No Dad vs. Crappy Dad

My wish list was difficult for me to figure out this year. The jury is still out. I am leaning toward none.

Pay It Forward

Thank you Secret Santa for the gift cards, you rock.....Connor and Molly and I are hitting the streets this week (actually, most of the time when we get out, every week), to make random people's days better. We will continue to live up to your example Santa.

Pat on the Back

Byron is having BIG issues with me. He said he spoke with a professional (I do not know what kind, hooker, I assume) and was told he no longer had to speak with me. What??? We are raising two kids and dealing with crazy scheduling, never speak again. So, he was supposed to have the kids today, but refused to call me to talk about it. He text me that some guy Molly rarely sees, that has not held a job in years and lives in a van smoking weed all day would pick Molly up here at noon today. Uhhhmmmm......FUCK NO. Then, a woman who watches Molly for Byron came up to me at school this morning and said she would get Molly from my house at noon today......uhhhmmmmm......not a FUCK NO, but no, sorry, I do not mean to be offensive, but I will keep her with me until Byron decides to call and let me know what is going on. I do not know legally what the deal is, I probably can not do what I am doing, who knows. I am doing it though because I have every right to know where my kids are, and if they are with someone other than their parent, I also have every right to speak with them when I want to on the phone when they are not with me, and Byron will not answer the phone, nor tell them I called. This is a kind of oversimplified explanation also, it is a control issue between us. He refuses to speak with me, I refuse to hear anything but speaking from him. He called the school and told them he would bring the custody papers by, I emailed them right over when I got home tonight. What is the school going to do arrest me if I come to get my kids? Give me a break. I may be painting myself into a corner. I need a break, I have so much work, but I also have two kids that do not need his bullshit anymore than I do.
As for the pat on the back, my boy's teacher said she definitly notices a difference in him, his participation and behavior when he has been with me. That's because I get him some sleep and feed him more than cup o noodles and doughnuts. Ok, that is definitly not all, but you get my point.

Washing

Ahhh, the sweet rain.....I love the wetness, the benefits, the sounds, the feel, rain is absolutely a good thing. It is so erotic at times. It makes me miss Washington for a brief, very brief moment. Take is slow and easy people while traveling.
Today, as everyday, I am remembering and thinking about my blessings. Who needs Thanksgiving except for the day off and the mashed potatoes? I am so looking forward to having wonderful people in my home. It is invigorating, like the rain.....

Pro Life

Maybe it is because conversations around me turn to spirituality a lot (which I still consider random or maybe not really), but I have had a few conversations with more people than usual about biology, Darwinism, etc. Here is my question for anyone who is a non believer in a higher power or has pondered non believing....


Hope, where does is actually come from? What does a person that is not spiritually based use to derive hope?

Any ideas?


I also think I have seasonal affective disorder when it comes to writing, the winter makes me feel prolific.

