Velvet Verbosity

I finally got the last of the glitter and tinsel out of my clothes and hair, the tree is looking a little limp, the family has all disbanded to return to their own homes, their own kitchens, and I still don’t know where I’m going to store the new stuff.  It’s a good thing I seem to like clutter.

Merry is not a word that came to my mind this Christmas.  I walked into this holiday holding the idea of good cheer with a shaky grip.  I was the competent surgeon who had developed tremors from some trauma but wasn’t ready to admit that the gig was up, and cheer was my unsuspecting and trusting patient.  I slaughtered cheer with an unsteady hand and with the help of my own personal live-in Scrooge. Still, I persevered.  I shopped for my entire Christmas list in four hours, a feat that there really ought to be some kind of award for. Really.  Who DOES that?  I shopped for presents, I shopped for Christmas dinner, I made phone calls to people who needed a light in the dark of winter, I moved blankets from here to there so overnight guests could be warm, I bought a tree, put it up, dressed it and myself up, and I smiled.  I wrapped gifts with the same flair as always, and I kissed my children.  I did my best to let the Spirit of Christmas get to me, and I admit, while I wasn’t exactly channeling Saint Nick, I was warmed and softened.

Besides, even if I didn’t make “cheerful and lively”, I at least managed to achieve the informal British definition of merry; “slightly and good humoredly drunk”.  But enough about me.  Sassy Mama Bear still has a firm grip on Merry, and just knowing that there’s one person out there still feelin’ it means that merry still has a place in this world.  All it takes is one.

Merry is the heart that knows unconditional love. Merry is the soul that flies free of emotional restraint. Merry is the child lost in innocent imaginative play. Merry is the bride on her ever special day.
Merry is my heart when I see my child smile. Merry is my soul when I feel no burden weighing it down. Merry as a child am I when the world is sunny and bright. Merry as a bride am I with a kiss from my groom on my lips alights.
Merry is the world where all know happiness if even for a moment.
~ Penelope Anne Bartotto
© 2008

Thanks Mama Bear for keeping us real.   In other words…

•  A “rogue and a scoundrel” but merry.
• Merry is not for the weak of heart according to Ninjas.
• Channeling merry in another world, another time.
• Night Blogger threw the antidote gauntlet down at Ninja’s feet.

Now, before I give you this week’s word, I have a surprise.  An idea emerging, but I’m going to need your help on this one.  I’ve been thinking for a long time about sending something to my choice of the week, but I wanted to wait for the right idea to come to mind, and I think it has.  I love books, especially old books, especially found and recommended books.  I want to share that love with you, and here’s my evil plan to do that.  Every week, I’m going to choose a word from a book that I will then send to you.  You being the you blogger whose 100 words I choose to feature. The books I send will be found books, books I’m ready to part with, used copies of books I’m not willing to part with, books from quirky used bookstores with delicate pages and beautiful poetry, funny books, helpful books, inspiring books, and books that for whatever the mood is that strikes me, I think ought to make a journey from me to you.

It doesn’t end there.  I’m thinking that it could get even more interesting if we send these books along on further adventures.  Leave them in cafes, gift them to strangers, or send overseas to a school in need.  The travels of the books are only as limited as each of your imaginations.  The only catch is that I haven’t yet figured out the best way to track and document the path of the books.  For now I’m going to add a page here for each new book I send, but eventually I may have to build a companion website.  I’ll cross that bridge when I have to get to the other side.

You can help me out by shouting this out on your blogs and making sure that if you are a book recipient that you let the book go.  I’ll be sure to include some other memoir for you from me.  And so it begins with Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic.  The word is

Doorway

With love,

Ha!  Holidays.  Technically over, but still recovering and only just home to my own bed, my own kitchen, a stack of mail, and an incredibly grateful purring kitty (that’s the great thing about pets, they forgive and forget pretty fast).  Every year, I totally underestimate the black hole of the holiday and I get sucked in wondering how it is possible that 24 hours feels equally like half the time, and a life time all at once.  I’m tired, a little fatter, and a whole lot of content.  I’ll be back tomorrow with the 100 word round up and a surprise for the challenge.  Stop by and say hello.

