Anticipation

I am trying very hard not to let Brian get on my nerves but I swear he does stuff just to get to me. Today he was telling Iyende something about taking a message if So-and-So called. Well, she is on punishment and cannot use the phone for a week, why would she answer it?? Ultra-duh! I'm sitting right there, why not ask me to take a message. True enough, I was working on the computer, so maybe he didn't want to interrupt me, but still.

Iyende told him she couldn't answer the phone, which he knew because we discuss disciplining the kids. It's not like I just decided on my own she couldn't use the phone, we decided together. He then told her to take the message again, and she responded the same way. So I yelled at Brian why was he asking her to take a message when he knew she was on punishment...he seemed pissed and just grabbed the phone and went upstairs. Grrrrrrr. I was very perplexed, but after a few minutes I went upstairs to apologize for yelling. Can't say I'm not trying. Did he apologize back? No.

We are supposed to go to this new marriage counselor this week. I am looking forward to it, I am anxious to hear what she has to say. I am also looking forward to her telling Brian all the stuff I've been telling him. Brian is a smart man, but how he walks around so unaware of his own issues is beyond me. This marriage counselor will not tell me anything about myself that I don't already know, negative and positive, but I bet Brian is going to be surprised. He thinks I am just talking out of my neck when it comes to him and his issues and how he interacts/reacts with me in this marriage, like he's just Mr. Perfect who never does anything wrong. It's amazing, it truly is.

Anyway I hope this will help...we have so much built-up animosity towards each other that we fight over simple stuff like today. Later on, though we had a really good conversation, it seemed almost like old times.

Heart Trouble

My aunt is in the hospital tonight. My mom called me and told me my aunt had some problems with her heart and that she was at the hospital, the doctors weren't sure what had happened. Two minutes after talking with her, my cousin (her daughter) called to tell me the same thing, with a little more detail. I told her I'd drive her in to see her mom. I had to wait a while because Iyende was at cheerleading tryouts until 9pm, Brian was out with his mother. He took her to dinner for a belated Mother's Day....so I told my cousin I'd come get her at around 9:30. I went to go pick my daughter up at 9 but they weren't done yet, long story short I got to my cousin's house well after 10.

We went to the hospital, and wouldn't you know it I parked in a lot way across from the building where my aunt was at. It was cool, though, all the buildings are connected. We finally got to see her. She looked a little peaked but seemed at ease, and my cousin was relieved. So was I.

Like me my aunt is a vegetarian going vegan. Now explain to me why a hospital doesn't have at least one or two meat-free dishes? My aunt told her that the nurses were like, We'll try to find something you can eat. What. Ever. We went to the hospital cafeteria and rustled up a salad, and they at least had whole fruit, some apples and oranges. I know it was late at night and all but still. I was miffed at that.

Basically they will have her under observation, they are not exactly sure what the deal is. This hospital is supposed to be one of Ohio's best. I hope that my aunt will be all right.

Michelle

She was my friend. My very good friend, for many years. We shared two houses together. In one duplex she lived upstairs, me and my kids downstairs. The next duplex was side-by-side. She had four kids when I met her, I had two. We both had baby daddy drama. Both houses had a front and back yard, and our kids would run around and play together. My daughter's birthday and her son's birthday were in the same week. One year we had a combined party, and it was so much fun. There were a million kids there, both our families, and in the back yard Michelle put up a pinata. It was a blast.

We were both poor and scrounging. Once in the first house my electricity got cut off. My folks, who could have, wouldn't help me. At first. While they ravaged me with words about how irresponsible I was, Michelle quietly put a couple of extension cords together and ran them down from an outlet from upstairs so that I could at least have a lamp on. Ashamed in the face of such kindness, my parents lent me the money to pay my electric bill.

The next year when I got my tax return, I gave her $100 to repay her. She seemed so surprised, and tried to refuse the money. Michelle was like that, very giving and not expecting anything in return. She was always helping me with stuff. I could depend on her to watch my kids and vice versa. Although our parenting styles were very different she loved her kids, fiercely, and I learned a lot from her. She was very good to my children, I trusted her with them.

I don't know what happened to our friendship. Although we practically lived together we still ran in separate circles, had different types of friends. Her boyfriends were all "ballers" and lived on the edge, the entire time I knew her I was with Brian, a "punker". She thought my other friends were weird, I didn't know what to think of some of her friends.

I attributed the big break-up to jealousy. She seemed to act different after Brian and I got married. As we were strengthening our relationship she was dating a new man every other week. We kept on going to college through all kinds of hardship, she did a semester or two at community college and stopped going. I put my daughter into an expensive private school, she had no alternative but to keep her kids in the ratty public one. I thought she was just jealous, and ignored her smart comments and thinly veiled insults until my anger at her could not be contained and we fought, viciously and nastily for all the world to hear, shocking even our loud ghetto neighborhood into silence.

