It was Just a Little Revenge, I do Love you Though

This is a super way to avoid taking a stroll through the underbrush of Google returns tonight when I research how to get started selling your photographs!  Not YOUR photos...mine of course.  It is 10:30pm as I write, and the 3rd sip of bourbon has happened with the joy that cozies in when you have waited for something.  I promised that I wouldn't stand it up tonight. However, I do like to wait to have it, if I'm going to, for when my child is tucked into dreamland.

I deem blog writing productive. Therefore, it is not avoidance of aforementioned Google search so much as I'm doing this first.  

It's a rockin Saturday night here at my digs.  I'm sitting on an air mattress with poofy pillows and Diners, Drive Ins and Dives on the television.  The air mattress is almost up against the cable box but fear not - the remote can get through when my channel bidding needs action.

I've spent days perusing through The Brokeass Gourmet cookbook looking for something to make before the author, Gabi Moskowitz, is on my show this week.  I settled on a few things to get us through our week.  More on that when it happens.  My copy of the book at this point looks rather dog-eared.  

So the last time I blogged and avoiding doing anything else like cleaning or researching, I wrote that FLIP and I were having a tension "thing" happening.  I didn't hear from him that evening and figured it was just that whole 5th grade I'm Not Your Friend thing.  I sent him a brief but nice enough email wishing him a good night of sleep. 

Until he called in the wee hours of the morning.  3:30am.  From his mother's.  He was mad at me and decided to get at me by going out to a bar to get his drink on, alone, for about five hours.  This is not normal behavior in this relationship.  I'm certain that if I had done that I'd have the How Dare You police at my door reading me my list of offenses.  Unfortunately he was having fun, being the smart guy at the bar (his words) and somehow blacked out, driving his car to an area that was not on his way home and crashing.  He was arrested and the charges are for "aggravated intoxication".  Hmmm.  Bummer.  Really.  If that word "bummer" over there could be 19 feet under a graveyard and its inhabitants and on fire, that would be suitable.  Font really does not do it justice.

He admitted at that time, as he was still drunk (and sort of denying it....but a slur is a slur is a slur) that he went in order to prove a point to me, to get a little revenge on me.  Revenge because I am going to New York City on the 11th of June to see my friend and co-host of our show and her boyfriend.  And he wasn't invited.  Only it wasn't that I didn't invite him.  It is on a weekday and my darling child is in school.  We only have a few hours together so I thought maybe he'd be a charmer and watch the kid after school.  He apparently did not ever get to hear this explanation because before he dashed out the door to Revoked Lisenceville, he interrupted me with anger whenever I tried to tell him why.  So I gave up.  I allowed him to continue on with his false narrative because he wasn't interested in hearing what i had to say.  He's like that.  He enjoys talking at people as much as possible.  But don't ask him to listen.  Unless he's trying to make an impression by listening.  Because in a romantic relationship, he's advanced bad at it.  Therefore, he ran out on the string of a narrative that was foreknown only to him - and the aim was to "make me feel as he felt".  

Now I don't know about any of you readers, but that to me is a shade of revenge.  Of disrespect.  It certainly doesn't come from a loving response.  Not the love that I know of.  So this is what we are dealing with.  

I was nice for the first few days, although with my warning sticker to please not thank me for being so understanding because I'm sure that I'm going to have my moments.  Blacked Out?  Don't remember parts of the night?  Accused me in the past of having issues with being in public with alcohol because I was one time nice to an older gentlemen while my partner was right there?  Mmmmkay.  This is not trustworthy behavior to me.  And yet he is angry with me because I see it as an intentional hurt.  

Manipulation on eleven.

There is more to the story at this point but I don't feel like really diving in too far.  There are AA meetings on the roster now before court starts for him.  Four times a week.  Our whole dynamic has changed and yessiree Bob, I am peeved a boundary outside of a Little Mad that this whole thing was avoidable if he had just heard me out and not tried to get revenge on me.  

Trust.  Trust is for Children.  (What's up Pat Benatar!)  

On another note, cheers to being a mom! The things that makes it all worth it from just today: A thank you for buying and making her a Hot Pocket (we are usually on a whole foods regimen with room for this stuff once in a great while), the fact that she was just dying to make me an apron for Mother's Day, only there was no one to help her gather the material or make it (but I told her that she can make this at anytime, not just mother's day and it would be awesome) and the last request before bed, as most nights...that I take my hair down and stay next to her so that she can play with it as she falls asleep (she says that my hair calms her).

