Hula your belly.

Toe Pick

Just watched The Cutting Edge with 10. Great movie then, great movie now. My favorite comments from 10-

10: What happened to his girlfriend in the beginning?

Me: Um, she wasn’t really his girlfriend.

10: THEN WHY WAS HE SLEEPING WITH HER?!?!

At the end of the movie…

10: Wait, it’s over? They didn’t even say if they won!

Me: I think it’s assumed.

10: What happens next? How do you know?! I HATE WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW!!!

Nobody gets irate like a 4th grader without a satisfying conclusion.

PS. How sexy is DB Sweeney in that? Right??

Tomorrow my sweet 9 becomes my double-digit grown up 10. She’s so excited.

I might wait until after the weekend to tell her and her brother and sister we are getting evicted.

I’ve spent the last 3 weeks on a mission to get us enough help to stay here. I’ve gotten paperwork, condescension, flat-out rudeness, and enough government bullshit to choke on.

I’ve filled out the same forms over and over, answered the same questions, brought the sum of my existence in bills and ID and letters and papers to person after person, been told contradiction after misinformation after “that’s a different department.”

And now I’ve hit the wall and I’m done and I failed.

I’m so tired. I’m so frustrated. I’ve hollowed myself out and offered myself up to excruciating exposure and judgement.

And it didn’t really matter.

But tomorrow’s a birthday up in here!

So we will party, and we will have fun, and we will figure this out somehow.

But not tonight.

Tonight I’m going to kiss the kids goodnight, and then I’m going to cry.

My pudding brings my boy to the yard

J just found the pudding cups I put in the fridge for the kids.

He grabbed 2, and when I busted him he did a dance to the Batman theme song.

Duh nu nu nu nu nu nu nu SNACK PACK!

Fuck it. He can have all the pudding he wants.

I love that man.

Ramble on

I’m unsettled, and I’m not sure why. Probably I shouldn’t be drinking this coffee.

I’m looking at a framed print on the wall of our living room of the movie Lost In Translation that I got J for his birthday years ago. He loves the movie and the print.

The tag on this particular version is “Everyone wants to be found.”

I would agree with that. But more so, we all want to be sought, to know that someone else is purposefully looking for us.

And that when we are found, we are seen. Truly seen. That we are more than someone else’s needs reflected back to them.

I’ve never felt the need to be popular. I’d rather have a couple close friends, and of course my boy. I’m so lucky to be in love with a man who sees me so clearly that he teaches me things about myself. To know thyself is important, but to be known is the most precious of gifts.

Also, I just noticed that both Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson have double letters in both their first and last names.

I’m going to pretend this means something.

Teenage Dream

findmemaggie said: love this! jeans are so important to a teenaged girl.

I’m beginning to realize that everything is so important to teenage girls. Was I ever this dramatic?

I wasnt, right? RIGHT?!?

Ah, crap.

I’m just going to buy ear plugs until they go to college.

Do we call the cops or ghostbusters?

OMG!!

Someone has stolen 14’s favorite jeans!

It may seem strange that someone else would take them, but they are nowhere to be found, and SHE certainly didn’t move them. We know this because she has conducted exhaustive interviews with everyone else, asking where her jeans are.

Nope! Without the presence of a denim-obsessed burglar, then they would be in the last place she had them. Since they are not there, CLEARLY THIS IS THE WORK OF A NEFARIOUS PANTS POLTERGEIST!

Please pray for our family during this difficult time. Hopefully, we will heal together and one day, learn to love another pair of jeans as we did the others. We can only hope the criminal mastermind behind this vicious crime will be brought to justice before it strikes again.

Or she might find them later after I lock her in her room and throw away the key.

They ain’t heavy, they’re my boobs

Took a shower, then was standing naked in the bedroom trying to figure out what to wear.

Me: (holding a boob in each hand) I wonder how much my boobs weigh.

J: I’d say 3 pounds each.

Me: That’s insanity. Boobs do not weigh that much.

J: Here, slap my face with them and I’ll tell you.

Me: Yeah, I’ll just take your word for it.

J: It’s for science!

Me: I’m leaving now.

J: WHY DO YOU HATE SCIENCE?!

Free wifi at the doctor’s office

Almost makes up for the really bad Muzak and overly loud small talk of the other people in the waiting room. But, Woot! Wifi.

This week has been ridiculous. I was at government services 3 days in a row. We need help. That’s all there is to it right now. We need help. And we are getting bureaucracy, paperwork, and way too many roadblocks because we aren’t married. The utilities are in my name and the lease is in his. So what? But we aren’t married, so the what is apparently a big fucking deal.

I had surgery on my right knee in May from an injury I got at work. The damage was so extensive I was on crutches for 2 months and am still rehabbing. I also now have arthritis, at the advanced age of 33. Because of this, my left knee is screwed up from compensating, and might need surgery.

So the left knee should also be covered by worker’s comp, right? Right. My doc agrees, says I have to call and get the other knee added to the claim. I call. Workers comp says no, the doctor needs to submit a claim and then it gets reviewed and then I have to be evaluated by their independent doctor and by the way this will take months.

Months.

My job can drop me at any time, since they only have to cover me for 6 months, even though I got hurt at work. Also, my comp checks are less than half of what I make.

Also, I’M IN PAIN.

Also, the lights are going to be shut off at any moment.

Also, things SUCK.

Also, I’m super negative right now and that needs to stop. I’m going to take a deep breath and then post something cheery.

Cheery, dammit!

