Category Archives: yeah write

Down With Decorations!

The thing about achieving a personal record is that almost immediately after I do so, panic sets in that this may be the best I ever do. Sure, I could work harder, keep pushing, but what if 22 hours really IS the shortest amount of time I can leave up my holiday decorations?

My husband is the Decorator of the House. If you visit and tell me that my home is lovely, I will tell you honestly that I had very little to do with it. I’m totally fine with blank walls and empty shelves, but for some reason my husband likes the house to look like people actually live in it. He puts up the candles and the framed pictures of our kid. I contributed my mother’s urn on the mantle, but is she really décor? I don’t know. Maybe.

Every year I begrudgingly participate in the holiday decorating. The only thing I hate more than year-round ornamentation of the home is the seasonal ornamentation of the home. I am a busy woman and I resent having to spend time putting up shit that I will just have to take down soon thereafter. Don’t even get me started on how I have to go outside to decorate for Halloween. (I flat out refuse to decorate outdoors for Christmas. It snows in December. That’s enough fancy for me.)

Yes, sure, I do it to see the smile on my kid’s face. But let’s face it, he also smiles if I give him five bucks or an ice cream cone. Also? I cook him dinner and wash his clothes and stuff so that really should be enough.

In 2013, my husband had to travel for work in the week preceding Easter. Still weary from the Christmas decorations I’d packed up the first week in January, I kept putting off pulling out the Easter crap. It might have been mentioned as something we should do but I probably pretended to agree while silently hoping it wouldn’t be brought up again.

The problem with that was the house was totally undecorated, the kid noticed and here it was Saturday night before the big day and I felt the pressure. After my son went to bed, I sat down with my Domino’s pizza (and breadsticks) and filled plastic eggs with candy and loose change. And then I put up the decorations. Not many, but some.

“Who decorated?” Nathan exclaimed with glee on Sunday morning as we got ready to retrieve his father from his red-eye flight home.

“The bunny must have done it. I’m sure he knows how Mommy feels about decorating,” I replied, quite proud of myself for my selfless act of decorating AND my clever idea who to blame it on.

The next year, Kris was away again the same week and the bunny decorated the night before. I didn’t even pretend those decorations were going up early. I had started a new tradition where I didn’t have to look at pastel nonsense all over my house for the weeks before Easter and I had no intention of going back to the old way. Frankly, it was bad enough I’d have to look at it for at least a week before I got around to putting it all back in the basement for another year. Nathan noticed, but he wasn’t as elated over it as he was the year before.

This year, Kris was home. We figure we’ve got one or two years more at best where this kid believes in a decorating and egg-hiding rabbit who comes into our house while we’re asleep, so on Saturday night we put up the damn decorations. It took all of three minutes and then we sat down to catch up on The Walking Dead, which, oddly enough, was less creepy than the quilted rabbit wall hanging out in the foyer.

When Nathan got up and collected the eggs, he was really pleased with the chocolate. You know what he did not care about? The decorations.

“Hey, Nate, you don’t care if I put this Easter stuff away, do you?” I asked, already pulling stuff down.

“Nope,” he said, stuffing his face with more chocolate.

By 6pm, I’d packed up the basket and errant pieces of plastic grass, the eggs and the quilted rabbit. I’m not sure I can do any better next year, but with training and perseverance, I can give it my best shot.

And really, isn’t that all anyone can ask of me?

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Fade Away.

I’ve been struggling to think about people I used to know. I grew up in a small town. I went to a small college. Most of my jobs have been long term. There were people I saw almost every single day and now it’s been so long since I’ve seen them I can barely remember that they used to exist in my world. Facebook became a place to reconnect with old friends and, of course, their lives have gone on just as mine has but I still see them there. Some are further in the background than others, slightly more blurry in my mind’s eye.

There are others I only hear about in passing. Gossip and rumors, hey-did-you-hear-about-this-one sort of stuff that floats around, the things that make old friends talk because it is their common ground. People we used to know – we share that.

And then there are others who just appear to be gone. I’m sure if I asked I could find out their deal. They hate social media or they moved away but their mom is in town or whatever. I’m sure they exist in some space and they are, somewhere, a fixture. Just like they used to be for me. Just like I used to be for them. Maybe.

Time always marches on. Things always change. People will always come and go. It seems like we take for granted that people will always be around simply because they were always around. But then they just aren’t and years go by and suddenly I realize that people have just faded away out of my memory.

