too short

I am a little drunk, a lot tired and my toes feel like someone's been banging on them with a hammer. I only had time to write half of today's post, so I will put it up tomorrow morning.

Today was a good, good day - with a cruddy ending, but that's even okay. half is better than none

the irresponsible woman

I always had a strained relationship with my ex mother-in-law. I never approved of the way she did things, lots of things. Does it surprise you to learn that I tend to be overly judgmental and “always right?” I was horrified when she wanted to give my little baby chocolate. Why would I give my baby chocolate or sweets of any kind? My mother never gave me sugar for my first two years. It was my grandparents that introduced me. Is that the grandparents’ job? I’ve been fighting a lifelong addiction to sugar. I’m finally overcoming that aching yen for all things sweet. What if I’d never had sugar my entire childhood? But I hold that my mother’s basis of nutrition for my first two years is responsible for the healthy body shape I’ve get even through two pregnancies.

It wasn’t so much that I was trying to protect Audrey from my candy obsession, more that I valued nutrition and wanted to make sure that every bite my baby took aided her physical and mental development to the fullest extent. Chocolate, sugar – not exactly making that list – I was surprised that she even suggested them. When I balked at the idea, she noted that there was a picture of Audrey’s face covered in chocolate sauce. No, no of course not. It was spinach I told her. Spinach, not chocolate.

That was the nature of our interaction. She would want something that went completely against my idea of good parenting and seemingly resent me for disagreeing. Did I think she was a good mother? I’m sure she was. A nutritionist? No. Her children all grew up obese, not mean-spirited, just a scientific fact. Do I think she has a good idea of what children should eat? Not at all. She gives Audrey bad food and drink because I’m not there to stop her, and that’s the price I have to pay. It saddens me – people who think it is kind to let children eat whatever they want, however much they want. It is better to teach your child proper nutrition and help them learn limits.

Nutrition is one thing. This was another. When Audrey was two, she horrified me by driving her only grandchild around without a car seat. In my mind, that’s playing Russian roulette with a life that is not hers with which to gamble. She got herself in a serious car accident reaching for a cell phone. What if Audrey had been in the car that day without her car seat?

Okay, now I’ve just been ranting. I guess my hatred of her spawned the day I got that paper and it showed that Sam got the $5,000 lawyer money from her. I could just imagine her gleefully writing him a check with the hopes that her evil safety and nutrition minded ex daughter in law would soon be a distant memory. Ugh.

So when Audrey told me last night while we were at the gas station that her granny let her go into a gas station alone to look at the candy while she stayed with the car putting gas in, my blood curdled. She’s still playing roulette with my daughter’s safety, my daughter’s life. It only takes a moment for something to happen. A moment. All I could think about was the little girl whose mother let go to the grocery store bathroom alone only to be followed in by a miscreant who molested her. It only takes a moment. It doesn’t matter at all that nothing happened to Audrey while she was alone in the convenience store, what matters is that something could have happened and has happened to other little girls. Why take preventable, irresponsible risks? A five year old does not belong in a convenience store by herself under any circumstances.

I’m not overprotective by any means. I’m not. But there are certain basic safety precautions every individual ought hold to when entrusted with the life of a child. Am I being unreasonable? Maybe it's dangerous for me to have a blog - it's just too tempting to rant about the dark side.

streaming

I’ve been drifting in and out of my past a lot lately. I pulled up the archives from the first two years of this site that I keep on a memory stick and couldn’t read much at all. I try not to feel ashamed of everything I’ve been through, but that is only possible if I don’t think about it. So I don’t, and I got to thinking about how that is indicative of how I deal with a lot of my life struggles and black experiences.

