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Rick is the sweetest guy I’ve ever met.  He acts hardcore and rough around the edges but I have witnessed him cry when it’s appropriate. I have called on him to bail me out of jail, which he did with intent and absolutely no judgment or speech.  Rick knows how to mop a floor. This may seem a small thing but when he’s mopping I am extremely happy about the fact that he is willing to do this and doesn’t complain or call this “women’s work”.  He is a simple dude who loves hamburgers, French fries and meatloaf.  He likes to fish with his brother and get wasted drunk about 3 times a year.  The rest of the time he chills only with an occasional beer.  He’s willing to smoke outside on the back patio to appease me, and he rarely ever truly complains about this arrangement.  I have seen him sit beside me in a hospital while I threw my guts up in a plastic bucket and never had him get all “grossed out”, but instead kept asking me if he could do anything.  I like how he laughs at stupid things on TV as if his lungs are going to shoot straight out of his chest because he finds something to be so worth a fall out belly laugh like that. I love when he makes big kick ass breakfasts with biscuits and gravy and I will never be able to see “biscuits and gravy” on a menu again in my life without smiling.  I love that he takes his socks off the minute he gets into the house and that he prefers to walk around in boxers and be all chill and relaxed.  I love that he loves his family with intensity and that no matter how bad they fuck up or what they say or do to him his loyalty knows no bounds. I love seeing him hold little kids and I love how his face lights up around his nephew Matthew. I love that he’s kept every single email I’ve ever sent to him, even the ones that say nothing but “here’s those blinds I want to buy”.  I love that after he moved out he forgave me and willingly came back when I asked him to. I love that he knows how to hook up the stereo and change up any electronics and all their cords are clear maps to clarity and he never makes fun of the fact that I can’t set up a computer to save my life (unless it’s a laptop that you plug in and insert the mouse into). I love that he calls me the smart one, even when I can’t add the tip to the check without counting on my fingers. I love that he doesn’t get a haircut at a barbershop but instead hands me the clippers and lets me go at it. I love that he wears any fucked up t-shirt that I buy for him regardless of what it says on the front. I love that he laughs at them and puts them on and let’s people laugh at his funny t-shirts too. I love that he always smells good, like soap but it’s not soap or cologne…its his smell, his clothes always smell like this and I often smell them just because they are him and it makes me happy. I love that he moves my hundreds of books without complaint. I love that he works hard for a living and comes home dirty and sweaty and covered in freshly developed muscles.  I really love that he’s not a weight lifter who brags about how much he can bench, but he’s probably stronger than most of those buttheads. I love that he’s humble and that he’s never arrogant or cocky.  I love that he gives the best hugs ever and I always feel like I’ve won the lottery when I come home from a bad day and he hugs me like that. I love that he loves coffee as much as I do and that he never measures it and asks me to make him coffee and then he says “mmm I love that perfectly measured coffee you make!” I love that he lets me be a smart ass and he’s a smart ass back. I love that he’s not a pussy and that he doesn’t bow down to me or wait on me hand and foot but he’s always there full of kindness when I’m falling apart. I love that he’s willing to go to work and work hard for a living. I love that he’s responsible with his money. I love how he’s great at playing Poker but he’s not a cocky player. I love that he’s quiet with everyone else and never shuts up with me. I feel special when he talks that much and that openly with me but doesn’t with the entire world. I love that he doesn’t tell me how to mother my son; he lets me be the same mother I’ve always been. I love that he supports my desire to get further education by simply not getting in my way and never dictating to me what I should be doing. He’s never said ‘Go do your homework!” once.  I really love how he holds my hand when we go to the movies and he always plays with my fingernails, running his fingers along the edges of my fingernails the same way for six years now.  I love his sloppy handwriting. I love how he asks me to spell words he can’t spell and then asks me if I really spelled it right. lol  I love how he doesn’t really care if his socks are new, if his shirt has wrinkles or if his pants are clean.  I love how he’s willing to try to fix things that he’s clueless about. I love that he succeeds 50% of the time. I love the way he drags off of a cigarette. I love how he says he hates the dog but I often catch him giving her tons of love and calling her doggy names that only make sense to him. I love that he cried on our wedding day overcome with emotions. I love his five minute maximum on talking on the phone, he hates it. I love how he constantly fights to keep those two big ugly stereo speakers because he simply wants them and he doesn’t let me always have my way. I love how he doesn’t take my bullshit and how he will hang up on me on the phone and put an end to my female tirades quickly. Yes I love that…he’s manly and not a whimp and I love that.  I love how much he loves me and how often I feel like I’ve won the lottery when I think about my marriage and my husband and my current life.  I love how I never consider what I don’t have because of how much I do have. 

