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October 29, 2004 Don't know why that particular passage moved me today. I think it's likely because I feel so doggoned good when I really have no reason to. I didn't sleep well at all last night. I've been sleeping on the couch because the cold has had be loud and restless at night and I don't want to keep Eric awake. I don't sleep well outside of my bed, especially not on the couch. It got really cold in the night and I couldn't get awake enough to get off the couch, must less start a fire in the wood stove. (Plus that would entail going out into the dead ass dark to fetch wood and past around 10pm or so, the monsters come out and I ain' having none of that) So I was cold and restless and uncomfortable and this morning, I feel great. I told Sherry I thought the wood stove was emitting some happy fumes or something. She said I should come up with some kind of pottery or something that you sit on your wood stove, have it heat up and release happy fumes. I love Sherry. So basically, there's no real reason for me to feel wonderful, but I am absolutely on fire. I feel energetic and healthy and sharp and motivated and all kinds of weird things one should not feel in the same week that they couldn't get off the couch. I imagine that the cold has subsided and the overall catching-up-on-sleep that has happened while I was sick has taken hold, despite last night's overall wretchedness. I feel all dancy and bouncy and exercisey (which will commence shortly). In that light, I did actually *gulp* step on the scale today for the first time in months and THAT should have depressed me, but nope! I also, while looking for Nathan's costume today, found the cords for the freakin Sega Genesis (why I hadn't looked in the costume box for the Sega Genesis cords, I have no clue - duh!). The real bummer is that just yesterday I bought a stupid Genesis off of e-bay for $16 because the kids were sad they couldn't play their games. Now I'm going to be multi-Genesised. Next expenditure I'm looking for is the new Dr Phil book, Family First. I've been enjoying the episodes he's aired this season that reference the book and I'd kind of like to fine tune my parenting a bit. I'm a really, really good parent and I think my kids are the best evidence. I'm grateful to have a husband who could get on board with my idea that you don't have to hit kids to have good kids. A few years of employing that philosophy proves it really does work and you can raise some really great kids without whacking them. I still need to get better with the consistency and perfecting my hard ass look. As some of you recall, I only recently figured out what happens when I count to three and get to three and after being a mom for nearly 27 years, I'm still perfecting the art. I think Phil might have some ideas, although he and I often part ways on the parenting ideal. For instance, I'm not completely sold on his premise that kids join OUR lives and should adapt. I think any time you have a child, whether it's your first or your sixth, life changes and you adapt to the integration of a new person in your life. There are times when we have to put our kids first, sometimes to our own detriment, but that's part of being a parent. I'm also deeply offended (have ranted on this before) about his admission (proudly, in fact) that when Robin wanted children, he made her promise that she wouldn't change from the vibrant, slender, active person she was. How can person ever promise that an experience as profound as pregnancy, birth and motherhood would not change you? It would be bizarre if it didn't change you. I can't imagine something so selfish as promising someone you will never change. I think when we join our lives with someone else, we should promise we WILL change and grow and get better and better every day. Silly Phil. The runner surely did stumble on that one. But I still want the book. So now I'm forward thinking about Christmas. Can't do the Fingerhut, Swiss Colony, etc chargey thing this year. I pretty much burned that bridge last year. I'm going to have to get completely inventive and creative and wily and accountanty and create a perfect Christmas by the skin of my teeth and my ass. (Not that my children would be excited about things made from my teeth and ass skin... metaphorically speaking only). Without any real thrift stores to speak of here, I think I'm going to have to go mad on e-bay, haunt it mercilessly and find the real bargains. I have seen so many miracles in my life, partly because I expect and watch for them and pay attention, even to the small ones. That makes life so much more fun and, well, miraculous. Partly it's because once you start doing that, the miracles seem to feel more welcome and show up a lot more, so it's like a miracle partnership where you look for them more and they show up more. :) It's miracle symbiosis. Miracle mutualism. Miracle synergy. I love it. I'm in the zone and I'm going to manifest the car payments and Delena's birthday and Christmas like mad. :) I feel good and nothing bad is allowed to happen when I feel this good. It's all gonna flooooooow like the mighty rivah. Speaking of which, I need to go be a mighty rivah flowing on the treadmill. :) Have a GREAT Halloween weekend (Katrina's FAVORITE time of the year EVEN with wretched snow)!! I'm leaving you with a fun conversation Sherry Mercurio and I had today. Just a little piece of my wonderful world, filled with wonderful people: Love,
