sueeeus

hooray for the birthday boy

Today my BB turned six. He’s such a remarkable young man. He has spunk and attitude, and beneath that, a warm and tender heart.

He’s passionate and sensitive, stubborn, and independent.  He is very physical and very visual.  He likes sticks and stones and leaves and feathers; my little nature boy.

homework - what I did on holiday

He’ll spend  hours working on one page of homework, the results a scribbly mess –because he doesn’t want to do it, and then he’ll whip out a complex drawing in a matter of minutes.  I marvel at his artistic abilities.  He draws from memory, from some picture in his head.  I watched him draw the crabs and trees — he pulled them right out of his mind and put them on the paper.

crabs, coconuts, and sunset

He’s a dreamer, spinning visions of fantastical things with his active imagination.

My friend Sailor once told him that girls get everything they want, so the sooner he accepts that, the better off he will be.  Some people’s friends.  Months later, BB tells me he wants to be a girl, or a grownup.  Because girls get whatever they want, and because grownups get to make their own choices.

One day we were talking about brains and I mentioned that I’d heard that people who are very smart have more lines on their brains.  At school he heard that girls are smarter than boys, and boys are cooler than girls.  Again, he wants to be a girl so he can have more lines on his brain.

But Mama, I’m a boy, so I don’t have very many lines on my brain.

I assured him that there are many boys who are smarter than girls.

It’s thrilling to watch his life unfold, to see the person he has grown to be.  This little one came from me, is a part of me.  I want him to live a beautiful life.  I want him to be secure in the knowledge that he is wanted, treasured, and loved.

the best present ever

How I love this boy!

I don’t sleep enough.  I would very much like to sleep more.  Some things can be done to improve this — the part where life’s a balancing act and something has to give.  I can always work on rebalancing, and not giving up sleep in lieu of ‘me’ time or other things.   I’m not sure what can be done about waking children.  If it’s not one, it’s the other.  I want them to always feel safe and secure, and shield them from any turmoil that churns within me.  I want.  I don’t always succeed.

I was in the middle of a dream when I heard LB crying this morning.  It was a dream about the dating circuit, I think.  I was on my way to meet a man.  He had a name, but now I can’t recall what it was.  Mike, possibly.  I parked my car at a bar (a little more cadence and this could be a grown up Dr. Seuss style book — Doctor Sueeeus…  Ha!  Note to self:  tag for future sarcastic writing /  art project…)  and at the same time a very clean cut biker dude was walking by, to enter the bar.  He had unscuffed pale cowboy boots that were very close to his skin color.  He had a bearded face, but the beard was short and tidy.  There was not a bit of roughness about his look — no weathered skin, no beat up leathers, no ink or visible piercings, no bad ass attitude.  He had a bottled water and was complaining there was no place to properly recycle the bottle top, as he threw it in the yard.  (This annoyed me.  He could have put it in a pocket or dealt with it later or in another less offensive and more responsible way.)  He was self secure and there was no hint of lacking confidence.  Even though he dressed like a biker dude and was entering the venue of a biker dude, he seemed out of place by appearance, but he was fully confident and not subject to external influences such as the expectations of what a biker dude should be.  I noted all of this in the once over I gave him, and concluded that he’s a boring engineer.  I said “Hi.”

I must have asked him if he knew the man I was going to meet (who lived next door –yep, next door to a biker bar), wondering if I had the right address.  He confirmed, and actually knew the guy.  Next scene, the two of us approach the house.  There is a screen door and I can see through the house to the back, there is a man outside near a short chain link fence (this is turning out to be a biker bar residential trailer trash neighborhood, it seems).  I wave to him in greeting, and he comes into the house.  Meanwhile, the biker dude opens the screen door and walks right in as if he owns the place.  He has a six pack under one arm –I think it was beer, and remember noting that it seemed out of place because neither guy seemed like the beer drinking type, and I am certainly not myself.  The date looks at me, at him, and a fleeting expression of ‘WTH is this guy doing here with her’ crosses his face, but he masks it quickly since he’s a very nice guy.  They exchange hellos, since they know each other, and I walk up to the guy and give  him a hug, introducing myself.  “Hi, I’m Sueeeus.”  He is very short and very slight, but lean and wiry, somehow more masculine than the pseudo biker dude.  I could crush him.  He has dark brown hair, a pleasant face, and intelligent eyes.  I take note that I have no physical attraction to him at all.  He explains that he had planned for us to watch a movie.  I can see that he is internally scrambling to adjust his date plans, with the addition of the third party present.  He describes the movie –it’s a children’s movie, G rated animation.  “Oh, I know the one!”, I exclaim.  “I like that movie.  Iron Man.”  (In the dream it made sense that it was an animated G rated Disney or DreamWorks type film, even though it was Iron Man.)

