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Thursday, January 26, 2017

Depth

O, I was at a march. And I was standing in a sea of faces that looked so similar to mine that it gave me pause. Sparkling eyes, north face, patagonia, llbean, humor, conviction, passion, disbelief, angry humor, ovaries and the like ... O, I was at that march. Boston has a long and storied history of throwing down with money and teabags ...

When they said (and i misheard) that an asian line dancing group was going to perform, i said that i was going to have to go.

But no, it were lions, not line-dancing, and they were ushering in change in the twitches and twines they performed.

Deafness has the best sense of humor. It does. The misheard are always better than reality.

Thank you notes have been written.  (I kid you not, and yes, i like notes, a lot... but really? What's more kind and considerate and white than the thank-you note?)

How sweetly we women were treated, like dainty white women or something... is this white girl rabble-rousing? Is it a problem?  Is the problem mine because i can't see strength in these days of political insanity being a quiet peaceful strength? I downright WANTED people to get arrested.
Betty Crocker needs to go down in a headlock.

I'm in a new state of seek.  I want nothing more than to dive down to where the pressure on the ears is pain. I'm tired of playing nice with people who cannot match my depth, and I'm weary of treading water in these shallows.

I Feel like i started leaving the shallows when my dad died.  Losing faith in the world of fairness and 'what should be' and 'if i just wait and be good, it'll turn out just fine'... and finally, i asked for a break from my difficult and struggling and unfun marriage, because i didn't think things would turn out fine anymore and the waiting was killing me minute by minute.

And I didn't even know how close I came to being totally squashed. I didn't even know. SO while I wouldn't wish this heartbreaking year on anyone, I recognize its parts for a rebirth, and possibility is ripe again, and this wish to be deeper in the world is one I will hold.

In some moments I wonder if the dissatisfaction is a problem for my personality, but then I look at what is happening in the world and see my reflection so clearly ... so I let that go... My dissatisfaction has led me to this ...




Friday, January 20, 2017

MONIE MONIE (part two)

FUCK. I'm having the same bad morning this morning that I had so many flipping times during my marriage... a hangover from bad news, so to speak.  And BECAUSE I DID THIS WHOLE FUCKING THING IN ORDER TO STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING TO ME AND MY KIDS, I am frustrated in a sort of in a different place than I was for the past ten years or so.  A decade.  So. Well.

Different place. Much more better.  Not as much sorrow and anger for me, but actually a dose more rage for the kids. Whole bag less care for the whys... Interesting.
Humanity is what it is and I'm still carrying around my good bones but still...

Distance really is a bellringer, i tell you.

Probably none of this makes any sense . Bellringer, what?

But. Anyhow. Money.
Part two.

I think because we were very middle class growing up and had a middle-lower-class neighborhood and my parents made clothes 'special' whereas many of my friends just 'got them' , i have always been aware of where i have fit in financially amongst my peers.  Sometimes I had more, but more often I had less, or it was more of a struggle not having the cool clothes and so forth. Sometimes I can hear myself saying no to the kids because i don't want them to miss that feeling, I don't want them to assume they can have it all.. I think it makes them more real and more connected to the world to hear the no and to have to come to grips with it.  My kids have an awful lot.  My nos are pretty insignificant in their lives, and probably feel arbitrary to them.  Money weirdness.  As an adult now, its something i wish were easier to talk about with friends... i have a lot of curiousity about how people spend their money, how much debt they carry and so forth. How do they afford shopping, is it budgeted, do they have to be careful or is it thoughtless, for instance? What about credit cards?

Money.  Work.  I have worked since i was fifteen and work ethic is strong with me.  I like to work. Thank you Bowie family genetics.  Put me on a farm and I'd be the clydesdale. I've always been able to find work and filled my heart and mind with sustenance from the jobs I've chosen.

When i was first married, I couldn't find the work i wanted and we lived on student loans entirely... i was very depressed while i waited for the work. . . then i slowly got work, and a second job and we still lived on student loans.  When we moved to start his next program we were back to loans and my unemployment and employment as homemaker magic-maker mother. (Fireworks, baby, FIREWORKS) ... And then he got work but it paid for a mortgage and two more weeks of the month. Loans. And the help of the state with food for us . Thank you for that, state.
And then ...........within the space of a month, our income tripled.  ............I remember getting a deposit for five thousand dollars and just needing to lie down.  I bought a blanket for the bed that I'd been wanting. It was 99 dollars and I couldn't believe I had the freedom to get it.  I am keeping it in the settlement because I am the only one who knows what I am talking about or what it meant to me.
Amazing.

