Making Music

Driving along the freeway this morning I heard the toddler singing softly behind me:

(To the tune of Frere Jacques)

Where you sleepin'
Where you sleepin'
All the night?
All the night?
Sa-la-lay-la-tina,
Sa-la-lay-la-tina,
Ding, ding, dong
Ding, ding, dong

Isn't she just too cute for words?

In honor of her recent birthday and the baby's upcoming transition to official toddlerhood, I'm going be changing the toddler's designation to preschooler. Henceforth you will be hearing about the preschooler and the baby (to avoid confusion I won't start calling the baby the toddler for a few months.)

(OK, fine. I just don't want to stop calling her my baby. So there. Pppbbttt.)

Look! Posting three days in a row! Whatever is the world coming to?

Creativity

Years ago a roommate, and my best friend, found a book in the library which contained nothing but various types of personality/intelligence tests. Specifically, it claimed to offer ways for you to measure all the different types of intelligence you had, not just IQ, but things like organizational, mechanical, emotional, or creative intelligence.

C. is an artist. Naturally she took the creativity test first. As I recall, one part of it was that you were supposed to come up with a list of ways to use a pictured item - a pipe or some such thing. C. came up with 98. When I took the same test I came up with something like 5.

C. claimed that it showed that I wasn't creative, and said that she agreed with it. That really upset me. I've always regarded myself as a creative person. I've always wanted to be a writer, loved doing creative things, been praised for being a creative person. That was just who I was. Jennifer the Creative. Jennifer the Writer. Telling me I was the creative equivalent of a concrete wall struck at one of the foundation supports of my identity. We had quite a fight about it.

It was relatively easy to dismiss that test. I mean, really, a test from an old library book? I know how real psychological testing works, and that isn't how you come up with a reliable result. Unfortunately that opinion was echoed by C., my best friend, the person who knew me better than anyone else. So it's been there in the back of my head ever since, a lingering question that I've never been able to resolve.

So that's the background. Lately, I've been thinking that maybe C. was right. I look at myself, at what I've tried to accomplish, and I see ... nothing.

When I little I never could figure out what to do with Legos. My little brother would create these amazing structures, spaceships usually. They were beautiful, expansive, airy - a cross between machine and bird.

I made houses. Small, clunky, square houses.

I'm good at homemaking. I'm really good at it. I sew, bake bread, craft with the toddler, preserve jams, vegetables, fruit and meat. I'm lousy at cleaning, but good at knitting, embroidery and crochet. We've got everything we need to survive a hurricane, blizzard or terrorist attack, and enough to help out our neighbors, too.

I'm good at writing - as long as it's non-fiction. I've won a couple of awards for my essays and editorials, and I can pull together an excellent newspaper or magazine article in no time flat.

Recently, I've been exploring photography, and I like to think I'm rather good at it. A couple of people have said nice things about my photos at any rate.

In other words, all my creativity seems to be based solidly on the concrete. If I can see it, touch it, feel it, I can photograph it or describe it. I can put the concrete together in a pleasing way. But, I can't tell a story to save my life.

I can feel the creativity inside me. It's there, like a banked fire that flares into life every now and then. I've tried to bring it out, but completely without success. It's like it's locked up, just out of reach and I can't find the key.

I can't help but write fiction. What I write is truly lousy, but I can't help it. I have to try. It's a compulsion, something I could no more stop doing than I could stop breathing. I think though, that maybe it's time to give up on the dream of being published. I don't think it's there in me. Hard work may be 90% of the equation, but without that 10% of talent, it just isn't going to happen.

I'll keep trying though. Like I said, I can't seem to stop myself.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things - -
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced - - fold, fallow and plow;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cinderella is differently-abled.

The toddler got a Cinderella doll for her birthday. She saw it in the grocery store a week before the big day and immediately glommed onto it. We were in the baby aisle; I was deciding which was cheapest - brand-name diapers with doubled coupon or store-brand diapers with no coupon. Having decided in favor of the store-brand, I turned to see my little one, stacking boxes of Disney princess dolls in the middle of the aisle. (Diabolical store, to place the toys next to the diapers!) It was an impressive stack, almost as tall as her, and she's extremely tall for her age. Unfortunately, although I was pleased with her stacking prowess, I had visions of the pile crashing down and having to pay for every one of the $10 dolls.

I hustled back to her and hurriedly started to put the dolls away. Naturally, she protested. Loudly. Very loudly. We finally compromised by letting her carry a Cinderella doll around the store while I finished our shopping. Then I spent several minutes explaining how Cinderella lived in the store and couldn't possibly go home with us. That's when I made my fatal mistake. I told her if she was very good and left Cinderella there without any tantrums, then maybe Cinderella would come to live with us on the toddler's birthday.

I thought she'd forget about it. She didn't. Every morning she'd wake up talking about Cinderella and birthday presents. She told Daddy, she told big brother, she told her friends at church and the little boy next door. She even told Grandma all about Cinderella and birthdays. What else could I do? I got her Cinderella.

Of course, Cinderella came with various accessories. A bracelet, three charms, removable clothing, long gloves and two clear-with-silver-glitter plastic shoes. Inevitably, the shoes wouldn't stay on. No problem. Neither did anything else. I redressed Cinderella about once every 5 minutes the first day we had her. At least her hair was styled with some kind of plastic substance that made the hair impossible to brush, wash or cut. (Yes, all things I did to my own Barbies at one point or another.)

One day, Cinderella disappeared. The toddler didn't say anything or even seem to notice Cinderella was missing. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved she hadn't made an outcry, or peeved that the doll had gotten old so fast. I decided to be relieved. I had a bad feeling about where that doll might be.

Sure enough, I found Cinderella today, when I was moving the living room furniture to clean out the toys underneath them. The dog had gotten to her. Her face was intact, which was a relief, but alas, she was not unscathed. He'd amputated her left arm, gnawing it off just below the elbow.

I tried to hide it, but the toddler caught a glimpse of that blue dress and got all excited. At first I pretended I didn't know what she was talking about, but in the end, I had to return Cinderella to my darling daughter.

There was a shriek of horror, then ...

Nothing.

I was turned away, too cowardly to face the grief I anticipated, but I turned back around at this. The toddler wasn't standing there in shock, she was heading for her bedroom to play with Cinderella. In no time at all, Cinderella had stripped and was being walked down the hall in all her bizarrely-dimensioned glory.

The toddler knows Cinderella is damaged and she understands that the dog did it. She just doesn't care. The husband wants to get her a new Cinderella; The armless doll creeps him out just a little. Since the dog chewed up the shoes, too, we need to at least get those. I don't know that we need a new doll, though.

The toddler has a port wine stain on her cheek. It covers her ear, down her neck to the top of her shoulder, then up to the middle of her jaw, up to her cheek, and over in a straight line to her ear again. At the best of times it's pale pink; when she's throwing a tantrum or is outside in the cold it turns dark purple. She doesn't know yet that she has it, but she's reached an age now where she soon will start to realize she's different from the other kids. I hope the people she meets won't care anymore than she cares about Cinderella's arm. Since that won't happen, I mostly hope that I can teach her not to care about the cruel words, and to know her own value.

Steadily Losing My Mind

I'm a happy helper
I like helping others
Yes, I'm a happy helper

I couldn't get this Barney song out of my mind this morning, so what did I do to finally exorcise it? I started singing the Dora theme song.

Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer!
Dora, Dora, Dora the Explorer!

That's what I get for letting the toddler rot her brain with TV all day while she's been sick.

Some people could make a zucchini feel homicidal.

My little brother is just two years younger than me. When he was little he liked to watch Godzilla movies. He looked just like our cousin and everyone used to think they were twins, two tow-headed little boys watching Godzilla movies and pretending to shoot each other. They watched Emergency and wanted to be firemen when they grew up; then they would watch Adam-12 and decide they wanted to be policemen when they grew up.

(I wanted to be a policeman or a fireman, too, but I was confused by the words. Fireman. Policeman. Obviously not something a girl could grow up to do. It made me sad. I use that as an example of the power of language whenever the husband starts ranting about the awkwardness of gender neutral words. Then I ask him, sweetly, if he really wants his two daughters to grow up feeling disenfranchised? I know. Not fair. But it makes him think.)

Anyway. Getting back on topic. Living here in the East, I haven't seen my brother in years, although we talk on the phone frequently. I got a letter from him the other day, an e-mail. He's been activated and is going to Iraq.

My bipolar brother, my obsessively stubborn brother, my brother who could irritate a saint into wanting to kick him in the head, my paranoid brother who sees insults behind every wisp of wind and thinks he has to immediately confront them, is going to a place where there are many, many people with guns. Oh dear.

I'm not worried about him getting hurt. I'm worried about him getting hurt by a member of his own unit.

My brother has my hands. I noticed that several years ago before either of us was married, when we were both still college students. I looked over at him and realized his hands were just like mine, only the masculine version. Same fingers, same ratio of finger length to palm width, same bone structure.

