As a young girl I thought the lyrics to the song Back in the Saddle by Aerosmith were, “I am back in Saturn again”.

I never questioned why he was back in Saturn, and what he had been doing there in the first place; I just turned up the radio and sang along.

I should rephrase that; up until yesterday, I thought the lyrics were “I am back in Saturn again”. The song got stuck in my head sometime last night, and this time I was actually confused about why anyone would go to Saturn, let alone in it. So I looked it up. Imagine my surprise.
So I am up and about. I have these long posts in my head about the comfort juxtaposing with the torture of feeling bedridden  and the man who made the biggest impression on me in the ER and my love/love relationship with the warm feel good narcotic pain pills, always a nice welcome friend to say hello to.

This shall have to suffice for now as sitting in this chair for any length of time has become problematic at best .

My doctor ended up sending me to the ER for my back pain yesterday. I had reached the point where I couldn’t walk, even with the cane my mom loaned me. After 3 1/2 hours in the waiting room I was seen by a doctor who gave me Dilaudid injections directly into the lower back muscles. I came home around three a.m. and slept until four o’clock this afternoon. Now that I am up and I have taken more pain medication I am ready to head off for a nap in front of the TV.

This sounds like it would be dreamy, hours spent doing absolutely nothing, but I am bored out of my mind and anxious to get back to my regular activities. I am fortunate that Alex has been home but he’s back to work tomorrow night. Hopefully I will be able to get up and around by then. Take care of your backs!! This is no way to live.

This weekend was crappy. One teenager in a shitty mood sucks, two will find me thinking of leaving on a Greyhound.

The weather was nice, however, meaning no rain for a change. I got a lot done despite the door slamming by the aforementioned spawn. I even cleaned my house in my wedding dress Saturday due to a lack of clean laundry. It was a perfect mood lifter as the neighbors were all out and every time I took the dog for a walk or the garbage out they commented on my appearance. It almost made me want to paint my face and wear a pair of fuck me pumps as well.

My weekend was brightened by a present from a woman in California.

Maggie is nine months old now. She is no longer my tiny puppy, but she still crawls onto my lap. She asks that no one notices the fact that she brought yet another rock in from outside, leaving this one beside her on the couch. She’s had a thing for rocks since I first got her, and I don’t need to hear another scary story about that friend of your sister whose dog had to have a rock surgically removed from its body and it cost $10,000. I’ve already heard that story several times and now I fear not only rocks but my savings account balance as well.

Itty Bitty is no longer so itty. Now I can call him Big Bitty, B. Bitty , Puff Bitty, P. Bitty etc. I hope he starts a successful rap career soon. Note the very light sprinkling of catnip on his head. He has just discovered the joys of the herb. I blame peer pressure from the older cats.

Swistle wrote a post about the worst Valentine’s gift being a single red rose, and it got me to thinking. Alex and I have been together for so many years that I can’t even remember all of the different holidays we’ve spent together. I remember our first Valentine’s Day living together because we pooled our money together; bought an eight ball of cocaine and a pack of cigarettes, rushed home, dumped some of it out, and chopped out four fat lines, two for each of us. After we had each snorted one Alex looked at me over the mirror we reserved for such purposes and said, “I’m sorry I didn’t have any money left over to get you some flowers or something.” I said I didn’t care and I meant it. Cocaine or crank were the only things I wanted those days, as well as pot and alcohol to help me come down. We had bonded over pharmaceuticals. That would also be the last time we used cocaine, ever. When we ran out and started to get sick we made a vow to each other and to ourselves to never do it again. We held each other through the withdrawals. He hadn’t eaten in so many days that I cooked him cream of rice cereal, thinking he might be able to tolerate it, and he didn’t even complain about the lumps. He peeled me an orange and fed it to me, tiny segments at a time that seemed so dry in my mouth, telling me he was going to watch to make sure I ate every bite.

As the years went by we sometimes had lots of money to splurge on each other and other years Alex picked flowers out of our garden and placed them in a vase on the mantle, way up so the kids wouldn’t grab them. There were years of sex toy gifts for me, followed by hours in bed, and years when one or both of us had to work, and we barely had time for a rushed “Happy Valentine’s Day” and a quick kiss as we passed off the child watching responsibilities.

