I don’t know why this cracked me up — maybe because I first watched it at about 3:30AM — but I can’t get over either the guy in the red track suit, or Zack Galifiwhatzit coming out as a way-too-long-flute player. This season of SNL looks like a lot of fun.
The Statler Brothers, Flowers on the Wall
“March forth!” my older, wiser, friend hollered, as I pocketed my chip and headed out of the meeting…
A few days ago I celebrated one year sober.
And, as my buddy noted, March 4th is a great day to have to celebrate, because it’s not only a goal, it’s also a command. A wish. A plan. So, that’s what I am going to do. Will you join me here?
I can honestly say I am a different person than I was a year ago. Maybe you will read that in my words here as time goes on. Maybe you have seen me and experienced it. Living by the principles of a 12-step program is extremely challenging, but ultimately so rewarding. Hopefully not just for me, but for the people who encounter me as well.
Thank you for all your support over the last many months. Even when I wasn’t posting I felt you all pulling for me. I plan to spend more time here at Fannfare, too, so stick around!
Coldplay, God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
So is there some kind of Metro etiquette I am not aware of? I know I err on the side of people feeling good about themselves, rather than being comfortable, but what if one’s comfort comes from feeling good about oneself?
Case in point: I get on the train today, and there’s a guy with an empty seat next to him that’s about as wide as me (read: we’re both wide). It’s a straight shot of about 10-12 stations to my office, though, so I decided to take the seat. As we zipped along, the seats around us started emptying out. At one point, the seat right in front of us became empty. I stayed put, thinking I only had a few more stops, so what’s the hurry? I am always sensitive to moving away from someone, as if they have the plague or are too big or smelly or something. Don’t move = don’t make someone feel self-conscious.
Then, this woman who was sitting catty-corner to us (mind you, she was in the handicapped seats and other than suffering from an obvious case of crab-itis, she had no ailments), barked at me “aren’t you going to move?” I did the whole “you lookin’ at me?” bob of my head, until I realized that yes, she was looking at and barking at me. The guy next to me hadn’t moved an inch this whole time. He was no help at all. A whole seat full of No Opinion.
I didn’t say anything. Nor did I move. The woman glared at me and rolled her eyes a painful number of times. Finally, the man next to me seemed to spring to life, but only to clear his throat as if he were going to speak, and then didn’t. He did this, loudly, three or four times. What was he saying there?
It was just weird. And uncomfortable. I could turn it into this whole P/C thing too, because I and The Barker were two of very few Caucasian people on that car of the train. Why would I move? Because we filled the seat? Because my neighbor was African American? Or is there some unspoken rule that one is always supposed to scurry into a Seat For One on the train. Can’t we just all sit together and get along?
Your thoughts?
We are the ones who make a better day, just you and me!
Bob Marley, Get Up, Stand Up
Oh. My. Word.
Raise your weak little sweaty hand if you’ve had the stomach flu recently! It took our house down like the Ushers and we’re just up today, yesterday. I said to Shaun that I hadn’t barfed like that since the 80s! Hoooowee!
That said, Ruby caught it on my heels and she wins the coveted Quote of the Flu award. She hurled over the side of the bed (we were sleeping together so we didn’t get the boys sick) and as she flopped back into the sack, a la 3AM, she oozed, “Mama, I feel craaazy.”
Mat Kearney, Nothing Left To Lose
I heard my critical voice today
like a wind-carried whisper
or a whistle from down a beach
a far-off squeak
a ticklish purr.
But this morning, instead of
reassurance within it
support and strength
and encouragement behind it
for the first time
I heard disease
in its thickest form
all sputters and judgments and growls.
Inside the simplest phrase
lay the covert beginnings
of countless drilling questions
waves of crushing inertia
bottomless bottles of shame…
“You should get up.”
The sun was just over the clouds.
The alarm had yet to sound.
“You should get up.”
My pulse quickened in defense
“What for!?” I shouted
down my mind’s foggy hallway
Was I to leap up, smiling?
Prepare steel-cut oatmeal
and caramelize bananas
for the still-sleeping children?
Fold the night’s laundry?
Write last week’s thank-you’s?
Recite thirty years of missed prayers
in these last lazy minutes?
Lose those lingering pounds?
Graduate college?
Perhaps with this ten-minute head start
I could dissect my family’s rage
reverse my years of despair
remember…discover? my strength.
