Tag Archives: all about me

Right back at it

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One of the things that has changed along with the Ex’s illness is my work status. I’ve forgone my state of idle bliss and have gone back to work. Much against my best intentions…

Several moons ago, I worked for a few years at a lovely medical Spa near our town. I worked for the Ex, which was much less devastating on our relationship than one would think. I managed the Spa, and quite enjoyed the work despite it being intensely time consuming. I enjoyed it so much that I worked until two days before the Boy was born and I went right back to work once I’d healed from the whole ordeal. The Boy was a delightful baby (during the day) and slept contently beside my desk when he wasn’t eating. The job, however, was time-intensive and stressful enough that when I fell pregnant with the Girl a year later I completely lost my shit and decided I was done. DONE.

So fast forward to January and the Ex asks me to return to my previous job, with better hours and for a limited amount of time, just to get some projects off the ground basically. I said no. Because, mostly, I’m not crazy enough to go work for my ex husband when we’re going through an extremely difficult and emotionally destabilizing (for me) separation. And then he got sick. And then I had no choice but to take the job. Mostly because I have issues with saying no to people.

It’s taken some adjusting. I’m only working part time, but with all the added work of taking care of the Ex, bringing him his meals and all the rest of it, it really feels like I’m working full time. Also, I miss my kids. And I miss exercising. A lot.

I know, I know, everybody works… but I had a pretty good set up before!

Also, there are things I had forgotten about working with actual adults. I get to talk to actual adults. I also need to remember that I’m not dressing for the park or errands. The last few weeks I’ve been holed up in the office, so jeans were fine, but now I’m interacting with clients a bit more and, as I realized this morning, jeans and sneakers ain’t cutting it! So now I’ve got to do a closet check, with subsequent tears and wails of I’ve got nothing to wear. Oy Vey!

I’m tired just thinking about it.

Did I mention that I actually have to use my brain now? For several consecutive hours I need to be able to not just concentrate but also look smart doing it. I need to follow conversations and look at a budget without going cross-eyed, and I need to remember what I tell people to do and why. My brain is about to explode.

It’s not all bad, but it’s not what I would have chosen. For now I’m rolling with it and trying to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment as much as possible. Also, trying not to tank the projects, alienate the staff, or kill one of the clients, all distinct, if remote, possibilities… thankfully I’m too tired right now to worry about that too much, which I guess is one of the benefits of insomnia. Score one for insomnia.

If they can do that, so can I.

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This week has been hell, I would have said about ten minutes ago. It’s been a difficult week for me, full of ups and downs; too many emotions and too many tears. I can’t get rid of the anger, the disappointment, the resentment… so many negative feelings along with worry and fear for the Ex’s life (I’ve decided it’s time to stop calling him the Husband… I fiddled around with the Father of my children, but that’s just too goddamn long to write), worry for my kids, worry for work, worry, worry, worry… which reminds me, need to get my brow botoxed before I turn into a prune.

My MIL was here for a few days, then my mother arrived, which, if you’ve read my past posts you would thing was a very bad idea, considering how much we fight and argue and disagree… but in times like these, I’ve realized, I need my family around. Case in point, last night we were watching tv and at around 1 am, when every other sane person that knows how tired I’ve been would encourage me to go to sleep, we decided to watch “just one more episode” (Lucifer, good show btw), by then of course it had been four hours since dinner so I was feeling peckish and I turn to her and say I’ll just pause this for a second, I’m going to make myself a sandwich. And instead of saying do you really need a sandwich at 1am? Which is what I expected and was getting ready to argue, my mom just goes “ok”, gets up and follows me downstairs to make her own sandwich. And at that moment I realized how badly I needed having her around. She’s the one that makes me have two glasses of champagne with dinner, because, really, why not. She makes me feel like maybe I can loosen up and let go of my obsessive control issues every once in a while. She’s the one that is completely and unequivocally on my side in the fuck fest that has become my life. She loves the Ex, but she loves me more, and she sees him differently from the way I see him. She doesn’t blame me as much as I blame myself, she takes a bit of the responsibility from my shoulders, she helps me see him with his flaws and not just my own. She sees how badly he is feeling, she realizes and acknowledges the difficulties he is going through, but she also sees and cares about mine. I’m happy I asked her to come, cause sometimes, no matter how old we are we really do just need our mom.

