What I do to keep my mind off things.

I blog and I bead...

It's amazing how therapeutic this is, I highly recommend it.

But after two or three pieces and several trips to the bead store, your fiance may begin to wonder if you're spending money wisely.

So you tell him that you're giving them away as gifts for the holidays. Genius!

The above necklace is my favorite piece so far. I'm in necklace love.

Thoughts

*Note: This may not be the most entertaining blog I've ever written. In fact, my next few may not be entertaining at all. Lately, I'm just not in the mood to even think of a humorous topic.

How do you continue blogging after such a life changing event? What do you even begin to write about when the last thirty days of vivid memories are being pushed into the deepest, darkest corners of your brain in an attempt to maintain some sense of normalcy?

All of the Hospice papers I continue to get in the mail say that I should feel numb right now. And in a few months I will begin to feel the pain associated with loss that will not even begin to subside until after the fourth month. Finally, after two years I will be able to create a more normal life pattern that will sculpt the more normal years to come.

While I appreciate all the helpful paperwork, I'm sick of the time lines. During the weeks that my family took care of my mom, we were given numerous, inaccurate time lines that did nothing but mess with our minds. And now, when I want nothing but to be sad in my own way, I get mail that maps out how I should feel for the next few years of my life.

Should I be grateful, for now, that my brain has me in a temporary state of denial? Should I dread the next few months when reality starts to sink in? What if it takes three or four months instead of the allotted two for that reality to hit? Because I now have this calendar, I anticipate what "should" happen and will probably be just as screwed up as I was when things don't go as planned.

I understand that these time lines are estimates. The pamphlet is not an exact science but if you were in my state of mind, and the state of mind that I'm sure my siblings and family are in, you'd grapple for anything - anything that makes some sense out of your life, anything that creates some semblance of normalcy. Anything like a mapped out plan of your emotional life.

11/30/07 - Mom, rest in peace

What I will be reading at my mom's funeral tomorrow. Cross your fingers that I make it through.

***

My mom always said that she didn’t want her funeral to be a sad one. So we thought we could accomplish this with photos chock full of Farah Fawcet hair, plastic triangle earrings that complement bright green eye shadow, and an assortment of hair colors that she would want you to think came about naturally.

Her personality is reflected not only within the pictures displayed before you or the music that you hear but in the memories that she left. Each of you has a favorite memory of my mom that’s all your own and that no one else may know or even understand, whether it was the first time you heard her sing “Delta Dawn” on karaoke night or the time you saw her squeal like a school girl when she got to meet David Allen Coe.

My favorite memory isn’t just one memory, but an era. An entire era of our lives that, to me, seems defined by the way my mom, S and I would cruise around in her yellow Volkswagen Beetle, jamming to Madonna’s latest hit song, headed to Mickey-D’s to get Happy Meals. Or picking up a pack of string cheese from the grocery store and eating all of it on the car ride home. It was an era of just us girls. Mom always made S and me sit in the back seat where it was safer because the old Bug had no seatbelts. I insisted on sitting in the seat directly behind her because it meant that I was the closest person to her. I was my mom’s personal little shadow for the first 2/3rds of my life.

Each memory we have of her is a little piece of what she left for us. A remembers singing in the Christmas music program in grade school. Everyone watched her sing, smiling and silently cheering her on. But when she would look at mom she would see that mom was actually mouthing the words to make sure A wouldn’t forget them. Afterward, mom congratulated A for doing so well – all on her own.

The best memories are those that make you pause for a moment and say to yourself – wow that is so mom. A story that S mentioned earlier does just this. When S first started kindergarten, she had to walk two blocks from school to the baby-sitter’s house at the end of the day. Mom was worried that S might get lost, so she came up with one of her genius solutions: She used chalk to draw arrows on the sidewalk for S to follow. Mom marked the path so she could finish up at work without worrying. But in the end, she took off work anyway and followed S home, just to be sure.

Sometimes, what my mom found hilarious may not have been quite as humorous to us kids, like the day B was first allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. He was ready to back the car out of the driveway, and mom was riding shotgun – visibly nervous before the car was even started. B was so bad at backing out the car – jerking backward, hitting the breaks, jerking backward, hitting the breaks – that when he finally got the car to the side of the road, mom jumped out and said, “I can’t believe you’re that bad – I seriously thought I was going to die!” She laughed, everyone laughed. But B wasn’t laughing later when he wasn’t allowed behind the wheel for another two months.

