I feel better

Still depressed, but not as bad, mostly, I think. Still easily distracted, but I suspect that has everything to do with stress and untreated Attention Deficit Disorder. I'm thinking of talking to the doctor about getting some Ritalin or some such.

My doctor, who is actually a PA but she's fantastic, has added Abilify to my daily medication regimen. I told her perhaps I should stop taking Wellbutrin, but she said let's try adding the Abilify before we subtract anything. OK, whatever. And I think the Abilify is helping. Or maybe my hormones are leveling out this week vs. last week. One never really knows about these things. I don't take my moods too seriously (or try not to) until they've been consistent for a few weeks.

And I have to talk to the MD, not the PA, about getting Ritalin. Because it's a class (whatever) drug, she can't prescribe it. What a pain in the ass.

I have begun organizing my craft/sewing stuff. Oh my gods, it's stressful!! So stressful in fact that I don't want to talk about it yet. Hang tight, maybe it'll show up later in the post.

Hot. We haz it. Well, it isn't too bad yet, but bad enough for me to bitch about it. I keep track of the weather in Burlington, VT just for kicks and giggles. Burlington is much more comfortable now than Greenwood, SC. Of course Burlington was cold as fuck a couple of months ago, but right now I don't seem to care.  It wasn't nearly cold enough here.

I planted some flowers yesterday. Some petunias in a container and a pretty multicolored Lantana in the bed beside the front door. I also put a salmon colored Geranium in a container on the front stoop. I have Morning Glory seeds soaking in water now to plant later this afternoon (probably) when the temps cool off a bit. I need Twitch to attack behind the fence garden with the tiller. It's maybe a 12 foot strip and I only need one or two tiller widths of soil for these plantings. I'm gonna plant Morning Glory and a selection of Sunflowers. We are excited about this. Well, as excited as it gets around here. That frankly isn't very excited, but what the fuck. Oh, also some of those summer flowers you see everywhere, yellow and orange, what's the name? I hate when this happens.... not Magnolia, (that's a tree). They smell kinda funky and are supposed to help keep critters out of gardens. Damn, what's the name of that flower? Ach! I have to go look it up. Hang on... MARIGOLD!! That's it. I knew it started with an "m".

And since I had to get off my ass to look at the seed packet, I got myself a bowl of chocolate ice cream. It's a bad habit I have fallen into recently. I get the low fat chocolate ice cream in a big tub from Wal-Mart. I put a few scoops in a bowl and add a little bit of skim milk, then let it sit for a minute or so. The milk freezes around the ice cream and makes lovely little icy crunchy bits. Then I add powdered malt mix and extra dark cocoa (Hershey's now sells the stuff. It's wicked good!) and stir it well. It's dark and smooth and crunchy and strong. I told my PA about it and she thinks it sounds horrible. So I call it my cruel chocolate. I also make a chocolate pudding (super easy, microwave and 5 ingredients, takes about 5 minutes) with the dark cocoa that is intense. I use less sugar and more cocoa than the recipe calls for, so it's deep dark and not too sweet. Cruel chocolate, my favorite. Kinda like cruel shoes re: Steve Martin, but tastier and less painful.

So let's talk about the kiddies. They are both now on probation, each for 9 months. Sproing started his probation a couple of months before Diva did, but Diva will probably qualify to get off early. She keeps her nose clean and doesn't violate any conditions of her probation and earns a few days off for every month she behaves. Sproing has the same deal, but can't seem to stay out of trouble. It's mostly minor trouble, but trouble enough for violation of probation. Sproing has a community service obligation which he started serving in the community garden in the Latino community. The gal who runs the garden is an old friend of mine, a gal we met at church when we lived in Easley, SC when Light was a toddler. So, yeah, I've known her and her husband for probably 22 years. Damn! That's a long time. She's super nice, and very churchy. I'm not churchy anymore. I don't know how much she knows about how much I've changed. Wait, this paragraph has gotten off topic. Let's start another.

