Seriously.

Today the federal government threatened to shut itself down because they two parties couldn't come to an agreement.  The soldiers were not to be paid.  Are you freaking kidding me?  I believe this is a continuation of a bigger problem that's like an elephant in the living room.  I believe our current president isn't from, for, or about our country.  I believe his religious views and lack of military experience are causing this country to spiral into depths we've only begun to imagine.

What I wonder also is:  Am I the only one that feels this?  Like we have a wolf in sheeps clothing leading us to a slaughter? 

Life is becoming more and more precious as the sand keeps slipping away.  It's totally too short to be unhappy.  As the song says "the changes, they are a coming", and "the answers are blowing in the wind".  I'd just like to fly free for a while....blow on the wind.

I've been thinking...

That we could work it out.  Sara Evans just sang a song about letting go.  I have to let go.  I want to do it with as much grace as possible, so praying for grace would be a good start.  I'm not sure that I do anything helpful these days with regards to my children.  NEVER have I had such moments of self doubt as I do now.  I know the difference between right and wrong, where my kids are concerned I am such a hypocrite.  They do things that are wrong, and I'm afraid to let them fall, mostly because the fall is so hard, and the hole so deep.

 "My family experienced the trauma, drama, decline of what is good, and general malaise, that addiction brings."  D. Krochta (The Addict's Mom)

It seems that lessons learned by one generation continue to elude the generations of today.  They make the same mistakes, fall harder and faster, than the generation before. So I'm done thinking that we can work it out.  I just have to let them work it out.  Hold my breath while they dive into the big, black, hole.

Friday nights all right for fighting, let a little action in!

As of today, I am returning to college on Monday, April 4th, 2011.  I think it's cool!  I don't think I can make it up cardiac lane without hurting myself!  I remember when I was in shape. When I never questioned falling.  I'm falling right into this return to school.  I now have a purpose and a goal.  They don't revolve around kids, husband or dog.  I'm doing this for me.  Screw guilt.  Yes, easy words to say, and rather vulgar, however; if I don't make "Screw Guilt" my motto, I cannot move forward in this life...I will continue to put everyone else first and build resentment after resentment.  I am going to try and leave clear directions with my expectations each day.  I want my organized, planned life back.

I married, I took vows, and it's time that a partnership occured on more than just paper.  THAT challenge is going to take more time than I probably have.  A couple married 40 years told me today that she STILL has to remind her husband, every day, that a fire would be nice.  I think her husband knows, he just wants to be told.  I think mine is the same..only so much of his motivation disappears with computer zoning.  No other word for it.  Wish me luck, the way things are going, Monday just might be my lucky day!!  :o)

Another day in Paradise by the dashboard lights...

I have to wonder about the common cold.  I contemplate this as I sit here mouth-breathing because my nose is so stuffed up.  Just why do we still have it?  They make 4 hour cough syrup, and 8 hour decongestant.  So why, pray tell, is there not a pill or syrup for 24 hour relief.  I mean hasn't anyone else had that "ah ha" moment at the Nyquil company?  Oh wait, I get it, I bet it's that profit monger sitting on the keys to the safe that holds the formula for a cure for the common cold that's to blame. 

In my opinion, someone needs to knock that little shit off the safe, grab the keys and cure this malady already!!!  And by the way, if my nose is stuffed up, why can't I unstuff it by blowing it?  Swollen mucus membranes?  I think not, otherwise, why does it seem to shift from nostril to nostril as I toss and turn? 

It's been a few days since I last posted.  I'm glad I'm back, cold and all.  At least on here I can't pass on any germs even though I could pass on a virus.... :0)

It's a new dawn, a new day.

It's a new dawn and a new day and I'm feeling good.  Jennifer Hudson sings it so well.  I read that if you emulate those you want to be like long enough, you'll become like them.  I wish I knew who to emulate, who I am.  I feel so firmly entrenched in the role of care-giver that I've lost myself.  I don't know......and not knowing is a bitch.  I've forgotten what I like, what tastes good, how to smile, where I want to go.  Bogged down in a thick quagmire of sucking mud.

Most of the time I'm afraid.  That hold-your-breath kind of afraid.  I can't seem to get it right, if I knew what "it" was.  I cry more than I laugh and I feel like I am running out of time to "fix" things, put things away, take care of that.  I try to be positive, only to look around at another pile of shit, dishes, dirt or dust and feel overwhelmed all over again.  Nothing brings me joy anymore and I'm worried.  No one hears what I say, especially the ones I love the most.  That fucked up fact hit home today when a battle of the wills escalated into yet another fight because I wanted something simple done that would have made life easier for me.  God forbid if it should be easier for me.  I'm fucking sick of it and the bitch of it is, I don't know how to get out, fix it, let go.

