deserted

my husband deserted me. he did it in the cruelest possible way - by saying  he didn't do it.


he said he was away on business.

he said he was still away on busness.

he said he was still away on business.


he made me hate his boss.

he made me hate his boss and his ceo and his human resources director.

he made me hate me.


he said he was coming home.

he said he was coming home next month.

he said he was coming home next week.

he said he was coming home the week after that.

he said he was coming home the week after the month after that.


he said he was coming home.


he made me think i should dye my hair blonde.

he made me think i should become a nun.

he made think i was going crazy.


i was going crazy.



he said he was coming home.

i would prefer it if kids would wear t-shirts with the rolling stones' tongue sticking out than the ones they do wear.

kids' t-shirts are a crime.

i'm talkin' little kids.

kids in kindergarten, first, and second grades. kids in third and fourth.

the girls wear t-shirts that say things like "i'm not crazy, i'm just boy crazy" or "i'm a diva princess" or "talk to the hand."

the boys wear "i don't find trouble - it finds me" or "i'm not listening so don't bother" or " don't mess with me. my parents have a good attorney."

they wear these shirts to school.



they would probably wear these shirts to church - if they went to church - which of course they don't because, well........

talk to the hand.

walking to school in snow up to your waist

what's wrong with the world is, nobody does that anymore.

what's wrong with the world is, parents ask counselors, "do you have any tips on how to get my kid to go to school?"

what's wrong with the world is, teachers say, "good job! good choice! nice cooperation! i like the way you're waiting your turn! i like the way you remembered your homework! i like the way you breathe!"

what's wrong with the world is, video games.

what's wrong is, kids who live in columbus, ohio who are asked what state they live in say columbus.

what's wrong is, parents go to the school and tell the principal what they will and will not tolerate.


what's wrong with the world is,


purty much everything.

Christmas lights on your bike parked in your living room

in a way, i guess it's art. art is supposed to grab your attention and whoa, this does.

the young woman who lives across the street from me who, sidebar here, is hardly EVER home (not that i'm gladys kravitz or anything) now has a bicycle in her living room on which she has strung tiny, little red and green Christmas lights.

it's just odd - that's all.

it's odd - but i like it. right smack dab in the middle of spring (my second least favorite season), i am reminded of winter (my first most favorite season).

i should probably go over there and pay her for having Christmas-lights-that-remind-me-of-winter strung on her bike.

but bikes remind me of summer - YUCK!  my most hated season! hated, hated, hated!


but let's look at it this way - if i were gladys kravitz, (which i'm not - it's not my fault that i know if and when she gets home), i would have a samantha stevens living across the street from me.

which means......

if that bike with the lights isn't there today,

ima need more of those pills, abner.

GET OUTA MY WAY!!!!!

look, i know that i tend to be a people-pleaser and i say "yes" way more often than i should when what i really mean is, "are you freaking kidding me ????" but still,  i think it is only  polite to apologize for little things that you didn't do. take for example the situation when you turn the corner of the aisle with your cart at the grocery store and you accidentally bump into somebody.

that's not really your fault. it's not really anybody's fault - except maybe the grocery store's -  cuz they don't have the good sense God give a rat. if they did, they'd put stop lights at the end of each aisle.

so anyway, you're coming down the aisle and turning the corner with your cart that of course has a wheel that won't turn like it should and you accidentally bump into somebody who clearly thinks he owns the store. even though it's not your fault, you do the nice thing and say you're sorry, fully expecting to get an "i'm sorry, too" in return and fully not surprised in the freaking least when you don't.

what you get instead is either nothing or a "that's ok," as if this moron thinks it actually was your fault, which, right there, that. pisses. you. off.

but what's even worse - and i don't mean to offend anybody with this but hell, it's 2011 - of course i'm going to offend somebody..............

i don't mean to offend anybody but what's worse, what really gets my goat is when you try to maneuver your cart around one of those handicapped vehicle thingies. i. swear. on. my. freaking. mother's. grave. (my mom is still alive, so bear with me here) that. nobody. can. give. you. the. evil. eye. like. a. handicapped. person. in. one. of. those. thingies. who. refuses. to. budge. a. freakin. solitary. INCH.

they look at you like you didn't donate to easter seals or somethin.

pisses me off.

speaking of getting my goat, though.......maybe next time, i'll bring my goat to the grocery store.

see how they like that.

just leave it wherever you drop it

in the first place, just dropping something somewhere is so foreign to me i can barely speak.

second, if i did just drop something somewhere, the first thing i'd do after i'd just dropped it somewhere is to just pick it up. and put it where it belongs.

