Archive for thoughts
June 7, 2008 at 1:45 pm · Filed under daily, thoughts
Of all the memes to miss, I always seem to do best with Friday 5. Grr. Eh well. Maybe I’ll do a late version of it later. In the meantime, I’m enjoying my Saturday. No appointments or obligations except to get my car in for a regular tune-up and oil change and tweaking. Only downside to that is the cost of upkeep (similar to upgrading dell memory for laptop, for example — it’s costly). I wish I could just take my bike everywhere. That would be sweet. Would save a lot on gas ($1.36 per gallon — W.T.F.?!), energy, upkeep costs, etc. Maybe if/when I get another job closer to home, I’d be able to do that more regularly. Would be nice.
Looks like Obama will be our next Democratic nominee for presidency in November. WOOHOO!!! Let me just tell ya how incredibly happy I am about this. Hillary is such a backstabber — going back on things she’s said, letting violent phrases escape her lips and then making excuses for them later on, etc. As much as I don’t trust politicians in general, Obama is the clearest choice. The most honest choice, if there is such a thing. I’m definitely voting for him, and that’s pretty clear. I don’t think he’s too fond of Hillary either, and I’m hoping he doesn’t have her run as his vice president. The only upside to that would be that Hillary voters won’t vote for McCain, like they’ve been threatening (that’s the most stupidest thing I’ve heard — ever. Why the fuck would you vote for your political enemy just to shove it to your party’s inner competition? STUPID). Anyway, November should be interesting, to say the very least. We have a lot on the line for this country. While I’m busy escaping it, I know there are many out there who are still struggling day to day. I work with them. I fight for them. Every single day. It would be a blessing to have someone in office who understands this everyday struggle of the working class poor.
May 26, 2008 at 6:18 pm · Filed under daily, thoughts
One of the things I am totally looking forward to after giving birth (and post-healing and stuff) is getting a decent hot bath. I haven’t had a hot bath since the end of October, and since the pregnancy began, I was forbidden this luxury for the safety of the baby. With our new bathroom all pretty (and remaining pretty given my weekly cleaning sessions!), I am so looking forward to getting a bubble bath again. Maybe even with Baby Bean (when she’s a little older and not so slippery and I’m not so panicky about her safety, that is)! Right now, the only thing I can think of that would make bath time more pleasurable for me is if I had one of those walk in bathtubs. Getting in and out of the bathtub is beginning to prove difficult, given the weight in front of me and my feet and legs being so sore. I can’t describe this feeling at all… I guess what I can sum it up to is if you were trying to use two toothpicks to balance a watermelon.
Yeah, after much thought, that doesn’t sound like fun, does it? Imagine how it feels being the toothpicks.
May 26, 2008 at 6:06 pm · Filed under thoughts
One of the things Dave and I have been marveling about during my pregnancy is the fact that I still look so young. I always chalked it up to being a little underweight, but now that I’ve gained 25+ lbs and actually look of normal height and weight as everyone else, I am at a loss as to why people are still confusing me with being 14 years old. Perhaps it is because of my round face? Well, it got a lot rounder since pregnancy. Ha. Maybe it’s because of my hair style? Or that I don’t wear make-up? I don’t really know what it is. All I know is, at this rate, I’ll not have to use any type of top wrinkle cream for a long, long time. Or ever, if I can help it!
May 10, 2008 at 5:27 pm · Filed under thoughts
One of the things I learned today in prenatal birth prep class is that breast feeding helps with weight loss. How weird. Apparently, the body just producing milk uses many calories per day, so the more you breast feed, the more your body works out. That’s just one advantage of breast feeding. A few others include lower rates of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and osteoporosis. I think they’ve got me convinced. I don’t really need to lose weight (even after all this pregnancy weight, I’m okay with it), but it’s kind of good to know that there are natural ways the body can go through to lose weight outside of just taking top diet pills or even liposuction or something. I’ve never been a fan of those types of methods, as they seem so unnatural. I think the human body, particularly the woman’s body, is so magnificent in all its form and I appreciate how durable our body is. It’s really cool that my tummy can stretch this far and wide and become a giant balloon, and then stretch back down after it’s all done. How wonderful!!
May 4, 2008 at 9:13 pm · Filed under thoughts
I was asked today where and how I got so resilient over the years, despite all the things that I’ve gone through. At the risk of getting too personal, I think over the years I’ve come to realize that there is enough strength in all of us — in me — to move on and look forward. I learn a lot from my clients, too. Each and every one of them has gone through something spectacular, yet different. I’m amazed at how many struggles there are in life, and how many combinations of lifestyles there can be. From someone who goes through alcohol rehab to someone who just left her abusive husband to someone who just wants to start over and be a better mother. Each story is different. The more I work with people, the more I seem to calm down, the more I seem to be more relaxed with myself. I don’t know what it is, because I know that this type of work usually makes people want to run the opposite way, and yet I almost seem to thrive on it. It humbles me, it makes me feel good about the world, and about myself. It makes me want to be out there, on the battlefield, doing better for us all. It makes me feel okay about who I am and where I am and where I’ve been.
