Mostly about tp holding

On yelling- if I do my posts first thing every morning, I should be able to truthfully say that I haven't yet screamed at anyone that day.
Honest but very carefully fine tuned.

On toilet paper roll holders-these type seem very popular wherever I go-heh- you know kind of like a bent thick wire mounted on the wall. They are pretty enough to look at, I guess, you know, if there isn't any reading material available...but I don't know, I can't seem to get the hang of them. Anytime I pull off any of the necessary paper, the whole darn roll goes flying across the bathroom and then bounces and rolls. I don't know, maybe it is just me.

Actually this one I got a picture of is quite pretty.

Using Google to try and find a picture yeilded quite a few that weren't quite as sartorial.



Fer instance:

High fashion shouldn't really have anything to do with toilet paper roll holding but I can see why this picture popped up:

black screen

I almost actually yelled twice today.
Volume went up but I managed to get it under control - which was good because I was barking up the wrong tree and it is a lot easier to come back from doing something like that when you haven't been shouting.

Now I can't guarantee that I will not be yelling for the rest of the evening.
My Mac*book just went to the black screen of death.
The good news is that it is under the extended warantee so any repairs are free - but they will take time and I don't know if I will have all of the material on it when it comes back.

I do have a back up that is a few months old but not new enough to keep me easy in my mind about the literally hundreds of photos that I don't have copies of.

So anyway, I have a headache now and a trip to my local Mac dealer in the morning.

I am using my darling husband's laptop to post.
We are watching the first episode of an old western tv show Have Gun Will Travel.
My older kids love it, I think my youngest son will too...but I am not so sure about how my younger daughter is doing with it.

Ahh, she just went and got paper and markers - not a bad coping strategy when it comes to sitting through a show she isn't quite understanding.

She is the one that keeps me guessing as to where she is at.
I think she keeps herself confused too.

The older daughter is doing all right.
She and oldest son aren't home much right now, they are staying and taking care of some lovely dogs of one of my running friends.
Big screen tv, lots of food and they get to take the wii game system with them too.
And if the dogs are happy and healthy at the end of my friend's vacation and given all the attention and affection they are getting, why wouldn't they be - my two will be richly compensated.
Not a bad gig if you can get it.
And good for my kids to try their wings out in the world a little without their Mom hanging over them all the time.
I have actually been surprised by how easily they are managing.

I see the future.

No More Yelling.

Just because I haven't been writing, doesn't mean I have been thinking about writing.

It is just that when all my posts seem to start with "I am a big dork", it is a little disheartening.

No, there isn't an interesting or comedic story to go with that "dork" statement - just my personal state of being.

I turned 41 this past Dec. 25th.
Nothing wrong with that, but like many, many other people I find this time of year HARD.

Having a birthday in the mix often doesn't help.
All that reflux of past years, all the reminders of what I wish could be, of what I don't have.

Don't I sound like someone you would want to hang out with by the lighted tree?

Now having said that, I must also say that this year has been possibly the one I have coped with the best in possibly all my adulthood.

I have done more actual thinking than wallowing.
And more thinking than being angry.
Both items to be marked down on the plus side of the ledger.

So although I am still sad and conflicted and wishful about:
-my dad and brothers having Christmas with their families, five miles from my house, as I gape in open mouthed wonder at how my Dad, the physically, mentally abusive alcoholic that he his, managed to pull off being the one who somehow managed to keep my brothers loyalty and affection and I didn't - despite feeling like I was the third parent.
-my Mom and her husband choosing to go to Las Vegas for Christmas, despite now actually living close enough to celebrate together for the first time in 23 years
-none of my family (of origin) phoning to wish me a Happy Birthday (or alternately, to beg my forgiveness for all they have ever done wrong (real or imaginary) and to throw themselves on the absolute heartbreaking beauty of my compassionate mercy (of which, need I even say it, I have copious amounts that I use generously)
-why do I even make myself nuts over this stuff, when I have a perfectly lovely family of my own to spend time with?

Wow.
The list is a little whiny but still I am glad to have put it down in writing, it makes it all feel a little clearer and less hidden away in the murk recesses.

It is what it is.
Wishing it would go away isn't going to work.
Shining a light on it might help though.

And it might help me with my big old New Year's Resolution too.
I want to stop yelling at my kids and my husband.


One of my natural gifts is a natural ability to PROJECT.
I am LOUD.
This does have certain uses in crowded situations and that kind of thing.
It is also absolutely something I use to express my anger.

I think I am a bit of a bully when it comes right down to it.
And I want that to stop.
So far this Christmas I have subjected each of the people in my house to my shrieking in rage or frustration.
Not proud of that, it embarrasses me and I want to stop.

I am thinking of using this blog as a tool to try and track it, when I do it, when I don't, why, that kind of thing.
We will see how it works out.

Putting those ghosts to bed

Fired my oldest daughter's therapist today.
Stupid woman.
Came out of a session with my youngest daughter and her therapist and found my beautiful young woman looking like she had been steamrollered.

She had tried to talk to her therapist about the way she wanted to be treated and spoken to, like a mature and intelligent person, and the therapist went on the defensive.

With my depressed fourteen year old daughter.
"I have worked for years with childen and youth throughout this world...blah...blah...blah"

To stop the tide, my baby, apologized and said that it just must be that she is tired and therefore given to exaggerating things and that is when the therapist became all friendly and said that anytime there was a problem to please just call her on it.

My ass.

The stupid, stupid, self centred idiot who is supposed to help my girl find her own strong voice, worked at muting it instead.

When I talked to her on the phone later, the therapist had no idea of what a good week our girl had experienced.
That she had a wonderful art lesson.
That she is involved in pottery every week.
That she had been happy and animated and hopeful until the counselling session.

