Delusions Of Happiness

One of my favorite blogs is here. Gretchen provides tips on Wednesday and they are always salient and timely. This week was no different. I had such a bad day on Monday, I was still reeling from it by Wednesday. A sort of numb PTSD feeling like I experience after an emergency that doesn't go well or a difficult death. Because of HPPA, I can't go into the particulars but lets just say I spent most of a twelve hour shift in one room and it wasn't because the patient was unstable and the doctor unwilling to send the patient to the ICU. Nope, this patient was completely out of control and in order to keep him off the floor I had to literally sit at his bedside and reorient him constantly. If my other four patients needed anything, the charge nurse had to come to the bedside while I threw pills and whisked bandages off and slapped them back on my other patients. I could go into a rant about this situation and why the patient was out of his mind and who it is but I would be (deservedly) fined five figures and lose my job. Anyhow, early Wednesday, cruising my blogs when I'm greeted with the "9 Tips for having a good bad day"

"Where the hell were you on Monday" I mumbled into the screen as I begrudgingly started reading. Begrudgingly, because I was in such a place that "bitter" and "angry" was starting to feel like a baseline emotion. Basically, I dumped all the water out of my half full glass so it would be empty. To be really woo-woo about it: I was giving my power over to someone else, namely to a patient with self-inflicted dementia. Who frankly, given how they have cared for themselves don't deserve the level of expertise and compassion they have received in my hospital. Anyhow, by number three (ruminating) I was hooked and realized how fruitless hanging on to the "no good terrible day" had been. To clarify, I didn't spend Tuesday in the midst of whining and moaning about my day at Crazy's bedside. I forced myself out of the house and pulled weeds, deadheaded flowers and decompressed in the dirt. But I did find myself returning to Monday's events and wishing I never EVER had to work as a nurse again. Whenever I contemplate not being a nurse I get a little sick inside. This is my calling and I'm going to let one really fucked up alcoholic borderline personality push me away from the bedside? If I did this, shame on me, I would be giving him my power.

Wednesday afternoon, I looked to number 7: "Act the way I want to feel" Which wasn't hard because we had this unseasonably cool and humid day yesterday and before I even tackled Gretchen's tips, I had been in the garden overcome with joy we have tomatoes on the verge of ripening. But I had the nagging sensation of counting down the hours before I had to return to work on Friday and I did not want to return with dread and a heavy heart. I wanted to return with hope for a better day and a patient who had the right mix of psych drugs on board so his thoughts and actions were a little more organized.

Yesterday afternoon, after Wally and Beav cleaned the house for me (beautiful job they did, too) my Ipod gave me a wonderful song I just discovered and downloaded last week. Too bad it's from a regrettably sappy movie Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Bob Schneider is a few years younger than me and maybe he is being Gen X and ironic when he wrote these words but I have taken them at face value:

There is a universe that can't be seen
It's just a feeling if you know what I mean
A delectable dimension undetectable by sight
It'll fill up your heart in the dead of the night
Some say its an astral plane
Can't be described can't be explained

The world exploded into love all around me
The world exploded into love all around me
And everytime I take a look around me
I have to smile

Oh is our life just an illusion
There is no need to figure it out
The separation exists not in your love filled heart
But only in your mind
The real story's all around you
Even now it surrounds you
Even now I feel the power

The world exploded into love all around me
The world exploded into love all around me
And everytime I take a look around me
I have to smile

I contemplated these words for a long time yesterday and I felt my spirits (aka "vibration") lift. Since I have spent eleventy thousand dollars in therapy, I find it exquisitely simple to act the way I want to feel. Once upon a time I thought acting cheerful like some sort of Little Mary Sunshine--you just need to turn that frown upside down and it will be a sunny bright day and all your problems will go away!--sort of dreck was just that: dreck. How dare I live an unauthentic emotion! To feign happiness in the face of bitterness, despair or frustration was lying to the world. Maybe it is a lie. Maybe being happy when things look bleak is a form of delusion. Or perhaps its just a way of looking around the road blocks to the place where love is exploding and the love in one's heart is not separated by the hell living in one's head.

