blessings and challenges

Happiness is sipping Starbucks hot chocolate with a six year old who adores you on a girls' night out shopping on a Saturday night. I love that she is getting older and yet I dread the day she prefers to spend that time with her friends rather than with me.

Which shows me that I desperately need to get a life.

I did extend myself this week and met up with another parent in La Princesita's class. I tried. Meeting at her (new) house, of course (inferiority complex, my boro-boro 40+ year old brick home just does not compare...) we sipped cappuchino and had a wonderful morning on Friday. Problem is, I realize just how obvious it is that I am so not happy with certain aspects of my life--it is impossible for me to even answer the inevitable questions that all relationships begin with, things like, "So how did you and your husband meet?"

I am starting to think that I just can't do this. Not the separation part...that is becoming more firmly defined with the arrangements we figured out last week, although still not quite to the point that permits me my comfort zone (i.e. separate roofs). We are on separate floors, and are doing the "housemate" thing, sharing the (upstairs in my "apartment") kitchen and the (downstairs in his "apartment") laundry room. I'm trying to find a cheap, small, flat LCD TV that can fit in my room so I don't have to be downstairs to watch my Univisión. The kids have free reign. My office is unfortunately downstairs, but there is no way to move all that up to the classroom. No room. I need an office if I have a home-based business.

What I don't think I can do is comfortably meet people. Not the kind of romantic meeting people--I am still married, technically, by a sheet of paper; Heavens knows I do NOT need complications in my life; and I will never again be 'marketable.' I'm resigned to that. No, I'm talking about meeting other women, forming that community of women in my life that I vowed so long ago I would never let go. I know and was comforted by the fact that there are others who feel the way about the "alpha mom" syndrome (I gave it that name) around here that I feel and how the few of us do need to stick together and not let ourselves be taken, in the name of just allowing our children to be kids...the only time in their lives they'll be able to do so. The problem is with the personal stuff...I can't converse or, if it enters into a conversation, I will end up opening floodgates about the disaster I have made of my marriage and how dreadfully unhappy I am.

And who wants to get to know someone who feels like that? What a downer.

So I'm back in my hole, where it's safe, and afraid to leave. Trapped.

I was going to the gym this morning but stopped myself. I already have a splitting headache for the second day in a row and I have work to do here this morning (which I am obviously procrastinating by blogging), plus I should not go two days in a row when I'm trying to put on weight. It's just the getting-out-of-the-house routine that I like to maintain. But I did that yesterday.

The piercing place here in town doesn't exist after all. The Town will not permit such places within its borders (it's a fairly conservative little town). Have to go to the neighboring communities to do that. Rats. I was hoping for simplistic proximity.

It's a chilly, windy yet sunny day. Maybe I should bring my work up here to the classroom and work, even though I'll have to deal with Everyone Else if I am here. I need to get La Princesita finished with her obligatory shows of affection for her classmates for Vday. It's nice not recognizing Vday myself, although for the children's sake I have some cute little presents (new socks, some notepads/$1 store toys that they go nuts over) for them. I bought myself a hurricane candle holder and three big candles for my room. And yes, they are scented. My "housemate" does not like scented anything and evidently, by the way he smashed my irreplaceable, hand-made candleholder last year in the same tyrade in which he smashed the kitchen window, doesn't care for candles at all.

So that purchase was for me. And the candles were on SALE! Yippee! So that is a blessing.

I'm trying.

how-to of the day

On my homepage, I subscribe to Google's "how-to of the day". I don't always read them, but if something I need to know comes up, I take a peek

Today's kind of caught my eye.

"How to get pregnant."

Duuuuuude... I could even tell you that, and I'm a llama.

I will mention, however, that the conception is, in most cases, one heck of a lot more enjoyable than the rest of the process.

Do not say you were not warned.

a boxful of memories

My mother has been cleaning house.

