Per Chancing and Living out Those Dreams ...

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

Nearly 4pm, on a Tuesday, meatloaf sammie, hot coffee and two drooling dogs by my side, he-man in the driveway with the shovel, home from his own full day of work and driving, laptop open, late in this day, I begin again.

I night-shift it, four nights a week now, which is nothing new, and has always been my favorite zone.  Night shifty behavior is my thing!!!  But it’s funny now, because I tend to get 6, today 7,  or sometimes even 8 hours of sleep after working my fandango off all night. 

“Back in the day …” when the kids were little, a night shift was followed sometimes by a hot shower (in place of sleep), lots of coffee, diet Pepsi, peanut butter & jelly toast, and maybe a nap when it was Ali’s nap time/the mid90s, but my young adult 20s-30s-wayyyyyyyyyyy into my 40s body and brain have always found the sleep around the edges. 

Maybe it’s something you grab hold of, like helium, when you have kids, that ability to stay afloat, on little sleep, laughing on the crazy side just some of the time, really not scaring anyone, while on the always (IN ALL WAYS), you are spot on where everyone needs you, and you feel so very real even though your Velveteen life has rubbed your eyes right off! 

Or, maybe it’s just your circadian rhythm and you better just dance to it, and get to it when your body and mind feel the getting is reallllllllllllly, realllllllllllly good.  Whatever it is, it’s like a drug, that lack of sleep.  Then,  later in life you realize, oh my gods and goddesses, on the flipside of this unslept drug is yet another drug, and it’s called SLEEP.  --A double-edged sword and a happy little pill all balled up in one, and the prescribed dosage of sleep versus the abstinence from same, it’s this amazing little tight-roped walk you do, backwards with your shirt on inside out!!!

The science of it, will they ever figure it out, Mr. Sandman and his crew of neurologists?

Ending a night, finding the new day starting on the immediate, after a rub of the eyes, and a quick orientation to time, place and where the hell is my person, well, it was a fantastical FANTASIA-astic, slap-spastic time! 

All those years will remain smeared in my memory banks as some of the best of life stores/stories ever!

I not only survived, back in those hair-raising and hardly ever bed-headed days, but I thrived, and I have 17 or 18 notebooks of scrawling to prove it!  Those odd-ass hours … before the kids were awake, or before they were due to be up, when there was no “real work” or house/handmaid work to be done, I would not sleep, perchance to live out some of my dreams.

So when I night-shifty behaviorally act out now, and then go to bed for seven hours, it feels like a loss of a sort.  I’m all, “What the hell did I miss, and was it worth it to have this tremendously puffy face, and why does a person look better (wired yes but better) when they go without sleep?” 

This morning, after the “real work,” I stayed up and chatted with Mark, crocheting (hopefully even rows), talking (probably rambling) and watching the news.  About an hour in, I felt my brain do that sideways sweep across my inner forehead.  It was that early warning bell, “Hey, if you just hold on for a second, your brain will bounce right back and there you have it, your second wind!”  I know this feeling, I STILL LOVE THIS FEELING.

I really, really wanted to stay up, long after Mark’s car pulled out of the driveway.  I wanted that cup of coffee, the bagel … the day to start.

But I went to bed instead, slept ‘til noon when someone had to pee (not me/a furry someone), and in my bleary-eyed glance out the door at the new snow, I wanted to “stay up” then too.  I wanted to steady and re-ready myself, but went back for 2-1/2 hours of more sleep, knowing it will make the nightshift easier on my brain tonight, the one that a person should take care of NOW THAT THEY’RE AGING, OMG!!!  And knowing that I’d be more capable of perhaps a little conversation, prior to work tonight, before Mark says, “Shhh, I just want to hear this …” (when AMERICAN IDOL IS ON … yes, we have both thrown each other under that fucked up touring music bus!!!)

Going back to bed, though, I felt I was missing the day, including the emails of what was coming next (which will—you will find—wait!).  I had stuff on the DVR, music I wanted to hear, Etsy listings to work on, three packages to get to the PO, cookies to bake, a pantry to clean, laundry to do, YARN, dogs, etc. 

I was missing the snowy day in daylight, and therein will always be a little lost feeling.  However, I’ve also learned in the last almost two years, that if you actually stay in bed for a lot, a verily lot of prescribed hours, holy manhole cover, the dreams!!!!! 

These dreams, they have been A-MAZING this last two years, and even the tiny one I had before waking the second time today … I dreamt Mark was standing there with a triangular cut of a sandwich, with one bite out of it.  I could see cheese, ham and turkey and mayo (which is weird because MARK HATES MAYO), and then he thrust the sandwich at me and said, “Here, it’s ham and turkey,” and then I woke up, FOR REALS, opened my eyes, and he was standing there, home from his workday, and the dogs were there, and they were licking my face, and it was a BRAND NEW DAY AGAIN.

See what I mean, this sleep shit is fantastic!!

I’m worried about the dogs, however.  When Mark is home-base, which he is this week, the dogs sleep both at night, and then of course they sleep with me during the day, and they take nine or ten naps in-between!  If I’m night shifty and “home alone” the dogs are on my schedule, and while they nap, their awake and play and wrestle and wanna-be-outside-right-now!!!! cycle is based on my movements, or stumbling.

