Family Camping Weekend

Camping Weekend

You didn't want to go

I planned the trip.

Made the reservation

You didn't want to go.

I planned the meals.

Bought the food.

You didn't want to go.

Stay home. Stay warm

Play video games

You didn't know or care where it was.

Too far away

Too cold.

You didn't want to go

I got out the equipment.

I checked the weather.

Packed the car.

You didn't want to go

I waited for you. And waited.

We didn't leave very late.

You didn't want to go.

It would be miserable.

It would be cold.

You thought it was beautiful.

You had a good time.

You apologized.

I am exhausted.

I don't want to beg people to travel with me.

I put away the food.

Cleaned the dished.

You played video games and rested.

I don't want to

travel with you

anymore. 

I want to go with someone

who wants to be with me. 

Spring running

April 25, 2013

I went running this morning.  It was a beautiful morning.  I started just before sunrise and the temperature was just below freezing.  When the sun came up, the sky was that magical baby blue and with the clouds forming pink streaks we get sometimes.  I felt good and strong and my run was going well.

Toward the end of my run, I was on a trail.  A man running a little ways in front of me, stopped, turned around and was watching me.  It wasn't menacing at all.  I thought he must have mistaken me for a friend.  When I approached him,  he would realize that  I wasn't his friend. 

As I got closer, he held up his phone and  asked if he could interrupt my run so that I could take a picture of him.  As soon as he talked, I knew he "wasn't from around here".  He said he was from New York.  Yep, thats what it sounded like.  A raspy, eastern accent.  I took a few pictures of him and gave him back his phone. I wished him a good day and continued on the last few minutes of my run.  

I wanted to tell him that the views got even better if he went my direction, but he had turned around and headed away from me.

What is it with these women?

My husband plays co-ed softball.  At one of his last games, he ran into a woman we had known as part of a family from our kids' grade school days.  Our children stopped playing together and we stopped doing stuff with them.  When he ran into Dianna, he asked about her family and she let him know that she and her husband were divorcing. 

He related the story to me when he got home.  "What is it with these women?", he asked me exasperated.  He meant that they get to around 50 and they divorce their husbands. 

I could have told him in so much detail.  We get tired of being the ones doing it all.  Working, cleaning, exercising while they tell us how busy they are.  And give us advice on how to do things. My husband thinks he is one of the enlightened ones who does his share around the house. Maybe I do a little more.

One weekend, we had a snowstorm, so the three of us were stuck at home.  I cleaned the kitchen and put a soup in the crock pot for dinner.  I asked my husband to do some vacuuming.  He said he would.  I cleaned the bathroom and changed the sheets on the bed when he finally got out of it.  I asked him again (trying for kindness, not nagging) if he could vacuum. Sometimes he forgets or doesn't hear things I say.   He said yes.  Snow had piled up outside so I got dressed and shoveled off the 40 steps leading to the house.  When I got inside, I got out the vacuum cleaner.  My husband finally decided it was time to vacuum.  I made dinner, including homemade soda bread and we sat down for it.  I cleaned up the kitchen afterward.

I would like to say that this was an isolated incident, but it happens every weekend. 
My husband used to tell me that he was too busy with work to help around the house more.  That somehow didn't stop him from taking breaks to play video games for hours and watch TV for more hours.  I now work at his same company (with the same job title) so I know that he is not busy. He doesn't use that excuse anymore.

Yesterday was another example.  By the time, my husband rolled out of bed, I had cleaned the kitchen, the floor and the main bathroom including the cat litter pan.  Vacuuming never got done.  Later in the day, I went to the grocery store alone (as usual)  with a list of items that he and my son demanded.  They "helped" me get the seven bags up the 40 steps to the house, but my husband disappeared as soon as that was done.  My son helped put things away and nibble.  Then I started dinner.  Alone.  My husband and son had ordered me to get fish for them so I put that in the oven for them as well.  My husband stayed in the kitchen long enough to tell me what pan I should be using to make dinner.  They were "busy" in another part of the house.  I finished making dinner, starting the dishwasher, and tidying up dishes.  No one came back to the kitchen.  I ate my dinner alone and put away my leftovers.  When I went to my room, furious, my son looked up from his computer and asked if dinner was ready.  I didn't say anything. Since the dishes were clean in the dishwasher, they stacked theirs next to it. They had to get to their current TV show and left the dishes for me to do when I get home from work tonight.

What woman wouldn't want that life?  What is it with these women leaving their husbands?

Dancing

I want to be with someone 

who will dance

and sing 

with abandon

and joy

in the kitchen

The Responsible One

I've always been the responsible, organized one who didn't cause a lot of waves.  I take care of people.  And I feel that I have been kicked in the teeth for it.