I can see in the instant expression that crosses his face that he is disappointed.  Disappointed that the other guy showed up.  Disappointed that I’m not into him, and that this will be a first and last date.  He’s a nice guy, and puts on a smile anyway.  He doesn’t seem to notice or perceive that I’m not into the biker dude either.  The pseudo biker dude is just there, oblivious to the situation that he is actually intruding upon a date, being inconsiderate to his friend (and me).  I size all this up and decide that it doesn’t matter that the biker dude came along, since I’m not into either of them; there’s no relationship potential.   I’m not sure why he came along, in the first place.  He doesn’t give any impression of being into me.  He may just be socially oblivious.

The dream ends with the three of us preparing to watch the movie.  More might have unfolded, but I heard LB crying.

Before, or interspersed with that, was another dream in which I was at another person’s house. I think it was my daycare, in fact.  I needed to use the bathroom.  Usually I’d wait for the comfort of my own home, but apparently my bladder was insistent.  For some reason there was limited privacy, so I wanted to take care of it as quickly as possible.  I started to go, and saw from the corner of my eye that my sitter’s husband was approaching.  I scrambled, made some noise so he would know I was there and not barge in on me, and flushed the toilet.  Only it clogged.  I was distraught.  How could it clog when I’d only peed and not even finished.  Urgh, what an uncomfortable feeling, to halt that flow part way through.  And then to have to contend with a clogged toilet that I didn’t even clog, and potentially have to excuse or explain myself to him.  It was his house, after all.  I was embarrassed.  I scanned for a plunger, found one, and tried to unclog, working furiously so that I’d have the situation fully taken care of by the time he got to the door, a bit frantic as the water level kept rising.  I was hoping hoping hoping that it wouldn’t overflow and leave me with an even bigger mess to clean up.  I felt irritated, having to deal with someone else’s crap (literally…) which manifested as my own problem.  Just in time, I plunged again, the clog gave way, the water receded and drained properly.  I washed my hands and made my exit, relieved to be over with it, but still strained and stressed from the ordeal.

capturing a new year

I’ve noticed some of my blogging friends have chosen a theme word to help focus the year.  Simplify.  Breathe.  Listen. Words like that.  What word would best encapsulate my aspirations for 2011?  I can think of many words that describe how I feel at this moment.

Drained.  Deflated.  Depleted.

Relieved.  Relieved to have my boys home, asleep in their beds, and to have a little alone time to regroup, try to figure out where I am, how I am, and let tears stream down my face as I try to sort these things out.

I’ve had a week off from work, but it doesn’t seem as though I’ve had a vacation, even though I did get two full nights of sleep in during that week, and even though I had two fine grown-up days that bathed the senses with visual, aural, and gastronomic goodness.

Maybe this is the year to focus on loving myself the way I want to be loved, or treating myself the way I want to be treated.  Or to put the golden rule into action and love others the way I want to be loved and treat others the way I want to be treated.  In general, I think I do these things (for others).  For me,  I can give myself time.  I can carve out more time with which to do things that edify me.  That I can do.  But what of intimacy?  Why is it that I have such a deep and persistent ache for physical touch, for embracing, for intimacy?  I don’t know how to assuage this ache alone, and I can’t make it an expectation for another.  So I’m stuck, like a spoiled and whining child who wants something she can’t have.  The difference being that that which I want to receive is also that which I want to give.  That said, I like to think that I don’t come across as spoiled and whiny.  I hope that I come across as loving, giving, and nurturing.

Stuck.  Stuck is not the word that I want to use to define my year.

Maybe I will find a way to overcome the ache, and just live, just be.

Be.  That can be my word.

Be.

A more apt title would be Gadget Sucks.

Christmas Eve – his time with the boys. We had agreed to a 7pm exchange. At the last minute he said something came up and asked that I come all the way to his house to get them. I have had a headache all day, and driving at all is hard. I offered to meet him later. A bunch of useless back and forth texting ensued with a final commitment to meet at 10:30 pm. At the last minute he said change it to 10 am. I thought he meant pm, but no, he meant am. I said no, I will be at the park&ride at 10:30pm as agreed.

So here I am. No response from any further messages. Apparently he’s not coming.

