So, I’m going to let it go. As if it really is that easy.  I’m just done writing about it here, for a while. So. *Ahem* moving on.

I think I put my foot in it yesterday, with a comment I left on a blog post.  If I didn’t piss of people there, I am pretty sure I will here.  That’s just how I roll.  (Does anyone use that phrase anymore?)

Yesterday, I was rolling through my Google Reader when I came across this story Liz of Maybe Baby Maybe Not posted at BlogHer.  Go read it, it’s a great story.  But for the purposes of this blog post, I’ll recap it for you. Guy goes into bagel place, young couple with young kids come in. Kids are all over the place, parents are oblivious.  Older gentleman, puts parents in their place.  It’s worth the read… honestly.

The comments that were there were in support of the parents.  *blink blink*  *scratching head looking all kinds of WTF?* Maybe I’m out of line, but one comment went so far as to say “Parenting is hard and in the end, I wouldn’t want someone embarrassing me so I wouldn’t do it them.”  Wait, WHAT?  Allow these children to assault (Ok, assault may be a bit too harsh, but the children were ‘driving’ their trucks all over the place bumping into other patrons) other patrons, because we don’t want to embarrass them? Are you kidding me?  Under absolutely ZERO circumstances is it ever acceptable for anyone, including a child, to hit another person with anything. Since these parents seem to think that that is perfectly acceptable behavior, I’m sure they wouldn’t care if I bumped into them as I walked by.

Another comment was ‘What if these were special needs children?”

Again I say, there is a certain level of respect due to everyone, and a certain level of behavior expected in public with some exceptions being made. . Children can be taught how to behave in public  If they can not sit in their seats, they sure can at least play close by the parents.  I understand that kids will be kids and that there are children with special needs, but again, the other patrons have expectations which I am sure include but are not limited to ‘enjoying a bagel without being assaulted by a child.” Seems pretty reasonable to me.

I will forgive a whole lot when it comes to kids, if the parents are attempting to be parents  and making an attempt to keep their kids from bothering other patrons.  I will excuse and ignore temper tantrums, yelling and screaming, I will even excuse running around their table.  I don’t even care if your kid comes over and says Hi to me, I’ll engage them in a conversation. But I will also be looking for you as their parent to see if you even know or care where your child is.

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You’re crazy.

You are fucked in the head and you need help.

All of those words were leveled at me this weekend.   To an extent, they are true.  I have a mental illness.  That mental illness sometimes grips me so hard, logic and reason are beyond my reach.  Yes, I do stupid destructive things while in the midst of this hell.  They seem logical and right at the time, there is no impulse control To be honest that is my healthy brain screaming out for help, much like Reagan wrote HELP ME on her physical body from the inside while the demon possessed her. 

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head and you need help.

Words spoken by someone who not only doesn’t understand, but clearly doesn’t want to.  Spoken by someone who would not step outside themselves to help. Those words said to me were as painful and as hurtful and as destructive as real physical blows to my body.  My manic brains seized on those words and repeated them over and over and over mantra style inside my head. 

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head, and you need help.

I have two irrational fears  in my life.  The fear of getting fat, and the fear of being crazy. ( I said they were irrational fears)   I can live with “mentally ill”, I can live with “bipolar”, I can even live with ‘sick’.  I can not live with ‘crazy’. I know I’m sick, I know there are times I look/act/sound like I’m fucked up in the head, mainly because when I’m in a spiral, I am fucked up. But crazy, while it’s pretty much common vernacular for stupid behavior, it also still stirs up images of loony bins and straight jackets.  And I am scared to death of crazy.

You’re sick.

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head, and you need help.

The truth is, I’m getting help, but help doesn’t make a difference over night.  Medications take weeks to be visibly effective.  Therapy can take years.  I’m never going to be normal, and life with me is never going to be Ward and June Cleaver.  When I’m sick, or crazy, or fucked up in the head, I can put on a charming smiling face and be a lot of fun to be around. if I work at it really hard. But the whole time I’m laughing and having a blast, the voices, the other person inside my head is saying things like “You know you’re crazy right? You know this is just an act.  You know that it won’t stay hidden forever.  Someday they are going to know just how fucked up and damaged you are.”  So, what do you do, when you’re falling down that rabbit hole and the person you reach out to for help, the one you should be able to count on, is the one who’s telling you

You’re sick

You’re crazy.

You are fucked up in the head and you need help.

I sit here, staring at my phone with such intensity I expect it to burst into flames, waiting, willing the little green light to blink, signaling I have a text message.  Hour after hour it stays dark. The help I reached out for, screamed for, cried and begged for was never there as I fell apart, lost myself, gave up.  Even now, as I am trying to put it all back together, find myself, and find my way through the shame and disgust at my words and actions, the help, the support, the person I need is nowhere to be found.  All because they believe

I’m sick.

I’m crazy.

I’m fucked up in the head, and I need help.

It is times like this, when I am trying to find… something, anything redeemable in me, when I question everything, when I have spent the entire day on the couch because I can’t get up and face any more of the world beyond my laptop, that I need to know that I am not alone.  I need to know that I have not been abandoned, and they can still find something, anything, within me that is worth loving. Because as I struggle to free myself from the voices, their words echo in my head.  It’s times like this that the voices inside my head scream the loudest, because there are so few voices outside my head to drown them out. I have to save myself because when it gets ugly, when it sucks me in and steals my rationality, my logic, my reasoning and my sanity, nobody wants to help, or knows how to help, and so they run.  I am left alone and abandoned, and faced with the cold hard truth the isn’t enough in me for them to love.  And I’m jealous of their freedom, their ability to run away. Because I can’t. 

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 02/20/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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So ‘Patrick’ writes

Whitney’s music saved my life ! HER MUSIC BRINGS AND HAS BROUGHT LOVE AND JOY TO MILLIONS OF PEOPLE’S LIFES (sic) ! TAKE THAT LOVE QUOTE AND RUBY HEART RING OFF YOUR WEBSITE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT “THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL” IS THAT WHITNEY WAS SINGING TO THE WORLD IN YOUR HEART COLD FISH !!!! BURN IN HELL !!!! F in H Y P O C R I T E GO DRINK THAT BOTTLE OF VODKA AND SINK INTO A WARM BATH GOD YOU ARE A HOT WET F ED UP MESS LMAFAO ! PZ

Dear Patrick,

First of all Patrick, *lives.

Whitney Houston described herself as “Nobody’s Angel” and frankly I tend to agree.  She was not an angel, and she was not someone to be worshipped and praised.  She deserves some recognition for her talent in the 80’s but let’s not forget she was a drug addicted washed up pop star who’s prime and had come and gone.

In Whitney Houston’s song “The Greatest Love of All” she sings

The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I find it very difficult to believe for a second that she loved herself when she stayed in an abusive marriage to Bobby Brown.  They were married in July of 1992, and divorced April 2007.  It was during this marriage that Bobby was arrested for misdemeanor battery after hitting Whitney. You only need to Google Bobby Brown/Whitney Houston marriage to see story after story upon story of the abuse he inflicted.

Do you want to go down the drug abuse road?  Let’s see, she not only DIDN’T deny it, she talked openly and candidly about her drug addiction and her and Bobby’s Drug of choice.  (pot mixed with cocaine).  Where the hell is the “love yourself” in the abuse of your body and your mind with drugs?  Please, explain that to me.

I will agree that she was talented.  She could sing. IN THE 80’s.  Not recently, and not very well recently.  Her last album was a dismal failure.  She was a pop star, she had talent, and she wasted it away and gave ZERO back to the community.  Have a funeral, have a memorial service, but flying the flags at half mast?  That’s an insult to our service men and women.  AN INSULT.

And as for all that other crap  you spewed forth in your email?  I stand behind my opinion.  I don’t care what you think of it, or me.  You don’t know me from Adam and the fact that you are this worked up and pissed off over a blog post tells me that I’ve struck a nerve.  You don’t have to read a single word I’ve written, I don’t care.

And one more thing.  I don’t drink vodka.  Its tequila.  At least get your facts right.

Thanks for playing Patrick!

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 02/17/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I am also on Google+ and I am on Networked Blogs through Facebook.  The simple truth is, if you want to find me, follow the flashing neon signs. 

I went to the doctor this week about my meds.  When you spiral as hard and as fast as I did, something has to change.  And so it did.  A tweak in the medications and we’ll see how I feel in a couple of weeks.  The problem with med updates is that for the first few days I am bitchy beyond belief because I feel as if I’m living in jello.  I can see all these things around me that need to be done and I just can’t seem to get off my butt to do them.  That and I’m convinced if I could just straighten up my house and put everything away my life would be in order as well.  Again, jello, butt-couch.  I know things will be even out and I’ll feel so much better next week, but right now I bitch at the girls because my house is cluttered.  Mostly with my shit.  I’m awesome like that.

I am on lithium, which used to conjure up images of insanity, and asylums, and Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Now it just means blood work every couple of weeks to check my lithium levels.  I’m going to have more track marks than a back hooker on crack.  And speaking of back alley hookers on crack, I pinned this greeting card on Pinterest months ago.

(click on image for source, I’m awesome like that)

Last week I got an email saying they were removing it because it was pornography and nudity.  Really?   I can have a “That’s it, I’m creating a WTF board” with this WTF picture on it

and it’s left alone, but a greeting card about a hooker on crack gets pulled.  Hello, it was on the internet.  So I downloaded the damn picture.   Yes, this is my manic mind at work, you almost need a road map to keep up with me, don’t ya.  I live with this shit in my head.

And speaking of getting things in order, I am totally geeking out over Outlook 2010.  I subscribed to my own damn blog (because writing this crap isn’t enough, I’m narcissistic as well) and now I can add each feed to my calendar so I will have an archive of every blog post this year.  Also, I can attached the emails that I get whenever someone comments on my blog to the same calendar event and someday in the future I can go back and see who said what on which blog post.  And yes, when I’m trying to get my brain in order, and my thoughts on the same track all going the same way, any kind of micro-managing organization I can do is comfort.  I am almost embarrassed I wrote this paragraph.

This is my life in a nutshell today.  I know next week I’ll be doing better.  In the meantime I am reading blogs, even if I’m not commenting.  I will get back to my usual snarky self (as if today wasn’t snarky enough) next week.  Thanks for hanging in here with me.  Also? Margaritas help this all make more sense.  I promise.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 02/16/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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It seems there’s been quite a bit going on while I was lost in my self-absorbed navel gazing.

There are a lot of things in this world that I just don’t understand.  Quantum physics, Nicki Minaj, and the worshipping of Whitney Houston.  Yes, I am prepared for a fuckton of hate mail and backlash, but hear me out first.

Whitney Houston, niece of Dionne Warwick, both women blessed with voices bigger and more powerful than they themselves.  Whitney rocked the 80’s.  Owned them.  Made them her bitch.  And then, like any other good girl meets bad boy love story, she met, fell in love, and married Bobby Brown and it was all downhill from there.  The drugs, the violence, the abuse, the lifestyle, the interviews, the denials, the reality television show.  It was hard for us to watch the good girl try and save and change the bad boy only to lose herself in the fight.  Even after she divorced Bobby it was still difficult to separate herself from him and the life they had lived together.  So, when the news started to come across the web that Whitney Houston had died, everyone’s first thought was drugs.

The Grammys were the next night, and Whitney was on the lips of everyone there.  LL Cool J opened with a short but heartfelt prayer for Whitney and her loved ones.  Jennifer Hudson performed an emotional hauntingly beautiful tribute to Whitney.  Everyone remembered her golden voice.  And brushed the rest of her legacy under the rug, ignoring the elephant in the room.  Almost as if singing her praises loud enough often enough replaying her performances at every possible opportunity would somehow make the ugly side of her life somehow less ugly or just disappear.

Whitney was blessed with a talent few will ever have.  And she was cursed with an addiction she couldn’t beat.  I am not going to argue addiction: Choice or disease.  She had problems, she had demons, she had battles of her own to fight.  We all do.  I am not throwing stones. In Whitney’s own words, “I’m nobody’s angel”. But here’s my issue with the way Whitney is being immortalized; she was given a gift, a great talent, but what did she give back?

I find it hard to stomach the praise and worship that is being offered up to/for/about (What word do I use here?) Whitney considering the life she lived and the legacy she will leave behind.  She will always be remembered for “I Will Always Love You”, “The Bodyguard” and “Crack is Wack”.  She was given a gift, and she used it to entertain us. And we gave her adulations, love, awards, fame, and she squandered it.

The world has lost a great musical talent, but I have to think we lost it years ago. We have finally lost the hope that someday she would find happiness and sobriety and her talent would one day ring out for all the world to hear yet again.  Whitney, I truly hope you have found the love and joy and peace that eluded you in life.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 02/14/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Carolyn from This Talk Ain’t Cheap left me a comment on that blog post that I tried to reply to, but I felt it I didn’t reply adequately enough.  So, please indulge me, while I try to do it justice here.

I was diagnosed in 2007.  I had been treated off and on for depression in the years since my divorce from the girls’ dad in 2005.  I can now look back and see bipolar behaviors in my childhood that we sort of just wrote off.

We totally missed all the signs

It’s hard to determine exactly when my bipolar disorder manifested itself.  My parents and I ignored it, wrote it off, explained it away, for so very long.  My childhood was not your typical childhood.  My father was a minister, so we lived a pseudo nomadic life, moving every three years.  Making friends and maintaining friendships has never been easy for me. Never.  I have often wondered if that is because of the moving so often, or if it is because of the BPD.  One of the characteristics of BPD is lack of impulse control.  I remember screaming and throwing my hair brush at the mirror because my hair wouldn’t curl the right way.  I remember my mother being concerned about me because I was so overly involved in my friends’ drama, everything was life or death.  Bipolar is about extremes, and so was my life.  I could go days, or weeks without cleaning my room, and then, for whatever reason feel this overwhelming NEED to have everything in it’s place.  I would spend an entire day tearing my room apart only to put it back together again.

