I had an entry planned for today but I have a UTI that is making me run for the bathroom every two minutes and I have to take Polly to her pediatrician for a physical this afternoon because she has a virus or something she can’t shake. I am seriously considering calling a cab to get there because the thought of taking two buses to get to the doctor’s office with a sick daughter and a burning desire to urinate sounds like a hell I’d rather avoid. Feel free to answer these questions and leave the answers in the comments. I’d love to get to know the readers I haven’t met yet. Or just say hi, if you’d like to.

How many keys are on your keychain? Two. One to my house and one to my Mom’s. Whoops. I was supposed to return the key to my Mom’s before the house sold.

What curse word do you use the most? Fuck.

Do you own an iPod? Yes, and that was what I really wanted to write an entry about today and I will, soon.

What time is your alarm clock set for? 6.

How many suitcases do you own? None. I don’t travel much and if I do I can borrow one from my Mom, who has dozens, literally.

Do you wear flip-flops even when it’s cold outside? No. I can’t stand the “something between my toes” feeling. I do have a pair of slip on sandals that I wear to take the garbage out, as well as a pair of trashed clogs I wear to work in the garden.

Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture? Take. I am insecure about my appearance and I hide when people pull cameras out.

What was the last movie you watched? Syriana, with Nathan. We both liked it, although I got the impression that I would need to see it more than once to really get it. This might have been because I was so tired at the time.

What CD is currently in your CD player? Foo Fighters, In Your Honor Disc 1. Good album.

Has anyone told you a secret this week? Family members are always telling me secrets.

What did you have for dinner last night? Salad with feta cheese.

Do you wear hoodies often? Yes, they are good for the crappy, dreary, rainy Portland weather. Plus they’re comfortable.

Can you whistle? Yes, but not well.

Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? My Mom.

What is your favorite ride at an amusement park? I hate amusement parks. I hate rides. I hate anything that might trigger another panic attack. I just watch my kids ride when we go.

Do you think people talk about you behind your back? Oh yes, my family is horrible about doing this.

What area code are you in? 503

What is your biggest regret? Not getting a college degree.

What movie do you know every line to? Used to be The Rocky Horror Picture Show, now none. I don’t watch movies enough to memorize them.

When was your last plane ride? March 2006. I took Nathan and Polly to Phoenix, Arizona.

How many chairs are at your dining room table? Our house is too small for a dining room table, but we do have an outside table that seats 4. It’s great during the warmer months.

Can you speak any languages other than English? Ebonics

What color are your bedroom walls? White. I would love to change them, but I got burned out on painting my Mom’s house.

When was the last time you cried? I can’t remember.

Do you have a desktop computer or a laptop? Desktop.

Which do you make: wishes or plans? Both

Can you skip rocks? No. I’ve never been able to, but my husband and son are quite good at it.

Who was your favorite teacher? Jan Chappell (7^th grade) and Sister Shaun Marie (freshman Algebra)
What two personality traits attract you most? Sense of humor, laidback calm.

What two personality traits do you most dislike? Sense of Entitlement, violent tempers.

What is your mother’s hometown? Grenfell, NSW
How many hours of sleep do you need to function? 8, but I rarely get it. I can function on way less, but I might be a crabby bitch.

Do you eat breakfast daily? Coffee, Prozac and Klonopin.

Describe your typical weekday with three adjectives. Stressful, Exhausting, sometimes boring.

Did you ever get in trouble for talking in class? All the time.
What is your favorite fruit? I love all of them, but fresh raspberries would be right at the top of my list.

Do you believe in life on other planets? I never think about it. Life on this planet is too much for me most days.

Who was the last person to piss you off? Nathan.

What do you tell yourself when times get hard? This too shall pass. Or, must step in front of a semi truck. It depends on how bad I’m feeling, depression wise.

Would you ever sky dive? Nope.

Do you sleep on your side, tummy, or back? All three. I have a bad back and I am constantly moving around, trying to get comfortable.

What character from a movie most reminds you of yourself? I can’t think of any.

Have you ever bid for something on ebay? Oh hell yes. I sell things too.

