Taken over by a whiny gremlin

I feel like a failure a lot.  My personality fails me (so introverted, so impatient).  My house fails me with its laurel hedges growing into a tall jungle while I’m not looking.  My lawn is rocky and barren and dry, spotted with dandelions.  My laundry room houses not only dirty laundry, but also a hodge-podge of debris that collects.  Plus two always-needing-to-be-cleaned litter boxes.  I can’t get anyone to leave my tools in one place, so I have screwdrivers and wrenches strewn about the house and I can never find the one with the star-tip (what’s it called?  I can never remember).

I failed one thing in all my academic years:  a math test in third grade.  I ripped it apart in anger and went home crying.  When a mean choir teacher gave me a B+ for my semester grade in choir my freshman year, it ruined my grade point average and so I never again took a subjective class in high school.  No art, no music, nothing that couldn’t be quantified and controlled.   What kind of life is that?  A safe life.  A boring life.

I hate to fail.  And yet I fail so often.  When I fail–daily–have you seen my kitchen floor?–I want to run away.  I want to abandon my family to someone who has a better chance of success than I.  I want my kids to have a better mom, my husband to have a better wife.  I don’t want them to have to live with someone like me who gets things wrong more than she gets them right.  I want to wash my hands of the whole sorry mess I’ve made and relocate to a farm where I will wear tie-dye, grow my own vegetables and talk to the animals.  Of course, probably the weeds would overtake my cultivated fields and the animals wouldn’t talk back.

Here’s the sentence I say to myself on occasion:  “How hard can it be?”  The answer, in the case of replacing a freezer gasket is VERY VERY HARD.  Nigh unto impossible, as a matter of fact.  My fingers are too weak and my constitution too impatient to successfully accomplish the goal.  (The goal is to keep food frozen without creating icicles in the fridge.)

I’m sure that it’s not normal to feel like a complete and utter failure because one cannot replace the freezer gasket because one was too impatient to wait for someone to arrive who can complete that task with ease.  It’s not normal to spiral into this black tornado of despair because I can’t keep up with my life.  (If I do not get the lilacs pruned, there will be no blossoms next year.)  It’s not normal that the thought of my storage room causes me great distress, the kind of distress that immobilizes me rather that motivates me.

And being not normal makes me feel like a failure.

I really thought I’d be a good mom, a good wife, a decent human being.  (I have never been called for jury duty.  Why is that?)  I thought I’d have a lush green lawn and the kind of kids who would happily eat a giant chef salad for dinner.  (Ha ha ha ha ha.)

I am pathetic tonight.  Blame PMS.  Blame the stupid freezer.  Blame my puny fingers.  Blame my schedule.  Blame the government.  Blame the mean choir teacher who ruined my grade point average.  But ultimately, it’s all me.  Imperfect, failing me.

And now, here’s the response:

Stop sniveling.  Quit the self-pity.  Enough self-exaggeration and melodrama.  Your hormones are out of control.  Fixing a freezer gasket is not the ultimate test of success.  Imperfection is all right.  Everything will look better in the morning.  Your fingertips will probably even feel better.

Everything that must be done will get done.  Stop complaining.  It’s so unbecoming.

Be grateful.  Be grateful.  Be grateful.

Go to bed.

How can it really be June already?

You should know that chaperoning kindergarten children on a field trip to Seattle is actually not that big of deal when you are only responsible for your own six-year old and two other six-year olds.  Especially if you can play with your iPhone the whole bumpy bus ride there.  The play was so cute–I got in trouble for taking a photograph of the set which looked exactly like the book Good-night, Moon

I was told to delete it from my iPhone and I considered only pretending to delete it but then the Rule Follower in me obeyed.

But by Friday night, my head felt full of cast iron.  I thought perhaps I would finally succumb to the Swine Flu, but no, it was not meant to be.  I am still alive and kicking.

