Sirens November 15, 2008

It’s sometime after midnight. I hear the siren coming. It’s on the main road and I think to myself, “please don’t turn onto my street”.  “Please don’t turn onto my street”.  I hold my breath. Damn it, it turned, it’s passing my building now.  I jump out of bed, throw my sweats on and go outside to see where the fire truck went.

I have always been afraid of sirens.  For as long as I can remember.  I was always convinced that someone I knew was in trouble. And for the longest time I couldn’t figure out why.  I was in my early twenties talking to my mom about it when she told me a story about something that had happened when I was little.  My mom, brother and I were out one afternoon.  I’m not sure how old I was, probably somewhere between 4 and 6.  We pulled up to the house as a fire truck was pulling up to our house.  Apparently my dad had been drinking by the pool and passed out and none of his friends could wake him up so they called 911.  He was fine and spent many more afternoons drinking.  Anyway, even though I don’t remember this happening, maybe I internalized the sound of the siren.  It’s a good theory anyway.

But have I always jumped out of bed when a fire truck goes by my house? No… of course not.  But in July of this year, as I was leaving for work, a fire truck and ambulance went tearing down the street. My uncle lives a block and a half away so I just took a quick peak down the street.  The fire truck did stop down by his place, but it didn’t look like it was right out front of his place.  I knew that if it had been for him that his partner or someone else would have called me.  So I took a deep breath, calmed down and went to work.

Four hours later I got a call from my mom.  Yes, the fire truck and ambulance HAD been for my uncle, but his partner hadn’t bothered to call anyone for hours.  She hadn’t even bothered to go to the hospital with him. And then she called my Aunt up in Idaho. What the hell? I was livid. So, long story short, I got up to the hospital, found out what was going on and took care of things.  He is ok now.  He had gotten dizzy and had fallen down.  They weren’t sure at first what had happened, they thought maybe stroke, but as it turned out he had started taking some new medication and it was reacting badly with a different medication he was taking.

But my uncle is old. And he’s not walking so well.  His memory is starting to go a bit and I worry about him.  And every time I hear those sirens I think, “please don’t let it be him”. It’s really starting to fray my nerves.  So instead of sleeping, I am sitting here writing in my blog, hoping that it will help me to calm down enough to go back to sleep.

It was bad enough when the sound of the sirens made me feel anxious.  But now I have a real reason to worry when they turn down my street.

So, people of my small town, please don’t have any more emergencies tonight.  I need to sleep.

Yes on Prop 8… Are you serious? November 8, 2008

I must live in an alternate universe or something.  Well, the Bay Area is different than most places, but come on…. Proposition 8 passed? Holy hell… in my own little world I didn’t think Prop 8 would even be a close race, much less that it would actually pass.

And the reasons I’ve heard for people voting “yes”.

“God meant for marriage to be between a man and woman”. Oh, is that so? Wasn’t “God” used as a reason for not allowing inter racial marriage? God put people of different colors on different continents… so they shouldn’t marry.  Or how many “God” reasons were given for women not voting? And by the same token, if it had been abortion on the ballet… would we have repealed a woman’s right to choose? Now don’t get me wrong… if within your religion you want to say marriage has to be between a man and woman, that is your right and I don’t have a problem with that.  I think it’s short sighted and narrow minded… but that is your choice.  But don’t make your religious beliefs take away the legal rights of others.  Why would someone that believes in God’s love want to take away two human beings right to declare their love for each other and their commitment to that? Anyway… I digress, that is not really the issue.  I guess the point for me here is, isn’t one of the cornerstones of the American dream the separation of church and state? I’m just wondering if people really believe that anymore… doesn’t seem that way based on the passage of Prop 8…

And then there are those that don’t want their kids to be taught about gay marriage in school.  What? You think they aren’t going to learn about it outside of school? And better yet… the example of the teacher that took her/his (don’t remember the gender) students on a field trip to a gay commitment ceremony/marriage. To those of you that don’t want this to happen and think taking people’s rights away is the answer, let me ask you this: How many field trips have your children gone on that you didn’t know EXACTLY where they were going? And how many field trips did you NOT have to sign a permission slip? Ohhhh and how many field trips did you NOT have the right to say, “I don’t want my children to go on that field trip”?  You’re really gonna take people’s rights away over a fear of a field trip? What a cop out!

