below sea level

All That Jazz

2012-01-21T19:46:00.000-06:00

I drove into the city today from the airport after dropping someone off and tried to look at New Orleans through the eyes of a tourist. The first thing Marge from Montana might notice as her filthy cab careens under the railroad trestle just past the I-10/610 split is the cemeteries. We do cherish our dead don't we. I mean, if burying them practically above ground next to a major federal highway can be considered a form of cherish. Really, what must these tourists think? Surely, they assume we are all idiots.

A friend once told me that the jazz music piped into the airport in New Orleans sounds genuine, as compared to the Don Ho forced upon people at the Honolulu airport. I don't know what that means really. Are we in New Orleans more simple than the people in Hawaii? Or are we just better at making people believe we all eat alligator and all know how to play instruments? Or maybe he just likes jazz better than ukelele music.

Look, I said I was going to try and post every week. I did not promise that it would be all that interesting or even all that good.

I did go the ER yesterday. That was both exciting and anticlimactic, as I am still alive. I had what they called a "visual disturbance." Yes, it was very disturbing that I LOST THE ABILITY TO SEE for 30 minutes. Yes, that was scary and I thought I was having a stroke or a TIA or something. But, in the end, they could find nothing wrong with me and sent me home with 2 tickets to the IMAX theatre because I had to wait more than 30 minutes. Seems kind of mean to give someone who might be on the verge of blindness tickets to a movie. I guess I better use them soon just to be safe.

In spite of the fact there was a fatal shooting down the street from my son's school, I would still rather live here than anywhere else. Does that make me an idiot? Perhaps, but frankly, my family and I just won't fit in anywhere else. People would assume the husband and I are drunk all day if we lived in Iowa, where as here, because when we are dressed up Mardi Gras day as the Bearded Lady (the husband) and a Ringmaster (me), since we remain upright and with our eyes open, everyone knows we are the sober ones.

Maybe this is what my friend meant about the jazz music in the airport....

Passion? No thanks, I'm good.

2012-01-11T17:29:00.000-06:00

I am sitting in an airport. I wonder how many of my blogposts start with that sentence. I bet a lot. I spent the past three days at a big sales conference. There were over 1600 people at the meeting. Itwas insane and bizarre (I am not a salesperson) and I often felt like I was ina live action Saturday Night Live skit or a trippy dream. But, I guess thesales people were motivated. I, on the other hand, kept my bitter and sarcasticcomments to myself…mostly.

I have to keep most of my opinions about public education,motivational speakers, Power Point Presentations and hotel food to myself, but I will tell you this, Death by Deckmeetings are alive and well in 2011. I barely escaped with my life. Why, ohwhy, did anyone ever in a million years think Power Point was a good idea?

I do not think I havehad sun on my face since Sunday. I have been in a windowless conference roomfor 3 days being told to Live Big! Follow my Heart! Be Impactful! I may have developed rickets from lack ofVitamin D. They asked us often what our passion was. In fact, you were supposedto write on your name tag what you were passionate about. I could not think ofanything to write. I realized that I am not really passionate about anything. Ithink maybe I used to be, but now I am not. Now, I find passion to be a bitexhausting and annoying. Think of the people you know who are passionate aboutsomething…they are annoying right? They show you pictures on their phones, theytell you long and involved stories; they shake their fists and spew theirrighteous indignation. They spit when they talk.

I will leave the passion to those who have the heart for itand I will continue to put one foot in front of the other, taking each day asit comes, trying to be a better human being, trying not to walk away from everything.I will drink my coffee in the morning and do my job. I will kiss my son andwalk the dog. I will try to be as kind and loving toward my husband as I wanthim to be with me. And I will do it again the next day.

I used to be passionate about ideas and values. But now, Ijust show up and smile.

Down in New Orleans Where the Blues Were Born...

2012-01-05T22:13:00.000-06:00

Mike's parents used to have a Little Christmas party every January 6th to celebrate 12th Night or the Feast of the Epiphany. This is when the three wise men made it to baby Jesus and brought him Frankensense and all that jazz. I have fact-checked none of this so it might all be wrong, because here in New Orleans, January 6th, or King's Day (I think some people call it that) is the first day of Carnival Season. Yes folks, Mardi Gras starts on January 6th every year. That means the good people of New Orleans get one week between the Xmas holidays and the start of Carnival to dry out and eat like normal people and then we get right back up on the horse - we eat King Cake and drink have parties and dance in the streets like crazy people right up until the day before Ash Wednesday. And then we repent. And we quit eating sweets and drinking (except for Sundays, of course) until Easter. And then Festival Season begins - Jazz fest, French Quarter Fest, Strawberry Festival, Mirliton Festival...we got a festival for every vegetable and every genre of music. You name it, we got a festival for it. Then summer comes and it's too hot to eat or drink so we're good until Halloween, more or less. And, bam, the whole things starts up again. It's exhausting I tell you.

So, tomorrow night is our Little Christmas Party. Anywhere from 20 -100 people are going to show up at our house (the good people of New Orleans are also not very good at RSVPing or sticking to the RSVP selection) and we will have food and drinks and a live band.

The gumbo is made.

The Christmas Tree is a fire hazard at this point.

But the mirror is masquerading already.

My cousin Beth's beautiful Mardi Gras quilt is gracing the wall above our table.

And Kenny is tired already.

Ring in the New Year with Writing and Sugarless Goodness

2011-12-29T12:48:00.000-06:00

I have a few New Year’s Resolutions this year, but the top 2 really are the ones I am focusing on. The others are there just to torment me so I don’t get too self-satisfied:

1) Stop eating sweets. Cake and pie will be the death of me. Damn you King Cake, I will not eat you this year by the fistful. I will not even try to display my non-existent self-control. I will simply avoid you and your sticky sweet friends all together.

2) Post to my long-neglected blog once a week. I did it one year, I can do it again. Dammit.

3) Fit back into my skinny jeans. Even if they are what I wear in my open casket, I will get back into those bitches one more time, dammit. And yes, I meant bitches, not britches.

4) Travel less for work. I don’t even know how I am going to do it, but I think listening to your 6 year old cry on the phone because he misses you is one experience I can live without repeating ever again, thank you very much.

What’s your New Year’s Resolution?

Random Post

2011-12-22T14:36:00.002-06:00

The Christmas shopping is done. The tree is up. The house is more or less decorated and everything is ok, except my son seems to have confused God and Santa Claus. I mean, really, they are very similar. I can see why one would get them confused. My stepmother says that children have a stronger faith than adults because they believe without question, in God. I think it is because they are gullible. They also believe in Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny. And whenever I lie to my son and tell him Taco Tico is still out of Hi-C punch and that is why we are having water, he believes me.

On a totally unrelated note, I was thinking the other day, why do we call something we look at as wimpy or feminine “gay?” I mean, seriously, I think as s society we are using the word gay totally wrong. I would think it takes enormous cajones to be a man and have sex with another man, and I would imagine, but don’t know for sure, that there is not very much flowery and frilly about it. So it makes no sense to me why we are not saying things like, “Did you know that John just lifted a burning car off of another burning car and pulled out the victim from the flaming wreckage. It was so f&^%ing gay!” Or, “It was so gay – that man literally lifted that other man up by the throat using only one hand!”

I hope this isn’t taken wrong. Although, of course, I am not known for my tact or kindness, but with this case, I really do think we are using this word all wrong. We need to change it and start associating the word gay with not only with men who sleep with other men, but also with feats of incredible strength and bravery. Just my opinion.

And on another totally unrelated topic, my sister is nice. And she seems to be so without having to work very hard at it. I find this amazing. There was a time when I thought she was actually not nice and was pretending to be nice just to make me feel like shit. I figured she, like me, had black gooey meanness at her core and that ire was actually fueling her “kindness” which was being displayed just to highlight my grouchiness. As I have grown older, I have come to realize that she is simply a kind person and while not perfect, she is not purposely pretending to be nice so that others around her will pale in comparison.

I, on the other hand, have to put “be nice” on my to-do list and check it off when it is done. It does not come naturally to me. I am quick to judge and often times, quicker to open my mouth with whatever ridiculous thought has fallen from my brain. I had a boss once who told me my mind was like the house and there was a set of step stairs leading from the front door of the house to the front screen door. And every ridiculous and inappropriate thought I had was the ill-behaved dog of the house barreling down the stairs and crashing through the unhinged screen door, right out into the yard

Just some random nonsense for your holiday reading pleasure!

Goodbye Dad

2011-11-06T09:35:00.000-06:00

Thestory that keeps coming back to me about my father is from when I was 13. Iliked a boy named Joey. He was 15 and drove a blue Camaro. I think he also hadan earring and perhaps a moustache. I liked this boy and he came to the houseonce to see me. I was, under no circumstances allowed to ride in the Camarowith Joey. I was the last child and my parents were tired, but they were notstupid. And thankfully, I was just stupid enough to be a very bad liar, so Inever managed to successfully sneak out.

Ifyou stop here and think about it, the real miracle is, as I recall this, that myfather lived as long as he did. He had 4 daughters and was principal of anall-girls Catholic High School. A lesser man would have crumbled under thatweight.

Backto the story - Joey comes to the houseto see me and instead of coming to the door, he honked the horn for me to comeout to see him. As I went for the door, my father stopped me and said, “You arenot going out there until he comes to the door and rings the bell.”

Iwas furious. I cried, I screamed, I pleaded. Joey honked the horn a few moretimes and then, I suppose, assumed I was not home and went away.

Iwas beside myself with anger toward my father, toward Joey, toward all theinjustice of being thirteen years old, but my father held his ground and said,quite plainly, “one day, you will thank me for this.”

Nodoubt I disagreed and likely expressed my displeasure in all sorts of unpleasantways. It took a few years, but I did eventually thank my father. I thanked himfor taking up for me when I did not know how or why I should.

Myfather was a good man. The story I told you was one of thousands where wedisagreed. For a long time, we could not agree about anything - from politicsand religion down to color preferences and pets – I love dogs and Dad was “allergic”to them. Everything was always so important to me back then. Getting him to seemy point of view and all the ways he was “wrong” was my second job for a whilethere. And, as tends to happen, as time marches on, things and issues losetheir significance and what bubbles to the surface is not words or beliefs, butactions.

Duringthe hurricane fiasco, when we were homeless evacuees wandering the state ofTexas, it was my father who stepped up to care for my dying mother. He spranginto action with his list. Yes, if you knew my father, you know the man didn’tdo anything without a carefully planned list. He organized setting up their Houstonapartment and making sure my mother was taken care of at MD Anderson. He didall the housework and grocery shopping. And although I had to show him how towork the washing machine, once he learned, he did all the laundry afterwards.

Ithank my father for being steady and consistent. My sisters and I often teasedhim for his predictability and fastidious nature, but in reality, we never hadto worry about anything because he took care of everything for us. When Aliceand I were at the funeral home with Gail, Alice remarked that this seemed more organizedand easier when Mom died. And I said, “It was, because Dad did everything andmade all the decisions.”

Hemostly planned his own funeral as well. I can picture him orchestrating all ofthis from heaven, where he was positive he would spend eternity. He told me,one day not long ago, that perhaps he would not go to heaven right away, but hewas pretty confident he would end up there eventually. And how could I argue withthat? It was, after all, on his list. “Go to Heaven.” Check.

Myfather, on top of being highly organized, was also in his own way incrediblyflexible. He loved to travel and was very good at it. As a frequent flyermyself, I can tell you, letting yourself and your fate be at the mercy of theairline is not always easy. But, Dad was an incredible traveler and always wentwith the flow. I suppose being stranded at an airport for a few hours is child’splay compared to being responsible for 1500 hormonal teenage girls.

Dad also, while beingthe serious one in our family, also went along with the craziness more oftenthat you would expect. He and Mom had come to visit Mike and me in Houston onceand when I declared I was going to pay for everything in Sacagawea dollarcoins because I had taken to wearing my hair in braids, he offered to bring meto the post office to get some. I was in my thirties at this point, so it’s notlike he was placating a child. He was an active participant in the MurphyFamily craziness.

Dad was also the official videographer of the MurphyFamily. So much so that we used to joke around that the grandkids were going togrow up thinking Grandpa had a video camera and tripod growing out of his face.We would hector him mercilessly for this insistence on filming every occasion,but the end result is thousands of hours of family memories captured. It was acouple of months ago that my Dad passed his video camera onto my sweet husband,Mike and dubbed him the new video man. He knew he was leaving this world andthat he would not need his camera anymore. His work was done. And he did itwell.

Iloved my father and I will miss him. It is an odd place to be in this worldwithout living parents. We are lucky to have a host of friends and family likeSue and John Barker who can remind us all of the good times from years past,like trips to Grand Isle and Mardi Gras Days spent chasing floats and countingchildren to ensure none were left behind in the chaos. My father adored hisbest friend John Barker and I am so grateful we have remained close to our AsherStreet friends. Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill have also stepped up and filled someof the void left by the departure of Mom and Dad and for that, I am so verygrateful. And of course, we have Gail, our Stepmother who has accepted thiscrazy family as her own. After Dad passed, she expressed concern about losingus and we laughed at her silliness – does she really think she’s going to getoff that easy? Nope, she is stuck with us. She is GG to 11 grandchildren.

Ihappened to be at my Dad’s bedside when he died. We were all at his house andpeople were wandering in and out of the room. I wandered in to sit at his computerand for some reason, turned around to hold his hand. And it was then, that hetook his last breath. It was peaceful and calm and he simply slipped away. It is the way he wanted it – a peaceful deathwithout lingering on. It was on his list.

GoodbyeDad. I love you and I will miss you.

Love You Forever

2011-10-05T15:46:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday, when it was time for bed, Max and I climbed into his bed so I could read him some books. We chose “Are You My Mother” and then he specifically asked for the blue book with the baby on the front that we had read the night before Christmas. Seriously, how does he remember this stuff? I finally figured out he meant “Love You Forever.” I both love and hate this book. It is a beautiful little story of a mother who, every night, after her son is asleep, picks him up and sings to him:

I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always.

As long as I’m living,

My baby you’ll be

She does this until he is an adult – she drives to his house with a ladder and climbs in his window. Finally, when he is grown and she is older, he goes to see her and she is too sick to sing, so he sings to her. And then he goes home and sings to his baby girl. By the time we finish this book, every single time we read it, I am choking back tears. And last Sunday was no different. I read it quickly, choked back some sobs and turned off the light. It has been a big day – we had gone to my sister’s for lunch and then over to Grandpa’s (my dad’s) house so Mike could move some furniture around as hospice was bringing the hospital bed over on Monday.

As we lay there in his bed, Max asked me if I would miss him when he grew up and moved to New York City. He told has told me more than once that he and his wife and their three children – Fergus, Felicia and Laney, will live in New York City at the Plaza Hotel and he will write and illustrate children’s books.

I said that I would miss him, but that I would come visit him and he would come visit me. He then asked if I would sit in his room after he was gone and cry and would I sell his toys at a yard sale (I think someone has been watching Toy Story 3) and I said, I would not sell his toys that I would put them in the attic.

He was quiet and then he turned to me and pushed his little face into my shoulder and began to cry, “I don’t want to grow up, I am not ready to grow up.”

And of course, I began to cry and said, “I am not ready for you to grow up either, you are not grown up yet we have lots of time and you do not ever have to move out of our house! You and your wife and Fergus, Felicia and Laney can all live with us!”

And we lay in bed crying next to each other until I kept hearing a popping noise over and over again and went out to the den to find out what was going on. Mike told me there were fireworks for some reason so I got Max and we went out on the roof to watch them light up the sky. He stayed up too late and the fireworks went on and on, but time is short and he will be grown up soon and won’t let me read books to him or lie in bed with him, so I want to make it count. I am not ready for any of this this, but I will do it anyway because he is my little boy and for as long as I am living, my baby he’ll be.

Ya Dig?

2011-05-19T13:55:00.000-05:00

I haven't written in so long and I am not sure why. Yes, I am busy, very busy with work. But, I was busy before and managed to write. Have I used up all my stories? I wonder why I am not writing as much. Part of it, I suspect, is my ego. I confess, I like the praise I would get after a good post, but each post, I felt like, needed to be better than the next so that people would not get bored. At some point, this blog became, or maybe always was, about me getting an ego boost from other people. I think, unexpectedly, it also became very cathartic for me. I managed to purge my soul of the stories that were swirling around inside of me and now, I don't have much left. Which is ok, I guess. But makes me feel a little swirl-less.

But I miss writing. I like to write. I like words, and unfolding plot lines and choosing just the right adjective for just the right noun. I used to write on planes a lot and now I spend it either reading or staring straight ahead wishing I was home.

Truthfully, I am a little bored with all of my online activity lately. Facebook is a drag and makes me wonder why I check it each day. I hear people saying they are going to take a break from it and I think I should do the same, but I always go back just to check in and see what is going on or post a cute picture or something like that. But, instead of making me feel more connected to the world around me, I get kind of sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It is the same feeling I would have as a kid on school nights as it approached dinner time. I don't know why, but that time of day depressed the fuck out of me. I can almost smell the frying paneed meat in the kitchen of the house where I grew up and my mother standing over the stove holding the spatula with a far away look in her eyes. Now that I am grown up, I am sure she was wondering how she ended up in a house in the burbs with 4 ungrateful and lazy children.

So, I will attempt to write more often, if nothing else to complain that I am not writing enough. It is not a should thing. I don't feel like I "should" write more, I just wish I DID write more often. It is calming and provides me with a sense of being alive and having some other purpose than work, work, work for the Man, Man, Man.

Ya' dig, my brother?

30,000 Feet and Nothing To Do

2011-02-26T18:05:00.000-06:00

The person who invented the mammogram machine did not have boobs. Or possibly hated boobs. And also severely underestimated the usefulness of gravity. I am done. I am not having any more mammograms. There, I said it. I will not subject myself or my tits to the horror of this obnoxious and useless procedure. My mother had breast cancer which is why every doctor has gone all bonkers about making sure I get mammograms, however, my mother had an estrogen feeding breast cancer, which is not hereditary, and she found hers herself, it was not detected by a mammogram. Oh, and did I mention that the treatment for that cancer is what caused the cancer that eventually killed her? Oh, and of course, we can’t forget that it was hormone replacement therapy that probably caused the initial cancer that resulted in the radiation treatment, which caused the radiation induced sarcoma that did her in?

And that, my friends, is why I say pooh-pooh to modern day medicine’s version of leeching.

What I think would be really nice is to have a doctor who said I should have my boobs removed and replaced with perky, store-bought ones. And, to have a doctor say I also needed a hysterectomy and while he or she was there, he or she would do a little tummy tuck, too. That would be really nice. Much nicer than once a year putting my already beleaguered breasts into a flattener. That shit hurts.

I am on a plane.

This is not a surprise, is it?

No, it is not.

Planes are where I read, write blog entries, day dream about cosmetic surgery and figure out how I am going to get out of being a road warrior by the time Max is 7. Because that is the oldest he can be for me to keep doing this. Little kid means little problems. Big kid means big problems. And I want to be there for him. I don’t want him to turn 16 and start smoking and doing drugs and blame it on the fact I was never there. Plus, worse than a mammogram, would be dying in a plane crash or getting cancer from the full body X-rays at airports now. That would suck.

What would suck more is something I read in People magazine a couple of hours ago. A man had tongue cancer and had radiation and chemo to treat it. It caused the lining of his esophagus to slough off like snake’s skin and he had to “pull it out of his throat while coughing and vomiting.” I just threw up a little in my mouth and shuddered.

I can agree with my father’s decision to forego chemo 100%. I did not even try to talk him into it. He has inoperable lung cancer and the chemo would be palliative, perhaps gaining him a month or two…a month or two of horror, pain and suffering. He has no symptoms right now, and perhaps, as it gets closer, he may change his mind, thinking 30 more days alive and in pain is perhaps better than 30 fewer days. And I will support him then, too.

He and I are not as close and my mother and I were. I don’t know why. Maybe because my mother and I had the same sense of humor – bitter and dark. I don’t know the reason, but I know I will miss him when he is gone. There will be no one left in this world who loves me more than themselves, no one who can fill me in on the tiny details of my childhood, no one to compare my son to me at the same age, and no one to record our lives’ special events. I doubt anyone will take up doing the filming. We all poke fun of him for recording our every gathering, even saying the children will grow up thinking Grandpa has a tri-pod growing out of his face. But he will leave us with close to 100 DVDs, I think, full of the birthdays and holidays and Sundays at mom’s house for roast, rice and green peas. Or as Nick used to call it, “the brown meat.”

I would give all those DVDs and much, much more to have Mom back and Dad cancer-free, even for just one more Sunday. But I am grateful for the time I had with them both. I could, however, do without the gaping hole in my heart, thank you very much.

Hidden From View

2011-02-07T20:28:00.000-06:00

Today, while cruising Facebook when I should have been working, I almost wrote on someone's wall who is constantly complaining about everything in her pompous way, that she was too judgmental. Until, of course, I realized that I was judging her. Which I am. She is so self righteous - that commercial offends me, that person should be ashamed, etc...but she does it all in the name of defending others. It. Drives. Me. Bonkers.

So, instead of accusing her of being judgmental, (which she is. And, yes, we have already established so am I.) I hid her on Facebook. Oh the power the "hide" feature gives me. It is a silent "Shut the Fuck Up" to the annoying people who call themselves my friends on Facebook. I love wielding the power of the little "x" and, poof, they are gone, erased from my feed, erased from my mind. Oh, but if life had a hide button, then all would be right and good in the world. I could, in one fell swoop, have peace and quiet and be done with the annoyances of my world.

There are days when there would be no on in the news feed of my world. And then there would be days when everyone and their mindless blather would be welcome. Even the cousin who repeatedly offends with his anti-gay, pro-military, pro-hate everyone who is not white, straight and conservative status updates. But, really, I would practically have to be high or the recent recipient of a frontal lobotomy to unhide that clown.
Because, as we've established, I am judgmental, and frankly, so are you. So pipe down and stay hidden.

I suppose I could just stop looking on Facebook. That too would achieve the same thing and free up a lot of time.

The Lazy Woman's Psychiatrist

2011-02-03T20:04:00.000-06:00

I found the following post in my drafts...I am no longer in this state. I guess Sudafed and caffeine work.

I am battling a depression. I am trying to make it go away before it comes by drinking lots of caffeine and occasionally popping a few Sudafed. I mean, thousands of Meth addicts can't all be wrong, can they? This is a familiar depression. It is the one in which I wish so badly that I did not have to work and could be a lady who lunches that I actually have to fight back tears at my desk. Usually it comes upon me in the Spring, right before Jazz Fest, but this year, the beast has reared its ugly head right smack in the middle of Janaury.

During this time I dream about quitting my job and becoming a cashier at Whole Foods. That is my dream job. I get to wear jeans, it is rote and with a limited set of tasks, and I assume I would get a discount. Of course, even with the discount, I doubt I could afford to shop there.

Fragmented Vignettes

2010-12-12T22:55:00.002-06:00

I am officially getting old. Not in the bad way, but in the “I don’t give a shit what people think” way. At Reagan airport tonight, I scarfed down a grilled chicken sandwich with fries while a man who looked alarmingly like Daniel Craig stood at the counter next to my table, working on his laptop, with a perfect view into this scene of gluttony. And I did not care. There was a time in my life when I would have been so self-conscious about this that I would not have eaten the sandwich…well, that’s not true, but I would have moved to another table for sure. Or maybe sat in a bathroom stall and gorged myself in the privacy and comfort of a public airport bathroom.

You know, there is nowhere to cry in an airport where you won’t be witnessed by thousands of people. There should be private crying rooms. Right now, I am wedged into a window seat, next to a large, yet pleasant man, and behind a woman who keeps trying to make her seat back recline COMPLETELY. Apparently, she is under the impression that if she just keeps trying, the seat will eventually go back far enough for her to be completely prone in my lap. And I feel like I have to pee. But the large man is sleeping. I want to move to another seat but I can’t tell if one is open behind me. And at this point, I wish this plane had a crying room because I would lock myself in it and wail. I am not particularly sad, just over emotional. It happens when I travel and am on the road for work. I think it’s really frustration. One has limited choices and control during an air travel trip. It is taxing.

No, really lady, why don’t you just lay your head in my lap and I will massage your temples? It’s ok, it’s not like I actually need my knee caps for anything. Same goes for the shins, which are now likely bruised beyond recognition.

I am not traveling next week and then I am off for the 2 weeks after that. I am looking forward to the break, but the holidays bring their own level of stress. First and foremost is the sadness. Christmas Day is lonely without my mother and 2 oldest sisters. It used to be an entire family gathering. The last time the whole family was together at Christmas was in 2004, the Christmas before the storm. It snowed on Christmas Day that year. We all went to Emily’s house and Mike and I joked that Old Metairie had special ordered the snow flurries for Christmas. It was cold. Max and Mark weren’t born yet and Alice and Angelle still lived in Lakeview. Mom was alive and we thought she had once again averted cancer by having her left breast completely removed in October. I didn’t know that was going to be our last Christmas together…I suppose you never know something like that.

The other day, I was taking Max to my Aunt Mary’s house to drop off some Christmas greens she ordered from his school and we drove past the house I grew up in on Blanke Street. I slowed down in front of the house to show Max where I grew up and he asked if we could go inside. I said no because we didn’t live there anymore, but then I noticed no one lived there. There were papers piled on the front porch and the mailbox (which had not been there when I lived there – we had a slot in the solid front door) was overflowing with junk mail. There was even a lockbox on the front door, but no “For Sale” sign out front. We got out of the car to peer in the windows and the house was different. The wall between the front living room and the back den was gone and the shag carpet had been replaced with wood flooring. I couldn’t tell if the dining room was still a dining room or an office. We walked around back and the back wall of logustrums was gone, replaced with a wood fence. The fig tree Mom had planted was also gone, as was the Elmer’s glue art I had created on the driveway one afternoon. A new driveway had been poured and next to it, a new AC unit. The driveway was curved such that I think each family member hit the AC unit at least once backing out of the driveway. A few of us hit the garage wall more than once.

Peering into the back bedroom, I saw just how small the space was the Emily and I shared. I swear I think the room was barely 8x8. There were always bees outside the window of that room, and they are still there, nesting between the bricks and the siding. The tether ball pole that Emily and Alice dropped on my head one afternoon is also gone, perhaps along with bits and pieces of my brain.

Most notably, I noticed just how small the house was. In my memory, the house was huge. Even though I was 19 when we moved, it still seems smaller than I remember. Maybe because there was no furniture, or maybe because, the majority of my memories of that house are from early childhood. Even the backyard, in my mind, had been much, much larger than it was in reality. The wall of logustrums had provided hours of fun as we used to have races – who could climb through them from one end to the other the fastest. They were a great hiding place as well. I wish there was a wall of logustrums on this plane. I would crawl into them and separate myself from the world for a few hours.

I don’t write often enough anymore to have clear and coherent blogs. Instead, I seem to produce vignettes of a scattered mind. Perhaps my New Year’s resolution will be to blog more often, finally crank out a book of some sort, or just empty my head of the clutter.

This flight is never going to end. I am going to be on this plane for eternity, being punished for some crime, unable to unfold my legs or stretch my arms, my laptop cutting into my gut because Miss “I must be prone” in front of me has eaten up six inches of space in front of me.

