it feels sort of normal to be up at 3:30 a.m.

I am back at work again.  I sort of missed it.  I am really very good at not sleeping.  Quite good!

Well… maybe today my hubby would dispute that.  I worked out a lot this week and kept to the macrobiotic sort of thing.  Last night I was on my feet all night doing this and that at work.  I came home, got three hours of sleep and woke up feeling hungrier than I ever remember feeling.  I am the maker of the food in our household (not for sexist reason, simply happen to be the more talented in that arena) but I was too sleepy to figure out what to do so I sort of wandered around the house like a hungry beast/monster/something until we ended up ordering in.  I went back to my cave and fell asleep. 

I found a tool to help me sleep during the day: watching things with the commentary on.  It has to be an episode of something or movie I have seen before so I don’t really pay much attention to the screen.  It has been working like a charm!

I am watching ‘Murphy Brown’ here in the lobby as I wait for a late, late check in.  I think I am still very hungry but I must stick to my eating regime.  A visit home restored my very real fear of death.  I am paranoid, you know.  It is important for any person who must deal with me to know I am paranoid.

Speaking of my neuroses…. I was thinking about my husband and I in terms of the ‘couple friends’ scheme of things.  I realized that we are both, uhm…. quirky- each in our own way, I guess.  Dealing with us one on one is probably not that strange but the two of us at once is probably odd.  I noticed this the other day when we were talking to a couple of friends out on the street.  Our apartment is also sort of proof of this- a concentration of the things that are off about us: my random stockpiling of obsession-of-the-moment items (I am a bit of a collector, off and on) coupled with my husband’s real inability to deal with furniture. 

I have made a bold decision.  I am going to decorate.  Re-decorate doesn’t really apply here because we didn’t put so much decoration effort in when we moved in.  We simply placed our stuff where it happened to fit and tried to work with that.  I think I am ready to take it to the next level.  I am starting to believe in color.  Also: my son has started to become really obsessed with furniture.  He recites the possibilities to himself any spare moment he has “oh mama, a rocking chair! A white bookcase! A classic sofa!”.  He ran into my parents’ apartment and exclaimed with joy as he found each piece (“Oh mama, they have a blue armchair!”). 

A three year old obsessed with furniture.  He is also reading magazines about archetecture and design.  I think “Metropolis” is his current favorite.  All this in an apartment that is so poorly appointed…

But I have big ideas.  I used to daydream about a different place but have soon fallen in love with the revolutionary idea of adapting to the cheap and functional space rather than dreaming of a new one.  I kind of like the idea that we really could live anywhere rather than the idea that we are going to search for the perfect home.  I mean, we dig the neighborhood and can walk almost anywhere we need to go.  We aren’t having any more children… why not adapt? 

Blah- I have to go do stuff.  I need to turn off “Murphy Brown” and turn on some music and pretty this place up for the morning time when I will be greeted my upper middle class soccer moms and dads alike who will not like their coffee and point out anything that does not meet their approval.

Back to it!

 

 

i had a big picture post planned…

…but I guess it will have to wait.  Why? I didn’t take the pics!

So text, text, text.  How dull!
What have I been up to in the past week…hmm….

I have been daydreaming (constantly) about color and redecorating.  I have been very inspired lately and can visualize what I will do to the apartment. It could be a home… a swell, swank home.  I talked to the landlord this morning and he not only gave me permission but access to his account at the paint store.  How exciting!! But how can I do this in the constant presence of a three-year-old?  Nightmare!!! I need help! Ug.  It will be lovely… my home, when it is done.  Really!  I need to do this.  NEED TO.

I have been hanging with an aspiring writer and a couple of legit (whatever you want to make of that) artists lately.  I get pushed and nagged a lot lately.  I have people to answer to now, and a little more inspiration.  Maybe I won’t get enough written, but at least I will get my apartment painted?

Tequila tastes so nice, doesn’t it?  I was just thinking about how much I would love a little swig later on, but I am working tonight.. all night! yaya!  I actually miss some of my guest-friends.  It could be kind of fun.

My child is screaming at me.  I guess I can’t really get into anything today!!

back to this

I haven’t so much as looked at this site in over a week.  I have been off the grid in so many ways, really.  I was pretty much near the very real, literal end-of-the-road.  The end of all roads!  Far, far, far away in a little village that has become more quaint and more… something than it ever seemed when I was there.  I am suspicious… but that is another entry entirely.
So I am home and now, maybe, summer will run an uninterrupted course and the three of us (mumum, dah, and son) can all remain under the same roof doing all of the things we plan to do.  Sounds lovely to me.

