310 Days Until the Big Five-0

Bottoms UP

I have something to get off my chest. Well not exactly my chest, actually it is the area below my chest. Of course I am a huge Oprah fan (show and magazine) because I am a middle aged middle class white woman with two children (that is the definition of an Oprah fan if you go on Wikipedia, and if it isn’t it should be). FAIR WARNING: I make things up sometimes in an attempt to be humorous. So don’t go wasting your time searching Wikipedia when you can be wasting your time reading my Blog damn it.

Okay, back to the area below my chest and Oprah. The other day her show featured Cookie Jeans and focused on finding comfortable and flattering jeans for woman with bodacious butts. Well what about us Big Belly Girls!! At least women with big butts are found sexually appealing to a lot of men. I have never ever heard a guy say “Ohhh I just love that pot belly of yours, come over and shake that thing in my face baby!”

I have spent my life fighting and hiding my Pot Belly. I want a pair jeans that takes into account my stomach has been the same size as that of a 6 month pregnant woman’s since I was 10 years old. My stomach and I will be celebrating our 40th Anniversary this coming year. I think I will celebrate by buying a vintage girdle just like the one I use to watch my mother pulling up over her rotund middle. Yes, it is genetic. Our body shapes travel over space and time. Grandma was round in the middle. And I bet if I could find a naked picture of some great great grandmother I would see the mound protruding above her pelvis looking strangely like a third mega breast with a little hole (belly button) instead of a nipple.

So when I put on a pair of Jeans do you know what happens to ME Oprah! I have a huge empty space between the denim and my body in the area right below my stomach and above either thigh. You see my stomach is pulling the front part of the jean way out with it and as a result the rest of jean cannot lay flat against me. I think of these two empty spaces as Black Holes and I can feel the air bubbles as much as I would if they were solid substances. Yes I know they have Jeans that claim to flatten your stomach, but they never hit me in exactly the right spot so I always have a bulge rising above or painfully trying to escape from below. Somebody help me!!!!!

311 Days Until the Big Five-0

I will write today!

“It’s a Decision”

I got that phrase from my husband. At first when he said it I got angry. I would be complaining about something and I would say “I am not happy.” And he would say “that’s your decision.” I thought “fuck you, asshole.” But we stayed married anyway because the truth of the matter is, he was right, and we are both practical people. It is probably the one thing that has held us together during all those rocky times most marriages experience. But back to decision making. It extends to every area of life. I realize when I go weeks without writing an entry for the blog it is not because I do not have time, energy, ideas or desire. I just did not DECIDE to do it. Same goes for exercise and being happy, and reading and spending time with my children.

I cannot wait until I am “in the mood” or magically inspired. That time may never come. I have to decide to do it. Deciding is the only thing that will lead to “becoming” whether it is becoming a writer, a mother, a volunteer, a pet owner, a world traveler, or a good cook. There is only one problem with all of this deciding. I am very indecisive. It dawned on me while I was walking the dog, which was an excellent decision because if I did not she would use my living room as her private bathroom. Is the ability to make a decision genetic? Are “deciders” (oy, I hate quoting W) predetermined by a sequence on their DNA Helix that enables them to make decisions and keep moving forward? It would make sense. I see them. The “deciders” they have no problem making decisions, if they turn out to be the right decision they happily progress along their merry way. It they end up making a wrong decision, they simply discard it, make a different one and happily progress along their merry way.

In my case I will never know if it is Nature or Nurture that caused my Indecisiveness. But I have been fighting with my indecisive ways my whole life. Every decision is an internal battle. It has prevented me from happily progressing along my merry way. My mother is the ultimate ANTI- Decider. She absolutely refuses to decide on anything. So I will ever know if it is something she conditioned in me or a bad gene she passed along (like the thin hair). How can I know? Unless someone is adopted how can they ever know what accounts for who they become. If the person raising you is all the one who physically created you certain things about how and why you turn out the way you do will need to remain a mystery. The origin of the species is easier to figure out than the origin of many of the individual traits within the species. So I have decided to blame my mother either way. And now I can move along on my merry way to figure out more decisions.

312 Days Until the Big Five-0

Period

Why does the word “period” have to have so many meanings? A period is an ending to a sentence or a sentiment. “I don’t want to discuss it anymore, period. End of discussion.” A period is a defined amount of time. “When I was a junior in high school I had Geometry during my third period.” If I could spell better I would use examples describing various historical times like the “Neanderthal Period” or the “Elizabethan Period”. Then there is the dreaded “time of the month” period. The euphemism we girls all learned when we were still in grammar schools. Who the hell wants to say “I am menstruating” when you are 12 years old? It is easier to just say “Oh shit, I just got my period.” And I have been saying it that way my whole life. The “period” of my live with a “period” is not approaching the big 40 year mark. Yes, when I celebrate turning 50 my “period” will celebrate torturing me monthly for 40 years straight with the rare exception of two 9 month gestational “periods”.