In the Clouds

2010-10-18T22:02:00.002-05:00

It has been ages since I’ve written. I did great for a solid year or so. I wrote at least once a week filling pages with stories about my mother, my son, my work travels. I don’t know if I have run out of stories or time. I hope it is just time. Max has been asking a lot about my mother. He is fascinated that she is dead and that I miss her. At least once a day he confirms that yes, my mother died and asks me if I miss her. My answer is always the same…yes, I miss her very much. He asks why we can’t go see her, and I tell him it is because she is in heaven up in the clouds. He has surmised that this is why I fly on planes so much. He might not be all that far off.

Two things happened when I had my child that I did not expect. First and foremost, I learned what it means to love someone with your whole heart. I had never, until I Had Max, loved someone to the point of pain. It is painful at times how much I love this child. This evening, I was in an airport restaurant and a mother, three children and a grandmother walked in. The children were young, maybe 5, 6, and 7. The 5 year old boy fell down while walking to the table and started wailing. I noticed he had a cast on his arm, a blue one just like the one Max had. I missed Max so much at that moment that I almost threw up. Although I was only on a day trip away from home, I felt the space between us like it was a living, breathing being, gnawing at my heart. It is in those moments that I think, if something were to happen to Max, I would be unable to muster the will to live. My heart would turn to ash and blow from my body. A love that powerful and strong is frightening. I had no idea, before I had Max, that I would love him so deeply and wholly.

The other thing I did not expect was the surge of emotion that would rise from my own childhood and intersperse with the milestones in his life. Last week, Max’s school was closed. They offered Holiday Care at $150 for the week. Holiday Care. It sounded so fun and fluffy. Monday morning rolled around and I dressed Max in play clothes instead of his uniform and packed his lunch and headed for school. When I got there, Holiday Care was anything but festive. The school was a ghost town and Holiday Care was three kids of varying ages sitting in a small room being marginally supervised by a tired looking stranger. Max did not know any of the kids and he did not want to stay in that room. Instead, he kept asking where his teachers were and where his friends were. I tried to explain that this was a special week at school and they were going to have “FUN!” But really, this was a hard sell. Even I cringed at the thought of sitting in that small room with a total stranger.

I could not do it. I could not leave my child there. I told the guy, who couldn’t have cared any less, that my husband just got off work and we would be leaving, but surely we’d be back tomorrow. And then tomorrow rolled around and again, I could not being my sweet boy to the toddler version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Life is hard for me because it involves interacting with people. I try not to burden my child with my neuroses, but shit, what else am I supposed to do? When you love someone so much that your very existence is dependent on theirs, what else can you do?

I swore up and down that I would be a different kind of mother than my own, that I would not be so over protective, that I would be trusting and encourage independence. I used to accuse my mother of being paranoid and telling us tales to scare us into submission. But now I know, she was protecting her heart. I can hear my dear sweet mother laughing at me as I fly through the clouds.

The "End" of Summer

2010-09-06T16:41:00.000-05:00

Scenes from Labor Day Weekend. What Northeasterners call the last weekend of summer. For those of us down South, summer as a season lasts well beyond Halloween and summer as the break between school years ended weeks ago.

The dragon that spits the children on to the ground in front of it. No doubt that pitch would not pass inspection in a modern day park. That dragon has heard its fair share of 1950's parents telling their kids to man up and quit whining as they attempted to get the embedded gravel out of their knees.

A quick picture before going back to the dragon slide.

The diving board that broke the 4 year old... after the 50th jump, he said, "I think I've had enough jumping."

The Ladybug roller coaster. Winding through the hundred year old oaks, I tell myself not to think about when was the last time it was inspected.

View from the Ferris Wheel.

View inside the Ferris Wheel

View from the train. This is the museum.

Having fun with a swim cap.

Having fun with a snorkeling mask.

My Permanent Record of Sleepiness

2010-08-27T13:27:00.000-05:00

Max started “big” school last week. It has been a time of transition and change for all of us. I am once again painfully reminded that I am NOT a morning person and loathe being woken up. This is unfortunate for my husband, who is a morning person and is the one waking me up. When we went to the parent night at the school, the principal actually said these words, “Make sure to get your child to school on time. All tardies go on their permanent record.” My inability to function in the morning has the potential to follow my child for his entire life.

Cycle of Crazy

2010-07-01T15:37:00.002-05:00

I am having a difficult time right now. Nothing is necessarily awful in my life. From all outward appearances things are good and one could argue I am ungrateful for not feeling sated. But, that one would be an ass hole. I am grateful for the good things in my life; I am just having a hard time.

You see, I am not a person who has an easy time with people. Relationships of all kinds are difficult for me because they require relating to and interacting with other human beings. And that, that my friends, has been the root of all my problems for my entire life. Interacting with my fellow earth dwellers has always caused me great amounts of fear and panic. Toss in a new high pressure job, a husband struggling with some inner demons, a demanding (albeit beautiful and sweet) 4 year old and I end up frazzled and teary-eyed.

And, as naturally and easily as breathing in an out, I resort to a few coping behaviors to deal with this stress. They are cyclical in nature and go like this….

I begin to crave cigarettes. I don't mean crave as in, "Oh I wish I could smoke." I mean crave as in, "Look crippled old man holding a baby and a puppy, get the fuck out of my way so I can get to the cigarettes, dammit." I confess, I smoked a few cigarettes over the past week. And then I felt like I was going to throw up my intestines. Blech. They are disgusting. Why, I ask you, why do I love them so? They do not love me back. They are Satan in rolling paper. I also resort to over eating when I crave cigarettes. And again, I don't mean over eating like, "Oh I think I ate too many M&Ms," I mean "Oh I ate so much cheese and chips and sandwiches and candy and pot roast and pie and anything that was not running away from me."

Then, I become convinced I am dying. Maybe fueled by feeling awful from the cigarettes and or gluttonous pigging out, I become convinced I have some form of terminal illness, usually cancer of some sort. I obsessively log on to WebMD and input my symptoms du jour. I then become over whelmed with grief that I am going to die so young and I have wasted my whole life not doing anything fun, which leads to…

I begin elaborately fantasizing about and planning my escape. It is a recurring fantasy that I use every time my life gets stressful and in it, I pretty much vanish. First, I will sell everything I own…house, cars, furniture…anything of remote value that is not tied down. I will have a liquidation sale. I will cash in savings and get a refund on the exorbitant tuition I paid for Max's pre-k…EVERYTHIGN MUST GO!

Next, I start the search for a used Toyota RV. I don't know why it has to be a Toyota RV, it just does, ok? This is my fantasy, so butt out. I figure I can get one these babies for less than $10,000 and with a little sweat (my husband's that is) we can get it road and family ready. Once it is tricked out, we hit the road. We will have no plan, we will explore every inch of this great country and Max will be a student of life. He will learn the ways of the world by actually living in it.

However, it does not take long for my neuroses to control even that fantasy…for example, how will I get treatment for my undiagnosed terminal ailment? I won't have a job and thus no insurance! What would my dear departed mother think?!?! Insurance was to her the mark of a successful person. The fear of not having insurance has been ground into my being from the time I could say the word insurance. Plus, I have never taught anyone how to read. How am I going to teach Max how to read? And Math? And what about money? We'll have to insure that RV and put gas in it and eat. How long will the money last?

From there, I begin thinking about the odd jobs we would get…but what about Max? The whole point was to school him on the road, but how are we going to do that if we both now have to work low-paying menial jobs while living in a trailer park in a too small RV?

From there, it all dissolves into a wishing game…I wish I would win the lottery so I could fuel this escape fantasy, I wish had a different job that didn't require so much travel/time/energy/fill in the blank, I wish my husband would fill in the blank, I wish my son would fill in the blank. And so it goes.

Then, it all comes back to me. Everything points back to me as I am the constant in all those scenarios and I feel it bubbling up, rising inside me, the self-loathing, the fear, the uncertainty , the discomfort and then, I start to crave a cigarette, which sets the whole cycle going again.

Here is a chart to illustrate what I call the cycle of crazy…

Being this way is eating up a lot of time and energy and since it is a vicious cycle that feeds on itself and gains momentum quickly, I am not really sure how to stop it, other than occasionally calling out, "Stop the ride! I want to get off," but thus far, that has proven only to startle strangers.

May I Check Your Emotional Baggage?

2010-05-18T13:37:00.003-05:00

I was a very shy child. Pathologically shy. In fact, my mother once told me she probably should have brought me to see a psychologist when I was younger, but back in those days, you just didn’t do that. Besides, I was the 4^th kid. I feel lucky to actually have a page in the photo album, even though it is a short and blurred view into my early years.

I carry around the emotional baggage of having been the kid who sat alone on the playground every day. I did not have friends, I did not know how to interact with other kids and I was painfully lonely and sad every day at school. In 2^nd grade I missed somewhere around 45 days of school because I was “sick.” I was not sick, I just hated school and having to be around all those people I just didn’t want to associate with. Every day that involved putting on a school uniform and interacting with kids my age and teachers was akin to having my teeth removed, one by one, without anesthesia.

Equally painful was any activity outside of school that involved interacting with kids my age or really, any one. I took dancing each year at the local playground, but wanted to quit after the first class. I signed up for Brownies, but found the constant interaction with the other Brownies to be emotionally exhausting. I went to one gymnastics class and when one of the kids in the class said I was too fat to pull myself up on the bar, I quit going all together. My sister says Mom’s one rule was that you could not, under any circumstances, quit dancing. But I remember her allowing us to quit anything else we did not like. Of course, I was really, really stubborn so that may have just been my perspective.

Now, I am a parent of a somewhat shy 4 year old. He is loathe to talk to other kids he does not know. He will not just go up to kids and start playing. Still, when my sister suggested I sign him up for T-Ball so we could all be out at the ball field together all summer, I thought it was a good idea. Instead, it has turned into my own personal nightmare of emotionally charged flashbacks to my own youth. It is about as fun as electro shock therapy.

We are not on the same team as my sister’s son, so I am at the stifling hot ball field alone with my son. I feel insecure and unsure of what to do. Max says he likes playing, but he does not actively participate in the games. He spends a lot of time staring at the sky, chewing his finger nails, and singing to himself. When the coaches grab him and tell him to “run here” or “come hit the ball” he goes, but, with a tiny tinge of reluctance.

I sat in the bleachers last night, baking in the late afternoon sun, hiding tear-brimmed eyes behind big sun glasses. I don’t know how to be objective about this. He seems to not enjoy playing ball at all. He does not pay any attention, he does not talk to the other kids, he bites his nails the whole time, but I think I might be projecting my own childhood angst onto his tiny little body out there. I want to run onto the field, grab him and tell all the other little wretched fuckers to fuck off and move the fuck out of the way.

“My child is not some mindless drone who chases a little white ball trying to catch it with a ridiculously oversized mitt! No, my child is creative and clever and sweet and has greater things on this mind that this bullshit, boring-ass, mother fucking hot sport.”

Of course, that seems a bit extreme and intense. No doubt it would leave an impression on 14 stunned 4 year olds, but that is not really my intention. My desire is to do the right thing, and frankly, I don’t know what that is.

Choice A: Make Max stay in T-Ball. Theoretically, this would provide him with a sense of commitment and provide him with opportunity to be involved in a team sport, blah, blah…But, it also means many, many nights spent at a ball field that is hotter than the surface of the sun, watching my child roll around in the dirt on home plate while the other kids and coaches get annoyed with him.

Choice B: Take him out of T-Ball. Sure, this would be easier on me. I could skip frying in the bleachers, but what is that teaching him? That it is ok to quit? And what if he does actually like it and is just really adept at hiding it? Maybe something will click inside of him. Maybe. Or maybe I will have skin cancer by July for no reason other than to torture my son and scar him emotionally.

This is not a huge issue, but my deep-seeded emotional crap is surfacing and clouding my rational judgment. This is a big and painful issue for me and I would cut off my right arm to save my one and only child that same pain. Seriously, I would take a hack saw to my shoulder blade. That is how fucking painful my childhood angst was. I should say here, this WAS NOT my parents’ fault. I DO NOT blame them for my emotional issues at all. Which begs the question, could they have done something differently to help me? I don’t know, maybe, but like Mom said, it just wasn’t done back then when I was a kid…and dinosaurs roamed the land. I wish my Mom was here to tell me what to do, or at the bery least, what not to do.

So chime in, leave a comment or two. If you post something mean anonymously, I will assume you are a coward asshole, which likely you are. If you want to say something mean, grow a pair and use your real name. I have gotten over my shyness. It was replaced with a caustic mean streak.

The Fine Art of Foolishness

2010-05-13T16:47:00.000-05:00

I was minutes away from getting on the 4:15 flight home to New Orleans when the BWI Southwest agent informed me that the flight was oversold and my stand-by request was DENIED. Damn you. Now I am stuck here until 7:15 and instead f getting home at 6:00pm on a direct flight, I will get home at 10:45pm after stopping somewhere. Arghh.

This would all be ok if the fancy pants Southwest waiting area chairs actually reclined. You know the ones I am talking about, they look like recliners and they have little end tables in between them that have power outlets, but oh how they deceive us! They DO NOT recline and do not allow for dozing. Unless of course I curl up in it or just let my head flop around like a mop. Which is always an option.

I've been thinking about a time when I was younger and I said something I will always regret. I was 12 years old and had made friends with a girl named Kelly. Kelly was cool. Her parents we divorced, she had no curfew, her father pretty much let her do anything, and she was allowed to wear skin-tight Jordache jeans and blue eye liner. I know now, of course, that she was borderline abused and neglected, but since I was nearly smothered with over protective parents (or so I thought) it seemed like heaven to me. She could do whatever she wanted and no one gave a rat's ass. Yes, as an adult, that scenario is frightening and fills me with sadness, but when I was 12, wow, what a dream.

I desperately wanted Kelly to like me and think I was cool, so when she joined the softball team in middle school, I became the team manager. I still have no idea what that meant except that I went to a few games. After one game, a bunch of us were in a car and someone's mom was ferrying us around (funny how the moms were just nameless, faceless free cab drivers...I am sure they are thrilled to know how much we appreciated them.) We stopped at a red light next to a school bus that had mostly African American kids in it. I wanted to be ccol like Kelly and she used the N word all the time, so I said, "Hey look, a bus full of Ns." It was easily the stupidest and most obnoxious thing I have ever done. And as soon as the words left my mouth, I was ashamed and felt foolish and stupid and trashy. I said it only so that this Kelly girl would think I was cool like her.

Int he car with us with one of the team members who was black. I realized that after everyone was just quiet. I remember wishing badly that I could turn back time and take the words back and I wished that I had never met Kelly. I wanted to die. I wanted to say I was sorry for what I had said and explain that I had said it only to try and be someone I wasn't and to impress someone who turned out to be someone I would lose touch with within months of that, never to be seen or heard from again. But instead, I said nothing, I did nothing. I rode in home in the deafening silence in that car feeling like a complete and total ass hole and wallowing in what would become a life-long wallow of self-loathing.

I quit the team after that. Really, I was nothing more than a poorly dressed and awkward cheerleader, going to every game like a pathetic mascot. I don't know what happened to the girl int he car with us and I don't even remember her name. But I wish I could go back and deal with it differently. I wish I had been the sort of person who did not feel the need to change who I was and what I believed in an attempt to get others to like me. I wish I had been the kind of person who was aware and generous with my actions. But I wasn't. I was insecure and self-centered and scared and awkward and stupid.

I wanted this girl to like me so badly, that I blindly pretended to be like her, or like someone I thought she would like.

I have thought about this incident a lot lately. I am working at a new company and around a lot of new people. There is still a part of me who longs to be liked and who wants to make sure I say and do the "right" thing. It is an awful feeling. I question everything I do and say and wonder if others are thinking about me and what they are thinking. Thankfully, I am not 12 years old any more and for the most part, I am ok with who I am and what I believe, but still, there is a part of me that longs to be accepted by the crowd and longs to be the one who gets all the positive attention and glory.

That part of me, I know now, is my ego. It is big and loud and loves to be stroked. I have to breathe deep and tell it to shut the fuck up. It always gets me in trouble.

I just wish, that back in that car, instead of saying what I did, that I had just smiled and waved at the kids in the bus. But I hated myself too much to be that open. Instead, I went against what I had been taught, and I pretended to be someone I wasn't. And after, I just shut down and wished for a quick and painless death, which did not come.

As painful as that experience was and as much as I wish I could go back and time and apologize to everyone in that car, I am grateful for the remorse that followed and the horror of my actions. It was a watershed moment in my young life, reminding me to be true to myself...although I have failed over and over again in that pursuit.I Just keep getting up, suiting up, showing up, and trying to keep my mouth shut.

Viva Las Vegas

2010-05-03T13:58:00.002-05:00

Once again, I have planned my reading materials for a long flight very poorly. Boise is not an easy city to get out of on a Friday. My meeting ended at 11am, which means I missed the 10:30am flight out and had to wait for the later flight, which was a 3:00pm to Vegas. After a three hour layover in Vegas, I am now on a plane headed into New Orleans. I will get home at 12:45am, a solid 13 hours after my meeting ended. I bought a People magazine and a book in the Boise airport and then proceeded to talk on the phone and generally do non-reading activities during my obscenely long wait for the 3:00 flight. I wanted to save the magazine and book for the rest of the trip.

The People lasted for about 30 minutes of the flight to Vegas and then I started on the book, which I finished about 30 minutes into this flight to New Orleans. I blame that on the Vegas airport. The Vegas airport is essentially a trailer park, except the trailers are planes that are shuffling the inhabitants from one place to another. Before our flight could take off, the airplane crew had to escort not one, but three drunken fliers off the plane.

I wonder what happens when you get taken off a plane for being drunk. Do you get your money back? Do they put you on a later flight? And how do they know you are really drunk? Do they make you take a breathalyzer test? Or do they do the equivalent of a road side sobriety test? Sadly, I did not get to see any of this. I guess it all takes place in some private room where the Southwest employees speak in calm voices and try hard not to shame the passenger in question, while the passenger gets more and more belligerent and indignant.

I would imagine it takes a special kind of person to be a flight attendant. I am not that type of person. If I were a flight attendant, I would carry a cattle prod. Last week I was on a flight and a woman refused to put her purse under the seat in front of her. The flight attendant calmly and patiently explained to her that FAA regulations required that all bags be under the seat for takeoff and landing. Still, the woman insisted that the floor was too dirty and her purse costs a lot of money. The flight attendant got her a plastic bag to put her purse in and patiently and kindly helped this recalcitrant and obstinate bubble head put her precious purse in a plastic bag. Meanwhile, the guy sitting on the aisle of that same row asked her something and touched her arm for a long time.

At this point, if I were the flight attendant, I would have popped that fucker in the face. I would also not have provided Miss Purse with a bag, unless of course it was the bag I used to suffocate her. I would have taken out my handy cattle prod and shocked some sense and submission into her air head. And then, I would have done the same to a few more people in ear shot just to ensure no one got any funny ideas.

Instead of the friendly skies, it would be the surly skies.

Anyway, back to the Vegas airport. I wanted to do some non-reading activities, but it was hard because essentially there is nothing to do in Vegas except play slot machines and drink, neither of which I do. And since the slot machines are taking up all the prime real estate, there isn’t much shopping to do either. This left people watching. And, while I find fake boobs and hooker shoes fascinating for a little while, eventually everyone starts to look and sound like the cast Jersey Shore and really, can you blame me for ending that activity so quickly?

I have been on the road for 5 days. I am cranky and tired and wondering why on earth I do what I do. And then I remember, “Oh right, there are no jobs for me in the city I live in.”

Boo, hiss, boo.

New Orleans, you are a hard city to love sometimes. It’s a good thing you have warm weather and interesting locals.

We are on our descent into New Orleans. I wonder where the three passengers are right now who got booted from the flight? Are they drowning their sorrows? Are they face down in an airport holding cell? Or did they decide to stay in Vegas? Maybe they rented a car and, God forbid, are driving back to New Orleans.

OK, Maybe I am a Prude

2010-04-21T18:07:00.000-05:00

I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, one would argue that I run the risk of being classified as a free-wheeling, let it all hang out kind of gal. However, I am relatively appalled by the way some folks dress on airplanes. Seriously, I do not want to see your hoochie or your boobies for 3 1/2 hours or for any amount of time. Additionally, pajamas are for sleeping. And, why, why I ask you must every teenage girl bring a pillow on to the plane? Are their necks so weak that they cannot hold them upright for a few hours? News flash - hotels have pillows...lots of them. Conversely, airplanes do not have lots of overhead bin space.

I won't get started on my feelings about people drinking too much on planes. Suffice to day, I have been touched, sneezed on, bumped into, and generally harassed by enough drunk people on planes that I consider carrying mace or wearing some type of diving bell on my head.

See aforementioned boobies, coupled with a beer, McDonald's and a black eye. I am flying with Brittany Spears.

Just Another Day

2010-04-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

I say too much too soon to people that I shouldn't. I started my new job and spent the last week on the road meeting new colleagues and new clients. I wanted to start fresh with a clean slate, maybe erase the cloud of klutzy weirdness that surrounds me. Alas, I am not willful or disciplined enough to change who I am at my core. And thus I both attracted too much attention for being both accident prone and too forthcoming with information that no one really wants to know about me.

At dinner, I told some colleagues who were divulging that they were on their second marriages that I too had been married before. And when they began talking about the whereabouts and relationships with their exes, I blurted out that my ex-husband was dead, murdered in a drug deal gone bad. Why, I ask you did I feel it necessary to say that? Why couldn't I even have just not said anything? Because I am a loud-mouthed laugh whore. It's not untrue and I am not ashamed of it, but still, what do you say to someone who says that? Especially if you have just met them? Thankfully, most of the people near me were drunk and hopefully will not remember even talking to me.

I felt compelled to tell anyone who would listen how the plane I was on Wednesday night from Denver to Chicago almost crashed. We were flying along and all of a sudden the plane started lurching around violently and the pilot got on the loudspeaker, "PUT YOUR SEATBELTS ON NOW!" he screamed in a panic at us. I think that upset me more than the actual turbulence. He did not expect this and was taken off guard. Never a good thing in aviation.

Everyone on that plane was doing the exact the same thing - praying and clutching the arm rests. There were no atheists in that foxhole, I assure you. I bargained with God that if indeed I was going to die in this United Airlines death trap, could I please die on imapct or pass out just before impact as opposed to, say burning to death in the wrecked fusilage? Even at the end, I will be looking for the easier softer way out.

We survived the wind shear at 22,000 feet. A few people puked into the little bags (why are they so little? And why are they PAPER? I need a gallon plasic jug with a wide mouth if I'm going to hurl.) and a few people cried out, but most of us just sat and cursed our chosen professions as road warriors, doomed to a life of travel size shampoo bottles and airport sushi.

Just another day...thankfully.

A Hodge Podge of Silliness

2010-03-19T09:36:00.002-05:00

I’m changing jobs…I am going from Vice President of Some Stuff at Company A to Vice President of Some Other Stuff at Company B. It is the same industry, the same type of job, even a lot of the same people I have worked with over the years, but still, it is a change and one that I precipitated and not one that was forced on me. It is easier to handle the change when it is not rammed down your closed throat. The past 4 ½ years have been a relentless series of unwanted changes – city flooding, mother dying, original company being bought out, sisters moving away – but this change, this one I decided to make. And still, I am a little nervous.

I like to be the person who knows everything. I like to say things with authority and help other people feel at ease. I feel off balance when I am the one with all the questions. I know it is my ego and a fear of looking stupid. People always say, “There are no stupid questions,” but they are wrong, oh so wrong. There are indeed stupid questions and there are stupid people who ask them and my fragile ego lives in fear of being one of those people. We are all one of those people at one time or another, so it is ridiculous of me to care about it. I am not inherently stupid, just occasionally stupid.

And, of course, I want everyone to like me. I mean, isn’t that the curse of every good Southern lapsed Catholic woman with a big ego and an inferiority complex? What if I say something stupid? Well, not what if, when I say something stupid, will they scorn me and ostracize me? If I screw up, will they publicly shame me? When I get sick, will the pack turn on me and kill me? So many questions…

The nice thing about this, however, is that I am not 25 anymore. I am a grown-ass woman of 40. I have given birth to another human being. I have lived through the worst natural disaster in the history of America, (ok, maybe that’s a little dramatic) I have logged hundred of nights in hotel rooms away from my family for the sake of my job….there is a big part of me that says, “Pffft, this is child’s play.” But not the whole part of me, you know? There is still that little niggling voice that says, “You are a fraud and a failure. Just wait ‘til they find out.”

My sister’s housekeeper says that voice is Satan. And, there is a part of me that thinks she is crazy. But, then again, maybe she’s not. After all, isn’t every great story basically the battle between Good and Evil? Why shouldn’t the battle in my head be any different? Call it whatever you want, Satan, the devil, low self-esteem, it all falls into the “bad” category. Thus, it seems the only way to fight it, is with “good” stuff – laughter, smiles and nervous eating.

Sometimes, I wish I could be a daily pot smoker. Seriously, I know people who smoke every day. Sure, I hate being around them because they have this kind of aloof detachment to their surroundings and the world around them, but that is also what I want sometimes. I want to care less and feel fewer emotions. Not always, just sometimes when it seems like life is too intense.

I equate my life to a movie. Most days, I am sitting reasonable distance back from the screen and can see the big picture easily. Some days, when things get crazy, I tend to sit in the first row with my nose pressed to the screen and everything moves fast and I catch only glimpses of what is going on. On those days, I tend to freak out and react in ridiculous ways. In reality, I just need to move further away to get the right perspective. But, it’s not that easy and the irrational part of me thinks it would be easier if I smoked pot (which, by the way, I have not done since high school.) Then, however, I might end up sitting in the parking lot of the movie theatre making out with the ticket taker.

I suppose the only thing I can do is suit up, show up, and do my best every day. How beautifully and wonderfully mundane.

Happy Birthday Mom...Girlfriend!

2010-03-09T11:19:00.000-06:00

My mother would have been 74 today. I miss her terribly. What I miss most about her is her sense of humor and wacky way of looking at the world. The day she died, I lost an advocate for my often dark and inappropriate humor. I also lost a source of unconditional love and support. Instead of crying myself through this day, I want to focus on my mother and her wonderful spirit. Here are a few of my favorite mom moments.

After the storm, when Mom was still in Houston undergoing treatment for her cancer, I was in New Orleans watching my sister’s three kids and raising my own newborn. I was using my sister’s car which had an awful smell of gasoline. Her husband had transported and spilled gasoline in the back of the car. It was a terrible odor. Every time we got in the car to go somewhere, we had to roll the windows down and turn on the AC. The children were definitely grateful their dear, somewhat insane aunt had quit smoking. (Only to start again a few months later, but that is another story for another day.) I called Mom to complain and asked her what got out the smell of gasoline. Her deadpan response was, “fire.”

Another time during this post storm, half the family in Houston, the other half in pieces on the floor in New Orleans era, I called Mom to chat about the day. I work from home and my office is upstairs in our converted attic. Looking back on the renovation, yes we should have blown out the budget and raised the roof line, but we didn’t and we are left with a room with a horribly steep pitched ceiling, on which I hit my head just about every day. I was telling Mom this and saying that one would think I would eventually get used to the pitch of the ceiling and quit hitting my head, but that day had not (and still has not) come. Mom’s suggestion was that I keep a helmet at the foot of the stairs and put it on every time I went to work.

