broken wings

i'm not really sad tonite. just a little road weary, i suppose. i may not sound much better but i finally feel it, knock on wood. bella woke me at 2 this morning with a sore tummy. we argued about suppositories, which is just something you do, when your child is cursed with the *can't poops* (or ibs). you get used to these occasional colon hiccups on the road to *what works for you*. afterwards, i went into a coughing fit and sprawled out in front of the toilet, i thought, great. this is how i'm gonna go. "woman dies from flem". fitting.

i almost caved and went to the doctor this morning but as it turns out, a little shampoo and a shave in a hot bath can go a long way. i laid back down, afterwards, and didn't even feel guilty about going back to sleep. i swear me by some zicam, kids. they can start floating offers in my inbox aaaany daaay.

we let bella's butterflies go at the park, this afternoon. all but 1 flew away. his wing appears to be broken; i don't know how or when. so we brought him back home & bella picked him a bunch of flowers and told him they "could be roomates". and he was "still beautiful."

we had a quiet night together. watched AI; had some dinner. and now as they both sleep, i find myself contemplative. do you ever have those moments that you wish could just be bottled. those thousand tiny instances that sparkle ever so briefly in the ebb and flow....

so much has happened over the last year. too much to even comprehend. i've had days so dark and so very painful. and i've cherished days of absolute beauty and grace. i have felt such loss. and so alone. there are moments when i feel like i'm never gonna get this mom gig down. days when i'm not so sure i want to still be jason's wife. after all this time and all we've been through, at the end of the day, when everyone gathers around the table....

but thank you, God. thank you for the courage or maybe the ignorance, to get back up. i'm not running. not even jogging yet. some days, this life that i know, still inches by at such a snails pace, while everyone else is better and faster than me. they get it. but with every little bit, every little hitch, every single solitary moment that i allow myself to breathe, i feel myself picking up just a little bit of speed. some day, maybe i'll even feel the wind in my hair.

in the meantime, even tho my wings are broken, thank you for bella. and for reminding me i'm still beautiful.

losing faith, just a little at a time

dear god. its me again, margaret.

you know. the chick with the raw,peeling nose. in the pajamas she hasn't changed out of for two days. with the button missing off the top and the alfredo stain on my boob?

i would really, really like a reminder.....a little proof......some evidence that there's actually some good and decency in this world, tonight. please.

i'm flinging my mom button in a corner for a few hours. as it turns out, i am terribly "mean, wretched and unfair". my 7 year old, the drama queen. thank you, thank you. encore at bedtime, i'm sure. which, incidentally, is being moved up by at least a half-hour this evening.

at supper, jason took one look at my sexy ensemble, cocked an eyebrow and in his best john wayne -meets- cap'n jack sparrow, said: "well helloooo there lil lady. are you tryin' to seduce me, you cheeky strumpet?"

i would also like to annouce my abstinence from female friendships, heretofore. instead, intending to only pursue committed relationships with robots from here on out. robots that come with compliments and soft batch chocolate cookies when i insert quarters into metallic cleavage.

"i have way too much sh** on my plate right now to deal with this...."

this was said, right before i was hung up on, this afternoon. after i had asked christy if she was going to stay in touch. after a long silence, after she had called to "see how i was doing. oh, and she left her cigarettes here...she'd need to stop by and pick those up."

"too much on her plate." wow. so, i guess i don't. or i guess i do such a grand job of hiding it all that everyone thinks they can heap a big steaming pile o' poo right on top of mine. really? seriously? because this is why i'm in therapy. because, for some reason, i can't seem to say no and stop myself from loving people unconditionally and not opening my arms and my heart and my home open wide for them to rip me a new one.

it could be this nasty sickness talking. the fact that it hurts to breathe, cough, blow my nose.....it certainly doesn't help that my offspring came home from school with attitude plus, tonite. or that my mom called this morning to remind me i'm fat.

just tell me this. why do some people just not care? why. why do some people open their mouths and use and take and not care one bit who they step on, in the process.

and why is it, that i care so much?

and why is it that every time i get just a couple steps forward, i feel like i fall a mile back....

tonite, i don't want to understand. tonite, even my lucky wonder woman underoos aren't helping.

