I'm still alive

You might think this post is about surviving yesterday and today with my children since the school district did, in fact, cancel school because it is cold.  We're weather pussies here, I tell you.
No, this post is about watching Pearl Jam: 20, a documentary by Cameron Crowe on "the" band that was my soundtrack for 4 years of undergrad.  The band I saw in concert and for which I skipped Shakespeare...the ONLY class I ever skipped in college.

I was, and continue to be, so completely bad-ass.

Watching this film as a 40-year-old, as a mother of 3, as I walked on the treadmill and then lifted weights, was a bit surreal.  When I was highly into the band, they seemed so much older than me, so far removed yet with an anger, a dissatisfaction that I could taste because that same anger, insecurity, dissatisfaction was what I ate and drank as well.

I don't know if it was shared overgrown teenage angst, the rut of late teens and most of one's twenties that makes people so lost, or if it was a cultural response to the politics and economics of the time.  But as I was watching the snippets of Andy Rooney complaining about the nonsense of "these kids being so angry.....and about what?," I didn't find myself agreeing with him, which is sorta what I expected.

The members of Pearl Jam are now middle-aged dudes with kids, and I am a middle-aged woman with kids.  Perhaps we need to be as old as Andy Rooney was when he launched that diatribe to get what he was saying?  Or perhaps it is a generational thing?  Maybe my entire generation, though mature now and with some wisdom, is still dissatisfied?  Though we've settled into ourselves and lives and our roles within those lives, perhaps there will always be a part of us that is inherently unhappy with the way things are with the world and within ourselves?

Or is it an artistic thing?  I have always been a writer, though on my itty-bitty scale of life, and not on the world stage at LARGE as Pearl Jam was and is.  Artists of various kinds often tend to be unhappy, morose, serious, deep, whatever.

And yet, watching the documentary, I felt a pulse of understanding of this aging experience.  The words do not mean to me now what they meant 20 years ago, but I can still feel what I felt then as I listened.  I remember what they meant.  I remember that vast lostness that surrounded me.  There is a part of my soul that remains stuck in it.

Am I not feeling it as intensely because I'm blessedly medicated or because I'm older?  Or both?

At 40, I'm past so much of that angst, but there is still the longing, the questioning, the existential turmoil that pinches me, keeps me churning, although at a much less hectic pace than it once did.  

Is something wrong, she said.

Well, of course, there is.

You're still alive, she said.

Oh, and do I deserve to be?

Is that the question?

And, if so, if so,

Who answers?

Who answers?

I, oh, I'm still alive.

Crazy stuff a momma thinks when winter break is ALMOST over but weather dudes are forecasting ample snow the day BEFORE school resumes

It is Saturday.  My children have been out of school since December 21, which makes 15 days of togetherness.

Fifteen days of togetherness....
When it is bitterly cold and there was no snow in which to play until yesterday (and there was only a dusting).
When everyone else is off work and school and are, therefore, clogging up the malls and cinemas and fun joints.
When I've just spent a buttload of money on Christmas presents and windows so the idea of spending any more money makes me feel queasy.

I have been trying to keep my calm.  Not get annoyed.
But I have reached critical mass.
 
I am to the point where I am getting fed the fuck up with my daughter's American Girl doll that Santa brought her because that bitch is high-maintenance.  She has been going everywhere with us and showing up in our family photos and losing her clothes and jewelry when she visits the grandparents.

Last night I was so in need of some momma decompression out-the-house-time that I went to Target (which is on my shit-list for jacking up my Red card with all their less-than-stellar fraud protection).  And I have absolutely no desire to buy ANYTHING.  It was just the only place I could think of to wander aimlessly and not get arrested.

As much as I cringe at the prospect of summer break because of its length, it is a trillion times better than this stuck-in-the-house-ness.  There are parks and splashpads and pools and the frickin' hose outside that I can spray them with if I feel desperate.

And now the weather people are talking about frigid temps and snowfall for tomorrow, the day BEFORE school resumes.  The day BEFORE my first day of routine and normalcy and "3 hours of bliss 2 days a week" that I have missed.  In this neck of the woods, the public school system has been known to call snow days because it was gonna snow at 2:30 pm.  It has been known to cancel school because of frigid temperatures.

The kids had 2 snow days in December, and the only good thing about those was that it means that I WON'T have a week off with them in February, which is even worse than winter break because they don't have new toys with which to play.

I need my children to go back to school for many reasons.

