Buddy's Campaign to Drive Me Insane
Monday, March 27, 2006
Terrorists the world over know that sleep deprivation over an extended period of time can break down the stoutest of soldiers. Can someone tell me how in the hell my dog figured this out?On nights that we have not had the chance to walk him, or play with him properly, he makes me pay. Not the slumbering child in the next room...but ME. Provider of all doggy treats, ear scratches and walks (ie: dog pulling mom events).
Since I've been running like a energizer bunny lately, Buddy has been feeling neglected, as evidenced by the following examples:
Monday night, 5:00am: Single Bark....me: what? wait, was that a noise? snore...
5:05am: Single Bark...me:shit...the dog, if I lay still he wont bark again...My body is like a board.
5:09am: Single Bark...me:I'm ignoring you dog.
5.09am and 2 seconds, I'm drifting back to sleep.
5:20am I'm almost there...
5:20am and 5 seconds: Bark! Me: CHRIST ALMIGHTY!!!
5:20am and 6 seconds: Wide Awake
I stumble out of bed, down the hall, manage to kick the washing machine, step on an army man and bang right into a wall that somehow moved since the night before. I get to the door, open it to find Buddy at the step, waiting...
I look at that adorable face and say without the slightest qualm
"I'm trading you in for a cat"
Repeat this every day this damn week.
And I used to complain about the gerbils...
link | posted by Kara at 3/27/2006 10:17:00 AM
Let's Get Physical
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
It shames me to admit this, but I haven't been to the gym in almost six months.Two weeks of missing the gym and it's like starting over.
six months....I might as well be dead and jazzersizing from the grave....argh.
So I throw on my workout sweats, pull my hair back in the obligatory pony tail and head off to my local YMCA. Before working out I take my little energy pills I like to use for the gym. I go ahead and pop two of them, even though I haven't used them in six months. This later will come to be my undoing.
I know it's going to be a long hour when we get started and my legs feel like rubber and my ass is asking why we are not sitting down and just enjoying this music. But, I have pride. I can't ever walk out of a class once I've begun it. Everyone else looks like they hate this as much as I and THEY are sticking it out. So I keep moving, up and down on that damn step. Legs resembling day old spaghetti and I'm looking like I just stepped outta the sauna.
Every few seconds I'm checking the clock like it's going to magically jump ahead 45 minutes and spare me some agony, but no...it seems to be moving in reverse.
Now I'm hot, sweaty, with noodle legs. My stomach is evidently feeling neglected because it chimes in that it's sick. Oh it's queasy. It wants to go home. My legs second this and my pores, well they are too busy drowning in bodily excretions.
Fifteen minutes to go and my stomach says yes, now would be a good time to visit the bathroom because those energy pills I took earlier, well they want the hell OUT.
So, my first day back to the gym was not the great comeback I had hoped for. Instead, I looked like a wet rag, had the energy of a slug, and vomited up the chicken salad I made for dinner last month.
I'm going again tonight...if I don't loose weight from the workout, at least I've got Bulimia to fall back on.
link | posted by Kara at 3/21/2006 12:33:00 PM
Spring
Monday, March 20, 2006
Spring arrived yesterday in all her playful glory. She set upon us like a determined debutante at her coming out ball. She was full of graceful warmth, the very picture of style. Her scent, subtle and floral, carried to our noses on a light breeze. She invited one to play in her presence. So persistent that she pulled you out the door to heed her siren call.Her laughter could be heard in the rustle of the blooms, her smile, shy and sweet, hidden behind light clouds, peekabooing with us through the day.
Oh how I do love Spring in all her moods and fancies. Her stormy nature tempered by the loving caresses of sun, she makes me turn my head to the warmth, following its rays like a newly bloomed daisy. She is the comely cousin of summer. So young in possibilities, she makes me want to dance with her on a carpet of green. She is the optimum of manners, leaving you with hope, laughter, and wanting just a few moments more of her time.
link | posted by Kara at 3/20/2006 09:33:00 AM
Drama
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Sometimes the words are so thick and crowded in my mind that my hands tremble to touch the keyboard. My fingers aching to expel thoughts like gusts of wind and my head so wound up in my words that I don't see where I'm going because my inner eye is only tuned into where I've been.Then there are days that I am afraid.
Days when my hands tremble to touch the keyboard, but tremble because my deepest fear is that I have nothing of importance to say. Days when the only humor I find is in the memories left behind from better days, scattered about like toys abandoned in an empty house.
The expressions of dismay that sometimes find their way onto this page make me feel like a self indulgent child. That somehow sharing my struggles make me weak, that I'm saying "look at me! Isn't my life crappy!". My drama is no more important then anyone else's, but it's mine. I hold it close in a greedy hand, clutching it like a lifeline.
But these words, these small expressions of grief. They are my pill. With each one I type I can feel my grip loosen. I can lift my face closer to the sun and feel more of it's warmth bathing me in new beginnings.
