Duck or Take the Hit

This relationship for me lately is hugely like a game of dodgeball.

Things could be wonderful for a moment. There could have been a beautiful compliment, moment, or maybe a nice bottle of wine involved. Everyone’s feeling good. We’re on our individual computers, me enjoying my good buddy Dorothy Hopkins and the wares that we’re exchanging for Farmville. He, playing the Sims on his computer.

I’ll have a weak moment and think that it’s ok to break the barrier and make a comment on something from the social network. I’ll have noticed that two particular folks on the site that we went to junior high school with seem to have found each other in adulthood and appear as though they are in the upswing of a relationship. Much like us! Only we didn’t find each other on Facebook…my guy hates Facebook and things it is the epicenter of all that is evil. In fact, when it comes up in conversation, he usually loses control and mutates into a spitting llama.

But I try anyway. Either that or I forget how fruitless and dangerous it is to mention anything regarding the site. If I’m doing anything other than simply playing games on Facebook, then apparently I can’t be trusted.

So I mention this couple….how cute it is….and he fixates on the fact that when I was 14, I made out with the guy. Ok, true. I did that. It wasn’t even fun at the time….the guy was a bulldozer, very forceful but whatever…bygones to me. I don’t care and if I did then maybe it’s something that I’d need to work out in therapy.

I mentioned back that I was pointing out that it’s cute….two other people hooking up later on in life. We’re adults….aren’t we past that who kissed who back when Duran Duran was super popular stage? Can’t it be something non-competitive and not the least bit serious?
Dodgeball. Either I’m trying drastically to get out of the way because I’ve mentioned something from 1984 or else I’m going to get smashed with the ball. And in most cases, once the dodging starts, the ball is going to hit me anyway.

It’s too bad that I didn’t use better discretion and allowed the funness of the moment dictate my words. Because then he started down the ladder of descent slowly but no doubt, without any other aim except to reach the bottom. Now I’m hearing about how there are a billion ex-boyfriends in my life. Yes, I am “friends” on Facebook with exes. We aren’t talking daily. Or weekly. Or monthly. Sheesh, lucky if it is as regular as an insurance paid pap smear.
But my words are as good as a used car salesman’s around here. My partner is a well intentioned man. Just too bad that his emotions and mind are warped a bit due to calluses from his past. What can you do with someone who won’t believe you or stop policing your every sentence?

I have learned that there seems to be a lot more that I should not say than I should share. I never know what memory bomb is going to blow an evening, a weekend, a good part of a week into shrapnel.

I miss my Self. I miss my freedom to think and speak without the Thought Police turning my home into a prison. I’ve learned how to work hard to just be quiet and hope that Hurricane Offended will blow by without ripping off too many roofs.

The only thing these fights allow me to do is to leave the house with my girl and head to Borders where we can pretend for a couple of hours that the world is right again. Where the bargain bins are full of life. Where people smile and the lights are golden happy colors. Where the little man in our bodies shuts off the cortisol switch.

I had an alternate day of beauty, awe and stress. It is my children and my memories of hope that have given me the most pleasure today. But that is for a different post.

Babes In Bookland!

Oh boyohboyohboy!!! There is nothing on this earth quite like the feeling of holding a pile of Borders Gift Cards and embarking on the Tour De Books! The possibilities of purchases, knowledge, entertainment and café beverages are enormous! Humanling and I set off today for a Three Hour Tour…a Three Hour Tour…..(hour and tour do not rhyme at all. I should get a grammatical beast that explains the drunken weirds and inconsistencies of the English language while I’m there!).

Just having had breakfast, the Ling and I were not yet suited for the café. She did however, request an Izzie as soon as she thought of it. Too early o’clock. Immediately after starting to suck it down in rapid straw fashion, she started to look, well, not suited to be indoors at a store. All potential carefully chosen purchases were placed in a pile and I steered her to the outside where she could get some air and hopefully recoup! After all, we had Borders’ GOLD to spend!
Within two minutes of freezing New England air, a viewing of a yellow trail through the snow, jokes courtesy of Mamma Moi and loosening the layers, she was raring to get back inside and finishing panning for papyrus flavored jewels!

Oh and did we have fun.