All I know is my heart is full and love is exploding all around me. Thank you Gretchen and Bob.

Warrior Princess, Smorrior Princess. I'm just a mama protecting her youngin's

Long-standing myths are on the verge of mutating. Stories that have remained fixed for years are about to acquire unexpected wrinkles. The effects may be pretty spectacular. I suspect it'll be the equivalent of Sleeping Beauty waking up from her long sleep without the help of the prince's kiss, or like Little Red Riding Hood devouring the wolf instead of vice versa. There's something you can do, Pisces, to ensure that the new versions of the old tales are more empowering than the originals: For the foreseeable future, take on the demeanor and spirit of a noble warrior with high integrity and a fluid sense of humor.

This was my horoscope for last week. Warrior, yes; high integrity and a sense of humor was an epic fail. But it’s a place to start. Always the good thing about the bottom: you can move up. And see the stars and yadda yadda twelve step yadda.

The Beav had his wisdom teeth out last week and was a trooper about it. Wally was deployed from Alexis’ house to my house this weekend, against his will. I guess this will prepare him for the US Army to make decisions for him. Hopefully, he will accept them with more grace. Not that he has a stellar role model for that.

At least, I don’t have to continuing stuffing down how I feel about Alexis Carrington. What I was waiting to say after The Beav graduated from high school just sort of puked out of my mouth and into her ear. After she started to cry, she accused me of being: “mean”? Mean? Are we twelve or fifty here? The more apt verb would be “done”. I'm not being "mean". I'm coming from my unhappy "done" place.

But I started the week “done”. I resigned from doing charge nursing. If I didn’t have a child to finish raising I would have resigned from nursing. Too many never events in one single shift.

But my week hasn’t been without noble warrior moments.

One of my “noble warrior” moments last week was not calling security when the screaming family room physically threatened a doctor because I knew she was (a) crazy and (b) grieving. My second moment was allowing another family see my profound grief while I was at the bedside and shared the news their 48 year old sister--a vibrant, previously healthy, biologist--may never return from her vegetative state.

I owned to Alexis a few hours after my tirade of how thoughtless and self-centered she behaves, that believe it or not, I have an inkling of an idea the balance it would take to be a step parent. I also know it would never be for me. I don’t have the stones for it.

It took courage, telling Ward how Alexis has negatively affected our sons. I’ve been afraid to do this because, frankly, I’m worried about repercussions on them. It was tough to tell him things she has said to them and done to them over the years; things I’ve witnessed; the broken promises; The Beav's fear about being the kid left at Alexis' now Wally is living with me; how sincerely devastated I am to see the man he has become; so alien to the man I once loved. But then, I’m not the woman he fell for either. I’m not the nodding and bobbing “yes girl” who thinks he is an expert in everything and always right about all that is wrong with me. Tap dancing as fast as I can to make sure I change to fit into his specific mold for me because obviously what he thinks I should do and be is absolutely The Right Thing. When Ward married Alexis, he gave her a ring and his spine. I wish I could grow extra spine and gift part of it to him.

It takes a lot of grace to be a noble warrior. My reservoir of grace was temporarily empty but I can feel it slowly starting to fill again.

(I borrowed my girl Xena from boxoffice.com. She's fierce in that ep!. . .)

