Goodbye for now

I am shutting down this blog, not that anyone reads it anyway!! I do not feel as though I have the privacy to say what I really think or feel (hows that for irony) and end up causing more trouble for myself by editing out (or not) what I think is going to cause offence.
I feel as though the effort of maintaining hope against the obviousness of how unhappy my current partner is(with life in general and me specifically)is just becoming too heavy even to write about. The sadness just clouds everything and makes for shitty writing and I am tired of being a fucking cliche from the 50's, I am tired of trying so hard for nothing and I am tired of this being the only way I express those feelings. I too, need to cry uncle and just let whatever the worst is , happen.

I will write another blog when I have something useful to say about the world.

shining sun

There is war and famine, greed and environmental destruction. This week, however, what is really important is that for the first time in over 5 years, I fit into my pre-Ruby pants. They're even a bit loose. Sometimes it really is the small stupid things that matter.

bad week

It's been the kind of week where I am having a hard time expressing myself in anything other than curse words. To counter this desire I am spending my time in the bedroom soaking up the sun and dreaming of living in a sunny liitle apartment above the garage. It would be a white-washed, bleached from the sun and there would be lots of books and art and shells the kids have collected and comfy spots. A packed kitchen and a desk beneath a window that looked onto the forest .
Not that I've really thought about it.

this week

Because of the screwed up bus system in the city where I live I cannot get my daughter to the doctor's office in less than an hour and a half. It used to take twenty minutes. I need a fucking car.

My man is at home this week on "vacation" and I am finding myself constantly praying to the Gods of mercy to prevent me from stabbing him with sharp objects. I am counting to ten a lot.

I need a good day today.

feeling fuzzy

There are, as usual, so many things that I need to accomplish-some simple, some grand, I cannot find the time. I am home with the little one most of the time-entertaining her, and taking care of this home. When she is not home I am not home either-volunterring, doing errands or simply breathing. It's making me feel lazy and wasteful. It's frustrating me and paralyzing me with procrastination and lack of focus.

I spend so much of my energy managing other people and their things that there is often little time and energy left over for myself. I don't even know what I'd do with my energy-I'm so fuzzy on all the details and everything seems to need to take place in the future. I'm talking in half sentences here but it's a sign of my brain.

I am dreaming of the days when my days are my own. No one else's stuff to take care of for them, no messes to clean up, no making lists for them to ignore. I used to be productive as all hell but now it seems I am drowning in other people's to do lists.

Where the fuck did my life go??????

the money issue

Lately, swirling dramas notwithstanding, I feel as though a lot of my time is spent managing other people's inability to manage themselves. I'd make a great secretary-oops executive assistant. I have forced my way into the financial no man's land of our income and made a budget. Not a perfect one, but a working one. A perfect one would have an extra $10, 000 per month to work with. I feel resistance at every turn although I do not know why-I'd love to hand it over to my accountant. Just give me my allowance, make some investments, pay the bills and leave me alone. No that's not true. I do like using my calculator. I like knowing where it goes and how. I need to know.

When I was little I would count my money endlessly. I loved having it, I loved saving it and watching it grow. I was a careful spender even back then. As an adult my taxes were always paid on time, I always saved some every month and I always worked however many jobs I needed to have enough money left over. Now my life has turned on its head. I long for that independance and control over my money. I am happy whilst part of a couple to pool my money for the greater good but I also expect that river to flow both ways-which is does not always do. At least not without some effort.

I hope that as spring comes, there will be a growth of faith in my amazing and miraculous ability to organize the world-at least our world. An upswing of trust and goodwill and a willingness to balance out weakness with strength, like with dislike. A sort of financial/pyschic give and take.
And I hope nothing major happens...

Hopeful Hearts

Beautiful blustery snowy days make me want to stay inside and bake. With the last of my flour I am making peanut butter cookies-they'll go well with the coffee and Sarah Slean is wailing and warbling most beautifully in the background about lost love. All is white again. All is quiet and hopeful and in waiting.

Confused

I have been at home sick for the past day so R has been in charge..well to the extent that he can be in charge, which looks more like me telling him what to do from the couch. I may be pushy but I do have children to take care of. If I left it up to him they would get fed-but not unitl 10:00pm. This is a real problem for him, a real concern for me-how not in charge he is sometimes. Maybe he's just not used to it.

He did all the right things though. He did the dishes, cleaned the cat shit out of the box, brought me tylenol and made his own dinner. He made the child her snacks (at my request.) (He did leave me a full sink of dirty dishes in the morning though).

He would have done them, I know he just ran out of time.

Time with him is the really big issue. He spent almost an hour washing the dishes. He spent an hour preparing his own dinner. He spent 2 hours relaxing in front of the tv after his "gruelling day" at work. He had a headache. I can't seem to make him see that spending 45 minutes washing dishes is excessive-he thinks that's how long it takes to get them clean.

