Finally, Some Peace Within!!!

Happy HNT!!!! This is an old picture, but what the hell? I didn't feel like posting anymore face shots of myself; I think I've indulged in that ego filled endeavor enough over the past few weeks and need to step back from it. I feel great today, despite having a million things to do of the obligatory nature. I have managed to paint for two days in a row and receieved a wonderful compliment from my husband last night with regard to the portion of the painting I worked on yesterday and the day before, as well as with regard to the painting as a whole. If I can keep plugging like this I should have the whole peice done before long, having preserved my sanity in the process. When I paint, I feel whole. When I don't, I feel very out of sorts. It does something to my spirit that nothing else can do; it gives me something that nothing else can. I'm not sure how that works-maybe it's just a matter of doing what it is I'm supposed to be doing, in some spiritual sense. I don't question it; I just try to go with it. Creative inspiration rocks!!!! My dream is to one day have a house with a barn of some sort out back so I can have a studio on site. Right now, I have an office/studio, which is much better than what I had before, which was a corner of the living room. Some day I would love to have a studio area set apart from our house, with walls that my daughter can write on and where people can leave comments like in the subway station-a place totally devoted to creative impulse. That would be a real slice of heaven!!!

A Fine Harumph

Okay, I know I've posted about this before, but it's a recurring subject for me, and one that came up again last night. About eight years ago, I got into a very intense relationship with a guy I'd met through the world of tattooing. I was apprenticing (sort of) at a tattoo shop here in South Florida and he walked in with another girl (who he later split from-nothing serious) and I was smitten almost immediately. He was completely clean and sober but still kind of crazy and I was attracted to him wholeheartedly, in a way I hadn't been attracted to another person in a very long time. (For some reason, the lyrics for Foreigner's "Dirty White Boy" are going through my head right now, but I'll push them aside for now...) I was so screwed up back then, mentally, emotionally, even physically (I wasn't taking the best care of myself back in those days and was in the middle of a self destructive streak) but he saw something good in me and soon after our first meeting we got together. We were inseparable for almost five years. This man really helped to put me on the right path. No, he PUT me on the right path, although I was willing to go there, being tired of feeling miserable and drowning my life away in a sea of Tequila and Samuel Adams. We had good times and bad times but, through it all, I remained madly in love. It was as though we'd been together in another life; I just couldn't get him out of my system, even when the relationship took a downward turn and things started to go very bad. He was a biker, heavily involved in a motorcycle club and I grew up around bikers and loved them, but with him it happened almost overnight. He bought a Harley and then suddenly he was hanging out with bikers, and then, BOOM, he was involved in a club, and then he started getting this macho edge (even worse than the one he'd already possessed) and I was okay with that to a point, except for the fact that my life was beginning to be swallowed up in his. It was choking the life out of me; he didn't want to make any compromises toward the things I wanted but expected me to give up everything for him. I've just never been the kind of person who can be stifled like that indefinitely. I was and am a free spirited soul; I don't do well with too many restrictions. I need to feel like my own person because, well, I am! Anyway, in the end game, he got involved with a chick like half my age. This girl is in recovery but I don't think she was even of drinking age when she came into the rooms. Word had it that he was running around with her for about a year before we split up. Big ouch. I'd been weighing the pros and cons of the relationship myself, and had developed a crush on a guy friend (who is now living in Denver and knows who he is), but I never stepped over the line of faithfulness, regardless of how unhappy I was becoming in my existing relationship and how attracted I was to this other person. I was devastated when J made the decision to end our relationship and devastated even further when I found out about the cute, young chickie he decided to move into our apartment about two weeks after I moved out. Adding to my dismay was the fact that he'd threatened every guy with whom we had mutual contact, so that everyone was afraid to ask me out for fear of receiving a head pounding or worse. Oy. Anyway, my whole point to this diatribe was that since he and I still travel in some of the same circles, I have occasion to see J and chickie together now and then. They have a beautiful son and seem to be happy and I'm happy for them. I'm very happy in my own life and glad for the way life turned out. I love my husband truly, madly, deeply. Still, when I see them together, or even when I see just her alone, I get this feeling of discomfort in my belly. I don't know what it is or why it comes, but it was there when I saw her at a birthday party I took Bebe to for the son of a mutual friend of ours, and it was there last night when they both attended a talk that I also went to. It's not a wretched, violent feeling (that wouldn't really be in my nature anyway), but just a feeling of not wanting to be around to watch them. Maybe it's the feeling of having been wronged in a very intense way. Maybe it's just mistrust (when people do things to you that are slightly underhanded, sometimes the reaction is to avoid having further contact for fear of being hurt again). I can't pinpoint the exact reason for my distaste, I only know that I wish it to leave me. I suppose, over time, the feeling will fade. Anyway, there's no law that says I have to want to hang out with either of these two people. Maybe, eventually, I'll get my lifelong dream of being an artist in California and N and Bebe and I can get out of here and start someplace with no old memories of exes and past lives. Until then, it's one day at a time, conquering my inner demons and pressing on with love.

