Kicking Off The Holiday Season

I have a friend who firmly believes that Halloween is the holiday that officially kicks off “The Holiday Season”.  Being a person who really knows how to entertain and, yes, even cook very fine meals, she is all about celebrating.  And she is good at it.  Whether you agree with my friend or not, by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, followed immediately by the day now known as “Black Friday”  (only in America and when did that happen anyway?), it is clear The Holiday Season is well underway. 

The Problem

In years past, I was all about Christmas and decorating and making everything festive and, like my friend, I enjoyed celebrating in the company of family and friends.  But somewhere along the line things went horribly wrong and suddenly, The Holidays, have lost their appeal to me.  Or maybe I’ve just become very, very confused about does and does not matter when creating those memorable holiday moments.

Okay, things didn’t really go “horribly wrong”, at least, not all in one big life changing moment.  It was more like a gradual decline and I think I did it to myself.  Too much pressure, expectations for myself and those of others (mostly in-laws), the demands of being a new mom, starting a new demanding career at the same time (oh, yes, I do wish I’d played that card differently), and the gradual erosion and decline of a marriage.  Along the way, The Holidays lost their charm.  They became something to be endured; a source of pain, frustration and immense exhaustion.

After the second divorce, I tried the best I could to make Christmas memorable for my children.  This wasn’t easy, since I was now in the place so many people find themselves in after divorce:  broke…if not bankrupt. I was definitely the former, scrambling to avoid the latter.  Looking back, I don’t even know how I survived that first Christmas because child support hadn’t even kicked in.  The second Christmas was also pulled off with meager finances and the third Christmas, last year, was the first Christmas my children spent away from me.  That was tough! 

  Yes, I am fully aware that in spite of the pretty lights, the happy smiles on people’s faces, the advertisements that boast loving couples, happy families, and joyous, grateful children with lavishly decorated homes where trees are standing amidst a treasure trove of gifts, the cost of which might easily feed a small third world nation somewhere for a year, The Holiday Season for many, is a season of pain, regret, disappointment, sadness and deep loneliness. Many of us, especially those of us who are Singles in a World of Couples dread the advent of the holidays because it means we will be attending yet another office party alone, waking up Christmas morning alone while the kids wake up and open presents elsewhere, eating alone with no one to greet us in the morning or drink a toast with us in the evening.  That awareness can gnaw at us and deprive us of joy, energy, and contentment.

A Solution:

Now, if I let it, that could depress me.  I could spend my time regretting the misused past.  I could spend my time fretting that I am now unable to provide my children with what I’d always wanted and hoped to be able to provide them materially. I could feel badly that I don’t have significant other to share the joys and sorrows (or my hot tub!) with.  I could get weepy that things are not exactly what I wanted or how I planned or imagined.  I could despair that things are not better than they are.  Sometimes I do.  Not for long.  Maybe only about two hours a month…if that.

Solution:  I don’t let it.  I’ve learned to enjoy what I have and be grateful that I have it.  I’ve also learned that things can always be worse.  After all, as one friend recently said to me, “You have a roof over your head, a good job, you are paying your bills haven’t had to foreclose on your home or file bankruptcy, you and your kids are healthy and you have food on the table.  It could be so much worse, so chin up!”

I’ve learned over the last three years to think differently about many things.  I now think differently about my holidays.  I think very differently about the holidays on those years when my kids will be away for Christmas Day.  I’m not so hesitant anymore to ask out that guy friend to my office Christmas Party.  I just make sure it is someone who understands that this is not a Friends With Benefits situation or that I have any illusions about us as a couple.  I’ve given myself permission to be single and to enjoy it.  I’ve given myself permission to take full advantage of the times when the kids are away.  I’ve met enough people and have plenty of friends that if I want a date to an event I can have one.  If I’m sitting home alone on a weekend night it is because I have chosen it, not because I have no other choice.  I’ve learned to be at peace with myself.

I no longer feel that I’m missing life if I stay home…alone…curled up on my couch in my lounge pants and t-shirt…in front of the fire.  Would it be fun to be using my couch differently?  Of course, but I’m not desperately hoping that will happen or thinking that it must happen in order for me to feel validated and alive.

