move Heaven and Earth for him and Charlotte so I know deep down I have what it takes....
item No. 4: all this shit doesn't mean anything because I need to be grateful. This is the hardest thing to wrap my brain around, the thing that breaks me out in hives that now cover my chest and neck and leave me a garish red scaly beast. This is the thing that finally brings my restlessness to a close. The fact that no matter all the previous shit I described, ranted, raved and just plain griped....it doesn't matter because there is so much less I could have.....and what little I do I cherish so much more than my limited vocabulary can express...
and so it is I leave you with these thoughts that make it worth dragging my ass out of bed....makes it worth taking that deep breath of air each day instead of holding it in until I pass out into oblivion.....
We are never given more than we can handle. Or at least I try and believe this.....its comforting to know that at the very least I am testing my limitations and finding out what exactly I am capable...even if it means I am constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown...
These weary bones of mine ache for change, ache for something more and by God I have to find what it will take to ease the soreness and pain....even if it eludes me, even if it takes a lifetime and I die trying to find it....it's all I can do.
Chocolate Easter bunnies are better frozen and then eaten..and you should always start at the ears first...
and so it is I finally roll over exhausted from the tossing and turning and pass smooth the fuck out...
I have hit rock bottom and my indulgence, my drug is stale marshmallow Easter bunnies I stole from my kids baskets....obviously not vegan approved and so I am sitting in the privacy of my closet sucking them down in guilt....at least its better than falling off the wagon...or at least the more severe wagon like snorting or shooting up..no, now I'll just be constipated for 2 days.
See, I have had a really shitty week, and quite honestly the only things keeping me sane are my 2 kids and even those are beginning to wear me down a little....even those little fingers pinching my cheeks are not enough to keep the flood gates from crashing down. And the crashing came last night as we sat snuggled on the couch watching Ramona and Beezus....and I just lost it....at the scene where Picky Picky dies...you know the one? Well if you haven't read the book, but at least seen the movie or vice versa...well you know...
Little girl with big sister having to bury family pet in backyard....especially given previous drama and sisterly fight between the two prior to this bring together moment...well-it got me all worked up....and then I just couldn't stop it once it started and then it just kept coming and coming and coming.....try explaining to an 8 year old and 2 year old how something like that epitomized your current situation on so many levels....but who has time for a much needed cry anymore? I had to suck it up, and dry my eyes and usher little heathens to shower and beds, and exhausted I lay there last night unable to sleep...
All I wanted to do was cry until my eyes and heart dried up....I just wanted to be numb. Strangely, this is what drove me to drugs the first time around and now I am driven to secret rendezvous with the Maytag man and his contents.
I just don't have it in me to cope with anything anymore...and not because I want to be a defeatist or failure or someone who gives up....I just cannot stomach it. I cannot mentally handle it....my brain is going to explode....I could spend an entire hour sitting here trying to come up with something witty to say....some anecdote to relay, something worth reading....but all I can do is lay at night and just toss and turn, staring at the ceiling wondering who the fuck I am and why am I so miserable?
I mean let's start with item No.1: my sister. Or lack thereof.
We have never been close. Blame it on difference in personality. Blame it on me wanting a brother and not a sister. Blame it on the fact that she chose one side and I the other. And the side she hates. Blame it on unhealthy sibling rivalry. Blame it on people pitting me against her in some battle of who is a success versus the black sheep. Blame it on our genetics. Blame it on environmental reasons. Blame it on me. Blame it on her. Just accept it.
Whatever the case may be, the fact remains we are distant....and yet in the past 2 years I was working really really really hard to make it work. I quite honestly can admit I had found a friend I never knew I had in the one person I resented and disliked the most....ok, second to my father, but still. We had forged this strained bond that left us for some moments coming together for just the present. To spending time together, to frantic crazy phone calls only us Uresti's would understand for even crazier advice. To weird inside jokes that will leave me laughing for years. I had managed to find a way to relate to someone who is totally unrelatable.
