clickmom

getting me a driver

Technically this post could be part two from yesterday's post.

So, this morning the cloud cover was so thick that it was practically dark when I left for the woods at 7:30.  I didn't bring my camera kit, thinking I'd go out and walk the streets shooting for another series I have been contemplating- which works for cloud covered days when I am not shooting the dappled light of the woods.

So, I give sweet pea a good walk, come home, goof around a bit, switch out the tripod plate on the bottom of my camera for a camera strap, cause I'll be walking down those shady covered street, and glance out the kitchen window on my way out.  Suddenly I scream "Is that a shadow!!" because, HEY HO!  It's sunny out there!! I kid you not.  So, I take sweet pea to a wooded path (I've been wondering how it looks these days) close by and while we are shooting.....  Yup.  Clouds kind of half way roll in, which doesn't give the same light as a fully cloudy sky which isn't what I wanted anyway because now (or rather, soon) it's sun for woods and shade for streets..

So, I tell myself I will just go out and shoot to see how it is, because I haven't fully planned out this project.  So, I take off with sweet pea on the leash down the streets and quickly realize that this isn't gonna work so well.  First of all this town is not completely sidewalked.  Secondly, I am happy to report that despite my long held suspicions that our house is being targeted by idiots who throw their car trash out of the window, I now see that there are people getting it a lot worse than we are.  Seriously!  Who the fuck is driving down residential streets throwing wrappers, bottles and cans out of their vehicles?  It's like living in a post apocalyptic world where there are no rules of decency.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the sun came out, ruined my photos and toasted me in my fleece.  Also, this town is too spread out for me to be doing this on foot and why walk if I can't bring sweet pea along?  It's going to take much planning and maybe even a driver.  I'm thinking of hiring Evan to drive me around while I take photos out of the car window.  It's more how I see those homes anyway, except I am normally the driver.  Yeah, that is totally what I am going to do! This is a great idea.  Thanks internet! 

Gotta go see what Evan thinks of this.

 

 

straddling the fence

I think a lesson life is trying to teach me (the hard way) is to be flexible.  I am not flexible. Not so much in the big deal things and not even so much in the little deal things.  I am a planner and I like to be prepared.  HAHAHAHA  I always walk around acknowledging that we make these maps for our lives and changing them is so incredibly difficult.  But now, I must step into that place, which I am unfamiliar with, that place of grace and surrender and and recognize that I can not control the things which I can not control.

(Sound flaky?)

Try having your husband of almost 30 years being diagnosed with a variety of brain diseases (because the diagnosis keeps changing) all of which are incurable,  fatal and the only treatment available is for palliative care- OR maybe not.  Because when it comes to the brain they just do not know.  I get that. But now, I do not know.  And a girl can not plan and prepare for things which she does not know are coming down the pike.  The are no tests for the living, only tests for the dead, and seriously??  Does it matter once you're dead?  Yes, if you have three kids.  Fuck you life.  (Insert middle finger gesture)

Also, there are the little things.  Since we have barely had a passing cloud (Hello drought!) in months, I decided that this fall would be my time to embrace the sun and hone my currently nonexistent passion for photographing on sun drenched days.  I bought a book last fall in Philly of sun drenched landscapes and it is inspiring.  I have been leafing through it trying to get in touch with something inside of me that embraces the brilliant light.  I made sure both camera batteries were charged and then I checked the 10 day forecast.  Not a single sunny day in sight.  OK, I told myself, just stay in soft light mode.  This morning I woke up in the dark (I hate you short days!) and clicked on the TV news on to hear good weather news!  There would be sun this morning changing to clouds in the afternoon. Hurray, right? I skipped downstairs to let sweet pea out only to peer into the strange half committed fog. Well, I love fog!  Hurray for fog!  I will take fog photos!  Then on my way to the woods the fog appeared and disappeared four times.  I brought my kit to the woods because I had decided that I would photograph (and enjoy it dammit!) no matter what, but since there was no fog, and only thick woods darkening clouds, when I arrived I decided to leave my kit safely at my friend's place while I first took sweet pea for a quick social spin.  Well, don't you know what happened, half way through our walk? The sun came out, I was thrilled!  Hurray for sun! Embrace the light!! I went back to the friend's (she lives across the street and I was parked in her driveway) got my camera kit and dashed back to the park, aaaaannnndd, it was overcast again.  The weather can bite me.  BITE ME WEATHER!!  I photographed anyway.  And I posted my favorite of the day on instagram where the world's super nicest visiting professor to my grad program liked it. So, Hurray for overcast.  By the time I finished photographing I was emotionally exhausted.

