Doing laps through the inside of my house, in a kind of mindless boredom. Looking for something to do, sort of, but really just spaced out in a zombie-like stupor.
I'm force feeding pizza to my daughter (what?). And I'm thinking of any excuse to get us out of the house. The plan is to procure some picture frames, big ones, and frame some of my old charcoal drawings. Looking through them last night kind of got me inspired. Heck, I even drew a picture of a naked lady. And these things deserve more than a thumbtack in the wall. Well, they'll look better in a prpoer frame anyway.
Then it's grocery shopping. I'm already exhausted thinking about it.
Our portion of summer is over, and I'm rolling with the solo-kid-ola these days. So life has gotten substantially easier.
I feel like making and taking in...
Here are some words of wisdom: Don't rush through an art museum

Everyone is in bed, and I'm settling into my writing indentation on the couch with a nice family pour of Zinfandel. I've been waiting for this all day. I sort of feel like drinking a little too much.
Today I wrote extensively in my personal journal, so I feel a little like there is nothing to say. I'm sure I'll find something to whine about.
Earlier we watched Grumpier Old Men, and I couldn't stop noticing how uncoordinated Walter Mathau was (r.i.p.) and it would be safe to say he was reverting to infancy at the time this move was shot. At one point, he and Sophia Loren get it on, and I just really couldn't wrap my mind around that. I also kept thinking about how Zooey Deschanel says on the New Girl that her perfect guy would be Walter Mathau and she would be girl Jack Lemmon, and that was so hilarious.
Today I played a distrubing amount of Words with Friends, and I justified to my self by saying that I was "exercising my brain." I did laundry and I made Felix work out while I folded laundry and we ate dinner at Jason's Deli and the kids played in the rain while I wrote in my journal.
Nothing much to speak of happened. I don't even think I cracked up once. That should be a new goal: to crack up once a day... There is nothing like a good, uncontrollable laugh that lasts so long that your cheeks hurt.
I'm sort of in this state of torpor lately. I'm so desperate to live and to experience and the be excited and to grow, but then I let myself languish in inaction and then boredom. I want to blame everyone, the kids for being my responsibility, my husband for holding me back, the rain which was always falling. But the difficult to deal with reality is that it's all my fault. The day to day tedium I feel is easily rectifiable with a little will and creativity, but I think that for the most part I'd rather just complain in my journal, be lazy, and grow resentful of everyone whose fault it isn't.
I made a vow to myself that I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to buy concert tickets (and then go to the shows), I'm going to get a babysitter (and then go on a date with my husband whether he likes it or not), I'm going to sometimes take up my coworkers on their invitations to go out for a drink after work, I'm going to drink my wine at home at night, I'm going to go see free shows at Miller Outdoor Theater, I'm going to live.
I don't want to be too lazy to be adventurous, but that's what's happening now.

I'm drinking this wine to losen something that is too tight in my mind, that won't let things flow. I'm drinking it to forget about the day and its menial tasks and relax my mind into a conduit for words, ideas, creativity. Hey, I'm not trying to write the next great American novel here, just some words on a digital page to remind me that I'm still kicking.
I think I overly glorify the past. Just for a moment there, I was remembering myold blog and thinking about how I was always so funny and eloquent and clever. And while it's true that there were moments of genius there, it wasn't all gold. Much of it was me writing highly personal ramblings and introspections, and self important drivel that reads like a 13 year old's diary (albeit a highly intelligent and insightful 13 year old).
Come on Candice. You're doing just fine. And no matter what that hateful little voice in your head says, you're doing just fine. In fact, you're a lot more interesting now than you were then. You are all those things, plus the newer things, with quite a helping of crazy taken out of the equation.
Yes the wine slides down the gullet so easily. The hazy pseudo-reality is sneaking in the back door, though I think I just heard the hinges creak. It's okay. Come on in. I've been expecting you.

Is it too late to become a musician? More specifically a song writer? What if I wrote songs with no music, since I don't really want to learn to play an instrument, but I do want to write and sing my own words? I've been working on a few things. But since I've been making an effort, I've been listening to songs in a different way and I've been noticing how complex the vocal melodies are and then I sing my 2 songs (incomplete) and they seem too simplistic. Maybe I should google, "how to write songs. "
Okay, googled it, and I think I'll just treat it like I used to treat poetry and just wait for that little snippet of inspiration to strike, and then I'll run with it.

