It’s been a hectic week with seriously mixed results. I can’t make my mind stop spinning. I visited my sister and all her home schooled kids in Minneapolis. It was Lily’s first airplane ride. We flew standby, though, which means we got a huge discount at the risk of not making a flight, which we did not on the way home. And that when everything started sucking.

I had to entertain Lily in an airport for 4 hours knowing I had an interview I could be preparing for. Not that it would’ve done me any good. I don’t know, though. Perhaps if I’d have had more time to prepare, I would’ve gotten the job.

There was a big scare regarding getting Lily into the right school this year that couldn’t be resolved until the last minute so that had me on pins and needles as well. It got resolved today, which was another relief.

I’m worried about my only dear friend in real life who reads this blog and she didn’t call me back today. My boss, who was on my interview panel and possibly didn’t vote to hire me is asking for something I’m not sure how to do. I have been paired with a mentor which might work out to be something but it’s a little stressful because I don’t know what to expect. Lily’s birthday is in a month and I couldn’t get Scrapblog to cooperate tonight to start ordering the photo albums. They’re not all done but a couple are so I was hoping to get some printing started.

and in case you’re wondering, I know what a crazy fuss pot I sound like. I know. You don’t have to tell me.

I like feeling like I have to work to keep up. If I start feeling like I do now,which is almost completely uninspired, I stop trying so hard and the stinky stagnant sets in. I can literally feel myself weighing how far my reputation will take me while surfing the internet when I should be working on some boring project. I didn’t used to let myself drift that far but I’m catching myself more and more lately.

So I’m gonna apply for a position that will be a nice promotion and a good bit more responsibility. And respect…I hope. Though I feel pretty respected by my peers, I’m not so sure about the bosses. Mostly because I’m not getting paid near as much as most of the people I work with. They’ve all been there forever; I have significantly less experience. But with years of service comes years and years of growing complacency. And that’s where my opportunity comes in.

***

Also, DMH and I went to the lake with 3 couples and a single this weekend and had the best time. We did an obscene amount of swimming, relaxing, laughing, drinking, peeing, singing, some-things-that-shall-not-be-named, and just generally whatever the fuck we wanted for almost three straight days. No children. No responsibilities. No false niceties. Just rude, obnoxious, funny-as-all-get-out friends we’ve known for 20 something years (holy shit we’re old).

Here’s my “best stuff to do on a drunken weekend at the lake with friends you’ve known forever” list:

• Best way to float in the water: legs stuck through an upside-down life jacket, zipped up front. Total water chair for drunk adults.
• Best, most least discussed part of getting drunk in the lake: Unabashed peeing.
• Best place to float: underneath the boat between the pontoons like some sort of secret, underwater club.
• Best thing to cook after fajita night if you don’t want to take home left-overs: everything nachos (and I mean everything – beans, chicken, steak, turkey sandwich meat, rice, hallucinogens, guacamole, sour cream, you name it)
• Best time to canoe: almost midnight
• Best time to skinny dip: not while your friends are having drunk sex by the moonlight

And my personal favorite:

• Best sign along the way: “Road Unsafe When Under Water”

On a similar note, I was reading a blog post by a friend recently where she was questioning people’s choices and society’s reaction to those choices. She described a scenario where 2 women made different life choices – one got married, had children, got divorced, is now being empathized with and supported by her friends and family – the other chose not to get married or have kids but instead get a degree and a well paying job, thus not garnering sympathy from said friends and family. There was obviously some bitterness there and I think she was talking about her sister, but my point is she was acting like these were all well thought out choices and my first thought was that she’s assuming falling in love is a choice. Talking to my father-in-law recently about peoples relationship choices, he said, quite wisely I think, that you can’t help who you fall in love with. How true is that? Really? Do you think that’s true?

Back to my coworker – does everyone really have the ability to choose their career? I don’t necessarily think so. Some people get to a point in their life where they need to support themselves or their family, so they find the best thing available to them. I know that’s what I did. But you can choose whether you like it or not. I truly believe that. If you don’t feel you can find another source of income, then you find a way to enjoy what you’re doing…or you don’t.

I have sympathy for those who don’t choose the happier option.

I’ve been working on a scrapblog photo album for Lily since she was born. The initial idea was to do one for her first year of life, but I didn’t finish in time for her birthday. So I thought, I’ll do 2 years for her 2nd birthday but then I ran out of time again. This last minute time crunch has been happening for the past 5 years and it has always ended in failure. So, what do I do? I try again, because I’m no quitter…and I’m highly motivated by guilt.