Whatever is left of this relationship with FLIP may not hit the scoreboards in the Olympics, but the joy of mammahood sure makes me cherish the decision to be one.  And also to relish this bourbon.  

{photo:Mr. Kory's arts and Stuff}

Your Mama

How many of us had a Mother's Day that was any different, chore wise, than any other day? If you did, hit me up with a comment with your husband's name. I'm stealing him from you.

Being a single mama with a child who isn't Chore Savvy means well...that I still cleaned the litter box, guinea pig cage and the fallout from my ghetto portable washing machine that was hooked up to the sink where it shook so hard that it knocked over and tipped upside down a tank of hermit crabs that were nearby.

I only saw two hermit's since. The families of the other two have been notified.

Well here's what else I can tell you.

This:

Does not work.

This is a banana dipped into chocolate almond milk and left to chemically compose itself into a new and unappealing kind of smell (APPEAL - GET IT? Banana joke!).

The cup has been burned.

We spent a good portion of our weekend at the park or at Borders skinny dipping in a large caffeinated pool with whipped cream floats.

Yesterday morning we frequented O'Neils again. It was pretty darn good. Even after I'd pulled aside out of the eggs a tiny broccoli piece and a tiny corner of bacon. And spit out a bite gently into a napkin so as not to alert onlookers to my aversion to eating a green potato. It was almost a Where's Waldo smorgasboard all in two scrambled eggs! Who needs crayons when you can entertain the kids with this one. Humanling casually asked me in all curiosity, "Did we order broccoli, bacon or a green potato?"

Not in so many words we didn't.

The entertainment was fabulous. Here is Humanling (in her special superhero disguise) oblivious to the larger boys behind her who are pummeling a third, much smaller boy.

Today however, we went to the park where I could sit with my array of enthusiam. What would I read first???

I decided to finish Save Me From Myself by the guy from Korn, Brian "Head" Welch. He left Korn eons ago to follow Jesus. Very cool book and really, the guy is not a literary headspinner, but I haven't read a book that caused me to tell a friend who wanted to visit "No, I want to chill with a book" in a while.

We also have a Science Of Mind magazine, a Rachel Ray magazine (I had to get my own subscription - my mother clings to each issue of hers like she gave birth to it), a newsletter from our local healthfood store, my bargain yoga book to help me do moves to soothe my back and therefore my sanity, and last but not least, a book about growing up as a child in New York City.

Funny that book should be around. There was a couple on the grass behind me and the guy said to his wife, "What would you think about moving to New York City?" I hadn't exposed the book to them at all at this point. I'm pretty sure it went over like the lead balloon since I couldn't hear her voice at all. Then he asked again, "Well, what do you think?"

"Are you kidding?" is what she said.

So then I took off all my clothes and ran back and forth yodeling with the cover of the book towards them. Not really but I did put the book within view to see if it was a 'sign' for them to see it. Who knows. I love signs. Was I messing with fate? My answer is no. God put me there so maybe I was supposed to hear that and happened to have that book on me.

Glancing over at the Merry Go Round, I saw children, including mine, starting to colonize in hopes of someone pushing them. And then daddy pushed them. I'm not sure who's, but it was a dad for sure. This guy's problem was that he stood too close to this apparatus and then got suckered into pushing.

That's why I sit way over here.

AND this photo is zoomed. Objects in mirror are closer, indeed. And if you note the little guy to the left in red, lying down....

He horizontally made his way to the ground. Poor little guy. Now that the dad is touching him, he owns him. I'm not sure who this kid came with but for sure, he and his pedigree papers were leaving with this Florence Nightengale Male.

And here is where my parental skillz come to a culmination. Humanling is celebrating Mother's Day with a new family as she ditches me and my portable library and CNN camera that observes without lending assitance to the little boy getting beat up by the Hooligans earlier, or the merry go round that flings off little horizontal bodies.

But now is my favorite part of the day. The ghetto dishwasher is wheeled over and hooked up to the sink while Humanling sleeps and I happily write away, forgetting that I still have to answer a couple of emails before climbing into bed with one of those books that I will read a paragraph of before passing out.

Happy Mama's Day!