fling o’ rama
Having accepted congratulations for putting flylady to the side for a time, I just spent probably two hours throwing away crap in my attick hideaway.
It’s a big lovely room. That also means it’s got room for a LOT of crap.
It has been a horror since Christmas. Which was FOUR MONTHS AGO.
I can’t remember what the argument right around Christmas time was about, probably division of housekeeping labor (the fact that there is none, but we’ve settled that reasonably happily now), but I remember crying and telling my husband- – I think I’m going to start abbreviating his name CKK (Curt Kirkwood Kinda)– anyway I remember crying and saying ‘That room is ME!’
Sure, it was theatrical. But it was also true. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Good old mommy, just throw it in her room, she’ll sort it out. Or, I am the only person in this house who can POSSIBLY take care of this. I’d better put it up in my study, on top of all the other crap nobody can possibly take care of but me. I’ll get to it some day.
Since Christmas this room has been at its absolute height of representing me, I’ll tell ya. It was full of globs of wrapping paper, shipping boxes, packing materials, gifts yet unwrapped, and just shit that the entire family figured I could somehow find a good place for. My healing table (like a massage table) had turned into a work surface/catchall/hidey hole for more shit. You could not see the floor in here.
Then, obscured behind Christmas, was all of my hoarded craft stuff. I have gotten so much better over the years, but… when it comes to crafts and paper products, I am a hoarder. I cannot, cannot cannot organize or let go of fabrics, old diaries/notebooks, items that need mending that I should really just THROW AWAY, unfinished craft projects, scrapbooking stuff… It’s a horror.
Everything I keep, you see, I have to organize.
This room represents me because it takes on everything, and everything never gets finished or processed. I just say, sure! And I take on another task, or pick up another item or commitment whether emotional or physical and figure I’ll get it sorted out somehow and then stow it in my room or in my consciousness until I can’t even think. It’s very sad.
I think of this when I’m in my office, too. I am a stickler about keeping public areas of my workplace clean– tables, dusting, bathrooms– but my office is a piled up mess. My file me pile takes up a table that is, I promise you, a square yard. I’m so busy taking care of my staff and my patrons that my office never gets clean.
I threw away and put away so much. I could just about vacuum up here now.
I have two attic storage areas. My back aches from stooping to come in and out of the mini doors to those dark, miserable little rooms. When I go in there I see all the crap I have still managed to hoard, for years and years and years through over a dozen moves.
I have thrown away so much at every stop, and still here I am. I have boxes and boxes of books, diaries, photos, fancy and expensive clothes that will never, ever, ever fit me again even if they were to be in style ever ever again, holiday decorations… to me that unwillingness to throw away symbolizes fear and denial.
If I could just throw (most of it) away, that would be the energy of a person who is ready to accept and embrace abundance. The more we accept or retain crap, the more we attract it. I believe that with all my heart.
When I shut the sweetly painted doors of my attic storage, I can try to pretend all that stuff isn’t there. But I know it is, and there is going to have to be a reckoning.
What book did I just read that in? “There will be a reckoning.” That echoes in my mind– I think it was kind of comic, but WHAT BOOK WAS IT?
Ah!! Wee Free Men. One of my girlfriends put me onto Terry Pratchett for my stepdaughter and I really liked that book meself. I need to go dig up the next one.
What do you think… is taking care of me first, even when it means that something for others will not get done, still best? We said at healing school that when we show up authentically– which includes setting boundaries and caring for ourselves first– it frees others to show up authentically. But what if I don’t get my goals met at work, or what if something doesn’t get done at home? What if?
This is at the very core of one of my greatest lifetasks, I believe. We just finished Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed in my women’s book group, and it’s such a witty, insightful book. The insight comes from the main character’s sense that she doesn’t deserve– anything. It traces back to her relationship with her dad, and impacts her dating choices as well as how she takes care of herself and creates incredible self blame and psychotic post partum depression when her baby experiences problems at birth. It is just ingrained in her that she doesn’t deserve these blessings. I think that’s the spiritual root of my miscarriage a few years ago. Somehow I didn’t deserve that blessing. I’m not saying it’s my ‘fault’– I’m saying I need somehow to get in touch with that essential worthiness that is in every single human being except, it seems, me. Somehow I’ve got to part that veil.
It’s actually a species of insane egomania… it brings everything back to oneself. If you’re religious, this conviction is a sinful denial of the nature of your loving higher power and it’s holding you back from your higher power’s ultimate plan of joy for you. If you’re not religious, well, this conviction is just– a species of insane egomania that’s holding you back from joy and growth.
But it is so easy to know intellectually that one has a problem with thinking they aren’t deserving, and another thing completely to say, oh, yes I am, and in fact if I care for myself I’ll be there for my family and friends and coworkers more than ever.
What if?
There’s no answer. It’s just something to think about.
And… I can reckon, I can shift my energy to the kind that accepts abundance, some other day. I’m just glad to be able to see the floor, and I’m hungry.
can’t resist…
Just one or two more listens to Up On The Sun. Not too much more/too much more… It is such a paradox, the sweetness of that song and the abrasive, ugly things Curt Kirkwood says that I also find so funny and honest. I am too tired to write about the trickster who appears across cultures and times and literatures and indigenous’ peoples’ belief that the trickster is important you cannot access the divine without laughter and embrace of paradox the trickster character provides. I was studying it for our April 1 programs at work… maybe later I’ll have something to say about it, but for now I can only offer the transcendant lyrics of Meat Puppets songs along side Curt Kirkwood’s assertion that life is a pile of shit and he’s here to put frosting on it.
I wish I could put the song on constant play, but I don’t know how and don’t have time to find out.