get down with the sickness

i'm just passing through while i wait for my rendezvous with tylenol night-time cold and sore throat *with cool burst* to kick in.

mom called this morning:

:croak:
ewwww. are we tired or sick??
:croak:
well that's a bummer. are you taking your vitamins and massaging your face?
:croak,croak:
well i guess this isn't the best time then, but i was just calling to see if you'd like to try this new diet pill thats out....

rain, rain

jason got his work bonus, friday. and while there are so many more sensible things that could have been done with Extra Free Money that we didn't have to work for, there are also times when you just need a break from insanity. whenever i have those rare moments of guilt, i am reminded of the sage advice given to us, a newly engaged couple, years ago, by a crusty old co-worker. he said he didn't have any shower gift for us but he could give us some words of wisdom: "work to live. don't live to work".

words that hold true, when you're struggling to make something of your life. when you have average jobs with average pay and living week to week, just is. when you weren't smart enough or lucky enough to do everything right, once you hit adulthood. or, when you find yourself in your 30's and still without a higher education or a car paid off or a mortgage or anything proper, really, to show for yourself, in society's terms. years of bad planning, poor choices, just bum luck, can eat away at you. and clawing your way back up to the top sometimes takes more energy and sacrifice than you could ever realize. so those moments, few and far between, when you splurge, i can't judge anyone for. i understand, all too well.

yesterday i felt hellacious. i'd spent friday night at work, self-medicating with zicam and herbal teas. after my ladies were in for the night and my cleaning was done, i mostly chilled, literally, on the couch. i tried to focus on bad reality tv and hemming some of bellas pants.the night was long. very long. and not a friend, to me. by the time morning rolled around, it was everything i could do, to get the girls thru their morning routine and wait for my shift relief to arrive.

when i arrived home, it was to the hustle and bustle of my busy little family. jason had errands to run and an uncle to help move. bella was packing a bag to go with nana to her church groups' spring fling. i did little but kiss everyone hello and goodbye and then flop down on my wondrous, most fabulous bed in all the world, and pass out.

i woke up in a coughing fit around 11 and called my manager, asking for the night off. when jason arrived home in the afternoon, he snuggled in next to me and said he had an idea: we could still go to gatlinburg . why not....he'd grab us some fannie farkle dogs and we'd veg out in the hot tub until we passed out from the sheer awesomeness of it all.

we had joked about escaping to gatlinburg if he got a bonus check. we'd just run away for a day and the world be damned.

decisions. i, of course, had banked on feeling human, so as to acutally enjoy the experience.

i felt like unadulterated crap. but the very promise of a hot tub was like handing me the keys to the kingdom. i nearly regretted the choice on the way up....its only an hour and a half drive, but we took jasons car, which has no ac. so not only was i burning up with a fever, sore scratchy throat, congestion and all the added goodies that the "s" word brings with it, but it was literally hot.

thankfully, it still being the calm-before-the-storm off season, the traffic wasn't bad. and the scenic ride up, is always breath-taking and beautiful. i stopped to get more sinus medicine and we got a gorgeous room, which turned out to be a loft, with full jacuzzi. jason did get the aforementioned sausage dogs, and with my nasal spray, i could almost taste it. and then, my friends, we soaked in every last bit of hot, bubbly goodness that jacuzzi had to offer. jason was wonderfully attentive and snuggled with me all night.

one day. when i'm rich and famous and out of debt.... i too, shall have one of these wonderful water inventions. its too bad you can't just rent a hot tub. after watching reruns of the cmt show,"can you duet" ( have you seen this?? and is it just me or does that one judge need to totally brush the hair out of his eyes!!), i didn't sleep worth crap. i burned and chilled the night away and couldn't wait to come back home. we stopped at the apple barn for some breakfast and made our way out of town.

today is a dreary, rainy day. which i will find helpful, when i snuggle back into bed in a few. i think the medicine and all my tea is helping, but its taking its sweet time. on the way back home, i had time to mull over the decision of whether or not to go into work tonite....did i really want to waste vacation time on the fact that i feel like absolute crap? but as it turns out, i do.