A Goodbye to a Friend

Yesterday was a little bit of a sad day for me, but also a little bit of a happy day. I really saw just how much our memory lives on through the good deeds we've done, and through those things which we've left behind that can continue to help inspire and heal other people. I've met many people through my journey of recovery; some have been deeply caring, sensitive, real people and some, well, no so much. Amy "Turner" Tunick falls into the first category. She was one of those people whose very presence made you feel happy. She wrote a weekly peice called "The Feel Good" column for the Sun Times here in South Florida; I used to grab the paper just to read her column; often that's all I would read in the paper, since I rarely have time these days to read a paper from cover to cover! Her column focused on positivity and hope, even throughout her fight with pancreatic cancer.

Yesterday my family and I attended a book signing for Feeling Good-Even Through Cancer which Amy was working on and which was released postumously. Her Mom and best friend were there to sign the book, and the event was attended by her friends and family, and anyone else whose lives were touched by this wonderful woman who wished to come by, buy her book and socialize a bit. I was only able to read a few passages while I was at the event. When I first picked it up and saw her picture and began reading I couldn't hold back the tears. I knew Amy before she got sick; I'd talked with her a little bit about her hopes and dreams for the future, and I felt heartbroken that some of those dreams (ones that came true for me) could not be realized for her. She was such a sweet, talented, kind person that it's still difficult for me to believe that she is no longer on this side of the veil between the worlds. After I got home, however, I thought about all of the amazing things she had accomplished in her life. She moved to LA as a young woman to pursue a career in acting and was involved in the show biz industry for many years. She loved animals and supported at least two causes for dogs that I know about. She wrote her column every week, a writing that touched so many people. She was a vegetarian. She championed for pancreatic cancer research when she got sick; she didn't just lay down and accept the prognosis that was given to her (many pancreatic cancer patients don't live past three to five months), instead facing her illness head on and doing everything within her power to beat it. She tried to remain optomistic and retained her sense of humor, even when the going got rough. Even when the outcome seemed to be turning bleak. I believe it was this inner strength and determination, and her attitude of positivity and hopefulness and action, as well as having a good spiritual base, having some phenomenal doctors and the prayers offered by many friends and family members, which enabled her to live for 32 months, much longer than her doctors probably originally thought she would.

Amy inspires me. I awoke this morning with a sense of gratitude such that I have not had for quite some time. I feel able to go forward and follow my own dreams, I feel that they are possible because I see what she accomplished in her life; I see how she never gave up hope, never stopped trying. I see how little time we all really have in this world and how precious that time is.

Sometimes, though, it's still hard to believe that she is gone from us. I guess, in some sense, she isn't gone from us, at least not one hundred percent. She is still here, cheering us on, leaving us her legacy of kindness, optimism, humor, and hope. Thanks, Amy.

The Ups and Downs of Parenting

I think that anyone who is a parent will be able to identify with how difficult it is some days to feel like you're doing the best job you can. Not a good job, or an okay job, but the very best job. Most days I feel pretty good with regard to my parenting abilities. My daughter is the center of my world, and I stay at home to care for her. We go to the park, cook, do craft projects here and there, go the museums for kids and adults both, as well as do the daily errands of life, which can be turned into fun excursions, occasionally. Still, some days, like yesterday, I'm tired, don't feel completely well, and feel like a colossal failure. And, I don't feel like a colossal failure because of how our whole day went. Our day was alright. We read stories, went out for awhile to run errands, played with her toys for a bit. I had work to do for N, so we didn't get to run around outside as much as I'd like for her to do, but we went to the park every other day this week, so a day off isn't something I feel too badly about. No, I felt like a failure because when I came home last night at almost 10:00 p.m., after going to a badly needed meeting, the house was a mess and Bebe was still up and was very cranky because she was, by then, overtired. Daddy didn't put her to bed, for some reason, and by 10 she was beside herself. I was way too tired by last night to have the kind of patience I usually have and I found myself feeling resentful that the house was a mess, there were dishes in the sink, and the garbage was filled to the brim, almost overflowing the banks of the trash can. As as result of being tired and of suffering from major anxiety as a result of some fears I have with regard to our economy and the slowdown of the construction industry, I was cranky last night as well. I didn't say anything nasty, or do anything evil, but I didn't behave in the way I feel like I should as a parent, who is supposed to be one hundred percent supportive and loving and patient all the time. It's amazing how having a child and feeling a love for that child which we never previously knew could even exist can make us want to stretch ourselves to inhuman lengths, to be more than we think we can be and to reach even further still past that point. Each time I fell in love I thought, with progressive intensity, "Yes, this is what love is. Now I get it." After I gave birth to my daughter I understood what love was on a whole new level. It's so hard to live up to what I want to be for her sake. And so worth every minute spent on the effort.

