May 10, 2007

A Different Kind of Project Plan

Maybe it's best to have a once a week update on the Lemonheads, or else people will think I'm baby crazy (which I'm not, but I admit being knocked up does factor in my mind somewhat).

So far, everything here is fine. I've hit week 15 now, and this is where the parties get started.

Being pregnant is not unlike being a project manager-there are a lot of project targets that you have to hit and a whole lot of milestones that are coming up. When you're doing IVF, you're maybe a little more aware of the milestones:

Project Milestone 1 - Start fertility drugs
Project Milestone 2 - Egg retrieval of the crappy amount of eggs I produced
Project Milestone 3 - Put the little suckers back in there, once they partied with some Angus sperm
Project Milestone 4 - Pregnancy test
Project Milestone 5 - first ultrasound check for heartbeat
Project Milestone 6 - second ultrasound check-heart still beating?
Project Milestone 7 - Hand off to OB-GYN
Project Milestone 8 - First trimester ends
Project Milestone 9 - Nuchal scan and the resulting fear
Project Milestone 10 - Hang out and be glad the puking is over
Project Milestone 11 - Scan at 20 weeks to check growth

and then lots of little milestones after Milestone 11 to ensure they're still growing, they're not re-enacting "North and South" in there, and that they're ok, before you hit the project completion stage:

Project Completion - Birth the little suckers

But throughout the whole project are mitigations involving the risk register. There are always risks, right? Every project has risks. This project has all kinds of risks-we had a risk of miscarriage (and, with "high-risk twins", as my doctors call my pregnancy, we still do). We had a subchorionic hemotoma baking away in my uterus, which caused bleeding and had a risk of miscarriage (it's gone now). We had a risk of Down's syndrome (and I guess technically we still do, as we only tested one of the twins but the other twin has a 1:898 chance of having Down's, and I'll take those odds.) We have a risk of anemia. We have a risk of pre-eclampsia. We have a risk of pre-term labor.

Risks, risks, risks.

It's hard to relax-when you have people screeching at you that your babies are high risk, it sort of registers with you. At the same time, our Lemonheads have proven time and time again that they are absolutely superheroes who haven't given us a reason to not believe in them. So believe I will.

I don't think any of this makes me unique. I get the feeling that unless you're one of the trainwrecky Duggars, for whom giving birth is as normal as getting your teeth cleaned, that all pregnancies come with a degree of concern. Maybe that's the shape of the game, and once they're born the concerns continue-Will SIDS pop its horrible head up? Will they have learning problems? Will they sleep through the night soon? Will they be potty trained by the time they get to high school? Will they really want to tattoo the back of their head?

Maybe that's a part of having kids.

What's harder for me to get used to is the fact that my body, it's not mine anymore. The other morning I woke up and lazily stretched. My stomach - which has become an extremely hard mound - surged and moved, and then settled again. I stared at it and wondered if Sigourney Weaver was going to pop out of it. I have no idea what happened, but it was as though I was inhabited by something else, which I suppose in truth that's what's going on.

Pregnancy for me has become ticking off each milestone. I have also had to change request a number of project tasks into my Lemonhead project plan-as the doctor put me on iron tablets and a pregnant woman already has digestive problems, I didn't know I'd spend my day praying to the god of Fig Newtons if he'd just let me poop that day. That's become a daily task. Another daily task is checking for signs of life in there, because although singleton pregnancies don't feel babies moving until about 17-18 weeks, twins make themselves known earlier, and one of the Lemonheads is situated just under the skin of my stomach, so that Lemonhead really should be any day now.

I never expected to actually get pregnant, and as time goes on I'm more and more surprised that I'm staying pregnant. It's as though I actually stand a chance of having the Lemonheads now. It's getting to a strange time - I'm 15 weeks pregnant today. As of next week's 16 weeks pregnant, if the babies decide it's time to come out it won't be considered a miscarriage, but instead it would be a stillbirth. Unlike my previous miscarriage which had me emitting blood clots the size of my palm while I sat vacantly on the couch watching Scrubs, from here on if something went wrong I'd be going into labor.

But nothing will go wrong, right?

We still sometimes struggle with the enormity of it all. Angus is unhappy today as we toured the nursery we've been thinking of. The cost alone is depressing, but add in to the fact that the twins won't be attending nursery until at least next March but there's already a waiting list which basically screams "you can't get in until May", and the depression deepens. A year's waiting list for two babies that aren't even born yet. I was delighted by the nursery, actually-happy bouncy kids and a host of toys designed to stimulate and educate, loads of bright colors and projects that the kids do themselves-filled the place. But it's weird to fill out a waiting list form for something that's only just the size of your fist.

Yesterday I was sitting on the couch with a screaming migraine (yet another fun side effect of being pregnant. When I told my consultant about the migraines, he told me to take Tylenol and drink water. If HE had these kind of headaches, I can tell you he wouldn't be taking Tylenol and water himself.) I was in pretty bad shape yesterday-I passed clean out for most of the afternoon and went to bed early in hopes of getting rid of the screaming agony. But as I sat there in the afternoon, trying to write a technical spec outside of my screaming headache, I had a funny sensation inside. It was like a few bubbles moving just below the surface of my stomach, a strange feeling of a smooth bump, like there was something turning just below my navel.

I put a hand to my stomach.

Another milestone.

"Hello there," I said. "I'm your mommy."

And as each day passes, they become more real.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:41 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 1165 words, total size 7 kb.

May 09, 2007

Where I Am the Target Audience

Growing up, I worshipped the TV.

I still do.

I have absolutely zero shame about the big plasma TV hanging in the living room (and the other one hanging in the kitchen). I have zero shame about our Sky Plus box (the UK equivalent of satellite + Tivo). I have zero shame about the DVDs and DVD recorder we have. I love TV. I always have, I always will, and while I absolutely love me a good book too (and read a few a week), my heart will always belong to the boob tube (I'm not cheating on you with my books, TV, I swear it!).

It never bothered me that I might wind up like Bill Murray's character on Scrooged, whereby I remember my childhood as being actual clips from TV shows I watched.

(Frank-I remember a girl, and a field with flowers, and she tripped and fell!
Ghost of Christmas Past-You idiot! You IDIOT! That was Little House on the Prarie!)

TV simply was part of my childhood, just as it's part of my adulthood. It's probably safe to say that I watch a bit too much TV. When I'm working from home these days I'm propped up on the couch with the TV on as background noise, and my entire first trimester was spent napping on the couch with Charmed playing in the background (I don't know what it is about Charmed that's so soporific, I just know that having it on guaranteed I'd get the snooze out). I do recognize that I'm contributing to the smoldering hole in the ozone by having the TV on while I work, but I can't express how much comfort a TV brings me. It's the sanity in my insane world. TV - and macaroni and cheese - are one of the only constants I have ever known in my life.

Films were also a massive part of my life, and sadly I don't see as many films as I used to anymore. A weekend TBS 80's trip is just what the doctor ordered for most ailments. To this day I can clock an actor on a film and tell you what other films or tv shows they've done. My stepkids think that I have some kind of amazing talent when I do this, the bad news is that it's a terribly unmarketable skill that will get me nowhere fast, but I can tell you that the chap who played a bit part Secret Service agent in CSI is now a star in Lost. It might save my life if I'm ever stuck playing "Trivia Pursuit-the Russian Roulette Edition", but otherwise it's pretty pointless.

But it's not just TV shows and movies that hallmark my behavior.

Lately, I've come to realize that I'm a product of advertising.

I remember that horrible film Demolition Man, where the radio stations only air ads as the main feast. Sign me up for some of that. I'm happy to sing along to how I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Weiner (although honestly, I can't think of anything worse.)

I'm a jingle-writers dream, and I've always known that. I have a bizarre, full of holes memory that can remember some remarkable details while completely forgetting key other ones. Details I remember include songs from ads I have heard a time or two too many. I don't have to go for the product, and generally speaking, I don't. The ad just has to hit the right note with me, and if it does that, it's with me for life. It also doesn't mean I had to like the ad to remember it, which makes for some unfortunate times.

When I moved to Sweden, the first Swedish phrase I learnt was from an ICA commercial (ICA is a chain of grocery stores there). To this day I don't know why it struck a chord with me, but the first words I was able to say in Swedish translates to "Excuse me, I only have a bit of salmon here."

Very useful indeed.

Over here I also tend to parrot ads from TV. Half the time I don't even know I'm doing it, I just "wake up" and find I'm spouting off an ad. My latest trip is singing along to the Sheila's Wheels advert, which is an ad for a women's only car insurance company as acted by an Australian cast (For ladies who insure their cars! Sheila's Wheels are superstars! For bonzer car insurance deals....girls rely on Sheila's Wheels!) This makes no sense to me, because the commercial is kind of crap and I wouldn't join a woman-only car insurance company anyway. Maybe I only sing it a lot because it permeated my brain while it played during my Charmed naps, so any day now I'll start having the dress sense of Alyssa Milano, aka "they ran out of fabric so I just threw some feathers on it. Now look at my navel."

But my memory is really consumed by commercials I saw when I was a kid. I repeat a load of them, all the time, only the problem is they're slightly out of context here.

Examples:

I woke up at 6:00 the other day as we had an early start. I shrug on my T-shit, incredibly bleary eyed, and whimpered "Time to make the donuts."

Angus shook his head. "What? Are you still asleep?"

I replied, "No. Winchell's donuts. It's time to make the donuts."

He didn't get it of course-not only don't they have Winchell's Donuts here (I suspect, in fact, the whole chain is gone) but that was a commercial from my childhood.

Childhood TV commercials get rolled out all the time. I like watching 80's movieswith the idea that I might be able to play "spot the product". In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, while Richie Dreyfuss is going mad making a fake clay mountain in his living room, there's the beer commercial I used to know and love playing in the background of his alien-induced madness ("When you say Bud you have it all, when you say Bud you have it all! La da da da da da da da da dada!"). It doesn't beat the motorcycle Rainier Beer commercial, but I have a feeling that was a regional commercial and maybe not shown all over the country. Similarly, I watched the commercials in E.T. and other films from my childhood.

I trot out the ads whenever possible. When Angus asked me how I got a stain out of a shirt, I winked and said, "Ancient Chinese secret!" I love to say "Silly Rabbit-Trix are for kids!" in situations varying from telling the dog what to do to business meetings. And of course, whenever someone tries a new food and enjoys it, they get the "Hey Mikey! He likes it!" routine from me. And fucking everything is The Other White Meat.

Not that those commercials mean anything over here.

Add music to it and I'm really fucked. O Solo Mio is now forever a Cornetto commercial (it's a type of ice cream here). It's a beautiful song but every time I hear it, I start singing "Give me Cornetto! Give it to me!" My bologna DOES have a first name, thank you very much, and it' O-S-C-A-R. I don't eat two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun, but I can tell you all about it. I would also like to have a french fry, for now, little baby sister of mine (although in hindsight I should've kept the carbohydrate to myself, thanks very much). Schoolhouse Rocks owns my soul, and the two ones I sing the most are the least well known ones-"Hanker for a Hunk of Cheese" (when my get up and go has got up and went, I hanker for a hunk of cheese) and the one about "Don't Drown Your Food" (in ketchup or mayo or goo! Yuck! It's no fun to eat what you can't even see, so don't drown your food!").

But the worst offender that's stuck in my head was the Milk campaign from the 80's. I can't find any trace of it on the web so perhaps I'm losing my mind, but I swear I remember it. Word for word. It was set to some marching song (Sousa, I assumed, although I don't know enough about the guy to know if that's the case or not.) It was a marching band, and there were lyrics:

You don't have to be a football star!
Whoever you are!
Show your stuff and Drink Milk!

I still sing that one to this day.

Sometimes I wish I could clear my head of all the slogans ("You soak in it!" "Let me try! Mom! Let me try!" "They're magically delicious!" and the giggle you elicit when you poke a plasticine dough boy in the stomach) to make more room for real life things, practical things that play a role in life.

