So, my sister married a Gator. I have not really forgiven her, but I have moved past the pain. Florida beat Georgia again. Did I say I moved past the pain? I lied.
That is why, when my nephew comes over, wearing a damn Florida blue outfit with Gator orange socks, (which, incidentally, is the same dork outfit my bil is wearing) and then his father leaves to go watch the Florida game at his house, I like to play this little game with my nephew.
Why? Because it makes me feel better.
This is a great read from The New Yorker.
Too many experts instruct adults to act like a piano whose soft pedal is permanently pressed down. It’s possible to find something sinister in the effort to hide half your emotional spectrum from your children. Sometimes it might be a good thing for a kid to hear, instead of polite evasions, an honest, full-throated “Cut it out!â€
Amen! I am so sick of Pussy Parenting.
This mother had her son taken from her at Hartsfield, without her permission. By TSA agents! There is something seriously wrong in our world. Seriously wrong. How much you want to bet that those folks are never held accountable?
I hope this gets picked up by the big news folks, and some heads roll.
Update: And now it seems this nutjob may have embellished her story a bit. . . .
So, I haven’t been blogging much. For one thing, Georgia broke my heart and my will and I could barely lift a finger to play Bejeweled, much less write something, after the demoralizing loss of Saturday. I didn’t even get around to writing Tiller’s annual birthday post (get those tissues ready, ladies), due to complete and utter house renovation/in-laws/birthday party/my parents/work/laundry/vacation packing fucking chaos in my life.
But at least I’m not trying to conceive during football season. Jesus. What a losing battle. Especially this season. I will say this: Even in the depths of despair, when the world seems to be crumbling around you, or at least around your football team, it is comforting to know that someone gets you. Courtney, if you can’t conceive, I will carry your baby for you, sweetie. You speak to my soul.
Much to say, and just not gutsy enough to say it, so i haven’t been posting. I have been writing, keeping it to myself. Not bottling it up, but not letting it see light, either. Part of me thinks I am a big pussy for not just writing things out in the name of honesty and forthrightness. The other part of me knows that it might cause irreparable damage.
Or maybe the damage is already done. Am I selfish for wanting to purge all of this heartache? Would it be healthy for me? Or would it just be me seeking vindication, revenge. Even if I was doing it for the right reasons, is it possible that those involved would see it that way? No. I don’t think it’s possible.
So, I guess I do have boundaries.
Huh. Didn’t see that coming. . . .
A friend of mine is being buried today. I could not make the funeral and I am sad about that. I know that there are others who couldn’t make it either, but that we are all there in thought and, some of us, in prayer.
Charles (we all called him “Spanky”) was not a close friend, but he was a friend, nonetheless. He was a boy who was in my classes. He was a boy who was at parties, who gave great hugs, had a big heart, and was quick to laugh. Charles’ laugh was so distinctive that I can still hear it in my head, clear as a bell. After twenty years, I can still hear his laugh like it was yesterday.
Last Saturday, Charles shot his father, and then he shot himself. The grief one feels over a friend killing themselves is overwhelming. The grief of knowing that someone you cared about took a life, much less the life of someone so close to them. . . that grief is almost unbearable. It makes you want to sleep to escape the thought of it. It makes you want to climb right out of your own skin to stop feeling it. You don’t want to imagine the grief of a mother, a sister suffering the pain of such a loss. And yet you cannot get away from it. It permeates everything.
You try not to think about it, but you can’t stop. It keeps you up at night, wondering how it turned out this way. You think, here I am, with my loving husband, my wonderful children, and my happy home. Here I am twenty years later (a blink of an eye, really) and where did Charles go? What happened to him in the last twenty years?
I cannot reconcile the boy I knew with the picture in my head of the man he became.
I have thought of it hourly for the last five days. I have wondered how it was him that ended up with an addiction. There were so many of us, and so many of us did more than we should have, and what made him the victim of addiction? It could have been any of us. “There but for the Grace of God go I” is on a loop in my head this week. I have thought about God, and heaven, and forgiveness. I have thought about whether there is an afterlife, and if it is punitive, or if it is a place where we all will find forgiveness, solace, and peace. I came up with no answers, save one: We are all so intertwined.
When I think of the community I came from, one that is grieving from top to bottom, one that was touched in so many ways by this one family, I know this: We are all intertwined. The things we do have an impact. Sometimes that impact is not seen until we lose a piece of ourselves. And then it breaks down and we are so very aware of the gaping holes in our lives. This one boy with the unique laugh was a friend to so many of us. He was a son, a brother, a cousin. And his loss and the loss of his father are felt so very strongly by one community today. The one thing I know is that we are all stronger for having known one another and that each and every one of us can never forget that we hold those that love us in the palms of our hands.