I was a sophomore in high school when I had my first go ‘round with anorexia.  BPD does not partly alone.  While the thoughts in my head would sometimes rage out of control, I found that the one thing I could absolutely control was the amount of food I ate, or didn’t eat. And I was very good at controlling that.  Control though was part of why I went undiagnosed for so long.  I was afraid to let go of control.  I maintained a B+ average in high school.  I always did what was expected of me, I never broke a rule, I was a good girl.  I had to be normal, and perfect.  We as a family of the minister had an image to maintain.  Crazy was not part of that image.

Until my father’s job demanded we move to a new church.  In January.  Of my senior year.  The middle of my senior year I left all my friends, the guy I was dating, and moved to a town where the only people I knew was my family.  My brother and sister would be starting school and meeting new people making new friends when we got there.  I would be graduating when we moved, and wouldn’t have any way to meet anyone.  Hello first depression.

I can point out other episodes throughout my life that should have been huge Ah-ha moments for us.  The day I was pissed at my English Lit professor for calling out me and my boyfriend for passing notes in class.  After class as my boyfriend and I were finishing our “discussion” I put my hand through a glass door.   I drank entirely too much in college and had sex with too many people.  Impulse control, I didn’t have it.

Those signs might have been explained away as a rebellious teen pissed at her father for ruining her senior year.  The years to come would not be any easier.

One of the biggest signs of lack of impulse control was my first marriage.  Chris and I dated off and on (mostly off, only on when nobody else was available) during high school.  My father hated him.  I can see why now.  I graduated from college in the spring of ‘91, that December I looked Chris up.  We hadn’t talked in years.  He was single, I was single.  I always had a huge crush on him, and he was always the one I could never catch.  30 days later we decided to get married.  We I told my parents the night before.  They were not pleased.  I couldn’t stop to listen to the nagging voice in the back of my head, I could only hear the mania squeeing inside “I’m going to marry him!  I win!!!”.

The manic episodes I experienced during that marriage were epic.  I remember Chris calling my father to come get me, he was giving me back.  I was crazy.  The broken door in college? Just the beginning of things I would break in the midst of a manic rage.  Then I had my son, Ian and the postpartum depression hit.  We came home from the hospital to a disaster.  Dirty dishes all over the kitchen and living room, dog hair on every single surface, and fleas… I took one look at that mess, took Ian, walked right back out the door and told Chris either clean this house up and get rid of that damn dog or you and the dog both will be on the streets tonight. I will be at my mother’s”.  I was serious.  I never saw a doctor about my depression. I just sucked it up, like I had done most of my life.  I just thought this was normal.  It had always been normal for me.

I divorced him, married the girls’ dad, got pregnant, twice, and went through two more horrific bouts of postpartum depression, lather, rinse, repeat.  The manic rages and the fights that ensued were epic.  There were slashed tires, shattered windshields, holes in walls, slammed doors.  In the midst of a rage, I took the girls to his mother’s house and, convinced she was trying to steal them away from me and chase me out of her son’s and our daughters’ life handed them over to her saying, “Here, you want them? Take them.”  I was screaming out for help and nobody heard, nobody listened, nobody offered to help.

Getting an answer.  It was only half an answer, but it was a step in the right direction.

My 37th birthday was a turning point of sorts.  A disagreement with the guy I was dating at the time led me to my first breakdown.  That was the first time I was completely consumed with hopelessness and despair. I stopped at a gas station to get gas, and for whatever reason my car wouldn’t start.  I called my mother and step-dad to come help.  I was already well on my way spiraling out of control deeper and deeper into a hopelessness I couldn’t, didn’t want to fight.  By the time they got there 20 minutes later, I was curled up in the driver’s seat in a fetal position barely able to speak.  They followed me home that night.  I asked them to leave my son with me, knowing his presence would be just enough to keep me from giving up completely.  I spent 36 hours crying, writing, calling family and friends to ‘say goodbye’ and not sleeping.  I still have the notebook I wrote in that night.  “Isn’t 37 years long enough to hurt?”  I don’t know if anyone really knew I was calling to say goodbye that night, but my dad called the next morning to check on me.  When I told him I couldn’t even get out of bed, he told me to call my mother and get to the hospital.  They gave me some meds, the name of a therapist and a pat on the back.

Depression.  Clearly.  Anti depressants. Yay!  Wonderful for the depressed. Not exactly great for the manic depressed.  The meds treated the depression, and swung me head on into a manic mood.  Mania is awesome, until it isn’t.  You feel great, all kinds of creative and energetic and fucking fabulous.  Until you take it way too far, and you get creepy and scary.  Once I was swinging away from the depression my doc stopped the anti depressants.  I would have repeated cycles of this… depression, three months on anti depressant and viola! Cured!

Naming the demon that lives inside my head.

I have written about that night here once or twice.  The night I finally allowed myself to admit to myself that there was something very seriously wrong with me and I needed some very serious help.  I was dating Brian at the time, living 2 hours apart.  I had taken the day off to spend the day with him.  In the course of the day I saw a message on his MySpace page (it was before we really knew or cared about Facebook) from a girl I didn’t know.  I couldn’t let it go.  The words of that message, “Nice pictures Brian”, echoed in my head, the my manic brain blowing that message clear out of proportion into a full-blown affair.  By the time we got to his house that night, I was convinced he was going to marry her, and I seriously considered just going home.  But I didn’t.  I stayed.  He knew something was wrong, he asked about it.  I denied it.  He pushed, I’m sure, out of concern.  I snapped.  I threw accusations and hurled hateful horrible vile verbal garbage at him.  The more my mouth vomited this poison, the louder I screamed inside to shut the fuck up.  He sat there that night, and took it.  He never raised his voice.  He tried to deny it but honestly there was nothing for him to deny.  He tried logic and reason, but those are ineffective against a manic rage.  He said “I was going to tell you I love you tonight.”  and my mania raged at him “Well, now you don’t have to lie.”  and inside, I curled up in a ball and died.

Just a quickly and violently as it started, it stopped.  As loud and passionate as I had hurled those vile hateful words at him, I just as quickly shut up.  The one thing I had screamed so loudly and wanted so desperately inside and finally happened; too fucking late.  I not only didn’t say another word that night, I couldn’t.  The shame and disgust from my actions washed over me.  I saw the hurt and the pain and the damage I had caused and I hated myself.  I wanted to disappear.

The next morning I drove home, called Pathways, made an appointment with a psychiatrist and a therapist and started to find the answers.  The damage was done, and couldn’t be undone.  But I could finally see that there was something very seriously wrong with me and I needed help.  I walked out of that appointment with a name for the demon that lived in my head, Bipolar disorder.  A scary disorder.  I was scared that people would hear Bipolar and think CRAZY or asylum.   I was afraid that if this information got into the hands of either of my ex husbands they would use it against me and take the kids away from me.  I bought into the ‘mental illness’ stigma myself.

Naming a demon is not taming a demon

Now I knew what I was living with. But that doesn’t mean things magically turned up unicorns, rainbows and glitter.  At first I used bipolar disorder as an excuse/explanation for bad choices.  I refused to take responsibility for anything. I was a real hawt mess.  It wasn’t until I ended up in out-patient therapy after another breakdown (this one involved tequila and vicodin) the first time that I finally got it, I was going to have to step up and take responsibility for my actions and my life.  I was not my disorder, I could live a fairly normal life if I worked at it.

And worked at it I did.  And I have, and I continue to work at it. Bipolar disorder can not be treated like an ear infection, there is no set course of treatment.  The only thing the medical field can agree on is that it takes medication and therapy to be most effective.  It’s not fun, and it’s not easy, but ‘normal’ is better than not.  I have done two stints in outpatient therapy, the latest one, just last summer, after yet another huge trigger and spiral into nothingness.  I have never been committed.  I lost my son along the way, his father took my disorder and used it to poison my son against me.  The girls dad gets it, he knows that the girls being here is what keeps me fighting and trying.  I am lucky in that regard.

My disorder still fucks up a lot of things in my life.  My sister and I are no longer speaking to each other because of an episode at Thanksgiving.  The longer I am unemployed the harder it gets for me to step outside of my routine.  This weekend the despair and hopelessness came to visit again in much the same way it came that night in 2007.  And I fight every day to get up and go on.

I am hyper aware of my girls behavior, moods, reactions.  I watch for any signs my parents and I missed in me.  At 12 and 14 I know that we could very well be on the brink of… something.

I am determined to live with it.  I am determined to find something close to normal.  I am determined that this disorder not destroy me, or my daughters.  I am determined to fight this fight and win.  And I know that I will fight every day for the rest of my life.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 02/09/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Everyone knows that bipolar disorder is best described as extremes.  Extreme highs, extreme lows.  We take the good and make if fucking fabulous, and we take the bad and we make it apocalyptically  horrible.  It’s a talent.

Everyone experiences BPD differently.  I can’t speak for everyone else out there, but I can try to put into words what life is like for me recently.

Right now, I am spiraling. And fuck, it’s ugly. I know it, I’m taking steps to control it, but those steps take time.  I know what triggers it, I have coping methods.  I am intelligently able to head this off.  I am not, however emotionally or mentally strong enough to fight it.  My brain knows what to do, my heart and emotions and core just can’t.

I know to ‘normal’ well adjusted healthy mentally stable people none of that makes any sense.

I go about my day as if I am a small tiny insignificant soul hiding in an intelligent functioning adult body.  I feel as if there is a physical mask/costume I am wearing.

That weighs a fuckton.

There are days I feel as if I am forced to function submerged physically and mentally in jello.  Where you can see all around you but it’s cloudy and difficult to maneuver.

Even these simple sentences are not doing it justice.

I live in fear, that the ugly little troll person who is actually controlling the Awesome Me puppet everyone sees, will break free, and people will see how ugly I am on the inside. They will hear the voices in my head constantly berating me with hateful things that are all too easy to believe.

I’ve been through enough therapy to know the language.  I can parrot it back to them, verbatim, right along with them.  I know I am intelligent, I know I can write, I know I am a good photographer, I know I am a great mom.  I know that I have worth, and I am know I am more than the vagina between my legs.

And yet? I don’t know any of that at all, for sure.

Or maybe I do know all that but I have allowed people around me to not know it.  And now, convincing them otherwise is proving impossible.

*ahem* bipolar disorder.

I am a rapid cycling bipolar.  Which means my moods swings can happen at lightening speed with little to zero warning. “From Zero to Bitch in 0.03 seconds?”  That’s me.  I can send you a text that says “I love you” and if you don’t respond in the predetermined by me, but not shared with you amount of time I text “Fuck you then”.  I’m sexy like that.  Is it any wonder I’m fucking single?

I hate my disorder.  I hate my life when it’s controlled by my disorder.  I hate me when I’m in a spiral.  And that hate, feed the spiral and the spiral intensifies the hate and do you see what kind of fun this shit is?

I fight a very difficult very valiant war inside my head every single day.  I pray my disorder does not harm or destroy my daughters.  I pray that the fight I fight is strong and worthy enough to allow me to overcome the demons inside so that I can be a good mom to my girls.  I also live with the fear that if anyone truly knew how horrible it is inside my head I wouldn’t have my girls another day.  What the girls don’t know, and can never know, is that they are the single solitary reason I get up every day and fight this fight as hard as I do.

I worry now, that putting this out there will somehow make people view me differently.  That those who know me in real life will shudder and shy away.  That now, instead of Becky, they will just see Crazy.  Or worse, they will think I’m too much drama.  They have the luxury of walking away.  I can’t walk away from my life.

I am swimming against a tide determined to drown me.  Afraid to reach out because what if they turn away? Or worse, lend a hand and save me only to walk away once they know I am no longer in danger.  I have so little faith in so many people, and really, it’s because I have so little belief in myself.

I am swimming.  Harder than I ever have.  I will get to safe ground. I’ve traveled these waters before.  Please just promise you’ll all be standing on the shore waiting when I get there??

Also, have margaritas. Lots of margaritas.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 02/07/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy and that would be the truth.

But it wouldn’t be the whole truth.  It would only be the easy truth.  I’ve been busy.

Busy pretending that I’m ok.

When in fact, I haven’t been.

I have been ok on the outside, smiles and laughter when needed.  I’ve been a great supportive mom, I spent the entire day Friday with my ex husband who came to watch our daughter cheer.  I provided sandwiches and sodas and a place to relax and freshen up after school, before the big game, to the cheerleaders.  I took over 800 pictures of high school students exploding with school spirit.

And inside I was dying.

I spent a couple of days hanging with a friend, laughing, talking, enjoying each other’s company.  I spent a whole day painting a bathroom and washing doors and drawer fronts with same friend.  I put on the happy face, I laughed, I helped, and hoped, I hugged and kissed and flirted and smiled, and talked as if there was a future beyond that day.

And inside, I tore it all apart.  Inside I doubted every word said, every sign of affection.

On Sunday, I couldn’t keep inside inside any more.  It exploded all over the place, as is wont to do with me.  It was ugly and loud and hateful and truthful and honest and raw.  I said things I had promised myself I would never say.  I told secrets I swore to myself I’d take to my grave.  I opened my heart and bared my soul.

And in the end I was left with large raw gaping empty wounds on my heart and soul.

My truths, which I thought would open doors to better communications, turned out to the poison to end it all.

Today the girls are back, the games and the cheering continue.  I will sit in the stands tonight and cheer on my daughter I birthed and the 9 others I’ve adopted this cheer season.  I will smile and laugh.  I will get their inside jokes.  I will thank them for all they did for Meredith on Friday, I will thank them for standing behind her ready to fight for her.  I will love them for their protectiveness of my daughter.  Tonight I will be The Awesome Cheer Mom.

