The Sting
Posted on April 3, 2008
Filed Under bitching and moaning, challenges, snark, suburban joys | 13 Comments
Okay, so yesterday was Wednesday and you know that’s my tennis day, so I’ll give you the full disclosure. But I’ll make it brief because I hate to talk about losing. Especially the kind of losing that, if I hadn’t made such a mince out of my last service game, would have actually been a win. And then of course there’s my explosive temper that I’ll only hint at. Suffice it to say that I am experiencing a certain shame and remorse that I misbehaved just wee bit after the match. I probably shouldn’t have slammed my racket into the net and screamed God Damn It loud enough to disrupt play on the next court and the court next to that one, all the way down the line. So much for that good sportsmanship I’ve been talking to O about with earnest tones of wisdom. Sometimes it’s too damn hard to model the behavior we’d like our very own children to exhibit.
Luckily we were playing a team comprised of two decent and understanding women who were already fully aware of my venomous and petulant tendencies (we all played for the same team last year). They just smiled and said, Such good tennis. So much fun. To which I responded Please excuse me while I swallow my own vomit. Oh and pretty please, for a just moment, try to imagine that you just lost an important match by one game, two points in an abbreviated third set that, by North Shore Women’s League rules, cannot be played in its entirety due to time constraints and come back and tell me how much fun it was again. Really, tell me again, because I need one more excuse to slam this ball at you from the service line after play has stopped and you approach to shake my hand.
Needless to say I’ve been licking the wound, suffering the sting of injured pride and damaged self esteem, all afternoon and only after a liberal dose of Clonazepam and a towering bowl of ice cream can I even write about the defeat.
Tomorrow is another day, a practice day, in which I should force myself to do wind sprints and full half hour of back hand volleys. Instead I may read a book and begin drinking before noon and stay in my pajamas until I need to take O to the dentist. Again, which, as you all know, always always puts me in such a foul mood that I will probably be freebasing Clonazepam and eating from the ice cream carton with my fingers by tomorrow evening. Oh, and yet another winter storm is rolling in which is just a cruel joke, a lesson in enduring patience.
Good things come to those who wait. Things like tulips and sunshine and tank top weather. It’s a shame that Mother Nature is just sort of an amorphous spiritual type idea because, if she were a little more real and had a tendency to wear tennis skirts, I’d be kicking her ass right now.
Flags of Compatibility, Book Selection as Rosarch Test
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under My Better Half, fiction, marriage, snark, suburban joys | 11 Comments
My Better Half directed me to the New York Times opinion piece It’s Not You, It’s Your Books this weekend. I laughed, I cried, I saw my younger self in the dating female who is just so damn glad to have found a guy who reads at all that she’s initially willing to overlook the fact that her love interest is reading grocery-store bestsellers she would never allow to reside on her own night stand. (Those initial moments of a love affair just encapsulate the phrase Love is Blind.)
I quaked with recognition, so much so that I let rip a great big guffaw of familiarity, when reading the line, “If you are a person who loves Alice Munro and your going out with someone whose favorite book is The Da Vinci Code, perhaps the flags of incompatibility were there prior to the big reveal.”
I can’t help but think that My Better Half directed my attention to this article to highlight the fact that we are, literarily at least, compatible. It’s his way of reminding me that we chose each other for our intellectual curiosities. His subtle way of highlighting the fact that he thinks my high school boyfriend is a dumbass, while he, My Better Half, the father of my children, has read Dickens and Moby Dick and Hemingway and Faulkner and not just for college English but for fun, for recreation, for love of the written word.
This is not to say we read the same things, he and I. His bookish preferences run to the decidedly male end of the spectrum. He claims that every literary novel written by a woman contains the requisite rape scene and he just can’t stand the predictable subject of violation. While I know this to be untrue, I can settle into the fact that he’s not going to take as much as I do from the stories by Grace Paley or Lorrie Moore or Sue Miller or Virginia Woolf. There are distinct gender differences in this reading thing.
He prefers non-fiction to fiction. I am a short story, fiction-only-please, kind of gal. If he deigns to indulge in a little pulp, it is always of the murder/mystery variety and not Dean Koontz or whatever schlock is out there but, rather, Chandler or Philip K. Dick and the occasional Ross Thomas.