But this wasn’t the only point of this post. Right before I started writing I saw the following video on the war in Syria. And just like that my problems did not seem so big. We all live our own personal tragedies, of course, and my problems aren’t any less important to me now, but they have been put into perspective. There are people trying to survive atrocities, daily, all over the world. If they can do that, I can survive this.

Crying, rivers and streams

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I used to have a husband.

I used to have a man that loved me, took care of me, put me first and who put my happiness above all else. I married this man, I loved him, I gave everything to him, I tried to make him happy and to take care of him. We made two beautiful, perfect little lives together. I was exceedingly lucky.

Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was ours and it worked. For a time it worked. And then it didn’t work.

He got leukemia, twice, he had two bone marrow transplants; he developed an illness called GVHD (graft versus host disease), which some transplant patients get, but he survived. He survived, but we didn’t. I don’t even know when and how it happened, our marriage died, slowly, over time, we didn’t even notice. One day everything was fine, and the next I simply can’t take the fighting any longer and I ask him to leave, for the night, for a few days, just to get a break from it all. He left, and it was a nightmare, so he came back after a week, but he never really came back. He came back and slept in another room, he shut down or off or maybe I only then started noticing. He simply didn’t love me anymore. It took me forever to understand those words. How, how can he not love me anymore? We’re supposed to love each other forever. We’re supposed to love each other more each day, not less, not stop.

It took months, months of arguing, of crying, of trying to wrap my mind around it, months of negotiating, figuring out what we were doing, months of hopes and crushed hope, months of misunderstandings, of righteous indignation and of broken hearts.

Finally in September I accepted that I could not and would not try to keep a man who loved me, yes, because we’ve been together for sixteen years and have two children, but who no longer loved me as his wife, who no longer loved me for me. And then it took two more months before he finally moved out of the house, but only half way, all his stuff is still here. And after that we still went on for months trying to figure out a new routine, trying to parent together without being together, trying to become independent from the other while maintaining a good relationship. I never threw a vase at him. I wish I had. I wish I had yelled at him, I wish I had gotten angry at him and thrown plates at his head, I’ve got so many plates. I wish I hadn’t cried quite so much.

Last week he was diagnosed with leukemia again. AGAIN. And I’ve started crying again, and I can’t stop, I literally can’t stop. I used to have a husband, now I have a man that I love, but with whom I am no longer married – on paper, I am, but in every other way that counts, I’m not – who needs me, who I can’t abandon if for no other reason that he’s the father of my children and because I can’t imagine a life without him in it, and because he is my family and I am his. And so I can’t stop crying, crying rivers and streams.

A lot like giving up

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Every time I open the BonnyBard file to write another entry on the blog it shocks me how long it’s been since my last one. When I wrote on Moomser I managed to write at least three times a week and read and comment on loads of blogs, now it’s a miracle if I remember to open my mac every three days to check my email. I’m not exactly sure what has changed. My time is distributed differently: I exercise more, I have a lot more to do with the new house, I have less help, but the kids are also older and in school longer, and I’m not in the hospital with the husband for hours on end anymore. Yet I can’t seem to find the time to write. And when I do, it’s because I’ve got crap to work out. I’m starting to annoy even myself! But in the spirit of letting go and trying not to control everything I’m just trying to take things as they are, observe them, take note of them and then just sort of letting them work themselves out. Not exactly sure how that’s working out for me yet.