Mostly, I’ve learned that the off times, those times when the kids are away at their other homes is a great time for me to work on the many home improvement tasks I have lined up.  I don’t have to worry about kids wanting to help with the painting or spreading the mess throughout the house. I don’t have to stop mid project to fix a meal and clean it up.  It’s also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with some of my adult friends that I have a more difficult time connecting with when the kids are around. It’s a great opportunity to get caught up on laundry and if all else fails…

…it is a wonderful time to try to learn to cook a new dish! 

Yeah, like that’ll happen anytime soon!

I do have questions though for those of you out there who, like me, have a shared custody or a parenting plan that means your children will be away from you some or all of the holiday season. 

How do you handle the holiday season when you don’t have your children with you to celebrate?

How has divorce changed how you celebrate the holidays?

 

 

Thanksgiving 2009 in Review: Screwing Up Fine American Traditions One Recipe At A Time

Never before have I been aware of the great lengths we Americans go to in our efforts to conceptualize, create, concoct and consume food on this particular day of the year.  Sure we say the day is all about family, but I think the day is all about food. Even more accurately, I suspect it isn’t even about food but about consumption. Better even, I believe it is about food, consumption and our competition to best each other in both realms.  Family, holiday and tradition simply legitimizes our desire to compete with each other in our desire to satiate our gluttonous tendencies.

Alright, alright.

Maybe that is a bit extreme, maudlin, or even harsh. Maybe it is unfair. Maybe I am just all sour grapes today.  I have reason to be. After all, I’m a lousy cook.  I can’t boil water without ruining a pan. Why would this day, of all days, the day we worship food and it’s preparation, even be a fun day for me? It isn’t.  It’s an ordeal.  It doesn’t ever start out this way for me.  I actually end up looking forward to making the attempt to enter into this realm of celebration, but somehow, some way disaster stalks me in the kitchen and always has his way with me.

A New Reality TV Show?

I’m notorious for screwing up completely wonderful UDSA approved food products in an attempt to take them from the state they were purchased in to a form that quasi resembles cooked and edible matter.  Delicious?  Ha!  That word NEVER is uttered at my table. I can blow a microwave TV dinner, I’m that good at screwing up anything food related. I can make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich taste like something that should be used to pave roads.  Better, I can make it BE something that should be used to pave roads.  In fact, I’ve often considered pitching Hollywood for a new TV reality show called “Cooking With Cat: Screwing Up Great Cuisine One Recipe At A Time”.  Hell, I don’t even need a recipe. I can screw it up without even looking at the directions.  Really.  I am that good.  

The Way To A Man’s Heart?

If the adage “The  way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” is true, I’m doomed.   This would totally explain why, as incredibly attractive as I am, I still remain single…well…that and the four kids…and the fact that I live in the Wild Wild West where mostly cavemen and cowboys reside, but details, details.  I keep hoping that, there really is something else more enticing to men than food.

Clearly, a holiday centered around boasting of one’s culinary clout is not one that I’m going to revel in let alone experience much success with.  Unless, of course, we measure success by my standards which is “She with the greatest disaster wins”.  (And, yes, I do have a scoring rubric to determine the greatest disaster.) This Thanksgiving had all the markings of an unmitigated disaster. Try as I might to maintain a respectable presence in my kitchen I was courted and consumed by disaster almost from the get-go.

Step 1 To Screwing Up A Great Meal:  Plan Ahead then Screw Up The Plan

I’ve heard that a key ingredient to a good meal is advance planning.  I really took this to heart this year.  When I went out to buy groceries for the month, I planned ahead.  I actually planned on cooking a Thanksgiving turkey this year instead of hoping beleaguered friends or relatives would take pity on my children and invite us over for the big meal.  You see, this works for me because then I can just bring a bottle or two of wine and call it good.  That’s really how I prefer to do my cooking. 

This year, though, I decided to step up to the plate and attempt to be a “real” mom. I planned ahead and bought a 21 pound turkey at the beginning of the month.  Got it home, stuck it in the freezer and made a mental note that I’d have to take it out and put it in the fridge on the Sunday before Thanksgiving so it could thaw.  See?  Planning ahead.  I even remembered (the Sunday before Thanksgiving) to take the turkey out and let it thaw.  Never mind that it seemed a little bit smaller than the turkey I purchased a few weeks ago, but being as I am a tired, frazzled (can’t you hear the violins playing now?) single mom, I didn’t think much of it at the time. 

