A Life of Less Than

I'm back to my old tricks.  Back in school--again--with nursing as a goal--again.  Taking Math 110--again.  Worried about a certain child of mine--again. 

I find myself in this cyclical life, "Groundhog Day" without the laughs.  Every week is a repeat of the last, but with greater intensity and urgency.  Three days a week the kids do martial arts, two nights a week I go to class, every night I do homework for three or more hours, every day I work nearly 7 hours at my paid job, every night I work at my unpaid job.  As any mom knows, the unpaid stuff is the most important, and it's getting the least attention at the moment.  Sad kids (one in particular) that would love to talk but I don't have time.  I kiss their heads on my way out the door and try to get up enough energy to cook them dinner before bedtime. 

I want to say that I'm doing all of this for them.  Partly I am.  I don't want to show up on their doorsteps with my bags in hand and try to explain why Mommy couldn't get her act together and be self-supporting in her 70s and 80s.  I do worry about that, I'm not going to lie, but mostly it's for me.  I'm terrified of being poor.  I know, blessed are the poor and all that, but there is no glory at all in being old and poor.  None.  I've seen it up close and personal, and I will move heaven and earth before I end up like that.  So I'm pursuing a career that I can work at until I physically can't work anymore, and hope that's enough. 

My trade-off for this ambition, misplaced as it may be, is that I'm living a life I never imagined.  Everything about it is shabby.  I look like death, with dark circles under my eyes on top of all the other flaws.  My clothes are Wal Mart special, and I wear the same stupid pair of jeans every day until one morning they will wear out and I'll head back out to the Evil Empire and buy another pair for under $20.  My house is a wreck, there are holes in the furniture, my children are DVD/internet addicts, and spiders are building webs in the corners.  My mother is coming this week, and I know she'll be so sad for me, which I can't handle.  I'm the toughest person I know, apart from her, and the last thing I need is pity, thank you very much.  But isn't that what I'm asking for?  Pity would cover a multitude of sins.  Oh, poor thing.  She just can't do it all, can she?  That's not who I want to be.  I do want to do it all.  Every last bit of it, and better than 'well'.   


My mom wants to know what she can do to help.  What do I tell her?  Please iron these shirts?  The fridge is a little scary.  The pantry needs to be organized.  The walls are a forensic scientist's dream-come-true.  It's not the obvious things I need help with.  It's this internal struggle that I've faced since I was first conscious of it.  I want this "life" that I grew up with, that I was conditioned to want.  It's a beautiful picture, and I've lived it as a reality.  But for the life of me I can't create it.  The 'how' of it all eludes me.  It's a secret code I haven't yet cracked, that illiterate women for centuries have been able to figure out.  But I can't give up the picture.  This happy family sitting down to dinner when it's still light outside, with money in the bank and smiles on the kids' faces.  Children who know they are loved and are well on their way to creating their own beautiful lives.  Okay, my kids do know they're loved, but the rest of the picture is out of focus with curled edges.  My children suffer.  My marriage suffers, and I feel lost.

So I keep working at everything that won't fix the problem.  Because I already have a degree, and we both have jobs, and we're both artistic enough that we are capable of creating beauty.  So in desperation I'm doing what I know how to do.  Work harder.  Sleep less.  Worry more.  Run faster.

What would really fix it?  That's what I want my mom to help me with, because she figured it out decades ago.

Next Summer's Plans

I know where we'll be next summer!

Grilled Chicken & Pasta Salad

My friend Julie passed on this recipe to me, which she originally got from our local ABC channel here. I couldn't find it in the archive to link to it, so I'm reposting it here. Credit goes to Angie Larsen of KTVX here in Salt Lake City. Julie served this at a luncheon that Isabelle attended a few weeks ago, and she raved about it--with good reason! We loved it.

Grilled Chicken and Pasta Salad

For Salad:
1 small pkg. spinach
1 8 oz. pkg. bowtie pasta--cooked, drained, and cooled
2-4 T sesame seeds
1/2 c. sunflower seeds
1 can sliced water chestnuts
3 chicken breasts--seasoned heavily with lemon pepper seasoning, grilled (or baked), and cut into bite-size pieces
1 c. bean sprouts

mix well all ingredients and toss with dressing just before serving.

Dressing:
1/2 c. oil
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. sesame seeds
3 T. soy sauce
2 T. seasoned rice vinegar
1/2 tsp. sesame seed oil (optional)
1 tsp. grated fresh garlic

Stir ingredients well to dissolve sugar, store in refrigerator. Let dressing warm to room temperature before tossing into salad.

