Peonies are still beautiful after they bloom

The beauty of life is how within one single lifespan, we can encounter and come to know and understand many versions of ourselves. Essentially, we can experience many different lives within this one life.

Sometimes we can learn from bad decisions and hard times and be the better for it. Other times, we make what some might call "mistakes," and come out the other side intact, yet somehow manage to get ourselves into the same situation again. And then--again.

But another amazing thing about life is that as long as we're alive, we can keep trying to be the person we want to be. Experience is being able to look behind us and know and remember what took place, and wisdom is having the insight to do something different to affect a different outcome--the one that we were hoping for, or something less painful, at the least.

That's it for now. That's the post. Welcome back dear readers!

Peony, post-bloom

Pindiculousities (A.K.A. ridiculous Pinterest pins)

Random post-divorce update

My coworker remarked to me today that I emanate an aura of peace, happiness and health.

Inside I feel torn, but others can see things we cannot always see.  Maybe I appear this way because I have found the woods again.  I try to spend as much time out there as I can, hiking and backpacking.  It is my meditative place.  Thoreau and Frost were definitely onto something.

The offshoot of the divorce was that I am now able to have time away from the kids to do that.  They come with me often, but I get more time to myself than I ever did.

I'm far from the person I want to be though.  My ex can still make my blood boil.  Sometimes I want to call him a "fucking fucker" when he's giving me a hard time about something, seemingly for the joy he gets from it.  My house is way more disorganized than I'm embarrassed to admit.

I am trying to navigate this being-single deal again-- not being too serious, not letting my kids know anything, learning to be good with being alone, learning to balance between hiding and showing care for someone, fighting horniness, and allowing myself to break away from the church guilt I grew up with after so long. 

Having male friends I keep only as that, and putting more value in my female friends.  Realizing sadly that the parents of my kids' friends are not my true friends, but more like conditional ones depending on if our kids are fighting or not.  Discovering that I really am fun to be with, forcing myself to meet new friends and open myself up to them, and being comfortable hanging out in a public place with people I just recently met and not worrying that I am going to say something stupid.

And I'm still trying to leave my old job and become a real nurse practitioner.  That has been the hardest thing of all lately.

When it comes down to it, this is really just the way of life.  Everyone has to walk this path at one time or another--becoming comfortable and learning to love themselves, while balancing that with love for others.  It's all about growing, and it's good.  I wish I had done this sooner.

in search of a car that goes vroom

After 15 years, the old '99 Buick Century (Bessie--my little cliche car) has finally tired out.  My nice country mechanic described it as "the engine done blown up," and "the engine has expired," to put it in simple terms for me.

Now begins the search for the perfect cheap used car that will hopefully last for another 10.  I am being ambitious, aren't I?

I will admit that I have kept my car so long because I dread this process.  It is like searching through the junk drawer that won't open without having to stuff your hand inside to shove things out of the way, and getting cut by an old pair of pliers several times before you can get the drawer out enough to find the right item.

My first auto salesman encounter came with the perfunctory car salesman smile.  He was the skinny one, and his boss the short stocky one.  They looked completely different, but they had exactly the same smile, only the skinny one looked like a young Nicolas Cage with questionable teeth.  Despite the teeth I developed a small and short-lasting crush on him.  I don't get many smiles like that from men, fake or not.

He took me down to a trade-in lot at the bottom of a hill that I had walked through the night before when it was dark and I could hide from salesmen.  I wanted to know the details about a couple of cars, so we went up a long flight of stairs to the dealer office.

There were two large men sitting behind a desk, eating comfort food from styrofoam containers.  It was an older building, cramped, like a waiting room for a mechanic more than a dealer. The walls had wood-paneling.  I was the only woman in there and could feel the testosterone vibes.

The one car I liked had the check engine light on.  I asked the left-sided man behind the desk exactly why.  He rolled his eyes at me and told me the reason.  I remember the reason, but I remember the eye roll more.

I told my friends about the encounter last night.  As my first test drive of many, I'm sure I will run into this attitude a lot, and get the "Why is this lady asking all these questions?  Shouldn't she just care about the dent on the bumper, the accessibility of the cup holders, and the burnt out tail light?" looks.