But then I think-Fuckit. Ads, TV, and film make me who I am today. I survived this long, surely it's not all bad.

Then I feel thirsty for a glass of milk and a marching song, and I go with it.


-H.

PS-you do not "provides beauty and excitement to (most of) our otherwise mundane lives." You are the single biggest waste of space I've ever seen in my life, ever, and I've seen some big wasters. Your conceit alone is a reason to throw you in jail, let alone breaking real laws. You broke the law, you should pay the price for breaking the law, and if Arnie pardons you then I shrug my shoulders in defeat of the U.S. judicial system forever. You should go to jail, you deserve to go to jail, and I hope you drop the soap a lot while you're there, too.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:52 AM | Comments (46) | Add Comment
Post contains 1663 words, total size 9 kb.

May 08, 2007

Obedience Lessons

Last night Angus and I watched The Ice Storm, a film which I knew Angus would like and was not disappointed (it had no special effects, not very many characters, dysfunctional families, and a suitably depressing story line. He did have a problem with the electrocution scene-this is a hazard of watching films with a man who knows everything there is to know about electricity. It makes watching CSI with him absolutely impossible.) After the film ended there was a documentary I wanted to see called Obedient Wives:Hidden Lives, a show whose premise it was that married women felt the best thing for their marriages was to completely and totally submit to their husbands' wishes, desires, and dictates.

Yes really.

I wanted to watch this.

Hidden Lives is a documentary series on the usually inflammatory Channel 5. I wanted to watch this episode of the series because it intrigues me. Not in an "I want to adopt it" kind of way, but in a "Didn't we just get rid of The Rules?" kind of way. In today's society, is it so that the only evolving role really has to be just the woman's, is it unfair to wonder why there are no self-help books flooding the market for men, which bounce around from How to Be the Classy Metrosexual to Caveman-Not Just a Stereotype Anymore to Adultery: the Other White Meat?

So on the show went. Angus watched it with me, and to be honest, I found myself conflicted in a few areas.

The documentary basically followed 5 couples, half in the UK, the other half in America. There was of course the typical stereotypes one would associate with submissive wives-one couple had a Thai bride and in typical stereotype fashion, the retiree husband had the face not even a mother could love, he nattered on and on about how English women didn't even know how to microwave anymore, let alone cook for a man (which made me wonder aloud if HE knew how to microwave), and how happy he is with a submissive wife. Said submissive wife genuinely, honestly seemed pleased to take care of the man in the house, and she made it clear that her upbringing dictated that the woman's role was to care for the man.

Honestly, I didn't have a problem with this. It's not my culture (ok, actually the Asian culture is half my culture, but you know what I mean), and if it floats the Thai Wife's boat to serve her husband, then rock on.

Similarly, there was the stereotypical couple of what I call The Hardcore Christians. The day started off at 530 with a Bible reading and the Little Mrs. making breakfast and lunch for the hubby. Then the Little Mrs. spent the day cleaning and working from a list of things the Man of the House gave her to do. Seriously. He leaves her with a list of things to do every day and she has to cross them off (it includes baking bread. By hand. Because Wonder Bread is clearly not something the Lord would approve of, I assume). As she goes through her day, she constantly explains that she loves doing these things for the Man of the House as it's a way to praise and honor him, and then would quote various Bible passages to back up why it's so important to praise and honor a dweeby husband.

Now, I also didn't really think too much about them. To me they simply registered high on the Fundie meter. But as I watched them, it got more disturbing. The Little Mrs. would clean so fastidiously it smacked of OCD with a dose of paranoia on the side. When she started scrubbing a bathroom sink so amazingly clean that I would've licked pudding out of it before she scrubbed it, I figured - Someone's got issues. While scrubbing the bathtub, she explained that her scrubbing the bathtub "Praises and serves her husband, as well as makes him a better attorney." I'm not sure how Scrubbing Bubble makes someone a better lawyer, but then maybe there's something about it on the bar exam that I don't know about, perhaps a Mr. Clean secret handshake. As she continuously instructed their one year-old daughter that "you must respect and obey the man", and "we must praise and honor the Father", I got a little confused as to which father she was talking about, but when they started making a fruit pizza to "praise and honor the father" that I figured they were talking about the Man of the House because I just don't see God as a fruit pizza kind of being. And then, of course, when the kid would put a tinned mandarin orange chunk on the wrong way, the Little Mrs. would rush to fix it. I guess you can't be praised and honored if the mandarin's facing the wrong way.

Still, I figured-their life, not mine.

The documentary came quickly to the crux of the issue-apparently there's a new movement that started in America and is now reaching out to torture the rest of the world called "Surrendered Wives". This premise is based on a book of the same name (and although I was handling all of this well, when I searched for this book on Amazon.com it threw up a search that was so repugnant to me I felt the need to bleach the inside of my monitor.)

The book was written by a woman whose marriage was reaching critical mass, and she figured out the way to save it was to check her ego at the door and allow her husband to take control. Control...of everything. Finances, sex life, decision making, child rearing, you name it. The one with the dick makes the decisions.

I do get that desperate times mean desperate measures. When I realized my former marriage was in dire straights I did about the worst thing possible-I agreed to start trying for a baby (because that always works, that whole "let's have a baby and save our marriage!" idea. Worst. Fucking. Idea. Ever.) When you find that things aren't going well, the truth is you may often be willing to go radical, I accept that.

But maybe some things are a step too far.

The documentary was very fair (I felt) and showed two women going through the process of being a Surrendered Wife. These women were the other side of submissive, and in fact two of them were the biggest nags I had ever seen in my life. Their husbands couldn't do anything right, ever, and the way they let their husbands know how uselss they thought they were was thoroughly disrespectful. I don't mean this in a "you must praise and honor him" kind of way either, I mean in a "how can you talk to anyone in that way and not be the featured corpse in a CSI episode yet?" type. If I were these women's husbands, I'd have left by now. Fuckit, if I were one of these women's friends and they talked to me like that I'd have bailed on them, too.

Anyway. One woman's "acquiescence" meant that her marriage got a lot better and her partner stopped looking like he wanted to kill himself. And I honestly didn't see that she had capitulated anything, she just stopped talking to him like he was a 5 year-old, which surely is going to make for an ok marriage. If she just became a human being in how she interacted with him, how does that make her a "Surrendered Wife"? iS she "liberated of control" simply because you don't want to drown her every time she opens her mouth?

The other woman, though, had clearly begun her indoctrination. She and her husband Chip -

(Angus-What is that guy's name?
Me-Chip.
Angus-Chip?
Me-Yes, Chip.
Angus-Chip is a name? You're allowed to name your children Chip in your country?
Me-Yes. I do understand how you're struggling to see how someone could name their child the English equivalent of the word "French Fry", but yes, you can name your child Chip in America.)

-had two kids, and Chipster, he had ideas about how to raise them. These ideas included letting his 3 year-old fly around on the back of a full size quad bike, and since the kid's feet didn't even reach the bottom of the seat, the kid just laid flat out on the back of the thing. Seriously. The kid was laying on the seat. I shuddered each time they showed it. Chip also bought his 6 year-old a dirt bike, but, seeing as I'm not a mom I'm not qualified to comment, I just had to wonder if a 6 year-old should be on a bike with an engine? Without a helmet? And no training? I'm just wondering. Anyway, Chip's Mrs. just kept closing her eyes and hoping it would work out ok because, you know, that's what a Surrendered Wife does.

She also allowed him to pick out her clothes, makeup, and do her hair for a date. On the date, he ordered her food for her. She didn't seem to enjoy it, but I was bouncing up and down on the couch at this point. "Wouldn't that be great fun!" I squealed. "You could do all that, then when we get back to the house, you could have your way with me! I'd be like your sex slave! And then the week after, we could change roles, and I'll dictate what you wear and eat and then you have to repeatedly satisfy me sexually in whatever way I specify! What a fantastic idea! Let's do it!"

Clearly, I'm falling astray from the Surrendered Wife path here, but I still like the idea.

The last couple on the documentary finally reached my Step Too Far. Prior to this I could see that some obedient wives were there for cultural or religious reasons, one woman claimed to be Surrendered Wife but actually, she just stopped acting like a real bitch, and for one woman being a Surrendered Wife to Chip meant that they'd be doing Darwin a favor and helping out with that pesky thing called Natural Selection. But the last couple was a couple that not only stands against everything I believe in, they bordered on dangerous.

A Scottish woman and her American husband, living in North Carolina, adopted the Surrendered Wife routine a few years ago when their marriage was in trouble (this is a common theme in all the women's stories, with the exception of the Thai woman and the religious Little Mrs.) She became a Surrendered Wife, and her husband very kindly explained that he makes all the decisions as she's incapable of it. If they're going to dinner and he recommends a restaurant and she says she doesn't fancy it, it's as he says: "We go there anyway. I'm in charge."

Really? You're also a conceited asshole, but who am I to judge?

He says her biggest problem is "knowing when to keep her mouth shut", which he demonstrated by physically taking her lips and holding them closed, a nice visual aid for viewers who maybe couldn't connect the words "mouth" and "shut".

But what really got me steaming was when he explained that when it came to sex, he was in charge. And if she said no, well, silly her, she didn't really mean it. No matter how often she says it, you know, he's in charge, his wife is like all women in that they act like they don't want it but they really do, and he's going to do it anyway.

Which in my mind, makes him less a husband in charge and more a rapist who should be jailed.

And throughout all this, she just nodded.

So hey. Channel 5 was able to push my buttons after all.

I get that sometimes keeping your mouth shut makes life easier at home. I do it sometimes, I don't always offer my opinion because I know it'll flash Angus up. But he says he does the same thing. So maybe it's not about "letting the man be the one in charge", it's more "gee, how about a little peace and quiet around here?" and you get along in peace as you both pick your battles. If you're going to be courteous to your spouse in how you talk to him, does that make you a Surrendered Wife, or does that just make you an amiable person? I like to cook for Angus and ensure he's happy, it doesn't mean I'm going to walk around praising and honoring him, nor will I freak out about perfect fruit line-up on the fruit pizza (also because he's not getting a fruit pizza, it sounds absolutely foul). But the thing is, my boy likes to cook for me, too. We divide the cooking 50-50. Does that mean he's not in control? I like to have a clean house, but not necessarily because I want to "please Angus" as much as it's just a relief to have a clean house. It doesn't mean I always succeed (the house needs vacuuming pretty badly and I've been using the guest bed as a dumping ground for the clean folded laundry. I keep hoping Harry Potter will show up and wave his wand and put the clothes away, but the little bastard still hasn't shown up.) It doesn't mean that because I do more indoor housework that I'm "surrendered"-Angus does more outdoor work, it's just what both of us prefer to do in terms of home maintenance.

The book way overshot the middle ground. You don't have to spend the day nagging, but nor do you have to roll over and let the man make all the decisions. I'm not a guy or anything (trust me, I've checked), but isn't the idea that you'd be making every single decision a little exhausting? Isn't the whole idea of a partnership that you have two captains piloting the boat?

I dunno.

I do know that I'm going to make lunch for both of us.

But I'm also going to nag Angus (day 5 in a row) if he'll please change the cat litter. Seriously. Maggie will go on strike soon.

There goes my Surrendered Wife title then.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:50 AM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
Post contains 2398 words, total size 14 kb.

May 07, 2007

Welcome to Rydell Corporation

A few days ago I had a business meeting in the nearby office of Company X. Now, it's been almost 4 years since I lost my job with Company X and despite my cottage cheese memory I can still tell you what it felt like to be told that I was being laid off, and I can still recall the depression that ensued thereafter. Weirdly enough I've dealt with Company X a lot over the past few years, luckily as a customer to their business, so I guess in hindsight (and with a couple of freshly picked sour grapes) I can say that things are ok. I was laid off by Company X (those fuckers), and while a part of me still hopes that their company crumbles and closes, the other part of me thinks I landed on my feet and it's really bad karma to think that way.