Her 5th birthday is in 2 months and I plan to have 5 photo albums printed into books for her, come hell or high water. I think she’ll love them and I’m pretty determined to get them done this time. Which is why it’s after midnight and I just finished her 5th year. I’ll show you the others at a later date.

Folding the clothes in the dryer so I can put the new load in when it’s done. I have a stackable washer/dryer combo and you can only wash or dry, not both at the same time. We did not realize this until it was purchased, picked up and completely installed in our house. Also, we built cabinets to fit around a stackable so we kind of screwed ourselves from the getgo.

Going to the grocery store for toilet paper. We literally have no paper products in the house that will work as a substitute for toilet paper. Yet, here I am, sitting on my laptop in my pajamas at 11:41 on a Sunday morning…drinking coffee…not buying toilet paper.

Calling my sister to explain why I probably won’t be visiting this summer.

Calling my friend to ask if she needs anything after being broken into while out of town. According to Facebook, she’s okay but if I were a better friend, I’d be on the phone with her right now. When she sees this, though, she’ll see that she’s not the only thing I’m procrastinating about, and perhaps she won’t be too upset.

Organizing photos on my scrapblog so I’ll have 4 complete albums for Lily’s 5th birthday.

Making the beds.

Painting my toenails.

Playing Hello Kitty Bingo with the kid.

Picking blueberries, then making a pie.

Reading Geek Love for my book club, though that book is over 10 years past its prime, I’m sure it will be a fine read…if I would just get started.

Sometimes just thinking about all the things I could be doing almost makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. I actually feel better. Still not doing anything, but don’t feel so bad about it. I think I’ll go stumble some more until someone forces me into action.

So I’ll be doing a little clean up, a little make-over, if you will, in an effort to redefine my purpose here. I don’t really need a soothing place to open my soul to these days. My feet are pretty firmly planted in the now. I’m not terribly interested in revisiting the past, reliving the pain, listening to that sad, old voice I developed while here. Though I must say, I’m sort of proud of the voice I developed. I’m proud of how I healed and I’m glad I have proof.

So, I hope you like the changes. I do. See? Here’s me happy…

Like, Valentine’s Day, for instance. Not typically a day meant for children, other than the cute little Valentine cards they share at school. Today’s spark didn’t start with that, though. I was filling in some family info on ancestry.com for my mom and paused on whether to add all my children. I almost didn’t because I didn’t want my mom to be sad the next time she logged in, but that’s no reason not to acknowledge a life so I went ahead and filled in my sibling’s kids, too, to make Olivia’s date of death a little less shocking.

What struck me was the imagery of father and mother with 2 girls beneath our names. The little pink profiles of what should’ve been my family. Although I love the sweet little pink profile asleep in her bed right now, there should be another one nearby.

Oh how it hurts to be reminded so casually of what should’ve been. It’s so cruel, what happened to us. I of course had to go look at her photos and they’re just so…horrible. So ugly. So the opposite of that adorable pink profile on ancestry.com. It’s such an unbearable thing we’ve learned to live with, and I’m struck by how easy it’s become to just go about my day like nothing ever happened until something just sticks. And pokes at me until I’m curled up in a ball trying to remember how to forget again.

This is who I am.

Anyway, I think I like it. Either that or I’m a huge narcissist.

I’m in a training position at a major corporation. I’m in a department of people who teach sales people how to do their jobs. I just got assigned responsibility for the Sales education website, but I haven’t really gotten a chance to totally focus on it. I’ve been working on an internal blog but haven’t presented it to our director yet. My boss just told me to, but I’m wondering about her motivation for telling me. I think it’s because she’s (the director) mentioned something to my boss about the new buzz phrase, “social media.” They are finally beginning to see the relevance and the opportunity to connect to people they’ve only begun to employ.

I’ve been working on the script for the online course that we’re creating about the new customer information tool they’re going to have to use. It’s my job to write the script for the course some other people will actually design. It’s a weird process. I have nothing to do with creating the visuals, but I’m responsible for writing the flow and the script of the course, and describing the visuals. Someone else might even record the audio. I think I’m going to, though. Honestly, it will be weird if they pick someone else to do the voice since I’m the one who wrote it. I mean, I’m working with this other lady and I got the content from someone else, but I put it together and decided what information Sales needs to know. And I wrote it.