Today is my husband’s birthday!  Instead of spending the day working on an intricate culinary request I am making BURGERS.  I think it is the first time that beef has been purchased and placed in our refrigerator.  It was a request: burgers with onion rings.  I added a salad to the request.  I can’t do anything so straight-forward so the the burgers are a tad gourmet.  I am not sure if this violates the nature of the request… but I can’t help it.

I always return from being away with so much more clarity about my own life.  Does this happen to anyone else? I came back feeling so ready to just be me in my little box of mine.  Nothing seems to be bothering me.  I can’t remember my previous complaints.  I woke up today and took the tot for a long walk.  We came in and had lunch and read on the porch and waited for the storms to start.  I watched “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” while he was napping and cried a little too much.  When the boy was we played at the table- he makes me read numbers, the biggest, longest ones he can come up with.  I couldn’t remember what was past the trillions today.  After this we started on some pieces of the birthday meal and put candles on the cake.  We each had a little bath and now I am about to start picking everything up and getting more stuff done.

I have been running and drinking a lot of water.  I have read three books in three days.

It is good to be back.

team ‘me’

Well, team ‘us’- I think I legally have to include my husband in my team.  If not legally, I am sure there is some marital obligation on some level, eh?

My humours? Unbalanced.  I am rarely actually angry.  I got angry today! and quite! Its the same old human story: you give, you give, you help, you extend yourself- then all your advise is ignored and you get treated like a big sucker in the end.  I will be wary of other people’s messy lives for now.  I got me and mine to consider.  GRRRR.  Hear that? MY TEETH GRITt-ed.

I was co-miserating a little with drunk fanclub tonight.  Yes, I have a drunk fan club (go team me).  They come see me at the desk over here and ask me a lot of questions and look through my phone and mp3 player and ply me with drunken conversation that keeps me awake.  Tonight was a little funny.  We were listening to the Smiths and, uhm, like David Bowie or something and talking about death and family and feeling angry and all of that.  My mp3 player went ahead to the next song… “Little April Showers” from the Bambi soundtrack I believe?  The little guy and I share everything you know.  It was comical.  Maybe I take myself too seriously.

After I finish up here I am heading out of town for a bit.  I will miss my husband too much.  I will! Sappy little me. Don’t feel sorry for me! Feeling sorry is for suckers. 

a little something about father’s day

This is a week like none other in terms of utter poopiness, but my husband rocks! He is the best father in the world.  AND when a man asks for Spinoza’s ‘Theological-Political Treatise’ and pancakes with homemade cardamom syrup as a Father’s Day present, one just has to give in, right?  We are leaving him behind for a week but I am sure he will have good times with his new book, beer (its only like the fifth time has purchased beer since our three-year-old was born!), and maybe the Celtics taking it all!

We will miss you though, da!

days could maybe be weirder-

I am not sure.

I think a thunderstorm will start up any minute- I cannot really tell.  The sky gets dark then clears… over and over.  My son and I went for a very early morning walk and had a little talk about how my sister will be over today and she will be very sad.   We then talked about how it is my mom’s birthday today and she will also be very sad.  I told him that his great-grandmother went away but where she is she can recognize people again… hmm.  I didn’t tell him that his uncle’s step-father died… I just don’t know what he knows.  I think he thinks death is something that happens to bad robots or something.  He cried when he saw an owl die in a cartoon once… This is the rough part of the parenting thing.  Death and potty training, man.

The easy part?  We are back in our apartment singing to the Kinks and Tegan and Sarah and eating strawberries.  I feel so a little guilty lately because I think my life is, in all ways but financially, easier than most.  Maybe it could be complicated, but it isn’t.

I spent the weekend listening to drunk guests spill their guts.  Maybe I should be a bartender.  For some reason people want to tell me things.  I sit there and let them look through my mp3 player.  We watch documentaries and syndicated television and they ask me about my son and my husband and tell me about whatever sordid things got them to where they are now and I solve some of their problems and hook them up with fresh towels… In some cases save our company a lot of business by calming down freaked out people.  This weekend I prevented a small racially motivated crisis.  Maybe sometimes people just need to listen to those poor drunks far away from home.  Trinidad and Tobago is pretty damn far from here.

