I am a Fly

A discussion with a friend tonight led me to dig up something I wrote ages, or at least six years, ago, that I think merits sharing:

They say that love will happen when you least expect it… but how could it possibly strike me unawares when I am constantly looking for it, ever watching for its arrival? All receptors are on full alert, technicians ready to receive and store incriminating data. I am a satellite registering and measuring love’s radiowaves. I am a fly, with huge, magnifying eyes, able to see an approach from any direction. I constantly change position, leaving no area unsearched, no rock unturned in my search for love. How, thus, could it find me unawares?

And yet, I know it must.

The Idiosyncraticness of Me

1. Multi-tasking while brushing my teeth. I seriously have a hard time just standing there by the sink and brushing without going to change my clothes, put on jewelery, etc.
2. Harping about the quality of things.
3. Being late.
4. Saying I’m going to bed at a certain time, then staying up 2 hours later.
5. Reading several books at the same time.
6. Enjoying anti-social behaviour.
7. Being “artsy-fartsy”.
8. Having big hair.
9. Carrying salon-quality bobby pins everywhere I go.

10. Turning up my nose at tap water and weak coffee.

11. Possessing a menagerie of candles.

12. Being wont to shock (surprise?) people with jewellery or fashion or hair choices.

13. Crafting what I deem to be clever phrases. Sometimes I’m my own biggest fan.

14. Singing snippets of random songs at random moments. Lately, everything from Patsy Cline to Tina Turner to Celine Dion to Elvis.

15. Getting peeved at inconsiderate drivers, or, well, all people that seem to lack common sense.

16. Playing a competitive game of soccer.

17. Bossing around my siblings.

18. Focusing so much on now that I lose sight of next month.

19. Typing a mile a minute. Or maybe closer to 75 wpm. 90?

20. Using a special, orthopedic pillow, or whatever it is they’re called.

21. Lusting after new technology (can we say “iPhone”, anyone? “Blackberry”? “MacBook”?) .

22. Multi-tasking while driving. Why waste time at home doing makeup, making phone calls, or practicing songs when you have drive time to do it all in?

23. Getting worked up talking about church culture vs. a God-filtered life.

24. Either constantly shifting positions or standing up because of the effects of the mysterious, self-diagnosed disease of NBS.

25. Falling in love with pretty things, such as my red down throw or my 50s-inspired black heels.

26. Being capable of creating a list of self-descriptors so long it would take a whole day to read.

27. Knowing when to finally quit and go on to another task.

En Transición

As you can see, things they are a-changin’ here at A Transparent Life.

What you’re seeing today is just a template to get us thinking WordPress while the original design is being created and tweaked.

If you check back over the next few days, you might get to see the draft version, etc.

A Long and Meaningful Conversation Gone Public

So Not Okay

Using the words I hear so often as I make my way through the seasons of The West Wing, I would like to issue a statement. Guess that makes you the press.

Despite the recent silence on this end of ATransparentLife.com, life has been anything but uneventful for me. The events include an eight-hour road trip to Ohio for the wedding of a friend, which became a mini YWAM Monterrey reunion; witnessing Remembrance Day ceremonies on television for the first time in a long time; getting two winter coats for $70; living through the first snowfall of the season; oh, and moving back into my mom’s house, which I will be doing later today (it’s 1:13 AM).

Which brings me to my point: I’m so not okay. So not okay with moving back in with my mom, so not okay with being the oldest, so not okay with Mom being single, so not okay with how my family sucks at communication, so not okay with being weak yet neither am I okay with any I-Gotta-Be-The-Strongest-Cause-I’m-The-Oldest philosophy, and, for those of you wannabe therapists out there, so not okay with you trying to fix me.

I’m gonna spill my guts some more before this is over, but pretty please, do me a favour and don’t use the comments section, which I should probably close if I was using my better, more cowardly judgment, to try out your quacking skills. Just listen and know the pain.

In the past couple of weeks, I was shocked to learn through late-night Facebook messages from a good friend that Mom had called her twice in the same week because she couldn’t get off the couch and none of her children were there to help her. Not getting off the couch meant she couldn’t get to the bathroom nor could she feed herself. As a side effect of the steroids they put her on to combat the aggressive symptoms of brain cancer (double vision, migraines, etc.), she is very weak. She spends most of her time sleeping and has little appetite, as a result of the new and more powerful drug she is taking to target the cancer in her liver.

Mom now has a hospital bed on the first floor, a cane, daily homecare, someone to help her shower, and a rotating schedule which delegates her children certain days of the week to be on call and to help get her supper and get her to bed, as well as certain jobs around the house.

I really want to finish this while I’m on an early-morning roll, but my body is so not okay with staying up any longer. I’ll try to jump on this wave again later today once I’m back in Highspeedlandia. Ciao.

~~~~~~

I’m back on an early-morning roll, just three days later. I now come to you live courtesy of a brand-spankin’-new Belkin Wireless G Router. What is life without the ability to communicate globally simply floating through the air? Still haven’t had a chance to properly unpack everything, perhaps because this room is simply so dang small!

Basically the deal with my mom is she’s not doing well right now and what if she doesn’t get better? So we (my siblings and I) are supposed to be diving into every moment as if she only has a handful left. I want to dive onto the nearest plane headed for anywhere but here.

Someone wrote me today about their own experience caring for their sick mother and about how they resented her for being sick. I think that’s part of what I feel. After all, moms are supposed to be strong and run their own households! A good friend told me she just didn’t get why I wouldn’t want to be at home and close by, at my mother’s beck and call. Talking about it made me feel as if I have really deep, sick issues. I definitely don’t have a better explanation for wanting to run farther away from rather than closer to. Something, sometime, happened to screw with my head, I guess, which is influencing my current emotions.

I’m taking my time about being emotional and angry and exploring the depths of that. I’m pushing the limits of being “weak” and, again, emotional in ways I’ve never allowed myself to, ever. Hopefully it gets worse before it gets better?

I will eventually talk to someone, the right person, but I doubt it’s going to be you, at least not concerning this topic, blogs on this site excepted (to spell it out for you, you’ll have to come here for the dish or go hungry). So please, just pray for me and us all and send food to my mom’s house if you can.

Thanks for the Shout-Out

Maile of Daily Relish wrote the following about A Transparent Life :

If she likes us, then she must be cool, too, so don’t be snobby… check out her site!