When I was young (really, I was once!) I was often told I was really sensitive: too sensitive. My feelings were easily hurt, and I cried easily. This was upsetting/annoying for my father, who would often say…well, he said a lot of things and many of them, true or not, were unkind.

I lost my grandparents (my dad’s parents, who come to find out, adopted him as an infant) 6 months apart when I was in junior high school. My school experience at that point sucked rocks: I was socially awkward (to say the least). Coupled with the over-sensitivity, I was an easy target, and received hate mail from “friends”. I decided I wanted to die and join my grandparents: I know, but it seemed logical at the time.

Instead, I realized that if I died, I’d never prove the bastards wrong.

So I decided to live, and more importantly, decided that I just didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought about me.

I was a freak in high school and made some really good friends (and weathered a few additional betrayals, who didn’t then?). I wore what I wanted, colored my spiky hair (the 80’s produced some really excellent hair products!) and generally gave a fine fuck you to the world…all while more or less making good grades.

College was more or less the same deal…right down to the betrayals by friends. It still hurt and I still wept, but I had decided that I’d die before I’d let on.

So here I am, ending my third decade on the planet (still have a few months of the 30’s left!) and have lost the ability to give that fine fuck you to the world. I worry about what my kid’s schoolmates moms think, what people think of me at work (and I’m a raving perfectionist and all-around type A), et cetera.

And I’m not sure *why* I care.

I feel like I’ve grown out of the punk rock model (even though I still love the clothes, I feel like I’m playing dress up and more or less feel like a jackass) but I’m not happy with the jeans-and-a-t-shirt ethic I’ve been rocking for years.

My life, as I’ve written (whined!) about here, is fairly crazed, and I am/we are in difficult financial straits now which precludes a new wardrobe (hell, until we get things right, it precludes a lot more than that!) and limits me pretty severely regarding other activities.

So how do I get it back: the old spit-in-your-eye ‘tude. How do I find my way back to that punk rock chick in her vintage silk blouse and army fatigues (yes, I really did wear that) without looking like an aging soccer mom/hipster douche bag who is trying too damn hard.

In the car, driving home from errands I see movement out of the corner of my right eye while checking the mirror.

I glance back and see Oldest child put her finger in her ear and draw on the window with her earwax.

Somebody better get the binky…

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that TD and I have had our share of financial crap (hey, who doesn’t, right?) and we’ve hit the rob-peter-to-pay-paul situation more often than we’d like, but hey, lots of people live hand-to-mouth and play the same games with their finances too.

So imagine my state of mind when I see the dreaded government envelopes in the mailbox.

We filed our 2008 fed tax return (yay, we get a refund…which needs to be allocated to pay the frickin’ state of taxachussets…we pay $4k in property tax, plus have “single one exemption:” payroll taxes and somehow we still owe those bastards money) and an extension for the state so we can do the financial shuffle, and…

One of the envelopes is from the feds stating that the return was taken for TD’s school loan debt.

The other is a “failure to file” warning and assessment.

I can’t even go to bed and pull the sheets up over my head: TD’s working and I’m kid-enabled.

sigh.

If you don’t live in the North East, you might have missed the Holy-Shit-It’s-August-in-April weather we had last weekend.

It was hot, no kidding.

Like 90+ degrees.

Which of course makes me want to spend almost no time outside (which is what I need to be doing: I’ve got yards of mulch to move, damn it!)…I don’t do well in heat. Neither of the kids do either.

That’s not to say we didn’t have a good weekend, because we did. We went to America’s Stonehenge for a lovely afternoon stroll. We hung out with PMF (pottery making friend), her kilt-wearing boyfriend and his kid. We had a cookout, ate a bunch of yummy grilled items and sat around the fire-bowl, drinking beer and carbonizing marshmallows. The kids ran riot hyped up on melted sugar and a fine time was had by all. Sunday was a low key reprise, with another friend and her chilluns visiting rather late.

How was your weekend?

I had the pleasure of seeing The Divine Ms Moonspun and her lovely Running Professor last weekend. We got to go downtown, eat yummy tex-mex and check out great kids clothes and the local rockabilly/punk kids shop (no kidding, it’s pretty fantastic).