Do you enjoy giving hugs? It depends on who it is.

Would you consider yourself to be fashionable? Nope. I aim for clean and comfortable.

Does it annoy you when someone says they’ll call but never do? It depends on who it is and if I really need to talk with them. I am usually content to let someone leave me a message. I guess you could say I have hang-ups (ha!) about the phone.

What books, if any, have made you cry? Too many to count. Sophie’s Choice. Charlotte’s Web. The Lovely Bones. Leaving Las Vegas. Gone With the Wind. Of Mice and Men. Tons more I can’t think of at the moment.

Do you think you’re attractive? Nope.

What are you allergic to? Stupidity.

If you were born the opposite sex, what would your name have been? Michael

Before my Mom put her house on the market she tagged the plants that weren’t included in the sale, intending on taking them to her new house. Now she is digging out these plants she can’t part with and driving them to my house with an urgency usually reserved for the transportation of human organs. “Tammy, I got the lavender out! Get it in the ground as soon as possible!” Now, I love to garden. This is nerve wracking though, taking her beloved plants, each one complete with a story of when and how she got it, and being expected to make them live in my soil.

Our house was built in 1920 but apparently no one ever felt the desire to plant a garden here. In the 2 and a ½ years we’ve lived here I have slowly worked on creating a garden. Every time I thrust my shovel into the earth I hit rocks, lots and lots of big rocks. I ended up making a big pile of them and now they are partially hidden underneath the back stairs because I don’t know what to do with them. Ideally the yard should be totally rototilled and new topsoil brought in. I had that on my list of things I want to do next year.

Now with the arrival of Mom’s plants I feel a nervous sort of expectancy in the air. She says it’s okay, that she knows they might not make the move, but I feel responsible to create a garden out of them, to keep them alive for her. My thumbs don’t feel so green anymore.

Polly is home, safe and sound. She brought with her new stories of her adventures and new smells emanating from the pile of wet, muddy clothes. She wants to return to Outdoor School as a high school student, to be a camp counselor. She told me stories of fishing, touching snakes and taking hikes. It is exciting to see her growing up. The day after she returned home I received a letter from her stating that she wasn’t having fun, that she thought she was going to throw up, and would we be mad if she came home early. When I asked her about it she said that yeah, she was feeling homesick when she wrote that letter. I am glad that I didn’t get it until she was already back. It would have left me fraught with worry over her.

Nathan is doing well, so well that I haven’t wanted to say anything for fear of cursing us. He seems to have his emotions in check for the time being and I can’t even describe the relief that settles over our home when he isn’t having one of his outbursts. Hopefully this calm will last. Let me knock wood quickly.

My husband has been working too much, so much that I feel as if I never see him. He was off last night and again tonight. It is so nice to just have him beside me. Because he works the graveyard shift and sleeps days, most of my nights are spent alone in bed. Having him beside me last night was such a treat. We were watching a movie and I reached out to hold his hand. Lacing his fingers through mine he held my hand for over an hour, and it was one of those moments that are hard to describe. I felt at peace, just having him near me. I try to remember to be grateful that he has a job, as much as I do miss him.

I have decided to read “The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides next. I told myself some time ago that I could not buy another book until I read everything on the shelf that I haven’t gotten to yet. I have stuck by that for months, with the exception of one book I picked up at a garage sale for a quarter. Today is a rainy day, perfect for snuggling up with a book and reading away the hours. I have a bit more housework to do and I am thinking that I’ll wait on the reading until the kids are back in school tomorrow and my husband returns to work. I don’t want to miss any opportunities to spend time with them.

I hope all my readers are having a good weekend. If you have any book or movie recommendations, please leave them in the comments. Or even if you just want to say hello. I love hearing from people.

2 and a 1/2 hours to get Nathan out of bed for school this morning. Any of you who are dealing or have dealt with kids who won’t get out of bed to go to school; my heart goes out to you. Not knowing exactly what to do is not helping. I was looking online at this website and I read this in the advice for family members caring for someone with a mood disorder “Don’t take your loved one’s actions or hurtful words personally.”