I find it ASTOUNDING that a dog can sleep for 55 hours in one day!!!  I feel like that’s what’s been going on since Friday.   It’s an Olympic event for them.  They are stellar at, sweet and cute and have that “oh, I’ve only just dropped off for a cat nap” look about them, when in reality they’ve been in a coma for HOURS!!!!!!  Or, they will look, up heavy sigh and LITERALLY roll over, backs to us and GO.BACK.TO.SLEEP!!! like, HOW DARE WE?!

And how daring I … really, how daring I … and loving it … all of it … including the real life-ass SLEEP!!!!

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
— Ernest Hemingway   ... mayhaps in another installment, after another 8 hours of "real" sleep, I'll talk about that "other kind of sleep," the kind I love to hate, the kind I "use and abuse" when my brain is trapped between a rock and a bipolar/brain-damaged state, where there are dreams yes, but ... well, another time on that one ...

[what later became] Work In Progress [d.b.a.]

 

I am doing a new client startup today, while also having “Friday with the Little Girls” which was going to be at the Little Girls’ house, but I woke up to snow, and a pile of stuff to do for my startup, so the Little Girls are coming here, the dogs are running ‘round and about and M is due home this afternoon, wherein we also like to f’ with each other, punch each other in the arm and try to “keep our relationship alive” while planning for the weekend (my new startup involves weekend hours, as many startups do, and as many transcription projects do … there really are no 7 days in the week, it’s more like one day that just runs together.) 

When I reached in a basket this morning in my office/sunroom/sanitarium for a new client folder, I came across this calendar that I’ve saved FOR.YEARS!!!!  It depicts this BRILLIANT ASS IDEA, which I had back in the start of 1998, well into the separation of my second marriage and single-parenthood (again, OMG … yes, I try hard but often fail), and still yet a full year-plus more before papers were finalized.  I was flying by the seat of my pants, and this was still back in the days of dialup and multiple phone lines, and screeching LOUD MODEMS … slow uploads and downloads, and car runs (with Alice in hear car seat and Carol and Beks at school) for CASSETTE TAPES!!!! 

We were still printing and delivering things, in person!!!!!! 

There was the internet, so to speak, but there were also tapes, and paper and cords everywhere!!!!  There was, and always has been a dollhouse and toys in whatever office space I’ve used, and I did more than once (especially during 9-11, which came years later, fell asleep on my office floor—many people did not work their shifts and IC work during that time because they were locked in front of their TV sets).  A very much of my life in those years WAS.A.BLUR, but a fun blur, an amazing TECHNICOLOR DREAM-COATED BLUR!!!!!

 
I had devised this calendar wherein I designated highlighter colors for activities.   On this one, orange was for one of my accounts, yellow was for sleep and pink was for the other account.  While I had some notations in there of events and such with the girls, etc., I also had a separate calendar attached to the back of each monthly form for “extras”, and a wipe-off board, magnets holding shit all over the front of the fridge … and we ALWAYS USED WIPE-OFF MARKERS ON THE BATHROOM MIRROR for stuff we might forget. 

Every Tuesday morning when I got up, or before I went to bed, if I went to bed that wee hour in the morning, I was met with green wipe-off marker and the word TRASH … and/or recycling, depending on what kind of Tuesday it was.

 
I love this calendar for the simplicity of it’s chaotic facts, and I love (to hate) how when it got towards the middle of the month there were no hours for sleep notated in the yellow spaces designated for catty naps.  I’ve always had that “I can catch up on that sleep later, if I can just …” mentality, which has gotten me through a lot of things (and terror and …), and when I take a nap, now years later, and/or stay in bed for eight uninterrupted hours, I just think HOW FANTASTIC IS THIS?!?!?!? 

The calendar and notes attached to this page are AMAZING to look at, and I will never, ever throw this calendar away, or any of my other journals, note scrapes and date books, though I’ve often told myself, a good barn burning of personal books would be a fantastic idea.

 
The jury is still out there on whether or not my stroke, the year after 9-11, and ten years almost 11 now ago, was caused by sleep deprivation and clear chaotic craziness (not possible … lol, how can chaotic craziness be clear?!?!?!) … but I jest … my stroke was more hereditary in nature, and was compounded by the fact that I’d been pounded by lesion-building migraines for years and also had a head injury the year Alice was born. 

 

I don’t blame my game of sleepy cards for my stroke (though I wonder of late with my way-too-many hours of Kindle reading and Spider Solitaire, if I might be irritating my lesion’d skull). 

In addition, when I look back at this crazy paperwork, and forward to yet another new client startup today, which keeps my work interesting, because every project is DIFFERENT AND INTERESTING AND AMAZING AND SOMETIMES ALTOGETHER ANNOYING, BUT I ABSOLUTELY.LOVE.WHAT.I.DO---I feel lucky!!!  Lucky as hell and all get out and shut the front door behind you!!!!!

