Courage to the sticking place...

Two weeks ago I nearly sold my soul to a devil disguised as a fairly
goodlooking boy with mediocre intellect and a booming personality.
Now, in my wine and "healthy" cigarette inspired clarity, I head to
the brewpub with my chin up, my tanned bosom heaving, and the resolve
to move on.

The children are tucked into their respective beds, except Mackenzie,
who is tucked into aspens respective bed, reading Nancy drew aloud to
the six year old, which ensures that my six year old will be awake
when I get home and no one will be sharing my bed with me except her.
And maybe truck. And the very bad cat. Who is very frazzled after
Halle took her on a bike ride earlier.

Yes. I've got a feeling (woohoo) that tonight is going to be a good
night. That tonight is going to be a good good night...

Sent from my iPhone

end of days

Tonight my ten year old asked me why so many people think the world will end in 2012. I said I don't know. I said that pretty much everybody in their lifetime has wondered when this big thing we call life will come crashing down and end, if it will be in their lifetime, or their children. For some it causes panic; others run to their respective gods for solace and hope that even at the end, it will go on. There is something appealing to me about the end. An end. Any end. Just quietness and sanctuary in a dark eternity. cool and restful. Feeding the earth as she once fed me. I look forward to that. I believe that any god that is must provide this type of relief when we are gone. I can only hope. But for Natalee, I told her that I don't know. That the people that wrote the bible had one idea, the ancient Mayans another, but mostly, when a civilization gets too comfortable, we start waiting for the other shoe to drop. When we quit pioneering, pushing ahead, forging new paths and making new ways, we start to look for an easy way out. Apocalypto.  No, I haven't even seen that movie, but I think I will. If I can ever find my netflix copy of "The Outlaw Jesse James" and return it. It must be squirreled away with all of my EMS training records somewhere, safe from any chance of discovery, holding both my netflix queue and my recertification hostage. Some sort of apocalypse sounds kind of exciting. At least I wouldn't have to pay off my ridiculous credit cards.

But all of that doomsday stuff started making me circle the drain. The (organic of course) wine I drank didn't help, but seriously. What is the point? I am trying to rationalize to myself that of course the kids that are fighting both on the floor above me and the floor below me, really aren't being that bad, they're just being kids, but instead these ominous thoughts of absolute failure as a parent swirl in my brain and between bouts of yelling threats up or down some random stairway, I cry quietly to myself and pray to a god that I hope exists that he will keep them from killing each other. Keep me from killing them, And keep them from turning out to be such a wretch as I.

what it's all about.

cleaning bedrooms, eating tacos and listening to TAB. makes the world go 'round.

2.12.2010

Have you ever been drinking a yoplait, and you are down to the dregs, and as you sit there with your head tilted back like a crest 360 commercial you realize that you can see your top lip inside the yogurt container, reaching, beckoning expectantly for the last chunk of cherry goodness? Or am I just weird? I just finished a can of campbells chicken noodle and am sneakingly suspicious that it was laced with speed. Or maybe it's the sudafed that I took, finally kicking in.

They all say I should write. They, who probably don't have any more time to listen to me verbally defecate all over them than I do to commit the atrocity, if for ten minutes I found out I wasn't emotionally constipated anyway. Maybe it's all of the Canadian radio I listen to. Maybe it's that I found out that Jodi slept with Colin while he was dating some girl from the food court and I am dying for the details. Maybe it's that I am paradoxically in love with a boy who can't seem to resist battering me verbally, but is so endearing in his own right and really just needs a hug. Maybe it's that I am simultaneously proud and enamored of my kids, winning awards for reading comprehension levels of 1543 wcpm (whatever that is) and best smiler in the class, while I am mind-bogglingly frustrated at them and the inescapable reality of their ever evolving femininity.

On a thousand levels I am so content and settled and happy, and really can't even imagine moving again. Anywhere. Unless somehow my house burned down and I only had to put the kids, dog, cat and my four pairs of liv jeans into the tahoe and start over. (Obviously the jeans were saved from the fire right after the kids and dog, but before the cat) But at the same time, I have the sense that we are not "there"yet. We haven't arrived, we (being me and my 6 appendages, jeans excluded) are not home yet, and we are missing something. Or missing out on something. And yet I am not afraid to find out what it is we are missing and chase it down, wrestle it to the ground, and beat it into submission.