I don’t usually share my political beliefs with people.  My beliefs and choices are mine and I don’t feel like it’s any of your business what they are.  Thank God I live in a country where that is an option… just like it’s an option for those of you that do like to debate your beliefs.  But this issue really gets to me. Just because someone’s beliefs are different than yours, it doesn’t make them wrong or illegal. Should gay marriage even be something we are debating in the legal/governmental realm? I am just shocked that our culture is still so narrow minded.

It makes me really sad.

To My Twitter Friends October 3, 2008

Where to begin? As many of you know, last month I went quiet on Twitter.  I needed some time to figure out what I wanted to do with my relationship and needed the break.  And this week I decided I needed to say goodbye to Twitter and deleted my account.  But I didn’t want to be one of those people that just disappeared without a goodbye.  

 

Over the last year and a half, Twitter has been a very important part of my life. Sometimes, I think too important.  I think I’ve been allowing my online life to eclipse my real life.  Over the last week or so, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what I want in my life and what I have or have not been doing to make those things a reality.

 

My health.  A few years ago I had gastric bypass surgery and lost 125 pounds.  In the last year and a half I’ve gained about 35 to 40 of those pounds back.  That is so incredibly scary to me. I worked so hard to get healthy and I have let myself slide back further than I ever thought I could.  I need to focus on getting healthy again, which for me means less computer time and more working on myself time.  

 

And my relationship. I have done a lot of soul searching and a lot of talking with my man about where our relationship is headed.  I have done a lot to make my relationship with him work… but I’ve also done some things to keep him at arms length.  It’s been hard for me to take a step back and acknowledge that.  In some ways I feel like I’ve been like my 11 year old daughter.  She is constantly telling me, “Mom, if you let me do this then I will do my homework, be good, clean my room, etc”. And I am constantly telling her she needs to do all of that stuff first and THEN she will get the rewards.  As I look back at some of the road blocks in my relationship, I’ve seen the same pattern, “if you do this or say that, then I will do the things I know need to happen to make this relationship work”.  That’s not really the way it works, is it?  I want my relationship to work.  I want my relationship to be more about the real world than the virtual world.

 

And my daughter. She is 11 and I don’t have a lot of time left to spend with her before she ends up running off with her friends with barely a backwards glance at me!  Such is the normal part of growing up.  But there have been too many times she has asked me to play a game, listen to her story or go out for a walk and I’ve said, “just a second” because I was too involved in what has been going on online.  And before I knew it, an hour or more had gone by and we’d lost that time.  I hate that. I hate being honest and saying that the online stuff became that important to me.

 

The hard part is that my Twitter friends are real to me.  And I already miss so many of you.  I miss seeing you every day and hearing what you all are doing.  I tried just being quiet on Twitter and not saying anything, but that was just so hard for me.  Twitter was still something that was taking up more time than I wanted it to, even without engaging in conversations.  So, to get healthy, make my relationship work, spend more time with my kid and many other things, I am saying goodbye to Twitter.  It’s just what I need to do.

 

So, goodbye my Twitter friends.  I hope to hear from some of you.  An occasional email would make me so happy! J If you’re interested in keeping up, I’ll be blogging every now and again… come back and see what I’ve been up to! And who knows what the future holds? Maybe someday I’ll be able to be the person I want and spend time on Twitter.  

 

@WigglyLisa out

Choices August 22, 2008

Most of the time I do my “writing” late at night in bed.  The thing is, I don’t usually write it down.  🙂 It’s mostly just in my head.  By the time I wake up, it’s just an impression and the actual words are gone.  I do some of my best writing that way. Needless to say, that’s why I don’t write as much as I would like in my blog.  But, a couple of weeks ago I had words swirling in my head and I needed to write them down.  So I actually got a pen and paper and wrote.  Not anything long or super profound, but it meant something to me in the moment.  But I wasn’t ready to share the words… I needed to hold them close to me for awhile and just feel them.  I guess I’m ready to share them now.  This is what came to me on a night I was feeling a little lost and alone.

CHOICES

I chose to make you a priority…
but I was somewhere down on your list

I chose to let you in and see straight to my soul…
but you’ve kept me at arms length

I chose to be there for you when your world got crazy…
but I didn’t get the same in return

I have no doubt that I love you

I have no doubt that you love me too

But our love together has been sorely tested

The things we have said to each other lately – I’m not proud of a lot of my contributions

I don’t know where to go from here.  I need more than “I love you” to keep holding on.