I’m lucky to live in beautiful surroundings with a man who drives me just as crazy as my schedule and two dogs that are both our “babies” and our freaked out rolling balls of amazement and humor, which a person needs in this life, amazement and humor!!!!!  I was lucky enough to leave home base a year or so ago and take a sabbatical in a “Little Yellow House” by the lakeshore, and though sabbatical was cut short this summer, it netted me reunification with my mother and father … so, really, what goes around and around and around, does come around again.

And I’m lucky beyond lucky, I realize when I’m able to call my daughter and switch the playdate with the girls from her house to my house, and Brad easily can manage same, and Carol will be here after work for their retrieval and to catch up on things with me before the weekend.

All of this rolling around in my brain and off the pages of my calendar today and I remain, IN STOCKING FEET, this beautiful (fresh-fallen new snow day), going TGIF (as if that makes a difference in my work world) and feeling lucky that the career path I chose really did turn out to be something incredible!!!!

I feel all gushy and happy and only slightly stressed … which RHYMES WITH BLESSED!

… she said, realizing, the girls will be here in 1-/12 hours, Mark will be here in 2pm, I must start work on new client stuff at 4pm, Carol arrives at 5pm, wherein there’s already a break in the new spin, and then once everyone is gone and settled into their nights, I get to keep on going like the energized freaked out manic bunny that I am.  Sweet!!!!

 

 

"You can discover the secret of a dew drop while drowing in the sea!"

... the sound of a train in the distance ...

... in high school, a best friend and i passed a considerable number of written notes.  there was one point where our notes merely consisted of "love" and "hate" lists.  i grabbed this memory up as a writing prompt today, as i've been trying most of the summer, but successfully this week to journal (hand-writtten) on a very nearly daily basis ...

"I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between."
— Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)

Loves:

-missing Mark.

-the pseudo jukebox radio in the kitchen, playing country western music. –second favorite being the same radio playing 70s songs.
-the sound of the breeze playing in the trees.
-watching the dogs sleep, play, wrestle.
-watching the dogs do everything.
-petting the dogs until I fall asleep.
-baking cookies.
-trying new recipes.
-cherry tomatoes!!!!
-TEA!!
-stuffing garden-fresh peppers.
-the sound of a train in the distance (sometimes).
-the feel of my pen on this page on a more regular basis.
-coffee with FOAMED MILK!
-conversing and feeding off of the unique personalities of the “little girls.”
-talking to my girls.
-watching Abigale and Sara grow.
-reconnecting with my mom.

 

"Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. For example now, I hate the bank and everything connected with it. I also hate Dutch paintings, penis-sucking, parties, and cold rainy weather. But I am much more preoccupied with loving." — Anaïs Nin (Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932)) [Hates] Frustrations … -the fact that I am unhealthy again- food-wise- ‘tho remedying same. -the fact that Dad is terminally in pain. -worrying about Mom’s heart. -the sound of a train in the distance (sometimes). -the fact that I can’t sustain decent handwriting despite the fact that I’m “writing/journaling” again. -the fact that I’m too hard on myself. -the fact that I can’t make myself “jump” out of bed in the morning. -the fact that I feel like I still have to “make myself” in any respect. -the fact that I’ve used the word “fact” for all the things I [hate] that frustrate me me, as if  they cannot be changed. -the fact that I didn’t do that in my “like” list. -the FACT that I remain too hard on myself, this self I feel I have to make. "Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves." — Anaïs Nin (Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931-1932))

The New Normal, Built on the Middle-Mix ...

Screech, crack, crunch, creeeeeeeeeeeeeak!  I’ve reopened my blog, and in doing so I’m sharing a post from another blog I frequent … The Splintered Mind by Eric Schwitzgebel.

Schwitzgebel’s is an excellent write for today, a day when so many of us are “remembering not to forget.” 

Today, is just one instance in which we are “remembering not to forget” as a country, as individuals, and also newcomers to the “remembering not to forget.” 

Due to the incredible amount of written commentary on September 11th, verbal, visual and audio content that is replayed over the years, redone, regrouped, etc., even those not alive on that day feel its constant life’s breath saying, “remember not to forget.”

I love the concept of Schwitzgebel’s blog, how the things we choose to remember/the things we might forget (or wish to), on the whole (or as individuals), really lend to the fact that the “forgetfulness is an unwitting confession of our values.” 

In something that I’m working on today, through my ears and out and on to the page, I’m listening to multiple women, who have similar thoughts on this particular matter, this “remembering to forget” stuff.

These women were not talking about September 11th, or any other specific event, for that matter.  They are merely tossing around thoughts, and in their discussions had touched on how life’s events can shape or unshape us, depending on what we remember and what we forget.

I’ve been struggling A LOT today with this “remembering never to forget” stuff and such.  This does include the September 11th anniversary, but also the 18-month anniversary of my brother’s suicide. 

It has me thinking … okay, not thinking … it has me FEELING, too, along the same lines of Schwitzgebel’s blog today.  The work that is filtering in my ears and out to the page all afternoon has my mind (okay, MY HEART!!!) thumping in multiple directions.

There were the three voices in my ear, Schwitzgebel’s blog, and then my own thoughts and feelings.  I've been WORKING VERY HARD, to make sense of all of these things, on this day of all days.

