Finally, We Were Safe.

Read this from Narcotics Anonymous on my Facebook tonight and thought I'd share the quote below, which I thought befitting of being in the throes of addiction, whether it's to narcotics or alcohol, my two worst vices. Active addiction is a scary, lonely place. Numbing yourself in active addiction becomes your first life priority, because the world HURTS. It's amazing how substance-centered your life becomes. Apart from completing basic, essential life tasks and responsibilities, the rest of your existence is placed upon scoring the next dose, the next drink, until you either face death straight on or let yourself fall off the cliff and into the arms of people below who care enough to help you save YOURSELF.

"The life we lived in the dark world of our disease was a terrifying one. It was as if we were perched on a tiny ledge thousands of feet up the side of a mountain. The drop was straight down. We never dared to look up or down because we so desperately feared falling. All we could do was feed our disease and tremble in fear. We were stuck. There was no room on our ledge for anyone else. We were all alone. Every day, little bits and pieces of our perch would fall off. All we could do was wait.

Finally, out of desperation, we looked up and saw thousands of people urging us to climb. They reached down and created a human chain for us to climb. All we had to do was let go of our perch and take the hands extended to us. We stood, looked up, let go, and took the hands. We were safe."

Eau des Mereveilles and a Desperate Housewife

Most women have a signature scent; a perfume or cologne that is uniquely connected to them. People recognize a woman by her scent; the opposite sex on olfactory overload by a perfume worn with regularity. My scent of choice is by Hermes, Eau des Mereveilles. Famously French and grossly overpriced. If you've been around me for upwards of the last decade, you've come in contact with Eau des Mereveilles. My ex-husband bought me a bottle for Christmas several years ago that I rationed for years, I think, followed by a bottle that my ex-boyfriend bought me for Valentine's Day in '08, I think. It's historically well-received, though when my best male friend smelled it on me the first time, he told me I smelled like "70's shampoo." I couldn't tell if that was a compliment or an insult.

There is precious little left of the bottle from the ex-boyfriend, which I sparingly use on special occasions. On the average day, I revert to the bottle of Burberry for Her that my best male friend bought me for Christmas last year. I like the Burberry, and he bought it for me knowing how much I love All Things Burberry, but it's just not the same as the Hermes. It's stronger and less flowery, more apt for the every day than for the snazzing out, which is why I usually wear it to work.

Sadly, Hermes and I will have to soon part company until I earn far more money, which is sad but inevitable. Perhaps I'll spritz my wrists and just once on my neck in the meantime, as opposed to the additional spritz on the back of my neck that I usually wear.

So last night I had a dream that I wouldn't categorize as a PTSD dream, but the ex-boyfriend was in it nevertheless. We were in the Hermes store and he was buying me another bottle of the perfume. We didn't have contact with one another in the store other than the fact that I knew he was there, while I was looking at the Birkin and Kelly bags on display in the store. His mere presence in the dream awakened me at close to 6:00am, when I had my alarm set for 7:45am. I don't have to be at work until 1pm on Tuesdays, so I thought I'd sleep in, having gone to bed at 10:30pm last night. Wasn't meant to be.

He wasn't abusing me in this dream. He was treating me to something. It certainly wasn't like the last nightmare, where he had one of his small kitchen pairing knives in-hand (that he'd given me to have sharpened a couple of times), and I was outside smoking, and he told me not to tell on social network sites that I was going to be alone in the house and he tried to cut me on my right arm where I used to cut myself. THAT was a nightmare. And yes, I'm still skittish about going out alone to smoke at night, worse going into the dark alley adjacent to my townhouse complex to go to the garbage dumpster.

Wearing the scent doesn't trigger PTSD reactions in me, for I wore it long before I met my ex-boyfriend, though he always said I smelled nice when I wore Eau de Mereveilles. It just reminds me of ME. I guess if I smell like "70's shampoo," it's my own damn fault for wearing expensive French perfume.

