Well, I am LOVING the response, so far, to my question below.
I absolutely want to hear about your hometown. No need to tell me the city, just spill the general area and tell me all about it. I have found the answers to be fascinating. I want to hear what it is like where you sit.
And also...just a thought. I constantly get spam from dating services in my e-mail. And while I will never use it, being happily married and all that (well, lately...okay..we have been treading water, but the vibe will return, it always does)...but anyway, I am curious.
Has anyone used a dating service either online or otherwise? I never have and I am very, very curious. What sorts of questions do they ask? Do you feel that you were portrayed fairly? When you met others, what were they like? Were they good matches?
Because, lately, it seems that a lot of people are getting matched up online, don't you think? It used to be kind of embarrassing, I think, to admit that you met someone online. Now, it is no big deal. And it shouldn't be, really. I mean, why NOT use all avenues given to you? But, I am curious...do they work?
And please...I also want to know where you are from and what it is like.
I want to get a feel for you...
Did anyone see The Sound of Music last night? It was Liv's first time, so we all watched it.
Favorite part: when Vince and Thuan danced and sang out "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" pretending to be the real male Liesl with his Rolphe.
It was so hilarious that we now have a new diet root beer stain on our sofa from where I knocked over my drink.
And now...off to work. Ugh. Kind of hard to jump back into it, but there is a promise from Thuan for a Vietnamese dinner waiting for me when I get home and Liv has many, many devoted babysitters....
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Pulling up the bootstraps like a good Cornhusker.
I decided to shuck those blues at breakfast today.
Nirand is up and around. I made him a cup of tea and a bagel with cream cheese. We sat and visited while Bing and Vince cut up vegetables for the crock pot of beef stew.
We are all going to go see this movie today. It was hard finding something we all want to see. I wanted to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas but Bing vetoed it ("I just don't think I'm up for some downer holocaust movie today...") which made me roll my eyes at her. Other movies were too intense for Liv. We finally settled on that one, although it has gotten horrid reviews.
Bing and I are grousing at each other today. Or I should say that I am grousing at her. She seldom grouses at me. I admit to having days like this, days where every word that comes out of her mouth just irritates me. And on these days, I look at her and wonder why she has to be so fucking picky about movies. She vetoes nearly all chick flicks or films that she thinks are too deep and thinky. She likes action movies almost exclusively, and since we both love movies, we have to take turns picking.
But, it is mainly because of her that I am shedding my blues. Last night, when she got home from the gym, she took one look at my red eyes and asked me what the matter was. I told her that I just had the blues, etc.
She gave me her standard lecture about how I really have little to be sad about. I have so much, really. She's right. But....I resent her telling me so.
And then Nirand was up and dressed when I came downstairs for breakfast and he said he felt so much better and that made me smile. I had been concerned about him. He and I took Socks for a morning walk and he asked me an interesting question.
I was telling him that I had experienced the blues but was determined to put my chin up and stop being so melancholy. He looked at me curiously.
"Is this just part of your personality or is it a prairie people trait?" he asked me.
Nirand has theories about cultures. He has seen so many. He calls people in my neck of the woods prairie people.
I slipped my arm through his and we walked for a bit while I thought about it.
Many friends of mine who live overseas often talk about an american way of thinking or an american outlook. The truth is that americans differ a lot on opinions, etc. But, yes...there are some viewpoints, cliches about certain areas of the country that are relevant.
I live in the midlands, or plains. Sometimes we are known as midwesterners or heartlanders.
And yes, we prairie people have certain characteristics.
We don't usually talk much about how much money we have or make. In fact, it is considered sort of rude to ask questions regarding money.
We tend to be taciturn, quiet. You don't see a lot of frivolity in my neck of the woods. It can be there, diverse personalities abound everywhere, but prairie people tend to be not unemotional, really....just sort of private about emotions. I was raised not to cry in public and I think that is very, very common with people in mid america. You don't often see big displays of emotion for good or bad. We tend to cry in our beds, in our bathtubs, just in private.
We keep our coins in our pockets, for the most part. I know very few big spenders, but know lots and lots of savers. Most of the people that I know, even the wealthy ones, look for bargains and clip coupons. It's just our way.
The larger cities in my area went for Obama in the elections, the small farming towns went for McCain. The farming communities are known for their conservative views. It is very difficult to be different in a small town around here. If you are gay, best not to flaunt it. You could get hurt. In private, of course. No one would think of beating up someone in public. But, in a back yard? Certainly. And, to be honest, I doubt if you would get beaten up, it is more likely that you would simply be shunned. I am not saying that there aren't out gay people in small towns. But, they are not traditionally flamboyant about it. If you are gay, you stay in your closet for the most part. Or if you are the mayor's son or something, well...as long as you aren't wearing a pink suit to the prom, you are okay. Tolerance is there, acceptance, not really.
Any displays of public affection are seen as unsavory. To be honest, it sort of turns my stomach to see someone kissing big large in public. I avert my eyes. It just isn't done much here. And I prefer that since I am not the kind of person who throws my arms around others in public.
Religion is not spoken about much, but nearly everyone goes to church. And in many of the schools, prayers are still said. Not in my daughter's school, certainly, (and frankly I am glad for that) but in many other schools.
That is not to say that rebellion doesn't exist. It does. Sometimes I think that the most hedonistic rebel is one from the prairie. I mean, you are buttoned up so much, so tightly, that if you are a rebel, it must feel absolutely wonderful to let it out.
But you don't see it much.
It is unusual not to know one's neighbors on the prairie. We generally not only know our neighbors, but give them our house keys when we go on vacation so that they can come in and water the plants and bring in the mail. We are a trusting sort of people.
And we embrace our own. We are intensely loyal to other prairie people.
Most people in Nebraska are very supportive of Cornhusker football. We call them "our boys in red" and everyone knows that this means the Huskers. The games are sell outs. We have season tickets because Bing got her masters at UNL. Otherwise, it is pretty hard to get tickets and they are dear. If you have them, you hold on to them. On game days, everyone wears red even if we don't go to the game. And the game is played over the intercom in supermarkets and gas stations, everywhere. If there is a touchdown and you are in aisle two at the grocery store, you clap or do a little dance, maybe slap hands with a complete stranger in the aisle or just smile at them. It is just our way. It is about as wild as we get.
If someone in your family is an alcoholic or a drug addict, you don't share that. And if you know that someone has a brother or whomever who is an addict, you don't ask them how they are doing. It is considered a private matter.
People here still do the spanking thing with their children a lot. That bothers me. But, you don't often see bratty kids in stores. It is out of the ordinary. And even the sulky looking teenage boys will almost always open a door for you if you are female. And call you ma'am or sir. Most of us were raised that way.
This is not to say that there aren't exceptions to every rule. There are many who don't fit the norm. I don't fit the norm. Bing and I are pretty openly gay, and we are lucky in that we live in a fairly diverse part of the city. Some neighborhoods are more open minded than others. There is still a lot to overcome. One of our neighbors told us the other day that he and his wife were concerned when they realized that we were two gay women with a child. But, after they met us and got to know us, they were fine with us. That is sort of the way if works for most of us who live in red states. And the more people who overcome their prejudices after meeting us, the better. My hope is that when Liv is my age, it will be no big deal anymore. Fingers crossed.
I told this all to Nirand and he smiled and nodded. He has lived so many places and seen so many cultures, nothing really surprises him. But, he has wondered why we live here.
"I think you are part of your environment but also just you," he told me.
And I suppose he is right. We are all products of our family, our community, our school, our workplaces, our country.
What is it like in your part of the country or outside of the united states? I am curious. Any quirks that are common in your neck of the woods?
Do tell....
Nirand is up and around. I made him a cup of tea and a bagel with cream cheese. We sat and visited while Bing and Vince cut up vegetables for the crock pot of beef stew.
We are all going to go see this movie today. It was hard finding something we all want to see. I wanted to see The Boy in the Striped Pajamas but Bing vetoed it ("I just don't think I'm up for some downer holocaust movie today...") which made me roll my eyes at her. Other movies were too intense for Liv. We finally settled on that one, although it has gotten horrid reviews.
Bing and I are grousing at each other today. Or I should say that I am grousing at her. She seldom grouses at me. I admit to having days like this, days where every word that comes out of her mouth just irritates me. And on these days, I look at her and wonder why she has to be so fucking picky about movies. She vetoes nearly all chick flicks or films that she thinks are too deep and thinky. She likes action movies almost exclusively, and since we both love movies, we have to take turns picking.
But, it is mainly because of her that I am shedding my blues. Last night, when she got home from the gym, she took one look at my red eyes and asked me what the matter was. I told her that I just had the blues, etc.
She gave me her standard lecture about how I really have little to be sad about. I have so much, really. She's right. But....I resent her telling me so.
And then Nirand was up and dressed when I came downstairs for breakfast and he said he felt so much better and that made me smile. I had been concerned about him. He and I took Socks for a morning walk and he asked me an interesting question.
I was telling him that I had experienced the blues but was determined to put my chin up and stop being so melancholy. He looked at me curiously.
"Is this just part of your personality or is it a prairie people trait?" he asked me.
Nirand has theories about cultures. He has seen so many. He calls people in my neck of the woods prairie people.
I slipped my arm through his and we walked for a bit while I thought about it.
Many friends of mine who live overseas often talk about an american way of thinking or an american outlook. The truth is that americans differ a lot on opinions, etc. But, yes...there are some viewpoints, cliches about certain areas of the country that are relevant.
I live in the midlands, or plains. Sometimes we are known as midwesterners or heartlanders.
And yes, we prairie people have certain characteristics.
We don't usually talk much about how much money we have or make. In fact, it is considered sort of rude to ask questions regarding money.
We tend to be taciturn, quiet. You don't see a lot of frivolity in my neck of the woods. It can be there, diverse personalities abound everywhere, but prairie people tend to be not unemotional, really....just sort of private about emotions. I was raised not to cry in public and I think that is very, very common with people in mid america. You don't often see big displays of emotion for good or bad. We tend to cry in our beds, in our bathtubs, just in private.
We keep our coins in our pockets, for the most part. I know very few big spenders, but know lots and lots of savers. Most of the people that I know, even the wealthy ones, look for bargains and clip coupons. It's just our way.
The larger cities in my area went for Obama in the elections, the small farming towns went for McCain. The farming communities are known for their conservative views. It is very difficult to be different in a small town around here. If you are gay, best not to flaunt it. You could get hurt. In private, of course. No one would think of beating up someone in public. But, in a back yard? Certainly. And, to be honest, I doubt if you would get beaten up, it is more likely that you would simply be shunned. I am not saying that there aren't out gay people in small towns. But, they are not traditionally flamboyant about it. If you are gay, you stay in your closet for the most part. Or if you are the mayor's son or something, well...as long as you aren't wearing a pink suit to the prom, you are okay. Tolerance is there, acceptance, not really.
Any displays of public affection are seen as unsavory. To be honest, it sort of turns my stomach to see someone kissing big large in public. I avert my eyes. It just isn't done much here. And I prefer that since I am not the kind of person who throws my arms around others in public.
Religion is not spoken about much, but nearly everyone goes to church. And in many of the schools, prayers are still said. Not in my daughter's school, certainly, (and frankly I am glad for that) but in many other schools.
That is not to say that rebellion doesn't exist. It does. Sometimes I think that the most hedonistic rebel is one from the prairie. I mean, you are buttoned up so much, so tightly, that if you are a rebel, it must feel absolutely wonderful to let it out.
But you don't see it much.
It is unusual not to know one's neighbors on the prairie. We generally not only know our neighbors, but give them our house keys when we go on vacation so that they can come in and water the plants and bring in the mail. We are a trusting sort of people.
And we embrace our own. We are intensely loyal to other prairie people.
Most people in Nebraska are very supportive of Cornhusker football. We call them "our boys in red" and everyone knows that this means the Huskers. The games are sell outs. We have season tickets because Bing got her masters at UNL. Otherwise, it is pretty hard to get tickets and they are dear. If you have them, you hold on to them. On game days, everyone wears red even if we don't go to the game. And the game is played over the intercom in supermarkets and gas stations, everywhere. If there is a touchdown and you are in aisle two at the grocery store, you clap or do a little dance, maybe slap hands with a complete stranger in the aisle or just smile at them. It is just our way. It is about as wild as we get.
If someone in your family is an alcoholic or a drug addict, you don't share that. And if you know that someone has a brother or whomever who is an addict, you don't ask them how they are doing. It is considered a private matter.
People here still do the spanking thing with their children a lot. That bothers me. But, you don't often see bratty kids in stores. It is out of the ordinary. And even the sulky looking teenage boys will almost always open a door for you if you are female. And call you ma'am or sir. Most of us were raised that way.
This is not to say that there aren't exceptions to every rule. There are many who don't fit the norm. I don't fit the norm. Bing and I are pretty openly gay, and we are lucky in that we live in a fairly diverse part of the city. Some neighborhoods are more open minded than others. There is still a lot to overcome. One of our neighbors told us the other day that he and his wife were concerned when they realized that we were two gay women with a child. But, after they met us and got to know us, they were fine with us. That is sort of the way if works for most of us who live in red states. And the more people who overcome their prejudices after meeting us, the better. My hope is that when Liv is my age, it will be no big deal anymore. Fingers crossed.
I told this all to Nirand and he smiled and nodded. He has lived so many places and seen so many cultures, nothing really surprises him. But, he has wondered why we live here.
"I think you are part of your environment but also just you," he told me.
And I suppose he is right. We are all products of our family, our community, our school, our workplaces, our country.
What is it like in your part of the country or outside of the united states? I am curious. Any quirks that are common in your neck of the woods?
Do tell....
Saturday, December 27, 2008
What is wrong with me?
I seem to have the blues. And no good reason for them.
Vince and Thuan arrived from Chicago and we spent a happy afternoon eating cinnamon rolls, drinking tea and opening the gifts that they had mailed earlier to us.
We were all heartily spoiled. They bought me what I love most: a gift certificate to Borders Book Store.
And now, Vince, Thuan, and Tinton have taken Liv ice skating. Nirand is tucked up in bed again with his cold (which is looking very much like not just a cold, but a cold, the kind where you sort of feel like a truck has run over you.) He came downstairs briefly for the present opening, but looked like he just wanted to be back in his bed, so that is where I insisted that he go right afterwards.
Bing is at the gym running off the cinnamon rolls that she ate.
And I am home, sitting in my bedroom....weeping.
I wish I could say what is the matter with me. Is it after-Christmas let down? No. Not really. I have never been what you would call a Christmasy sort of person. I don't walk around talking about how much I love the holidays, because, actually, I don't. They are nice, but they are stressful.
I was sitting in my living room, watching everyone opening gifts and it suddenly occurred to me that we are all growing older.
Wow. Big revelation, huh? Like I didn't see that one coming?
But..it is like...I didn't. Not really.
I remember when Liv was a toddler, when she was in kindergarten, first grade, even second grade...she really, really needed me. I was crucial to her existence. Now, well, yes...she needs me. I am her parent. But, she doesn't need me anymore, not like she used to. Her days of crawling into my lap and snuggling down are pretty much over. She is good for a hug now and then. She loves me, I know this.
But, where did my baby go? Where did all those endless days of swooping ducks in the bathwater go? All those days of reading one picture book after the other? Making snowmen in the yard? Long afternoons playing Chutes and Ladders and wondering why in the hell the makers of that game had to make it so fucking boring.
Now, she has friends in our neighborhood who moved in a few months ago and she made a snowman with them. And to be honest, with my arthritis, making a snowman would have been difficult. She reads her books on her own. Once in awhile, we read together, but she truly prefers to read on her own.
She seldom needs my help with homework. She just knows that she has to get it done before dinner, so she hunkers down and gets to work. I check it and it is almost always perfect.
My days of tying on bibs and sliding socks on her feet are long gone. I don't have to pour juice in her sippee cup anymore, if she wants juice, she gets it herself. She hasn't spilled in a long time.
She makes her own lunch for school, prefers it that way. I sometimes check it to make sure that it is healthy and it always is. In fact, she is much more vigilant about putting those carrot sticks in than I am.
I miss my baby. I miss the pulling on of snowsuits. The mittens with a string that goes into her coat so that she won't lose them.
I miss sitting on the edge of the bathtub and washing her feet and hearing her shriek with silliness when I tickle the bottom of her foot.
She talks on the phone with her friends now. Practices her piano and violin without being told. When I take her to her lessons, she requests that I wait in the outer room with the other parents instead of coming in to watch her. She says that I make her nervous. So, I sit and read my book, a newspaper.
When did all this shit happen?
Because I feel like the woman in Fiddler on the Roof who sings about the sun setting and rising and the swift flowing of the years.
Today, I noticed that Vince, Thuan, Tinton, Nirand and Bing and I are all...well...getting up there.
Vince has gone gray or maybe he just stopped dyeing his hair.
Thuan has a bad hip that makes him limp a little bit in the mornings.
Tinton, while he is only in his early thirties, is getting a slight paunch. He is losing his college guy physique. He isn't fat or even cushy, but he now looks like what he is: somebody's dad.
I looked down at my hands as I undid the wrapping paper on a gift today and I noticed how veiny they were. How did my mother's hands get on me?
I am a staunch buyer of moisturizer now.
Bing shocked me by admitting that the older she gets, the more she sees why people become republicans. She thinks that fiscally, she may agree more with the republicans than the democrats now.
Sven stopped by to leave a whiskey cake that his mother made for us and we gave him a loaf of carrot cake. He and I talked for a bit and he said that he is seriously thinking of going on to law school.
I sat there staring at him. He still seems like that kid who was the star of the high school football team to me. But, he, too, is growing older.
I feel like Emily in Our Town when she says:
I can't go on. Oh! Oh. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back--up the hill--to my grave. but first: Wait! One more look. Good-by. Good-by world. Good-by, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa, Good-by to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
God, I feel like throwing myself on my bed and weeping.
But, it would probably scare the dog.
I just....miss...my past. Miss those days when Liv was a baby and we were like one person.
And to be honest, I do remember that it wasn't always bright sunshine. I remember plenty of days when I got so tired of hearing MAMA?? MAMA, where are you?
I remember days when I put Liv to bed and was so glad to have one hour to myself without her sticky fingers on me, her constant needs.
But, right now...I am just lonely for that time.
And so I think I will go cry for a while...in my bathroom with the door closed...which is how I handle crying usually.