we got home to discover christy was gone. you'll remember she'd left out of here thursday night, saying she needed to go pack up her apartment, and she'd called that one time... but not since. and so sometime last night or this morning, she let herself in. took all her things and just left. no note. no phone message. no email. just gone. i called her sister to see if she'd heard from her. she had, and was surprised i didn't know ~ christy is "coming to stay with her for awhile". the same sister that doesn't know she's gay, for fear she will reject her or worse yet, confirm that God will. the same sister that won't allow animals in her home, that she could "never live with".

there's a part of me that wants to be loving and gracious and kind if or when she does make that phone call. but there's the other, very real & wounded side of me, that is angry and hurt. the side of me that knows i opened my home and my life to her. that we sacrificed alot and did so much to try to help. and she, in essence, slapped us in the face. i don't really know what the lesson in all of that is. and part of me, doesn't really want to.

but maybe that's the problem....maybe the lesson is that i'm supposed to be fixing me. not everyone else. that maybe i'm supposed to officially learn to bloom where i'm planted and be happy with me and who i am and what i have. with enough. to focus on my relationship with jason so that nights like last night aren't so terribly rare. so motherhood doesn't seem so hard. so the hours in the day don't seem so few.

there are moments, when the walls in this room, seem to close in on me. especially when money is tight or i'm feeling the pressure and demands from all different directions. but there are also moments, like now, when i am extremely grateful to God for what we do have. and that even tho we may not ever have excess, we always do have enough.

hows that, for irony

well it just figures that the very day i decide to get myself healthy and stay healthy, that my white blood cells would all die off in a sub-bubonic plague. having not 1 but 2 smokers around, the past couple weeks, has been a terrible influence on me. i'd never so much as looked twice at one of the cancer sticks and in fact, had never even bought jason a pack up until 2 years ago. even when it was all the rage with my girlfriends and their black clove and cigarellos. 'never interested me. before we moved in together, and way before bella came along, that was my one prerequisite of jason, that he smoke outside. i hated the smell. then all of a sudden in the face of my marriage and life as i knew it officially spiraling down the loo, i bummed one off jason one day & inhaled the nasty sucker down, thus beginning my on again-off again relationship with tobacco. i'd bum one here and there, from time to time.

i know. i know. shocking. the good news is i don't need it, as say, jason does. but when life gets stressful, that becomes the first thing i want to reach for. when mom had her heart-attack, when ray lost his leg, after the rape....

i still hate the smell...still don't allow it in the house, but still visit my dirty nicotene secret from time to time.

you'd think i'd know better by now. after last years bout with pneumonia and onset of the most Ungodliest Painful Asthma the world has ever known, you'd think i wouldn't be so stupid. but stupid is as stupid does, and i have been so stupid on 11 such occasions over the past year. yes, i keep track. i got a hankering for one the other day , actually, when all that dog drama went down, and i puffed 2 of them b'natches. the very next day, i decided to get back on my vitamin wagon that i'd fallen off ever sooooo gracefully, drink my weight in ice water and in true "lets DO this" form, walked a brisk 2 miles around the track that night, ignoring my heaving busoms.

add to this, my evil plan to cash in some vacation time on my next paycheck, and you have the makings for a right good disaster.

therefore, i spent all of yesterday and last night in sinus/chest/chills/congestive torture. i came this close to calling into work but bucked up and bought a bottle of zicam to get me thru the night. i wish i hadn't. and i have a sneaking suspicion that i may not be as lucky tonite. my plan is to knock myself out in abit and see if i'm miraculously healed by tiny heavenly faeries while i sleep. that could be the nyquil talking, but i'm not one to argue.

anyway. what i really came to talk about was this: guess who called my house last night. guess. you'll remember awhile back, my lengthy speel about the upstairs neighbors and the notes and the general funk and the "what to do, what to do", and such. well she called. and talked for like, 20 minutes. nicely. and asked for help. 'said she'd seperated from her abusive boyfriend. could we please keep an eye out for her, and so forth.

the irony in all this, is that tho i've felt really rather put out with christy, i don't think the neighbor would have ever reached out, had christy not embaressed the crap out of me by knocking on their door and asking for weed last week.

'funny, how the world goes 'round.