What Comes From Too Much Freedom May 24, 2008

Hooray for long weekends!

And in my case a long weekend is a TWO day weekend. In four years at my current job - policy of working “every other holiday” notwithstanding - I have never ever had Memorial Day off.

And I don’t care. Because I am NOT picking up extra hours this weekend, and I have TWO whole days off in a row for the first time in over a month!

I came home last night, fended off friends’ text messages to go out with them, welcomed home my baby boy from college, and sat down at the computer and carved up my paycheck into my bills. And with what’s left over I ordered four brand spanking new windows from my favorite supplier. They’re no frills, but they’re perfect for what I need - their prices are good and - even better - their customer service is terrific!

So I sit here on a cloudy, windy day-off morning wondering: what to do? What to do?

I can’t go shopping. Last night’s online ordering spree took care of that.

Right now I’m in the “not so fun and oh so expensive” part of re-feathering my nest. The “I have to get the walls, windows, and floors sound before I can put anything pretty inside” part.

So all the drooling over design websites is just mental gymnastics - kind of like Avi and porn. Hehehehehehe. The budget, she is shot for another 2-1/2 weeks. Turn on HGTV.

I have been invited here and there, but man, I find it harder and harder to leave my little nest, after being away from it so much and so long.

I love Home. Even as shabby and oddly dysfunctional as it is - and I mean that in a structural sense - for once.

I rescued a homemade bird feeder from the neighbor who made it and was going to throw it away because “it’s summer now and the birds can fend for themselves”. Silly man. Like winter won’t come again.

And that sets me to daydreaming about the “losethelawn” area I envision to the east side of my home - a narrow little strip between my house and the neighbors. I’m not a bland expanse of green grass type person. I see winding walkways and flowers and plants selected for their color and height and texture and fragrance.

I see odd little reclaimed treasures tucked here and there - like this homemade bird feeder that uses a license plate bent as the roof. I want to mount it on a pole and sit by the window and watch the little ones come and breakfast while I do.

I want to curl up on my second hand couch, bare feet tucked under me. When you’re on your feet working as much as I am, the shoes come off when the time clock clicks, not to appear again until it’s time to punch in again. Flip flops, sandals, and bare feet are the order of the day.

I want to take my puppies “bye bye”, even if it’s just a run to the convenience store for cigarettes and a fountain pop. “Home”, in my head, extends to my big old cruiser.

I don’t want to “give” to anyone today - not after several days of not feeling well and a month of giving the best I can manage at work.

I want to cook something. I want to nap. I want to go to the library and get new books. I wonder if libraries have shortened hours for Memorial Day?

I wonder if this post is just mindless rambling - and then I wonder if, if so, what the hell is wrong with that?

Freaking Flu… May 23, 2008

I never get sick.

Honestly, I am smug with the people who “always” have something wrong with them, heartless ass that I am.

And then, Wednesday night, I lay in my bed whimpering like an injured kitty. The sweats, followed by the chills, intermingled with the kind of body aches to my legs and back that were reminiscent of the “growing pains” I had as a kid. The nagging headache for three days - I never get headaches!

Of course I worked Thursday anyway. I can’t afford to take time off unpaid (and no, we don’t get paid sick leave until the second day of illness) and it’s damn near impossible to find my own replacement. Another policy - hazard of the industry. Nurses dare not get sick themselves.

And I was pissy.

I was mainly pissy about my house. This is the first time in my life when I have actually had the time and emotional space to feel creative stirrings about my space.

Up until this point, raising kids, it’s always been just “Do you have a bed? A dresser? Cool. C’mon - we’re late for practice!” Or work, or whatever.

But now I haunt the sites about small space stylish living. For me to even use the term “stylish living” is a new luxury for me.

To have the time to flesh out my thoughts about why small space living is important to me from a philosophical point of view, low impact, leaving a small footprint, anti-McMansion thinking. To develop my ideas about why reclaimed furniture and building materials matter to me. Not just because they’re cheaper.

And I can’t really do anything with all my cool ideas except file them away somewhere in that disorganized mess we’ll call Nanna’s brain.

