aug 23 - aug 25 2011

Life is fleeting. For some, people waltz in and out of our lives, often not even noticed. For me, everyone who drifts through my existence leaves an imprint. Sometimes short vignettes buried deep in my subconscious. There are many that span years as fixtures of some sort. In whatever way though, they are there. They are present, and they are pieces of me. If nothing else, I am quite proud to be an amalgamation of everyone I've ever met. But I'm drifting off topic.
The thing about people, and their role in our lives, is often based on their entry and exit, (if it applies). Some pass through quickly and unnoticed. Some stick around for a while. Many come and go amicably. And then there is death. That fucking whore comes for everyone. Death is by far the worst of the departures. it is final, and it is always resolute in its tidings. There are two types. Sudden, and drawn out. Some say one is worse than the other. Those people, I have no doubt, have only suffered one kind. When someone passes over a long period of time, it is said that you have time to say your goodbyes, prepare yourself, etc.. You will never be prepared. It's finality will astound you each and every time. A sudden death does leave you feeling as if there were some last words you should/could/would have said. But it affords you the courtesy of not watching a loved on suffer, or the almost waiting for the heartache feeling. Either way, it is never fun. The better memory you are cursed with, is all the more memories you can recall. Happy memories of giggles and mischief, only to remember that you will make no more. And the more you dwell on that, the more will flood over you. Times long forgotten, twenty years passed. Meeting as children, living through each other's firsts of all sorts, shows and friends and good times, teenage heart aches and daydreaming of the future. Transitioning into adults. But all too often, it means long periods of silence. Reconnects. Re-disconnects. Re-re-connects. Re-re-disconnects. They last too long. Sometimes you don't get a chance to speak ever again. Last loving words of an electronic mail, all you're left with.
Death is worse than hatred. There is always a chance at moving on, and growing as a human, even forgiveness, from hatred. Death leaves us with no recourse. What you had is just that. Forever locked in the past tense. And all you are really left with is a choice. How will you conduct yourself moving forward? My choice is to tend my own friendship garden fervently. If I don't water it, how can it grow? I want to touch the lives of others the way that they have mine. I want my friends to know that I love them. I want people who I have wronged to know that I am sorry. Sometimes my youth or my heart got in the way of doing what was right. And for the people who have wronged me along the way, if you think about that, don't. I don't. Those things are in the past, and will erode my future if I let them.
Existence in this plane is short, and almost always contains a few twists. Two days ago a dear childhood friend passed on. She was young, she was beautiful, and like me, she loved with everything she had. CrowsLanding girls are special, and the world lost a bit of it's sparkle for me today. Like a ship in the night, she slipped right on to the next chapter. While I myself have two kidneys still clunking along one year, 4 months, and 11 days past my expiration date. I'm not saying that I am waiting or anxious to expire. Simply that it is something that no man can predict. And that I should try and live each day like my last, because it very well could be. Just in case it is, I love you.

Whew.

Mike's dad is out of surgery now and home. Yay! Only a few inches of colon short! Not bad for a cancer free diagnoses. It has been rather tense around here while playing the waiting game. The collective sigh of relief could probably be heard all the way on the other coast. In this small victory for my ever- shrinking circle, a glimmer of hope. Yes, my son took the term "terrible twos", as a jumping off point for pushing limits. Yes, it is now in concrete that Mike is a horrible communicator on a regular basis, let alone when he is scared. Yes, I am still "forgetting" to make another appointment to find out about my own medical shortcomings. Mom's still at her wits end, dad's still pushing her buttons, and my brother is still dying. But Joe came out okay. And that is something to be celebrated. Those doctors were all but sure he was cancer ridden. Turns out it was just an insanely dense pocket of pre-cancerous polyps. Good thing we didn't let him put off that pesky colonoscopy this time around. Next year might have been a different story, but it wasn't. And because it wasn't, it gives me a faint hope. Not that all of the things that are bad in life are going to get better; but that some of them might. And if some of these life hiccups do get better, than I'll be more than capable of trudging through the rest.