I thought a great deal about it when three days later I went out to the other freezer to get ice cream for the kids, pulled the door open and saw this huge 21 pound turkey stuffed in there.  I wondered, “What is this huge turkey doing here?”  Then panic struck and I wondered, “If that’s the turkey I bought at the beginning of the month then what did I stick in the refrigerator to thaw?”  I checked the refrigerator and, sure enough, the thing I put in the refrigerator was a much, much smaller bird.  “ Oh no!” I sighed in dismay, “We’re gonna be havin’ Thanksgiving chicken this year, I’m afraid.”

So, step number one to screwing up your Thanksgiving meal is to defrost the wrong bird.

Step 2 And Beyond:  Lose Your Camera

I trudged on valiantly hoping to make the best of things.  I even googled “How to Cook a Turkey” so I could get it right. I mean, after all, I can read.  How hard can this really be? I found some great recipes, complete with cooking times and seasoning recipes.  I followed all the directions for cleaning the turkey, seasoning it and getting it in the oven.  Everything seemed to be going well, until, about 45 minutes before the time went off I began smelling smoke.  I thought maybe something was up with the fireplace but, no, this smell was coming from the kitchen and, yes, there was a fine smoky haze in my kitchen.  I quickly opened windows and checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally put the oven in self-cleaning mode.  (Don’t even ask!) The turkey appeared to be fine.  I could detect no reason for the smoky haze in my kitchen. Eventually the haze dissipated through the open kitchen window and we went on about our day preparing for the disastrous time when the turkey comes out of the oven and everything else goes in (rolls, bean casserole, etc.) and potatoes need to be boiled and smashed. 

Most experienced cooks would have been proud of me at this point.  I even had a meat thermometer and I used it.  The chicken turkey was right on schedule and when the timer went off after three hours I checked the thermometer.  Everything read the right temperature so I pulled it out and let it sit while I quite effectively did the following:

1. Got Child Number 1 to do the mashed potatoes (that way if everything else got ruined at least the potatoes would provide nourishment until we could ruin the frozen pies we bought for desert).

1a. Got Number 2 to do the stuffing.  “Just read the directions on the back of the box.” I told her.  “Use this pan,” I instructed as I handed her the really nice and muy expensive saucepan my other daughter bought for me last Christmas.

2. Had a glass of wine (after all the most stressful part of the meal had begun). 

3.  Realized the chicken turkey looked great and I needed to take a picture to post on my blog so the world could see that, yes, even I can cook a great turkey!

4. Realized I’d lost my camera.

5. Went off looking for my camera and after looking everywhere and not finding it, went into panic mode and began hyperventilating.

6. Got Child Number 2 to abandon the stuffing effort and get involved in the search for the lost camera.

7.  Realized a short while later that something was again on fire. 

8. Discovered that the stuffing was now blackened stuffing.  Does that fit under Cajun style cooking?

9. Downed another glass of wine (was I supposed to be using that for the gravy?).

10.  Remembered about the gravy and the bean casserole.

11.  Left Number 2 to continue looking for the camera, while I tried to forge ahead with the meal.

12.  Got Child Number 4 to set the table, Child Number 3 to prepare the bean casserole.  At this point there were four of us in my tiny galley kitchen going back and forth.  Seriously?  Hell’s Kitchen had nothing on me! 

13.  Began carving the turkey at the designated 20 to 30 minutes after taking it out of the oven.

14.  Realized about 3/4 of the way through the carving project that the chicken turkey was NOT completely cooked.  (Yes, you heard me chicken turkey was undercooked in spite of 185 degree readings in several places from meat thermometer).  I should have gone with the 3 1/2 hours instead of the 3 hour time.  Sigh.

15. Wrapped the turkey up in foil and put it back in the oven to finish cooking while we ate was there was of our pathetic meal.  (No, I didn’t tell the kids anything about that so, shhhhh!)

16.  Put what could be salvaged of the “chicken” and stuffing on the table along with the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole which actually survived the ordeal and made it to the table in edible fashion.  Please note, those were the two dishes I let someone else prepare and left them alone to do it.

The Final Step:  Clean Up the Mess and Try Again Tomorrow

By the time we all sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, I had a great deal to be thankful for.  We did have something to eat.  Two parts of the meal actually ended up being edible.  The house didn’t burn down and I did find the camera.  Well, Number 2 found the camera. I did lose a really nice saucepan in the chaos though.   

