Tag: divorce

Humanity

I do not know

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Second birthday is done now. Onto the Christmas thing.

Just made three different kinds of cookies to give as gifts. It was hours in the kitchen and I gave up on holding onto my sanity and it went right out the front door. I watched it go, that skanky bitch. She had a fucking swagger, she did.

My eyes are dry and I’m slightly sticky from all the sugar. I don’t know, man. Its a chance to say thank you to people, to show them a little generosity: of time, of thought, sometimes of money. I like it, actually, but not the wild stampede of my guilt and overwhelm as I try to fit in all the things and the planning and the grocery. Its all the steps that get me, the ways in which I am overwhelmed three weeks before the thing, the way my brain carves a groove in the ‘is this worth it’ platter holding the cheeses we’ll eat on the Eve.

My kids have Christmas with their dad the day before they have it with me. Mine is smaller this year than it ever has been and I’m just so done with all the things I think about that. Man, I need a good therapist, and I’m just so damn mad at myself that I am still falling into old patterns, ones which I’ve already tired out a few therapists with. OOOOLD news. so fucking old.

I don’t even care about them anymore, those old pieces of shit, to tell you the truth. But they come up AGAIN with the overwhelm and the fear that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not appreciated, that maybe I’m still invisible, like I was then.

so shit. i do not know. and here i am, all cookie-d out. and i look forward to giving them out tomorrow. I have to be in early, and its cozy day, so i’m just wearing a gigantic sweatshirt that almost comes to my ankles. I may not ‘rally’ and ‘be lively’. I predict a sort-of dazed experience of the day.

Love you guys. Be merry if you want to. 🙂

Cookies! So many goddamned cookies.

Humanity

sick days-time limit

Lovelovemotherexpletive

i’m haunted by food that is in the fridge. that chicken, could you cook it for me so it doesn’t go bad? i just cannot move. My nose is Gerard Depardieu.

I watched Last Holiday last night. Bob is a good egg to do it with me. (secretly he appreciated it tons. LL COOL J AND QUEEN LATIFAH? joy and extravagance? COME ON.)

there’s a timeline. this all has to go away in the next twelve hours because i haven’t been there long enough to have a sick day.

my middle child is the one of them who is not a good patient. tending him last night was one of those bitter moments when you realize your humanity is overriding the mother-bit. Being sick myself made it a hard one. but his fever broke sometime in the night and he was sweetly sweaty this morning and he will be 18 tomorrow and well. He was my easiest birth, and it was 18 years ago. dang.

Its been a doozy so far this year. I thought I’d gotten so much better with the divorce/shared parenting thing but this year has definitely shown me my flaws. Bitter bleeding pain moments at the kids being absent from me are occurring. I mean… ouch stuff. the right word is PIERCING.

the holidays and birthdays are always a ‘too much’ time for me, but this year I have wept, and I don’t recover as quickly as I’d like. My monkey mind is full of competitions and loss, and ‘well, fine, I’m wrapping the socks, we’re just going to have popcorn and I’ll leave all the presents to the rich dad and stepmom. Because I cannot win.’

And I still spend too much, and wrestle with my savings account. And it uncovers the part of me that really does watch the competition and try to participate. And believe it or not, as un-American as it is, I am aware that competition is out of place, and a full-on negative for me. but there it is. it appears anyhow.

I’ve done christmas by myself for my whole life with my kids. (like most moms) Do they know that? No. It is not just the two houses that makes it tough. Its a much bigger issue of feeling unseen and unappreciated. I was asked to move ‘things’ because of the stress the stepmom was feeling. So now there is a second woman overwhelmed and stressed by the season. (and yes, i wept, because goddamnit, this is my role, not anyone else’s and how dare their dad allow it to happen to someone else. isn’t one enough? ((and what the fuck does he DO?)) )

and then we go back to the chicken in the fridge and the need to cook for all the people. and the one home from college who fell asleep at 7 am.

Its a cheap, falling-apart wicker basket of emotions over here. And it better be all done in the next 12 hours. Thats it.

time limit.

person holding white tissue paper
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Humanity

falling leaves, right?

Lovelovemotherexpletive

One of the things i’ve learned from working with farmers, besides the fact that I’m not actually cut out to be an ACTUAL farmer, is that the seasons actually do follow that whole ‘official first day of… ‘ thing. As in, the weather will still be more warm than chilly until the end of the month (22nd?) and the cold will settle in afterwards. And then, the week that ‘winter’ starts, its going to be actually fucking cold.

And I’m not a pumpkin spice person, so I could probably not give less of a shit about all that. I’ll take the warm days and the cool nights forever and ever, amen.

Its been a while, and its ‘fall’ according to kids being back in school and my outdoor laboring jobs slowing down. I’m turning back to working from home, writing, editing, and the like. Well, i’m going to try damn hard. I’m pretty damn fearful I won’t make enough money and it’s still not enough to force me into some other line of work. not yet.

