Well, Here We Go Again F***

AS IF THERE COULD BE any amount of time in space that is adequate enough distance to wedge, force, drive, and lock you up away from me! There is NO amount of time. None. Not in a hundred millennia. Not in a hundred millennia would ever be enough distance from you.

AS IF I HAVEN'T DONE everything I could from the thankful end to cut, block, chop you out, and otherwise pinch you out of every colourful opening possible or imagineable!

Have you learned nothing? Does your poisonous narcissism run so thickly vile in your blood that you could not possibly perceive the sheer gall you have in messaging me AFTER being blocked TWICE?

Be warned, fair public! Be warned! Professional gang criminals, Hells Angels kingpins, and societal scum have nothing on you. You. Are more extremely disordered than I could have ever imagined.

All the twisted, conniving, manic, and sociopathic implications aside - writing me AGAIN even though you knew you were blocked, messaging me (you DARE) with yet a NEW i.d., messaging me in FRENCH (you fucking asshole) when you REFUSED to speak in French during our raucous, tumultuous, and repulsive time together, implying that I would be childish not to respond to your seemingly casual message - there is SEVERELY insidious and revolting history by you to be singularly vile and draconian, repugnantly self seeking without recompense. There is NO casualty to you message. None. It is calculated and infinitely (and forevermore will be) ill-timed.

You played the demon from the start, taking advantage of my relationship to God and the Holy Mother, lying to me and inventing stories, planting your seed of filth.

You aided and abetted the ripping up of the family I had, instigating and goading and coercing along the whole way.

You were pleased to take advantage of my self destruction, pretending to be an innocent passerby.

You used me. In every way that you could, you used me. You used me to fulfill your selfish, empty needs. You used me as a human shield. You used me like a plaything, the way the devil does when he's fucking around with people. You saw to it that no end would come to your harassment and abuse - inside closed doors, out in public, on paper, off paper, emotional and psychological and physical haranguing, from the beginning to the very end.

You didn't want to put up with the aftermath of breaking up a family.

You threw shit fits in the middle of traffic-riddled streets in Quebec and in Saskatchewan.

You yelled at me for sobbing.

You consistently tried to trap me physically and financially.

I found out I wasn't the only person you used for the money you could get out of them.

Simon-Pierre was right to move back in with your mom out of fear that you were there.

We fought the most when I stood up for myself.

You are the reason I lost my girls. Twice.

When I tried to get away from you, you insisted you follow, promising things would be better but they never were.

You promised you understood that we were NOT together but came to my work and sucker punched a guy.

You were NEVER loving, only territorial.

You scared the living shit out of me.

You left me to drive 40+ hours by myself with your dog.

You did nothing with your additional schooling. You failed a literature class. IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE. And made me pay for it.

You whipped nasty surprises like that lots along the way. The bus ticket at the very beginning. The $1000+ failed semester. The $2000 overdraft, then the $4500. You never had money for anything. And I am STILL reeling in the aftermath of that.

None of this, none, begins to present the entire spiritual warfare underlying every single corner that was your wretched presence in my life. I took every intensely deliberate step I could to remove you from my life the first time. And even that time, it was a hellfire process that took MONTHS for you to JUST... GO... AWAY.

Green Thumb

I have never, ever been particularly apt in the garden. I have tried. I'm not terrible. I've weeded and mowed and trimmed hedges. I even had a small vegetable garden when I was married that I was able to collect fresh carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, and onions from -- that is, until the local paper released the soil reports and I learned there was trace amounts of arsenic in it. Yuh hm. Yes sir, trace amounts of several elements "above recommended...guidelines for human health" (check this out) including arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury. Mmmmm, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury salad! Yum!

But as for having flowers? Perennials, annuals? Trees, bushes, or house plants? No. I am one of those people who kills unkillable plants. I do not landscape (I can't now anyway), don't fertilize, I didn't even concertedly water my lawn back when I had one. (It helped that the neighbourhood had been built in a marsh, maybe.) I just couldn't be bothered and it never excited me. Sidetrack: now that I am older, I figure that when I'm even older it will and I will. But dead-heading and regular watering and attention to something OUTSIDE my otherwise distracted path? Mmno. Not for me. Yardwork? Mmno. Let's just say it's one of them make-your-weaknesses-your-strength areas of improvement that I've only moderately worked on.