Midsummer Report Card

Landing into the middle of my life-post vacation--last week put blogging into the back seat. I even knew what I wanted to write about but real life, my real work pressed upon me and I didn't sit down to the computer until today. I Being away from here made me realize how much I missed working in our yard and garden. Coming home to four foot tall tomato bushes and chard ready for harvest was particularly sweet. Hopefully, the huge tomato bushes aren't a lot of faulderah of greenery without the benefit of fruit. Summer has been rainy and on the cool side and even the foothills are still sporting their May greenery--a pleasant change--usually in July things are looking hot and limp like your well-heeled Alabama aunt on a Sunday afternoon in June. Working in the dirt in the mornings this past month has definitely taken the edge off my brittle personality. I feel invigorated and cleansed after long days of nursing. Everyday I am home, I find an excuse to work outside or just be outside. Ironically, the dark rainy days buoyed my spirits, too. Probably the novelty of it all. I loved working in the cool damp of the early mornings this June.

Last month the sky was tinged with light before five but this morning I noticed predawn is now later. insert audible and dramatic sigh here Fortunately, after next week, it won't be necessary to race to the south bed before the sun starts it's twelve hour march across my flowers. The Girl is so terribly ingenious, with help from our landscaper, she is installing an irrigation system to the flower beds and veg gardens. No more moving hoses around, making sure it isn't tangled or kinked, maneuvering around a dog prone to wandering, downspouts, and stepping stones.

I have learned a great deal from my first garden. The most important thing I have discovered is a new passion. In the nuts and bolts department of gardening, I've learned Bee Balm aka Burgamot will take over the world given half a chance; Verbena and lavender are well behaved Submissives and crave too much light and very little. My delicate Trollius has proven to be a finicky Madwoman of the attic so I've taken a great chance and moved her this morning to a shadier spot in the front yard. The only reason I haven't killed my yellow pet is because our summer has been temperate and wet. And who knew something named "Bachelor Button" would not relish full on sun. I was thinking: bachelor farmer. When the truth of the matter they resemble these fellows. (my plants have all taken on the persona of Victorian stereotypes, haven't they? I'm truly obsessed!)

I successfully transplanted zinnias to a bare spot in the veg garden. The Bee Balm has also been relocated to a spot where he can continue to spread his wings and take over a troublesome spot. Oldest Friend quipped that 80% of gardening is moving plants. Fortunately, I won't be moving that many plants but since I planted invasives I see digging, dividing and moving in my future. The goal is to commit Drive By Yarrow Drops in the middle of the night. The Girl tells me I have a green thumb but I'm not sure about this. I think it's forgiving weather patterns, dumb luck and passion. It was a humbling gift to enjoy the lovely chard which began as a seed in my window. I planted seeds on our snow day in mid April as a tonic against relentless winter.

So the question I'm pondering today is this: Does a passion for something constitute a gift? Does it matter if I am "gifted" if the act gives me this much joy?

I know you are all waiting with "baited breath" for my musings and sudden epiphany but a big question like this must germinate like my chard.

Meanwhile, it's time to don my large brimmed hat and make the weed rounds. Saturday is promising to be cooler and damp so moving the other Trollius plants and wane Batchelor Button will have to wait until then and I won't have to be in the yard by 0-gosh-thirty.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I walked into my father’s house yesterday and it hit me like a ton of bricks, she is not coming back. In February I wasn’t gob smacked with grief like I was (obviously) in October. Probably because I was too busy planning my father’s birthday party and had just a few days to focus on that. But yesterday, when I walked in there was something about the house; the smell, the feel of it that overwhelmed me with a wave of lose, sadness and--yes--self-pity. My mother was dead. All trace of her was gone in the house. I had no mother. Mother’s day was pretty much like this too. Had I known how I was going to react to the Hallmark holiday in May, I would have planned differently and worked or slept all day. But I couldn’t sleep through yesterday. Or maybe yesterday was more difficult than that day in February because TG couldn’t come with us and this is the first time since we have lived together we haven’t traveled together. That I missed her on top of missing my mother threatened to overwhelm me with grief.

