Books for Brain Power

I've realized very recently that I love learning, but I have issues retaining the information. I always sort of knew that, considering I'd forget facts literally minutes after I finished taking a test in college, but when it comes to self-improvement, how in the hell do you keep track of all those things you want to do, and also be present in the moment, and on top of all that, take care of your business in the real world?

I mean, I can logically tick off the things I want to work on, but when I'm stressed or tired or hungry, how do I keep those goals in my mind while also dealing with the stress, and still have energy to do all those other things I need to handle, like work, cooking, cleaning, showering....? How do people constantly strive to be better than they were, and still maintain their sanity? My God, it feels like madness to just think about it!

My answer is, of course, to keep feeding my brain what I want to know, how I want to develop myself, so that I don't have to waste brain power on remembering, I can just go back into that zone for 20 minutes in a book before I go to sleep. Is that cheating?

I have been catching myself before mindlessly reacting recently. I've been trying to breathe instead of speak sometimes, and speak instead of ruminate. Maybe I just got wired backwards, and I need to somehow flip-flop those circuits to be normal? Hehehe, can I ever be normal? It's kind of fun to not react in a comfortable way, it's exciting to see a different way of living.

Instead of vomiting anger at my husband for not doing what we agreed he would do, like giving Taryn her bath last night, I give myself 2 minutes to calm down, (and give him a 2 minute chance to be the noble man I know he longs to be), then I do what needs to be done and appreciate the extra time I have with her.

On our way to gymnastics yesterday, P decided 5 minutes before we were leaving that he did in fact want to go. He was dressed and ready in about 3 minutes, then sat at the computer to check his email while I put on my shoes. As I was bringing Boogie to the car, he told me to wait so he could make some coffee. Instead of react to him lacking forethought, sitting at the computer wasting time when he could have been downstairs making his coffee, I told him I wasn't waiting and put her in the car.

He made it out of the house right before we pulled away, and was able to see Boogie having a blast for an hour.

It's taken me a long time to realize that my control issues are detrimental to my wellbeing. I have been trying for so long to control what is beyond my grasp, and I've gone crazy wondering why the world doesn't turn how I know it would most effectively. I'm reining all that in, and I'm really focusing on myself, the one person I can control in my life. It's taken my 6 years of marriage to realize that P is outside my range, and I officially give up trying to change him.

That doesn't mean I won't wish he'd do things differently, but I feel at peace knowing that it's up to God, not me, to make him more responsible.

I don't like New Age-y stuff. I'm not a fan of non-fiction. But if anyone has good book recommendations, fiction or story-like non-fiction, that I can learn from, please let me know. I'm all about feeding myself what's good and healthy and sane right now, so no more murder mysteries or horror stories, but after that I'm stuck as to where to turn.

Failure as a Mother

She won't eat.

We get her up for breakfast, and she'll grub on some oatmeal. Later on for a snack, she has no problem chewing down on some cheese and crackers. For lunch? Maybe some pasta or rice and chicken, carrots or corn, a piece of bread. Throughout the day, fruit, crackers, maybe some milk, and water.

It seems okay to me, but she's not growing. She won't eat dinner. She'll sit in her highchair and take a few bites, then throw it to the dogs. I know she's hungry, but it seems like she's just not interested in eating. She'll eat some things without fail: corn, blueberries, bagels, cheese... but everything else is hit-and-miss.

Tonight I cooked her some chicken, and while I was doing that, she had her corn. Then I gave her some potato, and she would only eat a tiny bit. Threw her chicken without a taste, and after I tricked her into tasting the sweet potatoes, she ate a few tablespoons. I knew she wanted to eat, she told me, but she refused to, screaming and thrashing around until I had to let her out of her seat before she hurt herself.

I feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that I can't feed my own child. She's 31" tall and 4oz short of 20lbs. She's gained a pound in 6 months. And yes, she's been sick, but I'm scared. I'm terrified of the thought that maybe she is failing to gain weight because of something I'm doing wrong. Or not doing at all. And I want to quit my job so I can stay home with her and see exactly how much she's eating, and make sure I prepare her food exactly how it should be... but it was the same thing in Paraguay.

She just won't eat.

And I refuse to preordain an eating disorder, where she's purposely not eating to assert control over her life. I can't do that, but I don't know what else to do. I'm stuck. I don't think anyone understands. Who has this problem? People complain about sleep issues and potty training, but I have rarely heard of someone whose kid just refuses to eat. Oatmeal for dinner 2 nights in a row, because that is all she'll let me feed her. And I'm scared to do the "if she's hungry, she'll eat" thing, because she IS hungry, and she's still NOT eating!

I know I've been a bit stressed. The trip was stressful, P and I have not exactly been fighting, but there's been some tension, the holidays, everything is maybe contributing, and I keep thinking it will get better ... I always think everything has to eventually get better ... but what if that isn't the case this time? What if at her next appointment the Doc says she's got FTT, and I'm a failure as a mother?

What if this is all somehow my fault?

Psychosomatic

I feel sick.

