Rambling...

11/29/2012

I'm feeling nostalgic this morning. Today is my oldest daughter's twentieth birthday. So I look around me and try to see what I have accomplished in the last twenty years. I don't have scads of money and I'm not famous. I'm still a lousy housekeeper (although I am getting better), still a great cook. I'm not thin, I didn't marry Johnny Depp... Just what in the hell have I done with my life?

Then again, since when have I measured myself by other people's standards? The question isn't what have I done with my life, it's what am I proudest of in my life? These things are easy for me to name.

We'll start with the most obvious. I have raised two beautiful, strong, smart, talented, funny women from infancy to adulthood. While I cannot take full credit for this accomplishment, I know I have had a major role in that happening. They are both incredible people. A mother couldn't be more proud.

Then there is the maintaining of a strong marriage for the last ten years. And as anybody in a long-term relationship knows, that is definitely an accomplishment. When you add to that the fact that my husband's work takes him away from me fairly frequently, it becomes more difficult to maintain a strong level of intimacy. But we work at it and we do pretty well. I love him more today than I did the day that I married him so, we must be doing something right.

Let's see... What else?

I have friends! So many wonderful friends!!! I have more friends than any one person should rightfully have, and yet, there is always room for more! I love having so many interesting, fun people in my life. It makes it all worth living. They accept me , challenge me, and the best ones are always there when I really need them.

Off to class... I'll get back to this later.


11/30/2012

Yesterday ended on a melancholy note. After my husband left, the house was too quiet. But it always is. Funny how silence can be filled just by the act of someone else being there. (Well, the right someone. Let's face it; there is not much in life as uncomfortable as uncomfortable silence.) Kids, husband, parents, roommates, brother... I've always had someone else living in my space.

Getting home last night after a few drinks, I walked into a deafening silence. It was the biggest silence I have encountered in quite a while. Justin was only home for a week but, I got used to his noise again. Now the house is too quiet. The last year has taught me that the best remedy for that huge, empty silence is to just live with it. Sit in it. Listen to it. Sometimes it's beyond lonely. Sometimes it's only broken by the sound of my crying. Sometimes it's oppressive, like a too heavy quilt when you have a fever; you'd push it off if you could, but you lack the strength to do so.

Sometimes it's a moment of creative birth. I have more writing and dance that has come out of that silence in the last year, that at any other point in my life. As much as I hate the silence that means that my daughters have grown up and no longer need me the way they once did, and my husband is away working for a (hopefully) better life for the two of us, I love what can spring out of it when I push through and deal with it.

And dealing with it can suck. It often involves some emotional outbursts, and I'm sure that I sound quite insane when I'm going through it but, fortunately for me, my place has thick walls, or if my neighbors hear it, they're too polite to say anything. Either way, I cry, I get angry, and I whine, until eventually I've dealt with it. And I find a way to put it out there creatively (currently in this weird rambling blog) and I feel better.

I'm hoping that today is a good day. It's the last regular class day of the term. With any luck, everything will go smoothly, and I can come home and start cramming for finals.

I'm sure I'll do some writing this weekend to avoid having to study...

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend

I have never been one for Black Friday sales. This has always been the case, but it has become especially true over the last few years and the exposure of corporate greed and the beginnings of the Occupy movement. I don't enjoy shopping on the best days. I especially don't enjoy it knowing that I am merely contributing to the profits of some huge, out-of-touch corporate empire. So, no Black Friday sales for me.

I also do not watch football. I don't care who's playing and I don't give a fuck who won. I cannot express that thoroughly enough. I don't fucking care about football. At all. Ever. I appreciate that you do, but I have tried and I do not. I had better things to focus on this holiday weekend.

First of all, my husband is home for Thanksgiving. I cannot express how giddy I am to have him here. Living alone has been good for me but, things are better when he's here. I am especially thrilled to have him home because there was a moment on Tuesday when it looked like he might not make it. That would have made for a pouty bitch on Thanksgiving and I would have been difficult to be around for a while after. So, YAY! My husband is home!

Our Thanksgiving involved going out to my folks home in South Salem, where my youngest daughter, my aunt, my cousin, and his partner were ready to spend the afternoon talking and overeating. And that's exactly what we did. We talked and laughed and overate and had a good time. I have a great family, and I enjoy having my time with them. Especially with the prospect of moving so far away looming in my future. I am thirty-seven years old and I have never lived more than ten miles away from my parents. And while I know that I will do just fine, it weird to think that, if I should want to see them I'll have to make travel arrangements, rather than just having to make a phone call.

So, I try to revel in my time with them while I am here. My mom makes one of the most moist, delicious turkeys ever know to man and she modified her stuffing recipe to make it gluten-free so that I could eat it this year. I made mashed potatoes with gouda cheese and bacon. Caesar salad, corn, rolls (gluten-filled & gluten-free), and two types of pie for those who could eat that, gluten-free cookies for me. Dinner was delicious!

Now it's not all Norman Rockwell perfect in my family.There are awkward silences, uncomfortable moments, and occasional weirdness but, somehow we manage to get through those moments and remember that we really do love each other and we should enjoy these moments while we have them. Even the uncomfortable moments.

How do we do that? To be honest, we have had years that the Holidays were far more uncomfortable than they are now. The years when I was with my ex-husband... The years when I was strung out on meth and we were all trying to ignore it... The year I was pregnant with my oldest daughter and we weren't really speaking to each other... The years when my parents would get so drunk we could barely be civil to each other... Even in those years, we celebrated the Holidays together and tried to put our differences aside in spite of everything. I guess after experiencing years that were really uncomfortable, it's easier to take those moments of awkwardness that happen now and let them go.

