Suburban Goddess

Much like his namesake, Ike rolled in and bitch-slapped Houston, leaving an impressive trail of destruction in his wake.

I am now standing on the other side of Hurricane Ike, sans electricity, short a few tree limbs, but otherwise completely and totally unscathed.  When I look across the street at my neighbors, some of them were not so lucky.

Why does a tree decide to fall on one house, and not another?  Either way, I am thankful it decided to spare mine.

I’m lucky enough to work for a utility company, so I drove into the office to find air conditioning, power, and most importantly… INTERNET.

As I look at the devestation that has spread across Houston, I’m strangely reminded of Katrina.  Again, I find myself looking at things that I’ve come to recognize, certain landmarks, that are no longer there. It’s sad… but even more sad to me are the people’s faces. So much despair, so much hopelessness.

On my street, all of my neighbors were out cleaning their yards today. Aside from the noticable breaks of sunlight shining through trees branches that are now much thinner, much of my street appears normal.  But the drive into my office brought me back to reality; this was a big storm. It never ceases to amaze me, how much people take Mother Nature and her impressive power for granted.

I’m about to head back home, into the darkness… or shall I say candlelight? Alex and I will cuddle tightly in my bed tonight, more for my comfort than for hers.  It’s times like this that I realize how incredibly and unspeakably blessed I am.

I’m sitting here alone, in my living room, watching the coverage of Hurricane Ike. I’ve lived through quite a few hurricanes in my life, but this is the first time I’m riding one out all by myself.  Actually, I won’t be completely alone:

Alex will be here with me.

I have tons of play-doh, paint, crayons, and books. I’m prepared to be trapped with a 3 yr. old for at least three days with no electricity. I have enough food, water and all the other amenities that one needs to survive something like this.

I have a few friends and family on standby here, but I still feel frighteningly alone.

“Alex, it’s time to brush your teeth.”

“I don’ wanna brush my teef.”

“Alex, get in here and brush your teeth.”

“Jus’ a second, Mommy.”

“Alex!  Now!”

“Mommy!  Jus’ a second!  I PLAYIN’!”

“Alex, get in here RIGHT NOW.”

She wanders in, dragging her lip, snatching her elbow away as she walks past me. She climbed up on the stool in front of the mirror, making a big production of putting toothpaste on her Dora toothbrush.  She shot me a look so dirty out of the corner of her eye that I had to fight back a smile…. I was instantly reminded of myself before coffee.

“What’s THAT look for?” I asked her.

“You jus’ makin’ me MAD, Mommy.”

“Don’t top it off!” The lady called out to her husband who was pumping gas.

“Why not?”

“They said on the Today Show that you actually WASTE gas that way!”

“Yeah, well, Matt Lauer is a pussy!”

“Do you think they’ll evacuate again?”

“No.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if it hit this time, and nobody left?”

“Um, not really….”

“No, I mean… irony, you know?  They made this big stink about Gustav and everyone panics and it wasn’t that big of a deal so no one does anything and they all stay and Ike hits…”

(blink.)

Normally, I have a wicked sense of humor about these kinds of things, but we’re talking about my PEOPLE here….

“Why does everything always have to be so dramatic with you?”

But really, it’s NOT.

I don’t WANT drama in my life. (I can hear D snickering as he reads this, but I know he understands). I really don’t. I want a nice, quiet, drama-free life where I have a happy little corner of the world and everyone gets along and life is easy. The problem is, I leave the door open for drama to creep in… and then I don’t deal with it well while it’s visiting… and then it sets up house on my sofa, eating everything in the fridge and using the last of the toilet paper while calling his girlfriend and the rest of her redneck family who show up the next day and duke it out on my front lawn…

Yeah, that’s the kind of drama I end up with.

The thing is, I hate it. I don’t want to be this way. The problem, I think, is that I am just a terrible judge of character. I allow people into my life with open arms, giving them my complete trust until they give me a reason not to. This is a complete paradox from my love life, where I give NO TRUST whatsoever, which usually leads to trouble because if I can trust total strangers, why can’t I trust the person I claim to love?

But that’s another story entirely.

I trust that people are on the same page that I am; I trust that they are being honest with me all the time. This is what makes me an idiot; there’s ALWAYS a hidden agenda. Take the photography thing; I’ve been contacted by many people concerning photography. Some are legitimate, true fans of photography… some people are just faking it because they want to date.

