I’ve said it before, but sometimes I feel like the biggest mistake I ever made was not having an anonymous blog.  On the other hand, I always read anon-blogs as fiction, and part of my big chest-pounding on this blog is that it is real, even if it’s only my version of reality. 

There are two huge issues in my life right now that are off-limits to the blogging world, three if you count the intricacies of my impending divorce.  I can write about the general feelings or the good/bad days, but getting into specifics crosses the line I’ve put down for myself and eventually for my children. 

I’m reading Perfection by Julie Metz right now.  Although her situation is very different than mine, her feelings are similar to my own struggle(s).  But I can’t help wondering, as I plow through the pages, how will her daughter feel about this? She’ll be a teenager now, with a famous author as a mom, the intense, sordid details of her deceased father published for the world to read.  Her father can easily be categorized as a bastard because he was a cheater, and a liar.  He’s also more than that.  Her mother, sometimes neurotic, mostly spot-on with her feelings and her reactions - it’s all there too, including her first sexual encounters after the death of her husband.  I just can’t imagine Lily and Arden reading that about me until, well, never - or at least until I was dead and didn’t have to look them in their beautiful eyes. 

The blog is bad enough.  We’re going on a year now of a lot of sadness, introspection, criticism (mostly self-induced, I admit), failed friendships and relationships.  It’s hard for me to read, but I am compelled to keep writing.  I’ve also been compelled to start writing letters again, stored privately on my laptop, not sent.  Some of them are to myself.  Many of them are to other people: those who have “wronged” me, those I’ve wronged, the friends I’ve neglected over the past 12 months who no longer have patience for me, the friends who have stayed with me through lots of dark times and bad phone calls, who handed me tissues and told me I had snot on my chin.  One of the most difficult and draining relationships I’ve had has received a ton of letters that only my computer has read.  I rarely can bring myself to read them once they are written.  Eventually I can have a bonfire burning party and dance around the flames.  Instead of burning my bra, or censored books, I’ll be burning up all those words and tears and joy and maybe then I can move beyond the anchors holding me down and back. 

Between my therapist and my life coach, I’m mentally healthier - and more aware - than I’ve ever been in my life.  As I notch the days under my belt, each morning marks another small success.  I made it.  Each time I am able to love my kids, or cuddle them in the mornings when they smell of sleep and salt, it’s a victory.  Each time I allow myself a few minutes to cry or express the complete and total exhaustion I feel mentally, I’m winning the war.  So many moments curled on my bed in fetal position or stretched out on the floor of the screened porch while I ache and feel hopeless end up adding to the anthill of strength I’m home-growing with organic intensity.  I used to doubt I was going to survive this, but I’ve got no doubts about any of that.  I have no doubts regarding the decisions I’ve made, or the ugly path I’ve walked to get to this day, this point in the long process.  I have no doubts that I’ll emerge better, more content, more lovable: a better friend, a better girlfriend, a better partner, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, dance partner, designated driver, confidante, wingman.  Wingwoman. 

I had a major epiphany last night, out of the blue.  I was brushing my teeth and wham.  Suddenly the confusion in my head cleared.  I realized that I’ve been punishing myself for wronging my husband, destroying his life, dragging my kids through this chaos - into the land of camel crickets and shared bedrooms and non-manicured lawns.  I took on a couple of people - messed up in their own private ways, their sole purpose in my life to punish me for what I’ve done to others.  I allowed them to make me feel worse about myself, to control me, to put up with crap I never would have in my previous lives (let’s not count college, shall we?).  Even these people have served their purpose, but I’m done with that lesson now and it’s time to cut and run. 

The second piece of the epiphany was that in one case, I realized the relationship was so very similar to a past one where I had no control over anything. I acquiesced, I bent.  I pushed my needs so far into my chest I no longer realized I had them, except for a lingering sense that something was terribly off.  At a time when I am supposed to be expanding - doing the things I’ve wanted/needed to do over the past decade plus but haven’t, for so many reasons - I was retracting, narrowing my world, narrowing my expectations, giving up. 

The third piece was that I have no control over others, but I can allow them to control me.  For so long I’ve placed my own needs secondary to everyone else.  It is the epitome of selfishness to say that I truly want to focus on me for a while?  Healing myself, being a better mom - not only for the kids, but for me?  I don’t want to settle - for anything.  If that means many more days and nights of fetal positioning, rocking, and snot on my chin, I think I can survive it.  I’m hopeful.  All signs, says the Magic 8 Ball, point to ‘yes’. 

In the meantime:  this day is “bad”.  This day is hard.  I am tired of hard and bad days; I am tired of writing about them.  I am tired of being tired, exhausted really. I am tired of killing bugs and cleaning carpets.  I’m tired of drilling, hanging things, trying to make this home feel like home.  There are piles of laundry in 3 rooms.  I feel like doing nothing about them.  I feel like sleeping.  Instead of that, I will have lunch with a friend who puts up with me and has as of yet not deleted me from her life because I am so tapped out.  I will stick to my hard decisions even though they completely and entirely suck right now. I will also run 3 miles this afternoon in sweltering heat, and I will not pass out or vomit - at least not publicly. 