What of the Santa experience for the boys? He said he’d tell them I didn’t want to see them for Christmas. Such a blatant lie. I’m physically sick from this.

My work has family care resources. I’m going to call and ask for help, for some consultation regarding what I can do, whether a lawyer can help me. I have to do something.

He’s deliberately sabotaging my life, and the kids are caught in the crossfire.

~*~*~*~

Follow up

9:13pm last text received from him.  9:15, 9:56, 10:36pm – my texts with no reply. 1:34am he replies ‘just got your messages via text…thanks alot’

It’s asinine.  Somehow in his mind he thinks *I* am the unreasonable one.

8:00 am he texts to meet at 9 am at the park and ride.  I immediately told him to bring them all the way home, but I don’t want to see his face anywhere near my home today, so I then told him I will meet him there after all.

I learned to juggle when I was eight years old.  We lived in Cambridge, England, that year, and some of the other kids would juggle two balls against the wall or in the air during recess.  I was intrigued, and gave it a go.  There’s a certain cadence, rhyme and reason to juggling.  It’s a learned skill, and some are naturally better at it than others.  I was fairly good at the two ball juggle.  I can even do it with one hand.  I’ve tried to add a third ball to the mix, off and on through the years, but never got the hang of it.  Once that ball was introduced, control was quickly lost, and the balls would tumble to the ground.

Sometimes it seems as though my life is like a juggling act.  Working and mothering.  These two things I can manage.  They are sustainable, and I can keep things going, more or less.  It’s not always smooth or with perfect rhythm, but I can generally keep it together.   A pattern seems to be emerging, in which the addition of a relationship is akin to trying to add that third ball.  I haven’t gotten the hang of how to adjust the rhythm, and sooner or later I get stressed out, start to compromise things, my mental and emotional states spin off into the ether, and everything falls apart until I can gather things together and get the rhythm going again.

I admire those kids you see playing that complicated jumping rope game in which two ropes are spun in opposite directions, one clockwise, one counterclockwise, and the kids line up, catch the rhythm, and jump in.  It’s so smooth, so perfect.  They blend, in what looks like effortless motion.  They skip and dance and sing.  It’s a beautiful thing to behold.  I wish relationships could blend so harmoniously, so smoothly.  For me, trying to have a relationship is about as successful as me trying to jump into one of those rope skipping games.  One step and I’m tangled completely, trip, and fall unceremoniously, possibly hurting others in the tumble, after which I have to pull myself together, apologize for the damage I’ve done and the trouble I’ve caused, scrape the dirt from my wounds, and hobble off to some safe place where I can regroup and heal.

I need to learn how to accept the limitations of time.  I find myself, over and again, succumbing to anxiety rooted in the inability to mold my life around the constructs of time.

The hyper awareness of time interferes with my rationale and affects some priorities that I set, decisions that I make, thoughts that I think, and emotions that I manifest.

This is already a broken record.  I can tell, even before I get the words out.

There is only so much time available.  Somehow I have to work, mother, keep my household, foster my friendships and tend to my budding relationship.  I would like to have some self-nurturing or at least recovery time.  I have to multi-task even that, and glean whatever pleasure I can wherever I can.  Rather than choke at yet another chore, I choose to savor the upkeep of my household and the shopping for groceries or other sundries.  It gives me a smidgen of peace.

And what of this budding relationship?  How does it fit in?  How does one have quality adult time and not compromise child time?  Beaten down by logistics.  There’s no time for seeing each other during the week, which leaves only the weekend.  Friday nights are nearly shot.  It’s late by the time any meeting can take place.  Saturday, and part of Sunday constitute the window of opportunity and the dynamics shift dramatically as a function of child visitation arrangements.  How to be relaxed and content when there’s no time for just plain living?

I don’t like juggling.  I don’t like the ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality.  I don’t like not knowing what time I will have with whom and when.  For all I know, I could be dead in five years.  Or tomorrow.  I’m grateful to make it home alive, each and every day that I have to traverse the freeways in the dark, when it’s raining.   It’s harrowing.  I don’t want a future life, I want a now life.

So I am confounded and frustrated.

I don’t know how not to be anxious about the time.  I don’t know how this life balancing act works.

Sometimes I find myself in thought, and realize that I’m not breathing.  Stress.  It’s a stress of some sort.  I have to remind myself to breathe.

Maybe I should ask myself what I want.  Why is the time or lack of it so stressful or so important?  Or did I not just write ad nauseum about it?

