NaBloPoMo 2013 — Page 2 — This Mom's Wired

Day 3: Sometimes I forget the internet has opinions

November 3, 2013 by sarah Leave a Comment

“Life is composed of light and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows.”
– Walt Disney

Last night after I posted, I tweeted the link to my post on Twitter and someone (helloooo to you if you’re reading) tweeted back and said it sounded like “incipient depression.”

I was offended for about two seconds.

And then I remembered, “Oh yeah, Sarah, this is the internet.”

I know that if I write something and I put it out there, y’all are going to have opinions about some of it. In this sense, I’m lucky that I’m not a blogger who has some massive readership. I’ll take a handful of people rolling their eyes disapprovingly at me through their screens versus hundreds, or thousands. When I hit “Publish” I know that I’m opening myself up to that.

But.

There are shadows sometimes. And as our buddy Walt apparently said (according to a pin I saw on Pinterest this morning), pretending otherwise is not sincere.

There are peaks and valleys, shadows and light, hormonal times and less hormonal times. I take each day as it comes – and yes, some are better than others. Today was a little better than yesterday, but still with time change induced meltdowns and some exhaustion and an argument about brushing hair and being told that I am not in charge of everything, the President is in charge of everything (I wonder if I can get Barack Obama to tweet to me that he believes my kid should brush her hair and go to bed on time).

“Emotion is messy, contradictory…and true.”
– Nigella Lawson
(amazingly, as I was writing this post I saw a photograph Lotus had posted on Flickr with this quote as its caption. How appropriately fitting to this topic.)

I’m going to keep on being who I am and I’ll keep on writing about my days, and some days will be better than others, but I’ll be authentic because that matters. Will I love when the internet remarks about my state of mind? Well, probably not. But, you know… it happens. Well, it happened. Once. Let’s not make this a regular thing, y’all.

Being a single parent is hard. Job hunting is hard. Parenthood in general is hard. Life is hard. Not just for me, but for most people. And not all the time and not in all the ways but enough. No one wakes up and says, “Wheee. Job hunting is really fun and it’s great for my self worth and I really enjoy people not seeing the value in the work I do and the skills I bring to the proverbial table.” Most of us, when job hunting, hope to quickly pass through the hunting phase to the happily and gainfully employed phase. And when we don’t, it gets tiring. It wears you down.

That’s…to be expected, y’all.

I do my best to not dwell in negativity in life – because I do truly believe that it’s not good for me.

But sometimes you’ve gotta.

Sometimes it’s good to be upset.

(I’ve never thrown a hammer through a window.

But I’ve wanted to.)

Saying I was offended for two seconds and then writing 500 words about it seems contradictory but it’s actually true. Internet, I ain’t mad atcha. I’m just living life.

Filed Under: A Job Ain't Nothin' But Work, Mom Shtuff Tagged With: NaBloPoMo 2013

Day 2: Even in Australia

November 2, 2013 by sarah Leave a Comment

Pumpkin woke me up at 7:30 on the first day in a week when I didn’t have to wake up early, on a morning after I stayed up far too late the night before archiving photographs because the warning messages were starting about “Hey girl hey, you have too much stuff on your computer so I’m going to just slow things down for you. Liiiiiiiiiike thiiiiiiiiiiisssss….”

I don’t know where the morning started going off the rails. Pumpkin had prepared my breakfast and left me a sweet note. The breakfast was cold and frankly I wasn’t really hungry – but I ate it anyway.

I started tinkering around the house, chipping away at my to-do list. I found a towel, drenched with bathwater, resting on the carpet in the hallway. Heavy with water and starting to smell of mold. Frustration rose. Who did this? Why? Trudged downstairs slamming a pile of wet towel and wet clothes with me.

Tried to put clothes away, tripped over toys.

Tried to let the water drain out of a two days old bath, the drain refused to cooperate.

A series of little things made me think of all the big things – all of it pointing like big neon arrows to: None of this would be so bad if you had a real job.*

And it’s true, you know, money can’t really buy happiness but it does quiet some of the nagging voices that tell you that you can’t really call a plumber to deal with the tub. And that it’ll be okay if the garbage disposal never really starts working right, you’ll just take out your trash more often. It lets you buy Christmas gifts without having a detailed grand master plan and it allows you to sometimes decide not to try to figure out what to make for dinner and lets you spontaneously tell your kids, “Hey! Let’s go out!”

