Oy! Motherhood.

all the empty space

all the time between then and now? that was the beginning of what i'm now recognizing to be something of a midlife crisis, or awakening. whatever you want to call it, i had it. it started out because of a betrayal. a lost business. a failure of sorts. it reached a peak in a drunken stupor on the bathroom floor (first time ever in the history of this life), and wandered around aimlessly for a while before settling on Something New. Something New is making me all kinds of happy. but for me, happiness and a full bank account are miles apart, so that part is still severely lacking.

i will say, though, that the family, as a whole, is more happy, whole, and functional. the boy has flown through first grade in public school (as opposed to first grade in a montessori school the year before). he wasn't held back because he couldn't do first grade the first time, he was held back because they didn't have room in second grade, he didn't meet the age requirement, and no one cared to test him. he has stagnated a bit academically, but socially has blossomed. an even score, i suppose. the girl is in exactly the right preschool for her imaginative self. had someone told me two years ago that there could be a better option than montessori for my children i would have laughed out loud. truth is, montessori was great for the boy, but this waldorf hybrid is much better for my girl. she would have gone crazy in a montessori school. i see that now and i am happy to have that wisdom, no matter how much it cost me in the loss of the school. and i am glad to be away from the craziest person i have ever met. really, truly, one-of-a-kind certifiable. she is the kind of person other people study and write about. just. plain. bad. my old employee, one of the sweetest, cutest, 20-somethings in the world, told me she looked back on her journal from last year and there were pages and pages of things like, "instead of Crazy Person, i see peace." "instead of crazy person, i feel harmony." she had to write it over and over again so she wouldn't go crazy herself. i did not have the great wisdom to do such a thing. i just got sucked into the crazy and spit out the other side in a most unglamorous fashion.

i am gaining distance on the great evil of 2006/2007, but still have occasional flashbacks. usually at night as i'm trying to fall asleep. i think about what i would say to Crazy Person if i saw her again. thus far i have been lucky enough to avoid seeing her troll-like visage. mostly i think i just want her to know that she's a whore. beyond that, i don't care to see her at all. so if you're reading, Crazy Person, you're nothing but a whore. Exeunt (in opposite directions, please. and don't come back now, ya hear?)

now i'm back on the public stage, no longer avoiding those who have wished ill upon me. i'm quicker to think the worst of people, but for me this is not such a terrible thing. i've always been the kind of person who has made excuses for the bad behavior of others. she had a bad day. she's recovering from a bad childhood. she's in a bad marriage. whatever. i'm done with that. adults should be on their best behavior with the people in their lives because they're adults. it's their job to work on understanding their own shortcomings and not force others to endure the unconscious fallout thereof.

i blog about the new thing i'm doing, but am wary of linking the two together. Board Members and all that. i'm not sure if i'm going to be able to figure out how to do both without crossover, but i'll cross that bridge when i get to it.

Jenn has inspired me to get back on the horse, so i'm up and riding (writing, get it?!) again.

and i'll leave you with a limerick my boy wrote:

My Limerick
by The Boy

There once was a gorilla who liked to do hip hop
And liked to wear flip flops when he went to the dance.
He liked to prance
After he went to the dance!

the accompanying illustration has a gorilla and a disco ball on an orange background with blue, yellow, red, purple, and orange lights. brilliant!

rod serling wuz here.

first, i was walking through the kitchen and saw this at the back door:

apparently slinky dog needs to go out for a pee.

and then, on the boy's magnetic chalkboard, this:

to be certain that the husband wasn't somehow involved i asked him to go up and look at the blackboard and see if he noticed anything unusual. he nearly pissed himself laughing. he definitely wasn't the culprit.

um...should i be rethinking public school?

