clickmom

don't lie

In a world where we are all surrounded by liars (might need a break from politics) I find it amusing when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a lie.I mean, but now I should just expect every word out of certain people's mouths to be a lie. Fool me once! Or more accurately YOU HAVEN'T FOOLED ME YET! WHY KEEP TRYING?  This latest incident happened when my niece, the daughter of the husband's sister, called me the other day. In an effort to plant a motivating seed in her brain I wondered out loud to her if she and her sister might be the first in their direct line to graduate from college.  I know the husband told me early on that his sister did not graduate from college but I was unsure of their father's status. I thought perhaps he had not finished college to go into the family business, but I wondered if I might be mixing him up with my own sister's husband. 

Then my niece told me her mom did graduate from college.

And that stopped me dead in my tracks. 

Either, the husband did not know that his sister attended and graduated from college or she's lying. 

So, I went online and checked the website of the college she claims to have graduated from. I checked the year she should have graduated and also the following year and she isn't in the yearbook. Now, I had a blast scrolling through those old yearbooks, reliving the days of crazy fashion, big hair and hairspray, but aside from my rather pleasant trip down memory lane, why lie???  We all know how I feel about liars, no time for that shit, and now I look like the awful mean vindictive aunt for blowing her lie when I was trying to be the kind and encouraging aunt. MF. I can not win.

Also, what does it mean when someone rewrites their past like that? It's a bad sign, isn't it? I'm guessing a healthy person would tell her kid, You know what? I didn't graduate from college, I always wished I did, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure you get to. Right?? Isn't that how it should go?

I'm so tired of crazy lying people.

I'm so tired of a lot of things. Like rape-y nominees for the supreme court. Seriously? We are getting a likely alcoholic/most definitely sexual offender for a supreme court justice? Where are the morals? Have we really sunk this low? Does no GOP member wonder what history will have to say about their actions?

Living with someone who has lost the ability to care is wearing on me. I try to instruct the husband to just say things like "Yeah" or "Good point" or even "I hear you" when I'm off on a rage rant over whatever the hell thing trump and the other russian agents are doing to undermine this country and the husband just cannot summon any emotion to care, or even respond as if he does. He was never good at following directions, hard to believe he had a brief stint as a highly functioning adult. Those were the days, though I am starting to question just how highly functioning he was back then. I may have overestimated him. 

I did watch the testimony of Dr. Ford and Brett The (attempted) Rapist the other day. I totally totally get why so many people are feeling triggered by it and am so incredibly thankful to this day and every day for the rest of my life for the wonderful care I got from my Dad's old man friend freudian therapist who helped me to not be in a place where the assaults on me from my youth would affect me by crippling me as an adult. I truly don't feel as if I carry trauma around with me every day. I do have the memories and do acknowledge that every event makes an impression on a person. But I don't walk around from day to day with fears, anger or guilt or even shame and for that I owe a lot to that old man shrink, who did right by an 18 year old girl in distress. 

 

 

Be Kind

 

This fence is right near the high school in new town. It’s that hideous plastic stuff that’s supposed to be low maintenance. For some reason this particular fence is either very dirty or very mildewed. On either case, someone came along one day and wiped out a message in the dirt. In big 4 foot letters they wrote BE KIND. 

Have I told you about this before? 

Every day I’d look over at the message and smile to myself, thinking how we really have to have faith in each other, and how lovely and human it might be if every one was driving with such awareness that not only would they spy the message but respond to it by.... Being Kind. 

