Random Words

Pressure - That's when you have six highly diverse projects with deadlines that fall within one week of each other in February.

Balance - That's when you help your sanity by staying on track, continue hacking away at the debris, to remove each item from the dust bowl in your head, and then, maybe, there's still a ray of hope that it will all get done and done properly - the Slow March of Progress.

Excuses - trying to stay away from the emotional, depressing, anger filled, distractions that can put a halt to the Slow March of Progress and turn it into the I Don't Give a Flick Anymore - Lying in Bed All Day Doldrums.

Weathered - Everything looks weathered. My car, my house, my poor coat, my boots, my life, my hair, my face, and my patience. Winter needs to pick up its long grey weathered coat and get out of here!

Space - Home on the range. Vast Space. Free range chickens. Space to run. Time to Run. Space time continuum. Time to spare. Time to think. Thinking freely. Running freely. Freedom. Space equals Freedom. I want a lot of both.

Distractions - Lots of them.  To stop you, to boost you, to help you weather the bad stuff, to keep you from doing the good stuff, to give you space, to give you excuses, to offer balance or to keep you off balance, or to take the pressure off or to turn up the heat.  It could go either way.

Either way, head over to UnMom for more Random Tuesday Thoughts.

My Brain is having an Eclipse

I'm feeling kind of random. My head is so full of stuff that I can't think straight. There's about five lists floating around in there and they're all getting mixed up. Instead of progress, I wander around trying to figure out what to do next. Too much data. Does not compute. Overload. Overload.
Obviously, I need more coffee.

Random thought:
Weather - Seven days of Caribbean breezes, lovely cool bright mornings, perfect warm afternoons, and never ending blue skies. The feeling is still inside of me and I'm holding on to that feeling for dear life. Because the day I came back to Michigan it was 22 degrees for a high, and has stayed that way since the second week in December. Everywhere I look, the sky, the ground, the snow, the cars covered in salt are all cold and grey. Grey, grey, grey.

I regularly pause to meditate on the island I just left with its blue skies and warm breezes. Closing my eyes, I can still feel the warmth. Yes, I still got it. It helps me get through these wintery days.

Random thought:
Christmas Menu - How can I make a shopping list, when Sister After Me still hasn't decided on the menu yet. Times a tickin', which means I'll be at some grocery store in the middle of the night or worst yet on Christmas Eve day. Please. No. More. Stores.

Random thought:
Lil' Dragons and Kid's Christmas Party - Baking away and wrapping forty little trinkets for my kung fu students. Luckily a sub-par wrap job is fine because how else can you wrap yo-yos, poppers, sling shots with parachute skateboard guys, princess wands, jean stickers, and flip cars?  Any way you can.

Random thought:
Wrapping Christmas Gifts for the family like a Crazy Woman - until three in the morning. Feet hurt, something is poking me in the back, and my state of mind isn't getting any better. I'm hoping a little snooze will help. Decided at 2:22am that I should take a gander at the total lunar eclipse.I ran outside  trying to find the moon's position in the sky. Took me a few moments to realize that it was cloudy.

Random thought:
"Been shopping?  Nooooo, I've been shopping." Done as of yesterday. No more stores. (Sigh of relief.)

Random thought:
Miss My Mommy - When I got back from the Caribbean, I sent my mom a box full of stuff she forgot to pack. Before I taped up the box, I got my santa hat and put it into the box. I know she'll wear it for at least two weeks, until they celebrate Three Kings Day in January. She said the weather turned worse after I left. It rained hard for days. My mother said that "the island was sad to see me go and was crying." Me too island, me too.

Now that we have gone full circle with my random thoughts, go over the Keely at UnMom for more of Random Tuesday Thoughts.

Leaving His Heartbroken Parents Behind

He's in bed right now. In his own bed, in his old bedroom. His lease was up on his apartment so he moved home for his last two weeks in Michigan. QueenMaker and I get a few more days with our boy before he moves to Chi-town.

This means we will see him less. Visits will be farther apart. Luckily Chicago is not that far away, just a four hour drive. QueenMaker and I are already planning our trips.

He is about to embark in a new adventure. He loves adventure. He loves new experiences.  So the move will be a welcomed change from life in Ann Arbor.  He will explore his new city with gusto and call us with his discoveries.

We get to discover it too. Looking forward to Chicago deep dish pizza, the museums, the aquarium, and whatever else Chicago has to offer.

