What I'm reading.

Joan Didion's The year of Magical Thinking. I am only 50+ pages in but the way she describes her reactions to the death of her spouse--numbness, inability to focus or read, denial--is very similar to the feelings I had when first divorcing. Speaking of death, here's a sad story about a our shark.

This is what my house would look like if it were underwater, sort of.

Big Guns and I spent over an hour assembling (and reassembling her after discovering I'd put her motor on backward) her, then running out to the store for fresh AAA batteries. She's super cool and Q got to play with her for all of five minutes before "swimming" her out to the car where she floated away from us. There were so many moments we could have stopped it--jumped higher, thrown our coats over her--but before we knew it she was above the roof, then above the neighbor's oak tree, then floating high above San Carlos swimming toward San Jose. On a happier note:

Baby Kitten and Clooney.

I'm still filthy with beautiful kitties. Here they are enjoying what we call "ice cream" but what is a tiny dollop of whippy from a can, which may explain their girth. Now that I think of it, they are both shaped a bit like the shark.

I have this box of angel cards that I've been consulting a lot lately because I will do anything--anything--to find answers to life's BIG questions such as "What should I do now?" In one form or another, this is the question I ask daily.

The angels appear to have their own agenda. Sometimes I'll pick a card that suggests I focus on my spiritual life or a card that suggests I spend some time in nature. Yesterday I picked Francesca, who had this to say:

What do you desire right now? Visualize it, and it will come about. Negativity will block your progress. You have been asking God and the angels, 'What is next for me?' Yet, we have been waiting for you to make that decision for yourself? This is why you have felt stuck lately. The impasse occurs because you are afraid of making a 'wrong' decision. We can help you to decide, but ultimately, the next chapter of your life is up to you. This is a period of your life that is unscripted.

Your desires are like a painting that you create upon the canvas of your life. Like an artist, you must decide what the theme, background, and foreground will be within your picture. Take some time out to meditate, pray upon, and contemplate this important decision. Be creative, and maintain standards for yourself. But remember: If you don't make a decision, that's the same thing as deciding that everything shall remain the same.

Nice punt back to me. I want the angels to tell me what to do next: send your novel to (insert name of agent). Even still, it's kind of spooky or miraculous.  Although, who isn't afraid of making a wrong decision?

If you're stubborn like me, you'll live with that wrong decision for 17 years before making a decision to change, if ever. How do you know when something is right? Wouldn't it be great if we had a sign, a green light that shone out our belly buttons when we were headed in the right direction?

4:22 first day of vacation.

Still in my pajamas. Things are looking promising that this year will be a lot like last year.

The public mostly sucks.

Mario cleaned out his closet a few months ago. You can see it, right? His closet is tidy and pristine but in the center of his room is the monstrous pile of clothes he no longer wants. They filled two garbage bags and sat by my front door to go to the Goodwill for another few weeks until I went through them and saw that several of the pants were barely worn. Bright lights goes off. EBAY.

For years, my boys exclusively wore the Boden Techno Zip-offs, $40+ new and always sold out so I'd buy every color as soon as I got the catalog. One year, I made the mistake of purchasing the camo ones in every colorway, plus orange and green ones. (God, I'm sorry; this story is even boring me.) I listed eleven pairs in varying states of wear from practically brand new to several rounds on the playground. My buyer paid $40 total. I just got an email from her complaining that they were not as expected--not barely worn but played in, a button was missing, stains on hems...

I don't know about other moms but when my sons wear pants they look like they've been to war. Trust me, lady, I wasn't trying to deceive you. And yet, I still feel like shit. She didn't even thank me for the extra pair I threw in for free that I found when I was boxing up her pile of pants.

I think people expect way, way more than they pay for and my Ebay days are firmly behind me. People suck.

Movie review: Melancholia

I dragged Big Guns to see this film on Sunday night. There were only nine of us in the theater, which was awkward. (I'll explain shortly.)

I stand by my previous assessment of Lars von Trier and I still have a love/hate relationship with him. His films are so hard to watch, but riveting and I can't not watch. I don't know how he reaches that deep, disturbing place. It's not the subject matter. Plenty of movies have been made about depression and injustice and the evil people are capable of, but his are more visceral. I suppose I could try and analyze them frame by frame, but I would have to take breaks to smell flowers and pet kittens to prevent myself from drawing a warm bath and opening a vein or two.

Lars does not shy away from ugly or difficult. He makes you stay with it even as it gets uglier. It's gut wrenching and painful and frustrating watching his character, Justine (who he supposedly based on his own self) be depressed. You want to kill her or hospitalize her. (Here's why it was awkward to see with Big Guns; he was so emotionally involved and distraught, he started yelling at the screen: "You bitch!" "Don't do that." "What's wrong with her?") The story is also about her co-dependent sister who married very well, but continues to rescue and care for Justine. The third main character is the huge planet, Melancholia, previously hidden behind the sun and which may or may not crash into and annihilate Earth. (It's a metaphor for how depression--or melancholia--destroys everything.)

Like a student film, it's beautifully indulgent and rich with imagery. Like a Lars von Trier film, it upset me and made me want to dream a new ending.

Drugs: a chicken and an egg thing.

