No Recognition

I am feeling especially aware of my material poverty this month.  I am on the very edge of gong into the pit of debt, and if I fall in, I can't imagine how I will climb out.  Meanwhile, I need look for a new apartment, and I so desperately want to better my living space - cramming into two teeny-tiny rooms over the last year was really tough, and I certainly did NOT imagine it being an indefinite situation.  I have to send the kids to camp so I can go to work, but I'm going to be spending my entire salary on camp tuition. Meanwhile, I keep sending checks to the lawyer......enough, I'm not going to catalog all my expenses.  The point is: I'm poor, I'm getting poorer, I don't see this turning around any time soon.  I want a break from "Sweet Pro's" world, but there isn't really any acceptable escape.

I recently bought a bunch of comic collections at the library book sale, including some of the later "For Better Or For Worse."  Not my favorite, too full of herself, but I will read almost any comics, and the kids like them.  So I see that a minor character was added as a school-friend of the youngest daughter.  The new character is a special needs student with trouble speaking.  Perhaps the idea from this character came from  a real person in the life of the cartoonist, but I thought about the attempts to extend the "diversity" in the strip. What popped into my "pity me" head was, "There are no poor characters in the strip."  Okay, that is not completely true - very young adults are shown having a hard time with finances, but this is clearly just a stage, a rite of passage. One of the son's friends lives over a garage from the time he graduates high school through his first couple years of marriage.  But soon enough he becomes one of the most successful business men in town.  And even his alcoholic parents seem to have had a nice house in which he grew up.  Okay, okay, she is documenting the world she knows, but it still gets me down.  Everything I grew up with on TV, in books, in comics, etc shows American life as rich by default (I know, Johnston is Canadian, but you get the point). It's not so much that I dislike my circumstances as much as having my kids (and myself) wondering why we can't just be like everyone else.  Isn't there already enough "less then average" about us?

While trying to think of a title for this piece, I considered "No handicapped Plates", as in no special accommodations for the working poor, the fat, the skinny, the bald, the ugly, the dysfunctional family member, the insecure, etc; basically the emotionally crippled.  A scene from Seinfeld jumped into my thoughts, where George has the same analysis: the world owes him for all his hardship.  I can't even figure out exactly which episode, I think it is in "The Butter Shave", when he gets the job with Play Now, they think he is unable to walk, and give him all the "perks" of being "handicapped".  George tells Jerry that he intends to take full advantage of the situation, since he has just as many problems as anyone with a physical impediment.

So I'm even more pathetic now: I'm kinda' siding with George.

This week's epiphany

This is one of the wasband's favorite comic strips:

Actually, he never reads comics, so he must have heard me reading it to the kids, but anyway, it always made him laugh. The wasband is big into lists, unlike your blogger.

This weekend started awfully: just another case of the wasband pulling out the worst in me.  End of story, I was without the boys for shabbos, feeling cheated and disgusted and all kinds sorry for myself.  As I came home Friday afternoon, I have a flash of how many things the wasband DID NOT manage to take away from me. 

This was like suddenly understanding the expression "to find yourself."  I would imagine most teenagers have very little understanding of this idea, though they are told that this is a possible benefit of college or the postponement of college for several years.  So too, one is advised to think about all the things wasbands [cancer/ financial crises/ adversaries in general] cannot take away from one.  (I'm reading "The Uncommon Reader", and it makes me want to use the pronoun "one".)

Shall I give an abbreviated list?  Okay, these are some things that are actually on the upswing since last summer:

• Shul attendance
• Lovely shabbatot in general
• Connections with friends
• Connections with family
• Exercise/ frolicking with the little guys
• Desire to get out of bed most mornings (well, I think it is most. not this morning, but most mornings)

I feel that I have to say, he DID take away a whole lot, not even considering the material items.  I can't get beyond that wall of awful.  But occasionally I can turn my gaze to the other direction.