Because right now, all I can do is focus on the structural necessitites. Shoring up the floors. And a lightweight remedy for the bare insulation in some of my walls. Thw windows that still need to be replaced.

One non-rock-star paycheck at a time. With what’s left after the regular bills are paid. And trying to avoid the paid professionals like the plague, God love ‘em.

But I got some very very good advice yesterday from my beautiful and wise friend Joyce, who told me, when the feelings are swirling about like a little dust storm, to just sit. Wait it out. Don’t act on them, don’t speak based on them. Just wait. Wait until that feeling of calm and peace comes again. As it will.

And inasmuch as it is possible in the middle of said storm, to do what I can to get back to that feeling of peace. Whether that means actually forcing myself to walk and talk and move more slowly - which is actually a very good tool to use at work when I can’t just jump in the car, grab my puppies, and head off to the lake in the middle of my shift.

The older I get, the more vital to me that feeling of “peace” is - whatever that means to anyone else. Not accomplishment and achievement, not the feeling of being “loved” (because I already know I’m loved). Peace - the lack of chaos and drama. Serenity. A deep breath and a cup of coffee.

Those are the feelings I value most right now in my life.

That and sleeping off this damn bug, whatever it is.

I really don’t have time for that crap.

Ode to the Inner Bitch May 19, 2008

I have said the same sentence so many times to my baby. “Honey - release your inner bitch.” If you’ve read or met Britt at all, you know she has some very strong and well thought out opinions on a lot of things.

But like her mother before her who taught her - and like a lot of women I know - there are times we feel justified in expressing those strong opinions - strongly. And times when we sit back and mewl like kittens, all in the name of “being nice”.

“Release your inner bitch.” I became so enamored of phrase I coined that I started using it with other women I talk to. Mothers whose teenage kids talk to them with disrespect. Wives and girlfriends whose men do something we wouldn’t tolerate in a girlfriend.

And I am all about live-and-let-live. And compassion, and everybody has a reality from their own perspective. And listening. And letting it roll off my back. I’m a hippie, remember?

But there are times, damn it, when it’s time to draw the line in the sand, bare one’s teeth, and dare some stupid ass to cross it.

Everybody has their own triggers.

I have two.

One is to insinuate, or say outright, that I lie. Because I don’t. I think it’s childish - what are you going to do if you don’t like my truth? Spank me? Ground me?

I also don’t have the attention span to lie because then I would have to remember what story I told you, in order to perpetuate it.

And foremost, I hate having to try to have any kind of a relationship with someone who lies, because I’m building my half of the sand castle leaning against yours - and if you lie, there is no support on your side for the castle - er- relationship.

I taught my kids when they were little that the two worst things they could do in the world were to lie and be mean to people. All three of them, plus various other kids who I “mothered” over the years” can repeat that phrase by rote.

So don’t fucking ever say to me that I lie. Or sunny sweet Nanna will turn into rabid nasty Nanna with a vocabulary arsenal that will cut you to shreds.

The inner bitch is released.

That happened to me this weekend. Someone knowing my aversion to lying, in an attempt to get my goat, implied that I was a liar. And the needle buried itself in the red zone in less than a second.

I let loose and said all (no, most) of the things I’ve always bit my tongue from saying before because, typically, women have brakes on their tongues. You can fight and argue and say hurtful things but there are always those things that are never brought up. The deepest insecurities. The most putrid wounds.

But damn it, you asked for it.

And afterward I felt a little ashamed of myself because I really do try to be a “good person”.

And then today I thought to myself, nope.

There are times when you have to let people know that here is the boundary. You may trespass this close and no farther. Because if you do, I will fuck up your world. I will remind you that I took the time to get to know you, and I know where your skeletons are buried.

My number two trigger is to threaten me. Not so much with bodily harm because, seriously, I’ve had my ass beat before, and lived through it. At this point in my life, someone who raises a hand to me is going to have a scrap on their hands, because I’m not at all afraid.

But don’t ever threaten my ability to take care of myself, to support myself. I’m paycheck to paycheck as it is, and will be for a couple more years yet (or longer, if I join the cultural trend), and I lay awake sometimes at night trying to figure out how to gracefully make it to payday.