Last night, while Dad was grilling after I sacrificed blood to the sacred mosquito we started talking about Sister’s trials and tribulations in the dating world. I made some offhand remark about spending a lot of time in therapy. He was incredulous I had spent two days a week for a year in therapy; that part of my decision to live in a terrible little rental house was so I could afford CBT and get off the antidepressants that were making me crazier. At first, I was miffed he had forgotten all of this. Then I realized: he probably never knew about it because I never told him and my mother thought it was a confidence and didn’t give it away. Until October fifteenth, I could count on one finger the number of times I chose to tell my father something important before I told my mother. Now he is the only parent I have to confide in and it hasn’t been all that bad, either. Once upon a time my father and I talked but we discussed the things I was comfortable with like my career and investments. Now I find myself engaging him in conversations about all the things my mom and I shared; family and friends of family news, travel plans, house plans…everything short of how erratic my periods are and the cute shoes I found on sale. What a gift to discover this relationship. Too bad it took losing one parent to discover the other.

I still expect to see my mother as I turn a corner in this house. Early this morning, Dad and The Beav went fishing and I had the house to myself for a few hours. It was so terrifically quiet and the first time I had been alone in the house in years. My grief felt unsettling and frankly a bit of an over reaction, it’s been over eight months since she diedwhy am I weepy about it now? Why did I feel the same emptiness I felt on October 16th when I walked into the house twenty four hours after she died. My father has a large picture of her prominately displayed, she’s standing near the water on Mikonos a few years ago, the last overseas trip she took. It’s not a very good picture of her, she looks tired and I can see the pain in her face, around her eyes, I sense her breathlessness as she tried to make a one last trip before admitted she needed oxygen 24/7 and was in unbearable pain due to her osteoporosis. I felt a buried well of loneliness for her open and then I realized living 800 plus miles away from home wasn’t helping my process. My sister and my father get to live everyday with reminders of my mother. Me? Because we saw each other just a few times a year, I have days every few months when I miss her tremendously. A one step forward three steps back approach to grief. But isn’t it part of my nature to make everything as difficult as I possibly can? I coped today by staying out of the house as much as I could when Dad and the boy were gone.

Once I was away from the house, I relaxed and was filled with the pure zen joy of being in the place I long to return to. I also realized how far I had come to be a person who is intrinsically happy. I am now a naturally happy person whether I live in a city where the Rockies meet the Midwest or in my home town or--God forbid--Lubbock Texas, I will be happy. (Lubbock is stretching it a bit, I don’t really want to try this theory out in with a return to West Texas) Because wherever you go, there you are. Despite doing things the hard way sometimes, being prone to “the glass is half full but dangerously close to falling off the edge of the table: I am deeply happy and content with my life. Once I realized this it was easier to step back into my mother’s house and own all my unaddressed grief.

Today was unspeakably hot with the gift of a sudden hard rain. Where I come from a rain like this cools things off. But here the humidity shot up to about 1100% and it felt as if we were in Houston or Florida or a Swedish sauna. After dinner, The Beav, mirroring my earlier restlessness, asked if we could go somewhere and “do“ something. I was feeling hemmed in after the rain and wanted to be outside in the sauna because it’s novel enough to experience my lungs adequately filled with oxygen but it’s a bonus to have hydrated skin. Besides that, I love the earthy cedar smell after the rain. I suggested we take a drive and see what had replaced a lovely old farm at the end of a road near the ‘rents house. When my parents built their little house it was in the last subdivision on the road. Now I jokingly refer to their neighborhood as the “ghetto” of one of the most expensive and exclusive bedroom communities in the state. Over the last thirty years, horse farms, old homesteads and densely wooded creek beds and a river bottom have been sacrificed for million dollar McMansions and McRanches. I am prone to sentimentality so you can only imagine the wistful feeling I have when I drive and remember the wild spaces. I’m such a sap, I can turn an errand to Walgreens into a trip down memory lane. Tonight wasn’t any different as we meandered down the roads, me lolling in how much I love this place despite the ridiculousness of the traffic, the heat and the Bubbas. The Beav didn’t even roll his eyes too much when I tried to explain DogMan to him and showed him the creek bottoms we would visit as kids trying to catchh a glimpse of the maniac who undoubtedly had a bloody hook and an appetite for teenaged girls. We drove down country roads which have blessedly missed the onslaught of nouvelle riche homes and marveled at the ground fog’s ethereal presence in the bottoms. Beautiful and eerie, I think we both expected to see the specter and Beav freely admitted it was “creepy“ at dusk with the fog hanging onto the dense canopy of trees. I wanted to walk along the creek but I’m very deathly afraid of snakes and boggy dusk is a recipe for copperheads and water snakes. So I stayed in the car on the road over the bridges, keeping the windows down so we could breath the rich air. I took us down roads I haven’t driven since I was 17. I felt a great sense of peace as I the curves and turns automatically not really sure where we were going after the DogMan Tour. But after we turned down a road partially closed due to the rain, I knew where we were going. A place I had forgotten about until tonight. The zebra at the horse farm. Why I had never taken the boys when we had visited is beyond me.