I had a mini meltdown today. I was sitting in the kitchen with the kids and the Husband comes in, does something funny, and I crack up. For a full ten minutes. I laugh until I get tears in my eyes from laughing, I start to get over it, the mirth gets ahold of me again, over and over for what feels like forever. Initially, it feels good, liberating, but then I realize I’m not really enjoying the laughter, it’s kind of hysterical and maybe I need a good slap to shock myself out of it. And then the laughter turned to tears, not actual crying tears but just sort of crying tears. Enough so that my kids started giving me funny looks but not so bad that they didn’t believe me when I said they were tears of laughter. Even though they weren’t, not really.

This past year has been so hard. Not in any tangible sense, nothing I can really explain that would make sense to others, but it’s been hard. The Husband and I can’t seem to connect, we try, we’ve got great days, good weeks, and then just completely hopeless days and weeks. I no longer feel like my only option is divorce, I’ve seen the consequences on a friend and her children up close and personal and I would really rather not go through that. Even though, I, unlike her, am not completely dependent on my husband financially. Yet nor do I see a way out of this slump, I don’t have the hope and blinding optimism required to pick up and leave, certain that something much better awaits me. I don’t think my life would be better with another man (who?), nor do I think it would be better if I were to be alone. I just want the marriage that I’m in, with the husband that I have, to work itself out. I’ve done all I can do, I’ve tried it all. At this point I think he’s the one that needs to work stuff out, and mostly he agrees, he just hasn’t found the energy or the motivation to do it. But all this waiting around is taking its toll on me.

I’ve learned, through trial and error, that I can’t control everything, no matter how much I may want to, or how much easier it would be if I could. I cannot keep hitting my head on the wall. But letting things go, and waiting patiently to see if they improve, if someone else takes the reins… well, that’s no easier. It’s just as painful and it’s just as much hard work, though in a different direction. Hence the hysterics.

This is all I can say on the subject, I’ve put it out there, and hope it makes me feel better, or not. Who knows. This feels a lot like giving up, and it’s not a good feeling.

Rolling hills and verdant valleys, dammit!

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The problem with the small, dinky, one horse town we live in is that it’s in a truly beautiful area:

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I recklessly took this picture as I was driving the kids to their swimming lessons yesterday. These hurried, one handed, trying to drive, iphone shots don’t do it justice, and proper photos like The Husband takes, with his professional camera and lenses and filters galore just make it look fake, like it’s too perfect it simply cannot but be photoshopped (even though it’s not). This place is positively magnificent, mountains and hills all around you, never ending fields, grass swaying gently in the breeze, majestic trees, wildflowers of every hue as far as the eye can see. And in the fall… well, autumn is my favorite season, the yellows and oranges, the pops of blood red… it’s dizzying.

It’s like nature is whispering “stay…” in my ear with the wind. Of course we’re staying a few more years, I mean we haven’t even moved into the new house yet (I bet you’d forgotten all about that!) but ever since I went to Houston in March my heart kind of wants to be stateside.

I went to Houston for a myriad of complicated reasons that aren’t really my story to tell right now, suffice it to say that there were absolutely non-tragic, yet still quite stressful family reasons for my going, and I went pretty much from one day to the next (which in mom speak means I only had a week to organize the care of my children for ten days which is essentially only marginally less complicated than a military operation to invade a moderately sized country from three sides). It was my first time in Houston alone since I went for the Boy’s baby shower six and a half years ago, and then I was pregnant so I couldn’t even drink. It felt exactly like coming home from University all those years. I stepped off the plane, completely free and unencumbered (and relatively well rested), and I partied and relaxed for a week (and dealt with some stuff, but I’ve almost forgotten all that).

My mom would wake me at ten (10!!) with a cup of freshly brewed coffee from the best coffeemaker ever invented (the Keurig), and then I would idle the entire day by, eating, shopping, hanging out with friends, going to fabulous restaurants with my Mom and Brother… I went out drinking – and now I got a major craving for a Shiner and fried pickles – and I could drink all the beer I wanted and I could even finish the night off with a jack and coke because I was responsible for no one but myself for the entire night. It was liberating and so much fun!