And inside I will be trying to heal the ugliness of my weekend.

So, while I say I’m fine, while I smile and laugh, while I look like the image of Awesome Cheer Mom, inside?  I’m a wasteland of spent emotions, shattered dreams, broken heart, crushed hopes.

I won’t be that empty wasteland inside forever.  I will heal.  I will write again, the smile will eventually reach my eyes.  I will come through this.  But for right now, when I say I’m ok, just know, I’m lying through my teeth.

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We have a cat in heat. Again.  She likes to sit in my front window and make that horrible ‘please fuck me’ noise she likes to make. Of course, after hours of listening to her pathetic mewing, I’m all “Fuck Me” too but in a totally different tone of voice.  I imagine this is what the seedy side of Amsterdam looks and sounds like on any given night of the week.  I think she’s perpetually in heat, with about a 20 minute window when she’s normal. And by normal I mean she’s all laying around tolerating us minions in her life because well, we are the keepers of the food and the cleaners of the litter box.

Meredith had a basketball tournament last week, which meant she was gone every night of the week cheering and crashing at other cheerleader’s houses.  Last night I made her come home.  This morning, I informed her it was not enough that her body was inside my house, she needed to get up and grace us with her cheerful over tired teenage attitude.  Clearly it couldn’t be any worse than the mewing sexually frustrated virgin cat in my front window.  Wow, did I underestimate that.

With Meredith gone most of the week, Megan got to experience what life would have been like if she had been born first.  And by that I mean, had she been first she would have been an only.  This week she cleaned the bedroom and marked her territory.  She made a list of rules for the bedroom she is forced to share with her sister, and put everything away where she thought it all should go.  Basically Meredith now has a small path from the door to her bed, with a little cul-de-sac in front of her dresser.

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A package arrived for me this weekend.  Inside the packing, a robin egg blue box tied in a bow.

Every girl knows that a robin egg blue box is from Tiffanys.  And that Tiffany is way better than Jared.  WAY BETTER.

Inside my robin egg blue box?  A robin egg blue suede pouch.

A early Valentine’s Day gift.  A sterling silver heart necklace.  Who it’s from is not important, but it’s not who you would think.  I promise.

The note with the gift?

“You are worth so much more! Thank you for everything that you have ever done for me.”

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/30/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Brian gave me this ring for Valentine’s Day a couple of years ago.  The relationship didn’t last.  The ring? Still has it’s uses.  Some days I sit there with the morning light streaming in my front windows, creating some amazing lighting for some beautiful photos.

I bought these bracelets from Charlotte Russe for $1.49 at Christmas.  Cute, cheap, costume bangles. They were on clearance, but when set in the morning sunlight, they look so much more impressive than they are.  In fact, I posted this on my Flickr account and Lotus Carroll (Who’s photography I have admired for months now) favorited it.  I was beside myself with OMG!

I was digging around in a friend’s basement this past weekend (that is not an euphemism for anything) when I came across an old ball and glove.  Sure, it’s only January, but spring training will be starting in just a few short months.  I got a nice surprise today, when I saw that Lotus Carroll had favorited this one on Flickr too.

Sometimes the things you drive by every single day take on an entirely different look when you see them through the lens of your camera.  I drive by this antique store in our small town, at least once a day without giving it a second thought.  But when taking photos for a theme (frames) I saw the simple words framed over the store front.

Again, looking at every day ordinary things through the lens of a camera can turn a simple drop or two of water from a kitchen faucet into something incredibly beautiful, and really kinda cool.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/26/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Pinterest.

It’s the heroin of the internet.

It’s like Fantasy Football for girls.

It’s the adult version of a Fairy God Mother.

Or maybe it’s just Horders for the Internet.

I am a bit of a shoe whore.  Christian Louboutin? My god.  My unemployment doesn’t allow me to own a pair of Louboutins.  Pinterest does. Dozens of pairs of Louboutins.  Louboutins I have nowhere to wear in real life.

I’ll never own my own house.  I’m perfectly content with renting and letting someone else worry about the maintenance and repairs.  Pinterest, though, allows me to ‘collect’ my dream home. The awesome shower with the color changing heat sensitive tiles, the winding staircase coupled with a spiral slide, the library that is three stories tall, with walls of windows overlooking the bay. (I live in Mo. Pinterest doesn’t care)

Pinterest allows me to wear fabulous clothes, on a rocking body, with perfect makeup, wearing smokin Louboutins, as I host a classy cocktail party in my stylish eat-your-heart-out house on the bay.  All the glorious food and drinks I made myself and Emeril is jealous.  Or so I’ve heard.

Some things I have learned from Pinterest and reasons why you should become addicted join right now.

• There are some people out there who are more seriously in love with Harry Potter than I am.  It makes me feel like less of a freak.
• I now know, that if money were no object I would overdose on shoes. Clearly.
• Even though I will never get married again, I can still dream about the perfect dress, pick out the gorgeous ring, and find the most fabulous shoes.
• There are a lot of people out there with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of crafty stuff laying around the house. Also? Probably no kids.
• That this pin of mine, sparked a debate that garnered 85 comments, and lasted almost an entire month. People are passionate.
• There is something out there for everyone.
• I will never be as crafty or talented as a third of the people on Pinterest. I’m ok with that.  I can just ‘window shop’.
• I have no idea how this even came about. And I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.  I’m sure there were promises made that shall never be spoken of again.
• If you need a pick me up, Pinterest has it.  If you need some inspiration, Pinterest has it.  If you need some motivation, Pinterest has it.  If you need a good laugh… Pinterest has it.

If you need an invite, let me know in the comments.  You’ll thank me later.  Much later. You know, like when you come up for food.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/18/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I just finished Season 4, Episode 13, The Good Fight.  (Which, you know, is probably way more detail than any of you needed, but I like to be thorough).  The underlying theme of this particular episode is “When it comes to relationships, what are we fighting for?”  Aiden is moving in with Carrie, and Carrie is learning to share her space, and her life, and adjust to Aiden, and it’s awkward and crowded and messy and he doesn’t understand her relationship with shoes and clothes, and she doesn’t understand why he doesn’t understand.  And she just kept agreeing and being gracious and moving her stuff, and giving up more room, and accommodating, and resenting, and fuming and felt taken advantage of.

And all she had to do was speak up, Hey, Buddy, can you do me a favor? I’m new to this living together, I’m new to sharing my space, my life, can you give me some space and time? Please.  Of course he did, and she discovered that once she voiced her need, got it met, it wasn’t really a need anymore.

I watched it on my laptop, ear buds in, tears silently streaming down my face.  How long have I silently swallowed my unease, how long have I bit my tongue, how long have I given and given and given and resented and felt taken advantage of and used and cheated because I didn’t open my mouth and ask for what I needed or wanted?  Far far too  long.

Recently I’ve done some work for some people, who have asked for favors.  Write a cover letter, takes some photos, make a graphic, nothing earth shattering but favors that I have the talent and the skill to complete better than they could.  An hour here, a couple of hours there, really not a great big deal.  Except that, yeah, it is, to me.  See that cover letter, those photos, that graphic? That’s my time, my skill, my talent and maybe someday my career.  I put a part of myself in everything I do. My words, my vision, my style, a piece of me.  I created those things.

I didn’t get credit for any of it.  The letter went on to get several responses that garnered some business opportunities, the photos are on the internet and hanging in homes for friends and family to see and admire, the graphic is on a webpage.  My name?  Appears on none of them. None.  The very people telling me I should charge for my services, are the very people who expect me to give them away to them, for free.  I’m not talking monetary reimbursement. I just want credit for my work. I want my name to appear on the photos I took, the things I write, the things I create.  I want my talents and skills to be acknowledged.

Watching Carrie and Aiden tonight I realized I’m done giving it all away for free.  The words, the photos, the work, the pieces of me.  Even in my personal relationships, the favors, the sex, the attention, the pieces of me.  I’m done giving that away for free too.  I’m done feeling taken advantage of, I’m tired of not getting any credit for all that I do.  I’m tired of giving it away and getting nothing in return.

I have needs, I have wants, and none of them will be met if I don’t voice them, if I don’t speak up and say I need this in return.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/17/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Let’s face it, he’s a better representative of the religion than Christianity has had in the past.  Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Oral Roberts.

Ok, let me get this straight.  Tim Tebow takes a knee on occasion, during a football game.  Never on the field, never interfering with the game.  And people all across the country get their panties in wad.  Sounds reasonable to me.

Fuck.

And the only reason it’s a big deal?  Is because the media has made it a big deal.  I am sure he is not the only member of the NFL to say a prayer or two or ten during a football game.  He just happens to be a QB that wins.  Would people have their panties in wad if it was one of the Manning Brothers?  Or Brett Favre?  (Now that’s a man who needs some Divine Intervention).

Back in November, Nick Novak, kicker for the San Diego Chargers,  was caught on camera urinating on the sidelines. He was taking a leak, he whipped it out and watered the astro turf.   And you want to be offended Tebow says a prayer.  Get the fuck over yourselves.

Frankly I am tired of saying it, but say it again I must.  You are guaranteed a whole lot of things in The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, but the right to not be offended is not one of them.  People are going to do things that offend you.  Tim Tebow’s taking the knee and saying a prayer? His Constitutional Right. I have not heard any reports that Tebow has stopped a game and grabbed a mic and asked the entire stadium to bow their heads in prayer with him.  I do not think he went to the press and asked for this coverage.  Kudos to him for defending his faith.  Kudos to him for saying “Yes I believe in God The Father, and in Jesus Christ and I am not ashamed.”

I am not going to get all preachy here.  It’s not my thing. It’s more my dad’s thing, or at least it used to be.  I just want to say a few things.

• There is a song that says “His eye is on the Sparrow, so I know he watches me”.  If God can care about all of his living creatures, including sparrows, I’m sure he has time for Tim Tebow.  If you want to tell me God can’t be bothered with touchdowns, do you also tell your kids you don’t have time for their activities?  To Tebow, it’s the same thing.
• I’m willing to bet he did not actively seek out this attention from the media about his religious beliefs.  This is a story the media jumped on and now it’s become a divider of people.
• For once there is an NFL player who has made the news for something besides drugs, guns, alcohol, or an arrest.  You all should be glad he’s setting a good example.
• He’s not bashing you for your beliefs, why bash him for his?

I could go on about how you high and mighty know he’s praying for God to put everything else in the world aside and give him a touchdown.  Is it possible he’s saying Thank You for the ability to play this game?  Isn’t it possible that instead of asking for divine intervention for personal gain, he’s offering up thanks for skills and talent and ability. Because clearly giving thanks is a truly heinous and offensive thing to do.  The nerve of the man.  And isn’t it possible he’s giving thanks for the skills, talent and ability of his entire team instead of being a selfish son-of-a-bitch and just giving thanks for himself?  Seriously, WTF is wrong with this man?  WTF is he thinking?

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/16/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in May of 2007, barely two weeks before I packed up my girls and moved here. Where here is 2 hours away from all the family they ever knew and my entire support system.  Believe me it sounds so much worse than it has turned out to be.

I am just a few short months away from my five year diagnosis anniversary.  I would love to be able to tell you that my life is so much better, in fact more normal, than it was then.  But I don’t like to lie.  The truth is, while I know a lot about my disorder, and I am hyper aware of mood swings, and I know that no matter how much I love tequila shots, my mood swings don’t.  I know enough to make an appointment with my p-doc to change the strength of the medications I’m on.  I know enough to take my medications every day. I know enough that some situations and people and places and foods and drinks are all triggers and I’m better off avoiding them.

I know all of this stuff, but I don’t always manage to follow through.  Like a smoker knows cigarettes are bad for them, and they light up another one.  Or someone on a diet knows donuts are off limits, but they look so good, so they sneak one, just one.

And so it was with the holidays.  I knew they would be difficult this year, I just didn’t realize how difficult.  I knew Christmas and New Year’s Eve were the big ones, they were looming huge and dark and foreboding on the horizon, and I needed to do something to get through them.  I called my p-doc, he tweaked my meds, offered some coping skills that did not include bottles of tequila or Captain Morgan, and some phone numbers, you know, just in case.

I did everything right.

And the holidays? Went all wrong.

I spent Christmas day, at home, alone.  I had heard from everyone I was going to hear from by 10:00.  The girls were dropped off safely with their dad for the week, and I was home with two in heat very obnoxious attention whore cats.  By 6:30 I was feeling incredibly sorry for myself and hating the world outside. And the damn cats.  New Year’s Eve, lather, rinse, repeat, with the exception of the addition of sleeping pills and I was in bed by 8:30.

But that week, bookended by those two holidays spent alone, coupled with tweaked meds which always take time to adjust to, triggered a major spiral in moods.  I have been all over the place for the past two weeks.  Finally the horrors of my holidays are fading, the meds are leveling out and I feel like I’m coming out of a fog.  The problem is, there is a lot of debris in my rear view mirror.  A lot of things said and done that were less than stellar but felt right and justified at the time.

Welcome to bipolar disorder. When a bad mood is more than a bad mood.  When a good day is an epic day, and living in the extreme highs and lows makes it hard to determine what is a reasonable reaction and expectation.  So, when you come back down to level ground, you see the mountains were actually molehills, and the epic great day was actually just Tuesday.

I will live with the shame and embarrassment of my extreme actions over the past couple of weeks.  I will make apologies for angry texts fired off in the heat of the moment and accusations leveled from jumping to conclusions.

