swing low

it is sunday. it is the day after the shower. i am exhausted. i went to bed relatively early last night and slept until 9, but i am still exhausted. i have blisters on the tops of my toes and the side of my foot from the sandals i wore yesterday. there goes my pre-florida pedicure. my knees are killing me. we were going to play tennis this morning, but i just can't seem to get my behind off the couch and my eyes keep wanting to close.

i probably could sleep were it not for the neighbor and his weed trimmer, lawnmower, and insanely loud car. then there are my daughters. they were so well behaved yesterday, not so much today. sylvie has been whining since she opened her eyes this morning and isabel has a chip on her shoulder about something. i suppose these are the thanks we get for letting them stay up late and look through the telescope, ride bikes, and listen to music on the porch.


i have no patience today, no true patience. i have been gritting my teeth and trying not to snap at them, especially since sylvie had an hour long crying jag when we were trying to put laundry away. yelling at her never helps, it makes it worse, so i was encouraging her to take deep breaths and count. it worked until isabel came running in and insisted she could count faster and in spanish. jesus.

the chicago trip is pretty much canceled, not that we had a room reserved. in fact, we found an awesome deal on a four star hotel for $89. we can't justify the money we would spend on other things, food, drinks, club cover charges, things like that. so unless we win the lottery, i get a raise, or jason goes back to work and gets forty hours plus, we'll have to postpone it another year. i am disappointed, really disappointed, but there isn't much to be done. to add salt to the wound there was an insert in todays new york times with the listings for all the free activities in millenium park. sigh.

so, i think we are still going to florida this week. i have not been given any information as to when we are leaving, so i suppose i will pack my bag and see what happens. i do so need some time away.

role models

i once read that sylvia plath did all of her writing for ariel in the mornings before her children woke up. i attempted to do that once, but i would have to get up at 5 am every morning. i don't know how isabel can go to bed at 10 pm and get up at 6 am on a saturday. i have a couple of friends, one of whom has a seven year old and an infant, who get up every single morning beforeand go to the gym, or run, or whatever it is they do. i can barely get myself out of the bed at 8 am on the weekends.

i feel run down and out of shape. i haven't been to yoga in at least a month. it seemed like one thing or another was getting in the way of me going. jason was working one week, then i contracted a god awful sinus infection, there was someone's birthday in there, then we were out of town, then jason was out of town, and now i have run out of excuses.

my back is killing me, i'm falling apart.

i need to pick up some proofreading jobs. i love doing it, it feeds my need to criticize without annoying my husband and children.

today is the big day to inspect the bees. hopefully, they have accepted the queen and there are bunches of little bee eggs in there.

i have to go grocery shopping today, we have been eating the bare bones of the pantry for the past four days. yay recession! it has been many meals of pasta, beans, leftovers, and eggs.

a slow and steady hum

i am transfixed by the bees in the backyard. if i walk out there and they aren't buzzing around, i am disappointed. the weather has not been very bee friendly. today, i was watching them being buffeted about by the wind,trying to maintain their flight path.

i know i am the biggest bee phobe. well, actually, i have a phobia of stinging insects. as a new beekeeper's wife, i have to distinguish. when jason became determined to have a beehive, i became extremely nervous. he assured me over and over that there were docile and that stinging something was a last resort option for them, as unlike wasps, they die when they use their stingers. i was still nervous.

i am now cautiously relaxed around them, if that is such a state of being. i have touched the hive to see if i can feel the vibrations of their work, i took them out a small dish of water with pieces of cork in it for them to drink, i felt guilty for an entire evening when i realized when i was backing away from the hive i had accidentally smashed one with my flip flop, and i could sit on the grass about three feet from the hive and watch them for hours. i do not take the lid of the hive off and when jason had to refill the feeder, i kept a fair distance. i do not, however, experience the paralyzing panic i used to feel as a child when a flying insect would buzz near my head.

they are soothing to watch. they are so determined, so efficient, and so pretty. the colors of their abdomen start as a honey yellow and melt into a caramel. when the wind isn't blowing and there isn't a tremendous amount of traffic on the expressway, you can distinctly hear a humming from the hive. i wish i had better photos of them to post.

so, the bees are my newest form of therapy. i can almost feel a little more centered when i watch them, which is so ironic considering i spent every warm weather month as a child running away from them.

so unoriginal

so after spending a good hour catching up on a friend's blog and chuckling out loud at many parts of it, i have decided to be a copy cat.

she pledged to write a blog every day for the entire month.