Looking back today and wondering about the worst valentine’s gift and what it might be, I thought that receiving a bathroom scale would suck pretty hard. Then it occurred to me, a valentine’s day I had forgotten about. I was visiting my sister Maria. Nathan was just a babe in my arms, so it must have been the early 90s. Maria’s boyfriend knocked on her apartment door and when she opened it, there he stood with a beautiful bouquet of a dozen red roses surrounded in a halo of baby’s breath. My sister’s face was overcome with joy as she reached her arms out. I don’t think she’d ever received flowers from a man before and I felt so happy watching her. Before she could take them in her arms he pulled away, reached into the bouquet, pulled out one single rose and handed it to her. “The other eleven are for my other special lady friends”, he explained. Maria kept her composure until the door was closed. She was absolutely crushed. She had truly believed that she had this very special relationship, this special bond that existed between just the two of them, and she found out in a horrible way that she was one of twelve. Maybe Swistle was right about the single red rose as a gift.

P.S. Off topic completely, but where would you guys like for me to respond to comments? In the comments, or in the next post? I am not sure if everyone comes back and reads the comments and I want to reply but then sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get around to it for a day or two and then I feel guilty. Damn Tammy, raised Catholic much?

My mom has traveled all over the world. I can’t remember a year since my dad died that she didn’t take at least two trips. As she’s aged she has become even more eager to see all of those places left on her list. She was recently invited to a family reunion, and I am using the term family reunion so loosely here. These people happen to share her maiden name but they are, as far as I can tell, so far from being related to us that I could slip my tongues inside their mouths or even marry one without igniting a fervor of societal shame and judgment. Maybe cousins, 400 times removed or something.

Anyway, she called me last night and asked me to go with her. While we were talking, I utilized my computer to look up this small town in Michigan. My mom also has the power to go on the internet while talking on the phone, but she is so used to having dial -up that she forgets to use it. I tell her the town’s population. It is a small town. I map from my house to there and tell her the miles. She is impressed with my mad geography skills and I am hungry for praise, so I don’t tell her my secret, although she must hear me typing. Maybe.

She wonders aloud where we would have a stopover and how long the flight is. “Oh, Denver, CO, I think, or maybe Chicago, and the flight would be about 10 hours.”

“Hmmm”, she responds. I think I am caught, but I am too busy being clever, so I rattle off facts like a walking talking traveling encyclopedia. “How are you doing that?” she finally says. I tell her, with a laugh, and mention that she could be on her computer at the same time. “I don’t know how to do that!”

“Just go to Google.com…”

“I don’t know where that is.”

I have almost given up teaching my mom how to use her computer. She knows how to check her email and that’s about it. Oh, and she likes to play solitaire. Alex refers to her computer as a very expensive deck of cards, but when I think about the thousand dollar phone bills she used to have I think email is a very good thing for her. I don’t even resent the four hours I spent trying to teach her to copy and paste. Much. (She still can’t do it.) Maybe I am a bad teacher.

She asks me where the plane lands and I say Detroit. There is silence, then finally she says in a horrified whisper, “Oh hell no. We are not going to Detroit.” “Why not?” I ask, fascinated to hear that there is somewhere she won’t travel. I swear this woman would fly to Bagdad right now, why not Detroit?

“Have you…heard…about Detroit?” she asks me. Her breathing is faster. Yeah, I’ve heard about Detroit, but this is fun. “Isn’t Kid Rock from Detroit?” I ask. She doesn’t know who Kid Rock is, but she continues, “I’ve heard that when you arrive in Detroit it is so dangerous, there are armed guards everywhere.”

“So it’s like LA, except you can see the guns?” I laugh, but she’s not taking it. “Is there anywhere else we can fly into and avoid Detroit?”

I type on my computer a little bit more and tell her that yeah, we can fly into Buffalo NY. She is thrilled, until I continue with and then rent a car in Buffalo, and drive to small(unnamed)town Michigan, through Detroit.

She is horribly disappointed at this time, but me? All of the sudden I want to go to Detroit. I want to see what stops Mom the world traveler in her tracks. I try to explain that her “family” reunion is being held so close to Detroit that she could spit from this idyllic small town and hit the city. She gives up for the night.

Today when she called me I answered with, “Hey! So when are we going to Detroit?”

“Oh, we’re going. But we’re NOT GOING TO DETROIT!”

Most certainly I am going to hell for this. The whole thing was interesting and while I had no desire to go to this reunion in the first place, I created a monster. A Detroit avoiding, I want to go in any way possible, certifiable monster.

