A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

I’m sick. No, I don’t mean the usual mental disruptions. I’m not even referencing the chronic health issues that have marked the last year of my life. I just have a cold.

That’s it. A cold. Nothing dramatic. Nothing worth a visit to my doc over or even missing work for. Just a cold.

And it’s kicking my ass into next week. I am quickly coming to the realization that I have no reserve. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

The house is teetering on the verge of disaster since the witchlets have been here most of the last month and have been completely unwilling to help me clean up. In turn, I have been unwilling to either crack the whip at them and so things have just been drifting downwards.

The witchlets’ needs are only barely getting met. I’m not reading to them, I’m sending Thing 2 to bed early and snapping at Thing 1. Clothes aren’t getting mended. Homework is getting done but it’s a struggle for all of us. Getting ready in the morning is spotty, at best. And getting to school on time isn’t a safe bet.

My energy level is likewise teetering as I have a few too many projects and a few too few hours in the day to work on them. Throw in the issues I’ve been having with my head and getting my meds adjusted over the last month and physically the reserves are gone.

Emotionally…..well…..do we really need to go there? I’ve not been making the time to process that I’d set aside previously and now find myself looking at the schedule trying to find 15 minutes to cry. More days than not I can’t find it no matter how much I know I need it. As a result I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so frazzled at home that if (when, to be honest) the phone rings I just don’t want to answer it. I’m ready to scream at the next person who asks me for ANYthing.

In a way, it’s kinda funny. Guido didn’t help out a whole lot around here but he did some stuff. Still, when he first moved out it was easier to keep up with stuff than it had been with him here. I think he made more work than he did. And yet, right now, I miss having him around.

I think that has nothing to do with him as a person or even as a helpful roommate. It’s more that he was my backup plan. When I couldn’t function at full capacity, it was Guido who helped me keep moving. At least until last year. Then he stopped. Guido became part of the problem when he decided that my health issues were his excuse to berate me and abuse me. For months I felt like I do right now – barely holding it together and hoping for someone to somehow throw me enough help to keep me moving.

When Guido moved out, WF took over. He knew firsthand how hard it is to be a single parent as much as he knows first hand about health issues. So he tried to help me pick up the slack with the girls anyway. With them taken care of at least I could handle the rest. But now he’s at the end of his semester and I’m the one trying to help him out. Except that I’m sick and in no position to help anyone.

So there you have it. I’m a single mom with a cold and an overdeveloped skill for whining about it. The bottom line, as near as I can see, is that I have to learn to deal with this kind of stuff. It isn’t that I need someone to rescue me any more than it’s about needed to be able to “do it all” no matter how you feel. No, what I need to learn here is how to let it go. How to look at a trashed kitchen and say “I’ll deal with this tomorrow” – or better still – order carry out and don’t trash the kitchen in the first place. I need to learn how to triage homework and laundry. I need to learn that paying someone to clean your house isn’t a character flaw. Nor is asking for help on the carpool rotation.

But I can also look at this experience and see what I have already learned. I learned that I felt like an overwhelmed single mom during the last year I was married to and living with Guido. I’ve also learned that finding time to cry is like finding time to sleep – if you don’t find the time to do it, the time will find you. So I’m off to make my peace with that time now. And I’m turning off the phone on my way there.

The Wicked Witch of the North sent this to me for the holiday:

When I got done laughing, I stopped to think about it. Being Pagan doesn’t mean being anti-Christian despite the beliefs of some Christians that I know. Still, in my darker moments even this Pagan Queen has been known to refer to the dominant religion of our culture as “dead human worship”. It’s like cursing. I don’t like to admit that I do it, I know that it reflects poorly on me and I try not to do it around the witchlets because I don’t like what it teaches them. And like so many other things about religion and life, what I tell the witchlets teaches me as much as it teaches them. It simply isn’t nice to make fun of other people.

So………..for the sake of this blog and the rest of this post please assume that I’m not making fun of anyone. I’ve admitted that I laughed because, well, y’all wouldn’t believe me if I said I didn’t. But that was then. This is now and now I’d like to talk about something more serious that the image above made me think about.