So don’t freaking ever threaten my income.

I will come barrelling out the door with the zeal of every peasant woman who ever brandished a broom to protect her home.

Except that my broom is my mouth - and it has spikes on it.

Today, instead of having that anger hangover that I dreaded, I feel finally more centered. As if I took hold of the leash someone had been yanking me around with and yanked it back into my own two little hands.

This is my life. My best advice to anyone who has a problem with my life is to stay the hell out of it. Find your Zen elsewhere, if I’m so damn upsetting. This is my dance space, and yours is way the hell over there.

I don’t get headaches, baby. I give them.

I’m almost 48 years old, and I don’t need another parent figure. I don’t need a moral compass. I don’t need teenage relationship drama.

What I need - and what I can create for my own self, thank you very much - is peaceful surroundings splashed with beauty.

I need stimulating conversation about things that matter to me - my kids and their kids, the environment, the upcoming election, the sad decline of Christianity into the Pharisaic mentality that my Lord died to free me from.

Stuff like that.

You can clutter my life with whining and moaning and a list of “should’s” for me for so long. But when you cross that line, look out.

I will release my inner bitch.

And I promise you. You will come away remembering her.

My Sunday Advice - Do It Anyway May 18, 2008

Actually, this makes me laugh. I am the least qualified person I know to offer anyone advice - and typically people don’t want anyone else’s “advice”.

But I had to come up with something for a headline, right?

Don’t Wait Until _____ To Be Happy. We can all fill in the blanks with any number of things - which would be a fascinating survey in itself.

When we get these bills paid off. I do that one myself. In 2-1/2 years my financial situation will look a lot different than it does now. Unless I get hit by a feed truck and die in the meantime.

When I lose ____ pounds. This one breaks my heart. I’ve never met a woman who doesn’t chain herself to some stump with this one.

When the kids are grown. Or in kindergarten. Or when summer gets here. Or when school starts up again.

When my kitchen is “done”, I will have friends over. Unless, as I said, I die first. Which could happen. Do it anyway. If your friends don’t want to come into a screwed up kitchen, get new friends. Furnish your kitchen first with warmth and memories. The rest will follow.

When I’m done with my degree, then I can start doing stuff I want. Except - uh - you won’t. Because then you’ll be working at your first big job and exhausted and buying stuff you could never afford before and then working more to pay for it. Creed. Do stuff you want right now, and treasure every minute of it.

When we move in together/get married/have kids, our relationship will really blossom and settle into an idyllic fairy tale. Until I get the flu and shit the bed. Or you have a heart attack and can’t work anymore. Or get sent off to war and come home a paraplegic. Or in a box. Make the fairy tale now. Or shut up.

We’ve all talked about the movie “The Bucket List” and even I, the last person to ever get in on anything, saw it. Loved it.

And I don’t have a grand list like “See something truly majestic” on it.

Because I see something majestic every single day of my life.

And so do you, if you truly “saw”.

My baby is going to New York next month because it’s something she’s always wanted to do, and I am very very proud of her.

But it doesn’t have to be that big and grand of a thing.

Get a pedicure if you’ve never had one. Or even if it’s just been too long since you’ve had one. Unless, like me, you’re kind of “meh” about pedicures. Nice, but, eh, I can live without it.

Don’t let anyone else tell you what you should want.

Just want. And then go do it.

This weekend, I really want to make gumbo and eat it with my son. So I’m off to the store to buy the ingredients.

In my life, I have known the following people:

A young man in his early twenties who went out hunting with friends for a day, and came home a quadriplegic. Who then finished college, bought a house and fitted it all out for his needs, and got an awesome job. Who has a wicked sense of humor.

A man who worked all his life the way he was “supposed to”, saw his lifelong employer go belly up and his pension disappear, and his wife develop and live with Alzheimer’s under his care until she died. Who is one of my best and most favorite friends.

A woman who left all she knew and had to follow a man to another continent, only to have said marriage dissolve, and then created a fascinating and colorful life for herself with her own two hands. Not without its mishaps, but without her, I would not exist. She was my mom.