The agency I work for created these ads as part of a bigger campaign to curtail meth use in the U.S. They were directed by Darren Aronofsky of Requiem for a Dream fame, which, I guess, qualifies him as the drug director. The fact that he doesn't seem to have had a drug problem doesn't diminish the power of his work and these spots are powerful and disturbing, no question about that. They made me squeamish, uncomfortable, and just plain grossed out--almost too much so because I was detached from the experience. I could not relate. There was one ad that came close; a teenage girl at a house party approaches a group of kids smoking meth and asks to be included. That desire to fit in is so strong at that age.

I never used meth, nor was it ever offered to me and so I was completely detached from the experience of watching these ads. I suppose the idea is to scare kids straight, right? You show them the worst possible outcomes--physical deterioration, prostitution, death--and hope that it deters them from ever picking up. But what these ads fail to recognize is that death and depravity are part of the attraction; along with getting high, self destruction and annihilation are goals, not deterrents. An accidental overdose looks better on a death certificate than suicide. Get it?

For that reason, I'm not sure this approach works. It makes all the adults in the room feel good, but I'm not convinced it will thwart a drug addict from picking up.

Maybe I was more cynical than the average kid, but I remember having derision for anti-drug messages. (Then again, I came up during Nancy Reagan's "Just say No" years, which we mocked mercilessly. I even dressed as Nancy for Halloween and my friend accompanied me as a pre-sober Betty Ford.) This is what we knew then: the people behind the anti-drug campaigns were old and out of touch and didn't care about kids; they just wanted to control our behaviors. How else do you explain the continual slashing of education budgets and services to youth but a willingness to dump millions on ad agencies to produce anti-drug campaigns? What I know now: the agencies who benefited from the great fortune of cranking out this noble work often celebrate by getting good and high on legal drugs: alcohol.

I don't have an answer. I don't know how you stop an addict from acting like an addict. I only know what works after. Maybe these ads are not meant for addicts but for casual users, in which case what's the fucking point? Spend the money on schools.

The day of the O.D.

A close friend of mine in the program relapsed on my DOC. Not just a slight relapse, but a full, f-ing hospitalized/say-goodbye-to-your-friend overdose. Thankfully it didn't end in death, but what a way to cycle through an enormous range of emotions in 24 hours -- disbelief, shock, terror, grief, fear, fear, fear, worry, hope, relief, confusion, anger. Now I understand why the left behinds of addiction and suicide ask, "How could you do this to us? Wasn't my devotion enough? Why? Why? Why?" Here's the answer: "Because I'm an addict." Addicts don't take drugs, drink or O.D. to hurt others or spite the people in their life; they do it because it's their job when the Beast is running the show.

I feel a bit like a patsy. I'm angry that somebody who was advising me on my program was using while I was struggling with life. It hurts to be lied to. A part of me wanted the tables to be turned, for me to be in a bed pumped full of fentanyl and propofol and let somebody else do the worrying. Now I know what it feels like to be on both ends of the disease. Either way, it really sucks. Damn.

Nurse Jackie.

I can't get enough of this program and have been gulping down/mowing through/inhaling season one just like a good addict. Not that it isn't hard to watch Nurse Jackie snort and swallow my DOC. In fact, I hate her and want to slap some sense into her thick, foggy head.

All the characters are fabulous, including her daughter. Hello anxious, little OCD girl. That would be me at ten. And there's Jackie, wrapped up in her addiction, fucking around, pretending like nothing's wrong, running all over the people who love her. That would be me at 40.

I highly recommend. (Available through Netflix).

Yep.

I had a lull in work and took a moment to read an essay on one of my favorite sites, The Fix. The writer described sobriety in such a true way:

I’d work hard. I’d drink caffeine all day and sleep not much. I’d feel in control. My emotional range was reduced to the narrow band between “mildly annoyed” and “quite pleased.” I’d go to parties and nights out with low expectations, and leave before eleven. My nights would feel a bit worse than normal. My mornings would feel a bit better.

As I work through my fourth year sober, it's painfully clear that this is the new status quo: dullish. Never having fun again was one of my greatest fears when I first gave up my DOCs (drugs of choice). I still have fun, but it's not like it used to be. It turns out I'm quite conservative in my behaviors without my DOCs. On the other hand, can I call that old kind of crazy fun truthful if it was always/mostly chemically altered?

I am grateful that I no longer have to shoulder mountains of shame and regret, but I also don't get to shake it off in a delirious, wild release. Sometimes I miss it.

"Your life is too empty--try our drugs."

This was the subject line of a spam in my mail box. I had to read it numerous times. My reactions went like this:

What?! How did they know?

My life is too empty. I wonder what kind of drugs they have?

WTF?

When they worked, I loved drugs, and smoking, and alcohol. Put them all together? Hoo boy. Party of one. The problem is they worked for such a short time. That elusive balance where everything was just right--not too full, or sloppy, or agitated--lasted minutes. Life is way too long to deal with that. Now I eat too much and have a closet full of shoes. I could probably wear a new pair every day for three months. (I'm going to go count.) No balance issues there.

Oh, and my other problem--I know things in relationship land must not be hunky dory because I've started that old problem about fantasizing about other men. It goes like this:

Sam (not his real name) is kind of cute. He probably wouldn't eat all the peanut butter and not tell me.

Fred (not his real name) is divorced and has a 9 to 5 job and probably eats dinner at a normal time and can go places on the weekend.

Cue my internal video of me and fantasy man attending art openings and walking through parks holding hands and making dinners together. The light is golden and fuzzy and I am very thin and wearing really nice shoes.

