Eleven Things

I can never, ever resist a meme.

1. What is your favorite type of cheese?
I like bleu cheese a lot but probably goat cheese.  Drunken goat cheese.  

2. What are you excited about?
I'm excited about going to NJ next month.  I'm nervous but excited.  We are going for a family reunion and I am going to get to see family who I haven't seen in a long time but we're driving, I'm taking Maria and Veronica, my sister and I are going with my mom, that's a lot of people, we don't know exactly the plan, ugh, it's always something but I'm excited anyway.  

3. How did you celebrate your last birthday?
I don't remember.  I'm sure we went out to dinner.  

4. What is on your bedside table?
Three pairs of glasses, my real ones and two pair of reading glasses, both with only one arm.  Arm?  Handle?  You know, the part that goes over your ear.  

5. What do you order from the movie theater concession stand?
I went to the movies last night for the first time in such a long time!  It's the kind of movie theater that sells booze and Mike had two beers but I am not drinking so I had kettle corn and a diet coke.  I wished the kettle corn had peanuts.  

6. Do you have a garden? What’s growing?
No.  I always think maybe next year but so far nothing.  

7. Any summer plans?
Maria and Veronica still have one summer camp to go, CYO camp, the first full week of July.  Felicity might go on Wednesdays to their little preschool camp.  Mike and I are hoping we can go to NYC the last week of July but it depends on Anthony's fricken fracken medicaid and waiver and if we can get respite support before then.  

8. Which TV couple(s) are you rooting for?
None.  Does anyone?  I can never get over that we are supposed to like Fitz and Olivia as a couple on Scandal.  I mean a) he is married and b) he is the president and c) and this should probably be a), he is a Grade A Douchebag.  I sometimes wish Peggy would get together with Stan on Mad Men.  I can't exactly cheer for any couples on Orange is the New Black, they are all kind of jerks.  I guess I am cheering for Jesse and her doorman boyfriend on Jesse and if you don't know what I'm talking about, good for you, with your having your own life and all.

9. What’s the last thing you bought?
I bought Graeter's ice cream today for Veronica and Felicity after we went to the pool  Maria stayed at the pool with my friend Marta, and at first Veronica was jealous but when we got to the ice cream place, it occurred to her that SHE was having ice cream and Maria wasn't, ha!  Then we talked about the meaning of the word benefit.  

10. What’s one thing you are passionate about?
This fricken fracken insurance appeal for Anthony.  I can't believe it is happening.  

11. What are you grateful for this week?
I'm grateful it's summer and good weather.  We had such a horrible winter, so cold and snowy and just - unDOable and even though I have to go out in the sun much more than I want, and even though everyone is home and bugging me for stuff to do, I'm grateful that I have these kids and I hope that they remember this summer as a fun one.  I read this awful article one time, interviews with parents who had lost children, and I tried to remember the whole thing  but one thing really stuck with me.  They asked this Dad who had lost his son what he was grateful about, what was something he was glad he did with his son and he said "we camped the hell out of every summer".  And I would never, ever go camping so that can't be a memory I have with the kids but I am trying to make their lives fun and I hope that someday they look back and say MAN, my mom took us a lot of places and tried to make us happy!  Maybe they'll say, jeez, she is so fair and it must have been awful for her to put that fat ass in a swimsuit every day of her life, alongside those skinny, skinny bitches, and stand in the sun, but she did it!  She's the best!  Yay, mom!

You are Being Tacky at the Least

Dear Person who puts a St. Joseph Statue Upside Down in Their Yard so he can Magically Sell Their House:

Stop.  Stop it!  It's so tacky.  If you are Catholic, it might even be sacrilegious!  I mean, it's not really against God or anything because of course St. Joseph was just a person, but it's kind of mean.  I mean, we ask Saints to pray for us, to help us find lost things (Anthony) to pray that our dog gets better (Francis), to pray that we stop being so crazy (Dymphna), you get the picture, right?  So why, if you were asking someone for something, would you bury a statue of them in the yard?  UPSIDE DOWN?  Ticky tack.  

With Love and God Help You,

Joanne

I have a friend who commented on this very thing the other day.  I felt like it was bait but I might be paranoid.  Some radio personality said he wasn't Catholic but he heard Catholics buried the statue of St. Joseph upside down so he could sell their house and should he try?  So my friend commented that she was Catholic and her house didn't sell for five months and then she buried the statue and it sold in two weeks!

I mean, it makes us look like kooks.  And also dumbbells.  There are specific prayers that you can say to Saints.  You can look them up!  You can say prayers and ask St. Gerard to pray for you as a mother, you can ask the Blessed Mother for ANYTHING.  I just - how did it come up that poor Joseph should have his visage buried upside down in a yard?  THEN - oh I forgot - THEN if your house does sell, you are to take the statue and presumably wash it off, then put it in a place of honor in your new house that you buy with the money from your old house.  If your house doesn't sell, I guess you just bash it over the head of your Realtor or something.

If I were a bad Catholic, it would make me ashamed to be a bad Catholic.

