Going Backwards

Without negating myself I have put myself in your place every time I have a concern.  Each and every time it comes down to this...you are spreading yourself too thin.

My mind inevitably sees a man that pursued me with confidence and consistency until you accomplished the simple goal of calling me your girlfriend in a short four months after meeting you.  I still often refer to you as the guy I'm seeing/boyfriend sort of.  I see a man that sees only through is eyes, but doesn't see me.  You do considerate things when you are not with me and want me to acknowledge what a good boyfriend you are before I get the chance to do it on my own.  You want me to be patient and understanding when you fall short of promise or expectation given.  You say you love me, a lot.  Well, admittedly you've dropped off in the last couple of days.  You said you were worried you felt more strongly for me that I do for you because I don't say it.  You admit that I do show it and that you have never been treated better, ever. 

Thanks for the used vinyl.  Thanks for new. It really makes up for the time you don't invest in me, with me.  

I do not thank you for the times you've given me an expectation and then changed the plan leaving me with so much less than I deserve.  You acknowledge it.  You accept that I am probably angry, but you hope not too much.  How could I complain?  We don't have enough time to even address it without me looking like a shrew.

I like to make sure I know where my feelings are coming from before I put them forward.  A few times I have dealt with my own issue quietly without including or inflicting my feelings on you.  Unfortunately, for the last month or so,  we are just going backwards.  All the things that put you in front of me, mainly you and your drive and effort, aren't there anymore.  Those little things that seem to be other forces bringing people together are disbanding.  I continue to respect you.  I am patient when I could be within relationship rights and be a total twunt but I have no interest in putting forth that kind of effort.  You are slacking and expecting me to make a lot out of a little... ... ... and the old me flickers and wants to start me on that path of building something out of almost nothing.  However, she flickers, like deaths last struggled breaths to hold onto its dysfunctional life.  The new me just won't do it.

I am so interested in wasting my time. 


A man, a woman...we are the sum of our actions.  Words mean nothing.  You moved fast and I am watching you respond to your inner demons with no self check, no thought.  I am seeing a man that lacks confidence.  That supposes he can heal a thing that is falling down with patch-work fixes and empty words.

You're spread too thin and for all the I love you's you don't Really want to do the work.

Focus on your daughter.  She's 17 and probably still needs you and her mom.  Focus on dealing with your most recent past mistakes that you are still actually paying for.  Focus on getting a stable home of your own when you are done paying for the one you signed a contract on and are paying for but not living in.  Focus on the final ending of that relationship and getting out of your parents house (even if you only camp there when you are briefly in town).  Focus on your new advancement at work and buy records for just yourself and let me buy my own.  Then you only owe yourself gratitude. Focus on your professional success and stability, then maybe you can find time to add someone to your life.

I find it interesting that you are surrounded by people who want to see you happy.  Who warned me not to hurt you.  No one warned you not to hurt me...
How could you?  You're the nice guy right?  You just can't understand...after-all, you bought me records, you'd text and call.  You'd tag me on Facebook.  You bought Interpol tickets for San Francisco.  Happy Valentines Day Babe.  Or was that happy birthday?  The show is after Valentines, and way before my birthday, but yeah...Thanks Babe.  I won't go into how your turn yourself inside out the second your daughter stands up and you helicopter her to the point of her getting short with you.  And PLEASE don't get me wrong.  I respect you as a father!  I really like your daughter.  She's a really neat kid and I like her despite your behavior.  But again...maybe you should just focus on her, your career, and getting your own place.

My conflict...

I met a really nice guy (or so it seemed) and that's so new to me.  Am I being frustrated by the new job, less time, and his dedication to his daughter?  Would I be putting off a really kind man out of my life and self-sabotaging?

So I think... ...

Today I met a friend, a very loose friend, for coffee.  He was the first person I met when I moved to this part of California in '89/'90.  He was my 'boyfriend' when I'd come to the city with my grandparents every weekend while they were helping my grandmother's sister with their mother as she convalesced in my great aunt's home.  It was short lived and we were mostly friends.  We moved in far different directions and it was interesting catching up on the last 25 years.  We talked for four hours.  He's done so much in that stretch of time and he's a bit self absorbed but his stories are good.  All over the US.  All over the world.  Always doing something along with his military career.  He'll retire Lieutenant Cornell in four years.  He will go to Germany and be dad to his two youngest and he has plans within schemes within plans.

He is only interested in what's fun and if it ain't fun he ain't doin it.  He's undecided about relationships.  He thinks I am bored.  I might be.