THAT’S A LOT OF VOICES, I know … but shared voices, become one voice, if you let them in.  Opening that door, (see the creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaking above) helps one to get out of their “circle thinking.” 

It’s like being in a traffic roundabout, circling, hurting, feeling, thinking, trying to make sense and you are just too afraid, finally, to make that break from the circle; you don’t quite understand, or it’s your first time experiencing a “roundabout,” and you’re kind of freaked that you’re going to get an accident if you’re not careful.

However, if you let the “shared voices in,” it doesn’t stop hurting (or whatever otherwise feeling/s you are having), but it does become more manageable. 

It’s as if the shared voices are saying, about the circle thinking, and in a “roundabout” driver’s-education-coaching-kind of manner, “Yield to the left and KEEP GOING …” wherein you will find yourself, not stuck in that circle, but spitting out onto the freeway … the free way, a bit less circle-jerk’d, I have to say.

The world, and your heart of hearts, will reopen.

We have to continue to believe, of ourselves (and of the whole) that we/us, in totality, are not the things that “happened to us.” 

There’s this middle-mix, and it is hard to find, but there’s this middle ground, arising from this middle-mix, that gradually turns into cement, a new avenue to explore, a way off the roundabout.

Here, the scars are still there, no denying that, but they’re ready now for new growth to take place.  It’s where places like “The New Normal” crop up, these giant subdivided housing tracts where people heal, live, prosper …

You become less your “own worst day,” or the “worst day ever for the world,” and more concerned about taking care of the “self” and the “whole” that are left behind. 

You keep moving forward, or up.  Or, if called for, you dig down deep, a new basement with waterproof walls.  You attach a sunroom to the side of the house and a outdoor porch, beyond that.  You might get your freak right back on and build a treehouse in the year ... whatever it is that you "need," you have to rebuild!!!

This is where resilience becomes a factor, that ability to bounce back (like a Bumble), remembering to never forget, but also remembering never to forget to move forward … [hard, the fuck as it is some days …]

                                           ****

"It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards."
— Søren Kierkegaard

                                            ****

... In addition, I have to say, I can’t BELIEVE I creaked, cracked, CREEEEEEEEEEEEEAKED/reopened my blog with a heart-felt post, but one that also contained the terminology “circle jerk’d.”

What things may come, from this … not gonna shut the door, gonna find out ...

 

 

vinegar and brown paper

… my brother came to me in a dream early yesterday morning, so to speak, and without speaking.

i arrived into the dream in a panic, racing into his bedroom in the last house we ever all lived in as a family, before he (the oldest) turned 18 and moved away.

on his bed, i picked up a leather-bound book/binder, which was also wrapped in brown paper, and had a long wire coming out of it.

the strange package in my hand, i ran from the room, crying out, “i found it, i found it! i found the bomb,” but as i ran from the room, and out of the house, a barn exploded in the distance, a giant fireball threatened the surroundings.

it was too late.

i woke with a lurch. it hurt to breathe.

the leather-bound book i had found, in my dream, wrapped in brown paper, on the bed in my brother’s old bedroom, the book was mine.

it was/is this leather-bound binder organizer thing that i had purchased in the 90s, something i used to carry back and forth to work.

it held calendar pages and phone numbers, baby-sitting schedules, addresses, bits of paper, business cards and snags of thought, tiny keepsakes, a bookmark and photos.

in the family, we called it “the black book,” and it was known for its “power” at saving the world, well practically—but for many an emergency, or need for a number or … the answer or the number or a card stating same, could always be found in that book.

i don’t carry it around much any longer. the more and more i’ve worked at home, it has remained on my desk, or under my desk or under a pile of papers. every now and then i pull it out and update addresses or phone numbers, shove in more cards and bits of info that might be needed in “some emergency.”

and early yesterday morning, in my dream, that book, “the black book,” appeared to be the next bomb to go off, but i was going to stop it!

when i grabbed that crazy brown paper-wrapped binder off my brother’s bed, in his room of our yesteryears, i had the power to affect change. i could right and rewrite the world as we know it!

but it didn’t work.

it was just a black book, with a wire coming out of it, wrapped in vinegar and brown paper.

whatever bomb i thought it contained, that could go off at any minute, didn’t matter because a bigger explosion had already occurred.

it was too late; it is too late.

i get that, but i’m taken aback at how flamba-flabbergasted my guts become when i learn it all over again, on a Wednesday bright-sunshine of a morning, over a year later.

i get that he’s gone and there are no real answers… won’t ever be, but a girl can dream.

art print: jack & jill by maria kirk

Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete.
— Kay Redfield Jamison (Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide)

****************************************************************************************************************
... So was vinegar and brown paper really a treatment for head injuries, and would Jack have survived with this remedy?
*************************************************************************************

From http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/:

You may know that part of the famous nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill which goes, ...to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.

This does indeed refer to the use of vinegar and brown paper for the treatment of wounds, bruises and other injuries. It is a very old remedy which is still used today for swelling and bruising, or headaches.