Excuse me, Ms. Degeneres...

so here I am, contemplating the cosmos and wondering what I would have to do to get Ellen to notice me. Most assuredly if she noticed me she would take pity on my plight and she would want to help me out of the mire I have faithfully stomped my way into. Or  maybe she would notice the "designer"jeans that I wear, and the wine in my cupboard, and obviously anyone who can afford such luxuries, and live in a house as amazing as the one that I can't afford the rent for, doesn't need her help.

god. (I say that as a prayer, a cry for help, not a curse, right?) I really feel desperate for help. Some kind of help, any kind of help. Maybe I need a nanny. Or a cook. I definitely need more painkillers. Or not. looking at the numbers, my life makes no sense. So I look for a plan. A Money Management Plan. A way to see my way clear to quit flushing money down the toilet on 22% interest rates (side note: got a cheerful email from one of my credit cards announcing merrily that I have now been promoted to a 27% interest rate. yes, that one is maxed out too.) and overdraft fees and overlimit charges. But just as soon as the first little chunk of available funds begins to surface, my car battery dies. Or my dog has to go to the vet. Or Halle needs baseball pants. Or I get online and order a pair of jeans. Because then I feel ok again, like I am rich and like I don't HAVE to live out of a thrift store, when really, that is exactly what I should be doing. In fact, I shouldn't even be doing that. I should be selling the stuff I have, generating more income. In my spare time, when I am not writing Recreation Inclusion Plans and Spanish Composicïons, or making dinner out of left overs, or breaking up a knock down drag out between three of the girls... I should be selling. I really should. Instead, I will leave it all behind and go to a G. Love and Special Sauce concert, spending money  I obviously shouldn't (thank you, cousin Hannah) on the ticket, the gas, and the drinks that I am certain to consume. But I will feel better. I will feel like life is actually ok, even worth living. That it isn't all about drudging through the drudgeries. But the guilt is still there. The good news is that it has replaced the guilt of things that I shouldn't have been guilty about. Things like having a messy bedroom. Yes, that used to haunt me. My messy room. Or undone dishes. Thank you Mrs. Melzer, for intensifying the complex that my mother gave me. There have to be some good reasons to get up in the morning. Hot coffee, good jeans, food that tastes good, and the occasional concert. These things are imperative. I know that many of you see me as irresponsible and self-indulgent, but if the things that I can't afford are the alternative to the prozac that was putting my body into complete physical debt, then I think I would rather have the external debt. I don't really care if I owe Chase Manhattan thousands of dollars. I have to live with my body. Every day. For the rest of my life.

ok. so I figured it out. this back thing, which, after getting
radiologist results, is muscular (the muscle contraction and
inflammation is pulling my spine out), is all related to the
adenomyosis. (boys plug your ears) The last time my back was "out" would've been during
ovulation, and now it's during my cycle.(clear) If adenomyosis is even
somewhat related to pesticide intake, then organics is a huge key for me. and
if it has effected me this much, it is crucial for my kids. so I want
to clear out all of the non-organics in my house and start all over.
but so much money. it's overwhelming. I have wiped out my food stamps
just trying to buy enough organics to get me through the week... and
they're so inaccessible here. I should have moved to Lopez. But then I
think what about ibuprofen and codeine, and all of the other chemicals
we are intaking, and wonder if I am just making myself worse with
every dose. But today, the pain is so unreal that I want to take
everything. and lots of it. what a dilemma. and a nightmare. I guess
baby steps is how you start. It doesn't help that it feels like the girls are being bad. But
I am trying hard to weigh how bad they're really being with how much
pain I am in and just want them to not be kids and to go away. It
sucks. It sucks even worse for them I am sure. I feel horrible. But I
take solace in the fact that in a few days I will have either bled to
death, or at least be through a hormonal roll that is instigating the
misery. So that's my epiphany. I am going to move somewhere without
pesticides and chemicals, where there are cute single boys. after lent
of course, since I have given up boys for lent. Maybe.

Been there, Done that, got the t-shirt, and you can have it (the t-shirt, I mean), Monica Bielanko.