I think I am focused where I have always been focused.  I have two boys.  One almost ready to graduate with no plan and one a freshman.  I'd like to see them move into their lives.  I envy my friends freedom in knowing that the mother's of his children are doing a good job and giving him the freedom to pursue whatever it is he decides he'll pursue...mainly his military career.

He said I have always been blunt, something another male friend said to me (of close to the same many years of knowing each other).  He also said I was aloof.  One friend said I was the same old (insert my name)...living in the moment.

This moment is what it is.  I can't invest in someone that doesn't know what he wants, or someone that is nice but inevitably leaves someone (me) behind as he tries to make everyone happy...and feels secure enough to expect me to be patient and understanding.  Hell, grateful, somehow for his being in my life.

My conclusion today...relationships are complicated and I find men in general have no idea what is going on, and frequently don't want to know as long as things flow their way.

   
 

Rapunzel, Rapunzel...Let Down Your Hair. No.

What would you be willing to do
To gain my heart and make me come to you
What would you be willing to do
To hear me sigh your name while I say I love you
What would you be willing to do
To get closer to the core of me where I smolder and burn
What would you be willing to do
To thaw what encases me that I fall into your arms

The best possible time is now.  Your eyes burn with wanting to break the code
You have my attention, my questioning mind
You are getting my response

Such a fast learner, like your life depended on it.

Like your life depended on it.

Oh Dear wouldn't you be willing to hear me when I say
I don't care what you say
I'm paying attention to you with my questioning mind.
My response was a flood tempered by smooth and unbreakable walls
I let you see the smolder and burn
I let you hear the sigh
I paced your course on the waters

I gave you the code.

And though you are kind.  And though you say you love me
And though you try with burning eyes when you touch me
And though you strive your passion fractures as an arrow caught by wind


I see you slipping your grip
My feeling comes and goes
Because you miss opportunities to add heat to the thawing ice

Now I am dropping lines in the water where you flounder
Hoping to recapture the passion you cast my way
The passion you don't sense is missing the mark

What would you change if you become complacent.

Don't let me down.  Please let me down.  Don't let me down
Don't be complacent
I'll be lost to you
And I will feel as though I failed something not meant to be mine

The Sweet Life

I sit here thinking, how could I speak to what is in my mind?
I am not as well spoken as he is.  My voice trips over itself and I stub my tongue on the stones of my teeth.
I am not as delicate as she is with prose fragile feelings and empathy.  My mental fingers grasp and fumble and shatter beautiful things.
I am not as blunt, as honest, as true as those two opposite sides of the coin.  The woman that feels she is selling herself and the man that would pay any price to let her know she is precious.
I lie to myself.  I hide my truths under translucent blankets that don't cover my feet or my face or my shoulders.  I am so fucking vulnerable and my words have become anorexic.  Thin and malnourished.
I have forgotten how to read and never knew how to write or speak, even after those remedial classes.
I have taken to listening to others words, viewing others minds and art, feeling others feelings.
I use them to define my own.  I use them to validate myself, to anchor my raft on unsettled and rolling waters.  Everything touches me.  Everything moves me.
So I set myself apart.  I did this a long time ago.  My little slip set adrift and seeing nothing but the tempest I have never had a reason to come to shore.

I have begun to eat words.  I have begun to feed on art, music.

Well, I suppose I will see what comes of it.  At the moment I am distracted.

Lipstick Weekend

just keep applying and smile
say as little as possible
because lips are pretty but
not always what passes through

over and over
the past would push through
scratching at tenuous contentment
gouging at delicate inner ears

unprepared response
just felt raw
coloring a bright and sunny
perfect day duller

eyes looking out at rain
shined streets, collected puddles
reflecting blue skies and soft drifting
clouds with promise of more rain

just keep applying and smile
looking out the window at
city streets passing traffic
people I wish I could be

would my life be different
if I'd kissed you instead
would my life be
happy and full and blessed

a step slightly more left
or right
and I'd feel the sun on my skin
and maybe not feel this

Akeru and the Question, Always the Question

 

 

(Enough Already)

What am I? 

What have I been up to?  Let's be honest, I've been going with it and not thinking too much.  At least when I am not over-thinking.

I'd like to keep it to just me.  Not Mom me.  Not work me. 

I get out when I can and love it.  I will see a band here and there.  Catch lunch or dinner with a girlfriend.  Drag my sons out with me (I know, no Mom me) to a band, an art showing, a science presentation.  They act like they are doing me a favor and either like it in the end or act like they merely tolerated it while talking about what we saw and did.  I love it.

