OMG, internet, Miss Doxie is back!!! I am so excited when I open Google Reader and someone I loved reading has a new post up, or one of my internet girls has an update. Not that I am one to really be able to complain about someone else’s lack of blogging or anything. But I guess blogging is too easy to stop – you just don’t go there anymore, you get sidetracked by life, bored by listening to yourself spinning your own wheels, frustrated with not being able to make what you want to say come out right in type. So you stop for a day or two, take a break, then suddenly months have gone by and it’s oh shit how do I start back up again if I even want to time. Anyway, let’s just make this about ME instead of someone else, because that is what I do. I was supposed to be writing about how nice it is to read Miss Doxie, how funny she is, how I love her LOLcaptions on her dog pictures… and I turned it into a me-fest. I have been realizing that I do that a lot – I get excited and interrupt people to add some “oh, me too” comment or to ask for details and then suddenly we’re off on the M train, making tracks on some “look at me, oh, it’s me, oh, hey, look!!” sort of path. I don’t know why I do it. I was psychoanalyzing myself with E the other day, trying to figure out why I feel such a huge need to be validated, and I can never come up with anything. I just get desperate, terrified and desperate, and I will do anything to make myself feel like people like me. Or to make myself feel like I like me. I don’t know which, I just know that I have to be noticed and admired and if I am not I get depressed. And I had a really happy childhood, you know? I can’t blame it on that. I guess I need more therapy. I have actually been feeling like I want to start that again soon, despite having not much money for it, because I am starting to go a little off the deep end again. What with the intense mood swings (someone noticed my shoes! the bliss!…oh, she looked at me funny, she hates me, what sorrow) every few hours/minutes, the general air of inevitable tears I have been tending to feel, the weird obsessions and the inability to focus and concentrate and stay still so that people have been asking me if I need to pee when I stand up because I’m hopping from foot to foot and vibrating slightly… I guess all these things may be signs of “get thee to a psychiatrist, post-haste! Something is awry with your inner brain workings, my dear.” I just hate to have to start all that over again. Medication tweaking, diagnoses, that whole boring story of this is me and my mental health history and what I am feeling now – all of it seems like such hard work. Actually, medication could be part of the problem, because a month ago my psychologist just took me from 75mg of Efexxor up to 150mg because I was feeling kind of down and blue… Hey, thanks, internet, I just read that link I put here and now I am wondering if I am less crazy and more just needing to take the medication back down. Hmmm, food for thought. Speaking of lost thoughts, yet again I forgot where I was going with this. I think I just need to exercise my brain and let this stream-of-conciousness shit out of me and hopefully it will take me somewhere better than where I’ve been.
We finally downloaded Google Chrome, but today something is wrong with it and I can’t see any little check boxes. As someone who adores surveys, because I am a loser like that, this is making me crazy. I need my check boxes. Otherwise, though, I love this browser – it is so fast and shiny! Like a new car, only free.
I.. shit, I am so tired of writing about how I miss writing and then disappearing for a month or two. I am so tired of feeling like I have nothing to say, nothing even worth throwing out into the big ol’ empty space of the internet, nothing original in my head or my heart. It’s weird how the more you see how different people are, the more you realize we are all the same – all this internet time, all this reading about other people’s lives, and we all want comfort, people who love us, fuzzy slippers or the equivalent that fits our lives. We all go along our paths that we have made, follow our own yellow brick roads back and forth until they aren’t yellow anymore, or if they are we don’t notice because we are hurrying too much.
Which is my totally high school way of saying that something needs to change in my life. I feel like I’m having a midlife crisis (which would mean I am dying at 60, since I’m not quite 30 yet) – I want a baby, a puppy, a kitten, a new boyfriend, new hair, new clothes, new me. I want something fresh to start over with. And I dyed my hair, I bought some new clothes, I wore a dress to work for the first time since before I worked at this place, I am looking at kittens (really I daydream about babies, babies, babies, I crave holding babies and smelling their soft little heads)…. Nothing helps, though. I have this whole idea that there will be this thing that will jolt me out of feeling stagnated and then when nothing does I start to feel desperate. I spend all day in these mood swings, big arcs of up and down without reason, because I am feeling so stuck. I keep reminding myself that I do this periodically, that we have to soldier on, change what we can, work toward whatever it is we want, stop talking about ourselves in the 3rd person plural…. It’s hard, though, when you’re inside of it, to see that there is an outside, too, that you can look in and see how it’s just a phase and it will pass and life will continue and it will be so good when it does.
