Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Fluff.


  
Some days are noisier than others.
Today is a "noisy" day.

The brain begins to fill with weird questions, thoughts that don't seem to link up, or fit with others.  Emotions swell from anxious despair, to inappropriate elation.  And everywhere in between.
And a feeling of desperation from the piles and piles of "unmentionables"...the thoughts that leave one sort of stranded, searching every friend in hopes of finding a confidant in whom to confide.
Knowing that most of it is best left unsaid, as there will be an immediate recoil of regret once the words are spoken.
Restless sleep that builds, and builds, until days have passed without sleep.  Awkward paranoia.  Fragile ego.  

I may be crazy, but  at least I'm not crazy! 

Whether it's genetics, or life experiences that created this, I do not know.  But I don't suppose knowing would make days like this any easier.


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

This post sucks.

I never want to be the kind of person who lords over her family, demanding that this or that take place in a manner timely enough to suit my ever-expanding demands.
I never want to be the type of person who tells my husband or children that they "can't" associate with someone, because I don't find it personally enjoyable.


Those are the things that I keep repeating to myself, over and over this week, as the arrival of my mother-in-law looms ever closer.

That is exactly, however, the type of person I feel like this week.



I keep telling him that his decision to invite his mother is entirely up to him, and that I will support him in whatever he decides to do.
This is what I say.  What I feel, however, and how that reads upon my person, is entirely the opposite. I dread it.  I dread her.  And I'm bothered that I have not been able to conceal it as well as I thought I could.  And it isn't for a lack of trying, either.


Of course, with her visit drawing near, my obsessive need to have an immaculate, spotless home has begun to take over, and has clashed violently with my childrens' need to be children...to be messy, and sticky, and to leave a trail of toys and dirty clothes wherever they wander.  Their promises to clean their rooms have turned into drawers stuffed with dirty clothes and trash, and the area beneath their beds turning into landfills.


My frustration is evident.  My hands are raw from bleach, and my back aches.  The better part of me wishes I could just leave the house, and return on Monday after the visit is over.  Check into a motel, and let the hired maid and the room service staff do all the obsessive cleaning.  Let the husband and the kids handle the mother-in-law, and I'll return when she's gone.


The guilt I feel has turned into some kind of stagnant, nagging sadness, because I don't like making this more difficult for my husband, nor do I like feeling like a broken record with my kids.  "Clean your room.  Pick up this trash.  Who left toothpaste everywhere?"  I don't like feeling as if I have to scour my house from floor to ceiling, and I don't like the fact that I'm just a general grouch, who is making her husband uncomfortable.

And I don't like this crybaby post.  

Suck it up, Nancy!  

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Parental Fail.

I hugged my teenage son goodbye this morning, as he left for work with his father.  As I held his tall, lean person in my arms, I was suddenly ashamed to realize how long it had been since I last truly hugged my son.
We stood for several seconds together, and I mumbled "my baby boy..."  half expecting him to pull away, or to moan in that teenager-y way.  He didn't.  I swear, I think he hugged me tighter.

I think I stopped hugging him at the point that he stopped climbing into my lap and asking for it.  What a loss.

He's been the size of an adult since he was twelve.  Did I subconsciously decide that he was too big for me to hug?  That he didn't want me to hug him?  He seemed so happy this morning, to bend down to my level, so I could wrap him in my arms.

This is a short-lived mistake.  I do not intend to make it again, and until he tells me he doesn't want to be hugged anymore, I will continue to fold him in my arms, regardless of how he towers over me.

I miss my sweet, blond-haired, cuddly baby boy.  But he has been replaced with someone even greater, and I will not miss out on those precious opportunities any longer.  

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Why I'm high in front of my kids.

This has been the bulk of my day.   If you haven't read it, it's a link to my previous entry, Zig-Zag Rainbow, which is a very detailed, very in-the-moment description of what it's like when I experience a severe migraine attack.
Resembling stroke, these attacks are raw, violent, and most of the time, extremely terrifying.  Every time, I become sure that I will never recover, and am forever doomed to live my life in some kind of sensory-confused, hallucinatory hell.  I don't wish such a thing upon anyone.

But this isn't about the nightmare experience of suffering thru migraine.
This is about the "after."
The post-migraine euphoria.

Once the blindness is gone, once the pain has finally stopped,  once my limbs find their way back to their correct places on my body, an almost excruciating relief creeps in, and my entire being is absolutely high.