Litany

I don't know if Litany is the right word.  I have many complaints and worries, but what does a person do with them?  If a person brings their worries and complaints to their friends/families, those people are tempted to cheer the person up, or God help us, to try and quick fix them.  If a person goes to a priest, the priest is tempted to remind the person that God loves them, which, ugh.  I don't want to hear that right now.  If God loves me so much, why do horrible, shitty things keep happening to me?  Why am I so miserable almost all of the time?  Why do I spend so much time thinking how I can get out of this?  Why do I have to hide in the bathroom with the fan on just to not hear it?

I am so jealous and envious of people, of normal people.  I don't know how I got to this point in my life.  I am forty six years old and I work as a waitress at $2 and hour plus tips but a lot of those tips suck because I wait on mostly old people who are mean and - I mean mean like cheap and they are also sometimes mean like crappy to me.  I can't go to work until Mike comes home to watch the kids, so sometimes I'm late and I have to stay at this bad job because no one else will put up with someone being late all the damned time.  I can't get a babysitter to stay with the kids because Anthony has to be picked up, by ME, every day at 4:30.  We could have him transported home but that costs $12 a day and guess what, we don't have it!  We can't pay a babysitter because we don't have the money, we can't get Anthony a ride home because we don't have the money, I have to go to work because we don't have the money.  There are people at work who want to make all the money, so I have to fight for every table, fight for every dollar, and I'm so sick of it.  I keep thinking I am better than this but guess what?  I am not.  I would try to take some pride in my work but guess what?  We can't afford that, either.

Anthony has been grabbing at us and hitting us for like six months now?  Nine?  A long time.  It's gotten MUCH better at his therapy center, he doesn't do it at all anymore because they have taught him that they'll just ignore it.  But we can't ignore it.  He pulled Felicity to the floor today, should I advise her to ignore it?  She doesn't do anything I say, so I doubt it would work.  I spent a lot of time in the last two weeks calling his neurologist, well his nurse because guess what?  The actual doctor can't spend time talking to a plebe like me on the phone.  I iterated my concerns and she said that she'd talk to him and call me back and she did, she said he said it sounded like it was behavioral so we should talk to his ABA therapy people about it.  Ohhhh, I wanted to say, I hadn't thought of that!  Thanks!  But of course we have talked to them, they ignore it and it stops but we can't ignore it.  They are having home therapy here so that Anthony can behave here like he does at home but guess what?  That is a giant pain for me, to have to try and work with Anthony while also amusing the other children whose every demand must be met immediately or there is so much yelling and screaming and then Anthony knocks them down and um, new plan!

My neck hurts all the time from being violently pulled to the floor.  I am so tired and nervous that I am getting a tic.  I had to stop drinking because I'm worried I'm drinking to much, for escape, but who wouldn't want to escape this drudgery?  I clean like a slave because if I'm not constantly cleaning up food of the floor, the ants completely take over.

This morning, to bring it back to church, we were getting ready for Mass and Anthony pushed Felicity to the floor.  She was being a jerk, she was tired because certain other jerkstores were so noisy this morning they woke her up. I don't want to say who but it was Maria and Veronica.  Veronica came marching over to my side of the bed and said "Mommy, me and Maria want you to come downstairs".  I asked what time it was and she said "7:01".  My first thought was crap, now I have to get up with them this Sunday and NEXT Sunday too, for stupid Fathers' Day.  Anyways, they were up early and they are noisy and they woke up Felicity and Anthony and that makes them grumpy.  So I said to Mike, I'm not going to church with all of them, I'm not doing it!  Last week we had to really wrestle Anthony to go to Communion, the week before he took OFF HIS PANTS, I mean, COME ON!  I'm not doing it.  I said I would go later and I thought, I'm not going.  I'm not going, I thought, I don't believe in this bullshit anyway and besides I am sick.  Sick in the head!  But now it's 4:41, I started writing this this morning and now I am going to Mass.

This week I went to the funeral of a guy who was 37 years old, he left a wife and two boys, who are like five and seven, or six and eight, or something.  It was a strange funeral because his wife (a woman who Mike works with) spoke, so eloquently and beautifully I couldn't get over it.  She put aside all her sadness and fear and whatever else and spoke so proudly about her husband, it was something else.  I don't know how she did it and at first I didn't know why she did it but then as she talked about her husband and how wonderful he was, and how they could go on without him because he was so great, I thought oh.  Oh, she did it for her kids and - I mean, that is incredible, right?  That is being a great and responsible parent.  Then the priest spoke (he did the homily, sometimes people who aren't Catholic thing anyone can say the homily for a eulogy but they can't.  Colleen, the wife, spoke right after they all entered and before the Mass started) and he read from a document that Chris, the man who died, wrote about his experience with cancer that he found out he had in February of this year.  He talked about how blessed he was and how grateful he was that he had his faith and friends and he wrote about how LUCKY he felt.  It was such a gift, to hear his words and realize that in the face of the disease which ultimately took his life, he felt lucky.  It was a really powerful experience.
And that was on THURSDAY and then by Sunday, I was all, I'm not going to church!  So I have thought about it a lot today and I don't know why I am in this shitty position, but here I am.  It's not as bad as some and it's CERTAINLY worse than some but it's my life.  I applied for some jobs and I am trying to heal thyself and we will see how it all turns out.