The Great Cosmic Parking Lot

Los Angeles Times, 10/4/77

OK, people.  It's late at night and I bet there are typos here, but I do want to get this post out, even if it's in rough form.  Let me know where you find inconsistencies and I'll work on them.  I know I'm missing citations and all that, but this is really more like a first draft of where I want to go with discussing my views on these things. 

I got a very interesting comment on one of my blog entries and wanted to make sure that I addressed it within a reasonable amount of time, but the topic of religion is so vast and requires so much context that I think I'm going to have to address it by iterations before linking those discussions with my experiences with mental illness.


Comment on Why Get Out of Bed:  I am fascinated by your claim "If Jesus were real, then you would be willing to get out of bed." I would love to hear more from you about what would constitute Empirical data for the existence of a higher power.

Gratitude: My "Perfect" Husband

www.zazzle.com image

I am trying to think of what to write for tonight.  My husband says that he would like me to take this opportunity to expound on his many virtues.  (I am reading my words aloud as I type.)  Now he says he doesn't want me to write about him.  He needs to keep his mouth shut, says he.  This is what he gets for giving me a hard time.  Ha ha.

Oh, how I LOVE my husband.  Let me count the ways:

1.  He makes me laugh.  A LOT.  Often.
2.  ummmmm....

Oh, Pinterest, How I Love Thee!

An evil friend of mine just turned me on to the time-sucking black hole that is Pinterest.  Now all I want to do is sit and pin things I like to my boards and look for new stuff to pin.  I think this may be a shopaholic's methadone.

Get Off My Chest - Part 2

Image: Masterfile.com

2.  To my high school field hockey coach:  I know this is pathetic, but I have been needing to get this off my chest for about half my life.  Consequently, I remember details of events that should have long been forgotten because I have been wanting to rebuke you these past 20 years.  If you even remember me, which I doubt, you might guess what I'm going to rant on here.  More likely, you have no idea what a hand you played in who I am today and this is going to be a bit of a sideswipe. 

Get Off My Chest - Part 1

http://m.tacker.org/blog/830.la-z-boy-redford.html

Now that I am here, safely ensconced in an overstuffed leather comfy chair at Starbucks and the kiddos are in the free childcare service that they have here at Annapolis Mall (Annapolis, MD, USA),  the less-than-a-respectably-adequate-mother-passing-her-children-off-to-strangers feeling I always get from taking advantage of that service is being diluted by warm, reassuring chai.

I have a few things to say to certain people.  Some of them are long though, so I'm going to break it up. 

Wheatgrass Juice Shots

http://www.floridaherbhouse.com/
wheatgrass_juice_powder/wheatgrassjuicepowder1.htm

WOW are there a lot of "Mommy blogs" out there!  I had no idea!  If I tried to read even a significant number of them that are mainly about depression or post-partum depression I'd have little time for anything else.  Here are a few that I've bookmarked for future reading:

Postpartum Progress
Life UneXpected
The Reluctant Mom's Blog
Depressed (but not unhappy) Mormon Mommy
PPD Survivor

Just a quick note for tonight.  My kids are hooked on Smoothie King.  We have one located here in the Waugh Chapel shopping center in Crofton, MD (USA).  I've had a couple of different smoothies and they were both great.  Today for some reason I decided I'd try something they offer, a 1 oz. shot of wheatgrass juice.  Anyone try this before? 

Of Soda, Chai, and Addiction

http://www.thenextgreatgeneration.com/2011/09/
how-to-be-a-starbucks-addict/

 Hello.  My name is Julie, and I have been a Starbucks Tazo Chai Tea Latte addict for eight years.  I have been to the point of getting two Venti (Starbucks' Large size) chais a day, and also went cold turkey for some eight months when pregnant with my daughter.  At present, I get one, usually Tall (Small) though sometimes Grande (Medium).  I also am a recovering Coca-Cola addict, the addiction I had prior to chai.  I was off soda completely for several years, but last year got into drinking Dr. Pepper again and I've been fighting that for a year or so.  I don't buy any to keep at the house, but I do have them when I'm out, and we eat out more than we should.  I usually end up having maybe five or so a week.  This absolutely must stop!

The Payoff of Laziness?

The Paper Source: Cupcake Apron

 So the other night I came up with around 45 possible topics and I don't want to do any one of them right now.  So I'm just going to go with the events of the day and see where the stream of consciousness takes me.  Hopefully I won't ramble too badly.


