Not at bedtime, though.

The other night I had this horrible dream.  I was walking through a deserted neighborhood (always a bad idea in dreams) and I saw a polar bear.  That’s not funny—polar bears are scary.  I steered clear and tried to avoid being seen, but kept walking down the street.  Then I saw a Pit Bull and hoped he wouldn’t see me, but I timed my escape poorly and we met at the corner.  I had some kind of metal stake in my hands (Chris has been doing some gardening) and I waved it to deter him.  It did not.  He came towards me and I responded in a decidedly un-Cesar-like fashion.  Somehow, I got away and the worst thing on earth happened: the Pit Bull and the polar bear (sounds like a children’s story) started to fight.  But Jenny, isn’t it better that they fight each other than you?  No, of course not.  I am ridiculous anyway, but I am especially ridiculous in regards to animals.  I’d rather have them maul me than each other.  And yes, I do love cheeseburgers, why do you ask?

So under the category of Trying to Fix Things Beyond My Control, I need to stop this fight.  I don’t want to see either of them hurt, Pit Bulls have a bad reputation, polar bears are on the endangered species list, no one else is around… my responsibilities are endless!  I know I have to do something, but what?  How do you separate a Pit Bull and a polar bear?  There is some advice about pouring water on fighting dogs, but that approach is lost on Pit Bulls, apparently— I imagine it has little effect on polar bears.

So I woke up somewhere around this point feeling sweaty and exhausted.  When I told Tracy about it, she said these dreams are a good indication of stress level and I had to laugh.  The Pit Bull and the polar bear, indeed!

Probably should have split this up a bit...

On Saturday, I went to a mindfulness retreat.  Towards the end of the mindfulness class last year, we had this all day retreat and I was invited back this year as an alumni.  This was a free class for UNR students, thank god, and I have been living off those lessons for the past year.  The class was called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, and was created in response to the rather unhelpful advice given by doctors to heart patients: “You need to lower your stress.”  Short of moving to a monastery, how are you supposed to do this?  MBSR is about teaching specific techniques and practicing them.  Mom had me read this book about allowing yourself to be imperfect and there was one part that really stood out.  It said that you clean off your desk not to keep it that way, but to mess it up again.  That was a little a-ha moment for me (Taaaaakke oooooooon meeeeeeee!) and it was confirmed early in the day at the retreat with a quote from some mindfulness expert to not look at it like a way to fix things or become a better person.  What it is is an act of self-love.  Or as I saw it, periodic maintenance.

The retreat was a day of meditations and silence, which is not the way today is going.  I am writing this a half sentence at a time.  Overall it was helpful, but it did not feel relaxing at the time.  In fact, the psychologist running the class congratulated us all for carving out time from our crazy lives.  That is no small feat, let me tell you.  Not only are there tons of other things that need to be done, this is an entire Saturday devoted to something that feels like it will be a waste of time.  People kept calling it “doing nothing,” but I think that’s because we don’t know what else to call it.  It felt like a selfish thing to take so much time and seemingly have nothing to show for it.

Of course, at the end of the day I felt SO calm.  I have been getting close to a state of panic and this retreat came at a really good time.  In addition to all the regular craziness, Chris has been informed that he has a spinal fluid blockage and needs surgery now.  They forbid him to lift anything or roughhouse- they don’t even want him to drive.  He’s understandably freaked out, as am I.  Chris was hoping to wait until January when work slows down, but it looks like it could be as soon as mid-summer.  Ugh.  I’m having sympathy pains.

