In Support

I waited till it was light out to write this. I waited till my mood was magnesium bright. What I'm trying to write is hard and that's an understatement. If I tried to start this when I was upset, I would break down in to tears before ever getting to the second sentence.

I don't know anyone else out there that has a family member with chronic health problems - with debilitating issues that overshadow everything else. I'm sure if I did, they would agree that its stressful and lonely and exhausting. Maybe they look at other families that don't have these problems with the same wistful feeling I do sometimes. Can't be sure.

I feel like I live in two circles. My small family of myself, Andrew and Aida comprise the inner circle and it's glorious. No stress, no worries. We count our blessings until they are too numerous to count further. The inner circle becomes more amazing when you consider it was created despite of the circle that surrounds it. It's like an oasis in a wasteland or more accurately, a miracle in a curse. That second circle, the one that can't touch but surrounds my family is the circle that is my mom's illness.

I remember I was on Facebook one day, looking through my cousins family vacation. The strangest feeling came over me. A similar feeling arrests me every time someone posts about the support they are given by their moms. It is a feeling of nostalgia. Back right when I started college. Back before things began to slip away at a crawling death speed. It started with bad days once in a few months. Bad weeks fell in to bad months. Months in to years that eat away hope and normality. Calls that should have sent my heart stopping throw me instead in to numb expectancy. "Mom's in the hospital...again."

I've given up on hope that some doctor some where will give us that magical answer we had held out for years ago. That there would be some pill or treatment that would stop the destruction of my mom. The therapies hold out the lies that are a few good days. For an hour, I see my mom, smiling and seemingly capable and I hold on to these memories. I try to use them to wash away the building tide. My mom isn't the person that cries all the time and shakes and looks at you without seeing you. My mom isn't the one that gets so upset she can't string two thoughts together because there was a missed call from her office. My mom, my real mom, is the one that reads Aida stories and offers to help me around the house, even though I know that maybe in an hour or a day or a moment, she will be gone again.

I marvel at her strength. Maybe in her position I couldn't fight as long as she has. My siblings comfort her saying over and over, once this new medicine.. once we get this done... we'll email the doctor, ask about this... it's an empty hope that we only believe on our best days anymore.

I'm crying and I told myself I'd stop if I couldn't write this detached because I endanger my writing with self pity and that's not what I want.

Of Doctor Who

In which I discuss my love of things that cause most people to go 'huh?'

I am a big Doctor Who fan. I am, in fact, a HUGE Doctor Who fan - and British TV in general. I find the plots original, refreshing, bold and the wit sharp fast paced and fun. I am not in to TV. We don't have one, truth be told. (Shock and amaze) And so, I order my doses of of Doctor Who on Netflix and on lazy nights, curl up with my husband and indulge.

I love my body. My husband adores me for all my softness and my squishy curves. I'll probably never be rock solid or a professional arm wrestler. There's a good chance you'll never see me jogging down the streets and if you see me at the gym, it's because my sister guilted me in to it. Being totally content with me, in this day and age, makes me an oddity - a fact I have to keep close to the chest because to not complain makes the group uncomfortable. I make up things to be upset about, or I say nothing at all and nod with a lot of fake conviction. Everyone wants to lose weight, everyone wants to wear tight fitting clothing and boots up to here with hair out to there... but not me. When my husband wraps his arms around me, I know I'm perfect. And I like looking like a mommy. I hope my daughter is surrounded by people that save her from the pressures so many girls give in to. I hope she always knows that she's perfect as is. We all are.

I like to read. I love to write. I devour new and interesting. I have a membership to NPR and support monthly the news that informs me and keeps me thinking. I like debate and social issues.

There isn't anything I would change about my life.

My husband and I have never had a fight. Never. Not once. Debate - oh yes, hours of debate and laughter - but not anger, never. I'm told this will change. I'm told all relationships have a expiration date and once reached, the honeymoon ends and the compromising begins. I'm told marriage requires work. I wonder who decided all this. Not me. Not us. We continue on, happy and in love. I told him one morning that my marriage to him 'was the relentless pursuit of something I already had'. Every morning I wake up ready to 'wow' him - willing to spend all my effort hoping to make him feel a fraction of the love I feel for him. Every night I before I go to sleep, I thank him for giving me another day to fall in love with the most perfect man in the world. I think this must be the way of soul mates. Maybe more of us should speak out and maybe fewer people would settle for compromise.