And then, of course, there was the road trip the summer before my senior year in high school. Mom and her best friend, my Aunt Phyllis, who is not really an aunt, (but when you call someone “aunt” your whole life, they kind of become an aunt by sheer force of will) decided to take a trip together to bring Phyllis’ daughter to graduate school in Virginia. We also had the grown son of some other friend of theirs who needed a ride up to the DC area. We started with 2 cars – the moms in one car, the “kids” in the other. Before we hit the twin span in Slidell, the “kid” car was participating in activities that could have gotten us thrown in jail.

On the ride home, it was just Mom, Aunt Phyllis and me. They let me smoke cigarettes in the car and drive a bit. I brought my summer reading books on the trip, so I read them aloud in the car to them. I read The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh and then Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson, which I am pretty sure was not a required reading book. I don’t think I could have appreciated The Loved One had I not read it aloud to them as they provided explanations and definitions, which made the book hysterically funny. I think I might have to re-read it as an adult to see if it really is supposed to be a comedy…I now question this “fact” of my memory.

We also stopped, against my vehement protestations, at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s house in Virginia. I did not want to go. I was 17. It seemed “boring” and “stupid.” It was fascinating from beginning to end. We bought our tickets and received our change in $2 bills, which tickled the three of us, who were already somewhat punch drunk from being in the car for so long. No doubt, we were completely obnoxious during the tour, but there are things I remember from that day like they were yesterday, and trust me, it was a LONG time ago. Thomas Jefferson invented the dumb waiter and pocket doors that open together even we you only open one, whatever that is called. Well, it WAS 23 years ago.

When she got sick, I was the only one of her daughters who did not have kids, so it was easier for me to accompany her and Dad to the doctor appointments and then the treatments. It is an odd thing to be happy for, but I am happy I was able to be there for her during that time. We got to spend a lot of time together, time that we not would have spent together otherwise. I would sit with her while she waited for doctors. She would tell me stories and we would laugh at world…it was much easier to laugh than to sit and cry, which was what we both felt inside.

It was reminiscent of high school. Mom worked at the high school I went to so we would drive into school together each morning and home each night. It was a long drive, about 30-40 minutes each way in traffic. By senior year, it was just the 2 of us as my sister had graduated and the girls down the street had as well. People think it’s nuts when I tell them Mom let me smoke in the car on the way to school. It is kind of nuts. I was in a Catholic school girl uniform puffing on a Marlboro light in the car on the way to school. I don’t know why she let me smoke. Maybe she was sympathetic to my addiction.

Some other things I love and miss about my mother, in no particular order:

She tended to give me and my sisters birthday cards from the Mohogany greeting card line. I am pretty sure one year I got an old Kwanza card.
She was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the CIA killed Kennedy.
She was also wary of the microwave. In fact, she did not get one until pretty much every other person on the planet had one, and even then, my oldest sister practically forced it on her. She remained suspicious of it for her lifetime.
She found my oldest sisters biological mother to thank her and then devoted her time to reuniting other adopted people with their biological parents. I especially liked that she used her vast knowledge of sleuthing to do this, referencing the 100,000 murder mysteries she read.
She referred to my dog Sam as her grand dog. She would talk to Sam when she came over. She knew how much I loved that dog and respected it, never taking it too seriously, but never openly making fun of it either.
She fell out of her chair laughing at me when I told her that I thought I would be a better mother than my sisters were because I was more organized. She then promised, through a stream of tears, not to tell anyone I had ever said those words. (Yes, she was right and I was delusional.)

I hear people complain about their mothers today and I want to grab them and say, “You don’t know what you have!” But, then a friend told me once, “If your Mom was my Mom, I’d want her alive, too. But, my mom is cruel.” How lucky I am to have had a mother who was kind. Yes, she was a little wacky, but, frankly, I can’t really fault her for that, now can I? After all, I am pretty sure I cut from the same multi-colored cloth.

Daydreams and Undertows

2010-02-25T11:56:00.001-06:00

Too...busy...to...be...witty...

Life is eating me alive right now. But, everyone is healthy, everyone is sane, sort of, and, most of all, there will be an end to this chaos. Either it will end or I will die, so that's something to which I look forward. The end of it, not my life. Although, some days, an early death appears less as a punishment than a reward. Only on some days.

If only there were more hours in each day. And, wouldn't it be cool to be the sort of person who only needed 4 hours of sleep per night? Those things aren't going to happen, so I will patiently wait for the tide to change. Life has an ebb and flow. Right now, I am caught in an undertow, so I just need to relax and ride it out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

It helps to search resort vacations on the web and dream of days spent lounging on a sunny beach. Hmmm, that sounds nice. Ride the wave...

Waiting for the Parade

2010-02-15T18:32:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, the best part of the parade, is the wait...you get to climb a ladder that your parents have hauled 15 blocks, strangers wave at you, and your mother takes pictures of you while your father gives you undivided attention. And to think, sometimes I feel sorry for him because he is an only child. I was the fourth child and can honestly say, I do not think I ever got the undivided attention of either parent unless there was copious amounts of blood involved.

The parade was awesome...was caught a ton of stuff...and hauled the ladder and a 20 pound bag of junk back to the car 15 blocks away. The smile on that mug was worth being a pack mule for a day.

Grace is Hereditary

2010-02-15T18:23:00.000-06:00

If you look closely, you can see the picture on the table is of my mother holding me when I was 4 and had a broken arm. Max liked that picture a lot. He made me take it out of the frame so he could carry it around with him.

His cast is off now and it was only after it came off that I realized something. I think he thought this cast was going to be on his arm forever, He seemed genuinely surprised that it was taken off. I could learn a lot from him. He accepted this cast as if it was not a bother at all. He completely adjusted in a matter of hours and frankly, never really complained about it at all. Sure, he cried when he broke it, but he never complained about it after that first night. Not once.

I, on the other hand, complained almost non-stop about what a pain in the ass it was having to wrap his arm in a bag to bathe him, how it stunk, how he could only wear short sleeve shirts, and pretty much about any change what-so-ever in my life. If I had broken my arm, I would have cried every day and moaned as much as I could about how much it hurt, how awful it was, blah, blah, blah.

Max, however, is grateful that the funky skin flakes are off his arm. And let me tell you, that was pretty gross, too.

He got his grace from me and obviously, his good nature from his father...thank goodness!

Do You Know What It Means...

2010-02-05T10:36:00.000-06:00

My company is hounding me to move up to New Jersey. Yes, I am aware that is where our office is located. Yes, I know I won’t find a job this good that pays this well for someone with my experience in New Orleans. Yes, I know that Jersey has a far better school system/government/public works/fill in blank than New Orleans. And yes, I know I have gone as far as I can working remotely from my home office in New Orleans.

But, no, I won’t be moving to New Jersey, thanks for asking.

You see, I can’t leave New Orleans. Here are my top 10 reasons:

1) My mother is buried here. Tell me, whose grave would I visit when I am sad/happy/lonely/scared? And, even if I did dig up the name of some relative who was buried somewhere up there, would the cemetery operators frown upon me placing Mardi Gras beads and masks on the headstone?

2) When I walked into the Jersey office and shouted WHO DAT into the air, no one would respond in any way other than possibly calling security. Here in the Big Easy, screaming Who Dat is akin to saying Good Morning.

3) Where would I get my Bunny Bread/Blue Runner Red Beans/French Market Coffee/Zapp’s Chips?? I’d have to get it shipped up from New Orleans. And that’s just a whole lot of work and planning.

4) It snows up there and they all go to work and school anyway. That’s just silly.

5) When I showed up to work in April and May wearing shorts and flip flops and sat at my desk watching streaming video of the Jazz Fest with tears pouring down my face, people would start to doubt my ability. And then I’d get fired anyway, so why bother packing everything up and moving?

6) The Saints are in the Superbowl. Our football team wears gold pants, our mascot is a flower, and our male fans wear dresses, but our team is going to the Superbowl after 43 years of trying. Leaving now would be like leaving before the encore! 5,000 straight men parade around in drag to commemorate Buddy Dileberto and celebrate the Saints going to the Superbowl…and it brings tears to my eyes…tears of joy and pride and a feeling of being home. I just don’t see anything like that happening anywhere above the Mason Dixon line.

7) Did I mention it snows in New Jersey?

8) My house in New Orleans cost $100,000 and is 100 years old. Plus it sits 2 short blocks from the Jazz Fest, ½ mile from City Park and about 5 minutes from the French Quarter. What’s that you say, I can get a smaller house in New Jersey for $450,000 and it will be a 2 hour drive in hellish traffic anywhere. Well, gee, thanks, but I’m good.

9) People in New Orleans know that you eat Red Beans and Rice on Mondays, you can get the best roast beef po boy in the world from Russel’s Short Stop, Dixie beer will give you a horrible hangover, you can’t take a left on Tulane Avenue, streetcars have the right of way, so look before you turn on St Charles, and that Betsy’s restaurant continued serving breakfast all morning even after the car slammed through the from wall. People in Jersey don’t even know what a po boy is.

10) I, despite my near constant crankiness about it, love New Orleans the people who live here. I love Mardi Gras, grown men who call each other “baby,” Jazz Fest, impromptu parades, second lines at funerals, second lines at weddings, second lines for any old reason, people who actually know what a second line is, being able to get from one end of the city to the other in less than 40 minutes and being able to do so without a map. I love gumbo, muffelettas, Terranova’s grocery, king cakes, po boys, shrimp ettouffe, and Parkway Bakery. I love PJ’s coffee and sitting outside CC’s coffeehouse on a sunny spring day. I love that my next door neighbor is the trumpet player for the Fairgrounds race track and that most days I get a free live jazz trumpet concert wafting over from his house. I love confederate jasmine and sweet olive. I love that the worst natural (or man-made if you ask us New Orleanians) disaster to ever happen in the United States’ history didn’t break us, it made us even stronger and more dedicated to rebuilding this beautiful city. I love that my husband will grab a live giant New Orleans cockroach with his bare hands and throw it outside…chivalry like that is not only dead, it never existed up in Northeast.

And so, my friends, those that I love so much in this beautiful city…can I use you as references on my resume?

WHO DAT!!!!!!!!

There's No Place Like Home

2010-02-04T20:54:00.000-06:00

I have been feeling weird about my blog, it's like I said all there was to say and now it is just a source of angst for me. But, I think I'll try to post more often and maybe say less. You know, just to get the creative juices flowing.

Right now, I am typing away as I listen to Max watching The Wizard of Oz for the 150th time. His 2 favorite movies are Snow White and The Wizard of Oz. Seriously, both of those movies are kind of scary, but not to him. He loves them. He can let out a shrill scream that sounds just like Snow White running through the dark and scary forest. And, when he feels like it (sadly, not on command) he will use his munchkin voice to ask for things.

I hope I never forget this stuff. It is priceless. I wish I would slow down and appreciate these little things all the time. But when I am tired or stressed, I forget to relax and get all grumpy and annoyed, like he's taking too long to grow up or something.

One day, I will miss his sweet little knees poking me in the back and his loud pretend burps at the dinner table. I hope I can remember to enjoy them more often instead of worrying so much about everything.

Sigh. Breathe deep. Take it all in....If I only had a brain, I would while away the hours, coferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain, I would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry. If I only had a brain...

Your Father's Not Yelling at You, He Just Has a Loud Voice

2010-01-28T21:17:00.002-06:00

If you read this blog, you know that I love my mother. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and wish she was here so I could tell her some story or show her how wonderful Max is. But, let’s face it, no one is perfect and my dear sweet departed mother was no exception. She was insanely smart and had a wry and dark sense of humor, but her childhood was somewhat tumultuous and she did not escape the effects of that. Although she constantly played down the effect the events had on her, looking back on it, it seems near impossible the one could emerge from them unscathed.

Mom was born in the 30s during the height of the depression. She was the 2^nd of 4 children and when she was 13, her parents divorced. Mom and her brothers lived with their mother as their father, it seems, was either unfit or unwilling to be a custodial parent. He was a drinker, although neither Mom nor Memere (her mother) would readily admit that. They played it down by saying he was a happy drinker and not violent. I suppose not beating the children does go on the “pro” side of the chart, but is it really a parental quality worth lauding?

Regardless of why, my grandfather was out of the picture and died before me or any of my sisters was born. Neither of my parents drank much, although Dad occasionally got blotto at Mardi Gras and made ridiculous promises to us – we were going to get a pool, we were going to ride in a Mardi Gras parade, we were going to pave over the whole backyard so he didn’t have to cut the grass anymore. When Ash Wednesday would roll around and we would ask about these things, Dad would say he was just exaggerating. When we asked Mom what exaggerating meant, she said it meant that you were lying.

Mom and my sister came to visit me when I lived in Houston. Sitting in the kitchen one evening, Mom was in a rare self revelatory mood and began telling us about the early years Mom told usl stories that indicated life with Dad had not been perfect. Again, while I was shocked that she was actually saying all this out loud, I was not surprised by anything she was actually sharing. I did, after all, live with them the first 20 years of my life.

One of us, either my sister or me, asked why, if things had been so hard, did she stay in the marriage? Now, you have to realize, this was just a conversation, a blip on the radar screen, a snapshot of one moment in time. I know now that she stayed with my father because she loved him and that marriage is hard, really fucking hard, especially when you add kids to the mix.

But her response on that day fit the tone of that conversation and she said, “I stayed because of the children, because of you girls. And I don’t think it hurt any of you…except Claire. She was always intuitive and knew something was wrong.”

At this point in my life, I had already been through about 10+ years of therapy and 10+ years of sobriety. I knew damn well that although I had felt like it my whole life, I actually was not the crazy one in my family. I knew intellectually that I saw things for what they were, but that pill is hard to swallow when no one backs you up. If I see a lion in the room and everyone else denies it exists, well, eventually you start to question its existence…until it rips your arm off at the shoulder. And by then, no one feels sorry for you. They are all mad at you for agitating the lion.

I wasn’t mad at mom for her revelation that day. On the contrary, I was quite grateful. I had spent most of my life being told that everything was fine and that I was wrong. I was actually, whether she knew it or not, taught to ignore and mistrust my intuition. She didn’t want to see certain things. I remember once as a kid crying to her because Dad had yelled at me. She said, “Your Dad’s not yelling at you, he just has a loud voice.”

By this point, I was an old enough kid to know that this statement was ludicrous. He did not just have a loud voice. He had a very loud voice, a quick temper, high blood pressure and was a bit of a control freak who was obsessed with his career. (Yeah, so I got qualities from him, too, but that's another blog entry for another day.)

Mom made excuses for everyone, not just Dad. My dog Samantha once snapped at one of my nephews who was pulling his tail. My Dad was filming the birthday party where this occurred, so we got the whole incident on video and watched it in slow motion. It was very obvious that although Andrew had indeed pulled Sam’s hair, Sam did indeed snap at his head. She didn’t bite him, she just scared the shit out of all of us.

Mom leapt into action saying that Sam didn’t mean to bite Andrew. I actually guffawed when I heard it because I was amazed that Mom would actually stand up for my dog, who had snapped at me more than once. I think she was trying to protect me, as if I would somehow be damaged by Sam ‘s bad behavior or that it was some reflection on me. Sam was a dog who was annoyed by a child and she did what she knew how to do – she snapped at him. And she got the intended result, the boy quit pulling her hair.

After she and my sister went back to New Orleans, I called mom to thank her for validating what I had suspected for some time. She acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about and changed the conversation. Instead we talked about something else, maybe movies or books or my nieces and nephews.

And just like that, the window was shut. It was as if she even regretted divulging that much about herself.

She spent her childhood doing the eggshell dance, walking quietly so as not to disrupt things. She spent most of her life making excuses for her alcoholic father and sitting with anger towards him that had no release. She lived in a different time when feelings were stuffed and not discussed. I am not making excuses for her. On the contrary, I am seeing her for who she was - a beautiful and flawed child of God. Just like me.

Ramblings & Mermaids

2010-01-14T16:28:00.000-06:00

I bought my son a Swim and Splash Mermaid Dora doll today. Because he wanted one, that's why. And if anyone makes fun of him, I will beat the shit out of him or her with the hard plastic tail of said doll.

I really don't have any hard and fast rules for parenting, obviously, but there are things I encourage. I encourage him to be himself, even when I feel weird about it. And, I'll admit, I felt weird about the doll. I was really just worried another kid might tease him about it. Other kids were the bane of my existence when I was growing up and had I lived in a slightly more dysfunctional and violent household, I would have likely ended up on the evening news acting out my intense hatred of other kids. Little fuckers. I heard someone describe their childhood as, "we suffer in silence, until we erupt in violence." I just ate, drank and acted out in other unfortunate and inappropriate ways. Violence turned inward, I suppose.

I will send Max to school and I will encourage him to make friends and talk to adults that we know, but I will never let him fly alone as an unaccompanied minor. Ever. Period. There are shitty fucked up people in this world and a lot of them fly.

I will encourage him to tell me if anyone ever hurts him and then I will exact revenge as I deem appropriate at the time, preferably after a long pause and a lot of prayers.

I will, I hope, allow him to express himself creatively, as long as it does not hurt him or anyone else.

I will, no matter what, love him with my whole heart and soul and would, without a nano second of hesitation, give my own life to save his.

This is disorganized and rambling...a lot like my life right now.

Motherly Love

2010-01-09T14:31:00.001-06:00

By the last day of the Christmas vacation, I was on fire with worry...you name it, I was worried about it. I obsessed about Max's shyness, about his refusal to poop on the toilet and only in a pull-up, about my eating habits over the holidays, about my job, about my bank balance, about my husband, about my marriage, about my general sense of insecurity and anxiety. And by Sunday night, I cried myself to sleep missing my mother so much it hurt to the very core of my being.

I wanted her to tell me all was alright and to tell me some story to make me feel better, like the time she went to the doctor because she was so tired all the time (she had 4 kids under the age of 7) and he put her on amphetamines. She said she actually made curtains during that time before crashing. I wanted her to remind me of the time she was so tired (and tired of us, I presume) that she let my oldest sister, who at the time was probably 16, drive us to Wendy's in the middle of a hurricane because we wanted Frostys.

What I remember and appreciate most about my mother is not that she fed us well (we were allowed to eat whatever we wanted, pretty much whenever we wanted) or that she disciplined us (I don't ever remember her scolding me with any seriousness,) but that she actually seemed to like us...me. She liked me and she loved me like only a good mother can. She didn't care so much what we grew up to be (although, she was obsessed with us each having health insurance and she, I think, was happiest once we were all married off) but instead she just wanted to talk to us about good books and friends and our kids.

And when she was on her death bed and one of us asked her if she had any regrets, she said she wished she had been nicer. Frankly, I am not sure that would have been possible. It was those thoughts that carried me through my tears and into a fitful night's sleep next to my son, who, if nothing else, I hope knows he was loved more than I thought humanly possible. And when he is on that therapist's couch 20 years from now, I hope his biggest complaint is that I smothered him with love. I don't know how to do it any differently.

Our Own Private Zoo

2009-12-28T11:03:00.000-06:00

Not many folks at the zoo on a Sunday when the Saints are playing and it is 40 degrees.

But the animals were all out and about.

Even the Kimodo Dragon.

Renaissance Festival..Worth the Weirdos

2009-12-25T10:11:00.000-06:00

Donuts and Juice and Eyes

2009-12-25T10:08:00.000-06:00

Yum. Donuts and juice.

Hell Hath No Fury...Like a Grieving Woman

2009-12-16T14:54:00.000-06:00

My Memere, who was my mother's mother, told my sister and me in a rare moment of self revelation, that the reason her ex-husband (our late grandfather) had not lived to see any of us is because after she threw him out for dallying with his secretary, she put the gris gris on him. We were stunned and confused. First of all, no one had really confirmed for us before that Memere and the mysterious man who sired our mother and her 3 brothers were actually divorced. He was never mentioned and up until I was around 11 or 12, I thought perhaps Memere had just magically produced these children of hers without a mate. After all, she was a formidable woman who seemed capable of magic anyway. The fact that he was caught with his secretary and thrown from his house without the shoes on his feet was revolting and fascinating at the same time.

Our own parents had been married for decades by then and would remain married until my mother passed away. This concept of infidelity and divorce was something reserved for soap operas and the parents of kids who weren't Catholic. On top of this scandalous confirmation, we also learned our grandmother had the ability to put the gris gris on someone. This was perhaps more fascinating than her ability to make perfect iced tea and maintain a perpetually full candy bowl. I am convinced the makers of York Peppermint Patties suffered a drop in revenue after my Memere passed away.

Although nothing was ever said outright or direct (we are Southern women after all) we knew there was bad blood between my mother's father and, well, the rest of the people we knew. Even though he had been dead for years, no one ever mentioned his name or his existence. Ever. Isn't that almost worse than spoken wrath? This man was so unworthy, no one bothered to waste breath on him. And, he had already been dead for 20 years by this point. That, my friends, is fury. It is silent and insidious fury.

I thought about this in a moment of crushing grief the other night. Max and I were lying in bed (as we often are...most of child-rearing seems to be coaxing someone else to sleep) and he said, "Your mommy can't come to our house because she is in heaven with Sam."

"No, she can't," I said. "But I wish she could."

Oh how she would have loved Max and his little hands and feet and elbows and toes. And, despite her consuming distrust of men, she always started each little boy with a fresh slate. Her father's inability to be a good and decent one never interfered with her love of her little boy grandchildren. In fact, more than a clean start, she also armed each grandchild with a huge resource of excuses and grandmotherly defenses - "he didn't mean it!" or "he's just a boy!"

I miss my Memere and my Mother...I miss their humor and their pluck. I miss their love and their stories. My Memere lived to be 89. My Mom lived to be 70. I would have given anything to have another 19 years with my mother. I want to hear more stories. I want to eat Sunday dinner at her house and have her attend grandparents' days at school. I just want her to love me like no one else in the world could...or should.

Instead, I have to swallow that grief and turn it into love for my little boy. Gulp.

With Friends Like These…

2009-12-08T16:02:00.002-06:00

I smoked my first cigarette when I was 12 years old. A few of us from 7^th grade ended up at someone's house whose parents worked. Somehow we got our hands on a pack of smokes and a lighter that had been tampered with so that the flame singed your bangs. Frankly, I don't know how any of us lived past 15. But, there was one kid in the group whose brother or parent smoked and so he showed us what to do and the right way to smoke. I craved it before I had my first puff. I just knew that smoking and I were going to be BFFs. And we were, for a while.

In high school, I started smoking whenever I went out with friends and by my senior year, I was a smoker. So much so that my parents let me smoke on the front porch at home and mom even let me smoke in the car on the way to school. I really cannot believe she let me do this. She worked at the school and there was for sure some rule against smoking while in uniform, which I definitely was on the way to school. Still, I think because she used to smoke she knew how bad it is not to be able to smoke. Or maybe she thought if she let me do it, it would lose its appeal. Nope. I was hooked from the first whiff of the unlit cigarette.

I tried quitting over the years and would succeed for a few months here and there. I always fell back into it in the same way, I'd be out at a party or at a bar and would decide to have just one. And my intentions would be good, I would swear I was going to have just one cigarette or just smoke that night. I would vow to be a social smoker or to only smoke on the weekends or to never smoke in the car. No matter what the promise, I would break it, tearfully breaking down and becoming once again a pack-a-day gal.

After the first time I quit, I could not go back to Benson and Hedges Menthol Lights, which is what I had smoked all through high school. For some reason, my taste changed and I started smoking Marlboro Lights. All the cool chicks smoked Marlboro Lights anyway. I always had a hard pack of Marlboro Lights in my purse along with multiple forms of fire – lighter, booklet matches, box matches. To me, there is nothing worse than having cigarettes but no flame. I happily smoked like a chimney even after I quit drinking. In fact, I think I smoked more and enjoyed it more after I quit drinking. It filled the void and I if anyone gave me crap about smoking, I would always say, "I don't drink, so let me have one vice!"

But, life went on and by the mid nineties, smoking was really socially unacceptable. Gone were the days of smoking in the halls of the buildings of my college campus. When I was a bank teller in the early nineties, I remember we would smoke at our teller stations after the bank had closed. The girl next to me was pregnant and would complain, but we would just ignore her. By 1996, there were indoor smoking bans in all public places and my sister's kids would point at me and make faces when I lit up. I had also met my now husband and he said he wanted to quit.

So, in 1996, we quit. Well, he quit. I lasted about 4 weeks and broke down. I smoked again for about another week and then quit for good. Well, for 9 years.

And then came 2005. Fucking 2005. The year of Hurricane Katrina and Mom's death and the absolute chaos that ensued. It was 6 months after the storm that I finally broke down. I was in New York City for work. I had left Max for the first time and Mom was dying and everything was a mess. I was in the hotel room and there was a mini bar. In my mind I had three options: drink, smoke or sleep with a stranger. I am not sure why my brain works the way it does, but at that moment in my life, I honestly felt like those were my only three options. It never occurred to me to call a friend or eat a donut or got for a run.

So, I did the mental math…if I drank, I was definitely going to smoke and very likely sleep with a stranger. If I slept with a stranger, I was for sure going to smoke and drink to complete the Trifecta of Shame. But, smoking would not lead to the other two.

So, in my mind, I chose the option with the least amount of collateral damage and domino effect. But, I knew, when I walked down to that Walgreens and bought a $7.52 pack of Marlboro Lights that I was not having just one and I was not just going to smoke that night. I knew I was going back into the arms of a kidnapper. I was re-entering my own private version of Stockholm Syndrome.

Today, I have about 13 months off the dirty sticks. I smoked like a fiend for about a year. And then the start and stop cycle started all over again. I switched to American Spirit Cigarettes because they taste like shit and burn slower. I was thinking it would be easier to quit when it tastes like shit. It wasn't. I grew to love American Spirit. I think I could grow to love any brand of cigarette. I am not choosy. I am your basic nicotine whore.

It was being in New York City that prompted me to start smoking again and it was there that I decided to quit again. They were running these public service ads that showed young people, like my age, smoking through the holes in their necks and missing huge parts of their jaws.

My BFF, it turns out, has a dark side. The shame and guilt were just too much to bear. Smoking had become a cross, a burden, like an abusive husband. No one could "understand" why I chose to keep doing it. And I got tired of not having a very good explanation. And, I suppose, it had served its purpose. I didn't drink and I didn't sleep with a stranger. So, I let it go. We broke up. I hope for good this time.

Where Art Thou Next Husband?

2009-11-29T10:40:00.001-06:00

Mike and I took Max to the Renaissance Festival on Friday. Max is the kind of kid who wears and cape and carries a wand wherever he goes, so it seemed the right thing to do. Although, I will tell you, the Renaissance Festival creeps me out a bit. It's not so much the turkey legs and the jousting as it is the personalities of the people who attend and work there. They are, I have figured out, a highly sexualized people who are overly friendly and, for the most part, ugly.

This is why I decided, while chomping on a BBQ turkey sandwich that no doubt was loaded with ptomaine, and avoiding eye contact with a jester giving out "free" hugs, that if Mike and I ever split, I am going to find my next husband at the Renaissance Festival. Let me tell you why.

First, in the bizarro world of Medieval Wannabes, I am Miss America. I not only have a full set of white teeth, I also weigh less than 375 pounds. By comparison, I am Heidi Klum and while I am not frightening, let's face it, searching for a husband in South Beach would likely yield me Versace's killer at best.

Second, these people are obnoxiously flirty in a creepy and dirty way. I am not sure how this will help me rope a husband, except that it would take an overly aggressive man to get me to marry again. For some reason, the men who work the festival circuit have this wacko level of sexual assertiveness. I kid you not, I got hit on twice by the men working the rides...while my husband was in ear shot. Weird, creepy and strangely flattering.

