I still haven’t had time to complete my muffin top extravaganza.  But, it’s coming.

Oh, yes, it is.

Instead, I’ve continued to be plagued by guilt about Silas and the whole hospital ordeal.  It just seems like a really sick, ugly shame that I had this major family disconnect at the same time that Silas was so ill.   Of course, it wasn’t intentional.  But, you know, the whole road to hell and all that.

Still, and I don’t know if I can put what I was going through into words (or if I even want to put it into words), I’ve learned from that bitter lapse of familial bliss.

(If you’ve been reading you might be noting that “familial bliss” might be a poetic stretch of the imagination.  But, still.  You know what I mean.)

Anyhow, I don’t know if it was seeing my boy so sick or if it was my mom coming to relieve the stress or the fact that I’ve been regularly taking my medicine, but I’ve been through a major change.

I’ve been able to relax and enjoy!

And, with a two-year-old that’s just vital.

I’m not going to go into all the cute little things that I’ve watched Silas do lately.  About how particular he is and how he throws his head back when he laughs.  Honestly, all the wonderful is pretty much summed up in the picture.  (Yes, I finally broke down and posted a cute picture of my son.  Does that mean I’ve turned all warm and fuzzy?  Still, can you even try to resist that smile?!?)

So, I guess the good part of fucking up– as long as no one was seriously hurt along the way– is– yes, I’m going to be totally cliche and am going to try to use at least one more set of hyphens– is– okay, I don’t really have anything to add but the hyphens– is that you can, indeed, learn from your mistakes.

I’m sure I’m not the first parent who was overdoing it at work, was feeling stressed at home, and who decided to put the blinders on in a desperate act of self-preservation.

The good thing is, I’ve re-prioritized.

So yeah, that’s why I haven’t been here.  It’s not because I’m reading trash novels (well, I am) or because I’m watching trash T.V. (no, I’m really not– unless you count Thomas as trash) or because I haven’t a thing to say.

I haven’t been here because I’ve been playing with my boy.  (Well, and I’ve been working on my Nat’l Boards while he sleeps.)

Anyhow, may you live each day like it’s 1999.  Or, whatever.

Love the one your with.

~Em

– Posted on Facebook by my good friend Anne D.

This monumental pile of dishes are clean. 

So, Paul just told me that Limp Bizzzzzzzzkit or some shit covered the song that graces the title of this blog.  To the world,  I’m sorry.

Still, here I am again.  In all my glory.  I had a crazy surge of energy the other night (hence the 3AM post) and, following Nina’s lead, got myself added to the Asheville Blogroll.  http://www.blogasheville.blogspot.com/

And, created a Facebook Page for this site.  (Join it, yeah!) 

And, finally got some GD photos posted on this here blog.    (You might laugh at me, but there is something either wrong with my web hosting or wrong with my computer or wrong with me.  Or, all of the above.  But, it was a nasty, multi-hour, uploading to Shutterfly, and then making a copy, and then uploading again, kind-of bizarre experience.  In short, it really sucked.)

However, as you can tell from the quote above, it paid off.

So, I thought I could start posting cute little pictures of Silas on my blog.  But, and I don’t know why, I don’t think that’s my style.  (However, it might be tomorrow.)  Instead, I uploaded more kitchen.  Paul has a new thing against our ancient dishwasher, so we often have this large pile of dishes (clean or dirty) piled up around our sink.    It’s not pretty.  But, then again, it’s our life.  And, since my title is faith-uh-faith-uh-faith-uh, it makes sense.  To me.  (Read on.)

On Sunday, I thought  it might do us good to all go to church together.  I was feeling pretty cranky but thought that the whole thing might be uplifting. 

I was wrong. 

We had a visiting minister which, usually, means a pretty interesting little bit of Bible School.  But, in this case, and perhaps it was my mood, I felt like the visitor was more of a self-important little bastard. 