Back to the kiddos. I had to take Diva to school this morning. Superman usually does it, but he had to be at work before 6 this morning, so I took care of it. Thing is, I forgot she needs to be awakened. She shouldn't need anyone to wake her up. She's fuckin' 16 years old now, and wants to be independent and live on her own. Well, she's gonna have to wake her lazy ass up herself to be independent. I got up at 7:30 we could leave at 7:45. She was still asleep. She wasn't late for school (starts at 8:30) but not by much.

Diva has arranged for a job for herself in Abbeville over the summer. Abbeville is about half an hour west of here. I don't know how sure this job is, it's at an auto repair shop where her friend Morq works. Don't know why an auto repair shop. Sounds more like something Sproing would do. She says she'll be answering phones or something. Anyway, we aren't going to provide transportation to and from Abbeville every day. That's a hell of a lot of gas that we can't afford, and she won't make enough money to cover gas either. She doesn't realize this. She thinks "I'll be making money, so I can afford it." But how much money, dear? "I dunno." Oy. Anyway, so she wants to stay with Morq during the week, coming home on Friday and returning to Abbeville on Sunday night. Superman thinks this is an OK idea. I'm on the fence, leaning toward letting her do it. For one thing, that will be one less Diva in my house! Hurrah! Also it will give her a taste of this independence she thinks she wants. She and Morq want to get an apartment together to move away from family. Morq is the girl with a baby. Diva says they'll get a 3 bedroom apt so the baby can have her own room and she and Morq will also have their own rooms. What kind of 3 bedroom apt can they afford? Though they could probably qualify for Section 8 housing. Morq could, anyway. Diva is still a dependent minor which I think kills the deal for her. I dunno. Don't really care, either. I find myself caring less and less. This is probably a good thing, really.

Let's try to revisit the cleaning/organizing issue. As I've mentioned in the past, I have hoarding issues. There is this thing they now call hoarding disorder. Dr. Spo, do you know about this thing? I haven't been diagnosed by anyone but myself (and I'm about half qualified to do so) but have done a little bit of research on the topic. Anyway, cleaning, organizing, and especially throwing things away is extraordinarily stressful. I worked on my office/craft room for about 45 minutes today. For some that may seem like not a long time. For me, it was. And I'm OK with it. I'll probably work on it again in the afternoon or evening for another little while. I'm actually proud that I can work on that shit for half an hour or so and NOT beat myself up for being such a wimp and not working for three hours, five hours, or until it's done. Gad, that would send me into the spaz zone.

And now I have written a long-overdue blog post in addition to working on my office/craft room and processed a load of laundry. So I'm going to reward myself with a bit of a nap, I think.

Messed up: Mentally and emotionally unstable

This is going to be, among other things, a complaint. You might want to skip this one and come back when I'm in a better mood. You have been warned.

I took an Ativan in preparation for my kids getting home from school. I hate this. I hate that they are so hard to deal with, and I hate having to medicate myself in defense against them.

I'm confused. Messed up. Sad upon sadness. Don't know what to do, where to turn, what's next.

I'll try to write a coherent report of the weekend. It was a good weekend in many ways. We got a lot accomplished. Superman worked on preparing the garden. Did I mention we're going to try gardening this year? Diva got a lot of the public living space in the house swept and cleaned up some. She had to do that as punishment, actually, but ended up doing a pretty good job, after having done it wrong twice. Damn, everything is a huge fight with these kids. (get back on track, Java) Superman and the sons worked in the yard a lot, not just in the garden. Sproing fussed and was a pain in the ass about it almost the whole time. On Saturday I spent a long time in the kitchen. I made bread, fixed a really good dinner, helped clean things up. I was motivated. It felt good to be in there working to make things better.

For dinner Saturday I made vegetarian lasagna. I snuck so many vegetables into the sauce!! I put grated carrot and zucchini in it, and cut up mushrooms and onions very small for the sauce. The kids didn't even notice! They always complain about mushrooms in my red sauce, but this time they didn't say a thing. I layered baby spinach leaves between the cheese and noodle layers, too. The spinach was obviously there, but the kids didn't fuss about it. I guess I've done spinach lasagna enough times they're used to it. Also, cheese. Cheese covers a multitude of sins.