So, to update:
1. Bought a house instead of moving in with the parents. Yeah, I’m still a little confused about how that happened, too, but it’s nice to be a homeowner. HOMEOWNER. Such a good word. Still really, really poor though.
2. Got a dog. He is nuts and we have had to get a trainer to come in to help us with him, and our cat is stuck in the bedroom until Mr. Dog chills the fuck out and stops barking at him and jumping on him. Poor cat.
3. E still working on the disability- denied twice now, they say time #3 is the time when they finally give in and admit that yes, bipolar disorder and a really bad bum knee DO qualify you as disabled, actually. Thank you very much.
4. Still not fucking done with school. Still have some CLEP tests to take and I have the credit for lifelong learning to finish up- and am stuck, stuck, stuck on those essays, I feel stagnated and terrified and unable to write them. I sat down the other night like, all right, let’s just do this thing, and ended up in the bathroom picking at a zit on my face (sorry TMI) instead of typing. Picking and picking and staring at my pores and just wasting time because getting any sort of essay written freaked me out so bad. Plus my pores seem so huge sometimes.
5. Still, you know, hanging on. Missing writing, feeling lonely and lost at times, reading a lot. Working, hanging out in the parking lot with the guys after work shooting the shit, wishing I had girlfriends to gossip with. Spending a lot of time on goodreads, joined some book clubs on there, finally joined facebook and that’s fun (games!)….
You know what’s hilarious? I am only posting because I am upset and I’m trying to avoid thinking about why I’m upset, trying to be someplace besides where I am…. I’m avoiding talking about it, too. You know how words make things more real, how if you hold back it seems more like it’s just in your head? Yeah, that. I’m tiptoeing around an invisible elephant posting like this. Shhhhh…. hopefully the elephant’s asleep now….
Oh, and no, I’m not on drugs, just tired and stressed and making no sense!
God, I miss this blog sometimes. I think about it and tell myself, just post something. Just do it. Who cares if months have gone by, if you’ve forgotten how to write anymore, if you have nothing to say. If you miss it, do it. But I get scared and embarassed and lazy and put things off and more time goes by and the burden of not-writing gets heavier and heavier and I push it off to the side, where it gets covered with dust, and my analogy got really messed up there. Suffice to say, I miss my blog, I miss my little piece of the internet, I miss my own words.
Oddly enough, I am back because we are getting kicked out of yet another apartment. Like once wasn’t enough, yet again we are being removed for no reason. There’s not even an excuse this time, like the loudness last time. Now it’s just this sudden “you have a month to be out” – no explanation, just an argument between our landlord’s evil mother and my husband (one-sided – hers) and some unfixed windows and now we’re out of another home. We’re going to end up living with my parents. I feel like an utter, complete failure and keep tearing up, because I’m 29, I have a six and a half year old son, I am almost done with my bachelor’s degree, I have a steady job, my husband is almost 30, and we’re still doing this shit, we’re still having to take over excess parental bedrooms and …. I just can’t handle it. I mean, yes, there is the plus of being able to save money and buy a house, finally, and never deal with asshole landlords again. My mom and I can take yoga together again. My son gets to see a LOT more of his grandparents and auntie. There will be a dog and a yard and a pool and space for much more garden. But the failure is always looming there. The wost is E’s extreme guilt because he can’t work, he’s applying for disability (and rightly so, I’ve been trying to get him to do so for years now) – but he feels like he is The Worst Husband and Father Ever. Despite the fact that he is 100% doing the right thing. Despite the fact that he is an amazing husband and father.
We came back from our Grizzly Bear and beer filled weekend in NYC to the landlord fight phone call, so at least we had this last nice rosy weekend. New York is amazing. And we both got new tattoos. I now have a pink cartoon octopus named Emile on my left wrist, which is so utterly awesome. I couldn’t be more thrilled with him, and he makes me smile every time I look at my arm. This is the best time for smiley cartoon creatures, because he is talking me down off the ledge with his cute eyes.
