Aging out of our fun bracket

SO a funny thing happened to us on the way to midlife... stop me if you've heard this one before.

I read a lot.  Possibly not a surprise to anyone who knows me personally.  Anyhow, I like Slate and Salon and MSN Lifestyle, and while the Beauty and Fashion articles almost never pertain to me anymore, I like to keep up on the Family and Life type bits.  That's me - always trying to enrich my life!  But lately, I've noticed a funny thing.  All those pithy little articles that used to feel so relevant, about dating and mating and such, don't really fit anymore.  Kind of like a pair of jeans that I used to be able to squeeze into, there's just a whole lot more of me than can be stuffed into those categories these days. 

The same thing is happening when I go to look at the Family articles.  Everything out there seems to be about parenting small children.  Do children cease to exist when they turn teenagers?  Judging by the constant mess and raucous music (music??) emanating from the house whenever they are around, I'm pretty certain that I can verify the existence of Teenus spasticus, the Common Household Teenager.  But you couldn't prove that by the rest of the mainstream world.

Oh, sure... there are other articles out there.  Yeah, THOSE ones.  The ones with the smiling white haired people.  The ones that get the pop-up sidebars for bladder control drugs and Jazzy scooters.  But here's the rub - we don't exactly fit there either.  I'm going on record to say that I don't have grandkids, don't own an RV, and have never been to Florida.  And I for heavensakes have never 'swayed to the soothing sounds of Lawrence Welk', except when my great-grandpa took the TV set hostage and forced me to retreat behind the big living room sofa with a Trixie Belden novel and a stolen bag of chocolate chips from Grandma's pantry. 

So where are the articles, MSN?  You give me "Five ways to a Hot Date Night", but at least two revolve around getting a good babysitter, and the other two don't take OUR early bedtime into the mix!  And honestly?  Your "Outdoor Date Ideas" are a bit rough on my Parkie, as well as my finicky gallbladder.  An outdoor pub crawl?  Yep, I'd have the crawling thing pretty well down pat, except there's nothing in your instruction book that covers how to get your teenagers to withdraw cash from the emergency account for bail, and THEN GET THEM TO STOP LAUGHING, DAMMIT. 

So, I guess for now, since I'm not into Bingo and I don't think they'll let us back into the bar after the last time we were making out around the pool table, we'll just have to stick with "Home and Decor".  After all, paint choices are pretty stimulating, right?

UPDATE:  After this post, I found just what I was looking for:  http://www.notreadyforgrannypanties.com.  Too funny!  I dig it.

Hey, we're "famous"!

Mary, over at Life With Shaky, is running an interview series with Parkinson's couples, and we have been asked to contribute.  See part I this week, and the conclusion next week.  I'm eager to see what other couples are experiencing, and what wisdom they have to share.  It was nice to be able to get a lot of those questions out in the open, as well.  There was a lot of dialogue opened up by doing this interview together, B and I.

The elephant has been unmasked.  Now what we do with it there in the living room is a question that remains to be seen.

Oops...almost forgot!

Almost forgot the good part!  I'm a 'weiner'!  Second place (which is really weird, cause the ribbon is white.  And their first place winner was a red ribbon...bizarre), $100 cash prize!  AND they want to see more of my work!  Wooot!

Recovery

And with the turn of the new year, this is a blog about Parkinson's again.  Or at least a post about coping within our own limitations. 

The last hurrah of the year has been sincerely and truly crazy.  We had one kid home from college for the three week break, one set of kids home over Christmas (the holiday weekend), and another home for the week between Christmas and New Years.  The company was great, but neither of us had time for any personal downtime for three weeks.  B has his garage, but that's another story.  It's hard to hide when you're the host of the party. 

They say that 'good' stress is just as bad as 'bad' stress.   For example, getting married or getting a promotion is 'good' stress, and 'bad stress is what we'd normally think of as stress:  losing a job, someone dying, a serious illness, etc.  They all add together to make the haystack on the camel's back.  Sometimes we cope pretty well.  Other times, it just takes that one little straw to break the camel.  PD has a tendency to seriously reduce the size of the potential haystack.  We know that, so we figured we were only taking on what we could feasibly handle:  the visits from the kids, which were self limiting.

We didn't figure on the little things that cropped up.  The art show.  The college kid's tagalong (and very persisitent) toxic boyfriend.  The ticket the girls got on the night they went out visiting friends late at night.  The Christmas project we forgot we had to finish. 

Today we finished the last of the outstanding obligations:  taking the college kid back home to her dorm.  It's an all-day project, and when it wasa done, we were relieved.  Not happy that she was gone, mind you, but relieved that we were going back to normal.  Since we went early and were done by shortly after one, we thought about going car shopping in the nearest big city, a couple hours away, but by the time we hit the cutoff for the freeway where we had to turn to head there, it was evident that we weren't going to make it.  He was exhausted and so was I.  We made it back to town, sat at the restaurant and had late lunch/early dinner, and went home.  It was too late for a nap, but too early for bed. 

I knew when we got home what was going on.  He was really wobbly and terribly fatigued.  He retreated to his garage and I let him be, knowing that he needed some defrag time playing sudoku in the quiet.  I, too, needed some defrag time.  I cleaned the girl's room and picked up the remainder of the house, started some laundry and dishes, and sat down to craft.  After awhile, I felt better, like my brain was finally coming back to me.

Unlucky for B, his recovery isn't that easy.  He went to bed early tonight, and is absolutely wiped out.  He was this way the last couple of days, but hasn't wanted to slow down.  But the PD demands its due.  He can deny it for a time, but in the end, it always gets its way.  He will sleep nearly ten hours tonight, since it's a work night and we have to get up, as he slept last night, and nearly twelve the night before.  It's hard for me to imagine that it takes so much to catch up, but it always does.  Who knows how long it will take this time, after all this stress?  Outside of the divorce, this is probably the most stress he's had in three years or so.  Now that our lives are quiet, he isn't used to the constant stress anymore, and so it really wallops him. 

So here I sit in the darkness in the living room, reading a book and taking a second to catch up myself.  I will probably be here for several more nights, waiting for his body to catch up with itself.  We can't do this again.  We are going to make some changes (most importantly to the house rules, for the college kid who thinks its okay to come home at 3 a.m. and wake the whole house up) and not let this 'perfect storm' of stress catch us out again.  For now, I watch him sleep, in the hopes that soon, we will be able to connect again.

New Year's gifts

"For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  ~Ephesians 2:10

I had heartily hoped that 2011 was going to magically turn off better.  Quieter, more peaceful, less chaotic.  A place where we could finally relax and enjoy life.  Well, it's two days in, and though it seems less than fair to judge a year by its cover, it doesn't look like it yet.

The month of December has been raging insanity.  Two trips across the haggard, snowy mountain pass to the other side of the state for specialists' appointments, B's dental emergency and reconstructive surgery just before Christmas, the holidays, the kids home on winter break.  And the wonderful, awful pleasure of a houseful of company for the last two weeks, over Christmas and New Year's.  Wonderful because we love them, and love seeing them.  Awful, because there has barely been enough time to breathe, much less process all of what's gone on in the last gasp of 2010. 

To top it all off, the local museum held a call for artwork for it's January juried art exhibition.  It's been a dream of mine for a long time to be chosen to exhibit, but I've been very afraid to submit.  Afraid of failure, afraid of success, afraid mostly that I'd finally be outed as a fraud.  After all, I don't do art full time.  I do it for love.  I know I'm no professional.  I have hopes and dreams, but no confidence.  But...B talked me into submitting four pieces, and lo and behold - they wanted one!  Happy day!

But of course since we are 'poor starving artists' we don't typically print and frame every piece.  And this being a large one (22 x 34), the costs are pretty big for the frame job.  And of course we procrastinated, because specialist's appointments and dental emergencies and out of town family took precedence.  So, there we were, trying to find custom mats and framing on the day or two before Christmas in a small town where the one frame shop goes on a two week vacation.  We decided it was okay - that B could make the frame, since he's such a craftsman.  What we forgot was that he was also building a bench for my folks for Christmas, and we were still putting the finish varnish on that one on Christmas Eve.  So, suffice to say, we were adequately stressed about the project.

