So, this was my view late on the 27th: knitting on the Clapotis, chatting with Ang. and watching a movie. I think it was Enemy at the Gates.

Now, I watched E@tG because That One recommended it to me. Well, recommended is not exactly the right word. What he actually said was “if you want to see inside my head, watch E@tG and Apocolypse Now.” Because I want to understand his ticking, I said I would, and I put them in my Blockbuster Queue. I’ve been waiting months for them to become available and will likely have to borrow Apocolypse from him if I ever hope to see it.

Now, this is not a “pleasant” movie. It is a brutal and gruesome movie. In fact, both of these are probably ones I’d rather just read the books for. But, then I would not have seen what he saw, only for real. The folks in his “movie” never get up and walk away after the director yells “cut”.

Most of you know I am a veteran. That is, I served, during peace time, and mostly in the reserves. Getting to know an actual combat veteran, it gives me a totally different sense of appreciation for what these folks have truly done for us. Every Veteran’s Day, people say stuff about thanking a veteran, and the other 364 days a year, we tend to forget them. That’s a shame, because combat vets, they carry it with them forever. Forever. It’s never truly over for them, because you can’t unsee a thing, can’t get a do-over.

One of the things that most disgusts me about our country is the way we handle vets. We teach and train them to kill and destroy and then, once they have served our purposes, we turn them loose to try to live normal lives, with a set of life skills that they are then forbidden to employ. We ought to be ashamed. And if I ever get around to being politically active, this will be my issue.

And while I am at it, there ought to be some kind of something for folks who purpose to be life partners with combat vets. Writing this post has made me realize some things. My first husband was a combat vet. Looking back now, I can see that part of his “craziness” was due to that. The thing was, he never trusted me enough to talk about his experiences very much, so I had no idea what was going on in his head. I don’t know if that was because it was fresher for him, or what. Nor do I think it would have made much difference in the eventual dissolution of our marriage. I was much younger and much less patient, way more ignorant and certainly unable to see beyond the end of my own nose. In retrospect, I probably pushed a lot of buttons for him, unintentionally.

So here’s what I have learned:
1) it’s not about you. It’s about a nightmare, lived once in life and over and over again in dreams.
2) it’s not about you, you didn’t do it, and you can’t change it.
3) when he talks, listen. Just shut up and listen. Nod and murmur occasionally to let him know you are still there, but be quiet.
4) when he shuts up, respect that.

Come to think about it, that’s pretty good advice for anybody who thinks they love anybody to follow. We all have our demons, now don’t we?

Oh yeah, one more thing: be careful touching a sleeping man, it can get you hurt.

On this day, I washed dishes. Now, that’s something I do with some frequency, but I took a picture of it so I could tell you a story.

Well, two stories, the first of which is fairly boring. My dishwasher is broken AGAIN, and so we are doing dishes by hand. All the kids hate dishes, but none of them mind cooking, and they dislike the other kitchen chores less than they hate dishes. So, I don’t cook anymore, but I do all the dishes. I divided the eight kids into four teams, and one team cooks each night, and the other three take care of the miscellaneous kitchen tasks. The thing is, I don’t mind doing the dishes. I just mind doing the dishes and the cooking and the sweeping and the clearing and the….. yeah, you get the idea. I find standing there at the sink with my hands doing a job that my mind doesn’t need to be involved in to be a great time for reflection, and a good way to wind down from the day, so the system works for all of us. It was a moment of sheer genius, I tell ya!

Ok, onto the other story. You will note that my right hand appears in that picture, and that on my ring finger is something that looks suspiciously like a wedding band. That’s because it is a wedding band. The engagement ring is there, too. These are Grandmother’s rings, and some two years after she died, I told my mother I was ready for them. I had to tell her about eight times before she believed me, and even then I think it was because That One was standing behind me and confirmed it.

Now, this is not the first time I have owned these rings. I had asked her for them many years ago, while she was still healthy and active, and she agreed immediately that I could have them when she was no longer needing them. And then, after she went into the nursing home, but was still leaving to visit us now and again, she gave them to me, because they no longer fit her. My uncle asked for them back so he could have them resized for her, and I handed them over without hesitation, and she wore them for a couple more years. After she died, though, the rings came off and Mama kept them for me.

I calculated a couple weeks ago, that Grandmother wore these rings while she washed dishes for about 55 years. And now I wear them, and I wash dishes in them, and so the legacy of love continues. I think roughly the same thoughts whenever I work on my flowerbeds or sew or make fried chicken. I want to be the kind of woman she was. Oh yes, I do.

