Little Green Men

I'm pretty convinced I've been abducted by aliens.

Full on abducted, brought up to the Mothership, had some sort of probe and that my actual self is still floating somewhere in space as the shell of my former self, all altered and tampered with was sent back down to Earth.

I hardly recognize myself. Had I been able to see myself now a year ago, I would have likely punched myself in the face. Awash in my own cynicism and mockery. Who IS this freakishly mushy estrogen filled woman and what have you done with the callous and evil person who once stood proudly in her place?

It's like a car accident really. A big mess you can't help but watch. I can't bring myself to look away. In retrospect mind you.

I think back a year ago, to my scorn and rejection. To my continued failures time and time again. My innate closedoffedness to everything with a penis. Rat bastards the lot of them.

My mind full of cheating and lies and bad treatment. Years of it. Blocks of ice built up around myself like an igloo. Turning me into a Paula Abdul chorus..."Co Co Co Cold Hearted....Oooh ah ah"

Here I am a year later. 365 calendar days and I am hardly recognizable. Like a massive thaw after the ice age, I feel. FEEL! Me the uber bitter bitch who thought I would never let myself fall, too weary of the pain of hitting the ground below.

Here I am with thoughts of happiness, of love and dreams. WHAT THE DEUCE?!

I actually found myself crying last night. Not the normal tears of woe is me, but for another reason. More real, tender. Emotional.

An ad on TV for a local Boston hospital…strange premise I know, but it was the hospital my father had his artificial heart valve surgery. It was an ad for an older gentleman singing the praises of said hospital and thankful for his artificial heart. I lost it. Sad because of the loss of my father yes, since I miss him every day, but sadder that I am finally happy. Beyond happy and with someone I envision the duration of my ridiculous life with and he will never meet him. Never share silly stories with or shake his hand.

I have no doubt my father would love him. He’s a good man. A pain in the ass at times, but hell so was my dad. A perpetual goofball who adores me and moreover my son. Who is an amazing dad to his own kids. And it made me sad that they would never meet. Made me sad knowing that when he and I met it was right around the death of my father. Strange how life works.

And these thoughts are a constant now. Not a when-will-the-bottom-fall-out-of-my-life type of thought process, but a I-am-starting-to-see-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind. And this time, it’s not a freaking train barreling down the tracks, honking its horn loudly as if to say “Ha Ha” right before it plows right into me.

I wonder if they were little green men...

Another Day At The Office....For Now

The clock is ticking.

Rain is falling. Incessantly. Non-stop, flood-raging rain. Record breaking really. It pelts the window next to my desk 8 stories up in droves when the wind gushes its 40 mile per hour gusts upon the 4 Point Channel on the waterfront here in South Boston. Creating intricate patterns as each drop trickles down the glass pane.

The clack of various keyboards sounds from cubicle to cubicle. Murmured voices off in distant conference rooms loom in the background. The whoosh of the vents as the forced air, manufactured air, never fresh air is pushed through from the center of the massive room.

Footsteps of people walking though to other areas. Sliding glass doors that cordoned off our area from the next swoosh as they slide open on their automatic sensor. A random cough from the other end of the room.

It's Monday and it's essentially quiet. Meetings ongoing, papers printing, reports typing. Emails being sent and received. Phone calls made.

I sit at my desk and I feel the faint rumble of the subway below me. Like the feeling your stomach makes when you're hungry, it gurgles and vibrates below the city, below the building. Barely noticeable unless you pay attention to it.

I stare blankly at my over-sized monitor, gleaming brightly in a room illuminated with mostly artificial light on this gloomy day. A fluorescent wonderland in a grey world. Music emanating from my speakers just loud enough for me to hear, like my own little secret right here in my own concrete jungle.

I am eerily calm. Serene in my final days in this atmosphere. Comfortable. It's cathartic. Homey. I am entirely at ease here.

But what may lie ahead for me? What sounds and sights will I have in store for me in the very near future?

Will it be a bustling chaotic place? Boisterous people and phones ringing off the hook? Will I have the view I do now of airplanes taking off from Logan, loaded with people escaping Boston and off to various destinations for business and pleasure? Will I be able to sit and imagine myself as I do now aboard one? Lost in my own thoughts?

