18

Today is the last day that I have a minor child.  Tomorrow, Elizabeth turns 18.

This is a huge ass victory.  All of the people who thought I would never go anywhere or do anything because of her...wrong.  All of the people who thought I would not be able to raise a child as a young single mother...wrong.  All of the people who thought that she would be FUBAR'ed because of me...wrong.

Or maybe it was in spite of me.

My daughter is absolutely amazing.  I know every parent says that.  But.  She has overcome some pretty steep challenges against her.  A mother who lived at the poverty level for a pretty long time.  A single mother.  A mother and father who did not always get along so well.  A YOUNG single mother.  Somewhat dysfunctional families on both sides.

She is not a statistic.  She has grown up and evolved to be a pretty goddamned fantastic human being.

The kind of person who will make it a mission to make a perfect stranger she has never met, who got stood up for homecoming, have a great night.  The kind of person who will stop at Walmart on her way home from work to buy her baby sister five goldfish when the one she got her for her first birthday died.  The kind of person who will text her mother "go get em, tiger" when she is interviewing for a job that could potentially change all of our lives.  The kind of person who will stand up for her friends when they are persecuted for their religion.  The kind of person that other people tell me, without fail, is a genuinely nice, sweet girl.

Don't get me wrong.  That kid has her faults.  She is stubborn as hell.  I blame her father for that one.  She knows her mind.  Blame him for that as well.  She is messy at times. Again, him.  She has the Lambkins temper.  I don't know yet if she has the Lambkins tolerance for alcohol, nor do I want to know if she knows this yet.  I can't figure out a way to blame her father (or stepfather, for that matter LOL) for either of these so I guess I have to own those...

But the fact that she is not some god-awful hellion child that teachers wince and brace themselves for in the classroom...the fact that she is able to have a relationship with both sides of her family...the fact that she has an inherent sense of right and wrong and that she acts on this sense to make sure right is done...the fact that every employer she has had, every person she has babysat for loves her to pieces...

All of that is despite her parents' best efforts to totally fuck her up.  And trust me, all of us tried really really hard to do so.

Happy birthday, Elizabeth Carle.  Mamacakes loves you ever and ever so much.  And remember very very hard as you venture out into the world tomorrow morning as an adult:

You are my sunshine, 
My only sunshine, 
You make me happy, 
When skies are gray, 
You'll never know dear, 
How much I love you.
Please don't take 
My sunshine away.
 

Murdering

I wait up for Elizabeth every time she goes out.  Mostly because I am a ball of anxiety and I am usually firmly convinced that if I don't somehow she is going to be murdered coming from the driveway to the porch.  I'm usually dozing on the couch because I'm old and have thus far been unable to force the world to accommodate my night owl tendencies (which means that for me to wake up at a decent time, I can't stay up past midnight every night like I would do on my own if left to my own devices...).  Anyways, I still wait for her in the living room so I know she is home safe.

For some reason, the other night the front door got locked, and of course Elizabeth took offense to this and claimed that we "always" lock her out of the house.  Fine, tack on another 6 months of therapy there, but I swear this is the first time I've had to get up to unlock it for her...and she has a key, for fuck's sake.  Our conversation proceeded something like this:

E:  Why you always locking the door?

Me: It's not always locked.  I usually don't lock it till you come home.

E:  Yes, it is.  What are you afraid of?

Me:  Murderers coming to get me.  Do you want someone to murder me?

E:  Oh come on.  Who's going to murder you?

Me:  A murderer.

E:  No one is going to come in here and shoot you.  We don't have anything they would want to steal anyways.

Me:  They don't have to shoot me.  Maybe they are feeling stabby.  And maybe it's just a random murderer.  Why you gotta question their motives, Elizabeth?

E: We live behind the police station, for God's sake...

Me:  Maybe they are living dangerously.  Don't question their motives.

E:  Right.  The murderers are just misunderstood.  I'm going to bed now.


Like that parenting win there?  Not only did I diffuse a potentially teenager-y fight sequence that would have made me wish I had a real prescription for Xanax, I slipped in a bit of education about the importance of not second guessing murderers' motives.  Because they's all kind of crazy, I tell you what.  And I should know, cause I know crazy.

Sometimes I do get this parenting thing right.