Ant was asking me about the retreat and I told him all I would be doing was sitting, breathing, lying on the floor, walking in circles, and maybe eating lunch outside.  He looked horrified.  I said it was an effort to de-stress, and I wanted him to do his chores while I was gone so I could come home and not re-stress.  He has been sick and would likely be unsupervised, so I wasn’t horribly optimistic about what I would come home to.  When I got home at 5, Chris was at the grocery store and Ant was sleeping on the couch in a clean living room.  He cleaned the kitchen, swept the back porch, cleaned his room and his bathroom, cleared off his homework table, walked the dogs, and sent Chris to the store.  Chris gave me the list later on:



The most adorable grocery list ever



Chris said he woke up to a clean house.  He said Ant was funny, harassing him all day long to get his butt to the store so it would be done by the time I got home.  When I came in, Ant told me Chris was getting me flowers.  This family does not seem to understand surprises.  Ant admitted that he wanted me to know that the flowers were his idea.  Chris said he was already going to do that.  They both wanted credit, which was adorable.  The grocery shopping was pretty major too—as much as I love to go, I wanted to take Ant shopping for pants and we were headed for Topaz the next day, so it really helped to have that taken care of already.  I was not expecting anything for Mother’s Day and instead I got some very serious sentiments of love and appreciation- not to mention a clean house, time for myself, and flowers.

We had to drop Chris off at work, then Ant and I had a lovely dinner (with coupon) at Boston Market, then I bought him some much needed new pants.  He would only shop for bargains—gotta love that kid.  He also got a new pair of shoes ($15 at Ross) so he can alternate them out more often and not have smelly feet.  He was super excited and appreciative.  We kept gushing appreciation to each other every frickin two minutes.  It’s a good thing no one else was around; it would have been pretty obnoxious to witness. 

Yesterday was Topaz.  Chris made plans to go out there early and cook Eggs Benedict for his mom despite the fact that he would only have about 3 hours’ sleep.   He was a little grumpy, but he made us breakfast.  We ate on the porch and watched the dogs play in the water.  Jasmine and Nicky chase each other in and out of the water for hours, competing for the largest and most intact stick.  Turk bounds on and off the dock, sometimes chasing the girls, sometimes coming up to one of his humans for some love.  Riley stands on the edge of the dock, barking at the chaos.  If there isn’t enough chaos, she wades in and paws at the water to make splashes to bite at.

Ant was still on this amazing behavior kick, being perfectly lovely to everyone.  We brought Elaine a new floatie for the lake and Ant went to pump it up for her.  When he couldn’t get into the garage for the air pump, he blew it up himself.  “Oh jeez,” she said to me.  “Now I have to go.”  That’s right, Grandma.  She was pleased that it was the kind that kept you up and out of the water since it was still pretty cold.  It’s a good thing Chris vetoed me- I was leaning more towards the one where your butt was in the water.

In the afternoon, we herded all the dogs inside and watched Contraband, Mark Wahlberg’s latest ridiculous action movie.  We are fans of his, but we are amused by his choices.  I lost a little respect for him when he apologized for making The Happening.  Just because it was a little more abstract than usual and poor M. Night Shyamalan’s films are promoted wrongly as horror movies doesn’t mean it was a bad movie.  And really, you’re going to apologize for that when you make movies like Max Payne and Shooter?  He was pretty awesome in The Fighter and The Perfect Storm, but my personal favorite is I Heart Huckabees.  Remember him in Fear?  Ha ha ha ha, you’re welcome for that.  Anyway, we all kicked out our reclining sofas over a sea of sleeping dogs and watched a silly action movie. WARNING: NOT REALLY MUCH OF A SURPRISE SPOILER ALERT: He manages to save his wife in JUST THE NICK OF TIME!  Isn’t that amazing?  I bet you never saw that coming.

We came home and watched an Adam Sandler movie, or as I like to call them, Vehicles for Adam Sandler to Make Out with Ladies that are Otherwise Way Out of his League.  And really, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan because there are much better things to do with your time.  Ant, by the way, thinks this is a really good movie and wants to own it, but he also thought Real Steel was awesome.

You will be pleased to know that Ant is back to his normal ornery teenager self today.  I had to wake him up for school again and got an earful of mewing protests.  Welcome back to the weekday, kiddo!

