It’s time to say farewell, methinks. We leave Tuesday afternoon for our trip to see family in Vancouver and Kelowna over the holidays. Yes, that’s a few days away yet, but I got Neil a very spiffy Christmas present that will be affecting my blog a wee bit.
I gave him a promise. A promise of no blogging for two full weeks. Well may you gasp! What’s strange though, is that I’ve offered similar (smaller) promises in the past, and dreaded the fulfilling of them. This time? Not so much with the dreading. I’m actually looking forward to some concentrated family time. Getting away from my safe little comfort zone and experiencing life a bit more. Hermit-like Housewifedom gets a bit wearing after awhile, and I’m eager to branch out a bit.
Normally? Being away from home = stress/panic/hyperventilation. No, that equation is not an exaggeration either.
I feel calmer this time round though. It’s a bit surreal, to be honest. Heaven knows I’ll be carrying a notebook and pen everywhere I go over the next few weeks. And come January I’ll frown at it in consternation, trying to make sense of a) my increasingly illegible scrawl and b) my meandering thought processes.
Anyway, it’s been a crazy ride this year. A lot of changing done. Growing, regressing, fighting, struggling, grieving, laughing, loving, shouting, dancing, squealing, pondering, singing, and…of course, blogging about it all.
I’m so grateful for you all. The silent readers. The faithful and intermittent commenters. The poor souls who chance upon this page at random and get who knows what inflicted upon them. It’s all still a bit mind-boggling to me, this sense of community so many of us share.
I’ll tell you this much - my BlogHer ads revenue (such as it is) is going into an airfare fund. Oh yes. There are some of you I simply must meet some day.
Till that day…may the season bring you much joy, and a myriad of memory-making moments.
So the illustrious, hilarious, multi-faceted and multi-talented Mombabe has sponsored a Karoke Christmas Contest. And because I’ve lost hold of my already tenuous grip on sanity, I decided to enter.
Now, I go to great lengths to take flattering profile pictures. Much of my youth was spent being mocked for my poor skin, big nose, lanky hair. You name it, I’ve been mocked for it. So to display an actual video clip of myself is transcending the outer limits of my comfort zone in a BIG big way.
Still, what better time of year to post something like this than when everyone is too busy to read?
So yes, here I am, singing (badly) and trying to win the offered tutu’s for my darling girls. Ah, a mother’s love. Are there no limits to it?
By the way, if you watch this you are 100% obligated to comment. Nicely. I want to slot in an appropriate threat here but really, the only retribution I’m likely to indulge in is crying. A very great deal.
Oh, and vote for me. Or yes, much crying may ensue. Vote Here
All the other entrants are cuter than me. Of course, they’re all pre-pubescent….
Our first fight was over chicken breasts. I giggle a bit now, thinking back on that. It wasn’t exactly huge, really, though it felt so at the time. We’d just never fought before. Not in the four months we’d dated or in the four months we were engaged. Not when I bumped the rear end of that car when he was teaching me to parallel park. Not the night he decided to tell me about every romantic entanglement he’d ever had in the whole entirety of his life (the five hour phone call - wow). Not when I told him about my own (the ten minutes that that took).
I was young for my age and soft spoken by nature. Neil was firm, self-assured, commanding. A good mix, it seemed, until he began rubbing off on me. The more time we spent together the more I realized that he was the happier one. I was constantly wracked by self-doubt, fear, and worry. Neil just…lived. At first I was in awe of him, then I envied him, then I began to emulate him. Life’s not quite as simple as it was that first year, when our personalities meshed so well. Balanced each other out, as it were. But complicated though it is. Struggle though it is. I’m happier for it.
Anyway, back to the chicken.
We’d been out shopping. Neil wanted me to expand my culinary repetoire outside the realm of baked chicken, soggy pasta, and grilled cheese sandwiches, and we were shopping accordingly. I grabbed some chicken breasts and put them in our basket. He wandered over, dumped a container of chicken thighs into the basket, and wordlessly picked up the chicken breasts and returned them.
I protested. In the whole course of our relationship, I think it was the first time I ever did. I can still remember his arched brows. The quizzical smile on his face. I explained I didn’t know how to cook with chicken thighs. He replied that they were a fifth the price and I just had to skin and debone them. I protested (again with the protesting!) that I didn’t know how to. He smiled at me indulgently and shooed me along in front of him and said, “You are so spoiled.”
