Monthly Archives: June 2011

When I Grow Up….

Posted on June 24, 2011 | 5 comments

I have written before about my struggle figuring out “what I wanted to be when I grow up.” Rereading that now I can see that what started out as thinking on my issues with being insecure and with my body turned out to be just as much about my being comfortable with who and what I am today as it is about anything else.

What prompted my thinking about what I wanted to be when I grow up again? Ironically, another email from a friend. Facebook is a delight in that it allows you to stay in touch with the people that you genuinely enjoyed from other parts of your life. From not only your past, but from social and intellectual arenas that you no longer really belong to, but that you may very well still hold dear.

This is a roundabout way to say that I live vicariously through the lives of my friends from my youth that have pursued their dreams as Actors and Artists. For so many, many years that was what I wanted. I wanted to be an Artist, specifically an Actor. Yup, with a capital letter A. Many of my close friends have asked me when I lost the bug. Or when I stopped thinking about it… and I don’t really know when it happened. I know it makes me get choked up now, like thinking about falling out of love with someone. To me there is nothing more heartbreaking than the idea of falling out of love. And I guess there was a moment somewhere along the way that I fell out of love with Acting.

Like most things that are hard for me to talk about I have a standard response to that question. The “when did you stop wanting to do theatre” question. “When I realized I loved wallpaper.” Somewhere inside me I knew that I didn’t have the “it” that makes that life a real possibility. I didn’t want it more than anything else. I wanted wallpaper.

Wallpaper is not permanent. But I’d guess that anyone that has ever sworn and sweat their way through an afternoon with a steamer and a trowel knows that removing wallpaper is about as pleasant as a divorce. It sucks. And the whole time you are thinking “why the fuck didn’t I just paint?”

I know now that my “wallpaper” was marriage. And a Family. (See how Family gets an uppercase letter, just like Artist. That makes me smile, that I think it deserves one now. I didn’t always.)

Recently I have been feeling more and more comfortable with who and what I am. In part because I have been so fortunate in recent years to feel more joy than sorrow, certainly. But also because I have come to peace with the fact that this Family that I enjoy, this delicious new husband and this incredible daughter, they take work. And sacrifice. And love. And sweat. And swearing, just like wallpaper. And just like Art. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, this goal. This Family.

So, when an old friend, a friend from college who has no idea that I poke my nose in to her facebook pictures and look longingly at her insanely gorgeous headshots and laugh until I cry at her youtube videos, wrote me recently and said “you are such a beautiful mommy…..honestly, i sneak peeks at you and sweet emily all the time on fbook” I cried. Because this woman that I admire, that I secretly wanted to be when I grew up even when we were twenty-two years old and drinking 40 ounce beers while we water-colored our Costume Design final exams… she said she sneak peeks at me. And what she sees is a beautiful mommy.

And it made me cry. Because I smiled and thought “god damn right, I am.” And I was proud. That, my friends, is progress.

Thank you, Nina. You just get more and more fabulous.

5 Comments

Posted in Family, Nonsense

Tagged Acting, Art, Growing Up, Parenting

Magic 8 Ball of Crazy

Posted on June 24, 2011 | 8 comments

So if I had a Magic 8 ball on my person at all times I know what I would ask it. Several times a day I look to the Universe to answer the question “Am I out of my fucking mind?” With my eyebrows scrunched together and a quizzical look on my face. Because really, sometimes I wonder. And by sometimes I mean a few times a day. In the last few weeks I asked myself this question daily when I got home from work. Or really every time I walked in to the living room.

I hate moth balls. And cats. I have two cats. But no moth balls. About three weeks ago I thought I smelled moth balls. So, naturally I blamed the cats. I checked the pockets of all their winter coats. No moth balls. So I assumed it was the new cat litter. Cat litter and the fact that we have pets that crap in a box IN OUR HOUSE can be blamed for all kinds of things in my Universe. It must smell like moth balls. The new litter.

