A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

Welcome to tonight’s episode of Mothers Behaving Badly. When last we visited our lovely family of three, the eldest daughter was just beginning to demonstrate what happens when a die-harder Optimist (capital O as in DSM-IV worthy) breeds with the twentieth century ADD poster child. Some call it pre-puberty, I call it Hell.

But first, this commercial break from our sponsor, Xanax.

I’ve noticed recently that when someone sets me off, my head feels like it’s going to blow to bits. Physiology may have been years ago but I simply cannot come up with a physical explanation for why my head would hurt that quickly under stress. Then it came to me. Someone lights my fuse and I clench my teeth. I think my head would hurt less if I quit stressing. That or if I just let it out and went off on someone. Loudly. With wild abandon. And heavily peppered with four-letter words of my choosing. Because, after all, if someone sets me off they deserve small words that are easily digested.

Which brings us back to the topic at hand. Well, not at hand by virtue of the fact that I don’t believe in corporal punishment. If Matricide is killing your mother and Patricide is killing your father, what is it called when you kill a pre-teen girl? “Alex, What is ‘Justified’?” You win the Daily Double!

She’s a good kid, she really is. But combine my lack of organization/ADD with her father’s unwaivering faith that everything will work out no matter what and I’m going to die young. We had (emphasis added on the past tense) plans tonight to go to a friend’s house (friend of mine) who was going to help her with a school project that is due the end of this week. Thing 1 knew that she had to have her parts of the project done by today for that to happen.

Three parts. Two I laid eyes on, one she said was saved at school and needed only to be printed. We were good to go. And then I woke up.

I left work an hour early to get her so that we could get home at a reasonable hour since my friend lives about an hour out. When I got to school I learned that the third part was printed fine but that one of the two that I’d seen wasn’t in the correct format for her teacher to accept. She’d re-written the whole thing but it still needed to be typed and printed. School closes in 40 minutes.

She read, I typed, and the Lord of Terror unleashed bugs in the Yggdrasil system. The printer didn’t work. Neither did the printer in the other computer lab. Even after powering off and rebooting. Or changing computers. Or waving a rubber chicken in the air. I was looking for a black rooster to sacrifice when the school closed and they kicked us out. On the way to the door the teacher looked at me and said “You’re so calm. I’d be screaming by now.”

Yeah. Calm. On the outside. Wanna guess what my head felt like?

So, time to change plans on the school project. We head to Michael’s looking for inspiration for Plan B and found it there. I also found my tongue there and used such choice phrases as “Screaming Hissy Fit” and “Life as you know it will end.” We then went home to print out the problem pages (I’d mailed myself the documents) and work on getting this thing done. On the way home there were more choice words, some related to traffic. Thing 2 asked at one point “Is that illegal?” and I explained that “No. It’s not illegal to say ‘shit’ in front of children.” It got quiet after that.

Guess what I found out when I got home? The rest of the pages and the paper to print them on are still in the computer lab at school. So in the absence of a project to work on, Thing 1 is left with just me and my wrath. Which is to say she’s doing laundry, cleaning her sister’s room and cleaning a litter box.

Me? I’m going to go light a candle and invoke the Goddess Calgon. All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals – particularly when they involve waterproof toys.

A few random thoughts for your Monday reading:

1) The difference between gossip and voicing a grievance is only a matter of who you’re talking to and if you had to make an appointment for the conversation. Yes, this is work related and yes, the plan continues. So far the conversations are going well with only a few surprises and those surprises haven’t been bad – just things to think about. In short, I’m feeling validated and empowered. Not that there aren’t more than a few hurdles left but I’m more confident than I was two weeks ago.

2) Is it a bad idea to name your invisible guard dog? I’m thinking “Adan” for a name. He showed up about the time I was doing some protection work and he’s not insignificant in making me feel better. No, I’m not psychotic, I’m a witch. Those of you who think those two are equivalent please refrain from commenting – it’s my reality and you’re only a visitor here. I can revoke your visa. And will before the next round of spell work.

3) Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thing 1 finally got her room pristinely clean this weekend – she even cleaned out dresser drawers and the closet. I was totally impressed. Until I saw Thing 2′s room. That would be the “equal and opposite reaction”. Turns out part of Thing 1′s plan was to weed out all clothes too small and hand them down – all the way down to Thing 2′s floor. I know that Thing 2′s room needs to be cleaned up next but now I’m a bit afraid of where the wandering vortex of clutter will settle next. Note to self: Check on burn laws for the area.

And finally, some fluff to top off this Monday sundae.

You Are Cayenne Pepper

You are very over the top and a bit overwhelming. You have a fiery personality, and you can give anyone a good jolt. You can easily take things up a couple notches, no matter what crowd you’re running with.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m not really blogging about work stuff right now. No, I’m not letting it drop. I’m still seething and working the plan. But like all my best plans, this one needs to stay mostly under wraps until complete. The mundane parts are rolling, the groundwork is laid for the magickal parts and there’s more planned for next week with more meetings and the moon rolling into Capricorn on it’s way to being dark.

That said, there are other matters afoot that are taking my attention.

WF is married to a crazy woman (the Rat Terrier) who seems to cycle her insanity on an irregular basis. I’ve been waiting for the next round and expected it this week but was still taking off guard when I got the call last night from WF telling me that the Rat Terrier was buying a house. I’ll admit that I freaked a bit. We co-parent well together and part of that is the distance between us. Since Guido’s moving out I’ve thought about moving to a smaller place and realized that I can’t go anywhere without disrupting the balance so I’ve resigned myself to staying here. And now he’s talking about moving. Not just talking – telling me that a house is going to be purchased. Period. No discussion.

Yup. I was pissed.

I explained to him, as calmly as I could (yeah, y’all know how calm that was, don’t you?) that I was violently opposed to this based on 1) disrupting the balance with the witchlets and 2) the fact that his home life/marriage was volatile enough that moving and buying a house together was the last thing they should be doing (as if I know crap about what’s good for a marriage). The Rat Terrier was in the room so the only reply I got was “We’ll talk later. She is buying this house.”

Xanax. Did. Not. Help.

So I called this morning. Again. No, I didn’t call over night……I just sent a couple of text messages. And an e-mail. And some negative thoughts. And hugged the witchlets. And took more Xanax.

WF called me back and I told him that I wanted…no….needed to talk about this soon. So this is what he told me:

<paraphrase>This is a good thing for all of us – me, the girls AND you. This will relieve a lot of the tension in our house and the that’s good for everyone. Rat Terrier will buy the house and I have made it clear that I have not committed to moving in. I’m not sure how well I’ve been heard but I’ve made that clear. We, I mean mostly the girls and I but you, too, will have to decide what is in their best interests before I decide that we’re going to move in with her. Does that help you feel better?</paraphrase>

So I feel better now but only a bit. I really have to wonder if this is his passive-aggressive way of getting the Rat Terrier out of the house so that he can “leave” her without having to confront her. Either way, things are calm for now. But if he decides that he’s going to try to move MY kids into that house (yes, the fem-Nazi just negated his half of the DNA – deal with it) we’re going to have some very difficult conversations.

I was having a discussion about relationships and “chemistry” the other night. Who the conversation was with is immaterial, we’re talking casual chat over a beer not pillow talk. Pillow talk is something I generally only get with Thing 1 and then it’s limited to phrases like: “If you don’t quite scratching, I’m going to put mittens on you!” and “Mom, why does your pillow smell like dog?” Yup. The old man likes to spoon. I share my bed with a neutered male. But this blog entry isn’t a wallow in pathos experience……back to the topic.

The chemistry conversation had to do with new relationships and the difference between friendship and a relationship. The difference, in the opinion of my companion, had to do with “chemistry” and the degree to which it was present. That’s a simple enough concept and one that I’m sure a lot of folks would agree with in theory but what happens when the rubber hits the road? (y’all knew I wouldn’t be able to resist at least one pun, right?)