After I’ve put the kids to bed, there is a small window of time that I get for myself.  It’s all I have, and there are a thousand and one mentally, physically, spiritually, or emotionally productive or constructive things I could do with that time.   But for whatever reason, the need to decompress and refuel is amplified lately, and I find myself floundering and anguishing, at a loss for doing this with the faculties I have available.

Ideally (this is pure speculation) decompression and refueling could be a symbiotic process with one’s partner, given that there is regular contact.  But there isn’t regular contact, and there’s not likely to be regular contact in the foreseeable future.

So I am confounded and frustrated.  And feeling alone.

I said it was a broken record.

I found a Barry Manilow album at Costco the other day – Ultimate Manilow – and I’ve been waxing sappy and nostalgic ever since.  Love him.  And not afraid to admit it.

Anyway.

One of the hazards of Manilow Immersion – I’m coining a new phrase and accompanying acronym (MI) – is the tendency to wax melancholic.  It could go either way, but the weather, the time of year, the music, the memories.  What is a girl to do.

In years past, the season dredges up memories of being poor and feeling desperate, as though financial well-being would or could solve any of the real problems in life.  I’m finding that the deeper issues are internal, and immune to monetary influence.

And truly, what problems remain?  There are blessings beyond measure, really.  My life dreams are all realized.  Motherhood.  Home.  Loving family.  Rewarding and satisfying livelihood.  I can hardly ask for more.

And yet.  Melancholy pervades.  Emotions swing as the sun rises and falls.  Fragments of memories float through my periphery.  Waiting for babies to be born, waking through all hours of the day and night to feed or pump, and the accompanying exhaustion, the sudden loss of friends and loved ones, the desperation of life’s realities not measuring up to what a holiday season should represent, a marriage that crashed and burned.  Loved ones in loving and growing families having new babies of their own.

Can I somehow rise above my own inner turmoil, or at the very least, hide it from my children?  What does it take, to let the sun shine in?   A little less Manilow?

On the up side of the MI experience, I dance around my living room and smile from ear to ear, belting out ‘Could it Be Magic’ at the top of my lungs.

Spirit move me
Every time I’m near you
Whirling like a cyclone in my mind

Sweet [insert name of loved one, GG in this case, my Giant German]
Angel of my lifetime
Answer to all answers I can find

Baby I love you
Come, come, come into my arms
Let me know the wonder of all of you

Baby I want you
Now, now, now and hold on fast
Could this be the magic at last

Even better, if when my giant is here, I can put my arms around his neck and swing around my living room, looking into his eyes, singing this song.  Better yet, he happily puts his arms around me and amusedly tolerates my MI.  What could be better than a European man who is a child of the 70s and 80s?  I can play ABBA and sing to my heart’s content.  There’s probably not much that can challenge the manhood of a nearly six and a half foot tall, three hundred pound German man!

There.  Bang bang.  I’ve gone from melancholy to cheerful in the span of a few paragraphs.  I don’t suppose it’s quite what the professors in engineering school had in mind, but the phrase (and phase) has stayed with me, through all these years, this past quarter century.  Who would ever have guessed that an education in classical control theory would ever fit someone the likes of me?  Yet, somehow, it does.

It’s a miracle
A true blue spectacle
A miracle come true

The winds of change are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry me away

As I was driving home this evening, the thoughts milling about my mind converged upon an association, and the sound of Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson singing “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before” surfaced.

I consider myself “serially monogamous”. I don’t really know how to date, and I’ve written quite a bit about my frustrations with the singles and dating scene this year. In retrospect, as the year comes to a close, I can say that I gave it a valiant effort!

I’ve met someone who gets me. We fit. So I’m settling in to this state of togetherness.  Separate togetherness.  There are logistics to be addressed, after all.  Single mom raising two young boys.  Single dad raising one young girl. Different towns, different schools, different daycares, different schedules.  Similarly uncooperative exes…    It’s glorious, though, this being understood bit.  It’s a connection in which it feels as though we’ve known each other all along, so the actual physical introduction is anticlimactic.  Hello there.  Oh, there you are! It’s beautiful, really.

So, with all this new found peace on the love front, there is the jumble of this year’s escapades still milling about my mind a little, and I’d like for it to all sort and settle.  Hence, the emergence of Julio and Willie.

I never really dated, in life.  I just went from long term relationship to long term relationship.  My bad.  Even so, having spent the better part of a year dating, it’s a major culture shock for me, and it’s hard to sort it all out.  I never really knew how to be ‘casual’ with people.  It’s contrary to my nature.