Okay. I obviously am struggling with that one. Is my son inside of this disease somewhere or is the disease inside of him? Where does one end and the other begin? At what point is he responsible for his behavior? I took him to his psychiatrist last Friday and after I gave him the run down on what had been going on he said, “Why are you punishing him for being bipolar?” I was stunned. So he’s allowed to scream and yell obscenities at me when he doesn’t get his way, threaten me physically, refuse to do what is asked of him, refuse to do what his teachers ask of him and I am supposed to let him play video games all day and talk on the phone all night? I don’t fucking think so. There has to be some sort of personal accountability here, even with an illness. Honestly, I am thinking of looking for another doctor. Every time we go in there I feel like it’s “You’ve got a very sick boy here and you’re doing the wrong things in response to X Y & Z. Here are some more pills to try. See you in two weeks.” Just when I thought things were looking up, BAM, setback.

Anyway, and now for something completely different, I finished the book I was reading, “ Leaving Las Vegas” last night. I saw the movie years ago but had never read the book. I highly recommend it. The movie mostly focuses on the relationship between Ben and Sera. The book goes into greater detail about them and their lives and the paths they have been on long before the characters meet. When I got to the end and read that the author had died in 1994 I got up and did an internet search on him. John O’Brien committed suicide two weeks after he found out his book was to be made into a movie.

I put my head down on the desk and wept. I am not even sure what I was crying about. Maybe I just needed the release.

My first grade photo. I am hoping to get my camera fixed this week so I can get some new photos on this site.

So Janet Jackson has come out and said that her brother, Michael, called her “fat butt” when she was growing up which gave her issues with her weight. My brother told me that bugs would crawl into my ears and tunnel through to my brain, creating entire colonies and living there happily until I died, except when another species of bug would enter and there would be wars between the two. This led to years of me not allowing my Mom to put my hair up into pig tails, only a ponytail that covered my ears and made her sigh with frustration, “Tammy, this would look a lot better if you let me pull it up and over your ears”, but no, I couldn’t do it. The threat was so real. I slept with cotton in my ears. My Mom never had a lot of money so instead of buying cotton she saved the cotton from the tops of medicine bottles, so for years I went through life with aspirin scented cotton wads showed in my ears while I slept. They were called earwigs for a reason, right?

Anyway, I would have expected something juicer from Janet, such as my brother used to dangle me over balconies, make me wear a blanket over my head when we left the house, slip elephant man bones into my bed while I slept, try to get my little male friends to sleepover in his room, and in later years, refer me to plastic surgeons who would do a wonderful job on my nose.

Truthfully, I was never a fan of Janet’s music, but I watched “ Good Times” religiously as a little girl. I loved that show so much I wanted to be a poor family living in the projects in Chicago in a too small apartment. They seemed so much happier than my family, living in a too small house in a lower middle class neighborhood. At least the parents talked to the kids. I felt like a stranger who just got in the way.

On that show there were these paintings that they showed depicting African American people. I still love those paintings but I’ve never been able to find out anything about them. If anyone knows who the artist was let me know in the comments or drop me an e-mail.

I have decided that I need to buy a laptop because I can never get on this computer. I have no idea how I am going to afford such a thing but it’s good to have dreams, yes? Between my husband and our two kids I am always 4th in line. I have planned on writing late at night when the kids are asleep and Alex is at work (he works the graveyard shift) but I am just so damned tired these days. I think it might just be a side effect from the Prozac or the increase in Klonopin my doctor put me on. I am not going to read all of those pieces of paper that come with the meds or do any research about side effects online though, because I will then get every bad side effect they write about. Trust me; I’ve made that mistake before.

Polly is going to outdoor school soon. My first reaction was that there was no way she was ready to be away from me for a whole week. I mean, this is the little girl who wakes me up in the middle of the night because she heard a scary noise. She seems okay about the trip though, so my second reaction was that maybe it is me who isn’t ready to let my youngest go just yet, and my third reaction was, “Damn, I’d better buy her a new sleeping bag, hers doesn’t look so good anymore.”

