So yeah, I think I'm figuring out things! 

I have a lot of things on the go, and they're keeping me busy. Or at least out of trouble. That's good. But it's part of being on track. I do feel like the "track" itself is not well-defined, as in with absolute goals and micromanaged footsteps, but I do feel like things are looking up and would like to attribute it to a change in attitude. 

I was wondering about why I'd want to define it for anyone in the first place because it doesn't really matter to anyone but myself, so what difference does it make if it confuses the hell out of people or keeps them on their toes or whatever. I know where I'm going. It's with my gut. And for all the so-called paper qualifications I'm lacking for anything of elevated job status, I don't need a paper to know that I'm following something true and real. I've done a lot worse than that.

I really can't say if school is in that track or not. I hope in some ways it is. But honestly, the idea of incurring all that debt scares the hell out of me, completely independent of whether or not the music education sector is really good or dwindling. At least trade school is another option. My love of all things auto-motive really is turning out to be a passion, and not just some way of being cool, or getting daddy's approval, or any weird shit. It just is what it is.

And in figuring things out, having had much occasion to think about what it is I want, what I used to dream of, what I imagined, and what I can do with my reality, and I remember that when I was a kid, I imagined living in some urban-mixed-with-old-world studio apartment with my pet Bengal tiger and white grand piano, edges painted in gold with a red rose airbrushed on top, near the music stand side of the lid.

And for some odd reason, I never reconciled that picture with what was going on in my own life or worked on making myself be okay with it. Everything that occurred in my life after graduation was a gradual disenchantment with life in general because all I knew is that things weren't going the way I had imagined them, even to say those things compounded each other in rapid-fire succession; although I didn't know exactly what that was (just a feeling) and then purposefully grew bitter and angsty to avoid disappointment. I had my reasons.

So what? Now? I just laugh. Not really at myself or wanting to put down my former kid self or anything. And certainly not at any of the really heavy parts that caused great pain to myself or others. But at the sheer ease with which I just overlooked it. I mean, it's not hard to fathom, seeing as how I was dealing with some pretty major things right off the hop out of high school which continued far into my adult life.

It's just that I missed one tiny little detail in having known that my studio apartment with my piano was one of those memories you just put away with growing up: there was a reason I imagined things that way at that age, but there was no reason for why I had not changed it, or evolved it, or even entertained the idea that I could have a new dream.

Others? Oh yeah, for s-u-r-e! All the time! Ask me for advice and I'd work hard around every facet of your brain trying to inspire you! But myself? Nah. Nope.

So, you ask me now what that is, I don't know. It's still tricky for me to say, at least career-wise, to have a dream. My last career dream kind of flew out the window when we moved up north, because I was not willing to compromise on my education by doing something else through whatever other online programs they had up there, and because we were so far away from any institution that the older I got, the more out of the question it became to do anything that would upset the girls' lives like... leaving to go finish school.

Not only that, but my family was growing and my priorities changed. That is to say: get your frickin' head out of the clouds, out of missed opportunities, any of the "couldas and shouldas" and be a mom.

And before that, before I even lived in Canada, never mind way up north, was being a mom. I was always a mom. Being a mom was and is THE most beloved, treasured of roles I've ever been blessed or been allowed to have, but it was also the first thing I ever knew in the outside, real world. There is a whole world of raising up children to be ready for the world that I believed and avowed to engage before all else. 

My parenting style has been one about standing up against the tide, of doing everything in my power and with God's help to NOT let the "sins of the father pass onto the son", to break the cycle of pain, and never ever being an autopilot mommy. (My parents were good parents, but they had their issues, and I didn't want those passing on through to me to my girls, and thusly whatever issues I had to pass on to them, either.) Giving them the tools and teaching them how to instill their own tools, too, for the hardass world I'd already seen enough of at 22, 25, and 29 was far more important than whatever I was going through. It didn't take a genius to know that their worlds were mine. I put them on like a mantle.

But I did kind of hide behind that. I was glad to. I still would. Except I'm starting to realize what a disservice it is to them. The whole part of figuring things out has this right in there, along with my other contemplations, because I can see the possibilities of good in this new equation. I really can't reconcile me not having my daughters with me right now as a good thing. In fact, it feels very wrong. But this time, I'm not reacting out of emotions. 

I'm trying to be a grown-up.

Resolutions. Yes, I actually have them. For the first time!!

I actually, really, for reals, have resolutions that I fully intend to stick by. Who woulda thunk it!?

What I am most excited about is that I feel they are realistic and that I can follow through with them; which has always been my excuse for never setting a single other one in my whole life. Like, ever.

Seriously. I don't even stay on track with Lent. That's considerably more important than the so-called social bandwagon of New Year's Resolutions.

It's a new year. What can I say. A new year in the new life that is my life now. I'm not exactly the same person I was before. At least I hope I'm not. I hope I took the good stuff, banished the crap from my soul, and took on more good stuff, shoving it deep in my cellular makeup.

Anyway.

I really thought about what was close to my heart. What did I really need/want to improve on? What was imperative that I get right this year, that I've not worked on so much in previous years? (Besides not making resolutions at the top of the year?)

One answer. My girls. More specifically, my family.

1. Play more video games with Celia

2. Be ready to have my hair and makeup played with lots more by Aurora, as well as be her guinea pig for manicures and nails

3. Spend less time on the computer in the evenings

4. Spend more time in private with God; some people call this meditating. Whatever. For me, it's the awesome dude who created us all.