And now, I am divorcing the income earner in the equation.  He is being generous in that he is giving more than the state demands, and we are splitting most things, but not that loan debt.  I have my own but he will be paying back what we lived on together while i sort out how to restart my financial life and get my feet back underneath me after being knocked on my ass.

So, this is the setup I find myself in presently.

RING DEM BELLS.

The bann is on the door, but there ain't no wedding happening...

RING DEM BELLS.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Money, roots and shoots.. (part one)

Money:

It has come to my attention over and over again, that it is one of the many issues that I have that I should look at. In this winter of my discontent (take 2), I am looking at it.  They say she is unemployed, yes, but she may reach nirvana, and isn't that going to be amazing?

Yeah, I'm being so sarcastic, it actually feels dirty.
So don't read the above.

Anyhow, money.  At its roots, it will reflect back onto my parents, and their parents... The dad who was very poor but had most-of-the-time enough and sometimes not enough... (no winter coat in Maine) , the mom who had more than enough and expected the same (but not an easy family,no.) .  And the way they worked together to grow their family and show us the uses of money.  My dad was factory management eventually and planned and saved and invested money and left my mom situated well for the rest of her life when he died suddenly at 68.  He bought us the expensive sneakers at the mall because he wasn't aware of comparison shopping and my mom made him take them back... My mom did the household budgeting but didn't pay the bills, and i mean that literally, he took that responsibility.  I remember a story she tells of making a casserole for the two of them in their early marriage which was so terrible (she didn't pour off the water from the hotdogs--- don't even. Don't even.). And my dad wouldn't throw it away because of money and they ate it.
Another one:  my mom's favorite aunt sent her 50 bucks as a gift and my dad said they had to use it for bills.

Right? There's a lot in those stories.  A care, a counting... some bullying, on both their parts I think, money as a power tool...and a thing of loss and privilege.

And the person i admire most in the world is my grandmother, my dad's mom.  She had a crap husband and six kids and managed to feed them when he left to find work in another state, she killed her own chickens, made her own butter and not out of anything but necessity.  She kept busy, filled her time with food and 'making' and was the smartest thing in a recliner when I knew her.  She laughed like a bowl full of jelly, for real, and I've wanted to talk to her and my dad so much about J and what I could ever have done about it all... and about me, where I go from here.  I think I get a lot of my self-recrimination from a failed comparison to my Grammie Bowie... not one she would ever have endorsed, by the way... its a romanticizing of depression-era living and my parallel world is full of it... and i see its flaws and carry them anyway.

These are my roots.
Get some Cindi down below...

Money Changes Everything : Cindi Lauper
https://youtu.be/pp4suZ4jNXg
https://youtu.be/pp4suZ4jNXg


Thursday, January 5, 2017

New Year 2017 and some Hallelujah chorus ERUPTS... somewhere...

It has been a year. Of many many endings and some fits and starts, but so many of the endings... I'm so glad that it is over, that we celebrate an encapsulation and I get a chance to look forward with a real knowledge that I won't have to repeat any of that, ever.  All the first days on my own, those first packing ups, a more true understanding of what i thought was a marriage. . .new friends, with a wider world of experience than i'd ever have expected,  holidays on my own, first time traditions for the kids, for me.  I got a fake christmas tree this year in order to avoid an old tradition, and the need for help, and the deforestation of the world...  and at first it nearly broke me ... but then, when it was up independently and quickly and already lit and boom, It was a really great thing... a 'mine' thing... I only missed the smell ... (and i remedied that with a candle, baby...) so much so that i saved and got myself a gigantic one the day after Christmas on super sale... . So now I have two.. and the days will be LIT.


:) 

I did a lot of yoga over New Year's and an awful lot of dancing... yoga style.  I felt my body sink right back into itself. There was a retreat and a sister and a very old friend surprise.  ANd so much damn laughter.  Fall off your seat laughter. And I have missed that for years and years.  YEARS AND YEARS.  Why would anyone live in a place like that? Without those laughs? I've got a lot of questions, and I get to be my own guide for a while, with an open road as well.  Get that. 

I know what I need to do, just not necessarily how to do it.  But I'm figuring it out... and it may include tiny sips of whiskey, it may involve some whacked out painting, a drum or two and it will definitely involve fortitude, quiet peace and delight.

I do hope that I write more but am looking into starting it up somewhere more anonymous, as J's connection to it is still a slight tinge on my ability to speak plainly, i suppose.  Or something like that.  You know. Meh. I don't know.  I have a real attachment to the name and to the spot.  I can work on it.