Maybe we have something to talk about…
I have six little moonflower seedlings in big pots downstairs. They’re destined for the northwest fence in my back yard, if they’ll ’make’ there. I haven’t had moonflowers in years. I hoarded some seeds many years ago, either from my mom or some very dear elderly friends, and planted them at my little shack down in the holler. But my boyfriend’s fat silver doberman dug up and ate the precious seeds and spent days after hallucinating on the couch. Who knew dogs could have drug problems? Needless to say I am tickled, tickled to finally be headed back in the moonflower direction. I have no fat silver hallucinogen-seeking doberman, and I think my dogs’ drug addictions are limited to chocolate and whatever’s fermenting in the compost pile or kitchen garbage can.
That two weeks each spring when I am actually thrilled that I live here in Alabama has stretched out for several weeks already. I got my grocery shopping done at lunch. I got the really ugly patches of my yard mowed after work, before the rain. I have a book club meeting at my house tomorrow. Shaky baby is snoring on the floor because she had such a big day today. I didn’t get to read to her, but I did yoga with her AND read to her last night, and I need the mommy time.
My Curt Kirkwood-looking husband is in California for his grandma’s funeral, so shaky baby spent the day with a wonderful friend of mine so I could work. I didn’t even have to take any time off. I’ve been giving, giving, giving lately, feeling very depleted/hard done by, and even though I paid my friend, I still feel like she pampered and nutured me– she picked up my baby at the library, brought her back to me shortly before quitting time, said so many nice things… Shaky baby appeared to have had a wonderful day– outside constantly wedged with her friends into the teeny tiny baby pool or playing at the water table, providing a bridge between the two boys, ages three and six. My friend said good things about the day, and sent me home with dinner. I’m not sure if the dozen or so insanely delicious falafel I ate were vegan, but I know the chocolate chip cookies I made this morning are, so that balances out, right?
I have two friends who really know how to mother girls. I mean, it’s not that I’m not feminine. I am, at least in many, many ways that matter. I am a feeler and a perceiver and very sensitive to others’ moods and prone to try to see both sides as best I can. I cry about really good, and sometimes even about really tacky, literary or cinematic emotional situations. I sometimes find upsetting situations hilariously absurd, and can’t stop myself from giggling, which pisses my husband off no end. I know how to love babies, at least other people’s babies, now that I’m no longer in the throes of lost sleep or soaked in breastmilk and spitup with my own any more, I really, really do know how. I have the magic touch, I swear, and babies give me so much joy. If those things aren’t feminine, I don’t know what is.
But I’m sort of, well, girly impaired. I’m a hippie. I don’t even wear makeup, although I’d like to, but I’m such a snob I’m waiting til I can afford vegan cruelty free expensive stuff. I am too tight and too busy to go look for girly clothes for work. I absolutely cannot, cannot accessorize. I wear a ton of rings, and a particular necklace that is very, very precious to me, but pearls? Scarves? Forget it.
I can’t remember the last time I purchased perfume, probably ten years ago. I finally, FINALLY got me some wonderful hippie smelling shampoo and deodorant from Lush… smelling good is so important, but I have just bypassed it for so long. I hope I don’t stink, I do strive to be hygienic… but smelling good (well, good to me, hippie good, or Clinique Aromatics good)– no brainspace for that, lately. I used to pride myself on it.
My other closest girlfriend C is a TOTAL hippie. That’s why I like her so much. She wears no makeup, never smells of anything whatsoever except maybe baby wash, wears a dorag on her head like a Swiss Miss or a Mammy, has prominent tattoos, says what she thinks, is very difficult to piss off (which isn’t to say she isn’t nurturing, sensitive or anxious, because she is as much so as any of us, perhaps more) and she is totally no nonsense, and it is so relaxing and freeing.
I have to add here that we’re all more or less hippies in my set– extended breast feeders (at least a year if not longer), cosleepers, organic food buyers, attachment parenters… so it’s just degrees of hippie, not whether we are or not. 
H, the hippie friend who kept shaky baby today, always sends her home with her hair done in such a girly way. She looks like a different child– a little girl. She said to me, do I look seven? That comes from when I told her her Easter dress looked older, and she said, you mean, seven? So now I guess seven is the pinnacle of ladyship to her.
I do her hair, too, but I either jam a stylin’ hat on her curly mop head, do two (or more) spiky pigtails that look zany rather than girly– and that truly fits a pretty substantial side of her personality– or I do the southern smock and monogram pull to the side with a fat cloth bow. I’m pretty utilitarian, a one or two trick pony. I hate it that she prefers dresses… I put her in these Prince or Adam Ant or Liberace or Nancy Griffith-esque, late eighties-early nineties 18thC or froufrou military or psychedelic clothes that seem to demand those stylin’ hats or zany spiky pony tails. My friend just pulls shaky baby’s ponytail back a different way, and she looks… just like a little girl.
My other friend K got shaky baby truly girly stuff for her birthday– a tea set, a tiny cubic zirconia and sterling butterfly necklace, little Chinese stamps for her scrapbooking. This is the same friend who remembers hostess gifts, thank you notes, all the sweet little things.
My husband and I got shaky baby an automated baseball batting practice machine.
Both these particular girlfriends put on their makeup every day and look so lovely. I just don’t know how to do that!
I finally see the effects of age in my face… or I finally admit it to myself. I see where a little facelift would come in right handy. Wouldn’t it be better to get it now, instead of waiting til later when it was real bad? I think losing 30 pounds or so has contributed to the breakdown of my facial flesh… I’m sure it wasn’t hard living or stress or actual chronological years. It sure would be nice to have my high smooth cheekbone look back. Wonder what that would cost?? Is there any truly vegan, cruelty free product that will push and plump the crepey flesh back up? How much time would I have to spend with my legs in the air (yoga! duh!) to remedy this? Probably the next hundred years. I was looking over a slideshow today of 5 hair makeup and clothing makeovers that ’took years off’ the subjects’ look. H’mmm…
One of my glamorous girlfriends is slightly older and one is slightly younger, and they both look lovely all the time. So I know, at the bottom of it, it isn’t about age at all. Now that I’m pushing forty I’m just going to have to sit at their feet and learn.