Now the thing is, I knew he was right. I knew it then, I know it now, but I became so angry over it. And the anger frightened me. I’d never been mad at him before.
I laugh over it now. The people we were seem like strangers from this distance.
What brought that long ago fight to mind today was the fact that we have no hot water. And the gas fireplace has decided to crackle away in mighty fashion despite being turned off. The water is freezing. The living room is sweltering. And I found myself feeling annoyed. Peevish.
Till I flushed the toilet. And it hit me (a thought, not the toilet). I really am spoiled. Indoor plumbing. Dishwasher, washing machine, dryer. Microwave, oven, fridge. A spacious home overlooking a valley. Two vehicles. An abudance of food.
I really am spoiled.
So very, very many people in this world are not.
Neil couldn’t have known how his words and the meaning underlying them would stick with me over the years. But I’m glad that I can hear his comment echoing in my mind at times. I’m glad for that reminder. At best, it will encourage me to give. At the very least, it will help me to be grateful.
It seems a bit cruel to leave my last post up for such a long stretch. No follow up. No details or explanations. Truth is that I, who am usually overflowing with annoying amounts of wordiness, just can’t find the words.
Ah, sweet irony. How you tickle the senses. Make us groan and giggle all in one go.
I sit at the keyboard lately and wonder why I’m here. What am I for? What is the end result of the hours and hours of time put here, and taken from…there. From everywhere else. You see, moderation just isn’t something I do. Neither is scheduling, though my yearning-to-be-organized brain thrills at the thought of it. I’m a groove wearer. A stuck-in-a-rut-er. A one track mind that keeps changing tracks.
And I really, desperately, want to change that about myself.
What I’m coming to realize is that the answer to my many confusions can’t be found by a google search, or stumbled across on the blog of an acquaintance or even that of a dear friend. There are insights galore, and so much wisdom to be had. I see it offered up like gifts in the comments on my last post, but they just slide through my fingers.
The only insight that can change me is one of my own. That sounds arrogant. Trite. But I need an epiphany, and those only happen in the inside of one’s head. Lucky for me, I’ve given you all a key.
The support, advice, and love of all of you have sort of condensed themselves in my brain, and I guess I need time to make sense of it all. To make sense of myself. Not that I’m going to do that between one blog post and another. It’s a life long sort of thing. And I’m not going to run away from the blogging world as if that’s the solution or the access to it. I think that’s where I go wrong sometimes. Always with the running. That’s me. Run. Hide. Deny.
I can’t deny things when I’m sitting here writing. It pours out and the backspace key seems limited to typos only. I can only be honest here, and perhaps that is why the urge to flee is so, so strong. I’m worried that I’ll face something I’m not ready for. I’m worried I’ll say something that will hurt someone. Offend. Alienate.
I spent so much of my life trying to be invisible, and I feel so vulnerable now. That’s the thing about hiding. You don’t step on any toes. You don’t make someone feel crummy because it’s taken you a month to find the brain power to answer the lovely email they sent you.
I crave a nervous breakdown so I can have an excuse. So I can shout, “It’s all too much!” and people will be gentle and understanding with me. Truth is, it isn’t too much at all. I’m a heck of a lot stronger than I once was. I have the time to do what I want to/need to/ought to. I just…don’t.
And I’m not sure why.
There’s so much I’m fighting against now, but it can all be summed up in one word. Me. I’m the one in my way. I’m the one creating the confusion and giving into the fear of confronting it. I’m the one who seeks mindless activities to fill my time and mind so I don’t have to deal with anything real. So I don’t have to write that important email, or leave a truly heartfelt comment on a blog. I’m the one shuffling music around on my playlist to escape my house and all the things I want to do and CAN do, but choose not to.
I’m the one.
That’s the ultimate truth of it all really. That’s the nasty secret I’ve been trying to hide from myself. This, is what being a grown up is, I think. It’s seeing that truth for what it is. And accepting it. Sadly, I’m only halfway there.
No, I’m not going to run. I’m not going to go on sabattical and pretend that giving up writing here will fix everything. Blogging is not the problem.
I can’t decide what to write about. There’s too much. Less time in front of the computer and more time doing crazy stuff like actually living has me full to bursting with ideas. Quirky thoughts that have popped into my head, odd experiences, random old blather about this that and the other. I can’t quite focus in on one aspect of myself right now, because I keep shifting all over the place.