With that in mind and understanding that it came from an I-dun-wannnnn-naa place in my childhood, you can imagine my disgruntled, objecting obligation to help my mom plant trees in the front yard one rather hot sunny day in my youth. Mom had purchased 5 or 6 little evergreen saplings and wanted to plant them at the crest of the half-acre of grass-only-bare yard. I don't remember much of preparation part of it. I just remember being on my hands and knees, in the grass, facing my mom, on her hands and knees, both of us bearing down for the task ahead of us. I remember the spade we shared, the root-bagged sapplings begging to be planted, the sweat pouring off our beet-red faces. We dug into the earth, ripping the grass at the circumferences we made for each tree, moving the black dirt with our spades, each claw or spadeful of dirt as satisfying as the next, and creating the crater where the roots of the sappling would nestle.

We worked into the mid-afternoon, perspiring and blackening our hands, setting the tiny little sapplings into their carved-out cradles, tucking them in with the dirt we had removed, patting the dirt down. We found our pace quickly and finished in good time. We did it. We got through a chore. Somewhere, at some point in the middle of the process I wanted to take the edge off of our tempers that I knew were secretly boiling and, knowing it would make my mom laugh (at least if for nothing because it would force an awkward ha-ha-ness) looked up at her with all the stupidness I could muster, and said, "We're bonding, aren't we!"

It worked. She chuckled whole-heartedly. I think, on a super side-ranging, emotion-be-true-to-Amy tangent, I had never quite clicked with my mother. Not in the emotionally-satisfying way a daughter like me needed, anyway. I commonly felt left hanging. As a child, especially teenager, I felt as though I needed something else, something more, not sure. Couldn't peg it then. And SURE the hell wouldn't have said anything about it then, had I even ventured to guess. But now I know it was a deep, personal connection I needed with her that I wasn't able to appropriate for myself. I got from my father, skewed as it was, because he was deeply emotioned and we could volley that back for each other. With mom, it was a little more difficult.

But she laughed. I got her to laugh. Totally worth the grunty, sweaty chore I had opposed in favor of sitting inside and doing, well, probably nothing. I didn't think we were truly bonding. Not the kind of bonding that is defined as basis for an ongoing mutual attachment or a close friendship that develops as a result of intense experiences, as those shared in military combat. But at least it wasn't nothing.

And for better or worse, the memory was forged. 

A week later, my dad was mowing the lawn and, none the wiser to the teeny beebee trees my mother and I had planted, mowed them over.

Fast forward ten, twelve-ish years later. After the invention of Facebook. And FarmVille. I was married with kids. Mom had remarried. She was in the western states, I was in Canada. Life had settled down. She had built an amazing farm. It was expansive and self-operating. She had the latest, greatest, newest add-ons. Factories and rose gardens and crops galore. Trees of every kind ornamented all her sidewalks, paths, ponds. It was truly a site to behold, especially after having built up my own farm to start procuring FarmVille monies thinking I was really getting traction in the game. I was in truth impressed as hell. I think she was able to finally achieve the wealth she wanted in this alternate reality.

But it was something, even if incomplete, that we could share and spend side-by-side time doing from across the miles. And she could finally have the yard and landscaping she visualized. I followed suit, fishing and harvesting and buying and selling, acquiring things, too. The bigger house, the next acreage of land for planting, the farm truck, a tilapia pond, and finally, if not nothing, my own trees. 

My daughters joined in on the building and expanding at random moments, too, using my account to play FarmVille when, one day, I sat down to harvest my crops and noticed all my trees were missing. I called my oldest over to investigate. She had gotten rid of them to do her own thing. My millisecond of frustration turned into wild, realized laughter. My mom and I could never catch a break. Whether virtual or real, we could not plant trees together without them going away some way somehow.

PhanTHomize

When we were little, the three of us kids, our dad had this skull ring that he wore on his pinky. It looked like it might have come from one of the many silver displays at the Sturgis biker rallies. I associated it with those, anyway, because collecting one silver ring for each time I went to the rallies with him was my thing. I had three by the time graduated that I wore on the last 3 fingers of my right hand. For show, of course. A rose, a pair of hands holding a heart, and one that looked like eagle talons wrapping around my finger.

(Not my hands, not my rings)

Our dad was creative, if nothing else, in both his artistic endeavors and in his discipline. Instead of the old-timey spankings, which used to involve the belt, a thin wooden dowel, a wooden spoon, or the metal ruler in the phonebook drawer, there was the occasional wall-sit, the rare kneeling with boots in the hands, and the odd lecture with presentation about needing to appreciate one another. That came complete with getting my little brother to slide underneath the glass coffee table, close his eyes and fold his hands so that we didn't have to use our imaginations to see what it would be like looking at him in a casket. Life is precious. You don't know if you have tomorrow.