If you see it closer then the finer points will show…
Not too much more/Too much more…
what came first
The memory loss, or the Meat Puppets?
I am forgetting everything. I am forgetting tasks at work. I am forgetting to tell people things. I forgot to leave shaky baby’s car seat at her school so my friend could take her home from school tonight. What an inconvenience for my friend! I pretty much throw my hands up. I never used to forget shit. One of the banners of righteous anger I used to wave in my husband’s face is that I never forget anything. NOTHING. Kids’ lunches, paying bills, social engagements– never. Nothing. So when was someone going to nurture me, remember for me, like I was doing for them?
So, here I am. It’s another message from the universe– just ease up, for Christ’s sake, it will be okay. There’s no way you will ever be able to remember it all, don’t be so hard on yourself. Or, if you can’t bring it to mind on demand, it’s probably because it’s completely fucking unimportant compared to the bigger fish you have to fry.
I used to know every ten digit phone number for every friend and loved one, often more than one per person, and just carry those around in my brain to call up at will. That’s no longer the case, you can bet. I know my mom’s just barely, my marrige counselor’s, my husband’s cell, and the eternal numbers for my best friend in library school and her mom’s. And that is it. Oh and my phone number from very, very early childhood– 229-3397. Right? That’s useful.
And I can’t remember the last names of people I see daily.
Who cares?
I don’t know why I have to quantify myself like this. Why can’t I just have pms, which is what I have?
But I hear those ugly words parents say to their children all around the globe and their children internalize– she’d forget her head if it wasn’t screwed on. I remember the words of friends when I in my preteen/tween/teen years growing up– you’re super smart, but you just don’t have any sense!
Oy, it drives me to drink. Let me go get a glass of wine. And turn on my Meat Puppets playlist.
And before someone who doesn’t know me goes judging… don’t tell me every thinking person doesn’t have these moments, especially every thinking mother. However embarassed I might be to be where I am and being honest about it, I know I’m not alone, so I’m not that embarassed. Sorry.
Where was I?
I also remember a particular epoch in my wine-soaked early twenties. I was telling my girlfriend about this really, really, really cool guy I lived next door to for a time, Dave. I know he thought he hit the jackpot, living next door to these two cute girls who always had a party on their front porch. He was one of the coolest dudes I had ever met and he was a wonderful combination of good values, good engineering student grades, and a little dash of bad boy within reasonable limits. He played guitar a little. He had huge brown eyes with thick black lashes. He was always trying to tell me about fractals, and Foucault’s Pendulum.
And the other day I was telling my friend about Dave, Dave of over fifteen years ago, because our book group is reading Foucault’s Pendulum now. And of course I picked the penniless musician and the redneck pothead mechanic/chef over Dave and never saw him again.
Or maybe Dave had a girlfriend and wasn’t strictly into me, that could be too. He was one of the dear, faceless many who got me home when I was too messed up to get myself home, one of the graces of God– you know, the there but fors go I? Well… all he had to do was carry me down his fire escape and up to the front door of my house. Still, I could have broken my skinny drunk little neck on those stairs, right? Or fallen asleep in my yard and fallen prey to who knew what.
Anyway, I was telling my friend about Dave trying to tell me about fractals and Foucault’s Pendulum. I told her I’m pretty sure I just looked deep between his thick black lashes into his big brown eyes and… glazed over. I probably nodded slowly, and then asked for another mason jar full of wine. The nice way to put it is, I was a party girl. I loved to dress up and entertain — such as entertaining is for impoverished college students with part time jobs.
In every arena of my life, I was coasting on being dumb and pretty and drunk.
Why can’t I do that now?
Because I’m almost forty, that’s why, I weigh 145 not 120, I’m too old for the flowing mane of my college days, I don’t live with my friend Missy any more so I can’t borrow her incredibly chic– I mean CHIC– clothes and pretend I am as wonderful as she is any more. Smoking isn’t something a cute bad girl does any more, it’s just cancer in a stick. I have to take care of my family and go to work each day so I can’t drink, and even if I could I don’t have a host of cool people to get drunk with like I did back then. Outside of a college campus, or over a certain age, people who get drunk regularly are just, well, they must not have anything to lose, you know? Or, the alcoholics in my neck of the woods just aren’t as cool– or just not as good at posing– as others I have encountered over the years. I have a home and a family which, as much as I bitch, I dearly, dearly love.
I guess I could coast again. It took me a while to get into the crisis of guilt and self loathing that led to easing up on the drinking, shacking up, working hard at my job, going back to grad school and getting a life. I could probably get back there, with just a bit of effort and rationalization.
But… if I was drunk all the time, or even very often, I would not have the energy to keep up this elaborate fiction that is my life. It’s not even a very good fiction. The reality– my forgetfulness, my anxiety attacks, my disordered thought patterns and existence and shaggy yard — peers through the thin spots and around the shaggy edges… but I still have to knock myself out to try to keep it together. Nothing but Gymboree clothes for shaky baby… big house and big car payment… smart cool hippie mommy friends… giving too much at work, at home, and to friends (I just accepted a nomination to run for vice presidency of a citywide organization, can you imagine that?)… healing school, vegan, yoga… but what would I be if, at 38, I just decided to revert to dozy, party girl me? I thought that ditzy, irresponsible little cutie was the fiction, that I would grow out of her some day and become successful, responsible and happy. But what if responsible, educated, bright, manager, mentor, mother, hausfrau is the real fiction?
Bears thinking about, I guess. Putting aside the fiction is always a good idea. If one can just figure out which is which.
If you see it closer then the finer points will show…Not too much more, too much more/Not too much more, too much more.
I have some time before bed and I have no idea what I even want to do. What’s my passion? My passion is overeating and smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap merlot.