Ha! I spent the whole day thinking it was the 26th. Disorientation is such a fun rush sometimes. I'm on the other side of being sick now. They say it's three days coming, three days here and three days going. I am on the first of three days going, so I feel better, but still crappy. My ears are still ringing, the cough is coming and I'm sniffly, but at least the fevers are gone, my sinuses don't hurt and I am able to ambulate without running into things. The irony of it all is that on Sunday, Eric voiced his extreme displeasure over the house (among other things) and I vowed I'd really impress him with it this week. I'd been cleaning like mad the week before and thought I was doing OK, but evidently, I was mistaken. I was going to amp it up even more this week, but woke up dog sick on Monday morning and I'm only now starting to get even part way better, so of course, nothing got done. He finally cleaned up a bit last night, so it's not heinous. I have been trying to at least not let it get worse than it was after he cleaned. We normally take kids trick-or-treating. Our neighborhood in Sacramento was a wonderland at Halloween and the kids always got a load of candy and had so much fun. The houses are so remote and far apart up here that it's not really practical to trick or treat. I don't really want to drive the kids all the way to Sacramento to our old neighborhood (an hour and a half one way), so I guess we'll do the school fall festival on Saturday, go get pizza with the kids after and let them kill some quarters on the arcade, then go to the community costume party (The Committee strikes again, some one that does Hamburger Night in the Summer) on Sunday. That should, with any luck, give them a good Halloween time. After the kids get back, Eric and I will have our End the Harvest ritual. We did ritual for the group this past Saturday and will do ours on the actual day itself. I'd love to get a minute to go visit the graveyard again on the actual day. The snow has mostly melted in the rain showers that have managed to stay over the freezing point. It's still really cold outside and I haven't been able to get the fire lit today, so we've had to resort to the electric heat. I think the humidity has settled into the wood over nearly a week of rain and snow. Eric is getting more wood this weekend to build up for the Winter. The kids have been golden since I've been sick. I've never seen them so extremely well behaved. I've spent the past two days sleeping on the couch and today have managed to be up and around a bit. I was really surprised at how independent and mellow they were. It was an amazing blessing, especially since every day I've been sick, Eric has had to be gone from the wee hours until very late, so mothering time has been at full tilt for about 15-17 hours a day. If they hadn't been so wonderful, I'd definitely be destroyed by now. I've written about 5-6 nonsoapies in my head that will manifest here over the next week or so. Now that I'm getting well, I look forward to getting my house and my act back together again. The good news is that even though I still feel very weak, I feel as though I've gotten rested up for the first time in a long time. At Halloween, our image of The Goddess goes from The Diva (my favorite) to The Crone. I have felt her coming in really strong this year. Usually, she and the Maiden are the faces of the Goddess that I identify with the least, but she's been very prominent this year. I think it's because I've aged so much more than a year this year. As life is settling down after getting the house finalized and now getting a vehicle so I don't have to worry about Eric driving in the snow and ice, I feel the stress of the past four years really catching up to me. I've been running for so long that now that I've stopped, I can feel how much my legs are aching and my heart is pounding. The adrenalin kept me going long after I should have fallen down and now I'm feeling it all at once. Eric has been assured that this job should last for a long while. He has other options if it doesn't. We make enough money to get by and have the necessities. Christmas and such will be close, but I think we'll be able to pull something off. Interestingly enough, our neighbor just had his house appraised and found that in the past year, he'd accumulated over $85,000 in equity alone. The housing market here is unreal. Our house closed on May 17th, so next summer, we should be able to refinance, lower our mortgage payments, get a better interest rate and pull out some equity to pay off our bills. That means I only have to get us through another 7-8 months on living really close to the bone. In between, we should have a decent tax return to get us over the hump. So yeah, for now I'm just trying to catch my breath and recover from the madness. In the interest of full disclosure (to change the subject), it is essential that I introduce my faithful, beloved readers to what shall, from this day forward, be referred to as "The New Hotness." All hail his majesty, Mr Sam Roberts:
