well. here we are.

i have all these funny and witty things to say, like 'what true, kind, necessary' really looks like during Christmas vacation. funny to think about how far i have fallen... funny, actually, not depressing, which is always a nice change.
i want to tell you the vast differences between 'santa's gifts' and those given by the uncles/aunts/grandparents... locally made wooden castle with working drawbridge - shared...
dog sized AT-AT with fully functional noise machines... (if you don't know what an AT-AT is, i can't even begin to explain the wild craziness ... just think star wars big walking gunner machines)
I have eaten so much butter and cream-based foods that I am feeling downright happy with my clogged arteries.  greasy and happy and licking my fingers.
I'm here to check in and say hello and then i'm back to a sort of weirdly sick three year old and a lot of rikki tiki tavi ... and 'snow buddies'. eesh.
I hope everybody is well and not dealing with a weirdly sick three year old. . .
i'm looking forward to reading again...
war and peace is tough going, but going it is...

Merry Christmas!

sometimes, the best thing, is holding hands.

mothering can be a distinctly surreal trip into a fairly ugly inner dimension. but the hand holding? utterly unbelievable.

love and kisses,

holding hands...

merry christmas everyone.

wmx

Who are you? and the rut is back in town...

Who is out there? who are you guys? There are times I definitely feel something is lost, for me, here. Its all getting repetitive, I am having deja vu about thoughts, before I'm even writing them down here... and I am wondering who is reading here? who? c'mon, lurkers. show yourselves, or old friends? talk to me.

The realtor told me that I'd be lucky to sell this house for 40K less than what I owe on it.  annunciate with me, forty thou.sand. doll. lars.
 whooosh. well.
I don't have that much in my savings plan.
The tax man made me write a check for 5K today.
Since when do I throw Ks around? like illegal inside baseballs.
who am i? yikes. I'm working on a lot of things and feeling bleak in the darkness over here. like so many things have changed and yet nothing at all has changed and I am stuck.
ah.
Here's to hoping a sparkly interior decorating scheme will soothe my jaded soul.  I'm off to turn on the lights, baby.

up to date...

So, I'm still praying every night that I get to keep my hearing, just in case you were wondering.  I have been wondering, now that my three is three, if I will ever read again. I've been in the same ten pages of my book for a long long time.  And it is a serious book and I like it.... war and peace, baby. I can't wait to see what the next ten pages hold...
what it is all about. this time of year, this time of the world.
peace coming, anticipation... nestling... inner... outer...warmth and chill...
while agree with all the smarties out there that opposites are not truly that, and that there aren't the great dualisms that we've all gotten very comfortable with... good/bad, etc. ... it is the solstice, the longest and the shortest, at once. . . and i'm IN, after having been OUT.
I'm thoughtful and I'm insensitive.  I'm ever-patient and my fuse is so damn short.  I'm optimistic and I'm depressed. . .
I'm the best mom. and the worst of her kind. . .
I'm overly hard on myself and I'm totally lax with my lassitude.
I'm redundant, and fresh.

I'm here and I'm gone.

Camera batteries are dead

you'll just have to make do with verbosity. sorry.

maybe i'll find an old photo. hang on.

there we go... to thrill my boys i took pictures of city life while we were away... the pigeons in the sky against the white, became 'eagle man' and the tip of a wing at the corner of a building? evidently, it was the toe of 'black panther'... i had thought it was fer shure going to be spidey, but i am out of the loop. i don't even really know who black panther is. 

also, the tree. life in the big city, the trees ride the trains. 

The days are darkening, I am not going out to any more stores, and even the errands are being compressed to be home for the pre-lunch rest. It is lightly snowing right now and I wish for nothing more than a very very large snowfall, so that we all could be together and nestled. . . 

ah. 

wednesday the 'bigbad' realtor comes to tell me what to do to the house to get it ready.  i'm a bit nervous, as I think I'll find out what it really should be priced at and I am afraid to lose all my savings in the loss we will take on the house.  

BUT. 

there is room on the floor in front of the fire.  while we are here, everyone is welcome to visit. 

COME ON OVER. 

(but not wednesday... let me cry in peace...) 

Got up two hours before everyone else today

They all stayed up late enjoying the fruits of my labor.  I sold a table and moved things around and all of a sudden our tiny house has exploded and is now just gigantic. we have an actually useably fantastic room containing all the big kid items and a woodstove. I will show it eventually, but know this: it is warm, it is carpeted and i am in love. LOVE. I even lit a fire first thing this morning, when the three woke up. the kids are playing there now , with blocks, with figures, while i sit with the cat on my lap, like i'm a lady of leisure and coziness all over.
In my early two hours I have written, and am reading and am drinking some lovely coffee. it is all lovely and the lights are a-sparklin'. 
these are my moments, we are making the house more and more perfect as we prepare to leave it... and I am learning more and more about how to do this 'making of a home' gig. . .
i'm very proud of what is here and what our focus is in terms of the kids and the environment I am giving them in which they will figure themselves out... (wordy and slightly awkward but still valid)

(and yes, when my hubsJ told me he had to go into work for a worried mother, i burst into tears... evidently the hysteria is just below skin-deep...)

Mind Control

Its either a sign of a deteriorating mental capacity or something that mothers live through, I can't tell. Probably something of both, which makes the double whammy one that I can't figure out.  I'm talking about :The random and often horrifying thoughts that pass through my brain on a semi-regular basis, usually regarding my children's safety but sometimes my own, but I have the brilliance of brain to plot out how horrific my own demise will destroy the lives of all of those around me.  BRILLIANT.  It does seem to come in waves, it is not every day at all, but There have been times when I have had to wake HubsJ to talk to me because the 'visions' have been so horrible and I need to counteract them with reality, boring old reality.  They really are awful things and not one single one of them is real, or even likely... and yet there they are, so damn dark...keeping me awake in their distracting, improbable fashion.  And I know how many times I talk about Chakra Carol here, but my lord,  you should imagine the number of times I chant her words to myself to try and clear out the horrors of my own head.  Don't be so tolerant of what you let pass through your mind. . . FOR CHRISSAKES.  Is this JUST a mother thing? Or am I particularly susceptible?
     I am working on it, I've developed an inner shout that can clear the images during the day time, it is getting easier and more likely that I can sweep it out, after all, it is completely and totally unreal, not present, and not part of my own body of 'right now'.  Nighttime though, I have a harder time fighting it off and will find myself waking and going to check on the kids (um, rolling over)  before I can do the inner shout...
I'm very happy about the development of my daylight shout... but I do wonder about what causes this sort of darkness to creep into my head. Its pretty damn impressive.  I've got to go get me some Freud, or Jung. . . I bet they've got some ideas. 
Da Motha? ....

Day of the THREE

the boy is now officially three and I can finally drop the 'almost' that has long existed in my compulsivevocabularyoftruth and that is quite blissful.... we spent the morning at the library, were visited by a housecleaner who (very very annoyingly) gets PAID to do what I do all the time and I look around and think to myself, geez, if I picked up like this every day, I would be crazy, prematurely grey, and the house would be tidy. hm. how much is this worth to me? I am not really sure, frankly.  I am willing to pay this woman because I think it'll help me when I get ready to put it on the market, but I am really really annoyed that someone else has gotten paid to clean my house, and the difference is primarily all the tidying that I have to do first, before she can get to the grit.  I had hoped it would make me all chirpy and the like, but surprise to the third! no. evidently i am not as chirpy as I thought I was in the last post.
chirpy.
The Three split his brother's lip open with a rhinocerous toy this afternoon.  I think that exemplifies everything about three.
today. today. today...

Homies

Homies, I enjoy  the hell out of myself on a regular basis, I do, really.  I kept trying to type, I need... but my fingers kept hitting the en and I had to figure out what the hell sort of channeling I was doing... and there it is... I lit upon it.  (or my fingers did. ) 

I am generally quite light hearted, full of it, one might even say.  I am not pessimistic, I am a compulsive defender, quick to imagine (and say) that there are a wild myriad of things that could be 'other' than what they appear.  It drives most everyone nuts. eh.

