a higher quality of nothing, striving toward something
Goblin fried the Fios box and we need a new one. Now I’m trying to get HBOGO set up on the Roku – which I had to find in a box still packed in the basement and set it up on the living room tv – and the activation screen doesn’t work on an iPad, which is a pain and we have to yell codes up and down the stairs.
Joxer just peed on the bedroom curtains. Last week he peed on the entryway curtains. He’s been peeing on laundry in the laundry room and once on my shoes. This week he’s going to the vet to see if something is physically wrong and then, unfortunately, he’s going to be confined to the downstairs bathroom for litter box retraining. It’s drastic, but this cannot continue.
Xena is scratching the dining room rug every time I turn around, but I can’t even be mad at her because we no longer have the flat cardboard scratchers she prefers because… Oh… Joxer has been peeing on those, too.
It’s times like these that make me laugh when experts talk about how great pets are for relieving stress.
The last time I saw my father in person I was ten or eleven years old. I visited him during summers back then, sometimes in Ohio, sometimes North Dakota, and once in a while in Kentucky, where his wife’s family lived. This particular summer, the last summer, I was meant to stay in North Dakota with him, his wife, and their daughter for most of July and August. Through a combination of me not being able to connect well with his wife, their three-year-old daughter having problems with this older interloper calling her father “daddy,” and, most seriously, transgressions on my father’s part*, I ended up calling my mother and begging to come home early.
After that disastrous last visit, contact between us was sporadic at best. He rarely called, even for Christmases and birthdays. He didn’t send cards for those occasions, let alone gifts. He seemed content at that point to write me off as a failed experiment and move on with his second family. For the most part, I was alright with that** but I would be lying if I said I didn’t grow up with daddy issues. Inability to trust men, a certain “moral looseness,” desperate need to be liked, and on and on. A classic case, really; one from which it took me a long time to recover.
But recover I did***, and that’s why today when I found a link to my father’s blog while saying happy birthday to my uncle on Facebook, I didn’t fall apart as I probably would have fifteen years ago. Instead, now I find myself reading through it with a kind of sick fascination and I feel like I finally, finally, finally understand something I’ve known intellectually but not in my heart: there’s nothing wrong with me, but he is a complete screw up. He didn’t leave me and do the things he did because of me, he did them because he’s a total loser who even to this day, at the age of sixty-five, can’t take responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong in his life.
I have three failed marriages and four children(one who hates me, two that are totally indifferent to me and one that adores me because I have not disappointed her yet).
Guess which one I am? The thing is, at this point in my life, I don’t even hate him anymore. The only thing thinking about him makes me feel is tired and, now that I’ve read about his life, vindicated. Perhaps he actually has three indifferent children. Reading through his pity party blog posts has, I think, left me with the ability to shed that last bit of clinging doubt that maybe it was my fault.
So thank you, Uncle G. It turns out that you gave me a gift for your birthday.
*That I won’t go into now but have done on the blog in the past, and may again in the future. But this isn’t about that.
**Because of the aforementioned transgressions.
***For the most part. I mean, I’m a functional human being, so that’s recovery. I’m still shy and don’t trust people easily, but I’m also not living in a shell anymore.
The neighbor who last year was a little standoffish has been much more friendly this year. Too friendly, in truth. It’s now almost impossible to go outside when she’s out there without getting into a conversation with her from which it’s difficult to extract oneself. Then we also have conversations like this with her:
Scott: Oh! I’ve been meaning to mention to you… there’s a canvas bag all tangled up with the wires on the side of your house, up near your second floor.
Neighbor, with a vague, dismissive wave of her hand: Oh, I know.
S: Okay, I just wanted to make sure you knew about it.
N, as if explaining: My daughter…
S&K: …
I’m not really sure what that means. Her daughter is the canvas bag? Her daughter was supposed to take it down but didn’t? Her daughter is conducting experiments that require canvas bags to be wrapped up in cable wires outside the house?