Yeah buddy. Sam could really make me want to get on a treadmill for about 2 months straight (with a couple of bathroom breaks) and hotten up myself. LORD have mercy. My slacker daughter-in-law, Sandra, was telling me how gorgeous he was, but she earns her slacker title for not telling me to sit the fuck down before watching him perform on The Tonight Show. I actually made little rodent squeaking noises. She tried, but wow, I'm old and you kind of have to overprep me for such things. My son, who had the courtesy to go out and glean this wonderful daughter-in-law for me, was actually in a bar in Victoria and looked up to find The New Hotness standing right beside him. They engaged in conversation even. Rrrooowwwl. For those unfamiliar with The New Hotness (as was I until being enlightened by The Family North), Sam Roberts is a wonderful rock singer from Canada who sounds for all the world like a very, very cool John Lennon. He's just absolutely breath taking, both in talent and in smoldering good looks. Looking at someone like him renews my ever lagging (in my impending Cronedom) faith in humanity. You know. That's it. That's part of the problem. (Not The New Hotness. If ever there was something that was the solution and absolutely not the problem, it's The New Hotness) I always figured as I got older, my features would soften instead of harden. I'd be more patient with my fellow man. I'd feel the oneness with all life and all humanity. I'd be more open, more forgiving, more tolerant, more... nice. As I've blown past 43 (which I honestly didn't realize I was doing. Until I did some math, I really thought I was turning 42 this past September), I have come to realize that the opposite is actually true. More and more, I see people and think, "You know, I really don't WANT to be one with dat guy. I don't even want to be one of a freakin crowd with dat guy." I sigh a lot more than I used to. I watch more and speak less. I have no time for bullshit any more. When people are pulling up their big dramas and ALWAYS and FOREVER are pissed at someone, I tend to back away quickly. It makes me tired to be around people who are in a constant state of drama. Everyone encounters hard times, but there are people who seriously get off on living amongst turmoil and anger and blame, who always need some kind of antagonist to feel alive. That's the stuff that makes me weary to be around. I don't trust people to be fun. Don't trust people to be nice. Don't trust people to care about how their actions affect others. I also don't give people very many chances to push past my boundaries once I've made them clearly visible. When I was young, I gave people a million chances to redeem themselves and fully believed that if I could only open my heart more, I could work through the problems inherent in different friendships. I don't even know for sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way, I recognized that I was the one doing most of the giving and understanding and accommodating and that if I backed off, there would be others who would be a better fit as a friend for the other person. I don't expect people to psychically intuit how I want to be treated. That's my responsibility to make clear if and when it becomes an issue. Once I've laid it out a couple of times, if the other person just keeps on pressing, then it's time to part ways. My time on earth is too short to keep constantly having to defend myself. I want to be around people who don't need the rush of drama and anger and conflict to feel alive. I enjoy people who do not require an external stimulus like a "cause" or an enemy or a drama to feel alive. I like peaceful people who want to sit and share good talk and good laughs and deep thoughts and who are eager to admit that they are still learning, still growing, still processing and still evolving, but who are comfortable in their own skin and excited about just being in the world and experiencing all it has to offer. Overly negative people, doom and gloom and pessimism mongers and those who are moving through life fearful and afraid make me feel edgy. It's not that I think they know something I don't know or that I don't understand how people can live in such a place. I do. I've been there. It's more that I don't agree that the world is a horrible place and negative people tend to be so goddamned intense and persistent about their negativism. It's pervasive and invasive and seems to eat the air out of the room and the joy out