Finally, I already have a kid. Most men balk at that. Who wants to raise another man's kid? These people are so freakishly friendly and accepting of unusual situations, that I think having a kid actually raises my stakes in Ye Olde World of Creepy Carnies.

Of course, this is all in jest. I could never marry again as no one could ever live up to my current husband's level of patience and tolerance, not even a knight or a king or a freak with bad teeth.

All in all, our day trip to the Medieval State Fair was expensive (including the speeding ticket, this trip will top $175) and enlightening. If I ever decide to drop out of society and wander aimlessly with a troop of misfits and big busted women, I know where to find my people.

The Long Road Home - Part 1

2009-11-18T19:33:00.001-06:00

I told you of the time I moved to New York with a guy I met in a bar, but did I tell you how I got home? No? Well, it was a wild ride. You see, the move to New York with That Boy I met in a bar, not surprisingly, did not end well. I was in the throes of alcoholism and he was, well, I think maybe just scared and regretful. Whatever the motivation, I got pissed at him one night because, even though I had moved out, I thought it rude to invite a girl over, have some fun, then tell her you have to go to work, but really go to a bar to meet another girl. How do I know he did this? Because like any crazed ex-girlfriend in the throes of active alcoholism, I followed him.

And when I walked into the bar and saw him standing there casually drinking his beer talking to some girl after spending the first part of the evening with me, I freaking lost it. For God’s sake, I could still taste him on me and here he was chatting up some Long Island skank who couldn’t pronounce an “-er” if her life depended on it. So I slapped his beer cup on the bottom so that the beer splashed into his face, I called him a dick and I left. I walked right to his car and slashed the two tires against the curb. Classy, huh?

What do you expect? I was 21. And did I mention I was in the throes of alcoholism? Yeah, that combination kind of makes you a little irrational. I then got into my Toyota Tercel and decided to head home that very night. I made it to somewhere in PA before it hit me that all my stuff was back in my apartment in Long Island and I didn’t have enough money to make it all the way home. This was the early 90’s before cell phones, so I stopped at a pay phone and called my Dad collect. I told him the awful and terrible things That Boy had done and that I wanted to come home. He told me to go back to Long Island and that he and Mom would come get me. They would bring their van and drive up so we could bring my stuff home. Even at 4am with 2 Mountain Dews in me, this seemed like a better and more rational plan.

My sister also decided to fly up early before my parents came. She would commiserate with me and help me pack my stuff. I was late picking her up at the airport because I was telling That Boy goodbye on the beach. Again, do I need to tell you my state of mind? None of my decisions at that time in my life was rooted in anything other than the desire to physically be with That Boy. I must remember this when my own child is a teen or young adult…it all made perfect sense to me then…and in some strange ways, to me now as well.

I got lost on the way to the airport. By the time I got there, she was waiting alone by baggage claim. She had the airport page me several times. I would have been furious, but she was genuinely concerned, which made me sad. I almost wished she would have hated me. It would have validated what I felt about myself.

She didn’t hate me. She went with me to the bar and made it seem charming instead of pathetic that I drank every night with a dispatcher from my job, who was 20 years older than me, 40 pounds overweight and obviously in love with me. She genuinely liked my married friend whose house I hung out at every night because I had nowhere else to go. I would sometimes watch her kid while her and her husband went out to see a movie. I think I ate dinner at their house every night for 4 months.

I started writing this thinking it was going to be funny, but so far it really isn’t, is it?

Anyway, after a series of crazy mis-steps including my parents’ van breaking down, my lame attempt to kill myself by taking a handful of Actifed (my sinuses were VERY clear the next day) and my parents’ eventual departure in my Tercel, Emily and I packed up the van and headed home to New Orleans. My few precious belongings were packed into the newly repaired van, we had a couple packs of cigarettes and a map. We were set.

All we had to do was get out of New York, which is not as easy as it seems. Yes, Long Island is jutting out into the Ocean so it seems logical to head West, but then you have to eventually cut through Manhattan…or at least we did, and that is where things got hairy for a bit, but them we were on the open road, headed away from That Boy, that city and my heart.

To get out of the city, if I recall correctly, we had to get on the Jersey turnpike. As we approached the turnpike, I told my sister, who was in the passenger seat navigating, that when That Boy and I had gone to Florida to visit his father, that the toll was something like $12. We had that thought in our minds when we approached the turnpike toll booth and that guy said “50.” I went nuts first, “Fifty? Fifty? Are you fucking nuts? What the fuck is wrong with this god-damned state?” Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, my sister is fumbling for her purse, asking the man if he would take a check because we don’t have that much cash.

Finally, after no doubt considering calling the cops or the nut house, the toll booth guys calmly says, “50 cents.”

“Oh,” I say sheepishly and handed him 2 quarters.

I am thankful the van had Louisiana plates and that perhaps he attributed our stupidity to all the dirt we eat down here below the Mason Dixon line.

Stop the Ride, I Want to Get Off

2009-11-15T11:35:00.000-06:00

My father is in the ICU recovering from lung cancer surgery and my husband has pneumonia. Oh, and work is insane. Last night, all I wanted was to lie in bed and read a magazine by myself for 15 minutes. I wanted 15 minutes to myself to lose myself in pictures of anorexic women wearing impossibly high heels with impossibly perfect bodies and lives. For some reason, mindless fashion magazines make me feel better about myself. But the stars weren't aligned, and instead, after spending all day with my napless son and the evening visiting my father in ICU, my son peed in his bed and could not get back to sleep.

Normally. I am gentle and loving and snuggly, but I wanted him to sleep in his bed. I wanted to be alone in my bed to do the aforementioned mind-numbing check out with a $3.00 magazine. But I was needed by a bunch of people I love, so instead I lay in bed next to my son, thinking of the storm, and my mother and how nothing is easy anymore. I squandered my youth and the free time I had before I grew up and became a parent. I let resentments and fear dictate my relationships with people about whom I care deeply, and now they are gone or dying.

Life is short and it is moving ever faster each day. I am an old fart...I honestly believe youth is wasted on the young, I sing out loud to the music played at the grocery store and this morning I told my son to stop what he was doing because he was going to put an eye out.

Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

Trick or Treat

2009-11-04T18:11:00.002-06:00

My son has an active imagination. He talks to the characters from his TV shows, even when the TV is off. He has introduced himself to strangers as "Caillou" more than once and at 4, he can spell his name and Dora's name. So, when he said he wanted to be Snow White for Halloween, I came close to saying yes and getting him the costume from Target, but, children are cruel and pictures last forever, especially when I post them on Facebook, which I would, so I decided to suggest a different costume. He decided to be a witch. I got him a cape, a witch hat, a broom and a wand. He made me open the want in Target before we checked out. It was silver with a pink bow and silver star. By the time we got home, he was wearing the cape and the hat and riding the broom. He wore this outfit for 2 weeks leading up to Halloween. He would "fly" around the house telling us and his imaginary audience that we would never break his spells. By the time Halloween Day arrived, I had to tape the star to the end of the wand and the broom was missing all of its bristles.

Still, I figured he would really get into this dressing up for candy deal. He even insisted on using a basket to collect his candy instead of a bag. By the time we left the front gate, I was holding his cape and two blocks later, I was carrying the hat and the basket, too. I know, shocking, right? This is a child who routinely acts out Snow White and the Seven Dwarves when it is on. It is his own private toddler-appropriate Rocky Horror Picture Show, replete with props collected from around the house – a plastic goblet, an apple, a plastic dagger. It made me wonder if he was self-conscious about being dressed up or if, because everyone else was also dressed up, it lost its appeal. And with that thought, I was transported back to 4^th grade. If this was a movie, you'd hear a whooshing sound.

As a child, as I believe I have established in earlier posts, I was not exactly popular. I was pudgy, wore glasses, corrective shoes and had braces. Oh, and did I mention I was pathologically shy and self-conscious? School was torturous. I spent most of my time trying to get out of going to school and once I was there, I spent all my time trying to figure out how to get back home. In fourth grade, I made a friend named Lorna. Lorna was beautiful – long hair, slender, tiny little features and she was nice. While the other kids ignored me (thankfully, because the attention they gave was much worse) Lorna would sit and talk with me. In fact, it was with Lorna that I had my first non-mom ESP experience. Not to divert too much here, but my mother always said I had ESP because I knew what she was going to say before she said it and we often dreamed the same dream. Lorna was the first person who was not my mother that this happened with. She told me her brother had to have surgery and before she said why, I knew already. It happened often to me as a child, but not so much anymore.

Anyway, Lorna invited me to her house for a Halloween party. It may be that it was a Halloween/Birthday party, but the details are fuzzy. You see, when someone invites you to a Halloween party, wouldn't you think it was a costume party? I mean, that's a natural assumption, especially when you are 9. So when Mom dropped me off at the party, I was wearing a black leotard, black tights, red shorts, suspenders, a tail, mouse ears and I had whiskers drawn on my face. I think I also had on white gloves. Clever, huh? If you're wondering, yes this was the same year as the Wonder Woman bathing suit incident. What can I say, I was socially retarded.

Apparently, none of the other 9 year old girls from our class got the memo about costumes. And thus, I was the only child not in regular play clothes. I was the only child wearing black ballet slippers. I was the only child masquerading as a mouse. I shrugged it off, pretended it was totally normal for me to be wearing this and that it was just my Saturday attire. I went into the bathroom and removed the tail and the suspenders and the ears. Mom was already gone so I could not feign an illness. I guess I could have, but it didn't seem right to leave the one party I was invited to. Once all the other girls were there, we went up to Lorna's room to hang out. She opened her presents. I gave her a placemat that you could decorate with your name and stuff. And then we all sat around talking acting naturally, ignoring the fact that one us us had mouse whiskers painted on her face.

After a few hundred days of that torture, we went downstairs where we bobbed for apples. I prayed that I would drown in the bucket and end my misery. Instead, my mouse nose smeared all over my face making me look more like a roughed up mime that Mickey Mouse. I don't remember how the party ended. I do remember that Lorna and I were not friends after that. In my memory, she moved away. But I am not sure that is accurate.

I want to find the right balance with Max. I want him to be himself and talk to Dopey and Sneezy as if they were in the room. I want him to feel free to walk to the beat of his own drummer, but there is the part of me that wants to shield him from the pain of growing up, too. I know that in reality, I can't so that and, if I am totally honest, I don't want to do that. I am who I am today because of the events in my past. I love who I am today. I can say that honestly. Sure, it took 12 years of therapy and about 70,000 12-step meetings, but I can say it. Dammit.

My mother loved me. I know that to the very core of my being. She knew I was different. She knew I didn't fit in. But she sent me out into the world and loved me anyway. I wish I could call her and tell her about Max. But I know what she would tell me, "just love him…that is your job." And I do.

Traditions & Values

2009-10-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

My sister and I used to sit on the driveway of our childhood home and smoke pot with the boys we were either dating or friends with or wanting to date. We would do this while our parents were home, which is kind of nuts, if you think about it. Yes, they were tired and their bedroom was on the other side of the house, but really, it's pretty ballsy to sit next to the kitchen window in a haze of pot smoke.

I thought about this while touring a fancy pants private school in Metairie with that same sister. We both have 4 year old boys and are looking at schools and deciding where to send them. As I ran the numbers (or shall I say, freaked out over the numbers) calculating the tuition per month, asked questions like, "What is the teacher to student ratio?" and "How much time does each child spend in each center?" and other other questions that made me seem like a rational parent, I kept thinking about the time my sister was driving me and 2 of our friends to Mt Carmel one Saturday for a drama club meeting.

She was driving our Mom's red Malibu station wagon and had cut off a bus right before taking a sharp turn into the horse shoe drive in front of the school. She had to have made that turn at 25 mph. Sr. Lawrence came running down the steps from the library wondering who had been in a car accident. Although I was used to her driving and unfazed by our near death experience, the girls in the car with us were pretty miffed and unamused. Oh well, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

And now I am acting like this pre-k school decision is akin to pressing the button that ignites the bomb that explodes a country. I am prepared (well, not prepared, but reluctantly able) to shell out almost as much money as I made my first year teaching high school to send my child to pre-k. PRE-KINDERGARTEN.

And still, when he is 16, he will probably smoke pot right under my nose and drive our car like it is a bumper car.

And so, just like the 81 year old private school, a fine tradition continues.

Who's On First?

2009-10-24T15:04:00.000-05:00

Saturdays, for a long time after Max was born, were hard. "Work" is easier than being the parent of a small child full time. And don't let anyone tell you differently. Unless you are a ditch digger or an executioner, being a full-time parent to a child under the age of 4 is exponentially harder and more exhausting.

But now that Max is getting older, it's easier and more fun. Today we toured a potential school for Pre-k next year. It is beautiful. The grounds are fantastic, the teacher to student ratio is 1:8 and the staff is loving and nurturing. I teared up during the tour because I was sad I didn't get a chance to attend a school like that and also because the majority of the kids in America don't attend schools like that. I can afford to pay the tutition. Because I work full-time at a job that is easier than being a full-time parent, but pays much better and allows me to pay other people to do that hard job.

Life is weird, isn't it?

Come Fly WIth Me

2009-10-23T15:48:00.001-05:00

I am thinking my new take on the blog is going to be that I post more often and say less. You see, I was trying to produce a once a week masterpiece. Alright, masterpiece is a little over the top, but something more than a blurb or a link to something else that is funny. I have become a blog snob, I guess. Or maybe the English teacher in me is coming out and afraid I will be graded on each post. In a way, the comments are the grades. Yes, I am that shallow and egotistical that my mood is effected by the number on the scale the type of comments I get on my blog. I am witty, but you didn't think I was emotionally mature, did you?

On Wednesday I had to fly to Atlanta for a business meeting. I put on a nice pair of pants, blouse, heels and jacket. Max saw me and said, "ooooh Mommy, you have your fancy clothes on. Are you going on a plane?"

Yes, I travel a lot for work and yes, my son probably thinks I am a flight attendant.

Some days, I think I could step into the flight attendant job with absolutely no training or orientation and do it as well as a veteran. This is not because I think the job is easy. Au contraire, mon frere! I think it is as painful and being a crack whore, perhaps even less rewarding. But, I have been on so many flights in the past 6 years that I can practically recite from memory the pre-take off speech.

I, sadly, hate to travel. Airplanes smell like urine and coffee grounds. Thank you very much, but I have enough of both of those smells in my on the ground life. And, I am pretty sure the foam on the standard airplane seat is not only wafer thin, but teeming with a thousand different types of germs and bacteria.

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

If only I had a handy bag to put it in.

Buh-bye, now.

Praise Be Gatorade

2009-10-21T20:57:00.000-05:00

Doctor: You have a stomach virus. You just need to take it easy, rest, drink fluids and take Tylenol for the aches and pains.

Me: You’re wrong. I am dying from some terminal illness – ripped up intestines or a fast moving cancer. I have been sick for 4 days! I will surely be dead by tomorrow morning and I will instruct my husband to sue you for every penny you have for mis-diagnosing me.

OK, I didn’t actually say that, but I thought it as I nodded my aching head and paid my $25 co-pay for the esteemed medical advice of “drink plenty of Gatorade and rest.” Damn you Dr. Of the Moment at Ochsner Urgent Care facility. I am dying, can’t you see this? Did you not go to medical school? I looked up my symptoms on the symptom checker at WedMD.com and yes, it listed stomach virus as a possible cause, but it also listed colon cancer, appendicitis and tubal pregnancy. It could just as easily be that my pancreas has exploded and you just missed it.

Still, I drove myself home, quietly weeping at the thought of my young son being raised without a mother. Sure, he would have anything he wanted because of the medical malpractice windfall, but he would miss out on the warm embrace of his loving, although somewhat neurotic mother. My husband would be lost without me there to advise him. It’s true that he is the one who actually keeps the household humming along, but it is me who sits back and provides the running commentary and critique. What would he do without my guidance?

I stopped at the store and picked up 2 bottles of Gatorade, a box of Immodium, and 3 cans of soup. It was less than my co-pay. As I struggled to get the unusually heavy bag of goods in to my car, I fought back tears of exhaustion and frustration. Why? Why does God see fit to take me so young?

Back at home, my husband instructed me to lie on the couch and he would make the soup and get our son from daycare. He might as well, as soon he will have to do everything, I thought to myself as I settled in to watch the marathon of The Real Housewives of Atlanta on Bravo.

After moaning all night on the couch, and dozing off finally in a Tylenol PM-induced come, I woke up Friday morning…and felt better.

I suppose Gatorade does have healing powers.

The Fine Line Between Crazy and Crazier

2009-10-06T12:30:00.009-05:00

I spent a good chunk of my teen years being Emily's sister. She is three years older than me and beautiful and smart and talented…you get the picture. Oh, and did I mention she was sweet and kind, too. So, when I was a freshman in high school and she was a senior and she suggested we double date to go to the Winter Formal I jumped at the chance. Her date, John, was a guitarist in a local band called The Socials that played the CYO circuit. He was what the kids call "cool." I was not.

I managed to procure a pity date and a dress. The date, Gary, was a friend from junior high who I am sure accepted the invite because his mother made him. He was sick the night of the dance but came anyway, thank God. He may have been burning up with fever, but he was there. The dress wasn't really a dress, but a long black taffeta skirt paired with a white blouse. I looked a bit like a witch with big hair.

John drove since Gary and I were only 14 at the time. Plus, he had a convertible Volkswagen Rabbit. I know what you're thinking, how cool could this guy be? Way cool.

Emily, I am sure, did my make-up and hair and likely instructed me how to pose in the pictures. She was pretty excellent like that. Next to her, I looked like the youngest sister-wife on a polygamous compound, but she didn't seem to care. She wore a blue taffeta off- the -shoulder number, probably in a size 2.

We went to a Chinese Restaurant before the dance. No doubt Gary and I never said a word. I was terrified. Sure, he was just a friend, but this was a date. A DATE.

You might be wondering why I remember all these details. Emily and I discussed them this past Saturday night on the way to The Socials reunion concert at Carrollton Station. Driving there, Emily reminded me of the double date. She remembered that while at the restaurant, a little boy got stuck in his chair and John rescued him. I had forgotten that part. I was too embroiled in my own self-pity and fear to notice the other people on the planet.

I remembered that John's car got broken into while we were at the dance and his radio was stolen. I also remembered that I was exhausted by the end of the evening because I was tense the whole night from fear, self consciousness and being in a mild state of panic.

Therefore, my level of enthusiasm on the car ride to the reunion show was not stellar. I felt 14 again. I was Emily's little sister. I wasn't dressed like a teen fundamentalist, but still, I felt like Julia Child next to my sister. She is effortlessly beautiful and petite. I am big and loud and feel like a giant next to her.

I am also 40 years old and pretty successful in my career, but somehow those aspects took a back seat Saturday night. Instead of a successful businesswoman and mother, I reverted to that 14 year old girl whose pity date had walking pneumonia and whose skirt was too tight around the waist.

We listened to the band and they really sounded quite good for guys who had not played together in over 20 years. But it was loud and smoky and I kind of just wanted to go home and go to bed after, but we decided to wait and say hello to the guys in the band after. I figured it would go like this:

Emily: Hello, it is so good to see you! Blah, blah, blah…witty and charming quips.

Band Member #1: Emily! Oh you look so beautiful, you are so wonderful, I remember everything about you and I adore you.

Emily: And you remember my little sister, Claire?

Band Member #1: You had a sister?

I wasn't upset about this; it is simply how I expected it to be. It was how it always was, right?

But, it was not how it panned out. All 4 members remembered my name and who I was and did not need an introduction. They were kind and inviting and charming and, well, regular people. Their wives were there supporting them and cheering them on. They have kids and lives and grew up, just like me.

I had appointed myself second chair; I was not elected into that role. I spent my high school years pretending I didn't care when I did, and acting like I hated everyone when I didn't. I feared everyone and it always came out wrong.

On the way home from the concert, I felt a little sad that I have spent so much of my life here on this earth boxing myself in and comparing myself to the people around me. Abysmal self-esteem is a difficult place from which to escape. Its vine-like grasp is constantly trying to suck me back into that dark place. In truth, I am comfortable there.

But the sadness lasted only a moment, and then it was gone. I am in the here and now and I am, today, the woman I always wanted to be. I took a circuitous route that involved lots of ugly dresses and poor choices, but I got here all the same.

I am still Emily's little sister, but today, I am honored to be in that role. It is one of the many roles that I cherish.

Just for kicks, I unearthed my journal from my high school years. I did this for 2 reasons: 1) I figure reading my old journal entries would give me insight into my mindset back then and 2) Emily swears I dated one of the guys in the band, but I have no memory of it.

I did learn some things about teenage me. I was obsessed with boys. Sure, every girl at that age (well, every straight girl) is obsessed with boys, but seriously, I was obsessed. Like, future stalker obsessed. And, every time I would "fall in love" with a new boy, I would start my journal entry with "I am in love with William James Smith*" I listed out their full names like a string of serial killers. (*Names have been changed to protect the innocent victims of my "love.")

Also, I had some serious anger issues. Frankly, I am shocked I didn't end up spending senior year at some institution getting my GED using fat crayons instead of sharp pencils. Daddy issues abound and if anyone at my high school had found the journal, I would have been prosecuted a la' Columbine.

I also had body dysmorphic disorder. I still have that, but I only weighed 115 pounds in high school and thought I was obese. These are the words I used in the diary, "I am fucking obese." Oddly, my writing style has changed very little over the past 25 years.

Anyway, Emily was right. I did "date" one of the guys in the band. And by date, I mean I wrote in my journal that I was in love with him (his full name of course) and then a few pages/days later, I wrote that he was a jerk and that I was now in love with some other wonderful boy. Relationships back then were so easy and brief, weren't they? Now it's all, we have to stay together and make this work.

I also found an entry that detailed my plan for running away from home, which I suppose I scrapped because I did not ever do it. And, I was under the impression that Emily and I were best buddies all through high school, but even poor Emily did not escape the wrath of teenage me, the serial boy lover/stalker.

All I can say is thank goodness for time and distorted memories.

The Burden of Ego and Poor Spatial Relations

2009-09-25T11:53:00.001-05:00

My blog is haunting me. I made a promise to myself last January that I would post once a week. It was a promise based on a bruised ego. I had tried to get my blog linked to some blogger website and they sent back a rather snippy reply about my infrequent posts. I crafted a lengthy email about the virtues of quality over quantity and where they could put their fancy pants blogger website, but never actually hit send. I find sometimes hitting send on an email like that is the virtual equivalent to kicking myself when I am already down.

A lot of my extreme statements and pledges are borne of my ego. I had a bad chicken experience once and said out loud that I would never eat meat again. My husband laughed at me so I didn’t eat meat for six years. Recently, I gave up sweets for lent and have enjoyed the deprivation so much, I have not gone back to them. Well, there was one piece of doberge cake on my birthday, but I spent the next 3 days crying and choking back vomit so I haven’t indulged since.

With this “post once a week” pledge, I am realizing it is much easier to NOT do something for a long period of time than to actually DO something for a long period of time on a regular basis. Sadly, I have never been pissed or threatened enough to say, “Damn you, I WILL get me Master’s Degree just to prove you wrong.” But, sadly, I have been stupid enough to say to Jet Blue Airlines, “Fuck you and your little TVs! I will NEVER fly you again.” Man, I miss those little TVs.

I heard a guy say the other day, “MY ego is so big, it tells me I don’t have an ego.” I love that. I have convinced myself at different times that I am some sort of misunderstood genius, a modern day Mother Theresa or just plan better than you. I am a fool is what I am. But, I at least know that, so I suppose I am progressing.

Max’s 4^th birthday party was last Saturday. At 4, when you invite 20 friends, you have a party for 60 people because the parents come, too. I have to do this every so often just to prove to myself that 1200 square feet is a fine sized house for a family of three, but not so much for a crowd of 60. The spacewalk outside provided some space for the kids, but then they all came inside for cake. We have a tiny table and 4 chairs so the kids had to stand while we sang Happy Birthday and then sat on the floor in the living room to eat the cake and ice cream.

One of the Dads was lamenting our decision to have kids eat ice cream and cake on our rug, but changed his tune to mild disgust when I said, “You have no idea what that rug has been through. We used to have a 16 year old dog that would shed and molt all over it.”

Max had a nice time at the party, but he really is not a big crowd kid. He really wanted everyone to go home so he could chill and watch is new DVDs. He carried the 2 DVDs around with him the whole party in anticipation of being alone with a sippy cup of juice, kicked back in his room singing along with The Backyardigans. He is truly his father’s son…and mine. I like parties, but I prefer to be alone.

Before they came to get the Spacewalk, the three of us had one last jump and a fight with the balls. I lost and at one point yelled to Mike, “No fair, you have good aim and you throw hard.” Even Kenny got in the spacewalk and played with us. He is a good dog. Sit. Stay…please?

That night, in bed, for the brief few minutes Max managed to keep his eyes open, we talked about his party. I asked him what his favorite part was and he replied, “The cake.”

Hmmm, a boy after my own heart.

And then he said, “On my next birthday, I will be 5”

Yes, my sweet boy, you will. But, let me enjoy 4 for a little while longer…it’s all moving so fast.

Work, Work, Work! Busy, Busy, Busy!

2009-09-21T19:58:00.000-05:00

I am afraid I won't have much time this week to devote to my blog entry. My list of accomplishments and to-do's is too big and consuming for me to spend time indulging in thoughtful analysis of my life or the world around me. A few of the things I accomplished this week are:

1) Being a complete and total bitch to everyone around me for no reason at all, especially to those I love the most like my husband and son.

2) Talking shit about people I don't like and a good chunk of the people I do like to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen, all in a piss-poor attempt to make myself feel better.

3) Acting entitled and put-out when my job actually required some hard work.

4) Taking everything personally, since I am indeed the center of the universe.

My to-do list for this week is chock full of more exciting things for me to do, including:

1) Spending an inordinate amount of time consumed with self-loathing, fear and regret.

2) Pondering my mis-spent youth and all the wrong roads I took along the way.

3) Continuing to take everything that happens around me personally.

4) Being completely self-centered....even when I manage to make myself think about you, all I really think about is how you affect me.

5) Trying to get my super-sized ego to shut the fuck up.

And so, you can see why the blog has to take a backseat to these important activities. I am just busy, busy, busy!

I have to run, I have some more bad decisions and years' past conversations to re-play in my head.

SERENITY NOW!

2009-09-15T08:45:00.003-05:00

I am sitting on a plane, if you can even call it that, at the Chicago airport, waiting to find out if we will be able to actually take off in this heap of junk they are dangerously calling our plane. Apparently, the previous pilot "picked up a rock" on the way in and it has damaged the engine. What an interesting choice of words, "picked up a rock." It makes it sound like he swung by Fresno on the way in for rock and meth.

I am bitter and trying to make light of my total annoyance by being cynically sarcastic, but I hate when I am like this. This is when I want to be completely Zen and ok with sitting on a fucking runway for god knows how long, but I am guess I am not that evolved, because right now, I hate everyone….except the 2 year old girl sitting across the aisle watching Wall-E. Her name is Celeste, which was my mother's name.

You know how some people have this whole WWJD – What Would Jesus Do thing going on? I have the same bizarre complex (sans a neoprene bracelet) with my sweet dead mother and what she would do in these awful situations. My mother, I dare say, likely had more patience than Jesus. She wouldn't have over turned the tables in front of the church (I am pretty sure that was a scene I saw in a movie about Jesus.) No, she would have hugged them and suggested something else, or maybe not even done that. She might just have browsed their wares and moved on with a smile.

