the worst day

I've been lost since 6 a.m. My phone beeped loudly at me, protesting its dying battery, and woke me from a deep sleep. I never did get back there, drifted in and out of consciousness for a couple hours, and woke up to a raging headache.

I debated an imitrex while showering and getting ready, and by the time I pulled into the office I had taken one. By ten my headache was gone, but that pill always leaves me feeling so heavy, like I have weights around my wrists, and my thoughts play bumper-cars in my head. But it could be worse.

At eleven, while debating a menu design with a coworker, I looked up and couldn't see her face anymore. The lights are, right now, on the very outer rim of my vision, meaning I've got about 15 more minutes until the pain sets in. The nausea already has, roiling and curdling my stomach. It's been so much worse with my last few migraines.

And my Dr. Pepper has given me a painful case of hiccups.

I just want to go home. I was overcome with the need to go home like I haven't felt since I was a child at school, the way it pulled me, like if I was just at home on my couch in my pjs all my problems would disappear, or at least not be so bad. Tears welled up in my eyes, my blind eyes, and I reached out to my husband on our chat window that's always open. He made me laugh, as usual, making jokes about David Blaine causing illusions inside my head, which made me feel a little better.

I'm worried that the pain will start even though I've already had a pill today. I don't think I can take another one. Even if I technically, medically, could, I don't know that I would want to. I don't know that I could handle it. Plus I don't have one anyway-- the packet is at home. So I'm praying now nothing will happen. The lights are gone now and my vision is returning, and I'm hoping against hope the crushing ache won't be so bad with the pain killer already perusing my bloodstream. Please.

What a day, and it's only 11:30. At least it's Friday.

Grateful Thursday

1) I'm glad to be home! We got back late last night, finally hitting the pillow (my pillow) at about midnight. It wasn't the best vacation ever (rain, family drama-- what else is new) but it was nice to get away from work for a few days and visit my favorite place on earth, and on the way home we were able to stop and see some friends we hadn't seen in a year.
2) Since I'm so busy playing catch-up at work today (the first thing my boss told me was that I could never leave again), the rest of this post will just be pictures-- moments for which I am grateful:

Grateful Thursday

1) Lessons learned.

2) My peace and quiet. I'm grateful for it right now because I have less and less of it. I'm sharing my desk with the receptionist until we move to our new office, and she likes to talk, a lot, about personal things. Like that her husband is "an ass" and she "doesn't know what to do about him." I don't want to hear that kind of stuff or give advice to her either, which I guess is what she wants? She even started crying one day last week. So I just listen and nod. I suppose I should draw some kind of line, but I don't want to be mean about it as she's obviously upset already. I never realized how much I live for quiet.

3) My fickle mind. If I were the type of person to make a decision and stick to it forever, life would get boring. (I'm talking small matters here, not matters of the heart.) For instance, I've been growing my hair out for a year at least now, and finally with only about a inch or two left to go to the longest it's been since I was 5, I want to cut it off. Eh, it's just hair.

4) Success. Without going into too much tedious detail-- two national franchises have contacted us about our software, interested in implementing it nationwide in all their offices. If they sign on, it means millions for our company. Fingers crossed and knock on wood, I could be doing a lot better financially come New Years. It also means a lot of hard work is paying off, but there's still a lot of hard work to come.

5) Starting early Saturday morning, I will be here, not to return until late Wednesday. If only I could stay forever...

forgiveness

I realized yesterday that I haven't forgiven my older brother, or my younger one at that, and that I'm carrying around anger for them constantly, like a little black mist obscuring a small part of my soul. I don't think about it much, but it's there, and I'd like to be rid of it.

My older brother starting hanging out with the "wrong crowd" and doing drugs at about age 15. I was 12. He got so overwhelmed by it that he was physically abusive at times, emotionally abusive always, drove my dad to hysterics, and dropped out of school. This went on for years with no real resolution, no real end and new beginning, no finish line.

