Suburban Goddess

Sometimes I feel like my heart is a room full of candles…. people in my life pass through the room, blowing them out, one by one. Some people pass through like a windstorm,  leaving me in almost complete darkness…

And then, there in the corner, one lights a match.

I slid next to Alex in the bed this morning, softly pulling her hair back from her precious little cherub cheek before I kissed it…

“Wake up, sugars… Mommy loves you.”

“UUHHN,” came her response, her tiny hand shoving my face away.

I closed in again, dropping another kiss on her cheek, singing “Good Morning” in a little sing-song voice.

“GO ‘WAY.”

“Good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning dear Alex, good morning to you.”

“Mommy, HUSH.”

“Hush? Why? It’s time to get up…”

“Mommy, YOU CAN’T SING! HURTING MY EARS! SHUSH!”

(blink. blink.) Well, that was just uncalled for.

“I think we should be able to open up people’s brains and take the bad stuff out, and some good stuff in instead.”

“Well, if you’re gonna do that, why not make it interesting? Put in a duck brain.”

“Huh?”

“When someone’s gonna say something stupid, you’ll see it coming… “Oh, and I think QUACK.”

(laughing) “Here I was, trying to think of things for the good of mankind.”

“Yes, you’re a much better person than I. I just look for ways to make life more entertaining to ME.”

D: My question is, where do all the rational, attractive, stable single people hang out… and why was i not invited?

Me: Perhaps because you don’t fit the profile.

D: 3 out of 4 should qualify

Me: LOL. I AGREE!

D: 75% is a passing grade damn it

“That was some storm.  I almost DIED!”

“What happened?”

“The daycare closed and I had to spend the day locked in the house with a 3-year-old! I’m lucky I made it out alive!”

“You’re so dramatic….”

“Obviously you’ve never done hard time with a toddler.”

“A DAY???”

“I can’t wait until you have a kid.  You’ll see.  YOU’LL SEE!”

As I listen to the thunder roll in the distance, I find it strangely symbolic of the turmoil within… I just can’t shake this uneasiness that stays with me.  It borders somewhere between tension and nausea, a permanant state of anxiety that I just can’t break out of.

I know where it comes from.  It comes from waiting; waiting for things to fall into place, waiting for answers, waiting for life, waiting for karma…. waiting, waiting, waiting.

I keep forgetting to live.

It’s not natural to live like this; I know that. But still I wait, wondering if perhaps this is penance for the life I’ve lead up until this point. Wondering which path am I supposed to take.  Wondering if there even is a path, or if I’ve just convinced myself there is to keep from having to deal with certain realities…

It feels like life keeps throwing complications at me.  Or as my friend D would tell me, we’re not victims of life,  we just leave the door open for drama.  We don’t actively seek it out, but we don’t lock the doors either, giving it free reign to come and go as it pleases.

If there was ever a time in my life I needed a sign, it’s now.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“What?”

“What are doing with your M&Ms?”

“I put them in color order… two at a time, then I eat any leftovers, then I eat every color until there’s only two of each left, like Noah, then I go down the rainbow starting with the red ones until I get to the brown ones…”

“So what happens if I take these green ones right here…”

“GIVE THAT BACK!”

Sometimes it feels like I’m just floating through this world, strangely disconnected from everything around me until something so tiny or subtle grabs me by the hair, yanking me back into a cold, painful reality.  I’ve learned to embrace the lows as much as the highs; I’ve discovered they seem to go hand in hand.

A scent… a voice… a melody… some things have a way of making your heart ache without ever touching you.

My alarm goes off at 6am, and I hit the snooze button exactly 5 times until 6:45…. where I scramble out of bed, jump in the shower, and start the mad dash to try to get to work on time.  The person who suffers the most from this wacked out routine is Alex, who I usually wake up at 7:05 to have us both out the door by 7:20. But this week, she put her foot down.

“Alex, put your shoes on.  Now, now, now.  We have to go.”

“I AM, Mommy…. hold on a minute.”

“Come on, Alex, we have to go!”

“Mommy, I AM!  You have to be more PATIENT!”

I was looking at the wallpaper on my iPhone, thinking, since I’m a graphic artist, I should really customize the wallpaper. I mean, I’m an ARTIST, right? So I should probably have some really cool customized wallpaper, because that’s the kind of thing a kick-ass graphic designer would do.

So I Googled “iPhone wallpaper.”

After loading a really cool picture for my background, I stared at it a little more.

Seriously, I live for originality, and I have a canned background.

LAZY.

So I decided to get creative and start playing around. And because I’m nice, I decided to share…. so I’m throwing a link up for “DOWNLOADS.” It’s a work in progress, so don’t flame me yet… but over the next few days/weeks/years I’ll start putting some of my stuff up like Photoshop brushes, screensavers, iPhone wallpaper, and anything else I feel like giving away.

Because I love you, Internets. Enjoy the fruits of my labor.