This ring, this skull ring he had, was pretty cool looking, really, and it had a name. It was the "Phanthom". Yes p-h-a-n-t-h-o-m. With a tee-aych. T. H. Along with flicking us in the face with his middle finger and thumb for mouthing off or a knuckle whip-crack to the head for insolence was this skull ring on his pinky. And when he went to flick his wrist, using his hands as the whip-crack end of his flicking, the skull would thump on our heads.

None of the above methods were consistently used and rarely used the older we got. But as the clump of methods grew to be a memory in the distance, terms for them still reminded us of what used to be. The skull ring -- The Phanthom -- and subsequent flick-smack procured a new verb by our dad. This verb in our house was "Phanthomizing".


Now it would seem pretty terrifying in several respects, most obviously at the moment as a parent myself reflecting in theoretic sheer horror, and more broadly in the perspective of current-day mindsets about what is acceptable discipline and what is not. But I will tell you that the mispronunciation of the word "phantom", to me, has stuck out far more than the punishment, as much then as now, itself.

My mind would always correct him when he said phantom incorrectly, but never once out loud. Phantom, Dad. F-A-N t-u-m. My middle brother and I would heckle and laugh about it in the safety of the basement later, but never in front of him. We knew, however lightly, that correcting him and/or laughing at the quirky addition of a consonant would not be kind. Or tolerated.

We never once stopped to consider how English being his second language may or may not have been a factor. He wasn't the first parent we ever knew to use his or her own words. And he was exceedingly deliberate in his mastery of the English language and losing his accent since before we were even in the womb. There was no guarantee it was a culturally linguistic slip. Our dad prided himself on being able to speak English very well and was expressly good at raising us with proper English. But he was not exempt from our juvenile considerations just because he was Mexican. It was just a kid-to-parent thing. A pair of offspring doing what every other kid does -- rolling their eyes at their parents.

Update

Life is interesting. So it's been a while since I've gotten on here, even though I have had MORE than enough material to add, most of which I've contemplated blogging. There have been so many changes and shifts in the paradigm of my life's fastly-held perceptions that I could quite easily spend a full-time job's worth of not just recounting the basic stories, but also the implications in them, the psychologies underneath them, and the utter fascination of it all.

But I've just decided that some of them are just too personal to share. Not for me, but for the respect of the people who are in the stories. What I can do, though, for my own selfish reasons, is list what I've been able to accomplish in my week off so far, something that was quite necessary (the time off, that is), and delve into why getting these things done this week were particularly important to me.

Getting the week off originated out of just simply not wanting to have to negotiate ducking out of work sporadically to go and support my piano students at the music festival. I had requested the time off before I knew none of the 8 piano students I have weren't going to participate, and I had prepared for the same with my flute student, in case she wanted me to be her accompanist. But I haven't heard from her in months. And because I would have had to use vacation time before year-end, anyway, I just decided to leave it. Lord knows I needed a break for a quick second because...

There had been a shift at work where the floor supervisor retired and her position made available for application. I never anticipated being a shoe-in, but I did get asked on multiple occasions if I would apply. To some people in the office, it only seemed logical that I would because out of all of the girls on our floor, I had been there, in that particular office, the longest, save for one (who wasn't particularly interested in applying) and so of course I would at least try. So I put my efforts into trying, and I became hopeful about it. I tweaked my resume, I made sure to collect all my thoughts into my memo ap on my phone so I could really sell myself as managerial, researched related interview skills, questioned my nurse manager mom (who would know ALL about hiring within and without a union), and delivered what I thought was a fantastic interview. But one of the newer girls on the floor who came to us from another branch legit had more seniority and got the position. It was one of my very first professional disappointments. And as such, I had to deal with it.

It wasn't easy because I had always tried to control or manipulate an unfavorable outcomes. All my life, up until that point, if something went janky in my job, I'd leave. Or I'd put up a stink bomb about it and then leave. This time it was completely different. I actually had to live with the news and work through it. Because I love my job and I wasn't going to leave. And this wasn't that janky. It was an honest-to-goodness legit 'defeat'.

But I had to deal with it. And it was kind of tough. I knew the girls at work around me could tell I wasn't myself. I didn't want that to show, but I couldn't help it. And it didn't help that the harder I tried to stay positive, both at work and at home, a number of little things kept poking at me from outside of me, like little sprites coming out of the bushes all around me at random to poke me even when I was trying to mind my own business. A comment here, a reaction there, a little tidbit of news there, whatever external extras, from completely random sources, acting like an 'ambush' and only serving to complicate the matter of me digesting my disappointment. I needed a reset.

