Tag: love

  • Maybe Recliners Aren’t the Be-All-End-All

    I have severe scoliosis. As in– I started wearing a back brace at age six, wore some variation of said brace through age 13 (think hard plastic shells molded from a cast of my whole torso, made every few months as I grew)…..it was not fun times.

    And at age 13 when I had surgery for an 87-degree curve, I really hoped that was the end of it. I grew from five foot six inches to five foot seven and a half inches in 10 hours. True story.

    But….life happened, four pregnancies and three healthy boys happened, and here I am at age 46 with a secondary thoracic curve that has to be at least 45 degrees in addition to the original lumbar curve, which has settled also at 45 degrees or so.

    Suffice it to say between the curves and rotation, my whole skeletal system is a mess.

    For the past six years, we have loved our Kirkland Signature leather electric reclining couch. We now are at Costco all the time, but we actually scored our couch at a local salvage store for $250, brand new apparently. When we bought it I thought we’d be doing well to get six months of use out of it, and here we are six years alter, and it still works.

    I have been in physical therapy now for months, and after last week’s session I decided I might be done with the couch. I’ve known for a long time that it was not good for my back, so I decided to just take the week and sit, when I sit, in this straight back cushioned rocking chair with the pillow, as pictured above.

    And…..something minor-miracle-wise, happened:

    I found myself sitting less. A lot less. I started getting back on my stationary exercise bike daily. I found myself sitting to do what I was going to do and then getting back up to resume household tasks as needed. And my mental health has been better on the whole, as well.

    I did not realize that what one sits on can literally make a change in lifestyle in the span of a week.

    So, the couch is posted on Facebook for giveaway, and we will find a better recliner for my husband, who legitimately does need one since he sleeps out here in our living room occasionally.

    Yes, we are a couple that does not always sleep in the same room, and no, there is nothing wrong with our marriage.

    I suppose that is another post, though.

  • February 3, 2011

    Detail of a 2011 Blogger template by Skincorner, featuring artwork by Amai, from the header of my blog at the time.

    “I’m determined to salvage the comfortingly wonderful customs from my heritage while, for lack of a better term, “taking out the trash,” so to speak. Example: Karo syrup makes a really good, easy topping for breads when mashed up with butter on a fork. Fantastic taste to that. However, eat too much of it, and I know I’ll have a heart attack. It’s all in the moderation. I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and I struggle with massive doses of anxiety. Generally, though, I am a pretty happy person. Except when I’m not. :) It’s pretty much just like that. And then I feel like the world is caving in. But the good news for you is that if you know me, unless you spend a lot of time and I really let you in, you won’t have to deal with any of it. Because I put on a really good cover and generally don’t let many people close. I’m slow to trust people right now. Otherwise, I’m mommy to two really funny little boys. They keep Jared and me really busy. My living room is overrun with matchbox cars and little boy-sized desks and chairs.”

    This was the “about” box on my very first blog.

    I finally got up the courage to go scouting through archive.org to look at old blog posts that are now defunct. I pulled this “about” quote from my blog as it was on February 3, 2011.

    And I can unpack quite a lot that goes unsaid between the lines now, 15 years later.

    And it is still, indeed true, 15 years later, that despite living what appears to be a fairly transparent existence online, it is true that I let remarkably few people close (pretty much 1 to be exact), especially in person, and I have learned indeed to put on a really, really great cover.

    In that paragraph, I hear the angst in my writing. I hear the quiet despondency and horror of having had my social sphere knocked out from under me just the year prior.

    On February 3, 2011, Porter would have been four and a half and Liam would have been not quite three. We were indeed in the thick of it with two very funny little boys. I was in no way prepared to give them the attention they deserved.

    In 2011, the world was falling apart in just about every way possible.

    And so, in 2011, the boys went to daycare despite me not working.

    Jared kept all of us going, day and night.

    I had visions of a “Mommy Blog,” and was not-so-quietly desperate to get back to some semblance of a professional life.

    And for sure, whatever beginnings of a social life we’d had the year prior was long gone. Church was kind but most people were distant.

    I was taking on the full identity of “sick Caroline.” And, quietly dying, horrified and terror-filled, inside.

    And in that paragraph above, I was trying to not betray that any one bit of that was actually happening.

    Over the next little while, I’m going to revisit some of those old posts, with updated commentary.

    February of 2011 was the quiet beginning of a new sort of lifestyle: a different kind of childhood for my boys than I imagined, a different sort of marriage dynamic than I’d imagined.

    A different kind of life than I’d grown up dreaming about.

    And it’s been beautiful in its own way. Arguably, my boys had a more present mother because of that season of life.