His dad has voiced it more than I have of late. I think he'll miss his son more than any of us know. So when Beloved packs his belongings into his car and drives away, our hearts will be breaking a little.

My Opinions - Worthy or Worthless

Well the assignment this week on the Spin Cycle is opinions.  Whoa!  I am very opinionated, but usually I keep my opinions within these four walls.  But if you get me going, I will give my uninformed, less than stellar and sometimes incoherent opinions to whomever wants to hear.   I in return will courteously listen to others offering an opinion all the while thinking, "But you didn't acknowledge my point."

Any-who, here goes.

When did it happen?  It used to be that saving money was suppose to be a good thing.  They were chastising us for not saving enough less than a decade ago. Or was that just a quaint 20^th century notion?  We weren’t saving for our kids’ college funds, or for a rainy day and definitely not enough for our retirement. 

When did it happen? It used to be that we knew how much house we could afford?  We knew that a car should not cost as much as a house, or half as much as a house, or a third as much as a house.

When did it happen?  We used to have patience, saving for the new couch, pinching pennies to buy the new dress. We were willing to wait making our purchases special occasions.

When did it happen, that credit became our lifeline? We used to know that credit should not cost as much as a house, or half as much, or even a fifth of a house, or even a ... 

When did it happen? It used to be that we knew not to use our house as a commodity.  We turned our dream of owning a home into a scheme for making quick money. We used to protect our homestead instead of draining it. When you turn life’s necessities into commodities, you’re asking for trouble.

My credit card company just sent me a letter telling me that they were lowering my credit line.  At first I was angry.  Because the way credit is working these days, I know that their action would lower my credit score. Imagine, a non-entity affecting your worth.  Bastards!

The letter said, since I use so little of the credit available to me, that obviously I didn’t really need that high of a limit.  I realized that they were correct.  It meant that they were either punishing me for not getting myself into trouble, or that they were actually pulling it back to where it should have been all along.  All I could think was screw them. 

Slowly throughout the years, the worth of brick and mortar industries have been reduced and transformed to judging their worth based on paper only and the betting and odds given on the worth or health of that paper.  Since we are running out of these types of commodities, there is a need to seek other avenues of profit and worth.

Real estate, at first an unlikely area for speculation, has now been ravished and decimated much like locust descending upon the plain. My sister lost her home and my niece is about to walk away from hers. She can’t get the bank to work with them.  I can see why people abandon their loans, because the industry abandoned their customers long ago.

Really people, bundling mortgages or portion of mortgages and selling them as paper and speculating on them was irresponsible, open to all kinds of illicit activities and stupid, on any plane of existence.

The only other big industry left for speculation, that I can see, is health care. Insurance companies already do this when they try to predict, speculate and lay odds on how long we will live or whether there will ever be a need for a payout.  What we do next regarding health care can be a big step forward for society or end up like real estate, laying in waste, boarded up, and people experiencing the same and very real abandonment issues.

What’s next?   Us.  We are turning into the commodity that everyone wants to bundle.  Our habits are studied extensively. The technology is here to help.  Advertisers, politicians, industries hire ethicists, psychologists, behaviorists to figure out what people will do next, to help predict and then to speculate and bet on the odds. I hope that they will always underestimate us.

I feel like I’m turning into paper.  I’m not kidding myself that it hasn’t been happening for a long time. I won’t need to ask, “When did it happen?”  I know.   I hope that when that time comes I can just say, “Screw them!” and walk away.

Now onto Sprite's Keeper to get more opinions that you can sink your teeth into. Yes they are that meaty.

She Brought Me the Christmas Spirit

I've been having either a menopausal moment, lasting for the last seven days, or depression is back like gang busters. It hit me like a snow shovel and I've been down ever since.

It seemed that the fates lined up perfectly to put me in this mood.  It started when Middle Sister's father-in-law died and the whole funeral thing, not eating well or drinking much water because we were at services and wakes for two days and I was working my arse off, in heels! My feet, knees, and back will be talking to me for days after that. After the second wake, I drove a four hour round trip to take my nephew back to college, finals week you know.

This culminated with the whole, it's that time of the month thing, with several people asking me to do favors I DON'T want to do, the yelling at my Mom and husband thing, causing the very guilty syndrome thing.  Add to that the whole, I'm not ready for Christmas thing but I have a kids party to host, and I have yet to buy Beloved anything thing, and nothing I planned is working out, and time and money is running out thing.