Nathan is doing okay. He’s had a cold and a sore throat and he even had the audacity to tell me that his ears hurt because I let us run out of Q-tips and he couldn’t clean his ears. Everything, my fault. I tried to take him to the doctor but he didn’t want to go so I am just keeping an eye on him. Plus, he has been eating three or four grapefruit a day, and I’m thinking that if his throat hurt that bad he couldn’t handle anything so acidic.

I am still trying to sell my Mom’s house for her while she is in Ireland drinking Guinness with her sister. We agreed to a $20,000 price drop and that seemed to renew interest so I am hoping.

Other than that I am okay. The panic attacks have dropped considerably and I am traveling by bus without too much trouble. I started reading “ Out Of Africa”. I am not far enough into it to tell whether I like it or not, but it came highly recommended by someone I trust so I have high hopes. I rented the movie “ The Human Stain” which I am going to hopefully watch tonight after Alex leaves for work. That is if I don’t fall asleep first.

Someone came to my site searching for Nance. She is now at http://www.nebshit.com/

As for the person who came to my sight searching for little boy, peeing, spanking. I don’t think I can help you. Today. But maybe something funny might come out of it in the future.

Currently finishing Magical Thinking .

Next up, Out of Africa.

Today I got to school 25 minutes early to pick up Polly. I thought I’d sit at one of the picnic tables, enjoy my green tea frappuccino and read my book, after balancing my checkbook first. I have to balance my checkbook every time I use my debit card or write a check otherwise I get all screwed up.

The green tea frappuccino was really good at first, but then I felt sick after I drank the first third of it. I could then only hope that it contained a lot of caffeine. Hey, I just looked them up and found this “Health link: Green tea generally has about half the caffeine of coffee and is full of antioxidants – chemicals that prevent cell damage.
Studies have suggested that it might lower the risks of cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema and other ailments.” This makes it a great drink to have with a smoke.

I added that last part.

So anyway, I was sitting down and as I looked around the park I noticed all of homeless people curled up in the grass, their heads resting on backpacks and rolled up sweatshirts. I started to feel nervous, is this a safe place for Polly to play on recess? Jesus Christ, is this some sort of universal homeless person nap time, sort of like the pot smokers and their 4:20?

The bell rang and I made my way to the sign that we meet by everyday. All of the curled up and stretched out lounging bodies scratched, stretched and rose and it occurred to me, “These are the parents!” They nap in the park waiting for the bell to ring so they can pick up Rainbow, Meadow and Miracle. I knew this was an artsy type of school when I signed Polly up for it, but it wasn’t something that worried me. Their standardized test scores are very high and they have a very good reputation. And their parents are well rested, apparently. Maybe midway through the year I can get over my sick feeling and lie in the grass where animals pee and poop and people walk and…Nope, not gonna happen.

As I made my way to our meeting place I remembered the year my mom had to send me to a school similar to this, but to the extreme, where I had classes such as Role Playing, Dream Analysis, Sexual Health, Personal Growth etc. She had no choice but to send me there because I was expelled from the all girls catholic academy I had been attending and no one wanted me, but them. On my first day of school I was sitting in the park during lunch break smoking a cigarette and this man walked over to me and said, “Do you smoke?” Of course I smoked so I handed him a cigarette and he waved it away. “I’m not talking about that shit, that shit’ll kill ya. You wanna buy some weed?” So I did. I bought an 1/8. Anyway, I walked into the school after the bell rang and found my Math class. There at the chalkboard was the man I’d just bought an 1/8 of pot from writing today’s lessons on the chalkboard. I guess it makes sense. To be a drug dealer you have to have a good grasp of the metric system and also a good head for finances.

When I picked up Polly I looked at her eyes and sniffed her shirt but I’m guessing she’s still sober.

Photo of me taken at age 14. I finished reading Middlesex yesterday (I highly recommend it), picked up DRY by Augusten Burroughs and read it in less than 24 hours. Now I have always been an incredibly fast reader, so fast that my uncle once sat and timed me with a stopwatch and bragged to everyone later that day about my speed. Later I found that I could read through three novels in a day with ease and I thought that it was going to guarantee me success in school, in life. It was something that I could do very well. Of course becoming a drug addict/alcoholic and dropping out of high school did not mean that through my amazing reading skills people in business suits knocked on my door with six figure job offers for me. It meant that I learned how to live on $3.35 an hour and still stay drunk or high every waking hour.