“You should get up.”
Just eight minutes now.
Seven. Four.
I have seen addiction as a hyena
a slobbering beast in shadowed view
taut and pounce-ready.
But there is no such predator
no monster, no enemy.
It is me.
Just me
and this icy voice
which I am tuned to just today.
I am years into scratching
and fighting and writing and wailing…
today I am listening.
And instead of the oatmeal
the weight
the regret
I nuzzle back into the pillow.
I nurture myself. I pray.
I sigh for reprieve.
“You should get up.”
“Or not,” I smile…
Today
I hear what is true
It is not time for me
to get up.
It is time for me
to rise.
Note: I wrote this in March, after a particularly grueling week in my counseling group. I have Lee M. to thank for talking to me about my critical voice. Had he not told me what it sounded like — what everyone’s sounds like — I might never have heard mine.
Public Image Limited, Rise
Hi you guys.
2010. Say it with me! I can’t believe I left you all hanging for all that time. It’s taken me a few days (I was going to start writing at the turn of the year) to grasp it myself. Why the big break?
See I done me a lotta growin’ last year I did. Sure, there’s the 50 pounds I’ve put on (who knew raisin bread was so good?), but it’s more than that. It’s different. I’m different. I think I had to go inside for a while in order to present a clearer picture on the outside.
March 4, 2009 is my sobriety date, for one thing. Looks like I posted for about a week after that and then went into emotional boot camp of sorts. I really took time to focus on myself and my kids (they’re so much bigger!), and to find my footing there. My husband is great, and has been encouraging me to get back here for months. My friends have been patient. I think there are even some folks out there still checking Fannfare…
So, thank you. I’m back! I hope to see lots of you and to hear from you in comments, in email. How did you change or grow in 2009?
Sia, Little Black Sandals
So am I pulling one over on you by post-dating these posts? Pre-dating? Keying in the entry for February 19 on what, March 4? I am determined to be thankful for five frappin’ things every day, and to rise to this challenge that Schmutzie put out there (damn you evil temptress!). I usually write in my notebook on the train and then promise that I am going to post said musings later that night. I’m what, 10-15 days behind? Crap. Ola.
Don’t give up on me though. I’ll catch up if it kills me.
(thud)
Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, I’m Late
New masthead, courtesy of the inimitable Jeff.
Thank heavens that year is over.
John Mellencamp, Check It Out
I would never say that a trip to an urgent care center is pleasant, either for the patient, or the harried caregiver. We all know that, and we pack snacks and niceties and good attitudes and sick little babies and we trudge on. HOWEVER. I was at the (unnamed Virginia off Carlin Springs Road) Urgent Care Center tonight and had absolutely the worst experience. It wasn’t the three hours we were there. It wasn’t that my son was maroon-faced and feverish and impatient (he is normally stoic) and, well, SICK. It wasn’t even the dude that was continuously listening to fart and burp noises made to sound like curse words on his cell phone thing-y and looking at me like “What, you don’t think that’s funny?” (I might have, in eighth grade, and even then probably not in a medical waiting room. He was about 35).
It was the pinch-faced (albeit exhausted) spindly Cee U Next Tuesday Doctor that did everything in her power to make me feel like Dreadful Mother Unlike Any Other 2009. Follow along!
Shepherd had pneumonia about a month ago. He took a round of antibiotics and was done with it, but never lost the boogers and I would say was never back to 100%. Last night he didn’t sleep at all, he was babbling and incoherent and feverish, and unhappy. This morning he had a high fever and he sounded like he did when he had the pneumonia. We Motrin’ed him and kept him home and watched and waited. He didn’t improve, and we were just managing a high fever with medicine. So when we both got home, I took off with him to the UCC to see if the pneumonia was making another visit.
When we got in to see the doctor, we had been playing in the waiting room (which involved my walking/jumping/running after a now spry Shepherd) for a couple of hours and he wasn’t having any of it. We went up his nose with a swab and into his throat with a swab and into his butt with a thermometer and into his eyes with a bright light and through all that he was a complete charmer, and I was cooperative and cheerful. The woman just could not have been nastier.