I got myself to a meeting last night. The alcoholism is gone, but the crazy lingers.

Through the looking glass.

It took two years, but I'm definitely on the other side, the down slope of divorcing. I'm not in the verdant, peaceful valley, but everyday is no longer a struggle and slog. I do not wish ex ill will. I have compassion for his human struggles and--hallelujah--I do not want to get back together with him, even though it would help me financially. Fuck the finances, I say, and the angels laugh and sing. "Now she gets it. The world is full of abundance and uncertainty and cute kittens--lots of cute kittens. What is finite is clean air and water." That's when I stop listening. I can't go straight from divorce to fixing the ills of humankind. I'm going to take some time to revel in this new place. With my new kitten. Behold, the handsomeness of Clooney, the world's cutest kitten.

Soon I will learn to crop so you don't have to see my wrinkly mug in Clooney pics.

Brazil nuts are good.

I've spent my whole eating around them in the nut bowl--first the cashews, then the pecans, then the almonds, then the peanuts until there was nothing left but a pile of Brazil nuts, which I left. Now, after 40+ years I discovered that I love them. It makes me wonder what other things I need to revisit? Might okra be tasty? Is it possible that Melanie Griffith is a great actress?

Dealing with rejection.

This is from "Tiny Buddha." They send daily emails full of inspiration and wisdom. Today's is perfect for all my artist friends who struggle with rejection. (Or maybe that's just me?) I'm also filthy guilty of putting tons of weight in other people's opinions, especially people who've been published.

Tiny Wisdom: Not Taking No for an Answer

Aug 24, 2011 10:25 pm | Lori Deschene

“Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Many times in life we ask questions of people and then put way too much weight on their answers.
We ask people we admire if they think we have what it takes, and then consider their opinions fact. We ask people we respect if they think we should take a chance, and then follow their advice as law. We ask people if they’ll take a chance on us, and then interpret their response to be a reflection of our potential.
Other people can’t tell us how far we can go. They can’t tell us how our talents could evolve. They can’t tell us if our risks will pay off. Other people’s “nos” aren’t what limit our future–it’s our own “nos” that do that.
The other day, I read an interview with television producer and former American Idol judge Simon Cowell. He admitted that if Lady Gaga had auditioned for the show, he would have instantly rejected her because of her over-the-top persona. Like her or not, Lady Gaga has emerged as a force to be reckoned within the music industry–a bona fide record-breaking pop icon, who likely isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Odds are she heard her fair share of “nos,” as does anyone with a dream.
Sometimes we hear “no” before we even get a chance to contact the person we really want to reach. We hear “no” from assistants, and publicists, and agents, and associates, and a number of other gatekeepers. Those “nos” are rarely final since a gate is made to be opened.
We can take all these “nos” and use them as proof that we shouldn’t move forward with our goals. Or we can learn from them, release them, and then keep moving ahead, driven by a deep internal yes that refuses to be ignored.
Today if you come up against rejection, remember: This does not mean “no.” It just means “not this way.”

Down days.

Getting older and sober I realize that there are days when it's best not to read anything I've written. Whether it's a lack of protein, sleep, endorphins, or serotonin, I'm stuck wearing a pair of shit goggles today. The last two stories I opened to revise literally made me gag and convulse in horror at the shitty, navel-gazing prose. I'm sure that better writing can be found in a 15-year-old girl's diary. I couldn't press command "q" fast enough.

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for what to do instead. Eat candy and hope tomorrow is better.

It's all about anticipation.

I recently read somewhere--Lucky magazine or some other fine literary journal--that for most people the anticipation and planning of a vacation is more rewarding than the actual vacation.

There have been times in my sober life when I have missed the anticipation of going out for drinks or to a party more than I think I've missed the actual drinking. That's not true; I'm a liar. Alcohol and opiates were excellent lovers and I miss them, but I did get a special thrill leaving work on a Friday evening to meet people at a bar, or putting on a new dress and heels to wear to a wedding reception. The anticipation of what I was going to drink--icy martini or fragrant goblet of red wine or BOTH!--was delicious. Caroline Knapp describes it well in her memoir, Drinking: A Love Story. I recommend it. I suppose these moments are nice to remember because they are the befores. You know, before I started stumbling around, singing too loudly, repeating myself, or thinking I was really funny or looking super sexy on the dance floor. Let me just say, yuck. Not a great look for a middle-aged mom.


I still get a thrill leaving work on Fridays and heading to a party but now I'm mostly excited about the cake.

Other people's musings on the creative life.

Ira's cute, isn't he?

I'm reposting this from a trail of links I followed like breadcrumbs: "via" which was posted "via" and who knows where it originally was printed. Fer sure we know that it originated in the mind of the always insightful Ira Glass. All my writer/artist friends will surely relate. Some were successful at a youngish age, other gave up and took steady, lucrative jobs. I wasn't officially published until I was almost 40. Take it away, Ira.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.