If I’m feeling flighty and distracted, I am more apt to grab something sweepingly popular off the best seller list. I can still enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love even though I know it’s been read by Oprah and every book group in America. I am, admittedly, fascinated by popular fiction, at least in part because I envy the mediocre writer their astonishing and surprising success and am always trying to figure out what exactly has propelled a particular book of questionable value to the apex of popularity. I find literary success of any kind hopeful and reassuring.
To My Better Half, the rise of popular fiction only bolsters his opinion that the entire country is comprised of semi-literate morons. The more fuss there is surrounding a book, the less credibility he thinks it deserves. I can’t remember the last time he’s read a best seller of the fictional variety. Currently he has Dashiell Hammett’s Crime Stories and Proust’s Swann’s Way on his night stand while I have Grisham’s Innocent Man on mine. (Disclaimer: It’s my first Grisham and it’s actually non-fiction and I’m only reading it because it contains a lot of the legalese I’m desperate to master in preceding to finish the true-crime novel I’m working on, but still, it’s Grisham, and it’s there beside the bed. I’m quite sure My Better Half is shocked and horrified by its presence in our shared chambers.)
Admittedly, I have loved My Better Half’s unapologetic superior intellectual shtick. I have, at times, found it kind of hot. But right now, I just see it as reason to be annoyed that he won’t sit on the couch with me on Tuesday night and enjoy American Idol like everyone else in the free fucking world. If we’re not watching Masterpiece Theater, The Wire or a Sundance film, he retires to the office to surf the internet and listen to political speeches and catch up on programming blogs. I’m totally alone on the couch trying to groove to the sounds of David Cook doing Billie Jean. I wish he could ditch the pretense for just a little while and take some pleasure in the decidedly fun aspects of popular culture, after all there is some inherent value in Justin’s SexyBack and Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen and the occasional Wally Lamb novel if only because these shamelessly popular examples of pure fun, of entertainment for entertainment’s sake. I tire of having to be learning something from someone at all times. Just sitting and receiving and doing little work in the process of being distracted has its own charms and advantages, ones I have come to appreciate more as I age.
Still, as said in the NYT piece, there has to be some substance that counteracts the fluff…”Most of my friends and men in my life are non-readers…but now that you mention it, if I went over to man’s house and there were books about life lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”
Gardenia Excerpt
Posted on April 1, 2008
Filed Under fiction, marriage | 1 Comment
She talks to herself in the bathroom mirror. Her lips damp with rum, her cheeks glowing with drink. He is only sharing the truth with someone, anyone. There is no harm in this. She manipulates her shirt back into the waistline of her jeans, she smoothes her hair and purses her lips. She stares at herself long enough to discern the slight difference between her two eyes, one just a hair smaller than the other. And she returns to the kitchen where Ted offers her another full drink that he has busied himself with in her absence.
He brings it to her, setting it and himself close again at the island counter. He touches the side of her face, which, to Kate, feels like a minor triumph, his saying he finds her adequate and attractive. Then his mouth covers hers, like the hand before on the counter, completely, confidently, as if he does this often, seduce married women in empty houses.
And when he clears away the glasses to the far end of the countertop to make room for their groping, she is relieved that at least they can do it here, in the kitchen, without the protracted migration to the bedroom where there is sure to be photographs of grown children in their likeness to Marilyn, perhaps a photo of Ted and Astrid, their lighter lustier selves. She would feel criminal in front of that sad audience. She needs no witness to the culmination of this thing that she has been working towards for months.
He is an efficient lover and it is a brief but satisfying coupling, free of promises or possessions, that allows her plenty of time to collect herself on the ride to parent pick up.
He does not hold her in a long embrace, he does not kiss the top of her head with marked tenderness, he does not whisper anything profound that elicits a torrent of great relief. She thinks of Amy, she thinks of God, she still misses the idea of him.
Despite the fact that she will not shower off their damp, salt sex until the following morning, she feels less an adulterer than just one of two people working through their own separate but equally pressing needs to feel someplace other. She feels ordinary and slightly defeated. She begins to sleep again. She can feel herself returning to the present.
