Don't look at me like that

*
Well, as always, I feel the need to clarify my last entry. I have this almost pathological need to be understood in real life too, so it's not you baby, it's me. I started to write a big ol' clarification, but then the entry got all wallow-ey and weird and BLEH. So nevermind.

Let's just say that life takes more effort than I'd like sometimes and I have trouble with that concept. But y'know, sometimes life is like that and we can't all walk around with sunshine and rainbows shooting out of our asses, now can we? No, we can not, because that would be awfully distracting in meetings. So there.

Anyway, and so, plus also, hi. How are you? You look lovely in that color, really. It brings out your eyes.

I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed lately because I have a lot of things in my life that I want to do and a lot of things that I need to do and, like always, I'm having trouble sorting out the two and prioritizing them and getting them done. So instead, I sit on the couch and watch CSI reruns and drink wine instead.

When I get this way, I also start feeling listy. Like, I want to get a notebook and start making lists - lists of things I need to do, projects, groceries, stuff I need to get done around the house, people I should call, work stuff I should do, daydreams, favorite songs, movies I want to see, books I want to read, other lists I want to make (yes, it's that bad.)

It's just one more way to try to grab the tail of my life and wrestle it to the ground, that's all. I've managed to go a whole month of feeling this way without buying a notebook (one my resolutions! Whoo!) I have a box of blank books taunting me from the closet. It may be time to dig one out and start list-making.

Here's an example of my first list - Ways in Which I'm Completely Off My Rocker:

1 - Well, the list thing.
2 - Compulsive nail cleaning.
3 - I can NOT handle anything coming towards my eyes. Like, if you're talking to me, don't gesture with your pen in my direction. I'll seriously squeal and duck.
4 - Oh, and don't even think about talking about eye surgery around me.
5 - Do I even need to mention my reaction to eye-related gore in movies? No? Good.
6 - I am deathly afraid of crickets and grasshoppers. yes, really. Shut up.
7 - I love pasta in any shape or form except bowtie pasta. Yech, I can't STAND that stuff. I think it's because of its association with mediocre pasta salad.

Anyway, I'm nuts and I need to sit down with a notebook and a pen and do some writing of the bulleted kind tonight, I think. You normal people are sitting there, all "why don't you just DO the stuff that's bothering you??" Look, if I could, I would OK? But I look at a messy house or a pile of laundry or whatever andI cI don't see a task or a set of tasks. I see a mountain. I see Everest. I see this insurmountable thing that I will never, ever be able to get a handle on. So I wander off somewhere safe (couch, wine, CSI - keep up.)

We all cope the best way we can, right? I cope with drugs, my penguin-esque waddles down the hike and bike trail, making lists and laughing at inappropriate times.

How do you cope?

*This is Jef's cat, Harold, looking very serious and judgey.

Crazy

I didn't get too far on my list the other day. I did go run and I did get the pile of clothes folded, but they got replaced by a whole new pile when kiddo cleaned out her bathroom. I made some progress on my horrifying living room, and I did go to Kohl's for new bathroom stuff (shower curtain and a couple of counter thingies. Why do we decorate bathrooms?)

I got my eyebrows waxed yesterday, for those of y'all keeping score at home.

Every time I get my eyebrows waxed, I end up with a GIGANTIC zit right smack-dab in the middle of my forehead. I mean it's a third eye sumbitch, too. I can't decide which is worse, the Bert brows, or the giant cyclops zit.

A long time ago, I resigned myself to the fact that maybe some people are just supposed to be happy and some people aren't and I was one of the ones that wasn't. After about a year I realized that living that way was gradually driving me insane, so I started looking for a way to be happy. I looked in a lot of places, some of them more logical than others, until I finally found myself in a therapist's office.

I started talking to her and I got on anti-depressants and mood stabilizers and I started getting happy.

I got divorced and I got even happier.

The other day I realized that I'm truly, honestly happy for the first time in a long, long time. The last time I remember feeling this way was probably my freshman year in college (1989-90.)

But I still have to take the drugs, and I still have to run 2 or 3 times a week and I still have to stay away from the diet sodas and I still have to make sure I pay attention to certain silly things and I still need to remember to stick up for myself and say what I think (things that should just come naturally, shouldn't they?) and so much, there's so much work to being happy.

There's so much maintenance to being low maintenance. HEH.