One book I decided to look for on the handy Don’t Harass an Employee When You Can Use our (sometimes confusing)Kiosk, was Gifts From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I basically remember only a handful of books from when I was around 22 that made my soul just open. This was one of them. But how would it fare to a 41 year old in 2010? I saw that they had stocked it on the Christian religion shelf. Really? I don’t remember this at all about it. But ok. And there it was. Small, brief and just full of invitation to re-read. It was nearly $20 for the hardcover. I decided that I could find it online for much cheaper. Right now I see it listed on Amazon.com for $10.88 brand new. I don’t recall what it was with that book that I am left with such a fond feeling. It was given to me by my then boyfriend’s mother, who I felt was an absolutely embodiment of pure love. Maybe it was the who and not the gift itself. But I will eventually read it again.

The bargain bin is sometimes something of a disaster to walk past. Cookbooks from former Melrose Place stars, romance novels (Le Ewwww!), and how to make origami out of your phone bills are all commonplace and in abundance. Sometimes though, if you’re patient, it doesn’t have to be a complete Marshall’s experience. I cite Marshall’s because I have to be in a real *special* mood to sift through things there. Same experience with TJ Maxx. More like patience Maxxed Out. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason sometimes to the racks. Surprising conundrum for someone like me who hosts power paper and book piles at home.

I did find in the bin today though The Mindful Child by Susan Kaiser Greenland. I figured, why not? We like the term ‘Mindful’ in this house. Even if it’s “you are full of Mindful Sh*t”. The book’s cover tells me happily that it will help manage stress and become happier, kinder and more compassionate. That’s a five star kid personality right there! My Ling is pretty darn wonderful…although to turn off the bias for a moment, she could really use a dose of compassion in her veins. And all for $3.99!

I spend a season or two resisting the next year’s calendars because I simply can’t stand to pay full price for something that will depreciate by 50% on December 26th. Today I found a fun daily 2011 calendar about one of my most favoritist of subjects: Vampires. This has daily info on legends, lore, practices and protections. Hm. I’m more interested in the words that begin with “L” in that sentence but it’s good for me to know what NOT to do when the big day comes. I’m certainly not going to chase away a vampire when I can roam bookstores for all of eternity simply for failing to employ Anti Vampire technique.

We stopped at my favorite section of all – the one that holds all the pagan, 2012, astrology, tarot, wicca and shaman books. A Kindle, I am sure, has it’s joys. But a book – to hold a book and turn its pages….I don’t think that can be replicated. After looking at quite a few, I felt drawn to A Witch’s 10 Commandments – Magickal Guidelines for Everyday Life. Yeeee-Yay-Yah! The edge of the pages remind me of what the hardcover Anne Rice books are like…those uneven, ripped type of borders…..just a home-made, olden feel to it. A Can’t Wait to read pick! But then again, how many books do you really buy that you CAN wait to read?

On the way out, I picked up a new issue of Yoga International. I had mentioned earlier to Humanling how much fun it would be if we cut out photos from magazines that we like and made our own scrapbooks out of them. Of course I will need to read my yoga magazine first before decimating it, and simply couldn’t find a single magazine that I wouldn’t want to read before cutting it up.

Now Humanling, after feeling much better, found about 200 things that she wanted with her $25 gift card (it was a Visa so they take out that $3.95 activation fee up front. A tad gratuitous in my humble opinion). We had to go weeding in the Borders red basket a number of times before she could wittle it down to something under $1000. She chose two paperbacks eventually – Luv Ya Bunches by Lauren Myracle and Is This Normal – An American Girls series book. It was love at first sight when she moseyed past and saw it’s flash of giant PINK. She’d never heard of it previously, but picked It up and it made the basket cut. Which eventually made the receipt cut.
There’s a lot to be said (but don’t worry, I won’t) for the American Girls books. I don’t know how their story series goes but the subject of obtaining teen behavior and body books are outstanding. It’s good just to hand them to the young blooming lass and walk off as if it isn’t a big deal. Eventually they figure out the excitement and come back with questions after long, porous reads alone. Simply amazing books.

She also needed a journal to record her feelings in…somewhere safe to write and draw, as the pre-teen brain must have a way to vent and express. She saw journals within the last couple of years that have the magnetic cover and always wanted one. They’d always been a few dollars out of range every time we are within range of one. But not today! Today we were invincible with our Borders Gift Cards! And….it had a clearance sticker on it. Those beautiful stickers with the red bar and bold black numbers! Bonus!

