Thank You God for Air-conditioning

I haven’t felt much up to blogging, tweeting or hopping onto FB. I’m navigating summer. I’m not a big fan of summer. Well, I am for about a week. Then the full force of a Southern summer begins to hit – sweltering humidity. The air clings to you like Saran Wrap. The burgeoning grass and greenery feel itchy as you walk through them. The trash can ripens. The mosquitoes, ants, flies and unknown flying and crawling entities multiply. The playgrounds sizzle. The pools are crowded. Under no circumstances do I spend any leisure time outdoors in the summer. It’s too miserable.

So this would be a perfect time, you would think, to hop online and poke about. Instead I’ve been downloading free books onto my Sony Reader and watching Roswell Season 3. And of course the girls are free agents in the summer. This weekend Firecracker used her birthday money to purchase Zhou Zhou Pets. These are toy hamsters that whir about their little hamster abodes, chittering to each other in a way I doubt hamsters ever manage. They wheel about the kitchen until they snag in the shag rug in front of the sink, when they begin to sound distressed and I have to rescue them. I thought the cats might chase them, but they seem indifferent, or perhaps too lazy. We also purchased a game called Chess without Stress, which I can tell you really overstates its claims. Firecracker and I began snarling at each other and never did finish a game. I was reminded of why I’ve always avoided chess – I can’t remember the rules from one minute to the next, and strategy bores me. Whatever part of the brain chess is supposed to activate donned flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt and kicked back with a martini years ago.


Go ahead, click above to satisfy your curiosity about this little critters.

Dear Husband is annoyed that I never mention him on here. I’m not sure why. He is a continual source of entertainment. His recent transformation to Emergent still has me rather bemused. I suppose I’m wondering if this is a temporary stop on the line to who knows where, or perhaps back to the original station. He has also developed a great affection for Glee, although that isn’t so unexpected. He has always like the quirky. Though he still doesn’t like Torchwood and refuses to even think about Dr. Who. Still, he’s a good man.

In which I decide that everything I do is wrong, and most likely will end in disaster

Oh dear Lord, why do I live my life in a friggin firestorm of anxiety? Today I feel like a fish who’s just found herself washed ashore and the tide going out.

Sample internal conversation:

Me 1: We’re going to lose our jobs and have no money and we’ll be forced to foreclose and live in a cardboard box under the overpass.

Me 2: Deep breath. These are emotions that come and go.

Me 1: What if Dear Husband dies? You know what you’re like – you freeze. Do you even know where your car insurance cards are? See, you’re screwed.

Me 2: Focus on the now.

Me 1: The now totally blows! I’m bored, and my eyes hurt. I need new glasses, and they cost a fortune. My vision’s so bad eventually there will be no glasses strong enough.

Me 2: What?

Me 1: And detached retinas. I’m at a very high risk for detached retinas. And there’s nothing I can do about it! There are no preventative measures!

Me 2: Maybe you should concentrate on finally setting up dental appointments for the girls.

Me 1: And orthodontics. Sure as anything Firecracker will have to get braces. How the hell are we going to afford braces? And they eat too much sugar. The dentist is going to secretly condemn me because I can’t figure out how to floss their teeth or teach them to do it themselves.

Me 2: Perhaps you should read a book over lunch break…

Me 1: Library fines – can you believe I had to pay over $30 in library fines? I’m so irresponsible and disorganized. And my house is impossible. I hate housework. The countertops are sticky. No matter how many times I wipe them, they’re always sticky. And the kitchen table is always piled with papers glued to the surface by pancake syrup. Which I really shouldn’t let the kids eat – real maple syrup has to be better for you, but it’s so expensive (remember the cardboard box). And now the doctor tells me they have to cut back on dairy products, which just reminds me that I’m a bad mother and my kids won’t eat anything because I haven’t, well, done something. I don’t know. Nothing works. They hate everything. They hate things they used to like. We’re going backwards. My kids are going to be fat and have rickets.

Me 2: You need a valium.