I was reading a woman’s blog recently, a woman who is dealing with acute pain resultant of the loss of two babies almost exactly a year apart. Her pain is crushing and intense, and as I read it, I reflected on my grief process for Oliver – the whirlwind of those days and months. It still feels like a foggy dream from which I’ve awoken and still am trying to bind the wispy strands together to make a complete memory. Glimpses of the hospital room, the shirt I was wearing, the stocking that fell down my leg during the funeral with only three attendants, the plane ride with ashes in my carryon bag…and sometimes I find myself overwhelmed by them all. Sometimes one moment whelms me, just that one moment when I pushed the button on the door to be readmitted into the PICU ward and stood waiting for what felt like hours to return to the bedside of my dying son while another mother assured me my child would be okay, and I could only smile weakly knowing that in the morning we were to turn off the machines.

But I don’t get those flashbacks, I don’t get that emotion every moment of every day. Oliver is on my mind often, but I block out the pain and deny myself the grief. When he died, I had to get on a plane and fight hard not to lose my other child. How does one grieve with another child on the line? There was no time to reflect and mourn, but to strategize and press toward middle ground.

At Bellevue Square tonight, Steve and I sat on a bench while Audrey played on the tug boat in the play area and both of us watched a little child playing nearby, and I knew both of our hearts went in the same direction.

“Oliver would have been close to walking,” I noted, watching the little pudgy hand slap the carpeted dock. Steve nodded wistfully and squeezed my hand. We allow those moments but rarely. Strength has been our mantra. There have been milestones and rare setbacks, but for the majority of the time our grief is set aside.

Sometimes however, I wonder if I’ve gone about it all wrong. Should I have been more incapacitated, should I be angrier, sadder? Is it better to dwell on him and my loss? What is normal, right?

In drifting between past and present, I have found myself thinking recently of this time last year – when I, a world away from here, was roaming up Bond Street and down Oxford Street maneuvering my growing belly in and around the bustling crowds of Christmas shoppers and tourists. I looked forward to a year so different from the one that is now ending, and I almost feel embarrassed at how naively I envisioned a rosy future. How grey that pink year became. How black.

I’ve become jaded. I’ve narrowed my foresight. I’ve become less trusting. I’ve become less naïve. I feel ruined by 2006, robbed, like I should be holding my arms out, turning circles and shouting curses at the heavens.

But I don’t think about it. Except when I do. Which is why I don’t. I don’t like to think about grief, wrong or right, naïveté, trust, blackness. That’s what the heart box is for. I’ll stop drifting between past and present, and I’ll put that memory stick back in the shoe box. I’ll reaffix the blinders. I’ll pretend.

Everything is okay. I am happy.

Are you?

la vie en rose

Yea! Boohoo( Story tomorrow

What I got today:






























What I didn't get today:

MMM TV GOOD stomach pain bad

Wow, it's amazing how much time you can spend in blog land. That's what I did this morning - surfed blogs. If I missed yours so sorry. Do you know how many blogs there are out there?

You know what else I did today? I washed my sheets and my underwear. Are you fascinated yet? No, well I also stared at pictures of myself trying to figure out which dress to buy. You guys are so helpful but also very divided. I'm going to decide in the next couple of days and then go shopping again. Party number 1 is this Thursday.

Oh, and I know there are nine dresses posted below, but that was because I posted one twice and then removed it, as the tenth dress, which should have been up there, was actually a happy absence, since upon closer eyeballing I noticed that my red lacey girlie wear was visible. Yeah, not buying that dress and so not posting the picture.

Yesterday on break from all of the dress shopping, my mom and I went to see Stranger Than Fiction. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. Will Farrell was quite good, and the story had more depth than I expected. Can I just press upon you how wonderful an actress Emma Thompson is?
Her mannerisms and expressions are not that of Emma Thompson, but those of the novelist whom she is portraying. Isn't it refreshing when an actor is not herself in every film?

This posting every day crap is hard than I thought. I have a stomach ache, wah. So rather than pushing myself to write, I'm curling up on the couch with Steve and the DVR. Adieu

The dress

I am in a really bad mood. Like wishing the demise of several people bad mood. As I drove home from shopping Bellevue tonight, so busy was I thinking of all of the fun accidental ways certain people could meet their untimely doom, that I did not even notice the pretty Christmas decorations on the ginormous mansions that dot the shores of Lake Washington until my mom pointed them out to me. I always notice Christmas decorations, but I had tunnel vision. I was pissed, seething, and I kind of still am. The bad mood, however has stuck. But here's to hoping a blog post will alleviate it a little.