But it doesn't mean I don't feel weird being in their hallways.

Even though I was working in Sweden I did deal with some of the UK guys and there are often many business trips between the branches. I worry that some of the people who knew I was laid off will see me and ask why the hell I'm in the hallway, like I'm the runner-up in the Homecoming Pageant and I won't get the hell off the stage. I have actually seen a few of my former colleagues and they were great-I even had an enthusiastic bear hug by a German chap I worked with a lot near Dusseldorf. Whenever I see them I feel this immature need to state that I'm not just hanging around the hallways, I do actually have a job and you know what? I'm the customer here. Maybe I'll always feel this way-you laid me off, but I have to show in a non-asshole kind of way that I've risen above it.

I never worry I'll run into my ex-husband because I understand he's still living and working in China (and I do wish him happiness, I really do. I'm sure he wishes I'll fall down some very deep well and never be heard from again, but I do hope he's found someone new to make him happier than I did.) I have toned it down a lot in worrying about meeting some of those from my former department in Sweden, which is actually a very real possibility. But I do worry about meeting up with my former managers, as well as meeting up with anyone that used to work with Angus' ex (who has since quit her job and doesn't work for Company X (or indeed at all) now).

About the time that Angus' marriage was ending, he and I started talking. My marriage hadn't quite breathed its last breath yet, and even though the writing was on the walls, it doesn't make it right that when he contacted me, I didn't even debate not having him in my life. We both have regrets about how we handled things and we both aren't proud about some aspects of our relationship, but what happened happened, and no amount of regret will change that. But I was still working for Company X, as was he (though in a different branch of the company) and as was his ex.

When she found out about Angus and I all hell broke loose. Even though I was out of the company by then, I did hear things. It was impossible not to hear the mud-flinging that went on, because after all, not only is it standard operating office procedure to blame the person that just left ("Do you have the McKenzie file?" "The McKenzie file? I thought Helen was doing that!" "Helen, that useless bitch! No wonder she was laid off, it was never done!"), but work is like high school.

Seriously.

All offices tend to have an edge of "Will you sign my yearbook?" about them. There are always cliques - the Corporate Shark Wanna-Be folk all congregating around the Speech Club podium. The technical/engineering/IT people all heading for Physics Clubs meeting. The HR people are all busy decorating the gym for homecoming. In the business meetings we had around the table you were always fairly certain there was a metaphorical slam book going around the table.

And offices are like high school because the gossiping is rife. High school is completely irrelevant for living in every way except tearing your ego down in expectation that life is going to repeatedly do that for you, anyway. If others can aid in the tearing down then obviously it means their own fragile egos will be saved.

So yes. I did hear what was said about me. The reputation slaying was phenomenal. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and hell really standeth no chance if work folk are involved. I heard it all-how dangerous and mentally unstable I was (both of which are true, but I was only a danger to myself, never to others). How I milked the company of money (very not true). How I was manic depressive and a manipulative liar (both not true.) How I stole her husband (which I refute in some ways-I think it's impossible to "steal" a person, in these situations all parties play a role.)

And I heard about those pushing forth the gossip and adding to it. I heard how my phone bills and computer files were checked and forwarded. I was livid with the intrusion, but as I'd already been laid off, there was nothing I could do (and luckily I'd wiped my PC clean of files before I handed it in.) I heard about people getting involved in the mud slinging that shouldn't have been. In the dark Swedish winter, I heard about all of it.

80,000 people were let go from Company X and I was one of them. I was told it was due to my length of service in the company-in my department you needed 7 years and 2 months to stay and I only had 4 years 9 months-and I believed them. It didn't mean that the gossip didn't add to the already incomprehensible agony I was feeling.

One of the gossiping was my former boss, Rolle. Rolle had been my boss for a long period of time and I knew him well. He wasn't the one who laid me off in the end-Rolle was interchangable with another manager I had, and between the two of them they were the only managers I had during that long stint at Company X-but he had been my boss. Rolle knew me very well. Rolle knew Angus and his ex very well.

And Rolle sided with Angus' ex.

I heard all the details. I heard what was said. A lot of it has passed from my memory, no longer relevant.

But when I saw him in the cantine at Company X last week, some of it came back.

I was sitting with some of my team eating a sandwich before our meeting. I saw someone at a table that looked familiar, but I didn't know why. I saw him staring at me with a similar expression, that "Where do I know her from?" look on his face. Then when I realized who it was, my heart started pounding. He caught on quickly, too, and he went a bit pink in the face.

Then we went about our business of ignoring each other.

I was hyper-aware of where he was, and hyper-aware of how much I didn't want him to talk to me. I had practiced a hot-headed speech ages ago of the things I would say to him if we ever bumped in to each other, but it all felt so pointless. My anger is gone now, and it's all stupid water under the bridge, he sided with one party against another. But to me, it was all uncalled for. Maybe it's true I had some of it coming. Maybe I did rise above it after the slurry came my way. But it was all too kicking a man when he's down for me.

We saw each other twice more in the hallways.

Both times we both pretended we didn't see the other person.

And I couldn't help but shake the feeling that as soon as I could get to my locker and get my chemistry book, I could tell my best friend about that dick who made fun of me in gym class, and when his slam book came around to me during English Lit, I'd make sure I wrote in an anonymous hand "I know what you said about me, and although it won't impact my life anymore, I'll never forgive you, you fucking asshole."

High school.

Work.

Same thing, really, but in one you get to pay taxes.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:42 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 1485 words, total size 8 kb.

May 03, 2007

Opinions

So, I knew it would happen.

I was surprised to not see it more on Statia's site when she was pregnant. I used to fear going into her comments, because I figured it would be there. I think she mostly escaped unscathed. I've seen it on some of what are referred to as Mommy Blogs, and while I don't intend on being a Mommy Blogger, this site is about whatever is on my mind at the moment. In the future, it's entirely possible my children are on my mind at that exact moment I sit down to blog. Maybe I blog about them, maybe I don't, but one thing is for sure-we have ways we're going about things as a couple. They are not up for debate.

I really got fucked off about yesterday's comments and yes, I am almost certainly being oversensitive. It's a hazard these days, especially when dog food commercials can reduce me to tears. I have enough hormones in my body to fuel whole power stations, you bet that my mood swings mean things are going to cause me to react (and potentially over-react).

But as we go forward with this pregnancy, there's one thing I want to make clear- I'm not after views on if people think I'm doing something the right way or the wrong way. This goes across the board, from my boss to my Dad to my blog.

This site has been remarkable in the help I've gotten, from how to get rid of a veruca to handling Mumin killing local wildlife to the difference between the neighborhood's ducks or geese. I am honestly grateful. You have advice about the best pacifier to use? Drop me an email, that'd be great. A friend sent me an email not too long ago about some good morning sickness remedies, that was very welcome. Seen a book that you think might be helpful? Let me know about it, please. Please-if you know of a good baby product, tell me about it. I have absolutely no idea about baby things, and it's been 10 years since Angus has been in the baby world himself.

But child-rearing is a different ballpark. I would never, ever go to a stranger (or even a friend) and tell them they are doing the wrong thing based on one of their choices (unless said choice was along the lines of dangling a kid out the window, of course. Then we'd be having a talk.) As this blog progresses, I'd be grateful if people didn't feel the need to tell me how to raise my kids. I am most definitely new to all of this, but Angus isn't. He's a father of two kids, one a teenager, one a pre-teen. I think this means that since they've survived this long and are in robust shape, he knows what he's talking about.

To get it all out in the open, we will be:

- using day care
- bottle feeding
- using disposable diapers
- never co-sleeping
- using cry it out when they get older
- loving them a million times a day, even when we're too tired to brush our hair

These things are what we feel is best for us. They might not apply to all. But they are our kids. We have our reasons for each and every one of those choices, and they are choices that Angus and I made together, as we evaluate what is best for our family. There is no "right" and "wrong" in how people choose what they want for their family. It's just choice.

You may not like our choices. They may not be your choices. But your life and our lives aren't maybe the same. There is no right and wrong to how people go about choosing what they want for their kids. You want day care? Rock on. You want co-sleeping? If it makes you happy....You want to breastfeed them until they're graduating from high school? Well, it may make prom night difficult, but it's your family, you need to do as you see best.

A very kind email from Easy helped clear my head, especially when he said this: The only one qualified to tell you how to raise your kids is YOU. Don't hesitate to be firm on the subject. (I hope you don't mind that I put a few lines from your email, Easy. It really helped.)

I'm still only 14 weeks and I've got about 23 more weeks to go. I'm just rooting for "Let's get 'em out alive" and then I'll move on to "Let's make sure they're never on Oprah weeping about their childhood". I'm not interested in the early implications that I might already be a bad mother and I haven't even gotten to hold one of them yet. Let's get them out, healthy and happy in one piece, because otherwise it's really jumping the gun here.

By all means, please be a part of this with me. I'm overwhelmed on a daily basis. Seriously. I love that you might want to read. I love my blog, and I love the people that comment and email.

But I would appreciate as we go forward that people's views are not impressed upon me. If you hate that we are using day care or bottle feeding or not naming one of them LaShonda, then you can click the red "X" in the corner. You can plug your ears with your fingers and sing. You can go and agressively chop onions until they are turned into a mushy paste. You can do anything you like, but please don't try to convince me to change my mind as I'm one stubborn bitch sometimes and it simply won't work.

I'm sorry, but our choices are not up for debate, either with our friends, family, colleagues, or on my blog.

If I come across as a bit bitchy, well...I'm kinda' pissed off, actually. But don't take it personally, please, just know that I'm pretty sensitive about this. Just hang out with me. Talk to me. Tell me a funny baby story. Let me know a pregnancy with a good ending (good endings are welcome, especially if you have been on bed rest with the Discovery Channel. Good endings are almost essential). Pregnancy is stressful enough, I'd like my blog to be a stress-free zone.

And that concludes the Fighting Back portion of today's lesson.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 02:32 PM | Comments (60) | Add Comment
Post contains 1077 words, total size 6 kb.

May 02, 2007

Just a Wee Bit More

Thank you very much for the nice comments on our last post. I promise I won't talk about the babies all the time from here on, but here's a bit more background.

We're 14 weeks pregnant exactly today. Although our due date is Halloween there's no way in hell we'll actually make that date - singletons are usually born at 40 weeks, but twins almost never make it that far. Our doctor has told us to think of 37 weeks as the end date, which puts our babies arriving at some point the beginning of October. Don't think I'm not dressing the infants up for Halloween. If the dog doesn't escape my Halloween frenzy, two helpless babies don't stand a chance.

We really have had a lot going on for us. I see I wasn't as good at hiding things as I thought I was (based on the number of commenters who suspected something was up, anyway.) This is why I don't play poker. I may as well label my forehead "Gee, you want my money? 'Cause I have a crap hand!" when I play.

This whole getting pregnant business has been a particular roller coaster. My IVF cycle (which was called a shared cycle, in which I gave half of my eggs to another woman who has no eggs of her own, for whatever reason) was a terrible round. I had almost no eggs to work with, let alone to give away. Surprisingly, I wound up with having 2 embryos myself to work with. We haven't found out if the other woman succeeded yet, and although we will at some point, we're maybe not ready to know just yet.

To say that we were shocked that both embryos - which weren't amazing quality - took is an understatement.

People will have different reactions of learning they're having multiples. While for some (particularly those on the infertility treatment merry-go-round) the idea is heaven, for others the idea is a new version of hell. I've learnt that fathers riding the Having a Baby pony a second time around the track are particularly afraid of having twins or more, since they know what it's like raising one baby. Couples tend to fall into either category - delight at "winning the baby lottery" or fear of the changes to come, and both reactions are normal and individual. You might not like it or agree with someone's reaction, but learning you're having twins is a huge deal that will have an emotional consequence.

