Mental springboard

When I was six years old I went to the swimming pool with my older brothers.  They were determined that would be the day I learned to jump off the diving board.  I tried.  I really did.  But that slick, undulating plank, towering a dizzying height of three feet above the water was not on my agenda.  Well, it was, actually.  I very much wanted to jump.  But I spent an inordinate amount of time that hot, crowded day teetering on the edge, staring down at the beautiful, clear, cool, blue water below me, fully aware of how luxurious it would be the moment I hit,  but doing nothing.  The lines grew behind me.  People yelled at me to hurry up.  I walked backwards to the ladder, got off and went to the back of the line again. Repeat process countless times.

Eventually, fed up with my six-year-old-girlness, the oldest brother, eleven years my elder, grabbed me by one arm and leg and quite publicly stomped to the edge of the board.  I screamed at the top of my lungs for help from anyone who could hear me, thrashed for all I was worth.  Where were the lifeguards in all this?   And then that big jerk threw me off the edge and dusted off his hands with smug satisfaction.  A loud cheer arose from the angry mob that witnessed the assault.  I spent the rest of that day gleefully jumping and splashing for all I was worth, so excited to have finally, rightfully claimed my place in the diving board line.

Sometimes that’s all it takes.  One little thing to take you to the edge and push you off into something you know you want, know you can have, know you can accomplish, yet are afraid to spring into.  Swimming is easy.  Leaving the security of that board, not so much. 

And so it goes with work.  For a year I have been teetering on the edge of a diving board slick with frusration and insanity.  Tired of  being tied to a never ending courtroom schedule that keeps me away from my clients’ phone calls, my files… the hoofed one and the N-Man.  Tired of the rigor of just sitting and sitting and sitting for hours a day, doing nothing while waiting for one stupid, two minute case to be called, as my work elsewhere piles up.  Tired of hours spent driving all over the metro area and state for home visits and staffings when I, allegedly, work from  home.  Tired of burying children.   I have done private pay cases in the past.  I know how to find the clients.  Not so hard in the cyber age.  I know good and well that I can make twice, possibly probably three times, the money in half the time I’m currently putting in.   I know, in the age of  e-filing cell phones and lap tops, that I could once again control my schedule, control my life.  I know all this, want it, crave it.  Yet for a year I have done nothing but minimally prepare and talk about how I’m going to do it, and then just stare at the prosect of a freer future before backing away to the security of my state contract, content to deal with it all some other day.  Today, someone threw me into the pool.

I got an email around noon.   The official word on state contractor job security?  We can all keep our contracts.  YAY!  Our hourly rate will be the same.  YAY!  Our dedication to these kids is so very much appreciated.  YAY!  Oh, but by the way, we’re attaching a very long list of things you are no longer allowed to bill for but still must do anyway.  Thanks so much for all your efforts.  Bull shit!

So it’s official.  After five years, I have decided that I will NOT be renewing my contract as a Guardian ad litem.  I’m saying it out loud, holding myself out there for public accountablity on my follow through.  I will miss the kids but it’s time for me to move on, hang my shingle back up.  I need what I once loathed, the stability of something that requires me to just sit at that neglected desk in my house and make phone calls, draft documents, and talk to clients on MY time, my grossly shortened amount of time.  Something that pays the bills quickly so I can focus on living my life.  Yes, I DID go to law school for this.    I can’t begin to express how amazing it felt the moment I hit that mental pool of beautiful, clear, cool, blue water.

Judgeth not, lest ye be judged

Oh dear holy mother of God!  I just spent one full, insomniac hour putting together the most beautiful, award worthy, piece of literature in the history of all man kind, and with the simple mis-swipe of one foul key, it all went down the shitter of unsaved cyberspace, delete delete delete.   Well, since I’m up and can’t sleep,  I may as well bang my head repeatedly against the nearest hard surface.