I need to throw away these stale Christmas cookies and broken candy-canes, and they need the distraction of school to forget that these items are in the pantry.
I need to throw away the various boxes and wrappings and, let's be honest, garbage that my children think is valuable stuff.
I need a little bit of time in which my children aren't in the house so I can get 1-2 things done without having to stop every 28 seconds to give someone a snack.

I'm trying to stay calm.  I'm trying to let this dust over my like flakes of snow.
But in my efforts to think positive, the only thing that comes to mind is that ample snow will give me a place to temporarily hide the bodies.  

Suggestions for 2014

I don't really like to think of what I do on New Years as being a resolution since that takes a lot of....resolve.  I'm so completely out of my routine groove that scrounging up an ounce of willpower is almost more than I can manage.  My abdomen is proof.  

Whenever a new year comes around, although I recognize it as being an artificial restarting of time, I am always happy to see it.  However arbitrary, I like the idea of a fresh start.  A space in the continuum of life to take stock, rid myself of baggage, see if I can find ways to be a better person.  

In 2013, things felt different.  G began kindergarten, M started preschool, and I started my slow re-entry into professional educational work.  I'm not sure all of this translated into "better," but it was different.

There were some things I saw fulfilled, namely getting through Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, a task that was two years or so in the making.  Teaching forced me back into classics, which helped make this novel feel do-able.  

Right now, perhaps because of the excess of the holidays (foodstuff and stuff-stuffs) I am less about starting new things as I am about completing things I've wanted to do.  Using up what I have.

So my suggestions to myself for 2014 as as follows:

1. Finish reading the books that are on my bedside table, especially the ones I began in 2013.  And if this doesn't work, MOVE those books to another "holding tank" so that I'm not looking at them every night and feeling like I'm so.far.behind. 

2. Recommit to working out 2 times a week and eating "whole."  I had been doing this fairly well until December when everything went to hell.  The windows, G's tantrums, sickness, an overabundance of sweets and miserable restraint that was stress- and PMS-induced.  I don't own a scale, but I'm feeling more doughy than I'd like.

3. Try, even though it is not in my nature, to stay more calm.  I'm a yeller, a freaker-outer, a blow-my-top gal.  I don't doubt at all that part of G's problem with tantrums is my reaction to G's tantrums.  I am determined, with the assistance of the psychologist and the occupational therapist who will evaluate G on Friday, to try to hold myself together better, to not let G's issues, whatever they are, make me blow a gasket.  I am certain I will fail miserably at this on an almost daily minute-by-minute basis.  But my heart is in the right place, if nothing else.  

(I've got lots of other ideas about what I could or should do, but trying to stay calm in the face of my highly persistent 6-year-old is about all the self-betterment I can stand.  Ultimately, I can't change my basic nature.  I am a bitcher, a whiner, a venter.  I will never be the type of person who oozes love and adoration for anyone, even the people I love and adore.  It just isn't how I roll, and it will never be.) 

4. Save more money.  (This I love to do and even consider it fun.  I gotta have an easy one in here.)

And that is it.

I resolve to consider these suggestions as things I may like to do in 2014. 

One hell of a week

I've had stressful weeks, but last week was as close to 2004-level anxiety (as in breakdown) as I've experienced.  Eating to survive.  Poor sleep.  And a viral respiratory infection for good measure.

There was the window installation which ran into a kink on Tuesday morning, when I was at M's preschool Christmas party.  Apparently, the lintel at the front of the house that holds up the brick wasn't installed properly.  When the windows guys took out the old dining room window, the lintel fell.  Off.  Completely.  Not good.  And so began my limited appetite.

So I had to call a mason.  For $500, he said he could fix it the next day (Wednesday) at 9:00.

Wednesday morning I took G for a visit with our family doc to get a referral for occupational therapy.  When I returned at close to 10:00 am, there was no mason.  And there was a mix-up in the window company's scheduling so they had to leave before the mason showed up (which he did, although very late).  The plan was to fix the lintel and finish the windows today, Christmas Eve.

That Wednesday night continued the limited appetite along with aches and absolute feelings of exhaustion.

Thursday and Friday I felt pretty punk and tried not to do much, but I had M all day both days,   Thursday afternoon was our meeting with a psychologist with G, and Friday was class parties.  G was a tantruming mess every day of the week except Friday.  

My head congestion eased up a bit this weekend, although I am still not 100%.  I'm doing only what I have to do and trying to sit, read and rest as much as possible.

Night crawler Christmas

I don't remember too many of my childhood Christmases, but one that does stand out in my mind is what I refer to as "Night Crawler Christmas."

