All Adither

Gimme an epiphany

When I was in my twenties and single, I had a lot of epiphanies. Mostly they had to do with how not to be single any more.

I liked life on my own. Somewhat. I loved living in an apartment that was all mine–-no one to make a mess but me or my cat. No guilt if I wasn't doing something productive like cleaning. Not a soul breathing in my space.

But, without a doubt, I wanted to meet Mr. Amazing. He didn't seem to exist in Lansing, Michigan, where I lived for a good chunk of my young life. Seattle was better, but still full of guys who were full of themselves.

Then I met J. and in pretty quick order we had two kids.

I don't have epiphanies any more...the lovely dawning of existential understanding that comes over a person. For one thing, I don't sit around thinking about life as much as I used to. I mean, I guess I do. But it's more about balance and identity and parenting and less about how do I live as a single person while being okay with it or how do I meet that special someone who will complete me???

No longer do I spend Saturday mornings sprawled across my bed talking to other single girlfriends on the phone about who we met the night before, who we hope to meet, the world and our place in it.

***

Claire is six-and-a-half. Going on 15. She has inherited a pair of patent leather boots that are two sizes too big. She wears them anyway, almost everyday. She loves them. Style over function. That's my girl.

I decide to make cookies with her one day after school. She puts on a frilly apron I gave her the Christmas before. She is all little girl, rolling her dough balls in sprinkles and licking the beaters. She's receptive when I show her how to level off the flour and use a rubber spatula. She's adorable.

At breakfast that morning Max reads descriptions to her out of one of the gajillion toy catalogues we get (despite having flagged them all here). "The cheeky new monkey chatimal  (approx. 9"H) loves to repeat what you say, but in his own funny voice. Simply squeeze his left paw and then record a short message..." It is childhood and siblinghood embodied. Another moment I want to hold in my hands like a clutch of brightly colored crayons.

But there are bad days, too. So many times when I think I'll go lock myself in the car if I have to hear them fighting or talking over each other to tell me some dumb story I don't give a shit about.

***

This morning I am walking Claire across the playground to where her class lines up. A special ed teacher approaches me and asks if I'm Max's mom.

She then, essentially, wonders aloud if I teach him any manners.

Ok, let me put that in context. Apparently she's been saying hello to Max for years with no response from my less than social son. Yesterday, she finally called him on it. She inquired why he never says hello back. "Because I don't want to," was his reply.

So the teacher said something along the lines of, "I'm sure your mom teaches you manners at home, right?"

He said, "Not really."

This upsets me because 1. I do try to teach my kids manners. Of course I do. J. and I both talk to Max constantly about responding when someone greets him. About how it feels to be met with silence when you make the effort to say hi. And, 2. I thought we'd made more progress than that.

It is a rainy, windy morning. Weather than causes my eyes to water incessantly. As the teacher talks, tears course down my face. She thinks I'm crying. "No!" I yelp. "It's the wind." But I don't think she believes me.

***

A couple hours later, I chaperone a field trip to the zoo that Claire has been excited about. And, I dunno, can I say this about my kid? She is obnoxious.

Claire is all kinds of brightness and lightness and empathetic and caring. But today she does not shine. She is a know-it-all, announcing that she already understands every single thing the docent teaches, because she'd been to zoo camp once two years before. She goes up to kids who brought a lunch box and admonishes them for not having brought a sack, as instructed. She makes it her personal mission to enforce the rule of "no picking things up from the ground". And at the end of it all? She tells me it has been the most boring field trip ever.

I'm not sure how much you'd have to pay me to chaperone the next one.

I feel like a big parenting fail right now.

Despite the games of Battleship across the coffee table, the hours of homework help, the baking together and tucking in at night, I'm wondering if I'm doing it wrong. Are my kids just immature, or do I really suck? Am I too distracted? Too uninterested? Can they read on my face that I truly am not fascinated when they put noodles down their pants?

I need an epiphany.

Flawed

I spend way too much time thinking about physical appearance. Particularly my own.

I'm not beautiful. I wouldn't even call myself pretty (except in the right light, at the right angle, wearing the right thing). But I walk around like I think I am, trying to fool whoever I might.

In truth, I'm very much too tall, too skinny in many places, too puffy in others. As dentists love to tell me, I have a tiny jaw, and sitting atop my giraffe neck, it creates what I think of as The Gumby Effect.