I just wish I knew if the path I'm laying out will lead to yet another dead end, or if I finally get the opportunity to do it right.  I'm tired of being "on hold" with no music while others seem to just dance...

My life has gone to the dogs..

I have had dogs.  Usually big dogs.  I realize more and more often the true gift that they are..that they are the purest definition of unconditional love.  They make me a better person...and I look forward to their antics every single day.  I think I'm more successful figuring out my pooches than I've been figuring out my children...at least the older ones.  It's a bummer I didn't recognize that as a kid, I basically ignored the dogs I had..  But they still loved me, and all dogs go to Heaven so I'll see them and apologize.

I've/We've got Lexie, the Lab, Roxie the Boxer, Breezy the pit.terrier and Blazer, the Jack Russell.  Recently we/I have gone through an ordeal from hell with the little guy, the only male, Mr. Blazer.  He got devastatingly ill and went instantaneously blind.  I've had to question whether I am making him better for me or for him.  I've held him while he literally howled in blind pain.  No pun there...and my heart nearly broke into irreparable pieces when I thought we were going to lose him.  Now, I'm responsible for a blind dog.  I've learned some valuable pieces of dog behavior today - that he cannot tolerate being caged, behind a closed door or away from me when I am home.  I imagine how terrified he is when continually crashing into things -- some things quite painfully.

I applaud the smallest victories and share them like a baby's first steps.  He went from the dog least likely to be around (the neighborhood was his) to the dog most anxious to find a familiar smell.  That the frantic sniffing when he first finds me is his way of identifying who he's sniffing, panic at not seeing me, and finally after 10 minutes of reassurance, he's okay again to find his way around and listening for any sound of food preparation. For 7 years Cameron's dog has NEVER been seen pooping!  Now, it's like a man with a stutter...he appears to have poop OCD.  He spins and sniffs and turns and licks and it goes on for at LEAST 8 minutes..rain or shine.  It's quite the ordeal.  And if he "hears" us watching, it starts all over again, as if we'd finished his sentence for him and he indignantly begins the story all over again.  My husband said he was surprised it didn't come out like Ppppppapoop... and of course we laughed.  Don't finish his sentence...HE wants to do it.  He wipes his paws, sniffs the air, and frantically looks for me again.  His world is so much smaller now, and mine is becoming more so.  I have to care for him a majority of the time...he is teaching me not to be selfish.  I have to work around his needs, not mine.  I have to slow down and smell the poop -- not necessarily the flowers.  And with each little bark, I smile.  He didn't bark for so long that the sound is now cheerful. 

In each day we have so many lessons to learn.  We have to stop, 8 minutes at a time, to recognize the miracles in those lessons.  And if it's all about shit, and I learn humility, it's a good day.

Imagine how your life would change if you only realized the miracle of one flower.

Pain is a good moderator.  It restricts, allows, bends and dictates.  My days are often filled with intense pain.  When I am having a "good" day, I can breathe without thinking about each breath.  My body is broken, each step I take initially feels like broken glass --shards imbedding themselves in my thighs while crunching into my feet.  I listen to the sound of my heartbeat on bad days, which are coming more and more often.  Even my heart squeezes and releases painfully...I think it's taxed by the zillions of nerves misfiring in pain, the constant adrenaline buzz that courses through my body when the pain is severe.  Today, I can't even raise my voice around the ache.

I posted a purple flower.  My sister's iris  - that boquet of purple majesty I carried on June 14th.  I have a bond with my oldest son that centers around a purple flower.  I once told him in an emotional, pain-filled moment, that when nothing seems to be positive, the world felt like it was whirling down on us like a crazed dervish, that something as small as a purple flower must be the focus at that moment, during that breath.

Today is one of those moments.  Pain is crashing down like that crazed dervish and I'm looking for a life change in a purple flower.

I have a plan...

