American Girl

She waits another week to fall apart...

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. ~ Thomas Paine

Today is my very last day of working from home, and I have surpringly little to do.  Now, who knows when I'll get a chance to blog again, because I certainly won't be doing it from my office, so I'll say what I have wanted to say for months and months: 

 

I love my blog friends because we tend to put it all out there.  The good stuff and the ugly stuff.  Every blog I love has posts written by someone who was feeling down about themselves alongside the posts where they were feeling good.  Because we all feel good and bad, sometimes.  At some point in history some blogger made the first "This is what sucks about me" post, and we all read it and sucked in our collective breath and related, and thought that if we dug deep enough maybe we could find the courage to post our uglies out there.  Hooray for admiting our faults so that others may relate and/or admit theirs!

 

And then, THEN...there's the others.  Two blogs I read come to mind.  I read them both because I hate them.  Ok, maybe three, but one I lost the link to when I lost my bookmarks and I haven't found it again, thank goodness.  None are written by people who read or comment here, so don't go getting all paranoid on me.  It's not you.  If you ever saw Howard's Stern's movie, there's a part where they conduct a survey and find that the average person who loves his show listens for 45 minutes.  The average person who hates the show listens for an hour and 15 minutes.  The reason the people who love the show listen?  They want to see what he's going to say next.  The reason the people who hate the show listen?  They want to see what he's going to say next.  It's like that.

 

One of the blogs I hate only because I think the author is crazy, and yet she blogs and has this cult following of people who tell her how wonderful she is.  Everywhere she goes, someone is either spitting on her or punching  her or knocking down one of her kids with their car.  And she comes home and blogs about it and her audience is outraged and sympathetic and on her side and saying things like "You're such a wonderful person, I can't believe that 80 year old hag spit at you!!   Oh, of course, this goes for only the female people she encounters.  The men she meets, naturally, fall in love with her instantly.  They don't spit.  From the gynecologist all the way down to the trash collecter.

 

You know, if someone is constantly spat on and punched and otherwise targeted, (good or bad) there are only two possible conclusions.  A) They're not as innocent as they seem or B) They're full of crap.  I dunno, I'm leaning towards B.  Please God, let it be B, right?

 

I'm not linking because she scares me, as most crazy people do.  Yep, I'm a chicken.  Buk Buk BuGAWK!

 

The other one's a boy.  He eats pizza every night of the week, and absolutely everyone who meets him falls desperately in love with him.  I would link, but you'd only fall desperately in love with him and no good can come of that.  You'll think you're just innocently reading a silly blog, and next thing you know you'll be following him around in your car and staring at his butt, because you won't be able to control yourself.  Don't laugh, it's happened.  Just ask him.  Women everywhere are unable to resist his charms.  It matters not that he is married, or is he?  I can't quite figure that out, but it matters not because humans are not designed to mate for life, so marriage is just a convenience or...something.  Did I mention he's very highly intelligent, and us "regular people" can only dream of understanding the world according to him?  What I understand is this:  He speaks of his daughter's beauty in a really creepy way.  He speaks of pretty much everything in a really creepy way.  He's a very creepy guy.

 

The most interesting part of his blog is that reading it would bring to mind this Adonis look a like, only he posts pictures of himself and the sad truth is that he resembles Richard Simmons, if Richard Simmons had never exercised a day in his life.

 

Yes, I'm mean.  It's part of my ugly side, out there for all to see.

 

And again, he has a fan club.  A fan club of seemingly intelligent women who feed and feed the savage beast that is his ego.  I want to grab them and shake them and say "Look away!  Look AWAY!" but heck, they seem to enjoy his banter, so who am I to interfere?  I can only hope that they read and roll their eyes and take him for what he's worth.

 

You know, it's been said that the person who loudly boasts about himself is the person who has zero self esteem.  I almost feel sorry for him.  I can't bring myself to actually go there because of a specific comment he once made about the victims of 9/11.  I'm a master grudge holder.

 

Sour milk blogs, (Ewwwwww!  Smell 'em again and see if they still stink!) I'm setting you free.  I'm making a vow to myself.  My time is much too valuable to waste on this nonsense.  I'm putting this out there because a hundred times I have told myself that I'm just going to stop reading them, and a hundred times I've gone weak and read them again.  Now I'm obligated to resist because I've put it in writing.  Bye Bye, blogs of yore.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 13:03 | link | comments (15) |

"I've got a magic box, with twenty seven locks, and inside I keep all my secrets..."

