It is not easy becoming a stepmother--there are so many hurdles to overcome, especially since in divorce, time is relative.  I married Belle's father not too long after the divorce from her mother was final.  It was a situation because of illness, finances and a somewhat slow execution that the divorce was not final until two and half years after it was asked for. Such is life, I have found.  If anything, our experience has taught me not to be judgmental. 

My stepdaughter had a hard time with my arrival in her life.  Because her dad and I were over 100 miles apart and she was being raised by her mother in another town, we did not meet until I moved in.  Naturally, she was distant.  Children hang on to the idea that mom and dad are going to get back together and can put off their grieving until someone eventually says, "I do."  Such was the case for us.  There were tears after the judge pronounced us man and wife.  I didn't take offense, it was only natural, because the dream was over.  Mom and dad didn't yell at each other, so in her mind, they were still viable.  

For a while, every time she would come to visit--about once a month--she'd come in looking like she had come to a funeral.  That was not easy on anyone, and there was a bit of acting out with her new (and admittedly, annoying) stepbrother. 

Then there came Christmas Eve.  

Her dad--an emotional pragmatist and admittedly, a man not given to magic--became exasperated when she started crying uncontrollably over her Elves.  Now I knew she was into Elf on the Shelf, and had asked her father if I should do something with them here at the old homestead.  He said, "No, that's kinda their thing."  Huh.  Well... that didn't seem to work, because it would be Christmas and she would be expecting the elves to leap into action.  

He lost it when she started bawling when her stepbrother touched them.  She was, after all, showing them to him in person.  She had thrown something at her brother, and that wasn't cool.  Red Bird read the riot act to her, told her they were not real, and they were certainly no reason to be mean. I was cringing inside.  Pop didn't get it.  It was real to her, and after all, she was only ten.  He went outside to have a talk with the ex and explain that it wasn't right that she kept hitting her stepbrother--that's not how they had raised her.  After all, mom was an intervention counselor at a local school:  quieting trouble is what she does, and no one has ever faulted her parenting. 

That night, when all was quiet, I got up and did things with the elves. The really did a number in the dining room where the presents were, tping the room 'n' all, hanging from the chandeliers.  Also, reindeer elf pooped Hershey's kisses on the table. Poop poop poop. 

One day, she'll realize that it was me, but it certainly doesn't matter now.  And I didn't only do it for her;  I did it for her mother, too, who couldn't be there to make the magic happen.  I do all I can to make things good for all of us;  I bear her no ill will, I just--like most step parents--wish we could see her more, but my husband's brutal work schedule as a manager just doesn't allow for it. Not yet.  Our first married summer will soon be upon us, and I hope that our year will be inundated with events and the beauty of having our world rocked by his child's happy presence.  

Meanwhile, we have Christmas, and we have being asked to sit in the back seat of the car on the way home.  It's all good, peeps.  

Learning Chicken and Dumplings in the Dairy Section

MUHAHAHAHA!  It is time!  Time to open the Crock of Pot.  This was a gift from my mother-in-law who didn't quite know what to get me.  She said that my brother-in-law (The Everfantastic Brian) had told her about my existing Crockpot which was way little and had the knob broken off by one of the cats.  (Don't ask me how).  Now I have the Big Mamma one, the Serious Church-Goer one, with the snap-on lid that has room enough for at least three chickens.

Yesterday in the dairy section of Kroger (thank God we have a Kroger, we didn't have one in Gulfport and it was miserable) I met an old black lady named Dorothy who taught me--right then and there--how to make proper dumplins. I had told her I made the White Trash Way (bird singing, angels sighing) with canned biscuits, but I had been wanting to make them  by hand. 

Here's my current method:  boil your chicken (whole) until it's very well cooked.  You can add chicken bullion to the water for extra flavor.  Keep all of the stock--that fat is valuable.  Then roll out canned biscuits, roll them out, cut them up with a pizza cutter, and cook them in the stock. They cook up nice and flat, and taste wonderful.

