Scary Stuff

I love Halloween, its my favorite holiday of the year, and my husband and kids agree (except, for the kids at least, the gift-getting part of Christmas – greedy little munchkins). This year, though, its been disappointing – Hubby's been so busy with school and homework that he's basically ignored us all for months, or tried to. So Halloween decorating was the last thing on his mind. Usually its his "area" and I am just directed to plug things in or occasionally refill the fogger with the fog fluid. His goal is to be that house that goes so over the top for Halloween that the local paper takes a picture or something. Halloween decorating is just so much more FUN than Christmas decorating. We are a family with a sick, twisted sense of humor much of the time and Halloween is when we can express it with no (or less) of the "You guys are so weird" looks. Even our two year old goes NUTS around this time of year when we go to Walgreens or something and she gets to run through the aisles like a mad child setting off every dancing skeleton and cackling witch decoration she can find. She sleeps with her Halloween snowglobe cause it keeps the "scaries" away (so she says). She wanted to be a vampire for Halloween, which I was all for…at first. She tends to really GET INTO her roles, if you know what I mean (she has spent days at a time as a cat, staying in character even in the midst of a tantrum). So when she started baring her fangs recently and then tried to bite her grandpa's neck – we decided on a princess costume. Blah.

But the three older kids will all be somewhere else for trick or treating and its the first time I haven't taken them *sniff*. The girls are going to their respective dad houses (someday I will lay out the twisted and confusing family tree that we have going on) and our little man is going to his other half sister's house for a birthday party sleepover and trick or treating (see what I mean?). So its just me and the littlest one this year, with a friend of mine and her even littler one, and hubby's staying home to hand out candy.

And my oldest daughter decided she didn't like her costume so she took my Freddy Krueger one, and I am costumeless.

BAH HUM BUG! (or is it BOO HUM BUG?)

No one dressed up at work either.

And now its Friday and no one wants to go to lunch with me. I LIVE for Friday lunches. But I guess its just a lunchable pack and me. BOOOOOOOOOO

God, I'm a whiny little bitch lately aren't I? Okay I'm going to go and try to find some happy, or something.

blech

I'm sick everyone's sick, at work, home, in the skyway, we're all a bunch of sickos.  And I mean as in hacking cough, aching head, and sore throat. 

My girls have been sick for two weeks, my two yr old on a nebulizer for about two weeks, steroid neb and regular albuterol neb (she has illness-induced asthma like her big brother - a gift from their daddy).  I was so happy it hadn't hit me yet, and now just days before my favorite holdiday of the year - BAM! 

So I have no motivation to write the post I was going to - all about my goals for the month, and how I would achieve them.  Right now I'm going to ACHIEVE finishing my after work errands as fast as my aching head will let me and then crawling into bed and watching crappy TV shows till my brain goes all numb and buzzy.  Quite a goal, right there. 

I feel like I smell or something.  Not based on anyone's reaction, just the fact that I smell onions, really stinky garlic and onion smell, and I can't figure out where its coming from so I'm starting to worry its me?  Not sure why I'd smell like that.  Granted my shoes are dying and probably need to get thrown, but I don't think that's it....god I hope I'm not the smelly girl today. 

Sincerely

The Hacky Maybe-Smelly Phlegmy Grumpy Girl at the 3rd desk from the left.

Hopeful Posting

So he has gotten on meds again, or should I say back on the same meds. This is a good thing. I can't put into words how proud of him this makes me.

I had typed a very long paragraph above, then deleted it, typed again and deleted again. I don't think I'm ready to say much about that issue yet. Not even here. Its just such a hard thing to talk about and I am so protective of him. In time I guess.

So I leave it at that for now, just a hopeful posting. Things are changing, for the better (me included).

I started reading "A House Called Awful End" to the kids last night, and soaked up their riotous laughter at my acting out of Mad Aunt Maud talking to her stuffed stoat (who is alternately known as either Malcolm or Sally). Moments like that you wrap up and tuck away for later when you need a smile.

Ouch

Okay then, group indoor trainer led exercise is not my thing.  But I did it and I didn't pass out, fall over, throw up, or embarrass myself too badly.  Yay for me!

It was fun, in a painful, sweaty, awkward way.

But all I could think was that I could be having a bacon cheeseburger right now instead. 

