Not Calm (dot com)

I had no idea his middle name was Schlomo

I was turning left, halfway through the crosswalk right by the kids' school, when I noticed that a woman was just inches from my driver's side view mirror.  I recognized her, and recognized that I very nearly killed her.  I opened my window and yelled over the sound of my blood in my ears, tears stinging my eyes and choking me, I'm so sorry.  My widows are all foggy and I didn't see you.  I'm so, so sorry.

And she was okay, and I was okay, but of course we were both shaken up as we silently tallied the list of What Ifs.  I'm not really sure what happened:  if I just didn't look; if she was in my blind spot; if I looked but didn't see because the kids were squabbling or I was preoccupied.  The windows were steamy, and that is probably what happened, but it worries me still that I wasn't paying better attention.

That happens to me a lot.  Not usually while I'm driving, luckily, but just in general.  I feel like I'm often looking up in a panic at some near-miss of a situation, knowing that I fucked up but totally clueless about what it was, exactly, I did.  Or didn't do.  It's like I'm not sure what things to watch, and the things that I don't keep in check circle back on me.  Mainly I have this sense that I am letting people down.  Only no one will really come out and say it, because, you know, I'm going through a hard time right now, and so I'm left feeling that I've been too self-absorbed, or not grateful enough, or too much of a doormat, or maybe just a bad friend, but I'm not sure, really.  Maybe it's all just in my head.  I know that my very own special breed of low self-esteem sometimes flipflops into an assumption that if something is wrong it MUST be my fault.  Which is perhaps about as self-absorbed and egotistical as one human can be. 

What can I say?  I do try.

I'll be better off in a few weeks when I'm not on such a high dose of prednisone.  (It challenges my coping abilities, to put it mildly.)  In the meantime I will weigh my words more carefully, I will watch where I'm going, and I will let myself believe in things that astonish me instead of waiting for that feeling of emptiness where there just was something amazing I was holding on to. 

Weak kneed, happily

I think it was the first day of second grade when the after-school daycare bus didn't show up to get me from school like it was supposed to.  I sort of remember walking home that afternoon, back through the pathway of alleys between fenced in backyards that I'd walked that morning.  I didn't have a key to the apartment, so I went and asked the manager to let me in.  I dragged a chair (the same ones are in my kitchen now) to the wall in the kitchen where the phone was, and dialed my mom's work number.

She ended up calling the daycare, asking them how my first day was going.  Oh, she's great!  They said.  Super groovy.  No worries.  Or whatever 1977 slang was for It's all good.  Really?  My mother said, Would you mind just putting her on the phone for a second?

I've always been an independent kind of girl, but I think that story really cemented my reputation.

So, last night SG stopped by for a little bit to help me with some excel stuff and say hey to the kids.  When he left, I walked him out so I could tell him goodbye.  We stood there near his car, standing in the street a little bit since he was parked at the curb.  He'd just opened the back door to put some things inside, so he had his back to the car and I had my back to the street.  We were talking quietly, his head was bent down toward me, his arms around me, and a car came down the street, fast.  He looked at it and pulled me closer to him all at once.  Nothing about his movements were sudden; I very likely could have missed the whole thing if I'd been in the middle of telling him a story or something.  But I noticed.  And then he said something about how the cars go too fast down my street, but all I could think of was how very nice it felt to have him want take care of me like that.  I know it sounds like a small thing, but he pulled me closer because he wants to be sure I'm okay.  And for me, right now, that is huge.  It feels really, really nice.  

Hang on tight

My whole life is a blur at the moment, and I feel like I'm more than a few steps behind it all trying to grab ahold.  Like running after a train might feel, I guess.

I've been pretty sick with this stupid autoimmune thing I have, and my doctor put me back on prednisone.  I hate taking it for a million reasons, but right now I've exhausted all my other non-surgical options.  The one sort of good thing is that it makes me really hyper and manic.  You should SEE my to-do list.  I think I'll open my seasonal gift-making sweatshop of one later tonight.  Am feeling driven to rearrange my closet while simultaneously writing a novel and planning the next month's worth of meals.  

Thanksgiving is kind of blowing my mind by suddenly being a week away.  I'm surprised how thankful I am feeling this year.  I mean, for someone who bitches and gripes all the time, I'm really so grateful that when I stop to think about it I get all teary.  I took next Wednesday off work so that I can bake pies with my small fry.  Maybe I'll even get a grip on that speeding train.  

I love November anyway

I'm learning that there is no such thing (at least for me) as an amicable divorce.  I'm getting it with both barrels (from both exes) today, and the only thing I feel like writing at the moment would be a long, all-caps, profanity dominated rant.  I'll leave acting like an asshole to the assholes.  After all, I'm too busy working and taking care of my kids to waste energy on crap.  I'm going to go home, open a gluten-free beer, make a kickass supper for my kids, help Soph with a big school project due tomorrow, bake sugar cookies, and beg SG to help me with a spreadsheet.  (First, though, I totally need to quit crying at my desk.)

It's always sunny

It's such a different life I have every other weekend when the kids are away. I think I get a little culture shock moving between the two very different worlds I live in.

Sometimes I feel like I must be a bad mother for not missing the kids more when they aren't with me. It's different than during the week when I miss them so much. These weekends are so good.

Accidental heart

I took all these today, but I don't feel like I have much to write about.  There are the yellow leaves and fall light, nothing I've ever been able to photograph.  The old rusty rail of the train track that separates the parking lot from the soccer field.  An accidental heart on the ground.  A heart I made from acorns because I was missing SG. 

