This Is It!!

I am done, done, done, and here is the proof! I am generally feeling warm and fuzzy about the whole thing being over. (along with feeling an intense itch from all the peeling skin and healing)
I always appreciate this time of year and I love the experience of tallying up all the things that I have to be thankful for, but this year, wow! Adversity can make or break you, and I will not be broken. I am alive and I am extremely grateful for all that I have. Laters.

Rock Of Ages

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0ZicY7Oqmg

I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t. But there they were, my toes tapping along to Joan Jett, a rebellious sneer forming on my third grade lip. “I love rock-n-roll, so put another dime in the juke box baby….”  Yes, hell was feeling a bit chilly the day the JUKE BOX was installed in the cafeteria of Paoli Public schools. If we brought a dime, (or was it a quarter?) we could personally participate our own debauchery. Raised as a conservative Christian, I knew that I shouldn’t, but man I couldn’t help myself, I DID love rock and roll and Joan Jett. It was auditory heaven, though I studiously tried to act sanctimonious; like I wasn’t enjoying it at all. To this day, I can’t even imagine how the juke box was installed in the first place. Who was the mastermind to circumvent the school principal, committees and parents and sashay in with a juke box as bold you please? I still wish I knew. If my recollections are right, the juke box spent most of its time unplugged in the corner due to complaints from parents. But on those occasional, glorious days of acoustic freedom, we who were born to rock at Paoli Public Schools, ate our fish sticks and pudding with a sassy twist. Laters.

A Room Of My Own

It was while scraping the peel off a cucumber that I experienced true pangs of housewifery. In a Virginia Woolf/Sylvia Plath kind of way, so you know it was very bad. I thought, “Is this it? Is this what my life amounts to? Scraping peelings into the sink while lecturing my kids about discarding Halloween candy wrappers in random places?” It happened again while I sat in the basement on the cold concrete in front of the dryer, sobbing quietly folding dishtowels. Everything I did seemed so pointless, like I was trapped in an endless Groundhog Day of the mundane.

Things have not been easy as of late and sometimes it’s like a cloud settles on me and I can’t find happy. I moved the sad party upstairs to the bath tub and cried a while in the steam too. I thought about many things- dreams that I have put to the side out of necessity, dreams that I have put to the side out of neglect, where I am and where I thought I would be, and how those two places don’t always match up. I cried over missed opportunities and would haves and should haves. I cried because I am still angry about being a bigger person than the person I am angry at, I cried because I had to be angry in the first place. I cried because sometimes people are idiots and it’s not my fault. I cried because cancer makes me feel out of control of my own body.  I cried because I’m probably the most ungrateful person alive because I should be content that I have laundry to fold, and cucumbers to scrape and kids to lecture. I cried because life isn’t fair, but I always try to be and it just doesn’t work that way. I cried because sometimes, even having the whole world is not enough to make me happy.
Then K came into the bathroom and asked me if I was crying. I lied and said, “No, why would I be crying? I’m getting out now and coming to bed.”
 Laters.