from inside and outside my life

the old days

so, we did go to the splash pad after all, it was fun. we took emily from down the street. but I had these weird flashbacks from my childhood. Getting there was not easy. first the bridge was out, so we had to take this funky detour. then we caught a train. then the train stopped. then it went backwards. then it went forwards. it was really really hot. I just saw the inconceivable truth so I turned the car off and opened the windows.

I remembered sitting as a child in a car, next to the window. it's hot, unbelievably hot. I'm crammed back there with my brother and sister. the windows are open. the train is stopped. we sit and sit. my mom sits in front and smokes. everything feels old and smells old, read: smoky. It takes forever and everything sort of is wavy with the heat. We'll never get anywhere.

it's the back of the cars I remember. We never once had a car with air conditioning. The seats would scorch your ass when you sat down. Your sweat would make you slide around on the vinyl. Your butt stuck to the seat when you stood up and left red marks. I also remember these stinky musty cars in winter: trapped in the back and smoke everywhere, feeling suffocated. My mom in the front, and my aunt, smoking away, and us little people, pinned in the back.

here is a photo of booker since I only ever seem to post photos of stella.



I got a little bonkers yesterday. there was so much running in and out of the house and they would get all excited to go swimming and then only swim for five minutes and then want to change their clothes and there is mud all over the place and sand... booker needs to have his shoes on if he is going to ride his bike. he is yelling at me. stella wants onto a website she's been playing games on. I am only wanting to get my parched flowers watered, is that so much? Here is what I know. If I walk away and put booker's shoes on, and then get stella onto her website, my flowers will die. How do I know that? Experience. I will then be sidetracked by some dishes or somebody will need lemonade or I'll have to pee or the phone will ring. I know better. I tell the kids: I'm watering the plants. There are wet bathing suits all over the floors inside and some damp, sandy towels, I can't get to that just yet.

One girl gets mad and goes home and within minutes another one is over here playing. I make them clean up as they roam from room to room. Earlier today I got a call from a producer asking me to direct a play for him next season. I couldn't talk. My son was having a temper tantrum. Do you know why? Because there are bugs outside and the pool is "dirty". It's a hectic kind of peaceful day. Rife with tantrums, girl-drama (our next door neighbor has no sense of humor, I talk to her about this and she drolly replies, "yeah, it's true. so?"), pony strife, broken mermaid heads, outdoor battles over chalk and hopscotch layouts. Really they should be outside, and they are as much as I can make them.

What do you think about serbia?

I just directed a play that takes place in Zrenjanin. It really blew my mind. At the end of the play I have the performers do something that doesn't usually happen at the end of the play. The responses to this are wild and interesting, some feel it is degrading, some feel it is hopeless, some feel it is hopeful. I just know that the energy of what happens at the end of this play matches the energy of the play itself. I do think it works, but it is so complicated as to why it works. I'm still processing much of this work, which seems to me to be more psychic than anything else. Weird, right, who thinks of directing a play as a psychic experience. But how else could I envisage this?





it's not just about those two guys, I swear... those are just some photos that I like.

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my daughter tried to spend the night tonight at a friends. she is 6yo. I was on a business call when she ran up to me and begged to spend the night. I needed to finish the call. But I did agree it would be fun. She would be at a neighbors house right down the street. While I was on the phone, she packed and took off. I didn't get a chance to talk to her! There are different rules at people's houses, different beds, different routines, etc. It was her first time spending the night anywhere other than her grandmother's house...

anyway, on a walk back from walgreen's with my 3yo we stopped and talked to the neighbors where she was spending the night... they were on the porch, it was a beautiful night...
and suddenly she was crying, and we were taking her home, I don't know if she heard our voices or just was suddenly homesick. I felt so bad for her, she was so disappointed in herself... but I felt like I had let her down as well but not talking with her about this milestone event. Her first sleep over! Oh she was upset, crying, carrying on. I made her a warm vanilla and my husband played the guitar for her and she went to sleep.

