Quit yer crying

The pity party is over. Time to recycle the empties, clean the ashtrays, and wipe the sticky tears off the floor. My bed is made, my clothes are put away, my room is tidy. There is solid ground under my oversize feet, I have much to be thankful for and all the rest that I have no control over can fuck off. It's sunny in the PNW so maybe I'll go for a swim in the lake.

Remission

So let's just say I was losing it. It was subtle. I kept it to myself but I was losing it. It felt like melting. And then without warning it started to come back. I regained it. Somewhere between pouring concrete, and waiting for the kids dance class to end. I had been talking to the new neighbors who were there too, and are recently in love, and I got carried away listening to them. He was standing behind her, hands on her hips the whole time and it felt good to just see them be in love and it made me think about what I have and I started to feel good. Love is so good and we are lucky to have it. And then the CSA box arrived and I felt good about the good food I eat, I made a big Greek salad and tzanziki and I visited a sage a friend who has known me a long time. A person who I can be myself around, my whole self, and it crept back. She suggested swimming might help and being with people. I have no idea what IT is but when I feel like I am losing grip on IT I get so worried and perplexed. How did I let IT go. Like those teeth dreams from college, where they are suddenly all rotten and you are in your mouth, peering out. And you think FUCK, how did I let this happen. Anyway, I am going to go see the doctor and sort out this BP thing. I have been so worried about it and that is maybe what's causing me to feel so horrendous. My sage friend has a sage husband who is very good-natured and I am entertaining the idea of changing my thinking to be positive all the time and not to worry but it's hard because as women we have the evil force of hormones to deal with and they are unruly like that Damien kid in the Omen. You can't just love it away, sometimes you seriously need to drive a stake through IT.

Concrete

On top of everything else I made a concrete pad over the weekend. It was Pearl's birthday so I waited until the sleepover guests went home and then I began. It was raining but I was undeterred in my lightweight raincoat, one of three raincoats I own and I pondered as the climate deteriorates, er changes we will need different clothes to function well in the gray moist world. I built the frame first, 4 feet by 6 and set it in place. I filled it with rocks and metal leftover from the two double box springs I tried to burn poor-white-trash-style on the burn pile. The cheap fabric melted away, the wood charred but the metal remained. I was pleased by how easily the metal springs came off the superstructure, no tools required beyond my gloved hands. The frame for the concrete was big and I underestimated the concrete it would require to fill it, so after mixing 4-60lb bags I stopped, took off my rain coat and started collecting rocks to fill the voids. I have a surplus of rocks here and so off I went and picked them up one after another until the bucket I was collecting them in weighed just enough to carry. I would dump each one and I found myself saying "just nine more loads" each time. I made about 2 dozen trips looking for mid size rocks, digging into the muddy earth with my hands and pulling them up, moving from spot to spot letting the rocks decide my path. On Monday I rested. On Tuesday I mixed up 11 more bags of concrete one by one and filled the spaces not taken up by the rocks from Sunday. At 4:30 it was done. Mark helped me screet the surface with a 2 x 4 and then he finished the edges because that is what he does and I am beyond grateful. I went and looked at the finished slab this morning and felt quite pleased that it is done and although the surface is flat and smooth I hold the memory of what lies beneath.

Derailed

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to go out in public. I was supposed to give blood yesterday but my Blood pressure was off the charts so they sent me home. The funniest part about it was the nice guy who took my vitals trying to make sense of me telling him I was anxious and nervous. He reminded me that I knew them and that I should feel okay but what he couldn't see or hear were the alarms going off inside in my body fueled by hormones, lack of sleep, feelings of fear and confusion and all of it lined up like a parade marching band of all cymbals clanging and marching and no one in step and I was smiling and nodding and acting like maybe it could be okay but my heart was pounding and that part he could clearly hear. He was right to send me home. I needed to rest. My body knew it needed to rest. As stated here previously I do not vacation well and I had just returned from an entire week away from home. An entire week of not sleeping well, eating crap and drinking more booze and less water than normal, and not exercising or doing any of the activities I had planned to do to quell my black soul. So there I sat behind a vinyl partition, pulse racing, once again choosing duty to a faceless blood blank over my own well being. My self which often feels like a flaccid appendage of my body seems to cause so much trouble at times and needs so much fucking attention and care that it's astounding. So I came home and instead of throwing myself on the couch I went to my office and thought about doing things I like and I made a sketch of a Chuckbox that I could build from wood and glue and it would keep me organized while camping and it felt like a good compromise between my hands and my head, and for my heart I will remember to sleep, to read, and paint, and walk or run so that I don't explode, at least not just yet. This helped too.

My Traveling Companion

Riding east on the WestCoast Express June/2011

I have been trying to compose an appropriately poignant post about my daughter, about the great depth of feeling I have for her and the rewards and trials of being a parent. But the time moves so quickly and I find I barely have time to think the whole post through, I am in the trenches as it were just living with her and enjoying it immensely. School is out now so we are on this odyssey called summer vacation wherein I try to be dedicated to near non-stop fun while still trying to work full-time. Summer, like life, is fleeting. I have never been a good playmate mom, I am impatient at best but I have always tried to just spend time with this child, slow myself down and expose her to the world in the best way I know how. In the summer that means visiting family and friends, camping, boating, riding bikes, reading and eating things we generally avoid in the off-season. I am making up for lost time I suppose. When she was 3, my husband and I split up and so began a 50/50 split of her time between us. Split straight down the middle, which was very limiting and to my mind not what I signed up for. One tries to adapt and make best use of the 50% without complaint, but it did wear on me and I felt like I got short changed until abut 18 months ago when the schedule was changed and she was with me more. Recently things changed again, and she was with me all the time and so that is what we have settled into and it feels so good to me. She is a wonderful person, not perfect but I never expected that. I feel like we have achieved the state I most desired as a parent, that we are traveling companions. She is a great traveler, she's adaptable and curious and she likes to tell stories about the things we see along the way, either from everyday life of the special trips we make like the time we just spent with my dad and stepmother. I am loading her up with interesting memories so that when she is grown and has her own kids she can look back at the crazy car trips with Mark and I and model her own childrens experiences after them as Mark and I are doing with her. She is a willing companion and I am so grateful to have her along.