On morning, months after the message had been wiped into the mildew, I saw the message had been rubbed away. But every time I see the erased fence these days I remind myself how seeing the message makes me want to go forward in a gentle way with love and respect and you know, kindness. And how maybe, there are other folks thinking the same thing, feeling the same way. I hope. 

instinct

 Today I met my friend from school in the city. I had to walk a long block when I got off the train and a homeless man was stumbling down the block saw me and started to walk towards me. I’m not kidding you when I say that the expression on his face looked like he was amusing himself with plans of how he was going to mess with me.   Without planning this out or even a moments of thought to what I was about to do I stared him down as he approached me and since that didn’t stop him as soon as he got within ear shot I said  “I’ll fuck you up” and the man turned the other way. As soon as I was a safe distance away from the guy I cracked up. I have no idea where that came from or the tough girl accent that it came out with but it was definitely effective in the situation 

shackle

So. My creative process. Not that anyone cares.... yet. Some day. Oh my gosh, some day, someone will connect his blog to the famous photographer and there will be so much to pour through. Or will there? You guys know I don't put the worst things down here. I don't whine and complain here nearly as much as I do in my own head. (And only in my own head for fear of driving the entire world away from me if I do it out loud) and also, for the sake of the privacy of the family members. I mean, adorable kid stories are one thing, but at some point they stopped being kids and now they're almost adults. (25,21, and 17) (Yes, even 25 does not appear to me to be a fully evolved adult, it's like an actor playing a fully evolved adult but still faking it in some areas)  This transition into adulthood takes longer than I realized, however, that being said, it does help me understand some of my own transitional period.

Here is an example. When I was in college I had to live off campus because as a transfer student I was not eligible for campus housing. I lucked out and got a room in a place that had the best location (and also met Pal that way) because it was right downtown and right on the bus line. As a matter of fact, the bus passed our little house on its way to school and we always knew when classes would be cancelled as soon as there was enough snow for the bus to slide backwards down the hill. We would sit in front of the big picture window in Pal's room (which was originally the living room to the house) and cross our fingers and wait.

Everything would have been just fine if I had not been a photography major who needed to spend late nights in the darkroom on campus. Sometimes I'd just miss that 11PM bus back down the hill and have two choices. I could wait an entire hour for the next bus or walk the mile or so down hill and hope none ran me over, abducted, or raped me. I usually hitch hiked or walked because I wasn't quite as fearful back then as I am now. But I didn't like hitching or walking in the middle of the night so I told my folks I had been saving money from all of my off campus jobs to buy a car. My dad said "Good Luck!" and I just assumed that meant he wasn't going to help me, so I searched the paper for used car ads and ended up buying the worst car which broke down completely on my way home from the sellers house. Long story short, it worked off and on for the next two years, I pretty much worked a million campus jobs to pay for the repairs and when I got out of school I gave it to little sis. She was very happy to have a car, but asked me if I had ever cleaned it. Cleaned it? It had never even occurred to me to clean it. 

Fast forward to current time and I asked Matt to give up the car we bought in 2009 because learning to drive on my tank size truck proved too stressful. Matt's in Philly where they are relentless about giving tickets and Matt is not relentless about paying tickets, so we get letters with insane fines on them and it makes me homicidal. Josh really wants a car to have his high school senior kid freedom in so I gently suggested that maybe Matt would like to see what it was like to not have the responsibility of having a car for a while and that's why Josh and I drove to philly to pick it up.

On the way back to new town, each of us in our separate cars now, Josh said he thought that maybe there was a jug of water in the car that he couldn't see because overtime he turned or stopped he could hear a sloshing noise. The day after bringing Matt's car home, I'm gonna name it shackle, which is short for ramshackle, I drove over to the car wash so Josh and I could vacuum it out. Something was all over the floors and I had hoped it was that cancer causing shredded rubber they put in the artificial turf fields which is killing young soccer goalies, but it turned out to be mouse poop. And the sloshing, well... to start with the entire bottom of the car was wet. Anywhere your feet might go- wet. The car mats? Slimy on the bottoms. I threw them in the trash. We vacuum sucked out all of the mouse poop.  We brought it back to the house, put it in the garage because Mat said there was a leak in the corner of the front windshield and watched as little puddles of water formed by both rear doors.  We opened those doors. slosh slosh. We found the water but had no idea how to get it out from inside of the  rear doors. We sprayed organic surface cleaner all over anything that could be sprayed and scraped 9 years of accumulated goo off the cup holders, window interiors, steering wheel, etc... 