(I know I just called a minister a bastard.  I may have to say an extra some penance at the pearly gates for that.  No, I don’t really believe in hell.  Well, except the hell for the really, really bad people.) 

Anyhow, this minister, he did what irks me about Unitarians:  he kept making snide little jokes about how we are so different and liberal.   It really gets on my nerves.  But it’s one of those things where everyone else laughs.  So, you think, “Maybe, just maybe, I’m in the wrong place here.”  And, maybe I am.

You see, lately I’ve been praying.  Real, God’s honest praying.  Closing my eyes and saying thanks and breathing deep and asking for help and all that jazz.  I’ve been praying and it seems to work.    Well, it seems to help me find my shoes.  But, still.  Shoes found are shoes found.   That could make the difference between a good God and a no God in my book.  (Maybe that’s a little too broad an interpretation of Matthew 21:21, eh?)

Anyhow, I’ve been praying.  It’s all I have to hold on to lately.  I’ve been praying and then I go to church and this little,uh, man tells me that God doesn’t answer little prayers.  That the cosmos is so big that “he” has little time to spend on us low lifes.  I have to say, it didn’t really make me feel any better.

(I should say that Paul really liked the guy.  He did tell a moving story about his place in the Civil Rights Movement with Dr. Martin Luther King.  If I had been in a better mood it might have been touching.)

Anyhow, faith.  Paul keeps telling me I need to have some.  Like, faith that we’ll get out of this financial mess.    That he’ll fix things.   That this situation is only temporary.

I don’t know about that.  It’s really friggin’ hard.

But, here’s what I do see: 

We didn’t have anything but canned soup for dinner the other night and then we were invited by friends to come for a fabulous dinner.

We didn’t have gas in our cars and a friend showed up with $40 on loan.  (Just checking on us.)

My co-worker paid my way, without my asking, to get into my National Board program and showed up on Silas’s birthday with a box of groceries.

Paul, who I used to think I would kill in the middle of the night when he wouldn’t help with Silas, now lets me sleep in every weekend and has been dutifully in charge of the dishes. 

And now, my sister, who I am SO close with, just found a job up here and is moving to good ole NC!!!

I have to have faith.  At least that there are people who love me.  That I’m not going to end up in a cardboard box.  That, on those really tough mornings, I will find my shoes. 

Yeah, faith.   You gotta have it.   And, I gotta get to bed.

So, cheers again, to a window open when a door closes and all that other great stuff from, well, The Sound of Music.   May you have what you need when you need it.   And may you keep better house than I do. 

Amen.

So, I’ve been sitting here, working on some posts, some poems, some new perspectives on my life.  Being 3:38 in the morning and a work night,  I was about to return to bed until I noticed the moon pouring through the “reading room” window onto my day bed.  (Ironically, spilling right onto my journal and laptop.)

I had to lie in that light.

And, now, at 3:40, I am wondering should I sleep in it even at the risk of offending my husband.

There must be something magical to absorb.

Silas was born on the night of a harvest moon– a big giant beast of a thing blazing in the sky like a she-god.  I am compelled to wonder what, if any, moon magic was instilled in him that night.   Although, I tell myself that I don’t believe in moon magic.  (But, then again, I am giddy with the thought of sleeping in it.)

Still, there was a time I believed in that magic wholly.

I was perhaps six, maybe seven, my bed pushed up against the western window.  Living in the country, I had a clear view of the sky.  I would take a deep breath and stare intently at the star that seemed most intense to me, most willing to grant my wishes.

I would wish the same wish every night– that I could transform into any being at chose, at any moment I chose, and shift back with the same ease in which I initially transformed. Sometimes, I would imagine myself a Pegasus, or a big fat tree, or a small, gentle creature like a rabbit or a mouse.  Most often, however, I fantasized about inviting the class bullies behind the school at recess where I would shape-shift into a Tyrannosaurus Rex and deny that I knew anything about it when they went screaming to tell the teacher.