My neck hurts, my stomach is upset, my throat is sore with the dry coughing and I’m irritable.…

I thought maybe I caught a bug somewhere, but when I called P to ask how he was feeling, he suggested maybe I’m just stressed. I can see that, maybe, considering the circumstances and my lack of control about them, maybe I’m a bit stressed. But I thought I was handling this well. I thought I wasn’t too worried about anything, that money wouldn’t be too much tighter than it is now, but I’m rethinking that idea, and it’s very possible that I’m psycho-somatizing.

Is that even a word?

I’ve been feeling really tired lately, and that gaping chasm in the earth that is my depression feels like it’s going to swallow me whole again. But this time instead of hurling myself over the edge without abandon, I feel like one of those circus-clown bears riding a pink miniature bike with streamers flowing off the handlebars and those clickety-clack beads on the spokes bouncing up and down as I slowly spiral my way into it.

I thought I was handling this well, but I’m scared.

Being faced with possibly losing the house when we already barely have enough cash after bills to pay for food and gas is terrifying. Where would we go? Would our marriage survive a loss like that? We are so far from being content with each other as it is, the stress of worrying more than we already do about money is taking its toll. But I know we’ll have enough, and he’ll find another job soon. At least I think we’ll have enough. We have no savings. I can’t afford insurance for him and if something happened…. We would be screwed.

But I didn’t realize I was so worried about this. The loss of control, and knowing that next week there will be another check is hard. We’ve been hand to mouth for so long I thought we would be comfortable by now, but we’re not. One thing could ruin everything we’ve worked so hard for. It wouldn’t be like this if he listened to me, but part of marriage is letting the other person have a say and this is what happens when he makes financial decisions for us.

I feel awful. I don’t even have the energy to want to read a book and oink out on ice cream, just want to sleep it all away. I really did think I was handling this better, but I guess suppressing the fear and anxiety just makes it manifest in another way.

Damn.

So the Truth Finally Comes Out

(You may want to get some coffee first .... this is a long one)

For the past two and a half years, a beat-up old Cutlass Supreme has been sitting in the only covered parking space available at my house. From my doorway, it looked like a dusty black, but in fact it has red stripes up the hood (spray painted on, thankyouverymuch) and the opposite side of the care is alternately a baby-ish blue and stripped metal. He never got around to painting the other side.

For the fisrt few months, P worked on the car every weekend, sanding down the paint, attempting to hammer out some of the dings, and laying a dingy blue rug throughout the interior to cover the lack of floor panels and ripped blue leather. The car is an eyesore, although that may really be an understatement. A piece of carpet was placed under it so that the oil oozing from the engine would be somewhat soaked up. Two tires are flat, and I found a hubcap in a bush a few weeks ago. The engine will only start if it's jumped, but otherwise that part at least is in decent shape.

The car was not exactly gifted to P. He sort of inherited it when La Tia threatened to send it to the junk yard. His Tio Toto loved that car, and drove it into the ground. When Tio Toto passed away from a misdiagnosed, God-awful cancer which ravaged his body making him unable to eat or walk, but left his razor-sharp mind intact, he gifted the Cutlass to Julio, who didn't have the money to make it driveable, so he left it in front of La Tia's house in Petaluma. And P claimed it.

So for two years, it has sat untouched in our carport, save the readjustments to the cover when the wind blew more than a single gust. Finally he got frustrated with the cover too, and left the car to blind anyone passing by, with it's degraded glory. For two years we begged foregiveness from the neighbors for leaving such an ugly, inoperable, unregistered vehicle park where they were forced to see it daily. And finally they started complaining to the HOA.

So I saw a note on it a few days ago that it was going to be towed. The note was old though, that's how much attention was paid to the car, and it was supposed to be gone a week before I found it. I finally convinced P that we needed to do something with it before they took it from him, and we decided it would be better to donate it to charity than have it torn apart for scrap metal. I looked online, contacted Marin AIDS Project who agreed to come tow it, and as of about 12:30pm yesterday, it was gone.

P had a really rough day. As he walked back into the house and the tow truck was pulling away from the curb, I could see him fighting back tears. There were people around, so I cracked a joke to give him some composure time, and headed back to work.

Last night I stopped at Safeway to get some beer, knowing he needed to grieve and that he wouldn't allow himself to lose face by doing it sober. We danced around the issue for a few hours, but he refused to discuss it, each time we came close tears welled up in his eyes, and he would angrily wipe them away and change the subject. When he finally had enough to drink to let his guard down, the tears streamed down his face and my heart broke open.

I don't understand. I've lost people before, but none were that closed to me. My great grandmother passed recently, and as heartbroken as I was it was more for the loss of life in general, than any real attachment to her as a person. It sounds cruel, but I didn't know her. We had a blood bond, but that was all. My uncle passed a few months after Tio Toto, and again I cried, but I didn't know him well. I mourned the sudden-ness of it, and the suffering my aunt would endure, and he was a good man, but I'd only met him once and so the grieving was relatively short.