Random VII

Hey, bitchez.  Go check out my co-worker's self-published book on Amazon...

Minutiae, by Steve Evans.

(Click on the different colored words, Mom, and it will take you to the book which you can buy for your Kindle.  Shit, do you even have a Kindle?  Apparently there's an app for that...)

Do your good deed for the year and support a budding author.  Because 2016 is rapidly approaching and your time to do good for 2015 is rapidly dwindling.  Me, I saved hobos and little dogs this year.

Fuck.  That was 2013.  I'd better get to trippin' here.



So you know that moving little saying about pennies from heaven being ones that our loved ones leave for us as messages that they are ok?  Am I the only one that:

A.) Finds that a bit creepy.  Like seriously, they are leaving pennies lying around for us where we randomly are supposed to see them?  Might as well just send me pictures of the inside of my house because how the fuck do you know where I am going to be?  Which leads me to...

B.)  How do you know that penny was really for you?  Maybe it was someone else's penny and you just picked up and stole, along with all their hopes, dreams, and love from their loved one.  Way to get some bad karma points there, asshole.

C.)  Why the fuck can't they send us like $100 bills?  I mean, seriously, cheapskates.  Aren't the streets up there gold?  Send me a goddamned nugget already!

Me, I much prefer to visualize people up in heaven using those fuckers as like Pogs that they are shooting at people down here on Earth.  Way more entertaining and totally removes the creepy factor if you accidentally grab a penny not meant for you because it just means that someone has lousy aim and missed.



So there seems to have been a trend in Pinterest-land (or for some reason it's just showing all up in my feed) of using wine glasses turned upside down to make candle holders.  I am horribly confused as I imagine that one would get burned, possibly light the house on fire, when one flips the glass over to drink.   And then it will no longer look like a cute pumpkin or Santa or whatever the fuck you decorated it like and more like something that a tripping preschooler would decorate.  Though I suppose that you could use the flameless candles if you wanted to be a problem solver.  But I'm still confused as to why you would waste a perfectly good wine glass...perhaps it is a sign of gluttonous America and people have an excess?  Or maybe you are planning on drinking the wine out of a mason jar?  I hear that rustic shit is totally hot right now...



My sinuses have recently decided to totally flip me the bird recently and have been giving me holy headaches from hell.  Actually they are holy in the same way that Marilyn Manson is that really sweet nun down at the convent.  Apparently they have decided to join forces with the rest of my body and escalate from being mildly annoying when the weather changes to being fully incapacitated.   It's a full fledged conspiracy launched by my immune system, and it leads me to totally anthropomorphize it.  The stupid fuckers have been flaring up something fierce and I'm not having it.  Now if only they would respect my authoritar and get in line.



I just watched some people on a TV show down 3 shots in as many minutes as well as drink some beers and they are totally sober.  Conclusion?  TV show characters have a hella tolerance.  And we should probably be super concerned.

Moon II

So today there is supposed to be a super blood moon with a lunar eclipse.  Which I suppose means that the world is gonna end or some shit like it was going to a few years ago.  I really need to get right with Jesus first, so if we could hold off on that for a bit, that would be GREAT, m'kay?

We took Alexis outside to watch the eclipse.  Or what part of it we could see, because clouds are assholes and like to cramp our style.  Plus it's a school night and apparently no one in the cosmos took this into consideration when arranging for natural wonders to be used as learning experiences.  THANKS FOR NOTHING, COSMOS.  Maybe YOU should go get right with sweet baby Jesus and stop being so SELFISH.

Alexis was mesmerized.  I mean, it is pretty fucking cool, the whole moon disappearing from the sky then changing colors.  If I would have thought of it earlier, I would have totally milked it like the Santa thing and told her that I was recently awarded magical powers and if she didn't start fucking picking her toys up, I'll make her disappear and change colors.  But not a cool one like red.  Like chartreuse.  No one knows what the fuck that color actually looks like anyways.  I mean, Charlie is already convinced that the moon is stalking her...it might not have been that hard to do.  And really, let's just tack on a few more years of therapy.  At this point, years are just a drop in the bucket...

