A weekend almost free

This weekend I actually got a Saturday off! After I recovered from the shock, Tara and I went to Lexington, got haircuts, Orange Leaf yogurt and then went to Joseph-Beth Booksellers and Whole Foods. We then came home and then I went out on the town with St Timothy of the Internest. St Timothy and I walked around downtown, and I was reminded of why I like living in this town. I appeared that I had missed the concert at Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe by a night, but there was a really awesome outdoor show happening down the street at the Cornerstone Art and Event Center. It was the Blues on Broadway show of The Paul Childers Band. I, of course, had the trusty iPhone in tow, and took two short videos more to capture the sound rather than the visual....

After a bit of eavesdropping we walked to the The Dragon Pub, where a DJ was spinning Top 40 songs that reminded me of going dancing in gay bars in the 90s. So we took off, went and got the kids a pizza and went home and crashed.

Since I got over 5 hours of sleep, I woke up this morning with a migraine from hell. I napped off and on this morning, trying to "sleep off" the headache, but gave up around noon, when the goofy work phone calls started. I took work calls and did computer stuff to help the calling clueless until about 9PM, when I decided that, in lieu of migraine medicine I would down some Midol and attempt to clean my bedroom. I got about 75% of it picked up and I feel much better with the room cleared a bit. I appears that I was listening to Hay House Radio and one of the solutions that was discussed for someone else - but sounded like good sense - was to clear out our physical spaces to get our minds together.

So the headache still clings but just barely. And I am still in shock because I got 24 hours of a break!!!!! I could so go for this.

I have been congratulating myself repeatedly in petitioning and getting to hire some help at work. I am looking forward to hopefully some more realistic work weeks - less than 100 hours per week anyway - and some balance back in my world....

The whole universe is as it should be.

Finally decided that my life was too short to try to force myself to read really bad novels. I have finally given up on Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. It still lies splayed face down on the bed next to me. Yet I cannot make myself read any further; it's that bad.

So what am I reading instead? Well, The Celestine Prophecy, Doreen Virtue's The Angel Therapy Handbook, and I am saving the latest Charlene Harris for a guilty pleasure treat. I have been having far too few of those, and definitely need to look for no calorie treats at this point....

Time, distilled.

I am spending the weekend sitting with a sick friend in the hospital, so it appears that time is going to slow down for me. I hope to get some writing done - most of it will unfortunately be work-related - and some reading done as well. I brought that damn Angelology novel, hoping being in an enclosed place and not able to leave, that I will be able to finish it. If this doesn't do it, it is definitely getting pitched. I'll at least get to do a blog or two, catch up on reading all the blogs that I love but have not had a chance to read in months, and maybe even get some catnaps in. I don't sleep well in anything but darkness so this may not be the best sleep. But I am so exhausted it will be what it will be.

At any rate, it has been an eventful week. Lots of work. Lots of just dropping into bed exhausted. Lots of being so tired that I have not bothered to always be kind. This disappoints me, as I was re-energized and re-purposed after attending the Step Workshop last weekend. I had asked that my character defects be taken from me, but alas, I took them right back. I suck like that.

One of my character defects is anger. Nasty, bitchy, raw and bitter anger. The white lightning, white hot, red hot, flaming kind of fury that will visit wrath in its path. I have the typical Irish temper, with some hot sauce thrown in. It costs me more than it costs anyone else. It makes me feel all indignant and righteous for a split second, and then I feel like shit. I feel like tucking my tail between my legs and not facing anyone because of my bad behavior. Because that's what it is. Bad behavior. A perfect example, today. I had a staff meeting and I looked out into their bland, blank faces, and I acted like an ass. I yelled at them. I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. But it was damn mean. And for that I apologize. To you, dear reader. But not to them. My amends will come, and they will come soon.

Another character defect I have is self-centeredness. I can't shut up about myself. This is most disturbing whenever someone tries to have a conversation with me and I hear myself use the word "I." The blog is where I will have to dump my navel-gazing musings. Sorry, dear reader. But the rest of the world thanks you. It's almost as if in the process of acquiring the practically useless Masters degree in counseling and hearing about relating to others, my verbal diarrhea-ic mouth took over. Boring stories suck. And unfortunately, I am full of them.