Back in the day there were several zebras at this horse farm and after we were bored with looking for Dog Man, we would stop at the side of the road, calling to them to lure them closer so we could take a good look at them. (Damn, meddling kids that we were, teasing the farm animals!) As I approached the fence I prayed tonight was NOT the night for charging and he would stay a safe distance. God agreed it would be undignified for my child to see me squealing like a girl as I flailed across the road to the car so the zebra stayed on his side of the pasture.
“Why’d you stop?“
“Zebra”
“Wha--? Na Ah, there is NOT a zebra over there, what kind of zebra, a real zebra? Sure mom. . .“
After a minute of: “Not over there but there“ type directions he saw it, the zebra hanging out in the pasture, contemplating the grass as he munched it. Fascinated by this phenomenon in suburbia, Beav lost his teenaged veneer and composure for a few minutes as he marveled at the animal and tried to fathom how and why a rancher would keep a zebra on a horse farm a mile from his GrandDad‘s house. His enthusiasm was infectious and I became fascinated with the beast all over again. I got to catch a glimpse of my little boy tonight. For this alone, Gram would have loved sharing the zebra with him. But the boy was soon replaced by the young man texting his best friend as I pulled back onto the road and headed for home.

Art for Art's Sake

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June got her culture and art on last week; between a friend of a friend’s art opening; scavenging tag sales for art and finally an annual open air art market downtown; I can safely say I have seen enough art...…at least until next week when I go to Next Town and make a quick tour of the local modern art museum. Sadly, my taste in art has been referred to as pedestrian and predictable despite my appreciation of the abstract over the representational. I grew up with really bad representational landscapes (sorry mom, your work was too safe) so I bristle a little when I see them. But when representational pieces reach out to me it is usually because the artist tells the truth of the object through color. She sees the glint of light off water as the color gray tipped with yellow and thereby makes it--creates if you will--a glint of light on water. This gift fills me with awe, wonder and envy. To be able to make color and paint hang together in such a way that I see what she saw in the moment she was painting, is genius. Abstract painters amaze me, too. They think and paint outside the lines. No safe vistas and bibulous skies for them! Their leaps of faith make me giddy. A few months ago the local posh university was offering an adult ed class in oil painting and overcoming fear: the colors will be layered and therefore muddy, I will hate it and therefore wasted $$ on a canvas and paint. It was like the instructor called me and asked me: “if you love color, texture and form so much why don’t you paint?“ Hopefully, the class will be offered again.

The theme of the opening last Thursday was so obscure and ridiculous but I am reluctant to blog about it because I feel mean-spirited: as if I am utterly clueless about the often difficult process of creating. The show revolved around a theme and featured four artists each representing a different medium. My limited art background is perhaps why I found the show to be--well frankly--an absurd and pointless exercise in deconstructing space. Because literature wasn’t enough now we must deconstruct space. I can grope my way through the murky waters of Deconstructionism and it’s tenants. In the beginning, I was fascinated with subtext and all the blah-blah theory but after my initial dewy-eyed fascination, I found it to be ludicrous and a waste of time and academic energy. My favorite description of the importance of deconstructing text was: “so we can read the pauses and spaces between the letters.” Oh. What. The. Fuck. Ever.

