hotter than a witch's mammary gland

The high today is going to be 106. And it is barely July. Ugh and ugh. Damn you San Antonio.

Love dares you to care for...

There are storm clouds in the sky so it looks almost electric green outside right now in the dusk. My favorite sort of weather during my favorite time of day. The aforementioned-in-the-previous-post exboyfriend, Jules, is kind enough to send the Hub and I mix CDs every now and again. And I just love them. Usually I don't listen to them right away. They get shuffled into my other stuff and then a year later, one surfaces, and I listen to it nonstop for a month. Jules is one of those people who loves music. But even better than that, he loves sharing music.... He is a great friend for sharing music. Not enough people do it in my opinion.

Tonight, I was reminded of a winter walk Jules and I took in Central Park all those moons ago. We saw a pair of young boys laughing and building a snow man together... and Jules started to cry. I asked him why and his reply,

"This is what they've been waiting for all year."

It was a sweet moment, shared with a sweet person. And tonight I wonder, wouldn't we all be better off if we could admit our faults, embrace our fucked upednesses and share our dear moments without being afraid?

Something to think about.

My Demons

Let me come clean here for a second. As a blogger, for the most part, there are some things (as in life) I just don't talk about. Somethings I don't talk about because I don't want to hurt people that read this blog. Somethings I don't write about because they are too embarrassing and honest. And some things I don't talk about because I don't want people to think I am a loony toon. But I've decided today is the day to fess up with a few of the things I rarely ever talk about.

1) My Parenting: Do you ever feel like you are doing the most horrible job in the world of parenting? Boy, I sure do. Several times throughout the day in fact. You see, I love my child. I think I am a great parent in a lot of respects. I am fun. I snuggle him continuously throughout the day. He has my undivided attention most of the time. He is smart and handsome and everyone loves him, so I must be doing something right. But the number one thing I hate about my parenting is that I am a screamer. Sure, I would be far worse if I was a hitter or a hater, but being a yeller is bad enough. Now, that's not to say I yell at the boy all the time, but too much of the time when he is misbehaving, I default to the screaming, yelling mode. And I hate it. He is a boy see, so he does all kinds of manly things like lashing out and not listening and being a general toot, and boy, oh, boy does it make me mad. So, I yell to get his attention. Sometimes it works, but most of the time I just end up feeling terrible that I yelled at him. I can picture him years from now having complete immunity to my shouts... "There goes Mom again... You know how she is... Always going off the handle." I can already picture the secret club he and the Hub will form. The knowing glances. The "here she goes again" eye rolls. Usually the yelling is followed up with lavish snuggling and kisses and hugs, so the Bub and I are already forming a unhealthy cycle of "scream, snuggle, repeat" when it comes to discipline. Sometimes I think he pushes my buttons on purpose so that I will scream at him and it will eventually lead to love. Ugh. I am working on it. Always trying to do better. Someday I hope the boy will forgive me for having a huge mouth.

2) My Self: Right now, I hate the way I look. I've spend my entire 30s in this state of hating the way I look. It started when the Hub and I hooked up. I was happy. In love. I went from dating a marathon runner (hey Jules!) to dating a nester. I went from date night including salad, cold soup and a brisk walk to date nights spent baking cakes, stripping squid to fry calamari and snuggling-in on the couch to watch a movie with a giant bowl of popcorn. The Hub and I are self-professed foodies at this point. I write about food. I love food. Somehow I manage to make it to the gym on a regular basis, but that doesn't help much in warding off the midlife poundage when there are fajitas on the grill. I went from being a 20-something hottie to being a middle-aged dumpy housewife in almost the blink of an eye. Now that the Bub is getting older, and sparks of my former self are starting to shine through, I have been working on myself again... and let me just tell you it sucks. You have to work twice as hard as you did when you were younger and the results are slow in coming. Not to mention, sometimes I go days without a shower... DAYS... When I drop the Bub off at school I wonder how the hell some of these moms do it. Perfect coiffed at 8 in the morning. Makeup... hair... clothes. This morning I still had my yesterday after-pool hair and I managed to slip on a Arab 'thoub' I bought in Cairo. (You know, the long, floor length dress-like robe Middle Eastern men wear? Sexy, right?) I was looking around at all the cute wives in their tank tops and mini skirts and man did I feel about 78. So, I am working on it. Again, always trying to do better. Someday I hope I can forgive myself for getting a fat ass.