No-one else in the world has my hands. No-one else knows what it's like to be the child of our parents when they were young. No-one knows the things about me that he does, or can ever really understand some elements of my personality the way he can. Oh, I do hope he can stay out of trouble.

Frying pan or fire? Fire or frying pan?

I've been fighting depression for somewhere around 18 months now. There was a break for a few weeks just before the baby was born, which lasted until she was a few days old.

I keep holding out, waiting for this to reach its natural end. When I was pregnant, it was the end of the pregnancy that was supposed to bring me relief. When I lost the dice roll after she was born and wound up with a second act it was supposed to fade away after a few months, as the pregnancy hormones worked their way out of my system.

If all had gone well, it might have worked out that way. Unfortunately, circumstances haven't been so great, which means that, in addition to the physical factors underlying the depression, there have been more than enough environmental factors to make anyone depressed.

I'm thinking I need to go see someone. I had the opportunity during the pregnancy and then again afterward, but avoided it. I don't really know why I didn't want to go. I didn't know at the time. I just couldn't bring myself to make that appointment, and when they made one for me (after the baby was born,) I called to cancel it.

I can hazard some guesses. After all these months of navel-gazing I should have some idea. For one thing it's never easy to do anything with small children, much less make it to regular doctor appointments. Being depressed, the last thing I was could handle was all the stress of trying to find someone to watch a toddler and a newborn for a couple of hours every week (visit time, travel time, etc.) I didn't think a therapist would be too happy to see me with two active little ones in every session.

I also have that BA in psychology, not to mention a great deal of practical experience in dealing with the psychological community. When you have as many mentally ill family members as I do you pick up a few things. Wanna know a secret? We don't know that much about mental illness. We have drugs that can help, sure, but no-one's really sure exactly how they work and when they're going to work. In other words, there's a remarkable similarity between the modern psychiatrist and the primitive witch doctor.

If I go to a therapist, the first thing any reputable, informed, educated, competent provider is going to want to do is get me a prescription. But wait! We don't know exactly what causes depression. There are no tests that can diagnose depression, no reliable way of knowing what medicine is going to fix the problem. We know more about viruses than we do about brain chemistry and how it effects the way we feel and the way we see the world.

Post-partum depression, situational depression, incipient bipolar disorder - after all these months, who knows how all this is interacting in my head and my body? I don't know if I want to offer myself up for musical chemistry, taking first this and then that for a couple of weeks at a time, enduring various side effects until we find just the right pill or combination of pills to lift me out of this.

And of course, ultimately, I'm scared. I don't want to find out the family illness has finally caught up with me. Denial is so much better than that reality. Being mentally ill means losing your friends, losing your family, losing your ability to support yourself, losing your life. As hard as it is to watch my loved ones going through this, I am selfish enough to prefer watching it to living it.

But I'm so tired right now and I just don't see how I can keep on coping. If only there was some test they could do that would tell them exactly what medication would take care of this, some kind of psychotropic drug that worked like a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

Failing that, I guess I'll just have to wait until the cure doesn't seem like a worse bet than the illness anymore

I'm not answering, so there!

One of the problems that has come along with moving has been getting a new phone number to go with our new address. I called the National Do Not Call Registry right away, but we still have three months that our phone number is legal prey for phone marketers. Which means we've been getting inundated in phone calls to a degree I've never dealt with before. We are getting calls at least every hour, if not more. I'm talking at least 10 calls every day. I can't wait for October.

Telemarketers - it's like trying to sleep with a mosquito whining about your head.

A Guided Tour

We live in a quiet neighborhood, out in the country, off a state highway. On the other side of the highway is a produce stand and a field full of cows (which delights the toddler.) The subdivision is fairly new, with construction still going on up the street, just out of sight over a hill. Directly around us, however, we are the newest house around. Everytime I run into a new person around here, in fact, they all say, "Oh, we were wondering who was moving into that house!" I've never felt so notorious!

We're not far from the entrance to the subdivision, just a couple of blocks up and to the left. As you drive up, you will see a pretty white house, with lots of windows, a scraggly brand-new lawn, and a single car garage (a tad narrow - I have to be careful backing out to keep from scraping off one of my side mirrors.)

Walk up the steps to the porch and in the front door and you'll find yourself on a wood-look floor, with steps on your right leading up and another half-stairway to your left, leading down to the basement. The basement is unfinished, bare concrete floors, shiny silver insulation covering the walls, boxes everywhere, making it hard to find a free place to step. I've created a clear space near one of the windows down there and covered the floor with puzzle-piece matting to soften the impact when the inevitable falls come. Most of the toys are down there.

On the other side of the basement, separated from the girl's play area by the roughed-in stairwell, under the other two windows, the teen has set up an old television and his PS2. He has plans to create a real teen nest down there, with food and soda, cushions, etc. We'll see about that. Privacy is good at that age, but we don't want him completely disappearing.

Upstairs, you walk into the living room straight across from the stairs. The kitchen is to the left, the hall to the bedrooms is to the right. There are three bedrooms, two baths, and a walk-in master closet that is almost big enough to be a fourth bedroom. The master bath has a shower and a garden tub. The kitchen has a dishwasher, a microwave over the stove, and water/ice in the refrigerator door. Every room has at least one window, and the whole house is full of light.

I've never lived anywhere this nice. It's really exciting to be able to clean and not have junk piled in the corners because I have storage space. I've gotten addicted to the water in the fridge door, guzzling icewater all day long, which is probably why I've lost some weight. I love this place.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Numerical license plates I spotted on the drive down and back:

LOWN WLF
2CAPTS
3 TIBET
LVIS4ME

I spotted three of them within a half hour, which kind of tickled me.

Going on a road trip with two little ones was something else. We left later than I wanted, but that was OK, it was only a little bit later, we'd still make it down there by a reasonable time. Of course, we had to stop to pick up a package of diapers first, since we were pretty low. Then everyone had to eat, because we didn't spend time on breakfast at home. Then the toddler spilled her orange juice and we had to pull over, mop up, and clean her up. Back on the road, except the baby started crying, because of course breakfast from McDonald's meant breakfast for me and the toddler. So, pull over to nurse the baby. Take the opportunity to give the toddler some cranberry juice in a spill-proof cup. Get going again. Another spill. Pull over and change the toddler again. Wonder if I'm going to run out of the clean clothes I packed for her before we even get there. Pull over at a gas station to buy Tylenol, because for some strange reason my head is starting to hurt. Back on the road, the cell phone rings. It's the husband. How am I doing? I check the trip odometer. We've gone 90 miles in 3 hours.

Things sped up after that. They had to or I'd still be trying to get down there! Got the stuff, got back up here (the husband flew down to drive the truck back.) Got cable hook-up the day after we got back. Hooray! So everything is going very well and life is settling down finally. Expect to see more of me, here and in comments everywhere.

You should see the smile on my face right now. It's so good to be back!

Of Loos and Drips and Lonely Facts

It's been frustrating not to be able to blog whenever I want. I have ideas for blogs come into my head several times a day, only to lose them because I'm in the middle of something and don't have access to a computer anyway. I know, I know, I could write them down on paper, but now that I'm used to a computer it's hard to go back to longhand writing. I just can't keep up with my thoughts when I'm writing like that. So, here I sit, with the time and opportunity to blog and no idea what to say.

We are going to be gone next week. We'll finally be getting our stuff from the old house and bringing it here. Yippee hooray! We'll have to use dial-up for awhile, but I think I can live with that. As the husband would say, "It beats the alternative."

I've been feeling kind of lonely this last week. I'm surprised it's taken this long to hit me, honestly. Moving is always hard on me. I tend to be really attached to my friends and miss them very much. Since I'm shy I also have a hard time making new friends, which doesn't help. It's easy enough to make casual friends, the sort of people you'd have over for dinner or stop and chat in the store when you see them. Really good friends, the kind you can call when your battery dies in Walmart's parking lot or get an honest opinion about this top, "... does it make me look top-heavy?" - those are harder to find and it takes time. I hate the taking time part. Patience is not one of my strengths, especially not when I'm stranded with a dead battery, two little ones in the car, and the husband a two hour drive away. (That'll teach me to leave the teen in the car while I run into the store with the little ones. He had the radio, air conditioner, fan and inside lights on. No wonder the blasted thing died!) (Though, to give him credit, he went and found a very nice young man who gave us a jump. But I'm still not leaving him in the car alone again. Not for a while anyway. OK, not for two weeks. Definitely. I mean it.)

I just have to hang in hear a little longer though. It'll take about a year, judging from past experiences, and then I'll finally have a small group of friends that I can add to as time goes on. It's good training in patience.