Why are there so many damn mirrors in bathrooms?
Vince and Thuan arrived from Chicago and we spent a happy afternoon eating cinnamon rolls, drinking tea and opening the gifts that they had mailed earlier to us.
We were all heartily spoiled. They bought me what I love most: a gift certificate to Borders Book Store.
And now, Vince, Thuan, and Tinton have taken Liv ice skating. Nirand is tucked up in bed again with his cold (which is looking very much like not just a cold, but a cold, the kind where you sort of feel like a truck has run over you.) He came downstairs briefly for the present opening, but looked like he just wanted to be back in his bed, so that is where I insisted that he go right afterwards.
Bing is at the gym running off the cinnamon rolls that she ate.
And I am home, sitting in my bedroom....weeping.
I wish I could say what is the matter with me. Is it after-Christmas let down? No. Not really. I have never been what you would call a Christmasy sort of person. I don't walk around talking about how much I love the holidays, because, actually, I don't. They are nice, but they are stressful.
I was sitting in my living room, watching everyone opening gifts and it suddenly occurred to me that we are all growing older.
Wow. Big revelation, huh? Like I didn't see that one coming?
But..it is like...I didn't. Not really.
I remember when Liv was a toddler, when she was in kindergarten, first grade, even second grade...she really, really needed me. I was crucial to her existence. Now, well, yes...she needs me. I am her parent. But, she doesn't need me anymore, not like she used to. Her days of crawling into my lap and snuggling down are pretty much over. She is good for a hug now and then. She loves me, I know this.
But, where did my baby go? Where did all those endless days of swooping ducks in the bathwater go? All those days of reading one picture book after the other? Making snowmen in the yard? Long afternoons playing Chutes and Ladders and wondering why in the hell the makers of that game had to make it so fucking boring.
Now, she has friends in our neighborhood who moved in a few months ago and she made a snowman with them. And to be honest, with my arthritis, making a snowman would have been difficult. She reads her books on her own. Once in awhile, we read together, but she truly prefers to read on her own.
She seldom needs my help with homework. She just knows that she has to get it done before dinner, so she hunkers down and gets to work. I check it and it is almost always perfect.
My days of tying on bibs and sliding socks on her feet are long gone. I don't have to pour juice in her sippee cup anymore, if she wants juice, she gets it herself. She hasn't spilled in a long time.
She makes her own lunch for school, prefers it that way. I sometimes check it to make sure that it is healthy and it always is. In fact, she is much more vigilant about putting those carrot sticks in than I am.
I miss my baby. I miss the pulling on of snowsuits. The mittens with a string that goes into her coat so that she won't lose them.
I miss sitting on the edge of the bathtub and washing her feet and hearing her shriek with silliness when I tickle the bottom of her foot.
She talks on the phone with her friends now. Practices her piano and violin without being told. When I take her to her lessons, she requests that I wait in the outer room with the other parents instead of coming in to watch her. She says that I make her nervous. So, I sit and read my book, a newspaper.
When did all this shit happen?
Because I feel like the woman in Fiddler on the Roof who sings about the sun setting and rising and the swift flowing of the years.
Today, I noticed that Vince, Thuan, Tinton, Nirand and Bing and I are all...well...getting up there.
Vince has gone gray or maybe he just stopped dyeing his hair.
Thuan has a bad hip that makes him limp a little bit in the mornings.
Tinton, while he is only in his early thirties, is getting a slight paunch. He is losing his college guy physique. He isn't fat or even cushy, but he now looks like what he is: somebody's dad.
I looked down at my hands as I undid the wrapping paper on a gift today and I noticed how veiny they were. How did my mother's hands get on me?
I am a staunch buyer of moisturizer now.
Bing shocked me by admitting that the older she gets, the more she sees why people become republicans. She thinks that fiscally, she may agree more with the republicans than the democrats now.
Sven stopped by to leave a whiskey cake that his mother made for us and we gave him a loaf of carrot cake. He and I talked for a bit and he said that he is seriously thinking of going on to law school.
I sat there staring at him. He still seems like that kid who was the star of the high school football team to me. But, he, too, is growing older.
I feel like Emily in Our Town when she says:
I can't go on. Oh! Oh. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back--up the hill--to my grave. but first: Wait! One more look. Good-by. Good-by world. Good-by, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa, Good-by to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
God, I feel like throwing myself on my bed and weeping.
But, it would probably scare the dog.
I just....miss...my past. Miss those days when Liv was a baby and we were like one person.
And to be honest, I do remember that it wasn't always bright sunshine. I remember plenty of days when I got so tired of hearing MAMA?? MAMA, where are you?
I remember days when I put Liv to bed and was so glad to have one hour to myself without her sticky fingers on me, her constant needs.
But, right now...I am just lonely for that time.
And so I think I will go cry for a while...in my bathroom with the door closed...which is how I handle crying usually.
Why are there so many damn mirrors in bathrooms?
Friday, December 26, 2008
Disappointed and confused.
That would be me. Today was a fine day, though.
We all mostly hung out and visited for most of the day. But, tonight I am on my own. Bing was invited to a re-union party of the all female rock and roll band that she played with in college. I was invited too, but I too clearly remembered their last get-together.
The band brought their instruments and jammed, which was fun for a few hours, but then I got tired and was ready to go home and I could see that Bing was nowhere near ready to leave. I ended up falling asleep on a sofa and when she awakened me to go home, it was nearly 3 a.m! Liv had spent the night at a friend's home, so we didn't end up paying a babysitter a small fortune.
I decided to skip the party this time around...
Tinton took Liv out for dinner and to see the movie about that cheeky mouse. Nirand, poor guy, is in bed already. He said that he felt like he was coming down with a cold this morning and by afternoon, it was clear that he indeed, was. Either that or preparing our Christmas dinner just did him in. At any rate, he and I took Socks for a walk around 6 and when we came home, he excused himself to take a shower and get to bed. It is awful to be ill when you are at someone else's home, isn't it? You just crave your own bed when you are sick. I took some tea up to the attic where he is sleeping and he was out like a light, so I just left it by his bed.
So...all alone tonight.
Which basically feels really grand. I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I can sleep in. Vince and Thuan's flight doesn't get in until early afternoon.
I can watch whatever I want on television. I can read with no interruptions. I can blog hop.
I went to get online and noticed a story about the von Trapp family singers. You know from The Sound of Music?
So, I clicked on it and read.
It turns out the Maria von Trapp was not the saint that Julie Andrews portrayed her to be. Apparently, she was cold and domineering. She did make those outfits out of curtains, though. But, I bet she was crabby while she did it and probably made them look kind of frumpy.
I really need Maria von Trapp to be the kind of person who twirls around happily on a mountain top and lets children sleep in her bed when it thunders and lightnings all the while singing about whiskers on kittens, bright paper packages tied up with string, and warm woolen mittens. I need her to put on puppet shows and kiss Greta's finger when she has a boo-boo.
If Maria von Trapp was really a bitch...well...then, maybe there isn't a Santa Claus or something like that.
And I feel all sullied and tricked. What did Captain von Trapp see in a cranky, domineering nun-in-training who was all cold and snippy?
They had a photo of her too. And she wasn't pretty and coltish like Julie. She looked like that aunt that everyone has whom no one wants to sit next to at the holiday dinner table. She looked like a cranky, domineering ex-nun.
And I ask you, what did the captain see in her? Because, I mean, he was engaged to the Baroness and she was kind of hot looking. Sure, she wanted to put the kids in boarding schools, but were they really any better off with a snotty ex nun who bossed them around and made them wear curtains?
I wonder how Maria and the captain hooked up. Think about it. She was a snippy ex nun whose only real talent seemed to be in sewing curtains into dresses. The article didn't seem to think she had that great of a voice. So, it isn't like he saw her dancing around her room in some little nightie while she sang about hills being alive with the sound of music.
He saw a cranky ex nun.
The article hinted that the kids weren't all that cute either. That they got along when Maria was alive because she was the kind of parent who insisted that they make nice all the time and they were sort of scared of her.
Liesl was a boy. So, I wonder how the captain and Maria felt about that? I mean, the whole floaty dancing scene where Liesl and Rolphe jump around singing about being sixteen going on seventeen sort of changes when you picture two teenaged boys sashaying around. But, it makes sense why the captain always seemed to sneer at him and at the end when Rolphe discovered them and then was too scared to shoot, maybe the captain should have threatened to tell his commanding officer that he had been seen dancing in the cupola with Liesl, his son. I bet he would have kept his mouth shut. I don't think the don't ask/don't tell rule was in place back then in Austria. I recall that Hitler wasn't real fond of homosexuals.
Did Maria teach them to sing about doe a deer, a female deer? Because that looked like fun. I remember that when my Da took our family to see that movie, my sisters and I came home and decided to make a puppet show about a lonely goatherd. It looked like so much fun! I mean, we could do that bit about
oho layee odilee-oo
oho layee odl ay!
oho layee odilee-oo
hododleeoday!
First off, the movie never showed how hard it is to make puppets. They made it look easy. My sisters and I found that our puppets looked nothing like Maria and the children's. Mine had a nose that kept sliding off and a foot that was bigger than the other.
We didn't sing while we worked on them, we got in the kind of whisper hissy fits that young girls go into when they grow up in strong Irish Catholic families where no slapping is allowed.
We did pinch a lot.
Instead, we moved on to singing So long, farewell.
Since there were only four of us, we all ended up playing more than one child which was very, very hard. And not particularly fun.
I do remember us putting on a sort of play for our Da and that he clapped.
But, now that I am a parent, I know what that he was really sneaking peeks at his watch wondering how much longer this song was going to go on and hey...only one of his daughters (Patrice) could carry a tune, so it had to be painful as well.
I think that I will just keep my illusions about the von Trapps.
Best that way.
I suppose that next I will find out that Danny Partridge is really some smart ass, foul mouthed red headed kid named Danny Bonaduce.
Or that Marcia Brady was an anorexic.
Boy howdy.
We all mostly hung out and visited for most of the day. But, tonight I am on my own. Bing was invited to a re-union party of the all female rock and roll band that she played with in college. I was invited too, but I too clearly remembered their last get-together.
The band brought their instruments and jammed, which was fun for a few hours, but then I got tired and was ready to go home and I could see that Bing was nowhere near ready to leave. I ended up falling asleep on a sofa and when she awakened me to go home, it was nearly 3 a.m! Liv had spent the night at a friend's home, so we didn't end up paying a babysitter a small fortune.
I decided to skip the party this time around...
Tinton took Liv out for dinner and to see the movie about that cheeky mouse. Nirand, poor guy, is in bed already. He said that he felt like he was coming down with a cold this morning and by afternoon, it was clear that he indeed, was. Either that or preparing our Christmas dinner just did him in. At any rate, he and I took Socks for a walk around 6 and when we came home, he excused himself to take a shower and get to bed. It is awful to be ill when you are at someone else's home, isn't it? You just crave your own bed when you are sick. I took some tea up to the attic where he is sleeping and he was out like a light, so I just left it by his bed.
So...all alone tonight.
Which basically feels really grand. I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I can sleep in. Vince and Thuan's flight doesn't get in until early afternoon.
I can watch whatever I want on television. I can read with no interruptions. I can blog hop.
I went to get online and noticed a story about the von Trapp family singers. You know from The Sound of Music?
So, I clicked on it and read.
It turns out the Maria von Trapp was not the saint that Julie Andrews portrayed her to be. Apparently, she was cold and domineering. She did make those outfits out of curtains, though. But, I bet she was crabby while she did it and probably made them look kind of frumpy.
I really need Maria von Trapp to be the kind of person who twirls around happily on a mountain top and lets children sleep in her bed when it thunders and lightnings all the while singing about whiskers on kittens, bright paper packages tied up with string, and warm woolen mittens. I need her to put on puppet shows and kiss Greta's finger when she has a boo-boo.
If Maria von Trapp was really a bitch...well...then, maybe there isn't a Santa Claus or something like that.
And I feel all sullied and tricked. What did Captain von Trapp see in a cranky, domineering nun-in-training who was all cold and snippy?
They had a photo of her too. And she wasn't pretty and coltish like Julie. She looked like that aunt that everyone has whom no one wants to sit next to at the holiday dinner table. She looked like a cranky, domineering ex-nun.
And I ask you, what did the captain see in her? Because, I mean, he was engaged to the Baroness and she was kind of hot looking. Sure, she wanted to put the kids in boarding schools, but were they really any better off with a snotty ex nun who bossed them around and made them wear curtains?
I wonder how Maria and the captain hooked up. Think about it. She was a snippy ex nun whose only real talent seemed to be in sewing curtains into dresses. The article didn't seem to think she had that great of a voice. So, it isn't like he saw her dancing around her room in some little nightie while she sang about hills being alive with the sound of music.
He saw a cranky ex nun.
The article hinted that the kids weren't all that cute either. That they got along when Maria was alive because she was the kind of parent who insisted that they make nice all the time and they were sort of scared of her.
Liesl was a boy. So, I wonder how the captain and Maria felt about that? I mean, the whole floaty dancing scene where Liesl and Rolphe jump around singing about being sixteen going on seventeen sort of changes when you picture two teenaged boys sashaying around. But, it makes sense why the captain always seemed to sneer at him and at the end when Rolphe discovered them and then was too scared to shoot, maybe the captain should have threatened to tell his commanding officer that he had been seen dancing in the cupola with Liesl, his son. I bet he would have kept his mouth shut. I don't think the don't ask/don't tell rule was in place back then in Austria. I recall that Hitler wasn't real fond of homosexuals.
Did Maria teach them to sing about doe a deer, a female deer? Because that looked like fun. I remember that when my Da took our family to see that movie, my sisters and I came home and decided to make a puppet show about a lonely goatherd. It looked like so much fun! I mean, we could do that bit about
oho layee odilee-oo
oho layee odl ay!
oho layee odilee-oo
hododleeoday!
First off, the movie never showed how hard it is to make puppets. They made it look easy. My sisters and I found that our puppets looked nothing like Maria and the children's. Mine had a nose that kept sliding off and a foot that was bigger than the other.
We didn't sing while we worked on them, we got in the kind of whisper hissy fits that young girls go into when they grow up in strong Irish Catholic families where no slapping is allowed.
We did pinch a lot.
Instead, we moved on to singing So long, farewell.
Since there were only four of us, we all ended up playing more than one child which was very, very hard. And not particularly fun.
I do remember us putting on a sort of play for our Da and that he clapped.
But, now that I am a parent, I know what that he was really sneaking peeks at his watch wondering how much longer this song was going to go on and hey...only one of his daughters (Patrice) could carry a tune, so it had to be painful as well.
I think that I will just keep my illusions about the von Trapps.
Best that way.
I suppose that next I will find out that Danny Partridge is really some smart ass, foul mouthed red headed kid named Danny Bonaduce.
Or that Marcia Brady was an anorexic.
Boy howdy.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Nearing the end and a Merry Christmas to all
Well, Merry Christmas to all.
Ours has started beautifully with the exception of one glitch: our friends, Vince and Thuan were unable to fly in yesterday from Chicago (nasty weather), so they will come on Saturday and stay until after the New Year. Instead of Thuan's famous Vietnamese fish soup for dinner last night, Bing and Liv made ham and it was just the three of us.
And of course, Tinton and Nirand flew in last night and I think that Liv was actually surprised. Bing and I took her to the airport to supposedly watch planes take off (she has loved this activity since toddlerhood and I hope that travel gets into her blood) and she spotted Tinton coming down the escalator and nearly jumped out of her pants with joy.
And after a nice breakfast at my sister's house, we are all busy going in different directions. Tinton is going to take Liv ice skating. Nirand is busy making his Indian supper for us. (And thanks so much to the Idle Devil for the grand recipe for Badam Doodh. I made it for homecoming drinks last night and we all adored it.)
Bing and I are going to have a date this afternoon and go see this. Then, we will all meet up back home for Christmas dinner.
We opened Christmas gifts this morning before we left for breakfast at Patrice's house. And cleaned up.
Liv loved all her gifts. Bing and I got her an electric guitar, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and a new chess set. Tinton gave her a microscope and Nirand gave her a children's cookbook. When Vince and Thuan get here, she will be spoiled rotten as they have money to spend and insist on indulging her shamelessly.
Tinton gave Bing and I the set of Charlaine Harris books that the television show, True Blood on HBO is based on. We are both excited about that, although I snagged the first one and have told her that she only gets it after me. Bing's sister gave our family a gift certificate to Target. Hal and Nora gave us a book of free movie tickets to our neighborhood theatre and the promise of free babysitting whenever we go. They also bought Liv her own set of gardener's tools. Nirand gave us Christmas ornaments from India that are so delicate and lovely that I am afraid to touch them too much. My sister gave me three gorgeous cashmere sweaters with exquisite pearl buttons. My co-workers gave me a pricey jar of pure shea butter lotion, the only thing that works on my poor dry skin. And Utah sent us a box of decadent Godiva chocolates, as she does every year. Every year, I send her a raspberry swirl cheesecake, her favorite.
So...boy howdy, we are one happy family.
I hope you and your kin are having a grand day too. It is so cold and snowy outside, but so warm and cozy inside. Life is truly good.
And now on to the questions...I have told myself that once I finish up the questions, I will travel around to all the blogs I am behind on reading.
ZC asks "Who are the people whose wings lift you as an adult?"
Hmm. My Da still lifts me to this day. Often when I am confronted with a parenting decision, I ask myself what he would have done. He was a fantastic man, an exemplary parent and loved by so many that the church was overflowing at his funeral. If I can be as good and kind as he was, I will consider myself a success.
I look up to Bing a lot too. She is such a steady person. Very pragmatic and practical, but so steadfast in her love that I think I could learn a lot from her. She is the most loyal person I know and always so ready to be a good neighbor. She is much loved in our block while I am simply known as her quiet partner.
Liv inspires me more than anyone else. She teaches me every day to look at the world with an open heart. That sounds so fucking sappy, but it is true. I see the rain and she finds the rainbow for me. She saved me in so many ways. Before she was born, I was simply sliding through life (and often stoned or out of it.) When I knew I was going to be somebody's mother, my life changed for the better because I knew that I wanted to do this parenting thing correctly. I cleaned up my act and my life went charging into a better place. All because of one little seven pound baby.
Mme Benault asks if I recall the time I lost my faith in God and why.