Friends, loved ones and doctors all tell me the memories will eventually fade, just as the scent of the perfume eventually does. That's true, to a large degree. It's just the dreams that are relentless. They won't go away because he's still implanted in my psyche, which my present (soon-t0-be-former) therapist was unable to redirect through therapy. And I doubt highly that he'd ever show up at my house and hold me at knife point, though I take my phone outside with me whenever I smoke, ready to dial 911. Seems like my mind has 911 on speed dial too. I just want it to all go away.

Separately, I RSVP'd to a pharm rep talk at the hospital this morning, "Smoking Cessation and Nicotine Addiction: Understanding Both," to be given an hour and a half before I start work this afternoon. I said I'd go. My supervisor encouraged me to go. Brought to you by Pfizer and a cardiologist from another hospital. There's Thai food involved, which is free, but I somehow doubt I'll make it to the session. I think I know enough about nicotine addiction to skip the lecture, even given this week is the Great American Smokeout on 11/17. I'm just not ready to quit, and it's the last vice I do have, so when I'm ready, I'll quit. That day hasn't happened yet, though I'm getting close, having had to sing again this weekend and quickly losing my breath (partly because I don't know how to sing using my diaphragm). Sorry, but the free lunch isn't riveting enough to draw me in, during my pre-work chain smoking and Led Zeppelin-listening ritual I perform before I head into the office.

I'm a huge fan of "Desperate Housewives," the only current television show I watch religiously with my mom every Sunday night. Luke knows he's on "Do Not Disturb" from 8-9 on Sunday nights, though the show's getting hard to watch. One main character's husband just turned into an alcoholic, and at the end of the episode was heading off to rehab. Meanwhile, another female main character, who is a recovering alcoholic with 5+ years of sobriety behind her, having helped her alcoholic son recover, fell off the wagon at the end of last Sunday's episode. I begged the question, "Why did she have wine in the house in the first place?" Another couple on the show is divorcing after 22 years of marriage, which makes me sad. The women in the show all have themselves in a highly precarious place, having covered up a murder, and there is Bree, falling off the wagon with a sip of chardonnay and a look on her face as if she'd just run into her best friend in life. It's just a stark reminder of how close we alcoholics are to that one drink that will ruin everything we worked so hard to achieve. I know the show isn't reality, but it speaks to me in understandable terms and is starting to make me uncomfortable. Luckily, this is the finale of the entire series, so I only have to deal with it until the end of May. And there's enough intrigue and humor to keep me on edge for the coming months, so I keep watching it anyway.

There's this "Occupying" everything lately...and I joined the united front of occupying musicians. That was good, to be included in that. However, I was rejected from the petition for occupying writers, because my medium of writing is a blog. I sent a link to my writing to the moderator of the petition site, and he politely responded that despite my prolific ponderings, I would not be included in the petition because I blog and am not published. They were super-polite about the exclusion, so that was good, and wished me well in my writing ventures, but it's still kind of a bummer. Unlike my friend Mimi Smartypants, my blog has yet to be turned into a book, nor do I expect it ever to, but it would've been nice to have been acknowledged for the writing that I *do* do, regardless of the medium in which it's published.

Til next time!

But Who's Counting?

Understanding Life.

Rated "M" for "Momblog"

I've been accused of being, but vehemently deny, that I am a helicopter parent. My son is warranted freedoms typically given only to children much older than 11. I don't hover over and follow him wherever he goes. Unlike some parents in his 6th grade class, I don't walk him into school in the morning and make sure he gets to his classroom. I let him go out and ride his bike alone around the neighborhood, confident he'll come back eventually. I entrust him with privileges and usually receive reciprocal respect as a result. I let him make a lot of his own decisions and deal with the fallout or successes of those decisions. I'm firm but not overbearing. I discipline but I don't condemn. Carl Jung said, "We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation doesn't liberate. It oppresses."