All of this said, I feel that not enough attention is being paid to the subject of Madeleine McCann, who has been missing since May 3rd. I see all sorts of headlines on Yahoo's front page, and not one of them mentions this little girl. Because I have a daughter close to her age, the subject really rips at my heart. Please check out this website: http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/.
I pray for her and her family that she is brought home safely. This is such a scary and horrible thing; I pray they find her safe and sound and catch whoever took her.

The Crazed Artist Within

As of late, I've been trying to use only my own photographs for this blog, but since I can't go to Jackson Pollock's studio and ask him if he minds me taking a quick snap of him at work, I had to settle for a picture I found online. When I first saw Jackon Pollock's work, I have to admit that I didn't understand it. I liked some of it from an aesthetic point of view, but I didn't understand the meaning behind it. Almost all of my artwork has some sort of symbolism to it, even my portraiture. Because I didn't understand his artwork, I delved into some biography of the man himself. In doing this, I began to at least understand the place from where his art came and I could relate on some level. Pollock was a man who suffered from depression, who, like many of us, tried to find some way to combat his inner demons through the use of alcohol. From what I've I read, he began painting as a means to force back those demons, as a way to become healthier within. Van Gogh also used to say that painting was something he had to do. It was what allowed him to breathe, to exist in this world with some small measure of peace and sanity. Considering the outcomes of both of these artists' lives (Van Gogh committed suicide and Pollock was killed in a drunken car wreck), one might not think that either acheived peace or sanity through their art, but I think that in some small way they succeeded, at least for awhile. I relate to them; I try to achieve peace within in much the same way. For an artist, there is only so much life to be drawn out of recovery programs and spiritual pursuits. If that sounds sacriligious to some, I apologise. It's my sincere belief that G-d gives all of us a purpose in this world, and if we're not pursuing that purpose we won't be capable of finding that deep contentment and inner peace that following the purest parts of our hearts and souls can lead us to. I've been feeling so out of sorts. I've written about this many times in the past, but I continue to write about it because I've yet to be able to find the time for my own creative pursuits and my sanity suffers for that. I live my life with a fair amount of normalcy, because I have a strong spiritual base and follow a program of recovery, but my soul feels bruised. When people tell me that there isn't time for my artwork right now I can't accept their opinion. When they tell me to wait and be patient I know that they don't understand the mind of the artist-the ever running machine that is our brain, the flood of ideas constantly rushing at us, wanting to be thrown onto a canvas, the photos that beg to be taken, the words that plead to burst forth onto paper. There has to be time for that, because in doing those things we find our deepest peace, and through that we can relate to everything else more easily and lovingly. That's what I want-that deepest peace and contentment-so that I can be my best when I'm out in the world and so that I can give as much as possible outwardly, whether it's through my art or just through a kind word or a gentle touch.

Happy HNT

No HNT for me today. I feel too blechy to even contemplate contemplating some part of my body to post online. I have a shot of my belly avec belly ring but it was taken before I lost more baby weight and I will refrain from posting that here. I thought I looked good back when the picture was taken, but since I've lost more weight now I think I looked a bit pudgy podgy in that shot. Not that a little pudge is bad; I just have issues when it's located on my own being. America Ferrera? Sexy as hell (you've gotta see her outside of the "Ugly Betty" show, which I actually have never watched). Me? No. It's funny how sometimes despite our own concepts of beauty we sometimes still bend a knee to what the general public percieves to be beautiful. Hence, we hold ourselves to different standards from those which we expect others to keep. There is something so wrong about that, and yet I still fall into the trap. The most evil traps are those which we can plainly see but still dive into headlong.