If we're discussing full-disclosure financial statuses, boy have I got some dirty laundry to air. I have been lying awake at night imagining how the fall out will look. Will I be evicted from the house because I couldn't come up with my rent first? Or will that come after the repossession of the used Tahoe that I obviosuly couldn't afford in the first place. Will I make just enough money that we won't qualify for foodstamps, right at the moment that the father of my children loses his job and I suddenly am back to absolutely NO child support, not even the meager offerings that have been trickling in? Even after I sell my entire psuedo designer wardrobe on ebay, quit buying even cheap wine (I love you, Our Daily Red),  and return to bumming the occasional cigarette that I don't finish instead of buying a whole pack to get stale while I spend my sober moments staring at them and remembering that I don't even like to smoke, even then, I can't imagine how we can avoid being homeless, carless and running from the collectors that I am friends with on a first name basis now.

This is how bad it is, but it has been worse. It has been worse to the extent that in a preemptive move to avoid eviction, single mother me and my four gloriously entertaining daughters and obese hound moved in with my parents. It made sense. It was the right and logical thing to do. And it was just a couple months. Just til the girls were out of school and I got a fire dispatch that could get me back on my feet and pay rent somewhere. Anywhere. A fire dispatch that never came. The months of cohabitation rolled by, with some ethereal hand of grace over them. Blowups were at a lifetime low when they should have climaxed as the rolling ball of chaos that is me and my life collided with perfect structure and harmony and a fierce grip on tradition and order that was my mom. The whole thing went well, overall, really, other than the fact that I never had a fire, or job, or a life. I had facebook. I had truck the dog. But then I realized that facebook was just a flood of familial farmtown updates so I decided, unwisely, to "unfriend" most of my family members. Including the ones I was living with. All hell broke loose. I had suddenly become the jagged blade of soul destruction to my mother, my sister, my cousins and aunt, who incidentally didn't remember we were friends on facebook until someone told them that I had unfriended them. I just wanted a quiet little virtual world of my own. A place to have friends that I was not related to, where I could use cuss words and not get the cold shoulder for a week. As it happened, facebook suddenly became as quiet as the dinner table every night while my family nursed their broken hearts and I wallowed in my vileness. And that's when I discovered that I actually didn't have a life. Other than that family. I didn't have the friends I fantasized about, friends that I could cuss at. They were as far away in cyberspace as they were in real life. They had lives. People, places to go. Jobs. Jobs? What the hell is that? Who works anymore? So I closed my facebook account. For about 15 minutes. Then I got bored. How the hell did I get so far off track? I was talking about finances and here I am rambling on about the bain of facebook. Dammit.

Back to finances. Moving in with mom and dad didn't help much, since the income that wasn't paying the bills became the non-existant income that meant I was living on credit cards with exorbitant interest rates whenever I was too proud to simply ask mom and dad for money. When the credit cards were maxed, and here, I will own, partially due to the bad spending habits I did not curb, I finally had to humble myself and beg my parents for money. Obviously this was only after I had begged the love of my life (NOT) ex-husband to pay any kind of child support.  Child support was about as forth-coming as the ex-husband, and so after seven months of mooching off of my generous and frazzled parents, I got a call from my old boss in Northport and an offer to come back and work at the hardware store. His wife of 28 years had just left him alone to care for their 22 year old autistic daughter. I love Dan, and jumped at the chance to work, especially for such a great family. If I had known that he had not-so-secret plans to woo and bed me, there is definitely a chance I would not have moved back to hell's asshole, but in my ignorant bliss I charged blindly across the pass with two uHaul trailers and four disgruntled children who didn't understand why we couldn't live with grandpa and grandma forever. And again,  I am off track.

But we landed in Northport, with a sort of employment, $10 an hour part time at the store, plus some extra work cleaning houses, which I am apparently proficient at. For ten dollars an hour. So, with my maxed out credit cards, not enough income to pay the rent ($650 a month - half of anything I could find in Tumwater), or the car payment, or the insurance, or the credit card minimums, I have been barrelling ahead, robbing peter to pay paul, and here is where I stand, Monica Beilanko:

OutGo
Credit Cards: (at at least a 22% interest rate)    $19,707.10
Tahoe (again, a 22% interest rate)                    $ 10,000
Student Loans                                                  $ 25,066
mom and dad                                                    $ 1,400
rent                                                                    $650/month


InCome
Hardware store:          $225 weekly
Childsupport (maybe) $550 monthly
housecleaning             $40 weekly


this is after I got my $4500 tax return which bailed me out of some late car payments and overdue rent.