I was given some good advice that I think I'll use next time, and every time, if I can get the guts up. If I can just say it once it will be a piece of cake. "I'm here to buy a car, and I'd like to know right now if you are going to treat me like an asshole.  In fact, I would like to know up front if everyone here is going to be an asshole to me and get this out of the way so I can move on to the next place."

I'm giving myself a month to complete this search.  It will be a long month.  But it will be a month that I'm going to grow some balls.  How couldn't I, being around all these car guys?

Oh, happy New Year, by the way!  I've missed it here. A lot.

I cared

Translation:  "I draw on my face and my mom does not care and it is awesome!  It is awesome!"

Michelle in March

I am losing my husband, and I am losing one of my best friends who lives across the street.

With her though, it's not really about what I am losing, but about what she is losing, and I feeling sorry for myself for it.

Back in March I wrote down some thoughts about her journey with metastatic breast cancer.  One morning, I came home from a particularly rough night at work and met her outside at the end of our driveways to wait for the school bus.

I break down about my morning at shift change.  She is interested and wants to hear.  It’s a change from the usual topic of death.  She says that even as a family member, when her son was 17 and dying in the hospital with cancer, she could see how badly some of the nurses treated one another.  They are catty bitches, I say with enthusiasm.  It’s good to be able to tell another woman this, because my husband can’t fully comprehend what I am talking about when I say those two words together, even though he has been on the receiving end.  Before the words even finish leaving my mouth she is echoing them, grimaces, and says with a tone of feistiness “Do you need me to go down there?”

She is dressed up, wearing some of the layered necklaces that I admire her for, always looking put together despite being a mess inside.  There’s a new wig, the second wig.  I joke that she’s already losing hair from the wig too as I remove a long strand from her white shirt, and she laughs.  I tell her it’s a nice style and looks good on her.  What I don’t say is that I miss her old hair that spoke of vibrant health.  

She sees her youngest son off to school, tells me that every day he says he is dropping out of kindergarten.  There is an oncologist appointment this morning to discuss her pain.  She gets through the day with church people and her close friend Stacy, and at night helps her kids with their homework, but in the very late hours that's when it gets bad.  She has been up the past two nights laying on the floor in the bathroom.  I assume it is from vomiting, but she says it is just that she feels like she has to grit her teeth together from the pain, all alone in there.  She won’t take narcotics, not now, not this early on.

She senses my drunken sleepiness and tells me to go lay down.  As I walk away, instead of feeling calm and contented with the camaraderie we just shared over mean women, I want to scream “Noooooooooooo!  You can’t die.  You are the closest thing to a best friend that I have right now!  The only true Southerner who seems to get my sarcasm and is not offended by it!"

I don’t ever want her to see me cry during these moments.  She would ask what was the matter, and I would have to lie.  Would she forgive me if she knew that I was blurring the honesty line a little past where friends normally go?

driving the Natchez Trace

I have so long neglected this blog that I don't even understand the new format anymore.

So, fuck it.

I am going to write whatever I want on here.  This is my blog, after all.

I need to vent, and in order to do that I'm going to have to relieve myself of the pretend obligation that I need to be nice, educational, or accommodating to anyone who might be offended by my posts.

Frankly, I've been offending myself for not writing, because I am too caught up in trying to think of a name for a new blog.

I can't do that anymore, because here I sit, at work, in the quiet of the night at 2 a.m., crying.

This seems to be the only place where I break down.  I don't have a typical nursing job. Patients actually sleep, and I often only work with one other person.  There is lots of time to think.  Too much time.

I'm looking forward to finishing my master's degree next year and getting a dayshift job in a busy clinic.  I'll actually have other things to focus on then besides how sucky life can be...at least my life, as I'm sure some of my patients will have sadder stories to tell.

We used to be a family.  The four of us.  That's not something you just throw away.  I feel like that is a precious thing.  There are going to be problems, of course, but family is sacred.

I have never experienced what that means. My parents were divorced when I was 12, and I was shuffled around between them for awhile.  There was nothing sacred there.  My sister and I were the human pawns in their game of who could get out of paying child support.  I represented a dollar sign and an inconvenience of time.

Then I married young, at 18, and that marriage was over within 2 years.

This marriage was my chance to get it right, but I'm obviously not good at this.

My kids will never be made to feel as if they're an inconvenience.  Not from me.  I can't control what their dad does, but I've been hurting for them lately.  It's almost like I am 12 all over again, feeling their pain.  I've promised myself that I won't let them feel what I felt.  Ever.

