Oh Christmas Tree! - Part 2

My, how different this Christmas will be.

This year I'll be spending part of Christmas with my mom and new step-dad and step-brother and step-sister, and the other part of Christmas with my dad and new step-mom (but not my three step-sisters and one step-brother). I will also be spending it with one brother and his wife, but not the other brother. I will hopefully be going to visit my brother-and-sister-in-law and two nieces as well. What a change it will be.

I have never met my step-mom and have only ever met my step-dad in a context outside step-family. I have never seen my mom or dad with different people. In fact, I've never seen them apart. Both have come to visit separately since their divorce, but I've never been in my childhood home without both parents there. I've never had to do the divorced thing, time with one parent equals time with the other. I hope both parents recognise that upon visiting their homes that very first time, and meeting their new spouses that first time, they are going to need to let me retreat quietly to another room for a moment to shed some serious tears. What a weird, surreal experience this all will be.

I am looking forward to my trip, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, and seeing my house, and having Christmas with my actual, biological family. But I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with so much change at once. I can't wait to meet my brother's new baby, and I look forward to seeing my Texan nieces and family, and there's even a tiny chance I might get to meet my new Georgian step-siblings. And I'm looking forward to meeting my new step-mom and step-dad and all those step-siblings and step-nieces and nephews that are attached to them. But I'm just not looking forward to seeing my little family all broken up and patched up so differently from how I've always known it and how I always believed it would be.

So much innocence gets lost when you grow up.

Growing up really, truly sucks. Having your foundation cracked and crumbled right from underneath you really sucks.

But I suppose that's when all these wise people say you really become stronger. I don't know anything about construction, but I suppose having to rebuild your foundation and building it according to your own specifications and needs probably indeed gives you something firmer to stand on for the future.


****
Ha. Tricked you with that happy and joyful Christmas music crap didn't I! I kinda tricked myself too... I didn't sit down to write anything sad and depressing, I genuinely started out just wanting to beg Scott to let me put up the tree now! So that's why I've split this post into two parts. Enjoy one, and then don't enjoy the other very much.

NaBloPoMo

November is only a month away - who thinks I can succeed?!

Only got five minutes to post, but I suppose a 5 minuter is better than a nothinger.

So - quick update on what I'm up to:

*Childminding
*Teaching TinyTalk
*Rehearsing for Disney's Beauty and the Beast (I'm a florist villager and an enchanted fork!)
*Rehearsing for the Christmas pantomime 'Goody Two Shoes' (I'm Simon, the Principal Boy)
*Taking Gaelic night classes
*Going to BodyPump (weight training)
*Going to Aqua-Zumba (well, I'm starting this week, we'll see how I like it)

Is that all? I think that's all. I also have a bunny rabbit now. His name is Chewbacca.

And that's my 5 minutes up. More eventually.

Lori's Pet Hates of Social Media Usage - The What-Not-To-Do's

I appreciate social media as much as the next girl. I appreciate wanting perfect strangers to know intimate details of your life. I have a blog, I have a Facebook account, I have an unused Twitter account. I get it. I'm down with it. But what I'm not down with is the way some people use the internet to, well, do the following.

These are a few pet hates (pet peeves if you are in America) of mine regarding social media. They are the things I wish to goodness people wouldn't do, because they are annoying. And ignorant. And down-right inappropriate. So here I go. I may come across a bit self-important here, but that is the sole reason social media exists. And you'll find that narcissism isn't one of my pet hates.

#1: Spelling and/or txt spkFirst let's just start with the basics. Spelling. Grammar. This is not because I am a linguaphile. Or maybe it is, but not entirely. It's just that text speak is of the devil. And okay, just because u r on fb on ur fone doesnt mean u shuld stop spking englsih. ffs pls rite properly bc u make smart ppl want 2 kill u, omg. do u think ur teacher in skool wuld except this on ur homewrok? o u say u arent n skool so wtf? omg u r rite wat was i thinking lol.Yeah, um, did you start to feel your head spin, your heart rate increase, your blood pressure rise, the sweat form on your brow when reading that? No? Then you are a perpetrator and you must be stopped.