I encourage and reward good behaviors and call him on and punish bad behaviors. We speak to one another on an intellectual level reserved customarily for adult-to-adult interactions. He is continually praised by other adults for his level of maturity and things like his sardonic sense of humor. We always say he's an old soul, and he is. Craig would say he's been coddled, but my impression is that he's been through more in his 11 years than most kids go through in their entire childhoods, and some of that stuff is really difficult to deal with. It's tough to remember that at heart, though, he's still a young kid, subject to young kid emotions and challenges.

I fully admit to spoiling him by my own accord materialistically, purely out of the feeling that I want him to be afforded a lot of what I felt I was missing out on when I was a child. I want him to be happy. Craig disagrees with how much I cave in and let Luke get his way, and thinks our son should be learning more about disappointment and the ills of the world than he now comprehends. It's so hard, though. You want to be generous with your child, especially when circumstances were different in your own childhood and you *didn't* always get what you wanted when you wanted it. Today, our kids are obsessed with instant gratification, and that's something I have to work on delaying in Luke, and I am, slowly. And it's a cliche, but today things are different. Children have access to and are encouraged to HAVE so much more than we did as kids. Whether that's fashionable clothing, the latest electronics or games, or whatever, they just want everything, it seems. Peer pressure for children these days (and I'm speaking about pre-teens, which is my knowledge and experience base at present) is intense.

A new video game came out this week, Call of Duty: 3. Most of Luke's friends pre-ordered it from a store, and got it the day it came out, Tuesday. We pre-ordered ours online, largely because I had to wait until I paid my credit card bill, and this annoyed Luke. He said that his friends would make fun of him at school because he didn't have the game the day it came out. I explained to him that this was of those instances where he'd just have to wait and be patient, and that he'd get the game whenever it arrived. Thus he waited until it arrived yesterday, and all was well. If I had half a ball, I would've told him to put it on his Christmas list and wait until then. But I frankly didn't feel like dealing with the fallout of that decision. So I caved and bought it for him now, which Craig would probably like to bop me upside the head for doing.

Through teacher/principal and parental intervention, Luke mended ways with the first bully who was bothering him this school year, and now they're good pals. I even had the child over to play last Saturday for the whole afternoon and the kids got along famously. The child was polite, respectful and friendly. So super! I was happy for Luke that their differences had been resolved.

Meanwhile, the bully who's been abusing Luke for the last 4 school years has started abusing him again, physically and verbally. This abuse is a relatively new development at school for this year, but Luke told me about it the other night. My knee-jerk reaction was to spout off a rather abrupt, angry email to the teacher about the bully and about a situation at school where someone stole something that belonged to Luke, due to the negligence of the teacher. Not saying the bully in question stole the Lego mini figure out of Luke's book order at school, but someone in the classroom did, and no one fessed up, even after a desk and backpack check. (The teacher is ordering him a new book, not at our expense.) This bully likes to call Luke "stupid" and a "dumbass," and physically knock him around, kick him, grab the fat around Luke's waist and twist it until Luke screams out in pain, tackle him and just generally can't keep his hands to himself. He's a snot-nosed little brat who threatens Luke not to tell on him or he'll have his mommy, the cop, arrest Luke. (Which come on, Luke should know that's bullshit, but it intimidates him nevertheless.) Craig and I have gone through 4 teachers and 3 principal changes regarding this particular bully, and nothing ever gets resolved to anyone's satisfaction.

Not saying that the bully's behavior is in ANY way excusable, but Luke needs to remember that it's not really about Luke and who he is or might be like. It's about how the bully feels about himself, and the way he feels about himself is torn up inside. His parents are divorced, with the father living out-of-state, and the couple is currently embroiled in a serious custody dispute over where the child will live. Luke needs to understand that this kid's going through some heavy shit, and that his parents don't get along like Dad and I do. He needs to realize that the kid is grasping at straws to make himself feel better about himself, since his parents don't seem to be instilling in him a great deal of self-confidence, if they're tugging him from side to side.

