The Shrinky Dinks

Cassie and I started therapy, cause I am a hip 40 year old mom and because when you get to a point that your frustrationis are making you say things that you would never normally say...it is time for an intervention.

Just admitting that feels good. I was raised to fake the good and hide the bad. I never quite caught on to that and would rather be out there looking flawed than to be flawed, faking perfection. Too much pressure......

I think it will really help and the first session seemed to go quite well. We already seem to understand each other a little better. I really like that office because they so could NOT believe there was ANY way I was 40!! Yes, I knew I loved it there.

I always thought I would maintain my ability to "remember 14" or whatever age any one of my children were and that I would be able to mentally return to that age just to undertsand their feelings. Funny thing happens though, as hard as you try to remember that time, your knowledge, that only age can bring, keeps creeping back in and you still forget how you just would not have known any better at that time. You keep the feelings of the age, in a sense, but they are so clouded now by "knowing better".

Sometimes the act of something is just as important as what that act may bring about in the end. I think sitting in an office, talking about our feelings says how important that other person is to you, just as shooing someone's "200th same question of the day, worded differently," says you don't matter now. We say so much without really meaning to say anything at all. I am trying to pay more attention to that.

Travis, Chase and Lacey are coming in to the home stretch of graduating. It seems I just went through this all with Ryan, but two years have come and gone like a bowl of Breyer's Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream (my favorite) and here I am all stirred up with emotions again. Just too many milestones, maybe. All of them remind me of how fast the time goes....Brooke will be four years old in less than two months! Unfreakin' believable!

I spent the wonder years, wondering way too much, the 20s growing up too fast, the 30s falling apart and now I really hope to do something different in my 40s. All these years of deep thinking and picking apart every last detail of my life was maybe to prepare me to actually decide to think about it less and live it more.

I'm so ready for that!

If You Miss Your Birthday, Does it Still Count??

It started on Friday, the day before my birthday. I was going to a house warming party and it was a cold and miserable night. There was a different chill in the air and it was one that left your bones aching.

Right before I left and throughout the whole party, I was soooooooo cold. I mean ridiculously cold and shivering. It was a torturous cold and no amount of warming methods were helping. I heard that at times I kept up with conversation, but I barely remember anything other than being chilled.

(Me with my dart team at the party, notice my red face and nose preparing to be ill.)

By the time I got home that night I was miserable. I grabbed a few blankies and then a few more, until at last count, I had six blankies covering my body, that was still shaking from the sensation that I was laying in a bed of ice.

I started to finally fall asleep, but a horrible pain on my left side woke me up. I started coughing a lot, that only made my side ache that much more. By morning, I was weak and fevered. This continued through my birthday, forcing me to miss my little celebration with friends on Saturday night, and ended sometime Tuesday.

I remember a few years ago when I walked outside to get into my car. There was gravel all over the road for some reason and my house was on a steep hill. Upon stepping onto the street, my feet started traveling on the gravel. I had no control and when my feet flew into the air, by full weight came down on one elbow and then my hip. It was painful and I remember thinking about how, as an adult, we rarely fall. As kids, it is a daily event, but as grown ups, we don't experience this too much and it brought back the memory of all those bike wrecks of youth. In the same way, this flu made me remember how much it sucked to be sick. It rarely happens with such severity, fevers and flus, were you get older. You forget just how sick a body can get and then, you get amazed that it can heal from that.

I was sad that I couldn't celebrate with everyone and had looked forward to getting together with everyone, even though, secretly, I had wished I could just spend this day by myself, mourning my youth, being whiny and pathetic and all alone.

It gives new meaning for me to "Be careful what you wish for...........". But, just for the record, I never said ANYTHING about a fever!!

Countdown to 40!!

How did this ever happen, cause I seriously never thought I would actually turn 40. As I say or think 40, I get a bad taste in my mouth. It is not that 40 is THAT bad...it is just a decade from 50, and 50.....ya-ouch!!

