November 2008 Archives

I was turning left, halfway through the crosswalk right by the kids' school, when I noticed that a woman was just inches from my driver's side view mirror.  I recognized her, and recognized that I very nearly killed her.  I opened my window and yelled over the sound of my blood in my ears, tears stinging my eyes and choking me, I'm so sorry.  My widows are all foggy and I didn't see you.  I'm so, so sorry.

And she was okay, and I was okay, but of course we were both shaken up as we silently tallied the list of What Ifs.  I'm not really sure what happened:  if I just didn't look; if she was in my blind spot; if I looked but didn't see because the kids were squabbling or I was preoccupied.  The windows were steamy, and that is probably what happened, but it worries me still that I wasn't paying better attention.

That happens to me a lot.  Not usually while I'm driving, luckily, but just in general.  I feel like I'm often looking up in a panic at some near-miss of a situation, knowing that I fucked up but totally clueless about what it was, exactly, I did.  Or didn't do.  It's like I'm not sure what things to watch, and the things that I don't keep in check circle back on me.  Mainly I have this sense that I am letting people down.  Only no one will really come out and say it, because, you know, I'm going through a hard time right now, and so I'm left feeling that I've been too self-absorbed, or not grateful enough, or too much of a doormat, or maybe just a bad friend, but I'm not sure, really.  Maybe it's all just in my head.  I know that my very own special breed of low self-esteem sometimes flipflops into an assumption that if something is wrong it MUST be my fault.  Which is perhaps about as self-absorbed and egotistical as one human can be. 

What can I say?  I do try.

I'll be better off in a few weeks when I'm not on such a high dose of prednisone.  (It challenges my coping abilities, to put it mildly.)  In the meantime I will weigh my words more carefully, I will watch where I'm going, and I will let myself believe in things that astonish me instead of waiting for that feeling of emptiness where there just was something amazing I was holding on to. 

I think it was the first day of second grade when the after-school daycare bus didn't show up to get me from school like it was supposed to.  I sort of remember walking home that afternoon, back through the pathway of alleys between fenced in backyards that I'd walked that morning.  I didn't have a key to the apartment, so I went and asked the manager to let me in.  I dragged a chair (the same ones are in my kitchen now) to the wall in the kitchen where the phone was, and dialed my mom's work number.

She ended up calling the daycare, asking them how my first day was going.  Oh, she's great!  They said.  Super groovy.  No worries.  Or whatever 1977 slang was for It's all good.  Really?  My mother said, Would you mind just putting her on the phone for a second?

I've always been an independent kind of girl, but I think that story really cemented my reputation.

So, last night SG stopped by for a little bit to help me with some excel stuff and say hey to the kids.  When he left, I walked him out so I could tell him goodbye.  We stood there near his car, standing in the street a little bit since he was parked at the curb.  He'd just opened the back door to put some things inside, so he had his back to the car and I had my back to the street.  We were talking quietly, his head was bent down toward me, his arms around me, and a car came down the street, fast.  He looked at it and pulled me closer to him all at once.  Nothing about his movements were sudden; I very likely could have missed the whole thing if I'd been in the middle of telling him a story or something.  But I noticed.  And then he said something about how the cars go too fast down my street, but all I could think of was how very nice it felt to have him want take care of me like that.  I know it sounds like a small thing, but he pulled me closer because he wants to be sure I'm okay.  And for me, right now, that is huge.  It feels really, really nice.  

My whole life is a blur at the moment, and I feel like I'm more than a few steps behind it all trying to grab ahold.  Like running after a train might feel, I guess.

I've been pretty sick with this stupid autoimmune thing I have, and my doctor put me back on prednisone.  I hate taking it for a million reasons, but right now I've exhausted all my other non-surgical options.  The one sort of good thing is that it makes me really hyper and manic.  You should SEE my to-do list.  I think I'll open my seasonal gift-making sweatshop of one later tonight.  Am feeling driven to rearrange my closet while simultaneously writing a novel and planning the next month's worth of meals.  

Thanksgiving is kind of blowing my mind by suddenly being a week away.  I'm surprised how thankful I am feeling this year.  I mean, for someone who bitches and gripes all the time, I'm really so grateful that when I stop to think about it I get all teary.  I took next Wednesday off work so that I can bake pies with my small fry.  Maybe I'll even get a grip on that speeding train.  