Let’s start with the words: “Don’t let a dead man affect your life.” Taken totally literally, I can’t agree with that statement. There are many, many dead men (and women) who affect my life – Galileo, Ibsen, Douglas Adams – so I’d be a hypocrite to tell anyone else not to let a particular dead man impact their life. That said, I think the words weren’t meant to be taken literally.

Change it a bit and you have “Don’t let the death of one man affect your life.” That, I think, is closer to what may have been intended. The minister at my church (pause for jaws to be retrieved off the floor – yes, I’m a member of a church) gave an Easter sermon years ago about “The Passion’s not the Point.” His message has stuck with me and will continue to resonate with me for years to come. It was simply this: Jesus had many great teachings. Allowing ourselves to focus only on the death and (presumed) resurrection of Jesus misses the majority of his good work. In short, it isn’t the death of one man that should be impacting your daily living but rather his life and teaching.

I think I would have fewer of those embarrassing moments chuckling at the Christian faith if folks spent less time extolling the virtues of a man for his method of public execution (without the death penalty, there would be no Christianity, think about it) and more time extolling his virtues as a teacher. Find a Jefferson Bible. Read it. Really. I’m unwilling to let Jesus affect my life because of how he died but talk to me about what he taught and I’ll consider it.

Then there’s the second set of words: “Why do so many people worship a dead traitor and terrorist?” Looking at the history, Jesus was a traitor and a terrorist. I’m not using those words to be inflammatory (this time) but just to state a fact and set the stage for discussion. Jesus, by actions and words, acted contrary to the lawful rulers of his time. And yet, the majority of people in our culture view him as the pinnacle of morality. Why? Because what he stood for, his core values and beliefs, have stood the test of time and proven themselves to be worth fighting and dying for.

So why is this noteworthy?

Because so many of the fundamentalists who hold these views are now the “lawful rulers” of my time. And they don’t take well to dissent from any quarter – within or without. They restrict our rights and invade sovereign nations in the name of protecting their right to rule and in the name of their god. But from where I stand, at their most sacred time of the year, I have to ask: What Would Jesus Do? Would a known traitor and terrorist have approved of silencing the minority in his name? Would he have found waterboarding preferable to crucifixion? Or perhaps, just maybe, he really meant that whole bit about love and neighbors and enemies (Luke 6:27 and others)?

Nah. Not in an election year……….

Let’s talk about Magick, shall we?

I mentioned working by the dark of the moon recently but didn’t give details. There were two rituals – the first one was to remove barriers that are standing in my way professionally. I didn’t ask for anything specific, just please let me plant some seeds without Round Up getting poured on them.

So here I am, weeks later, watching the first sprouts peek through the ground. I know better than to mention what those sprouts look like or what I’m hoping they’ll grow into – I save that level of disappointing disillusion for my personal life – but even if they fail to grow into anything ever, at least I have sprouts. Tiny little seedlings of hope reaching up for the light of a new day.

Can you sustain yourself on sprouts?

I think you can. Monday night I was a bundle of nerves, in large part because of how the schedule had turned out and what that meant for Jackie and I. I know the kinds of things that set her off and I knew that Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning would be enough to have her looking for ways to make me suffer. But knowing that things in my life are moving, even if the movement is imperceptible on any sort of “normal” scale, helped. So yesterday when the blow came, it didn’t level me. As a matter of fact I did my own investigation and have evidence that her statements were a very gross mis-representation of the facts. What I’ll do with that evidence I don’t know yet, but it’s good to have it and the reason I have it is because I didn’t crumble. Progress was made.

Speaking of progress, guess what came in the mail yesterday? My divorce papers. Yup. They’ve been filed and notice should be served shortly if it hasn’t been already. Eventually I guess I’ll have to mention this at work but so far I’ve done my best not to let on that I’m even separated. Sure, there are a few people who know but for the most part I’ve been actively keeping it off the radar. One of Jackie’s favorite digs has been how I can’t handle being a “single mother” – and that was when Guido lived with me. I just don’t want to feed that fire right now. Mainly because I’m sick enough of it to go straight to HR and my lawyer to resolve this once and for all. I can’t believe that those comments would be condoned.