Anyway, it's that time of the month and I feel horrible. There should be some cosmic law that states that once a woman endures the trials of pregnancy and childbirth she will get a break when it comes to the monthly visitor. I feel worse now than I ever did before I got pregnant; every month there are two days when I'm rendered barely competant to leave my house. During those days, the crayons come out for my daughter and I move as little as I possibly have to, housework and paperwork be damned. Of course, the only two options to having a "monthly" are being pregnant, in which case I would feel considerably worse and for a much longer period of time, or going through menapause. Since I experienced the famed Hot Flash while I was pregnant and know its evil, I have vowed that when the time comes for me to experience the joys of menapause I will be taking whatever drug is deemed safe to take to combat its unpleasant side effects. In any event, I'm not sure why I felt the need to come online and kvetch about the inner workings of my body today; call it lame performance art. Or something.

The Power of the Written Word

I was struck today with the true, deep down understanding of how fragile life can be; of how each waking day comes with no guarantees and of how important it is to make a difference in the present moment, if making a difference in the present moment is possible. I was also inspired as a writer and as an artist and I hope that inspiration will stay with me and will drive me to make some positive and much needed changes with regard to my creative life.

This morning, over coffee, I read a short story about a woman named Julia Campbell. She was a writer, a teach, a Peace Corps volunteer. She was murdered while hiking in the Phillipines, where she'd been doing volunteerwork helping the Phillipine people, by a man who claims he did not mean to kill her. Apparently, he was angry over an argument he'd recently had with a neighbor when Julia bumped into him and he flew into a rage. No matter the reason for her death, a void will now exist where her life once was, although the work that she accomplished, the caring, courage and committment she displayed in her life will be remembered by those she helped and by those who love her. She will live on through the good she did in this world, and she will remain an inspiration to those of us who, thus far, have only dreamed about having the courage to reach out to others in the way that she did. I stumbled across her blog after typing her name into the computer because I wanted, after reading the magazine article, to know more about who she was. After reading several of her posts, I prayed that the blog I was reading did not belong to the same woman whose life had been so suddenly ended. A peruse through comments left under the last passage she wrote confirmed that it did.

So, I'm left with the feeling that what we do with the time we have is very important. If we want to write, if we have that passion, then probably there is some purpose out there waiting for us. If we feel a fire in our bellies to paint, to create, to love, to help others, there is a reason G-d ignited that fire. To ignore it is to deny the very purpose of our lives. Even if following our dreams is sometimes daunting, even if being a creative person sometimes causes us pain, even if helping another person means suffering through some discomfort on our side, it's extremely important to keep moving in the direction of those dreams, of stoking the fire within. Of making life really matter.

WTF?????

I was driving home today on the way back from a morning at the park and our daily trip to the supermarket for suppertime fixings when I noticed a police car parked at the entrance to a nearby trailer park. I thought it seemed strange, since his lights were on and he wasn't sitting there to tag people for speeding. As I approached our development, I noticed a line of cars waiting to get in, as well as another line of cars leaving. When it was our turn to enter, I saw a sea of police cars and realized that no one was being allowed into the development, even to go home. The cop I spoke with advised that the area was being locked down because they were looking for someone. Judging by all of the police vehicles, both marked and unmarked, the person they were looking for was armed and considered dangerous, so I was semi happy to leave them to do their jobs, although I silently lamented the frozen yogurt melting in my trunk. A trip to McDonald's (we'd been heading home to eat lunch when this incident ocurred) and one hour later, we returned home to find yet another line of vehicles waiting to get into the development. I shut the car off, turning it on periodically to use the air conditioner, and decided to wait it out, since I had noplace left to go and was aggravated enough at that point to go in there and catch the guy myself. Never underestimate the damaging capacity of a locked down fold up stroller!!! They can be deadly, I swear! Apparently, they'd either caught the guy or given up, because they finally let us back in. I think I heard one of the officers say that they'd gotten him-we can only hope there isn't some crazed maniac still running around the streets of South Florida. What am I saying??? Of course there are many maniacs running around the streets of South Florida!!! After a shooting incident at a North Miami Burger King recently I didn't even feel safe taking my daughter to lunch at Micky D's today. It's insanity. Makes me want to move to the woods of Maine and buy me a shotgun. It would just be so boring, though....

