Something Happy

My daughter and I have a great relationship for the most part...she is funny, pretty, and all the things that I could have been had my mother not been such a PSYCHO!! I have endeavored to make her happy more often than not, and tried to give her the freedom to express whatever enters her head...even though that has bitten me on the gluteous maximus many times.
We were bantering back and forth in the kitchen while I was slicing cheese for her late night snack. We got on the subject of the worms I ate at the company 4th of July party a couple of years ago...I told her that mommy was a free spirit. Her exact reply was, "I hope your free spirit comes with a manual next time so I know how to handle it"...I laughed so hard I almost cut myself!!
She is such an amazing amalgam of qualities...spoiled and giving, fearless and timid, my bestest little pal and the bane of my days (although that doesn't happen often). I hope we can keep some measure of this relationship into her teen years and beyond. I know that all teenagers sprout many heads, akin to Medusa's snakes, but as long as I can see a glimmer of this amazing girl every now and then, it will all be OK.
As much as motherhood has brought so many trials and tribulations, I can't imagine not having been blessed with this experience.

Songs That Make Me Cry Pt 1

Playboy Mommy~Tori Amos

in my platforms
i hit the floor
fell face down
didn't help my brain out
then the baby came
before i found
the magic howto keep her happy
i never was the fantasy
of what you want
wanted me to be
don't judge me so harsh little girl
so you got a playboy mommy
but when you tell them my name
from here to birmingham
i got a few friends
i never was there was there when it counts
i get my way
you're so like me
you seemed ashamed
ashamed that i was
a good friend of american soldiers
i'll say it loud here by your grave
those angels can't
ever take my place
somewhere where the the orchids grow
i can't find those church bells
that played when you died
played gloria
talkin bout hosanah, yes
don't judge me so harsh little girl
you got a playboy mommy, come home
so when you tell them soldiers my name
you'll cross that bridge all on your own
little girl, they'll do you no harm
'cause they know your playboy mommy
i'll be home
i'll be home
to take you in my arms

I cry everytime I sing this, everytime I hear this...This song just breaks my heart.

Empire Records and It's Many Implications

When I first saw the movie Empire Records I was barely 21, if that...life was full of promise and it embodied that time in my life completely...the world was an open book.
At that time, music was still best played loud, and Bryan and I would walk around downtown Lakeland at 2am. looking in the antique store windows and planning how we would decorate our home and our child's room. We lit our apt with candles and still slept under the same blanket. We made very little money and it wa somehow still more than enough. We both had impetuosity and optimism, music and motivation.
This movie is currently available on HBO on demand and Bryan has been watching it obsessively. He has downloaded the soundtrack and was playing it full blast when I got home tonight. He is very disatisfied with our lives and yearns for that time again. In many ways he reminds me of a high school quarterback who keeps re-living the "glory days"...life is moving forward while the occupant keeps trying to move backwards...not a happy combination.
He just keeps telling me how miserable he is...we never have enough money (this part is quite true). enough friends, enough excitement, enough fulfillment...He seems to resent our kids, the turns our life has taken, the responsibility that is a lodestone around his neck.
The thing that always gets me about this is that he has it easy...He works a desk job for 4 ten hr days while I have our 14 month old twins (and our 9 yo during the summer)...I do all the housework, cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry, plus care for the kids from waking to bedtime...he comes home from sitting on his buttoxes to sit on the couch or at the computer on his buttoxes while I make dinner, clean up from dinner, feed the animals, feed the kids, put the kids to bed, clean up the daily ick, and "spend time with him before bed...
His constant negativity and unhappiness grate on me like fingernails on a chalkboard...to me, he is the quintessential definition of someone who can't see the forest for their own stubbed toe.
I love him, but he exhausts me, and I have no idea what to do about it...I have spent the last 11+ yrs trying to make him happy, but it becomes more apparent with each passing day that he treasures his misery and nothing will ever take that away from him.
It makes me question the value of the last decade of my life.

So Confused

Why do I have to work so hard to make these posts show up?? What am I doing wrong?? I'M SO CONFOOSED!!