Today I received a box in the mail. Its contents included:

• a coin from a show we saw together as a family in Beijing in March 1997
  
• a framed crosstitch that my grandmother had done, that my mother had always hung in the laundry room
• a clay picture I had created as an art project in elementary school, which she had hung, also, in the house
• an envelope filled with photos--everything from me at one week old to the Oak Alley plantation tour we took the week I was to be married, and postcards representing so many of the different countries I visited throughout my 20s
• two sweaters, hand-knit, that my mother had made my sister and I when we were La Princesita's age...she, in fact, wants to wear one of them tomorrow to kindergarten
• a family portrait of the four of us of when I was in the third grade. After my father had his first tumor removed, in the spring of 1981. He was 40. And so thin.
  
• all the Mother's Day cards I had made or given her, and all the Father's Day cards I had made or given Dad
• a couple of cards from my grandmother, who had died back in 1985 when I was 13

I don't know how much I will keep. It brings me such mixed feelings to see all of this in front of me, and honestly the memories are overwhelming--so much so that all I can do is cry.

Why cry? Do I mourn? Do I wish? Is it the handwriting? Is it that I want for simpler times? Is it that I know I will never give my children the family life that I grew up with just because there is no way that I can be happy here? Should I sacrifice my happiness and my completeness in life for after they are grown and out of the house, only so that they might have at the least a façade of a stable, happy home (in which, of course, the parents don't even sleep together, let alone hardly speak)? Is it that I just miss my father so terribly? Is it that my last interaction with my grandmother was that of an emotional, hormonally over-reactive teenager who ran off from her parents and acted like a spoiled brat and worried them all terribly...then she died of a massive coronary two weeks later in the middle of the night, without my ever making it right again? Then felt like I was being more punished when my other grandmother, my only other living grandparent, died not six months later? Is it that I miss my mother? Is it that I miss feeling like a part of a family? Is it that I'm tired of for so long trying to force a family out of what is not strong enough to make that happen?

She says that she has made lots of trips to the Goodwill for donations and has just gotten rid of so much stuff.

I hope she finally let Dad's shirts go. They have been hanging in the closet upstairs for eight years now.

And it makes me so terribly sad to see them still there every time I return to the home of my youth...not so much for her and her need to hold on, but for my missing him so...

But, of the three of us left, I'm the strong one who can't let that be known.

So please don't tell her that.

mardi gras mambo

Yesterday for Lundi Gras and today, in honor of Mardi Gras, I wear my beads with pride.

I had millions of throws left over from my three years celebrating in the Vieux Carré. I used many to fill glass-bottomed lamps, a decorating tip that would make Martha Stewart proud. I have only one such lamp left.

I kept my largest white beads and use them now to decorate my Christmas Tree each year as a garland.

And I kept my four favorite throws that I received...and I never had to demonstrate any indecency to receive them. Each were given to me, the best ones of the four put over my head at the St. Ann Drag Parade that occurs each year around noon by a man wearing nothing but a few strategically-placed green, gold and purple feathers...and a mask.

So let's all dance another Second Line in honor, please.

Laisses le bons temps roulle!

&*%$#!!

Okay, okay.

So the Pats did NOT win.

(insert fork into Humble Pie)

I have a feeling a LOT of moo-lah was lost last night...and a lot of subsequent hangovers this morning.

To be honest, I woke up to the news this morning. I was so incredibly "taken" by the game that the halftime show put me out.

Nothing like a Tom Petty drone (not that I mind him, mind you...he's part of my "Forever 80s Child" thing I've got going on) to shut down the ol' systems and lull you right into Wonderland.

(remember that video?)

My vote on Favorite Commercial? The squirrel that was about to be hit...brought to you by Bridgestone.
Screams - Bridgestone

My kids' Favorite Commercial? The dinosaurs doing the Michael Jackson "Thriller" Dance (the Young Prince calls it the "Dead Dance."...yes, he loves it when Mama Llama does it).
Sobe Life Water: Thriller - Pepsi-Cola

Keep in mind I only saw to halftime.