And I will try harder next time.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/12/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Turns out, over the holiday break, (which the girls spent with their father and his girlfriend) they went shopping with their dad’s girlfriend.  They ended up at a shoe store as, clearly, my girls tend to do.  They are my daughters after all.  The girlfriend offered to buy Meredith a new pair of shoes.  Mere was all about getting a new pair of shoes.  Megan, who refuses to be left out, chose that exact moment to remind Meredith that earlier this summer, the girlfriend’s oldest daughter had handed down three pair of shoes to them, and Megan had bought herself a new pair of shoes.  So, in a nut shell, with 4 new-to-them pair of shoes in their possession just a few short months ago, there was no reason for the girlfriend to buy Mere a new pair of shoes.

Meredith didn’t follow the logic of this thinking.  All she could see was the girlfriend offered to buy her a new pair of shoes.  She offered!  She couldn’t see why or how she should have said No Thank You I don’t need a new pair of shoes.

And I couldn’t see how the girl sitting across from me, saying those words, was actually my daughter that I had raised.  So I sat out to explain to her that just because the girlfriend had offered to buy her a new pair of shoes, she was not under any circumstances obligated to accept said offer.  That in fact, accepting said offer would be rude and selfish.  When she dropped this bomb on me:

Well, you just bought two new pair of shoes you don’t need.

I had, in fact, bought two new pair of shoes (stilettos (see picture above) and boots) that I clearly didn’t need anymore than any woman needs seven pairs of black heels.  But, they were on sale, it was the holidays, and nobody else was buying me any presents.

Also? I was spending my money.

And? I bought each of the girls a new pair of shoes for Christmas. (which she picked out, and then turned her nose up at once they were delivered.)

I was mortified that my daughter thought it was perfectly acceptable to allow her dad’s girlfriend to buy her a new pair of shoes that she clearly did not need.  Their dad and the girlfriend are not by any means rolling in the dough.  It’s not like they can just go around buying the girls shoes willy nilly.  But even if they could, the girlfriend was not offering the shoes up as a gift, she honestly thought Meredith needed the new shoes.  And even though she knew she did not need the shoes, Meredith was all too happy to accept the offered shoes.

Am I over reacting here?  Am I over thinking the whole situation?  Is this a teenager thing? A girl thing? Or just a my daughter’s thing?

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/11/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I’ve been featured twice!

World Domination? Yes please.

Actually, I cross posted yesterday’s post about raising teenagers on BlogHer and the lovely and brilliant Jenna Hatfield sent me an email telling me she was featuring me!  So, thank you Jenna.  I am beyond thrilled.  And Thank you to everyone at BlogHer that came by, and left a comment, or came here and commented.  I am just over the moon about this experience.

Now, I really have to step up my writing.  After all, getting featured once is luck. Doing it consistently is talent.

I do have a topic for discussion I am working on, but today is not the day to bring out the Panties-in-a-wad banner. (new people I’m trying to impress and all)  I’ll wait until tomorrow.

I guess what I wanted to say today is Thank you.

Thank you to Jenna for featuring my post yesterday.

Thank you to all the commenters here.

Thank you to all the people who commented via Facebook

Thank you to all the people who commented over at BlogHer.

It has been an amazing 24 hours.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/10/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us

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And we have a winner.

Because she alone entered more than I had other entries, the odds were strongly in her favor to win.  Congratulations, and a free copy of My Memories Suite, go out to Annie Younger!  Annie I will be emailing you the code to use when you download the software so that there is zero cost to you.

Now to today’s post.

I was looking around the internet the other day for a collaborative website (think Babble, or BlogHer) that includes A) Single moms, B) moms of teens C) Single moms of teens or any combination of the three.

I mean, there are places for singles women, newly divorced/going through a divorce women, pregnant women, women with fertility issues, new mommies, mommies of newborns, multiples, toddlers, kids.  But once our children near the end of their childhood and stand on the cusp of teenhood, all of sudden, us mothers are, well on our own.

Babies are all the same*.. change them when they need it, feed them when they are hungry, teach them to walk and talk and keep them from bringing the house down around them and us.  With teenagers we mothers have to navigate hormones, periods, boobs, pimples, dating, boys, mean girls, driving, curfews, attitudes, smart mouths, rolled eyes, slammed doors and stomping feet. Also? The silent treatment.  There is no longer the question of breast or bottle, cloth or disposable, spank or time out.  Now it’s too young to date, when to set curfew, how short/tight is too short/tight.

Parents of teens need a place to vent and get support when they hate us, and we just can’t take one more slammed door or rolled eye. And that’s just us.  Their attitudes are so much worse and volatile.

Take for instance today, the girls have been gone most of the weekend, spending the night, hanging out with friends. Today, I made them stay home.  I mean, after all, they do live here.  Bad idea.  By 3:00 I was ready to set them on the curb hoping a band of gypsies came by and picked them up.  They could not sit on the same couch together without the UFC breaking out.  They argued because one of them seriously thought she owned the jar of pickles in the fridge and threw a fit when the other ate one of ‘her pickles’.  (I couldn’t make this up) They couldn’t be in the same room together without fighting at decibels I wish I couldn’t hear. Where is the place I go to find out I’m not alone, there are other moms living in the hormone charged war zone that is a home of more than one teenager?  And how do they get through a day without killing one or all of them, or at the very least, running away?

How is it that this group of mothers has been overlooked and ignored?  Are other moms of teens looking for a place on the internet to call ‘ours”’?

*That is not to say that babies are easy.  Especially first babies when you have eleventy billion questions and you’re sure you’re doing everything wrong, and you’ll screw up your kid before their first birthday.  Trust me, you will. 

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/09/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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When exactly did it make you a bad mother to admit out loud that “I need a break from my kid”?

I am not a mommy blogger.  I am no longer a ‘mommy’ I am now Mom and that apparently is pronounced A-T-M.  But I read mommy blogs.  A) Because there is an over abundance of them and B) there are few blogs written by moms of teens, or at least there is not a noticeable niche for them. (Note to self.. there is your corner of the internet, go forth and claim that unchartered territory.)

I read about Stay-At-Home moms, Work-from-home moms, Work-outside-the-home moms, single moms, married moms, new moms and pros (I’m not stupid, no way was I going to say OLD MOMS..DUH).  And it seems there is an underlying theme.  Society has deemed us horrible mothers if we are not dying to spend every single waking moment with our beloved children.

And I say, that is bullshit.

Before we were mothers, we were women

Before we had kids, we had our own lives.*   We had jobs, friends, a social life, boyfriends, husbands, shopping, manis and pedis, movies, cocktails.  We had me-time.  Now, that’s not to say that we had to give all that up when the kids came along.  There are plenty of moms who have jobs, and husbands, and friends, and shopping, and cocktails, and all of that.  But society has made us feel guilty for stepping out and doing something for us. Without the kids.  Having children does not mean exchanging the awesome you for the mom you.  They don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

There is nobody else in our lives we are expected to spend every single minute of our lives with

We are not expected to spend all day every day with our significant other, with our friends, with our extended family, so why is it just because we gave life to this little person we have to be constantly tied to them?  When and why did it become taboo to want to pursue your own hobbies, interests?  Mothers are expected to push out a baby, and then give up their entire life to that child until said time that child can be safely ensconced in school for 6-7 hours a day.  And even then, if you’re not a work-outside-the-home mom, you’re expected to be room mother, and field trip mom, and teacher’s helper mom.

Taking a break from the kids actually makes us better moms.

[Insert joke about how if I had to spend all day every day with my kids I wouldn’t be a stay-at-home-mom b/c I wouldn’t have kids anymore here]  I think it’s good for us necessary for us as mothers to step away from the kids, and pursue our own interests.  I’m not saying all day, or even every day.  But it’s important to remember we are our own person.  There is more to us than MOM.  Remember when we were first dating and we fell in love hard with Mr. McDreamy and our entire life revolved around him?  We thought about him eleventy billion times a day, tingled when our phone rang, checked our text messages every 3 seconds?  And remember how our parents or friends told us “It’s unhealthy to be that attached to someone.  You need to maintain your own life separate from him too”?  Why should it be any different with our children?  Trust me, the children will not hate us, and we will not be the worst. mother. in. the. world. if we leave the kids with Dad or Grandma for a couple of hours and go shopping or meet a friend for coffee, or get a mani/pedi once in a while.

Give yourself a break

Frankly, who cares what society says?  Is society there helping with the crying, demanding, two year old with the temper tantrums?  Is society there watching Yo Gabba Gabba (Please tell me that’s what kids are watching these days… I don’t know) for the 80 billionth time?  Is society there entertaining your child so you can take a shower in peace without having to explain to your curious child why your body looks different than daddy’s?  Is society there changing the diapers, doing the laundry, cleaning the house?  Is society there entertaining you? Preventing your temper tantrums?  NO? Then tell society to keep their damn opinions to themselves.  You’re doing the best you can, and if the house is still standing and the kids are still breathing at the end of the day then you’ve done a good job.

Now, have a glass of wine and relax.

*Yes, I understand this is a blanket statement and may not hold true for every mother out there. I can’t run around taking into account every single possible scenario.  I’m busy trying to become a big deal.

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See that? THAT!  *sigh* top right hand corner….

Here let me show you.

Yeah.  Me.  Featured.  Front page. Above Aiming Low.

Yesterday I was a featured on the DailyBuzz Mom’s daily Top 9 newsletter.

Of course, it was the one post this week that didn’t have a picture, so I look kinda dull and boring up there in the corner.

But picture or not, I was featured!  And in my mind, my little ole blog was part of an email that was sent to thousands of inboxes around the internet.  The potential for hundreds of new eyes to see me..

Now I have to step up my game.

I have to say thank you to Meredith over at Life’s Crazy Joke.  She wrote this post, and gave me the information I didn’t have before, to branch out, to take it up a level.

Just another step on my journey to world domination national fame becoming a big deal.

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Apparently there is some guy who’s a big deal in social media (I’ve never heard of him, but I guess that doesn’t mean much) who does Three Words for the New Year.  Supposed to help you focus or some shit like that.

My three words?

• Try. New. Shit.

Also?

• Buy. More. Shoes.
• Drink. More. Tequila.
• Listen. To. Me.
• I. Mean. Something.
• I. Have. Worth.
• I. Am. Awesome.
• Kiss. My. Ass.
• Fuck. You. Too.

For the 2012 Elections and politics I have these three words

• Elect fewer asshats
• Not on Twitter
• President Betty White

For Hollywood I have these options

• No Kardashian Weddings
• Lindsay needs clothes
• Clooney won’t wed
• Sequels are overrated.
• Jessica Simpson pops

When it comes to sports, I have limited knowledge, but I know this much:

• Bush brother suck
• Don’t Need Pujols
• Rams give up
• Leave Tebow alone

What Three Words would you offer up for 2012?

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 01/03/12.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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and ends up looking like this:

I don’t make resolutions anymore.  Sure I sit down the first of the year, and look at all the Self and Shape magazines I subscribed to last year, and think “Wow I’d look amazing if I worked out and ate right.”  Then, I go eat the last few Christmas cookies that escaped the girls’ radar.

This year, instead of improving myself, because let’s be honest, the road to success is not paved with good intentions, I’m going to try something new.

iTunes offers free music every week.  Starbucks offers free downloads as well.  It is always a band, a group, a soloist I have never heard of.  I’ve never tried them. I have no idea why not, I have nothing to lose.  This year?  I’m going to try new music.  New music+free downloads = win/win. Or at the very least, break even.  Also included in this, would be podcasts.  I have two I listen to consistently I need more.

For years, my mother would give me a subscription to Taste of Home magazine for Christmas, along with the hardback cookbook of every recipe they had published the year before.  Great gift. I loved it.  I have stacks and stacks of magazines, and more recipe cards than Vegas has playing cards.  And I have about 8 meals in my repertoire, and that is being overly generous.  So this year, I’m going to try new recipes. I’ve got plenty at my disposal. I have time to shop, and plenty of time to cook, and if the girls don’t like it, I’ve got peanut butter and jelly.

I have an amazing camera.  My Nikon D40.  Meredith and the cheerleaders have insisted it be brought to every home game.  I have spent years shooting people.  Guess what? My camera takes pictures of other things besides people.  I’m going to try to photograph less people, more things and places. My cousin Melissa has started a Facebook Group, The 52 Week Photography Challenge which will push and encourage me to shoot things besides people.

I love to read, but I’ll admit, I am afraid to step outside my comfort zone and read new authors.  I go to the library every. single. day.  Library=free books.  What do I have to lose? If I don’t like it, return it, get something new.  This year, I’m going to try to read new authors, new books.

Since I am open to trying new things, I am, therefore, open to suggestions from you.

What would you suggest I try first?

Also, don’t forget my review and giveaway that ends on Jan 5th.  A free copy of digital scrapbooking software.  Please?

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I have sat, laptop in, well, lap, and tried repeatedly to write a year-in-review post.  Each time I got more depressed than the last.  So, in order to fulfill the Year-in-review blogging requirement, and avoid a major meltdown let’s just sum up 2011 like this; break up, break up, break down, break up again.  Oh, and shoes.

And with that, 2011 is done.

The end of one year, the beginning of the next, while at it’s basic premise is no different than Sunday following Saturday any other of the 52 weeks of the year, is somehow more when it’s out with the old, in with the new.  And it becomes a time of tremendous amounts of naval gazing.

I spent entirely too much time and energy being mad at the world.  I focused too much on how people disappointed me, hurt me, pissed me off, and were just plain assholes.  I spent way too much time feeling lost, out of control and apathetic about the whole thing.  2011 didn’t exactly suck, I sucked.

2012 hasn’t exactly gotten off to a stellar start, but I am 30 minutes away from seeing my girls again, and getting my life back to some semblance of normal, where normal is yelling, arguing, fighting and laughing.  Cheer practice and basketball games.  Hit the floor running and not stopping until I drop at the end of the day.

Happy New Year to all my friends, family, fans and readers.  I honestly hope 2012 is better than 2011.  God help me if it’s worse.