I forwarded the angry email I'd sent to the teacher to a few close friends, and Craig, all of whom thought my tone was over-the-top and definitely an angry, accusatory outburst. That much I'll agree to. What most of them (apart from Craig) missed was the conversation and all the emails that followed that angry email, where I apologized to the teacher for being such a hardass and she apologized for her negligence in watching the kids and the book that got vandalized. She and I are on fine terms now, and I owned up to my anger and she said it wasn't displaced or unreasonable. I got a wrist slapping from Craig and TOC, so the teacher won't see any more angry emails from me in the future. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Meanwhile, my therapist, to whom I was assigned (Medicaid, what do you expect?) a few months ago has been largely useless to me. I have to do all the talking in the sessions and she either agrees with me on everything, saying "Exactly" over and over again, or she doesn't comprehend what I'm talking about at all. We've been talking about the Luke situations at home and at school, and she cannot GET why it's impossible for me to offer objective advice to my son. I'm biased. So is Craig. "Why you not objective?" she asks me her foreign vernacular. "He is kid." (Yes, I know that, but must you constantly refer to him as just plain "kid" and not "Luke" or "your son?") I've been trying desperately to find a therapist for Luke, who finally accepted that he should and needs to have someone to talk to about issues in his life, other than Mom and Dad. We had a family meeting the other night to discuss things going on in Luke's life, and we encouraged him to be as open as he can be with us, but that we understood that there might be things he wants to tell an objective 3rd party and NOT share with his parents, and that that is ok. It's someone he can fully trust with his secrets who'll tell no one and furthermore, not judge him for how he feels about things. My therapist didn't grasp that proposal.

My therapist also erroneously assumed that my counseling from my Stephen minister through church was a conflict of interest with her therapy, when my Stephen is a spiritual adviser who can offer me God's perspective and the Christian perspective on my problems and issues. She's there as a supportive, prayerful friend who helps me work things out according to God's plans, not mine. I need that. I appreciate her a lot. My secular therapist felt threatened by my Stephen minister. I told her I still need a licensed clinical psychologist for my mental illness-the bipolar, the general anxiety and the PTSD. I need my spiritual counselor to help me with living with reality of my issues as a child of God. They're mutually exclusive of one another. Even that she didn't understand. She wanted me to counsel my son and didn't think he would benefit from therapy and I had to raise strong disagreement with her regarding that issue, more than once.

The therapist asked me a strange question today. She asked me if I HAD to choose between the secular therapist and the Stephen minister, whom would I choose? What an unfair question. They serve totally separate roles in my therapy. I told her in all honesty that at this point, I'd pick my Stephen minister. There is absolutely no cause for me to choose. She's just weird, what can I tell you?

It's inherently impossible to be objective when the subject is your own child. The bond you share with that child is stronger than that of any other human relationship, even stronger than the bond between husband and wife, at least in my life. I LOVE Luke, in all caps. He is my first priority in life. I want him to emerge as a healthy, well-adjusted, not mentally ill, productive member of society when he grows up. But I can't do it alone, and neither can Craig. And Craig and I don't have all the answers on how to raise a pre-teen. That's why I'm soliciting advice from other parents with similar aged kids, who are also having problems with their children's moodiness and anger and aggression towards the whole world. Also soliciting advice from experienced parents who've lived through all of this pre-teen nonsense already. Craig and I have to do our part. The teacher and principal need to their parts, and a counselor will have to do his/her part. Our little ones are learning quickly that the world can be an unfair, icky place in which to survive. But you keep on plugging along. That's how you mature and become an adult. A young man, not a little boy.

Coincidentally, I'd planned on writing a note to my therapist's proctor (she's a grad student, and all of our sessions are recorded for her proctor to review) to ask for a new therapist. Well, glory be today! My therapist said she's leaving for "personal reasons" at the beginning of December, and I'll be assigned a new therapist, Erin. According to my therapist, Erin is young, like my last therapist, Elena, who I adored. So we'll see how that works out. Just about anything would be better than the current therapist. My mom, dare I say, gives me better advice on life.

Hey, You.

‎Run your fingers through my soul. For once, just once, feel exactly what I feel, believe what I believe, perceive as I perceive, look, experience, examine, and for once; just once, understand.