So I am going away.  My son and I are heading up ‘home’ to see my parents, pay my respects to my late grandmother… just be in that place I never go to anymore.  We have to leave my husband behind (and on Father’s Day!) because he has to work (the job is brand new).  I was feeling very weird about all of this until I saw some pictures early this morning. They were pictures of endless green fields and deep, deep woods- all of the things I don’t even realize how much I miss.  I felt something sort of heavy in my chest.. homesick! I got homesick.  Homesick just in time! Just in time to take my son out to the middle of nowhere and show him the trails in the forest that were mine when I was just a little older than him.  It makes me feel so strange.  Maybe it is because I miss my grandmother?

I wonder how much more of my father’s side of the family I will ever see or hear of again now that my grandmother is gone?  They are such a mystery to me: Waco cult, restaurants I never really patronized, the Blue Oyster Cult? A lot of things are the stuff of legends… slightly unconfirmed legends.  Some are confirmed legends and just as strange.  Maybe I will make good use of my visit to learn a thing or two.

It sure is hot and humid today!  I think we will go get ice cream.

r.i.p. a farmer’s wife, a farmer’s mother

I was sound asleep last night when the phone rang.  I thought I would have some idea of when my grandmother would die.  I didn’t have any sort of spectral visitation or anything…. actually, I spent most of yesterday in a confused daze looking for a missing credit card.  I went to the gym, suffered, came home, had a drink with my husband, watched the Celtics beat the Lakers, fell asleep then woke up suddenly to my phone ringing.  It just didn’t seem like the right night.  Does that make any sense?

I mean, my grandmother has been suffering from dementia for years.  She has always recognized me, just not been able to understand the when and where of our meetings.  At some point in the past year she just sort of went into her own little world and refused to open her eyes for long spells of time.  Her body weakened and weakened and last night, I guess (my father just happened to be there, I suppose there was no real big illness or incident at the time), she just went to sleep.  That part sounds right.  If you are going to be confused and annoyed for the final five years of your life it is best if you can just end it like that: somewhat painlessly.
Anyhow- the timing of this: my sister and her husband are currently at the bedside of his father while he very quickly dies of cancer.

Also about the timing- I was going to visit my grandmother next week.  She was living six hours away… I felt like I was going to be visiting her for the last time.  I guess I visited her for the last time already… which is kind of okay.  They last time my son and I went to see her she was having a pretty good day and understood that my son was her great-grandson and was having a great time watching him doing his little kid tricks.  She was conversational and happy… If she had made it to next week it would not have been like that.  She would not have even known that I had visited.  Maybe I am just telling myself that it is alright to have planned everything one week too late.

I don’t really know that I can do her any justice in a description today.  She is one of those people that will be eulogized with kid gloves- but that is just how it was with her.  I think it is what I like about her.  She gave me a lot to aspire to without any bullshit.  She really did believe she was better than everyone else and today I will give her the benefit of the doubt: she really kind of was.  She was nothing anyone would imagine when they hear “farmer’s wife”: she was stylish and sassy and on top of the world.  Her mother died when she was young, she was never really taught ‘her place’… she just sort of attacked the world like a man in a fake Chanel suit (maybe it was real, I never checked), in heels, with her hair done… in the middle of nowhere.   When she was alone with me she talked about Kennedys and chasing New Haven boys and advised me to marry a Jewish doctor (uhm, she is a gentile for the record).  The only boyfriend I had that she ever liked was the one I married… He was the only one classy enough for her.  The others were quite simply, too simple.  This is interesting stuff for a woman who lived on the last mile of the only major highway (actually, only road at all) that even reached her town.

The selfish thing: I loved her for being my biggest advocate.  From colored lip gloss when I was five to a faux fur muff to warm my hands in on the way to a Christmas service: the woman understood what I needed to feel like a girl living on a farm!  She bragged about me to anyone who would listen.  There are people in this world who think I am a prodigy, a genius, a concert musician?  Thank her for that.  I needed that, though.  I needed a place to go watch tabloidy television and eat ice cream floats and look through catalogs once in a while.  If it wasn’t for her I would be a complete frump, I am sure of it!
Anyway, I had better cut this short.

I will close with this: WHO THE HELL TOOK THAT CREDIT CARD?