sueeeus

• Here’s the TMI bit.  Still bleeding.  I guess you can call it spotting, but it’s still annoying.  Thirteen days, but who’s counting.
• I’m feeling crabby today.  I’ve had three meltdowns in less than one month.  I’m not used to this, and I’ve barely recovered from the last bout.  It’s exhausting, not to mention wholly unpleasant for me and my loved ones, and it just plain sucks.
• So here goes.  I’m going to proceed with another long discourse that attempts to sort things out.  It helps me, and yes, it’s narcissistic, but that’s the point of my blog.  I blog for me. You know the drill.  Run along now.  (Oh, she IS crabby, isn’t she?!)

I think I may just draw the conclusion before I even go anywhere.  I’m a sore loser.  I don’t handle criticism well, in any form, constructive or destructive.  The inability to handle criticism reflects the following character flaws:  insecurity, inflated ego, pride, self-consciousness, low self-esteem, and inordinate people pleasing (which may be better stated as too much concern or regard for what other people think).

Of course, acknowledging these character flaws only prompts immediate self-flagellation.

Now that’s helpful.

If I could only stop my brain from short circuiting to the least constructive place to be, and take that split second needed to squeeze the question, ‘What does Sueeeus Maximus think of this?” out of my exploding head.  If I’d answer that question for myself, I’d be much more centered and balanced.  I’d see the forest and the trees.

Also, if I could take a moment to recall or realize that any negative emotion I elicit does disservice to me and all I hold dear, maybe, just maybe, I’d not bother wasting any time at all with it.

It’s like exercise, and requires serious training and effort.  Why can’t it just be first-nature, and easy?

~*~*~*~

I can put together a complete string of events that contributed to my funk.  Having already drawn conclusions, this may actually prove constructive.  We shall see.