(ftr, in case there is anyone out there who thinks my kid knows anything about the above-photographed word, this was a completely accidental letter scramble.)

the authentic life

so i realized something this week. i know i realized it a thousand other times before but wasn't able to do anything about it so i didn’t waste any time thinking about it. what i realized is that for a long time now i haven't been living authentically and it was squeezing the air out of me.

it's true,  i've been lucky in that i've been able to hold onto pieces of myself throughout this whole motherhood gig, but only by the skin of my teeth (whatever that is). even the school, as much as i was able to inject it with parts of myself, wasn’t for me. it was never fully mine. i don’t mean that in a financial ownership sense—what i mean is that everything i did there was for someone else. for my kids, for the community, for my friends, and yes, for the whore who eventually walked away with it all.

but now, now i have an opportunity to take a more authentic path, to take joy from  the sum of my accomplishments and really acknowledge my self-worth.

i had a moment of clarity on the bathroom floor after a visit from my (now ex-) friend jose cuervo (meanwhile, do you realize how many calories in the average margarita? 780. seven hundred and eighty. the hell? that right there is enough to make me stop), and realized that this was it. this was the moment i could choose to succumb to whatever ailed my tortured spirit or it was the moment i could start to live for myself again.

i started simple. i began by giving myself permission not to work. not to blog. not to do anything at all if i didn’t feel like it. i started reading. and listening to music. MY music. not thomas the effing tank engine or bless her, the crazy chick with curly hair who jumps around singing about having a pig on her head (i actually like her, just not all.the.tiiiiiiiiiiiimmmuuuuh.) i got my feet tattooed with henna, and bought a small, leather-bound journal (and wrote in it!). i allowed myself the pleasure of cooking. i cleaned my house. i started rearranging furniture and painting tired old rooms. i sat on the beach. a lot. i live less than a quarter mile from the ocean and until this summer i could count the number of times i’ve sat on the beach in the seven summers we’ve lived here on two hands. and after i felt quiet enough in my body i acknowledged my pain and my anger and decided to let it go.

[aside: i’m not pretending i don’t still have moments of absolute mind-bending rage about what happened, but i don’t hold onto it anymore. i give myself that moment and then i’m onto something better.]

and then i began to acknowledge the opportunities around me and thought really hard about what it was that i wanted to do with my time. and the door to the school closed and a window opened on the other side of town.

i am climbing through that window. because it’s my window and on the other side of it is my work and I need it. i deserve it.

did i mention?

during all the nuttiness at the school my book won an IACP award, which is a big effing deal, peeps. a seriously big deal. not as big as a james beard award, but second to that. like a golden globe to an oscar.

so that was good. and now we're trying to sell the next book and i gotta tell you, i could certainly use an infusion of cash around here.

and i'm hoping to get a real job--you know, the kind where you get a check every couple of weeks. but i have to convince someone to create the job first. that might be a bit of a challenge.

the kids are delightful in an insane sort of way. the boy is doing karate now. twice a week for $100/mo. so far he loves it, but it's pretty hilarious to watch his legs and arms trying to figure out how to go in all the right directions. he's been very sensitive to all the goings on about the school, even developed insomnia for a while. i'm not sure how to understand what he feels because i know he feels everything about this much more deeply than i do. psycho was in his life for four of his six years and now all she wants to do is hurt his mom. and he has to go to a new school. public school. which i'm sure is a wonderful school, but it's huge and different from everything he's been involved with since he was 2.9 years old. i fear his monsters are even bigger than mine. and he doesn't talk much about it because he's his father's son.

the girl. i can't decide whether she's a genius or a just a goofball. she's amazingly advanced in some things (like talking and repeating things she's heard--mother of the year award to me for having a kid who says, "come on, dumbass!"* to her brother), and in others, like counting, for example, she's quite dense. "one, two, three, NINE, TEN!" and potty training? not even on the freaking radar. "K no potty mommy." not even on the flipping dora seat. or for stickers. or for two stickers. not even for a lollipop. i keep trying to figure out if it's me, if i'm just not engaged enough, or if she's just that damned stubborn. i'm going with the latter since she appears to take after me that way.

psycho pissed me off to no end today. put my stuff out on the porch on a rainy day just to be a bitch. J had to make several trips over there to get it all home.

i think i must be quite stupid. wide-eyed and dumbfounded every time people do nasty things just for the sake of being nasty. the world cracks open a little more every time. mostly i'm just incredibly offended. and frightened. because people as spiteful as she is are just plain scary.

the good news?

i no longer have to live in her miserable little world.

oh, and tomorrow i turn 39.

