Barking Mad

Dear New York, Do You Like Me? Check Yes or No

Dear New York,

Maybe me bashing the pizza here wasn't the smartest thing.  I'm willing to give it another chance.  Sure OK, I groan a lot about missing Maine and wanting to go home, but listen Empire State, maybe if you gave me a chance, I'd hush up.  Heck, I might even grow a little fond of you. 

You and I, we have really gotten off on the wrong foot, haven't we?  It could have a little to do with the fact that when I first found myself living here, things were pretty much frozen...the lake, the ground, the people...You get where I'm going with this.   I assumed that perhaps because we lived on a fairly large lake and it was a very seasonal area, that once the spring thaw hit, that maybe the people around here would defrost too.  I even had images of hosting fantabulous cocktail parties and BBQ's on that massive deck of ours that looks out over Lake Saratoga.  Sadly, all I've hosted is hordes of mayflies that seem fit to alight on every freaking surface.   But let's nevermind that.  What's a few trillion smelly, pesky, invasive mayflies when a burgeoning relationship is at stake?

Why so aloof and cool?  Are you playing hard to get? I was never very good at that back in my dating days, and I'm a fat girl, so therefore I don't give chase very easily.    Maybe you could meet me halfway, say, over a bagel?   I'm willing to give a little if you are.   Heck, I might even be willing to come down and take a bite out of the big apple if that would make you happy.   I'm completely willing to give this relationship another chance.  I just need to know that you're in this too!  Maybe the occasional smile, a wave, or a friendly "Hello!" said in my general direction would go a long way toward smoothing things out.    Just a few suggestions. 

I know sometimes I slam you because there are days when I feel like there are never enough middle fingers when dealing with my fellow drivers.   I'll try harder not to scream remarks about the potential for New Yorkers to become better drivers if they would just get off their cell phones and shove them into certain bodily orifices.  I will really make a concerted effort to wave with my entire hand and not just one finger, when those drivers pass by me, cell phone glued to their ears, driving 35 miles over the posted speed limit.   For all I know, any one of those drivers could be a neurosurgeon on his way to the hospital to scrub in on a life-saving procedure. 

Maybe if you thought of me like the lonely kid at fat camp, the one who hasn't gotten to know anyone yet because she's not really sure if she fits in and so she maybe has a bad attitude about the whole experience?  Perhaps you could sort of be like that hunky camp counselor who takes pity on the new fat girl and comes over and offers to show her where the canoes are, and how cool the air hockey table is? 

I want you to know that I am totally on-board, willing to wipe the slate clean (does anyone know of a good dead-mayflie-remover- because I'm having a hard time cleaning the slate of those nasty, smelly little buggers!), and compromise.  I want this relationship to work.    I'll even go one better!  I'll watch a Yankees game on TV...and I won't yell nasty things about how the Red Sox will kick your butts!   I'll even eat a slice of genuine New York pizza while doing it!  See?  I am willing to give a little.

So, what do ya say?   Do you...Could you...would you, like me?

Check yes or no.

Napoleon Hill Said It Best...

 

"Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday."

~Napoleon Hill~

***********

I seem to have a little problem lately with procrastinating.   It would explain why the load of wet clothes I took out of the washing machine two days after I put them in there, smelled funky and had to be rewashed.  It might even explain why I just found a brand new package of thank-you notes buried in a box of crap I still haven't unpacked from our move [in DECEMBER!] and I'm sitting here wondering just who the hell I've neglected to send a thank-you note to and for what?