I have only enough mental energy left to tell you that my thoughtful, brilliant parable  did  include amongst its perfectly planned  cadence and profoundly, socially significant moral, this very prophetic, Oscar worthy film clip and that I expressed my dismay and fear that we are already  too late.   And just like that, I  have now officially found myself living as one amongst those for which I sought such bitter judgment.   Karma, thou art a cruel, cruel mistress.

GAH!!

I’m throwing this one in now too, just because I’m so mad and well, because I feel like this at least three times a week, which really was the point of my original attempt.

My day

6:45 am  pit pat pit pat pit pat  The N-Man appears at my bedside.  Hi Mommy!  Watch cartoons!  At least I have him trained to sit still on my bed for an extra half hour when he gets up so early.

The novelty of Higgly Town Heroes wears thin.  Go downstairs! Geez I feel like crap.  I figure, as is true most mornings, I need some caffeine to get me going.  Head downstairs. Pour sippy of milk and glass of Diet Dr. Pepper.  Let out the dogs. Lay down on the couch with the N-Man. Wait for caffeine to kick in.

It kicks in about 30 minutes later by coming back up.  GREAT!  Hopefully I just need to eat something to settle my stomach.  Go to pantry and get 3 saltine crackers for me and a bowl of rice checks for the N-Man, who still isn’t 100% himself.  I eat.  He doesn’t.  More laying on the couch together.

Crap.  It’s not working.  Up come the crackers.  Three times.  I move to the floor of the half bath, where I can keep an eye on the N-Man while waiting for this to subside.  The N-Man thinks it’s funny.  Pit pat pit pat pit pat. He joins me in the bathroom and points with glee. MOMMY SICK!  He’s observant that way.  He lays down next to me on the floor.  Hi, Mommy!   If smiling didn’t make me puke I would have done it more than just on the inside.

9:30  I’m getting worse.  I officially accept that the N-Man has given me whatever crud  he had 48 hours ago.  Time to get ready to go to X’s house.  I manage to get the N-Man ready but settle for sweatpants and my slippers for me for the drive there and back.  Somehow I make it the twelve miles.  Oh.  And it’s official. The Wheels on the Bus can play six and a half times between here and there.  If not for the N-Man in the back seat yelling Beep beep beep, I would have gone insane.

10:10  We arrive at X’s house.  I call him to tell him we’re downstairs and I’m too sick to carry the N-Man in.  Can he please come down to get him?  It takes five minutes of arguing to convince X I’m actually in his parking lot and not asking him to come to my house to fetch him.  If he doesn’t hurry up, I’m going to puke on the N-Man, who is now sitting in my lap laughing as he turns on the blinkers and sprays the windshield with washer fluid.  X finally appears.  The N-Man points and yells.   Tata!  (Croatian for Daddy)  X takes one look at me and tells me I look like shit.  I’m not offended.  He’s right.  He  point blank tells me he’s keeping the N-Man until tomorrow afternoon instead of bringing him home tonight.  Praise the Lord!  This is the first time he’s ever just stepped up and offered to do the right thing  without a fight.  I thank him and leave.

On the way home, I pull over three times to puke in three different parking lots.  Nice.  How can one puke so damn much when there is so little in their stomach?   I make it home an hour later and crawl upstairs and collapse.  Out!

45 minutes later I sit straight up and sprint to the bathroom.  I don’t make it.  Great.  Now I have a mess to clean up.   I spend a good half hour in the bathroom hugging the toilet.  I think I’m finally done and make myself drink some water, just a few sips, before I crawl back into bed.  I sleep for almost two hours.

I wake up with horrible chills.  I need a steaming, hot bath.  That’s the only thing I can think of worth getting out of bed for.   Ahh, HEAVEN!  I lay in the tub until the water cools.  Then I sit up to get out and puke in the tub.  Lovely.  I stand up and hang on to the sides of the stall as I shower it off of me.  I get out and proceed to puke up my few sips of water for 3o more minutes.  I now officially feel like I’m stranded in the desert.  I  can’t remember having ever been this thirsty but am afraid to drink anything.