*for the record, i do not say "come on dumbass" to my kids, only to the dog. who totally deserves it.

i vacillate

between acceptance and rage. between pity and hatred. between self-loathing and grace. a less than casual observer might see my ambivalence.

picking up the pieces has been difficult. i expect it will become more difficult as time passes. and then less.

even the garbage cans that are put out on the curb every wednesday were donated by my parents. even the garbage cans.

it took me an hour to scrape the bumper sticker off my car with my thumb nail.

i have lots of guilt. for not saving it in its whole form. for letting my family and friends down. for stealing a year of my babies' childhood to do something that was wildly successful but which also failed.

i didn't have an exit strategy.

neither does the bush administration.

i don't allow myself excuses. instead, i beat myself about the head because i should have known better. i should have protected us all better. my father's habit for plodding detail never rubbed off on me. maybe rubbing off would have been too subtle for someone like me. i get it now.

in the past two weeks i've read eat, pray, love; the history of love; and harry potter 6 and 7. i've also painted two end tables and an armoire and painstakingly cleaned the junk out of my closet and the boy's room. i'm throwing things away like crazy. what's the point of keeping all of this? it's crowding me out of my own house.

i don't like to go out shopping alone anymore. 

i am not working. not because i don't want to, but because i haven't sold the next book yet--or rather, my agent hasn't. also, i haven't found anything i want to do yet. i've got an idea. lots of them, but a particularly exciting one about a job that may or may not exist.

i'll keep you posted.

a return?

it's been a long time, hasn't it? so long, in fact, that many of my readers have removed me from their blogrolls. ah, well. nevermind. i'm back now. and there are lots of stories to tell, but i still haven't processed most of what's happened since march, so i'm not sure how quickly it will all come out.

for now it will have to suffice to say that i am no longer a part of the school i helped open this fall. the school that in actual fact, took up most of my waking hours for the better part of a year. the school my son and daughter were to attend until they turn 12 in 6 and 10 years respectively.

my business partner--and i use that term loosely because she never really participated much in the actual running of the business--turned out to be rather nuts and after trying several different approaches to continuing the partnership i finally decided that what is best for me and my family was to leave the school. sounds simple, doesn't it? it hasn't been. there was never an exit strategy. never a plan for resolving disagreements between us and we remained at deadlock until it became apparent that time had run out for adding on to the building for the elementary program. there were public outbursts. broken friendships. eye-opening moments that have taught me a good deal more about the human condition--at both ends of the spectrum. i have received the grace of unsurpassed friendship and a renewed understanding of the bonds of family. and yet my business has effectively been stolen by a woman who has no conscience and puts self-interest above all else. i will evermore view her as nothing short of a common thief. a plotting swindler who lives off the hard work of everyone around her and leaves misery in her wake. her very existence is a foul stain upon the planet.

bitter much? 

i'm moving through the grief. at first i was unable to do anything. then the crying. and the pity party (and oh what a party it was!). now the rage. i'm not sure how long until i get to acceptance, but i don't really care, either. the rage is empowering and i intend to use it.

i wish i could report that life! is! good!, but in actual fact it's more meh than anything else. struggles. financial mostly. i'm out $5k in legal fees already and it's just the tip of the iceburg. and then the struggle to find my boy the right school and get him the right placement. and the struggle to teach the girl not to scream every time she needs something. and the struggle not to struggle....

but there are good things too. really good things. i've rediscovered how in love with love i can be, which is refreshing and uplifting. and i've returned to writing and am enjoying being at home. the big move from upstairs to down is finally underway, and i'm spending more time sleeping, exercising, hanging out with the kids, and socializing. i didn't know how stressed out i was until i stopped.

and now i've tentatively started again. 

for B

this one's for B because his yesterday was my today and i jacked him up about it a little, so i deserved it. and also? i know there are gajillions of moms and dads our there having the same day tomorrow…

yesterday B’s mood was fouled up because school was canceled, due to an technical difficulty with the propane heat. in truth, and aside from the boy’s unexpected stay at home, his day didn’t start as he’d hoped, generally. having the kid there just brought his grumpiness into sharper focus because, as he would later explain, the inane questions just. never. stopped.