 

And mostly all it did was make me miss home and want to move back to Houston. Although, I know that those ten days were a break, an anomaly, that if I moved there my life would move along with me, and thank god for that. But still, I love Houston, I miss my family, and I miss my friends. So sometimes I fantasize about moving home. I especially fantasize about that when it’s been snowing for what feels like fourth months straight here.

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And then you get days like this… gorgeous, sunny, crisp, the hills all rolling, the mountains all peaky with a dusting of snow, and you get that “Sound of Music” induced feeling of singing and prancing on the hills and then you start to feel like eh, you could stay here a while longer…. And that’s the point where I start hyperventilating myself into a panic attack because the verdant hills are actually covered in snow and ice four to five months a year.

So this is where I’m at, confused as ever, foot in one shoe on either side of the pond, and craving fried pickles and an ice cold Shiner.

 

New Year, Old life

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I like the idea of fresh starts. The new year, my birthday, a fresh season, heck, even a new month, these are all occasions that trigger expectations of new beginnings, renewed efforts, opportunities… but not this year. This year I don’t want to start out with resolutions, with hopeful plans of a new and improved me. This year I’ve decided to start out with more acceptance of the old me, the flawed, familiar me. I have a whole list of things I’d like to do, I’d like to finally completely eliminate processed foods and artificial products from my life, I’d like to exercise more, I want to get back in a dance studio, I want to be more patient, more fun, a better more engaging mother. I want to be a nicer wife, I want to have more sex, I want to lose lots and lots of weight, I want to be healthy, and less tired and less irritable… I could go on for pages…. But that’s exactly what I don’t want to do this year. I don’t want to start the year with a series of HAVE TOs.

In fact, I’m going to try to not make plans for “this year” at all. All I want is to be happy. Happy, right now, today. I don’t even want to worry about being happy tomorrow, or next month, or when spring arrives, I don’t want to worry at all, in fact.

I realize I’m not going to be able to eliminate worry from my life completely, I’m always going to worry about certain things, I just want to let go of some of the completely useless weight I’ve been carrying on my shoulders forever. I want my life to be lighter, both in weight and in intensity, I want it to be light as air, light as a bright sunny day, light as when you’re floating in the sea in the summer.

I’m a control freak, but I want to let go of some of the control. I’m tired of fighting to control the things I have no actual control over. I’m not saying I’m planning on becoming a completely laid back person. I’m not, I couldn’t, there’s not enough weed in the world for that… I’m always going to fight to get dinner on the table at 7 no matter what the circumstances are, but there are some fights I’m just not willing to fight anymore.

Being happy, happy with me, happy with life… it seems so simple and yet so daunting. So that’s my plan, that’s my goal, for right this minute and hopefully the next one and the next, but I’m not going to worry about them, I’m only thinking about right now for now.

 

So, friends, Happy New Year, may 2014 be whatever you want it to be, and may you always love yourself and be good to yourself… because, well, you’re with yourself a lot, aren’t you now…

Sometimes a little French Onion Soup is enough

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This October was one of the craziest months I’ve had all year, and, honest to God, I have no idea of the why or the how of it. All the kids’ activities kicked in at once, as well as my own, my mom was supposed to arrive, then didn’t, then reset the date, and then changed her plans again, then finally arrived, which kept me in stand-by mode for two weeks, not being able to make any plans as she was arriving “any minute now” and then kept me busy for the two weeks she was actually here. In fact, now that I think about it, it all makes sense, October was taken over by the tornado that represents my mother’s visits.

