Monday, July 31, 2006

old

you know you are getting old when you cant remember how old you really are. you have to begin calculating by saying "well, i know i was born in...."

one is the lonliest number

i was doing laundry today while making dinner (which if you don't like burned food i would not suggest doing) and right in the middle of folding a shirt i heard the timer beeping, indicating that my tasty fish portion from weggies was done. without thinking i almost yelled at someone to grab the fish out of the oven for me so i could finish up in the basement, but the only people in the house were cara and emily (neither of whom are capable of such a task). as i caught myself from yelling at no one i finally found a name for the funk i have been in for a while. i'm lonely. its funny because earlier today i put up a little blurb about lonlieness from this website despair.com which i thought to be amusing at the time. i dont know why i feel lonely. i think i miss the idea of being married. thats not to say i miss the person i was once married to becuase that would be very very wrong. but i do miss the idea of having someone to yell at to grab the fish before it burns at any given moment of the day. i feel lonely when i am alone (thank you captain obvious...what a profound statement). especially when i am alone with the girls. they overwhelm me so quickly most days with their incessant bickering over who had the toy first and the whining about wanting pasta instead of mac and cheese(which i mistakenly tried to explain to cara that mac and cheese was pasta...bad move). i feel very lonely during those moments because i cant go away to be alone. its a weird place to be...feeling alone because i cant be alone. sometimes i feel lonely when i'm with people too. not really sure why that is. so...thats my lament for the day. i'm going to go brood over it while driving to the thrift store to drop off clothes. and i'm going to put up that same away message because even right now it still amuses me.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Traveling Mercies

I'm just about to finish a book by Anne Lamott called Traveling Mercies. Its been one of the best books i've read in a long time. the thing that gets me about this book is the sheer honesty of it all. she seems to hide nothing. i find that to be a trait that i respect in people but personally have a hard time doing. thats not to say i lie to people, but i suppose in a way i do. i would probably hide a lot of the things she so freely speaks of. i might share with one or two close people but publish it in a book? that takes balls. i think anne is very balls-y. the other thing i like is that wherever she seems to go, she creates a community for herself (or finds one) and immerses herself in it. she surrounds herself with people who care and whom she can care about, so when she's really freakin out she has people to rely on. i, on the other hand, have such a community of people but deliberately choose to keep my neatly constructed wall about me. i dont let people inside my walls much. i grew up this way. our family wore its happy face in public and only had a few people who were privvy to anything beyond the face. its pretty hard to break this. so when i'm really freakin out i know in my head that i have people i can rely on, but i'm afraid to let them past the walls. i probably should deconstruct the walls, because there is a lot about life right now that i find myself deconstructing. and all of it is strange and scary and freeing and burdening all at the same time. i should probably share some of the load with people. once i figure out how to do that i'm going to teach my girls how to do do that as well . so anyway...go get the book and read it. its damn good.