I don't know how old I was, probably 9 or 10.  I don't know what I received as Christmas gifts.  I don't even really remember that it rained a lot that year.

What I do remember is my dad, my younger brother and I walking the streets of our neighborhood with buckets in hand, picking up some of the thousands of worms that sought relief from the over-saturated ground by crawling onto the roads.

The neighborhood in which we lived didn't have curbs as we do in our neighborhood now.  Drainage wasn't as engineered so the worms didn't have to do as much work to get to the pavement.  The roadways were absolutely covered with worms.

I don't remember what we did with the worms, whether dad saved them for future fishing excursions or if we dumped them in the grass once we had finished trolling the neighborhood.  But I can clearly see us meandering the empty streets, my brother and I excited with every wiggler we delicately lifted from the concrete.

As a mom, I worry that my children will remember every little thing I do or they experience, specifically all the things I fuck up in my job as mother.  The times I yell and am not especially nice.

So memories like this are soothing in that they are a nice reminder of how much I don't recall of my childhood.  I don't remember all the times my parents lost their tempers with me or did things that I thought were completely unjust and mean (although now I understand those decisions were likely completely reasonable and justified).   I don't remember every unpleasant experience that life threw at my childhood self.

My memories of childhood are dim, feathery shadows with the occasional clear outline of true remembrance, like the night crawler Christmas.  I remember the oddities of my childhood experience, the unusual, the unplanned.

Probably most people's memories work like this, or perhaps this is one of the blessings of the OCD brain.

My Advent struggle (thinking on Mary)

For someone who doesn't feel particularly religious/spiritual, I find myself thinking such things often.

As I've been struggling through these weeks of December, with my usual Christmas bahhumbug-ness coupled with home improvement disasters and the emotional roller-coaster of G and his current issues, I have thought to what a shitty time Mary must have had.

There was that pesky angel visitation.
There was the donkey ride at 9 months.
The birth-giving in a stable instead of an inn.
The getting the hell outta town and into Egypt.
And the son who didn't exactly do as "normal" Jewish boys did.

Maybe that is the point of Advent for me.  Perhaps because of my personality, my own limitations in the joy category, my anxiety, I'm not going to be one to savor the anticipation, the waiting on the king.  Maybe I need to look to Advent as my understanding of the struggle, the difficulties inherent in the king coming.

I know that I've learned much more from struggle in my life than from any easy roads on which I've traveled.  I have lived the experience of a breakdown being a breakthrough, and so I need to look to these weeks of discomfort, of fear, of bone-tiredness, as the difficult path that will eventually, at some point, lead me to greater compassion, greater understanding, and hopefully greater fulfillment.  

At this time of year, I think on the sacrifice of Mary who, after the event, is pushed into the background but is assuredly the backbone of the story.

When life hands you lemons, you freak the f*ck out and don't compare yourself to the third world

I am all for gratitude.  I know where my bread is buttered, and I am thankful my life is as easy (in the grand scheme of things) as it is.

But I am struggling in the midst of a rough spell, and I have to remind myself that it does me absolutely no good to compare my struggles to those of a person in the Philippines or Haiti or anywhere else where the problems are those of survival, of meeting basic needs of food, water or shelter.

I hate standardized testing in public schools because the tests compare what totally different sets of kids from totally different backgrounds in totally different years learn from totally different teachers.  The expectation is for everyone to be proficient in spite of these differences.  To know the same stuff with the same level of understanding.

Why, then, would it make any sense to compare my stress and/or suffering with someone who is completely different from a totally different background in a completely different culture under totally different life/economic circumstances and say whose problem is better or worse?

It makes me feel like shit, and I don't need to feel guilt-like shit on top of feeling overwhelmed-like shit because of the stress life is throwing at me.

Because of my personality, because of my OCD, because of my GAD, I do a piss-poor job handling things.  Period.  Whether I'm here or somewhere else.  Whether I'm rich or poor.  I could drop myself into any situation, and I would handle stress suckily.

My stressors are what they are, and I tire of knowing that I handle things poorly and feeling guilty that I handle things poorly over issues that are of no "real" consequence anyway.

If I believe my life is of value, then I have to give value to not only what I experience but how I experience it.  My life has to be as valuable as the value, the seriousness I put on the struggles of those whose struggles are different than mine.

To discount my own struggle is setting myself up for nihilism.

And OCD, GAD and nihilism seem like a very, very bad mix.