High-pitched feedback

So I've created a website (you have to say that in the same way you'd say 'I've created a monster!') and I want you to check it out and tell me what you think. www.freewebs.com/inajar

Also...I'm kinda curious to know who has been reading my blog, so leave me a comment and say hi, OK? I suspect that I only have the 3 readers I know about, but who knows? Maybe I have a whole fan club out there.

Nah...not enough naked pictures on here for that.

What else could I be...

You know what really gets to me?

(And if you're one of the people who does it, or has done it, don't take this the wrong way, because I know you mean it in the nicest, most complimentary way, and I appreciate it, I really do. But.)

A lot of people have expressed some kind of bizarre admiration for me, because of all the kids that I have.

Don't do that. Please.

I have a lot of kids. One of my kids has some trouble that he goes to weekly occupational therapy for. Two of them are snarky adolescents. Two of them play baseball for different leagues, and we have to do some juggling to get them both where they need to be on time. Three of them wear glasses and I'm constantly searching for them, cleaning them, straightening them out, sticking them on to little faces. One is a spoiled and precocious preschooler. I homeschool them, run endless errands, make sure they all get to where they need to be when they need to be there, and sometimes I'm lucky to find ten minutes midday to grab a Wendy's burger for lunch.

That does not make me a superhero, or even someone to look up to.

I can't say my life is easy, but who can? Really, can you? It may be fun, exciting, fulfilling, but easy? I doubt it.

Having six children does not make me someone to be admired. If I had adopted these children, taken them in and made a conscious decision to have them in my life, then you could look at me with admiration. But I had them all, gave birth to them, and not under the best of circumstances most of them, if you want the truth. They were always a part of me; I had no choice but to have them, and after that, to raise them, to love them, always to love them.

I have no choice in caring for Jeremy. Someone at his old school used to thank me for coming when I would show up again, after being called over a meltdown or tantrum or bad PE day, and it always left me baffled. Thank you for what? For taking care of my own kid? Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? He needs, they need, I give. It's like eating, or breathing, it's simply what you do.

I sometimes joke about living in my van because I'm always on the go, but I don't really, of course. I live in a nice little suburban brick house with four bedrooms and a fenced back yard. I have room for my family. We don't have much extra, but we have enough, and a little more. I have a new-ish vehicle, two of them, to load my kids into when we have to run to this place or that. We have a DVD player to keep them occupied on the long drive to the family reunion we attend every year. My freezer is full, the shelves well-stocked. If I didn't have all this, if I was really struggling and still keeping things together, then you could look at me with admiration. But not now.

I don't beat them, or lock them out in the cold, or send them to bed with only a cold wet hotdog for dinner (as my daughter told my mother several years ago, why I don't know). I'm not supposed to do those things.

If you want to admire someone, admire the woman who adopts a disabled child and devotes her life to meeting his needs. If you see a woman with children, clean but shabby in dress, trying to count out the last few cents she has for a box of cheerios, smile at her. She may have escaped something worse than povery to keep her children safe.

Admire people for their choices; don't call me Supermom. I'm just a girl who got lucky.

Me speaks English please.

Last night, some dude on ESPN said 'How better can this team get?'

Aaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhh.

Yet another reason to shoot the TV.

My kingdom for a pie

I went in search of a cast iron skillet yesterday. The logical place to find one, of course, is the local kitchen store, a massive building filled to the top with everything you could possibly need for cooking, serving, grilling, cleaning up, decorating...anything and everything Kitchen is in this place.

Almost.

I found the skillet, choked on the price, stuck it in the cart, and then did my usual mindless wandering, travelling the aisles, looking for things I'd forgotten I needed, or maybe didn't know I needed till I spotted it there on the shelf. I gathered necessary objects: a measuring cup to replace the one I'd ruined with the kids' bizarrely sticky and permanent Easter egg dye; a set of flexible chopping mats to replace my grody-looking cutting board; a pair of heart-shaped egg cookers; a canister of four different chocolate flavored coffee creamers. Headed to the checkout, I suddenly remembered something I really did need: a pie server. You know, one of those little triangular spatula things you use to lift a piece of pie out of the pan, so your blueberries or whatever don't run all over the place and leave you with a wad of soggy, crumbled crust. Not that I make pies often (my mom still talks about the Apple Pie Incident, which wasn't really all that funny, I mean apples are plenty sweet on their own...I thought...) but I buy them sometimes, and I make cheesecakes too. A pie server is just what I need. So off we went, my daughter and I, with a purpose.