She seems so mature in other areas. As sad as her dejection was, I felt an odd happiness in bringing her home and putting her to bed the way she loves to be put to bed. I was also glad that this didn't happen at 3am. But I never thought for a moment that she wouldn't be able to spend the night away from us, even down the street.



here's my little snowflake.
that's at her recital. what a whirlwind getting out of school was. she went to her school picnic, then a small break before her recital (I got her and her brother to fall asleep in the car... hoo boy SCORE!) Then the recital which her grandparents from CA made it just in time for her to dance! And the music stopped and she was so confused. What a great dancer though. She's such a leader. She gets herself set up then all the other girls sort of arrange themselves around her. Nice. Then the rest of her weekend and beyond was visiting and traveling with her grandparents and her little brother and other extended family. Zoo. Picnic. Brunch. Then, suddenly, after being here since friday, they leave and BAM: It's SUMMER. And boy howdy is it. The phone starts ringing at 8:30 am!

solstice eve

this is my first day and night off in a long time. I'm sort of freaked out. what should I do? I want to take the kids to the splash park but my daughter has a friend over and I'm afraid she'll be real mad at me if I send her home. Why don't I just take her with? I guess I could.

tomorrow is the summer solstice. why is it so much easier when everything around me is living, not dying. half -- more than half the year here in this part of the country, it feels like things are dead.

so many things are falling into place now, I feel like this

I sort of don't like this solstice. even though summer is beginning here in the midwest, now the earth turns toward the decline and why does that bother me so much? I don't like it that on the first day of summer, the days actually grow shorter. Maybe because Spring in the midwest is sort of a rip off, fleeting and ingenuous. Mostly cold and muddy and shitty out and then a few things sprout, then it snows again and you gotta start all over. And the ingracious wind. Making everyone stay inside all damn April.

Then everything blooms, all at once, and everything is that shimmering magical green color for only a few days, and if you do not appreciate it on those very few days, you are fucked until next year. Not like the fall, where things decay and turn color for months on end. More wind, more slush. Some drama. At least fall is dramatic, even if it goes on forever.

I would like it if the days grew longer until august, when summer seems to hit the ceiling. What part of the world do I need to live in for that to happen?

I feel so awful because I got my 6yo daughter two kittens for her birthday, and I busted my ass finding them. It was really difficult. I wanted small black fluffy kitten(s)...preferably girls because that is what I am used to dealing with. And after a good few weeks of searching I finally found them!!! sooooo cute too.

One was a runt, but I was ok with that, I've had many runts before. She was as sweet as could be.

It was so cool when my daughter took the lid off the box; for the first time ever, it seemed quite like she didn't really know just what to say! My daughter is never speechless. When she recovered her voice, all she could do was shriek, "MAMA!!" This made me really happy. Three days before her party my mother had asked her, "if you could have just one present, just one, nothing else, what would it be?" .... after years of saying "a horse" or "a pony" she finally said it. "A cat." FINALLY! Something I could possibly manage for her!



That night my husband and I watched the video of her taking the lid off that box many times, I was ensconced in the glow of that moment, it was wonderful.
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four days later, the female kitten died. My husband opened the bathroom door where we had been keeping them, and her brother was draped over her, and she was limp, unresponsive, and had defecated on herself. I rushed her to the vet but she died in my arms in the waiting room. I saw it happen. Her head tilted back a bit, her jaw suddenly went slack, and her eyes changed. It was awful.

No one should ever have to tell their six year old that her birthday present has died. She was in a panic before she went to school, she got to hold the kitty, and pet her and kiss her. After school I had to break the news. I came home with chocolate milkshakes and fast food for everyone, but nothing was going to make this easy. Her babysitters were there, and there was a flurry of action, but nothing prepared me for the moment of my daughter asking, "oh mom, where's my kitty?" and I had to say, "she was really very sick, and the doctors did everything they could... but she didn't make it". I wanted to wait for the sitters to leave to break her heart like that. I wanted my husband to be home. But I couldn't lie, I couldn't wait. I had to say it. She just crumbled, tears sprung out of her eyes, they leapt out. It was all I could do to keep myself together. I didn't really, I think I cried as well.

My daughter was in love with this kitten, and terribly so. I picked this kitten out because I'd raised runts before and I figured that my daughter would be just as good at it as I was. She was small, and fragile, but she really loved the attention my daughter lavished, the cuddling, the petting, the constant holding. My daughter doted on her. She was really smitten.

The next day we buried her. I let my daughter hold her and we all said nice things about the kitty. I tried to tell her through my tears that the kitty was very very lucky. She was loved and cherished and that love made her happy even when she was sick. I told my daughter that she gave her beloved kitty a very special gift, the gift of love, and that she was a lucky kitty. We buried her, and my daughter and I sat outside for awhile and cried.



That morning, my daughter wouldn't go to school. She was afraid that when she got home, the other kitten would be dead too.

I have shown her photos of her kitten, and it makes her alternately happy and sad. She is really processing this life lesson, as am I. I realize these things must be part of our life experience when we are child raising, but god dammit! On her sixth birthday??? Her beloved kitten? Why not take the fish!!?

Anyway, for anyone wondering, it turned out that the kitten had a parasite. I'm angry this wasn't caught by the vet, but there's nothing I can do about it now, the kitten is dead and buried out back.