And this mothering gig?  Some days it is just a trip. And on the other days, there are still parts of it that are downright trippy.  The kids getting older is a big big! part of that, and the fact that there are only two of them and I am sort of starting to be able to ignore them/parent them from afar... or, farther, at least... and I get to be home, so, as hard as that can be- I think its easier than dropping them off somewhere (for which one must work to prepare, work to provide, work to supply,etc.), going to a job, and then picking them up and doing all the whole mothering/parenting/housekeeping thing in a much much shorter timeperiod. so, i have it easy, i say. easy.

Did i want to kill my kids today? yes, only one, and only once (and the day is young. 4:30PM...) but still, once the adrenalin rush passes by, and you can shake off that shakey feeling, there is food and there is a warm and cozy nest of a house that I have made, here.  me.

so there it is, homies.

Away......

Techno no longer is just for dancing... when 'linked' in the big city, all the information of the world is at your fingertip/phonefinger... so i'm copying, from the uburbs.

HubsJ and I were away for two whole nights in the big city, the big Apple, no less. We spent the weekend with our blessedly child-free creative-genious genuinely genuine friends in their sprawling pad off of Lexington Avenue...I went to the Frick for the first time, and also MOMA.   (these are entire posts, waiting to explode in my visual life...)  . . I ate soup dumplings(can't recall the restaurant name..but everyone who is everyone ELSE, can.) and chicken mole (courtesy of fabu homies), and a pot of cheese fondue...as well as bacon and eggs (again, the lovely home). . .saw the GayMensChorus singing Christmas Carols on the Hi-Line....  got gloves....did not lounge around with them on... or pay for them... started to read a book...thought about books I'd like to read again... Madame Bovary Madame Bovary... rode some trains...walked... held hands with HubsJ...learned that Paul Klee is probably pronounced Klay, which since I have never spoken his name aloud, was a shocker... learned about myself that I belong in a different era, romantically speaking... give me a swishing bustle, thats what i say... and a paintbrush.  I wish to be Lee Krasner, too... I wish to  have all of this on a more regular basis... I wish to have it all without any sacrifice of what I already have... and . because wishes have always driven me crazy for the innate longing/depression I feel for having them?  I am going to do something about it all and I do not know what will be done.  Haircuts do not cut it, I tell you without punning.  Find the link for this, would you?

How to Elect an ACTUAL representative.

1. Find out where they live.  If they have more than one house.... do they represent you? If they do, send me some money, or a gift card, if you like.  If they live in a 'gated community', how big is the community that they represent? and how big is the community that they are 'slightly uncomfortable' with? IF they winter somewhere else... are you kidding me? How can they represent a place they can't stand?
2. Find out how many times they have been married, or if they have kids...  or, if they even can get married, (state to state), or if THEY have kids... find this out just for kicks.
3. Find out if they have ever had a job. I mean, a real job, which is hard and demanding and doesn't pay alot ... or if they have been in school their entire lives... and if any of it was public or publicly funded...
4. Find out how much money they made last year, and what percentage of that they paid in taxes.  Compare to yourself.   ... if the difference in percentages is a large one...if the difference in salaries is more than you can stomach...  ask what changes they might make in legislation to improve the lives of 'yous' , whether it be by improving your wage earning ability or by paying more in taxes so that you can access the same opportunities that they have had.  All men are created equal and all that...
5. Find out why the hell they are running for a public office. why? WHY do they want this job? Who do they think they will be working for?

Maybe when we know whom we are electing, instead of just listening to the soundbites of the news, we can be more certain that they will respond to the American people, and hopefully we won't end up a nation of people whose government is bought and sold by the so-called elected 'representatives' in the U.S Congress and the corporations that donate to them.   Be they Democrat or Republican, they have sold out to the highest bidders and left all of us in the lurch. . . so lets get new ones.  Its the American way.

-anything i missed?

Dude. I hear you.

This refrain, 'Dude. I hear you.' is one that I very Very regularly use in my mothering patterns.  Whether it be to the three year old who is perseverating about lions or the five year old who is telling me some very fabricated story about werewolves and their skill sets, I find it to be applicable and when said with something approaching sincerity, it is even, dare i say? suitable. yes, wildly suitable.

I don't have to pet their egos about their stories, their lions, their whathaveyous, I just have to truthfully let them know that I am their witness to whatever sort of wackyness they are experiencing RIGHT NOW.

and yes, there is a WILD TON of irony in the fact that I say this all the time.. and sometimes I think WISDOM rears up its hairy head and smacks you with an iron.
so you sit down and try meditating again, drinking your teas with honey and sucking down the vitamins... and facing tomorrow with all the faith that one can muster for the sunrise.
okay?

Fear, baby, fear*

Its that time of year again, the hearing loss chapters come and come and come ...
I've had a cold for the past week along with the kids and HubsJ not so much. bastards. any time I have a headcold, my hearing goes down to like 30% and I miss a whole hell of a lot of what is going on. a whole hell.
The kids have been re-watching a video I got when my hearing was gone, sign-a-lot, and I have been remembering how completely insignificant I felt that all I could do for my twoandahalf year old was give him an insipid video with the signs for 'happy' and 'salad' in it... and E was only two months old at the time so its all new for him... the video is fine, its just the utterly small gesture against a giant wave that the deafness was.
And so I am scared. I am completely scared. what if it happens again? what am i going to do? how am i going to take care of my kids? How am i going to stand missing all that I miss? How can I stand missing all that I miss right now?
We got the christmas tree and hubsJ and I fell asleep on the floor in front of it and I was consumed with fear that this would be my last night hearing.  It wasn't .  but there it is.  We'll see how tonight goes. and then the morning. . .

* i know, wisdom says that I can't spend my time worrying about something that may not happen or certainly hasn't happened RIGHT NOW. and i have to state finally and for the record, I AM NOT WISE.

Out of this world...

HubsJ is not one to panic in the kitchen... First, a carpaccio... yes, that would be almost entirely raw meat. We had visiting Germans.  hello, meat.  We served up a turkey soup, some with noodles, some without.  And a wild cheese nut plate for the meatfree... not so much, but substantial enough and turns out they had the turkey soup broth and didn't mind the meat addition to their vegetarianism.  I made bread, hearty slices and melting butters abounding. There was also a cassoulet with all the things that my family will eat, chicken, turkey, sausage and cannellini.
holy smokes.
There were more people here than we had on Thanksgiving, and master HubsJ really pulled it off... good thing he only worked half a day and could groceryshop himself silly...
It was actually much better than I had envisioned, and I even managed to have some conversation, which is something I like quite a bit.
and that is how it played out.  and this morning, it is full-on collapse.
playdate played, tea with honeys and elderberry juice and we are making due with the congestions and consistent drips because there just is no other choice.
and now? we nap.
and that, is what is out of this world.

All of a sudden

We have dinner guests coming tonight. and, as luck and the strange characteristics of my husband would have it... we have,  gluten-free living loving vegetarians (children AND adults), some plain old vegetarians, one meat-only adult, and then my own famdamily itself_which has been tending towards the chickennuggetwhite diet of the millenia.
what to do?
holy smokes.
I'm thinking about nachos.
and steak.

I wish I had known about this before this morning. I cleaned, rather than grocery shopped, as no one would eat here if I hadn't... I also called a cleaning lady. NO Shite. really, i did.  I need someone with skills, determination and some seriously poisonous substances to come into the bathroom of this house and I am willing to pay. PAY.

But I am also willing to make my husband PAY for this, as trite and old-school as this may sound.  (and small, don't forget how small it makes me seem) what? NO NOTICE? I think I've seen this show on tv. i swear. Maybe I should order something expensive online. huh. no thrill there. shoes? no.
damnit.
No inner thrill at the retail end of things?!
damnit.
what a strange post.
See what happens when I get kicked out of November?

Books and their Stupid, Stupid endings...

I've read a couple of novels lately, wonderful characters, beauty all around... and each time I've gotten to the end I feel distinctly robbed.  All these accolades, these wild praises for the 'debut'... and it feels as though the pressure is just too much and by the time they reach the end of their project, they are just too worn out to have an actual, definite end.  And I am not suggesting that the ends are not 'my taste' and so I am disappointed, its more like, they just put their project down and walked away.  when someone reminded them of the ending, they wrote ... 'and then she woke up.', considered themselves finished and moved on to the book tour.