I cannot stress how, at the age of 32, this has become more than just a duty. One has to understand that my entire adult life has known no other way but being a mom. It started out as a personal sacrifice laced with rightful duty--an emotional conviction deep within my core--and blossomed into a choice.

What? A choice? How can that be, right? Obviously it's not like I could (or would ever!) give them up and then, like, re-adopt them or something. It was the difference in the attitude I had toward parenting: surviving parenthood at eighteen versus engaging parenthood full-on.

And then, call it age, necessity, maturity, whatever you want, I really started to feel these waves of needing my family near me that stirred deep within me about a few years ago, when the pain of leaving my mom standing at the train station in Seattle left me surprisingly, gut-wrenchingly wracked.

Who knew I'd ever grow up out of my surprisingly cocky, surprisingly naive, suprisingly angsty 20s to really re-grow an attachment to my parents, my brothers, even now my cousins and aunties! It was like re-attaching an arm that I had ripped off myself.

Needless to say, for all that I whined about in the last 15 years, and even more specifically on this blog, I needed my family the most.

And I LOVE being in my 30s now. I kind of remembered that I was waiting to be here a long time. Yeah, sure, I've complained about feeling my life is half over and wondering what I've done with my life. But frick! I'm changing my mind. Yup. Just like that. Because I have realized the importance of focusing on the positive. I have realized this by being consumed with the negative for far too long. And I don't even know how. I'm going to say: it just happened.

(Gaaa!! I'm really digging this Collective Soul album tonight! Staring Down from their second self-titled album.)

I'm not only just tired of working so hard at trying to get the people who just don't get it to GET it, but I am tired of the effort of it all keeping its grip on me. Tired of people who don't have the time of day for me and even more tired of giving the time of day to people who don't have it for me. Truly fed up with people who don't like me. And I have crap to teach my girls, crap that I learned from all of this.

Like following your heart, for one.

And for two, following your gut.

With having basically ditched town and torched a lot of friendships, I'm pretty much at the top of the heap of detestable things, really, and so my biggest fear of being hated came true and my second biggest fear followed suit: having to take responsibility for my share of things going wrong long before that.

It can't get much more in my face than that! I'm up! I'm up! I smell the coffee, dammit!

It Really Is Time

To grow up. To move forward. To not just 'get' over old fears but charge right the hell over them. To quit giving that little piece of ****-mentality any room in my brain. To go back to school. And to quit making a big deal out of it.

I realized with an absurd, aggravated, and earth-rattling heaviness yesterday that in trying to be a good, decent citizen my whole life long and be a good listener (a challenge back in the day as I have procured such nick-names as Blabber Mouth and Chatty Patty,) I let TOO many outside opinions seep into the inside my brain and became the wishy-washy, insecure, tormented and turmoil-ridden little creep that I was. Just read some of my older entries, you'll see. 

Okay, creep is a little too far. It just is a point of reference for how disgusted I am with this realization; and equally how frustrated.

I mean, retarded. It was absolutely retarded. Simply and finally just grabbing the realization like I was choke-holding it, it was an epiphany of the weary sort. Who woulda thunk. I thought epiphanies were supposed to be dowsed in light and make you feel like skipping all the way to school or something.

You have no idea how this whole idea has got me in a bit of a tizzy.  For no other reason than that is not how my parents raised me. Like I said in a bit part of a few entries ago: where the HELL did that monster come from?

There were two parts to this: 

1) The letting it soak in, the processing of information that had been lingering in the abodes of limbo for a time, the accepting it, the growing furiousness of wondering what in the hell "just" happened, the knowing full and damn well that it didn't actually just fly out of nowhere, and the overlapping madness of wanting to scream, yet again, it was ten or so excruciating years at my expense.

2) What. The. Ginormous. ____ Where in sam hell did she come from? 

I'm not that person. 

That is not how my parents raised me.

That is not even what I believe in being.

Did I ever mention that I think doormat people are the sorriest of people?

 

I don't really think anyone who knew me or knows me now would consider me a doormat, but there were doormat moments for sure.

It just doesn't make sense. When did I got from being a woman who knew what she wanted to being a scaredy-pants, little afraid-of-her-damned-shadow poser who tried to tap too hard into her old self?

Well I'll tell you what it was. I'll tell you how I got there. It was me listening to people and butting my head on brick walls. It was trying to value the opinion of others while slowly tuning out the dreams of my own heart. It was what morphed out of trying too hard to be a doormat and resenting the hell out of it. It was me forcing myself to be something I was not, and it was me making an effort and no one noticing. (So cheap!)

It was the anger and the insecurity of a person who tried so hard to be good, to do the right thing, was really dealing with some heavy crap on and on and on and on and on... along the way, and too backlogged with "whatthehellisgoingon!?" to pay attention until I was throwing syrup bottles at the wall across the kitchen. 

Or, it was feeling placated when I did try to pay attention to what was going on in and around me.  Several people, one at a time over time it felt, were simply trying to placate me or maybe placate a rage they felt on their own. Maybe me making enough gripes and slashing comments (many of which I wish I could take back) unearthed their own discontentment with feeling essentially trapped there. Who knows. I was just too inside the inside.

