A tiny rant about ex and remorse for my bad parenting.

I can't tell you how many times I was warned by therapists and lawyers and friends not to ever say anything disparaging about ex in front of my children because it would backfire on me and the children would immediately defend and cling to ex. I believed/I believe all of them. I know this. And yet, I still do it. I think I'm being sneaky about it, but Mario sees right through it and--text-book true--defends his dad as if he's parent of the year or saint.

(Here's an example. Mario and I are driving to meet a friend to help her with Photoshop.
Me: I'm so busy. I have to finish an assignment after we get home.
Boy: Why don't you write during the day?
Me: I was in meetings all day.
Boy: You should be writing. When dad's at work, he gets stuff done. He works really hard. (Or something like this.)
Me: Yeah, well he didn't have to do anything else, did he? I actually had a problem with how much he worked. (I wanted to say it destroyed our marriage, it was his drug and escape, he had no boundaries. Kudos to me for not saying this.)
Boy: He goes in early.
Me: You think 9 is early?....and on and on.)

I don't know what's wrong with me--lack of emotional maturity or self discipline? A black, ugly soul? Do I want my boys to dislike their dad? Do I want to be the favorite? Is this even a competition? No. No. No.

I am still angry at the fucker for not loving me anymore and leaving me and spending only eight days a month with his kids, which is so little time as to be the perfect parent since you'd have 22 other days to be tired, cranky, depressed or angry. I also fucking hate him that he's going to be in fucking Oregon with his fucking girlfriend at the fucking Shakespeare festival for his son's birthday. He missed the other son's birthday last year because he was in fucking Italy with the fucking girlfriend. I don't think he's a particularly selfish person, he just looks that way on virtual paper.

Back to work. Take note, Mario; I'm writing.

Bad neighborhood but the rent is cheap.

As a freelancer, every new gig brings on the anxiety of the first day at a new school. It helps if you know somebody at the place, which has usually been the case for me, but not today. I start a new gig at a big company where I know not a soul except the nice woman I interviewed with. I've lost more sleep and hours worrying about this gig than the length of it---2.5 weeks. I'd like to be able to jump forward in time when I'm leaving a happy client and there is a check in my hand.

Speaking of anxiety, I spent the weekend alone and in my head, always dangerous. Well, that's not completely true, I turned on the  radio long enough to hear a guy talking about cults. I checked out his site and found myself deeply mired in reading about cultic behaviors and various organizations considered by some to be cults including the Forum/EST (duh) and AA (what?), including this man's site.

I have heard AA called a cult before and agree that some groups are more zealoty than others. There are big book thumpers and 12 steppers and hard liners. Frankly, the founders of AA were a bunch of entitled,  narcissistic, sick, white men mother fuckers. Apparently a lot of AA's principles came from the Oxford Group, founded by a latent homosexual/former Lutheran minister asshole who was quite pleased with himself and stayed in very nice hotels on other people's dimes.

Do these facts make the group any less effective? Can we escape the taint of Bill, et al.?

I have a problem seeing Bill W's picture hanging on the wall of meeting rooms, as if he's some kind of savior. (And where did the anonymous part go?) I also have a problem listening to people share in meetings, the ones who thank their "higher power who they choose to call God," who attribute anything and everything, from their life to this morning's toast, to God. It's the hyperbole that bothers me. All the group does is help people find ways to manage the struggles associated with being human in ways other than with drugs and alcohol. Period. It is not a religion. I hope it's not a cult because, frankly, I (and maybe other vulnerable fuck ups like me) am ripe for somebody to come along and tell me how to live. You bet if the right person came along, one who didn't look like Bill W. but more like Pema Chodron, and offered me a plan for guaranteed happiness and relief from anxiety and myself, I'd attached myself to her barnacle style. If only.

Watch while I pull an economic recovery out of my hat!

This explains a few things. Robert Reich published a piece yesterday: Why aren't we getting the truth about the economy.

We are all so desperate for good news that any growth is touted as a sign of recovery--even on NPR--and yet, it's not happening. The only recovery I notice is the annoying kind--a bit more traffic on the streets and freeways--and the pathetic kind--a few companies actually respond to me when I apply for jobs, then I spend $15 in gas and two hours of my life interviewing for a position that 50 other people want including some young thing right out of college willing to work for peanuts and stay up all night.

I do have a fairly steady stream of freelance but I should mention that I'm working for one-third to one-half my previous hourly rate.

In the words of Mr. Reich:

...consumer confidence is plummeting. It's weaker today on average than at the lowest point of the Great Recession.

Real hourly wages continue to fall, and housing prices continue to drop. Hourly wages are falling because with unemployment so high, most people have no bargaining power and will take whatever they can get.

But isn't the economy growing again - by an estimated 2.5 to 2.9 percent this year? Yes, but that's even less than peanuts. The deeper the economic hole, the faster the growth needed to get back on track. By this point in the so-called recovery, we'd expect the economy to be growing by 4 to 6 percent.

Consider that back in 1934, when it was emerging from the deepest hole of the Great Depression, the economy grew 7.7 percent. The next year, it grew over 8 percent. In 1936, it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.

So why aren't we getting the truth about the economy? For one thing, Wall Street is buoyant, and most financial news you hear comes from the Street. Wall Street profits soared to $426.5 billion last quarter, according to the Commerce Department.

Yes, Mr. Reich, it goes to prove my thesis that people are pigs and rich people are the piggiest.

We are emotional creatures.

