Finding My Place

I have always had a plan in life and I have done a pretty good job of sticking to it. I have had a plan from the moment someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I will admit to having tweaked this plan over the years as my style and tastes changed and has my strengths and weaknesses showed themselves. It did not require much tweaking because even in the 1st grade I knew I did not like Math and that I should probably go into a field that involved talking.

I had a plan for going to high school, college and grad school. I did all of those things and for the most part in my expected time line. (I went to grad school twice because I did not like the first one and that put me behind schedule.) I got married at the age I wanted and to the type of guy I wanted. I had kids at the age I wanted and the way I always anticipated - boy, girl. I theory I would have had two more, but that is one of those tweaks. After you have kids you realize you only want half as many as you originally planned. It even extends to may married life because every year Husband and I come up with a plan on our anniversary about what we want to work on and towards each year.

My problem now is that I don't have any real plan. Husband and I have been so caught up in other stuff that we did not come up with one and I have been so distracted that I have not come up with one for myself. That is why I am floating around and acting crazy. I have no direction. I am like a chicken without a head. It make a terrible mess, but provides a good show. I like having a plan. Plans keep me focused and help me to prioritize and evaluate what I really want and what is important to me. Without a plan I lack focus and anyone who knows me will tell you that I am already working with a deficit as far as being easily distracted. (Squirrels, shiny objects, pretty colors, shoes...you name it.)

I realized what the problem was this weekend and immediately decided to change course and come up with a plan. I just don't know what that plan should be. There are so many things that I need to work on.

I am open to suggestions.

Ridiculous

I just spent the last 2 hours cleaning my house so that it would be presentable enough for the maid to come and clean my house. That is right. You heard me. My poor behind has a maid. I use Merry Maids and I LOVE them.

I guess I should be happy that my mother's opinion of my housework being subpar has finally paid off because she is the one I was most worried about telling. She agreed that I needed help and that is how this journey began. The problem is that now that another person comes into my house, other than the people who love and accept my foolishness and refusal to match socks out of the dryer, I feel compelled to clean up.

Ridiculous, I know, but it is true. Now I am late for work and can barely type these sentences as I run out of the house.

Love you...bye....

Thankful

In light of the recent holiday, I have decided to share the things I am thankful for. I am, as always, thankful for my God, my family and for a delicious diner, but let's be honest I am thankful for a lot more than that.

I am thankful that my husband does not look like a TV weatherman. I know that they are fancy meteorologist now, but they tell the weather and in my book that makes you a weatherman. I remember back in the day when the person who did the weather was most likely to be a former cheerleader or beauty queen. They would point at a smiling sun or sad rain cloud and that was it. The most interesting part about that part of the news was when Willard Scott said "Happy Birthday" to someones 88 year old grandmother or a 6 year old girl. Then there was Al Roker, who looked nothing like most weather people and actually got to talk. Now every weather person wants to chat it up with the anchors and most of them look like a honey roasted rotisserie chicken with frozen foreheads and "creepy man in a van" looks. I am thankful that the plastic surgeon from The Doctors (one of my guilty pleasures) has brought his orange glow into my house and touched the handsome face of the man I love.

I am thankful that while my kids are sometimes loud, they are never weird. I say that because I went to a Thanksgiving diner and the other children there were so quiet I was just waiting for them to snap and take us out into the cornfield. I don't trust kids who don't talk - they are keeping secrets and that is never good.

I am thankful that my daughter was gone long enough for my son to remember what it was like to be the only person for Mommy and Daddy to focus on. When he is alone, we see everything and there is nobody else who could have done it. That means he is under constant watch. He now misses her and will hopefully remember this the next time he wants to get rid of her or hurt her feelings. It is not fun being an only child, at least not for him. He is always doing something and I think he appreciates having someone there to take the heat off.

I am thankful that my sense of humor is still in tact. I have had a rough couple of weeks, but I am back and ready to tackle my challenges with a fresh perspective and a plan of action. I am 11 weeks into my 52 week stay and I am determined to make the best of it.

Thank God for Jesus! (For real, try it; it helps)

Better Day

I got to go to see my sweet boy sing with his class this morning, so today was automatically going to be a better day.

I also had a better day at work. Don't get me wrong, I still want to run screaming from the building, but I said a few things today that I thought might make you laugh. These are things that I really say at work.

Nobody is going to lick it, so please don't put salt and pepper in your hair.
Cake is not a requirement; it is a privilege.
I hope you are not stuck under that chair.
Do not crawl on the table.
You all seem to have a booger fascination.
Do not pick things out of the trash to play with.
I will not give you scissors to cut a can.

