"The End"

Today is Wednesday, workshop day. It is usually my favorite day of the week because it's the place where I feel most at home with myself. Tonight is the last read of my novel and I can actually say "the end" and mean it. It is exciting and frightening at the same time. Now that I am finished I can say I am a novelist. But that also means I am responsible for another book. And another. And so on. How wonderful, right? It really is. It makes me excited to start new projects and challenge myself. I also feel nervous about letting go of this one book. But it seems to be a good theme for my life right now, running parrallel to all that I am going through. It is a beautiful and exciting thing to start a new world. It is also hard to learn a new set of rules, a new way of thinking. It goes against my beloved "routine" that I talk so much about. In the end, the more challenge, the better. Within reason, of course.

Crazy is my Supervillain

So, here we are again, pretending to have an audience while my word-lust follows me around at 10:35pm. It's been too long, and I have a few things to say about that. They may or may not be related, but I hope you enjoy them, my deeply loyal imaginary friends.
I created this blog and won't tell anyone about it. That is the first and only secret I will reveal tonight. Except for how I've been reminiscing about the days I went crazy and did nothing for two weeks. Maybe a month. I lost track of time.
The glorious part about it was that I got down to my bare minimum, and was able to hear my body asking for the most basic needs. I do so much based on routine. I listen to my body only when I want to fight off a cold or some other illness. Otherwise, I manipulate it. When it was tired, I would give it coffee. When it was exhausted, I'd try and sneak in a few more chores. I was deceptive. I loathe deception.
I think I've gotten better about taking care of myself. I'm making more of an effort. And it's just like my body to snuff out the routine manipulation with mental illness.
Mental illness is my own personal supervillain. My worst fear.
So that was on my mind today. My fear of crazy. Let me tell you, it only takes one trip to realize you don't want to go back.

Funeral Cupcakes

Nancy died about two weeks ago, and just now our families are getting together to honor her. The past two weeks without this event felt wrong. There was no burial because she was cremated. Our families have been very close for the better of thirty years and I felt like I needed a funeral, even if it was an informal gathering just for us.
My mother asked me to make cupcakes for the occasion. Whether I was asked to make cupcakes because my cooking ability is weak or because there was an actual need for cupcakes at a funeral is still unanswered. I didn't really question it. I just made them. They were a box mix of yellow cake and chocolate icing. Nothing special. I felt, even cooking them, that Nancy would have hated that I was going to bring cupcakes instead of my original idea to bring Gouda and bread. She would have wanted something a little more upscale maybe.
So, tonight, uniced cupcakes and a jar of frosting in hand, I left my house and opened the trunk of my car. Alongside the snug plate of cupcakes I left my one key to our one car. And I shut the trunk. Yes, I did it. I left the funeral cupcakes in the car with my key and no way to get where I needed to go.
Wanting very badly to kick the car and very passionately yelling all kinds of profanity, we called the locksmith. Two hours and 125 dollars later I had officially missed the funeral.
I thought earlier in the day how it really didn't matter whether Nancy would have liked the cupcake idea. She is gone now. She can't say anything about it. And it's true. She can't. But she might be able to get me so frazzled that I lock my key in my car and inavertantly leave myself, with the cupcakes, at home. She's so tricky.

What Would Thoreau Do?

So I started a new job two days ago. I should be excited to bring in money. Especially with the holiday season here and my son truly wanting Santa to come this year. I should feel grateful for the little bit of extra cash to give him a good Christmas. Alas, I am not satisfied. After day two, less than a whopping twenty hours of work, I am so bored. Even more than that, I am disappointed that I am bored.
This is not a soul feeling, purpose finding job. I am strictly making money. But somehow I hoped to find a bit of purpose. I do realize that I have plenty of opportunity to affect the lives of the people I come into contact with daily, regardless of how menial the task that I am doing while connecting with those people is. On the same hand, I like for my motions, my physical and mental abilities to be in good use when I work. It turns out that most of the action required for this service industry position is pressing buttons.
I'm old school when it comes to making coffee. I want to feel the weight and pull of the espresso grinder. I want to hear the thud of dumping the used grounds out, the steamer skipping in the milk at my control. It's a small job, but those are the things I love. I love the meat, the grime of doing it myself. Now all I do is press a button.
In college I developed an appreciation of a Thoreau attitude towards industrialism. But I thought I would grow out of my passionate feelings about the world moving much too fast. Especially after moving to Texas, the epitome of materialism and industry. I am thankful for this job in realizing that I have not lost my passion for wanting a human aspect to working for a company.
One could argue that the machine doing all this on it's own allows more room for personal connection with the customers. But I have worked for an independent coffee company and connected in the very same way that I am now. Maybe even better because I am not so dulled by pressing buttons. I think that productivity comes first in a business like the one I work for even though they may not believe it. Efficiency. I think it develops a huge distrust with your employees to allow a machine to do all the work. Yes, it may be more efficient or consistent, but then again it may not. It may just be that trusting your employees to do some of the work develops a more meaningful way to pass the time, more of a feeling of accomplishment.
I don't want to be mistaken, whether hands on or not, it's definitely not the most important job in the world. I get that. At either spot I still desired more interaction with my brain. So there's that. But I also want to know that somewhere way up high in the corporate kingdom someone trusts me to pull my own shot of espresso and hand it to a customer knowing that I did it myself. That I am capable of doing this. I am not a useless human being that doesn't have a working brain. I think it's really important to be valued. Who knows where these feelings might take me. Once again it may be somewhere far away from employment.