Now you understand why I was sour grapes about the whole Thanksgiving Feast thing. I mean, really, when it comes to putting food on the table, I’m lucky if it even makes it in edible form, forget it tasting good and looking good.  I simply had to forget the Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray cuisine and table settings everyone else was Face booking about on Thursday. I was simply glad to have made it through my meager attempt at celebrating in my own very unique way and still actually eat.  And losing one muy expensive saucepan in the fray was an improvement for me. 

In spite of it all, I’m still hopeful that I can pull off a tasty “chicken” noodle soup with the carcass and scraps. 

All’s Well That Ends Up Getting Eaten

As I sat down battle weary to yet another successful kitchen disaster (being this bad at cooking is really hard work!), I looked at my starving progeny.  They waited patiently in their chairs until everything was on the table. Their eyes gleamed at the mounds of fluffy white potatoes with butter melting unrestrained on top. The creamy gravy (little did they know then it would taste like paste) at least appeared tempting in its boat.  The “chicken” sliced with my new electric knife gleamed with the soft white juicy tenderness that the outer layers of an almost cooked bird can have.  The bean casserole provided color to an otherwise monochromatic culinary palette. And the soft, doughy rolls?  I completely forgot those, so we did without.  Sweet potatoes?  Nope.  Cranberry sauce?  None.  Other side dishes or soup?  Glaringly apparent in their absence. It was just me, my meager offerings, my hungry kids, some sparkling grape juice for them and a third glass of wine for me.

In spite of my incredible lack of skill in creating ambiance and mood (at least a positive and inviting one) through food, my kids ended up eating until they were stuffed.  Not one of us ended up with food poisoning. The dismal state of our cuisine’s presentation didn’t dampen our gratitude and joy that day one bit.  We all worked together to clean up the mountain of dishes then retired to the living room where we ordered Four Christmases on pay-per-view while digesting our dubious dinner.

In all, the meal may have been a disaster but the day was alright.  The very best part of it all was the chilling realization that my daughter was completely accurate when she said, “Seriously!  Hollywood should so come in here and just film us!  We wouldn’t have to memorize a script.  We wouldn’t have to change a thing and people would watch us!”

Move over, Jon and Kate plus Eight!

Making It Through In Spite of the Flu

Just a short note tonight.  I’m tired.  It’s been a long day.  I have another fairly long day tomorrow and I was sick this weekend.  Flat out, on my back, slept for nearly 24 hours straight except to get up and get drinks of water and go to the bathroom.  Yeah, that kind of sick.  The kind of sick that you hope will pass quickly because to have so many things you need to be doing.  The kind of sick that you worry might never pass because, really?, the common cold does not feel this bad.  Or does it?

After Booty Texter dismissed me in his frustration at my being unwilling to lower my standards and subject myself to his selfish motivations, I went to bed (Friday night) .  For all intents and purposes, I did not awaken and like it, until sometime Sunday morning in the wee hours of the morning.  Oh, I awoke, but only to go to the bathroom and get a drink.  Over 24 hours sick.  Yeah.

I’m grateful that I was well enough to work a 13 hour day today and not keel over. 

I’m grateful that I’m now home and people decades younger than me who didn’t spend the whole weekend flat on their back sick as a dog, and who have fewer children to go home and deal with than I are just as tired as I am if not more so.  This means nothing other than I’m feeling better, my health is certainly not horrible and I am so very glad for that.  One’s health is so important.  In fact, in my list of things I’m grateful for my health tops the list. 

How would you finish this statement?

“If it weren’t for my health I’d _____________________________________________.”

or how about this statement…

“Because of my health I _____________________________________________”.

As for me, it is great to be making it through.  The knowledge that people many years younger than I are experiencing the same, if not more, fatigue is encouraging to me.  Not that I wish them ill, I don’t.  It just means this contraption I call a body isn’t doing so badly after all, and, to me, that is enough to be grateful for.