I'm learning that there is no such thing (at least for me) as an amicable divorce.  I'm getting it with both barrels (from both exes) today, and the only thing I feel like writing at the moment would be a long, all-caps, profanity dominated rant.  I'll leave acting like an asshole to the assholes.  After all, I'm too busy working and taking care of my kids to waste energy on crap.  I'm going to go home, open a gluten-free beer, make a kickass supper for my kids, help Soph with a big school project due tomorrow, bake sugar cookies, and beg SG to help me with a spreadsheet.  (First, though, I totally need to quit crying at my desk.)

It's such a different life I have every other weekend when the kids are away. I think I get a little culture shock moving between the two very different worlds I live in.

Sometimes I feel like I must be a bad mother for not missing the kids more when they aren't with me. It's different than during the week when I miss them so much. These weekends are so good.

I took all these today, but I don't feel like I have much to write about.  There are the yellow leaves and fall light, nothing I've ever been able to photograph.  The old rusty rail of the train track that separates the parking lot from the soccer field.  An accidental heart on the ground.  A heart I made from acorns because I was missing SG. 

I was scolded, vigorously scolded, today by an older woman one car ahead of me at a stoplight.  I'd called SG as I walked out of the medical office and into the startlingly beautiful day, and I wasn't thinking as I started my car and drove out of the parking lot, filling him in on my visit.  She saw me, talking and not using my headset.  She delivered a disgusted look to me via her rear view mirror, and then wagged her finger at me and said words I couldn't make out, but could well enough imagine.  She was so very angry with me.  And I laughed at her for making such a stink, even though, really, she was right and I should have been using my headset. 

I've just begun Steve Martin's book, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life.  I've been a little under the weather, and I'm hoping to kick back and read this weekend.  Maybe for one or two whole hours.  It's the sort of last weekend of soccer, except for Lex's tournaments the next two weekends.  I know the kids loved it, and I did too, but I'm ready to welcome back my Saturdays. 

• 2 or 3 small butternut squashes (squashi?)
• brown sugar
• an onion
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• parsley
• stock
• maple syrup (The real stuff, or else skip it.  I am a food snob.  Everyone should be.)

• I roasted the butternut squash (sprinkled with brown sugar) the night before.  To roast the squash, cut them in half, lengthwise and scoop out the seeds and gick.  Put face up on a baking sheet (with the brown sugar, or with butter or olive oil or whatever you like) and cook at 400 for about an hour.  After the squash is cool, peel off the skin and set aside.  If you are adverse to scrubbing stuff off your baking pans, line the pan with foil.  Or parchment paper. 
• Coarsely chop the onion & cook in the olive oil until carmelized, something like 20 minutes
• Add the butternut squash, and smush it up with the onion and keep cooking it until it's browned enough for you
• Add 4 to 6 cups of stock (I had 2 squashes, and used 4 cups and like how the consistency ended up)
• Add the parsley.  I use little frozen cubes of chopped parsley, but you can use fresh chopped, of course.  I wouldn't use dried.  It's a food snob thing.
• Let this all cook and simmer for awhile.  Twenty minutes or so.  Then blend it with a hand blender, or you can do it in small batches in the blender.  I use a hand blender, though, because I would probably burn the crap out of myself trying to do it in a blender. 
• Add about 3 tablespoons of maple syrup, salt if you need it, pepper, hot sauce maybe

This morning I took the girls to my friend's house so they could spend the day there while I was at work, this being Veteran's Day.  She runs a day care from her house, and so the girls got to help her wrangle what looked to me to be something like fifty seven babies.   We were sitting under an overpass, waiting for the light to change, when Sophie turned to Willow and said, What did YOU have for dinner last night?  Willow said, Raviolis, root beer, and ice cream.  What did YOU have?  I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Sophie look at Willow, Steak and fries, she said, with this vaguely threatening, level delivery.  And I sat there, mildly panicked from being parked underneath an overpass** and thought that it was sort of a sad thing that my girls were comparing the dinners they'd each had at their (different) dad's houses the night before.  

I realized that I was halfway expecting my usual inner dialogue of criticism and insults to begin, but I just wasn't motivated to put myself down.  The girls went from having a sort of a showdown over which dad had the best dinner to being silly and laughing at something I can't remember now.  Then the light changed, and we passed by two telephone lines running over a creek, and the girls both pointed and exclaimed over the long, long rows of birds perched on the wires.  Did you see that? they kept asking each other.  I wish I had my camera, Sophie said, I'd take a picture!  And just as I was noticing how nice it was that I could listen to them talk about their not-perfect life and not beat myself up over it, I also heard them laughing and I realized that they're still happy kids, despite the way things are. 