Oh, but that's not all. 

I do have this charming tendency to freak out when under great personal stress, particularly when the stress comes from something that I feel very insecure about, such as my art or my writing.  I love it, I'm good at it, and I know that in my head, but I can't get over the feeling that I'm just not good enough.  So it means that I see EVERY...LITTLE...TINY imperfection in the product, and it drives me crazy, because if I can see it, I figure everyone can see it, and then - do you follow my destructively circular logic here? - they will find out that I'm just a poser.  Bleah.  I hear it in myself, I see myself doing it, and I hate it, but there it is.  So here were are, and even with all these great "Plan B" plans, every single stage of this project has gone wrong.

• We found a great little craft store in town which also cuts and sells mats.  They are $20 for a double mat of the size we needed, vs the $75 for the one we found out of town.  The little old lady we ordered from promised to have it within a couple days for us.  After the couple days was up, we found out (after stopping by to check on the progress) that they did not have the colors we needed after all, and we had to come pick new ones.
• We were going to have B build a frame, but then found a set of metal contemporary frame kits lying around the house from a prior project that were perfect.  We just had to cut one down to size.  No problem, right?  Free frame.  Woo hoo!  Except, we didn't have a metal cutting wheel, so B had to do it with the Dremel, and, while he's gifted at what he does, he didn't cut it quite perfect, so ... (see next bullet)...
• Lowe's had cut-to-order glass.  Perfect, right?  So we went in with the measurements from the mat and had the glass cut.  Except, when we put it all together, we found out that we were 1/16 of an inch off.  Just about the 16th that he had to burn up in making the nice clean miter cut.  So, we are now the proud owner of TWO pieces of glass, one approximately 1/16th longer than the other. 
• And, the print job, which should have been as easy as taking the thumb drive in to the large format printer, was plagued with trials.  Wrong paper, too curly paper, file too big to save, crashing Photoshop, laptop with dying battery, etc. 

We did finally get things together, after at least three days of fighting with the damn thing.  All three days of the holiday weekend.  And now we get to go back to work tomorrow.  But at least we are going to take the darn painting with us, and drop its bad luck self off at the museum.  Hopefully there's not so much bad juju attached to it that it ends up burning the place down.  Or at least that they have good insurance.

The end result, however, is that there are some severely grouchy feelings around this house.  I totally can't blame him for being frustrated, at the project for being a pain in the tush, and at me, for crumbling under pressure.  I knew it would be like this, and a part of me did not want to do it, just for that reason.  But here we are.  Turn in is tomorrow, the show opening is the 7th, and we are on.  The piece looks fantastic, despite the little errors that only I can see.  And so, this is the unveiling of my gift.  I hope it's worthy.

To kill time tonight, because I am not sleepy and because I have been playing with the Netflix through our Wii console, I watched a Veggie Tales video with  my girl.  Yeah, I know she's in college and we are way too old for Bob and Larry, but the simple laughs ground me, and remind me of what is really important.  The message for this episode, ironically enough, is the quote at the beginning of this post.  The episode was about gifts, and what we are to do with them.  I've been thinking about why I have always wanted recognition for the art and the writing.  I've always dreamed that somehow they could support me, that I would sell one piece that would lead to a lifetime of the freedom to do the things that I love doing and be secure, not have to go to work.  Now, I'm not so sure that's what gifts are for. 

What are they for?  What do I do with these hands, these words?  How can I make the world better, other than by making the world more beautiful?  Is that it?  Is that enough?  If I use my gifts to please God, will this feeling of inadequacy finally go away? 

2011 is a year of many goals.  I think, perhaps, that this journey needs to be one of them.  To find out what the plan for my life is, and to walk it.  I've been looking in a lot of places for peace, but maybe true peace is not in what lies outside of me.  Maybe, I should have been looking up all the time.

Riding the waves

I've always loved the ocean, and felt a connection to it.  I don't know why.  We live in an area that's about as far from seaside as you can get:  in a desert.  Any salt water is nearly four hours away.  Maybe it was the trip to Seaside, OR when I was a little girl that did it.  Or reading in books that there was another world out there besides our own sagebrush-studded, monochromatic one.  Whatever the genesis, the few times I've been able to make it to the ocean as an adult I've felt like I've finally come home.  I think most people feel a kinship with the ocean.  The marketers know this.  They sell relaxation tapes with quiet piano music and the soothing sounds of the surf.  There's just something about all that salt water that touches a place deep inside human beings.  Is it our 80% water composition, calling out to its counterpart, yearning to reconnect?

Maybe its the waves that seem so familiar, rushing in and then receding, in crests and troughs.  Life moves that way as well.  Perhaps we are governed by the same moon as the tide, pulling and pushing us this way and that in succession.

Yesterday afternoon we hit the trough of the wave.  In the morning, B complained about a popcorn hull stuck in his teeth.  He had been worrying at it all the night before, making his gums bleed trying to get it back out.  I had a bad feeling then.  By midafternoon, the gum was swollen and abscessed.  By evening, he was running a fever, and he was in pain.  I should mention that he's been on gabapentin for the past several months, trying to combat the leftover chronic headache from the meningitis he had earlier this year, so there's really nothing besides ibuprofen that he can take for the pain.  Thank heavens, later that night it ruptured and eased the pressure somewhat, but this morning he's feverish and yucky feeling, and scheduled to see the dentist for some antibiotics.

I feel fortunate that the dentist was able to see him this morning as an emergency, but I'm leery about the antibiotic course.  This same time a couple of years ago began the same way and ended in c. diff, which took months to recover from.  To say that I'm nervous is an understatement.  He's started on the heavy duty probiotics and some echinacea just in case.

Ironically enough, we're both on the disabled list.  I have a painful cyst that we are waiting to go away, and it hobbles my day and the things I can do.  He's still got the tinnitus, which was really bad last night as well and drives him insane.  And now the infected tooth.  I held him this morning as he wandered around looking sad, watching me get ready to go to work.  I told him "This is the trough.  Soon enough we will crest again."  And it's true.  It seems to be cyclical.  It just seems like there is so much at once time that we have to deal with. 

I read other people's stories, and I see that their lives operate the same way.  Life will go along for a while and you think "Well, this is okay.  I can deal with this, and maybe I can even get some enjoyment out of it as we go."  And then, out of what seems like nowhere, the car dies, someone gets sick, you get laid off, people fight, a bill gets missed.  Something.  Everything.  All at once.  People feel like Job.  What it really is is your trough.  The simple key is that you have to get through it to get to the other side.  The pendulum always swings back.  That's the thing to remember.  And it works both ways.  The pendulum always swings back, so if it's really good, look ahead so that you can be prepared.  If it's really bad, have faith and hope, because the sunshine is behind the cloud, even when you can't see it.

We will hang in there.  This too shall pass.  And in a couple of weeks, we will have all the kids at home to visit.  Out of the troughs, and into the crests.  This little boat shall not sink.

In praise of men

Today I happened across a headline on the Today show website that stopped me cold.  "My daughter punched a boy in the privates - I'm so proud".   My first thought was that it had to be sarcasm.  Of course, I had to read it. 

The article is written by the mother of a preschooler.  The gist of the incident is that the little girl got a note sent home from school, alerting her parents that she'd been reprimanded for her behavior in class that day.  When asked what she'd done to deserve it, she told her mother that one of the little boys in the class had positioned himself proudly in front of her desk and told her to "Talk to Mr. Weiner".  So she proceeded to do what made her mother so proud:  she hauled off and punched him in the privates.

But that wasn't the eyebrow-raising part of the story.  The mother's  reaction was to haul the kid down to the hapless teacher's desk, where she demanded that the little boy be sanctioned for 'sexual harassment' and kicked out of the school, and told her that her kid was a hero for 'standing up for womens rights'.  And if the teacher didn't comply?  Well then, they'd just sue her and have her job. 

I read the multitude of comments at the end of the article.  I found the women's comments, for the most part, to be appalling.  The cry for blood on the part of the little boy was disturbing.  So was lauding the little girl as a 'hero', and a crusader for justice for women.  What is this cry for violence?