This is a snippet of the show‘s statement: “. . .an exhibition featuring works of art that non-representationally refer to human bodily figure. Whether a surviving mark or mere evidence of the former existence--blood stains, sweat, hair, footmarks--indexical signs create a narrative.” The statement continues to instruct this collection of work “delves more into semiotics with the dualistic role of artist humanistic vestiges; intact are the clues that link the imagery to its human origin.”

You lost me at “semiotics”. Is “indexical” even a word?

One of the artists spent the last year collecting her hair from the shower drain, lobbed the wad on the scanner bed and made a picture of it. Yes, they did look like dainty line drawings but that it was scanned hair made me snort in an unladylike fashion. Another of the quartet, made paintings as he stomped, jumped or walked across the canvas in different paint covered shoes. The paintings reminded me of Joan Mitchell’s work, the shapes were airy, loose and sometimes off to the sides of the field. These pieces grew on me because the artist freely admitted what a departure this was for him as a representational artist. He lost me with over thinking his work: “Man has no identity without a carbon foot print, a traceable identity that is erased over time. “ The third is a French chemist who photographically explored how a drop of blood devolves over a year. Scientifically, it was interesting to see the breakdown. He also photographed drops of blood moving through water as an exploration of the alchemy of blood. On an intellectual level, the idea of his work intrigues me. But to see the actual work made me physically recoil. In my reality, an intimate acquaintance with someone else's blood can be deadly and is never beautiful. Finally, the piece de resistance, a textile artist who looked like Joyce Carol Oates younger more intense baby sister working hard to outdo her sister in the oversized eye glasses department. She used the bits of worn thrift store garments featuring stitching, snaps, buttons or zippers on each square of a large quilt. I thought my eyes would spin out of my head when she confessed feeling the previous wearer’s essence in each piece of clothing. She confessed being delighted as she ironed how she could smell their bodies. . .well that’s just icky. Ickier than the hair and the blood. She relates in her artist statement: “. . .the traces of human action that remains on linens and clothing--the rips, holes and stains that mark them as used--become markers of domesticities, lives constellated by cycles and patterns.” Oh joy! Feminist Deconstructionism! Let’s dig up the decomposed corpse of scholarship past and revisit how women’s art is demarked by the cycles of “repetitive and tedious processes” of domestic labor. Let’s debate whether or not biology ultimately decides my creative process. Lee Krasner's "Portrait in Green" as case in point! I did stick my hand in the air and asked if she was still artistically exploring this dead mare. (for the record, I was polite and didn’t say dead horse or dead mare but did assert this had been done to death) Many greater than she had beaten the cycle and drudgery of domestic labor to a bloody pulp back in the 80’s. For the love of the Goddess and womyn everywhere, give it a rest Ms. Oates Jr. And please, girl! The 80‘s are done! (now I’m being BitchyJuneCleaver)

I think I shall pitch a show: I can cart around an empty portfolio, and when I open it up I will do a dramatic hand flourish with a staccato “Viola!” I present to you: The Deconstruction of Space!” But there aren’t any pieces. Not even blank canvases. How ironic, how navel staring, how PoMo of me. Excuse me while I light my Gitan; adjust my gigantic and flowing scarf whilst contemplating my art.