everything belongs somewhere and nothing belongs where you dropped it. that's my motto.

actually, that's my parents' motto. my parents have a lot of mottoes and all of them can be condensed into one: don't just leave it where you drop it and don't just drop it. unless you want to die.

i was never particularly keen on the idea of dying so i never dropped it, but what i would do, just to piss 'em off is, i'd go through the kitchen, for example, and i'd open all the cabinet doors and leave 'em that way. just for the hell of it. or maybe i'd leave the water running. stuff like that.

the reason i'm talkin' about just leaving stuff where you drop it is, practically every single one of my clients leaves stuff where they drop it and they drop everything. i have one house where there's clean and/or dirty diapers just dropped on the porch steps. there's pop cans just dropped on the clean and/or dirty diapers and there's leftover pizza just dropped on the pop. (and no, it's not art.....or even poetry......even if it does sorta rhyme).

just leaving it wherever you drop it is so pervasive among my clients that i almost think it's a prerequisite for being a client.  well, that and hanging your k-mart-taken family pictures in cheap frames too high.

every client of every social worker on freakin' earth hangs their family pictures too high. sometimes, there's only about 12 inches between the top of the picture and the ceiling. i totally don't understand this phenomenon. it's not like social work clients are super tall or something.

another thing that every client of every social worker on freakin' earth does is, they leave the t.v. on all the time. all the freakin' time.

or maybe they don't. maybe they just turn on their t.v.s (and hang their pictures so high a social worker has to break her neck to see them) whenever the social worker has an appointment. maybe clients hope that loud t.v.s and too-high pictures are to social workers what rat poison is to rats.

speaking of rats, they just leave those droppings wherever they dropped, too.

which would you rather do?

eat five cold worms or one warm worm?

have balloons tied to your wrist or bells tied to your ankles?

lick the top of a dirty car or the bottom of your shoes?

live in a world where no one cleans up after their dog or in a world where everyone does, but you have to use your bare hands?



when you work with kids, like i do, you gotta find ways to get on their level. and one good way to do that is to be silly. or gross. silly-gross is even better.

kids love silly. and they love gross even more. kids are so zoned out on gross that who needs drugs?

and so it is that i have a deck of cards with questions on them like the ones above. i pull out these cards whenever the conversation starts to lag or if we need some comic relief or if i'm talking to a boy.

if kids love gross, then boys love a gross of gross. there's just no such thing as too much gross for a boy.

(men aren't much different.)



sometimes i think that maybe i need a new job. like when i come out of a disgustingly filthy home where i'm afraid to sit down but when i do, i sit in something wet and warm and i don't know what it is and i'm afraid to ask.

which would i rather do.....be like Jesus or be like me?

there are more people in prison who aren't in prison than there are people who aren't in prison who are

hardly anybody understands freedom. the best shot you have of finding someone who understands freedom is in prison or in a fox hole.

or in a church.

freedom has absolutely nothing to do with doing what you want to do. it has nothing to do with your "rights" (gag me with a spoon) nor does it have one iota of anything to do with going to paris at the drop of a hat.

freedom's got nothin' to do with speech and it's got nothin' to do with terminating an inconvenient (maternal) truth.

what it has somethin' to do with is freeing yourself from yourself - not freeing yourself from everything else.

martyrs who died at the stake were a helluva lot freer than i'll ever be. and a helluva lot freer than you'll ever be, either.

martyrs who died at the stake freed themselves of themselves and freely chose to come under the obedience of God. God  - who promises freedom forever, not just in this life, but for frickin ever, peeeeeople!!....... but nobody in this life wants freedom forever - everybody wants freedom now -  in this life - so they can say whatever they want to say (as long as it's not about God) and go wherever they want to go (even to paris at the drop of a hat, which, sidebar here, i've never had a hat like that), and be pissed off at whoever they wanna be pissed off at.

and feel justified about it. because nothing feels freer than feeling justified about being pissed off.


unless, of course, you wanna count eternal life.

better to be the dumpER than the dumpEE

that's why i gave "the young and the restless" the boot. better to get rid of it than the other way around.

soap operas are a dying breed. they are not, as we love to say these days, "sustainable." it's hard to sustain yourself in the middle of the day when in the middle of the day, your demographic is at work.