There were voices of dissention, mercilessly quashed, mostly from men.  One struck me as poignant.  "Why the cry for sexual violence in response to a non-violent act?"  The women said that the little girl was a 'victim', and that she had the right to apply violence in 'self-defense'.  Self defense?  Really?

Now, let me step back just a moment from this table, to establish a few facts.

I have survived the real thing.  I know what molestation looks like, and rape, and sexual harassment.  These things are violent acts, in and of themselves.  They are power plays masquerading behind masks made of sex, designed to quash and degrade and enslave and subordinate.  It has taken me years to get in front of the memories of long ago.  I know the import of these words, some of the most powerful in the human language.  In no way would I ever degrade anyone who has been victimized by someone else in one of these ways.  This story, too, is a story for another time.  Suffice to say that I have been branded, and I am in the unwanted sisterhood.

Do I think that little boy, sashaying up to impress the little girl with his sassy remark, meant to degrade or enslave that girl?  Do I think that he had any understanding of the (adult) concept of sexual harassment?  I do know one thing:  weiners are funny, especially at that age, where one is just learning the difference between "I have one thing and you have another".   I'm thinking that his quip probably sounded pretty cool to him when he said it.  I don't think he's a 'troll' or a 'pervert' or a 'little fiend'.  I think he's a pretty normal little boy who made the unfortunate discovery that the things he finds funny aren't necessarily everyone else's bag.  Still, I can't sanction the education of discretion at the end of a fist to the genitals. 

Would we sanction the punching of a girl in the privates by a boy?  Under what circumstances would that be okay?  I'll bet 9 of 10 people would say 'never'.  Then why the double standard?  The potential for pain and damage is twice as great for a girl to hit a boy in the privates.  But there it is:  the double standard.

Not so very long ago the double standard existed in reverse.  I don't think anyone would disagree that women were a ways down the totem pole of importance in the recent past compared to their brothers.  We have worked hard to overcome that, and I believe in my heart that we have.  I think we have every advantage today that men do, unless you speak of absolutely gender-linked issues.  (I don't think we want to share equally in contracting prostate cancer, or erectile dysfunction)  If anything, the pendulum has swung further forward than back.  Women are able to play the minority card and claim that credit as well.  Women are now going to college in numbers far greater than men.  We are paid equally in most instances and share the same perks.

  

But the biggest bonus for women is really the oldest one in the book.  We got everything we wanted, and we still got to retain our 'protected' status.  We only gotta be liberated if we want to.  By default, if we don't feel like paying the bill for dinner, custom and courtesy dictates that the man step up.  Or opening the door.  Or tackling unpleasant things.  Or fighting our own battles. 

And here's the rub:  you'd think we'd be grateful.  But this newfound liberation, God bless it for its wonderful qualities, but it has an ugly underbelly.  It seems to be an unwritten law of the cosmos that one group can't exist without stepping on the other.  It's not enough to peacefully coexist in equality, happy in our own differentness, enjoying each other and celebrating how each sex compliments the other.  No - when we stepped up to take our place at the table, we felt we had to step on men's heads to get there, kind of like a big game hunter with one foot on the trophy. 

How many instances of this stereotype can you find on TV today?  Beautiful, successful, witty, knowing woman, paired with bumbling, stupid, lazy, slovenly man?  How about this one:  failure father, who is laughed at and scorned by his children and the superior wife who barely tolerates him but bails him out again and again for comic effect?  It may be just TV, or the movies, but we absorb it.  We are sheeple, under the skin, and we feed on stereotypes.

 

How does this affect us?  Slowly, it erodes our respect as women for the men around us.  We are somehow not able to feel equal without trying to make them aware that we believe them to be inferior.  We shame them, laugh at them, stereotype them.  We pigeonhole them.

And just as a battered woman will come to believe that she truly is worthless, a man eventually comes to believe it too.

"Slacker" comedy abounds.  We laugh, but is this really what we want out of our relationships?  I'm with Paula Cole:  "where have all the cowboys gone?"  Well, Paula, the truth is we confiscated the horse and the job and gave him a shovel and the real important job of shoveling horse dung behind us as we rode around with the spangles in the spotlight that we really and truly deserved after being held down for all those generations and generations of injustice.  Where is our cowboy again?  No clue... he forgot how to ride and rope after all that time of internalizing that all he was worth to us was either wrapped up in his Wranglers or doing all the tasks we didn't want to do after all. 

So now what? 

It's a good question.  Studies are beginning to show that the children that REALLY need rescuing are our boys.  They've lost their stars to navigate by.  The grandfathers and great grandfathers that were men back in the generations that appreciated their men have begun to fall by the wayside, and the fathers that have been part of the emasculation generation no longer know how.  And we should feel BAD for them.  We should - after all, we know how it feels to be deemed worthless.  All that they have left is what society shows them is an acceptable role:  buffoon, slacker, patsy, spider-killer, dungslinger.

Despite this depressing trend, those little boys who need love and respect are still there, waiting, eager to love and to please.  They may be ten or thirty or fifty, but they all need the same thing, the same thing we all need as human beings:  Love.  Respect.  Self-worth. 

The world is large enough for all of us, after all.  There's no need to push and jostle.  We are so much stronger if we stand side by side, rather than fighting to take the top position.  The strongest pairs among us realize the truth: that the top position is temporary, and to be traded back and forth as needed by strengths.  Today we need his skills to navigate our journey's path.  Tomorrow we may need mine. 

This post, long and rambling as it is, comes back around to this.  This is my love song to men.  I appreciate you.  I respect you.  The human race would not exist without our joint effort. 

• Thank you for doing all the things you do, quietly and with no fanfare, without seeking of praise or recognition.
• Thank you for the things you let me do, for encouraging me to be the best woman I can be.
• Thank you for being strong, and holding me up when I falter.
• Thank you for being weak sometimes.  I need to feel needed, and to comfort you not only shows me I can be safe with you, but lets me give back to you in your hour of need.
• Thank you for your courage and for your heart.  You inspire me and give me hope.
• Thank you for your innate sense of direction, which every man seems to possess, and women can only Garmin!
• Thank you for being my sense of direction, my bright star, which points the way.
• Thank you for my children, and for being a father.  Without you, I must do twice the job with half the knowledge. 
• Thank you for respecting me, and for respecting yourself.  Your faith and justice are a beacon to others.
• Thank you for holding me, and the safety I feel when I am in your arms.
• Thank you for being the yin to my yang, the other half of the puzzle, without whom the universe would be incomplete.  A woman CAN live her life without a mate, but was not designed to.  There are things we need from you that we can not even put a name to, but the sense of completion when we are mated shows us that something was missing without you.
• Thank you for being YOU. 

There is a reason that God is called "the Father".  Protector, redeemer, judge, confidant, comforter.  He created Man in his image.  I am thankful to be a daughter of Eve, and more thankful for my Adam.  May we strive to ever be thankful for each other, respectful of each other, and mindful of our own equality, as well as our unique strengths and weaknesses.  Let this new world be a world where we treat each other with the same respects that we demand for ourselves, and tolerate no violence against each other.

Long time gone

It's true.  I've been a long time gone.  And I really should be doing a thousand other things than sitting here, but sitting has become my solace.

It would take too long for this post to recap the past six months, but I'll say this:  between B's illnesses and my own, it's been a whirlwind of specialists and misery for quite a while.  Interspersed with the wonder and awe of such things as taking the girl off to college, building an addition to the house, and reclaiming our son from the long shadow his sister cast for eighteen years.  It takes a long time to build a family, especially when life insists on happening in the meantime.

So, we're back.  I still owe some very important letters and emails, some of which I feel a deep shame for missing for so long.  I dropped the ball, grievously, and I am very sorry.  I can only say that I have been so deep within our own pain and misery that I've had energy only to brush the surface of the outside world and dip my toes in occasionally.  Any further or deeper interaction has required more mental energy than I possessed.  And that's as many excuses as I will make here.

