The Week From Hell

So far this week, I've flown to Kentucky and back.  I survived two big meetings at work, one happening exactly ten minutes after I walked in the office after coming back.

I buried my grandmother.  I broke down repeatedly, some of these in front of people, which is um -not at ALL like me.

I was the only non-married person in attendance, and believe me, there were alot of people in attendance.  It was the first time my whole family had been together since all my cousins have gotten married.

I felt like that scene in Sex and the City, when Miranda's mother died, and she said that her sister was worried about her because she was single.  "Forget the coffin!  There's a single thirtysomething woman walking behind it!"  Miranda didn't realize that you need a date to go to a funeral.  I didn't either.

I started crying when I walked up at the very end to say goodbye and there was no one holding my hand.  Of course, everyone there adores me and loves me and is there for me to no end.  But no one was holding just MY hand.  I didn't focus on that actually, too much, at the time.  I was too busy doing what I was supposed to be doing -honoring Granny's life.  And she had a good, full one.  It was difficult to walk away from her for the last time. 

This was on Tuesday.

Then last night, my bedroom flooded.  I am staying home from work today to get this taken care of, and its a hell of a task.  Everything is soaked. 

And the irony?  I'm scheduled to fly BACK to Kentucky tonight so I can have a vacation next week.  Ha!  Boy, isn't this going to be relaxing. 

My best friend said today that she couldn't remember me having a worse week.  I agreed.

So -that is me today, and that is where I'm at.  I'm reading your blogs, just being a quiet commenter, because I don't have much good to say at the moment.  I am hanging in there.

I had plenty of moments of sweetness this week wtih my family --cousins, neices and nephew, sisters.  One of my sisters saw my breakdown start and I was alone holding my head in my hands and she came running over to me, nearly throwing her kid down on the floor in the process.  It was touching, to me.

Off to unload the dryer.  Again.

Blue

My granny, she had blue eyes:

She gave them to me:

She loved me completely:

And I miss her completely.

Be in peace, my granny.  You heart of our hearts.  Smoker of cigarettes, reader of the paper.  Nurse.  Fixer of eggs and cereal.

I will think of you every time I look in the mirror.  Until we walk together again, I will miss you.

The nurses said her last word was "Mom!"

DLJ. Died today, May 21, 2010.

Thank you...

I feel better.

I have a sunburn from too much time outside, sore legs from walking two miles to and from my softball game.  Muscles that are aching after playing catcher for the longest seven innings ever. 

I made chicken, roast potatoes, green beans and garlic bread.  No one showed me how to cook any of it -I taught myself.   I'm tucked in on the couch, aloe and lotioned up, a heating pad on my back. Drinking cold water and one glass of red wine.

Gentle, gentle steps.  And on we grow.

The song that doesn't end.

I guess, at this point, you can say I'm simply surviving.  I have excellent days --like today, in fact.  I packed up a cooler, a backpack and a book and took off to the park where I spent the day.  I even walked in the creek and closed my eyes and thought of home.  I realized how many times home comes back to me in moments when I least expect them. 

And I am grateful, and want to acknowledge that grace.  I walked along, casting fleeting glances up to the sky -I am still uncertain of how to address God.  To thank him seems a bit irreverant, seeing as how I cast all my fears, bad thoughts and accusations toward him a few days ago. 

Do you love me?  Why is any of this happening?  Is my life worth anything?  Do you hear me?  Hello?  Do you HEAR me at all? 

So now, we side-step, as lovers and friends do after a fight, knowing that love remains but so do hurt feelings. And questions, and things that just can't be answered.

I don't want to quite meet eyes that may not be there.  Or that may reflect that, no, maybe my life ISN'T going to be as good as I thought it might.  That the love, the babies, any of it--well, maybe it's not there at all.  Maybe it's not in the cards for me, no matter how much I want it.

I'm so tired of platitudes --the 'good things come to those who wait' and the 'once you stop looking, love shows up'. 

Well, my ass they do. 

I guess I'm getting bitter.  And I wanted so badly for that not to happen.  I look in the mirror and I see a babyface staring back at me, but I am 29.  And doors are closing for me -doors that I always imagined would stay open forever. 