Now that I have a husband and two kids and a Mom to look after my reading time has slowed to a halt, except when it comes to memoirs by former addicts and/or alcoholics. For some strange reason I can’t get enough of these books. When I picked up Dry I thought that it was going to be his take on getting sober, albeit a funny one. While there were funny moments I ended up getting teary eyed or straight up crying more times than laughing, mostly because I could relate. I have thought some time of writing a memoir on the time I spent getting sober; but it would come down to two words “Got Pregnant”. Of course I am overly simplifying things; the process was a long one and one I don’t like to admit I still struggle with to this day.As an observant exboyfriend once remarked to me long distance on the phone when I told him I’d gotten sober because I got pregnant with Nate, and then Polly ,he correctly answered, “Tam, you can’t stay pregnant the rest of your life.”I went through a period of time after I had Nate and the panic attacks began when I was afraid of all meds, prescription meds, OTC meds, everything. My then shrink worked with me long and hard to convince me that taking Xanax or Klonopin coupled with an antidepressant did not mean I could no longer hold my sobriety proudly on my chest for all to see. It took months and I decided to try the pills, because the alternative, hiding in my apartment with my baby while my husband looked at me and wondered where I had gone to, and the panic never ended, it just went up and down but never away, was not a life I could live. I kept biding my time, telling myself, when Nate stops breastfeeding you can commit suicide. Or then, when Nate starts school you can commit suicide. The pills made me feel better, so much so that we decided to have another baby .Then I had to go off them for the safety of the fetus and I rebounded, worse than before. My new mantra, one that I’ve never repeated to anyone before, became, when this baby is born I can commit suicide. It took a team of three doctors, my shrink, my OB/GYN and my general practitioner to get me through that pregnancy and the months that followed, as well as my Mom, my sister, and my husband. But I made it.

And then I was proud again. On medication, but proud. Happy even. After a few years I convinced myself that I could have an occasional drink, and I didn’t freak out when my doctor prescribed Vicodin one time for a massive ear infection. My doctor kept saying to me over and over, “If you had diabetes and you needed insulin you wouldn’t think twice about taking meds for it” Or, “if I thought you had a problem with the Klonopin, I wouldn’t be prescribing them, now would I?” It was true. I didn’t have a problem with the Paxil or the Klonopin. I could have one glass of wine at Christmas dinner and not want to crawl inside the bottle and lick every last drop from it.

I had tried AA and NA before, but sitting around listening to people talk about how much they wanted to drink or use never did it for me. Sitting around watching people talk about how they had beat addiction while they chain smoked and drank cup after cup of coffee made me want to laugh and jump up and say, “Don’t you see?”

Plus, I couldn’t do the higher power thing. An atheist, what was my higher power? Did it come in powder form or liquid form or was it those tight green buds with the red hairs on them that I packed into my bong and smoked?

I didn’t believe that what they said was true, about once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. AA was like a religion. I despise organized religion. I didn’t want to say, “Hi, my name is Tammy and I am an alcoholic and a drug addict” and listen to my name come back, “Hi Tammy.”

I listened to a Native American man who actually smelled drunk talking of his 9 months of sobriety and how he had taken the carburetor out of his car and waited for six months for his higher power to put it back in. I listened to the woman tell the story of dropping her three kids off at some hotel on the Oregon coast and then going off drinking, from bar to bar, only to realize when she was finished that she couldn’t remember where she had left them, so she spent hours driving up and down the coast looking for them in every hotel. She sobbed as she told this story, and I cried too, thinking of those little kids alone in that room, wondering where their Mom was. I couldn’t do AA or NA anymore, but I believed that I’d gotten some good book material from it. As sick as it sounds, I really thought that. I watched people leave the AA meetings , head for the nearest 7-11 and buy beer. I believed myself cured, without help. I had done it alone, I proudly told myself, the other voice inside telling me I was full of shit.