After wishing, I would climb down onto the floor and curl into a ball, my head nestled between my knees.  “Make me a rabbit” I would say.  Each time truly believing that it might actually happen and gravely disappointed when it didn’t.

I am realizing, now at 3:57, that Silas is quickly moving into that age in which magic really is possible.  In which Santa Clause is real and wishing on a star doesn’t seem so silly.  I am thrilled and enchanted and desperate that the wonder wear off on me.

I wonder if maybe I, too, was born under a harvest moon.  If maybe I did ingest some of that magic.  And, I am smiling, however mischievously, as I realize that I can share that with my son.  That fierce tug of curiosity and imagination.

I could expound upon this– go on and on forever about forest creatures and tooth fairies, but I am sleepy at 4:04.  And honestly I am anxious now to wrap myself in the throw that my grandmother knit for me and to enjoy whatever slumber I have left under the last rays of the silver moon.

Good night and good wishing…

So, I have, just recently, in the last few days in fact, experienced a little, life-altering epiphany.   And, yes, like most life-altering epiphanies–or at least like most of my life-altering epiphanies, because I have had so very many, you know– the burst of mind-numbing enlightenment was completely obvious.  Beyond obvious.  Let me fill you in…

While perched on the toilet– I admit that I often feign constipation in order to fulfill my literary yearnings– I revisited the introduction to Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.  In her opening paragraph, she discusses a childhood filled with books and with people actually reading them.  She talks about a writer father who sprawled across the couch every evening after dinner to read, read, read.  She writes about how the whole family would retire to their favorite reading spot and about how, on occasion, their house was also filled with, perhaps better than books, her father’s writer friends, who would, to Lamott’s dismay, occasionally pass out at the dinner table.Ah!  How I wished, with all my stupid heart’s desire, that I could be living that life.

Living that life?!?  You’d think I was envious of someone who built a 4-acre palace on the back-side of a cumulus cloud.  I mean, golly, turning my back deck into the Playboy Mansion may be a little beyond my reach, but living in a house in which people stretched out after a good meal to enjoy a good book?!?

Yeah.  I’ve been spending my time desperately yearning for the easily possible.

Unfortunately, it seems, that wild pointless yearning of mine confirms one of the following: a.) I’m ungratefully spoiled and nothing is ever good enough for me b.) I am a masochist who likes to dangle the near-possible in front of myself while happily throwing ugly curve balls– such as a child who has been sick for almost four months and a sink that is full of crusty, unwashed dishes– at my undeserving head OR c.) I am plagued by a bout of life-threatening perfectionism that forces me to focus my undivided attention on all the wrong things.

Okay.  It’s A, B & C.  I’m an ungrateful, spoiled perfectionist masochist with a son who has been sick for 4 months (and who consequently is about to undergo surgery for a hernia AND a branchial cleft cyst), a sink full of almost-crusty dishes, and an inability to just damn RELAX!!!

So, if my idea of a perfect life includes lying on the couch reading and writing and having over artist friends, I have that so in the bag.  All I have to do is Just Do It!  (I really didn’t mean to use that Nike catch phrase.   But, now that I have, I finally, uh, get it.)

Instead of constantly berating myself because the bathroom floor has dirty sneaker prints on it,  I am now thinking that, within reason, I should just throw my Suzy Homemaker tendencies to the wind.

I was never intended to be a homemaker.  (At least not the kind that dabbles in Jell-O Mold.)

Wait!  That’s not fair.  Maybe I was.  Just a wee bit.  I mean, I do genuinely love organizing my closets with baskets.  I feel great when I’ve both dusted and made a Pot Roast.  And, I did– just this year– host a holiday wine-tasting in which the cloth napkins were rolled ever-so-neatly in little silver reindeer napkin rings and in which fresh Holly adorned our mantel.

Still.  I was never intended to spend so much time stressing about my domestic duties that I lose all sight of the truly important.

And, I don’t just mean reading books.