— Ira Glass

Woody Allen said it another way:

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Thomas Edison: 

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

This morning on the radio, I heard Garrison Keiller talk about Andre Dubus II, who had this to say about the writing life:

"A first book is a treasure, and all these truths and quasi-truths I have written about publishing are finally ephemeral. An older writer knows what a younger one has not yet learned. What is demanding and fulfilling is writing a single word, trying to write le mot juste, as Flaubert said; writing several of them which becomes a sentence. When a writer does that, day after day, working alone with little encouragement, often with discouragement flowing in the writer's own blood, and with the occasional rush of excitement that empties oneself, so that the self is for minutes or longer in harmony with eternal astonishments and visions of truth, right there on the page on the desk; and when a writer does this work steadily enough to complete a manuscript long enough to be a book, the treasure is on the desk. If the manuscript itself, mailed out to the world where other truths prevail, is never published, the writer will suffer bitterness, sorrow, anger, and, more dangerously, despair, convinced that the work was not worthy, so not worth those days at the desk. But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this through concentration on a single word, and then another, and another. This is splendid work, as worthy and demanding as any, and the will and resilience to do it are good for the writer's soul. If the work is not published, or is published for little money and less public attention, it remains a spiritual, mental, and physical achievement; and if, in public, it is the widow's mite, it is also, like the widow, more blessed."

That is why, even as the rejections pile up and the novel gets re-written again and again and I spend more money on my craft than I'll ever make, I continue to do it. Because there is nothing as worthy of my time and, besides, what else am I going to do? Jog? I often wonder what gets non-writers out of bed in the morning?

Stop for beauty.

You have to read this.
I think of all the people I know, my mother would have stopped and listened. (Maybe my aunts, too.) She pays attention and doesn't let context cloud her perceptions.

RIP uncle W.

My uncle died yesterday, but not from the disease. He was sober for 30+ years. Here's one of my favorite stories about him.

We were all gathered around my aunt's dinner table. I must have been around eight because I was walking around the table asking each relative to tell me what their favorite color was. Things like that are only important to eight-year-old girls. The answers I got went something like this: "blue," "blue," "green," "teal," until I came to my uncle. He looked at me and said his favorite color was "clear." Then he laughed.

My uncle was into mind expansion and this blew mine. My tiny thoughts went something like this: Wrong, uncle, clear isn't even a color. Or is it? Maybe what he's saying is all colors are equally beautiful and it was wrong for me to ask a person to choose one over another? 


Honestly, I didn't even have a favorite color and here was a grown up telling me I didn't have to.

I'll miss your wacky sense of humor, Uncle W.

Let's Ben Franklin-fy divorce

Now that I seem to be going down the other side of the mountain of pain that is divorce, I've been thinking about whether it's worth it or not. What price divorce?

Pros
Walk away from the problem that is your ex
Not having to spend the rest of your life with an extremely depressed, sullen person
Have the whole bed to yourself
Two child-free weekends a month
Popcorn for dinner

Cons
Have to give half of everything to the man who's divorcing you: house, 401K, savings, children
Children have the stigma of coming from a broken home
Must go back to work in the worst economy EVER
Chosen career is full of people young enough to have come from your womb
Must dye hair and get Botox to fit in
Dating
One year of active pain and bursting into tears at inappropriate times
Another year of chronic, low-level pain
Temporary loss of sense of humor
Feeling like a victim
Feeling guilty
Feeling unlovable

Ben Franklin would say divorce is not a good decision. Am I that much happier all things and losses considered. Not really. Ex will have to speak for himself. However, I was forced to use his bathroom when I went to pick up Mario at his apartment the other day. (Mario said his toilet was not working.) On the counter, unavoidable and glaring, was a bottle of antidepressants, those same pills ex refused to take even against his doctor's wishes. This muddies things; if he's happier divorced from me, it's a chemical thing.

Life with ex, summed up by Aristotle.

“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” -Aristotle

Nowadays, we call this kind of behavior "not being present," which is just a weenier, kinder/softer way of saying "stop being a weenie." I like Aristotle's take on the subject.

I've moved into a clearer space, not of blaming myself or blaming him, but seeing what wasn't my part. This is a difficult thing to do when the person you're living with doesn't ever actually DO anything.

It does get easier.

After two years I'm starting to feel unmarried. It's not something I think about all the time, I'm not angry as often, I actually can see the rest of my life without ex.

I just have to take a little moment to mention that it sort of helps that 1 out of 3 people, after I tell them I have separated, ask me if ex came out of the closet yet. Back when I was engaged and working at Gap headquarters where every man was gay, ex came to pick me up one day and my fellow gay writer pulled me aside the next day to tell me he that he hated to break the news to me, but my fiance was gay.

What does it say about me that so many people thought I'd married a gay man? I love gay men, but I didn't want to marry one. I feel sorry for his girlfriend who, now that I think about it, is slim-hipped like a boy.

I don't want to think about this anymore. I'm going to go eat a drumstick. Alert! The industrial-sized boxes are back in stock at Costco. $12.99.


 

Gems from boredom

As a writer, I often multitask. I put the part of my brain that is writing headlines on a burner to simmer and go surfing the web. (I can't even remember what I did before the Internet? Talk to people?) I found this young whipper snapper's site. He was born in 1985, the year I graduated college. And he taught me a few things.

I've always felt a bit conflicted about email and Facebook and the constant barrage of online crap that keeps me from doing. (There was a time in my life when I wouldn't even go to movies because I felt I should be out experiencing life, not watching it happen.) Now I waste hours online, some of it helpful, lots of it not. I've reconnected with people who drifted away and always wondered about (hello old boyfriend, former fiance, past co-worker) but I also fall into a comparison trap (she looks better, his house is bigger, she's more successful.)