I didn't talk to him for several years. My first year of college I took a creative writing class, and while writing about my family I realized how much hatred I had stored up for him. I let it go, as simple as that. Like a bird I had trapped inside, fluttering against the cage walls, when I finally realized it wanted out I simply opened the door and watched it fly away. I decided I didn't need that inside me, and I forgave him for myself, not for him. I was ready to let it go.

That was almost ten years ago, ten years in which he has inflicted new cuts and bruises on me and our family. Ten years in which he has moved from city to city, girl to girl, never getting a job for more than a few months at a time, lying to my parents, coercing them out of money, and expecting nothing but acceptance and acquiescence from us. I'm done, I've been done with him for a couple of years. I talk to him on birthdays and Christmas. I don't need his crap in my life.

But somehow it manages to find its way back in, as my parents can't give up. So I'm still angry, angry for the pain he causes them, angry for every sleepless night my mother has worrying about him and his brother (who's now growing pot in north California), angry for every sigh my father heaves over both of them, every sad glance down at the table away from us, angry that I don't have brothers who love and care for their family the way they should. I'm furious, actually, and if I didn't think it would only make it worse for my parents, I'd tell both brothers exactly what I thought and cut them out completely.

All I want-- all I want-- is a little appreciation from both of them for all my parents do for them. I don't even care if they still ask for money or remain jobless or whatever, as long as they understand my parents are doing them a favor and not simply fulfilling whatever duty my brothers think they're owed.

I'm not ready to let go of this anger yet. I take that back. I've gotten comfortable with it, wrapped it around me, stood in front of it and prodded and stoked it, basking in the heat of it. It's not a single hurt, or a past hurt-- it's an ongoing issue that doesn't seem to have an end. Neither of them think they're doing anything wrong. How do you forgive someone who continues to sin against you over and over without even thinking about how their actions affect you, or caring? Like someone who walks by you and kicks you in the same spot on your shin every day, not noticing the bruise they're leaving behind, the bruise that gets darker and darker with each passing day, not hearing your words of either protest or forgiveness as they stride away from you.

And there it goes. Deep breath in, deep breath out, the cage door opens and this day has been forgiven. I will let it go. Maybe if I just keep at it, every day forgiving every day's trespasses, eventually there will be no more to forgive. Eventually.

legacy

His front yard sloped gently down toward the highway, but to quell the frequent rain waters rushing away too quickly, he had landscaped it-- a patch of trees here, a couple bushes there, to ease it down to the ditch. His gravel driveway, hand-poured, winded among the trees and shrubs to his chainlink gate, partially hidden behind the thick honeysuckle vines. At dawn on muggy summer mornings he'd swing one long, wiry leg over his silver riding lawnmower and buzz all over his yard, the front half-acre and the back forty. His grass was always a perfect half inch. When a pine started to throw out low branches, so low he'd have to duck his 6'4" frame under them, he'd make a run back to his white lean-to work shop, at the end of his first plot of land, and grab his chipper. These limbs make perfect mulch, he'd say as he sawed them off and then pushed them into the red metal hole, his yellow leather work gloves helping his large hands grip the gyrating timber.

He'd make a weekly trip to the barber shop in town, especially during the summer, every third visit getting a trim to his half-head of shiny, mousy brown hair, but mostly to collect the clippings they swept up for him. Keeps the deer away from the vegetables, he said, and it did for the most part. Sitting on the screened porch that stretched across the entire back of his house, thumb nails turning green from snapping or shelling peas, he'd swing with us women while we worked, feeling the breeze and listening to the windchimes tinkle and chime. Late summer nights were spent sorting blueberries on the porch, moving them from basket and bag into sealable buckets ready for taking to friends and neighbors, popping an occasional stray into our purple-stained mouths as we worked.

Just off the porch was his office with the keyboard drawer full of tasty secrets. He'd shush you and slip a foil wrapped peppermint patty into your hand while no one was looking. His computer was top of the line for the eighties, a full DOS system with Frogger and some other games. As soon as the internet was available, he had it too. On the wall opposite his computer was a giant world map, red-headed pins stuck in three-quarters of it, all the places he had visited over the years, most of them in the last ten or fifteen.