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But I love the look of the pages.  And the idea of at the end of the year putting all our pictures together sort of a year in review.  And I take hundreds of photos over the course of a year. I would love to be able to do something with them besides save them to flash drives at the end of each year.

It seemed like a perfect fit when MyMemories.com contacted me and offered me the opportunity to review their digital scrapbooking software.  It combined my love of photography, my love of my laptop, and took into account my aversion to mess and clutter and rolled it all into a very easy to use scrapbook software program that makes me look like a creative genius.  Yes, please.

I downloaded their scrapbooking software from their website.  While I was there, I browsed through their free kits they offered and downloaded several other pages, packs, and other goodies I could use and installed them as well.  Then, I was ready to go.

That was three hours ago.  I have been sitting here at my laptop browsing through all the premade templates they offer.  (it comes with over 40 premade templates) Each template has at least 5 pages, some as many as 10, and the photo only templates usually have 25 pages so there is no shortage of options to chose from.  Each page can be rearranged, items added or removed, colors changed to suit your preferences.

Just to show you that even my lack of a creativity gene isn’t a problem, I made the following pages. (in about 10 minutes each, I have a LOT of pictures to look through)

Yes, those were all premade pages, but I added a few personal touches to each one (besides my own pictures, obviously).  Drag and drop makes it simple. It automatically resizes your pictures to fit, and everything on the pages can be manipulated to suit you.

Now, the good news is, the people at MyMemories.com have graciously allowed me to give away a free copy of their Digital Software Suite (a $40 value) to one of my readers.  Yay them! And Yay You!  With 2011 winding down, what easier way to remember this year with a scrapbook of your photos.  They make sharing your albums easy so you can share them with grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends.  You can also print them so that you can have a ‘real’ scrapbook.

So how do you get your own copy of My Memories Suite?  Easy peasy.

Leave me a comment and tell me which one of the above pages you like best.

For additional entries (yes, I know this is extra work for you, but you could win a prize worth $40. Aren’t these extra steps worth $40?)

• Follow MyMemories.com blog
• Follow MyMemories.com on Twitter
• Like MyMemories.com on Facebook
• Then be sure to tell me you did so you get an A for your effort.
• Contest is open until Noon January 5th, 2012.  A winner will be drawn at random and you will be sent via email your own code to download a free copy of My Memories Suite.

Now, if you don’t win the free copy of their scrapbook software, they have been generous enough to give me a special code to share with you that will allow you to save $10 on the purchase price.

Click on the banner above, and use my special code, STMMMS99363. Simple as that.

And now for the legal stuff:

MyMemories.com allowed me to download a free copy of their scrapbooking software program to try, and review. They have offered another free copy for me to give away to one of my readers.  The code above is from their Share the Memories program, of which I am a member, and I get $20 for every purchase made using my specific code.  All opinions and pages created for this post are my own.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 12/29/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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And then The Big Day arrives, the kids run to the tree and tear into the presents, opening the next before their brains can even register what they just opened.

It’s all over in the blink of an eye.

Unless you’re me.

Because much like everything else in my life, I fuck up traditions.

When I was growing up, the rule was we couldn’t knock on my parent’s door until 6:00.  We couldn’t go out to the living room to open presents until Dad had plugged in the tree lights.  We opened one gift at a time so everyone could see what everyone else got.  It lasted forever.  And it was awesome.

Much as I wanted that tradition to carry on into my house now that I’m the parent, my girls refuse to cooperate.  They sleep half the day away with zero regard for the fact that Santa came.  I barely put up any Christmas decorations and the fact that I had a tree this year was because I was feeling really generous one day.  It was a cheap Charlie Brown looking tree.  And that was before the cats tore it down.  The first time.  (we discovered the safest place for the tree was in the bathtub.  I wish I was kidding).

So, I have accepted my traditions with the girls are not going to be my parents’ traditions with me.  I’m never going to have that magical Christmas morning moment with them.   Our Christmas looks like this:

The week before Christmas (Usually the 22nd or 23rd) my Dad and his wife come over from Ohio and we do dinner and open gifts with them.  They get a motel room, and the girls have a sleep over with Grandpa and his wife.  We do breakfast the next morning and a good time is had by all.

The past couple of years I have given the girls a set amount of money each so that they can buy gifts for each other.  It’s fun to watch them A)budget their money b/c they want to get the  most for their bucks and B) figure out what their sister would like best.  And it teaches them that giving is as fun as receiving.

This year, after shopping with my dad, the girls and I went home with their goody bags of gifts for each other.  Once home they decided bah humbug who needs to wrap them and wait until Christmas Eve? Let’s just give each other our gifts now.  And in the span of a few minutes they had ripped price tags off and given their gifts to each other.  Christmas magic teenage girl style.

Christmas Day saw me at home, alone, without any presents to open.  The girls had been safely delivered to their dad for the week, and I was home doing everything I could to forget exactly what day it was.  The fact that it was Sunday didn’t help.  I had expected the darkness to swallow me, to just take me away.  The girls were safely at their dad’s and I had already gotten a text from all the family I was going to hear from, all by 11:00.  I had nothing else to look forward to.  And yet, as much as I was prepared for it, and possibly expected and welcomed it, the darkness never really showed up.  I found I made it through the day.

Here I am on the other side.  Still standing.  And that must mean something.

So I am preparing to face 2012.  I am gearing up to changes to this blog, to my writing.  I am going to ramp up the job search.

I came through the holiday, the BMOC holiday and that must mean something.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 12/26/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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It was my first field trip with either one of my girls.  One of the many glorious perks of being unemployed, I now can go hang out with 120 5th and 6th graders who have money in their pockets, no parental supervision and free access to large amounts of caffeine.  Oh and a huge HUGE swimming pool.  The only design flaw I found in this Rec Plex? No open bar, and no “Adults Only” places to hide.

Turns out it was an educational field trip. Oh not for the kids. Their brains are already set for Christmas Vacation, which means you can’t teach them a single thing, such as throw your trash away when you’re done, don’t lose the key to your locker or you’ll have to go home in a wet swimsuit without shoes or a coat, or it is not nice to point and laugh at the older adults who are using the same locker room you are you’re going to look just like that someday.  No it was quite educational for me.

I learned that

• No matter how many other mothers went on this field trip, or how many times I tried to engage them in conversation, it was the fathers who sought me out and wanted to chat me up.  Every. Single. One. Of. Them.  This was a field trip, for the kids, not a field trip/dating adventure for the parents.
• It takes a special kind of person to be a teacher who can openly and genuinely care about every single kid at their school. Especially the ones who are poor.  The ones with broken homes. The ones with disabilities.  The ones who need extra attention.  The ones who *think* they need all the attention.  The ones who have been raised in the My Parents Are Somebodies because we have a lot of money home.  The ones who think just because they are short and cute, they can get away with anything.  And the ones who know everyone has their own special needs and I’ll just wait my turn.
• Kids will sit and listen to every single word their teachers are telling them.  They will even look like they are engaged and paying attention.  The truth is, they know that they have to just endure this lecture on rules and responsibility and blah blah blah because that’s what is standing between them and the ice rink/swimming pool/unlimited caffeine.  Once they are free to go everything you just told them is forgotten.
• If the pool doesn’t open until 11:00, you can bet that lunches will all be eaten at 10:30 and the locker rooms will be invaded by pre pubescent adolescents all trying to get their swimsuits on so they can be the first one in the water.
• No matter how excited and rushed they are to go swimming, no matter how much confidence they ooze at school, no matter how cool all their friends think they are, the second a tweenage girl puts on her swim suit, she instantly becomes insecure and worried about her looks.  It’s like Lycra is kryptonite for self confidence.  Even at 12 and 13.
• In 5th and 6th grade the boys don’t really notice or care how the girls look in their swimsuits.  They are, after all, just girls.  This will be the last year of their lives that this is true.
• The decision whether to wear a shirt in the pool or not will keep some kids in the locker room for a solid 10 minutes.
• Even at this age, it is not only possible but sometimes incredibly easy to tell who will be the jocks, who will be the nerds, who will be the mean girls, and who will be the class clowns.  Some kids are still trying to figure it all out.
• Even though the kids were as well behaved as you can expect tweenage kids to be when fueled by the possibility of swimming and soda, I still felt a strong urge to apologize to all the adults who were there to use the facilities for legitimate exercise.
• That a bus full of tweenage kids who have spent the past three hours in an over chlorinated indoor pool smells like death.  And ass.
• Also, the chlorine from the pool will permeate the overly warm, extremely humid air which will infiltrate my sinus cavities and jack them up in such a way that breathing through my nose will become virtually impossible 3.6 hours after returning home and normal air.  Breathing again is now at the top of my Christmas wish list.

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I started looking at some of the blogs I love to read, some I’d love to learn from, some who I consider have made it and looked at what exactly it is they have in common.  Guess what I found:  A vagina.

Yes, they all* have one.  But they also all write about them.

Meredith at Life’s Crazy Joke.com tells you how to get paid to write about your vagina. It’s practically a step-by-step.

Brittany at BarefootFoodie.com writes about how she explained vaginas to her children.  Seriously, go read this.

Shauna at Shauna Glenn dot com writes about why she will no longer be attending pilates classes thanks to her vagina. Her tag line is even “No vagina was harmed in the making of this website”.

We can’t forget Miss Britt, the self proclaimed Queen of the Coochie.  She wrote an owner’s manual for those of us with a vagina.

The argument can even be made that Adam Avitable has a vagina. Even though he never misses an opportunity to show us his balls. We all know you have balls Adam, without you flashing them at us.

When I did a search for ‘vagina’ in my feed reader of 600+ feeds, (insert your own joke about searching for vagina) I got 110 feeds returned.  In the past six months alone.

Maybe the vagina niche has been filled already? (again, insert joke about a filled vagina) Besides writing about mine would embarrass my family, and frankly I’ve done enough of that in my life.

*All jokes at Adam’s expense have been approved by him.

Also, can I say vagina any more in a single blog post?

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The point has been made that blogging has changed.  Some might say evolved, I say changed.  I wrote my first blog post back in 2005.  Back when people commented on each others blogs, when blogrolls were a Who’s Who in my corner of the bloggerverse.  Where friendships were born, and internet drama was better than Days of Our Lives in Stefano’s glory days.  I was blogging the year the internet rallied together to send a family to Disney to fulfill a cancer stricken mom’s wish too see her daughters’ dreams come true.  I’ve seen lives changed, both for the better and the worse, because of bloggers around the internet.  I remember the days when a blogger’s home page, theme of their blog was a reflection of their personality.  The look of their blog told you as much about them as the blog posts they wrote.

And all of that seems to have gone away.  It’s like we’ve moved from a village, to a suburb, to a city, to a metropolis.

I can’t really buck the blogging is a business line of thought because, this week, for the first time in my blogging life, I put ads on my blog.  I don’t have any delusions of wealth to be gained from putting an ad in my sidebar.  But if I can make a buck or two, why not?

I have hundreds of blog feeds in my reader.  Honestly, I don’t read them all every day.  But I try to read a lot of them when I have time.  I may be a day or two (or ten) late, but I’ll get there.  I may even comment on them.  But I don’t comment on them all.  Also? I’ve learned there are some bloggers who never respond to any comments left by anyone on their blogs.  Those I *refuse* to leave a comment on, no matter how much I agreed with what they wrote.  Every once in a while I will write something and hit one out of the park, and I will get quite a few comments.  I’m still old school enough to reply to every comment left.  Usually within 24 hours.  I know of a few other bloggers who are fairly well known who do still reply to every comment.  To me, it means the blogger still appreciates the fact that someone came by, read their post, and left a comment.  It’s kind of a thank you.  I comment on those blogs often, because I feel valued, and not like a number they are watching “OMG! 100 Comments!!!!”

I feel like in the youth of my blogging days I was like a kid in a candy store, adding all the new widgets in the sidebar, collecting badges and buttons nobody really cared about, I wanted the newest flashiest theme with all the bells and whistles.  I joined every group I could find hoping to get some recognition from them, and I put their badge in my sidebar.  And waited for the masses to come beating down my door.  To put it simply, my blog has spent the past 6 years in the midst of a very manic phase coupled with ADHD supported by alcohol.

I’m making some changes to my blog in 2012. I’ve cleaned up my sidebars, I’ve pared down my badges and groups. Is it really necessary to have my Facebook badge on my blog? No, seriously, I’m asking. I’m paring down my categories.  (the tags are still a free for all) focusing my posts..  Of course I’ve picked categories I categorically am *not* an expert in such as Family (Thanksgiving anyone?) and Relationships (Because I am never really sure when to walk the fuck away) I want to branch out, I want to be a better blogger, I want to reach more people, (And not just for the possibility of making a buck) but I want to do it authentically, old school.  Is there room in the business world of blogging for an old school still likes to interact with readers kind of  blogger?

In 2012, I’m going to take what I know, (which basically is a little bit of a whole lot of things, and a whole lot about a very few things) and see if I can make it in the big leagues.  Ok, maybe not the BIG BIG leagues, but I do want to branch out, I want to take this blog up a notch.  I’m going to work harder, learn more, and try, really try, to do something with this blog.  You know besides waste a hella lot of time.

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I’m willing to bet that Carrie Bradshaw only had to write one column a week.  Plus she had a job, so she didn’t have to look for one. And she didn’t have kids who walk in the door right after school and announce they have a project due tomorrow and there is a shopping list a mile long of things they need to complete said project.  Of course she lived in NYC so shopping wasn’t necessarily a 30 mile drive to an over crowded store that almost guaranteed you wouldn’t make it home in time to get the other child to the school for practice before tonight’s basketball games.