"all my children" is the latest casualty. poor susan lucci. she just never could catch a break.

i dumped "the young and the restless" two weeks ago. completely out. of. the. blue. i didn't see it coming, but one day, suddenly, out of nowhere, i was like, why. am. i. watching. this.

all they ever do on a soap opera is wear fancy clothes and drink coffee.

me? personally? i like to drink coffee in my jammies.

techniques

in my line of work, everyone always talks about "techniques."

what kind of "techniques" work with oppositional and defiant kids?  what kinds work with kids who have "abandonment issues?"

and what kinds of "techniques" are good for kids who wish they were anywhere except in your office?

the answer, in my opinion, is almost always the same -

 none.

none.

none of 'em work.

oh, most of them "work" to the degree that the person suggesting the technique feels better about having suggested it and/or the person receiving the suggestion feels better about having received it. nothin' like a new "technique" to carry home with you and try out on disturbed children that you haven't a clue about.

but the reality is, there ain't no exercise or activity or approach or clever little something that somebody learned at some training somewhere that turns anger and fear and sadness and chaos and rage into........ love.

nothing..................except love. (and that's the last thing we want to give.)

oh, we want to give our clients "positive regard," and "affirmation," and "empathic listening,' but we don't wanna give 'em what they really need......love. because love is too dangerous.

love means somebody's blurred the "boundaries" somewhere.

love means you've taken your work home with you and you shouldn't.

love means you're meeting your needs......not the needs of the client.

love means all kinds of bad things. many of them having to do with - gasp! -  Jesus.


today, one of my foster moms asked me if i could suggest some "techniques" to use with one of her foster children who tells her he hates her practically every other day.

tell him you love him, practically every day, i said.

"tell him i love him?" she shouted.  "we're not supposed to get "too attached" to our foster kids!"

why not? i said.

"cuz then, they might love us back," she said.



bingo, i said.

i mean, BINGO!!!!!!!!..........i shouted.

foggy outside/foggy inside

there are times,

and this would be one of them,

when no amount of windex takes it away.


no amount of windex makes it clear

and no amount of windex  - blue,

green,

or otherwise,

makes the colors pretty

again.


there are times,

and this is one of them,

when the fog outside my window

gets confused with the fog inside

my window


and the smudge marks, which are

everywhere,



are everywhere.

dress for the job you want, not for the job you have.

you've heard that advice, right?

so have i, and i have never thought too much about it, but for some reason, i thought a lot about it today at the mall when i overheard a woman telling her boyfriend that.

my first thought - and really, my only thought - was, the job i have is the job i want! (so, now how do i dress??)   :)



i think i am very lucky that the job i have - and the jobs i have had in the past - have all been the jobs that i want(ed). well, not counting working at burger chef.....nobody wants to work at burger chef. why not? cuz burger chef went out of business, that's why not, and nobody wants to work for a company that goes out of business. i mean, right?

but besides burger chef, the jobs i have had have always been the job i wanted. maybe that makes me lazy, but i prefer to think that it makes me humble, content with what is, easily satisfied, and not out to step all over whoever (whomever?) to get where i want to go (because where i want to go is where i am!).

i have never wanted to "move up the corporate ladder." i don't even want a corporate ladder........whatever the hell a corporate ladder is. hell, i don't even know what a corporate is!

i just want to go out to all these sad and abused kids and see if maybe i can help. that's all.

funny thing about corporate, though.......when abby was real little, she had this thing she called her "corporation." all it was, really, was an old briefcase that her dad didn't use anymore, plus a bunch of junk mail and a bunch of pens and a bunch of pencils. i think she mighta had a calculator in there, too. every now and then, abby would announce that she was going upstairs (or outside or wherever) to "work on my corporation." and she would! she'd go upstairs (or outside or wherever) and she'd get out all the pieces of junk mail and she'd scribble all over them and punch her chubby little fingers all over the calculator and sooner or later, she'd come back downstairs (or inside or whatever) and she'd announce that her "corporation is fine now."

we all got such a kick out of abby and her "corporation," but imagine my amusement when i learned (just a few weeks ago!) that abby's husband's brother, eric, used to have a corporation when he was little, too! abby's husband, eli, says it was the funniest thing (i know! i know! you're preachin' the choir here, eli!).....eli says it was the funniest thing because every so often, eric would gather up his "work stuff" and take it outside - always outside - to a specific spot in the sidewalk. not just anywhere outside on the sidewalk......to this spot......right here....on the sidewalk. that's where eric's corporation was.

what i don't know is, what did eric do with his corporation when it rained or snowed?

wore a raincoat or a winter coat, i guess.

after all, dress for the job you have.

:)

the name game

ok, so it's not my prerogative, but i'm gonna name the triplets (hereafter known as the tripalittles).

(see? i'm naming them already!)



even though it is not my prerogative, i like to say that it is. as such, i have fired off probably no fewer than 50 emails to abby and eli, telling them what to name their kids. (abby and eli are always sooooooooo appreciative......they just love controlling people....... especially when those people are mothers and mothers-in-law.)