Nothing makes me crazier than the suggestion that I have sacrificed these things for a job.  For my career.  My friend said this to me once and it absolutely stunned me --I could see how the casual observer may think this, but not those who know me.  These things didn't happen, so I had to focus on the job.  It was that, or focus on nothing. 

And holy shit, it has all opened doors.  Thrust me into a place I never would have dreamed otherwise.

In a heartbeat, I would trade it all.

But trade it all for what?  There is nothing else.  What is else is latching on to others' lives and daydreaming about things I don't have.  I can't go back -I must continue to look forward.

And maybe blog-world isn't the place for me to air these frustrations anymore.  I feel inadequate in so many ways and the constant reminders that I don't have children or a marriage or a home or a family is making me feel like less than I am.  I feel sad and burned out.  I feel like I'm missing out on a secret that everyone already knows.

Its a song that has played through the ages, and I don't know the words. 

I do miss these things that I have never known.

Please, not another Life Lesson...

Sometimes I think I have gotten this far in my career by simply knowing when, during a professional conversation with others, to nod or shake my head at the appropriate times, how to raise my eyebrows and squint in the fashion that suggests I am both knowledgable AND engaged, and inserting a few well-timed "mm-hmm's" to also suggest that I am just as smart as you are.  Sometimes I smile, to insinuate that I actually know MORE than you do, but I am going to keep it to myself.

I have concluded that these four things are responsible for the hoodwinking of my current bosses into giving me a job.

Does it sound like I'm being too hard on myself?  Well, perhaps a bit.  BUT -the level at which I am overwhelmed right now is astronomical.  In alot of ways, the details are not worth getting into here.  Let's just say that my knowledge base is deep and I know I'm good at what I do know and what I do.  However, a bomb just went off in Washington entitled Healthcare Reform.  It's time to actually DO this thing, and good lord, it's hard.  And prior to this, I had no dealings in healthcare policy as a whole.  So --my world has been rocked.

The bigwigs eyes are on our work, and on our money.  I'm in a hurry to prove my value, and prove it FAST.  But so much is out of my hands.

So what am I doing then, blogging in the middle of the day if I'm so worried about proving my value?  Going out of my mind about it.

I just left a conference that had to be one of the strangest meetings I've attended in a long time, which is truly saying something.  I was too far away from the office to go there after I left, so I came home to do a few things.  But first I took a detour. 

I went to the old neighborhood where I worked for over two years when I was here before.  I hadn't been since I moved back since I live and work in DC and this area is in northern virignia.  There's just simply no reason for me to go.  But today, since the conference was so close by there, I took a quick walk over.  I rounded the corner and almost gasped.  I mean -I hadn't been to this particular set of city blocks in almost five years.  I lived there, worked there for so long and I could see myself on every city block as I walked.  I know all those restaurants like the back of my hand.  It looked so....exactly the same.

I learned so much back then.  I'm learning so much now.  I'm on learning overload, every single day.  Everything at work is new, everything at "home" is new.  New people, new activities, new bars, new friends, new foods.  This is exciting, but it has been six months.  I would like to settle in now.  I would like to stop feeling like I'm speed-dating through my days with every day holding some new challenge for me.  With something -anything- coming naturally. 

I'm missing familiarity.  And that confidence that comes when you KNOW things.  You know the story, you're smiling because you know more than these other people do.  You aren't trying to impress these people because they love you and think you're smart and you've got nothing else to prove.

I am at the beginning.  Just the beginning of this race, and I am already weary.  I want to figure something out and not look at my future with a big open space of uncertainty.  Marriage, kids?  I dont know.  A house?  I dont know.  Where?  Well, I sure as hell don't know that.

I guess I'm homesick.  Homesick not for what I've lost, but for what I don't have.  And am so afraid that I never will.

If A Little's Good, A Lot's Better

Ahh, the mind of an addict.

In a tentative, detached way, I've been tip-toeing around the edges of exploring through the reasons why people become addicts in the first place.  Trying to figure out WHY some people latch on to things/pleasures and can't let go of certain things.  And figuring out why those some people are sometimes me.