Later, I’ll make dinner for the kids and myself and we will sit at my cleared dining room table in a darkened room that still doesn’t quite feel like mine yet, and we will talk about Puffles, Club Penguin and summer camp.  I will do laundry, work, add inventory to my site.  Later I will get into my bed, still my favorite space in the universe, and I will stretch out because it’s all my space and there is no one to demand anything from me, including pillows or leg room.  It will be an odd mixture of terrifying aloneness and blissful solitude.  The house will make weird sounds; Thora will growl or sometimes bark.  She will end up, against my wishes, at the foot of the bed.  She is the only thing I will allow to share my comforter.  In the morning she will lick my face and I will awake, victorious that another day is behind me and a new one is in front of me. 

I’ve got some finishing touches to put on the last three rooms (kitchen, family room and living room) to finish before I’m completely done (not that there is really such a thing).  In the meantime, here’s set 2.  There’s something really cathartic about posting these - it’s been so much hard work and it’s nice to have physical proof of it.  At the end of this post is a link to the Flickr set with all pictures included. 

Screened porch before: 

And now:

Note the shed in the background - my landlords fixed it.  Much better

The bathroom the girls use was a huge mess before.  Someone had painted it poorly and it was peeling like crazy.  Dingy was about the nicest adjective I could think to use. 

Since the tile was white and black, I stuck with that theme.  Unfortunately, the linoleum is yellow/beige, so I’ve done what I can to cover it until I take the time (and money) to do more peel and stick tiles.  I found some fun accessories on clearance through Amazon.com and the shower curtain at Bed, Bath and Beyond. 

The dining room required the least amount of work, but this is where I stored everything because I had no place else to put it.  I really hadn’t seen the floor in quite a while. 

Before:

After:

It’s been a ton of work, but it’s finally starting to feel like - dare I say it - home. 

www.flickr.com

Two things bring out the worst in people.  Weddings, and buying/selling homes. 

I am trying so hard not to be angry right now, because really, we are almost through this house thing - but it’s so aggravating to have given a house away and still be asked for more and more and more.  With the exception of the first house we purchased, none of the others have gone well.  Bickering and griping over tiny little things is just par for the course. 

That is all. 

This is my first set of before and after pics.  I’m only posting them in sections because, well, I have only finished a couple areas of the house. 

Lots of people have said they “couldn’t do it” - meaning downsizing to the extent that I have.  Losing 2200 square feet is quite a bit and required every ounce of organizational ability I stole from years of knowing Sara.  I’m fairly proud of my work and sometimes I would go so far as to say I’m pleased as well.  My life has been simplified to an extreme degree - I can probably clean the entire house (haven’t tried yet, because I’m still unpacking) in 45 minutes.  It will take me much longer to mow the front and back yard than it will to clean the entire house. 

I’ve posted a flickr badge at the end of this post if you want to see the whole set; some people asked me where I got things, and a lot of the pictures have the specifics in the “info” section if you click on it as you are viewing the slideshow. 

So up first:  Lily and Arden’s room.  My brother, my dad and some friends helped get the painting done before the bunkbeds were assembled. I wanted their room completely done before they moved in to cut down on any sort of additional stress for them, and we got 98% of the way there. 

Before:

After:

The girls’ room presented a number of challenges, not the least of which being the closet space (basically none).  I used a stackable shoe rack, purged a bunch of their clothes, rearranged and stored things in places I hadn’t though of (like repurposing Lily’s shelf baskets as storage for under the bunkbeds) and secretly sneaking out with armfuls of stuffed animals to donate when they weren’t looking.  I love the paint colors; I took the linens from Target and picked a very pale pink and a very Granny Smith green for alternating walls.  The louvered closet doors were not only ugly as all get out but hard to open and close.  I ripped them off and hung a beaded curtain.  I’d like to say it was intentional, but I didn’t realize until the beads were up that it really didn’t give any coverage for the mess in the closet, so I added a curtain road and a sheer dotted curtain from Target over it. The result was super cute and the girls love their “sparkly” closet. 

And the picture of Thora?  Really nothing spectacular about it but she’s so cute.  And she looks so well-behaved in this picture. 

Next up:  the office.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of things for my home office that had to come with me.  I had to keep my sewing table (it’s my old, tile topped table from 1996), I had to drag my inventory, and I needed a desk.  Fitting those three things into one smallish room with a tiny little closet was challenging to say the least.  Here’s what the office looked like before:

Tiny office closet:

And now:

Closet:

My wall of inventory:

My “master” bedroom was definitely a challenge.  It had nasty carpet that smelled like a nursing home to me.  The wall color was a sickly beige contrasted against a slightly less sickly white for the louvered doors.  The blinds were cream, and plastic, and mostly broken.  It clashed horribly with the very very blue bathroom.  Someone got a peel and stick bug up their butt and decided to “improve” the blue bathroom by adding hideous tiles in completely the wrong shade of blue.  The result was as follows.