Sigh. It would be a fight-he would get defensive. It would end poorly for both of us, so I avoid the subject. Compared to me. he has absolutely NO time management skills. I therefore, have to spend my energy managing his time for him so that things like my kids can get fed and put to bed.

Maybe I don't give him enough credit, he's better than a lot of men. Maybe I am controlling, but I see his whole evening going down the drain needlessly because of this issue. I wish I could talk to him about it, to show him how to manage his time in a way that doesn't make him angry and defensive. His biggest complaint in life is his lack of time but he refuses to see his own time wasting in the big picture and in the day-to-day of his life. He seems unable to make any changes for the better in his own routines and approaches to things. He refuses to use the dishwasher!! I would like him to have more freedom-that's why I do so much for him-so that he not only gets things done but has time to sit down at the end of the day too. I do it everyday afterall

I can only see this an as argument with no winner. Both of us should be the winner but he won't change. I don't know if he can. What do I do??

finally some snow.

Snow!!
But I'm hibernating.
I wouldn't mind skating or playing outside.
But the wind is killing my spirit.
Still it's pretty.
My 75 year old neighbour is shoveling her driveway.
I am inside in my jammies drinking tea and watching reruns of Sex and the City.
My bad.
I guess I'll get dressed and go out.
Have fun.

a good day

Yesterday was a good day. I was kind and patient. I was generous and sweet. He did the vacuming and slept in a bit while I made the tea. I read my book and watched footy and cuddled with the little one-suffering from the sniffles. Under the weather, as she said. We gave each other shoulder rubs. I talked to friends and family. There was a whirlwind swirling around me, a shit storm of anger and sadness and the ending of illusion for some very dear girls. There is another one pending. There is drama and uncertaintiy abounding, but I made sure my home was a place of peace yesterday. A place of sunlight and chocolate and laughter. At least one day!

Away from my peace

I'm in my kitchen, it's 6:45 am. Put the kettle on to make tea for the big girl and myself. Making lunches, tidying up messes. I turn the heat on, the house is cold. My thoughts try to organize themselves, random snippets of ideas and imagined bits of conversation float by as I put away last night's dishes. The little one pads down the hall into the too bright light of the kitchen and I have to scoop her up and tuck her back in, whispering that it's still night time, it's too early. Luckily, she's asleep before I get her back to bed.

Throughout all of this I try to keep my thoughts of him positive. He's late for work and not happy. Not a typical morning, but not an unusual one either. I wait patiently for him to go, for my space to be free of his energy. I am not in a bad mood, I am just not wanting an intrusion onto my morning ritual. It is a ritual I enjoy, in a kitchen that I know like the back of my hand. My movements in it are rehearsed and planned and everything is coreographed for efficiency and production. I resent the muffled swearing and the loud opening and closing of doors. I want the house to be quiet as I work.

I am not sorry for his misery, it is entirely his own and I will not step into it, will not share it with him. I am happy to help, to find an unfound item, to check on the time, but not at the risk of inviting his negativity into my morning. So I continue with the counters and the tea and telling the big girl again that it's time to get up. Soon he is out the door, that is the most important thing, mug and books in hand out into the still dark morning. I leave him to wrestle with his own
intrepetations and grievances. Away from my peace.

And the morning is mine again.

here it comes...the inevitable

I don't even know what I'm doing, I'm just trying to duck so I don't get covered in shit.
It's not my drama, my drama is almost always just my own and not up for public consumption.
But it's hard not to get too smug, too critical-jesus how can you live like that? How can you do that?
What about the children????

One thing I know for sure and the older I get the more I know it. People will do whatever the hell they want and create a justification for it anyhow. They will always be doing what's right. They will always be the good guy. They will twist logic to suit their own messed up needs.
I am no different, no doubt.

I will always be the good guy, the one who is doing right. I will be the one with the justification-even now as an observer, I already am. I am clean,

We've joked that the plantets or something is causing some sort of major upset in the universe right now. But maybe it's just the universe balancing itself out after being out of whack for so long. Maybe that's why. Maybe all this craziness of inter-personal relationships is actually a re-balancing.

