Burnt out of my fingertips
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I’m having severe blog-fatigue. That, and I don’t have a whole lot of time by the computer these days. Jelly Man will take control of the computer immediately upon his return to the nest in the afternoon, and since we cleaned the house from top to godbedamned bottom, I’ve had to put in time every single day to keep it presentable. It’s not even super clean, but it looks so much better (and feels twice as good), but argh, enough of all the dirty dishes and all that damned laundry that demands to be loaded/unloaded/stacked taking up precious time of my and Carlita’s lives that we’ll never get back.
But, I guess this is what being a “housewife” is all about, eh? And, well, I actually feel grownup these days. Imagine that!
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I’m giving up candy for a year or so. Attempting, anyway. We are officially TTC these days, not just considering it. I’ve been pondering it since a good six months back, and thought I was absolutely sure we wanted to/could handle two kidlings, but now that the plan is laid and we’re actually giving it a shot I feel absolutely terrified. Can I possibly love another as I love her? (the blogosphere gives a unanimous YES to that question), and the thought of unintentionally loving one more than the other is just plain scary. Both Jelly Man and I are singletons in practice, so we just don’t know anything about sibling love and/or rivalry.
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Carlita is being such a fuss about her naps. They have dwindled to next to nothing, and some nights she can will herself to be awake until 10pm, babbling to herself in bed. It drives me nuts and up the walls, it took me a while to figure out what was so infuriating about her inability to embrace sleep (something I am a champ at), but Jelly Man solved that one by pointing out how she is just like him about sleep. In other words, sleep is for the weak!
* * *
And lo and behold! The Jelly Man arrives. And so I must log off. There is more, but never enough time!
Where I stand, firmly
Monday, April 21, 2008
So, the fight was about work. Such a stoopid thing to fight about, if you ask me. I’m lazy by nature, true, but I still think my “work to live, not live to work” attitude is acceptable, especially after spending many-a afternoons locked out of the house because I had forgotten the keys - you’d think I’d learn to remember, alas no.
As I’ve said so many times before (if I haven’t I have at least thought about saying it), my childhood is pretty hazy, but I do remember the waiting. My mum got pregnant and had me shortly after her 19th birthday. She had to drag my dad to court because he refused to acknowledge that I was his - despite this she has always been keen on telling me that I was a love child. Truth is, I think I very well may have been, but she knowingly got pregnant without my dads consent.
That doesn’t sound very loving to me.
I think my mum was desperate for something of her own. Her childhood was rough, I get that. She was determined to make a life for us, so she worked a lot, not only that, she worked her ass off. And I waited. A lot. We also moved a lot, and I have had two stepfathers, none of which I called dad, but who still had to sort of fill the empty slot - in the end both relationships went bad, both in a rather traumatic way, so if I have had a fucked up view of men during my childhood, teens and young adulthood I can totally see why.
It has taken a lot of years and a lot of unconditional love - not the parent/child kind, which truly is unconditional when done right, but the I love you for you, not for what you look like kind of lover/lover love - to get me to feel accepted as a person, to feel worthy in a way no one had ever done before (in fact my ex, in the same weekend he stayed over and took my virginity, said that I could stand to lose a few kilos, when I asked him what he thought of my naked body. Yup, I should have asked him to pack his bags right there and then, but I was 17, cut me some slack.)
Jelly Man has never once, not a single time, looked at another woman in my presence, or flirted with another woman, or tried to be charming around another woman, or tried to make himself attractive for another woman that I know of, and for that I have so much respect for him. It took me a long time to get to the point where I no longer feel the need to be validated by men, no longer want others to want me, so I can feel like I am someone.
And when I got pregnant, his head in my lap, sobbing softly into my shirt, because he didn’t think he could do it, the parenting bit, and me crying because I knew I would never forgive myself if we terminated, that plus I knew he could. I just knew he could do it. I hadn’t sought for this to happen, but there it was (there she was already) and that was all I needed to know. We could do it.
Jelly Man did the previously unthinkable. He went to the doc, he got anxiety meds, he got his ass to the unemployment office, he got himself enrolled in classes for the unemployed and landed in a precursor to a gardening school. Because the gardening gig would take three years of continuous staying home for two weeks/going away to school for two weeks, he jumped at the job offer he got from S., working at his dad’s company for 4 years while getting a machinist education, even though I know gardening would have been just the right thing for him. He has 2 years left before he gets his diploma.
And he works his ass off, too, so I can be home with Carlita, and be a so-so housewife when I’m down, doing a better job at it when up, and I so totally appreciate what he does for us. I also try to tell him as much whenever I can, and when I do I feel that pang of guilt, looking at the tower of dirty dishes looming over the sink. But, see, I’m working on it - we both are. And honestly, compared to my childhood, compared to Jelly Man’s, I don’t think we’re all that bad off.
