All politics, all the time

I bet the 7 of you who read this blog are really looking forward to the election being over, if only so I'll stop talking about it. Too bad for you all, I have 2.5 months left!

So, how's about that scary bitch of a VP candidate??? I think it says a lot about this country that the GOP chose someone with no experience, who is a right-wing psycho fascist, JUST because she's a woman and may steal some of the Hilary vote. I think it says even more about this country that they may actually be right, that Obama could lose just because some Hilary supporters are still so pissed off that their girl didn't win that they'll actually vote against their beliefs or stay home altogether. I hope hope hope Obama wins, but if he doesn't, the democrats will have screwed themselves again, by letting that primary go on to the point where the party is so divided it may sink its own candidate. I'm so proud to be part of this fucking moronic organization. And yet it's the better of the two choices.

Just wait, more commentary to come during next week's Karl Rove convention. Anyone else see the irony of a hurricane hitting New Orleans on the anniversary of Katrina, just as the republicans gather to promote a walking fossil and his affirmative action VP pick?

Can I just say...

...where the fuck was this Al Gore 8 years ago??? If he'd spoken like this then, with this passion and articulation, maybe we wouldn't have the last 2 terms of crap to recover from. Stupid man. I mean, lovely speech, but why such a late bloomer, Al?

Why yes, we are still watching the convention here, thanks for asking.

If I were a religious person, I would be fearing for my family's souls

We are suffering through hour 6 of the Democratic National Convention, and we're all getting a little punchy. My mother has a 44 year history of watching the whole convention every 4 years, and this is the first one since she moved in with us, so it's a big week for all of us. She's actually Tivo-ing the whole thing, just in case we miss any of Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper's scintillating commentary. I'm really starting to understand why the Democrats keep losing. This couldn't be more soporific. I'm as enthusiastic about Obama as anyone, but I can't see this lineup of dullness, set to dull music, as inspiring anybody.

Oh, but my family's souls. We're watching the introductory video on Michelle Obama (who I really like but kind of fear), and her brother says, "we lost our father in 1991." Simultaneously, my husband says "we found him in 1995" and my mother says "and we've been looking for him ever since." I live with funny, but kind of wicked, people.

Shame

Shame is almost a pretty sounding word, like serendipity or quintessential, but it's an ugly feeling, and I don't think I really knew its meaning until this year. Shame, I now know (try to write that, while marginally drunk, at 2:45am, by the way, it really wants to come out 'I know now'), is having to answer questions like "have you recently turned to drugs or alcohol" and "what kinds of feelings are negative feelings" from a marriage counselor. Me? Turn to alcohol? And please, who doesn't think anger, sadness, and anxiety are negative feelings? But that gave the Steve Martin therapist with the child molester mustache much fodder for note-taking, at $2 a minute. Clearly, thinking some feelings are negative is a big red flag. And so, I have renamed our therapy as "wife failure class," and hereby resolve to do better, although I'm still a little unclear about what that entails, exactly. Probably, to be honest, not going out drinking and dancing until after 2am the night before the kids meet their teachers.

An excellent character trait in a spouse

Not to be too personal, but things have been a little roller-coastery around here, marriage-wise, and I'm happy to say they seem to be on an upswing. When discussing the possibility of marriage counseling, we talked about not wanting to disappoint each other. My lovely husband said - as the children ran dirty and grouchy through the filthy house, as he put away dishes from the meal he bought and prepared after working all day to support us, as I sat with my 3rd beer in an hour and surfed the internet with my fat roll hanging over the waistband of my too-tight shorts - that I never disappoint him. And so I have determined that the single most important character trait in a spouse, at least in my spouse, is low expectations. It certainly helps to be the second wife, compared always to a woman who seems to actively seek slovenliness, poor parenting, insanely bad money management, and unkindess. I'm just not ambitious enough to beat her.

Peace and Quiet

Next up in my list of weird things - peace and quiet. I'm visiting friends in Minneapolis, and have had a long lovely day, full of books and movies and way too much junk food. I feel like my brain has been full of buzzing and bitten off words and sharp pointy things for months now. Being here, away from children and schoolwork and chores and obligations, I can feel an almost tangible stilling of the hectic mess in my mind. I'm not sure yet if that's a good thing. It's a little scary to think that I may finally see what's been lurking under all the noise.

Things That Are Weird

This is the first in a series - okay, who am I kidding, I have nothing like the perserverence to write an actual series, but let's play make-believe, shall we? - about things I find weird. I find a lot of things weird. Life is strange. One of the strangest things about being an atheist is that I don't see reason in anything, no overall pattern to tie all the weirdness together, and so things that seem normal at first glance, just because you're used to them, seem really bizarre and unlikely upon further inspection.

