Purging

I haven't been blogging much.

Nothing like stating the obvious, eh?

Everyday I sit down and open my laptop and start writing a post to publish here on RMN. And almost everyday, without fail, I scrap the post or save it to finish another day.

I haven't been able to write what I want and I'm feeling bound and gagged like my husband tied me up with soft purple satin strips and walked away while leaving the ball-gag in so he could go get something to eat.

(Not that he'd ever do such a thing. Really.)

I could tell you I'm weighted down with grief as of late and I'm having a hard time finding my joy. But that would be lying. 

I could say I have been so busy sitting around doing nothing I haven't had time to compose anything worthy of publishing. But one look at my daily twitter account would betray that falsehood quicker than when the kleenex I used to pad my bra in tenth grade fell out at the feet of the cutest boy in my class.

(It is a mystery why I was such a geek back then when I am the epitome of coolness now. Hmm.)

The truth behind my spotty posting as of late is more complicated than the gossamer weavings of a spider's web tucked up high in the corner of your ceiling. 

I'm pissed off. 

Okay, so it really isn't that complicated. I'm mad as hell and I'm tired of muzzling myself. I'm tired of not being able to sit down and compose a post about what happens when you grab your husband's package while on a six-hour road trip only to hit a pothole. Hint: eyes bulge out and expletives may be uttered.

I made a promise to myself when I started blogging I would focus on the funny. If it didn't bring joy or wasn't about remembering how to find joy, I wouldn't write about it. My life has enough drama filled moments I don't need to fill my time trying to recapture them.

For the most part, I've held true to this promise with few exceptions. I've never felt stifled by that decision. Until now. Now I feel as though there are things I need to get off my chest so I can resume my routine of focusing on exaggerating and twisting my daily life for the sheer pleasure of knowing my husband will read this and wish he had remembered to wear a rubber one fateful night long ago, thereby escaping a shotgun wedding and an eternity tethered to me.

So I'm going to stray off the beaten path and do what I never do. I'm going to dump all my pissiness at your proverbial feet in hopes you'll understand why the bee has been trapped in my bonnet as of late.

Deep breath. (Stay with me peoples. It'll be quick and painless. Like having sex while intoxicated.) 

I'm pissed with the adoption process my husband and I have been traveling for almost two years now. I'm tired of running along side him in this hamster wheel of bureaucracy and being bound by legalities (and a healthy fear of retribution) to not speak about it.

One day, though, this path will end. I will climb the highest mountain and shout my story for sherpas and villagers everywhere to hear. Or I'll just open my laptop and press publish. That day cannot come soon enough for me.

Bureaucracy can suck my big hairy toe.

I'm pissed with the anonymous trolls who have nothing better to do in their lives than to mock my parenting, my dead child and me. I won't lie and say it hasn't destroyed a bit of the joy I have found in the community of the blogosphere. I prefer my naive belief that as adults we can all agree to disagree and if you have nothing nice to say keep your big fat yap shut.

I have walked through the shadows of hell, holding my children's hands tightly within mine, to ensure we all survived our unthinkable tragedy as unscathed as possible.

It wasn't easy and it wasn't fun. For any of us. For people to diminish my loss and the loss of my children pisses me off.

I don't write about my son, Shale, for entertainment. I certainly don't write a post about him to earn money off the revenue I make running ads in my sidebar. I write about my son to help remember him, to preserve the memory of his tiny chubby hands laced with calluses and covered in drool, or his curly blonde hair always sweaty from exertion or how he'd throw his head back and laugh when he did something he deemed extraordinarily funny.

I write about my son so my children will one day understand why I am the person I am today. How his life and his death so deeply impacted my very being and how I struggle to stay aloft the despair that threatens to pull me under every day I live, knowing I will never watch my youngest son grow to be a man. 

I post ads on my site to create revenue so that I can donate money in his name to the Stollery Children's Hospital. I wanted to be able to do something personally, to show my gratitude to the hospital that fought so hard to keep my son alive for as long as he was. Every damn cent I earn off my words goes straight charity. 

I'm pissed off that my new puppy eats more scat than puppy chow and insists on kissing my face with her shitty breath. And I'm pissed off I'm dumb enough to coo over her and let it happen. Repeatedly.