Mind you, I will be the first to admit how envious of her I am....I think I would be a big fat pants on fire liar if I said I didn't get somewhat green thinking of all that she has going on, all that she has accomplished and wondering if I didn't have children would I be the same. But then I realize no. My 1st child saved me from overdosing, and my 2nd has only reinforced it, and so I would be fooling myself and the world if I ever thought I could measure up to half of what my sister is in her professional and academic life. Hell, even her personal life seems way more blissful than mine right now.
But regardless of said envy, I truly had begun to feel like she gave a shit about me and my petty little life. The reality is with law school, tax journal, internships, booking classes and being the all around "good one", there was little room for the mundane and ordinary aspects of my life in hers....but even so she had made this quantum leap into building something...I don't yet know what....and as luck would have it will never get hte chance to....
I mean lets face it....may be it was meant to be short lived....however fleeting, I will never forget her being there in the room when Max was born (grey, traumatized and all), I will never forget the few moments we have had the past year between phone calls and much needing venting over lunches....
But the truth is it wasn't enough.....here she is four months later still ignoring me, casting me out of Eden so to speak because of some unforgivable sin....an extremely "you know what you did and you must apologize" hissing, and there I was. Alone. Sisterless. Completely alone. And people wonder why the hell I would have chosen a brother over this bullshit.
The reality is that I don't know what it is I supposedly did, I am not going to apologize, and I don't give a shit. And yet none of this makes me feel any better. None of this makes me sleep any better. And none of this changes that I do in fact give a shit. More than a shit. And so I toss and turn. And toss and turn.
item No. 2: my job. I go everyday and work everyday because I have to. Because it's my duty, its what I have to do. Because I am caught up in some lame ass cycle we all are as hardworking Americans where we take on financial obligations and lifestyle changes and sometimes after 2 or 3 or fuck, 20 years working with no substantial change in your salary, and the finances rising and rising.....well you can see how it can be a daunting and bleak outlook on life....I mean I said it before and I will say it again. I am worth more dead than alive.....and lately that dead doesn't look too bad.
I am listless and tired and just plain burnt out on the job, the people, my routine. my life. I would give anything to stay home with my son, be there with baked cookies when Char gets off the bus, and volunteer 20 hours a week at a soup kitchen or a co-op or something. But spiritual and moral fulfillment never equated keeping a roof over my kids heads....and nowhere in the employment handbook does it talk about passion and being synonymous with your career.
Nope, here I am stuck in a dead end job surrounded by people who laugh at me and wondering how the fuck did I get here. Oh, that's right. I didn't finish college. I didn't gain better employment skills. Or maybe not better but more varied. And I didn't want it bad enough to change it.
And that keeps me tossing and turning some more.
item No. 3: my baby boy. ECI has determined although he is wickedly smart, he is socially lagging behind...say 8 months behind...and speech isn't that far off....so in a nut shell he is 36 month level with his gross and fine motor skills....and 20-22 months on speech...and 16 months socially....
what does that mean you ask? It means he is basically unable to relate to kids his age in any setting....can rough house and play with an 8 year old, but is frustrated to tears with another 2 year old.....
so behavior therapy will take place 45 minutes every week, and the school is still adamant he isn't good enough to stay.....mind you 3 other kids are being seen at that school by ECI services....so we are caught in limbo....every other school whose list we took his name off when getting into this one has a 6 month waiting list....I don't know if we can wait that long....factor in further that he was placed in a class where every other kid is 6-8 months older than him...so now we might move him to the class below the one he's on....which a child we personally know who is only 4 days younger than Max is in.....