Other than that I'm okay.

As I was sewing Beloved's steam punk vest, (it only needs button holes and buttons, yahoo!) Little Sister and her three children home from college came through the door. This brightened my spirits because my niece and nephews were always considered mine too.  Beloved was always with his cousins and our homes were practically interchangeable, acting as one household when it came to the kids.   I missed them. I realized that not only was I missing being a mom to Beloved, but here were my other kids. They were so much part of my life and I missed them more than I knew.

They brought me a Christmas tree. The smallest the lot would let them cut down.  It was a crooked four foot tall, "a Charlie Brown tree" she called it, exactly what I wanted.  After they left, I went back to sewing.  When I finished, I opened the door and the sweet smell of pine greeted me.  QueenMaker had brought the tree in and had it in its stand.

The nostalgia, the smell, my big smile, the knowledge that I finally got my tree lifted the doldrums from my heart and head.  I called my sister immediately to thank her again.  I wanted her to know how her loving gesture was just the cure I needed.

I decorated the tree last night, wrapped some gifts.  I feel much better now.

If you want to feel better, go over to Keely at UnMom for some blessed RTT. 

A Wistful Dear So-and-So

Dear Father-in-Law,

Could you please not get the Alzheimer disease yet?  I’m not prepared.  I didn’t know how quickly it would or could take hold.  You and Mom (an invalid) live an hour away.  Your job of taking care of your wife will become mine.  I am realizing that my life is going to be overtaken by your lives. Can I have a month or two to get used to the idea?  No.  Okay, I understand.

Love,

Your wistful daughter.

Dear Mother-in-law,

You’ve called in a panicked state the last two days since your husband has been in the hospital.  Because of your illness, emphysema and COPD, you have abrogated all thought processes to your husband for the last decade. So when you called me I said, “Step up to the plate. What happened to that woman that was a single mom, taking care of her kid, and working two jobs?  The woman who used to take care of business, the accountant, the avid reader, the capable woman I used to know? Don’t worry I will be there to do for you, but I won’t take over ALL of your responsibilities as you have given to your husband. You need to help me as much as you need me to help you.  Make some phone calls woman, ask questions, be a proactive advocate. You are not helpless.

Love,

Your Partner in Illness

Dear Life,

Why do you insist on changing on a dime?  What, did you see a dime on the ground? Did I step on it by accident?  Maybe it was someone else’s dime.  I know, I know.  I stepped on it anyways.  I won't fight it.

Regards,

Learning to Balance Life as It Comes

Visit 

Spin Cycle - So Much to Hate, So Little Time

What do I hate? Sprite’s Keeper’s Spin Cycle is on the topic of hate.  After reading some of the other posts regarding this topic, it got me thinking about true hate. Do I know hate?  Have I felt real hate?

As the oldest of five children, all one year apart, I can honestly say that we all experienced hate.  Put five rambunctious children; keep them closed up in a tiny house, always hungry, playing and arguing constantly with each other. Add to the mix a dog, a cat, and a bird flying around and you have chaos. The four girls had to share everything, clothes, shoes, socks and coats.  Four girls eyeing the same outfits or stealing clothes from each other and it’s a recipe for knock down, drag out fights, with lots of hair pulling, name calling, clothes tearing and lots of tears. (Go ahead pull my hair.  My scalp doesn’t feel a thing. Mega Scalp.) By the time I was eight years old, I knew my sisters hated me. They kept telling me so.

Now don’t let this Lord of the Flies situation get you down. It is so true that there is a fine line between love and hate. But I have to admit, that as a child, I experienced great love and great hate when it came to my siblings. I wailed at my mom many times, “Why didn’t you stop having babies after me?!” 

But do I hate as an adult?  Like many of you, I do not hate individuals.   People can be misguided, sick, ignorant, ridiculous, blinded, dramatic or unthinking.  People can also be con artists, greedy, unfeeling and prey on their fellow human beings. I do not hate individuals.  It’s what they may do as a group that scares me.

Here are a few things I do hate.

Hypocrisy – I can avoid hypocritical individuals. When they come into my life, I run the other way, closing the doors and windows behind me.  But massive hypocrisy as I witness in our political system and parties, I truly hate. They all move like schools of fish, first one way then the other, swishing around, changing direction in ethics, speech, and mores.  It hurts me to listen to the parroting rhetoric, the propaganda, and the hypocrisy. Have our attention spans become so small that we can’t remember?

