torture

I have been staying at my mom's apartment since Monday while my floors were being refinished. Thank God my mom is away in Florida while I'm camping out there with Owen and Oona and my two cats. I knew that it wouldn't be the easiest thing, all of us in this small space, but I figured it would only be for a few days and that the pay off, beautiful refinished floors, would outweigh the short term stress of being sandwiched in my mom's place. What I neglected to consider is the fact that my mother is very fastidious in terms of cleaning, her house is always perfect. The thing that mystifies me is that with her zeal for cleaning, her home is jam packed with tchotchkes- artificial floral bouquets are everywhere. Any flat surface seems to be covered with a lace doily and then have little figurines or the fake flower bouquets or coasters (you'd think the woman entertained every night) on top of them. There are little faux candlesticks on each window ledge in her living room and stained glass animals suction cupped to her kitchen windows. Needless to say, the kids love visiting Grandma Cat's house because there is so much STUFF to look at and touch, where else can you find a copper lighthouse that plays music to harmonize with you while you tinkle in her toilet. Our home looks downright austere in comparison. But maybe it's a yin yang thing, my mother likes to clean to such an extent that she needs a lot of dust catchers in order to feel she's truly doing a good job. It seems almost masochist, but it's what makes her happy.

I've had to put every fake bouquet in her closet because my very poorly behaved cats were trying to eat them. They've jumped up on every surface they possibly can knocking over picture frames, getting their cat litter everywhere it seems- after having their litterbox in the basement for years it really seems that I cannot avoid stepping on cat litter, which really grosses me out. I am sleeping on a pull out bed with a very wiry mattress that is doing nothing to help my achy back. The only pot of gold is that Owen and Oona have been marvelous when it comes to bedtime. They're great for me at home but I thought it might be challenging with the two of them sharing a bedroom, but they barely make a peep and drift off without a problem in my mother's two twin beds, while I lobotomize myself with Law & Order reruns five feet away in the living room.

Anyhow, regarding the torture post. I think almost everybody, well maybe everybody I know, engages in a sort of self-torture of one thing or another. In a way I think it can be extraordinarily helpful to know what your problem areas are, parts of yourself that you'd like to work on or improve. But I know for myself that there are many areas I feel bad about (parenting, not being assertive enough, lacking confidence, placing waaay too much importance on how others feel about me - to name the tip of the iceberg) where I feel like I don't measure up and it's so easy to beat myself up about these things, it's almost reflexive. I am fully aware of my need to break free from this way that I torture myself. But sometimes you can work so hard and then someone finds your weak spots, picks at that scab, and if it happens often enough a scar forms and the tensile strength of scar tissue is 80% of the original tissue, at least that's what I learned from the wound care lecture in school last year. That being said I truly hope there's credence to the cliche that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. The past two years have really been a struggle for me in more ways than I care to enumerate. So I just might try to limit my self-torture to eating some heirloom tomatoes soaked in oil and vinegar even though my whole mouth is cut up pretty badly from these invisalign liners I've got on (to correct my crooked bottom teeth and, hopefully, fix the right side of my jaw which pops painfully when I yawn). The joys of getting old. Nothing like being forty-two with a lisp from the plastic in your mouth. Well as long as I don't sound like Truman Capote I figure I'm golden.

They finished my floors yesterday.The man who did them looked a bit like Sam Elliot and drawled out his words in much the same way. Perhaps even slower? But he was a bit inscrutable, rather cryptic with his answers, or lack thereof, to my questions about the floors, until I learned yesterday that I've got to let the floors cure for four to five more days before moving anything back into those rooms (living room, dining room, entry, hallway upstairs and Oona's room). So it looks like we'll be at my mom's until Wednesday. But, on the bright side, I can wash the three loads of laundry that accumulated at my mom's. And I have internet access (my mom took her laptop to Florida so my only access to a computer was two visits to the library this week). And wait until you see how lovely the floors look now. It's the best $1715 I've spent- and that's a flipping bargain for as bad as my floors were. He trimmed out the downstairs with new oak quarter round, he didn't do anything to the upstairs so I've got to call him about that. Well I'm off to vacuum the fine layer of sawdust that seems to be everywhere.

Well the living room walls are sandpiper and it's just the warm griege I was looking for. Unfortunately 3/4 through the painting my back completely seized up on me. It was funny I'd bend over to put paint on my roller and I was like, why is it killing me every time I bend over to do this. Bending at all made me wince so I had to squat with my back straight to finish the last wall. I went to the gym hoping to stretch out the muscles that were seizing up in my back, on the left side from just under my rib cage to my ass, but the gym didn't help. I deliberated between going to medexpress or coming home and drinking enough Guinness that I didn't care that I was in pain. In the end I opted for buying a heating pad and popping some of the 800 mg of ibuprofen the doctor gave me for my back pain when I saw him a few weeks ago and hoping it would be better in the morning. It wasn't so I got a scrip for flexeril called in which is helping calm down the muscle spasms in my back but it also turns me into a complete zombie. I guess this is what people mean when they say don't overdo it. Total suckfest for my break without the kids.