Portland, aka Poor Me

I just got back from Portland, a trip I generally take a few times every year to see my best friend. This time it was for her baby shower. Needless to say, my BF is a little more laid back in her pregnancy, so this trip combined with the last one we took together where I threw a Harri Krishna cookbook at a bartender, missed and broke the bar lamp, kind of smoothed out into a pretty great year of traveling. I absolutely love Portland. It reminds me of what being alive feels like. I leave feeling excited about life. Texas really snuffs out that lusty feeling and replaces it with...hmmm...concrete. Cows. And work. I know a lot of it is my fault. I need to make more of an effort to connect. The sheer distance of places from one another in Texas makes it difficult though, especially if you aren't living in an urban area.
There's always an excuse. Poor me. The truth is that it's time to make a change. And changing really makes me uncomfortable. It always ends up being something really great that I can be proud of later though. So. Change.

I Got Your Back

His boogers hurt. He's been telling me this all day. He's been sneezing, teething, crying, whining, and asking me to put cream on his mouth, his boogers, his feet and other random extremities that are causing him pain. Ever since a severe infection that required lots of cream, that's his new remedy to any problem. He wants to put cream on it when we get home.


I took him to story time today at the library and he stubbed his toe. He wanted cream on it. His molars are coming in and he wants cream on them.

Same day, different note...

When he is playing with other kids, I usually assume that he has an equal amount to do with any issue that they are having, which is usually sharing. He is two, and two equals mine. It's that simple. And sometimes, he just does things to assert himself and irritate other kids, like only playing with the toy they want, or holding the door to the playhouse shut so that no one else can get in. I forget a lot that instead of apologizing for him and always assuming he has done his share, that there are times when I need to defend him. Even if it's just staying out of it and teaching him that I trust him to do the right thing.


Today at story time was one of those moments. Another kid wanted the toy he had, and instead of telling him that he needed to share, I just sat there. When he looked at me for my approval in not handing the toy over I just smiled. All I wanted to say was, "I got your back." And it felt good to be devoted to that. It felt like a new way to let him know that I love him. And it felt good to be an ally.


And a small confession, the other kid was a brat. So even if Ethan had been trying to hoard the toy, I think I still would have sat there and let my son assert himself.

I Heart Forgiveness

And no, I don't mean that I love engaging in the act of forgiveness where I am the forgiver and you are the forgivee. I mean my son forgiving me. I want it, but I have a harder time giving it. That actually kind of kicked me in the teeth tonight when I thought about how grateful I felt that all my crankiness from the day could just be swept away with a little laughter and love. Awwww.
I was cranky all day. I even threatened to not let him go see the fountain in the middle of the square because I was ready for him to take a nap. Nevermind that I had promised to take him several times throughout the day. It wasn't until he took on a joint effort to ask nicely with his nanna that I gave in.
I was cranky despite the pure joy he got from laying on his belly and sticking his hands in the water. I was even cranky when he held my hand, his tiny palm so soft and warm, to cross the street without my having to ask him twice.
And at the end of the very busy day when I finally felt bad about just how cranky I had been, he said from the back of the car (no, not the trunk, I wasn't that cranky), "Mom, I love you very, VERY much!" And when I said, "I love you too, babe" he said "awwwww, that's so sweet."
That's when I felt grateful for forgiveness. Thus the topic. I haven't evolved enough to talk about how forgiving I am. I only got so far as to think, "Man, I bet it would feel nice to someone else if I forgave them. Hmmm. Interesting."
The end.