This is for the town that I have scorned. The town that has changed so much over the years and which I was so glad to have left. But that town is not just growth and development and a homogeneous population. It is the town where I grew up. It is a community, no matter how far flung we all our now; Deep down, we are still those kids that walked to school through an old cemetery to sit in run-down classrooms together. We are church groups, and football teams, and kids who sneaked into neighborhood pools together. We fought at the water tower. We are a bunch of kids in the McDonald’s parking lot on a Friday night, waiting to see where the party would be that night.
This is for Roswell, a community that lost two of her own this week, and who is the lesser for the loss, but the greater for having known each other.
Another friend sent me the lyrics to this song. I have heard from distraught friends all week long. It has hurt my heart, but reminded me that I came from somewhere, that we all came from the same place. That when one of us hurts, we all hurt.
Adapted from the Will Oldham song.
And the original:
2009 is pretty much the worst year I’ve ever had, as far as stress in my life, and terrible things happening to people I know. I am completely over it.
2010 can only get better, right? RIGHT!?
If you read Dogwood Girl very often, you know my summer has sucked ass, pretty much from the end of May (Dad had heart surgery), into June (Pop went downhill fast and was in hospice), into a fucking awful July (Pop died), and then in August, I had a little cancer scare, which I haven’t talked about, but will now. Suspicious moles: Itchy and multiple colors. Fast-growing. Had them biopsied, and thankfully they were benign. Turning a new leaf, perhaps, on the luck front? I think so.
First i read that my fave series of forever is releasing the next book on Sept. 22nd. Then i found out that a good friend is expecting (Shhhh . . . it’s a secret!). Another friend had her baby boy Monday night. (Welcome, Miles!) And then this morning, I happened to come across a blog post from the author of the Gentleman Bastards series and he posted a REALLY LONG prologue excerpt to his next book!
And then there’s the fact that the kids are both in school from 9-12 three days a week. That is just enough of a break to keep me from selling them on the black market. And lots of time to play Bejeweled Blitz with my copilot sitting next to me.
I am in heaven. And feeling DAMN lucky.
So, I have some questions about the magnet program at my kid’s school. I cannot get the Dekalb County director of the program to reply to my emails or phone calls. I cannot get her assistant to reply. I have left multiple messages on the numbers that I can find listed for those folks and the department. I have called the main office to be connected to that department, and the Office of Student Assignments. Evidently, Dekalb County schools are being run by computers. Computers that spit out incorrect schedules for thousands of Dekalb County students.
Luckily, they have humans to make sure that your kids are not wearing flip flops, have a hole in their jeans, or God forbid, have stitching on the pockets of their pants. Because that, that would have to be dealt with by putting the perp into ISS for hours on their first day of sixth grade. Because every young girl, on her first day of middle school, needs to be held up and ridiculed for her clothing.
I am so thankful (and this is NOT sarcasm, promise) that the wonderful folks at my kid’s elementary school are so helpful and really wanted to help me work this problem out. However, they basically told me there was nothing they could do, because THEY can’t get these folks to reply to them either.
So, I am kind of feeling sorry for Dekalb County now, because they are going to be really sick of me. If I have to go down to that office in person and get Pat Copeland to respond to my questions, I will do so.
I just love meeting new people. I think she is really going to dig me.
Wanna get scared about Dekalb County schools? Read this watchdog blog.
Or AJC’s Get Schooled.
Or this Teacher’s advocate blog.
I cannot believe how fast this summer has gone. It has been a rough one, with Daddy having surgery, and Pop passing away, and Todd working a ton (a good thing) and me worrying about all my family.
And now it is almost over. I feel like I got nothing accomplished. I vacillated between worry, and exhaustion from travel, and insomnia and occasional moments of fun with friends and family, trying to blow off a little steam. I took great comfort in watching my garden grow, feeling the passing of time, and knowing that it was natural to watch things get bigger and ripen, knowing some would be lost to disease or bugs.
I didn’t write, blog, or work on house renovations as much as I would have liked. (Okay, didn’t work on renovations at all.)
I am looking forward to fall, though. Moving on, getting some distance from the events of the summer, the kids on a regularish schedule. This is my life, and I need to get back to living it, and feeling less like a passenger on an out-of-control roller coaster.
And football. Time and tide and football wait for no woman.