Spoiled Only Child

Death, etc.

Whoosh! That was the sound of me returning from another dimension. Things have been out-of-control crazy over here. On Tuesday night, my father-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack. He was 90 years old, and had lived an active and independent life until the very last day, but still... Losing a parent is hard. Really hard. And it's even harder when the remaining parent is also 90 years old and difficult, and they had absolutely no plans for their deaths, and they have no money and every bit of the responsibility falls on you. So Mr. SOC has had a tough go of it. And in addition to dealing with the viewing and the cremation and the memorial service and the military honors and writing the obituary and giving the eulogy, there have been family feuds and fights over money and reunions with long-lost siblings. And during all of this, Mia was sent home from school with a fever, so I've been pretty much out-of-commission taking care of her. Mix all that with Mr. SOC's childhood memories of his father (From his eulogy: "I remember the feel of his woolen overcoat that smelled of New York and smoke-filled train cars." Sob.) and wine-soaked ruminations on death. (It's inconceivable really, that you can be here one day shopping at Walmart and mooching the free coffee at the bank, and—BANG!—the next day you're a pile of ashes in a box on the mantle. For those of us left behind, death is the most incredible disappearing act. How can you be here, so solidly here, and then just... not be?) So anyway, we've been living in some kind of alternate universe for the past five days.

Then today, I thought Mr. SOC might finally get a day to relax, take a breath. But instead, he went to his parents' house and cleaned his dead father's filthy bathroom. And now he's at the emergency room with his son, who appears to have a bat bite on his arm. And we really don't want him to get rabies. But he got this bite a week ago, and hadn't mentioned it, so I hope to hell it's not too late to start the rabies treatment. It's all a bit surreal.

But the one benefit of all this is that, until Tuesday night, I was having a little personal breakdown, complete with feelings of hopelessness, etc. But this seems to have rocked me out of it. It was like a volcanic eruption that shifted my perceptions and forced me out of my self-centered downward spiral. So now, even though we are stressed and saddened and have a long road ahead of us figuring out how to deal with my mother-in-law, I somehow feel better than I did before it all started. I am not depressed anymore. I think maybe part of my problem has been this expectation that life is supposed to be fun. Every day is supposed to be fun, and anything that happens that is not fun causes me to panic, because I am losing out on the fun life I deserve. But sometimes, life is just hard, it's just putting one foot in front of the other, doing what you have to do and making it through. And it is so freeing to just let it be that.

I should probably delete this post

So here I was worrying about death and infirmity, and something completely unexpected came and whacked me on the back of the head. Politics. I am not the kind of person who takes politics personally. But we just had a school board election, and the people who won want to dramatically change our schools in a way that I think is unconscionable. And I can't do anything about it. These people who I don't support in any way are going to ruin our schools. My child will probably be OK, but the poor kids, the ones who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, well, good luck to them. And we will all be poorer for that.

This election got me thinking that this whole far-right movement really is taking hold again, that less than a year after Bush left office, all the hope is disappearing in favor of the most polarized politics our country has ever seen. I mean, there are actually people--lots of people--who are prepared to kill health care reform just to make the president look bad. Something our country so desperately needs. If you don't like Obama's plan, then come up with an alternative, but please don't send crazy people out in the streets with signs saying "Hands off my healthcare!" It feels almost as if we've come to the end of the viability of the two-party system in America. This just isn't working anymore.

It's all making me start to wonder if this is even the kind of country where I want to live, the kind of place I want my daughter to grow up in. I am profoundly disillusioned with the selfishness that seems to permeate the American psyche. Who cares about the poor? Who cares about the uninsured? Just as long as I get mine. This goes totally outside the bounds of what I allow myself to write here, but I just cannot keep it inside. I have actually started to cry multiple times every day for the past three days thinking about this stuff. I am so afraid of where my country, my state, my county are headed. I just don't understand why those of us who have more can't seem to find the slightest bit of care for those who have less. But I guess it's more important to us to have five televisions, to have closets stuffed full of crap we don't need from Target, than to make sure that poor people have healthcare or decent schools for their kids. So we'll just build more jails and pay for more ER visits, all for the luxury of not having to give a shit about anyone else.