When I was young and my mother drank, I poured her drinks.  "My poor mother" needed help and I should give it to her.  I tried to be a good daughter. When I was older, I made dinners when my father traveled and my mother didn't feel the need to stop drinking to make a proper dinner.  She tried to bullshit me about what a good cook I was.  I just felt like I had to take care of myself because no one would take care of me.

Now, when I visit my mother, I can see the disgust for me in her eyes.  She doesn't like that I am competent,  responsible and organized. Because I am not fun.  But I am still expected to help her at every turn, whether it is driving her around, opening doors, holding her purse, or letting her lean on my arm when she flaps her hands at me.

Now, 30 years later, I am married with a son.  I do most of the housework, all of the cooking, grocery shopping, laundry and those mundane chores around the house that my husband and child "have no time" to do like feeding the cat and cleaning the litter or taking months of accumulated recycling out of the house. I cook good dinners and get told that its just okay. I then clean up the kitchen afterward because they are too busy to help and walk out of the room as I talk.

When I do something fun, my husband and son don't want to do it with me, although that is not what they will say, but they always seem to have a ready excuse.   I rarely get asked about the things I did and instead get asked whats for dinner or if I did the grocery shopping.  If I do an event with a friend that my husband doesn't approve of (a male friend), he just gets scornful.

I want someone to take care of me for a change. I want to come home to a clean house, a good meal, flowers on the table, and someone who wants to sit and hear what I have to say or even do things with me.  Seems simple, but so far from what I have.

New Year: Happiness Experiment

3 January 2013

In 2012, I decided that I battle depression.  I read an article on CNN about a woman that determined that she was depressed and so many of her examples seemed like things that I deal with.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/01/health/gallman-depression/index.html?iref=allsearch

There are too many days when I wake up sad and go through the entire day that way with very few things that cheer me up.  Some days, I cry through a lot of the day.

I don’t want medication. There have been few studies that show that medication actually works better than a placebo.  I don’t think I have chronic depression.  I don’t stay in bed all day or miss work or parts of life due to depression.  I’m just sad and angry too much of the time. I generally get past the worst sadness in a day or so. 

I was comfort eating for a long time ( I was binging), but I made the choice to stop eating added sugar and the binging has subsided and the self-hatred due to the binging is gone too.

For 2013, I am going to make the choice to be happy. 

I am lucky.  I have had times when I feel utterly at peace with who I am and with my place in the world.  This generally happens on a bike ride, a run or a hike.  That is when I know what ultimate happiness feels like.   I can return to those feelings when I need to.  I also can often find those feelings when I need to. I am also happy being social.  Just being around people improves my mood. 

One of my friends posted a meme on Facebook that said “Be someone that makes you happy”.  I think that may be the key to my happiness.  In December, I flew to Tucson for a half-marathon.  During that entire weekend, I was happy because the person that I felt like was a care-free adventurer, a strong woman that could run 13 miles in the desert and hang out with friends in the sunshine by the pool drinking margaritas afterwards.  When I returned home, I was late picking up my son after school.  It was cold and dark. We were both mad at each other.  Right then, the person I felt like I was was a poor excuse for a mother.  I felt like nothing more than his chauffeur and maid.  I don’t like being the maid. The happy adventurer was gone.  I started crying.

My marriage isn’t good.  But I am not defined by my marriage. I am me and I have to find my own happiness.  Perhaps in doing so, my marriage might improve. 

I don’t necessarily know how to choose to be happy.  But I can try to be grateful for who I am and what I have.  I can work on seeing myself as successful instead of failure.  I can recognize times when  I struggle with how I see myself and just work on little things that will get me past them.  I can make sure that I take care of and be kind to myself.  I can recognize the big and little things that make me happy or at least contented.

Let the happiness experiment begin!

Books Read and Listened to in 2013

I read or listened to 39 books in 2012.  What will 2013 bring?  The format I used last year was a table which turned out to be very difficult to add to.  This year, I will be using a free-form format and counting along the way.  I've created a template to use to keep track.

Number. Name of Book
Author:
Read or Listened?
Fiction or NonFiction?
Description and comments:

=======================================================

1. Girl Gone

Author: Gillian Flynn
Listened
Fiction
Description and comments:

A woman is missing and it looks like her husband is to blame. The story is told both by the husband and wife.  Unfortunately, neither one is a very good person. It's a mystery, but there are too many obvious holes and the ending is deeply unsatisfying.