I awoke Sunday morning to Maggie’s cold nose gently prodding me, this is her way of saying, “Hey get up! I need to go pee.” It was around 6:30. After she had been outside and I had brought her in to prepare her breakfast I remembered that I was out of coffee filters. I was thinking about using a paper towel and cursing myself for not buying one of those reusable coffee filters when I realized that it was so cold in the house I could barely stand it. I went and turned the thermostat on 68 and eyed the couch. Maggie jumped onto it and curled herself into a circle. I decided to join her with a blanket and snuggle up until the house warmed up. Of course I fell asleep.

A few hours later there was a furious banging on the front door. Maggie was barking and spinning in circles and in my confusion I thought that it must be the mailman delivering a package. I always think that I am getting a package, even on Sundays, because I am self centered that way. I stumbled to the window to peek out; I am a paranoid sort who doesn’t open the front door often. I saw my next door neighbor with her two little girls. At this point she was screaming, “911! 911! 911!” I opened the door and she yelled, “Our house is on fire! It started in the basement and it’s spreading to your house. Evacuate now!” I don’t remember what I said to her. I slammed the door in her face and ran to Polly’s door and pounded at it yelling for her to get dressed and get outside. Next I ran to Nathan’s door and did the same thing.

My kids used to ask me if there were a fire in our house and I could only rescue one of them, which one would I rescue. I hate questions like that; there’s no way for a mother to answer them. I always stated that I would rescue them both. The truth was I always knew that it would be Polly who would need to be rescued and she proved that yesterday morning by following me around the house asking questions. “Why do I have to get out of the house? What about the cats; where are the cats? What is happening?” Nathan listened to my instructions clearly without questions. I ran upstairs to wake Alex. He had worked the graveyard shift the night before and was fast asleep in our bed. “Get up!” I told him, “The neighbor’s house is on fire and they say it’s heading for our house!”

He mumbled, “Why do we have to live next door to such stupid fucking people?” and slowly rose from our bed and sauntered out of the room. I was confused and having a panic attack and I literally spun around in a circle trying to figure out what to wear. Not in that “I have a job interview way”, but in the “I am wearing a nightgown what should I do?” way. I pulled on a pair of sweats underneath my nightgown, thinking that was faster than taking everything off and starting over. I grabbed my coat and saw Alex peeking out the window. He was quite literally sauntering around. I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t running. “You need to calm down”, he said. I grabbed my purse thinking it had everything I needed, money, bank cards, cell phone, cigarettes, tampons, lipgloss, medication for a major panic attack…

We all ended up on the sidewalk in front of our houses, waiting. Alex looked around for flames and sniffed for smoke. My neighbor is chatty under any circumstances; a fire is a whole new world of talk. Speaking a mile a minute she blurted out that she loaded her dryer, turned it on, later smelled smoke and went to her basement to see that her fuse box was on fire. I reassure her that she did the right thing. Her mom walks out of the house, comments dryly on the fact that the fire engines are taking so long, saying, “It’s a good thing the house isn’t on fire or anything.”

I laugh, too loudly. I wonder if it’s OK to smoke while the neighbor’s house is on fire. I finally break down and pull one out. My neighbor sighs, “Oh thank god. Can I have one?” We all light up, except the kids.

The fire engines finally pull up, no sirens. Maybe sirens are reserved for those who live in nicer neighborhoods? Once things are clearly under control my neighbor apologizes for beating on my door like that. “I really thought that it was going to spread to your house!” “It’s OK”, I try to reassure her.

Back inside my house Nathan goes back to bed. Polly goes to pour herself cereal in the kitchen, and Alex is wide awake. Waking up someone who works graveyard is always a difficult call, but I thought that this time was easy. It didn’t even occur to me not to wake him. He asks me, “Did you look out the window before you woke everyone?”

Of course I didn’t! I was thinking that time was of the essence, for fuck’s sake.

Alex asks me if the neighbor’s husband was home. “No, he wasn’t” I remember her mentioning that he was out of town. “If he’d been here, none of this would have happened. Women blow things so far out of proportion.” Alex claims.

Now I am pissed. I tiptoe around all day so as not to wake him. I really believed that this was an emergency.

As he heads back to bed he says one last thing.
“Next time wait until the flames are licking the house to wake me.”

Oh don’t worry, I think. Next time I’ll wait until they’re licking your feet, and then I’ll think about it.

Is this a gender issue? Did I overreact? What do you think?

