True love(s)

My therapist was hard on me today.

I don't normally want to talk about my therapy, as it is not so much therapy as someone to bitch to. In fact, I went in there saying that I had much of the same to bitch about as last month, and that I feel like a broken record.

So, he challenged me.

I'm tired of bitching about Joe. I'm tired of bitching about life. Things, on balance, are better now than worse. I still have a lot to get through, and don't I know it, but I do realize now that I need to make significant changes.

What I think is curious is that I didn't think I was consumed so much with my custody case, but I came out of there thinking... my custody case is a habit. The therapist called it an addiction, but we compromised and called it an obsession.

My son is at stake.

I listened to my weekend voicemails, and I had one from Zoe's dad. He wanted to talk to her, but said he'd try her "next weekend."

That's not what I want for my daughter: A sometimes dad.

Or my son: A dad who hates the boy's mother.

I need to try harder. For both of them.

Fanfare

"This time you've got nothing to lose.
You can take it, you can leave it, whatever you choose."

-- A Matter of Trust, Billy Joel



Aimee and Dean are getting married!


Dean popped the question on a "weekend" trip, and Aimee said yes. I'm happy for those kids, and quite surprised they made the leap.

In other romantic news, I gave Liam a key to my house this weekend. I know, it's not like getting engaged, or even close! But I had been thinking about it for weeks.

He opened the gift bag and unraveled the tissue paper... then unceremoniously screwed it onto his key ring, gave me a peck, and we went about our business.

Normally, this reaction would disappoint me, but the fact that I'm comfortable with the exchange is probably more indicative of how comfortable I am with him.

In the past week I fell asleep playing with my kids on the living room floor, while he cleaned up the kitchen. He took me to a Pens game Sunday and actually got us there on time. We stood in line at KFC feeling each other out about the menu and finally agreed Extra Crispy was the only way to go. He went with me into the city Friday to have a night out with my friends (and got mad that I paid).



But tonight.... tonight he brought his girls over, and I was lying in bed. They came and sat on the bed and told me about their week, grilled me about various things, and then the situation disintegrated into a tickling match.

And I realized I had missed his girls. I mean, I really missed them.

Liam and I have a long way to go, but things are going so very well. I have been thinking about some of the relationships I have pined over, as far back as my college days, and this is the first time I've thought to myself that I have something so much better, maybe this is what I have been waiting for.

Someone I've known all my life.

I was skeptical at first, but....


I am so happy. Still somewhat skeptical, but I'm going to let myself be happy.

I'm letting myself be happy.

Let's get this party over

I don't know why when someone says "eggs" I think, immediately, "Unless you're a millionaire, this uterus is closed for business."

I've had enough hunts for eggs this weekend that by the time I hit the last aisle at the grocery store today, I was thinking, "NO MORE EGGS IN MY HOUSE."

So, I went home and did what any mother in my position would do: I put my eggs in the position of being more palatable.




This doesn't solve the issue of all the chocolate eggs that we've collected, but I have no problem with taking those to work along with a plateful of the story of my egg upgrade.

Happy Easter!

To dye for

Buried up to our elbows in vinegar and tablets and stickers.... and only one dipper to share among us.... dipping eggs was an exercise in diplomacy. But we got through it unscathed.

Liam helped a little. Zoe gave him an egg or two to keep him interested. I was not so generous.

Operation: Pain Relief

I have been off work for a week.

Last week, about midweek, I started getting headaches in the afternoon. I had been sick for weeks, but I was working on a project at work that I couldn't abandon... and I started loading up on Advil and Coricidin.

I took off Friday at work once the project was put to bed... and I spent much of Friday in bed. Then off to the ER on Saturday, where my blood pressure reading was through the roof. Then bed, bed, bed for days afterward.

The headaches began earlier in the day and lasted longer and were more intense even after starting an antibiotic and Vicodin. I tried to go to work Tuesday but ended up leaving after a couple of hours, in tears.

I started a steroid that same day, and I think finally I might have this sinus infection licked. I'm still in pain, but it is finally bearable.

I remember the day in December 2006 when I woke up in the hospital, groggy from painkillers, to an empty delivery room, in a panic, screaming, "This baby needs to come out NOW!" And repeating that mantra for the next 45 minutes. "NOW NOW NOW! Get it OUT!"

I just spent the past six days in that same mode, with no end in sight, with promises that a few pills here and there would fix the pain.

I wish they gave out epidurals for headaches. I would trade the past six days for a huge needle in the spine and being forced to eject a huge object from a bodily orifice in a moment.

Sell by 12-09-07

"When you work out where to draw the line,
Your guess is as good as mine."

-- God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, Coldplay



I have an expiration date.

My friends kid me about this... to the point where I almost live by it. If I don't give up on a guy after a date or two, my breaking point with a guy appears to be set at about three months.

It's nothing intuitive, like, hey, it's been three months, let's assess.

It's more like, OK, I'TS BEEN LONG ENOUGH. I GET IT ALL NOW. And I'm not happy. And it happens to be three months in. It's uncanny.

Aimee asked me at the beginning of February "So how's it going? You're about halfway there."

I couldn't tell at that time. My guess was another one would probably bite the dust.


