Wednesday, February 27, 2008

patience is not my virtue

I've been told so many times through my life by loved ones: Be patient. You need time to heal.
And I never listen. I am patient to the furthest extents of Karen patience and then I leap once I feel healed.
To me, healed meant feeling capable of going on with daily life no longer feeling daily pain.

But it is more than that and after decades and multiple run of the mill surprise life changes I am starting to understand that the stages of healing runs the same conduit as the process of re-becoming.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

the space between

Caught in the middle again, who I was coming back and who I will be around the corner not decided yet.

I lost my job last Tuesday, or not so much lost it as had it removed.
"Here, let me take that from you."
Indian givers.
(European American givers, really. "Here, you can keep your land. HA! Fooled ya'!)

Maybe I was given a gift just in time for my study load to double.
Maybe I'll be denied unemployment pay and won't be hired by anyone and my nursing license will expire and my debts swallow me whole.

Maybe this piece of the puzzle had to fall into place so that the next one will fit.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

always a good time for Christmas




Your Christmas is Most Like: A Very Brady Christmas



For you, it's all about sharing times with family.

Even if you all get a bit cheesy at times.

bird prints in the snow

Yesterday morning I sat halfway up in bed just after 7:30, peeked through my bedroom window's white and sky blue sheers, sat up higher in astonishment, and pulled the curtains apart to be sure. Snow! - on the ground and still falling. We actually finally yippee skippy got snow!!

Was I the only one whistling while sweeping eight beautiful inches of it off the car at 8:30 AM? Was I the only one smiling around my white knuckled steering wheel grip as I slipped through the unplowed slush?

It took me 45 minutes to make the 15 mile trek to my job interview- well, 40 counting the five minute stop at the Clarksburg post office where I made certain the Postal worker at the desk knew I was asking directions to a job interview and not simply driving to a summer day camp site at 9:30 AM in the middle of a snowstorm. (I don't want my very own jacket with the wrap-around sleeves quite yet, friends)-
- at the post office where I knew I could get away with smiling and waving at the tyke boot kicking snow near her mom but knew Mom might worry if I dove into the snow in my interview clothes to play with her child and make snowmen and snow angels like I really wanted to.

Ah- job interview. Yep, I was terminated on Tuesday. Terminated- that's a more accurate description than fired, but every time I say it I picture myself being blown into shrapnel sized bits by a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now that truly would have shaken up the office!

It is okay. It is okay right now because they must have been able to tell I wasn't so happy there any more, and because I won't starve or go homeless as long as my peeps are around (swear to the Great Lima Bean I just typoed 'my poopes'.)

It is okay because I firmly believe I will find another job, and because now I have some freedom to find something that will be more fulfilling: toward that goal I am trying to find work as a hospice or summer camp nurse.

In other news, spring is definitely coming! I know this because my long haired cat is leaving trails of fur all over the place and making hair balls the length of my hand.
Yep- just chased her around the apartment with her brush(in a studio apartment, cats have fewer places to hide from hair brushes ;-) and doled out the treats- two hairball and four tartar control for my teeny short haired kitty, and just the opposite for my sack of hair with feet.

cast iron dreams

The effect on me of my boyfriend asking my preference in engagement rings last week manifested itself in my desire to make him breakfast last Saturday morning. Suddenly I wished for bread worthy of French Toast (no Freedom Toast shall be made in this home!) and eggs... and a stove. (I do have a two burner counter top unit, and most of my pans rescued from storage, including the pull-my-shoulder-from-the-socket if I have to hold it for longer than 3 seconds cast-iron pan I nearly laid over my ex-fiance's head when he gave it to me on our third Christmas instead of the engagement he'd for 14 months lied about saving money for)

So why the Betty Crocker dreams? I have not in 16 months of courtship cooked for this man. Honestly with school on top of work since last October I have been too busy to cook for myself other than the occasional cheap whole chicken tossed into a pot of seasoned boiling water.

Growing up I aspired to be a horse trainer, or a published writer, or an editor or a farmer- these things would do. What I wanted most to be was a house wife, now labeled a ***SAHM***. I was reading Hints From Heloise and Erma Bombeck, Good Housekeeping and Parents magazine by age 12. I wanted to cook and clean and be pregnant, swear to God. It was all planned out- married by 23, four kids by 30.
(someone is bound to be offended- but see, I was an only child until age 6, and my mom was a SAHM until I was nearly 16)

Except I can't carry a baby, and here I am at 33 still single. And I still want to be a SAHM.

So what happens often is that I wander off to play with the little kids at family parties, and I want to wash your dishes when I come over, and when I am home very much or especially when I co-habitate, I want to clean and decorate, sew and run errands, make the sink faucets sparkle, garden and paint, cook a wholesome dinner every night and send my significant other off to work with natural peanut butter and jelly on whole grain bread.