And by emotionally exhausted I mean, more emotionally exhausted than the empty shell of a human being/zombie, one foot on the panic side of the fence and one on the sadder than sad side, I have been walking around as for the past 4.5 months.

turning

So I'm thinking that maybe my luck is turning around.  For the longest time all I had to do was make a plan and the universe would intervene and rip that plan to shreds.  I'm not kidding.  But it looks like things are starting to (caution here!) possibly go my way.  It started one day when I was planning on photographing.  I planned on taking sun light drenched inspired shots so I dragged my heavy bag of gear the woods and Boom!  Completely overcast.  For about 15 minutes and then sure as shit the sun came out.  I was kind of astonished, because normally, I'm singing that old song When I want rain, I get sunny weather.....  But this was a happy surprise.  Then yesterday I went into the city because Peanut asked to meet me there.  Part of me suspected that she was being sent as a messenger of the group to make sure I wasn't completely falling to pieces.  I had to take the commuter train into the city and two subways to get to the Whitney.  Not only did I magically sit in the train car which was right where I needed to get off but I didn't have to wait more than 60 seconds for any of the trains.  Then after a lovely day I ended up needing to take 3 trains back to the commuter rail and the same thing happened!  All 3 showed up as soon as I hit the platform and I got out right where I needed to be.  Then I got a forward facing seat for the ride home near relatively pleasant people.  At least the two ladies sitting close to me did not have that shrill loud grating nag-voice Long Island accent which makes me want to stab someone in the throat.  (Yeah, that lady was screeching into her cell phone in the commute in)  AND here is the biggest factor in my luck turn around.  A bird totally shit on my purse- which as everyone knows, is good luck to be bird shat upon but if a bird has to bestow you with luck, to aim it at your easily wiped off no harm done leather purse is a pretty lucky thing in and of itself, don't you think?

Yeah, good things are coming down the pike.  I just know it!! 

So, I see that I forgot to mention the day when I went ape shit crazy at some kids who were speeding down my street (everyone speeds down my street) with 9 kids crammed into a little car and one kid sitting on the open window with his arms spread out over the roof of the little car.  They were driving two cars behind me, and since both the kids in the tiny little Kia clown car and the SUV directly behind me were riding the bumper of the car in front they were close enough to my vehicle that my eye was caught by something odd in the side view mirror which happened to be the body of the boy who was 75% out of the car as it sped up the street. All I had to do was ask myself what I would want someone to do if Evan was doing that and I stopped my car right in the middle of the street, got out o my vehicle and marched back to tell the kids to get back in the car, except when I saw them illegally and dangerously piled in there I lost my cool. I stood there gesturing and screaming DO YOU WANT TO KILL YOURSELF?  THAT IS HOW YOU END UP KILLED!  And maybe some other unintelligible stuff because I was freaking out as if it was Evan doing that. I thought my brain was going to fly out of my head when the driver looked at me and said "I've done nothing wrong" since he was driving the car with 5 kids crammed into the backseat and 4 in the front and his idiot friend hanging on for dear life out the window.  Then the kids pulled into the other lane and drove around me and off down the road.  The lady who was in the SUV between us asked me if I knew them and I said NO and then some other crazy shit and I called 911 to see if the police could stop and warn them and I in such a state that I didn't even recognize my own voice (seriously, I never heard the voice that came out of my mouth during that call to the cops) while trying to relay the stupidity of these kids to the cop, who probably didn't do a damn thing about it even though I gave him their license plate number.

Had any of my family witnessed this incident it would surely go down in history, right along with that time I clubbed the world's most irritating upstairs neighbor with the husband's golf club, as a really hilarious story about how insane I can be.

Children will be the death of me.