At A Snail's Pace

Sometimes the world around me is going warp speed, but my brain is stuck on rewind. Right now is one of those times. Trying to sort my way through the fen in my head. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I just don't see in yet. I am in the middle of a struggle, I am not ready to talk about it. I am sorry.

Well

The last few months have been some of the weirdest of my life. It feels weird saying that because of the way I chose to lead my life just ten years ago. I would have expected to say that those days were the strangest, as I was having a grand time experimenting with life. Apparently, it is when life is having a grand time experimenting with you, that things can get quite odd. With everyone seeming to be in some stage of death, crisis, or hurt, it got overwhelming. Looming illnesses that cause hormonal meandering have built an almost solid wall between twenty years. And now fear of judgment widens the gap. Ailing fathers, and dying brothers, visitors from afar, straining a marriage that was already weak. A communication breach so profound, one wonders how there was ever progeny involved. Wanting to believe my brother is changing, hoping whatever comes next doesn't kill my mother. Struggling to find a balance between the love I have for my dying sibling, and the hatred I have for the things heroin made him do to me. No father, it wasn't about giving up on him, it was about not giving up on me. It seems I may be coming to a point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. That's not true. I can't see the light yet, but I know it's there. One thing I did come to realize is that it is not always me. I've always approached things with a "what did I do wrong", or "Why should this person like me", and I think I've sold myself short. The question I should have been asking was "Why should I like them".

Broken

I am broken. I am always going to be broken. Broken and sometimes confused. I'm sorry.

My name is Lynn, and I cannot sew

Mike bought me a pair of pajama pants for Christmas in 2007. Sometime in 2008 (early) I ripped them. They sat in a Tupperware tub until this morning. Five minutes ago I finished sewing, and I use the term loosely, very loosely, them back together. It looks like something two five year old children collaborated on with some scraps of fabric. Oh who am I kidding, I am giving myself way to much credit here. I totally suck at sewing. It is at this time that I finally regret bribing Steven into doing my home economics sewing. I dare say these pants might last a week. *Sheepish Grins* I suppose I'll eventually get better at it, I just have to practice. Oh yeah, and probably have someone show me, that might help.

Bumbling and Fumbling

Yesterday I thought I was being productive when I penciled in my cousin Brianna's birthday for the 12th. Reminded myself I need to go out and get a card and everything. Unfortunately her birthday was in fact yesterday. She got a text message instead. Fail. March 12th is somebody's birthday though, so it's not a total loss. My great, great grandmother will be 97 years young.
I suppose I'm not doing much to buck my procrastination trend. Thanks so much honey for sharing your bad habit with me. Sheesh. I am going to go and get my calendar up to date right now... well after I get lunch done for Phoeny.

Vaughn

About a month after moving to hell I met a couple of nice people. One of them was Susan, the other one was Vaughn. Vaughn is one of the sweetest people you will ever meet. He has been continually one of the only nice people in this place. Probably last year sometime I wrote about Vaughn having cancer. Well as all battles with cancer do, they have to come to an end. I am afraid that it is coming to that time for him.
It took a little while for the cycle to catch up with me here in Washington. I dare say, I was almost a little less worried about who the next one would be. Last month Chad died. It was sudden, and nobody seen it coming. We all lamented the usual bit about not getting a chance to say goodbye. Right now I am reminded of how much it sucks to watch someone slowly go. Instead of losing their life at once. It's like a little more is stolen from them each day. They slowly fade. They hurt. You writhe inside, wishing you could help. But you stand by helplessly, and watch. There is nothing else you can do. Watch. And Wait. But you have to be there for them until the end. And I plan to be. I just wish after all this time, I could have learned how to prepare for this. Some way to steel myself. But I cannot. I am broken again, watching God take yet another one home.