In other news, the toddler finally use the toilet as more than a place to sit and be entertained! Last Saturday night she was in the tub and suddenly grabbed herself and said she was stinky. Now, we'd been through this before and I knew it wasn't going to lead anywhere but a wet/soapy floor and toilet seat. It's great fun to pretend we're going potty, after all. So, I told her no, that it was bath time and not a good time to play on the potty. I know what you're thinking, but please remember, I've been waiting months for this. I wasn't expecting her to nod and then cut loose!

I wisked her out of the tub before more than a small amount of solid stuff had emerged and put her on the toilet. She finished up and flushed with great glee and much pride and then we went and told Daddy. (And then Mommy scrubbed the tub, a suitable punishment for her cynical reaction, and the toddler got to take another bath. Whee!)

I'm Back!

For this post anyway. I'll try to make this work every so often, but it's going to be difficult. You see, we don't have our computer, and we don't have internet access at the moment.

The day we moved was hot and cloudy, a miserable combination. We had nightmare troubles getting the truck rented (we went through FOUR trucks, no kidding), and the people helping us move showed up while the husband was gone getting a hand truck (because the truck rental place didn't give us the one we had reserved, although they did charge us for it.) It was a chaotic and stressful day, which ended with too much stuff and not enough truck. Not to mention the charity that was supposed to come pick up some stuff never showed, and it started to rain on the assorted furniture and clothing that I was giving away.

We wound up driving off the next morning, leaving several important items behind (the computer, the vacuum, clothing - all the stuff we left for last because we wanted it off the truck first - in other words, all the important stuff), planning to come back for it in a couple of weeks. We headed for our new home, a 6 hour trip that wound up taking 10 hours. Luckily, the people in our new church who were waiting to help us unload were nice and don't hate us for that. They all went home and came back when we got here and helped us unload in record time.

The house is perfectly wonderful, the neighbors are friendly and helpful, and our new church is beyond fantastic. The teen went to two sleepovers our first week here and has been just as busy socializing ever since. We keep saying, "When do we meet the jerks?" The only problem is we can't convince the local cable company to come out and hook us up. They keep saying they're going to do it and then not coming. It's been nice being without TV and internet though, very peaceful and fight-free. The teen is actually spending time doing other things than sitting on a chair or a couch while some kind of screen sucks his brains out through his eyes. Yay!

Oh, there is one other problem, but it's work-related. They've got the husband on a incredibly difficult schedule at work, five 10-hour days on and one day off. The overtime is nice, and helps us pay the bills, but we can't get back to our old house to get everything. Which means we're having to keep paying the mortgage. Talk about your expensive and inconvenient storage units! We want to rent it out, but that's not going to happen until we can get back down there. Not to mention the husband is so incredibly brain-dead from this schedule. It's just for a while though, they tell us. It better be. I don't know how long he can keep this up. It's not just the long work day, it's the hour and a half commute that's the problem. 13 hours gone from home each day. Wow, I love that man. He works so hard to take care of us.

In other news, the baby started walking (July 12) and got her first tooth (June 30.) The toddler has grown out of most of her clothes again and has figured out that, "I not a boy, Mommy, I a girl!"

In other words, life goes on. Which is a very nice thing.

I'll get back on as I can. Hopefully a couple of times a week. I have to check the library's schedule.

Wandering about tearing my hair out in large chunks.

It's crunch time. We're clearing out this weekend and I still have too much to do!

I just can't allow myself time to blog this week. I must pack, pack, pack. Work, work, work, pack, pack, pack.

Must. Resist. Temptation.

I'll be back when we're all settled in and back online. Hopefully not too long.

I remember remembering.

You know you're in a rut when you experience double deja vu.

I was at the store with the girls today, getting them out of the car when I had the strongest feeling of deja vu. I get that a lot; I think I must have a lousy memory that only lets me half recall. That, or I'm sleepwalking through life a lot more than I think!

This time, though, what I was experiencing wasn't the feeling that I'd done this before. It was the feeling that I'd had deja vu over this before.

Whereupon I said to myself, "I really have to get out of this town."

I'm excited about moving. I was nervous at first, but then I found out I'll be living only a few blocks from an online acquaintance who is just an amazing woman. It's going to be great, getting to know her in real life. Maybe I can talk her into being friends with me! Yay!

I just have to get packed first. Do you think it would be bad if I started indiscriminately throwing furniture away?

Packing and more packing

I've been busy all day between packing and kids and making moving arrangements and shipping Very Important Stuff to the husband that he left behind, so here's a cop out blog.

These questions are taken from The Conversation Piece: Creative Questions to Tickle the Mind.

In your opinion, what is the best piece of music, pop or classical, ever written?

I don't know about the best, but my favorite piece of music is Pachelbel's Canon. It always strikes me as so joyous. I can't help but feel good after listening to it.

If you could have one superpower, what would you want it to be?

I would like to fly. Or teleport. Traveling in the blink of an eye would be great. I could go all over the world and see whatever I wanted, when I wanted to see it. Flying, though, that would be better, I think. I would love to move through the air as easily as I can move through water.

I want my body back.

I've been needing to get a new dress for several months now. As in, ever since the baby was born and I couldn't get away with wearing my maternity dresses anymore. I kept putting it off (there's always something better to do, after all,) but finally sucked it up, and decided to take advantage of the husband's presence at home to have a safe babysitter for the girls.

As I was heading out the door though, he called out, "Have fun, dear!" and I was so choked with annoyance that I just stared at him. I couldn't think what to say that I wouldn't regret later.

Fun. Oh yes. The thrill of spending a couple of hours actually deliberately looking at myself in full-length mirrors that are unrelenting in stripping away my refusal to acknowledge what I look like right now. The fun of trying on size after progressively larger size. The excitement of realizing full-force just what having two babies in two years has done to what used to be my waistline. The elation of hiking up my bra and wondering to myself, "Are these supposed to line up with my armpits or my elbows?"

Not to mention that I had two impossible dreams. Is it so much, in the South in the summer, to want to find a dress with some kind of sleeve? And to want it to button up the front so that I can nurse? Apparently, yes. At least, if you want something in pretty colors and fabrics. If you are an 80 year old woman who loves dark houndstooth, however, you've got it made.

I finally came home with a light blue flowered polyester thing. It could be worse. It ain't gonna be better though until this baby is weaned, or I haul out my sewing machine again.

The husband, of course, had the nerve when he saw it to say, "Well, that's pretty. What a beautiful color on you!"

I let him live. His children are fond of him.

WE GOT THE HOUSE!

WE GOT IT!

WE GOT IT!

WE GOT IT!

We are moving in just a couple of weeks! Excuse me while I go jump up and down and scream for a while!

Later ...

Ahem. Yes, well, now that I've calmed down a little. Whew. That was exciting.

You should see the grin on my face right now!

The husband went out to pick up some prescription refills this morning. Not long after he left the phone rang. It was him.

"I got a call about the house," he said.

I held my breath a little. "What did they say?"

There was some interference on the line just then, but through the disruptions I heard, "They said no."

I felt sick. "No?"

"We got the house!" he told me.

"What? But you just said, they said no!"

"No I didn't!"

"Yes, you did," I said, forcefully, starting to feel very annoyed at his idea of a joke.

"No," he said, in very patient tones. "I said, are you sitting down?"

"Oh."

I don't know how I got a "no" out of "are you sitting down." I guess I was just so braced for bad news that was what I heard. But I was wrong, and I'm so happy to be wrong!

So, we should be moving in a couple of weeks. I am so happy. Our very own house. Just ours. Wow. This is going to be awesome.

In which I drag on for a very long time.

A comment was made recently that really got me going. Not that I have a problem with the commenter, it's the situation she is dealing with that has me upset.

When the husband and I realized we were getting serious one of the things I did was start researching step-parenting. I read books, I joined newsgroups, and I went back to the boyfriend-soon-to-be-husband with everything I'd learned for us to talk over during one of our endless phone conversations. And, as I got to know other stepparents (usually stepmothers) I began to see a pattern.

We're all familiar with the picture of the "ideal" family. There's Mom, Dad, kids, pets, grandparents, the whole kit and kaboodle. It's certainly a good thing to have, if possible. I would whole-heartedly agree that it's the absolute ideal, the way to go if it's at all possible. It's certainly what we've been taught to aspire to. There aren't many kids out there, after all, saying to themselves, "Gee, I want to be a stepparent when I grow up!"

Blended families are hard. Two people, who couldn't get along well enough to keep their marriage/relationship together, now have to get along in raising children when all sorts of other complications have entered the picture. Coming into a divided family as a stepparent isn't any easier.

Let's look at the experience of a new stepmother. To my husband I'm the woman of his dreams, but to his ex I'm just a stranger who's suddenly been handed the keys to her child's life. She doesn't get along with her ex to begin with, and now she's expected to trust his choice of a stepmother to her child?

The stepchildren, meanwhile, are having to cope with some very painful truths. Mom and Dad aren't getting back together again, because I'm in the way. Again, Dad likes me, but they haven't had a choice in the matter. They have to learn to live with me, no matter what they think.