I never really had it begin with. I was raised in such an intensely religious Irish Catholic family that you would think that I would have it in my veins or something. But, I missed that gene. My sisters all have it. I never did. I remember at a very young age wondering about the validity of god.
As I grew older, I questioned more. By the time I was in college, I was reading about the background of the Catholic church and just...repulsed. I mean, good hell...all that selling of dispensations and greed. It made me sick at heart. I left the church for good when Liv was about a year old and I have never returned.
I have always believed, though, that there was a power of good in the world and a power of evil. I know in my heart that this is accurate. And it has virtually nothing to do with religion. One of my professors in college was an atheist and he was the most upright, finest man I know. I knew that goodness existed and that he added to it.
When I worked in the ER for a time, there was a man who came in who professed to be possessed by Satan. He was assigned to me after he had attacked someone in a grocery store. I sat across from him and it took very little time for me to see that not only was I dealing with a very ill person, but an incredibly intelligent person too. He worked hard to promote himself as a textbook schizophrenic, presenting every symptom like clockwork, pulled out as if from a a case study. He had studied up on it, that was obvious. And he was incredibly clever and real. Underneath the facade was simply a very evil entity. I could see that and it chilled me to the bone. His eyes stayed in my mind long after he was taken away. I remember him sitting across from me and as I looked into his eyes, I realized that not only was he toying with me, but he was much, much smarter than I was. And he was evil, not just mentally ill, he was certainly that, but something else too. Something very frightening and very, very dangerous.
I believe that there is a light and a dark side. Maybe not an entity, maybe not god or satan, but...a force. Bing calls this the star wars mentality. And yes, it is simplistic. I try hard to land on the light side as much as I can.
I know that there are documented miracles. I know that there are ghosts. I have seen them. I also know that evil exists. I see it every day in the media. I believe in my heart that there is a connection of good and one of bad.
But, I do not know for sure that there is a god.
I sometimes picture aliens coming to check on us humans and reporting back to their peers that....
Well, they still pray to statues and believe in an entity that will save them. They meet in buildings to pray to this entity and their speech is flavored with thoughts that this entity somehow guides them or has the power to step in and make a difference in their lives. If only they could see that THEY are the power, that THEY are the entity.
I sort of believe that we are all a part of that entity for good and for bad. We just have to keep the good force stronger than the evil one.
Earth Muffin asks if Bing is my partners real name.
No. I started calling her Bing when we were in college. It was Christmastime and I was having trouble waking up for class one morning. She finally went to the cafeteria and snagged some bacon, came back to our dorm room, held it under my nose and began singing White Christmas to me.
She doesn't have a very good voice. I grumbled, snatched up the bacon and said, "Okay, okay...Bing Crosby. I'll get up if you will stop singing."
She's been Bing ever since.
Bing's real name is actually Tess. I am only revealing this because my blog stalker already knows her real name, so I am giving her nothing new.
Lulubelle had many questions. One was to ask how my bff, Harriet, is.
She is okay, Lulu, thank you for asking. She went through a bad patch a few months ago with depression but she is doing better now. I think that she simply put all the pain over losing her sister on the back burner for a very long time. She had to. She had her sister's children to raise, had to say goodbye to her old, tiny house and buy a bigger, newer house and she had to go back to work instead of be what she loved, a stay at home mom because they had two extra mouths to feed and not enough money to buy the food. She started working full time, falling back on what she did before she had children, working as a counselor to teens with eating disorders.
And eventually, she hit a wall. She missed her old life, her tiny house, her small family and her life in sweat pants.
She came through. She went into therapy and started giving herself permission to grieve. She and I went out and did some crazy things. We went bowling. She made me take a belly dancing class (I lasted for ONE CLASS.) And she eventually went to AA.
I am so proud of her. I saw her last week when we arranged to meet for lunch and exchange gifts (she gave me a lovely scarf for my poor balding head and I gave her a charm bracelet with a bowling pin, a hula dancer and a tiny house on it) and to drink coffee instead of wine.
Lulu also asks about the "dynamic" with Bing's family. Are they more accepting than mine?
Bing is originally from Louisiana, but she has a sister who lives here and her mother and several aunts and uncles. They moved here to work in the packing plants when she was younger.
Bing's family is rather odd but of course, mine is odder. They are staunchly Catholic and very devout, but they are also, well....southern. They have accepted Bing and my relationship from day one. Bing's sisters call me their sister in law. Her mother calls me her daughter in law. Everyone is very accepting and always has been. But...they have a curious dynamic that used to give me the shivers.
I come from a very non-huggy, very quiet family. Bing's family is gregarious and um...well...LOUD. They have rough and tumble arguments, usually at the dinner table and say the most snarky things to each other.
And then...after they have pronounced each other to be total bitches and foul bastards in a heated verbal match that looks as if it might come to blows...
They. Just. Stop.
And when they say goodbye, there are hugs all around and no one is offended. All is done.
Everyone says what they think and they get it all out and then well...they move on.
If that happened in my family, we would not be on speaking terms for years. I have seen her two uncles have huge fights at the dinner table that ended with bottles of beer flying and then ten minutes later, they were back slapping and watching football together.
I have seen one of her sisters call the other a "bleached blonde hussy" causing the other sister to take off her shoe and hurl it at her. And then, a half hour later, one sister will be taking off her bracelet to give to the other one as a gift because she admired it.
I have learned to sort of...adapt. But, I still get unnerved now and then. And I will never get used to being hugged and kissed wetly each and every time they see me.
Lulu also would like to know if Socks has asked for a little brother or sister.
No. He knows a good deal when he sees one and I don't think he would consent to sharing Liv with another animal. Plus, one dog is plenty for us.
Jess asks if I were an elderly woman and I knew I would be passing soon, what three things would I want to give/tell Liv?
1) Have a diverse group of friends. See the world from all angles.
2) Try not to hurt anybody if you can help it. But, never be anyone's doormat, either.
3) Listen more than you speak.
Trite, maybe. But, that is only a partial list. I have lots of ideas to impart to her. I'm sure she will only listen to about half of them. And that is fine. It is best to go one's own way in the world and discover things on your own terms, when you are ready.
Jenny wants to know about Bing's parenting relationship with Liv.
Oh. Well. That is a bone of contention sometimes with us. Bing can be very...stubborn. She is also a big fan of being strict with children and insisting on them following rules. Me, not so much. Bing doesn't think I am "parental" enough with Liv. She thinks that I am not strict enough and that I spend too much time discussing things with Liv instead of expecting her to simply obey me.
She and Liv love each other but I can see right now that Liv's teen years will cause some problems for them.
For now, she knows that I am Liv's parent and that what I say goes. If she has a problem, she can discuss it with me when Liv is gone or in bed (and believe me, she is not shy about stepping up to that plate) but that she is NOT to interfere.
Besides money, it is probably the one thing we argue about the most. I feel that Liv is doing just fine and I am comfortable with my parenting style. Bing feels that I need to lower the boom a bit more. She is against any physical punishment but she is a big fan of grounding children. I disagree. I think that grounding Liv is more punishment for me than her. I would much rather just sit down and talk things over with Liv and work things out that way. And it isn't as if Liv is a brat or a problem child. She isn't. She is a verbal little girl with lots of opinions.
An example: Liv has never had a bedtime. She gets a bath about 8 p.m. and then either she and I read for a half hour or she can read on her own for a half hour and then it is lights out. But, there is no absolute time that Liv has to be in bed. Sometimes, if we are enjoying a movie, etc, I let her stay up later.
Bing believes that this is not setting boundaries enough with Liv. She tells me all the time that "children need to reach out and feel a wall sometimes...it makes them feel secure."
I think that is ludicrous and I have said so. Bing also thinks I am a bit too loosey goosey with junk food.
But, the thing is that Liv almost always chooses good food, rarely pigs out on cookies, etc. If Liv was overweight or a junk food junkie, I would step in, but she isn't. If she feels like eating a few cookies some nights for a treat rather than carrot sticks, I'm okay with that. I figure that some nights, I choose ice cream rather than a cheese cracker, so why not Liv?
I don't know if it will ever get solved. The bottom line is that Liv knows that Bing loves her, even though she once told me that she thinks that Bing is "a little too much of a rule setter."
Matarot asks what was the tipping point in finally letting Bing back into my life.
I think I just grew up. I realized that there was this incredible woman who loved me, was loyal to me and protected me and that she had been there all along. And I knew that if I was going to settle down with anyone, it would be her. Only Bing has the capacity to put up with me, I think. I can be really, really hard to live with.
And amazingly, after all the shit I put her through, she was still here with me. I hadn't scared her off or acted so cool and aloof that she lost interest. Where am I gonna find that anywhere else? She had seen me at my ugliest, both inside and out and she still found a way to love me and want me. She knew my bad points and my good points and still loved the real me. She knows me better than anyone in the world and she still wakes up every morning and says she feels lucky.
God, incredible.
But, you know...I never doubt for a second that is me who is the lucky one.
JYankee asks how Liv handles Bing and my relationship and if others ever give her a hard time.
Liv is pretty accepting. But, the truth is that I think that Liv knows that I love her and feels safe and reassured in my love. And she knows that Bing adores her too. As she has gotten older, she understands that she needs to knock on our bedroom door before she comes in, things like that. But, she also knows that, in a pinch, both of us will drop everything to get to her if she needs us. She and I have never actually discussed my relationship with Bing, but then...what child has to do that with their parents?
Liv simply accepts that we are a family. I've never called attention to it or pointed out to her that we are different from most of her friends. I have never wanted it to be an issue. I just want it to be what it is: a family.
As far as others giving her a hard time? To my knowledge, it hasn't come up. I chose a very diverse, very progressive Montessori school for her to attend. It was imperative to me that her education be important, but I wanted her to be in a school where all kinds of families existed and accepted each other, all different types of children.
I love her school. It is very green, very progressive and very diverse. And she isn't the only one with two same sex parents. There are several in her building. I knew right from the beginning that I would pay as much as I had to for this monetarily. And her school is not cheap. But, no one is turned away if the parents are willing to work to pay tuition by tending the school garden or cleaning bathrooms or bringing a talent they have to the school (one father teaches a t'ai chi class for free to any parents or children on Saturday mornings, another mother polishes the wooden floors every month.)
I have run into a few snotty parents, but not many and they are far outnumbered by the rest. I have never once had Liv come home from school and complain that she was teased, etc. But, the school has a very open door policy on nearly everything. Problems are discussed and solved before they become issues.
Again, I ADORE Liv's school. I like it that religion is not part of the curriculum in any way. The teachers are well paid and very, very good. And the school is very small and that helps. Liv's entire elementary school is under 100 children.
They recycle, learn to compost, tend a school garden and help the neighborhood. They are learning to be citizens of their school, their neighborhood, their families, their community, their city and the world.
I am not stupid. One day, she will be teased. But, I am hopeful that her school and I have given her the tools to deal with this.
And lastly (y'all are clapping...how RUDE!!)...MLC asks who would play me in a movie or screenplay?
I say let Catherine Zeta Jones be me. But, the truth is that I am no beauty. I think that any pale faced, short woman with a smart mouth and a bad swearing habit could play me.
Angie suggested Linda Ronstadt.
Okay. She would be fine. Or Tina Fey. Meryl Streep. Gwyneth Paltrow.
Yeah right....
How about Betty White?
And I am finally done...I will get to your blogs this weekend as time allows.
Right now, we are home from the movie...(it was loooonnngg, but pretty good) and it is almost time for dinner. I smell curry. Ahhh. Tinton and Liv are finally home from ice skating and Nirand is calling for someone to set the table.
I guess it's the least I can do.
Happy Christmas, to all you patient readers. You guys rock.
G'night...
Ours has started beautifully with the exception of one glitch: our friends, Vince and Thuan were unable to fly in yesterday from Chicago (nasty weather), so they will come on Saturday and stay until after the New Year. Instead of Thuan's famous Vietnamese fish soup for dinner last night, Bing and Liv made ham and it was just the three of us.
And of course, Tinton and Nirand flew in last night and I think that Liv was actually surprised. Bing and I took her to the airport to supposedly watch planes take off (she has loved this activity since toddlerhood and I hope that travel gets into her blood) and she spotted Tinton coming down the escalator and nearly jumped out of her pants with joy.
And after a nice breakfast at my sister's house, we are all busy going in different directions. Tinton is going to take Liv ice skating. Nirand is busy making his Indian supper for us. (And thanks so much to the Idle Devil for the grand recipe for Badam Doodh. I made it for homecoming drinks last night and we all adored it.)
Bing and I are going to have a date this afternoon and go see this. Then, we will all meet up back home for Christmas dinner.
We opened Christmas gifts this morning before we left for breakfast at Patrice's house. And cleaned up.
Liv loved all her gifts. Bing and I got her an electric guitar, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and a new chess set. Tinton gave her a microscope and Nirand gave her a children's cookbook. When Vince and Thuan get here, she will be spoiled rotten as they have money to spend and insist on indulging her shamelessly.
Tinton gave Bing and I the set of Charlaine Harris books that the television show, True Blood on HBO is based on. We are both excited about that, although I snagged the first one and have told her that she only gets it after me. Bing's sister gave our family a gift certificate to Target. Hal and Nora gave us a book of free movie tickets to our neighborhood theatre and the promise of free babysitting whenever we go. They also bought Liv her own set of gardener's tools. Nirand gave us Christmas ornaments from India that are so delicate and lovely that I am afraid to touch them too much. My sister gave me three gorgeous cashmere sweaters with exquisite pearl buttons. My co-workers gave me a pricey jar of pure shea butter lotion, the only thing that works on my poor dry skin. And Utah sent us a box of decadent Godiva chocolates, as she does every year. Every year, I send her a raspberry swirl cheesecake, her favorite.
So...boy howdy, we are one happy family.
I hope you and your kin are having a grand day too. It is so cold and snowy outside, but so warm and cozy inside. Life is truly good.
And now on to the questions...I have told myself that once I finish up the questions, I will travel around to all the blogs I am behind on reading.
ZC asks "Who are the people whose wings lift you as an adult?"
Hmm. My Da still lifts me to this day. Often when I am confronted with a parenting decision, I ask myself what he would have done. He was a fantastic man, an exemplary parent and loved by so many that the church was overflowing at his funeral. If I can be as good and kind as he was, I will consider myself a success.
I look up to Bing a lot too. She is such a steady person. Very pragmatic and practical, but so steadfast in her love that I think I could learn a lot from her. She is the most loyal person I know and always so ready to be a good neighbor. She is much loved in our block while I am simply known as her quiet partner.
Liv inspires me more than anyone else. She teaches me every day to look at the world with an open heart. That sounds so fucking sappy, but it is true. I see the rain and she finds the rainbow for me. She saved me in so many ways. Before she was born, I was simply sliding through life (and often stoned or out of it.) When I knew I was going to be somebody's mother, my life changed for the better because I knew that I wanted to do this parenting thing correctly. I cleaned up my act and my life went charging into a better place. All because of one little seven pound baby.
Mme Benault asks if I recall the time I lost my faith in God and why.
I never really had it begin with. I was raised in such an intensely religious Irish Catholic family that you would think that I would have it in my veins or something. But, I missed that gene. My sisters all have it. I never did. I remember at a very young age wondering about the validity of god.
As I grew older, I questioned more. By the time I was in college, I was reading about the background of the Catholic church and just...repulsed. I mean, good hell...all that selling of dispensations and greed. It made me sick at heart. I left the church for good when Liv was about a year old and I have never returned.
I have always believed, though, that there was a power of good in the world and a power of evil. I know in my heart that this is accurate. And it has virtually nothing to do with religion. One of my professors in college was an atheist and he was the most upright, finest man I know. I knew that goodness existed and that he added to it.
When I worked in the ER for a time, there was a man who came in who professed to be possessed by Satan. He was assigned to me after he had attacked someone in a grocery store. I sat across from him and it took very little time for me to see that not only was I dealing with a very ill person, but an incredibly intelligent person too. He worked hard to promote himself as a textbook schizophrenic, presenting every symptom like clockwork, pulled out as if from a a case study. He had studied up on it, that was obvious. And he was incredibly clever and real. Underneath the facade was simply a very evil entity. I could see that and it chilled me to the bone. His eyes stayed in my mind long after he was taken away. I remember him sitting across from me and as I looked into his eyes, I realized that not only was he toying with me, but he was much, much smarter than I was. And he was evil, not just mentally ill, he was certainly that, but something else too. Something very frightening and very, very dangerous.
I believe that there is a light and a dark side. Maybe not an entity, maybe not god or satan, but...a force. Bing calls this the star wars mentality. And yes, it is simplistic. I try hard to land on the light side as much as I can.
I know that there are documented miracles. I know that there are ghosts. I have seen them. I also know that evil exists. I see it every day in the media. I believe in my heart that there is a connection of good and one of bad.
But, I do not know for sure that there is a god.
I sometimes picture aliens coming to check on us humans and reporting back to their peers that....
Well, they still pray to statues and believe in an entity that will save them. They meet in buildings to pray to this entity and their speech is flavored with thoughts that this entity somehow guides them or has the power to step in and make a difference in their lives. If only they could see that THEY are the power, that THEY are the entity.
I sort of believe that we are all a part of that entity for good and for bad. We just have to keep the good force stronger than the evil one.
Earth Muffin asks if Bing is my partners real name.
No. I started calling her Bing when we were in college. It was Christmastime and I was having trouble waking up for class one morning. She finally went to the cafeteria and snagged some bacon, came back to our dorm room, held it under my nose and began singing White Christmas to me.
She doesn't have a very good voice. I grumbled, snatched up the bacon and said, "Okay, okay...Bing Crosby. I'll get up if you will stop singing."
She's been Bing ever since.
Bing's real name is actually Tess. I am only revealing this because my blog stalker already knows her real name, so I am giving her nothing new.
Lulubelle had many questions. One was to ask how my bff, Harriet, is.
She is okay, Lulu, thank you for asking. She went through a bad patch a few months ago with depression but she is doing better now. I think that she simply put all the pain over losing her sister on the back burner for a very long time. She had to. She had her sister's children to raise, had to say goodbye to her old, tiny house and buy a bigger, newer house and she had to go back to work instead of be what she loved, a stay at home mom because they had two extra mouths to feed and not enough money to buy the food. She started working full time, falling back on what she did before she had children, working as a counselor to teens with eating disorders.
And eventually, she hit a wall. She missed her old life, her tiny house, her small family and her life in sweat pants.
