Tag: advice

Humanity

mean old bastard

unwifedmotherexpletive

there’s a piece of me that is a hard, flinty old man. the man who cuts up the tennis balls that land in his yard, to show those young’uns what ‘respect’ means.

you wouldn’t know it to look at me, but it is there, and it is strong. it is most assuredly NOT the strongest of the bunch, but he does show his head often enough that I know him. He’s really quite reactive.

If I’m cold, he comes out ranting about how I can’t start a fire because it is too early in the season and I’ll run out of wood when I need it most. And I can’t turn on the heat because I’ll run out of money when I need it most.

If I’m lonely, he runs out into the yard to wave his stick at all my faults, including my introversion, which is a bit of a mind-bender.  “If you weren’t so damn picky, you’d have more friends. If you go out with those people, they will really learn about how weird you are.”

curmudgeon. filled with fear and lack… not-enoughness.

UnwifedMotherExpletive on the Beach

I think most people know it, certainly have seen it in others.  its a whole way of explaining American culture right now. I hate you because you might take what I have, someday, somehow, because I really don’t have enough, and I’m scared.

And how do I address that mean old bastard? The more I respect the pieces of me that have developed, the more I realize I can let him rant, and fling his fear around. I can. no big.

as long as I don’t do more than that. I can let him, I don’t need to burn down his house.  I may not want to have him over for dinner but I don’t need to ‘become him’.  I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work. So, i’m just going to go to the beach and pick up pretty rocks and use a hanky to save the world.

and he can rant, and I can let him. and when he is done, I might bake him some apple crisp.

but guess what? he’s lost his teef.

more for me.

-uwmofo

 

Humanity

what’d you do today, freelancer?

unwifedmotherexpletive

I don’t have any work to do today. I mean, I’ve got two jobs that are on hold, or i’m awaiting a response to the last message, etc. So I really have nothing to do.  I’ve moved the sofa. I’ve got a wing chair in the middle of the kitchen now. I’ve measured something. I’ve danced. I took a bath. I’m clean and I watched a zombie show. I am keeping the chickens locked up today because there is a fox, and he has been fed twice in the past two days and hella, stop.

This:

Last night I got a text message from a mom whose kid is/was a friend of my teenager.  sometime in august some shit went down and she just heard about it now and was texting me to essentially find out about it, complain and judge me and my job as a parent.

let me be clear: my kid was part of something mean and unkind to her kid. my kid was mean and unkind.

full stop.

but I don’t really take kindly to the notion that I then get a lecture on parenting from another parent. As if my 14 year old kid is not responsible for his decisions.  Because I was upset at the text series, I looked again through his phone, talked with him about the incident yet again and when I told him that the boy’s feelings had been significantly hurt, he had remorse, again, as he should have.

AND YET, it is still not my responsibility to control his first actions.  I’ve given him a model, and earlier on, explicit directions on how to treat people.  And he made a mistake.

I do feel sorry for it, and sorry for her kid, because it sucks to be in high school sometimes. it really does. and he got hit with flung shit (not literally).

But the patronizing, and the moralizing, and the judgement that I got?  I fling that shit back and out. No.

BUT because I avoid conflict, even within myself, the anger splurted out at my kids last night.

(yelling)
“SHUT UP. I LOVE YOU BUT PLEASE SHUT UP.”

lots of fun at bedtime. guilt. anger. guilt. anger.

so I leave you with this:

a new pink sofa. free, by the side of the road, with a twin. small enough to haul around the house on a freelancing kind of day.

0916191208

Humanity

current mood: crackhead

unwifedmotherexpletive

Sitting in the Car- UnwifedMotherExpletivei’m sitting in my living room currently with three kids around me, all plugged into various screens, even the six year old. and i am typing, while watching Airplane.  I had them all in it with me, for about six minutes.

There are 100 things i love about this movie.

and i’m sitting on the dog’s bed*, so he is lying next to me licking my foot until i scream and get the hell out of his space.

*dog’s bed being a completely original way of saying beanbag chair, intended for humans.

God Bless Kareem Abdul-Jabar. I mean, Roger Murdock.

and then, Ethel Merman.

I’m smitten with the casual cruelty and egalitarian roasting. no one is safe. and yet, it manages to not be aggressive. how does it do that? and, if i weren’t a white girl from the country, would i still think this? i mean, its certainly offensive. but is it?

part of what made me write today was a thought that flashed through my brain while watching Elaine dance to Staying Alive. ‘I wish i was taller’.

Ok now. So, I am 45 years old. My last growth spurt was a while ago. I don’t need to be anything other than I am. ever. right?

As part of the crackhead mood i”ve been in for the past week, I’ve lost all my ground. And, a lovely friend (@hannahmarcotti) said it today, in terms of my doubt, that doubt is really an inability to be present.

and its doubt that is making me lose my ground. doubt in my own instincts, not knowing the difference between fears based on baggage and fears based on intuition, just the wild uncertainty of everything.