 

I wonder if crazy, real bona fide crazy, is like pregnancy.  You're not just a little bit crazy.  If you have even an ounce of the crazy in you, you're gone.  Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.  Because you just never know when it's going to flare up and take over.

 

There's a lot I haven't said lately.  Much of it is mundane.  I've been shopping for new work clothes, which is very fun.  Hope is going to Gymboree classes.  She has top teeth!  Two of them.  My brother got a boat and is trying to think up a name for it.  We went apple picking yesterday and he fell out of a tree, like a dork.  I'm glad I didn't inherit the clumsy gene.  I got new Skechers, and they got all muddy in the apple field, so I'm going to get new ones to replace them.  I don't care if it's diva-like.  My other brother is doing this body cleansing thing.  For the first week he sweated out black ooze like the Amityville Horror house, and now he feels better than ever.  We joke, because that's what we do, that the ooze is actually Guinness, seeping out of his pores.  The program calls for no alcohol.

 

For a while there, I was convinced that I was dying.  I was having episodes where I actually felt like my heart stopped, and my throat closed up, and it felt like my body was not my own.  Certain that I had contracted some crazy disease, or that my body was just giving up, I went to the doctor to confirm what Ryan had already diagnosed; panic attacks.  Who is this mess of a girl, with the out of control body?  I didn't even know myself anymore.  After years of refusing medication, I went on medication for what I have always referred to as my E-GAD - Extreme General Anxiety Disorder.  Extremely General, that's me.

 

There are people in this world who should absolutely be medicated, and I'm not knocking that.  As a matter of fact, I strongly encourage it.  I just happen to be another breed.  I'm the kind of person who doesn't like messing with nature.  That goes for everything from EGAD drugs to birth control.  I don't like a little pill that makes my body not do what it thinks it should be doing.  Even if my body is stupid and does things I hate.  I've always thought that often times people are depressed, but it's because they are in a rotten situation, or they have made some bad choices, or maybe just been shat on a whole lot, or, in other words, it's legit, and they need to take steps to change their situation, not take pills to numb it.  Just like physical pain is your body's way of telling you something is wrong, mental pain is your body's way of saying "Hey, this sucks, fix it!"  This is not to discount true depression, I know it exists.  I just think it's over-medicated, in some cases.  (Note to the person who's about to comment that their depression is real and debilitating:  I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about me.  If it works for you, have at it.  I haven't gone "Tom Cruise Crazy".)  But I gave in, desperate as I was.  The panic attacks stopped, but I think they would have stopped anyway.  For a variety of reasons, I quietly stopped popping the pills recently.  I expected my body to revolt in a not-so-subtle way, as you are supposed to wean, but so far I'm still standing. 

 

Of course, through the powers of hysteria, I feel like the damage has already been done.  I over analyze.  I feel like I have brain damage.  My memory isn't what it was.  We talk about things we've done, and I remember in kind of a vauge way, but can't recall the details.  Hard to describe.  Perhaps I'm just getting old.  I look back at the past few months through a haze.  I have a general feeling of the shakes, like too much caffeine type jitters.  To be honest, I kind of like it.  Nervous energy maybe.  I just don't feel like myself, and like a paranoid person, I feel like the drugs messed with my chemistry.  Because I read into things too much like that.  If I went to a detox center, I think I would sweat out psychedelic rainbows.  Hey, maybe I'll try that.

 

I drove to the mall with the CD we play in the car for Hope blasting, and didn't even realize until I found myself belting out "Suzy has a cow on her head..." and even then, I didn't turn it off, even though Hope wasn't with me.  Hence the magic box.  My magic box has wings.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 12:34 | link | comments (12) |

When I wasn't blogging all kinds of things popped into my head to write about.  Now that I'm off the wagon and hitching a ride, I can blather on.

 

What is up with men who come out of restrooms, public or otherwise, still messing with their pants?  I suppose it's too much to expect them to actually wash their hands after doing their business, (cringe!) but seriously - can't you at least finish tucking it in before you head out the door?  You don't see us women leaving the bathroom with our skirts still around our waists, pulling them down as we go, do you?  Why are they in such a hurry?  No one needs them back THAT badly.