And once again, blogging is a metaphor for life. Because I can’t focus my life either. I’ve been really struggling lately, trying to figure out what I want to do with the time allotted to me. I yearn to write, to bake, to perfect my culinary skills, to be supermom and superwife combined, to expand my photography skills, to finish my cross-stitch projects, to learn how to crochet something slightly more complicated that a simple scarf, to write letters to far off friends and family on a regular basis, to become a blogging superstar (okay, I’m gradually letting that one go), to be content! And that last yearning is completely smashed to bits by all the others. Contentment just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me right now.
It’s not just that I don’t know what I want to do, it’s that I don’t know who I want to be. Thirty years old and once again in the throes of a major identity crisis. Aren’t these supposed to happen pretty rarely? I seem to undergo one at least three times a year.
My mind is bouncing about like a platter full of jelly on an express train during an earthquake. It will not be still! Images flash and shudder, ripples of thought constantly spreading outward from the epicentre. There is a flash of the movie Twilight that we went to see on Thursday. I can see Neil’s face as I glance over at him smirking, feeling smug and superior because I know that love is more than pheremones. Our intertwined hands tighten their grip, and we silently communicate the knowledge that romance is more than the cliched drama painted across a silver screen. It can be found in quiet moments of shared thoughts. It is found in the stark reality of what and who a person is, and loving the entirety of them. We are learning that, him and I. It has taken many years. And so we smother our giggles and watch…amused, entertained, and lost a little in the dreamery the movie provokes.
Next images of Saturday night intrude. Laughter and sweet tangy smells of lotions and scrubs. The giggles and outright guffaws as the “Passion Party” part of the night begins and I am left to alternately blush and gape. So young still. My cheeks ache from laughing and the warmth of women bonding suffuses the room. No judgment in the laughter. I feel strangely peaceful. I come home and tell Neil what “Passion Party” means and he laughs and laughs. I feel I’ve given him a taste of our laughter.
Flash to Sunday night. A phone call from a troubled woman. Weeping. A misunderstanding quickly cleared up but oh, what a gift to be the source of solace to someone so very hurt! Even the knowledge is a gift - that knowing that I, insignificant as I often feel, can mean something…can be a blessing to someone else.
And today. So strange. Someone else watching my kids as Neil and I take a first aid course. Performing CPR on dummies the size of my daughters. They are plastic but the feeling of panic still rises in my chest. I do well but feel ill afterwards as the adrenaline washes away. Please may I never need that training. Coming home to be squeezed and kissed and snuggled by the very girls whose lives I too often fear for. There is a peace in feeling better prepared. There is horror in confronting the possibilities. I clutch them so much more tightly than usual. Emma asks if I am crying. No. Just happy, Emma. Just happy.
And I realize in that moment that I am. For all my confusion and uncertainty. I am happy. This is a new lesson. Not one of the many lessons that repeat over and over as I wince and grimace, knowing I ought to have learnt the first time…or the seventeenth. This is oh so new. To realize that I don’t have to be perfect, life doesn’t have to be perfect, for me to blissfully happy, even if only for a few moments.
I don’t like the fact that it does, but alas, it’s true. From this comes the dizzy-making feeling of the world spinning, oh oh so fast. In those rare moments when I’m able to focus on someone other than myself the spinning slows or perhaps just shifts. It’s nice to have a break every now and again. I’m realizing I need to do that more often.
Not that it’s not fun to walk down the street and think I’m oh so interesting and everyone must be looking at me out of the corner of their eyes and whatnot. To not want to leave the house because social hermitage is so much more comfortable, not having to confront hundreds of other people who all think THEY are the centre of the universe. Silly people. It gives me a headache, honestly.
Today is one of those wanting to stay home days. It’s been snowing since we woke up this morning. Small flakes falling gently and soft but steadily. Not a raging blizzard, just snow. Beauteous, blindingly white, frustrating snow. The car is covered and I peek out the window at it every now and again, picturing myself braving the frigid cold and scraping the ice off the windows while the kids bang on the front door and wail because mummy had the audacity not to take them out until the car was warmed up. Bad mummy.
I picture myself struggling to get my snowsuit clad girls strapped into the carseats that Neil hasn’t gotten around to loosening the straps on yet (note to self - learn how to do that), wincing at the feel of the snowflakes settling on my cheeks and eyelashes. A feeling that many people love but that makes me shudder. It’s like chinese water torture, that slow dropping of freezing wetness onto every exposed piece of flesh. I will likely scold the children for not moving faster, despite the encumbrance of their puffy snowsuits and thick soled boots.
