Mamarati

I feel like today is the first day of something for me. First day at work. First day at school. First day of something. I finally feel relaxed. My kid started middle school and so far, he hasn’t had sex, joined a gang, failed the metal detector, smoked pot, skipped class, worn his pants so low that his underwear show, flipped off a teacher or otherwise taken part in any offenses that would land him in the office or hot water, been made fun of, shoved into a locker or been the victim of a swirly.

Not that I thought any of those things would happen, but those are my worst, most paranoid fears for 7th grade (or any grade, really. Haha). How do I arrive at all this craziness? Well, if I buy into the bit about kids doing stuff at a younger age than we were back in the day… The rebel years should start any minute.

I’m lucky, perhaps. My kid is a really great kid and we’re pretty open about discussing all this stuff. I didn’t have a lot of sound, solid adults to bounce my concerns off of when I was a kid, so I’ve always wanted to make sure that my own kid wasn’t flailing around in a sea of misunderstanding and confusion. At least not any more than already goes along with being a teen…

7th grade. I can’t believe it. It’s like he’s maturing every single day, too. I see so much difference in him even from just a month ago, and certainly much more than during his last weeks of being in 6th grade, which is still elementary school around here. I look at the kids at pick-up time, though, and I realize that he’s not nearly as mature as many of them. I’ve sheltered him a bit. I’ve kept his exposure to some things minimal. I question doing that some days. Other days not so much.

So far, though, I couldn’t be more pleased. He’s happy about his teachers. He’s interested in his classes. He’s bonded with one of his teachers and wants to stay after school talking to him. He’s so observant and talks to me every day about the things he sees and his take is so interesting. I am thankful for the time we have in the car, where some of our best conversations take place on the drive home after school. He really opens up. He’s not seeming anxious or nervous about anything and said to me yesterday, “I think I’m really gonna like this middle school thing.”

Phew.

So, now that he’s settled… I feel like I’m settled and I can get back to business.

Back to writing and working and being productive. Back to having moments to think. I feel relaxed today. This despite two cups of high-test coffee. It’s a little bit exciting at the same time. I feel like I need to go to Office Depot, though, and get some new school supplies. Nothing says “time to get busy” like a new pen.

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In other news… politics have been incredible lately. I don’t talk about politics too much because of the “work” site. I have my own personal beliefs, of course. Some are strong. Some are pretty liberal. Others are incredibly conservative. I took some quiz one time that identified me as both liberal and libertarian. I have my issues where I’m not going to be swayed and others that I have not fleshed out enough to say where I stand.

I think that a lot of folks are like that, no matter what you may be seeing on TV or reading on blogs or wherever. I think that this race for president is bringing out a lot of issues that people are arguing about, sure, but I also think that a lot of the “conflict” is going on within ourselves. I can only truly speak for myself, but I’m tellin’ ya — I’m thinking about issues and figuring things out for myself that haven’t ever come up before.

And the truth is, while I don’t usually talk about politics online because I work here and I don’t necessarily want my personal politics to be used for or against me in any way… and I want to be as unbiased as a person can be who is offering what mostly consists of advice rather than pure journalism… I have a lot to say about politics. I’ve been involved in this process. I’ve had relatives run for office and I have been to rallies, watch parties and the like. I’ve campaigned for candidates. I’ve dragged my sick, flu-ridden self to the polls to vote. I ran a friggin’ caucus here in Texas and boy was that a rush. I’m excited by the Democratic process. I like thinking about all this. I think that things are in a state of change right now and it’s really interesting to me to consider things I haven’t before. To be confronted by issues that I’ve never had the opportunity to consider and weigh.

Sometimes I hear my son say something and I think that he’s getting it from me. Sometimes it sounds extreme coming out of his mouth and that reflects on me. It gives me a chance to think about the context of how he heard me discuss that issue and how it came across to him. It gives me a chance to play Devil’s advocate and give him the other side of it. It gives me a chance to say I may not be right about everything and even that there may not be a perfect right or wrong way to think or feel about an issue.