A visit, which incidentally, was much better than expected, in part because I kept my expectations way low and in part because I sent the kids off to their other grandma for three days. My mom has a low tolerance for children and I always had unrealistic expectations as to her magically (and inexplicably) becoming a kid person as a grandmother. She does really well the first few days, then she usually overloads, but this time we got to spend some quality mother/daughter time for a few days and then the kids came back. Though I felt bad sending them away since they only get to see her once or twice a year, I’m perfectly aware that it’s all in my head. They didn’t care, their other grandma was ecstatic, my mom got to decompress, and I got to go shopping all day, cook with my mom, and go out to dinner with absolutely no organizing required and no guilt at leaving the kids home with the babysitter. Definitely the way to go for all her visits, until the kids start into the tween/teen years, at which point I will be able to just leave her to it and go enjoy myself in total independence.

The Husband’s health saga continues, he’s not terribly ill, he’s just not terribly healthy either, and quite frankly, it’s starting to get annoying for all concerned (directly, or indirectly). He’s actually starting on a path of self-discovery of sorts, which hopefully will bring him some positive results and, even more hopefully, won’t drive a wedge between us, as these things often do. Things between us, they have been tense lately, so we’re all hoping that some good will come of this, and I’ll leave it at that, for now.

We went out for lunch today, a rare occurrence on a week day, which, in this case, mostly involved taking the cars to get the tires changed for winter… oh so romantic, I know. As chance would have it though, we decided to go to a friend’s restaurant that we always enjoy greatly and is usually too far to drive to in the rare evenings we manage to dine out sans kids what with the babysitter waiting at home impatiently counting the minutes till she can leave and go out with her own boyfriend.

This restaurant, The Baluardo, is fantastic, the chef Marc Lanteri is French and his wife, my friend Amy, is American and their diversity really shines through, with the Italian wholesome ingredients, the American boldness and French sophistication. If you’re ever in the area it’s definitely an obligatory stop, especially if you’re into Michelin Guide starred restaurants.

Anyway…

They had French Onion Soup on the menu today. I’ve been hankering after a good, authentic, French onion soup, which is strangely a much harder dish to find than one would think. Also, I’m extraordinarily picky when it comes to French Onion Soup. Mostly I only like the one I make, which is truly delicious, and for which I can take none of the merit other than being able to follow a recipe. If you want to try your hand at it I got the recipe from Deb of The Smitten Kitchen, since finding it I’ve tweaked it enough to make it my own, but the original is the best place to start experimenting. After eating it today, I wrote on facebook that French Onion Soup makes me happy. And it really, truly, does. It’s so simple, just a handful of ingredients, but it’s so comforting when done right, so light yet tasty, it has so much depth of taste and texture. I needed it today, I needed something simple to make me happy, I needed to be reminded that life doesn’t always have to be about the complicated dishes, that sometimes the simple things, if prepared with great care and attention – because that’s the only way to get a French Onion Soup to taste right – can be just the thing to set your world back right-side up. If only for a few minutes.

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Tick Tock says the Clock, Thirty-eight says the Date.

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Tomorrow’s my birthday. Every year the approach to my birthday is a little bit different. Last year I was down in the dumps, this year, I’m neither here nor there, I’m pretty even keeled. It feels almost like it’s too early for it to be my birthday already, I haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that summer’s over, much less that I’m a year older tomorrow.

Looking back on the year that’s been, not an awful lot has changed yet I feel like I’ve changed a great deal. Physically, I’m stronger than I was, exercise has become a part of my life again, yet I haven’t lost any weight, which was an obsession last year, and more of just passing note this year. I thought I’d be in the new house by now, I’m not, yet I care much less than I probably should. I’m healthier, yet I’m also much more forgiving when I find myself hand wrapped round the chocolate bar right before bedtime. I’m more patient with the kids, yet, bizarrely, I’m stricter with them. I’m busier yet more organized. It’s all really quite surprising. And the guilt, well it’s not gone completely because that would, of course, be unrealistic, but it rears it’s ugly head less regularly.

My mom was supposed to be coming in this week, she didn’t because she was having some health issues so she had to postpone her trip by a few days. A lot of my ambivalence towards her seems to be gone, or dormant at least. I’m trying not to worry about what she thinks, how she’s going to behave, how she’ll react, how or if she’ll judge me, I’ve realized I have no control over these things anyway. I decided to give myself a break and hire some extra help while she’s here, and I’m thankful that I can do that.  It’s not going to be the perfect visit, I’m just going to try and not let the disagreements and the disappointments get to me. She is who she is, and I am who I am, so I’m just going to try and enjoy her visit and leave all the baggage at the door.