#2: Vague Calls to SympathyOne of the most annoying things people can do is leave a message on Facebook like, 'Some people. Do they even care who they hurt?' Or 'That's it, I'm done. Who needs friends like her anyway?' And then almost equally annoying is the numerous comments saying, 'Oh hunny, u ok? [[[[Hugs]]]]]' or 'fone me if u need to talk'. GAH. WHY do people do this? If you are that hungry for love and attention, get a dog. But please, do NOT do this next thing.

#3: Hang Out Your Dirty LaundryCan we say embarrassing? Not to mention inappropriate? Nothing makes me more uncomfortable than someone sharing with the world (and thus me) the not so pleasant dirty dealings of their personal lives. It reminds me of this really bad first date I went on once where half an hour into it, the guy tells me he has a serious problem with pornography. There are some things we don't need to know. If you have been to work five weeks in a row with a hangover, you aren't doing yourself many favours by broadcasting it. If you hooked up with a rando while drunk and on the prowl last weekend and you are soooo embarrassed, we don't actually want to know (or care). If your husband blows up at you and insults you during in couple's argument, please don't share it with the internet. In fact, that should be an item number all to itself. Don't talk crap about your husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend online. Because, in case you don't understand how the human mind works, people who don't personally know your spouse/partner will then think he or she is a jackass, and that you are a sad, pitiful, victimized weakling for staying with them. Not to mention, it is utterly disrespectful.

#4: Documenting Your Every Move(ment)Some people clearly have nothing better to do than blog or tweet or status update every mundane detail of their incredibly mundane lives. 'Just ate a sandwich. Now I need a drink.' Or 'Spent the last ten minutes in a daze while driving to work.' Or my personal favourite: 'At work and bored.' As a 'friend', I will block you from my feeds for this. As an employer, I would block you from your internet connection. Please, if you don't have something of interest to say, don't say anything at all.

And finally...

#5: Leaving Your Account Vulnerable to 'Frape'The misogynistic undertones devaluing rape thanks to this word aside, do people not protect their phones? Who still does not have some sort of code/number/word/pattern for securing their phones? And why do people leave their phones lying around when they get up to go to the toilet or the bar? Or is it that (and this I assume is more likely) people actually enjoy getting 'fraped', so they just intentionally leave their phones lying around unsecured for their friends to write stupid and usually obscene Facebook updates with? I think I have only ever twice laughed over a 'frape'; once was when someone allegedly announced her pregnancy and then was greeted with numerous mistaken congratulations, and then once when someone went into the profile page of a friend and changed the birthday so that the person was inundated with erroneous birthday greetings. Those were actually kinda funny. So I guess actually what I should say is this: If you are not funny enough to come up with a good prank, don't bother. Because no one actually thinks Mark suddenly loves the man parts and has decided to announce his new homosexual lifestyle this way via Facebook. And I am willing to bet his Facebook-using grandmother doesn't think it's very funny either.

Rant over. lol.

Glam Girls

Scott took the girls for a walk today to get them out of my hair while I tackled the disaster that was our bedroom. He took them to the Pound Shop and let them pick a toy each. Lolly chose one of those rubbery-bouncy light up toys that are totally gross, and Fifi picked a make-up kit. Scott thought it was plastic until they got home, and Fifi opened it to find 'real make-up!' So of course, we had to do make-overs.




Then of course Fifi wanted to give me a make-over too. No way was I going to allow that disgusting gellified gunk on my face, so I took out my stage make-up and let her go to town on me.



Afterwards, she asked me, 'Mum, tomorrow can I sit in our close with a jar and when the neighbours want their make-up done, I will do their make-up and they can pay me?'

Post 1,200!

There is a bit of pressure with this post as (as you can see) it is Post No. 1,200! And I haven't posted anything since... April?

Shameful.

In my lame defense... I've been busy?

But no really, I have!

And I thought (back in... April?) that if I refreshed the blog's look that I would get back into blogging but it's pretty obvious that, no.

Anyway, I'm sitting here on a Friday night in a cleanish living room with hair dye in my hair and thought, 'Oh to heck with it, I'll just write that 1,200th post.'

So here's what's on my mind:
The hubby said to me tonight, 'There are some good jobs I'd be qualified for in Bentonville' or something to that effect. And then the wheels in my head started turning, how I could move back to Fayetteville, be only hours away from my family, go back to work in my old place. My stomach started to get all butterflyish, though that could've just been the pizza I had for dinner, and I can't help but daydream about moving back home.

