And The Winner Is.....

Strep, Round Two.

I was just getting over my strep when I had a bad allergy attack -- the first real one I've ever had since I've just developed the damned things over the last 6-9 months -- and it spiraled me back into the cycle. Drainage = irritated throat = infection = strep. I'm achy and bitchy and all the other -y's that you can think of. I called my doc and he gave me another scrip for a different antibiotic. He told me if this one didn't clear it up I'd have to come back in.

Arrrrrrgh. What is it aboout January that makes my body think it just hasn't filled its quota of sick for the year?

Hup, One, Two, Three......

So I joined this gym.

Starting on the 13th of January I worked out an hour each day up until this Tuesday, when I came down with strep. I went to the doc on Wednesday, got antibiotics on Thursday, and spent my weekend recovering while busying myself scanning in all my old family pictures and genealogical documents.

I've now recovered from the strep and am back at work. I went to work out today for an hour and plan on getting up at fuck-thirty (read: 4:30 am) in the morning to do it again. I am working out with this girl in my office who's lost about 60 lbs so far and plans to continue her weight loss. She attends school in the evenings after work so we have to make it before work at 7 am if we want to get any workout time in and believe me, she does. She's a drill sergeant, I tell you, a sadistic freaking drill sergeant! Damn her hide, she won't let me skate or wiggle out of workouts. I've done more physical activity in the last two weeks than I've done for the past two years.

She just might be my savior.

Hee!

I Am In A Conventional Dither

Happy New Year everyone!

Let's see......where to start?

The holidays were fine. Rather enjoyable, as a matter of fact. I didn't feel the heavy obligations that I always felt when I was married so -- because I didn't HAVE to go to all these places -- I enjoyed going to the few I did go to. (My parents with the kiddo, in other words.)

The roommate and my friend Queen are dating...well, whatever passes for dating nowadays I suppose. I'm admittedly a little blurry on the definition. The roommate is in many ways like her ex. During my talk with her I told her she tended to gravitate toward emotionally challenged, unavailable men that make her work for the scraps of affection they throw her way. I mentioned her romantic entanglements resemble her relationship with her mother -- working for approval and praise and feeling that if either are given to her without her effort or her sacrifice it's worthless. I said, rather bluntly, that her relationship with roomate is like updating her software - Ex version 2, or "EX.2" Hee! I'm still concerned on many levels because I don't see anything but an oncoming train at the end of this particular tunnel, but I've said my peace to Queen and don't care to lose a friendship over it. She's a big girl. But I'll be there when he runs her over.

I'm going after work to join a gym. There's a first time for everything, hm? I've went a few times with a girl I work with and so far so good. I had troubles the last time I worked out -- 3 months, 4-5 times a week, 30-45 min each session, eating less than 1200 calories a day...and the only thing I got for it? Toned arms. Didn't lose a pound, didn't lose an inch. Thyroid, anyone????....but that's a subject for another rant. Anyway, I've got to think of it as a health and maintenance issue to keep me feeling strong and fit as opposed to a vanity issue. I do recall feeling better doing it. So I'm putting money where my mouth is.

Hm.....oh yes. I've got a few more additions to the "Oh My God She's Young" files: when I walked into the house a few days ago to pick up the kiddo Yo was there sitting on the couch with her laptop sending messages on MySpace. I briefly wondered why she was there since most of the time kiddo is home alone that soon after school is out. I found out why quickly. Seems Yo got fired from her job for, and I quote, "opening my mouth one too many times." This is the second job she's been fired from in as many years. But no worries, because she's apparently contemplating going back to school but "I don't know what I want to do." This is of course all on the Exh's dime. This oughta be fun; I remember well how tight it was for he and I and the kiddo to live on his salary and mine, much less his on its own. Then there's the fact that she likes to spend money a lot more than I do and that there's four of them. Wait, maybe five! As she was telling me about the job she said, "It'd be just my luck to get pregnant right now too." I thought to myself well that's easy to prevent you silly goose, but that works only if she really wants to prevent it in the first place. It's obvious she doesn't.

So I ended up standing outside talking to the exh while she was rolling around in the grass and chasing my kiddo, laughing and giggling. I watched her out of the corner of my eye and her youth was so painfully apparent that as I went on talking to exh I actually felt embarrassed for him.

Which also reminds me -- she's got over $800 worth of unpaid tickets to her home state and if she doesn't pay them, she could do jail time.

Oh my dear exh, whatever were you thinking when you hitched your cart to this wagon? Er, or it might be more accurate to ask, whatever were you thinking WITH?