Our Lady Of Perpetual Motion (OLPM) has hauled herself back to the panhandle to “deal with some stuff”. Meanwhile, Tattooed Dad and I have gone back to the juggling of the childcare. While both working full time. And dealing with the house projects-in-process. We were used to a certain level of suckage where it came to our family childcare issues, but OLPM has been here for a few months now, and neither of us was prepared for just how much it was going to suck to go back to it. Particularly since TD’s boss has decreed that he’ll be working either 8 AM - 5 PM or 1 PM to 10 PM. Period. Now, TD’s bossman is usually a pretty decent sort, and is being flexible, to the best of his ability, and my boss is also being pretty understanding. It still sucks, and a lot of stuff itsnt’ getting done around the house…so waaaaaahhhhh: where’s my binky?

It’s springing here, and we’re supposed to have phenomenal when-did-June-arrive-dear? weather. I’m excited because I just got a yard of mulch delivered and while it’s quite attractive sitting in a HUGE fragrant pile in the driveway, I’m quite sure it’s needing to be hauled around and spread out. Not to mention that I have a lawn to reseed (at least we have sun now), leaf bags to haul out, more leaves to bag up, and a border that needs to be replaced. Then I can start by raised bed veggie garden.

For which I already have seeds.

And a laid out garden plan.

I’m feeling the urge to start a new knitting project, despite having a small thing on needles (a mitten) and a bunch o’fiber I need to handle so the pottery making friend (PMF) can have her long delayed holiday gift. Maybe she’ll get it by her birthday (she’s a Gemini too).

Okay, I admit it: I have a soft spot for “young adult” fiction (provided it’s at least decently written and has a halfway engaging plot). It’s mind candy.

So I am within a couple of hundred pages of finishing the final book in The Twilight Series (you can hear the capital letters when fans speak of it). For those of you out there who are disconnected enough, it’s the story of pretty, average, clumsy Bella who manages to attract the attentions of a beautiful, old-fashioned boy who happens to be a vampire. She also attracts more than her share of danger and manages to get herself into “situation” regularly.

I started watching the movie that came out last year starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart both of whom are passably attractive (and, who could be, technically, from a purely biological perspective be my children: WTF is that about?). I got sucked in, as, like the books, it’s candy: pretty to look at, fun to indulge in, and not particularly substantial. I got about 2/3 of the way through, and it dawns on me (ha! fourth book title pun) that these are nasty little morality plays. The first is all about chastity and control (because you know what happens if you don’t keep control, right?). The second one is about love, loss and loyalty (both because true love triumphs: you need to wait for the right one, and then, if you sacrifice and prove yourself, you can gain “forever”). The third one details what can happen to you if you “don’t follow the (moral) rules”. It also goes out of the way to promote marriage, particularly before any um…carnal…pleaures.

The fourth book, which I’m reading now, is where everything comes to the “happily ever after” stage: sort of. Marriage first, then carnal love, and then (spoiler alert!!!) a baby and the inherent tension between pro-life (moral) and pro-choice (immoral)…the ideal that Bella will sacrifice her life for her half-vampire fetus is *supposed* to be inspiring, I guess. It clearly gives, though, a “no abortion, even at risk to mother’s life/health” message. I’m not done with it, but if the pattern of the previous books holds true, love will triumph, Bella and Edward will be together and everything will turn out fine, which is what I object to in these books.

Young adult fiction, like the Potter books, or like Pullman’s, should challenge kids to think critically…and this most certainly does not.

Obviously it’s been ages.

I’m working at the same job, dealing with the same frustrations and dealing with the house, the live-in Grammy, the kids and the disorganized TD. So basically, not much has changed.

In positive news, our dear friend has made miraculous strides from her medical situation. At Thanksgiving, we were looking at last rites, and now she is in a rehab facility working her ass of to try to get to walking again. She is a fracking miracle, no doubt about it.

My uncle, who has bouts of cancer, has just had a massive intervention which involved radical surgery to remove any visible cancerous growths in HIS ENTIRE TORSO then had chemo washed through his body to deal with the rest. It’s a relatively new procedure, so of course there was the obligatory arguing with the stupid insurance company. He is doing very well (all things considered) and is recovering at home.

TD has been away for a week-and-a-half training for his job at the big fruit company. The timing of this has been a challenge, as we’re (still) working on the house and our relationship. There was a not-good point just before he left where we discussed divorcing as an option, rather than a threat. He told me to get the paperwork together, and I’ll admit that I was shocked he said it. I was pretty pissed that he put it onto my shoulders: it seemed pretty typical of our situation. So we talked, and argued and talked some more, and cried, all the while sheetrocking (him) and yardwork (me). It sucked. Then we agreed that we didnt’ want to divorce: this was an odd realization. That we wanted to stay married even in light of all the other problems we had.

This may not sound like a revelation, but trust me, it was.