I lay awake wondering what I did wrong....whether I ate the wrong thing....skipped a prenatal....do I have bad genes? was it because I couldn't get him to breast feed as long as Charlotte....was it the fact I didn't get to stay home with him? Is it the fact that the gap between him and Charlotte is enough that they both exhibit signs of only child syndrome? Who the hell knows...all I know is that I roll over and watch him sleep...his soft curls, his chubby cheeks, and I ache inside because I don't know if I am mentally equipped to handle this....but I have no choice, and I would move Heaven and Earth for him and Charlotte so I know deep down I have what it takes....
item No. 4: all this shit doesn't mean anything because I need to be grateful. This is the hardest thing to wrap my brain around, the thing that breaks me out in hives that now cover my chest and neck and leave me a garish red scaly beast. This is the thing that finally brings my restlessness to a close. The fact that no matter all the previous shit I described, ranted, raved and just plain griped....it doesn't matter because there is so much less I could have.....and what little I do I cherish so much more than my limited vocabulary can express...
and so it is I leave you with these thoughts that make it worth dragging my ass out of bed....makes it worth taking that deep breath of air each day instead of holding it in until I pass out into oblivion.....
We are never given more than we can handle. Or at least I try and believe this.....its comforting to know that at the very least I am testing my limitations and finding out what exactly I am capable...even if it means I am constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown...
These weary bones of mine ache for change, ache for something more and by God I have to find what it will take to ease the soreness and pain....even if it eludes me, even if it takes a lifetime and I die trying to find it....it's all I can do.
Chocolate Easter bunnies are better frozen and then eaten..and you should always start at the ears first...
and so it is I finally roll over exhausted from the tossing and turning and pass smooth the fuck out...
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Suicide, cookies and a half ass chance at being a millionaire...
So-obviously if I am blogging today we know I did not win the Mega Millions....no, alas I failed to make that flight to Maryland to purchase my $600 million jackpot ticket ( ok, so there was really 3 different winners so I guess it would only be $213 million but still), although I am certain the fates intended it for me nonetheless....so I must resign to return to my ho-hum life....minus a new flashy car or ginormous maison...at this point I would just settle for a long overdue raise....or a car with a working A/C because mine decided to take a vacation...or something with 4 walls and no pot smoking asshole neighbors dropping beer bottles on our patio...
Mai non! C'est la vie...ou plutôt que c'est ma vie ... semble être la manière cerise sur le gâteau ....merde de qui se passe est une autre façon de le dire ... mon préféré ...
And so it is I decided to throw out said cookies, to wash the crap off my shoes and to get a jump start for my Kickstart...another 21 days of veganism...and this time I am actually welcoming it with open arms because I need need in my aching joints and bones, something amazing to happen to change the monotony of my life right now....I mean isn't that how it happens....We have to make change if we want change.....and not in the vague and anti climatic slogan of Obama....no, real change is made in the trenches by real back breaking sweat salt of the Earth type of people...not by weak ass people who talk out their asses instead of actually backing it up with actions...sitting behind desks snacking on Ding Dongs and Debbie Snack Cakes....or my preference, Hot Tamales and Hershey bars....
I am sure that whole thought right there could have been phrased a little more articulately....but you get the gist of it.....I have decided to take action....to do something about the to do list that seems to be growing and growing and growing.....and most of all I have vowed to do something about my attitude....to not lose such hope in life...and to be patient with things, people...with this goddamn computer that keeps crashing while I write this....Maybe karma telling me I should be doing something more productive with my lunch hour....
Either way....I will be choosing to do something better with myself, as myself for the benefit of others during this 21 days....I did however, choose to take the opportunity Sunday to go out with a bang....ate probably at least 5-7 lbs of crawfish ALONE and that's extra extra spicy...not including my husband's that I polished off.....that should tide me over until I decide to venture back to the dark side again....for now I am munching on my hummus and grilled veggies and thinking about the days ahead...
This week started quietly with a visit from ECI yesterday so I escaped the trappings and confines of my job and headed home for a 1/2 day...granted this was met with grunts and grumbles and whispers, but I didn't give a crap....my head wasn't there and my heart had caught a bus out a long time ago....lately I seem to be so burnout I have this "ehhh..shrug" attitude....you know the one....where tons of hard work goes unnoticed and it isn't that you do it to be a martyr....besides I think there's a weight limit for the wooden cross so crucifixion is out and as we can all tell I definitely have a problem with the whole starvation thing....no, its more a "this is my work ethic"and at some point I hold out hope, some sick twisted psycho thought that it would pay off....and by pay off I meant like some sort of validation....pathetic I know....but a thought nonetheless...
