out of sorts 29 November, 2007

i’m not feeling myself today.

it’s not just today, either. for about the past year, i’ve had these weird, random mood swings…it’s like i can go from elation to supreme pisstivity in 3 seconds flat.. and yeah, i’ve always been kinda prone to mood swings, but not like this. these are different…it’s like, it’s not just a change in mood, it’s almost a physical change. my eyes feel puffy, like i’ve been crying; my head starts to hurt; sometimes even my body aches a little. and it happens seemingly without provocation…i literally have no idea whatsoever who, as the old (and crude) adage goes, pissed in my cornflakes. it’s just…i don’t want to talk to anyone, i don’t want to see anyone, i just want to sit and simmer in my own grumblings. i don’t even know if anger is the right word for this feeling…when i think of the word anger, i picture a vivid red, an active, motivated feeling, a very strong emotion. this isn’t anger…it’s like a dull ache, an annoyed grumbling from a toothless lion. it’s a dark shade of gray, a giant gray cloud filling up my head and nailing boards over the windows to keep the light out.

and what’s worse, it’s like i don’t like anyone or anything today. i mean, i love my friends, but…i don’t know. it’s almost like i’m mad at them because i feel like if they knew about this, they’d want to talk about it and help me, and i don’t want to talk about it. i just want to be left alone. (incidentally, i don’t like the fact that i’m posting all this here, but i feel like i need to do it.)

i hate feeling like this. but i’m making myself write down how i feel, because it’s a method that’s helped with other problems i’ve had in the past, and i’ve never really discussed these mood swings with anyone before. it’s like, i just want to move someplace far away from everyone and everything, somewhere where no one would ever find me, and just be alone. i know it’s just the moodiness talking and not the truth, but when i feel this way, everything is meaningless and hopeless and utterly disappointing. and then the doubts start…maybe ben would be happier with someone else, someone thin and socially graceful and gainfully employed. maybe she’d get along better with our friends, always having something interesting to talk about, like armor and stat comparisons for wow or the double deuce of fashion and makeup. when i feel like this, i just want to disappear, taking with me every memory anyone’s ever had of me. i just want to have never existed.

is this normal, to have these moments of unexplainable…i dunno, emo?

update:  that was kinda cathartic.  i’m still kind of in a funk, but writing it all out, getting it out on paper (so to speak) and out of my head so i can confront it…i feel a little better.

maybe.

stomach-turning 11 November, 2007

i read an article today that left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. cheney “paid tribute” to veterans during a photo op…i mean, speech given at Arlington.

my eyes rolled so far back into my head, it was actually painful.

dick chaney respects veterans, does he? i don’t doubt that’s what he’d like the american public to believe. but you know, i find that kinda funny…i mean, if dick really cared about the welfare of soldiers and veterans, why are one in four homeless people veterans? why are veterans advocates worried that the cycle leading to homelessness is showing up much quicker in iraq veterans? instead of leading us into an unnecessary war (which, in turn, has led to more american forces dying as a result of the war than americans killed by the 9/11 attacks), why didn’t cheney push for improved exit and post-service care for soldiers? how many lives would have been spared if the money spent to get ourselves in a quagmire in the middle east had instead been spent on improving the veterans administration, making it quicker and easier for veterans to not only enroll but also to receive the care they need, when they need it (i speak from experience, the va isn’t the most efficient cog in the machine…)? imagine all of that money, money that went to weapons developers, consulting firms, security companies and other warmongers (no telling how many are in some way associated with the vice president), all of those billions of dollars (and climbing every day) going not only into helping veterans adjust and stay on their feet after leaving the service, but also into really improving schools (and not just passing pr-friendly bills that only encourage schools to train students for the test and not for real life), or improving services and care for senior citizens, or finding a realistic approach to maintaining social security, or researching alternatives to oil like solar or wind power, or any of a long, long list of problems that could probably very easily be fixed if self-serving, greedy politicians weren’t so busy hooking up their friends and serving their own needs.

it’s too easy to be a pessimist sometimes.

like a natural woman 9 November, 2007

i was talking to a friend the other day when, as usually happens, the topic of babies and family entered the conversation.  now, this wasn’t the first time this particular friend and i had discussed this particular topic, and we both share the same frustration…wanting to be full-time moms, but not entirely comfortable at the thought of living on just one income.  then, she said something that really kinda struck me:

“maybe it sounds very unfeminist of me, and maybe i sound old-fashioned, but i’ve always wanted to be a mom, and i want to be able to stay at home and raise my children, at least while they’re young.”

