Every Monday (OK I skipped last Monday and pee-yew paid the price for it), I clean out my cat’s litterbox, my rabbit’s cage (I have one rabbit with digestive problems so this is sometimes not fun), and their litterbox as well. Monday is trash day and I have to have all that shit (literally) out by the curb by 6:30, so I usually get up at 5am to do it.
What did I do yesterday? Mash up my foot by stepping on the sharp edge of the lid of the cat’s litterbox, fall and send dirty litter all over my carpet. The tiny grained, scoopable sticky kind. So here I was at 5am shop-vaccing with a hurt foot and no coffee in sight.
I was in a foul mood anyway because of the weekend. You see, I’ve only been in love with one man in the past six years. We were friends for about 3 years, it turned into more last summer, but he never really wanted me for anything more than companionship and a bootie call. It broke my heart and crumbled my confidence. When we parted ways in December, it was UGLY. I don’t know that I ever said such horrible hateful things to someone when ending things. And it was via email, so it could be referenced again and again. Phrases like “hate your guts” “rot in hell” “never EVER contact me again” were used with abandon. And he didn’t contact me for five months, which was fine with me. The approx. 6 months I “dated” him were filled with tears and disappointment, even though he never promised me a goddamn thing.
Well last Friday out of the blue he called me but I can never understand him on the phone because I think we both have the shittiest cell services on the planet, plus he’s very soft-spoken so our conversations typically were me saying “what?” and him getting frustrated. When we even had conversations that is. Friday was no different, and I never could find out why he called me. He said he’d call me back Friday night but never did, and no call this weekend either.
Typical him. I think I’ll call him YoYoBoy because that’s what he does. Draws you in then violently pushes you away, and it’s all good with him because he’s the one standing still. You’re the one spinning on the end of his string getting very nauseous.
Anyway, I finally email him Monday and said if he wanted to talk to me call me and if he didn’t then at least we ended things on a more civil note with our brief phone call and good luck.
He called me yesterday afternoon saying his grandfather is very sick and will probably die so he’s flying out-of-state. Which of course makes me want to go into “caretaker/comforter” mode immediately except for the fact that because he ignored me all weekend, we never got to get to why the fuck he even called me again in the first place.
So now if I keep my distance and act aloof, I’m now going to be a jerk because his grandfather is on his death bed. But how to be a supportive friend when we’ve spent the last five months hating each other (well, I can only speak for my feelings). When he called yesterday I told him to call if he needed me but of course he put it all on me, I’m supposed to call him. What a crazy situation!
He knows about this website I’m sure, but I’m not worried about him coming here and reading this because he has no interest in anything that is not about him, and I know I’m making him sound dicky. But he’s not conceited. He is just so wrapped up in his own self-preservation he can never see anything beyond it, and I feel sorry for people like that because one of the most interesting things in life, in my opinion, is the exploration of the thoughts and feelings of other people. But that will never capture his interest, so I feel I can write here freely about YoYoBoy.
ANYway, I do believe him about his grandfather but I think he blew off calling this weekend and that was a dick move (after all, who called in the first place - him!) I think he’s using his grandfather as an excuse but that’s just a gut feeling. So being supportive, even though I don’t trust him at all and don’t know why he even contacted me, plus he’s put it all on me by saying I have to call him, is going to be difficult.
I traveled a lot last year and get lonely on the road. Both road trips I took when we were dating, he didn’t call or email either time - just ignored me. So it’s hard being supportive to a guy who wouldn’t in a million years think of someone else long enough to return the favor.
Yeah, why did I love this guy? I’m retarded.
Despite that unpleasantness, I had a productive day yesterday. I worked 11 hours (I get SO MUCH more work done when working from home), pulled weeds in my back yard for 2 hours straight (have taken a total of 4 garden trash bags out of there in a week), and worked on both my blogs, as you can see from my post flurry.
An Arizona rabbit rescue group - Rascally Rabbit Rescue and Critter Haven of Arizona, Inc. - needs some fundraising help. Remember, this time of year all of the Easter bunnies Preppy McObnoxious bought for their pwessius children are now being abandoned. You can help their efforts, and get something for yourself too.
(They also rescue other small animals like chinchillas, hamsters, guinea pigs, etc.)
Just follow these easy steps:
1. Visit our online store to see over 650 magazine titles at up to 85% off the newsstand price.
2. Choose and order your favorite magazine(s) or renew any existing subscription(s).
3. Pay directly by credit card and 40% of your purchase will be sent to my group, Rascally Rabbit Rescue and Critter Haven of Arizona, Inc..