Anyway…. I should be in bed. It’s so late. I had to write something, though, I feel so scattered and squished and weird and hollow and full and all these odd, disjointed things at once. I feel slightly better now, though. More smoothed out, less rough-edged, less on the verge of tears and more like I can sleep. Hopefully. Last night I lay awake thinking of Things To Say to Our Useless Asshole Landlord and couldn’t sleep because I was so enraged. I did yoga tonight, though Rainbeau Mars is not as good as my new favorite Kabbalah Yoga. I feel not so blissed out, but I will stare hard at my octo-wrist and drink some milk now, then get to bed. Husband is there and warm and I will tuck my hands around his thighs to help me sleep, and another day is gone and hopefully tomorrow will bring something really awesome.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me – I had fully planned to participate in NaBloPoMo, and I managed all 30 days last year, and yet every time I thought about it this year, I freaked out a little bit and invented an excuse to not post. Or just pretended that I’d forgotten I signed up or that I even had a blog. I have no real excuse, actually. But I do have things I wanted to write, and blog avoidance is keeping me from writing them down (using the internet to help me organize my thoughts). So I have to just get over myself and clickety-clack away, or else I’ll never work through my stuff. Maybe part of my problem is that my blog is a little like therapy, and therapy involves looking closer at the deep dark stuff inside myself that I really prefer not to look at most of the time. Not that things are terrible (read: last year this same time, when life totally sucked). Things are actually pretty good, I’m happy; I just dyed my hair red and cut myself cute sideswept bangs and I’m whittling away at those college credits, about to do the credit for lifelong learning thing which should shave 21 more credits off and get me that much closer that much faster…
But my weight is, to be punny, a weight upon myself. Still. I haven’t managed to drop anything beyond the 25 or so pounds I lost almost a year ago. I can feel that I’m stronger and more flexible, I can do things I couldn’t do a year or two ago (like a successful, if very short, crow pose, which I was incredibly proud of). My waist curves inward ridiculously, very hourglassy, and would be utterly sexy if I didn’t have a big ol’ Buddha belly still hanging off the front, and I have these great big biceps which you can’t actually see because they are buried under a layer of chub. I know that I want to lose weight for all the right reasons, I know that it’s not that I think weight loss will make me happier or something unrealistic like that. I am happy, and I’ve been thin, and I was in one of my most depressed phases when I was thin. But I know that losing weight will make me more confident, will help me feel better about myself, will open up a whole wealth of clothing opportunities that are closed to me now. Even when I was all weepy and mopey and thin, I knew I looked hot and I dressed to accentuate that, and I had major body confidence because of that. Now, I just can’t feel that same way – I’m cute, but I’m fat. I have a great new hairdo, but I have chins. I can’t separate the two things – the way I look has to do with the way I look, and my face and my body can’t be split apart, my chub and my muscles are both in the same package as my eyes and my chins, or my (niceish) boobs and my big butt.
The truth is, I have been lazy. I have backslid. And yet, in some ways, I haven’t. I stopped walking every lunch, but I do yoga every day. Or else I don’t, I skip a few days because life is so busy, and then I feel so guilty. I eat healthy meals, but Halloween candy and I were far too intimate. And last night I ate a pint of ice cream. But in general I am still on track, I am still doing the right things – just not enough of them. It’s so freaking hard and I get so down on myself, and then I remind myself that I really have made those lifestyle changes you’re “supposed to” make, I just need to make more of them, which sucks because I am happy with my lifestyle right now. It’s so confusing, because I want to accept HAES and remind myself that my weight doesn’t define me and do right by myself and all the body acceptance blogs I read… but I also want to wear a cute dress sometimes and feel awesome about it, not all self-conscious about fat folds or how huge my calves look without jeans over them.
So I had expected to feel somehow refreshed after writing all this – like I’d conquered something in myself, the block to the writing or the weight loss block, or the part of me that hates the way I look sometimes. But, honestly, I feel just as confused as I did when I started. Just as unsure and tangled up and wishing someone would hand me Jillian Michaels on a platter and just force me to change my body, instead of leaving it up to me.