So all good, right? And Sunday. Continued with all the good work. I repaired holes in two of Superman's favorite jeans. He needed to work, but his only usable pair of jeans was dirty. These other two have been sitting around waiting for me. Woe is me. So he put the jeans in my lap and said "now." So I did. Funny thing, he blows out the crotch of his jeans. The left side between the bottom of the zipper and the crotch seam. It's a difficult area to patch because of curves, intersections of planes, thick seams. But I like to think he wears out jeans there because his package is so big. (giggle) And I enjoy doing things for him. I love him. I know he loves me. When I do stuff like that, I do it with love.

After I finished repairing the jeans, I moved on to Diva's dress. Background: Diva is in the JROTC program at the high school. This coming weekend is their annual Military Ball, which because of her involvement with JROTC, she is entitled to attend. Superman bought her a nice long dress a couple of weeks ago, and it needs to be altered. I got started on that yesterday afternoon. The shoulder straps need to be shortened and the gap at the front needs to be tacked. Otherwise the front will gap and show off her girl boobies. I don't know if she'd like that or not, but I don't want that to happen. So I accomplished those tasks. The dress also needs to be shortened. I started on that, but couldn't complete that task because DAMN. My children.

When I mend Superman's clothes, I do it with love and he appreciates it. Everything I sew or knit or crochet is made with love. That's what I do, who I am. However, the love gets blocked when I work on Diva's stuff. Not sure how or why, exactly. No, I do know why. You probably do to if you've read this blog for any length of time. So I start the work and my heart doesn't know how to proceed. Mixed signals, bad energy, something. When fixing the straps I did a damned good job. Looking at it you can't even tell where I made the adjustments. The thread I used matches the existing thread exactly. All my work is hand stitched, the dress was constructed with a machine, and you can't tell where my hand stitches are because they look so much like the machine stitches. It's flawless. I put a lot of effort into it, and it hurts me because I know Diva hates me. She can't appreciate what I do for her. She can't show her appreciation, and if she does, I don't believe her. Usually I enjoy doing that fine level of work, but it hurts to do it for her.

I worked while sitting at the table in the kitchen. Diva was supposed to be cleaning the living room and hallway. She was there, throwing stuff around, bumping things, being rough because she didn't want to do the work. She bitched the entire time. She made more of a mess than she cleaned up in some respects. The thing that really killed me, though, was her attitude. Her negative energy filled the house, squelching me. Sproing would come in from working outside to get a drink or a snack, and the two of them fought every time they were in the house together. Not just the same room, but the entire house. If she's in the kitchen and he's in his room at the other end of the house, they're arguing. They say the ugliest things to each other. They can't shut up. If one says something, anything to anyone, the other makes a snide or ugly comment about it. He answers for anyone whenever a question is asked. I'll as her some mundane thing, and he'll answer for her which pisses the hell out of her. Or his answer will be some obnoxious insulting response. They do that constantly. Every fucking interaction they have is filled with vile negativity. It's killing me. Killing my heart.

Yesterday I couldn't take it any longer. They drove me to tears. I was very testy and angry, angrier than the circumstances would indicate. That smacks of hormone imbalance if you ask me, and maybe that's what some of this is. However, the kids are killing me. They are breaking my spirit, breaking my heart. I am all about peace and love. They are the opposite.

I dread being with these two children. Yesterday afternoon and most of today I've been unable to function. I was supposed to take Diva to the dentist this afternoon, but I couldn't make myself go. Superman volunteered to take her instead, which was super sweet of him. He didn't have any meetings this afternoon at work, so had some flexibility to do that. It makes me feel guilty, though. One of the reasons I'm home, not working, is so I can take care of shit like that so he doesn't have to. Today I can't. Too messed up.

I'm so sorry I'm so useless. Seems I make so much work for others when I should be able to take care of shit myself. I have managed to wash our laundry today, however. Two loads put away, one load in the dryer, and the last load in the washer. I can't go out there and take care of it now because I have to stay locked in my room to avoid the teen monsters. I don't want them touching anything of mine. They have cooties. If Twitch were to bring me a basket of clean laundry I'd welcome the help and be able to fold those things. If Diva or Sproing does it, though, it would make me sick. There is something wrong with me. Well, there is something wrong with them, I'm pretty sure, but it affects me. It is breaking me.