I hate my period. Oh, I cannot complain to my female friends who due to cancer or other illnesses requiring hysterectomies. That would be rude. But then again, I have never shied away from being rude. So, it seems that something that has taken up such a large part of my life should be a part of my blog history as well. I was 10 years old when it hit me. It was excruciatingly painful every month. I was double over for the first two days. My friends would immediately know because I began walking like their grandparents who were suffering from severe osteoporosis I tried to keep my head up and my back curved in the most peculiar way as I managed down the school halls. It was awful. It was regular! It was long (7 days every fucking month). Soon, the physical ramifications were nothing compared to the mood altering psychosis that would inhabit my body. I became like Regan in the exorcist and it was just as ugly! Head spinning, vomit spewing, cussing and threatening anyone who even thought of being in the same room as me.

Then as the years progressed and I entered the work force, my period became part of the company newsletters. I remember yelling at total strangers in the middle of meetings “I can’t, I have my period”! They would stare at me in amazement and fear and I loved the feeling of being empowered and not giving a shit about anything including my job. During the five years I worked at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago, I had one close friend, a club director, who said “Benita, you are either getting your period, have your period or just finished having your period”. He even gave me a funny plaque about it.

For a few years after the two pregnancies the “periods’ seemed to lessen in the pain they caused but the vicious mood swings the week before seemed to be getting worse. I was tinkering on the edge, literally. I thought I was going crazy. For no apparent reason I had no patience at all with my kids. The smallest thing would set me off like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Finally, I was able to address that issue as well with the help of medication. I refuse to let anyone (Tom Cruise included) tell me there are not severe implications from hormonal activity in women’s bodies. Now that I have the mood issue under control it seems the stomach aches are rearing their ugly heads (I won’t go into detail) and have been joined by back aches. Oh, and the one symptom that has never ever changed in 40 years, I get so tired I could literally sleep through an earthquake. I will pass out for 16 hours. I get so tired I can’t describe it. I will fall asleep in the middle of a party, while having sex, while walking the dog, on the toilet, in my chair while typing an entry into my blog…..


Well you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out why I chose this topic today. I have my fucking period!

313 Days Until the Big Five-O

Prompt 4 from the book Branches by Nancy Beckett

“Tell a story of traveling at night and of falling asleep, or at least seeing lots of other people asleep while decided what the trip you were making was going to be like. Describe in detail one sleeper in particular. Tell the story.


We make this trip so often I have a hard time telling them apart. My husband Marc and I load up the van and the kids and drive 8 hours, sometime 10, to Pittsburgh at least once a year, and often twice. I never do any of the driving. I usually get a couple hours of sleep in. In the beginning it was just me and Marc, then it was me, Marc and Reid, then Blair was born and it became a foursome. When the kids were little they had to be strapped into car seats like little astronauts. We go every thanksgiving religiously. Our summer and spring break trips are more sporadic. I have actually come to appreciate that I have somewhere to go every thanksgiving. Repetition makes you feel like you “belong” somewhere. Being tethered, depending on your disposition is either a good thing or a bad thing. I am someone who needs to be tethered. I resent the part of me that needs to be tethered. I wish I was more adventurous. When I worked for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago the big emphasis was that children needed a sense of belonging so maybe it is a good thing.

I like sleeping in cars. I like sleeping. But I loved seeing Blair asleep in her pink snow suit belted into her car seat. Her face was round and her skin looked so soft. It was not a secret to me or my many friends I wanted to have a daughter. I had a son, and actually I have grown quite fond of him over the years. But when you are a little girl playing with dolls and dreaming of being a teacher or a mommy one day it is that baby girl you want to hold in your hands, as if one of your real dolls came to life. I have a real doll. I don’t think about the awesome responsibilities involved when I watch her sleeping face surrounded by the white fur of her hood. All I can think about is how much I love holding her. I call her my little drowsy doll. Drowsy was the name of my favorite doll when I was a little girl. My Aunt Ruth bought her for me. Drowsy talked. I loved that talking doll as much, and probably more, than I loved my real friends. Drowsy was never going to let me down or leave me, or scare me. I would sleep at my Aunt Ruth’s apartment every Saturday night. It was right across the street from our apartment. If I forgot Drowsy my dad would have to run outside and meet my Aunt to get her. I loved sleeping at my Aunt Ruth’s. She had never been married and did not have any children so I guess I was HER little Drowsy Doll. I loved being her doll. She showered me with attention, love and things my own parents could not afford to buy me. My mother loved her oldest sibling and her only sister. My Aunt Ruth was more like a mother to my mother than a sister. Maybe that is where all the confusion started. None of us ever got to be in the “real roles” of our lives. It was nothing new in our family. Sisters became mothers, daughters became husbands and mothers, grandmothers became friends, brothers became enemies and eventually friends became family. Round and Round the assignments would fly. And if my Aunt Ruth was like a mother to my mother she was also like a Second Mother to me.

