Daily doo.

I haven't had the energy to write much here lately, because for the most part, I just keep thinking of negative things to say. I figure you people probably have enough going on and have read my bitching enough that you don't really need any more of it right now.

I am about to miss what will probably be the best and most explosive staff meeting at work ever- we had some pretty big events last weekend, during which one guy quit and several others were inconsolably insulted by things the first guy said and did. As a result, our boss called an EMERGENCY staff meeting and instructed us all to type out every single complaint we have, EVEN ABOUT HER, about anybody in the store, and also anything good we have to say and drop it into this SEALED box to be read and dealt with at the meeting. Unfortunately I didn't eat dinner last night after clinching through a night of fit-throwing from the little dude in my house, plus finding out that Kane has been looking at PORN on the internet, and as a result I spent most of the night lying awake with a burning, cramping gut. IT WAS AWESOME. Anyways, this morning I felt terrible and stayed out of work and now I'm missing the meeting. Seriously, every person I work with has chips on they shoulders and grudges and secrets and they all secretly, or openly, dislike almost everyone else there and I AM MISSING ALL THE ACTION. I didn't ever type my grievances and so now I'll type them here:

I wish my boss didn't throw boxes at me, or clap in my face, or grunt at me and roll her eyes at me. I think these tactics are counterproductive, in that they make me want to steal things and throw bricks through the window.

I wish that all the lip-service my boss gives to equality and how everyone in the workplace should be treated the same had any truth, and effect on the way she treats her employees. One guy can scream about scrotums and putting stuff in his butt and licking butts and show stuffy old clients naked pictures of his boyfriend's ass and IT'S JUST SO GOSH-DARNED CUTE, THOSE GAY BOYS! But I make one loud comment about wanting a beer and I'm chastised in front of the entire staff, singled out as an example of how INAPPROPRIATE we can be at work and how it should stop.

I think that pretty much everyone we work with does a good job and works hard and is good at what they do. HA HA, BITCHES. I may get tired of certain people pouting and throwing fits and refusing to take their phone calls and refusing to talk to customers and getting irritable if I ask them questions and trying to pass as much of their work as possible off on me, but I also respect all of them. Almost. Almost all of them. And that's pretty good, right?

And now it's summer.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff

Some time soon I bet I'll be able to think of lots of things to write about on here that don't always involve the word "FUCK", in all caps like that, repeatedly.

Our lawyer has filed some stuff and sent a letter to Kane and Jude's mom. Of course, when she laid down this decision she immediately stopped communicating with us- won't answer the phone, won't return our calls. So we're still not hearing from her at all, still being avoided, so we have no way of knowing if she's received it yet, if she understands the severity of the situation, if she knows how bizarre it will be if she has to go sit in a court and talk in front of our families and lawyers and a judge about her life and all the things that have happened to her and all the things that she's done and still try to come out of it at the end saying "And that's why I'm a great mom."

One day soon, after all this mess has passed, I'll probably go into much more detail about their mother, if for no other reason so everyone reading will understand why we have been so panic-stricken, why we worry around the clock about what she might do next. Up until recently I have made some passing comments, but I've never felt the need to make her personal business public because I figured, hey, she deserves to have her skeletons in the closet, she deserves her privacy, I can leave well enough alone.

Now it has become clear that all those details, events, secrets, are going to be affecting me on a regular basis. I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to take good care of Kane and Jude; I don't feel obligated to a woman who will willingly jerk them around just to try and get her way. If nothing else, even if it weren't for how much I love them, even if it weren't for how much I love their father, if there were no other reasons in the world for me to worry about them they would still be Reed's brothers. He loves them and loves playing with them and looks up to them. That alone makes me wildly fierce about who's caring for them, how they're being cared for.

In other news, I started taking a different birth control pill and it immediately made my period stop. Just like that. No more. It is making me sick as a dog, but the sickness is slowly tapering off, and I AM NOT HAVING A PERIOD. After three months of it, it's a big deal.


Now if I could just stumble upon a good attitude and a million dollars, all would be right with the world.

Dear God, make me a bird, so that I can fly, far far away.

I would like to say that I pray all the time, every day, many times a day. Unfortunately lately I've had a hard time praying. I still believe, I just have been so tired and had so much running through my head that I just haven't prayed, have been lazy, confused, preoccupied.