I think that what kept me from beating myself up wasn't only the fact that my kids are actually okay (because, believe me, if you are prone to the self-hate, you don't really need a reason) but it's got a whole lot to do with this new life I am making.  I work hard.  I'm doing everything I can, as well as I can.  I'm happy.  I'm suddenly able to cut myself some slack and appreciate what I accomplish every day.  Now I just need to be sure that I don't kick myself too hard for not being more gentle with myself sooner.  Heh.

**I'm not sure what that phobia of mine is called (I HATE tunnels and being under overpasses), but while I was doing a half-assed job of looking for the name, I found the following:

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - fear of the number 666
Nomophobia - fear of being out of mobile phone contact
Paraskavedekatriaphobia - fear of Friday the 13th
Chemophobia -  prejudice against artificial substances in favour of 'natural' substances

This afternoon we (Willow, Soph, & Nate) stood in an almost dry dugout, shivering and eating microwave popcorn and watching Lex play soccer in the rain. Willow kept calling it a bomb shelter, and that made the woman who was in there with her toddler laugh. The child had on tennies with trucks on them, track pants, and a jacket with a baseball on front. The mom was annoyed when my kids thought her kid was a boy. Then she got on her cell phone to talk about college football, saying that the defense was awful and they'd obviously been out partying Friday night. It was weird. My whole day was weird, yesterday too. Stuff I thought was okay maybe isn't, other messed up things got better. At the end of it all I'm just wanting to crawl into bed and hibernate for a bit. I wish I had some kind of life rulebook to consult right now. I have this sinking feeling that I'm fucking up, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Or if I even am doing anything wrong. I hate going to bed so unsettled, but I'm too tired for anything else.

Dude.  I had a big long post that just disappeared when Firefox crashed and all that got saved was the title.  How appropriate!

The upshot was this: I don't get mad easily, but when I do I really, really do.  And, I'm so glad that I went ahead and didn't wait to calm down before I posted, because even though if I had waited awhile I could have said it in a less name-calling, more intelligent and thoughtful way, it feels REALLY good to go off on the bad guys.  It's like that feeling you get when Spiderman is kicking some bad guy's ass on the big screen.  It just would not satisfy if he were all, You know, I'd really like to invite you to think about how your actions are impacting the other beings you share this planet with.  Perhaps you can consider setting aside several moments a day to reflect on how you'd like to be, and then strive to attain that vision.

Yeah.  Totally not working.  Jerks of this magnitude require Serious Ass Kicking.  Just ask Gwendomama.  Plus, even though I was barely able to sputter some well-chosen adjectives, there are beautifully written comments in that post.  So yay for not self-censoring.

Changing gears now.

This morning I took the girls to school 45 minutes late.  Nate hates being late, so he walked and was on time, taking with him a check for hot lunch because I have no cash and I didn't get it together last night or this morning to make lunches.  The school secretary asked why we were late and I could barely even talk because I was about to cry.  They just couldn't wake up this morning, I said. And she suggested they go to bed earlier, which made me that much closer to crying because holy shit, I try, you know.  I really, really try.  I don't know how other people do this.  How do people with kids and full time jobs keep their houses clean and stocked and get their kids places on time?  Why can't I figure this out?  My house is a full-on disaster and I am behind on every single thing in my life with a due date attached to it.  I am feeling like a complete and total loser, and at the same time, I'm not sure that I could work very much harder than I already do.  I need help, and I'm so drowning in the mess of my life that I don't even know what to ask for help with.   

Last night I made lasagna for the kids, and then I tried to adapt this lovely, lovely recipe into a gluten and dairy free version.  You have never come across a worse biscuit in your life.  Even the bacon couldn't save them.  At the end of the night, SG stopped by on his way home to give me a kiss goodnight (on his motorcycle, because I am as lucky in love as I am drowning in everything else) and I stood out in the driveway with him talking for a few minutes.  Nate came out looking for me, because he couldn't sleep and his head hurt.  He walked over to say hello and check out SG's bike, and then he went back in the house.  I said goodnight to SG, and went in to find Nate sitting on the couch with his knees drawn up to his chest and his sweatshirt pulled over them.  I'm sorry for interrupting you, he said, grinning at me.  No! I said, I'm glad you came out to say hello.       