PD is still our roommate, but we've come to deal with it much better.  Somewhere in the middle of the great medical crisises of 2010 we decided that we did not have to put up with an unresponsive, rude neurologist any more, and fired him.  We found what seems to be a pretty good movement disorder specialist three and a half hours away in the Big City, close enough to B's brother and sister in law's place that we can do an overnight.  She took the ball in hand and ran with it, changing him in the first visit to Requip XL (versus the regular Requip, which caused him profound nausea and misery four times a day and had big on and off periods) and bumped up his Sinemet dosage.  The combination of the two changes has eliminated his weak side drag and limp, and given him a peaceful daytime, since the nausea and ups and downs are pretty much gone.  The XL lasts longer, and has a smoother ride.  It's been out for a few years now, and it never occurred to the old neuro to change it.  Thank God for new doctors!

It's impossible to describe how wonderful it is to see him feel better.  There is precious little comfort in this whole thing, but to find this small change that makes such a vast difference is definitely a blessing.  If only we could fix everything so easily!

The girl is doing fantastic at college.  She is loving it.  She's hooked up with a sorority, and pinned with her group last week.  They can't move into the house until next year when the Seniors move out, but in the meantime she's made fast friends with all the rest of the girls on her dorm floor and is having a ball.  The midterm grades showed a 3.9 GPA.  Finals are next week before Christmas vacation.  We all have our fingers crossed that she can pass the finals as well as the midterms.  Adjustment has been easy for her, thank God.  It seems funny to think that just a couple of years ago we were wondering if she would make it to high school graduation without dropping out. 

My relationship with my son is a subject for another post.  All I can say is that we needed this so badly, this time together.  He astounds and awes me, and I am so very proud of him.  I can see that we are in for another long road to get him to where he needs to be, in college, but that it's going to be worth the journey.  The depths of the relationship he's found with B is incredible.  I never could have anticipated that, nor that the girl would call B to come spend Dad's Weekend with her in her dorm.  I don't know what happened that I did right finally, but I hope it lasts. 

This post is to say that I am back, hopefully for a while.  I'm sorry I left, and that I dropped the ball on my friendships here.  This place is valuable to me, as are you.  If you're all still here, thanks for hanging in.  I'll try to make it worth your while.

Transitions

TODAY is a day of transitions. 

I think I want to go back to bed.  If I do that, will today go away and begone?

Today is the day my daughter graduates.  It's 7 a.m. as I sit here in my quiet house nursing a cup of coffee.  In an hour, I have to go pick up the balloon bouquet.  In two and a half hours, my house will fill with all the friends and family that are going with us to the field where the ceremony will be held.  In four hours, the ceremony will start (and we will see if my Kleenex stash will hold out).  In six to seven hours, depending on how long the presenters decide to talk in between the three hundred plus students, it will be done.  Thirteen years of school, brought to a close.  Eighteen years, brought to a transition.  And in August, my child will leave.  It's already begun.

How did this happen so fast??

Two months ago she started the pulling away process.  She's been nearly unliveable.  I guess maybe I have too.  I hate this.  I want her to go.  I want her to stay.  I want it to be the way it's been for eighteen years - mother and daughter, two best friends.  All of  a sudden it's different.  In the last month, she's had a major secret from me, something that's never happened before.  She's pulling away, and I hate it.  I know it has to be, but I just wasn't ready.

In a way it's a good thing.  Her brother's been in her shadow since he was born.  She's always been the gregarious one, and he the quiet one.  She did all his talking.  Now that she's gone more and more, he's out of his room more and more, and we get the privelege of getting to know him.  I'm finding that I never really knew him.  She always needed more attention, so he faded into the background.  It's going to be a lot of fun and so rewarding to catch up and make up for those years I've missed out with him. 

And it's going to be so much nicer in a house without all the constant drama that seems to cling to her like a cloak, sweeping through the house in a thunderstorm, all flash and noise, whenever she comes through.  I won't miss that.  At least I think I won't. 

I guess it's telling that she finally feels like it's time for her to pull away and become her own woman, to move into her new life and destiny.  We have gone through so much in this lifetime.  So much garbage, so much heartache and drama.  It's been all we can do to cling together like survivors in a lifeboat.  If we hadn't been so close I don't think we could have made it.  But it wasn't until my divorce, until after B and I got together and things calmed down, that she began talking seriously about college.  It was as if we could all finally relax and move into those new phases of life that we'd always dreamed about but could never imagine.  She told me once, after things settled down, that now she could feel safe about leaving me and not feel like she was abandoning me.  How that hurt!  To find out that your child felt that she had to sacrifice her own hopes and dreams to stay home and make sure that her parent at least had an ally in a bad and crazy household.  But that's all over, and the plans are made and paid for.  College is a reality, and she's gone in August.

Silly me.  I thought we'd be able to hold onto the shiny happy feelings forever.  I didn't realize that to move on she'd have to leave us behind. 

It's hard.  I will miss her.  I want to strangle her, I want to hug her, I want to shake her, I want her to be my little girl again.  And I'm so proud that she's made it.  My straight A student, with her five Advanced Placement (and college credits) under her belt, her part time job and the summer internship she won - she's already running.  And somehow I missed the starting line.  I didn't get to wave her off. 

Today she's pausing for a moment to catch that next piece for her toolbox - the diploma.  I might have missed the starting gate, but I can catch her here, for one shining moment before she's off again. 

Bittersweet.

Short update

To those who don't know - sorry to be gone so long, but my husband has been very sick for the last week, beginning the Friday before last.  We have been to the ER twice, the walk in twice, and to his family doctor twice, had tests, fluids, drugs, cranial and cervical CTs, and a spinal tap.  On Thursday, he was finally diagnosed with viral meningitis.  He has been very ill and in a lot of pain.  He is recuperating slowly, but it's still in the wait-and-see stage.  The only way he gets some relief is by lying flat on his back, so it's two or three hours down, and ten minutes up.  I am working on very little sleep and not making much sense at the moment, but will post when we get more news, hopefully better. 

Google says viral meningitis passes within a week to ten days, so he should be feeling better soon.  The only question left is whether he will need the blood patch for his leaky spinal tap, which is the reason for the continuing head pain.  Hopefully tomorrow will tell.

Blessings to all of you, and I'm praying that he gets through this quickly and that I do not get sick as well.  Since they diagnosed late, I've been exposed too.

Disequilibrium

IT has been a long time since I posted, I know.  I'm sorry to anyone who is watching (not as if I think there are a whole lot of folks out there holding their breath waiting for any words of wisdom from over here!  LOL).  It's just been very busy.  The girl is in whirlwind mode, getting ready to graduate, with all the attendant insanity that accompanies that transition.  And it's been spring here in the Northwest, and finally some nicer weather, so that we can finish the huge project we began a month ago.  We did get some help one weekend from my family to get the walls framed, but there's still a long way to go.

One of the largest reasons I have not posted recently is that I've had to have some time to process something that happened last week.

I am the only one in my department at work, but I have a coworker who is my equivalent in another department.  We frequently work on some similar projects, and though we probably would not have sought each other out to build a friendship, we've had to both become familiar with the same set of brand new state regulations, so we have spent some time working fairly closely.  This is not the story of a workplace affair, even if it sounds like the same setup. 

'Calvin' moved here from a larger city a couple of years ago to take the job with our city.  I wondered for a long time why someone would come to a small town like ours for no reason.  He had no friends or family here.  But - he was good at the job they hired him for, which was a type of middle-management in his department.  There had been a lot of problems in that job before he came, which left a mess that he had to sort out from the inside out, first thing.  And on top of all that came me, bearing a four inch thick book of state regulations that our city had just been scooped into, and that he and I had to navigate and become compliant with posthaste.

To make a long story short, as I began working with him, I got to know his situation a little better.  Calvin has a wife that has some kind of cancer.  The incurable kind.  B and I saw them at a company BBQ last year, and met her for the first time.  She came to just be there, though she couldn't do much but sit in a folding chair and smile.  She wore a blanket, in the mid July heat.  She looked beautiful and exhausted.  I wondered what it was, but didn't dare ask.  It isn't the kind of question you ask.

