Misery Loves Company

This carefully constructed house of cards is collapsing. This life is caving in on itself. There's nowhere to hide anymore. The pain peels the flesh from me and leaves me exposed to the elements.

I stand arms wide, sun beating down with tears pouring from my eyes. Let the darkness steal all my joy and let me remain behind with only my sorrow to sustain me.

There are no trees, no clouds, no rain, no relief. Just the miserably hot sun beating down and intensifying the ugly, bitter truth. My wounds along with the wounds I've inflicted. All of it stripped bare and laying stark naked before me.

We're all bleeding now. We're all full of hate and fear and ugliness. Our selfishness came in and made a feast of everything good and left only a carcass where there was once a healthy, happy home.

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Conversations via text message are in close competition with Monopoly for what will be the beginning of WW3.

Text messaging is meant for short exchanges of information. However, some people (read: me) sometimes (read: daily) have lengthy conversations via text message.

Such socially-stunted behavior has lead to more than one misunderstanding.

Recently, it has gotten worse as I have also taken to having actual arguments via text message (I used to make fun of people for that)...(there's stuff going on in my life to which you have not been made privvy)...(unless I have had a conversation with you via text message recently).

Arguments via text message are pointless and have served no purpose except to make me a slower texter because I am stabbing the keys furiously to make my point before the other person can add an additional inane comment to the fire fueling my rage and cause me to have to hit the back key 50 times to start my hateful response over.

How can one person need so many interventions?

Ruminations

There's a whole website dedicated to this, and the creator is hilarious. I am not trying to steal/copy/plagiarizer his idea. However, I don't think I can write an entire blog on each topic below, so they will join forces to create one entry.

1. Men who do not live with wives, mothers, girlfriends or female roommates must smell awful. I have never lived with a man who has not found himself using my deodorant on one or more (usually more) occasions. Therefore, I have decided that single men (who have no woman to steal deodorant from) must smell terrible for approximately six days out of every month. (Why six days? Deodorant seems to only last men slightly less than two weeks, and it usually takes a man about three days to finally remember to do anything.)

2. Armageddon will begin over a game of monopoly.

3. Adding folders to my inbox always seems like the best way to organize it...until I start looking for an email containing vitally important information and realize that it could be in any one of fifteen of my fifty-seven folders.

4. On any given Tuesday, I find myself jealous of my friends who work jobs where they get a day off during the week because I know they are very likely napping while I'm staring at a computer. On any given Saturday, I find myself feeling sorry for those same friends because I know they are very likely doing paperwork while I'm at the mall.

5. As a woman, I am superior to all men. However, as the mother of a little boy, boys rule and girls drool (okay, boys drool too, but only while cutting teeth. After that, there's nothing left but awesomeness).

WARNING: Danger

The last blog was not for you. It was for me to get something off my chest. I needed to say it, couldn't hold it in any longer. So, it makes no sense to you, but it's not always about you...sometimes it's about me (almost every time it's not about Silas, it's about me...)

This one is for you.

Last week, amid drowning in depo summaries and having child care issues because my child care went missing (eventually to re-surface, don't worry), I was also panicking that my appendix was about to burst. Why? Google.

I obsessively self-diagnose. My belly button was hurting, so I googled "belly button pain" and google told me that I needed to go to the hospital immediately. Work and motherhood and financial concerns would not allow me to go to the hospital immediately, so I constantly braced myself to collapse on the floor with a burst appendix.

My belly button pain has since vanished completely. So, it was probably just from being kicked in the stomach repeatedly by my stompy son.

A couple of years ago, my best friend, Christen, banned me from WebMD because I kept self-diagnosing myself with deadly diseases. For a while, I obliged, and then the neurosis overwhelmed me, and I started cheating by bypassing WebMD and plugging my symptoms into Google. That way I could keep my promise and still stress and worry and panic until my symptoms went away or a doctor confirmed that I was actually fine.

The internet is a dangerous place, people.

"Why won't a shark eat a lawyer?"............"Professional courtesy."

Our receptionist came to my office Friday afternoon with a flower delivery......for me. The card said the flowers were from Silas. It brought tears to my eyes, and I set about trying to figure out who sent them. Once upon a time, the obvious choice would have been Michael. However, under the current circumstances, I figured the more likely candidate would be my mom. I was wrong.

After about an hour of investigation, I learned that two of my attorneys had sent the flowers. They went out of their way (probably mostly Tina did the going out of the way and George did the writing of a check, but still) to brighten up my day and make my first official mother's day special.

What's my point? Lawyers get a bad rap. Yes, I've worked for some hateful SOBs, but odds are, so have you. Odds are also that your boss doesn't consistently go out of her (or his, and then, really, yeah right!) way to show you how much you mean. My boss does, and she also happens to be a kick-ass attorney.

Good people come in all shapes, sizes and professions. So, back up with your stupid lawyer jokes (imagine how bitchy I'll be if I actually go to law school, graduate, and pass the bar....)!

Father Time

Can someone please explain to me how, in the space of 5 short years, I went from being able to stay up all night and work 17 hours the next day to staying up a few hours past my bed time and having my brain come to a screeching halt at 10 a.m. the next day? I'm still in my twenties, for God's sake.

It often slips my mind that I'm not as young as I once was. In my brain, I'm still 22, but my body feels every bit of it's 27 years and 51 weeks today.

There are many beautiful things about getting older. People are generally smarter, wiser, stronger and better able to brave the world as they get older. However, if they drink a couple of beers and stay up past 11...to hell with wisdom and strength because they can barely put together a coherent sentence the next day.

Home

My life is in this weird, transitional phase right now. There's all this stuff floating around out of order and not making sense. So, it's hard for me to write when the story keeps changing. I was trying to wait until all the details were nailed down because I like things in tidy packages all tied up with bows and ribbons. Unfortunately, there's wrapping paper and bits of ribbon and tape all over the floor of my life right now. So, no tidy package, no bow.

Just mess and chaos and confusion and frustration.

Then there's the glue that keeps me together. Just Silas. Just him and me in the floor reading books and talking about his feet. Him crawling (I TOLD YOU) all over the place trying to get into everything. Him being spoiled to sleeping in mommy's bed and settling immediately down the second I rescue him from his crib and snuggle him up. Him lighting up like a Christmas tree when I walk in the door to pick him up. Him laughing and crying and smiling and babbling and being so completely happy.

Before he was here, I lamented that Michael and I would screw him up. However, even though we screwed us up, Silas is still awesome. That's not something either of us is doing alone. Silas has two parents who would move heaven and earth to make him happy, and he is happy.

So, Silas and I will live with the wrapping paper and ribbons swirling around us and find comfort and solace in the floor, reading books, talking about his feet.