Moving On

What the heck is dating? I am not so certain. I also do not understand why there has to be some sort of goal, some master plan.......
Can you date someone who is not "The One" for you? What is the rationale behind dating for fun?
My friends, I went out and tried it again after a year. I "dated" someone. What did I like? The company, the mental stimulation, the body contact. What did I not like? The expectations......Can we really have no expectations for another we are learning? Really, this person was not my friend before, not a stranger, but not a friend. How can I say I have a future plan for something such as that? There is so much unknown. I can look at what seem to be his good qualities and what seem to be his bad qualities, but qualities are fluid, like people that possess them, life changes, and the person follows suit (at least I hope, due to the importance of growth and learning). If you are enjoying time spent, wouldn't you do that until you stopped enjoying it? What kind of bullshit is, I do not want (insert you/me) to get hurt in the future. There is no future really, there is right now, especially with dating.
Well, in my own self deprecating manner (without self pity), he dumped me after a few weeks of seeing one another a lot. He told me it was because I had children and he does not. I have had at least one of those beings for more than 7 years, which is ALOT more time than I knew this person. Wait, did I neglect to tell him I had children? It made me think it was a lame excuse, something that was easier for him to say to me than I really did not like this about you. I understand children are a big deal and even in my head I had not put both parties in the same room. My dating is separate from them, or is it? There were no plans for the two parts of my life to collide. I did not say, do you want to take over responsibility for another man's children and marry me? But, being honest, these kids are not going away, ever, so even someone dating me needs to think of them. Why do people choose to ignore things for a brief respite from reality? I am guilty of it. I eventually choose to accept his reasoning though, I really have no reason to not. He has pretty much been honest, I think, since we began talking...but that presents another issue. That means he is guilty of the delusion too, ignoring reality. I realize I am wonderful and distracting, but I talk about those two more than anything else, how can they have been ignored? Then, it make sense to me that, they were not ignored, they were accepted along with me (as much as possible without actually being around them), until something else set in....fear maybe, maybe a personality trait of mine that made me less attractive as a date, ok, the layers stack up. I am not for everyone, or even for most.
He continually asked me if I was ok, all the while saying he did not want to see me anymore. I was enjoying time with him, but a man, or the prospect of one in my life makes the difference to me on a purely social level. I wanted to say, which I did not, was, my child's head is not broken anymore, she has no brain damage, my abusive relationship has ended, (add in here a list of important life changing issues) why would I EVER not be ok? Maybe without him sharing the life perspective I have, he somehow thought I would fall apart a little (because I am a bit crazy, go crazy on him or something). And really, once he stops being interested in me, does he not give up the right to know how I feel and if I am "ok"? I did get a little pissed, rejection sucks, really, no matter what, but when things get thought through, really what have I lost???? Potential fun, a person to enjoy time with, a sex partner...not much in the grand scheme of life (not to make it seem like he is not much as a person, that is not kind, and I did not like everything about him, but did like some about him also, just not enough one way or the other to make a judgment call this soon).
I refuse to be ruled by fear in the area of relationships. That is what I learned from this experience. I had a fun time, I will not cut myself off from the adult area of my life just in case something is going to happen. I will also continue to put myself out there, all of it, good and bad. I think that is important. Sometimes I have considered my warts and all approach to be detrimental, but have thought about it again, and decided, that is not so. It will take an amazing person to accept me and for me to want to accept also. The life circumstances I find myself in have shaped me and will continue too. I chose not to date because of the difficulties, now I realize, those are difficulties set up by me and I have the ability to recognize, confront, and move past. All in all, a fairly good experience to get myself open to the possibility of love and to continue living in a spirit of generosity that I have come to view as almost important as any other quality a human possesses. I know it may sound like I have gone completely over the bend, but maybe, just maybe, I should remove the nevers from my life I put there. I will never remarry, I will never have children (ok, I am still fairly certain on that never), I will never put up with certain things....blah, blah, blah
There are two sides to every story, but unfortunately most of the time we only have one and then our limited imagination and intellect for the others.

So, I ask....do we waste our time, deluding ourselves....dating?

There are no real easy answers, just insights, I should have stopped seeing him when I realized there was no way I could ever set my bottom down in his filthy bath tub. That is the most important part of a house. Hindsight.....

I Am

I am everything I am supposed to be. It is difficult to begin writing after being away for such a length of time. I have taken to reading instead of writing.

Gone and Done It

Well my friends, I have finally done it. As of this morning around 9.30, I obtained myself a divorce. Bittersweet is one of the words that come to mind. I really wish my husband, who was on the bend when I met him, had chosen not to go around it, but we can not all have what we want.

Gratitiude

I know the best people, I really do and it fills my soul up. Grazie.

Self Help

My mom is back in town visiting. I am happy about that. She came at 7 am on Friday to get both of my kids and bring them to my sister's house for the weekend. This 1) provided child care for Molly why I taught without me having to ask friends or run around my entire half hour lunch break, and 2) got a day of rest for me, and 3) the kids are playing in the pool and spa with their four cousins and Grandma. This is a good thing all the way around.
My Mom, when she came, dropped me off a new book. This is not unusual for her, she brings me books every time. She helps me feed what she feels is a healthy obsession. She will be gone before it manifests itself as piles and stacks of dirty books filling my cramped apartment tot he point where there is only a narrow walkway through each room to pass through. This could be seen as beneficial though, as the books would stack to the ceiling so there would be no room for an old lady to fall and break her hip, the books support her walking. The abundance of silver fish that all of the beautiful expressive pages would bring would suck though. Those things are so gross.
Anyway....the book is called The Power of Now. The title implies a good concept, the back cover explains the book as powerful, phenomenal, and radically life changing. Whoa...slow down, I read life changing and immediately my mind put the book low down in my stacks. I have had a fricken enough life changing in the past few months.

