So, I signed up for WRT 102 for the third time in my life. Such damned irony. I was at one point going to be an English major and get a PHD and all of these grandiose stupid plans. I was going to be a writer. But my writer’s block always got in the way of the writing aspirations. Because fate has a sarcastic sense of humour.

WRT 102 attempt number one: Fall 1992. I actually aced the class this time. Loved the class. The teacher was, how shall we put it, colorful. She put a very multicultural, anti-colonialist spin on traditional American literature, I recall. I dominated many a heated debate in class. My letter grades were A’s. All was well.

But in order to get credit for the class, she required that our journal be 100% complete and there was, I think, one essay or so that I never quite got off the ground and I turned the thing in anyway. So she gave me an incomplete. and proceeded to go on a two year long sabbatical. I was told I could not get a complete in the class until the instructor provided requirements for changing my status. No one had an answer for what to do since the instructor was unavailable.

I gave up and singed up to retake the class in the Summer Session, but ended up dropping it to take something else, don’t recall my reasoning at the time.

Retook it in earnest in Spring of 1994. Honors level, this time, and again I was doing well. Then got a nasty bout of the flu and was out of school for two weeks straight and ended up dropping most of my classes, including that one. After that, I moved out of the house and out on my own and tried working full time while going to school, but could never quite get the hang of that.

The list of my dropped and incomplete coursework is about 36 credit hours long. I still don’t understand how I can have been so bright and so good at the college courses I actually manged to finish and yet so quick to give up entirely. I have about half of the credits I would need for a philosophy degree wit a minor in humanities, but still need a math, a science and stupid writing 102 to even get an official associate’s degree.

A fine representative of gifted education am I – one of the best educated Community College dropouts you will ever meet.

Now a year and a day after my father died, I am taking the stupid class again and trying to go back to school a tiny bit at a time. Trying to get my money under control, and keep my household managed and my children well parented. Trying to be a force of unification and responsibility at work. But I look at my college transcript online or the years old neglected debts in my mailbox, or my messed up teeth in the bathroom mirror and I wonder what the hell makes me think this time is going to be any different?

I am, by nature, a bit of a fuckup. Everything that I touch I am either effortlessly brilliant at or hopelessly faltering, and with a lot of effort I can pass for normal and average and well balanced, but my nature is that I am uneven. Clever, but sloppy. Well intentioned, but chronically behind schedule. Clumsy and susceptible to bruises and spills and the accidental breaking of things I didn’t quite know how to operate. Maybe I can’t help this and my efforts are heroic. Or maybe I just don’t try hard enough.

And the thing is, it FEELS like I’m trying. It feels like I’m trying so hard. But my Dad would sit me down for a lecture every couple of years about how irresponsible he thought I was. Not out of malice – I really think he thought it would help – but all it ever did was make me feel more helpless and failed. And now he’s gone, so matter if I ever finally graduate or get my affairs in order, so to speak, I suspect he left this world (even though we were on good terms) thinking I could do better and not knowing if I ever would.

And yesterday, on the fucking anniversary of his death, my significant other of 5 years spits out an angry diatribe about how I “always let him down” because I had spazzed a couple of things he had asked me to do for him. Pretty much gave me a lecture that echoed word for word a thousand verbal battles with my father when I was in high school/junior high and early college. And even though I think he was just irritated and prone to exaggeration, I thought to myself “See? I’m just like this. I can’t reliably live with other human beings unless I gave birth to them. ” and since then I’ve been curled up into a ball of exhausted despair.

My kids are gone for the weekend, so it is safe to go catatonic. I can’t talk to L. without bursting into angry tears. My mom wants to meet me for dinner, but I don’t know whether to tell her what a mess I am, although my face is all puffy and red and it’s obvious. Probably 90% of this is hormones and stress, lack of sleep, time delayed grief and simply not having had a weekend to myself in over a month.

The other 10% is seeing my damned transcript in black and white – a testament to my terminal lack of discipline and drive spanning the course of many years. I should be happy – most of my credits still count, some of them over 19 years old.

1)Money is not Random...
No matter how good a year I have, it always comes back to the same anemic money situation from about mid November to about a week before Christmas. Seriously, if I am doing well at the time, I will end up needing car parts or getting a traffic ticket or something just as a sort of Karmic great equalizer effect. I often get sick around the same time also. Not sure what my particular psychic baggage is with this time of year. Anyway, the point of it all is that just because I can't always control the tides of fortune, doesn't mean I can't be aware of them as they roll in. I think I have a grasp on this finally (she says with about $80 left in a $150 budget for the week...and it's only Sunday...)

2) Sometimes you just have to stay up until the dawn...
Every year my friend Jesse throws a party the day after Thanksgiving, and there is a bonfire and turkey chili and scotch and at about midnight the guitars get plugged in and the drum set set up and we play and sing until the sun comes up. I was having a really run down, stressed out, crappy week and didn't think I'd make it all night this year. But I did. And it was worth it.

3) My kids kicked ass at their piano recital. Sarahcorbid was very possessed and elegant and Maggiecorbid seemed to forget that people were watching her and just poured her heart into it.