Today I found myself lecturing E about how “we make our own happiness” and “you are so much better than you think you are” and “you are selling yourself short, you can’t succeed if you don’t believe in yourself”. It was pretty sickening and cliche, and yet, I realized that I believe all these things. They are all true, and we create our own happiness, and we own our own lives. It was weird. I’ve spent so many years thinking about how if only life had been handed to me on a silver platter, if only my parents were rich, if only this and that had happened… and suddenly I am grown-up enough to realize that life is what we make it, that how you look at things is so much more than half the battle, that all the positive thinking crap my mom fed to me for so many years really is true? Wow. I was pretty impressed with myself.
I signed up for NaBloPoMo today, and I’m scared. I’m out of practice. I feel like I should have a cache of posts stored up, like a squirrel with a shitload of nuts, because I’ve been out of the game for so long – but i don’t. My mind is not working right. I had a few weeks of being pretty depressed last month (yeah, there goes the “positive thinking” shit right there) and coming out of it now, I still feel a little fragile, a little nervous, a little more on the edge of tears. I’m vulnerable and I don’t want to just go bleeding that all over the place, letting all that stuff out and emo’ing up the internet. I think November will involve a lot of recipes, since I have been healthy cooking girl lately and I’ve got some things to share with the internet – healthy food that doesn’t taste ass or involve seaweed! (more on the seaweed thing later, my kitchen is currently full of weird foods no one will eat).
Ummm… I just lost my train of thought. There was stuff to say in this paragraph, but it’s lost now. See what I mean about brains and the atrophy of? I … shit, that sentence is gone, now, too. Wow. This blogging thing is harder than I remember.
Ring, ring, ring…
“Hello?”
”Oh, hai, it’s the internets. Where are you? Are you dead?”
”Well, no, if I were dead, I couldn’t answer the phone. I’m just lazy.”
”LAZY??? Too lazy to type some WORDS once in a while?”
”Ummm…. yeah? I mean, it’s hard work, with the fingers on the keys and all that…”
“Oh, shut up. No one even reads your blog anymore, and you had a whole TWO readers before. Now it’s just like a tiny black hole on the internet. You should be ashamed of yourself. At least write something for your own enjoyment.”
”Okay, okay, how about I write about this conversation?”
“Fine. But I expect to see some real writing up here tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir!” (saluting)
Sorry, internet, I have been ignoring your calls, sending them right to voicemail. But I will start answering them, even if you are only calling to yell at me or sell me Cialis. Next month is NaBloPoMo and I need to get my fingers back in shape, because I will do it again this year. So there will be real words tomorrow. Also, I have some recipes I want to share, because they are awesome. Stay tuned – tomorrow, same bat time*, same bat channel!
*Tomorrow is Saturday. No way will I be posting at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday. The bat time will actually be totally different, but don’t tell anyone, okay? Because that ruins the whole Batman quote if it’s a different bat time. Thanks..
**Yes, everyone has a post titled this. I think I already have a post with this title. So sue me, my brain is atrophied from not writing for so long.
I keep opening “new post” and staring at it and closing it. Le sigh. You’d think that blogging wouldn’t be an activity fraught with dramtic sighing and hand-wringing over what to write. I mean, I could probably post my grocery list (TP, unbleached white flour, yogurt, coffee, skim milk, ground beef… so far, if you’re interested). At least then I’d be filling the page. But to save the internet from boredom, let’s do some relevant and topical listing!!
1. I sort of want to write about the presedential race but I also don’t because 1) I am just not educated enough about the candidates to really get up good arguments, 2) I am not down withe either major party and so, since I am probably going to vote 3rd party again, I think my opinion is pretty biased, 3) I don’t want to get into any kind of brouhaha (not likely, but also not a can of worms I want to open). So, basically, go Nader? Maybe? Or go McKinney? I don’t know yet, but I’m much more likely to vote for one of those two than Obama or McCain.
