What I Set Out To Do...

I'm in a pickle. Not the delicious kind either. Assuming you think pickles are delicious. Shit, I know I do. 

I am facing yet another career change.
When I left Race Street I was so unsure of what the future held. I am a long term job type of girl and in the last few years I have had about 3 different jobs. 

My current job I will have been at for a year in April. I feel it in my bones that the gig is up. I just ordered my transcripts from State and just that alone makes me feel like I am headed in the right direction. 

Finally.
In my mid-30's.
I see the light.

It's time to take action. Honestly, I just need to come to fucking terms with my life and the poor decisions I have made. Taking ownership is the hardest thing. 

I have made a myriad of excuses as to why I have continued to slack on myself. Don't believe me? A part of me hella wants to list them. Why? Maybe to shed myself of them, to own them once and for all and be fucking done, just done with them. And then another part of me is like hell no that might bite me in the ass later... accountability is key. But I am barely starting this journey with it... 

Truthfully a lot of it has been my fault. I have let other's shortcomings become mine. I've been complacent when I should have been enraged. 

I need to be an example for my children. They are entering the "old enough to remember phase" and I need to up my game, straight up.

It's hard as fuck being a mom and going back to school and following your dreams and all that shit when you have, for the last 13 years, aggressively set aside your own personal wants for others around you. 

How do I find myself again? How do I find what the fuck it is I really want to do with my life?

I thought my 30's were going to be fun. And in a way, I guess you can say this is fun. A different kind of fun. I have a chance to reinvent myself and be a better ass motherfucking me. When it can still count for something cause let's face it, trying to find yourself and your journey in your 40's, 50's & 60's, although extremely courageous and commendable, can also be laughable and sad. 

So here's to gobbling pickles and showing them who's boss. I'm sliding into home, players.

How Lovely Is The Life I Lead.

It's hilarious that I have to work all day and then go home and work all night. I love sitting here at my desk and contemplating my next move, my next call, my next dodge, my next word and then stressing my brain out to oblivion with all the chaos that comes my way. I never anticipated a sit-down job to be so fantastic. It really is all I could ever want. Sitting here practicing posture techniques, typing with out looking, or what different ways I can organize my desk. I have mastered the technique of guessing who is coming by the sound of their pitter-patter on the linoleum floor. Nine times out of ten I always guess right. I can tell by the length of their steps and the heaviness of their feet or the squeek their shoes make or don't make or the way they come down the stairs or how the upstairs door slams when they close it. It's actually a talent I have honed over the years of working here and I am considering including that talent on my resume. I listen to complaining literally ALL DAY from a wide array of people. Co-workers, sales partners, customers, buyers, dock employees, my computer fan from being over worked... all underpaid.

Then I get to go home. I have about 45 minutes of alone time that use to be spent cooking and tiding up a bit before members of my congregational family arrive. But now I have realized that those 45 minutes are truly the only real moments alone I have at home so I spend them instead on Sorority Life like a real woman should. Of course in between the moments it takes for my computer to download I am in the kitchen prepping for the spectacular dinner I am imagining in my head. After I am done whooping virtual ass, buying all the hottest virtual clothes virtual money can buy, and of course virtually pampering my virtual boyfriend that is if one of my virtual sorority slutty sisters hasn't stolen him, I drag my feet to my lovely kitchen and begin the task of dinner. YAY!

Thankfully, I am the type of mother that does NOT care what my kids will or will not eat. I never indulge in their pickyness because once you let them get away with it they will do it time and time again. I never got to choose what I ate and they are granted the same privileges. While I am on this subject I absolutely can't stand mothers that proclaim what their child will and won't eat and they bring their own snacks to the party because of it. Unless your kid has tried it they don't know if they like it or not! So quit with the dumb shit! There are starving children all over the damn world! Shit there are starving children here in San Jose that don't get a choice in what they can eat or won't eat. My kids eat what I cook, if they don't like they don't eat and until they can buy their own groceries that's how it is. I always tell them when they don't like what I cook that they are NOT at a restaurant and if they were I would be the manager, the president, the boss with the sauce and I would kick them out with out a refund just for complaining.

After we eat dinner together as a family, they have the opportunity to watch a movie, read a book, play a game, clean their room, draw or color, take a bath, and leave me be. While they are occupied with their tasks at hand the hubby gracefully plops himself in front of the computer to work while I tend the kitchen and the dishes and the draperies and the laundry and the sweeping and then I do them again! All the mean while I am in a whirlpool of self-loathing cursing every sock, toy, dish, chair, jacket that is out of place ruining what should be ME TIME!

Then following the round-up of all things scattered, I calmly ask Mordecai and Rigby to brush their teeth and hop into bed. I use to let them watch movies but that shit just keeps them up later so lately I have been playing this CD called Sleep Sounds we got at a hotel once. They hate it, I love it cause they are asleep in about 20 minutes when it would normally take them hours to crash. I don't know why I ever thought watching a movie to go to sleep is a good idea for kids that aren't even trying to go to sleep in the first place. I put the CD on and I close the doors to the hallway and the kitchen giving them peace and tranquility while I ever so gracefully plop myself in front of the TV hoping to catch something good on Netflix.