But it’s time to rescue shaky baby from an evening made up exclusively of watching Noggin– noggin is late night now, isn’t that cool? Now I can ignore her at night as well as all day!
The Meat Puppets helps a lot.
You are my daughter.
Maybe we got something to talk about…
superconnected
My other mania was making brightly colored tissue roses. I couldn’t stop for days after shaky baby’s party. I was working out the trauma of all the crafts we didn’t do at her party because I was so disorganized. But somehow shutup or I’ll stack you, accordion pleat you, wrap you with a chenille pipe cleaner, and fluff you doesn’t sound as funny as shutup or I’ll frost you.
“when you’re finished with the mop then you can stop
and look at what you’ve done the plateau’s clean,
no dirt to be seen and the work it took was fun
well the many hands began to scan around for the next
plateau some said it was greenland some said
mexico others decided it was nowhere except for
where they stood but those were all just guesses,
wouldn’t help you if they could”
Meat Puppets Plateau
I rediscovered the Meat Puppets because I was trying to explain to my husband that he looks like Curt Kirkwood when he just lets his hair get all long and raggy and goes unshaved. He really does, too. Kinda.
Staring at photos of longhaired, five o’clock shadowed Curt Kirkwood, preferably in a pink gingham dress, was my greatest comfort during a particularly uhappy moment in my romantic life twelve or so years ago. And at almost fifty he’s still pretty damn delicious. And he’s in Austin, where all good rockers go when they die (oh or Nashville, not sure which is better, Austin by a hair, though Steely Dan had been working out of Nashville for a while, and Bon Jovi’s there now right???). And lo and behold! They just put out a new album! And Curt is spewing his abrasive, probably aspbergers, nobody’s going to impose their agenda on me language– yum.
Anyway.
Top down is just not me.
For a long time I’ve been trying to get on top of my life by doing the Flylady thing– flylady.net, you know. I have tried so hard to impose easy, one-size-fits-all, brief, doable routines on my life that could be accomplished in a small amount of work each day, as opposed to either major disgusting house or major housework misery all day on a weekend day, which I just refuse to do, routines which would make it all come together with a minimum of misery, angst and resentment.
Don’t get me wrong– it has helped. A lot. I throw away a lot of crap, and then I no longer have to organize, put away, or dust it. I try to go by the handle everything once rule- go ahead and decide if it’s junk mail or important and file it, whether in the circular file or the important file, right away instead of having to touch it once when I get it out of the mail box and again weeks later when I finally get around to organizing the mail pile. I keep certain surfaces clear or easy to clear so that they can be easily and quickly disinfected often so I don’t have to get out the flamethrower because I haven’t cleaned them since last year. My house is in much better shape (at least I think it is???) than it was before Flylady.
But as a general rule, no matter how well it works, no matter how much sense it makes, top down is just not me.
There was a study in the late 70’s-early 80’s about programming styles of boys and girls using logo. In a nutshell, probably the nutshell of warped memory because I haven’t looked at the thing in twelve years, the study differentiated boys and girls like so. The boys decided what they wanted to do and then attempted to cram the reality of the programming language into the desired result– top down. The girls looked at the reality of the programming language and used that as a jumping off point to create from there– bottom up.
I see this in my life every day. Husbands relax after work (imposing desired result, regardless of reality all around them) while wives bust their asses, becoming resentful and too tired for sex, parenting, housecleaning, working full time (embracing external reality and starting at the bottom). As my brother says, men just don’t have that take on too much gene.
Managers strive to bring together reality and top down desired result, attempting to encapsulate and convey the desired outcome to staff, who relax and don’t concern themselves with the desired outcome because they aren’t paid to and they just want to deal with their own little fiefdom. My best friend’s husband keeps putting glass in the city recycle bin because it makes no sense to him that they don’t recycle glass. I don’t guess I’ll ever be a process engineer or computer programmer, but my husband can’t build a fire for shit or string a kite that will actually fly. I can, as I demonstrated beautifully on cold, clear, windy Easter night after his kite kept diving earthward and his knots popped off.
When I load the dishwasher the dishes almost always come out sparkling. My husband loads the dishwasher chock full, even though when he does that half the dishes come out dirty. He says, I refuse to be held hostage by my dishwasher.
Held hostage by your dishwasher?
How about tuned in to reality so that you can be effective, so that your kite will fly and your fire will burn?
Is my friend’s husband’s stubborn refusal to embrace the recycling reality a stupid refusal to see reality, or a thoughtful protest? I mean, it is truly wrong that our city does not recycle glass. I get that.
Some see at what is and ask why. Others see what isn’t and ask why not?
Or something.
This is a very, very basic difference. It would be unproductive to say one approach is better than the other. Even if bottom up is better (and I believe, know, that it is), never, ever the twain shall meet. I can knock my head against my husband’s reality all day long but it will only piss us both off– me because he isn’t doing it ’right’ and him because I am helping him and that pisses dudes off.
Sometimes top down is even useful. I find that at work, dealing with the folks I supervise, top down is sometimes needed or else anarchy will prevail. Anarchy isn’t such a bad thing… unless it is accompanied by people forgetting why we’re there and failing/just not bothering to serve the folks whose tax dollars pay our salaries. So, sometimes I do have to go all top down on ’em.
But at home…
It just came over me Monday when I was off and home alone.
This constant attempt to impose routine, and the consequent unhappiness because I can’t/don’t want to do it and so my life is still in disorder because I failed to tick off the items on my to do list, isn’t helping. It just isn’t.
I’m knocking my head against some basic realities.
I’m struggling to find the right simile or metaphor for this. I haven’t yet, sorry.