She had a way of smiling at you when you walked into a room that made you think she’d just been waiting for you to show up to make her day complete. A big huge smile, and she continued to do that until very near the end of her life, even after she no longer recognized people for who they were. (Thankfully, that stage was intermittent, and didn’t last very long for her, but she often thought I was my mother near the end. I could tell by the things she said.) Lately, I’ve been told by my bffs and my kids that when I am not smiling, I look angry, no matter what my actual mood is, so I’m practicing smiling a lot more, letting the people I love now it with my face, and not just my words and deeds.

Yes, I miss her still. No one has ever loved me like my grandparents did. I think……of all the memories I have lost, it is not being able to remember more of them that troubles me most. I want to be able to remember being loved like that. It hardly seems fair to be able to remember the absolutely shitty things in my life (and excuse my language, but there is no other word for it) and to not be able to remember that.

Someone is going to the ball! On this day, I stopped by the thrift store and fell in love with a dress. And then I tried it on and it was perfect. So my mom gave me ten bucks to buy it. Gotta love her, right? She tells me that this picture does not do the dress justice.

Now, I am going to this ball with That One, and I guess now is as good a time as any to tell our story, or at least as much of it as I remember. Back in the day, I was a cheerleader for the local high school, and That One cheered as well for his school. The first time I saw him, I was a sophmore and we played at his school. I remember seeing those blue eyes of his from across the court, and nudging Ronnie in the ribs and saying “Look at that boy over there! He’s so cute!” I did not speak to him or even learn his name that night.

My junior year, Grand-dad was diagnosed with cancer and had part of his lung removed. He had a wonderful nurse, whose name was Miss That-One’s-Mom. She was one of those nurses who gets to know a patient’s family, and not just the patient. When she found out I was a cheerleader, she mentioned her son cheered too, for NHS and she would bring him out to meet me. I think I probably told her that I had seen him the previous year. Anyway, she brought him to the hospital, and he waved from behind her with those blue eyes and that shy smile. It was the same smile and wave he had when we met again 25 years later, btw. So, he spent a couple days there at the hospital with me and we hit it off very well. And I invited him to my junior prom. I remember very little about the hospital or about the prom. He remembers it all, for better or worse, and he has told me quite a bit, but those are his memories and not my own, so ….

Anyway, after the prom, we never saw each other again. We talked on the phone a couple of times and that was it. I thought he dumped me, and he thought I dumped him. (Keep reading, I’ll explain.) But I kept his picture in my wallet, along with the index card on which he had written his address and phone number. And after Pat and I split up, I was surfing the yahoo personals and saw a picture, and thought, “oh, that looks like That One”, except that really, the picture doesn’t look like him much at all. Not like he looks now, and certainly not like he looked back in the day. I looked at the rest of his profile pics and pulled out the one I had and compared it, and I was pretty certain it was him, so I thought I would call.

And then, I signed up at match.com, and his was the third profile presented to me that first day, and I thought “WOW, maybe I really should call”, and then the same thing at plentyoffish. So, I called and left a message with his mom. And he didn’t call back. And so I let it rest for a few days, but it kept nagging at me, so I called again. No answer. By this time, I had found his myspace and I left a comment, but I knew he wasn’t getting online much and probably wouldn’t get it for awhile. So I called on the way home from work the last Saturday in April, and we talked for a couple of hours that day, and I invited him to come up here to the movie in the park that we had here in Bittyburg that night. And he accepted. And I really thought that we would just spend an evening catching up and that would be the end of it. After all, he dumped me back in high school, right?

So he came, and we had a great time. And he came back the weekend after that and the weekend after that. And in between, we talked on the phone for a couple of hours every night. And some time in one of those long conversations, I got up the nerve to ask him why he never called me back in the day. And he told me he had called “but when you get told enough times that someone isn’t home, you get the message that they aren’t home TO YOU.” And I told him, I was so sorry, and I never knew he called, and that if I had, I would have called him back. And I asked my mom about it. “Did That One call me back in the day?”, and she assured me that she didn’t think so, and that she would have told me if he had. So there it was. I was seeing this guy who I liked a lot. I knew I’d liked him back in the day, cause some things I just know even if I can’t remember, and he said he had called. And all I was able to say in response was that I had spent a great deal of time away with home, because I had a job and also, it was bad at home, so I tried to be away as much as I could.