This has a real Asian taste to it. You could add strawberries or craisins to it, or even chow mein noodles for a crunchy texture. I added more spinach and pasta and it made a huge bowl. There was plenty of dressing to cover it all. So good, and very pretty.  And homemade breadsticks weren't so bad, either!

Day 1 of Summer Vacation

I have been looking forward to this day for many, many months. At last, work is done for a few months, or close to it anyway.

When I was a kid, we were so exhausted at the end of summer break we couldn't wait to get back to school. Everything was cleaned, sorted, purged, arranged, gone through, and any other thing we could do to it. Each drawer, closet, shelf, book, and knick knack was re-evaluated for its' usefulness and sentimental value. If it didn't make the grade, out it went. My mom was absolutely ruthless about it, which she really had to be. We moved nearly every summer, and we had a certain weight limit that our household goods had to fit within or we would have to pay the Army extra to move it. That would never happen as long as my mom and dad had a say in it, so we made that limit no matter what. Honestly, there are very few things I even remember getting rid of, so I'm hardly emotionally scarred by the experience.

In fact, I have often wished that we had a big move coming up. As overwhelming as it would be, knowing you have a concrete number to make makes everything look much less attractive to you. I've lived in this house for over 16 years now, and boy does it show. We have so much stuff, and it completely drowns me. I get so paralyzed at the sight of it all that I don't know where to start.

Since becoming a mom, summer vacation has typically become a blur as soon as the kids have gone back to school. I feel like I have absolutely nothing to show for it, and rather than having all sorts of educational enrichment activities, they're sticking straws in their noses or something equally disgusting. So in order to feel less like a complete failure in life, I'm going to chronicle our summer vacation. Boring for you, dear reader, but most entertaining for me.

Here goes:

On the first day of summer, the weather gave to me
A day full of pouring down rain.
So we went off to do errands, which needed to be done:
One trip to Petsmart, one new paper towel holder,
And a salad chopper that makes Kitty Boy smile.
Then off to Best Buy, to look at X-Boxes which I'll regret.
Lots of 'M' rated games, way too much money,
but Sweetie went and made a deal with the boy.
Thread at the fabric store, and a pattern for Tinkerbell,
A summer full of sewing for me.

Okay, that's enough of that. Then Kitty Boy made an amazing salad bar for us, I went through a few more papers and threw some out, I'm about to take the dog for a walk, and I've only played two levels of Wedding Dash today. Oh, and Tinkerbell played with Kylie all day long, and I took the kids to Macey's for frozen yoghurt. I also found the fabric that goes with the pattern I bought and am going to preshrink it tonight.

I talked to Mom and Suzy, but forgot to call Suzy back. Will do that during our walk. No reading yet, or pulling weeds. I'll try to remedy both.

Okay, I don't feel like a total slacker today. I got a fair amount done (plus dishes and the usual "stuff."). But I want each day to stretch out as long as it can. I'm in no hurry for it to end yet.

Dear Ben (and Jerry)

Dear Ben and Jerry,

I watched Jimmy Fallon awhile back when you unveiled your new flavor in his honor. You were very funny (and you both look great--congrats on the weight loss!), and I could tell Jimmy was really excited about having his very own ice cream. I happen to love your ice cream, though perhaps a bit too much, if you know what I mean. But in my quest to acquire a healthier lifestyle, I decided to forgo dairy products. After that show, all my vegan hankerings went completely out the window. Vanilla ice cream, potato chips, chocolate, caramel! Heart attack in a carton, more likely, but impossible to resist.

But I've been thwarted at every turn! I've searched store after store in our lovely state of Utah, but to no avail. Then I found your Flavor Locator online. At last! I would know where to look! I believe your little gadget has a glitch in it, as it tells me it's not available in Utah yet! My sister in St. Louis can find it at Dierberg's, for crying out loud! (You can thank me later, Em). We're the #1 Ice Cream Consumption state in the country here in Utah!

I guess begging won't do much to speed things up. Please note, however, that a very devoted family is anxiously awaiting Late Night Snack.

Yours Sincerely,
Diane


UPDATE:
Well, their precious little Flavor Locator is defective! On a whim, I checked for it at Macey's here in Provo, and there it was! So excited I actually screamed (not too loud, but my kids were amused). Couldn't wait to try it, expecting something amazing, and.... it was pretty good, but not earth-shattering. I like Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream better. Sorry Jimmy!