I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve been through the regular check out line at the regular grocery store. I tend to use the self check-out counter and get pretty tunnel visioned about just getting the hell out of there, or I shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.

Yesterday I was feeling leisurely (with Christmas around the very next corner, I admit this is probably naive and foolhardy) and economical (a dollar goes a wee bit further at Stop N Shop versus Whole Foods) and decided to stand in a regular line complete with a real live cashier. You only live once right? As I was unloading my groceries, I glanced over to where I remember the candy shelves and soda cooler being when my kids were still of an age that they sat in the cart and had “close candy proximity” induced seizures as I frantically unloaded groceries in a race against full onset preschooler meltdown.

This is what I saw:

What is this crap?  Where are the chocolate candy bars to melt in a child’s sweet chubby fists to be smeared all over clothing and car seats?  Where is the soda that will turn a well-mannered child into a tazmanian devil on steroids?  Where is the potential for your child’s gentle voice to turn into a spine shredding whine?  I want to know who is responsible for this. Parenting is just not parenting without the experience of candy shelves at the grocery checkout. So if you see a small woman giving you a scornful look next time you’re in the grocery store with your sweet, healthy-snack-eating-toddler, that would be me.  And you call yourselves parents.  Ha!

With love,

I finally got to sleep, at about 5:00 a.m. Up at 6:30 to stand outside Alba’s door to play my favorite morning game with her. Lately Alba has taken to telling me that she’s going to drop out of school. This makes me sigh an “I’m exhausted with teenagers” sigh. This makes me want to say things like, “you know, I was stupid when I was your age too, I understand.” Somehow I think the humor would not be appreciated. What it comes down to anyway is that everyone in our household has sleep problems, AND the school system is obviously cruel. The only time I saw Alba watch public access television was the time the school board was hearing arguments for and against pushing school start times up to a later hour. She watched with the same anticipation and hope as we all watched the 2008 elections. Too bad she hadn’t accepted the school system as a system of torture.

Think about it. In elementary school, when kids are up before the sun jumping on your head because they’ve been awake five minutes already and they’re bored, you look at the clock and curse the schools for not opening for another FOUR hours. Then adolescence hits, that time period of hormone induced insanity and altered sleep requirements, and the schools want you to drag your teens out of their warm beds even though they won’t wake up until just about the time school is ending. Cruelty I tell you.

It’s enough to make you angry. Good think we can live anger vicariously through my readers submissions. This week I tag Sleep Deprivation Ninja (I’m not biased or anything. Just because he’s sleep deprived has nothing to do with my pick. Honest.) Powerful piece this one:

It’s the bleeding hearts that get me, the screaming, thrashing, singing, dissident crowds, holding firm in the face of adversity. Break free from tyranny, they scream. The lollipop laggards stand back, mocking, laughing, squirreling away hidden admiration for the ones who stand. Crypto kids clap hands in code and shrink away in silence, live another day, anonymously blending with the passersby, watching from the sidelines as the riot gear cops push in.
Someone throws an apple and gets a beanbag bullet in the face.
You don’t know anger until you see it bleed out the nose of a rebel with a cause.

What’s that? You want more? Get your click on and be sure to spread the comment lurve.

• Night Blogger is making sense of it all.
• Follow the unfolding drama at Losing Myself.
• Mama Bear on anger and forgiveness (welcome back MB!!).
• I think I might be Frank Talbert.
• Patsy and painful words.
• Lceel does a very good impression of God.

Ok, I can’t avoid it.  Let’s do something festive, shall we?  Oh, and I have a surprise for you next week.