Despite two rhinoplasties (the second to fix the first), my nose is still crooked and one nostril has collapsed. Wrinkles are deepening, and I'm starting to be able to picture what I'll look like as an old woman.

I love clothes. I'm a fiend for a cute top or kick ass jeans. And I get bored easily, so I'm often refreshing my wardrobe. I hate trying things on, though, and seeing what my torso has become, stretched out by monstrously large babies, time, and Skittles.

My hair is dyed and has been since I was sixteen. For a while it was jet black, auburn, sandy brown (the closest to my natural color). But mostly I stay blonde. Because I think that blonde has a softening effect on facial features. And mine are odd.

Since March of last year I've been working for a website all about plastic surgery. It's not a position I would've seeked out, but they found me and, schedule-wise, it's been a great fit. The work is okay. I enjoy the social media aspect of it. I have to admit, though, that looking at so many photos of tummy tucks, breast lifts, and nose jobs gets tiresome. And for a while, it skewed me.

For some time after starting my job, I would see people on the street and mentally scalpel their faces, rearranging features until they looked like the After pictures I saw day in and day out. Just a little tuck here, a small shave there... and yes! Much Improved! I disgusted myself. I've always been one to notice how something or someone looks, but never before had I so flagrantly judged (and, in my head, tried to fix) people's "flaws". It was becoming a terrible habit and I knew it was in large part because of the work I was doing.

Then, in December, I went to see the Picasso exhibit at SAM. I was alone, which afforded me time to absorb and think without having to discuss and analyze. That exhibit did something wonderful for me. Studying the bizarrely beautiful faces and breasts and bodies that Picasso created, gave me back the sense that we're all odd. And oddity is lovely. We don't have to have a perfect nose or smooth foreheads or dainty feet to be a muse. To be worthy of art and life and finding love.

Daily, I still have to look at Before and After shots of women who've had silicone bags shoved in their breasts, but the perfection that the high, round C cup represents doesn't seem like the most important thing now. Or even necessarily desirable.

We're all freaks. We're all flawed. Me especially.

I suck

Two kids + a part-time job + one unpaid writing gig + a couple of blogs + a house that doesn't clean itself + meals up the wazoo + and a husband who works a ton =

two forgotten appointments, two forgotten friend's kids I was supposed to keep an eye on after school until their father arrived, one forgotten Kindergarten tuition, one forgotten cupcake I was supposed to send to school with Max, and one forgotten cup of sugar that should've gone into the pumpkin pie.

I've always leaned toward airheadedness. I mean, I know I'm not a stupid woman. But I biff a lot of things. Forget simple tasks I'm supposed to do. Mess up others. 

I try to convince myself that it's because I have a lot of balls in the air.

It can't be early onset alzheimers because, well, it just can't be.

Comfort me. What have you totally effed up lately?

Weak threads

You try to be a good listener. You do. Sometimes, when your husband talks about work, your eyes lose focus a little, and you think about cupcakes or the recycling that needs to be taken out. But you try. You ask questions. You do your best to be there.

But you have learned there's one area in which you cannot be there. And this disturbs you.

Lately, when you and your husband talk about your children's food issues (severe allergies and probable celiac) and he begins telling you how he dislikes that Fruit Bat has to sit at a nut-free table, how he's worried about Kitty Cat's impending endoscopy, how it all kind of sucks, you shut him down. You pull into yourself with a slippery suck and say that you can't hear it.

You know that if you start down that road right now, thinking about how inconvenient and scary and sad your kids' relationship with food is, you will slowly collapse.

You have realized, as recently as last night, that the threads holding you together are weaker than you'd thought. You are sure of this, because as you were explaining yourself to your husband, your eyes leaked down across your temples (you were reclined).

There is no doubt that your children's health issues could be so much worse. A little girl from Fruit Bat's Kindergarten class was recently diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and you know this to be infinitely harder. And that there are more difficult things still.

Perhaps in late August, when Kitty Cat's endoscopy is over, you'll feel more like yourself, more like you can listen.

For now, though, you have to admit failure. This fact makes you itchy and uncomfortable. 

You do not especially like living with unpleasantness, with unfinished 

emotional business. But you will. Because it is the best you can do.

Facebook. I love you. And I hate you

I've had a Facebook account for years. Since the beginning of the internet practically. Though my FB page sat dormant until recently, when I received a few "Friend Requests". 