I'm pissed off I am a damn klutz and am now paying the price for attempting to clean my house. This is just further proof no good can come from household chores.  My twisted knee and myself are proof of this.

I'm pissed my son is eleven years old and still has to be reminded to clip his own damn toenails. Those suckers are like sharp little crack nails and he doesn't even seem to notice.

Hell, I'm pissed my left boob is noticeably bigger than my right one. I feel lopsided and uneven. I know I'm not alone in this. Women everywhere have uneven boobs. But why don't guys have unevenly sized testicles? What's the deal with that? And why don't bra manufacturers make bras with different shaped cups so one boob isn't squished and spilling out while the other cup is almost so empty you are eyeballing a box of kleenex like you did in junior high.

But mostly I'm pissed off that people just don't get it.

Life is short. There is no such thing as tomorrow. Tomorrow is a promise not always kept. I speak from experience. Why do people waste any second of the spun gold known as time as though it's a renewable resource?

I want to teach my children to focus on finding joy and learning to be amazed with whatever path they choose to travel. To always aspire to be better not bitter.

That's why I blog. I just needed to remind myself of this and expectorate the pissiness.

Like a cat after coughing up a hairball, I feel much better.

Care to share? Purge your pissiness. You'll feel better. I promise.

Redneck Makeover

You may have noticed a slightly different look to my blog. Or maybe you didn't and you are just really unobservant. In which case, allow me to point out the obvious. 

I have new, shiny digs. 

I booted Big Red. It was time. She was annoying me. I can't have another woman showing me up with her big boobs and itty bitty waist on my own damn website. One of us had to go, her or me. Since I'm the one paying the hosting fees and doing all the grunt work I figured it ought to be her.

Not that I don't totally rock a bikini. I do. Really. Dammit, why are you laughing???

It was time for a change. I wanted something a little visually simpler, something that would load a little quicker and make me smile each and every time I saw it instead of making me want to race to the gym and bust my ass to look like Big Red.


 

Not that I don't totally look like her, but with blonde hair. 

I do.

Really.

Big thanks to Shaz from Swank Web Style Design Studio for putting up with my incessant emails, constant whining and slightly annoying tendencies of nit-picking.

Now when I see my web page, I chuckle instead of feeling the urge to break a sweat and do 50 crunches. Frac, however, may not feel the same way since it's his image forever captured in a two year old temper tantrum, which is now plastered on my banner.

I really am gunning for that coveted Mother of the Year Award.

An added bonus to the redesign is now when the kids are misbehaving all I have to do is grab my camera and tell them to hold still, I need a new picture for my next blog layout.

I don't make idle threats so their behaviour miraculously improves. 

I suppose Gay Ray could have told them that, though.

Snicker.

For those of you who pop by to ogle the hot chick with flaming red hair and stay for the potty talk, I promise you, nothing else has changed. I'm still the same immature dirty girl I've always been.

Dildos and dead kids, that's my motto.  (Unless you are a an adoption case worker, in which case, I'm totally just joking. Cross my heart.)

Sit back and enjoy the new digs. And while you're at it, let me know what you think. Feedback is always valued.

I'm a big girl. I can take it. 

And if I can't, I'll just find an image of you, bust out the ole creative photoshopping skillz and dedicate a post in your honour.

Wink.

Sometimes Pain is a Good Thing

I wimped out during childbirth. I have no problems admitting this as I was 20 years old and freaked out by the thought of squeezing a human being through my delicate and once virginal cooter.

By wimped out I mean I had a full fledged panic attack. I cried, I whined, I hyperventilated. Besides the blissful and relaxing feeling of being torn in half by contractions (such an understated word. It should be something more like Anaconda Death Grip of birth), the back pain alone felt like Jason was stabbing me in the back with a rusty butter knife.

(Nevermind the burning ring of fire which makes one feel like someone shoved a flaming torch up one's crotch.)

I was out of my element and fearing each natural progressive step in the stages of labour and childbirth. Just when I seemed to acclimate to one subset of pain, the bar was raised and my threshold was pushed past it's admittedly puny limitations. I was the ultimate birthing wimp.

It was the like my very own perfect storm, the trifecta of terror for a young woman who had never gave birth before, who had only had sex a few times in her life and was about ready to become a mother as she was to start dancing on table tops, stripping for money right that very moment.