I am, on the whole, a strong person. Today I can't seem to tap into that strength. It will probably come back, because I am fundamentally strong. Right now, though, I'm messed up. I'm depressed. Sad. Beyond sad.

Of life

I am going to tell you about a garden. Please picture in your mind what I try to relate.

It’s a large garden, planted mainly with flowers. There are a few trees, mostly ornamental yard-sized trees, nothing huge and towering. A well worn path meanders through the flower beds, almost like a maze. But unlike a maze the purpose of this path is to lead you to discovery, introducing new avenues to explore if you wish. You gaze at your surroundings. To the left, to the right, and up ahead you see a plethora of flora. What? Flowers mostly. Some on tall stalks swaying in the gentle breeze, waving their colors. Some in clumps and mounds, close to the ground, reaching out to tickle your toes with tendrils of green, or multicolored petals like brushes dipped in paint.

Choosing a path, you set out slowly, walking gently as you seek the rhythm of the place. Colors explode in your field of vision at every twist in the trail. The scent of fresh earth forms a base against which the unique smell of each plant reveals itself in concert with its neighbor. This is nice! The sunshine runs around the shadows of clouds above and the leaves of the taller plants. The light entices you to increase your pace.

And oh, the colors! You see lots of green, a lot of greens. Reds fade to pale pink on this stalk, but burst like fire over there. Did you know there were this many shades of yellow? Where does yellow become orange? It doesn’t matter, because it’s all so beautiful. There are dark colors on leaves and blooms, funny shades of gray and burgundy you didn’t expect to see on a plant. Blues and purples peep through buds, or splay large and lustily.

Some you like, some you don’t. “Well,” you think to yourself, “I suppose someone likes that strange looking thing, but I wouldn’t plant it in my garden.” Along the winding way you are distracted by a foul odor. That clump of decay is disgusting! Moving right along, you choose a path that looks and smells more promising.

Mostly it is a good place. You like it here. “I could spend a long time discovering the secrets of this place,” you think to yourself. There is enough variety to keep you interested and entertained.

As in all of life, there are detractors. Let’s call them weeds. What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place. ~Donald Culross Peattie. Possibly, but some of this stuff is obviously weed. The weeds seem almost as varied as the desirable elements.

Let’s look metaphorically at weeds. Let’s say for the sake of this discussion that among the many weeds here is one type of weed that is particularly deceptive. It looks quite beautiful. It grows rapidly and the breeze readily disperses the small seeds in a wide swath. However, we discover that the weed has an adverse effect on the plants beside it. It’s time to remove this weed.

The weed first entered this garden a while ago, so it has gotten into lots of places. Some of the specimens have grown large, and very close to some valuable flowers.

Removing weeds can be a tricky proposition. They should come out without uprooting other plants. The smaller stalks of this weed come up easily, and where the roots intertwine there isn’t a lot of shared space. The adjacent plants lose some ground, some nutrients, a bit of their foothold on the earth, but recovery is rapid.

In places where this weed has grown tall and strong the neighboring plants are deeply affected. As the weed is yanked from the ground it takes with it a sizeable chunk of dirt. In some instances the flower has spread its roots almost intimately within the roots of the weed. Sometimes the flowers lean on the weed for support, or a vine uses the seemingly stable stalk as a trellis. The valuable plant is left vulnerable, threatened, feeling deeply the loss of what should have been a strong companion.

I suppose some of the smaller, younger flowers will suffer much, depending on how close they were to the weed. This may affect their growth significantly. More mature plants will also suffer, of course depending on how much they relied on or were affected by the weed. The strong ones will quickly regain their stability, the additional access to air and sunlight compensating for the losses.

Tonight it will rain. At times soft and gentle, occasionally with bursts more forceful. Wind will whip the leaves against each other, moving the rain in and away from our garden. The water levels out the holes left by our weeding. The rich rains nourish the ground from which our plants absorb nutrients. The dust, the dirt, the detritus fallen on the flowers will wash away.

There will be tears of rain on some of the plants when the sun lights our garden in the morning. As the light and warmth increase, our tears will dry, our leaves stretch out, our buds will blossom. And life goes on.