It is over as quickly as it began. And for a time, she is less curt, given to sudden bouts of laughter and warmth, like a schoolgirl with a secret. She suspects that, in his own way, the way that would rather see forward than back, Paul had already forgiven her this trespass.
Kate returns to 61 Alfonso Court one more time. She chooses a day when Ted’s car is not in the driveway. She sets to restoring order to the garden, gently trimming the spathiphyllum and the begonias, coaxing the Gardenias at the front door to remain deliciously fragrant conveyors of sweet southern gentility until the property is sold.
A-Void-Ance
Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under advice, another dread disease, bat-ass crazy, bitching and moaning, challenges, kids, milestones, parenting, recommendations, snark | 9 Comments
The existence of a book analyzing a person’s relative health based on the color, consistency and frequency of bowel movements does not, somehow, surprise me. In fact, when I first read about Josh Richmant and Arish Sheth’s field guide to excrement on Salon.com, I was not entirely bowled over (pun intended). It just seems simple and apt and altogether inevitable. Surely a sign that I am a mother of two and have spent way too much time wiping tiny asses for the past eight years.
After all, what mother hasn’t cooed with pride over their infant’s first mecomium stool, that greenish black slick that is all the evidence an anxious new parent needs that their darling new baby possesses the very same digestive track as all other healthy babies the world over. There is comfort in this sameness. Expectations fulfilled. One off-colored elimination and the entire family is exhaling a collective sigh of relief.
And then there is the issue of the new mother’s own ability to defecate. Without a proper bowel movement, she is a prisoner in the maternity ward. More stool softeners are administered. Nurses talk in hushed whispers about her inability to poop as if it is a sign of this mother’s mental weakness. They have forgotten just how startlingly and scarring it is to pass a watermelon size creature from the vagina. They are focused on forcing this poor woman with the stitches to produce yet another expulsion that will surely tear her insides out, will lead to internal bleeding and the end of a perfectly good birthing experience. There is a stand-off. Armed guards stand at the bathroom door and order her performance. She will weep softly and pretend she has shat. They will rush in and insist on seeing the evidence and the new mother is forced to admit she has lied. Back to toilet for another attempt. Hours drag on before she achieves the successful void which is celebrated and admired and practically wrapped up along with the flowers and the teddy bears and the swaddled infant as souvenir of this important life changing event.
Now safely home with baby in arms, the true shit talking begins. There are long battles waged about whose turn it is to drag themselves from bed to change yet another diaper, change the whole outfit, the entire crib, in fact, because another runny infant stool has crept beyond the gathered leg pleats of even the most absorbent nappy and has stained the sheets and spoiled the cute footy-pajamas with the moons and stars.
This ritual grows tiresome, like Ground Hog day with diaper genies and Huggies’ wipes and changing table pads.
And somehow, in all its shit-filled sameness, life just sort of flies by until a person finds themselves suddenly parenting a child capable of crapping their pants at a zoo-themed birthday party even though they’ve been ‘potty trained’ for months. Just as quickly, they are Mom to an eight year old little boy who is crying as he clutches the porcelain, ‘It hurts Mommy, it hurts. Make it stop.” And without reaching up there to extract the compacted stool herself, she is powerless to help the child experiencing the distinct pain of his first anal fissure. Apricots are administered. A Sids bath is drawn. There is hand holding and supportive cheers while the boulder of poop is finally excreted. It is a monumental turd that refuses to be flushed away. It threatens to remain their as evidence of the ill effects of too many chicken finger/french fry combos for time eternal until someone gags their way through the process of breaking it up into flushable sized portions.
Because this defecation thing is something we all must do on a regular basis and because we parents have become sort of inured to the relative disgustingness of such discussions, 225,000 copies of What’s Your Poo Telling You? have been sold and the Poo Quality Index has become a popular topic at dinner parties, on episodes of Oprah and at play groups alike.