Post Breakup Part ‘Em Depression and Booty Calls

“Have you experienced The Insane Weekend yet?”  he asked.  He was a person I’d brushed digital shoulders with some time back, nearly two years now, on a social networking (not dating) site.  While he lives locally, sort of, we’ve never met. We chat online every now and then. this was one of those now-and-then times.  Over the last two years, I’d become his outlet to rant about his latest relationship that didn’t pan out.  Since he’s also an FB friend, he knew something of the demise of the romance between Oz and I. He was trying to be helpful and commiserate.  Seems he’d just broken up with someone he’d intended to marry.  His situation, like my own, began in a gradual downward spiral and ended up plummeting to a disastrous end.

“The Insane Weekend?”  I typed back.  We’ve also never talked on the phone, only IM’d sporadically. 

“Yeah, the weekend where you cry your eyes out, want to die, don’t want the end of the relationship to be reality but it is.  I wept for two days and even prayed on my knees to a God I don’t believe in that He would take this reality from me. You act insane and you feel you’re going out of your mind with pain. You know, the insane weekend.”

I sighed.  Yeah, I thought.  Since 20 of October I’ve had plenty of those. 

“Yeah, I’ve had a few of those, I think,” I messaged.

We went on to talk about the breakup and healing process.  The pain when you finally realize conclusively that the someone you’d painted into your present and your future is erasing themselves out.  Decisively.  Finally. 

The pain that comes in spite of the fact that you also had very real concerns about the other person and their “stick-ability”, especially after the recent events.

The sense of rejection you feel.  The sense of loss.  The very real experiences associated with the death of anything, anyone significant, important, cherished. 

The fear that comes with envisioning a future by yourself, when it only days ago appeared to be filled with incredibly fulfilling companionship, love and hope.

The realization and the sickening dread that your current loneliness may well be your lot in life.

All these feelings we IM’d about and shared. 

He related the pain and confusion of breakup sex and the back and forth situation he was still dealing with. 

I was grateful that option is not possible for me, especially not now, since, as suspected The Wizard magically disappeared in a way that is convenient to do when you are 12,000 miles away and can simply unfriend a person, delete a contact and refuse to answer any email.  At least I am not in the place where the breakup sex and the subsequent delay of the inevitable is possible. I’m realizing, as I usually do in situations like this, that things are working out, or they eventually will, for the better.  In the meantime I’ve learned a lot about myself.  Good to know. The Insane Weekends are over.  Moving on.

Eventually, the IMing evolved to texting, since I had to get off the computer.  Still battling a cold/flu and feeling very weak after my first week back to work I really could only take so much sitting up and squinting at the small computer print.

By this time our conversation had turned from dealing with what we regretted and had lost, to thinking about the present and the future.  We both recognize that though our pain now seems to overwhelm us at points, it is not a permanent thing.  We began bantering about his upcoming plans to spend some time eating sushi on his brother’s dime the next weekend.  The conversation was gradually tapering to an end.

In the midst of this, I received a booty call. Well, it really was a booty text.

“You still up?”  the text said.

“Yeah, just heading to bed.”  It was almost nine o’clock.

“I’m not one to beat around the bush,” the Booty Texter replied.  “Want company?”

I almost laughed out loud. 

“I think I just got a booty text”, I texted to my other friend.

“I am in my pj’s, look like bat guano and can’t breathe.  I won’t be great company,” I texted Booty Texter.  “Wait!”  I went on, “Was that a booty call and I just missed it?”

Booty Texter didn’t deny it and he wasn’t giving up that easily.  He went on to mention that he was was also in his p.j.’s and could just slip on his slippers and come over.  He then mentioned his CPR skills. 

Really?!  Are you kidding me?!  What part of any of this is supposed to make me feel special, desirable and like he’s really into me? (None of it, that’s my point!) This also from a guy in earlier exchanges who said “he really liked me, but didn’t know about getting involved with someone with kids”.  Yeah, he should have just said, “Let’s be f*** buddies”, after all, he wasn’t “one to beat around the bush”.   As far as Booty Texter is concerned all I can say is, “Good to know his real intentions now rather than later”.  He’s clearly into no one but himself.  Good to know.

This booty call strategy must work for guys because they try it.  Apparently they’re getting rewarded for it enough to make it worth the effort.  Seems like a completely degrading place to go for a few seconds of gratification…if you could call it that.

The guy had to be totally desperate to want to get it on with an ill, snot oozing, barely breathing babe like me.  Add to this that I’d already refused to go out with him once that evening when he invited me “over to his place for dinner”.  Right.  He was hard up enough to take rejection twice from the same person?  And don’t even tell me any of that is because “maybe he really likes you”.  Excuse me while the tears from my recent breakup turn into gales of hilarious laughter. 