I heard Eve Ensler read this on the radio in my car yesterday and wanted to pull over and jump up and down and shout because she challenged a belief I didn't even know I had. One of the rites of passage for me in becoming a woman was feeling shamed about my emotional nature and, in turn, feeling "grossed out" by other girl's emotional outbursts. Frankly, one of the reasons I felt happy about having boys was so that I wouldn't have to deal with a teenage girl. Eve busted that bullshit apart. She's shining a light on that dark place. I found this poem liberating. Take it away Eve....

I AM AN EMOTIONAL CREATURE
I love being a girl.
I can feel what you're feeling
as you're feeling it inside
the feeling
before.
I am an emotional creature.
Things do not come to me
as intellectual theories or hard-shaped ideas.
They pulse through my organs and legs
and burn up my ears.
I know when your girlfriend's really pissed off
even though she appears to give you what
you want.
I know when a storm is coming.
I can feel the invisible stirrings in the air.
I can tell you he won't call back.
It's a vibe I share.
I am an emotional creature.
I love that I do not take things lightly.
Everything is intense to me.
The way I walk in the street.
The way my mother wakes me up.
The way I hear bad news.
The way it's unbearable when I lose.
I am an emotional creature.
I am connected to everything and everyone.
I was born like that.
Don't you dare say all negative that it's a
teenage thing
or it's only only because I'm a girl.
These feelings make me better.
They make me ready.
They make me present.
They make me strong.
I am an emotional creature.
There is a particular way of knowing.
It's like the older women somehow forgot.
I rejoice that it's still in my body.
I know when the coconut's about to fall.
I know that we've pushed the earth too far.
I know my father isn't coming back.
That no one's prepared for the fire.
I know that lipstick means
more than show.
I know that boys feel super-insecure
and so-called terrorists are made, not born.
I know that one kiss can take
away all my decision-making ability
and sometimes, you know, it should.
This is not extreme.
It's a girl thing.
What we would all be
if the big door inside us flew open.
Don't tell me not to cry.
To calm it down
Not to be so extreme
To be reasonable.
I am an emotional creature.
It's how the earth got made.
How the wind continues to pollinate.
You don't tell the Atlantic ocean
to behave.
I am an emotional creature.
Why would you want to shut me down
or turn me off?
I am your remaining memory.
I am connecting you to your source.
Nothing's been diluted.
Nothing's leaked out.
I can take you back.
I love that I can feel the inside
of the feelings in you,
even if it stops my life
even if it hurts too much
or takes me off track
even if it breaks my heart.
It makes me responsible.
I am an emotional
I am an emotional, devotional,
incandotional, creature.
And I love, hear me,
love love love
being a girl.

Let's bitch.

This blogger got a book deal. So did Emily somebody from Cupcakes and Cashmere.  I'm sure these girls work very hard and post daily but how many fashion/lifestyle books from bloggers do we need? I know, unlike clean air and water, that money is one of those unlimited resources (my woo-woo sources told me so) but publishers are stingy and according to them there is a finite and miniscule amount of it to spread around. I'd much rather see them using it to fertilize books by these bloggers: Rude Man on Ice, Simone Says, or The Yeast I Can Do. Not just because I personally like these people, but because I'm all for variety. And humor. And I already know how to wear colored tights.

Mindful/less Monday.

Have you ever been plagued with low-grade anxiety. It's a feeling as if I've forgotten something, a term paper or a child at school, but can't remember what it is. I've had that feeling for a couple of days. Nothing's any more wrong than usual, but I just can't pinpoint the origin of this fear and worry. So I went to Beyond Blue and got this:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. –Marianne Williamson

Maybe the origin of my anxiety is that I'm Wonder Woman, about to win the lottery (I did dream about the number 38 million last night), and get a wheelbarrow full of acceptance letters from literary journals and a book deal? Or maybe I'm just a good person who continues to do the next right thing? At this moment, that is mulching the garden.

Ex in dream!

A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here.

The preamble: ex was here picking up Liam. He was wearing a shirt with a quote on it in Italian: Dante's famous "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Taken literally, a person wearing that shirt is warning people that if you get involved with wearer, i.e. ex, you should give up hope of ever feeling happy again. He should have had it on when I met him 20 years ago, although I probably would have fallen for the tortured artist act. Obviously I would have because last night I had a dream that ex was flirting with me a la Big Guns. (I hope it doesn't mean I want a combination of the two of them, some sexual intellectual?) Let's just say the dream makes me look magnanimous and that I'm hoping ex is able to get in touch with the human side of him--the part that isn't his brain. BTW, Italian is the fourth language he's become fluent in. I think he's trying to find the one language that ultimately, finally, allows him to express himself and be present and live in the moment. Good luck with that.

Ahh spring.

I love spring. I do. Just when I think I can't stand it another minute--the mud and weeds and grey skies--the sun comes out and the flowers bloom and my yard smells like candy and everything's right with the world. The weeds can wait until next weekend.

Does anything smell quite like a spicy, fruity freesia? These are mixed with Santa Rosa daisies, the flower of the decade. They are all over my neighborhood.

Some kind of lowly geranium, but loverly all the same. Pretty pretty pretty.

My crabapple tree is amazing! It's a blaze of blossoms! A magenta firework!

The color!

After a minute or two, Dylan magically appears. He loves the garden as much as I do. Good kitty. Look at him, he's pretty magnificent, too. They really go together. 

Dylan in the grass.

It's not about the pants, pt. 2

I realized that I forgot to include the epiphany that followed the last epiphany post. For 18 years, I thought my problem was ex but it turned out all along that my problem was me.