And so the week off worked out exceptionally well as over the course of the last few months, I've taken on a play, grad committee chair (what American volunteers to head a Canadian graduation committee?? Idiot!), and the continued music lessons, all of which needed some quick and fierce permanence into my own schedule. Things were going to become quite hectic and complicated if I didn't get myself organized AND if I didn't have a chance to separate myself from work for a moment. So, in no predetermined order, I made a to-do list for my week off and have overloaded my cellphone calendar with dates so that I can start ticking off quite a number of items to help myself organize.

#1 Grad votes

They started coming in the mail by the hords. When T would open the tiny little mailbox, envelopes would fall out onto the floor, like a cascade of fan mail, after coming in home from a long day at work. I made as much as joke to Trev ("Hey babe, lookit all your fan mail!") but that fell as flat as the mess of envelopes on the floor. As the chair, the votes would be coming to my address, and my duty was to collect and count all of the information included in the vote package. The voting was for what kind of after-grad festivities students and parents preferred. There wasn't just the vote itself, but volunteer information. I purchased a small black bin for atop the fridge for any grad mail to go into. That way I wouldn't miss any votes coming in and "my" mail wouldn't get misplaced. After putting it off a week, I finally started counting votes and collecting data into a spreadsheet. It took me hours upon hours. I was easily at the comp for four-hour stretches. But I finally did it. I finally entered every piece of information from each piece of paper in every of the hundred-and-some envelopes to come in onto a spreadsheet. From that spreadsheet I was able to make other related data spreadsheets, including contact info, committee assortment, and the like. Praise to my family for having to suffer my momentary check-outs as I scrambled like a mad woman to get everything put together in one organized spot. I got it done and I felt good about getting it done.

#2 Lesson management

Lessons are still ongoing and therefore not in any way exchangeable with anything else going on. I value them above all other commitments outside of work because they were my first, and because music is my passion. Fortunately, all my students are grouped over the first three days of the week, so that as soon as Wednesday is over, I have the rest of the week and the weekend to recover. Not that I need to recover, per se, but time to regroup. In the process, I have also needed to readjust my angle and approach to lessons yet again. Anyone who has tutored or privately taught anything understands the need for this. Teachers know this. You go into it with all the knowledge in your arsenal, attempting to extract only the most necessary information to impart on your student(s) (so as not to overwhelm them), you find a method, a routine, your confidence grows, then it takes a hit. The kid starts acting up or disengaging. Or fidgeting or yawning or letting their eyes wonder. You're losing them. So you make the decision to try something new or risk losing their interest. You can't sing and dance for them and be a puppet, either. They're kids. But you try. The most critical piece of being a teacher that has worked for me is to work on my ability to understand how their minds work, specifically, each one, from one to another, even from sibling to sibling. And so, I have moved all of my students out of their method books and have given them pieces to work on with varying degrees of difficulty (tailored to their knowledge and ability) and am using the method books as supplements only. It has made all the difference. And while a teacher with more experience than me might look at that as a big old "duh", for me I was debating on how out of their comfort zones I wanted to push them. All but two sets of siblings have only been at it a year or less. The biggest stall, actually, was finding pieces that fit each one well, and with accordance to what I've been teaching them. And for one student in particular, I've moved her out of books and off paper completely and we're working on a more studio-esque-type approach. And every single one of my students were smiling this week! Accomplishment!

#4  Saying "yes" to being in a play (after volunteering to be grad committee chairperson. On accident.)