In truth...my life is busy as it is, and I'm lucky if I get to slow down before 10 PM, with work, then cooking cleaning, homework, baths, dishes, mediating sibling battles, monitoring chores, walking dogs, and the neverending piles of laundry.   Oh and then trying to fit in time to bath myself, sleep, bond and/or sleep with my husband so he remembers I exist.  :)   I don't really think sacrificing my lunch hours for exercise is anything I want to do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.  I'll let life be my personal trainer.  Something must be working...or its just the superhuman metabolism I got from my father's side.  Hey don't look a gift horse in the mouth right?

Not to knock those people who are either dedicated enough or hate themselves enough to do this regularly.  I respect them and envy their will power.  Now I'm going to go and find a cheeseburger somewhere to eat.

Power Punch Lunch

So my exercise insane co-worker (whom I love dearly) has convinced me to spend my lunch hour at a kick-boxing class at the gym in the building where I work.

I don't exercise on purpose. I'm not saying I don't exercise…just only as a by-product of doing other things that I actually LIKE doing. Like walking the dogs, riding bikes with the kids, chasing them around a park, and especially hiking. I LOVE hiking through nature areas throughout the twin cities and beyond and exploring.

But like going to a gym and putting on "workout clothes" (which I realized after agreeing to this I did not own) and sweating along with a bunch of other people while we follow the commands of some high strung, super skinny, sado masochistic instructor? NO. That's just not me.

But *sigh* maybe it should be. So I'm going to do this. Kick-boxing actually sounds kind of fun.

My real issue? Looking like a total moron who has never exercised on purpose. Which I am.

Flashbacks to all those gym classes that I was picked last for being the nerdy skinny bookworm girl who was ridiculously uncoordinated. I STILL AM THAT GIRL!

Lets hope this goes well. Not sure what the best case scenario is, but I'm shooting for minimal pain and embarrassment.

And away we go…

Okay so this is my first post. I have a lot of things in my brain that just bounce around looking for a way out. Throughout my life I've tried lots of different outlets for that…stuff. Journals, poetry, friends, bottling, drowning my sorrows, talking, reading, art, and yes…even blogging. There are a couple of abandoned blogs of mine out there. Thought about restarting one of those, but I guess I just wanted to start fresh. Each of them are relics of a sort from different chapters in my life, when I was a different person. Where are those blogs? Well, I'll just leave them as memories for myself. I don't think too many people could track them down at this point.

Okay focus. So why am I here? My life is nuts. I mean really truly chaotically beautifully crazy. A great rushing swirling mass of LIFE stuff – kids, husband, pets, work.

My husband and I are working through some major issues in a marriage we are both doggedly determined to fix and fiercely dedicated to. Amazing how you can want to strangle someone and wonder how you ever decided to marry each other and still not be able to even sleep away from them for a night without missing them with every fiber of your being. We are just both human – flawed, somewhat tattered human beings trying to love each other in what seems to be an impossible mix of full-time school, full-time work, and full-time responsibilities.

Motherhood is the absolute center of my existence. But I feel like everything ELSE is making me miss something vital, and that the bonds between me and my kids are somehow slipping. My identity is so completely wrapped up in who I am as a mother. I have this image in my head of the mother I want to be, the family I want to have, and I have to stop trying to make that happen and just enjoy the amazing people that make up the family I DO have.

I have a job full of people that I love working with that leaves me completely unfulfilled. And I am really really good at it. But I can't do this forever. And am completely terrified that I will.

In the recent years, some of the most peaceful moments I, my husband, and my children have found have been either as a result of our love of nature and explorations of it, and also from our forays into the world of Zen Buddhism. We (stupidly I have now decided) decided to stop going to the Zen Center for the summer with the kids schedules, and vacations, etc. Now I am trying to rededicate myself, and reinterest my family in something that made such a difference for all of us.

I brought it up last night and my daughter said "Why? It didn't help our family before".

But it DID. And this was the same girl who six months ago said she thought we had the best family of anyone she knew. She said we were "fun, kind of crazy, and not perfect, but we all love each other SO much". And she was right. What happened to us? Why did we let all this stuff get in the way of appreciating each other and what we have?

This is me, trying to find my way back to the middle path. A balance. Refocusing on opening my eyes to the present moment, living, feeling, experiencing NOW instead of plugging along hoping for tomorrow to be a better day. Cause today, I have everything I need already in front of me. I just need to see it.