I am not saying my life is overly full.  I am not one to overcommit and I am perhaps more reclusive than most.  However, my time is still precious and I want my novel reading time to fill me up and allow me to flush my system into the dreamy. . . so what up?! novelists, I demand you work harder. Produce less, goddamnit, but make it MORE.

Don't Make me read The Chronicles of Narnia AGAIN.  Even C.S.Lewis needs a break now and again. and I am getting old.

heh.

Whatcha think of me now?

So, another year of nomohoho under my belt, a full month of posting daily.  I must say, I am happy it is coming to a close, happy that I had a goal and accomplished it and it didn't involve cleaning anything or supervising anyone.
So, I am glad. I am glad about many things and I am ready to move on.  I'm sure I'll post this week because I am a creature of habit and compunction but I'd really like to just cease the electronica, get my journal back out and decorate the house for the warmth and lights of the holidays we celebrate. Again, I'm sure I'll post in the morning. haeh.
And now, as Miss Piggy says, 'HIIIIIIIIII-YYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH'...

Time keeps on ticking

we've been talking a lot about time here lately. tricky thing, sort of fleeting. heh.
the moments when you can literally see 'it'. . . in a gnarled and twisted tree, hubsJ describes, you can catch its history in its curves, the leap away from the straight that happened thirty years ago, for some unknown to me reason. its both space and time at once.
in a moment when I watch C read a book to his brother, that I have personally read to him hundreds of times, and his version of it is so close to the pattern/meaning, that he is correct in his changes, and i can witness the time that I have spent, in a tangible remembrance of that time, spent. 

The deaths in the family are shaking our tree. We (hubsJ and I ) are getting a bit more quiet, tucking in to the beginning winter and the changes of our hierarchy with a healthy but somewhat heavy dose of introspection.  There is faith in the rising of the morning sun. There is faith in the turn of the seasons, at leastaways here in New England... hanging on for the ride is just about all that there is...

The faithful steed

The house is going on the market after New Years. I love this place. It is beautiful and full of my kid's earliest memories and my transitions from harried mother to radically harried mother. :) i'm not harried, no worries.) Today we spent the morning sorting out HubsJ's clothes, getting some ready to go to the tailor, some to the salvation of another, some just to get themselves good and clean... we sort the socks on our bed, we look at the wallpaper and the afternoon sun coming in our windows, we talk about our recent repast. This is our place.  If we could take it with us? all would be well.

So we are readying ourselves to leave this place behind, hoping to feel good about the next people to come inside...

We carried a bench out to the street this morning and it was scooped up by lunch.  I love the idea that someone has excitement over something that has dogged me so... as I have begun to look at this lovely place through its transition to 'sellable'... the crazies who need 'clean lines' and 'clean countertops' as if no one were living here, no young boys were spreading their puzzle pieces from stem to stern...I'm very glad we have this last holiday season here, free and unencumbered from realty, a critical eye can pass right by... my clutter, the doghair tumbleweeds, the playdough forever enmeshed in the rug, the leftover lice treatment box behind the computer, and so on and so on -infinity.

Outer rims...

Today was a funeral, and I was on my kids like ants on honey, and they did very well... and i feel completely bereft of the public sharing that gets to go on at a funeral and its following luncheon... Not only did I not get to hold my honey's hand, but I hardly saw him... big church, kids rambunctious at the back, family at the front.  I sort of feel 'outsided' and so much of it has to do with kids and personalities and old news that I am both flattened and annoyed by the flattening as an overly familiar friend can be at times. 
HubsJ's family is wonderful, chatty, social, of good humor/cheer, and EVEN at a funeral. yes, they are normal, and there were tears and emotions agaga. Near to them, I do a tremendous amount of self-comparing which inevitably puts me in the bag. 
There isn't a particular individual that i 'want to be' and there isn't even an individual that I remotely see as flawless.... I think it may just be the feeling of being an in-law... the history is not mine, I am part of a hyphenation... and today as I watched with one eye through the door, the cousins in black, the secondcousins too... I felt far away, out side of the family. 
*None of this is HubsJ's fault. His reaction to all this day has held is to tell me he hopes we can have forty years together. he is good and feeling sad and in flux/flow.
I suspect myself of whining a bit, although I also do feel at times that I use the kids to give me distance from people and places that I am uncomfortable with and this morning was the other side of that same coin. use, used .

Crrrazyheads

If you went out and got lots of bargains, well, good for you.
I think you are crazy. I drove around with my family, though, and maybe that is crazy too.  And if I'm going to drop my judgemental sham thing, its all crazy, and none of it is. . . We shopped like crazy for books at the Salvation Army and I got some beautifully illustrated books that they won't look at (much) until they are way older. HubsJ got a shirt. We were wild.
We went to the hardware store and bought some dowels so the 5, C,  could have a pointer like his teacher and play school.  Long arms no longer cut it.
And then we drove to look at a house we once visited which is unfinished and for sale.  So beautiful, beautifully located, but perhaps too small, perhaps to be developed by... so beautiful though...

Now we eat our leftovers, all of them, and feel fat and happy by the fire. 
what the hell is black about any of that?

ThanksGiving Day

We are going to have a bunch of people here, family from both hubsJ and I... my parents, my sister and my brother, three dogs all together... and a cat, his sister, his parents...
We are going to watch over two children. . . and pine for one who is with her father on another coast...
We are going to eat one turkey that hubsJ killed for the nourishment of his family...
We will give our thanks, raise our glasses and eat for the health and wellbeing of the world, as exemplified by the beauty of our plates and our hearts and what they contain.

Thanks and more of life than I requested...

My husband's family is going through another loss this week.(a brother-in-law, an uncle... last month) and now  another uncle, the only brother of my husband's father, at 85, it was time to go and no one mourns that... but everybody is changing roles and there is a sense of loss in that -at the very least, a great and building sadness... It is a constant check on our 'normal' affairs this week.
I am both curious and full of trepidation ... we all are going to die. my goodness. even my kids. me. my mom. my dad. my sister, my brother. (not hubsJ.)
my goodness. it is hard to type, yes? the unspeakables.
and our stories will be changing and some stories will just be lost.  A lot of people say that they want to leave something behind when they go... and I sort of feel like challenging that notion today. it feels grasping, right now, somehow.   What you leave behind is what you did in life for people, what their lives have become flowing around/in yours... the whole river is always the whole river... when you take a cup out, its not the river anymore, it is water in a cup. but while we eddy and swirl through our river ride, we're all river, all the time.  what can a river leave behind? the land changes - yes, but it is not left behind.
just like the family grieving, changed.

- my faith in afterlife is firm, i'm sure that it'll be shaken again in my life, but it is firm today. and it makes me feel so damn peaceful about it all, but I have a distance from the grief because it is not sudden, not 'inappropriate', and not mine.  all critical points.
i'm sad for the family, a waterfall drop.

I know Jack is watching a ball game at the local high school and regaling G-d with stories of HolyCross football, and getting ready to eat pie with his sister, her husband and his parents...  how much better can it get?

Making me some pumpkin tiramisu

Oh. that got your attention, i see.
me too.

Although, I have just roasted the pumpkin and now I need to wait a little bit for some coolness to descend, or ascend, however it goes... and then, then, I will begin my wild assembly. 

AH. the food, the fridge is stocked, STOCKED. and my closets are bursting with flours and candies galore. 
I am just so thrilled, even the wierd aches and pains can't get to me.

I think that Chakra Carol got me going last time I was there, and I am 'feeling' things that have always been there, but I'm not ignoring them and actually feeling them.  We all know how much fun that reality is..
:)

and dudes, I got my hair cut.  I did not use the clippers but went ahead and paid the gayest man alive to do it for me. honestly. so so very very.  so so, i hope that the world is safer for him.  It is good, I need to wear earrings now, though.  It is not even as short as I'd like it, honestly, but I'm going to let everyone around me get used to it before I go again...