She came through. She went into therapy and started giving herself permission to grieve. She and I went out and did some crazy things. We went bowling. She made me take a belly dancing class (I lasted for ONE CLASS.) And she eventually went to AA.
I am so proud of her. I saw her last week when we arranged to meet for lunch and exchange gifts (she gave me a lovely scarf for my poor balding head and I gave her a charm bracelet with a bowling pin, a hula dancer and a tiny house on it) and to drink coffee instead of wine.
Lulu also asks about the "dynamic" with Bing's family. Are they more accepting than mine?
Bing is originally from Louisiana, but she has a sister who lives here and her mother and several aunts and uncles. They moved here to work in the packing plants when she was younger.
Bing's family is rather odd but of course, mine is odder. They are staunchly Catholic and very devout, but they are also, well....southern. They have accepted Bing and my relationship from day one. Bing's sisters call me their sister in law. Her mother calls me her daughter in law. Everyone is very accepting and always has been. But...they have a curious dynamic that used to give me the shivers.
I come from a very non-huggy, very quiet family. Bing's family is gregarious and um...well...LOUD. They have rough and tumble arguments, usually at the dinner table and say the most snarky things to each other.
And then...after they have pronounced each other to be total bitches and foul bastards in a heated verbal match that looks as if it might come to blows...
They. Just. Stop.
And when they say goodbye, there are hugs all around and no one is offended. All is done.
Everyone says what they think and they get it all out and then well...they move on.
If that happened in my family, we would not be on speaking terms for years. I have seen her two uncles have huge fights at the dinner table that ended with bottles of beer flying and then ten minutes later, they were back slapping and watching football together.
I have seen one of her sisters call the other a "bleached blonde hussy" causing the other sister to take off her shoe and hurl it at her. And then, a half hour later, one sister will be taking off her bracelet to give to the other one as a gift because she admired it.
I have learned to sort of...adapt. But, I still get unnerved now and then. And I will never get used to being hugged and kissed wetly each and every time they see me.
Lulu also would like to know if Socks has asked for a little brother or sister.
No. He knows a good deal when he sees one and I don't think he would consent to sharing Liv with another animal. Plus, one dog is plenty for us.
Jess asks if I were an elderly woman and I knew I would be passing soon, what three things would I want to give/tell Liv?
1) Have a diverse group of friends. See the world from all angles.
2) Try not to hurt anybody if you can help it. But, never be anyone's doormat, either.
3) Listen more than you speak.
Trite, maybe. But, that is only a partial list. I have lots of ideas to impart to her. I'm sure she will only listen to about half of them. And that is fine. It is best to go one's own way in the world and discover things on your own terms, when you are ready.
Jenny wants to know about Bing's parenting relationship with Liv.
Oh. Well. That is a bone of contention sometimes with us. Bing can be very...stubborn. She is also a big fan of being strict with children and insisting on them following rules. Me, not so much. Bing doesn't think I am "parental" enough with Liv. She thinks that I am not strict enough and that I spend too much time discussing things with Liv instead of expecting her to simply obey me.
She and Liv love each other but I can see right now that Liv's teen years will cause some problems for them.
For now, she knows that I am Liv's parent and that what I say goes. If she has a problem, she can discuss it with me when Liv is gone or in bed (and believe me, she is not shy about stepping up to that plate) but that she is NOT to interfere.
Besides money, it is probably the one thing we argue about the most. I feel that Liv is doing just fine and I am comfortable with my parenting style. Bing feels that I need to lower the boom a bit more. She is against any physical punishment but she is a big fan of grounding children. I disagree. I think that grounding Liv is more punishment for me than her. I would much rather just sit down and talk things over with Liv and work things out that way. And it isn't as if Liv is a brat or a problem child. She isn't. She is a verbal little girl with lots of opinions.
An example: Liv has never had a bedtime. She gets a bath about 8 p.m. and then either she and I read for a half hour or she can read on her own for a half hour and then it is lights out. But, there is no absolute time that Liv has to be in bed. Sometimes, if we are enjoying a movie, etc, I let her stay up later.
Bing believes that this is not setting boundaries enough with Liv. She tells me all the time that "children need to reach out and feel a wall sometimes...it makes them feel secure."
I think that is ludicrous and I have said so. Bing also thinks I am a bit too loosey goosey with junk food.
But, the thing is that Liv almost always chooses good food, rarely pigs out on cookies, etc. If Liv was overweight or a junk food junkie, I would step in, but she isn't. If she feels like eating a few cookies some nights for a treat rather than carrot sticks, I'm okay with that. I figure that some nights, I choose ice cream rather than a cheese cracker, so why not Liv?
I don't know if it will ever get solved. The bottom line is that Liv knows that Bing loves her, even though she once told me that she thinks that Bing is "a little too much of a rule setter."
Matarot asks what was the tipping point in finally letting Bing back into my life.
I think I just grew up. I realized that there was this incredible woman who loved me, was loyal to me and protected me and that she had been there all along. And I knew that if I was going to settle down with anyone, it would be her. Only Bing has the capacity to put up with me, I think. I can be really, really hard to live with.
And amazingly, after all the shit I put her through, she was still here with me. I hadn't scared her off or acted so cool and aloof that she lost interest. Where am I gonna find that anywhere else? She had seen me at my ugliest, both inside and out and she still found a way to love me and want me. She knew my bad points and my good points and still loved the real me. She knows me better than anyone in the world and she still wakes up every morning and says she feels lucky.
God, incredible.
But, you know...I never doubt for a second that is me who is the lucky one.
JYankee asks how Liv handles Bing and my relationship and if others ever give her a hard time.
Liv is pretty accepting. But, the truth is that I think that Liv knows that I love her and feels safe and reassured in my love. And she knows that Bing adores her too. As she has gotten older, she understands that she needs to knock on our bedroom door before she comes in, things like that. But, she also knows that, in a pinch, both of us will drop everything to get to her if she needs us. She and I have never actually discussed my relationship with Bing, but then...what child has to do that with their parents?
Liv simply accepts that we are a family. I've never called attention to it or pointed out to her that we are different from most of her friends. I have never wanted it to be an issue. I just want it to be what it is: a family.
As far as others giving her a hard time? To my knowledge, it hasn't come up. I chose a very diverse, very progressive Montessori school for her to attend. It was imperative to me that her education be important, but I wanted her to be in a school where all kinds of families existed and accepted each other, all different types of children.
I love her school. It is very green, very progressive and very diverse. And she isn't the only one with two same sex parents. There are several in her building. I knew right from the beginning that I would pay as much as I had to for this monetarily. And her school is not cheap. But, no one is turned away if the parents are willing to work to pay tuition by tending the school garden or cleaning bathrooms or bringing a talent they have to the school (one father teaches a t'ai chi class for free to any parents or children on Saturday mornings, another mother polishes the wooden floors every month.)
I have run into a few snotty parents, but not many and they are far outnumbered by the rest. I have never once had Liv come home from school and complain that she was teased, etc. But, the school has a very open door policy on nearly everything. Problems are discussed and solved before they become issues.
Again, I ADORE Liv's school. I like it that religion is not part of the curriculum in any way. The teachers are well paid and very, very good. And the school is very small and that helps. Liv's entire elementary school is under 100 children.
They recycle, learn to compost, tend a school garden and help the neighborhood. They are learning to be citizens of their school, their neighborhood, their families, their community, their city and the world.
I am not stupid. One day, she will be teased. But, I am hopeful that her school and I have given her the tools to deal with this.
And lastly (y'all are clapping...how RUDE!!)...MLC asks who would play me in a movie or screenplay?
I say let Catherine Zeta Jones be me. But, the truth is that I am no beauty. I think that any pale faced, short woman with a smart mouth and a bad swearing habit could play me.
Angie suggested Linda Ronstadt.
Okay. She would be fine. Or Tina Fey. Meryl Streep. Gwyneth Paltrow.
Yeah right....
How about Betty White?
And I am finally done...I will get to your blogs this weekend as time allows.
Right now, we are home from the movie...(it was loooonnngg, but pretty good) and it is almost time for dinner. I smell curry. Ahhh. Tinton and Liv are finally home from ice skating and Nirand is calling for someone to set the table.
I guess it's the least I can do.
Happy Christmas, to all you patient readers. You guys rock.
G'night...
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Moving right along...
Today had all the beginnings of a hard day. I was up and dressed while Bing and Liv had the day off, so they stayed in bed. Even Socks didn't get up to see me off.
I dressed in what Bing refers to as my Stevie Nicks skirt. Actually, it is just a golden and brown peasant skirt, but I had an appointment with one of my favorite children today, a five year old child with autism who absolutely adores that skirt and fingers it lovingly as we work. So, I put it on for his sake and just as I was heading out the door, I noticed that my hem was sagging badly.
No time for a quick fix. Piper and Julie are on vacation this week with their staff, so it is just me and Elly minding the store and I had the key, so I needed to be on time.
I ran upstairs and quickly changed into the simplest outfit I could find, a black long sleeved silk tee shirt and some nice black pants.
I glanced at myself in the mirror and quickly turned away. I looked positively matronly.
Grandmotherly, even.
I drove to work. It was freezing and had snowed again last night. But, it is amazing how quickly one learns to drive in this mess.
I parked and went to unlock the front door. It is an old fashioned, heavy door and there is a trick to the key. You have to turn and pull up at the same time.
The door swung open and before I could step in, there was Jacky, the neighborhood junkie, smiling widely at me and pushing the door open for me.
Jacky is old. He lives in a tiny room on top of the bakery down the street. He is an old queen. I have heard that in the 60's, he was quite lovely and dressed to the nines. I heard that he could sing People better than Barbra Streisand did herself. And he dressed up like her frequently.
But, now...well..
He is just Jacky. His hands shake frequently. I don't know where he gets his rent money. Or his drug money.
He smells like a Goodwill store although he tries hard to look neat. Sometimes he wears a dress, sometimes he wears a tattery pantsuit. Once, I am told, he wore a pair of leggings and platform shoes.
Jacky is tolerated and taken care of by the neighborhood. He often gets rolls from the bakery, a bowl of soup from the cafe. A taco from that taco place.
He likes the coffee at my office. I make it strong and he says it helps him get going.
Today, as he came into the office, his hands were shaking worse than usual. I took off my coat and he watched me anxiously as I scooped out the coffee and chicory, made coffee. He wanted a cup badly.
Elly arrived and without saying a word, handed Jacky the rest of her bear claw. He smiled hugely and sank his yellow teeth into it, his eyes glassing over in an instant sugar high.
I poured his coffee into a plastic cup and told him that he had better get going now, I had a client coming.
Elly popped her head around the corner to tell me that our first two kid's parents had called to cancel.
"No one wants to get out in this cold," she said.
Jacky smiled at me. "Hey, now that you aren't in a hurry, I have something for you," he told me. "A Christmas gift."
I told him that he did not have to get me a gift. He shrugged and pulled a long multi colored silk scarf out of his pocket.
"I laid it out flat after I washed it," he told me. "I washed it in very hot water in my sink. Do you like it?"
I picked it up and fingered it. It was real silk, but it had some sort of burn in the corner, probably from a cigarette. And it was wrinkly as silk gets when it is washed.
"Well, I was hoping you wouldn't notice that," he said, looking crestfallen. "It isn't perfect, but it is pretty, don't you think?"
I told him yes, that it was absolutely gorgeous. I tied it around my waist to show him how much I liked it.
"Oh, woman. You look one shade of divine," he gushed in his girlish voice.
I laughed. But then I stopped and told him that I didn't have a gift for him. He said that it was fine, that all that coffee was a great gift.
"And thank you for not running me off," he said. "But, you know what? I do think there is a present you could give me that I would just love."
I told him to name it.
"Well, I noticed that you have some bottles of fingernail polish in the bathroom," he said. "Do you think you could maybe paint my nails for me? I can never get polish on straight anymore," he told me, showing me his palsy hands.
I went into the bathroom and came out with four different bottles of polish. He immediately picked the most garish one, a bright chili red color.
I poured some dish detergent from the break room into a small bowl and added some hot water and had him soak his fingers in it. If we were going to do this, we were going to do this right. I kept thinking of that commercial I used to see where the manicurist soaks her clients hands in dish detergent. Remember that one? God, I am old.
Jacky loved it. He sat smiling down at his hands as they soaked in the small plastic sesame street bowls, the only ones we had in the break room.
And then he laid his fingers out flat on my desk and I painted his nails a nice fire engine red. He leaned back to hold his hands up against the heat grate to make them dry faster. He did have nice hands....
Then, I told him that he had to go, I had to get to work. He flounced into the waiting room, and waved a ta-ta wave to Elly, waving his fingers at her delicately, in a true beauty queen wave.
And then he was gone.
I felt good about Jacky all day. It took so little to please him. My sister would be repulsed. ("You let that horrid man SIT in your nice office and you TOUCHED his hands??")
Yeah, I did. And you know...that scarf really did make all the difference. I didn't look so much like a matron, I had a little gypsy in me. It is on my dresser now and it is, indeed beautiful...
And now to end with some questions...
Rose would like to know if I am a competitive person.
Yes. I. Am.
I am one of those people who cannot stand to have someone get a better grade on a test. I was always very competitive all through my long school years. It is what made my resume look so great. I had the grades.
But, it is not something that I am proud of. I wish I were more wise and less competitive.
Rose also wants to know if I am a risk taker.
Not so much anymore. When you have a child, some dare devil part of you sort of dies. It is hard to be a good parent and be devil-may-care. I am a mother, now. I think like one. I act one. I feel like one. I don't take many risks anymore.
And yes, I was a terrible risk taker before I had Liv.
I once got completely and totally stoned at a Bob Dylan concert and have no idea how I got home.
Not only was that risky, it was so incredibly stupid that just the thought of Liv doing something so insane almost makes me sick.
Dive asks if Bing has a sister, an identical twin, who has a thing for Englishmen.
Bing has two sisters. And believe me...you want to stay clear. One is married, but she is one of those people who talks VERY LOUDLY all of the time. She also laughs loudly. It is unnerving. Bing's other sister is an FBI agent. I kid you not. And she is single, but she is very bossy and domineering. Somehow, I can't see you with her, Dive, my love.
Scout wants to know if I can drive a stick shift.
Of course, I can! Silly! I grew up on a farm. I can drive a frackin' tractor. With one hand. I can also drive a hay baler and a combine. A little stick shift doesn't scare me.
But, no..in answer to your next question...I cannot parallel park to save my life.
QuJaBaKa wants to know if I ever get to the southern hemisphere if I will come to her place for coffee.
Yes. Make that coffee strong, please. I like it to slide down my throat like tar.
MLC asks if I like camping, sex in the morning, and what my favorite book is.
I HATE to camp. Thankfully, Bing hates it too. Liv, on the other hand, camped with her father last summer and had a ball.
I am not a fan of sex in the morning, either...although, I don't hate it or anything. :)
I just don't really wake up until nearly noon and I would have to brush my teeth first, because I hate morning breath. Bing, on the other hand, likes sex in the morning more than any other time. So, we compromise. She brushes her teeth faithfully before trying to snag me back into the bed. We also have Liv to consider...when you have a child, sex in the morning is rare.
My favorite book is a common favorite: To Kill a Mockingbird with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as a close second.
I only have ten more questions left! Next time, I will discuss people who inspire me, how I lost my faith in god and what Bing's real name is.
I dressed in what Bing refers to as my Stevie Nicks skirt. Actually, it is just a golden and brown peasant skirt, but I had an appointment with one of my favorite children today, a five year old child with autism who absolutely adores that skirt and fingers it lovingly as we work. So, I put it on for his sake and just as I was heading out the door, I noticed that my hem was sagging badly.
No time for a quick fix. Piper and Julie are on vacation this week with their staff, so it is just me and Elly minding the store and I had the key, so I needed to be on time.
I ran upstairs and quickly changed into the simplest outfit I could find, a black long sleeved silk tee shirt and some nice black pants.
I glanced at myself in the mirror and quickly turned away. I looked positively matronly.
Grandmotherly, even.
I drove to work. It was freezing and had snowed again last night. But, it is amazing how quickly one learns to drive in this mess.
I parked and went to unlock the front door. It is an old fashioned, heavy door and there is a trick to the key. You have to turn and pull up at the same time.
The door swung open and before I could step in, there was Jacky, the neighborhood junkie, smiling widely at me and pushing the door open for me.
Jacky is old. He lives in a tiny room on top of the bakery down the street. He is an old queen. I have heard that in the 60's, he was quite lovely and dressed to the nines. I heard that he could sing People better than Barbra Streisand did herself. And he dressed up like her frequently.
But, now...well..
He is just Jacky. His hands shake frequently. I don't know where he gets his rent money. Or his drug money.
He smells like a Goodwill store although he tries hard to look neat. Sometimes he wears a dress, sometimes he wears a tattery pantsuit. Once, I am told, he wore a pair of leggings and platform shoes.
Jacky is tolerated and taken care of by the neighborhood. He often gets rolls from the bakery, a bowl of soup from the cafe. A taco from that taco place.
He likes the coffee at my office. I make it strong and he says it helps him get going.
Today, as he came into the office, his hands were shaking worse than usual. I took off my coat and he watched me anxiously as I scooped out the coffee and chicory, made coffee. He wanted a cup badly.
Elly arrived and without saying a word, handed Jacky the rest of her bear claw. He smiled hugely and sank his yellow teeth into it, his eyes glassing over in an instant sugar high.
I poured his coffee into a plastic cup and told him that he had better get going now, I had a client coming.
Elly popped her head around the corner to tell me that our first two kid's parents had called to cancel.
"No one wants to get out in this cold," she said.
Jacky smiled at me. "Hey, now that you aren't in a hurry, I have something for you," he told me. "A Christmas gift."
I told him that he did not have to get me a gift. He shrugged and pulled a long multi colored silk scarf out of his pocket.
"I laid it out flat after I washed it," he told me. "I washed it in very hot water in my sink. Do you like it?"
I picked it up and fingered it. It was real silk, but it had some sort of burn in the corner, probably from a cigarette. And it was wrinkly as silk gets when it is washed.
"Well, I was hoping you wouldn't notice that," he said, looking crestfallen. "It isn't perfect, but it is pretty, don't you think?"
I told him yes, that it was absolutely gorgeous. I tied it around my waist to show him how much I liked it.