Dramatics – I can avoid dramatic individuals. I can avoid the “chicken little” people or the “poor little me” people that dot the landscape with a quick side step or by using the phrase, “You and a thousand other people in your situation.”  But mass dramatics as I witness in everyday television is frightening.  It’s like a primer for our nation on how to act. 

Here you go folks, a little problem, and no big deal, really.  Let’s see how to handle it.  Oh yes. Blow it out of proportion. Right, have a tantrum. Finger pointing, Excellent. Oh good, make a scene. Let’s make it much bigger than it really is. Did you just call him a bleep? Fantastic. We’ll put you on television. You will be our new national hero! 

Oh yea, what was the problem in the first place, inconsequential. No need to correct it. It was just a means to an end, dramatic anarchy and incivility. Don't worry your little pretty heads about it.

When did we become satisfied with the lowest common denominator?

But what I hate is that it has leaked onto our political scene. Why has the high school mentality taken over our politicians?  I hate it that the struggle between them is not for our benefit (American people), hasn’t been in many, many years.  It’s more like the jocks against the greasers, the Jets against the Sharks, the nerds against the pops, just a struggle for power.  They would rather bring each other down instead, taking us down with them. 

My, this has truly turned into my own dramatic tirade. I’m going to stop now.  Oh believe me there’s more.  But the post would probably be way too long. But in my defense if you asked me what I loved, it would take up volumes and volumes.

Gee, reading over my post above, it seems I hate politics.  And my friend, you would be right. 

How Do I Explain the Unexplainable? - Mortgage Crisis Part II

Part I of this story below.

After I hugged her, she started to sob uncontrollably.  When we finally pulled apart, she said, “How do I explain the unexplainable? I couldn’t think about it anymore. I had to stop myself from thinking, thinking, thinking. He’s never going to forgive me.”  With that statement in mind, I had to put to paper the anguish that I felt within my sister that day and the struggle I had witnessed these past years.  I was trying to answer her question, to explain the unexplainable. 

To my sister:

“How do I explain the unexplainable?”  The final eviction notice came. Fear gripped me and I just hid.  I have carried this secret for so long, I hid things from my husband and my kids. My sisters couldn’t understand why I didn’t come to them and tell them of the terrible fears and hurt I was holding in. I couldn’t ask them for help; I couldn’t make myself do it. I promised I wouldn’t. We agreed to keep our financial problems to ourselves.  I couldn’t think about it anymore. I had to stop myself from thinking, thinking, thinking.  I hid by reading my books, finding work to do outside of the home, anything that could be a distraction. I wish I didn’t have this perpetual migraine, this headache that’s been with me the last six years, and the mother of all stress headaches these last six months, starting in March when we were informed that the house no longer belonged to us.

I would cringe when the mail came, knowing I would have to hide the letters from the taxman, the mortgage company, the school, and the insurance company. I kept negotiating, trying to work things out, hoping to save us.

Everything is on my shoulders. I must shoulder all. I shoulder all of it.  All the responsibility will be placed on my shoulders.  My perceived inept attempts to make a single paycheck stretch, I stretched it until it was paper-thin. Then holes and rips started to appear.  I would run from one end to another trying to patch the rips that were getting bigger and bigger until the only thing left was to stop. I had to stop myself from thinking, thinking, thinking.

A wall of debt stretched high above me. I was constantly under its shadow. The shadow was with me always. I could only wait until it decided to fall under its own weight. The wall was holding back the floodwaters of secrets, pride, shame, worry, anger and failure behind it. Slowly, the cracks appeared and the water started to push through. Even though he knew it might come, I didn’t tell him that it was finally upon us, that we needed to get out.  I chose to ignore it. I chose to hide from it. Finally, the trickle became a river, washing my home, belongings, and secrets away. I was at the same time in crisis and in relief.

Responsibility was the one thing I was given so that no responsibility or liability fell on anyone else. He didn’t want anyone to know about our situation. I couldn’t ask anyone in the family for help. He didn’t really want to know what I knew. He kept saying where is all the money going? I tried to explain, to lay it all out. As long as it was an abstract idea and no hard facts or figures came his way, he could go on.  If a hint of it touched him, he would fall into such a depression and anger that it made it very difficult for me to broach the subject again.  Clues such as garnishment of his wages, avoiding calls from collectors, or attempts at the ATM all brought his frustrations, temper tantrums, and accusations of my ineptitude. He ignored the lawyer’s advice. But the inevitable was still going to happen. Long ago, he refused to sell the one thing that could have averted this tragedy. I chose not to argue. That maybe was my biggest mistake.