It is scary to see an adult cry when you are a child. You feel so helpless. It is easier to comfort a doll. It must be easier to take care of children than it is to take care of adults I think as Blair’s tiny breath blows in and out of her mouth. When I look at Blair in the back seat as we make our way through Ohio I keep thinking how much I loved her, and how much my Aunt Ruth would have loved her. I remember seeing my Aunt Ruth cry for the first time. It seemed unbelievable to me. She was short but really tough and strong. She had a career. She was a bookkeeper. She took care of my Bubby until my Bubby went blind and had to live in a Convalescence home. Aunt Ruth was dependable. I wish I had never seen her cry. It was so scary. I wanted to run to my room and get Drowsy but I was frozen in the spot on the carpet between the dining room and the living room. My feet would not have moved no matter how much I wished they would have. The front door bell rang. Aunt Ruth was home for dinner. She ate with us every night. But tonight was different, my mother’s brothers and my mother were in the living room waiting. My uncles also lived close by but there were married and had kids and only came by on Holidays or weekends. I wondered what they were doing in my house when I got home from school but I cannot remember the time between getting home and the door bell ringing and my mother and uncles opening the door. I do remember being told my Uncle Louie, the only one who did not live in the neighborhood with us had died. I was very confused, and I hardly knew him because he lived in Indiana, but my mother came from a close family and the three brothers and two sisters seemed much happier than I was with my two older brothers.

My Aunt Ruth must have looked shocked when she saw her two brothers at our apartment. They quickly told her to sit down in the big blue chair in our living room. She looked confused and she had a light complexion to begin with, but now it was getting so light she almost looked like you could see through her. She started to cry immediately. No one noticed me standing there. Maybe Aunt Ruth and I were both getting lighter and lighter, disappearing. “Ma, Ma” my Aunt Ruth cried as her arms stretched out in front of her towards her two brothers. I remember thinking, “Oh she thinks my bubby died.” But I could hear my Uncle Birney screaming over her anguished shouting, “No Ruthie, ma is alright. It was Louie. Louie is gone.” I had lost my first relative. It was an Uncle. I have only vague memories of him, but I will always remember the day he died and I saw my Aunt Ruth cry and cry and cry.


While Blair falls back to sleep we are almost out of Ohio and into Pennsylvania. I am thinking about the Aunts and Uncles I no longer have. My husband is lucky. He still has several Great Aunts. We were going to visit his Aunts and Uncles and my children’s Grandparents. I wanted to whisper inside Blair’s ear as she slept, these people are the people who you will think about one day while you are driving a car across the country to visit someone far away. You will be remembering your trips to Pittsburgh, your Aunt Bea and Uncle Don, waking Uncle Adam up on the couch every morning, going to breakfast with Pop Pop, waiting for Grandpa Fritz and Grandma Pat to drive down from Maryland to see you. Sitting on Grandma Sue’s bed and watching Barney. That is your father’s family. My family always stays in one place. Your dad was willing to move around, no wonder he likes driving so much. You would not have even been born had your dad not left Pittsburgh to move to Wisconsin for a job, and then again to Chicago for another job. He moved, his father moved, his step father moved, but his mother and her sister, Aunt Bea, they were like my family. They stayed in the same place, tethered. Perhaps it is the job of the women to provide that stable nest that is always there. Blair is sleeping and I am dreaming.

314 Days until the Big Five-0

I need an excuse. I do not have one. I have spent the last two days with my dog. I don’t write even though I have the time, plenty of time. Too much time? I have decided to give up my two male adult cousins for adoption. I am going to call the Cook County Guardian on a research mission. My mother has two care givers, one for the mornings and one for the evenings. All those things I felt were keeping me from writing are being managed, I think. I still have those two kids, ages 11 and 13 but they are being taken care of by a Television, or two. Then there is the dog, the true love of my life. The truth is I lay on the floor next to her for hours doing absolutely nothing, and I feel guilty about it, well just a little. Notice all my sentences have these dangling qualifiers hanging off them like misplaced tails.

