Post Christmas Blahs

Even Princess Leia would be mystified

1. Dave chipped a molar on Christmas Eve on the super yummy - but super crisp - bacon on the annual Christmas Eve bacon brie cranberry sandwich. 
2. My laptop started doing that whole "Hey, you don't have a camera connected so you can't video chat with you family." And I started in on the "Like hell I don't, dumb laptop, because that's what I had repaired in October." But the laptop countered with "Oh, yeah, miss smartypants. Find it if you're so smart. And while you're at it, I'm not going to recognize your external hard drive just because you're being a bit of a know-it-all bitch." And then I was like, "Fucking hell, laptop, you're not supposed to do this you piece of shit." Yup . . . I spent a few hours talking/chastising/begging my laptop to work the way it is supposed to. 
3. Whilst trying to find an external hard drive, the Girls and I got caught up in a huge traffic jam (for our town it was huge) and had to go to three different stores to find the one that I wanted . . . and remembered why I hate Walmart (too many students, too crowded) and don't care for Best Buy (I don't have a penis therefore, no one thinks that I need help because I couldn't possibly want anything technological). Alas, Target didn't have the hard drive so I was stuck with the other two options, thank you very much. 
4. Dave woke up this morning with the same pain in his abdomen that he has had for a few weeks now. Only this time, it woke him up. He used my phone to look up symptoms of a heart attack on WebMD because he didn't think he could walk back up the stairs if it was, in fact, a heart attack. Not to worry, he's going to the doctor today, and truly he thinks it may be a really bad bruise from a hard landing a few weeks back. I thanked him for scheduling the appointment because a) I'm not willing to give him up just yet, and b) it will be on my terms when I am. 

Bright spot? We're headed to the train station to pick up Jordan's boyfriend in a few minutes, so the Girls and Shelby's boyfriend will get to hang out in town for a few days before we take them back. Dim spot? An appointment at the Apple store to fix my laptop, which is pretty much the eight circle of hell. The ninth circle? Forever 21.

How was your holiday?

xoxo,
Jill

When Life Gets In the Way

There was a time in my life when I believed that stress didn't exist. I even was dumb enough to say that to a group of people. I wasn't incredibly young; hell, I think I was in my mid-30s and Lord knows I had encountered my fair share of stressful situations: having children while still in college, finding out that one baby was really two, coming out of college in a recession, applying for Welfare . . . all pretty stressful. Still, I never really felt it.

But lately, stress is becoming a little more known in my life. Last year, several people commented, "You look like you've lost weight," which is always nice to hear. However, I knew it was coming from lack of eating properly. These days, I'll eat sometimes to stay awake if I am doing something that needs to get done . . . which isn't a good idea. Knitting has always provided a kind of stress relief for me. Even that, these days, is compounding the stress that I feel. The night before Thanksgiving, I decided that it was high time to finish one of my sweaters. I had plans to wear it to school the next week, and I knew that I needed to finish the sleeve . . . that's right, one little sleeve. I picked up the stitches but felt that something was wrong. See, on the other sleeve, I remembered the number configuration, and this sleeve was not the same. After some "heavy math" and questioning Dave about my calculations, I discovered that I had fucked up this sweater AGAIN. Seems that this time, instead of felting the damn thing, I put too few stitches on waste yarn for the sleeve. If you are a knitter, then you know that this type of thing is fixable by doing one thing: ripping it out. If you aren't a knitter, then think of something that you can't fix save for starting all over. Note that I said AGAIN. I won't bore you with the details, but you can read all about it here.

After a minute of dumb-founded confusion, I started crying. Dave came over and held my hand, telling me that it would be okay, but sometimes you just know. The Girls came back from a friend's house about that time. Later, they would tell Dave that they thought my father passed away. No, Grandpa is still kicking . . . but your mother is a knitting failure. I pulled out all of my easy knitting projects and decided to finish them since I needed that kind of "pick-me-up." I took the sweater to my Knit Night just to see what everyone thought. Pretty unanimous: rip the sucker and start over.

Honestly, if wool burned, I would have a pile of ashes right now instead of a bag full of shit.

Jill

Damn Swedes

If you are Swedish, let me apologize as I truly love your fish. But IKEA must be "torture" in Swedish. Honestly, if you really want to break a suspect Jack Bauer style, just hand them an IKEA bed frame and slats and tell them that they have one hour to accomplish the task or confess. I guarantee . . . they will break every single time.

Let me explain (without photos . . . I refer you to the title of this post). The Girls are living in an apartment with a year round lease in Philadelphia. And I decided to turn one room into a guest room and the other into a "den" of sorts. So, a friend gladly claimed the beds - from IKEA, no less - and we were left with semi-empty rooms. Dave felt kind of guilty as his room is basically untouched from the days when he was living with his parents. Mine? Hell, I think Erika moved into that room the day I moved into the dorms at Miami. So, no . . . I didn't feel guilty.

But today, I feel sore. Like someone kicked me a thousand times and then asked me to turn around and kicked me another thousand for good nature. My back is on a tiny little hinge that needs oil in the worst way. I visited IKEA not once, but twice searching for a bed that was "just right" and loaded all sorts of prefab Swedish torture devices in the Pilot. One man was kind enough to help me load the headboard into the back, but he was the exception as most people shot me dirty looks for not being able to control my shopping car with full swivel wheels and the hand truck that was toting the heavy stuff. In hindsight,  perhaps I should have noted that the happy builder man in IKEA's helpful picture directions had a buddy in the picture without the big X over it, but the sad builder man didn't have a friend to go with that big X.