This February Calvin and I had to go take a two day class to gain certification in our jobs.  I wondered about his wife, but didn't ask.  I did ask him if it was going to be okay, him being gone out of town for two days.  He seemed pretty easy about it, telling me 'Oh, yeah', as if it were nothing.  We rode up to the class by carpool, and in two hours one way, dinner the next night at Outback, and two hours home, we had told all the stories that were fit to tell, and I knew everything about him but how his wife was.  Calvin never talked about his family.  I found out the circumstances that had led him to our town, and how he'd left the big city.  I found out his preferences in music, what he thought about politics, where they went on vacation a few years ago, and of course, how he felt about the new state regulations and how the affected our jobs.  I talked about my family, but I never asked about his.  It was as if it were a taboo subject.

The week before last we got a call from our State inspector, saying he was going to be in town Tuesday morning to meet with Calvin and I about a worksite that had been out of compliance, and while he was in town, we'd all get to sit down and go over the new regs.  Calvin had been looking forward to it.  He had a lot of questions. 

I reminded him about the meeting Monday morning, and went off to lunch.  I had a busy day, so I never made it back around the other side of the office till mid afternoon.  B came to my office to find me. 

"Calvin isn't going to make it in tomorrow."  He said.  "He went home for lunch, and his wife was gone."

It took a while to sink in.  Gone.  Not gone, as in to town for a soda pop.  Gone.

Calvin was a work acquaintance, not a really close friend.  But we'd spent enough time together for me to be able to put myself in his shoes.  And that was the worst part.  For the rest of the day it echoed.

He'd gone to work, thinking everything was going to be okay.  He went home for lunch, and she was GONE.

For some reason, it put me on vapor-lock.  I went home Tuesday trying to find some equilibrium.  I found a bit finally after B chased me down, feeling somehow how lost I was.  He wrapped his arms around me in a hug and I cried and cried and cried, until I felt like the hole in me was huge enough to fall into.  The echo in my mind was that shock:  it was okay, and then it wasn't, unexpectedly.  It wasn't like it was really unexpected.  She had been very sick.  But it was unexpected enough that he'd gone into work, thinking it was just another day. 

How terrible would that be?  Could I cope with that sudden devastation?  Can anyone?  B wants our lives to be that way when he retires.  I will just go off to work and leave him here.  But what if?  What if??

We have been steeling ourselves for this long struggle, this lonely road.  But what we forget is that it can come anytime, even over lunch, as quick as that.  It underscored for me how much I can't imagine losing B.  I know that there comes a time that we all have to make that last transition, even if we don't want to.  Even if we think we still have things to do, time left.  But please, God....not anytime soon. 

National Parkinson Foundation - U.S. Senate Designates April as Parkinson's Awareness Month

National Parkinson Foundation - U.S. Senate Designates April as Parkinson's Awareness Month

National Parkinson Foundation - U.S. Senate Designates April as Parkinson's Awareness Month

National Parkinson Foundation - U.S. Senate Designates April as Parkinson's Awareness Month

Mapping fear

SO it's been a busy few weeks.  I didn't think it was much more than normal, but I guess looking back it's been rather eventful. The boy got himself into a spot of trouble the weekend before last, so he's been grounded and at home (even this week, which is Spring Break).  The girl has Senioritis and has been bouncing around like a mexican jumping bean.  And we've been pushing hard to do all the projects that we need to get done.  The problem is, there's about four major ones, and they're all interdependent, so it's been nearly impossible to decide what to do first.  What we really need is more than one scatterbrained woman, one man with PD, and a teenage boy.  We really need a crew, for just about sixteen hours or so.

B took Thursday and Friday off last week to catch up on his sleep, which he managed to do a little bit of.  I guess he probably would have gotten more sleeping done if he hadn't gotten his new Mac computer.  (And the new GarageBand program, which is WAY cool, if I do say so myself!)  I am only allowing myself to be *slightly* envious!  ;-)  I stayed at work, because I knew that not only did I not have enough vacation time to be taking random days off, but I knew that my being here would just spur us to try to finish a project rather than him get some rest.  He slept, but not good.  I don't know if it was just stress, overtiredness, or whether his explanation held some truth - that he can't sleep without me there anymore.

At any rate, we did get some work done on the porch on Saturday.  We spent about four hours, all told, then just meandered for the rest of the weekend.  All in all, I thought it was uneventful.

Today, we were back to work.  He moaned and groaned this morning with me about having to go back to work, but I didn't think much about it.  We caught up on things in the morning, then had our little sack lunch at noon.  I asked him how his day was going, like I always do, and he was noncommittal.  In the afternoon, I got to a point where I couldn't go any further with my spreadsheet, so I called him.  I just knew he knew a trick to extract all the pieces of data out of the map in one fell swoop and import them into my spreadsheet without looking each piece up one by one.  He came over and walked me through it, as per usual, then went out for a smoke.

He was back in just a few moments.  "You need to be writing this down."  He said. 

"Oh....kay."  I said. 

"And not those little sticky notes, either."  He said.  His body language was intense, and my radar went on immediate alert.  "You need to write it down... keep a handwritten how-to manual, so you know how to do these things."  The sentence lobbed out between us, the unspoken words hanging out there like a green cloud of poisonous gas.

It's worth noting right here that he is the only one in the whole organization that knows how to do what he does.  He is the heart and soul of the place - the man who makes the maps.  He can make the programs do backflips.  He's gotten everyone in there used to having maps and data literally at their fingertips, as soon as they ask. 

I was the one three years ago that he chose as his successor. 

At first we trained, a lot.  I had to come up from absolutely ground floor.  I use the program in my day to day work.  But that was before I got handed my own promotion, and began working on other things.  Pressing, time-sensitive things.  And like B, I am the only one in my own department.  Both of us are islands, and a lot of things rest on our being there to do our jobs.  Somewhere along the line, I had to assume that he was going to be able to continue on until I could rest a bit in my own job;  till I was ready to take both helms.

"What are you saying?"  I asked, heart pounding.  "How long have I got?" 

He was evasive.  Not a good sign. 

Finally I said, not the question that I needed to ask, but the next best one.  "Do you regret ...things being how they are now?"  We were both talking about home... the new house, the new living arrangements,.... him being with me and my ready-made family.  Big questions.  Big questions, with no good answers.

He only laughed a little.  "Its overwhelming sometimes.  I had no idea."

My heart sunk.  He would talk no more, but went back to work.

So now I'm left with more and more questions.  This weekend he made an offhand comment that this would be what retirement would be like.  I laughed and asked him how he would ever keep himself busy, and he said in all seriousness that he could find many things to do so.  How long has he been thinking like this?  What's on his mind?  Is he feeling that badly that he is thinking about pulling the plug already?  And where do I figure into all this?

Am I even close to ready to take on his job, too?

I am so afraid of what comes.

Flagellation

IT has not been a good day.

We have some big plans for the weekend.  We made them last Monday, when we got a little windfall.  The plan was for B to get a new battery for his pickup after work Tuesday or Wednesday, then we'd run up to Lowe's or Home Depot to get the materials to enclose our back porch.  It's a project we've been wanting to do for some time. 

He drew up the plans and I jotted a materials list.  But somehow, over the course of the week we just didn't get it done. 

Today we finally split up in the evening - me with the girl, to go get her tabs, and him to go get the battery.  He got it, we met back here, and put it in the truck.  It was only 5:00, so I thought we should run up to the store to get the materials, so we could get started early in the morning.  Big mistake.

Once we got there, the frustration began.  We had made a plan - to do the framing on two of the three walls and stop there until we could get the doors shuffled around.  (We are moving the sliding glass door out into the new sunroom wall, and putting a regular door in its place, from the house out to the sunroom)  That's what the materials list was for, and that was the plan.  Once we got there, the plan changed.  He talked himself into finishing the inside of the walls too, then talked himself out of it.  We had decided on windows, then he talked himself out of those, too.  They were too big.  Then they were okay.  Then when we'd picked new ones, he wondered if he should be working on the doors first instead.  We had a very patient associate helping us, but I finally cut him loose and told him we'd find him when we were ready.  After a long long time, I was getting frustrated. 