(I am happy to report that I have yet to discuss the PQI with anyone over tapas and dirty martinis or while standing attentively just to the right of the monkey bars. I’m not sure the suburban town in which I reside is ready for discussions about feces. But have no fear, I will probably make this social blunder very soon as I have a compulsive need to bring up shocking matters at regular intervals just to ensure that I am not too well liked in this town of 30,000 judgmental mom-types.)
Perhaps I am so comfortable with discussions of colon performance because I endured months and months of undignified testing in order for doctor’s to determine that my intestines are truly unique and mysterious and that no matter how many colonoscopies are conducted or stool samples collected and placed into small vials and stirred with little plastic spoons in preparation for lab analysis, no one is going to be able to determine the exact reason for my inner turmoil. The ability to sit in a room with a male doctor and exchange colorful commentary about one’s recent performance on the seat-of-ease is definitely an acquired skill. No matter how professional and gravely serious this doctor is about the topic, initially, there is that awkward silence that is you trying to determine just how much is too much information. I mean he’s asking but does he really, really want to know?
There is a distinct feeling that anything you say or do in regard to your bowel movements can and will be used against you in a future episode of Candid Camera. Such is the nature of the topic. But the success of the book and my ability to discuss poop for an entire and lengthy blog posting is evidence that we’re all in this together. To void or not to void has never been at question.
Friday Round-up
Posted on March 28, 2008
Filed Under Friday round-up, bitching and moaning, suburban joys | 16 Comments
I know, I know, I’m supposed to post something brilliant and snappy to launch the weekend but I’ve got nothing. It snows here again today. Big, fat heavy flakes of you’ve-got-to-be-shitting-me-it’s-almost-April kind of snow. My windshield wipers actually froze up while I was driving down the highway this morning. This mechanical difficulty meant I had to slow down, a deceleration which was directly in conflict with my inner sound track telling me to speed, speed, speed. But, like a big girl, like a Mom-ish individual with responsibility and a good head on her shoulders, I eased it down to a respectable crawl and hoped that the defrost system would have some effect on the exterior situation so I could crank the mental Pearl Jam.
O’s got tennis lessons this afternoon. G has Brownies. I’m not sure why I said we’d be in two places at the same time. It seems I’ve forgotten how to plan and the calendar sits forlornly by the computer where it quietly suffers its neglect. Why oh why can’t I just write things down? Then I’ll know not to schedule a hair appointment for the day I’m supposed to help out in G’s classroom. Guess which activity is getting canceled? Oh alright, don’t be so damned judgmental. If you only knew how hard it was to map out a two hour cut and color appointment with Orlando on a Friday. It’s been months. I’ve got serious and ghastly roots showing. G and her bitchy teacher will survive my absence. I know they will. (Plus I’m still not sleeping well. This scattered ineffectualness is just a product of the insomnia, right? Surely it’s not old age?)
The weekend is yawning before us with a whole lot of nothingness on the itinerary. I thought we’d get our burning permit and gather a winter’s worth of sticks and twigs and spark a bonfire on the driveway – the white trash version of Spring clean up – but it’s supposed to be cold and windy. I need at least 45 degrees and some semblance of sun to put myself out there. I chap easily. My skin gets all dry and sprouts cracks and deep fissures when exposed to the sharply cold air. I’m delicate. Just think Scarlett O’Hara with work gloves and steel tipped boots. I can hustle up some leaves and dig a decent hole in the ground but it’s got to be comfortable conditions for me to wield the rake or the shovel or the kerosene and a box of matches.
And because, frankly, I don’t give a damn, it’s frozen chicken pot pie tonight for dinner. Thank you Mrs. Bud’s Family Sized Meals in Minutes. The short cut will please the males in the Madmarriage household who adore a good sodium rich, fat heavy meal every once in awhile. Tomorrow I’ll subject them to Shrimp with Feta and Wine Sauce over Penne but tonight I can only manage enough wherewithal to pre-heat the oven.
So happy weekend. May you all have the joy of baby sitters, the mirth of evenings out on the town with friends and the pleasure of days full of stimulating activity. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’ve got three Netflix films (No Country for Old Men, Atonement and Michael Clayton), a gallon of cheap wine and several boxes of Girl Scout cookies in the cupboard. I think I’ll make it to Monday. And maybe I’ll even have something interesting to blog about by then. No promises though.