so back to me and the Maxx and two really nice ladies from ECI sitting in my cramped and newly painted living room....for 3.5 hours...3.5 hours....of playing and controlled testing, and lots and lots of meltdowns, and I found out the following:
My kid is NOT the dumbass those people at his school thought....he is NOT autistic...his problem solving and fine motor skills are that of a 3 year old and up...what he lacks is socialization skills of a 2 year old which somehow goes hand in hand with the whole speech thing....and so it is we will now have a behavior therapist coming out to our home 1hr a week to work with him....
So I filled out all this paperwork and we put a plan in place.. and so it was I went to bed with a glimmer of hope and a HUGE HUGE overdue sigh of relief that everything would be ok....backed up by a week of good reports from school and I lay there thinking last night that he, we were going to be alright...that all that guilt, all that shame I felt sitting in that initial meeting with the administration and being talked at instead of to....well, here he had the opportunity to remain at the very school he finally was beginning to adjust to...
Well......that was until I received a call first thing this morning..... from the school assistant director who interrogated me with 20 questions about the appointment....before I had a chance to email her about it....She actually sounded pissy that he wasn't handicapped or mentally delayed and then reiterated to me the need for him to be observed at school....that these specialists, people with ACTUAL DEGREES AND CERTIFICATIONS AND TRAINING in these areas couldn't make a full assessment unless he was seen at school... Mind you this was after I dropped him off to a very surprised teacher who had that deer in the headlights look....but they cashed that tuition check as fast as they could.
It took everything I had not to explode, to cry, to scream, to reach through the motherfucking phone and choke the living shit out of this woman....who mind you spends a inordinate amount of time chain smoking across the street from the school....so I wonder how much directing she actually manages to get done....
So in lieu of physical violence and the risk of damaging office supplies and property, I chose to write her a very informative email....I outlined all the results which I also scanned and attached, as well as the plan the caseworker and I had mapped out for him....and most of all I mentioned the 3 things that bothered me most:
+One-that we were asked to provide a family photo his 1st day of school and it has not been hung in the classroom at all.
+Two-that his name was just last week placed on his cubby and his pocket. And there is still no picture of my child on his pocket.
*please note number 1 & 2 are indications with anyone as paranoid and hypersensitive as me that they had no definitive plans for him to stay since day 1.
Was this an error on someones part that he ended up in possibly another child's slot who was higher up in the enrollment list??? And they are just too chicken shit to say anything???
+Three-that the ECI caseworker let me know 4 other kids who attend that school have SEVERE behavior issues, receive services through ECI there at school and are still allowed to attend.
What now, bitch?
No response as of yet, and so it is I am beginning to feel the acid churn and brew and splash around in my hummus filled tummy, and I begin to wonder if I jumped the gun....I mean here I am being told by a child therapist that giving him the boot will only fuck him up more...and this lady is excitedly window shopping for the perfect boot....
Of course that could be my paranoia..or it could be the fact that I couldn't see her face when I heard her tone....yet another reason I hate talking on the phone...so impersonal...but so is this....it's just less painless....
And so I feel a migraine coming on....and then I count to 10, take a deep breath .....
This too shall pass. Right? Or at the very least it will take longer than a few days in a short holiday week...right??? Come on....I need some assurance here....or at the least a Peptid for the tummy thing....
so I direct my attention to my soon to be Friday off....complete with dyeing eggs, more birthday planning for Shark, designing of a t-shirt for her lemonade stand....and finishing some more painting...
Ugh....just thinking about it seems crazy and hectic.....but then it fills me with this inner calmness and joy because I have shit like that to fill my day rather than sitting around alone..depressed and thinking of suicide...
And that isn't an over exaggeration....I have and do and then slap the snot out of myself because that's selfish when I have two wonderful little people counting on me to keep my shit together....it isn't I think about it to be selfish....it's more a I thought about it because I have a life insurance policy and it would take care of Marcus and the kids for a while....