And so, since I am clearly *not* living the carefree life of Carrie Bradshaw, the two posts I have in the works will just have to sit in my drafts folder another day because I’ve been put on notice, if I bring my laptop to the basketball games I will summarily be disowned if she didn’t need me to drive her everywhere and cook and buy stuff.

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Until this year.  I was kind of Leary about seeing them all over my house, sort of dreading the holidays this year, but also knowing since it won’t be with him, I better man up and learn to do Christmas at my own place.

I decided the girls are old enough this year they can go through all the boxes, (there were 6 without the tree, which we no longer have, and will have to buy) and put out what they wanted to, where they wanted to and just let it be.  One of the benefits of having older kids, they can do all the decorating. (and the taking down of said decorations).

The opened the box of all the tree ornaments and started going through it.  To me, it was like visiting old friends.  And I told the girls the stories of most of the ornaments as they pulled them out one by one.

Ian’s first Christmas ornament.  The year, 1993, he was 2 months old and didn’t know or care what Christmas was beyond a whole lot of strange people wanting to hold him and fawning over him and basically scaring him because none of them were Mommy.  I haven’t talked to my son in over a year and I cry over that fact weekly.  But I still have his first Christmas ornament and this year, and every year from here on after, I will hang it on my tree, until the day comes (and it will come I have to believe that) when I can give it to him to put on his own tree.

Along with his first ornament, is the ornament I made for him in 1995 when I was a single mom.  Just him and me, and I didn’t have a whole lot of money, but he needed an ornament for our tree.

This is Meredith’s first Christmas ornament. You can tell I am a finalist in the Mother-of-the-Year contest, as she is 14 and her ornament still does not have her picture in it. Also, this thing is so damn heavy it bends branches and rarely hangs on our tree.  Maybe when she has her first baby (god please let that be a bazillion years from now) she can use this ornament. Maybe trees will be stronger by then.

This little guy has seen some better days. Clearly.  This is mine from when I was growing up.  It’s a horse. Made of pom poms and felt.  And missing an eye and has a deformed ear. I apparently like handicapped deformed ornaments as you will see in a minute.  I remember hanging this on the tree every year.  He was one of a set (my brother got the other one (I think)) but I don’t remember what the other one was.  I just remember wanting to hang this one every year.

This is another one from my childhood.  It’s part of The Night Before Christmas series.  On the other side is the part of the poem that says “The Children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.”

Ah yes, another deformed handicapped ornament that needed love and a home.  I was in college when I got this one.  Mom and I were walking through one of those chain craft stores when we found the Christmas decorations.  At the time my mother had been buying us Hallmark ornaments, but that year as we walked through the ornaments, I saw this little guy.  Yes, he’s a purple mouse.  Yes he’s ugly.  And yes, he has only one foot.  And my mother tried, in vain, to convince me I didn’t want an ugly broken ornament for Christmas when clearly I could have a gorgeous Hallmark ornament to hang on my future tree.  And I couldn’t believe that she would be so cruel as to leave this poor deformed ornament on the shelf doomed to be put back in a box and shipped off to lord knows where because nobody wanted an ugly handicapped purple mouse.  I was saving his life.  My mother put up with a lot of shit from me. She still does.

2002 was The Year of the Snowman in my life.  I was working a national children’s book distribution company (think stupid school book orders and book fairs) and every year our department had a Secret Santa gift exchange.  2002 I put down I wanted “anything snowmen” because I have snowmen out the ass now.  Anyway, I got this ornament from well, from Ami.

And just because the girls think that in telling you the story behind this ornament I will be incredibly embarrassed (which just only goes to show they never read my blog, thank elmojumpingonapogostick) I am including this beauty.  The story behind it it really quite simple and another shining example of how I can improvise when I am drunk broke.   At the time I was working with a woman who sold Avon, on the side. Avon then wasn’t like Avon now, it was just in it’s infant stage when it came to clothing.  That year, Avon offered some sexy ooh-la-la kind of panties. In a plastic Christmas tree.  You know for those tacky single want to be romantics who think it would be uber awesome if they hung their girlfriend’s panties on the Christmas tree.  Or whatever.  So I bought them.  What? I’m sure I was either single, or had just started seeing the girls’ dad and you know I wanted to make an impression. Although what that impression was I’m not exactly sure.  Bought said panties, and had this empty Christmas tree ornament thingy and since I’m crafty and creative and awesome, I filled it with pot-pourri and bing bang boom, instant ‘80’s (even though it was the ‘90’s) Christmas ornament.

So those are some of the awesomeness that have hung on our trees in years past.  There was one year I did our tree in burgundy, gold, and silver glass bulbs, and burgundy bows and white lights. I’m not even sure we’ll have a tree this year, what with the destructive duo running around our house destroying everything in their path.  A Christmas tree would last approximately 3.9 seconds before they were up in it, and it was knocked over.

Next, I’ll show you some of my favorite decorations that have been set out around my house.  Hey wait! Where are you going?!?! Come back!!!!

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July 2004.

We were legally married for exactly 5 years, 1 month, and a few days.

That’s not the point.

July 2004 means I have been doing this parenting gig by myself over 7 years now.  Four of those years have been here, 2 hours away from my family, and theirs.

Seven years.  That’s half of Meredith’s life, and more than half of Megan’s.  The girls have known us in separate houses, as long as they knew us in the same house.  They remember the former more clearly than the latter.

Seven years.

I wonder though, if I would have been a different parent if I hadn’t had to do it alone.  If I’m honest, I would tell you our house is a strange but working mixture of sorority house (without the boys and mostly without the alcohol) and boot camp.  A lot of the decisions in this house are made by joint committee.  There are arguments, there is a lot of stealing of my sharing of the clothes.  We keep a huge desk calendar hung on our fridge to keep track of everyone’s schedules.  And we shower in shifts.  At the end of the day, though, I am the disciplinarian.  I am the one who makes the rules, enforces the rules, and doles out the punishment.  Sometimes that’s hard for the girls to reconcile in their heads.  Sure they *know* it, but when you’ve just been laughing and playing around with mom, for her to switch gears and actually BE MOM, wow, I forgot you were in charge here.  I get to be good guy, but I also have to be the bad guy.

Being a single parent means you have to be there, for all of it.  The good and the bad.  You get to be there when things go right in their life, and when things go wrong.  I get the luxury of being the only parent in the house, so I don’t have distractions.  I get to focus my attention on them, whenever they need me.  And sometimes when they don’t.  The good news for me is I know what’s going on in their life.  The bad news for them is I know what’s going on in their life.  At least for now, I haven’t crossed that line that separates the cool concerned mom from the control freak stalker mom.

I have an edge their father doesn’t have.  I have a vagina. I understand female hormones. I remember what junior and senior high were like.  I can help navigate their journey. Also, I now know what bipolar was like, and I watch ever so closely for signs that maybe, they need to talk to a doctor.  I don’t want them to suffer like I have.  But I also don’t want to jump the gun.  So I watch what they do, how they act. I listen to what they tell me, and sometimes to what they don’t.  I talk to them about school, and friends, and boys, and teachers, and classes and homework, and practice and games. I pretend I don’t hear what they are telling their friends when they think I’m not listening. I let them live their life and experience all there is to experience, all while standing in the not so far off background.

Their dad has an edge I don’t have.  He has a penis, and he can tell them exactly what those stupid boys are thinking and why they are acting like total idiots.  He can tell them “Tell that numb nuts to back off or I will drive the 2 hours it takes to get there to have a talk with him.  And if I have to drive 2 hours, it won’t be to have a coke and a smile.”  He can tell them to be aware, to be careful, but not too careful.  He can teach them how to be safe.

I wonder if we would parent the girls as well together as we seem to have managed separately?  I wonder if we would have been able to play to each other’s strengths, and compensate for each other’s weaknesses or if it would have always been a power struggle between us leaving the girls lost, confused, and unguided.  I give them city life, I give them excitement and opportunities and entertainment and fun and flash and pizzazz.  He gives them small town country life, he teaches them loyalty, and family, and hard honest with your hands kind of work.  He teaches them to give to others what you can when you can’t give anything but yourself.  We both have taught them it is possible to provide a safe, warm, full of love home, as single parents.  We both have taught them “You are enough on your own”.

My Our girls both have a strong sense of self, they have moral compasses that they trust and believe in and stand for.  They know exactly who they are, probably better than I do today, and definitely better than I did at their age.  Their looks, their brains, their sense of humor? their father and I have long ago agreed they got those from Target.  But the rest? I’m not sure.

I want to hope it was from both of us.  Separately.  And together.

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This was on this week’s Post Secret.

It pissed me off.

Am I the only one?

Or maybe I’m reading it wrong.

To me, it says “I’m the whore who’s banging a married man.  He says his wife is ‘not normal’ (whatever that means) and that his marriage is sexless.  I’m offering him half a million dollars, kids, the possibility of grandkids and amazing sex (comes with the whore part) and that son of a bitch asshole chooses to honor his commitment?”  I wonder if she threw in the part about the kids and grandkids so she wouldn’t sound so superficial just mentioning the money and the awesome sex.

So, basically, money, and sex, and a life with this man are of far more importance to her than his commitment to his wife, more important than the vows he made to his wife, which I’m assuming are the same vows she will want him to make to her should he chose the money and the sex over vows and commitment.

Frankly, this post secret sounded like it came from a spoiled fucking bitch who wants what she wants and fuck the world if they get in her way.  Morals, responsibility, honor, and commitment are just irritants in her life.  Is it just me, or can you imagine some spoiled little rich bitch standing there stomping her feet because her ‘lover’ won’t leave his wife for her.  I’ve seen enough princess tantrums in my life (both by those young enough to get away with them but most by those not) and this sounds exactly like one.

Wonder if she sent him a link to her secret, in a passive/aggressive way to throw her temper tantrum in front of him.

Frankly I just wanted to sit back and say “Oh the nerve of him. WTF is he thinking? Of course he should leave his wife, break his vows, divorce a not normal woman for thinks that are much more important; sex, money, and of course you. Clearly.”

Now here’s a one way ticket to get-the-fuck-over-yourself-vile.

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This is going to be like that.

Exactly.

First let me just get this out of the way.  I put my life on the internet, along with eleventy billion other people.  It’s out there, of my own choice.  I blog, I tweet, I Facebook right along with countless other people.  I am aware of what I put out there, and I know that in putting it out there I open myself up to judgment and speculation and unsolicited advice, and varying opinions.  Welcome to the Internet in America.

It has been brought to my attention that lately, the majority of my tweets and Facebook status updates have been about stress, drinking, and Xanax.  And an on-line friend decided to hold an on-line intervention, you know to save me from myself.  Going so far as to suggest rehab or AA.

So, I’m here to set the record straight.  The problem is, because this is all online, and behind computer screens even if I emphatically deny the charges, it will sound like just that; denial.  But I’m putting it out there anyway.

I talk a great big talk.  I don’t walk a step of it.  I am gainfully unemployed, my son turned the magical 18 this year, the age I hung my hat on hoping he’d reach out to me when he became an adult.  It’s the Holiday Season, I am a single mom of two teenage daughters, and it’s my first holiday season without Brian (which was *another* bone of contention in this online intervention). I’m under a lot of stress.

And I’m bipolar.

And that’s where this all hinges.  Because BPD and alcohol either party really really well, or not good at all.  Ok, but did I mention I’m unemployed?  I am raising two teenage daughters? For those of you who don’t have 2 teen daughters, they are very expensive creatures.  My unemployment benefits cover my bills. Barely.  There isn’t much to spare, and if there is, the girls have a list of things they want or need.  I don’t have a whole lot of money to support a drinking habit to the point of putting myself in danger.

I mean seriously, give me a little bit of credit here.  How many people out there talk about having a glass or two of wine at night to relax?  I’ve tried that.  It really isn’t my thing.  Oh, and for the record? I hate vodka. It is vile disgusting stuff.  But I’ve tweeted and Facebooked about it several times recently.  Tequila is my poison, and I know my limits and tequila is not invited into my house.  I don’t drink tequila or margaritas alone.  Captain Morgan is also my best friend and he is also not allowed in my house.

Basically what I’m trying to say is I’m too goddamned broke, and responsible, to fuck my life up by getting lit all the time.  Yes I talk about it a lot.  It doesn’t mean I do it.

And then there is the issue of Brian.  Apparently I’m not getting over him nearly as quickly or completely as some people would like.  But then again, they are the same people who think that every single Facebook Status is cryptically about him.  As if there could not possibly be anyone else in my life.  Uh, this whole me getting over Brian issue?  That’s on you, because you’re just making assumptions about things without knowing the details.

Believe it or not, this was not about Brian that night

I guess the reason I’m writing this is because really, I understand you said you are coming to me because you care, but clearly you don’t know me well enough.  And to suggest REHAB and AA because of Facebook?  And I’d say I’m really sorry I’m disappointing you in how I’m handling the whole Brian situation but I’m not sorry. Your disappointment is on you.  I’ll handle it however I decide to handle it.  I’m doing fine, really.  Yes, Thanksgiving sucked ass, but that’s a personal issue.  Here it is Monday, and I’m still here.  So, thanks for your concern but forgive me if I won’t be making reservations to be spending Christmas with Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen.

Now pass me the vodka.

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I am not going to get into the nitty gritty of the day.  It meant a lot to my mother that I made the effort to come back and spend the holiday with her.  It meant even more that I stayed at her house.  I know that telling her I love her and I’m sorry and I really enjoyed my time with her may or may not make her feel better.  But I know this, I will not even for a second put her between me and the rest of the family.

The truth is this, I don’t fit in. I don’t belong.  I’m not like them.  I don’t believe what they believe, my life is not like theirs.  And this Thanksgiving was wrought with unrealistic expectations.  I went back, because I was running away.  Running from my demons here.  Running from facing the holiday alone. Not just alone away from Brian, but alone because my girls were with their dad’s, and my son still refuses to have any contact with me.  I was running away from the reality of a failed fucked up painful life.