Today I purposely befriended a woman whose daughter is now her son.  I have some research to do.

whole other thing

Well, it is getting pretty chilly at night and I take that to be a personal slap in the face reminder that summer is on it's way out and that my least favorite season- any time snow is possible- is upon us.  As if I needed another reason to be sad! 

Yesterday I totally got my panties in a wad when I was stuck in "traffic" (bumper to bumper situation that develops around the world's most ridiculous corner and 4 way stop sign situation next to a triangular island which sides traffic- leading to two more sign signs) equals stop and go traffic every time more than a dozen people leave their homes at the same time.  The dude in front of me was in a convertible and I realized that the display where his GPS should be was moving- so I leaned forward and figured out that the guy had his cell phone propped up over the GPS display and was live streaming and watching some news program while he was supposed to be driving!  I know, in-fuck-credible!!  Am I right? Anyway, the driver in front of Mr. TV Watcher got to the stop sign, but since Mr. TV Watcher's eyes (I could see in his rearview) were downcast watching tv he didn't realize it was the stop sign and he slowly inched into the intersection after the rightful turn taking car and narrowly avoided being T-boned by the car who was taking it's next rightful turn only because the rightful turn taker was paying attention and slammed on his brakes.  I did manage to shoot Mr. Good Driver a gesture of sympathy as he drove by making his own WTF? gestures to anyone who may have witnessed the TV Watching Guy's illegal stop sign slide through.

Then, it just gets worse, Mr TV got on the highway and immediately slipped into the left lane and sped away.  I lost him.

Later in the day I accidentally set off the house alarm and then Evan didn't know the alarm code when the alarm company called and so the police showed up.  After I showed the cop my driver's license to show her how I am the homeowner (or should say Mortgage Payer) I told her about TV Guy and showed her the video I took from my car and she said she would stop by his place and let him know there was a citizen complaint.  Hopefully this will scare the dude on to safety before something tragic goes down.  I always imagine a mini van full of kids when I see someone doing dangerous stuff and that gets my blood boiling.  It's one thing to hurt yourself but a whole other thing to hurt a mini van full of kids. 

 

bear

We spent 24 hours in utopia this weekend.  As if seeing the eagle wasn't the best way to finish off the summer I got to see the bear yesterday! And by the bear I mean one of the bears that people who are close to the woods get to see all of the time, but I don't because of my fortunate location in a relatively bear free (except for that one time when bear bait totally offered me up as dessert) spot.  I am not complaining.  I got to see this one from the safety of my vehicle, which can be used in a jam both as a weapon and as an escape against bear attacks.  The bear, which I think was one of the baby bears, was on the road digging through someone's trash can, much the way deedee the slut, my freshman year college roommate, used to dig through my clothes, by tossing anything that was not of interest over her shoulder and reaching into the bin for more.  Have I ever mentioned the time I walked into my dorm room to see deedee doing just that? Let's just say it's not something endearing which makes a girl want to get matching tattoos, which deedee thought was a brilliant idea but luckily I have the jew card in my hand, so I eased my way out of that one.  Whew.

Back to the bear.  As if seeing a bear on the road (and not in my bushes) wasn't fabulous enough, I also got to have a nice swim with the sentry, and privately (everyone else was fast asleep) enjoy a morning thunderstorm from the covered screened in porch. (Well, until the blowing started, this storm was a windy one)

Sometimes the universe is on my side, as it was this weekend with the bear and the storm and also the warm weather which afforded me the bravery of jumping into the lake even though it's starting to lose some major warmth by this time of year.

Something for sure is going on with me. I think it might be Lyme's.  It would not be a surprise for me to have it considering the amount of time I spend in the woods. One time over the summer I thought I was feeling a tick on my butt.  Not having anyone to ask about it, (the husband is half blind) I pulled it off myself and then immediately lost it in a stream of water and never even saw what it was, but I can tell you that it was tiny and hard and stuck to my butt.  What else could it be? The reason I think I have lyme is because 1. I am dead tired these days.  I could easily take a two hour nap every day if not for  reason 2. every joint in my entire body feeling like it's bone on bone.  Normally my knees are my one and only complaint but right now my knees are on fire, my hips ache, as do my shoulders and my neck feels like I have been whiplashed or something.  I even feel like my ribs hurt. I want to pull the blankets over my head and cry.  Tomorrow I am seeing the gyno for my yearly and I know he'll order up that test for me if I ask him and I intend to ask.

The other person I am seeing tomorrow (probably) is Matt.  I absolutely hate it that he lives so far away and never sees me.  That sort of thing should be illegal.  Really.  I didn't give up my own life when he was born just to be abandoned!  Isn't this the time when parents and children start to become friends?  My friend lives 2.5 hours away.  This sucks.  I Fing hate it.

Pretty much my level of respect for a person is directly parallel to the absence of foot pictures on their Facebook feeds

The only way for me to express to you how much I hate the word "foodie" would be through some sort of modern dance performance with heavy drumming and ear splitting mechanical sounds for music that ended with the dancer killing herself in a messy and violent fashion involving being able to rip her own guts out and stomp them into the ground before dramatically spreading her arms and legs out to be broken by the real devil and then collapsing into a squishy heap of body parts that automatically smelled like it had been lying in a hot bog during a sunny spell for about a week. I might be downplaying my hatred here but that's all I have come up with so far. Also, your photos of food wouldn't pass a discount diner menu standard, so freaking stop! People make livings by doing weird shit to food in order to make it photograph as appetizing and you do not have that ability. Also, we all freaking eat, and according to me people who call themselves "foodies" are mostly people who just eat out most of the time for what ever reason and need to share their dining loneliness. Stop. Just make a post which says "Hey! I like to eat a variety of food, who wants to be adventurous with me? No phone photos, promise." and have an authentic person to person experience.

Almost rivaling my hatred for the faux word "foodie" would be taking photos of one's own feet. I did it once in college with a couple of friends, and it was only a photo of our shoes in a circle on the pavement yet I was so nauseated by the whole ordeal. Now it is a very unfortunate "thing" to such an extent that there are trends. Holy, poke my eyes out please. Worse than feet in shoes? Feet without shoes. If I lived the next 50 years without seeing a photo of someone's hideous toes on a beach I would live a happy and fulfilled life. Nothing says "I'm living such a miserable life that on the one day which appears to be nicer than most I photographed my crusty knobby toes to make it all seem worthwhile." like one of those photos from the beach. Please. Do. Not. Pretty much my level of respect for a person is parallel to the absence of foot pictures on their Facebook feeds.

Guess who had a bad experience with another specialist yesterday?

This one was a neuro-psychologist who tried to convince us that all of the husband's problems are from sleep apnea, diabetic recklessness and depression. After spending a few hours testing the husband and another couple talking to us this was his takeaway. Then as we stood to leave his office he remarked "Of course this wouldn't explain symptoms A,B and C, I don't know about them." Guess what else! I did not turn around and punch his little howdy doody face, and for that I am proud. But I am still incredibly frustrated and I wish I could find the contract that all of the doctors signed which says every one of them will try leading us toward a different diagnosis and burn it. It almost feels like someone is trying to pull a prank on us, except for the part where the husband is genuinely going down hill and we are wasting time chasing down too many paths.

It was unfortunate because earlier in the day I had met a pit bull puppy with a very sweet young man owner and I was all happy warm and cuddly after falling in love with the puppy. Damn doctor spoiled the mood!

ready for a good time mouth

My big disappointment of the summer (hahahaha, like there was only 1!) was not seeing any eagles.  They nest in the cliffs over the lake and normally I see them circling the lake looking for fish at least a few times a summer.  I headed up to utopia yesterday with every intent to clean the hell out of the house and did just that for a few hours until my back, which has been bothering me for a few days now, called uncle.  While goofing around waiting to see if the back was going to truly revolt or not I checked my email and saw that the old lady (they call it a swim group) "chat and float" planned on meeting this morning, so I replied that I would attend their Monday "swim." Guess what I saw during the swim!  Not only did I see one of the larger eagles circling the water, but I also got to watch him dive down and grab something out of the water.  

It was a good morning.

Also, because I did manage to swim despite the chilly entry and one lady who literally floated in one place while riding a swim noodle horse back style the entire 45 minutes we were in the water.  I'm pretty sure a great thing for me to do would be to commit to swimming laps at the Y all winter long.  I'm thinking about it.  I told one woman, with whom I swam a long distance about 4 years ago, that she should swim all winter too so we could do another 2.5 mile swim next summer if I am still around.

I did get a decent amount of cleaning down despite my aching back.  I did things that are probably not noticeable to anyone but me, like replacing all of the window screens that the painter left out of the windows when he painted last fall.  I also scrubbed every toilet, including the outside toilet, which I did not scrub last summer so it had two years of nature clinging to it.  Not any more!  It glistens now.  I vacuumed and mopped, which are the big back killers for me.  But lordy lord, that place needed to be de-haired and de-grimed.  You can't just mop it by swishing water around either, I did a scrubbing mop because .... if you want the job done right, do it yourself! I cleaned the stove for the only time this summer, and also the greasy hood underbelly for the first time ever- and that was disgusting.  

Tomorrow it is back to school for the kids.  I labored on labor day, and that seemed fitting.  Now I am going in search of prescription strength OTC painkillers, which thanks to my always ready for a good time mouth I have bottles of in just about every purse I ever carried. 

the sads

Well.  I left a message for one malpractice lawyer and sent an email to another.  We will see what happens with them.  As soon as I know if there is anything going on there I do intend on filing a report with the hospital.  This bad doctor can not go on talking to women the way he spoke to me.  It was Trump-like and he was so busy being a (silly threatened by my obvious higher than average (wink wink) intelligence) bitch to me that he ended up ENDANGERING  the husband's life.  Scum bag.  Really if the world was a fair place that bad doctor would get smacked upside the head every time he spoke with such disregard and bizarrely paranoid unwarranted suspicion that eventually he would figure out that it is not only unprofessional to be dismissive to a caring family member but in some cases the person who spends 24/7 with he patient knows what is up!!  Seriously dude! I am smarter than a doctor.

a n y w a y s

I have the sads again today.  My grandmother used to say she had the blues.  I could call this the blues, except for me the visual image of the blues is not sad at all but rather lovely, so the sads is way more accurate.  Because there is nothing lovely in the way I feel today.  I feel like a slug, barely moving and wishing it was just time to go to bed so I could start over again tomorrow.  I think part of my problem today was that I did not walk sweet pea this morning.  Its crazy how much I need to wake up and immediately get my ass in gear.  But this morning I was waiting for a bug guy to come because it appeared that over the summer a wasp family made itself at home in a crack in the trim around the outside house which was right on the divider between the ceiling of Josh's room and the floor of the attic.  In any case, the wasp family somehow found a passage into Josh's room and by the time he finished his camp counselor in training odyssey of the summer there were dozens of dead wasps sprinkled all over the window sills of his bedroom.  I was hoping they were bees, so we could just have them relocated to the backyard, where we could feast on their honey, but alas, no such luck.  They were paper wasps.  So I called some guy and he came over, stuck a ladder up the side of the house, sprayed something powdery into the crack and charged me about $120 dollars more than what I could have paid had I known how easy it would be and went to the hardware store for a can of wasp spray powder and made Evan climb a ladder.  Oh well.  In the future, I can be a do it yourself-er if we get another wasp party hanging around.

The other thing I am going to take a stab at being a do it yourself-er about is mowing the lawn.  But only if we do manage to sell utopia.  If I get another summer in utopia I don't think I want to come back down here to mow, but if I am stuck in hell new town for the summer I am totally going to mow it myself.  I'm going to embrace being broke so well no one will recognize me.  I am so tired of paying people to do things that I could technically do if I wasn't so lazy it's shocking even to me.  Although, in my defense when we moved to stepford to begin with I asked the husband when we were going to buy a lawn mower and he informed me that he worked hard enough during the week to pay someone to mow the lawn and I asked him if he would pay someone to keep me company when he was off working so hard to pay a lawn guy- so in my heart I have always been a do it yourself type of person living the princess life which is what the husband wanted. That was fun while it lasted!  Starting with my next house, all future homes from now on will have no maintenance landscaping, which means pretty much I plan on living in the woods surrounded by weeds, but that is okay with me!! 