And so ends another chapter

Again I awoke with a heavy heart this morning. For what seems like an eternity now, I've been pondering life's nagging questions. You know, the ones that usually start with why. It seems that the stand out lately has been "Why am I always that friend?"
I'm the friend of convenience, need, or flight of fancy.
I am the friend that it's okay to cancel on because I'll understand. I'm also the friend that you can go without for long periods of time, until you are in crisis. To that repertoire, I also bring the "I'm bored" card. "I'm bored, no one else was home, what are you up to?" Yes, I hear this a lot. I also hear a lot of "I'm sorry it's been so long". Often thrown by the wayside when a new and/or long lost friend reappears in the picture. Only to be called upon a month later, when the novelty has worn off. Or even better, they've moved on, and so here I am waiting. The constant stand-by.
Here's the thing though, I'm getting old. I can count my friends on one hand, if that. I try to tend and nurture the few awesome friendships with the people I consider my compadres. It seems as time goes by, my circle shrinks. The only thing I can say to that is, the only way to hold on to sand is not to try and hold on. So this is where the path has led me. There will be no more e-mails, and no more phone calls. At least not the kind where I'm calling to see what you've been doing for the last 6 months that I've got no answer.

And A Merry Christmas To You Too Sir!

Dear Kalamites, Kalamans, or whatever you choose to be called,
I own exactly one beanie. I am sorry that it is black. I am also sorry that I wear the same black sweat shirt whenever I go out. I do own an Aerapostle, or however you spell it, hoodie. It lives in my closet because it is too big, and when I wear it I look like a sad M&M. I am sorry I do not buy new shiny things to wear and impress you with. Anything I don't need, I can save the money for something my child needs...or something else for him, (or someone else), for Christmas. I am sorry that my black messenger bag is weird, and that the reusable grocery bags that are inside it, are even weirder. Did you know a plastic grocery bag will last twenty years in a land fill. I have a son, maybe someday I will have another. I want to preserve things for them. I want to teach them the joy of vegetables that they cultivated. I want them to know that what is inside them is so much more important than the clothes they put on them.
Dear Kalama, I am sorry that you do not understand why I still smile and say "Merry Christmas!" when you are scowling. It's because I am a christian. It's not my job to be mean back. And I can't let your actions change who I am inside. Who I am is the girl who will keep smiling at you, because someday, you might smile back.

What More Than Sorry Can I Be

I don't have a lot of words today. So here is a Ben Harper song that seems to pretty accurately express what I feel today.


goodbye
hasn't been so good to me
stepped out into the night
back against the moon
i saw ten thousand hands with candlelight
we all think that we're right
it's hard to tell
if the night is full of hope or doom

what more than sorry can i say
what more than sorry can i be
before our love fades away
what more than sorry
do you want from me

my eyes
burn with unshed tears
my body is weak
from so many silent years
too many people say goodbye
before they say hello
step into the morning
and disappear

what more than sorry can i say
what more than sorry can i be
before our love fades away
what more than sorry
do you want from me

what more than sorry can i say
what more than sorry can i be
before our love fades away
what more than sorry
do you want from me

I Remember When...

The candle, both ends really burn

Nothing has come spewing out of my brain for two days now. Three hundred times a day "I need to blog about that" runs through my mind. For the last two days I have done a whole lot of worrying. Yesterday I worried so much that I didn't do the usual Sunday deep cleaning of my house. Money, housing, food, job, school, money housing, food, job, school. Over and over, thoughts of these things ricochet off of each other in the confines of my skull. It's hard to wade a logical line through stress brain soup. I am beginning to wonder if going to sleep is worth it right now. Dreams often amplify fears of what could be if things continue on this trajectory. Up, down, up, down, all night long. Waking up more tired than the day before. The day before when you woke up thinking you couldn't remember the last time you were THIS tired.

What exactly IS wrong with me?