i think i am going to do it. even if i only sit down and write a small paragraph...i used to write ALL the time before the age of married suburbia. there is no reason not to do it now. i used to write well, granted i didn't get much commentary on it, but i thought i wrote well.

i wrote a few personal essays when isabel was small. i should dig those up and give them a reread.

everybody's looking for something

i, personally, am looking to let go. i need to drift away from the disappointments shrouding my life. well, maybe not shrouding, but putting a damper on my ability to take pleasure in other people's happiness.

i am jealous by nature. i always have been, always will be. i am not keen on sharing my friends. i envy other people, all the time. i grew up with no money, wearing hand me downs and homemade clothing that was never, ever, ever remotely in style. i never had the right shoes, the right bag, the right hair...nothing. that has made me an extremely insecure and envious person.

i had a nice wedding. i really did. it was at the national shrine of the little flower, the celebrant was the archbishop of detroit's secretary, the flowers were beautiful, and the reception was a champagne brunch at the birmingham community house. it was a nice wedding. my mom worked herself to the bone making sure it was proper and fitting for who we were and what our situation was. the situation being that i was 7 months pregnant, a member of the church choir, and she was the sacristan of the aforementioned national shrine.

it was a nice wedding. we, jason and i, are grateful for how nice it was and how much work went into planning it in a one and half month span of time. but, no matter how nice it was, i remember sitting crying on the floor of a david's bridal salon fitting room because no matter how hard we tried there was no way i would fit in a traditional dress. i remember my nerves being shot over whether or not i was offering to pay for enough things, or if the suggestions or requests i was making were inappropriate or somehow sounded ungrateful. i remember being told not to eat too much or i wouldn't fit into the handmade suit my mom made me to wear on my wedding day. i remember worrying that my mother would be upset because we were talking about living at his mom's for a little while until our house was ready to move into. i remember crawling into my mom's bed the night before the wedding and telling her we were going to live at his mom's house. i remember being on the phone with him in the middle of the night before our wedding crying that i just couldn't move into his mom's house, coming up with asinine excuses as to why i suddenly changed my mind. i remember being nauseated while having my hair done because it took so long and my abdomen was so crunched up that i could only sit for about 15 minutes at a time but i didn't say anything because i didn't want to be a pain. i remember begging jason's dad to go back in the sacristy of the church to make sure jason was there. i remember being nervous and uncomfortable and so freaking miserable. i remember thinking there was no way i would be able to make this up to my atheist husband. i remember all of the sudden having to pick a song to dance to, even though originally that was not the plan, out of a small group of jazz and classical standards that our pianist knew, and to this day jason has no idea what the song was. i remember my dad was so drunk that he had to be held up when he left the reception. i remember that it stormed that day.

i cannot let go of my wedding. we have a video recording that jason's late uncle jim made for us. it is so painful to watch, it really is.

we have often talked about annulling the marriage simply so we could get married again, the way we should have. or redoing it on a major anniversary, having a friend officiate the ceremony, have a big party, letting me wear a long white hued dress.

so the other night, i had this wonderful dream. i've had similar dreams before, but this one....this one was so vivid. it was as if we were starting over, but with the kids. i was not wearing a wedding ring, only my engagement ring. i was looking at dresses with my mom and isabel. and my mom was happy for me...imagine that! she was just smiling and saying how excited she was for us and she could really see how in love with one another we were. for some reason, jason and my dad were there as well and i remember my dad was happy and smiling. and i remember looking at jason and thinking how lucky i was and how much i loved him.

maybe this wouldn't have been a dream if the birth control hadn't failed or my parents had ever actually said they liked jason. which is one thing i still can't figure out. i thought initially it was because he broke my heart twice and they weren't really up for round three of that nightmare, but it seemed to go deeper than that. so many things have gotten in the way of them trying to be happy for us, i suppose. the decision to no longer attend mass, our decision to be free thinkers, the temporary disintegration of my parents' marriage, jason standing up for me when i cannot do it myself, jason refusing to be a scapegoat for my family, my mom calling him a prick while holding his children...so many things that have led us to be the couple we are today, the people and parents we are today. so many things that are hard to move forward from.

it makes me sad.

i have spoken more to the members of my immediate family this week than i have in months. i don't know if it has anything to do with jason being out of town for work or that my mom just turned 50. you pick.

this all makes me sad. and determined. i am determined to stop with the envy, it isn't healthy. if i need something to celebrate my marriage to the love of my life, then i am the only one who can do anything about it.

let's get planning.

i'm just wondering where my pillow went

is that how it starts or how it culminates? i walk into the bedroom after what i had deemed a nice evening of two episodes of the office and one of the soup and a couple of drinks once the kids were asleep and am thrown for a total loop.