Girl Fight
Posted on March 27, 2008
Filed Under bat-ass crazy, snark, suburban joys | 15 Comments
I know you all are going to think me crazy, another day, another tennis story. I mean who are these people I find to accompany me on the court, you ask? Well, here’s another tale that I hope you’ll find amusing. I’m laughing about it too , until next week when I will either be stabbed in the back or blissfully free of the offense.
Since my regular tennis partner and I broke up a few months back, the tennis season has been sort of free form, each week a different partnership, a different challenge. Sometimes I play with my former partner as we are committed to remaining good friends but we are not exclusive anymore. I’m definitely seeing other people, playing the field. I’ve played tennis with six different partners since February vacation. I am officially a tennis whore. But hey, whatever it takes, my win record this past few weeks is 7 and 0. There’s something uniquely exhilarating about this dating game.
This week I was asked to play as a stand-in for Linda’s sister. Linda and Laura are a sort of townie duo, both hair dressers, both gum chewers, both tough talking women from the South Shore who often intimidate their more mild mannered, country club-type tennis opponents. Think Rizzo from Grease versus Nicole Kidman’s character from The Stepford Wives and you are conjuring the right dynamic. Linda’s sister Laura was away on a Vegas vacation yesterday with Mick her loan shark boyfriend, so I was Laura’s stand in. In an effort to play the part, I wore a tank top, I chewed gum, I considered getting a tattoo.
Linda is widely considered the better player when she takes the court with her sister. Laura can become emotionally unhinged, cursing and ranting and throwing her racket when things aren’t going her way on the court. There have been times when Laura has asked an opponent to step out to the parking lot with her after the match. No kidding. I’m not exaggerating. A forty year old woman threatening to drag another woman out into the parking lot and bang her face into the side of a dumpster. It’s good stuff. Fun to watch. As long as your not the poor person on the other side of the net.
Because of Laura’s quick temper, Linda is often charged with keeping her wildly unpredictable sister from throwing temper tantrums and threatening fist fights. She is accustomed to ordering Laura around and scolding her when things get tough. She is generally talking the ENTIRE match, a constant diatribe from one point to the next.
I anticipated some of this. I tried to grin and just sort of endure Linda’s patronizing rants on court position and suggestions about where to put the ball. I just nodded when she said helpful things like, just try to keep it away from their rackets. Instead of blurting out the first thing that came to mind like, Okay. Thanks, Genius. I didn’t know that was the point of this tennis thing. Even though I think I could take her if things were to come to fisticuffs, I do try to avoid physical altercations because I’m female and last I looked have fully grown beyond the influences of high school and all those hormones. I was really aiming for placating and patient. Really I was.
And all went well in the first set, given that we won six-love. At the start of the second set, I was still playing along, letting her feel all superior with her bad self. But as our opponents made adjustments, moving back to the baseline, chucking up lob after annoying lob, Linda grew increasingly befuddled and frustrated. She started to make errors which she tried to blame on me. She began analyzing each and every ball play to determine how we should approach the next point.
I’m an impulse player. I see the court. I see the ball. I react appropriately. I’m not big on the pre-game show, the plans and the plays. Her efforts to manage each point were cramping my style. Eventually, something just snapped. I turned to Linda, the tennis thug, and taking a serious risk, I said loudly, with purpose, “Oh just shut f*%# up, Linda and play tennis.” I half expected her to launch at me. I was ready for hissing and claws but she sort of quietly turned around with the shadow of a smile lurking on her face. We played the rest of the match on auto-pilot. We won the next five games and completed the second set in steely silence. I wondered if she’d challenge me to a duel in the parking lot once the match was over. I anticipated a little verbal abuse if nothing else. But as we left the court, Linda extended her hand for a shake. It appeared she was over it. The lion had been temporarily tamed.
I exhaled a great sigh of relief, happy that I would not have my knee caps broken just yet. I jogged out to the car, peeling out before she could slash my tires or key my door. Now I’m on pins and needles anticipating next week’s practice and the reception I will receive from Linda who will have had all week to stew about our on-court disagreement. Believe me, I’ll be watching my back. There will be some fall out. I know there will be. I’ll be on my toes ready to deflect her predatory advances. Bring it bitch.