 

Hope has decided, as if on cue, that it's all mommy all the time, and no one else will do.  She's brilliant.  She must have overheard us talking about me returning to the grind and now she's responding appropriately.  I recently got an email from a parenting newsgroup that I subscribe to that was titled something like "Your nine month old and separation anxiety".   It offered no advice outside of the comforting news that it's a normal milestone for this age.  Up until now I've been ok in her eyes, but more of a friendly caretaker when it comes to comparing me to Daddy, who happens to be the bomb.  Now poor Daddy gets pushed aside, just in time for him to take on his part time role as Mr. Mom.  We've had lengthy discussions, Ryan and I, about who has the short end of the stick here.  I suppose it's a toss up.

 

My youngest nephew started kindergarten last week.  Siiiiiiigh.  I can't even believe that he's off to big kid school.  I wish you could have seen him, with his little Hawaiian shirt and his hair all gelled and spiky.  My sister in law has taken this all in stride, and really - who can blame her?  It's a long time coming and now all of her kids are attending the same school and she can have a little bit of time to herself. (Till Hope starts invading that time)  But for me, it was hard to see him lining up like such a big kid, with his big old backpack hanging so low that it practically bopped him on the back of his knees when he walked.  The last of my brother's babies is not a baby any more.  They're all so big.  I hope the world is kind to them in the future.

 

Did I mention that he has a girlfriend?  She's from Australia.  Cutest little girl I have ever seen.  She draws him pictures when they're apart and he gives her all his cookies while they're at school.  He's either extraordinary, or the world has changed, because when I was five the only thing a boy ever gave me was a cold or maybe a shove.

 

Did I mention that my evil ex-sister in law is getting married?  (Ha!  Yeah, I know.  SUCKER!)  At that point I can officially denounce her as my evil ex-sister in law and just refer to her (strictly on an as-needed basis) as the mother of my nieces and nephews, right?  I'm thinking of starting a pool for how long this marriage will last.  Who's in?

 

I'm having anxiety about my job.  Every five minutes or so I think maybe it's not the right move.  My brothers think I'm crazy for giving up the cushy position I have now.  I'm sure they're not alone, they're just the only ones that are honest and don't bother trying to be polite and encouraging.  Maybe they're right.  But then five minutes is up and I think it's going to be good all around.  Good for my career, good for my mental health, good for my family in the long run.  Bad for my laziness and anti-social tendencies, and definitely bad for my blog.  Ryan will have to dust off Hope's.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 16:01 | link | comments (8) |

Well hi!

I really have been very busy.  I swear.  And I had all sorts of computer problems too.  And all kinds of other stuff going on.  Not the least of which is this big life-altering decision that I've made, without even consulting my blogmates.  What kind of blogger am I? 

 

I was offered a promotion at work, which I've accepted.  The good news is that it's a promotion - Yay!  The bad news is that it means I have to give up my cushy work-from-home lifestyle and commute to the office every day.  The good news there is that I did this for a week, just before the promotion was offered, and I realized how very much I miss my office and the city and the commute and the world and all of it.  I'm aware that I've become a bit of a recluse, and it's not something I'm especially proud of or happy about.  So, off to the world I go.  Exciting, yes?  And of course, the bad news is that poor Hope now has a non-working-from-home mother.  But, the good news is that Ryan will be with her most days, and when he's not, my sister in law will have her, so she'll be in excellent hands.  I tell myself this to relieve myself of the guilt, which is not insignificant.  I haven't done much for myself lately though, and this step up really is what I've worked towards for years.  If I were to turn it down, it likely wouldn't be offered again.  So, off to the big, bad, beautiful city I go, to be the boss.  In three more weeks.

 

The last bit of good news is that Hope isn't going to look back on her childhood and remember a mom who has her attention focused on a computer screen.  Our time together will be less, but it will be quality time.  Not half focused, "just play with your toys until I finish this conference call and then I'll do whatever you want I promise" time.  It was getting harder and harder to pull off both jobs, and really, it's time.  Shit or get off the pot, as my oh-so-eloquent mom would say.

 

I know, you're just reading to be polite until you get to the pictures.  Here you go:

 

Everyone here is doing well.  Life is good.   How are you?

posted by: AmericanGirl at 16:36 | link | comments (18) |

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