I’m sorry, but that pisses me off. Why didn’t you just say you wanted a date, because then I would know EXACTLY where you stand.

I guess things have changed since the last time I was single. Not that they were any easier back then, but at least you knew when someone liked you, and weren’t blindsided by their affection later. The sneakiness of it all bothers me.

Maybe because it wasn’t sneaky at all, and I just completely missed it.

Which makes me a total idiot, completely naive, or…

subconsciously addicted to the drama.

The past couple of months have been pretty difficult for me. While my father is handling the chemo well now, I still worry about him constantly. I worry about my mother as well… the trip home helped ease my worries for a while, but with the whole hurricane scare, I just realized how incredibly fragile everything is in my life at the moment.

My love life has been a train wreck for quite some time now; out of respect for the party involved, I have remained silent. I have loved him for quite some time, despite warnings from many, many people to guard my heart carefully. I didn’t. I’m still not sure I’m not making a horrible mistake, but every time I try to walk away, something unexplicably pulls me back… sometimes with a gentle push, sometimes with a violent tug. While everything in my mind says run, my heart refuses to budge… and so, on it goes.

As of late, there are quite a few friendships that hang precariously in the balance. The one thing I hated about my marriage to Chip is his inability to accept my friends. More than anything, I do not want to ever have to make that choice again. I WILL not make that choice again. So it is extremely important to me that the man in my life fits into my circle of friends.

But that’s complicated.

My circle of friends is pretty diverse; they come from all walks of life, different socio-economical tiers, and from many different backgrounds. The few times in my life where I’ve managed to assemble this motley crue, I’m left feeling uncomfortable and awkward. It’s kind of like putting a skinhead, a Jewish woman, an Indian and a black man in the same room. Disaster.

My job has had quite a few changes lately as well, leaving me grasping for a better management style. I can’t really write about that stuff here, ’cause I’m sure I’ll get a call from HR, so I’ll just leave it with the statement that things necessarily don’t feel comfortable at the moment.

I’ve been in a general funk lately… and I couldn’t figure out why. So I did the one thing that clears my mind, something I’ve been putting off out of pure laziness lately.

I ran.

As my feet hit the pavement, I suddenly had a rush of adrenaline. I’m not quite sure why this works for me; I just know that it does. Within a couple of minutes, the blood started to pump through my body, my breath came faster, and the clarity I needed began to appear. It was just that simple. And the answers I sought were incredibly simple as well.

Life is really not that complicated, unless you want it to be. When I start to feel like I’m losing control, I complicate my life… that way, I have something to focus on, something to try to control. But the ultimate joke is on me; I’m not in control of ANY OF IT. I could’ve gotten hit by a car, struck by lightning… hell, a PLANE could have fallen on my head…. and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it. And all my best-laid plans would be for nothing! It was about 8 minutes in (when I realized I’d only gone a mile) that things started to make sense again. It was also at that moment that I realized an 8-minute mile was disgraceful for me… and I realized how important it is to take care of MYSELF first.

The rest of the world will just have to wait.

D: Do you do any coding at work? Or you are pretty much the graphics chica?

Me: I’m the boss chica…

D: I take it you have the glasses, spike heels, and the tight suit dress to go with the title

Me: No glasses yet…. but they’re coming soon… lol

D: That’s right, you are entering the cougar category

Me: SHUT IT! I am NOT THAT OLD

D: Right, the term is puma for your age range

Me: You are so lucky you’re not within choking range sometimes.

If anyone could give me a clue why my links above won’t work in Firefox 3, I would be most appreciative.  They work perfectly fine in every other browser.

But I don’t use any other browser.  And since they won’t work in the browser I use, I feel hopelessly useless.

I have a really close friend who can’t articulate in words what he’s thinking… but when he puts it to music, it becomes hauntingly clear what he’s trying to say.

I am profoundly effected by music; to me, it’s emotion in it’s purest form. It comes from someplace deeper than words…

I have people tell me all the time, “I don’t know how you can write about the things you do.” Well, it’s pretty easy most of the time; I hold a little of myself back.  I hold it back to share with those who are closest to me. But music is different; there’s no hiding behind words.  Granted, it’s subject to interpretation, but if you truly know the composer, there is nothing standing between you their deepest feelings.

Sometimes, that can just be too much to take.