Doctors note:  I moved the bed back to where it always has been since I moved it a few weeks ago.  Headache down by at least 85%.  seems there must have been some sort of wierd angle and not the friendly fengshui I had imagined.  I also have an eyeglass doc appt because maybe the taped glasses bit has got to go.

Not feeling it today..

I'm not really into the 'writing, reading, thinking' thing today. But feel compelled to sit here and get something off my chest. You'd think I'd be down to an A cup by now, but really? no.

Chakra Carol says, be careful what you let pass through your mind.
so do that. be full of care.
also, last time I was there she related a tale of a feeling.. and came out with ... the only thing G-d can't work with is ... indecision... if you are so stuck that you refuse to move, there is not much that can be done. You must be in motion... the littlest things, sometimes, those are Motions...

so . be full of care.  and move. . .

Ha HA! all aboard...

bet you thought I'd miss a day. bet you did. in the evergrowing pressurefilled rush to be the first to get a post on the board every single day in november, thereby achieving the very illustrious positions of ...
what?@! exactly.
but i didn't miss a day yet and here i am in a nomobhoho suit just waiting for your applause.

i'm sucking bigtime at the true, kind, neccessary quiz of a few posts ago.  The thing about it is that it is hard. I spend most of my day saying things that are almost completely unneccesary.  don't hit your brother.
um, right. would be neccessary IF the kid didn't already know that hitting his brother wasn't in the rulebook of the house. he knows. why do i seem to be saying it every flipping moment of the day?
E., don't hit him with that stick, or I will take it away.
Every moment that I am not saying the first, I am saying the second.
I take away a lot of sticks. Why don't I just shut up? aye?

I'm going to get back on the train for this questioning though.  When it started, I was amazed and felt a sort of calm settle in, and I'd like that feeling back.  I cannot actually move in to Chakra Carol's house, although I haven't technically asked.  So, in the interest of accessing the Calm, I am back on the train.  Before I speak... each time... the kids, the hubsJ, the grocerylady...
is it true? is it kind? is it neccessary?
is it?

whapper of a headache this afternoon. lets all keep our fingers crossed that I need new glasses, shall we?

Your eggs, sir. . .

Today was the fundraiser for my kids school...
(OH MY GOD THE KIDS DOWN THE STREET HAVE RUNG THE BELL TO PLAY 4 TIMES IN THE LAST HALF HOUR... MY KID ISN'T HERE AND THEY . JUST.KEEP.COMING. I'M LOSING MY WITS...)
whoosh.
okay.
the fundraiser. me, eggs. you, plate.
I remember writing about it here last year which sort of blows my mind.  (that i've been writing so long, that my repetitions run so deep..:)  Today was good, as it was my third year of serving eggs to people who are surprised by teasing and cajoling, and it is lovely to be a nice surprise, sometimes. I don't get the nicely surprised response at home very often. Maybe I should work on that? hm. food for thought.
I seem to be ending on food a lot lately. Maybe its the big holiday come-up and all the cooking magazines I walk by at the grocery stores.  They are very pretty. oh so pretty and so bloody expensive, its almost criminal.  however, my will is of stone when I see them in the store, as the internet really does hold its own in that arena AND I already pay for it...
I got a comment yesterday that was this, (partly) :

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." --Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

and I wonder if we couldn't be doing more, all of us, to make a rationally 'middle' point of view heard in the world these days.  that was 1953, folks... 57years. . . still warring, still not feeding, warming, nourishing... all sorts of wackos/all of us's buying plastic mickey's and calling it quits... . .
what're you up to?

Day 475 of the headache...

Now I'm getting sentimental for the days (yesterday) when I said this bitch was gone.  She ain't.
I can also tell I'm pushing crazy because I just typed 'ain't' without referring to something my precocious child said... and by precocious (pre-ko-shus) I mean heavily influenced by morons.
It came back in a very big hurry last night and I am sorry to report that it stayed the night.  Bitch.
Just like a naked woman in the sauna, I tell you. . .

I pumped the excedrin primer and took the 3 out to the bank and target to feed the bills and to paper the people (bounty, wipes and t.p., baby) who live here. I survived Target, but just barely.  They have put toys at the end of EVERY SINGLE AISLE.  and i am not kidding, and I am not pleased. not pleased. WE are going to have to have some serious de-tox in this house to get us all through this season, material-wise.  I love the lights, the decorations, the food, but I just don't want all that shit in my house, and I don't want the pressure that I feel to buy it so my kids will be happy.  I feel that pressure, do you?  It is an ugly feeling, especially if you don't want to spend the money you have so carefully saved and scrimped for... on a plastic mickey that dances.  know what i'm saying?

In the past months, I have simplified, we are without cable, there are no toys in the boys' room at all,( not that they will EVER sleep there again or anything),   I got rid of 50% of the animals and cars. holy moly. not a single kid has said ANYTHING. unbelievable.  but i have a birthday (almost 3) coming up and then the christian motherlode. . . I can already feel the chaos.  I've started hoarding again, spaghetti sauce and squashes... go figure... I guess I'll feed the hell out of the neediest children ....

talk to me, i need more to write about and quickly...

Amox and this mama

Sinus infection, it was a sinus infection and whilst I lay about all day yesterday, by noon I had popped some antibiotics and was in recovery. It was something of a joke to write 'day three' on yesterday's post, as it had been a week of daily excedrin struggles and a worn down mama is nobody's friend. nobody.

(this is an old picture, haven't seen that mask in months and months, from Grammie's stash after she died...)

so, now my system is full of the ambiguous ingredient list of the big pink pill and we'll see how it handles the ride.  And the headache is 'just' about gone, though it tickles the skull now and again, still.

To refer back to the sauna problem of a few posts ago... husband makes a real distinction between this sauna activity being 'non-sexual nudity' and not lecherous leering, so he sees no problem and requests fairly respectfully that I talk the same talk.  It is actually one of those times wherein I have a split between what I may feel intellectually and what I feel from the gut.  Because the two reactions are opposites, it is hard to apply a nonjudgemental approach.  My intellect agrees with hubsJ, it shouldn't really be a problem for people to be naked in a dark sauna.  Even while typing, the other part of me (what IS IT?) is arguing and flinging arms and swearing.  So... the debate rages. or something...

And i have a free morning and I have washed dishes and now I've been here on the computer for an hour and I'm sort of pissed off about that. where the hell are the inner resources?
damn.

Headache, day three

last night: the kids are downstairs watching 'Harry and the Hendersons', which is a lovely thing.  Last night's special was Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, the man being rather openhanded with his fair and honest policies... except with the wild animals.
oh .
the headache rages and I don't really get where it came from or why ibuprofen just knocks it down and then it comes back.  I think it has something to do with the light of November and the weird warmth we have going on today. I was outside without a coat, in New England, in the middle of November.  I should have caught pneumonia. (maybe i did and the headache?... no. .. .)

this morning: three excedrin and i'm still walking around like a zombie. hubsJ is a good man but likes to pick on me when I am defenseless and it makes me simmer because i'm too zombied to cut his balls off.
but eventually, this headache will go away and then there will be an ambush.

- i am clearly okay enough to be at the computer, and to be prepping the house for the afternoon's playdate, which we've all been looking forward to all week.  headache be damned. there is even an unopened bottle of excedrin for me to pop, if need be...
looks like need will be.

off,
k

More on Cleaning up...

so,- met my former neighbor Beth, (foreclosure, move, etc. etc.) this morning at the school drop off.  She looked, hmmm, 'dolled up' was how I put it when I asked her about it... this was 8:30 AM at the Kindergarten drop off and the shimmery silver cleavage shirt, the acidwashed tightjeanthings and the black 'slouch' boots were all somewhat out of the ordinary for her.  She did look more sexy than normal, I will give you that.  Evidently, she is going to a home inspection and wanted to look good.

good.

