selective hearing

'Violet, pick up your toys, please.'

'Huh?'

'Pick up your toys, please.'

'Huh?'

'I know you heard me. Please pick up your toys.'

'Huh?'

'Violet, I know you can hear me, I know you can understand me. Please pick up your toys!'

'Huh?'

Pause.

'Want a cookie?'

'COOKIE!'

Things I Love About Me.

•I have never made it through anything by Franz Kafka. Therefore, I have no idea what ‘Kafkaesque’ means.
•I cannot stand angsty teen music.
•I love female singer-songwriters. With the exception of Beck, this is the only kind of music I buy. My last few cd’s were Jenny Lewis, Alanis, Ryan Adams (who is merely a female singer-songwriter with a penis.)
•Sometimes this includes country music.
•I love to read glurge.
•LOLcats Crack. Me. Up.
•Sometimes I sleep in an extra 20 minutes cause that sleep is more important to me than showering.
•We watch Hannah Montana.
•I adore designer imposter sunglasses.
•I run any scented product by Jason before I buy it. I have 1 perfume (Very Irresistible by Givenchy) that we both approve of.
•All my other products smell like fruit: pomegranate body spray, body wash, and lotion; tangerine shampoo; coconut conditioner. My aim is to smell like a tropical fruit salad.
•I nearly always claim it when I fart.
•I cannot stand Alaskan winters, but the summers almost make it worthwhile.
•I hate camping.
•I abhor fishing.
•Shopping is my favourite sport.
•I love my husband for not caring about the ball game.
•I really and truly believe my daughter is the most beautiful creature on the planet.

Now and then, I get insecure*

A friend told me I looked fabulous today. I shrugged it off.

Of course I don’t look fabulous.

I am fat.

I am not, ‘oh, hai, I am a size 14 and can still shop in the regular ladies’ section’ fat; I am a bona fide size 20 with more than 1 chin. I am legitimately plus size.

But wait.

I am lovely. I am wearing white and denim with silver touches today, and feeling quite boho. My hair is pinned up and styled in my favorite punk-meets-secretary updo. My eye makeup skills get better with age, and my lip gloss is Sephora. My skin has an olive undertone, and despite some stray hairs courtesy of my Gypsy ancestry, is quite clear, and, well, glowing.

I accessorize religiously. I shop for clothes like an Indiana Jones expedition. I embrace colour and style, and gigantic shiny earrings. I am usually the best dressed person in a room, as I pride myself on finding the perfect outfit for every occasion. But I always have that little tiny SIZE ISSUE in the back of my mind.

I have come a long way in the past year, as far as accepting my size, and loving myself. I eat healthy foods, I maintain a level of activity, I take my vitamins, and I love my body for being healthy.

But just today did I realize I could love it for being fabulous.

It doesn’t matter what size I am. I don’t have to shrug off compliments. I don’t have to wonder if the men who hit on me are chubby chasers. I don’t have to feel I am cheating Jason out of a thin, gorgeous wife. He has a zaftig, gorgeous wife.

I AM fabulous, thanks very much.


*From "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilerra.

Donna

My Mother…she is an amazing person.

There were four of us growing up. Now, with only one child, I wonder how she did it…how she managed to make us all feel like individuals, how we never felt lost in the crowd. Each of us was so different, and she managed to encourage that, help it grow. She didn’t put us all in matching outfits, even for Easter or family portraits. Even with their meager salary, she made sure we all got presents unique to ourselves; we were all allowed to pursue our different interests. And when you have one theatre kid, one football kid, one cheerleading kid, and one EVERYTHING kid…that can be a lot of events.

Every opening night I had, I got flowers. The first play I did after moving to Alaska, my ma mourned not being able to see it. When I decided to quit teaching kindergarten to go back to school for the ever-useful theatre degree, she supported me. When I had to drop out and work full time due to an unexpected pregnancy, she sent me maternity clothes and called me nearly every day.

When I had been in labour for hours on end, with a cervix that got to six centimeters and said, “hey, this looks like a nice place to stop,” she called me from the airport in the midst of the 20 hour trip to be by my side and said, “hey, I know you wanted to do this naturally, but babe, you need to get an epidural,” resulting in the most wonderful feeling of my entire life…RELIEF FROM FRICKIN’ CONTRACTIONS. And oh, yeah, the eventual birth of my glorious daughter.

Months before that, when they told me I had a high chance of cervical cancer and was being labeled a high-risk pregnancy, she cried with me across 3,000 miles of phone line. When the chance dwindled to nothing, she again cried with me, only this time with relief.

And only a few months ago, when I was on my way to the hospital, she calmed me down and told me she loved me. And then, hours later, when I called to tell her Max was gone, she cried with me again…she gave me the words of comfort that help me to this day: we don’t know the reasons why he was taken, but God does. This may seem a bit simple and trite to some of you, but it made me able to do the only thing that got me through: say, “Ok, God, he is in your hands now. You better take care of him.”

She is my comfort. When I am having a rough time, I imagine being enveloped in her hug. I remember sitting in her bed, watching the Food Network. I feel her hand on my head, caressing my hair. I smell her mix of Victoria’s Secret lotion and vanilla perfume. I hear her giggle – not the one she does politely, but the one where she cannot contain herself, and her eyes get big and her mouth gets tiny, and then she snorts. I inherited that laugh. I inherited her thighs, her arms, her chin, her shapely ankles, her smile, her sense of humor (fart jokes NEVER get old), her love of books, her compassion, her toes, her Gypsy heritage, her belief in eyeliner, her ears, her nose, her entertaining gene, and her ability to flirt her way into getting what you need.

Everyday, I look in the mirror and see more of her. And I am thankful.

Weird.

My baby sister graduates from high school this week.

I wish I could be there. If there was any way to beg, borrow, or steal the money to get down to Florida for the event, I would take it. But the worst part of living in Alaska is the horrendous flight prices during tourist season.

Bethany is a diva, a cheerleader, a singer, and has been homeschooled for the past year. Any gift suggestions?

what do you mean, diva must run in the family?

guffaw.

There have been a couple of points in my life when I have lost the laughter.

I don’t notice it. Like most things Depression related, you kind of assume everything is as it always was. I laughed on the inside a lot…didn’t people know that?

Last night, as on most Thursdays, the incomparable Miss Ali came over to watch The Funniest Show Ever Made. I cannot for the life of me remember the exact moment…maybe it was when Stanley said “Did I stutter?!?!”, maybe it was the stick figure anti-smoking commercial, maybe it was something, anything Ali said…but I laughed. Loud. Unstoppably.

Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed if not for Ali looking at me with an utter sense of relief on her face. My biggest worrier, my staunchest supporter…she was waiting, hoping for the laugh to come back.

It came back. I am holding on to it dearly.