And of course, the magazine rack – I had my periodical fix, it’s nice to pass on the fun of magazines and the like with my Ling. She chose at first a magazine on Baby’s. Like for pregnant women. To the tune of a resounding No on my part. I walked her to the Bieber Bibles and other Teen poster pages. She spotted the Simpsons comic book, #26. I am a big fan of comics, bigger of manga. So of course! Perfect. I slipped the Baby magazine back onto the shelf and orchestrated a stadium’s worth of cheer for the newer choice.

Not to mention the CD’s…Humanling loves those NOW mixes so we got her one of those. I just had to buy Diddy Dirty Money – Last Train to Paris. I j’adore that song “Hello,Good Morning”. Hula hoop to that and I dare you not to feel totally soul freedom and glee. That’s right….that’s pretty damn special!

I was also looking to widen my Ella Fitzgerald collection but in my search decided I wanted something with multiple female jazz singers. I ended up with Verve Unmixed 4….a collection of good jazz singers with the music remixed to hold hands with hip hop. Nice concept!

Material goods are looked at many times as evil and shallow. And many many times this is the case. But books….that’s like a million worlds, a million galaxies and possibilities. That’s an experience, not an item. I’m content now that I’ve gotten to connect to the mothership for a few hours today. My blood is half Borders, half Amazon (dot com) woman!

Inevitably Blessed

Today we are finally receiving proof that snow exists. I feel like I’ve heard the Sky is Falling a number of times this season so far, only to receive nary a flake. Booooo!

I do not enjoy being cold. I enjoy even less, being hot. By default, bring down the mercury!

I do love the cozy, hunker down feeling of a snowstorm. We had an amazing Christmas day yesterday…the very holiday we’d been dreading simply because it has been a rough health season for the Honey, leaving us to mainly rely on my paycheck for a family of three in a very expensive town. We managed to buy a few gifts for our families, but our main concern was to give Humanling a kid’s Christmas. Straight from the Humanling’s mouth, “This is the best Christmas Ever!”. That in itself made us happy.

As the snow comes down today, we stare at the full birdfeeder. This is another joy of ours….to see the pine grosbeaks, doves, blue jays (well…Honey is not enjoying the bluejays but to me they aren’t simply Bird Bullies of the feeder, they are still birds), chickadees, tufted titmice (not even sure if the plural would be that but it seems to make sense!) and nuthatches. What a wonderful cast of our daily Bird Show. We had run out of bird food a month or more ago and could hardly stand to watch the birds mainly disappear. Even worse was watching them show up desperately, pecking inside the empty holes, looking for anything at all. I’m almost positive they’d even have settled for a gobstopper.

But now, it is full. The birds have telegraphed the other birds that there is one place nearby that is serving in this weather.

Our other animals seem content and happy…guinea pigs have carrots from grandma’s yesterday. Cats and dog are all curled up on various pieces of furniture.

We travelled down the hill to the market for Snowed In type food. Which is anything you can get your hands on at this point. Say honey, doesn’t motor oil make a good buttery sauce?

The shelves were becoming more and more bare from the organized, under frenzied but over annoyed crowd. A sense of humour was not to be found. What WAS found though were people who may have been out of The Happening. It isn’t sound that they were REALLY trying to off themselves, but debatable when more than one person walks/drives/sleds aimlessly in a parking lot without much regard to the fact that it really isn’t a ghost town. Those aren’t mirages…they are actual CARS coming at your back. Thankfully with people behind the wheel who want to enjoy their Christmas wares without the slap of manslaughter on their record.
But now, with the beautiful gift of wood for the fireplace, a fire burns and the three of pursue after Christmas enjoyment. Art to be made, posts to be writ, football to be watched, beer bottles to be kissed by the Honey.

The most beautiful gifts of all, were every single one of them. We were far blessed! I am swimming in giftcards to Borders. My heaven, my sanctuary, my All That Is Right with this World. Beautiful, beautiful Borders. Of course I fantasize about reading more than I actually wish to be reading!

But the top gift of all, the Mother of all Gifts, is that my older girl, Miz Eye and her boyfriend of 5 years, are gifting the world with a blessed new being! As life keeps opening up new days, new lessons and new passions, I am inevitably regenerating again...I am going to be a 41 year old Grandma! So for now, lots of sweet dreams of books and the time to read them as well as that fresh new baby smell and a cross country trip to Arizona next year to get to enjoy it!