Pacing My Cage

Need: basic, primal, urgent,
instinct.

Male: skin, scent, power,
growl.

Female: soft, sweet, yield,
purr.

Together: desire, savage, raw,
fire.

Prize: calm, safe, peace,
fulfillment.

Denial: frustration, futility, insanity,
restless.

Potpourri

Mood: pretty decent
Music: Evanescence - Anything for You

Can you tell I hate coming up with blog post titles?

Well, Christmas went well. A couple days before, I had this wonderful sense of peace and calm. A rare gift at any time of year, and absolutely unheard of during the holidays. I was happy with the gifts I'd gotten everyone, and didn't care that hubby kept saying he felt bad that I wasn't getting much this year. It just didn't matter to me (still doesn't). I had finished the afghan for my mother (she loves it), and I actually got everything wrapped on the 23rd. Christmas Eve was, for once, not spent wrapping gifts at the last minute. Amazing!

After all was said and done, and the girls were picked up by their dad, Mom and hubby and I sat around Mom's kitchen table and talked. The topic turned to Dad, and Mom brought up that she still wanted to talk to Dad's second wife, who was there when Dad died (she was renting a room from Dad and his girlfriend). Mom said she couldn't understand why the second wife (let's call her V), who was a nurse's aid for years, let Dad go 24 hours complaining of chest and arm pain and not feeling well before he died.

My jaw hit the floor, I think. That's not at all what I'd been told by V about Dad's death. I'd been told it had been pretty sudden. She lied to me, and I won't even go into what that's done to my opinion of her. She's made it to the Unforgiven list, let's just leave it at that.

To think that V should have recognized the signs and either didn't or ignored them.... I'm speechless. Come on, ask anyone what the symptoms of a heart attack are and one of the first things they'll tell you is chest pain, and right behind that is pain radiating down one or both arms. I can't help but think that Dad would be alive right now if V had gotten him help. He'd never had any more trouble than high blood pressure, which he was taking medication for. I think nowadays men are more likely to survive a first heart attack than not. If I felt cheated before, that's nothing to how I feel now.

But...at the same time, knowing this doesn't bring him back. I can be angry and upset and hurt all over again, but...he's still gone. I don't know if that helps or not. In a way, I'm angry that it doesn't change anything. I mean, shouldn't he get a do-over or something? It's not fair. It's just not fair....

*takes a break to compose herself*

Okay. That was painful. But on to better news. I get the girls back from their dad today! I miss them so much; the house is just too quiet without them. And little man misses them terribly, too. He wouldn't go to bed Christmas night - he told me he was waiting for the girls to get home. I finally, at about 2:30am, got him to understand that they wouldn't be home for a few days, and he went to bed. He wasn't happy, but he slept. He's been asking about them every day since then, and when he found out last night that they are coming home today, he was thrilled. This morning I was greeted with "Good morning, Mommy! We go get the girls? I get my shoes!". Hated to tell him we don't leave until this afternoon, the little guy is so excited.

Well, I should fix some lunch and get ready to hit the road. Two and a 1/4 hour drive this time, since the ex doesn't seem to have the gas money to meet me halfway. So, I get to meet his girlfriend on her way to work, about 30 minutes away from their house, toward our house. Lovely. Don't get me started on his girlfriend, she pokes her nose in where it doesn't belong far too often, and one of these days I'm just gonna lay her out.

Damn, that thought makes me smile.

Pluggin' Along

Mood: neutral-to-good
Music: Seether - Rise Above This

It's one of those days where I'm just plugging along and puttering around. Playing a little Holy War, listening to some music, and waiting to get over this stupid congestion that's taken up residence in my chest. So not amusing - I've filed eviction papers, but you know that takes forever... *chuckles*

Being sick isn't fun, per se, but it can get interesting when your defenses are down a bit and things come to play. Little crawly things that speed around at the edges of vision, darting for cover when I turn my head. Fear and paranoia that are not my own, but thrust upon me from some outside source. I'm not amused by that, either, but at least it seems to have stopped.