((Song: "A Wonderful Guy" by Tex Beneke and Margaret Whiting. Lyrics here:
http://legalgeekery.com/2008/11/08/fallout-3-song-list/comment-page-3/))

Now Give Me Money, That's What I Want

So my master plan for becoming someone to envy after my divorce isn't working out all that well.

I have levels of ideal floating about in my skull. There's the ultimate ideal (that goes without saying, right?) and then there are a couple levels of ideal that are lower than the ultimate but still very desirable. There are even a couple levels below that where I'd be content. Even my ultimate ideal isn't being ridiculously rich and bored. I tried a taste of that in Las Vegas with X and -- while fun -- it wouldn't be my cup of tea over the long haul. Err....I don't think so, anyway. Hee!

Satisfaction is really my goal. Security. I imagined getting a job that would put me making twice what I'm making now. That still wouldn't very be much but I could move out and live on my own. I could live in a style that, while not luxurious, would be relatively comfortable. Too me, comfortable means traveling a few times a year and seeing the world. As I most likely have more birthdays behind me than in front of me, this is something I'd like to do.

So I thought, what better way to better myself than to go back to school? I thought giving myself some new and updated skills would do the trick. But it hasn't. Even before the recent economic troubles, it hadn't. I've discovered that the skills themselves weren't as relevant as experience is. I know that's not first page news, but I'd hoped -- apparently in vain -- that my decades of experience in other fields would make me a better "bet" than a fledgling graduate right out of college. Looks like in order to really utilize my new skills I have to take a entry level job in the field making $3 less an hour than I currently make. I simply can't do that. I am barely squeaking by as it is and that's WITH a roommate.

Now I'm $4k MORE in debt than I was when I exited my marriage and in no better position. It's frustrating to say the least.

Still, I'm not suffering and I'm not lacking food on the table or a roof over my head. My roommate is really not all that difficult -- in fact he's one of the better ones I've had over the years -- and I am guardedly optimistic that whatever company I eventually end up with will see that the updated skills I've cultivated would be beneficial and at that juncture I'll be compensated for them. I want to think that I haven't done the schooling in vain.

It's funny, though. I'm pursuing other avenues -- contract positions and part-time writing jobs and things I haven't done since college. I was a journalist back then. Who knows....maybe my chops aren't completely gone but are just a bit dusty.

It made me think, though, about happiness. Knowing what you want and going for it with a single-minded determination. That's something I've rarely been able to maintain because I'm much too interested in experiencing all that I can before I shuffle off this mortal coil. While reading one day I came across a blog (http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/01/why-career-planning-is-time-wasted.php) with an article about why career planning is a waste of time and I pondered this quote about miswanting in particular:

"We are poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future."The idea of making mistakes about what we might want in the future has been termed 'miswanting' by Gilbert and Wilson (2000). They point to a range of studies finding we are poor at predicting what will make us happy in the future....Over time we learn, whether implicitly or explicitly, that we are not that good at predicting the future.

"This means your future self is probably a stranger to you. And, on some level, you know it. That's why it might be hard for an 18 year old to choose their career, but it's a damn sight harder for someone in midlife when limitations have been learnt. This might seem like just another way of saying that people get more cautious as they get older, but it is more than that. It's actually saying that it's not caution that's increasing with age, but implicit self-knowledge. People begin to understand that the future holds vanishingly few certainties, even for those things that would seem to be under our most direct control, like our sandwich preferences."

I DO know and have always known that what I want changes over time. I've never made really solid long-term goals because of that knowledge. I've always thought that made me wishy-washy. Hm. Perhaps it simply means that I'm a lot more self-aware and knowledgeable about myself than the average soul?

Well, it's a great justification anyway. :)

((Song: "Money/That's What I Want" by the Beatles. Lyrics here:
http://www.stevesbeatles.com/songs/money.asp ))

We Drank A Toast To Time...

Today would have been my grandmother's 108th birthday. I thought about her a lot this morning, Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" running through my head.

My grandmother was born in 1900 in a small town in the midwest, the youngest of seven children. Her father was French by descent and a farmer as well as a tintyper. His father had died years before from milk sickness, otherwise known as tremetol poisoning - their cows had eaten some white snakeroot. The entire family had grown ill from the milk and because of that, her father never drank milk again as long as he lived. Her mother was of Irish descent and was a Quaker, a decision influenced by a Quaker family whose home she had worked in as a housemaid.

Her parents met during a local fair along the Wabash River in 1885 when her dad stopped her mother to ask if she'd like her picture taken. They married in 1886.