My daughter is in bed with me.  She just came in. Apparently she's cold.  She may have just been missing me.  I was not home for bedtime tonight as I was attending my Women's Cognitive Therapy Group.  This is the group to which the X and Y post's exercise belongs.  I came away with two assignments:

1) Choose a body part each day that I can accept for just that day without judgement.

2) Come up with a list of the payoffs of inactivity in the household to me.  What's in it for me when I decline to do the chores I need to do, considering that I then feel really bad about it. 

SIGH.  I suppose I can do this.  I don't know about the body part thing.

Bedtime

http://www.just-pooh.com/pictures-view.html?id=1203

I fell asleep with my daughter again.  I usually don't but the last two bedtimes I have.  Our bedtime ritual with the kids is SO much more involved that it ever was for me growing up.  As a kid,  my sister and I would say good night to my Dad---you could not just disappear, you had to announce you were going to bed and say good night---go upstairs, brush teeth, get into bed, say The Lord's Prayer for Mom, and that was it.  There was no haggling, chasing, cajoling, whining, threatening, etc.  My husband doesn't believe this by the way, despite the fact that this is the accounting he receives from myself, my sister, and my dad.  With my kids?  Ha.

New Resource Tabs

Dear Diane and Readers,

I hope you have been enjoying the blog! I am having breakfast today at The Nautilus Diner with the husband and kids. We slept late because the kids, especially my poor daughter, kept us up last night. She must have eaten too much ice cream, a blue cotton candy flavor with KitKat pieces and gummy bears, last night at Coldstone Creamery, or something she ate was contaminated.

The Tortoise & The Hare

I took a couple of nights off to try to get some sleep.  It didn't work very well because I still found myself up too late, interrupted several times by waking, crying kids,  or on the couch because my husband snores.  Also, I think I forgot to take my meds last night. We were out of our nighttime routine and there was badly-timed caffeine intake.  In all, lots of operator error.  So I am pilfering my last story that I'd written in the past.  Now I'm going to have to think of something new each time.  Eek!



In the past two years I have become a bead collector, particularly of Trollbeads, although there are other varieties (Pandora, etc.).  This past week I added a new bead:  A crouched silver hare stands on the upturned feet of  a small silver tortoise.  The silver rope, or leather, bracelet is to penetrate the space left between their bellies.  The bead turns on the cord, sometimes showing the tortoise, and sometimes the hare.  For me, they symbolize more than the old fairy tale about the race won by slow, steady persistence.  They represent life and death.

X and Y

The wind is blowing outside my window tonight.  I hear it through the trees of the woods next to our townhouse.  There is occasionally a clear ting from the wind chimes the kids broke in the back yard.  I am tired, but for the first time in a long time it is just the feeling of a tired body and not the desperate need to be unconscious, to disaparate, to flee the world.  This is a huge relief which I dare not hope might continue.

I had an appointment with my regular counselor this morning.  I did well in getting up on time and getting the kids ready for school (with help from my husband), preparing lunch for one and a snack for the other, kisses good-bye to Daddy, and off to school.  I arrived at the office half an hour early for my appointment and decided to listen to NPR in my car.  I locked the doors, put the seat back, turned onto my left side, drew my knees up and pressed my face into the microfiber plush of the seat back.  Morning Edition droned in the background.  When Diane Rehm came on, it would be time for my appointment, until then I could rest in the capsule of a womb that is my blue Prius with the Darwin-fish on the back.  I woke up fifteen minutes late for my appointment, cursed, and raced into the building.

Naivete

Yay!  In bed before midnight tonight!  Unfortunately, with an unsettled stomach and feelings of shame from writing tonight's post. Being new to this, it is a little unnerving to think that people I've never met will eventually know so much about me.  I am just hoping that other women like me might be able to see that they are not alone in their struggles, failures, and perceived inadequacies.  I was looking for that six years ago and didn't manage to find it in a timely manner.  Not that failure is good, but knowing all the other mothers are not as perfect as you assume they are would have been a great relief.