What happens next? Who knows. Right now it's just nip and tuck every week and I pray that somehow we will make it, push it off til next month. Pay $100 on a credit card and then have to use it for gas. I keep waiting for a windfall. Or a good job. Maybe when my perpetually elusive degree is done. They say those things help. My cousin has a degree in journalism. She's got a good job. at Anne Taylor. Maybe a good fire season. Maybe not. Maybe a sugar daddy who falls hopelessly in love with me and turns out NOT to be a psycho who holds me captive in developing countries and takes advantage of me. I don't really like being alone. I don't like shouldering the debt myself or trying to figure out how to keep my lips above water. But I am thankful for this moment, while the electricity is still on, the house is warm and we're all ok. I have a great life, if I can just figure out how to sustain it. Ok, staying out of the Buckle and off of websites sporting great deals on hoodies would definitely help. But there is this weird sense of Disney fueled entitlement that says I was born to look good, to feel good, to have good. Something internal that says I should have a fairy tale, not a crappy job and an empty bed at night. But then again, I don't want wrong, or bad, and even with the stress and the struggle, I am so divinely grateful to be on my own again, in my own space, without worrying about who's toothpaste I am using. In some ways, it's worth the 22% interest rate. Probably what I really need is somebody who is good at dealing with the sharks that are eating me alive to talk them down. Or something. But instead I have a hound dog, who is staring at me mournfully. and a ridiculous kitten playing with the hair on the back of my head. And I have toilets to scrub. One cannot truly know humility until they have scrubbed someone else's toilet for $10 an hour.

So yes, Monica, I have been there. I lived with my mom, and we somehow survived each other's ridiculousness and now I am back to me again, with my tribe. I am thankful for the process as it was, and now I have to dig the rest of the way out on my own. And what an adventure it will be. How's the black dress thing going?

clinging

I was holding on so fiercely to a love that only hurt me. I was chasing a few good memories that stood out in a gray life of frustration and mistrust. suddenly all of that is behind me; literally behind me. i am looking forward. I am not sure to what, I don't even really care, I am still just waking up to the reality of the over-ness of it all. It feels good. Like a good pain that you know is leading to healing. I have lowered myself for so long to a point of begging for love. Begging for affirmation. As if one boy was the key to the significance of my existence. I don't need to move "on". I am just moving forward. I don't feel alive, and exuberant. I don't feel depression and grief. I feel, right. I feel solid. I feel correct. And I feel that it will all be OK.

I still have the good things. I have silly aspen climbing in my  bed at 4 am every morning. I have truck, smelling like a skunk and sneaking on to the couch to sleep. I have four girls fighting over every imaginable thing. I have 4 pairs of liv jeans. three pairs of baldies. I am ok. This is the good life. It isn't the everything life. But it's the good life. when I can still get excited if the hardware store is in the green because our sales are better than last year, and I can be stoked that my kids are getting b's in school. and I can breathe a sigh of relief because nobody hates me and I don't hate anybody... it's a good life. when things that don't directly affect me are still important to me because of what they mean to someone else, it means I am living. It means that I have relationships and I am not dead, right?

Head full of doubt, because none of it adds up. Because the odds are against me, against success in the terms of the world. Head full of doubt because I am still alone, and wonder if I always will be. Road full of promise. The sun is shining. The kids are well. The job is still here. The people I love will all survive whatever crisis they are in at this moment (susan). I will survive. And there is no crisis. Wonder of wonders. Just steps. Every day, steps. more steps. Lord willing they're all going in the same direction and not schizophrenically all over the place in a paranoid grasp of desperation. No more insanity. No more banging of the head against the brick wall, pursuing the same elusive objective to the same fruitless end. No more chasing the tail to eat the shit. No more.