=======================================================

2. Cigarette Girl

Author: Carol Wolper

Read (iBook)

Fiction

Description and comments:

A 20-something screenwriter in Los Angeles and her life around her work and the business. The main character comes off smart and examples of her screenwriting are through the book. It was light, too much love and sex but satisfying.

========================================================
3. Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness
Author: Scott Jurek and Steve Friedman
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction
Description and comments:
Scott Jurek is a champion ultra-runner and a vegan.  Many people have said that he could not run long distances on plant material alone, but he proved them wrong. The book is interesting, but there is very little about his marriage.  He always seems to be running with his male friends. It's not even clear if his wife even runs or goes to any races with him.  This makes sense in the middle of the book when his wife divorces him.  His relationship with his father never seems to develop either.  He was kicked out of the house in college and it seems like he never reconnected with his father.  In the audio version, the reader reads the recipes in the book which is REALLY BORING.

============================================================
4. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Author: Timothy Egan
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction
Description and comments:
A history of the region of the country now known as the Dust Bowl and how the people survived years of drought and no crops in the Oklahoma-Texas-Colorado area during the Depression.  I would recommend it.

========================================================

5. Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy

Author: Ken Follett
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Very long book about the early 1900s and World War I in Russia, England and the United States.  All the characters interact in the book.  With a book with so many characters, there are some that just seem to get focus and then disappear.  I learned things about that era in Russia and the Bolshevik revolution and woman's suffrage in England. I probably won't read the next one very soon. 

========================================================

6. More than You Know

Author: Penny Vincenzi
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
The book starts in 1958 with the main character a headstrong girl who becomes a "career girl" before marrying and starting a family with a man who is opposed to women working outside the home which she acquiesces to until she doesn't.  There are side stories of other woman, other career girls, an Italian countess and the main character's brother.  The main story just seemed to be a lot of miscommunication and noncommunicable between the characters until they divorced.  

========================================================

7. The Tie that Binds

Author: Kent Haruf
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
An extremely dysfunctional two generation family in the Colorado plains farm town of Holt.  I like Kent Haruf because his characters are often kind and against stereotype.  This book was just mean and bitter.



========================================================
8. Maybe This Time

Author: Jennifer Cruisie
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments: A beach read.  Predictable, but some parts of the story is unexpected.  Good and diverse characters. This is the second book by this author that I have read this year. 

========================================================

9. Without Reservations

Author: Alice Steinbach

Read or Listened? Read

Fiction or NonFiction? NonFiction - travel memoir

Description and comments:

A 50ish woman and reporter takes a sabbatical and goes to Europe by herself. She goes to Paris, London, Italy and meets people along the way.  Its a really good book about travelling by ones self and how to enjoy being with people.

========================================================

10. The Casual Vacancy

Author: JK Rowley
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

The lives of a small English town and various people in it after a citizen died and left a "casual vacancy" on the parish council.

========================================================

11. 14

Author: Peter Clines
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

A man moves into a cheap LA apartment building, starts meeting the neighbors, and notices some strange things going on in the building.  It was good and light with fun characters and unexpected twists.

========================================================

12. Orphan Train

Author: Christina Baker Kline 
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Dual stories about a modern-day girl in the foster care system and an Irish girl who was put on the orphan trains from New York City to be adopted in the midwest.  Some predictableness, but it was good historical fiction.

========================================================

13. Calculated in Death

Author: J.D. Robb
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Futuristic detective story.  Very light and easy to listen to.  A perfect light novel.  I believe this book was the middle of the series.

========================================================

14. Star Island

Author: Carl Hiassen 
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

A drugged-out pop singer in Florida with her enabling entourage including a double that gets kidnapped by a paparazzo.  Hiassen's great odd ball characters, but they were a little too over the top in this novel.

========================================================

15. NOS 4A2

Author: Joe Hill
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

A haunted bridge, a haunted car, missing children and a girl/woman who can find things.  Very dark and ugly.  I don't think I would recommend this book.

========================================================

16. The Red Tent

Author: Anita Diamant 
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Fictional story of biblical story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob.  It took me so long to read that I just didn't get into it.


========================================================

17. The Winter Sea

Author: Susanna Kearsley 
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

A woman who writes historical fiction goes to her ancestral Scottish lands and finds that instead of fiction, she has the memories of her ancestor.  This is two books in one.  Good history, but overall kind of a boring book.

========================================================

18. The Painted Veil

Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:
Short, but really well written.  It was never quite clear where the book was headed even at the very end.  Its been a few years since I have read Somerset Maugham, but I will have to read more. 