Tired and writing while learning online defensive driving. Everyone is in bed.
Earlier I read some guy's article about happiness and the same guy's article about courage, and I'd be more enthusiastic about how inspired I feel if I weren't so sleepy.
Go after what you want!!!
Variations on that theme are what I repeatedly find. Have goals, and the courage to pursue them. Dream big. Go out on a limb.
Which leads me to the question, what do I really want? It is something I've asked myself too many times to count, but been unable to answer. And all the while my life has built itself around me. I guess it's kind of like that John Lennon quote, "Life is what happens when you're making plans."
All I've ever wanted to do is travel and write. But somehow that's not good enough. And now it seems unattainable, circumstancially.
In a way I'm kind of undriven, kind of content to go with the flow or what have you. But this other part of me has this desire, so strong, to have an extraordinary life. Not a life of "success" by someone else's definition. Just a full life. An interesting life. But I feel at a loss in a way. How can I have the freedom to follow what the universe brings me when I have a family to take care of?
I know that I need to be courageous, but it is definitely difficult when parenting and raising a family is so based in fear. Am I providing enough stabillity? What about financial security? Germs! Bad foods! Pedophiles! College funds! Fuck!
I love my daughter more than anything, and I want to do right by her, but what is this? Where is there room in all this for either one of us to live? It's like, if you don't follow the prescribed formula of raising a child, you're a failure as a parent.
I am so grateful for my family and the fact that I only have to work 3 nights a week and that I'm the one who gets to spend the majority of the time with my daughter. But sometimes, in the haze of the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning and the whining and the entertaining of children and the errands, I lose that perspective a little, and I think, "is this it?" Is this what I "plan to do with my one wild and precious life"?
I guess I just need to keep in mind that this is temporary. My daughter will not be so little for so long, and soon the days will come when I miss her adorable innocence. As she grows, we both earn more and more of our own independence. She won't be my baby for long, and these are the times to savor, because they only happen once. Soon enough it will be my time again, and I'll miss these days fiercely.
Wow, I think i just wrote myself out of a hole.
I truly feel a lot better about my current station in life. So much so, in fact, that I can't wait for tomorrow when I can wake my daughter up, and just play with her. Soon enough she'll be grown. But today she's 2 3/4. And I'm her mom.

Holiday Road

We've come to the end of it....
It's the first day back in real life, although when vacation was 45 miles away in a house where you are still cooking, cleaning up after everyone and doing laundry, it doesn't exactly seem like PeeWee's Big Adventure.
Not that I'm not grateful for the break from my own house and the pungent city air.
One just has to imagine the different capacities in which vacations come. There's stay-cation, break, long weekend, vacation, adventure, long-term, round-the-world, and I'm a travel writer. This one was a week long break, which is good in it's own way. It's just starting to hit me that travel with family is just not the same as travel on your own. Especially when you're the mama bear.
Also, I think I would have come back more bronzed and beaming had we seen more than an hour of sunshine, total. Not to bitch, but no one is going to read this anyway.
The happiesst I felt was when we were sitting in the warm tub, and Forrest was being light hearted and silly, and we were discussing walrus dongs,and there was a sense on fun and commeraderie, almost as it we had been drinking. But we weren't. Also, that brief moment at the beach when the sun came out, and everyone ceased to looked like a washed out corpse. We were playing soccer, skim boarding, trying to do handstands.
And let's not forget the alphabet game at dinner....
So it was a good time, and I'm sure the further behind me it goes, only the happiest moments will remain, and shining even more brilliantly than at their inception.

Yes

Not only did I not get you a birthday gift, I also didn't go to your party.
Sorry America.
We are so lazy we couldn't even go see the fireworks.
Lame
Another evening well spent digesting burgers in front of the TV.
I don't want to live this way. I get it, my husband is tired from work, and he is such a great salesman, it is easy to be convinced.
Not to mention, fighting the traffic and crowds would have been a pain. But getting out there and doing things is living. Goddammit!
How can I even dream of travelling with the kids when I can't even manage to get out of the house in my own city?
I was tired today. Only 4 hours of sleep, and a rotten mood. But today was a wake up call...
I'm not all into the Fourth of July. Don't get me wrong, I love America and all that rap (I'm modernizing from "jazz" to "rap"). But my holiday is Christmas, and I just can't get into any of the others. But it is a special day, with a lot of celebration and good energy and commeraderie, and let's not forget, FIREWORKS! Indi would have loved that. Now that it's nearing bed time, and naturally, the day's fog has lifted and I have a bit of energy, I can see clearly what we should have done.
I said recently to the universe that I wanted to be a yes man. And today I said no.
Well we have a vacation coming up on Saturday, and it's going to be living to the max. I'm going to treat this trip to Tiki Island as if Tiki Island were in another country, on the other side of the world.
I'll let the annoyances I've been feeling lately slide off my back like a cape off a disrobing super hero.
My vj is hairless, I've got a base tan, and I'm ready to do this... And I won't just be playing the roll of mom. I'm on vacation too.