It became impossible for me to bring the subject of our finances up any longer. He didn’t want to know. He never wanted to know the score. I was to keep all unpleasantness from his view and when I couldn’t he would shake his head and find other things to do or wallow in self-pity.  I was supposed to fix it.  I was supposed to fix everything. It is my job to make all of their lives easier.  I knew then that I was alone.  I would be the one to hold the brunt of the responsibility no matter what happened because no one else wanted to share it.

So alone, after years of struggle, I will forever be the fall guy. It was me that did this.  It will always be my fault.  Why didn’t I do this, why didn’t I do that? Consequently the debt is gone, and the credit that was for so long non-existent remains so. But the secrets, the inner turmoil, the thing that no longer needed saving is gone. I am finally free of the many millstones around my neck. How can I explain the unexplainable? I don't know how. My children and family supports me still; they don’t sit in judgment of me, sans one.  I await his verdict.

Mortgage Crisis - Part One

My sister lost her house a few months ago.  The fire started in her bedroom.  The source of the fire was an electrical cord that ran under her bed to a lamp. Due to lack of closet space, my sister and husband store many belongings under the bed. This combination overheated the cord and started the fire.  Luckily my parents live next door and were able to raise the alarm.  Little Sister rushed home from work and we rushed to her aid to help with the clean up.  We wore old clothes, brought boxes, garbage bags and facemasks to protect us from the fumes. 

When we pulled up three men were in front of the house, one had a badge around his neck.  At first we couldn’t figure out what was going on.  They were taking things out of the house and so was my sister.  She was working furiously and with such a concentration that I don’t think she even knew that we were there. Were the men helping her save her belongings, getting them out of the smoke filled house?  Our confusion turned to disbelief when we finally realized that they were not helping my sister, but these men were here to evict her.

We asked her what was going on and she just kept on working to keep her belongings from ending up in the dumpster.  Soon we were helping her, dragging out soot-covered possessions before the men could get a hold of them.  We started filling my mother’s garage and backyard with the salvaged belongings, a stove from the garage, televisions, stereos, and other valuables from inside the house.  Luckily or not depending on how you look at it, the crew that came to evict her was a three-man crew when the number should have been six.  With a six-man crew they would have emptied that house quickly and more efficiently. They kept mumbling under their breath about the fire. They mumbled how they wished they had facemasks.  But when the fire marshal came in and gave his verdict that the fire was definitely an accident, the men became more sympathetic.

The three men seeing the scope of possessions that my sister’s family had accumulated in 25 years quickly became tired and became more concerned with their own health, inhaling all that soot. and so their resolved weakened. And when they saw my sister’s tenacity and single-minded determination of retrieving her belongings their resolve weakened further.  They started asking her if she wanted this item or that item and helped move a piece or two.

Apparently they were commissioned to take out only very large pieces and were not interested in the smaller items.  Besides with most of the surfaces covered in the house by papers, bills, books and the like they just tossed them to the floor.  Not only was there soot everywhere they added to the debris pile creating soot clouds, which made it harder for them to breathe and harder for us overall. We scoured every room making split second decisions on what was expendable and what should be left behind.

Her husband hurried home from work expecting to deal with the fire situation. To say he was taken aback by the eviction is such an understatement because it in no way describes the range of emotions that came over his face all at the same time. He kept asking the same question over and over to his wife. But she kept on working. He wanted to have a show down, but she kept on working.

The fire was contained in hallway and rear bedroom.  I had never been in a house after a fire and was shocked to see how every wall in the house was black as though charred but in reality covered in soot.  We worked until nightfall to begin again the next day.

My sister was still very quiet, exhausted, but still concentrating on all the work yet to be done. She wasn't ready to talk about it. It was too soon. I took a few moments to cry my eyes out.  I know how hard she has struggled the last few years trying to keep it all together and I felt her anguish.  As nightfall came, the work stopped for us, but it kept going for her.  She began the laundry, trying to remove the smell of smoke from the clothes we saved. Finally, I had to ask her the inevitable question, “Is it all right if I give you a hug before I leave?”  When she answered yes, I put my arms around her and as soon as I touched her, she began to sob uncontrollably.

The mortgage crisis has finally hit too close to home.