The brown paper used in 18th and 19th centuries was made of old rope, canvas and other sacking, and could be very coarse, but it was found to be useful when applying a substance to the skin. Cider vinegar, meanwhile, has been used in medicine for hundreds of years.

For bruises, one method was to take six or seven sheets of brown paper and soak them in a saucepan containing vinegar. The vinegar was heated and allowed to simmer making sure the paper did not break up. The paper was then applied in layers over the affected area. Often secured in place with a cloth or rag.

Chambers Encyclopaedia of 1868 recommended that "the heat and pain commonly experienced in sprains are often relieved by the local application of brown paper soaked in diluted vinegar and changed when the feeling of heat returns."

Sometimes it was used for nose bleeds, and a letter to The Cottager's Monthly Visitor (1849) suggested it helped with toothache: "Steep a piece of the coarsest brown paper you can procure in some cold vinegar. Apply it to the face before bed time and tie a handkerchief over the same I have known great benefit to arise from this application."

In Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens has Squeers recovering from heavy bruising which required "Vinegar and brown paper, vinegar and brown paper, from morning to night. I suppose there was a matter of half a ream of brown paper stuck upon me from first to last."

Other substances placed on brown paper included honey for sprains, and tar for pains in the chest.

Everything You Wanted to Know ...

“Are you there, God, it’s me Margaret, and I have CRAMPS! What can be done about this?”

No such thing as time/only change! Again and again this phrase helps to work it all out.

In the 70s, when they separated the girls out for their “meeting” on this particular subject, the girls were given a pamphlet entitled, “Growing Up And Liking It,” as if you had a choice about these things, which you didn’t! Aunt Flo was a freight train screaming around the bend!

I somehow missed the “meeting/presentation,” but just never you mind, I didn’t miss much because I had already found the book, Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask on the bookshelf in our living room! I found it long before the school presentation ever came about.

And I wasn’t afraid to ask if I could read it! I just plain didn’t ask if I could read it!

I hid the book behind the book jacket of another book, In This House of Brede, which only now do I see the irony/play on words in that choice! At the time, I was too scared to see anything as I raced up to my room, with everything left yet to know, and the sound of blood rrrush-roaring in my ears!!!!

I read the Everything … book in one sitting, the day into the night I had found it. I was afraid that the “fake book” behind the dust jacket, still on the living room shelf in our “library,” was beating its telltale heart out and getting ready to alert my parents that SOMEBODY FOUND THE SEX BOOK!

Without taking notes, because where would you HIDE THESE NOTES, or in what code would you write them down in, in case your brothers FOUND THE NOTES, I quickly consumed and archived the book’s knowledge into my brain, ran back downstairs, replaced and readjusted the book jackets, and then ran back up the stairs, slammed the door to my room and realized I was full to the top with knowledge, but I was deathly afraid TO ASK ANYONE ABOUT WHAT I HAD JUST READ!!!! [and yes, I DID ALL OF THIS WITHOUT TAKING A BREATH!]

A year or more later, after the “meeting at the school,” which I didn’t go to—and don’t ask me why I didn’t get to go; to this day, my mom said my invitation “must have gotten lost.” Anyhoo, no matter, one fine night I was home alone with her and she “took care of things.”

My brothers were gone!!!!—whisked away by my dad. This was not an uncommon occurrence. It was probably a car show or maybe even Rummage-A-Rama! Though I was included in some of these treks, I wasn’t always included, so my being HOME ALONE WITH MOM AND THE TIME BOMB THAT WAS ABOUT TO BE SET OFF, didn’t trip any wires at first.

I was reading in the living room as was Mom. Maybe I was even reading, finally, and in second order, In This House of Brede, because I do remember that it was one of the books Mom did offer up was a reading level I “could probably handle at my age.” Either way, things were going on swimmingly, fire crackling, books open, absolute quiet.

That is, until I felt warm and chilled at the same time and then realized, “OH, MY GOSH, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO; SHE’S GOING TO HAVE ‘THE TALK’ WITH ME!” Since I had “missed” the presentation at the school, I assumed some day she’d get to it; but I was also “okay” with her NEVER BROACHING ANY OF THESE SUBJECTS WITH ME EVER!

She cleared her throat and began to say, what? I don’t remember. I recall the same rRoaring and rrrrushing noise of the blood rocketing to my head and making my ears DEAF AS A DOORSTOP, as I did when I read the “real deal,” The Everything … deal!

When her lips stopped moving I formed what I thought was a brilliant question, a question that would look like I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT ANYTHING, and I blurted out somewhat sad and disappointedly, about the whole period/bleeding thing, “Uhm, does that mean I can’t go swimming after it happens?”

I tried to make the question sound as if I was so fearful, and SO NAÏVE, that I was sadly disappointed to find out that “becoming a woman” meant NEVER GOING SWIMMING AGAIN!

Mom explained, again in words I scarcely remembered, that it wasn’t that I could NEVER GO SWIMMING, it was more like… but I was so horrified by the fact that WE WERE STILL HAVING THIS CONVERSATION that I finished it off with a quick, “Okay, then,” so we could go back to our reading and living the lie!