However melodramatic, I've decided to write a prayer here just to get it out, solidify it. Then whenever I feel too tired to pray I can come back and read this.

God, please watch over my family and friends.

Please watch my mama. Keep her safe, and make her life good. Give her happiness and relief from stress and let her have the ability to find some peace now that she's raised her children. Please give her the knowledge that she's done a good job.

Please help my sister to find some happiness in a life that is different from what she imagined as a child. Help her to relax and find some goodness in her life, and to let go of all her disappointments.

Please help my dad to be happy and safe and healthy. Help him to know that his kids are all good people, even if we're so far from perfect.

Please help Jason's mom to find some peace and to know that she did a good job with her children. Help her to know that their fierce love of life is a testament to what kind of parent she is.

Please help Jason's dad to love himself, to be proud of his own tough brand of fathering. Help him to remember that his children love him.

Please keep Jason's brothers and their families safe, and keep them on the path to a great life, a path I think they are already on.

Please give happiness and safety to the rest of our families, our uncles and aunts and cousins and step-parents and all of their families.

Please watch over Kristi and Chris. Help them to stay as happy as they are now, to remember this time when life gets harder or different, to have a life with babies and good jobs and friends who love them and take care of them.

Please help Andy to find some happiness, to let go of some of the awful things he's been through and feel a little lighter. Watch over Diane and give her the peace of mind that she deserves as a woman who has worked her entire life to make a good life for her children.

Please help Lindsey to know that her life will be full and perfect and that this time when things are swimming around her and everything is murky will one day be gone. Help her to remember that when her life seems mired in pain and uncertainty, her friends still love her and still want everything to get better, and that's a start.

Please help Stephanie to find some peace, some calm, some ability to see clearly in the dark. Please give James the ability to center down, to remember how delicate life is, to remember how much he loves life and smiling and his future wife.

Please watch over all my friends who I don't see as often- Deanna, Brock, Linnea, Johnny, Derek, Mason, Jasper, Amanda, John, probably others whose names aren't coming to me now- help them to be happy, keep them safe.

God, please watch over Kane and Jude and help them to understand that parents can't always agree. Help them to understand that having divorced parents, fighting parents, is not their fault and that everything will be okay. Help them to forgive us for being imperfect and not always knowing the right answer. Help them to remember that this life is not perfect and even when things are disappointing, we are always trying really, really hard.

Please keep my baby safe. Please, God, just be with Reed and don't let anything bad happen to him. I am having a hard time right now not thinking about all the bad things that can happen to a child, all the illness and accidents and tragedies. Please just let Reed have a long happy life that I can enjoy with him. Please don't let him be a crazy person like me. Please give him the ability to be a hard worker and a fierce lover of his friends and family and a person who can love his life with reckless abandon.

Please help Jason to remember why he fell in love with me, why I fell in love with him. Please let us know how to persevere. Please help us to find our roles with each other as a team, as a pair of people who want the same things, and people who want good things for each other. Please help him find everything he's looking for. Please keep him safe.

Please help me to be a better person. Jesus, please, just help me let go of some of this grief that is inexplicably lodged in my heart. Please don't let me waste this time, this time with Jason and Reed and Kane and Jude, being a sad person, a crazy person. Please help me to know the right thing to do in all these situations I find myself in, these moments when I feel lost, when I forget for a moment that I'm not a kid, when I think that I can't possibly be old enough to make the decisions that I'm faced with. Please help me hold on these last little remnants of my ability to have a good time, to smile and laugh, to get pleasure out of watching other people laugh. Help me remember that my children are fragile and I must always think about every action, every comment, every single thing that I do and how it will affect them. Please give me the strength and grace to combine the very best qualities of my favorite people, to be like my mother and Kristi and Lindsey and Jason and Stephanie and Deanna and to have the quick, witty sense of humor and irony that Kane and Jude and Reed have. Help me to remember why I am not perfect, why Jason isn't perfect, to remember that our flaws are beautiful and that without them, we would be someone else. Please give me some peace in the night, some time when I don't wonder if the doors are locked, some time when I don't wonder what that sound was, some moments when I'm not thinking about all the bad stuff that could be about to happen.

