I am not a big product endorser because I am a cheap bitch and I tend to look for the least expensive products of a quality that doesn’t suck ass. Recently, however, I tried the The Microdelivery Peel by Philosophy. The results were amazing. My skin is clearer, glowing, smoother and as soft as a …, wait a minute I was going to say as a baby’s bottom, but I can’t remember the last time I touched one of those. Of course I changed my children’s’ diapers, but I can’t imagine that I spent anytime rubbing their butts and marveling at the smoothness. So with nothing to compare it too, I’d say it’s softer than it ever has been. It’s possible that it was softer than it is right now when I was very young, but back then I didn’t give a shit about my skin. I was just hoping for a horrible accident that would leave me in a wheelchair and then everyone would love me and pay lots of attention to me. Or I hoped that I would go blind like Mary on Little House on the Prairie and kind natured family members would guide me around and my parents would look at each other and embrace as their eyes filled up with tears and everything would be right forever.

Anyway, now that I look at some of the other products by Philosophy I am inclined to buy more, even though they cost more than I usually spend on clothes for five years. Whoever is titling some of these is a genius. How can you not want a jar of moisturizer titled Hope In a Jar? I’ve been looking for that jar my whole life. And When Hope Is Not Enough, haven’t we all felt that from time to time? Hope And A Prayer is available for believers and those of us who eschew the usual being grateful for our blessings for open mockery of church goers because they have to get up early on Sundays too for waiting for something really scary and fucked up to happen before we get down on our knees, or cuddled into the fetal position in bed weeping and praying to God until out heads ache. Don’t even get me started on Help Me and Save me. I have two bottles of those products, but I call them Prozac and Klonopin.

Now I have detailed some very expensive products for faces that may or not be worth it. I feel obliged to offer up a cheap beauty tip for the shiny people. You know if you’re one. If you wear makeup even powder doesn’t reduce the shine, not for long. You risk caking on so much powder to reduce the shine that your face looks like a sick mask. Even if you don’t wear makeup you can be shiny too. I’ve seen faces you could see your reflection in. What to do, you ask? Well, I tried those little oil blotting sheets that sell for too much for too few. One day as I patted my nose and forehead in the restroom at my former job it occurred to me that the consistency of these little sheets I was paying too much for was rather like the toilet seat covers they supplied in each stall. What do you know, it worked. So if you find yourself out and about and turning shiny, go to a public restroom, take a toilet seat liner, fold it into fours, press it to your face and viola, no more shine. What the hell, take a few. The horrors us consumers with weak bladders and /or small children who have to pee or worse yet poop endure in most public restrooms is enough to make it okay to snatch a couple oil blotting face sheets for free.

The reality has hit. My Mom has until October 31st to be out of her house. She has found an apartment to move in to. She is going to stay there for the winter before she decides where to buy a house. Now the problem that remains is her stuff. We have emptied the attic and the top floor and the main floor is looking pretty good. Most things are packed, and she has eliminated the furniture she doesn’t want. The problem has always been and remains to be the basement. 1300 square feet of stuff, accumulated over 40+ years, all stuffed into that concrete pit, like the stratified layers of earth studied on an archeological dig. I feel as if I’ve spent decades working on tackling this stuff because I have. Emotionally it is difficult for my Mom to deal with the memories that have been laid to rest down there, and so the stuff remains, waiting.

Yesterday we decided to tackle a large bookshelf that my brother wants. It seems a simple enough task, clearing off a shelf so that we can give it away, but the shelf holds more than books. It holds memories, painful reminders of days gone by.

First I cleared the area in front of the shelf and then I set up a chair nearby for my Mom to sit on, surrounded by boxes for sorting. I had boxes for give away, keep, and recycle. These books must have been packed onto this shelf close to 20 years ago when my Mom bought her house and have remained there untouched since then. They were covered with a thick layer of dust and when I pulled some of them out mouse shit would sprinkle onto the floor.

A very telling assortment, these books. It was almost as if my parents had been buried together right on those shelves. When my Dad died in 1985 my Mom stopped painting. On those shelves were quite a few of her art books, left there for when she could pick up the brush again and rekindle an old passion that somehow went to the grave with my Dad.

My Dad had quite a few books on that shelf too, something that surprised me because I incorrectly assumed that we had disposed of most of his things years ago.