Ev experiments and one of his experiments was to untether from Facebook. Here's how he put it:

Overview: I began to notice in late 2010 that my interactions on Facebook were keeping me from being present in my own life. I knew what everyone else was doing, except the person across the table from me. I had 1,000+ friends, and couldn’t figure out where they’d all come from. Dunbar’s law states that a human mind can only have 150 connections, so I knew something was wrong. Facebook’s “Like” function kept drawing me back into the application, distracting me from my own life. So, I decided to quit.
Intention: Quit Facebook in order to be more present in my own life.
Length: Initiated in Dec 2010 –> Indefinitely.
Results: Many extra hours in my life to be present with the people who are actually in my life.

I don't think I could disconnect, but it's interesting to think about.

Back in the snake pit.

This time around I'm sitting next to very, very nice people. It's just amazing how the wrong personalities can mess with my fragile inner peace. Although she is young enough to be my daughter, my new desk mate talks quietly on her cell phone (although my hearing is failing), says hello and goodbye, and sometimes asks my opinion about design. This shit makes a difference, especially when you are fighting the feeling of being the biggest loser in the world since you're older than dirt, a fucking dinosaur in advertising agency years (where do the nearing 50s go in this biz? Rehab? Hollywood? Suicide?), and you spent your ladder-climbing years carpooling and picking Cheerios out of your carpet. Alas. I get up, get dressed, and start every day thinking I'm going to write the best monitor topper Intel has ever seen and all those tattooed hipsters can kiss my saggy, spreading bottom.

Literary rejection: the other white meat.

Got a decently long email rejection that went on for pages outlining my small, embarrassing mistakes and the larger problems with my story—no style, nothing that says this is Eileen. (And I had worried my story was all style, no plot.) I had misspelled freshman and made other "miscalibrations" (This isn't a word, but poets like to make words up and they can when they have degrees from Harvard.) I was aghast and awed.

At first I felt this editor was an overeducated prig who recommended I read people I’d never heard of—Cyril Connolly's book is in my bag right now--but then I came to admire him for his attentions to lil ol’ me. I must have something to elicit this reponse. So I googled him.

He is a renaissance man, not just a poet, but a designer of posters and books who edits several literary journals, writes esoteric blogs and quotes more writers I’ve never heard of. He translates books from German and Spanish. (He's probably a musician, too.)

There was something about his formerly skinny child-self and now schlubby academic that made me feel depressed. Possibly I felt deflated for lacking the training and intellect he worked so hard at inflating, but it was that black hole feeling I get when I'm around an active addict and our divorce attorney. He uses so many words, quotes so many people, puts up so many ideas, and says so little--a man hiding behind his intellect.  He is also a committed atheist and organizes meetings for atheists (a form of church?). If he didn’t believe in words, I would have cried for the emptiness of him. And then--boom!-- I get it; he is ex.

How a short dinner with ex can make things okay.

Dylan likes a sun-warmed walkway.

Kitten likes a warm bed.

Mario had a learner expo yesterday evening, which is hippie speak for a school open house. I roasted a chicken, mashed potatoes and invited ex to join us for dinner and asked if he'd make gravy. I arrived home to him in my kitchen, pulling a bowl from a shelf for beans. The gravy boat was filled and the sink too with the dirty roasting pan. Just like old times. We were like old times. He was quiet and seemed depressed and I, flaming co that I am, thought it was my fault and tried to lighten the mood by talking. (My emotional tourettes kicked in.) Ugh. I know he has so much to offer his kids and so many interesting thoughts swimming around his big brain, but they get stuck on their way to his mouth. It breaks my heart. But I am grateful I don't have to fix that problem anymore.


P.S. On a happier note, I included gratuitous cute cat photos.

Real-life fantasy.

My fantasy did sort of happen. No, not the one where ex gets run over by a train, or the one where ex begs me to take him back, or the one where Matt Damon calls saying he read my story and wants to turn it into a movie. The fantasy where the CEO, in this case just the Director of marketing, sees my copy for AOL and asks, "Who wrote this?" in a Judy Garland/get me that girl kind of way. It didn't result in a full-time job, but it made me feel happy. (Y'all can pick yourselves up off the floor; you haven't heard me say happy in--what?--ever.)
I watch two and three-quarter DVDs last night: The Switch, Venus, and The King's Speech. All good. Reviews up on the public blog soon.
In my quest to torture, I mean enrich (I was going to do that odd blog conceit where the writer strikes through words. Have you ever seen that anywhere else besides blogs?) my children, I'm taking Mario to see Smuin ballet. Alvin Ailey would have been a better choice but it was four times the price and in Berkeley. Mother of the year award: it's not even my weekend with the boys.

Missing Ex.

Sometimes I wish ex was a complete motherf****er, sociopath, psychopath meanie because then I'd never miss him and that would be easier. He isn't and there are days that I'm full of remorse for my past behavior and wish he could forgive me and we could go back.

Apples and oranges.

At my second interview, I was given a math problem of the word variety, i.e. a train leaves the station going 35 miles an hour and hits a 19% grade and is carrying a full load of passengers but 20% of them are overweight how long does it take to go 200 miles away? That kind of question. I was interviewing for the job was for editorial content manager. Here's a tougher question: how are these two things related? I'm not terrible at math, but I was flummoxed thinking there was some trick I was missing, some other reason I was being asked this, for instance maybe I was being filmed for some new reality show: Interviews Gone Awry, true tales of sweat and squirm.