As I told Jef - it's not that I'm low maintenance, it's that I'm self-maintenance. The idea of somebody else dealing with and taking care of my crap just mortifies me. I need drugs and regular exercise and fresh air and sunshine and 3 meals a day and lots of water (Jesus, am I woman or a poodle??) in order to function, so the idea of somebody else taking on all of this crap? UGH.

I don't need jewelry or flowers or *stuff* to be happy. I mean - it's nice, don't get me wrong. But, for one thing, I went for 14 years with a husband who didn't give me flowers because he gave them to everybody else so he felt like that de-valued them. Same with jewelry. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get some fucking jewelry. I am stereotypically female in that I love the shiny stuff. But the Ex had some bizarre notion that he wouldn't get it right, so he didn't get anything.

What the fuck was I saying?? My daughter just came in here, dancing around....Oh...yeah. The idea of asking anybody else to take on my crap. Just, no. If we define "high-maintenance" as needing lots of material shit, then no. Y'know, presents are nice, but no. If we define "high maintenance" as needing lots of actual maintenance in order to function in reality? Well yeah. That's me. But I do it myself. I work really hard to keep it separate from everything else too.

Maybe too hard.

Hi Jef - baby, if you read this one?? I'm nuts, OK? Seriously. I mean - you already know about the meds, but see here's the thing. I run so I don't get fat, but I also run to keep myself sane. If I drink too much Diet Coke, I start to get nutty. I have problems with low blood sugar. I'm afraid I'll get cancer like my dad did, so I'm trying to be healthy, but then I'm convinced I'll get it anyway so sometimes I say "why bother??" I'm petrified of my ex and can't stand up to him at all. I think getting divorced is the smartest and best thing I ever did. I know why I'm with you, but sometimes I wonder why you're with me.

See? NUTS! NUTSNUTSNUTSNUTS.

I just think somewhere along the way I got the idea that I'd be able to sit back and relax, all "aaah, here I am in Happiness U.S.A." and well, so far that hasn't happened. There are times when I know that I'm in the right place at the right time, or I know I'm doing the right thing and I know what "happy" feels like. But most of the time? It eludes me. I wander around, wondering if I'll ever be satisified, if I'll ever go through a whole day without feeling like crying or feeling like there's an oily knot of fear in my chest. One day without feeling like I have to defend everything I do, without worrying that someone will expose all my secrets, will point me out in the crowd for being the moron, the fraud, the dupe the I am. One day of not feeling like I'm pulling the wool over all the normal people's eyes.

Phoning it in

Y'all, I was gonna do another projecting my issues type entry about Britney again, but FEH. I just don't have it in me anymore.

I do, however, have the day off tomorrow. Right now I'm headed out for martinis and gossip with a friend. Tomorrow, tonight and this weekend, I'm planning to do some of the following:

Put away the mountain of clean clothes in my room
Take a bunch of stuff to Goodwill
Weed through my books and take the rejects to Half-Price Books
Get my Oscar the Grouch eyebrows waxed
Clean my horrible living room
Wander through Target and consider some new bathroom stuff
Go for a run
Make something with the beads I bought in Dallas last weekend
Write a real entry

SMOOOCH!!!

Go home, mister

For years, I've gotten homesick on Mardi Gras. Last year, it just made me sad. This year I'm more than happy to pretend it's not even happening. In fact, until Sunday it didn't even really click with me that it was carnival season.

I just don't want to think about Louisiana right now. It makes me miss my hometown and it makes me miss my dad.

Lately everything reminds me of my dad, and I know it's because down in the part of my brain that I try to ignore, I'm reliving last year and I'm doing a countdown. This time last year, he only had a month left. We knew, but we didn't know.

So y'all forgive this New Orleans girl if she embraces her adopted Texan status today and ignores all that south Louisiana foolishness. I'm going for a run on an Austin trail, then I'm going home to work on my filthy little hill country apartment and perhaps knit some very silly projects, considering winter is just about over down here.

I will drink cheap Spanish wine and eat sauteed mushrooms over avocado (it's good, you should try it.) I'll have some of those damn mini Cadbury creme egs for dessert.

I will ignore any and all Mardi Gras coverage, even if it means going to my room and closing the door and the blinds and burying myself in books I've read 4 times already.

Tomorrow I'm not giving up a damn thing, because I'm not Catholic.