I'll be honest - we weren't exactly over the moon when we found out it was twins. Cue Alexis Carrington-like sobbing and arguing scenes the day we found out (and that's from both of us). While we were delighted that we were pregnant, the idea of twins scares the living fuck out of both of us. Our biggest concern was (and still is) finances. A single baby we could handle with no problem financially, but now with two babies we're facing day care bills of anywhere from £900-1500 (we're still researching), and that's going to cause a real shift in how we live our life from a money perspective (don't worry - we already know the shape of the universe in every other area is going to change now that we have infants.) So combine the financial issue (belt tightening, anyone?), the pure lack of sleep we're facing, and the fact that we haven't gotten our asses in gear and built the extension (so where the hell are we going to put two babies?) into the equation, and we were shit scared.

Happy it worked.

Shit scared.

We still are.

But we have moments of happiness, too. I wouldn't say either of us has gotten used to the idea of twins, neither of us has come around to believing that we've won the baby lottery and we probably won't ever see it that way, but I have seen signs that both of us care about the babies. As the one who will be lugging them around inside of her (and I've already gained 12 pounds, which somehow doesn't freak me out as much as it would have), I feel very strongly about the babies. I already love them and they only just resemble human beings at this point in gestation. It's too early to feel them move but they are simply a part of my day. I don't think about them every single moment, but I don't forget about them either.

We told Angus' kids while we were in Cancun. They both took it very, very well. Jeff even said he wanted to adopt one of them, but when we pointed out that an infant may put a crimp in his football practice, he agreed that maybe he'll just mentor one of them.

Melissa has also taken it very well. She has said she's keen to babysit and wants to be here when they're born (but we told her that twins will mean complications, and I get a nice long stay in the hospital, so maybe they should come the week after. Angus and I aren't being obstructive, we simply want to be alone during the week that they're born to try to adjust.) Twice I have been asked to promise that I will love her as much as I love them. Once I swore we would do. The other time I put an arm around her shoulder and told her not to tell the twins, but it's possible I may just love her more.

I want her to feel as secure and invovled as possible. Jeff too. So does Angus, and we watch them carefully for signs of upset. So far so good. We've started a baby name list and the kids were a part of choosing names (although Jeff's favorites have been stricken off the name list already. Much as I love the kid, there's no way I'm naming our babies "Wayne" and "Krusty".)

The first trimester was harder than I thought it would be. I was nauseous all the time and I slept constantly. I still sleep more than I used to, but aside from blinding hormone induced migraines the symptoms are getting better and I find that I am constantly hungry now. Maybe this is all practice for how expensive twins will be, because I am eating us out of house and home (yet still, I've only gained 12 pounds in 14 weeks, which is below-target for moms having twins.)

We had a real scare about the babies two weeks ago, when a scan revealed that one of them - and you should know we call the babies the Lemonheads, a name given to them by a lovely blogger friend of ours when they were the size of lemons (they're now the size of a fist) - was at a high risk for Down's syndrome. We didn't know what to do so got a second opinion, which showed the risk was real. So we had an invasive test procedure to test the baby. The test itself has a risk for causing miscarriage, so it was a fraught time for us.

Monday we found out the Lemonhead is fine.

Yesterday we had a scan and both babies were alive and well.

We're still a little nervous something might go wrong, but determined to try to dial it down and relax a bit.

On Monday Angus and I were in an all-day meeting. After I had gotten the news that our Lemonhead was Down's free, we went into the meeting room and sat next to each other. Once the presentation had begun I saw Angus fumbling in his pocket for a pen and paper. He scribbled something and passed it to me.

Good news about baby, it said. Very pleased.

I love him.

I hold a sense of amazement-I am popping two little bags of Redenbacher popcorn in me. It seems surreal, and at the same time completely cool. We're happy, terrified, excited, nervous, and concerned all at once. The emotions go up and down, but it's safe to say there's usually an element of terror going on with everything we feel.

Maybe that's what parenthood is about.

So I won't talk about babies all the time on this site, but I leave you with a parting shot of what they looked like at 2 days old.


On board


I think they have my eyes.

They totally have his hands.

-H.

PS-any pregnancy related pics are in this set, which I have now made public. I usually update the set weekly.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:57 AM | Comments (33) | Add Comment
Post contains 1440 words, total size 8 kb.

May 01, 2007

"I got the best news! Sally just came out."*

I look into the fridge again in hopes that it may yield something interesting. I don't know what I'm expecting to find, I only know that I want something. I've had a whole wheat English muffin, a bowl of yogurt and granola, and a handful of cheese crackers so God knows I shouldn't be hungry, but I am.

In Cancun I spent a lot of time with Angus' son Jeff. I also managed to get some quality time with Melissa, who spent her time perusing my dive book and nicking my magazines. One evening I had to help her work the shower. I ran the tap and waited for the warm water to kick in. She nosed through my makeup bag.

"Melissa," I said hesitantly. Hesitant not because she was in my makeup bag (it wouldn't have been the first time she'd been in there), but because I didn't really know how to say what I wanted to say. "I just want you to know that I love you and Jeff very much. I know I'm not your mother and I would never try to take her place, I don't mean any disrespect. I just wanted you to know that I do think of you as a daughter, and I mean that in a good way. You're also like my friend and my sister in some way, and I am not trying to dismiss you at all."

The shower water was dripping down my arm onto the bathmat. I shook my hand of the excess water and turned to her. Droplets continued to fall from my arm.

"Oh I know," she said, opening a tube of lip gloss to check the color. "I love you as much as I love my mother."

Wow.

"I would never, ever try to take her place," I reminded her. I mean that. I love the kid a lot, but I'm not her mother and never will be. Our relationship is some kind of mix, and it's very important to me."

"Me too," she replied calmly. "I love you, too."

It amazes me that kids can be so calm when I'm all over the place, worried that I will upset her, worried that I won't get things right. I've never been a mother. Being a stepmother is nowhere near the difficult task it is to be a mother. I may think unkind things about the kids' mother (and I do) but I would never, ever say them to the kids. Mothers should be infallible for as long as possible in a child's eyes.

And I have learnt that in many ways, when I am with the kids, I fill some kind of motherhood role. With Jeff I am the Sunscreen Applier, the Entertainer, the Please Will You Brush Your Teeth-er, and the Have You Taken Your Medicine-er? I love that I am these people to him.

The past holiday, I found I have slipped into a "Mother Lite" role more than I had realized. Kids stand outside the bathroom door when I'm trying to have a private moment on the can and ask me questions (which, when you have a screwed-up intestinal system like I do, it doesn't help). I am the one who simultaneously knows where the sunglasses, sunscreen, and snorkles are. I coordinate across Angus, Melissa and Jeff, and I never knew how rewarding a job it would be. I love Angus, and I love being a stepmother. They are impossible, frustrating, hilarious, energetic, annoying, and great fun. I think they're the best kids in the world and although biologically they're not mine I'll love them forever, genes be damned.

I always thought my pure purpose in life is to climb the corporate ladder and rule the world.

The truth is, if I know where the sunblock is, I'm pretty fucking happy, too.

Maybe life for me will be an intermediary, a Something-In-Between. I don't know where I will be or what I will do or how everything pans out. Suddenly, I don't need to.

I still can't find anything in the refrigerator, which frustrates me.

Some (most? all?) of you (mwah!) already know the details, and now it's time to let them all out here, too.

We've had a hard time lately, we've been on tenterhooks, everything has been uncertain. It has been a roller coaster, full of incredible highs and crashing lows. 2007 is one for the books. We had an incredible New Year's complete with a ring I still admire on a daily basis. I got out of a horrible project and got not one but two pretty cool projects to work on. Our test results on Monday came back normal, the last hurdle in the hurdle of hurdles.

Our last round of IVF worked.

I am almost 14 weeks pregnant and results on Monday from our CVS came back with the report that our worry baby is Down's free.

I am due on October 31st. Halloween. My favorite holiday.

And we are having twins.


Hi.  I'm Pregnant.

-H.

*From the amazing Practical Magic.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 06:47 AM | Comments (76) | Add Comment
Post contains 859 words, total size 5 kb.

April 30, 2007

Whipping Me

English gardening is renowned. Seriously. Not only do they have the big gardens, like Kew Gardens, but they have 100,000 gardening shows with the likes of that guy with the name and her who never wears a bra (and I'm not a prude or anything, but DAMN. Consider strapping those puppies, babe, or you're going to put someone's eye out someday).

I even have the name guy's book, and while it's good he's a little fussy for me, even. He's like the Martha Stewart of gardening, when I'm still at the level of trying to figure out the Hungry Man frozen dinner gardening equivalent. I'm a true beginner. Even using the latin names whips me and makes my eyes glaze over.

But we have been getting a lot done. After the weekend known as "Slash and Burn" weekend:


Angus and the burning


Where we cut back huge bushes (the whole place was overgrown), ripped out sections of overgrowth, and above all weeded:


Too much to do


We've felt better about the place.

Not like it's done or anything.

A garden this size is NEVER done.

So a lot's been happening in my life, and I decided the area where I wanted to unleash my aggression was on my number one enemy...the pond.

When we first viewed the house the pond was a selling point for me. I have always wanted a pond, complete with irises, little fishies, and a duck (a duck proved too much for Angus, we had a fierce argument about it and the duck idea was abandoned.) So when I found out that this house came with a pond, it was huge. Angus was ambivalent, but me? I'd found nirvana.

Until I actually OWNED the pond, of course.

And can I just say...do you know how much fucking work is involved with a goddamn pond?

It was a nightmare. Mumin - the ultimate hunter - was bringing mice in by the handful. Turns out that the former owner's gentleman caller friend would feed families of field mice on the floating lily pads of the pond. Very cute and Wind in the Willows, but add a cat to the equation and it was rodenticide. The families of field mice didn't last long, even though we tried to stop her. When the mice ran out, she moved on to decimating the pond frog population (and I did learn from the helpful comments that praising her for catching animals was the way to get her to not kill them. Thanks for that advice - now we get presented with them alive, so they have a chance to live. Still, it squicks me out.)

One month after moving in the pond had 100,000,000 tadpoles brewing on the top of it. A neighbor helpfully told me that you have to go in there and do a little "weeding out" of the frog population, so I had to murder about half of the little tadpoles. I still feel guilty today, and worry that the frogs continue to hold it against me. In my next life I'm going before a tribunal for my crimes against amphibians, I just know it. Kermit judges me. I feel his anger.

The pond got covered with pond scum, which needed sweeping out and which smelled like something died (nothing did, apart from the Mumin presents.) You had to constantly cut back the overgrowth, something we weren't always good at:


The pond before


Not like you can make it out, but the pond is to the right in the picture. It's the huge growth of irises, you can't actually make out the water.

And we had to keep the pond covered with mesh netting, as rumor had it there was a neighborhood heron that likes to have a little sushi for lunch.

But this year I'd had enough. The pond was going. True, it did have fish in it-at last count, we thought there were about 10 or so. We were going to give the fish to Angus' brother, who is installing his own pond (HA! Sucker!) and would take our fishies. I uncovered the pond because I hadn't seen a heron around.

I am now going to be tried for crimes against amphibians and aquatic vertebrates, because guess what? Yeah, um, there is a heron. And he had a whole lot of sashimi from our pond. We came back after a weekend away and found that we had no fish.

So we started to drain that which I call That Fucking Pond.

And wouldn't you know it, we did have 4 fish left.

The 4 fish were rescued in a bucket, along with a few water newts. We were going to give them to Angus' brother (who is in Namibia) but hadn't been able to do it yet.

The fish didn't last long in the bucket.

Despite my best efforts at feeding and giving them fresh air, the bucket became known (in Angus' terms) as the Departure Lounge.

I do feel really guilty about both the heron and the Departure Lounge.

Now down 4 fish and several water newts, there was nothing holding us back. I attacked the pond yesterday with Carrie-like ferocity. I ensured that all wildlife (except for frogs, which I knew would move on, and water snails which, seriously, are on their own) and then stripped out the rubber liner. I was ready to fill that pond in...until wouldn't you know it. The batshit lady who used to own the place had filled the inside of the pond with carpet and newspaper.

