Thirty-two

It's been a minute since I've written here, I realize. I've been spending the time both sitting under clouds and admiring their silver lining.


The first couple of weeks in May are loaded for me. First off, I celebrate my birthday at the beginning of the month, which as I get older is equal parts dark cloud (I'm getting OLD) and silver lining (lucky me - getting old is way better than the alternative!).


But five days after my birthday marks the anniversary of my sister's death, which always puts me in a funky, pensive mood. Inevitably, I replay where I was when the phone rang. The way I questioned the validity of the news, and made my husband call the sheriff to get confirmation, even though the sick pit in my stomach told me I already knew it was true. The rush of regret I felt then, and still feel now.


I think about how she was when I was a little girl, her mannerisms and quirks. How she sounded, smelled, looked, laughed. What she ate, what she wore, the car she drove, where she lived.


And then, how she died, where she was, what she must have been thinking and feeling. Was she afraid? Did she think of me? Uncontrollably slippery slope, I realize, but each year, at least once a year, that's where I am, and that's where I was yesterday.


And then, in the middle of that day and all those thoughts, I saw a picture of my niece. My sister's silver lining. She is hands down the best thing my sister ever did. That girl has gorgeous, strong, colorful wings that flap furiously and take her around the world, and yet she is able to stay grounded. She has seen the darkest of clouds at a young age, and chooses to seek and find and focus on global silver linings instead.


She is the opposite of my sister. She is health and peace and life. I can feel her thankful heart beating all the way from the other side of the world, and seeing her graceful profile in that photograph reinforced for me how grateful I am that she is here.


By just being alive, my niece dulls the pain of my sister being dead. Talk about silver lining. If I could, I would wear that shiny girl like a bracelet. 


Speaking of bracelets and birthdays (and let's throw Mother's Day in there too as an uncomfortable transition because, wow, Debbie Downer blogger), the traveling husband frequently says I'm too hard to shop for, because the only jewelry I wear with any regularity are my wedding rings.


I wear my rings all the time. (I only take them off to slather my finger with this weird cream I have to use because apparently I have eczema on my ring finger from washing my hands too often, as moms tend to do when they have kids and stinky, hairy, slobbery puppies. Nothing makes you feel old like a doctor telling you that you have eczema on your finger. Except another doctor telling you that you have eczema in your ears. Really? In my ears? I couldn't wait to tell my husband that it's official, those aren't potato chip crumbs in my ear, I have a real issue. Marriage with me just gets sexier.)


Surprisingly, I have a point.


Which is that I don't need diamonds for Mother's Day (or my birthday). Right now I need the kind of sparkle that only a silver lining can deliver. I would like some hugs and kisses and potentially breakfast in bed. I want to know that I'm loved and appreciated in the form of me not having to cook or clean anything, and I want lots of smiles and attention in the form of me being sent to a spa where a silent masseuse skillfully turns my body into a noodle, and then hands me cucumber water while ushering me into a private room where I can soak in a warm bath. 


Keith Urban/Robin Thicke/Bruno Mars (if he were taller) serenading me while this is happening is optional, but it would be a nice touch.


But even if none of those things happen, I'm happy. A bit melancholy, perhaps, but happy. And grateful to have another year with all the people I love.


The eczema can take a hike, but all the rest deserves a big outhale, and so, I think, do I.

Twenty-nine

Guess what happened today? I found the silver lining.


No, for reals, I actually looked up at the clouds this morning, after the rain stopped, and saw the sun shining behind one of them. It created a bright, glowy edge along that big cloud, and I thought, Huh. There it is.


Nothing has changed. The taxes are still there, as is every other stress in life like aging parents, missing siblings and the ever-present question of "Why haven't we won the lottery yet?".


But.


While the puppy is a nut job, he's sweet and fuzzy and when he pounces on me at 5:30 in the morning with his 110 pounds and then circles around and drops down ass first on my pillow, it's sort of charming. If you can get past the wind getting knocked out of you by his not-so-soft landing on your ribcage, and his hindquarters an inch from your nose.