After having three children -- and losing three, one at the age of 2 from an accidental fall into the fireplace and another two at birth -- my grandmother was born when her mother was 40. She was less than two pounds at birth and she told me her father could cradle her in the palm of her hand. He took a shoe box, placed it in the pulled out bottom drawer of a nightstand and moved it near the fire. That was her crib. They didn't expect her to live through the night.

But she lived, all right. She died four months before her 102nd birthday.

Oh, but she lived! Her brother fought in WW1. She rode a horse to school and only attended until the 6th grade. She took a cross country trip in a Model T around 1919 and worked in a shoe factory in the 1920's. She saw both World Wars, the Great Depression, Korea, Vietnam, and the development of aircraft, automobiles, television, cameras, radio, telephones, spacecraft, and computers. That in itself is simply incredible. Would that my life be as far-reaching in scope.

She met my grandfather at 27 but they didn't marry until she was 34. My grandfather's mother had died when he was 12 from influenza so he was the sole provider for his aged grandmother and great-aunt during the Depression and he worked as a mechanic to take care of his womenfolks. After the Depression was over they continued to date. My grandmother waited patiently for him to decide, as was her manner. She was a firm believer in the power of patience. After a few more years had gone by -- six of them! -- though, her patience had run its course. In her no-nonsense manner she told my grandfather, "I've given you leave to decide whether we're to marry. I'm getting no younger and I have waited long enough. If we aren't to marry, I will leave."

They married a few months later.

She lived her life like this. Patience, caring, love, acceptance. She allowed my grandfather to run the family and rarely made the "waves" that modern women make, angsting about decisions and feelings and rights. She didn't consider her choices a sacrifice and she didn't believe that she'd given up any of her own power by allowing these things. My grandfather listened to her counsel, believed in her, leaned on her and was devoted to her. She knew that while my grandfather was the rock of the family, she was the root. She was calm like the port in the storm. She rarely put her foot down with him but when she did, he invariably acceeded to her wishes. They were married 55 years.

I didn't really get to know her until she was in her 70s since I wasn't born until she was in her late 60's. We grew very close after my grandfather died and my love for her was the kind of love that I hold for no one else in the world, save my child. Nothing could shake her; she'd seen and lived through much and there wasn't much about life that surprised her. She told me at her 100th birthday that she thought they should legalize marijuana! She was 4'10" but in her small package she managed to meld pragmatism and childish innocence; a curiosity and appreciation for the wondrousness of living that I don't see often enough. She taught me so very many things.

The last few years of her life were a little rough. She suffered a number of mini-strokes over the last decade of her life and finally a few months shy of her 101st birthday one stroke was bad enough to render her incapacitated and she moved from my parent's home into a nursing facility. Though we were told that her brain had been damaged by the stroke, I wonder sometimes if she was aware enough to know -- in some distant sort of way -- what was happening to her. She'd told me many times over many years that she was ready to die when it came her time and though I understood why she said it, my gut always clenched when she would. She lived this way for about a year before finally succumbing to another massive stroke. It was a blessing and through my grief I knew that she was relieved to have it over and done with.

There are precious few people on this earth that I miss profoundly after they're gone. I don't believe that people persist after death but there is a part of me that wishes that they would, and even hopes that they do. I can see why many religious sorts find an odd sense of comfort in the thought. I thought about my grandmother today and wished with all my heart that I could see her again, if for no other reason than to apologize for my behavior in the face of her decline and death.

When she went into the nursing home I rarely visited her. It reeked of death and decay. It wasn't the reek of her bodily functions so much as the reek of what was inside her, killing her. Her breath smelled dark and rank, like death was her passenger and only her autonomic system and our efforts to sustain her were keeping her fixed here. She had a DNR so she wasn't on machines but she was fed through a feeding tube. Bu none of that would have mattered to me had SHE been there....the light in her eye, I mean. The glint of life still being lived underneath it all. I would have visited much more than I did. As it was, I felt uncomfortable and sad and petty that the glint mattered to me. She looked tired and miserable and I didn't want to be there as witness to her loss of dignity or remember her in that way. So I stayed away. I wish now that I hadn't.

I hope -- if she did know that I didn't come -- I hope that she forgave me. I hope that she understood the whys of it. I'm driving the two hours to her grave tonight. I can visit her in the peace of death. I hope if by some crazy way she's there now, she can see me again.

I love you, grandma. Sleep well.

((Song: "Same Old Lang Syne" by Dan Fogelberg. Lyrics here:
http://www.afn.org/~afn30091/songs/f/fogelberg-same.htm ))