You meet someone new and there is or there isn’t a spark. That spark can be “I hate you” or “You’re kinda cool” – I’m being non-judgmental here. No spark and you may end up being friends or not, it’s too soon to tell. We’ll come back to that. Well, I will since this is a monologue until someone comments.

So if there are sparks (the good kind), you go from there. Arrangements are made to meet again, and again, and you spend some time getting to know each other. How does anyone know if that’s going to move to a friendship or a relationship? And that’s just assuming that “sparks” are mutual!

I’d like to pose the hypothesis that if you move to a relationship you can slide into a friendship easier than you can go in the other direction. There’s something about making the decision to leave the situation as a friendship that can close a door – in many ways. There’s the simple logistics of the situation: “Oh, we’re friends. That’s cool. I’ll keep looking for someone who wants a relationship.” but I think there’s more to it. Excepting rare cases, once either side has decided to move to “friends” the possibility of any significant chemistry is off the table. The catalyst is missing, and without that, there’s no chemical reaction.

There are exceptions, of course. Those cases where people have known each other for years and years and been best of friends only to move into the relationship stage one day. There may or may not have been sparks when they met initially, heck, they may not remember! But for them to move on to a relationship they need to both be receptive to a relationship – the catalyst is present. Unless I’m the only one who has ever had the experience of a friend who thought it could be more but I didn’t want it – or vice versa. Yeah. Didn’t think so.

So what’s the danger with just allowing catalysis to take place? You meet someone, there are sparks, you allow chemistry to happen and find out later that you were wrong. The catalyst wasn’t a true catalyst, it was the only thing that kept the reaction going and without it things quickly fizzle. What have you lost?

You may have lost your heart, at least temporarily. You may have lost your mind, at least temporarily. And you may have lost a friend, maybe permanently. But for that brief time that you allowed yourself to be ignited and swept up into the messy chemical reactions of life and love – you were alive.

To live is to incur risk. To make a decision is to forgo other choices. But to not decide is still a decision and to not risk isn’t really to live. I suppose I’ll keep taking my chances.

Thing 2 is now 7 years old. We had the birthday and now we had the party. It’s official. The only thing left is for the fat lady to vent so here goes.

First, let me say that the witchlets’ father (WF) and I get along well. It’s taken a long time but we’ve reached the point where we can co-parent together well with a minimum of grief. Case in point, the day before the party we collaborated on a plan for Thing 1 and her issues (pre-teen drama, shoot me now). So you’ll not hear me complain about him often and I certainly try not to do it publicly.

That said, organization is not his strong suit. Planning, not so much. And birthday parties are still a bit of a sore spot for me. You see, they had always been my domain and something that I enjoy doing. When we negotiated the custody agreement, he wanted us to agree that we’d split the parties. At first, we tried doing joint parties – we planned and pulled off Thing 2′s first birthday together and decided that wouldn’t work again. So now we alternate. This was his year to do Thing 2′s birthday and me to do Thing 1′s. So I sat on my hands, put duct tape over my mouth and let him plan.

He chose to have the party at a gym in town that entertains the kids and has a party room where you can serve cake. Great. They even gave him the invitations. OK, I opened my mouth long enough to remind him of the kids he forgot, then I put the duct tape back and shut up.

The party was scheduled for 3:30. At 1 he calls to ask if the gym provides treat bags. Or plates. Or cups or napkins or a table cloth. And is water ok for drinks or should he try to pick something up on his way?

I explained that water will NOT work and that the rest of his questions are things that the gym would have put on the contract he signed with them. I then got off the phone and dug out my bail-out box. Yup. We’ve been separated/divorced for 7 years and I have a box of spare party gear for just such occasions. Treat bag stuff, table ware, all the things he’s forgotten in the past.

So at 2:30 when he called to tell me that he was running late and could I pick up drinks it wasn’t a big deal. The bail-out box was already in the car and I figured I’d end up with some errand.

At 3:32 I pull into the parking lot. Behind him. Yup, the guests were there already. Better still, he’d taken time to stop at the coffee shop on the way – at least he got me a latte, too. We get inside and things were underway in just a few minutes – as in just a few minutes late. The fun part was the parents asking me questions about the party. Hmmm…..I’m just a guest here.