Maybe I should get smart and realize it's him telling me to get up for that 6am class so he can spoon his alpha dog.


And my girls are crazy and combative but they are healthy and strong and funny as hell, and all of those things, even the crazy/combative parts, are going to serve them very, very well someday. I'm happy to be their training ground.


Also? Good things are coming. Fun, interesting, different, challenging, new things. They're coming. I know they are. And if this isn't your first time reading this, you know I love anticipation. And today is my favorite day of the week. So today, my coaster is glistening in that silver lining and going tic-tic-tic up the incline, and I'm inhaling and outhaling and letting go and becoming transparent and letting it wash right through me as I fall into the next steps of my life.


I'm blessed to have today and I pray I get tomorrow. I live in the quiet, joyous expectation of good. (I didn't write that, I read it somewhere. Nice, right?) My hair is frizzing into oblivion and I'm pretty sure I haven't weighed this much since the last time I was 4 months pregnant and tomorrow morning my kids will be all, We don't want that weird organic cereal for breakfast, we want Lucky Charms! And that will all be fine. Nothing some product and a little self-control and some marshmallows can't mastermind.


Maybe this is just the Nutella and Real Housewives of Orange County marathon I indulged in last night talking, but you know what?


I have hope! I believe!

Twenty-eight

Does anyone else ever feel like they're choking to death in a pit of what the fuck?


I mean, pardon my French, but if you ask me, I'm too familiar with the taste of that nasty muck.


I'm a poet and I didn't know it. (Sorry, second and third grade humor reigns in my house.)


It's all one step forward, two steps back sometimes, isn't it.


Yay, my bonus is coming! Boo, we owe more than that in taxes. (BTW, can someone tell me what country doesn't suck that also doesn't have taxes? Because I'd like to move there, please.)


Yippee, the puppy finished school with flying colors! Rats, he just ran out of the house and tore across three lawns and into the street with all four of us chasing after him.


I'm sure he thought it was the most fun he'd had since he polluted the RV. And if I was watching it from a neighbor's window, I'd probably pee my pants - which I have been known on occasion to do - at the sight of us all running at full speed but coming nowhere near to catching him. We could have maybe caught his tongue, which was flapping in the breeze, but that thing is slippery.


In the moment though, his escape wasn't that funny. We had just been talking about taxes, which formed the thick, murky base of the WTF choking potion, which came after the fight to get Seven to do her homework, which was timed perfectly with the argument with Nine about why three cups of organic cheesy bunny snacks isn't an appropriate snack in and of itself, even if it IS organic, which led to us being a mere 8 minutes away from the time that ballet class starts. And in case you were wondering, ballet doesn't start in my living room, it starts one town over. That's the moment when the puppy decided to shove his gigantic, hairy self out of the front door, take a leap over the front hedge, and take off like a racehorse heading for a finish line decorated with kittens and milkbones. Except in his case, the race ended with the alpha dog (also known in this case as The Very Angry Husband Who May Have Just Pulled A Hamstring In The Middle Of The Street) catching him and "helping" him back into the house.


Now, if I was the dog, and I'd been listening to the taxes and the cheesy bunny conversation and the whining about the math, I'd have run away too.


Let's be serious, I'm not the dog and I wanted to run away.


But I didn't. I swallowed my crazy, and got in the car with the girls and drove like a maniac safely to ballet, explaining all the way there that no, me and their dad actually aren't the meanest dog owners in the world, because listen girls, it's really, really hard to teach a dead dog that running out of the house into the street isn't a good idea, because he might get hit by a car. Then, I choked back some tears, got a chai tea latte, sat in the hallway at the studio and started tapping away here.


How do all of you deal with the dance of life? Where do you find the extra joy you need to make those backwards steps not quite as tumultuous? Is it juicing cucumber and spinach? Pouring a Chardonnay? Taking an extra exercise class? Writing a blog? Do you meditate? And if you do, on a side note, how do you meditate without falling asleep? Or is that the goal? Because I can always use more sleep. And more Chardonnay. And more dancing and meditation and exercise and green juice.