Isn't it ironic that I could work the next 5 years and never make enough to get ahead, but if I kick the bucket it pays out 15 years worth of salary?
Am I the only one who sees something seriously skewed? Or am I just the only one with a really low paying shitty high stress job....I mean I bet the walls of my flabby heart are having a field day....and coming in 12th place...
And so I prepare to go home....where I will finish up the design for the Shark's stand shirts....I need a catchy slogan so inquiring minds please think and strain like you would for a hemorrhoid and let me know....
The sale of each shirt will feed a homeless family or vet. I also have to finish the posters and send to the printers....at least this is one ginormous thing that makes me feel good....that I have a compassionate enough child that she gives a fuck about others....and recognizes the need to give back...even if its only a little...and even if she still slams her door in my face half the time....
Speaking of which...she just got back her door and has been slam free going on 4.5 days....
So I bid you adieu, bien nuit!
Mai non! C'est la vie...ou plutôt que c'est ma vie ... semble être la manière cerise sur le gâteau ....merde de qui se passe est une autre façon de le dire ... mon préféré ...
And so it is I decided to throw out said cookies, to wash the crap off my shoes and to get a jump start for my Kickstart...another 21 days of veganism...and this time I am actually welcoming it with open arms because I need need in my aching joints and bones, something amazing to happen to change the monotony of my life right now....I mean isn't that how it happens....We have to make change if we want change.....and not in the vague and anti climatic slogan of Obama....no, real change is made in the trenches by real back breaking sweat salt of the Earth type of people...not by weak ass people who talk out their asses instead of actually backing it up with actions...sitting behind desks snacking on Ding Dongs and Debbie Snack Cakes....or my preference, Hot Tamales and Hershey bars....
I am sure that whole thought right there could have been phrased a little more articulately....but you get the gist of it.....I have decided to take action....to do something about the to do list that seems to be growing and growing and growing.....and most of all I have vowed to do something about my attitude....to not lose such hope in life...and to be patient with things, people...with this goddamn computer that keeps crashing while I write this....Maybe karma telling me I should be doing something more productive with my lunch hour....
Either way....I will be choosing to do something better with myself, as myself for the benefit of others during this 21 days....I did however, choose to take the opportunity Sunday to go out with a bang....ate probably at least 5-7 lbs of crawfish ALONE and that's extra extra spicy...not including my husband's that I polished off.....that should tide me over until I decide to venture back to the dark side again....for now I am munching on my hummus and grilled veggies and thinking about the days ahead...
This week started quietly with a visit from ECI yesterday so I escaped the trappings and confines of my job and headed home for a 1/2 day...granted this was met with grunts and grumbles and whispers, but I didn't give a crap....my head wasn't there and my heart had caught a bus out a long time ago....lately I seem to be so burnout I have this "ehhh..shrug" attitude....you know the one....where tons of hard work goes unnoticed and it isn't that you do it to be a martyr....besides I think there's a weight limit for the wooden cross so crucifixion is out and as we can all tell I definitely have a problem with the whole starvation thing....no, its more a "this is my work ethic"and at some point I hold out hope, some sick twisted psycho thought that it would pay off....and by pay off I meant like some sort of validation....pathetic I know....but a thought nonetheless...
so back to me and the Maxx and two really nice ladies from ECI sitting in my cramped and newly painted living room....for 3.5 hours...3.5 hours....of playing and controlled testing, and lots and lots of meltdowns, and I found out the following:
My kid is NOT the dumbass those people at his school thought....he is NOT autistic...his problem solving and fine motor skills are that of a 3 year old and up...what he lacks is socialization skills of a 2 year old which somehow goes hand in hand with the whole speech thing....and so it is we will now have a behavior therapist coming out to our home 1hr a week to work with him....
So I filled out all this paperwork and we put a plan in place.. and so it was I went to bed with a glimmer of hope and a HUGE HUGE overdue sigh of relief that everything would be ok....backed up by a week of good reports from school and I lay there thinking last night that he, we were going to be alright...that all that guilt, all that shame I felt sitting in that initial meeting with the administration and being talked at instead of to....well, here he had the opportunity to remain at the very school he finally was beginning to adjust to...