But it’s not even just that.

A messy house that the kids don’t want to help clean. A dog that has somehow acquired thirty tug of war ropes, all of which have been chewed to shreds, leaving little rope pieces all over your living room. Not being able to fold clothes because the dog steals the socks.

A hormonal and Halloween-induced feeling of fluffiness and no energy to do anything but a jaunt on the treadmill that leaves your hip aching because your gait is dumb and your foot rolls out and it’s making everything hurt.

A kid who says she’s hungry but refuses everything you’ve suggested until you finally make a piece of buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, thrust the plate in her direction and say, “JUST EAT THE TOAST!”

Michigan and Michigan State played and I always want Michigan to win if only to quiet the “ha ha sucka you lost” taunts from State fans. Michigan lost.

Preparing a dinner that The Princess refused to eat because, “I was just tolerating grilled chicken before. I don’t really like it.” (I mean, WHAT IS THAT? Tolerating chicken? Can you just give me a break now?)

All of those little things and more. This heaviness. This feeling. This being so tired and exhausted and just wanting the tide to turn and for everything to start going my way.

So Chris, He Who Makes Me So Happy, met me on his way to work to bring me his dog as an excuse to stop and hug me in the middle of my day. As another reminder – my children are two more – that not everything is bad. That there’s a lot of good stuff. That I am loved. As I type this, his dog is licking his foot clean and the girls are laughing at this display, the weird grooming practice of this dog. This dog who hovers close, assumes the role of little spoon as soon as I lay on the couch.

I am grateful now that the day is almost over. I feel like I’ve been tumbled in the clothes dryer. Beat up, worn down and just exhausted. I am hopeful that tomorrow will be better. It should be.

I wonder sometimes if perhaps it is a mistake lately to post so much of this negativity. Meh. Maybe? Maybe not? I would hate to give the sense that all day every day that I am sad or ungrateful for what is beautiful in my world and focusing only on the negative. I could gloss the picture, surely, and let everyone believe that life was perfect but just as those people who post on Facebook (Fakebook?) all the time about how wonderful everything is, you wouldn’t really believe me if I said that, would you? I’d laugh in my face and call me a liar.

Fact is, some days just…are rough. And sometimes life is rough. And sometimes you have to give in to that. Sometimes you have to cry and curse the bathtubs that don’t drain, the jobs you don’t get, the abundance of leftover chicken, and the football team that beat yours. It’s just… life.

* I feel like I should state for the record: Sometimes I worry that people I work with will read this blog and get all defensive or angry the way I talk about job hunting or “real jobs” but I also figure that every one knows that it wasn’t my choice to transition to part-time. And most people realize that a single mom can’t really get by working 24 hours a week. If they don’t like that this change in circumstances is causing me stress than they are welcome to stop reading. I mean no disrespect: it is what it is. This is a situation I didn’t choose and I am working towards solutions that work for my family.

Filed Under: A Job Ain't Nothin' But Work Tagged With: NaBloPoMo 2013

Day 1: National Blah blah blah Month

November 1, 2013 by sarah Leave a Comment

I went back and forth about whether or not to take part in National Blog Post Writing Month (what’s it called again? That thing that bloggers do when they’re too chicken to commit to trying to write a novel? YEAAAAH. That thing), whether I wanted to write every day, whether I wanted the fuss, whether I wanted to be real or put myself out there. Again.

I remember how difficult it was to write for 30 days (31?) last year – especially because not even halfway through November, my grandpa suffered a stroke. He never returned home. It’s silly, perhaps, when we had all those months yet after that stroke that I am associating November with it all, why this month and the writing feels like revisiting an accident scene, but it does feel that way. A little.

{I miss my grandpa. A lot.}

I have no idea what’s in store for this month and I can’t believe it’s November already. More job hunting I’m sure, as it becomes more and more obvious that living on a part time income (even with the unemployment kick in) is not really an option — oh, and unemployment won’t last forever. A few portrait sessions at the end of October have made Christmas shopping possible, so you may see that – that I’m gonna try to get that done before anything else comes up. And at some point this month, I have to tackle researching health insurance – so you can maybe tag along for the ride as I venture on my healthcare.gov adventure {let’s not get political, okay? I spend a lot of time being afraid of getting sick or getting into an accident and going bankrupt because of it — so it will be peace of mind to have insurance, even if it’s just catastrophic coverage}.

I dunno. Here we go, huh?