This is me, begging the collaborative you, to share your infinite wisdom so that I can catch back up with myself (and the running puppy). I need to remember where to find the silver lining on days like this. I need to find my uncrazy self so I can be happy, helpful, smiling, grateful mommy.


I need to inhale and outhale and keep plowing ahead, even with the full realization that the choreography of life will take me backwards again at some point.


Thanks in advance.


Love,


Grumpy McNeedsalot

Twenty-one

I feel a little crazy writing about Whitney Houston, because I don't know her personally. Plus, it dates me and makes me feel like I'm glorifying big, eighties hair bows and neon pink and the pop music that was the soundtrack to my life back then. But her passing has pissed me off, and while I have never met her, I'm going to call her by her first name, and I'm going to take it a little personally that she died when and how she did.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm more than a little sad that Whitney's gone. It just feels wrong. I think there are many women like me who, when they first heard the news, felt instantly like, that's gotta be a typo, there's no way Whitney is gone. Seriously? With her fabulous life and gifts and money/fame/glory? How could it be? What about the whole, learning to love yourself thing? How. Could. It. Be?

I kept saying to my husband (who, shockingly, was in town), She's a dumb ass. How could she do that to herself? Knowing that she had friends who revered her. Knowing that she had a daughter who loved her. How?

Because she's a dumb ass, that's how. And my husband kept reminding me, don't hate. She was sick. She had a disease.

Maybe I'm angry because I've been through this before. So many people have, and shouldn't the rest of us learn from the fatal mistakes we see being made all around us? Don't people understand the devastation their passing causes? Couldn't Whitney see she had every resource available to help heal her, and that she didn't have to end up high and alone in a bathtub when she passed? No, she couldn't see that, because she was a dumb ass.

My sister may have been somewhat of a dumb ass too. (If you knew her, and ever heard her cackling laughter, you'd know she'd be agreeing with me and laughing right this second. So it's all good, I'm not pissing Jesus off or anything by writing it.) She wasn't in a bathtub when she died, but she was definitely alone and she was probably high. She was 45 when she passed. FORTY-FREAKING-FIVE. How many years away from or past 45 are you? I'm pretty close to that number today, and it feels a whole lot younger now than it did then.

But how about that sentence a few paragraphs back, the one in italics. How could she do that to herself? Is that a fair question? Let's consider for a moment that maybe she and Whitney weren't dumb asses after all. It's tough for those of us who aren't afflicted to recognize addiction as being a sickness sometimes. Cancer, that's a disease. Pneumonia, that's an illness. Alcoholism or drug use, from the outside, looks like a choice, doesn't it?

When I tell people my sister died, I get a very appropriate, sympathetic look. When it comes up why she died, and I explain that it's probably due to her abusing her own body for many, many years, combined with her last couple of weeks of life consisting primarily of drinking vodka...the look shifts slightly. I end up feeling like her death was HER fault. And on some level, I tap into that feeling, because if only she hadn't put the drink to her mouth all those times, maybe she would still be here. It was HER doing. On some level, I feel like her death was suicide, because she knew from a near death experience years ago, that if she drank heavily again, her body would no longer be able to survive it. That kind of abuse would surely kill her. And yet, that's exactly what she did. 

A tumor can't be helped, it just eats you alive. But alcoholism or drug abuse? That doesn't just eat you alive. Or does it?

Cancer cells are uninvited, but so is whatever IT is in somebody that drives them to drink too much or use drugs. Some of us can do it whenever we feel like it. We can take a hit or a drink, or we can leave it. We don't have that thing inside of us, whatever that thing is, that tells us we must use.

Or maybe we do, and we just also have something else inside of us that's stronger, that tells us when life gets tough, or we feel like we aren't good enough, or we want a 5th cocktail for the 5th night in a row, that hmm...maybe there's a better choice to make. Maybe there's another way to feel better.