My Dad was an engineer, but his passions were Mathematics and Science. I found books on Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. I found blueprints he had drawn up. I was unable to discern what he had designed on these fragile pieces of paper, and I felt once again stupid as I looked at them. I was never able to match his mind, his genius IQ.I flipped through every book before I placed it on a stack for my Mom to decide on. My Mom has a bad habit of slipping things into books for safe keeping. I have found cash ($250.in one book once) checks never cashed, photos and letters, bank statements, newspaper clippings and bills yellow with age. Into my fathers books are notes he slipped, mostly mathematical equations he was working on that look to my mind to be written in a foreign tongue.

My Mom has been searching for a suicide note since he died, some sort of explanation she needs and so I kept a careful look out for anything hand written, even though I believe no such note exists.

In one Mathematics book I found a series of equations and then my father’s tiny cursive, so familiar. It took me a minute to make out the writing in the dusty dark basement but when I finally did I realized that he had placed that slip of paper on that page because he had found an error in the author’s book and after working out the equations himself he had placed it in between the pages for future reference. I wondered if he felt a feeling of satisfaction when he did so.

My Mom used to keep everything, but now the lack of time and the passage of 21 years since his suicide have changed her perspective. She tossed a lot of books into the giveaway boxes, a lot more than she kept. I saw her carefully placing the art books she has collected over the years into the “keep” boxes. When my Mom concentrates very hard her tongue comes out and she bites on it. My Grandmother has this same habit, I’ve noticed, and it always makes me smile to see the look of concentration on their faces; the total obliviousness to the tongue they bite on. I found myself hopeful that the day might come when my Mom might paint again. I miss watching her work. I miss the smells of the paints and the thinners. As a young girl I used to sit and watch her paint silently amazed as she mixed and swirled and brushed beauty onto canvases, secretly envious that I seem to have inherited none of her gifts for art. I still draw in crude one dimensional stick like figures. I used to try to paint along side my Mom, and then pretend that I was going for some abstract Picassoesqe look because the noses were all out of alignment, the mouths crooked, and the eyes different sizes.

I played the violin as a girl and never picked it up again after my Dad died. My Mom put down her brushes, I put down my bow, my Dad was laid to rest and we stumbled through the days.

I was told once by a former psychiatrist that I should write a letter to my Dad and then burn it, or bury it, or take it up to his grave and lay it on top of him. I was able to start that letter many times, but never finished it. I revert back to that 12 year old girl I once was and still am in a way. I want to ask him why he abandoned us. I want to apologize for pulling away from him in the years preceding his death. I want to tell him that with all of the advances made in the fields of mental health he could have been treated for his bipolar disorder. One day that letter will be written, but not today. I can’t. I wonder which stage of grief I am stuck in and how long this will last before I can finally achieve peace and move on with my life.

It took all day but we cleared that shelf. I explained to my Mom that we probably didn’t need to keep my Dad’s tax records from the 50s. I am guessing the chance of the audit she fears is slim.

When I got back to my house yesterday, after I had cooked, cleaned, done laundry and played with my kids I retreated to my bedroom to watch my latest video pick from Netflix. I have been working my way through the HBO series Six Feet Under. I just started season four. As I watched on the screen the characters trying to go on with their lives after the death of their father I was suddenly hit by what might be part of the great appeal this show holds for me. You see, the dead father pops up from time to time, and the children are able to talk to their Dad. He provides comments on their lives and they are able to express their grief and how much they miss each other. I have had these conversations with my Dad too, but they are only one sided, his voice silenced or replaced with mine, telling me that I am and always will be a failure. I ended up having a good cry at some point, pausing the show to wipe my tears and to blow my nose. My snot came out black and I realized that I had inhaled a lot of dust while going through those stacks and stacks of books and papers. I realized that grief is a long process. There is no magical time line, no steps, and no rules. There are just people going forward with their lives without their loved one, doing the best they can, one day at a time, for the rest of their lives.

And I am totally cool with that because really, who cares? But the timing certainly seems suspect to be running off to rehab and then announcing that you were raped as a teen by a clergyman. Maybe he was raped. Maybe he is an alcoholic. But instead of owning his behavior it seems to me that he is making excuses for it. And I hate that. This is not a partisan issue for me either. When Bill Clinton lied about screwing around with Monica I thought, “You idiot. Why didn’t you just tell them it was none of their God Damn business in the first place, instead of lying?”

