Category Archives: Family

ABC is actually not as easy as 123

Posted by Elizabeth in Family, Lamenting

I wrote this a few nights before Christmas and, for some reason, it’s been sitting in my drafts folder. But I’m publishing it now because I felt this way and still do.

I miss her every single day of my life. I miss her when I pass by the cemetery. I miss her when I drive by her house. I miss her on her birthday, my birthday and most especially at Christmas.

When I was little I would go with them to Raleigh on the weekends to see the symphony. She taught piano, he loved piano and I was a student with some budding talent. We would watch and listen from good seats, looking at the gleam of the horns, straining to hear the sound of the woodwinds. I loved it, though sometimes I found it boring. I never found The Nutcracker boring, however. I loved getting dressed up every year and going several times. My Girl Scout troop would go and then my grandmother would always take me. “Sit to the left of the stage,” she would say. “You have to be able to see the hands of the pianist, even if they’re in the orchestra pit. If you can’t see the hand positions you can’t understand the movements.” My grandfather would watch, mesmerized, as the musicians played their instruments feverishly and ballerinas twirled around candy canes and Christmas trees.

Tonight on public television there was a Russian version of The Nutcracker, which I watched beginning to end. And then I found the Raleigh handbell choir performing holiday music, which included pieces from the ballet as well. I played handbells as a child, and I will never forget our recitals in church, getting dressed up again in my Christmas dress, running down the halls by the Sunday school classrooms, waiting for my turn to walk into the sanctuary, play my alto bells or my flute or the piano, and see them smiling from their pew in the middle. She would close her eyes and bob her chin a little, nodding her head sometimes to indicate emphasis, or to help me remember something she had told me to do. Lift your wrists a little more. Start soft and then build to a crescendo. Not too fast! If you rush I will know it.

I can’t help but sob right now thinking about her. My heart aches and my stomach hurts and I can’t see through my tears. I want them back so badly.

Welcome to the Four Seasons

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Daily, Family, Good Stuff, Muse, The Weather

So I’m sitting up in bed, roughly around midnight, typing on this lovely but God-forsaken netbook I’m using these days. I’ve been stricken with a summer cold, for lack of a better term, and it’s KICKING MY ASS. I had this whole 5 day holiday thing worked out, including pool time, beach time, movie time, eat something not on Weight Watchers time and BAM! This cold has made me its bitch.

I have a lot of half-posts I’ve written lately. I was going to do all these fun, intelligent things about design and how our minds see images without predisposed opinions. (On second thought, that doesn’t make sense.) Then I was going to write a list about what the Internet and Its People have taught me over the last couple of months. (Surprisingly, quite a bit.) And then I have this really cool post coming about a memory I have of being 8 or 9 in July. Because, you know, it’s July.

But instead of topping off those half-done projects, I’m going to start another one. Warning up front: Brian doesn’t know I’m about to talk about these things. Like every other plan we’ve ever had, this one will sink like a cinder block. TRUST ME. It’s still fun to talk about, though.

Have you ever thought about picking your shit up and just moving away? I don’t mean the next water district over, or into that 10,000 square foot foreclosure by the country club. I mean AWAY. Away, away, away. Like, House Hunters International Checks out Amsterdam! away. Actually, my first preference would be the Loire Valley of France, or perhaps Brittany, right on the English Channel, but my adventure partner, who doesn’t yet know about his adventure, wouldn’t be up for it.

Instead, I have decided that this is the very last summer I can put up with this heat without doing something about it. We – both of us – are FUCKING MISERABLE. Granted, I don’t live in Texas or the Death Valley or whatever, so yes, some of you are hotter. But I can’t take the two seasons per year thing. We have scorching brutally humid hot, and sometimes okay, rainy, coolish cold. That’s it. We can’t enjoy outside stuff in the summer because of mosquitoes and the drought (and it’s too hot) and we don’t live close enough to either the beach or the mountains to take advantage of other weathery thingies.

So yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and look for jobs for one or the both of us. I’m going to look at houses up in the mountains of (some) state. I want a screen porch that allows me to enjoy myself without needing a baby pool to catch my sweat. I want to plant some plants that won’t automatically die once they’ve figured out where they are. I want to see the seasons change. You know, like CHANGE. I don’t want to have to keep my flip flops and cropped pants out just in case this Thanksgiving is like all the other ones before it. I’d like to wear a pretty sweater more than once during the winter.

Again, I haven’t officially brought this up with Brian. What’s the point right now? It’s a pipe dream.

A cool, rainy, screen porch, Wellies, good grocery stores and schools, fun cultural activity kind of dream.

Destruction

Posted by Elizabeth in Anxiety, Daily, Family, Farm, Lamenting, The Weather

We have a family farm about 15 minutes outside of town. This morning, Brian and I rode out to see if there was any damage from yesterday’s storms (on the news here, here and here). Our land and the farmhouse were spared. Others were not so fortunate. None of these pictures I took are of people I know, nor do I know who belongs to these houses. It doesn’t make me any less sad and heartbroken.

This was taken about a quarter mile from the farm. We kept saying that we don’t understand how a tornado behaves, not that anyone does. Why does it tear a path and suddenly stop? Why does it miss large structures and take small ones?

I love that we live in a county that is bordered by a large city on one end and lots of farmland on the other. In 30 minutes we can enjoy restaurants, concerts, museums and all the fun city stuff fun city people enjoy. But then we can take a short drive and be out. Out of the noise, out of the traffic, out of everything. It’s peaceful, like this.

Newcomers to our area come for the weather, ironically. We have warm, mild winters and hot, humid summers. In between there’s not much of either – instead there’s rain, sleet, snow, hail, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods. A famous saying around here is that if you don’t like the North Carolina weather, just wait five minutes. These people didn’t have five minutes.

Everywhere we went today there were old people and young people, all suited up with work gloves, rakes, ropes and chainsaws. We saw a man carry a big blue cooler, wider than he was, across railroad tracks. There were cars on the side of the road for half a mile, with neighbors and family members helping load up what was left of belongings.

We finished our drive around the county and were about a half mile from home, just across the railroad tracks and behind the grocery store. This was a mobile home owned by a man I know, although he thankfully wasn’t living there.

In Raleigh and Sanford, there was damage on a larger scale, if only because the structures were larger and the concentration of people exposed to the storms was wider. There were deaths all over the place and some of those included children. Tomorrow there will probably be more people found. North Carolina hasn’t seen this type of tornado damage in over 25 years.

Papa’s got a brand new bag

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Anxiety, Beach, Family, Good Stuff, Listing, Muse, Rejoicing, Totally normal

I’ve been avoiding the blog for a little while because there’s been so much going on I haven’t known where to start. Maybe I’ll start by making a list, as I do love a list better than just about anything.

1.       Brian got laid off.

2.       Brian was home for a really, really long time.

3.       I was the world’s greatest cheerleader, resume-writer and job coach. For free.

4.       I was the world’s greatest church-goer, two whole weeks in a row.

5.       Brian got hired!

6.       Brian’s first day at work was yesterday!

So week before last Brian was running around dropping his resume off anywhere that had an open door, and he decided to take one by his pre-Pepsi company just for the hell of it. Before he could get halfway home, the vice-president called him in for an interview! Can you believe it! Neither can I! Neither can he!

Last Wednesday he interviewed for a similar position as to what he did for Pepsi and they hired him ON THE SPOT. On the spot! For a job! And the sweetest deal of all is that this job is Monday through Friday. Not once in the 7 years we’ve been married has he had the same schedule as I have. We’ve been ships passing through the night, running into each other in the kitchen and occasionally one of us sees the other by sifting through laundry, searching for familiar clothes.

The last few weeks have been the best of our married lives. It’s no secret to our friends that we’ve gone through a bit of a…rough patch over the past few months. In fact, it was super rough. Like, SANDPAPER rough. And yet – YET! – he loses his job and we become blissfully happy. It’s like all the negativity of the world, all the things that beat us down over and over and over had magically disappeared. Brian’s face softened and he slept better. We laughed at stuff and marveled because we forgot what laughing sounds like.

