Modern Mommy:

The Affair I Am Already Having...

So I am reading the latest over at my good friend Corky's Log and I got to thinking about how I am spending the lonely nights these days.  As are the rest of my civilized friends, I am greatly concerned about the writer's guild and their strike.  This may not have filtered down into all of your lives yet, but no writer's guild means no network TV.  Let me lay this out for you.  A few months back when things had already begun to sour around the Modern household, I became ever more dependent on the TV and my beloved, the DVR digital cable box.  You see the truth is that I was having an affair of sorts.  I came to rely more and more on TV and movies to take my mind away from the drama and pain of a relationship in it's sad final months.  As with any slow death, it was devastating and heart breaking.  The only escape I found was in the plot of each sitcom, drama or comedy that came across the screen. 

I could get lost in someone else's problems, someone else's life.  Yes.  It is fiction.  But when a character you have known for many seasons and episodes goes through a divorce, or childbirth...  love and love lost or any kind of drama of the heart I feel like I am not alone.  In the hours i share lost in story after story, gradually the noise in my head stops and I can focus on something or someone else.  Sweet release. 

The DVR is my new spouse, and the programming our quality time together.  We laugh, and cry.  We fast fwd the commercials and eat unhealthy foods.  We are totally bonded.  I watch almost anything as long as it is written well and frequently includes people who feel the same as i do... if I am lucky it is much worse and then I can actually feel some gratitude that my own situation is not nearly "that bad".   Grey's Anatomy, a plate full of pizza rolls and a comfy pillow.  For that hour I am not sad, not desperately lonely for human connection, not just a single mom (I still can barely say that last one out loud).  So writer's guild, write on and write fast.  May God speed your talents, may you strike no more.  Go forth and create the must see TV that I cannot escape without. 

Frosted Animal Cookies Would Make The Crow Taste Better

Things went a little haywire in the Modern household tonight.  The confusing thing about relationships is how a simple, ordinary but happy marriage turns into analyizing the meaning, agenda, motive and/or baggage behind each word, action event etc...  At the beginning there are some games and everyone is on their "please love me" best behavior.  A wedding, a honeymoon then little by little we settle in to the real honesty.  That incredible feeling that you want to share everything, intimacy.  But before you know it, things can revert back to the games, agendas and oh yes, the baggage. 

What I feel all tangled up in tonight is the ever living baggage.  No spoken word can be taken at face value, no act, be it malicious or good intentioned, can be seen without first filtering it through the crap buffer.  The crap buffer is the kind of like the x-ray machine we send our carry-on luggage through at the airport.  This machine looks for what people try to hide, it was designed to detect crap.  So is the crap buffer in the relationship brain.  Internet, sometimes a hair dryer is actually a hair dryer.  For drying hair.  That's wet.  And requires drying.  Plain. Simple.  And, sometimes a hair dryer is a loaded weapon.  I cannot say with any scientific certainty what the good hair dryer to bad hair dryer ratio is exactly.  I imagine the actual drying of hair might slightly out number of times a hair dryer has been determined to in fact be loaded.  So the crap buffer actually reassigns the definition or meaning of the words it is buffering.  You might say it literally changes the purpose of the hair dryer.  Convincing the opposing team that the Game is On, and you better be prepared to bring it and bring it hard. 

When this all started there was only one team, the family.  But good intentions fail, they may have been destined to anyway, and words fly and then the crap buffer hits the fan.  Or hair dryer.  I have lost track of all my metaphors.  Obviously this comes from a real place for me, and is a little less story telling, and a little more about purging runaway thoughts.  But I think the long winded point I am driving at is this:  How does a worthy marriage navigate around all the baggage and return to a point when words and actions do not require approval from the surgeon general?  When do we let go of hurt feelings, broken promises, and past mistakes?  How does one truly reach that moment when you choose to only look forward?  No more looking over our shoulders for past events that can be used as ammunition to make a point, or to win a battle?  What is the exit "stategery" for the battle of hard headed, stubborn and selfish married people?  When is sorry, sorry enough? 

Does anyone else hear Sarah Jessica Parker's voice in their head right now?  If someone were narrating my life, I would not mess around, I would call out the big guns.

Internet, I cannot answer any of these questions.  I feel helpless and ashamed and lost.  Also the afore mentioned frosted animal cookies (thus the blog post category) are gone.  And the spoonful of sugar that was supposed to help me choke down the humility is predictably unavailable.  I am an emotional eater.  The chicken we had dinner was awesome, as to be expected cause Modern Hubby is a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen.  But the inclination to OD on sugar has been tragically cut short. 

Have I ever mentioned the stupid buffer?  Maybe tomorrow.

Remembering What I Have Forgotten

My mother would say that I should be doing some more of my "assigned reading and a little light behavior modification to put me into a calm state of relaxation" reading than blogging tonight, but I am 31 yrs old and if i want to stay up past a reasonable bedtime, eating frosted animal cookies and blogging to validate my self-worth, I will. Let the crumbs fall where they may.

What can I say, I am in to workbooks. Odd since I despise real work. But I digress.

So today I was served a steaming dish, a culinary masterpiece, a perfect pie. So flawless in it's execution, so razor sharp in it's accuracy that I was quite literally left flailing about in search of an adequate compliment to satisfy the chef. Instead I went off in a huff and spent the following hours pouting, blaming everyone else and feeling generally sorry for my poor misunderstood self. As you may have recognized, it was more of a metaphorical pie with which I was gifted, specifically the deepest cutting, truest ringing reality check in humility i have ever known. Only the ones we hold close can deliver such blows and i am literally still dizzy. I am pretty new to this whole humility, taking responsibility for yourself thing, must have been a class I ditched in school. Change does not happen over night, and obviously change does not happen tonight either. So, again, I am choosing hope. Hope I can remember what really matters, what I was taught. Hope that the message was recv'd and hope that I can forgive the messenger.

On a much lighter note, I happened upon (followed a link from a fav blog) some of the most amazing and touching photography. Tara Whitney Photography to be exact. How amazing her talent, the light, the eye with which she sees the world, and how powerfully she transmits this to film. She made me remember how I feel when I see the world through a camera lens. She moved me to reconnect with that love. Like Ali Edwards, (more blog-name dropping) I feel inspired to do with my daily life, as these terrific women do. Now, I have often fancied myself an amateur photographer, you know me and my zoom capture some incredible shots of the ginormous sleeping rhinos at the zoo every summer, seriously I've got game. Get it, wild game? Seriously. Ok anyway, so please check out Tara's (like how we are on the first name basis already?) new site here and her blog, here. I am not sure what she would charge to fly on out to the midwest, shoot beautiful photos of my family, then win awards for them, plastering them all over the internet, but I am looking into it.

Internet, bear with me here. It seems I am occasionally the last to know what you know. The best blogs, the talented new artists, the Mac keyboard shortcuts. I am playing a lot of catch up. Just keep on pointing out the "must see's" and I will keep linking them on my blog to look well informed, classy, educated and modern, because after all...