But then I really love it here. I love Scotland.

Oh, by the way, Arkansans, don't get your hopes up! I'm only daydreaming here!

So yeah, I mean, I have a good life here. I have amazing friends, two good self-run businesses, a nice flat, a fulfilling hobby in amateur dramatics, wonderful parents-in-law and sister/brother-in-law and nephew, and really great winter clothes. Could I really leave all that?

But if I went back to Fayetteville, I'd have old friends I would hopefully reunite with, JR's and the real proper indie music scene, a better choice of churches, my family only hours away, some of my best friends only hours away, and could start a nice collection of really great summer clothes.

But here in Scotland, Fifi goes to a good school where she is learning to speak Gaelic in a class of only 10, and we have the NHS, and we don't have Republicans or Democrats.

But in Arkansas, they don't have Labour or drug addicts using your tax money to get wasted and then pee on your walls while stabbing you with a broken Buckfast bottle.

But in Scotland, we don't have Republicans or Democrats. Or American Christians. Or patriotic Americans. Or Americans who think Scotland is part of England.

(Sorry, I'm perhaps a bit too British now in my opinion of Americans.)

Hmm...

So that's what's been on my mind tonight. And by now, my hair dye is ready to wash out.

So, that's that. Number 1,200. Maybe I'll reach 1,210 by December!

to Uncle Matt and Auntie Charity from Fifi

Ash Wednesday

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

-from The Book of Common Prayer, Ash Wednesday liturgy

May this season of Lent be not one of mere dieting and exercising self-control, nor one of empty religiosity, but one of heart-felt contrition and repentance. God, please mould me into your image. I don't know if I even resemble you at all anymore.

For Fifi and Kieran

No one else will get this. No one else will care. But as promised, you two, I shall post what is written in my little notebook... I did promise to do this the night it took place, didn't I?

Back last summer after rounders, Fifi (not my daughter Fifi, my friend) and I drank hot chocolates in the Spinnaker Hotel while Kieran drank a poncy green tea, and Fifi and I received a battery of insults from Kieran, which we then began to record. Over the evening, Kieran managed to call us or insinuate that we were:

Fat (for drinking hot chocolates and overall unhealthy eating)
Lazy
insane (I believe for admitting we talk to ourselves)
"mums & teachers" (said in a disparaging tone)
old (just because we're older than him!)
hopeless/ lost cause (probably for the hot chocolates, as if we could never change)
strange

So in response, we drafted a little list of insults for Kieran:
BORING
weird
slow
simple
no on/off button (because of all the insults he kept accidentally hurling!)
no brain
MALE (yes)
feminine (haha yes!)

And now that I know both of them better, about nine months later or so, I think actually these lists (minus the fat!) are all fairly true! (And minus the 'no brain', too, Kiero.)

And since no one else will get this or get why I posted it, it's up to you two to read this! (And comment?)

Sun!

Today IS a perfect, lazy day. The sun in shining brightly. So why am I inside on the computer? I have a cold. And because I'm lazy.

But we are about to go out. We need to pick Scott up from work at 5, so I'm gonna get the kids bundled up (it's still cold), and we're gonna go for a walk down the waterfront until it's time to pick up Daddy.

Love the sun!

Books, Oceans and Greener Pastures

Scott linked this to me. I think it's perfect.

Don't Date a Girl Who Reads

I love it. It is so right.

'... A girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment.'

I absolutely love this. This put in words something I've never articulated before. Life is like an ocean. It ripples and waves, it has moments of perfect calm in between the tidal waves and tsunamis. Just as the storms on a wave eventually pass, so do the 'flows of disappointment'. I'm a realist. I don't expect perfection or a life that steadily goes up or down. I know people and relationships are both rubbish and wonderful. I don't believe that bad times must signify the end. Every life and every relationship will inevitably be full of all kinds of bitterness, disappointment, contentment, laughter, anger, tears, kisses and hugs. To hold on to the negative only leads you to search for greener pastures. But greener pastures only look pleasant from the outside. Once you are over the fence, the imperfections start to show and what will you do then? Start collecting bitterness again, only to start closing in on yet another ending?