The kids went to Toby's parents (for the week!) on Sunday morning. And since their car left the block I've been tackling my living room; attempting to make the built in book case and mantle look nicer and repaint the walls before the guy comes to refinish my floors. I painted the room what I thought was a warm grey but once up on the the walls there's too much red and not enough yellow in the grey. Yeah, I didn't realize this until I painted the entire room. I'm very picky about my paint colors, so I got yet another gallon of grey paint (sandpiper, how I love the names for paint) that I'm hoping will look better. My current state of mind is a bit altered, which I'm going to blame on huffing miniwax wood stain fumes yesterday afternoon whilst doing my many layered distressed paint look on the bookcase. I should add frustrated on top of the altered mental status because I think I might need to put another layer of pain over the barn owl, grey sky & jacobean stain I've got on the built in so far. I had to sand the bookcases a lot, to the point I had phantom vibrations in my arm an hour or two after I'd stopped sanding, before starting the paint work. Toby built the bookcase and mantle shortly after we moved into this house seven years ago and I couldn't help but draw comparisons between it and our ill-fated marriage. Of course, it was easy to compare when that is sort of forced into my consciousness because of the complaint of divorce I received in the mail. Toby had called to let me know I'd be getting it and I don't blame him for my dark mood. I just blame the whole fucking process, the harsh wording of the complaint 'You are being sued' which caused me to panic momentarily, because when you don't have a lot of money financial stuff, specifically mention of being sued, can feel like a punch to the gut. I guess lawyers aren't emotionally ruffled by this legalease but it makes me bawl. The being sued, the 'you will no longer have health insurance once the decree is filed' the myriad personal stressors that have made the stress of nursing school that much harder to bear and the worry worry worry my mind the eternal problem solver keeping me up throughout the night on Monday trying to troubleshoot how to go about passing the boards, finding a job and getting health insurance in the sixty days between graduating from school and my divorce being finalized. Oh and botox! I must get botox so the abject desperation will not be quite so easy to read on my face. Too many stressors. It would be one thing if it was just one thing, the divorce, the need to find employment, the imminent threat of no health insurance, or if it was all of them, but I had someone super supportive to lose my shit to in private. Someone who could hug away the fears or be a sounding board or just make me laugh and forget all this shit for a heartbeat. But I don't have that, which is why I air my dirty laundry here. Well I'm off to sandpiper the walls.

vacation

I am done with school until September! And, barring any fuck ups when filling in the scantron sheet for my final, I graduated with highest honors. AND I had a great final clinical evaluation with my instructor whom I'll have for PNR (my nursing intership which I'll be doing on the liver and intestinal transplant floor at Children's Hospital come this fall). I just need to get through PNR, pass my boards and find a job, then I'll be golden. But for the next few weeks I'm going to do the work around my house that's hard to do while I'm in school and relax when I can. Maybe find another non nursing related book to devour. Any recommendations?

owen's nine

He officially turned nine at 6:38 pm. We were doing a countdown at Baskin Robbins but the time struck waiting at the light on the way to the grocery store for cat food, Sam and Frodo were hungry after going without this morning. Owen and Oona counted backward from sixty once they saw the car clock turn to 6:37 and I snapped Owen (really just turned the camera to the back seat and shot so I'm glad it actually turned out well) celebrating the passage into a new year.

This is the pose I got when I asked Owen to look sweet, meaning no gangster hands and or thinking he's doing the peace sign but his palms are turned in so he's really telling people to fuck off if they're English. Oh my, how to explain this without it becoming a loaded hand weapon.

Oona attacking her sprinkle waffle ice cream cone with true gusto. She gave up a couple bites after this though. They usually just get a kids scoop but for Owen's birthday I said they could have whatever they wanted, they each ate less than half of what they ordered.

Oona is just going to kill somebody when she's older if her eyes stay that big and brown and beautiful.

unaccustomed earth

I had started reading this book last year and loved all the short stories but couldn't get into the last part, which was a novella centering on two characters, Hema and Naushik. Maybe I was put off because the story starts in the second person and I think that is a very hard narrative point of view to pull off. But I hate not finishing a book. It's just a compulsion of mine that once I start a book I have to finish it, even if it is over a year later (although I might have to break this compulsion with The Dinosaur Man, which I dread finishing). Anyhow I picked up Unaccustomed Earth to revisit the last part and I easily fell into the story and couldn't understand my initial hesitance to finish reading (although I know that how much I enjoy a book us has a lot to do with what is going on in my lives that might make the book resonate all the more powerfully to me). In fact, the last part is now my favorite of that book and I bawled on reading the last page, wept harder than I have with any other book I read, it killed me. I don't even know how to comment with respect to Jhumpa Lahiri's writing aside to say that I'm completely amazed at the command she has for writing where everything is distilled down to it's essence, she does not write one superfluous word in her books. And as good as her writing is stylistically, the level of insight she has into the intricacies of the human heart could put the best therapist to shame. I think she is, hands down, the best person writing fiction in America today.