So, my first weird thing - beer. Not that I don't like beer, as you all know, so you can see from the beginning that weird does not necessarily equal bad. It's just strange, how we pay money and seek out this sort of foul-tasting, off-smelling liquid (when soda is so much more socially acceptable and more slowly damaging, biologically), when all we do with it in the best case scenario is convert it almost immediately into urine and in the worst case into vomit and urine. And yet, when you have had a day like mine, when your 7 year old has tried your patience for the 9,000th time and your patience has failed, no contest, you need the beer or you will run away screaming, will seek out hard drugs, will enter a life of crime or whatever it takes to get. the. fuck. away, you damn near worship the beer for its temporary reprieve, its dulling of life's sharp edges, its postponement of real life and real problems. Like I said, beer is weird.

My face is blurry

My friend's daughter spent a lot of time with her eyes open underwater yesterday, and emerged from the pool with the pink eyes of an easter bunny. She rubbed them and said, "my face is blurry," which I thought was the best description ever of that used-up raw itchy feeling. I felt that way myself on Saturday night, after powering through the new Twilight book. I love immersing myself so completely in a book that I feel like I'm waking up from someone else's dream when it's over, when my eyes are grainy and red from being submerged so long in a fictional universe. A lot of my 32-year-long writer's block is fear of trying, and failing, to bring my own imagination so tangibly and accessibly to life. It's too bad I can't just read fiction for a living, I'm one hell of a reader.

August and Everything After

Isn't that a Counting Crows album? I love Counting Crows.

This summer has been long and strange, and I was looking forward to the turn of the calendar, but August 1st started off a bit rocky. On my way to a chemistry test for which I was grieviously underprepared, my car abruptly clonked out of commission in the middle of an intersection. Four strangers stopped, during rush hour, to offer assistance, and my friend came with his Volvo to push me out of harm's way, so the actual breakdown ended up being sort of uplifting, in an all-people-don't-suck sort of way. Unfortunately, the estimate on the repair is about half of the car's actual value, which does suck, no matter how I look for silver linings. I made it to class only a few minutes late, while the professor was still reviewing. The test itself was insanely hard, causing one girl to leave the classroom in hysterics and one unfortunate 20 year old boy to weep quietly at his desk. I am perverse and kind of enjoyed the challenge of it, although my classmates didn't appreciate my enthusiasm during the postmortem. I hate having to wait until Monday for the grade.

After all that, the day improved dramatically. I had a nap, one of my favorite food groups, and then took the little monsters to the pool and saw a lot of friends. Then I got to dress up like a fancy girl and go out for a fancy dinner with some old and some new friends, and it was great fun. Then, best of all, we went dancing, which always makes me happy, even though I'm not a good dancer and it was like dancing in a sauna and my legs were already sore from a way-too-ambitious workout on Monday.

The new Twilight book is out today, and my mother is at the store getting it right now. That's my whole plan for the day, which is just fanfuckingtastic. Well, that and a nap, of course.

A riddle, from the mind of my nutty nuthead

"I feel hungry for somefin. Somefin delicious. They have black covers and white fings. You know what shape they are? A circle. They're not Swedish Fish that you don't want me to have. I had two of dem. You know what I mean?"



Hint:

Love

I never have a camera when I really need one - this picture was taken with my phone, and it's fuzzy and incomplete. Tonight, my quirky 4 year old was a star. He is that critical one degree off from center, just enough different that people think he fits in but he doesn't, quite. Tonight, though, he was the main event, and I've never seen such joy. He decided to try jumping off the diving board, and as he dithered and fretted like any nervous 4 year old but more so, everyone at the pool gathered around and supported him. Instead of yelling at him to hurry up or get off the board, as I'm sure I would at their age, the other kids in line started chanting and clapping their encouragement. By the time I got on the board myself and tossed him in to put us all out of our...not misery, but anticipation, people were placing bets on what he would do. I later heard that a child we don't even know was being herded from the pool at this time and protested to his father, "please, wait, I want to see what happens." I grew up in a small town, and even so I've never seen such a thing, where one child's fear and excitement transports a community. I don't think it was just the ever-present alcohol that brought tears to my eyes. My children are so lucky, to have this love in their lives.