Besides, not only can I handle being a single mom, but I can handle being a single grandma. Thing 1 last night was moping around the house trying to cheer up my grandpuppy after said canine was spayed yesterday. Poor Shadow wanted nothing to do with being cheered up (or picked up or fed or anything but being petted) but she was perkier this morning. Thing 1 is back with her father tonight so I’ll be playing nursemaid to a wounded mutt tonight. Poor creature. I’m sure she’ll be back into trouble long before we’re supposed to let her off leash in a week.

And working our way back to Magick, I’d be remiss to not mention the interesting conversation we had in the car yesterday on the way home from school. Thing 2 has been told not to use the “W word” unless she knows it’s safe. As she gets older I’m getting more lax about this and she has a shirt that says “Witchlet” on it so I’m not sure that her language matters all that much any more but she knows the rule. We were driving home with another girl (Cat) in the car – a friend of Thing 1′s that we car pool with but whose parents I’ve never discussed religion with at all. The subject of religion came up (no doubt my fault) and Thing 2 made a comment about the “W word”. Cat asked why it was the “W word” if we meant “witch” and Thing 2 said that she wasn’t supposed to say the word.

I jumped in at that point to explain to Cat that some people didn’t like the word “witch”. Cat said that we weren’t witches because we didn’t fly and cast spells so we talked about the difference between fairy tale witches and real witches. She asked what real witches believed and I started to wonder where her father was and why he wasn’t there to pick her up yet because I was getting into conversation that I’m not comfortable having with other peoples’ kids. While I was scanning the horizon for a distraction, Thing 1 said that real witches believe that all living things are connected. Cat’s response? “Duh” Thing 2 found her tongue and said “Yeah, and we believe ‘God’ is female – it’s the Goddess” Cat’s response? “Gaia is female. She’s Mother Earth.”

Her father drove up at that moment and the conversation was over as quickly as it had begun but I have to think that this was just one more little sprout peeking up into the light. I look out into my life and I see the barriers. That’s how I was conditioned. But maybe, just maybe, there’s more there than that. If I trust, if I believe, if I give my hesitation a holiday I might just find that there’s more out there than that. I may find champions and children to give me hope. Sure. The crap will still be there. But if I look up just a little bit and quit focusing on crap I might be able to see the flowers. And the blooms are so pretty when they’re well fertilized….

In an effort to keep myself from thinking about anything remotely serious today I’ll post the following offerings. Honestly, I feel crummy and don’t know why but also figure I can’t write about it here. It started sometime over the weekend and just seems to be on a downhill slide. Yeah, I know, this isn’t news to anyone who read yesterday. Nor would it be a surprise to know that I spent some quality time last night crying over nothing really of substance. I’m just “raw” right now and can’t seem to sort out the why. I know there are topics that are closer to the surface than others but there doesn’t seem to be a real pattern to them. So……without further ado, here’s the silly filler. Perhaps I’ll run on about what’s really on my mind later.

Fotos

On the advice of my spiritual advisor, The Great Karnak, I have password-protected pictures of the witchlets on this site. If you want the password, send me an e-mail and I’ll tell you. That is, if I recognize you and you are able to tell me who The Great Karnak is.

Fluff

OK, generally these things are nothing more than a good waste of time (at best) and a bandwidth sink (at worst) but this one was a bit creepy. I expected that it might peg me as the youngest (I am) or maybe an only due to the large age gap between my sibs and I. What I didn’t expect is that it would peg me as forth born. How did it get that from me saying I was sarcastic?

You Are Likely A Forth Born

At your darkest moments, you feel angry. At work and school, you do best when your analyzing. When you love someone, you tend to be very giving. In friendship, you don’t take the initiative in reaching out. Your ideal jobs are: factory jobs, comedy, and dentistry. You will leave your mark on the world with your own personal philosophy.