So maybe there isn't a gene that exists in some people, telling them to overdo it, maybe something else is missing instead. For those of us who find ways to cope with stress or sadness or frustration, those feelings, when we have them, fall into our internal coping mechanism and the mechanism churns it up and spits out an answer. It's not always the right answer, but it's something. A process with which to manage ourselves in a way that won't, say, lead us to death. Like, take deep breaths. Go for a run. Call a friend. Take a Xanax. Write a blog. What have you.

But it seems to me that for people who are missing that coping mechanism, all those horrible feelings of stress and sadness and frustration fall into a little hole where the coping mechanism should be. And maybe that hole goes deep, and maybe it's dark and prickly and devoid of answers. And when they go into the hole, chasing after all that stress and sadness and frustration to see where it's going to go, they go too deep inside of themselves, and they start to feel really alone and afraid. And also, it's so dark they can't see their options anymore and they're just waiting for the answers to churn themselves out like they do for everyone else, but unbeknownst to them, that's not going to happen, because that mechanism they think they have, actually doesn't exist.

So in that dark, pokey place where they feel different and bewildered and alone, how good does a drink start to sound? How nice would it be to just tap out for a while. Get reeeally high and just say fuck it for 90 minutes (or however long a high lasts...this is not my personal area of expertise). And maybe it starts as a conscious thought, like, I think I'll get high and not deal for a while. For some of us, the next thought might be, Nah, getting high is probably not the best thing for my body/kid/husband/job/life. I'll call a friend and go for a walk, or I'll eat some ice cream and watch a sad movie and cry it out, or I'll clean the bejesus out of my house. 

Maybe for people like Whitney and my sister, that second thought doesn't come. That first thought, the one that tells them that the only option is to escape, gets all stirred up in their system like a dirty martini, except instead of olives, it's mixed in with that stress and sadness and frustration, and after some time, that's what makes them sick. And the longer it lives, the bigger it grows, until it turns into disease. And the disease then starts to eat them alive, just like cancer can. It starts to make all their decisions for them. It becomes their first thought, and their first instinct, and it manifests itself as need in their body. But the general public doesn't live like this, and so in order to keep functioning in the sickness, people with the disease learn that the disease's best friend is a good front. They have to pretend. They lie. A lot. So much of the time the lie is paper thin and vodka-scented, but they so desperately need to hold onto the life they lead, they believe we believe it with a whole (if broken) heart. But we can sniff it out, literally and figuratively. For the longest time when I was a kid I thought that scent was my sister's perfume (It kind of smelled like White Shoulders or Taboo...what can I say, it was the 70s.). When I got older, I realized it wasn't that at all. It was the smell of lies and sickness and the disease that would eventually take her from me.

My sister wasn't an international megastar like Whitney Houston was. But she had friends who loved her, just like Whitney. She had a daughter too. She had three siblings who had each spent nearly thirty years getting banged up along her rocky road and loved her in spite of it all. She had parents who gave with open hearts and minds and hands over and over and over and OVER again, and yet the well of love was still full to overflowing whenever she came back for more. She knew it too, because she reached out to all of us the week before she died.

I hold my last conversation with her in my heart, in a dark corner, right next to a large pile of regret. I can't recall the whole conversation because it was almost 10 years ago, and I was a new mom, in the throes of sleepless nights and foggy days, and honestly, this call sounded a lot like many other calls from her over the years. A bit twisty and nonsensical. I remember thinking though that I was happy to talk with her, because we finally had something in common. If you read "Seven" on this blog, you might recall me mentioning that we didn't have a very large common ground as I was growing up - she was clutching a bottle of alcohol not long after I stopped clutching my bottle of milk. But as adults, we were both moms. We both had daughters who would be 11 years old in our 45th year of life. There had to be something there now that we could connect over, and laugh about, and love each other through.

