...my best friend received a devastating diagnosis.
...I found out I need a biopsy (it’s happening tomorrow!)
...I missed some major warning signs about a person in my life and really screwed things up.
...I continued to put myself last behind everyone else and their brother.
...I asked for help from people i didn’t want to help me, but had no choice.
...I helped someone i love learn how to commit someone they love to a mental hospital against their will.
it’s no wonder i have gotten NO work done and am so far behind that at this point, i don’t think i will ever catch up.
my best friend wrote to me a couple of days again, and something she said really resonated with me. she said:
I’m changing a lot of the priorities and friendships in my life. It just makes you recognize how petty and superficial a lot of the shit in life is. I’m trying to clear that out and make room for what’s important. And for that, I am grateful. I think a lot of people live their whole lives trying to gain the approval of others and over the course of the past six months, I have just about totally eliminated a lot of the bullshit. It also means I am eliminating friends, but that’s OK. They weren’t real friends to begin with.
i’ve been going through that process for the last 8 months. and even though right now it feels like the entire karmic universe is pooping on my head for sins i’ve committed that i’m unaware of (well, some of them, at least), another friend mentioned that “god is trying to get your attention”. that’s possible too. my attention has been gotten. i’ve been faced with just about every nightmare situation i can come up with, yet i’m still able to hold my children at night and breathe in their sleepy scents. even in the midst of what is most definitely a hurricane of epic emotional proportions, i continue to write about gratitude, model good behavior for certain people in my life, and attempt to balance on the fine point between supportive and enabling.
i need to follow my best friend’s advice. life really is too short. you have no idea what curve balls are going to be thrown at you. my life’s goal is not to be happy; happiness is fleeting. life is hard and full of moments of joy or sadness. being content, or secure in the decisions you’ve made, is what it’s all about for me. learning not to get wrapped up in other’s issues, and help and hold the ones who deserve all that i have to offer, has been a hard lesson for me. oddly i feel stronger right now than i’ve ever felt.
as i changed the water filter in my expensive high-end refrigerator that will be left behind along with the rest of this ridiculous house, i realized it was the last time i’d ever have to change it. the new refrigerator has no ice maker or water dispenser. it sits on a floor of yellowed linoleum that probably should have been replaced a minimum of 15 years ago. for the first time, i couldn’t wait to get onto that linoleum and back to ice cube trays. i haven’t been on my own since 1999. having my own space, being alone with the girls and the dog, getting some breathing room and figuring out why this all happened and why right now, seems necessary.
i’ve reached a level of peace with my situation and for that i am most grateful. our short sale may very well fall through; the second mortgage company is still dragging their feet, and the buyers are getting very nervous. we are reaching month 4 of waiting. regardless, i’m moving out. mike has already left. the house will sit here, empty, waiting for either a new family to come in and love it, or for the bank to come and take it. i realize that there is absolutely NOTHING i can do about it - and i’m totally fine with it. i can’t control what happens to me financially at this point and am making the best of an absolutely horrendous situation. do i still have guilt that the father of my children is being dragged into this hell unwillingly? i do, but i also know that he will end up much happier without me and with someone else than he realizes at this point.
i’m getting ready to say goodbye to dan and nicole, two people who have never hesitated to help when i’ve needed it. hopefully i’ve been there for them as well. there will be a legendary party at the house on saturday - it’s a graduation party for one of the few people i’ve ever known who graduated summa cum laude and know how to pronounce it.
(when i pronounced it, it sounded like the title of a porno)
they’re totally worth the drive to blacksburg, however, and i’ll be darkening their doorstep as much as i can, probably with two kids in tow.
in the meantime, i’m going to keep focusing on the gratitude. and trying to learn from my mistakes.
Nikki is a friend I met through NaNoWriMo. We have a lot in common, despite a 12 year age difference. She’s been living in the house on the third floor and has been our unofficial nanny/nurse/chief coffee drinker since she moved in. Since I’ve been remiss on writing about the kids, Nikki wrote a guest post. She might become my regular, unpaid guest blogger until my brain is less muddled and full of bees.