Will I be able to drown out the familiarity as I am able here? Close myself off to my surroundings and adapt myself to the tasks at hand? Or will it be overly distracting? Will I be alone in my location or surrounded as I am here? The clacks of others work chiming in with my own, or will the sounds of my own productivity be the sole means of music to my ears?

As I sit and bask in the last weeks, days and hours of my life here at Gillette, I cannot help but fear the unknown. Cannot help but wonder where my future employment lies, or even if it lies at all. Will anything I've done prove fruitful? Will interviews behold some semblance of hope? Or be a drastic waste of time and current hourly wage?

For now, all I can do is sit. Sit and take it all in.

And just add to the ambiance that is my day, right here, right now.

The Kool-Aid Drinking Relationship Anti-Christ

I have for as long as I can remember been the relationship Anti-Christ.

I lived in blatant disregard for those who had found happiness. I scoffed at romantic gestures and vomitous cutesy acts that portrayed every cliché known to man. I looked for the elusive shoe to drop and the bottom to fall out of everything, leaving me in a pile of chaos and sometimes despair at my own lack of ability to make things happen.

I had had that great love once. So I thought. I was young, naive. Things were blindingly perfect to my 15 year old self. That one seemingly perfect match that left you to contemplate the very validity of everything to come after. To compare and contrast every imperfection and flaw of those who tried for years to fit that mold once cast by juvenile fixation.

All failed despite my greatest efforts. I would stick things out for roughly a year or so, and then it would be over. Sudden and quickly like the end to a movie. Credits rolling, thanks and blame handed out and then fade to black.

I don't fault them all really, though in the latter stages when I found myself in abusive and dysfunctional relationships I certainly laid the blame where it was obviously due.

None of it had been right. There were little moments that alluded to hope that maybe, just maybe something was possible. But they were few and far between. I would feel a disconnect again and slowly but surely sabotage any shred of goodness there may have been. I would point out the obvious flaws, exaggerate them. I would look for an escape.

And I blamed that first love. That picturesque story I had in my mind. The old fashioned courting with letters and phone calls. Doors held open, the car door opened for me. Seemingly sweet gestures.

And then I came to a realization that I had been delusional, even then. I would spout off poetry and harbor grand thoughts of a happily-ever-after. I had seen those romantic movies with happy endings. With white filly dresses and veils and I would know that someday, that fate would be mine. That my Prince Charming would swoop in and we'd ride into the sunset.

What a crock.

I had been too young to know that the man I based all these feelings of hope and of love was not who he set out to be. That he was a smooth operator, bi-coastal and a Marine with a woman at every port most likely. As I came to know him again as an adult, the clearer it was to me that I was utterly wrong about his character. What little he actually had.

So years and years of callous cynicism abounded. Proved right in my own silly justifications of being abused, cheated on. Those fantasies I once held on to so tightly, fell from my heart and hands and shattered like fragile glass upon the hard ground that was reality. A million pieces of my former self left in pieces, shards and jagged edges everywhere I looked.

And yet, I've melted. The Ice Queen I have been so familiar with, stripped away by something and someone I never thought possible. A feeling of happiness, of utter contentment and of raw emotion that I didn't think I had in me.

I drank the Kool-Aid my friends.

Sucked down in one gulp all that I had abhorred in those romantic endeavors. All that I thought was complete and utter bullshit, completely consumed by. Thoughts incessantly of that one person. A smile creeping on my face at the most inopportune moments in memory of a smell, touch or experience.

I am who I never thought I would be. Wrapped up in this lovey-dovey mush I once scorned and looked down upon.

And to tell you the truth, I am loving every pathetic minute of it.

On the Hunt...to Hunt

I'm not sure who exactly is at fault anymore for the whole shitty economy, but whoever the hell it is I want to kick their ass.

They say things are on the mend, that things are picking up. People are spending more money, blah blah blah. That's all well and good, but the job market still sucks, at least here in Boston.

I have been struggling since the end of January with the fear that I would walk into my office and be told I was no longer employed. My contract ending, and hiding under the radar from the likes of various HR people day to day. Ducking them in the elevators, hoping to go unnoticed. Hoping they wouldn't wonder "why is she still here?".

It's not that I didn't know it was coming. The way that contracting works is a whole re-tape nightmare. 1000 hours, no more. Once you hit the benchmark, you're 86'd and on your own. Usually.