Me 1: Yes, I do. But I can’t even afford the medication I take. What if I’m on the wrong medication? Maybe my diagnoses are all wrong. What if I’m not really bipolar and instead managed to bamboozle the doctor because it really seemed that my symptoms fit and nothing else worked and then we threw in ADD but perhaps I’m just really lazy and don’t get enough sleep and both of those are over diagnosed because doctors like to diagnose you with stuff. And I think my mom was bipolar but who knows because she was in an institution in the 50s when they shocked everyone and put them on lithium and they said she was schizophrenic but then how did she get by without any meds at all? None, zilch, zero. And she swung like a pendulum. But I don’t – I’m not that bad, really. I just get depressed over and over. I don’t gamble, I don’t empty the bank account, I don’t stay up all night, I don’t think I can conquer the world (although sometimes I think I can drop the meds because it’s really okay, I’m really okay), and I don’t behave recklessly (unless you count the years of taking whatever drug was handed to me, getting drunk in unsavory situations, cutting myself, and that rather weird episode of unprotected sex with a series of men, which pretty much clinched matters for me because that was totally out of character for someone as generally uptight and painfully timid and anxious as I am, but at the time it just seemed rather free-spirited, and then just really really skeevy), and how do you know if your thoughts are racing if that is just the way they are and have been all your life? What would you compare it with? Doesn’t everyone think like that, with thoughts galloping across the plains? The speed of my thoughts feels normal. A little exhilarating sometimes, when I’m surfing them, but who wants slow thoughts, anyway? That’s the cold depths of depression, when thoughts are stiff-legged and lag behind. But it could just look suspiciously like bipolar, because that’s how I’ve arranged all my memories, now, whereas before they were all arranged for dysthemia and no one, no one, would have considered otherwise. Maybe because I lied a lot. I lie to therapists. I leave out stuff. I rearrange it. I exaggerate or understate. I actually understate a lot. If I’m really really ashamed of something, I never ever admit it, or it takes years, or I honestly don’t think it’s relevant even if it shaped me in some way. Being bisexual, for instance. I don’t mention that. Is it relevant? I don’t know. Maybe I’m not really. I mean, sheesh, I’m married here. Maybe I just hang onto that identity for some unknown reason, because it’s kind of cool to be secretly different even though it has zilch impact on my life now, except that I find it hard to imagine being completely straight. How can you be completely one way or the other? How can you find one gender undesirable? What exactly is that like, anyway?

Me 2: Do you even hear yourself?

Me 1: I hear almost no one else, because I’m totally self-centered and don’t know how not to be, because here I am with myself, keeping myself company, and whatever I do, I’m stuck in here, worrying that I’m not very giving and can’t seem to make friends and I talk a lot about compassion blah blah blah but I never really do anything, unless you count writing to my congressman twice or making donations doing something, and the only thing I’ve ever done at church was work in the nursery sometimes, because I feel really weird trying to do volunteer work, everyone else is so genuine and caring and I’m cold and remote. Trust issues you know, fear of commitment, which is why I don’t make friends. I don’t want anyone to know me, at least not the people I meet now. I’m afraid I’ll be exposed for a fraud and lose my job. And how the hell did I end up working for a denomination that partners with organizations that try to “cure” gay people? WTF? That’s not me. That’s an abomination. But here I am, 100% cynical skeptic working for people who believe in 5 point Calvinism.

Me 2: Are you done yet?

Me 1: Yes, I think so for now, because I have cherry nougats.

Random thoughts with string accompaniment

I get restless when I don’t post anything. That means I’m writing this without there necessarily being anything worth saying. But it relieves my mind and by golly why else did I start this blog anyway?

1. Last night the second graders put on a little musical. Firecracker was so excited because she had a speaking role, delivering a line about “strng and compassion.” Yes, that’s what it sounded like. I showed up with a nearly dead cell phone and a nearly dead camera. Of course all the other parents had whipped out their camcorders. I’m the mom who still has all her photos in boxes instead of albums. I can’t concentrate on watching and recording so I thought “screw it.” The kids sang about recycling and diversity. It was almost like being back in the 70s. They all wore virulent yellow T-shirts, which Firecracker insisted on wearing again today.
2. Firecracker now has a cape and some fake blood so that she can be a vampire for Halloween. DramaQueen will be a vampire slayer. We have still to fashion a stake and find some way for her to carry that along with her “holy water” (a spray bottle which we will label and she can use to annoy her fellow trick or treaters). DramaQueen is into verisimilitude, but she told me that it “doesn’t have to be real holy water.” Thanks, sweetie. Firecracker told me quite firmly that she doesn’t want fake blood on her face, which kinda defeats the purpose of buying it. Perhaps I should just have her carry around a little faux juice pouch of blood. The new generation of vampires knows how impossible it is to get blood out of a good white shirt.
3. The Halloween store had some truly disgusting set pieces, including one of a man being eaten alive by rats. The contrast between that and the toddler ladybug costumes was disconcerting. It made me want to shake some sense into someone.
4. My therapist thinks I should try something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Instead of struggling with negative feelings and trying to fix my various problems, I am to observe them with a sort of Zen-like detachment and get on with whatever needs doing. I’m not great at letting my feelings float by like debris in a stream (they tends to swim around in me as if I were an aquarium), but I was struck by the novelty of simply giving up on trying to control depression and anxiety. Easier said than done. Right now I feel anxiety smoking out the long-suffering residents of my internal world. I did try to visualize my anxiety, which for some reason appeared to me as a green lima-bean shaped velvet cushion.
5. One problem is that I really don’t know what needs to be done at the moment. I have a lull in my workload. That makes me feel guilty, as if I should find some envelopes to lick. So I’m listening to a very odd CD by Final Fantasy, who is actually a violinist named Owen Pallett, who I gather did the string arrangement for one of Arcade Fire’s albums. In live performances he plays his violin into a sampler and then plays over that. I love hearing the violin, so I’m enjoying this. That’s one of the reasons I like Patrick Wolf, too, as he uses a violin so frequently. Anyway, here is Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy doing strange things with a violin.