Meanwhile, I might have had some dreams of my own, that aren't going to be happening now. If this is my first marriage, then I have to cope with the fact that my firsts are all "been there, done that" for my husband. We may or may not have gotten much of a honeymoon, depending on his visitation/custodial situation. If he's paying child support, our financial situation might be severely compromised. If they want to, it's very easy for the kids and ex to make my new married life a waking nightmare. And if this is my second marriage, maybe with my own ex and children added to the mix, the logistical and financial complications can get really crazy.

The craziness is the problem. When life gets complicated, it's only natural to want it to be simpler. Unfortunately, it's so easy when you're in a blended family to dream about the simplicity of being a traditional family. If you're honest with yourself, it's not too much of a problem. You recognize your feelings, let yourself feel wistful or wallow in self-pity a little, then move on. If you don't realize what you're going through, though, you can walk right into a big 'ol pit. If you still don't recognize or acknowledge what's happening, it's going to get ugly.

A friend of mine is divorced. She and her ex have both remarried. My friend has taught their daughter to call her new husband, "Daddy." The ex's new wife sent my friend a package of old pictures. She'd cut my friend out of every single one. Kira's ex's girlfriend won't let the ex have anything to do with his children. Boil these two situations down to their essentials and you've got the same thing happening. Everyone's trying to force their blended family into a traditional family mold.

That's what I saw in the stepparenting support groups I participated in, and I got so disgusted after a while I finally quit them all. I saw the group members using one of three ways of dealing with this life. Group A tried to create a traditional family by trying to get custody of the child, by attacking the bioparent, ignoring the bioparent and trying to cut the bioparent out of the child's life. They wanted to pretend this was their child.

Group B tended more toward the traditional wicked stepparent model, ignoring the child, attacking the child in discussions with their spouse and in the worst cases, actively trying to eliminate the child in one way or another. They wanted to pretend the child never existed.

If you'd told them this was what they were doing, they would have been very angry and indignant. They didn't realize what they were doing - which is why they were in a position where they were doing those things. They saw themselves as good people, dealing with an impossibly difficult situation, trying all alone to make things work. They saw themselves as victims.

To a certain extent, they're right. But, in focusing on how hard their situation was, they were forgetting to look closely at how hard it was for the other people there, too. And that's the only way to survive this, in my opinion. Everytime I start feeling sorry for myself, thinking too much about how complicated and blasted difficult everything is, I start losing my perspective and I get off-balance. Off-balance, I start a pretty quick drift toward Group A or B. It's a constant struggle to keep out of those camps, to hold fast to my ideals. I want to be in Group C, the very small group of miniscule membership, whose members cope with the sorrows of a blended family while recognizing the special joys that are part of it, who concentrate on making it work instead of wishing it away.

I'm a long way from perfect. I've had way too many times of fantasizing about getting a phone call that the teen's mother has been in a tragic car accident. Then there are those days that I try to figure out exactly how much longer we have until he goes off to college. I fight those feelings by putting myself into their shoes, mother and son, reminding myself that this is just as hard for them.

It drives me crazy when I run across committed members of Groups A and B. I understand where they're coming from. I think this essay makes that pretty clear. It's just so irresponsible. I made a choice to marry a man with a past. The husband and his ex made choices that led to their break-up. The teen, and all the kids in these families, haven't had any choice at all. The teen doesn't even get to choose where he lives.

In the end, it doesn't matter what I or the teen's parents feel. If we are to do any kind of good job, be any kind of responsible parents at all, we have to put our feelings and desires on the back burner and do what's best for him. I couldn't live with myself any other way.

Defining Art

Today is a "seriously get down to work" day. I'm all dressed in comfy clothes that let me move freely, I have the baby down for a nap, and the toddler is watching Dora. I'm going to get a lot done today.

Just as soon as I stop procrastinating.

I had a funny conversation with the teen last night. Some ad came on tv talking about art. I wasn't paying attention, so when the teen snorted in disgust I had to ask him what he was annoyed about.

"That!" he said, gesturing toward the tv. "That's not art."

"Huh? What isn't, and why isn't it?" I knew he wasn't talking about the television. The teen and the husband are both like this. They'll comment on something they've just seen or heard, and get annoyed if you don't immediately understand them. They claim I'm scattered-brained. I think I have better things to do that give the tv the rapt attention it claims from them.

"On the ad. They were showing something they said was art, and it isn't."

"And why wasn't it art?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "It doesn't mean anything."

Up to this point I hadn't been paying much attention, but now I put down my newspaper. "Art has to mean something? Then what about Boy Blue by Gainesborough?"

Now it was his turn to say, "Huh?"

"It's a portrait," I explained. "A boy dressed in blue. No meaning, just a picture."

"Well," he conceded in a gesture of generosity to those poor benighted previous generations, "they didn't have cameras back then."

After further debate I finally managed to convince him that art wasn't so cut and dried as he thought. It was a pretty funny conversation, though.

I finally came up with what I think is a pretty definition of art. "Something created for the joy of creating it."

I ran away.

Well, it took nagging, ordering, reminding and enduring all sorts of resentment and sulking, but the teen's room is a little bit cleaner. He's done a load of laundry at least and claims to have picked up. I can't see anything done, but I was tired and let it go.

One of the problems of being a stepmother (and forgive me if I've gone off about this before) is that I just don't have any authority, and no strong foundation of love and trust to cushion the teen and I against the normal friction of life. I have to be so cautious in how I handle and discipline him. A certain amount of resentment and anger is acceptable. We can fight every so often and not have the world cave in. But, there are very definite limits and I'm scared of crossing them. Add to that that I'm not really his mother, which he is very much aware compromises my authority, and the situation gets incredibly dicy.

In the end the atmosphere in the house was so stretched that I took the girls and left for the afternoon. We went to a fast food place and I let the toddler play while I felt sorry for myself. We came home too late to fix dinner and I didn't even try. The teen didn't ask about it. Maybe he was aware he'd pushed me a little too hard. Maybe he was just really happy to have the house and computer to himself for so long.

I'm going to hire a friend's teenage daughter to help me out with the girls so I can get busy packing and cleaning. The teen won't do it without a lot of struggle and I just don't have the energy. Hopefully I'll start making some real progress on packing up. She's a nice girl and she'll be very helpful if I can talk her into it.

The problem is, if you see three, there are billions more hiding in your walls.

I may have to hurt the teen.

He told me last week that he'd found a cockroach in his room. That was not good. I immediately started worrying. Sure enough, a couple of days later he came in and told me he'd found another one. And just now, one ran across the floor.

I am so going to kill him.

Let me point out that this problem is not in the kitchen, the logical place to find roaches. No, it's in his bedroom and around the computer.

Last summer, after he went back to his mom's, I went in to clean his room and took out two full garbage bags of candy wrappers and soda bottles. I've been working so hard to maintain some control over what comes into this house, but I'm guessing right now that he's somehow smuggled stuff in.

The computer is another problem area because he keeps eating over here, and if I don't catch him and get after him, he'll leave the dishes here overnight instead of putting them in the dishwasher.

He is so cleaning his room first thing in the morning.

Harry Potter

Dana asked about Harry Potter a couple of days ago (I told you I was behind on my reading!) and I just felt like I had to respond, since I blogged about the teen going to the movie. (Which he told me was "OK" but no surprises if you've read the book already. Um, yeah, and you expected what? A major plot change or something? He cracks me up.)

Personally, I just don't have a problem with Harry. I've read the books, and I think they're fun. (I wouldn't call them great literature, but then there are a lot of things I read that aren't great literature!) I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with reading stories about magic. It depends on the child, I think. If you think your child would have a problem keeping it clear in their mind that this is only make-believe, then by all means keep it away from them. Otherwise, I think Harry Potter is fine.

I do understand the feeling that anything to do with magic is dangerous and wrong. I respect that opinion/decision and I fully support those parents that make that decision for their families. I just don't see it that way. And I wish I could explain better exactly how I do see it. It's one of those things that simply isn't easy for me to put into words.

I guess, to me, these books are just so obviously fantasy that they're no more dangerous than when my brother and I played make believe when we were little and pretended we were drowning, or flying like Superman, or shooting each other. I might have pretended to fly, but I was very clear that actually jumping off a high spot would be a very bad idea.

Now, having said that, there are books that I consider to be dangerous and bad and don't want my children reading. The His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman for instance. The teen's mom bought him those last year and he brought them to our place for the summer. Being an insatiable reader who loves fantasy, naturally I picked them up and read them.

At first I enjoyed them. The first book impressed me with how well it was written and with his insight into things like having a mentally ill parent. The second book had me raising my eyebrows, and the third book I really hated. I have a passionate dislike of that sort of story. Yes, I can see making good, evil and evil, good as a literary device, but no. Not for me and not in my home. Everyone has their boundaries and those books crossed mine. He took things I consider sacred and turned them on their head. He has the right to do that and I'll defend that right - but I won't ever read those books again and I won't let my children read them. (Once the kids are 18 they can make their own decisions on it.)