I got a repreive of sorts, as the end of January neared, I was told I got an exemption, I was the exceptional exception and granted more time. The people I work with love me, I do my job well and efficiently. It was win-win really.

So as February neared it's close, I started to dread yet again. Is today the day? My contract exception in theory only gave me another month. And thus February came and went and we are now in the latter stages of March, and I get the word.

I had full hoped that the reason for my exception was to get me in permanent, as was the hope of my entire team. However, that elusive black cloud that stalks my life felt differently. Someone from "inside" the company is moving over to here. I got snaked out.

Now I like her, she's a great person who had been helpful to me the past 2 years, but I cannot help but harbor resentment towards her swooping in and stealing my job. I know technically she isn't, but hey I'm allowed to feel whatever the hell I want.

And now I am back on the hunt. Scouring and searching the internet for jobs. Applying to hundreds upon hundreds of positions, hoping that something pans out. Praying that by the time I am forced out the door mid-April that I will have a back-up. A new work place to call home.

I have an interview today. And it's not as positive a thing as one might think. You click "submit" resume over and over again only to be contacted by yet another staffing agency. I am working with 3 already and have an interview for a 4th today.

It's always the same. You walk in, you wait. You are forced to take some sort of remedial typing test on antiquated computers to show your skills. You are usually mentally drained from the out-of-the-way place they are located and likely got lost upon actually finding where the hell the building/office is located.

You plug away at the silly quest, typing what they want you to type, fiddling around in the land of Microsoft Office until your time is up.

You then meet with a phony person who asks you questions they have the answers to in front of them on your resume. You smile, you play along. It's all for the greater good right?

Wrong. I was laid off 5 months last year. Working on this premise that these staffing agencies were there for me. That they would help me in my endeavors. Yeah I found my OWN job back where I was let go from. And so I've been ever since.

So now I wait. Wait for the phone interview I have today in 6 minutes. Wait to travel the subways of Boston and walk blocks through the city today at 3pm to get lost and irritated by yet another useless agency who is supposedly there to help.

I need to make no less than what I do now to survive, to pay my bills that I barely am able to handle as it is. Yet the down-turned economy has most things starting out at close to $10 LESS than what I make hourly now. I don't know about you, but that's a HUGE pay cut.

I have to factor in commute time with Dylan's school. He has before and after care there, but they close at particular hours. I have to factor in traffic and unforeseen incidents into my travel plans.

I then get nudged to find something out of the city, closer to home. IN theory that would be phenomenal, but in reality, the pay is on a lower scale. Why this is, I have no idea, I didn't make the rules I just abide by them.

It's hard to plan your future when you have no idea what is going on in your present. What lies ahead in the next day let alone the next year or beyond. It's exhausting. It's stressful. It causes rifts in seemingly perfect relationships with people.

I just want to know the name and address of the fuckers who ruined it all, so I can hunt them down and beat them.

An Idiots Guide

Ok fella's, here's the deal. You've landed her, that elusive lady you've wanted. You tried, you tested and you made it past the point of no return so to speak.

However...

Should you like to keep her happy, the way you enjoy her a vast majority of the time I have some oh-so-happy tidbits for you. Some tasty nuggets for you to chew on. Help save everyone a boatload of aggravation, because let's face it, as cute as some of you are, common sense is not always on your forefront when it comes to some of the things you say and or do.

First things first, chances are you and the lady probably view things a little differently. This is normal, biological even. You are not supposed to understand it really. Like Einstein and Darwin you must have ridiculous IQ and let's face it, you are not quite schooled in the fine art of Estrogen, so this is where you just suck it up and learn to stop being a jackass and just deal with the fact you cannot talk your way through everything like a used car salesman without making matters worse and just let the poor girl have it. There will likely be less tears, less "Fine" one word answers, and a lot less of the cold shoulder.

Another thing. Most girls with any modicum of self-worth could give a rats ass about your ex girlfriends, however if they are still roaming around in the wings like a feral cat in an alley waiting for a piece of something to come their way, if you don't cut them off, you will likely get cut off. Just saying.