"Oh, woman. You look one shade of divine," he gushed in his girlish voice.
I laughed. But then I stopped and told him that I didn't have a gift for him. He said that it was fine, that all that coffee was a great gift.
"And thank you for not running me off," he said. "But, you know what? I do think there is a present you could give me that I would just love."
I told him to name it.
"Well, I noticed that you have some bottles of fingernail polish in the bathroom," he said. "Do you think you could maybe paint my nails for me? I can never get polish on straight anymore," he told me, showing me his palsy hands.
I went into the bathroom and came out with four different bottles of polish. He immediately picked the most garish one, a bright chili red color.
I poured some dish detergent from the break room into a small bowl and added some hot water and had him soak his fingers in it. If we were going to do this, we were going to do this right. I kept thinking of that commercial I used to see where the manicurist soaks her clients hands in dish detergent. Remember that one? God, I am old.
Jacky loved it. He sat smiling down at his hands as they soaked in the small plastic sesame street bowls, the only ones we had in the break room.
And then he laid his fingers out flat on my desk and I painted his nails a nice fire engine red. He leaned back to hold his hands up against the heat grate to make them dry faster. He did have nice hands....
Then, I told him that he had to go, I had to get to work. He flounced into the waiting room, and waved a ta-ta wave to Elly, waving his fingers at her delicately, in a true beauty queen wave.
And then he was gone.
I felt good about Jacky all day. It took so little to please him. My sister would be repulsed. ("You let that horrid man SIT in your nice office and you TOUCHED his hands??")
Yeah, I did. And you know...that scarf really did make all the difference. I didn't look so much like a matron, I had a little gypsy in me. It is on my dresser now and it is, indeed beautiful...
And now to end with some questions...
Rose would like to know if I am a competitive person.
Yes. I. Am.
I am one of those people who cannot stand to have someone get a better grade on a test. I was always very competitive all through my long school years. It is what made my resume look so great. I had the grades.
But, it is not something that I am proud of. I wish I were more wise and less competitive.
Rose also wants to know if I am a risk taker.
Not so much anymore. When you have a child, some dare devil part of you sort of dies. It is hard to be a good parent and be devil-may-care. I am a mother, now. I think like one. I act one. I feel like one. I don't take many risks anymore.
And yes, I was a terrible risk taker before I had Liv.
I once got completely and totally stoned at a Bob Dylan concert and have no idea how I got home.
Not only was that risky, it was so incredibly stupid that just the thought of Liv doing something so insane almost makes me sick.
Dive asks if Bing has a sister, an identical twin, who has a thing for Englishmen.
Bing has two sisters. And believe me...you want to stay clear. One is married, but she is one of those people who talks VERY LOUDLY all of the time. She also laughs loudly. It is unnerving. Bing's other sister is an FBI agent. I kid you not. And she is single, but she is very bossy and domineering. Somehow, I can't see you with her, Dive, my love.
Scout wants to know if I can drive a stick shift.
Of course, I can! Silly! I grew up on a farm. I can drive a frackin' tractor. With one hand. I can also drive a hay baler and a combine. A little stick shift doesn't scare me.
But, no..in answer to your next question...I cannot parallel park to save my life.
QuJaBaKa wants to know if I ever get to the southern hemisphere if I will come to her place for coffee.
Yes. Make that coffee strong, please. I like it to slide down my throat like tar.
MLC asks if I like camping, sex in the morning, and what my favorite book is.
I HATE to camp. Thankfully, Bing hates it too. Liv, on the other hand, camped with her father last summer and had a ball.
I am not a fan of sex in the morning, either...although, I don't hate it or anything. :)
I just don't really wake up until nearly noon and I would have to brush my teeth first, because I hate morning breath. Bing, on the other hand, likes sex in the morning more than any other time. So, we compromise. She brushes her teeth faithfully before trying to snag me back into the bed. We also have Liv to consider...when you have a child, sex in the morning is rare.
My favorite book is a common favorite: To Kill a Mockingbird with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as a close second.
I only have ten more questions left! Next time, I will discuss people who inspire me, how I lost my faith in god and what Bing's real name is.
Monday, December 22, 2008
small break for a question...
I'm getting new glasses and I can afford two pairs.
Which should I get?
Number 1
Number 2
or
Number 3.
I realize that it depends on one's face. But...I have sort of a heart shaped face with hair that is short and gray eyes. And freckles.
Pale. I used to have that lovely peaches and cream/milkmaid face. Now, I am just pale as a ghost.
I currently have a pair of John Lennon glasses, some Tina Fey ones and some plain yellow frames.
I already have sunglasses...I just need some new specs and I cannot make up my mind. I can get two...
So..which two??
Which should I get?
Number 1
Number 2
or
Number 3.
I realize that it depends on one's face. But...I have sort of a heart shaped face with hair that is short and gray eyes. And freckles.
Pale. I used to have that lovely peaches and cream/milkmaid face. Now, I am just pale as a ghost.
I currently have a pair of John Lennon glasses, some Tina Fey ones and some plain yellow frames.
I already have sunglasses...I just need some new specs and I cannot make up my mind. I can get two...
So..which two??
Sunday, December 21, 2008
On a roll...
Well, Bing's obsessive compulsive cousin Richie is coming over this afternoon with his grandson, so it should be a not-so-fun afternoon, but gotta do the relative dance, I suppose. I have finally broken Bing of her habit of sitting back and making me do all the entertaining when company arrives. (Once, she even disappeared and I finally found her in the office playing some game on the computer...yeah...THAT went over well with me.) If I have to sit and watch this man fiddle with his food (he cannot bear to have any of his food touch) or draw lines at television (he dislikes to watch sports on television, only likes to watch in person) or talk relentlessly about how he is unappreciated at his place of employment, well...boy howdy...she better be sitting right there with me. And this is her relative, not mine.
We took Liv to see Milk this morning. It was fantastic. Go see it. About time. And please don't waste my time telling me that I should be taking Liv to see children's movies instead. She enjoyed it and it was educational.
On to some more questions before Richie descends on us...
Pawsing to speak asks what I would do with the winnings if I won the lottery.
Well, a million doesn't go nearly as far as it used to....
But, first, I would set aside what I figured would be enough money to put Liv through college, grad school and beyond. And then I would triple it because that is about what it will cost by the time she gets there.
Then, I would buy new cars, even though Bing detests new cars and swears that she will never buy anything but used.
I would pay off the house. Give money to my three charities:
1) Sexual Minority Assistance League.
2) St.Jude's Hospital.
3) ACLU.
And what was left would be spent on living the good life. I am not going to lie and say that I would still keep working. I wouldn't. Bing wouldn't.
I think I would make a nice millionaire, I really do.
Sassy Femme asks if I had to move to another state, not near my present state, where would I go and why?
I would move to Maine. Don't ask me why. I hate Winter. I hate the cold. But, I have always had this silly little fantasy about living in a small cottage by the sea.
The hard part of this fantasy is that I am always alone, or just with Liv. I imagine a house filled with books and Liv and Socks running along a beach.
It isn't that I don't want Bing around, I just know that she would hate it. She hates Winter even more than I do, being a Louisiana transplant to the prairie. And she has no desire to live by the sea.
So, just a fantasy. We are far more likely to end up in California. Go where it is warm and more gay friendly. It is important to me to raise Liv up in a place where diversity is prized and doing that in Nebraska can be difficult.
But. Maine calls to me. I have no idea why. A past life, perhaps?
Kate asks what the worst airplane trip I ever had was like.
Easy. It was before Liv was born. I had just spent Christmas in Chicago with my friends, Vince and Thuan. I was on a flight home. A crowded flight full of people who were sick to death of their relatives and just glad to be leaving to get back to a life where it wasn't Christmas and they could sit in their easy chairs and watch Survivor in their smelly slippers while eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.
My seat was on the aisle. An Asian man sat across the aisle from me with his infant daughter. She was whimpering and he was obviously not a full time father as he was holding her all wrong, in that way that people who do not have children hold them. He was holding her a little away from himself as if he feared she might throw up any second.
As soon as the plane ascended, the baby began wailing. I tried to tell the man that she needed to drink a bottle, to open up her eustachian tubes. He angrily told me that she had just had a bottle and that he had told his wife not to give him a bottle, that he didn't want her "upchucking" on him. I debated whether to argue with him by explaining the valsalva manuever, but he wasn't interested in listening.
He also seemed to have no interest in comforting his child. He held her stiffly away from him and periodically wiped her face with a tissue. He obviously had some serious snot issues. Once, she held her arms out to me in an effort to get some kindness. I didn't dare try to hold her.
She screamed the entire flight. I was ready to jump out of the window by the time we got home. And that poor little baby....
The Idle Devil asks if there was one thing that I could change in my life, what would it be?
That's a hard one, because as we all know, difficulties sometimes bring our strengths to the surface.
My inclination is to say that I wish I wasn't sick. But, I don't know...maybe this whole mess has taught me to enjoy my life more, appreciate what I have.
I also have always wished that I had let Bing in when I was 18 instead of 48. But, that too might be a mistake. I mean, I don't think I was truly ready to co-habit with anyone until now. And even now, I have my doubts. And really, how fair is it to ask someone to have to put up with me for thirty years instead of just a few?
I think that maybe it would be nice not to have diabetes, not to have rheumatoid arthritis, but with my love of sweets, if I didn't have to curb them in because of my diabetes, I might be as fat as a pig by now. But, the rheumatoid arthritis? I think that yes, I would very much like to have that gone.
So, if I could change anything about my life it would be to make me NOT have rheumatoid arthritis.
Oh, and I wish that my mother hadn't cut me out of her will. I lost over 200 thousand dollars of inheritance.
Deb asks me what talents do I have that have not been previously revealed here and would talent would like I to own?
Hmm..I'm not shy about my talents. I guess I could admit that I can knit. And while I detest baking, I am not a bad baker if I set my mind to it. I am a published writer and if you have taken an advanced degree science class, I may have edited your textbook. I used to edit science and medical texts as a freelancer for several years.
A talent that I covet? Musical talent. I have none. Zilch. I took one piano lesson and the teacher sent me home with a note for my mother saying that there was no need to continue lessons since I had no aptitude. I often look at Bing, who plays many instruments (drums, most percussion, including piano, guitar, violin, harmonica and trumpet) and I wish I could sit down at the piano as she does and simply lose myself. My daughter is gifted musically too, as is her father. But, I have no talent. I can't even carry a tune.
Val asks how I ended up in Omaha. I grew up near the famous bridges of Madison county in Iowa and when it came time to go to college, I got a scholarship to an Omaha university. It was either Ames, Omaha, or Bemidji. I decided on Omaha. I don't much care for the conservative atmosphere here most of the time but there is a small group of people who are liberals and square pegs like myself and I like them just fine. Bing and I talk a lot about moving somewhere else, somewhere more liberal, more open to diversity for Liv.
Jennfactor asks for a story about my Da. I think I have told most of them. And since he died when I was very young, I don't have that many. I will say that he set the standard for decency and kindness for me and that bar is very, very high. I've yet to meet anyone quite like him. He was tied to the land, a farmer...but his head was always in the sky. He had an open mind and was my very own personal Atticus Finch. But, he was also intensely religious, went to mass sometimes three or four times a week. I often wonder how he would have handled my bisexuality.
Jill asked me a very thought provoking query. She wonders if I feel like I "chose" women over men.
I honestly don't know for sure. I do know this: I never have felt exclusively gay, although I tend to lean that way more than any other. I have had very strong attractions to men as well as women. If I had to lay down a percentage, it would be about 65% women to 35% men. I am more attracted to certain personalities than to gender. I tend to be a sucker for bad boys/girls with good hearts and big brains. I like complicated men and women best.
But, is this a choice or not? I read a recent study out of the Stockholm Brain Institute that studied MRI scans of gay and straight men and women. The researchers found that people who liked women, heterosexual men and homosexual women, had larger right brain hemispheres while people who liked men, heterosexual women and homosexual men, had symmetrical brains.
And where do I, a bi-sexual woman fit?
Bing thinks that I am just one of those people who is open to it all. But, the truth is that I am not a particularly sexual person. I can go months without sex and be just dandy. So, it isn't as if I am such a sexually hungry person that I can be attracted to anyone.
If I am in a room with an equally gorgeous man and woman, which do I gravitate towards? Probably the one who makes me laugh or says something intelligent or witty. On occasion, I have been attracted to someone solely on looks, but it is unusual.
But is it a choice? I am not sure.
So, yeah...um...I hope that clears that up.
Liz asks why I started blogging.
I never intended to have a readership. Honest, hand over my heart. I started blogging because I have three sisters and they kept nagging at me because I was a poor e-mail correspondent. I started a blog so that they could sort of tune and catch up on all my news.
And somewhere along the way, I acquired readers and my blog changed from being a family newsletter to the blog it is now.
My sisters all know my blog, but my google analytics say that none of them read it regularly. My sisters don't find me all that interesting. And I think I make them uncomfortable. I am honest about how I feel about them. They know that I love them. But, they also know that I don't always like them. And all three of my sisters are devout Catholics. They all have problems with my life and think I am waaayyy too out there in liberal field for their taste.
The blog has become more of a testimony for Liv in the last few years. I want her to read it when she is older (and not until she is at least 16!) and it will be sort of a diary for her. I wish that my mother had done this. I would have loved to know what was in her head.
Fairy Dogmother asks what has been my favorite event or turn of events, so far this year?
Easy. One word. OBAMA.
And lastly (for today), Rose asks if when Liv was younger and we would play a game, if I let her win.
No. But, when she was little, we often played Chutes and Ladders or Candyland (two games that nearly drove me insane) and they were really games of chance rather than skill.
I taught her to play chess and it is by losing that you learn to really play the game. She has yet to beat me, but that day will come and she will love every fucking minute of it.
We play crazy eights and war now with a deck of cards and she is getting better.
She is just learning about how to buy property in Monopoly. She knows that either you go around and buy everything in sight and try to win that way (my way) or you hold out for the big properties and not waste time on the cheapo places (Bing's way.) She has seen us both win, but...frankly Bing wins more often.
So, no. I don't let her win.
And in a few years, when she surpasses me in skill, I hope she never lets me win either.
Okay..time to get to bed. Richie has come and gone and it wasn't all that bad.
Next up, I will answer questions about my competitive nature, my risk taking abilities and Bing's twin sister. Oh, and the burning question you are all dying to ask:
Can Maria drive a stick shift?
We took Liv to see Milk this morning. It was fantastic. Go see it. About time. And please don't waste my time telling me that I should be taking Liv to see children's movies instead. She enjoyed it and it was educational.
On to some more questions before Richie descends on us...
Pawsing to speak asks what I would do with the winnings if I won the lottery.
Well, a million doesn't go nearly as far as it used to....
But, first, I would set aside what I figured would be enough money to put Liv through college, grad school and beyond. And then I would triple it because that is about what it will cost by the time she gets there.
Then, I would buy new cars, even though Bing detests new cars and swears that she will never buy anything but used.
I would pay off the house. Give money to my three charities:
1) Sexual Minority Assistance League.
2) St.Jude's Hospital.
3) ACLU.
And what was left would be spent on living the good life. I am not going to lie and say that I would still keep working. I wouldn't. Bing wouldn't.
I think I would make a nice millionaire, I really do.
Sassy Femme asks if I had to move to another state, not near my present state, where would I go and why?
I would move to Maine. Don't ask me why. I hate Winter. I hate the cold. But, I have always had this silly little fantasy about living in a small cottage by the sea.
The hard part of this fantasy is that I am always alone, or just with Liv. I imagine a house filled with books and Liv and Socks running along a beach.
It isn't that I don't want Bing around, I just know that she would hate it. She hates Winter even more than I do, being a Louisiana transplant to the prairie. And she has no desire to live by the sea.
So, just a fantasy. We are far more likely to end up in California. Go where it is warm and more gay friendly. It is important to me to raise Liv up in a place where diversity is prized and doing that in Nebraska can be difficult.
But. Maine calls to me. I have no idea why. A past life, perhaps?
Kate asks what the worst airplane trip I ever had was like.
Easy. It was before Liv was born. I had just spent Christmas in Chicago with my friends, Vince and Thuan. I was on a flight home. A crowded flight full of people who were sick to death of their relatives and just glad to be leaving to get back to a life where it wasn't Christmas and they could sit in their easy chairs and watch Survivor in their smelly slippers while eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.
My seat was on the aisle. An Asian man sat across the aisle from me with his infant daughter. She was whimpering and he was obviously not a full time father as he was holding her all wrong, in that way that people who do not have children hold them. He was holding her a little away from himself as if he feared she might throw up any second.
As soon as the plane ascended, the baby began wailing. I tried to tell the man that she needed to drink a bottle, to open up her eustachian tubes. He angrily told me that she had just had a bottle and that he had told his wife not to give him a bottle, that he didn't want her "upchucking" on him. I debated whether to argue with him by explaining the valsalva manuever, but he wasn't interested in listening.
He also seemed to have no interest in comforting his child. He held her stiffly away from him and periodically wiped her face with a tissue. He obviously had some serious snot issues. Once, she held her arms out to me in an effort to get some kindness. I didn't dare try to hold her.
She screamed the entire flight. I was ready to jump out of the window by the time we got home. And that poor little baby....
The Idle Devil asks if there was one thing that I could change in my life, what would it be?
That's a hard one, because as we all know, difficulties sometimes bring our strengths to the surface.
My inclination is to say that I wish I wasn't sick. But, I don't know...maybe this whole mess has taught me to enjoy my life more, appreciate what I have.
I also have always wished that I had let Bing in when I was 18 instead of 48. But, that too might be a mistake. I mean, I don't think I was truly ready to co-habit with anyone until now. And even now, I have my doubts. And really, how fair is it to ask someone to have to put up with me for thirty years instead of just a few?
I think that maybe it would be nice not to have diabetes, not to have rheumatoid arthritis, but with my love of sweets, if I didn't have to curb them in because of my diabetes, I might be as fat as a pig by now. But, the rheumatoid arthritis? I think that yes, I would very much like to have that gone.
So, if I could change anything about my life it would be to make me NOT have rheumatoid arthritis.
Oh, and I wish that my mother hadn't cut me out of her will. I lost over 200 thousand dollars of inheritance.
Deb asks me what talents do I have that have not been previously revealed here and would talent would like I to own?