    And if I could go back and tell the girl, who probably drafted that “about” paragraph in between sobbing episodes, anything at all, it would be this:

    Those two little boys that you worry about: they will grow up to be stellarly wonderful men in spite of whatever shortcomings you have. That man you married, that man that you feel growing ever distant with the stress of life right now: this marriage that is being tested is going to find its own comfortable peace and that man is your safe haven. And the career days may very well be done, and that will always hurt. And you, dear girl, your tears are not in vain. There’s a beauty in the growth going on right now. Do not lose hope.

    That is what I would tell my 15 years’ younger self today. Because it is the same thing I can tell myself today, in 2026.

  • The Girl in the Basement Apartment

    25 years ago today, I survived psychological torture and likely real physical danger.

    And the particulars don’t matter anymore; I am safe in February 10, 2026, not February 10, 2001.

    But I have to wonder what my neighbors of the time thought. They had to hear the screams; I screamed for my life that night. No one responded. It was a 55+ community probably not used to domestic violence issues.

    I don’t have to wonder about why it took that precise incident for me to decide to have the boyfriend of the time move out. It took precisely that sequence of events to upend our lives like that.

    And I don’t have to wonder because I know: I reclaimed his old room as my own, and rechristened the energy of that space the very day my Mommy came to clean up the trashed apartment he left in his wake on the last day of February when he moved out. 

    My Mommy brought my baby cat Cricket to live with me that day, and Cricket and I went on to live there a good while longer.

    And that day, that lowest of lows, was a turning point. It was the day I decided no man was worth my safety. No man, no matter how long I’d known him, was worth giving up my self-respect.

    I was done settling after that night.

    Thankfully, mostly good men followed that purging of my life.

    I am so grateful that I got to marry the best one.

    Jared is the one who has tolerated living in the light 24 hours a day for years on end.

    Jared is the one who answers the ghosts that aren’t there when I hear noises in the night.

    And Jared is the one who wants nothing from me other than my happiness. He doesn’t ask me to be anything other than real, he doesn’t ask me to perform for him. 

    He only asks me to accept his love as a gift. And that it is: a gift.

    And 25 years on: I know for a fact karma is real, as sad as that is to say in this particular instance.

    Tonight I will go to bed safe, having worked on a new jute bag for most of the day.

    And I will go to bed grateful for the new lease on life I got in 2001.

  • Randomness

    You know what? I sure have missed writing.

    Also, randomness: I’m pretty darn good at Russian on Duolingo. Apparently there were hidden subconscious benefits to spending a good amount of time in my toddler years in a college language lab, as Russian, Greek, and Spanish are all fairly intuitive in addition to the French I did actually study.

    And, there’s a new job to get ready for, and I am glad.

    And it’s nearly tax season, and I am glad about that, too.

    But, it’s bedtime. And with said job on the horizon, routine is becoming super-duper important.

    And apparently my back is really messed up. I don’t know why my spine is a corkscrew, but it is.

    Poor Abby has to have a dental on February 2; she has an infection in her mouth and will have to have several teeth pulled too. I guess that comes from us not brushing her teeth– sorry girl. She’s been a trooper but we finally got her to the vet today. I am so thankful my therapy dog only has to have a dental and it was nothing worse to worry about. I was afraid she had kidney issues.

    Aside from the trip to the vet, it was a good day.

    I’m thankful to be getting back into the headspace that I can concentrate on writing. It’s been a long winter and I am grateful that the fictionalized memoir is still a project on the horizon. It may take me a decade to write, but will be well-worth it.

  • On The Bus

    I’ve been on the struggle bus for a while now.

    For years and years, actually.

    Jared is the one who named it the “struggle bus.” 

    This winter is actually slightly more bearable because of the shears in the house. 

    Light helps.

    And even though I am on the struggle bus, there are small mercies.

    A new job.

    A fun New Year’s Eve.

    New tires on my car that make it formidable in the rain.

    Mastering the French pin up-do.

    Figuring out that why yes, I can live without cheese in my life. And be happier for it.

    Figuring out that why yes, I can be happier without some people in my life, too.

    Figuring out that even life without the GFX is pretty darn great. 

    My hair is growing. It’s longer now than it’s been in probably 11 years or so. I forgot that when it gets to a certain length, the ends in the front underneath get curly on their own. Completely forgot that at all. It’s well on its way to being as long as it was on the 404 page.

    And there is terror, and I haven’t been writing.

    It’s mostly been survival mode.

    There are new routines with the new year, and the future is bright. 

    Maybe life is the struggle bus.

    It’s a pretty darn wild ride.

    There is hope. At least I’m on the bus.