So, I wait. And I try not to let the moth ball smell ruin my evenings. And by ruin my evenings I mean distract me from eating bowls of ice cream and watching shitty TV. The weekend comes and MQD changes the litter. Even though he most definitely can NOT smell the moth balls.

Monday rolls around and I come home from work. Open the door. MOTH BALLS. I am losing my mind. I must be. He changed the litter. My house can not smell like moth balls. Because this heinous scent must be the fault of the cats. I trudge on through my week. Avoiding my couch. In the living room. Where I enjoy relaxing. I am feeling angry and crazy. A bad combination. I live through the week. But it is touch and go.

Saturday morning comes. MQD and Em are doing their thing. Em is tearing apart her room. Changing her clothes every 45 seconds. MQD is downloading some music, because surely there has been music released since last week when he had a copy of everything ever recorded on his hard drive. I take this opportunity to do that kind of cleaning that is fueled by anger. I furiously sweep up dog hair. I mopped. I hate mopping. I vacuum. I shoved the couch back and vacuumed that sliver of rug that is mostly under the couch. I change the bag in my vacuum and clean out the inside of my vacuum cleaner. I pulled out the suitcases under the bed and got the cat hair off of them and swept under there. My entire downstairs smelled like Simple Green.

Success. It must have been cat hair that smelled like moth balls. MQD leaves for the grocery store and I sit down on the couch. Em is in her room. I am relaxed. I exhale. I inhale. Oh hell no, motherfuckers… MOTH BALLS. I smell them, this is no joke. I am filled with rage.

In a moment that can only be blamed on hormones I jumped up from the couch. Kicked the coffee table back in to the room. And flipped my motherfucking couch over. I was, of course, expecting to find a cat. A cat in a coat it had gotten from a thrift store. The thrift store having gotten this coat at an estate sale. Or maybe a cat in an ancient wool cardigan. Suspiciously free of holes. But there were no cats under my couch. In coats or sweaters. But what I did find there…. it was like I had asked the Giant Magic 8 Ball of the Universe if I was crazy and it had answered once and for all. “Oh hell no. No. You are not.”

Em came running down the stairs. Perhaps because I shrieked. Perhaps because I was flipping over furniture like a drunk in a barfight. “Go back upstairs!” I hollered. As if I had in my hand a MOTH BALL sized ball of plutonium.

So, I ran out on the porch. And I waited. For MQD to get home. With it in my hand. And I yelled, gleefully as he exited his car. “LOOK AT THIS!!! I found this under the god damn couch. I am NOT CRAZY!”

I thought about putting it in a jar. And saving it. Like my own Magic 8 Ball that always said the same thing. “You are NOT crazy.”

Sadly this feeling of euphoria only lasted a couple of days. I haven’t been sleeping very well so my early morning thought processing has been all over the place. I woke up this week thinking about how I really don’t think I can ever wear contact lenses again. At least not why I have my period. Because knowing that a menstrual cup works because of the suction it has around your cervix, and that contact lenses don’t fall out because they are in a way suction cupped to your eyeballs… I don’t think I could handle both at the same time. And I started imagining these opposing forces of vacuum seal… and my eyeballs would get sucked down my throat, my lady bits pulled up in to my guts and they’d meet somewhere around the center of my chest. Yup. Back to feeling like maybe I am just not quite right. At least things are back to normal.

8 Comments

Posted in Nonsense

Tagged Crazy, Diva Cup, Magic 8 Ball, Mothballs

How my Monday was like a Primus Song

Posted on June 13, 2011 | 5 comments

I’ve been to hell. I spell it…I spell it DMV
~ Les Claypool

A typical Monday morning for me is a lot more Bangles and a lot less Primus. But I don’t typically go to the DMV first thing Monday morning. Walking out of the house with my lunch, my kid, my dog, a piece of fresh fruit for school, the mail that needs to go out, both doors locked, alarm on, cats fed, do I have my phone… that’s enough for me on an average Monday. But as of this Monday morning I have been married for six weeks. I have had an expired driver’s license with the wrong name for five. It was time to take the bull by the horns.