Drinking coffee when I should be drinking water. Writing when I should be cleaning or something. Shoulda shoulda shoulda.
Instead I'm on 4 hours of sleep, and I'm lazy and spacy and write/erasey and I feel super.
It's the U.S.'s 236 birthday, and I forgot to get it anything. I'm so embarrassed. But I'll still try and make the party.
Wow, i got completely side tracked looking for Florence + the Machine tickets. Clearly I'm dedicated to this task today. After missing Marilyn Manson, and the regret over that which still plagues me today, I've decided that I'll see whatever show I want to dammit!
After a bevy of torturous treatments, from the cruel and unusual Epilady, to the agonizing slowness of the single hair tweeze, to going tempting nesting birds to roost by going au natural, I have finally taken the big plunge and had my first Brazilian wax. And I feel fine. Now we can take our trip to the beach, and I can live easy, without fear of weary seagulls. Also good for my husband who has been living with Snatchsquatch for longer than I'll admit to.

Indi is in the bath again, swimming with her small plastic zoo animals. I'm sitting on the toilet(lid) beside her, and after a short tutorial on how to wash your own butt, I am writing, and I am inspired. I feel free to write whatever I want here. I have told no one about this blog, and I will tell no one about this blog. No comment solicitation for me. I don't even want to let Forrest read it. Something about the words I write is so personal, even if it isn't serious. It's like someone is reading my thoughts, and I like to keep that stuff guarded. I don't even like for people to read their own greeting card messages in front of me.

Look, this just isn't working out. It's not you, it's me...

Last night we had a bar cleaning at my work, which naturally led to a little beer drinking, which led to weird mood today. Not a bad mood, per se. Just weird, tired, maybe slightly more succeptable to tears than usual.
I've been doing things around the house in an effort to delay sitting down to write on my blog. I guess a part of me feels that it's selfish to sit down and devote all my attention to something that isn't the many chores I see that need to be done or the daughter I see who I should be teaching things to, or the 11 year old boy on the couch playing video games who I should be encouraging to be active. So there's that guilt.
But honestly, that'sjust me lying to myself. How many times a day do I check facebook on my phone? I know it doesn't take the same level of concentration as writing, but it certainly does eat up my time.

If things are going well in ones life, and they look around and are contented with what they see, they look back over their previous trials and say, "that was why I had to go throught all of that... to get me to HERE!" If one looks around at the festering turd that is their current condition, and they are feeling unhappy with the state of things, they look back over their choices and wonder, "where did I go wrong?" Shaking their fists at god, turning their conscience on into overdrive and scouring every questionable deed looking for the culprit for which they are feeling their present karmic recompense.
Why does there have to be a reason? What if things just happen as a result of other things happening? Maybe there is no plan... Maybe we aren't meant to do anything... What if it is all just the chaos of cause and effect of centillion things all happening at once?
Just something I thought as I was cleaning the sink.

I've just been thinking about the past a lot lately, looking through the beer goggles of reminiscence. Everything looks so good, which is funny considering how unhappy I thought I was. I guess there are just elements to every stage in your life which you will always miss when you're in another. I guess my goal is to try and see those things for what they are, while they're actually happening.

I am happy now. I'm in love with my husband. I love my daughter in waysI never knew existed. I am looking good. I am well provided for. Forrest supports my dreams of travel. He really is the best. I am happy.

I look back and I miss the freedom. The feeling of not being tied down. I miss Tiffers even though then she felt like a burden. She was a good friend. I miss the alone time. The time to be creative. But on the transcribed story of my past, I white out how unfulfilled I felt, and how much I hated my job, but felt trapped in it. I've cropped out the lonliness and the seeking to fill some sort of hole with some sort of substance.

Oh those rosy tinted lenses, how you betray the truth. Yes I miss my freedom, but it was the price I paid to keep my daughter. Well worth it. No spontaneous trips to a coffee shop is worth the depth of feeling I've discovered with her.

I guess the whole point of this is that I'm discovering the good points of my past. What I want to bring forward into my future. I can edit out the undesirables and with the pieces I love, create the life I want.

Well, this turned out to be a little more, um, serious than I intended. What can I say? I blame the extreme sensitivity that comes post beer imbibment.