So. my mother would have pulled me tight if she'd been met with that outfit during a school dropoff.  I am not so obvious -and it helps to know that Beth is not in fact an out-of-work hooker-but an overly large woman of extreme anxieties....  but I AM slightly miffed that Beth, in all of her crazy, knows how to look 'good' at the drop of a hat and if I am ever asked to do the same thing, it is a panic of wild proportions here and everyone in the vicinity is involved and somehow I am completely lacking in the silvery cleavage shirt arena. completely lacking.
but I'm not sure of what kind of attention it is that I really want... does the Home Inspector tell me more if I vamp it up? Should I get a shirt like that just to buy groceries? meat? deals?
And if I spend all my time (granted, its about 20 minutes on any given day) on the sexification of myself for the attention of random men on the street, what then will I do when I get said attention? !

and I wonder if that isn't part of the problem of me and many of my stay at home mother compadres. (yes, the irony, mother, compadres... hah! ) I have become sort of immune to the attention-seeking. . . (not single, too tired, too many kids..this damn stomach... ) but haven't exactly forgotten the feeling of getting the attention itself. . .  and its not a husbandly kind of attention I am talking about.  Its that flirt with the coffee boy, the george clooney at the bookstore... the possibility that lurks in the friendly stranger. . .

but it certainly is not the random construction catcaller. or the husband's pal at work...

(oh. an aside: or querie: if husband goes to a sauna with pal from work and pal's wife is there and she goes naked, what say you? i was bothered, both by hubs, the pal and the wife... what say YOU?) i want public reaction to supply hubsJ with a secondary reaction to mine... balance, dudes, balance...

ho[piho[phgpo'hiuioyio;u'pollllllllllkkkkkkklkkklklkl...in bed...

the kids have been helping lately, and I have a lot of cleanup to do, all over everywhere....so this post is cleanup and procrastination on cleanup all at once. how's that for multitasking?

seriously, when i asked my hubsJfantastico what to write about this week, he told me to write about all the things I like to do in bed.  He really is a one-track sort of fellow when it comes to me and it is lovely almost all the time. except when i'd like a topic to write about and happen to find the bed to be a source of tremendous frustration as it is a queen and has to fit two adults and two children and sometimes a cat and a dog and consequently, not exactly a space of rest for me... in bed...

at least I don't have to get up when they wake up, thats what i say... maybe i'll never sleep again ... in bed...
but at least I don't have to get up...
its not like i've been bored lately - and needed more to do... really, its not. ... in bed....
In all my furniture moving of the other night (in search of deadening fleas, if there were to be more than one..) I have re-arranged the bed.  We are now directly in the path of the eaves, both hubsJ and I.  What this means for us is so many things.  No more jumping on the bed, the kids have learned very quickly that their jumps and the ceiling are not a match. glory be.
We also have to huddle more, get closer, as we feel smaller in our space... a pack of dogs in the den. . .
and We are in line with the beams, suddenly, not opposed to them, and J and I feel we have settled some sort of fengshui problem as the whole room seems more friendly.

Sunday morning i was given breakfast in bed... and it was not quite the thing of dreams (hello, crowded, bumpy, children??) but what WAS lovely was the time I had to myself while it was made. . . slow, quiet... in bed...
I didn't even have to make my own coffee.  lovely.
so thats what i did in bed this weekend.
the rest of it i'm leaving out.

:)

The turkey is officially dead.

So the holiday, the big one, the food one, the Americanblitzkrieg of binges is coming...
ah. the best one, the warm one, the sleepy one, the smell-full one...
oh. i love it.
we are in planning stages and we are hosting the grandparents and the aunt and uncle of one side and we are in need of plates, and chairs and space but we will be just grand.  I have no cable still so we will miss the parade and the sporting and that is sad but easily forgotten, as it is every year.  I wish the performers well and warm. . .
AH. One grandmother makes sides, one makes pies.  Turkey, potatoes, gravy, cranberry relish, bread, and we are full of appetizers here. simple but my god, MY GOD. 
It is the happiest day of my year.
As a child, we were with our extended family for a gigantic free-for-all every year and this year, we are small and 'just-us'ing, and the change will be large for me, and I will still be happy and warm and my fatness will spread throughout the land...
So, every day until then I wish you a happy, warm and well-fed day. canadians, i wish you a happy warm day every day since yours.  i know these things work in reverse as well, with a little perspective. 

any given weekend...

My mom made these last year... talk about productive... you could actually eat them if you felt like it...

my family is feeling quasi-productive these past two days.  hubsJ  killed us a turkey, literally, and it was a first for him and not exactly the norm for the neighborhood.  but whatever. i'm sure it'll taste better than the grocerybrand and is way less expensive, except for the whole morally ambiguous internal questioning, which costs, baby, it costs.

the almost 3 still can't get his hand out of his butt.

the K melts down all the time when he doesn't get his way and I spend a lot of time squelching the desire to flip him off.

i do squelch very well.

I found a flea on my leg this morning in my own living room and went nuts. laundry, vacuuming and room rearranging later, we will be completely uncomfortable but maybe the fleas will die a terrible death in the new sparse environments... maybe.  yeah, and if you think my 'sparse' actually means fewer piles of culch, you've got another thing coming.

I'm getting very random and day to day-y, here.

welcome to it.

i'm posting, i'm posting.

is that the same as postal?

ha.

one of those...

today i decided to wipe up the floor without sweeping first.  for those of you out there who don't do these things every day... it doesn't really work that well. 
after swishing the dirt on the floor around into different swirly patterns, i cut myself a piece of a yummy chocolate chip muffin that someone at stop and shop put into the dayoldbread section.  tiny piece out of a big muffin because i was trying to get it to last me through the day where the three year old thinks he is not going to nap and that his ass is the most interesting thing in the world and so keeps his hand there ALL THE TIME.  so . muffin eating. move on to the story chanting (the lion's coming... on the next page... turn it to the lion mummy...the lion....) for the boy with the hand in the butt, hear a crash from the kitchen, dash to see what is the matter and discover that the dog has gotten the plate on the counter between her teeth, dashed it to pieces on the floor and gobbled up the rest of my muffin.
So i am back to cleaning the floor in the kitchen from one dirty standard to another and i decide that i need the vacuum. into the closet i go and (without mishap) get it out, turn it  on and reach another standard of clean alltogether... fabulous. i did, however, discover why the entire dining room smells like pee. And I am not going to talk about it, because I cannot discern if it was dog or kid, and eventually, I would like to have you all over for dinner, and I don't want you wondering, either.
At least I get to go to Salvation Army this weekend to buy plates.  We now officially do not have enough for our own family, unless I begin eating on a dinosaur plate.  and i don't want to. and I think five bucks is a glorious price to pay to escape the nightly battle over who gets to use the T-Rex plate. 
glorious.
I have 20 minutes before picking up the boy from K and now the three is beginning to fade. Did I mention we walk to school? no? wonderful. . .

TINY but big.

Crazy child on the string of the camera itself. you would think I had planned his appearance, as perfect as he is...
ah.
life is out there.
my dad is a veteran of vietnam and i spent the morning with a friend whose husband is a vet and i would like for us all to quit what we are doing to thank them in our hearts.
amen.

coincidence, i think not.

Today is a day of links. call it lazy if you like, but I have been struck by repetitions and 'coincidences' of late, so here are my sources, some of them.

Its okay to be angry...  yeah, it really is. and i have been, and i am sure I will be again, as sure as the sun will rise in the morning.

I like to be warm, I like my world to be warm, I want my kids to be warm. . . all day, all the time...
Warm it up...  I am aware that I may not be able to get my boys into wool tights on a given day... but I want to . . . I WANT TOOOOOOOO. . . it is enough that I have them on, I suppose...

and thats it, really, two. i am finding this daily posting a bit more challenging than i thought. i know there is a world of beauty and connection out there and i am having a trouble with 'linking' up... so i am off to launder and errand and i will probably see it for myself. only time will tell.

peace.

Better, without guarantee...

Chakra Chakra rocked me.
she got me to slow down my breathing, held me close in a good and right hug, and told me I was going to be allright.

I got just what I needed.
AND, whatever happens this afternoon, when my children return from their various places, I am much less likely to need to lock myself in the bathroom after shouting profanities at them. much less likely.

but there are no guarantees.

today she told me that the spirit, the wisdom (what we all recognize as wisdom, whatever it is for you...) does not recognize 'should' because it comes from your mind and a vague or concrete sense of wanting to control something. . . the core of you, spirit, wisdom, G-d, doesn't deal with things that are not right here, right now. as yoda says... 'do, or do not do, there is no try'...

peace out,

k

Daylight Savings is the Devil.