We went to the kitchen and he made himself some tea while I got down the tylenol.  I stood there, picking the bacon pieces out of the biscuits that were still sitting on the baking sheet, little orange hockey pucks.  Nate came over and stood at my elbow and picked his own biscuit to break apart.  He took a tiny bite.  These aren't that bad, Mom, he said.  I looked at him and said, Dude, they are AWFUL.  In fact, I think they should be called shitcuits instead of biscuits, and we both got a really nice case of the giggles and kept saying things to each other like, BACK AWAY FROM THE SHITCUITS!   

I needed those things last night, that unexpected goodnight kiss and that time spent laughing with my kid.  I know things will get better, but damn it's so hard right now.

This is for all the assholes who voted yes to prop 8.  You are petty and mean, hurtful, smallminded, selfish, and ignorant.  You lack empathy, compassion, and love.  You certainly aren't very Christlike, and you definitely should be ashamed of your hatred.

This is an example of the stupid situations I've been getting myself into lately:

Every year, I have someone from PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) come out and inspect the furnace heater thing that runs the forced air heating in our house.  (Until kinda recently, I thought it was called "four star heating" but then I thought about that some.)  I'm not entirely afraid of the heater, but it does live in a tiny closet in my hallway, sharing a wall with my daughters' room.  I just want it to be working right before I turn it on for the first time each year. 

Right now it's 53 degrees in our house and I haven't turned on the heater yet, because I hadn't, until about two minutes ago, scheduled an appointment for a service person to come and make sure it won't explode or gas us or whatever else it is capable of doing. 

I hadn't made the appointment because I'm really behind on my bill.  I am behind on my bill, because last month I had to pick a couple of bills to skip (because OMG, the daycare money killed me dead) and I chose to skip the phone company and utilities over insurance and food and the van payment.  Fun times!  Anyway, this month I am all set to catch up, BUT I have one little problem. 

That part goes like this: 

My bank will not let a customer turn a joint checking account into a one-person-only account.  You can't just remove someone, you have to close the account and open a new one.  So, okay, that part is done, but I did something stupid when I was at the bank.  I opened my mouth and told the woman helping me set up my new account that I was going to go back to my maiden name, which is, at the moment, my middle name, and I asked her if I'd then have to make ANOTHER new account, because I think that is just too much adhersion to the rules for me to take given the other multiple stresses in my life right now, kthanksverymuch.

And so when I was ordering the checks, she was all Oooooooh, I'll just put that name on your checks NOW, and then we can change the rest later, and I was all OKAY! Thanks!  And then I told my mom (she's helping me do my divorce doing my divorce stuff for me) and she was all, Well, that's nice, and also not really legal.  You can't have your name back until the divorce is done.  And, so, then I called the bank back to tell the woman, but she wasn't there and the only message that they'd take to give her was that I called.  Of course she did not call back, and then I forgot all about it until a) my box of checks came in the mail and b) I had a shitload of bills to pay.  By check. 

So, I went online and set up payments for my van and I paid half of my late phone bill (which I already did online) and I made an account so I could pay for half my utility bill (now we're back to the relevant story).  And so I scheduled a payment for half my utility bill and then I went back to the bank and got a cashier's check to pay my rent and ordered MORE checks with the acceptable name and everything was well and good and also it was warm outside, so, Yay! happy times! 

Except.  Then it got cold and rainy and I was wanting to turn on the heater, but was stopped by my fear of exploding.  So, I checked my account and saw that the PG&E payment didn't go through.  I went back to the PG&E website and saw that I still owed a shitload of money, so I tried to schedule a payment and it said, Sorry, you can't do that because your login name isn't the same as the electronic bill payment name.  And I was all, Hmmmm, I better take care of that.  But then I got overwhelmed with other things and didn't do anything and now we are caught up in time to this morning, when I woke up to a 53 degree house.  It felt like that part in the Little House on the Prairie books when Mary and Laura are sleeping in the loft and their quilts get frozen.  So, I got back onto the PG&E site and saw, to my huge relief and delight, that I now only owe them a half a shitload of money, and the balance isn't due for three more days, so I felt like I could schedule an appointment without getting hassled to pay up.  So, a week from tomorrow we will once again have our Four Star heat system keeping us warm. 

The End.

This post brought to you by too much Peet's coffee and by the new steriods my doctor put me on that make me hyper, edgy, irritable (which is not *exactly* the same as edgy), unable to sleep, several pounds heavier, acne-ridden, and hairy, but otherwise well.   