My husband’s forty-eighth birthday is tomorrow.  I can’t speak for him, but I’m feeling older and older by the second.  Tonight we were at a Community Group meeting and nearly everyone was young enough to be my child.  (If I hadn’t been infertile and become a mother at such advanced maternal age, that is.)  That’s just weird.  Almost as weird as the time my dentist in Michigan mentioned “Oh, you’re one day older than me,” which made me wonder what in the world I’d been doing with my life while this man had been making something of himself.  (Answer:  Nothing much, unless you count thousands of meals and loads of laundry “something.”)

What I could use right now is a chiropractor.  My neck is killing me.   (I don’t have a chiropractor.)

This is the last week of school, a fact that makes me either want to celebrate or cry.  But mostly cry.  Not that I don’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with my kids for 10 straight weeks . . . but I don’t want to spend twenty-four hours a day with my kids while they bicker for the next 10 weeks.   And they will bicker.  It’s apparently a rule.

I should be asleep at this very moment

Tonight, I heard a loud crash while leaving T-ball practice.

Some teenage girls crashed a newer model car right into the garage door.  The funny thing was how they reacted.  One stood outside the car, hands over mouth.  The other got out, checked out the damage and sat back in the driver’s seat and began to talk on her cell phone.  A third ran back and forth into the back yard.  I have no idea.

I am grateful to not be a teenage girl who smashed a new car into the garage door.  I’m also glad not to be the parent of any of those girls.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. I will be boarding a big yellow school bus.  I’ll be chaperoning the kindergarten field trip, along with a bunch of other hearty parents.  We are going to the Seattle Children’s Theater.  On a bus.  To Seattle.  (That’s an hour from here.)  Filled with loud children.

Oh dear.

I probably should get a life jacket

The relentless forward motion of life drags me along like my hair is caught in the chain and I have no choice in the matter.  How can it be June?  How can another school year end?  When I was a child the school years lasted at least four times as long as a current school year.  Or that’s how it seemed to me.  Fourth grade?  FORever!  (Mr. Steiner made me sit by Julie M. and I resented for some reason that escapes me now.  Also?  My little circle of friends were vicious, constantly aligning and realigning into circles that excluded someone.)

I’m already thinking ahead to fall when my youngest child will be in first grade.  I know it’s just June, but September will be here in a blinding flash.  And I know I’m supposed to live in the moment, focus on the little things, relish the ordinary events of every day life but the truth is that if I step into the river of summer thinking it’s only ankle deep I will be swept away by its furious current because that is how summer is.  A rushing raging torrent that will rip through our lives, leaving us breathless and shocked that we’ve been carried so far downstream so fast.

My husband is turning forty-eight this year, “almost fifty” he likes to say.  He’s been reassessing his life and wearing gold chains and buying a red Corvette . . . okay, not really.  He’s just been thinking about his life and how much he has left to live before crawling into a coffin and dying.  It’s strange to think about the sands of time running through the hourglass, but they are, even if we don’t think about it.  My dad, for instance, was already dead by age 48.  That’s just how it goes sometimes.

Maybe that’s why my husband says “yes” when our daughter asks him if he’ll play card games.  I’m likely to put her off, say, “how about tomorrow?” but he just says “yes.” The day will come soon enough when she stops asking.  I know this because the day has already come when she has stopped asking us to rock her before we put her to bed.  I only realized that yesterday.

I wonder what I really want to do with my time.  I used to feel like I had an unlimited supply, a bag with a black hole from which I could withdraw as much as I needed, but as it turns out, time is in short supply.  Too many days I feel like I’m trudging from morning to midnight, barely holding together the fraying edges of my life.  Am I too lazy?  Or am I too busy?  Am I both lazy and busy?  I don’t want to be either.

Am I accomplishing anything that really matters?  Or is my life like my front yard, an ivy-covered mess that needs constant upkeep and never seems to look any different?  If we stopped trimming, eventually ivy would cover our whole house, swallow it whole.  If I stopped doing what I do, what would happen?  Other than the fact that everyone would starve to death while wearing dirty underpants?