Here comes the interception. See, SHE thinks that when I say that Jelly Man works because of Carlita, what she is hearing is “Oy vey, now that we have Carlita we have to do these horrible grownup things, oy vey, oy vey!”, when what I really mean is “Look ma, look! We’re really trying here, and it’s fucking hard, but we are doing it!”.
And we are, we are doing it. And we might be standing with one foot inside and another on the outskirts of society, but that is because we like it that way, that is what we have chosen. Based on our own childhoods, values have been scrapped and others adopted - this here, this is OUR LIFE and we like it this way.
But that little technicality of wanting to versus needing/having to go to work apparently bothers her. To that I spit on the ground and tell her that at least Carlita won’t have to use hands and feet to count all the places she has called home. At least she knows her dad, gets to be hugged by her dad, gets told that she is amazing/funny/gentle/wild/wonderful by the two most important people in her young life.
It’s true that Jelly Man might not be working if it wasn’t for her, that yes she has played a major part in our growing up, and that yes growing up can be painful at times, in fact has been a lot at times, but we also know that it beats the waiting.
And to Jelly Man, I take off my hat - for all the love and support, the trust I didn’t deserve (but do now), and for being Carlita’s dad, all the way. For bringing home the bacon, for worshiping me regardless of what I look like, regardless of what I’ve felt like. Neither of us have been perfect, we have both done hurtful things, but we never let it stop us getting to where we are today.
So there. I won’t tolerate another attack on my household, because it is mine. I love my mum, I truly do, but I won’t put up with her tampering.
This is the line. Do not cross over.
Stuff I’m sure you’re dying to know - or maybe not
Monday, April 21, 2008
Curse on you, sun.
*gasp*
Yes, I said it. All winter I’ve been longing for sunlight, hitting my face, my arms and legs, a faint breeze chasing away beads of sweat. And right now, at 10:45 in the morning it’s not a problem. In fact, it doesn’t start being a problem until 7-8 in the evening when Carlita is supposed to get sleepy and go nighty-night.
On Saturday it was a big problem as she didn’t hit the sack until 11.30 - and slept until noon Sunday. Seriously - did she skip one and a half decades? Am I dealing with a teenager here? Should I be on the lookout for boys trying to get her to run away with them in the middle of the night? Can I please have my toddler back, thankyouverymuch!
Anyway, man, dude.. Dude, man.. Am feeling utterly pooped today, to be honest. I was hoping I’d be up for some gardening today, seeing as, yes THERE IS SUN! (Curse you, except, not!) Jelly Man thought I’d better wait until there has been some rain, maybe I should listen to him. He is, after all, the one who nearly went to gardening school, not me.
Oh yes, and that reminds me of a stupid fight I had with mum (work related, want versus need, oh boy!) - but that will have to wait. I don’t want to dwell on it, so I’m thinking happy thoughts, and those happy thoughts are mostly about POWERTOOLS (I could say I fantasize about sex when I want happier thoughts, but sex is a non-issue, as in, I get as much as I need and I always ALWAYS get what I want, so there is little left to fantasize about - but, POWERTOOLS ZOMFG YES! Happy thoughts, here I come..)
* * *
Oh, and also, we’re so out of toilet paper it’s not even funny. It’s made even unfunnier by the fact that I seem to be suffering from selective IBS. Traveling or having guests always messes with my bowel, but instead of getting constipated, like normal travelers, I go to the other end of the scale and can’t keep anything in. I didn’t even know you could evacuate a meal about an hour after eating it, but my stomach has been giving it a go for the past week or so.
Great times, oh boy!
Fresh, but creasy
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Yes, this family’s collective mental age is about 11, give or take a few months.
And no, I don’t iron my sheets.. What? Are you supposed to?
But, this isn’t just a picture, it’s a step in a really awesome direction if you ask me. It’s not exactly a secret that I’m not the best housekeeper in the world, and I think I’ve come to accept that I never will be, but it’s been so bad that I’ve avoided taking pictures indoors because, dude, it has been so much worse than you could probably imagine, and for us to live like that, for Carlita to live like that, it breaks my heart. Yet I’ve still not been able to DO something about it.
It seems like spring really is kicking in, because both Jelly Man and I have been cleaning like mad and the house is cleaner than it has been for years and years. And it feels awesome!
I know at some point this cleaning enthusiasm will wear off, it’s bound to. But I was hoping to really work in a routine and make it stick while it lasts, so I’ve been taking pictures along the way to motivate myself and see just how far we have gotten, plus I’m working up the nerve to post a few Before/After pictures - but we’ll see when that happens.
You know, it’s really ironic how much I love cleaning products, the bottles, the sponges, the little disposable dusters - although these days I mostly use hot water and vinegar instead of harsh chemicals. And my love for the washer and dryer is still running strong. What is up with that? It’s like I have half a cleaning gene, the halve that prowl the isles at Prisma just to look at mops and microfiber wipes, while the halve that would actually put these things to use is AWOL.
Stupid AWOL half-gene!