I've also been procrastinating posting more regularly, despite my best intentions to do exactly that.   I have tons of drafts just sitting in my lovely little "Draft" folder and I work on them and then get distracted and start on something else and tell myself, "It's no biggie, I will come back and finish that up in a little bit..." But then "a little bit" becomes getting lunch for Gaby, moving around smelly laundry, trying to bribe Gaby into taking a nap, vacuuming up a bajillion mayflies (yes, that's what all these bugs are!  We finally have a positive ID on the little bastards!) and then realizing that I have probably ruined a $600 Dyson vacuum that took me TWO YEARS to save up for because mayflies smell like dead fish and now there are a bajillion of them reposed in my Dyson cannister and then bemoaning the fact that I'm never going to get that smell out of my vacuum!  Oh sure, I can put something in there to try and cover up the smell, but I'll probably end up with "Apple-Cinnamon scented dead fish smell", or even better, "Island Paradise Dead Fish smell."Oh and another distraction lately?  My discovery of a Discoball horse!  What's that you ask?  Stay tuned and tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I'll tell you about it!  Seriously, I will!

So, it's not like I don't have good decent passable excuses for why I'm not keeping up on my committment to post more, it just sort of gets shoved to the back burner while I'm suddenly remembering that I told myself I'd switch laundry loads at the next commercial break which was actually two days ago.

I would write more but I just remembered that I was going to turn out all the lights downstairs, "in a few minutes", but that was three hours ago.

 

This is the Last Time I Take The Pioneer Woman's Advice!

This morning, whilst perusing my blogroll, I stopped over at The Pioneer Woman's place and remembered that she had earlier Tweeted about some sort of cathartic exercise she highly recommended.  I read, I laughed, and then I thought to myself that if I tried anything like that with my family, they'd have me committed, instantly! 

Seeing as how I already live in an insane asylum, I considered the fact that an involuntary commitment might net me some time to relax.   I left a comment on her site, (which I rarely do because lets face it, Ree gets eleventy billion comments a day, and now there's  a film being made based on her blog and her [upcoming] book that chronicles her transition from city girl to country wife with none other than Reese Witherspoon being considered for the part of Ree herself.  Um- I love Reese, but c'mon, this is a role perfect for Sandra Bullock or Julianne Moore!...OK what was I saying?) saying something to same effect.

I'm not the brightest bulb in the box and after spying my flip camera on the counter, I decided to start a conversation with Gaby about what we were doing today, namely cleaning her bedroom.   Gaby's reply opened up the chance for me to try out Ree's suggestion.  Oh and you really MUST go read PW's cathartic exercise post before watching the video.  Go ahead, I'll wait. 

This is what happens when I take free advice given over the interwebs!

So, what have we learned from our cathartic little exercise today?  Two things.

1.) My 4 year old thinks I am a joke, wonders if I'm OK,  and then pulls her own Jack Nicholson 'tude on me!

2.) When you want a wake-up call as to how much of a nobody you are in the blogosphere, just go read The Pioneer Woman, or even Dooce.  Books...movies, HGTV gigs.  Kinda makes me feel like a tadpole in the ocean that is Bloggywood.  However, I can at least name almost everyone who reads this blog.  Ree or Heather being able to pull that off would be monumental and damned near impossible!

 

My New Band

Credit for this post should probably go to Avitable seeing as how I was over at his place, wandering around and trying not to make too much noise...I'm not sure if he's an early or late riser and didn't want to accidentally wake him up with all my noisy traipsing around over there.  I stumbled upon this little gem and thought to myself, "Self, you've got an entire folder full of drafts that you once again aren't going to do anything with, so why not give this a shot?" 

Unlike Adam, I have never done this before, but should you be so inclined to give it a whirl, here's what you do!

1.) Go to the "Random Article" link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.

2.) Go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3.) Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture will be your album cover.

Toss all of the above in a blender, whirl it around and this is what you'll end up with...well you're mileage will vary, but you get what I'm trying to say!

 

So, um yeah, this is my new band.  I smell a Grammy.

Nope, wait, it's just Geronimo...he has gas again.  Damned cat.

 

My Pregnant Brain!

 

So much has been going on lately, but not much of it is physical - nope, most of it is mental. In fact, at times, I've got so much mental noise going on, that I feel as if my brain is surely going to ooze out of my nose, ears and mouth.