i was crabby earlier. we had been gone for four days in another country, it was canada, but it still qualifies. jason and i both went to work today; isabel had school, it was a monday like every other, aside from the fact the house was destroyed and we were all exhausted from being "on vacation until 5:30 pm last night. i picked the girls up after work....which is no small feat. i did not leave the office until 5 pm, it takes at LEAST 20 minutes to get to papa's house at that time of day....but jason said he wanted to work on the porch and i wanted to oblige.

i was trying to be helpful in a situation where i would be the ultimate benefactor. i called aforementioned spouse who led me to believe that since being home at 3:00 pm he would be capable of at least starting dinner, so silly me when i thought when i pulled in the driveway at 5:45 there would at least be the pork chops that i thawed earlier marinating on the counter. not so. i had two unruly, crabby daughters, one of which in desparate need of a nap, on my hands. so, i was, what i thought to be understandably, pissed off. i made dinner, i helped with homework and attempted to mediate littlest pet shop disputes. (sidebar....do not buy my kids littlest pet shop anything...i will never speak to you again). there was one dispute that got out of hand and jason came in the door yelling and i told him to mind his own business, he had a porch that was obviously higher priority than what was going on in the house. apparently, that is not the most diplomatic response. i had my head torn clean off. we did not eat until 7 pm.

i am sorry, but those of you who know the beginning of the story know that he delayed himself on beginning this project and that he has not picked the most opportune moments to work on it.

i decided to overlook all of this. we had a peacable dinner, clean up, and pediatric bed time.

this leads us to tv time and drinks. cuddling....with no expectations....auntie flow is finishing her visit...the office and the soup.

time for bed. i turn on the tv in the bedroom, wait for him to vacate the loo, and then use the facilities and brush my teeth.

two things. i am still slightly hormonal and when i used the scale it said i gained 5 pounds.

i was upset coming out of the bathroom. i am lamenting my alleged weight gain and notice my pillow is missing. my throw pillow, which i have been using for extra support given my sinus issues, is there, but my regular pillow is no where to be found. i asked where he put it and i received pretty much the response i got when i commented on him working on the porch on a monday night, peppered with the "f" word here and there. seriously? seriously?

and given my stupid arse hormonal emotional state, this sends me into tears. tears warranting me climbing out of the bed and making lunches. tears that have me clutching the edges of the kitchen counters and going to my knees. tears that had me briefly clawing at my arms. how is it he can send me into such a state with one diatribe? how is it that i rely so heavily on his approval, happiness, and need for me that when he is displeased it makes me crazy?

he doesn't react that way when i get mad. he pouts and laments and then he grabs my boobs and tells me how he can't live without me and blah, blah, blah.

i wanted to eat in chinatown this weekend. i wanted real dumplings. do you know what we had? hot dogs from the truck parked in front of the hotel.

there are days when i think i could beat the crap out of him and walk out the door. which i won't. i hit him this weekend when he was getting irate because i was slamming the glove compartment closed and it wouldn't cooperate. i hit him...it felt good...and i told him to keep his hands to himself. i didn't hit him in the face or anything, just whacked him really good in the hand.

so hear i sit, complaining to the only people that really listen to me. the people that i know were they here when i sank to my knees they would sink with me and pick me back up.

come away with me

gazing across the table, over couscous, green beans, and pork chops, there he is. and he is actually smiling at you, a genuine look of everyday contentment. but it is so fleeting, ever so fleeting. because there are noses to be wiped, pork chops to be cut up, manners to be overseen.

gentle reminders of how enamoured you used to be. i put a picture of us from a friend's wedding in our bedroom. it is from six or seven years ago and we are kissing, not gross kissing but a sweet lean into each other, "hey, i haven't seen you all night" kind of kiss. that was only our second all night away since isabel was born.

we have had quite a few "all nighters" since kids. but there is so much pressure attached to those nights. we spend the whole time squeezing weeks or months of much deprived intimacy and peace into a eighteen to twenty four hour period. somehow, i always end up with indigestion from overindulgences. too much rich food that we wouldn't feed the kids, too much wine and liquor...not enough sleep.

with the summer coming, the pressure lessens somewhat. we send the kids outside so we can have a real conversation, or we sit outside with them while they run around and enjoy the yard. there is more time to enjoy the members of our little family. no need to go to bed early because there is no school in the morning, you sap all the daylight you can from each day.

every spring promises a renewal in the joy that you once held in being a family and being with one another. when i see that first crocus, everything seems to warm up.