Here's a twofer - An ironic list of annoying things the wasband used to that I have found myself doing this year:

• Going to the library multiple times per week, borrowing up to the limit
• Keeping Granola bars in the car for kiddie snacks
• Using minty liquid soap in the shower (mine is a nicer brand though)
• Taking kids out to do "stuff" in the evenings
• Shopping at pricier grocery stores (but I don't enjoy this, it's just that along with the pricier neighborhood comes the pricier stores)

Not some little Hotsie Momma

Few people who consistently wear their waistbands above their hips are less qualified to write an article on fashion than I, but I have one particular fashion peeve to share: shells.
I don't mean those calcium rich mollusk armor you collect on the beach (although those shells are also not my favorite embellishment); I'm referring to a tight bodice garment used for under-layering, to provide "modest" covering of arms, neckline, etc, under less concealing clothing.

The idea of under-layering is, of course, not new.  The past several decades have seen 1) popular fashion become increasingly revealing, 2) overwhelming expectation that clothing be available "off-the-rack".  Thus religious women have been asking "Uch, isn't there some easy, non-bulky, economical, and stylish way to make this years fashions 'work?'" 

And, like the Ronco in-the-shell-egg-scrambler, the SHELL was born.

No, maybe not like that... Anyway, although we have been wearing T's, cammies, long sleeve T's, dickies, "sleevies", or whatever underneath all these years, suddenly "shells" are the new thing.  But because they are "shells," they are now somehow appropriate to any occasion.  And even more unbecoming: now every article of clothing is appropriate if it has a shell underneath.

A couple years ago I was dragged into Brooklyn for the day.  I had way too much time to just watch the people at this "Jewish family event."  The place was crawling with young women, mostly young mothers, wearing the tightest, sauciest clothing I had ever seen at such an event.  And I thought to myself,  "there is no way I could ever really belong to the ****** movement, I could never be such a little hotsie momma."

How nasty a thought is that?  Well, sorry but it was just an awful day, and those clothes were the topper, along with a soft-serve chalav-yisroel ice cream cone that was so bad, it might as well have been tofutti (maybe it was! I hate Brooklyn.)

So here is my advice:
1) DO NOT spend $5000 on a shaitel, then wear it to your cousin's wedding with a sleeveless off-the-rack dress "enhanced" with some obvious shell.  You CAN still find a seamstress to either alter that dress you saw and loved, or just order a whole new dress, it is possible.  And if you really can't afford that - then keep walking and find a different dress or wear last year's.

2) Some tops are just plain inappropriate.  No matter what you do to them.  If it looks like underwear, don't use it as outerwear.  If it looks like a negligee, don't wear it as sports wear.  If it is so tight, strappy, notched, that it would be only be appropriate...well, you get the point, just don't wear it.

Good candidate for a shell

Poor candidate for a shell

I guess that's it.  I'm sure I will end up giving in more to this trend eventually. 

How to let go?

The wasband gave me a reprieve over Passover from the constant barrage of "more stuff".  But this week, he again emptied bags and boxes of mostly garbage onto the sidewalk next to my car (he carries it around with him so he can do this whenever he finds me, no kidding).  I did point out, fairly calmly, the boxes of true junk equally owned by the two of us, and told him I would not be responsible for disposing of it.  But the bag of clothes - obviously old run-down stuff he finally picked up from the laundry room floor, as he cleaned for/from Passover - I accepted, along with some assorted odd-and-ends from the garden - which was definitely MY project, as explained previously . Actually, I didn't so much "accept it", as slump down like I had lost all muscle control and start to cry.  Then I threw the stuff in the car, and drove off without doing any of the chores I had planned.  I went home and ate and ate and ate (luckily it was mostly the produce I have left from the holiday), and watched hours of videos.

I went back to the 1st season of Frasier, and the end of the very first episode clearly reflected my situation.  The finish of the pilot episode features a call from a woman (voice of Linda Hamilton) who broke up with her boyfriend eight months ago (*eight months ago!) but cannot stop grieving.  Frasier shares the "Lupe Valez" anecdote, telling the woman that she is in mourning for "what she thought her life would be," and advising her that she needs to "let it go."
 