Error 404

I lied. Almost all the witchlet pictures are password-protected. One isn’t. The one that appears on the custom error-page for this site. Check it out and tell me that we’re not geek-girls. No numbers were harmed in the creation of that page.

It’s Spring and Love is in the air. So naturally a Pagan Queen’s mind turns to thoughts of divorce. Several quasi-random thoughts on the subject to be specific. As in: Someone isn’t taking her Strattera again.

Guido materialized out of thin air last week to ask what he could do to hurry the divorce along. He seemed to think that it would be final this week and wanted confirmation of that fact. Confirmation that I couldn’t give him because it won’t be final this week – it will be filed this week. Then he gets served. Then we wait the required three weeks. Then we conduct depositions. Then we file those. Then a judge signs the divorce papers and I dance (with luck, horizontally).

Now, I didn’t explain it to him in that level of detail. I really left it at the “Gosh, I’m sorry to disappoint you but the divorce won’t be final until May.” Honestly it didn’t seem worth the effort to go into detail.

He flipped: I must be wrong. It’s been six months. The divorce should be final now. NOT May. It can’t be May. What can he do to make it sooner??

Now, I’m not keen on being married to him any longer than need be but according to the law of the land in these here parts, that “need be” May and there just ain’t no point in gettin yer panties in a wad over it. Unless you have somewhere to be…………

Nah. Even Guido isn’t that bad. Is he? He moved out in mid-September and in early November was dating again. That’s a scant six weeks. Anyone want to hazard a guess that there’s a would-be Mrs. Guido who is having her wedding date jacked with right now?

And speaking of marriage and divorce, here’s another bit of BS from my little world. Turns out the Rat Terrier isn’t buying her house after all. Something fell through BUT she’s looking for another house – a smaller one for just her and her daughter. So things aren’t settled over there with the WF yet, as a matter of fact the word “separation” still might be an appropriate description to use.

I don’t bring this up merely to gossip. I was asked the other day about the witchlets and their father and mentioned this tidbit and got the standard response: “Do you think you two would ever get back together?” That seems to be the #1 question I get asked. In this case when I got done laughing and wiped my eyes the next question was even more interesting: “Not even a platonic, financially advantageous co-habitation?”

When I mentioned this to WF his comment was that “everyone has seen the Parent Trap” but I think there’s more to it than that. I think in some ways the two of us specifically foster this sort of illusion. Which amuses me. I would consider marriage to WF if, and only if, we didn’t have to live together and could have an open marriage. Living with him would lead to death. I’m not sure for whom but certainly for someone.

But not living together he and I can maintain the illusion of a couple very nicely. Not a loving couple but a couple of parents and, in many ways, friends. That last bit took a break after the divorce but we’ve reclaimed it at least as well as we ever had it. Case in point, I have issues at work and he’s one of the first people I’ll call to talk to about them. He’s known the situation longer, known me longer and knows the landscape of an academic environment as well as anyone else I can talk to about this stuff. Given that, given how well we get along, I can see where people would think that we might think of getting back together. It’s a rookie mistake.

Then again, I’m not sure I’m fit to ever be in a relationship with anyone ever again. At least not a serious relationship or one lasting more than an intermediate length of time. I may be throwing out the three date rule here but honestly I’m having a hard time imagining what kind of person I could ever be compatible with for more than a couple of months or closer than arm’s length. So I’m not throwing the rule out to get better odds but to keep from ramping up the turnover rate too much.

Tip of the day: Buy stock in Duracell. That seems to be the best long-term solution.

Let’s keep rolling with the themes of the week, shall we? On Tuesday I found myself in the role of discussion moderator for a small group discussion on social issues. The course is designed such that there are lectures followed by one hour small group discussions. The groups are about 12 students each, randomly assigned that stay together for the entire year. The topics vary and have included things like racial diversity and inequity, rationing of health care, end-of-life issues and literacy.