God. Is this boring to you? I honestly really don’t know. I’m so in the thick of it that I can’t even tell if it’s absurd. The woman I’ve been working with is absolutely insane. She is this incredibly short. very weeble wobbly woman. She is constantly getting phone calls from her soon-to-be ex-husband and her crazy 17 year old daughter with bipolar disorder, supposedly, and apparently cannot be trusted. Everytime my coworker’s daughter calls, she has to answer the phone. And she answers it in this sticky sweet voice, so not matching the look on her face when the phone rings. She’s utterly exhausted. She told me she agreed to take her daughter on a cruise this summer and the daughter is apparently obsessed. She says the obsession is because she has bipolar but I’m not sure I’m convinced. I’m not an expert so there’s no way I could really know, but it sounds/looks to me like my coworker is the problem. She has raised her daughter to be completely co-dependent on her and she has no idea. She has no idea that she’s the problem. What is her daughter going to do when she dies? Her father certainly isn’t going to invest any time on her. It’s heartbreaking really.

Sometimes my coworker puts her soon-to-be ex on speaker phone so I can listen. I frantically put my ringer on silent when she does this for fear what he would say if my phone ring while he was whining about not having enough gas money to pick their daughter up from school every day. Not saying outright that he didn’t want to do it; he simply couldn’t come up with the money if he wanted to eat. He said he was counting crackers.

Although she did hear me getting into an argument with my husband last week. It was weird because I could tell she could hear but she wasn’t saying anything and then when I said something she was so quick to take my side. People so want their misery to be accompanied by everyone around them. She doesn’t understand, though, that I don’t think I’m miserable, I’m just imperfect.

Aren’t we all?

I can’t believe it’s been a year. Last year I was sitting in this same living room with this same damn Christmas tree thinking about things like thank you cards for the checks to help pay for the memorial service, and how I was going to fall asleep without crying. This year I’m thinking about how to get Lily to fall asleep without crying and how much I love where we put the Christmas tree this year. I have changed over the course of the year, though. Somehow I’ve come out in the end – or more like  just barely into the beginning – less predictable emotionally, more emotionally disruptive and wholly unstable than I was before. I’m less willing to be nice for the sake of being nice, much more willing to be angry. I’m often flustered, irrational, at fault. I said bitch on the phone to my mother the other day. I wasn’t calling her a bitch, but I said the word. And I wasn’t just repeating something someone else said – I meant to say bitch and I said what I meant. Because that’s what I do now. That’s how I roll. I say what I mean because…I mean it.

***

I raked and bagged up leaves in the front yard today, all by myself. Lily helped me, but I’m taking all the credit. David and our neighbor did it last year and I remember looking out the window at them like it was yesterday. Why does that day stand out? I was at the kitchen table, blogging, occasionally checking the soup I was cooking (or maybe it was bread I was baking), Lily was playing in and out, I was 8 months pregnant and browsing Etsy for new prints to hang on the wall in whichever room we ended up choosing for the baby. I could see them through the front window and remember feeling so safe. It was very sunny and crisp outside and so warm and cozy inside. David would take breaks and come in to drink some tea, give me a kiss, see what Lily was up to. Olivia felt so natural to me in that moment. One of my favorite memories with her. As a family, we were happy that day. I can remember lots of other times during that pregnancy where we were not a happy family. The Holmes’ were having trouble many, many other days. I had a lot of guilt after we lost Olivia that I cried her away with worry about our future. I truly did not think David and I would make it if we had another child. I’m still not sure. Things were not good. We were frayed to what we thought were our edges (we learned they were not). We were tired of trying to make peace and we saw no end to the struggle in our near future. We were this close (fingers pinched together) to giving up.

She saved us, is something I would say if I thought about it that way, which I don’t. I don’t consider myself the type of person who could stay happily married to someone through our child’s death, but not through her life. What kind of backwards love would that be?

***

We planned to make a big breakfast together, go ice skating, make a cake, do happy family things to appreciate each other all day but I feel like I’m just trying to think of things I should be doing and then going through the motions. David and I aren’t in the same mood at all and Lily is somehow managing to be the opposite of us both at all times.

I just want to drink alcohol until I don’t feel anything at all because I can’t seem to feel what I think are the right feelings. Does that make sense to anybody? I’ve always had trouble with expectations for holidays but this holiday is really throwing me for a loop.

But it’s not over yet. I mean, her birthday’s not over yet, the holidays haven’t even begun. I think I’m just going to focus on being present and remaining calm. Slow and steady wins the race, right? The race to the end of this day and the end of this year. It’s almost over and then I plan on getting on with my life. Time to start using all this pain and unwelcome wisdom to my advantage.