No Title, Just a few Frustrations

I see a picture, a small note, on my husbands FB wall from his trip to Mexico and suddenly it hits me. The frustration over being left behind, the jealousy, confusion over what that means. Why couldn't he wait for 1 month until I was out of school? We would have gone together, those would be our memories. Instead I feel the exclusion, it's another piece of his life that he didn't want to share with me. I'm trying really hard to be understanding, I said I was OK with him going... but the fact remains that he left me again and I don't know why.

SG

My American Dream

My American dream is to have a beautiful little home, where I can be the Mom and you can be the Dad. We have kids and they are happy, we tell them what to do and they might complain but they listen because I am the Mom and you are the Dad and we know what we are talking about because we are the parents.

We go to work, do our job then come home to our loving little family in our beautiful little home. We have our hobbies, we take vacations, and everyone has a good time. We have babies together, there is so much love.

There's no room for uncertainty here. It's all laid out like a nice pattern. There's this wholesomeness, idealness about this vision and it doesn't seem unreasonable. I wanted my family to be like this when I was growing up. I wanted everything to be clean and tidy and everyone to fill their respective roles, help Mom out with the cleaning, help Dad out with the yard work. Keep things tidy. That's the American dream, a nice tidy well run family. That is what I have been trying to create for so, so long.

It's not working. Dad goes to work, putters about the garden or sits at the computer or TV and gets all worked up about politics. Mom does her job, she does all of her jobs, but she looks exhausted. She's got too much on her plate. I've not done my part to alleviate her burdens, I went back to school and let my kids spend endless hours at Grandmas playing video games. It's all a mess, our family home, our relationships. I tell my kids, clean your room, help me out, and it's not an easy thing to get them to do it.

Everything is not neat and tidy. It's messy. Life is messy. Everything is not certain.

It's just this little picturesque dream in my mind. This pesky dream. I see other families, I know they aren't perfect, but tell that to my little envious heart.

I know it's silly but I want more of my American dream and a lot less of the uncertainty.

SG

Thoughts on Politics

When I learned about the history of Hitler and his rise to power, I asked the question "why didn't the German people stop him?" 

We've heard that he was charismatic, that the German people had gone through hard times. He came into power with this Anti-Semitic rhetoric and that was a focus for all of the frustration that people had felt. 

I said to myself, I would not be one of those people standing in the streets with my hand raised to the sky praising Hitler. 

Now, I'm not saying that I can predict how I might have acted if I had grown up in the circumstances that the German people did. All I can say is that now, right now I can choose to not follow along the party line. I know all about the futility of voting for a third party candidate, that doing so might take votes away from the lesser of two evils, but in this election there is no lesser of two evils. Both of the candidates are what I consider to be the vilest of scum that was dragged up from the bottoms of pond. 

So I am voting for a third party canidate, Gary Johnson. Who is this guy, you know what I don't know a whole ton about him, but from what I have seen on the internet about him he is a decent guy, that is who I want in the White House.

SG

Learning to Deal with Loneliness

Hello Internet Diary,

Let's talk for a moment about fallibility, the mistakes that we make throughout life and sometimes continue to make even when we know the consequences and dislike the consequences.

For instance, I know that milk is devilish to my intestines (still not positive about raw milk but that's for a future exploratory post). Even though I know it's bad for me I sometimes get to a point where I figure that enough time has passed that things will be different if I eat products with milk in them or drink products with milk in them. Especially yogurt, it just sounds so wholesome and wonderful that I feel like I should be OK consuming milk products that have been fermented. So I start small, a bit of cheese, then a bit more, some yogurt... granted it does seem to be OK in small doses but when I fully embrace milk products again at some point in the consumption of them I've crossed the line and they mess with me. It's not good.

So now having established that I sometimes do a bit of self delusion this is what is really on my mind. Doing S#*t that we know is wrong but think it will be OK this time around. I think we all know when we're starting down that road, for me it starts from some trigger... my biggest trigger is loneliness. I know that I have put off developing close friendships because I have been focusing on school (something I've been focusing on for most of my life and higher Ed for almost 2 decades!)

23 years from 1983 - 2006 '83 (Head Start), '84 - '90 Elementary, '90 - '93 Jr. High, '93 - '97 High School '96 - '06 College (off and on)

8 Year break from May 2006 - July 2014

1 year 11 months 21 days from 8/1/2014 (I started my MBA in August 2014) to now.

That means that I have been in school for roughly 25 of my 37 years.