Then I’ll remember whatever is I’ve forgotten and carefully step-step-step my way along the icy patio and back into the house, envying the girls who get to sit in the toasty warm car listening to the acoustic strains of my favourite satellite radio station. Then I will step-step-step my way back, thoroughly bothered by how I seem to keep banging into things, dropping heavy things on my toes, that sort of thing. I will scowl and mutter to myself and then quickly glance up to make sure the neighbours aren’t watching me be all surly and scowly.
It’s all about me, you know.
And I will drive through the dark and the snow, fingers clenching spasmodically at the wheel because I hate driving in the snow and I hate driving in the dark, and I will be doing both at once. And why? What could possible persuade me into such an irrational course of action?
The local Christmas parade.
And my husband’s insistence that our children be there to see it. That I not cower at home and deprive them of the magic of it. He offered to cancel his last patient and rush home to pick them up and rush them back to town for it. And that’s when it hit me. How incredibly important this simple event is to him. And for a moment the world stopped spinning so madly around me. For one brief moment it spun around him.
I think that’s part of what love is. I think that’s what it can do to us. For us. It can stop the spinning long enough for us to realize how dizzy we’re making ourselves. Love can be the feeling of the world revolving around someone else for a time. Not always. Not every moment. Because we’re human after all. But love can teach us that no, the world does not revolve around us, and that this simple fact does not cause it to end.
So before I attempt to be funny to smooth over yesterday’s drama…well, the words “thank you” just seem too trite to express what I’m feeling. Those people who roll their eyes a bit when they hear the word “blog”? Experiences like I had yesterday are what they don’t understand. I was able to come here and just spew. Just pour out whatever popped into my head and then hit publish.
With no fear. None.
In a world full of silent and not so silent criticism, that’s verging on miraculous. But that’s one of the things about blogging isn’t it? There are over a billion blogs out there, and through trial and error we find the blog authors who appeal to us, or who we connect with. Which means that if someone is reading your blog? They’re doing it because there’s something about you they like and enjoy. That alone is so bolstering to the wounded self-esteem, but add sweet, loving, encouraging comments like the ones I received yesterday and the self-esteem soars.
All too briefly, of course, but still. The memory of that sensation lingers and carries us through other bad times.
So do the laughs, of which I share a few now. These are the search terms that have lead people to my blog in the last two weeks. And yes, Google has a lot to answer for.
friggin - Oh my. It’s true. I’m guilty of using a pretend swear word. What is a self sustaining ego – definitely not mine, that’s why I blog! Bulk ob tampons - multiple hits from this one. Don’t know if that makes me more or less inclined to do future product reviews. how to find joy in housework - is it bad that I giggled at that? Temporary insanity is fake - aren’t not! bossy 11 year old daughter - trade you for my four year old. parent yell too much - maybe they’re ticked off that you’re spending too much time on the computer and have a worrying grasp of basic grammar? Shut the computer off and do your homework,. learning to live with angry parents - my kids sympathize with you, I’m sure. I like the word learning in there. I don’t know you, but you sound like a good kid. Sniff sniff. why does my dog chew on my tampon - people really do think Google knows everything, don’t they? My tampon after wee - Wet and soggy I’d imagine. This is proof positive that the general populace a) is not as bright as we would like to think and b) has far, far too much time on its hands. Is this the face that launched a thousand ships? - Oh yes. That was me. Take of my panties to get to my heart - Having never in the whole history of my blog used the word panty or panties, this one completely boggles my mind. And makes me giggle over the searcher’s complete lack of understanding of basic anatomy. The heart is more in the bra area, dear. Parents always angry at me - hey, there’s another one of the readers I could totally hook you up with… My life is a lie - I’m going to haul out the too much time on the computer response again. Stop googling and start living! Pictures of unorganized messy house - you can come over and do a photo shoot if you like. After three weeks of NaNoWriMo I make just about anyone look good. Hannah Montana advent - Oh no you did not! Not only do they make and sell the horrid things, people WANT to buy them? Gah! On my way to insanity but I’m laughing at myself - Oh I am so with you on this one. In fact, it’s a big part of the reason why I blog.
Which, admittedly, I haven’t been doing a terribly good job of lately. To those of you (that is, all of you) who haven’t seen me around your blog for a week or two…well, you know I think you’re wonderful, right? I’ll raffle off free copies of my book if I ever finish it. Promise.
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