I didn't take the books away from the teen (one of those, "Hmm, I'm a stepmother with no real authority" moments,) but I did make a point of talking with him and making sure that he understood what was going on. I didn't want him to be unwittingly influenced. If he understood what was going on then he'd be able to spot the misleading bits, I felt. After all, he was still fairly young then, and didn't really understand a good part of what he was reading. Right now I wouldn't be so worried (although I still would discuss it with him.) He's grown greatly in his sophistication and ability to analyze what he hears and reads.

I don't know if he ever finished the books. I kind of hope not, actually.

Thoughts on some boys I thought I knew, once.

A few years ago the husband and I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to a news story on the radio about two local boys being arrested for armed robbery. We didn't quite catch the names, though, or at least we couldn't really believe what we heard. So we laid in bed for another hour (yes, this was very much pre-children) until the local news was replayed.

We'd heard correctly. It was them. Two boys from our church, from the Sunday School class I was teaching in fact. One of them used to babysit the teen every so often.

It was the most amazing shock. These were the two last boys I would have thought would pull something like this. Oh, they'd gotten a little off the rails in the last year and we were all concerned for them, but there was nothing to indicate they were capable of armed robbery.

The one boy (let's call him Pete,) the teen's sitter when the teen was a grade-schooler, had always had such a sweetness to him. He'd gotten kind of angry lately, and taken to doing weird things with his hair and clothing, and his friends were a source of concern to his grandmother who was raising him, but, well, what's so unusual about that when you're dealing with a teenager?

The other boy (call him Sam) was smart and personable, talented and capable, a good-looking boy who was perhaps a little too aware of hus advantages in life and maybe a tad arrogant about it sometimes. But really a good kid otherwise, a nice boy. He'd been caught experimenting with marijuana, but that was the only time he'd gotten in trouble. He was a tad rebellious, but no more than you'd expect at that age. The marijuana had his mother pretty upset (understandably,) but it's a far cry fronm that to threatening to kill someone if they don't hand over their money to you.

They both went to jail. We've written to them as we could, which hasn't been easy because they both got shuffled around the system, getting moved from jail to jail as population pressures demanded. It's been hard to keep up with where they were.

Sam finished his sentence last month and is currently living with his mother and trying to get a life going again. Pete got a longer sentence and still has a couple of years to go.

I was talking with Sam's mother the other day and learned some things I didn't know at the time. It turns out she was very unsympathetic to him after he was home on bail before his trial. He started crying about how he'd messed up his life so badly, and she reacted with, "Well you should have thought about that before, shouldn't you?" Then she read him the riot act and talked him into admitting his wrong and accepting whatever punishment he was given.

I found that very interesting in light of how he turned out. He's really changed and grown up. He's very humble now and regretful of his actions back then. He's already started working toward a career as a plumber and was praised by the halfway program he was put in for how well he is doing in adjusting to real life.

Pete, on the other hand, isn't doing well at all. He's continuing to make bad decisions about his life, getting in trouble in jail and heading further down this self-destructive path.

When the boys were arrested, Pete fought from the first, insisting that it wasn't his fault, that he was led astray by Sam, and that he shouldn't have gotten in trouble. His grandmother was very angry with Sam and Sam's mother, to the point that she stopped coming to church and now refuses to have anything to do with any of us, even friends, because she feels we should have kept Sam and his mom out of our church. When Sam got a lighter sentence because of pleading guilty she was even angrier.

Now, there's a lot there in both boy's backgrounds. Sam and his mom were abandoned by Sam's father the year before all this happened, which wasn't all bad as his dad was abusive to them. Pete was raised by his grandmother from birth because neither of his parents could be bothered with him.

But, I couldn't help being struck by the obvious. The boy who 'fessed up and whose mother didn't allow self-pity is the one who's moving on to a good future. The boy whose grandmother encouraged self-pity and who still doesn't acknowledge his fault is the one who's falling deeper into a very unhappy life.

Not the whole story, but I would bet it's an important part of it. Something to remember in raising my kids. Sympathy is good; enabling is bad. Find the line and stay on the right side of it.

Good things are right around the corner.

I woke up to photos in my email of the house the husband looked last night.

Wow oh wow. It is so nice.

I'm not talking marble and cathredal ceilings. I don't like those sorts of things anyway. No, this place has a basement and a garage. It has a kitchen with a dishwasher and built in microwave. It has closets and storage space. It has 2,000 SQUARE FEET!

It's in a nice, pretty neighborhood, with playing children and bicycles lying on the side of the road. There are parks and ponds not far away, and a big yard. There are even stairs for the toddler to play with. She so adores going up and down stairs right now.

It's funny the effect these photos have had on me. Looking at those pictures, imagining walking through the rooms they show, I can feel something inside me relaxing. I never realized before just how thoroughly uncomfortable I felt in this house.

I suddenly feel like I've been wearing clothes that don't fit and itch, too. Now I'm looking at new clothes, wonderful, luxurious, soft clothing, tailored just for me, and it's so enticing that I can't wait to switch over.

Oh, I hope we get this house.

So, So Busy

I haven't had a chance to catch up on my blog reading in days, which is very depressing. I had to laugh earlier today, though, as I was feeding the baby and wishing for something good to read - and I realized I wanted to have a book that was composed of all y'alls blog entries!

We may have a place to live. The husband found a really great rental this evening. 2,000 square feet with a half basement. Brand new. We'd be the first people to live there. There isn't even any sod laid yet. Best of all it's a couple hundred dollars less than our budgeted housing costs. Of course, it'll mean an hour and a half drive to work for the husband, but he insists he doesn't mind. I sure hope not, because it's looking like we'll try to get this place.

I have a new piece up at Yet Another Jennifer and a new look too.

The teen wants to go to the opening of the new Harry Potter movie. He even has a costume he made, months ago, for it. I told him I'd make it happen. I'm going to regret this I know. Getting two sleepy little ones in and out of the car at hours past midnight. Yeek. Oh well. I can't be totally evil stepmother all the time, can I?

Family Secrets

The husband's first wife called tonight and we had a nice chat. Have I mentioned before that I'm the husband's third wife? The first was a teenage elopement that fell apart almost as fast as it happened; they're still friends and she was friendly to me from the beginning.

His second marriage was the one to the teen's mom. That lasted a decade and a half only to fall apart after he retired. He was gone so much that the problems they had never had a chance to come to the surface. A couple of years of being home full time had them barely speaking to each other. By the time the divorce was finalized they were so entrenched in their anger that it's only in the last couple of years they've been able to work together for the teen without any discussion degenerating into shouting and slammed phones.

I like to tease the husband that I'm his midlife crisis wife. It's only funny because I'm a long way from blonde and skinny. We met online, through a penpal service. I'd wanted a penpal ever since I was a kid, but never knew how to go about getting one. When I finally got online it was for the express purpose of getting penpals. We knew each other for a year before we met, but we were in love for months prior to our first face to face.

The husband doesn't like people to know he was divorced twice. He feels badly about it, and if you just hear the bald facts, yeah, it does sound bad. But once you know the details it's no big deal.

Of course, I say that, but I still haven't ever told my family I'm a third wife ...

Riding the Vomit Comet

The problem with going so long without blogging is that I get all tied up in all the things that I want to post about, and then I have a hard time writing anything, because I want to write about everything!

The big event of the weekend with the teen was that I gave him the rules for the summer. Only 4 hours/day on the computer and bedtime at 11 pm. You'd have thought I'd stuck a knife in him and twisted it. He tried strenuously to talk me out of my decisions, arguing like a lawyer about every detail. I kept it simple, though, no exceptions, no complications, just the basics. 4 hours. 11 pm. No exceptions.

He took it very badly, finally grabbing the phone and storming off to his room. I found out later that he took the phone, not to call a friend to commiserate (as I'd assumed,) but to call his mother. He left a short, but very nasty little message on her answering machine, to the effect that she'd thrown him away, didn't love him, had ruined his life, and he hated her.

I just love getting upset emails from her, especially when I have no idea what's going on.

I wanted to punish him, on the grounds that his mother deserves a certain amount of respect from him, no matter what the problems between them. The husband told me to stay out of it though. If he was here, he'd handle it, but at the moment we're just ignoring it.

On the bright side, the baby seems to have figured out Mama and Dada! At any rate, as of this weekend, she will look at me and babble, "mamamamama," and look at her father and babble, "dadadadada," which is good enough for us to declare this the weekend she said her first words!

Oh, and I also bought a car for the husband. We had to have a second car, but he didn't have the time to do it. So, I went to a friend of ours who sells cars and she found us a great one. Not too old, not too expensive, not too many miles, very nice and even pretty. And I handled everything from beginning to end all by myself - test drives, negotiating, finding financing - I feel so adult! I've never done the whole process by myself before. The husband just showed up in time to sign where he was told. Picture me doing a little triumph dance here!