As for us, once we've been scorned by a fella, we generally want nothing to do with him...forever. We would usually like him hung someplace unpleasant by his toenails over a pit of boiling lava. SO your wanting them to go away, while seemingly fair in theory, is generally more baseless as we do not think with our testicles.

Girls get into their TV shows. Yes I understand with the invention of the DVR that recording now and watching later has become a habit or need for some people, but if we are home during said airing of show, we are going to watch said show...uninterrupted. This is not a punishable offense and we should not be penalized by an attitude or by mockery of "I can't believe you watch this crap". You likely watch something lame that will most definitely be cancelled before our show will be. You see, she who holds the estrogen also holds the majority marketing shares and buying household power. Companies are not stupid. You on the other hand, well the jury is still out.

We will never, ever hear the words "Do you really need another pair of shoes?" uttered. Ever. IN case words are uttered, rest assured several pairs will be purchased, likely with your money.

Facebook is the root of all evil. Everything on your page is fair game and up to interpretation. Warn idiotic friends ahead of time, or you could be in deep shit. Undated pictures of debauchery or comments that would be detrimental to said happy relationship should thus be cleared before moronic testosterone brigade posts them. If inappropriate posts made my someone with a vagina, prepare for World War III.

We never look like shit. Death could be knocking at our door, we may not have left bed in a week or showered in days, doesn't matter. You ever, ever utter anything that even sounds like you think we are not attractive to you, you will never hear the end of it. Until you're dead.

Text messaging can make or break you. A cute little hello? A quirky pick-me-up? Total make. A full-fledged argument that should take place either in person or on the phone? Break. Grow some balls will you? We want a man damnit. Communication is key, and let's face it half the time you don't say the right thing the right way, imagine how we take it when you type it...

And we may forgive, but we seldom forget, which in turn means you will never be made to be able to forget either. Remember that.

When all else fails, jewelry, flowers or some whole-hearted proof that you know you've been a jackass and that she is the most beautiful wonderful woman alive is likely the best course of action to redeem yourself.

Ahh, love...

Maybe I've Been Lobotomized

It's a strange thing really. Amid monsoon like rain and wind, trees falling and gusts whipping things around, I the queen of gloom and doom feel oddly sunny.

Not much has changed really. Not in a drastic way. Circumstances are still what they are, and yet, I am yielded by a new found regard for optimism.

Who am I and what have you done with the real Apryl?!

It's almost like I have been lobotomized. Abducted by an alien life force and transformed. I still walk and talk like me. I still conduct myself in the same manner I always have, but I'm not entirely the same. Weird.

And it's a slight difference. Maybe only noticeable to myself really. The way I see or hear something and the sides of my mouth start to do this odd thing on their own. This mystical curling up on both sides. This odd glint in my eye, where did it come from?

Was it there before? I haven't the foggiest really. Maybe it was. Laying dormant, hidden beneath years of misery. Years of abuse and cynicism. Maybe it had been there all along, waiting for the right moment to arise to come to the surface. To rise above the muck and mire that has been the last few years as I knew them.

Or maybe I had to know those years to see it when it happened. Denial for so long gave way to something, maybe greater that I had anticipated.

Did I really say that out loud??

Again who am I?

Awash in mush and hopefulness. Thinking not of the next shoe to drop, but of the endless possibilities. Of the way my heart flutters in my chest, the way my stomach fills with anticipation. What IS this feeling??

How had it alluded me for so long that now I am totally engulfed by it? Completely consumed? Unknown to myself really. That closed offedness I had come to know so familiarly, now seems so distant.

It's comfortable yet new. Familiar, yet like exploring a new and wild world I have never seen or knew existed.

And dare I say it? Dare I admit it again out loud?

I think I might like it...

Corporate America and the Shitter

Once upon a time, big companies ran streamlined. They were headed by powerhouses who meant business, no pun intended. They knew how to make snap decisions. In Donald Trump fashion they laid down the law of hiring and firing with an air of confidence, of arrogance and certainly of their own decision.

They made the rules, they lived and died by the sword as it were. Wheeling and dealing late into the night to get things done, for the greater good of the company. They did what they had to do. People were hired based on their ability to perform. Based on what they had to show for themselves. They were high-fived, they were lighting cigars at the end of a job well done.

Not anymore.

