Painting Chef - Cheaper Than Therapy

I think the general consensus is that as we get older, lots of things get harder. Being a kid is fan-fucking-tastic and it’s one of life’s great tragedies that we don’t realize it at the time. People talk about wanting to go back to high school or college to re-live their carefree youth.

Screw that. I want to be 8 years old again. I want summer vacation to stretch out endlessly before me. I want to walk across the street to my best friend’s house at 10:00 in the morning in the middle of the week and form up our little biker gang as we roll from house to house with the queen of diamonds (it always had to be the queen of diamonds) stuck in the back wheel of my pink huffy so the kids could hear me coming from a mile away.

I want to not care that I’m covered in kid summer sweat from the hours I’ve spent on that bike or running through the woods or playing tag in the back yard (or Russian spy, whatever… sometimes we would let the boys pick the games). I want to tell time by the arrival of the ice-cream truck. I want to tumble into the house in a big mob of awkward kid limbs and dusty shoes and make kool-aid and pass around popsicles. And at the end of the day, I want to collapse into bed completely exhausted, fresh from the bath or shower and fall asleep dreaming about doing it again the next day.

Remember those days? Remember how EASY it was to make new friends and add people to your little biker mob? The new kid moves in next door or down the street. You tag along with your mom when she makes the new-neighbor visit with a pile of cookies and look at that! Right there in the living room! Another person. And just like that, your little road gang had grown by one. Guess what’s hard to do when you are old like me?

Make. New. Friends.

It’s like dating. It’s so difficult. But this past weekend, a good friend went wakeboarding with us and brought another couple with him. And they were AWESOME. They were cool and funny and laid back and drank beer and matched me curse word for curse word. They didn’t try to sell me anything or take me to their church or their spaceship. Their dogs sleep in their bed and feature prominently in their stories and probably their pictures. He brews his own beer. She’s impossibly adorable and is going back to school because finding a job sucks right now. I think they’re younger than us… do they think we’re old? They were totally up for post-lake spontaneous Mexican food at 10:00 on Friday night and talked about sleeping late the next morning. She got my 90210 joke. Is this love?

I’m so nervous. Insecure. When is it okay to call? Text? He left his sunglasses on the kitchen counter. Is that to ensure a callback or is it just because he’s as forgetful as I am and leaves a little trail of personal paraphernalia in his wake? Seriously. When is it okay to call? Invite her for a pedicure? I texted about the sunglasses because, well, I’d die without mine, but I’m solar-sensitive. Was that pushy?

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become slightly lacking in the girlfriends department. I mean, I have them. Several. More than several. Several severals. (Is that nine? Nine seems about accurate. A several is three, right?) But let’s be honest… the ones that don’t have kids and aren’t running from day care to t-ball to soccer to dance lessons are few and far between. I’m at the age where MOST of my friends have kids. Which is, I know, COMPLETELY normal and I’m the exception. As is my uterus (there it is, the u-bomb, you knew it would be here).

Does she think its weird that I DON’T have kids? How old are they anyway, he mentioned working in 2006 so he’s been out of college since at least then which probably puts them inside of 10 years within our age. I feel like that’s acceptable. Am I allowed to look for her on Facebook yet? Just locate her? Or should I send a friend request? Does anyone else feel like a Facebook friend request is one of those “check yes or no” notes folded into a crane or a Chinese throwing star? If I invite them to do something and don’t invite the people who introduced us or I do and the old friends are busy but the new potential friends aren’t busy am I friend-poaching (a term coined by Patrick as I basically went through this entire thing with him yesterday)?

Baking them cupcakes would be too much, right? Better to say it with beer?

Dude. Being a grown up is really fucking hard.