Wednesday’s Wandering
Posted on March 26, 2008
Filed Under praise, recommendations | 9 Comments
Okay, so it’s Wednesday, match day. I’m on the tennis court in a town forty-five minutes away so my post will be brief and frivolous. And since I was forced to watch Idol alone (My Better Half thinks he’s above it and my kids were in bed), I’m just going to scream this one…..DAVID COOK!!!!!
I have really, really liked his cool factor from the beginning. But last night stunned me. This guy is the real deal. I love it. I love that show for introducing us to talent like his. And I just hope that the ten year olds propping up David Archuleta will somehow grow the hell up and recognize the true rock star in the bunch.
For those of you that are not Idol fans just tune in here for a second and see what I’m talking about.
Tough Crowd
Posted on March 25, 2008
Filed Under Blogroll, bat-ass crazy, bitching and moaning, kids, parenting, snark, suburban joys | 15 Comments
I was resolved to don my big girl panties and drag myself out of the doldrums. I’d been indulging my foul mood, wallowing in the mud of self immolation. I thought I was finished with all that. I felt ready to greet the new day but then there was the thing that happened at Elementary School. Leave it to a third grader, someone else’s third grader, to highlight the actual depths of my despair.
It was a fairly typical morning. I was up before the sun and tried creeping down to the kitchen to prop open my face with a big steaming cup of coffee WITHOUT waking the kids. But come 4 a.m., my children are primed and ready, actually lying in wait. One eye open, ears perked for signs of life. Just the sound of my breathing in close proximity to their bedroom rouses them.
We were ALL up before the sun.
It was longggg four hours. I have been cross and impatient with my children lately. Our 4 a.m. togetherness did not improve things much. But there was hope and light because it was Monday, Early Morning Sports Day, when the children are ferried to school by 8 a.m. to run around in the gym and spin off some reckless energy. I’d be alone and writing by 8:15. Just the thought of that sweet solitude was enough to get me through it.
We arrived at school promptly at 7:56 a.m. The kids were dressed in their best school clothes which is to say track pants and t-shirts, the ensemble that has become something of a uniform now that they are 6 and 8 and hyper-aware of the cool factor. I’m not sure who decided that sweaters and khakis and corduroys are the garments by which grade schoolers commit social suicide but I can tell you that the beautiful clothes I bought back in September haven’t seen the corridors of S. School. They are languishing forgotten and, now a size too small, while their athletic brethren get repeated wear. Over and over and over again.
I, too, was actually pretty put together for such an early hour seeing as the adorable Mr. S is in charge of Early Morning Sports and there is absolutely no way I was doing the drop-off without being fully made up and at least dressed in something other than fleece pajamas. I was wearing my own version of sports attire, prepared for a jaunt to the gym that I planned to allow myself after several hours of productivity. Yoga pants, UnderArmour hoodie, Mizuno running shoes. I was looking and feeling kind of sporty.
We were the first ones in the gym and we grabbed a basketball to shoot some hoops. It had been years since I’d played and it felt great to get that lay up going again, to hear the swish of the ball through the net. Never mind that O chucked up a shot while standing directly beneath the basket and took the rebound on his face. There were some sheepish, hasty tears. There was immediate swelling beneath the left eye.
Fifteen sweaty minutes later the gym was teeming with children who had been dropped on the curb. No other parent had bothered to actually accompany their kid into school. I was the solo helicopter-Mom compelled to actually escort her children through the heavy doors. And so, by default, I was the sole adult with twenty grade schoolers, spinning dervishes in the cold gym. Sadly, there was no sign of Mr. S.
By 8:15 a.m. it became apparent that the lovably disorganized, boyish teacher, adored by parents and children alike, was not going to show. I still had choices. I could have gone down to the office and requested they find a suitable replacement for Early Morning Sports instruction but there I was thinking, I can do this. I am woman, hear me roar. Now let’s get the fucking dodge ball going.