Whatta Day

I had great plans for this afternoon which were sidelined when I walked out of the supermarket at around 2:15pm. I was in the driver's seat, about to push my car into gear, when this guy who was talking outside his truck on a cell phone called out to me that my front tire was flat. What?!!!! Urrrrrrr.. So, I got out of my car, and, sure enough, my left front tire was as flat as a pancake. The strange thing was that prior to going to the supermarket I'd stopped at a kosher deli and the same truck was parked next to me there, so alarm bells started going off in my head. I don't know if that's a sign of the times we live in or just a sign that I watch too much television and am now highly paranoid, but I was very nervous when I opened my trunk, half expecting that he was going to shove me into it or something. All he did was take the jack and very calmly walk over to my dead tire. Phew!!! But I was still paranoid. After arguing with the lug nuts (the tire was brand new and the mechanics had used power tools to affix it to my Kia) for awhile, we finally managed to get them loose, with him pulling on them and me jumping on the tire iron. It must have looked hilarious, because my daughter was howling with delight in the back seat of the car. This poor man, dripping with sweat (did I mention that it was around 86 degrees outside today?) put the spare on my car, lowered the jack and then promptly informed me that the spare was also flat. He offered to drive me to the gas station to put air in it but I was still paranoid, even after all of this, and besides that I had the baby with me, so I called my husband and he called some of his guys and they came and got the tire to have it fixed while I took my daughter to get something to eat (we hadn't eaten lunch yet and were both starving and cranky by this time). It turned out that the valve had gone bad in the tire, which was why I couldn't find any nails or tacks or glass stuck into the rubber. So, now it's 6pm and I'm just getting around to doing my hair, which looked REALLY bad due to the fact that I knew I was going to do it today and so didn't wash it this morning. We are meeting some friends tonight to watch the Red Sox game at a local sports bar/restaurant so now I'm going to have to really hustle to be ready in time. Why is it that I always seem to be in situations where I have, despite my best intentions, to rush around like a maniac to be on time getting someplace??? Anyway, I have to be grateful. If this guy hadn't been in the parking lot by my car I wouldn't have been able even to change the tire, and if my husband didn't have guys working in the area I would've had to wait for much longer for him to show up and probably would not have been able to have gotten the tire fixed today. And that's my story for today.

Signs of Intelligent Life on Our Planet???

Okay, maybe I'm going to sound a little bit petty with this post, but a few days ago I was browsing blogs at another blog hosting site. I came across this one particular blog on someone else's page and the person's icon looked fairly interesting, so I clicked on the picture. When I got to her page and looked through it I found it to nothing more than just a lot of semi sexy pictures of her posing on logs, bending over in lacy pajamas, etc. with little cutesy comments like, "Hi, everyone!!! Have a nice day!!" Don't get me wrong; I know that people blog for different reasons, and, as well, people check out blogs for different reasons. I'm sure that she has many an appreciatory fan out there, just waiting for her to post yet another semi naked picture with a message underneath telling them to "have a great day". Indeed, she has probably helped more than one person to do just that. The thing that got me about the site was that she had something like 80,000 hits!!! Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me why this person would have so many viewers enthralled with her page. If I posted more pictures of myself in compromising pictures with cute little captions underneath that basically said nothing would I have 80,000 hits on my blog site? It's not going to happen; it's just not my style. If anything, I'd have to post something sarcastic beneath the pictures. There are bloggers out there who post hot pictures but have something to say as well, and I think that's great (I'm thinking of Stealth, in particular). I understand why they get so many hits-they're beautiful and intelligent; they have both outer beauty and inner substance. Has our world gone so far down the tubes that all people care about is getting a cheap thrill online? Does anyone want to think anymore? Perhaps I'm just being egoistic. It's not like my site is so damned interesting that everyone should be checking me out. I actually have quite a few friends at the other blog hosting site, too, so I guess I should stop kvetching about not having 80,000 checks into my page. Still, though.....

Pondering the Holy in Everyday Stuff

I've been reading this really great book called "Judaism for Everyone" by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and it's been making me think a lot about how I express spirituality in my own life, as well as how seriously I take my own religion. I love the way Rabbi Boteach interprets biblical scriptures, and how he says that suffering isn't something we are obliged or even expected by God to take without fighting. In fact, "Israel" means "to wrestle with God" and God expects us to rail against suffering when we see it. There was no suffering in the garden of Eden, so therefore suffering must be something that we should not see in a utopian world, which is what we are supposed to experience when the messianic era arrives. Conclusively, we should all alleviate suffering where and when we are able to do so, since that's a beautiful thing in God's eyes and maybe something that will hasten the arrival of the one who is supposed to help the world to usher in an era of peace and harmony (in Judaism, the Messiah is believed to be a human being like any one of us, rather than an angel or some sort of God figure). This book has been causing me to reflect a lot on how I live my life, and on how by participating in the Jewish rituals of everyday life, I can bring myself into a more spiritually grounded place. By practicing kosher eating, for example, I enable myself to experience the spiritual in the everyday act of nourishment. As well, I am performing a mitzvah says, "See, God? We love and care about you. I'm doing something to bring myself closer to you. Please notice this and look favorably on humanity." I do this as part of a community of people who are also doing this, which brings me not only closer to God, but also closer to the Jewish community as a whole and to the Jewish community of the past, including my relatives who survived the Holocaust. This is not to say that I have become a master at kashrut. I have not. Mostly, I've been practicing some of the dietary restrictions of kashrut when cooking in my own home, by not mixing dairy with meat and that sort of thing. It's a very small step but big changes start with small steps and big changes made all at once can often be so daunting and overwhelming as to cause the changer to give up the challenge when the journey has barely begun. I guess it's like losing weight; people who lose a few pounds at a time tend to keep the weight off for life, while people who shed a large amount of weight quickly tend to gain it back plus extra. Slow and steady work is what brings about lasting, positive change. I suppose that when I stopped chemicalizing myself I began to have a deeper need for spiritual meaning. I've always been curious about God and I've always searched for the spiritual among the activities of everyday life. I never could access the true meaning of it, though. Now, in sobriety, I can finally begin to feel what it's about and to really need it in a true and less selfish way.