Thursday night, we went out to Dave & Nikki's and sat by the fire, spun fire, listened to music and drank cider or beer. From one family to another. While the experience is different, the feeling is the same, "I love these people so much. I am going to miss them terribly when I am gone," so I savor each moment like a gourmet meal, as I know I won't be able to hang on to it as well as I'd like once I am away.

Friday night, we went back to my folks place to celebrate my oldest daughter's twentieth birthday (which isn't until next Thursday but, she wanted to have a celebration while her step-dad was in town). more overeating and more laughter. For me, the best moment came when my daughters and I got Mom and Dad talking about the beginning of their relationship (almost fifty years ago!). It's amazing to me that my folks have been together for as long as they have and that they still love each other so much.

While I didn't watch a single football game or hit even one Black Friday sale, I feel like my weekend has been well spent. I hope everybody out there had a similarly lovely holiday.

Let it Rain

As I prepare for my move, I find myself appreciating things that I have taken for  granted all my life. It's autumn now, so the rains are here. Oregonians are funny about the rain. We all complain about it when it's here but, when we had over 100 days without rain this summer, we freaked out about that. So, the rains are here and we complain about them the way a wife complains about her husband of fifty years. 

For me this year, the rain feels different. Maybe it's because I know I'm about to move to a place where 100 days without rain is the norm not the exception. Maybe it's because it makes me nostalgic for rainy afternoons when I was a kid; curled up in a corner in my parents home with a book and a cup of tea, and the sound of the rain to accompany my journey with Alice into Wonderland, or with Ramona or Elizabeth and Jessica (yes, I read Sweet Valley High when I was a tween). To me the rain sounds like peace, contentment, and safety. Of course, I never thought about that until I was faced with the prospect of leaving it behind.

It's not just the weather that I'm appreciating. People have become hugely important. After thirty-seven years, I have definitely developed some relationships. People that I love like family, that I have taken for granted for years, I find myself going out of my way to spend time with. Not that I haven't always loved them but, I always assumed that there was plenty of time to spend time with them... I'm down to five weeks. So, I'm trying to get time in with everybody I can. Oddly enough, with all the writing that I do, and all the time I spend familiarizing myself with the English language, when I try to find the words to tell people how much I love them, how much I appreciate them and, how much I'll miss them, I don't know words that express that as strongly as I feel it. 

So, if I'm going to miss so much about here, why am I leaving?

I am looking forward to warmer winters and drier springs. But more than that, I am looking forward to being with my husband. All this time away from him has made me appreciate him all the more. He is complex, crazy, brilliant, funny, sensitive, and sweet. He's also loud, stubborn, opinionated, abrasive and, can be just a bit obnoxious. He challenges me, pisses me off, makes me laugh, makes me cry, and loves me more than I ever thought possible. Even after twelve years he can still surprise me. I would follow him to the end of the earth if it meant we got to be together so, L.A. just isn't that bad.

But in the meantime, bring on the rain.

A Bit of Bitching

There are days that I feel like I cannot win, no matter how hard I try or how good I am, I just cannot win. We've all had them. It's not like I am unusual in having those days when I wake up and feel like the world just wants to shit on my face.

For me a lot of this feeling is wrapped up in this huge change I am about to embark on. I am about to move from Salem, Oregon, where I have lived all my life, to Los Angeles, CA. My husband got a job, so he's has been down there since March. I will be moving down to join him right after Christmas. 

My impending move has brought a lot of my crazy to the surface. I've had so many anxiety attacks over the past few weeks, it's not funny. I find myself worrying that I will have trouble making friends, finding a job, finding a dance studio, finding fire performers... you name it. I have nightmares of getting lost and finding myself in the "wrong" neighborhood, or discovering that my husband has decided that he doesn't need me with him after all, or that the cats arrive in L.A. and they've died sometime during the two hours they were on the plane... Awful stuff. I know it's just the anxiety but, the dreams have been incredibly vivid and disturbing.

It has all been bad, however. I look forward to living in a place where I will be able to go play outside almost every day. I look forward to having the time to work on my writing. I look forward to waking up next to my husband everyday. I look forward to the opportunity to spend time with the few friends I do have in L.A. And, as nervous as I am that it won't happen, I look forward to making new friends.

I have been surprised by the outpouring of support from my friends as I've been dealing with my husband being gone and wrapping my brain around moving to L.A... Not surprised that it's been there, surprised by whom it has (and hasn't) been coming from. People that I expected to give me love, support, and strength have pulled away to the point that I am wondering if I should bother attempting to spend time with them before I leave, while people who I didn't realize were such great friends have reached out to me during my darkest moments and helped to keep me from losing my mind. So, to those of you who have been loving and supportive: thank you. To those that haven't: I've noticed. It will not be forgotten.

Moving on...

As I have been dealing with the emotional shit, I have also had the pleasure of dealing with the onset of arthritis and bursitis in my right hip and, once I got that under control (thank the Gods for cortisone), I came down with bronchitis. I was given prescriptions yesterday that will cost me almost every cent I have to fill all of them... Every day is a new adventure, eh? So, to sum it up, I'm broke, anxiety-ridden, and unable to breathe.

But, it will get better. All of it. I've been around long enough to know that in life, all things ebb and flow. Health (mental and physical) will improve, finances will get better, life will get easier. I am loved. I am wanted. It's all gonna be okay.