I am acutely aware of how precarious life can be, how comically our plans can turn out, and how very very unaware of how much joy there is to be had - that we blithely and irresponsibly ignore.

If we want a more joyous world in which to live, we have to start being more joyous people.

And we already have everything we need right now to be at least a little bit joyous.

Do it for me. I need more joyous people around me.

Cynical, whiny ass people suck the life out of me.

I’m your girl if you need a sympathetic ear when you’re going through a rough patch.

But if you want to stay there and build a cozy little nest in misery, constantly cataloguing everything that’s ever not turned out your way, everyone who’s ever disappointed you or not appreciated you or hurt your feelings or broke your heart - please go elsewhere.

Bring me your gifts of joy, and I will share mine with you.

Or get the fuck outtahere.

*giggle*

Random thought: A long time ago I met a guy who told me, very seriously, how “vulgar” he thought it was to hear a woman use the word “c*cksucker”. And actually, I kind of think so too. But being who I am, what word do you suppose I used 48 times in the next five minutes in every possible combination I could think of? Hehehehehehehehe

An Unplanned Night That Turned Out Fabulously May 17, 2008

Did you ever notice how the very best nights out aren’t planned at all? They’re the result of somebody’s “Let’s go do something” and may wind up anywhere. But maybe it’s because there aren’t any expectations other than a little unwinding that suddenly everyone’s having the time of their lives.

I really needed a few hours away with friends, especially after a long few weeks work wise and holing myself up by myself to do some much needed thinking. It’s good to spend time by yourself - and I’m really glad to have that opportunity, when I know a lot of people (women especially) don’t.

But I am - as we all know - a social creature. And sometimes just to sit and mingle and laugh with a bunch of people is exactly what the doctor ordered.

I got my hair cut Thursday. I am one of those women who typically drags her feet about getting her hair cut because I’m so afraid they’re going to screw it up. I have long curly hair that I love, as you’ve probably seen, and it’s not as common as you would think to find someone who knows how to cut hair like that and have it come out looking good.

Well, to make a long story short, I did. Someone actually who also has curly hair. So she layered the shit out of my hair and then, for fun, she straightened it with a flat iron. I felt like I was wearing a beautiful disguise.

So when my friend called and asked if I wanted to go out for a few hours after work, I said sure!

Now, I get off work at 10:30 at night. Bars here close a little before 2. Obviously, we aren’t talking about even the possibility of an all out bacchanalia.

We made it to the local hangout at 11 and had a drink. Not much going on there, and we had to go pick up my friend’s daughter at a friends’ at some point.

So we headed out of town, I called another friend, and off we went to meet her. In a bar in the town I just moved away from two months ago.

And wouldn’t you know it, they were having karaoke.

No, I didn’t sing, but my friend did. “It’s My Life” by Bon Jovi. I ran into a bunch of women friends I hadn’t seen in so, so long. Hug - hug. Air kiss - air kiss.

I don’t know how to explain it to you but it was just very cool. There was a gaggle of young ones doing a lot of the singing, and there was one young girl who seriously rocked. In fact, she and another girl sang a song that took me back to my daughter’s teen years - “Shoop”? And that made me very tickled.

At two we headed over to get the daughter in yet another town and met these two very cool women - the moms of the daughter’s friends. One of them said, offhandedly, “Yeah, my kids call me a hippie.” and I almost swooned.

I got home far too late for someone who knew her dogs would wake her early - but it was before four, so that’s good.

And of course, I have to work today and tomorrow. In fact, I have to train today, which I hate under normal circumstances. But it’s part of my job, and a part I take seriously.

Now I feel defensive, like “I didn’t do anything wrong.” The results of past conditioning and continued harranguing. I’m not the minister of a megachurch caught trying to boink a 13 year old girl like this guy, after all.

I saw some friends my kids had graduated with, in town for a wedding. And as I said, some women friends I really really like whom I haven’t seen in a long, long time. And of course the random faces that exist just to entertain me. No old boyfriends or ex-husbands on the horizon - no drama - everyone just having fun.

I love those unplanned things!

Things That I Really, Really Like May 16, 2008

This is kind of a silly post. But then, I am in kind of a silly mood. Just, you know, happy.

