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.

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.

Today ended up being a rather productive day. I cleaned the bathroom, the kitchen and the living room including the mopping of the floors. I also did ALL of the laundry. That’s right. For just this moment every bit of dirty laundry is washed, dried, folded, and put away, including fresh clean bedding for everyone. This will of course change as soon as someone takes a shower and then the next thing I know the hamper will be overflowing again, but for just this moment I want to enjoy the feeling of not being behind on the housework. The one job that I didn’t do that desperately needs doing is the cleaning out of the fridge. UGG. I’ll do it tomorrow. I hate cleaning out the fridge.

Polly and I baked a cake together today, vanilla with chocolate icing. I was trying to cheer her up because she tripped and fell going up the basement steps and now she has a scraped knee, elbow, and a big bruise on her hip. I was right behind her when it happened and I didn’t catch her in time. That’s a pretty good metaphor for parenthood, really. Sometimes our kids will fall right in front of us and we can only be there to dry their tears and bandage their wounds. The cake came out pretty good, and I let her ice it herself. Nate declared the icing as tasting almost as good as that stuff in a can. For a former pastry chef, that stung me a bit. I enjoy scratch baking and would like to think my efforts are way better than some crap out of a can, but whatever.

I received my disc from Netflix today. Six Feet Under Season 2 Disc 5. I am so loving this show and I can’t wait to settle down and watch it. I am really enjoying having something that’s mine. I took me many years to realize the importance of taking time out for me. It’s something I still find difficult.

Friday we are taking a day trip with my Mom to a small town in Washington. With a sale pending on her house she is stressed to find a new place to live. I have tried to tell her not to buy in haste, she can always put her stuff in storage and stay with us awhile but she is eager to settle into a new home. I am not sure if Washington will be the right fit for her, but I wish her the best. Not having her so close will be different for us all. Real estate prices have skyrocketed here in Portland, making home ownership impossible for many.

I feel sad to think that not long ago my agoraphobia would have made it impossible for me to go with her. But now I am happy to say that I am looking forward to taking Nate and Polly and getting out of town, even for a day.