Swoopy feelings all over the place. Too many highs and lows in such a short space of time.

It's here!

As promised, here is my fiction blog, Yet Another Jennifer. I have one short story on there so far. Please feel free to stop by and read. Comments, suggestions, critiques and honest opinions are, of course, always welcome. Especially if you like what you read, wink, wink.

I've been busy working on it to the neglect of this blog, but I'll get back in the swing of things next week, cross my heart.

Oh, and by the way, if you're good at blog templates, please tell me what I'm doing wrong! I can't seem to be able to figure out how to get it right. I know basic html, but the way they've done this template has me stumped.

Daddy's Girl

Blankets are totemic items in our house. Large or small, fuzzy or quilted, designed for winter nights or summer months, each one is coveted, a treasure to be safeguarded.

The toddler is our dragon of the blankets of course. I can't so much as wrap a blanket around the baby without loud cries of, "Too, too!" coming from big sister.

Imbued with this kind of power, blankets are capable of protecting and soothing under even the worst circumstances. With Daddy being so far away lately, they've been in greater demand than ever. It doesn't matter that the thermometer reads "sweltering", I am constantly beseeched for more blankets.

"I cold, Mommy," she'll cry, then without waiting for response repeat, "Mommy, I cold!"

I'll help her wrap up in whichever blanket she's brought to me and she'll be happy for a few minutes. Then she'll kick it off, realize what she's done and start crying for Mommy to come and fix it all.

I wish I could fix the bigger things in her life as easily as I can wrap her in her blankets. She misses her daddy so bitterly.

This move can't happen soon enough.

Well, la-di-dah, ain't I special?

I am now the wife of someone Very Important. The husband was assigned to another area at work, which (while it doesn't mean an actual raise, oh no) does mean he now has much more Important responsibilities.

My mother-in-law was a woman very impressed with social standing. She was a bit of name dropper and never lost an opportunity to give the husband's father a promotion in casual conversation. "My ex-husband, the colonel ..." She would have been delighted with the husband's new job.

In honor of her memory, I will now go practice putting on airs.

The other shoe drops.

Every afternoon when I pick the teen up from the bus stop I ask him, "Do you have any homework?" And almost every day the answer is, "No."

It didn't occur to me to worry. After all he came here late in the school year. It seemed logical that the homework was winding down as the teachers were preparing for summer.

All together now: "SUCKER!"

I heard from the husband at the end of the week. The teen is missing several science homework assignments. The school sent an email to the teen's mom, who forwarded it (with an accompanying upset note) to the husband, who forwarded the whole shebang to me. Now everyone expects me to handle the situation, only it's the end of the school year and hello, it's too late.

Being a stepparent is, in some ways, an awful lot like being a babysitter - except that babysitting pays a lot more. You have no intrinsic right to be a part of that child's life. It doesn't matter how much you love the child, what sacrifices you've made, or even if you've been the child's primary caregiver all her life. You're nothing, because you're not a legally recognized parent.

I can't take the teen to a doctor without a signed form from the husband giving me permission to do so. I can't sign him up for school, because I'm not a parent or guardian. And now, apparently I can't even talk with his teachers. They email his mom, in another state, rather than pick up a phone and call me. I've had a call in to his economics teacher since the middle of the week with no response. I tried to get hold of his science teacher Friday morning, but there's been no response from her either.

If I had only known about this sooner, I might have been able to do something about it, but his finals are this week. He's insisting he hasn't missed anything. His English paper is due this week - the one he's been telling me he was working on. Only he hasn't. So all that has to be done.

I'm so angry with him right now. I feel used and played. He pulled the wool over my eyes without even trying, I was so trusting. Man. What an idiot.

"Dead Inspiration" would make a great title for a murder mystery.

Selected items from putting my name into Googlism:

jennifer is missing (Well, that would explain a lot.)
jennifer is dead (And that would explain even more. No wonder the teen ignores me.)
jennifer is getting (What? WHAT? What am I getting?)
jennifer is getting bike riding lessons (Oh. Well, that's disappointing. I was hoping for money.)
jennifer is right (Of course I am. How can you even question that?)
jennifer is dead inspiration slipping away (I have no idea what that means, which must mean it's terribly deep and beautiful.)
jennifer is trying to determining if this belief holds true for elkhorn slough (Or do they see me as live inspiration?)
jennifer is beautiful but you might consider eating a steak (Um, wow. I don't even know what to say here.)
jennifer is slightly taller (... than your average Jolly Green Giant.)
jennifer is as talented as she is beautiful (Well, if you insist. *simpers* *pauses* Hey! Wait a second ...)
jennifer is taken to a palace (That's what he promised at any rate ...)
jennifer is threatened by a hungry wild rooster (Is that why I keep hearing that faint clucking?)
jennifer is a twenty (Eat your heart out, Bo Derek!)
jennifer is truly one of a kind (And as the joke goes, we'll avoid discussing exactly what kind that is.)
jennifer is actually a minor deity (Surely I'd have an easier time getting help from my family in cleaning the house if that were true!)
jennifer is a goddess (Seriously. The family, housework ... it's just not happening.)
jennifer is a very rare male name (I'll say!)
jennifer is actually more strange to me than love (Well, yeah, after reading all this!)

Intrusive Thoughts

I don't know how old I was the first time it happened, but it was before I was 10, and I think it was sometime after I started grade school. One day I was sitting and thinking about how, even as I moved through space, I was moving through time. In a way, I thought, playing with the emerging concept, it's like there's a very long cord behind me, that traces everywhere I've been. If I could only see it, I would be able to follow every step, every move, since the day I was born.

I sat there, visualizing this cord as a thin thread fastened to my back, an unbreakable track laid down over the years, tracing back and forth, crossing itself, twisting around itself, around me, wrapping around, under and through furniture and buildings, forming knots great and simple as I traced and retraced my steps every day ...

I started to feel uneasy, thinking about that tangle of invisible thread. Knots. That was bad. The thought of knots being created in my invisible cord made my shoulders feel twitchy, bothered me in some deep and previously unnoticed core. I had to do something about it. It was unbearable that there should be knots in my path. I had to fix them. I had to retrace my steps and untangle those knots.

It's called OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I'm lucky. My case is pretty mild, at least I think it is. I consider it mild because I've been able to keep it from interfering with my day to day life too much, without needing medication.

I decided to write about this because I ran across a courageous and compelling blog, My OCD Journal. Zakk does a brilliant job of describing what it's like to have OCD. I've really been enjoying reading it and I've added it to my links. He makes me think about my OCD, not something I normally do. Normally I just grit my teeth and shoulder through it, but he's made me want to write about it.

It's not an easy thing to write about. Like my infertility there's a lot of shame attached to the illness, in my mind. I don't know why. It's a physical illness in both cases. I do what I can to control things, but the existence of my illness is simply beyond my control. Life happens. You do what you can. After all, what's the alternative? Lie down and die? Something in me has never been able to do that - even on those days when I really wanted to just give up, some tiny spark in my gut has forced me up and doing, coping and learning, stubbornly ignoring my shrieks of protest.

The shame and the need to hide the OCD was there almost from the beginning. It didn't take too long before my mother noticed something was wrong. She gave me a funny look one day as I was carefully backing and bending to untie an invisible knot and in a wary tone asked, "What are you doing?"

I realized immediately from the sound of her voice and the expression on her face that what I was doing was not normal. Shame rose up and without thinking I told my first lie about the OCD.

"Nothing."

She accepted my answer but kept looking back at me as she walked slowly from the room. I waited until she couldn't see me to go back to my ritual. From then on I was very careful about how I untangled myself. I turned my rituals into elaborate pieces of misdirection.

* Yawn, stretch, twirl casually 180 degrees.
* Look casually behind me as if looking for something, keep going until I'm facing front again, look bewildered that I didn't see what I was looking for.
* Pretend to be dancing, pirouetting on the balls of my feet.

After a few months of this, I got mad. In a way I can't explain, this had never felt like it was coming from me. Or at least, not the me that made decisions. This was coming from my body. The part of me that thought and chose what to do was being forced into these actions by my body, and that made me angry.

This was my body. I told it what to do, not the other way 'round. I'd had enough and I was taking charge of things again. From then on I would resist the compulsion, the twitchy, distressing, worry, worry, worry feeling. In fact, I would even seek it out, deliberately tangling myself up and then just bear the feeling until it subsided. I was going to show myself who was boss.

It worked. A little. I was able to make the worst of the compulsions go away and I've managed them ever since with that technique. I'll force myself into the discomfort and grit my teeth until it subsides. It's great for dealing with the compulsions.