And so this past weekend I surprised him with an overnight trip to the beach. It was amazing timing because North Carolina had its first 70-degree weather of the year and we honest-to-goodness took our beach chairs out on the sand. We snuggled in with books and short-sleeved shirts, and we walked for a little while with our toes in the water. (Which was frigid. We are obviously stupid.) We had a nice peaceful dinner, walked on the beach at night under a weird orangey moon and we slept in. We took naps and we laughed some more, because it kind of sounded good.

Now I realize all of this might come off as a little, I don’t know, cheesy maybe. And that’s true. But I’ve found myself in a new quandary, Internet, and here’s where I need your help.

For the last few years, Brian has been the primary housekeeper because he was home ALL THE TIME. He had like, a gajillion days off and so the cleaning fell on him. Now that we’re back on the same schedule, we have to rework our chore chart a little. I want there to be less clutter, obviously, but for right now I just feel like we need to spring clean for a fresh start.

I’m doing one room at the time, starting tonight with our bathroom. I’ll tackle the other stuff later. What are your best cleaning tips? What makes the whole job easier for you? I might just sweeten the comment pot with a little prize for the one cleaning tip that saves my life. YOU NEVER KNOW.

Death of the American Dream

Posted by Elizabeth in Anxiety, Family, Lamenting, Muse, WTF?

I feel like a part of us has died this morning.

Yesterday morning, Brian went to work as usual, dressed in his Pepsi uniform, ready for the day with his coffee in a Pepsi mug. He adjusted his Sunkist hat to block out the eastern sun, and he wore his Pepsi winter squall jacket. He was ready for his day.

After a short training video on, of all things, fire extinguishers, Brian was called into a meeting. He was told that as of that minute, his services were no longer needed at Pepsi. He was the turn in his keys, his cell phone and bring back the hats, the jackets, the clothes at his earliest convenience. He was given a sheet of paper outlining the termination of his benefits immediately, as this was the end of the month. They nodded their heads as men do, said they wished him the best and let him go.

After 8 years of never missing a day – EVER – never calling in sick, never taking an afternoon for a doctor’s appointment, they just let him go.

When he told me, I was so stunned I burst into tears. But the small voice on the other end of the line was trying so hard to be brave that I held in my sobs until we hung up. I wanted to be sure that I was here with him when he first came home, so I didn’t leave for work until hours later. My boss understood.

As anyone who has ever lost a job knows, it feels like a continuous kick in the gut. It just keeps happening, over and over. When you are finally able to fall asleep at night, it’s just an illusion of peace. The next morning you are reminded that yes, the death really did happen. It wasn’t a bad dream.

Our first thoughts were of money, of how we can tighten the belt and adjust. Adding up what very little savings we have and subtracting the many bills we have. Regret for buying this and fixing that before it needed repair. Wishing we had made different decisions in the past financially. Being glad – for him, for the first time – we don’t have children to feed.

I’m not sure Brian can see this far yet, but I think of the days and weeks to come, when I will continue to go to work and he will not. His body is conditioned to wake up at 5am every morning and go hard all day long. He’s thinking of what we’ll do this Monday when offices and HR people are back in place. Lists of places to call, people to send his resume to, emails to be sent.

We’re trying very hard to be proactive about this, as much as we can. By dinnertime last night, we’d already purchased new health insurance at about 75% cheaper than what it would have been to add him to mine. We created a Facebook and LinkedIn profile for him, logged him onto websites for companies doing any kind of work related to his.

Everything we could to forget the death that just rocked our family.

Even now, the next morning, we are awake in our den, and he is rattling on about routes, sales, numbers, who’s up and who’s down. Something – anything – to make sense of it all. He is sick from throwing up all night, probably nerves.

We are nervous, we are scared, we are shocked and we are confused.

We are now part of the national unemployment numbers and we are now standing in line with millions of other people, far worse off than we are, fighting for benefits and jobs and the ability to provide income to our family.

We are Americans, and our dream just died.