2. Right now I’m reading two very different books. Well, one I’m listening to from this awesome downloadable audiobook website that my library subscribes to, so I”m not really reading it, I’m listening to it. Anyway, that one is Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, and it is phenomenal – the woman reading it, first of all, is just fantastic. She does all these different voices without sounding fake or forced, and she reads beautifully – I’ve had some that really took away from the book due to throat clearing noises, bad awkward pauses, men’s voices that sounded like children with head colds. The story itself is great, too (so far). It’s weird; because I know I started the book a while ago, when it was newer, and because it is so freaking long I ended up having to return it to the library before I was done (or got distracted and never picked it up again, which happens to me a lot, too); and hearing it again is kind of like rereading and kind of like hearing something totally different. I like it, though, and I recommend it.
The second book I’m reading is Karma Girl, by Jennifer Estep – opposite end of the spectrum, this one is chick lit, only it’s about superheroes!! How fucking cool is that? There are tights and capes and all of that, but with the fun snarky 20-something chick lit thing going on. I am having so much fun with it. She is pretty hilarious about the whole putting on a mask and being unrecognizable thing, and she has some great superheroes, too (a purse-snatcher avenging Grandma hero, for one). So go read that, too, if it sounds like your kind of thing. Or not – I mean, you can always expand your horizons, right?
3. Musically, I just (as in about 30 minutes ago) downloaded some stuff from Angus and Julia Stone, which I found in the roundabout way of going from Mighty Girl to her linked blog for today, Loobylu (one of those blogs I sigh over when I’m in my covetous crafty moods), and which I am really enjoying (his voice more than hers). Thanks for the music, internet!! I’ve also had the new(ish) Mountain Goats album on repeat, we all know I love, love, love him; and Grizzly Bear, who I love so much I spent the weekend after we saw their show talking about them and only listening to them and repeating how they were so cute I just wanted to put them in my pocket and carry them around with me. Seriously, watch this and don’t just fall in love with them. (Also listen to “While You Wait For The Others” from this page, because it is gorgeous.)
Also this, which is so adorable because you can tell they put on their dress-up shirts to go on the TV, how can you not love a band that does that?
And also they are so. fucking. awesome. Mind-blowingly so.
4. Did I mention that I Love Money is NOT GOING TO BE ON THIS SUNDAY??? That’s a crime against humanity and E and I have been fretting about it all week. Cry for us. Email VH1 to complain. Start a revolution!!!
5. I have been exploring the internet today like a crazy woman and have found approx. 8000 new blogs to read, which is great except that on Monday it will make me cry when I am at work and supposed to be, I don’t know, working and I won’t be able to because of all the blogs I’ll need to stay up-to-date with. I’m already behind, actually. I should be in google reader right now, keeping up.
6. I am sewing myself a tote bag from old T-shirts and I vow to knit something that is not a scarf this fall/winter. I will also figure out how to make my camera hook up to the computer and put up some pictures of my crafty stuff, along with the world’s best video ever that E took of W. It will rock your socks. Which reminds me- which is more horrible to say: “rock out with your cock out” or “raw-dogging it”? Because I’m curious, that’s all.
Okay, finally, Denise shut up. Sometimes I want to slap her smiling face. No offense, Denise. Not that you can hear me, this is my own head. Ugh, Denise. Her eyes really freak me out, I’m glad my eyes are closed. Why would someone with such huge eyes wear so much eyeliner? It just draws attention to the fact that she’s some sort of weird praying mantis. Like Callan Pinckney (aside, not thought while meditating: watch the preview, it shows her crazy self in action). Why are exercise ladies so insect-like? Ew, is there a mosquito on my arm? No, that’s just sweat. And you shouldn’t have just wiped that sweat off, you’re supposed to be lying still. Let’s try this again… breathe in, breathe out, focus on… nothing. How the hell do you focus on nothing? You have to think about something, I gues unless you’re asleep, in which case it’s different. Though dreams must be thinking, right? Shut up, self. We’ll do the Ujjayi breath thing instead, focus on that…. cool, the ocean, think about the ocean, that works…. footprints in the sand, waves wash them away…. this totally better not turn into a porno thing, self. That would be really unmeditation-y. Probably thinking about not thinking about porn is defeating the purpose here. Okay, waves, we can get back to waves, ocean… my lips feel weird when I breathe like this. And if I close my throat up too much, that feels weird, too. Maybe no more Ujjayi breath, just go back to ocean, no porn, no reprimanding yourself for even considering thinking porn-y thoughts. Just ocean, waves… oh, shit, this is so not working. I think I’ll go blog about my lack of serenity instead.