There was no post yesterday. It wasn't because I could think of nothing to say, it was because I had entirely too much too say, and I didn't know how. I wanted to write a post to my son. My best friend writes posts to her daughter often. They are wrapped in love, and sealed with a promise. We talked on the phone last night and I started to tell her of my dilemma. I love my son more than the picture my humble words could ever paint. But it's just hard for me to put these types of sentiment down sometimes. She said it was hard for her at first, but it got easier, and she wanted her to know how she felt should something ever happened to her. I expressed my newly realized fear of this now. She tried to be helpful and said she would tell him I liked him. Someone beeped in for Mike, and I was left alone with my brain to ponder this last statement. At first my feelings were bruised. Why wouldn't she tell him I LOVED him? I know she would, and being as she is my best friend, she was probably trying to make me laugh. I was a little too far in the trapped by my own thoughts phase though. Oddly the phone was busy last night, and it wasn't for me. I spent a lot of time on auto pilot, lost somewhere inside me cerebellum. Thinking about the fact, that there is no forever, and so many people have had to leave my life early, and I've already been handed my ticket, that I've got to figure out some way for him to know. My own little private random thoughts book is not enough. Besides what if he never found it. So while I know that after I'm gone people will tell him he was my everything, it's up to me to do it while I'm still here.

Par for the course

Yesterday started with the realization that I only had three eggs, no mustard, and one dryer sheet. *Sigh* I cooked one of the eggs, and of course Phoenix decided he didn't like eggs today. Joy. I talk to my BFF for what is never enough time... we both have very willful toddlers. *Smile* I inevitably unload more of my current inner turmoil than I wanted to, and today feel guilty about that. *Sigh* I'll do better tonight... if she calls. I wouldn't blame her if she needed a break from me. But I digress, back to Craptastic Sunday. Phoenix refuses lunch and is sent to his nap, screeches rivaling a howler monkey. I get in some more BFF phone time, and do some character leveling on Final Fantasy while getting an hour in on the exercise ball. Endorphins my ass. I do not feel better. In fact, I'm not sure what you do with this thing besides bounce. Oh well, at least the heart rate is up. Phoenix wakes up in a less than stellar mood and is immediately sent back to his room for assaulting his mother with a kick to the shin. He throws things, screams things like "why" and "noooooo". Punctuating this mammoth tantrum with a horrid guttural noise that he picked up from an eight year old menace. Terrible twos suck ass! The foray into holy terror lasts for forty five minutes, no joke. I wish I was exaggerating. Now I need to drag the garbage can up the hill. So I unlock the door and then nearly pull my arm out of socket when it refuses to budge. What now? Apparently the doorknob is broken. Enter "manly man" who practically shoves the "little lady" aside to fix the problem. *Grrrrr* Um, who was on HER way to take care of the garbage? I'm just saying. An hour later Phoenix is banished to bed. Oh yeah, he refused his dinner too. Full on melt down. Any way the door eventually has to be pulled off the hinges. It's Fifty degrees outside. Brilliant. When it does come off, the inner workings of the doorknob disintegrate and fall to the ground like a bag of candy. Crap. So at 7:30 p.m. Mike's dad is here with a new doorknob and a receipt for the landlord. Awesome. An hour later I have a new doorknob, a child who is still not asleep, and a headache. But I've logged another hour on the exercise ball. For what is I think the first time in my life, I am looking forward to Monday.

I can see the light...

...at the end of the tunnel that is. I made it completely through yesterday without a single drag of a cigarette! Yay me! Today should be easier right? I sure hope so, because yesterday was out of this world hard. I'm not sure if I just forgot, or the overall crappiness I felt when I was pregnant masked it, but I felt like total crap all day yesterday. With Phoenix, I just quit, not even a "well I'll have one last one". Nope, the stick turned pink, and that was that. This time, there is no little one to do it for. It's all on me, and up to my will power. It hadn't went well, I'd been trying now for at least a week. I believe it was two days ago I asked my BFF to please pray that I might have some will power. I know she prayed for me, and I prayed for me. To tell the truth I was very disheartened when I sent the message. I was about to just give up all together because I couldn't do it. And in true Lynn fashion, the more I tried to quit, the more stressful things came my way. My family's entire future as we were trying to get to, may never come to pass. NO, I do not want to smoke. The feeling will pass. The cupboards are getting uncomfortably slim. NO, the last thing I need is another cigarette. Leading to another expensive cigarette. By about 2:00 p.m. yesterday I knew I was going to make it. But with all the emotonal stuff going on, and the nicotene making it's way out of my system, I was also completely and utterly exhausted. I don't know what time I went to sleep last night, but I know it was pretty early. And even though I still didn't sleep through the night, I only got up twice I think. That by itself is an indicator of how tired I was. On a normal night I'm up about fifteen times. I'll take it! So here we are at the beginning of my second smoke free day, wish me luck.