It doesn't work for obsessions and intrusive thoughts, though. Those I fight with regularly. I distract myself by thinking of a song or getting busy doing something very complicated. It's hardest when I can't do anything like that, when I'm trying to still my mind to fall asleep, or focus my attention on something important. Then the intrusive thoughts flood in and I wind up spending all my energy shuttling them off to the side of my mind, over and over again.

But, that's just life. I'm lucky things aren't much worse. I can even look at this and see how it has helped me be a stronger, better person.

Anway, go read My OCD Journal. You'll find it illuminating.

Sites for the fiction fans out there

I've added a new section to my links: Fiction Blogs. I've run across a few blogs here and there which are exercises in fiction writing. I'm going to start linking to the best of them. I'm planning on starting one of my own, too. I'll let y'all know when I get it up and running.

The teen starts half days tomorrow, before ending the school year. Starting next week I'm going to have to start fighting for the computer again. I have got to find a way to limit his computer gaming, with a minimum of conflict. Given his druthers he'd do nothing else, not even sleep.

In the distance I can see the faint outlines of the corner I'm hoping to turn.

Things finally seem to be coming together, and it's in that release of pressure that I realize how hard I've been working these last few weeks. It's like I've been pulling and tugging, physically dragging this family into a new road, a new place for us. There's been so much to adjust to, and with the husband gone I've been the only person here who could make sure everything happened as it needed to.

I've never before had to maintain this degree of control over myself. The teen is continually poised at the edge of the cliff; the least exhibition of frustration or anger sends him off into reactionary fits of self-defense. If I fail to project complete calm in both tone and body language in every interaction with him and his sisters, he will react with everything from sullen withdrawal to outbursts of rage.

He has pushed and pushed and pushed at me, and I didn't even realize until tonight I was being tested.

Each time we've had a fight, I have taken the time to regain control of my emotions, then insisted on talking calmly with him until we resolved the situation. I have kept insisting that it's OK to be mad at each other and that I still love him. I have also made a point of sincerely apologizing for anything I have needed to apologize for.

The last couple of days, something has changed in him. I don't dare believe that he's turned a corner in trusting me, but he has temporarily stopped trying to push my buttons. He hasn't gone into any diatribes about how mistreated he is and how awful it is to be here, he has actually eaten two dinners in a row without complaining about how awful they are, and he has not only done his homework he did it without needing to be reminding more than about five times. He even responded with a smile to my tactful reminders and was cheerful while he worked on his English paper. Most astonishing of all, he confided in me his concerns about his upcoming Economics final.

Nor is he the only one acting happier. The toddler has suddenly dropped from averaging a temper tantrum once or twice an hour to only three or four a day. She helps me cheerfully with the baby, even trying to share her favorite toys with her little sister in an attempt to calm her down. She's more obedient, and is happy and smiling in a way I haven't seen in months. With her I am daring to hope things might continue to improve, because I think this is developmental.

We've got a long way to go yet, but I think, maybe, we're starting to gel. (Now we just need to survive the move, the new home, the new church, the new school, the new neighbors ...)

I'm feeling a little bit triumphant right now.

E I E I O

Old McDonald had a dinosaur
E I E I O
And on his farm he had a dinosaur
E I E I O
With a dinosaur here and a dinosaur there
E I E I O

Dinosaur fever has hit the toddler. She was singing this a few minutes ago, playing with the sand toys I just bought her, the bucket over her head.

I blame Barney.

More From Yesterday

I just wasn't in the mood to finish this last night, so here's the second half of my last post.

Five Items I Have Brand Loyalty To:
- Cascade Complete
- Pampers
- Tabasco
- OxiClean
- Store Brand

Five Snacks I Enjoy:
- Popcorn
- Tortilla chips
- Chocolate chip cookies and milk
- Ice cream cone
- Egg salad on Saltines

Five Songs I Know all the Words to, Even Without the Music:
- Under African Skies
- Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
- The Rose
- Calling America
- All the Pretty Little Horses

Five Things I Would Buy With $1000:
- A professional quality digital camera
- My own computer
- A complete makeover - hair, clothes, makeup, gym membership
- New furniture
- Wood working equipment

Top Five Locations I'd Like to Run Away To:
- Australia
- Hawaii
- My mother's house
- Upper New York state
- Outer space

Five Bad Habits I Have:
- Cracking my knuckles
- Jumping to conclusions
- Reading when I have things to do
- Impulse buying
- Procrastinating things I don't want to do

Five Things I Would Never Wear:
- Halter tops
- Daisy Dukes
- Knee-high high-heel boots
- A bikini
- A tongue stud

Five T.V. Shows I Like:
- Law & Order
- CSI
- Stargate: SG1
- JAG
- Good Eats

Five Places I've Lived:
- Oregon
- Washington
- Idaho
- Wyoming
- Australia

My Five Biggest Worries At the Moment:
- Finding affordable housing
- Packing all our belongings
- Buying a good car
- Having the kids taken away because I'm a bad mother/housekeeper/cook/human being
- Short term finances

My Five Biggest Joys at the Moment:
- My children
- My husband
- We're moving
- I'm decluttering
- Things are looking pretty good for our future

Remembering When

From Dana and AGK:

10 Years Ago, I...
- Thought I might never get married
- Was back in college, working toward becoming a research psychologist
- Watched my parents get divorced
- Started feeling like something had gone wrong inside my body

5 Years Ago, I...
- Was finally diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
- Had a doctor tell me I might never conceive a child
- Started taking fertility drugs

2 Years Ago, I...
- Was a new mother
- Was the thinnest I'd been in 15 years
- Was still not sleeping through the night

1 Year Ago, I...
- Was pregnant with my second child
- Thought the husband's job would last
- Thought I would live in this house forever

Yesterday, I...
- Drove the teen to and from the bus stop
- Was too tired to cook
- Bought fast food for everyone's dinner and took the kids to a play area

Today, I...
- Drove the teen to and from the bus stop
- Made a healthy salad for dinner to atone for last night's calorie-fest
- Packed several boxes

Tomorrow, I...
- Teen/bus. Again.
- Might go hang out at the park, with some friends from church and their children
- Need to do some laundry, mop the kitchen floor, vacuum the carpet and make the beds

Packing Up

I definitely can't miss a night's sleep easily anymore. Which can be good. Last night it was. I was so exhausted that I slept through most of the night in spite of everything. I'm still exhausted, but not as much of a mess as two sleepless nights in a row would have made me.

A friend gave me a big ol' package of Sharpies today, all different colors. They're supposed to make packing more fun. I should think so! I dearly love pens and getting these just really made my day.

I'm making steady progress on the packing, but I don't have the time to declutter as I go along anymore. I started just shoveling things into boxes today. It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate just by staying in one place for a few years.

It's starting to hit me that we're leaving here and I'm feeling sadder than I expected. I never cared for this house. The husband owned it when we got married. I would never have chosen something like this place. But I've never lived anywhere as long as this. We spent our first year of marriage here, struggled to have children here, brought our two daughters home to this house. It's not what I would have chosen, but it's familiar and there are dear memories here. I'll miss that about living here.

I won't miss all the memories from his previous marriage, though. Yeah. That's what I need to think about. All of a sudden I'm excited to get out of here again.

One Baby Discovers Another

The baby has discovered her big sister's baby doll and is enraptured. Every chance she gets she is playing with the doll, chewing on its bald head or grasping it by the arms and studying it, not to mention flopping it about vigorously. It's great fun to watch and my new way to keep her reliably entertained.

The toddler thinks this is awful. She'll tolerate the baby playing with the doll for only a few minutes. Then she'll grab her toy away from her sister, shrieking, "My baby, my baby!"

Which means it's my reliable entertainment only when the toddler is asleep. But hey, if one's sleeping and the other is busy playing, life is good.

The baby also has been practicing squatting. Her balance has improved to the point that the other night, while standing holding onto my knee for support, she suddenly let go of my knee and lowered herself to a squat with just her own sense of balance keeping her from falling. She wound up sitting down very gracefully, with no idea of the huge leap she'd just taken. It was all very exciting for Mommy, although I was sad that the husband wasn't here to enjoy it.

Told the husband about last night; he was suitably concerned, though harried-sounding. (This is a big week at work; lots of training going on that he's in charge of ensuring goes well.) I've taken precautions to make myself feel safer, although we'll see how I feel when it's time to close my eyes and go to sleep. I didn't get much sleep last night, and what sleep I did get was done holding onto the phone, my finger glued to the 9 of 911 even while I was out.

I find it interesting how I'd feel so much better if the husband was here. After all, the teen is bigger than his father, not just in weight, but height and breadth. But then, there's a big difference between an experienced adult in his prime, and an inexperienced boy. The teen will be quite a man when he grows up, but for now he's still just a child who I am responsible for protecting, not the other way around.

So I'll sleep with the phone again tonight and buy more Mountain Dew tomorrow. Unless someone can recommend another soft drink with even more caffeine?

Scary Night

Finding a house has been put on hold for another week, as the husband is much too busy at work, he tells me, to do any house hunting.