• After receiving a good report on my bill of  health STD-wise, I sent a message to Skills’ ex to let her know that I didn’t have the thing she claimed he gave her, and that he wasn’t the carrier.  I also responded to some of the things she’d said about him.  She’d written some things from her perspective, and I replied with my own observations.  I was cordial and not trying to stir anything up.  In retrospect, however, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.  She sent me a curt reply, and left him a voice mail calling me a psycho and telling him to tell me to leave her the hell alone.
• Gadget said he won’t take the kids for my birthday weekend.  I don’t know why it is, but there is something about birthdays reminding me of a lifetime of disappointments.  Sort of like the holiday blues that people get around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.  All this hype of love and gratitude and joy and life is great and life is beautiful and oh the love, nothing but love, love is all around,  swirling about while inside the reality is there is turmoil and travail, and it’s just such a relief when January 2nd rolls around and all that focus of unfulfilled life and love is behind you.  The thing about birthdays, though, is all this internalization of “why am I here?”, “who is glad that I’m here?”, “who cares that I’m here?”, all compounded with a “don’t look at me!” self-conscious complex.  The battle between wanting attention and not wanting attention.  Maybe psycho was apt.  Because in reality?  I am loved.  Loved by many!  If I stepped outside of my ego for just a moment, I could see that.  “You are loved.  You are loved.  You are loved!”  Loved by my fine and beautiful friends.  Loved by my sisters.  Loved by my children.  Loved by my nieces and nephews.  Loved by my mother.  Loved by my brothers (at least some of them).  Probably even, in some as yet to be comprehended way, by my father.  Loved by my coworkers.  Loved by almost everybody I’ve ever known.  (Probably.  I’m lovable.  What’s not to love?  Apart from the psycho bit.)
  • Loved by Skills.  [pause; she stops, smiles, thanks God for this man]
• Every time I talk to Gadget, without fail, he cries about money and how he has to make sacrifices to make ends meet.  I’m so tired of hearing it.  I want to scream at him to just man up and shut up.  I don’t know Skills’ financials, and I don’t care, really, but I’m guessing his may be in the same ballpark as Gadget’s.  Yet, in comparison, he supports himself, his two boys, pays child support for his daughter, which is more than Gadget has to pay for his daughter, and doesn’t say a word about “I want, I want, I want”.  I respect that, in Skills.  But I digress.  Gadget has been waiting for an insurance claim check to arrive, and he asked me to open his mail to see if it had.  He went so far as to ask me to deposit it for him.  He has no problem asking me to go out of my way to do something for him, yet turn the tables?…  I told him I wouldn’t forge his name to endorse it, so he said forget it, he’ll come by the house and get it.  When?  Probably Saturday morning.  I mentioned this in my last blog post.
• The irritations with Gadget mixed with the drama from the STD-ex and a houseful of four children to keep entertained –all this energy being drawn out compels me to want to regenerate, and how do I do that?  Pester Skills for attention.  Now, consider a tired and drained after a long week boyfriend, also subject to the drama of the STD-ex, and now accosted by a needy girlfriend.  He called me selfish.  Said my attitude reminded him of her and the games she used to play.  A night that could have been restful turned toxic, and he had to leave.  So I managed to take a low point and drive it to even deeper depths.  Insane.
• So I have to run damage control.  Again.  I have to pick myself up from the pit I’ve managed to put myself into, and I have to grovel and redeem myself and somehow explain that no, I’m not playing games, nor do I want to play games, ever, nor do I want to come across as being needy, nor do I want to be needy, ever.  All I want is to love unconditionally and to be loved unconditionally.  Do I know how?  I don’t know.  I’m aspiring.  And at the same time, the prideful part of me who won’t just sit still, rises up with indignation that I would grovel in the first place.  That person will defend me and say, “There there, if he really understood you, he wouldn’t say things like that, that are so hurtful and cut you to your core.”  But that’s pride speaking, and the sore loser speaking, and the one who doesn’t want to take responsibility for not taking that split second necessary to squeeze the question and thought, ‘What does Sueeeus Maximus really think of this? and any negative emotion I elicit does disservice to me and all I hold dear” out of her exploding head.
• He left, and I didn’t know whether or not he’d read my last blog post, so didn’t know if he knew that there was a possibility that Gadget would show on Saturday morning.  But since he was gone, it seemed moot.  If Gadget showed, he wouldn’t be here anyway.  And Gadget didn’t show.
• Damage control.  A bit of regrouping.  Some talk.  [The part he keys on]:  You silly girl, why don’t you get it.  I’m here.  I’m not going anywhere.   [The part I hear] If I’m not meeting your needs, we need to nip this relationship in the bud, and not waste our time.   Me [jumping to wrong conclusions]:  I don’t want to end this relationship because of some potholes that I’m not smart enough to avoid before I go crashing through them.  Me [trying to explain myself, not feeling understood]:  So maybe I appear desperate when I’m all whacked like this, but this isn’t the real me.  Please, let’s not jump to conclusions when I’m not in my right mind.
• There is much to be said about the healing power of sleep.  When he’s rested, and when I’m rested, there is calm and clarity, and the static and craziness of other days is put away.  He’s very good about knowing this about himself.  He can’t process properly when he’s tired.  He knows he needs to be rested and recharged before he can think seriously and clearly about things.  I need to learn from this and follow this more, too.  It would save a lot of grief.  Yet I so stubbornly cling to the words, “Let not the sun go down on your wrath.”  I could follow that scripture by putting away the wrath without resolving it.  It’s a personal choice to hold or release the wrath.  The resolution can come with the dawn.  There.  Thinking outside of the box.  I just gave myself the means to let things rest.  Win win.  Because, with the dawn, there is renewed energy, and things can be seen in clear light, for what they are really worth.  Then we can see if we do or do not have a real issue to contend with.  And if we do, we take it from there.  In truth.  In honesty.  With humility.
• I feel so much better.  But I’m not done.
• So we repaired and continued our Saturday.  It was such a special day, because he got to have his daughter again, and this time, for an overnight.  We had her, my two boys, and my niece and nephew.  We went to the park and had a picnic, and lo and behold, one of his sons was there with his friends, so we had even more family together.  We had a football, a soccer ball, and a frisbee to play with.  We walked along the dock and watched people fish.  We enjoyed the fresh air.  (Okay, the kids claimed boredom, but the grown ups had a nice time.)  Later that night we watched movies and had a taco bar dinner.  It was a nice day, a nice evening, and a nice night.  Morning came and I made some quick bread cinnamon rolls and we lounged about.
• And then Gadget showed up.  With his fiance.  Unannounced.  I assume he came to get the check, but in retrospect, I’m not so sure.  Maybe it was like an ambush.  I definitely could have handled the situation better.  She was fashionably dressed, very tall, wearing high heels.  She has long long dark hair, and is pretty.  She seemed nice enough.  Skills was still in his jammies.  I guess that was awkward.  He wasn’t completely pleased that I hadn’t told him that Gadget might show (scroll up a few bullet points).   We made introductions all around.  I’d just put LB down for his nap, but told Gadget he could go say hi since he was here.  I shouldn’t have let him, though, because then LB didn’t want to go back to bed, and he ended up crying.  And it seemed like Gadget and his fiance were upstairs quite a while, which made me sort of wonder what they were doing.  Was he showing her around at all the things he’d done to improve the house — installing the ceiling fans and changing the light switches — or whatever?  Or snooping in the rooms?  Looking at my rumpled bed?  (Good, I hope it looked like there was all kinds of crazy love and acrobatics going on very recently.)   And of course Gadget made comments about the kids being sick and odds and ends in general that in retrospect are the same old $#!t button presses that I’m not savvy enough to recognize before I say things I shouldn’t say and get myself all upset.  Because I am the one who ends up frustrated and upset.  He’s just pushing buttons because he can.  And I totally let it happen.  Idiot. IDIOT.
• What does Skills say after they leave?  “It seems like you still have feelings for him.”
• WTH
• Seriously, I don’t get that.  Words like that send me straight to defense mode, compounded with frustration and general consternation.  Feelings?  Yes, I have feelings.  Feelings of frustration.  Feelings of anger.  Anger at myself for wasting so much of my life with somebody who is so polar opposite.  Anger at Gadget for being such an ass.  Anger at him for being such a buffoon.  (But really, that’s not warranted.  I can’t hold against him his own mental and intellectual limitations.  That’s on me, for not honoring my own standards.)  Anger at him for not being man enough to end a dead relationship civilly.  I can love Gadget as I can love any other human being on the planet, but no more.  I can have compassion for him as a human, if and when I can see through the prickly crust he lives behind.  But love?  As in, love between a man and a woman?  No.  That love waned long ago.  That love only burned brightly for a very very short time, and then remained as sorry embers that I tried valiantly to tend for far, far too long.  If I were to be brutally honest with myself, I should never have married him.  I should never have taken him in at all.  But I jumped in like a fool, and then, as a more stubborn fool, tried to make it all work.  Square peg, round hole.  Whatever.  Water under the bridge.  It’s over.  OVER.  So yes, I’m still harboring much anger at myself for letting things be what they were, and for so long.  Much self disdain and anger.
• I think that we, Skills and I, are both somewhat affected by ex-drama, whether we admit it or not.  His ex has tried to plant some seeds of question and doubt, and to generally stir things up.  We’ve both exhibited anger and frustration at our respective situations.  The bottom line?  It’s emotion.  Granted, it’s negative emotion, but any investment of emotion to things past does disservice to things present.  Truly.
• We are here and now.  We are blessed with this opportunity to be completely free to love and be loved.  We are blessed to be able to laugh and rejoice in the life we are living at this very moment. We need to recognize that, remember that, and not let things past place shadows over our brightly shining present.
• I am in love with him, this man called Skills.  We have pasts.  We’ve made poor decisions in our lives.  Some of those decisions helped us learn and grow into stronger people.  Nobody is perfect.  I have a hard time stepping up when the finger is pointed at me.  I squirm and feel uncomfortable and defensive, but truly, I accept full responsibility for every mistake I’ve made, and I’ve made plenty.  What can I do about it now?  I can only learn and try very hard not to repeat the same mistakes.  I can try to grow and become stronger and better and just a bit wiser.  In so doing, I honor myself and those whom I love.
• So.  My goals.
  • Honor myself and those I love by practicing more humility, by taking that moment to remind myself that any negative emotion I elicit does disservice to me and all I hold dear, and dismiss it before it can take hold.
  • Be a better mother — be more attentive to the effect that my actions, words, and emotions have upon my children.  Take the time to steer them in the right direction, to encourage them, to bolster them, to give them what they need to grow up to be fine people.
  • Listen with an open heart and an open mind, rather than react and become defensive or make assumptions of criticism.