So I gathered the children around me and explained that since Mr. S was not coming, I was going to be the stand-in instructor. The children clapped enthusiastically. I grinned from ear to ear. I love sports. I tolerate children. I was feeling confident.
So we got busy right away and played a few versions of dodge ball and sharks and minnows and then some indoor soccer. I was careful to let the kids sort of free-form these games, though I secretly wanted to stop play every thirty seconds and explain the geometry of a corner kick and the need for a wall of bodies to prevent the other team from scoring on goal. I bit my tongue. I rolled with it. I did a lot of sprinting back and forth, hooting and hollering in my best imitation of an encouraging and energetic coach.
Eventually the bell rang and the kids scampered off to grab their backpacks and drink from the water fountain and get to class. Not one child, even my own, thanked me for stepping up and standing in. My O and G dashed down the hall without even a wave. But the real kicker, the true blow, was delivered by a fussy little nine year old who was exiting the gym fluffing her pigtails and adjusting her purple track pants. I heard her say as she turned the corner, (please imagine this delivered in the most haughty, little girl voice imaginable), Oh my God, she was just sooooo annoying.
Annoying? Annoying you say. You know what’s fucking annoying? The fact that your parents kicked your thankless little behind to the curb this morning without even checking to see if any adult was here to receive you. You know what’s annoying? The fact that Mr. S was clearly out sick but the entire administration spaced on the need for a sub for Early Morning Sports. You know what’s annoying? That I could have marched all you thankless trolls down to the cafeteria and handed you off to the monitors who would have made you sit there coloring in pained silence for forty-five minutes but instead ran the class myself. You know what’s annoying? That still, some twenty four hours later, no one, no child or adult or other human being, has even bothered to thank me for spontaneously setting aside an hour of my time, my fucking time, to play pied piper, to do the right thing.
Shattered, shattered I say. I’m crawling back into the hole from whence I came to lick my wounds and simmer. I promise, I should be fully recovered in a few days, just as soon as I plot my revenge on that little third grade imp with the saucy commentary, the cruel review. Tough crowd, that third grade, tough crowd.
Those Kind of Friends
Posted on March 24, 2008
Filed Under Anxiety, holiday fun, marriage, milestones | 20 Comments
I am an Easter failure. I didn’t plan an egg hunt, there were no bunnies or chicks, no collared shirts or little girl dresses. Hell, we didn’t even color eggs this year. I boiled and chilled a dozen. I purchased food coloring and vinegar. But when it became time to dip the eggs, I felt the powerful urge to retreat to the bedroom for a nap. “We’ll do it later, kids,” I promised. The hours slipped away. We never got around to it.
Last year we hosted Easter lunch for our dear friends the Q’s. Even though our O was sick with the throw up bug, our kind, devoted friends agreed to come to our home, tainted with illness. We hid plastic eggs in the mud and ate quiche and too much chocolate. We drank Mimosas at noon. Poor O stayed quarantined up in his bedroom but, still, the Q’s contracted the throw up bug twenty four hours later. They spent days and days vomiting up their insides into rinse-able receptacles, their penance for having agreed to be with us on Easter. They are that good, they are those kind of friends.
Sadly the Q’s moved to the West Coast last summer and the various friends and family members we could have drafted to take their place all had plans elsewhere. So it was the four of us and too much ham and a decidedly mournful meal through which we scolded the children about their table manners and picked distractedly at the food growing cold on our untouched plates.
I drank too much on both Friday and Saturday nights, willful self medication that made the three day weekend even harder to endure. Still windy, still cold, I longed to be alone with my iPod. But I have two children and husband who expected some measure of my presence. It was inexplicably difficult to give them that. I was remote and distracted. My Better Half called my state of mind short fused when he wasn’t calling it something else, something less subtle and understanding.
The high point of the weekend was Friday night when I met my high school/college BFF for drinks and dinner to celebrate her 35th birthday. (She happens to be in Boston on business for a week or two.) It was like old times, only sadder. Her mother is very ill and my BFF wrestles with the attendant grief and guilt. She is obligated to finish the professional project she is working on while feeling, acutely, the draw of an aging and frail parent that needs her -badly.