It was feeling cross about what was "right" for everyone else and nobody else at the same time versus what was right for Amy; and yet so rarely did what was right for me. Instead of being accountable for myself, I was accounting myself to everyone else, answering to them like a child.

It was discovering, albeit rudely, that finding a good ear was incrementally difficult to come by; and not only couldn't I get the help I needed nor rely on friends to simply say, "wow, that must've SUCKED", I didn't even get to have a 'my side' of the story without being linched for thinking the wrong way. 

I had just had enough of it.

Or I thought I had, anyway. 'Cause apparently, even after being sick of editing myself to death, I was still doing it. I was still, still saying what I thought people wanted to hear based on what truths they were able to bring to my attention. Did you catch that? I was listening to other people's opinions, digesting them, understanding their side, and trying to alter my perception to meld to some schmoozy hybrid of them both!

And then I did it one last time. With the so-called 'last' person in my satchel of people I angered to the hilt with my attempt to clean up the hot mess that I was, wanting to get control of myself AND feel validated, a final stroke of contempt plus this massive downstroke of irritating depressive moment yesterday, and it all came swirling together. That's what made me mad. Holy crap.

Have I ever let people influence me!

And then it occurred to me. Regardless of the lack of details, pertinent or otherwise, for anyone sitting on the outside of my skull, or even fragments of the story pieced together by outsiders--by anyone not directly influenced--there is only what's right for me, and what is right for my kids. There is conjecture and perception, and then there is truth. And, as much as I hate to say it, just because someone doesn't like my point of view, it doesn't mean I'm wrong and it doesn't mean I deserved nearly a tenth of what I got. It means, I made a choice.

And isn't it effing ironic that I had a whole entire life of being indecisive and letting everyone make decisions for me (or at least influence the hell out of mine) that when I finally started making my own, I would get very little respect for them.

And here's the thing. I can still hear the voices of the multitude of well-meaning people in my past saying their well-damaging things. 

I had grown monumentally resentful of it, too, relative to the time spent there. 

1 year = isolated hardship frustration times pi r-squared minus some joyous moments X 10 = clusterphuck to the nth. 

But...

...doesn't it just SAY something about me? Yah, what a kook I am, perphaps. Because I'm the only one to have moved in and moved out, with a hefty sum of time having been served on the inside, and being so absolutely "vocal" about it. (Who really knows who reads these things. It never serves me when I'm writing something cool, only the negative. Just ask whatever anonymous person it was who printed out one of my, shall we say, meaner entries some years ago and sent it to my bosses.)

But it should also speak to how hard I was trying to make it all work--living there, working, emoting, partying, sulking, crying, laughing, celebrating, mourning.... Taking my lemons and making lemonade, if you will. Doesn't anything speak for itself?

The worst part about this whole kind of dawning-on-me thing is that it really wasn't new or surprising. And it came laced with feeling dumbass-ey and feeling freaking justified all along. Weird.

The realization that I was drowning in that deforming mentality, rather than staying true to myself. It just sucks.

I mean, family can have their own way of screwing you up, true, but isolated northerners...

And to digress a bit more, yes, I know it wasn't just people back there, that it was just my own experience, that I am grouping the people I loved there/people I did not love/people who weren't even from there and therefore possibly stepping on their toes, and that yes, it wasn't all bad and yes, there were good times there, and yes, it's true that I should not be coloring the minds of whichever 2.3 people that read this with a negative opinion of a community that happily functions at a stunted level, and that yes, I know my contempt screams through every word. After all, there is much to be said (and will be said in an entry soon-ish to come) about the life I had with my kids there, and that was plenty positive.

But I am truly confident that I am not wholly out of line when I say that there is definitely a certain "mentality" because I did live there and did give it more than just a disgruntled chance. I've seen people who've lived there and left use air-quotes around the word 'mentality'.

 

I did my damned best to entrench myself there, live and bloom where I had been planted, and deal with all that I had been dealing with at that time in my life; and contrary to what I have been told in regards to post just like this one, I am not slapping people in the face. I'm slapping a mentality which does afford me some room to gripe. Not to mention that some of the dearest of my friends there admitted, or at least relented to, there being major disadvantages to living there.

I guess it just didn't didn't work for me. For whatever reason. My very two different, Gemini sides were very present through pretty much my whole ordeal there: from start to stop.

A rambling year in review: 2011 in some parts

-So yeah, I don't know. That's just what my thoughts are on it. I think the biggest thing, in rereading my religious entries, is that I am still not satisfied with my answers. Perhaps that may be because I don't know what question I am answering, and to figure that out directly would mean answering directly. It would mean taking a defined stand on something I specifically and intrinsically do not feel I can do, for I see the errors in representation on all sides.

-I had to put some barriers between me and an old friend recently. It really sucked, and I am rather sure she was on her way to doing the same before I even resolved to, but the real pisser of it all is that I was trying really hard to be the kind of friend she wanted and needed and still failed miserably (for a multitude of reasons both sides contributed to) while trying with great difficulty to overlook the fact that we both were probably always friends with each other out some sort of sense of condescending obligation. I mean, that's not to say our friendship was or is a farce. No. Never. But just ended up being more on the ritual side of a prolonged, long-distance relationship, and then when I tested the friendship by making a decision she could not stand by nor overcome, the ugly reality of it basically divided us. I really don't harbor a whole lot of ill will because she had to stand by her convictions and I had to stand by mine. But what compelled the need to put more than a little space between us, and it's more complicated than I give credit here, is that at the end of the day, she could not be there for me.

