If You Belonged Here

Diosa's Summer is Fast, Furious and Shocking

2010-07-29T07:21:00-07:00

This summer is flying by, like summers tend to do. Hell, like life tends to do.

Weeks can go by where Blackstone and I pass each other like ships in the night, with only the barest of communication over the logistics of the week.

It's not always like that, thank goodness.

We certainly appreciate when we can sit back and take a break. We still enjoy spending time together. But sometimes we long for those carefree years when we were able to spend an entire day lounging in bed together. There was a time when we were able to do that. I think it's been over ten years. Not that we haven't had a vacation or two, but there's nothing like spending an entire day in your own bed. Somehow, even when the opportunity presents itself, we always give in to the pressing needs of another task. When the kids aren't around, you have to make the most of it. Staying in bed all day, going out to dinner, seeing a movie, taking a walk, doing the marketing, the laundry, putting in some extra time at work.

Somehow, I'm just too restless to spend an entire day in bed. It actually makes me anxious at this stage in my life. A few hours, sure. But more than that, I just can't relax.

I'm spending this entire weekend at work. Blackstone is taking this opportunity to work all weekend without me giving him hell about it. Our kids? They've been with my parents, my in-laws and my sister. They've been fighting over them. Child care is often not an issue for us. But I still feel guilty. I miss my kids.

In another couple of days, I'll be sick of them again. But right now, I miss them.

The last few weeks, they've been spending Sunday night through Wednesday evening with my parents, and our former nanny has been watching them on Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow, they go back to day camp for the next five weeks. Back to having everyone's lunch made, bag packed and body sun blocked by 7:35 in the morning.

Ah, the carefree days of summer.

So far, this summer has worked out fantastically for everyone. The boys enjoyed their first week at camp and can't wait to go back. They also loved spending time at my parents' getting spoiled rotten and jumping between the hot tub and the pool. And they were thrilled to spend time with the nanny and got to spend some time playing with their friends in the neighborhood. But not so much time that my house has become the hot spot for every boy in a four block radius between the ages of 6 and 13 to gather. This has been a problem in the past.

The summer hasn't been without a mishap and shock. Blackstone was in a car accident three weeks ago. No one was hurt, thankfully, and he wasn't at fault. The other driver hit his right rear tire. He's still in a rental. He's supposed to get his car back on Monday. It's been going on so long, I keep forgetting he still needs to get his real car back.

The shock of the summer came a week ago. Friday after work we took the boys and our neighbor to a Pawsox game. They had a fantastic time. It's the first time they've been to a ball game and watched and cheered the game.

LT was even heckling one of the batters, "You're the worst hitter ever!!!"

Around eleven, we're driving back home and Trouble tells us, "Oh yeah, Nanny got married today."

Me: "Um,what?" Nanny watched the boys all day.

T: "Nanny got married today."

Me: "And you both went to the wedding?"

T: "Yes."

Me: "Are you sure she didn't just get a marriage license?"

T: "No, they did that yesterday. Today they got married."

(Have I mentioned that Trouble is perceptive and has always maintained an understanding of relationships and basic psychology of a person well beyond his years? He also recently related the story of Blackstone asking me out for the first time. I didn't realize he even knew that story.)

Me: "Why didn't she tell us?"

T: "She wanted it small and quiet."

I text Nanny: "Did you get married today?"

Nanny texts back: "Trouble should be in bed by now."

It turns out Nanny did get married and did bring both the boys to the wedding. Her sister-in-law and maybe a couple other family members seem to be the only guests in attendance. The wedding is not a secret. (I asked before I started blurting this story to everyone). She just wanted a quiet ceremony.

Now my mom's gotten hold of her and is throwing a party/reception. I'm figuring that's not going to be so quiet.

Oh, and Trouble rang up $200 worth of lottery tickets when no one was looking. I'll let you know at the end of the month if we're millionaires.

P.S. - It's ten o'clock in the morning? Do you know where your children are?

Pandora Has Cat Bait for a Sibling

2010-07-26T05:20:00-07:00

Of all the things I wanted for my parents to give me, it wasn't a little sister. A little brother would be a torment, but entertainment. With an older sister, I could steal her clothes. Lastly, an older brother would provide protection and attractive friends. Having a little sister, in my eyes, did me no good.

You all know her as Sex on a Stick, but to me she's my baby sister. To keep my stomach from turning every time she is referred to as "Sex on a Stick," I'm calling her Cat Bait. It's actually the name Polly dubbed her with upon meeting her for the first time.

Cat Bait and I were like DJ and Stephanie Tanner, the two elder sisters of the Full House sitcom. I, like DJ, matured at a younger age and was always pretty aware of my surroundings. I knew and was exposed to illegal paraphernalia by the time I was 12. I was 18 in Amsterdam explaining to Cat Bait what marijuana smelled like and how it could be smoked. When she asked how I knew, I just told her I had friends in high places....

Stephanie Tanner constantly wanted to be like DJ, but she could never fall asleep without Mr. Bear. Cat Bait had Lambchop and constantly mimicked my style. The jacket I'd pick out in the department store would conveniently be the same one she's "had her eyes on since the moment she walked in."

Cat Bait and I don't share friends or clothes--my boobs would stretch her shirts out anyways. We don't share music or the interest in films. Cat Bait is sastisfied with the newest Matthew McConaughey film and will think it's Oscar worthy. I'll turn my nose up at it and rather engross myself in a critically acclaimed independent film that only makes it to select theaters. She thinks Ke$ha and Kris Allen are the best things that could have happened to 2010. My iTunes are being burned up by Avi Buffalo, Band of Horses, Delorean, and K'naan. Obviously, there's no comparison. However, Cat Bait and I share blood.