My alarm goes off at 6:55, and resisting the urge to hit snooze, I jump out of bed. Jump is a misnomer here. It’s more like I don’t even think about the fact that prior to two weeks ago, this waking time did not exist for me. I stand up, grab my iPhone, tweet my location on Foursquare so as to not be ousted as mayor of Casa Estrogen, and head downstairs.
If I was smart, I would have pre-set the coffee for the night before. It took me several days at the Del Bueno household to remember this trick from my early college years. Downstairs, I spring into action. Set out two kid’s cereal bowls, one child spoon, one adult spoon. I make an educated guess as to what cereal they will want for breakfast and set it, along with the milk on the counter. Everything is ready to go. I make sure that the set up is in the correct seats, because all hell will break loose at the kitchen table if the seating chart gets messed up and Arden has to sit in Lily’s seat or vice versa. It sounds silly, it sounds trite, and you are shaking your head over something so trivial. But remember back to your childhood. If you had siblings, you went through the same thing. I know I did. Ever rooted in tradition, my little brother still likes to mess up how we sit as a famiglia when we come together for the rare dinner.
I hear thumping down the stairs. The 63 pound yellow lab, who I joke (when the kids are not around, or course), is the biggest, dumbest lab I have ever seen, is awake and demands attention in the form of love and hugs and food. Most of the adults in the house know I say this in jest. I am a true animal lover. Careening towards the door like a bull in china shop, she demands (not begs, demands) to be let out. One she is done, I try and get her sit calmly…who am I kidding, I try to get her to sit at all, as I wipe her paws. She races towards her food as if she has just come from a famine. I guess several hours would be a famine for this big lovable lab. Right now we have abandoned ‘sit’ and are working on not jumping. If I time it right, I can get the dog settled (I laugh as I type settled) before I hear the pitter patter of the girls coming downstairs for breakfast. Lily is ready for school. Arden, her hair sticking up every which way, goes to school later. If I was her older sibling, I would be eternally resentful. I don’t know how Lily feels. Maybe she doesn’t value sleep like I do. Cereal is poured, silliness abounds. It took me a while to get used to one, eating breakfast; two, eating with 2 kids. They eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. I had to be a member of the ‘clean plate club’ when I was their age, so seeing kids leave food on the plate and it being acceptable is something completely foreign to me. I also like calmness and order, since that’s the way it was in my house growing up. As anyone who has kids or has spent any significant amount of time with kids knows, calmness and order generally takes a gentle soar out the window when you have children in your presence. It was something I had to readily adapt to, and still am.
I find myself craving solace, quiet, the peace that comes with all the family members doing their separate things at all times, but then I quickly remember that I love Arden’s contagious smile, her braids that she requests from me each morning (with the hair ties matching her outfit. major little diva), wildly flying as she streaks to her next activity, ever a ball of energy. How Lily will come home from school and briefly climb in my lap and tell me about school and how, despite the almost 20 year age difference, we can geek out over books together. Holed up in the story room, we both eagerly anticipate the next chapter, and delight when she pronounces a tough word and reads with a fluidity generally reserved for a girl years older. She was recently up in my room, perusing my bookshelves, and picked up my dog eared copy of DFW’s ‘Infinite Jest.’ Mispronouncing the title and then flopping back on my bed in a fit of hysterical laughter only fit for a first grader, she looks at me and with the most serious face says, “Nikki, I am going to read InifiniJest as my next book. But you might need to help me with the big words, k?” How could you not love that? I know I do.
It’s different. It takes time to get used to, as all changes do. I’d write more, but someone is calling for me to braid her hair.
I know you are a bit, um, apprehensive about your new exciting future. So whenever you are down or feeling like you are going to toss yourself out the window to avoid using the elevator at work, here’s a little ditty to remind you of me and make you smile.
Trixie belongs to Heather. In this picture, Heather cruelly has dressed her in a tutu. But it’s so cute!!! Trixie also has narcolepsy. I never knew dogs could have that, but apparently, this one does. Sometimes I feel like I have it too. I could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Or maybe that’s just from having young children.
I'm a 30-something mother of girls born 23 months apart. Originally hailing from the frosty throes of Northern Michigan, I now live in the humidity pit of the universe - Virginia.
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