Happy Manic Monday!!!!!

Today wasn't actually too manic of a Monday for me, which is unusual. We had a great day, in fact. I took Bebe to the park in the late morning and we spent an hour or so running around like crazy, up and down the slides, ladders, stairs, and ramps. It was very windy and a bit chilly here today so my daughter lost interest in swinging on the swing after about four swoops back and forth. I opened my computer to news of the Virginia Tech shootings and have to wonder what is wrong with the people on our planet. It is frightening to think about being the victim of such a crime; those people didn't do anything to this madman, yet they had to be the object of his psychosis. They did nothing to bring about the fates that befell them; they were just going about their day, when suddenly the gates of hell clanged open. I am reading a fantastic book right now called "Judaism for Everyone" by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. I'm learning so much about my faith, about my religion, about this awesomely cool heritage to which I am heir. In the book, Rabbi Boteach talks about the violence in the world, about the lack of spiritual grounding suffered by so much of the populace. It's a great book that, even in the early stages of reading, has helped me with some recent life situations. I love that my spiritual path can do that; it guides me when I don't have a clue as to what direction I should be going in, when I don't know how I should be reacting to a particular situation or to another human being's actions. For a long time I felt such a conflict with being both Irish and Jewish, but I feel like lately it's all coming together. I feel like that conflict can be okay; I can be both and embrace both wholeheartedly. I recently read an interview with an author who expressed a similar conflict in being both Jewish and from Yorkshire, England. She said that conflict has been a positive issue as far as her writing is concerned, and I can see where that tension could be a great driving force in my own artwork. Anyway, all is peaceful at this end of the computer and I'm grateful for that.

Post Sick

Hooray!!!! Both Bebe and I seem to be getting over the cold/sickness we've been suffering under for the past few days. I got sick on Sunday, the day we came home from Disney, and Bebe has been sick for about a week. Whatever the bug is, it doesn't seem to be very hearty (thankfully) but it kicked me in the head on Monday and I spent most of the day lying around the house. By Tuesday I had no choice but to motivate myself into action and keep moving until it was okay to stop (which, for me, is at around 9PM). In the midst of being sick I managed to get my latest newspaper article written and sent out, complete with interviews. Hopefully the editor/newspaper owner likes it and will include it in this month's paper. I dropped the ball recently and forgot to re-order our business checks. I realized this today when I used our last check to write out a bill. I don't know how I didn't realize that we were out; I could've sworn we had another box floating around somewhere. Oy vay.

Post Seder

We had the first night of Passover at our house again this year and I spent the past two days in the depth of preparations. I'm so tired today that I had trouble waking up this morning and have felt groggy and stupid all day long. I can barely think! I basically spent two days in the kitchen for long stretches of time with only one screw up (my matzoh balls fell apart the first time around and I had to make them again-argh!!!). The night of celebration and friendship was well worth the effort put in. We had just three friends over, and only one of them is Jewish, but it was a lot of fun; better for the small crowd, actually, since we all had a chance to really talk. Lots of yummy food, lots of comaraderie, not much sleep! Today was very screwed up time wise because of my lack of energy, but it's okay to have days like that now and then. I must say, though, that I'm looking forward to curling up in bed with a good book and probably falling asleep before I've read three paragraphs.

Am I a Grown Up Now? Nahhhh!!!

