Can you ever really retrieve your groove?

While asking the above question, one might pose another question: Did I ever really have my groove or is hindsight somewhat more flattering than reality was at that time?

Lately I've been having a recurring thought and it is this: I'm fed the fuck up, or FTFU. It's true. I know that at this time of the year we are supposed to be giving thanks, and I am. Truly. There is so much for which I am grateful. I have a beautiful family with really cool kids and a great man. Plus I have an amazing mother, a roof over my head, food in the fridge. I'm working on my yoga journey, I've cut out all refined sugars from my daily diet, etc.... But under all that I'm FTFU. Why? I'm not entirely sure. Recently I started with a new therapist with whom I suspect I'll make great progress, though in our initial stages it's really just good fun to chat with somebody who isn't part of my family and I can shamelessly drone on for 50 minutes. So. It's mostly just been chit-chat and not too much work yet.

So, again. What gives? Mid-life blahs? Could be. I've been at this parenting thing for a little over 20 years and I still have a nine year-old hanging out in the house. How does that happen? Poor family planning, I know. I'm tired of parent/teacher conferences. Tired of mediating TV wars. Tired of giving up my yoga classes to schlep kids to after school activities. Tired of not doing my shit. I know. So selfish. But it's honest. That's just how it is right now. Somewhere in all the soccer games, ski lessons, hockey practices I lost sight of my own aspirations. My current ambitions include clean uniforms for Devon, balanced lunches for the kids. There is no color in it, just automation.

I hope this part of it ends, that I get my crap together and get over myself. In honor of trying to find a bit of me tonight I am listening The The on Pandora and ignoring the fact that Devon will soon come down stairs wanting sustenance. Hmmm, will it be PB&J or a grilled cheese? The wondering is keeping me on the edge of my seat.

Every time I hear Pink's song about True Love I'm fairly sure she wrote it for me and my family. She's a bad ass through and through, but this one nails it at the heart.

Riding it out

So I stopped writing for a spell. Why? For about 46 x 12 reasons. One of them was that life got super real and in my face and all I could focus on was breathing in and out, in and out, in and out until my lungs worked on their own and could perform the exercise without any instruction. They still need some encouragement most days, but it's getting more manageable and my red blood cells seem to be doing their job of oxygen delivery. Another reason is that there is a creeper out there who stalked my blog for years, so I turned off that Statcounter to live in bliss and ignore his weirdness. Then I waited. And waited. But the words have been stuck. I start sentences in my head, but can't complete them because the fun went away and my sass was covered up by a greasy film of stress.

I'm trying to get the fun back. I backed out of Blogher, let my other blog go into the sky and have returned to blogspot. Why not. It seems low pressure. There are no deadlines. I don't have to Tweet about any products or review any books. I'd like to do something fun here rather just rant about the lack of oxygen in my brain. I have colors in my head I'd like to share. Projects. Ideas. I'm really going to try to step around the piles of sick and regrets that have built up in the corners of our house, hell maybe I'll get out the broom and send them out the door in a swoosh of healthy cleansing.

I'm tired of rare diseases sucking the life from our family. I understand that they are here to stay and roost in arteries and the like, but not in mine. Hell and no. Today we are all upright, breathing and mostly cognitively functional. That's not half bad.

I love this picture. It isn't mine. 

I found it on Facebook without a photo credit. 

While I wait for the words to return in my head, these cats are awaiting the fishermen 

to return home with their day's catch

Being gone vs. being absent

Summer is an ass kicker. There's no way around it, at least in my Book of Crazy. And since I write that book I think I'm something of an authority on it. By the time August rolls in my bones feel hollow, I suspect my judgment on even the tiniest things to be less than stable and I really, really don't want to hear the word Mom and have it refer to me. A bit crappy but 100% honest.

This summer began with Matt in the ER, unable to walk and the fear of blood clots in his legs. From there the path of madness transpired quite nicely until about 10 days ago when I found myself on an early Monday morning trapped between the garage wall and the car, unable to do anything other than cry and pull at my eyelashes. Fantastic beginning to the week. Matt's inclination was to admit me to the hospital, but since Crazy is much harder to diagnose than blood clots I called my doctor and we proceeded to have a long chat about medications and life balance. She decided I desperately need a decent dose of both.

So what's my point? Nothing really. I have to say I appreciate Klonapen and the therapeutic results of the borderline obsessive exercise that is keeping me out of the garage. That's really all there is to it for today.