I was going to title this post “Things I Love” but then I would have to do the whole disclaimer thing about how, most of all of course, I love my children, my grandchildren, blah blah blah. Or be branded a bad mother and shallow person.

I do love those things - er, people - with a fiery passion and fierceness that would scare you, were you to run afoul of it.

But that’s not the point of this post. This is merely a “fluff” post, written to celebrate a lovely, contented and grateful mood I’m in.

Here is a list of things that I Really Like a Lot, that Make Me Happy:

My Washing Machine and My Clothesline: Because I can make my entire world look and smell and feel better simply by washing my bed linens, hanging them out to dry, and then snuggling into them at night.

My Puppies: No, they are not my children. But they are indeed, my roommates and friends. When I tell people that “we” are going to the park or for a walk or to Dollar General, they are the companions to whom I am referring. They are the “people” I spend most of my time with, outside of work. Not because I am a lonely loser, but because they are funny as hell, adore the shit out of me, and make me laugh consistently.

My New “Outdoor Living Space”: Which sounds a lot cooler than it is, aesthetically speaking. I dragged my old wicker loveseat around to the south end of my house, which faces very little. And I sit out there of a morning smoking cigarettes, drinking a great big travel cup of hot coffee, listening to the birds and feeling unseen, because of the big tree which has finally leafed out and which shields me.

My New Bathroom: with virgin vanity territory, that I can leave stuff out on, like my new flat iron, and go to work and not worry about it being in anyone’s way or “space” or looking untidy. I like everything about it, from the peel and stick tile floors that look like stone, to the cabinet doors I primed and painted and put hinges on and hung all by myself - and they work! To the hidden nook for my laundry basket. I like it a lot.

Reading Other People’s Blogs In The Morning: There are really some fascinating people around. It’s like, when I read the paper newspaper eons ago, I always went to the Op-Ed section and read the columns and editorials first. Because people, and their perspectives, are amazing. I can’t list one without listing a lot, and then surely I’d leave someone out. But it’s a treasure in my life.

That’s my short list today.

What are some things that you really like, that make you happy on an ordinary day?

My Idea for a “Shit List” May 15, 2008

My best friend, this morning, was sleeping in her bed. Her ex-husband, who is psychotic, came to her door because she didn’t answer any of the 10 threatening and insulting voicemail messages he had left her calling her a “tramp”, a “whore”, and a “loser”, and their daughter let him in the house.

She heard his voice and escaped into the bathroom, which he proceeded to enter, called her a few more names, and then whacked her across the face and knocked her right off the toilet onto the floor.

She got herself up, attempted to chase him out the door, while he is continually calling her names, and finally lost it, whipping a set of keys in her hand at his back.

He finally left, she called the cops, and discovered that if she presses charges they will both go to jail because “it was all said and done with” and then she threw the keys at him - making it a double assault.

Sigh. Deep heavy sigh.

She also can’t get a restraining order “until he does something”. I stood right there next to the officer telling her “not in ____ County, anyway”.

So what are we to do?

By the way, said psycho ex-husband hates my guts with a fiery passion because I have dared to tell him, to his face, to knock it off, leave, and that, oh, by the way, I think men who talk to their wives and hit them like he has for years should be buried up to their necks in the sand and a lawn mower run over their heads. You know - kind of as a public service.

I am also, in his book, a “whore”, a “tramp”, and a “loser”.

Which - whatever. I’ve had my ass beat by bigger men than him and should push ever come to shove and he make a threatening move toward me, I know without a doubt I could tear him limb from limb.

The point is - the nutty fucker drives by here day and night. (My friend is also who I bought my palace from and lives about - I don’t know - 30 secs walk away from me.) He calls her day and night repeatedly.

OK, so the law is set up so that “they” can’t do anything to him until he kills her, or somes close.

What about the rest of society?

I don’t know who said that evil exists - nay, even thrives, when good men do nothing.

And I absolutely believe it is my job, as a woman hell bent on leaving the world a better place for being here, that I have the right, even the obligation, to confront shit like this by standing up calmly and saying, “Alright, knock it off. Your behavior is not acceptable here, it will not be tolerated, so go away.”