Years went by until, stop, three or so years ago. I hurt my back at work and had to go to the doctor. They did X-rays and MRIs and told me that the discs in my back were disintegrating. They were wearing away. One doctor put it, “You have the back of a woman in her nineties.” and I thought “See, I’ve accomplished something with my life. I have the back of a 90+ year old woman and I am only 30!” My primary care physician put it differently. Find something else to do for a living or you will be permanently disabled within five years. The tears began to roll down my face and she thought I was crying because I could no longer do my job, baking. She put her hand on my arm and gave me a little smile. Truth, I was crying because I didn’t believe that I could do anything else. So I can read, big fucking deal. I think I am supposed to know how to read at 33. It might have been amazing when I was 4, now it means jack shit. I tend to break everything involving technology I touch. That is part of why my marriage has worked for so long. I break things, then I give them to my husband and he fixes them. We are a team. Sometimes he sighs but he never complains.

Meanwhile I am being doped up with percocet and muscle relaxers and I stumble around the bakery, doing my job. I can still bake; I convince myself, slinging 100 lbs. of flour like the men do. I start to keep the pills in my pocket, because I never have time to take my breaks and I have learned to dry swallow them. One holds Percoset, the other Flexeril and I slip my tiny metal pill holder filled with Klonopin into my bra, just in case. But I never panic anymore. I’m high. I don’t want to admit it, but I am getting high again, only this time my drug dealer wears a white lab coat and tells me this is the only way. It is easy, too easy. I make the unmistakable sound of pills hitting together and against the sides of their little orange bottles while I speedily walk around the bakery. I can feel myself slipping away within minutes of taking a pill and it is easy to smile, to do an inhumane amount of work in less than 8 hours, or stand next to the oven loading and unloading in 100 something degrees for 21 hours straight because it is Christmas time and that is what the job entails. I believe that I am the best baker in the world.

I finally go back to my doctor and tell her that I want to try something different. She suggests methadone treatment for long-term pain management. For a second I pause, remembering the few times I shot heroin as a teen and the feeling of “oh my God, this is what has been missing my entire life” The feeling of love, comfort, inner peace and calm all in a single shot of head nodding beauty. I imagine going to get my methadone every morning and no longer feeling any pain. I imagine not even needing any antidepressants because I feel so fucking good. I dismiss it. I ask for physical therapy, or occupational therapy. She gives me a referral. I buy an over priced back brace. I go to therapy even though I am starting to think that PT stands for physical torture. I start feeling things again. I admit to my husband that I have been having some problems with addiction to pain pills. He already knew. He is not surprised. I move on with my life, no longer feeling like laughing at those who state that once you are an alcoholic you are always an alcoholic. I understand now. I am not above anyone.

I plan on staring college soon and learning a skill that won’t cause me further back pain. Nothing comes to mind. I know I want to write it all down. I have this idea that someone might be helped by something I write. Even if just for one second, they feel less alone. But we are all alone, filling that empty space inside with something. Or is it just me?

 

Last night I ended up Watching Carlito’s Way instead of my Six Feet Under disc. Over the years I have written lists about just about everything, to do lists, grocery shopping lists, things to do before I die lists, goal lists, and dream lists. The two that have been the most fun over the past year have been the books to read list, and the movies to see list.

From time to time someone would mention a book or a movie and then express astonishment that I hadn’t seen it, or read it. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard, “You’ve never seen The Godfather?” or you’ve never read “ Crime and Punishment?”

I would get embarrassed sometimes and say nothing when I didn’t get a joke or a comment related to a classic. “Say Hello to my little friend” meant nothing to me. People discussed the brilliance of the genre creating “In Cold Blood” by Capote and I kept my mouth shut. I sometimes nodded while absolutely clueless.

I am not sure if I can really explain why I missed so many books and movies over the years. From the age of 15 through 19 I worked fulltime, after having made one of the worst decisions of my life to drop out of high school and get my GED. I can say that it took me a long time to recover from my abusive childhood and my father’s suicide when I was 12. I do know that the aftermath to his gift that keeps on taking was I found myself severely depressed and with a drug and alcohol problem by the age of 13. I can’t really blame him. Even at the time I knew I was making some fucked up choices and I didn’t have the self esteem to care.