It wasn't that I thought I would die before then or anything like that...I was just stupid and thought it was so far off. I feel closer to the time when I sat in Oglebay, by the falls, with my friends, with a quart of beer, talking about how we would be 33 in the year 2000 and it felt like that was so,sooooooooooooooooo out of reach and then it creeps up on you and continues to creep even further, and you wonder how you ever got here.

My turning 40 issues are even starting to get on my nerves because I did not see this spazz out coming a year ago. It started in the fall, this obsession with it, and grew and grew into some big, depressing and scary thing.

I have three days and it will officially happen at about 730pm on Saturday. It feels like doom's day and I really need to get a grip and stop this shit, but I can't. I want a new hairdo, a new job (errrrr..just a job at all) , a new car, and just a whole new life. I think they call that a midlife crisis and I am riding that wave with a capital M and a capital C-R-I-S-I-S!!

When you reach the end of a decade you hang onto that number. You fool yourself into believing that 29 is so much younger than 30 and 39 is much better than ever saying 40. In my late 30s I used to forget my age and would have to do the math. I was like 37 for at least two years until my birthday was approaching and I did the math, but there is no mistake with 40, cause, like, it is ((40!!)) and the numbers are all different and junk. I will have to wait til like 48 to think I am still 47.......omg...the cruelty of it all.

Okay, I'll shut up. See, I am totally intolerable right now. I would pay a million bucks to just get a vacation from myself!!

<> I CAN do this. I just wish Cassie would stop pointing and laughing at me, repeating every 5 minutes that I am so old now. It is like some teenage revenge or something. "I am not allowed to do that...fine, btw, you are OLD and you can never be YOUNG again....HAHAHA!!!!"

My birthday wish...that I live to see HER turn 40!!!

Boiling

I thought my lack of overwhelm may have been a good thing, but now I think I am in the stages of grief. I started with denial and now I am in the anger part. BIG TIME.

I am so pissed off right now. Why? I don't know, but WOW, am I ticked. I'm just downright mad. I'm sick and tired of everything and everyone and yet, no one specifically for any real reason.

I was in the car with Bob last night and every single sound he made or movement made me feel like I was fuming even more. I wanted to kill him for clearing his throat and it took every ounce of restraint not to kick him out of the car. When we got to the bar, my parents were there with my sis and her husand and just the fact that I had to try and make conversation made me mad. I tried to answer nicely, but just didn't care about the small talk and the pleasant crap.

I announced that I was a total bitch for no good reason and to please ignore me and better yet, not speak to me at all.

I am starting to get mad that I have to be around someone this angry and am completely sick of myself too. I tried to sit down and figure out what may be causing this and then I started pulling all sorts of reasons out and they were all stupid and all too deep and they pissed me off too. So, I stopped.

They need to have a 12 step program for bitches. "Hi, my name is _____, and I am a total bitch." Then you could sit and tell them about your cruel, aweful attacks on others during bitchy times while the others sat nodding their heads and patting you on the back. Or wait, maybe they would tell you to shut the f up. (It would be a room of bitches trying to reform. They would not all be, like, cured yet, right?)

Then the lead "reformed bitch" would be all, "I was where you are now and look at me.....I have bitched myself into numbness and you can too!" She would tell hideous stories of her past bitchiness and how she started the program to help all the other countless bitches out there to get help and support. It would be cool if it were like the alcoholic thing...like you have to avoid it. "You will always be a bitch, you were predisposed to be one, it is genetic and you must avoid your spouse or anyone else that gets on your flippin' nerves at all cost, because a relapse would be a certainty. Just like a drunk cannot have one drink, you cannot have any contact with the main sources of your bitchiness.".

That leaves me with a very short list.

I like it.

I NEVER said ULTRA!! EVER!

My computer, after several abusive "use" hours from Cassie while I was at work and she had school cancellations, is not working so well. It freezes often, boots me and constantly brings up the same website over and over. I have tried to clean it up, but with no luck at all.

It is making me mad, so I avoid it since playing games is no fun if you get booted half way in and lose rating points.

