a day at the park

i'm thirty six.

i have friends.

i'm cool.

i'm smart.

i'm happily married with the two kids, the
husband i adore, the house (even if it is a fixer-upper)
and the dog (even if i own the dog only because i have to).

so.

why is it that the presence of one person
from my high school days
at the park today
could transport me back to
sudden insecurity,
(does my bandana look stupid? damn
i shouldn't have worn it...if i take it out
now will my hair look stupid?...damnit,
why did i wear these ugly flipflops from
zellers?)
discomfort, judging myself
and wondering if when their little
group gathered at the picnic table,
if they were talking about me
(remember her? remember she didn't have
a boyfriend until she was sixteen? remember
that time she wore those shorts? with those
shoes?)

sigh.

and then the second wave of anger
at myself as i walked home
(pushing a stupid looking stroller,
why couldn't it be a cooler looking one?)
kicking myself
at how i can let them do this to me
again...
let them eat away at my confidence...
make me doubt myself...

but its not them i'm mad at,
its myself.

i'm sure i was not the topic of conversation
at their picnic table.
and what happened to all my big talk
of being who you are regardless what
anyone thinks...
my big talk of not caring what anyone thinks.

bah.

maybe ten can give me a pep talk
when she gets home from school.
:)

grateful friday a day late...

--the sun is out!
--my brother made it out safely and without an embarassingly
emotional outburst from me as a send off...
just a trembly hug and voice-cracking goodbye
--my daughter's play (she is in the choir) went off perfectly
--the garden is starting to grow and so far, i have been able to keep
the rodents at bay by covering up the plants at night


--reading this book in one night makes me realize what i DO have,
how LUCKY i really am, how GRATEFUL i really should be...

all right, now get out there and have a great weekend!
:)

the truth of the matter.

i guess
the weather is not all
that is dragging heavily over me,
weighing me down,
making me sad,
listless,
quiet.

my brother
who has been living with us
on and off
(but mostly on)
for about ten years
is moving far away.

he leaves tomorrow.

all week
i have felt increasingly
silent...
void...
and i blamed it on pms
and i blamed it on rain

but the truth of the matter is
everytime i think
about him going,
about him being gone,
my face starts to twist toward tears...

so...
that's that.

yawwwwwwnnnn....

ack.

lately i have noticed
that my energy level
seems to be directly correlated
to the weather...
sunny=bouncy
cloudy=lethargic

rain makes me almost comatose.

this sucks.

and something has been tearing out
the plants in my garden...
could be a cat, a dog, a skunk,
a raccoon or just birds...

hard to protect from assault
when you don't know who the
culprit is...

my husband keeps saying
"just remember, they could be
just like the little guys on Over
The Hedge"

heh.
whatever.

lists and books all in one post?

sound too good to be true?
its not...
cause i'm doing it
right here, right now...

borrowed loosely from
acumamakiki

here goes:

like acumamakiki, i had trouble picking
"influential" books and chose to do my

three all time favorites instead...

-Fall On Your Knees by Anne-Marie MacDonald...
a book that made me gasp, made me sigh,
made me angry, made me cry, made me have
to find it in hardcover so i could own the option
of reading it whenever i wanted.

-The Piano Mans Daughter by Timothy Findley...
i don't plan picking Canadian authors, it just happens.
this book had me bawling behind the counter at the
store i worked at while reading it...

-Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds...
i don't own this book and it has been a long time
since i read it but it sticks in my memory as being
a book that i wanted to share, i wanted to force
everyone i met to read it and share my feelings
for it.

three books read more than once

-anne of green gables...heh...i knew parts of
that off by heart when i was kid and even
now if i pick it up, i get easily caught up
in the story again.

-fall on your knees...it was too good not
to read over and over

-the witching hour by anne rice...

three books that were supposed to be great
that i actually hated...

-the celestine prophecy
-the historian...i didn't hate it...but i didn't love it
and i did hate the fact that i was so psyched for it
and it fell short of my expectations
-catcher in the rye...i don't know why i hated it
as badly as i did but i did hate it...with venom.

three books just for pleasure that i have read...

-summer sisters by judy blume
-king con by stephen j cannell
-and then most of my "light" reading gets filled
with my magazine addiction

three books i should have read long ago
because i have had them on my list forever...
(a little alteration on my part)

-one hundred years of solitude -marquez
-war and peace - tolstoy
-the uses of enchantment- bruno bettelheim

and since i never seem to buy any books,
i had to adjust this one, too, to be
last three books i have read (rather than bought)

-the english patient by micheal ondaatje
-secret life of bees by sue monk kidd
-mermaid chair by sue monk kidd

and one last thing...the book i am reading
right now is the private voice by peter gzowski

i had big plans on some major linkage
but...holy...thats alot of linking and
so my momentum kind of said never mind.
heh.