Concurrently, the wonderful, amorous man I call Baby Daddy is still in oblivion working on his pictures and I mentally debate with my mental self about interrupting his work and letting him know that I am going to watch a movie if he would like to partake in such activities. One hundred percent of the time I am successful at pulling him away from his rigorous assignments. I then patiently wait and watch as he shows me what he has accomplished so far while waiting for a professional critique. I inwardly beam with pride, joy, accomplishment, happiness when I see the marvelous work he does but I can't show too much pride or excitement or overdo my compliments otherwise he will think me fake. Like any artist he appreciates constructive valid criticism not the "I-think-every-single-little-thing-you-do-is-absolutely-fantastic-even-if-you-hate-it" type of banter I guess I can sometimes give. Whatever. It's how I feel. It's the reason why I don't get upset when he sits there hours at a time while I am sweating to the tunes of a dirty house because I know that whatever he is working on is going to be brilliant and I don't want to be the one to hold him back or make him feel like he can't be great because his nagging ass wife. If he wasn't so adept, I wouldn't be as supportive but then again would I even realize he wasn't skilled cause I am his wife and love him to pieces and everything he does?

We snuggle up in bed, sometimes with an ice cold one, sometimes with a snack, sometimes just each other. And these are the moments I can't wait for. The moments when it's back to us. The moment's when I get to lay down next to the man that's played the lead role in all of my dreams including my nightmares. Ignoring my never ending back pain and just basking in the infinite love I feel for him and my children at this very moment when I finally get to do what I want and not what I HAVE to do. I say a little prayer to God asking him to please pretty please slow down the axis of the earth around the sun and let me have extra moments of this tranquility.

And then BAM my phone rings and it's my Grandmother giving me her ritual wake up call that I quickly devalue by going back to sleep as soon as I hang up. Sometimes she calls me back at 6:30, most times she doesn't but that's okay because the devil himself disguised as my husband's cell phone alarm will now continuously ring for the next hour every five minutes marking the pinnacle of another fateful day of waiting till I reach those last few hours that make the rest of my wonderful day all worth it. Indeed the life I lead is lovely, can't wait to do it again tomorrow.

Ciao.

(ps. I really do love my life.)

Justifying Failures

As much as I try and not let past experiences get in my way now I always find myself excusing my present behaviors on 'not-being-taught-when-I-was-younger'. But how long can I really milk that for if I even still can now? How long can I really say, 'because-my-momma-never-taught-me' or 'because-my-dad-was-never-there' or 'I-grew-up-way-too-fast-for-hygiene-and-etiquette-to-make-my-top-list-must-do's'. The fact that I even realize this must mean that the time is NOW to stop using those excuses.

Question is, am I truly ready to let go of my crutches? To truly abandon every justification that has made me a slacker, a procrastinator, a dweller of all things traumatizing, a push it to the back of my mind kind of person till the fees have added up hasta el tope? Or the fact that I justify dropping out of school to begin with because I got pregnant and I wanted to focus on mother hood and my daughter not my future. Can I really blame that on my child? Will she grow up thinking that she held me back? Is that burden fair to place on her? Sure she is young now and doesn't realize it but she is smart and just as I question my own existence as a burden placed on my own mother have I doomed my child to the same fate? I kinda want to cry even writing that because it's the first time I have ever admitted it and I am not sure if I am completely ready to admit it.

Since I'm on this path of self-revelations, the truth is I dropped out of school cause I was lazy. It was hard for me to work two jobs, pay rent, gas, go to school full time, do homework, buy books, have a social life, wake up early Monday thru Monday, essentially had no help from no one at the time, look good and be pregnant. I was not made for those duties. Faults I blame on my past. There were other kids making it. Why couldn't I? Was it really my fault I wasn't taught to handle and manage all these things together, that I was forced to? Who's fault was it then that I wasn't taught to fight through life's harsh realities when it came to 'normal-day-to-day' struggles like work and school and responsibilities but without question knew I didn't need a man to raise kids or be happy? Without question, I knew a woman could do whatever she wanted how ever she wanted with whomever so long as it was making HER life happy? Why couldn't these things include school, or work, or brushes, or money, or lotion, or true love, or true family love?

I was in my walking class when a classmate told me how she had taken a year off to raise her child. It sounded like an excellent idea. She made it perfectly clear that it was imperative I return after that year off was taken and completed other wise everything would be screwed up. I was already failing my math class. I couldn't for the life of me get out of remedial math in the two years I had spent studying there. My English professor would not cut me any slack on making up homework even when I had explained to her that I was on Medi-Cal and could only take the prenatal appointments given to me which just so happen to fall on the hour of her class. Bitch. And in the year that I took my leave, SJSU decided to switch everything online. Yeah nothing crazy difficult, but it was just another obstacle I had no intention on overcoming.

I felt like the two years I completed there were sufficient enough and joining the sea of college-dropouts wasn't really that bad. The fact that I was even accepted into SJSU was an accomplishment for me. I probably didn't even have to attend one day of curriculum and I would still ride that boat till it sank. So basically I was looking for an excuse to drop out and fail. Motherhood was the perfect, most justifiable, sympathetic way to not have to go back. Besides what kind of mother would I be if I left my child everyday just to go to school? I was working full time by then and I would never see her if I did that.

I lay in bed every night thinking of what if, or I'm going to call the school tomorrow and get a copy of my transcripts and enroll again. Instead I wake up the next morning late and I forget about it all. Even if my Grandma, God bless her soul, calls me every morning at 6 and 630 am to wake me up. I linger in the past because I think I'm still trying to figure it out and understand it. I still want these excuses to be valid in my present day life because it helps me to put off till tomorrow what I know I so badly need to do today.

Looking in the mirror is hard to do knowing all this sometimes. Aside from all physical defaults, my eyes are relentless once they see past superficial insecurities and go straight to the ones that lie beneath the surface. The ones I can't escape nor deny. The ones that need to be faced and dealt with as soon as possible.

And what comes next when writing this reminds myself to call the school and get my transcripts right now that their phone lines are open and everything would be readily available and I still won't pick up the phone and do it?