Slap Slap June 16, 2008

Is no one gonna tell me to stop feeling sorry for myself and get on with it? Ughhhhh! Read my last post and rolled my eyes at myself! Needless to say, I was having a “poor me” moment.

Truth be told… I have the best friends any woman could ever ask for.  Yeah, my family is going through some “stuff” right now and things have been crazy… My man has a lot going on his life right now too and can’t always give me 100% of his time and attention, but I really do have wonderful friends that make me feel special all of the time! My online friends, my RL friends and even my online friends that are now RL friends… I am a lucky girl.

And I still can’t believe that none of these awesome friends didn’t *smack* me upside the head. Sheeeeeshhhh…

What Do You Want For Your Birthday? June 15, 2008

My birthday is a week away and everyone keeps asking me, “What do you want for your birthday?”. The thing is… I don’t really want any “thing” for my birthday. How do you tell people all you want is to feel special, to feel like number one without having to ask for it? I want to feel like I’m worth the effort… as a Mom, as a Sister, as a Daughter, as a Friend and as a Girlfriend. Even as I read that I know it sounds so very selfish and self centered. I want to be the most important… at least for a day.

The thing is… I used to make people make me special on my birthday. I didn’t give them a choice! (laughing at myself here!). June 1st would roll around and I’d start proclaiming Lisa’s Birthday month has begun! I would leave no doubt in people’s minds that it was my time of the year and I needed them to celebrate it. But then I hit my 30s and I was a mom and I started to feel like I was pushing too hard. It didn’t feel quite as special when you were telling people they had to celebrate your birthday. So, for the last…. hmmmm… more years than I’d like it to have been since I turned 30…. I have been playing it more low key.

As I sit here feeling sorry for myself, I think back over the last few years and realize that my kid has definitely caught the birthday bug and she tries to make it special for me. And it’s so sweet and makes me smile. So I get to feel special as a Mom. Last year she organized a “surprise” dinner for me. It was very cute.

And this year, for the first time since I was pregnant with my kid (she’s gonna be 12 this year!), I have a someone special in my life. And of course a week out from my birthday things are rough between us. I’m not sure he’ll even remember my birthday. Much less have the ability or desire to make me the most special thing in the world. I guess we just wait and see on that one.

My birthday is on a Saturday this year. You wait and wait and wait for your birthday (for those of us who actually like birthdays… I know some of you could care less about your birthday) to fall on a Saturday. What a great day to celebrate and have a good time. Know what I have planned? Nothing. Wait… that’s not true. I am going to be spending the day doing laundry and getting my kid ready to go to her grandma’s the next morning. I will have a nice dinner out with my girl though. Our last night out before she is gone for a few weeks.

What do I want for my birthday?
Get over myself
Be happy for what I have
Maybe I’m just PMSing or something this year!

Goodbyes May 1, 2008

I’ve never been good at saying good bye. Even when I was a kid… I remember going to visit my cousins and when it was time to go home, I would bawl my eyes out when it was time to say goodbye. And now, even a phone call or an IM session… I hate endings.

What is it with goodbye that is so hard for me? I think when I am in a moment, I don’t want to let it go. When I feel connected to someone I am at my happiest. Even a small connection. I am a very emotional person and I wonder if maybe I attach too much emotion to goodbyes.

Imagine a girl (ok, so I’m past my girlhood here, that’s besides the point! :p) who sometimes almost cries when hanging up the phone with a friend. See the mom who gets teary saying goodnight to her baby goose when she spends the night away from home. Can you see the woman who is hugging her friend goodbye at the airport? Just thinking of these goodbyes makes me cry.

Tell me, how is this girl suppose to handle the big goodbyes? I can’t even type about the biggest goodbye of my life… when I had to say goodbye to my Dad. I had to do that one after he was already gone and well… I don’t want to go into that one.

And what about the emotional goodbyes? The end of a relationship? How do people say goodbye and then just go on as if nothing happened? How do people say “I love you”, but I need to leave you? How do you say goodbye? Why don’t you fight? I want to be able to say goodbye and just move on. I don’t want to feel paralyzed.

I’m not sure where this post was supposed to go. I just have goodbyes on the brain, I guess. Last night I got one of the hardest goodbyes I’ve ever gotten. Never mind that the goodbye alone really hurt, but it was so full of anger and malice. I’m not sure how to make my heart say goodbye on that one.

Even when I write, I don’t like to say goodbye…. So, maybe this time, I’ll just say, “see you next time”.