Okay, this is obviously good advice, as far as it goes, but HOW DOES ONE LET GO?  HOW DO *I* LET GO?  It doesn't just happen because you say it will, anymore then the average person can just lose weight but saying "okay, now I will lose weight."  The clearest answer to both is "get yourself good professional help."  But at the moment I haven't the time or resources...

I'm gonna stop here.  I not really that bad, most of the time.  But it is still too hard sometimes, and I am really bad at giving up ideals - a topic for another day.  Right now I have to pick up the videos the libraryis holding for me.

Finding My Voice

In college, there was a guy (one of the most conceited people I ever met, incredibly knowledgeable, and eventually a good friend) who had a bad way of interrupting me often. One day I got fed up and said "That's it, I'm not speaking anymore today." And everyone around us laughed. "You not speak? You can't keep that up for even one hour." And I was shocked - this was how they saw me. And I was even more shocked when I realized how true it was that I had so utterly changed from just the few month before when I was in high school.

I was shy and quiet as far back as I remember, quiet and shy throughout elementary school, and terribly depressed and frustrated in high school, felt terribly alone, and really was pretty much alone. I really did consciously spend entire days not speaking, waiting to see if anyone would react. Everyone liked me, I think, but I was just easy to overlook, which became a vicious cycle, becoming more unhappy and withdrawn, and therefore more invisible.

College started great, I can't say why; I guess I just started out more visible, therefore became more extroverted, and therefore more visible (and audible). But it proved to be very unstable and dependent on outside factors. A friend came to stay with me at "home" over winter vacation. After a couple days, she asked,"are you feeling unwell?" "No, I'm fine, why?" "You're so quiet, it's bizarre." "...I guess that is just what happens to me as I get closer to the Atlantic Coast."

Well, I don't know if there is really some geologic epicenter of my silence, but I am now physically somewhere between the state of my birth and the state of my undergrad education. My metaphysical position of verbosity is now somewhere in between as well, roughly correlating with the above.

So, when people ask me common polite questions, such as, "How are you?", "How was your weekend?", the answers tend more towards, "Fine...and you?". This is especially true if I am actually doing poorly. I may tend toward whiny, but in general, I am not a complainer.

But the Badass came out again when I was back in the old neighborhood over the holiday.  And this time, it was not just in a dream.  I was having such an utterly horrible time, I wanted to shout it out to the entire community.  So when people politely asked "How is your holiday going?",  I answered, "Really, really awful." while looking them full in the eye.  I think several people were sure they misheard me, as they just smiled, and kept walking.  The rest gave me some short condolences, then tried to give me a little lesson on how to keep a proper perspective. Only one person (ironically, the husband of a couple I just recently met) had anything helpful to say - basically, "You're sad, I'm sorry, it's hard. We would really like to spend time with you if you would like."

Was it better to speak up?  I'm not sure...Let me think about that, and I'll try to get back to you.

something's coming

don't know when
but it's soon
catch the moon
one handed catch...

so don't give up on me.
in the mean time, the dirty laundry keeps expanded, will probably have do some with the boys in tow.

Still around, just exhasted...

...so I haven't had a chance to write - it's a shame, I had lots of ideas.

Probably won't have a proper post for a couple weeks. But I am feeling tremendously satisfied: ready for Passover, and did it all by myself, with only one major breakdown, when I let the kids play with my phone while running errands, then got home and realized the phone was left somewhere along the day's travels.

copy of FB post:
Lost my phone somewhere along the many stops last evening. Freaked, kept babbling and asking G-d for a miracle. So torqued, stayed up, finished the kitchen cleaning - b'li eyin harah, ready to kasher tonight (well, early Thurs morning)- never ready this early before! Great quote from friend -"We talk about the 'finger' of G-d, 'hand' of G-d; you got the 'boot' of G-d. There is my miracle?;)

got my phone back fairly easily. While kashering stove, only distuction was melting the knobs, and I'm pretty sure I can replace those at Home Depot.
I liked kashering the sink, counters; that was always the wasband's job.