So I call my grandma once a week.  It’s usually early in the morning while she’s drinking her coffee. I really treasure these conversations.  For the past 3 weeks I’ve been unable to get her on the phone. I finally broke down last week and emailed my sister and asked her if something was wrong.  She said,”No”. 

This morning I tried calling my grandmother again and no answer again.  So, I called my Aunt DeDe (other side of the family) who lives in the same town and asked her if she heard anything. Yes sad that I don’t really trust my own sister.  She saw a strange car at another one of my Aunt’s houses but no she had not heard of anything having to do with my grandparents.  But she suggested I call one of my cousins who lives across the street from my Grandmother, so I did.  My cousin Theresa got on the phone and after my muddy explanation about who I was (I haven’t seen this woman since I moved away at age 19), she advised that my Grandmother is attending the Novena this week but that everything is fine.

Unbeknownst to me my cousin Theresa walked across the street and told my grandmother that I was trying to call her.  About an hour passed after I hung up with my cousin Theresa and I decided to try my Grandmother’s number yet again.

She answered!!!  She told me I was like Dick Tracy hunting her whereabouts down. I apologized but exasperatedly told her I was concerned about her.  She said she understood and that my mother had simply bought her a caller ID so that she could avoid telemarketers and my number was coming up on her caller ID as “Number Unknown” and she had simply “ignored” me.

*gasp*

Ignored by my own grandmother due to her upgrading her technology!!  Since she only got a caller id and did not upgrade into the year 2009 with a voicemail system, I was unable to even leave her a message.  *double gasp*

Dissed by my lovely grandmother over ill upgrading my mother installed.  Oh let me count the ways in which my mother is evil.

Ok I jest.  It’s not my wicked mother’s fault.  But still…I was dissed due to technology!!

I hope my grandmother never upgrades her telephone, I love that little *ding* I hear in the background as she says hello to me from her old school phone.  I honestly was worried…..I’d much rather learn of my dissing than something horrific.  I admonished her and said “don’t do that again, I was slowly becoming a mess of worry”.  She laughed her sweet Grammy laugh and said “ok! ok!”.

I love her.  God…just how much I love her.

Incidentally the cousin I spoke to after years referred to my mother’s massive diss of me and I hate that. I’m forever the small town girl who’s own mother shit all over her.  I quickly responded to her reference by saying “oh don’t worry, I have a blessed life, a great husband and wonderful child and my husband’s family….oh so wonderful, I am not to be pitied”.  She replied, “I’m so happy to hear that, you can call me anytime!”

A few weekends ago we spent a Sunday working on our bathroom.  One Sunday all day and then a few hours the following night.  We decided that Sunday mid morning to go ahead and just do it within an hours time of talking it over.  We then set off to Lowes and Home Depot and therein began the project I like to refer to as the “recessionary re-do”.  We did not change out any major bathroom fixtures.  The tub is an old cast iron tub that was previously re-done and looks great.  The toilet is brand new as well.  So are the white cabinet and the sink.  We did remove a new medicine cabinet and light….it was cheap and ugly.  And we did swap out the following: 
    

Bathroom Light Fixture   64.00     Bathroom Medicine Cabinet  96.00 
Paint Color - Valspar Sky Blue EB6-4 23.47New Faucet - Lowes (not on website) 24.99

New Cabinet Knob    2.49

Shower Curtain   29.99
        

Black/white wall clock from Target 2.97
      Black Umbra plastic Garbage can 9.99
    Black bathroom rug  12.99
    2 new black bath towels   12.00         