-I started playing bassoon again and realizing a huge portion of an old dream: to perform for a living. I did not make a living off of playing come true, but I DID get to just focus on playing, practicing, performing, and making some good friends for life while doing it. I realized that I have a ginormous fear of accomplishment and/or failure, and that to get past it, I had to suck up a buttload of old preconceptions and misguided notions. About myself. About others. About success and failure in general. And I did it French.

-Learning French was a much needed benefit and blessing. As a result, my vocabulary and ability to communicate has improved somewhat. I have found the ability to articulate more clearly and be more concise in my communications. Being that French is a more direct language and puts the kibosh on vague and otherwise useless constructs of language, I have figured out how to more accurately state no more or no less of a given main idea, which has helped in my writing, but has also aided in my personal psychology, making introspection and even moving forward more easily accessible. On top of that, I can now listen and appreciate French music and television much more as well as watch movies in French without subtitles. I can walk into my girls' school and utilize my newly acquired French-speaking skills. Overall, it has made my life a much richer experience.

-I never, ever, ever, EVER, ever. Ev-er. Want to live without my daughters ever again. And while that may be just exactly what happens as they go to live with their dad next year, I will scream it from the rooftops of Blogger here and through tensely clenched teeth: I. Do. Not. Want. This. At. All. It is not because of their father. In fact, if there was anybody else to take care of them when it's not me, I would rather it be him. But it is because living without them last year was absolutely hell. My entire adult life has been constructed with being a mother. I do not know who I am without them, nor do I really want to know. Whatever sweet moments of living like I was a freely independent woman and cohabiting with a crazy wonderful man that I just adore to have existed last year were intensely subdued with the pain of being without them and the terrible, terrible state of limbo I was in without them. My life is complete when they are with me. It doesn't matter that I will just have to deal with their absence when they leave home to go to university or whatever mission in life, what my mom said about that absence being like a practice run for me is the shittiest thing I've ever heard.

-I realized how negative I had become. Again. Who knows why or when, and it almost certainly has to do with the tremendous ups and downs of the last year, from divorce to epic disagreements with mon conjoint to living without my daughters, but in rejoining my children's lives to mine, my oldest has been keen to call me out on it point blank.

So, after a negativity/positivity quiz kind of acted like the final smack upside the head, I just kind of, sort of snapped out of it. I quit dwelling or brooding. I realized how easy I could do it. I realized that I couldn't handle boring without brooding, that I had brooded all last year, that I had gone back to brooding after successfully changing my outlook TO be glass-half-full back in the day. I realized that if my daughters could live through the kind of year they had and still be happy, well-adjusted children, well then, so the eff could I. I realized I don't like brooding. So I changed it back again.

It doesn't mean I'm cheery or with sunny disposition all the time. But it does mean that I have, yes, reassessed my life, realized that even with all the stresses of starting over, of tight budgeting, of cleaning up after everyone, of maxing out the overdraft, sewing holes in clothes (rather than getting new ones), scrambling to make rent---in addition to this being the THIRD time in my life that I've started out from scratch and been poor. as. fuck.---my life is still pretty good.

Maybe the third time's a charm. Maybe it's because I have this really cool French boyfriend that my daughters are trying to establish a relationship with. Maybe it's because people are so friendly in this town, or that I'm doing what I love for a part time job. Maybe it's because I have cool friends and a sweet neighbor lady and family that still loves me. Maybe I'm wiser now. Maybe it's because putting all the crap behind me is working and I'm not hiding behind anyone or anything anymore (even WITH the drama and scandal of what I did.) I don't know. But I just know that things are getting better. I know I am seeing signs of hope, joy, love, and exciting times passing my way and just as sure to come.

-Bottom line of the last year: not apologizing for myself ever again. This is not the same as being sorry for people I've hurt or mistakes I've made. But it is about correcting those mistakes, making right the wrongs, and moving forward. I have not always moved forward so decisively. In fact, I pretty much never have. I have blabbed to just about everyone I've had a problem with in email form while continuing to spin out on either 1) blame/wanting someone else to take the responsibility of any given gripe (early on) or 2) force their side of accountability. I will probably never quit trying to be a mirror towards people, but I will not be focusing on what I can show someone else--I will only be worrying about choosing the paths and turns I am taking to be happy and to bring happiness to myself.

In the words of a very dear friend in regards to all the naysayers and judgmental critics: f*** 'em.

"Nah, you're not! Have you seen you, lady?"

This was the main idea behind me, a little white kid with freckles and starkly dark brown eyes, going around staking claim in my Mexican heritage as a VERY non-Mexican-looking runt. For pretty much the whole of my life, I grew up being half-Mexican.

Not half Norwegian, not as mutt-worthy as I really am, just... half Mexican. Anywhere I went, any time I had the chance, I was looking for a way to butt in with my cool Mexican-ness. In the band room before school, meeting new friends, heck just meeting new people. Going to coffee, starting in a group, and then later as a so-called grown up, it'd be a conversation piece. Sometimes related to the topic being discussed, sometimes not. Most times not. Eventually it grew to be, "Hi. I'm Amy. I'm Mexican. And your name is?"