But once the tears started flowing they quickly went from genuine grief to this overly dramatic spilling a sip of beer in his name, kissing his hand and holding it over his heart, asking for forgiveness, and I couldn't take it. I snapped. It was only for 10 minutes or so that he did that, and I'm sure I was a complete a-hole in the moment, but I told him to be real. I told him that if he was going to grieve, he needed to do it for the right reason. I said he didn't give away his uncle, he gave away the car, and I apologized for pressuring him, but told him that he needed to keep his Tio Toto in his heart and mourn his death, not giving away a material object that he once owned.

And I think he got it. He sat quietly for a minute, and then said, yes, I was right. He felt guilty that the day before Tio Toto passed away, he had called P to go visit him and he didn't. He regretted not going to say goodbye, and it felt like a double betrayal that he is now giving away the one thing he had left of him.

I remember at his funeral, P didn't want to say goodbye. I basically forced him to go up to the casket and say a prayer for him. I knew that if he didn't do it, as much as he opposed it in the moment, he would not forgive himself for missing that opportunity. I knew there was something wrong at the funeral, but I was busy taking care of the kids so the adults could say their goodbyes, and I never pressured him to tell me.

So there it is. Guilt is an ugly thing. It makes you irrational, and it sucks that people feel so much shame, so much that they can't face what it really is about in order to work through it. I dont' think I did anything to "solve" his problems, but I'm hoping that when he starts to feel that guilt and shame he can remember that it isn't about the car. And anyway, we did a good thing. Hopefully when they auction the car off they'll get enough to help someone out with medications or doctor's appointments or something. Hopefully.

I know this is long, there is a lot to this. But P also said something that broke my heart and confirmed years-old suspicions that I've had.

He said that one of the reasons he felt so close to Tio Toto was that they both loved women their families hated.

Yeah. He finally admitted what I've known for years. His family hated me. I don't think they do anymore, but he made me out to be this crazy American bitch who broke his heart and trampled his self-worth, turning him into a depressed, angry, alcoholic recluse. And then when we got back together, I was the Golden Child. I saved him from himself.

At Tio Toto's funeral, people were whispering about the "other woman." The mother of his children would not allow her to pay her respects, even though he had been divorced for decades and the "other woman" had been by his side, loving him and caring for him when nobody else would. P said he understood the ostracism, loving an American, choosing a woman over his family.

And on some level, I always knew it, although he denied it up and down for the past 7 years, I knew it, and now I can stop worrying about pleasing them. It's hard to be yourself when you have a suspicion someone doesn't like you, but won't admit it. It's a weird feeling. It doens't change my feelings toward them, I love his family, but I'm glad to finally know why I felt so out of place for so many years.

My Newest Obsession

Anyone who has stepped past the door to my house knows that I absolutely abhor the painted brass, ugly-ass "chandelier" hanging from my living room ceiling. From the first day we saw our new place, that was the one beef I had with the built-in decor. And after three years, I still don't understand the design flaw of hanging that in a house full of brushed nickel fixtures.

Last week, I finally bought a fan to hang there instead. I am so stoked beyond belief, but I have to figure out if I have a beam over the hole to attach it to.

And while I was on my It's Been Three Years, I Deserve It kick, I also FINALLY bought some wood patio furniture for the front porch. I can't afford it, but I figure that we spend so much time out front, drinking, smoking, talking, playing with T-Boogie, that we should have some nice furniture out there to sit on. And I'm sick of our house looking like a junk-bomb exploded out front and I'm hoping with some nice stuff out there, I'll be motivated to keep it a touch cleaner.

Just like I thought owning dogs would motivate me to start running. Maybe I just needed bigger dogs?

So now that those two things, which I have been ruminating on for the past three years since we bought our place, my mind has become suddenly clear for a new obsession, and it's skin care.

Look, I know I look young, and I'm thinking that part of it may be the fact that my face looks like I rubbed a piece of pepperoni pizza on it, then rubbed it with steel wool to get the grease good and lodged in my pores. I've got pimples, and I'm not ashamed of it. I'm actually pretty used to it, especially when I'm stressed and I start messing with them (I know, gross. Sorry) but I don't look at it all day long, so maybe that's why it doesn't bother me too much?

For my birthday, Nonny bought me some shower gloves to revitalize my skin, and I'm hooked. The first time I used them, I couldn't beleive my skin could be so soft without any lotion on. Of course I'm not looking to be ashy, so I put some on anyway, but I am so far past impressed with these that I actually went out and bought a couple more pairs as gifts. And I started thinking, if I can get my body-skin healthier with a little bit of work, how about my face?

So I started using the Olay Revitalift face cream, and I bought the night cream too because I'll be honest. I don't wash my face at night. Sounds gross, but I don't use foundation, so I figured it wasn't necessary. But I also bought my Bare Minerals starter kit this weekend, so I thought it'd be a good idea to get some good night cream since I'll need to wash it off before I go to sleep. Even though it's "So pure you could sleep in it." I'm not taking any chances.

I'm hoping the new regime will become second nature and my skin will clear up, and maybe I'll look my age instead of 18. I don't know what that will affect, besides my self-esteem, but if that's it, it'll be worth it.

I spent a lot this weekend. But it all seems like good investments, for my mental health and well being. I need to invest in me some more, so this is my start.