I like sushi and raw things. I'd probably be a tree hugging, mushroom hunting hippie if I didn't love my coffee, computer and all things modern so much. And fatty foods and chocolate. And probably the large amount of work it would take to be a hippie, like living in boulder and mirco diets....

I don't see the point of fast food. I have sworn to bring a large amount of scorn against the first person to dare feed my child fast food. OH THE SCORN.

I haven't drank soda in over a decade.

I haven't drank alcohol in five years - this is a personal thing between God and myself. I like to think of it as an inside joke.

I'm not the scariest person you've ever met and I'm certainly nothing to be wary about under normal circumstances. I can't out run you. In a fight, even a dirty one, I'm not going to win. My physical skills are laughable and my capacity for violence non-existence. I'm not angry enough to hold a grudge and I'm too full of happy-joy-joy to create the kind of bitter, drawn out drama that most people surround themselves in. But I think that's my greatest trump card. I have limitless patience and understanding. I'm probably an extremely boring enemy cause I forget you. Completely. I don't allow things like that to touch my life.

I would like to write more.

But believe about the Doctor Who thing - it's worth watching.

Have a good one Blog.

In which I Don't Sleep

And things happen.

Dear Blog.

Right now in my life, I am a happily married mom-o-one. I am very happy and extremely thankful for every aspect of my life - from that job that I'm lucky enough to work with my sister at, to the hansom husband that adores me, to the my lil world sleeping in the next room.

Life. In short. Is amazing.

But irony of irony.

My life has come together, a circle complete if you will and all around me other lives are stumbling along. It was like my life, cemented in to place, caused the tiles around it to crack and shift. I remember what it was like to be lacking. I wish I could make it easier on others.

Also - note to self. I am a terrible writer when I have nothing to say. No news is good news and life has been so peachy lovely lately, I have nothing to write about. Thankful - very - but I should learn to master the mundane. Make doing laundry and sweeping the house sound action packed. I audit medical records for Bob's sake - it's going to take a lot of effort to sneak action filled sentences in to that work day.

Don't worry Blog. I'll be back. I'll write more. Maybe when the winter bends to the spring, when the moon hammocks across the summer stars and the full promise of life is realized, the life inside me that lends to these words will bloom too. I'm lazy in the winter - snow has never inspired words in me, nor action. I sleep in the soil under frost and boot covered foot. I'm writing is the part of that day that got lost in the short sun light. Snipped away to make room for the happy, plump night. I'll be back with the Sun. Soaking of hours of warmth and activity to sit long silent nights in creative joy.

Count on it.

Cold Front

In which Autumn flees.

Good evening blog. I wish you the very best and ask no less for myself. The year is closing down, and lights are about to be shut off and we're all aisles out the door as they lock up 2010. Been a good year, a very good year. In fact, any year you get to see the end of is a 'win' in my book. Work is good, family is a blessing. All is right in my world.

'They' say snow is coming. I can't catch a breath of it on the wind. It is colder, I'll give 'them' that.

In which the Darkness cometh

I am at the center of a maelstrom. It rages and I can see it all so clearly. I don't need music to write in this mood. I don't need descriptive settings or romantic ideals, gothic emotions or vintage knowledge.

My vision is perfect when I'm upset. Literally. Figuratively. Oh how heavy and huge and hurtful it all can be.

The air I breathe in is too much for my lungs. Expanding me out and how tiresome that is.

Dear Blog. Hear me. Here I am. There are times when I feel much older than I am. I might be jaded. I probably am and under it I'm so hopeful. I don't know where this blog is going. My fingers sound like they mean business with each key stroke but my brain is on auto pilot. Today, the moon suggested fasting and solitude. I got food poisoning and my person to person interactions are wearing me down. Wonderful advice moon but calling it sky doesn't make it more obtainable. I feel like my stomach is about to turn in to a golf course sprinkler. There's nothing creative in this mood. No redeeming, underlying good underlying these words. It's a reverse fever.

I need to get out of my head for a few. Nothing triggered it. This is the circle closed. Tonight it starts again and I'l be euphoric come tomorrow. It's cathartic and a much needed release.

Goodnight dear blog, I'm going to go sleep it off.

On Friday

In which knuckles crack like firewood.