Soon after, my dad and brothers arrived home. Did they get the talk too? I’ll never know, and it’s not like I WAS GOING TO ASK, though I did have a book I could recommend to them for filler! I’ll never know. Maybe they were lucky ass shits and had “just been attending a car show” and nothing more! Score on their parts!

I just wanted everything to go back to “normal” so we could all live happily ever after… happily ever after, of course, until ONE OF US STARTED BLEEDING!

The living end, I have to tell you!

Yet, with every end, there is a new beginning, right?

The continuation of this story is that I’ve raised three daughters and have been as Marge Piercy calls it a “kidbinder” (in the latest novel of hers I’m reading, Women on the Edge of Time). “Kidbinders” mother all those kids around them, not just their flesh and blood, and not just female children either. Kidbinding is gender playing fields wide open.

Suffice it to say, many a talk has been had, many a question answered in my life & times as kidbinder. Many further discussions ensued, spin-offs of previous discussions, and some discussions were met with “don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW…” with hands clasped over the ears until further notice.

It’s a give and take, a careful dance, to be sure. You really don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s “I’m not ready to hear this yet” toes, and you also don’t want to send someone out barefoot in the cold!

My belief system always was that the bulk of all the “growing up and liking it” should not be a surprise that you launch on your child right before the “presentation at school,” the dreaded PRESENTATION AT SCHOOL!

Growing and changing needs to be an ongoing conversation, for both sexes, not something you “launch” and then back out of the room going, “Okay, then… if you have any questions, you know where to find me,” but then you hope they won’t find you, or ask!

This works when discussing issues of death and dying, grief and otherwise WISE subjects, since it’s all linked, the feeling of lost and found, lost and found, found and lost again, found?!?!? It all requires ongoing communication, and sometimes LOUD SCREAMING, SCREEEEEECHING AND OUT LOUD FEAR!

This evening I’ll be attending my 10-year-old first grandborn’s “presentation” on lady issues. I’ll be there with her and my eldest daughter, her mother. Ironically, this is taking place, as I mentioned, at the same elementary school I attended as a mid-elementary school child, and the same place where I somehow “missed” their group discussion/presentation on these matters.

Is my daughter ready for this “coming of age” moment with her daughter? Am I ready for this “coming of age—again” moment with my daughter and my granddaughter? These are moot questions by this point. The important thing is what my grand girl is ready for.

She has approached us both with the usual questions, the most prominent one being, “Tell me again why all the girls have to go to this?” We can’t answer this question, fully, of course because we’re jaded “bleeders” and we’d like to launch into the million ways it’s unfair that any of us go through this, let alone sit through a flowery presentation about it!

However, in order to keep the doors open, for future discussions and questions, my daughter and I have to answer with stuff like, “Don’t worry, all the girls are going. It’s just a way to keep everyone informed and empowered, and on the same page,” even though we know HOW SKEWED THAT PAGE IS GONNA GET IN THE FUTURE!

We go with the adage that a child will ask questions, at their own pace, when they’re ready to hear the real answers. We don’t bombard her with diagrams and overt discussions about what “men and women” really do in the dark, or the consequences of dark times and not so perfect scenarios.

The important thing is to NEVER OVERLOAD A KID WITH TOO MUCH INFORMATION AT ONCE, on any “coming of age/big life” subject, no MATTER HOW SCARED YOU ARE YOURSELF ABOUT THESE THESE THINGS, AND NO MATTER HOW BAD YOU’D LIKE TO JUST GET OUT OF THE ROOM AND BE DONE WITH THIS STUFF ALREADY!

I was given a piece of advice about kids and telling them about the “tough subjects” like death & dying and “growing up and liking it,” wherein you are to remind your SCARED OUT OF YOUR MIND SELF, that your child will only ask for what they are ultimately ready to hear. The important thing is, NEVER OVERLOAD A KID WITH THE DETAILS. Start slow, and engage in a conversation that will continue infinitely. Gradually, they will ask their questions, at their own pace, whew!

Starting slow, engaging in discussion patterns, all along becomes more and more helpful as childhood mature. The questions are a lot easier to handle if there wasn’t a lot of “cabbage patching it up,”when the first questions ever arose, believe me, but you also don’t want to freak a kid on just how complicated life can get, outside the confines of the happy-go-lucky cabbage patch.

There’s this fine line, somewhere, and I think all parents are still trying to find it, cross over it, redefine it, and then run back to the other side of the line and still worry if they’ve “drawn it up right.”

How do you explain to a kid who believed once-upon-a-time in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, that the real reason the Tooth Fairy leaves change is because you’ll need it for the Tampax and condom machines of your future?

Losing Santa, and demystifying the Easter Bunny are one thing, but a handful of loose change, and A LOT OF QUESTIONS ongoing can be pretty scary, no matter the time period we’re living in. No matter that “this is now” discussions are ten times better than the “then” discussions.

Growing up is what it is, and you actually aren’t always going to like it. Therein lies the rub, but being openly educated about it, feeling as if you can even have opinions and deeper questions, that makes it a whole lot easier.