This is my future?  I wondered. Wasting time with freaks like this to find out what?  They hope to get something for nothing? 

“Yep” I texted to my first friend.  “It’s a booty call and he’s not giving up easily.”

I texted a firm no to Booty Texter and he, like all the others before him, who’ve tried the same futile tact, ended the conversation in a huff but not before he’d put in his last “you’re really missing out” digs.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never hear from him again. 

I’m pretty sure I don’t care.

I let my friend know that the booty text episode had ended and shortly after that we concluded our own lighthearted and delightfully non-sexual banter and said our own good-byes, encouraging each other to keep our proverbial relational chins up.

It is times like these, that I am grateful, for the humor of life.  It is these times that make me wonder what I was so worried about a future alone for?  It is times like these that sitting at home alone by the fire with my one guard dog and two cats is really all I want or need.  No demands.  No pressure.  No pain.  Just lots of good old fashioned contentment mixed in with a bit of joy because I know I’m going to be okay, come what may. It is also at these times, interestingly enough, that my own internal focus and vision for my future become much clearer and more defined.

I’m done with The Insane Weekends. I’m done with online dating. I’m actually even feeling like I might be done with being sick. That’s the best part. 

I might even be done with “dating” per se for a while.  I just am really tired of the games, the dance, the eventual disappointment.  Not that there would always be a disappointment, but quite honestly, more and more I’m becoming convinced that if I just go about my life…if there even is someone out there for me…then he’ll appear when the time is right.  It will be more authentic and less artificial and staged.  I’m not saying I won’t ever date, but I’m not going to worry about filling my weekend social calendar either.  It somehow seems to do that anyway without much effort on my part. 

In the meantime, I have better things to do with my emotional energy than waste my sorrows on those who clearly are uninterested and unworthy.  I have far better things to with my time than sort through Booty Call Boys and Disappearing Acts in the hopes of finding Prince Charming. 

After all, in every scenario, Prince Charming went seeking Cinderella, not the other way around. 

Cinderella mourned the loss of her shoe but went on dusting in her rags till the dude showed up. And if he hadn’t shown up, something else interesting and magnificent would have happened to Cinderella. I’m certain of it. 

I have far more interesting things to do than read fake profiles, go out for coffee only to find it’s a no, go back to the drawing board again, and so on. 

Besides, it is far more likely I’m probably going to  bump into him at one of those classes I’ll be taking at The Home Depot on how to install sprinkler systems, lay tile, concrete walkways, or prune my trees because that is where I’m going to be spending my time anyway. 

Illness and Strength…or the Lack Thereof

When an illness knocks you on your ass, you should stay down and relax for a while before trying to get back up.  ~Candea Core-Starke

Ever get the feeling you’ve just been benched in life?  It could be through a job layoff, a breakup, and illness, a divorce, or financial difficulties? Where things seemed to be rolling along smoothly and there seemed to be some really forward motion in your life toward a better tomorrow or a brighter future or a more solid financial picture, now you are suddenly in this surreal place of motionless float. It is as if the video tape of your life was running at normal speed and then someone slowed it to a fraction of the normal speed and now your motions are like moving through quicksand.

I feel like someone pushed the pause button on the video of my life. 

I was cruising along at a pretty nice little clip and then suddenly “sccccrreeeeeeech!!!!” and silence. No motion, no sound, nothing.

Life slowing way down.

That’s what pain does I think.

Yeah.  Pain.  Sadness, Grief.  Loss.  Regret.  Stress. The Common Cold.

All these things, especially when experienced without let up over time, can have this numbing effect. (And I’m a week and a half into this “cold”/flu thing I’ve got going on.)

As a single parent completely responsible for four children (well, three now, since one is mostly out of the house at college) getting sick is nearly a death knell.  In fact, most of us single parents really don’t get that luxury unless we have an excellent support system or family close by.

I have a great support system, but they are mostly single parents as well and certainly not folks I can call on if I get sick and need help with my children or my home responsibilities. 

So, I muddle through on my own, hoping I don’t catch anything.  Hoping I don’t get sick.  After all, if I did, how would I even possibly get well?  I still have to get my kids into school.  I still have to cook for them.  I still have to…

I’ve been fortunate.  I haven’t been really sick, like flat on my back I can’t move sick (and thank God, no serious diseases or illnesses) since the divorce three years ago.