The Husband, he got me the most awesomest present in the world. (Hyperbole). I already know what it is, because I’ve been talking about it for weeks hoping he’d get the hint. And he did. It arrived the other day and as soon as it’s set up I’ll photograph it and share. Tomorrow evening we’re going to go out to dinner with the kids, to a mid-level fancy-ish restaurant that I love and where they’ll behave (with they’re ipods), I didn’t feel like organizing anything too complicated, involving babysitters and whatnot, and I wanted the whole family together (and I don’t feel like cooking). On Friday I’m going to a Spa with The Girls in the morning and lunch, I’ve got a great group of friends and I’m so happy to be spending time with them. It all feels very simple, I’m not stressing over anything, I’m not organizing anything complicated and I have no expectations that someone else will. And it feels good. So, tomorrow’s my birthday, and I’m surprisingly relaxed, a little older, and hopefully just a smidge wiser, can’t really ask for more than that now, can I?

One week down, how many more to go?

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Week one of school is finished, and I survived. Unbelievable. Because, let’s be honest here, getting the kids back on a school schedule after the summer is much harder work for Mom than for anyone else in the family. I’m not a morning person, and quite probably neither are my kids, whether it’s survival instinct (who knows what I would have done with one of those children who wakes up every morning at 6.30 all chirpy and talkative?) or their natural inclination I have no idea, either way, I tried to bring their wake up time up (and consequently all the related sleep times up) for the two weeks prior to this and I clearly failed, if the amount of tantrums, hysterical, over-tired crying fits, middle of the night wake up calls, and generalized grumpiness are any indication. I’m hoping this week will be better.

Although, as I started planning their weekly activities I already wanted to pull out all my hair… I don’t know how mothers with more than two kids do it (and I quite envy mothers of singletons right now, for organizational purposes, at least). The Boy wants to play soccer this year, they start them at 6 here, but as he’s tall they’ll take him anyway, the Girls wants to do a dance class, and I would like them to do a swimming course before the start of the skiing season. It shouldn’t be that complicated, I thought, I don’t want to over book them, but an activity each and a joint one shouldn’t overextend us. I am so naïve.

Oh, and I need to keep one afternoon for their American babysitter because I’ve realized that when they have someone (other than me) who speaks English to them they’re more prone to speak it in general. Easy peasy. Right.

So, this is what I found out after a round of calls and a couple of hours of scheduling: soccer is Tuesday and Friday, because apparently 5-6 year olds who aren’t allowed to play in the tournaments and who are basically going to chase a ball around a field for an hour and a half need to “train” at least twice a week. Every single dance school but one in this god forsaken town, in an evil conspiracy to drive mom’s insane (I presume), decided that Tuesday was the only logical day for the 3-4 year old dance class, and the one that went against the mold already has a waiting list. Oh, and by the way, our lovely American babysitter only has one afternoon off from her primary job. Guess which day. Tuesday. And after a half hour of route planning and head banging (not the heavy metal kind) I resigned myself to the fact that without the aid of cloning or a teleporter there is no way I can get them both to their activities on Tuesday. Seriously, how does everyone else do it?

Anyway, before letting myself get sucked into the insanity of a new school year, I’d like to wrap up our summer. We got back from our extremely long vacation to a garden that looked like this:

my tomato plants

my tomato plants

 

cherry tomatoes

cherry tomatoes

Eggplants! I have 3 plants just like this...

Eggplants! I have 3 plants just like this…

Peppers, I have eight plants of lovely green, yellow, and red peppers. Not as pretty as the supermarket ones, but yummy all the same.