But why Monday morning? Because I had already given the DMV four shots. The first time I went very early in the morning, just after they opened. I went first to the courthouse for a copy of our marriage certificate and then immediately to the DMV. Nope, I still needed a social security card. No problem. Went to the social security office. An hour and half in to my wait at the social security office the muzak was making me anxious. I elected to drive very carefully and under the speed limit on my expired license until my social security card came in the mail. I filled out the form, put my marriage certificate and my birth certificate (an original copy from when I was a baby, how proud am I for never losing THAT!?) in to an envelope and sent it on its merry way.

A week or so later my documents were returned to me sans social security card. This seems like a strange waste of money but what do I know. And three days later my card arrived. Back to the DMV I go. This time in the middle of the day, the day that Em graduated when I had an hour or so free in the middle of the day. I thought that was an appropriate way to honor the little graduate. “Congrats on your accomplishment, welcome to the real world. You’re going to the DMV.” We went in, we got a number, we sat down. The tricky numbering system of both Letters and Numbers means you never really know how many people are in front of you. But it was shortly after eleven o’clock in the morning. And when I overheard a woman say that she had been there since 8:45 am I elected to call it quits. I would never make it out of there before Em lost her mind.

Trip to the DMV number three . Seven am. They don’t open until eight. I am almost giddy with excitement as I pull in to the parking lot and round the corner to see…. thirty two people already in line. Yes, I counted.

Trip number four , the suspense is mounting can you feel it? 3:00 pm, two hours before they close. Packed to the gills and no longer handing out tickets. Sigh, another weekend as a daredevil without a valid license.

I was not to be defeated. Enter Primus. Trips one through four did not have theme songs. This was clearly my problem. (Special thanks to MQD for reminding me of this stellar tune.) Nor did they have beach chairs. Or refreshments. Or books. I was first in line. It was just almost 6:30 am. For the first twenty minutes I was all alone. It was almost like early morning at the beach, only in a strip mall. The sun on your legs, but you can still feel the chill in the air from the night before. And then I was joined by the second person in line. I mustered every bit of “Please do not talk to me” I have and kept my face in my book. Ten, twenty minutes passed. “I thought I would be first in line,” he said. I only smiled. Success. He went out to his car to get a book. At approximately 7:30 a man asked me if he could get in front of me for $20. “Sure, and in front of all these other people… at $20 a pop, I figure that will run you between four and five hundred bucks.” And another big smile. That conversation didn’t last long either.

Eight am, on the dot, the door opens. I get my ticket A101. “Now serving A101 at desk 1.” This alone was reason to celebrate. My personal DMV employee having come straight from the 1984 Police Academy cast of extras was the icing on the cake.

Some highlights.

“How long have you been married? You’re the happiest damn woman I have ever seen at the DMV. ”

“Do you ever act like a total bitch? My boyfriend he just bought me four new tires and I was hateful to him last night, just hateful… I didn’t sleep at all thinking about it…”

“Only 35 years old, you’re real sexy. I’m not a lesbian, I have had the same boyfriend for 16 years, been with the DMV for 20. In Siler City for 17. But you’re really chesty for being so thin, that’s nice.”

She has me smooth out my pigtails before I take my picture. “Ooh, now that is a nice picture. You have a real nice face, m’aam. A real nice face.”

“You know this is a real stressful job, you have no idea. Now I need to read off of this card and quit cutting up… you practice writing that brand new name for a few minutes.”

I thought she was going to hug me when I left. With my temporary driver’s license in hand. At 8:16 am. The best Monday morning I have had in some time. And the very best trip to the DMV. Hands down.

In eight more years I hope to go back and say hello to her again. In the meantime, this happy gal with the nice jugs and the real nice face will be driving willy-nilly all over the place.

