13 Years Old

My son has this habit of late.  He sneaks up on me.

He's driving me crazy.

I am trying to take back the wheel by keeping my promises.  Promises like, going to school with him, and making sure he Repeats 8th grade if he continues to flake out no matter how bright and capable he is. 

Life's a hammer.  I hate being part of that.  I am a Mom.  I want to protect and defend.  I want to be a safe place from that harsher part of life.

Yet, it is my place to teach him how to navigate as much as I can. 

I feel I am failing my sons terribly.

#1 truth of parenting no one tells you.  #2 truth of parenting, even if they did your stupid ass will still have kids not realizing the internal turmoil you are handing yourself wrapped in a bundle of guilt and neurotic worry.  #3 Truth of parenting, now that they are here...while you might fantasize about all the things you'd like to believe you would have done if you'd only had a clue how much their existence would change you... You'd Do It All Over Again, Or, You Wouldn't Change A Thing.

I wish I had a village.

My City Smells Like Orange Blossoms

I like to drive fast on the highway, with the windows down and a favorite cd playing.  Lately it has been a metal band.  This is not my usual style but does increase my speed.  I like feeling the wind in my hair, and the sound of the tires on the road.

The weather is warm, leaning toward hot, and sunny.

I like it when while I am driving I hit pockets of fragrance.  Particularly orange blossoms.  The heady fragrance always makes me smile and feel relaxed.  I guess it just triggers the good synapses in my brain.

Tonight I went to a local nursery.  I loved the earthy smell of damp soil, water, and plants.  The flower scents mingled gently with food and music playing in the background quietly.  Jazz.  I am glad it was quiet because it wasn't my kind of jazz. 

My girlfriend and I were catching up.  She had a spicy chicken bowl and I will say it, mine was better.  It was a pesto chicken hogie.  Seriously, delicious. 

There are these gourmet food trucks that hit different locations in and around the city and I occasionally go.  This location is in my old neighborhood so it was fun to walk to the nursery (which has been hosting this as a dinner venue on Friday and Saturday nights) from my friends house just up the street and around the corner. 

I haven't been to this one yet,  The beer garden and live band were nice touches and made it special.  Usually I go on the weekend, they set up about a block from my work on Saturday's and Sunday's at a business that sells fresh and dried fruit and nuts, and fire wood cut from old orchards.  I went with my oldest son on Sunday and it was so nice to just spend time with him alone and eat some good food.

I wouldn't say it is the cheapest food, but it is a nice change from the norm and it never disappoints.

When my friend, her daughter, and I sat to eat and catch up we were over off of the beer garden and I had my my back to the other people milling about or sitting and eating and talking.  I don't normally do this but I was focusing on my friend and trying to read her as this is the first time we've spent time together in months.  It was really relaxing, though I wish I could have done more people watching.  I would have happily stayed longer just relaxing and enjoying the scenery, watching everyone come and go, the kids playing among the adults and the rows of plants and flowers.  This nursery has an almost a park-like setting with little sitting areas, areas for pots and areas for flowers, a few small gazebos.

There had been a band playing jazz when we arrived.  Soon after we got our food and sat down they'd finished. 

Aside from being tired from work it was a really pleasant day.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does, Ergo, I Am Stupid

I say this, with humor of course, because I have been so filled with sunshine and delight of recent that rainbows shoot out of my eyes and I'm so joyous I skip everywhere I go.  So I am facetious, I am glib, I am flip.  I have to make the fears funny if only to me.

Why, you may be asking, am I am Stupid?

Because I recklessly throw myself into situations that make me the butt of the joke.  Even if only a few choice (and proven to be cruel) people know it.

I confessed my crush to a friend that could, if she should so choose, screw me. 

Why have I done this?  I am asking myself the very same question.  Old friendships, old habits.  Perhaps the feeling of risk and disaster appeals to me. 



Oh well.

Maybe it will be Wonderful.

Does that happen when you are 40+? 

Does wonderful happen?  Take a risk and find success...

I was hoping to use ergo in a sentence.  So that's good.

The Real Conversation

I keep dreaming of the beach.

I could feel it.   
The fine grains clinging to my skin under little hairs of my arm  
How the sand makes its home in my cuticles
Under my nails and between the webbing of my fingers.   
It's settled into the lines on my palms.   
I can feel where the blanket falls short of my calves 
How the sand shifts all warm then cool under my legs that extended past the towel. 

I feel the sun on my skin and bright in my eyes as it shines off the water, the sand, the sky.