Monday night’s grand finale was a trip to the ER. My Mom was over at my house freaking out because the buyer whose offer I accepted while she was away had all of the sudden come up with financing and was once again saying that she wanted the house. And my Mom was pissed. I don’t blame her, but it looks as if she legally has no recourse and honestly, I handed the house stuff right over to her as soon as she had slept off her Dublin jet lag hangover. Polly has been sick since last week. She started complaining of a headache that felt as if her head was splitting open and of feeling dizzy every time she stood up. I finally couldn’t take the worry anymore so I just announced, “I am taking her to the ER.” I offered to take the kids in a cab but my Mom said she would drive and we ended up there until 3:30 Tuesday morning. Turns out she was dehydrated. I never would have guessed. No one I know drinks more than Polly. I can often hear her coming before she enters the room I’m in because of the ice clinking against the sides of her glass or the familiar whoosh sound of her sucking on a bottle of water. She always has a drink going. If she’s dehydrated we all are.

She ended up having to have an IV, which was a big deal because she has a big time phobia of needles. While the nurse went to get the bag and supplies I had a little talk with her. I taught her some breathing exercises to calm down. See, having a Mom with chronic panic attacks comes in handy sometimes. I told her not to watch them put the IV in, but to look at me and squeeze my hand. Before my eyes the little girl who once cried for 90 minutes in the waiting room of a lab because she had to have blood drawn and the same little girl who cried for a week over having to have a shot when she was in kindergarten and ended up screaming her head off and thrashing around at the doctor’s office became brave and she looked into my eyes and squeezed my hand and we talked about the circus and camping and coyotes and she didn’t shed a tear. She then demanded I take a photo of her arm with the IV in it and send it to her Dad, who was at work, because she was so proud of herself. I used my phone and did so, although I never did read the book on my phone because it was boring and I don’t really know what all the buttons are for. It magically made it and he was proud of her.

“I guess”, she said, “My phobia of needles is over.” As I sat by her bedside and watched the bag go drip drip into her arm and awaited the results of the blood tests, the urine tests and the chest X-ray she looked at me and said, “This is kind of fun.”

Fun? “Yes, fun. Because everyone is so nice and paying attention to me and it feels good.”

I managed to hold it together but I felt like shit. My poor little girl, so starved for attention that she thinks going to the ER and being poked and prodded is fun. As I looked at her I realized just how much of me is being given to her brother, and how she silently waits for her turn. I need to remedy that.

I can remember when I was hospitalized for a week in 2003 with a staff infection, once I got over the fact that I wasn’t going to be getting out of the bed for some time, I decided to just lay back and enjoy it, like a forced vacation for my body. The nurses kept me doped up on percocet and I didn’t care that my roommate, who was there for constipation, was constantly yelling for more morphine. When the nurses wouldn’t give it to her she would wait for them to leave, get out of bed, go to her purse and get pills from there. I wondered why no one had made the connection between morphine addict and constipation but I said nothing, lying on my side of the curtain, listening to her screams of pain and the unsuccessful enemas, suppositories, laxatives and rectal exams.

Finally I whispered to a particularly cute male nurse, “Where would a patient who wanted to smoke go?”

He looked into my eyes and whispered back, “Oh, you can’t go outside. But when I get a cigarette break I go down the elevator to the main level, outside to that little enclosed area about half a block from the main entrance and smoke. No, I can’t let you leave, but I can get you a pole that we can hook your IV bag to and you could walk the halls a little bit. It would do you good.”

I nodded silently, thinking that there was hidden meaning somewhere in his whisper, that he was telling me something with those oh so blue eyes. I put a gown on backwards over the one I was wearing so my ass wouldn’t be hanging out in the halls and slowly walked down the hall with my pole. When I got down the elevator to the main level I went through the front door and down to the box built to separate those who inhale from those who don’t and sat down. I can remember that cigarette vividly. I saw the ambulances racing in, I saw people coming into the ER, people leaving, family members crying, people rushing all around me and as I felt the warm numb of pain killers mixed with the hit of nicotine juxtaposed with the coolness of the night air I remember what I was thinking as I tipped my head back and inhaled. “This is fun.” Because it was a break from my job. My Mom. My husband. My kids. The dishes. The laundry. The cat box. The grocery store. The stack of bills. What to cook for dinner. My Life.