Sad Stories Are Not Over Yet, Part II

Back in 2009, I found out I was pregnant, and Chris and I were very excited.  We told everybody too soon and I miscarried four days later.  It was very sad and I have had a lot of thoughts about that over the last couple years, but one thought is particularly persistent and I think I’ll have to share it to get over it.

Beware—this is ridiculous.

This is like when I was diagnosed with diabetes in Turkey.  I was just out of the hospital and thinking about the different tasty things that were out of my life forever when the worst thought ever occurred to me: I would have to start carrying a purse.  That was seriously the most upsetting thing to me about being diabetic.

So right off the bat, Chris and I started calling people and making pregnancy plans.  The baby would be due in February and he wanted to get married before that.  We thought we could pull it off in September and I got this great idea.  I called Dad and he said he was up for it, but then everything changed and if I did it now it would just be sad, so my only option is to just tell you about it.

My idea was to have Dad fly up to Reno and he, Chris and I would go up to Virginia City to get some of those Old West pictures taken.  We’d all dress up and the setting would be a shotgun wedding.  Wouldn’t that have made the funniest wedding announcement ever?  Well, I think it’s hysterical.  Think about the silly expressions we could have made!

Like I said the other day, some stories are sad because they aren’t over yet.  I may not have a biological child in my future, but ALL the TIME I get confirmation from the Universe that it was just not meant to be and that my energy is not at all wasted on Ant.  I read so many things about how kids will always be like their biological parents, even if they have never been around each other.  It was so depressing to think that I would put all this time and care into him—not that it would be worthless, but that it wouldn’t matter?  I don’t know.  But now I can see where I show up in him and it is so neat to watch.  He is a good kid regardless, but he is also a good kid because of me, and I am extraordinarily proud of that.  Could I have given him as much as I have with a baby?  Maybe, but in my gut I don’t think so.

Goodbye, baby Seren.  See you next lifetime.

Sad Stories Are Unfinished Stories

Under the topic of Lessons I Just Keep Learning, sometimes a story is sad because it is not over yet.

On Monday, we had this big plan to grill.  Well, maybe it wasn’t a big plan for anybody else.  I had some chicken and I found this marinade mix (on clearance, with a coupon, yeahhhhh) and we were going to grill and play with this big silly Frisbee afterwards at the park.  But then Chris told me he’d invited Justin over and there wasn’t quite enough chicken and we ALWAYS have chicken when Justin comes over.  In fact, he hasn’t been over for dinner in a while, probably because he is tired of chicken.

So Chris and I had a quick powwow and I ran over to Winco for some ground beef and other BBQ supplies.  I took too long at the store and Chris was busy working on a song for a while after I got home, so when we FINALLY got the grill going it was at least 7.  Justin showed up after we ate and it was all discombobulated, but the food was tasty and we had this crazy flustered moment of grabbing the dogs, the leashes, some water, poop bags, and way more summer evening yard game equipment than we could ever use in the amount of daylight we had left.

Chris was totally unsatisfied with the distance on the Wiffle ball, so he’s been wanting to play baseball.  He is the only one who ever played.  Justin is a snow and skateboarder, the most I ever played was pickup softball games, and we failed Ant completely by not forcing him into Little League.  I played the lonely outfielder while Justin and Chris traded off hitting and pitching.  Ant was pitching for a while, but wasn’t very consistent, so Chris did what dads have been doing to sons for eons and gave him a hard time about it.  Ant took as much as he could before handing the ball off to Justin.  He went to play shortstop on the wrong side and missed every ball except for the one that hit him in the foot.  He fell over, acted as if mortally wounded, pronounced baseball as stupid and went to go skate.  I hit for a little while until it got so dark that we had to play by ear, then we gathered up our stuff and headed home.