I have a cold. Please kill me.

Remember how I said I hate it when people blog about being sick? Yeah, well, I now hate my former self. I will never belittle the experience of being sick, or the common cold, again. Never. Because this is fucking awful. I have been trying so hard to stay away from this blog during my long days of coughing and misery, but now I am at my wit's end. And if there is anything, anything, that might ease my mental suffering, I will do it--including blogging about my snot. Whatever it takes.

I have now been coughing, or feeling that tickly sensation in the back of my throat, continuously for eight days. It is enough to make a person lose her mind. For the past four days, I the cough has been accompanied by congestion, fatigue and general awfulness. The most torturous part is that, after spending all day yesterday lying in bed drinking tea and eating soup, I felt immensely better last night. I woke up this morning so excited about my return to good health, new facebook statuses dancing in my head. "I am so grateful for my good health," I imagined myself writing. No, maybe, "I am finally reemerging into the land of the living, and I am so grateful for it." The birds were chirping and the sun was shining. It was the first day of the rest of my life. And then I sat down at my desk, and I couldn't stop coughing, and then I noticed that strange woozy sensation again, and before long I felt just as awful as I did two days ago.

I can't describe the mental anguish that this illness has caused. I feel so guilty for lying around the house doing absolutely nothing. I feel guilty for coughing over and over, forcing everyone around me to listen to it. I feel guilty every time I go out into the world, because I am surely spreading my germs. I feel guilty that Mr. SOC has been sleeping on the couch for five nights and there is no end in sight. I feel guilty that we haven't had sex in ages. I feel guilty for skipping out of work. I feel guilty for ignoring my to-do list. I feel guilty for being an emotional wreck. I feel guilty for being knocked flat by a stupid fucking cold. This virus is screwing with my head, I tell you.

Now, I am waiting for Mr. SOC to get home, dreading his realization that I am not on the road to recovery, that I am once again coughing and whining and snotty and that tonight is probably not going to be the night we rekindle our romance. I want to lie on the couch and do nothing. I want to get up and force myself into action, to become healthy by acting healthy. I want to fall into a black hole until this is all over. I want to move into my own apartment, quit my job and be left to cough alone, in peace, guilt-free, until death finally takes me. Didn't I tell you this cold had driven me crazy? Didn't I tell you?

This is what I can write in 12 minutes

1. I really hate it when people blog about being sick. For god's sake, do you think you are the first person to have a cold? And yet, when you have post-nasal drip that tickles the back of your throat, making you feel the urge to cough every single second for days, and you are hacking a dry awful cough 17 times a minute and you have no idea when or if it will ever go away, well, your world really narrows down. There is nothing but you and that godforsaken cough and, really, what else is there to write about?
2. It appears that fall has arrived. It is supposed to still be hot as hell here right now, but instead there is a crispness to the air and I am dreaming of pumpkin farms and winter stews and getting that vague worry that, oh my god, I really am going to have to go through this fucking Christmas thing again, aren't I? Couldn't I have just one year off? Just this one? Anyway, this also means that my secret summer vacation is over. I guess I have to go back to thinking about my life goals again and caring about my job and whatever all that other stuff I used to do was. But really, why? Summer vacation was good. It took a real mental load off, and I don't think I did any worse at my job. And in this economy, there's really no sense applying for other jobs. So maybe I will continue the summer vacation indefinitely. At least until after the holidays. Although I might take an online course or two. And think about my Spanish again, and my little secret business plan. Oh hell, I guess it really is over.
3. A friend sent me a notepad full of blank lists, and I am using it way too much. Its lure is more than I can handle, all those beautiful blank lined and numbered pages. But I go as fast as I can and I just cannot get to the end of my list. I cleaned out the fridge tonight, but the freezer is still full of unidentifiable objects and the kitchen cabinets are crammed with crap, half of which probably needs to be thrown away. I am still tripping over unpacked crates and bags from our Labor Day trip. And really, every corner of this house is piled with crap that we don't need and don't know what to do with. Old baby clothes, pots and pans we never use, ancient magazines. When will there ever be time to get to the end of the list? (I know, I know. Never. Fuck.)
4. I think I am obsessed with the lists because I have some unexplainable feeling that the change of seasons is a sort of fresh start. I'm ready to stay home, clean up, weed the garden, bake pies, knit intricate sweaters, clear out all our clutter, begin the winter nesting rituals. But the reality is I only have time to do one one-hundreth of that crap. Which leads to frustration and many, many lists.
5. My mother just left after a two-week visit. I love her very much, and consider her one of my best friends, but I realized that I just cannot fully relax when she is around. Maybe it's because of her mounting health problems, and my constant fear of her death, which seems to have really intensified lately. Or maybe it's that she never, ever tells anyone what she really wants, so I am always guessing about whether she's happy and has what she wants. Oh, it's not even worth writing about. But I was looking forward to breathing a big sigh of relief when she left. Instead, I got this cough as soon as her plane took off. So now I'm just hacking miserably, and blogging about it.
6. I guess that was more like 22 minutes.