I suscribed to five magazines (Good Housekeeping *snicker*, Victorian Homes, Reader’s Digest, Country Living, Better Homes and Gardens). I wanted to suscribe to People but couldn’t swing it. The subscription for People works out to $2.20/issue - pretty cheap!
You can suscribe new or renew on the site, prices are great.
I know I’ve been a downer lately. I’m not all that unhappy, but maybe a bit homesick lately for everything that hasn’t worked out.
Let’s take a break from my Debbie Downerism and look at some Jib Jab videos I made back when they were free!
First one: Unnecessary Force (movie trailer) starring: My mom and dad, Moose (my St. Bernard), Sparky (my parent’s bloodthirsty puppy) and my brothers Mark and Mike. Not for kids due to cartoon decapitations, but otherwise safe for work.
Math Camp Massacre (Not safe for work):
Night of the Living Republicans - Moose and Sparky barely escape with their lives! Much like the rest of us from the past 8 years of a Republican White House!
Mom, dad, Mark, Mike, Sparky doing the Can Can (safe for work):
June 6 would have been my 16th wedding anniversary. Instead, June 7 is now my 15th divorce anniversary.
People see that and think it’s pathetic. I must have rushed into marriage, chose poorly. Yes and yes. But I did marry a man I knew for seven years, a man I was best friends with for three years before we “hooked up” for the final time, who I talked on the phone with on an almost daily basis for over a year before we started dating and then got engaged.
I think at 23, I was scared no one would ever want me, but I wasn’t quite desperate. I firmly believed that life owed me a partner and a happily ever after. I survived my childhood by clinging to the one hope of just one person to call my own. And here he was, one man who seemed to suddenly look at me (after years of me chasing him) and say, “You. You’re exactly what I want.” And he said it exactly long enough to get the engagement ring on my finger, get me to quit my job and move in with him. The closer the wedding day came, the more he let me know that I wasn’t at all what he wanted, but if I could just change my behavior ever so slightly I’d become good enough. Mere days after the wedding the reconstruction efforts of Mary began in earnest. I’d never be warned in advance what he hated about me. The news flash would come immediately after my infraction, usually involving screaming, or being spit at, or being thrown against the wall. His rages were always my fault. If I could just talk different, think different, and be a totally different person. I’d be exactly what he wanted.
So I practiced, took mental notes, stayed awake all night planning every word out of my mouth for the next day. But my corrected behavior wasn’t good enough either. Seems that even being exactly what he wanted, I was nothing he wanted.
15 years of hindsight and now I can’t honestly pin down exactly what he was really thinking when he picked me. I’m no pushover (or wouldn’t be for long). Why marriage, why me? Was he trying to escape his stalker ex-girlfriend? Was he looking for a woman to give him the love his mother never did, only to discover that no human being could make up for that hurt? Was he looking to feel better about himself by having a real, live human to call his own so he could kill them a little bit day by day? Who knows, and now blessedly not my problem.
But I still can’t wrap my mind around why people don’t see what gift it is when someone stops dead in their tracks, looks at you and says, “You. It’s you that I want to share every day with until I die.” I don’t understand why people think such an honor is owed to them, why they don’t see it as the miracle it is. The compliment it is. It’s like how a baby looks at you without a hint of realization that you could drop them, that’s the trust a person puts in their partner when they marry. Once someone hands you the keys to every day they will ever live from the wedding day on, why do many people think this is nothing worth fighting for, worth tending to?
We’ll take a financial planning seminar but refuse to go to marriage counseling. We’ll fight for a parking space but when it comes to our relationships, divorce is easier than fighting for our marriages. I’m not talking about the big, horrid horrible marriages. Divorce has it’s place - I know I’d be a murder victim without it. I’m talking about the bigger tragedies of divorce. The marriages that whithered on the vine. The slow spiral into onesselves, the hurts left undoctored. Taking for granted, being selfish, keeping score, not pitching in… We take that one person who said, “I love you above everyone else, forever!” and we don’t throw them away with both hands. But we do let them sit in the rain and rust away from neglect.
I can’t imagine anyone looking at me and saying, “You bring me joy. Let’s spend the rest of our lives bringing each other joy. You are exactly what I’ve been looking for.” But if I ever get that lucky, I hope I remember how fragile that is, and spend every day tending to it. And I hope that man would make even half that effort.