This broken back will heal, this broken heart will mend. This twisted mind will smooth out like river rocks under the turbulent waves of life's raging river. If that isn't cheesy poeticism, I don't know what is. But I am all good. Life is good.

Tonight I danced with my girls. We swung and swirled to all kinds of old rockabilly songs until we were dizzy. Maybe that was the whiskey daisies that I drank. Now I am pretending not to hear the two older girls fighting downstairs or the two younger girls squabbling upstairs, or the kitty yowling in the bathroom next to my room. I am in my bed. In my space, that now only smells a little like cat poop, and I am hoping that is my imagination since my sinuses are still packed and I can't smell anyway.

We danced to sweet home alabama. That was Leeroy's song. It's like he's dead now, in my head, and in my heart, and while it's not real because his face and his voice is so fresh, it's that much more in my face. That he is, but he is never coming back. That he will continue to exist as a beautiful memory for all of us, but he may never again be a presence in our lives. That is more than I can swallow without the tears overcoming me.

I got in my car and drove. I had to know. I had to find out if he was all of the words he was saying, or if he was what I thought he was in my heart, what I knew he was in my soul. I bought roses. Yellow ones for friendship. I took coffee, good coffee, steady's coffee. I took wine from China Bend and Steve's Etzelager. I took pepper bacon and farm eggs. All the things I knew he loved. And at four am, I showed up on his doorstep, with my heart in my hands, my emotions on my sleeve, and our dog by my side. He was happy to see me. He had almost asked. Almost. He wanted to talk. To spend time. It was good. We talked. We didn't sleep much. He had a sore back. I rubbed it. He made chili. All of the things that were always there are still there. The love is still there, along with the confusion and mistrust. The history is still there. The good memories that lead in to the bad ones. He would remind me of how good he was at making everything ok, and then he would remind me of what a disappointment, what a laughingstock I was to him and my whole family, and most of our friends. He talked about how we could never go back. I asked if we could go forward. He didn't know. He had options. I had options. We could try. We could just mess around with the same old shit for more years. He was still beautiful in my eyes. He was amazing. He was a mess. He was thin and he was unhealthy. His world was a bachelors world. An intentional bachelor, with no sense of what a good life was. I knew it wasn't real because he knows. He knows what a good life looks like, tastes like, feels like. But choosing an intentional bachelors world helps to foster the self-pity that motivates things. I can't understand which things. He says it's all about getting the good life back. But I don't understand why he resists the good life now. It's all right there. He could make it for himself, or he could have it with us, but either way he rejects it and insists on paddling his way toward something. Paddling and Paddling and paddling. I was hoping he was done. I was praying that he could fall into the rest, into the love that could make the future begin now. I was praying. We fought. We yelled. We manipulated, the way we have before. We rose above it, we overcame it and talked about real things, in real voices, on a real level. But it wasn't enough. Not enough for him. He still wasn't sure. He was willing to try trying. To attempt an attempt. But it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to commit to an attempt. To promise a try. A good try, A hard try. He wasn't there. I am proud of him for not lying and saying he was there. I hope that he wasn't lying by saying he wasn't there, and that is what makes me sad.

Now I am home. I drove home on Valentine's day. I stopped in Bend. I stopped in Redmond. I wanted him to call and say come back. I wanted him to call and say yes. That he could commit to a try. I wanted to not hurt like I was broken in half all of the way home. The radio played valentine's music. Music about loving forever. Touching and holding. Music that made the aching worse. Made the anger more. People everywhere were holding hands and going on dates. Truck was groaning in the back seat. I pulled over in connell to sleep for awhile and I dreamt of chocolates and roses and dressing up for a nice date. Then I woke up and kept driving. I have to start believing that this chapter is over and the next is open now. I have to make myself know that the door is closed. I can't keep going back, changing my mind because my stupid heart won't let go, because it tells me again and again and again that he is the one and only. That the one of a kind Leeroy is all I can ever want. That his smile and dance and voice and eyes can never be replaced. It is time to let go. I am glad I spent all of the money I had on the gas to go to Klamath Falls and know that it is time. I am glad that we talked how we talked. That even though the love is still there, the hope is not. And that it is ok. Even if it doesn't feel like it. It is.