I can't even count the number of posts where I've said I was either going to let loose out here, or had this, that or another subject I really wanted to write about, or that I wanted to post photos from some adventure we went on and...well, it never materializes.   I can't get anything out of my head and onto paper - so to speak because there's so much stuff cramped up in there and it's all jockeying for a spot at the front...to be let out that it causes a huge snarl-up of brainy traffic, if that makes any sense. 

Often times it's quite literally as if my brain itself is pregnant...11 months along and labor is no where in sight.   Hence the title of this post. 

What?  You thought I was actually PREGNANT?  Nope, sorry about that.

The Move to New York

Everyone keeps asking me how I like it here.   I don't know.  It's white, and gray, naked and frozen. The people move fast but seem nice enough.  I am numb to everything around me right now.  I'm still unpacking and worrying about the house back in Maine.  Maybe when the spring thaw hits I'll be able to feel a bit more of the "soul" of this place we now call home.  Until then I'm just kind of treading water I guess.

Oh, but there is this little tidbit...the lake that sits directly in front of the house, in all it's frozen mass, is actually pretty damned creepy late at night.   It makes these God-awful sounds and half time time, if I find myself outside after darkfall and I hear this huge almost space-like groaning and heaving sound, I haul ass back into the house.  I don't know what the hell the sound is, or where exactly it's coming from but it genuinely creeps me out.   Gareth thinks it might be the noise of the ice moving around...or something like that.  Whatever it is, it's very chilling.

Gaby

My little ray of sunshine in the form of a curly headed, bedimpled imp, has not adjusted well to the move.  She has had such a difficult time getting settled and liking this place.  I have tried earnestly to not vocalize or even show how homesick I am for Maine, and I think I've done a pretty good job...but my darling girl says her "heart hurts and wants to go home to the old house, to Maine." 

I know we've not even been here six weeks yet and in that short frame of time so much has happened.  Immediately before that she had a fairly stable routine and then her daddy lost his job, there was a lot of stress about our home, Meg left for the USAF, her daddy got a new job, he moved, then we moved, Matt went back to Seattle (I wish I could elaborate on that, but I can't...just know that what led to it was extremely traumatic for all of us, but most especially Gaby),  then we went on a quick trip to Texas to see Meg, and then back to the house to the continued monotony of days spent inside, unpacking, reading, playing games with mommy and generally being bored out of her little mind. 

Gaby misses her big sister in the worst way and sometimes it breaks my heart to hear her talk about her.  When she got off the phone after talking to her last night and wishing her big sister a happy 20th birthday, she collapsed into a heap of tears on my bed and the sounds that came out of that tiny body were almost mournful and brought me to my knees with sympathy for her. 

Added to all this is Gaby's desire to go back to school again.  It was out of necessity that we even had her in the Montessori in Maine.  I was still in outpatient treatment and in other therapy twice a week.  Truth be told, I should be there again, but that's a story for another day...She misses the routine, the friends, and the fun.  I've tried building a routine similar to what she had back in Maine, but she's tiring of it and I can't say I blame her.  We just don't know if school, even another part time Montessori is in our budget right now. 

Unfortunately because her birthday falls so late in the year, she won't begin kindergarten until the fall of 2011.  I'm trying to decide how important a pre-k program really is.  All of my other children were in preschool for 3 days out of the week by the time they were 4.  But that wasn't my choice...my former in-laws impressed upon me the importance of it.  Right now, I don't know if I'm smart enough to try and replicate that in my own home...plus, the big thing that's lacking...friends. Plus...and I'm not bragging (although show me a parent who never says that when speaking about their children and I'll show you a parent who is lying!) or being vain, but she's smart.  I mean, really quite bright and loves challenges and LOVES to learn.  She loved the structure to her days back at the Montessori in Maine and fell in love with learning French and she had just started tumbling classes within the school itself.   Her mommy doesn't "tumble" unless it's going down the stairs outside after a good snowfall.  

What's a mom to do?   All of this makes me feel quite inept at being a good parent to her.  I've been thinking about putting her either into dance or gymnastics but as our budget is still quite tight and New York is not the cheapest state to live in, that might have to wait. 