I dream about a vacant day, a vacant week without relentless demands raising their hands and insisting on being called upon.  I’d like to stop thinking about the dripping showerhead and the worn out freezer gasket and all the digital photographs that should be sent to Costco to be turned into prints.  I’d like to stop fretting about my yard, my ghastly lawn (if you could call it that), the overgrown hedges in the yard and the snow-damaged back fence that leans precariously into the neighbor’s back yard.  (Why, tell me why fences are so expensive?)

The good news is that the current of my life will drag me along, willing or not, into the future which includes an appraiser coming by tomorrow night, a T-ball practice on Thursdays night, a kindergarten field trip to Seattle on Friday,  a T-ball game on Saturday at 12:30 (thus encroaching on the entire day) and my novel which demands to be written despite my increasing despair over my prose.  (Perhaps one should not read Barbara Kingsolver while writing a novel of one’s own.)  All of this happens while I balance working forty hours a week which is like balancing a chair on my chin while I ride a unicycle.  I’m fancy.  Also, apt to fall.

Before we know it, the daisies in the front yard will bloom, Fourth of July will arrive, we’ll be at the ocean, it’ll be time for dentist appointments and vaccinations for sixth grade and football practice will begin to consume our days.  I just hope that I find time to prune the overgrown lilac bush in the front yard so that the blooms next year will be bountiful.  Circle around, circle around, try not to get dizzy and hold on for dear life.

Books

Last summer, I read East of Eden (by Steinbeck) for the first time.  I read most of it while sitting at the pool, half-watching my kids swim.  When I think of last summer, I think of that glorious book.

The summer before, I read Soldier of the Great War (by Helprin).  What a fantastic story that was.  I even copied down some quotes from it.

This summer, I started my second reading of The Poisonwood Bible (Kingsolver).  I read it a long time ago, but remember how much I loved it.  I am so looking forward to reading it again.

What are you reading this summer?  I wish I could spend most of my days reading, but instead, I fit reading into the very small margins of my life.

Also.  Can anyone tell me who left a banana peel in my living room?

That is all.

What I did this weekend, a Report by Melodee

On Friday night, my twin teenagers slept over at someone’s house.  They didn’t return home until Saturday night. I cleaned their room while they were gone, but not until Saturday morning.  (Hint:  DISGUSTING.)

Saturday morning, my husband took our two youngest to an indoor play area.  It was a two-for-one deal, hooray.  While they were gone, I intended to clean for an hour, then head off  to the library to write.  However, one thing led to another and I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned for what felt like a million years, but was only three hours.

By 2:00 p.m. I was in my regular spot at the library, writing my faux novel.  I decided by 5 p.m. that I am delusional and what was I thinking?  Also, why am I doing this again?  I struggled to put 800 words on paper, bringing my grand total pretty close to 18,000 words, which is nearly a quarter of the way to completion.  I haven’t looked at it since, but I will resume work this week, plowing toward the finish line.  The whole point of this exercise is to do it.  To write a novel.  To finish a novel.  Whatever happens after that is not my immediate concern.  I really need a girlfriend to sit down with to discuss the behavior of the people in my novel.  I think I need to talk it out.

Saturday night I did absolutely nothing, other than cringe while watching UFC (fighting) with my husband while reading a magazine.

Sunday we went to church, then to Dick’s Drive-In afterward.  When we got home, I took the two younger kids to the pool (which opened the day before) and they jumped right in and passed the swim test.  Grace spent much of her two hours jumping off the diving board and chatting with the lifeguards.  One even let her sit in the tall lifeguard chair during adult swim and then let her blow the whistle when it was Kid Swim again.

When we returned home I cleaned off the kitchen counter.  I found a basket full of Christmas cards.  I saved some and threw the rest away.  I sorted through a stack of papers and threw away coupons that expired in March.  I cleaned out two purses.  All this took an hour and is proof that I ought to be fired from household management.

And then it was time to go to a movie with my husband.  We saw “Star Trek” which was quite entertaining.  I liked it quite a lot.  It was made all the more entertaining by the three soldiers sitting in front of us who got such a kick out of it.