Carpet.

CARPET.

This woman loved carpet. She had carpet on everything, including the bathroom floor. I'm surprised ceilings weren't carpeted. She has instilled in me a hatred for carpet that is nearly pathological, and the only remaining rooms in the house that still has carpet are the hallway and living room, but only because both are getting torn to bits in the coming extension so it made no sense to address it now. We chucked out every other room of carpet and took the floors back to the original floorboards. If I never see carpet again, it will be too soon. Hell (for me) must be covered in shag pile.

This made the job 100,000 times worse, as not only did I have to get the liner out, I had to try to get the carpet out otherwise I'd be handling really foul, awful carpet as well. And while the pond water looked clean, lemme tell you-what was left after the water was pumped out smelled like sewage.

I went into a fury.

Angus came to help me, even though I'd been getting lots of help (to the right of the sleeping dog is some of that bloody carpet):


Gorby helps out


Together we tried to get as much carpet out of the pond as we could. We got about half of it, then the structural integrity of the liner gave way, and the pond drained.


Empty pond


I have never in my life - despite all the housework I've done, no matter the rebuilding jobs I've been a part of - been through a more foul task in my life. I asked Angus if this was the worst house job he'd ever been through and he admitted that some of the sewer work he's done on homes has been worse. I can see that. Just.

So all that's left is a few inches of mud, the liner, some roots, and some funky carpet. We're going to let the mud dry out - it's not even May yet and already we know we're headed for a drought again this year, it's been the hottest April in English history and it looks like that'll keep going. The mud will sort itself out and then the liner, the carpet and more will be taken to the tip.

We're not sure what we'll do with that space now-there's more work to do, it has to be filled in and the paving stones removed and those aggressive hedges behind it ripped out. We'll either just grass it over for more lawn or make a small benched reading area or something.

I've since had 2 showers since getting rid of the pond, and we rewarded ourselves with a triumph over my other nemesis, the stinging nettle. I carefully picked a load of them (and still got stung anyway, despite the gloves), washed and boiled them, and then made nettle soup. I know it sounds awful, and very crunchy granola, but it was the best soup I've ever had in my life.

And the pond is gone.

It was hell.

It was worth it.

Dontcha' just long for relaxing country living?

-H.

PS-yes, that last post really was from Angus, who is the one who fixed my sidebars and thus the loading, she is better. And yes-I really did pay up. Of course.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:11 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 1472 words, total size 9 kb.

April 28, 2007

Angus says:

It was well worth walking the dog for!

Angus.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:48 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 13 words, total size 1 kb.

April 27, 2007

Bartering

"I dreamt that we were at a water park and one of the slides we went down went at 4G!"

"That's impossible, Helen. You can't have a downward force of 4G."

"You can in my water park."

My cow clock goes off.

"I love that clock," he says sarcastically.

"I know! I love it too!" I squeal.

We lay there, cuddling.

"I'll give you a blow job if you'll walk the dog this morning."

"OK. When?"

"After my visit to my mental health professional."

"Deal!"

Never let it be said that I'm not willing to pay for my services.

-H.

PS-My website is slow to load because my sidebar is screwed up, but I'm hopeless at this kind of thing and can't figure out how to fix it. Also, I'm sorry for the lack of posting/abbreviated posting. There's a whole lot going on in our house, which I'll explain on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, thanks for being here.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:15 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 161 words, total size 1 kb.

April 25, 2007

Jump

There are a lot of times I wish I could reach out to you and tell you that I just believe. I just believe. I don't know why, and I can't explain how, but I believe in you. You've been through so much, and there is so far still to go, and yet here you are. You persevere. You show me that you're so much stronger than I worry you are, all in the space of a second, in a flicker, in a moment.

I've never been a leap of faith kind of girl. Gods waved goodbye to me as we went our seperate ways. I can't believe in something I've never seen, I can't accept a concept as my mantra. Things have to be seen to be believed. This is the way of the world, of my world, of the way things have to be.

And now I need to just believe.

And I will do this, this just believing, because the alternative to not believing is unpalatable. Because you are so important to me that you nearly own me. Because if you think I just not believe, then maybe you will go, and in going you will destroy me.

I remember a Winne-the-Pooh still from a long time ago. It had the pudding shaped Pooh walking hand-in-hand with the little Piglet. Their backs were to me, and their profiles were speaking.

"I'll believe in you if you'll believe in me," Pooh is saying to Piglet.

That sounds like a fair trade to me.

I believe. You believed in me. I won't let you down.

Don't let me down, either.

I love you with everything I know how to love.

You can go anywhere you'd like, you can be anything you want...as long as you'll be mine.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 301 words, total size 2 kb.

April 24, 2007

Helping Hand or Helping Push

The Alamo thing has, apparently, really affected me.

I'm not a very Bolshy person. It comes and goes with me in terms of standing up for myself. Sometimes I do it, more often than not I don't. I don't like to raise my voice to people I don't know and - this is the worst part - I don't like people to hear my American accent, not because I'm ashamed or anything, but I figure they'll simply dismiss my complaint and chalk me up to being "an American" instead of listening to me (and yes, this has happened to me).

But since coming completely unglued at the rental car counter I'm suddenly a lot less tolerant of people being assholes around me. Maybe it's just a phase, maybe it'll pass, but right now I call people on their shit and that's completely out of character for me.

Angus, he's a guy that will make a fuss. So will my stepmother. Both of them have had real bust-ups with managers of grocery stores, Angus over his views on the unjust cost of limes and English cheddar, my stepmother over a bad melon. They do not have a single problem with complaining about bad service or bad products - in their views, they have paid for a product or service and dammit, it better be good.

Me, I cringe. I don't really ever complain to staff or management about things because I'm not much of a "rocking the waves" kind of girl. I have eaten not great meals and never said a word. I have been left waiting in queue longer than Paris Hilton's list of one night blow jobs. People cut in front of me and I don't say anything, people are stupid and I don't let off.

Until now.

Maybe something's come unglued in me.

I've made no secret about the fact that commuting is one of my greatest stresses. The train station (which is now empty of Travellers, as they've moved on to a football pitch nearby) is one of my fiercest foes. My ulcer goes off nearly every single time I take that fucking train, and it never gets any better.

Add on to the fact that I'm suddenly dealing with a great deal of stress in another area of my life (more on that later), and I'm a ticking device ready to burst.

This whole week was set to be a London week (luckily today has become a working from home day). After months of very few London days, suddenly my project schedule is getting very busy-I have three projects now at work (two of them very interesting), and they're not stressful but will keep me busy. This week kicks it all off, and sadly Thursday and Friday I have meetings in Upper Buttfuck (proving that you can't have everything and sometimes that includes trips to the one place in the country that I truly hate). So the train station and I are going to be very, very close for the next several weeks.

I made it to the train station very early yesterday morning, as I had a number of calls I needed to make in private and quiet before my meetings started. I got to the station and just missed the train I wanted, but I knew another one was coming in 5 minutes, so I wasn't too stressed...yet.

The ticket queue was torture though, as everyone wanted to buy monthly tickets, a complicated procedure involving forms, photos, and all kinds of hassle, and which nearly every time makes me want to scream "Why can't you handle these transactions AFTER peak travel time?" I went to the queue for the ticket machines instead. The machines were acting up, dicking around, rejecting cards at random. Mine was such a card. By the time it accepted my card, the train was pulling up. And again, if you get on the train without a ticket you get a penalty fine, even though the Network Rail website says that you should never have to unreasonably wait to get a ticket to board a train, proving that Network Rail really are a bunch of bureaucratic cunts who get off on messing with commuters minds and wallets.

I ran for the train, tickets in hand and receipt still printing in the machine.

As I boarded the stairs (because naturally the train I needed was on the opposite platform to the ticket office), I passed a party of four old age pensioners taking an overnight trip to London (I know this as one of them felt the need to tell the ticket agent about said trip, and the details of the trip, and how fun the trip was, thus delaying the ticket queue even more. This isn't even including the fact that all the seniors had asked the one senior to purchase everyone's tickets, and made a real song and dance about dividing up the bill and who owes who money but do you have change for £20?) The seniors were slightly blocking the entrance of the stairs.

That, I could have dealt with.

I could even have dealt with the elderly group taking up time at the ticket window (despite a huge line of people waiting for tickets).

What I couldn't deal with was one woman in the group.

As several business suited men and I sprinted like hell for the train, she chanted in a sing-song childhood playground taunting kind of voice "You're never going to make it! You're never going to make it! You're never going to make it!"

Sure enough, we didn't make it. As we made it to the top of the stairs leading to the train's platform, the train pulled away from the platform, leaving 6 of us who were within site of the doors but the train conductor wouldn't wait for us, on the platform.

And I could still hear the old woman chanting. The men who missed the train with me shook their head in disgust. One man swore. The woman's taunts reached me from the other side of the platform.

And a blood vessel in my head burst right open like a very ripe peach.

I was fuming. Absolutely fuming. (I hated her sooo much, it, it the, it, flame, flames, FLAMES on the side of my face, breathing, breathle...heaving breaths, heaving....) My stress levels-both about the train and about other things-were threatening to take over my vision. I walked up the stairs and over to the woman. I couldn't believe what I did next.

"Do you think that's very helpful, to stand there and make stupid comments like that?" I demanded angrily to her.

I couldn't believe I had said something like that.

I NEVER talk like that outside of the safety of my own brain.

The old woman looked startled. "I was just talking, I wasn't really thinking about you."

"No, clearly you weren't." I replied angrily. I walked back to the ticket office to get the receipt I'd left behind for my tickets. When I passed the old woman again she had a packet of mints in her hand.

"Well," she said snippily, popping a mint into her mouth, "looks like your day got off to a bad start."

I looked at her. "PISS OFF!" I snarled.

An elderly gentleman in the group shouted after me. "What did you say, young lady?"

And I made myself walk up the platform away from the group. I knew if I turned around to talk to the group there was a chance I could take the old gent and actually physically get into it with him, which I would ordinarily never do as I'm a serious pacifist. With the exception of the Alamo counter I can't remember being that angry in so long.

I caught another train twenty minutes later, which naturally got delayed and kept me waiting outside of Waterloo for 10 minutes. And I couldn't calm down. I recognize that I should have just shrugged her off as being a busybody who couldn't help herself, but I had had enough. It's possible I was taking my own stresses out on her, it's possible she meant no harm, she'd just disconnected that whole "brain-mouth" connection. But in that moment I felt that not thinking about others wasn't acceptable. Got nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all.

Instead of helping her across the road, at that moment I was tempted to push her in front of traffic.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:41 AM | Comments (22) | Add Comment
Post contains 1427 words, total size 8 kb.

April 20, 2007

Today Is Your Day, Sparky

This morning started with giddy excitement. I carried up coffee to a beaming Angus. I whipped out a mound of gifts from me, his kids, and my Dad, stepmother, and step-grandma. He grinned as he opened his cards. The phone and Skype have been ringing off the hook as wishes come pouring in.

The gifts were popular-clothes, sweets from Sweden, a Gorillapod and pasta maker from me, a cooking certificate from Eat, Drink, Talk from my family (which is perfect, as Angus loves to cook).

And then my big present-he unwrapped The Rough Guide to Scotland. Even though we've been to Scotland many times and love it absolutely, I thought it would be useful.

Useful because I've booked us a trip there. We leave the first weekend in June (June, as even though it's his weekend this weekend, we just came back from holiday and we have Iceland in May). He head to Oban (via Fort Willaim) on the sleeper train, and our first stop is somewhere he's always wanted to go to, the Cruachan Power Station, which is Scotland's biggest power station. From there, we then head up through the Hebrides and relax for a total of 5 days, before taking the sleeper train back home again.

He seems very happy with his gifts.

Tonight I'm making him a posh pasta dinner and uncorking a nice bottle of bubbly. We're relaxing and taking it easy. Throughout the day he gets whatever he wants.

It's his day after all.