I'm sitting in my bed. It's 11:11pm. My husband is beside me, the dogs are at my feet and you, my blog, are sitting in my lap in the form of an Ipad. In the silence, the keystrokes are loud and accented by the sighs of the dogs sleeping. My husband reads a digital book, no pages rustle and somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks.

Tomorrow is a full moon. That bears no relevance on this story but I thought you should know. I track these kinds of things to amuse my mind in passing.

I read over old blogs, mine and others, before setting to task this one. I belatedly notice that I have received comments on my blogs, from my Aunt and cousin and I read them over in amazement. In this world where I'm sent an email notification every time some one sneezes, it never occurred to me that a comment would drift by unnoticed.

So I notice now.

A few days ago, I tune in to NPR as I drive to one place or another. A short story - more of a sound byte in passing, says that people fall in love three times faster online than in real life - a lack of inhibitions that daunt face to face. Like I said, interesting but like the full moon, has little to do with the blog.

I'm losing my voice. Or rather, it hurts to talk so I'm electively taking a break from the vocal. It's not going to last long. Morning. Maybe.

11:17 blog. The seconds are skipping against the minutes. An hour will have danced by before I know it. I seem to write more at nights. Active mind I suppose that isn't ready to sleep. Better to let it play here where the only damage it can cause is to my train of thought....

I have a lot to say blog. Volumes and bound books worth. My mind is awhirl with possibility and alit with things I wish I could do justice to. They call me an auditor now. Head of the department, no less. Three years and going and it hasn't been able to hold a prince's candle to this... my writing, my words. These tiny hours I snatch and share and smear my soul against paper or screen and I'm here. Always here, waiting for the working world to slip away and give rise to this. I sing the body electric.

And that is not something that is easily comprehended. Only when I'm writing, with husband beside me, dog curled warm on my feet and the knowledge that my daughter sleeps sound in the room next to ours do I feel... feel like myself. Nothing else needed. No one to 'be' for. To be able to have this time where stress cannot seek me and love is all I could ever feel.. I'm not sure there are many that can stake a claim in such time.

Anyway blog, I feel like that was a lot of short rantings wrapped around a loose fifteen minutes of intent. To anyone that reads this or will read it I offer encouragement.

Keep writing. Keep typing at the top of your lungs 'I'm here, I was here, every silly little thought and deep inspiring life lesson or joke or ramble I share matters'. Cause it does. Oh believe me it does. This lesson of language is one of the greatest gifts we have and even if you use your blog for nothing more than to explore the ups and downs of cracking your knuckles against pavement, it matters.

Trust me.

Till next time blog. Blessed Be.

On Midnight

In which I write the next hour away.

I cannot abide drinking. The energy of it sits ill with me. The uppercase 'why' escapes me - with effort I can trace a few of the less subtle aspects. It's been four years now if it's been one since God with a capital G asked for my everlasting vow of never tasting alcohol again. Important note; it was a Wednesday, I was dead sober and trying to fall asleep on an otherwise unremarkable night. And i wasn't much of a drinker to begin with. The request seemed out of left field. But deity speaks, who am I to argue? It's been the one thing in my life that is an absolute certain. I question it less than I question if air is visible. Like brown eyes, witty humor and a small toe that bends slightly inward, the command is me and I just don't/will not/can't drink.

As one forever removed from this socially accepted norm, it's been quite an education in the goings on of the inebriated mind. I don't see the point drinking alcohol. I just....don't. I don't like being around people that are drinking. It's like a thick vail of suds bubble up between myself and the drinker, the person I had been keeping company with washed away, leaving me with a stranger with a familiar face but emotionally and rationally unstable. A lot of terrible and uncomfortable things can be caused by this imposter.

I dislike immensely that the next day, when my company washes back on shore from their tide of inebriation, they wave away any misdoings as the acts of another. Their lovable, blameless ale clone was the wrong doer and they admonish their actions as if they were a thing apart from them. "I was drunk.... I wasn't that drunk... No i wasn't acting like that,,,"

As my hour is almost up now, I'd like to give thanks again. Deity, in infinite wisdom, blessed me with a soul mate that also doesn't drink, mainly I believe because he came from a country where getting drunk was viewed as the highest form of social embarrassment and simply just wasn't done. He never saw the point of drinking. Alcohol was treated as something as common place and special as grapefruit juice - something one got a taste for on occasion but could stomach more than a glassful at a time.

That's all from me. Blessed be