This morning, then, I roused everyone and had us all en route to Wild Waves by 9:30 a.m.  We have season’s passes.  The idea is to arrive as the park opens to claim a spot for the day.  That’s exactly what we did.  We had our four kids plus two extras.   Although I sprayed us all with SPF 50 sunscreen, we are all a little pink from our five hours of fun in the sun.  (My fun involved sitting on the lounge chair reading an Elizabeth Berg novel and despairing over my own novel.)

Back home by 4:00 p.m. and then my husband took four kids (three ours, one friend) to the “Night of the Museum” movie.  In their absence, I cleaned out our big freezer.  Unfortunately I had to discard two turkeys of unknown age.  I hate it when I waste food.  Really.  Hate.  But what can you do?  We bought an eighth of a cow (organic, natural beef) and it’s going in that freezer next weekend. It will keep all my husband’s leftover Jenny Craig food company.

I also vacuumed and cleaned random spots off the carpet.  Although I could not remove the GUM?  GUM?  Who drops chewed gum in the living room and doesn’t pick it up?  Or report it to the proper authorities?  Seriously.

While defrosting the freezer (it’s really bad–it’s still thawing), I went outside and sprayed Round-Up on the stray weeds.  And I noticed how badly our back ivy-covered fence is leaning and wondered how much those neighbors back there hate us and remembered how mad I was when the contractor pulled that fence out of its socket and what a poor job he did fixing it–he just shoved it back up, instead of making sure the end fit into the socket–and I wondered how in the world we are ever going to get that fence down so it can be replaced because the ivy is as thick as small tree trunks and is woven right through the chain link fence.  It’s a mess.

Also?  My boys like to use sticks to shatter plastic things into bits and if they don’t stop it I’m sending them all off to an orphanage.

Also, whoever keeps breaking popsicle sticks and tossing them around the house is on my Knock It Off List.  KNOCK IT OFF.

And now, back to the freezer.

And back to real life tomorrow.

Hope you all had lovely weekends.

Picking up where we left off

And just like that, no fever.  My 6-year old woke up ready for action, only there was no kindergarten today since it’s a half day.  (They go on alternate half-days since everyday is a half-day for her.)  I was not so ready for action, so after taking the neighborhood boy to school, I went back to bed.  Going back to bed makes me feel slothful and lazy.  But eight hours of sleep?  Kind of important, if you ask me.

When I woke up, my day began in a hurry-hurry-rush-rush fashion.  I kind of hate it.  I started working at 1 p.m., finished at 5 p.m., had her at the T-ball field by 5:50 p.m., finished watching T-ball at 7 p.m., stopped by the grocery store on the way home and returned home with five minutes left until my last shift of the day.  I finished working at midnight, wrote a few blog posts (apologies for them, but I do so like Amazon gift cards) and read a few blogs (Annie, Sarah, Linda and now it’s shamefully late.  Ridiculously late.  So late that I will waste my morning by sleeping in again tomorrow.

And the cycle continues.

But the weekend is coming.  And I’m taking Monday off.

In my next life, I am not going to complain about being too busy when I’m in high school and college and in those years before I have kids.  Seriously.  I had no idea what busy meant until now.

Sick, sick, sick

When I picked up my daughter from kindergarten at 11:47 a.m., she clutched her head and said, “I don’t feel good.”  She went straight up to her bed after school–a sure sign of doom–and stayed up there a few hours, finally coming downstairs with flushed cheeks to report that she still didn’t feel good. They she crawled onto the couch where she huddled under a blanket for a few more hours, insisting that she felt FINE and that she wanted to go to McDonalds and could she please call her friend JUSTIN because she was ready to PLAY.

She felt a little feverish.  Little known fact:  I don’t own a thermometer.  I trust my hands to tell me the severity of a fever.  Plus, I believe that fevers are a sign the body is fighting off infection, so I don’t panic.  She felt a little warm, but–as I said on my Twitter account–she was not oinking, so I figured she doesn’t have the Swine Flu.

Just call me Dr. Mel.  Just don’t call me past midnight.  Or on weekends.  I’m too busy not cleaning my house and not ironing pants to talk right now.