Let me preface this by saying that no, this is not turning back into the “all my uterus, all the time” channel. I have not had, nor do I have looming, any appointments with the wonderful witch doctor. I’m still not where I need to be, in my head and in my heart, to jump back on that whole plan of cooking up a baby with the help of a skilled chemist, a little black magic, Patrick’s right hand and a VERY long syringe. (Too much? Too far? Yeah… probably. No worries, he’s totally a leftie)

But the other night I dreamt I was pregnant. Like… HUGELY pregnant. As in the amount of pregnant where random strangers are saying “HOLY CRAP! Does that HURT?” Also featured in the same dream? Star Wars-esque spaceships, a shopping mall and many, many bathrooms because all I apparently did while hugely pregnant was walk around the mall and pee. (This dream, by the way, led to a VERY mad dash to the bathroom at about 4 am this morning. No more second glass of water while sitting up in bed to read Kathy Griffin’s memoir because it is too damn funny to put down)

The reason I find this being massively pregnant dream (and I know I keep saying massively and hugely and all that but I’m telling you… I could NOT wrap my arms all the way around my stomach and the people in the mall and on the space ships (?) they were STARING! They were POINTING! They were offering to take me to the hospital!) so strange is that I can’t recall dreaming about being pregnant. EVER. Over the course of the past year while we were knee deep in fertility treatments, there were many cruel dreams where I would wake up thinking that I really HAD seen that positive pregnancy test in the middle of the night. I dreamt so many times about finding out I WAS pregnant. And then I would dream about going to the hospital to have a baby only to find out it was like… a cake. Or a goldfish.

People say that out dreams are our subconscious selves working shit out while we sleep… is that true? What am I trying to work out? Here my head is playing tricks on me when I thought I finally had everything figured out.

Then again, the night before this dream, I dreamt I was a head on a stick and I just sat up there on my stick yelling insults to everyone as they passed down below me. I attribute THAT one to either too much Kathy Griffin memoir or withdrawals from Nurse Jackie. It could go either way…

I’ve never had my writing stolen before. It was something that just belonged to me and a few other people read it sometimes. And some of these people would comment, there are a few who always email and maybe some others of you just read it and kept to yourself. That’s cool… I usually do that too.

(tangent… does anyone else think that the convenience of a feed reader is also causing less interaction among bloggers? It’s taking that extra step to click through and comment rather than just nodding to yourself or laughing a little before you keep scrolling down? No… just me? Well color me lazy.)

But the other afternoon, I was kind of bored and my feed reader was empty and I hadn’t watched Project Runway OR Mad Men so I was avoiding Television Without Pity AND Tom and Lorenzo plus there were other people in the office so those episodes of Weeds on iTunes weren’t doing me any favors EITHER. (And it should go without saying that working was out of the question… it was too hot.) So as I’m looking through my bookmarks list, I notice a long-forgotten link to a stats counter for this site. Meh… why not. I’m bored and surely that will kill at LEAST 45 seconds until I resort to picking at my cuticles.

So of course, I recognized most everyone listed and was just about to click to something equally fascinating when I saw some sort of link from a website called Gravity. The link was a long one but as I looked at it, something was oddly familiar. The link was the title to a very stupid post I’d made back in 2007 about having a sore ass after gardening. And someone, just a few days earlier, had tried to pass it off as their own.

They failed. Someone, some stranger with a super hero’s cape, called them on it. And I live to fight crime another day. But this had never happened to me before and I guess somewhere, somehow, its supposed to be a compliment that someone liked what I said enough to claim it as their own or whatever but I was really shocked by just how angry I got. Those were MY words. And ridiculous as they may be, they were still mine.

I am glad that they were called on it before I even discovered the whole situation because when I did actually post something on this (VERY strange) Gravity website, nobody believed that I was me. It was the weirdest feeling, reading people who were saying “I seriously doubt that the original poster would take the time to join Gravity just to confront someone who copied their work.” Really? Well first of all, it only took like 3 seconds to join. But secondly and more important, why wouldn’t I take the time to do just that? Those words are MINE. And some asshole was trying to pass them off as their own and then backing down like a little bitch as soon as they were confronted. “Oh no, I NEVER meant to imply that I wrote that.”