On my way home from work I stopped off to get Sophie from soccer practice and then we went to get the rest of the kids from the sitter's house.  When we got there, my kids were all crammed in the living room, watching the election coverage on tv.  Even Willow, who loves to tell people that we voted for Rocko Bama.  Only she says it Rocko!Bama! with a little jump in her voice.

I was so proud to see them sitting there watching history unfold.  We don't have cable, so tonight they've been checking in online to see what's happening.  Every time the points change, Lex yells out to me.  Now he's at the computer, saying We're controlling the Senate, and nearly the House!

I've promised celebratory waffles (with Nutella gelato that SG made for us) for tomorrow morning. Here's to a brighter future.

I was standing in the kitchen when Nathan walked up to me, all happy and excited to tell me something.

Mom!  I think I figured out something really cool.  He turned his shoulder toward me, put his hand behind him, and stuck out his shoulder blade.  See how my shoulder blade is shaped?  It's kind of triangular, kind of flat here and at an angle.  The very perfect angle for a wing to be attached.  I think that maybe humans used to have wings.  Now, you'd have to have really strong arms to fly but I think that if you moved, like this, then maybe we could fly.  Maybe we used to be able to fly.

Wow.  That IS really cool.  That's always been a dream for humans; to be able to fly.

Maybe we used to be able to, he said, maybe we almost remember it, and that's why we dream of it so much.

SG came over last weekend to carve pumpkins with the kids and me.  The six of us crowded around the table in my too-small kitchen and scooped out pumpkin guts and told stories and saved seeds for roasting.  SG brought a video from a diving trip he took to the Galápagos Islands last year, and we all sat in the dark living room, crunching warm (and sorta spicy) pumpkin seeds and checking out the marine life that SG got to see up close.  We're taking it slow, this whole hanging out with the kids thing, but they all needed to get their eyeballs on each other a couple of times at least. 

That's the Jack Skellington pumpkin, all moldy and gicky after a few days of rain.  I was cleaning up tonight and went to put all the pumpkins in the yard waste bin.  Most of them were still in good enough shape to carry, (not bare handed, tho) but Soph's was the consistency of puke on the bottom, and I had to scrape it up with a shoe box lid and an Anthropologie catalog.  Then it dripped all the way to the trash and I was barefoot and worried about getting slimed so I said a few preemptive swear words and then, then I stepped on something sharp that stuck into the part of my foot where your middle toe meets the rest of your foot.  You know that spot?  It's a little tender even when the rest of your foot is like, well, like shoe leather from walking outside barefoot all summer without sandals.

Nate was feeling down tonight about how hard it can be to get along with his siblings who so very clearly have no purpose on this planet beyond making him miserable.  Finally I just told him that he needed to grab onto the happy moments of his days and use those to carry him through.  It was dark where we were talking in the hallway, but I could see that he was looking at me skeptically.  Listen, I said to him, right now I am honestly going through some of the most challenging times I've ever been through.  The thing that keeps me going is that I've got so many happy things during the day to hang on to.  He kept looking at me.  I have times like the other night when we walked to the store for candy, and how much fun I had with you.  I have times like yesterday when we cuddled up and talked on the couch.  I have a million happy moments with you, so I don't have to let the hard stuff and the bad stuff be in charge of how I'm going to feel about my life. 

He went to bed, because it was late.  He didn't really say much.  A few minutes later I was in the kitchen, throwing yet more dishes into the sink, and he appeared at my elbow.  He wrapped his arms around my waist and put his head on my chest.  Thanks, Mom, he said, and I let out my breath and ruffled his hair and kissed the top of his head and hoped and hoped that he's able to do this.  To be content with all the brightness available to him, if only he'd remember to keep looking for it. 

Last night and almost all of today I've just had Nate and Soph with me.  My middle kids.  They get along so well when the other kids aren't here.  Even their fighting is almost friendly.  Last night we walked over to the grocery store to buy some candy (they only got 30 pieces between the two of them and they seemed a little dejected) and as we made our way down the dark sidewalk Nate said to Soph, You know what?  We're like totally getting along and being nice and I really like it.  See how much better it is when we get along?  It's really cool.  This is my favorite night, ever.

It seems to be the case that any combination of the kids that doesn't add up to four makes things around here more peaceful.  Like how I wish it could be all the time. 

I'm in a weird place; really happy but also so stressed out and worried about too many things.  I cannot keep up with my life anymore.  I'm behind on everything from bills to laundry to the kids' dental appointments.  I keep on doing what I can, but it's comical how small of a dent my near-constant efforts make. 

I'm going to take a stab at nablopomo.