“Focus on yourself.”
“Don’t care so much about what other people think.”
“Grow a backbone.”
“Quit being a doormat.”
Dare to dream. All good advice. I’d like to think I’ve come a long way from the barefoot & pregnant girl who refused to get dressed in the morning, cried all day long and stared longingly out the window. I’d like to think I’ve grown a backbone; gathered some self-esteem amongst the ashes of my past. As strong as single motherhood has made me, I can’t deny my unconscious fishy needs.
I’m a Pisces. I’m astrologically screwed. Here are some descriptions of the unfortunate fate of my species.
Pisces people are frequently pegged as wishy-washy. They believe in people, are deeply hurt by compassionless human behavior, and have a hard time saying no. – Cafe Astrology
Pisceans are compassionate, charitable and will quickly put the needs of others ahead of their own. The flip side to their giving natures is that oft-timid Fish are likely to be taken advantage of by less well-meaning souls – Astrology.com
Where do {Pisces} draw the line between compassion for their partner’s “weakness,” and saying, “Thank you for that blow. May I have another?”- Sasstrology.com
We live in a world where this element of one’s personality is almost considered a disability. In Modern America, where even the most tight-lipped, unforgiving, distrustful person can STILL get their identity stolen, my fellow fish and I might as well put a bullseye on our backs.
Its survival of the fittest, in business, relationships & social status. Those who aren’t guarded, who don’t have the street smarts to protect their sensitive little underbellies are going to get squashed in the process. Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly fighting against my need to bond with a person and the common sense I’ve been forced to acquire that says “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
There are some things we just can’t change about ourselves. What we are attracted to; what we desire. What tweaks our nerves; what gets our goat. Why we always order the same thing at certain restaurants. Why we crave specific scents; why we always cry during Fried Green Tomatoes. What makes us smile, and what song triggers the dance reflex.
Maybe Brian Wilson described it the best when he wrote the lyrics ”I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.”
That’s not to say I DON”T want to live in these times. Even though I have a tendency to get myself into bad situations by trusting too much, I think I’ve learned enough lessons to counteract that to a certain degree. In fact, in a world where empathy & compassion has become such a rarity, we Pisces should VALUE this about ourselves.
Of course it helps to have friends to kick us in the ass once and a while. 
The Nuggets lost 2 nights in a row. So much for cheering me up.
Saturday morning began with LB asking when her daddy was going to pick her up. I told her he and Blondie were busy this weekend but she would get to see him next Friday.
She then proceeded to sit in her room all morning and brush her My Little Pony’s hair. Couldn’t convince her to get dressed. Couldn’t convince her to eat breakfast. Every time I asked her to do something she replied with “I will in a second.” Then she ignored my request. She dumped her entire box of 96 crayons out and strategically placed them through out the living room. I will probably find crayons in random places for the next year and a half.
Sunday began the same way, with ”Is daddy picking me up today?”
In the last week, Miss Independent has been replaced with “I can’t do it.” While getting dressed, she intentionally kicks off her pants right before she pulls them up, screaming in frustration. She puts both feet in one pant leg and cries. She throws herself on the floor and bemoans her failure. read more…
I had my first Parent/Teacher conference today. I know my kiddo is only 3, but the program she’s been going to is 1000x better than the hell hole HEADSTART. They actually sit down with parents and tell them useful things about their children. They follow Creative Curriculum. All the teachers have BAs or higher.
Not to sounds like an elitist bitch, but I like that.
Roofie did not make their grand appearance. They also ditched out on this weekend with LB because they needed some “child-free time” together.
Blow me, Assclowns.
LB’s awesome teachers told me she’s a very creative, imaginative, social little girl. They also told me that when she comes back from her dad’s house she is more aggressive, argumentative, stressed out, anxious, clingy, emotional, and over-tired.
They want to classify her as having emotional risk factors.
Can someone pour hot sauce in my eye, please? Or better yet, Roofie’s eye?
I plan on drowning myself in Carmelo Anthony and some microbrews tonight.
I haven’t been sleeping well. I hate my huge empty bed. I hate that I’m curled into a single corner every night, pressed up against pillows in the fetal position, my back against the wall.
I’ve started to realize there’s never going to be a permanent male fixture in my bed. I should sell this Queen and go back to my childhood Twin.