4) I am lazy and did not make it to the grocery store yet this weekend but magically remembered I had half a box of potato pancake mix in the pantry, so we feasted this morning in spite of it all.

5)The Clash,X,& Flaming Lips on webradio this morning (thecurrent.org) to make me lighthearted enough to persist against the rising tide of backed up housework.

6)We put up our Christmas tree yesterday - it's a 2 foot tall fake that we have placed on top of the TV cabinet where curious dogs cannot reach. Bonus points because it is easy to decorate and the perfect size for a short and therefore inexpensive strand of twinkly white lights. It only took one box of cherry flavored rainbow candy canes to cover it. It's Yuletide, Baby!

7)Just finished listening to "The Graveyard Book" in the car with Sarahcorbid - it's been a nice morning drive to school ritual for a couple of weeks. We'll totally do another audiobook after this one.

8)Gradually am adjusting to all the damned vitamins and bottles of V-8 I now have to ingest on a daily basis in order to keep my electrolytes in check. No longer think I'm in danger of imminent death. Still feel less than perfect, but we're progressing in this area.

9)Have figured out once and for all that my real creative calling in life is in editing, producing, promoting or enhacing other people's ideas. You never really think about that as a talent, but it's one that I have and have downplayed. And there's a vast untapped niche for low rent PR help, the economy being what it is...

10)My girls are doing chores and not loudly bitching about it. And I didn't even have to really bribe them - I'm just splitting up the day into 30 minute chore blocks alternated with 30 minute free time blocks. Somehow it seems less punitive that way...

Haven't posted much recently. Low energy mainly has caused me to lurk and be generally low outut. Apparently there was an internal cause that I missed - for all this. Low calcium (dangerously low) and then low potassium. Ended up in the hospital - same one I spent my 16th summer in (PTSD Details to be hashed out later) and barely avoided a heart attack or coma. Must take better care of myself, obviously. Want to be alive and productive and all that shite...Finally have internet at the hospital - yay! Want out of here ASAP! Vibes for calcium levels are cordially requested

Love a very pale and weary but determined Corbid.

I wake on a Sunday and my small children brag about how many bowls of cereal they can eat in one sitting. Apple Jacks. We went to the regular grocery store for a change, instead of the socially responsible grocery store. My vehicle is out of commission and beggars can’t be choosers.

Listening to Rasputina on Rhapsody and wishing I had more money. I have been coveting a $399 Dell Mini “Hackintosh” netbook that keeps popping up on eBay - like I’m not using enough operating systems as it is. I am a Geek of all trades, master of none, and a fickle one at that.

Egg salad on rye toast with licorice tea for my breakfast. Reading “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.” Finally getting around to watching “Heroes” on Netflix.

Maybe going to see Ian Svenonius’s new band “Chain and the Gang” on Wednesday, if I can hitch a ride with someone or other. I love the crap out of Ian Svenonius. Saw his last band “Weird War” a couple years back at Solar Culture and no one would go with me, therefore none but I witnessed the amazingness that was a Weird War live show. One of the best Tucson live music experiences I’ve had of the last few years, I shite you not.

I realize that all of this was very very boring, but I have to get back in the habit of writing before by brain dries up in my ripe Gen X old age. I can’t afford, like, basic transportation expenses, but somehow have stumbled into all of this technology on the cheap. I am spoiled by secondhand capitalism. Grateful, but spoiled and tethered to the house like one of the Lotophagi from the Odyssey. I need to get out and live a little before my skeleton completely fails on me and my taste atrophies from neglect.

Turned 36 last week and feeling very stagnant and uncreative and restless. Time to turn that feeling into openness and creativity and righteous holy anger.

...am mentally doing well, I think, but am still experieincing a really visceral, physical sense of depression. I am just leaden footed and unmotivated. Normality has fled with reason still present but on the verge of packing its metaphorical bags for a long vacation. I didn't call my mom for the first time in 10 days. My laundry and dishes situation is becoming ridiculous. I am not "doing just fine" after all. Maybe. Fuck.

I'm gonna C-I-L-L. My. Sister.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/107281.php

My dad passed away yesterday afternoon at about 2 o'clock of cardiac arrest due to complications of diabetes.

It was sort of unexpectedly expected. We knew it was a looming possibility but not an immediate or inevitable certainty. It took me by surprise, but not shock.

In the car ride on the way over, I didn't know yet if he had died or if he would live. I couldn't fully simultaneously contemplate the dual possibilities . So I just drove.

It's been a long time and no posts, I realize, but...Merry Christmas and assortedly related holidays to all the mamas!!

Here's 5 anyway:

Had a decent thanksgiving in spite of boycorbid having to go to a seperate family dinner than mine and me wanting to strangle my sister for just being who she is...restraint it is a virtue.

Had a a great time at my buddy's annual "day after" bonfire party. There was a bit of beer involved and drunken harmonizing of Concrete Blonde songs. It was lovely.

Successfully installed Ubuntu linux on my laptop and am now surfing wirelessly in true open source rebel spirit - Ubergeek girls must travel in style.

...it's never worth the effort to second guess what people may be thinking of you. The sort of people who will do that don't deserve you to care what they are thinking of you.