Love is the strangest thing. Everyone feels it, and who can define it? Of course I love the boy - I "grew him out of me," as he says - but what motivated all these friends and strangers to see past his obstreperousness to the momentous occasion it was for him? What, for that matter, makes all the lovely people in my life tolerate my recently near-constant drunkenness and frequent weepiness? It feels like sheer ingratitude to be anything other than radiant with joy in the face of such an unasked for, undeserved outpouring of kindness and acceptance.

I still often wish for the imagination and courage to write, and feel like something of a failure for falling back on medicine. If I had the courage, and the perseverance, I would begin my writing career with some kind of testimonial to friendship, some kind of homage to the friends who hold me up with their laughter and love. The ones who kiss me and say they love me, even when I let them down. The people who know everything about me and those one step removed who offer their support on faith alone. The kind strangers who love my children on my behalf, or me on theirs, and cheer on my strange son at a moment that could have been mundane but which these beautiful rare people rendered transcendent.

This is me, writing up my lab report

My summer class has improved somewhat, mostly because I ditch at the break most days, bring my laptop (to play spider solitaire) every day, and have made some...well, not friends really, but acquaintances at least, to amuse me. AND I got 104% on the first test, because I rawk at Chemistry. Except for writing up lab reports, which I do not want to do, since I just did one two days ago and my whole self is rebelling against the idea of doing another. Suck.

Randomness floating through my head as I cultivate ADHD as an alternative to schoolwork: Angelina Jolie just wants to be me - now she has 6 kids and her last two are boy/girl twins, just like me. Take away her money and her looks (and, to be fair, her energy - just that travel schedule would kill me) and we'd be twins ourselves. Facebook - it's finally growing on me, after having an account for ages and seldom checking it. Now I feel like a private detective, hunting down people from my past. Plus it's something else to do during class. Shoot, the nagging voice in the back of my head that says I'm going to be up all night writing this godforsaken report has shoved all the detritus aside. Guess I'll go back to staring blankly at my lab notebook.

Anyone have some paint I can watch dry? Or sniff?

I started my summer class today - I'm taking the second semester of general chemistry because it's a prerequisite for everything I have to take next year. The thrill of being back in school had already worn off a bit after one semester back, but now the thrill is gone baby gone. I have never in, let's see, 15.5 years of school ever ever been as bored as I was this morning. My professor is quite literally the dullest person I have ever encountered. He spent a solid hour reading the syllabus aloud, then another hour and a half reading slides slowly and repetitiously, then writing out on the overhead exactly what he had just read. And this was, so far, all review material. The class runs from 9-1 every. day. for 5 weeks, but I only made it until 11:30. I packed up my things and walked out while he was lecturing. I do realize how rude that is, but my only alternative was to start yelling and throwing things. I can not believe I have to go back in the morning, but at least this time I know to bring entertainment for myself. Like heroin.

In other news, my two oldest boys are at sleep-away football camp this week. The house is very quiet, and the 7-year-old is having quite the run of mood swings. He reportedly has a great time every minute of the camp until he lays eyes on me, and then he bursts into tears and collapses in a heap. I believe I'll restrict future visits to ones from a distance, using binoculars.

My nutty 4-year-old had a very frightening incident on the 4th, in which he vomited blood (boy do I never want any of the kids to ever do that again), but he bounced back more than completely and has been a reassuringly holy terror for the past couple days. Just now, my husband told the boy, as he tucked him in to bed, that our 9-year-old was going to give him his old Woody doll, from Toy Story. The boy's reply? "I don't want a soft Woody, it will just break and we will have to throw it away! I want a hard Woody!" How can you not love him.

You are what you eat

Last night, before the stomach flu my children have been passing around finally laid me low, I was imagining how model-thin I would be if I had never eaten a chip in my life. I think, actually, that I'd probably be dead of malnutrition, as chips have made up the bulk of my entire food intake (see graph for detail). Clearly, I have a problem, and there are no chips anonymous groups to help me.

Beer brings my voice back

I do understand, on an intellectual level, that drinking is not a viable alternative to a normal life, but it makes me feel so much better. Is that so wrong? This was a good day, the first good day in a while, really, and for no real reason. I'm so tired of thinking about myself and what I want, what's important, it's nice to take a break and revel in the fact that there were random Busch Lights hiding in the fridge, that my stomach is rising in that pre-nausea roller-coaster thrill way because I'm staring at the laptop screen, that I had a moment of prescience with my husband earlier that makes me feel hopeful about the future. That maybe I'm not an aberration, that I can be satisfied in life, that I'm not an unfit mother and wife. It's a rush, and beer just helps.