So those of you who have been plagiarized… what did you do? Did you just ignore it? And were you as angry as I was when you discovered it? (Not only that… but then somewhere else on this Gravity site, someone called me a one hit wonder. And then? They called me OLD!!! Perhaps I shall burn and pillage? Plunder? Pontificate? What’s the word I’m looking for… and if it belongs to you, can I borrow it?)

When my great-grandmother passed away in 2003, while I was tremendously sad and heart-broken, I wasn’t shocked. She had been sick for a long time and had lived a full, long and wonderful life and I, quite luckily, had had the opportunity to tell her good-bye. Other than offering up a posthumous tour of our house in Augusta (she hadn’t even been down to see it), I behaved much as you would expect. Plenty of tears, some time spent with old photographs, telling Patrick lots of Nannie stories and some phone calls with Betsy wherein we talked about all the fun we’d ever had with her. She was a fun lady.

But aside from grief-appropriate behaviors, my life continued on in a somewhat normal and sane manner. (This is a sliding scale we’re using… right?)

Well as you know, there has been a fair amount of death in the family happening in these parts over the past couple of years. A fair portion of which I’ve handled… not so great, for lack of a more descriptive term. As will come as no surprise to you, I have had a lot of trouble dealing with the loss of my grandmother, I still miss her every single day and I can’t even bring myself to take her phone number out of my cell phone. AND I’VE BOUGHT A NEW PHONE SINCE SHE DIED…

But I have to share a secret with you. (And this is where we need to just step aside, open the door and roll out the red carpet for THE CRAZY as it is about to make an entrance.) I think that grieving might be the easy part. It’s the dealing with someone as a non-living being that kind of throws me for a loop. I don’t know too much about what happens “next” but I imagine it involves an awful lot of spare time. And I don’t know about you but I think I’d spend that spare time getting all up in everyone’s business.

Now bear in mind that my idea of the afterlife is influenced very heavily by three things. .. specifically middle school sleepovers involving Ouija boards and “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board”, repeat screenings of “Ghost” and “Beetlejuice” and “Spooky Little Girl” by Laurie Notaro. Also something it is NOT influenced by? Religion and the bible… please bear that in mind in a non-judgmental fashion. KTHANX. Should I ever become a ghost, I will make you this one promise… I’ll try very hard not to scare you but trust me, I’ll be around. I’m DEAD. If that’s not a free pass to be all up in your shit, I don’t know what is. I think that what people do when they’re alone is the most fascinating part of human behavior.

So if I, as an invisible dead person, would be so interested in spying on people that I may or may not know, it stands to reason that my dead people are checking in on me at least once in a blue moon. And this, dear internet, was something that gave me pause.

I should back up a second…

You see, this past weekend, the boy that I dated towards the end of high school died in a car accident. As a couple, we didn’t really work, we were too much alike. Ridiculously high IQs without the discipline necessary to truly benefit from them, a tendency towards self-destructive behaviors, struggles with depression, no respect for authority, it was a recipe for disaster. But he always stayed with me in my heart and recently, we’d reconnected on Facebook (of course) and he sounded truly happy. So this post is not to downplay that tragedy, I’ve cried on and off for days and I still have trouble believing that he is really gone.

Um… that’s not what this is about. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he has plenty of things to do and see. And I’m not saying that I rank up there on his list, I’m sure I don’t. But suddenly, my alone-behaviors have me thinking twice. Not only that… but my not-alone behaviors!

Are my dead grandmother, uncle and ex-boyfriend from high school judging my marriage? Do they think I spend too long on the pooper if I’m in the middle of a good chapter? (Yes. I read. On the shitter. I am not ashamed.) Let’s face it, sometimes showering isn’t a pretty picture either… especially during swimsuit season… do they avert their eyes? What about when I eat whipped cream from the can? Or slices of cheese with ketchup on them? Or stick my finger in the peanut butter jar? Or scratch my ass? Pick my nose? A wedgie? That day that I went commando to work due to a desperate laundry situation? Do they ride in my car too? If so, sorry about the mess… and the smell… sometimes I’m gassy in the morning… Why did I serve macaroni and cheese with hamburgers again? (Because it’s TASTY, home skillet!!) Do Patrick and I REALLY get so wrapped up in an episode of “Property Virgins” that we will sit down to dinner on the couch (YES! ON THE COUCH! DON’T JUDGE ME GHOST-BOY!! Look, the dogs stay on the floor and I only feed them off my fork when I’m done eating. We aren’t total Neanderthals here…) and say maybe five words to each other? Do they take into account the fact that we work together and that that’s a whole lot of together for a married couple when one half of said couple consists of… me?