And then one day, this past fall, I was in the bathroom putting on my makeup and I remembered this thing my dad used to do that made me fairly aggravated. He got this habit of telling me when I got home that “some boy called.” And he told me this several times over several weeks or months (how long it went on, I don’t actually remember), and I realized that That One was Some Boy. Do you know how hard it is to return a call to “some boy”? We don’t think much about it now, with caller ID and all, but this was 25 years ago, yk? I tell myself now that we were young and stupid and would have wasted it anyway, because my heart can’t stand to think about the what ifs. But I know that what happened between us started a bad spiral for him and wasn’t really whoopie for me either, and so.

I am going to the ball in a dress that makes me feel like Cinderella, and I am going with Prince Charming also known as That One and Some Boy, and this time, I think the story is going to end a bit differently.

On the 11th, I undecked the halls. We held off on Christmas until The Clone was here, so that meant keeping the tree up a bit later than normal.

Each year, when I pack the ornaments away in the stockings, I get to take a little walk down memory lane. It’s interesting to me that (apparently) most of my memory still resides in my head, awaiting the appropriate trigger for release. It’s also interesting to me that of the traumas I remember, none seems bad enough to trigger a memory wipe-out like I have. I talked a bit about that with a therapist when I took the kids to their appointment last week. I’m now entertaining the theory that instead of one significant event, it may have been a result of my wish to avoid conflict at all costs. Anytime there was conflict, wipewipewipe. And folks, my childhood was filled with fairly significant amounts of conflict and when there was not direct conflict, there was the threat and/or fear of imminent conflict. I’m particularly leaning toward this theory since I remember very little of my first marriage and am quickly losing the details of the last three years of my second marriage. I remember enough to know why I am getting divorced though, and at this point, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it? And if you haven’t guessed yet, the final event was significantly traumatic for me. Enough so that it is etched in my mind forprettymuchever.

On another note, there were ornaments missing this year–I gave the ones that had belonged to my almost ex-husband back to him as well as the stocking his mother had made. It was only right, but I missed seeing the stocking. But only because I dearly loved his mother. That lady was one class act, and I am not saying that in the sarcastic way we usually say it in these parts. I truly mean it.

Also on this date, the 11th, it should be noted that one year and one day have now passed since we separated. My sentence has been served. I’ll avoid jokes about hemorrhoid treatment, especially since I am now fondly referred to as “butthead” alot. And not by him.

Let’s continue our journey, shall we? Unlike my weight loss diet, which has gone on for nearly two years, we are nearly at the end of my memory walk. Yeah, I know–2 posts and nearly finished. Crazy, huh? There are two little ones today. Then there are a couple from Europe and then a couple about my two dads that I don’t know if I will ever be able to tell, but we shall see. Later.

And before I forget again, here’s today’s self portrait, taken with the webcam, because it is easy and I lazy.

Both of these that I am going to talk about today happened when I was 6 or younger, and I know that because of where we lived at the time. We moved from there before I started school, and I was heartily upset when we moved because it meant I couldn’t ride the bus with my best friend who lived next door, which thing we had planned on with great excitement. Yes, I remember her name, it is/was Gina (last name left out for a modicum of privacy).

So, there in the cul-de-sac where we lived, there was a sewer grate. Only not really a sewer grate like you would think of, because we didn’t actually have sewers here then. I guess you would more properly call it a run-off grate. It was square, with rectangular openings for the water to go through to drain the street. You could sit on the curb and still put your feet on it, even if you were a little snip of a girl who was only about 3 feet tall and weighed maybe 40 pounds soaking wet. With 4 layers of clothes on. Which I wasn’t wearing, because it never actually got cold enough for four layers of clothes here back then, and anyway, we were riding bikes that day, Gina and I, so it musta been warm enough for that. And it was certainly warm enough to want to sit down and rest for a bit and giggle, which we must have done, because we did. And somehow, I got my foot into one of the slots in that darn grate, and I could. not. get. it. out. For a very long time, or at least for a very long time to a very small child who was very scared and near to panic. I can just remember sitting there crying, and my ankle hurting from me trying to pull my foot back out of there. And obviously I got it out, because I still have two feet, and I don’t know how I did it, but I did it myself because my parents were…..I don’t know, in the house I guess. And I think I remember telling Gina not to go get them because I was afraid I’d get in big trouble for putting my foot in there in the first place.

Second thing, still in that same house, we had a dog named Laddie. Now, I don’t remember playing with the dog, that would be nice. But I know that the dog died, and my dad buried her in the backyard (I know that, but don’t remember–you see the difference?? There are plenty of things I KNOW without actually remembering) and I cried, not because the dog was dead, but because I had pulled her ears and made her whimper not too long before she died.