Anyway, as I was sitting here contemplating whether going bonkers on this flight would increase or decrease my travel time, the young mother sitting across the aisle from me gently told Celeste to sit down. Fuck. Why does Mom's voice have to hover over me challenging me to be a better person? Can't I just bitterly slam things around, sigh and grumble about being stuck in Chicago on a Friday at 3pm? Do I really have to consider the people around me and their pain as well? Christ, must I be grateful for what I have?

And, why can't United Airlines just get us another fucking plane? No, instead they are going to have us sit for an hour while they figure out whether they can or cannot fix the plane, and then, and only then, will they begin the process of finding us another plane. Seems to me if you did these things in tandem, then there would be a lot less sitting around.

The pilot just announced that they think they can fix the plane with some sandpaper and files. And that it will take about 25 minutes. I feel so comforted. Again, I wonder what would happen if I stood up and started screaming? Would I get removed from the plane? And if I did get removed, would I be put on another plane that won't crash mid-air because it is held together with superglue and sandpaper?

Now the mother sitting next to me is getting on my nerves. She keeps asking Celeste if she wants to take a nap on her lap. Really? How's that working for you? Are you seriously expecting her to say, "why yes Mother, I would like for you to shut down my portable DVD player so that I may curl up in your lap and gently and quietly drift off."

I am beginning to hate myself even more as the minutes tick by. My ass is throbbing from sitting squished on planes since 11am this morning. I want to be home. There is no place like home. And it is where I want to be right now.

****************************************************

I made it home, with very little fanfare actually. The plane left kind of late, but in reality, arrived not as late as it left. How does that happen?

Anyway, that night, while lying in the tub, at home, alone, I started thinking about regrets and lapses of judgment. In spite of my desire to rant and rave on the plane, I did not actually do it. But, I have done and said truly awful things in my life. The power of words is immense, and those uttered in a fit of anger are like escaped wild dogs, wreaking havoc on unsuspecting bystanders.

Anger is a dubious luxury, or so says one of my favorite books on the topic. For years I really believed that goal was never to get angry. I suppose had I kept on with that insane belief, I would have ended up like Kramer on Seinfeld after his failed "Serenity Now" anger management plan. I would have either become detached from myself and everyone else or simply blown my head off in one final "fuck you" to the world.

But thankfully, growth and maturity are available to anyone who wants it, and I realized along the way that I cannot avoid anger, but I can keep my freaking mouth shut.

Sadly, as quickly as I learned that, I forgot it. So then I had to re-learn it. But I forgot it again. And so the cruel, almost daily cycle continues, presumably for my lifetime. I keep getting back up on the horse, even after it throws me and stomps on my head. Fucking horse.

Brush, Floss, Rinse…Repeat

2009-09-08T10:36:00.002-05:00

I brought Max to the dentist this morning. His appointment was for 8am, which is good because it is the first appointment of the day which means you don't have to wait, right? Well, that is what I thought and was getting more and more pissed as the minutes ticked on…8:06…8:11…8:16. I told my husband that I would give them until 8:20 and then not only were we leaving, but I was going to give them a piece of my mind. Dammit.

At 8:20 I put down my Good Housekeeping and swaggered up to the counter. The girl behind the desk looked like a monster to me. Had you asked me to describe her, I would have told you she had beady yellow eyes and I would have intimated she had some personality disorder. "We're leaving. This is ridiculous! We are the first appointment of the day and we are waiting for 20 minutes! I have to go to work, my son has to go to school. Just cross us off the list. We're in a recession for Christ's sake! I can find a new dentist faster than I could brush my damn teeth."

I know I rambled on with some more obnoxious things that I had been rehearsing in my head for the past 20 minutes. No doubt I mentioned that dental care is the first thing people drop in a recession and I can only pray to God I did not mention that dentists have an unusually high suicide rate.

I got a calm blank stare back from the girl behind the counter. She placidly looked at her computer screen and told me my appointment was for 8:30 not 8:00. She also told me their first appointment of the day is always 8:30 not 8:00. Just as I was about to respond, the other nurse called Max into the dentist's office, so I just walked away from her and into the dentist office.

Max jumped up in the chair and the lady was very nice to him. He showed her the DVD he was carrying (yes, some kids carry stuffed animals and blankets, my TV junkie carries DVDs) and explained to her who Caillou is and why he is so awesome.

I just stood there feeling like a giant ass hole.

After about 5 minutes, once Max was settled in the chair, I walked back to the receptionist desk and up to the monster behind the desk. Upon further inspection, she indeed did not have beady yellow eyes and that personality disorder I thought I saw was actually a detached calmness.

"Um, I just wanted to apologize for my snarky attitude earlier. I am sorry I was so rude." I wanted to go on about how they must have told me the appointment was for 8:00 and it really was their fault, but at that moment, a power greater than me blessed me with the gift of brevity, or what I like to call, "the-shut-the-fuck-ups."

She smiled, and said it was ok. Again, I mumbled some more "I'm sorrys" and ambled back to the dentist chair.

There, the dentist had arrived and started raving about Max, "What a great kid. He's so good and his teeth are wonderful."

I was being tortured. I had just acted like a complete fool and these people were being so nice to me. They were killing me with kindness. Bastards!

Finally, I broke, and started smiling and laughing and cracking jokes with the dentist and the nurse. When we went to pay, I felt compelled to once again apologize to the other nurse at the desk. She laughed and said I was certainly not the worst they had seen. Still, I said it was not nice of me. And she smiled that kind of smile that says either "I forgive you" or "I will make your life a living hell the next time you come back." I don't know for sure which one it was, but it doesn't matter.

I learn lessons every day that I open my mind and heart. If I can get my ego and my pride to pipe down, I can actually open myself up to the reality that I am no better and no worse than anyone else on the planet. And that I make mistakes- I put the wrong time down on the calendar, I jump to conclusions, I bark at people when I shouldn't.

But the biggest lesson I have learned in my life is that I can, on the spot, change my behavior and my attitude. I can tell someone, a stranger, that I am sorry for acting like an ass hole.

And then, I can start the day over right on the spot.

I like this growing up business.

My New Laptop

2009-09-02T20:15:00.001-05:00

I am typing this blog post from my new laptop and this fancy new-fangled MS Word function that I think will allow me to type the entry into Word and publish it straight to my blog, thus eliminating the sheer torturous drudgery of hitting ctrl-A and then ctrl-V. Whew, thank goodness for Bill Gates. Oh how our mothers and sisters before us suffered so…

I am sitting in a Doubletree hotel in Jersey City. I have been here for 2 days working and I am ready to go home. I miss my house and the smell of my bed and familiar curve of my pillows. Plus, I do not have an active elevator in my house and thus do not hear dinging all night long. And, of course, my sweet boy is at home.

Last night, I had dinner alone at an Italian restaurant here in Jersey City. It is a chain. Weirdly, everything in Jersey City seems to be a chain. Jersey City is right across the Hudson River from Manhattan, but it might as well be across the continent. I sat in a booth near a young family – Mother, Father and little boy. The little boy kept looking at me from his perch on the back of the booth seat and he would scrunch up his nose and eyes and smile. I fell instantly in love with his little button nose and the way he kept saying, "My croc fell off! My croc fell off again!" His Dad would say, "That's because you keep kicking it off," and the little boy would laugh and laugh.

His mother apologized to me saying she was so sorry he was bothering me. I assured her that he was not at all bothering me and that watching him was much more fun than reading the 65 page contract in front of me. (Dimly lit Italian restaurants are not ideal for editing, but I was hungry and desperate to get out of the hotel room.) It occurred to me that I usually do the same thing that mother did, I apologize for Max and I live in fear he might bother someone. I wonder why I do that? Isn't it pretty much none of my business whether someone is bothered by my son?

I mean, sure, if he starts throwing gobs of spaghetti at diners or hurls his shoes across the room, then we have a problem. But do I really need to apologize for an errant shriek or peals if hysterical laughter? Really, aren't there worst things in life? And, if I mumble "I'm sorry" too often, doesn't it tend to lose its worth when I really am sorry for something major?

All good questions to ponder.

I find my blog kind of hard to write the last few weeks and I am not sure why. I feel repetitive, as if I have lost some of my voice. Maybe I am just tired from work or going through a dry spell. Or maybe there is something bigger and deeper going on with me and I need to dig to find out what the block is. Perhaps I should do a thorough searching of my soul and discuss with a friend my darkest and deepest secrets.

Or, maybe the new laptop will cure everything.

Whatever the cause, I will not do as I yearn - I will not apologize for the sparse entry, I will not apologize for potentially boring you, I will not apologize for me or my son…unless we hit you with a flying croc.

Hang Ten

2009-08-26T16:21:00.003-05:00

Max found our wedding album the other day and has delighted in looking through it over and over again. It makes me happy I went through a crazy nesting and scrap-booking phase while I was pregnant. I culled through the millions of boxes of wedding pictures I had and painstakingly pasted my favorites into a scrapbook replete with my lame attempts at making them cute and clever with paper.

I also, during that hormone crazed trimester, insisted I needed to make new curtains for our bedroom. I lugged out this old sewing machine my aunt was going to toss before I saved it, called a friend to show me how to load the bobbin and I was off. Off my rocker. I made the most hideous curtains I have ever seen, but I stayed up all night to do it and frankly, if you consider I had not sewn anything since high school home economics class, they weren’t half bad.

At least that is what Mike said when I woke him up at 2am to hang my freshly made curtains. He really is a very good husband when I think about it. That is, when I quit nagging him long enough to think about it.

Max and I were looking at the wedding photos for the 50^th time and for the 50^th time I was having to answer the question, “Who’s that?” while he pointed to the pictures of my mom.

My answer is always the same, “That’s Mere, my Mommy, but she is heaven with Sam.”

And he says, “Yeah, Sam was old and she died and went to heaven with Mere and the other dogs.”

It makes me wonder what on earth is going through his mind. Does he imagine my mother surrounded by hundreds of dogs, laughing and frolicking with them? That would be kind of cool to me, but I think Mom would be slightly miffed by all those dogs all over here and would not consider it her version of heaven.

But maybe it is Max’s version of heaven, being chased and licked by hundreds of tail-wagging dogs.

This Saturday is the 4 year anniversary of the hurricane. My mother did not die during the storm, but I equate her death with the storm because everything seemed to happen at once in one ugly blur – the evacuation, the storm, the levees breaking, not being able to go home, the birth of Max in Houston and my mother’s ultimate death 6 months later.

It was nice to look at the wedding pictures with Max and remember that life was once calm and predictable, then there were the chaotic years of the storm, and now, the tide is going out again. It is the ebb and flow of life, and I’m just surfing the waves, hanging on, and hoping the board doesn’t rear up and smack me in the back of the head.

Me Mind on Fire, Me Soul on Fire

2009-08-21T09:53:00.001-05:00

Max’s first nanny was a Tulane senior named Robyn. She came to us in January of 2006 and worked as Max’s nanny until she graduated in May. She didn’t need the money. In fact, she drove to work in her Mercedes sports car, but she liked kids and wanted to do some work. I was a nervous wreck when she started because this was my baby and here I was hiring a complete stranger to care for him. Sure, I would be right upstairs working, but what if she abused him? What if she did not love him as much as I did?

The first time she met Max she asked if she could take his picture to send to her Mom back in Jersey. I went nuts in my head, “Her mom? Yeah right, more likely the kingpin of whatever baby trafficking organization she is privy to!”

But, when I opened my mouth, what came out what, “Oh sure.”

To my surprise, she handed the phone to me to take a picture of her holding a smiling Max.

Oh, I get it now. You LIKE babies!

I firmly and assertively told her that under no circumstances would she be driving Max around in that sports car of hers and maybe, after she had been working here for a month, she could take him for a walk in the stroller, but only around the block.

But then, we all fell in love with Robyn. Max was small, maybe only 4 months old, so he still took 2 naps a day. Robyn would climb into my bed with him to snuggle and sleep with him. And he loved it. This is a child who still sleeps pressed up against me every night.

I would be working upstairs and hear her chatting away with him. She would read books to him and play with him for hours.

By day 3 she took him for a walk in the stroller and by week 2, she took him to lunch with her friends, his car seat wedged in the tiny back seat of her car. She patiently listened as I gave her a long list of instructions – don’t leave him in the car even for a second, make sure he is snapped in, drive carefully, don’t talk on your cell phone while driving, don’t bring him around anyone who smokes…in short, you have my very existence and reason for living in the back of your car, so please drive carefully.

Robyn was more than a nanny, she was a member of our family. We loved hearing about her friends and her family. She would tell me all the places she had brought Max that day – to Tulane’s campus to meet her roommates, to a sushi place for lunch with her friends, shopping with her mom. He was just one of the girls after a while, I think.

When Valentine’s Day rolled around, Robyn gave Max this big fuzzy lobster wearing a hat. When you pressed the button on his claw, he would sing Buster Poindexter’s “Hot, Hot, Hot.” His whole head and lips moved. And it was LOUD. Max was terrified of it. We sat it on a high shelf in his room for a while and then one day, long after Robyn had moved back to New York and taken her bright light with her, he asked us to hand it to him. He had already been through another nanny and graduated to play school. He was still scared of Jacques, our name for the obnoxious lobster, so he asked his Daddy to hide him in the shed out back.

But even Jacques' exile to the shed could not quell Max’s fearful curiosity. Slowly, he started going out to visit Jacques occasionally and finally, one day, decided Jacques could come back inside. Quite quickly Jacques progressed from being a scary loud red blur that warranted only a place next to the dryer, to a full-fledged member of the family. He was dragged over the place and even had his hat chewed off by our Boston Terrier. (Thankfully, Max grew up with the dog and is very forgiving of his predilection for eating toys.)

The other night, Max and I were lying in bed together. Our nightly routine is long and some nights I relish it and some nights I just want to read a book. This night, we were having fun. Jacques was next to Max with his head on the pillow, covered in Max’s favorite blanket. Every time I did something to ensure Max’s comfort, Max did the same for Jacques.

Finally, in an attempt to coax Max toward sleep, I said, “Jacques is tired, he is going to sleep,”

Max replied in his sweet little Mommy-is-a-fool voice, “No, Jacques is not going to sleep because his eyes don’t close.”

My, how my little boy has grown.

Why Are You NOT Here?

2009-08-17T10:53:00.002-05:00

"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes..." - Henry David Thoreau

Recently I decided I needed to dress better. This is not entirely true, but it is less embarrassing than the real story which involves a very awkward conversation with my boss telling me I needed to dress to the title on my business card. Whatever the impetus, I went to Ann Taylor and attached myself to the sales lady. She patiently brought me skirts and jackets and pants and shirts that were tailored. Elastic waist linen pants, white Hanes t-shirts and flip flops are indeed my real uniform, but, alas, clients frown when I show up dressed like that.

I got a jacket, skirt and shirt. It went so well, I went back the next week for a pair of grey pants. $400 dollars later, I left with 2 skirts, 3 sweaters, 2 shirts, 2 camis and a new Ann Taylor master card. That second sales lady was much better at her job than the first. One of the skirts is a high-wasted lycra thing. I thought it seemed a little snug when I tried it on at the store but the sales lady assured me it was supposed to fit like that. I was so overwhelmed at this point that I just said fine.

When I got home, I tried it on again and it seemed a little snug, but maybe that was the style. But the third time I tried it on, I knew it was not right. Clothes you wear on land should not be as tight as the clothes you wear in water. There are no Spanx that could hide what this skirt was so prominently displaying. I decided to return it and I have not thought about it since.

The point of this story is that although I often labor over a decision, once it is made, I usually don’t question it. The hard part for me is just making the decision. Some people make a quick decision and then spend all their time wondering if it was the right one. I am more likely to just sit with something for a while and mull it over for a long time.

That is what I am doing right now about blogging. To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

A couple of things happened last week that are making me weigh this decision. There were some ugly comments that upset me, followed by a colleague of mine saying I should shut my blog down immediately because it would ruin my career and surely the Gestapo would storm my house and take everything of value, or some rant like that. I am beginning to question his sanity, but still, his scare tactic worked. When I reminded him that I don’t blog under my real name, he pointed out that my blog is linked to my facebook account.

Oh, right, that.

On the other hand, I also had handfuls of people telling me they love my blog and they love to read it.

Hmmmm, so what do I do?

I’ll tell you what I do, I follow my heart. I live what I preach – a life of honesty that is not ruled by fear. (Yikes!)

In the eternal words of Popeye, “I yam what I yam.” You can dress me in a suit and slap heels on my feet, but at my core, I am still me. And I will continue to be me long after my career is over and the lights have dimmed.

When I am on my deathbed I won’t think to myself, “Gee, I wish I had pretended to be someone else more often in my life. I wish I had spent more time hiding my real feelings and less time honestly sharing with the people around me.”

I won’t wish I had let my childhood dream of being a writer wither away and die, only to supplanted by what society deems right and good. (This is where you insert the National Anthem…)

No, my friends, I will not stand idly by and watch my very soul be crushed by the ridiculous rules and regulations of modern day society! (But, I will dress better when I have to.) I will continue to post my wackiness whenever I can (although not under my real name) and I will continue to wonder in print about the effectiveness of airline security measures, for I am a free thinker!

And so, my dear friends, thank you for your support and your comments. The reason I blog is because I am a writer and I always have been. I just got lost along the way.

Tacky Gold Footballs

2009-08-06T20:11:00.003-05:00

When my mother was asked on her deathbed of she had any regrets, she responded, “I wish I had been nicer.”

Nicer?

The woman was a freaking saint. She was loving and patient and brilliant and funny and everything you want your mother to be. I do not ever remember her uttering a harsh word to anyone (except George Bush, but come on, who hasn’t?)

But, then I thought, maybe she wished her thoughts had been nicer. I get that.

People who kind of know me would say I am a very nice and kind person. But people who really know me have seen the dark side of me, especially the people who knew me before I quit drinking. Those unfortunate few have definitely seen my Mr, Hyde and it ain’t pretty.

When someone posted a hurtful comment to my blog yesterday, I will admit, my first thought was absolutely not, “oh he/she must be hurting in some way.”

My first feeling was “ouch.” It hurt. It stung, and then, somewhere in there came fear - fear of being mocked, fear of not being accepted or loved. I am, after all, no different than any other person on this planet – I want to be loved and accepted by my peers. After toying with several different versions of a reply, most of which were expletive-laden, I settled in on kindness.

Before she died, I asked my mother how she was so nice and how she had become such a wonderful person and how on earth could someone as damaged as me even reach for that level of humanity. “Pay it forward,” she said.

I miss her so much. She was so beautiful and so smart and I so wish she was here to guide me.

But she is not. And I am here.

My heart is big and I wear it on my sleeve. That is what I was thinking last night as I was going to sleep, pondering the day’s events. I was feeling fearful that I was not a good mother, that I was making a fool of myself on a daily basis by even pretending to be a writer and that a colleague I respect and adore had lost respect for me.

And so, my head wandered to my heart and how for so many years I worked so hard at keeping it all hidden inside and pretending like nothing effected me. And then the pressure of that enormous job got to be too much and I decided it was easier to just take my heart and my emotions and place them where they belong…right out on my wrist like a prom corsage.

And then the memories rushed through my brain like flood waters. I went to the Brother Martin Homecoming Dance with someone, [although, sadly I do not remember who – let’s call this mystery date Jack] and he gave me one of those wrist corsages. I don’t know if kids today still do that, but for some reason every dance involved not only the laborious process of sifting out a date, but also buying a dress and making sure your date knew what color the dress was so he could bring you a corsage.

Although I was grateful for the wrist corsage, as I do not like still to have anything pinned to my clothes, this thing was like a banquet centerpiece and it had mini gold footballs stuck in it. I spent the whole night trying to lose it on the dance floor. Every time I managed to ditch it, Jack would come running up to me, “You dropped this!” or “Look what I found!”

That is what my life is like these days, every time I try to hide my heart and the feelings inside, they keep reappearing, strapped to my wrist, replete with tacky charms.

Love and Other Odors

2009-08-04T15:13:00.001-05:00

I was on vacation last week. I started an entry that was going to be a funny day-by-day diary-like account of the week, but by the entry for Day 5 I was too depressed to make it funny. Vacation is freakin’ hard. If you don’t have kids, you won’t get this, but if you do, you know what I am talking about.

The 10 days I was off of “work” were the longest 10 days of my life. Why, you ask? Because daycare was also closed for those 10 days. I had 10 consecutive days with Max. TEN. And while I love that little munchkin more than life itself, he is demanding, irrational and sometimes just an ass hole.

I spend, on an average work day, a lot of time alone. Max goes to daycare at around 8 and I work alone, at home, usually until 5pm. Then I pick him up. Although I talk on the phone with people, it is not unusual for me not see another human being all day. And frankly, I like it that way.

This vacation meant all day, every day was spent with my shadow right next to me. He slept with me, he whined at me, he hit me, he spit at me, and at one point, I believe it was Day 8, I locked myself in the hotel bathroom to cry with the sounds of him on the other side of the door whining “Mommy.”

I now know why and how people snap. I get why some mothers just one day pack their bags and walk away. I am not saying I am going to do this, but I now completely understand why some do. My mother stayed at home with 4 children. And we were whiny and lazy and unappreciative. I don’t know why she stayed.

It seemed that the more miserable I was, the clingier he got. He could sense that I was fading, vanishing from existence with each day of vacation. I tried to be happy, I suggested pool visits and games, but he knew I was faking it and balked every step of the way. He whined for his pacifier (which he only gets at night) all day long, he whined that his stomach hurt (which it did because he held his shit in for 4 days) he whined that the pool had closed (which it was and it was moronic because who closes a pool when there is a clap of thunder 25 miles away) but when he started whining for me to hold him when I was already holding him, I snapped. I cried. I cried because I do not like being a mother right now and I cried because I missed my own mother and I cried because I will not be free for a long time.

I will be tied to this little boy forever and for the first time, I was saddened by that.

He can sense this in me and he does not know what to do, so I am hugging him more and telling him I love him. I do love him. Very much. But right now, it is hard to like being with him. He is irrational and willful. He makes outrageous demands and is willfully disobedient.

Last night we were lying in bed and he was singing to himself. I held him tight and told him I loved him. He stroked my hair and snuggled in close and said, “Mommy? You smell good. You smell like pizza.”

From a three year old, there are no sweeter and more poetic words of love than those.

And, I know this phase will pass. He will get over his bizarre toilet hang ups, he will eventually enter the age of reason and one day, he will not want me around all the time. He will be embarrassed to be seen with me and will make me drop him off 2 blocks away from his friends.

But for now, I have a tiny tyrant in my life and he smells like hot dogs and urine.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2009-07-24T13:11:00.001-05:00

I think I’ve mentioned before that I tend to get a little weepy when I travel. I don’t know what it is, but I am often over emoted for no good reason. I have found myself, more than once, overcome with emotion watching even the silliest of events - a mother chasing her child or an older couple going through security. The thing that gets me every single time, though, is kids traveling alone…unaccompanied minors. It even sounds awful, like they are orphans lost in the bowels of the FAA.

It is that soft spot I have for these tiny travelers that got me into the mess I was in yesterday. After a harrowing experience with US Air that involved me showing up for an 8:30am flight that got moved, then moved again and finally cancelled, I bailed on that lame excuse for an airline and bought a ticket home from Palm Beach at the Southwest counter. Because I bought so late, they only had business select. For $20 more I got 2 free drink coupons (which I did not use) and, more importantly, I got an “A” boarding card. I would not be packed in like a sardine. I would be able to get on the plane first and if you travel Southwest enough, you learn that the groups mean this: A=Aisle, B=By the Window and C=Center, or as I like to call it, “arm rest overflow for the fat person next to you.”

For my leg from Tampa to New Orleans, I was A1. Yes, I was to be the first person to board the plane….well, except for the pre-boards (hello? Did they have to pay $20 more??) and the unaccompanied minors. And, because I was standing in the first spot, I saw the mother hugging her two little boys good bye and tearfully watching them walk down the jet way.

They were tiny. They might as well have been walking to war the way the emotion welled up inside of me. I wanted to rush over to that mother and hug her, I wanted to run down the jet way and grab those boys so I could return them where they belong…with their mother!

But, I didn’t. Instead, I told myself I would sit with those boys to make sure no one took advantage of them and also to make them feel safe because it must be scary to fly alone at such a young age.

I walked right to the row where they were sitting and plopped myself down in the aisle seat. I didn’t want to freak them out, so I didn’t start talking to them right away. After all, I was a stranger and although I know my intentions, they did not.

I learned that the older boy was named Austin and his younger brother was Tyler. They each had a handheld video game, I think a DS, and were actually playing each other. Everything was fine until it was time to put the games away. Tyler didn’t want to, so he smacked the piss out of his older brother. A small scuffle ensued, but the 2 DS handhelds went back into the backpack and I settled back with my book, feeling quite smug and satisfied that I, yes me, had done such a good deed by making sure that mother’s children were well cared for.

It was about 30 minutes into the flight when the 2^nd fight began. The DS hand helds had made another appearance and Tyler (age 6) did not like getting beat by Austin (age 8) and so, he started wailing on him. I mean, abusing him. Austin, who probably had been told never to hit his brother, at first didn’t really fight back, but then I heard a really loud crack (apparently a DS is good for other things, too) and then the breathless silent sobbing of Tyler. Wait for it, wait for it, and here comes the howl. Everyone in ear shot looked at me. I was the first person on the plane. None of these people knew that I had just plopped down next to these little terrors. They thought I was some absent minded and neglectful mother.

The grandmotherly woman next across the aisle spoke first, “You’re going to have to separate them.”

I protested, “But they’re not my kids. I just sat next to them.”

She looked at me like I was nuts, “That doesn’t matter…just sit between them.”

Oh, right, I am the adult here. I can use my grown up voice and maybe scare them into behaving. I got the little one to move over to my seat and I jumped in the middle. It was in that spot that I became the defacto mother. The things discussed included:

Where are you going? (Grandma & Grandpa’s house)

How high are we?

When will we be in outer space?

Are the drinks and peanuts free?

How many oceans will we fly over?

When do we fly over the Mississippi?

Am I familiar with the DS system (no) and do my kids have one? (no)

I also got an amusing story about the time Austin went with his Grandma and Grandpa to Texas and how Grandpa had to call the police because he lost Austin, who was really at the playground.

From the magic backpack emerged 2 packs of Cheetos. Between those, the Cokes (they swore up and down they were allowed to have them on special occasions) and an unending supply of peanuts, these boys were set…for a little while.

Then they started getting bored and were all jittery from the sugar. They wanted to sit near each other again and play.

I stalled for a while. I took out the map from the airline magazine and randomly started talking to them about where we were, where we were going, where they had been before, but once we started the initial decent, Tyler wanted to sit by Austin so he could look out the window. I agreed.

And thus, we landed to the sounds of Tyler bending back Austin’s fingers and Austin calling Tyler a baby while spitting in his face.

And then I realized, their mother’s tears were not the sobs of a broken hearted mother. They were tears of joy. “Grandma and Grandpa be dammed, Mama needs a break,” is I know what she said to herself as she drove home from the Tampa airport alone in absolute silence.

“Go in peace my daughter. And remember that, in a world of ordinary mortals, you are a Wonder Woman.” Queen Hippolyte

2009-07-21T13:53:00.000-05:00

When I was 10, I begged my mother to buy me a Wonder Woman bathing suit. It was a one piece suit that actually looked like the little crazy and impractical outfit Linda Carter wore on the show, but it had straps and more modestly covered a young girl’s parts. I needed to have this bathing suit. I promised to wear it for 5 years if she would just buy it for me.

