realizations

It has been quite a long time since I have used this blog. More often than not, I use my tumblr blog. Today, however, I have to rant and am afraid I would fill up the tiny little blog. Plus, I know no one reads this blog any longer.

Full disclosure, this is going to read like a pity party.

Now I am fully aware that friendships have a tendency to ebb and flow throughout the seasons and years. This is a bittersweet fact of life, you drift away from friends that you spoke to every day, or they drift away from you. You make room in your life for newer friends, ones that enhance the person you are becoming.

And while that sounds enlightened and accepting, it still has a tendency to be more bitter than sweet. Instead of speaking every day, you talk once a week, and then it is a text once in a while. After that, there is nothing. You are relegated to observing their life from the outside when they post their updates and photos on facebook. Every once in a while, if your children are friends you will actually see each other in person, but it becomes disconnected and awkward. You cannot possibly catch up on 4 months of life’s happenings in a 5 minute exchange and even if you could, there is a sneaking suspicion the other person really doesn’t care. It’s a case of unrequited friendship.

Now I have been the perpetrator of the same crime(not that it is a crime), I have been the one who has drifted away and not made a huge effort to maintain any sort of friendship, sticking to an evite here and there, or a christmas card. As I said, it is a normal happening in all relationships. They are organic in nature, always growing and then dying. Alas, it seems like most of the friendships I thought I had experienced a case of cardiac arrest. I have wracked my brain trying to figure out what it may have been that I had done to cause such a dramatic shift in my social life and I have yet to come up with a reasonable explanation. Gone are the weekly invites to coffee, wine night, after school debriefs, or nights out. No more texts about something that may have happened that day that someone needs to vent about.

Was it my politics? My lack of religious life? Was I too quiet, too loud? Too much of a gossip?

Maybe the group had reached maximum capacity and someone needed to be tossed overboard.

I warned you, this was going to sound like a pity party, but it hurts to suddenly be excluded on so many levels.

I’ve been struggling with this for months, I am not a fan of confrontation and I guess this is my passive aggressive way of doing just that. Maybe I just need to get a clue and realize I am on my own and need to cultivate the friendships of the people that do treasure me.

Yes this was petulant and probably a bit immature, but Jason is sick of me complaining about it and I needed to get it out.

escape

must be italian…

if you need me on days i’m not here..check here.

exile

i’m always the last to know anything, but that’s okay, i’m used to it.

i am looking forward to monday nights.  jason joined a bowling league that is at 8:30 pm.  do you know what that means?  that means that after the girls go to bed and he leaves, the house will be silent.  i can watch whatever i want, or i could read without interruption, or i could go to bed.  sigh.  it is going to be heaven.

i am pretty much over winter.  i don’t like the cold, i don’t care for snow (unless it is on christmas), and this nonsense of it still being dark when i get up in the morning just needs to stop.

i have done a pretty decent job of keeping the house picked up and organized for the past few months, the basement is still accessible, and isabel has kept her room clean.  sylvie’s is a disaster 12 hours after she picks it up, without fail.  i’m rather proud of myself.

now i just need to squeeze a workout in here and there.

as of late, it has not been easy.  jason has been working in the garage, so he is in and out of the house all the time.  he’s driving me batty.

the mornings sylvie is at school, i’m either at work or running the week’s worth of errands.  the last thing i feel like doing after dinner is exercising and i am not an early riser.  so when is there time?  i just need to work harder.

we have been lecturing the girls lately on how wasteful and unappreciative they are.  it isn’t that they are bad, slothful bratty children, they just haven’t had to sacrifice or do without.  (well at least not that they were aware of, when i was a kid i was made painfully aware of what i was missing)  i don’t want them to grow up to be snotty, slothful, demanding, selfish teenagers and then adults with no appreciation for what it takes to get through the day to day.

i’m tired of tossing out half of a plate of food because all of the sudden sylvie has decided “tacos just aren’t her thing” or the pasta isabel requested just “wasn’t quite the way it usually is and didn’t taste right”.  my mom used to say that she wasn’t a short order cook and we had to eat what was prepared and eat all of it with a smile.  there were nights that i was still sitting at the kitchen table a half an hour after everyone else, but i ate it and no food went into the garbage can.  i threaten the girls with this, but then it pops into my head all of those asinine parenting articles about how forcing your kids to eat will make them develop an eating disorder later in life.  i know it’s bullshit, but it still hampers my ability to enforce not letting them get up until they are done.  i’m overweight because i like to eat, i like to eat good and bad food, and i don’t have a regular exercise regimen.