Thoughts on a shiny noggin

Y'all, Britney's bald head makes me all kinds of happy. I mean - home skillet done snapped, and I just know she's gonna start decorating her noggin with Swaroskis and shit now. (PLEEEEEEEEEEEEZ) I gave up celebrity gossip and have been so good about not following it, but dude. Bald Britney! I am not made of stone, people!!

I'm joking, because the truth is, I kind of feel for Britney. There was a time during my divorce when I really, truly thought I was going to lose my mind. One more phone call or email from the ex, one more shitty comment and I'd be writing this from the loony bin. (Instead of someplace that's totally NOT work. Ahem.)

There's a point in any stressful situation where you realize that there's not a Goddamned bit of what's going on that's in your control. Nothing. The only thing you can handle is getting up and putting one foot in front of the other. Arm in shirt, leg in pants, key in door, you can handle that. When you get to that point, you either relax or rebel.

The relaxers do exactly that. They sit back and just ride the roller coaster. They do a lot of deep breathing and perhaps some eye rolling, but they mostly just mutter "not my marble, dude" and wait for the storm to pass.

The rebels reach out for anything upon which to exert some control. In the extreme forms of rebellion, they lash out at other people to try to make them feel bad. In the mild form, they do things like re-decorate, buy new wardrobes, get tattoos, take up new exercise regimens and get extreme new haircuts.

When I got divorced, I chopped off 5 inches of hair and got two spur-of-the-moment tattoos - one of them on my neck.

As long as I can remember, I had dreams where I was trying to walk but I couldn't because I was floating above the ground. I wasn't flying, but actually floating about 2 feet above the ground and every time I'd try to walk, I couldn't get anywhere because I couldn't get any traction. You don't have to be a shrink to figure that shit out.

About 2 years ago, those dreams stopped. I haven't had one since. I've been more scared and alone and freaked right the fuck out in the past two years, but I've been able to control what happens to me during it. I know that at the end of the day, I made the decisions on what happened to me, and I was responsible for my own shit. It might suck, and it might be the worst damn decision I ever made, but dammit, I made the decision.

It felt really Goddamn good to get rid of those dreams.

Getting divorced sucked. Hell, being divorced sucks. Even if your marriage isn't happy, when things get rough you always think to yourself, "Man, if I'd stay married, somebody else could be picking up the chicken noodle soup/dry cleaning/cat barf right now." I guess I'm old-fashioned, but as a Woman Who Left, it feels like I failed. We won't even get into the ways the Ex failed, because every story has two sides and water under a bridge and caveat emptor and all that happy horseshit. But, you (I) do sometimes wonder if you (I) really gave it your (my) best effort.

So that my mom, Jef and Jane can all breathe again - does that mean I want to go back and give it another shot? Good fucking God, NO. I'm depressive, not delusional.

As much as it sucked, and as much as I'd like to go back to a HAPPY partnership someday, I'm glad I did it. I know I wouldn't be happy if I were still married to the Ex, and I'm happy now.

I'm happy with my life. There are things about it that could use a little fine-tuning, but I'm happy.

My point, and I swear I had one when I started, is that for some of us who never felt like we had control of our lives in the first place, when things get really crazy-insane? We reach out at something, anything and just CHANGE it, make a mark on it to show we were here, to show that we have power and agency and control in the world in some way.

Or, y'know - bitch could just be crazy.

A rebel and a relaxer arguing is a lot of fun to watch. The rebel is getting redder and redder, just trying to MAKE the other guy made, and the relaxer's like "dude - have you considered decaf?"

Do not pass go, do not collect $200

Because I have a corner booth in hell* already reserved, I have a picture of the future.

There is Hugh Hefner's head, floating in a jar. It is resting on a podium next to a tall, statuesque woman. She has curly blonde hair and big blue eyes and vaguely familiar features. A large, toothy grin spreads across her face. She is wearing a 20th century style dress known as a "halter" over her curvy frame.

"I'd like to congratulate Danielynn Stern on being named Playmate of the Year. I'd also like to thank her for gracing the cover of our very first 'Legacy Playboy'."

Oh, stop staring at me like that. Y'all know Hef thought of it too and he's just pissed off he won't be alive to make it happen.

*I actually don't believe in hell. I believe hell is here on Earth, in the form of Karma and the consequences of all our shitty decisions. And Celine Dion.

*BWOK!!*

OK, so I'm a giant chicken. Those of you got to read the big angry rant, lucky you. The rest of you, sorry. I took it down because I'm a weinie and because it was just entirely too much negativity, even for me.