On a more excellent note, as a lucky alcoholic I got to see Annie L. of Marin speak at an AA meeting. (For those of you not in the know, that's Annie Lamott.) She was terrific, of course. She makes recovery look like fun. That meeting was preceded by an Al-Anon meeting. Ex is a card-carrying member, but I've never been to one. The take away, their big catch phrase is the three Cs: didn't cause it, can't control it, and can't cure it. Now you know all there is to know about that program.

I'm not due back at AOL until Thursday. My fantasy of the CEO finding my copy on a printer and exclaiming "Who wrote this recruitment ad? It's genius. Hire her on the spot and pay her whatever she wants" didn't happen. No, my copy is making its rounds but mostly being ignored by the people who are supposed to be approving it. Happy Monday.

Oh shit.

I think I was a better writer when I was drinking. Drunk, hungover, high on whatever, I had this singular focus and could ignore my aching ass and the cries of my hungry children and stinking guinea pig cages. Now? I have sober-onset ADD. I can't stop multitasking. What if I can never write anything good again? It reminds me of this guy I met in the house--he was a professional sommelier. How sad is that? Finding out your an alcoholic sommelier? He said he thought most of them, and chefs, were. I suppose if you drink enough, the cucumber eventually turns into a pickle. See? See what I mean? This post was about my inability to focus and I've just proved my point.

People just like me.

How, how did I never find this blog? Or this yahoo group? Of course there are middle-class, functioning, suburban mothers (and fathers) struggling with this disease just like me. Of course they're gonna blog about it 'cause that's what some middle-class, functioning, suburban mothers (and fathers) do. I mean, I practically started the trend. Years ago, I published a popular essay in Brain, Child called On the Rocks: Mothers who Drink, (how's that for "center of the universe/alcoholic thinking?") in which I ponder the boredom and stress of staying home with my kids and note that I only make it through each day with the medicinal wonder of nightly cocktails, then my drinking buddy went and joined AA. It took me something like eight more years of pondering before I took my seat at the table where I so clearly belonged.

Anyway, these blogs are terrific for women/men/parents pondering the tough questions about when enough is enough and whether or not one wants to be a member of THAT group. I didn't want to be a member of that group! No way! I was a loner and an individual and a free thinker! Nobody was going to tell me how to live and--God forbid--to pray. It was only after a couple years of sobriety that I realized I had been beholden, devoted, even genuflecting (if you consider crawling to bed a form of genuflecting) to my own god of addiction--the Beast--for years. I thought I was in control but he was running the show and he was an asshole. (I say "he," but my beast is gender neutral. He looks a bit like an ugly doll but furrier.)

Second interview at the little electronics distributor today. Fingers and toes crossed even though I feel a bit like I'm slumming or, at the least, settling. Talk about getting "right sized."

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.

It's not about the pants.

I had one really good epiphany while parenting about ten years ago. I was trying to get my oldest, who was three at the time, dressed and out the door for preschool and he was not cooperating. He was on his bed in his Blue's Clue's undies crying, whining, and shaking his head while I frantically held up pant options.

"How about these? These? Why not these? Yesterday you loved these pants; they have Thomas the Tank Engine on them!" About the time I was ready to give him back, it dawned on me: this was not about the pants. I asked him if he needed a hug and he said yes so I gave him one. Then he got dressed and we went to school.

Sometimes what we think is the problem, isn't really the problem.

The cut. What?

One of the ways I make the time go by until I end up in the pine box is reading emails sent to me by New York magazine re: fashion. It's branded "The Cut." Get it? You cut fabric to make fashion/you cut lines of cocaine which I'm sure helps keep models skinny/this is the news worthy to make it to my mailbox--so many meanings in that little name. But why do I read it? Why? (She asks, banging her head against her desk.)  I feel superior because I think to myself "Thank God I'm not part of that scene!" but that's a lie, because by reading the emails I am a fringe part of that scene, which makes me even more pathetic, just being a fringe and not, say, a hemline or zipper. Here's a particularly stimulating headline:

Olivia Munn Wore a Bright Blue Marchesa Dress

 Seriously? Who the fuck is Olivia Munn and who the fuck cares what color dress she wore?

Baby fever.

Above-the-waist old man pants.

 

 Everywhere I look women are having babies or being pregnant: Faux Fuschia, Rachel Zoe, all those Spice Girls.

I did not like puking AND STILL gaining weight for nine months. Once I had my boys and was home with them, most of the time I was so bored I thought I was crazy. Seriously. I talked with my doctor. Even still, I'm missing those days. I never thought it would happen to me.

Here are a few photos. This is how old I am; my children's baby pictures are on film, i.e. negatives and paper. I had to photograph a 35mm print with my digital camera then transfer it to ye old laptop. (Oh, soon after the photo on the right was taken, we got a digital camera, but ex has all the photos on his laptop.) Mario is still cute, is he not?

Those cheeks! That mouth!

Heh heh.