He loved his wife, he loved his children, and he especially loved his grandchildren. But he wasn't perfect. He could be strict on us, wanting things done in his way and only his way; unforgiving as well, not allowing for many disgretions beyond his approval. He grew up with nothing, hardly even a family to which to cling, so he clung to money, believing it would protect us in the end, after he was gone.

I understand more now, more as I get older. His porch, his yard, his family, that was all he needed to make him happy. Although he always believed the best thing he could do for us, the right thing, was to leave behind his money to take care of his wife and the rest of us, what he didn't know was his lasting legacy, the one I hold so dear on days like today, were the lessons he taught me just by living his life: simplicity and honesty. The greatest thing I have learned from him: just love, and be loved in return.

it's a rule

I struggle to do what's right. What is right? We make up our own rules for ourselves, don't we.

My rules include:
1) Meat is bad.
2) Being mean or cruel, even when it could be construed as deserved, is never deserved.
3) Touching and/or displays of affection with non-family are not needed or wanted, especially in public.
4) Better to be unheard than overheard, aka shut the eff up.
5) No one is ever always right, not even me.

There are many more I could list, rules that I've made for myself and for people in my life. You must abide by a majority before I will let you in my club. It's very exclusive. You probably don't want to join anyway. Only the most dedicated get in. It's a lot of work to be me or be near me.

Today I'm thinking about number 1. (These numbers are fluid, it's number 1 today because it's number 1 on my mind.)

And I'm thinking about number 4 too. Which totally throws out that parenthetical hypothesis as to the numbering system's meaning.

Anyway, I haven't eaten red meat, poultry, pork, or anything related since 1999. A full ten years. (Rule number 6: We're not going to count the time I was in Paris and ordered a croque monsieur, thinking that it was just cheese and bread, not realizing the thick gruyere was hiding a thin layer of ham until I had eaten half, but I finished it anyway because I was ravenously hungry and had no other food options that late at night back at the hotel.) For several years, five I think, I didn't eat fish either. I was tiny, a waif of a girl, pale too, and by the time I started working, meaning I was getting up at an "adult" hour and actually doing real work for at least 8 hours a day, I needed more protein. Beans and peanuts were not cutting it, so I added fish back into my diet, thinking at least they aren't factory farmed.

I should add another rule here: No watching anything on tv or at the theater that will make me sad or angry or that will affect any other rule's stability.

The damn Discovery Channel aired a show about the harmful affects of fishing on our planet and on other animals. It was disturbing. Dolphins, albatross, turtles, they call get caught up in the nets and lines and die, thrown back into the water by the fishermen, unused and uncared for, unmourned.

I mourn them, I mourn everything that dies a purposeless death, everything that lives a cruel and heartless life only to get smacked in the head unceremoniously to become a cheeseburger scarfed down by some unappreciative neanderthal human with no clue as to how that burger came to be. No reverence for nature, no consideration for what's right.

I suppose it's right to other people, somehow they think we have this right, to make the lives of animals into whatever we want them to be, that we own and control this earth and not the other way around.

So I'm struggling with this, with whether to keep eating fish. As of now, I'm buying as much organic and farm-raised as I can. It's more expensive, but I'll pay for my peace of mind.

And for number 4, I need to raise my not-often-heard voice and yell "shut up" at one girl in the office. Maybe not in so many words. That probably wouldn't be right.

Grateful Thursday

1) Every breath I take. I want to acknowledge each one, thank it for coming to me, allowing me to live on this earth. I don't want to take them for granted because you never know when they'll end.
2) A good ink pen. Not too thick, not too thin, preferably gel, and the clicky-kind, because who can keep up with a cap? A good pen makes even my chicken-scratch look elegant and refined.
3) My new followers. Hi, everyone!
4) New life, in all its forms. My coworker (despite my pleas for her to get her young dog spayed) waited too late and her Sally got pregnant. It was touch and go for a while as Sally had a hip problem from puppyhood and the vets were afraid child-birth would be too much for her. But Sunday night she produced two of the tiniest, blackest puppies I've ever seen-- the only hint of color is one white spot on the tip of one's tail and pink paw pads. She's keeping them at the office during the day. Here's a photo I managed to snag in one of the few restful moments, momma and baby together:

5) Flowers...

no regrets

One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love. ~ Elizabeth Aston

When I was seventeen, I went to Europe with about 14 classmates for our Senior trip. I've lived a charmed life, in that vein anyway. I wrote about the plane ride here in this post, Richard being the key character, the boy who, by Paris, had mended himself to my side, and who became the most important person in my life for the next four years.