We met with the realtor yesterday and as in most situations in our lives, and by "most" I mean "all", I had to do all the talking and take care of everything. Bob just sits back and nods his head occasionally. I imagine he secretly hopes no one will ask anything of him. The strange thing was, the only conversation happening was between me and the realtor and the realtor started every sentence with "Well, Bob, ya know....", which I found extremely bizarre.

I was shocked by a trick pen at the store last night and then given the wrong cigarettes and that little gothic, clumped eyeliner beotch is on my list now. When I got home and saw I had the wrong ones, Bob said he would run back down and get the right ones. I'm still not sure why and what he wants from me.

He said he told her she had given me Winston Ultra Lights instead of Winston Lights and she was all, "Then she should not have asked for "Ultra Lights". (you little tramp!!) He responded with, "She didn't, and has smoked Winston Lights since she started and I KNOW she did not ask for Ultras". Then he went into some figures about how long I have been smoking and how long he has known me, both quite exaggerated, and left.

Brooke is becoming a little repeat and a big boss. She tells me how to do everything and when to do it. She just walked in to tell me that Cassie eats everything, doesn't listen to her parents and needs to go live at the brat house. She is so serious and is looking at me as though it is up to me to act on all this immediately. I am not trying to have a three year old run my life, and I really need to get this girl in check with who is really running the show around here (Who am I kidding??), but I am going to look into this "brat house" thing.

I need to go to the store now, since I have avoided the big shopping trip for over a week. It is just too cold to be out there loading and unloading groceries and the employees either shock me with a pen or call me a grandma...I mean, who can blame me? But I need to go now and get some food for this house. Brooke said!

The End of the New Job

After my allegies went ape shit and BD cut my knuckle, while attempting to take my lunch, I decided that my "stay with it" thing was, like, not going to continue anymore. I left.

I was mixed with relief and regret at the same time. I liked having somewhere to go to actually work and yet I hated WERE I had to go. Part of me wanted to stick it out and yet, I knew there was no long term potential in a job that, by week two, was making me want to vomit from filth and little dog hairs caught in the back of my throat. I no longer had to be in the office to experience the office. My last two days there, when I went to bed at home those nights, I woke up surrounded by the smell and running to the nearest toilet to gag. It was bad.

So many other things are going on at the same time, most I cannot write about here, and they have me in a miserable state of distraction. I see that as both good and bad.

I am quickly approaching the big 4-0. It has left me thinking about my life and just like a closet you avoid cleaning for way too long, this IS my life, as I see it now. A closet of crap that has things from the past, years and years of garbage and unwanted items, that I am finally ready to sort thru, keeping the important things and throwing out the useless clutter. Sometimes determining which is which is the hardest part. I feel that too.

I will have the last phase of my cosmetic denistry junk completed on the 26th of this month, if I do not chicken out, which I am pretty certain I will not, but then it is me and anything is possible. I keep telling myself how having it over with will be worth the hell. I almost believe that now, so I have faith. (Crossing my fingers.)

Something else really weird is going on with me too, maybe too deep to get into, but that never stopped me before.....AnyHO, I am probably in the worst shape of my life in just about every way. Financially-Train wreck. Physically-Exhausted and major lack of any real muscle tone. Among the zillion other issues that are going on, that stuff I would rather not mention, I actually do not feel down or completely overwhelmed. This means one of two things, I have either lost my mind and have crawled into some deep denial or I have hope and determination that I will see this all through and come out on the other side in a better place.

I don't want to jinx it, but I think it might be the second one!

No, really!!

It may be a temporary thing, as I have already admitted I am mostly just a mood swing, but I keep thinking about how cool it would be if it were the real thing. Just for today, I want to believe that and then take it day by day from there.

Tonight I have darts and tomorrow I meet with a realtor to try and rid myself of the house of horrors. Cassie wants to go back one more time for a ghost hunters experience, since most that have been there feel "something weird" about the place. I think it might be fun, so I agreed, with the condition that the temperature is above 40 degrees. Ghost hunting in cold temperatures might affect that cold breeze thingy and all.

........boom, boom, ain't it great to be crazy.,...boom, boom...........