I’m good otherwise. I have the wood I need to get through the cold spell. Though, most of it is in the front yard, waiting to be split and THAT is waiting on me to go buy an ax. I want to memorialize this action somehow, like dress up in a loose and flowy gown with sparkles before I walk into the big box hardware store and purchase my ax. It is a once in a lifetime thing, and it should be special.

Maybe I’ll carry a lit candle.

I should bring my kids with me. Because I want them to have more core memories of me than just ‘lady who does laundry’ and ‘the boring house’ and ‘why can’t we go out to dinner?’ …. yes, i jest. we have a good time, they are sto damn funny. but goddamn. i do see this as a negative of the two-home family. the comparisons are nonstop, and i really do not do well when held up against ‘the weekend house’ and the laisse-faire. and i think i’ve misspelled that. and guess what? i’m not going to search it up or correct it. because i’d much rather have someone contact me about it and engage in a conversation. how bout that?

i’ve got to go soon, my new leaves in flip still include egg washing chores, and i’m off to wash dozens and dozens of them. While i wash, i do a lot of thinking about ‘dispatches from the cooped-up’. I do crack myself up.

See what I did there?

oh my friends, expect more from me. go on. do it.

love love,

kate

Humanity

Grief

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’ve mentioned before that I am swamped with melancholy in this month and next. The anniversary of my dad’s death and the necessity of sharing birthdays of children with my ex and all the tearing up of my insides at the still new change of holiday appearances, all that? Oh god, the feeling of loss is so damn pervasive, its the chill in my toes of winter. It swamps me, and I am still working on it, but am spending most of my time just looking forward to New Year’s Day, the day everything is finished and everything can begin.

When I say ‘most of my time’ that is mostly a lie. I’m busy, we’re all busy and I don’t necessarily have the time to focus on my inner workings all day. But, BUT, I am aware of a somewhat constant undercurrent of sadness.

So. When a friend told me about a writing group that focused on grief, it did not feel like a horrorshow. It felt like a possibility, a way to purge myself of this feeling, or at least to acknowledge it at a deeper level than just in type, here.

It was tough. I didn’t want to. and sometimes, knowing the depths of loss that people can be in, it can make my grieving of a father, and a man I thought I knew, or the girl i was when i believed in people, feel somehow less significant. When someone is in the rawness of it, and you see, remember and don’t feel it anymore? awe inspiring how human we all are. and how much a part of human life loss and grief are.

I spend a lot of time in shallow waters, and it is much safer there. but the truth isn’t there, and when i woke up this morning (daylight savings be damned) I felt relieved. Somehow the writing of it has released some of it for me today. I’ll take it, even if its temporary.

so thats where i’m at. day 8 of this month of constant writing. So far so good.

the work is ongoing.

-love love.

ball point pen on opened notebook
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Humanity

Alligator Tears.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Honestly, I’m not sure that I’m using that metaphor right. Is there some element of mischief there? Or fraud? I can’t remember and there is no one here to ask. and honestly, i really resist searching things up on the internet that are better found out in conversation.

today is a cry day. big fat loppers, and little ones that I don’t know are coming. puddles.

I spent 1500 on a plumber yesterday to bring us up to a level with this century in terms of my well. It was definitely money well spent as we all took satisfying showers for the first time in ages, if a little bit extra iron-y. but they were the third plumber visit in two weeks. THIRD.

and this morning I had a hard time waking up, and stumbled around the kitchen to make my coffee and there was no water. there was no water dude.

humpty landed his first whallop.

so in pitch black i go into the basement because needs must. and for the love of god, it all looks like it did yesterday, for all i can tell. and so i come back to the kitchen, soothing myself that there are no spiders in my hair and that my house is not in imminent danger of explosion.

2. my mom calls. 3.boys go to school with bitchery. lots of it. showers work, other places have water. so that is a win. 3.1 i drive mom home from her car shop. 4. get a call from my car shop. next week is hopefully the last day i spend at the dealership. maybe. but thats another grand. i’m officially worried about money and whether i have enough working as i am, or if i need to just go ‘get a job’ like my kids stupidly say because they are sometimes assholes.

5.my ex offers to host the eight year olds birthday party at his house of fun and i dream of his immolation. i do not say this to him because its completely irrational but then 6. i book a party at a trampoline place that i now officially cannot afford. I hate these months. I have forgotten how much I hate these months. Two birthdays, anniversary of my dad’s death and the big holidays.

7. I’m officially in pre-menopause and I can’t tell what my hormones are raising and what the devil is raising and what my actual life is raising.

I’m having a day of official overwhelm when the worries are winning. so be it. let it be known though, that …

i fixed my damn sink guys. my own damn self.

for seven dollars.

and i’m crying some more. i’m fine. i’m fine. i am. even in the pit, i am my own fucking little candle, right?

fucking hell.

maybe its crocodile tears. is that milli vanilli or elvis or something?

fug.

love you, even though i’m a slumpy mess.

-kate

raindrops
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