i’m sure it doesn’t help that when jason serves up dinner, he piles their plates way too full and there is no way they could finish all of their dinner.  he drives me nuts.

jason is putting new shocks on his truck and the drill sounds just like the drill at the dentist, it’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.

i am going to register for the corktown race, if i can figure out when registration starts.

okay, i should get dressed so i can get started on my day.  i am going to shovel the walks, run to target, the grocery store, and finally get my eyebrows done.  i’m starting to look like frida kahlo.

delusions

much has been on my mind as of late.  especially what we are going to do when isabel is old enough to start middle school.  the current state of the school district has me in a tizzy.  we purposely only looked for houses in royal oak because the district was a safe and enriching environment.  i attended the schools, had numerous family members and friends who worked in the district, it was the only choice in our minds.  then, isabel started kindergarten.

kindergarten wasn’t too bad, other than the fact that her teacher missed almost half of the year due to an elective surgery.  oh and the principal chose to disregard the fact that another student in her class was being threatened by a classmate (whether or not the child would have acted on it is immaterial, it sets a bad precedent).  attending functions at this school, what limited ones there were, was like walking through a wal-mart in hillsdale county.  (not everyone, but enough)

we chose to pull her out after kindergarten and send her across town to the school based on the magnet and pod program.  she has excelled.  she has had wonderful teachers, with the exception of one tenured teacher who was suffering from alzheimer’s and a snotty long term sub while her 3rd grade teacher was on maternity leave.  alas, the principal, who we loved and was the main reason we chose addams, is gone, and we are stuck with a neo-nazi in the guise of a barbie doll.  we only have one more year there.

but what is starting to get to me is that everything is diminishing.  the field trips are costing a lot more money (which we don’t have), even though prices of admission have stayed the same.  do you mean to tell me that it costs $10 per student to transport them via bus?  i doubt it, but as an example, one of the trips they went on this year in which they had parents drive was significantly less expensive.

but to be honest, i don’t mind chipping in an extra couple of dollars here and there to help offset classroom costs.  in fact, i have said before i think it is ridiculous that the kids are not expected to provide their own paper, pencils, crayons, etc. and that the district supplies all of that.

i also wonder how much these consumable textbooks cost.  for the district to buy each student one, each year…how much money and paper are wasted?  what is wrong with them copying out of a hardcover book?  the rules of grammar and mathematics do not change year after year.

enough with the money being wasted, what about money not being spent on the right things?  did you know there are almost no honors programs at the middle school level any longer?  i’m not saying my child is a genius, but one of the reasons i am digging in my heels about moving to the middle of nowhere is that i want there to be an array of educational programs and opportunities available for the girls.  if we move to podunk, michigan the odds of them offering more than one foreign language or ap level courses are slim.  but it turns out, royal oak may not be offering that many any longer.

and now on to safety.

my girls will not be going to the high school.  when it comes time, hopefully we will be able to move.  the stories that have come from staff at the school make me queasy.  people who won’t even send their children to the school even though they live in district.  guns?  seriously?  knives?  numerous sexual assaults inside the building?  these are crimes that have somehow not made it to the papers…why are the parents at this school not up in arms and storming the board office? this is royal oak, not detroit.  one would think you could send your child to school without worrying if they are going to get caught in the middle of a knife fight or cornered in a classroom with tragic results.  this is fucking royal oak!  what the hell?

unless something drastic changes in this district, i don’t know how much longer we will be staying in it.

this is what has been weighing on my mind and i don’t know what to do about it.  do i talk to administrators or board members?  do i visit the schools or do i just throw in the towel and look at other districts?

nouveau

happy new year, dear readers!

i am going to try and start the new year with a smile and a positive attitude. i’ve been actively awake for an hour and half and nothing has burst my bubble yet, so keep your fingers crossed.

what a lovely evening last night.  it started off slow, as it always does, but that is the perfect pace when trying to catch up with friends.  all of the children were impeccably behaved from the oldest to the youngest.  sylvie was ecstatic not to be the youngest guest. 

the only thing about the new year’s party is that it reminds me every year how little we see our friends and it seems that with each passing year it gets more difficult to make a point to spend time with the people whose company you truly enjoy.  it is a bittersweet occasion.

well, i just wanted to wish all of you a happy new year, now it is off to clean up the aftermath.

zero

i had about that much tolerance for the members of my household last evening.  after asking sylvie to finish her dinner for the millionth time so i could clear the table and she could get in the shower, i was on the verge of blowing a gasket.  i am beyond tired of repeating myself.  then, once the girls were safely in and out of the shower, i went to the living room to see what was on and who should be monopolizing the television?  you guessed it, my husband.  watching a rerun of “meteorite men”, that i know he has already seen.  really?