I think I am currently logging my 'most vile temper ever' day.  E, the almost three, actually shuddered and hugged the fridge after an especially motherly moment.  Seriously.  there isn't even any story to go to that. I think it had to do with him opening the freezer door and hanging on the fridge door at once.  I think .

I had been planning on wiping down the floors...my big success for the day... and then, Some hot chocolate spilled all over the table, down and around our sloped kitchen floor, onto the walls, onto the curtains, every.where. Kid tried to suck it from the floor, which frankly, was just too dirty to allow it... Now I have washed the floor and am washing the curtains in a vain hope that they are not going to shrink to the size of a napkin.  we'll see. everyone needs more light, right? who needs curtains?

And now? I'm posting because I have plugged the young one into Little Bear's harvest collection and I have all the time in the world to hide away and I've already washed the dishes and have absolutely nothing to focus on. Maybe I will come back up here in a few more minutes when I've got something to talk about. There is a lot going on here and I feel like my skin is peeling off while I wait to find out what it is that is going on here. . .
maybe I'll join the witches of eastwick cast and throw up cherries all over the place, just for kicks, to rid me of this demon.  I AM blaming daylight savings, because that is so much more enjoyable than blaming myself. so much more . . .

Crisis in cycles, not bikes*



PushmePullyou Daddygoatgruff

     
In my house we have repeating distinct crises, an everready bunny list of someone sick, etc.etc. You would think that I have twelve children, but no. no.
I've begun to see how much of a pattern there is here, so many familiar feelings again and again, and I wonder how much I play/feed into this all.
     For instance, The day after.... there is an immediate sense of blessing that the moment of crisis is passed/past. I think sometimes, even during the event, that i can see its end or envision the morning clearly.  whatever and Whatever may be Coming, but there is a really clear relief.
and the really clear relief is mixed with really muddy adrenalin comedown, and a simmer and a stew, sometimes in the same hour.  Resentment, a 'don't i wish i could actually use the babysitter we had coming, but no'. or a 'why should i bother asking her if she can come tomorrow, when this hell is all sure to happen again'.  a sort of depression of an aggressively passive sort, if that make sense.
Then there is the day after that, normality is more in-reach but not quite in the room. The windows have been cleaned, you can see the sun outside. Nobody feels that well, but noone is talking about it anymore. . .
Then there is the day after that.  apologies have been made to the sickness gods, children have been restored their innocence in the destruction of their mother's lives, husbands have returned to the living.
and then the insanity of post-reconstruction.
and then - at least here- it all starts again. 

*post could be alternately titled, AND THEN THERE WAS VOMIT, again.

Badass

swing it, power ranger.  he believes he is the red ranger because he has that nifty cape. thankgod. the red ranger costumes at target were 20 bucks. holy hell batman. so, in typical fair mom fashion, the older one got the cheapass fabricated outfit with mask and the young one got the salvation army version with a rushjob cape, to make it all red. everyone was happy.
*also, they are currently 75% off, so guess who nabbed excellent christmas costumes? oh yes, we will have wolf ninja and pirate scallywag dancing around the christmas tree this year... just about every mother's dream. . . dress up is KING.

I'm going to see Chakra Carol next Tuesday and I even called her on the phone and asked for some tips to get me through a bad day (it worked -because she is that good) and thats how 'in' I am.  I just wanted you to know. I am totally 'inner circle'.
(i'm really not, though I do think Carol likes me. she's very nice. ) ((Ever read CS Lewis' writing about circles? good stuff))
I have a new wish for the millenium.  (not the Falcon)

I want to be a badass. 

Thats right, I want to stop being distracted by parenthetical explanations and just let the expression stand without any dither.
(Thats right.  This is where I have ended my spiritual growth and decided that badass has something to do with grammar. )

really. I have to figure out how to cultivate the badass-ishness that lies dormant ....
any tips?
maybe i need to get those clippers out? DAMN THE MAN.
( i desparately fear the cold. DAMN THE WEATHER MAN.)
yes, nonsensical.
tired.
yes.

Problems with Trends

My mom gets a magazine that has the trickiest title ever, as in it is a gigantic lie, ehem...romantic notion...  It is neither real, nor simple.
anyhow, they 'spotted' a trend that is wearable and affordable and so i just wanted to share it with you so that you could be in the know, like i am .
Large bows.
yep, that is right.  Feel free to be hip, now.  Attach a large bow to your current ensemble and you, too, can be a trendsetter in your neighborhood.
go for it.

someday, when i am feeling very very ironic, i will be sporting a large bow to pick up my child from school.  I just have to figure out where to put it. None of my ideas seem appropriate. Maybe if I get my monk haircut (when I stop being overly paranoid about coldness) I can put the bow there. yeah, thats it...

Trying to remember what I love.

SO. a list is in order today, on a day (well, now it was yesterday) when I am having wine because I used it for cooking and therefore, I am melancholy and slightly morose.  As the boys would say, good guys fight bad guys, so here is my list of good. . .
1. roasted vegetables, almost all of them. the less 'squishy', the better.
2. onions, anyway you cook 'em..
3. typing and saying, 'meh' or 'gah'... new favorites. . .
4. ellipses

hmmm... stuck ...
5. finding the camera.
6. the sun on the leaves when they are in full color change mode... blinding beauty! all over the place, even here in the urban landscapes...
7. voting. i love it, i do it all the time.
8. we do not have lice, repeat, we do not have lice.  I am even going to link to the product we used because it rocked the house.   http://www.quitnits.com/  Who else has that link? c'mon, you know you wanted to know... go look at how happy the people are at that site. seriously. go . look at the happy lice-free families...
9. afternoon sun.
10. holding hands with my kid on the way to school .

sometimes a list of ten is hard to come by. . .

ShockmeShockmeShockme

with your deviant behavior...
a direct quote from 'Empire Records', one of my most favorite for-no-discernible-reason movies of all time. I wasn't even a teenager when I first saw it, so i don't even get to use that as an excuse.  i love the girls, i love the boys. i love it. The romance is the weakest part, and I love that.  i also love that Gwar is in it. 
love.

i went back earlier today, a long day with no naps and no school as it is voting day here (i did, i voted... damn the man... [more Empire])
Damn the man.
anyhow, i went back and read last year's postings in the month of november and i almost feel like i am a different person now.  How is this possible?  How can I not have noticed these changes? drying up...  You bet your bippy i am judging them and feeling myself wanting. . .
bippy.

and then there is the recurring thought that perhaps I am becoming repetitive because I have now been doing this here internetwriting for too long. the wierd circles of the damned of my intellect have shown themselves (teenmovies, faith, struggle, deafie, husbands, mothering, buffy, swedishfish, raising boys, blahblah) and are showing themselves again. huh.

again, i am wanting.

Gah, more awkward pauses.

SOMEtimes, the awkward pauses are in the house.  Its true.  Its not just the everlovin' battle that I have to not be a complete dork/loser with strangers, but sometimes it is here, on the homefront.  It is the worst, fucking literally heartbreaking.  My confidence is down, my throat hurts, I am all fidgety and flaky and lo and behold, I don't communicate well, and my long simmering resentments and other marital fidelities raise their pretty little venomous heads.  and it really sucks.  and it doesn't seem to help to recognize them, or to realize that they do not originate on my side of the fence (this time)... its a ride, an ugly twisted too fast ride that you don't tell anyone about when you get off, you just move away and don't choose that path again.. if you can help it... which, of course, I cannot.
and that, is marriage, day 9034. (random number, no genious here, thanks)...
when i very firstly posted, it was also about marriage and which would be more difficult, marriage or motherhood? still on the fence about it.  if you do them and suffer no slings and arrows, they keep going on and on forever. FOREVER.

AND... the pile of candy wrappers stashed behind the laptop screen is not going to help me when I hit the witching hour this afternoon.  no. literally Houston, we have a problem.  We're not going to make it, Captain. 
Inconceivable.