Seriously, I thought the images were either absurd or repulsive. I found their intimacy grotesque. (I can hear Ms A’s man--R--with his laconic English accent: “June, art isn’t always about the beautiful, sometimes it’s about the profane”) But the intimacy evoked wasn’t the a sad piquant intimacy of Goldberg’s photos; or the brutish and jarring intimacy of Mapplethorpe’s finger in a penis. Goldberg and Mapplethorpe rivet me but these pieces made me want to turn away and wash my hands. Perhaps my boundaries are too hard and fast but I felt as if I had violated the artist‘s, and in one case, ultimately the subjects’ personal space. Much of my life’s work revolves around strangers most private functions and becoming intrinsically involved with their bodies. My companions at the show were surprised by my disgust and took note: “But you are a nurse!“ After a week of contemplating all of this it boils down to I would rather art not cross that line. I prefer to be entertained by art. But really, what the Hell do I know? The nice girl that lives in about 2% of my soul is appalled by my distain for these artist’ efforts and one’s complete body of work. What I do know and completely understand how difficult creating art can be.

The art market was a mindless pleasure after the intellectual contortions a few days before. Some of it was boring and predictable but other pieces were surprising and inspired smiles. Like this piece at the student show. I must admit to gasping with pleasure when I saw how well he photographed against the stormy sky.


It’s a deconstructed notion of Mr. Stay Puff as interpreted in Ghost Busters, don’t you think? oh my god! Make it stop! Make the Derrida and Smith voices go away! But you gave them the power of the text by typing their names. Their influences are now the subtext of your life. Ahem…sorry little moment with the voices in my head.

Despite my bitching about the show, I had a great time with Ms. A, R and his friends. The garage sale art and the market a few days later was cosmic payback for the head scratching, belly gazing experience last Thursday night. I did see things I would love to own at the market. I returned with cards and websites for the future when I can acquire a canvas and maybe a tea pot. Art makes a splendid gift. A picture of my hair would be just the thing for TG next Christmas! Better yet, I will allow our strands to intermingle as one continuous line. . . The supreme romantic gesture. Do you think she would like a Kleenex from the bottom of my purse? Because, that too contextualizes traces of my existence. My existence is too important to not be contextualized.

I slay myself, truly.

And all this time, I just thought I was lazy!

Isn't this the most awesome book cover ever? Mommy and Daddy are having cocktails their little darling has thoughtfully prepared for them. My kind of kid, this one! Such a prodigy, mixing martis at the tender age of three. Shoot, I was the ripe old age of 14 when my parents taught me to tend bar for their bridge parties.

Did you hear the collective sigh a couple of weeks ago?? It's the sigh of a million parents realizing the age of "Child-centered Parenting" is over. And I am feeling especially edgy because as a member of the prenatal Mozart therapy-family bed-four or more activities after school-generation of parents I refused to participate. I'll never forget the tsks and pearl clutching because my kids didn't have any after school activities aside from playing with their friends. The horror! Call CPS! In fact, I'm such a maverick when everyone was rolling around in acres of money even if I had wanted to take the effort to shepard two kids between six activities, I couldn't afford them! Like the parents today! W00t!

The pendulum has swung back to the middle. I can freely admit I thought piping Mozart to my fetus was an incredibly stupid waste of time and breastfeeding was boring and a pain in the neck.

The real pioneer in all of this is one of my heroes: Marion Winik. What a sage when she confessed way back in the 1990's she was exhausted by the process of mothering and everything she had to worry about when our mother's had martini'd and Marlboro'd their way to the delivery table.

So let's have a cocktail, let's have several! In fact, Jr can mix 'em up for us and keep 'em coming because it is now the era of the hands off parent! Mothers every where now have permission to let go of the guilt, wooden toys, enrichment classes and organic bananas. Bring on the cardboard box forts, impromptu games and Pop Tarts!

My laissez faire parenting style is now the rage. Boundaries are in.

It's about damn time, don't you think?