It looks like Mother Nature is granting us a white Christmas (in the Pacific Northwest, anyhow).  Even the trio of miniature trees on my covered front porch are blanketed in snow.

They’re tiny trees and I decorated them with fruits and birds.

Awww, isn’t that sweet?

Speaking of sweet, my cookie baking failures continue.  Alas!  If I were to put a price on these cookies based on how much time they took and what I get paid for real work, these would probably cost $10 each.  No cookie is worth $10.  Not even a Versace (if there were such a thing).  I’m a terrible cookie maker.

I gave up on shaped cookies and tried drop-smashed instead.  This recipe emulates the Lofthouse cookie.  It’s light and fluffy and the icing is surprisingly good.  They are a far cry from uniform, though.

To my credit, they all taste good.  The execution, however, leaves much to be desired.  Because I like to beat a dead horse, so to speak, I may make one final attempt at holiday cookies before Christmas.  I’m thinking of a sugar cookie dough that is rolled, refrigerated, and cut with a wire to make uniform circles.  Or, I could try to overcome this ridiculous perfectionism personality disorder, and resist the urge to produce a beautiful, delicious, uniform cookie.  That would be the better road, in many ways.

I also made some sweet and spicy almonds, which turned out okay, but could be improved upon.

The same can be said for the Chex Mix as well.

Again with the dead horse.  I am SO very tempted to try again with all of these concoctions.

The thing is, in the interest of giving home made things to friends and family for Christmas, I can hardly feel good about giving something that looks gross or tastes gross, now, can I?  I think I’ll just put these out for people to nibble on (if they dare, and if they care) and not use them for any sort of gift.  Eventually I’ll get these recipes figured out, and hope for better luck next year.