Total  278.89 Tax   19.52  

Grand Total 298.41      

    Before AND After 
    

Not bad eh?  I love it.  I absolutely LOVE it.  I’m very proud of the work we did and the dramatic changes that we ended up with. I love the room. It’s bright, cheerful and makes me immediately happy every morning.  Since we live in an 1100 foot house with only one bathroom, making that bathroom a happy place has made a huge difference.  It only took us 11 months to finally get to that Sunday when we went forth making the changes we wanted to make from day one.  The majority of these items (shower curtain, rug, towels, clock…all from Target). We put a note on the wall behind the new medicine cabinet that read “We replaced the medicine cabinet in March of 2009. If you think this one is ugly and are replacing it, you should have seem the beast we removed!!!” You can see the entire bathroom info and pictures on my Flickr here   

Reason # 991,203,123,094,233 that I pick Rick. He did the majority of the painting and swap out work.  I just put the icing on the cake details and did the shopping.  Thanks honey!                                       

I got an ARC copy of this book in the mail. I read it in a mere 2 hours. Why? Because it was free and because I could basically peruse through it because if you’ve read www.dooce.com then you’ve already read 97% of this book. I hate blog to book deals where the publisher basically regurgitates what the blogger has already put out there for free. Are people supposed to actually pay to read the same depressive “I loathe raising children because I don’t have time to pluck my own eyebrows” memoir style entries in a book form? I didn’t pay for this and while I used to read “her” blog, I can’t stomach it anymore.

I am a parent and I have suffered from depression the majority of my life. But I can’t stomach how Heather Armstrong speaks about her child in one sentence as though she loves her so much she can barely stop herself from “eating” her child and in the next she writes about the massive amounts of resentment she has towards her for robbing her of her former freedom. Leta didn’t rob you Heather; you chose to give birth to her. It’s your responsibility to raise her, not her debt to you to make up for. She’s going to one day resent you for plastering her entire life all over the www for your own pocketbook stuffing.

While I find Mrs. Armstrong to be quirky at some turns, by and large this compilation, and that’s what it is (a compilation of blog material that’s all now over 4 years old) the same drivel you can read for free if you’re so inclined.

Incidentally, a stint in a mental health hospital that lasts for 4 day’s is really so very minor in the world of depression. I mean…really. My Aunt had postpartum depression, never resented her own child, and she spent months in a facility trying to muster up the courage to merely take a shower. The state of her eyebrows was the last thing on her mind when she was sick. I think that humour’s a wonderful thing, but some things are just not topics to joke about. Mother’s who loathe motherhood certainly shouldn’t have any more children. But I’m sure that’s the 3rd book to bank on.

This book covers the early pregnancy days, the early Leta days, all the day’s that have been well documented already. How many times can you rinse lather and repeat the “Dear Leta Month 324,567″ letters?   I think it was when she hit Month 37 when I finally got fed up and quit reading THAT blog altogether.  Why do women who can easily have babies loathe so many things about them?  As a woman who would love to have had more children it’s largely disheartening.

The back story

Some day if I have nothing at all better to do, perhaps if I’m bedridden and can only type and I’m no longer gaining degree’s, I will then write the entire long drawn out story of my mother.

I have come a long way regarding my feelings towards her.  I started to blog back in August of 2001.  When I first started to open up about her and blog about it, I was highly angry and hadn’t really talked to anyone about her.  Since then I’ve sat in several years of therapy and I’m really a-ok about the topic.  Except that it’s widely more acceptable to feel kindly towards one’s mother.  It never comes across as “okay” or “cool” to think your mother sucks.  Mine does.  No matter what anyone says, the facts remain the facts and any woman who can disown her child, refuse to utter her name thereafter or acknowledge that she exists…well that’s not normal and she’s not normal.  I don’t understand her, I never will.  But I’m finally ok with that, because I feel I am better off not being influenced by her being a part of my life anyway.  I want a mother….just not mine.