Chantix, day seven. Or six, I can’t remember. Years ago, I had a lovely female psychiatrist who got me started on the road to wellness with the aid of sample boxes from every pharmaceutical rep. she made acquaintance with. She knew that I could barely afford our household expenses at that time, let alone expensive co-pays for name brand meds that hadn’t released generic versions yet, and so she really went out of her way to help me out. She also removed every single package insert from every box she gave me because she believed that if I read those inserts I might be inclined to develop the side effects listed therein. She was a smart woman. How did she know that? She later dumped me over the phone, calming trying to explain that she felt it would be better if I found another doctor, and as I stood there in my kitchen, my legs giving way beneath me, I cried, feeling as if I had been dumped by a boyfriend I still really really wanted to be with.

Anyway, she hasn’t been around me in years, and now I navigate the waters of prescriptions with the inserts intact. I am lucky and blessed even to have good health insurance that makes my pills affordable. When I first started Chantix I skimmed the package insert. I ended up tossing it aside.

The first side effect I noticed was a funny taste in my mouth when I smoked then came a funny smell in my nose. The next day I noticed that a pot of lentil soup I had prepared from scratch tasted so unbearably salty I couldn’t eat it. It had tasted fine the day before. The next day I noticed the unbearable stench of cat piss, as well as a lack of appetite. I blamed all of this on CHANTIX until I realized I had forgotten to clean the cat box. I vowed to quit being ridiculous and went on without another thought until the stomach upset came and I blamed it on hypochondria. Progress!

A few nights later I snuggled into bed and quickly feel asleep. It was time for the deliciously erotic sex dream to begin. I flew to Las Vegas to meet a man. He picked me up in a town car. As we sped along the freeway he joked that I was the only person he knew who would show up in Vegas with only four dollars. I open my purse and sure enough, four bucks are there, nothing else. There was a nervous tension that I ended with the slightest of kisses, short, soft and sweet. When we arrived at the hotel we got into the huge shower and began to lather each other. With our hands we made so many bubbles, there was slippery skin, fingers everywhere, teasing, and waiting. There were those huge soft white robes to climb into. I have always wanted one of those robes.

Next we are on the bed and I was watching us from above, his hands sliding slowly over my body. There were no scars or stretch marks or saggy skin on me. This is dream sex. After pinching me, pulling me, teasing me, I was ready. He slid his hands under my bottom and lifted me to him and…my back went out. No kidding. I threw my back out having sex in my dream. When I woke up my back was throbbing and I could hardly walk. It’s been like this for three days now.

I am writing this from my bed on my stomach because it hurts too much to sit in a chair.

FUCKING DAMN YOU CHANTIX!

P.S. Without even trying, I am smoking about half what I was. I have a callous on my right thumb from flicking my lighter, so that’s really saying something.

Never could I have dated. I am too self conscious, too unaware of the rules, the jargon; too willing to hide myself as well as I can without exploring the possibilities of someone else discovering me. My husband knows me, but it remains unspoken; a space between us that doesn’t exist; a topic only broached if I bring it up or he vents in frustration, which is rare.

Having spent years in the kitchen doing food service related jobs, I became used to hanging out and working with men. As a teenager it was easy to feel that I fit in as just one of the guys, but when I returned to the kitchen as a baker at age 29, after spending ten years screwing around and watching Sesame Street; I was hopelessly, impossibly out of touch.

I kept quiet as I did my job, trying hard to keep up with the younger stronger men who seemed like boys to me. As I worked I would listen to their back and forth banter with a smile on my face. I quickly realized the three stages they went through on their shifts: Hunger, Horniness, and Sleepiness. A few of them went through the stages in that order, others mixed it around a bit before they clocked off.

I had no problem with their crude humor; their attempts to shock me were futile. I had the dirtiest mind out of the whole crew. As I grew more relaxed in the environment I entered into their conversations. For the most part I did alright, but I embarrassed myself, and a few of them, by not having any idea what they were talking about on a few occasions. Once, a coworker was telling me a story about getting a reach around. I stopped him and asked, “Hey, what’s a reach around?” He stopped, tomato red, speechless. I seriously wanted to know, but it wasn’t until my older female supervisor who had been listening from the next station pulled me aside and told me that it clicked in my head.

Around Halloween, pumpkin pie season started. We made so many gallons of pumpkin pie filling we had to use garbage cans to store it in. At first the smell was a refreshing change, the color gave a bit of visual interest to what can become a mundane task, until finally it settled into a crusty orange substance I had to scrape off my shoes. We mixed that pie filling and teased each other with the huge paddles and whisks, pointed out the spanking possibilities with the giant size kitchen utensils, labeled the cans with masking tape and sharpies and tried to wheel them into the walk in coolers without tipping them over.