It was really humbling, though, to see her innocent excitement at something that she has never seen before.  At something rare.  It was a great reminder that there is always something new, something wonderful.  I need to remember to look at things through a child's eyes more often; to get back to the simpler things.  I need to stop adulting so much and be more mindful.  I really think that would reduce my stress level significantly.

And maybe then I will stop anthropomorphizing nature and expecting it to get right with the Lord.

Lying

There is a saying floating around the Internets, I believe coined by the Bloggess (or at least I am giving her credit.  Kinda like the whole I didn't say you were at fault, I said I was going to blame you thing)...it is simply "Depression lies."

It tells you you are no good.

It tells you things will never get better.

It tells you no one will miss you if you are gone, and even if they do they will quickly get over it. 

It tells you there is no joy in life.

It tells you that you are choosing to feel this way and deserve it because of a fundamental flaw in your make up and if you really really wanted to you could just get over it.

It lies to you.  Over and over and over again, and sucks you down into the abyss without you even realizing it.  And then when you are trying to climb out, the fucker greases the walls and laughs at you while you frantically try to get to the top.

To breathe.

To survive.

To be able to feel something, anything, besides that deep dark hole in the pit of your stomach that keeps sucking you in and making you slide back down.

And one of the most remarkable things about those who suffer from depression, is that they continue to try to climb back up those walls.  They continue to breathe.  Continue to survive, when their very being is screaming for relief and the only surefire way to get it is through death.

A person with depression is the opposite of weak.  Imagine trying to get up out of bed with a 500 lb weight on your chest.  That has weight added to it every day, so that you can never get accustomed to it and stronger.  That tells you that it will never go away and what a horrible person you are.  And then you have to try to accomplish daily tasks, like bathing.  Caring for others.  Working.  Living.  Maybe even laughing when all you want to do is scream and curl up inside yourself.

It's hard, but sometimes you start to climb out of that abyss.  The fog lifts and motivation returns.  Your capacity to feel joy comes back.  You want to bathe versus doing it just so the people you live with can tolerate you.

But it's always there in the back of your mind, that you could slip up and slide back down.  And then you do, and that just gives the depression more ammo to use against you. 

You were feeling better.

If you were a better/stronger/smarter person, you wouldn't backslide so easily.

You're fucking up your family/friends/relationships/career.

All that progress you made...for nothing.

And yet still, you climb up the slippery walls, ignoring the mocking laughter coming from the abyss.  Because you are going to survive.  You know it's a fatal disease sometimes, but you try and try and try.

Because depression lies.

Animals

Have you ever looked at someone and thought "Well, aren't you just a big bucket full of fucked up, with a dollop of crazy on top with a sprinkling of insanity?"  Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about my cat.

I swear, she's plotting my death, probably when I'm sleeping.  It's a good thing that we sleep with our door closed because I'm pretty sure that she would try to smother me or slit my wrists in my sleep.

Nothing to see here.  Move along, now.  Move along.

It's bad enough that she does things like run into the big window in our living room over and over again to catch the leaves in the fall, or tries to burn the house down by chewing through the cord of a lamp while it is on and getting electrocuted in the meantime (for weeks after, you would take a tissue out of the box and she would about jump out of her skin)...but she also pretty frequently tries to murder the dogs.  Most specifically, Deogie.  That poor guy is so confused, he doesn't know what he is or wants to be.  He's the most metrosexual dog I know, almost to the point where he's *just* this side of straight but really really wants to experiment. He tries humping the cat on a pretty regular basis, so I can understand her irritability with him.  (He also tries to hump the other dogs and blankets pretty regularly, too, hence the confusion reference.) She takes her irritation to the extreme, though.  Deogie can be just walking past her and she was be all like "Hiss hiss", which I am assuming is cat speak for "Imma cut you, bitch.  You best check yourself before you wreck yourself."  That cat is totally ghetto, but if I was ever in a bar fight I'd totally want her on my side.