It is raining tonight.  I can hear the pinging of drops on the metal chimney cap as I sit in our basement where the fireplace is.  There is something I was wanting to write about but I really feel like I can't because of how unpopular it is.  I have never thought of myself as a radical.  To date I haven't been a statement maker with my voice or  hair or clothes or skin.  It's just I've had this unfounded and, until now, uneducated gut feeling that if I needed to leave my kids in the car to run to the restroom or whatever for a few minutes that it should be OK if they are in no immediate danger from the heat or cold.

The Price of Cheese

"Prefab" Sunday too?!  Yes, I am cheating a bit again tonight by using something I'd written a couple of years ago.  I read what I was working to my husband and he was bored quickly and thought it wandered, so it needs more work.  You and he and Safeway may be grateful to know that I am choosing to go to bed now instead of working that piece to death and being up all night.  So enjoy! 




“Ma’am, is there a reason you have been asleep in this parking lot for over an hour?” demanded the young and obviously single and child-free police officer.  His dark countenanced partner stood  just behind him, his face registering some concern, but more of what I saw as “What were you thinking, you deadbeat?  She must be on something.” look.  “We were just taking a nap,” I replied.

You're Dead A Long Time

 



It's "Prefab Saturday Night" and I'm posting something I wrote a couple of years ago about my mother's death.  If you've just lost a loved one, you may want to skip this post.




When I die, it’s not going to get on NPR.   “Today on The Diane Rehm Show, we celebrate the life Julia Burzon, who left an indelible print on our lives.  Let’s open with an excerpt from her 2014 interview with Terry Gross on WHYY's Fresh Air.”  No.  Sometimes I look at my hands.  I've done this since high school...I try to imagine them not being alive.  I look at the skin.I test it’s elasticity by pulling on it up above my knuckles and compare its texture with the memory I have of doing this to my mother’s hand and my own, back when my skin was caramel satin and hers looked like mine does now.  I examine my fingerprints.  I judge the slightly spatulate shape of my nails.  They have always had very white tips, like a french manicure.  I got this from my mother.  I can see her fingernails filed to rounded points and wonder if this was a nail shape preferred in the ‘50s.  Mine are clipped short and shaped like rounded rectangles.  Often there is a white spot migrating down the nailbed, a cloud on the horizon. 

One day these hands will be still and stiff, like my mother’s were when I removed her engagement ring the day she died.

Honor?

So I'm writing this from the couch in my basement rec room.  The TV is hidden by our pained-looking Christmas tree, but I am listening to the shringing of blade on blade.  My husband is watching Rob Roy.  The main character of this film seems to be honor.  It is so prominent in the lives of the characters.  It doesn't really seem to come up much in my life.  Maybe that is an artifact of modern life? 

Why get out of bed?

Wow.  Who knew how complicated this blogging thing could be?  Not I, though I suppose I hadn't given it much thought.  Now that I think I have a handle on the basics of layouts, gadgets, favicons, etc., and having deleted yesterday's post entirely at least once (found it in the cache of my laptop though. HA!  Take THAT, technology!), and radically overhauled the look of the blog, I can finally get back to writing something.

Given that my father thinks I already put too much information about myself "out there" on Facebook, I'm sure this whole project is going to be a topic eliciting large sighs, slight shaking of the head, squinting of the eyes in mystified but benign disapproval, and the urge to freshen one's bourbon.  My husband  says I have no pride, which, I suppose, will allow me to actually put forth some of the more interesting experiences I've had and views I might hold.

1, 2, 3, JUMP!

Dear Diane Rehm,
Just a quick note to let you know that I am actually doing it!  I am starting a blog that I can use to work on my memoir---the memoir that will be the subject of our discussion when you interview me on The Diane Rehm Show!  It's really late right now and I should be in bed but I wanted to make my opening salvo into the blogosphere and state right up front that my goals are:
    1.    to become a guest on The Diane Rehm Show some day
    2.    to get myself to write more so that I can then mine my posts and publish a fabulously successful memoir whose sales will allow my family to move into a single family home and take care of my father-in-law (eventually)
    3.    to provide some interesting discussion material, humor,  or even insight, into the subjects of motherhood, its intersection with depression and anxiety, my own personal slog through the process of my diagnosis and treatment, my ridiculous addiction to Starbucks Chai Tea Lattes, and wherever else this might take me.  I may also comment on Diane Rehm show topics of interest, so watch out! 
I can't wait to meet you, especially if my dog, Indy, is still alive at the time.  You'd love him, I know.  Have a great night!
jb