Didn't know anything about it.
F**k.


So, now we are looking for someone to work with her, who won't put their own personal insecurities first.

********************************

My Mom visited today.
There is a lot of past family craziness but today was nice.
I am happier than I have ever been as an adult at this time of year.
(Even if it scares the hell out of me to write that. Like I'm asking for trouble, y'know?).

The Season of Miracles?

Sitting in the therapist's waiting room on Tuesday afternoon, squinting at a knitting pattern - waiting for my youngest son to finish up his session - when it hits me...
my youngest daughter has been sitting on the floor at my feet, playing with a toy truck and a bunch of crayons who are the people going for rides in the truck.

For almost ten minutes, she has been doing this.
Telling a story aloud to herself about what is happening, using different voices for the different personalities.
And I hadn't even noticed!
For the first time since I have known her, possibly for the first time in her life, she was playing - happily and appropriately- on her own!!!!!

Oh My God.
I cried.
Both then and when I told my husband about it later.

*********************

Wednesday night, I am lying abed upstairs with some icky version of the flu, my husband is out doing an errand and I can hear something erupting downstairs between my two youngest children.
Careful, thoughtful parent I am, I yell down the stairs that it is time for bed for both of them,
which is evil, because it has only just hit 7pm.
They both come up and disappear into their rooms.
Followed almost as quickly by my oldest son who tells me quietly that youngest son was blameless. Unbeknownst to youngest daughter, I apologise to youngest son and send him back down to watch MASH dvds with his older siblings.
Almost an hour later, she appears in my bedroom door, tears in her eyes - "I feel bad that Alex has to go to bed when it wasn't his fault."

Yeah, it took her an hour to figure it out and to take responsibility - but she DID IT!!!!!!
She made a connection, thought about someone else and took steps to correct the wrong!!!!!
This is the first time without prompting, without having it explained, without having something outside of herself act as her conscience.

**************************************************

I am so very hopeful.
More so than I have been in a long, long time.

Maybe, things will look up for my oldest daughter soon?

When I was twenty one...

...a very troubled man went to l'École Polytechnique de Montréal and killed
Genevieve Bergeron
Nathalie Croteau
Anne-Marie Edward
Maryse Laganiere
Anne-Marie Lemay
Michele Richard
Annie Turcotte
Helene Colgan
Barbara Daigneault
Maud Haviernick
Marys Leclair
Susan Pelletier
Annie St-Arneault
Barbara Klucznik Widajewicz

Why?

Because they were women.

I worked on a different Canadian University campus at the time.
A co worker joked to me that I must now be nervous because if someone wanting to hurt people came into our office, I would be the first one killed.

It wasn't funny.
I just stared at her.

All these women should still be alive.
Aggravated by teenagers, worn out by their jobs, knitting presents for their friends and family
and they are not.

I try to think of them and remember them at least once a year, to say each of their names aloud in remembrance.

It saddens and frustrates me that I know the name of the man who killed them, that I can't forget and yet it is so hard to remember all of theirs.

There was a lot more news coverage about him at the time.
Which is what he wanted.

I do not want to give him that, even though he died the same day, by his own hand.

So today, I think about the young woman I was and the young women they were and I will read their names aloud.

Adoption and teenagers makes me buff

Today was Way In day for the W8 watchers and I dropped 2 more lbs and they took away one of my daily points! What is up with that?

Weird thing is that I know have dropped that much talked about ten pounds. You know the ones, everyone - at least almost every grown female of my aquaintance, talks about how they would like to just lose that ten pounds.
And I have done that.

It is just that....well...I don't really see a difference in my body.
Yes, my pants are all loose and saggy in the butt and I am NOT complaining but I am confused.
When I stand in front of the mirror, starkers/minus covering/jaybird, if you take my meaning - I look the same.

The same.

Now is that because with my body image, I can only see myself one way?

Except that when I put on the little black dress for the cocktail party, a couple of weeks ago, I could see that I looked HOT in it - (relatively speaking).

A side effect of all this staring at myself in the mirror when I am nekkid and trying to take some self portraits to teach myself not to cringe and look away....is that I think I am getting ready to post to The Shape of a Mother.

The site just blows me away because it makes me remember how stunned I was by the changes that pregnancy and birth wrought on my own body. There was no preparation or training or family or friend wisdom to prepare me for that, the way a woman's body looks after.

In writing this, it has occurred to me that I never anticipated the changes that have happened to my body since becoming a mother through adoption.

I am stronger and more physically fit now than ever before in motherhood.

Working out and tracking my diet offer me a sense of control that I so often don't have in parenting.

Sweep

Three black garbage bags went out to the alley.
The rest of the stuff in this picture went to Goodw*ill.
Some of it came from my two youngest children's rooms but most of it came from my bedroom.

What is most surprising...okay, other than that I have lived with that much extra stuff for far too long...
is how great it feels to have it gone.

Not bad or sad or ....
++++this post is interrupted to briefly describe my youngest son and his insane curtain hiding behaviours - very recently he has taken to wrapping himself in draperies and then peeking out and saying ooooola booooola to me and tell me about how he is the curtain god and how I have offended him----- oh and my youngest daughter just got off the phone with her birth grandma and came and whispered at me that grandma was asking her if she had been reading the bible that grandma had given her and that she had to lie to grandma and say yes, because she had given the bible away months ago!!!!!!! Without talking to a parent about it! So we just had an impromtu discussion about how we don't get rid of bibles/etc. without checking with a parent first - because it can preserve family harmony...etc. etc. Now I am almost too tired to finish this post+++++++

....okay the whole getting rid of stuff feels good.



Oh, and the other most surprising thing?
That there is still stuff to deal with!!!!!