To the sexiest 45 year-old I know: Happy Birthday, Angus. I love you madly.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:21 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
Post contains 274 words, total size 2 kb.

April 19, 2007

Walking

Some days are days where everything makes sense-the sun comes up just like you need it to. The coffee is hot but not too hot. Your phone is quiet and the dog's tail thumps on the floor behind you and your favorite TV show is all saved up to watch.

These days, the days where it's all like it needs to be, are the days which remind you that things will be ok.

In my head things buzz around. A long email which needs answering but I don't know how to answer it. A project at work that I want to sink my teeth into, but am not sure how to proceed. A long litany of words swimming around in my skull which need to be unleashed. A move towards the next step in the therapy of me that needs to be taken. All of these things move in me and on me and will be released when I am ready, when they are ready.

Sometimes life comes in and affects us so profoundly that we think the life we knew before will never come back again. We had gotten comfortable, we had become secure, we never knew that things could go the way we didn't want them to go. We walked our daily walk, never knowing the storms that were brewing, the fact that the sun is going to disappear.

When the darkness comes, we never think we're going to make it.

The thing about life is you don't really have a choice.

Pick any tired cliched adage you want - When God closes a door he opens a window. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. We are never given more than we can deal with. Through every darkness, there will be light. It doesn't matter the saying, the underlying message is this- it's bad now. It's very bad. It's a sheer and unmitigating darkness that swallows you whole.

But it will go away, in time.

It always does.

Yesterday was not a remarkable day. In the ordinariness of life, this day was stunningly ordinary. Return from holiday, laundry hung out to dry, dishes done, the dog was bathed, and I passed out on the couch from jet lag.

Yesterday was the day that the child we miscarried last year was due.

I didn't mention the day to anyone, I didn't do anything to note the event.

I didn't need to.

Yesterday the sun rose and set and then it came up again this morning. It will continue to do so for as long as I'm alive, which is a great deal longer than that embryo ever will be. Once I didn't want children. Now, I know children are something I want more than I know words to express it. And I look back on the unrelenting grief that was August, I remember the loss of the one I nicknamed Dr. Seuss baby, and I feel ok. I feel like I have been on a long walk, one which nearly took my career, my heart, and my happiness down with it. I walked through the storm of it all, and I look at yesterday with a bittersweet calm.

A birth didn't take place in our world yesterday.

And it's ok.

I'll never stop walking.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:03 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 551 words, total size 3 kb.

April 18, 2007

We're Home, aka American Airlines, Expedia, and Alamo Can Suck My Flat Pale Ass

I'm super tired and barely functioning. I'm home now, and Angus has left to take his two extremely tired kids to their final flight home. I'll crawl back on the couch and pass out in a sec, but first an update.

You know how I'm one of those high-powered, super-sonic worriers when it comes to holidays and flights and such? I like everything to be beyond ready, I like to be at the airport fucking eons before the flight, I like everything to be nailed down tight? Imagine what happens when it all goes wrong.

Which is exactly what happened last Monday.

It went wrong in every way something could go wrong.

Seriously.

It started with us screaming to the airport, running late to catch our flight to Miami from Montreal, where we'd then connect to Jamaica. The security queues were endless. We got trapped in an immigration line with a man who wrote slower than a Slug Tag Team. We barely caught our flight.

I tried to calm down.

I ate Tums.

We got to Miami and it really went downhill.

Melissa only had her Swedish passport on her, as her English passport is being renewed (and anyway her English passport isn't machine readable, a requirement to enter the USA). I checked the Jamaican visa requirements when we booked the flights, and we were all green.

Then Jamaica went and hosted a Cricket Tournament.

And a cricket coach was murdered.

Suddenly, Swedes needed visas to enter Jamaica. Because, you know, the Swedes, they have a real reputation for danger. They are wild, my friend, especially if it involves cricket-a sport they don't even play there.

For being a neutral Scandinavian country, they're rewarded by needing visas to enter Jamaica for the months of March-May this year. Said visa could only be gotten from Jamaican consulates. Which-as it was Easter Monday-were closed, and it takes them 24-72 hours to process them anyway.

I asked an American Airlines woman for assistance. She blew me off. I asked for her supervisor. He blew me off in an even more spectacular fashion, it was more of a "really, can't you go crawl in a hole somwhere in the airport and die?" blowoff than a regular blowoff. In a fit of rage, and in a totally uncharacteristic move for me, I shouted after him if there was actually anyone who really knew how to do their jobs who could help me.

We decided to book a last minute flight to somewhere warm. We paid an extortionate sum of money to American Airlines for a hotel and flight and wound up going to Cancun instead. I told the American Airlines guy I'd be contacting American Airlines about his behavior. I thought I'd won that round.

American Airlines, instead, thoughtfully had us chosen to be specially security searched as a "security risk". We got singled out, embarrassed, and held in a little glass box in the middle of a hugely congested screening area before we were screened with a fine tooth comb (which luckily didn't include rubber gloves). Angus was livid. The kids were confused. I was ready to come home.

I'm so grateful to American Airlines that I hope they rot in hell.

We got on the plane.

Once on the plane, I realized my beautiful and amazing Irish bracelet Angus had bought me had fallen off somewhere in transit and was gone.

When we arrived in Cancun, the security screeners there pulled us to the side. They were very kind and polite, and we braced ourselves to be searched again. They didn't want to screen us, it turns out, they just wanted to kindly let us know-a bottle of wine had broken in one of our suitcases, and soaked most of the contents inside. When we opened the suitcase in the airport it smelled like Boozy McWino had taken up residence in our clothing.

Greaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

And when we finally got to the hotel-a surprisingly posh one, thanks to Expedia-they informed us we didn't have adjoining rooms after all (as we had booked), but for another $120 a night they could upgrade us to a two bedroom suite. I battled with them, and they went down to $60 a night. In the end, we wearily agreed-it was have the kids stay on the other side of the hotel (not an option) or have the adults split up to stay with one kid on the other side of the hotel (also not an option). Rock? Meet Cancun place. The room they gave us was indeed nice, although I'm not too happy we were held for ransom like that.

Melissa took diving courses, Angus stayed with her as much as possible, and Jeff and I spent the next three days in the pool. This would be idyllic, only there was a hidden problem we would later learn about - "what lies beneath" is more than just a scary movie title.

Both Angus and his son came down with flaming ear infections, apparently (according to the doctor, anyway) from the Mexican hotel pool (and this was a really posh upscale resort, too! Who saw that coming?) When we made it to Key West over the weekend, it was another $400 in a doctor visit and antibiotics for them, and both of them are still in agony.

They were not alone in their discomfort-Melissa came down with an outbreak of Herpes Simplex A on her face (NOT the kind related to sexually transmitted disease, this is the viral kind related to exposure of chicken pox. Still, not something that one is necessarily proud of). That's right. Melissa has the hand herpes...but on her face. Luckily, she too has an ointment that seems to be clearing it right up.

I seem to not have come down with anything (besides a day of seasickness when I accompanied Melissa on her diving boat. I didn't dive as she was doing her exam dives, but I did snorkel, which I only did up until the waves started, then I was flat on my back for the duration of the day, puking my guts up.) I'm told my face was an interesting color for the remainder of the day.

As a family, we didn't even get to spend a single day together in Cancun. We booked a day trip with the local Expedia office to Cozumel, where we were told we'd be together all day, but we weren't. Jeff and I went snorkelling while Angus and Melissa went diving (Melissa flexing her successful PADI dive card for the first time), and we didn't see them all day as they put us on different boats. Don't get me wrong, by this time Jeff and I had bonded so well we were like two peas in a pod, but I was actually missing Angus by that point. When I went back to the Expedia office to complain about what had happened, I was told that "I clearly misunderstood."

That'll be letter number 2 going off to management then.

Besides the face herpes, the oozing ears, and the overwhelming cost of Cancun (a big perk in Cancun is I can highly recommend the Argentinian restaurant Puerto Madero, which is one of the best meals we've ever had), the real kick in the face happened with Alamo Rental Cars in the U.S. Upon landing in Miami I went to the rental car shuttle to tell them that we were coming, could they wait thirty seconds for us to board? I had my body half in/half out of the bus while asking this question, and the bus driver simply shouted "We're full!" at my question. Then he shut the door on me.

He shut the door on me.

With me halfway in the bus.

I had to push myself out of the closed doors.

And then I went mental. I was so full of rage I couldn't even speak. The weird thing is, in the Good Cop-Bad Cop scenario, Angus is always the Bad Cop and I'm the Good Cop. Always. But not this time. Angus tried to tell me this was a minor inconvenience, but all I saw was red. I went from Bad Cop to Ballistic Cop with a speed that startled even me.

And in the Alamo office, I exploded. I even used words like "assault", "police", and "lawsuit", and I NEVER use those words because I NEVER sue. It got us a car upgrade, anyway, from a Ford Piece of Shit to a Chevy Impala Piece of Shit (seriously, who drives these cars? Who?) but I didn't calm down for a long time.

Cue angry letter number 3.

I can say this-Key West was extraordinary. The people were very kind, the place relaxing, the setting lovely. I want to live there. Gorby would be in heaven. On Sunday we had a terrific thunderstorm and I loved it. We had key lime pie (obligatory). We went to the Southernmost Point (also obligatory, but what the fuck is up with those creepy plastic people?) We took it easy.

Unfortunately we had very little time in Miami and we only saw Old Navy and Target, no other shopping got to be done. We didn't see anything of Miami this time, but I can confirm this-no more hotels on Miami Beach for us, mostly because I like my sleep to not be interrupted at 4 am by abusive drunken revellers.

I'm getting old like that.

We made it home on the flight from hell, leaving last night and arriving at Oh God Hundred this morning. I say flight from hell because the American woman in front of me threw her seat back all the way down from the moment the plane took off, and didn't raise it again, except to have periodic bursts where she'd lift up her seat back and then slam it back down as hard as she could, nearly always catching my knee in the process.

We fully expected to have come home and found the house burned down, burgled, and Gorby dead, but none of those seem to have happened, despite us apparently not only forgetting to lock the door on Sunday when we left, it appears we forgot to even close the door at all. A neighbor who we asked to check in on the place found the front door wide open on Tuesday, two days after we left. She kindly locked up the place for us.

Living in the country has its advantages.

So we're home. Overall we had a good time, but I think it was far from relaxing. I miss the kids. I miss the sun.

I never knew the house could be so calming.

-H.

PS-will try to upload Flickr pics tomorrow. For now? Bedtime.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 12:50 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 1823 words, total size 10 kb.

April 06, 2007

What a Week I'm Having

It's truly been an amazing week. I'd be hard to enunciate why, exactly, but I somehow feel some kind of new horizon has been opened up. Maybe it's turning 33 (because that's such a banner year, of course.) Or maybe it's many things.

Having my dad and stepmother here was absolutely phenomenal. We miss them very much, actually, and I wish we all lived closer. Seeing as they work from Seattle and we work from London, though, I think that's unlikely. We've spoken twice since he returned home, him using his laptop with the new Skype kit Angus installed, and I get to talk to him once more before we have a bit of radio silence while we're both away.

Our guests just left. Jill and her kids stayed the night, and it went better than I thought it would. Angus did indeed up his attentive game, and I have to admit in my childish way that being the center of his attention again was just what I needed. In the light of his sparkling, I felt calm and secure. I still recognize that around Jill, I am Logical Helen. Logical Helen is tough, has her game on, and is not rocked by emotions anywhere. Logical Helen is polite, laughs, and goes about getting things done. Logical Helen is a part of the real me, but she usually dwells behind Childlike Helen, Dozy Helen, and Laughing Helen. Having Angus understand that I have jealousy issues made a difference, though, and this visit went very well.

The house is quiet now for 24 hours. I feel like people have been here with us all week, which I guess they have. It's a day off in England today as Good Friday is a proper holiday. Angus and I will do a bit of work, and I'm personally hoping for an afternoon session in the bedroom.