Well......that was until I received a call first thing this morning..... from the school assistant director who interrogated me with 20 questions about the appointment....before I had a chance to email her about it....She actually sounded pissy that he wasn't handicapped or mentally delayed and then reiterated to me the need for him to be observed at school....that these specialists, people with ACTUAL DEGREES AND CERTIFICATIONS AND TRAINING in these areas couldn't make a full assessment unless he was seen at school... Mind you this was after I dropped him off to a very surprised teacher who had that deer in the headlights look....but they cashed that tuition check as fast as they could.
It took everything I had not to explode, to cry, to scream, to reach through the motherfucking phone and choke the living shit out of this woman....who mind you spends a inordinate amount of time chain smoking across the street from the school....so I wonder how much directing she actually manages to get done....
So in lieu of physical violence and the risk of damaging office supplies and property, I chose to write her a very informative email....I outlined all the results which I also scanned and attached, as well as the plan the caseworker and I had mapped out for him....and most of all I mentioned the 3 things that bothered me most:
+One-that we were asked to provide a family photo his 1st day of school and it has not been hung in the classroom at all.
+Two-that his name was just last week placed on his cubby and his pocket. And there is still no picture of my child on his pocket.
*please note number 1 & 2 are indications with anyone as paranoid and hypersensitive as me that they had no definitive plans for him to stay since day 1.
Was this an error on someones part that he ended up in possibly another child's slot who was higher up in the enrollment list??? And they are just too chicken shit to say anything???
+Three-that the ECI caseworker let me know 4 other kids who attend that school have SEVERE behavior issues, receive services through ECI there at school and are still allowed to attend.
What now, bitch?
No response as of yet, and so it is I am beginning to feel the acid churn and brew and splash around in my hummus filled tummy, and I begin to wonder if I jumped the gun....I mean here I am being told by a child therapist that giving him the boot will only fuck him up more...and this lady is excitedly window shopping for the perfect boot....
Of course that could be my paranoia..or it could be the fact that I couldn't see her face when I heard her tone....yet another reason I hate talking on the phone...so impersonal...but so is this....it's just less painless....
And so I feel a migraine coming on....and then I count to 10, take a deep breath .....
This too shall pass. Right? Or at the very least it will take longer than a few days in a short holiday week...right??? Come on....I need some assurance here....or at the least a Peptid for the tummy thing....
so I direct my attention to my soon to be Friday off....complete with dyeing eggs, more birthday planning for Shark, designing of a t-shirt for her lemonade stand....and finishing some more painting...
Ugh....just thinking about it seems crazy and hectic.....but then it fills me with this inner calmness and joy because I have shit like that to fill my day rather than sitting around alone..depressed and thinking of suicide...
And that isn't an over exaggeration....I have and do and then slap the snot out of myself because that's selfish when I have two wonderful little people counting on me to keep my shit together....it isn't I think about it to be selfish....it's more a I thought about it because I have a life insurance policy and it would take care of Marcus and the kids for a while....
Isn't it ironic that I could work the next 5 years and never make enough to get ahead, but if I kick the bucket it pays out 15 years worth of salary?
Am I the only one who sees something seriously skewed? Or am I just the only one with a really low paying shitty high stress job....I mean I bet the walls of my flabby heart are having a field day....and coming in 12th place...
And so I prepare to go home....where I will finish up the design for the Shark's stand shirts....I need a catchy slogan so inquiring minds please think and strain like you would for a hemorrhoid and let me know....
The sale of each shirt will feed a homeless family or vet. I also have to finish the posters and send to the printers....at least this is one ginormous thing that makes me feel good....that I have a compassionate enough child that she gives a fuck about others....and recognizes the need to give back...even if its only a little...and even if she still slams her door in my face half the time....
Speaking of which...she just got back her door and has been slam free going on 4.5 days....
So I bid you adieu, bien nuit!
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