Hmm..I'm not shy about my talents. I guess I could admit that I can knit. And while I detest baking, I am not a bad baker if I set my mind to it. I am a published writer and if you have taken an advanced degree science class, I may have edited your textbook. I used to edit science and medical texts as a freelancer for several years.
A talent that I covet? Musical talent. I have none. Zilch. I took one piano lesson and the teacher sent me home with a note for my mother saying that there was no need to continue lessons since I had no aptitude. I often look at Bing, who plays many instruments (drums, most percussion, including piano, guitar, violin, harmonica and trumpet) and I wish I could sit down at the piano as she does and simply lose myself. My daughter is gifted musically too, as is her father. But, I have no talent. I can't even carry a tune.
Val asks how I ended up in Omaha. I grew up near the famous bridges of Madison county in Iowa and when it came time to go to college, I got a scholarship to an Omaha university. It was either Ames, Omaha, or Bemidji. I decided on Omaha. I don't much care for the conservative atmosphere here most of the time but there is a small group of people who are liberals and square pegs like myself and I like them just fine. Bing and I talk a lot about moving somewhere else, somewhere more liberal, more open to diversity for Liv.
Jennfactor asks for a story about my Da. I think I have told most of them. And since he died when I was very young, I don't have that many. I will say that he set the standard for decency and kindness for me and that bar is very, very high. I've yet to meet anyone quite like him. He was tied to the land, a farmer...but his head was always in the sky. He had an open mind and was my very own personal Atticus Finch. But, he was also intensely religious, went to mass sometimes three or four times a week. I often wonder how he would have handled my bisexuality.
Jill asked me a very thought provoking query. She wonders if I feel like I "chose" women over men.
I honestly don't know for sure. I do know this: I never have felt exclusively gay, although I tend to lean that way more than any other. I have had very strong attractions to men as well as women. If I had to lay down a percentage, it would be about 65% women to 35% men. I am more attracted to certain personalities than to gender. I tend to be a sucker for bad boys/girls with good hearts and big brains. I like complicated men and women best.
But, is this a choice or not? I read a recent study out of the Stockholm Brain Institute that studied MRI scans of gay and straight men and women. The researchers found that people who liked women, heterosexual men and homosexual women, had larger right brain hemispheres while people who liked men, heterosexual women and homosexual men, had symmetrical brains.
And where do I, a bi-sexual woman fit?
Bing thinks that I am just one of those people who is open to it all. But, the truth is that I am not a particularly sexual person. I can go months without sex and be just dandy. So, it isn't as if I am such a sexually hungry person that I can be attracted to anyone.
If I am in a room with an equally gorgeous man and woman, which do I gravitate towards? Probably the one who makes me laugh or says something intelligent or witty. On occasion, I have been attracted to someone solely on looks, but it is unusual.
But is it a choice? I am not sure.
So, yeah...um...I hope that clears that up.
Liz asks why I started blogging.
I never intended to have a readership. Honest, hand over my heart. I started blogging because I have three sisters and they kept nagging at me because I was a poor e-mail correspondent. I started a blog so that they could sort of tune and catch up on all my news.
And somewhere along the way, I acquired readers and my blog changed from being a family newsletter to the blog it is now.
My sisters all know my blog, but my google analytics say that none of them read it regularly. My sisters don't find me all that interesting. And I think I make them uncomfortable. I am honest about how I feel about them. They know that I love them. But, they also know that I don't always like them. And all three of my sisters are devout Catholics. They all have problems with my life and think I am waaayyy too out there in liberal field for their taste.
The blog has become more of a testimony for Liv in the last few years. I want her to read it when she is older (and not until she is at least 16!) and it will be sort of a diary for her. I wish that my mother had done this. I would have loved to know what was in her head.
Fairy Dogmother asks what has been my favorite event or turn of events, so far this year?
Easy. One word. OBAMA.
And lastly (for today), Rose asks if when Liv was younger and we would play a game, if I let her win.
No. But, when she was little, we often played Chutes and Ladders or Candyland (two games that nearly drove me insane) and they were really games of chance rather than skill.
I taught her to play chess and it is by losing that you learn to really play the game. She has yet to beat me, but that day will come and she will love every fucking minute of it.
We play crazy eights and war now with a deck of cards and she is getting better.
She is just learning about how to buy property in Monopoly. She knows that either you go around and buy everything in sight and try to win that way (my way) or you hold out for the big properties and not waste time on the cheapo places (Bing's way.) She has seen us both win, but...frankly Bing wins more often.
So, no. I don't let her win.
And in a few years, when she surpasses me in skill, I hope she never lets me win either.
Okay..time to get to bed. Richie has come and gone and it wasn't all that bad.
Next up, I will answer questions about my competitive nature, my risk taking abilities and Bing's twin sister. Oh, and the burning question you are all dying to ask:
Can Maria drive a stick shift?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
More questions
I slept like a top last night. I love it when that happens. I love waking up at 2:45 a.m. and knowing that the alarm is not going to go off at 5. I love slithering around under that electric blanket and then gingerly getting out of bed to go get a drink of water, pee, and check on Liv. The wood floors are cold as hell this time of year and Jack Frost has decorated all the windows. The snow looks almost pretty as it sits in pristine glory over the front yard. Almost. Not that I am fooled for a minute, though. I am a prairie girl; I've driven in snow and ice. I know that it is not pretty. Not really.
I love checking on Liv and watching her head poked up out from under her mountain of blankets (she refuses an electric blanket, prefers 4 woolen blankets instead), her mouth open, Socks laying on the blanket at her feet, his head on his paws. Sometimes, I see both of their heads poking out from under the blankets and I know he has once again coaxed her into letting him burrow under with her. They like to lay in bed and whisper, tell secrets before sleep.
And then I hop back into bed, thoroughly chilled and it is like balm to my aching joints to slide into that warm bed and to seek out Bing's warm feet with my cold ones.
Now, it is a frigid Saturday afternoon. We've just come home from grocery shopping. Bing and Liv are making pumpkin bread. Soon the house will smell like a very good dream.
Liv and I finished our Christmas shopping this morning, starting at a book store and ending at a bakery. She has noticed that I am filling the house with Vietnamese foods for Vince and Thuan's visit from Chicago for Christmas (rice noodles, tree ears, coconut milk, sliced sour bamboo), and I am wondering if it has caught her attention, too, that I am stocking up on Indian foods as well (hot sweet chutney, nirav almonds, cumin seeds, garam masala and saffron.) If she has noticed, she has not said anything about it. But, this child misses nothing. Tinton and Nirand are scheduled to fly in Christmas Eve night at nine. We are going to pretend to go looking at Christmas lights and then decide to watch some planes fly in, hoping to surprise her. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that Liv and Socks are whispering about the possibility of a visit from her father for Christmas. As I said, this child is smart as a whip and misses little. After all, she did perform as a human cell in her Montessori winter program.
My favorite line of hers was:
My basement membrane consists of an electron dense membrane called the lamina densa, about seventy nanometers in thickness...
Only in Montessori do they have winter programs like this. The rest of the schools are singing about how all they want for Christmas is their two front teeth. Not our kids. They sing about endothelial cells.
We'll see if she is surprised...
But, now, without further ado...on to the questions.
My good buddy, Eric, wants to know what the air speed of an unladen sparrow is.
Well, Eric, I am here to tell you that the average cruising air speed of velocity of an unladen european swallow is roughly 24 miles an hour.
Thank you, google.
Kristi asks if I ever regret not having another child and if Liv would enjoy a sibling.
The answer is yes. I have often wished that I could have another child. But, I was 41 when Liv was born and it was sort of a miracle. I don't think lightning strikes twice. But, when she was about five, I started hankering for another baby which shocked the hell out of me, considering that she had colic for the first four months of her life and turned me into a sleep deprived blob. I remember vividly hanging over the side of her crib at 2 a.m. listening to her scream and singing in a sweet voice She drives me crazy...like no one ca--an. She drives me crazy and I can't stand her right now...
And yes, I think Liv would have loved a sibling. But, you get what you get. And she gets me, an aging hippie mama, who is madly adoring of her. Not such a rough life.
LL COOL JOE asks: You write beautifully, so how do you tolerate reading bad English (like mine)?
Joe, I like your blog. I like it because it is honest and funny. And I don't think the grammar is poor. Actually, I don't mind reading poor grammar nearly as much as I mind listening to someone speak with poor grammar. But, my new job is humbling me. Many of my patients are very poor speakers and I love their little hearts to bits. Some of their parents speak poorly as well and I love most of them too, although I have met a few who are just a little too adept at manipulating and that annoys the hell out of me.
I am going to end this blog post with a question that I have thought twice about answering, mainly because it is very personal, but what the hell. I have written about peeing my pants at my doctor's office, right?
One Brick and Deb ask how things came about with Liv's father, Tinton.
Without drowning anyone in detail, I will try to be succinct. Well, as succinct as I am capable of being...
I met Tinton when my niece, Lisette, was in town on her way to a move to a different job in Texas. She was staying with me for a week and visiting with some friends who lived here. She met Tinton at a party and he, with a large group of friends of hers, all came over to my house to pick up Lisette to go to a movie. Tinton had just begun graduate school here on the prairie, was a very young man, yes indeedy.
Lisette moved on to Texas, but Tinton and I stayed in touch, became friends.
Liv was conceived on a night in late October when the moon was full and too much was had to drink. A one night stand. I had finished several rounds of in vitro fertilization about four months before that and had been unable to sustain a pregnancy. Had spent thousands and thousands of dollars with no success. My doctor told me that my eggs were simply too old and that my body did not seem willing to want to stay pregnant.
So, I was sort of sticking my toe in the waters of adoption, although I didn't know how successful I would be at even that, being an over 40 year old single woman.
Enough said. I became a mother and Tinton became a father because of a crazy one night stand that should have never happened. Frankly, we were both shocked. Me in a very good way...him not so much.
Liv was born in late July. 7 pounds, 7 ounces. Every hair on her head perfect. Her apgar was spectacular.
Tinton saw her once when she was a week old and again when she was 10 days old. I asked for nothing from him and he informed me that he had no interest in being anyone's father. When she was four months old, he signed off on all parental rights for her.
I was ecstatic. I think he was too. He transferred to a grad school in New Mexico and I didn't see him again until Liv was three years old. He was in town, was working on his doctorate and asked if he could see her.
I thought about it for nearly two weeks before I consented.
He came to see her and I could tell that in those three years he had changed a great deal. He was not some college kid anymore. He was a man.
The day he came to see Liv was a sunny day in November, crisp and cool. We all sat outside in the back yard and he watched her while she played in the leaves, while she sat on my lap eating apple slices and while she scowled at him when he tried to play a babyish game of peek-a-boo with her.
He fell in love with her. Pelted me with questions as she napped. Wanted to know what her first words were (light, pizza, and baby), her favorite foods (fish sticks, bananas, and toast with jelly), and what he had missed in three years (a butt load of stuff.)
He came by daily for weeks and Liv, being a shy child, took to him slowly. But, once she trusted him, they got along splendidly.
A month later, he told me that it had been the biggest mistake of his life when he gave up his parental rights and asked me if I would let him be a friend to Liv, if not a father.
I told him that he was her father and if he wanted to be that, he could. But, that she lived with me and that would never change. We worked out the parameters of their relationship and it has been a sweet part of Liv's life ever since. She adores him and he adores her right back. I have come to trust him completely and he has proven to be an excellent father. He tries hard to visit her whenever he can and she has traveled to see him as well. As she gets older, I am certain that he will play an even bigger role in her life and that is fine with me. I can't be stingy with love for Liv. I want her to have many, many good people in her life who love her and will be bridges for her to cross over. He is one of those people.
Tinton and I have become friends. We aren't particularly close friends, but we get along well. I never doubt his devotion to our child. He never doubts mine. We are joined in that way and always will be.
Tinton is a geologist. He travels a lot, freelances more than not. He makes a good living but is not settled in one place. He has a long term girlfriend who breeds dogs. (She is the one who sent us Socks.) He and Nirand work together on projects. Sometimes, Tinton teaches for a semester or two at a university. His specialty is in fluvial geomorphology and tectonics and he loves what he does.
He and Bing have a sort of strange relationship. She has some problems with him. She likes him, but doesn't want to. I think it just bugs her sometimes that she puts all this work into raising Liv and then Tinton shows up and he is Liv's hero. Tinton never ever tries to one up Bing or anything remotely like that, so I have no idea where all this animosity comes from. The last time he was here, he told me that this song always reminded him of our relationship and since he plays the piano (and the guitar), he played it for me. If dirty looks could kill, he would have been dead on the floor from Bing's glares. Maybe it is a musician thing, I dunno. She gets kind of jealous sometimes around him and Bing is not a jealous person, in general.
Tinton and I have no real relationship outside of our parenting of Liv, so I am not sure why Bing seems to set her teeth on edge every time he visits. It helps that he brings Nirand with him and Bing and Nirand get along beautifully.
So, she is not thrilled that he is coming for Christmas, but she loves Liv enough to want her to be happy, so she will endure his presence and play nice. Plus, Tinton works very hard not to step on Bing's toes. That helps.
So, that is the story of Tinton.
And yes, you can just call me Mrs. Robinson. Because he just celebrated his 32nd birthday. And yes, I am 50.
Next blog post, I will tackle what I would do if I won the lottery, what state I would live in if I moved and my worst airplane trip.
Stay warm....
I love checking on Liv and watching her head poked up out from under her mountain of blankets (she refuses an electric blanket, prefers 4 woolen blankets instead), her mouth open, Socks laying on the blanket at her feet, his head on his paws. Sometimes, I see both of their heads poking out from under the blankets and I know he has once again coaxed her into letting him burrow under with her. They like to lay in bed and whisper, tell secrets before sleep.
And then I hop back into bed, thoroughly chilled and it is like balm to my aching joints to slide into that warm bed and to seek out Bing's warm feet with my cold ones.
Now, it is a frigid Saturday afternoon. We've just come home from grocery shopping. Bing and Liv are making pumpkin bread. Soon the house will smell like a very good dream.
Liv and I finished our Christmas shopping this morning, starting at a book store and ending at a bakery. She has noticed that I am filling the house with Vietnamese foods for Vince and Thuan's visit from Chicago for Christmas (rice noodles, tree ears, coconut milk, sliced sour bamboo), and I am wondering if it has caught her attention, too, that I am stocking up on Indian foods as well (hot sweet chutney, nirav almonds, cumin seeds, garam masala and saffron.) If she has noticed, she has not said anything about it. But, this child misses nothing. Tinton and Nirand are scheduled to fly in Christmas Eve night at nine. We are going to pretend to go looking at Christmas lights and then decide to watch some planes fly in, hoping to surprise her. But, I have a sneaking suspicion that Liv and Socks are whispering about the possibility of a visit from her father for Christmas. As I said, this child is smart as a whip and misses little. After all, she did perform as a human cell in her Montessori winter program.
My favorite line of hers was:
My basement membrane consists of an electron dense membrane called the lamina densa, about seventy nanometers in thickness...
Only in Montessori do they have winter programs like this. The rest of the schools are singing about how all they want for Christmas is their two front teeth. Not our kids. They sing about endothelial cells.
We'll see if she is surprised...
But, now, without further ado...on to the questions.
My good buddy, Eric, wants to know what the air speed of an unladen sparrow is.
Well, Eric, I am here to tell you that the average cruising air speed of velocity of an unladen european swallow is roughly 24 miles an hour.
Thank you, google.
Kristi asks if I ever regret not having another child and if Liv would enjoy a sibling.
The answer is yes. I have often wished that I could have another child. But, I was 41 when Liv was born and it was sort of a miracle. I don't think lightning strikes twice. But, when she was about five, I started hankering for another baby which shocked the hell out of me, considering that she had colic for the first four months of her life and turned me into a sleep deprived blob. I remember vividly hanging over the side of her crib at 2 a.m. listening to her scream and singing in a sweet voice She drives me crazy...like no one ca--an. She drives me crazy and I can't stand her right now...
And yes, I think Liv would have loved a sibling. But, you get what you get. And she gets me, an aging hippie mama, who is madly adoring of her. Not such a rough life.
LL COOL JOE asks: You write beautifully, so how do you tolerate reading bad English (like mine)?
Joe, I like your blog. I like it because it is honest and funny. And I don't think the grammar is poor. Actually, I don't mind reading poor grammar nearly as much as I mind listening to someone speak with poor grammar. But, my new job is humbling me. Many of my patients are very poor speakers and I love their little hearts to bits. Some of their parents speak poorly as well and I love most of them too, although I have met a few who are just a little too adept at manipulating and that annoys the hell out of me.
I am going to end this blog post with a question that I have thought twice about answering, mainly because it is very personal, but what the hell. I have written about peeing my pants at my doctor's office, right?
One Brick and Deb ask how things came about with Liv's father, Tinton.
Without drowning anyone in detail, I will try to be succinct. Well, as succinct as I am capable of being...
I met Tinton when my niece, Lisette, was in town on her way to a move to a different job in Texas. She was staying with me for a week and visiting with some friends who lived here. She met Tinton at a party and he, with a large group of friends of hers, all came over to my house to pick up Lisette to go to a movie. Tinton had just begun graduate school here on the prairie, was a very young man, yes indeedy.
Lisette moved on to Texas, but Tinton and I stayed in touch, became friends.
Liv was conceived on a night in late October when the moon was full and too much was had to drink. A one night stand. I had finished several rounds of in vitro fertilization about four months before that and had been unable to sustain a pregnancy. Had spent thousands and thousands of dollars with no success. My doctor told me that my eggs were simply too old and that my body did not seem willing to want to stay pregnant.
So, I was sort of sticking my toe in the waters of adoption, although I didn't know how successful I would be at even that, being an over 40 year old single woman.
Enough said. I became a mother and Tinton became a father because of a crazy one night stand that should have never happened. Frankly, we were both shocked. Me in a very good way...him not so much.
Liv was born in late July. 7 pounds, 7 ounces. Every hair on her head perfect. Her apgar was spectacular.
Tinton saw her once when she was a week old and again when she was 10 days old. I asked for nothing from him and he informed me that he had no interest in being anyone's father. When she was four months old, he signed off on all parental rights for her.
I was ecstatic. I think he was too. He transferred to a grad school in New Mexico and I didn't see him again until Liv was three years old. He was in town, was working on his doctorate and asked if he could see her.
I thought about it for nearly two weeks before I consented.