If I put all the energy and time into writing and it ends up being a piece of crap no one reads then I will have been proven to be a fake, a failure? Okay, I need to get back on the horse. I keep thinking about writing. I keep thinking there has to be a hundred great stories in all those ideas and life experiences I have had over the last 49 years. I imagine they will eventually pour out. Is this wishful thinking? I am reading a book called “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. It is fantastic so far. I wish I could write like that. She probably had small kids while writing. I would feel so much better if I had a good excuse. I need an excuse. If I don’t find one soon, I will have to make one up. I have no intention of going back to spending endless hours helping my special needs cousins. I am totally burnt out on that mission. Besides, helping them turned into a vicious cycle of crisis management. The more I helped the more catastrophes they were able to create. I think they did better on their own. They started feeding off the attention and that was too distracting for everyone involved.

I promised myself my Blog, my creation, would not simply turn into a recording of my diary, another journal like the spiral notebooks I have been filling up for years, but I fear this entry is just that, my diary but on the internet instead. This is some of my worst writing and I am still going to post it, as soon as I finish eating this bag of pop corn. Yes it is not even 9 a.m. on a Friday and I am eating pop corn. The breakfast of boobheads. When I was a junior in college Roberta and I would eat potato chips and cottage cheese for breakfast every Sunday. I was living in Scott Hall and she was in an apartment. I had transferred that year from University of Illinois in Chicago to Champaign/Urbana. I still look back and wonder if that was a good move. My mother taught me to always keep looking back and fearing forward. What a gift! So maybe that is my excuse, my crazy family life growing up, but that is also the source of all my material. Oy, now I am confused. How can I blame the one thing that might prove to be the answer to all my troubles, the golden ticket?

I see other writers, the ones modeled after Robert Redford in “The Way We Were”. I hate them. They did not have tragic childhoods; no they had the best suburban schools and colleges, and well educated somewhat normal parents, professional like doctors and lawyers. Yet, they are the ones producing and publishing. Just like in the opening scene of the “Way We Were”, a troubled average looking Jewish girl struggling to escape some hidden traumas from a dark past, and the blond boy wonder. “Everything came easy to him….” And then the teacher decides to read one student’s paper out loud and whose is it? Yeah, Blond Wonder Boy who then goes on to become famous author. I was never consumed with the love story aspect of that movie. For me, it was all about the opening scene. Who was the teacher’s favorite. Who was the better writer? Angst and drama don’t guarantee a publishing contract. Hell, this is really going to piss me off. I live through the stereotypical neurotic Jewish Mother (is that redundant?). Hell Portnoy had nothing to complain about compared to me! I have the father who was a Holocaust Survivor. I had the house filled with fights where WW II would simply not die. I had the loss over and over again when one relative after another would die unexpectedly and prematurely. I had the crazy ass older brother who made my life a living hell. I had the weight problems, and eventually the drinking and drug problems. Come on where the fuck is this story!!!! Meanwhile the Suzy Sun Shines of the world walk around accomplished because they are inspired by something in the news or a class they took, a family they once knew, but they did not PAY the PRICE of PAIN that I did, or that I would like to think I did.

Sad truth. I have a fucking luxurious life right now and it is getting me nowhere. I am sitting in a (very messy) two story home, typing away on a lap top with a perfectly beautiful caramel corn colored dog behind me. Someone else is bathing my 90 year old mother and all is right with the world. My two kids are at a somewhat (Lord I hope) safe suburban school and I am pounding away on these letters hoping that at some point I will be motivated enough to get my ass in gear and organize and SELF-MOTIVATED to see a project through to the end. So, I just realized this blog entry has been my way of

EXCERCISING my WRITING MUSCLES. Hip hip hooray. I am sorry if it bored you, but that is what exercising is for most people, boring, and hard work. But necessary. I hated having to drag you in on the process. But at least you got some insight into my neurosis. Pain is not rewarded. Damn it. But hard work is. Damn it. Now I have to go lay down next to my dog and nuzzle my nose into her soft brown curls. As soon as I am done. I will return to this lap top and writing something really good.

31Five Days Until My big Five-0

Blog Prompt 3

Since it is too difficult for me to write about real people in my life on this blog I will have to make some things up in order to accomplish one of my goals of writing based on all the prompts from the book Branches by Nancy Beckett. Or maybe not? After all, there are 70 prompts. I hope I have a good imagination.....