I don't look at it. AT ALL. I have fair skin that never tanned (until I was an adult) and about as much natural rhythm as any puritanical protestant fundamentalist. But there was no consideration of this. Not because of extreme Mexism in our house, no. After all, my dad was just a simple, proud man, deeply defined by the rich culture and history from where he came. But because he instilled that same pride into his whitey kids. We. Are. Mexican. And... I did have just enough rhythm at unexpected, effortless moments to trick myself into thinking I could be Latina. (Those moments didn't really stick, though. Just ask my 7th grade band teacher who didn't let me into the jazz band.)

No rhythm plus conductor equals no jazz for me!

 And isn't it really something that a man who grew up in Mexico, emigrated to the states with his single mother in the 60s, and mated with a Norwegian woman with starkly blue eyes teach his pale-faced, dark-brown-eyed kids to hold onto their culture?

So hold on we did, in varying degrees, to our Mexican heritage. Full-bore and headlong into an unsuspecting world where no one really dared to point out that we didn't really look the part.

Then one day, my dear college friend just kind of stopped me dead in my tracks by daring to ask with a puzzled frown, "But you're Norwegian, too. What about that part of ya?" Clearly she was appealing to my sense of culture and NOT my pale, shows-up-better-in-black-light visage. It made me think. For all of about two seconds. Then I'm pretty sure I changed the subject.

Then I had an Angst-For-Dad phase (you know, out of some crazy, ill-notioned thought that he should have reacted differently to me getting pregnant at 18) and did kind of focus on my Norwegian side. For about a day. Yeah, I looked up some stuff. Read that there is no real unified language as of yet, so instead of picking on dialect to try learning, I proverbially threw my hands up in the air and said, "Oh well, can't learn 'em all today. So why try." I know. Good, eh?

The best part? I am so full of contradictions I could make your head spin. It's fun living in my world! What with the cold Viking blood and the hot Aztec blood fighting itself in the same blood stream. It's a wonder I didn't end up bi-polar or ADHD. Guess I'll just have to settle for being Gemini.

Birthday Bash Galore!

Well, what a fantastic weekend that was! Last weekend, I mean. The one before this last one. I mean going on over a week now last weekend because I haven't blogged in like, FOREVER...

The past few weeks, I started to give some thought to some kind of get together for my big three-o ('cause I didn't expect someone to throw me a party an'....)... annnn' I hadn't thought about doing anything. Then, at the last minute (as true to form *SIGH*) started thinking it'd be great to have people over. I mean, might as well, since it would be a laid back way of getting together. I absolutely loved the idea of sitting on my back deck (which is somewhat spacious and has been a growing tradition for Kyle and I after school/work) with friends and drinks and just chattin' with good music playing in the background; I'd been looking for an excuse to have people over because I've been so work-n-life go-go-go and I had hoped people warmed to the idea of just sitting around drinkin' and chatting with each other. I had a birthday like that a few years ago and it was just the most relaxed, lovely time. So getting all of the old buddies together plus the friends I've made from work, it hoped to be a non-presuming time.

So, I put it together, started telling just about everyone and thought I would make pozole (a traditional Mexican dish that make buttloads from the recipe I have.) Perfect. Low-key, low-budget plan engaged. And I'd be feeding people food!!

This would would play out beautifully along with a calm, lovely dinner with the hubby, dressed to the nines the night before. A plan he'd suggested about as many weeks ago and was an exciting, understated but elegant night out. *yay*

Didn't say anything about doing anything else.

Then the girls each had friends who called for sleepovers, which cancelled the sitter and quelled the feeling of rushing to get home, thusly employing a calm, lovely dinner complete with wine (well, for me) and gentlemanly accompaniment. Just as the hubby paid the bill, and we walked sleepily down the corridor arm-and-hand with the feeling of wrapping the night up, my friend, K, incidentally came through the front doors all in a frenzy, claiming to have left/lost her cell phone there from the conference she had allegedly been to that day. A text from her earlier that day, I thought, had confirmed her presence at this so-called conference for daycare workers, and I totally bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Being in dress clothes that were already calling attention to myself and not wanting to parade around anymore, especially in heels, I prompted the hubby to go with my friend, offering to wait in the lobby until their return. He urged me with a casual tone, saying, "nah, just c'mon. We'll just go out this way." So I followed them, reluctantly, down the hall to the stairs, down the stairs, and to the conference rooms and past the door of the one room, at which K whispers something about people being in there.

Seriously, I'm still not getting it. Seriously.

I shun away thinking, gaa, if there are people in there, I really don't want to be goin' in there, looking like this. Having people wonder what I was doing crashing their dig with my fancy clothes or something whack like that? Psh no thanks.

Yes, I'm really that thick.

Finally, K was just like "just c'mon!" Hubby moves in, light goes on and in one swift movement, we're all in there and I recognize EVERYONE!

WOW!!

Wow.

Wow!!

I can't believe it! They're all there, everyone is sitting or standing around, and as I move in and take it all in, I see everyone is dressed up. EVERYONE! Guys in three-piece suits, the girls in dresses and nylons and my other friend, whose initial is also K, is ushering me shots and within twenty minutes, I've downed 5 shots. There are tables set up, music is going, beautiful decorations with big ol' "30"s on them, and there is a cake on one side, cards and gifts on another, and we've got access to an outside door--yippee!

It was FAN-TAS-TIC!