She and her husband are struggling with fertility issues. They want a baby. They want their baby to be the culmination of a love that is easy and free. A roll in the hay, a hastily purchased home pregnancy test, tears of joy and anticipation. They deserve that simple outcome and still it won’t happen for them. It will not be easy like that. Now they speak gravely about donors and the possibility of adoption. They wring their hands and hold their tongues, secretly, fervently hoping that something will change. And soon.
I spoke of my recent worries, mere tribulations in the wake of her angst, but regardless, she listened. She listened to me tell about my writing, my doubt, the financial black hole that is this house, the demands that having children and a mortgage make on a marriage, a partnership. It is the stuff of middle age – this. And how did we get here? She and I wondered aloud. Mid-thirties. Another year. Another crisis.
Thank God for old friends who can hold hands, tightly, with meaning and say (when it matters most), “I understand and no matter what…I’ll always love you.”
Bottom of the Tank
Posted on March 20, 2008
Filed Under Anxiety, bat-ass crazy, praise | 15 Comments
It dawns another ugly gray March day, depressing in its raw hopelessness. It’s supposed to be the advent of Spring. I feel betrayed. Where is my sunshine, my crisp breeze, where are the damn daffodils?
Admittedly, even without Mother Nature’s cruel withholding, I’d still be feeling pretty bleak today. Probably a culmination of two whole weeks of miserable insomnia. I can feel the fatigue wrecking havoc on my general outlook, my patience, my ability to write anything good or meaningful. My brain feels like hash. And when I find myself at the bottom of the tank like this, I begin to weep along to pop ballads. I start feeling hyperbolic, exceptionally self-centered. My skewed perspective contributes to the under-pinings of anxiety that prevent my sleep. A predictable cycle. Round and round, chasing my own mangy tail.
I contemplate phoning a therapist because clearly that which plagues my night-time self may need professional attendance. But then I worry that it’s just my exhaustion talking and one good night’s sleep later, a trip to a therapist will seem ludicrous, indulgent even. I can’t even plan the next minute forget about the next week. Who knows where five days will find me if this insomnia thing keeps up.
As is typical of someone stuck in the spin cycle of a depression, I feel like I’m just barely keeping it all together. That one mild set back will set it all to tumble.
In spells like these, I suffer intensely about my writing. Because I’ve been almost ill with sleeplessness, I’ve been remarkably unproductive in the past two weeks which should just be fine, really okay. There’s no deadline, no pressing need to finish anything. But there is the persistent idea that to call oneself a writer, a person has to have actually produced a complete written work. Something worthy of shopping around. I have a few short stories finished and don’t know what the hell to do with them. My novel languishes just at the point where I abandoned it in February. No more no less. What am I waiting for? Maybe I’m not a writer at all. Maybe I’m just what My Better Half suspects I am – a housewife with a hobby fooling herself in the pursuit of some far off dream. And there’s a sort of pressure in all that, the need to prove him wrong which makes me less lenient with myself, less able to accept that there will be times when life and obligations and just plain mental health will affect the quality of my writing.
So this brings me to the point of today’s post which is to say thank you to all of you who read Gardenias and left supportive comments. I really, really needed to hear the praise this week. A piece of me wants to believe you all, wants to lap up the accolades and go forward, bolstered by your audience. But then there is the doubting writer in me that is slowly working against you all, wanting honest support and encouragement and then not believing a word of it upon receipt.
I’m reminded of a passage in Writing Down the Bones…”As writers we are always seeking support…But when we receive it, we don’t believe it, but we are quick to accept criticism, reinforce our deepest beliefs that, in truth, we are no good and not really writers…Really stop when someone is complimenting you . Even if it’s painful and you are not used to it, just keep breathing, listen, let yourself take it in. Feel how good it is. Build up a tolerance for positive, honest support.”
So this is me today trying to inhale your kind words and absorb the praise. Thank you guys for being the light and the drive and the confirmation that what I’m working at it is meaningful and good. Forgive my reluctance to hear you. I’m trying to tune in to my own worthiness. Really I am. Just this week, it feels hard.
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