In the late 80s early 90s my then boyfriend, now husband, Alex, saw that I had some VC Andrews books on my shelf so he started buying me the latest release as soon as it hit the market. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I wasn’t really interested in reading any of her work after the Flowers in the Attic series. I read every book he brought home, not wanting to hurt his feelings. When I found out she had died I was actually relieved thinking there would be no more books (isn’t that horrible?) But they hired someone to continue writing under her name and so the gifts continued. I finally broke down and told him that I didn’t want to read them anymore and he was surprised I hadn’t said something earlier. I don’t know why I was so afraid to tell him the truth.

With my pregnancy at the age of 18 I got sober, left my job as a pastry chef when my stomach made it nearly impossible to work at the speed that was needed for restaurant production, and threw myself into motherhood completely when Nate was born. Polly came along three years later and by that time I was up to my tears in Barney, Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street and Dr. Seuss. As completely absorbed as I was with being Mommy I neglected my needs totally.

Now I find it a pleasure to finally read all of those books I kept a mental tally of. Now I have a document on the computer of books I want to read and I add to it constantly.

The same goes for movies. My queue at Netflix has over 150 movies on it and I look forward to each one with a child’s Christmas morning anticipation.

I liked Carlito’s Way a lot more than Scarface, which I also liked when I saw it for the first time last weekend. On further reflection I think it’s because Carlito is a character I found myself sympathizing with, unlike Tony Montana. I totally wanted Carlito to catch that train at the end. I think the ability of a screenplay writer and a movie director to create a sympathetic character out of what should be a despicable unlikable one is a gift. This has been brilliantly done in Movies such as Goodfellas, The Godfather I and II, and Pulp Fiction. I also noticed this while watching the Sopranos. Not many writers/directors are able to pull this off but when it’s done properly, the results are memorable. The same holds true for Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov in the brilliant “Crime and Punishment”. I almost wish that I could go back and have those conversations with those who were talking about these things years ago now that I finally get what they’re saying!

Mothers, fathers, people, take time out for you. It is so important. Having little things that are just for me, whether it is a movie, a book, a bubble bath, a walk, or my garden has changed my perspective on life for the better.

I must stop my rambling trips down memory lane for a moment to announce my biggest accomplishments of the week. I took three different trips on the bus and didn’t have a panic attack on any of them! Why is this a big deal? Because I always panic on the bus and I had gotten so bad that I was avoiding riding the bus almost completely. This will not work in the fall when I need to take my daughter to school.
Maybe I am back on the road to being able to just ride the bus whenever I need to. I sure as hell hope so. I hate having to call my Mom when I can’t stop panicking and ask her for a ride, or just hiding in the house. I long to feel capable, self sufficient.

My husband got us each a cell phone a few months ago. He told me that if I wanted to get a game to put on the cell phone he would pay for it, just to choose one that didn’t suck up minutes. I looked around at what was available; not really thinking too much was going to come out of it, because video games have never been my thing. I found a game called Collapse. I played it online and liked it. I mean it’s not so complicated that it is going to take a whole lot of thought but it does hold my interest. Without even intending it to be, it ended up being a godsend for my panic ridden bus rides. I just turn off the sound and play my silly game of colored blocks until it’s time to get off. Also, my sister loaned me a book: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and I am enjoying it very much. I got a lot of reading done on the bus yesterday, and I feel good about that. Because with two kids I often don’t have the time to read that I desire.

All in all, I am feeling pretty good.

Learning how to come up with blog posts has been challenging at times. I want to be able to just write about whatever I happen to be thinking about or feeling at the time, but I also would like to have an audience who wants to read me, who looks forward to reading me. I thought about a Bukowski quote that I had saved years ago and it seemed fitting.

“Somebody at one of these places asked me: “What do you do? How do you write, create?” You don’t, I told them. You don’t try. That’s very important: not to try, either for Cadillac’s, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It’s like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.” -Bukowski