3) My Husband: As a wife, I feel like I am constantly disappointing my husband. I try really hard to keep the house clean, to be happy, to keep the car clean, to keep the Bub happy... but somehow it never seems enough. If the Hub comes home and the house is clean and I am happy (I am never happy if the house isn't clean)... then he is happy. If I am disheveled and struggling and fighting with the boy, he breathes a heavy sigh and then, sort of, checks out from me. And I can't say I blame him. Who wants to spend all day at work just to come home to unrest and chaos? See, that's the thing about the Hub. If I am unhappy, he takes it personally. He thinks it is his fault. I would say 60% of the time he comes home to happy, and the other 40% he comes home to me tired and struggling. So... when I am standing ten feet in chaos... feeling tired and worn out and terrible... what I would love more than anything is for the Hub to come in and sweep me into his arms and make me feel for one minute like I am pretty and not a housewife and not fighting with my child. But instead, I get the silence. And on some level I understand it. I do understand my husband. He handles conflict differently than I do, and I'm fine with that, I am... but sometimes it would be nice if he was a little less from Mars and I was a little less from Crazyland. We are working on it. Always trying to do better. Someday I hope the Hub with forgive me for always feeling overwhelmed and adrift.

4) My Family: So there is the Hub/Bub, and beyond that I have two sisters, a mother, a father and a 94-year-old grandmother. The five of us have been through a lot together. So, I am writing a book about the years of my youth when all the women lived in one house together and my dad lived 2,000 miles away. And it is hard. Really hard. I know I have to finish the book. Finishing the book is just one of those personal goals I have in my life that must be done. But again, it is hard. Trying to write honestly without hurting anyone. Trying to write honestly without making myself look like an ass. Trying to write honestly, period, is hard. It is a memoir, and memoirs are filled with the memories of people who write them, but aren't always the way other people remember things. I know, no matter how hard I try to not hurt my family, something I write will. I love my family. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt any of them. So, no matter what happens... If I finish the book and it languishes on the shelf of our family history for eternity. If I finish the book and someone thinks it is actually worth a crap and wants to publish it. I hope my family will understand and know that mine is just one voice in a family of many. That hopefully it will be one more stepping stone in moving forward and moving on. We are all always working on it. Always trying to be better together. Someday I hope they will all forgive me for saying too much.

5) My Mortality: Over the past few years, you've heard this theme a lot from me. I am morbidly preoccupied with death at this point in my life. It is the first thing that comes to mind when I wake up at 2 in the morning. It is what I think about when I look in my son's eyes. It is what I worry about when I feel a twitch in my chest. I am absolutely terrified of dying. Everything I read in the paper scares the shit out of me. I can't think about Iraq... Afghanistan... Iran... New York... down the street... without feeling terrified and sad for people and their pain. It almost consumes me... almost. This one little life. This one life we all have to live. What the hell does it mean, when it can so easily be snuffed away? I do not want to die. I do not want my child, my husband, my loved ones to die. I keep thinking that if I keep thinking, an answer will come. A antidote to the fear will wash over me, and I'll feel a peace and serenity about it all. But I wait and I think and I worry and I fear and nothing comes. No great answer. I assume this is the point in a "non-believer's" life when they turn to God, but the thing is, I am not a non-believer in the traditional sense. Just because I don't believe in religion doesn't mean that I don't believe in spirituality. So I search, always working on it. Always trying to understand. I hope I will understand when the time comes. I hope I will not be afraid.

Now that I've depressed the crap out of everyone... know this. I use this blog to purge a lot. Despite what you might think, my life is not all doom and gloom. I have not painted all the walls in my house black and I do not write poetry in my own blood. And I do not spend every second of my life miserable. Quite the contrary, in fact. Most people think I'm pretty funny and friendly and helpful and sexy if a little bit wacky. So there. I just wanted to say a few things. Get them out there.