This week was a “new” topic – new to the class anyway. Like any good topic, it had suffered growing pains as things got added to the discussion until it was no longer a lecture but a panel discussion on Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence and Child Abuse.

Great. That’s one discussion I think I’ll pass on. I simply don’t need the emotional turmoil of hearing all that re-hashed. Yes, I’ve been through therapy, my survivors’ group at the women’s center and can talk about these things without grimacing (too much) but given a choice I’d simply rather not hear the stories that early in the morning. Particularly on a morning when I have to go lead a discussion right afterwards. Nope. I’ll pass.

The discussion was very, very subdued – as you might expect. More than just the usual “I don’t want to be here when I have notes to study” quiet. Nearly a third of the folks didn’t even make eye contact with me until I said something near the end of the hour. And that’s when it hit me. Hard.

I had the luxury of skipping this talk to get myself into the right “head space” for the discussion, they didn’t. And while it’s easy to believe that they didn’t need to, let’s look at some numbers, shall we?

With numbers like that, it’s hard to deny that there may have been one or more student sitting in that room with direct, personal experience with the topic(s) of the day. And unlike me, they’ve not been gifted with that extra 20 years in which to seek therapy and make peace with the ghosts that haunt them (by the same token, they may not have lived long enough to have had trauma yet – a protostatistic as it were).

I’m torn by this. On the one hand (someone, come quick! I’ll run out of hands doing this!!), any topic worth talking about is a minefield of potential. OK, maybe with this group literacy isn’t going to hit a nerve but end-of-life issues may. But statistically, this topic is more likely to. On the other hand, we’re talking about future health care providers here. They need to learn to manage their own reactions and emotions if they are ever going to be a help to anyone, right?

Well, there’s the rub. They are going to be docs but they’re not yet and that’s precisely why they’re here. We, as educators, have incurred an obligation to help them become competent docs. As part of that, we’ve designed a curriculum to expose them to not only the science of medicine but also the social issues that they will face as providers. We teach them the science of medicine and, if they don’t “get” it, we provide tutoring to assist them. What about the social issues? What if they can’t “get” past it? What do we give them then?

Apparently they were told that there was counseling available. Then they were sent off to their discussion groups. Was that enough? Don’t we, as a community of educators, incur a moral obligation to our students to help them with the repercussions of topics that we inflict on them? And doesn’t that obligation extend to more than just a cursory mention of what resources are available.

Don’t get me wrong. I applaud the course director for making this topic part of the course and asking our students to look at such a difficult subject. Without the ability to look at this topic, our graduates risk lacking the ability to help their patients face these topics. But trial by fire, for a survivor, isn’t going to help them face their demons successfully. Bring up the topic, but be ready for the fall out if any should occur.

Over the next few weeks there will be conversations about this. I’m going to have to brainstorm ideas for how to make this less traumatic. The schedule is tight, people don’t like to volunteer, there are always reasons why it can’t be changed and won’t work. But there’s an even more compelling reason why it will: It simply has to. The thought of myself as a student sitting in that auditorium listening without a safety net is unbearable. That another student may be in that position and I have the ability to prevent it makes it impossible to not take action.

A couple of themes keep cropping up this week, rolling around in my mind like rabid dust bunnies, and I think it’s time to try to wrestle a couple of them to the ground. Bear with me, this is going to come out over several posts I’m sure.

The first theme is reality and the life of the survivor. Those of us who, for whatever reasons, grew up physically without our social-emotional selves keeping up. Speaking for myself, when you “grow up” hearing things and being told things that are inconsistent with your perceptions it creates a disconnect. You want to believe what you see, hear and feel but that reality makes the world an unsafe place. What you’re told is much safer, much more “normal” – at least from your childlike perception of “normal” being what you read, see on TV and hear from your friends. You want to believe that reality even though it contradicts your own perception. And so, in an effort to protect yourself from pain, you believe.