Whatever it could mean, one thing it does mean for sure is that bag is still there after three months.
If I’m completely honest, I haven’t knit in a very long time. An embarrassingly long time. The knitting mojo is returning lately, though, and I have ideas for new projects with some lovely new Blue Moon Fiber Arts yarn I bought recently. So this is not just ten reasons I knit, but also reasons I’ll knit again.
- Knitting makes me happy, just in general.
- It soothes me and keeps me calm when I need soothing and calmness.
- Working with color satisfies my need for beauty.
- It can be a rhythmic, mindless, easy way to occupy my hands while doing something that requires my attention like watching tv or a movie, like when I knit a garter stitch scarf.
- Or it can be a challenging task that requires my full attention, like when I knit a lace shawl.
- It helps pass the time when I’m engaged in waiting for something, in a line, in a doctor’s office, etc.
- Using something I’ve knit myself fills me with joy.
- I love spending time plotting and planning with a pattern, choosing colors and fiber and needles.
- Knitting is magic. Anyone who has ever turned a heel on a sock or seen a shriveled up piece of lace transform into a thing of beauty when blocked will back me up on this.
- I’m good at it and yet have so much to learn, which is an incredible combination. There’s always something new I want to try, but there are so many things I’ve done and want to do again. Knitting is never boring.
Ten On Tuesday: 10 Things I’m Looking Forward to in the Month of May
- Beltane. While we don’t celebrate in a huge way, I always love to mark Beltane somehow, even small. Speaking of which, happy Beltane!
- Todd Sheaffer solo show. I’m so excited for this on the 11th.
- Some of my spring garden will be ready for harvest in May. I can’t wait for that!
- Memorial Day. I love when Scott has three-day weekends and we can spend all those days together.
- It’s a three paycheck month, which means a whole extra paycheck. That means half a mortgage payment to spend willy nilly or maybe add to extra principle.
- Warm enough weather that I can finally sow the warm weather crops.
- My brother’s birthday. Even though I won’t be able to spend it with him, this month is his milestone 30th birthday.
- Getting my herb container garden planted.
- Reading in the sun. May is traditionally neither too cold nor too hot.
- My little lilac should give us its first blossoms in May.
This is the second re-post for National Infertility Awareness Week. The first one was yesterday.
Negative
I wrote this a few days after this cycle’s transfer. It was sort of stream of consciousness, but if I got a positive, I was going to clean it up a little and use it as my first post in a new category entitled “Fertile & Hopeful.” The counter to the current category of “Barren & Bitter.”
I got the call from the clinic about half an hour ago, and the result was negative. I don’t have much to say right now, but I thought I’d post this to get it out of my drafts. It shows how high my hopes were for this cycle, which should give you an idea of how far down at the bottom I am right now.
You were transferred back into my body on the coldest day of winter. As I dressed to leave the house, to go receive you back into my care, I wrapped myself up as carefully as I could. I chose the most comfortable clothing I had that was still fit for public viewing. (Left to my own devices at home, I’m most likely to choose something like a t-shirt and yoga pants. If you stick around, you’ll learn this.) I wanted to drape myself in softness and comfort, to pamper my outer body as I hoped my inner body would pamper and nurture you.
When I reached the doctor’s office, I waited and waited in the waiting room for it to be my turn. Papa arrived and we waited together. When we were finally called back to the procedure room, he stood by my head and tightly held my hand while the doctor did his work. When the doctor was done, we were left alone for a while, so you could adjust to your new environment. Papa and I talked and talked while we waited, holding hands and laughing softly as we discussed our dreams and hopes for you.
As I write this, I don’t know if you’re still in there. I hope you are. I hope you’re tucked safely into position, getting ready to start growing, getting ready to eventually accept the life of a new soul entering you and quickening you. I still won’t know for a week whether or not you’re still there.
I hope you are.