Here is Dorothy's method:  flour, salt, and cooked in condensed milk with cream of chicken soup.  That I have to try.  So the chicken cooked down in the Crock Pot most of yesterday and I will be rolling out the dough tonight once I'm done.

I'm rather shy about blogging other people, but meeting Dorothy and her friends (they go shopping in threes) was a treat.  They taught me how to make instant chicken pot pies in a muffin tin and all sorts of little things.  They attend Beaver Creek Baptist Church.  It's all I can do not to go out on a Sunday and just sit and learn, to happenstance on a potluck--that would be glorious.  Sometimes I wonder if I should collect all I can about the cuisine of the Free State of Jones and let it roll.

I think that's what I'm going to do.

 

So you know you have a bad case of the domestics when you're this delighted to get a Crock Pot for Christmas.  My dear mother-in-law was told that my last Crock Pot (too tiny to cook a chicken) had a busted knob.  I had to ask my brother-in-law to turn it down when we went to get our wedding photos and he spilled the beans on my sad state of Crockpottery. 

Here, inronically, is a picture of me today. 

It's fate.  Stay tuned.

Subbing to Assistant to Certified: The Plan in Action

Subbing for eighth grade is not for the faint of heart.  I guarantee you I did not have this smile on my face the last two hours of school, and I most certainly did not by the time I got home.  It was a brutal day.  

I don't know why I took this pic, other than to send to my husband, whom I usually don't see all day long.  A habit that's a remnant of having spent a long time apart, where selfies were treasured immensely because that's all we had.  That and the phone, sometimes several hours a day.  

I am looking to become a middle school teacher.  Some folks think I am insane for aspiring to work with kids who can be exceptionally ungrateful for their opportunities to learn, but I feel that middle schoolers provide enough of a challenge to keep one on their toes. 

I am very well educated, I'm just not able to be a certified teacher--yet.  Yes, I do have a massive amount of writing behind me, but I've found the writing life is full of uncertainty and that--after about four years--got old.  Very.  I want to be able to make a life for me and my children without counting on the maybe jobs month after month year after year.  The type of freelance writing I do--technical and non-fiction--is non-existent where I live.  I am sure there are those that telecommute, but they have more experience than I and are highly specialized.  Freelancing is far more stressful--to me--than teaching school. 

I am hoping to become an assistant next year and segway into the assistant-to-teacher program through the University of Mississippi.  Substituting provides me a way of getting to know the administrators, other teachers, general atmosphere and students.  When a family situation needs to be taken care of, I can always answer my phone in the morning and say no--that's always good.  After two years of underemployment (which was a serious drag on the self-esteem) I am so grateful to be working it shows on my face.  

So wish me luck as I strive to become a middle school teacher making a difference.  Yes, I'd teach English, but I'll be happy with whatever they give me.  

Bring it on. 

A few weeks ago, I was up in the house when I got a phone call.  It was my soon-to-be husband asking me if I wanted to come down to the bottom of the yard to watch him light a fire.  You have to understand, we live up on a hill and our yard slopes away beneath us an acre between the house and the property line where we have an erstwhile stream.  Down in the beneath is the fire pile.

As we sat there, we had a discussion about life, and how things had turned for us.  He said something that enlightened and loosened me at the same time:  "I'm learning how to be happy again."  I nodded.  I knew what he meant.

Less than two years earlier, we had both watched our families disintegrate. After 13 years, he had told his ex-wife that it was over.  It was over, it'd been over for a while but had lingered on in a state of habit until his father died (by his own hand) and he could no longer try and please the acerbic discontentment that was spread his way.  The ex and their daughter now live 35 miles away which doesn't seem far until you're trying to manage a retail store and a 140 mile round-trip to pick up your child.  Sometimes she'll bring her over, but it's usually only once a month.  What are we to do?  Fuss?  Fight?  No, we regulate ourselves to the short time we have with his little girl and make the best of it.

Me?