The few posts I wrote about her…and no I’m not going to bother linking them…if someone really wants to know, they’ll copy/paste and do the work to know.

this one
this one
and this one

Those three posts say a lot about my past.  But I’ve come to a place where I’m really not angry, even though it may appear that way to others.  I am merely ambivalent about my past, my absent mother, and the lack of her presence whatsoever in my life since I was 19.5 years old.  It’s been 20 years this year and I’m ok with it, really I am.  But I will say what I want to say about it without apologizing to anyone.  It is my truth, my reality.  My mother is a woman who caused a great deal of harm to me, and in her absence has been more of a gift than she ever was during her presence.  I have now lived longer without her than I have with her.  She’s very much alive and living in my hometown, Johnstown.  She’s the same mess she was when she kicked me out.  I’m allowed to be angry, but I’m really not. 

I won’t send her an email or a letter because I have no earthly idea if she even has an email address, and she would simply mark anything I mailed to her personally with a giant “REFUSED RETURN TO SENDER” message just like she did when I sent her a birth announcement regarding my now 16 year old son’s birth 16 years ago.  

I will be sending my beloved Aunt DeDe my graduation announcement and another one for her to mail from my honmetown to my mother.  She’ll have to accidentally open it to find out I graduated.  But….it really won’t matter to her.  She’s heartless when it comes to me.  I email with my sister, who is my mother’s favored child and close to my mother, and she advises me only that I am a null and void subject with my mother.  She behaves as though she only ever had two children.  The rest of my family allows this behavior and that pisses me off more than my mother does.  

However, I’m over it.  It will never change.  It hasn’t changed in 20 years.  I certainly don’t hope or hold my breath.

But….yes…upon seeing my diploma…I really thought “fuck you mother…fuck you!”  Although it’s hard to explain to people that it’s a fierceness born from spending my first 19 years of life trying to be “good enough” for her to love me…..only to find that I wasted all efforts and so now I know I am good enough but my fierceness comes from my desire to have everything in the world that I ever wanted …not because of her…but despite her trying to break me.

She hasn’t.  She won’t.  I always survive.

Trust me…I used to tell people my mother wasn’t present in my life because she died in a car accident.  Now I’m brutally honest.  She’s not present because she chose not to be, she makes that choice daily.  And I no longer want her.  I sometimes mourn not having ever had a mother…someone that thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, like all mothers should feel for their offspring…but low and behold….I found out that I had my own child and that child….well he thinks I’m pretty cool and that I’m good enough without trying.  Therein my soul is saved.

My mother has missed out on much.  I have become stronger, better, bolder…than I ever thought I could be….without her. I am not angry, but I will not apologize for overcoming the damage she caused.  I will never know what it is to have a mother, I had an egg donor who spent my childhood resenting my mere existence.  I was not planned for and never wanted…and she never missed a chance to remind me of just how my coming along ruined what she wanted her life to be. She’s a sad lonely lady….and sometimes in life you lie in the bed that you make.  I don’t find glory in that….I just know firsthand that she goes to bed alone every night, she’s never met her own grandson and that….well that is not a life I would call “good enough” for me.

I wish I had a mother. It does make me angry that people assume I should love mine.  I don’t.  I don’t hate her.  I hate her actions and her inability to find help for herself.  

My family story is not the average norm. I’m not the kid who  just didn’t dig her mother….I’m the kid the mother didn’t want and therefore verbally dismissed and in turn abused.  I never saw it as abuse until I went to therapy where two different doctors told me emphatically that my mother is probably sick because mother’s don’t do that stuff under normal mental health conditions. If she’s sick, I’m sorry…but I can’t say it erases what she did to me.  It doesn’t.

One cool thing that came from my fucked up family story was the time I met Po Bronson…now that was cool and that experience really helped me heal a lot.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/poetical/sets/72157594360251923/

Oh and one other thing….my mother paid for my sisters college degree, she also paid to send my younger brother who quickly failed out.  When I wanted to go to college, she told me to “get a job and have some kids because when she was my age she was strapped down with me”.   Yah so it took me 20 years to find my footing enough without family or support to get that degree.  So yah…fuck her!!!  That’s not anger…..that is pure and simply…..tenacity.