Now Maximus, he's a bit of a different story.  He's caught in a constant battle with Spartacus for the alpha male position, but Spartacus wins just because he is built like a brick shithouse.  Spartacus is like the old time bosses in the factory, the blue collar guy, who got to the top by hard work and has dirty hands.  Maximus is the fresh college grad who's coming to the factory and gets a management job by virtue of having that college diploma.  Unfortunately, he's also the frat boy who drank and snorted coke all his way through college and ascribed to the philosophy of "C's get Degrees".  Plus he totally does not know how to change a flat tire.  He was most likely banging a freshman and got her to write all of his papers for him.  He lacks what one would refer to as common sense.  Like for instance, if you pushed him over he would totally just stay there on the floor lying there, looking up at you.  He also struggles to find his way out from under a blanket. Not that I have experimented with either of these before.  *Ahem.*

Spartacus is the strong, long-suffering, silent type.  That dog doesn't bark for much of anything, which really defeated the original purpose in getting him, which was for me to have some sort of protection when I was home alone with Alexis all those years.  We once had a fucking deer, in our back yard, not 10 feet from that dog, and he just totally looked at me when I came outside like "What?"  He totally hates cats, though, which I blame solely on Angel because she's fucking certifiable.  He will bark at a cat if it is within a quarter mile of our house.  He's also an emotional eater.  I'm pretty sure that he would totally drink beer and eat pizza and pretzels every night, and would be a perpetually single man who yearned for a family of his own but never found Mrs. Right.  Or in this case, his owners chopped off his balls and he is never able to act on his crush on the neighbor's dog Rosie.  He's my baby, though, and the first pet I ever owned as an adult.  Or as a kid, really, except for an assortment of fish and that one frog that I caught from a pond and kept in my room and would feed crickets.  Do you know you can buy crickets?  And do you know how loud those fuckers are?  Never again...

We also have some fish.  Dorothy, Charlie's left overs from her Elmo obsessed days. There is also a sucker fish thingy that no one ever named, poor thing.  I'm not exactly sure, but they could both be plotting some kind of escape, Finding Nemo-style.  Or perhaps the sucker fish will really be the one to murder me in my sleep because we never bothered to name him.  If I ever wind up mysteriously dead, seriously, look at the pets.

I totally need this for my house.

Then there is the rabbit, Toby.  Actually, Toby II as the first Toby died the night I had my hysterectomy, giving the whole the rabbit died thing a new meaning.  Elizabeth maintains that it is totally fucked up that Alexis named the rabbit Toby again, but Alexis does what Alexis wants cause honey badger don't give a shit.  I've not quite put my finger on this guy, but he's not actively tried to kill me or hump me yet, and nor do I have any expectations of protection from him, so I guess he is all right.   Fucker better not die before fair, though, or I'm making all of us, Charles included, take a pregnancy test.

Humor

Note:  Usually, around this time, I write about my son and his death and my struggles with this time of year.  It hasn't gotten any easier, even 7 years out.  This year, I am taking a bit of a different approach and will be writing a more lighthearted post.  I'm well known to use humor as a coping mechanism (see: me barely avoiding giggling like a school girl cause the chaplain at the hospital kept referring to Gabe as she and Charles kept trying to correct him to no avail...) so I figured that this year I would give that a shot.  If you are interested in reading about Gabe, there are posts here, here, here, here, here,  here, and here.


There comes a time, in everyone's work day, when you just know that you aren't going to be productive anymore.  It happens to the best of us.  It happened to me today.  Now, mind you, I was staring down the barrel of a 4 day weekend and was antsy to get the hell out of the office.  One of my coworkers came by, and we started to discuss various emergencies that we have worked on together.  We then tried to dissect the mind of people who deliberately try to commit their loved ones when they get mad at them.  We were unsuccessful.  Hell, there are days when I wish Charles would go to court and probate me to the psych ward.  I could use the break.  But only if I go to a swanky one.  Because you know, that is totally how the system works.

(FYI, it's totally not.)

This conversation then proceeded to devolve further into the wonders that we had seen while doing in-home therapy.  Mostly it revolved around the whole people wanting to do therapy in various stages of undress.  I mean, I am all for being comfortable in your own home, but for the love of God, therapy requires pants, people.

This then moved to the idea that pants were not optional in the office, except for strippers, but that they probably wanted to put their clothes ON at the end of their shift vs taking them off, and then to people sending penis pictures using company e-mail.  Again, the logic that goes into this was beyond us.  As my coworker said, "Sending someone a picture of your penis is like the opposite of romantic.  In fact, I think you may have skipped at least ten steps one would normally take before you get there.  Minimum."