I cope with my dehydration for about 40 minutes before I give in and call for help.  I don’t do well asking for help.  I can take care of myself, thank you very much.  But I ask for help.   I manage to find a friend who is already out and about, sans children, who can run to the store and bring me some Sprite!  A choir of angels appears in my room and heavenly hosts begin to sing.  30 minutes later, she calls me to let me know the delivery is on the stoop.  I briefly get a rush, feeling like I’m engaged in some illicit activity.  Then I stand up to go down and get it and the room starts to spin.  I sit back down and take it slower.

Never in my life has a simple glass of lemon lime soda over ice tasted so magical.  It takes me an hour to drink it, thanks to my fear that I’m really just renting it for a short time.  I finished it about an hour ago.  So far so good.  Maybe the hurling is passing.  The N-Man only hurled for  eight hours.  It’s been about that… just a hair longer.

I acknowledge that I need to sleep in tomorrow and miss work.  AGAIN!  I’m missing too much work the last two months.   Thank goodness I’m self employed.  Fortunately it’s a very light day with only one simple case.  When I call for coverage, my colleagues laugh that I definitely do need an exorcist at this point in the bad health season and assure me they’ll take care of things.  I owe them all big time after this last month. 

I’m settled down on my bed switching between the Oscars and a crime drama.  I’m not convinced I’m done.  My stomach feels precariously perched on a lump just below my throat.  But I’m hopeful.   Seriously, I. am. over. this getting sick shit!  OVER IT!  Between the N-Man and me we’ve been sick non stop since the first of the year.  My house is a giant CDC petrie dish of experimental germs grown especially for us.  If you see me on the streets, run fast the other way, lest I breathe on you and cause you to bleed from your eyeballs.

So that’s that.  I’m going to sign off and attempt to keep down one more glass of Sprite, maybe even some crackers. Then it’s lights out for Li’l Cyndilu Who!

Au Revoir!

REAL unconditional love

Look, you can go out and meet Mr. Right, the one that takes your breath away every time you think of him… which is every second of every day.  You can fall hard, head over heels, and eventually stand up in front of God, your family, and friends and proclaim your eternal devotion to one another forever and ever, amen.  But whatever.  Don’t tell me that your love and devotion to that man is unconditional because there ARE conditions and limits on it.  

 There is not a thing you can say to convince me that you are willing to get up at midnight, 1 am, 2 am, and 3 am with your spouse, and lovingly rock him, sing to him, and stroke his hair as he repeatedly pukes on your shirt, in your hair, all over your lap, and the whole time resist the urge to spew yourself.   You aren’t going to change his clothes for him until he is out of clean clothes and wash the sheets over and over until the hurling ceases. Yeah right.  You and I both know your love and devotion stops just short of there.  Until you have a child, a helpless little person, untainted by the world, you do not know unconditional love because when you have a two year old, that scenario is suddenly just fine.

I’m going to need an awful lot of caffeine to get me through today.

Take two

I had  some amazing, thought provoking conversations with myself in my head yesterday as I was driving to and fro.  An invitation to a grown up dinner at a restaurant with cloth napkins and table coverings, devoid of giant slides, cliff diving monkeys, or seven foot tall mascots   fresh in my mind, I  quite pointedly pondered this new, awkward, unnatural world of dating whilst a child lurks in the background, watching my every move over a stuffed blue puppy and sippy cup.   I stewed and I thought and I conjectured.  Of course by the time I came home, caught up on work emails, chatted with friends, fixed dinner, ate dinner, packed the N-Man’s bag, and sent him away for the night with a big sloppy kiss, all I had left in me was to pop open a bottle of wine that desperately needs to be consumed before it goes bad and watch, with delighted, evil, maniacal joy as Izzy found out that she likely has cancer on Grey’s Anatomy.   Then it was lights out.