I find myself editing my alone-behavior. Changing into after-school clothes and pajamas a little faster instead of strolling to the laundry room in the buff to get clothes out of the dryer since I use the dryer as a closet extension to avoid folding laundry. God knows I never wanted him to see that my cross-country runner’s body from high school has long since left the building. Does that matter? Do dead people have x-ray vision? Can they see in the dark? Can they read minds… and do they think that the section of my brain devoted to cake is a little ridiculous? What about my closet? Do they think less of me now that they’ve seen the shoe mountain?

Or do I just need therapy…. lots and lots and lots of therapy?

It’s like a cloud hanging over my head. A general anxiousness. I have no idea where it came from or why it’s there. I look around and nothing is left undone. Nothing is unattended (aside from my laundry and dirty house but SURELY dust bunnies and dirty whites don’t qualify as anxiety triggers, do they?). I’m good. I’m happy. I’m not chasing the creation of a fetus. Nobody has died. (Well, okay, lots of people have died but nobody I know has kicked it recently) I’m actually taking time to enjoy the world around me. Patrick and I spend time outside on the lake and in general, I feel good.

Is that it? Can anxiety come from NOT having anything to worry about?

Here’s the thing. I’m a secret worrier. I’m closet-anxious. People who meet me think I’m totally carefree. I give the impression that I float through life on a bubble of pink cotton candy and silver unicorns (and GUMDROPS! There are GUMDROPS because unicorns shit gumdrops, you know. They do. It’s a scientific fact.) But internet, you know my truth. (Gag… I just had a Britney Spears “Letter of Truth” flash… tell me you remember that whole mess.) I have an army of what-ifs that dance in my ear and they’ve been searching high and low for things to worry about since I went off the baby juice.

So instead I find myself worrying about things that have already happened. That I have no control over. I spent a good hour last night, when I SHOULD have been falling asleep, beating myself up about not using the 15 or months that I was unemployed IN THE YEAR 2003, to make daily exercise a habit in my life. Wasn’t THAT productive? And the night before that? I think it was Lindsay Lohan and how long it will take someone in prison to knock her out and demand their money back for “Herbie: Fully Loaded” and if they will make her wear pants instead of leggings in the pokey.

Okay. Maybe not so much La Lohan but I think it was something equally trivial that affected me just as much. So how do I deal with not having anything to be anxious over? Why can’t I accept that I’m kind of, secretly, pretty fucking happy with my life? I think maybe I feel guilty? Because there is a large part of our general existence that is kind of in the crapper right now? People are losing their houses and there is oil spewing into the ocean?

Is it even alright to BE happy? I want to say yes. I want to say go for it, find your pockets of wonderful and beautiful wherever you can. Be in love. Hug your partner. Kiss your puppy. Walk barefoot in the grass (but not over there… over there is a yellow jackets nest and those fuckers HURT). Stand outside in the rain. Have another glass of wine. Lick the beaters (heee… sounds funny!). Float in the lake. Close your eyes and let the sun warm your face (WITH SPF! You should see my forehead, I’m doing the highly unfortunate two-tone peeling thing. NOT attractive).

So what is this part of my brain that can’t fully let go? Am I missing something? Is it trying to tell me something? See… THIS is why I can’t relax! I think I’m afraid to be happy. I think I’ve been letting things weigh me down for so long, dealing with losing people and not being able to make people and between those two “dealings”, part of me has forgotten how to just let go and float a little.

But I’m working on it every day.