This was before the days of blogs and Facebook. Back then, all I had to reach out to other adults was my telephone and dial-up email. (These things could not be used at the same time.) I often wonder if I wouldn't have felt so lonely and isolated had I had an online community back then. And online suits me because apparently I only like other moms digitally, not in person. I did have a subscription to Brain, Child for a sanity check, and actually published a few pieces with them. Those editors understood the downs of parenting--long, unpaid hours, the doubts and struggles. (The ups, after all, are a given--cuteness, recreation and procreation of a better self, blah, blah, blah...) But that magazine arrived only monthly and I was finished with it in a few days. I also had brief respites with Anne Lamott and my What to Expect the First Year book, but no daily dose like what is available today.

Psst: The secret.

How had I never heard of The Secret? I must have been drunk or changing diapers during this fad.

Desperate for entertainment on Sunday eve, I watched a documentary about it. I'm a magical thinker but I'm also a half-measure kind of gal so even though I expected my LIFE as I knew it to change forever, I was also eating dinner in bed and flipping through Lucky magazine.

What's the secret? What the angels, my woo-woo mentors, mothers and Jesus have been saying for years: ask and you shall receive and reap what you sow.

It's all about manifesting and making vision boards and sending out positive vibrational energies. It did get me thinking that my son's teacher is right: I'm negative. If The Secret Keepers are right, I'm screwed.

It's official: I'm not an optimist.

I went on an all-day field trip yesterday with fifty 12- 13-, and 14-year olds. The odyssey went like this: hour-long car drive with five teenage boys to Tiburon, ferry trip to Angel Island, 6-mile hike with two snack breaks, ferry trip back to Tiburon, car drive home. One would think that agreeing to do this would make me, if not an optimist then, at least positive, but several times my son's teacher--a very cheerful and optimistic woman--mentioned, in the kindest, cheerful, optimistic and sarcastic way what  a sunny disposition I have. I don't remember what I said to elicit these responses. Well, I remember one thing. A kid was complaining about his sore neck. One mom said it might be his heavy backpack (we were instructed to bring BIG lunches.) Cheery teacher mentioned that he might have slept wrong. I said it was possibly meningitis.

I am not a chihuahua.

I am cynical, like Dylan. It's not an entirely bad thing, is it?

We were blessed with beautiful weather. Imagine what I would have been like had it rained as the weather service predicted? There was enough complaining already (and not from me).

I went to the doctor for a check up and I'm officially ten pounds heavier than I was three years ago. She suggested sorbet instead of ice cream (again). I said that when I have a part-time job with great benefits that pays $100K a year AND a book deal we'll talk about my diet.

Having major fantasies about two weeks in a remote cabin with electricity and no internet to do the final edits on my novel and whip out a synopsis.

I read this little article in Psych Central at 5:30 this morning. (My oldest had to be at school by 6:30 for a field trip.) It made me want to rewind my entire life and re-shoot it. I think I have mentioned how ex accused me of being incapable of intimacy our entire marriage. This is why.

A bit defensive are we?

People! There's no softer, easy way or any substitute for feeling your feelings. You must feel them. Apparently, it won't kill you.

A few tidbits. (If you're seeking mental health and a fulfilling relationship, you should read the whole thing.)

When you avoid feeling the emotions of vulnerability that are a natural aspect of being human, unwittingly, you become the cause of your own suffering.

When, in order to avoid these feelings, you blame others or events for the pain you feel inside, you act in ways that are contrary to the best interests of your relationship.

When your relationships are on the line, so is your health and your happiness.

The choice is clearer now thanks to recent advances in the study of the brain. Will you take the helm as the captain of your life, as the agent and creator of your experiences, or remain a passive onlooker reacting to and hoping to avoid crises, perhaps even thinking of your self as a victim of certain persons or circumstances?

 Yeah, now you tell me.

Brace yourself--encouraging words.

To help you carry onward in difficult times from my gal, Therese Borchard:

A Japanese proverb: "Fall seven times, stand up eight."

ABuddhist saying, "If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."

A quote from Mary Anne Radmacher: "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'"

 It's tomorrow. 

My new obsession.

According to this young scion of fashion, we can now wear slippers with our pajamas in public. Are you listening, N?!? Life gets better and better. I'm in my pajamas right now, but I don't have a pair of these:

Image from The Man Repeller

You know why? Because they cost $395?! Who buys slippers that cost $395? The Man Repeller. And she's only 22. And a college student. I'm thinking trust fund. My slippers...No, I'm not going to show them to you. They're too gross. An old, beat-up pair of clogs that I also use for gardening. (Not of the Crocs variety; I still have some dignity.)

I am sick and missing Pilates today. I am still unemployed, or underemployed if you count the freelance I'm currently doing for half my usual hourly rate. Let's just say it would take me a couple of weeks after taxes to buy myself a pair of Stubbs & Wooton slippers. What are they made of? Velvet woven from the nostril hairs of baby pandas?

Oh man.

When I was pregnant with my oldest, ex and I were fully expecting he was a girl. We just couldn't imagine ourselves raising a boy because we're both such "girl" people. I had a dream that I gave birth and it was a boy. I looked at him and said, "You get back in there. You're not finished yet. You're supposed to be a girl." According to a new book, my dream was very prescience.

Credit goes to my friend D for finding this interview Piper Weiss Shine had with Dan Abrams, the author of Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers, and Just About Everything Else.

Abrams--a man!--looked at tons o' research that, in addition to the list above, proved that women live longer, tolerate pain better, are better doctors, and less corruptible and gullible.