Nothing made sense until I read this on Pinterest:  To the lobsters in the kitchen on the Titanic, it was a miracle.  I was a lobster on the Titanic--I just didn't know it.  I, like the passengers on that fair ship, hadn't a clue what was in store for them.  (Can lobsters survive in that part of the North Atlantic?  I doubt it, but it's a great saying all the same).

I suppose I should have known I was in trouble a long, long time ago and I had a hard hard time forgiving myself for not knowing so and lacking the judgement to have known he wasn't good for me or my children--in the end.

It was the dream job, it was a farce.  It was standing in a three room apartment bereft of my home and most of my things asking for money for groceries and being told there wasn't any.  It was the end.

And for nearly two and a half years--even as I approached my marriage with the love of my life (who had carried the torch for me for two and a half decades)--I was a crumbling sordid mess on the inside.  I would jump at the slightest provocation--I could *not* relax.  The smallest things about my life ceased to function, most notably my confidence and my sense of peace.  They were gone.  Obliterated. What hurt the most was my inability to believe in myself again, and my seeming lack of ability to support myself.  When you get divorced and you find you were Really Really Wrong about a person, it does something to your inner faith that you do know best.  And so many things are dead.

Your old life.
Your spouse.
Your joint holdings.
Your lifestyle.
Certain friendships.
Your idea of yourself.
Your trust in your judgement.

My mother-in-law couldn't believe that his ex--to whom his family has tried and tried to stay close to no avail--wanted to go and hear her divorce decree, to hear it in court.  "Your marriage," she told her, "was over two years ago. This is just a formality."  I disagreed.  I felt that no one--not a single one of us or anyone else--should tell her how to grieve complete or dissipate her marriage.  I knew this because no one could tell me.  My grief was hidden, not mine to display or subjugate other's feelings to.  Keeping it to myself was the healthiest thing for my new family and what we were trying to achieve:  moving on.

This great, gasping hole that the wind was constantly whistling through, unabated, was for time to fill. And sometimes it takes time to realize that yeah, you were in trouble.  Some guy with a white hat was moving over to your tank thinking it was your time to get a'boilin'.  And then, pow, howdy, your friend Fred starts screaming, "SWIM, FRANK, SWIM!" cause you happened to be a lobster named Frank. And you did.

When I could not hear my ex ask me a question without flinching in anticipation, when I felt my son deserved to have a life where his mother didn't have to be in fear coming home from the grocery store, when I asked my ex to leave the packing to me because I just couldn't take the ten thousand questions about my judgement, when he sold my things without my knowledge, when he lost mortage payments in the gambling houses of North Mississippi, when he got caught for fraud on eBay, when my fifteen-year-old had to explain to me that no, daddy wasn't a good man, he was watching porn downstairs on the big monitor in the den.

Well.  Someone was blind.  And no matter how much I enjoyed his company, I somehow missed that we were yelling at each other so loud that my son could hear it through the floor.

Now I have approached a situation that will put me in benefits and a permanent employ for quite possibly, the rest of my life.  I am lifted out my own personal hell of Not Knowing What to Do with my new life, and the two years of painful underemployment I experienced are over.  And I see not the loss, nor hear the whistling in the wind of this great loss--our family--I see something great, and moreover I feel it.

My husband is warm at night.  His family is warm all the time.  My son gets fatherly parenting he never experienced before.  His stepdad is a considerate and thoughtful man and although he is not perfect, gives a lot of thought to presents, approaches to discipline and the structure of our family life.  He is a family man if ever there was one, spending a good deal of his time at home and only occasionally going on nature hikes. This past week he presented my son with a fishing rod and tackle box.  As he is way into his games, I figured Aslan would hate this present, like getting clothes for Christmas.  Instead, he was awed.  He wanted to go fishing with his stepdad and stepsister.  Things in his life now--where the weren't before--are readily and steadfastly defined, and his stepfather does not passively allow him to pass through this life without engaging in nature.