With the kids in the gym, I go to the party room and scope things out. There are treat bags provided by the gym (read: cheap) so I go through my box and supplement. I put out the drinks, cups (they had bathroom size dixie cups provided so I put out the party cups) and looked for candles. WF had brought the standard-issue tiny thin birthday candles. Great! He remembered. But if you’ve ever tried to put those in an ice-cream cake you’ll appreciate why I brought some that wouldn’t break.

Satisfied, I wandered over to watch the kids in the gym. And that bothered me. I looked at the kids and a little voice told me something was wrong. So I counted.

You see this coming, don’t you?

There were more kids than the gym expected. We were short on treat bags and place settings.

So I shuffled some things around, got extra bags sorted out and figured out how to make it seem fair to the kids, broke into cabinets and pulled out extra place settings. Mischief managed.

Back to watching the kids. One was separated from the herd and crying. The gym folks were staying with the herd and WF was doing his own thing (taking pictures) so I went into the gym and dealt with the drama. It wasn’t too much longer and they were ready to come out of the gym and have cake.

So up to the party room everyone streams. WF hands me the cake to deal with and I take the lid off the box.

Set the box down. Step away. Do NOT kill…….

WF looks at the cake and makes some comment about it looking good. I told him to look again. Somehow he understood me through my clenched teeth and looked again.

“What?”

He was talking to empty air. I’d gone off in search of a toothpick and fork/knife to fix the misspelling of the birthday girl’s name. Frozen icing moves easily but the underlying layer isn’t as forgiving so it took a well-placed candle to really mask the error.

Don’t worry. I was in control. When he tried to hand me the knife to cut the cake I was able to walk away and tell him that he didn’t want me to be holding a knife right now. I simply don’t look good in prison orange. I even stuck around after the party with the kids whose parents he’d told the party ended 30 minutes later than it did.

Another year, another party. Goddess help us all.

Rolling with the “diet” theme a bit longer I need to say a few words about comfort food. We all have them. And not uncommonly they are things that our friends may turn their noses up at. Don’t believe me? Think about mashed potatoes with corn mixed in. OK. Now un-crinkle your nose. But when the day really, really sucks and all I want to do is curl up and pretend that it never happened – that’s what I eat. It’s safe. It’s familiar.

So I went out to dinner and a movie with Moishe last night. You know what? He’s safe. He’s familiar. My friends would turn their noses up at him and, objectively, there are plenty of reasons to. He very happily lives with several of my exclusion criteria, his humor is at least as off-beat as mine, and he’s not what any of us (I’m including myself here) would envision for a partner for me. There’s no spark there – never was – that chemical reaction that ignites a relationship early on never happened. And maybe that’s the reason he’s so comfortable. There’s no spark but neither has there ever been a need to impress or be anything other than just me – wart and all (first one to make a witch joke gets hexed). I can let my hair down, crack bad jokes, be politically incorrect, whatever. And it’s all good.

So what the Hel is this post doing filed under relationships?? The relationship sounds like Bear to me – he and I have been best friends for over 20 years and that’s exactly the kind of relationship I have with him – comfortable, familiar (note the word root for “family”, Bear is like a brother to me). Why shouldn’t I have exactly this kind of relationship with Moishe?

Well. The start was different – Bear and I met as friends, Moishe and I started out on a date. Speaking of, how do you count dates when there’s a 6 year hiatus between dates? Was the movie our second date or our fifth? Not that I care but my Wife has a record she’s trying to expunge and the answer could help her…..

The other difference (pardon the ADD sidetrack) is that I suspect that Moishe is looking for something more than a friendship.  Of course that’s the last thing either of us should be looking for at this point and we both know it but that’s not stopping his intentions from pinging on my radar right now. Yes, this will be another interesting conversation that I know I shouldn’t avoid. But it’s comfortable………………

So there I was, minding my own business, trying to write in my journal. OK. I was avoiding actually writing. Seems like some topics are tough to tackle so I started daydreaming instead. That led to thoughts of deja vous about the topic I was avoiding – like I said, JD used to drop me into tears on that subject on a regular basis. So I said to myself: “Self. You could avoid writing about this topic entirely if only you look through your journal and find where you addressed it before. Surely you possessed the wisdom then to solve your problems and need only to be reminded of said brilliant solution.” (remember: people who talk to themselves are delusional).