Only to be reminded of it time and time again.

And at the end of the day, my sister and I agreed on one thing.  I would never ever set foot in her house again.  And to my mother, I am sorry, sorry that once again, I fucked it all up for you, for everyone.

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I got a text message this morning that said “Will you answer a personal question for me?”

“Fine, yes, I have had sex with another woman. No there is no photographic evidence.  Is that what you wanted to know?”

It wasn’t.

Oops.

Later, I got another text from a different person, “I need some advice.”

Uh, ok, as long as you realize it won’t be worth a damn.

I’m trying to decide between playing the filed and exclusivity.  There are some things I want to try but can’t figure out how to do it.

I’m not sure how to break this to you, women are not lab rats.  That’s what hookers are for. 

I can’t afford a hooker, and the things I want to try involve more than two people. Any suggestions?

I’m sorry, I turned in my membership card to the Women who fulfill men’s threesome fantasies support group just last week.  Sorry.  Play the field. Besides you don’t want to get all caught up in the Holiday Gauntlet of relationships.  No man has ever come out of that alive. 

The Holiday Gauntlet, or Holiday Triathlon, you know that obstacle course that starts at Thanksgiving and runs up to St. Patrick’s Day.

If you’re Single the gauntlet looks like this:

Thanksgiving is a day you can hang with your family and quasi forget you’re single.  They will forgive you that third glass of wine and the second piece of pumpkin pie. Especially if you offer to do the dishes.  (That way you can sneak a fourth glass of wine, or third piece of pie.)  Also, Thanksgiving is when the stores really ramp up their advertising campaigns and the jewelry stores of the world unite to bombard you with never ending reminders that you are in fact single and you do in fact suck and won’t be getting any bling this year. Pass that damn wine.

Christmas is for the kids.  At least that’s what you tell yourself if you have kids.  Watching them open their presents and squee with excitement and rush to hug you and say thank you should distract your for about 6.9 seconds.  Then they are off to text all their friends about all they got, and you are left to throw away all the wrapping paper and curl up with the book you bought yourself, and drink coffee out of the I <3 Mom coffee mug you kid bought at the school store.  By noon you’ll be ready to rip down all the decorations and throw them out with the wrapping paper.

New Years Eve isn’t too hard to navigate.  For the most part you can go out and risk life and limb to attend any number of NYE parties offered (for a substantial fee) at any of the hotels, night clubs, casinos in the area.  Or you can opt to stay home and watch television.  Believe me, not every channel on television will be shoving Ryan Seacrest down your throat.  But at some point in the evening it will invariably be all over Facebook and Twitter that it’s NYE and everyone in the world is celebrating a new year with their significant other, and you will be reminded that when the ball drops at midnight, with any luck you’ll be passed out.

And just when you think you’ve made it through the trifecta of Holiday Hell, February throws Valentine’s Day in your face.  If the jewelry store commercials, the Holiday music, the parties, and the constant reminders that you’re single have made you want to stab someone, this day will.  And forget trying to forget what day it is. Every fucking woman in your office will be getting an obnoxious ginormous bouquet of roses from their significant others and you’ll be stuck answering phones while they go out to lunch.

Of course the reward for surviving the Singles Holiday Gauntlet is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day!  Bring on the alcohol!

If you are coupled up through the holidays

Fuck you.

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You would think a lot of things about me that probably aren’t true.

The thing is, I just don’t know what to say.

About a whole lot of things.

Like, the Penn State Nightmare.  It’s like that whole town, not just the college, and certainly not just the football program, the whole damn town has fallen down Alice’s Rabbit Hole.  And just when you think it’s gotten as bad as it’s gonna get, something new breaks, and so does your heart for all the kids, their parents, the students, the town.

But not a tear shall be shed for those who did this, covered it up, kept quiet, and wished it all away.

Then there is the Republican Nomination race, which is turning more and more into a three ring circus every single day. I heard a Hermain Cain ad on the radio today for his website www.999.c0m.  And when he was giving the web address I swear he said ‘Go to dubya, dubya, dubya, dot Nine, nine, nine dot cum’ and now there’s soda all over my steering wheel and the inside of my windshield.

I could write about how I got yet another rejection letter from yet another job I applied for and interviewed for.  This time, while my knowledge, skills, and experience were quite impressive, they have decided to go with someone who speaks Spanish.   Funny, when I applied for the job, that was not listed as a requirement, and it was brought up almost as an afterthought in the interview.  But apparently it was a deal breaker.  Spanish.  In my own damn country.  In Missouri. Back to the drawing board.

And just because I swore I wouldn’t write about it or talk about it, because according to some people if you’re still talking about it, you still care about it, the damned holidays are coming up.  Next week.  Thanksgiving.  And yes, this has to do with Brian.  In the 5 years since I met him, several things have been true.  No matter what has happened between us at any given point in time, we have always managed to be together for A) my birthday, B) Thanksgiving, and C) Christmas.  This year is going to be different.  We weren’t together for my birthday, and I was ok with that.  I was fine actually.  After all it’s just a birthday. And I was mad at him, and he was too busy blowing shit up to spend a minute thinking about me, and really, I’m rambling here about something I claim to not give a shit about.  But Thanksgiving, that’s a little different.   I’ve tried to convince myself, and those around me that I’m going to be ok not being there this year.    (And elmo help me I am sitting in the library once again, writing a blog post that is making me cry and if this continues they are going to ban me from using their internet and then what the hell am I going to do?)  But you know, when you spend every Thanksgiving with someone, when you spend so much time and so much of your life with them, that first big holiday without them? Is a real fucking bitch.

Damn, apparently there is nothing happy down this road I chose to blog about today.  I’ll leave you with a cute pictures of Kittens, you know because kittens are always awesome.  I’m going to go buy a bottle of wine.

This is "Good" or "Baby"

This is "Evil" or Princess

The girls have named them Baby and Princess.  They call them Yours and Mine.  I call them Good and Evil.  Also? I call them pains in the ass.  And yes, Good sleeps all stretched out and twisted around like that.  I think they’re inbred.

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This June he saw his 18th anniversary of the day he enlisted in the Air Force.

That is my son’s entire lifetime.

I don’t really care how many birthdays he claims to have had, he will always be my ‘little brother’ in my mind.  He will always be the brother that followed me to college and I will always be the sister that felt the need to pave his way.

For 18 years I haven’t been able to pave his way. Well, let’s be honest, it’s been much longer than 18 years, but for 18 years he’s gone to places I have only read about in history books, or hear about on the evening news.  For 18 years he’s been places, done things, seen sights he will never be able to tell us about, and probably wouldn’t even if he could.  For 18 years it’s been his job to keep us safe, to do his part in defending this country so that his family, his sisters, his parents, his nieces and nephews and cousins and friends and family continue to have the freedoms that make our country unique in this world.

Today is Veteran’s Day.  Megan’s school had a breakfast today to honor all the Veterans and the kids were allowed to invite any of their family who are Veterans.  Every year when they do this Megan dies a little inside because she would give anything to have her Uncle Sean there beside her, but he’s either ‘on a trip’ or because he lives in another state he can’t come.  Either way, she is fiercely proud of her Uncle.  I’m not sure he even knows how proud she is of him.

To Sean, to all the guys on his crew, to his commanding officers, to all the members of our Military, to all who are serving and who have served, there are not Thank You’s big enough, or sincere enough to convey my gratitude for all you have given.

And Bud?  The girls and I love you with hearts bigger than words can say, and we are proud beyond measure of you.

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And now, along with husband, father, producer, director he is a writer.

And a damn good one.

I don’t usually do reviews on my website.  I tried, I tried to write for Buy-her.  It just wasn’t my writing style.

But for this I’ll make the exception.

Rob Lowe’s career took off just as I was entering high school.  He was the Rob Pattison of my day.  I mean really who didn’t fall in love with him in “St. Elmo’s Fire” and then again in “About Last Night”?

In his book, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob (is it ok to just call him Rob?) tells the story of his first brush with celebrity (meeting Liza Minnelli in a hotel in Ohio) to the day he finally realized it was time to say good bye to ‘The West Wing’ with an easy conversational style that makes you, the reader, feel as if you truly are one of the friends he’s telling these stories to.

Rob’s mother was trying to live with depression and not doing a very good job at it.  His father was left behind in Ohio, and Rob was left to chase his dream on his own.  It was a different world he lived in, traveling 30 miles by bus alone for auditions.  He was not always alone, he lived close enough to the Sheen’s (yes, Charlie, Martin and Emilio, who professionally took the family’s original name Estevez) he spent as much time with them as he did at home.

Because he was basically chasing his dream on his own, he had little to no guidance or adult supervision.   Alcohol was a constant companion.  In school Rob was far from popular and rarely if ever caught a girls eye. (How the hell is that possible? Do they grow them dumb and blind in Cali?) but he made up for it after “The Outsiders”  The press made no secret of any of Rob’s romantic encounters and relationships.  In his book, Rob mentions the women he dated, but does it with respect and kindness.  This is not a kiss and tell kind of book.  This is a book that tells his story in a way his sons can read and not be embarrassed.  The drugs, the parties, the drinking, the women, are there but the ugly details are not as they are not necessary to the story he tells.

Rob does drop names throughout the book.  Virtually every story told is a brush with a celebrity.  What I really liked about his stories is he doesn’t start with ‘The night I met Sarah Jessica Parker….”  He tells about how his agent asked him to have lunch with Sarah, who has been playing Annie on Broadway.  Rob brings his high school girlfriend to lunch (Because he’s an idiot and doesn’t know the ways of Hollywood apparently)  Rob and Sarah hit it off, talking about their hopes and dreams of acting in the future.  They enjoy lunch and then she leaves.  Years later, at an award ceremony Rob does not win the award he was nominated for, but he was quite happy for his friend Sarah, when she accepted her award for her role of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City.

The stories he tells are not about the celebrities he meets, they are about the people he’s met in his life.  Yes, at times he’s in awe of the person’s career and achievements, but the story is always about the person underneath it all.

He’s honest, he doesn’t gloss over his failures, his short comings.  He doesn’t go into great detail, but he tells the story in such a way the nitty gritty isn’t needed to make the point.  The emotions are real, and you can read them, feel them.  All throughout the book you’re rooting for him.  He tells you about his trip to Fiji with his now wife Sheryl, and how he knew they would be together.  He also tells about how he goes out with the guys the night they return, and gets drunk and takes a girl home with him and ‘gets caught’ when Sheryl calls him later that night and hears the girl in the background.

When he talks about his family you can feel the love and pride and joy radiate from the page.  When he tells the story of meeting his son Matthew for the first time in the delivery room, when he calls him My Son, My Matthew your heart swells with the love you know he felt at becoming a father for the first time.  When he talks about life with his wife Sheryl you can feel the love he still feels for her 20 years after she married him.  (and maybe you’re a little bit jealous b/c that lucky bitch gets to spend the rest of her life with Rob Fucking Lowe)

From the nerd who couldn’t get a date to save his life in high school, to the leader of the Brat Pack, from the sex symbol of the 80’s to the West Wing, Rob Lowe has traveled an amazing road and has the stories to prove it.

P.S.  The pictures he included?  um, yes please. No matter what age he is he’s just gorgeous.

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But back to Kim.

My first initial reaction was Wow Lindsay Lohan had longer jail stays than Kim Kardashian’s marriage.

The attention whoring of that family isn’t the problem.  They’ve found their niche.  They know branding.  They have made millions suckling at the teat of America’s obsession with all things Hollyweird.  And train wrecks.  I mean, thank god her father defended OJ during the murder trial, otherwise nobody would have cared about her sex tape that made her famous.  Kim’s ex, Reggie Bush, has started doing commercials for Pizza Hut proving who the money maker was in that relationship; Kim’s vagina.

I have heard it reported that between the E! television Network’s deal to throw and televise the wedding, the honeymoon that was paid for, all the gifts, the sale of the ‘exclusive’ rights to the wedding photos, and the reality show, Kim made $140,000 for every day she was married.   There has been talk around the media, that Kris Humphries was hand picked for Kim by ‘the powers that be’.  They approached him, asked him if, for a rather large sum of money, he would date Kim for her reality show.  He was reluctant to be on the show, but eventually agreed. I’m wondering how much he sold his dignity for.  Also? I’m sure the phrase ‘you will be always be known as Kim Kardashian’s ex husband’ was uttered in the negotiations to get Kris Humphries to go along with this sham.

What I don’t understand is how is it completely acceptable for attention whores in Hollywood to make a joke of the sanctity of marriage for financial gain, when committed same sex partners aren’t granted the right to have an honest marriage?  I can promise you E! Network won’t be offering the same deal to Neil Patrick Harris and his partner.

And that’s a wedding I’d pay to see.

Photo credit US Weekly

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Ok so anyway, my brother married someone younger than him.  I did too, once upon a time.  But I remember a phone conversation we had, where he was telling me she was doing things he didn’t like.  Such as, when he would be on a trip (for his job) she would go out to the bars with her friends.  He thought it was a waste of money, and she could get into trouble, or hurt.  Why can’t she just stop because I told her it was dangerous and she could get hurt?!?

Because she has to learn that lesson for herself.

And so it is with my girls.

Their lives have been full of the drama these past few weeks.  I am sure they have caused their fair share of it. The story goes something like this….

So and so wrote this about me!

Ok why?

Because I wrote this about her BUT It’s because she said something to them about me.

Somebody says or does something they know the other will react to.  And they do.  And then it’s back and forth all day long until my kid comes home yelling, screaming, crying, slamming doors, pissed off and hurt.