I still remember how that house looked when I lived there. And I had a big plastic gun that shot balls, and that gun was not in my room, but across the hall in the room beside the kitchen. And in the room next to mine, on the left as you walk down the hall, there was a dresser and on that dresser sat Daddy’s marbles. I don’t remember anything else about that room, I guess I never really went in there, but you could see the marbles from the door. They were in a glass vase back then. I have those marbles now, at least some of them. I left part of them at Aunt Lady’s for all the great-grands to play with.

You will perhaps note that those marbles are no longer in a glass vase. Yes, it’s a rum bottle. And it sits on the hutch in my room, as part of my wall of happy. Which has become a room of happy now, just so you know. I thought very briefly about putting them in a more appropriate container, but I decided against it. My dad was who he was, and I choose to remember the truth, ugly, pretty, somewhere in between. I don’t have enough of them to start altering them to suit political correctness or any other such silly thing. And btw, the half I left there for the kids are similarly packaged.

Guys, I have stuff. I have a lot of stuff. In fact, I have an un-natural and abnormal amount of stuff. In my 25 by 12 living room, I had SEVEN bookshelves full of books and dolls. Seven. So, I spent the last ten days or so weeding through my books. I have now seven boxes ready to ship to a friend, and I have thrown a bunch out that were just trashed. I have re-filled 2 sets of shelves, and I have space for one more set AFTER I get the doll shelves out of the way. Which is my next project, the packing up of dolls. My current plan is to just keep one out at a time, so I can actually see and enjoy her. One day when I have a huge house I can unpack them all and spread them out again, I guess, unless I can talk myself in to just letting them go. And that’s what this post is really about, I suppose, letting stuff go.

Back in May, I had a chance to visit with Aunt Lady for a few hours after she locked herself out of the house. The conversation ranged from banana hammocks to the wearing or not wearing of panties (love my Aunt Lady–did I mention That One was also there?) to the more serious things of life: past and present and future. She asked me then, “What do you remember?” and I looked at her and said “Trauma. I only remember trauma.” That’s a darn sad state of affairs, isn’t it? And sadder still is that I don’t much talk about that which I do remember because I don’t want to upset anyone. And yet, I think the key to unlocking my memory may be in talking through those things I do remember. Maybe not, but maybe so, and anyway, stories need airing now and again, don’t they? Now, I don’t plan to unload my entire (small) memory bank in one post, but I do plan to explore some things in the blog that I haven’t touched before, and tonight we will start with the story that I think contributes to my need to have STUFF. Because, frankly, my STUFF is strangling me and sucking the life out of this house. Only a handful of people know this story: it’s been fairly well guarded, like most of my secrets. And maybe in the telling, I can quit hauling the weight around, like an extra set of Rimowa luggage. Even on wheels, that mess gets heavy.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was nine years old. She lived in a little 2 bedroom house with her mama. It was nice and cozy, but in a series of bad neighborhoods and the girl was lonely because she had no one to play with. But then, her mama started dating this tall handsome fella, and he had a little girl, too, and that was cool. They’d go on dates and take the girls along. They’d go to Merritt’s BBQ where they still had carhops (and still do, for the record). And the drive-in movies, where they saw Walking Tall. And then, that couple decided to get married. And that was pretty special, too, because the mama was very happy, and behold, instant sister! Only they were still in that little two bedroom house and space had to be made to accommodate two more people.

Soooo, after a little discussion, it was decided that the little girl would have to part with about half of her stuff in order to make place for her new sister and her new sister’s stuff. (Notice, it’s all about the stuff, right?) Now the little girl did not have an over abundant amount of stuff. There wasn’t money to buy a whole lot, you see. It was tough just to keep food on the table and clothes and such. In fact, I remember my grandparents buying shoes for me, and my grandmother making my clothes. By the way, I loved dressing up like my mother, because Grandmother always made us matching clothes. Yes, I realize that I just switched to the first person. Deal with it. So anyway, I had to go through my stuff. And at the time I really didn’t mind.

I had two teddy bears, Paul and Paula. One had been a gift from my grandparents when I was a year old. He had a white face and chest and plaid arms and legs. He now resides in a chest in my living room, along with Ms. Beasley. The other bear, it was pink and blue, and newer. I’d received him as a gift from the other side of my family. I’m thinking from my uncle, based on the names I gave the bears. At the time, I wasn’t seeing anyone from that side of my family, and so the natural choice, when presented with two bears and allowed to keep one, was to keep the bear that I had loved longest, given to me by people whom I knew loved me. And again, I say, I was ok with it at the time.