I've had sex.  Twice.  I'm sort of seeing Matt.  Was that eye rolling I hear?  A quiet groaning dimming the light of the screen?  Or perhaps layered with that the slipping thought of, 'It's about fucking time.'

How was it?  Interesting.  Different.  Confusing.  It's like most things with me, a little running list of pros and cons.

I typed a lot, then erased it...I'm not sure what to say and what not to say.  I suppose lately I have been considering a few things.

-What is intimacy to me now?
-Do I even know what love is?
-Am I even capable or did everything from two years ago burn it out of me?
-Are my hang ups valid?
-Are the hang ups I have telling?

I bought a truly bitch'n pair of heels today.  You know, the 'Heels that can change your life' kind of heels.  Heels that make people turn their heads and watch you with their eyes.  A guy asked me if he could give me his number.  It's flattering to be acknowledged as being pretty.  It's nothing sleazy.  I'd like to point that out.  I've never been turned on by that kind of attention.

Hang up: I don't feel I could wear these heels with Matt because he's barely my height when I am barefoot and it bugs the hell out of me.  But in the end, if he's the most amazing companion, does it fucking matter?!!? No.  It wouldn't bother him either, if I wore them.  But I am not entirely past it and I vacillate between feeling shallow and total acceptance either way.

I have an acquaintance, she was telling me about a few men she's dated.  We're both single Mom's with two kids.  Hers are much younger than mine.  She has this uncanny ability to meet men that are loaded, but crazy or just riddled with problems.  As she was describing these two men she'd met I couldn't help but think about how great Matt is in comparison.  How lucky I am to have met a grown up man I really enjoy spending time with. 

This makes me question what it is I find attractive, what I want, what I have wanted and why.  Am I settling just because he's consistent and nice and good company?  I feel like I am always waiting for the shoe to drop, the rug to be pulled out from under me...whatever expression that follows you like. 

I worry I am not dating enough.  I am not dating at all, except Matt.  This makes me nervous. 

Interestingly I have been spoken to a few times.  Today that man asking me if he could give me his number.  He paid me an incredible compliment.  I gave him my card but I won't meet him...not interested.  The other night seeing a few bands at a local venue, I didn't even know this guy was talking to me at first.  It is that unfamiliar to me to be spoken to when I am out.  Again, not someone I would date.  He's young and he wanted me to 'hang out' with him at his place after the show.  Um, thanks but no. 

I am afraid to commit to someone.  I don't know why.  Matt has said a few times he has fallen for me, that he thinks about me in the long term.  He's said he understands why I am hesitant, that he was in the same place not too long ago.  He lets me know where he is at and lets me have the freedom to be where I am.  His no pressure approach and how easy it is for us to be together makes it so damn easy to want to be around him more. 

My girlfriend asked me if I would go out with someone else if I wanted.  I might.  Then again, I might not.  I'm not comfortable considering meeting someone else for a date considering how much time Matt and I spend together, but then again I am worried I am not holding to my commitment to Date...

My thoughts and my actions are two different things.  I spend time with Matt and enjoy it, and sex isn't the leading factor to our spending time together.  It is just that easy.  I acknowledge my hang ups and concerns and think about them.  I think about a lot of things, positive and negative.  I think and I spend time with Matt and there isn't anyone else catching my attention...and I'm not looking...

I guess those questions never quiet.  I don't trust being in love.  I'm not sure it has served me well in the past.  I don't fully trust love either.  Why would I?  Yet, I want to.

I suppose I have a lot of learning ahead of me.  I don't mind.

I Think Red Velvet Cake is Gross

In my city we have a few terrific bakeries.  My favorite is in an historic section of town and they specialize in cupcakes.  Freaking amazing and delicious cupcakes.  I rarely ever go and I am so very relieved it is not down the street.  My favorite is the Maple Waffles and Bacon cupcake.  Then the Salted Caramel.

I have never had red velvet cake anything that I think is a delight.  It is one of those foods that looks terrific and doesn't deliver.  It's dry.  I also find cream cheese frosting disgusting.


This was a random thought that has nothing to do with my post.

I do like the word Velvet. In the styling of Lloyd of Dumb and Dumber I like the word Velvet Ah Loht.

I am having a really good hair day.  My labs came through as normal.  Ultrasound is next appointment on Thursday at 8:15am.  I thought my period was finished but, I ... well, lets just say it isn't.  I guess things are touchy down below and they'd better get over it because I am not going to live my life this way for much longer.  Stubborn Ginger Attitude rising.

I just spent $300 at Walmart on groceries and a few bathroom supplies for the boys and I.  I am offended with Walmart and myself for my shopping being that much.