But instead, about a week later, I got another phone call. This one came in the middle of the night, and like most middle-of-the-night calls, it was a sharp ring followed by some very bad news. The call came as a shock, even given the history and the knowledge that it could happen, because it had almost happened before. But it felt surreal, as did the phone call I then had to make to my parents. As did gathering with my family for my first Mother's Day weekend, to say hello to everyone, but goodbye to her. As did standing on the boat, with my baby in the Bjorn and my husband next to me, while we each scattered a handful of her ashes into the Pacific Ocean. As it does now when she comes to me in my dreams, and I wake up thinking how real it felt when I talked to her.

Some people end up being able to fill that little hole inside them, so the despair has somewhere to go to turn into answers. I don't know how big that hole was inside my sister, or what shape, but I wish she had found a perfectly-sized piece of self-love to put there. In my mind it would soak up her despair and allow her to see her way into her 46th year and beyond. Both my sister and Whitney gave me memories, and taught me about myself in little ways, and then abruptly left. Nothing I could do about it and no song about learning to love yourself could keep them here.

So where's the silver lining, you might ask? Well. Maybe my sister has now met Whitney, and they're up in heaven reading this blog and having a good laugh. Maybe Whitney is helping my sister turn her cackle into a proper singing voice. Perhaps they are busy advising young angels on how to watch over people on earth who are dealing with their own disease, so they don't come up to heaven too soon and make the wait time for a table even longer at the Heavenly Starbucks, where my sister always gets her Egg Nog Latte and her Cafe Verona blend.

Whitney and my sister can keep my seat warm at the coffee shop for another 50 years or so. In the meantime, I'll continue to miss them both. (One more than the other, obviously. Who can resist an international megastar songbird?) 

Does anyone else hear a cackle in the distance...?

xoxo

Sixteen.

"Mama, what do you want me to be when I grow up?"

"Happy. I want you to be happy, baby."

That response just flies out of my mouth whenever Nine and Seven ask me that question. I know they are probably asking me for some sort of career guidance, but honestly, I don't care what they do or where they go with it. I just want them to be happy. And safe. And strong. And smart. And clever and soulful and fair and healthy and respectful of themselves (and others) and brave and loving. So I guess it's not just happy I want them to be, but that's at the top of the list. 

Which is why I wonder if I am living by example. Do I bring them enough joy every day? Do I show them how to live life with glee in their hearts? Not sure. What I am pretty sure of is that me doing the dishes and hollering at them to HURRY HURRY HURRY UP AND IF I HAVE TO SAY IT AGAIN I'M GOING TO PASS OUT doesn't inspire great joy, nor does it make me seem particularly happy.

I am happy though, and I do respect this life as my only one, and I do know that every day - be it good or total crap - is a gift and that it's far superior to the alternative. But when we aren't necessarily living the dream as we'd imagined it, how do we teach happy? Is it by our living a happy life in whatever form that life has shaped itself into? How possible is that on a daily basis? I try to slap a smile on my face whenever I can, but maybe that's not enough. Maybe I need to be my own student of happy, so that I can lead by glowing example. Is my stress level weighing them down too, just because they are near me? Do I need to do a better job of hiding it all, or of actually not letting it affect my own happy? Yes, probably on both fronts.

Note to self: Exude great joy at laundry and dinner and repeating myself 100 times a day to no desired result. It's still better than the alternative. What if I didn't have those little pumpkins to holler at? What if my life was quiet and clean and devoid of dog hair and backtalk? Would joy seep from my pores then, or would I want what I didn't have? 

The trick is that the things that do bring us joy aren't always what fills our day. My girls love cookies and movies and play dates, but their daily allowance of fun is doled out in tiny portions, given to them in between big, time-consuming things like vegetables and homework and please finish up in the shower because you've been in there so long that I'm dehydrated just thinking about the water that's being wasted. And my joy comes from relaxing with family and music and catching up with friends and writing and taking class and laughing with my husband. But those seem to be the little glittery dust particles that float in and out of the spotlight that's focused squarely on the hours spent driving and planning and cooking and cleaning and saying no and teaching lessons and making lists of things to do and then doing those things and repeating and repeating and repeating myself.