of life. I don't mind people who are throwing their hands up in the air and saying, "I don't know WHAT the fuck to do about this!!" and who are willing to learn and work and open their minds and figure stuff out. Those people actually excite me because we learn together. I'm so excited to be alive at this particular time. I wouldn't want to live ANYwhere in the past. I love now. I love living in the United States and in California. I love my world. Hearing people constantly bitch about any of those things gets old fast. Being around people who need to tease and poke at people to the point that you don't even feel safe around them any more is a drag. I don't necessarily fault the people who do all the things I talked about here. Hey, to each his own. A friend once told us that we all have our inner machinery and there is something in particular that will best "feed" that machine. For some, it's music, for some it's art, for some it's writing. For some people, it's working on cars or cooking. For others, it's the next dramatic explosion or the next person who wrongs them in some way, real or imagined. It's what inspires them, motivates them, excites them and "feeds" them. It's their deal. I'm just saying that as I've gotten older, I've gotten much, much more in tune with what *is* my deal and those things are just not compatible. I want to live in a world of love, of peace, of joy, of hope, of laughter and in times of hardship, of faith and trust and joyful perseverance. That doesn't mean I don't have a soft shoulder for the people in my life when they need to cry and it doesn't mean I don't have my times of needing to bitch or rant or scream at the sky. It just means that I don't want it as a way of life... a nightmare carousel that just keeps on going and going, playing ugly calliope music and making you sick to your stomach. OK, the cold meds are wearing off, so I should go refill and get some rest. I'll be around, probably on Tuesday or so, before if possible. Love, I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning to sail my ship. -Louisa May Alcott
October 26, 2004 This will be a very short update. I am immersed in worst case scenario head cold. Was down for most of yesterday and I am getting ready to go back to bed today. My house is destroyed and Eric is getting frustrated as hell with me being sick and unable to do anything. He did manage to get a loan for a 2003 Jeep Liberty, which he picks up today. He would have gotten it last night, but it was after hours for our insurance company and he could not get a binder, so the dealership would not let him take ownership. Can we afford it? No, we cannot. Can we afford not to? No, we cannot. Here's why: http://www.eyeonsoaps.com/snow.htm As I was getting Delena ready for school this morning, the phone rang and it was the school transportation department informing me that because of the snow, buses would not be running in our area and I'd have to take her to a "main bus stop," the closest of which is about 3/4 of a mile away. This was news to me since when I went to bed at 11pm last night, the sky was clear and stars were shining. Sure enough, we were covered. Eric finally managed to get out of the driveway about an hour and a half after he was supposed to leave. We'd heard the snows hit the first part of November, end of October, so I guess it was right on schedule. I was not about to walk the kids 3/4 of a mile in the snow (it's hard enough in good weather since it's all up a huge hill), so I have all kids home today. Delena is sleeping and the boys are playing quietly. They've been incredibly good since I've been sick. That is a miracle in and of itself and I'm very, very grateful. I had to go out this morning, get on a step stool and use the broom to knock a ton of snow off of the satellite dish so the signal could get through. Of course, it all fell on me, down my shirt and on my head. The sun is sort of out, but it's still snowing a bit. The roads have been plowed, so they are fairly clear, but there are not many cars going by. Eric brought in some wood for me for the day (under duress) before he left and the house is starting to heat up. I absolutely have to pull up some energy to get this house clean. I feel like complete dog mess, but it's got to be done. If Eric has to do it, he's going to be crabby about it and that will be hard for the kids after they've been so incredibly good. For that reason, I'm going to go to bed for a while and try to get some healing going on. With some good rest and more soup in me, I might be able to pull it off a little at a time. He'll be late getting back since he's picking up the jeep, so I'll have time. Surely I can get better in a few hours and get some things done. Now is a day when I could beg a friend to come in and just take care of everything while I sleep. The House Faeries would be so welcome today. Off to bed. If I'm not around tomorrow, it's because I'm still feeling crappy. Love, |
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