I was scolded, vigorously scolded, today by an older woman one car ahead of me at a stoplight.  I'd called SG as I walked out of the medical office and into the startlingly beautiful day, and I wasn't thinking as I started my car and drove out of the parking lot, filling him in on my visit.  She saw me, talking and not using my headset.  She delivered a disgusted look to me via her rear view mirror, and then wagged her finger at me and said words I couldn't make out, but could well enough imagine.  She was so very angry with me.  And I laughed at her for making such a stink, even though, really, she was right and I should have been using my headset. 

I've just begun Steve Martin's book, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life.  I've been a little under the weather, and I'm hoping to kick back and read this weekend.  Maybe for one or two whole hours.  It's the sort of last weekend of soccer, except for Lex's tournaments the next two weekends.  I know the kids loved it, and I did too, but I'm ready to welcome back my Saturdays. 

Carmelized onion & butternut squash soup

I might just have to resurrect my food blog.  I made this up as I went tonight, and it's goooooood.

    Ingredients:

• 2 or 3 small butternut squashes (squashi?)
• brown sugar
• an onion
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• parsley
• stock
• maple syrup (The real stuff, or else skip it.  I am a food snob.  Everyone should be.)

    Method:

• I roasted the butternut squash (sprinkled with brown sugar) the night before.  To roast the squash, cut them in half, lengthwise and scoop out the seeds and gick.  Put face up on a baking sheet (with the brown sugar, or with butter or olive oil or whatever you like) and cook at 400 for about an hour.  After the squash is cool, peel off the skin and set aside.  If you are adverse to scrubbing stuff off your baking pans, line the pan with foil.  Or parchment paper. 
• Coarsely chop the onion & cook in the olive oil until carmelized, something like 20 minutes
• Add the butternut squash, and smush it up with the onion and keep cooking it until it's browned enough for you
• Add 4 to 6 cups of stock (I had 2 squashes, and used 4 cups and like how the consistency ended up)
• Add the parsley.  I use little frozen cubes of chopped parsley, but you can use fresh chopped, of course.  I wouldn't use dried.  It's a food snob thing.
• Let this all cook and simmer for awhile.  Twenty minutes or so.  Then blend it with a hand blender, or you can do it in small batches in the blender.  I use a hand blender, though, because I would probably burn the crap out of myself trying to do it in a blender. 
• Add about 3 tablespoons of maple syrup, salt if you need it, pepper, hot sauce maybe

The end result is very oniony, but in that good, smoky-sweet carmelized onion way.  I might make this to bring on Thanksgiving.  And, I am sure that it would be most excellent with some nice crispy chopped bacon on top.

And when the subway dimmed, a stranger lit my way

Every winter (since 1991) I listen to The Innocence Mission. They are just the right amount of sad and happy for these short grey days. Enjoy ~

Pretty birds all in a row

This morning I took the girls to my friend's house so they could spend the day there while I was at work, this being Veteran's Day.  She runs a day care from her house, and so the girls got to help her wrangle what looked to me to be something like fifty seven babies.   We were sitting under an overpass, waiting for the light to change, when Sophie turned to Willow and said, What did YOU have for dinner last night?  Willow said, Raviolis, root beer, and ice cream.  What did YOU have?  I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Sophie look at Willow, Steak and fries, she said, with this vaguely threatening, level delivery.  And I sat there, mildly panicked from being parked underneath an overpass** and thought that it was sort of a sad thing that my girls were comparing the dinners they'd each had at their (different) dad's houses the night before.  

I realized that I was halfway expecting my usual inner dialogue of criticism and insults to begin, but I just wasn't motivated to put myself down.  The girls went from having a sort of a showdown over which dad had the best dinner to being silly and laughing at something I can't remember now.  Then the light changed, and we passed by two telephone lines running over a creek, and the girls both pointed and exclaimed over the long, long rows of birds perched on the wires.  Did you see that? they kept asking each other.  I wish I had my camera, Sophie said, I'd take a picture!  And just as I was noticing how nice it was that I could listen to them talk about their not-perfect life and not beat myself up over it, I also heard them laughing and I realized that they're still happy kids, despite the way things are. 

I think that what kept me from beating myself up wasn't only the fact that my kids are actually okay (because, believe me, if you are prone to the self-hate, you don't really need a reason) but it's got a whole lot to do with this new life I am making.  I work hard.  I'm doing everything I can, as well as I can.  I'm happy.  I'm suddenly able to cut myself some slack and appreciate what I accomplish every day.  Now I just need to be sure that I don't kick myself too hard for not being more gentle with myself sooner.  Heh.

**I'm not sure what that phobia of mine is called (I HATE tunnels and being under overpasses), but while I was doing a half-assed job of looking for the name, I found the following:

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - fear of the number 666
Nomophobia - fear of being out of mobile phone contact
Paraskavedekatriaphobia - fear of Friday the 13th
Chemophobia -  prejudice against artificial substances in favour of 'natural' substances

You are getting sleepy

I'm in bed with my laptop.  The girls are both asleep next to me, snoring and hogging the blankets.  I think I am going to get to sleep for something like 8 whole hours, and even though I am going to bed with a couple of dishes in the sink and a living room that looks like, well, maybe a mix between Lord of the Flies and Toys R Us, I totally do not care because I am So Very Tired that sleep sounds better than Christmas. 

Things are better.  I should say that I am better.  My attitude is better.  Nothing's really changed, but I'm looking at it all with a more relaxed and forgiving pair of eyeballs.  Because, really, all that stress wasn't making it better, but adjusting my response to the hard stuff in my life sure has.