And then someone told me, yeah, but if you do that, you just inflame the situation.

So I guess what we’re all supposed to do is just sit there and be called names by needle dick freaked out wife beating assholes?

Um. No.

There has to be a better alternative.

I really don’t care about being called a bitch or any derivative thereof. I am one, certainly, at times.

At one time I had the brilliant idea of publishing a “shit list”. You know, as in “Oh, I’m on her shit list today.” And just taking submissions from women and publishing them with men’s names, not with hearsay and mean spirited revenge stuff, but just with verifiable stuff like “doesn’t pay his child support”, “beats his wife”, “cheated on his wife” - and leaving that list in places like bars where women and men run into each other.

That way, should a man and woman meet and there be some interest generated, the woman could say, “Hold on,” look him up, and see what his past “references” are.

Yes, there would still be the morons like me who would say stuff like “Oh, he’s not like that with me” and “Oh, nobody understands him like me.” Which makes me laugh to think about, I am so predictable, and why I want to be alone because I know the kind of mental contortions I do.

But maybe - maybe? - it would have the effect of old fashioned shunning. Maybe those little pukes would all go somewhere where they could hang with like minded pukes and leave the rest of the world alone.

Maybe it would change the world.

Yes I know. I KNOW, Adam - who will invariably point out the flaws in my idea from a legal point of view. I love you Adam. I really do. You would never be on anybody’s shit list, except maybe - temporarily - on Britt’s sometimes.

I’m open to ideas for refinements.

My “Happy Hermit” Stage May 12, 2008

It’s the strangest thing. I told someone yesterday that this is probably the most reclusive I’ve ever been in my whole life.

I, Miss Social Butterfly, am definitely going through a Happy Hermit period in my life.

It was a wonderful Mother’s Day yesterday. I had been a little apprehensive about it. I hadn’t really been sure what to expect, since it would be the first time I couldn’t physically get all of my kids together in one place. But between Britty’s blog, which made me cry - my son Jay calling me - and my son Creed being home and an email he wrote to me as a gift - it was priceless and tender and relaxed and sweet.

Other than that, I slept part of the day, for working third shift Saturday night. And I was on the computer looking up such diverse things as “roll out pantry” and “The Woman Who Can’t Forget”. For no reason other than I was interested and to me, Internet access is like having this huge unlimited library at my fingertips day and night.

And I watched both “The Princess Diaries” and “Mary Poppins” in their entirety, deciding both that I adore Julie Andrews and that Dick Van Dyke had to be the coolest dancer ever in the pre-Michael-Jackson-and-Usher era. Gene Kelly was cool yes - very cool. But there has never been a more malleable and expressive face than old Dick’s to go with it.

And I revelled in sprawling on my own little couch in my own little home - padding up and down the hallway to the bathroom or the bedroom in my bare feet. I looked in the mirror for a few times, thought to myself “Yeesh! Girl, you might want to do something with yourself” and then didn’t.

In the past, this “caving” or “holing up” has been a sign of depression in me. Usually a mourning ritual of some kind.

This time, I don’t feel depressed one whit.

Tired, a little. For hormonal and work-schedule reasons.

But other than that, it just feels so right and perfectly decadent and self-indulgent to sit and sip my hot hot cups of morning coffee and wake up slowly. To sit on my bed at night and wrestle with the puppies - to their delight and mine - for an hour before we go to sleep. To just be home and let my spirit fill up my surroundings.

Right now, I just don’t seem to have it in me to be there for a lot of people to a large degree.

I was thinking the other other night that it’s almost like being in labor, when you feel yourself slipping the bonds of the “normal world” and descending into someplace where you are pulled along, where you have to go.

I think I’m going through a cleaning-out-and-healing process at an accelerated rate. Probably cuz God knows I typically don’t allow myself time for that kind of shit. Get it while the gettin’s good, you know?

I know that the wordless insights and epiphanies are coming at an amazing rate - not big “Eureka!” things - just little stuff. Like little Tetris pieces falling gracefully and soundlessly into place.

I feel good. Really good. And when I don’t, I veg out on the couch or take a nap.

Is this normal?