And There's A Reason Why I'm Feelin So High

I spent the greater part of the afternoon sitting at a down-home country restaurant chatting with my kiddo. Over chicken and dumplings and coffee for me and root beer for her, we talked about a lot of things. She did most of the talking. Me? I mostly listened. I liked it just fine that way.

Unless you happen to subscribe to the idea of reincarnation that says you're supposed to be living all these chosen lives and doing certain things with each one every time around, you don't pick the people who end up in your family with you. It's random happenstance. You're born and you end up somewhere and you do the best you can and sometimes your best isn't good enough. Sometimes you discover you've ended up with the shoddiest bunch of kooks to ever grace the planet and sometimes your family members end up putting up with you, one of those aforesaid kooks. It's a particularly interesting form of chaos in action.

Parents who have more than one kid -- hell, even parents who don't -- know deep down that they have favorites. They are loathe to admit it but they do and many times the kids are well aware of their parents' favoritism. Some take it personally but others seem to better understand and accept that its origins are not so much anchored in who loves who most, but who likes who most. Parents love their children equally, love just is. But you really get down to the brass tacks of things when you talk about the art of liking. Liking is something that creates friendships out of possibilities. Liking is choice. Liking is when you realize that the person in front of you has something within them that calls to you and that you want to find out what that is. But liking doesn't mean that the person you don't take to as much is a bad person or less worthy of love; it simply means that for one reason or another, two people just seem to feel an inaudible click that two others don't. That is just the way of these things.

I love my kiddo. Dearly, passionately, deeply. But today, as I was listening to her tell me about her school classes, her widening tastes in food, how her best friend needs to stop telling her mother that she hates her and be more positive about life, and how she believes that all bad things that happen end up being beneficial in the end if she just waits them out to see how they pan out, I realized that I truly liked this kid. I liked the person she was now and the person she was in the process of becoming and I couldn't wait to enjoy her as a friend as well as a daughter. I could see the relationship down the road for the two of us would only get better and better and that our personalities meshed for many other reasons than an accident of birth and shared blood.

And life doesn't get any better than that.

((Song: "Let Your Love Flow" by the Bellamy Brothers. Lyrics here:
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/bellamy-brothers/let-your-love-flow-22054.html ))

Everybody Loves Me, Baby....What's The Matter With You?

I find box-thinkers more and more irritating as I grow older. You know the types -- without empathy, without tact, without the slightest desire towards self-examination. Assured that their own opinions and thoughts are the only proper and correct ones. Things go over their heads. The blinders they wear prevent them from realizing that there is a vast difference between being correct and being right. I suspect only those who don't understand this difference will be confused by my last sentence.

These sorts of people want to try to help you see the right way of things -- their way, of course. You hear them offer you their help and their opinions, which are often unsolicited and even more often rude and condescending. People don't like the implication that they are considered stupid or irresponsible or unable to decide for themselves. As a rule they don't appreciate hearing that their beliefs and their thoughts and feelings have no validity. The amazing thing is that people who do this honestly believe that they are helping. Helping? Alienating would be a more accurate term.

You always hear that ignorance is bliss. Maybe it is. Parts of me envy the black and white world that these people exist in. It must be nice to move through the world feeling confident that your way is so correct that everyone on the planet would live in bliss if only everyone just listened to you.

But you can be correct and still be very wrong.

(Song: Everybody Loves Me Baby" by Don McLean. Lyrics here:
http://www.don-mclean.com/songsearch/viewsong.asp?id=27))

Sex & Chocolate

Guess which one I'm having?

Chocolate, of course. Sex is highly overrated. And chocolate lasts longer.

* * * * *

Let's see......

roomie is off to the Great Northwest for a week, my BFF is getting hitched tomorrow, I spent the weekend with kiddo and she and I had a great time at Queen's house (who is recovering from major surgery that I hope does her a world of good) watching "Firefly" and "Swingtown" and "Hot Fuzz." By the way, "Swingtown" is a great show! The clothes and the hair and the music, down to the telephones and the shag carpet and the avacado kitchen appliances, are spot on. I'm enjoying it immensely. I remember 1976.

I don't remember the swinging lifestyle, of course. I was way too young for that. I'm also not naive enough to think that all swingers act like Trina and Tom (the couple on the show.) I suppose I am naive enough -- or idealistic enough -- to hope that somewhere out there, there will be a man able to indulge all the different things I need in order to have a full intimate relationship. Tom comes about as close to "that man" as I've seen. Maybe he's out there. But if he is, will I believe that he's really being real?

It appears that a national TV news program is interested in doing a story on the case that I was a juror on. I have no idea what that means. Will I be on TV? Will I just get a phone call one day? Will nothing happen at all? I won't know for a while, I'm sure.

Exh is getting married in two more months. They've set a date but I won't divulge it here. He and I had a bit of a talk about a lot of things after I dropped kiddo off this evening. We went all over the map -- how I felt about his upcoming nuptials, how Yo feels about me and some of her insecurities and strengths, about some of mine, and my thoughts on what needs he was satisfying to go so far so fast with this. I told him I knew he just wants to be married and that I knew it was because he has always needed something outside himself to focus on in order to make life worthwhile. He agreed. And when I revealed that I felt "easily replaced," he said, "You're not easily replaced. Believe me," and we exchanged one of those looks that would have inevitably led to a heated kiss in the movies or on TV. But in real life? -- well, I have no idea what he thought or felt -- but no heat, not really, not on my end. I just felt the sharp tang of regret. Maybe he was feeling that same sort of amalgram.