(Anybody besides me dying to get on a plane and go somewhere, anywhere?  Why am I the only person who is stuck at home for endless weeks and months?)

Sunday, when the sun shone

We skipped church yesterday to sleep in.  I felt a pang of loss at missing church, not because I’m being graded on church attendance, but because I do hate to miss Mark Driscoll’s preaching.  (And, yes, I could listen to it online, but I know I will never find time to do so.)  But half of us have a half-hearted cold and our twins had a “sleep”-over.  So, we slept in.

Later in the day, we rounded up everyone, including an extra teenager, and drove twenty minutes to Wild Waves, our local waterpark/amusement park.  The waterpark won’t open until next weekend, but this weekend was an opportunity to get our permanent season pass i.d. cards.  While we were there, we set the teenagers free and took the littler kids on rides.

The elusive sun shone on us all day yesterday, reminding me that the gloom does not last forever.  The first two weeks of May were our wettest and coldest in history and seriously, felt like Groundhog’s Day, February 2 itself, repeating over and over.  Cold, gloomy, rainy, cold, damp, cloudy.

And wouldn’t you know it . . . the rain has returned.  Looking outside at the sky gives no clues to the season.  It could be November.  Please, Weather, have pity on us!

Since our youngest child is now six and a half, I notice a big difference in the difficulty-level of family outings.  When she was younger, we’d had to tailor everything to her appetite, energy and likelihood to throw a fit.  Now she goes along with the program mostly, adjusting to most disappointment with calm acceptance.  We can reason with her.  She can steer herself now, whereas before she was at the whim of her emotion, likely to go off course or capsize anytime, anywhere. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we had a baby now?  It would!  And although that would please her no end, that’s not going to happen.  Maybe a puppy.  Or a rat.  But no babies.  I’m getting old.  But hey, not as old as that 66-year old woman who is pregnant.  Did you hear about her?

When I am sixty-six, my daughter will be 28.  I’m going to leave the child-bearing to her.  But not for a long, long, long time.

Weeping, wailing but no gnashing of teeth

Tonight my husband and I were exchanging bits of news and happenings from our lives.  I started telling him about “Grey’s Anatomy.”  He used to watch it, but doesn’t anymore.  I still watch it because I work from my living room every night until midnight and the television keeps me company.  He gets up very early these days, so he goes to sleep early.

I started describing the ending scene and to my utter horror, fell apart.  I snatched a tissue, but thankfully, the tears did not fall.  I could have collapsed into the “ugly cry” but instead I took several deep breaths to compose myself.  I was so keenly aware that these aren’t even real people, that this is just fiction, but I couldn’t help it.  (I won’t tell you what happened, exactly, but it was sad.)

Tonight, I watched most of the Farrah Fawcett special about her struggle with anal cancer.  I cried.  A lot.

Last Sunday (Mother’s Day!) I cried when my kids wouldn’t be nice to each other and me.  My teenage son, the one who caused me the most distress, had been performing a dramatic monologue, waving his arms with theatrical flair, demonstrating his vast vocabulary and said, “WHAT?  WHAT?  WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”  And without intending to do so, I burst into tears.  He stopped, stared at me, then walked straight toward me, stooped down and hugged me.

At that point, of course, I cried more, but I also congratulated myself on raising a boy who responds to female tears with a hug, not words or defenses.  It was actually very sweet.

I cannot seem to stop crying at the most inopportune times.  I cry while watching “Survivor.”  I wept during “The Amazing Race.”  I’m tearing up just writing this about how much I cry.

I know it’s hormonal.  I think it has something to do with age.  Most of my life I have had easy access to a deep well of sadness.  Loss will dig that well in your heart.  I’m not sure you can ever really fill it back in once it’s been dug–and I don’t think I’d ever want to.  That’s the melancholy speaking in me.

I’m thinking I could hire myself out to cry for people who don’t have time or inclination to cry for themselves.  I am turning into a quite excellent crybaby.

But it does kind of make my head hurt.