My mother, being the kind and gentle woman she was, tried to talk me out of it. She said it didn’t look well made, that she thought the colors might run and finally, when I didn’t get the hint, she said, “Aren’t you a little old for this?”

Old? Are you insane woman, I am 10. I thought my mother must be having a stroke.

She caved and I got the suit.

No doubt, she gave in out of pure exhaustion. I am the youngest of 4 children and now that I am a mother of 1 child, I wish I could reach back in time when she was alive and thank her from the very bottom of my heart for not beating us or just leaving us all. I would have done both, in that order, and then come back to beat us some more.

I marched home with my bathing suit. I was the proud owner of a Super Suit. And I knew when I wore it the next day to swim at my friend Shelly’s house, she would be green with envy. How could she not?

The next day, as planned, I went across the street to Shelley’s house to swim in her ultra modern and hip above ground swimming pool and she had also invited another friend, one from her school. Shelly was a year older than me and went to the, gasp, public school. Her mother was divorced.

These things were whispered at my house because my parents, by God, were going to stay married even if it killed them and us in the process and, even if we had to forego medical attention, we were going to the Catholic School. Because we were holy, and apparently holy people can’t associate with people whose parents can’t afford to send them to the Catholic school.

I don’t think her situation had anything to do with it, but Shelly could be kind of mean to me. She never let me forget she was a year older than me and that she, not I, had a miniature Yorkshire terrier named Sugar AND a pool. All I had was a present father and Catholic School uniforms. Oh, and a WONDER WOMAN BATHING SUIT!

As I trucked around the side of her house wearing my new suit and carrying my towel, I was flush with excitement. Finally, I could show her how cool I was even if my parents were still married and only had great swaths of St Augustine grass in the backyard instead of a pool.

Her friend was the first to say something, “Are you wearing a Wonder Woman suit? How old are you?”

I didn’t understand it at all, why was everyone asking me this idiotic question, “10,” I answered less confidently than I had my mother.

This friend turned to Shelly and said, “Why is she wearing that stupid bathing suit? Are you friends with her?”

Shelly was torn, I could see. Were we friends? I don’t know, but pickings were slim on our block and if she denied me, who would she play with? On the other hand, this girl was obviously way cooler than me and she was probably 11.

“She lives across the street,” she said quickly, “come on, let’s swim.”

I swam for a little while, but eventually, I felt like if I did not get this suit off of my body, it would become permanent and I would have to wear it like a Scarlet A for the rest of my life. The shame and embarrassment were burning into my skin through the cheap spandex.

I went home, took the suit off, and never wore it again. I continued to play with Shelly, and even talked my parents into switching me to the public school, where she ignored me and pretended not to know me.

This whole thing came back to me a few weeks ago. Max and I went to a store called “Little Miss Muffin.” It’s kind of a posh gift store that has house wares, candles, toys and a whole bunch of nice and expensive stuff crammed into the “boutique” (I am convinced this is code for small, crowded and over priced.)

He found this pink Melissa and Doug castle that he had to have. He wanted it desperately. It was NOT CHEAP (I am too embarrassed to say how much it was) so I told him when he was potty trained I would come back and get it for him. I figured he would be so traumatized by the inadequate potty training and marginal parenting he gets from me that he would just forget about it.

‘Lo and behold, a few weeks later, as soon as that boy peed in the potty the very first time, he asked to go get the pink princess castle. It is really hard to explain to a three year old the concepts of consistency and regularity. He continued that day to pee on the potty and each time, he asked to go get the castle.

I gave in at 2pm.

Mike, Max and I went to Little Miss Muffin to get the castle. Max went straight to the back of the store in search of the pink castle. Meanwhile, I noticed they had the exact same castle in blue. It was called the medieval knight castle – very manly, eh?

I really want Max to be an individual. I love that his favorite movie is Snow White and that he acts it out while he watches it, much like his own private Rocky Horror Picture Show. Nothing makes me prouder than to see him pretending to bake a cake or wheel around his teddy bear in a stroller.

Still…

The pain I felt that day and for an ungodly amount of time before and after the Wonder Woman Incident came rushing back to me. Would I do him a disservice by NOT forcing him to get the blue castle? Or would I just be crushing his tiny spirit?

We deiced to show him the blue castle and let him decide and, not surprisingly, he chose the pink castle. He carried it to the car and has played with it just about every day since we brought it home.

And I am glad he got to be himself…and that he pees on the potty most of the time.

I suppose the only difference between my mother and me is that I am actually not as nice as her and if anyone says one word to my son that even resembles an insult, I will verbally eviscerate him regardless of his age.

So, take that Shellys of the world…Max’s Mama really can beat up your mama and you, too, so watch your back.

Who Me?

2009-07-17T14:24:00.005-05:00

I ran into an old friend at my son’s daycare the other day. Let me get totally honest, he is not an old friend. He is someone I had a crush on in 7^th and 8^th grade, my Junior High Days. His kid also attends the same daycare, so our paths cross occasionally and each and every time they do, I manage to make a complete and total ass out of myself.

You see, thus guy, let’s call him “Bob,” he was one of the cool kids in Junior High. I was not. While he sported Vans and even at one point had a Mohawk, I was frumpy, had glasses and braces, and, every once in a while, wore a tan polyester jumpsuit to school. While he was living in a John Hughes movie, I was in the Beta Club. He walked to school or hell, maybe he floated to school, while I rode the bus, which was criminally over-crowded and often had a few of us crammed in three to a seat. Seat belts, schmeat belts.

If he was caught in the hall without a pass, the principal would give a stern warning and then tell him a few jokes. If I was caught in the hall WITH a pass, I would get detention and a dirty look. He was a star and I was invisible.

When I saw him last week while picking up my son, he walked over to my car to say hello. I was hanging halfway out the back of my Toyota matrix trying to secure the car seat on the brace so Max wouldn’t roll all over the backseat. This is how the conversation went:

Bob: Hey, how are you?

Me: Good, good, you? (Oh God, I am sweating like I just ran a fucking marathon.)

Bob: Good. Saw you on Facebook…

Me: Yeah, yeah, it’s fun, huh, seeing all the people you knew from way back when, you know some of these folks I’ve known for 30years or more. Weird huh? (Why am I talking so much? What is wrong with me?)

Bob: Yeah. I figure, it’s a time waster, but whatever, it’s a pastime, right?

Me: Yeah, it’s fun, isn’t it? I like to read books, too, I really got into to the Twilight books, even thought they were kind of silly. (Oh crap, I just copped to being a fucking Twi-Mom. I am pathetic.) And I just recently read all the Sookie Stackhouse books, you know the ones the new True Blood series is based on. Does your wife like to read? She might like them. (Why can’t I shut up? Why am I assaulting this poor man with my verbal vomit?) But, you know, maybe not because they are kind of silly and I am sure she is busy. (Unlike myself, since I am just a Vice President of a national education company! Why can’t I just shut up?)

Awkward pause

Bob: It’s hot, huh?

Me: Yeah. (He has noticed that I am sweating like Albert Brooks in the movie Broadcast News. I have rivers of sweat streaming down my back. I am going to slide right out of my flip flops in a minute.)

Another awkward pause

Bob: Well, have a good night.

Me: Yeah, you too. Bye.

Driving home, my face was burning with embarrassment. Why couldn’t I just act like a normal person? Whenever I see this guy, I am 12 years old again. I revert back to that little girl who longed to be cool, but couldn’t figure out how.

By 8^th grade, I had made a little headway. I got my braces off, had a spiky haircut and started wearing Converse high tops and camouflage pants. I knew I was never going to be beautiful, so I might as well strive for interesting. It worked, kind of. Boys started asking hanging around, but I was so pathetically desperate for attention, I ended up being the girl who went a little too far, too fast.

Meanwhile, he was getting even cooler, achieving an almost celebrity status. Everyone knew who he was, he was good looking and funny, plus, he had a sidekick who had a clever nickname. What more could you ask for at 14?

Now, every time I see Bob, I want to somehow prove to him that I am not that awkward little girl any more, that I have grown and matured into a calm and collected woman…but, come on! Who the hell am I trying to fool? And why?

Yes, I have matured into a woman, but I am still the kind of person who would rather read books than go out and I still have piss-poor boundaries. It’s just now, instead of giving guys hand jobs, I say wildly inappropriate things and at all the wrong times.

And I actually somewhat enjoy the look of discomfort and pain on your face while I am doing it. I can almost picture my sister’s face when she reads the words “hand job.”

My sister cautioned me when I told her I was going to blog about Bob. She said, “What if he reads it?!? Won’t that be embarrassing?”

Are you kidding?

It is no more embarrassing than walking into a guide wire while talking to him or admitting that I am addicted to bad vampire novels, and besides, how fucking cool would be if he read my blog? OMG! XOXO & B.F.F. !

Bad Dog! Sit, Stay...Love

2009-07-13T11:39:00.003-05:00

We took Max to Gulf Shores, AL for 4^th of July Weekend. We met my sister and her family there and all piled into her condo for a couple of days of fun in the sun. Emily has three boys, so Max was alternately in heaven and crying hysterically because he was overwhelmed with all the chaos. I felt the same way inside, but thankfully, only Max was the one to roll on the floor in tears of frustration.

Max loved the beach, which is kind of weird in a kid that small. Usually, kids like the idea of the beach, but when it comes down to reality – sand in your butt, sunscreen in your eyes, jelly fish stinging your shins and super salty water up your nose – kids almost always like the pool better. Not Max. He got knocked down by waves and came up laughing foamy water out of his mouth.

His other big experience over the weekend was Oreos. I would love for you to believe that I am such a fantastic mother my son has never had Oreos because I limit sugar and only offer healthy snacks like apples and tree bark, but the truth is, I don’t like Oreos so I don’t buy them. More than once, Max has had gum for breakfast.

He really got into the Oreo thing with his cousins. They devoured a bag of Double Stuffs in seconds flat. It was a flurry of hands, crumbly chocolate and white stuff. In fact, someone left a rogue licked Oreo half on the coffee table and, the next morning, I noticed Max’s cousin eating it for breakfast. The Murphy Women are known for many things, but raising well-behaved and mild-mannered children is not one of them.

The next week, back at home, Max and I went to the grocery store. He was, miraculously, sitting in the cart and not running around like a wild boar, but that was because he did not have shoes on and he can’t read so he believed me when I told him the “Sale on Tomatoes” sign said “Kids without Shoes Have to Ride in the Cart.”

From this higher vantage point, he was able to spot the Oreos on the shelf and frantically demanded them. Not wanting any more of a scene than absolutely necessary in my neighborhood grocery, I did not even pretend to protest or read the label. This is the same child that knocked over a case of wine because I wasn’t paying enough attention.

I handed him the package of Oreos and he looked at me like I had just handed him the Holy Grail. He cocked his sweet little sweet little head to the side and asked, “What are these?”

I said, “They’re called Oreos.”

He looked at me kind of strange and quietly and slowly said, “I think they’re cookies.”

My son thinks I am mentally challenged, but at least he is sweet about it and didn’t call me a dumb ass. I guess that comes later when he is a teenager.

This experience with Max is one that I had repeatedly with other people last week, albeit on a larger scale. I had an experience with someone that caused me to lash out in anger because I felt like he was not respecting me and my position. Yeah, that went over well, let me tell you.

The other experience involved seeing someone I knew in Junior High and basically making a total ass of myself, but that will be a topic for another blog, when I am totally sure he does not read my blog.

In both of those situations, I felt like I came across wrong, that what I was trying to say and do was not clear and ultimately, I reacted from a place of fear – fear of losing something or fear of looking stupid. Fear, fear, fear – if I look back over my life and examine all of the times I blew up in anger or lashed out in “defense” of myself, it is always rooted in fear. I want you to like me and I want you to know that I am start, but by golly, you better not fucking cross me. I am like a bad dog – I greet you with a wagging tail, but if you scratch me in just the wrong place, I will take your arm off at the elbow and toss it around like chew toy.

This interaction with Max reminded me that I don’t have to be that way. I can go through the day with the knowledge that I am reasonably smart, kind and have good intentions and just plain not give a shit what anyone thinks of me. I didn’t care that Max thought I didn’t know what cookies were because, well it was hysterical and also because I DO know what cookies are and didn’t feel the need to explain that to him. Because I love him. Oh yeah, that reminds me, I am supposed to love everyone.

I guess if I looked at everyone through a filter of love instead of fear, then, well, it would be Oreos and milk and laughter every day, wouldn’t it?

Life is Just a Fantasy

2009-07-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

Last night, I was lying in bed with Max, trying desperately to get him to go to sleep. It’s hard to get someone to go to sleep and although it does not work, my best laid plan thus far is to occasionally scream, “GO TO SLEEP!” when he does this staying up until 11:00pm nonsense. He was lying next to me, being a goofball, and I was turned on my side away from him thinking that all I wanted to do was lie alone in my own bed and read a fucking book. Is that too much to ask, I ask you? I also asked myself inside my head while choking back tears of frustration and anger.

And so I found myself lying in my bed next to a squirming and fidgety toddler fantasizing about being single and childless. And when I say single, I don’t mean not married and free to date, I mean ALONE. No one. No man or woman in my life or in my bed for any reason what-so-ever. Just me and a book.

And it was then I realized that I was actually somewhat resentful of my child because I was not going to get to do whatever I want for at least another 15 years and even then, I am bound forever to this obstinate little boy. Not only can I not just leave a big bowl of food and water for him and take off for the weekend, I actually have to be emotionally available and supportive for his entire life. Oh heavens, what have I done?

And of course I love him. He is my child, but it hit me, like a slap to the face last night, that I am an old mother. And I don’t mean mother as in bad ass motha’. I mean, I gave birth to someone and now I am responsible for him forever. And, I am old. Old in the sense that gravity is no longer a welcome force that keeps me planted on the ground, but instead is a cruel foe. Underneath the brown hair dye is a head of gray hair and those marks on my face can no longer be classified as cute little freckles.

On top of all that, I can’t even read when I want to, so now I’m old, matronly and a slave to a tiny tyrant.

And just when I thought I would actually start sobbing, I heard Max’s steady breathing and realized his sweet, sweaty little head was resting against my back. And then everything else went away and all was right with the world.

And I read my book in peace and forgot all about my single life fantasies.

The first rule of book club is you do not talk about books

2009-06-26T08:50:00.002-05:00

I, for some reason, get weepy on planes. I don’t really know why this is. Maybe it is because I have to hold so much inside and refrain from saying and doing things on a plane that it escapes through my tear ducts. Right now, I am on a plane, in the window seat pressed against the wall, unable to move because the person next to me is kind of big. There is a family behind me with 2 small children. The kids are maybe 4 and 2. And they are bored. And trapped. And miserable. So am I, but I can’t cry and yell and kick the seat in front of me. I want to, but I can’t because it is frowned upon by the other people on the flight and airline employees.

I don’t mind that the 2 year old is kicking the back of my seat. I don’t care. There was a time when I would have. I would have been indignant and glared at the family because they could not “control” their children and were making me suffer. That was before I had a kid myself and realized that it is impossible to control a 2 year old anywhere much less on a plane and the most miserable person on the flight is generally the parent of the crying and screaming kids. I get that now and in fact, turned around and told the parents I did not care if their kid kicked the back of my chair all the way home to New Orleans. It, oddly, makes me feel closer to Max, who is home, in New Orleans.

A few years back, before the storm, before my mother died, before everything turned upside down and got all water logged, I was in a book club with my mom, my three sisters and some other women they knew. The number of us at each meeting fluctuated, but was usually about 7-8 women eating snacks, drinking wine and discussing the book of the month. This book club drove me bonkers. At the time, I was childless and traveled for my job even more than I do now. I was on planes 2-3 times a week and had a lot of free time. That free time, I now realize I squandered, but I digress.

During that time of my life, I was easily reading 5-7 books a week. I know, it is insane, but I had nothing but time. I would sit on airplanes and read novel after novel. I would devour a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book like normal people read People Magazine. At every airport I would buy more books to read – David Sedaris, David Eggers, John Irving, Yan Martel…the list goes on and on. I read so much, people grew tired of talking to me about books because I think they thought I was mocking them…or just lying.

Anyway, this monthly book club seemed like it would be a good fit since I was reading so much, right? Yeah, no. You see, most of the women were mothers of young children. In fact, I think one woman had something like 5 kids all under the age of 3 or something insane like that. Every book club meeting went something like this:

Me: I really like the way Zora Neale Hurston juxtaposed the voracious effects of rabies and the painful thirst that accompanies that awful disease with the deluge and violence of a hurricane. Didn’t you like that?

Haggard Mother #1: This hummus is good. Who brought it?

Haggard Mother #2: I did.

Haggard Mother #1: Did you make it?

Haggard Mother #2: Good God no. I don’t have time for that. I had to pick Jake up from Soccer and take Maggie to dance and then the tire blew out on the car, so I had to change it and by the time we got home, I only had time to run to Rouse’s and grab this and a bag of pita chips.

Me: I also really like Zora Neale Hurston’s use of…Betty, I think your phone is ringing.

Haggard Mother #3: Is that me?

Me: Yes, I think that ringing is coming from you.

Haggard Mother #3: Really? Oh wait, here it is. (As she grabs it from just inside her bra) Hello? No, no, you absolutely may not do that to your brother. I don’t care if he wants you to, I said no. Do you want me to come home right now? Do you? Because I will and so help me god you will rue the day…That’s what I thought. Click.

Me: So, well, was anyone else really impressed with the black dialect that Hurston employed throughout the book?

Haggard Mother #2: I skipped that part. It was too hard to follow.

Me: What?!?!

Haggard Mother #1: Yeah, me too. I just went to the middle part of the book and then I read the last 10 pages.

Haggard Mother #3: I never even bought the book.

Me: What? You’ve had a MONTH to read this book. A MONTH. I read it and about 37 others in this month. What is wrong…Betty, your tits are ringing again.

Haggard Mother #3: Damn kids, I swear to Jesus in Heaven they are going to kill me….

And so went just about every meeting of this book club. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong with these women. Were they so disorganized that they could not spend a few hours finishing a book in over thirty days? I am not sure that I ever actually said what I thought out loud. At least, I hope I never did, because since I had Max almost 4 years ago, I think I have managed to read about 10 books total.

For the first 2 years, the only thing I could manage to read was the crossword puzzle. That was the most mentally challenging thing I did outside of my job. I had a stack of books on my bedside table that I was saving for if and when my brain cells ever regenerated.

I was before, and am more so now, convinced that the majority of a woman’s brain cells exit her body with the afterbirth. They are chucked into whatever vile and disgusting disposal system a hospital uses for such things.

I have been able to return to reading, but not nearly at the rate I used to. It is harder now. I can’t concentrate, I get tired 5 minutes into the book, I start thinking of all the things that have gone undone in the day and I usually end up passing out with the book splayed across my chest, open to page 3 or something pathetic like that.

When I was pregnant and Mom was getting chemo treatments, I would often take her and sit with her. I was her only child who could do this because my offspring was still in his convenient carrying case – my uterus. One time, we were sitting in the doctor’s office waiting, which is what you do when you are dying of cancer, you wait to be told you are dying and then you wait to die.

I was rambling to my mom about some nonsense because all the waiting to find out she was dying was making me nervous and I talk when I am nervous. And I said these exact words, “I think I am going to be a better mother than my sisters because I am more organized.”

I honestly thought that day she was going to fall off of her chair she was laughing so hard. It was then that I realized I was doomed. I made her promise never to tell anyone what I had said. She wordlessly nodded her agreement through her howling laughter and tears.

A few months back, we tried to resuscitate the book club. I managed to read the book, but once I was with the other women, I had absolutely no desire to discuss the book because a) I could only remember tiny fragments of it (more proof of the afterbirth theory) and b) I was so thrilled to be around adult humans I just wanted to talk about hummus and pita chips and my kid and potty training. I wanted to connect with my friends over real life and not the written word. Besides, I couldn’t remember if I had actually finished the book or not anyway.

If I listen really carefully, I can hear my mother still laughing at me from her grave on Esplanade Avenue.

And it makes me happy and weepy and proud and sad all at the same time.

Misanthropy is Exhasuting

2009-06-19T09:52:00.006-05:00

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I outed myself on this blog. One can only write about one’s self for so long without divulging one’s inner secretes. Additionally, one can only write for so long using “one” as the main pronoun for so long without sounding like one giant ass hole.

I want to write about something I read in a book. Here is the quote:

The idea that we can be possessively loving of a few, can ignore the many, and can continue to fear or hate anybody, has to be abandoned, if only a little at a time.

Seriously, go back and read it again.

Because it goes on to tell me this:

We can try to stop making unreasonable demands upon those we love. We can show kindness where we had shown none. With those we dislike we can begin to practice justice and courtesy, perhaps going out of our way to understand and help them.

Whenever we fail any of these people, we can promptly admit it--to ourselves always, and to them also, when the admission would be helpful. Courtesy, kindness, justice, and love are the keynotes by which we may come into harmony with practically anybody.

This is heavy stuff. I mean really heavy. I cannot speak for all, only the committee of grouches in my own head, but I can assure you that I have spent most of my life loving just a handful of people, hating perhaps another similar sized subset, and then feeling indifferent and apathetic toward the rest of the massive nameless, faceless great glob of people on this earth.

When I am not indifferent, I will actually claim to hate people. I have said this maybe 40,000 times in my life when frustrated at the “stupidity” of the person near me, or angry at the young mother who tossed her newborn in the lake, or down right spitting mad at the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA.

But if I think about the statement, “I hate people” in greater detail and with a calm mind, it is both terrifying and not accurate. I don’t actually hate people, I am terrified of people. People are unpredictable and mysterious and convoluted and uncontrollable. They generally don’t do what I want them to and cause me to have uncomfortable feelings.

I know, when I write it out on paper and read it I have to laugh at myself and my self-centeredness.

I have made countless mistakes in my life. Crap, I have made countless mistakes in the past week and do I wish to be scorned by my fellows? Or do I hope to be loved anyway?

Back in the day, before I had a kid and got all mushy on the inside, I used to watch Law and Order. And, being a junky of all sorts, I watched it addictively. I would venture to say I have seen probably every episode of Law and Order. I am far too soft inside now to watch it. Even a fictionalized account of an abducted child will send me over the emotional edge for days.

This particular Law and Order I am thinking of was about a man who was a pharmacist. In order to skim money from his business to donate to this church, he watered down the chemo drugs for hundreds of patients. He had pledged money to his church that he could not afford and was too proud to tell the church. Instead, he defrauded the weak and disadvantaged.

When all this came to light, dramatically on the church steps with a slimmer, sexier Vincent D’Onofrio (has anyone noticed that over night he gained like 75 pounds?) with the congregation slack-jawed with disgust, he was ruined. His wife and his fellow congregants moved away from him in judgment and repulsion.

I remember thinking at that moment, “But, this is when he needs you most. This is his greatest moment of need. And you are walking away from him.”

It is so easy to see the flaws of others, especially when it is on TV and the cancer patients who died are SAG actors who got $500 for their day of work. In reality, I probably would have led the charge to tie this guy up and hang him on the church cross as a constant and vile reminder to all the other congregants.

But in the end, it is forgiveness and love and tolerance of all people in this world that is the way to go. It is exhausting to hate and fear a couple billion individuals. Ironically, it is actually easier to love everyone. Weird, huh?

I am a fish out of water in this territory. Fear, hate and anger (it's all really just fear, but with different tones of voice) have been my knee jerk reactions for so long, that I actually have to learn to react with love and tolerance much the same way someone would learn to ride a bike. And I hope, that like riding a bike, I never forget how and I have a padded seat for the long journey.

Bugging Out

2009-06-16T15:29:00.000-05:00

I am annoyed…and my eyes are burning. I have become convinced that the bug man decided to take out his anger on me by over-spraying my house with flea poison. Here’s what happened….

We have used the same pest control company for the past 8 years. They come every spring and spray the shit out of the house and yard so that we don’t have an infestation of fleas. This was very important for 2 reasons – the first is that I do not like to be bitten by a hundred small bugs while sitting on my couch. The other is that Samantha the Wonder Dog had a bad flea allergy and if she got bit by even one flea, she would spend countless hours chewing all the fur off her ass and hind legs. It made for a disgusting sound, smell and sight.

Since Sam was still alive this spring and since I still don’t like to be bitten by little bugs in my own house, I called the same Pest Control company. Let’s call them Company X to make this sound like something really important.

Company X came out with their giant trucks and 2 men who stormed the backyard as if it were a war zone. They doused everything in a liquid substance. (I have to insert here that I have never even asked them what they are spraying all over my yard.) And then they came inside with aerosol cans of some equally mysterious substance. And as expected, nary a flea was seen and by the time I put Sam down a month later, she had most of the hair on her little body. Sure, she was blind and deaf and seemed to be teetering between this world and the next, but by golly, she was not flea infested.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was lying in bed and looked down at my hand and there was a flea. Frankly, I think I would have preferred seeing a masked intruder holding a machete. At least with the second scenario, my death would be quick and seeing one masked intruder does not mean there are 4,000 more in the house determined to procreate enough to take over the world.

After ripping all the covers off the bed and kicking Kenny the Boston Terrier to the couch, I decided to call Company X in the morning and have them come back to spray again. I figured this reinfestation was due to the crazy cat lady moving out across the street and leaving her 50 cats to roam the street. OK, let me confess here that I had no intention of calling Company X. For this level of confrontation, I needed to bring in the big guns – my husband.

Mike called Company X the next morning and they came out armed with little aerosol cans. They sprayed the house all over. Still, a few days later, I was still seeing fleas on Kenny. Once again, Mike called Company X and this morning the man came with big truck of liquid Flea Death and turned our backyard into a sea of poison. But, when Mike asked him to come inside to spray, he said he did not have the inside stuff.

I am not sure why, but I went bonkers. I called Company X myself and babbled and spurted my frustration. After a call between the bug man and Company X, he came inside armed with a small sprayer filled with the backyard liquid death and proceeded to spray it all over my house. He dropped that crap all over my floors, my son’s teddy bear, every where. I stood there, my jaw on the floor, while my husband asked, “This isn’t going to stain the floors is it?”

The floors? Well, I hope they aren’t messed up when everyone comes to our house for OUR FUNERALS.

And now, I am sitting here, wondering if the bug man, who insisted that it was harmless (I think the fleas would beg to differ,) decided to take out his 30 years of frustration working for Company X on me and my family. Perhaps he decided this is the day he snaps and gets rid of the aggravating flea bag house that seems to breed fleas?

I really want to write something meaningful and stirring each week in my blog, but some days, all I can muster is anger towards Company X and questions about my future on this planet. I think it is because I have mild brain damage from the torrent of bug spray in my living room.

It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

2009-06-08T13:16:00.002-05:00

I feel like I rode the emotional roller coaster all weekend and now I have carnival heart. It is all jumbled with happiness, sadness and grief…all at once. I went to a funeral for a friend who died at 47 from stomach cancer. She was a beautiful person and a mother of 2 teenagers. Her service was attended by hundreds of people who loved her dearly and cherished her passion and beauty and honesty.

Because it was my birthday weekend, I was both saddened by the loss of her and filled with gratitude that I have been blessed with another day. Right after the funeral, my husband whisked me out to dinner to celebrate my birthday. We went by ourselves and had a beautiful dinner that in no way involved pizza or crayons and ridiculous attempts to entertain a 3 year old while waiting for food that will be shoveled at an alarming rate.