i joked with him and said, “welcome to my little world, only it’s my little world every damned day!” how bad could one day be? one tiny little day in the grand scheme of things? as we all know, especially for the free-wheeling spirits among us who need days of uninterrupted focus to wander freely around in our heads and homes, even one day can be daunting, oppressive, and just downright irritating. it’s almost as bad as being trapped in a moving vehicle with two yappity yappers yappity yapping over and around each other, one trying to out yell the other just to be the one who is heard when there is nothing a parent can do but drive on. and fantasize about pulling over and making a run for it.

so today, after a quick morning game of red light, green light roll in the hay (come on—any one of you with mobile kids who can get out of their own beds in the morning know this game and know that even locked doors don’t help because children? they can do that teleporting thing), J announced that he’d be at the office today. all day. i was slightly hung over from last night’s debauchery, but got up and made everyone pancakes anyway. and then all i wanted was to be left alone for a little while to do some work. and rehydrate. five minutes in and there they were, climbing into the refrigerator. the boy got some drinkable yogurt. the girl screamed until he got her one too. then they commenced with the asking for and announcing of things.

“mommy, can we have some chocolate?”

“mommy, can we have some lemonade?”

“mommy, can we have a fruit leather?”

“mommy, is it lunch time yet?” (it was 10am)

“mommy, it’s 10:34.” (mmmm. hmmm.)

“mommy, is it lunch time yet?”

“mommy, i’m hungry.”

“mommy, pick me up.”

“mommy, K pooped!”

“mommy, it’s 11:01”

“mommy, is it lunch time yet?”

“can i have a banana?”

“can i have an apple?”

“what are we having for lunch?”

“i’m bored.”

GO OUTSIDE

“mommy, i want hummus and pretzels.”

“mommy, i hurt my finger.”

“mommy, my socks hurt, can you fix them?”

“can i have a turkey and cheese roll up?”

“I WANT CHOCOLATE MILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLK!”

“NO! DON’T TALK MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.”

Jeebus. EAT ALREADY.

so by 2pm today they had gone through 10 (oh, you think i’m joking, don’t you?) drinkable yogurts (the little ones, in their defense—i think they’re less than 2 ounces each), four fruit leathers, two roll-up sandwiches, a pile of pancakes, two bananas, and an apple.

and they ran laps around the interior of the house about 4,000 times, all while screaming and bouncing random objects as close to my head as possible.

the girl slept from 2 to 4:30pm and during that time i had to endure the boy’s proclamations of deadly boredom oh, say, maybe 18 million times.

J didn’t show up until after 6pm. i thought i might kill him by the time he walked through the door.  and then i thought, “this is what i get for jacking B up.”

i’m sorry, B. i should have been more sympathetic. how efficient is my karma, though? kicked my ass the very next day!

oh, and p.s. you know that puzzle we finished last night? k spilled an entire glass of chocolate milk on it. yeahhhhhhhhhhhh.

hibernation

yesterday i emailed one of my oldest friends. we haven’t been in touch lately. so the first email i sent just said, “hi.” in response she wrote, “hi to you too. you need a wikipedia page.”

i sent a very silly reply and then she appeared on instant messenger. “wow. you haven’t been online in years,” she started. of course i have been, but i've not been using IM. “you’re nutty,” she quipped. “that email you sent was nutty. like you have come out of hibernation.”

and then it occurred to me that she was right. since the girl was born i’ve not really been myself. my spark, my playful side has been in a long, deep sleep. there are piles of reasons—the book before the baby, the baby, the book after the baby, the school during the book after the baby, the husband’s last depressive episode after the baby, the fear of another depressive episode, financial struggles….each of them makes enough of a case for hibernation. combine them, and frankly, i think it’s a miracle i get up every morning to do it all again.