But I look forward to those shiny bits. Remember I said once that Thursday is my favorite day of the week and Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because both of those things hold promise of what's to come? I can get through all the muck of the day because I love anticipating the special moments that I know are just a phone call or a tickle or a laugh away. Just knowing that joy is going to be found can bring the happy around. Just knowing is the silver lining in each day.

Granted, when Nine and Seven are bickering, and then one of them starts repeating "NO! NO!! NO!!!" louder and louder to the puppy as he innocently forages in their room for shoes and pencils and socks (i.e. his happy), and the shower is running (see aforementioned cause of drought), and the oven starts beeping because I'm burning the roasted brussels sprouts, and then my husband's phone rings, interrupting our 30 second chance to catch up on the last three days...well, sometimes it's hard to find that silver lining. But I know it's there. I should tap into that content feeling. The peace of knowing joy is around the corner, even when the corner is blocks away and in order to get there I've got to walk barefoot, uphill, in the snow.

Some people don't have happy waiting for them. I do. And my girls do. They have happy woven into every day of their lives and waiting around the corner. And they need to have happy waking them up each morning, and happy taking them to school and happy helping with homework and happy loving them to sleep at night so they realize that even though life is crazy and Mama is crazy and the puppy is crazy, we can all still be happy.

Hence, I've decided to be outwardly happy. As much as I can. I'm going to joke instead of yell. I'm going to smile instead of frown. I'm going to say "I love you" when Nine says "no" to me for the umpteenth time, and when Seven whines at me about homework/chores/dinner/bedtime/brushing teeth, I will hug her. 

Time for Mama to walk the walk and talk the talk. Time to give happy and grow happy and teach them how to find their own happy, in - and sometimes in spite of - their lives. Maybe it's as simple as acting like the dog (apart from the innate desire to eat poop). He seems to find great joy in very simple things every day.

So I will be more like the puppy, except laughter will be my stolen slipper. Because "when I grow up" is happening right now, every day, all around us. I can't slow it down, but I can infuse it with as much joy as possible. And hopefully one day, when growing up turns to all grown up, they can look back with eyes that sparkle with happy memories, and joy that lights up their hearts. Which will set my own heart afire.

Outhale.

Three.

Dr. Seuss has it down.


I watched The Grinch tonight (not the vintage version, the new one with Jim Carrey and a frenetic Molly Shannon), and I realized the idea of "keeping up with the Joneses" is a universal theme. Poor Mrs. Lou Who lived next door to a fabulous (lonely, secretly-in-love-with-the-Grinch) woman who had a shiny machine that shot out Christmas lights onto her home in perfect order. In an effort to keep up, Mrs. Lou Who tried to string up everything from chandeliers to stolen street lights on her roof.


I'm always in admiration of my friends' beautiful homes. The perfectly chosen furniture, color schemes, choices of art, scent of candles, lack of dog hair on everything...you get the picture. There's nothing out of place, not a backpack or stray shoe in sight, and everything in their world seems just right. Sometimes I end up going back home to our little 1930s cottage thinking, huh. Yep, there's the friendship bracelet maker with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book balanced on it, which lies under the unpainted wooden wreath, next to the frosted gingerbread house, close to the heating vent, which valiantly tries to push warm air out, only to be trumped by the cold air sneaking in due to the lack of sealant on the doors and windows.


Granted, if I had friends coming over, that whole pile (save for the gingerbread house, because how charming is that this time of year?!) would be shoved into whichever closet would hold it behind a closed door. And those friends might leave my house thinking, man, that girl has it all. Clean house, nice kids, beautiful husband.


So I get that sometimes it's about what we put out there. Sometimes our story is frumptastic because that's all we can muster, and sometimes, to quote another Dr. Seuss movie, it's a perfectly painted picture: "In my world, everyone's a pony and they all eat rainbows and poop butterflies!" (Horton Hears A Who - seriously, one of the funniest scenes ever.)


But other times, comparisons can be restorative. Not as a matter of jockeying for position, more a matter of jonesing for some kind of peace and perspective.