These realities are just not going anywhere. We have so much time and so much money. We have certain needs– food, sleep, shelter, transportation, paycheck, emotional and physical and social comforts. My husband sees things a certain way. All of these are realities I can knock my forehead against until it bleeds. I stretch and stretch, trying to manage both ends. At the front end I impose a top down strategy involving lots of proactive things like buying in bulk and routine– and still find myself stuck on the other end, out of money and out of energy, with needs unmet.
I can make running up the slide a way of life if I want to. And I have.
The endless to do list, the daily and weekly attempts to finally game the system, hit the sweet spot, make routine work for me, just wear me out and make me feel like a failure.
So it came to me Monday to try something different.
How about just being where I am and paying tender attention to that particular thing? How about setting down all the balls I am just barely managing to juggle — work, home, my own mental and physical health, parenting, marriage– and giving whatever single thing I am doing my full attention.
Instead of doing fifteen minutes in each room in the house, changing rooms each time the timer goes off, how about cleaning the kitchen for a while, as long as I want, and then going into my room and cleaning there as long as I want?
How about going to bed when I’m tired?
How about being off ADD meds which help me be supermom and just being scattered me for a while?
I gave this a shot Monday. I felt like I was in some kind of superconnected state. I say this because healing school work is the only thing I can compare it to. I was flowing through my day, and it was sweet. It made me nervous, like the first time without training wheels or water wings… but I am convinced of the essential rightness of it.
Those realities were still there… I could stop any time I wanted and try to claw my way up the flinty perpendicular bank of that flow– not enough time, not enough money, day slipping by, have to go back to work tomorrow, must be proactive, must impose routine, must go work on my budget and short and long range forecasts and plans, must accomplish this and this and this in order to create this outcome, must convince husband to save time and aggravation by finally succumbing to the reality of our dishwasher, or our dogs or child or… but why?
I might even make some progress scrambling up the bank. But all those loose ends would still be waving sweetly at me in the breeze– my failure at top down, my reality at bottom up… scrambling up the bank would probably just make my fingers bleed.
I thought, you know, this shit is all going to be there. Why don’t I just do what I want to do right now, and later I’ll probably want to do something else, and it will all get done, or it will still be there.
I didn’t check email. I didn’t budget. I didn’t create a list or calendar of things that must be done on or by certain days in order for my life to work out. I was just … there. I did some dishes. I folded some laundry. I did some writing. I printed some photos. I did some reading. I ate. I just was.
I’m not describing it very well. It really was a moment of zen, though. I haven’t had one this big since I read Haruki Murakami’s Windup Bird Chronicle. Not that I can remember anyway. It’s so funny how a truly useful paradigm shift just sneaks up on you slowly and silently.
One more listen to Plateau… who needs action when you’ve got words?
Good night!
shutup or I’ll frost you
My best friend from library school is part of a pair. She is tall, big boned, has thick, wavy red hair, and beautiful white skin with tons of freckles covering her big solid body. Her older sister is short, thin, with corkscrew curled red hair, and the matching white skin and freckles. Both are just beautiful, although I happen to prefer my friend’s bright and generous looks to her sister’s petite ladylike looks. It’s just an aesthetic thing, not a quantitative thing.
So my huge, beautiful friend used to tell her teeny weeny older sister ’shutup or I’ll sit on you!’ I thought that was sooooo funny on so many levels. Like, if I have to be this big I am going to own it, and take advantage of it. And since she was so much bigger than her teeny weeny older sister, it would have been bad news for teeny weeny, too.
So I was cleaning up the mess from my new mania tonight– lemon cutout cookies from the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook, covered in a mixture of 1/4 c each vegan butter and soymilk, 2 c flour, and a bit of almond flavoring and food color. The colors of the frosting are so deep and so beautiful, and I bought all these beautiful sanding sugars too, and the worst part is, the cookies are so damn good that I have to eat them as soon as I frost them. They are gorgeous, but nobody will ever know because I can’t stop eating them. I’ve made four batches of these cookies since Sunday or Monday. I simply can’t stop.
Tonight I frosted another batch and then finally got a grip and put it all away. I was finally able to do so without having an anxiety attack. I promised myself I can get them out again, any time I need them. I hated to throw the last of the frosting away. I almost couldn’t do it. I could make just one more batch…
So as I cleaned I picked up and brandished my little cheapie frosting squisher from the dollar rack at Tarjay (I need to break down and get a real pastry bag) and thought of all the things I could frost. I could frost my furniture, appliances, walls and floors, my dogs…
Consider yourself warned.
And shutup or you’ll be next.
pick a fire goddess. Or, it’s either fuel or spark.
I don’t understand it, but it tickles me. My husband cannot get a fire to burn.
This man can make any combustion engine run, no matter how shitty filthy broken down it is. He’s from Cali, not where you’d expect your talented self taught shade tree mechanic to come from, but his stepdad’s people was from West Virginia, so maybe that’s where he gets it. He’s saved us a fortune on cars and lawnmowers. Literally. One time he and my brother (two anti-man’s men if you ever saw any) were talking about our broken lawnmower, and he said the profound words, ‘Well, it’s either fuel or spark.’
Wow.
In our wonderful Brady Bunch house (not really, just from the same era) we have a real fireplace.
I love it so much, although I am a bit scared of it cause I don’t know when the chimney was last cleaned and everyone knows the creosote builds up and eventually catches and burns your house down. And then there’s the carbon monoxide, of course–
Anyway. We had a huge dead tree in the yard when we moved in, and as men do, a little over a year ago my husband and about eight of his friends congregated to scratch themselves and take it down with chainsaws, rope, and beer. I was too frightened to be home that day. When I did muster the courage to come home the tree was just a pile in the grass. The house and fence appeared undamaged, and there were no head wounds or severed limbs to be seen, praise Jesus.
I should have known when I caught him attempting to throw away all these long pieces of bark. It was a huge amount of huge dry pieces of bark, and (I’m guessing) he thought it was useless because it wasn’t big smooth manly logs. Sigh.