I went shopping today for the perfect holiday party dress. I brought my mom with me because sometimes moms are the perfect shopping buddies and we could use the bonding time. We shopped a. lot. And I tried on a billion dresses, and I just so happened to have worn exactly the wrong clothes. What a moron. You know - never wear four layers on top, and zip up boots with your jeans tucked into them when you are going to be changing in and out of it ten times in the course of a few hours. Everytime I got into a changing room it was peel off blazer, shell, tank top, bra, boots, jeans, socks, try on dress, try on dress, try on dress, put on socks, pull on jeans, zip boots over pant legs, because I'm cool like that, snap on bra, slink into tank top, throw on the shell and button up the blazer. Repeat, rinse, dry. Geez, that was annoying.

I thought it was going to be more difficult to find dresses that I like, because my Amazonian frame is prone to odd fits of the torso and mammery gland variety, but this year was a banner year. And golly, what a tough time I am having deciding between them all. Luckily I remembered to bring my camera, so guess what? You get to help me pick my dress. Isn't that exciting? Yeah, I know, not so much. This dress is for our Black & White Holiday Party, hence the lack of color in my prissy palette, Steve's Brmmm, Brmmm Party, and my mom's Family and Friend's Holiday Party. So whoopee, I'll get to wear it THREE times. I love it. That means I get to divide the cost by three and spend way more. HA!

So without further ado and any particular order, here are the 10 dresses that made the cut, though Steve and I agree there are 4 forerunners. And yes, next time I'll put a little more variety in my poses. What a bore I am. That's why no America's Next Top Model for me. Yeah...

Sometimes I am hopelessly inept. I can't for the life of me label these and I don't feel like organizing them into one numbered picture, so just imagine them numbered right to left. I'm tired now, and lucky to get this posted with 37 minutes left in the day. What a shame it would have been if I failed on day 2 of my resolve. I'll be visiting blogs on Sunday. Leave the homefires a' burnin'

decks the halls with daily blog posts

fa la la la la la la la la

I honestly do not know why they picked November for National Novel Writing Month and all of the NaBlo wha who events that have been developed in its wake. Isn’t November a busy month for people? I know that the US is the only Thanksgiving Day country, but even England has Guy Fawkes day. Couldn’t they have picked a different month – say April? Really, who is busy in April?

By the time we hit November, I have just had Steve’s birthday, then Halloween and the first day of the month is Audrey’s birthday and it goes uphill from there. So how am I supposed to find the time to write a 50,000 word unreadable piece of literary waste? And please don’t’ take this to heart, but I chuckled at the blog everyday of the month people, because isn’t blogging in its essence a daily activity?

But it did inspire me just now, right this very minute. After months, well, close to a year and a half of terribly spotty posting, I am going to make it my goal to post daily for the month of December. I want to get back in the habit of writing. I want my brain to start thinking that way again. So it’s time to stretch beyond. So I know, December is much busier than November, which makes it that much more of a challenge. So booya! You can do it too. Any bloggers that skipped the NaNoBloPoHoMo brouhaha care to join me? If so comment below, so I can exercise my visiting other bloggers muscle more strenuously. I don’t have any pretty badges for you to post on your blog, but it can still be fun.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I've changed the name of this blog countless times now depending on my whim and what I've been going through. When my primary blog was Narcissistic Flight, named so because that's how I described my divorce, I started this blog, calling it The Narcissist's Secrets. When all of my secrets were out of the bag, I changed it to The Narcissist. It was hard to feel like a narcissist after Oliver died, so the blog became The Next Chapter. Fed up with the name changes it became Narcissistic Flight yet again. But I think I've finally found the perfect descriptor for me, hence the new blog name. This is it. No matter what, I am never changing my name again.