Don't worry, dudes. There are some things you excel at:

Men are better at parking, they’re better dieters, they have better distance vision, they read maps better. One study suggests they even treat their friends better. 

His last thought:

Overall I found that men's biggest problem is that they’re too confident and women’s biggest problem is that they’re not confident enough. Truth is, I think the evidence is overwhelming in favor of women.

That's certainly my problem, little miss who-would-hire-this-piece-of-shit-that-the-world-revolves around so I'm happy to shine your shoes and no, you don't have to pay me minimum wage.

Oh baby.

This made me happy. I got to meet, hold, sniff, and rock my friend C's new baby, Aveline. She is so petite and sweet. I haven't held a newborn in quite a while. (And never one this tiny. At a month, she topped the scales at 8 lbs. My babies were 9 lbs. at birth.) She's a little hazelnut (which is what her name means) of love.

In a word, exquisite.

She's studying the quality and values of the sunlight; her dad is an artist.

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me because I have great style.

After her lunch and diaper change, I got to walk/rock her to sleep. Those babies fight it and I just love the feeling when they finally give up the ghost, shudder and drift off to dream land. I hope I get invited back.

The Monday Thursday

When I worked full-time and had kids, I actually looked forward to Mondays after spending the weekend with them. Then, by Friday, I missed them terribly and looked forward to the weekend. That was a nice cycle. Now it's all cattywhompuss and today feels like Monday and I'm always missing and needing a break from my boys.

Liam and his friend Kaia and the famous Yule Log cake at Christmas.

I saw the divorce lawyer yesterday. He commended me on getting along with ex. He's been in the biz for 30 years and has seen some horrific stuff. He says most divorce lawyers have good marriages because they've seen the horror divorcing people inflict on each other. Be afraid. His stories! Humans are greedy and sometimes we get it in our heads that the only thing that will make us happy is to annihilate our exes. When divorcing, the way to do that is with money and custody of the children. Those are your weapons. He also said that this depression/recession is soo deep, the biz of divorce has gone the way of the housing market. People simply can't afford it and are staying in shitty marriages until the economy picks up. Good times.

This week I'm pondering how we decide we no longer love a person or if we're just irritable and need a nap. We had a marriage counselor once who told us that the opposite of love was indifference, not hate. The opposite of irritation isn't murder, is it? I'm thinking I need a vacation, but some would say that my whole life is a vacation 'cause, you know, I'm not working, just worrying about not working.

I'm off to take world-famous Cheese House sandwiches to my friend C who just had a precious baby girl. So sweet, so petite. Pictures tomorrow. Have a nice Monday/Thursday.

10 forms of twisted thinking.

I am one twisted mother. I have been told so many times by so many professionals and lay persons that my main problem is the way I think, so I had to re-post this item from Therese over at Beyond Blue. I think I have more than 10 actually because I'm an overachiever and really special. See? There's one right there.

Both David Burns (bestselling author of "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" and Abraham Low (founder of Recovery, Inc.) teach techniques to analyze negative thoughts (or identify distorted thinking) so to be able to disarm and defeat them.

Since Low's language is a bit out-dated, I list below Burns' "Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking," (adapted from "Feeling Good") categories of dangerous ruminations, that when identified and brought into your consciousness, lose their power over you.

1. All-or-nothing thinking (a.k.a. my brain and the Vatican's): You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization (also a favorite): You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities don't count (my college diploma was stroke of luck...really, it was).
5. Jumping to conclusions (loves alcoholic families): You conclude things are bad without any definite evidence. These include mind-reading (assuming that people are reacting negatively to you) and fortune-telling (predicting that things will turn out badly).
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way out of proportion or you shrink their importance.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: "I feel like an idiot, so I must be one."
8. "Should" statements (every other word for me): You criticize yourself or other people with "shoulds," "shouldn'ts," "musts," "oughts," and "have-tos."
9. Labeling: Instead of saying, "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk" or "I'm a loser."
10. Blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that you contributed to a problem.

Depression and addiction. Or Lincoln and me.

Although drug ads would have one believe that depression can be cured, it's beyond the scope of medicine, encompassing the physical body and the mind, which makes it exactly like addiction. Both are chronic diseases that need to be managed daily. Both have, at some point, taken a person to her knees in defeat. Both require the sufferer to admit she is powerless and to turn the care of herself over to a higher power.

I recently read this article, which is a synopsis (although it's an Atlantic piece, so it's still long) of a book about Lincoln's depression. To compare my depressive/addictive nature to Lincoln's is like comparing a  mosquito bite to full-blown psoriasis, but I could relate to the guy.

Lincoln: "They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society," Lincoln said, "which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for … even though never perfectly attained."
AA: Progress, not perfection.

Lincoln: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
AA: Do the next right thing.

I hear many drunks in meetings identify themselves as "grateful alcoholics." I used to think they were grateful to be sober, but now I see what they mean is that they are grateful for the gift of their disease. Lincoln, too, seemd to come to believe that his disease was not a curse, but a gift.

It's a pity that it would be an uphill battle for a great man like Lincoln to be elected today. Aside from the fact that the camera didn't love him, once People magazine ran a story about his black dog, the race would be over. The public views depression and alcoholism as character flaws and weaknesses, which is too bad because both diseases, when being treated, result in a person who is rich in humility, has examined her soul, and taken responsibility for her actions. I wouldn't mind seeing more of these traits in my elected officials.