STOP DUDE! I said. Why? he said. That’s kindlin,’ man! I said. I didn’t say, what the hell are you thinking, don’t you know how to build a f*ckin’ far? Okay, maybe I did say that, but quietly, so as not to embarass him in front of his dude friends. He gave me this look like I’m some kind of idiot and we boxed up the bark and saved it for months and months. (And I was picking bits out of the f*cking lawn for months and months, too, cause apparently if a chainsaw don’t cut it men don’t pick it up, and someone had to get it up in order to mow our jungle).
He took some of the big smooth manly logs camping with him– part II of the saga which started with scratching, chainsaws, rope and beer. No burns or severed limbs from that trip, either, unless there’s something he isn’t telling me. There was plenty, plenty more wood from that old tree, and we stacked it in the carport for the winter.
Last winter it seemed like it just never was the right time. This winter, part III, we’ve used it constantly since Thanksgiving, any time it was even a bit cold.
So, since I didn’t take the hint at the time of the manly tree topplin’, I let him build the first fire of the season this year. My stepson looked on. And it wouldn’t catch. I said, let mamma help.
Next fire of the season, I heard him telling my step son– want me to show you how to build a fire?
I couldn’t resist. I do have a competitive streak, which my stepson finds reasonably funny (at least I think he does). Not just that– but he really doesn’t know what he’s doing. I can’t let my boy go down like that. I said, don’t you think I should be teaching him how to build a fire? He (husband, not stepson) flipped me off and kept working. I can’t remember how that one worked out– not very well, I don’t think.
I love that fireplace so much, I took to cleaning the ashes out each morning after and laying a proper fire, so that it would be ready when I wanted it. I had a lovely dancing fire one night when my girlfriend came over for supper. I had a lovely dancing fire the night my husband left to go out of town for a work trip. Shaky baby and I built and lit it together and curled up on the couch with blankets and watched The Secret Garden (1993) for the first of, um, like five times so far.
So one night this week shaky baby was begging, can we set the fire? Can we set the fire? (Do I have a l’il pyro on my hands?)
Baby and daddy got to work. About ten minutes later it wasn’t working out. The frustration filled the whole downstairs.
I said, do you need help? He said, f*ck you, I mean, yes, I do.
Okay, you cook, I’ll start the fire. Off he went.
Later, I tried to explain it to him. It’s either fuel or spark, I said, just like the lawnmower. Then I thought about for a minute, cause he had spark and plenty of fuel.
Oh, fuel, spark, and, you know, air? I think that’s what you’re missing.
He loads that fire place UP. It’s so chock full of wood the fire cain’t breathe. The nice biguns. And how ’bout we clean out the ashes once in a while?
My fires are a tender, patient bricolage. First there’s a loose pile of bark. No, first there’s removal of ashes. Then there’s a loose pile of bark. Then some slim branches, then some slim logs. Then the coup de grace– a few balls of newspaper under the iron thingy that holds up the firewood, the touch of a lighter, and a dancing fire emerges in a minute or two. Then and only then do I throw on the big manly logs.
My fires burn fast and hot. But at least they burn!
Tonight I got a beautiful fire going with wet wood. Yes, wet. It has rained for a day or two and the woodpile is getting low and soaked. And with a little love I got that bitch going beautifully. I loved sitting there next to it, watching it steam and slowly catch.
I said, a couple of times, to be sure he heard me, did you know I’m the fire goddess? I made sure to tell shaky baby again when I had her to myself, too.
Pick a goddess, any goddess. Let’s see, there’s the outcast Pele, with her foul temper. I see that in myself, definitely. There’s Maman Brigitte, known for her hard work and cursing and drinking, could be me, and Li the lucid middle daughter, could also be me. Good so far. 
Izpapalotl seems to be resurfacing from the collective unconscious via graphic novel and other current art.
And I’ve always thought of St Bridgid as the patron saint of hospitality, always there for folks to come and be warmed and fed and comforted, and her kindness to stray dogs is spot on, but it appears fire was her special familiar. The stories are frightening if one thinks of them occurring now… but they resonate most for me.
I don’t know. There’s something precious and nurturing in building and enjoying a lovely fire. It’s evidently not the easy common sense I thought it was. My husband’s a bit of a star, in some ways (some more playground and some more to do with grownup skills and extremely accomplished in a world that completely leaves me behind), especially lately with his new job, and it’s comforting to me to know how to do something so basic, so, well, competent.
I think I need to invent my own goddess. Lord knows I’ve done enough studying of what qualities, destructive, freeing and healing, chaotic and nurturing, I have and want in my life. And what with reading Shirley McClaine’s Out on a Limb, I’m all ready to go review all the Biblical references to aliens assisting the tribes in the form of fiery wheels and burning bushes.
It’ll have to be another post, though.
The contents of my child’s pockets
the contents of my child’s pockets
I give her new jeans, a coat, or a dress. She says, does it have pockets?
I empty her pockets as I do the laundry. Yesterday was something new– a small, pretty plastic butterfly.
At the holidays my husband laughed as he told me he saw her pull out and ring a fairy-sized metal bell.
She always stops and darts like a bird to pick up a choice bit of gravel, or an acorn– I’ve removed more of those from her pockets than I can count in the years since she’s started preschool.
For a long time, I superstitiously kept all the little stones. I thought they might somehow be a mark of some affinity we’d need to know about, that might be weakened if I took it too lightly. Or maybe we had to put them around the house because of her kinship to some feng shui aspect I haven’t had the time to look up much less nurture– earth?
Let’s not even talk about a trip to the beach.
Finally I got the courage to start throwing the bits of gravel away, though many are still lying around the house. There are about seven on the sink in the laundry room. I just looked away, this evening. I’m not strong enough to dispose of them today.