My mother coined that phrase up there, the title of this blog.  She used it to describe me once, but not in a cruel way.  We were laughing about how, when I was younger and slept with her nightly following my parents divorce, I would always ask her to get me a glass of milk the MINUTE we turned out the light. 

And of course, after much sighing and pleading on my part, she would get up and bring me a glass of milk.  I was always so thirsty at night and in the mornings (and still am.  My father's diagnosis of diabetes this week definitely makes me think about THAT a little more.)

She wouldn't just bring me a glass of milk though.  She'd bring me two.

"Why two?" I asked her the other day.  She just laughed and said that I had the mindset that if a little's good, alot's better.  And that frankly, she didn't feel like hearing me whisper "more milk?" twenty minutes after she'd laid back down.  Which, of course, happened all the time.

I am still the same way.  I don't want three french fries, I want the entire serving.  Not one drink, but several.  Not ONE phone call with my favorite people, but seven.

Now --I can control this.  And some times I do better than other times.  I just WANT these things.  My self-control is so low, and yet so HIGH when it comes to certain things as well.  What makes me tick is somewhat fascinating to me, when I look at it from another perspective.  The things that most will crave ---that whole brownie instead of just a bite, well, that's totally not my issue.  I don't like sweets that much, although I do like chocolate alot, I don't NEED to finish my entire desert.  A little satisfies me.

Why is it, then, that I can't say the same for everything?  Why only some things?  Can I not do something GOOD with this aspect of my personality?  I have a friend who is incredibly into working out --it is something that gives her enormous fulfillment and pleasure.  I have another who is addicted to her religion at the moment and preaches her newfound spirituality in every facebook status update.

It all reminds me of that one saying--there's no greather faith than that of a convert.

But that's just not me.

I'm having issues with work, too much so to get into here and too much so that I can really get into.  Let's just say that healthcare reform has become a reality, and now that the political hoo-ha has died down, it's OUR job to help get this thing implemented.  God, everyone--do you realize how huge this is? 

Whatever you think politically if its good, bad, or ugly, the magnitude of this to carry out is simply staggering.  And to wrap my mind around it, well, let's just say my team has been at the bar for three nights this week as soon as work ended and usually at the demand of the boss.

I wish I'd get addicted to my job in the same way I'd get addicted to other things that make me feel good.  I wish I got that HIGH from being competitive, from being the best, from making a difference in the way that we do. 

But it simply makes me tired.  And I reach for things of comfort, things of pleasure, to ease the sting of feeling overwhelmed.  Of feeling as though I'm treading water through ocean waves everyday and taking in as much water as air when I breathe.

So that is me, I suppose, on this Friday night in May. A little sleep tonight would be good.  But alot would be better. 

Good night.

More milk?

Help?

Sorry for such a quick, impersonal post --but does anyone out there using Blogspot know how to make old entries private? 

I'm trying to figure out a way that doesn't involve me just deleting them (because I love your sweet comments), but I can't seem to do it...

As Ms Moon would say....

Babies, it's hot.

It's the kind of hot that I hate --that sticky, humid, sometimes-its-raining-sometimes-its-not kind of heat that makes you feel like you're walking underwater. 

Or maybe that's just me.

I slept too late for church today (I've been a grand total of ONE time so its not as though I'm a regular, but still).  I did walk my no-makeup self to the farmers market to get some eggs and I thought about some asparagus but I still have no idea how to really cook it so I didn't get any.  No red potatoes today, although plenty of sweet potatoes, but again, I have no clue how to cook them.

And besides, I have plenty of food in my fridge to tide me over this week -I made a batch of chili because I'm that weirdo that likes to eat chili all year long, even when its hot outside.  I made homemade spaghetti sauce and froze most of it after I had one dinner, so that'll keep for awhile.

I have fresh eggs now, and bread, and peanut butter for my lunches and it's my goal to not eat out at all this week.  I have eaten out wayyyy too much while on the road.

I play softball at 5:30 today, and part of me is tempted to skip it.  I know I'll have to play catcher, and stand up and squat back down at least three hundred times and in 93 degree heat, I'm not sure I'll be able to do it without falling over from heatstroke :) 

Ahh but.  I know I will go, even though I may threaten to stay home.  And I will love it, I'm sure, sticky-sweetness and all.

Happy Sunday.