May 3, 2008 at 12:32 pm · Filed under baby bean, daily, thoughts
The rest of the week went much better, thankfully. After that little venting session I had in the last entry, I seemed to have snapped out of it. I work very hard to keep myself emotionally stable so that I’m healthy, vibrant, and good to myself and everyone else around me. Every so often, I suppose we all need a bit of crazy, stupid, moody time in our lives. It gets all that icky, toxic feeling out of us once and for all.
There are some pregnancy symptoms that I am not very fond of. For example, hormones dictate that now I have these weird lines on my neck that weren’t there before. They’re odd, and I don’t like them. Another example? My face breaks out uncontrollably on my chin and around my nose. It doesn’t matter how much water I drink, I still get tons of pimples. Ordinarily, I don’t get much unless I’m stressed or when it’s my time of the month. I don’t even want to use any type of acne treatment because I don’t want to risk it not being safe for the baby, so I end up annoying picking at pimples and zits on my face. I know, I know, TMI, but goodness sake, it’s annoying. I want to be clear skinned again! Another example: my legs cramp up a lot easier these days, and I still get charlie horses during the night from time to time. They come out of nowhere and my legs get all stiff and crampy. Not fun at all.
Okay, enough bitch festing. Other than that, this pregnancy is treating me very well. I feel healthy, happy, and I can eat 5 times my regular share. It’s a strange sight. Dave gets a kick out of it. Watching me eat now is like witnessing how many clowns can be squeezed into a tiny little car. Heh.
April 26, 2008 at 9:40 pm · Filed under thoughts
Chores are horrible, though when they’re done, you get this wonderful sense of satisfaction, like you just won a big war. A big war against germs. I cleaned all the bathrooms today, even the en suite faucet area. I’ve been dreading doing that, though I don’t know why. The toilets are the worst, but I also cleaned those too. I’m a good housewife. Heh.
I’ve been feeling emotionally under the weather lately. I think it has a lot to do with pregnancy hormones getting to my brain. Or something. I’m ultra sensitive, and I don’t being ultra sensitive. I want a big, giant hug, without having my belly squished. I think I’m just thinking too much. Sleeping has been easier lately, but for whatever reason, I feel kind of lonely. Bean has helped with that, since whenever I start feeling down, she kicks to remind me she’s just right there. I’m so proud to be her Mommy. She reminds me not to be lonely. We’re literally connected.
April 19, 2008 at 11:32 pm · Filed under heart, thoughts
Dave and I were talking today about how we’ve gone through so many changes in the last 2 years. First we got engaged, then we got married, and this year we’re having a baby. A baby! Imagine all these changes. I’ve truly become domesticated. It’s rather amusing, though expected, and I’m not surprised at finding myself easily adjusted to the homebody lifestyle, being a wife, a mother, a worker bee of the working poor. While all this may seem scary to other people my age, I find it comforting to have such a predictable lifestyle, able to get what I expect: a loving husband in a loving home with a loving surrounding of family and friends. I can’t stress enough how easy it has become to be happy. This is why they call it “the easy life.” When you find happiness, it simply just “is.” It becomes daily routine to be happy. I like it.
I joke around with my friends these days about how “excitement” is defined in such a different way in my life now. For example, I get all excited when our windows and stairs are washed and cleaned. I am forever ecstatic when laundry is done and our sheets and blankets are washed (I just loooove the feeling of going to bed to clean, fresh sheets and blankets). I get a great kick of adrenaline through my blood system shopping for our next foam mattress. Getting a good night’s sleep is simply the next stage of bliss for me. Like I said, it becomes “easy” when you’re happy. Every little thing, every simple little thing, is a blessing.
I think, though, I’ve always been a little “different” from other folks my age. I’ve always enjoyed the quieter lifestyle. In college, while all my colleagues and even my roomate wanted to go out and have fun, dressing up in tight low-cleavage clothing and clubbing it out, I found true solace cuddled up in bed with a good book. When my peers around me were getting high and experimenting with sex and boys, I was designing websites and becoming part of the internet’s first round of true “bloggers” (you know, before livejournal, vox, wordpress, and movabletype even existed — when websites were coded by hand and entries were purely coded by html in notepad). While girls my age were busy trying to get a grip on why their boyfriends were cheating on them and whether or not they should cheat back as revenge, I was sending love letters and receiving them back to my future husband. I was taking photographs and learning how to edit them in Photoshop. I was writing poetry and drawing. I think, I’ve always been a little different.