I've not been writing much lately, mainly because I'm struggling with another phase of that grieving process. I've not really been very talkative to friends or family either, and I know at least some of my friends (notably HD) have noticed. I just don't feel like sounding too much like a broken record until I figure it out.

When I was married I pushed and pushed against the gilded cage I'd built for myself. I wanted freedom and I was profoundly frustrated that I couldn't taste of it from where I was ensconced. I resented the people around me that "prevented" me from being my full authentic self, which I felt would only be released when I was untethered by duty, obligation or guilt.

What I never realized until I got divorced -- and even for a long time after that because I was just so giddy with taking full and free breaths! -- was that "those people" had given my life boundaries. I had a place to feel secure and people that depended upon me. I had a sense of belonging. I knew where I was going and I knew why even if I didn't like it all the time. And most vital -- my life had meaning.

Now I come home every afternoon and look around at my empty apartment and wonder what it all means now that I don't have the people whom I didn't realize until I lost them, meant everything in the world to me. Who am I, now? Where is the meaning, now?

I'll figure it out.

I'm baaaaaaack......

Sorry about the long absence from the blogosphere, which is mostly explained by a long vacation to the Midwest. I returned on Sunday and took yesterday as a much-needed recovery period from the long drives I've done in the past week and a half. All total I drove through eight states and logged more than 2400 miles.

It was tiring but very enjoyable. I travelled with the parents and the kiddo. We travelled first to the midwest state where my brother currently hangs his hat. His home is only a few counties over from the one where the ancestors that carried my maiden name had lived in the 1810s-1850s. I wrote a book about these particular ancestors back in 2004 and have been researching them ever since so needless to say, my interest and excitement were high. My ancestors had all moved away by 1852 except one girl who decided to stay behind with her husband. I wanted to find her family's descendents and their family cemetery so I got the chance to drive through the county they lived in and travel all the little roads that they used.

I managed to locate their old homestead, as well as the cemetery -- but the last, only by sheer serendipity. I stopped at a house about an hour after driving around trying to locate the cemetery, meaning to ask the residents if they knew where it was. Not only did they know, but the house just happened to be the home of the great-great-grandson of the woman I was searching for! Talk about fate. I not only found the cemetery (grown over, way back in the woods, I never would have found it myself) but I also found long-lost kin. Life sure is cool some times.

Kiddo hadn't ever seen the area of the country that I was born, since the last time she was there was when she was only a few years old. I really enjoyed taking her into the woods I used to wander and introducing her to the man that bought them from my grandfather; the one who used to tell me to watch out because "there are bears in them there woods!" We ate wild blackberries and wandered barefoot and didn't have to watch for bugs or snakes or scorpions, which freaked her out because everything is poisonous or stickery in Texas. I introduced her to sweet Midwest corn (instead of this field corn crap here in Texas) and dark red tomatoes as big as softballs. She ate fresh cucumbers she helped my brother pick from the garden and baked bread with flour that my sister-in-law got from the Amish people near their house. We saw beatiful green grassy meadows, acres of corn and soybean fields bursting with bounty, the hills of the Appalachians, dark rich soil with the smell of the earth rising from it, the heavy weight of the humid air, the hoots of mourning doves, the trills of the wrens, and the constant buzzing of cicadas. Home.

I own land there....or will, once my parents deed it to me as they plan to do in order to make sure it remains in our family. It's been in my family for 130 years. I would really like to go back someday. It's mid-america and the people work with their hands in factories and in the fields. They're good hearted and down to earth. Not much market or need for professional jobs there. But when I go back, I feel at home. Who knows what I might do. I do know my daughter loved it and it pleased me. I am glad that -- although she was born and raised here -- that she can feel a bit of love for her mother's roots.

In other news, it appears that exh will get married again this month. A friend of mine heard it from his sister. He hasn't mentioned it to me and I doubt he will until he actually does it. Or I'll hear it secondhand from kiddo. We'll see.

So, I'm back here, and it's back to my old routine. I sure did have a good time.

WTF?

I'm seriously grossed out.

There are a lot of good things about my roommate. So far it's been pretty easy living with him, all things considered. He gives me plenty of space and is generally pretty laid back. But sometimes -- like now -- I have to question his sanity. Here's why.

The other night after dinner I was relaxing with a glass of wine and happened to notice he was doing the dishes. He's done them, for the most part, the entire time we've been roommates because he was unemployed until the last month or so. It's been great. Anyway, I looked over and watched him a moment and one of those observations you sometimes have come out of nowhere suddenly struck me: I hadn't heard the water running to fill the sink. So I get up, curious, and go into the kitchen.

I was right, there was no sink full of water. But no. He's standing there, running tepid water, and RINSING the dishes we'd just used! And putting them in the dishwasher to air dry (we don't use it as anything but a drying rack.) I asked him what he was doing, hoping he couldn't possibly be doing what it looked like he was doing. He told me that his ex-girlfriend had told him that if you got to them fast enough you didn't have to wash them. And that I needn't complain about it now because he'd been doing that for a year.

I was stunned. I just stood there speechless.

So sure, I've been under a lot of stress and I'm sure my immune system is a little shaky because of it. I've been figuring that susceptibility was why I've been getting sick more often in the last year. But you know, maybe that's only part of it. Maybe....just maybe....I've been exposed to more as well. Maybe THIS is why I've been sick more this last year than any years previously.

Is he seriously that much of an idiot?