Bedroom Before:

With a lot of carpet pulling and staple removing, a bunch of paint, new blinds, curtains, and a hard look at what I really needed to keep, the end result is this:

And finally, my last set for the night. . . the dreaded master bathroom.  With one tiny light, hideous blue on white tile, decaying grout, a blue toilet with a white lid, and some bizarre looking blue sink, I cried my ass off the first night I showered in there.  It was grungy, depressing, and made me feel like I was staying in a flophouse somewhere.  Dramatic, yes, but seriously gross:

View from inside the shower - note huge door not able to really open . . .

And the afters, with tons of help from Nicole on the curtains and the overall color scheme.  Did I mention Steve ripped out the blue sink and toilet, and replaced both in the span of about 2 hours?  Yeah, he rocks.  He’s my brother, and no, you can’t have him. 

New flooring:

and the world’s best invention - a suction cup thingy to hold a hairdryer and brush!!!!

I just finished the girl’s bathroom tonight and am also done with the family room.  The screen porch has become my holding area, even though Robey and Co. made fun of me when I had them hang up my “festive” garden lights. They say it now looks like a mexican restaurant’s bar, and that’s okay with me.  More to come later - as I get finished. 

www.flickr.com

It’s no secret that I have strong associations (and love) for music.  With the exception of screaming speed metal, I can listen to just about anything.  It started way back in 1989, when I DJ’d at a college radio station.  I took the slots they gave me - and one of them was called “The Revolving Fandango”.  It was literally a song from every genre of music one could think of.  Being 17-ish, I had no idea what to play for Blues, or Folk, or C&W, and most of the rock was alternative.  Thankfully I had some education in Jazz courtesy of my dad (he loved to drive my mom nuts with scat jazz).  I would wander around the tiny, smelly (think bean burritos, rank beer, a faint scent of urine, and something that always reminded me of moss) lovingly fingering the album covers, pulling them out and placing them on the turntables. 

Because 90% of this music was new to me, I learned A LOT about music genres and my taste buds for music became far more sophisticated than my taste buds for food.  It’s still that way. 

Along the way, music has been a backdrop for whatever I was going through in my life.  I would bond with albums and later CDs and now MP3s like lovers, depending on my mood and their staying power.  During the initial stage of my separation, I listened incessantly to Iron and Wine, Shawn Colvin and David Gray’s Draw the Line, which to this day I swear he wrote just for me. 

Nicole told me I had to listen to the new Court Yard Hounds offering.  Never a huge fan of traditional country music, I do confess to liking the Dixie Chicks.  I like them still with their lead singer on hiatus from them.  Emily Robison’s divorce obviously plays a huge part in the songwriting.  Nothing soothes my broken-down soul than other women crooning their way through their broken fairytales.  Misery indeed loves company. 

The opening song is called “Skyline” and I’ve put it right down there for you.  It’s my life, in this moment, in a nutshell.  Or an MP3 player, embedded on this site, which is way more tech savvy than a nutshell.  (or not so much, considering it took a good 30 minutes to figure out how to do this)

If you don’t feel like listening to the song (but you should), the lyrics are as follows:

What am I doin’ here
In such a lonely place?
Birds fly below
I’m high up in my cage

Wide awake again
Or am I dreamin’?
Trains passing by
World’s spinning ‘round my head

Then I heard a sweet voice cry
Telling me, yeah it’s gonna be alright

I just look at the skyline
A million lights are lookin’ back at me
And when they shine
I see a place I know I’ll find some peace
I just look at the skyline

I used to rush around
To keep busy in the day
Then we’d sit up and drink
We might find something new to say
No, I can’t live this way…

But then I heard that sweet voice cry
Telling me, yeah it’s gonna be alright

I just look at the skyline
A million lights are lookin’ back at me
And when they shine
I see a place I know I’ll find some peace
I just look at the skyline

I look at the skyline
A million lights are lookin’ back at me
And when they shine
I see a place I know I’ll find some peace
I just look at the skyline

What am I doin’ here
In such a lonely place?

In other non-divorce-related news . . .

Lily has always been fascinated with art. She’s been drawing since she could hold any type of instrument with color in it.  Her first grade class had a final project, and it was to draw the Queen of England.  Here’s her rendition:

Considering my artistic abilities consist of stick figures and lines that are never straight, I was impressed that my 7 year old is already drawing better than me.  She did it in watercolors and proudly explained that she made the “peach” color by mixing pink and yellow and a tiny bit of brown to give it just the right shade.  Arden’s teachers also tell me she’s advanced in art, but when they are your kids, it’s just the way they are.  I really try not to be like many of the moms I know, who think every little thing their child does is the BEST, most BRILLIANT, most GENIUS thing on earth.  Everyone has their talents and skills; Lily’s is definitely art and writing.  I can only take credit for the writing. 

Her first grade recognition assembly is on Thursday; she’s getting an award for something that will hopefully make sense during the presentation (it’s called something like “Appreciating Differences”) and an award for missing only 1 day of school and no tardies.  She would have had perfect attendance had I not given us all the stomach flu.  Way to go, mom!