Yesterday, I visited a nursing home in my town. From the moment I walked in - from a side door, where nobody questioned who I was or what I was doing there - I felt sad. (Disclaimer: I cry over movies, babies, old people, commercials, and almost anytime I see someone else crying, whether they're faking it or not.) The bedrooms were small, and shared, and the common room was packed with the sweet old folks who lived there. Not in a festive, comfortable way, more in the realm of, here, let me move this sleeping fellow in his chair over so the ornery lady who doesn't understand what's happening can scoot by with her walker.


All at once yesterday, in that nursing home, I felt thankful for my parent's situation. Until then, I hated the idea of my Mom rehabbing her hip in a nursing home, with my Dad alone at home. Now, I'm so much more grateful for the quality of care she is receiving, and the fact that they both have friends who visit to keep them company and bring them what they might need. I am happy she has her own room, with a big window, and kind staff to help her do the things she isn't able to do by herself right now. It's hard for me to see her relinquish her pride and privacy. It's difficult to swallow the fact that she and my Dad will eat Christmas dinner there, and then have to tuck into bed separately.


For most people, including my folks, it's the small rituals we rely on that fill our days and nights with normalcy. In the case of my parents, it's the coffee tin they've had since I was a kid that my Dad pulls out every night so he can set the coffee maker to brew automatically before they wake. The little water dish he puts out on my Mom's bedside table, so their cat can hydrate at will (I'm not saying she isn't spoiled...and I realize this may be an admission of how spoiled I myself was as a kid). The fact that I saw when I visited them last week that my Dad - even though my Mom isn't staying at home - habitually made their bed with my Mom's side turned down, the way he does when she's home, so it's easier for her to climb in for a nap or a good night's sleep.


You may guess where I'm going with this. Yes, yesterday I saw another silver lining. It made my eyes water then, and now. And it made me realize that nobody eats rainbows or poops butterflies. Everyone has a junk drawer that gift cards and screwdrivers and brownie vest patches get lost in. And we all know that as bad as we think we have it, on some level, it's okay for now.


Seven days until Christmas. Not a lick of shopping done on my end.


You're welcome. :)

Two.

Today I was talking with a friend - and before you imagine us sitting near a fire in a tidy home with a hot tea Chardonnay in hand and awesome leather boots on our pedicured feet, take note that I was on the street, getting tangled up and manhandled by the 95-pound puppy when said friend happened to drive by.


My delayed point is that we were chatting about how busy our week seemed to be and I said, with full conviction, "I mean, it's already WEDNESDAY!". She gave me a blank look with a half smile and said, uh, it's Thursday. I looked down for several seconds as if the real answer to why I'm crazy was written on the side of her car.


This happens to me a lot. Not just the day of the week thing, but other things too. I consistently feel like I'm on a raft, swirling around inside my own head, with all my jobs and tasks and things I'm forgetting to do rushing at me trying to capsize my day.


Even when I try to compartmentalize things, which I'm pretty good at, the compartments tend to open up and spill over and everything slips into each other's way.


For example, I have a day job, and I work from home a lot. But I'm still a Mom, with a husband who travels so much in the month of December that I pretend he's not coming home even when he's supposed to. Which means that when I get home from dropping the girls at school, I have a puppy who wants to play (read: eat poop outside, and don't act shocked, I've probably heard your kids talk in my back seat about how your dog does it too). Laundry that isn't going to wash itself. Errands to run. Dear friends I'd love to catch up with. Breakfast dishes to do, lunch to consider and a dinner plan to make. 


So as the minutes turn into hours, I try to slip other things into quiet work moments. Take a break in the action to check personal email, or look up that recipe I was meaning to try. Text a friend or my husband. Add to my "to-do" list. Some people might call this multi-tasking, and on some level I agree. But when it happens more often than it should, you end up being the equivalent of a quarter of the way through 7 books at once, and mixing all the characters and story lines up.