A Brave New World

My big girl now is the proud owner of a cell phone. It is probably not a big deal in the grand scheme of her life and many of her friends are seasoned pros-one even bought her own laptop that she covorts with in the privacy of her room. So why does it make me fearful? Is it just another reminder of the ticking clock on her childhood? Is it that I feel she is now exposed to certain unforseen (and forseen/imagined) dangers? Or is it simply that she is now one more step away from the warmth of my arms and out into a Brave New World of independant living?
When I was her age I got my first job-giving out samples of fudge at the flea market on Sundays. I got myself around town by bus and took myself to whatever educational and social events that my parents were unwilling to participate in. I was insecure about being on my own, but travelled solo anyway. I was a bit of a lone wolf-one could be in those days when leaving the house meant being incummunicado unitl the nearest payphone was located.
It is an understatement to say that life is so different now-and man how old does even thinming way make me feel?? But she is such a butterfly in so many ways-social, physical, emotional (by that I mean the type of insect that looks delicate but flies 3000 miles twice a year to get to the holy ground, fierce). She is a product of her times but she is also an agent of them and is not completely subject to its pressures. She stills giggles and runs around the house telling fart jokes. She wants to be cuddled at night and hates sleeping alone-even if it means sharing the bed with the little one. She eats canned tomato soup and dances on her bed using a hairbrush as a microphone. She's still little a bit, I still have a bit of time with her.

what's up

oh my God, what a bizarro weekend. It was like being stuck in a Dali painting. It was like longing for your body to ease into deep sleep but being jolted by the sounds of an oncoming train-no rest.
Luckily, I have discovered the moments of joy and love and friendship that I have experienced really do sustain you through the craziness.
This is supposed to be a really amazing year for us Virgos but I am wondering what's up.

My new goal in life

Muddling through it all I find that some moments are great, some ok, some terrible. Is this what it's all about? Just trying to get the right combination of moments? It's time for me to get a plan together-a life plan, a year plan, a bloody week plan! R and I had a conversation the other day during which I asked him to pay attention to his negative thougths and try to switch them to positive ones-just to see what would happen, just to keep track of how many negative thoughts and attitudes came into his head in the course of a day. I have started to do it myself and I am astounded by how much negativity there is swimming around this head and life of mine. All lot of judgements, a lot of fear and worry, a lot of complaining. I am also astounded by how hard it is to switch to a more positive sound track for more than a second or 2, how hard it is to pay attention to this. It's going to take a lot of work but I am determined to switch that innner voice. That's my goal this year-to turn off the negative talk-the judgements, the criticisms, the fear and doubts about everything and to try to find a more loving voice inside myself.

dreams

I have nothing to say...how pathetic is that? I am living vicariously through my dreams, some sweet some bitter.

The other night I dreamt I was married to David Beckham and we were on flight to Madrid, we were moving there. Sitting next to each other I had my hand under his waistband on his very firm lovely groin and he had his hand on mine-not so firm yet lovely in my dream. We were cuddling. When I woke up I lay still and enjoyed the feelings of warmth and love that the dream created for me.

Last night I dreamt that I had taken R on a trip to England on a Beatles odyssey-an alternative that was taking us through John Lennon's childhood (?). We were oustide in a field and were being shown some re-entactment of his childhood brilliance in which I was engrossed. When I moved off to the side to stand with him he asked me if I wanted to go back to the hotel to invite "Nargis" out to a drink with us because she just saw her "lovely form in green walking across the field" from a distance. This was supposed to be a romantic get away for us and yet here he was enjoying the beauty of some aquaintance of ours while ignoring me completely. I was pissed and told him so and he responded by getting mad at me for my jealousy and stormed off to read in his hotel room, leaving me to feel rejected on 2 levels.
I woke up after that and was very upset for a long time. It felt true although I knew it was just a dream and I had to lay still in bed for a long time going over it and letting it penetrate that it was a figment of my own imagination (although maybe not entirely a FIGMENT-you know?) I decided to alter the ending of my dream in this way: I go back to the hotel and check out-while he's gone I pack my bags and move to my new hotel in a different part of town and spend the remainder of my vacation reading, walking and drinking wine in the English countryside. He goes off with his vision of lovliness and they live happily ever after.
I guess I've always felt that I am in the way of him finding true love. I've never felt him looking that way at me, or even noticing me across the crowd, or sometimes even not across the crowd. I guess I felt invisible every time we were together and was always on the alert for his attention. To think all this time I couldv'e been on a plane with David Beckham...

so far this year,

I officially have a 12 year old who is adding 3 years to her birthdate on facebook and is, apparently, interested in "men". Her father apparently doesn't mind.
I am trying to go off wine for a month. It is easier to go off wine than it is to go off chocolate and sugar and dairy-which I also want to do.
We put the Christmas tree in the backyard and decorated it with peanut butter covered pinecones, bird seed lollipops and popcorn strings.
No marriage proposal yet-don't worry I get the hint and know it ain't never gonna happen. Still, it would've been nice to have been asked.
So far 2010 feels like a mountain of paperwork. I think I need to ease into the New Year-like maybe by the end of January I will feel like it's time to begin again.
I have the hands of an old woman.
I am jealous of anyone who can afford to take a vacation to a warm place.
Finally, some snow. Regretably, shovelling it has been my only exercise.
Ever since seeing It's Complicated, I have been craving roast chicken. that and living in Santa Barbara.