Now it is all politics and red-tape. A person not hired because they are able to perform at an optimal level, but because they pass a mundane "personality test". Not because the tasks they are given to prove they are the best man or woman for the job are completed with vigor and with professionalism, but because they fit a quota, or a tax break.

There are ridiculous HR regulations. Countless seminars on how not to do things. On the sudden uprising on what the world now thinks the word "Ethics" means. Businesses running into the ground because these new and supposedly improved practices give-way to higher turnovers, lower salaries, and people not able to move up in their current positions. Job frustration over having to jump through countless hoops to get a seemingly simple task accomplished, like a circus animal no longer there to perform a job, but a performance to amuse the puppet masters at the top of the food chain in their cushy offices, signing check after check with minimal dollar signs.

This has become the bane of my existence. Caught up in this red-tape like a crime scene. Consumed by the banality of it all. Questioned day after day by colleagues as to why I am not just hired out-right. Complimented by members of senior management for my continued efforts to go above and beyond my basic duties to help others, to get things done. It's not intention as to say "Look at me! look at me!", it's how I was raised. I know what a proper work ethic is, and I am one of the few left in my generation that has one.

I wonder where it all got lost. Where that finite line of definition that led someone in to that ominous office once upon a time, interviewing with the Head Honcho's of yore. Getting grilled incessantly as you sat either timid and frightened by them, or poised and composed. Assuring yourself a job. Proving yourself at that job, and getting a hearty "Good work" as you punched out for the day.

How have the once booming Corporate Tycoons become the timid field mice they are today?

No wonder the economy's in the shitter.

Here Come the Judge

I never suffered from anxiety. (I enjoyed every minute of it, badoom ching!) I never had moments in my life where I felt stricken by fear or emotion that paralyzed me. Started me shaking, seizure-like. A prisoner in my own body. Unable to control what was going on. Heart racing, body writhing. Mind racing, tears flowing.

Not until the first time I was forced to face my child's father after what he had done to him.

I never knew the power of this. That the polarized side of loving my son with every ounce of my being could be emulated in a physical way. That not just feeling it in my heart when I held him the first time, watched him grow, heard his first words, saw his first steps. That this gut-wrenching opposite end of the spectrum that came out of what I envisioned knowing what my son saw, what he was put through at the hands of his father...

I get sick. Physically ill. Nauseated and shaking. Emotional and incomprehensibly overwhelmed with things I never knew I could feel. I ache for my son, even a year and a half later. I think of his nightmares, those reoccurring sleepless nights where he has dreamt of his father being a monster out to get him. The sad words of a 5 year old child.

The fits of anger and outrage, the emotion a child has no idea how to deal with so he acts out, unsure of where to put it all exactly. I think of his year of counseling, trying to get it all under control, knowing it was never his fault.

Hearing my child of his own volition come to the conclusion he was put in danger, that he was put there by his own father who had broken the law. Words I didn't put in his mouth, conclusions he made remember being taken away in an ambulance, remembering seeing his father taken away by a policeman after a gun was put to his head.

And it all comes back to me when I see him. I could even see someone resembling him and I shudder. Someone walking with the same caveman like lumbering walk down the street and I cringe.

And today I was forced to sit in a courtroom, in close proximity with this man. Disgusted. A man who mentally and physically abused me. Words he admitted in open court today. "Verbally Demoralized" me he called it. As though that made it sound better than being abused. Recounting years and years of witnessing substance abuse by him.

Financial slams by a man who showed up in brand new sneakers and fresh haircut. I had witness who had seen him getting in and out of work-type vehicles at a local Dunkin Donuts with other men, work attired, and yet he puts down no income. Mentions he was staying with a friend and barely able to support himself, when his own sister had told me he had been living in a rooming house. Always contradictions. Always an excuse.

Never a consistent means of supporting my son since the day he was born. Fired from every job he ever held. In and out of jail before I had even met him, license suspended 6 or 7 times. (don't ask what I was thinking when I got pregnant) Again trying to blame his unemployment now on the Quarry Check. Was never an issue before with his previous incarcerations, hiding behind it now. Excuses, always excuses.

But my shut-off notices, my rent, utilities, car don't matter. My son's school tuition, feeding and clothing him for the past 5 1/2 years are clearly irrelevant to him. Remembering the fact he stole from me, my son. Not only monetarily but a piece of both of us. A part of our lives we have been slowly trying to recapture for a year and a half.