Mom was there for everything. She would watch Z play Halo on the Xbox for hours just to spend some time with him. Sure, she would complain about the gratuitous violence or the sheer stupidity of the game but she would sit there and, at the very least, pretend to be interested in what Z liked so much.

The five of us were always our mom’s first priority. She did a fabulous job as our mother and as our friend. And as all of us celebrate her life that is one of the things we have to be happiest for. That’s what she would want. Not that we cry for what we don’t have, but that we smile and laugh as we go through the tremendous archive of memories she helped us make. They’ll never run out.

Hola

Hello to those who've been wondering where I've gone. I'm in the middle of a family emergency right now but will be back. Until then...

Adios.

Blogger's Block

It’s official. I haven’t blogged in 14 days and I have bloggers block. Thus the basis of this uber creative title. It’s not that I haven’t thought about what I could write about or that I’ve completely abandoned my Spotless Mind. Of course not. It’s because I’ve been so up and down these last weeks I thought I’d spare you my drama. (You, meaning the two people who actually read my blog and the random person who ran across my humble web-abode after Googling “poopy underroos.” Not joking here people. This crazy cat is either a mom looking for a remedy to clean her kids soiled drawers or… well, I won’t go there. It’s just too messed up.

Anyway, I thought, in lieu of said bloggers block I’d leave you with this.

Everyone can use a good monkey grin. It made me smile.

Don't Get Snarky With Me

Let me set the mood: It was homecoming season a few weeks ago. The school was crawling with teenage girls all looking to get up-dos, manicures, and pedicures before their big night. I was washing this girls greasy mane when:

“Are you Japanese?”

Her inquiry was out of the blue, yes, but I get these types of questions quite often. “No, I’m not Japanese.”

“Well, you look like you are,” she said with an audible snark in her tone.

So sorry to have disappointed you, my dear, I’ll try harder to please you the next time you ask such an uncouth question.

I went on to politely explain the smorgasbord of ethnicities that run through my veins but she got bored and called someone on her cell phone. What she didn’t realize is that I had control of the water temperature and, even worse for her, I controlled the direction of the water spray. I could have EASILY shot her in the face with a blast of icy, cold water.

Speechless

Did any of you hear about this?

Every school day every student and every teacher in every Illinois public school is legally required to take a moment out of their day to be... silent. That's it. Silent. No talking, no humming, no farting, no nothing. For this moment they can pray, they can reflect on their week, or they can sit silently with their thumbs up both nostrils just as long as their actions are not distracting to others and absolutely no sounds are made. It will allow the kids to “listen to the rustling of leaves, to listen to the chirping of a bird, to listen to the tip-tap of a kid walking.” Tip-tap? Seriously?

Another purpose for this mandatory moment of silence (MMoS); (My interpretation.) It is meant to deter students from the black whole that’s twisted our kids into the depressed, violent, and drugged up little children that they’ve seemingly become.

“Rep. Will Davis (D-Homewood), the bill’s chief sponsor, denied he was promoting school prayer but instead said a moment of silence possibly could avert tragedies like the recent school shooting in Cleveland, where a troubled 14-year-old shot two students and two teachers before killing himself. Just think if that student had an opportunity maybe to sit and reflect,” Davis said.” – Chicago Sun Times

Yes, Mr. Davis, what exactly would that child sit and reflect on? Maybe it would give him a moment to rethink his decision to shoot up his school and himself. Or maybe, just maybe it would give him a moment to think for the elleventy-billionth time how unhappy he is and how he feels like there is no other way to be heard. One moment out of one day will not deter someone that feels so beaten down by society, peers, family, or whatever it is that has a person contemplating such rash measures. It's simple algebra, one undefined variable (aka. MMoS) for every day of the school year will produce an undefined result.

Additionally, who says our children have become these no good tyrants who can't contain their evil behavior? The news? Phooey. Because, last I knew, people have had depression (diagnosed or not) since before the year 2007. People have been gunning down other people prior to the formation of the US of A, It should come as no surprise that children are depressed and, in turn, channel those feelings into violence and rash decisions that they’ve learned from their predecessors.

I have no problem with giving students the opportunity to pray for a moment or to reflect for a moment but don’t cover up a political strategy to put religion back into the public school system by blaming a disgruntled fraction of the student body. Or at least come up with a better cover. Few will accept the BS being offered. Personally, I would have been the student painting her fingernails with a pink highlighter in the back of the classroom until the MMoS was over.