I stare at the ceiling every night, my mind playing tricks on me. Sometimes I swear I hear someone walking through the house, doors opening, walls thumping. I know the weather is getting colder and I’m just getting readjusted to my noisy heater, and the creaky response of this house, but I haven’t been able to shake it lately.
I feel alone, and not in the good way I used to rave about. I feel isolated. I feel cold. I feel scared. I feel weak. And I fucking KNEW this would happen when I started bringing men back into my life.
Why the hell did I do it?
I can’t sleep anymore. I cry at night. I’ve stopped blogging (as you can see). I haven’t worked on my screenplay. I look at my Wii Fit and I can’t find the motivation to climb onto the balance board. I get home from work, put my pajamas on, make dinner for LB, and go through the bedtime routine.
After she’s asleep, I sit on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. Sometimes I drink tea. Sometimes I read. Mostly I just stare at the TV until I force myself to go lay down. Do I sleep once I’m in bed? No.
Work has been getting consistently worse. The impending doom of everyone’s job is obviously chiseling away at the office’s morale. Ironically, more job duties have been passed my way. More responsibilities, bigger workload, more cross-training, more requests, more projects…you get the picture. I’m busy all day, chatting with Chivman and Facebooking is the only reprieve I get. I know social networking on the clock is a big “No No”, but honestly, in the face of massive layoffs, no one gives a shit anymore.
I need an attitude adjustment NOW. I find myself saying f***ed up things like “This is where that imaginary husband would come in handy” MORE and MORE often. I don’t like that longing in my life. What happened to my complete satisfaction with self-sufficiency? Did I forget that I’ve been taking care of myself AND my daughter for the last 3 years? Why am I whining?
Maybe I’m just going through that 10% of the time I don’t like being alone, and praying it doesn’t get to be 20%. I don’t have the energy to pine away the rest of my life. And oh how the Damsel in Distress Pisces would love that.
In an attempt to ward this off, I’ve been playing this song over and over. I may be crazy, but dance music is kinda like my non-narcotic antidepressant.
Remember my little freak out about being De-Mommied? I am happy to say that I am once again called ”Mommy” full-time. To add to that sick, selfish pleasure, LB announced that I am also ” a better cook than Blondie.”
As much as I tried to prevent myself from enjoying that statement (like the courts want you to), I found it near impossible.
15 pages into screenplay. Very excited to see it take shape.
Ictkapuss and I had some hang time this weekend, and like teenage girls, we chatted for hours about the obvious….BOYS.
Neither of us want to believe that we’re still attracted to bad boys. We are older, wiser and have goals/projects that require too much time and energy to throw away on someone who’s main priority in life is to get wasted. We concurred that our One Night Stand days were over, and that dating younger men (see Young Buck) wasn’t worth the babysitting & adolescent drama.
So what DOES turn us on? What type of man are we looking for? Obviously, I have a thing for Scorpios, but the more I thought about Chivman and HS Sweetheart, the more I realized I like a man with a story. A history. A past. You know, experience.
On my date a while back, I tried and tried to get the guy’s story out. I wanted to hear about his life, his interests. I wanted to see if he was comfortable telling me something he may have failed at, something he overcame, something that had made him a better, stronger person.
I don’t ever post song lyrics, but I’ve been at loss for my own words lately. After throwing a mini hissy fit a few weeks ago, I bit the bullet and finished my Screenplay’s treatment last night, and it pretty much drained all the creativity out of me. I forgot how HARD it is summarize your entire story in 4 pages. I’ve never been good at being…succinct.
So instead, here’s a filler post with some Pisces-lyrics. Morcheeba is one of my favorite bands, mostly because their songs are about watery, ocean-related hippie gaga. But they are soothing, comforting and relaxing when you are sitting at home alone, staring at a defective computer that “thinks” in between keystrokes.
So I thought I’d share. Enjoy.
Well I wish I could think of some cliche to mouth
To make our parting seem less sad
But if I told you lies I promised you the moon
The truth would come trickling from my eyes
So run honey run, hide in the wind
And never stop to look inside your mind
And I wish I could wash all my weeping blues away
And watch them disappear on morning tide
But I seek after soul after sounds of the sea
The charm forever round my mind
So run honey run, hide in the wind
And never stop to look inside your mind
So run honey run, hide in the wind
And never stop to look inside your mind
And I wish I could fly like a bat from a cave
From darkness of my ignorance to light
And forever live on the echoes of our love
And die like some star burning bright
So run honey run, hide in the wind
And never stop to look inside your mind
Click here to listen.