I have to lay in wait for a decision from the court. He's ordered to some Auschwitz style work camp and community service. Complaining to the judge he had no means of transportation, to which she (thankfully) haughtily replied there was a train a few blocks away, and he should be grateful she only made it every two weeks and not every.

And so my morning was spent in Family Court, where you go to watch people's lives get ripped apart, case by case.

Here come the Judge.

Melting Ice Caps and....Me?

When something has been the same for such a long time, and it suddenly changes, not necessarily for the worse, but just changes nonetheless, it's a strange transition.

You feel things differently, react to words or actions in a way you never thought possible before. Find yourself a different person in a way really. The same essentially, but skewed. Off your axis as this change, much like the Chilean earthquake has shifted you. Not enough to make a noticeable shift in course, but maybe a millisecond saved off the day as those overly paid NASA scientists have been so bold to point out.

And that millisecond, that tiny shift has changed everything drastically. Your once easy jaded perceptions you held onto so tightly, are loosening. You are susceptible to hurt again, and you hate it. Yet, you like the other things that go with it. Those silly things you have detested so long.

The mundane specialties of life. Simple yet memorable all the same. A look, a touch. A stupid comment or smell. Those Lloyd Dobler moments that are awkward yet pubescently romanticized.

You didn't ask for it, or expect it really. It sort of happened, like the gradual changes of the seasons. One day you just wake up and Winter had changed to Spring. You notice that the snow had melted and it's not longer cold and icy. Things are warmer, greener. The sun stays out a little longer each day and you feel, well happier.

Happier? How the EFF did that happen? You? Really? Was it possible? And more impossible was it had been there all along. Sort of. Hidden in plain sight. Your own mirrored image in testosterone. Your equal. The one person who had been your confidant, your partner in crime. The one you didn't think of "that way". Impossible.

And yet afraid a little. Change is a scary thing, even if slight. Even when all else is familial and you have not much else to learn. Because even though it's comfortable and easy, it's different now. There's that element that hadn't been there before. That vulnerability. That ability to hurt. Those feelings of mush that weren't there, those Rom-Com moments you secretly watched, silently hoping for behind closed doors. And they come, and they exist kind of.

You hear lyrics to things you've heard every day with new meaning. You hate yourself for becoming THAT girl. It's not you. You the callous one. The guarded heart. Safe in your own cynical bubble of mockery. You don't DO mush. What the hell is going on here?

Global Warming has the ice-caps melting...could it be melting me too?

An Accidental Evolution

You ever have one of those sudden realizations when you wake up and just say out loud to yourself "How the deuce did I get here?!"

Not here in the literal sense, because I am pretty sure if you woke up in some forsaken place of the unknown you'd be a bit worse off than you generally are, but I mean in the sense that you wake up and you are in a state in your head that you have no idea how you got to.

Like the train in your brain just showed up at some arbitrary station and you were forced to get off and take a look around, baffled and confused as though you just woke up from a drunken stupor, and wonder where the hell you are and what the crap happened to the stations you swore were next in line on the track you were pretty convinced you were headed on.

And so it goes, as Stewie's voice chimes "What the deuce" inside your head and you take a look around this brand new mystical brain space. These feelings you never expected, or emotions you didn't know you had left. You're subliminal Darwinian mental evolution as it were.

It was ever so subtle in the making. Just get up, go to work, live life. You suffer losses and bad luck day after day, so little things just seemed to go unnoticed. You learned to tune out the positives, any positives, because let's face it you always waited for that elusive other shoe to drop. You knew in your head it was coming, didn't you? Hadn't it come so many times that your collection rivaled that of Imelda Marcos?

But in all that waiting, all that desperate anticipation for what could go wrong, they instead went....right? How could that be? As though they seemingly canceled themselves out and just ceased to happen. As though you were so distracted by the outward and obvious that it had all gone on under the radar.

So aloof and in denial you try to thwart it all back to the way it once was. Change? You and change are surely not friends. Never have been really. It had never been for the better before, why now would it prove different? And yet, yet this irksome feeling in your chest that rises or in the pit of your stomach, where were they coming from? These stirrings were new, they were complicated.