So forgive my histrionics from time to time because letting them go, gives me back a piece of laughter that I have denied myself.
I am taking baby steps.
link | posted by Kara at 3/16/2006 10:28:00 AM
Pet Peeve
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Here is something that puts a knot in my knickers every damn time.I'm driving to work during the usual free for all that turns my hair grey every morning when I look ahead and see a bicyclist. He is on the road. There is a very nice sidewalk that extends all the way down this road we are traversing, but in his greater judgment, he decides the road is a much more acceptable place to ride to work doing 15 miles an hour. There is no bike lane on this particular road, so you have to either drive at a speed my grandmother would find comfortable (FYI...she's DEAD) or you have to go around him.
Can someone please explain to me why bicyclists INSIST on riding on the road when there is a much safer pathway for them?
I realize that they feel they are a vehicle and can use the road, but that doesn't hold water when they then proceed to ride up next to you at a stop light instead of staying behind you like another vehicle. I'm always afraid that I'm going to hit them when the light changes and we drive. It's even better when they accidentally bump into the side of my car. This is when I'd like to make a call to emergency response for a hit and run. But how exactly do you get a license plate of a bike?
link | posted by Kara at 3/14/2006 12:13:00 PM
Mortality
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Driving to work today I drove past someone's life.They were loading a man into an ambulance, his rotund, pale belly naked to the bitter cold morning. Flashing lights, grey skies and me, mute witnesses to the day his world changed.
His life flashed outside my car window and imprinted itself on my retinas. Long after the red and yellow flashing faded from my rear window the image of the man clung to the inside of my lids.
Today I will go to work, eat lunch, laugh with my coworkers, and pretend that I didn't see what might be the end of someone's life.
While my day is like every other day, his day has been altered forever.
I can't express how that makes me feel. The sorrow that he is suffering, the helplessness in that I am only a fly on his wall today, and the relief that this time, it wasn't my family, my life, my day, that will be forever changed.
Life is just a tenuous state of being, mortality, our checkmate.
Today I was reminded how quickly it can slip through your fingers.
I'm not sure I'm grateful.
link | posted by Kara at 3/08/2006 08:30:00 AM
Helplessness
Monday, March 06, 2006
It's been rough this last year. Money has been non existent and I think we have held on just because I'm so damn stubborn. I've tried really hard to keep up and things have gotten better lately, my head has surfaced above water and I've been able to breathe.I just learned that my doctors office doesn't have record of my making payments. You can imagine how this makes me feel when I know I have been paying every month and had thought my balance was paid off.
It's even worse because I'm at work and I can't go through my paperwork to prove that I have made them till I get home.
I'm an instant gratification kinda person. Meaning, it drives me crazy to have to wait till I get home to look.
This feeling of helplessness is overwhelming. Even though I know that when I get home I can find what I need, it still cartwheels me backwards into the past and all the struggles I thought were behind me.
This is my greatest fear, helplessness. Even though rationally I know I'll be fine. Fear unfurls in my belly like the waking of a terrible beast. It's tendrils stretching through my body, shaking my hands, making my breaths short and fast. My heartbeat mimics panic, a quick tattoo of beats pressing against my head, pounding in my ears. My eyes droop with the weight of tears and my smile is false and painted.
Joy today is a remote concept. Anxiety my bread and butter. I want so much to be strong and capable, but how can I be when one little misunderstanding sends me into the throes of despair?
I'm so tired of fighting, so tired of shouldering it all. So weary of tears.
Everyone thinks I'm strong.
Everyone is wrong, I just pretend I am.
Maybe if I pretend long enough, I'll eventually believe it.
link | posted by Kara at 3/06/2006 09:25:00 AM
Role Reversal
Friday, March 03, 2006
I have a bad habit. Not only is it bad, it's ugly, I mean elephant man ugly.I bite my cuticles. I bite, pull, chew and generally rend the skin around my nails into tiny little victims of the internal war constantly waging in my head.
I bit my nails till I was eighteen at which time I switched my attention to my cuticles. Now I have long lovely nails that during times of anxiety, are overshadowed by the carnage of my fingers.
It's something I do when i'm thinking or when i'm upset...translation..all the damn time! Even when it hurts, i'm still right there picking at them.
bite...ouch
bite...ouch
Yesterday at the doctors waiting for my son to have his check up, i'm sitting in the chair, bored, and turn to my nails in contemplation. I nibble on one, looking for weaknesses, you know...just testing the waters here. My son looks at me and says "mom, don't do that. You're making yourself bleed."
I come back with the superior mother comment of, "Don't worry about it"
"But MOMMMM, please stop"
so we go back and forth this way for a couple of seconds when Kendell pulls out the big guns,
"Mom, please, don't bite them. Do it for me."
Damn,
When did he learn about emotional blackmail?
link | posted by Kara at 3/03/2006 02:55:00 PM