All that worrying for nothing

Oh, so this is what people mean when they say "vacation." They don't mean rushing from place to place, trying to have new experiences. They mean staying in a luxury home in view of the breakers, strolling from beach to pool to hot tub, throwing your kid into a pile of 4-year-olds while you drink beer on the deck, reading novels in bed and occasionally getting ambitious enough to take a trip to the ice cream shop. I used to say that I didn't understand what you were supposed to do at the beach. Now I know. You are supposed to learn what it's like not to do anything, not to be rushing from here to there, not to have any ambition at all other than to watch the surf and dig in the sand and take your child for a swim.

All of my hopes and not a single one of my fears were realized during this trip. I was able to use this vacation as a sort of meditative experience, a place where I could let go of all my usual worries.  Time seemed to stretch out into a smooth expanse, completely free of the ceaseless rushing and dilemmas that plague my ordinary days. I didn't worry about what we were going to eat or our schedule for the day. I ignored the imperfections of this place where we chose to vacation and the annoying tics of some our housemates. I made new friends and babysat children I barely knew and felt myself part of an extended, if very temporary, family.

Every time I caught myself stressing about what we should do next--should we go to the lighthouse tomorrow morning? And when are we going to fit in that nature walk?--I was able to stop myself, to remember that life is lived in this moment, not the next. I remembered to enjoy the simplest of pleasures: the feeling of being freshly showered after a long day in the sun and sand, of the surf rushing under my feet, watching dune grass sway in the breeze and eating lunch beside the pool. I swam and read and walked and sat and played and ate and drank and remembered what it is to simply be here, in this place and time.

I know, of course, that this week was a luxury afforded by the work and stresses of the rest of my life. But I hope I can take a little bit of it with me: The knowledge that you really can let go of it all, and the world continues to spin on its axis, the people you love go on living, you all find something to eat and a place to sleep. I can rest. Everything really is OK.

Is it possible to fail at vacation?

Hello from vacationland. I am in the first of two weeks of vacation/furlough, and this is the week where I get to live my dream of being a stay-at-home mom with the benefit of full-time child care. This is truly the life I fantasize about. But can I confess something? I have no idea what to do with myself. That's not to say that I am bored--far from it. Instead, my brain is buzzing with all the possibilities, making list upon list of things that need to be done. I think the best way to describe my state of mind is confused. What am I supposed to be doing with this precious, precious gift of time by myself? Should I be relaxing on the couch with a good book? Cooking gourmet meals? Cleaning and organizing my house? Packing for our beach trip? Preparing for Mia's birthday party? Taking her out of school and spending quality time? What is the right thing?

As a result of my confusion, I'm trying to squeeze all those things in, and so I make lists upon lists of the things I need to do, and then end up paralyzed by all that needs to be done. So I just spent the past hour watching the Colbert Report on the laptop, and now I'm totally behind on my plans for the day (which include stuff like reading, knitting, straightening the house, washing the blanket on our bed, doing laundry for the beach trip and AAAAHHHH, I can't think about it all.) My brain just cannot seem to accept that life is always a work in progress, that there are always going to be things on the to do list. Instead, I keep trying to make the complete list. I have this crazed idea that if I could just get everything on the list, then I could eventually cross it all off and then, only then, I could find peace. So when I think of another thing that needs to go on the list, no matter how trivial, I become instantly anxious. Because every new thing I add to the list is another obstacle between me and the peace I seek. I rush through each task, because I am in a race with the list. Hurry up that workout, no dawdling at the store, finish that novel because there's another one on the stack, go, go, go.