I guess I need to learn how to make friends, even when I am busy.

Problem is that I really need to discuss things with people to form deep relationships, that's my preference, and modern life really doesn't accommodate that.

My closest relationships are with my family and even then I've distanced myself from them to study. The absolute closest relationships that I have formed have been with the men that I've loved. I tend to want to hang on to those relationships, I value them. Unfortunately moving on and forming a strong relationship with a new man means that I need to give up those prior relationships. Let all of those close relationships go.

So, if my current relationship is difficult and I don't feel the closeness that I need I tend to feel alone. I've made mistakes in past relationships and I have learned from them. I should have learned from all of the life that I've lived, right!? I have. But learning to stay with the feelings of lonesomeness and sadness without acting out in negative ways has been trying. I tend to stay up too late, not sleep well and wake up late w/o feeling refreshed. I tend to try and distract myself by watching too much TV (instead of studying or exercising like I should) and my mind circles around in frustration.

I guess it's a part of life, learning to deal with loneliness, but I sure hate it.

~SG

Weird Interests

On my way to work I noticed a swarm of birds on the side of one of the buildings in our condo complex. The type of birds that build mud dobber nests, whatever they might be. It was so strange to see them all hanging on to the side of the building like that. I stopped to take a picture but they all flew away before I could.

There are weird little things like that going on all the time. Like the potato bug infestation in the parking lot of Adobe, why are they there? All crawling around, blending into the blacktop. They are in the building on the ground floor as well.

Have you ever built a Rube Goldberg machine? I think they are so much fun to design and build, so time consuming but so satisfying. I used to build things like that, I created a gumball machine out of cardboard and car tracks, a magic box out of a refrigerator box, I created a pulley system between my window and the neighbor and we used to pass things back and forth in a basket. So interesting, you can learn a lot about people by what they share.

I have some books at my desk at work, SQL, Deep Nutrition, Investing for Beginners, an Archie Comic book and the book "Women Who Run With the Wolves." 

What do those books say about me?

I shall leave it to you to sort that out... ;)

Little Lovely Thoughts

My lovely friends Mandi and Sorina stopped by to give me a birthday present today, I am so glad that they still work here at Adobe because even with working in the same building I hardly see them. What a sad state of things, that work and school have so much more draw on my time than building lasting friendships.

I want to be connected with other people, through thought and speech and time. But I am building up these skills for work and that doesn't seem to leave me time for what I want.

There are so many interesting things to think about, to talk about. I think that's why I loved my English and Philosophy classes when I was doing my undergrad. At least I've got some things planned for after I graduate, I'm going to hang out with my cousin tomorrow then perhaps take my daughter to the movies. Graduation on August 13th, then lunch with my friends the Tuesday after. Then we have planned a graduation party, nothing too wild. ;)

SG

Searching for happiness... Body issues

So... I have been thinking about body issues. I guess because my damn body seems to get fat or skinny of it's own accord. A couple of months ago (before I started taking Lialda to control my Ulcerative colitis) I had dropped down to near 145 which is a pretty good weight for me. Then I started the medicine, my hormones went out of whack (I don't know if it's correlated) and I started gaining weight. Doctor said that's a good thing, right? Means my gut is healing and I'm absorbing my nutrients. Yes... Good is no more bleeding, no not good that I'm gaining weight. So bleh, suddenly I am back in my chubby jeans. Then again... It's not like I'm really fat. I'm a bit chubby. You know what? My body reminds me of paintings of the ideal pre-modern woman. I'm not even going to pretend to know what century Michelangelo painted in. But yeah... Paintings from his time. I saw a picture of a bunch of ladies standing naked before the RNC holding up mirrors in a symbolic gesture. Set up by a photographer. Every one of those ladies bodies were different. Even skinny bodies didn't look like they were "supposed to". So... Why can't I just live, self confident... Happy? I try... But sometimes I hate on myself.

Which brings me to think about what the f I am doing with my life. I want to know how to do so many things... Dirty little secret... It's because I want to feel competent. I want respect.

Don't get me wrong. I recognize these body issues, I recognize why I want to know things and what is motivating me... I'm proud of myself for working so hard on improving my life.

But if I could do anything I wanted. I would read, paint... Dance. I would have a house to build stuff in. A studio to sing my heart out. I would cook.  I'm trying to do that kind of stuff anyway... I will do more of it after school is finished. And I will get in shape.

But for now I am limping along (literally, my knees hurt) and I will keep searching for happiness.

SG