Another year

I wanted to say something deep and profound. But the words just wouldn't come. Happy Birthday Robert. I love you.

Seal coughs and running noses

Yesterday was craptastic. For the most part of it, I don't want to talk about it because I can't be nice. Suffice to say I spent some time with Satan, and she was at her usual worst. After we got home things went down hill. He started with a runny nose, and that was all there was going on when he went to bed last night. But at oh 9:30ish began the horrible seal coughing. I am completely unprepared. Here in Washington they LOVE to pass out the narcotics left and right, but try to get something to ease your kids coughing and they look at you like your stupid. It's a good thing I know how much plain old Tylenol to give him, because you can't even call them for dosing instructions. You will be greeted with we don't want you to give him anything, it's best to let him ride it out. My question is how many of you fuckers sit idly by and watch your kid hack his brains out sounding like Phyllis Diller? Enter BFF with the normal doctor there in California. She has all the charts of all the doses that she is willing to share. So now I'm in a quandry because I know if I call the doctor's office they will do two things. First tell me not to give him anything at all. Second tell me to bring him in, and then send me home telling me not to give him anything. Or I can just figure out what the best cough syrup is to give him... Actually that means call Allie and ask her what the best plan of attack is. And then ride it out for a day or two to see where it goes before calling the doc. But I still feel like a bad mom because shouldn't I call the doctor even if that is the response? And then there is the whole other barrel of shit that comes with needing a ride to the doctor what with the guilt trip that unfailingly follows. *sigh* I miss home, and the village that raised me.

***disclaimer***
Parts of this entry may be incoherent due to lack of sleep ;)

Television and motherhood

All the house work is done, here I sit flipping through the channels. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Oooh a marathon of "House"! I've seen that once, I like him. Click.
It's a thin line. What you could and couldn't stomach. And what you can tolerate as a mother. I LOVED scary movies... until Phoenix. Now any of those babies could be him. Gone are the days of "I feel like crap, Court TV all day it is!" Now not only is there a little one that I'd rather not let watch certain things, every little thing means something totally different now. Any, and I mean any, situation can now be morphed into a possibility in our life. It's like there is an "insert child's name here", in every damn title. Okay so I'm watching "House", and in the first fifteen seconds I regret that decision. It was about sick babies. I'll go ahead and spare the details. But alas, I now had to watch the remaining 59 minutes, and forty five seconds minus commercials. I was stuck desperately needing to know that they save the day. Crying for most of the make believe story there in TV land. Why? Because I have a child now. And even though the story would have made me sad before. Once he debuted in the carbon world, this kind of thing wrecks me. Because I put myself in these situations. I drill myself on what I would do, how I would act, and everything else. Let me tell you, I can contort my brain in marvelously strange ways. On it goes until I find something to redirect my focus. Basically, I watch a ton of comedies, they feed my happy.

Even nice dentists hurt

Just got back from having a bothersome tooth pulled. And although my dentist called me hun and kept assuring me that I was doing good, I was still terrified. Because as is the law of Murphy, my teeth were perfect...that is until I know longer had a cushy job and top of the line insurance. So here I sit, terrified. I have had exactly four teeth pulled in my adult life. And I use the term lightly because they were my wisdom teeth, and I was still in college far from adult, and my mommy and brother took me. He said he'd pump my face full of all the Novocaine I wanted, then was shocked when even though the pain wasn't completely gone, I didn't need anymore. I explained about the previous dentist and her aversion to my state health care. You know some people don't care whether you paid your taxes for your whole life, the second you are on aid you are as good as a degenerate crack head who's working the system. He looked genuinely horrified. At any rate, what was left of my poor tooth was not easy to get out and it involved some twisting and pushing and pulling. He apologized throughout the whole endeavor and I left feeling a little better about humanity, even if my face was already beginning to throb and I won't be able to smile again until I have dental insurance. End the end I think it went as well as it could have.