After a fortnight or so I started to notice the labels were changing. Someone had written, “Blumpkin Pie Filling” on one, another one was labeled, “Plumpkin Pie Filling”. My boss, looking at the buckets with me one evening to assess whether we needed to make more, pointed and said, “These young boys today, they cannot spell.” I nodded my head, pretending to understand the gravity of generation Y, and waited. As soon as I could I asked one of the other bakers about blumpkins and plumpkins. He shook his head NO.

I waited until I had a spare moment with Alex at home and mentioned it to him. He shook his head, sighed and told me the meaning. I asked him how it could be that we could have lived together for so many years and I didn’t know what he knew. “I’ll bet you know what a reach around is too!” I said, and he did. I had held his penis a million times and the thought had never occurred to me. I told him that the guys at work were laughing at me and he laughed too.

The jokes at work grew tiring eventually and everyone settled into a more reserved state of chronic fatigue as the holidays approached. Thanksgiving and Christmas are not the most wonderful time of the year for a baker. As I stirred the pumpkin filling with the four foot whisk my eyes burned and filled with tears, making the sea of orange with flecks of spices blur, then disappear completely.

“Tammy?” Rodney said from across the kitchen where he stood mixing chocolate cake batter for Yule logs, “How far south do you go?” I looked at him for a second and answered, “I’ve been as far as the California Mexico border before turning back.” As the laughter broke out in the room I realized; I’d done it yet again.

First, a big thank you to Robyn for linking to me and sending so many readers my way. It is very exciting to have someone I have been reading for so many years find my journal and recommend it.

I have been answering a larger than normal array of emails, which has been fun, really, as I like to get to know my readers better. Due to the fact that I have publicly shared my own battles with child abuse and drug addiction, depression and panic disorder, it is not uncommon for people to tell me of their own struggles. What I haven’t learned is how to achieve a balance between writing here and answering email. So here I am again, and if you’re still waiting for a response from me I hope to get caught up on all email this weekend.

From the comments: Lori, thank you for pointing out your new url. I was indeed wondering where you had gone and was about to get all stalkerish and email you. MichelleW why oh why didn’t I know about the pain that is Spanx before I wasted my money? I should have known better when the overenthusiastic woman at the clothing store kept pushing them on me, telling me that, “Oprah recommended them” and “She’s got like a trillion dollars and can have the best of anything so you know if she’s using them they must be good…”

Belle, I loved this line , “As long as it holds the fluff in and the straps are wide enough, I’m happy!” Fluff! I might have to borrow that word.

In other news, I have had a rough week with the depression and the anxiety. Sometimes I can go quite some time forgetting I even have panic attacks and then bang! one will hit, hard. The same goes for my depression. I could feel myself slipping lower and lower after my nanny died so I thought it was related to that. I emailed my favorite cousin because chatting with him always makes me feel better and he wrote back describing the funeral and I felt worse. It is hard to be so far away from family.

I contacted my doctor and she wanted to speak with me again face to face. I told her about the constant sadness, the thoughts of suicide, the never ending anxiety , and the panic attacks that come from nowhere and I can’t seem to calm down. She likes to play around with my medication so I didn’t even want to be there, even though I really like my doctor, and not only because she uses google when she can’t remember something. She’ll just log on to the computer while we’re talking and double check something. I don’t know why I find that endearing but it might have something to do with the fact that she doesn’t hide it, she’s just human. Plus, she laughs at my jokes. That is a big requirement in a doctor.

I have been smoking so much lately that I have a permanent wheeze. My doctor asked me to try Chantix. The only problem is Chantix has been linked to depression and suicide. I went ahead and filled the prescription. When the pharmacist called me over for a consult, she asked more questions than she ever has, “What other methods had I tried?” Well, I tried cold turkey but I am a vegetarian, so that one didn’t work and I tried Wellbutrin but my anxiety went up so much I stopped it after a month because my smoking doubled, and I tried the gum, but I could remember to tuck it into my cheek, I kept chewing it, and I tried the nicotine patches but they didn’t work either. She asked if I had nightmares while using the patches and I said no, but as I told her, I had the wildest, sexist dreams I have ever had in my life. Seriously. I almost kept using the patch for the aphrodisiac properties. That was all I needed to say. Drug stuffed in bag and I was out the door.

I am committed to getting healthier. The photo above shows me starting the day with a well rounded breakfast. Alex brought cookies home  because they were left over from some meeting he had at work. Waste is wrong and I had to have one.