i don’t mind him watching tv, he works his ass off all week, but he claims the tv EVERY night and mocks anything that i watch.  so i get to claim the tv either when the girls aren’t home or he is asleep.  how is this fair?

to clarify, it isn’t that the girls are watching tv all day, it’s that i really can’t watch “grey’s anatomy” when they are hanging around.

i have deleted all of this season’s episodes of my shows because i haven’t been able to watch them.

i cannot remember the last time we watched a movie that wasn’t a family movie with the girls.  or that i picked.  actually, he doesn’t watch movies and i can’t commit that much time during the day to watch a movie since there are five million other things i should be doing instead.

argh.

sylvie has this habit of walking right in front of me when i am trying to do something.  it’s like she comes out of nowhere and then i almost trip over her.  or she will walk right into me.  she did it a lot yesterday and at least twice this morning.

i think they are bipolar.  they spent all day yesterday alternating between screaming at how the other has ruined their lives and tickling each other.  six more days.

i want to come up with a new year’s tradition for the four of us.  aside from the party.

i don’t want to take the christmas decorations down.  everything is so blah after that.

i need a book to read.  i started “Catcher in the Rye” yesterday and i am just not feeling it.  this is the first year i didn’t get any books or movies for christmas.

errands to run, it’s going to take me at least an hour to get the girls out the door.  groan.

 

vacancy

i apologize for being incommunicado.  this time of the year beats the hell out of me.

i am on the precipice of something…not sure what.  not sure if it is good or bad, but i am feeling the need to break free and do something else.  i am not talking about anything drastic, i.e. abandoning my kids or husband …not that the thought hasn’t crossed my mind this holiday season

i cannot listen to the camp rock soundtrack anymore, i can’t listen to “glee” anymore.  i need a break from the mindless music my children have chosen to subject me to every morning in the car.  not that i no longer enjoy “glee”, i do.  i need a break from lea michele and cherise pempengco singing “telephone” for the fortieth time this week.

the girls seem content to spend the entire week in their pjs…i don’t blame them, but it is taking them an hour to get ready to leave the house when we need to run errands.  i don’t like running errands any more than they do, but a little cooperation would be nice.

this is the first time in a long time that jason has been working the week between christmas and new year’s.

i am over this weather.  is it april yet?

the girls are driving me nuts.  sylvie has worn the same outfit for three days, only alternating it every few hours with her new christmas pajamas.  she is getting into everything and her room is destroyed.  DESTROYED.  i cannot get to her closet to hang up her laundry.  they are going with my uncle for a couple of hours tomorrow and i cannot decide between picking up her crap or using my douglas j gift card.

here’s the thing, though.  if i pick up her room and make it livable again, she is going to make more of a mess, refuse to clean it up, and then i will end up right where i started.  she has been telling me it is too large of a task for her to accomplish, even when i assign her small portions to complete.  i am not sure if i am expecting too much from her or if i am letting her walk all over me.

i am very pleased with our new television.  it isn’t as if i am watching any more than usual, but the rare occasion i get to watch something is very pleasurable as i can actually see the screen from the couch.

i read two novels in four days.  i am pretty pleased with myself and am now rereading “the catcher in rye”.  sometimes i am so pretentious. 

i am looking forward to new year’s eve…no matter how many people come, it is always enjoyable.

i need to run to the store, i need to come up with a side dish to go with burgers that is not french fries.

zoster

this week has been pretty horrendous.  we began it on sunday with jason experiencing a relatively high fever and some major intestinal distress.  now, the weather had been dreary on saturday, our plans to check the beehive and attend artprize in grand rapids were abandoned due to weather and jason’s hour meeting with a client turning into 6 hours.  the bright spot was a visit from a.g. and miss maus.  so, sunday held a great deal of expectation for me.  the sun was out, the temperature was bearable…alas, after consuming his hash browns and eggs, jason retired to the bedroom to begin his day long “woe is me” campaign.  he and the girls spent the day watching the diy channel, back to the future 3, and castaway.  i did laundry, cleaned the house, melted beeswax, walked to the store, roasted a chicken, made homemade gravy, and mashed potatoes.  the man who normally picks the meat off of every bone on the chicken picked at his food and pushed his plate away.  i was very crabby by the time i cleared the dishes after dinner.