The end result of  yesteday’s internal debate  is that I am GLAD to be a single mom back out on the dating scene.  Yes. That’s right.  I am happy to have to do this again.   And no.  I’m not insane.  I’ve just come to the realization that by having the N-Man by my side, I am now forced to undertake this whole dating thing in  the manner I  should have long before he was ever a twinkle in his father’s eye.  

I look back at my dating past and cringe.  The incredibly hot professional skier whose asshole personality was excusable because, well, he was an incredibly hot professional skier.  The happy go lucky, free spirit whose irresistible charm beckoned to me from paths that I knew I should not tread, like a mythical siren off and on for four years.  The neurotic guy whose home I never saw once, in five months of  coupledom, because he had issues with people seeing it.  Not me.  Not his friends. No one went in it but him.  (Well, actually, that one I was well aware was a horrible choice but dating him meant free ski passes in Aspen so I let it linger through March before cutting my losses.  Did I just admit to that? Eh… men do it.  Why can’t women?)  And then there was X.  Someday I’ll tell the whole story of X,  but not today.  Y’all know enough for tonight’s purposes.   Bottom line is, the first time around my general M.O. was  to make bad choices, settle for the promise of potential over already proven and esablished, and rush my way right into disaster.

Because I’m a single mom, I CAN’T procede in the old manner.  No more first dates that linger, dreamily and unrealistically on for 72 hours.  No more bad boys with loads of charm and a list of things they swear they’re going to accomplish.  There is just too much at stake.  My bad choices no longer affect just me and I don’t take that lightly for a second.   Besides, from a practical standpoint, with a jabbering two year old, young horse in training, and business to run, who has time to rush and be stupid?    I have to take it slow, open my eyes and pay attention.  That’s just the nature of my life now.  There is not time in my universe to do anything BUT creep along at a snails pace.  

 Had I undertaken the dating world the first time around in the same manner in which I have no choice but to now, well,  I won’t what if, because I don’t believe in what if-ing.  But chances are better that there wouldn’t have been any more than one time around. But then again, there also wouldn’t be an N-Man.   So as far as I’m concerned, my life has been perfectly imperfect up to this point, leading exactly to this place I am so happy to be.   But, I assure you, I  have learned, and am continuing to learn, from my past  mistakes experiences.  So bring on round two.  Life does not often bless you with do overs  and I’m not going to squander this opportunity.  Not one bit.

Blank page

I have a profound lack of anything running through my mind.  Nothing.  Not one interesting thing to say.  Nothing about X.  Nothing but whining about work that you don’t want to hear.  Nothing exciting going on in my life.  Well, I have quite  a crush on someone, if a gal of my age  maturity, wisdom, and experience  is not too old for giggle producing, blushing, demure glances from the corners of one’s eye, and unexpectedly ran into him this morning.  But I can’t even come up with a clever post to turn that tiny blip on my radar into free flowing, intricately woven prose.  We chatted for twenty minutes in the middle of a downtown parking lot, ignoring the turbulent, howling wind swirling about us and the fact that we were both about to be late for our respective appointments.  It made me smile all day.  Hopefully if our schedules mesh we can try to get togheter next week.  We’ll see.  Exciting or no?  Even I say it falls under no.  Really, that’s all I’ve got. 

Oh, the N-Man recently learned the word chinchilla because there is a picture of one in one of his books.  I love chinchillas.  Used to have one as a pet and want another one… someday when my rodent loathing dog has moved on in his own time.  Tonight we had Mexican food for dinner and so the N-Man learned another word.  But something about the fact that he morphed the two together and proclaimed his love for Chinchilladas as he shoved his food into his mouth made me loose my appetite.

OK… really that’s all I’ve got.   I trust that eventually this cloud of apathetic writer’s block will disipate.   I hope…

Round and round

My parents’ divorce was finalized on my 10th birthday.  I don’t know the details of their marital demise.  I would venture to say I’ve blocked a great deal of it from my mind for whatever subconcious reasons.  As a life experienced adult, I have my own theories about their downfall, but don’t really want to know.  Some things are just  better left forever unsaid.  All I know is that the day after the deed was done, my father got on an airplane and flew away to Europe where he picked right up where he left us off.  I didn’t see him for a year.  (Again, as a life experienced adult, I also have my own theories as to how that affected and continues to affect  my relationships.  But that is another post.)