We passed a whole wall of measuring cups, one set with its own coordinating egg separator. Speaking of egg separators, they had one shaped like a happy little chick, which is just weird if you ask me. We passed a shelf of cookie jars shaped like little squat men in karate outfits; when you lifted their heads to retrieve cookies from their wide neck holes, they sang 'Kung Fu Fighting'. Those were on clearance, I have no idea why. They had little animal-shaped creamers, quesadilla cookers and cutters, taco shell warmers, rotating weenie grills. We spotted jars of gourmet vodka sauce and my daughter, trying to be bad and rebellious, asked me to get some. I didn't have the heart to tell her the alcohol was cooked out and that there was a bottle of beer in every pot of marinara sauce I make; only gave her the disapproving look she wanted and told her to come on, sounding appropriately impatient.

On the wall with the baking tools, they had spatulas made of every possible material, in every color, from wee kid-sized ones to some with abnormally long handles, for people who are afraid of the stove I suppose. Or maybe they were for really tall people who don't like to bend over at all. They had mini-whisks and maxi-whisks, flat ones and the usual bulb-shaped ones and ones that oooo magically switched from flat to bulb. They had a dozen garlic presses. They had a pizza server with a serrated edge, and cake servers that ranged in size from the teeny piece you give your kid on his first birthday to longer than any cake I've ever made. Why would you need an 18-inch cake server? If you know, would you write and tell me? It's been bugging me. They had wooden and metal and plastic rolling pins, some that were hollow so you could fill them with ice water.

They did not have a pie server.

We looked. We looked and searched and looked again.

The pizza server was too big, and besides it had that sharp edge that would destroy the little foil pans most of my pies come in. The cheese server was too small, and besides who needs a cheese server anyway? I have a bit of class, I eat smoked gouda, I even have little spreaders for Christmas time, little flat pieces of metal with snowmen welded to the ends so you can feel festive while you're spreading your port wine or your smoked cheddar with bacon. But a cheese server? Come on.

I asked someone who worked there. She considered the wall o' gadgets briefly and said 'Hmmm, I don't think we have those over here. Check over in glassware.'

Glassware? I had described to this woman what I was looking for; why would it be in glassware? But OK, I learned a long time ago that there is no explaining why people do things the way they do.

Off we went to glassware. Not a pie server in sight. Silverware was close to glassware so I checked there. No pie servers. I would have asked someone but the only person I saw was the same lady who sent me over there to begin with.

Finally we left. I was bothered by many things: the pie server mystery, the giant cake server, why anyone would want an egg separator shaped like a baby chicken, why the guy behind me in line had to stand with his toes an inch and a half from my heels. I hate people like that.

And it's not like I even have a pie to serve, but I'm on a mission now, to find a pie server. If you know where I can get one, let me know, and in return I promise never to serve you a slice of pie that I've baked myself.

Broken

I am his doll, his fragile little goofy girl, I need protected from everything, watched over, don't let me break.

But once something is broken, what does it matter if it breaks a little more?

And then, after

My husband I got back together. He had moved out, quite coincidentally, the same night Rob killed himself.

I had never felt more alone.

He came back too soon, I wasn't ready, but I was afraid of the never that might happen if I didn't let him back, quick.

He would tell me he loved me and always would, and I would jerk away from him, tell him not to ever say that.

Don't ever say you'll always love someone. There's only one way to always. When you're alive, everything is uncertain. Everything. When you die, whatever it is is always. It becomes forever.

I will be loved forever by a dead boy. I don't want it.

I got over my whateveritwas, nervous breakdown, drinking binge, whatever. A day or two after the funeral-I was still alone-I opened the curtains, dumped what was left of the bottle from the night before, and mopped the kitchen floor. I did laundry, vacuumed the carpets, took a shower, put some lipstick on.