My daughter has really latched onto boy kitten now, and does have momentary lapses of sadness and grief. She mostly doesn't know what to say or do when others express their condolences. She alternates between saying something spritely and happy or bowing her head and saying nothing as if to commemorate the spirit of her dead pet. It is great for her to finally notice her other kitty, because until the other one died, she barely noticed his existence. He is very playful and not quite as cuddly, but she still really enjoys his presence.

A lesson for me: I was trying to recreate my memory of getting my first kitten as a seven year old. I reconstructed this whole event for my child exactly the way that it happened to me. Down to the lid on the box. The only difference was there were two kitties instead of one. The whole thing obsessively played out exactly as it had happened for me as a child, except on the fourth day, one of the kittens, the beloved one, the one that she was supposed to nurture and care for extra special, died.

What did I learn? Don't try to recreate memories from your childhood for your children? I'm not sure because that memory of her opening the box is forever intact, but it is colored with the awfulness of her death and my poor daughter's grief. I'm not sure what to walk away from this with, other than my daughter needed us to help her learn about death, and we did help her, but we can't take away her pain.

And now my memory of my first kitten is forever colored with the memory of my daughter's birthday and her first kitten. I think that what I am learning is that while life is happening, death is happening too, and it colors everything. The older we get, the more it colors.

Please See Attendant

yesterday.

the gas station says "please see attendant". I have just pressed the premium button and wanted only regular gas (2.19 a gallon!!!) and was only trying to cancel my transaction. But "please see attendant" is easier said than done. I have a two year old in the car as well as about 200 things to do before I go to work later. I have just dropped off my daughter at school. This is a no brainer, put gas in the car, but it is about to turn into a herculean feat.

only the beginning of the morning.

I pull into another pump. "please see attendant". I pull into another, "please see attendant".

I pull up to the gas station door and hold the door open with my foot. a relatively small place. She tells me she needs my credit card if I want gas because I cancelled my last transaction, credit card fraud, etc etc blahblahblah. So I give it to her. How much do I want? I don't know! I just want to fill my tank! Why is this so hard.

So I go out after telling her to put in twenty bucks. It won't pump. I get my 2yo out of the car. We get in line. Powerball, lottery, cigarettes, lottery lottery lottery. I guess if you don't win, you just stand there and keep buying tickets? I get up to the front and she says, oh I need your signature. I should have known. I guess I thought I was supposed to sign after I pumped or something. Maybe I was frazzled having my son in the car and standing in the doorway. At any rate, I say maybe I'd better just go, and she flips my card back at me... "fine!"

should've known. I already have bad luck with gas stations. should've known.

ok ok. I go to the next station for the $2.19 gas. It's BP Amoco, my mortal enemy. But I give in and fill up. $23.00.

I get home and need to print resumes for an audition later. This should be a very easy thing to do. The computer screen is dark, totally blank. My crazy husband is downloading too much music and the dang thing is maxed out. I can barely get it to work. He tells me to take the battery out, so I do, my son needs me to play with him of course, and I'm desperate to, because I am needing him as well, I need to wash and do something to my really hideous hair, and find something to wear. I need to also pack up for work. I can't get the battery out with the really awful tool I'm using, some sort of screw driver assorted bit gizmo, and when the computer turns back on the screen is still blank. try to put screwdriver away, can't even figure out how to close it. txt mssg husband, phone says no signal. I just burst into tears. I seems like I am at the end of my day, and it hasn't even begun!

I feel absolutely worthless and really stupid and silly and completely inept.

anyway, I go to the kitchen and do something I've never done before. I grab a bottle of wine ( really nice pinot noir that I had a glass of a few nights back) and chug it.

It's 10:30 am.

I can't believe I did this. And you know what? It worked. I suddenly functioned marvelously, made decisions, got myself together, the boy over to my mom's, and out the door. It didn't really feel like I'd chugged wine. It just felt like the edge was off, and I'd fixed it somehow. I was impressed with myself. My audition went great and I had quite a power-day at work and then the meeting that followed into evening was just fine as well.

why has it never occurred to me to do this before? I have no idea. I have no idea if it will work again. But hey, I'm open. That's my story. That's yesterday anyway. Later.

NOVEMBER 9, 2005

my due date

today -- 6 years ago that is -- was my due date. november 9th, 1999.

you just can't imagine your life, that's all. you can't imagine what it will be like, what will happen, where you will live, and why.

I spent so much of my life imagining being a mother, but it just doesn't hold a candle.

today -- I am completely obsessed (and a bit manic maybe?) about getting my daughter a kitty for her birthday which is in a matter of days.