Waiting For Payday

Bryan and I have a new weekly ritual, not a fun one, but new at least. His direct deposit is supposed to be in the bank acct as of 12a Thurs...the last couple of weeks we have not followed the budget as well as we should, and so are without entertainment on Weds. night...no smokes, no beer, and a whole lotta blue funk.
Our ritual involves trying not to watch the clock as much as possible til 12a, then obsessively checking the acct online til the magical goddess of money decides to smile on us and deliver our small pittance...
It takes a lot for me to admit this, I know that most of my friends are better off financially than I and I have a lot of shame tied up in that, but life takes us on a twisting path, and this is where I am now.
(boy that was one monster run-on sentence)
I look at people around me, and often ponder what choices in their lives led them to their prosperity. I worked very very hard in school, and could have had a full scholarship to basically any college I wanted, but my mom would not provide her tax information, so I missed out...the joke being that she was the one that drilled into me that anyone who had any measure of success in their lives went to college!!
(one of the many many reasons I am so screwed up)
This also instilled a horrible deep dark feeling in me that since I am not financially endowed, I am somehow less of a person. I know that isn't true in the black and white, but it still gnaws at me and has a big place in my closet of insecurity.
I can't wait til the twins start scholl (hopefully pre-k) and I can go back to school myself. I always loved school and learning and I think I will feel a billion times better about myself when I am not only learning but learning and working towards the goal of having more prosperity. My mind also hungers for the fulfillment that comes from intellectual dialogue and discourse.
(12:09a and still no money)
It's amazing how slow time can crawl when you are looking forward to something...in this case that has 2 disparate but equal exemplifications.
(I hope that makes sense)
Ah, well...I think that is enough mental diarrhea for one night.

Musings on Motherhood

I wrote this the other night and posted it on my birthclub bulletin board. However, it seems right to post it here as well:

I lost ALL my "friends" when I got pg with Beaner...I went to work waiting
tables 5 days a wk then spent my evenings with our dog cause dh was still very
immature and tended to stay out drinking and partying with his work friends
after they closed the restaurant he cooked at. I felt like I had been completely
abandoned...quarantined like a plague carrying rat!!

We were the first of our "peer group" to have a child, and even the only ones
that actually had custody of their child throughout her early years!! She was a
novelty to some of our friends, but in a very ADHD sort of way...fun only when
they felt like acknowledging her existence...this definitely made me feel
alienated a lot, and certainly decreased their overall value in my eyes.

On the other hand, I really feel like parenthood just affects women so much
more dramatically than it does men. Once we have brought life into the world,
our entire identity is changed in our eyes. I had a hard time with that for a
long time (and still have growing pains now and again). I would get depressed
cause I felt like I no longer had an identity outside of wife and mother, but also
keep "June Cleaver-ing" it cause I was in that mindset. I was breathing,
eating, sleeping, existing only as wife and mommy, then getting frustrated
cause no one ever looked at me as a "real person".

It really is a cyclic thing...and through the years I have had many "friends" I could hang around with (after the family was asleep) that never really saw me in the wife/mom role so they did not think of me that way...It has been a nice escape now and again. It is so hard once you have kids, (esp. young kids) to feel dynamic, creative, sexy, intriguing, (pick your adjective) cause they just take so much of your time and energy...motherhood has seen me lament the loss of my own identity time and time again. Pre-kids I was a published poet, taught voice and piano
privately, performed onstage, read everything I could get my hands on, got
into deep, philosophical conversations over endless coffee and cigarettes at
IHOP, wrapped myself in my spirituality, and damced til the wee hours of the
morning to The Cure and Sisters of Mercy.Now I am having a good day if I brush my hair and get carded for beer!!

I know it gets easier, (then harder cause they're teenagers LOL) but I really
am still having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I was a
"Mother of 1" for 8 yrs, then became a "Mother of 3" overnight..."Mother of 3"
just sounds like a much more settled, informed, in charge, at peace, and above
all else, professional. Mom than I feel like I have any right to pretend to be!!

Your mind settles with this in time, but you'll still have surreal days, and Lost days...on the other hand, that means that you are still in touch with the fact that there is life outside of mommy and wifehood, and you will not go quietly into that good night!!

Angel

So Here I Am...

It is 1:57 in the am...I am eating Cheddar and Sour Cream Lays and drinking Natty Ice and waiting for the Depakote Dragon to take me to bed.

I think I have discovered that I value eclecticism above all else, (in people at least). Humor is a close second, tho. If a person can make me think and make me laugh at the same time, then they are ALL THAT!!

I find that the later it gets, the more philosophical I become, and introspective as well.

I just apologized to the dog for waking him up.

I think it is time for Pee-Pee go Night-Night.

Angel

Yet Another Blog

In keeping with my many moods and personalities, I have started this, my third, blog.

Actually, this is a reaction to the loss of a really awesome poem I blogged on myspace and now it is gone. Like an idiot, I did not copy it to a word document before I posted it, so it is really and truly gone and I am quite upset.

ANYHOO...

Here are a sampling of the things rattling in my head at this moment...Song lyrics, Criss Angel, making dinner, the dog snoring on the floor, beer burps, and the fact that the babies are too quiet.

I shall return!!