I got a princess banner to wear all night that ended up on my head like a bandana somewhere in the festivities and it was a fantastic surprise.

Then I had to recover all the next day. I had to get ready for the one I threw for myself--oops! I asked hubby why he let me go ahead with my planning when he had clearly been planning his own for me, but it was a great deflection tool and especially handy for those who couldn't be at one or the other. I worked diligently on getting pozole ready and said "f- it" to mowing the grass or cleaning my house because I knew we were going to be in the garage and the house was just going to get messed up with people tracking into use the bathroom anyway.

One of my work gal pals came over early to hang before her son's bedtime, then a few more people showed around the stated party time. Kyle helped me to set up the computer in the garage with our speakers and bass amp and more people came. Soon enough we didn't have enough chairs and I kept urging everyone to go in the house and try the pozole. One by one the garage filled and more surprise visitors showed and everyone mingled while I took turns plopping on empty laps. Beer and wine and liqueur was being consumed and everyone was laughing. And then someone started pulling out the instruments and more singing ensued. By all means, all told, and all accounts, it was an incredible success.

But if two grand parties in one weekend wasn't enough, Kyle and I had our "Open Instrument Night" (which really was more in the afternoon) and witnessed a GREAT turnout (about 12 or so in total) with the most excellent, balanced range of voices--high to low--and we got to run through music, which was VERY exciting. I hope more people will keep coming out and I can't wait to reconvene in the fall!

To the thirties coming: cheers!

I'm wondering what's left to do. Spent so many years, it seems, wasting time being worried about things I couldn't do anything about, concentrating on less meaningful tracks of life, and being obssessed with the "next" moment or being normal or being somebody different or feeling awful about being in my own skin, and just never, ever satisfied that I ended up sad in my life. Depressed. Trying to find satisfaction or happiness or even so much as to entertain the idea of happiness as a healthy thing. And not for lack of wanting to, but just having absolutely no bleepin' clue as to where to even begin, even with the life lessons I had been taught from the past.

And then the air cleared. Not magically. Not instantly. But after finally being so fed up with the fighting in my own head and how wrecked I made myself through my emotions and because of my emotions and all--and I mean ALL--of the suffering I experienced due to the extreme lack in maturity (taking responsibility for myself, my life, my decisions and consequences to go with that) that I just finally took a look at the trail behind me and just decided "ENOUGH!"

I mean, I finally, finally, on the eve of my thirties, just GET it. I get that I can't control everything (or much of anything) and that, in fact, the only thing I can control is myself. And while that seems so simple now--such a perfectly plain idea--but it just took so much to get there. I get that the beaten path I took brought me to where I am, including the ideas I had as early as childhood all the way to the painful, painful road that I took with Kyle. I mean, I'm also embarrassed and so sorrowful that I can look back and see all the places that I needlessly suffered and somehow bumped along that way with my poor kids in tow. However, the place of deep sorrow that I can go (and used to dwell) has been blessedly replaced or set into its rightful place with new perspective, which includes embracing all that I have to celebrate right now and all the things I will have to celebrate in the future because I've learned it the hard way. It has really, truly freed me up to concentrate on the priorities I've always regarded, but with more purpose and genuine, integral participation.

Fat

When I was growing up, I heard all kinds of comments about women come from the men who were married to them, or at least attached in some formless, ambiguous way.

A lot of times, these men didn't know I was around the corner writing on inventory cards or looking through Chilton manuals, but some of them did and some of them made these comments directly to me with half amused expressions. As though I could understood this male peer kind of comedy.

As though they could control some slender, pre-real-life teen thing from turning into the old ball-and-chain blimp wife that "starts expanding at the alter" by making these sly, clever little digs to a naive sixteeen-year old.

These ranging biker varieties were hardly qualified to give advice of the marital kind to the young, impressionable daughter of a Harley repair shop owner; but there we were: them giving me the advice and me unknowingly committing it to memory as I shirked their comments off with a smile in the middle of an oil-reeked garage.

My dad added to it occasionally by inserting his own thoughts, opinions, and ideas of the unrealistic kind. "You know, women should be more like..." were the common preface. He gave me lots of good ideas! Don't nag, don't let one's self go, be graceful, try to see where he's coming from, things that maybe his biker and miner comrades shared a common plane of thought, but things that quickly translated into: how to be the perfect woman for any guy. No wonder my mother seemed so unhappy.

How it turned from the point of my dad's well-meant-though-ill-informed intention (especially because of or completely in spite of his customers and friends) to me processing my father's words as a manual to my life, I'll never know, but I do know that for what I DO know now, I didn't know anything back then; and perhaps, just maybe, the responsibility to shut the hell up about things he did not understand or accept (the female pscyhe, for one) fell on his shoulders.

But it happened. I recalled these dislikes of men, vowed silently to never gain weight (though exactly how, with zero athleticism, I thought I'd pull that off I'll never know), never left the house without makeup, dressed modestly, put what the guy would think or want on the forefront of my mind without any regard for my own feelings, development of my own thoughts, or embracement of my own female self. Ooops.

What started out as perhaps helpful suggestions based on the frustrations these men and my dad were having with their wives (or even if they were just real life comedic releases!), became notes of extreme value tucked away in my cerebellum, never to be released again until a time much later revealed how damaging these thoughts had been to my own personal development as a woman.