That is, until last week.

It is like the stress, the fatigue of holding it all together, of making all the pieces fit and everything work, hit me.  My body simply gave up and got sick.

I was out all of last week and after two days back at work it is draining every last vestige of energy from me.  I can feel the energy dissipating rapidly by noon. I’m pretty useless after leaving work, and I’m out cold by 8:00 in the evenings these days.

I feel like this year has kind of knocked me on my ass in more ways that one, in fact, maybe it’s the culmination of the last three years.  There are other things too.  Mostly the unfairness of the legal system to ethical and responsible people who end up picking up the pieces and cleaning up the messes after hedonistic, irresponsible and unethical people.

I wish I could just stay down and relax but I can’t.  I still have taxiing to do, bills to pay, income to try to increase in order to reduce debt, meals to prepare and serve, a home to maintain, and children to tend to. Staying down when you are sick is sometimes a luxury the single parent cannot afford.  I simply don’t have the luxury right now. 

I’m not complaining.  I’m just stating the hard, cold, stark truth.  I’m sick and I can’t really rest enough to kick it.  I have far too many plates spinning in the air and if I stop to take a nap several of them will come crashing down.

At times like these, I wonder…

What do other single parents do?  How do they cope?

.

Tickled…Tickled Pink…Actually!

Not sure quite why I chose that particular title for this post…. 

I haven’t done a Google Ad Words search on it to see if it is SEO or anything.

In fact, over the last several weeks, what with the exit of the Oz and all, I’ve kind of done some thinking.  Amazing what you can get accomplished when you aren’t spending your time texting or talking to  or IMing someone on the other side of the world.

Here’s what I’ve accomplished with all the extra freed up time:

I’ve done some thinking, as I mentioned.  More about this later.

I have cleaned my house (not that it was dirty to begin with, but I actually can see the bottom of the laundry pile now…in fact…there is no laundry pile).

I’ve cleaned out my refrigerators.  Oh, and they really needed it!

I’ve gotten myself sick. Yeah, that’s what happens when you try to be the single mom of four kids and hold down not one, not two but three jobs to make ends meet.

I’ve read two whole books in the last week.  Amazing what you can do when you are sick…and can’t really read but you can’t sleep either so…what else do you do other than just stare at the ceiling and let your thoughts make you crazy.

I’ve actually folded and hung all my clothes from the laundry (j/k…I do that anyway).

I’ve gotten caught up on some work projects, na, scratch that.  I haven’t.

I’ve done some thinking. (Here it comes…really…it’s nothing really monumental or anything!)

I’ve made some decisions.

I decided, I’m not going to write unless I want to…meaning…writing under pressure (unless it is fun pressure) is so not for me. Well, at least not until I get a book deal (hahahahahahaha!) and then I will write, I will sign autographs and books, I will talk under pressure no problem…but until then…it’s going to be all about what catches my writing fancy.  So there!

This also means, I’ve decided that I’m going to focus less here on how many search terms might be in my blog posts and just write what I love and do the best at that, that I can do.  Hopefully the masses, or a few of them, will like it enough to tell someone else to come visit.  I know this is probably the death knell to the blogger who wants a book deal and a movie deal out of it, but face it…I’m just not Julia and Julia right now.  Even so, I hope some of you will decide to comment, because that’s where I get my best ideas for further writing.

I’ve also decided that while I am really super sad that things with the Oz and I didn’t work out and I am super sad for my part in the demise of the whole thing, I am not going to let this make me even more bitter and untrusting…and for me…that wouldn’t be a hard thing to accomplish because I could go there.  But I won’t.  Instead of shutting myself down (which I might do at times to just sort stuff out but not forever) I’m going to work on really taking this opportunity to refocus. 

Some quotes that have helped me lately:

To the Oz….

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.  I miss you like hell.  ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

To The Wild Mind…

[A] final comfort that is small, but not cold:  The heart is the only broken instrument that works.  ~T.E. Kalem

To Everyone Out There…

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.  ~Lamartine

And again To Everyone Out There…

In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

To The Wild Mind and To Everyone Else Out There With A Broken Heart….