-Huh, this posting every day thing will be nice for me.  Not so sure about how it'll be for you, though...

NOMOHOHO, and away we go...

I'm going to try and do the daily posting for the month.  And, in light of the recent Halloween overload and the presence of much sugar in the house, I am renaming it NoMo HoHo*.  I remember last year's writing took place when I'd had much todo with the local constabulary and it had PoPo in the title.  we'll see how HoHo plays out.  I expect it to spread like wildfire through the hills of the world wide web.
we'll see how it goes.
I need to focus verbally and typographically on the things that are sort of blissfully noticed around here.
My kids really like to turn their daily activities into song.  really. the 5 year old and the almost 3 year old.  and that is really delightful, even when its a storm trooper killing an elk, its delightful.
our halloween was just fine, so many people in the neighborhood had their lights off that it was sort of pathetic, but the kids didn't really know that - and as most of the candy has been 'redistributed' already, its not yet all about the haul.  I love giving out candy at the door.  Its a chance to be the generous neighbor, the beneficent one at the door.  You get to see the families of the kids, the kids get to see you... i love it... and its warm and toasty inside. One more thing that is blissful about being the grown-up... heat and cozy become WAY WAY more easy to achieve.  ah.
so, here it goes, day one.
hoho.

*(plus, i've already played tony bennet's christmas cd twice for the kids... they can't decide if it is rock and roll or jazz.... ) 

Lying down with the Lions

Daniel in the lion's den was let alone, because he asked G to make it so.  If I lie down with my lions, rest my body, release my 'plight' , and ask..? will it be so?
Can my lions let me alone?

I am not fooled. For ages, I believed my day would come when the boys were both in school and I had the six hours a week to myself.  MY DAY!!
but, it doesn't play that way.  sickness, laundry, bizzybizzy. . . and the time is eaten up. will i forever be looking into the future for the relief? the pleasure?

I don't trick myself into thinking I am overly burdened.  I am not.  I have this life, I get tired of it sometimes, but it is mine and much of what I don't like about it is my own doing, or what I have allowed to be. . .
there is a lot of good in it.  I am thirsty for many things, and much of what the body craves is not infact, very good for the body.  I am not a pregnant body.  Trip trap.

All this work, and I still need help to be still, to feel fulfillment, to get feedback, to look around without judgement and enjoy the hell out of this life in my hands. . . here I am. 
Give me more.

Lazy Thinking

Man walks into the bar and says, 'I'm just a simple man, all I need to be happy is sex and straight communication'..

Bartendress pummels him into the ground..."boy, that boy needed some life experience..."



Ah, girls. . . evidently, the simple truth is that men are simple. they have very clear wants and needs and if we want to keep them happy, which is evidently, paramount... all we have to do is satisfy these needs and all will be well with the world.  (which one? i can't recall. )
Keep those menfolk happy.  Have sex! Communicate your fondnesses at all times.... its so easy, just add it to the 'to-do'...

Lazy thinking.
And, actually, insulting to the smart, complicated men that I know. While they would LOVE more sex, and good, clear, communication, they also have strong opinions, lifelong ambitions, weaknesses, and the occasional indescribable. I give on the idea that most men really love sex, i give. But when they get all they could possibly want, there is still all the rest of it... and still all within their OWN grasp (no puns intended).  Nobody else gives you what you want and solves all your problems. It is not how it happens.
This is the same lazy thinking that allows us to believe it matters what one's party is, when the results of getting our lives in line are the same, moving towards thrift, smart environmental approaches and responsible people in the government, it is lazy thinking to get all ramped up about an issue of 'belief' instead of taking steps to live ones own life in accord.
Lazy.
Give me more.

Allergic

I'm getting very repetitive in my dotage. (milk, sickness as mental leap, wierd/weird, ? hello? )
dotty.
spotty.
We here in the household Weird are fevered and slowly getting covered in the red dot of a laserpointer dream. what is it? how did it come to pass?
This is the third day after a long weekend of travel, in which the children are home with their mother.  The children have not lost their senses of humor.  Their mother? lost.
We have painted, we have read, we have even cooked.  I spent the entire day yesterday making a lovely wintersquash/apple/potato soup, which no child would ever eat. ever. The roast chicken fed the brood, and the machinebread filled in the gaps. butter is a neccessity here, as the bread is how I get the kids their actual nourishment, as they simply will not eat anything else that I serve, and I will not serve secondary meals.  damnit.
I don't think its bedbugs (they live in NYC, evidently, and would be equal opportunity pests, not singling out children alone)
I don't think its chicken pox as nobody is screaming of the itch. (too bad.)
What're my other choices? I don't google these things as I just can't stand the glut of information on terrible things and I am losing my ability to discern plausible from possible.
pray for me.
come squirt us with some sort of anti-dot.
come on...

the weird spot on the dresser...

I've set myself up to be a wierdo, i think.  I'm leaning into all these inexplicables, like I just don't support the drinking of cow's milk except in cereal or coffee.  true.
I have no real reason, just a feeling. unsupported by the hubs, by the way. He'd like us all to be guzzling the white stuff. . .
I also feel quite certain that every illness is a way for the body to plow through some sort of developmental stage.  Proven, as far as I am concerned, in the MASSIVE amount of feverish behavior being exhibited by the children and theirvery frazzled mother in this particular household. 
I am allowing the kids to watch the Power Rangers, all the time.  (very, very weird.)
I am becoming radically unconcerned with being involved in any outerworld activities. radical.
I am refusing to give any advice ever again, as I believe it to be part of the crapulent judgemental thing that is harmful to mom's [gah!! poor grammatical prowess, at show, and not deleted because that would be fraudulent] and women everywhere... , and am seriously considering shooting the next person who gives me some. (see: recently visited the extended family for a long long time)
My reactions to hubsJ are based purely (almost) on a desire not to expose vulnerability.  HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?! the person i spend the most time with in the world, and i don't want him to know that i like him.

i think i might need to go see chakra carol again soon, just for me and some major chakric rearrangement. or maybe if she just pushed me off a ledge, that would do it...

and....again....

My three year old is slowly deciding to give up his nap, at the strangest of times, and without changing his bedtime or rising time.  Even recovering from a fever, when most are apt to sleep MORE than normal? no go.
I am very tired from his fever. let me tell you. very tired.
My eyes are itching from the latest sickness... and he is cute, but the devil.
and i got him a new elephant toy (off the less is more wagon and on the halloween-candy-in-the-house-junkie-motionpicture show... picture Riley in the vampire crack den.... )
and said elephant toy is actually a lethal weapon to my knees, my belly and occasionally the head.  i want to melt it down in the fire.

and hubsJ is enjoying the mists of Seattle and so happy to be with an old friend. so happy.
It is sometimes easier to be alone in this parenting battle, especially temporarily, because there are no standards, no expectations... and I wonder if it isn't really like that all the time but for my mind's attachment to judging my own worth? ...
damn, I begin to believe that my only enemy is my own damn self. and it isn't actually helpful at this point.
they say 'knowing is half the battle'... well, great. half. battle. half.

Sex

Oh, sex, I always forget about you.  I'm so 'busy', there are children all around, my brain spins with the useless decisions and constant 'thought', all day, all day, so much so much and there is just so little time for sleep, at the end of all that dread for 'bedtime... and then there is the warmth now of the blankets and the lull of deep breaths and the radiation of the heat from the mass of bodies in my bed.  and the lurker at the other end of that mass? oh, a nice one, he.

Oh boy, that same he leaves for five days from work tonight, the kiss this morning, free of anger, free of recriminations, was sweet...sad, already full of longing... for return.

Oh sex, why do I never remember you until you are gone?