Then, the conversation moved to serial killers keeping heads in their fridge because they accidentally decapitated them in the midst of their psychosis because they just kept killing people when they did not mean to.  We both agreed that it was a little frightening that we could follow the logic of keeping heads in the fridge because of accidental removal of said head from the body but not of sending penis pictures or feeling that pants were optional in the work place.  However, the conclusion that was reached was that both being pantless at work and decapitating people, accidental or otherwise, are probably no-no's in the scheme of life.  Additionally, being in a relationship where your go-to move when mad is to involuntarily commit your partner is probably not healthy.

I guess the take home from this conversation?  (Besides the fact that mental health workers are pretty disturbed in and of themselves?)  Apparently I understand the psychosis that leads to serial killing better than I understand misogynistic thought processes.  I always knew I would make a disturbing psychotic person vs a happy one.

Random VI

I have had for a while now a couple of ideas for posts that have been banging around in my head like two horny teenagers, but I've not been able to make any kind of cohesive post out of any of them.  Much to my disappointment, and I am sure the disappointment of the like four readers I have.  Sorry, bitchez, but I'm not a circus monkey that can perform on command.  I need some Viagra to get this party started, if you get my drift.  Or wine.  I'm not sure what Viagra will do to a female, and I'm kinda afraid to Google it.  Then I had a lovely epiphany...I can just write a post of random shit.  I have done this before.  In my defense...OK.  No fucking defense.  It's my blog and I can write whatever the hell I want to in it.


My children's pediatrician has recently started to confirm appointments by text message.  What is really hella cool, and super enabling of my continued social anxiety and avoidance of being an adult, is the fact that you can now also cancel appointments via text as well.  Pretty soon I am so not even going to ever have to talk to people again.  Well, except for that whole being a therapist thing.


One trend that I am trying to wrap my mind around is the whole concept of a food cart.  Look, bitchez...I've worked in a restaurant, several in fact.  Who the fuck thinks that it is a good idea to take an entire building and condense it into a horse trailer, where you can then move around like some kind of nomadic, gypsy restaurateur?  It seems pretty shady to me.  Ever see the movie Snatch?  Parkies are not to be trusted.  Neither are food carts, IMHO.


Along those lines, who the hell started this whole open letter thing?  Seriously, I just can't even with those things.  What an incredibly passive aggressive idea...let's just write to the entire fucking Interwebs when someone pisses you off.  And conversely, if you are thanking someone, let's totally NOT go up to that person in person but post an anonymous letter because God forbid that we should have social interactions with each other of a positive sort.  I mean, I am cool with texting my kids' docs, but open letters piss me off and serve as a justification for my wine consumption.


Magical things happen when I avoid laundry.  And by magical I mean my grandmother's peanut butter cookies, those delicious bombs of trans fats and diabetes.  I still have yet to decide if I like them cooked or raw better.  See, my family should THANK me for not engaging in the futility of laundry.  Really, I'm just trying to show my love through delicious peanut butter cookies.  Except to Charlie.  Peanut butter makes her gag.  But hey, all my actions can't be winners.


I've also been thinking a lot about the whole concept of hashtags.  Who the fuck thought of that name?  Who came up with the idea to put a # sign in front of shit?  And really, what purpose do they have on Facebook?  I've been trying to start my own hashtag, #textingwithalicia, but I only use it on Facebook.  Mostly because 90% of the time I forget I have a Twitter.  I'm a really bad Tweeter.  I have an Instagram too that I post, like, monthly on.  But really, has anyone ever considered that hashtags could be the way that pot heads keep track of content on the internet?  I mean, come one, HASHtags....I wonder if by using them I have been inadvertently enabling someone's weed habit.  Great, now I feel fucking guilty.  I thought I gave that all up when I stopped attending Catholic churches...

Conversations XIII

Reading from Reddit:

Me:  Huh.  I'm glad we are not giraffes.

Charles: ?

Me: According to this list of weird facts, "To know when to mate, a male giraffe will continuously headbutt the female in the bladder until she urinates. The male then tastes the pee and that helps it determine whether the female is ovulating"

Charles:  I would just head butt your head.

Me:  I know, right?  I'm glad for both of us here.  Me because I don't want to be head butted in the bladder, and you because you don't have to drink my pee.  That's just weird foreplay.