Love is like a puzzle.  When you’re in love, all the pieces fit but when your heart gets broken, it takes a while to get everything back together.  ~Author Unknown

And this…

Don’t worry about losing.  If it is right, it happens – The Main thing is not to hurry.  Nothing good gets away.  ~John Steinbeck, 10 November 1958

And for all who would, like The Wild Mind, attempt love, fail and dare to try again…these words…

“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.” — Robert H. Schuller

I’m not a Robert Schuller fan per se, but if the shoe fits….

Anyway, I’m tickled pink that I’m not sick, tickled pink to be returning to work tomorrow although it will not be easy after being out sick for a week, and I’m tickled pink that, well, it just isn’t worse than it is.  Seriously.  As a friend recently told me, “Chin up, girl.  You own your own home, your bills are paid, you have food on the table, transportation to work and a job to go to…in fact…more than one of them!  And…you’re an intelligent woman…you can actually learn to cook!  How bad can life be?”

Okay, yeah, that from a guy who is happily married and gets it whenever he wants but, okay, we’ll go with the intent there.

Anyway…can’t really put a finger on it, but I’m just feeling a little tickled pink and I kinda don’t really have any reason to be except that I’m alive and healthy and, well, I guess I’m grateful for all that and considering that Thanksgiving is just around the corner I guess that’s a good thing.

So, given that every ending is the opportunity for a new beginning….that when a relationship ends it can be a great opportunity for reinventing oneself, I have these questions for peeps out there…

What have  you done that helped you overcome a breakup?

Breakups aside, have you ever gotten to the place where you felt you wanted to reinvent yourself?  Did you?  How is it going?

If You’re Like Me

If you’re like me then you are a reader. 

You’re a reader of articles, of stories, of books and blogs. 

And…if  you’re like me…you don’t just read those articles, stories, books and blogs and cast them aside. No “out of sight out of mind” for you. 

If you’re like me you connect with those stories, articles and books, or, at least the ones you love, the ones that resonated with you, the ones that made you think, the ones you gave up moments of your life to pause and listen through the written word, to the voice of another. For a moment, if you’re like me, you enter the world by invitation of the author and you become one with that world.

If you’re like me you think about the characters.  No, you do more than think about them. With the help of the author you create them, breathe life into them, worry about them when you’re not reading them and you wonder about them as if the story could continue beyond the printed words the author wrote as if in some Inkspell-ish sort of way…if you’re like me. 

If you’re like me, you speculate about the people behind the pen.  Those creators of characters, those wielder of words, those visionaries who craft fantasy the way carpenters craft homes and artists their sculptures with such precision and intricate care.  You meditate after a fashion on these people who communicate so clearly and so deftly so invisibly. You think about them, about their lives, their loves, their sorrows, their existence, even if only for a fleeting moment and you wonder.  What kind of person would it take to write something like that?

If you’re like me you become, in a word, or maybe after many words attached to the invisible artists who’ve helped you create worlds, travel distances and experience lives you might never have known.  Or maybe, you do know the life of which they speak and you are all the more drawn to them because the existence they share is your existence as well.  You know it.  You feel it.  You live it.  And someone chose the words to express it that you yourself could not and you are grateful. 

If you’re like me, then in  a small way, you may even come to love those invisible craftsmen who work their art in black on white, creating entire galaxies where only blank, dead, white space existed before.

If you’re like me,  you wonder what happens when suddenly nothing is heard from them again.  The end of a series of books, the last of the articles, a blog abandoned.  You wonder what happened in the life of that person that ended their existence in print so suddenly…if you’re like me.

If you’re like me, in those respects, and you’ve been reading along here at The Wild Mind  maybe you’ve noticed that where there used to be an almost daily account of distraction, there has been a strange and unusual (at least it has to be for The Wild Mind because look how long her posts usually are!) silence of late. If you’re like me, you would wonder what happened in the real world to shut down the digital world of the person you’d grown somewhat attached to and were reading every so often. 

You would appreciate an explanation…if you are like me.  And you would hope that that explanation did not contain news of abandonment, because if you are like me abandonment in all its many forms never goes over well.  If you’re like me you even hate it when your favorite TV series gets cancelled.  You hated it when you finally finished the Harry Potter Series and you hated it when the Lord of the Rings movies were done. You knew it was the end of the story but somehow you wondered, was it also the end of the author?

You might wonder these things…if you’re like me.