Not so bright eyed, or bushy tailed

I’m sneaking some Internet right now. It’s so good I might start huffing it in a minute.

Slept from 12:30 to 3:30. Up since then. Thanks, brain! Looking forward to passing out like a drunk prom date later.

9 had a sleepover last night. They are passed out in the living room hiding from the sun blazing through the broken blind. All I can see of them are the tops of two little heads under the blankets.

I’m listening for sound or movement, deciding if I should get up and make them hot breakfast on the griddle or let them eat cereal. On one hand, bed. On the other, I would get hot breakfast too. Still deciding.

No Internet sucks. I miss replying to posts, reading them as they come up instead of way after the fact. I miss getting my thoughts out. Are there memes? I DONT EVEN KNOW ANYMORE!

My brother and his fiancé are coming in from Noo Yawk Citay tonight, and I’m stoked! Lots of fam and food, and my folks’ annual S’mores-a-thon in the backyard. We got the big ass marshmallows this year. You know the ones I’m talking about?

BIG.

ASS.

MARSHMALLOWS.

Yeah, you know.

O Hai I has no interwebz

So the Internet and cable got shut off today. Sigh……

I’ll check in when I can, don’t think I’m just not hearting you. I heart you, dammit!

*whispers*

I heart you…..

My bedroom’s rocking

It’s 5 am and J is rustling around in the bedside drawer.

J: Aw, yeah! Found a Snicker.

Me: Baby. For the last frickin’ time, even when there is only one, they are still plural. It’s a Snickers.

J: Snicker, please!

Me: And I give up.

Oh, Universe.

I really, desperately, absolutely want to write about what is going on this summer. 

I can’t. Not in the way I want to, need to.  There is too much at stake, and no matter how anonymous I want to believe I am here, we all know there are ways of finding out who everyone is.  The odds of a tumblr being used against us are small, but when it comes to the safety of our children, J doesn’t want to take any chances.  I am slightly less paranoid, but until we really know what’s going on, better safe than sorry. 

The irony is not lost on me, that I have recently decided to be more open and truthful and now when I really want to, I am hamstrung.

And I hate being all non-specific and mysterious, and I’m not trying to elicit questions or concern or play up any drama. But if I don’t get out what little bits I can, I’m going to lose my shit.

I AM ANGRY.  I am furiously, lividly, hatefully angry.  I am not a person who does well with being angry.  It affects my appetite, my sleep, my hold on my emotions.  I want to feel safe in my home, to not check the chain on the door more than once a night, to be able to rest peacefully when the kids are out playing.

I am hurt.  Devastated, bewildered, disbelievingly so.  The knife is so deep in my back I don’t know that it will ever come out.  I feel so, so stupid and foolish that I was so blind to it for so long.  One day I’m going to be a psychologist. How could I not see what someone had inside them, what they were capable of? I am embarrassed, exposed, stripped raw. 

And this will drag on, and on, and on. Nothing in our legal system moves quickly. Nothing is guaranteed.  

I want to understand.  I want to be in control.  I want to sleep.

To Truth, or not to Truth

Truth is a tricky concept.  Truthful Tuesdays, no less so.

Truth is billed as being both absolute and intensely personal.  Can we have truths that are unchanging and eternal but also those that are small and temporary and fleeting?  Are my truths different from yours?  Is there a truth hierarchy?

We hold up truth as an unshakeable ideal.  If offered a choice, we all tell ourselves we would take the tougher path of truth rather than the easier one of denial.  Everyone wants to fight the matrix, no one ever thinks they would be the ones to take the red pill. (Blue pill?  Fuck it, I don’t remember which bloody pill it is.) But the truth is that truth is hard. And we are not always as strong as we tell ourselves we are.

What is truth?  What are the important truths?  If there are important truths, what are the lesser ones?  How does any of this matter on Tumblr?

It matters because one of my truths is that truths are hard for me to share.  All that openness and exposure and weakness all flopping around out there for the world to see. Yikes. 

But that is partly what I wanted a Tumblr for.  For MY truths.

So I am going to try to be a little more honest, a little more open with the things that are hard for me. The things that are part of me, regardless of how much I may not wish that were the case.  I’m considering this a mission statement for future Truthful Tuesdays, or whenever else I feel up to it.

One of today’s truths is that I can’t stop laughing thinking that there is someone out there named Al Dente.

I didn’t say they were all gold.

Uncle Gramma’s Foot

We got a meat loaf from a food bank this week.  It was huge, and looked like an overly seasoned frozen gray brick, shrinkwrapped in thick plastic.  If I hadn’t known it came from a very reuptable local grocery store, I would have been terrifed.

13 named it Uncle Gramma’s Foot.

Don’t ask me, I have no idea.  But the name stuck, and the whole family now refers to it as such.   I have a feeling this loaf is the stuff of family legend, and will be reminisced about at holiday parties for years to come.

I made it the other night, it was…interesting.  Not horrible.  Not great.  Interesting.

Uncle Gramma’s Foot got two thumbs down from children used to eating the homemade good stuff. J and I ate it, it was kind of along the lines of what you might get in the high school cafeteria.  But it was so big, over half of it was left. No way am I wasting food, especially right now. 

Tonight we had spaghetti.  With meat sauce.

While they were eating it, all 3 kids told me how much they liked the sauce.

I may have had a slightly evil smirk when I asked them what they thought was in it, because their eyes got huge as they all yelled together “Uncle Gramma’s Foot!”

But they ate every bite. :)