I am over feeling embarrassed about this lament. I'm already over it. I just don't care. I've thought about this enough times to write a book and shirked it off just as many times as I shirked off the comments of my dad's customer friends. The fact of the matter is that having such an insight to a guy's mind, and it was a mission for my dad, was to understand how they think.

And it's been helpful. I can understand how men think. I can understand them really damned good. I understand them so damned well that I can't even see what my feelings are/were/could be. To the point of reasoning away my own womanly complaint and forgetting what I could have possibly been upset/perturbed/wistful/museful about. I can understand them even better than myself (though this is changing, progressively resorting to embracing the fact that I am, indeed, a bonefied, certified, hard-wired from birth, real live woman) because I was made to understand them before I even understood what it truly meant to be a woman.

This infinite, valuable insight has been immeasurable. I've been able to modify who I am, how I react, things that come naturally to me as a woman so that I can be a man's woman and understand how, where, and why they think from where they do. But it unwittingly made me a very angry woman.

How could I ever be okay with venting, being frustrated, or anything/something I viewed as lesser value? That is to say, how could I ever possibly know that it was OK to feel the things I felt as a woman, when the man-brain in me kept reasoning it all away? I never recognized that I was letting little things built up over time to one big mess, I just thought I was being petty over one thing; and trying to find that one thing making me so angry was next to impossible. Just ask my poor husband, who saw it through a few versions. In reality, I was just not accepting that this boiling point had been brought on by a series of undigested moments.

I'm just saying...

It didn't matter that it totally screwed with me as a young woman, fiercely fighting off my femininity (rather than for my independence), to be this perfect type of woman (which does not exist and hello! why couldn't anyone have stopped me to tell me that?); I was still able to identify with the male side of any argument faster than any woman's and was excruciatingly embarrassed whenever I didn't and got caught. Even more was all the ways it affected my parenting, my whole thoughts, and the process of completely denying myself like some saint when Kyle was sick and then when he came home.

It just made things a little more difficult to process while life was slapping us in the face or while recouping the losses suffered in the consequences of our decisions; and the relief comes in knowing this now and being a better person for it. A gal able to look back at her 'silly ol' self' and reflect with wider-opened eyes.

Back to the G.I. Joes, an addition to Jan 31 entry

I say I was a tomboy by force. No one ever put a Lego gun to my head and told me to be, but being the only girl with two brothers, it only stood to reason that if I wanted to have someone to play with, I would have to play on their terms, with their rules, and their games. But I was still a girly-girl. Just ask my dad.

Did I mention they were younger? This had no bargaining value, no leverage. Whatsoever.

Usually Erik made the rules and Michael and I followed, but even before Michael was old enough to hang outside with us unattended, Erik was doing his own thing. This was not always the case, I admit, because there were many time I didn't want to get dirty or be bothered or play with Tonka trucks or Tinker Toys; OR because he was taking direction from his older sister. However, I do recall playing with G.I. Joes, Guns, hide and seek, MacGuyver, Hunter, and various other action-packed adventures because he refused to play Barbies, My Little Ponies, dress-up, and for the most part, House.

Lush sensuality

1. I was born in Laramie, Wyoming, USA and was primarily raised in Gillette, Wyoming where we moved when I was little. Both are in the east side of the state, Laramie in the south corner, Gillette in the north. I've never been to Yellowstone National Park.

2. I don't really have a favorite color because I don't ever want to have a house or closet full of purple, which would be the color of choice. But then I wouldn't want a house or closet full of red, either, or chocolate brown, black, blue, green, which are all really great colors,too, that are rich and attractive and that I like just as much. Too many options to have too much of one thing and variety is the spice of life. It's not a standard rule, but it does stem from my beliefs in balance.

3. I was a single mom for a year--only a year--but I was 18 and will never forget it because I didn't know a thing about anything and it came before everything else, including all the other things I would ever become in my life. I played single mom again when Kyle was sick with cancer for 6 months and again later when he took a year off of teaching and had to work out of town. So even though my life is great now, it wasn't always so.

4. I was in a horrible accident with my then-fiance (Kyle) and my then-year-old (Aurora) where I fell asleep at the wheel trying to drive overnight back home, hit a reflector pole, overcorrected one too many times, and sent us rolling into the median of the highway. According to the police report, I hit the reflector pole, swerved, over-corrected twice, and rolled the vehicle a number of times before coming to a stop on the roof. Aurora was ejected out the back, but miraculously--MIRACULOUSLY--escaped with a bruise on her jaw and a bruise on her collar bone. She was released from the hospital within hours. Kyle was beat up horribly, with pulled back muscles, ridiculously blood-shot and blackened eyes. He was released in a few hours. I was in ICU for three days with concussion. My dad said I looked like an alien. I don't remember ANY of it. Did I mention I was driving a Geo Tracker?

5. The guilt from the afore-mentioned accident on ALL sides of realization ate at me for a very long time. It took a long, long time to "sober" up, get my brain back, start remembering things, and I was a very different person after that. Very combative. Not myself.

6. I have a big freckle on my big toe. It's been there since birth.

7. I don't grow my nails out. I am always clipping them because I hate the feeling of click-click on piano/keyboard keys, the scratching when they connect with a surface, and when they start tearing at the tips.

8. I love to laugh. I love stupid comedy, dry humour, jokes that involve reaction and I will laugh primarily at reactions that have less to do with the joke content than people's faces.