With working full-time and teaching students after work, I felt I was pretty much tapped out on what I could do and was content to not take on any other activity. I have three other people's schedules to think about at home, too, one of whom includes a teenager who can drive, so with my 9 students and a teen's schedule, I knew I was at my max. Therefore, you can imagine my panic when, in trying to be a good involved mom at the grad parent meeting, accidentally volunteered to be the committee chairperson. Like, of the whole thing. The whole thing. I whole-heartedly believed I was volunteering for head of one of the committees. Not for the whole thing. No one raised their hand. No one really moved. After the liaison down front went through her presentation of committees and started back at the top waiting for volunteers, a good, solid 40 seconds or more passed before the principal assured the crowd that volunteers would be supported through the whole process. Nothing. What was the big deal? I wondered. Why was no one raising their hand? Does no one want to volunteer that badly? Someone had to start the process. How hard could it be? I raised my hand. My hand went up slowly but steadily. From the back of the auditorium, where the principal had moved to, I hear him snap his fingers and shout, "We got one over here!" Still reeling in the "what's the big deal?" thoughts and being pointed out so fiercely, heads turn and the liaison on the stage cranes her neck to see who's got their hand up, and within the following seconds, as the meeting moves on and the liaison down front recaps the positions for volunteers, alarming realization washes over me that it was chair for the whole thing. What!? Oh. Oh, s***. I can't do this. I needed to focus on being smart about my involvement. This was not smart. At all. My brain floods with event conflicts galore. I pull out my phone to look at my calendar. I could work it. But no. Wait. Ugh! What did I just do? But wait. I don't back out of things. I don't shrink away at stuff. Fool or no, I would try. The worst that could happen was that I wouldn't be able to handle it and have to back out (although I would have had to decided that then and there that I wouldn't do it and back out by the end of the meeting so I wouldn't leave the grad parents hanging.) But as it stood, I would be getting the lowdown at the end of the meeting. Binders were passed out to all the volunteer heads. So, I held it. I figured if I simply made myself be organized "af", I could arrange what needed to be arranged. So I did that. I came home, cracked the binder open. Skimmed over timelines and critical dates. Entered it into my phone (my quintessential switchboard for the schedule of my life.) And have, to this date, called my first meeting, made my very own first agenda for that meeting, collected and sorted votes and committee volunteers. Big girl adulting! Yay! Score!

In between straining to stay on top of grad essentials, as per my binder and the content from previous years in that binder, I got a message from a lady I know (through C's friend at school and whose husband I work with in my office) asking me if I would be interested in playing a part in a play she was directing. Uh. Sure? No. No? No. I really couldn't commit to something like that, I tell her. It wouldn't be fair to any of the cast for me not to commit to any role, regardless of how small. Hell yes it would be fun! Heck yeah, I'd love to tell my daughter and my very BFF, who are both huge theatre people, hey, guess who took a role! I'd love to do something small and step out into that circuit. I've been intrigued by theatre people ever since my junior year in high school, where a boy I had a crush on was Freddy in our high school's production of "My Fair Lady" and, on the last night of performances, the whole cast came out and dog piled each other out of wild excitement that they had achieved multiple nights of performances. I could mildly relate being a musician. But it seemed ridiculous that I would dust off an old kid intrigue to give it a try. I made one hesitantly but concerted effort to be a family pet dinosaur for a May-term play my second year of university, which C coaxed me into, called "The Skin of our Teeth." I heavily joked with her after agreeing to being the nurse and Mexican woman in "A Streetcar Named Desire" that I could have a write-up that consisted of my extensive theatre experience having been a dinosaur and laughed hysterically at myself. But I consented to the roles. After all, I can speak Spanish. Who needs to audition when you can just be stereotyped after years of playing the "I'm a part-Mexican" card one's whole life, no one caring, and then me finally relenting to being myself, instead of a titled version of myself? It seems ironic. The director assured me that I only had to be a specific rehearsals. I've been to a read-through, a character analysis session, and one stage-blocking rehearsal. I love it. And I'm glad I said yes. And yes, rehearsal dates have all been entered into my phone. And guess what? Wouldn't you be surprised, none of them conflict with lessons or grad stuffs. At least for now. The week of dress rehearsals leading up to opening night is another story, but I can simply give my students a head's up. It's only one lesson per kid. Every kid loves a break. Lifelong intrigue employed!

#5 Translating a kid's book into Spanish (with my dad's help)

Almost quite literally two seconds into being involved in this play, another cast member, who doesn't know me from Eve, approached me with translating a kid's book he wrote into Spanish. JUST because I speak Spanish and was instantly regarded as having total expertise in the language. Or something. I guess. There really wasn't any pressure to do it. I just thought it would be cool to try. But to cut down on time spent translating every single word, I simply translated it online and then promptly read through the translation to correct everything I knew was wrong. As a precautionary measure, I asked my dad to review it after I had tweaked it and got the approval. It was just another thing in the wave of oh-my-goodness-I've-taken-on-way-too-much-what-the-hell-have-I-been-thinking things that ended up really good in the end. Accomplishment!

#6  Planning a trip to Brandon, MB

Long before all of the above and making sure to include dates, birthday surprises like Cirque du Soleil for Tia, Celia's musical production, for which she is tech crew, other massive dates, and grad meetings, was my A's news of being selected for one of the leads in her play Peter and Wendy. Having planned and canceled two trips to Brandon to see her, this one was particularly important. And I realized I could do it if I saved a certain amount of money from my lessons. Which, holding my breath, I did. Fortunately no one canceled for March. So I booked a hotel with a pool (VERY important to my step-daughter!) and free breakfast close to the university. And there's no backing out this time. Major road trip planning feat, check!