*****I just got back to writing. I went ot say hi to my mail lady friend. When I came back into the house I looked up at our eaves and saw about 25 huge black spiders sunning themselves right above where I sit. My skin is still sort of crawling. I got out the old dyson(I love that thing) and sucked those bastards up. I like living things, just not living spiders on my house, in my house, around my house.

Back to my original post:

I want to adjust well to my changes before embarking on any other personal growth that could possible cause a shift in thinking or living. Let a girl get adjusted to ten things at a time before she adds one more. I bet it is a great book with many positive things, but positive things come with emotional intensity too. I need lower emotional intensity in my life not more at the moment.
Thanks Mom, I will put it under Lady Oracle (my pleasure read by Margaret Atwood), Women Who Run With Wolves (my positive, strength, intuition reinforcing book), Women On Top (my erotic for the usual reasons that accompany a book such as that), and Soul Mates (my thrift store buy regarding understanding relationships in your life, which I have looked at once). Lady Oracle and Women on Top are the most used. The other two take a special mindset to read and take in and I am previously occupied right now.

I am going to sit on my newly vacuumed porch in the sun and read some real stimulating material, People magazine, nothing like mindless entertainment sometimes. I am bringing lemonade too and my cloves, such sweet and relaxing pleasure.

Butterflies

I watched a Montiel show one day with Sylvia Brown. I have always liked her. I think God has blessed certain people with abilities more in tune to souls than others. How else would you explain my family, they are just not in tune to souls? Digression anyway. So, Sylvia was speaking of a woman who say butterflies and she said that was the woman's deceased (insert here) aunt, mother, sister, friend, brother, dad.....A consequence of watching this show is that when I see butterflies, I think of my Grandma and her being around me. Mind you, that is not the only time I think of her, but that brings it up every time. Today I drove Byron to Fillmore to pick out boulders for a job. We took the kids and a neighbor boy. We did not have clear directions. I do not like the 126. I looked down and there was a dead butterfly stuck in my wind shield wiper. What the fuck does that mean cosmically?

Emotional Calm

Ok, so I like to think I have emotional calm. Believe me, dear God, I really want it. Where are you, inner calm, so illusive? Why is so much in life in need of attention? Why do I have 8 animals in my care? That little bitch Susamina gets out at every single opportunity. Does she not know coyotes love to suck the marrow out of her small petite bones? Does she not know her boundaries are only for her own good? Damn boundaries. Boundaries interfere with my emotional calm, to tie it in here.....
There is a slight balance to be achieved in life and where does it exist?
I have had one HELL of a week and would appreciate never having one like it again. My emotional calm was challenged.
I did spend the sunset with my family at Emma Wood though and that made life a bit more beautiful.
My firecracker Molly has a fever and snotty noes. I am not sure why (I am assuming undisclosed flu/cold like ailments), but she woke crying a few times last night. I gave her motrin, but she continued to fuss, almost a whiny fake, pay attention to me Mom cry after being asleep for almost a hour. So I put on the Beatles and I sang. I still suck at singing, but I still really like it. I always feel bad for he kid's in my classes with my singing. I enjoy it though, so much, as well as whistling. I enjoy whisting, drumming too, harmonica too, shakers, whatever ends in my hands, making music. Making music was not done in my house when I was raised. We had it in the car, and sometimes on the record player or 8 track, but to make it was not encouraged. So, I digress, but I sang to Molly, and she stopped whatever her whining issue was and lay still and rested, eventually slept, to me, singing the Beatles. She rocked at the beach though (as Beth would say). Today, she had a three hour nap and Molly does not nap. She ran, played shoveled and laid on the rocks like a lizard. Connor and I, and Byron in and out, did s a puzzle while Molly was napping. The darn thing was 300 pieces of the States and their capitals. I re-familiarized myself with it, just in case it comes up sometimes in class.
Going now, to bed, to bath, to play, to visit, to whatever I want because I want to.
Happy Saturday and Happy Easter, to those practicing humans.
Love live the spirit of Jesus Christ!!!