This isn't stressful at all considering work is ridiculously slow.  But hey!  I have food in the house and two teenaged boys.  It should last until tomorrow night.

Matt and I are going to his friends reception Saturday.  I have a wedding in a few weeks and I am thinking of bringing him as my plus+one.  Does that mean we are seeing each other?  We text every day.  I think about him a lot.  The things he says, his behavior.  I very much appreciate the things in our lives that slow everything down for us.  Considering all the details I find him to be extremely consistent, positive, aware.  That is really attractive to me.  I still don't know what to do with it all, so I am not doing much but going with the flow.

My sons are balancing out in the lippy and flaky departments.

Everything is fairly peaceful.

Also, I like Doctor Who, my black classic vans, skinny jeans, pretty dresses, and reasons to laugh.

I am sure I like many more things but that's good enough for now. 

Seriously? Seriously?!!?

I have been on my period for 16 days.  Let me tell you, I don't feel any different but for having to change my Tampax two to three times a day, and the light and occasional cramping.  Oh, like a regular period that lasts four days and only one of those actually feels like being on my period.

If you feel this is a bit on the TMI I do not apologize.  I have been to the nurse practitioner, same day I called to report my little problem because Kaiser feels it is important enough to address asap.  This is the first time it has ever happened.  No, no there is no chance I can be pregnant.  Not unless a non-virgin, sterilized by tubal ligation mother of two can experience immaculate conception, or something that approximates it.

I had the pleasure of having a uterine biopsy.  During a uterine biopsy the patient gets to lay in a cold room undressed from the waist down with legs spread, feet supported by these little cold foot holds.  Then the practitioner inserts the speculum.  This opens up the patient.  Not too comfortable but tolerable.  Tolerable because there are these lovely pictures stapled to the ceiling for the patient to focus on.  Then a mini speculum is used to 'stabilize' the cervix.  What a delight!  Let me try to describe it.  Ever had a bad phlebotomist stab your vein with a needle that feels like it is the size of a pencil?  It's kind of like that, but so much more multiplied and INSIDE of you.  Then the biopsy is performed on the uterus.  This was the part I was informed would be very uncomfortable.  I think it was a set up so I wouldn't try to run away when they stabilized my cervix.  The biopsy was a walk in the park on a pleasant day in one of the pictures over my head by comparison.  Then the patient gratefully experiences removal of devices, left to clean themselves up and dress and leave on their own power.  The cramps driving home are a lovely side effect, followed by ibuprofen upon arrival at home.  I do not have the results back yet. It frightens me to know there is little the medical industry can do to detect cancer or other problems, even with a pap test.  Pap doesn't cover ovarian or uterine cancers unless they metastasize to the cervix.  Isn't that a pleasant thing to learn?  After all this, minus probing my butt, I will know without a doubt I am healthy.  I will KNOW it.  Unless I do have cancer.  I wonder if I should try to schedule the butt probing? 

I do have the results back from my scan for varicose veins.  I have varicose veins in my left leg.  No shit.  Now I have a rescheduled consultation with the surgeon.

I have the results back from my hormone panel.  Apparently, and this due to my own research since they didn't provide normal ranges for comparison, I am in normal ranges.


Barbara, the friend I have let go, offered tickets to a Social Distortion show I really wanted to go to explaining to me that we can't ever be close friends again, but we can be show friends.  This is after attacking me for not letting her know that her (at the time) ex-boyfriend text messaged me as he was using me by letting me know she'd been using me in their relationship battles.  I declined politely.  I wanted to say, 'Are you kidding me?  There is no fucking way I want to sit in a car with you for 6-8 hours or enjoy another outing with you to see a favorite band.  She then posted pictures of herself and the boyfriend enjoying the show.  OMG.  She also tagged me on Facebook about shopping in a little thrift store we like.  All after letting me know she'd like me to not text her back and thanks for taking her boyfriends side and being disloyal to her.  Then blocking me for a few hours so I couldn't defend myself or explain Again even if I wanted to.  Which I didn't.

Crazy.

My fourteen year old is really frustrating me.  My 18 year old has been lippy...

I'm tired and I need a road trip to somewhere nice for a few days.

I am broke.  So broke it ain't no joke.

I'll watch Doctor Who until it is time to go to work to do my girlfriends hair color for free, and a clients haircut.  Gotta bring in that $25.

Ah, but something to look forward to.  English Beat at a favorite venue coming soon.  Maybe I can't have a holiday, but I can dance my ass off and pretend my life isn't complicated for a few hours.