Note to my 30 readers… I’m taking some time off of blogging here to work on some other projects. Thanks for reading… and I’ll be back soon.
You can find me in the meantime at Babble and Imperfect Parent.
Bookmark to:
Archive for April, 2008
28
Apr
Hiatus
25
Apr
Dare
Sometimes I feel like a transvestite trapped in a straight woman’s body. Heels? They should be high high high. Makeup? Sparkly, heavy, and colorful. And dresses? Yes yes yes.
There has been much talk on the ’sphere lately about women who deign to write personal things on blogs about their children, or feelings, or political beliefs… About how the act of creating art is so devalued and fetishised in our society that anyone who even dares use the word “art” or “muse” is chased with sticks.
Especially in a day and age where the Internet cloaks people in enough anonymity that they feel free to let loose their mean subterranean rage. Don’t believe me? Check out the rage this little opinion about $4 gas evoked…
Self-expression, whether sparkly gaudy makeup, religious beliefs, writing, or spouting opinions is a dangerous and necessary act. If one has the courage to speak from the heart, after the kids and the marriages and the mortgages tell us we better shape up and act like a lady (or at least act “mature), the pressure to keep it all tamped down is pretty strong. But let’s not fool ourselves, also scary as hell.
So today I dare you to do something that is from your heart. For you. Some small secret place you’ve been waiting to open up and tell someone about.
Do you dare?
If nothing else, go share her wonderful news!
Bookmark to:
In my neck of the woods weather is relatively mild, but even so, the rain and mist and gory grey makes a person (no matter how tall) want to curl up with a good Diego episode and eat a cookie.
With all the evidence that our kids are the fattest, least active, most addicted to television since the Goddess invented children, most parents are plagued with worry. Are they getting enough exercise? Eating too many McNuggets? Do they realize how much TV the ‘rents watch after they go to bed? Will they (please God) do as we say and not as we do when it comes to being physically healthy?
Fat chance. Your only hope is warmer weather, or at least a cessation of the sleet and hail and snow.
Read more at Imperfect Parent…
****
Also, why $4 per gallon gas is a good thing.
Bookmark to:
The thing about recovery is that we’re all in it. Recovering from something. Bad childhoods, bad clams, bad breakups, bad timing. But we’re also recovering from self delusion. When we get lost in the scary woods of our own minds, we make bizarre claims about what we need and where we’re going (”Honestly, this job is great for me! Yes, it’s in the middle of Antarctica and it’s minimum wage, but they give you your own winter jacket!”). Whether you’re talking to an imaginary executioner or judge, this self-justification can create a whole mess of wrong choices.
Anne Lamott talks about KFKD radio — that self-loathing noise between our ears that keeps us hunkered down in isolation and waiting for Godot.
I’ve been trying to find the courage to be myself for awhile now. Finding the True North inside and trusting that it’s right and good. Not hiding away, tamping down, lowering the volume, or turning it up to screeching angry volumes. True North. That place in each of us that sits back on soft pillows and sighs knowing that all will be all right in the end. Even though we’re turning 40, our marriages are a mess, our kids will grow up and leave us, and the house isn’t selling.
KFKD radio tells us that everyone is more important than us, that we don’t deserve happiness and peace, and that we can’t write our way out of a wet paper bag and should just be a secretary somewhere since all we’re capable of is answering phones cheerfully anyway.
I used to drink to drown out that station. Now I pray. And go to meetings. And love my kids like they are my bones and blood. But it’s all such a mess. Not a beautiful mess (yet) but I’m hoping one day at a time it soon will be.
But this is all so depressing, so I must also say this. I’ve never had this much serenity in the face of so much struggle. And honestly, if that isn’t recovery, I don’t know what is.
