Category Archives: Rejoicing

Happy B(B)day

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Daily, Family, Good Stuff, Listing, Muse, Rejoicing, The Almighty TV, Totally normal

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.

Today is a really, REALLY good day.

Posted by Elizabeth in Family, Good Stuff, Rejoicing, Totally normal

Today is my father’s birthday. He is 70 years old today, and I can’t stop telling everyone I see. All the people I’ve talked to in the last week or so know that today is his birthday, they know that we’re eating a super fancy schmancy I-don’t-have-clothes-for-this dinner tonight, and that I’ve been struggling over what to give him for months.

Without doing a ton of fact checking, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that he is the first in his family to reach the age of 70 in at least three generations. It’s quite a feat.

He lost his father when he was 9. He lost his brother to cancer when his brother was in his 50s, he lost his sister in her early 60s and his mother – who had a heart attack on a park carousel on my birthday in 5th grade – was in her late sixties. This is a big deal.

For reasons I won’t go into, I don’t know a lot about my father’s childhood. There are a few stories here and there, occasionally a reference to how young he was when he had to become “the man of the farmhouse,” but for all intents and purposes, his life is a mystery up until he married my mother. Or it was until I found pictures of him this week.

In some, he is a teenager, posing sullenly with his mother and sisters, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else than in front of the camera. In others, he has a mischievous smile and is obviously fidgety. My favorite is the one where he looks like Jack Nicholson, grinning as if he just told a dirty joke. (He probably had.)

Because he doesn’t read this, I can tell you that we are giving him an engraved watch tonight at dinner. To him it will probably be just another gift to file away in his “man box” on the dresser (what are those called, anyway? they aren’t jewelry boxes, are they?). To my brother it will be a thank-goodness-you-took-care-of-that-for-me gift. For me, it will be a reminder that he has been given – divinely or not – more time to spend here on Earth, cranky as ever, suffering from allergies, frustrated at his computer, and loving his children more than he will ever allow himself to express.

I love you, Daddy. Happy birthday.

A love like ours

Posted by Elizabeth in Good Stuff, Lucille & Charles, Muse, Rejoicing, Totally normal

We’ve had a troubled relationship, you and I. I laid eyes on you for the first time and knew that I was in love with you, but I also knew that you’d break my heart. I looked at your face, I looked into your eyes and when you cocked your head at me, I smiled and that was it.

The first sign of trouble was the first month I knew you. The timing wasn’t always right, we thought we’d have more space than we did, and we weren’t as devoted to each other as we hoped. But you and I gradually found a routine and it worked. The time we spent together was precious, and I woke up every day loving you a little bit more. I didn’t think it was possible to open my heart as big as I did, but I just couldn’t help it.

On our first anniversary there were people with us to celebrate, and you looked like you always do: assured and confident and – though not on purpose – a little aloof. You felt comfortable in your skin and you loved being the center of attention, even if you wouldn’t admit it. I’ve never been more proud of you.

There are times you exasperate me, there are times you betray me, and there are times you behave poorly. We both know this, but our love transcends the hard moments and we still look into each other’s eyes and love resides there. I’m not the only one to feel this way about you; you worked your way into two hearts and you’ve stayed there.

Today, on your birthday, I count the years and want three times as many. I want you to feel free, but I want you to always come home to me. I want to bury my face in your fur, scratch your sweet little head and feel your cold nose on mine.

We’ve had a troubled relationship, you and I. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Happy 6th birthday, Lucy and Charlie. I love you both immeasurably, and yes, I know that makes me crazy.

The one where I have ants in my pants

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

Y’all, I am in desperate need of HGTV. Well, that and a vacation to Acapulco, but that’s not the point. I should give you fair warning: I haven’t posted in a really long time (it’s not you, it’s me), I have pictures of stuff I want to share with you, and this going to be long. Have a drink, grab a snack and settle in.

First of all, I would write one of those sappy shitty posts about oh I’ve missed you such much my 4 blog readers but that annoys people and it’s also kind of fake so I’m going to skip that and just say that I kind of don’t need you anymore.

HA! April Fools!

Here’s the thing, Internet: I’m not so much crazy anymore. I mean, according to the books I’m still a nut, but my counselor and my doctor have let me go (it’s not me, it’s them) because my medication has regulated the majority of my anxiety. I am now under orders to carry on with my life, which quite frankly confounds me. What to do? How to handle it? Who to blame? What’s with the feeling of the normal?

I know not what to do with myself, so BB and I took a day trip. We went to look at riverfront property we can’t afford in northeastern NC on a blustery beautiful day, and we enjoyed ourselves and had quite the nice time and we didn’t contemplate killing each other not even once. It was a fluke.

Brian looks across the river at his grandparents' house. True story.

We're so cute we DESERVE a river house.