He came to see her and I could tell that in those three years he had changed a great deal. He was not some college kid anymore. He was a man.
The day he came to see Liv was a sunny day in November, crisp and cool. We all sat outside in the back yard and he watched her while she played in the leaves, while she sat on my lap eating apple slices and while she scowled at him when he tried to play a babyish game of peek-a-boo with her.
He fell in love with her. Pelted me with questions as she napped. Wanted to know what her first words were (light, pizza, and baby), her favorite foods (fish sticks, bananas, and toast with jelly), and what he had missed in three years (a butt load of stuff.)
He came by daily for weeks and Liv, being a shy child, took to him slowly. But, once she trusted him, they got along splendidly.
A month later, he told me that it had been the biggest mistake of his life when he gave up his parental rights and asked me if I would let him be a friend to Liv, if not a father.
I told him that he was her father and if he wanted to be that, he could. But, that she lived with me and that would never change. We worked out the parameters of their relationship and it has been a sweet part of Liv's life ever since. She adores him and he adores her right back. I have come to trust him completely and he has proven to be an excellent father. He tries hard to visit her whenever he can and she has traveled to see him as well. As she gets older, I am certain that he will play an even bigger role in her life and that is fine with me. I can't be stingy with love for Liv. I want her to have many, many good people in her life who love her and will be bridges for her to cross over. He is one of those people.
Tinton and I have become friends. We aren't particularly close friends, but we get along well. I never doubt his devotion to our child. He never doubts mine. We are joined in that way and always will be.
Tinton is a geologist. He travels a lot, freelances more than not. He makes a good living but is not settled in one place. He has a long term girlfriend who breeds dogs. (She is the one who sent us Socks.) He and Nirand work together on projects. Sometimes, Tinton teaches for a semester or two at a university. His specialty is in fluvial geomorphology and tectonics and he loves what he does.
He and Bing have a sort of strange relationship. She has some problems with him. She likes him, but doesn't want to. I think it just bugs her sometimes that she puts all this work into raising Liv and then Tinton shows up and he is Liv's hero. Tinton never ever tries to one up Bing or anything remotely like that, so I have no idea where all this animosity comes from. The last time he was here, he told me that this song always reminded him of our relationship and since he plays the piano (and the guitar), he played it for me. If dirty looks could kill, he would have been dead on the floor from Bing's glares. Maybe it is a musician thing, I dunno. She gets kind of jealous sometimes around him and Bing is not a jealous person, in general.
Tinton and I have no real relationship outside of our parenting of Liv, so I am not sure why Bing seems to set her teeth on edge every time he visits. It helps that he brings Nirand with him and Bing and Nirand get along beautifully.
So, she is not thrilled that he is coming for Christmas, but she loves Liv enough to want her to be happy, so she will endure his presence and play nice. Plus, Tinton works very hard not to step on Bing's toes. That helps.
So, that is the story of Tinton.
And yes, you can just call me Mrs. Robinson. Because he just celebrated his 32nd birthday. And yes, I am 50.
Next blog post, I will tackle what I would do if I won the lottery, what state I would live in if I moved and my worst airplane trip.
Stay warm....
Friday, December 19, 2008
Starting with the questions...
Okay, time to get to the questions. It is finally Friday, so my mood is better, in spite of an ice-turning-to snow storm last night that closed all the schools today. Bing and Liv stayed home while I ventured out into the mess. But..it was kind of nice at work. We had over three fourths of the patients cancel and half of our staff didn't make it in, so I got lots of paper work caught up and we all pitched in and ordered a pizza for lunch. I ate like a pig (THREE pieces!) and then topped it off with a piece of fudge from the goody plate that someone brought in.
And then came home to find a hot dinner on the table, prepared by Liv and Bing...so, yeah..I am waddling around now with a full stomach.
I feel ready to tackle some questions...
BBC would like to know if it will snow in his neck of the woods this weekend. (Actually, I think he meant last weekend, but what the hell...) Since my degree isn't in meteorology and I don't live in Washington state...I will check with my magic eight ball. It says "my sources say yes." Okay, BBC, there you go. Bundle up.
Earth Muffin would like to know more about my relationship with Cory. For those of you who don't read me much, Cory was my first real love. She and I met when we were 24. I was right smack dab in the middle of med school and had no business trying to juggle a romance too..
But, hey..tell that to a twenty something woman. I met her when I went to a women's basketball game that a friend was playing on. We fell hard and we fell fast. It was the first time in my life that I experienced that lovely sensation called pheromones sliding into each other.
I swear that my mouth actually watered while I watched her play ball. And she wasn't even that good. But, she looked sensational in her little short set with her hair clipped back into a sloppy ponytail. She was tall and lean and at a time out, she looked right at me and gave me the kind of deep, penetrating look that would make me roll my eyes now. But, when I was 24, I thought it was wildly romantic.
Everyone went out for pizza and beer after they lost the game (they lost most of them) and she made a huge point of seeking me out to sit by me. I learned that she didn't even have a high school diploma, had a GED. She worked in a candle shop at a mall.
Even back then, I was sort of an intellectual snob. It bothered me that she wasn't educated. It bothered me that not only did she not read books much, but she professed to hating to read. Later, we would find out that she was dyslexic.
What didn't bother me was when she kept managing to touch her thigh to mine under the table, that she violated my space by leaning down to smile at me over and over.
She offered to drive me home and since I had no car, being broke almost ALL of the time, I took her up on the offer.
We barely made it into my apartment before the clothes started flying off of us. And, just like all those lesbian porn movies, we ended up doing the dishes right there on the kitchen floor, that dirty speckled linoleum that had probably been there since the 1940's and is probably still there today.
You can only fuck like that when you are a nubile twenty something. If I tried that today, my back would be screaming bloody murder.
Then we fed each other some strawberries, the only food in my apartment, and we slid into my bed.
I was late for a class the next day and the professor was this borderline sexual harasser who commented as I came flying into the classroom with my haggie maggie hair and chapped lips, that I looked like I had spent "a deviant night."
I blushed scarlet because he was so on target. I could still smell Cory on myself and it drove me insane.
We moved in together in true lesbian fashion. It took us all of two weeks. I moved into her apartment, which was much nicer than mine.
The first five years were pretty decent. We had some arguments but nothing serious. We moved to a different state for a few years. Cory always found some job. She worked at a jewelry store, at an earring store and when we moved back to the prairie, she got a job at a travel agency.
I was making some money by then, so we bought a house. Our first house, a small fixer upper in a nice neighborhood.
Little by little, I had fallen out of love with her over the years. By the time we bought the house, I knew it was a mistake. Foolishly, I figured that if I just tried harder, I could get that feeling back.
The truth was that our differences had become painfully apparent. It made me cringe to hear her speak sometimes. She said things like, "I learn things fast" and I wanted to scream at her that she did not learn things fast, but maybe she learned them quickly.
She had this habit of using double negatives that set my teeth on edge. She would say things like, "I never did nothing to you."
More and more, I began to notice that she was a noisy eater. That her public displays of affection made me uncomfortable.
I withdrew. This caused her to have high anxiety and she became incredibly clingy. I would sometimes want to shake her off of me when I sat on the sofa and she would plop down next to me and snake her leg over me and loop her arm through mine.
I felt smothered.
I was working full time in the ER at a hospital then and it was stressful. Coming home was even more stressful and so I found ways to stay late at work or just drove around aimlessly after leaving the hospital just so I would not have to deal with her.
She began accusing me of having an affair. I wasn't. But, I was fantasizing about it.
Eventually, I found the courage to tell her that I wanted out of the relationship. It was a terrible night. At first, she went dead quiet. Just sat like a zombie. And then she asked if we could go out for ice cream. I was nervous, but agreed.
On the way to the ice cream store, she threatened to jump out of the car while it was running because "living without you is not an option for me."
Then she tried a different tactic. She began screaming at me, telling me that she had supported me all through my school years and now that I was finally making some serious money, I wanted to ditch her.
I reminded her that she had never supported me, really. That I always paid more than my share of half of our bills and that the house was mostly from my income.
She went into a depression and the next two weeks were a frightening journey through every scary case study I had ever read. She would be silent as stone and then suddenly turn into a weeping mess, followed in short order by a shrewish screaming fit.
I told her that we needed to put the house up on the market. She was in one of her quiet moods and agreed docilely.
I went to work that day and felt strange for the entire time. I finally called the travel agency where Cory worked and was told that she had called in sick that day. As I left work, my knees were shaking uncontrollably. I was scared to go home, but I knew I had to do it and I had better get there quickly.
When I got home, I found her unconscious in our big claw footed bathtub, her wrists slit.
I went into medical mode (ask any health professional and they will tell you that it sort of just happens...you go into this workmanlike state where you simply go through steps to identify and then solve the problem), bound her wrists and called an ambulance. She was still alive.
It seemed like forever, but it only took about ten minutes for the ambulance to arrive. She must have timed it perfectly. I see that now. She made sure not to be too far gone by the time I got home.
That night, in her hospital bed, she asked me to please stay for six more months and if things were still bad between us, she would consent to end the relationship and not try to kill herself ever again.
I stupidly agreed. I didn't know what else to do. I had her family in the room looking at me as if I were some sort of cruel monster.
So, we gave it a go. By the third month, even Cory had to admit that it just wasn't working. She was in deep therapy still and was getting to a better place.
By the fifth month, she told me to go ahead and put the house on the market, that she had spoken to some friends in Colorado and they had invited her to live with them until she got a job.
And so it ended, not with a bang but with a whimper.
And I swore that I would never get involved in a relationship again. Obviously, I was not meant to be in one. I had hurt Cory badly, she told me that over and over again.
I was terrified for the first year after she left that she would show up at my doorstep or else I would hear that she had killed herself. I felt unbelievably guilty even though I knew that I had done nothing wrong, really. I just fell out of love.
But, still.
I felt responsible. And Cory sometimes called me drunk or stoned to wetly weep into the phone that I was an asshole, but she missed me, still loved me. I would hold the phone in my hands and listen to her until she had tired herself out and then I would gently slide the phone receiver back into it's bed and go to bed myself, sliding into dreams where I was lost in a cornfield or trapped in a car as it careened off of a cliff.
A novice could have analyzed those dreams.
Thus began a time in my life that I am not proud about. I was sort of lost for many, many years. I drank too much. Smoked too much. Took lots and lots of drugs. I managed to stay employed, though, and actually excelled at my job. It was the only place where I felt like I knew what I was doing.
And so...that is the story of Cory.
She still lives in Aspen. She is in a long term relationship again, but it is not a happy one. She hasn't called in years and for that I am grateful. When she comes to the prairie to visit her family, she sometimes calls to update me about her life.
She never sounds remotely happy and I think she wants me to feel guilty about that. But, I am older now. Wiser. I don't take responsibility anymore for her pain. It is her own ride and thank god, I am off that bus.
So, Earth Muffin...I bet you are sort of regretting asking me that one, huh?
The next question will be easier. Eric wants to know something about air speed and swallows and Kristi has a Liv question.
Enjoy your weekend, kids.
And then came home to find a hot dinner on the table, prepared by Liv and Bing...so, yeah..I am waddling around now with a full stomach.
I feel ready to tackle some questions...
BBC would like to know if it will snow in his neck of the woods this weekend. (Actually, I think he meant last weekend, but what the hell...) Since my degree isn't in meteorology and I don't live in Washington state...I will check with my magic eight ball. It says "my sources say yes." Okay, BBC, there you go. Bundle up.
Earth Muffin would like to know more about my relationship with Cory. For those of you who don't read me much, Cory was my first real love. She and I met when we were 24. I was right smack dab in the middle of med school and had no business trying to juggle a romance too..
But, hey..tell that to a twenty something woman. I met her when I went to a women's basketball game that a friend was playing on. We fell hard and we fell fast. It was the first time in my life that I experienced that lovely sensation called pheromones sliding into each other.
I swear that my mouth actually watered while I watched her play ball. And she wasn't even that good. But, she looked sensational in her little short set with her hair clipped back into a sloppy ponytail. She was tall and lean and at a time out, she looked right at me and gave me the kind of deep, penetrating look that would make me roll my eyes now. But, when I was 24, I thought it was wildly romantic.
Everyone went out for pizza and beer after they lost the game (they lost most of them) and she made a huge point of seeking me out to sit by me. I learned that she didn't even have a high school diploma, had a GED. She worked in a candle shop at a mall.
Even back then, I was sort of an intellectual snob. It bothered me that she wasn't educated. It bothered me that not only did she not read books much, but she professed to hating to read. Later, we would find out that she was dyslexic.
What didn't bother me was when she kept managing to touch her thigh to mine under the table, that she violated my space by leaning down to smile at me over and over.
She offered to drive me home and since I had no car, being broke almost ALL of the time, I took her up on the offer.
We barely made it into my apartment before the clothes started flying off of us. And, just like all those lesbian porn movies, we ended up doing the dishes right there on the kitchen floor, that dirty speckled linoleum that had probably been there since the 1940's and is probably still there today.
You can only fuck like that when you are a nubile twenty something. If I tried that today, my back would be screaming bloody murder.
Then we fed each other some strawberries, the only food in my apartment, and we slid into my bed.
I was late for a class the next day and the professor was this borderline sexual harasser who commented as I came flying into the classroom with my haggie maggie hair and chapped lips, that I looked like I had spent "a deviant night."
I blushed scarlet because he was so on target. I could still smell Cory on myself and it drove me insane.
We moved in together in true lesbian fashion. It took us all of two weeks. I moved into her apartment, which was much nicer than mine.
The first five years were pretty decent. We had some arguments but nothing serious. We moved to a different state for a few years. Cory always found some job. She worked at a jewelry store, at an earring store and when we moved back to the prairie, she got a job at a travel agency.
I was making some money by then, so we bought a house. Our first house, a small fixer upper in a nice neighborhood.
Little by little, I had fallen out of love with her over the years. By the time we bought the house, I knew it was a mistake. Foolishly, I figured that if I just tried harder, I could get that feeling back.
The truth was that our differences had become painfully apparent. It made me cringe to hear her speak sometimes. She said things like, "I learn things fast" and I wanted to scream at her that she did not learn things fast, but maybe she learned them quickly.
She had this habit of using double negatives that set my teeth on edge. She would say things like, "I never did nothing to you."
More and more, I began to notice that she was a noisy eater. That her public displays of affection made me uncomfortable.
I withdrew. This caused her to have high anxiety and she became incredibly clingy. I would sometimes want to shake her off of me when I sat on the sofa and she would plop down next to me and snake her leg over me and loop her arm through mine.
I felt smothered.
I was working full time in the ER at a hospital then and it was stressful. Coming home was even more stressful and so I found ways to stay late at work or just drove around aimlessly after leaving the hospital just so I would not have to deal with her.
She began accusing me of having an affair. I wasn't. But, I was fantasizing about it.
Eventually, I found the courage to tell her that I wanted out of the relationship. It was a terrible night. At first, she went dead quiet. Just sat like a zombie. And then she asked if we could go out for ice cream. I was nervous, but agreed.
On the way to the ice cream store, she threatened to jump out of the car while it was running because "living without you is not an option for me."
Then she tried a different tactic. She began screaming at me, telling me that she had supported me all through my school years and now that I was finally making some serious money, I wanted to ditch her.
I reminded her that she had never supported me, really. That I always paid more than my share of half of our bills and that the house was mostly from my income.
She went into a depression and the next two weeks were a frightening journey through every scary case study I had ever read. She would be silent as stone and then suddenly turn into a weeping mess, followed in short order by a shrewish screaming fit.
I told her that we needed to put the house up on the market. She was in one of her quiet moods and agreed docilely.
I went to work that day and felt strange for the entire time. I finally called the travel agency where Cory worked and was told that she had called in sick that day. As I left work, my knees were shaking uncontrollably. I was scared to go home, but I knew I had to do it and I had better get there quickly.
When I got home, I found her unconscious in our big claw footed bathtub, her wrists slit.
I went into medical mode (ask any health professional and they will tell you that it sort of just happens...you go into this workmanlike state where you simply go through steps to identify and then solve the problem), bound her wrists and called an ambulance. She was still alive.
It seemed like forever, but it only took about ten minutes for the ambulance to arrive. She must have timed it perfectly. I see that now. She made sure not to be too far gone by the time I got home.
That night, in her hospital bed, she asked me to please stay for six more months and if things were still bad between us, she would consent to end the relationship and not try to kill herself ever again.
I stupidly agreed. I didn't know what else to do. I had her family in the room looking at me as if I were some sort of cruel monster.
So, we gave it a go. By the third month, even Cory had to admit that it just wasn't working. She was in deep therapy still and was getting to a better place.
By the fifth month, she told me to go ahead and put the house on the market, that she had spoken to some friends in Colorado and they had invited her to live with them until she got a job.
And so it ended, not with a bang but with a whimper.
And I swore that I would never get involved in a relationship again. Obviously, I was not meant to be in one. I had hurt Cory badly, she told me that over and over again.
I was terrified for the first year after she left that she would show up at my doorstep or else I would hear that she had killed herself. I felt unbelievably guilty even though I knew that I had done nothing wrong, really. I just fell out of love.
But, still.
I felt responsible. And Cory sometimes called me drunk or stoned to wetly weep into the phone that I was an asshole, but she missed me, still loved me. I would hold the phone in my hands and listen to her until she had tired herself out and then I would gently slide the phone receiver back into it's bed and go to bed myself, sliding into dreams where I was lost in a cornfield or trapped in a car as it careened off of a cliff.
A novice could have analyzed those dreams.
Thus began a time in my life that I am not proud about. I was sort of lost for many, many years. I drank too much. Smoked too much. Took lots and lots of drugs. I managed to stay employed, though, and actually excelled at my job. It was the only place where I felt like I knew what I was doing.
And so...that is the story of Cory.
She still lives in Aspen. She is in a long term relationship again, but it is not a happy one. She hasn't called in years and for that I am grateful. When she comes to the prairie to visit her family, she sometimes calls to update me about her life.
She never sounds remotely happy and I think she wants me to feel guilty about that. But, I am older now. Wiser. I don't take responsibility anymore for her pain. It is her own ride and thank god, I am off that bus.
So, Earth Muffin...I bet you are sort of regretting asking me that one, huh?
The next question will be easier. Eric wants to know something about air speed and swallows and Kristi has a Liv question.
Enjoy your weekend, kids.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Why you don't want to read this blog when I am crabby.