Long pause.

Charles: Uh, OK?

Me:  Well, I'm just sayin'...

Charles: (Shaking head.)  Well, you brought it up.  I'm perfectly ok with just having sex, OK?

Me:  Well, if there was ever anyone I would want to drink my pee, it would be you.

Charles: And I promise I won't head butt you anywhere but your head.

We would make lousy giraffes, apparently.

Shoes

I am fighting a never ending battle in this household.

Not about eating veggies, the importance of wiping front to back, or even about going to bed at night.  While all of these are very real struggles, there is one that trumps all battles and has escalated into full blown nuclear holocaust.

The fucking shoes.

Not only are my children (and to be perfectly honest, my husband (and to be even more honest, on rare occasions, me)) apparently genetically wired to accumulate as many pairs of shoes as possible, they lack the portion of DNA that handles putting them away.

Our house is small.  And very awkwardly put together.  Our house is the pre-pubescent tweenage boy of houses who just hit a growth spurt and possibly discovered a hair or two where there had not been one before.  Just like the man-boy, our house has dreams of one day growing up, learning to drive, and possibly getting to second base.  It is just all the awkward limbs and acne and voice cracking is getting in the way.

Or, since I am talking about my abode, rooms that lead to rooms, lack of closet space, rooms modernized after the fact with newfangled things like running water and electricity and asbestos-free insulation, a random addition that did not add much usable square footage, and one bathroom for five people, four of whom are female.

It's awkward.  I think you get it.

Anyways, since you abruptly enter our house and are immediately in the living room, I have had to carve out some kind of area where people could hang coats, take off shoes, and whatnot.  The problem is, during the winter, my husband has roughly 8 trillion coats and takes up every goddamned spot on the coat rack.  Plus there is a limited space for people to take off their shoes, and unfortunately when they do so they usually are having to schlep through whatever the people before them tracked into my house.  And if a lot of people are over, the shoes pile up.  It's really a fire hazard and thank God the fire marshal does not inspect the house because we'd get one hefty fine there, I tell you what.

What is worse, though, are the sheer number of shoes that we own as a family and trying to corral all of them.  I could have the kids put them up in their rooms...but there is a distinct lack of closet space and they would likely get lost in the abyss of their rooms, along with all matches to socks, library books, my sanity, and quite possibly other small children/mammals.

I have been struggling with how to organize all of the fucking shoes.  Not only shoes, but the 8 billion work boots my husband has to match his 8 billion coats.  Work boots are impossibly to store in a cute fashion.  Not that my house is cute, because it is all pre-pubescent boys and decorated in early poverty, but I do like to pretend occasionally that I'm all Pinterest savvy and gonna do my house up all Trading Spaces style.  I have tried numerous configurations.  Baskets, drawers, piles, shoe racks.  Nothing is ever a good solution.  This is the Good Housekeeping equivalent of the unsolvable equation in theoretical mathematics.  It is a mystery that will be studied and pondered on by future generations in much the same way that we marvel at Stonehenge and its seeming purposelessness. 

The current shoe situation is that each of the three girls has their own basket next to the love seat.  There is a shoe rack on the other side of the loveseat that has all of Charles's boots and the two other pairs of shoes he has that aren't work boots.  Then in our room, which is (awkwardly) off of the living room, I have all of my shoes in a two drawer dresser thingy and a basket.  It makes it tolerable, I guess.  Until it isn't and I have a nervous breakdown and am found in the corner of my house, wearing work boots and licking the heels of my stilettos while rocking back and forth and humming "Roxanne". 

I don't really have a clever way to end this post.  The shoe situation...kinda sucks.  It is awkward, just like my house and tweenage boys.  Oh, lookit there!  Hot damn, I found my ending!

Updated to add:  My husband feels that this post makes him look like a slob.  I asserted that it made him look like he has a work boot fetish.  We both concurred that neither was really all that flattering...so in his defense, I *may* have exaggerated by a few billion the number of work boots he has.  Like maybe 7.99999999 billion plus 4.  But in my defense, once upon a time, he may have had 8 pairs.

And don't criticize me if my math is wrong above.  I may or may not have had a drink or four tonight.