And I am extraordinarily fascinated by and drawn to pregnant mammals.

*** No I don't think it is easy to be a SAHM, and as I seep deeper into thirties and watch my peers parent I wonder if I could do it all. Keeping an entire household running and being responsible, at the bare minimum, for raising a human being to reach his or her greatest potential? Now that's some serious stuff. ***

Saturday, February 16, 2008

maybe my future

When I was 15 or 16, my mother told me that my great-grandmother never felt older than 16 in her heart; that she believed each of us has stays one age inside for all of our lives.

I can't say I have stayed one age, but several remain. Lying on my back in the cool over-grown grass early on June mornings I might be 6 and I might be 10. Falling in love anew, I am 13. Dreaming of my future with a beau, I am 15 or 16 all over again and filled with hope and promise.

I think we've all been hurt by loving- trusted too hard, gave too much, stayed too long. Somehow I was always glad the end hurt so much. No pain would have belittled everything we'd had.

Through Boyfriend's Rhapsody account, I am listening to "How Can We See That Far". It's so simple, and so ... simultaneously pinching and promising.

I've been engaged before. I was almost 31 when we got engaged, and almost 32 and nearly married when I left. I left, and no pain or guilt has ever been harsher. I left one morning in the middle of my third full anxiety attack of the month, and my father and I drove up to clean out the apartment- our apartment- five weeks later.
I cried and screamed- literally screamed and howled- for the first three hours driving home. I was glad to be alone with my pain for the first time, but it's hard to see and drive and have a melt-down barely breathing with legs going numb all at once.

I've learned from my mistakes and I think I know better what I'm doing this time. I'm excited and scared; but I am comfortable. It feels much different this time around. I want it for me. I want it for my parents. I want it for him. It's something we are able to talk about, something we are able to face.


How can we see that far? We can't. None of us can.

Loving makes us vulnerable but we take our future and place it in the hands of another, and accept his and promise to give our best and make it work no matter what.

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Last night

I dreamed I stepped outside briefly into the comfortingly cool, sparsely lit, welcoming night leaving the front door open, but wandered off across the gray lawn distracted and came home again to find the door still open but my cats still tucked safely inside.

I dreamed of coming home from work to find a fully fringed towering green shrub had grown across my path in my absence. It was menacing; a malignant, peace eating tree of a shrub and section by section I dug my bare hands in pulling and tearing it out by the eight inch circumference roots. An allergan it turned out to be and I rushed in to suds up my arms and legs scrubbing away the threatening spores.

I dreamed of Boyfriend and I. I do not remember where we were going or why: I do recall us wandering by a door we had to enter and I was supposed to be carrying something necessary but had left it behind along our foot travels. Whatever it was, we found it again and were able to pass through the door.

Monday, February 04, 2008

one of the cool kids

While re-filling the tin in my purse with my secret stash this morning, I had an epiphany of sorts:

I have a private tin full of pills in my bag, like the 'underground' party kids did in high school, my very first box of fun -

humiliatingly age-baring that my idea of a box of fun pills is a tin full of antacids and Motrin :-)

Sunday, February 03, 2008

fresh bunny

Maybe this makes me a sicko, but I love this commercial to pieces- so much so that I watch it over and over and over and searched for the longest version I could find and bookmarked it. So much so that I want everybody to see it.
It isn't stuffed animals having sex that endeared it to me. At least I hope not ;-)

They are freaking adorable! How can you not love the bunnies ears flopping up and down it time and their little fluffy bodies bouncing to the beat? How can you not adore a smiling bunny and teddy bear in love in the back seat?

It kills me :)

Saturday, February 02, 2008

nothing

He asks what I have been doing all morning, likely wondering why I ask him to leave me alone and delay his arrival as long as possible.

He asks me what I have been doing so far this day,
and I say,
"Nothing," in a sigh,
which I know makes him nuts.


I am not willing to bare myself in words, to risk being seen as a flake, to tell him I am enjoying just being me, the air coming in the windows, the dry grass crunchy under my slippers padding way out back in my snowman pajama pants with the soft-cotton wear holes, and the headband on sleep hair, to replenish bird food hoping they'll be back despite me starving them all week long.

That I want to feel attractive to you, to feel like a woman, to love a man's body long and loudly and freely instead of feeling bashful for being so horny;
that I want to be alone all day and go for walks in the sun, make my muscles strong again, get skinny, daydream spring's gardening days.

That sometimes I feel my inner spark, the burst that is me, growing back.

That it's always been a challenge for me to grow into my partner, or with my partner, instead of independently and away. (only one person ever exalted my day dreaming side, the part i protect like a mother bear)
I don't know which direction to go in to try, but I am trying to go that way.

I can't stop it that sometimes I just want to fly away to simpler things, find my old dreaming self- the one who watched the sea and sweat poems.