Ant didn't show up until 9, like he was some kind of badass who does what he wants.  Chris asked him why he left, Ant said the ball hurt his foot, and Chris pointed out that he wasn’t too injured to go skate for an hour.  This was a brief volley and then Ant pouted off to his room.  I went in briefly and Ant whined that he should NOT be FORCED to play a sport he doesn’t LIKE.  I sighed heavily and agreed that he was right—that it would be wrong to take him every week to play on a team—but this was just a family thing, no big deal.  I acknowledged that Chris was being kind of turdy, but asked him not to wander off from stupid family outings.

I thought about this situation late into the night.  At first, I thought no, he should not be allowed to escape whenever he feels like it.  Later, I thought well… maybe he has every right to react like that.  He’s 13- isn’t he supposed to be storming off?  I thought maybe it’s also good for him to have an honest reaction to Chris’s shit talking.  Chris believes it is healthy to learn to take people’s crap, but maybe some lessons are best left to other people?  Or is it really best to hear it at home?  This kept me up.

The next morning, I woke Chris up and told him he was a turd and he’s going to make his child hate baseball.  He got mad that I was waking him up to talk about that, but promised to talk to Ant about it later.  Ant was still a little pouty and I kept my mouth mostly shut.  This is hard for me, you realize.  I just asked that he try to have fun whether or not he’s good at something.

When I got home, Ant told me that he realized that he just has to be in the right mood to play baseball.  I was already planning to revisit the park, but with the soft Frisbee—something that would be like playing catch without overtly playing catch.  Ant thwarted my plans, however, and suggested we bring only the gloves and baseball.  :D

Chris was still pulling some crap like throwing the ball harder than necessary and being a little mean, but he hasn’t really been himself lately anyway.  Another old friend of his just died in a motorcycle accident and he’s been kind of short with everybody.  I was really proud of Ant though, for suggesting that we play catch.  It was nice outside and the dogs were happy.  I had to give Chris a couple looks and one small powwow, but everybody kept it together and we had a nice time.  After we were done, Chris sat down in the grass next to Ant and they had a little bonding moment.  Chris taught us both a little bit about baseball and after a small father/son wrestling match, we went inside.

It’s taken me hours to write this between calls and I’m sure it doesn’t read as nicely as it could, but I’m going to just get it posted before it’s time to go home.

This situation really bothered me and I realized that I have this problem letting things go unless they are perfect.  That’s what makes me a halfway decent writer, I think, and a lousy conversationalist.  I wanted to tell Ant not to avoid certain things just because he’s not good at them- yet.  Be able to have fun even when it’s not perfect.  Now I see that I need to apply that to my own damn life.  And my writing.  I’m leaving this as is.  So there!

Writing blogs makes you less cranky.

I need to ask myself what’s reasonable.  Of course I’m never going to seem happy if I am always viewed as the bad guy.  Ant told me that everything’s cool until I get home.  I told him that hurt my feelings and that I knew exactly what he meant by saying that my family reminded him of the English.  Maybe someday he’ll read all these blogs and have some idea of what my side of things was like.  This morning I’m fired up about why I’m responsible for all the frigging housework and chasing after Ant and making sure the animals are fed, walked, clean, healthy, happy… and I still have to clean up after their barf and other functions.  I can’t even write my next sentence without sounding whiny, but good grief, no wonder I’m so pissy.  I would like to create an infallible system to share responsibilities.  Somebody’s got it pretty easy right now.

Okay, so now that that’s out, I feel better.   Now as a reward for reading my list of accomplishments, I’ll tell you about last night.

So I come home just as Chris is taking off for work.  I had 99 calls yesterday and somebody told me that in the 8 years they’ve been dealing with the VA, I am the most helpful person they have ever spoken to.  That had me feeling pretty good, so it didn’t bother me that Ant asked me what was for dinner as soon as I walked in the door.  I told Ant we would be going to the grocery store after I got back from walking the dogs (alone, since Ant still has a cough, I’m only slightly bitter) and asked him to please write out a grocery list.  When I came back, I found stuffed shells on the list.