Things you didn't want to feel really. Right? Or maybe, maybe somewhere buried deep in my psyche I did. Maybe there was a battle, like Knights on horseback with lances charging each other, one Sir Cynical and one Sir Optimist. My inner selves out to get each other. And may the best man (well woman really) win?

But then it happened. Evolution. Accidental and strange. Awkward and clumsy and definitely not as smooth as you have would imagined. But you never imagined it. It just sort of happened, like humans from apes. Time just morphed itself forward and suddenly it seems you are here, now and different.

And now all that was and has been familiar and the same for so long is suddenly no longer the same. It's full of emotion and of feelings it wasn't full of before. There are thoughts that weren't filling your head before. Those twinges your body gets that never reacted as such before. And you don't know why, or how, or when really. And you're confused by it all, and it's complicated, and you almost wish that it was back the way it was, but it's not and it's better, but you're scared.

Vulnerability to fear is an amazing power. It is consuming and toxic and exhausting. But your mind wanders anyway. Through fields of mindless possibilities. Not of the what-ifs that go wrong, but the what-ifs that go right. And you start to not recognize yourself. That callous cynic who looked back at you day after day in the mirror, with a heart like the Grinch 3 sizes too small, much like the Grinch is changing.

An accidental evolution. And…hope?

Can I Have The Envelope Please?

The lovely Brenda over at MummyTime has nominated me for 2 fabulous Blog Awards, and since she herself is fabulous, I am of course honored, since this comes by way of Australia, which in and of itself is pretty badass. (If I do say so myself)

So in compliance with these Oh-So-Stellar awards, I have some "Rules" I am to follow.


Rules:
1. Thank the person that nominated you; link to the person that gave you the award.
2. Pass this award on to 15 bloggers you've discovered and think are fantastic.
3. Contact said blogs and let them know, they've won.
4. State 7 things about yourself. (This goes for both)

(the other award says to nominate 7 Blogs as well, but seeing as the first says 15, I think the bases are pretty much covered, don't you?)


How easy is this award?

So now, as I am SURE you are all dying to know 7 miscellaneous factoids about yours truly I have yet to divulge in my random blogging over shares, here we go!

1. My first college had a required outward-bound type class in which I was made to hike across a portion of the Green Mountains in Vermont, in the winter in about 6 feet of snow, breaking our own trails, maps, compasses, sleeping under nothing but a tarp for 4 days. Needless to say, as cool as the experience was, I will never do it again. (on our "practice" run I ended up getting evacuated to a log cabin and having to go to the infirmary due to hypothermia because it was in the cold freezing rain, not a good time)

2. I have egg-shell nails. I had no idea what the hell this meant until maybe a couple years ago, but for some odd reason, my fingernails, though they grow long, they curve downward and sort of bent like they were crushed somehow. I don't know why they do this exactly, if only to annoy me and make manicures not last very long.

3. My son is addicted to Cheetos, and half the time when I buy them for him, even though I really dislike them, I end up finishing off the bag, which is gross since they are covered in artificial orange cheese powder, but I just can't help myself!

4. I have this area around my mid-section where my once fabulous abs used to reside that I refer to as my "Fanny-pack". Thanks to an abnormally small torso and a massive child, 3 months of bed rest, weighing close to 200lbs when I gave birth at 5' tall and having an emergency c-section at the time, I fear that a tummy-tuck is my only resolution to get rid of said "Fanny-pack", although I fear they will chop my frog tattoo off in the process. It's a dilemma.

5. I fear becoming one of those old Italian ladies with massive amounts of arm wobble. That dangling under-arm flab that continues to wave after you stop waving. I already have lost some buoyancy in the under arm area and I fear that being Italian in heritage my fate may already be sealed. Flap flap flap.

6. I could eat buffalo chicken anything just about any day of the week. Salad, wings, dip, you name it. I loves me some hot chicken. Bleu Cheese please, none of that Ranch nonsense.

7. I suck at housework. I live in organized chaos and when given the chance to clean or nap, I always go for the latter.


And now there are a few blogs that I read on a daily basis that I feel should be shared with the world. All fabulous in their own way (they too could piss glitter) and different in what they share and express.