***
On the lighter side, Are you a very serious parent?
and
5 Frugal Living Ideas that Stink
Bookmark to:
15
Apr
Today at Babble
Today I celebrate 6 months of sobriety. A life without alcohol was something I could barely comprehend only 1/2 year ago. I wasn’t holding a brown bag on the street corner (yet), but I was thinking about those glasses of wine earlier and earlier each day and they, not life, were becoming my reason for getting up in the morning.
What started as a muse to greater regenerating clever blather became a dependence. The funny tightwalk between levity and release gave over to a fall through a canyon of doom. There were hostages and legions of hurt people. The first were last and the last were made first.
I am so much less now than I was then, both in net worth and employment and pretty clothes and shoes… but again so much more. More available, more alive, happier than I can remember.
If you ever wonder whether your drinks or drugs or habits are a dependence rather than a treat, try giving them up for awhile and see what opens for you.
And if you ever wonder what becomes of a person who loses something in order to gain something else, you can come visit me. I’ll welcome you here and gladly show you around.
****
Read this beautiful thing and thank god, or God, or goddess that there is such a lovely person on this planet…
Bookmark to:
I don’t talk about this much because when I talk about it, it makes it real. But some days I just need to share it, in the hopes the burden will be lightened somewhat. Here goes:
My twin 6 year old daughters still consistently wake me up at night. And if they *do* go to bed at a reasonable hour they wake me up at 4am or some ungodly hour with their giggling and chatting.
I’ve recently befriended a new mother of twins (hers are 5 months old) and I offer her hope and encouragement and what assistance I can render. But when she asks me about sleep (when will I get some??) I can’t bear to look her in the eyes.
One cannot begin to describe the anger that occurs when one’s sleep is interrupted on a consistent basis. I am grouchy beyond belief.
Thanks for listening.
Bookmark to:
Let’s say (hypothetically) one quit one’s primary nonprofit gig to spend more time with certain offspring. At the same time, other freelance work dried up and one’s house was going on the market (it is pretty and fancy and was purchased back when Mommy had a full-time job).
If there were a Costco sized box of Milk Duds (emphasis on MILK, not DUDS, for you Brits out there), and it was consumed more rapidly than anything else remotely healthy, would one still be a loveable sort of person, or merely an obsessive eater?
If on the road of life, I were waylaid by a number of children and unemployment, would “Milk Duds” be an appropriate response to the question of “So how are you coping with these changes?”?
The world is a Very Serious Place. And from this angle (small children in tow, high on sugar, earning enough to buy one carrot and two lattes as a blogger), it all seems quite difficult to sort through.
And it could be that the sugar and the serotonin are teaming up to make it all seem silly and ironic, but I could go on like this for quite awhile longer and not mind one bit.
***
I don’t usually do memes, but this one is about books and requested by her (lovely, writing, pretty woman), so I’ll oblige.
Nearest book: Living Sober (it’s all nonfiction around here lately)
Page 123 & 5th Sentence, then Type Sentence 5-8
Here is the Excerpt:
Many of us have been amused at our seeming inability, even after many years of sobriety, to walk away from a half-finished cup of coffee or glass of soda. We sometimes find ourselves gulping the last swallow of a nonalcoholic drink, as if… Perhaps most readers already get the point: It is not always easy for us to put down an unfinished page, chapter, or book we are reading.
I’m not going to tag anyone but go ahead and do this if you like.
Bookmark to:
03
Apr
Where Has Funny Gone?
I wrote this post about getting my toddler a lower back tattoo and some folks believed I was telling the truth (including the suggestion that we’d serve virgin margaritas to all the toddlers in attendance at V’s birthday party tomorrow).
I think it’s a sad commentary on the grim state of parenting in the media when something as outlandish as getting one’s youngest a back tattoo is believable.
Bookmark to:
Kids are natural pranksters. They pretend to be upset when you wait 5 hours to change their diapers, or feign hunger first thing in the morning. They are masters of comic timing.Time to turn the tables and show them, Mommy and Daddy have a trick or two to show them, even though we’re nearly middle-aged:
Bookmark to:
