clickmom

40,370

I'm baaaaack! And it feels pretty good. I'm not writing as fast as I was before but I am writing! I am doing a lot of looking back, need to occasionally add in a detail here and there but basically, I am (cautiously) over the block. Ending the book (even though technically I am in the middle of it) is proving to be much trickier than beginning the book. It's fine.

Also, I have started to photograph again. Hurray for me. Unfortunately now that everything is blooming I recall why photographing in my favorite park is something I don't do in the summer- excessive underbrush. I can barely see five feet into the woods in some areas there is so much low level bushy stuff. Good thing I found a new woods to focus on....

Also, I heard from a junior high school friend today because she needed someone to tell her 13 year old daughter what she was like at 13 for a school project. So when I was finished describing my friend to the daughter I chatted with my friend and she told me how she remembered me, as a great source of positivity. She said that she didn't feel that way as a kid and she really needed to get it from me. She said I helped her feel like everything was going to be alright. it was such a nice thing to say to me that I chose not to ask her if she was saying it for real or to cheer me up since I had just told her about the bad luck/health curse which has befallen my family. I'm going to pretend that I am just this little ray of light brightening the lives of everyone I meet.

hahahahaha

My SIL might disagree. I sent her a snippy text today after she texted me for the hundredth time that she "feels awful, useless and helpless." I told her that the husband's illness wasn't about her. Note: When my other SIL asked her to give my dying BIL his pain medication in order to make her feel HELPFUL she gave him two doses and turned to me and said "I feel like all I do is give him medicine." Some people will never be happy.

38,967

I wrote about 1,200 words tonight.

I really want to have this book written so I can commence the rewriting and editing! 

It's been so hard to make myself work.  I did take some photos today. I'm trying to nudge my creativity back into place. I really wish I felt inspired because my fear is that if I force anything it will end up being no good. I feel like a big whiner.

looping

Ok. So it was another freaky dream night last night and I am going to spare details and try to get this down as painlessly as possible

Dream one: I think I need to sage the evil spirits out of Josh's room after this dream. I dreamed I was on a nearly empty train with Josh and I was sitting one row in front of him so we could both lie down across the seats. I sat up and looked back at Josh only to see an evil presence disguised as a young boy standing next to Josh with it's back against the window and hiding behind a curtain. I tried to scream to threaten the evil boy spirit and also to warn Josh but I couldn't hear myself making any sound, so panicked I tried harder and harder to scream to no avail. Then I woke up so deep in hysterics it took me solid hour to fall back asleep.

Dream two: Evan has a hidden kitchen in his bedroom and he opens the fridge to show me how he can rearrange the shelves into a spiral staircase and he climbed up and through the ceiling. I climbed a few steps, noticed that there was a real set of usable stairs above the ceiling of Evan's rom and entered into the open area which led to a series of rooms. The rooms were filled with my old things, I noted bookshelves of various shapes and sizes and bedding. I longed for that dream bedding. I wanted to have it on my bed every night. Some critter had been in the bedding and I found a cute little hedge hog and thought I should find someone to claim it as a pet. As I wandered through my past reflected in these things I saw a desk lamp turned on, so I went over to click it off.  I heard the loud click of the light and my eyes fell upon a young man in the next room lying on a bed watching television. I froze in fear. Should I run? He was living in my house, so he was the one in the wrong. Would he kill me to avoid getting caught? I didn't know what to do. Also, I wondered how I had never heard him up there or seen the light through the attic window. 

Then I woke up with Every Morning by Sugar Ray playing on a loop in my head.

In other news, I burned myself twice today! Once with boiling water while making coffee this morning (It's my bird flipping finger) and then again by touching my forearm onto the 450 degree handle of the sauce pan I had just carefully removed from the oven for dinner. I want to cry. 

So, I wandered around the woods this morning with a bag of ice tucked into my poop bag/dog treat/tissue bag and every time I stuck my bird finger in there to cool it off all the dogs thought I was going for a treat so they paid me some attention. It was kind of funny. Then my Columbian friend told me that his mother always said to rub the burned part of you in your hair, which I tried, and it probably didn't make my finger feel better but looking so ridiculous brought a smile to my face. 

 

pshaw

I can recall sitting in the dark photo lecture room during my intro to photography class when the instructor said "It's all about the light. If you don't have the light, don't make an image." It was as if he had unlocked the mysteries of the universe for me. That statement was my game changer. 

It's been quite the dry spell here since the BIL got very sick and then died. My creativity is at ZERO. It's something I can't fake, can't force out of myself. But I started to carry my camera again and I shot a bit the last couple of days, so I think my passion isn't going to return with a big rush overnight but rather a hint or glimmer here or there.  The other thing I haven't done is write my book. I did do a smidgen of writing one day and now my grand total word count is up to about 38,000.  It makes me sad to think that if I had continued to write at the same pace I started writing at I would be sitting here with a complete novel.  Everything in it's time, right? You can't rush genius. (wink wink) 

I took sweet pea for her yearly physical today and the vet ran her hands over sweet pea and said "Wow, she's in great shape!" I didn't say Damned straight! or I kill myself for that kind of recognition! or anything else, I just smiled, like a normal pleasant woman who isn't insanely over the top in love with her dog and willing to forgo just about anything to take her sweet pea for super long hikes in the woods.

I really do think I am fighting some depression here. I've been crying a lot. Mostly in the car when I am blissfully alone. I just want to be alone practically all of the time. I am never alone. I feel a bit guilty about this but I am so worn out from taking care of everyone else... I feel like I could curl up in a ball and just stop- stop talking, stop doing, stop trying, stop caring. 

I think that in addition to my BIL's death, the whole diagnosis rejection thing has really rocked my world. I just want a name for this special brand of hell the husband's disease is putting through and some general guidelines for what horrendous-ness awaits him. I could be wrong, stop back in a year is fucking bullshit. In the world where I make the rules any doctor who said that would be back in school taking a HOW TO TALK TO PATIENTS AND THIER CAREGIVERS LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN 101 class. 

The woman in front of me at the check out today rubbed me so wrong that I was practically homicidal by the time it was my turn. First she was wearing runners clothes when she clearly had not been on a run.(perfectly pulled back hair and makeup)  Second she had her thumbs looped into the thumb holes that runners jackets have for when you run on crisp morning and don't want to wear gloves. Third: She had perfectly manicured too long to be practical finger nails which she was rubbing neurotically against her face while she watched the check out lady bag her food because what freaking princess would ever bag her own damned food? Fourth she had a stiff and uncomfortable Kate Spade bag across the chest of her perfectly ironed running outfit from which she pulled her car keys and the little LV credit card holder key chain, so she could slip her debit card out to pay. Fifth she completely ignored the check out lady until she walked off and then said something over her shoulder. Believe me there something was something condescending and judgmental about it. 

Wound tight? Who me? Pshaw! 

 

Made my day

catch up

So, I feel like I may have you hanging in the breeze with no resolve on a few things dear reader. SO, Let me catch you up a few things.

1. The husband of the very interested client for utopia has not been back to see the house. (yet. still have hope- just a wee bit though) Some lame excuse about the weather, but it barely rained the day he was supposed to come. His representative has a "don't call us we will call you" attitude, so I think I might have to go full steam ahead with my non profit idea. In a perfect world I could earn a salary off of running the non profit and it could be an actual career move for me. In a perfect world! 
2. OH MY GAWD  I swear this is true. I got so worked up over that woman's post about the take home lesson of getting a ticket/towed while using her hand held phone in the car while driving was to have a valid insurance in the car that I went back on to set her straight and she had removed the post. Someone must have schooled her before I got there. However, not long after, she posted a post asking if anyone (I swear this is true) had a helicopter she could borrow. This is the kind of shit I couldn't make up, but am totally willing to take notes on for future use in some other book about living in this type of neighborhood with these types of people.
3. My knees, hips and shoulders are still aching every minute of every day. The chiro said I was testing insanely high for inflammation (stress induced, no doubt) and that the one thing which tested as helping me was fish oil. I am taking a ridiculous amount of fish oil, and my skin is so freaking soft, I can't keep my hands off of myself. Really, I could stroke my baby smooth elbows all day and night. I am fearful of smelling like a sushi bar because that is exactly what happened when my one friend's big old labrador died and she gave the salmon oil to our other friend who had a little 15 pound terrier and that little terrier did end up smelling like salmon because she fed him the same dose as the big old lab. His hair sure was soft though!
4. The specialist in FTD doesn't think that what the husband has is FTD. Fuck my life. He offered no other alternatives, and said he is sometimes wrong we should return in year. Bite me, right? Looking the husband's brain scans he said "Yeah, there is definitely something going on, I just don't think this is what it is.." 
5. We were also supposed to go see this doctor who is apparently some kind of prescription writing wizard who can magically adjust your medications to maximize your functioning and he freaking cancelled on us for the second time in a row-we have been trying to get into see him (as per Yale neurologist recommendation) since last August!! I was so angry I was shaking for hours after I hung up the phone with his nurse.

SO this is happened... My BILs memorial service was yesterday. It was a Memorial Tailgate (recall: tailgating was pretty much a religion for the BIL-so completely suitable) and we only stayed 2.5 hours. I kind of wished I was there alone though, because then I would have stayed longer (nice people. great soundtrack playing, tons of insanely good smelling food coming off the grill, and BOOZE!) and probably enjoyed myself. But, you know, I was there with the husband and Evan. Matt drove up from Philly (I suspect in part because he never came to say goodbye to his uncle even though I told him he should) with his new purple hair.  

Matt looked like shit, to be frank. I'm only writing this down because hopefully the boys won't read it until I am dead and by then Matt will think back to his post hipster-college years and his delayed adolescence with the perspective of an adult who is capable of realizing that he looked like shit with insane purple clown hair. For one thing, it did nothing for his skin color, since it was more of a magenta purple which looks good on almost exactly no one ever, let's be real. I discussed my plans of dying my own hair tips blue for the bat mitzvah and then how I was going to cut the blue off a few days later because, let's be real. I am way too old for that kind of look. Matt tried to suggest I might like it and I tried to get him to think about the message bizarre colored hair might send to the public. (Um... I'M A JOKE? or maybe DON'T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY, BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY, I DO NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY...) Then I told him I might be projecting because the one person who I know who does insanely color her hair is in a bit of difficult emotional state right now. I can't recall exactly how I described where this friend is, but at the time I recall thinking I had hit the nail on the head with my word choice. 

I'm really stuck on the fact that I believe I sent a confident hard working kid with unlimited potential off to hipster college and they churned out a child who is lost and distant to his mother and couldn't even manage to renew his driver's license despite my reminders and the fact that he only works a part time job, until more than 3 weeks after it had expired. Not capable of living in the adult world. I am alarmed. 

sacrifice

A
As in "I hope my niece appreciates the sacrifice " because I am about to bleach out and color the ends of my hair this insane blue color for her bat mitzvah.  Big haircut scheduled for 4 days after the celebration. 

hating all over the place

Pretty much as I am driving around day after day (because nothing is close by or convenient in this town) I am raging and cursing behind the wheel at the other drivers. Not because I am aggressively driving but because they are. Or maybe because (not kidding here) at times a full 25% of them are holding the freaking phone in their hands. It makes me furious.

Yesterday as I was going to the Y I came to stop having just missed the turn arrow in the left turn lane. A little silver car went down the right lane, turned left on red in front of my vehicle narrowly missing being t boned by the oncoming traffic (you know, the traffic with the right of way..) And..... that is how it goes here. I tell my kids they have to drive like everyone else just stumbled out of a bar.

Long story short, there was a town Facebook group that I joined because someone told me I should to get news and some overly privileged mom turned it into a bizarre "lifestyle" type page where in you look to her spoiled rich white woman-ness to guide you through all of your gut wrenching clothes shopping decisions that you have you make day in and day out. Women here have it tough! The princess got a ticket today and here was her status update on Facebook: (bold face mine) 

PSA - just got pulled over for using my phone on speaker - they are doing a huge push to stop people from texting or holding phone and driving. Have your updated insurance card in car or you will be towed.

Oh for god's sake!! 

I just couldn't...

could not...

Here is the post I would have commented with if I had some guts...

REALLY? REALLY, SUZI Q? HOW ABOUT LEARN FROM MY SELFISH MISTAKES AND DO NOT USE YOUR HAND HELD PHONE WHILE DRIVING AND PUT OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES IN DANGER. LET'S ALL MAKE A VOW TO BE RESPONSIBLE ON THE ROAD.

 

I hate this place.

 

 

Postal

When my phone forces me into updating the software I just want to go postal on someone. I mean, shouldn't it just ask me?   And let me politely decline? After it harasses me a dozen or so times I will give in and I allow it to update the whole time praying that I recognize on my favorite apps when it's finished. I don't understand why the software engineers at Apple don't realize that for some of us (in the generation I am in) it is practically a hardship to change the way things look. I can't even tell you how long it's been but every time I look at my phone I still try to swipe to turn it on and that doesn't work or hasn't worked in forever. 

 I sat down with my book to look it over and make some improvements last night and I realized that for the last two thirds of it I was really on a good roll and going in the right direction. I've had some good ideas as to how to continue on in the story so tonight I plan on adding in the next chapter. The difference between how I started and how  I need to go forward in the future is that in the future I need to keep a consistent pattern that includes everything I've built in the beginning for consistency. This is way harder than I thought it would be. But in a good way.  It's challenging me and I like that   

rest of my life

I don't know what is going on with me but everything hurts. My knees are on fire, back entire lower back feels like it might crack like a windshield and there is some kind of pinched nerve in my left side jaw. That jaw nerve hurts when I sleep on my right side or when I brush my hair or move my head.  Also, I am exhausted, which might be because I am two weeks in on a detox, but I figured I'd feel light as air and completely giddy by now.  Maybe this time it's all just of life's stress puddling in on me.

Speaking of stress, today is the big day that I have been waiting for for months. Today we get to see THE GUY who specializes in researching the brain disease that they told us at Yale was their best guess as to what is going on with the husband. On the one hand I would like answers, on the other hand there are no happy endings, so the answers will all totally suck and send me down the road to reality, which if I am going to be real about I may have been hiding from as best as I can.

In other news we have a potential buyer for utopia, which makes me sad but relieved. I'm not going to discuss it (pretending that I'm not thinking about it day and night) until there is an actual deal on the table, but I will tell you that I am wearing myself out trying to make plans for either outcome. At this point I don't even know which outcome I would prefer. Mostly it depends where I am when I am wondering about it. If I am not in utopia when I am wondering about it I think I'll be fine and make another special spot somewhere else. If I am in utopia I feel like desperately clinging to the place even if it means not using the lights, or heat and eating nothing but rice and beans for the rest of my life.