Somewhere along in there I decided to talk BB into rearranging our furniture so that my new business – remember that? – had a space. And also because the back bedroom of doom and despair the office got so cramped and junky that we climbed over clutter and shut the door and pretended like it wasn’t there. So basically we devised this plan that we would bring some furniture from the back to the front, move the dining room, combine the living room and the den and call it a day.

The old living room which is now the dining room which moved from the old dining room that is now the new office.

A shitstorm turned upside down.

We are STOOPID. Mostly me, but I don’t live here alone.

It took two days of packing, one 13-hour day of moving, three men, three overseers and $100 to screw up my house. I mean, it could be worse, it’s not completely terrible, but y’all. THE MOVING. It’s not worth it unless you’re getting a new house out of it. I guess any idiot with half a brain could’ve told me that, but I’m not so good at the listening.

Right now I’m hiding from what’s left of it. The desk hasn’t been put back together, the dining room still has shit everywhere, the old office looks like an HGTV “before” picture and I’m short a hundred bucks. This did not turn out the way I planned.

Not much of an improvement.

See?

In addition, I’ve only had two orders with this here new business. Half the people I know are saying “I told you so” and the other half have promised to buy something to make me feel better. It’s hard to be the kind of person that I am, the kind that gets incredibly excited about something, acts on impulse and then is disappointed when expectations aren’t met instantly.

I obviously learned a whole lot in therapy.

Speaking of therapy, I wasn’t kidding when I said I didn’t know what to do with normal. I really don’t. I haven’t felt this energetic and un-anxious since college (!) and I just can’t seem to figure out where to direct this movement. I want to get out and run for miles but I don’t know how to run (it’s true) nor can I even walk around the block without reaching for an oxygen mask. (It’s that chair I bought years ago. I blame it for everything.) I want to start this business and take it to soaring unreachable heights (okay FINE, it’s stationery, where the fuck can it really go?). I want to quit my job, travel places I didn’t think I could go and get new stamps in my passport. I want to appreciate every morning and every night and stop wishing it away at a desk in an office in a small town.

But that’s not normal. Normal doesn’t have to be extraordinary, it just has to be comfortable, right? I used to have this friend in college who asked me all the time what normal was. She wanted to know if her family was normal, if her boyfriend was normal, if she was normal and I never had an answer. It isn’t the same for everyone and since I haven’t felt it in quite some time I really don’t know what it is. Is it rearranging your house to fill some energy need? Is it hopping in the car and using up a tank of gas to gaze at land you can’t afford? Is it pretending to tolerate your job but counting the minutes until you’re free?

Mostly a normal day.

I just can’t answer that.

We made a mess this weekend, all because I want change. Change is the evil fucking pollen wafting from the pine trees in the spring. It’s the baby gosling toddling around the pond near the parking lot at school. It’s the mommybloggers getting their own articles in the New York Times and their own seats at the White House. (I’m not linking to that because it’s frankly not worth your time.) It’s realizing that you don’t have be a nut for the rest of your life when there are pills to be swallowed and people you can pay by the hour to nod while you talk. It’s realizing that you are who you fucking are and you can’t afford to waste your time wishing you were someone else.

I love it when I give advice I can’t take.

Right now I am wondering how many of you are in my shoes. Are you feeling the anxiety I felt six months ago before I discovered the miracle of prescriptions? Are you dying to shed your skin and ditch the cabin fever? Or are you in limbo? I think I fall in the limbo category. I obviously don’t know what to make of myself, but I no longer feel like scrapping this go-round and trying again. There has to be some way to salvage what falls in the middle.

For now I’m going to live with the piles of junk and the jigsaw puzzle of furniture. I am going to hide inside away from the pollen and finish my book club selection. I am going to fork over every red cent I have to GlaxoSmithKline. I’m going to sit on Twitter and laugh at the stupid people.

I think I’m going to be normal.

And the winner is…

Posted by Elizabeth in Addiction to, Daily, Good Stuff, Rejoicing

Those are my sultry office eyes and my "Kiss Me I'm Irish" tiara. Can't say I didn't BRING IT at work!

Olive Cooper of Olive Out! Her suggestion for my new business name was “Twice Noted,” which I think is ab-fab and very clever. Olive, please send an email to elizabethbake at gmail dot com with your address and your iTunes gift card will be on its way! Congratulations.

Much as I’d love to tell Olive that her suggestion was taken, we have actually decided to call my paper pimpin’ spot “Noteworthy.” I have an insanely gorgeous business card designed which I’ll show you later this week. Right now I have to run to a little out-of-town meeting (read: goofing off in the car for a couple of hours) but when I come back, OH WHEN I COME BACK, we’ll kvetch together.

(I’m thinking of trying out Yiddish in my quest to explore a new life being Jewish. Again, we’ll talk later.)

TTFN friends – happy St. Patrick’s Day!