Sitting On The Fence

photo by Jeff Greenburg date unknown


This week my horoscope mentions

It's a ripe time to revise and rework your past, Pisces. I'll trust you to make the ultimate determination about how best to do that, but here are some possibilities. 1. Revisit a memory that has haunted you, and do a ritual that resolves it and brings you peace. 2. Return to the scene of an awkward anomaly that remains unsettled, and finally do a duty you neglected. 3. Make your way back to a dream you wandered away from prematurely, and either re-commit yourself to it, or put it to rest for good. 4. Dig up and contemplate a secret that has been festering, and come to a decision about what you can do to heal it.

I spent at least five figures in therapy so I’m not haunted by memories; I haven’t a clue what he means by an “awkward anomaly”; I don’t do secrets, so the only thing festering is what I’m giving TG for Christmas next year. By process of elimination, my job this summer is revisiting a dream and moving aside the fear of putting together a fiction written in no less than three notebooks and one dream journal over the last twenty plus years. I have wrapped months of energy around my fears.

The first and foremost fear is the whole thing sucks and I’m wasting my time with this old idea. Next out of the basket is I subject my closest friends with readings and they feel bad when they have to tell me it sucks. Years ago, I participated in a disasterous workshop with part of this piece. The writer guy--a real Bukowski type--hated it; thought it was a piece of crap; basically told me this would be on the list of things he is condemned to read in Hell. The criticism was particularly painful as he salivated over the other woman’s piece. She was one of those wispy women prone to wearing long flowing scarves and equally long flowing hair; her voice soft but emphatic when she read. Her piece was a story poem, a phantasmagorical fruit salad of magic realism meets surrealism meets Jane Austen. I thought it was a mess against my straight up piece of narrative. I think it was just a few months ago, I realized Bukowski workshopped with his dick. Perhaps he would have liked my story better if I had been more like Jori Graham‘s disciple: young, pretty and eager to get stoned with him. In hindsight I can’t believe I let this sorry old man wannabe Beat poet take away my pen and my notebook . Leave it to me to be silenced by an old and lecherous hippie.

Aside from this blog, emails, Facebook updates and random chat on Table Talk (link) I don’t write much. I can use the time sucks as excuses. I can use my kid as an excuse. I can use the house and the endless chores as an excuse. But I’m out of excuses. The only thing Beav needs me for is my driving, banking and cooking skills; the big house projects are done (!) and the nuts and bolts of house work takes maybe four hours a week.

My other excuses rest in the end product. This will all be a waste of time because print is dead and the only people being published are writers like Nora Roberts and that chick lit Shopping/dating/I’m a fabulous wreck of a Gen Y woman. This will be a waste of time because ultimately, it will suck and no one would read it anyhow. Ok, my family might read it and say: “Well at least you tried hard” or some such platitude which ultimately means: “don’t quit that day job cuz you need to eat!” Finally, why would anyone give a shit about this yarn I‘ve been spinning in my head. But my very favorite excuse: someone wrote a lovely book and used part of my title(link). The title I've imagined for twenty years. People will see my title just before her’s on the Amazon list and will think: “That woman copied Azar Nafisi’s lovely title!” (as if it’s already published, see excuse number one)

The fence was already getting uncomfortable before Rob told me the stars were aligned just right. Before the star’s blessing I had promised myself the next four months of habitual writing. Not daily, that’s a recipe for disaster. The only things I do consistently every day are brush my teeth and whine. Rather, I have set aside time three days a week to write in four hour blocks. If our patient census remains low like it did last year, I’m devoting my call days to writing. Writing what could be a doomed novel is more productive than sitting on my hands waiting to be called into the hospital. Hell, with all those notebooks to combine, I have enough material to edit this summer without generating any new ideas.

September I will evaluate if it’s time to put this dream on the shelf or proceed onward. Years ago, during my other lifetime, I read Canfield’s The Aladdin Factor and I learned an exquisitely simple formula: If I ask for something there is a 50/50 chance the answer will be yes. If I don‘t ask, the answer is always ‘no’.

It’s scary to ask for what you want. Much like standing en point atop a picket fence.

photo by David Street 1998