I had to shift from grief to joy in the car on the way to the restaurant.

On Sunday evening, I was to have dinner with my sister Emily. She picked me up and said she forgot the gift certificate at home, so we went back to her house where I was surprised with a little party that my husband planned. I was surprised by the party, but also surprised that besides me and my sister, there were three other people there.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have 3 good friends and feel like that is enough to last a life time, but, still, it was hard to ignore that there was food and drinks for more than 5 people. My husband planned a party like we used to have before Katrina. Before that STUPID FUCKING HURRICANE (oh, excuse me!) we used to have a core group of about 15 people who were regulars at every party, every function and every step of our lives.

These people were our friends that we shared holidays with and they were at our wedding…we saw them every Sunday night for maybe 10 years. And then the storm hit. And most of them were forced to move because they lost their jobs or their houses. Or, some of them just broke under the crushing weight of sadness. And they left. And I don’t blame them, I just miss them.

Again, I was flooded with both gratitude and sadness all at once. It was a beautiful gesture on my husband’s part and he is, without a doubt, the kindest and most caring person in my world. I have never, in all my years with him, felt anything but pure love and acceptance from him.

After an hour or so of hanging with the girls at the party and chowing down on the food, Mike and Max came back to the party for the cake. Everyone sang Happy Birthday and Max helped blow out the candles and we all ate big slices of chocolate doberge cake. It was the first time I have had sugar in 4 months.

Between the sugar, the vast swaying of emotions and missing the people who are no longer in my life, I am a mess, a crying mess. And that is ok. This is my reality and it is not always rosy and neat. Life is messy and life is hard. But it is life and I am grateful for it…all 40 years and counting of it.

Loving and Dancing

2009-06-08T13:09:00.002-05:00

As a child, I did not feel that I was loved. I know, that sounds harsh, doesn’t it? It implies I had a terrible relationship with my parents or was kept in a closet under the stairs for months at a time. None of that is true…well, I did hang out in the closet under the stairs a lot, but that was a self-imposed isolation.

I just spent a lot of time not feeling like I was loved or wanted or even important in any way. This is a result, I suppose, of abysmal self esteem coupled with being the youngest of 4 children. I guess. I could spend the next 30 years in therapy to pin point why I felt that way, but I don’t feel that way anymore, so frankly, I don’t care why I felt that way.

What I care about now is absolutely making sure my son does not feel the same way. I could not bear for that sweet little face to crumple under the false notion he was not loved more than anyone could ever love another human being without snapping and actually eating him.

I went today to see his final ballet class. His little daycare last year started offering a once a week ballet class. I signed him up because he was 2 and he was friends with all of the little girls at daycare. What happened was unexpected…well, unexpected by me, I am sure others would have expected this. He developed better balance and he really LOVES his ballet teacher.

Last year, I went to his last day of class to see him and the other little kids “dance” and Max and maybe 4 other kids refused to dance. Max sat in my lap the whole time and would only watch the other kids. He was shy and scared and did not want to leave my side.

This year, he was a little Baryshnikov. Or a little ham, really, because there wasn’t a whole lot of ballet going on. He kept looking at me to make sure I was there and was watching him. He did the positions and the kicks and the “dancing” with the 5 other kids. He let me take his picture with Miss Nikki, the teacher. His little face lit up when everyone applauded.

I love him as much as did last year when he sat in my lap and shyly sucked his fingers. But this year, at least I got cute pictures, too.

Jawbreakers

2009-05-28T15:16:00.005-05:00

After I had Max and the hurricane hit and my whole life seemed to turn upside down, I started having this really intense ear pain. It actually felt like someone was sticking a toothpick in my ear, or worse, that something was in my ear, like a roach or an ear wig or something disgusting like that.

I went to the ear doctor and he didn’t see anything. He did, however, notice that I was clenching my jaw a lot and surmised that it was this activity that was causing the ear pain. I asked him what I could do about it and he said, “Stop clenching your jaw.”

And so I did.

I made an honest effort every single time my ear hurt to relax my jaw and unclench. I remember once leaning over into Max’s crib and almost going blind from a flash of pain in my ear. Sure enough, my jaws were locked.

After a couple of months of making this effort to relax, I quit having the ear pain and it has never come back.

But, I still notice when I am clenching my jaw and still make the effort to relax. I’ve had to do that a lot over the last couple of weeks and for no good reason. When I was doing it before, I had reason – new baby, deluged city, dying mother, and crumbling marriage – that is the stuff that deserves body-altering stress, you know?

My big stress now is the fear of losing the good things in my life – my job, my child, my husband, my stuff. And, really, isn’t fear of that just a complete waste of time and energy…and jaw strength?

I’m struggling with very simple and worldly nonsense. I feel like I am failing at my job, that I am a fraud and that everything I do is an exercise in futility and nonsense. This is where I usually launch into some speech about wanting to do something more meaningful, but that would take way too much energy and way too big of a pay cut.

Instead, I want to care less about the nonsense, about what people think of me, about my nonsensical need to be liked by people, even people I hate. It is none of my business what other people think of me. I know that my son loves me and thinks that I am the bees’ knees. My husband, hearing me complain about a colleague in California, offered to board a plan and go kick his ass. I declined the offer, but the gesture was oddly sweet.

There is a line from one of my favorite books, (The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello) that sums it up…”What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world or the people around you, but the thinking in your head.”

And so, just like I made the conscious decision to stop clenching my jaw, I need to make the conscious decision to change my thinking. Instead of crying because an old business colleague does not like me, instead, I will be grateful and filled with joy that I am loved by a whole host of wonderful people.

Instead of wrenching my hands in fear about losing my job or failing to impress my boss, I will go to sleep at night knowing I did my best and was honest. I will be myself and not worry whether that is what people want…it is what they get!

Today, my friends, my campaign to do to my head what I did to my jaw begins. Let the wild rumpus start.

Samanta The Wonder Dog - R.I.P.

2009-05-21T16:56:00.002-05:00

I put Sam down on Monday. She was nearly 16 and she was old, but, still…I miss her and wonder if I didn’t just kill my dog because it was too hard for me to watch her slowly die? She fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago, and frankly, falling head over paws down 12 steps and the off the landing to the floor when you are a 16 year old dog is a life changing event. And for her, it definitely was. She just wasn’t the same after that fall.

Still, she would try to follow me upstairs to my office each morning. So, I started putting chairs at the foot of the stairs so she wouldn’t come up. I would go up and sit and my desk and Kenny, the spry Boston Terrier would come up and then we would both sit and listen to Sam nosing the chairs trying to come up.

She was the most loyal dog in the world. Since I work from home alone in an office flanked by Sam and Kenny, I dubbed Sam the Chief of Security and Kenny the Chief Operations Office. Sam took her job very seriously. Kenny, on the other hand, just drags his ass on the carpet and chews on his paws. Slacker.

Sam, although for the most part by this time, was deaf and blind, she still would lie by my side prepared to attack any one who might come near me. Sure, she was a little slow on the reflexes toward the end and likely would be nipping at the heels of the masked intruder after he bludgeoned me, but at least she was still suiting up and showing up every day, which is more than we can say for Kenny.

Don’t get me wrong, Kenny is a great dog. He plays with Max and he is cute a button. But, still, he’s not Sam. Sam kept Kenny in line and walked her beat each day and night. She made sure no one came up to the house unannounced and more than once, on sunny days when we had the house open, caused us to not get mail.

I will miss my Samantha. I will miss Max petting Samantha and loving on her, although she had taken to nipping at him a bit. He did not care for that part. It hurt his feelings I think.

Sam started out rough, like most dogs do. She took forever to house break and even when she was house broken, at one point she took to pissing in my bed when I was at work. She would somehow pull the covers back, pee in my spot and then somehow put the covers back in place. This meant I would already be sitting in dog urine before I realized the bed was soaked. I never figured out why she did this. It happened maybe 5 times over the course of 4 years. That was plenty enough, thank you.

In spite of all that, she was the best and most loyal dog in the world. And I will miss her.

To read my post from last year on Sam and why I loved her so much, click here http://talesfrombelowsealevel.blogspot.com/2008/09/love-letter-to-sam.html

Here and There

2009-05-14T20:43:00.002-05:00

I am sitting in the JetBlue terminal at JFK airport in New York. It is 9:00pm on a Thursday night and my flight is delayed. Until 10pm. I won’t get home until 12:30am. And I am lonely. There is a family waiting to get on this flight to New Orleans. It looks and feels like they have 13 kids and that they are all 3, but I think I might be exaggerating. You get my point though, there are kids and they are everywhere. Their mother is a shell of the woman she used to be. Sure, she still looks great – she is thin and her hair is a cute bob, but if you look closely, she has chocolate smudged on the shoulder of her shirt and I know I heard her say at least once, “if you don’t stop that right now, we are going home.”

Really? Are you really going to pack up all 13 kids, go back our through security, get the car from long term parking, cancel the vacation to New Orleans and drive back to Any Town, New York because Junior is rolling around on the terminal floor? I didn’t think so. You know you’re not, Junior knows you're not, and you know Junior knows you are not, but still, you are desperate, your nerves are frayed and if Junior does not get up off the floor, YOU are leaving all 20 kids (yes, they have multiplied somehow) in the JetBlue play space with their marginally engaged father and YOU are going to go home. And never see them again. Ever.

I have been there. We’ve all been there. Still, when I am here, where I am now, alone in an airport, sans my 1 kid who sometimes feels like 8 kids, I miss that feeling of slowly being emotionally and mentally waterboarded by a demanding toddler. Or 13 toddlers. I miss the feeling of dirty little hands touching my face, or the tug on my pants leg, or the occasional random bite or scratch. Don’t get me wrong, when I am there, that place where if I am touched one more time with a dirty little hand, or I cannot believe you BIT me, I often wish I was where I am now. Sitting in an airport, anonymous and free to read a book or type on the computer and stare at the wall.

But, right now, I am here and I am lonely. It seems everyone, even the clean up crew, has a kid in tow and they are all cute. Their little cheeks long to be pinched and their tiny bow mouths call out to be gently kissed. I have to restrain myself, lest I end up in airport jail for the night. The headlines would be horrifying and I would be quoted as saying, “But his little butt called to me to be squeezed.” Surely, anyone who has laid eyes on a 9 month old butt knows resisting the urge to give it a playful pat is akin to heroin detox.

I had lunch today with a friend who is married but has no kids. He and his wife have been married for 8 years and they are discussing the matter. They want to have kids, but they are doing what we all did – freaking out at the prospect of doing something that changes your life radically forever, never to ever be the same again…ever. You know that scenario. Anyway, I told him that had I realized earlier in my life how much I would love being a mom, I would have started much earlier and had a lot more kids. But, I am weeks away from 40 and my husband is days away from 47 and it seems…impractical? Or maybe just insane to entertain the thought of doing it all over again. Sure, having a kid not in the midst of a hurricane and a mother dying is probably not quite as harrowing as just having a kid, but probably not that much less harrowing.

My friend quoted a line from a movie he had seen. He has no kids so he can see movies. Fancy art house movies with random violence and not feel it to the core of his being because all emotional reaction has been wrenched from the core of his being and been placed right out in the open. Does that happen to everyone who gives birth, I wonder? Anyway, it was beautiful and, of course, I don’t really remember it exactly because I was busy scarfing down my lunch. But, it was something to the effect that a man’s true love is a woman’s body and a woman’s true love is her first child.

And I tearfully nodded in agreement with a mouth full of spicy roast pork with string beans. The day I had Max and they put his squirmy little body on my chest, I felt, for the first time in my life, love at first sight.

And gone was the ruthless bitch who could watch any movie about any random child abduction or murder and simply say, “this is fiction and not real.” Today, I can’t even watch Law and Order SVU because too often a child is in danger or missing or dead or horribly abused. Fiction or real, stories like that hit my heebie jeebie, which, oddly enough, seems to be at the base of my spine. (I realize no one except my sister will understand what the fuck I am talking about here.)

So, here I am, at the airport, stealing glances at other people’s kids, trying not to look like a nut job, anxiously awaiting my flight…which was just delayed another 30 minutes. I wonder if that mother is now wishing they had just gone home?

Negotiations and Love Songs

2009-05-06T14:55:00.000-05:00

After Max was born, I could not, for any reason, imagine leaving him in that big beautiful crib by himself. Actually, he was born in Texas in the middle of a hurricane. We had evacuated to Houston during Hurricane Katrina, the city flooded, and we couldn’t go home. So we rented an apartment and the night Hurricane Rita made landfall, my water broke. So, when we brought him home from the hospital, it was to a shabby apartment in Houston that was outfitted with used and IKEA furniture. There was no real crib, just a portable crib that was kindly handed down from a generous stranger.

He was tiny and fragile and all curled up like a sleeping kitten. When I put him in the portable crib next to my bed, I could no longer feel his tiny feet against me or hear the soft hum of his breath. And, his legs didn’t stretch out like he enjoyed the vast space of the crib. Instead, he seemed to pull them in tighter like a mini agoraphobe rejecting the world outside.

Being a female human who has never been routinely abused or set an animal on fire, I did what came naturally – I picked him up and I put him in bed with me. I snuggled him in right next to me and we both promptly passed out.

Some of the mothers I told this to gasped in horror. There were “tsks” and knowing glances between them. The only thing stopping me from reaching out and smacking their smug faces was the baby in the sling on my chest and, of course, the fear that they really did know something I did not.

They warned that I had done it; I would never get him out of my bed. He was going to want to sleep next to me every night and would be a handful and probably I had completely ruined this child and should just throw him away and start again fresh with a new baby.

They said I should “ferberize” him. That is a fancy term for putting your baby in his crib and letting him cry until he either falls asleep or dies. I am more likely to beat my baby with a shovel than I am to let him wail himself to sleep, so that was out of the question from day one.

It’s been three and a half years now and those other mothers were right – Max does still sleep in bed with me. Each night, he starts in his own bed. I lie in bed with him and we read books for a while and then we turn off the light and hug and sing and talk about the day and when it is quiet, he snuggles up to me and falls asleep. I then get up and go about the night – filling the dishwasher, folding clothes, watching my TIVOed shows - you know all the important stuff that has to wait while I spend all this time, you know, being a mother and bonding with my son and making him feel important and loved.

Then, I go to bed in my own bed. But, at some point each night, Max wakes up and ambles into my room. He climbs up in bed with me and snuggles right next to me and we sleep. I wake up in the morning with his sweet little face telling me he loves me and that he wants to help make the coffee. He brings me my pajama pants and my glasses and looks genuinely pleased that I have lived to see another day. Which, in turn, makes me genuinely happy to have lived to see another day.

My point in all of this is that the other night, I was lying in bed with Max and he didn’t want to go to sleep. He was indeed tired, but he didn’t want to go to sleep and was fighting it and was very angry that I was being the meanie who was making him stay in bed. As he quieted down, I told him, “I love you” and he said, grumpily, “I don’t want you to love me.”

I am an adult, a secure adult. I know he was angry and I was more impressed with his cunning ways than I was offended or hurt by what he said, but it got me thinking about love and being loved. There is a Paul Simon song called “Hearts and Bones” and there is a verse that puts it just right:

Why won’t you love me
For who I am
Where I am
He said:
cause that’s not the way the world is baby
This is how I love you, baby

We don’t get to choose how other people love us or if they love us. Max can tell me he doesn’t want me to love him, but I always will, from the bottom of my heart. I can cry and scream because I think {insert name} should be this way, or do this, or if {insert name} really cared, he would blah, blah, blah. But, the reality is, we are lucky to be loved at all.

And, I went to sleep with my boy curled up next to me, his sweaty little head resting against my cheek, thinking how lucky I am to be loved. Yes, those mothers were right – I did do something that first night with Max that radically altered the course of my life – and I am forever grateful for it.

Lennie looks happily toward the river as George shoots him in the back of the head.

2009-04-23T20:52:00.001-05:00

When I was 21 I moved to New York with a guy I met in a bar. I really just like saying that out loud to people and watching their expressions. In reality, yes, I did meet Dan in a bar, but it was 8 months later that I moved to New York with him. And 11 months after that, I called my parents and asked them to come get me.

My late teens and early twenties started out normal enough – part-time job at a clothing store, enrolled in college, steady boyfriend, but over the course of a couple of months, things went radically wrong. I kind of started to break apart. I quit my job, I dropped out of college and I broke up with the boyfriend. My three older sisters were all out of the house, so my parents decided to sell our house and move into a smaller place. For several months, my only job was painting their kitchen cabinets. I cannot begin to tell you how long it took me to do it, but I think I averaged 1 cabinet door a week. I would take it off the hinges, bring it into the garage, sand it and paint it. The whole operation took forever because I would smoke a bunch of cigarettes and drink beer the whole time. Eventually, I would have enough beer that I would not care about the cabinet and would just go inside and watch TV.

Can you imagine how disappointed my parents must have been? Actually, looking back on it, I’m not even sure they even noticed what was going on. They both worked full-time, they had 3 out of 4 kids married off and out of the house and were just so relieved my “big news” was that I dropped out of college and not that I was pregnant, that I could have been canning human beings in the garage and they would not have cared.

It was around this time in my life that I met Dan. I was hanging out in this bar called Le Bon Temps Roules on a nightly basis. My sister Emily went with me most nights, but some nights I went alone. Mostly, I went with people because I liked having a ride home. Generally I drank until I passed out, so driving drunk wasn’t really an option for me. I met him playing pool. This is what Em and I did most nights, went to Bon Temps and plated pool. She was the pretty, funny one and I was the brooding mean drunk in the corner using the pool cue to steady myself. So, it was surprising when Dan started talking to me and not her. Everyone talked to her, people just tolerated me.

He told jokes, he may have bought me a beer, maybe I won the pool game…who knows, it is all a long ago blur. He was nice to me and that was something most people weren’t as I generally did not attract a good caliber of people. We stayed out all night, ending up at a breakfast joint where I knew for sure he would leave me when I went to the bathroom. But, he was still at the table when I came back. This only confirmed by suspicion that he would kill me before the night was over, but he didn’t do that either. Instead, he asked me for my number and said he would call, which I was certain he would not, but he did.

He was a senior at Tulane and we dated until he graduated and moved back home to Long Island. I was crushed when he left and I returned to drinking every day, something I had managed to avoid while dating him. We talked on the phone and I held back my tears so he wouldn’t know how desperately I needed to be with him. Drinking every day wears on a body, even a young one.

When he asked me to move up to New York with him I said yes without a moment’s hesitation. With him, I felt smarter and prettier than I was. I knew I was a fraud, like I had fooled him into thinking I was something, when, deep inside, I knew that was a dirty lie.

And so, I moved to New York, with the guy I had met in a bar.

And looking back, it was one of the bravest things I have ever done. I left home, for the first time ever, with $800, 2 years of college under my belt, and a 1984 Toyota Tercel. I had no job lined up and knew no one except Dan, who had a job that required him to work somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 hours per week. I wanted him to fall to his knees and profess his undying love for me. I wanted him to love me more than I did myself and I wanted him to validate my very existence. It’s a tall order for a 24 year old recent college grad from a background as dysfunctional as my own.

Still, I assumed his silences were him thinking how repulsive I was and that his time away from me was his reaction to my very existence. In the years that have passed, I now realize none of these things is true. We were young. We didn’t know how to tell each other the things we felt inside. I didn’t know how to tell him he made my knees week and he was as capable of telling me he loved me and he was of spontaneously taking flight.

The point is, we did it any way. We went out on a limb and gave it an honest try. We played house and discovered both the joys and exhaustion of a constant partner, and then we called it quits. Well, it was a lot more dramatic than that and involved one last fling (no really, this is the last time…,) a stalking and a set of slashed tires, but the end result was the dissolution of a relationship that had been dear to me.

I am not that brave anymore. I won’t sign up for heartbreak of any kind and not just because I am now married and not “out there.” A friend of mine once said making friends as an adult is a lot like dating. You swap numbers, wonder when is an appropriate time or reason to call, make a “date,” and then wonder if you talked too much about yourself or chewed with your mouth open or divulged too many of your secrets. And then, you wonder if the potential friend will feel the same way. Will he or she reciprocate with a call or an offer of another get together? And then, even after you invest all the time, sometimes, people end up not being who you thought they were or wished they were.

I am scared to make the investment. I don’t want to be hurt or left behind. So, I keep you at arms length, but all the while, all I want is to grab you and put you in my pocket and take you with me wherever I go. I am, at my core, Lennie Small. But I spend most of my day pretending to be aloof and confident.

I keep looking for the clever way to end this post, but really, there isn’t one. I just likened myself to an overly strong and affectionate mental retard. I can hear the crickets from here.

She's Got L'eggs

2009-04-07T11:40:00.014-05:00

I was driving home from Target this weekend and Max was in the back seat playing with the Easter eggs I had gotten him to bribe him into the cart so he would stop running around like an escaped monkey from the primate center. They were those multi-colored plastic eggs that snap a part. You know, the ones you fill with stuff to hide for an Easter egg hunt or to put in a basket. He loves these eggs. Even empty, they bring him a great amount of joy. I started questioning this, almost judging my three year old for his fascination with empty plastic eggs, when all of a sudden, I was hit with a sharp and distinct memory – L’eggs panty hose eggs.

Anyone who was alive in the 70’s remembers L’eggs. In fact, I venture to say the pantyhose are still around. I am loathe to wear panty hose under any circumstances, so I am no expert on best brands or even still produced brands. Anyway, I guess my mom would get these hose and they came in a white plastic egg like this –

She would take out the crumpled up nude hose and give me the white plastic shell to play with. The eggs were bigger than the Easter variety, but the same concept – you could snap them apart, put things in it, like change or Barbie shoes, snap then 2 sides back together, and, voila, you had a super-secret hiding place! That is, of course, if you consider a giant white plastic egg super-secret and inconspicuous.

Thinking about the eggs also elicited a couple of other really strong memories of the house I grew up in. When I was 4, we moved from Asher Street all they way to 6504 Blanke Street. It was 7 blocks away, but it was a two story house, thus it might as well have been like moving to Mars. I kid you not, I think we moved from a 400 square foot house into what felt like a 3,000 square foot house. But, I was a lot smaller, so I think my numbers might be a little off.

What the Blanke Street had besides a SECOND FLOOR! was ample closet space. If I had this much closet space in my current adult home, I could die a happy woman with many, many coats and linens. These closets, when I was a child, made me happy for other reasons.

When I see Max playing with plastic eggs or having a conversation with a TV character…when the TV is off, I am brought back to my own childhood. I was shy, almost pathologically shy and I found great solace in small spaces. So, I spent a fair amount of my childhood hanging out in the closets of 6504 Blanke Street. To better illustrate the closets of my childhood, I have used my intensive architecture training to construct detailed and scaled blueprints of my childhood home.

Floor 1

Floor 2

The house was shaped like an inverted L so that the 2^nd floor was not across the whole length of the house. Let’s start on the ground floor. As you enter the house via the front door and into the foyer, you take your first left into the hall where immediately to your right is the under the stairs closet. This closet had a sloped roof and was chock full of coats. In fact, for a family of 6 that lived in the South, I think we had enough coats to outfit a small tribe of Native Americans in Alaska. I do not know why we had so many coats because really, I don’t ever remember wearing one as a kid.

This closet also served as our tornado shelter. We never used it for that purpose except for the one time my mom swore she saw a twister over Lake Ponchartain on the way home from the grocery and ran in screaming at us to get into the hall closet. She then proceeded to make my very skinny sister Alice hold a 5 pound bag of sugar on her lap so she would not blow away. I think maybe one of us should have sat in Alice as I doubt 5 pounds would have made a difference when she only weighed about 85 pounds.

The beauty of this closet was that if you wiggled your way past the coats, you had a lovely space that was perfect for small people. The maximum ceiling height was maybe 3.5 feet and sloped all the way down. It was the perfect place to put a Barbie make-up head. You might remember this. It was a giant Barbie head that you could put make-up on and you could style her hair.

Her hair felt like fishing wire, but it was blonde and I had pooh-brown hair, so she was beautiful to me. I think I may have attempted to bring an Easy Bake Oven into the closet and was thwarted by the lack of a power outlet, thank god. I was the youngest of 4 girls, so mom was pretty tired by the time I was growing up.

The other closet on the first floor where I spent a good chunk of my formative years was my parents' closet in their bedroom. They had a massive walk-in closet with, seriously, enough clothing to open their own Goodwill store and not need donations for years. I do not know why they had so many clothes. In fact, in writing this, I am now beginning to think that maybe my parents were pathological hoarders of some sort, but that is a topic for another day.

The phone cord on the phone in my parents’ room would reach into their closet, so that is where all high school discussions took place. I planned dates, talked about boys, dreamed up new lies to tell my parents and generally wasted time and space all while staring at my father’s extensive collection of clip on ties and white shoes. More than once, he booted me from his closet so he could get dressed.

The second floor had two hall closets. One was basically a linen closet. It was maybe 18 inches deep and had shelves. We kept our linens I suppose in one of the other 500 closets we had because this closet contained only books. Actually, I am not even sure we had additional linens. Changing the bed sheets was more of an annual thing for our family. It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I realized that this was something that should be done more frequently. So, from floor to ceiling of the linen closet, it was books. Years and years worth of Scholastic book club orders were stored here. We had multiple copies of many books because our poor frazzled mother could not keep up with who ordered what or maybe she was just tired of arguing with our demands to have our “own” copy and willingly ponied up the extra .75 cents to have peace and quiet.

Across from the book/linen closet was another hall closet that was a walk in closet with, you guessed it, more coats! And hats and an assorted array of other junk. One of my favorite things to do was to pick a few books from the library (linen/book closet) and retire to my own private study (hall closet) and enjoy a quiet read. There was light and always a plethora of coats to lounge on. The main problem was the heat. There was no air conditioning vent in the closet and since it was an upstairs closet, it would get stifling in there. I often emerged well-read, but looking as if I had just run a marathon. I can vividly remember sitting in there reading Ramona the Pest and droplets of sweat falling onto the pages.

For some reason, I never spent time in the closets of my rooms, and at one time or another, I inhabited just about every bedroom in that house. When we first moved in, Emily was forced to share the downstairs bedroom with me. I was afraid of the dark and she was the closest in age, so she got stuck with me and a bright night light. It didn’t matter what room I was in, I always ended up in bed with Mom. Everyone knows only the closeness of your mother can ward off ghosts and all evil associated with the night.

Our two older sisters theoretically had their own rooms upstairs, but my oldest sister Angelle did like to sleep alone, so her stuff and a bed lived in her room, but she actually slept in Alice’s room at night. Once Angelle got older, she moved to the downstairs room and Emily and I moved to the room that used to be hers. Again, Emily had to suffer with my phobic dislike of darkness. Finally, when I was nearly 18, I got my own room. And one year later, my parents sold the damn house.

I lived in that house from the age of 4 until I was 19. To this day, all of my dreams take place in that house. In my subconscious mind, I still live there. I still hide out in the closets and wish I could convert the attic into my own room like Greg Brady. I remember that the house had a whole house intercom system. I think it broke 20 minutes after we moved in, but we had some fun with it. The house also had an electric range in the kitchen that, if you held the handle of the frying pan and touched any of the controls at the same time, it would give you an electric shock.

One summer, we got our hands on a Little Fryer and ate french fries for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. The summer my oldest sister got her learner’s permit, she took all of us on rides up and down the driveway all day. The result was she could fly into the driveway at 30 mph and never hit the back of the garage. She also could back out of that tricky driveway without turning around.