Today I made a plan.  I formulated, calculated, wrote, re-wrote and edited.  It was a writing kind of day. The plan I made seemed to come together with a few extra pieces thrown in.  I'm trying to go back to college and finish a degree, finally.  I think I am ready.  I'm done having babies and changing diapers and being interrupted.  I'm ready.  I remember leaving for college the first time.  I never really thought anyone would care if I left home and went to college, no one seemed to make any fuss and I had written and re-written, calculated and edited all the applications myself.  The day I was to leave, my mother gave me a garfield coffee mug and a little pig made of bread dough behind a chicken wire fence.  It was then I knew that I was noticed, that it did matter that I was leaving and that she had remembered the things that I loved at the time.

She was always so quiet, my mother.  I never knew what she was thinking most of the time.  If she worried about me like I worry about my sons and daughter. If she ever tried to figure me out.  By the time I realized how much she cared, I had finally begun the process of being okay.  Maybe it was part of the plan.  She left me because she was ready to be okay.  Finally.  Go with God, it's what I told her and I meant it.  I wonder if she knew how much I cared.  If that was all part of the bigger plan.  I sure hope so.

The Vernal Equinox of 2011

Spring. It's sprung.  My grass is green, thank to daily deposits of fertilizer from my pack of 4 legged friends and a whole lot of rain!  Today I am wearing Spring colored clothing.  I vowed today not to put my hair back in a ponytail (that lasted till 1:45 p.m!) and to look more feminine. In my line of work black is the standard.  Black shirts, black pants, black shoes and the dark circles under my eyes complete the whole black look.  I started to wonder, as I decided to do this blog, at influences that are part of my day and my mood. And I looked at "black".  The color itself, if you close your eyes and visualize a black crayon, is solid.  Thick.  All ecompassing.  I used to think of the color black when I was trying to sleep, in an effort to make my mind stop racing, sometimes it worked, but usually not.  What I've deduced on this first day of Spring 2011 is that more light needs to enter my life. Lightness in color choice is a start.

I'm moving to beige.

Things that make you go "hmmmmmmmmmmm"?

Remember the Arsenio Hall show?  I do. I miss looking forward to a laugh.  Not just your ordinary laugh, but a deep belly laugh that made your cheeks hurt and your sides ache.  Painful laughing--it's almost an oxymoron!  I'd get my household chores done, as many kids tucked in bed as possible, settling back with something to drink and a blanket to just get lost in the funny.  There needs to be more funny in my life.  It's not that my life isn't a comedy of errors, or that if I didn't laugh, I truly would be crying non stop, it's that I miss that "ah ha" moment when some sort of funny magic happens.  The OMG, I didn't know anyone else thought that way and as my friend Nikol often says "holy mother of pearl" (that's actually freaking HILARIOUS)!  The cares and worries of the day fell away, the build up to the "ah ha" moment headed for the cresendo and you were left with an uplifted mood that lasted quite a while.  Better yet, the late night show shared on those rare occassions with a good friend who totally "got it" as well - a shared moment of hilarity. I remember Arsenio's collection of jackets - a new one each show.  And I remember he too would be slapping his knee laughing his ass off at whatever witty, truly funny, thing that made him go "hmmmmmmmmmm".  And me too.  I'm missing the thing that makes me go "hmmmmmmmmmmm".

1st Day in the life of my blog..

Today is St. Patrick's Day.  I'm not Irish, it just seemes as good as any day to start the journal I always said I was going to keep.  Plus Irish folk I know are pretty cool people and if I drank green beer, I probably would start today.  It's been "one of those days".  I keep trying to get "finished" with "this" and "that" and all the rest of the "stuff" over there.  I'm not making good headway.  Do I think I have bad luck?  Sometimes.  Do I trust people too easily and believe that people are inherently good and that I'm not going to get hurt/let down or disappointed today?  Yes.  Did I get hurt, let down and disappointed today?  Yes.  Each day the hurt that I held in quietly and destructively for so long leaks out more and more.  It seems so anxious to escape that I keep my eyes closed as long as possible each morning to stem the tide of  leakage.  Bubble gum in the dam.

I hope that when I look back on this blog as time goes by that I am able to be happier.  That I learn to let go, with love, of the hurt.  Hurtful people who's wounds are just as fresh today as the day they stabbed me in the back, hollowing out another hole in my heart.    That I learn to let go of people that I can't "fix".  That don't fit into my life, just overwhelm it, swallowing all the air I need to breathe.  I never feel like I can take a deep breath, that if I let that breath all the way out, I won't be able to draw it in again. Lately I find myself holding my breath in my sleep, as I gasp awake at yet another terror called consequence.  Heart racing, angry and scared at yet another dreamless night of ragged sleep  interrupted by the rude awakening of responsibility.