Oh as cheesy as it is, I'm stuck with this kid for life and lately that idea doesn't bother me as much.

Cat Bait is currently 18, but I forever see her as 7. Legally, she can now have sex, smoke cigarettes, watch porn, and of course vote. She's off to college later this fall and I'm scared shitless for her. I mean, she'll be fine because I was but, there's this innocence about her that I didn't have. Finally, I'm going to say it: Cait Bait has super hot potential and doesn't even realize it. She's even "liked" the Facebook group of "Not Knowing How to React to Compliments." Sister could easily snag a boy with a bit more confidence. Cait Bait's a dork and for that, I love her.

The Dol and I pealed through her high school yearbook and flagged potential candidates for her to kiss. Sister turned down kissing the All-Star baseball player of our county who had a fatty crush on her. Can you say waste of hotness?

We aren't close now, but I can see a bridge forming and that someday, we'll be able to tell each other real secrets without her being a narc to our parents. She kept the nose piercing I got a secret which was a big step towards that level of trust. I can see us talking daily on the phone once we get older and have our separate families. Hell, I might just let her be my MOH at that imaginary wedding of mine.

Alice Takes A Stroll

2010-07-12T05:05:00-07:00

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.

I ended up in college, legitimately, when I was 15. The first class I took was a playwriting class where I’m absolutely positive I embarrassed myself in ways my 15-year-old self could never have understood. Thank Christ I didn’t keep those masterpieces.

I read, in its entirety, the contents of the first blog I kept, The L Factor, which documented roughly two years of my life starting from the time my son was about four weeks old until the time his father and I divorced.

I remember when I shut that operation down. Knowing that some of the posts I had written during that era of my life were words I wouldn’t want anyone I planned on having in the next era discovering via Google.

I can honestly say I don’t know what possessed me to print the archives of that site and bind them like a book. I did, though, and on a scale of 1 to 10 regarding how I feel about rereading, and having in my possession, documentation of that time, exactly a 10. Where 10 = very good.

I was amazed to find myself actually amused at my own writing style, stories of becoming a new mother and of my first marriage and its ups and downs. (Surprisingly, a few more ups than I would have guessed now.) It was also wonderful to find recorded memories of some happy little times in my life that surely would have otherwise been thrown out with the rest of my mind's trash, in a landfill that has long been buried in asphalt and forgotten.

Letters to my young son regarding his habits in pooping and the pattern of his first teeth growing in made me absolutely weep. The post I wrote on his first birthday was a treasure that made the rest of the nonsense worth reading. I found a post tiled “Old House, New House” which was the sorriest excuse for a poem a person could find, but it was thickly laced with memories about the first home I owned – the garden and the kitchen I loved so dearly but have a hard time picturing.

More than anything else, I found memories of a marriage that ended only a few short years ago, yet it is one I sometimes forget even existed.

My ex-husband is so much a stranger to me that it’s a sincere struggle to remember his middle name. Scott. He and I have a continuing “relationship” which starts and ends with parenting and the occasional discussion regarding film or music, one of the few things we had in common. Although, he was always much more knowledgeable than me and kept me informed on these subjects, making even those topics a struggle between us these days. To think this used to be a man I often professed my unconditional love for on the world wide web…..

Ha.

Reading this one and only recorded “book” of my life has helped me realize the value that writing it actually had. Not only do I get to read back, helping me remember the good and the bad qualities that my young self possessed, I also see why I never have it in me these days to write a blog post, let alone a short note to a friend to send along with the days mail: writing encourages writing. Imagine!

Not an easy realization, either, knowing that in my early twenties I had so much more will to be creative and so much more time, apparently. Relearning some aspects of myself that I had so obviously forgotten without really noticing has inspired me to pick myself up by my typing fingers and get back to it.

I spend a lot of hours at this particular juncture in my life imagining what down the road looks like and remembering that this life is, for most, a marathon and not a sprint. Funny thing is, I know I used this same logic during the years of my life I just took a stroll through via my own written thoughts and feelings – and let me tell you that where I have ended up today is not at all what I had imagined as I was becoming a new mother and, shortly thereafter, a newly single mother.

I can’t say exactly if I’m better or worse off than I’d imagined. I like to think better off, applying that old saying that hindsight is 20/20.

I certainly have learned a lot. I’ve stopped doing some of the things I love creatively (scrapbooking, photography, writing, hell – reading), I’ve changed my hair more times than I can count, I’ve developed a love affair with coffee, I’ve lost old friends and made new ones. I’ve traveled and explored landscapes I never even knew existed, I’ve mellowed in some aspects and become overwhelmingly crazy in others.

We change with each passing year, more than we, at times, care to realize and more than we are, at times, even capable of realizing. Today I learned that some of the changes we undergo within life’s passing years are for the better and some are for the worse. But, those little parts that make you who you are, the parts you like, can easily be forgotten forever if you never have anything to remind you of them.

I think I’ll start writing again….

P.S. I found this little gem amidst the hundreds of posts I just re read – saved as a draft. I guess some things never change:

March 12, 2007 at 11:26 pm

It’s harder than you would think to type while drunk and it’s harder than you’d think to go through life sober. This is becoming a problem between my blog and I…