Oh, and sorry, Eli...you still don't have anything on Tommy-baby.

super boooooooowl

Will I be watching? Yeah, mainly the ads. But there is something intrinsically exciting about the blatant exertion of testosterone-driven aggression between two packs of males...

(oooooga oooooga)

It does help when you understand a bit about the game, too...I learned just a trite from my Daddy.

Unfortunately, here in these Eastern Lands the televised game is on so late that I would only have hopes of making it to halftime. However, in Japan...HA! It was televised after the game had ended. You had to either 1. not understand any Japanese whatsoever, or 2. simply turn off all forms of media communication if you did NOT want to hear who had won before the game had actually ended; yes, half-time Japanese commentary always talked about why the game ended up the way it did, JUST so we could watch it "in retrospect" in the second half...

slighly defeats the purpose, ¿no?

And my pick?

The Patriots, of course!

Why?

One simple reason:

Tom Brady is HOT.


(what, isn't that enough???)

the subaru saga continues

My lawyer telephoned today from Nashville regarding the accident lawsuit. He told me that, just incredibly and something that rarely occurs in his profession, all three witnesses to the accident were accessible and were able to talk with him.

It was interesting hearing what the witnesses themselves had said and what points of view they had (literally speaking). One was right behind me, one was right behind the auto suing me, and one was in the oncoming traffic lane. Each said I was clearly forced off the road; it was the man from oncoming traffic whose witness report has made me feel so much better about the split-second decision I made to swerve as opposed to let myself get hit by the car that fled the scene. He told the lawyer that he saw it coming and, as it occured he was "telling" me to swerve or that we would be hit into oncoming traffic and die. Of course, the subsequent events were horrifying but the fact is we all survived with, besides a broken back, relatively minor injuries considering the number of times we flipped at 60 mph. So that alone, after what has almost been two years this March, has put my mind somewhat at ease in that I really, truly did do what I was supposed to have done and that there was really, truly no other way out.

Sigh.

Regarding trial: My lawyer mentioned that there are many people who, upon learning that the other side really has no case, will take it to trial just so that they can't get anything at all. Most insurance companies, he added, will refuse to make any offer whatsoever if there is no fault on the part of their client and the case appears a clear loss for the opposing side. However, he said, my insurance company sees things a bit differently, understands the huge emotional turmoil and deep, dark place this accident sent me free-falling into and does not really want me to have to go and re-live it to a judge in a trial setting, so they're willing to put out $2500 just to settle it...a $20,000+ suit. This implies absolutely no liability on my part whatsoever; it is basically going to be presented to the plaintiff in this case as "you will get more this way than if this went to trial because, really, you have no case and won't win anything."

There is a chance they might reject this offer or want more, in which case there might be some back-and-forth dealing with my insurance company but nothing that will affect me. However, in the case that my insurance company is not willing to settle for the amount they want just to keep me out of it, this will end up in trial.

I told my lawyer that I am very much a person of high ethical values and LOVE to fight on principle...but that I honestly don't know if I am, in this case and at this point in my life, strong enough to voluntarily go for it. He thinks my decision is correct considering the case and its aftermath in my life, and said that it is different for everybody. His saying that made me feel better, too...like I wasn't "wimping out" or "taking the easy route" because, if it does come down to it, which there always could be a possibility of that occuring, I will have to go and stand my ground.

I also really don't want to have to disrupt these three witnesses' lives to have them subpoenaed to testify for me. I would never be able to release that guilt of voluntarily asking that of these three strangers.

At least it wasn't a call telling me I had to show up in Nashville next Friday for trial at 10 a.m., which I feared it was. That will be continued to a later date as offer/counteroffer decisions have yet to be considered. It could take another couple of months. I feel a little better now, although it is not necessarily over yet.