And I promised I wouldn’t bust out laughing or embarrass anyone tonight, which I WOULD NEVER DO THAT! I’m actually looking forward to the “presentation” I missed all those years ago, and attending one in a more open and loving fashion. It will help me to forget the “deer caught in headlights” GUILT I had in my own “knowing all along” before I was supposed to know, right?!

What comes around, goes around and around and around … all of life is a circle!

Chamomile is not for sleepy time; it's for the wickedly awake in all of us!

THE JOY OF CHAMOMILE: migraines suck the life out of a person. i'm not allowed to take "ordinary" migraine RXs because, silly me, i had a stroke 10 years ago, so that makes "ordinary" migraine medications, the kind that will zap the headache away/RIGHT AWAY contraindicated for me because, "what the fuck if" they caused another stroke?!?!?!? that wouldn’t be good now would it?

so the alternative is to have one of these buggers, which usually include a neuro pro-drome, which then ramps to the “real ache” from which i CANNOT GET A F’ING BREAK, followed by at least a week post headache, where i feel like i'm missing the digits of my left hand and can't walk talk/walk straight—because, yeah, that’s far less damaging to my BRAIN than a migraine med THAT WOULD STOP THE HEADACHE IN ITS TRACKS!

anyhoo, a year or so ago, my doctor put me on a prophylactic medication, a low-dose blood pressure med (even though i have the most labile blood pressure of all time/even when i'm LOL'ing and pissing myself!) since this is supposed to help stop/reduce migraines.

go figure!

now, i did not go into her office SCREAMING THAT IF SHE DIDN’T GIVE ME SOMETHING I WOULD PEEL THE PAINT OF THE WALLS WITH MY TEETH, BECAUSE I COULDN’T HANDLE ONE MORE HEADACHE, but i did stress that they are both emotionally and physically debilitating and that I REALLY COULDN’T TAKE IT ANY LONGER!

i gave this med a try and i've tracked this for over a year. now, every once in a great while, i can go a month without a F’ing MIGRAINE, but the “every once in a while[s]” don’t come around that often. the first time i went 30 days without one, yes, way cool, but once i had another one shortly after the milestone, i tended to forget how cool it was or when it was that i was ever MIGRAINE-FREE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!

some months i’ll have one migraine, but it’s more like two. i typically have a “funny headache” around the hormonal wing-dinging in my ovulation cycle (YES, AT 50! EGGS! so not right!), and then i’ll have the pleasure of a prodrome, a F’ING migraine and the resultant dead head week, with the migraine usually starting right before my –er, uhm, gonna say it on Blogger, right before my F’ING PERIOD! even this is better than the “off the chart and on no particular schedule” migraines i’ve had since pre-teen-hood, but still just because they’re coming “on a schedule” DOESN’T MEAN THEY WERE INVITED!

so yeah, two headaches a month is better than more than two a month or an “anything can happen” headache kind of life, but like a doctor told me once years ago when i told him i once went such-and-such a few weeks without a headache, “Uhm, hello, a person isn’t ‘supposed’ to *really* have headaches, especially migraines, and a person really isn’t supposed to count the number of them as the positive; the positive would be not having a headache at all, Ms. Stoic MigraineSufferer, no WONDER YOU HAVE MIGRAINES! you think one or two is a picnic, but a bunch of them is a mess. the fact is THEY'RE ALL MESSY AND YOU'RE A MESS!"

i was told that when i was about 24, and i remember readjusting the giant stick up my stoic ass and thinking, “uhm, sure, i’m sure a day without a migraine is a day without a migraine, but what kind of a wuss would choose that over … oh, what the hell am i thinking, I HAVE A MIGRAINE…” and then a number of years passed, and i was still having migraines so i kind of told my doctor i was uber-interested in this “semi-charmed kinda life” that this other doctor had told me about long, long ago in a faraway no-headache land!

that’s how i ended up with the blood pressure med, even though i didn’t have high blood pressure, and here i was still on an “okay, so two migraines a month, maybe not a picnic, but certainly not the end of the world,” schedule and not thinking that was too bad, because the Mayans are in charge of the REAL end of the world, right?

and this is also how i have now ended by weaning off the drug/shit that doesn’t work—because, yeah, you have to wean off a high blood pressure med, and not just stop it, even if you DON’T HAVE HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE—AND IF THAT WON’T GIVE YOU HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE OR A F’ING CLUSTER HEADACHE (different than a migraine, by the way, so how lucky am i that i don’t have those … there i go again on the sunny side of the f’d up HEADACHE STREET!)

and so enters this month’s “funny headache” mid-month, and so entered premenstrual migraine (just like most usual/on or off this medication i didn’t need that didn’t work). AND, the ditzy prodrome-ish crap started on the eve of my 50th a.k.a. GRAND TIME FOR A F’ING MIGRAINE, can you believe it?!!?!?

however, this time i tried the usual holistical-ish things, and had a strong cup of coffee (for the caffeine and vasodilation), made sure i had taken my one 325 mg (stroke prevention enteric-coated aspirin already that day), and then the rest of the afternoon and evening drank chamomile tea, STEEPED, and lots of it, both cold and warm.