My patience with his procrastination just ran out, though. The police just left. Someone tried to break into our house.

The baby woke up just as I was heading to bed. Naturally she was wide awake and wanted to play. So, holding her in my arms in the vain hope that she would get so comfy she'd start feeling tired again, I headed to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water.

I was standing by the fridge, looking right at the kitchen door when the handle started to turn and someone pushed inward very gently until the lock stopped the knob from turning anymore.

My heart about stopped. I have never grabbed a phone faster in my life. Thank goodness for 911 because I was too frightened to remember anything more complicated right then.

The dispatcher stayed on the line with me until the police got there. Two cars, which I found very comforting. Thank goodness for dedicated police officers, too. While I know where the husband's gun is and I know how to shoot, I don't ever want to have to defend myself. Hitting a target at a gun range is a far cry from dealing with, say, a home invasion.

I feel reasonably safe now. I would think seeing the police there would scare any would-be burglar/attacker away. I think I'll sleep with the bedroom light on, though, and the living room, kitchen and dining room lights, too. Just to be on the safe side.

I do think that when the husband hears about this, during tomorrow's morning phone call, that it just might light a fire under him about getting us all reunited.

I want my husband home.

Mother's Day

I had this whole long post about today, and then soemthing weird happened and all of a sudden I was looking at a old draft instead of what I'd just written.

I hate losing something I've just finished polishing up.

I made the teen write to his mom today. I threatened to take the computer away for a week if he didn't at least send her an email. So, after much pouting and sulking and complaining, he wrote to her. I don't know if I did the right thing. I just muddled through, like I do with most of life it seems. I just couldn't bear the thought of her being alone and sad on Mother's Day because her son was too busy being angry to think outside of himself. I hope someday he'll think back on this and be glad I forced the issue. I hope he doesn't think back on it from a therapist's office, while talking about how I was the worst thing to ever happen to him.

Everbody's sick, but getting better. I'm not sure how to handle the teen staying home from school. I've never had to do this before! He called home from school Thursday to come and get him, so that's a day and a half. He said tonight he still feels crummy, but I hate to think of him missing another day. Not to mention I have a healthy mistrust of his report of his symptoms. He makes it sound like he's about to die, but he looks just fine, and certainly was well enough to want to stay on the computer all day.

Besides, I remember when I was a kid trying to get out of school.

The baby has finally figured out that food isn't just for the fun of new sensations. She's actually eating to satiate her hunger, now.

And now she's crying, so I'll go and try to get her back to sleep.

Priorities

Ran into this question on Lisa's and Linda's blogs, and from there to Shelley.

"You have to leave. You have roughly an hour to get your butt in gear, and you have to travel light. Not including people and pets, or survival items (i.e. food, water) what three things would you take with you?"

Since we live in hurricane country, we have a disaster evacuation plan all ready to go and non-essentials are covered as well as emergency supplies.

1. Get kids and pets to the gassed up car.
2. Grab the four backpacks that hold our 3 day evacuation kits: clothes, food, water, personal care, toys and first aid for each person. I also have some cash in the parents' packs.
3. Grab the small suitcase where we store family photos and important papers.

Once you have a disaster kit set up, it's easy to maintain. You just need to review the contents once a year and replace the old food and water with new. Make sure the clothes in there fit the kids (you can pick up clothes at yard sales or thrift shops just for these kits.) Check expirations on any medication and replace as necessary. I got the backpacks at yard sales and a lot of the personal care/first aid stuff in the sample/travel section at Walmart.

I keep everything in a corner of the family room, out of sight behind a chair, during the heart of the hurricane season. The rest of the year I keep them in our bedroom closet (we have a nice big one in this house.) If there was a fire, a tornado, a tree caved in our roof or any other "get out of the house quick!" type of emergency we could be out in minutes at most, seconds if necessary.

The Red Cross has a whole section of their site on disaster preparedness. Check it out at their Family Disaster Planning and Disaster Supplies Kit pages. I would strongly urge even those of you who don't live in areas where you anticipate hurricanes or earthquakes or other natural disasters to put together something like this. It's easy and the peace of mind is worth it.

I want to put together a pack to keep in the car in case something happens and we break down on the side of the road - food and water for the kids, toys, diapers, blankets, etc. I also need to put together something for the teen now that he's here. We shouldn't have to worry about hurricanes in our new home, but I'm sure there will be something. My mother in the West lives with the possibility of brush fires every summer; some areas have earthquakes, some have blizzards, some have floods. There's always something you need to watch out for.

Getting back to the original question though, the only thing after living beings and survival items that I'd grab would be the photos and papers. I archive our computer files online so I don't need to worry about that. Anything else in the house would just have to be left behind. I'd be sad to lose things like my wedding dress, the girls' blessing gown, my wedding night negligee (hmmm, what does it say about me that it's clothes I think of as mementos?) but, oh well. I can't take everything. I have the memories of the important things and everything else can be replaced.

Spring = Strawberries

The girls and I picked strawberries yesterday morning. It was a spur of the moment decision. The toddler started fussing and whining on our way home from dropping off the teen at his bus stop. We'd been planning on going berry picking anyway, so, prompted by desperation, I decided to do it right then if it could distract her from her whining.

It worked out as well as I'd hoped. She ran wildly up and down the rows, picking strawberries and eating them. I picked strawberries and put them in the basket. The baby grabbed at leaves and tried to get them into her mouth before Mommy took them away. She also grunted a lot as Mommy shifted her up, down and sideways. Picking berries while holding a baby on one hip is not the least complicated thing I've ever done! The only snag came when I had to haul her kicking and screaming back into the car. There was room to run, there were strawberries to eat, there was a friendly dog to pet - what more could a little girl ask for? So why go home? Such a mean mommy.

After gorging ourselves on berries all day long, we wound up having pancakes with strawberries on top for dinner. Not the healthiest thing I've ever made them, but oh, was it good! And what's the point of living healthily if it means you can't enjoy the occasional indulgence?

We won't be going back Saturday for more strawberries as originally planned though. Everybody is coming down sick again. Thank goodness it's the end of the week and the husband is coming home. Not the funnest way to spend the weekend with his family, but much easier for me than trying to cope with three sick kids while I'm sick myself. Poor husband.

About Nothing

I am feeling so uninspired this week. I just can't think of anything to say. It's very annoying. I haven't felt like this in months. Blogging has been great for inspiring me with ideas. I'm practically overflowing with inspiration, in my fiction as well as blogging. But not the last couple of days.

It's not all bad. You wouldn't believe the amount of cleaning I've gotten done the last couple of days, and several boxes packed as well. I bought a new mop this last weekend and I love it. I finally have a mop that will get this blasted kitchen floor clean. The color and texture are such that I've always had to get on my hands and knees and scrub it with a brush. This mop, with a nice scrubby sponge, gets it clean enough without that. Just in time to move. Oh well.

The baby is wide awake and looking to stay that way. She's playing on the floor while I watch TV and try to think of something to say. Frequency is on again (I really have to get my own copy of that movie.)

The teen had a doctor appointment today, so I kept him home from school. Not something I'd normally do, but the husband made the appointment for the middle of the day. It's an hour drive out to the private school the teen's mom put him in. Not an issue normally, because they have a bus that stops only 20 minutes away. But to pick him up? The girls would have been in the car at least 4 hours, just for the appointment, not counting getting home and then turning around to pick him up at the bus stop. So I kept him home. I'll have to remember to write a note for him to take to school tomorrow. I made sure to schedule the next appointment for the late afternoon (much to his disappointment. He thought this was great!)

He is noticeably losing weight now. I'm going to have to buy new clothes for him. I'm so excited and happy. I'm not sure he realizes though. He hasn't said anything, and I don't want to make him uncomfortable by saying anything. I haven't made a big deal about his weight, just made sure to keep candy and soda out of the house and tried to make sure dinners were healthy. The only thing that was an obvious weight loss tactic was getting rid of the sugar.

The baby started fussing. It isn't easy, nursing the baby and typing. I can type one-handed no problem (and not too slow either) but she keeps kicking my typing arm. Maybe she'll fall asleep soon.

I'd rather have a beautiful body ...

Tell you what, I'll trade the empathic nature for a set of killer abs, hmm? Oh, and throw in some thighs suitable for a skirtless swimsuit. New triceps (the current pair has started the beginnings of that old lady flag waving routine), a trimmer jawline, and, well, heck. Just make me 19 again, OK? I'll throw in the beautiful mind to sweeten the deal, but hurry it up. Swimsuit season is upon us and I'm not getting any better-looking.

Your True Nature by llScorpiusll
Username
The quality that most appeals to you:	Spiritual Advancement
In a survival situation, you:	Scream for help
Your hidden talent is:	A beautiful mind
Your gift is:	Cunning
In groups, you:	Don't fit in
Your best quality is:	Your empathic nature
Your weakness is:	Your lack of focus
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