Over a year ago, I posted this PMS gem, bemoaning my fat ass life. While swapping summer clothes for winter clothes, I found the jeans at the bottom of my drawer. Still brand-spanking new, and completely unworn, I took a deep breath and slid them up my legs.
Guess what? THEY FIT!
So, if you’re feelin’ down about your present situation, who knows where you’ll be in a year. If you’ve been blogging that long, take a look at your posts from a year ago.
What have you grown into? What fits you now that didn’t before? Think about what will fit you next year!
I’ve mentioned before that I work for the state of Colorado. Obviously, we aren’t as much in the hole as California or Arizona, but the government isn’t going in the right direction financially, and the Governor has made it clear that people will be losing their jobs.
The Head Honcho of our organization came to our office meeting yesterday. 2.5-5 million dollars are expected to be cut from our budget in the next year. Since the Governor has used federal stimulus money to ease some of the financial burden, this means that we may be able to keep our jobs a little longer. If Governor Ritter decides Colorado needs that money NOW, then we may be cleaning out our desks ASAP.
Last time my organization made Personnel cuts, it was based on seniority. People were moved from department to department, bumping out the peons who only had a few months under their belt. I’ve been employed for about 9 months now. The hiring freeze went into effect right after I got my job, so guess who is on the bottom of the totem pole?
I also talked to Lawyerdude about how moving 6 hours away will affect my custody agreement. He told me that I need to give Roofie a certain amount of time before I leave, and notify them in writing. He also advised that I either get a job in Denver or get laid off before I make this move, otherwise I may have a fight on my hands. I think I will probably have a fight either way, but I was glad to get a little more information.
So do I throw the job search into high gear already, and keep one step ahead of the game? Do I take my chances and see if I can keep my job at least till next summer? Do I just wait until I’m laid off so Roofie has no case against me moving?
Still working on my screenplay. I’m on page 3 of my Treatment, but I hate it. I have too much going on, too many characters, too much drama, no way to resolve it. Its starting to remind me of a really bad Lifetime movie and I haven’t even started the physical script yet. I’m trying not to let my previous screenwriting experience cloud my pure little baby script, but last night I had a minor freakout after trying to get LB to sleep in her Twin bed for the first time.
Hopefully tonight I can get my s*** together and fix this problem.
I’ve been applauding my singleness for a while now. I’ve declared how awesome it feels to be alone. How much more I like myself, how much stronger I feel, how satisfying it is to make choices and reap the benefits of self-sufficiency. I still agree with all of that.
When Rooferman ended our relationship, my situation improved dramatically. It was a breath of fresh air to be able to feed and clothe my daughter without asking him for money. It felt good to look in the mirror and admire myself instead of wondering if I should even get dressed. I felt useful again. I felt proud of my abilities as a mother instead of shaming myself for not being able to keep up with housecleaning and cooking the way I “should” have.
So it feels great to be alone, but does it only feel great in comparison to the awful place I came from? Does singleness feel so good because my previous couplehood was so painful? Am I going to the extreme, trying to get as far away from my life as I knew it? I herald my ability to be alone, and I haughtily look down on the people who bounce from relationship to relationship, sneering at their inability to cope with being alone. I think I’ve developed a superiority complex. It doesn’t help that Rooferman hooked up with Blondie only days after he ended it with me, so I know some of that degradation is coming from personal betrayal. It’s obvious I pride myself in any way that I’m NOT LIKE THEM.
I can’t help but notice, the closer I get to Chivman and HS Sweetheart, the more I like having them around. The longer I go between seeing them, the harder it gets. I don’t think my desire for singleness is ALL in my head. I do like being alone, but I don’t like being lonely. While I’m basking in the afterglow of male company, I’m definitely lonely. A few days later I get back to my normal, uppity, empowered self, but until then, I’m hugging my pillow at night, pretending it has a pulse.
I still agree that being alone is good for me. My tendencies to turn into a doormat when a tall, dark mysterious man enters my life haven’t been fully vanquished. But I’ve discovered that being alone is much easier once you’re used to it. When you’ve been without the touch of a man for years, you start to forget what its like. That makes your singleness MUCH easier. Now that I’ve been reintroduced to the elements of masculinity, I’m savoring them like the last rays of summer.
Or maybe I’m just playing with fire.
Pre-Single Mommyhood