What's Rattling Around in My Head

1. DramaQueen did not test into the gifted program. She’s kind of bummed about it. I’m kind of bummed, too, because she tests high in two of the four categories, so I guess she’s just supposed to continue being bored and unchallenged in those two.

2. I still don’t understand Twitter.

3. It’s possible that my ancestors came from an area around Dunakin castle (named something else now) on the Isle of Sky. I would like that to be true just because I like the name Isle of Sky. One of my brothers is the family genealogist and actually enjoys roaming around cemeteries and poking around in dusty old papers.

4. One of my relatives forged some documents trying to establish that we had our own clan. I think it more likely that we were peasants hanging onto a protector clan by the skin of our teeth.

5. Sometimes I think about the fact that I’m here because my ancestors managed to survive the Black Plague.

6. For some reason, after I drop Firecracker off in the morning and start my drive to work, whatever song is playing on the radio will make me cry. This morning it was Bruce Hornsby’s That’s Just the Way It Is.

7. WiiFit. Is. The. Best. Thing. Ever. So far I excel at the hula hoop.

8. Why did Taylor Swift get a recording contract and why does anyone like Love Story, which I vote one of the suckiest songs ever?

9. Except, there’s the Jonas Brothers. Rolling Stone actually compared them to the Beatles. That reviewer was obviously smoking crack, probably supplied by the bros’ record company.

10. DramaQueen thinks my music sucks and all the singers look weird. And so the generational conflict begins.

11. Yet DramaQueen has not yet figured out that it is very uncool to watch ballroom dancing.

12. I think coupons are a frakkin waste of time. I get so tired of the same old advice about online coupons (most of the sites list the same deals and more than half the time they aren’t coupons at all but some in-store deal for something I don’t need in the first place). I don’t use half the products that appear in these coupons, and the coupons that require multiple purchases are particularly useless. How many things will I buy name-brand? I won’t buy store brand of: Mac N Cheese (Anything but Kraft is immediately detectable as not-Kraft. My kids have radar or something), cereal (man the knock-offs taste awful), coffee and ice-cream. You could spend hours just printing, clipping and organizing the bloody coupons.

13. You can save a lot of money by just not buying anything. No need to use the coupons for the fruit roll-ups, the pre-packaged meals, or the disgust-o snack food.

14. Have you noticed at Walgreens that you don’t even have to have the store coupon on you? You don’t even have to know about the coupon. The cashier keeps their newspaper insert at hand and checks it against your purchase and then just zaps the coupon with her laser to register the savings. That rocks.

15. Now, if someone invents a card where I can download the bloody coupons and hand it over at the register which it automatically checks for matching items, that might be worthwhile.

16. I have got to do something about off-season clothes storage. My closet is the size of a broom cupboard, and my clothes are plotting a mutiny. Already I cannot find some of them.

17. Our dishwasher is exhibiting a desire to remove itself from our cabinetry and advance face down into the center of the kitchen.

18. I have 9 years’ worth of photos in boxes. None of them are in photo albums.

19. From the amount of mail we get, I think at least 12 other people use to live in our house, a number of whom the IRS and Social Security are trying to contact.

20. For reasons I cannot comprehend, Dear Husband does not like Monty Python. Now I have no one to laugh with me over The Upper Class Twit of the Year or The Ministry of Silly Walks.