ромкие звуки заставляют меня чувствовать себя прекрасным

The ONE morning Luke runs out of time to put his Right Guard on and spray himself with Axe Excite, his math teacher rants the above, verbatim, which Luke decided to artistically interpret during class. Math is right after recess, and it was a mild day outside, so the kids (obviously) got a little sweated up. I understand the math teacher's dilemma, for a gaggle of stinky pre-teens would likely make me want to wretch myself, but she could've made it a more teachable moment about personal hygiene than just outwardly complaining that the kids reeked like a horse's ass.

The best part? His homeroom/lead teacher watched him draw it during class and told me she just had to chuckle. No, he didn't get in trouble. That's MY boy. Had that been me in 2011, I'd have written a poem about it behind the teacher's back, most likely, then "accidentally" have left it somewhere obvious in the classroom after school. And I would've gotten busted, like I did with Patti in 7th grade when we wrote (sans our names on it, naturally) a "Diagram of a Dick" illustration on some note paper that Mr. Piel found and used to mortally embarrass us.

I think he asked us if we had questions about sex we wanted to discuss with a female teacher or something, which we totally didn't, and we were probably relegated to the punishment of sitting in the hallway and writing sentences like "I will not draw diagrams of male genitalia and use street vernacular to describe it and leave it sitting around the classroom like a fucking dope" 100 times whilst on our knees. If we wanted to learn about sex, we asked Erin's mom, who was a pediatrician and told us no fluffy lies. Either that, or we'd enhance our learning experience by attempting to watch scrambled porn on OnTv late at night. Or we'd ask the one girl in class who, by 6th or 7th grade, had already gotten laid.

(Sexual education at St. Paul when we were kids. Holy crapoly. In 5th grade, they told us that all it took to make a baby was for a Christian husband and wife to love each other very, very much, and they would reproduce, which always made me think that since there were only 2 children in my family, my parents must not have loved one another at all, certainly not in the last 10 or so years since I'd been born.)

Whomever decided to put Patti and I next to one another in class was completely naive. We were best pals. We made an envelope out of notebook paper, taped it together and stuck it in between our desks, filled with nibble-sized pieces of paper on which we could pass notes to one another without talking. During tests, we had to put folders up in between us to discourage one another from cheating and looking at your classmate's paper. Great idea, Dear Educators. The pockets in the folders were incredibly handy in which to hide cheat sheets. The best part of that? We had to take the Illinois State Constitution test in 7th grade. Patti was having trouble with the test. She slipped her test (which was either scan-tron or multiple choice, so handwriting wasn't an issue) to me and I took hers for her, and if memory serves, we both got A's.

At some point in some grade, Mr. Heinze was our social studies teacher. Walking around the room unaware, he missed the fact that I was working on my test with my textbook in my lap. Great move, Annie, right?

(Ok. Maybe I *wasn't* the "smart one" of Patti and I, and she was the cool, stylish one that the boys liked. But I sure as hell as the more pragmatic of the two of us. Academic honesty and integrity weren't my strong suit when I was in grammar school, though I doubt highly that it'll impede my future study towards my doctorate.) And while not the bastion of a good example for Luke, luckily he's a helluva lot smarter than I was as his age, and has no reason to cheat on his work.)

My ma got on my case today about how much I use foul language on Facebook. One of the downsides of having your parents as your Facebook friends, I suppose. I posted a status challenging my friends, asking them what they'd do if I succeeded at not swearing on Facebook for an entire week. One friend commented thus far, citing "It just wouldn't be the same." My cousin Paul left a biting remark earlier in the day that indicated that he thought I was tiresome, vulgar and childish, but hey, that's just how I roll. Foul language is an ingrained part of my typical vernacular. I referred to someone as a "mofo" to my Pastor last night at the Praise Band meeting, and he didn't ex-communicate me from the Lutheran Church. He's one ok guy.