I ran into him on Facebook the other night. An old high school friend contacted me, and there he was, green eyes and curly hair, on her wall saying hello to her. I hadn't seen his face since Christmas day of 2003. I broke up with him early that fall, but when Christmas rolled around weakness overtook me and I went to see him. Something about meeting him there, at his parents house, finding that the old feelings were gone and replaced by awkwardness and uncertainty, that even the pain of the split was numbed on my end, let me know that was it, that was the end, this was the last.

There had been love between us, I think. It may have been more desperation, more loneliness, that brought us together though. We were kindred spirits, but only in our negative qualities, feeding off of each other. I lean towards the thoughtful, the sullen, the quiet and pensive, as did he, but I know now that never meant I had to be depressed. He was depressed. He was a cutter, and a tantrum thrower. I did all I could to make him happy, but he brought me down to my knees with his sadness. I ran as soon as I could run. I did love him, I loved what he could be if he just could. But I loved myself more in the end.

I met my husband while I was still dating Richard. I wrote about this meeting in this post. The more I got to know my husband, the more I came to see what I could have, and I began to fall for him even while still with Richard. To tell the truth, my relationship with Richard had become a shell by then, fragile and begging to be broken. But I thought that's what life was.

I don't wonder what would have happened if I had not gone to Europe, if I had not spent those years with Richard. He brought me to my husband. I wish Richard well, if that's possible for him. I do wonder where I would be if I wasn't strong enough to be the one to push at the cracks of what we were, to jump ship when I saw the boat sinking. Drowned, I suppose.

There's something so disarming about seeing a face you haven't seen in years, a face you used to see every day, that meant the world to you, that was the last thing you saw at night and the first thing in the morning for years, that you thought you'd continue to see forever. Rushing tingles, swelling scars, and trails of tears, love like a ghost haunting your memory, shadows only of what once was there.

What once was there in no way compares to what now is here. What now is here is written here.

let's get physical

No, not like that.
Like this.

Husband and I bought an exercise bike on Sunday. We did not, however, remember the 4 D batteries that run the magnetic resistance feature, but it's still ride-able until I get back to the store. After about an hour of "which screw? where? there?" it was finally assembled, and I rode twenty minutes on Sunday night, pumping the pedals while also pumping two-pound hand weights to re-tone my arms. I rode again last night for about thirty minutes. So far the only problems are the two bruises on my rear end from the very uncomfortable seat. A pillow fixed that.

I suppose it's a condition of nearing 30 and of having an office job that that same rear end of mine, bruises and all, has seemed to have spread in the last year or so. I still fit in the same pants, technically, but I'm not comfortable in them, and I appear to be spilling out in places I used to smoothly glide over. I also noticed while retiling my fireplace these last couple weeks that while scrubbing, my upper arms sway a little bit harder than they used to do. We can't have that.

Husband has gained a bit of a "beer belly," and though it was cute and funny at first to watch him stand in front of the mirror, grab his stomach and growl at it, it's not making him go back to his fit and trim self. Time to do something, now before it's too late, before I start buying one size bigger (then two, then three) and he has to make new holes in his belts.

We debated an elliptical or a stationary bike or a treadmill or a combination therein. Treadmills are hard on the knees and ankles so those were ruled out fairly quickly. We picked up the stationary bike because you can get a nicer one for less money than you can an elliptical, but we might get one of those too, so we can exercise at the same time.

