Feb. 7th, 2011

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UGH I am so depressed!

*giant heaving sigh*

However...this is awesome.






We just got back into town from visiting my mother and Nana and Pa up in Lakeland late last night. Today sucked.

I got up and went to RCIA and the teacher was just giving me a really hard time about missing last week the entire meeting. I called her in advance for permission to be out and she acted like it was between me and God, basically, and lots of people are out all the time for work or a cruise in one case or whatever. Anyway she kept singling me out and referencing it and making penance jokes and all this crap the whole time today and at least twice she got really mad at me in ways that made other people visibly uncomfortable. I mean, COME ON.

Then I stayed after to meet with her; I assumed we would be making up last week's content. Rather, I got a long long lecture/interrogation about whether or not I'm committed enough. I confessed to her that I do think I've had a sort of prideful sin of feeling that I have done so much independent reading and research over several years that I already know most of what is being taught in RCIA, which in turn has made me feel like it wouldn't be a huge deal to miss one week to go camping; they're often doing things like "The Bible is divided into many smaller 'books' and they can be categorized as gospels, poetry, prophecy" etc - stuff I learned in Baptist kintergarden, basically. I told her I realized it's not really right for me to think that way because often I DO learn great things and I realize I have to come regardless and that there is a seminarian coming every week. I thought I was being honest and trying to bridge a gap between the two of us but I guess I just irritated her more because she got downright threatening about whether or not she would approve me and telling me she doesn't see the conversion, the true spiritual growth in my eyes during mass and things like that. It's like, lady, I have been attending Mass on my own as a non-Catholic for the last 3 years. I was crying at Midnight Mass on Christmas. I didn't realize you had to be there to catch and count the tears in a little tally bottle to approve me.

I know I should not be so bitter. I like her on a lot of levels. It's just very frustrating to have her be the gate through which we must all pass to enter The Church. Today she made us close our eyes and listen to Elvis again (How Great Thou Art, on cassette).

But, next week we are going up to the "Vatican Splendours" exhibit at the Ft Lauderdale Museum of Art and I am really happy about that. We're going to have headsets to listen to some hour and a half long thing explaining everything we see and I'll be driving a bunch of people in my van. There's also a free art exhibit here in Homestead on Saturday that I'll probably be taking the kids to.

I still have to go make up the lesson from last week separately as well as seeing a video I missed since I started late in the Fall rather than when everyone else did, and I have extra reading for this week...it is probably a good thing for me on some levels. I have some abivalence about Lent and my first confession and things like that right now.

Anyway. That was RCIA, and then I felt like I just couldn't write and just...overwhelmed by so many issues, large and small, that have been getting to me lately. Grant and I are definitely in some kind of rough patch, and it's punctuated by lots of good moments and I think it will be ok, but in the meantime I am so emotionally exhausted and weary of hashing out the same damn things over and over and OVER.


I think I'm having something like a really early nonsensical midlife crisis. I spent my childhood and adolescence taking care of my siblings and holding my mother together and working and then I started having babies...and now, NOW that I am here in this financially precarious situation, married with five children and a great big house to keep clean - I want to be young. I'm ready for something wild and new every day and it never comes. I'm really, really restless and NOT content with my life as it is, and...I don't know. I've had a million theories for why this is over the past 6 months, some of which I've written about:

We had a lot of drama and upheaval as I was growing up so maybe I don't know how to have everything stay ok and the same.

I can't have babies anymore so I'm getting bored now that my youngest is gonna be 4.

I'm coming out of a fog from all the pregnancies, labors, surgeries and trauma and am "waking up".

I've just been attachment parenting and/or homeschooling five children for the past 10 years and so this was bound to happen eventually.

I started my family very young and never ever "partied" beforehand, at all, or even just lived on my own or traveled or...whatever.

I'm trying to channel my energy in productive directions - succeeding sometimes, failing others. Trying to remember what is good and rewarding and joyful about my domestic life as a wife and mother, trying to think about how much better I have it than so many other people and how my whole world seemed to dangle by a thread when my various kids were in various dangers and they're ok, now! They're all ok so...what is my problem?

I want to get tattoos and piercings and go on roadtrips with friends and get drunk and have really amazing sex pretty much constantly. I need to have too much music up way too loud and often and I am driving too fast and getting speeding tickets and I'm too distracted by facebook chat and phone conversations with people outside of the house. All of this scares the living shit out of Grant. I confessed to him today, lying on our bed with tears all over my pillow, that what sounds better to me than anything is if I just had a pause button I could push on my family, such that I could go off and do what I want to do for some indefinite period of time and then come back and find them all just the same waiting for me.

Obviously this is not really plausible. And what scares the living shit out of ME is the idea that by time I can act young or do what I want to do, it will be "too late".

*sigh again*

I am trying to remember that most of the things I crave lately have little to nothing to do with lasting happiness and find some kind of middle ground - wherein I go out and talk on the phone more with friends but also read to my kids and cook something decent here and there and plan out a tattoo as I sweep the floor....argh.

I feel silly right now for even bringing any of this up. I just got back from a camping and a hotel road trip. But they were both trips with kids that centered around family and extended family and both of them also featured quite a lot of those capital T Talks Grant and I have been having.

Anyway. After he and I talked, earlier, he went over to Shaun's to watch the Super Bowl and seemed to have a pretty good time and then came back and played ping pong with Shaun however many hours later. He starts his new job tomorrow and I hope it's good for him.

I think he's been having some good stuff for himself...taking the bigger kids swimming or to Bingo while I hang with littles, sitting in the back of the van watching a movie while I do the driving, things like that. I feel so insanely guilty for how stressed he gets about my malaise.

Career/job/educational choices for myself, as well as schooling stuff for the kids, have been looming large for me...Ananda and Aaron have self-corrected what I've been seeing as their biggest problems in recent weeks, which makes homeschooling seem really great and makes me second guess everything I've been saying about putting them in the charter school. Sometimes lately the pressure of making these sorts of decisions for other people is seeming a bit heavy. There are a lot of ins and a lot of outs with this business. Annie found a $4, clearanced Nightmare Before Christmas lunchbox at an FYE while we were out of town and ended up getting it in a "might go to school in the Fall" way.

I considered filling it with rocks to beat (bil) Frank over the head with this afternoon when he was trying to threaten to take all of Elise's old shoes over to Goodwill if I didn't come get them within the hour since Elizabeth keeps scattering them about their house :p


WTF'ery: whilst we were on the highway starving one day, we pulled over at a McDonald's. Hashing out how many of us there were and how many nuggets we should get, the cashier was like "You want to just get the 50 piece?" THE WHAT, we asked?? That's right. She said fifty. We got a 50 piece chicken nugget. AND TOOK IT DOWN. THE WHOLE THING. ALL FIFTY. Afterwards Grant was like, "Damnitt I only got two of those!"


I ultimately believe that most of the angst I'm dealing with at the moment is the result of really seeing how poorly I've been doing in many areas and striving to change it. The changing it part is great but it's hard to see how far I have to go instead of just living in denial (like with my weight, or doing independent things with my life like a writing career or going back to school). It's hard to know that I'm turning 30 this year and just sort of haven't accomplished anything for almost 4 years, since I failed bigtime. Even though I know it isn't quite that simple - in another way, it is. I'm sure it's good and transformative to be struggling with things and pushing for progress, it just feels like pulling teeth in the meantime...and drudges up all kinds of hoohaw in the bargain. This will still ultimately be my year, if for no other reason than IT HAS TO BE.


That's a wrap.

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