In response to Cazzy’s comment on my last post, thank you for letting me know I am not alone. Sometimes it really feels that way. If anyone gets to keep the earnest money it will be my Mom, but her realtor says she’ll probably have to go to small claims court to get it.

Someone like you, thanks for the well wishes. I never expected the teen years to be so difficult, even before my son was diagnosed. I know that we will get through this, somehow. Thank you for stopping by.

I was on the phone most of yesterday and I now have Nathan on the waiting list for three different alternative schools. I spoke with his psychiatrist and his primary care physician, both who said they will happily write letters on his behalf to maybe help speed up the application process. When I told Nathan that he was on the waiting list he seemed much happier. I think just the thought that he might be getting out of this school has really lifted his spirits. They have a lot more programs for teens over the age of 16 or teens who have been arrested, expelled or who are teen parents. Fortunately Nathan qualifies for none of those programs, but it is still frustrating to see how far you have to fall before you can get a hand up.

Polly is doing very well at her school. I spoke with her teacher last Friday and she is getting all As and Bs. Her teacher is very nice and the whole environment at that school feels so positive. She is going to her first dance on Friday. She asked me if I would chaperone and so I said I would, but the office said that I can’t until I fill out a criminal background check. I just had one last year, so I could volunteer at her last school, but they said when your child changes schools you have to get (and pay for) another one.

I’ve only volunteered a few times at my children’s classrooms, preferring to let them have school time be their time. When Nathan was in kindergarten I used to go in and read to a small group sometimes. When Polly was in kindergarten I used to go in and help during journal time. Soon Polly was clinging to me when journal time was over and begging me to stay the entire afternoon. I decided it would be better if we parted ways at the door. The school that Polly is in now requires parents to volunteer sometimes. I can work in the school’s garden, or help in the kitchen, or run copies in the office. All of this after I prove that I am not a violent felon.

I was sad to hear about the death of Anna Nicole’s son. I used to watch that show on E sometimes and he seemed like a sweet young man who really didn’t want to be in front of the camera. The fact that he apparently died trying to treat his depression and who knows what the methadone was for makes me feel bad. Not to get all Tom Cruise on anyone, because I have tried many antidepressants and had a lot of luck with most of them, people, be careful with the drugs you take.

Life is precious, even though it can be a real bear to bare at times. Today I am focusing on cleaning my house and doing some laundry. I haven’t been working at my Mom’s since she returned because I want to focus on my kids and on my own home. I feel guilty in some ways, but in other ways I know that my kids need me most and this is where I need to be. I hope someone buys my Mom’s house. I am tired of devoting so much of my energy to it, tired of having it be the #1 topic of conversation.

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.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us remember where we were that morning. I hope that we will never forget what happened on this day. Nothing I could write would be as poignant as these photos I found on the following link.

http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/shattered/index.html

This is not Steve Irwin.

Heard behind me today while I waited in line number five at my son’s high school registration,

“Did you hear that Crocodile Dundee died?”

“Oh really? I loved him in those movies.”

“Yeah, a fish bit him in the heart.”

“Oh my God I am never going near the ocean again.”

“I know.”

Okay first, my Mom is Australian and was born and raised there. I have traveled to that wonderful country several times. In Australia, they tend to call shrimp prawns, not shrimp. And I’ve never seen anyone throw one on the barbie, or anywhere, for that matter. Except into a glass with cocktail sauce.

Also, I’ve never heard the word Crikey except by the human Barney, and I was glad when my kids stopped watching him. Not that I wished the man dead.

As far as Aussie slang goes I prefer Dunny, Drongo, Dinky die, Tinny, Thunderbox, Reg Grundies or Reginalds and Ta.

Other than the two Aussie men confusion, today was relatively uneventful except seeing my psychiatrist who asked me if Nate had ever been abused by a babysitter or a family member because he seems so angry. I wanted to say, “Of course he’s angry, he’s 14. Angry at the world is his job.”

I am willing to bet that if they would have let Pluto talk instead of Goofy, we would have found this out years ago. Also, on a plus note, all of those out of date textbooks we have in our children’s schools are now more accurate. We only need to find out that the Apollo Landings really were faked and we’ll be on our way. I was flipping through one of my daughter’s textbooks and it said, “Maybe one day man will walk on the moon.” Maybe.

At times, I seriously question this world we are living in. And I wonder what I can do to make this world a better place, one free from stories such as these.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51602
http://savemalak.googlepages.com/home

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