I'm working from home today, in full view of The Jesus House. This is a little barn with a loft that my parents used to pull out every Christmas for my brother and I to fight over play with. Granted, in my childhood home, Christmas=gifts and Easter=chocolate, so The Jesus House was a treasure, but we didn't fully understand the meaning behind it. Now my daughters love to play with it too. In fact, a couple of years ago, as they set it up, I learned that Ariel, The Little Mermaid, was present at the birth of Christ. I told you they are smarter than I am.


Moving on.


Each character was always wrapped in tissue and my brother and I would take turns choosing; whichever ones we got, we got to set up. We tried to feel around for the baby, or his bed, because it was cooler to set up baby Jesus than it was yet another sheep. And we always tried to get "Gloria" - the angel holding the banner that says "Gloria" on it, who hangs on the tiny nail at the roof's peak. What? It says her name RIGHT THERE.


My second delayed point is this: look at sweet Mary. If any of us find stress in our day, let's ponder hers for a minute. The woman gave birth in someone else's barn, after walking around for hours on end begging for help. I called for the epidural guy for a while from the comfort of a clean hospital bed and thought I had it rough until he showed up and turned dark into light.


Back to Mary. There she kneels, by the baby's little bed of hay, hands gracefully crossed at her chest, head tilted to the side, peace written across her face. I'm pretty sure she had more to deal with back then than I do today, and yet, I can't remember what day of the week it actually is.


I don't know the trick you use to keep it together, even when it's all obviously slipping through your fingers. The best I can do some days is stop. Take a deep breath. And while I feel the rise and fall of my ribcage, and my shoulders releasing my ears and settling down my back again where they belong, I remember that this breath is a gift. And my chaos is a gift, as is this day, and these thoughts, and my able body, and the friends I don't have time to talk to, and the husband who is gone, and the daughters who fight with me every morning about the same things. 


And there it is. A tiny sliver of silver lining. I told you it was in there. And it was hiding under an Ugg boot. Not anymore, however, because the puppy has now eaten it in it's entirety. 


It's going to be a great night.

One.

It's taken me until now to reconcile what "trembling ovaries" means to me, because it started as one thing but has evolved into something else.


Let me try to explain.


I am the daughter of a mother who two Thursdays ago, turned around too quickly and ended up falling down in the kitchen and fracturing her hip.


I am the daughter of a father who has loved his wife for 51 years and counting, through very thick and some thin, and who is the best man I have ever known, hands down.


I am the mother of two daughters who at age seven and nine are already smarter than I am in lots of ways, and who already go through social and academic situations that I don't have any idea how to handle properly.


I am the sister of three siblings - one is in my life, one is estranged, one has passed away.


I am the wife of a man, and the fabric of our relationship continues to weave itself together to the point that I can't see which is my thread and which is his anymore.


I am a woman, who used to be a girl, who loved to dance and laugh and listen to music and draw and sleep.


See all that love you just read about? And stress? You know there are some good stories lurking there, if you read between the lines. Don't worry, I'll get there.


My point is, that THIS is what causes my ovaries to tremble now. My middle name is Worry. I am a scatterbrain. What do I get fritzed about first? My Mom's health? My Dad's strain? My kids? Their bodies, minds, health, happiness, future, safety, Christmas gift list? My own body? My husband's? The puppy? My best friend, who lives so far away that her kids don't know me because I can't bring them after school treats and read them stories (or ignore them while I drink Chardonnay)? Do we have gas in the car? Money in the account? Water in the Christmas tree stand?


My point is that as a woman, everything causes my stomach to flip. And when it rains, it pours, so when five things are jiggling the egg baskets, a sixth inevitably adds itself to the list.


It's all good. I know there's a silver lining, although sometimes it seems buried under a lot of mud and dog poop and torn Ugg boots. In the meantime, it sure does give me a lot of material for a blog.


If you've got ovaries, or know someone who does, perhaps you'll come back and read again. Feel free to comment too, as we go. Hopefully, the more I lay it out there, the less I'll have to panic about hot lunch and hot flashes and hot ladies flirting with my gorgeous man.


Have a nice day. :)