Yet another character defect I have is indecisiveness. I see this everywhere in my life: my inability to decide what I want to be when I grow up, my inability to make a decision about my marriage, my family, raising my children, or what have you... basically all of it. However, this character defect is being helped by my choosing to let go and let g*d/Higher Power take some of the freneticism away. Praying for guidance, that whole bit. Still it would be nice to have a sense of certainty about something.

I am sure of one thing. I am sure I love my daughters. They are very unique, beautiful people, and I wish I could see them every day, and spend time with them. Working as many hours as I do, and working every day as I do, I don't get to spend time with them like other parents. I hear other mothers talk about spending time with their children, days even, and I am at a loss. I see my children for minutes, maybe an hour a day, and in the next few days it appears that I will not be seeing them at all. Tim has said he will bring Tara by for a few minutes for the next few days, and I am grateful for that.

Last character defect - well, the last one I am going to talk about it this post - is my forgetfulness about gratitude. So I close with a list:

I am grateful for:
1. My daughters
2. I have a place to live
3. I have a job
4. Some people have helped me alot this week
5. My Al-Anon program
6. My Al-Anon friends
7. My cell phone that I can use to ask for help when I need it
8. My health
9. My dog
10. The people who have helped me this week

Time in a bottle

If I could save time in a bottle, I would put it on a high shelf and keep it away from my staff and everyone else on the planet with the exception of my children and my friends.

The unfortunate problem is that I don't even have time to write a blog entry, as I have 5 people in my office talking to me all at once.... maybe I will get a chance to try again this weekend.

June, Writing, the Will of a Higher Power

Welcome to the lovely, hot month of June. Already this summer is proving to be a hot one as we look at our first full week of 90+ degree days here in the capital city. And last night I came home in the 92 degree heat to a house that was 88 degrees. Yep, the air conditioning has died for the second time this summer. Good times.

Prior to the air conditioning fiasco, I had spent the better part of the day at an Al-Anon 12 Step Workshop. It is one of those rubber meets the road opportunities for those of us who know that the spiritual solution to living with those who have addictions lies in the Steps themselves. The same Steps that addicts and alcoholics have to work if they are to be able to survive with their disease.

I have worked the Steps before. I worked them with the help of two sponsors and a group of Al-Anons - some of them black-belt Al-Anons. But this time it was different. For one, I was there with a group of about 20 who were working the Steps themselves. And we were being led to take the Steps by a person with 30 days in his program. And just from talking to him, I think his program was not the kind, gentle kind, but the kind that truly knows that the Steps are the Steps to survival - failure to work and take the Steps is just a choice to die with the disease.

See, in Al-Anon, we are not addicted to alcohol. We are just enmeshed, intertwined, and mired down into the life of an alcoholic to the point that it hijacks our own lives and experiences and takes us to an ugly, desperate, evil, frantic, obsessing, miserable, dank, dark, deadly place. And drops us off. Without cab fare.

We fool ourselves and say that we are the ones who have to hold the family, the household, the household budget, and the alcoholic/addict together. When in reality, all it does is tear us down and apart.

Deconstruction at its most efficient.

And so, with the same Steps that the alcoholic/addict has available to him/her to see a glimmer of light, we can claw ourselves out.

It is clawing, because it is a fight for survival, the same as it is for the alcoholic.

I am drifting off into a place I want to do a separate blog post about....

Yesterday, one of the exercises was to do a free writing exercise after a meditation/prayer opening of asking for your God's/Higher Power's will. We wrote whatever came into our minds for five minutes. At the end of the exercise I could no longer read my own handwriting - carpal tunnel be damned. Then we read out loud the phrases that we had written. This part was so we could know if someone else had a thought that could be meant for, or used by us.

Knowing me, you know that I loved this exercise. I have been doing freewriting since I started educating myself in the craft of writing at the age 17 by reading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones.And of course, being a fan/student of Doreen Virtue, I *knew* that someone else had gotten a thought I could use.