Oh God, please don't forget about Leonard Peltier. I cannot imagine how hard his life has been, still is, how much longing he must have to hold his grandchildren, to stroke their hair and tell them that he loves them.

Please help all of us to do better, to think more about this living, breathing organism that is the world we live in. Help us to remember that it is our responsibility to make sure that there still is a world for our children, that this fierce love and fear we have for them is the same fierce love and fear they will have for their own children, and that we have a hand in deciding how much they will have to worry about their families, their lives, their futures.

And God, as long as I'm making requests, please help me not take a cow pie to work in a bag and throw it at my boss. All those times that she rolls her eyes at me, grunts at my "stupidity", claps her hands in my face, talks to me like I'm an idiot, please in those moments help her to know that she is walking a very thin line with a very crazy lady. We haven't got Reed potty trained yet, so I still have access to some very nasty substances which I could very easily rub all over the door-handles on her car.

Help me to remember why a sense of humor is so important, and help everyone reading to know that I still have one. It just gets lost behind a very thick fog sometimes.

The next storm was today.

Oh, for the love of shit, it's Mother's Day time, and that means it's time for my job to make me question my will not to drink during the day. Or morning. Or while in the bed, during the night before.

Seriously, people want their flowers for their mamas, they want to be able to wait until 48 hours before the big day, and they don't want anyone standing in their way. Today was a long day of pissing off various people, from the owner to the delivery manager to the customers to the designers. People are totally unafraid to let you know that you are an insignificant cog in the machine that is THE BEST FLOWERS IN BIRMINGHAM, PEOPLE. I found myself saying "FUCK IT" more often and more loudly than most days, and it's usually pretty frequent if that tells you anything.

Tonight I am trying to push through the nausea and fatigue to just, please, get some alcohol into my system. Tomorrow I'm going to work with a can of silly string in my apron because, listen, I won't get in as much trouble shooting people with that as with the lazers that come out of my eyes.

Calm after the storm... and before the next one.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff

Jason and I simultaneously exhaled today, a mighty heaving that left us totally giddy and thankful and exhausted. I'm still nauseated, but it matters a little less now. I will probably write a lot more about all this at a later date, but for now I will say that I think everything is going to be okay.

I have found myself totally uninterested in staying up past about 7:45 lately. I've always been a late-nighter, so it's a little annoying. I keep thinking I'm going to have a drink after Reed goes to bed and then make some jewelry; I end up having a drink of water with an antihistamine while Reed is still watching his nightly Wiggles film and then passing out around 9:30. It's good to get all this rest, but I'm starting to wonder if my time- the time during which I love to party and hang out and stay up late- has finally passed. IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME.

I have to say, though, that I seriously doubt my late nights are over; this has just been a particularly rough patch this past couple of weeks. We've found a tiny place where we can rest easy, at least for a few days, and I'm trying to remember that I don't have to be stressed out right now. It may get better or it may get worse, but for the next week or so we won't know, so we may as well feel better.

Making a wish.

Originally uploaded by buffpuff

There has been so much going on lately- nauseation, continued bleeding, A LOT of crying, pulling of hair, frustration, worry, constant phone-calling, and then a couple of good things.

I think this super-cute little boutique in Homewood called Happi is going to carry my jewelry. I am so excited and hopeful and grateful- it's really a big deal to me, and I hope that it works out well for everyone involved.

An article that I wrote is being published in the June issue of Lipstick Magazine. Again, great opportunity, very excited, could lead to other opportunities, super-awesomeness.

I am not downplaying either of those things because they are both so rad and exciting, but I must say that the past two days of making 734 phone calls to 347 different people, telling our story those many times, talking to people who didn't know, or didn't care, or didn't want to disturb their lunch is really defeating. It has gotten to the point where every time I hang up the phone, every single time, I start to cry. I sit there for a few minutes and cry and rub my eyes and collapse in on myself, and then I straighten my shoulders and find my list and make the next call. It's not even that we're getting bad news from anyone; we just can't seem to light on the right branch, so to speak.

Luckily we're checking out another couple of branches on Thursday. So the beat goes on.


P.S. I just noticed that Lipstick has a link to my blog under "Our Favorite Websites". How cool is that? WAY.