I cut all ties with his family, the users and hypocrites. They are nothing to me, nothing to my son, worthless, pathetic liars, all of them.

If they were drowning, I'd toss them a rope-both ends. And when they were under and didn't resurface again for a long, long time I'd laugh, and only then turn my back on them and walk away.

I stick around for the good parts, you know.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could talk about Forgiveness and Closure and Rebuilding. Wouldn't it be nice if I could say, they are who they are, who are we to judge, we don't know what's going on inside their heads.

Fuck that.

I went on but I am not the same. The only person I ever knew who really understood my head is gone. Doesn't matter that he wasn't around, the knowledge that someone out there gets you is comforting. I don't need that, obviously, but it's nice. Something you get used to, I guess.

So we got back together, me and the husband, and he is good. I think he's a little afraid of me, scared I'll go off the deep end or something, and so I'm a bit too spoiled and allowed to be a bit too bratty sometimes. That's OK with me. If you knew all the shit we've been through you'd know I deserve that. But that's not for here, that's ours. He's good now, a good provider like he always has been, puts up with my shit, does everything for me, everything he does is in my name. I'm on a pedestal, as they say, some hollow little statue looking down on the world.

It's all right.

My kids are here, they play ball, run and climb at all the local parks, eat popsicles with the sticky juice running down their fingers and staining their chins blue. I have a new little hound puppy who squirms with joy when I come home and stretches his long-legged body across mine, snoring little puppy snores against my chest. I bought a hermit crab for Sebastian's birthday, and I surprised myself by loving to watch him creep around the cage and climb his little wire grid. I'm buying the new Pearl Jam CD when it comes out, and Soul Asylum has one coming out just before my birthday, which is nice. I've heard tracks from both, and they're good.

Life is the same as it was before, only different.

Rage

I'm reading Still Waters by Jennifer Lauck, a memoir that reads more like a letter from an old friend than like a book...her voice is real, her truth painful and fresh, her tone always true, never self-serving. She simply tells you what happened, the way it happened, what it felt like to be there.

I knew her brother would die.

I had a feeling he would kill himself.

I wasn't prepared for her retelling of the funeral, the emotions there, the anger she confessed to.


I felt that, two years ago. I have told people about it, tossed it casually into conversations, almost gave people the knowledge of it, but not quite. It was always kept at a distance. I felt rage through a thin veil, never allowed it to really touch me.

When my son's father-biological father, the nothing that created him-died two years ago, I lost my mind for a while.

I was angry, I was hurt, I was How could you just take from him the opportunity to ever know you? and How could you just fucking give up and not keep trying to be good enough to know him? and Oh shit, my friend, my friend is gone.

We had not been friends for a long time. By the time my son was conceived we had been reduced to off and on status; he was someone to get high with, someone to chill with, close enough to town that I could get dropped off by my parents as they took my brother to Youth Group, get high and fool around a little, and get home in time to be on to the next thing.

He was convenient.

But before that he was picnics in hilltop meadows, flower chains in my hair, rescuing turtles after the rain. He was silence in his basement, both of us moody and antisocial, fingertips touching, nothing else. He was three strips of leather, one on my wrist, one on his, one around the gearshift of his Mustang II as we travelled the backroads, bound and yet not. He was fear as he drank himself sick and quit breathing, and when everyone else left I stayed, pounding his chest, screaming at him until he threw up on my new leather jacket and god, took a breath. He was singing off-key into the phone, washing dishes at the college, asking first thing when he got home if I had called.

Later he was talking about the future, making plans I wasn't ready for, angry when I laughed at the thought of ever being married-either of us-to anyone. He was a joint passed in the dark, a bottle warm from his hand, leaning on his shoulder but not quite there. He was talking about the beautiful children we'd make, and I left him there, knowing it was nothing. He was a month later on the phone and I was pissed at his sister for telling. He was nothing I wanted and my son was mine alone. He was threats on the phone, feel sorry for me, I'll kill myself. He was a dull click and nothing as I hung up on him. He was working under the table, hiding from the child support collectors. He was telling people to have me call, he needed me, needed to talk.

But before that he was my friend.

He was always out there, this boy who had never become a man, the boy who allowed me to be able to say This sucks, but once I had flowers in my hair. Life hurts, but someone once thought I was beautiful.