And I thought I said strange things at home.

Cover Up

Have you ever noticed that store or restaurant in your neighborhood that seems to stay open despite the fact that no one ever seems to be in there buying anything, EVER? I am not talking about one of those guilty pleasure places like Krystal's, White Castle, or even a celebrity restaurant. It is not the kind of place that you pretend not to,like, but secretly go at 2 AM. It is a dingy hole in the wall with bad food.
I just passed one of those places today when I dropped LoLo off at school. I will admit that I have been to this restaurant once. That was 6 years ago and the food was so bad that I have never been back since. I did not see anyone else in there when I went the first time (Red flag, I know) and I have not seen anyone go in or out since.
I am usually fascinated how places like this can stay open and other places fold within a year. I am sure the overhead is low because they can't be ordering a lot of food based on past sales. They don't need a lot of stay because bugs serve themselves and the location does not warrant a high rental price, but still, something must be up. Then I remembered something that Husband once said about a gas station in our neighborhood where the pumps don't work, but manages to stay open. It must be a drug front or some kind of mafia meeting place. There really is no other explanation for how they stay afloat. The same is true for the car wash that never had a car but always had people standing in front.
It all makes so much more sense now. I think about the few times that I saw a cop pull someone over in that parking area and it is like an episode of CSI, NCIS, and Law & Order when all the pieces finally come together and you know who did it.
It was all a cover up. Consipracry theories are everywhere and sometimes they're real!

9 More To Go

I was in supervision today when it was mentioned that we have been working for 3 months. I found it interesting that mt first thought was not, "wow, that went fast" or "look how far we've come". Nope. My first thought was 9 more to go.

I think that is pretty telling. I then decided that since it takes about 3 months for a job search to really take off, that means I really only have 6 months to go. Then a step further, I could apply to government jobs because they take at least 6 months to realize that you have applied in the first place.

This was a nice distraction, but I still have my sights on making the one year mark without incident, but was nice to dream. If only for a moment.

Choices

JJ Santana is one of my very good friends. I say this because I respect her choice not to get married and to live with her sweetie for the last 300 or so years. I am also very certain that she respects my choice to be married. They are both valid and socially acceptable choices, even if I disagree with "shaking" from a religious standpoint.

I was watching Public Broadcasting the other day and caught the end of a documentary about couples and one of the last couples interviewed was a couple that lives together. It was clear that this couple had been together for quite a while (like decades) and that they had no plans on getting married. In general, that is not a problem for me. God gave people free will and I can't take that away.

My problem is when that pompus woman looked into the camera and said that "life is about choices and every morning I wake up and choose to be with him. There is nothing binding me to him." What?!? Do you think that I wake up with shackles of some sort or that Husbandis keeping me at gunpoint? I make a choice to stay married just the same way she makes the choice to stay unmarried. I make the choice to be an unspoken point of contact, heir, and approved decision maker on his behalf, should he ever be unable to answer.

What really burns me is that this crazy woman thinks that she is less enmeshed than I am. I find it very hard to believe that these two do not share a mortgage or children or friends. I am sure that they know each others family and coworkers. Do you know the hardest part of dissolving a marriage is for most people? It is usually dissolution of property and custody fights. That means that she would have the same problem if she wanted to make a different choice as I would. Her friends would ask her the same questions about what went wrong and trying to rebuild a life.

I made the choice to get married. I am happy and I love it. She made the choice to stay a live-in girlfriend. All the work and none of the legal benefits, also none of the debt sharing. We all make choices. Don't poop on my parade just to make yours seem like sunshine.

Can't Be Serious

I worked a 10 hour shift last night and my mother said she would consider helping me out by taking my son to school this morning. I was a little annoyed that she would not just say yes or no, but it was late and I did not have it in me to get worked up.

This morning, however, there was no call to say yay or nay. I had to call her. She says she would take him so I would not have to wake Suga, but then she lost track of time and was late. If the whole point was not to wake my sleeping monster, then I can't understand her insistence on coming in my house yelling all the time. Then she looks surprised and says, "was I really talking that loud?" Yes, yes you were. I finally usher them out of my house and she insist that I go get some rest. I think it is over and lay down knowing that Suga will be up soon, but that can at least get a moment of peace only to have the phone ring. Is it a telemarketer or one of those donation people. Nope. It is my mother calling from down the street telling me my son has declared himself sick and asking if it is true.