So. It's three days to Christmas and I have nothing wrapped, and still have shopping to do. Nothing new there. I'm supposed to take the kids shopping so they can buy presents for people. I'm supposed to bake a gazillion Christmas cookies. Hmm....now that one might get done, since I've had a vicious craving for sugar cookies for days now. And not just any sugar cookies, but the ones we used to make in my mom's little pie shoppe/restaurant. Incredibly yummy. I'd share the recipe, but I'm not allowed - family recipe, proprietary info, etc. So, I'll just make a batch and think of all my friends while I eat every delicious morsel. *wicked laughter*

On a more sober note, my cousin is supposed to get test results back today - they did a biopsy and a scan of what they suspect is a tumor on his chest. Mom says that he could be in surgery before Christmas if it comes back as malignant. Scary stuff - he's one year younger than me. We grew up together, a set of four cousins; he and his brother, and my sister and me. Our mothers are sisters, and it seems our families were always together. In any case, I'm crossing my fingers for him.

And on goes the day, just plugging along....

Cleaning up the blog

Mood: industrious
Music: the backyardigans (on TV)

Well, I've spent some time converting my old template from HTML to XML, and am in the process of doing little tweaks. I tried lining the header up with the body, mostly because some part of me said it must be aligned, and decided I didn't like it that way. Since I'm unconventional to begin with, this way suits me just fine. ::grins::

So anyway, I was going through my comments, weeding out the bits of spam, and I discovered a comment from 2005 that really surprised me. Well, the comment didn't surprise as much as the author did. Back in 2005, I had no idea who Gena Showalter was, and read the comment without giving it a thought other than "why, thank you". Now, though, I know who she is, having recently read her Lords of the Underworld series (which is great, by the way - go read it!). You can find her blog here.

How cool is that? ::happy dance::

On a sadder note, I discovered that one of the people I regularly communicated with in the blogosphere seems to have disappeared. His blog has sat inactive since 2006. Of course, I can completely relate - the whirlwind of life just has a way of picking you up and tossing you to places where blogging is the last thing on your mind or what you have time for. So, I hold out hope that he'll return, much the way I keep doing.

I have again come to the conclusion that my blogging is mostly for my own amusement, and that putting that into some narrow topic like all the blogging 'experts' recommend is counter-productive for me. I am eclectic, and my blog reflects that. Works for me. ::smiles::

Time to go play with some more of the new Blogger toys that didn't work with the HTML!

Happy Frippin' Holidays

It's been ages since I wrote last, I know. But I had decided to let this blog just die out, like so many before it. Don't ask why I do that. I don't have the answer, and maybe it really doesn't matter in the long run.

I do know that I only seem to write when things are bad. I can't really write cheerful, perky crap. It's just not me. And I write best when it comes from somewhere deep, and the only time I get to that deep place is when something forces the lock on that door open. Because it is usually firmly locked, to keep That Which Must Not Win from consuming me entirely.

Anyway, back to the topic of this poor excuse of a post.

We put the Christmas tree up today. I do this with some reluctance in these years since Grandma died on Christmas morning. I used to love Christmas. Now, I endure it. I hope someday I come to a place where Christmas will let me remember her with love and fondness, rather than with pain and sorrow.

So anyway, while we were putting up the artificial tree (I dislike real ones), I had Dad in the back of my mind. He and I used to assemble our family's tree together when I was a kid. So there's the subconscious weight of Dad's memory in my head, and the three strange dreams I had this morning are still rippling the waters of my mind, and the girls won't stop bickering. I mean -constantly- at each other. And then daughter 12 told daughter 9 that their stepdad doesn't control her actions. And I blew up at her. I told her that as long as she lives in this house, and until she is old enough to support herself and be on her own, we WILL be controlling her actions. And if she chooses to demonstrate that she can be responsible and mature, she will be given more control over her own life. But until then, she can empty the damned dishwasher like she's told!

Well, that settled down a bit, and I went back to putting lights on the tree while the girls continued to bicker over the dishes. Finally, lights on tree, dishes done, I told the girls they could now decorate the tree. I came back to my computer and was checking on Holy War stuff, when I heard a small thud combined with the soft sound of fine glass breaking.

Little man, age 4, had gotten past the girls to 'help', and had dropped a large hand-blown glass ornament that was still in its box, and the ornament had broken. I got up and took the box, and couldn't say anything for the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Dad had given me that ornament, years and years ago.

That ornament had survived three 800-mile moves between PA and NC, plenty of shorter moves, years of being put on the tree, and several cat-induced tree tipovers. And in the blink of a four year old's eye, the slip of his fingers, the short drop to the ground from his hand....it's gone.

And he's too little to understand the blow he's dealt to his mother's grieving heart, and why.