I mean, of course, my family.

In what sick self-created world of mine did dish-washing and laundry-folding become more important than drum-beating and boogie-dancing with my 15-month-old.  Or, more important than sipping a nicely chilled Manhattan and having a down-home discussion with my husband.  Or, even, more important than just checking in with myself about how the hell I’m feeling.

I can vow and resolve and promise and dream until I’m– well– dead.  And then, I guess, I’d just die dreaming.  If having a happy home filled with books and creativity and love is my goal, well,  I should consider myself one lucky woman.  Because, no matter how I slice it,  I already have everything I need.  All I need to do is just enjoy!

Sounds simple.

To enjoying my home, my hubby, my son, my books, my couch, my mind, my new quill pen, and my lap top, I toast (literally, I’m toasting as I type) to a new beautiful year!

May you also have little life-altering epiphanies and may we both have the courage to learn from them.

Again.

(If you’d like to add insult to injury, leave a comment stating: Emily, Just yesterday you were complaining that you had no inspiration, no motivation to write. Isn’t this your fourth post?!?)

(You may try to provoke me further by asking me if I’m in some sort-of state of mania.)

So, back to the bitchiness.

Early on in our relationship my then boytoy, now husband, tried to talk to me about the work of Jiddu Krishnamurti. He tried to talk to me about unattachment (why the hell is unattachment not a word? or disattachment? Or ostracization? Pendulating? Xrytabjuok?) and about inner peace.

I’ll admit it now. I didn’t get it.

This evening, I am working on getting it. We could use the peace. I could use the peace. Silas could use the peace.

Many days, around this time, say 6:30 or 7:00, I become irritable and fanatical. It is often my attachment to cleanliness and order that arouses my irritation. Or perhaps, also, my attachment to the sun. Before I succumbed to the assistance of psychotropic medications, I must admit that with the twilight came from me a rush of hostility often directed toward my husband or myself or both. It was as if with the setting sun a switch was flipped, a trigger pulled, a defense mechanism collapsed. Like a werewolf.
(You know how sometimes when you say something aloud or write it down it becomes more real. Lucky you, I am working this out as I type. You, oh privileged onlooker of my mind.)

What I stated above is not exactly true. Perhaps my attachment isn’t to the cleanliness (or rather the uncleanliness), but to the doing, the doing, the doing.
Before my faithful consumption of mind-altering chemical cocktails, I was completely entranced by the idea of doing. I could never do enough, enough, enough, enough. It was an ugly, unrelenting cycle. Twilight, being the signifier of the end of another day, piqued in me the desire to examine what I had done. Twilight, the unattainable finish line. Twilight, the symbol of my inferiority.

Things are better. I am now aware of the reality that my reaction to any situation is by and large a choice. Last night (pat on back) with the approach of darkness, I started in on my incessant ranting and scrubbing and sighing and refusal to communicate and then something beautiful happened. I recognized the pattern. Recognized the choice. And stopped. I said to my husband: Guess what? I was about to say that this mess is stressing me out. But then I realized that the mess really can’t stress me out. Can’t do anything to me. Only I can stress me out. (Or, as Tolle might say, only my ego can.) And now, I’m choosing not to be stressed.

Then we went about having a merry evening.

So, then, why am I out on the back deck this evening? Why would the twilight bring about the same metamorphosis. Only this time with even more force?

Probably because I don’t want to stop this pattern. Because I am addicted to being frustrated and irritable in the evenings. Because I need a place for all of my excess energy to go.

But, I won’t berate myself. No, again, I am making a choice.

I should mention that my husband did not banish me to the back deck. I did. And in doing so, I have stopped feeling claustrophobic and obsessive. I am watching the gentle shuffle of leaves and the sun setting over the mountains (and admittedly having a small, but stiff drink) and I am breathing deeply and releasing my negative energy onto this page. Ahhhhhh…

Now excuse me, while I go enjoy my dinner.