I began to flip through the pages and you’ll be happy to know that I successfully avoided ever dealing with the topic at hand. Yup. Totally, utterly, completely sidetracked.

What was so interesting as to distract me wasn’t just belly button lint (this time). Nope. I got to reading about the last little jaunt I had with dating and single life and it scared me. Apparently not only am I missing the “solution” to the current issue but I’m missing whole issues. I won’t make any sweeping generalizations about how the people in my life (ok, not people, men, but some of them are people too!) are the same as before but the types of relationships and issues are strikingly similar. Yes, I’m aware that there are a finite number of issues one can deal with in a relationship but hear me out.

Last round of dating I kept a journal with entries for every person that I’d had either a strong reaction to or more than two dates. For each, I tried to note what I was reacting to and then later I went back and wrote out what I thought I learned from the most significant ones. “Later” in this case was after Guido and I met and were engaged so he’s not included in the post-mortem dissection. The lessons were interesting, seemed clear at the time and are well-enough articulated that they make sense to me even now. Things like, “I was reacting to being attention-starved and this was the first person to give me the kind of attention I craved so I felt gratitude and interpreted it as attachment” and “We seemed well-matched physically and intellectually but without a common vision for a relationship that would never be enough.”

At this point there aren’t many relationships in my life that meet those criteria but there are a few. And if I had to pen a lesson for each at this point in time, I could plagiarize myself and lift them straight out of my old journal entries. No, the people don’t resemble each other and the lessons don’t match exactly but they’re close enough that I can hear Fate chuckling at the beauty of a well-executed practical joke. No. That’s not fair of me. She’s sent me clues – Moishe has shown up recently and just yesterday another name on that list came up in conversation. Fate does want me to succeed at figuring this out. Maybe. I think. Possibly.

The scary part of all this is that the last go round I missed a lesson and look where it landed me (face down, as I recall). I have a strong desire not to repeat that painful lesson so I suppose that it’s time to start listening to Fate. I’m already taking notes – I just have to take them a bit more seriously. And maybe, just maybe, start paying attention with all my senses.

I’ve never talked about my job on here. Mostly because the risk would be too great. Sure, RC knows where the blog is and knows what’s said here but what can I lose? And SK has enough info to find it, heck, the men in my life (or my head) could all find it and there’s still nothing to lose. Those who would leave over anything I’ve written aren’t worth the effort to hang onto anyway and those who would stay long enough to ask me to explain are worth the time to explain myself to. They can make up their own minds. My job, on the other hand, well, someone has to buy the Cheerios!

But anyone who knows me well knows that my job is a source of constant frustration for me. Jackie alone is enough to make me want to run away and teach middle school science the rest of my life. And then there’s my “real” boss. It’s all just very disturbing. One more prejudice, illegal, demeaning, uncalled-for comment about me and I may be sent over the edge into a psychotic break.

Funny then, that here I am on a business trip for a job that de-values me at every possible turn. While I’m out I’m getting e-mail from Jackie telling me what’s waiting when I get back (HINT: nothing good) AND just in case that wasn’t enough fun and games to keep me loving life, the group I’m with keeps talking about her as though she were the best thing since sliced bread. Oh. And it’s Thing 2′s birthday tomorrow.

I’m going to f’ing scream.

Keeping in mind the posts of late (reference the box of untouched chocolates) and it’s easy to see why Xanax should be a scheduled medication in my life right now.

But no. I’m nowhere near that smart. I drank instead.

Not a lot. Just enough. Enough to loosen my tongue to say somethings that I know damn well didn’t need saying. OK, the Hel with that. They needed saying, just not with that crowd of people. The needed shouting from the mountain tops as loud as I can shout – loudly enough that I have no voice left the rest of the week!