Prompt 3:

“Describe a friend in the following dimensions: physical – head and body, the way they moved and breathed. Quote a favorite pet expression, or the way they acted in front of superiors. Describe the thing they loved but had trouble acquiring and a stray goal that eluded them. Finally, discuss an outstanding quality they possessed and how you felt about it. By the way, what did their parents do for a living?"


With arms always in motion to match the movement of her words, Andrea often appeared to be conducting an invisible orchestra. Her thick dark hair hung like a helmet around her round face and she managed to find a pair of rectangular black glasses to provide a strong contrast to the rest of her. For poor Andrea was round from the face on down. She could have been drawn using only circles for head, torso, and all four appendages. Her favorite saying was “alls well that ends well.” Unfortunately some things never ended for Andrea. She was 43 and still pursuing her bachelor’s degree one class at a time. The adventure started immediately after High School, when she went away to live on Campus at Northern University in DeKalb, Illinois. She only lasted one semester there and came home to a set of loving parents who expected little from her in return for their constant support. They spoiled her with their endless patience and low expectations. After all, she was so round. They were afraid if they pressured her in any way she might burst. So Andrea took a job as a waitress in a local Pizza Joint. She worked mostly at nights and struggled looking at a variety of different trade schools during the day. Should she be an X Ray Technician, a dog groomer, a court reporter, a paralegal, a phlebotomist? The choices were endless really. Her parents were happy in their vocations. Her father was a shoe maker and her mother worked as a beautician. They each had a very distinct odor about them when they would come home at night. Andrea wanted a job that would not make her smell. That was her top priority. She would try on different courses at these specialty schools like other kids tried on jeans.

But after a few years, when nothing fit, Andrea could feel her friends passing her by as they graduated from college, got married or went into the family business. So it was back to the drawing board, but instead of looking for a “trade” Andrea enlisted at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She decided to try every single different type of class she could find from chemistry to architecture and from Poetry to Russian as a foreign language. Andrea was determined to finer her passion, her true calling which would then result in a fulfilling career. By time she was 43, she had enough credits for about 4 majors but unfortunately it was never the right combination to get a specific degree. So she continued to waitress. Round bunions grew on her feet and eventually she had to wear sandals all year long even in the winter. But Andrea was determined and she never saw life as a means to an end because she could never see the end, which is why I always thought it was strange that her favorite saying was “alls well that ends well.” So what did she end up getting her Degree in? Education, of course!

316 Days Until the Big Five-O

Blog316

Okay, I need to feed my blog. I am afraid it is becoming anorexic! I have decided my Blog is just like the imaginary friends we all (I hope it wasn’t just me) had as children. And like any friendship, it requires work and attention. The good thing about the “blog” because of the following simple rules:

The more you exercise, the more you want to exercise.
The less you exercise the less you want to exercise.

The more you eat, the more you want to eat.
The less you eat, the less you want to eat.

The more you read, the more you want to read.
The less you read, the less you want to read.

The more you write, the more you want to write.
The less you write, the less you want to write.

All activities become habits, It is the nature of the beast.

317 Days Until the Big Five-0

Prompt 2 from the book Branches by Nancy Beckett:

Tell the story of a couple that you have observed together over and over and how you were miffed, intrigued, jealous, or otherwise instructed in the ways of couples. What did they have that they allowed you to see? Tell the story.....


I don’t know if I can write about another couple. I feel like I am invading on some private territory. I view the relationship between two other people as sacrosanct. Talking about someone else’s relationship is like being a peeping tom. I don’t really want to go there. So I struggle with this prompt and then I try and think of fictional couples. Perhaps I could extrapolate on how Ozzie and Harriet, the Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Carol and Mike Brady or Samantha and Darren Stevens figured into my naïve approach on what would be the most important decision I would make in my entire life, the choice of a spouse. Aha, the light bulb went off AND then immediately popped. These fictionally happily married people were as poisonous as the Cinderella Story. No one was going to save me, laugh at how adorable I am when I burn the grilled cheese, or thank me for making their entire existence worth living. No wonder I married so late in life. I bought into all that crap. When the truth is Mike Brady was gay, and I think Darren was too. The ghost never materialized for poor Mrs. Muir and Ozzie and Harriet, well, they were Ozzie and Harriet. Lucy and Desi got divorced, as did Sonny and Cher. See what happens when you try to mix reality with fiction! Lesson learned.