5 Comments

Posted in Nonsense

Tagged DMV, Monday, Primus

I scream, you scream….

Posted on June 10, 2011 | 2 comments

Yesterday was hard. My baby is growing up. But when she burst in to tears because the restaurant we were in “FOR MY SPECIAL DAY” did not have pancakes … I smiled on the inside. And we got up, and we left. And we went to Elmo’s.

Where they have pancakes. And milkshakes.

2 Comments

Posted in Bad Mood, Parenting

Tagged Elmo's, Milkshake's, Pancakes, Parenting

Day 84: Plant a seed…

Posted on June 9, 2011 | 9 comments

Today plant an apple core in a park and come back in 20 years to check on your tree.

Par for the course lately… I accomplished day 84’s challenge, in a round about way. I got up early this morning and took Fish out for a walk. A typical day includes Fisher tagging along to work with me so he was flummoxed when I peeled him out of bed at 7 am. I grabbed an apple on my way out the door.

Ordinarily I listen to a book while I take a walk but this morning I needed a minute to gather my thoughts.

I managed to juggle a dog leash (stuffed in my sports bra! Hey, now! My boobs nourished a child for three and a half years AND they walk my dog! Amazing!!) a cup of coffee and an apple core. I’d planned on planting my apple core somewhere along my walk today. And as I knelt down next to the edge of some trees and dug a little hole with my foot I wondered if I’d be here to come check on “my tree” in twenty years as the book suggested.

And then I started to cry. Because this was only the first seed that would be planted today. My little girl “graduates” from pre-school today. She is excited. She has practiced her song “My Future’s So Bright” complete with shades, of course. (Em is the second bobbing head from the left, in the back row!) She has picked out an outfit. She has expressed her malcontent with continuing to go to pre-school for the remainder of the summer “because it makes no sense, I have GRADUATED!” She is ready.

Again I am left to wonder how it is that I have prepared her for yet another transition and failed to prepare myself at all. With each passing milestone of her childhood I am surprised all over again that it has crept up on me and yet seems to have come all but too slow for her liking.

I see in her a determination that I envy. We have been hard at work on swimming this summer. Our new pool requires the kids swim a length of the pool in order to go down the tube slide. From the day we found out she has been practicing. And rapidly, fearlessly improving. It is not just the former swimming teacher in me that swells with pride. She is convinced daily that “Today I will pass that test!” and is not defeated when she climbs out of the pool to head home for dinner with the knowledge that it might take “one or two more practices.”

I know it is not unusual for a kid to be convinced of their inevitable success. Each child at graduation this morning held up a picture of what they were going to be “when they grew up.” Doctors, teachers, ballerinas, veterinarians, mothers, a samurai, Darth Vader and a Superman. Not one of them said “I’m going to live in my parent’s basement and wait tables until this crappy temp job turns permanent.” Children are hopeful by design. But I can’t help but feel a sense of accomplishment when I see how completely convinced she is of her success and happiness.

Emily has seen more sadness in me than I ever hoped to share with her. But when I see her so certain that it will all work out for her, I know that she has not only noted my sadness and my struggles. She has seen me relentlessly pursue that which will bring a smile to face, even when the journey took much longer than I had hoped. She has seen me grow in to the woman that knows she deserves nothing short of a dream come true.

I thought I would be overwhelmed with how big she seemed today. But instead I just kept looking at her little face. Her nose is the same as when she was born. Her fingers, though longer, still curl around mine just as they did when she was only a few days old. Her skin, even peppered with bug bites and scrapes, still feels brand new.

I may not return to the corner where I planted an apple seed this morning. But I will be here to see the seed that was planted today at graduation grow. I knew someday I’d put my arm around her, pulling her close to me, my eyes intently focused on the camera as if the camera could make that moment last forever. I knew someday she’d pull away, her focus on where she was headed, not where she had been… but I had no idea she would still be so very small.