I know you're thinking, Just go outside! or Join a gym! No, those options were discussed and eliminated. My climate does not permit outside exercise, unless you're a masochist-- it's either blazingly hot or achingly cold, or raining, no matter the time of day. Here we get about two nice weeks a year, and two weeks do not make much of an exercise regime. Gyms are for people who like to show off, who wear makeup to work out, who go out and spend a small fortune on designer sports bras and tennis shoes, who blast their iPods because they can't just be alone with their thoughts for half an hour. I rode in a t-shirt and Garfield boxers last night, barefoot, eyes closed, alone in my world. It was peaceful, serene, and invigorating.

In other news:
The ENT agrees that I do not have sinus or allergy problems. He said an imitrex, which is what ultimately killed my 4-day headache two weeks ago, would not have helped if it were just a sinus/allergy headache as those and migraines are two separate causes that have two separate solutions. So he's referring me to a neurologist. I'm a little bit back-where-I-started-from then, but at least I know now I'm not crazy. Husband might still argue with that.

Honest Scrap

Heather, a sweet Southern girl like myself over at ...and now I'm a grownup, was kind enough to pass on this Honest Scrap award to me. I get to list ten random but honest things about myself. And then I'll pass it on! Here we go...

I've read all seven Harry Potter books and I absolutely love them. Especially Hermione. And Dobby.

I have a shoe obession. I wear a different pair nearly every day of the week just for fun. I really love ballerina-type flats in funky colors, even more so if they're pointy-toed. And I don't wear heels unless I absolutely have too, which leads me to this...

I'm tall. I'm at least 5'9" although I won't look when they measure me at the doctor's because I don't want to know. I've always been a little self conscious about it, probably because I went to a very small high school where I was the tallest girl and guys didn't ask me out because I was so tall. But I don't like heels because they're uncomfortable too.

I hate to clean. I hate doing dishes, I hate cleaning counters, I hate dusting, I hate vacuuming, and I especially hate cleaning the bathroom. I will do anything to get out of it. I'd rather go outside and hoe up weeds in the heat for an hour than spend 20 minutes scrubbing a bathroom. Yuck.

I have a pretty good singing voice. I used to sing solos in the church I grew up in especially while in high school. I sing in the car now, that's about it.

My favorite flower is a blue hydrangea because my Granny used to grow them, and I just absolutely love that bright blue. It's my favorite color. Second favorite would be a purple iris.

I'm a vegetarian and have been since I was eighteen. Some of you know this but not all. I gave up red meat first because I never really liked it anyway, plus it takes so much energy and money to grow a cow for meat, and those resources could be put towards many other more efficient uses. You could feed thirty-two people with the grain it takes to create one hamburger, which feeds one. Plus I figure if I don't like to know or think about the way the animal was killed, then I shouldn't eat it, and if we don't treat an animal with the reference it deserves before we slaughter it for our use, then I won't be involved in that either.

My father is a photographer, and he has some work in larger museums like the Smithsonian. So I spent quite a bit of time as a child in a dark room developing photos with him, then in frame shops cutting wood and metal and glass, and then in galleries and museums listening to people who know nothing but think they know everything criticize and spend too much money.

I live in a brightly colored house. No neutrals or beiges for me. Dark gray-blue in the living room, bright yellow in the kitchen, and olivey-grass green in the bedroom. It makes me happy. I'm thinking of painting the office cherry red.

I sunburn really easily and have very sensitive skin. I get weird rashes and itches it I touch something I'm not used to and have to use detergents that don't have dyes or fragrances. I carry cortaid in my purse. When I go to the beach or out in the bright sun I slather myself with SPF 45 at least and reapply every couple hours; otherwise I'll get sun poisoning. I don't know where I got this-- no one else in my family is this way. But I've learned how to live with it and it's not that big of a deal anymore.

So there you go. It wasn't as easy to think of those as I thought it would be, I suppose because I try to be as honest as I can here on my blog anyway.

I'm passing this on to Kathy over at kathy's kamground kapers because I think she'll have fun with it, and she always seems to tell it like it is, too!