the next morning, his fever was gone, but not the distress.  he went off to work, the girls went to school, and i went to work.  upon arriving home after a cruddy day at the office, no plans had been made for dinner.  i got a vacant stare and a shrug.  with nothing thawed, i made a trip back out at rush hour to the grocery store.  we were both tired and crabby.  i sent him to bed shortly after the kids and i sulked in the living room.

tuesday was a repeat, except that i only worked a half of a day, my mother in law picked the girls up after school and i got into a huge blowout fight with my mother.

he was sick, i mean sick, up until thursday.  although that didn’t stop him from playing softball.  i bought him natural remedies at nutrifoods and tried to be as understanding of his discomfort as i could.  but it was old by tuesday.  i am used to our routine and a certain level of affection every day.  i was not getting any of it.

i admit it, i am needy.  i don’t like to share my husband, be it with a flu bug or his softball team.  so by yesterday i was really looking forward to a quiet evening without the girls.  we could have a light dinner, open a bottle or two of wine, and watch some tv.

i came home from work.  called oldnavy.com for what was the fourth time this week.  usually, someone helped me within a few minutes of sitting on hold.  i waited 32 minutes and hung up.  jason got home, we pulled something out for dinner, went outside to light the grill, i called old navy again and turned the speakerphone on.  jason turns to me and says, “dear, you aren’t going to be happy with me”.  i hate it when he says that.

that means he is getting a cold sore.  ARGHHHHH!!!

are you kidding me?  the week from hell with a lost order from old navy that should have arrived a week ago on the doorstep of my brother and sister in law’s house, a suspected e. coli related illness, a fight with my mother, starting new medications that have kind of made me a little wacky, and a room parent meeting…and now this?

what have i done?  what is it that i need to atone for that this week just keeps on sucking?

now, to be fair, the girls and i had a lovely time at the orchard on thursday and today we are going to east lansing to spend the day with m.b. and a.c., but still.

i need attention.  i need to burn some sage in the house.  some sort of cleansing ritual.

i know, i am being ridiculous.  but i need to complain to someone and i seem to be short on people to complain to these days.

by the way, i sat on hold the second time for 71 minutes before hanging up and emailing old navy.  i am on hold again…20 minutes so far.

recognition

i don’t spit nearly as much venom as everyone thinks i do.  most of the time it is people putting words in my mouth.  this constant need to defend myself is really getting tiresome.

yet it begs the question, am i doing things that need to be defended, or am i just that insecure that i do it automatically?  not out of a need, but a habit?

well, i am officially the room parent for isabel’s class. one half of the room parent duo, that is.  we have a meeting tomorrow morning to go over what our responsibilities are going to be and how often we need to be at the school.  i am really stepping up this “being involved” nonsense.  i even went so far as to talk to some of the other parents on sylvie’s field trip today.  one would think it wouldn’t be difficult, but for me it’s like pulling my fingernails out.  i always fret that i am going to sound inane or the opposite.  i can’t seem to relax enough to just say, “hey, my daughter is in your son’s class and my oldest daughter is in your daughter’s grade and we live three streets from each other.  cool.”  “oh, and i went to high school with your husband.”

instead, i usually stand off to the side and not say a word. or sit in the car until the bell rings.

i am exhausted.  we were only at the orchard a couple of hours, but i am beat.  we must have walked back and forth from the playground to the hay tower at least ten times.

there were baby goats, though.  i love, love, love baby goats.  they were so soft and sweet and sylvie just kept gushing over them.  we went in the pen twice.  i wish we were allowed to have goats in our city.  i would have two.

sylvie is still being indecisive about her halloween costume.  i am not going to stress about it.

i am really bummed that we cannot attend the rally to restore sanity.  jon stewart should no better than to plan things halloween weekend.  or in a place i cannot afford to fly to.    i think we will try and do something locally, even if it is just having a bonfire on the backyard where we all complain to each other.

if you have any ideas, let me know.  okay, i am going to put our apples away and enjoy the beautiful weather.

 

 

 

for shame

i was having some tea with a.g. today and we were talking about the recent increase in homophobia related incidents.  most tragically, the student at rutgers who committed suicide after being outed on the internet.  i have to ask my fellow human beings…WHAT THE FUCK?

what is wrong with you?  why do you feel the need to humiliate the person next to you that you don’t even know?  a person that you never had a true conversation with, a person that never did a thing to you.

why do we seek to cause so much pain to one another?

why do we not aim to be better?  seek to be a role model.  a true person for others, not for yourself.

why are we not more benevolent?  why is it that all this jingoism induces persecution.  we are the nation that is supposedly a leader and we treat our own citizens like trash.

for shame.

watch this.