Way back when, before I knew my life was my life and it was “normal” regardless of how I lived it, I wondered why I was different and whether or not I should be part of the grain. Why wasn’t I into the stuff that other girls my age were into? Depression became the name of the game, suicide was a bit of a fun past-time hobby of fantasy-making. It wasn’t until the realization finally kicked in that I am allowed to be who I am, without remorse, without regret, whether or not it’s “different” or the “same” as everyone else’s, that I was able to relax and really just live.
Life is simpler when you’re just yourself. Life is happy when you accept that simplicity.
April 6, 2008 at 5:04 pm · Filed under thoughts
I just finished reading a really good book, called “Infidel” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It really puts things into perspective, when reading memoirs about how other people in different parts of the world grow and live. I always thought I was a feminist of the fiercest kind, and thought I knew most, if not all, of the biggest feminist leaders past and present. However, this was the first time I’ve heard of Ayaan, and she just fascinates me. While I don’t really agree with some of her views and plans, I find that I have the utmost respect for her as a woman, a politician, and a progressive. I didn’t know much, and still don’t know much, about Islam and the Muslim world. I’ve heard rumors and stories and speculations, but I haven’t really heard much from anyone who has actually been born and raised Muslim. Her memoir told of how she grew and live in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopa. She spoke of how she witnessed little girls being flogged by their fathers and brothers for being raped. She spoke of how she herself was bought and sold by her father into a marriage she didn’t want to be part of. She talked of excision and little girls as young as 7 years old having the parts between their thighs sewn up so as to be “purified” in the eyes of Allah. I was absolutely appalled at the extreme ways of Islam. I was horrified.
I think, though, to put things in perspective, there are many extremes in every religion. Any extremist, no matter from what religion, can be led to become very violent and take away basic human rights from others who don’t believe in the same things they do. From the Crusade to the Holocaust to today’s crisis with Islam, the message as a whole is clear: when you put yourself in a little box called religion, with little room to move, grow, and question, it becomes very, very dangerous. It’s when you find that excuse to do harm to others because you’re so dead set that you’re right and they’re wrong. From killing millions of Jews to persecuting women for being raped to having girls cover themselves up from head to toe in blackness in order to avoid having men “lust” over them for showing an ankle or heaven forbid, a wrist. It’s so extreme to me.
Religion is such a touchy subject. This is what I mean when I say, “I am spiritual, but I am not religious.” I don’t need doctrines to tell me I’m a good person. I don’t need to pray and recite scripture to know my morals. I don’t need someone else’s authored book to tell me what is right and what is wrong. I intend to do no harm, to myself and to others.
How are we going to move on as a world culture if we can’t learn to accept each other? These are things that need to be discussed, debated, taught. Every so often, instead of worrying about the latest bathroom vanities to install, we need to really sit down with our fellow human friends and discuss how we’re all different yet the same.
March 21, 2008 at 10:26 am · Filed under daily, thoughts
This week has been a really long, hard week at work. At the risk of sounding too vague and impersonal, all I can really say is that I was part of a system that got a child molester arrested. It may sound like a triumph, but I’ve been working with this particular family for over a year, and this working relationship has meant something to me, as well as to them. All I know is, nothing is ever in black and white, it’s never as easy as it looks, and “protecting children” doesn’t come easy, nor does it come without a price to pay for the family in question. While I know everything that happened was good, and that it must be done, I can’t help but feel an incredible loss nonetheless. This work.. if it doesn’t kill me, it will make me stronger. It has made me stronger. I come home exhausted everyday, but I look at Dave and he calls me a superhero, and his face just expresses how proud he is of me.
All the hard decisions, the hard choices I have to make at work. All the court hearings and the legal proceedings and the advocacy for kids and families — this must all mean something at the end of the day. And it does. I am exhausted to the bone, but the more I do this work, the more I feel like I’m preparing myself to be a really good mother.
I was supposed to take today off, to catch up on paperwork and filing and stuff. But I’m choosing to go visit one of my kiddos in jail because he has been asking for me, his counselor. He doesn’t talk to anyone else but me, and as much as I don’t want a dependent client, I also know that he is at his most vulnerable and I need to be there so that he can let it out.
I used to cry a lot when I come home from work. I don’t anymore. Perhaps I have lost that emotional touch that makes it so hard for so many people to do what I do for a living. But I don’t feel like it. It still weighs on me, but I know that if I take it personally, I won’t be of any help to anyone. Now, instead of crying, I consult with my peers, my supervisors, and other therapists. Now, instead of crying, I come home to a smiling husband who opens his arms so wide to hold me while I shake it off and go on with the rest of my life. And at the end of the day, as my head hits the pillow every night, I know I’ve done something good. I know I’ve made a difference. I have to believe that.
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