I get up and furiously write and print my curriculums today (two drama clubs in a row pant pant!) and get everyone dressed and brushed and fed for school.

after we drop off my daughter, me and my son gallavant around our village looking for a prospective feline candidate... pet stores, humane societies, vets ensue. I fall in love several times but return home empty handed except for a sleeping 2yo.

for an hour, I respond to emails regarding the current project I'm working on and proceed to goof off, only a little bit (!) before I'm off to the land of drama club world. I've got kindergarten and 1-3rd grade today. What's more, I've got my son... there's no one to watch him today. He's never been to drama club before but I figure what the hell. I'm super mom right. I can do this.

it's really hard though! He's just woken up and a little freaked out by all the drama-energy! He needs me to hold him, so I do. Everyone else thinks it's cute. For me though, he's really in the way. He needs to be in my lap, in the way of others trying to see the illustrations in the books I'm reading, throwing his fishy crackers around the room for attention, and staging a major tantrum in the hall because I won't carry him down the stairs in his stroller (yeah right!).

finally, the principal sees us and helps me out, she rocks, and I get everyone out into the car, after my 2 yr old screams at me repeatedly about something I have no clue about. We go home. I have exactly 45 minutes to get my 5 yo dressed and fed and ready for dancing. She can't go upstairs by herself, it's too scary. Good thing she is hungry, she eats her entire bowl of beans and rice. And a cup of milk too!

We all get to dancing -- on time -- and it is getting very cold out now. We meet my husband at the store, he's limping! He's hurt because at work today they tore marble out of the walls and threw it away. He literally uses my cart to help him walk through the store. See, I'm angry about this. Not AT him but angry at this situation. After a really grueling few days, I am really looking forward to seeing this guy, and he's miserable and limping and really in bad shape. I am going to finish out this night without him. I buy lots of supplies for the impending birthday party. I haul all of it into the house and put it away.

send the husband up with a glass of wine for a hot bath. Make an extremely heavy and layered lasagna to eat all week. Put "Annie" on for the kids, make popcorn, clean up shredded cheese in the tv room (how did that get in there??) clean up the kitchen as best as I can... holy smokes. Have a glass of wine myself.

so that's a lot for someone who preaches to not micro manage your child's time:
school
drama club
dancing
store

I do feel sort of badly because it is a really hard day for her. My 6 yr old. My amazing and clever daughter. My 9.1oz sweet little bundle of happiness. My oldest, my girl, my sweetie!

The lasagna is really tasty. I'll be sick of it by saturday.

Fissuring

When a car leaves or enters joliet prison in Illinois, it must stop over this slot in the earth where a guard stands and looks up to see if any contraband or humans are hiding under the vehicle.

I feel like this fissure today, trapped but free nonetheless. Stuck in the ground but able to function, on a primal level. People who are free and people who are not trample right over me. I will accomplish all I need to today, but who is really upstairs in the old noggin I'm not sure. It's possible the moon is full, but I haven't seen the sky in several days, it's been dank and snowy. Pretty snow I guess. But my toes are cold.

I believe I have a condition called agitated depression. I just looked it up. It fits. I am not depressed, but I am agitated into a state of inertia. I have much to do, but will not do any of it, only what is essential. Bad time for this. I will give my son a bowl of cookies. I made him some strawberry milk. He'd rather be playing drums, but I turned on rudolphs shiny new year. This makes me sad. But I'm not sure where to go from here. I took two St John's Wort's last night, I think I was anticipating this. But it hasn't seemed to make a difference... or what would I be like if I hadn't?

It's Christmas time dammit. I should be really really grateful. My kids are amazing. My husband is amazing. I am amazed even at myself.

Today a new part of my year begins, a program I taught is coming to an end and a new one will begin this evening. I hate to admit it, but I am dreading it. I want to stay home with my family! We can have hot chocolate and play drums. Ah but I know this trap. Once home the extreme agitation sets in. Malcontent. How frustrating, is that why I work so much, so I don't notice how incredibly agitated I get once I am static? Would I be happier if I took some drugs? Some meds? Some pharmaceuticals? I am really divided on this, but I know I will try it soon enough.

I need to experience contentment. I am rarely, if ever, content. Why is that? What is it like? How long does it last? Is it boring? I'd love to know. I need a drug called contentment. How much does it cost? Was I ever content? Have I always been like this?

I scoffed at contentment when I was younger. I can't quite remember why! ~ I looked down on the condition. I thought it was homely or something. Too complacent. But I need it now, at least I think I do. What do you think?