First Sunday Blog Post – Twitter Backgrounds April 21, 2008

Awhile ago my Baby Twin said I should commit to writing in my blog at least once a week. I agreed with her and decided to write at least once a week on Sundays. That was a couple of months ago. So today I decided to finally start my at least once a week Sunday blog =)

Now, what to write about? Well… the last few weeks have been pretty tough for me. But I don’t really want to get into all of that. My last post was about that and I don’t want to only write about the sad things. So, what I will tell you about and show you is what I’ve been doing to try and keep myself busy…

I love to be creative on the computer. I’m not good at sewing or painting or drawing, but I can play and get creative on my computer! 🙂 One of the things I like to get creative with is my Twitter background. It all started with the color wars on Twitter… I belong to the Pussy Pink team and I’m damn proud of it! But I didn’t have any pink background so I went looking for one. And I found this:

But take a look at the tile all the way on the right, second row down… What the HELL is that!?!?! LMAO! My good friend from Twitter @darkgracie fixed that for me:

She fixed it so I didn’t have the scary pink thing anymore! And then I thought, “hey, I can do that… I can make my own”. So, as I was feeling kind of “down”… I started with a grey theme:

For a first time, it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t like that it was so long and so I thought I’d add some squares to make it more square. I needed to keep busy so I started pulling different images from the web based on some color themes:

PURPLE THINGS – this is the one I currently have on my Twitter page:

And then I did a few more colors just to keep busy:

TEAL THINGS:

Then I was talking to my Baby Twin and since I knew she liked pink, I decided to find pink things that made me think of her.

PINK THINGS for KARRIE

And the whole time I was working on these things, my Goose was lurking in the background and she asked me to do an Orange version for her. And on a side note here, I must say THANK YOU to the lovely @JeannieGrrl for helping me find the Orange clarinet! 🙂

ORANGE THINGS FOR GOOSE

While I was talking to Jean about making my collages, I learned that her favorite color is purple and she likes, no loves, Hello Kitty… Can you guess what I did next? 🙂

PURPLE HELLO KITTY:

And the one person in the world that heals my heart always is my @IBTerri. So as I was trying to find ways to heal, of course she came to mind. Another Pink friend! 🙂 But she loves loves loves Mickey… so this one was for her:

PINK MICKEYS

Those are the ones that I have finished so far. I’ve got some other ones that I’ve started. I’ve got a martini page… a cracked/flaming heart page… a green page…a black and white fairies page. Just a few that I have started, but haven’t finished yet. Also, I have some backgrounds that I did prior to my current project. I have a few with my Second Life avi, Coconut Jewell and I have one that I did with all of the avis of my Twitter friends.

If you have anything you’d like me to do, let me know. I could use the distraction! Sometimes it’s a challenge trying to find enough photos to fill the whole grid.

Oh yeah… one other thing. All of my backgrounds have something in common (except the grey one)… Can you figure out what it is? It has to do with a common theme on Twitter.

Ok kids… that’s it for my first Sunday post. Sorry it’s so long, but hopefully you had fun looking through the backgrounds

Until next time… Wiggly One signing off!

She Knows April 16, 2008

She Thought

She thought he was the one

After all this time… the one she thought she’d never find

She thought he understood her

Understood her heart

She thought he was the one to love her

Despite how difficult she knew she could be

She thought that he wanted her for who she was

With all of her emotional bagage

She thought he would never let her go

Hold her through all of her self doubts

She was wrong

She Knows

She knows he is not the one

There is no one for her to find

She knows he doesn’t understand her

Her heart is too complicated

She knows he’s not the one to love her

Even as her heart screams that it can’t be true

She knows she can’t be loved for who she is

Her baggage is too heavy

She knows he’s let her go

She was right to have self doubt

She was right… she will be alone

#1006 October 6, 2007

Today is a day I almost made a huge mistake. But all is right in my world and things have turned out the way they are suppose to. I don’t think I would have liked myself very much had things happened the way they were planned.

But then why do I feel such a sense of loss today? Why the tears over the what ifs? I didn’t think today would be this hard for me. Maybe it’s just left over hurt from the way things happened. Maybe I just need to get through this day and it’ll all be over.

There will always be times in our lives when there are things we want that we just can’t have. But to have those things dangled in front of us and then taken away… well… that’s tough.

So now… I take a deep breath and move on. Trying not to dwell on the what ifs.