I'm hoping with the spring thaw will come my own thawing towards this place and a renewed sense of wanting to explore and see what's around here.  And then with the blooming summer and warmer weather, we'll have the lake literally at our door step and a chance to swim and float our days away...of course, I say that now but the thought of anyone looking at me in a swim suit or even shorts and the ridicule that often accompanies it, makes me fearful that people will pity Gaby for being stuck with a mom like me.  It's not all about me,  yet at times, it still is.  So um yeah, I'm still pretty fucked up.  Sadly, it's my kid that's paying for it.

Not all is lost though...

I am working through my issues and battling my demons.  Sometimes they win the occasional battle and sometimes I manage to pull out a victory.  The war is not lost though and I'll keep fighting because really, what other choice is there?

Along those lines and dealing with demons, a lot changed inside my head after I published this post, about forgiving the man who hit and killed my son, all those many years ago.   It was cathartic and opened up so many other possibilities of things I might be capable of.  One of those is reaching out to the girl (and she was merely that, a girl), who was watching Josh the night he was killed.  I have never spoken to her.  We talked to her before we left that evening...we kissed Josh goodbye and told her to call us immediately if she needed us.  The phone did ring but...well, you all can surmise what happened from there.

I want to talk to her.  I've ached and longed to talk to her for almost 20 years.  Immediately after Josh's death her parents refused to let us talk to her.  Their fear was that it might traumatize her, or that we'd be angry and she'd slip back into the catatonic state she was in immediately after his death.  You see...she saw the small pickup truck hit him.  When she realized what direction he had run and looked that way, that's when the impact occurred.   I can't even begin to imagine how awful that must have been for someone so young.  She was 18 when it happened.  I was only 20.  Both of us children still.

I need to talk to her.  I've needed to all these years.  She was the last person to be with my son before he died.  My last memory of Josh is of him standing at her front door, screaming for his mommy.  She has other memories of him I will never have.  I'd love to hear her account of what happened...we really never even got the full story.

Please know I don't want to point the finger in blame.  I no longer hold any acrimony towards her.  I want to talk to her and hear her voice and have her hear mine...I want my words to be loving and thoughtful and careful.  Most of all I want to release her from the burden of blaming herself for his death.  I know that burden has been heavy these long years and I think that Joshua's mother is one of the only people that can help her unencumber herself of that heavy weight.

I never wanted to write about this openly because I didn't want my former husband, Josh's father, or my former in-laws, who I bear a great deal of anger towards, to read this and judge me.  I also, very selfishly wanted to reach out to this woman on my own...without any competition from my former husband.  I know that's incredibly selfish. 

This weighs on my mind greatly.  So much so that I've begun to search for her.  No easy task, that. I only know where her parents were located as of 2001.  So far, based on that, my search has netted me nothing useful.  But I'm going to keep trying.  It's important to me.  

Not Quite Darwin Award-Worthy, but Close Enough!

I continue to live up to my nick-name, "Trauma Magnet."

Last month in an attempt to repair the wings on one of Gaby's mini Tinker Bell dolls, I super-glued myself to Disney's beloved muse.

 

Considering that I have a fairly volatile history with superglue, upon learning of my latest dumbass stunt, Gareth has hidden the superglue and written to the company (as well as many of my other well meaning friends and family members) and asked them to put a small picture of me on all superglue containers alerting sales people to the fact that I should NOT be sold the product.  

Another case in point...lately I've taken to eating flax seed right out of the bag.  I love the stuff!  Too much is a bad thing though, I can unfortunately tell you.  Also, chasing several handfuls of flax seed with low carb beer right before bed is a REALLY REALLY INCREDIBLY BAD THING!  Take my word for it.  Just don't do it.  Otherwise you'll be up all night with hallucinatory dreams so real you'll think there's a damned Nazi in your bedroom about to eat your cat. 

So there you have it...just a few of the things currently plaguing me.