Rather, they were said in a blandly conversational tone over dinner in a mundane little cafe in a mundane little town on the West Coast. And now I can’t take them back. Worse. I don’t want to.

It’s been documented many, many times that people, women in particular, feel like impostors when they’re being successful.  So I have to say, I’ve felt like an impostor more than once including the fact that I’ve been included on this trip. Never mind all the things that have come to pass with the national organization. Clearly there’s a mistake and someday they’ll realize it and all of this will evaporate into thin air.

Then I think about Jackie and her dislike of me – the way she goes out of her way to make me look like an impostor – and I feel so angry I could scream. I have worked hard to get where I am – at least as hard as she has – and by Goddess I am not going to roll over and play dead because she’s decided that somehow my personal life makes me unworthy. That’s not her place and as much as I want to run away and hide, I’m not going to let her win this without a fight.

Of course, some of what I learned today makes me think that she’s more cunning than I thought. There may be plans afoot that run deeper than I dreamed in my worst nightmare but knowledge is power and now that I know (or suspect) I can start to plan my defense.

Or my escape. I don’t know. I just know that I’m so sick of this.

Oh, and Fate is having fun with my e-mail again. Old names in the inbox conjuring ghosts with a simple two-word spell have left me in a head space that I cannot describe or explain. I think, perhaps, it is time to let some of these tears out before Fate is tempted to see how high she can build the pressure. I don’t know how much more I could take even if I wanted to.

So today the Pagan Queen finds herself on the road…..well, more like in the air. At the moment I’m sitting at some random airport that shall remain nameless (Newark) waiting for my connection. I could post random travel thoughts but there are things here that have caught my attention and deserve their own space.

To know me is to love me know that religion is a hot button for me. So imagine my reaction when I arrived here and saw a stage set up next to the food court in my concourse (the same one where the flights to Tel Aviv leave from, both that gate and mine border the food court).  The banner on the stage makes some random proclamation about celebrating ‚ÄúBlack History‚Äù so you‚Äôll have to imagine my surprise that nearly a third of the robed singers on stage were not black (ok, a quarter if you use the criteria of paler than lily white arse). Surprise quickly gave way to shock when every single song they performed was Christian Gospel.

I couldn’t escape without leaving my gate and had no choice but to listen to the choral musings on the divinity of Jesus. Did you know he was born of a virgin? I heard that today. About 50 times. In tune at least.

There are a couple of things that bother me here. The first is the simple fact that I‚Äôm pretty sure I‚Äôm not the only non-Christian who had to deal with this. Unless Christian men have taken to wearing yarmulkes, that is, in which case my observations are wholly inaccurate. Now, there‚Äôs nothing wrong with a little cultural literacy among friends but I do have to wonder what day Klezmer music is performed here. I fly back through on Wednesday, what kind of performance do you suppose they host for Odin?  I don‚Äôt mean to be cynical‚Ķ..ok, I don‚Äôt want to be cynical but in the absence of a reason not to be I mean to be, for now‚Ķ..and I have a cynical feeling that this is solely a Christian thing.

Now the second point, and I hope someone politely corrects me if I‚Äôm wrong here, is that the combination of ‚ÄúBlack History‚Äù and ‚ÄúChristianity‚Äù doesn‚Äôt seem right to me. Typically when I hear folks talking about Black History the reference is to pre-slavery history.  My understanding, limited as it is, is that Christianity was introduced to the slaves. So essentially lumping Christian teachings and music with Black history leaves us celebrating slavery.

Odin help us all.

And for those of you waiting for a random airport snarkage:

1. Saggy boobs do not belong under a low-cut V-neck (think navel-revealing) under ANY circumstances much less air travel when things get slung unattractively over shoulders and catch on clothing. Then again, I didn’t want airport food anyway.
2. Speaking of clothing shifting – I know I’m glorious to behold and yes, that is a bra strap – but neither of those facts constitute permission to stare.
3. Will I ever be able to fly again without the need to pre-medicate with narcotics and still hope for some miracle end to my suffering? I think this year I shall only fly with a companion so that I can be well and truly medicated for any and all altitude changes.