The sun is shining. More than that, the sun is warm. The back door has been thrown open to a cloudless sky and a canine trods in and out of the house. The light is coming in all the windows, sheltering, calming, cleaning.

Tomorrow morning Melissa and Jeff arrive. I haven't seen them since February, and you probably wouldn't believe it, but I can't wait to see them. I know-it sounds cheesy, it really does. But I'm looking forward to having them here a lot. Melissa showed me her new haircut on Skype, and we'll settle in tomorrow to watch TV and chill.

And then, on Sunday, we're off. The four of us leave at lunchtime after dropping Gorby off at his bed and breakfast. We board a flight to Montreal, and we land in the late afternoon. We're checking in to an airport hotel for a meal and a night, then in the morning we take a flight to Miami, where we then connect and go on to Montego Bay, Jamaica. We spend 5 days in Jamaica.

Melissa is going to get certified to dive there. I couldn't understand it, but Angus was adamant that she get the complete certification with him, instead of doing parts of it in Sweden. I didn't get it until he explained it quietly to me-he wanted her to look back on her diving as something she learnt just with her father, he wants it to be a special memory. I got it then, and now I'm doing all I can to help. We've found an excellent PADI certified school in Jamaica. I've spoken with the instructors. I feel comfortable they're good, and Melissa is very, very excited.

Jeff may do a resort dive or two, it depends. While Melissa is taking diving class, Jeff will have one of about 50,000 water slides at this hotel to choose from. I don't think he'll be bored at all. We'll all be slathered in SPF60, aka "BLOCK THE SUN NOW!" sunblock, especially as two of the four are shockingly blond and just had a Swedish winter, and one of us has had skin cancer.

As for Angus and I, it's not our usual type of holiday, but we're looking forward to time with those he calls "his babies", and we'll relax (I'm taking several books), eat fabulous food, and hopefully have a lot of loving in the quiet nighttime hours (the kids have their own hotel room.)

Next Saturday we leave Jamaica and go back to Florida. We're making our way to Key West for two nights, then Monday we stay at South Beach for one night before taking a connecting flight in Toronto to come home.

It's been a hell of a week, my friend.

And now I'm going to paint my toenails red while soaking up the sunshine. I'm going to have a cup of coffee and smile at the man I love. I'm going to enjoy the last few days before we go away.

I'll see you on the 18th of April.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:08 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 833 words, total size 4 kb.

April 05, 2007

My Eyes Are Sometimes Still Green

A long time ago, I was one seriously jealous chick.

Really.

I remember being eaten up with jealousy and envy. The 7 Deadly Sins had nothing on me. My insides got eaten up with hideous jealousy, to the point where I was a control freak.

The biggest point I remember being jealous was with Kim-I was almost mental with insecurity and resentment. Kim had a lot of female friends, and although it's true, he did wind up cheating on me with one of them, I viewed them all as the enemy. I had to be on my guard. I had to watch everything. It got to where I was dangerous-I would listen to his answering machine, I would search his closets. I was way out of control.

When we split I realized that I couldn't spend my life that way. Jealousy is an emotion that takes enormous chunks out of your soul, it's a feeling that eats away inside like a caustic chemical, burning out parts of you as you go. I learnt that the price I paid for jealousy was too high-not only was I rewarded with my greatest fear of him cheating, but it became one of the worst parts of me, something that I was least proud of.

I didn't want to be that person anymore.

So I stopped.

Honestly. I just stopped.

From then on, I wasn't remotely jealous about people in my boyfriends' lives. They want other people in their lives? Cool. Those people of the opposite sex? Whatever. Go to dinner, have a drink, enjoy. Fuck them and I'm leaving you, but unless you give me a reason to believe you're cheating it's not going to cross my mind for a moment. I'm not spinning another wheel on jealousy, I'm not dwelling in the House of the Paranoid ever again. I may dial up the crazy in other ways, but I'm not going to be jealous.

Angus and I have a very, very honest and open relationship (by open I mean communicative, not "shagging our way through Britain one person at a time" open). One of our early foundations in who we are is that we told each other everything. For the first time in my life, I had someone that I let it all out to. No one got that before, not even Kim. We told each other everything, from the hopes and dreams to fears to where we had grievously sinned. Nowadays sometimes our communication takes a hit, sometimes some subjects are so prickly that it does damage the ability to drag everything into the open. It used to sadden me terribly, but now I just think that life is like that-maybe some feelings are too raw to drag out until the edges become a little bit buffed. But in general, he's the one who knows me more than I know myself.

Which is why I was shocked that he recently mused I was jealous about something.

Angus has an old friend from when he was in school. He's one of those lucky sods that didn't spend his life moving around, his childhood friends are still his friends, and probably always will be. At this little school he had a friend named Jill, and in a strange coincidence, they met up at a school reunion about 10 years ago and discovered they were both living in Stockholm with their spouses and kids. They reunited their friendship and have remained friends since.

Jill and Angus both divorced about the same time, and although she disapproved of me in the beginning, she doesn't seem to mind that I'm around now and in fact he says she speaks highly of me these days. They talk fairly regularly, especially when she's going through a new relationship crisis which seems to happen about every 10 minutes or so.

And the truth is, I don't like Jill.

I never have.

It started when I first met her and Angus and I had an argument that we both handled very badly, and it's continued since then.

I don't for one minute think there's something naughty going on. Trust me when I say that I have zero doubt they're not having an affair. They're good friends and they like each other alot, but I don't need Angus to tell me that sex isn't an option (which he has told me, anyway), it's clear that there is nothing even vaguely romantic between them, nor could there be. They may be friends but you can tell they'd probably kill each other if they were romantic.

My dislike for Jill isn't something I really talk about. It does happen in relationships, I'm sure we often dislike one of our partner's friends (I have a female friend Angus doesn't like, so I guess we're even.) But since that meeting a long time ago, she simply rubbed me the wrong way and stayed in that sandpaper position.

When Angus went to Stockholm a few weeks ago he stayed with her and her kids in the evening (staying at the former marital home wasn't an option, which I think all parties are relieved about.) While there Jill mentioned she and the kids are coming to London this week, could they stay with us? Seeing as Angus had just crashed at her pad, it was hardly possible to say no.

So they're coming.

They were due to come on Tuesday, but my family was here until Wednesday. So they arrive tonight and stay until Saturday. Jill has three kids, one of them who is sweet and friendly, the other two for whom the word "tornado" was invented-the youngest is just a handful, the eldest ranges from "offensively rude" to "incredibly sweet" in a matter of seconds (unless something has changed-I haven't seen them since last year so maybe they're no longer like that.)

I'm not looking forward to it. I'd take an herbal tranquilizer, but that's not a good idea. Instead I'm going to face it head on.

One night in bed a while back, Angus said that he thought I was jealous of Jill. I scoffed. Ridiculous! I don't do jealous! There's nothing to be jealous of! Jealousy is an outdated emotion! Acceptance is the new black!

Then, with time and a little thought, I realized that he was right.

I am jealous.

I don't feel the need to check his collars for lipstick or to guard my heart. I don't worry that she's coming along in an attempt to steal him, I don't want to religiously check his behavior.

But they have a different relationship than I understand, and it does upset me.

In the UK friends use very derisive humor with each other. You take the piss out of someone that you like (and you simply abuse those you don't.) As friends, she speaks to him in ways that I would not only dream of talking to him in, but in ways that I'm not allowed to talk to him.

Everyone has trigger points, the things that make us blow up. Everyone's are different. For me, if you hang up the phone on me you'd better plan on never speaking to me again, because I find it pretty unforgivable (but that hasn't stopped Angus once or twice from doing it to me.) If you attack the fact that I have a mental illness in a negative way, you'd better be prepared to throw down. If you're teasing me about being an American, that's one thing. If you're having an unwarranted go at my country, that's another.

For Angus, he has a few key flashpoints. One of them is when something is imposed upon him-it can be anything from getting a parking ticket to someone imposing their opinion on him. One of this other triggers is when you tell him what he should think or do - he doesn't like that, and while I understand that, I do sometimes struggle with it, as you have to explain perceptions to him carefully, i.e. "I think you're doing X" as opposed to "You're doing X" in an argument.

Through the years we've been together we've learnt what each others triggers are and we carefully try to work through them. It doesnt' mean we both don't fuck up from time to time, but I know that there are parameters I should work in with him, just as he has ways he has to handle me (the words "kid gloves" apply here.)

For Jill, she gets to blow down all the barn doors. She can talk to him however she wants and it's ok. I know Angus disagrees with me, but I've seen her commit the cardinal sin of telling Angus what he thinks and he didn't get angry. And I'll be honest-on reflection, I realized that I resent that horribly. Why do I have to be so careful with what I say and she can just let loose? Maybe the truth is, they just have a different relationship-as school friends, they can be disrespectful but lovers, well...you have to respect and care more. But still-it makes me angry. It makes me angrier still when I think she's being downright rude, teasing him about weight or grey hair or the like.

But my biggest issue, I have realized, is so embarrassing I can hardly believe it.

The entire time I have known Angus there is one thing I can count on him for-if we are at a party or an event or in a crowded room, he will be looking out for me. He will be around me, sparkling, caring. This sounds incredibly smug and I really don't mean it that way, but I know that in a room full of people chances are his eyes will be on me. Which makes me feel amazing and alive, especially since my eyes are always on him. We're both so transparent it's sad, but it's one of our things-apparently our eyes sparkle around each other, and for once I don't mind sounding a little My Little Pony.

But when Jill's around, his attention is on her. Not in a sparly eye kind of way, but perhaps in a "she makes me laugh and is a good mate" kind of way. The past few events we've had that she's been to, I've barely seen Angus. Again, I'm sure there's no hanky panky going on, but I have understood my biggest issue-

When she's around, I'm not the center of his world.

I can't tell you how embarrassed I am at how pathetic and needy that sounds.

Here are my insecurities playing out on a global scale. I am jealous all over again, and all because I'm not the center of his attention for one evening. It's like I'm a fucking four year-old all over again, demanding the grown-ups pay attention to ME ME ME.

Angus and I talked about this, and he's apologized for not being more attentive and says he'll rectify that. For my part, I've got some work to do, and I apologized to him for that. I hate feeling this way, and I need to stop it. This is wrong, it's not healthy.

So they arrive tonight. I'm not looking forward to it but I'm glad Angus will see his old friend. I guess a part of me sort of wishes I could hop out of myself for the evening, but for better or for worse I can't do that anymore.

I honestly believe that even if it weren't for my childish insecurities I still wouldn't really care for Jill (but of course, I would tell myself that). She's really isn't the kind of person I usually get on with, her personality kinda' grates on me. I wouldn't be rude to her, I'll be polite, but I still can't escape from the fact that I'm not a good person inside when she's around.

But that's my problem.

I may be off the suicide list, but apparently I still have more work to do on the jealousy list, and I can't express how ashamed I am to admit that.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:45 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 2032 words, total size 11 kb.

April 04, 2007

The Shape of Things

This post might not make much sense, but I'm currently a jumble of emotions, thoughts, and memories. So maybe it's more for me than anyone else but I need to disconnect the brain and hands for a bit and let some things out.

My dad and stepmother just left and the house is sadly quiet now. Gorby - having lost his companion in dad - is sulking in his dog bed. Angus had to go in to work for a bit and I'm at home looking out the windows, feeling like I forgot something somewhere - I left the oven on, I need to bring the laundry in, I'm meant to be on a conference call...something like that.

Angus and my family arranged my surprise birthday visit back in January so that my family would be able to arrange their crazy flight schedules accordingly. They can never change things on short notice as their jobs don't permit for such, so the fact that this has been planned for so long touches me greatly. I absolutely loved having them here and I can't wait until they come back and visit again.

The relationship I have with my father is a whole new territory for me. As a young child I adored him, I loved him, I wanted him in my life so much, but this ended shortly after I turned 8 and my parents divorced. My childhood idolatry of the man I knew as "Daddy" ended then, with the harsh reality of poverty and preferences - namely that his preferences were to be elsewhere, instead of us.