The next day I brought it to the mechanic. He was awestruck by level of mouse infestation they had to do clean the entire engine. Anyways, I didn't know there were gutters inside the roof and around the sun roof which could be clogged with pine needles so old they composted into dirt which clog the gutters and cause leaks, but now there is no leaking in the car or car doors. Monday I am taking it to be detailed on the interior. On the one hand I don't want them to charge me extra, but on the other hand I kind of want to ask if they have has-mat suits and can use some anti-bacterial disinfectant with their wet vacs. You know?

If I could go back in time, or if I thought I get an honest read from lil sis, I'd love to be able to compare the level of ruin in Matt's car (I honestly wondered if it was indicative of a mental breakdown) and my own filthy money sucking vehicle of years gone by. 

Oh yeah, this is how that story ended... once my dad got a look the not even close to road worthy thing I had been tooling around in (off and on depending on it's repair schedule) for two years he brought lil sis to a car dealer and bought her a car that was not only reliable but a hot little silver sporty thing. We gave my car to a metal recycler. Hello?

Anyway, back to my creative process. Ah, forget it. I'll write about that tomorrow.

 

why

There is a couple of things that have me on my knees right now screaming WHY? WHY? to the heavens. The big one is that one of sweet pea's buddies from the dog park is having a rare complication of lyme disease called Lyme Nephritis. It's simply lyme disease causing kidney failure. It's almost always fatal and I just don't want to believe that this kind of unfairness is happening right now. This pup is 3 years old with big brown eyes that could melt diamonds. If you were making a toy dog you could use this girl's eyes as a demonstration. Seriously, she looks up at me and it's everything I can do not to scoop out every treat in my treat bag and give them all to her. She is lovely sweet adorable dog, and also one of sweet peas favorites. I call them "The Mischief Sisters" because whenever I'm walking with her owner the dogs disappear for a while and when we call them back the two return, striding side by side with the guiltiest sweet faces. I want to hug her and yell DON'T DIE! DON'T DIE!  But you know, it's not about me. Which is something I often find myself saying when I am sad over someone else's loss. I have been trained by my childhood to deflect attention away from myself. Children should be seen and not heard. Fly under the radar. I'd do anything in my power to save this dog's life.

The other WHY? WHY? WHY? thing is my own thing. I've been struggling the whole summer with terrible heel pain. I finally went to the chiro past week for relief. He didn't help it. I mean, basically, no relief. I went back this week and I said I thought maybe I had a torn achilles tendon and he said he was afraid of that too. I gotta see someone. It's bad. It's undeniably bad and the pain is that horrible burning pain, which I am not used to feeling in any of my other pain experiences- except maybe that c-section I endured without the benefit of anesthesia, but that burn of being sliced open was the thinnest searing hot sensation and this one is broader and comes on with pulsating waves which stay for longer. Now here is the issue: I will have to see an MD doctor to get properly diagnosed and also probably have to have an MRI (according to the chiro). I don't particularly want to do either of these things. We all know I have trust issues when it comes to western medicine. And I just don't want to lie on an MRI machine. I really don't. Also, the first thing they're going to do to me if they think I have a tear is stick my foot in one of those crazy boots and tell me to stay off my feet. Seriously? It's finally going to be less than hotter than hell outside and all I have been dreaming about this hot wet summer is cool fall days of photographing before the trees are bare and now I'm going to have to spend them in a boot? Off of my feet? Lord, give me the strength. Yesterday I was literally bawling my eyes out while driving back from the chiropractor. I'm not the stay off your feet and wear a boot type.

Speaking of crying.... I saw the movie BlacKKKlansman and also cried my eyes out over that. I wasn't alone. There was another woman bawling so hard she couldn't even stand up when the movie was over. Eventually the sadness turned to anger and the next day I volunteered at the local democratic phone bank to call people and remind them to vote in the mid terms. I'm going to do that every Tuesday until election day. I don't want to be one of the kind of person who complains and does nothing.