========================================================

19. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Author: Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? nonfiction

Description and comments:

Probably a little long, but it was amazing how Oppenheimer grew up and evolved over time.  The number of famous people he encountered was incredible.  Lots of sadness and drama in his life caused by Hoover and others during the red scare.

========================================================

20. How to Bake a Perfect Life

Author: Barbara O'Neal
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Really light book about a woman who owns a bakery, her pregnant daughter, her daughter's stepdaughter and her family.  The woman bakes bread so there are sides about how to make bread and how making bread is therapeutic. The characters were all too nice and kind of one-dimensional. It was very predictable.  I liked it as a light read, but I wouldn't recommend it.

========================================================

21. The Glass Castle

Author: Jeanette Wells
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Non-fiction, memoir

Description and comments:

Very powerful book about a girl growing up with two self-centered parents who couldn't seem to be bothered to earn money and put food on the table.  She had to go through garbage cans to get food to eat. She and her siblings got out as soon as they could, but their parents followed them.  Her mother, especially, seemed all about being an artist that couldn't see that her children were starving and she could do something about it. 

========================================================

22. The Book Thief

Author: Markus Zusak
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

A book narrated by the devil set in Germany during World War II.  I think it is a "young adult" novel, but it reads well.  Descriptions are beautiful.  The reader really makes it.  A girl is left by her mother in the care of foster parents just before the war starts.  And these are coarse, but good-hearted foster parents who genuinely love her and take care of her.

========================================================

23. Strength in What Remains

Author: Tracy Kidder
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Nonfiction

Description and comments:

A book about an African, Burundi immigrant to New York City and how he meets people, makes a life and finishes college and medical school.  The book goes into the civil war and the history of Burundi and the differences between Tutsi and Hutu clans.

========================================================
24. Justice Hall
Author: Laurie R. King
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Sherlock Holmes and his wife investigate a very wealthy family and who should inherit the estate.  Also involved is a court-martial and execution in World War I.

========================================================
25. S is For Silence
Author: Sue Grafton
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Good and light mystery novel.  Time shifted back and forth on a cold case.

========================================================
26. Night Work
Author: Laurie R. King
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Lesbian mystery novel set in modern-day San Francisco.  There are sub-pieces about a biblical play and a feminist godess thesis that I just had to skip over.  By the end there were so many characters I had trouble keeping track of them all.

========================================================
27. Lit
Author: Mary Karr
Read or Listened? Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Memoir

Description and comments:

Her third memoir.  This one is the account of her as an adult getting married, having a child and a really big drinking problem.  She stops drinking, begins AA as her lifestyle and converts to Catholicism. And she makes a lot of money with her first book.  Her husband really seemed to be out of the picture during most of the marriage.  Was she protecting him or was their marriage that poor?  The book made me mad, but also hit some personal notes along the way as well.

========================================================
28. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest
Author: Stieg Larsson
Read or Listened? : Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

Third in the "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" series.  Its been a while since I listened to the last one and it was difficult remembering the characters.  This one had a whole bunch of new characters too.  It was good and had good twists and turns and the courtroom scenes were very good.

========================================================
29. Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein 
Read or Listened? : Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments: Two girls in their 20's in England during World War II.  One is a pilot, the other a spy.  They meet, become best friends and one is captured and tortured in France.  The story is told from both points of view.  It may be "young adult", but it is a good novel about women making it on their own terms.

========================================================
30. Where'd you Go Bernadette ?
Author: Maria Semple
Read or Listened? : Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments:

A woman who we later learn was a genius architect goes a little crazy raising a child in Seattle while her husband is a Microsoft genius.  She escapes on a cruise to Antarctica.  The story is told through emails and from the point of view of the 15-year-old daughter.  Very quick read, but interesting plot twists.

========================================================
31. Snow White Must Die
Author: Nele Neuhaus
Read or Listened?  Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction

Description and comments: 
Set in a German town (book was translated) after a man who was convicted of murder 10 years before gets out of prison.  The whole town is turned upside down.  Secrets come out.  There are many characters and you learn the life story of many of them.  It gets confusing at first, but at the end is very satisfying.


========================================================
32. Vertical Burn
Author: Earl Emerson
Read or Listened?  Read
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:

A good firefighter seems to have bad luck and two partners die.  This is definitely a mans book.  It was good light reading, but I am not sure I will read another by this author soon.

========================================================
33. The Light Between Oceans
Author: M.L. Stedman
Read or Listened? Listened
Fiction or NonFiction? Fiction
Description and comments:
Australian book set after World War I.  A war vet gets a job as a lighthouse keeper on a desolate island off Australia.  He marries, but his wife is unable to have children.  A boat washes up one day with a dead man and a small baby.