i did not take any additional ibuprofen or Tyleonol, or Excedrin Migraine or aspirin Goodie powders, and I did not drink any GIN straight until i fell on the floor and could just forget the battering ram of a headache. i did not drink more gin after the first “pass-out that wasn’t long enough,” followed by more Tanqueray with Nyquil just to make sure i would pass out again and get past the headache, and also sleep through the night, so i could wake up unrefreshed to continue working on my headache!

i hate taking so much ibuprofen even though it's something else my doctor said "can help" (such as taking it “several days before your cycle” to stave off the migraine), but she also can't give me anything else, so what else is she going to say?!?!!?

i already combat my ridiculously low vitamin D with supplements, make sure i’m getting enough iron for my lily white ghost appearance, drink a billion tons of water, exercise, eat right, take my fish oil (and eat 50 pounds of fish a day, practically), and a number of other things to prevent/stave off the M-beast and keep my head “safe.”

i don’t really eat chocolate (yeah, i know, weird) and i even (and this is hard for me to say) STAY AWAY FROM THE CHEESES MOST NOTABLE FOR CONTRIBUTING, SUPPOSEDLY, TO MIGRAINES—although i think that’s propaganda!

too many aspirin, ibuprofen, etc. bother me in the first place because i don't like "thinning my blood out" any further than necessary because what if this, that or the bloody last migraine makes my head explode?!?!!? yeah, see? you can see the mess i’m explaining and it's bad headache art! what’s to become of Vegetable Matter Me if all that loosened blood flow, thinned and ready to travel, gushs out my ears and nostrils, making my gums bleed and then, well—not so good!

so where is this all going? it leads straight back to the CHAMOMILE tea, Baby! i sucked that shit like it was gin!!! by my 50th birthday morning, my headache was down to a lesser pulsation, and even though i found it difficult to think, and i knew i’d still be Freudian-slipping words for the next several days, my head felt more manageable!

i mean, if a person was going to be force-fed a headache, a migraine EVERY SINGLE MONTH, this one i can “almost” get into, even though of course i wish they’d go away forever! but i won’t look a gift lesser headache in the mouth especially when i'm having so much fun IN SPITE THE F'ER!

also of note, i typically don’t drive or run heavy machinery when my “head is fucked.” with a sludge-filled head, i do dumb-ass things like put a cup of water in the fridge and then wonder why it’s not in the microwave, heated up, when i return from pissing in a closet instead of the bathroom. stuff like that, stuff way crazier than normal crazy!

however, yesterday it was easier to do that, drive and “stuff,” though i was glad it was a fun outing day with my eldest daughter (a chaperone) and eldest grand girl (someone i could entertain with my crazy shit!). it’s still nice to have company on Freudian slip/head f’d days, a. because it’s Freudian slips are better with an audience or someone that can explain things to the cops, and b. it helps me to talk through what i’m doing and where i’m going next when i can’t concentrate. if someone is there going, “i know you meant we were going to the store next and not the shoe,” that’s always super helpful.

i also don’t take on EXTREME WORK or futz with my schedule during this “time of the month,” and make sure to get my sleep, solid as possible, no reading, no movies, no music beforehead, just dead head go to bed. i count to ten over and over to get past the pounding and go to sleep, or a reason facsimile thereof, since the dreams during a migraine are freak-oriffic! (more freak-oriffic than regular freak!)

now, i had read chamomile can be good for headaches, though we all know it’s the tea of choice for a good night’s sleep, and while it can’t KILL A FUCKING MIGRAINE TO DEATH, it can slur-purr one into submission and make it more manageable—and that was WITHOUT EVEN PUTTING GIN OR NYQUIL IN MY MUG!

i’m a total tea fanatic/ADDICT now, anyways, so this was a giant score-score/win-win. Chammy, my nickname for the wondrous tea will become one of my fav/stave off a headache “cocktails” now, where previously in all my tea collection i’ve been ignoring her as the “sleepy time tea.”

most evenings, i’m cavorting with other leaf-age varieties, or sipping ice water (what Granny calls her gin—just kidding!) and don’t need a “sleepy time” tea because i get to the business of “sleepy” all by myself. but Chammy will now be one of my topper teas on a daily basis.

this was just one lesser than evil migraine under my belt, but i’m taking it my tea ball and i’m going to run with it—okay, moderately race walk and try not to fall on my face!

we’ll see what happens next time i feel the rampage starting up. i’ve also rethought and redrawn the garden plot of my dreams for this summer at “the little yellow house” and it’s most probably going to become an expanse of CHAMOMILE!!!!!! –and maybe some weed!—i mean WEEDS, the other wildflower!

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"For some migraine sufferers, chamomile tea, has been helpful in relieving certain migraine symptoms. Chamomile has used to help with reducing inflammation, reducing muscle spasms, relieving anxiety, treating stomach cramps, ease skin irritations and serves as a mild sedative to help with problems sleeping. Chamomile is available as a tea, liquid extract, capsules, skin ointment and as dried flower heads." ---from www.migraine.com (this does not work, of course if caffeine is a causitive for your migraines as some teas contain caffeine)