Riding the Bike with One Pedal.

Month: March 2007 (Page 3 of 3)

Turning Whine into Wine

Whenever I think about what I could blog about lately, it all feels like a gigantic WHINE. I’m still coughing from this crap drizzling down the back of my throat, I’m still kvetching through post-dad-death stuff, my computer at work is selectively deciding what it WILL and WON’T do for me, and then throughout it all, there’s crazy non-stop knitting. I suppose if I got a little more motivation (and wasn’t dragging-ass tired every night from coughing/lack of sleep/more coughing/bitching/kvetching and whining) I could take some pictures and show that indeed, I continue to progress on the Bayerische socks, that in the time I’ve done 16 rows (on each sock – always always do I knit socks two at a time), I’ve started & finished a pair of socks out of Tiny Toes yarn, procured last fall on the Wedding Trip across Iowa. I’ve also made one baby item, with another one needing to be finished, for the lovely new bambino Sammy. But you can’t have pictures of that until they’ve been gifted!

As far as the Anger Management tour goes (that’s how I think of it in my head) – I’ve had some serious rage-aholic times the past few months, and I’m trying to stop myself when it feels like my head is going to explode right off my body in a Monty-Python-esque skit. I was challenged the other day at lunch, when our waitress disappeared and never refilled my drink or really, brought the check until she finally noticed the laser beams shooting out of my eyes. I almost had to use those laser beams on the jackasses sitting near us who had their phones on “high ring” and kept getting calls all through lunch. And then the jackass (same lunch hour) that cut me off in traffic and proceeded to slow down/speed up and basically make me crazy as we went for a Starbucks.
Like I said, it’s getting better, but I still have some challenging days, when I want to rip off the offender’s hands and beat them with them, violate their corpse and RUIN YOU! AH AH AH! (this is a reference to the SNL Barry Gibb Talk Show skit. I find it helps to channel Jimmy Fallon in times of extreme rage.)

In other news, hopefully more interesting than me being a big fat raging whiner, JWo has begun full-on garden preparation. He is going to plant seeds tonight, and has all sorts of little plants growing in our breezeway under the grow lights. I do get a thrill seeing the tomato plants, because they signify that great moment in time when we can abandon grocery-store produce, for even the cherry or grape tomatoes this time of year are sadly lacking that tart-sweet acidity and full flavor that only comes from the garden.

Oh, and I discovered this weekend my neice makes picklesicles. She actually takes pickle juice & freezes it in a popsicle mold. A quick Google of this shows she is not alone. None of us are, no matter how much we think we are, sometimes!!!

Thousand Posts of Light….

….well, maybe not exactly points of light, but this does mark my 1,000’th Blogger post. Probably why I didn’t post yesterday, because I was feeling like this post should be a little more pithy than pissy.

A couple weekends ago, emotions were high and the seas were turbulent. At the time, I hated it, but I like some of the things that came from it, particularly my mental short list that seemed to have gotten lost at sea quite some time ago. That short list is the Priority List. No matter what you put on yours, we should always have the same thing in #1.
#1. Me
#2. My marriage
#3,#4, & #5: Job, Friends, Dogs (with movement among those numbers, depending on circumstances)
#6. All the rest of it.

I don’t even have #6 on my mental list. My point is that as awkward as it seems, putting me first has got to be the governing principle of my life. What makes it feel awkward is that I always joke about being selfish and self-centered and being an only child and not sharing, but the truth is that even though I want what I want (and I want it now), I can easily become paralyzed by the wants/needs/wishes/judgement of others. And when you’re swimming in a big unfamiliar sea of grief, being paralyzed doesn’t help you swim. It helps you sink. (And I’m seriously not referencing Grey’s Anatomy here AT ALL, though I see there are some parallels. My anguish and realizations came before those aired.)

I know I used the jungle/forest metaphor the other day, and now I’m mixing it up with a big ocean visual. Right now, I want to get to that point where you drag your tired body up on the beach and look back at what you survived and marvel that you did, indeed, make it. For the first time in quite some time, I feel my will to live has been re-energized. I tell you this because I do think it’s normal to lose it (it being many things – joy, will to live, sight of what’s important, a longer view, your priorities), and it takes a sizable chunk of time to sort it all out. I’ve stopped crying all the time – I realized this morning I would cry in the car, every day, on my way to work. It’s been weeks since I cried, but today I got the little pinpricking of tears in my eyes, as a line from a song floated into recognition in my brain. I share it with you, because it fits so well with this stage of my life. The song overall is not as applicable, which made it even more surprising to have the words hit me so hard.

We’d never know what’s wrong without the pain
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same

–from “All at Once” by The Fray

Thanks for reading, and commenting, and your personal e-mails. I write this blog for my own therapy, and my desire to entertain and write creatively, and sometimes, hopefully, even articulately. Knowing someone else reads these words makes me work harder to make them worthwhile. Things are looking up. So am I.

Looking Up

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