So hold out through this mind-boggingly bad pain:  it will abate.  You'll see, somewhat painstakingly, that you made the right decision by moving on, no matter how painful it is, no matter how much you loved that marriage or that time together, you will find your way because even if you don't feel strong now you had the strength to leave.  Insanity is part of the grief.  Accept it.  Know that someday it will pass.  You're not going to be going to the supermart and suddenly feel that it's all passed and now you can have your shit together.  It doesn't work that way.

Be traumatized if you must.  Cry in private if you can, and don't try to move forward--you'll do that naturally in time.  SWIM FRED SWIM and get the hell out of the kitchen.  It was going down, anyway.

Just Plain Happy

First, look at this:

It's just all kinds of happy to see that sort of talent.  There's more. 

Called The Ugly Duckling. 

Have you ever seen such a good writing prompt as that last picture?  Not me.  Honestly, just adorable. 

All this happy stuff is a sign.  It's a sign that something changed. 

First of all, I'm posting.  It's because I think I should.  Because the days are happy. It's time to bury all the old things and move forward.  And it's time to stop rationalizing why I'm not posting.  Blogs are meant to be written, not waste away.  And besides.  The Man is handing my ass to me in numbers.  Just ain't write.

And look at my life:  

I have a kitten that is OBSESSED with bread.  Here is the little idiot stealing my bagel.  He was ripping it about with his head, flopping it like a dead mouse.  Three days before this, I picked up a box of Kentucky Fried bones I had on the couch to take to the huskies, only to discover the biscuit was missing.  Odd.  But then into the living room where the biscuit was EVERYWHERE.  That's right--bread fiend passed over the chicken. You bet your ass I'm going to get video.

Here's a rainbow two weeks ago when I was walking around the neighborhood.

 Here is a happy kid who thinks his new stepfather (pending) is the greatest dude alive.  He comes home with the best grades, citations for being good, and is brimming with The Happy at his school.  He was in agony back where we had to land after the divorce.  The teacher there would tell him he was going to fail in front of his whole class all the while telling me she couldn't do anything for him.  She was the first teacher in all the years my kids have been in school that I took exception to--after all, I was a K-8 major and a substitute teacher on and off--I have a good deal of understanding how hard it is.  But I would never treat a student like that.  And she shouldn't have either.  Everyone told me that Aslan was in a "good school."  I think they meant "lily white."  My son is in a classroom where he is a decided minority (one of two white kids) and is the happiest I have ever seen him.  Take that, racism. Take that, having spent a lifetime in Mississippi and being told Those People This and Those People That.

Here I am completing a sock for a Very Tall Man on 0's.  No pattern, seamless, toe up.  And I am working on the second one because I'm going to enter the pair into the fair and I am bloody going to win.  Cause there ain't much competition in this little neck of the woods, and I better get to knitting.

This is a view of my backyard.  My desk is just to the left of the frame.  I sit at my desk and watch this:

And despite the adjustments, despite the setbacks, despite not having a dream job, despite having been dealt certain blows, it's all good.  

And it's better when you decide just to let go and feel the good. 

Dear Robin,

The Mrs. Doubtfire stoop, August 12, 2014

How dare you, how dare you how dare you leave us.

When I was diagnosed ADD, your presence on the list of "famous people who also have crazy attention issues" always meant something to me.  The success--even though I knew of your demons--I've got mine, too--always imbued me with hope and a sense of pride.  Because you were allowed a venue for creativity, and you took it.  You seized it.  You let it go.  Even the greats--Jack Benny, Pryor, and the rest--were studies in structure.  You had no structure and it made it okay for me not to have one, either.  Because you knew what the rest of us knew--sometimes you just can't.  It is difficult to be in a world that wants you to fit in the structure, when you couldn't draw out a structure if you're life depended on it.  Like Einstein's Fish, had you been required to teach college or labeled in such a way or talked into Making a Decent Living, oh what, what would have done for the knowledge of my disorder?