you know what else? and this is going to sound especially crazy because looking at it all from a birds-eye view it makes no sense, but i have been bored. bored out of my gourd. until recently there has been nothing fun and lighthearted happening. nothing remotely bacchanalian or indulgent. no decadent dinners or tra-la-las through the park. just boring, boring. boring. get up, feed the troops, dress the troops, yell cajole everyone out the door, drive to school, work, drive home, clean, cook, do some laundry, work, work, work, work, throw in eighty million trips to the grocery store, sleep a tiny bit, get up and do it again. i was dying a little at a time. the little was so tiny that i didn’t notice until it was a great, huge, heaping pile of dying staring me right in the face. like a big dog poo on the living room rug on a saturday morning.

and now that i’m thinking about it, that’s not even true, really.

i honestly didn’t notice until i started coming back to life. and that bit happened when i found myself feeling a bona fide connection to some friends. i know, that sounds nutty. but think about it. when do we, as parents, as married people, get the time to bond with other people the way we might have when we were younger and single. almost never, that’s when. either the husbands don’t like each other or the wives want to claw each other’s eyes out or the husband of one couple can’t stand to be in the same room with the wife of the other. it just rarely gels in a way that satisfies everyone. i mean, don’t get me wrong, i’ve had acquaintances who have filled the social need, but for the most part (with the exception of my friend S), it just falls flat. there’s nothing of substance there. everyone seems so preoccupied with impressing everyone else, which is not the way i have ever lived my life. (just ask my parents.) and frankly, it bores the crap out of me. 

so now we have these great friends, who were friends before, but suddenly became better friends, and we hang out every friday night (although this week’s been switched to saturday, which is today! yay!) have some dinner and drink some smoking loon or some bitch and laugh our heads off. B and i work on jigsaw puzzles (this part sounds really stupid, but it was spontaneous—one day we had a puzzle out on the kitchen table that i was working on with the boy and B started doing it, then i sat down with him and worked on it too. now it’s a *thing.* we’re on our second 1000 piece puzzle. puzzling whilst drunk is slow-going!). His wife and J make cracks about how crazy we are. he and i challenge each other and engage in name-calling and the kind of banter that is only comfortable with a good friend, because otherwise? it would just be scary. some other peeps came by one night and actually thought B and i were related. that should tell you everything you need to know. by nine o’clock all the kids have passed out on the couch or the floor.

 

i look forward to friday night. it’s not more of the same old same old, it’s real and safe. sometimes, during the week, N will stop here and have lunch with me because she works less than a mile away. the other day i was driving the girl around for a nap and called N who said B had asked her to bring him coffee but she couldn’t because her lunch break was just ending, so i dropped one off for him. sometimes B will bring the boy home from school or i’ll bring their boy home with us. they get angry on our behalf and vice versa. we take care of each other and it’s easy. at this point, i have a hard time remembering how we even managed to survive before they came along. i really hope they stick around.

the lost days

not much has been going on here. the usual plus a few moments of grace, clarity, and insanity thrown in for good measure.

an update is in order, though, so here it is.

first, this is my new best friend:

initially i bought it for the label because i'm shallow like that, but i have since bought five more bottles because it is so damned good. australian. barossa-grenache. from what i understand, it's a tough grape, but this wine is superb. i highly recommend it, not only for its delightfully sensuous--voluptuous even--flavor, but also for the fact that it's fun to say, "gimme a bottle of bitch," or "i'm just sitting here with a glass of bitch," or "don't touch my bitch!" at the register it rings up as "bitch wine." and it makes me giggle. best of all? it's a screamin' deal at $8.99 or so a bottle.

also, the girl is finally weaned. mostly it was fine, but a couple of days ago she woke up asking for "momma's milk," and i said, "mommy doesn't have any more milk. mommy's milk is for babies and you're a big girl now." she burst into tears and said, "i don't want to be a big girl, i want to be a baby again!" heart breaking. but! she's weaned. my boobs haven't figured it out yet.

that's all from my little world.

for now.

random

i know it's lame to post someone else's poem as a blog entry, but i don't care. i love this. for lots of reasons. today it feels easy to tumble right into it. in fact, it almost feels necessary.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

		e.e.cummings