It happens like this all the time.  The home building stores are a tool of the devil, I swear.  B can get absolutely lost in there.  It's like a kid in a candy store.  He doesn't know what to look at first.  We can go in for sandpaper and come out with a light fixture, speaker wire, 2x4's, batteries, paintbrushes... and it doesn't matter if we don't have a use for them.  For some reason, those places absolutely scramble his brain.  

I try to stay patient.  God knows, I do.  I try to understand that he can't help it.  But after two and a half hours in Lowes waffling back and forth and ultimately NOT BUYING ANYTHING I had to leave, or I was going to leave without my sanity.  I have extreme sympathy for men who have to accompany us women shoe shopping, because THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS LIKE. 

He gets to this point sometimes, and it's typically at the home centers.  We call it 'spinning' or 'spinning out', because that's exactly what it's like.  The motor's going, ninety miles an hour, in fact - but the wheels aren't getting any purchase so the car ain't going anywhere. 

I realized on my way to the register (with a cart full of little 'stuffs' that we found along the way) that he hadn't taken his 6 p.m. meds, and it was at about that time that he crashed hard.  I sent him to take his pills at the water fountain while I checked out, and we came home, no closer to knowing what we'll be doing for the weekend than we were when we went in. 

I am frustrated.  More than that, I'm ashamed to be frustrated, because he can't help it.  I know that I can't expect him to be perfect all the time.  I know, too, that I can't expect him to be able to get through Lowes or Home Depot in less than an hour.  It's aggravating, yes... but it is what it is. 

My stomach is balled up in knots tonight, and I know I need to let it go.  But the little voice in the back of my brain keeps reminding me that if we could ever make a plan and stick to it we'd be further ahead.  I had better get my mind around the fact right now that there may not be plans like I like to make in the future.  I need to become more flexible.  I need to have more faith in him.  I know he knows what he's doing.   But his sense of time drives me crazy. 

Here in this blog is the place where I self-flagellate, and also blow off steam.  I'm going to wear myself out here, so that I can let it go and smile when I go out to interact with him.  I value B more than I do any stupid project.  But that doesn't mean I'm not weak, and human.  It's springtime.  It's warm out.  And I don't want to sit another weekend in the house doing laundry and being idle on the puter, waiting for him to decide to do something.  I like to build, too. 

The home stores used to be my favorite place to go, but I can barely rouse myself to do them now.  They mean a whole host of things:  projects that I will never get to help do, things I want to do but am not good enough at, a colossal waste of valuable time off, and potential frustration and conflict between us.  And that just isn't worth it anymore.

I hope tomorrow's trip BACK to Lowes will prove to be both quicker and more fruitful.  I will say that this is the last project, but we all know it won't be. 

Pieces of my own net

LAST night I was sick; suddenly, in the middle of the night, the way it so often happens.   I fled out to the living room, where I could hop off to the kids' bathroom, far away from our room, if I needed to.  I left my confused and sympathetic spouse only half awake but aware.  I have been weak in front of him.   He knows all my secrets, even the embarrassing IBS that grabs me unexpectedly after a random meal.  BUT there are some things that I can't bear to have him witness to, even at a distance. I crawl off to be sick like an animal, craving solitude.

I fell asleep on the couch after a harrowing hour or so, propped up on pillows with an afghan and "Under The Dome", the new King book, and the weenie dog tucked beside me.  I don't know how long I slept there, but I woke to his hand on my shoulder.  "Come to bed, honey."  He helped me up and found my glasses as I fished around for them, half asleep, sliding an arm around me as we shuffled back to bed.  "I was worried about you."  We slid back into the warm soft flannel sheets and I felt him wrap around me as I curled up there, safe.  There is something about the sound of his breathing that makes the world spin correctly on its axis.  I fell asleep thinking how thankful I was for him. 

Last week I was online with the writers' group when during a conversation about one of our members who has just gotten published, we began to discuss art.  The newly minted author had posted a shot of her new cover art for the novel, which is a fantasy/sci fi piece.  The cover art was okay, but nothing I felt like I wanted to write home to mom about.  She was pleased with it, however, and was looking ahead to the next novel.  One of the members posted a page with her artwork, and so I did the same. 

All of a sudden there was interest.  "You do beautiful work!"  "Do you ever do commissions?"  "Would you think about doing.....cover art?"  And finally, "How much would you charge to do one for me?"

After answering "Thanks!  On occasion.  Possibly." and "Nothing (just credit on the jacket would be fine, thanks!)", I found myself with two new jobs.  I also took a couple of copies of members' manuscripts to proof, in exchange for promises of critiques on my own.  I am finding that my own net is expanding.  After all, if you can trust someone with your 'baby', you know you have a friend, right?

And finally, after a long day of running errands and paying bills and making budgets, B and I were standing in the garage winding down.  He looked at me thoughtfully.  "What would you think of going up to the bank and opening a joint checking account?" 

It's a small step, but a major one in the realm of trust.  We have both been financially destroyed before.  And while it will be a while until we can actually get married, the simple fact of that extension of his trust is huge, and implicit.  He's bought a house with me.  We are slowly paying down the debt he got stuck with from his previous life.  And now, this. 

This is the rope I am weaving together, making a rope ladder that will carry me across the chasms of the future.  They are deep, say the people who came before me.  Weave it well.  I heft the coils in my hand, feeling their solidity, their reassurance.  Someday I have to trust my life to these lines.  I hope to connect them wisely and strongly, to people who are willing to hang on when I might not be able to.  But while it's hard for one single person to hold up someone's weight, it's easy for ten.  Or twenty.  Or fifty, until my weight is just a petal, borne on a multitude of single fingers, passing me across the chasm so that I can get to the other side and take up MY place in the line.

Ripples in the mist

I have been gone a long time, and I have no excuses.  I think it's inertia. 

It's also that someone on one of the blogs I follow responded to something I said in such a profound way that I haven't been able to formulate a response.  My grandmother always told me choose my words carefully, that they may never come back to haunt me.  I tried to always think of that when I wanted to say something unkind, but it's clear that I never thought it all the way through.  Sometimes they come back to haunt you in a good way.

There are grand and well planned speeches and there are sound bites, there are quips and questions, plaints and platitudes, responses and rants.  The sheer variety of  the ways in which the human animal communicates is staggering. And now, to add to all the verbalization, we have emails and blogs and boards.  So many times we think that what we're throwing out there goes out into space, hanging in the ether like slowly dissipating bubbles wafting through the darkness until they are too thin to exist anymore and they pop out of existence.

This is not a post about internet privacy.  This is not a post about free speech.  This isn't even a post about a post, in the end.

This is a post about human connection.

Sometimes.... a single sentence can linger, like a note, reverberating.  Even one that you think will be skimmed and tossed aside, the crust of an old bread acknowledged but ultimately useless, fit only to be consumed by the crows until none of the crumbs remain.  How many words do you think we speak in an average day?  Most of them are soap bubbles, admired while they lasted but meant for transience.  Those words have to dissipate, otherwise the world would be so crowded with them that there would not be room for any more.  And that's a good thing.  Most of them are rinds; we have eaten the fruit inside them and only the husks remain.

But a very few are more than that.  Some are keepers - plucked from the air and saved, to be savored.  And the point I want to make is that we don't know when we speak them which ones will be those 'keepers'.  Often they aren't the ones contained in the pretty speeches, in the postulating pontifications so carefully crafted to make us look learned or wise.  Frequently they are there, hiding in a thought or a breath, tossed out lightly to be caught and kept.  The catcher can take them away to inspect them at their leisure, turning them over and over in a hand to see what reflections can be found in each facet.

We may never think we are capable of pronouncing something that someone may find valuable.  And maybe it isn't us that produces it at all.  Maybe those words come from somewhere else, through us.  Maybe it only happens when we find that human connection, whether face to face or across the vast sweeps of cyberspace.

Something in my friend's post moved me, and I posted back, a reach out across the blank dark face of the web.  "Hold on.  The net is larger than you imagine." 