We almost came to blows.

Right there in the yard, with our kids and the neighborhood kids looking on, I wanted to kick her ass. I wanted to knock her down and spit in her face. I hated her. I stood on my porch and hated her, hated her screaming and yelling obscenities at me. I looked down at her and wanted to leap off my porch and land with both feet squarely in her face. She looked like she wanted to kill me, to kick my ass. Though this anger shook me to my core, Reason won out. I stopped in mid-scream and walked back into my house, collecting my children on the way. I shut the door and cried.

I haven't really talked to her since.

She called me a week later but again, we ended up cussing and screaming at each other. I hung up on her first. She called back and hung up on me.

The kids nit-picked each other for awhile, but made up. They were scared to play together, though. This breaks my heart. Soon she moved away.

A few years after that, when one of my sisters was in town she saw Michelle at a mall. They talked of this and that. She told my sister she has another baby. This hurt me like a wound, why didn't she come find me, does she hate me that much? I would have been there for her, I would have helped her. But I did nothing to find her, because my sister told me she was with her same old friends. Maybe she didn't need me or want my friendship, maybe her friends would laugh at me again behind their long acrylic nails.

But maybe she thinks of me often, too. Maybe her and her kids look in their photo album and say, "Do you remember when we lived in the house with Iyende and Scott and baby Todd? Remember Trula fed us seaweed all the time and Brian would pull the basketball hoop in the street and everybody would come down to play? Remember all the birthday parties and sleepovers? How come you're not friends with Trula anymore, mommy?

If I ever see her again I will hug her and tell her how much I miss her. I miss our friendship, I miss her kids. I know how to find her, I know where one of her good friends live. I think I will stop by and ask her to please give Michelle my phone number. Maybe she misses me, too.

Cheerleading

Iyende decided she wants to be a cheerleader. I don't know how I feel about it, exactly. I put her off for awhile when she asked permission. I don't want her to be a cheerleader! It's like all my work to ensure that she has a strong, feminist, healthy self-esteem is gone right out the window. If she were a little older, I wouldn't be so hesitant...but eighth grade? the tryouts are for the next school year.

Why does she want to do this anyway, it seems so boring. Maybe she won't get picked, then I won't have to worry about this 'till next year. She told me all this stuff about how cheerleading is a Real Sport with Real Training and you need Real Skills to do it. Whatever. It might be all that but I can't tell. All I see is the same old same old - girls cheering on the boys, girls on the sidelines again.

Condoms

I haven't been on the pill since I decided to continue breastfeeding Todd back in '98, and then only briefly, two months. We have been following a natural birth control method. I don't worry about getting pregnant too much since biologically speaking I am getting old for that and we are married, 2 factors that seem to inhibit procreation. Now, if I were a little younger or still shacking up with Brian I'd have five more kids by now, ha ha.

I'm worried now though because our relationship is having problems and I'm back in school and I'm trying to come up and do some things with my writing. If my body follows it's past pattern, then I will conceive. I do not want to have more children, mostly because it is by the grace of whatever deity that exists or sheer luck that I survived childbirth 3 TIMES. I truly think a fourth pregnancy would just about do me in. Plus, I'm happy with the 3 I've got, and Brian agrees that our family is complete. I did tell him that he had until I turned 31 to make up his mind, I'd have another one if he really, really, really wants me too.

He claims he doesn't, but why has he been forgetting to buy condoms?? Does he want me to get pregnant but doesn't want it to seem like it's his decision? Does he want it to be a 'fit of passion' baby? Hmmmmmm. We are really too old for this juvenile indecision. So I took it upon myself to buy condoms.

I was so nervous! Don't laugh, I know it seems silly but hey, I am 30 years old and never bought condoms before. When I was a teenager I would have died before anybody saw me buying condoms, and when I was in my early twenties the few men I was intimate took care of that. I've been with Brian since I was 24, up until recently he bought them.

I slunk into the grocery store, sidling up and down the aisles until I found them. There were so many brands and styles! Colors! Textures!? Flavors! All I know is that Brian likes some brand that was ultra-thin for sensitivity. I looked up and saw some clerks watching me in the circular I-Spy mirror. I was tempted to give them the finger but restrained myself. I was tempted to yell, "hey I'm a grown married woman!" but I didn't. I felt guilty and scared and nervous and ashamed just as if I were 16 years old again. I finally picked a box and took it to the counter. I really wanted to get some strawberries too but felt so uncomfortable with the condom box I probably would have hidden it in the produce section under a stack of bananas, so I just went ahead and paid for them. They cost 7.99 for a box of 12.

Some questions I have been mulling over:

Why was I embarrassed to buy condoms?

Why do I care what other people think of me having sex?

Why did I feel the need to validate gratifying my sexual urges with my marriage?

Brian was so surprised I actually went out and bought condoms, he knows how prudish I am.

We had a lovely time.