Back in the day, there was no trash service, and so our garbage was burned. After I had made my choices, my excess stuff was put out on the trash pile. And once more, I say that I was okay with it at the time, but I got to watch that stuff, MY STUFF, being burned. And maybe I wasn’t quite okay with that part, because I can still see the flames licking up my blue and pink teddy bear. That bear is the only thing I remember from the stuff I got rid of, by the way.

So, here we are, all this time later, and I have STUFF. And I am very protective of my stuff and I am basically pretty selfish with it. I say, “No, that’s mine” about as often as your average three year old. And I just wonder, how much of that goes directly back to that day of the big burning? It’s time to let it go. Both the physical stuff, and the mental pain that goes with the memory I’ve just shared. And now that I have talked about it out loud in public, maybe I can do that.

And there ya go, the blog becomes a therapist.

I have no idea why I look half drunk in this picture. I haven’t had a drop in three days, I promise. But the other three were even worse, so we’ll go with this one.

This week, I have worked. And also worked. And had some coffee. And lunch. And I worked. And I thought about cakes, with both layers and frosting, not just frosting. Slowing down.

I spent some time thinking about the importance of making time for important things. I spent some time defining what was important. You know what I came up with? People. People are important. Also, clean laundry. And I am important. Even in the midst of all I do for others, making sure my needs are met is also important. In fact, if I don’t do that, I will be less able to do for others, and then that whole miserable cycle where I spend a couple of years wearing pajamas may start again. Hey, I like pajamas, but putting on a bra should not constitute “getting dressed”.

Let me tell you a something. You might have figured out from some of my posts here that I have a few daddy issues. And not in that perv way, but in a very real way. Both the men I’ve called/call Daddy have failed me in fairly significant ways at one time or another, mostly through no fault of their own. I truly believe both of them were doing the best they could at the time with the resources and knowledge that they had. At 41, I can see that, but then, as a child, I could not. All I saw was the fail. Anyway, as a result of that, there are other men I look up to in the way some girls look up to their dad. I saw one of them today, first time I had seen him in a couple of years. And he hugged me for the longest time, we were rubbing each others backs and telling each other it was “so good to see you again.” And when that man put his hands on my waist, they were trembling. And not from emotion, it was a purely physical tremor. I saw the same thing in another older man today that I have known for awhile. The people I admire and respect are short timers now. They are getting old. And I hadn’t noticed it in my own folks, I guess because I see them so much, and the changes are so gradual. I was so not prepared when my grandparents died just last year, and I am so not ready for this. No amount of home insurance is going to keep my emotional and mental house safe. I am the grown up now. I am being dragged kicking and screaming into areas I do not want to go.

It is so true that life is but a vapor. And on that note, I need to go slice the ham. My kids are hungry and waiting on me. That’s an important thing, and I need to make time for it.

Here in lies a collection of things I want need to get off my chest.

Dear Customer, when I am assisting your wife in the store, don’t yell at her. It embarrasses us both and really makes me wonder if you are the cause of that split lip she has.

Dear Friend, when you use my computer and see I have tabs open for “PTSD from Domestic Abuse”, “Depression” and “Finding Help”, don’t raise your eyebrow and say “Really?!?” in that incredulous way. I match 90 percent of the listed symptoms, and we both know my behavior is not exactly normal. You can put on a tuxedo and I can put on The Clone’s old prom dress and we can dance and pretend to laugh, or you can be the rock for me you’ve always been. I’m choosing to give you the benefit of the doubt, because I think you were most likely blind-sided.

Dear Co-Worker, when you call me over to you and we have a little conversation, and then I walk away and your eyes are glued to my butt, I totally know you are staring.

Dear Different Friend, thanks for not thinking I am batchit crazy, even though we both know I am.

Dear Washing Machine, why don’t you run yourself once in a while? You’ve lived here two years now, you know where I keep your soap!

Dear Self, why don’t you stop being so busy and take the time to listen to your own head? Might do you a little bit of good.

Dear God, please help my other friend, the one I haven’t mentioned here so far.

Dear Grandmother, I got side-tracked driving yesterday and headed to your house. I still miss you.

Dear Blank-on-purpose, I’m glad you’ve started looking at me again.

Dear Grandma, thanks for teaching me to make a lemon pie from lemons and not a box. I don’t remember how to do it, but I had such a good time in your kitchen that day.

Dear Daddy, I would give anything if I had just kept you on the phone a little longer the day before you died. I am so very glad you called.

Dear Other Friend, please let me meet you where you are. I’ve got a flashlight and a map, and I am willing to help you out of that place you are in.