I try hard not to stress out, to sweat the small stuff, to get overwhelmed. I’m not very good at it, but I try, because stress sucks – it sucks out your energy, makes you feel awful, research shows it’s bad for this that and the other part of your body – and because, when you are married to a bipolar person, that person stresses enough for both of you. And for your whole neighborhood, too.
Case in point – last weekend, we went on a work-sponsored (read: free!) whale watch in Boston. (Which, BTW, if you ever go on a whale watch – and you should, they are awesome, whales are huge and cool and “oh hai, I’m a WHALE, I’m like TEN FEET FROM YOUR BOAT, just swimming upside down, seagulls are sitting on my head, DOODS.” – if you do go on a whale watch, bring cash, because the snack bar will serve beer and will not take debit cards and the one Heineken that someone gives you will make you wish you had the $5 to go purchase something more beerily to your liking. Also, sit outside, where your stomach feels more settled, but not in the back, where it smells like diesel (only in the back will be where the party people are at, yo. There was a group of annoying people smoking joints at the back of our whale watch. If you can handle the annoying factor and you are down with getting high on a whale watch, the back could be the place for you, diesel smell or not).
Okay, so, anyway, whale watch, husband, stress. So we’re driving to work, where we will board the bus to be whisked away to Boston, and E is freaking out about how we’re going to be late, and the bus will leave without us, or maybe it will be leaving and then will have to turn around for us and everyone will glare at us dolefully for holding them up, and if we miss the bus it will be the end of the world and we will never ever get to go to Boston again, so if we don’t drive 90 miles an hour we might as well just drive right off the bridge because how will we live if we are late to the bus? Etc. etc. (another aside here – when I was in junior high/high school, I kept journals, and when I wrote the word “etcetera”, which I’m not sure why I did, it’s not a very diary-y sort of word, is it?, I would write “ect”. When E helped me clean out my room before we moved in together, he found and read those and was horrified by my improper abbreviation of “etcetera” and still teases me sometimes about it. It’s my secret (not anymore!) shame.)
Whew, the asides are starting to take over, huh? So he’s stressing out, and I’m all zen “oh, don’t worry, if we miss the bus, we’ll just go do something else, no big deal”. I was so impressed with myself and my calmness – hey, self, pat on the back, the yoga breathing and the meditation you keep vaguely attempting and all that cognitive behavioral therapy are actually working!! But then, we got ice cream in Boston and the guy messed up my order and the ice cream fell off my cone and I turned into a raving, near-tears lunatic and yelled at E for not making it better and then we ignored each other the whole drive home, and when I fell asleep he let me snore and drool in front of my coworkers (hopefully no one was looking at me or listening to me). And then I realized that all this trying to not stress out isn’t working, because it’s the little stuff that bugs me out and sends me over the edge. I can deal with missed buses to work trips, I can manage to stretch the groceries another few days when there’s no money, I can usually figure that things will start looking up and not worry about having no money… but if my coffee spills on me or some guy sends packing peanuts in his damn box even though the paperwork clearly says “no packing peanuts”, or someone says something to me in the wrong tone of voice; that’s when I start freaking out and have to go hide and do my alternate nostril breathing and take some Rescue Remedy. And sometimes I just turn into a raving bitch anyway, and snap at people and think unkind things about them and just generally lurk in my cubicle, hating the world. I was sitting in that sort of morass of meanness the other day and realized, all zen-like again, that hey, the person I’m really affecting with all this nasty feeling is ME. And so it would benefit me to stop hating everyone and lurking and sulking and being all toad-like. So, internets, as of right now, before you and you and you, I am deciding to stop being so hateful. To be more zen and to let little shit roll off my back. To stop thinking awful things about people, especially, because feeling all superior, or at least feeling all nasty, is just fucking draining, and I really need that energy for other stuff. Like… I don’t know, naps?
