…You strut around at work in your maternity sweatsuits, except that you’re only like, 6 weeks pregnant, and you’re not showing even a little bit. Also, we didn’t need to know the exact second you conceived, the reasons behind the names you’ve chosen already, or about how your lady parts are changing.
Monthly Archives: May 2010
With love and gratitude
I can’t say this enough, here or anywhere else: I have the most wonderful friends anywhere around. And I know you’re saying to yourself right now, Elizabeth, *everyone* thinks they have the best friends ever and you’d be right. But actually, you’re mostly wrong because mine beat all.
My friends are loyal, they are supportive and they are unfailingly kind. They are honest when they have to be, protective when they need to be and patient when they shouldn’t be. They are mothers and daughters and my sisters. They are in pain, joyful and lost. Some of them are content while others are itching for life to begin. They remember to call and send cards on my birthday and my anniversary, and they forgive me when I forget to return the kindness.
I don’t tell my friends this enough, because I’m always unsure how people feel when I say this out loud, but I love them. I love them wholeheartedly, [almost] unconditionally (I still can’t forgive that one time when that one girl tried to make out with my one fiancé), and without end. I cry when they cry, I rejoice when they give birth, I swell with happiness when they marry and I kick myself for not anticipating when they’ll need me most.
They have blessed me with their wisdom, their advice, their hugs and their kisses. They have cheered for me when I start new, short-lived projects and ridiculous schemes. They are sympathetic when things don’t work out. They talk about me behind my back because they want what’s best for me and because I exasperate them so.
There is no special occasion or particular reason to warrant this post, except that I am so terribly grateful to have still have any friends at all (I am the world’s most self-absorbed person; count how many times I’ve said “I” so far). I don’t do enough for them and I should. I don’t overlook our difference in opinions like I should. I don’t always support their life choices like I should, and I am not honest about it like they are with me.
In short, I don’t always live up to the standards my friends do. I’ll try harder and maybe, perhaps, hopefully, they’ll stick around for a while.
Happy B(B)day
36 years ago today, your mother lay in a hospital bed staring out the window at the Chowan River. She was 36 years old. She had three older children, one of them 15 and rebellious. She had a 5 year who wanted a baby sister and instead got a brother. She had a 10 year old who had no time for babies, only time for riding bikes.
And she had you, a ball of energy from the start, a head full of dark blonde curls, and brown eyes that twinkled.
Now she is 72, a happy grandmother to 7, a woman with a more active social calendar than Lindsay Lohan and who wears the same perfume she did when you were a child.
You are a grown up, with a head full of dark brown curls, brown eyes that twinkle, and a line on your forehead that comes from too much worry and not enough vacation. My friend at The Daily Snark wonders what life it too short for, and I took the liberty of answering that for you.
Life is too short to…
…Let your bank account determine your station in life.
…Watch others get what they want and not grab some for yourself.
…Let your wife erase “Good Times” from the DVR.
…Spend your days off clipping hedges.
…Worry about what you can’t change.
…Not change the things you can.
…Let other people get away with things they shouldn’t.
…Not pick your battles.
…Take birthdays for granted, even 36th ones.
No, I’m not dead, as far as I know.
I don’t know quite where to start. I have neglected this blog, my readers and my propensity to overshare and write things that shouldn’t be written.
The last time I posted I said that I was experiencing anxiety again, and I wasn’t sure if I was really ready to let go of it – or it of me. A few of you commented that, essentially, it’s not my choice whether or not I go through panic and anxiety, and of course you’re right. But it’s creeping up again nonetheless and I am planning a little re-check for myself sometime in the near future to see if I can get a handle on this.
There are extenuating circumstances, however. One – the biggest one that’s kept me away from here – is that my invitation and stationery business is actually starting to get going. (And by get going, I mean that I’ve filled a few orders and have talked up a big game.) I absolutely love it, but I am absolutely terrified. My days are filled with emails and phone calls to business-owning friends, asking questions about taxes, licenses and ID numbers. My nights are filled now with a burning desire not to DVR “American Idol,” but alas I am laying out and designing my wares and so I’ve been reduced to reading recaps of my favorite shows online and getting updates from my Twitter friends.
I didn’t know this is what I wanted to do, and six months from now, this may not be what I want to do. I know – and regardless of who reads this, I am freely admitting – that I am completely and totally burned out at my job. What was once a thrill and a calling for me is now a chore and a source of income. I am ashamed to say that, but it’s the truth. Part of me feels guilty because I have this unspoken commitment to my students, this feeling of obligation until they have graduated and successfully joined the workforce again. But a larger part of me feels incredibly stifled, antsy and insanely unhappy. I don’t dread coming to work (yet), but I don’t think of it fondly as I used to, and I don’t feel a huge sense of loyalty to this school, like I used to. I’m just burned out. This 40-watt light bulb has done used up all its juice.
Another reason I’ve neglected posting regularly is because I am a little aghast at some goings-on in the blog world. I’ve said before – plainly and not-so-plainly – that there is a circle of well-known bloggers who contain themselves to themselves, if that makes sense. For well over a year now, I’ve been on the outside looking in, wishing I had the traffic they did, wishing I had the design skills or the wit or the talent for doing this online weblog thing. But recently – and as usual, I’m not getting into details – a lot of ugly heads have emerged, revealing sides of people I didn’t know existed. That’s the danger of making online friends, you know. People present the good sides of themselves, only the aspects of their personalities they want others to see. I think we all do that to a certain degree, but in the face of adversity or conflict, a person’s character is tested and revealed. I have wanted to acknowledge some of this bloggy drama but I haven’t known how to say what I wanted to say. None of the bloggers involved in the recent brouhaha read this or even in reality know who I am; nevertheless I have felt the urge to bring this up, if only to say that my instincts to stay out of the way served me well and my integrity is (I believe) still intact. Sometimes laying low is the only way to lay (stop it with the grammar corrections – I know it’s wrong) and if I’m good at anything, it’s laying around. High or low or in between.
Okay, so on to other things, if you’re still reading.
House improvements are moving forward and it’s starting to look less like we live in a crack house and more like we just moved in last week and are overhauling the mess the previous owners left. BB turns 36 tomorrow. I still haven’t graduated from school. I fell off my shoes in a parking lot on Monday and sprained my ankle. BB and I will celebrate our sixth anniversary next weekend. The cats are still bringing in live (and dead) animals and my book club is still going strong – though again, I have neglected our online presence.
(Incidentally, if you’d like to read along, we just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and are starting The Double Comfort Safari Club: The New No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. We also are eating a lot of dips, cheese and crackers, and macaroons. Feel free to join in on that, too.)
If you’d like to stalk my new business – but promise not to send me hate mail or some poisonous powder in a suspicious envelope – you can become a fan of Noteworthy Invitations on Facebook, or follow Noteworthy on Twitter (@NWInvites). Be kind, please; I’m just starting out.
For those of you very loyal people, I apologize for indulging myself in explanations and rambling. For those of you who have disappeared for lack of content to ridicule, meh. I kind of don’t care.