More on this… because I am going to write about it. And this is my space, so I’m going to use it because I’m tired of remaining silent on these issues that are so important to me just because it’s such a charged arena. It’s so much more complex than that, and I have so much to say that some days I’m about to burst. And, too, I have so much more to work out for myself, and this has always been the place where I’ve done that. Do you remember what you told yourself, woman? That all this self-censorship was like cutting out and discarding a part of your brain? Yeah, I’m tired of that.

So I’m doin’ real nice with this writing every day thing, huh?

Noooooooo.

Let’s see what my excuses are…

On 11/5, which was what? Monday? I was working on school stuff and then I had to make crazy allergy jelly (recipe) and then I had to make a roast (recipe) and then I had to make bread (recipe) and collard greens (recipe) which take forever to clean and remove the stems and such.

And then I was tired, but I started watching this show about children in India who are born to mothers in brothels and I couldn’t stop watching that…

But my boyfriend went to bed early and so I couldn’t get to my computer to write…

And… yeah. All that.

Then on 11/6, which was yesterday. I was working on more school stuff and researching how to dry fruit when you don’t have a dehydrator and then I was cold so I went to take a bath and after that I started watching this documentary about Scrabble nerds and fell asleep during that.

Which brings me to today.

Oh, but look, I’ve written today. How nice.

See you tomorrow.

So, it’s NoJoMo… and you know what? I didn’t usedta need a special month to encourage my writing. I used to write ginormous entries nearly every day.

For YEARS.

But I’m older, busier, tirededer and… apparently more healed.

I went to my niece’s funeral this week, fully expecting the usual… and what I got instead was refreshing and real from most parties involved. Genuine discussions about silly things like thoughts, ideas and feelings took place. It was crazy stuff, I tell ya.

More on that in a bit. J will be here in a minute and today is his official birthday. YAY! When David was here last week he was kind enough to bestow $100 worth of GameStop joy in the form of a gift card (as well as 2000 Wii points) and today is also Day 1 (which means beef, cheese, milk and bread) so it promises to be a good time. I’ll need dry hair for that, which I don’t have currently.

Well, I gave up on the former theme. It kept not loading fully and I just could not track down the problem. I am not the biggest fan of this one, but I’m all about the “easy button” so there ya go.

Monday is Jacob’s allergy appointment. We will figure out more about the corn and egg allergy then, and see what kind of diet he’s going to have to follow and for how long. Read the rest of this entry »

Something weird is up with the blog since I changed the theme (what else is new — I change the theme like I change my underwear.)

Wait, if that were true, I wouldn’t be wearing a theme at all most of the time. Ha.

Ok… just checking to see if a new post will change that.

So, I’ve been having computer problems out the wazoo.

I mean, aside from the general I-can’t-use-the-computer-like-I-did-before-the-accident way.

Hard drive issues. Issues with trying to get Apple Mail and Outlook to be friends and share. Issues with the backup drive and file names and little squares showing up in my documents. Issues with training speech recognition to deal with my Southern accent.

Just issues left and right. I’m behind with school after waiting on the Dell to come to me with all its components working. That took way longer than I’d anticipated. I was already behind to start with since the first two weeks of school passed me by as I laid in bed in a hydrocodone-induced stupor.

I’ve been having lots of days with pain. And there was a week there where getting my prescription filled was delayed when my doctor’s office closed down on a Friday. I had to wait till like Wednesday before everything got faxed back and forth and verified. During that time I was rationing my pills like chocolate during a war… so there were many hours of just laying very still, very quiet, trying to think of anything but how bad my arm hurt.

I found that, just like when I was in labor, trying to “breathe” and “find a focal point” was a big bunch of hooey, however.