And that hurt part.  That tears at me.  I can allow them to be mad, and vent and rage, although I do have to protect my doors, but when you hurt my girl?

That’s more than my mother heart can take.

Any more, then confronted with hurt feelings, the one who did the hurting always says “I was just kidding!”

What they haven’t learned yet is that “Just Kidding” doesn’t negate the hurt feelings they have caused by their words or their actions. Just kidding doesn’t take the sting away. Just kidding doesn’t undo the mad.  Just kidding isn’t a do over, or a rewind button, or an eraser.  Just kidding is just two words that kids use to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions, and their guilt.

And letting them learn that on their own?

Is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.

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Then I did a couple of Google searches and found out, I am in the minority.  Well, clearly I’m in the minority, JCP pulled the shirt.  What I don’t understand is this, It’s a shirt.  It’s not going to single handedly crush some girl’s self esteem.

And if your panties are in a wad over JCP’s shirt, why isn’t someone jumping up and down screaming at Old Navy for this shirt?

Old Navy is marketing this shirt to boys and apparently nobody seems to care.  So we’ll get our panties in a wad because a girl has managed to delegate her homework to her brother, showing great management potential, but it’s quite alright for our boys to just play stupid altogether.  Know what else won’t be in his vocabulary? Job.

It this economy, with an election coming up, when unemployment is at it’s highest, and there are two games left of the World Series, I’m pretty sure there are way more important things to get your panties in a wad about besides kids shirts.  Great you can rally around and get a shirt pulled from the shelves of JC Pennys all across the country.  Now use your powers for good, not for something as trivial as kids fashion.

Looks like I wrote that blog post after all.

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#We’veTriedTo spell Quadaffi Gadaffi you know that dead dude in Libya.

#We’veTriedTo close the refrigerator door slow enough we could see exactly when the light goes out.

#We’veTriedTo give Lindsay Lohan the benefit of the doubt, but now it’s just grab some popcorn and a seat and watch the train wreck.

#We’veTriedTo explain to our daughters who Punky Brewster is, and why their trend of wearing mis-matched socks isn’t exactly revolutionary.

#We’veTriedTo figure out why our +Klout score is important, and then figure out a way to increase ours short of retweeting our own tweets. (Best way to lose followers)

#We’veTriedTo understand the appeal of The Three Stooges, UFC, and Bud Light with Lime.

#We’veTriedTo explain to our daughters that high school drama is not life or death, when the same shit is happening on the internet day in and day out.

#We’veTriedTo understand what’s the point of a single glass of wine

#We’veTriedTo stretch a dollar further than even we thought possible

#We’veTriedTo explain economics and why we can’t just print more money to a 12  year old. And #We’veGivenUp.

#We’veTriedTo understand what Occupy Wall Street is all about, and what it is exactly they want to change.

#We’veTriedTo guess what kind of deal each of George Clooney’s “girlfriends” get because clearly marriage is never going to be an option.

#We’veTriedTo wish Ashton and Demi good luck and hope their marriage works when in reality we’re all sort of hoping she would just get the eff out of the way.

#We’veTriedTo have that die hard Cardinal faith that we’ll win this series in 7, when deep inside we’re all like Really boys, taking it to 7 games for effect and suspense right?

#We’veTriedTo get through school pick up lines without wishing we could stab someone in the head

#We’veTriedTo understand how some people make it through life day after day without killing themselves or someone else on accident

#We’’veTriedTo take up running as a form of exercise, but gave up when it got cold. (Fat is insulation, yo)

#We’veTriedTo ask the 12 and 14 year old daughters if they are going trick or treating this year.

#We’veAlsoTriedTo decide if 12 and 14 aren’t just a bit too old to trick or treat.

#We’veTriedAsALastDitchEffortTo convince said 12 and 14 year old daughters that I would just buy them a bag of mixed candy if it meant we didn’t have to do costumes and I didn’t have to drive them to a decent neighborhood that gives out great candy (and adult beverages to the adults).

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But not today. Today is not a day for any kind of significant meaningful post. Today my head and my heart just aren’t in it.  Maybe tomorrow.

Thanks for understanding.  Help yourself to a drink.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/25/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I was given two words.  Which was enough to get me started to find answers to questions that had been unanswered, at least for me, for years.  Two words. I went in search of the rest of the story.

What I found lead to more questions, and more searching.  I spent several hours in the library looking to build on what I had already found.  This lead to that, that pointed to this. 

And at the end of the day, I sat back with the knowledge I had gained, and looked at everything differently than I had up until now. 

Two words, took me to a website that took me back in time.  The drama from then sucked me in.  It was as if it had just happened, instead of years ago.  And I found myself wanting to add my comments, and fire off emails.

So I wrote eleventy billion posts about how blog drama is everywhere, about how sponsors and ads and stats sometimes taint our writing, how some bloggers spin stories so they look better, or hide the truth.  I wanted to write and say I believed in you, I believed your story, and if what they say is true, then I am truly disappointed, and hurt, and will never look at you the same. 

Every day from that day to this, it all seemed less and less important.  I didn’t need to voice my disappointment on my blog for several reasons. First being I’m not sure the person the words were intended for would read them. Or care.  Second, it’s been years, why bring up something that has been long forgotten.

At the end of the day, I sent one email.  It said, I read everything. Of all the players, you were the only one to own up to your actions and show remorse, and because of that, it doesn’t matter to me.  The others act like it never happened, have never owned their part, or told the truth, and because of that I will forever look at them differently, if I look at them at all. 

It’s in the past, and that’s where it should stay.  It has changed some people’s images in my eyes, but you know, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. They have enough other friends they won’t notice if I slip away. 

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/24/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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And then, I met Adam.

I was a virgin no more.

I know, how many people can say that online.

Ok, put your hands down… It was a rhetorical question.

Up until 11:00 this morning, I had never met another blogger in real life.   I have never been to a blogging conference, I have never been to a bloggy meet-up.  In fact, I had never talked to another blogger in any way other than on-line.

But when I saw that Adam would be in St. Louis, for his 10-year law school reunion in a city not all that far from my house, I had to take a chance he would have an hour free and might like to say Hi.  A few emails, and text messages later, we had a plan to meet for brunch at 11:00 today.

And by “we” I mean, Adam had agreed to not only meet me for lunch, but my girls as well.  And my girls had agreed that no matter how crazy they thought mom was for going to lunch with a guy she had never met before, they agreed to go.  (I can only hope they have never read his blog.)

So what made this different?  I felt like I knew Adam.  I’ve been reading his blog for years, we’ve exchanged dozens of emails over the years, I’ve left comments for him, he’s left comments for me.  I felt safe, I felt like I was meeting a friend I have known for years even though I had never laid eyes on him before today.

We had a lovely lunch, the food was great, the company awesome, the conversation was witty and funny and easy.  He included the girls, and the girls behaved themselves.  Adam even strongly suggested that she mix what was left of her nachos into a small little mountain in the middle of her plate. And then, Meredith surrounded it with tator tots.  So, I sat there and cringed that my daughters were playing with their food, I was relieved that Adam and the girls felt got along.

I won’t be attending BlogHer, or TequilaCon, or any other blogging conference any time soon.  (Unemployment doesn’t pay *that* well) but if the opportunity comes up again to meet another blogger in real life, I will step outside my comfort zone and go.

So, Adam, I know I have said Thank You profusely today, but one last time, thank you for lunch, for a lovely visit, for laughs, for some insights, for making my first time the one time I’ll never forget.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/21/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Here we go again.

This is Baby Lisa.

A 10 month baby from Kansas City.

She’s been missing since October 4th. 

Her parents stopped cooperating with the authorities and lawyered up on October 8th. 

Wait, what?

Their 10 month old baby girl has gone missing, clearly not on her own, and they have stopped cooperating with the very people who are their best chance of finding and bringing her home?  If it was my baby I’d be there every single day telling the police, the FBI, everyone whatever it is they wanted to know so as to eliminate me from their list of suspects.  If I clearly had nothing to hide, nothing to do with her disappearance, let’s get me cleared so the investigators can get busy finding the baby, and who took her.

The FBI is involved.  The mother failed a lie detector test.  This baby is still missing.  It’s another Casey Anthony story.  And yet, as often as I have defended the Casey Anthony verdict, right now, it looks like the parents had something to do with the disappearance of this baby. 

The parents are no longer talking to authorities, but have granted media interviews.  There have been several inconsistencies in what they told investigators and what they are now telling the media. 

In this country you are innocent until proven guilty, I get that.  But when babies go missing we tend to look at the parents because on some level they are responsible, right or wrong. 

Last night, the mother admitted in a news interview that she was drunk the night the baby went missing.  She told investigators she hadn’t seen Lisa since 10:40 that night. She told the media it was closer to 6:40 and she may or may not have blacked out that night. 

Today, the FBI sealed their house.  The parents, up to this point, have been able to come and go as they pleased, getting whatever they needed from their home, while staying somewhere else.  Today the FBI banned them from their house. 

And yet, they are innocent until proven guilty. 

A little girl, who hasn’t even celebrated her first birthday, is not in her home, does not sleep in her own bed, is not with her parents. 

And the questions go unanswered.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/19/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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I seem to be reading a lot of blogs lately and finding inspiration in them.  I’ve read several posts about Forever Loves.  At 43, I don’t believe I’ve met my forever love.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I never will. 

Sure I’ve been married. Twice. I knew neither of them would be forever.  I’ve been honest about the reasons I married them.  Neither was because I was head over heals I can’t live without him want to spend the rest of my life with him in love.  Oh, I did love them, as best I could as the person I was then with what I understood about love.  All of which was painfully inadequate. 

But they were not total failures.  I have three amazingly brilliant, funny, good looking, outgoing, wonderful kids. (yes, I’m wearing mommy goggles) I have a good relationship with my 2nd ex husband, and my 1st ex husband could fall of the face of the Earth and I wouldn’t hire the search party to find him.  Oh, there would be a party, just not the searching kind.

Then there was Brian. I can honestly say, from the beginning, I thought “This is it. This is forever love.”  The stubborn hopeless romantic still wonders what if.  (look, that’s honest, but it doesn’t mean it will happen, but you know, when you believe that this is it it’s hard to let go of that, no matter what.) After 5 years, and countless break ups, it’s probably a safe bet that he isn’t my forever love. 

But he was as close as I have ever gotten.  He’s probably as close as I’ll ever get. 

My first love? I was 12. In 7th grade.  His mom made him break up with me in 8th grade because she said he was getting too serious.  At the time I thought she was cruel and I cried for a week, my poor 12 year old heart was shattered for the first time.  I thought I would probably die.  Turns out, she knew him pretty well.. he tends to get a bit obsessive.

The thing is, I hear people talk of true love, forever love, lasting love, a certain security in knowing that while their partner could leave on any given day, they know that they know that they know that they won’t.  And that is something I’ve never had.  I’m willing to accept that I never will.  Does it tug at my heart? Sure it does. Who doesn’t want to find someone who loves them, accepts them, wants to be with them day in and day out and not just on good hair days?

I believe in true love, forever love, lasting love, committed love.  I just believe it exits for other people.  At 43, I’ve missed the boat.  I chose to give my heart to men who wouldn’t protect it, who would end up breaking it, sometimes over and over again.  I’m done giving my heart away.  It’s too beat up, banged up and bruised, used and abused, I’d be hard pressed to find anyone willing to put in the work to heal it.  I’d be even harder pressed to find someone I’d be willing to let try. 

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/19/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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Picture credit here.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/18/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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And nowhere, anywhere, have I been able to find a mission statement for any of them.

They are occupying Wall Street, and they are camping out, but what do they want? What is their plan to change the status quo? They have people donating food, tons of food, to feed the masses gathered at the parks.  They have built their own tent city, complete with a library.

Why haven’t they put that kind of commitment, creativity, inspiration, and energy into finding a job, or making their own lives better, than sitting around expecting the 1% they are protesting to change?

According to this guy, the 1% are the ones who make more than $350,000 a year. I will never be one of the 1% that influences the politicians.  I will also never been one of the politicians influenced by the 1%.

What I am is a single mom in my 40′s.  A month ago I had a job that was paying the bills, putting a roof  over our heads, food on our table, and afforded us health insurance.  It was not a fancy life, but it was livable. We managed to eat out once a month, and by eat out I mean my daughters got McDonald’s for dinner.

Today I still don’t have a job, and it’s been a month.  I filed for unemployment the day my job ended. And I also started looking for a job.  I knew unemployment could take up to 3 weeks before I saw a dime.  I called the utilities, I called the landlord, I called my parents.  I asked for temporary help with the understanding I would make it right, pay it back, as soon as I got back on my feet.

I spent every day on line applying for every job I could find.  I was on the computer literally 5 hours a day, applying to 7-10 jobs a day.  I sent my resume to every company I could think of that would allow resumes be submitted online.  I could not allow myself to not look for a job, even for a day.

I found food pantries and stood in line at those every week, to get food to supplement what little I could afford to buy in order to feed my kids.  I swallowed my pride, kept looking for a job, and did what I had to do to get by.  I talked to everyone I saw, and listened when people were talking about places that were hiring.

I am not out of the woods yet, as I don’t have a job.  I have a job interview on Monday.  It’s only one out of the many I applied for. Unemployment only required me to apply for 2 jobs a week.  I know there are those out there who will do just that, only apply for those 2 jobs a week.

I am not one of those people.

I will never be one of the 1%, but also don’t expect the world to change because I don’t have the job I want with the paycheck I’d love to grow accustomed to.  I don’t expect to live off of other people, I don’t go looking for handouts so that I can afford to be a stay-at-home-mom.  My job, for the past month, has been to find a job and ways to feed my family.

I am the 99%, and I’m doing the best I can.

© BeckyHood for Welcome to my life, 10/15/11.All rights reserved. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us

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