In one most touching phase, she was folding her art projects in half, and in half again, and again, until she had a bit of paper compact and hard as a rock. Look what I brought you, Mummy! Slowly she brought it out and unfolded it for me, beaming with pride, generosity, and accomplishment.
I saved every one and am overwhelmed by these wrinkled bits of paper. It took immense courage for me to begin, only recently– these were not just rocks! she made these!– to throw away those which did not represent ‘her best work–’ like she’s some sort of Mary Cassatt, whose legacy I have to guard and conserve.
These are her choices. She finds them significant and sticks them in her pocket, holds them for some reason, sometimes to give me, but more often for me to find at laundry time.
Are they little totems, small familiars? Or can I cast them like bones to gain some kind of understanding?
Even if I could, it seems like that would almost be a species of prying. You know, like witchcraft or a ouija board. Where I go, you cannot follow.
The meaning is in the very act itself– of spying and choosing, or creating, and carefully stowing–
of discovering and realizing– her dimpled, callused hands chose this. Her beautiful, dirty little fingers plucked this and saved it.
I think I’ll start a big clear glass jar. It will be like a three-dimensional scrapbook. I know it’s really detritus, but it’s treasure to her, at least for that fleeting moment. Or, what is it?
Maybe it will yield some insight for her, about who she is or was, some day. Though she’s not nervous, not like I am, and she probably won’t ever need to ask. They’re her bones to cast, if she even chooses. She may choose to live consciously, and in only this moment, a good choice.
I am supermom
I am super mom
So sue me.
Well it helps to be raising the coolest kid on this earth. But it’s really beside the point.
Here’s the icing on the cake. Or the proverbial straw, more like it.
Shaky baby loves pancakes. What have I done every morning for the past several days or maybe couple weeks?
Got up and made pancakes.
From scratch.
With non hydrogenated vegan butter and pure maple syrup, of course.
It has to be better for her than the refined sugar and flour in breakfast cereals– even the small amount in the generic cheerios we get.
Yep, cigarette smokin’, adderall-poppin’, scrapbookin’, curtain makin’, vegan cookin’, taking on to much-in’, highball swillin’, nightly story time-in’ beggin’ for a divorce, Spoon-lovin,’ world savin’ (one library book at a time), kitchen redoin’ super mom.
I don’t know how long it will last, but it’s been going on for a while and I am nearly at the top of my game.
I got up this morning shortly after four, after tossing and turning for quite a while. I made pumpkin muffins and got started on from scratch, vegan veggie burgers and sweet potato rolls to share with my girlfriend tonight. I made said pancakes. I updated my list of folks for Christmas cards– oy vey! I’m up to fifty four and counting! — and addressed and slipped photos inside several. I took the baby to school, went to Wal Mart and Dollar Tree, came home to finish our supper, and got started cleaning up the house.
WTF?
Shaky baby goes to gymnastics Monday and Wednesday, 4.50-5.45. For the past few weeks and for the next couple weeks she also has swimming lessons Tuesday-Thursday at 5.50. I cart her to school at 8.15 and go off to work, to return home about 6.20 exhausted. I have two wonderful days off– Sunday and Monday, today being Monday– and those go so quickly and I feel so bitter when they are over. I spent the luxurious days off of Thanksgiving week– working my ass off.
We got our kitchen mostly painted… I have one more set of curtains to make. I cooked a big vegan Thanksgiving dinner. We watched Santa Clause (can you believe Tim Allen’s a big cokehead? I’m in total denial. but I should have known.) and made some family portraits on our front porch that will do for Christmas cards. I took the kids to get scrapbooking supplies and let them print some photos on my computer. I’ve started my Christmas cards and I’ve started ordering gifts and I’m providing the table decorations, flatware and plates for my mom’s group Christmas party. I work constantly on the mountains of laundry and dog hair bunnies and dishes.
And that’s just the stuff I remember.
My husband and I have been going round and round. You know what’s sad? A housekeeper visit a couple times a month would eliminate about 85% of my gripe with him. Or, if he doesn’t want to pay a housekeeper he can pay me. He says no damn way will he pay me.
I called my (divorced, sadly) brother almost in tears to bitch about the situation, and one of the pithy things he said– he’s a man of few words, my bro, but they’re good words– is that men just don’t have that problem with taking on too much.
It was like the clouds opened to reveal the golden rays of sun.
Well at the time it wasn’t really like that. But as I’ve thought on it… it’s become kinda like that.
My husband is so much better than most husbands I know. That’s the other sad part. He brings shaky baby home from school most nights and there is never, ever a question whether I will have child care so that I can go do something important to me, baby free. He takes shaky baby to gymnastics and swimming lessons three times a week– I only take her once. (After five years of bitching and complaining on my part) he alternates weeks with me, cooking and doing dishes or getting shaky baby her bath and reading her a story and putting her to bed. He is patient and kind to her almost without exception. He’s a workhorse. When he wants to, he will work til he drops to assist me with something– like that damn kitchen, or the Halloween party we had a few weeks ago.
It isn’t that he isn’t working. He may be working somewhat less than I am, but he works.
I have *got* to start taking care of myself first.
I clean, cook, clean some more, fold, craft, cook, drive here, drive there, craft some more… I put everything outside of myself, first.
My attic office is a shambles. My bedroom is piled with laundry. I never take long warm baths any more.
Our kitchen looks damn good though.
It’s so clear, what’s happening here. I have got to put myself first each day. I can’t spend *more* hours on selfish pursuits than I do on family pursuits– well I guess I could but I won’t. But when I run out of hours at the end of the day, if something is going to be left undone, it had better not be my personal, emotional and spiritual work.