I have found the blogging community to be a fantastic release and a great support system, and these are my Peeps yo (and not the cavity with a face kind you get in your Easter basket):


1. Ferni @ This Little Girl Dreams
Because little girls with big dreams pretty much rock (and being in your 20's is something I miss)

2. Julie @ 47 and Starting Over
Because the beginning is always a good place to start, no matter how old you are

3. Polly @ The Hitch List
Because I too suffer from Relationshipaphobia

4. Lauren @ Hipstercrite
Because she is freakin hilarious

5. Nancy @ F8hasit
Because she is real and relatable

6. Hannah @ My Soul Is A Butterfly
Because her words bring you places, and it's awe inspiring

7. Natalie @ Nat the Fat Rat
Because she is quirky and likeable

8. Cath @ Random Thoughts From Underneath the Table v3.0
Because she's pretty much my soul mate

9. Chrissy @ I Shoulda Been A Stripper
Because we all have our "Shoulda's"

10. Kristine @ Wait in the Van
Because her Photoshop skills crack me up

11. Heather @ Confessions From My Everyday Life
Because she's a wheeling and dealing mom who I love to death

12. Robin @ The Writing On The Wall
Because I get her and she's great

13. Ashley @ lesbifriends.blogspot.com
Because she is real and raw and brave

14. Tara @ I Should Write A Book But I Blog Instead
Because she lives through humor and has similar luck to me

15. Kendra @ Kendra Payne
Because she's on the biggest journey of her life...motherhood

So that about sums up my reading list. Now you're on to me. What I do when I should be working, reading the rants and writings of the above mentioned fabulous people.

So click on their names and read away, you won't be sorry!!





I am passing the tiara to these beautiful and kreative bloggers.

Silent Anxiety

Anticipation isn't always a good thing.

That build up in your mind, your body. Where everything in your body you are able to feel tense in does. Your stomach is in knots, your head reels. Your thoughts race through every possible what-if scenario that can pan out. The good, the bad, and certainly the ugly.

You can't concentrate. Your mind wanders. You stare off into the great beyond, not at anything really, just off into the distance. At what could lay ahead.

It's nerve wracking really. The waiting game. Knowing that the state of your life, your future, rests in the hands of someone else. Decisions weighed not by your actions, but by corporate policy and political red tape.

Today I sit, awash in this feeling, my financial future a mystery. Shrouded behind closed doors and HR jargon. Dotted i's and crossed t's as I fret if tomorrow I will be at this desk, my hourly wage ticking away or if I will be joining the masses of unemployed.

I've known for months it was coming. Looming in the distance like the shadow of a massive storm cloud making its way over the countryside. All that was bright and shining, now covered slowly by darkness and all you could do was watch helplessly as it overcame everything.

It's an awful feeling to be helpless. To not have control over certain pertinent aspects of your own life. To answer to others, to have your life held in the balance because of someone else's choices.

I have certainly made my own slew of choices that have affected my life sure, but the big decisions, the whoppers have been mostly the choices of others. Those are the ones that impact the greatest. The choice of my company to end my job, the choice of my son's father to be a deadbeat. Those choices, those vital pieces of history are the hardest to overcome, because those I have the least control of.

I have another court date coming. My son's father wants a child support reduction. I almost laughed out loud at the sight of the motion when I opened it. A reduction? From the ZERO amount I have received in a year and a half? Really? Can they reduce zero? Even the greatest of mathematicians would have a hard time deducing that sum.

But getting what he owes would just barely cover the cost of Dylan's school a week, not to mention a portion of the rest of my monthly bills I can hardly afford. Not to mention the back owed support he owes me, or the cost to feed and clothe a growing 5 year old boy. Costs I have incurred entirely on my own since my son was 1 year old, since his support was never consistent.

I know they say it isn't healthy to hate, but I loathe that man with every ounce of my body for what he has done to my child. What he has put him through, the nightmares he still has. The counseling he is still in. The fact that we struggle so much and he hasn't done anything to support him.

I get anxiety at the thought of seeing him again in court. My heart races and my stomach turns. He makes me physically sick for what he's done. My restraining order is little comfort to the fact that I have to face him in front of a judge. Being in the same room as him brings back everything from that day I got the call at work to get my son from a detective, from the state. It's disgusting.

Impending joblessness, deadbeat dad, more financial hardship...

So much negative anticipation. No wonder I bleed inside.