My mother, left on her own as a single mother to deflect and absorb all of my misplaced anger and despair did what I can only assume was her best, but I know I didn’t make things easy.  I missed my father horribly in that first year.   Finally, the next summer he came back, and swept me away, escorted me off to what I imagined, in my still developing, overly imaginative tween mind, would be nothing short of three months in Camelot.   We touched down in Amsterdam, after enduring 8 hours of  in flight, last minute Dutch lessons, and finally together again, we undertook the two hour drive to his new, mysterious life and my new summer home.  Having spent my entire memorable life in the brown New Mexico mountain desert, I could do nothing but silently stare, wide eyed and awed, out the window at the passing windmills, tulips and endless, flat, green country side. 

After a mandated nap intended to catapult me out of my jet leg, we ventured out for a local street carnival.  Mesmerized, I wandered the brick streets  with the man in my life, straining to hear and process unfamiliar sentences, doing my best to make sense of letters in store windows that were put together in odd fashion to create words I had never seen.  I ravenously consumed what instantly became an obsession, the staple of my summer diet for years to come, a tasty meal of frikandellen & frites, wrapped in brown paper and topped with mayonnaise.  And then, in the midst of all things new and curious, we rounded the crowded corner to the town square and there it was.    The one thing children the whole, industrialized world over can relate to.  A carousel.  Three towering tiers of glittering horses and mirrors spinning around and around and around with smile inducing Euro-pop blaring from five foot speakers. This was not your run of the mill, everyday merry go round.

Now I suspect that eleven year olds of today’s generation would roll their eyes in abject boredom, too cool to be bothered with such silly endeavors.  But in 1981 children were still children and I was no exception.  I couldn’t climb onto that ride soon enough.   I stood anxiously in line, carefully studying the new and different fashions of the local youth surrounding me, making mental notes on how to not look like the weird American kid, as I waited for my turn.   And then it was time.  It wouldn’t have been the summer of 1981 in Europe without ABBA and, as we started to spin and slowly gather speed, the simple, sing song, melody of Super Trooper began to chime.  For the next four minutes I was no longer a despondent, forced to grow up too fast child of a newly broken home, freshly reunited with my father, absorbing a new culture into which I had fully been emersed in a matter of hours.  I was just me.  A kid from no were specific.   My hair blowing in the breeze as I went round and round.  Smiling.  Happy.  Free.  It is hands down, the single most, happiest memory of my childhood.

To this very day I can’t pass a carousel and not take a ride, get on and let it all melt away.  That kind of peace and bliss – shining like the sun, smiling, having fun, feeling like I’m number one – does not come with an age limit.   And, as happened this morning, when I am fortunate enough to go up and down and round and round with the N-Man giggling next to me, it is all I can do to hold back the tears of simple joy as I travel back to the summer of 1981 and glow in the realization of just how blessed I am in this world.

Livin’ on a prayer

I got word this morning that my friend Kerry is on her way to labor and delivery to have her twin boys.  While I’m excited beyond words that she is finally seeing her long time, hard fought for dream of becoming a mother come to fruition, I had hoped that it wouldn’t happen for at least another month.  She is at  just 30 weeks as of yesterday, a huge milestone in itself after having been on bed rest for over a month, following quite a scare in January.  While I know that 30 weeks is a relatively safe time to deliver early, if you have to deliver early, we can all agree that those boys needed more time to cook.  But they, God, whoever, apparently have other plans.    So, if you can find time in your blogging day to send some prayers out to her imminently soon to be family of four,  for as few complications as possible, I know it will be much appreciated.

Edited:   Congratulations Kerry & Jeff and welcome BO & GO!  There is no more perfect family in this world!