Yingyangyrubberbandslap

Um,

1. No, i have not cut anyone's hair.  There is an unopened clipper on the counter, awaiting the time when the ugly bug of rut or lice-itude shows its head again.  I feel lame for not giving you a bald me but am very afraid that I will be cold and ugly AND bald when this happens and I am not alltogether comfortable with those three things.
2. The school is settling out, 23 kids in his class and things being dealt with in a sortof timely fashion.
3. Another PTO meeting, at which I spoke a bit in a fairly intelligent but vaguely pointless (certainly ineffectual) sort of way  ... stroke victims sat off to the side so I focused on them less.  have decided they are stroke victims instead of alcoholics as I can handle that more. The principal made cookies.
!
4.  The school nurse was totally cool about our lice problem and couldn't find any in his hair when i showed up that morning anyhow. totally cool.
4a.  Yesterday the school nurse called me to come pick him up because he had a rash and said it was because he ate strawberries.
4a1. he didn't eat strawberries, he had mosquito bites. 
hmmm. mosquito bites? hmmm. . . okay. okay.
5. I got his progress report today and says he needs improvement in writing.
hello? he is in school to learn how to write. to learn. how. to . write.
hello?

ha. ah.
yingyangyrubberbandslap

Not one of you...

I love the vegetarians, who love all things bean.
I love the people who cook, and freeze and always have something ready that is delicious and wholesome and just needs to be popped in the oven.
I love the people who clean their showers, all the time, so that the shower is the color the tile men think it should be.
I love people who make playdough each week, fresh and salty for the kiddos to eat.
I love the moms who work out.
I love the yogis who manage their breath during their non-yogi time.
I love people who smile as they walk down the street instead of staring at the cracks in the sidewalk.
I love the confidence of the multitudes who believe they are good and whole.


I am not one of you.
and that is where i am at.
working on it...

In light...

In light of my new relationship to embarassment, I am going to share... more.   I have bought a clipper at the local CVS, for $16.99, in case you were wondering.  (One does not buy USED clippers, i am told)  I am considering the full shear. yes, i am .  I think, in part, to piss off my husband.  He is lovely sometimes and having a struggle lately and I feel like I need some sort of signal to the world that I am heading off my rocker.

I have long considered chopping my locks.  They are fairly nondescript, dirty blond/brown sort of listless bundle of hairs on the top of my rather big ears.  After the buddhist meditation day/plunge of a few weeks ago, I spent several days brushing my hair, thinking how nice it must feel to have such a short crop.  like a little boy... (one without lice, please.)
Granted, my boys have long lustrous locks themselves.  Curls or straight, long, long hair.  The younger is frequently mistaken for a girl.  (idiots.)

So. I have the clipper on the counter. Hubs J expresses trepidations.  I think of the cold.  I am scared. Maybe it is not for me. Maybe it is.  Maybe I have a good face for it.  Maybe i've got pimples all over my scalp.  The lice won't make an urban legend of me if I am shorn. (see: mother with throbbing headmass runs screaming through streets)  Maybe it'll be the ticket to jerk me out of a rut I cannot see the end of...
Maybe I'll be like Brittany and start wearing wigs.  Maybe it'll make me all hopeful...  

It might make my still-growing ears a bit of a problem, or highlight the tape holding my glasses together.
gah.

Seriously? How To handle embarassing things...

Yesterday Hubs J told me he thought I had a gift for happy.  He's not a sarcastic person, either.
he was talking straight.
of course,
-this was in the midst of an all out battle against the demon lice and the demon children who carry them, hatch them and completely freak their community bed-sleeping mother out of her ever-living mind.
AND- this was in the midst of the 'i'm so angry i could kick you' phase of the last post, which is still lingering and making me feel ... wait for it... angry.
and bad about myself and so on and so forth.

i have started journaling more again, and that is good, again... and i have been practicing reiki on my kids, which they love so much it is almost spooky.  they lie down, still, on the ground and wait for me to put my hands on them.  i hold my hands still on their body and empty my precious little brain of all thought, and just sort of listen to the world. and then move on to the next spot... the kids love it and my five year old infestation originator asked me yesterday if i could teach him how to do it. .. .
incredible.

chakra carol is teaching me and the D. how to do reiki.  it is pretty damn cool. but I'm totally embarassed that I'm doing it and that its happening AND that i like it. ANd I feel like people are going to think that I'm fruity lala and that maybe I won't know how to cut them to shreds wittily when they do because i'm going to fall in love with the waves or living in yurts or something.
SO.  I handle my embarassment and fear by making it public.
now you know.
lice and reiki .
its all out there now.

Don't know where I am...

I'm all whacked out, really far away from being able to do all that stuff that I know is good for me, that I've been working hard on getting into, towards, etc.  I'm really angry a lot of the time and what I'm angry about is not neccessarily flaring up or present, I'm just carrying the anger like some sort of badge.  and I actually feel like I know better these days.... its not true, for instance, the little blamegame crap that goes on in my internal dialogue is just not true.  I can brush it off completely.  but I'm not settling into the peace like normal.... i am still angry.
There is a lot going on and almost all of it pointing in good directions, and I am still battling the bricks of the front steps. . .
so. what to do? avoid typing?
huh .
i looked at last year's writing at this time and thought again of my friend pam who is wonderful and with whom I haven't talked for ages... and so I link to this, what I gave her a long time ago and what I need to settle into...

DAMN

so. this is my humble pie.  what i am good at? huh.
i had a sick kid all weekend, who was taken to the beach by his dad on a last gasp summer/fall day to have a blast and fall stricken with fever into his mother's arms when said beach day was done. this continued. 
said mother is COVERED in poison ivy that has not appeared on any of the children, but is ransacking the sanity of the mother as we speak.
said sicko is home again today, after three days of school, because of a rash and some 'funny' behavior this morning.  He ate the last of the summer/fall strawberries from california last night in his mother's last ditch attempt at savoring the foods of the summer.

'h' - he is helping me now by typing letters, quotations added by me later to great dismay ...

tL  HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKkkkkk
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm

I am beseiged by the slightly ill. 
ha.
can you feel all the 'last ditch' going on over here? 
I'm working my way out from underneath a pile of crap in said ditch.

'said' is woefully underdeveloped, don't you think? My humble nature is exposed for a fearful one, full of face rashes and recognition of  'off' .... ho hum. welcome to it.

Humility

SO.  I am finding myself in a bit of a quandry.  a spot difficult for my ego to process, because my ego is all complex and shit.
I have this longstanding relationship with humility... a feeling that walks along hand in hand with a conviction that if one is overly confident, cocky or vain about one's self/ability/skill/control, that G-d will get pissed off and very likely take it away or somehow burn you with a big stick.  It is not exactly a well-formed belief system but it has been around in my psyche for quite a while.  It makes it impossible for me to believe compliments or their givers.  Its actually a source of some discomfort in my marriage because I am married to someone who believes himself to be incredibly selfconfident and humble at the same time! which I tend to scorn and deride on a regular basis as an impossibility.  'scorn and deride' are a bit strong but when pushed I can really bring down the house.
The present difficulty comes because two people, three, actually, have told me that I am good at something and I'm freaking out because if I believe them, i will never have access to it again.  get it? its sort of crazy, i can feel that... so I have to convince myself that THEY are crazy and misguided and therefore I can keep myself in motion. 
right. writing it out makes me feel stupid. 
nonetheless, plunging onwards in stupidity...
but I can see the problems in my thinking ... and so I have to look at it awhile...
how do I acknowledge my own helplessness in the midst of a skill? or, my own training? or an ability that has grown over time with practice? practice, that I was Granted the time and space, to 'perform'? Why is it that I value the lack of will so highly?  as if, in wanting to do something, I were tempting the G to take away my want and thereby, I shouldn't start at all, because it will all end in lost ? yah? the very wanting becomes the problem. 
my word.
right? whoosh.
where does this all come from?
 I wish i could get more comfortable with my own sense of arrogance, or self-comparing...
'but I'm taller than a dwarf, at least... etc...' (no offense to dwarves for their stature being one I am proud to top... by a little, only...)...
i mean, i must be a better driver than she is, i havne't got half the dents she does...
she spends all her money on their clothes, she's clearly more vain than me... her values are WHACK...

there is a psychosis in the vanity.  it is tied to a pride, which is not a humility. humility contains a certain non-judgement,  dig?
so, where does this leave me? when i want something, to do something, to explore something... but i wind up afraid to even begin, because i might want something? because if i am good, it is bound to be lost to me?

my word.