Tonight, as I've done several other nights, I'm thinking about the outings we had together as a family.  The four of us.  The kids happy in the back of the van with DVD players.  Dad driving as I read a book in the passenger seat.  The kids running around on a hill while I take photos.  Laughing at the silly things we find on the ground, at the irony of life.

I loved every minute of those outings, except for times like when Claire walked into a spider web on a forest hike and it took awhile to console her screaming, or one of us clumsily tripped and scraped a leg, or insects crawled onto our food during a picnic (well, Brandon liked that part).

Now that I think back, I don't believe my husband was enjoying himself much.  He was faking. I was taking the photos, lost in the wonderment of what was around us, and I think he was just watching me do it, not an active participant himself, but simply going through the motions.

He told me once, toward the end, that he thought about taking photos too, but I was offended and told him to get his own hobby.  I was a jerk for that, for being possessive of my interests.  The thing was, I wanted him to have hobbies besides TV and video games, to find his own loves, and to share them with me and teach me something, not copy what I was doing.  Not do another thing that I would have to be the expert at.

I didn't take any photos of the spider webs, but the memories are there.

We're still going to have those outings that I treasure, but it will only be the three of us now.  We are sacred.

upside down

So...I am getting divorced, or being divorced from, whichever way you look at it.

This is the 5-year anniversary of this blog and of the date we moved to Tennessee from Illinois.  I once said out loud on facebook "I give it 5 years."  I was so unhappy here initially, but I've slowly grown to tolerate some of it, and love other parts of it.  It's a bittersweet anniversary.

 I didn't and don't want to write the details here though, because this is mostly my "fun" blog, and what part of divorce is fun (unless you are the divorcer, maybe)?  That is why I've been so quiet lately.


Also, some of it might be offensive and depressing to my garden/insect/earthy readers, although I know that no matter what our hobbies are we all have very real and human problems, and sometimes it is our hobbies that keep us grounded and sane despite them.


Therefore, I am going to make a new blog only for the topic of the divorce.  It will be one more way to help me get through.  There will be many personal things on there, and since people I know in real life sometimes read this blog here, I have to "screen" the readers first.  I am not so brave and trusting that I won't be horribly judged.


My solution to this is if you would like to read about this side of my life--if you care enough to try--drop me an email at moonflower317@yahoo.com, and I will send you the link.  (Actually some of it might turn out to be a teensy bit humorous, only because my brain copes with this kind-of stuff by forcing myself to laugh at the sadness.)


To the rest of you, I will try to keep writing funny and/or informative things every 6 months or so like I've been doing ;-)

Taken near Stockland, IL at sunrise

Grief

Grief doesn't listen to reason or follow our directions.  It can be messy, chaotic--like a firework--a spinner--that when lit takes off in a flash of noise and sparks, goes one direction, abruptly turns another way, settles down for a moment with seeming restraint.  But then grief gets a second wind and bursts forward again, until it finally hits the grass and starts a small self-defeating fire, or slides across the pavement and burns itself out with a whimper.  We can't control the path, but we can control where we move our feet.

Written 6/2012

journey

Why do we stay in places in our lives where we feel, sometimes with every ounce of our being, that we should not be there?

Because we fear the unknown.

As wrong, as lonely, as sad, as infuriating or as unfulfilled as we may be, we are comfortable in the KNOWN.

And even though what lies ahead and is unseen may open doors that we never thought possible, we still can't see that far, and that's scary.

I know that no matter what happens though, I need ME.  I need to be the person that I was born to be; to not waste the talents I was given because I am in a melancholy funk.  I'm still not sure who that is, and I imagine I'll be working it out until I can't remember where to put my fingers on the keyboard anymore.

I need to be a friend, in return for all the friends in my past and present who have given to me when I couldn't give in return.

I need to be a mom to my kids, to fill their world with the joys of life that it took me so long to find on my own.  To give them the tools to be strong and to know that their greatest ally is themselves.

I have a feeling that this walk down a long unknown trail of many turns, through a forest I've never traveled in before, has already begun.  I am surrounded by stands of tall trees, thick shrubs and May apples covering the ground, still believing that I'm in the parking lot, that I can go back home and life will resume with the known.  I have yet to fully recognize the implications of where I am.