see, that’s where she and i disagree, because i don’t think it’s unfeminist at all to feel that way.  feminism isn’t about being focused solely on one’s career or being masculine or any of that stuff:  feminism is all about choice.  the women who were out there fighting for us – and not just in the 60s, but all throughout history – were doing so in order that we could decide for ourselves what we want to do with our lives.  if a woman has absolutely no interest in starting a family and would rather pursue her career, that’s awesome.  more power to her.  but if a woman would rather start a family, even go so far as to be the new june cleaver, well, more power to her, too.  the point is, both women, all of us, we all have the freedom – nay, the right – to make that choice for ourselves.  to expect a strong feminist woman to be a ruthless, career-driven lesbian, for example, is just as wrong as expecting any woman to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen for the better part of her life.  the whole point of feminism is that women have the same rights and freedoms as men, whether that means earning the same as men for working the same job or making our own decisions for what we want out of life, rather than following the expectations of a patriarchal society.

remember, ladies.  it’s okay to want to have a family, just like it’s  okay to want to have a career or a girlfriend or a motorcycle or really girlie clothing.  feminism is about choice, and every time you exercise that right to choose, you’re doing our foremothers proud. 

novels and babies and cold… 8 November, 2007

oh my.

nanowrimo is laughing at me, i just know it. but, i’m taking a tip from melissa and not worrying about keeping track of my words, just on the writing itself. my story’s kinda coming along, but today i’m gonna do overhaul #2. good thing i’m not out to win nanowrimo.

i’m gonna go slightly out of order with the title here and point out, at this time, that it is damn cold. lows last night got down to 28, and this morning isn’t much warmer. we finally turned the heat on, but we haggled over the setting…ben wanted it at 68(!!), whereas i prefer 72. so, i settled on 70. i say i did, because ben was still griping about 70 being too warm, but in my opinion, if you’re gonna set it any lower than 70, there’s no point in turning on the heat at all. can i help it that i don’t have a molten core to keep me warm like ben does?

and now, the babies. i feel like i’m standing at a baby crossroads, so to speak…three different roads, three different women, three completely different situations, and i care about them all. first, the new mother: none other than the lovely mrs. esmon. graham is her second child, after the lovely miss piper, who is 2. nikki and alex are wonderful parents, and graham is going to have a fantastic life (at least, as much as any kid can…those adolescent years are tough for just about everyone). and that’s the family life ben and i hope to have one day…two children, preferably a boy and a girl, and a relatively happy home life.

then, there’s my baby sister. you know, the one with the much-older hep-c-positive jail-bird “fiance.” i was worried enough at the prospect of the two getting married, but now she tells me they want to have a baby. i’m fairly certain part of my face melted right off when she said that. i mean, forgetting for a moment the fact that neither of them has a job (and kayla’s never been able to hold one for more than a couple months), there’s the fact that kayla is on a truckload of medications for a truckload of issues, issues that could be passed along to any baby she conceives. or the fact that they’re both bigots (kayla argues this point by proudly proclaiming, “i hate everyone equally”). or the fact that they both have long, involved histories with everything from heroin to acid to alcohol. and then, there’s the fact that curtis supposedly had a vasectomy. maybe it’s because she’s my baby sister, but this is a prime example of baby = bad…

and then there’s the third, a friend of mine who confided in me that she can’t get pregnant. and of all the women i know, she would be one of the absolute best moms. it’s really unfair…

something else that’s unfair is the fact that i somehow pulled a muscle in my stomach at some point. i don’t know when, but i suspect it was at night, while i was asleep. i can feel it when i lean forward or do anything else that uses that muscle. ouch.

oh deer… 5 November, 2007

this past weekend, i had a startling but much-needed self-revelation. i now know why i don’t bother with vegetable gardens.

you see, i really rather like the fact that i have a great deal of love and respect for wildlife.

i can remember growing up, when everybody had a vegetable garden. and it seemed like everybody also hated critters like deer, squirrels, rabbits and chipmunks. maybe “hated” is too strong a word, but there was certainly no love lost. and the dislike was, of course, because these little critters needed to eat, and more often than not, their eatery of choice was a garden…and really, can you blame them? let’s see, leaves, moss and bugs, or delicious tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, peas, green beans…yeah, i’d hit up the garden, too. more recently, ben’s mom was complaining about rabbits who’d eaten up most of the little garden she lovingly maintains in her back yard. and in the face of all the complaining from all the people, i’d merely shrug and say,

“but they’re so cute! i’ll bet they were even cuter when they were feasting on your veggies.”

this response, of course, was usually met with disdain. i now understand why.

i have a little cherry sapling. cherry trees grow all over the place in the little valley where i was raised, and my mom dug up three of them for me to plant here. two of the saplings died, probably because it’s a lot warmer here than it is there (and maybe also partly because i suck at growing things), but one, the smallest one she gave me, survived. the little champ has lived through 2 frosts, a drought, having part of its main trunk broken off (it just grew another one), 3 attacks by ravenous beetles (the japanese kind, not the liverpudlian kind), and 2 curious cats chewing on its branches, all the while confined to a big plastic container. finally, last weeked, we picked out a little corner in the backyard and ever so carefully, ever so lovingly planted it. we spread pine straw around it, and it looked so happy, with its 8 little leaves almost glowing in the sun.