I took little one to a mommy meetup group two days in a row, yesterday and today. Yesterday we all met at the Hallandale Beach library and today at the Hollywood library. Yesterday was storytime and today was just a free playtime. It always amazes me how my daughter seems to befriend the kids who at first seem to be so rough. This little boy was stealing her toys away one minute, and the next they were running around together!!! This group is a big step for me; I tried this once before but could never get my act together enough to be able to make it to the meetups. Now that my "baby" is two she needs to get out of the house more, needs more of a variety of things to do and other kids to do things with, and I need other adults to converse with here and there. I was hesitant, at first, to join a group because I thought that I might have a hard time relating to the other moms. I know that my tattoos sometimes cause people to form an incorrect assumption about who I am and what I'm like but I'm not willing to walk around with them covered up because they are an important part of who I am. That said, I thought that maybe some of the moms would be prejudicial toward me in a negative way before they got to know me. As it turned out, my daughter and I both had a good time. The moms were super cool and I related to everyone just fine, thank you very much. I actually relate to the moms in this group more than I did the moms in the punky moms group I also joined. Apparently, I'm more artsy than I am punky....It's cool though. It's hard for me to believe the way my life has progressed over the past four years. Everything in my life gradually changed; now I'm making dinners at night for my family, running around like a crazy person all the time trying to cram forty hours into the span of twenty four, being a mom, going to mommy meetups. Wow.

Hooray!!!

Yay!!!! Someone finally answered my email regarding an article I'm trying to write for the beach newspaper that I have a column in. I've been leaving messages and emails but as of today hadn't heard anything yet. As I was sitting down to my computer I was thinking about how hard it was going to be to have a peice with nothing but my own ideas rambling on and on, and there was an email from someone I really wanted a few quotes from for my peice! There is hope yet that this thing will get done, which is good because I need to bang out the story ASAP. It's actually mostly written already, but I need to add the quotes and tweak it a little bit. Someone recently told me I'm a dork for writing an environmental column but I don't care. I never claimed not to be a dork! I attended a fantastic meeting tonight which inspired me to take more positive action in my life. I've been feeling much more motivated as of late and that's given me hope that I can create the changes for good that I'd like to bring about.

Manic Monday

Well, it's 9:23pm, I'm tired, my daughter has not had her bath yet and I thought it would be a good time to post a blog. Actually, I was waiting for the tub to fill and was planning on blogging then, but I spent too much time reading other blogs and nearly overfilled the bathtub. Yep, it's Monday. We spent the whole day running errands and doing paperwork. I think I'm busier now than I ever have been in my life, including the time I spent working at the law office as a legal assistant. My daughter just came in and handed me a diaper. I guess that means it's time to take a bath and get her jammies on. Did I mention how busy life is nowadays??? It's great, though. I love being busy in this sort of way. For years I prayed to be busy in this sort of way. I was always kind of afraid of being a mom, but now that I am I find that it's a natural sort of role, and one I much prefer to the constant, unrewarding stress of being a legal assistant. If I'd stayed in my old job I would've had to go back to school to do something else, because I would've fried like an onion ring after too many more years of staring at a computer screen and talking on the phone, making money at a job that gave me absolutely no creative release but paid my bills and provided me with medical insurance. It's so scary and sad how sometimes life hands us jobs and we become afraid to leave them for fear of losing our security, even though they are jobs we really don't like, jobs we hate, even. I didn't hate the law office; it was a great opportunity and helped me buy my first new car. I enjoyed certain aspects of law and even considered going to law school. Anyway, my daughter's spirit had other ideas and wanted to be born and decided to be born to N and me, and we were blessed. Which brings me to another bath time and a good bye and good night to you all.

Snnnnnnoorrrreeeee.....