For ADD is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.  It is difficult for those who do not have it to understand how emotionally eroding it can be to constantly struggle to remain on task.  The sink that overflows, the college loan notifications that were ignored unintentionally, the keys locked in the car, the strain on your loved one's patience when yet again, they have to tell you again and again.  The moments your mind goes completely blank.  The jobs lost.  The desire to numb the input of the world and just not deal.  Many's the time I should have finished a piece of writing where dammit, I just played Sim City.  It was easier.  I theorize ADD is why I'm a writer:  at least I can always see where I left off.  There is no cubicle in the world that would have me long. Not because I'm lazy, but in reality, how would we keep the job it came with?  Can anyone imagine you in a cubicle?

All those people, all our lives who told us, "What's wrong with you?" and we began to believe it.  How much did that play into your life?  I do not know.  I hope in the ensuing years we hear your take on it all.

For this reason, to me you were always this star in the firmament that glowed like Venus.  Venus is not a place you want to visit.  Like most ADD folks, I'm sure you were exhausting to live with at times.  I know I have been.  I am in my third marriage and I know that in at least the last marriage my ADD was a burden to us both.  I safeguard and change in subtle ways to make sure that my disorder doesn't disorder this life.  You knew how it was. Funny myself (not YOU funny, NOBODY was YOU funny) I knew people didn't understand how I could ever get down.  Very down.

On the morning you died, I woke having slept poorly and was usurped by anxiety.  There it was, sitting on my chest, saying that as an artist and a person, I would not succeed. But I pulled it together that afternoon.  It may be because I forced myself out of my funk into doing something creative and was working on a project for my new job (baking scones) when my man came into the kitchen with a really troubled look on his face.  I have known him twenty-five years, I know when something is Wrong.

And he told me.  And he told me.  And there you were, my secret harbored success, extinguished.  Having understood at least in part what the life of an ADD human existence is life, all I could say was, "It finally got him."  I wept because you were a professional comfort to me.  You were also adorable.

I suppose it stands to me and others like us to be grateful that you succeeded at all.  You know as well as I do that the only thing the world will give you for having ADHD is a pink slip.  There is so little understanding and acceptance, even within ourselves.  Our patience becomes raw, and it is easy--it is dreadfully easy--to despair.

That cup of coffee you microwaved eight times.  The swell of fury at someone who won't fucking stop unwrapping a peppermint in a movie theater.  The friends who just lose it on you because you weren't on time or forgot again.  The imagination that gets away and suddenly, you've spent time you couldn't afford on something that allowed you to escape the onslaught of data that sometimes is just too much.

I can say without a doubt you gave me a sharp poke in the eye with a stick.  Devastated is what everyone would be if I decided to let the despair overcome me at any given time.  The depression that plagues us ADHDers should not be neglected.  I myself will die a natural death.  I know other layers and events may have influenced whatever depression you battled and lost.  But I know the crippling emotions that the inattentive mind is prone to and the childhood infused with disapproval for your unusually creative and spastic mind.

I know the place you went.  I've been there--in 93 and 07, once with children, once without.  I know your friends will blame themselves for not seeing it, but no one can see inside it.  It is a deep underwater cave you feel you can navigate on your own, and cannot.  Man's first instinct, Robin, is self-preservation.  If a man's desire to die overcomes this instinct, then it is a place in which madness has had its full due.

My fiance's aunt had a neighbor who called her hysterical, yesterday afternoon.  His brother had just moved in after a diagnosis of ALS.  He committed suicide.  She herself has survived the suicide of her mother, her son (only twenty) and her brother, my husband's father.  And then you.  She posted about your death yesterday.  My future husband sat in the kitchen in our rocker and I placed my hand on his shoulder.  Suicide is always hard for him to hear.  Like his aunt, we live without understanding it.  We see the grandchildren he missed, the marriage we form that would have delighted him.  I know how your family would miss you. Only in madness would you have subjected them to such a loss.

I hope you are comfortable now where you are, and that everything is clear and bright.  For me you will never be one of those geniuses who struggled but was beset by the demons who finally won.  You will always be the ADHD person who succeeded, in spite of it all.  I still have faith in you.