then, on sunday morning, it had no leaves.

when we went to investigate, it was clear that something had decided to nibble on my poor sapling. upon checking the ground around it, we found the tell-tale hoofprints of deer. and as i stood there, looking down at my sad, partially-eaten cherry sapling, i didn’t think the deer were so cute anymore.

bastards.

we got some chicken wire and built a little protective “house” around my sapling, and ben keeps reassuring me that “it’s had worse,” and it’s not like i want to grab a gun and go shoot some deer. but if my little sapling doesn’t pull through, that’s gonna be a black mark against all deerkind in my book.

(and i feel bad for even blaming the deer. the only reason the deer didn’t eat cherry saplings back home was because they were surrounded by food. out here, where urban sprawl is more than just a catch phrase, i have to sympathize with them a bit. but for christ’s sake, did they have to eat every damn grow tip? really??)

where we’re going, we don’t need roads… 1 November, 2007

and again, from the lovely mrs. esmon, a good reason to live in the past, if only for a moment. and i do love to do that every so often…

as mentioned in nichole’s blog, if you decide to take part, please leave a heads-up in mary’s blog so she can track how crazy this thing gets. and with that, let’s look at where i was…

TEN YEARS AGO! i was 19, had been medically discharged from the army about a month and a half prior, and i think i was working night shift at the front desk of a hotel in my hometown. i was about a month away from the mutual breaking off of my engagement to dickhead josh, the abusive asshole i’d met while in the service, and crushing hard on david, the night tech support guy at the company that supplied the software we used at the hotel. we would talk on a nightly basis when i worked, and email each other when i didn’t. he was also 11 years my senior. obviously, it didn’t work out, but i still think about him sometimes and wonder how he’s doing. i try not to think about dickhead, on the other hand…

TWENTY YEARS AGO! i was 9. i was in like 4th grade, maybe…? possibly 5th. if it was 4th, it would’ve been the year a guy in the grade ahead of ours accidentally shot and killed his little brother, and since our dads knew each other, it was kinda weird. i think i was too young to really grasp what had happened. if it was 5th grade, that was the year i started hanging out with the aforementioned lovely mrs. esmon (who was, at that time, neither a mrs. nor an esmon, but was still lovely), and i had mrs. fouts as a teacher. she was kinda scary. nice, but scary.

THIRTY YEARS AGO! i was a near-term fetus. the doctors predicted i would be arriving in 19 days, on november 20, but i decided to start early with a lifelong bad habit of procrastination. i managed to hang out until december 12. i’ve kept the tradition up ever since.

Nano-Uhoh… 1 November, 2007

Today, the first of November, is a gloriously perfect, perfectly glorious day. I’ve been productive, having found a place to put nearly all of the things Ant Sue dumped on us (again), including the white wingback chair (which goes surprisingly well with the other two wingbacks in our living room). I repotted two plants I’ve been meaning to do, I’ve done two loads of dishes (one in the washer, one in the sink), I’ve changed all the calendars, and I even put in 20 minutes on the treadmill. All of this, done while watching the 6-hour Halloween special of Ghost Hunters and the regular one-hour episode of DOOL (the guiltiest of guilty pleasures, but in my defense, my love of this show was developed at a very early age by my mom and grandma…). And the weather today…mein gott, it has been beautiful. High of 75, slightly overcast, breezy…I’ve had the windows open all day long, and it’s been glorious. Today has truly been one of the greatest days I’ve ever known.

But as the minutes tick by, I grow increasingly wary. You see, this being November 1, I am inclined to take part in the annual ritual in self-torture known as NanoWrimo. I was introduced last year by the lovely Mrs. Esmon, and even though I failed miserably last year (of the requisite 50,000 words to write, I wrote…maybe 10,000…if I’m generous in my memory…), I feel the overwhelming urge to participate this year, as well. I have decided that 6:00 p.m. shall be the time of day that i do my writing, and to reach the 50k goal, I’ll have to write 1,667 words per day. This might not sound intimidating to those of you out there who are prolific writers, but when your attention span is as short as mine is, it’s quite the daunting task. I swear, I used to be a writer…I still have a box full of notebooks, filled with scribblings. Short stories, poems, essays…it was like I had to write to be happy. In recent years, though, my attention span has dwindled – could be too many video games, could be too much time spent with bad habits, could be I’ve just been forsaken by my muse and/or the creative writing gods. For whatever reason, writing kinda scares me these days.

But I’m gonna do this. Whether it’s simple pride pushing me or a desire to topple the wall and find my muse again, I’m determined to make this happen. And in one hour, I’m going to sit here, and hopefully not panic as the blank page stares back at me, daring me to write something, anything.

We shall see.