So now he’s been gone for a while and it’s been me, OLPM and the kids, plus the dog. It’s not easy: it’s all the challenges of single parenting, without any of the time off when the kids go to the other parent’s.

I don’t know if anyone is still reading this and I guess that’s okay, as I started blogging for my own sanity. I guess I’m back and will keep my expectations to a minimum. If you are reading, I hope you’re well.

the fantabulousApril Flores (aka Ms Fatty D)sent me a big wet virtual kiss. (Click with caution, folks, it’s NSFW.)

tattooed dad, who has been Twitter-ified, sent the Divine Ms Flores a tweet (I still think that it should be twit, or maybe twat, for the dirty minded) complimenting her on her performance in the adult film Morphine: the compliment was from me.

She responded graciously with virtual kiss mentioned above!

Let me say that she may not be everyone’s idea of a super sexy lady, being, well, fat. I think she’s amazing: confident, sexy and just plain fantastic.

It’s funny that some times it’s the most obvious things that escape you.

I have known Tattooed Dad since the mid-90’s. We’ve been through a lot together, and have definitely had our trying times (listed, in much of their ugly neon glory right here on this blog).

What I don’t always say, or don’t say enough is how much I love him.

Tattooed Dad is one of the few people in the world who can take my self-deprecation and turn it around, who loves me whether or not I gain or lose a jeans size, who insists that I am the most beautiful woman in the world. He loves me no matter what cockamamie idea I have come up with now (”really, honey, if you want to be a Montessori teacher, we’ll find a way to do it!”), what bizarre direction my passion has gone (”but I only bought a hand spindle and one bag of fiber), and regardless of whatever edge of mine I’ve currently been sharpening (”are you still doing/not doing x, y or z”). He believes I am smarter than I am.

He loves me enough to let me try things, both smart and far from it, to stand or fall with no judgement.

He almost never says “I told you so”…something I haven’t been graceful enough to emulate.

He listens to me laugh, whine, gripe, bitch, rave and celebrate, all with near infinite patience.

He comforts me when I am afraid, hears his intuition speak when I’ve been deafened to mine, holds me when I’m small or lost: without expectation, explanation or insistence.

Jack Nicholson said that Helen Hunt made him want to be a better man.

Tattooed Dad makes me want to be a better woman.

I love you, Boo.

We’re having a very quiet weekend: naturally, being as that my car is still MIA. Due to the utter graciousness and generosity of a friend of ours I have a reliable car that is reasonably good in snow, (yes, I do have rental insurance, but they allow for $30/day which will get me a shoe box, which will NOT be good in the snow), but I haven’t felt like going anywhere.

I’m coming up on a particularly nasty couple of weeks at work and am not exactly dreading it, but not thrilled about it either. I’d classify myself as depressed, if I was twittering (which I can’t stand), or on facebook (which I still haven’t done, damn networking spaces, but hey, there are folks in Tattooed Dad’s local network who are looking for my vehicle, so yay.)

I got a great piece of advice from Russ: he’s declined to go all airy-fairy on me and suggested instead that the pragmatic in me needs to plan, which is great, but that I might accidentally shut out a possibility (even one obscenely far out) from manifesting. So I’ve been thinking about what the most insane solutions for this and it’s been entertaining, if not much else.

I also made a list of the stuff that was in my car: some of it was “of value” as the insurance folks say, and other stuff, was just stuff. Sadly, my entire red hot chili peppers library was in the car, some of which were limited single CDs. Plus several of my NIN discs, and Tattooed Dad’s copy of Voltaire’s most recent album that he got at the show. I also had a ball cap from The Mad Raven, a bar that (was/is) in Waltham, MA. The kids had chalk, crayons, paper and a half dozen picture books. Then there were assorted clothes, gloves, mittens, hats, three blankets and my sheepskin (which I bought for the Oldest child when she was an infant). Plus I had just bought a 30 lb. bag of cat food which neither TD or I had taken out of the car.

Another bit of nothing comes from TD and I. We just did our budget (ironically the same night the car was stolen) and agreed to partner on taking care of our finances together. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, even though we put it on the calendar. And neither has the massage and ahem! that he’s been promising me since last week. It is tough to believe someone saying that they want you in whatever glorious and perverse way and then having them not do a damn thing about it. Particularly when the normal impediment of OLPM has been out of the house for four days. I admit to exhaustion, at least Thursday of last week as I didn’t sleep for a good goddamn after the car went away, and I’m tired overall because of the stress, AND I have specifically said ‘wake me up’. I personally sleep better with a little Vitamin O. Maybe it’s a timing thing. Who knows.