When my parents got back together all parties had changed. "Daddy" had disappeared, and in his place I had intalled The Man to Butt Heads With. I was hard and broken inside, and it was the start to many years of battling between my father and myself. I could never forgive, even when I would later commit those same offenses myself.

My father was never a good father. He really wasn't, and I'm not having a go here at him, he even admits that he was a terrible father. He was never around and when he was he was volatile as hell. His career was the most important thing in his life and his emotional repsonsibilities to his family were far down the list. I often felt like I was an inconvenience, a nuisance, a hassle. He struggled with himself, he struggled with us, he struggled. I, in turn, struggled with him. He was never "my" dad in my mind, he was my sister's. Ever the golden child on both sides of the fence - even my mother admitted to me once that my sister was her favorite, which is always a wise thing to tell a child - I always felt like the darkest of the black sheep, the one who honestly should never have been born. We once went three years without talking, and I guess the emotional distances from all of our pasts was something that we thought would serve some of us again, as now years later most of us don't speak anymore.

I could be all I'm OK You're OK and blame my parents for handling things badly. I could blame myself for handling myself and the situation badly. There are all kinds of ways to throw all kinds of blame, but at the end of the day people need to take account for their actions, and even more so rehashing the past will get us nowhere. I don't see the point in dwelling anymore - thanks to therapy, I try to let things go and not spend all my time immaturely running around appointing blame. Because the truth is, in the split-up of a grown-up family, everyone is to blame. We all came at things with pinking shears, on every side of the fence.

Only some fences in my life, they got mended.

My dad and I started talking very occasionally when I moved to England. It wasn't regular, but we were pleasant on the phone to each other. W weren't that close, and Angus used to remark we talked on the phone more like friends than father-daughter. I didn't confide things in him and I didn't let him too far in my life, but he was on the periphery.

When we miscarried last year it was bigger than either Angus or I could handle. I didn't know why at the time but I wanted to talk to my dad, and I never talked to him about matters of the heart. I couldn't even really talk to him about the miscarriage, I just wanted him around. So after he visited my sister and her child in Texas (to be fair to both of us he saw us both), he came out here.

And we've been close since then.

We've been father-daughter, even.

We talked often between August and Christmas, and at Christmas Angus installed Skype on all of their computers and we all now speak several times a week.

Angus, for his part, has been ultra-supportive. He interacts often with both my father and stepmother and thinks this relationship we have is so important. He - like all of us - works hard to make sure everything stays on course. He and my father wants the relationship between the other side of my family and myself to heal too, but that's just not going to happen.

My dad has changed so much from when I was younger that he's not even the same person. He and my stepmother have a very respectful, very caring relationship, and I have found her to be honestly an amazing and wonderful person - she never had a chance to be close to any of us because it wouldn't have been tolerated, and I have apologized to her for that. I was wrong.

Dad and I talked about the past from time to time and on this visit we covered off some things that maybe needed to be talked about. We both apologized for things that happened in the past, and we openly and honestly admitted where we went wrong, where we regret, and where we wish things had been different. The other side of the family is different-everything is all my fault, always has been, probably always will be, I'm the worst kind of despicable human beings, so it's a relief to find someone that doesn't want to spin their wheels with how horrible a person I am. Maybe the truth is I am a bad person. Maybe the truth is my mother and sister will never be happy until they resolve their internal bitterness.

But I hope and wish for happiness in my dad's life. The funny thing is, I've learnt that love gets bigger as you spread it around. I know my dad isn't limited to only being in my life, I may not like the person but I honestly hope and wish that he will be allowed into that other person's life, simply because it would make him happy. I understand that's not the case right now, and I know that my dad would be a great asset to the other person's world.

That's something that Angus taught me.

Love isn't a clique, it's not a fierce loyalty spending card.

As cheesy as it sounds, love is a gift with endless depth and resources.

So I had my dad and stepmother here, and I loved every minute of it. I got to spend my birthday with them. They got to meet most of Angus' family, and I'm delighted that my family and his family gets on very well. They came to stay with us for a few days, and Dad walked the dog, we all had meals together, we relaxed and laughed.

And I got to tell them some of the best news we have had in a long time. Last week in my therapy appointment, I got some of the most rewarding news ever - from my therapists' professional and clinical opinion, I am now out of the high-risk category. My BPD and I are healing, to the point where I am now officially no longer ruled a suicide risk. My therapist said that my entire world can collapse in every way, shape, and form, and yet I will make it, that I am strong enough and able enough, that inside parts of me are healed even though other parts remain broken.

People make mistakes.

People recover from their mistakes.

Having a dad is one of the greatest feelings in the world. I feel like I finally have a family, and it's a family that is healthy, loving, and supportive, no matter what. My dad has only been a major part of my life for the past 8 months, and if I lost him tomorrow I would mourn him forever and ever, but I will never regret that we have become close.

It only took 32 years.


Dad and Helen


-H.

PS-I realize that the Texas side of my family obsessively reads both of my blogs (which is very disappointing and extremely pathetic and sad in a control freak kind of way.) I didn't write this for you, though, and I didn't write it to hurt you. I wrote it for me. I wish you'd just go away from here and give me my privacy, but I guess you will never truly leave me alone, so I make my peace in other ways.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 11:57 AM | Comments (21) | Add Comment
Post contains 1590 words, total size 8 kb.

April 02, 2007

Seymour and More

I only have a moment, so here goes:

Seymour arrived with great fanfare late Friday (read: me jumping up and down in the pouring rain with glee.)

Seymour is a fabulous wooden outdoor table and chairs, complete with comfy cushions (not seen in this photo as they arrived later.)


Seymour


I absolutely love it. I thought Angus outdid himself with the fantasticness of the gift. I adore Seymour (and yes, it will be called Seymour).

But then more came.

Saturday, after a day of frenzied cleaning and some minor arguments, I came back from a short shopping round to a sparkly Angus. He told me to pack things for two nights, and put them on the bed. When I looked again, a suitcase was packed. We dropped Gorby off at the kennel and went for a Mystery Tour.

I had no idea what was going on.

We drove into London, and pulled up at a nice hotel on Gloucester Road. He asked me to take a walk with him, and we went to the National Science Museum. He asked me to stand by a barrier and hold still for a picture. I did so, then he asked me if I wanted to see the picture. So I walked up to him and looked at the back of the viewscreen of the digital camera.

more...

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 03:33 PM | Comments (44) | Add Comment
Post contains 293 words, total size 2 kb.

March 30, 2007

What Time Does My Baby Elephant Arrive?

So Sunday is my birthday.

No, that's not a joke.

I have NEVER enjoyed having a birthday located squarely on April Fool's Day, and apparently there was no chance of me even saying I cut it close-if I remember correctly from my baby album, I was born at about 2:00 in the afternoon, so I am indeed an April Fool's Day baby. There isn't a crack about April Fool's Day babies that you could make that I haven't heard, either, despite people always being willing to give it a try.

I have no idea what's planned for the day, only I can't help but feel something's planned, mostly because Angus has this undeniable sparkle in his eye as he denies all knowledge of anything planned. I love that I can read him like that, but at the same time it pisses me off that I can read him, but I can't see into the innermost reaches of his soul and find out what - if anything - has been planned. To be honest, nothing has to be planned - I'm just feeling a bit needy and would like some reassurance time.

It must be so great to be with someone with issues.

Angus asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, and I laid out my dream scenario:

- 5-star hotel.
- Champagne.
- Massage and facial.
- A great round of sex.
- Then all of CSI Season 6 on DVD while I'm laying chilled out on the 5-star hotel bed.
- Dinner of a great food (of course, my fave is mac and cheese, but I could admit that I should bring my game up a little for my birthday and all.)
- Falling asleep after an hour of him telling me how wonderful our relationship is and that time started moving finally the day he met me, or some such romantic shit in a similar vein.

I would've included something about John Cusack, but that's just unrealistic.

But barring any of that happening, I'd settle for:

- Him walking the dog so I can sleep in.
- A great round of sex.
- Him not trying to talk like an American at all for one day (he still sounds like someone battling a case of outrageous hemorrhoids when he tries to imitate us, so a day of not thinking about Preparation-H would be ok with me.)
- A nice meal.
- Loads of voluntary cuddles and compliments.

My stepmother keeps wondering what kind of cake I'll be having. Truthfully, Angus and I usually don't make each other cakes-that was a big thing he and his ex did, but honestly, most of the time I can take or leave cake. I honestly can't stand frosting and never have done, so when I was younger we always had Baskin Robbins' Ice Cream cakes. Ice cream? Good. Cake? Good. Ice cream frosting? Good. The ice cream cakes isn't really an option here, so I told him that ice cream sundaes instead of cake would be ok this weekend, too.

I've specifically requested no English birthday cake. Again, England is fantastic in many, many ways. They have (after many years of abuse) gained a great reputation in food, and I love many English dishes. But one thing I can't stand here is the cake-for Christmas, weddings, and Christenings they have that heavy, heavy fruitcake. For birthdays and other celebrations, they have a kind of "fruit cake lite".

I won't go near fruitcake.

Like frosting, I have never liked the stuff.

Fruitcake is banned from the birthday weekend (although maybe I'll make it for him, as he likes the stuff.)

So I'm Cake Neutral. Although weirdly, lately I've been craving yellow cake with the world's thinnest layer of chocolate frosting. This is seriously out of character for me because 1) I don't really like cake and 2) in case I haven't been clear, I can't stand frosting. He found a recipe for it online (you can't buy the mix here. In fact, there are only one or two mixes you can buy here, so anytime I've made a cake I've made it from scratch. It's more fun that you might imagine, actually, in a "god the flour exploded" kind of way.) So we'll see. I'm good either way-cake or no cake.

Apparently my birthday present arrives today, too, because Angus said that was the closest he could arrange it to my birthday. I gave him a list of what I'd like for my birthday, and I'm relatively certain it's not something like a new fridge or a new dishwasher, mostly because our appliances are still new but also because he is under strict instructions that he is never to buy me an appliance for a gift. This came about as his sister-in-law got an iron from his brother one year, and the other sister-in-law got a juicer (despite the fact that she hates cooking and anything to do with it.) I do not feel that appliances are appropriate presents in any way, shape or form. If I need an iron I'll fucking buy one. If Santa brings me one, he better take a running start because it's going airborne.)

(The one exception to that rule is this. I'd love to have one. I'd worship it for the rest of my life. No one would be in trouble if I got one, although there's a good chance everything we'd eat for a long period of time would have meringue on it, and I hate meringue, I'd make it just because.)

But my present is coming today.

And my present is big.

Very big.

He said that the delivery truck will be by anytime between 8 and 6 today. As he has a meeting this afternoon, if it arrives while he's out I'm to ask the guys to put it in the driveway, although apparently I'll know what it is right away.

I'm convinced it's that baby elephant I've always wanted. I'll name him Seymour, and I'll let Maggie and Mumin ride on him. He'll be so happy here, and I'll punch anyone in the throat that tries to call him Dumbo because I don't want Seymour to have a self-esteem problem.

The baby elephant theme is riding high in our house. I keep asking Angus when my baby elephant arrives, and he keeps rolling his eyes. The truth is, I'm not good with surprises-I hate knowing if one is coming, I'd rather just live my life cluelessly in the dark until something springs up. Warning me that a surprise is coming is like torturing a lactose-intolerant cheese lover with a visit to Neal's Yard.

So there you have it.

On Sunday, I have the unremarkable birthday of 33, which doesn't feel either old or young, I just accept that it is (I love existentialism).

Today, my baby elephant arrives.

Life doesn't get much better than this.

-H.

PS-it's a day early, but it is a tradition, so happy birthday, Mitzi!

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:04 AM | Comments (37) | Add Comment
Post contains 1183 words, total size 7 kb.

<< Page 18 of 62 >>
422kb generated in CPU 0.1377, elapsed 0.1845 seconds.
50 queries taking 0.1413 seconds, 664 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.