God, I usually don't blog when I am in this state, but in an effort to let it all hang out more...here goes.
Sunday, I had the migraine headache from hell. ALL. DAY. LONG. I stopped having migraines when I was 30 but one of the side effects of the medication that I am on is that it can cause migraines and it sucks the hell out of one's immune system.
So, I spent the day in bed, it was fucking FREEZING outdoors and my head ached so badly that I couldn't think. It was Liv's last basketball game of the season and I HAD to go, so I dragged myself out of my death bed in the later afternoon and went to her game where I sat on a bench in an overheated gymnasium with one side of my head aching and one eye streaming. I was just a picture of loveliness. Oh...and I darted into the bathroom after the game and puked. That was fun...
This morning, I felt a little better when the alarm went off. And then Bing stomped up from the basement to inform me that the basement bathroom pipes had frozen in the fucking record setting cold (minus something) and that one of us would have to stay home to sit with it while aiming the space heater on it.
Thankfully, she said she would do it.
I love you, honey.
And then, Liv and I went out in the minus 30 degree wind chill and got into the car and I hit the automatic garage door opener and yes, you guessed it. It went halfway up and a wire snapped and it came crashing back down.
Luckily, Bing was home anyway, so she got to wait for the garage door opener guys to install a new 300 dollar electric door.
And it took both of us to open up the garage door on our own power. It was fucking heavy.
I got Liv to our neighbors and went on to work. I am not kidding when I say that in the forty minute drive to work, my little car did not really fully warm up. It was THAT cold.
I got to work and was reminded by my secretary that tomorrow I have signed up for a computer class (How to work a basic computer for total dumbasses.) WHY did I sign up for that class?
Well, I know why. I want to stop having to call to get it fixed when I break it.
Bing called me at work to tell me that she had this great idea about how to stop the basement bathroom sink from freezing up....
SHE DRILLED THREE HOLES IN THE CEILING!
Apparently, this is to let the warm(er) air reach the bathroom, which is on an outside wall, so it freezes easily.
And, oh, yeah...the pipe finally unfroze. But, now there are three ugly holes in the basement bathroom ceiling.
She wondered why I nearly shot out of my chair at work....
She also said that we have a new garage door opener...
After work, I had an appointment to get my eyes checked. It has been four years...
My cataracts are getting worse, but not so bad that I need to have anything done.
But, the doctor did put those drops in my eyes that make your eyes dilate.
Stopping at the grocery store on the way home to pick up snacks for Liv's day as snack manager was quite an experience. I must have looked like I was totally tripping out because I was nearly blinded by fluorescent lights.
And now I am home and thought to myself that I was too frackin crabby to blog.
But, I decided to let you see the real bitch that lives in me sometimes.
That bathroom looks hideous.
I am so mad at Bing that I could spit.
I have a sore throat. A really bad one.
We are supposed to get more record lows tonight followed by a snow storm tomorrow.
Liv has her winter program tomorrow night.
I'm going to go take a shower...a steamy hot one and watch Heroes.
I will make hot chocolate for Liv and me. Bing does not like hot chocolate. That is good because I am so mad that I would probably feel like spitting in hers.....
Goodnight, dear blog friends.
The bitch is off to shower, watch television and drink hot chocolate.
And Bing is going to be lucky to even get a kiss goodnight.....
Sunday, I had the migraine headache from hell. ALL. DAY. LONG. I stopped having migraines when I was 30 but one of the side effects of the medication that I am on is that it can cause migraines and it sucks the hell out of one's immune system.
So, I spent the day in bed, it was fucking FREEZING outdoors and my head ached so badly that I couldn't think. It was Liv's last basketball game of the season and I HAD to go, so I dragged myself out of my death bed in the later afternoon and went to her game where I sat on a bench in an overheated gymnasium with one side of my head aching and one eye streaming. I was just a picture of loveliness. Oh...and I darted into the bathroom after the game and puked. That was fun...
This morning, I felt a little better when the alarm went off. And then Bing stomped up from the basement to inform me that the basement bathroom pipes had frozen in the fucking record setting cold (minus something) and that one of us would have to stay home to sit with it while aiming the space heater on it.
Thankfully, she said she would do it.
I love you, honey.
And then, Liv and I went out in the minus 30 degree wind chill and got into the car and I hit the automatic garage door opener and yes, you guessed it. It went halfway up and a wire snapped and it came crashing back down.
Luckily, Bing was home anyway, so she got to wait for the garage door opener guys to install a new 300 dollar electric door.
And it took both of us to open up the garage door on our own power. It was fucking heavy.
I got Liv to our neighbors and went on to work. I am not kidding when I say that in the forty minute drive to work, my little car did not really fully warm up. It was THAT cold.
I got to work and was reminded by my secretary that tomorrow I have signed up for a computer class (How to work a basic computer for total dumbasses.) WHY did I sign up for that class?
Well, I know why. I want to stop having to call to get it fixed when I break it.
Bing called me at work to tell me that she had this great idea about how to stop the basement bathroom sink from freezing up....
SHE DRILLED THREE HOLES IN THE CEILING!
Apparently, this is to let the warm(er) air reach the bathroom, which is on an outside wall, so it freezes easily.
And, oh, yeah...the pipe finally unfroze. But, now there are three ugly holes in the basement bathroom ceiling.
She wondered why I nearly shot out of my chair at work....
She also said that we have a new garage door opener...
After work, I had an appointment to get my eyes checked. It has been four years...
My cataracts are getting worse, but not so bad that I need to have anything done.
But, the doctor did put those drops in my eyes that make your eyes dilate.
Stopping at the grocery store on the way home to pick up snacks for Liv's day as snack manager was quite an experience. I must have looked like I was totally tripping out because I was nearly blinded by fluorescent lights.
And now I am home and thought to myself that I was too frackin crabby to blog.
But, I decided to let you see the real bitch that lives in me sometimes.
That bathroom looks hideous.
I am so mad at Bing that I could spit.
I have a sore throat. A really bad one.
We are supposed to get more record lows tonight followed by a snow storm tomorrow.
Liv has her winter program tomorrow night.
I'm going to go take a shower...a steamy hot one and watch Heroes.
I will make hot chocolate for Liv and me. Bing does not like hot chocolate. That is good because I am so mad that I would probably feel like spitting in hers.....
Goodnight, dear blog friends.
The bitch is off to shower, watch television and drink hot chocolate.
And Bing is going to be lucky to even get a kiss goodnight.....
Friday, December 12, 2008
The one where Maria tries to answer the questions
Well, at last count, I had 33 questions to answer, some easy and some not so much.
I will begin with the one that I found the most odd.
Shazza wonders if I am real.
Um...yeah. The last time I checked anyway.
I suppose it would be sort of interesting to say that I was really a 78 year man in China pretending to be an aging lesbian from the heartland...but no. I'm just me.
No, Shazza, I'm not offended by your question. I did wrinkle my nose a little when you compared my blog to an Oprah pick. (They aren't high up on my to read asap list.)
Your question made me think, though. Do I give you blog readers the impression that I lead a charmed life or something, all aglow with happy endings?
Because it really isn't like that, my life.
Sometimes it stinks like a pig.
I have really bad days where I feel like shit and sort of go into myself and only come out for Liv. I try not to blog on those days....
And I am hardly a perfect person. Bing will tell you that, right up front and loud...
I suck at many, many things.
I am a poor partner. I really am. I don't know how Bing puts up with me (and she just walked by, read what I wrote and nodded solemnly.) I don't work well as a boxed set. I do better on my own. Or at least I think I do. I guess I should just say that while I may come across as a very approachable person online, in person, I am very aloof and not particularly friendly or warm. I can be very witty and sparkly with strangers and then act like a real bitch on the car ride home.
Bing and I are not a match made in heaven. We have problems. Mostly about money and child raising. We don't generally have screaming matches, though, because I refuse to fight in front of Liv and she tends to turn on her heel and leave if things get dicey. She goes out and drives around or goes to a music or hardware store and tries to forget my shrill voice. I simply clam up and give her dirty looks if she even tries to touch me once. So, no...we are hardly role models for a healthy relationship.
I tend to write about things that move me. And I find that the older I become, the more easily I am moved even by small things.
Before I blog about something, I sit and jot down everything I can remember about the event. When you free associate like this, you will be amazed at how much you recall. Also, I have an excellent memory and I am observant.
My Da always said that Maria notices things. Not much gets by her. And he was spot on. It is just a knack I have.
For many, many years I free lanced as a jury consultant. I was hired by lawyers to help pick juries. And I was good at it. I could tell by a certain slant of a leg or a hip or a certain look on a face whether a person was open minded about things or if they already had their mind made up. I noticed the clothes they wore, or didn't. What they did with their hair. Was it carefully coiffed or tousled? And if it was tousled, was it deliberately that way or unintentionally? Just that will tell you a lot about a person. I watched their faces carefully to see how they reacted to different people, if they sat with their arms or legs crossed. How often they blinked. During their initial interviews, I watched them very, very carefully to see if their eyes could tell me something that their mouths would not.
I know it may sound boastful, but I was freakin' good at my job.
My bff, Harriet, once told me that if we went for a walk, she would remember what the weather was like and a few of the topics we discussed but that I would remember the lady we saw who was walking her dog and that it was a chihuahua and that they both had the same expressions on their faces. She said that I would also remember exactly how the sun was slanting through the trees and how it made her leather jacket look shiny.
I think she was saying that I am very observant.
Maybe that is why my stories may seem false to you, I dunno.
I can tell you this: I don't make up things that happen in my life but I do remember details. I think that most people have really, really interesting lives but they just don't realize it. Think about the people in your life and now zone in and think about each person specifically. You know how maybe your Uncle Joe really likes pizza with lots of mushrooms and how he wears a baseball hat because his hair is thinning and he hates that? Well, if you put that in your blog....people get a pop up picture in their heads. It may not be the same picture in your head, but it is a picture even so.
I try not to sugar coat my life when I write about it here, but maybe I do. Maybe I don't write enough about the times when I feel sick at heart, when I go to pick up Liv at school and some mother gives me a look like she can barely stand me and she doesn't even know me but I have heard through the gossip mill that she thinks it is "cruel" of me to "force" my child to live in an "unconventional" family.
Or how I can't ever really forgive my sisters for abandoning me for nearly a decade because my mother threatened to cut them off from their inheritance if they so much as called me on the phone.
Maybe I should write about more of the times when I feel crabby and fat. Because sometimes I do, you know, feel really crabby and maybe not so much fat anymore...but there is always something to replace it. Like the fact that no matter how much moisturizer I use, my skin still looks and feels like rice paper.
My life is not a dew laden journey. Or...maybe it sort of is. I have been rather ill for several months and I have found that the one blessing out of this is that I now take the time to really look at my family, my friends, my life. And things look pretty rosy when you consider the fact that you could lose it all.
I have made so many mistakes in my life, Shazza. For more years than I want to admit, I drank too much, slept around too much, did too many illegal substances and hurt the people around me who deserved better than that from me.
I don't think that I have ever deliberately hurt anyone. But, yes...I have hurt people.
And Bing doesn't always sit around playing the piano for me. Sometimes she comes home from work and asks me why I forgot to take out the trash.
Liv isn't a perfect child, although, to be honest...she comes close. She can be pretentious and too big for her britches at times and it really bugs me that when I go to watch her play her basketball games, she sometimes is so busy looking to see that I am watching her every move, that she misses her shot.
My life is so not perfect and I am very real. Sometimes, in fact, I feel WAY TOO REAL. Sometimes, like Wordsworth, the world is just too much with me.
I am not model pretty, but hey...I am okay looking for a fifty year old woman, I think.
I used to be prettier when I was younger, actually I think I was kind of a looker, to be honest. But now? I don't turn heads anymore. I look like a fifty year old woman who is buying milk and gets halfway through the check out line and remembers that she forgot to buy bread. Once, when Liv and I were in the check out lane at a Walgreens, the clerk smiled down at her and said, "So, how are you enjoying your time with grandma?"
That would be me, I suppose. I look like a freakin' grandma????
When shit like that happens, I do stupid things like go to Victoria's Secret and buy pink silky underpants. Because my frail ego needs it.
So, in my usually verbose way, I hope I have answered your question...
I am so fucking real, Shazza!
I just write kind of...pretty. Even when things aren't so much.
Okay..time for bed. And I will try not to take a fucking blog post to answer the rest of the questions. Another one of my bad habits is that I tend to be um...wordy.
But, I keep it real for you folks, I really do.
I will begin with the one that I found the most odd.
Shazza wonders if I am real.
Um...yeah. The last time I checked anyway.
I suppose it would be sort of interesting to say that I was really a 78 year man in China pretending to be an aging lesbian from the heartland...but no. I'm just me.
No, Shazza, I'm not offended by your question. I did wrinkle my nose a little when you compared my blog to an Oprah pick. (They aren't high up on my to read asap list.)
Your question made me think, though. Do I give you blog readers the impression that I lead a charmed life or something, all aglow with happy endings?
Because it really isn't like that, my life.
Sometimes it stinks like a pig.
I have really bad days where I feel like shit and sort of go into myself and only come out for Liv. I try not to blog on those days....
And I am hardly a perfect person. Bing will tell you that, right up front and loud...
I suck at many, many things.
I am a poor partner. I really am. I don't know how Bing puts up with me (and she just walked by, read what I wrote and nodded solemnly.) I don't work well as a boxed set. I do better on my own. Or at least I think I do. I guess I should just say that while I may come across as a very approachable person online, in person, I am very aloof and not particularly friendly or warm. I can be very witty and sparkly with strangers and then act like a real bitch on the car ride home.
Bing and I are not a match made in heaven. We have problems. Mostly about money and child raising. We don't generally have screaming matches, though, because I refuse to fight in front of Liv and she tends to turn on her heel and leave if things get dicey. She goes out and drives around or goes to a music or hardware store and tries to forget my shrill voice. I simply clam up and give her dirty looks if she even tries to touch me once. So, no...we are hardly role models for a healthy relationship.
I tend to write about things that move me. And I find that the older I become, the more easily I am moved even by small things.
Before I blog about something, I sit and jot down everything I can remember about the event. When you free associate like this, you will be amazed at how much you recall. Also, I have an excellent memory and I am observant.
My Da always said that Maria notices things. Not much gets by her. And he was spot on. It is just a knack I have.
For many, many years I free lanced as a jury consultant. I was hired by lawyers to help pick juries. And I was good at it. I could tell by a certain slant of a leg or a hip or a certain look on a face whether a person was open minded about things or if they already had their mind made up. I noticed the clothes they wore, or didn't. What they did with their hair. Was it carefully coiffed or tousled? And if it was tousled, was it deliberately that way or unintentionally? Just that will tell you a lot about a person. I watched their faces carefully to see how they reacted to different people, if they sat with their arms or legs crossed. How often they blinked. During their initial interviews, I watched them very, very carefully to see if their eyes could tell me something that their mouths would not.
I know it may sound boastful, but I was freakin' good at my job.
My bff, Harriet, once told me that if we went for a walk, she would remember what the weather was like and a few of the topics we discussed but that I would remember the lady we saw who was walking her dog and that it was a chihuahua and that they both had the same expressions on their faces. She said that I would also remember exactly how the sun was slanting through the trees and how it made her leather jacket look shiny.
I think she was saying that I am very observant.
Maybe that is why my stories may seem false to you, I dunno.
I can tell you this: I don't make up things that happen in my life but I do remember details. I think that most people have really, really interesting lives but they just don't realize it. Think about the people in your life and now zone in and think about each person specifically. You know how maybe your Uncle Joe really likes pizza with lots of mushrooms and how he wears a baseball hat because his hair is thinning and he hates that? Well, if you put that in your blog....people get a pop up picture in their heads. It may not be the same picture in your head, but it is a picture even so.
I try not to sugar coat my life when I write about it here, but maybe I do. Maybe I don't write enough about the times when I feel sick at heart, when I go to pick up Liv at school and some mother gives me a look like she can barely stand me and she doesn't even know me but I have heard through the gossip mill that she thinks it is "cruel" of me to "force" my child to live in an "unconventional" family.
Or how I can't ever really forgive my sisters for abandoning me for nearly a decade because my mother threatened to cut them off from their inheritance if they so much as called me on the phone.
Maybe I should write about more of the times when I feel crabby and fat. Because sometimes I do, you know, feel really crabby and maybe not so much fat anymore...but there is always something to replace it. Like the fact that no matter how much moisturizer I use, my skin still looks and feels like rice paper.
My life is not a dew laden journey. Or...maybe it sort of is. I have been rather ill for several months and I have found that the one blessing out of this is that I now take the time to really look at my family, my friends, my life. And things look pretty rosy when you consider the fact that you could lose it all.
I have made so many mistakes in my life, Shazza. For more years than I want to admit, I drank too much, slept around too much, did too many illegal substances and hurt the people around me who deserved better than that from me.
I don't think that I have ever deliberately hurt anyone. But, yes...I have hurt people.
And Bing doesn't always sit around playing the piano for me. Sometimes she comes home from work and asks me why I forgot to take out the trash.
Liv isn't a perfect child, although, to be honest...she comes close. She can be pretentious and too big for her britches at times and it really bugs me that when I go to watch her play her basketball games, she sometimes is so busy looking to see that I am watching her every move, that she misses her shot.
My life is so not perfect and I am very real. Sometimes, in fact, I feel WAY TOO REAL. Sometimes, like Wordsworth, the world is just too much with me.
I am not model pretty, but hey...I am okay looking for a fifty year old woman, I think.
I used to be prettier when I was younger, actually I think I was kind of a looker, to be honest. But now? I don't turn heads anymore. I look like a fifty year old woman who is buying milk and gets halfway through the check out line and remembers that she forgot to buy bread. Once, when Liv and I were in the check out lane at a Walgreens, the clerk smiled down at her and said, "So, how are you enjoying your time with grandma?"
That would be me, I suppose. I look like a freakin' grandma????
When shit like that happens, I do stupid things like go to Victoria's Secret and buy pink silky underpants. Because my frail ego needs it.
So, in my usually verbose way, I hope I have answered your question...
I am so fucking real, Shazza!
I just write kind of...pretty. Even when things aren't so much.
Okay..time for bed. And I will try not to take a fucking blog post to answer the rest of the questions. Another one of my bad habits is that I tend to be um...wordy.
But, I keep it real for you folks, I really do.
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