That being said . . . we'll have one sweet guest room and a whatever-the-hell-it-chooses-to-be room when I get done with the one thing IKEA apparently got right: the Allen wrench.

Not Sure What's Going On

When summer ended, I was really, really happy because this summer kind of sucked for me. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but it wasn't up there in my all time favorites. It never really seemed like it was a summer for me; granted, school was out, it was hotter than Hell, and I bought new flip-flops, but it never really jelled for me.

Contemplating Everything

I spent a good percentage of my time this summer crying, and I have no clue what is causing it. For some reason, I think I might have blogged a bit about it, but even that escapes me at this time. One Friday when I was cleaning, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and burst into tears. Not just a little tear in the corner of my eye but huge, gulping, snot-streaming-out-of-my-nose tears. I was cleaning the damn house one minute and fifteen minutes later, I'm sobbing on the couch trying to fold clothes. I tried to explain it to Dave, after a poignant story came on the news that he missed. Trying to explain the story to him resulted in me crying and telling him that I didn't know what was wrong.

Not BAMming Yet

Part of me was wrapped up in the whole "I'm Not Good Enough" routine that I go through every once and a while. I work myself into a frenzy thinking that I'm not a good enough: mom, wife, daughter, sister, teacher, knitter, photographer . . . slap an "-er" on there, and I'll think I'm not good enough. I certainly spent more time analyzing my mothering skills this summer than I should have, and I came up with more question marks than anything.

Lounging Around (and trying to keep my boobs in my shirt)

The other part of me is wrapped up in being 40. Sometimes I'll try to take stock of my life and see what I've done, and I'm not sure what that is because "I'm Not Good Enough" . . . it's a vicious, vicious cycle. I thought that by this age, I'd have it all figured out. But some days, I feel as unsure of myself as I did when I was 23 and dirt poor. Everyone wants to make an impact on at least one person's life, and I'm starting to feel like I won't.

Usually I can get this out of my system after a few weeks, but this funk has stuck around longer than the other funkers have. I never, ever call it depression because I don't necessarily think that's what it is; maybe it is, and I just don't want to admit it. So for now, I'll try to figure it out day by day. Some days are better than others, but then I see a photo of insert any of a various list of nouns and the tears well up. Crap.

- Jill

When Serentiy Prayers Won't Work

How do you admit you have a problem? Face it head on? Let it fester for a while? Wait until your family stages an intervention? For me, I think it's a combination of all three. There's no substance abuse here, no illegal drugs, no behavior that is non-conducive to a productive life . . . but there might be a problem. Let me back-track about three weeks.

Jordan and Shelby finished their first year at Temple on the 12th (quite well, I might add). They came home to a messy house as I finished up with a student teacher a few days prior, was back in full teacher mode, and settling into a precarious balance of extra duties. Translation: cleaning was the last thing on my mind and I really didn't care. I'd had about six hours sleep over the course of two days and woken up thinking every morning for a week. Things at work had been reeling in my brain for days on end, and I could have cared less about what the dining room, living room, my room, and bathroom looked like. The Girls, on the other hand, did . . . and I totally get that. Truly, I do. But for me, cleaning would most likely wait until the first day of summer break.

I do this every summer, literally, spending days pulling everything out and doing a thorough purge of crap. Stuff I bought at Target on clearance - gone. Stuff I "rescued" from Mom's house - gone. Stuff I have been saving for another use - gone. Get the picture? Erika can tell you . . . I might not surface for a week depending on the mood, but the house gets clean. This year, I decided differently because the Girls were expressing their frustration with the clutter. Jordan even asked how, if she and Shelby were so tidy, I could live with all the mess on the dining room table. Truth be told, I really don't like it, but I've gotten used to it. And, I knew that once I got started, the yarn and knitting crap would take a full day to sort out properly.

Yesterday was that day. Dave and I went to Target and bought some lovely clear storage containers. I opened up a notebook, carefully inscribing "Projects" on one page and then skipping about 30 pages and writing "Yarn" on another. At 10 AM, I pulled out the first of many bags next to the couch to begin a slow descent into my own personal hell. You don't have to knit to understand this . . . you just need one hobby or craft or passion or collection. By the time Shelby woke up, the couch was covered with bags of yarn, projects half begun and discarded, various needles and books and shit that I long forgot I had. "Hey! You're cleaning the dining room," she said. When I pointed out that this was from next to the couch, her look changed. I don't think it was sympathy but more of concern.

By the time I finished pulling stuff out from bags, from cabinets, from under the table, from a beautiful stand that Dave bought me years ago when this obsession was manageable, I had no clue what to do next. Start by putting sweater-quantity yarn into a bin: check. Hang your head in shame over the ten sweater-quantity yarn selections you just put in that bin: check. Wonder if it's too early to start drinking: check. Think about running away: check. Motioning at the couch and the dining room table, I told Dave that I had no clue what to do next. "Well, you have to do something because it can't stay like that," he said.

About seven hours later, I finally admitted that I was, in fact, as done as I was going to be. Honestly, I accomplished a lot but nothing at the same time. Sure, I had the yarn all nicely organized and cataloged and tucked away . . . but the five sets of vocabulary essays and five sets of punctuation quizzes were still sitting in my school bag, my summer clothes still sat in Space Bags upstairs in the hall.

But damn if I don't have the nicest, most organized yarn in the county. I even saved a spot for the yarn I need for a new sweater.

Jill