If I do finally figure it out--when I do--I expect poison ivy, thorns, ticks and spider webs on my face.  I also know that there will be surprise blackberries, fields of wildflowers, the croaks of a family of bullfrogs, and a soft breeze that cools me in my weak and tired moments.

And it is those moments that I will wait and hope for, because I know they will eventually come.  They always do.

I've been in stalking mode and have gone for months now without blogging, but after all this time I'd like to write about:

McDonald's!

 .

First, let me make the disclaimer (I am dripping with guilt as I sound like an organically-concerned poseur mother) that I don't remember the last time I've been to Mickey D's for anything other than coffee after seeing Food, Inc.  Even so, that was a brave move, since I had once found beard hairs floating in my latte.  But it was one of those running-around days--you know the type.  One of the kids shouted it out along with "meat paste!", I made a justifying statement about why McDonald's might be okay just this one time, and there we were.

No fries with the Happy Meal--Claire asked for apples!  She wanted the caramel dipping sauce though.  What a way to negate the nutritional value, I thought, but hey, those apples are surely coated in every pesticide approved by the EPA, and who knows what they were soaked in to keep from turning brown, so....food values tossed to the side once again.

But wait!  The cashier said they no longer carried the caramel dipping sauce at that location.  We asked why and got a garbled response over the speaker that included "customer" and "lawsuit."  We were intrigued and grilled the guy further when we got to the window.

Turns out our local McDonald's was sued over this harmless condiment!  

The caramel had been on the warming tray, and supposedly exploded when opened in the car of the offendee.  I am thinking that this person did not drive a '99 Buick as I do (or anything remotely similar).  

I probably would have cursed out the package, considered going back for more, ruled that out from hunger, and then proceeded to dip the apples in whatever was gobbed up on a clean part of the seat and chocked it up as another "character stain."  When I got home I might have let my dog hop in the car and lick up what she could since she is so much better at handling messes like that than I am.

I can't imagine taking time out of my life to sue a restaurant because my car got stained by their food.   Eating in the car is not the best idea anyways, especially if you own one that would cause you to bring a lawsuit over a splatter of caramel.

It's like the frothy matcha latte I bought today that was foaming out of the cup and onto my pants as I walked through the grocery store.  I appeared to have an episode of uncontrollable diarrhea, with dark green splotches running down the front that I couldn't hide with the groceries I was carrying.  Hmmm...could that pass for emotional distress???

Detour

I've been going through some major changes lately.  (No, not that kind of change.  Hopefully I have at least 10 more years before that hits.)  It seems like life refuses to follow the plan that I have laid out.  Such a stubborn beast life can be.

How is it possible to walk around in a daze yet still be full of new insights?  That's how it has been for me this past month.

I'll talk more about all of this later.  Right now I just wanted to say "Hi!" and "I'm still alive out there!" for those of you whose blogs I haven't visited or commented on in a long time.

When circumstances take a dramatic turn, I feel like the best way for me to get through it is to focus on something.  Of course with the holidays coming that's a little more difficult to do.  But anyways, whatever it is that I decide to throw myself into will be shared here because I miss writing.

Talk with you soon!

the thousand year stare

The thousand year stare
scaffolds up a hundred transparent moments
my attention wanes
and sharpens abruptly.
I flirt with an emerald hummingbird
on the sun's side of the window
but he only sees his reflection, not the ghost
nods goodbye to sample a Gerber daisy
timid
peach-colored
proud
one of two on a stubborn plant.
I return to the kitchen.
Lines ingrained in pressed wood trace my finger
alphabet letters and preschool portraits
smiley faces
pencils tapping out songs leaving stars behind
the cadence of children making music around our table.
Window smudges.
Moss on the gate grows unchecked
the siding glows
this incessant heat
how long will it take to return after I scrub it away?
I remember something my mother wrote
words of tonic water when they finally went down
still undigested
does she resent me for not being her
or for being myself?
The books I ordered should have arrived
it has been nearly two weeks.
Piano lessons, nursery rhymes, the gingerbread man.
Dinner.
Milk?
High-pitched silverware slides
with plates like cymbals
piercing.
My family sings melodies of white noise in the background of my daydreams
I wish I could discern the tune
the fine points, the rough edges
find an intrinsic harmony.

garden haiku

If you want to start writing poetry, the haiku is a user-friendly introduction to it.  With a three-lined verse that contains the syllabic pattern of 5-7-5 and no requirement to rhyme, amateurs can make their foray into this Japanese art form without the emotional and time investment that other types of poetry require.  Purists might argue that it's more complex than I let on, and I suppose it could be, but I don't want to scare any burgeoning poets away.