I’ve started a mental recap, with the help of Julio.  My poor brain is jumbled and confused.  I have a fantastic love to focus on, but I have these threads that need to be put kindly away in their respective resting places.  How do I sort them out?  I don’t want them emerging to distract or confuse me.  And they don’t distract or confuse me in the sense that there is any interference with the relationship I’m nurturing, but in the sense that phasing from one person to another is something that has been done over the span of years in times past, but in days or weeks or months this year.  It’s a lot to process.

Like Salieri said, too many notes!  My poor brain.

~*~*~*~

the fish, the frogs, the toads, and the prince

In the course of 11 months, I’ve met a dozen men, and kissed most of them (all but two).  Shhh, there were even a couple of one night stands in the mix.  Not my thing, not my intention, but it is what it is, or, more accurately, it was what it was.  Not a whole helluva lot.  Ho hum.  Live and learn. And for all the men I’ve met, there were dozens more that I didn’t meet.

It’s not that they are fish, frogs, or toads, really.  Most of them are genuinely great guys, and it’s heartening to know that there are so many truly nice men out there.  We just don’t fit.  Misfits.  Except the prince, that is.  We fit.

• the gangster trucker (fun, controlling, alpha male, but still friends, after all)
• the electrician boat enthusiast (a sweet man, truly, but scattered; it seemed like we connected, but didn’t, if that makes any sense)
• the industrial maintenance guy with the permanently attached bluetooth headset (moody, controlling, and WTH is up with the headset?)
• the Irish road crew guy (such a funny and sweet man)
• the executive fish monger (more show than go, a disappointment, all told)
• the geek sailor (an inexplicable friend)
• the metrosexual designer (sweet, funny, kind)
• the geek viking body builder (fun, nice, thoughtful, kind)
• the musician (sweet, caring, good)
• the taco restaurateur (nice, sweet, fun, good)
• the resonant nerd.  MY resonant nerd.  He would be the prince of the lot.

I’ve kissed as many men in one year as I have in my whole life combined.  It kind of messes with my head a bit.  I think time will take care of the sorting, and I am so relieved I have one, just one, to focus on completely.

losing it

~*~*~*~

Actually, the day started out well.  I felt rested.  I’m beginning to sleep better, not waking at 4:09 a.m. each and every morning.  It’s very healing, to be able to sleep.  I think my whole self can barely take any more of the loads I’ve been subjecting her to for the past who knows how many years.  It’s been compounding this year, understandably.

I try fruitlessly to coordinate with the kids’ dad, and get little to no cooperation.  Things turn into bicker fests, and that’s the last thing I want.  I’m seldom fast enough on my feet (figuratively) to be ready for things said, so I seem to play into the games, each and every time.  It’s so wearying.  And ridiculous.  It’s been over a year since we parted ways, and nearly a year since we’ve been divorced.  There’s no need to continue bickering like immature hot headed teenagers.  I don’t want it.  All I want is a routine, simple and clearly defined.  He does his part, I do mine.

I can’t enforce anything.  I can’t make him do his part.

I feel like I’m under attack, and there’s nothing I can do about it, apart from roll over and let him kick me around some more, i.e., give him all he wants and submit to his stupid manipulative passive aggressive tactics.

And here I am, wasting my blog energy spewing this stuff out.  But it helps me to air it.  Otherwise, my composure is held together by the finest of threads, stretched to its near limit, on the verge of snapping.

I’m too close in.  Take it to the 30,000 ft level, and what do I see?

Bottom line – he doesn’t want to pay child support.  It’s as simple as that.  I don’t have to get sucked into his threats and shenanigans that revolve around this subject.  They all do.  What can I do about this?  Nothing.  (Well, I could cancel the child support order, which is what he wants.)  When my five year old goes on a whining bender, what can I do but ignore him?  If I acknowledge him, it provides attention, which is what he seeks.  Perhaps the best thing to do here, therefore, is to ignore as well.  If he tries to take me to court, I can get a lawyer to deal with him.

Another bottom line – he is scorned.  Why else would he accuse me of having boy toys and flavor of the month men?  He doesn’t get to live happily ever after with me, so he must attack any attempts I make toward the pursuit of a happily ever after for myself.  And what can I do about this? Again, nothing.  It’s an attack, but there’s no reason for me to acknowledge it or allow it to hurt me.

That’s that, then.

Belief is vapor.

Understanding.  Is that more true?

What is truth?