When she first came in, she was looking at the sheet where I had written “lethargic” and “cranky” and “not himself,” and as Shepherd was bouncing off the walls, she said “Is this the same kid you filled out these forms about?” And it wasn’t in a joking way. It was as if she had immediately decided we were wasting her time, or that I was manufacturing symptoms. Then she asked about the pneumonia…when was it…what did we medicate it with. “About a month ago” and “antibiotics” were not answers that were good enough for her. She said “About a month ago. Was it Christmastime?” When she wanted to know what the medication was, she barked “WHICH ONE” when I answered “antibiotics.” Fair enough. I fought off the urge to answer GetOffMyBacitracin or A(poxonyourfamily)icillin, and I said I could make a phone call about it and let her know.
“Who are you going to call?” she asked. What the!? “The pharmacy?” I squeaked. She shrugged her shoulders (this was an actual movement!) as if to say DUH and said “Well, if you must.” I felt like saying, “Do you need to know or not!?” but again I held my tongue.
I was about to throw up when she asked how much Motrin I had given him at 5PM (on the form I put just that…Motrin, 5PM) and I stammered…”A dropper-ful? The appropriate amount for his weight?” I SWEAR this woman practically threw herself on the ground she rolled her eyes so hard and she actually said “I’m not a pediatrician. (change tone to even more condescending) I’m not a mathematician. (audibly grit your teeth and appear even more whore-ish) HOW MUCH DOES HE WEIGH.”
Wait! I know this! 28.5 pounds!! Because we just took that weight in the hallway and it’s right in front of your evil prune-like face ON THE PIECE OF PAPER CALLED A CHART. Do that math, Cruella.
On her way out the door, she asked through pursed lips, “Do. you. have. a. phone?”
I can hardly even finish this story. Shepherd has a double ear infection. They tested for strep and the flu — both negative (she almost turned inside out when I told her we hadn’t gotten him a flu shot). The pneumonia check was…in my lay-person’s opinion, sort of LAME as she didn’t seem to be really listening to his lungs at all (I fear she could only hear the deafening roars of the crusty rotting demon inside her own chest). This after she judged me (again. again. again.) for not demanding that the doc do a chest x-ray the last time (insert fuck-you tone…”Oh, they diagnosed him in the office?”).
I can imagine anyone reading this has had one of those days where you love your kid like crazy — said kid is not doing well, and in turn you are not doing well — and you just need help. I thought by going to a doctor I was admitting that (I need help!) without having to wear it on a sandwich board. I guess not.
So. UCC Doctor woman? Bite me. Bite me again. Draw blood. Tear me open. Leave me on the side of the road…with. my. phone, and I will get the EMTs to take me to VIRGINIA HOSPITAL CENTER to get it looked at. Fuck OFF.
(Amy gathers herself).
In other, lighter news: Ruby informed Shaun and me on the ride home from school that soandso from Hill Preschool had seen her on the playground and announced that he wanted her to be his girlfriend. I almost drove into a cherry blossom tree. She chattered on about how he liked this girl and that girl but Ruby was his favorite and she thought it might be okay if he were her boyfriend but she wasn’t sure if she would go to Hill Preschool in the summer, etc. etc. Shaun and I looked at each other and I said “What, did she turn 9 at recess today?”
She went on to tell us that Anya told her that she didn’t like kissing because it was way too spicey.
This is the kind of memory that you want to whip out on dates and prom nights and when Shaun and I are changing each other’s diapers. Today was the first day that Ruby, four years old, correctly used the word boyfriend in a sentence. I have blogged it. It is so.
We haven’t been sleeping very well over here as Shepherd has either night terrors, or a mean growth spurt going on. He wakes three to four times a night and just jabbers away, shrieks, bats around. We have to bolt up and tear in there because he and Ruby share a room — so her sleep hasn’t been too restful either. One or two nights we have succombed to having her sleep in the guest room on another floor, but for the most part, a couple of pets on the back and some soothing tunes will help the little one back to sleep.
I was already up this morning and in the bathroom when Ruby came padding in in her footie pajamas, still half asleep. She usually crawls in bed with Shaun and me, having awakened before everyone else. She yawned and yammered, “Why are you up already this early?” I said “Well, your brother was up a lot of the night and I just couldn’t get back to sleep.”
Complete with a scratch to her rear end, Archie Bunker style, Ruby cocked her hip, leaned into the cabinet, and sighed, “You’re tellin’ me.”
Pretenders, I Go To Sleep