Sorry. I just almost passed out at my computer, which would not be a good thing since my two year old is downstairs with a cup of water and a palette of watercolors. I'm trying to nurture her artistic spirit, and so far she's really digging it, so I'm going with it. I love seeing what she comes up with and have several of her masterpeices posted around our home. I'm unbelievably tired right now and am looking forward to going to bed early, if that turns out to be possible. Exciting, I know, but I had a day of doing lots of running around and constantly being "on" and I'm worn out now that the day is melting into the beginning of evening (although, I have to admit, that I mean "melting" only in a figurative sense; it's still quite light outside, if not a bit overcast). I read an article in a parenting magazine today wherein a woman talked about her child's siblings. I felt a twinge in my stomach as I read about how her daughter interacts with her brother and sister, how they help her as she learns the art of growing from a baby into a little girl. I felt sad because I am one of six children, I'm close with all of my siblings and am glad I have them, and I know that my daughter will never have that bond with a brother or sister herself. You might think that there is no way I can know this with certainty, but I know this as surely as I know that the cow jumps over the moon (I swear that I actually saw this happen during an all nighter when my daughter was in her first few days of life-at least, it sure looked like a cow...). It's amazing how much our bodies tell us if we're in tune with their rythms. When my little one was almost ready to make her appearance on the stage of life, I began feeling an urgency to get my house ready for her arrival and to finish my projects at work as much as was possible. Although everyone laughed and said I still had time, I knew that I did not. I could feel my body telling me that it could contain her no more and that soon I would be holding my daughter in my arms rather than in my belly. My last day of work at my old job was the day I went into labor (I actually began going into labor at work, but I was in denial about the fact for a few hours); I worked up to the last possible minute because deep down inside I knew I would not be returning and I didn't want to leave a mess for anyone else to resolve. Recently, I thought about how nice it would be to have a son. His name would be William, after my grandfather (Will for short), and he would be as full of life and vigor as his older sister. He's just a dream. I know in my heart that no more children will make residence within my body, however, and I'm okay with that. Pregnancy wasn't all that much fun, even though there were moments that were positively magical and those moments are ones I wouldn't trade for all the cranberries on the Cape (or that used to be on the Cape for companies like Ocean Spray took over the cranberry industry). The moment I saw my daughter for the first time far surpassed any sickness or other discomfort experienced while I was carrying her. I enjoy being able to focus all of my attention on her, though. My energies aren't drained by the attention of many; we can afford to take her places that we couldn't visit if we had more than one child and I have a very special bond with her. And, I'm too tired at the end of the day to be able to even imagine having any more kids!

Grateful to be Sober

Yesterday I visited the hospital with N, to see a friend of his who is probably dieing from cirrhosis of the liver, combined with a few other issues. N didn't actually get in to see him, because he was just waking up and was very emotional after visiting with his immediate family. I guess that's how it is when you're not sure if you're going to wake up again every time they give you something so you can sleep. N was good friends with this guy for lots of years and they enjoyed many diving trips, party nights and Ja only knows what else together. It's very sad for him to see J in this condition; everyone is powerless to do anything for him except to pray and to be there to see him through the ordeal. I feel badly for the guy; I met him only once but he had a very good energy. He is one of those people who I liked immediately. Apparently, he had that effect on lots of people and was quite the ladies man in his day. Anyway, he's 51, and this might be the end of the line, and there is something profoundly frightening about that to me. After we went to the hospital I called my brother Kenny and talked with him for half an hour. Seeing J's daughter brought back many old feelings for me, from when I was in the hospital waiting to find out if my own Dad was going to pull through (he didn't). I felt like all I could do was call my own family and tell them I love them.

Mall Rat Wednesday

Today was a good day, but after yesterday's post I'm ashamed to admit that today I had a case of the "I wish we made more money" blues. I guess it was triggered by our trip to the mall; we went there to meet up with a girl friend and her kids. We had a great time-ate lunch together and talked. The kids had a chance to socialize a little bit and then K had to leave because she had some work to do at home. I spent another hour or so walking around with Little One. I followed where she lead and immersed myself in her world. To a toddler, even the smallest things can be interesting. She broadens my world quite a bit. The thing is, I want to give her everything I had and more. Sometimes it gets to me that I can't give her as much as I'd like to-I see other moms at the mall buying these cute little outfits that I know I can't afford, and sometimes I'll see a toy that I think my daughter would enjoy but it's too much money at the moment. We are able to give her a lot, and I think that I'm probably worrying about nothing, but it's hard to not want your child to have the best of everything. When the time comes for her to start school, I want to send her to a good school. No, a great school. If, when our daughter is of school age, we're still living in the area we live in now, we'll need to think about an alternative to the public school system since most of the public schools down here aren't ones I would sent her to. There are some great Jewish schools available to us, so at least there are options, but some of those schools are quite expensive. I would love to be able to just send her wherever we think she would best thrive, without money being such an issue. We live a good life; I'm not complaining. We're currently in a slump because some people who owe us money haven't paid us, and once they do pay us we'll be in a better position. That said, some financial insecurity has probably been triggered in me that, in turn, lead to my feeling frustrated by the mall today. Business ownership is scary because there is never a guarantee of a paycheck and some months/weeks are frightening. This is one of those weeks. I think that the solution for me today is to think about the things for which I am grateful, and there are many. Today is today, and today we're okay, financially and otherwise. I may not have had the money today to buy anything at the mall (other than lunch, for which I'm grateful because some people can't afford to take their kids out to lunch), but we had fun just the same. My daughter cared about being out running around, not about me buying her a new pair of shoes or a new toy, and I couldn't put a price value on the time I get to spend with her right now. I cherish this time beyond words.