I'm looking at the Gulls.  

They are just there.  

Chatter.

The real conversation was the sand and the sun and me.

Peripheral Vision.

When backing up my car I look over my right shoulder.  I have found I can move quite fast and accurately this way, when driving backwards.  Including backing into my narrow garage.  I find I like to challenge myself, how fast and how accurate can I do this without running into anything?   I haven't run into anything yet.

Peripheral vision is a wonderful thing.  I remember once having a conversation with a Ninja.  He was explaining his peripheral vision was quit honed.  He could see more than the average person and was able to 'see' his environment more thoroughly, see details others ignore or never register.  He explained it helps him see and/or recognize a threat as well, as in sparring.

I feel I have a decent scope in my peripheral vision.  Compared to every else in my known family my vision is also quite good.  It must be reading in dim lighting and those weird exercises the eye doctor had me do with a pencil after I explained to him I could change my focus at will.  Strange man.  I don't think those exercises did anything but make me an excellent eye crosser to delight of my youngest son who at almost fourteen still likes it when I make faces at him. 

I have found recently if I am too close to something it tends to blur and strain my vision.  That sucks.  I now have thoughts of me with a gigantic magnifying glass while I sit with my house coat settled above my knees and my support hose making my legs look like sausages while I try to read USA today, or coupons or something.

I don't cut coupons.  I don't because when I tried in the past I always forgot them, or they were for items I didn't really care about anyway.


I've started writing to myself in Word Document.  I find I can be brutally honest there.  Something I have had a terrible time with that even when blogging anonymously.  I still hedge on the full monty info sharing.  So writing in word, I started yesterday, is an outlet.  Yay for me.  Besides, what's the Meme I saw?  Don't tell people your problems.  80% Don't Care, and 20% are Glad You Have Them.

I am well acquainted with that 20%.  I had a brief moment yesterday where I was giving the mental finger to a 'friend', then wondering if he was right, then my eye became tear-filled as well as a 'friends' that read the abusive things he'd written to me after I reached out to him in frustration over something, and then that calm that descends over me... that calm decisive moment when everything opens up... my spiritual peripheral vision...

The Armour of Spirit linking up Resolve. 

You don't treat me that way and see it pass without response. 

It just won't pay off like you hoped. Whatever creepy thing you hope to accomplish...

Sadly I understand it is a pathetic male response to sexual rejection.


Anyway.  For every nasy little boo out there I experience there is light shining on several others.  Some temporary, like my friends empathy at reading what had been written to me, and some sustaining.  I suppose it depends on each and every one of us to 'see' those lights and not let the shadows overtake us. 

Is it human nature to feel more poignantly to darker things in life?  To have to fight that back, battle constantly?

I like those sunny people.  Those people that find joy and hold it and share it.  You wouldn't notice it here because I have often used this place to vent or work out some of the stupid overwhelming drama that has gone on...but I tend to be optimistic.  This year has really challenged me.  I have been a deeply injure optimist that is trying to find her way again.  However that may be the case I am at my best when I shine a light of joy, hope, excitement, newness, and opportunity on another. 

This is probably why I am not so great at my job. 

That is why I am going back to school, at some point, and trying to figure out a path.  I give myself away a lot.

I need a practical platform to work from so that I might still give and not be personally bereft in the process.  I guess my rude and inappropriate 'friend' wasn't wrong in that. 

It's interesting, in a way, that someone can be so successful in some areas... so creative... and so horrifyingly impulsive and destructive in others.

Loop

I'm overthinking again.

Conversation

I miss it.  I miss talking about music, art, ideas. 

I'm not a fan of participating much on topics of politics, religion...people often become rabid dogs when those subjects come up.  I also feel terribly uninformed (politics) because it is such a Pandora's Box of nightmares.  As for religion, I think it is the work of the devil and I think he is getting a good and possibly endless belly laugh over it.

Tonight I am chatting with the lead singer of MGT, that metal band I saw Thursday night.  He's smart and cool and chill.  He knows what Star Bellied Sneeches are.  No one knows what I am referencing.  I'm absolutely stunned. 

You know what this feels like?  It's like when someone is neighborly, or just polite.  It is so shocking a joyous a moment.  A simple thing, a thing that should be Normal and everyday, a thing like neighborly politeness is almost miraculous.  It is a moment when my faith is restored in humanity.

What happened?  Was it the news only reporting awful, sad, negative, sensational things that started the decline of old fashioned normalcy?

Why am I so incredibly impressed by a good conversation?