Calm

Newsweek Article, an interview with the Dalai Lama excerpt:

Some images of the recent casualties have been graphic and disturbing. Have you seen them? What was your reaction? We heard you wept.
Yes, I cried once. One advantage of belonging to the Tibetan Buddhist culture is that at the intellectual level there is a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety and worries, but at the deeper, emotional level there is calm. Every night in my Buddhist practice I give and take. I take in Chinese suspicion. I give back trust and compassion. I take their negative feeling and give them positive feeling. I do that every day. This practice helps tremendously in keeping the emotional level stable and steady. So during the last few days, despite a lot of worries and anxiety, there is no disturbance in my sleep.

Ache

I am really missing my Grandma lately. She pops into my mind very often. I still miss her so much. I am grateful for Molly, another sweet, kind and strong female. I wish Molly could remember her.
I read PostSecret. It is a blog where people anonymously send in their secrets. I can not do it justice by describing the post, but i will try. It is an ultrasound picture of twins. One is named and the other just says girl. The writing says: She is only three weeks old, but I lose sleep thinking about how I will have to tell her one day how her twin sister did not make it.
I sent the card to my friend Rebecca, who was close to me when I was pregnant with Molly and her sister and she hit the nail on the head. It felt like a punch in the gut. Ouch.

Women & Courage

This is the story of our Grandmothers, and Great-grandmothers, as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote. The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards

grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO 's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. 'One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,' she said. 'What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.' The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'

HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for
by these very courageous women . Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.



****This is not my writing, FYI, I plagiarized.

Like Him (as in adore and the action)

Crazy wisdom is ... wisdom that flouts taboos in order to undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one’s gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything; wisdom that embraces risk and eschews security; wisdom that turns the tables on neurosis by lampooning it; the wisdom of those who neither seek authority nor willingly submit to it. -Tom Robbins

Mucus

I have been fighting a sinus infection for a LONG time now. My lack of health care has made the fight longer than necessary. As I was laying in bed last night at 4 a.m. lamenting my head ache and the inability to rest, I was wondering.....
Does mucus have calories? Does a person with anorexia consider mucus a weight producing substance? Do they exercise more when sick because of mucus?
A lot of mucus runs down your throat in almost six weeks of being sick.

Intolerance

I teach tolerance to children every day. I try and practice tolerance in myself. I am intolerant though, why do I get so pissed off when I see ignorant, up tight, racist, stupid, moronic, judgmental, hateful, close minded, yes, INTOLERANT people. It makes me so fucking sad to know that people are so fucking stupid. I teach tolerance, therefore, I should have some....I work hard to accept everyone and look for good qualities within them. I just can not do it with stupidity though. I think the only way I function not pissed off all of the time at the idiots of the world, is I block the memory that they exist from my mind.
I need to stop reading Craigslist that is for damn sure.

Sickness

On Sunday night I got really stuffy and my sinuses began to drain down my throat. I have had a fever, body aches, chills, since then and now I have a cough. What really stinks is that when I cough, it is a really good cough, I pee a little. Love you Connor and Molly, thanks for the wakeup call regarding old age.

Angst

I taught a 7-8 class today and am going back tomorrow. Going back tomorrow, you say. Yes, tomorrow. I like their eye rolling, their smart ass attitude the look on their faces when they are trying to pull one over on you. I like observing this human behavior. Those kids are just as fun as the kindergarteners I subbed for last week, but way, way different. Good for them I am beginning to like kids.

Shaping America's Youth

I have been substitute teaching more often now. That does not mean that I like other people's children now (some of them I do), but I get great satisfaction out of producing good feeling in the little bodies and when the light bulb goes on, and they understand what you are doing, I really like that.