I feel a definite softness in every part of my body.  Even my feet feel as if they've been shrouded in cotton.  My head buzzes with a peaceful excitement, and a giddy relief that the attack is over, and that I found my way back out of the strange, dark migraine tunnel once again.
My stomach finally returning to normal, food never tastes as good as it does in this stage.  Even something as simple as this pear feels and tastes glorious...those little bits of sugary grit, the texture dazzling, the sweetness dancing circles on my tongue.
Everything will taste this good today.  Even my ice water is clear and sweet, against the insides of my cheeks.

My arms and legs, having tensed to the point of exhaustion during the attack, are finally rubbery and content, in a way that I can only experience after extreme exertion.

My brain is warm and happy, and I truly believe that nothing could possibly be greater than the sensation of not being in pain.  I am giddy.  I am relieved.  I am exhausted and happy, thoughts all swirly and warm.  I am high.

If not slightly slow, and somewhat tongue-tied, as evident from the choppy, lame attempt above to tell you what I'm feeling.
But I'll certainly take it.  

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Happiness of Soap

I make my own laundry soap.  Partly because it's a gazillion dollars cheaper than buying it from the store, (I can make ten gallons for less than three dollars) and partly because it's just something I like to do to.  I'm definitely not a professional at homemaking, but I do like doing those few "Little House on the Prairie" things that I'm good at, in order to help keep us afloat. 

I bottle it up, and store it in the utility closet until I'm ready to use it, then I start washing away, secretly wishing for a wringer and a clothes line.  It makes me happy. 

A few people have discovered the secret awesome-ness of this homemade wonder, and from time to time will send me their empty jugs to fill.  This also makes me happy. 


I'm happy to share with them, something that makes me happy. 

Happiness everywhere. 

Filling my bottles today, feeling, well, happy, and full of old-fashioned domestic satisfaction, I thought, "I should send this bottle to my mother!  I'll bet she'd love it.  Maybe I'll call her today and invite her over to get it..." 

Eh? 

Happiness wilted. 

I don't have a mother that I'd just invite over on a whim, without some definite back-up plan to get her immediately out of my house.  I don't have a mother that I'd invite over for soap, and ask her to stay for coffee, while we chat about the current goings-on in our lives.  I don't have a mother that my children will be happy to see upon arriving home from school...

I have a mother who will keep people waiting on her indefinitely, and then, back out of plans, simply in order to have control over whether or not people wait on her.  I have a mother who will say "I'll be there in ten minutes," and who will then be four hours late.  I have a mother who will promise her grandchildren one thing, and then do completely the opposite. 

There are times, when I want, sometimes desperately, to rise above my petty resentment, to get over what is passed, and just start over.  When not having a mother in my life creates a feeling of actual sadness.  When I consider those who have lost their mothers permanently, and think, "you ungrateful brat." 

Sometimes I literally want to shake her, shake the "phony" out of her.  Shake out of her the piece of her that gives such a shit what other people think of her, her hair, her skin, her weight, her goddamn fingernails, and find out if there is actual substance there. 

Shake her, until the part of her that skips family reunions because she's "too fat" comes rolling out of her, so I can stomp it to death. 

Shake her, until she accepts my unease about her...husband...so that she never asks me to reconsider again. 

Shake her, until she sees that being perpetually late is disrespectful, and that breaking every single promise is even more damaging. 

Even shake her until that goddamn baby-talk, phony telephone operator voice of hers is gone forever.  Just talk to me.  Just talk to my kids.  We're mature enough to handle your real voice, and don't need such feigned politeness. 

Shake her.  And shake her, and shake her.  Until nothing is left, but...a mother.  A grandmother.  A mature woman who has had some fifty years to learn her way around herself, and has come to a conclusion that she is as worthy as the next woman.  And that others are as worthy as she.  An equal balance of self-esteem, and respect for those around her. 

I know that if I invite her over today, one of two things will happen.  She'll be delighted, she'll keep me on the phone for two hours, she'll say she's coming, and then she will call and cancel after I wait on her all afternoon.  And I will wonder why in the hell I invited her over in the first place. 
Or, she will show up, talk incessantly about her fatness, make awkward comments, (in her baby voice) about my parenting, my person, my husband, and I will not be able to push her out the door fast enough.  And I will wonder why in the hell I invited her over in the first place. 

Why is it so hard to just be with her?  Why is it so hard for her to just be with me? 
And why, after 33 years of trying and trying and trying, do I still care?  I have a fantastic family of my own.  I have amazing friends.  Besides the millions of dollars I seem to have misplaced, I am blissfully content.  So why on earth do I give such a fuck about one, selfish, neurotic person? 

I suppose the only simple answer is, "she's my mother." 

Fucking soap.  Fucking thoughtful soap.