People, as much as we may not want to admit it, just become obsolete. There’s some newer person who swoops in, maybe she’s more clever or more hip or more cool but whatever she is she’s just more of it. As much as things change people do, too, and it’s one of those things we can’t stop if we try but we don’t always notice it until it’s too late. And whether it’s that we let someone replace our old people or someone let us get replaced when I stop and think about it, it just leaves this cavernous pit in my stomach because all of us, each and every one of us, is replaceable even if we swear up and down that it’ll be different.

It won’t be different.

And before long, we’re just gone. Maybe we’ll pop into someone’s head someday and maybe someone will ask whatever happened to? or maybe not. Maybe we never pop back up. Maybe we’re completely forgotten.

Maybe we all just fade away.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not a real person, like I’m just a shadowy specter floating in the background until it’s time to fade away.

 

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All the Cool Kids are Writing Sonnets.

“Of course I can but I just can’t, you know?

It’s hard,” I whine. “Why can’t this come with ease?”

There’s effort here and yet it doesn’t show.

So close, the words won’t rhyme or scan; they tease.

 

I wish for depth of feeling in my words.

Profundity eludes me at all cost.

Significance? There is none, only turds.

But I keep writing even if I’m lost.

 

My peers all push me to participate

And tell me that I must a sonnet type.

And even though I know it doesn’t rate

I’m writing you this pile of vomit. Tripe!

 

Although, you see, this poem is not good.

I wrote it, damn it, ’cause I said I would.

 

 

 

Winter Anxiety.

Since last winter, I’ve been fantasizing about moving away from New Jersey to a place where I’d never have to see snow again or at the very least have some idea what the weather will be every day.  Last year only ranked as the 14th worst winter on record but felt much worse. I actually lived through the worst winter in the state in terms of snowfall (1995-96), but that year didn’t traumatize me like last winter did. I was in college back then so maybe that was it.

Considering it was 20 years between that worst winter and the one that had me itching to flee the state, odds were that maybe I would be able to handle whatever this winter threw at me since moving to a warmer climate wasn’t exactly practical. It made more sense to keep my expectations realistic and attempt to go with the flow.

As my Facebook feed reminds me daily, the cold and the snow are typical in this region and therefore I should just settle down with my winter angst. I do expect a certain amount of bad weather and, in fact, I’ve been pretty quiet until now about how frozen my fingers are and how tired I am of wearing so many layers. But after Mother Nature taunted me as she did last week, I’m done. I give up. I’m out.

I’m not a flexible person. I like to have a plan and stick to it, but given how unpredictable the weather is, I try not to make too many plans.  Since I’m trying to meet the universe half way here and not put unrealistic expectations it, I think it would be super awesome if maybe the universe could get off my back for a change. You see, I had plans last week and the weather decided to mess with me.

First up on Thursday was a focus group which was an opportunity to earn some actual money. The location of the event was about 20 miles from my house and no sooner were the details all firmed up did the 5-day forecast start to not look so hot. I don’t put much stock in longer-range outlooks though so I decided to pretend I wasn’t stressed. Plus I had bigger fish to fry.

My kid’s birthday party was scheduled for Saturday. 17 kids and more than a dozen adults were supposed so to gather at my house for a Pokemon celebration. I still had a million things to do that didn’t make sense to do until closer to the party.  With close to half a foot of “wintry mix” anticipated for Saturday afternoon, I started sending texts to see if moving the party was a viable option. It was not.

I’ve had virtually nothing to do for weeks that couldn’t be easily rescheduled. Suddenly, now that I had obligations scheduled and I had been praising the weather for not being a giant jerk so far, it was making me regret ever saying anything nice.

Thankfully, after 24 hours of watching the predicted snow accumulations go up and down for Thursday morning (and subsequently wondering if I was going to earn that money or not), there ended up being no precipitation at all. Saturday went from 5″-8″ to 3″-5″, then to less than 1″, only to have 5″ or so fall on Friday night and nothing on Saturday. Sure, I went through half a bottle of Tums from the stress, but at least things worked out.

Then there was a blizzard warning.

I’m over this. I think I’ll use my snow day to plan my escape from the Northeast.

Into the Woods.

Needles crunched below while you remained silent

As I brought you into the woods, the pine

trees scented the air and then I heard you breathe deep.

 

When you finally start, your bitterness runs so deep,

I let you carry on. I keep silent

Standing before you in the shade of this majestic pine.

 

I am slain among the pine;

Your sharp words cutting deep.

You speak your piece and fall silent.

 

I am silent when I leave you with the pine; this time your wound is deep.