Last night, the buzzing of the to-do's got so loud that I just couldn't relax. No matter what I did, my brain kept going over and over the list, thinking about what I needed to do and when I would do it. It was like a skipping record or something, and I couldn't unstick it. Of course, I had trouble sleeping. And now I am sluggish and feeling like a real failure at vacation. Aren't I supposed to become gradually more relaxed as the week goes by? Instead, I am becoming more and more keyed up. What I really need is a vacation from myself.

Pennsylvania mood swings

I am at the parents' home in PA. For some reason, I seem to swing between two states of mind here. I am either loving it and absolutely dreading the moment when we have to leave, or I am completely bored and homesick, filled with annoyance and unexplainable dread. Right now I am in the latter state, which is why I'm blogging rather than frolicking in the pool or the hot tub or shopping at the mall or enjoying the other advantages of suburban living. What is with this mood I get in here? I have nothing but free beer and free babysitting and free time and I'm moping around. Well, at least I am drinking the beer.

Part of it is the weather. It is gray and rainy and yucky. And I'm feeling kind of sick to my stomach. I've been eating too much, and nothing with vegetables, and I haven't gotten any exercise.  It's probably just those things, and not the fact that something awful is about to happen. But it's hard to explain this feeling of foreboding that grips me. All the things I excitedly planned to do here--shopping for a bathing suit, tackling the complicated knitting project I never have time for at home, devouring whole novels--just feel like too much effort now. I started reading a book, got about 100 pages in, and realized I'd read it before. Hell.

So here I sit with the computer. Maybe I'll go check facebook, see if anyone's commented on my status.

More pointless musings on the meaning of life

I am on vacation! A real one, the kind where I don't have to go to work. Mia and I are leaving to visit my parents on Wednesday, but these past two days I have been true to my word. The farthest I've ventured is the Asian market in the next town over, the park on the north end of our city. I am loving the freedom of days at home, with Mia in daycare, to do whatever I want. I so rarely have days like this, because of my compulsion to go places. The idea of having time off work and not going someplace, anyplace, has always been unthinkable for me. But the idea that these days are completely free and open is a bit of a lie. Because I have been unable to resist the pull of the list. Since I never have time like this, I have to make the most of it. In fact, the only reason I am writing this blog post is because I am a bit ahead of schedule for today. You see, blogging wasn't in the schedule, but I'm stealing this little bit of time because I finished my gardening early.

I am crazy, aren't I? There is nothing wrong with getting things done, but there is something wrong with always worrying about the next thing on the list, to the point where it's sometimes difficult to enjoy the thing you are actually doing. I was watching a documentary the other night, and a woman made this observation about life, "It's all a tragedy. It's just a matter of how you get through it." Truer words were never spoken. My college Shakespeare professor once said that the only difference between tragedy and comedy was time. In a tragedy, they run out of time--to make things right or to uncover the truth or to do the right thing. And that is really the tragedy of life. That there is never enough time. Things could be perfect if we just had time to finish everything on the to do list.

I realize now that all my life I've been struggling against time, swimming against the constant overwhelming feeling that I have so much left to do, that the seconds are ticking away and every one counts. I have been making lists and crossing things off, trying to get ahead in a race I will never win. And I suppose that I will go on struggling to find the balance between too much and not enough, to feel that I am not wasting my precious too-short tragedy of a life.