Gobacken Sidonna.

I’m laughing out loud, all by myself because a spear just hit a map in the background. thank you very much.

I love the utter ridiculousness of it.

and i’m whacked. doubting myself like crazy pants, and knowing that intuition is a tough one for me, and i relate it to my belief systems in marriage. . .  and i’ve got to figure out what i’m going to do with all my baggage, because i’d like to walk with a slightly lighter step.

and when one decides to look directly at a problem like this: what does it look like?

I’m going to start with some byron katie work.  I’m familiar with this process as i’ve been through it with Chakra Carol in years past.

its a thought re-conditioning sort of thing. i’m taking the kids to the Cape on Monday and I’m going to force myself to get up early and write in the mornings, and i’m dealing with this shit like throwing bricks. obvious and hard.

i am pretty damn sure its just a step in the road, but fuck it.

love you.

-uwmf

 

 

 

Humanity

In the middle of the week. (a pallet fence)

unwifedmotherexpletive

It is Thursday. I’m going to call that the middle this week, defying all convention. but you know, seven doesn’t divide neatly on a calendar anyhow, so don’t send the hit squad, please.

Summer started here on Tuesday at noon.

Which means, for me, three kids in the house all the time, likely possibility of it being five at any given moment.  Five feels like seven, believe me. Some of this i typed last time i posted. bear with me.

summer brain is like pregnancy brain.

there is a great deal of uncertainty about things that were formerly quite absolute.  and i’ve arrived there. took a day and a half.

yesterday, on a wednesday, the loveliest man (LM) and i put together a pallet fence to protect the chickens-to-be from predators. Because, it turns out, I really like having chickens, for the comfort of their feathers, the curve of their eggs and even their confounding stupidity.  i remain uncertain as to whether god made a mistake in their pea brains, or not. but don’t tell god i said that.

i made a pallet fence.palletdetail

 

and there is much to do, to wire up the whole thing against digging critters, but it makes my whole place look distinctly farmy and delightful in a way i would never truly have expected in my life. (its sort of how i feel right now about LM in general, although he is definitely not farmy)  Its delightful, and I’m going to paint it purple. (not the LM)

Honestly, the pallet fence was so easy, i feel like i need to fence in all the things. stand em up, brace them together and you are done. chickenwire in the ground will happen in the run during the next dry day.

i’m going to fence in my kid who turns 14 at the end of this month. he’s so in it, the life, that i already miss him, and he’s here. so, a paddock it is.

i’m going to fence in the LM, because i barely know how to handle such loveliness and sometimes i need a pause to gather all my panicking feathers.

i’m going to fence in my middle E because he is growing towards 14, and is so independent and will be the crush of my heart when he doesn’t throw himself on me to hug anymore.

i’m throwing my littlest in the fence because she’d love it, the nook aspect of a new cuddle spot, and LM has promised to build her a playhouse and I’m so convinced of men being liars that I don’t want her to know about any of it. so she can never be disappointed.

i’m throwing a fence up around my heart because i’m so content that it is terrifying. chew on that one. I will have a gate so LM and kids and family can come and go.

there will be gates everywhere. and doors. and windows.

let the light flood in. leave the cracks.

sigh.

-uwmofo

 

 

 

 

 

Humanity

Summer begins

unwifedmotherexpletive

I think, from my point of view, on this rainy muggy day, that it feels like the beginning of a long stretch, one of those times when you know that your two jobs are going to overlap such that you might not have time for a dinner break for two more weeks. like that. except it is two months.

and i have it easy. i’m not trying to juggle child care. i am child care. i work at home and the kids will be making their own breakfasts this year, all summer. and this means many more breakfasts for dinner, because i can make eggs like nobodies bizniz.

so, its happening right now. they are all home. my tenant has her two kids here and that means 5 kids in house. my littlest is out on the trampoline with her littlest, so there are benefits, but it is also a whole lot of negotiation all the time, but mostly i get over that pretty quickly.  the benefits of a girl for the girl are pretty good.  except when they suck. then it sucks.

my kids go to their dads tonight and my honey will come over for grilled cheese and soup. because thats the kind of day it is.

just sharing, because i don’t know what else to do. the days are spinning by.

i’ve done a lot of summers, i don’t dread them anymore, and i know i’ll be fine and that it ends and i’ll even be sad that it was so short then.

i’m working on things, and trying to figure out how to make sure that I still rate as important during the summertime, that i continue to work on work and on myself and what i prioritize EVEN when the kids are here.

EVEN WHEN.

0503190655
http://www.seasoulblessings.com  GO LOOK.  

this is the feeling i want to have, at least SOME of the sweltering days this summer, the thrill, the endeavour. (those funky brits, always the extra ‘u’) THIS. how do i truly swing this with a potential of five sweaty urchins?

but i read this earlier, in a listing of the day’s details, calling them  ‘the day’s minor urchins’ … and suddenly its all romantic, dickensian-like. romance in the grit.

thats where we are.

-uwmf