You age and you continue to believe: “That never happened”, “He loves you”, “No one would ever hurt you” even though it means ignoring bruises, nightmares and flashbacks. And as you age, you meet new people and become involved in new relationships. Some of those are with other people who would like to substitute their reality for yours as well: “You had that coming”, “I only hit you because I love you”, “You don’t deserve better”. This time, it isn’t safer or more “normal” to believe them but your own perceptions lack a voice. They’ve given up – taken their Barbies and gone home. Why bother? You don’t listen anyway. So you can’t trust your own reality because you’ve never learned how – there’s no choice but to trust the reality you’re being handed.

Blah, blah, blah……I thought the pity party was last week? Where in Goddess’ name is she going with this??

Just hang on another paragraph or two, ok? I think there’s a point. I just need to set the stage so you’ll know where I’m coming from on this. Because basically I’m looking at BTDT and got the therapy bills to prove it. I thought I hit bottom, got into therapy, really hit bottom and clawed my way back up. That’s a big part of why I write and it’s a HUGE part of how I handle relationships at this point. My reality may be skewed, biased or prejudiced but it’s MY reality and I will NOT ignore it again. Period.

And I thought that was good enough. I thought that’s where I needed to be and that I’d finally “grown up”. But the other day someone used the phrase: “Love, whatever that means” and it started me thinking again.

What is love? Isn’t that another one of those constructs that people define for themselves in their adolescence? (can’t spell it, didn’t live it) How would I have learned to define love while living in a reality where people who “loved” me hurt me in the worst ways? And don’t worry. I’m not even implying that I’m any worse off than anyone else – just that my version of confusion and everyone else’s may be different.

Love and trust are all bound up together but for me, so are love and pain (not the good kind, Wife, put the paddle down!). To love is to give someone them the ability to hurt you. And they do. Chuckles used to threaten to kill me. WF stuck with the emotional (2/4/00). Guido sent me to the ER. Clearly I have trouble equating love and a desire to harm. OK, that was a bit tongue in cheek, but only a bit.

I’m thinking that as I move forward here, and more importantly as the witchlets grow up, I need to spend some time thinking about what “love” means to me and how I’d like to see it operationally defined in my life. If I can’t do that then I’m better off avoiding the topic in favor of other four-letter words. And I don’t mean “pain”.

*I need to quit hanging on to posts. I started this with the intent of it being longer and more involved but days later when I still don’t have it finished I realized it was time to post it as is.*

I’m still not going to post too much about work but this was a good time for some dark moon magick to focus on the work front. When I was done with the ritual, I left out a food offering that included a fortune cookie. When I came back the next morning, the cookie was still there so I opened it. The fortune read:

I knew that. Really I did. But it never hurts to be reminded.

Ya ever notice how when the day starts off badly it just keeps going? I think that’s Newton’s first law, isn’t it? Well, today is just rolling along like the f’ing Energizer Bunny.

What does the Pagan Queen do to calm herself down when the day has the suckage index nearing that of the 2000 election? She writes. Comment if you will but don’t remind me that I have no talent – at least not today. Besides I deserve a little credit for bothering to keep going after slamming my hand into that screwdriver while breaking into my own garage….

Yeah. That kind of day.

Grab a noise-maker and a party hat, I think this may turn into a surprise pity party. Of course now that I’ve warned you the surprise is ruined. See? I can’t do anything right……

And so it begins. Yes, dysphoria is a symptom of hypoglycemia so I’ll finish my sandwich while I type but I wouldn’t hold my breath for things to change. It’s gray and rainy here today. The propane tank was unexpectedly empty so my shower was ice cold and while we’re on the subject of ice, I met with my lawyer this morning about the divorce. And it’s Tuesday. That’s the day I don’t quit running all.damn.day. Throw in the assorted mishaps like spilling my tea on my purse and slamming my thumb in the door and I’d say you should have a fair picture of how the day is shaping up. And let’s not forget the headache that’s been ramping up for three days now.

Days like this are the reason I have a cave. With a blog I can let the world know where I’m at without having to surface. See that rock? I’ll be under it. Check back tomorrow.

With all the troubles in the world, you think I’d be able to keep mine in perspective? Just one more thing I can’t get right, I suppose.