Merry

With love,

Yes, I said a bad word. In the title even! Sue me. It’s 4:00 a.m. and I’m not amused. There was a time in my life when I was oddly proud of being a “night owl”, but those days are gone and I’m ready to call it what it is. Insomnia. When I was at Smith, insomnia came in handy for all those papers I waited til the last minute to write. Back then it was ok to show up for my first class in yoga pants and a t-shirt sporting 5 lb bags under each eye. It helped that I spent hours planning my class schedule around my sleep schedule as much as around my degree requirements. This meant that once I booted the kids out the front door to catch the school bus, I could go back to sleep for an hour or two before I had to roll out of bed, throw on shoes, and head to class.

Now? Now I have a teenager that I have to wake up two hours earlier for, just so I can lean up against her door trying to catch snippets of sleep in between banging on her door and responding to her muffles with, “Alba, it’s not hard, just drag yourself out of that bed before I do.” I’m such a liar. It IS hard to drag yourself out of bed in the morning when saddled with my genes, and no way I’m dragging her out of bed for real because I’M TOO TIRED.

Now? Now I’m supposed to be at work at a normal work time. In theory. Truth is, I plan my career around my sleep schedule the same way I used to plan my classes around it. My dream job has nothing to do with pay scale, benefits, or wanting to be part of a dynamic team. My dream job offers “flexibility”, aka the possibility of sleeping during daylight hours while everyone else is working because during normal sleeping hours, I’m laying in bed wide awake.

Now? Now I’m getting really tired of the insomnia game. I want to sleep like regular folk. I want to wake up at a decent hour like regular folk. I don’t want the only people I can call up when I’m awake to be halfway across the world because apparently my brain thinks I live in a different time zone.

And you know what’s responsible for this whole mess? My suprachiasmatic nucleus, that’s what. If any one of you can figure out how to reset my clock, I’ll let you use that term at cocktail parties. It’s fun to say and people will think you’re totally smart. You can thank me later.

Things have been hard with Poe for some time, but in some ways they are harder now that he is in recovery. He goes to meetings regularly which means I have to drop him off and then pick him up. I also have to take him to treatment, make tons of phone calls, and try to guide him without nagging him about getting a job, getting enough sleep, and taking care of his health. He is up, then he’s down, and his mood can change in seconds. So, I apologize for my long stretches of absence, but just know that we’re all in recovery mode over at the VV household. And the real truth is that I’m fecking exhausted. There are days that holding this little family together feels a lot like trying to plug holes in a dam that is about to burst at the seams. I’m tired of crisis management.

We need time.

Speaking of time…last I left all of you, the mission, had you chosen to accept it, was to write 100 words on time. From those who accepted the challenge, my mission is to choose one that particularly moves me. My pick of the week for time is LouCeel with this bittersweet exchange between generations. Oh, and for a real treat, be sure to visit the original post where you can hear LouCeel read this piece. That really adds a whole new layer to it.

Do you not like my gift, Grandfather?
Oh, I love your gift, my child.
But why do you not smile, Grandfather?
I am smiling, my child.
There are tears in your eyes, Grandfather.
I know, my child. I know.
So what is wrong with my gift, Grandfather?
There is nothing wrong with your gift, my child.
Should I have given you something else Grandfather?
There is nothing else you can give me, my child.
What gift would take the tears from your eyes, Grandfather?
No one can give me that, my child.
What is it, Grandfather?
Time, my child. Time.

 

I apologize for the weird formatting. I don’t know how to fix it right now, and I have so little time to pay attention to such things. So let’s just ignore that for now, shall we?  I figured out the formatting problem.  Moving on…let’s get to our other loyal 100 worders.

• Hank and June meet over at Patsy’s place.
• Losing Myself offers hope for change.
  
• Angel Sharum warns us not to squander our time here.
• They grow up fast over at I Rodius.
• A haunting story from Lessa.
• Night Blogger’s clever twist on love through the ages.
• The ever sleepless Ninja.
• Mary reminds us that there are those whose time is up before it should be.

This week’s word doesn’t come from a book. I have little time to read these days. This word is, unfortunately, a word that my family is struggling with as Poe fights to stay sober and deal with an unruly mind, as I struggle to be supportive and detached all at the same time, and Alba gets lost in the crossfire.

Anger

With love,