The Hub/Bub and I went to our neighborhood Fourth of July wagon parade... after the Bub pulled and rode and sweated in the July Texas heat for blocks and blocks and blocks. After we trekked up the hill to the Episcopal Diocese of Texas headquarters for lemonade dished out by local boy scouts. After we all recited a few patriotic poems and songs... the Bub looked up at us and said , "This is the best lemonade I've ever had in my whole life."

I guess all the lemons I have do make for some nice summer refreshment.

Just keep livin', man.

Happy Fourth

Childhood: Part 8,672

Gosh, it feels great to be home. The wedding was fabulous... the Bub was break-dancing at the reception, seriously... not sure where he picked up the moves, but he definitely stole the show that night... the coast of New England rainy, foggy and cold... we never did get to go on the puffin/whale watching boat trip because of the weather... though we saw eider ducks, grebes and sea gulls aplenty... plus the Hub/Bub followed a pair of wild turkeys and their brood into the woods. But, what I wanted to talk about here today is walking with ghosts.

As you may or may not know, I am slowly and laboriously, writing a memoir about my broken childhood. The weird thing about the act of doing this is that you have to reach beyond the cocktail party stories you've perfected from a lifetime of retelling and step back into untapped memories that have been buried away in your subconscious for years. You begin writing and the most fleeting thought spills out and turns into a whole series of memories you hadn't thought about... probably ever as a memory, only in the moment.

This happens with places too, and so it was that without even thinking about it, I found myself in the part of New England that is riddled with such landscape reminders. My parents met and fell in love in New England. My father worked at a boarding school in Maine and after they got hitched, my mom moved there to build a life and have babies. She loved New England. Years later after my sisters were born and they moved around for work and I was born and my parent's relationship fell apart, it was to Maine where my mother returned... bringing me and my sisters back there the summer after they split. We lived in a house right by the water. We swam in the freezing cold Atlantic. We collected Maine rocks and star fish and sea urchins. We hung out with my mother's old artist friends. It was perfect except for one fatal flaw. He was gone.

When I returned this trip, I sporadically phoned my mom to locate the landmarks... The lobster pound in Kittery on Chauncy Creek where we used to eat on the water. The house in Ogunquit. Kennebunk Port and its streets and galleries. We never did make it to The Berwicks where my family lived and worked... but it was probably better that way. And always, I talked of the Swingy Bridge... I thought I spotted it a couple of times here and there, laughing and driving the Hub/Bub around, showing them the sites. But it wasn't until we rounded a corner in York, Maine, that I saw it and remembered.

Called the smallest suspension bridge in the world, the real name is the Wiggly Bridge, a tiny walking bridge that literally jiggles as you walk across... and that summer after my parents divorced, it was my favorite spot in the whole universe. My sisters and I loved to walk across it over and over again and hide up in the woods just beyond. It was a magical world for me. A bridge to a secret, special place.

As we got out of the car, and it came closer into view... I got choked up. Watching my son run down the rock-lined path over the water leading out to it, I could almost hear the giggles of innocence from my sisters and me. The damp air and the memories flooding back. It was like having my heart broken all over again. There I was standing in the exact spot where, not much older than the Bub is now, my life changed course irreparably.

This is what fascinates me so thoroughly about childhood. It holds the key to all that is right and wrong in our lives. To the mysteries of who we are and how we came to be in this moment. It is not the past exactly, for too much of it is bound up forever in the present. It is the elephant in the room. The tree that grows quietly in the back yard. It is the beginning and end of everything.

Of course, as soon as we were on the bridge, I took out my camera and began to snap away... to which the Bub guffawed, "Awwww Mom, life is for living, not for taking pictures."

I scooped him up in my arms and held him tight and vowed never, ever, ever to leave him. How could I abandon this perfection?

Greetings from Maine

Blame It On The Boogie

Ah Boston... we ate roast beef and seafood on the east side... paid homage to Robert McCloskey... walked Beacon Hill just after dusk during prime window peeking hours... ate a couple of slices from The Upper Crust (love that prosciutto) ... chased that with clam chowder and pistachio Italian ice. It was the kind of day MJ would have loved.

Rock on little brother, wherever you are.