And then he hung himself, his long, skinny body god I don't want to picture it, hung himself with a fucking shoestring, his piece of shit brother in the next room. He was fresh out of rehab, straight out of the shelter, living in a room in his brother's trailer, a bare mattress on the floor and bottles everywhere, drinking himself into nothing again.

I saw him that day. Earlier, he was wearing a loose pair of khaki pants-everything was always loose on him-his tattoos looking faded and tired, one nipple pierced, his cap on the floor next to him. He didn't look like anyone I knew, and he wasn't, and as he lifted the bottle I asked him Please. Please don't do this.

Earlier he had asked if he could see my son. I told him No, not for a long, long time. Fix yourself first. Show me you're OK. Fix yourself.

Please, I said. Don't do this. He smiled and said he was OK. He said he'd always loved me, you know, and always would.

Dammit, I said, you're completely fucking yourself up. You're not that old, you don't need this shit. You can be better than that. Goddammit, why don't you just fucking quit?

He smiled, said goodbye, and I closed the door on him.

That night, he quit.

I yelled and screamed when I heard. I drank too much, sat down with a bottle of cheap vodka and a bottle of cherry coke and drank it all, this one's for you, kid. Fuck you, I don't have to think about it.

My kids were someplace else. Their father cared for them. I don't remember much. I was alone, and I wanted it that way.

And then the funeral. I sobered up, bought a long black skirt and sweater and put a tie on my boy. Took him to the funeral home where every single member of that family ignored him, acted like he wasn't there, this boy who was the oldest, the first, they ignored him, every goddamn one of them.

They cried. Played some church music, nothing he'd ever listen to in his life, talked about how happy he was, how they didn't understand, cried and wailed about this boy who never became a man that they never gave a shit about.

Never tried to help him, never told him he was worth more than a bottle of cheap wine, let him go, let him think he couldn't be anything else.

You don't understand. You don't want to understand. You don't want to look at yourself and see that you killed him, don't want to take any responsibility for this boy that was yours, the boy you treated like a god, treated like he could do no wrong. He could, and he did, and he knew it, and when nobody called him on it, he knew you didn't give a shit.

Fuck you. I know my wrongs. You lost someone you didn't know, someone you made up, your perfect son, brother, nephew, when the real boy sat alone and dying, invisible.

I lost my friend, so fuck you. I lost somebody I knew, someone who had been gone a long time, but was real. I lost my past, my youth, the pretty girl I was, the fucking yellow flowers in my hair, they're dead now. I lost someone real, you lost nothing because you are nothing. You're shit.

Fuck you.

One for the ladies

I am not a man-basher. Hell, I love men. I have four boys, and they're going to grow up to be great men. I've had some awesome guy friends, and I've had guys who were the scum of the earth but were lots of fun to be around, and the fact is, most of them serve some purpose or another, just depends on what you're looking for at the time. And I have to say I've managed to hook up with one of the better ones out there. On like a permanent basis even.

That being said...

Why, why, why do they think they know everything? Why do they think you want to hear about it...whatever it is...a thousand times? Why do they do this:

Argue argue argue for point A, while you argue for point B, then, upon finding out that point B was in fact the correct point, insist that you were the one in favor of point A to begin with.

Did that make sense? Of course not! It makes even less sense when it's actually happening to you.

Is it completely incomprehensible that I might actually know something? Be right about something on occasion? Be capable of doing something right? Not the His Way Right, but the My Way Which Is Different But Still Right, Right?

And why is it that when I get tired of hearing about all the wrong wrong wrongs and blow my top, he gets all condescending and patronizing and pats me on the head and says Silly doll, you do lots of things right, you're a smart girl as if I'm some three-year-old prodigy having a tantrum because I can't get Beethoven's Fifth pitched just right on my nose harp. Or something equally ridiculous.

What is it that makes you so fucking superior? I know I'm not much but what ever gave you the impression that you were so far above me? And even if you were up there, looking down, 20 feet above sea level isn't enough to keep your ass from getting washed away either.

Remember this...if a penis was really an essential part of a woman's life, we'd all have been born with one.