This morning I was inspired by a contest to write some haiku.  I haven't written much poetry in the past few years because it takes a lot out of me emotionally, but this was simple and without that commitment.  Haiku is like the one night stand of poetry.

garden wanderer
pauses to view robin nest
dive bombing ensues

night time insects cry
katy did, katy didn't
cacophony choir

Feel free to comment with your own haiku or link to your webpage or blog :-)

thoughts on May 21st rapturization

Well, it looks like the day is finally here--the day that the end of the world begins.  I'm still here.

My kids and I have been trying to get through the 3-hour-long Avatar movie.  I've been wondering if the rapture will be like that, where your body will suddenly go limp and that'll be it.

If it is gonna happen today, I doubt it's gonna happen to me.  My next-door neighbor is still around, and he has a lot going for him.  He was named after the Apostle Paul, he told me that he never curses, he hosts the church youth group for a backyard get-together every so often, and he always has a piece of candy in his pocket and a smile for a stranger.  I am nowhere near oaiopaslk;jgkl  908t 8gti  nlkalhe480ah fgie


ATTENTION HUMANS:  THIS IS THE ANGEL GABRIEL.  I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO COORDINATE RAPTURE ACTIVITIES.  IF YOU HAVE BEEN LEFT BEHIND, YOU WILL STILL BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR RAPTURED FRIENDS.  THEY ARE LEARNING A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM IN HEAVEN AND WILL BE BACK ONLINE IN A FEW DAYS SO THEY CAN GLOAT AT YOU.

YOU ARE FREE TO ROAM ABOUT THE PLANET.  LOOTING AND PILLAGING ARE NO LONGER PROHIBITED SINCE THERE'S NOTHING GOOD YOU CAN DO THAT MATTERS ANYMORE.  HAVE FUN!

sullen teenage mockingbird

I won't do it.  You can't make me leave this tree.  Humph!

argiope aurantia, our charlotte

This little girl was spotted in our front bushes in May, 2009. She took up residence there and remained for the entire summer. When I arrived home from work in the early morning I would check for her presence in the web. If she disappeared for a day, we would worry that something terrible had happened to her, but sure enough she returned soon after, sometimes in her old web, sometimes in a new one. I guess you could say that she had a high "web-site tenacity," which is the probability of how long spiders remain in their webs before they find another site. This term was described in 1973, long before the internet was around! She had a good food source there, but we think she just liked us. :-)

She ate flies and beetles that ventured unknowingly into her lethal web. After paralyzing them with venom, she wrapped them tightly in silk.

Her abdomen, which was usually flat, grew large and round and stayed that way for days after eating. We came to know when it was time for her next meal.

As time went on, she somehow carved for herself a little depression in the leaves so that she could expand the web out further. After all, she was getting larger, and needed to be able to catch prey that was worthy of her size.

In this photo she holds a large winged insect, perhaps a cicada. We did see a few of those last year.

My favorite photo of her. The yellow and black markings on her legs and abdomen are clear as she rested after a long meal.

Her home began to extend above the bushes.

When the lower bushes were too confining for the size of the web she wanted to build, she moved up and anchored onto the pillar of our front porch and the Euonymus Alatus, or "burning bush," growing next to the house.

One morning, after I did my usual check for her, she was gone again from the web. I searched the bricks and within the leaves. I finally found her on the soffit of the front of the house. I knew it was time to say goodbye. She was drifting away from where we could be close to her and watch the details of her life play out. The mornings were becoming chillier, and I knew that she couldn't hang around forever. It was time for her to build a nest in which to make her egg sac. After laying the eggs, she would grow weaker and eventually pass away.

We had adopted her as part of our extended family, and last summer I found her offspring on some of the bushes.  I called them my natural mosquito-killers.  This spring we should be seeing Charlotte's grandchildren.  I will welcome them joyously into my garden too!

convention of the river spirits

black coal river