9. I use tanning beds.

10. I think confession is good for the soul.

11. I talk too much and too fast.

12. I can operate heavy equipment, operated a full-scale gravel crusher, and shovel like a b****.

13. I can drive a standard transmission.

14. I rebuilt my bathroom downstairs from scratch after we had water in the subfloor and had to gut it out. I'd like to say I did it all myself, but a friend with more knowledge than me helped.

15. I really, really, really like my computer. I don't go to bed without spending WAY more time on it than I should.

16. I know how to play bassoon and used to be pretty good at it.

17. I like to belt out the tunes if there is noise that can kind of hide it and I stop when the noise stops. I used to sing full force when I worked at the crusher because nobody could hear me over the generator, the conveyor belts, the motors, the noise, and overall crunching and crushing of boulders. But sometimes I like to hear my voice in resonating in a building. Like the bathroom or the restauarant I work at that has a vaulted ceiling or big churches.

18. I put a rock through a picture window the summer after 8th grade because I befriended a girl who stole cars. The police came driving around and we somehow managed to avoid getting caught by laying in a field of grass taller than us for three hours.

19. I'm a Gemini.

20. I danced the Jarabe Tapatio with my dad when I was in high school for the Cinco de Mayo night the school put on. It was the unofficial official version of the regional dance of Jalisco, the state where he is from. It is, more or less, the Mexican Hat Dance. I still have the dress. I still hope to dance it again some day.

21. I speak Spanish. My dad is Mexican. I have Mexican family that I can talk to, but don't often.

22. My mom is Norwegian. She does not speak Norwegian. Nor do I.

23. I was in Girl Scouts from grade 1 to grade 8. It's really, REALLY not cool to be a Girl Scout in junior high.

24. I got out of an algebra test in college to get married. I wore my best friend's clothes and tied a bow in my hair. In 1999.

25. My computer is about to die. So I'm posting this and logging off.

Pink foam curlers and G.I. Joes

I had foam curlers that you had to clasp on one end after rolling wet hair onto it. (You, as in the general you, not the boy 'you' because boys don't curl their hair, so I guess I mean the general GIRL 'you', in which case I should have just wrote 'girls', instead of 'you', but I am not wanting to offend boys who DO curl their hair, because maybe, I don't know, there are a few of those out there, and there is such a high likelihood that they would read this.)

Back to the foam, here. They were pink. The cylindrical foam that you wrapped the hair around and the plastic clasp that framed the foam and connected at the one end were pink. I put a ton (okay, well maybe not a TON) of them in my hair one afternoon in the hopes that I could put a luscious and luxurious body of curls into my otherwise normally straight (bland, blah, brown) hair. I had entire afternoon to waste. I had time to let my hair dry.

In the meantime and without a hair dryer (without? or absent-minded enough to not think of using one? hmmm...) I started to lip sync with the radio. Joan Jett came on and I poured my ever-lovin', rockin' heart out into her lyrics. "I hate myself for lovin' youuuuu!...." On the bed, crouching down, hopping off, microphone (brush) in hand. Performing to a huge, sold-out crowd (ten or fifteen stuffed animals) on a well-lit stage (pastel-colored bed.) I caught a glimpse of myself in the tiny vanity on my desk coming down on a beat, mid-angst-cringe. I was absolutely horrified to see the pink curlers flopping against my angry face, sickly pale and splattered with freckles and brown eyes that I couldn't get away from.

I stopped. Party over. Total rocker kill.

But it passed. I rocked it out to the end, I took my curlers out, and looked something more like this.

Batman Returns: my first date

Once upon a time, there lived a girl...

So once when I was 13, I had a real date. My first, out-of-the house, to-the-movies date. It was Batman Returns. Not real romantic by all wooing standards, but I didn't care. I could tell someone I "went on a date."

There was a catch, though. His mom had to go with us.

It was not MY idea of a good date, even though I sympathized with both mothers, but I guess neither my date or I had a lot of say in the matter since we needed her to get us to the movie. In the end, there was no win-win because she had to watch all the penguin blood come out of Danny Devito's mouth in the final scenes of the graphic novel-come-animation.

We never went on another date, but I'd look for every reason to call him on the phone or meet up with him when our parents met for boy scout meetings. I didn't really like him ALL that much. He was a year older, kind of dorky but kind of cute, and went to a different school. I was just, well, boy crazy. He ended up losing interest and I ended up getting sick of his "would you rather die being hanged or sliding down a razor and into a bucket of iodine" level of conversations. They were topics better left to all his dorky friends.

Let me back up a bit by explaining that I met this kid getting ready for the annual Boy Scout Day Camp that involved cartloads of projects: handyman, craftyman, applied sciences, and the like. Three days worth of activities that would keep every age and every level of boys' hands and mind busy, but that also need prepping. This is where CG comes in. CG had a Dremel with which he was carving notches out of wood pieces that would become tie slides. I, as the daughter of two active Cub Scout leader parents, did the dutiful thing by coming into all the pre-planning meetings and helped. So I picked up a Dremel, started carving notches, and struck up a conversation. This has always been my style.

Except I missed after about the hundredth piece of wood and ended up Dremeling off some skin. I washed it off, pressed a towel to the wound, and retired from notch-making. A few weeks later, my proactive ways produced what is now infamously known (only in my mind) as the Batman date.