Sometimes I wonder if I could get my mind wrapped around city living again. Obviously it would be a bummer for sweet pea, but one day I might want to land in a place where I can just run to the corner and get what ever I might need.  Also, so much easier for old people to live in apartments and not have to worry about cars or lawns and other such suburban stuff.

opening a can of bad karma

The husband had a lumbar puncture today.  I have no faith that this invasive test will provide any answers for him.  I went along with the doctor's because doctor's have fragile egos and if I said it wasn't necessary then they may have said they couldn't work with us.  Oh yeah, I still need to get that mother F-ing doctor (who told me he could not see the husband's bulging eyes and that he did not have a cardiac issue and that I could not stop him from discharging the husband) in trouble.  That was when the husband was in congestive heart failure, yeah.  Asshole.  Smug patronizing condescending asshole. That incompetent idiot has no idea how lucky he is that I drove the husband straight to another hospital where they took care of him and saved his life.

Nothing changed and I am still cranky as can be today.  But feeling somewhat hopeless.  This unknown degenerative neurological disease story is getting to me big time.  I think it's the unknown aspect. You can't batten down the hatches and protect yourself from an enemy you don't know is your enemy.  

I'm going to call a couple of malpractice lawyers right now and see if I can get some retaliation.

 

bummed and bums

As soon as I got back to new town I ambled over to the side of the yard where the neighbor's apple trees are and there was not a single apple to be seen.  I am so bummed.  I heard that the early spring weather this year brought out the blossoms early and then the freeze in February killed them off.  I guess for the neighbor it killed every single one of them off.  Not one freaking apple.  I even scanned way up high where all the lawn rats (deer) couldn't even reach them.  Nothing. Dammit.  What the hell kind of fall am I supposed to have if it can't include the thrill of stealing apples off of the neighbor's tree?  Seriously! 

In other news sweet pea had a big reunion with her dog friend, piper, today and it was just as sweet as I could have imagined it to be. Both dogs were ridiculously happy to see each other and then we walked together and they barely played because they (choking back the tears) aren't puppies any more.

I talked and talked the entire time because my life sucks more, even though my friend, piper's owner, is recently divorced from a dude who decided he didn't agree with what the divorce settlement says he needs to pay up each month and just pays the much less amount which he feels is fair.  I know too many guys like this!  They make families and then they decide they want out with no responsibility.  Bums.

I'm starting to fantasize about spending some time living in a van.  I guess what this really means is that I don't want to be committed to a place.  My guess: I made a bad decision by choosing new town (for me, it worked out great for the kids) and now once Josh is out of high school in three (hopefully) SHORT years I will for sure (unless the husband is deep into disease or something) want to find a place where the people are more grounded and I might have some trust issues with my town choosing abilities, so I guess living in a tricked out camper van could give me time to get to know another place without committing.  Also, you could never live in new town in a van because the police would be knocking on your van every time you parked.  It would be cuh-razy and if I tried to live here in a camper van the people of new town would band together to pass ordinances just to make it impossible for me.  I hate them back even though me and camper van would be outta here so fast they wouldn't even be able to get all the letters from my license plate down before my taillights were a faint glow in the distance.  

This won't be an issue if I win the lottery (keeping utopia!) or win the DYI blog cabin.  While living practically below ocean level in the blog cabin is not my ideal because I would rather not have to row row row my way to the grocery store each day, I think I could tolerate a short stint in gloriously sunny and warm florida and not pay taxes while I decide where to eventually land.  I know I am picky, but here is the current list of future town requirements: at least 10 feet above ocean level, not where earth quakes are currently common or predicted (sorry entire northwest coast), not where mud slides or gigantic uncontrolled brush fires happen, no alligators, and most obviously, on a lake or at least really large pond.  I almost forgot, the weather should be milder than it is in fracking new england.  I am done with slipping in the ice.  Evan keeps telling me I should move to north carolina, but we'll see what is trending 3 years from now when this might be (but who knows?  Has a plan I ever made been carried through?  That would be UNLIKELY) something I might in some alternate universe where I get to make that plans that come to fruition- get to have my own say in.