I quickly accepted, because who doesn't need more "friends"?

A few of the folks I "friended" were old classmates. Which was all well and good. I kind of enjoyed watching their "status updates" and discovering where life had taken them. Occasionally, I "commented" on their "status" or on their "photos" and felt like we had a rapport, where there had been none in the hallowed halls of the BURNING HELLFIRE that is called high school.

But then I started realizing that there was a huge contingent of my high school acquaintances on Facebook who had NOT sent me "friend requests". I would see them commenting on my "friends'" Facebook entries and notice that they still insisted on using the same nicknames that flew like pesky swallows around stuffy classrooms and ricocheted off the lockers at lunch. Glimmer. Deter. Squash.

And I threw up in my mouth a little. Then I swore to J. and whomever else would listen that I was DONE with Facebook. That it made me too queasy. That it made me feel like a fifteen-year-old again, worrying about why I had no nickname and about who hadn't "friended" me. Because, if they didn't "friend" me, I certainly was NOT about "friend" THEM.

Yeah, totally stupid.

My Facebook hiatus lasted about 12 hours. I started in again, rationalizing that I would just check Facebook once a day and if I saw a comment from high school UNfriends and they utilized any nicknames whatsoever, I would avert my eyes and rapidly scroll down the page.

That didn't work either.

I am FASCINATED with Facebook. The roiling cauldron of people from my past and present is too bizarre to ignore.

So here I am, back where I started. An FB junkie. And not at all happy about it.

Content copyright www.AllAdither.com

What do these things mean?

They mean that I met my BFF Tricia for tea and dessert tonight and did not sit down to write a proper post.

Try me tomorrow for Cat Video Friday.

Someday maybe, but not yet

A woman was getting out of her car. It was a slow extrication, old bones and joints mutinous, her face set in a disappointed grimace. Her hair was dyed a dull brown, too dark for skin that had turned to rice paper.

She looked right at me as Kitty Cat and I weaved, slowly, yet surely, around her open door.

The gaze she settled upon me was this: defeat, envy, portent.

Or maybe that's just how I took it.

All Afluff

Now I'm feeling guilty for writing about my preference to be called Miss over Ma'am. I mean, who really cares when there's September 11th and war and leukemia and food allergies.

I fret about the dumbest things sometimes. Actually, I fret about the most horrifying things most of the time. What's the Worst Case Scenario? That's what I get worked up about. I think that's why I like to grumble about fluff, it's an escape from WCS.

In other news, I gave Fruit Bat a harmonica today. I think I'm an idiotica. But, he was cute blowing on that thing like Sugar Blue.

Kvetch, whine and fuss

We are lucky. We have, because of our neighborhood, access to a private beach along the Puget Sound. It's a good beach. There isn't much of it when the tide is high, we have to cross two sets of train tracks to get to it and, because we live in Washington, the shoreline is dirty and rocky rather than silky and golden. But we like it. During the summer we take the kids. Jay pokes around the rocks and pulls out squirming shore crabs for Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat to touch. They dig and throw rocks. I often get to sit on my arse and watch boats criss cross the ocean in front of me.

This summer though, we haven't been able to get down there much. The railroad is working on the tracks and have blocked our entrance with a fat chain and menacing lock. Jay and I tried to make the trek this morning and couldn't. We grumbled: But we paid 45 dollars for the year! Why do they have to work on the tracks during the three months we actually want to use the beach?!

We attempted to get in to by way of our swanky neighbors to the east (Blue Ridge) who have, not only a nice, paved path to the sand, but a play structure that sits lonely and unused. We pressed our faces to the chain link fence, but no one came along for us to pester.

So we loaded up the car and drove to the nearest public beach.

We still had a good time. The tide was superlow. Two blue herons stalked around us, looking for food, then lumbered off: 747s of the avian world who seemed barely able to stay aloft. Sea Anemones (which I think are disgusting, but Jay--who used to be a marine biologist--has made me swear not to convey this disgust to Fruit Bat and Kitty Cat) bubbled up through the sand like hundreds of plantar warts. And the sun came out just enough to warm our backs and lift our spirits.

And I thought, how dumb to grumble about losing beach access when we are so charmed to have it in the first place. I thought a lot about human nature and how people (especially me) will find something to complain about no matter how comfortable our lives may be.

(Thanks to Heather for bringing up this topic a few weeks ago too!)