Because it’s exactly what we all deserve, and it’s more than any of us deserve.
* * * * *
At the wedding reception, I remember the best man making a short toast. I don’t remember what the toast was, but I remember him ending it by screaming, “GO PENGUINS IN ‘92!” The 92-93 season of my marriage was a losing season. I wonder how the Penguins did?
I spent the past three days working 20 hours and coming home to read two of Haven Kimmel’s books cover-to-cover.
The first one, A Girl Named Zippy, is a conversation with a new friend whose life story of not-that-unusual-but-yet-still-unimaginable is told in such a way as to draw you in and make you hope you’ll be friends with this person for life.
Zippy was a girl who didn’t seem to fit in the world from the start. She spent the first three years of her life silently pondering this (while steering her mother to converse with God about how she’d love this defective child anyway), then the rest of her life determined (and mostly succeeding) to not care.
I was drawn in to her stories because I could relate to living in a world wrong for you but somehow finding kindly people to take you in anyway. Zip is the youngest of three, which I (being the oldest of them) found an interesting new perspective. I briefly wondered how my younger brothers saw me growing up, as the author described her adoration of her older brother and sister who seemed determined to protect her (all while remaining disinterested,) and twirl her brain out of her head at the same time.
Her mother’s character was especially hard to get a bead on. As the story commenced and Zip describes the almost squalor of her home environment in bits and pieces, as an afterthought and only when necessary to propel another, more important part of a story, it becomes clear that her mother loved her and neglected her at the same time.
In Kimmel’s follow-up novel, She Got Up Off the Couch, the author explores her mother’s character even more. The reader becomes sympathetic to the mother, later proud of her, but in the background wholly disappointed in a woman who couldn’t even be bothered to make sure her child was bathed and had clean clothes. In the modern times and big city life of today, I wonder if Zippy would have spent some time in foster care. But not in Mooreland, Indiana in the 1970’s. Neighbors and her friends’ mothers would take her in, wash her clothes, give her a bath, feed her, and send her home. The author doesn’t reveal if she ever felt any shame over this.
The second novel is filled with stories that draw you right in, just like the first. It did leave me wondering what was wrong with me, in that I don’t remember my childhood much at all. But in the acknowledgments of the book, she reveals that her siblings helped her. Maybe that’s the difference - you remember your childhood if someone is around for you to discuss your shared memories with.
Towards the end of the last chapter of the second book, there is a heartbreaking paragraph that foreshadows how Zippy’s 13 year old life is about to change, and in a few heartbreaking sentences she tells that she is about to suffer the ultimate betrayal a girl could ever face. I’m aching to know what happens next. Her website shows no hints of a third edition of her tale, so I’m not going to know.
I was, in fact, so curious as to what happened in the life of the adult Zippy, her brother and sister, how she felt about her mother and father now, that I scoured over prefaces, the books’ dedications, the acknowledgments at the end of the books. (Normally the stuff that pains me to glance at.) It just led to more questions. How could Zippy - the Quaker girl who never could give her heart to Jesus despite being forced to go to church three days a week - end up in seminary school, as her “About the Author” blurbs declare?
Two novels stuffed full of of Zippy, pouring open her life for me, allowing me to take away her stories and do what I will with them, and the question of her remains unanswered but fascinating.
I highly recommend these books, but save yourself some time and buy them both at the same time. you will finish the first one and want to get right started on the second. Trust me.
In the comments section of the post where I proclaimed that I was “the child that ruined the family,” this is the comment:
I would agree. I think the $4 gas per gallon will change a lot of this..
Now how someone would think that a $4/gallon price of gas would make my family’s memories of having me in it turn joyful, or promote anyone to get Lasik surgery (which is where the return link of the commenter led to), I cannot explain.
I spent the past three days working 20 hours and coming home to read two of Haven Kimmel’s books cover-to-cover.
In Kimmel’s follow-up novel, She Got Up Off the Couch, the author explores her mother’s character even more. The reader becomes sympathetic to the mother, later proud of her, but in the background wholly disappointed in a woman who couldn’t even be bothered to make sure her child was bathed and had clean clothes. In the modern times and big city life of today, I wonder if Zippy would have spent some time in foster care. But not in Mooreland, Indiana in the 1970’s. Neighbors and her friends’ mothers would take her in, wash her clothes, give her a bath, feed her, and send her home. The author doesn’t reveal if she ever felt any shame over this.
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