I can take care of myself– healing work, journaling, organizing and planning, bath and high quality paperback fiction, creating a comfort zone in my bedroom and office– before I set out to be supermom and the best damn library director, friend, and all round person *ever.*
I don’t know why I do this. And I thought I was well beyond the problem of being unable to say no. But it goes far deeper than I ever imagined. My inner house is a terrible mess, while I struggle to keep up appearances, do the right thing, make the world a better place, and buy the affection and admiration of the people I care about– and the people I don’t care about, too.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Doesn’t it suck to realize that one’s problems with someone else really do start within oneself? Sigh.
Okay gotta go finish those curtains, fold three loads of laundry, clean the bathroom, and veganize my favorite petits-fours cake.
Hahahahaha!
I really am going to do those things. But first I’ll clean my little office some, make it more of a haven of comfort and sweetness and less of a dumping ground for the ruins of my attempts to keep up appearances and make the world a better place at my own expense. I’ll get a nice warm bath today too.
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Currently listening : Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga By Spoon Release date: 10 July, 2007 |
today
Today’s myspace post:
just today
Current mood: 
calm
Going today up to way in the country to see the dear friend who kept shaky baby back after maternity leave ended but she was too young to go to Montessori school. She doesn’t drive these days, but even so, it’s a lot to ask her to be the one to always drive down here.
She’s such a neat person. Among many other things, like me, she abruptly left a youth of recreational drug use (although for me it was pretty strictly alcohol and cigarettes only, and she grew up a lot earlier than I did) to become a mother. She is a wonderful caring hippie mommy. She trusts her instincts and is suspicious of The Man. She is much stronger about parenting in a way she believes in… at some cost to herself, I might add. I am far too selfish and unsure of myself to be as strong as she is.
She cloth diapered. For the first few years I knew her every time I came to her house there were stacks and stacks of adorable clean cloth diapers. She cooked healthy home made foods instead of giving her kids processed foods. She breastfed for a long time. She had her second baby at home, pretty much by herself before the midwives showed up. She is staying home with her children in spite of her family’s limited income. Like me she still has that punk edge, and issues aplenty, but her babies come first.
This girl and her sister– well they are ten years and more younger than I am, but they remind me of my best friend in high school. The day I met each of them I just got this good feeling from them. There’s just that deep, real, been there done that honesty and sense of humor about them that I would like to associate with country people… but I have never met anyone like these girls.
Their backgrounds are different yet similar… trailers yes, but my best friend in high school had wonderful loving parents who stayed together and these girls had hard, harsh broken home childhood– and came out just as hard headed, beautiful and determined, more so really than my dear friend from high school. You know how redneck girls are often so much better groomed– better haircuts and makeup– than city girls? None of them went to college. They are all three very smart, big fish in small ponds who breezed through high school without having to study, but without bothering to worry about college. They all have horse sense and an ability to see through the bullshit, their own bullshit, and others’, and call it like they see it, that sometimes just has me rolling with laughter. They are nice girls, but they don’t let being nice keep them from seeing and telling the truth.
I can’t describe it. There are some people who just remind you of the good parts of your childhood in such a way that you can truly be yourself, whether you’re seventeen or thirty seven, as if those twenty years never passed.
Twenty years… I’ve been thinking a lot about that number, as my reunion is coming up this summer. It hardly seems possible. I am still just as frivolous, just as cool, and almost as stupid, as I was when I was seventeen. I hit a turning point about thirty, and another as my baby began to grow and I slowly became a mother. But inside… my essence is pretty much the same. I’m a party girl. I am deeply introverted and shy– but I need my friends and community. My imagination paints huge beautiful emotional and visual pictures in my head, and after all these years I still can’t manage to write them down. I love, love, love to work, like in the garden or cooking or quilting or on the house, but I fucking hate doing the grind of someone else’s routine if I can’t see the bigger picture.
I don’t know how it can be that this time has gone by. Time goes faster and faster, and while life doesn’t necessarily get easier– okay, I must admit I prefer my problems now to the problems I had in my twenties– not easier, but… I dunno. Anyway, life becomes more and more precious every day.
I have some deeper and darker thoughts regarding just how precious life is but I’ll have to save them for another day. I want to tote the baby quilt up there
to work on while the kids play and we talk. I want to get some garbage out of the house because it’s trash day and it’s good feng shui to keep this stuff moving all the time. I wanted to take some vegan cupcakes up there too but I’m starting to run out of time.
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Currently listening : Bareback By Hank Dogs Release date: By 02 February, 1999 |
take it up a notch with christmas feng shui
Sounds great, huh? And it really is.
Christmas is the chance for so much hope– good food, good gifts, good friends, good time off, good decorating.
So how ’bout we ratchet up the comfort-and- joy-or-else with feng shui?
Weeeell, remember my Southern Living/Nightmare Before Christmas aesthetic?
As it turns out, I learned too late, dried flowers are one of the top ten ways to bring bad vibes into your house. So, I have to throw away those bunches of dried red roses hanging upside down from the ceiling of my back porch (and looking disturbingly like dead game birds?) . The black glass christmas balls may not be that good either. Sigh.
And, the elements that comprise a Christmas tree need to be either smack dab in the center of a home, or in the Southeast corner.
Well… the Southeast corner is our laundry room.
If we could put it in the Southeast corner of our living room, another option, that would be fabulous… but it would not be visible from the street. And if you can’t let your Christmas tree sparkle sweetly in your front window for all to see, what’s the point?
[Of course then my husband fusses because I open the vertical shades and he's always hanging out in his boxer briefs and wifebeaters-- spoilsport.]
And the colors we need in that front part of the house– those pertaining to water– well dammit, that just wasn’t my color scheme for this year! Blue and silver was 2002!
And… I know all this clutter in snowdrifts around the house isn’t good for the chi, either. I am *this* close to having my daughters’ curtains finished. Once that’s done, I can clear a path, in anticipation of really enjoying decorating, cooking, scrapbooking, whatever else with my family this weekend. I could even go finish them this minute but I am sooo tired. I already worked on them for about two hours tonight. It’s time to get ready for sleepies.