Are you freakin serious? We're you not a teacher and a mother? Weren't you just in my kitchen with him? He is clearly not sick, but I am. I am sick of people asking me crazy questions. I am sick of people telling me to rest only to be a disturbance. To make matters more interesting, she then proceeds to hold me on the phone while they have a back and forth about what hurts and going to school anyway.I was tempted to hang up, but honoring your father and mother is the first commandment with promise.

Even though I seriously doubt Jesus' parents gave him this much trouble.

Election Hangover

It's not what you think. There was definitely no drinking. I took the day off from writing because I could not be trusted to write what I was thinking on the Internet. It is way too permanent a forum for me to fly off the handle on a political rant. Today, I feel better. I am pleased with the results and took great pleasure in watching the concession speech that solidified that I could with good conscience raise my children in the country I love, run by a man I respect.

I do, however, have all the symptoms  of a hangover. My head is foggy and heavy from all the political commentary I watched. My stomach feels like it just came out of my throat and I am positive that I am dehydrated. It was a long night. So waking up and getting the boy to school was a test. Thank God for Husband. He took LoLo so that I would not have to wake Suga and take her out in the blustery wind. I am sure he thinks I went back to bed to sleep it off, but that was not the case. My head was still swimming and the sound of my breathing was too loud to get any rest. So, I did what I always do- laundry.

Suga woke up pretty much within the hour and as I sat with her watching Mickey Mouse zoning in and out I realized something that would normally be very disturbing, but that I let slide in my lax mental state. Mickey was teaching my baby how to steal. He and his "pals" snuck up to the giant's barn and tried to take back a chicken that Donald had traded for without waking him up. I don't know about you all, but sneaking onto my property and taking something that rightfully belongs to me is considered stealing where I come from and here was Mickey Mouse teaching my one year old how to tiptoe in and run away with the goods. I figured it must be a side effect of the hangover- a hallucination, but it was real. I guess I should be glad that I am not tweaking, at least.

I am hoping that I get some rest today, but that is just like asking for things to go wrong. I think I will just have to settle for some coffee and a little hair off the dog that bit me.

Bring on Wolf Blitzer!

Pretty People Problems

We have all by now heard the jokes about "first world problems". Problems like the barista at your local organic sustainable free world market coffee shop being out of vanilla soy and only having skim milk for your coffee. It is a terrible shame that we have to live under such dire conditions. I amsure that Glee fans remember with great delight when Sam told Quinn that her crazy antics were the result of having "rich white girl problems" and that having been poor for half a season had taught him to focus on real things. Well, I have another category to add, "Pretty People Problems".

I don't know what pretty people are upset about all the time. I feel much the same way about rich people, but I don't want to get off track too much. I am not saying that bad things don't happen to rich people or pretty people or to rich pretty people. I am just saying that all things being equal, pretty people have it pretty easy (pun intended). Let's take Miley Cyrus for example. I am not here to discuss how I feel about her looks, but the article I was reading called her beautiful and I am going to write this post as though they could not have written it if it was not true. So here is the scenario, beautiful young millionaire who feels so frustrated and bound by the constraints of her jettsetting lifestyle bought by a squeaky (I use that term loosely) clean Disney image that she feels compelled to give an interview where she curses and talks about how she doesn't care what anyone thinks. Right?!? Then, what pray tell is the point of this interview? Could you not just live your "homebody" lifestyle without the magazine cover and curse in the privacy of your own home. I guess not. She had to prove herself and how hardcore and sexy and unpredictable and misunderstood she is to the whole world as a way to shed that good girl image. Aww, the horror of a good girl image - pretty people problem.

We could also use someone that I love and do consider to be quite a pretty lady, Ms Zooey Deschanel. I love me some New Girl, but the fact that to date her biggest issue to date outside of losing her job and taking a very random set of temporary jobs is that she did not know what to do about dating the attractive millionaire or the emotionally stunted doctor or Justin Long.  Not knowing what awesome attractive person to date because they don't tick off all your boxes is a pretty person problem. Only pretty people can answer random Craigslist ads for a roommate, behave like a total eccentric singing emotionally intrusive crazy person and be allowed to stay. I am just saying, it's true.

The same is true for men. Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt ( and Johnny Depp beg that they be taken seriously and not be seen as just box office candy. They could all take a lesson from George Clooney and embrace the handsome and all it's privileges. You don't see George scowling and cursing about how hard his life is. Take Matthew Mcconaughey. He has to know that the only reason he can pull a woman like Camilla Alves while not using deodorant is because he is pretty.