I'll be back later.

smooches.

See what happens when you pay me a compliment?

So now that I've written something sort of damning of the ex, I feel this need to defend him or attach some sort of disclaimer. Bleh.

Before you rise up, all "Girl, don't you say nothin' nice about him!!" let me explain a couple of things. First, the ex is not a bad person. I wouldn't have spent 14 years of my life with a bad person. He just has some problems claiming responsibility for his own emotions and I am all too willing to own other people's emotions, which made us the perfect little dysfunctional match.

Second, while I do talk about the ex and some of the problems we have to Jef, I try not to trash talk about him where my boyfriend can read/hear it. Why? Well, for one thing it's just plain tacky. For another, it sort of sets a bad precedent. If I say those kind of things about the man I was with for 14 years, what do I say about the guy I'm with for 8 months?* Despite the fact that I write out here on the intarwebs, I actually don't believe in airing my dirty laundry. That's why most of my and the ex's mutual friends were so surprised when we announced we were getting divorced. I'll tell you about shaving my crotch or my horrible housekeeping, but some other things just aren't done. And this site is still semi-anonymous. The only people from my real life who know about it are my mom and Jef. I don't know, I'm starting to sound hypocritical to myself w/ the "I don't air my issues" and "I'm here on the worlda-wida-webba" at the same time. But somehow it seems different to me to sit with a girlfriend and vent and then turn around and tell the same stuff to your current partner. I'm not making sense anymore. End of paragraph.

Third, and I always feel the need to do this whenever I say anything even remotely uncomplimentary about anybody, I'm not a perfect person. So here's a list of all the ways in which I'm just a little hard to live with.

*I am a moody depressive.

*When I walk in the door, I drop my shit right in the middle of the walkway. I've tried to stop this, but can't seem to. I think the only answer for me is a house with cubbyholes right by the door. In other words, I have the housekeeping skills of a 5 year-old.

*I'm a clutterbug. Piles of crap everywhere. And yes, nine times out of ten, I really do know where everything is.

*I leave a 1/4" of milk in the jug and put it back in the fridge.

*I steal the last beer and sometimes the last cookie.

*I almost never make my bed, and usually only do it because company's coming over or because I've just washed the sheets.

*I let my cats sleep in the bed with me and if you have a problem with that, I'll probably choose them over you.

*Sometimes I take off my bra while I'm watching TV and leave it laying right there, in the middle of the living room floor. Trust me, there's no missing that bad boy.

*I can NOT cook in a dirty kitchen, not even a sandwich. If you want dinner NOW, the kitchen needs to be clean, or we need to go out to eat. The upside of this is that I usually can't go to bed unless my kitchen is clean.

*I don't soak my dishes because the thought of that nasty water bothers me way more than the thought of scrubbing a pan.

*I leave cups and glasses EVERYWHERE. I send the kid scouting through the house every day for glasses when I do dishes, because lord only knows where I've left my coffee cup from that morning.

*I'm picky about everything except food.

*I like stinky food like sardines and blue cheese. But not together - that's too gross, even for me.

*I can and will go an entire weekend without bathing or changing clothes. In fact, I rather enjoy it after a tough week. A little ferality never hurt anybody.

*Sometimes, I just don't really want to be touched.

*I think Fritos, cheese and a glass of wine is a perfectly acceptable dinner every once in a while.

*I can get a little self-involved. I still love you, but I'm over here, doing my thing - don't you have a thing to do?? No? Well, go find one.

*I'm forgetful. If I don't write it down, I'll forget it. And, frankly, if it's not important to me, I'll forget it too. Just because something is important to you doesn't make it important to me, sorry. I'm sure there's some transitive property of relationships here that I just don't get, but there it is. I'll try to share in stuff with you, I respect that things are important to you, but just because you have a big important meeting today doesn't mean I'll remember it. Sorry.

*I don't communicate my needs and wants clearly, or hell, sometimes at all. It takes me a long time to dredge up what I really want from the bottom of my brain, and if you start talking in the middle of my thought, you'll completely derail my train.

See folks? I'm hard to live with too. A moody, unpredictable, prickly, forgetful, selfish, cookie-stealing, messy, stinky cheese-eating, giant bra-leaving, crazy cat lady.

Call me!!

*Of course, I say nothing bad about him, because he's given me nothing bad TO say. Smoooooch!