What I mean to say is, that's life. Deal with it.

The girl in the above essay left; 'she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on... The girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.'

I get this. On the other hand, I do get this. Okay, so maybe moving onto greener pastures isn't a measure of doing something blindly and irrationally. Maybe it's just the next paragraph or chapter. I suppose this is the problem with being able to accept life without letting the sadness end you. It's easy to move on. Just as I have turned the last page to many a book and regretted that there was no more, yet an hour later have moved on to the next adventure, it is easy to see life as a series of novels, each beginning and ending with some pain, but not death.

So which is it? Do you stick with it because life will always be full of ups and downs and greener pastures won't change that, or do you move on because life is just a series of beginnings and endings, each with little plots and heroes that will only be marginally missed?

I'm putting this mostly in terms of marriage at the moment, because the essay is about a relationship, and because recently my world was as torn apart as it has ever been by my parents' divorce.

I've not yet written about my parents' divorce on here, because of anything I've ever experienced in my life, this has ripped me to pieces more deeply than anything else.

(Mom, Dad, you may want to stop reading here.)

You always expect your parents to be together. At least I did. I truly believed they'd be together forever, and I walked into my own marriage with my parents as my foundation. If they could last it, then so could I. Commitment, love, hard work, all the rest, that's what it takes to make a marriage work. So we can do it, because they could.

Then, suddenly (I mean really suddenly, to me anyway) they couldn't.

My rug was pulled out from under me.

Suddenly I had no place to put my feet. Suddenly I started to feel myself slipping, slipping, slipping, arms grasping at anything to stop me from crashing and falling. Commitment? Hard work? LOVE? What was the point? It obviously WASN'T enough. It wasn't enough for them, so how can I believe it's enough for me? None of it is enough. There is no point.

It was the darkest period in the history of my life. If my life really were a long novel that I'm only still reading, it would feel too much like the climax that no one wanted to have happen, but the author has come to feel in his guts was where it was leading, where it had to lead, like it or not, because it's reality and a good novelist will always sacrifice all, even his characters, to the great cause of Reality. At this point in the novel of my life, there would be two, three, maybe only four chapters left. It must end here or the reader will get bored.

So it felt. The story must end here.

And in a way, it kind of did. For months I gave up. For months I saw no reason to put forth all that effort into my own marriage. Why bother? We won't last. We'll just end up divorced like everyone else. There's no point.

But slowly, though maybe it was really only a few chapters later, I closed in on the ending. Maybe our lives are more like a series, not just one novel. That novel ended. It ended with the discovery that something else is needed in life, marriage, besides commitment, hard work and love.

Realism.

That ocean thing. If we live our lives as if they were best-sellers, then yeah, we're fucked. But if you live your life like a classic, or rather an entire library of classics, you begin to see that ebb and flow of a 'life [that] is not planar'. If you expect the climax of your life to happen only once, then after it's over, what do you do with the anti-climax? Do you leave? End yourself? Do you despair? Do you search for another thrill? Yet, if you can accept that all the great climaxes must be followed by disappointment or anger or boredom, and then if you can expect for all the great tragedies to be followed by contentedness, calmness, okayness, or even just another level playing field, you begin to see life for what it is. It is like an EKG line. Straightish rippling lines followed by a sharp incline/deep decline followed by more straightish rippling lines.

I look now at what Scott and I have and see it more for what it is. We need commitment, love and hard work to thrive. We'll never make it without those things. We also need to see reality and accept what is for what is. To close our eyes and say such and such will never happen to us is foolish. To shut our eyes and pretend away feelings that really are there, ignore issues that won't go away and walk and talk like a perfect Christian couple is stupid.

So with all this, our relationship has developed a newer level of honesty and trust. It's a trust that is not blind, not ignorant, but 100% because it has to be. So a new novel has begun, one with a plot I haven't figured out yet. It's just the start, this new story about a girl who has had her eyes opened to the reality of marriage and life and is figuring out a new way to make it work separate from the way the generation before her did it, but very separate also from the way her own generation is doing it. The pages are still fresh, the binding unbent.

Yet never forgetting that access to the old stories are still close at hand, because you should never forget the lessons learned in earlier books you've read, because they all work together to create your own library of experiences, which build that heartbeat line of a life that is not planar.