“But we had stuffed shells not that long ago,” I said.

“Yes, but Daddy made them, and they were terrible.”

Well, okay.   So we went to the store and Ant did not make a scene, a mess, or a pest of himself.  He let me match sales with coupons in silence.  I took him to Blockbuster and let him pick out a movie and when we got home, the sprinklers were on.

The sprinkler by the door shoots out across the walk, probably to water the rosebushes against the garage.  This makes it interesting to get to the door.  I grabbed a handful of bags and just ran for it, shrieking.  My theory was that sometimes dumb luck applies, but I got sprayed in the face.  I waited on the porch to see how Ant did.  He carefully hid behind the car door, distributing grocery bags for equal weight.  Then he moved up to the edge to watch the rhythm, but misjudged the distance and got sprayed in the face just by standing there.  I was immediately consumed with the kind of laugh that you just can’t keep up with.  Ant almost lost his composure, but held it tight and tried to time his launch anyway.  He saw an opportunity and ran for it, but got sprayed in the face again.  We giggled our way into the kitchen to put the food away.  Ant went to start the movie while I started making dinner.

“Really?”  I hear Ant ask.  “REALLY?”

“What’s wrong?” I call from the kitchen.

“The sprinklers JUST turned off.”

Such is life.

Manic Thursday

I love my outfit today.  I just knew what to wear today and I feel so happy.  I've got this nice stretchy black top with 3/4 length sleeves, my awesome new jeans from Wal-Mart (who knew) and my gray Mary Janes.  I have these rainbow sherbet socks and they crack me up with this nice, sleek outfit.  As I walk you can see little slivers of yellow and purple craziness.  I look all put together until you catch a glimpse of my true age.

Tonight is new puzzle night!  I'm so excited!  I found another one of those puzzle piece within a puzzle piece puzzles, if you could follow that sentence.  This one will be much harder than the last one, so how exciting is that?  About as exciting as that 1000 piece Toulouse-Lautrec puzzle I just finished: so exciting at first, then you realize that it consists entirely of brown pieces with bits of a weird green.  Once you finish the border, you look through the box and say, "Shit!"

Chris was on the same page about Ant deciding to miss school yesterday.  Since he took his free time yesterday, we will be taking his free time this weekend.  Uh-huh.

"But I told you I didn't feel good enough to go to school!" Ant cried.

"Maybe in your sleep, because I don't remember hearing anything.  Besides, I certainly didn't give you the ok."

"True..."

I love it when logic gets through.


Do you ever have the urge to throw something?  Not in anger, but entertainment?  I used to have these urges to throw tapes or cds out the car window, but I've only followed through with that once.  Sometimes I just want to wing something across the room because it feels like it would fly nicely.  Lately I have the urge to launch something over the top of the cubicles and look confused like everybody else.  Nothing dangerous, maybe a balloon or something.  Draw a smiley face on it to increase morale.  Maybe an inspirational quote or interesting fact.

That's my update.  Feel better now?  I do.

Chris calls:

"Did you know that Ant was home?"

Excuse me?  I heard his alarm go on and on, got up, woke him up and he got up and went into the bathroom.  I went to take a shower.  By the time I got out, it was already past 7 when he leaves for the bus stop, so I went about my business.  Little turd went back to bed.

He's been sick, but uhhhh... WE decide when you stay home, ding dong.  I don't know if I can restrain myself from grounding him.  I called him and said the house had better be spotless when we get home.  Chris is also pissed, so this evening ought to be fun.  We should just take the damn door off the hinges-- many problems could be solved that way... and more created, but for now I'll just heave a big sigh and roll my eyes a lot.

I've been all kinds of aggravated today, but that has been alleviated greatly by making patients attempt to pronounce the medications they want to refill.  I had one guy today call me to change an appointment, then get all bent out of shape that now he had to "ruin his calendar."  What?

Almost done.