And it is.  We are all in this together.  Those simple words reverberated for her, opening doors that she may not have seen as doors until she stopped to think about them.  And conversely, seeing the ripples from those words through her eyes has made me stop to think about my own. How many opportunities for human connection have I let pass by, drifting past me on the breeze, waiting for me to pluck them out of the air and prize them? 

Walking through life is sometimes a lot like walking through a heavy fog, especially when life is difficult to bear.  When we cannot see, we begin to believe that there is nothing more out there; nothing beyond the short reach of our vision.  The world is reduced to that which we can see just in front of our faces.  It can become lonely and overwhelming very quickly.  "I am all alone in this."  We think.  "How can I bear it?"  But the reality is that there is a whole vast world out there, of course, hidden just beyond our sight where we can neither see nor touch it.  A whole vast world of other people, thinking that they, too, are islands in the mist, stumbling through the whiteness as best they can.  It's easy to feel disoriented in that world.  Sometimes, all it takes is to stumble upon one fellow traveler, who says "Hey!  I am here, too, and we can be lost together."  And with that one voice, the small space of your lostness becomes larger. 

I am vastly thankful for being able to make a difference in someone's life with a very few words, even if just for a short time.  Even though I did not know where and how those words would land. I am glad that hearing one voice in the fog made her space larger.  And the sound of those two voices brought more in. That net... it is larger than we imagine, if we let it be.

Take care with your words.  They ripple.  And they do not always disappear.  But send them out there anyway.  You don't know who might be waiting to catch them.

I'd like some cheese with this whine, thanks very much.

OK, so in my 'other life' (aka, when I am not Facebooking and putzying around doing house stuff), I am a writer.  I know it might be presumptuous to say that, but I think I can legitimately lay claim to the title, if not by virtue of the single published piece that I have, then by the file boxes and computer folders full of stories told and in the telling, half-written or waiting to be told.  And by the novel that has me in its thrall, daring me to break that magic 70K word count.  (So close!  So close...)  But I'm also a whiny lazy thing who flits like a flicker from project to project, and frequently leaves things half-done. 

This is one thing I really, really want to finish.  Even if just to say I've done it.  But here's where my resolve runs dry.  I really envy people that have time to commit to writing every day. I know that sounds like an excuse (and truly - today it is. I had time, and I chose to finish a craft project and work on a painting instead), but on most days, there just isn't a whole lot of time to carve out for something that requires a great deal of concentration.

I work full time, and getting up earlier just isn't an option. And here's how my weekly commitments play out: Mondays are Zumba class. Tuesdays on occasion are City Council meetings, which require my presence for work. Wednesdays are writer's group chat meetings, which can run late. Thursdays are Zumba days (the ones I paid good money to attend). Fridays are usually free, but nearly always involve running a kid somewhere and back to stay the night someplace, and every other one is a payday, which means Wal Mart grocery shopping and a fast food dinner. Saturday mornings are for writer's group meetings, when I can get there, and the rest of the day usually involves spending time with my hubs on some sort of project. Sundays are housework-catch-up days from the rest of the week, and most of the time involve a weeks' worth of ironing in front of the TV watching a movie.

Ironically enough, I watched "The Tommyknockers" last week. I never laughed so hard in my life. When the main character invents the magic-enhanced-dream-typewriter that allows her to sleep for eight hours and wake up with a fully written novel (in her sleep!), I'm thinking 'Invent THAT, honey, and you'd be rich!!" What I wouldn't give! LOL

So it's mostly a matter of sneaking time in between, which is what everyone in the world does with a hobby when they want to devote more time to it. And I know that if I disciplined myself more, I would get more done. I reallly want this to be more than a hobby. I've been telling stories as long as I can remember. I learned to read when I was two, so the literary life has never been far from my heart. I spent the majority of my school years writing stories when I was supposed to be doing homework, and I can remember joyful hours of passing dreadful bodice-ripper stories to my girlfriends, written longhand on backs and fronts of papers, and watching them eat them up and ask for more. I always wanted this.

But I have also known the pain of writer's block, and that's where the excuses come in. When the writing comes, it comes in a torrent. I hardly want to eat or sleep, just to get the words on paper (or nowadays, in the puter). But to write for an hour daily? That's like trying to go to the bathroom when you're not ready. Terrible analogy, I know... but think about it. When you're ready, you're ready, but forcing progress when it just isn't there doesn't give very satisfying results. LOL

So... here I waste my time talking about writing, and not actually WRITING. Blogging and posting on Facebook will bring me nothing, especially not satisfaction. I need to carve out a little hole for taking down the words. I dream my story almost every night. I write the words in my head. I just need to find the time to get them down.

My characters aren't moving where I want them to, but maybe, if I follow where they lead, they'll tell me the rest of the story. All I need to do is chronicle it. But they're counting on me to listen.

So much pressure.  What stays, and what goes?  Doing something to make my body healthier?  Housework?  Cooking?  Time with B?  Painting?  Or is there a magic shoehorn somewhere I can use to fit a few more hours in the day?

Crazybusy

WELL, it's been a hectic week and promises to be just about over (I hope).  Yesterday alone (which I took off work without B), looked like this:

7:30 a.m. - dropped B off work

Shortly after 8:00 a.m. - got to the neighboring city, where the courthouse is.  I went there for an appointment to see the court facilitator to go over my child support modification paperwork.  The appointment, of course, isn't till 9 am.  But I didn't want to be late, and you never can tell how long it's going to take to get through traffic.

Sitting in car in the parking lot killing time - 8:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. - Got a text from the girl saying the screw in her foot is bothering her and we need to schedule a time to get it taken out.  Called the doctor's office and set her up for tomorrow while we are going to be there anyhow (B has his 6 mo. neuro checkup), since it's an hour and a half out of town.  Called my hair salon to see if I could get in.  Texted B to let him know that the girl would be going with us on Thursday.

9 a.m. - Met with the facilitator.  She doesn't know much more than I do, but thinks my papers are all in order.  I could file them this morning, but I'm uncomfortable with the 'I THINK so'.  Decide to call my own attorney and see if he can just look them over to make sure all my ducks are in a row.  The whole meeting with the facilitator lasts fifteen minutes.  I see my organization boss on my way into the courthouse.  He looks at me funny, but waves.  I follow him up the stairs to Superior Court.  At the top of the stairs I turn left for the clerks' office and he turns right into the courtrooms.  Hmmm... wonder why he's in court this morning?

When I get back to the car I call my attorney's office and talk to the girls there.  I have to call them anyway - it's on my list.  I had to give them the last details for our wills and schedule a time to come sign.  They told me to bring the paperwork in and leave them for the attorney to look at. 

On my way back to hometown.

9:45 a.m. - Stop into work and give B the heads up that we have an appointment to sign wills on Monday.  Try to explain everything up to there but he gets frustrated, confused, and then angry.  I leave.

10:00 a.m. - Stop at the lawyer's office and spend half and hour shooting the breeze with the girls, whom I haven't seen in six months.  Recap B's daughter's wedding and all the intervening fun.  :-)  Drop off the paperwork.

10:30 a.m. - Text the girl and tell her I can too go to her doctor's appoitnment with her this morning.  Run up to the school and pick her up.

11:00 a.m. - We go into her ultrasound appt and who do we see at the counter but a familiar person?  Grandma, who works upstairs!  :-)  The girl has her ultrasound and we have bad news - the clot is still there.  The girl is distraught.  We go upstairs to talk to Grandma, who takes a few minutes between patients to talk the girl off the cliff. 

11:30 a.m. - The girl and I get Starbucks, because we darn well deserve it.  And then we run the car through the car wash, since her boyfriend is working there and B hates to do it.  It starts sprinkling approximately 5 minutes afterward.  LOL

12:00 - I have a hair appointment.  She decides to go with me and go back to school afterward.  Aaaaaah....I could lie in the hairwashing basin and have a scalp massage FOREVER.  The hairdresser is slow, and doesn't get done until 1:15.  More on the haircut later, when I decide if I'm keeping it or not.  I am minus a LOT of hair.

1:15 p.m. - Take the girl back to school so she doesn't miss another day of AP English, since she has to miss tomorrow.  Consider running another errand, but I don't have time before my doctor's appt at 2, so I go to Walgreens' and pick up a novel to read out of the bargain bin.