Of all my childhood memories, it is always the small, weird ones that stick with me. We had a huge backyard and tons of kids on the block, and I remember the closets. So who am I to judge my son’s love of empty Easter eggs?

Late Night Ramblings

2009-03-25T21:44:00.001-05:00

I really don’t have anything much to post to my blog this week. It really is a lot of pressure to come up with something each week. Well, not a lot of pressure, I mean, it’s not like I will get fired if I don’t post. But, some people who read the blog on a regular basis, ok, well, my sister Emily says she wants regular updated posts, so she is my readership and I aim to please.

I’ve considered using my blog to self-publish my novel…a chapter a week or something like that. Of course, that means I would actually have to finish it,

I have a lot of things I’ve started with the intention of putting them on the blog, but they seem a little too revealing. One in particular is about my mental collapse at age 22. Sure, looking back on that time is amusing, but some people just don’t have a sense of humor about alcohol induced psychotic breaks.

The well this week is dry. I have some ideas mulling around, but it’s just a couple of empty cans rolling around in the back seat. Nothing is well-formed or thought out. But, the week is young and I still have time. Maybe I’ll get it together enough to tell the story of when I moved to NYC with a guy I met in a bar. That’s always a good one.

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It is the day after I wrote the above and I still got nothing. So, this week is an easy week and I will get back on track soon.

All is good and well…I am working a lot at that pesky real job and my beautiful 3 year old son is just so much fun to be around right now that I would choose playing in the backyard with him over just about everything else in life. His view of the world is fantastic. The other day, we were looking at a picture of a giraffe and he told me the giraffe looked like pizza. By golly, it does. The spots are the pepperonis and the yellow fur is the cheese.

I am on the road right now and we just video called each other. He said he wanted to get me from the airport right now and it is hard to explain to a toddler that you are 600 miles away and can’t come home until tomorrow night. He kissed the camera and told me he loved me and all was instantly right with the world.

It makes me wonder, did my mother love me this much? I have been thinking about her a lot because the three year anniversary of her death was March 20th. I live a few blocks from the cemetery where she is buried. I popped in to say hello and clean up the flowers. I miss her like I would miss my left arm – I always know she is gone, I just somehow have adapted to her not being there. It gets easier, but it will never be the same.

She would have loved Max. She would have loved that he talks to the characters on TV…even when the TV is off, and that he can count to 10 in Spanish, and that he hides in the same spot every single time we play hide and go seek. And because of that, I think it makes me love him even more. As if that was possible.

My Wacky Eating Disorder

2009-03-17T12:34:00.003-05:00

I wrote this a few years ago when I was living in Houston. I just found it while cleaning off my old shared drive at work. Sadly, but not surprisingly, I have not changed much. Still, it is much easier to laugh at myself these days. One of the perks of getting older I guess!

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My wacky eating disorder is in full swing right now. Last night, on the way home from work, I stopped at Walgreen’s for deodorant. I had only noticed that morning I was out, which made for a smelly, moist day. The whole time I was navigating the back streets of Houston in search of the crimson "W" I knew I was not only stopping for a bottle of Secret Platinum Protection. I knew deep in my heart that Walgreen’s is the Mecca of junk food and that, for a mere few dollars, I could drown my existence in Ruffles potato chips and ranch dip.

I stood in front of the snack rack for what felt like hours laboring over the decision. Do I compromise and get baked BBQ lays? Should I go all out and get Fritos, practically the most fattening snack on earth? Should I get dip to go with all these chips? Will I be able to contain myself and eat only a "serving" of the chips and dip? How do they expect someone to eat only 1 ounce of chips and 2 tablespoons of dip? Isn't that like telling someone they can do only one shot of tequila or that they can have only one tire on their car? It's insanity? Is Kate Moss the official creator of the snack serving size?

Finally, after much internal deliberation and calculation of calories and fat grams, I settled on the Ruffles Natural potato chips at 7 grams of fat per serving and the Ruffles ranch dip at 5 grams of fat per serving. 12 grams of fat per serving. That doesn't seem so bad, right? Right.

When I got home, I let the dogs out and listened to the messages and all that stuff you are supposed to do when you get home. I put the dip in the fridge (even though it seems to be made of some creamy white substance that does not need to be refrigerated) and the chips on the counter and all the various sundries away, but the chips and dip never left my radar. I am a trained hunter and I knew where they were at all times. Even as I walked from room to room, I knew they were there and that they were beckoning me. I gathered my strength and told myself, "Before you can eat, you have to do Yoga."

Yoga and running. These are the two forms of exercise I have chosen. After years of torture trying to do aerobics, lift weights, swim, bike, hike, skate, hula-hoop, you name it, I have always come back to Yoga and running. I've always managed to do one of these forms of exercise fairly regularly up until I broke my foot in January. That kept my butt planted on the couch for 3 months and when I finally could stand up again, it looked like part of the couch stayed attached to my rear. I am way too young for my butt to be gently resting on the top of my thighs, so it's back to running and Yoga, both of which are decidedly more difficult when lugging around 10 more pounds of derriere. The "Downward Dog" looks more like "Cottage Cheese Ass in Air."

I put down my giant beach towel on the rug (it’s much easier to just cover the dog hair then it is to vacuum it) and settled in for an hour of breathing, stretching and panting with Tracey Rich and Ganga White. With each breath in I thought of the salty chips waiting for me in the kitchen. Every time I bent at the waist and saw the jiggle of my inner thighs, I was reminded of the gelatinous consistency of the non-refrigerated style ranch dip that awaited me as a reward for my efforts.

I did almost the whole videotape, but decided to skip the plow shoulder stance, as I feared suffocation from my own bosom and stomach. In this pose, you lie on the ground and then raise your legs up over and behind your head so that, ideally, the bottoms of your feet lie flat on the floor behind your head. After hanging out there for a while, the goal is to, while supporting your back with your hands, elbows firmly planted in the ground, raise your legs up to the ceiling. The end result is looking like you had your hands on your hips while standing on your tip toes and then, in some strange lunar pull, the world was turned upside down and you were tossed on to your head while your legs remained perfectly straight. This is difficult even when I am not lugging around 10-15 extra pounds, so you can imagine my reluctance to rest the bulk of my being on windpipe and esophagus.

The end of the tape has about 10 minutes of relaxation, which I also skipped, even though Ganga White tells you in the beginning of the video expressly not to skip it. I was feeling all crazy and the din of the Ruffles was deafening by this point.

Still, I refrained from hitting the chips just yet. First, I ate my salad. If I took away nothing from my few weeks at Jenny Craig, it was that I could eat as much salad as I want all the time. I have no doubt in my mind the salad they had in mind was not the salad I had last night, but it was mostly composed of leafy greens, so it was a salad – with crumbled bleu cheese and Paul Newman’s Caesar dressing. It was still a salad.

Finally, the time had come. I was to be rewarded for going to work and staying all day, for doing almost an hour of yoga, for eating a salad for dinner – I was going to eat the chips and dip. The chips had been screaming to get out of the bag for hours. I opened the seal and smelled the salty “poof” of the broken seal. The dip proved more difficult and I was forced to wedge a butter knife under the lid to release the hermetic seal (apparently this is why it does not need to be refrigerated – it is sealed in the same way nuclear waste is.)

I fixed a big glass of water (because everyone knows you should drink 8 glasses of water a day) and headed to the couch, drooling dogs in tow. I have no idea what I watched on T.V. I ate my first “serving” and considered stopping right there. That would be the right thing to do. I would feel so good about myself. But, I keep telling myself things like, “Just one more” or “This is the last 2 and then I’m done.” I even start calculating how many calories and fat grams it would be if I ate all of it or half of it. “If I ate all the chips at 7 grams a serving and there are 9 servings, that would be 63 grams of fat. There’s more fat than that in a Big Mac and people eat those all the time. The dip is even fewer grams of fat at 5 grams per serving with 9 servings, for a mere 45 grams of fat. It’s barely a meal, right?”

At that point, I knew I was out of control. The dogs were starting to whine and whimper because they had seen this before and knew that I possess both the chips plus the ability to go and get more chips. They were torn between leaping up and grabbing the chips so they would get some and just playing it cool so as to ensure there will be more chips on future nights. It’s a delicate line they walk. They want chips, but they don’t want to piss me off and risk not ever getting chips ever again. They were confused and I was wildly shoving chips and dip into my mouth.

Then, in an attempt to save myself, I put the lid back on the dip and as quickly as the feeding frenzy had begun, it was over. I shoved the dip to the back of the fridge and rolled the chips up tight. I figured I did about 40 grams worth of damage and, as if rehearsed, the inevitable occurred and I was consumed with remorse. “Oh, the humanity! Why, why do I do this to myself? Why must I be a slave to Frito Lay?”

“I am a cow and I hate myself,” I shouted to the frightened canines at my feet.

The phone rang, startling all three of us, and though I was deep in a quagmire of guilt, I feigned professionalism, “Hello.”

“Hey, Babe,” shouted my loving, but slightly deaf husband.

“I am a cow and I hate myself. I am fat and disgusting. I want to die. I just ate half a bag of chips and half a canister of dip. I wish I was bulimic so I could purge myself.”

We have been together for a while, so without skipping a beat he responded, “You’re not fat. You’re beautiful.” And then, he did what he always does with every conversation, he focused it back onto himself, “We’ll get better at eating. It’s baby steps. Tonight, I went to Bud’s Brolier and even though I wanted a number 6 AND a number 4, I only got a number 6. And then, after dinner, I walked to the store to get a piece of chocolate cake instead of driving.”

I couldn’t argue with any of this. I was seeking solace from a man who rationalized eating one greasy hamburger instead of 2, who justified chocolate cake every night because he walked the 3 blocks to get it instead of driving. And it was solace I got.

The Economy - Some Lessons Learned

2009-03-10T13:31:00.005-05:00

Be forewarned, I am bitter in this post. But, mostly, it sounds more bitter than I really am. In reality, I care much less about any of this than it seems. In truth, I would much rather watch reruns of Law and Order than the news. I just needed a weekly post and this appeared on the paper.

Cheers!

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Every time I turn on the news, I hear another horrifying tidbit about our country’s economy and, well, what I really feel like saying is, “Well there rest of the nation, how the fuck does it feel?”

I know, not a popular attitude, but, frankly, the country could take some advice from New Orleans on how to act and what to do when your entire infrastructure collapses and you find yourself without a tax base.

For example, you may find that your home, which you had methodically and rationally(?) invested the bulk of your money in, is now worth mere pennies on the dollar. Yes, we New Orleanians know how that feels. My house didn’t flood and we rejoiced in that tidbit of information for all of 30 seconds before we realized that we were now saddled with an unflooded yet unsellable house in a burned out, bottomed out, flooded city. Gee Maw, aren’t we lucky?

Additionally, you may find that although you have not lost your house or your job, that perhaps every other household on your block is facing foreclosure and maybe even there are some abandoned houses on your block. I know how you feel. The house across the street from me has been empty and abandoned since the hurricane. Yes, directly across the street from me is a blighted property and it has been there since 2005. Cats use the house as a giant den of iniquity and as a humongous liter box. The owner, who has relocated to Dallas, comes in occasionally to sit on the front porch and talk about how one day he will come back. But, he had no insurance and I doubt he will ever come back. Besides, he is awestruck by the level of competency he sees in TX government. Really, can you blame him? He lived here his whole life destitute and futureless. Now, after 3 years in Texas, he is practically J.R. Ewing.

You may also find that with foreclosures on the rise, there will be no property tax base to fund your public school system. Well, who better that New Orleans to tell you how to get by with a sub-par education system? Simply invest those dollars in cleaning the French Quarter and then pretend like the murder rate skyrocketing is just something completely and totally unrelated and unimportant. It seems to be working fine here in New Orleans and you could practically eat off of Bourbon Street. Perhaps, and this is just a modest proposal, we should just eat the poorly educated youth? Just a thought.

Finally, as the times get rougher, you may find yourself drowning in fear, anxiety and depression. As your friends and loved ones come unhinged around you and, despite the pain, life continues to go on and people die and children are born, you will, without a doubt, begin to turn on your spouse. He or she will be the closest person to you and therefore the one to take the brunt of your fear and anger. The mounting pressure of unpaid bills, uncertain futures, and sheer terror at the prospect of how you will go on will add fuel to the fire.

This is when you and your spouse need to find a common enemy. This is very important so don’t rush this step. Make sure you choose someone you both despise (for example, the neighbor across the street who won’t come back and deal with his blighted property) and then spend countless hours detailing how you would exact revenge if you weren’t so completely drained and void of all energy and emotion. For instance, you might fantasize that you would throw a Molotov cocktail through the window of the place or maybe plant drugs in the house and call the DEA? Or, maybe you would just shake your fist and snarl at the man every time he comes in to visit his own personal addition to the decline of a major and celebrated historical city?

If all else fails and you still find yourself struggling to wrap your tired brain around all of this seemingly nonsensical economical blah, then that is when you take your cue from New Orleans – have your governor turn down federal dollars on principle. What better way to say “fuck you” to the remaining battered citizens of New Orleans?

I'm not a doctor, I just play one on the internet

2009-03-03T15:27:00.003-06:00

I’m doing that thing again where I feel kind of fat and maybe a little achy so I start Googling symptoms like fatigue, weight gain and moodiness and start reading up on all my possible illnesses. There are a lot of things that pop up when you Google those symptoms. The top 10 are:

Abdominal Obesity Metabolic Syndrome.
Ok, I feel kind of fat and that may be because I just at 2 mini burgers and fries from Ruby Tuesday’s, but I still shop at normal mainstream clothing stores so I think I am alright with this one.
Achard-Thiers Syndrome.
This occurs only in diabetic post-menopausal women. I am indeed a woman, but thankfully the other 2 do not apply…at least not today with this bout of hypochondria.
Bipolar Disorder.
Really? Can bipolar disorder really make you gain weight? I think this really only applies to the moodiness part, don’t you? Besides, I would love to be that manic, but I think I am too lazy to actually have both sides of the bipolar coin.
Cushing’s’ Syndrome
OK, now we’re talking. This is something I can sink my teeth into. When I click on the link, it tells me there are 81 more possible symptoms for this disease! Oh my, this is a veritable feast for hypochondriac like me! But, when I read the symptoms it’s like someone threw darts at a wall of symptoms – weight gain or weight loss, hair loss or hirsutism, thin arms, fat neck, blah, blah, blah. This is too all over the board and would require an actual trip to an actual doctor to diagnose, so I am skipping Cushing’s, although, I do think my dog may have it.
Depression
Whatever.
Depressive Disorders
Cop out! How is this different from depression? Screw you. Been there, done that, give me something that is actually going to get me some sympathy and a magic cure that will zap my girth!
Postpartum Depression.
Now, this is serious. I actually had this after giving birth to Max and is indeed no laughing matter, however, I was thin and trim while suffering from this condition and I had nice big breastfeeding boobs to boot.
Autoimmune Lymphoproliferative Syndrome.
Hmm, I like the sound of this. It sounds like something that would be a diagnosis on House or my favorite, Mystery Diagnosis. However, I did some digging and really, with my very limited knowledge of anatomy and biology, it was all gobledy gook. I should have paid more attention in my Biology for Liberal Arts majors’ class in college, but, I did not.
Addison’s disease.
This one really does haunt me. It always pops up when I do my symptom searches AND it was the most recent illness on Mystery Diagnosis. Some of the additional symptoms are spot on – craving salty foods, irritability, moodiness, sleepiness, emotional distress, but as I continue to pick my symptoms, I can’t ignore that some are just wishful thinking. For example, who wouldn’t love to have “Underarm hair loss?” Or, my other 2 favorites, anorexia and collapse. Still, I do like pickles, so I will keep Addison’s on the short list.
Crohn’s Disease
This entry took me on a 15 minute journey into a tangled and frigtening web of symptoms, diagnoses, and heart-stopping fear. In fact, I got so freaked out, I decided to just shut down Google and accept that I am a little plump, tired because I am a mother and I work full time, and, frankly, just a little mean.

From the time I was little, I have just known there is some rationale explanation for all of my sneaky and elusive symptoms. One day, the web will lead me to the correct diagnosis. It will have to be the web, because the doctors I have seen over the years, the ones with their fancy blood tests and barium enemas, they just aren’t finding it. Slackers.

Simone

2009-02-26T09:13:00.003-06:00

In years past, I have gone down to the French Quarter on Mardi Gras Day and paraded around incognito, usually dressed as a fairy or something that allowed me to wear a flowing dress and lots of makeup. Despite what the rest of the world believes, Mardi Gras is not all boobs and beads. Mardi Gras is a day to let your alter ego burst forth and shine through and, for some people, that means lifting your shirt in public so that drunken fraternity boys and old men engaging in frotteurism can pelt you with cheap plastic beads.

But, for most of us locals, it means people watching, meeting old friends, and acting like a fool for a day.

Back when I used to drink, I would, after having a few beers in me, tell people my name was Simone. I would tell this to new people and also people who knew me already, and they, knowing that I tended to get mean as the night wore on, would just take the easy route and not argue. In my mind, Simone was exotic and beautiful. Instead of a plain girl from the suburbs, Simone was mysterious and daring. She was a gypsy and a poet and wasn’t afraid to live her life as she saw fit.

On the other hand, Claire was scared, insecure and generally consumed with self-loathing. Simone was that part of me who came out only when I drank enough to forget how much I hated myself. After I got sober, Simone went into hiding for a while. Without my bottled courage, Simone stayed deep inside and just when I thought she might be gone forever, Mardi Gras 2002 rolled around and she came out with a vengeance.

I would love to say that I went on a meditative retreat with my swami and tapped into an abyss of self love, but I would be lying. I realized instead, that if I painted my face entirely and dressed completely different than normal, then I could parade around on Mardi Gras Day and be whoever I wanted, and that’s when Simone came back. I was, for one day a year, stunningly beautiful, alluringly mysterious and completely not the Claire who is me for the other 364 days of the year.

This year, Mardi Gras was quiet. Simone is still there, but instead of parading around with wings and fairy dust, Max and I walked our neighborhood and looked for ant piles. My little boy, just like me, does not like parades and big crowds, and so, Simone will just have to wait a few years until she can come out again to play. Besides, there is no greater joy than hearing my little boy tell me he loves me and climb into my arms after a long day of ant hunting. Simone pales in comparison.

You're a nice girl, but...

2009-02-17T21:58:00.002-06:00

The other day, Mike was driving me to the airport for a business trip. I felt uncharacteristically calm as my usual MO is anxiety before a trip. You know the free floating kind that sometimes erupts into misdirected anger…generally at Mike. Yet, he continues to taxi me to the airport for these trips. He has the patience of a saint and is easily the most forgiving man I have ever met.

We were tooling along the highway and he started telling me a story. It is a story I have heard many times before, but after so many years you run out of new material and you just tell each other the same story over and over again. I imagine when we are in our 70s sitting in an assisted living facility our son will visit us and think we are old and senile because we tell each other the same stories over and over again when in reality, we do that now and it is not the result of dementia.

This particular story he was telling is a good one. He and some friend whose name I can’t remember met a couple of girls while on vacation in Florida. He and this friend, let’s call him Peabody (all of Mike’s childhood friends have odd names and I have learned not to question this because someone did once confirm the existence of a friend named Eebazabba) were around 18 at the time and the girls, who were from Alabama, were on vacation with their families. Mike and Peabody took such a liking to these girls that they actually went to visit them. Mike’s Dad rented a Dodge Colt for them to drive to Montgomery or Mobile or someplace like that, so they could once again see the girls they liked.

Like all stories Mike tells, there was more to the story like how there was a gas crisis and the girl’s father had to siphon gas out of his Cadillac so they could actually drive. No doubt, he gladly did this to get these boys away from his little Princess, but Mike argues that point insisting he, at least, was a perfect gentleman. There was also an offshoot about Peabody punching the hood of the rented Colt and Mike then punching Peabody because he knew his Dad was going to be pissed.

My first reaction to hearing this story for the 50^th time was to mock Mike for not only his silly little crush, but for still romanticizing it some 30 years later. Yes, I am that kind of wife. My husband patiently drives his irrationally angry and anxiety-ridden wife to the airport and she responds by ridiculing him. But, for some reason, on this particular trip down memory lane, I kept my mouth shut and instead of teasing him for being kind and lovingly human, I decided to be the same and share a story with him that I never shared before.

When I was 14 I went to Navarre Beach with a girlfriend and her family. They gave us remarkable freedom and we met a couple of boys one night on the beach. They boy I ended up talking to was a kid named Cal. He too was from Alabama and he was a nice boy. I was, looking back, a pretty young girl, but my self-esteem was somewhere near the floor and the fact that this boy was paying attention to me and was nice to me was mind boggling. When it was time to leave Florida, I was crushed. I wanted to exchange addresses and numbers with Cal so we could keep in touch, but he logically noted that we lived 2 states apart and would likely never see each other again.

Still, I was crushed. For the entire 5 hour car ride back to New Orleans, I quietly wept into my sweatshirt sleeve. No doubt the family I was with thought I was deranged or possessed, but they politely declined to comment on my weepiness. I just couldn’t stand that I had connected with this boy and was never going to see him again.

This next part gets a little weird. When I got back home I still could not stop thinking about this boy so I walked a ½ a mile to the pay phone at the Schwegmann’s Grocery Store, called information and got the phone number and address of Cal in Alabama. I can’t remember why I didn’t call. I suppose fear of verbal rejection or not enough quarters for a long distance call, but I did write him a letter. I am sure I tried to sound like it was the most normal thing in the world to stalk him from 2 states away before the invention of the internet and perhaps I even dotted the “i” in my name with a heart. The amazing this is that he actually wrote me back. I think this letter was something like a nervous, “wow, how did you find my address?” and “you are a nice girl, but…”

I had really forgotten about this incident and my inability to let go of this boy and how he made me feel. My heart healed quickly and no doubt I moved on to the next cute boy as young girls do, but telling the story again to Mike made me realize something about myself that I had forgotten. I like people. I like to hold the people I meet in my heart and keep them near. I don’t like to lose the people I meet. Over the years, as I have “matured,” I have learned to feign indifference about people I care about who either move away or don’t care as much about me. I have taken that heart I so carelessly wore on my sleeve and tucked it away. I have compartmentalized my emotions and learned the socially appropriate amount of care and concern I am supposed to show.

And, I have gotten so good at it that I almost made fun of my husband for not being indifferent. You see, if I had met my husband in Florida when I was 14, he would have rented a car and driven to see me. He would have given me his number and his address and been inappropriately expressive and possessive. He would have shown genuine interest in me and my feelings. He would have never forgotten me and would be telling stories about me 30 years later.

In my pained and pointed efforts to not seem like a clingy stalker, I almost forgot that sometimes, I just want to openly and honestly love my fellow human beings. I want to hug too long and cry when people move away. I want to put it all out there and not fear being mocked. I want to be like Mike. Or, at the very least, openly admire him for having the courage to do what I have forgotten how.

Random Ramblings About My Husband

2009-02-10T20:58:00.002-06:00

My husband is different from me in many ways. He does these things that I think are completely bizarre. For instance, he asks people for directions. Sure, that’s not weird, but I am telling you, he asks EVERYONE for directions to EVERYTHING. If we walk into a giant chain supermarket in a new city, he will ask the cashier where the tomatoes are. I mean, for heaven’s sake, is it really that hard to look at either end of the store and see which one has the produce? When I call him on this, he says, get this, that he likes to talk to people??? What the fuck? Shouldn't he have disclosed this to me BEFORE we got married?

You see, I do not like to talk to people and will go to great lengths to avoid small talk. When I arrive home in the car, I look down and walk briskly until I have one foot in the front door. Then, and only then, will I look up and see if any neighbors are out. Then, I can give a wave as I enter the house. I appear friendly, but there will be NO small talk. I do not care that there was a gas leak or that Herman is getting new siding.

My husband, on the other hand, is like a loose dog that ran out the open front gate and is visiting every yard in a 20 block radius. He will spend hours roaming the neighborhood talking to anyone about the traffic, the weather, the cost of living, politics, religion, how much you paid for your house, how much we paid for our house, what kind of air freshener you use, why our brand is better, and the list goes on forever. The man can talk about nothing for hours on end. It is strangely revolting.

I have heard him call his friend Terry in Witchita Falls and talk to him for over 30 minutes about the weather. The weather. Yes, I am serious. I once stood around staring into space for an hour wishing a meteorite would land on my head listening to him talk to a random stranger on our street about politics. Or maybe it was religion. I do not know because I refused to make eye contact with the stranger or listen to anything that either of them said. It was my own private mutiny.

Most people dread the Jehovah’s Witness people coming to the front door. Not my husband. He welcomes them in the front door and it is they who are begging to leave, shouting “God Bless Yous” over their shoulders as they try to escape his grasp. Again, he says he just likes to talk to people and that he likes people.

This is completely baffling to me. I have already walked to the other side of the street feigning distraction to avoid talking to a relative.

The thing is, people love my husband. He always gets free stuff, he gets free deserts in restaurants, he finagles better rates out of sales people, and everyone in our neighborhood, I am sure, feels sorry for him because his wife is so stand offish. I have never been upgraded to a better room or received a complimentary appetizer, but this is commonplace for my husband.

He is a total throw back to the days of yore. In fact, sometimes I think he might actually be 78 and just in good shape. After all of us who are “technologically advanced” forget how to have actual conversations with actual human beings, my husband will be a sought after expert and resource. People will hire him to come in and teach the workers the basics of human interaction that takes place in real life as opposed to email or IMing.

For now, I will continue to do as much as I possibly can from my laptop, and while he may not know how to use Facebook and he may still think the Internet is baffling, let’s face it, in a post-apocalyptic world, I want my husband on my team.

How Hard Can It Be?

2009-02-04T09:58:00.002-06:00

I have decided that I am going to post to my blog once per week. I originally was going to post everyday, but that was when I was young and naïve (last year) when I first started the blog and thought to myself, “How hard can it be?”

Those 5 words have caused me great pain in my life. I said those words to myself when I got pregnant, when my husband and I decided to buy and renovate our old house, when I decided to start running and when I decided to break my son of the pacifier habit. And just about all of those events have nearly broken me in half.

My last blog entry (Deep Fried Broken Heart, 2/2/09) is about my sister. I sent it to her, I suppose as a twisted and bizarre Valentine, and she liked it, although she protests and says she isn’t that harsh (she is) and that I exaggerated (I did.) Her terse email to me was something like this, “I like it, it was good. You should be writing a book, or at the very least become a columnist for a newspaper or something.”

Um, yeah. Sure, I’ll just fire up Monster.com and type in “newspaper columnist” and see the thousands of job opening appear on the page. I saw Marley and Me, I know that the only way to get a job as a newspaper columnist is to marry Jennifer Aniston and get a rowdy yellow lab. Even then, he didn’t seem very happy with his situation, now did he? Ingrate.

I figured, maybe Angelle is right, maybe it is something I could do “at the very least.” I typed “How to be a newspaper columnist” into Google and my laptop actually laughed at me. Really. The mouse guffawed and the F & G keys giggled. I can’t even tell you what the USB port did because it was wildly inappropriate.

The search revealed some nonsense about research and listings of editors and resumes and all kinds of other stuff that seems hard and time consuming and not immediately gratifying at all. But, at the bottom of the list it said to start a blog and, get this, post to it on a regular basis, like every week. Hmph. I can do that. After all, how hard can it be?