(nothin' like a good, old-fashioned controlling mother-in-law to brighten your day.....that's my motto.)

so, anyway, i will be naming these kids - these three kids - which means three names of each gender - which means six names of each gender, if you count the middle names (and who doesn't count the middle names?)...... and if abby and eli don't approve........

then, fine. let them name these kids. see how easy they think it is.

why we need lunch dates

we need lunch dates because in the middle of a hard day, it is soooooooo nice to have lunch with your grown-up daughter who is a mother of twins and a soon-to-be mother of twins AND triplets, plus she brings the twins along just to spice it up even more.

you have lunch with your daughter and with charlie and olivia and suddenly, whatever was hard is still hard, but who cares.

you eat hamburgers cut up in little pieces that you dunk in the ketchup just like you dunk the fries in the ketchup and when charlie goes to the potty with his mommy, you play "airplane" with olivia and the hamburger. (and when charlie gets back from the potty, you don't tell him that you and olivia were playing "airplane" with the hamburger cuz if you did, all hell would break loose.)

you have lunch with these 3 wonderful people and when you tell the waitress that it's all on one check and you're the one who'll take the check, you think to yourself.....i sure as shootin' have enough money to do this...... more often.

my point EXACTLY!

triplets on top of twins is a lot of babies.

i don't know how to use computers as well as i should and i probably never will.

people call what i do "writing" but i call it talking out loud on paper. i mean, talking out loud on a computer that i don't know how to use as well as i should.

i like tradtional values. i think the world is a wreck because not enough people adhere to them anymore.

i'm in the mood for inviting dolly parton, lily tomlin, patricia heaton, and kathy bates over for dinner.

whatever happened to meryl streep? i haven't heard much from her in awhile.

for someone who's basically got a decent brain and a decent heart, i sure have made a bunch of lousy decisions in my life.

i prefer cold and dark to warm and bright. isn't that weird?

i never thought i would ever get old but wow, i sure as shootin' did.

i try to please too many people. so, sue me.

my dog refuses to let me brush her teeth, so the hell with it.

my grandma and grandpa had a dog who never saw the inside of a vet clinic nor did a vet ever see the inside of the dog's mouth. and the dog lived to be 16. so, sue me.

not that i'm anti-veterinary care because i'm not. i'm pro-veterinary care. but let's be reasonable.

why norajill makes me happy

i am supervising a master's student from osu this term and her name is norajill. i love the fact that her name is norajill.

norajill, norajill, norajill. i could say it all day long.

it's pronounced just like it looks - nora-jill. not noraj-ill or no-raj-ill or even noraji-ill. it's good, old nora-jill. except that it's norajill.

there's a cool story that goes along with her name and norajill told me the cool story but to be honest, i was too busy rolling the name "norajill" around on my tongue that i didn't quite catch all the details. something to do with she was born in nicaragua and they named her nora and then somebody or other or something or i don't know what when her family moved to the states had the name jill and her dad - or maybe it was her mom - liked the name jill so they tacked it on.

i love that story - even if i don't quite know what it is..........the idea of a "name in progress" is so cool, i can't stand it. they named her nora and a little while later (days? weeks? years? to be honest, i was too busy rolling the name "norajill" around on my tongue that i didn't quite catch all the details....ok, so none of the details....but a few days? weeks? years later, they decided nora wasn't quite enough of a name so they got more! who knew you could even do that, right? i mean, sure, i guess if you stop and think about it, you realize that anybody could do that - if they wanted to - but who knew that anybody wanted to? i mean, right???)

too cool.

so, anyway, i told norajill that i hope her parents are done adding on to her name cuz i like it just the way it is......norajill. such a lovely and unexpected combination of old-fashioned and perky. norajill.

norajill told me that's she pretty sure they're done. they're too busy paying ohio state university to be worrying about her name.

no april, just fool

it's been a tough week, which, i know, i know! -  is a gift. but still.

actually, it's been a tough year. tough coupla years. i can't seem to find my zone.

i've been stupid at work. stupid. suddenly, all of my clinicial skills seem to have flown out the window. and i didn't even realize that the window was open!

i just can't hit my stride. i'm jerky. not a jerk (well, maybe that, too) but jerky. i feel like how everything looks when you're in a room with black lights. (do they still even make black lights?????)

i'm usually so organized. on top of things. ready to go.

i'm usually pretty confident. some might say overly confident. (some would probably be right.)

but lately? this week? this year? this last coupla years? i feel more like a fool than anything else.

no joke.