My own knockout: "Live not in fear."

The line I got from someone else: "Writing is what makes me sane."

So without further ado, I knew immediately at least some of my Higher Power's will.

I have made it thus far. WIth my current health and lifestyle, I've probably made it at least 60-75% of my current travail here on this planet. And so there's really nothing I have to fear or dread. Or as one of my friends says, "What are they going to do? Eat me?"

And there is a message out there waiting for me. For all I know, there is a message hiding in that miasma of a synapse between my brain and finger for someone else.

Writing keeps me sane.

So that's what I'm going to do.

May flowers...

This blog has suffered from me being so overwhelmed with work and all the other things that have been going on in my life. By the time I get home each night from work it is usually 8PM at the earliest, and 10PM at the latest, and I am too tired to do anything but get something to eat and go to bed. My days start around 6 or 7AM, so it makes for long days. On the weekends, work stuff still keeps happening, and then I have to do cooking, cleaning and try to spend a few minutes interacting with my kids. I spend Saturdays running around like crazy and then spend Sundays stressed out that I have lost the ability to take any time off. I spend Sundays in an angry funk. Needless to say, this type of life does not lend itself to many opportunities to engage in creative, life-affirming, pursuits.

On the bright side, I have a job. I am trying to still get to a couple of Al-Anon meetings a week.

This has helped me keep some semblance of sanity as my resentments are still breeding other resentment... I am still overwhelmed as I try single-handedly to support my family and handle the household and all the minutiae of keeping a household running.

At any rate....

I continue to want to be someone else when I grow up. I continue to try to stake my claim to tiny bits of time to explore just who this person is.

Lately I have been shopping for a bicycle. I really want to ride a bike as I live a 1/2 mile from my office and this would be a way for me to get my head together and some exercise as well. There is a bike shop here in town where I could build my own bike with a small donation of cash and time. I would love to do this. I would enjoy it, and I could learn how to fix my bike if there was every any mechanical problem with it. Once again, I am resenting that I cannot figure out a way to take the time to do this. It is a really neat place called Folkbike Re-cyclery. Check it out online, and if you feel strongly about community building and teaching someone to fish (metaphorically, of course!) rather than giving them a fish, then send some cash their way. They are non-profit and the money will go to a great cause.

I love where I live. There is a community here - even outside of Al-Anon meetings - that shares the same values and concerns I do. For example, one group Walk/Bike Frankfort sees that this town has the same potential that I see. And of course, there is the history and the old buildings and all the other things that make me happy.... If only I could spend more time working towards these causes....

Oh well, it's late and I am making the promise to work on the blog more, do more writing, and get more done... more enjoyable things done. However, tonight, I think I am ready to fall asleep with a book. I am still slogging through the Angelology novel. Underwhelmed so far with it, but trying to slog through.

Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from My Grandmothers by Adriana Trigiani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I read this as an ebook on my Kindle.

Reading this book was more an exercise in revisiting and appreciating what my grandmothers brought into my life and awareness. It was less about what new or interesting value I got from Trigiani's grandmothers. After all, we learned similar lessons and values, and it was nice to see someone else appreciating them as well.
Trigiani is an entertaining writer. Her Big Stone Gap novels were a guilty pleasure for me in my thirties, and I still feel she has a great style and writes with heart.



View all my reviews

340th Post.

Well, today St Timothy turned 48.
Funds are fairly limited but I wanted to do something nice for him. He was sick most of the day, but tonight he agreed to go to a crappy supper at a chain restaurant. I got him a piece of cheesecake after dinner and he seemed happy with it. Tara went with us to dinner, and she sang Happy Birthday to him.
I just had higher expectations for him, or at least wanted more for him that what we had to offer today.
Expectations being just premeditated resentments, I realize that I am setting myself up to have them on someone else's behalf! How messed up is that?
Well, maybe I don't want an answer to that.

At any rate, happy birthday, Tim. I hope this year is whatever you need it to be to be happy, healthy and wealthy and wise. Peace out, my man.