2:00 p.m. - OB/gyn appointment.  Long story.  Routine girly exam, blah blah blah, plus new stuff.

3:15 p.m. - Off to the lab for bloodwork.

3:30 p..m. - Can't pick B up yet, must kill a few minutes.  Decide to go pick up make-n-bake pizza.  Lo and behold - guess who is behind me in line?  My dad!  In one day we see both my parents, whom we haven't seen since Christmas.  What a funny!

4:00 p.m. - Pick B up from work.  He is too stressed out to talk about anything, and doesn't have the resources to process anything I need to tell him about the day.  Maybe later....

5:30 p.m. - After baking the pizzas, it's time for my online writer's group.  Lots of fun, but takes forever.  I finally get tired and log off at about 7 p.m. when they haven't yet gotten done bs'ing and gotten down to work, and B comes in asking if I want to watch a movie.

7 p.m. - Start 'The Fellowship of the Ring'.  Aaah.... curled up on couch in B's arm.

9:15 p.m -  The boy comes in.  His friend needs a ride home - to the other side of town - by 9:30.  Guess who got voted to do it?

10:00 p.m. - Finally in bed. 


Today?

Drop B off again
8:15 chiro appt for me
11 a orthodontist for me
3:30 neuro for B
4:00 podiatrist for the girl

and both of those last are out of town.  And Zumba, at 7 p.m., cause I missed the last one.  Holy cats....  If I survive the day, going back to wrok tomorrow will be a mercy!

That boy shoulda been a Laaaaaayer!

(great mousepad - get it here:  http://www.zazzle.com/liar_liar_pants_on_fire_mousepad-144824612005737975)

ONE OF B's favorite sayings is that there are only two things he can't stand:  a liar, and a thief.  And in actuality, you can boil that down to one, since a liar is really just a thief of trust.

The girl, who recently turned 18, after several years of heartache and hassle, has finally turned the corner and begun to blossom.  She is currently enjoying the fruits of some hard earned trust, having had to prove herself over the course of the last two years.  She has been permitted to make most of her own decisions recently, within the parameters of the house rules, of course.  So far, so good.  This trust comes with a price:  we expect her to tell us where and when she will be in and out of the house, and stick to her word. 

This has been a big step for the girl.  She has not always been honest with me, particularly when she knows I'm not going to approve of what she wants to do.  I think since B's been here she's made lots of progress.  I will say with fair certainty that, while I know that she does not tell me *everything* about her world, she tells me most of the things that matter.  I know, for instance, that she smokes.  I know she sees a boy off and on that I don't like.  I know that she's sexually active here and there.  I know these things because she comes to me and we talk about them.  I trusted her enough for her to tell me when she thought she needed to get on birth control, and she trusted me enough to say so.  Between us, we've been able to make sure that, while I don't think she should be out having sex, she's protected enough not to get caught with unintentional consequences.  She understands why we need to keep the lines of communication open and honest, and we agree to disagree on some things.

This hasn't come about overnight.

The boy just turned 16, and we are beginning to have labor pains.  Now that they're older, I see that the real pains come not when they're born, or during that 'terrible two' period, but here, as they stand on the line between childhood and adulthood.  Nowhere else has it been this difficult to be a parent.  At this age, they do not accept things blindly, nor do they suffer a fool.  It's very easy to put a foot wrong and be in the swamp before you know it.  The plus side is that as they grow older, I see a maturing in their thought process; the development of an ability to see things from multiple sides, rather than blindly in black and white.  The boy is almost there, but not quite.

To his credit, he's been dormant for fifteen years.  He's the kid who you never heard a peep out of, who lived in his sister's longer and brighter shadow.  Docile and mild mannered, he was the 'easy one'.  He is now a six foot monster with facial hair and a voice built for movie trailers.  He's still the same goodhearted kid, but now he wants all the priveleges of adulthood, all at once.  Some he's ready for, some will take a while.

We thought he was making some progress at about the same rate as his sister, but this past weekend he shot himself in the foot.  Friday night two of his friends showed up at nine o'clock at night, wanting him to go over to their house for a little while and play video games and hang out.  Since it's a kid we know, we said he could. 

B looked at me a little curiously after they left.  It was strange, them coming so late.  We puttered around the house for another hour, winding down before bed.  The whole thing tickled at the back of my mind.  Before we went to bed, I texted the boy to see what was going on and what time he'd be home.  No answer.  Hmmmmm....   I texted him again.   No answer.   Finally I picked up the phone and called.  He answered it nearly on the first ring.  "OhhiMomhowsitgoingwhatareyoudoingareyouhavingfun?"  Hmmmm squared.  This is not like my kid.  His usual communication on the phone is limited to "Yeah". 

"When are you coming home?  We are going to bed soon."

"I wanttostayat Friendshouse. We're playing games and having fun."

"You're still at Friend's house, and you're staying there for the night?"

"Yeah."

"Okay..." 

"I love you Mom.  You guys just enjoy the peace and quiet with us gone."  Effusive.

"..............................................I love you too, honey.  I'll see you in the morning."  

Hmmmmmm CUBED. 

"He's staying at Friend's house tonight."  I told B.  He just looked at me.  "My momdar is going off all over the place."  I confessed.  "He's not staying at Friend's house.  He's at least not telling me SOMETHING.  I just hope he doesn't get in any trouble."

"What are you going to do?" B asked.

"I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens."  I said.  "He's got to learn to start making some of his own choices sometime.  Give him some rope and we'll see what he does with it."

Flash forward to Saturday.  B went to his class, I went to mine.  My group ran really long and the boy came home shortly afterward.  But - lo and behold - he did not come home with Friend.  He came home with his girlfriend.  Hmmmm....  And 2 + 2 equals what again?

We didn't say much that weekend.  But it came up several times over the course of the week.  B and I sat down and had a long talk about freedoms and trust, etc.  We felt like we'd been hoodwinked by both kids over the course of the week; the boy on this incident and the girl on a smaller one.  

I knew we needed to sit down as parents and hash out how we were going to handle it between us, and I'd been dreading it.  The potential for conflict made me sick to my stomach, and as we talked, my hands shook.  I confessed that I struggled with it all the time - the desire to avoid conflict and the temptation to let the kids get away with things I knew they shouldn't just to keep from having to confront them.  I hope by the end of the evening he understood what I meant.  For B, the conflict and craziness lasted twenty years, but he can remember a time when things weren't like that.  For me, it's been all my life.  It's harder to get past that automatic avoidance response.  So all this time I've been enabling the lies the kids tell, and now it's time to pay the piper.

The only way around it was to unite as a parental front.  And lo and behold - who should come home in the middle of the discussion but the girl.  We sat her down and hashed some of it out with her, and came out of it satisfied that we were all on the same page.  The boy was gone, so we didn't get to do it with him.

But last night, he asked to go again (since we had some no-school days at the end of this week).  AHA.

To make a long story short, I seized the day and sat him down to chat with him.  B was in the other room, able to hear and make comment, but not up front and imposing.  We actually got pretty far with the boy.  Yep, he lied.  He confessed that he'd gone to spend the night at his girlfriend's house.  And he confessed that he had been smoking off and on (which, I found out, B already knew).  I still don't feel like I handled it very well.  I wasn't very imposing, and I felt weak and waffly.  But I did get some surprising truths out of the boy, and a promise to always be truthful, even if he knew I wouldn't like it.  Whether we get that always is doubtful, but I hope between us we are building a place where it's safe to tell hard truths, knowing that even though you might not be approved of, you are still loved.  And that there are parameters that are flexible, and those that are hard and fast, and that's just the way life is. 

After an hour of hard talking, I came away from it with one knowledge.  He is still a little boy who needs his parents' approval, despite how 'mature' he thinks he is or how big he's gotten.  He knows right from wrong, and is going to have to learn about making choices and the consequences.  And that there is a large part of him that is really stressed about keeping secrets.  He likes things on the table where we can see them and dissect them.  In that he is his mother's son. 

Nothing is too big to handle but the lie.