Yes, I was a big, enormous wimp. So when a maternity nurse casually suggested (and by this I mean grabbed my head between her clammy man-hands and yelled at me to breathe and shut the hell up for a second) I get an epidural, I jumped on that chance like a homeless person does on a lottery ticket.

Sure, have someone I have never met before jam a huge long needle straight into my spine and pump drugs into my body. Sounds a helluva lot more fun than this childbirthing gig. Sign me up.

I pussed out. Emotionally and physically. After a few hours of painful contractions and the mental image of a ten pound watermelon being squeezed through a ten centimeter hole, the choice wasn't all that difficult to me.

Screw natural childbirth and pass me the drugs, please and thank you.

After not one, not two, but three painful deliveries (the last one being drug free because the world is a cruel and merciless place) I thought I would never face pain like that again.

Then Bug died. Suddenly I was in the more pain than if I had to squeeze out a two tonne hiefer through my vajayjay. The emotional and physical pain was overwhelming. I expected mental anguish. I just never expected the physical pain that came along with my grief.

It felt like a weight was pressing down on my shoulders trying to grind me to dust while somebody was constantly stabbing me in the gut and in the heart. Add to this, the worst stress headache imaginable, lack of sleep and apetite and soon every breath you draw in feels like your body might explode into a million tiny shards - all broken fragments of the person you used to be.

This time there was no nurse waiting in the wings to grab my head, shove it between my legs and tell me to man up while she procures body-numbing drugs for me. This time I had to do it on my own.

So I did. There was no choice really. I had two kids and a husband who depended on me to stay sane and upright as they navigated the oceans of mourning alongside me. The pain was unbearable. And seemingly unending.

At times I thought of self-medicating, and if Bug were my only child, I probably would have made a different choice. I'd probably be typing this from rehab after months, years, of sitting on a couch, drooling and looking at the pretty sky while reaching for a half empty bottle of booze.

But Fric and Frac needed me. I needed a clear mind to steer through this tragedy and not inflict any more emotional trauma on them than they had already endured. Eventually, I survived the pain. And while it still lingers, like wisps of smoke after a forest fire, it is no longer the crushing pain it once was.

After surviving that loss, and of course the horror of childbirthing pain, I felt like there was no longer a pain in the world I couldn't shoulder. In fact, after walking through those embers of hell, I didn't really feel anything at all. I was numb.

So I started seeking out ways to feel. Painful ways to feel. I was a hollow shell of my former self, barren of the most basic human emotions. It was right about then I discovered the tattoo and piercing parlour. My new favourite place to relax. Some chicks dig spas and massages. I happened to find serenity in have a huge pointy needle shoved through my skin so I could bedazzle myself like a cheap pair of jeans.





My third tattoo. And the least painful of the bunch.

It didn't take me long to get past the whole wanting to be poked like a pin cushion. Body modification is intoxicating. Soon I moved onto tattoos. And then another. And then yet another. Each one brought a special mark to my body, a permanency to the fluid emotions swirling around me. Each one was relatively painless.

Which made me want to get another. With my 33 birthday on the horizon, I decided to treat myself to yet another ink spell. Because I have rocks for brains and I enjoy annoying my husband. I'm thoughtful like that.

I sat in that tattoo chair smiling like the stupid rube I am. I was cocky with the belief that this tattoo would be just as easy as all the others.

I was wrong.

Holy mutha of all that is holy!!! Apparently, my grief has receeded and taken my cloak of numbness with it. Picture a rather burly tattoo lady artist with pendulous boobs eyeing my watering eyes suspiciously and asking me every twenty seconds if I wanted to stop and take a break.

I refused to wimp out. I gritted my teeth and nearly died from the hot buzzing needles scratching ink into my tender flesh. Beads of sweat lined my brow like I was running in the desert. I was wishing for a big ole needle to be jammed in my spine to give me drugs, I'll admit it.

I am a pussy.

But I am a pussy with a new tattoo who can once again feel the most basic of human emotions. Pain. Along with a host of other emotions that were once lost to me.

Time really does heal all wounds.

Now if only my damn tattoo would stop itching like crazy.





One Joy Scatters a Hundred Griefs. Words to live by.

Edited to add: The tattoo is on my right forearm. Does this mean my arms look like legs or my legs look like my arms? Hmmm...