The band meeting last night was productive and emotionally charged. We decided on the future direction of the band, put some thought into fundraising to purchase monitors for us as well as a digital recorder to record ourselves practicing, to get a better feel for how WE play songs as opposed to the professional versions we hear on the CD's we're given on which to learn new songs. One of our vocalists is coming back after a 2 month high-school football season sabbatical, and we all vocalized our desire for there to be more preparation and working on material rather than Mary, our mama bear, having to run after and console a sobbing, hormone-drenched teenage singer when things go awry at every practice. Pastor Dave said that comparatively, our band is tighter and has it more together than a lot of praise bands he's heard, his former church included, which was surprising to hear, given we all feel like we've been operating on fumes the last few months. We were handed commitment agreements to fill out and sign with regard to being involved with the band. I have no problem with that. I've been a dedicated member of the band for almost 6 years now, twice a month, every month. They've been more than flexible during my multiple hospitalizations and illnesses by reverting back to Dr. Rhythm, the awful drum machine that takes my place in my absence.

I tried explaining my approach to learning new songs with the band, that the rest of the band thinks we should have nailed down by the time the actual practice takes place. But I can't do that. I literally listen to the songs dozens of times, get the timing down, though I'm not a technical professional and improvisation, as I've said, isn't my strong suit, so my method of learning a new song is to come up with my parts while my band plays them for the first time. And certainly, I can't replicate what professional drummers play on the CD's we're given featuring the new songs. I can't read music, nor do I have a piece of sheet music in front of me telling me what to play when, like the rest of the musicians do. I write myself notes on the chord sheets I'm given to by the guitarist so that I an at least follow along to the songs. That's about it. The rest I have to make up as I go along. Yes, it takes more practice time, but too bad. The band wanted a live drummer. I volunteered, though I'd never played in front of people before. Had never been in a band before. I never touted myself as being a professional, and it's obvious I'm not, but I can keep time (usually, except when I set a tempo that's way too fast, which is, frankly, my SOP) and I'm getting more expansive with my fills. Anyway, we got all of our ego shit and other shit out in public at our meeting and are a united family once again. Mazel tov!

My cousin Jackie still lie dying in the University of Madison (WI) neurological ICU and it's not looking good. She had another angioplasty on her brain on Friday, and her blood is clotting and bleeding out simultaneously. My ma and her sister, my cousin's mom, had a difficult visit up there Thurs/Fri, and all of Jackie's 5 kids were present. I continue to keep them all in my prayers. The doctors are saying that even IF she recovers, she'll never be the same. That makes me infinitely sad. If her brain doesn't start healing soon, her children will have to make the insanely difficult decision whether or not to let her go. I would ask those of you who pray to keep Jackie and the rest of our family in mind.

TOC and I were talking the other night about the difference between the Catholic church and my Lutheran church. His church, specifically his men's group, seems focused on socially getting together and thinking about fundraisers so they can have more meat-a-thons, rather than on spirituality, The Bible and God's grace and mercy. I hate to start a row with him about the denomination in which he's lived his whole life, but the Catholic church these days seems way for "works based" than "worship based." It's like mass is something you have to attend when you can, as long as you're praying your rosary and saying your Hail Marys, going to confession. Ceremonial praise. The Lutheran church is very different. We're far more Bible-based (it is fundamentalist, as I've previously mentioned) and worship-concentrated than the Catholics are. I respect his choice of religious outlet, but it just seems that God Himself is rather far removed from the epicenter of his church, which is a shame. I gave him a book for his birthday, a year-long devotional book that would literally take him 5 minutes a day to read, 5 minutes surrendered to God each day, and to date, he still hasn't started the book. Talk about irking. Here I am, trying to strengthen his faith walk with God, and he's neglecting what should be an important part of his spiritual life, out of what logic I'm not certain. I'll have to remember to ask him if he has read any of it again on Monday. Giving him that book was me showing him the Agape love I feel for him, when I could've given him 100 different gifts. Ah well.

Enjoy your extra hour of sleep tonight. Have to get up early as Luke's choir is singing in church tomorrow.

"Loud sounds make me feel fine."