At any rate, I’m trying to get all my poop in a group here… so if you see lots of entries popping up… I’m just backtracking. I’m trying to keep track of all the stuff that I’ve been writing down on scraps of paper or keeping in my mind over the last few weeks… wanting to keep a record of all the books Jacob has been reading, what’s going on in the yard, what we’ve been cooking, what the cat is up to and all that other crap that only I care about. Haha.

Well, OK, my mom cares about that stuff, too.

I find it really hard to type when my hands are so cold. I’m going to have to get gloves and cut the fingers off or something.

Why am I always so damn cold?

I am trying out Qumana. It’s not a drug or herbal supplement to help raise your metabolism so that your body generates more heat. No.

It is an offline blogging doohickey. It doesn’t work with the new version of blogger, however, so I will have to wait to use it here. They’ve got to figure out the bug and get a new version up or something like that. I’ll wait.

It works with my wordpress blogs at work, though, so I kinda like it. I can just save a bunch of crap that I haven’t fleshed out completely and come back to it later instead of letting it hand in my mail folder, which is kind of like a dead letter box at the post office. I might as well rename my “do something” folder “do nothing.”

I procrastinate.

I think that school will help this. I’m taking 17 hours this semester, and it seems like the more shit I have to do, the more shit I actually get done in all areas of my life, no matter how frazzled I may seem.

I’m looking forward to it.

We went out of town to visit my boyfriend’s family and were away from home for like 20 days or something. I didn’t work much of those 20 days. I am about to feel it in my paycheck.

I know Will must have some gloves around here that I can alter.

I’m going to go look for those and then I will be back…

What happens, when I am going through my old self and placing that old self in a new, hopefully permanent place… are a couple of things.

First, there is this sadness. This realization that I just do not write like I used to write. That there used to be this very introspective side of me that wasn’t too difficult to capture in words. Even when it was a complicated struggle, documenting the conflict was revealing and good in itself. And it makes me sad that I seem to have lost that.

I’ve talked about this before.

Then, there is this embarrassment. When I read some of that old stuff I cannot believe how raw some of it is. How primal. How immature and silly and stupid. I cannot believe I took the time to write about some of it. I cannot believe I got so personal and opened up all those strange cans of worms.

And then… I don’t know what to do with it all.

I think some of it has to do with my boyfriend. And I know some of it has to do with work. And that ever increasing ? worry that those parts of my life and my private thoughts, public here, are going to bleed together and … I don’t know.

It’s just hard to figure out all the parts of me and teach them how to get along well together, because they really are so different. And there is the expectation that if you are X then you cannot also be Y and Z and G and whatnot. Well, I am, though. I just haven’t figured out how to reconcile all the parts. Madonna. Whore. You know the syndrome.

I guess there are just things that I DO or SAY or whatever… that are not what one would expect. One who knows some other part of me, I guess. Like, if you know the “work me” then you would not expect that I… do some of the things that I do as the “at home” or “with friends” me. Or something like that.

I don’t know what I am saying. I guess I’m just saying that I’m normal, in my own strange way, and nothing brings that out more than trying to get the pieces of my past to fit with my present and future. It’s all so different.

And I wish I could just let go and write what I want. THIS IS MY JOURNAL PEOPLE. I just want to write. I just want to not be so blocked somewhere here in my head.

It’s like I’m afraid of something.

You’re a damn writer. SO write… right?

well, when Kim came and rescued me, we went to Bennigan’s on the way home. I got the southwest sampler as my meal, because I do that sometimes… and because it’s got this incredible stuff they call pineapple salsa.

I had leftovers, so I’m having them for brunch right now… and it’s turned out much better than I thought. I figured it would all be smoosh, but there’s actually some crispy left in the southwest egg rolls and the quesadillas aren’t all chewy.

Mmmmmmmm.

And I’m going to take a bath and then start on some laundry and stuff. I have sworn myself not to nap until at least 2pm.

I’m up to 10/5/99 in my porting process.

What in the hell am I thinking sometimes when I’m writing?????

I think that my other personalities must have written a lot of this shit.

Oh well… bath is done runnin.

More later…