Silence

I've got a bad case of the mean reds today. I feel words drifting away from me, feel myself becoming still and quiet. I want to be a flower, to sit harmless and innocent under the sun and rain, but I am more like a weed, unloved and unlovable, drying up and blowing away.

My So-Called Life

I have a mental picture of myself, as I'm sure we all do. I think I know who I am, what's important to me, which way my internal compass is pointing. I think I'm a good person, that I think about others, that I know right from wrong and pretty reliably do the right thing. I'm starting to wonder, though, if my mental self-portrait is as inaccurate as the physical one - I'm always surprised when I look in a mirror and see my sagging post-baby body instead of the pretty young thing I somehow still feel like.

I moved to this city 11 years ago, and for ages it felt really foreign to me. Everything is different from what used to be home - the pace is different, the accent is different, the people are different, the climate is different. For several years, I lived with the assumption that I'd work myself back home eventually, but then I married a man with children who live here and the roots began to grow. After I had children of my own and stopped working full time, I began meeting wonderful people, mostly women, who were thoughtful and kind and funny and supportive and I gradually found myself enmeshed in a real community for the first time in my adult life. I can't describe the deep feeling of happiness it has given me to be a part of this group without sounding trite or hyperbolic.

Now I'm afraid that I have lost the love and trust of one of my closest friends in this tribe of mothers, someone who has been such a part of my life that my memories of my own children are tied up with her face. I have been talking to her in my head, trying to explain, trying to find the words to excuse myself, but everything ends up sounding like just that - excuses. I find myself engaged in an orgy of misplaced apology, begging forgiveness from cut-off strangers at intersections and bumped-into shoppers at grocery stores with an excess of fervor that must take them aback. I'm just full of remorse and regret. The good intentions I thought were a foundation aren't holding up to scrutiny - they turn out to be empty air and count for nothing.

Hey, Jealousy

Every once in a while, I toy with the idea of titling each post with a song title, but then I remember that I know nothing about music and never really have, so that would probably lead to even more protracted silences than usual. I do love the song Hey, Jealousy by the Gin Blossoms, though. It was popular during my brief foray into popular music during college, and it still reminds me of that time whenever I hear it.

Lately, I've found myself consumed with jealousy, and it really is a consuming and pointless emotion. Not relationship jealousy, but ugly middle-aged jealousy of youth. I see pretty teenagers in pretty summer dresses, thin and glowing, chattering like mindless birds, and I feel my eyes turn green. Of course I'd like to be thin, and not need makeup to remove the night-of-the-living-dead undereye circles, and wear mere suggestions of clothes without looking ridiculous, but what churns my stomach is the blank-slateness of their existence. I remember being that age myself and can't quite figure out the path that took me from there to here. I really missed the point of that whole Thoreau thing about living deliberately until it was far too late, and most of my choices had been made for me by chance or impulse or the path of least resistance. Is this the appeal of religion, the idea that you might get some celestial do-over? I want to be a different person, I want to have a different life, but the mirror is very clear on this subject - I'm calcified into who and what and where I am.

I'm so domestic

Every once in a blue moon, usually when the house has just crossed into the qualifying-for-federal-disaster-relief territory, I get a short-lived but strong impulse to act domesticated. This morning, I showered before my husband even left for work, then got all four of my monkeys dressed and out the door before 9am. To go grocery shopping, as I am a hero. They were so well-behaved that a kind woman commented at the checkout on their loveliness. I took big boy to the doctor to get an official asthma diagnosis, came home and made lunch, then put the twins down and cleaned for 1.5 hours straight. Which is probably 1.25 hours more than I've put in total in the past 2 months. It's still not CLEAN, exactly, but you can walk through every downstairs room and could actually eat at our dining room table. Oh, which reminds me, I also started dinner. AND, most miraculous of all, I'm in a calm peaceful happy mood (knock on wood) after all of that. If only being Barbara Billingsley was fun on a day-by-day basis and not just every once in a while.

I have a blog?

Oh, right. Hmm. Things have been a little off-kilter around here lately, nothing I can/should/will write much about, just the all-too-ordinary trials and tribulations of a boringly average wife and mother. I started my new job and it's very interesting, but my heart's not in it, or much of anything lately. The kids are done with school, the pool is open, my mother is away visiting my sister. My husband's ex is being the poster child for bad parenting and there's nothing I can do except watch with my chest hurting. My family is lovely, my friends are lovely, my life is just what I wanted. I'm sure this flatness will pass, and I'll be back here to dazzle you all with my wit and wisdom again.