Long story which I may tell another day...

I've been wrestling with a dirty kitchen for the past 3 weeks or so and the kitchen has been winning...but tonight I kicked it's ass! Clean dishes, clean floor , trash taken out, clutter uncluttered, groceries put away, TWO pots of homemade soup/stew in the fridge for emergency eating purposes. I feel like I have slain a particularly noxious dragon. Just wanted to share that...

1)Listening to our local "pirate" radio station run by baby Anarchists:freeradiochukshon.org

2)Breakfast is hostess cupcakes and mexican dark coffee with cream on the porch with candles and incense and the Sunday paper. Dishes can wait...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUba4aq8imk&fmt=18

May all hipmamas vote with our hearts and our guts and may we win and win decisively and may all your pet causes and most deserving local politicians be proven worthy in this election. Merry Voting Day. Love Corbid.

I have to say I am offended at John McCain's attempts to use his VP pick as a basis to court the "autism vote" throughout the debate tonight.

My very bright but autistic child needs healthcare and educational opportunities and a brighter economic future, not just sympathy. Do not insult me by courting me as part of a demographic but failing to address the actual needs of that demographic.

How are you going to help children with autism? By nominating a woman with an autistic niece? Well, if that's your plan you have still not answered my question.

1)Ambition has finally returned to me...woke up at a decent hour and managed to get the dishes done while listening to NPR and waiting for my breakfast to be done.

2)Ambition part II: Volunteered to man a voter registration table this afternoon downtown. I get to do my part for the cause and people watch at the same time.

3)Breakfast:Roasted yukon gold potatoes with hatch chiles, red onion, garlic, cilantro and tomato. Plus fresh ground "super dark" coffee with cream.

4)Morning Songbird Soundtrack: A mix of old school punk, alt country and the new Amanda Palmer CD.

Inarticulation has reached critical mass. I have always been so good at holding things together even when I don't hold things together. Pathologically even tempered. Lately though I feel like I am on 24 hour permanent on call status for everyone. I have so much I am responsible for everywhere that I cannot get anything done anywhere. I have reached the proverbial breaking point. One thing on the pile too many. I am a raw and aching nerve. I am irrationally, inexpressably angry and anxious and unable to cope. I know a lot of this is hormone related.

1) The non-verbal autistic boy and his mama who were dancing in the produce aisle at Trader Joe's yesterday. He was grunting and smiling and flapping his arms and she was smiling and happy for him, not embarrassed or apologetic at all. I heart them.

2) I dreamt that I saw Neko Case at the Rialto theater and met her before the show. In my dream she gave me three joints rolled in purple paper, though in real life I don't partake of the ganja, nor as far as I know does Neko Case. Wonder what that means???

3)Got to sleep in due to my half-day. That was nice.

Here's what bites for me this week. What sucks for you? It feels good to write it down and wish it all better...

*SO is currently unemployed as the company he was working for finally went all the way bankrupt. It was not unanticipated,and we are not yet suffering financially, but it still sucks ass.

*My dad just had his left leg amputated below the knee due to diabetes complications. Again, forseen, but not enjoyable.

1) Sunday Soundtrack: Devotchka & Calexico
2) It rained, it was a deluge, therefore cool enough to bake.
3) Baked a yellow cake with cherry frosting and a blueberry muffin ring.
4) Popped some baby back ribs in Yukon gold fires in while the oven was still hot.
5) Ooh, and made iced blueberry white tea this morning.
6) Clean kitchen and living room.
7) Made it out to a playgroup in the park yesterday with some other moms of autistic kids. Maggie like being the sage older kid instead of the socially awkward one for a change. Still didn't talk much, though.

1)My DD's "no boy's allowed club" rules which she posted on the wall at her day camp: Rule number 6 was "This is a sixth rule that is written in pencil instead of black marker. It is for the rule of no talking to boys and ignoring them if they talk to you."

2)Trader Joe's frozen strawberry shortcake, which is criminally priced for how tiny the box is, but is really a dmaned fine dessert nonetheless.

3)A half-dozen episodes of Corner Gas on the DVR - I love this show, maybe just cause half my family's Canadian.

My tax refund and "stimulus" check came at the beginning of the summer: just in time to pay a $350 photo radar ticket, the $50 traffic school fee that accompanied it, the $1200 cost of my share of summer day camp,$600 for a "new" used car when my old one gave up the ghost, and a small contribution to the generally increased cost of living. The money has now officially run out.

1)Arranging to donate my ex-car to Habitat For Humanity. Was going to sell it but then it wouldn't start. Then I was going to fix it and sell it, but someone shattered the window. Fuck it, I will donate it and hope it will do some good.

2)Donating some excess furniture as well via Freecycle and whatever is left is going to whichever local charity answers its emails. I will get my porch back, yay!

I must confess, I've been lurking much of late as well. Mostly I read HM at work in between assorted work duties and don't have the time or energy to complete my half written posts and replies whence at home due to constant interruptions of of the "responsible grown up" kind.

In the interest of everyone who is in a similar boat, here comes a plethora of "having time for yourself" vibes!!!

Anyone want to join me? Vibes to all the mutlitasking mamas!!!