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

I am messed up.  I acknowledge this for what it is.  I think my brother's death has warped me, and set me up for this delayed sense of grief.  There's been this whole "I know you died, but it'll be ok, they're looking for you, they'll find you, it's not final..." thing replaying again and again on some levels, except with all of the denial and none of the looking and finding.

It comes out in funny ways, like my inability to be alone.  I suppose this is compounded by Ryan going back to work, but there is this suffocating fear that I have now that I never had before.  It comes from having two babies, and an explosive imagination that creates all these dark scenarios and forces me to play out my imagionary reaction - If both girls are asleep in their rooms and "whatever" happens, which one do I rescue first?  How will I get them down from the roof, into the car, out of danger?  I sit here by myself and think that if I couldn't rescue one, then I would probably just sacrifice the rest of us to whatever the demon was, because nothing else seems even remotely ok.  

Saturday night I was suffocating in all of this, whatever it is, and I called Ryan at work but he was out on a call, so I called my brother and found myself unable to explain this feeling, this fear that something horrible might be about to happen and I'm painfully unequipped to handle it.

In my mom's house, in the crawlspace in my old bedroom, she hid all of the Christmas gifts that she bought each year.  She always shopped early, getting serious around August or so.  In there are rows and rows of boxes all neatly labled with little yellow Post-it's with the names if the intended receiver.  What can we do with all of this stuff?  I can't possibly put Carly in this little Christmas outfit and not want to kill myself looking at her all day.

In a great show of defeat, I'm going to the doctor today for some serious mind-numbing drugs.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 13:50 | link | comments (13) |

A great mystery has kind and intelligent characters,  an interesting plot, and drama so intense that once you start reading it, you won't want to put it down.

This story has none of that.  It is, nontheless, a mystery.  The mystery of this:



This is a scan, a blurry scan, of my metrocard.   You might notice that scrawled across it, in girlish handwriting, is the message "Thnx 4 the MMRS".  What you can't see is that I found my Metrocard in my coat pocket, two days after I used it last, on the evening of the tree lighting in Rockefeller Center.   Normally I would have my metrocard in a certain slot in my wallet, but in this case I give myself a pass.  Perhaps we were running for the train.  Perhaps I didn't want to flash my wallet about at the ungodly hour that it surely was when we were running for said train.  Perhaps I was just too tired to follow the "place for everything and everything in it's place" law.

Back to the message, I'm thinking MMRS is the name of a vaccine, or close to it.  But neither of my girls know how to write, and if they could write me a cryptic note about shots at the doctor's office, I'm fairly certain it wouldn't say "Thnx".

Ok, I'll limit the drama, since I'm probably the only person that didn't have this jump out at her, but my niece has since informed me that "Like, DUH!  It's a song!  Don't you know Fall Out Boy?" 

Well of course it is! 

Back to the mystery.  How did this get on my metrocard?  From the looks of it, the weapon was a Sharpie, black, medium point.  If it is indeed a song and not a vaccine, who is singing this song to me?  It doesn't look like my writing, so that eliminates me.  It certainly doesn't look like either of my brother's handwriting either.  And no one else was with us.

It's ironic, isn't it, that someone is thanking me for mmrs and I just can't remember who or why or what the mmrs actually are?

I might have been able to let this go, except that when I used my metrocard, I noticed it only had two trips left on it.  Well crap, I'm sure I had 8 trips left on it.  I'm generally pretty good at keeping track of these things, because of that one time that I thought I had another trip, only I didn't, and let me tell you it's quite unpleasant to try to walk through a turnstile that won't turn because your metrocard has been rejected, and the line of 40 men in trenchcoats behind you doesn't care if the turnstile didn't turn, they will just force you through the damn thing because you've already used up your alloted .3 seconds to enter to subway and now you're just a nuisance.

So one has to wonder, where the hell did I go?  Why so many different subway trips in one night?  Why have I nothing to show for all these trips beyond a message on my metrocard?   Who was with me and what was so memorable about it?  This really is very uncharacteristic of me.  Believe it or not.

So I got to the office and waited until it was a decent hour and called my brother.  Not wanted to appear foolish or start a scandal, I casually asked him if anything strange happened on the subway Wednesday night.  His response?  "What the Hell are you talking about...subway?  We took a cab."  Hmmm.  This just gets more and more mysteriouser, doesn't it?

Frustrated, I go to finally return my scarred metrocard to my wallet, when lo and behold:



My metrocard, sitting right in it's proper place.

Holy. Crap.  I stole someone's metrocard.  Worse, I stole someone's mmrs.  How did I fall so far, so fast?

If you're out there, and missing your metrocard, contact me and I'll get it back to you.  I'll pay you back for the trip I used.  Plus interest.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 12:36 | link | comments (5) |