Summer vacation, revised

This summer vacation I had planned? Let's just say I'm revising my plans a bit. This thing is becoming a staycation. I am starting to feel that all efforts to leave my home are cursed. First we had the Memorial Day beach debacle. Then, a couple weeks ago, we took a camping trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway. On the first night in the campground, Mia would not go to sleep. For hours and hours she thrashed around, adjusting her sleeping bag over and over and over, yelling "It's not right!" Nothing on this earth could make that sleeping bag right. Finally, it was almost midnight, we were desperate to go to sleep, and Mr. SOC kind of lost it. Actually, we both did. Really, anyone in their right mind would have been insane by that point. So Mr. SOC tells Mia that she's going to have to sleep in the car, and he starts angrily removing her from the tent as she screams. And I'm trying to intervene and tell him to calm down, and at some point in the flailing, I accidentally get hit in the face, so I'm yelling "Ouch!" After a couple minutes, we get things calmed down, and I think the whole scene scared Mia straight, because she laid down and went to sleep. A few minutes later, as we're ready to finally go to sleep, a couple of sheriff's deputies show up at our tent. Apparently, our campground neighbors thought we were child abusers. The deputies threatened to take us to jail, and insisted on checking on Mia (to make sure she was alive, I guess) before finally leaving us. Making the whole situation even better was that Mia had a giant bandage on her forehead because she had fallen in the driveway a few days earlier and needed stitches.

 And that brings us to yesterday, when I decided it would be a good idea to take a day trip to the beach. Mia had had another night of sleep similar to the one in the tent (WTF?), and we hadn't slept much either. But we decide to drag our asses there anyway. Can't miss out on fun! We drive two and a half hours there, haul our stuff onto the sand, and spend maybe 20 minutes before Mia starts crying. She has developed a mortal fear of the water and won't go near it. Then she starts complaining about her eye. It's red and watering, and it's just not getting better. She's crying and crying, her nose is running, we don't have any tissues. After about a half hour of that, we packed up our stuff, got back in the car and went home. Fail!

For some reason I am compelled to go places. To the beach, camping, sailing. I don't fully understand this need, considering the stress of packing, driving, getting Mia to sleep, and just the general stress of traveling. I guess I feel that if I'm sitting at home, I'm not taking advantage of all the world has to offer. If I stay home, I am complacent, unadventurous, stuck. When we're home, there are always chores to do, dishes to wash, errands to run. When we go away, our weekend becomes a vacation. Plus, I don't want to miss out on anything. If we had gone somewhere, we might have had the time of our lives, but we'll never know if we don't go. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with enjoying camping and the beach. But I'm wondering if this is more of a compulsion with me, a sort of grasping and wanting, a way of trying to fill some hole. Instead of traveling, I should be meditating, learning to feel at peace where I am.

So we're still going on our week's vacation at the beach, and we're still going to visit my family. But no more impromptu trips to the beach for a while. I promise.

Secret summer vacation

Oops, I accidentally posted my half-finished draft earlier. This is the real post:

I have a secret. I'm on summer vacation. No, I wasn't smart enough to become a teacher who gets the summers off. (What was I thinking?) You see, this is a stealth vacation. One that involves going to work. Although, thanks to this thing they're calling a "furlough," I do have one week off in July and two weeks off in August, plus long weekends for the 4th and Labor Day, and a few other ones thrown in there for the hell of it. But mostly, this is a mental vacation from my hopes and expectations and plans for the future. This summer, I am not thinking about my career or all the goals I should be achieving, or what my next job should be. I am just going to work, doing my job, going home, as early as possible. I am not studying Spanish or taking that web design course I meant to sign up for.  I am not fretting about money or the economy or whether I'm going to be laid off. For now, I'm just letting it be a simple equation. I have a job, I go there and do what I have to. Seems so simple, doesn't it?

Here's what I'm devoting my energy to. This summer, I am cooking the season's bountiful produce. Fennel and cucumbers and tomatoes and fresh-from-the soil potatoes. I'm packing picnics to eat at the park. I'm watering my flowers. I'm hanging out at the pool. I'm planning endless budget-friendly trips, camping and days at the beach. I'm knitting Mia the cutest little tank top and skirt combo--in pink, of course. I'm planning to listen to the cicadas and catch lightning bugs with Mia. We're going to go to the neighborhood 4th of July parade, decorate our wagon with red white and blue, maybe get some sparklers. We'll spend a little time visiting family, and we'll spend a week at a big house on the beach in late August. I have a good feeling about this summer. I love vacation.