These are just celebrity examples, but I see it with regular people too. Remember the woman in Britain who said she could not keep friends because she was so beautiful and other women were jealous. I heard she was not a cute as she thought she was, but that is a pretty person problem if I ever heard one. I hear women complain about the most ridiculous things. People always want to buy them drinks, or lunch, or help them carry things. They don't know who to go out with because they have so many choices and so they pass on making real connections with great people and then complain about being single. Aww, that must be so terrible for you.

Pretty people and their problems.

Barbie Girl

I was one of those girls who grew up playing Barbie, watching princess movies, and all manner of other girlieness. Nowadays, people seem to feel like that this is a recipe for anti-feminism and teaching a girl that they need a man to save them. I, however, never saw it that way. Cinderella, which I watched everyday, did not tell me that I needed a Prince Charming anymore than it taught me that it was k to make friends with mice. I did learn about not being afraid to face your haters with a smile and that hardwork never goes without reward. I learned that it ok to dream about and want a palace and about being wiling to let unbelievably good things happen to me. Perhaps most importantly, I learned that no ridiculously good offer comes without a catch and to make the most of opportunities before they turn into pumpkins.

Barbie had more jobs than any of my male cousins toys. She was a pediatrician, vet, rock star, travel agent, model, beauty pageant winner, and an astronaut. Barbie "worked hard for the money. Hard for it, Honey." Ken really was an afterthought. He was a cool accessory, but like the shoes; you did not need Ken to play or have a good time. Barbie could just as easily meet up with one of the GI Joes found lying around or go out on the town with her girls. She did not need him to get a Ferrari, a townhouse, or a mansion. That sister was doing it for herself. (I am clearly in a singing mood.😗). I must admit that it made me feel like I could do all those things and more and look good while doing them.

The point is that none of these so called bad influences were really that bad. I get what Disney and others are doing by making the new princesses more independent and I like it, but princesses are not the problem. Mattel should have sued Nicki Minaj for calling herself a Barbie girl and being such a one dimensional version of a complex character. The problem these days is the real life reality television women whose whole personas are built upon their identity as someone's ex wife or exgirlfriend. That is a bad example. To make matters worse is the way they fight and act like terrible people at the expense of anything that remotely resembles an idea of a moral compass. They aren't like Jigga, whose compass sometimes needs recalibration. These chicks don't have one at all and we let their nonsense play out in front of our baby girls and reward them by picking favorites, taking sides and lining their pockets with cash for ignorant behavior.

As a mother to a baby girl, I have to honest. I would much rather raise a Snow White than a Hollywood Ex. I'm just saying.

Wisdom

I had a totally different topic in mind, but on the way back home I had a thought and it was too good to let go. I thought about some of the jobs I used to think were cool when I was younger, but really are not. I am not talking your typical fireman and nurse type jobs, although, I will admit that as an adult I would suck at those jobs as well. I am way to rational to run into a burning building and I am much more comfortable with feelings than fluids so nursing is out of the question. I, like most kids, had a set of "go to" answers for the "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Question, but truth be told I did not want to be those things. I just knew that they were the answers I was supposed to give. Much like I knew I was supposed to say I thought boys were gross, but as any of my friends can attest, that was never true.

I have always liked boys and I was always drawn to jobs that leaned more towards the seedy side of life. Maybe that is why I am a therapist. This way I get all the dirt and none of the consequences. In the spirit of sharing and self-disclosure, here is a short list of jobs that I used to think would be fun to have...don't judge me.😉

1. Prostitute - before you get all riled up, let me explain. They got to wear short shirts and skirts. They got to wear makeup and hang out all night with their friends. Plus, the only place I saw them (knowingly) was on television and in movies. There epwere no pimps, no sex, no getting arrested, and I had no clue.
2. Nun - what is not to like about a job that brings you so close to God. You don't have to live with your parents or worry about what to wear. They seemed nice and everyone seemed to like nuns, but it was not meant to be; I wanted a boyfriend and I am not Catholic. Those are just two of the issues, but I will stop there.
3. Hobo - I understand that this is funny because an essential aspect of being a hobo is being unemployed, but as a child this seemed like it would be a great job. No responsibilities, lots of travel (by train, of course) and no parents telling me what to do. Besides, the only place you saw hobos, not bums, was on tv shows like Dennis the Menace and in old movies. There was never any mention of the more disturbing things like alcoholism, poor hygiene, and homelessness. Like most jobs, this one looked better on tv.

My bad for posting so late. I started this morning and decided to take a nap and finish later, but overslept. I set the alarm. I don't know what happened, but I woke up at the time I really needed to be leaving the house. So this is an after work posting of a before work idea. 

Hope it stayed fresh.