Baby, Ride Your Firebolt

Feeling a little lost without a Harry Potter book coming out, but thanks to my friend Sally, I got my fix today. Enjoy BYU's Divine Comedy's "Firebolt" video--made me laugh and filled the gap a little bit! Make sure you turn on the "CC" button at the bottom to read the lyrics!

Why I Hate Guns

I think that most people don't believe I could possibly be well-informed when they find out how much I dislike guns. "Oh, you'd feel differently if (insert any number of reasons here), believe you me!" In their estimation, I've had a liberal, left-wing, East Coast (Military/Missouri--really?) upbringing where men wear pink and drink lattes. Au contraire, my ultra-conservative, right-wing, FOX News-watching compadres--nothing could be further from the truth. I come by my opinions honestly, and with a surprising amount of real-world, first-hand experience.

Awhile back, I wrote a post about my memories of living with terrorism in 1970s Europe. This shaped my views to a large extent, but apart from the armed guards at the airport, most of the damage was done by large amounts of explosives. So why my hatred of weapons? I know that guns don't do any harm by themselves, only in the hands of psycho nut-jobs. But who decides who the psychos are? Certainly not the neighborhood guy who takes his six year-old out hunting with him, right? After all, what could possibly go wrong when you get a bunch of guys up in the mountains with a few coolers of beer and firearms? I'm sure that many people do have lovely memories of hunting with their families and blowing away animals. Not only do they eat the meat (which let's face it, with ammunition costing what it does these days is hardly cost-effective), but they get an attractive animal head to mount on their wall. But let's leave the hunters out of this. I live in "Gun Land" where elementary school kids really do get .22's for Christmas. I teach any number of these kids, and I like them just fine, as long as we're not talking firearms, which they seem to be obsessed with.

No, the reason I hate firearms is that I have been the victim of gun violence, and even after all of that, the last thing on earth I would want is a gun.

In April of 1979 when I was nearly 16, my family was living in San Antonio, Texas. My dad, four year-old sister Emily, and I went downtown to watch the annual Battle of Flowers parade, a local Fiesta tradition commemorating the Battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto in 1836. A psycho nut-job who hated the police set up shop in an RV parked in a lot right where the parade was to start. We walked right past it, and stood kitty-corner and blissfully unawares in front of Fox Photo. Just before the parade began, Psycho Man opened the door to his RV and fired much of his 3,000 rounds of ammunition into the crowd, felling a motorcycle cop immediately in front of us. There was screaming and outright pandemonium everywhere, as the fallen officer's blood slowly pooled in the street. We were surrounded by men from Fort Sam Houston where my dad was stationed, most of whom were Viet Nam vets. I pulled Emily out of her stroller and collapsed it as Dad threw me and my sister to the ground and covered us with his body. The glass of the store windows shattered behind us, but we stayed calm because Dad told us to. We started to crawl towards the alley that ran perpendicular to the end of the block, reaching it just as the SWAT team arrived. One of us grabbed Emily and we ran as fast as we could to our car a few blocks away. We had to cross the street this guy was on a few blocks up from where he was shooting, but Dad assured me his bullets wouldn't reach that far. I had no idea if that was true or not, but I wasn't about to argue with him for once.

When we got home, I was so shocked that I just lay down on my bed with the blinds drawn. My mom and older sister were out shopping for wedding things, and had no idea until they arrived home what had happened. My dad came in a bit later and awarded me his Combat Infantry Badge (CIB) for witnessing my first enemy fire. I still have it, and I do believe that I earned it. We talked about that day often over the next 31 years, even soon before he died. It had a huge effect on both of us.

I had no idea at that time what an impact that morning would have on me. I had recurring nightmares for a good 8-10 years after that, developed irrational phobias, and a massive fear of guns. The dreams and panic attacks eventually worked their way out of my head, but the revulsion of firearms is still alive and well in me.

I was in the most well-armed state in the country (sorry Utah, but you've got nothing on Texas), surrounded by active military, and this guy blew his own brains out. Being armed wouldn't have changed things for us one single bit. In fact, if someone had tried to be a hero and rushed the trailer, it would have been even more disastrous than it was. This was better left to the professionals, and they did a splendid job.

So there you have it, a little blast from the past to brighten your day. You'll never convince me that owning guns is a good idea, but I know I'm a lone voice in the wilderness on that one. Sweetie wants a gun in the worst way, but his mean wife won't give in. Who will prevail? All I know is, if he does get one, I'm not touching it.

For a great first-hand account of the above incident, check out Gary DeLaune's blog post.