Liam and I have passed my critical three-month marker. And now I'm left with either reassessing my strategy, or accepting that I have something real here.



I think I am falling in love.



I think, in fact, that I'm most of the way there.

Aging gracelessly

I spent a small part of the weekend in the emergency room. What a headache... literally.

My blood pressure is screwed up, I have a sinus infection... MY EAR IS BLEEDING.

This is what getting old is all about!!

...You might be a redneck

A few weekends ago, Liam, Zoe and I trekked up to the top of the hill behind my house. I'm not sure how far my property goes back... but in the summer it was too grown over to navigate, so I decided to take advantage of the sparse vegetation and warm weather to get an idea of what I was dealing with back there.

When we finally reached a plain below Nevillewood, a slum version of Pittsburgh's suburban gated communities, I realized we were encountering the bathroom of all the deer in the township. Watch out for that yellow snow. And the piles of beaded excrement.

I have seen less than a handful of deer in my back yard since we moved here, but I know they are there, and I wondered if my dog had anything to do with them steering clear of our hilly pasture. So, I went in search of ways to get the wildlife closer to home.

I found what I was looking for:


It's habit-forming, powerful deer attractant, it claims. It comes in solid, salt lick form. "Paw'n, knaw'n deer lick'n good."

I can't wait to make this purchase and apply it to all the various stumps available for licking.

Cooooookies!

'Tis the season of Girl Scout cookies!

Timing is everything

The snow started to fall around late morning today, and by mid-afternoon, there was a significant coating of nice, sloppy, wet stuff all around us.

It's a Saturday, the snow is unadulterated, we've watched it come down all day. This is quite possibly the first time this alignment has happened while Jacob was with me for the weekend.

It took me a solid half hour to gather the necessary supplies and bundle him up with layers and layers tucked into layers.

And then that view beyond the sliding glass door finally became a reality for him.


He wasn't gleeful, or ecstatic, or tearing into this shit like I thought he'd be. But then, he had an extra 14 layers of clothes he wasn't used to. Still, he wanted to trek through the yard, and as difficult as that was for him in his limited mobility, he really made a valiant effort. A very serious effort.


He didn't speak the whole seven minutes we survived the outdoors. He didn't do much except take in the phenomenon that is snow and his capability of being surrounded by it. Even when he fell down, he seemed to accept that this was a new situation, akin to learning to walk again.


He didn't protest when I finally took him back inside. Or when he had his first taste of hot chocolate.

Background noise

I went to court today to be a witness in a stalking case. It was a very surreal hour and a half.

The case was to be heard by a district magistrate, and when I walked into the nondescript building on the side of a nondescript road, I walked into a nondescript room buzzing with people from all walks of life.

I don't know much about the operations of the justice system, but throughout the hour I sat there, I came to realize that all cases heard in this tiny courtroom were criminal. There was the mother-daughter team caught stealing from a department store, a guy accused of harassment who had to turn over a computer card filled with photos, a woman who sat waiting for her friend to get out on bail, and plenty of lawyers wheeling suitcases, meeting their clients for the first time.

Oh, and the place was littered with police officers, security guards, constables, troopers.

It took me a while to get over the feeling that I had been dropped there from outer space. And once I almost got over it, a door opened, and a man in shackles came out and passed through the room very close to me. And later another. Then another. And another.

I thought of "Silence of the Lambs," when Jodie Foster's character goes down the row of cells and is leered at and spit on. Only.... there were no bars between me and these guys. And it's not often that I'm the most attractive girl in the room. Not often at all.

And then one of the guys who was previously shackled came out and sat down, sans chains and handcuffs. OK, someone thought that was a good idea, but couldn't they let him go out the back door??

I spent only a little time in the actual courtroom, and during the few cases I heard, I knew I liked this judge. She was very much like Judge Judy, and the whole scene was quite entertaining. The law enforcement in the room was goofing around when she was on the bench ruling, but at one point she left the room and while the law enforcement guys kept goofing off, telling stories, I heard her holler from another room, "That's a courtroom, fellas, not a dinner theater!!"

One officer was telling a story about being hit by "some mother fucker" at a DUI checkpoint, got smacked off the windshield, and while he was lying on the pavement, a fellow officer came over and said, "You better hurry up and go get that guy."

After all I witnessed in the 90 minutes I was trapped in that building, I am surprised at the compassion they showed me. It would seem to me that people in that business would be hardened and jaded, but I thought just the opposite after today.

They seem to understand human nature better than most of us.

God is on my speed dial

I took Zoe to a memorial service for an old neighbor this morning. I waited until we were leaving before I told her what we were doing, where we were going.

"Oh great," she said. "Another person in my family died."

"No, Zoe, he's not our family. But he's a good friend, and it's no less important to say goodbye."

She behaved pretty well at the service, but kept whispering things in my ear. "When is Virgil coming?"

Ummm.... "He's not coming honey. He died."

I got the usual, "When is this over," "I can't see," "I want to go home." One of the more interesting of her comments was about the words above "the guy hanging from the thing that looks like part of a kite." But she did settle for a while and listen. Apparently. Because then I got this zinger:

"Do you know God?"

I felt all my Catholic schooling suddenly coming back to kick me in the ass.