Peppers, I have eight plants of lovely green, yellow, and red peppers. Not as pretty as the supermarket ones, but yummy all the same.

So we had a LOT of this:

Caprese salad - the tomatoes and basil are from the garden, as is the basil in the pesto.

Caprese salad – the tomatoes and basil are from the garden, as is the basil in the pesto.

Tuna salad bruschetta

Tuna salad bruschetta

And since this was overflowing:

large lavender plant

large lavender plant

so I made sachets for my closet and drawers… but when that wasn’t enough I figured I could use it to experiment…

Sausage risotto with rosemary, lavender and saffron.

Sausage risotto with rosemary, lavender and saffron.

so creamy makes me hungry again...

so creamy makes me hungry again…

Have I made you hungry yet?

I’m slowly getting my act together again with the start of a new school year. I’ve got several posts I think you’ll like in the works, and I’m pretty confident I’ll even manage to finish them and post them, so yay for school, despite the scheduling headaches.

Two cutie pies on their first day of school. Sweet brother carrying his sister's backpack. A little southern gentleman in the making.

Two cutie pies on their first day of school. Sweet brother carrying his sister’s backpack. A little southern gentleman in the making.

Life Lesson #1: Chillax, dude

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Living life, as one does day in and day out till one no longer does, we learn things, life teaches us things, but oftentimes we forget these small, seemingly unimportant lessons. I figured I’d try and remember at least a few of them when they hit me upside the head.

The other day I made the unfortunate mistake of making a comment on one of my sisters’ facebook statuses (stati?), but let me give you some background. This sister of mine, (half-sister, to be precise, different mothers) she has always had a ginormous chip on her shoulder, I dare say, this chip, it is the size of Texas, and just as loud, and occasionally obnoxious (I’m allowed, I’m from there). This chip, which manifests itself mainly on many maudlin and/or pissed of rants as to how utterly unfairly life treats her, along with very grave, justified-or-not, abandonment issues have led her to a lifelong search of “spiritual improvement” or “personal betterment” and other sundry related paths. So, what this means, for our purposes, is that if you enter into any sort of serious discussion with her about life, and the meaning thereof, death, and it’s ramifications, life changes and such, you do so at your own peril because, you see, she is always right, as she has “done a lot of work on herself” and you, clearly, have not. Unless you’re just like her, in which case good for you (!) and I suggest you stop reading right this instant cause you can only get more offended as you go on.

Unfortunately for me, though, I forget these things, in the general business of living my life in a manner as far removed as possible from unnecessary mental masturbatory, pseudo-psychological, life exploratory type of behavior. In any case, I was being distracted as I am wont to do, and read one of her statuses that went something along the lines of Do you really know who you are? I’m not sure I know who I am any longer… is that good… or bad? Or something very similar to this. To which I responded something along the lines of dude, lay off the wine before the existential mind fuck… (just more, you know, politely).

And, wow do I wish I had laid off the wine before commenting! I was kidding, maybe she and all her friends didn’t get it… then I apologized, but she was on a roll, so I re-apologized and stated I hadn’t meant to intrude on a serious conversation and boy were her friends on a roll! So I shut up and ignored the rest of the very serious, very self-righteous, discussion.

But honestly, all I really wanted to say was god, guys, relax, live and let live, peace and love and all that. I mean really, maybe lay back on the wine, have some fun and stop being so freaking serious, because life, it is hard enough, painful enough, and just plain unpredictable enough that we shouldn’t be getting so involved in and up in arms about the stuff we write on facebook of all places.

Mostly though, what this little episode did for me was remind me that a certain measure of laid backedness, of that chillin’ feelin’ is very important in life, as is a proper grasp of irony, and humor – misguided though it may be. It also reminded me that my Dad always used to say that the women in his family had no sense of humor… that may have been generalizing just a smidge, but in this case, I kinda see his point so… sorry Dad for all the times I over-reacted, I’m glad I’ve mostly chillaxed enough now not to care whether everyone’s opinion is exactly on board with mine.