My Willow Weeps

So I get up this morning with good intentions. I’m going to work like a fiend and get tons of stuff accomplished. It was like a sign from God….even Lydia was yanking on my hand telling me to go work (because she wanted to watch cartoons and when I’m not working I’m usually watching HGTV).

So I sat down, intentions all aglow. And then…..and then…..{spoosh}. Lydia knocked a full glass of soda over. Onto my keyboard. *sigh* All over my papers, bills, my brand new PHP5 book, and the floor. Usually I keep my soda beside my desk, not actually on it. Of course, that damn Murphy knows the minute I deviate from my SOP and took immediate steps to remedy my motivation.

Lydia goes to see her grandparents on the weekend, so shortly I will be going to buy a new keyboard. Which I’ve really needed to do for months now….my old one is so well loved that the letters were rubbing off (but who cares…I touch type). Fortunately, being the geek that I am, we had a spare keyboard lying around. But the riser thing on the bottom is broken on one side and that is NOT going to work for me.

Who knows, maybe I’ll end up getting an uber cool keyboard anyway and it will be fate in disguise trying to help me out. (Ok, that sounds like a like of self-rationalizing bullshit. But hey, sometimes rationalizing is all you have.)

I’m a web developer by trade.  Some days, it’s uber cool….playing with all the techie toys, the less computer-literate bowing down in homage and awe at my incredible electronic prowess.  But some days…it just sucks.  There are lots of reasons why.  Working too hard on projects that take too long and don’t pay enough.  Trying to be nice and getting kicked in the teeth for it.  Not having time to learn all the things I need to learn - because if there’s anything you learn as a computer geek is that the more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know.  For all my supposed prowess, I’ve barely scratched the surface.

But I slog along, working to get somewhere.  I’ve had multiple people tell me I’m one of the most driven and ambitious people they know.  Obviously they aren’t living in my skin…  I feel guilty spending time playing Civ4.  The people who are really successful don’t do that, do they?  They have perfect homes with nary a dustbunny hiding under the sofa.  Their dogs are too well-mannered to track grit all over the house.  They have passels of children who are always perfectly washed and don’t leave jelly goobers on their clothes and the sofa.  Our house is usually a candidate for a national disaster area.  So what is the difference between them and me?  Are they working harder, or just smarter?  Or as Tom supposes, are they high on amphetamines?

Maybe I just expect too much of myself.  Maybe I need to sit back and enjoy life…and once I stop trying too hard it will all just come to me easily.  Or maybe I just don’t have what it takes.  How do you figure it out?  There should be some kind of test online (my god, there are tests for everything else) that once taken will just say “Give up already.  It ain’t happening.”

I know I could do more.  So why don’t I?  Instead of playing Civ, I should be doing the dishes.  Instead of telling myself “I don’t have time to exercise, clean house, play with the munchkin” I should stop wasting my time and do it.  I honestly think sometimes I’m my own worst enemy.  I know what I need to do.  The little voice in my head is nattering on insistently about it.  But I find my hand clicking that button for Civ, I find my mouth saying again “I’m too busy to play, I’m working” while I read my horoscope.  Somewhere my priorities are jacked.

A common thread in my posts seems to be endless questions and doubts.  I want answers, dammit…but there just don’t seem to be any.  At least not easy ones.  Am I making things too hard?  Or am I just refusing to see what’s in front of me?

*sigh*

Havoc: a funny name for a tiny tabby cat who was skittish, but loving. Who would come when you called her, but didn’t like to be held long (she preferred a choice seat on your shoulder, the better to look around). When she was a kitten, she would run the Indy 500 around my bedroom, cornering hard off chairs with her sister, Mischief. I hope she can again skamper off with her sister, happy and playing (Mischief has been gone for many years). She loved to play with ponytail holders. For years when you walked into my house, there were ponytail holders on the doorknobs so she couldn’t run off with them. She would barely hold them on her lip (she liked the furry ones best), carrying them around the house like a prize mouse. We would often find them under the refridgerator or the stove, where she would lose them after batting them all over the house.

I stayed with her at the end, though the kindly old vet offered to put her to sleep after I had gone. Her passing was gentle…she shook her head once like she was dizzy, then laid down in peace. In her last days she liked to be held and snuggled…she spent her days under the lamp on Tom’s desk. She was alert and when held would purr and look around her with interest at everything around her. I believe she was happy and the vet told me that due to her extreme dehydration (likely caused by kidney failure) that she probably wasn’t in pain.

I hated to let her go, my baby girl who was with me for almost half my life. She was the one who stayed with me after the car accident that left me with night terrors. She slept by my side, purring as every few minutes the dreams woke me up and I petted her to calm myself back to sleep. Out of our 3 cats, she had the most independent personality. She was the queen, the one who would smack the dog in the nose, who was always perky and gliding around on velvet paws, unheard.

It was always a toss-up who would go first, Havoc or Stoner. At 14.5 years, she was the oldest, but also seemed likely to be the healthiest. Stoner is 12, very fat, and has a heart murmur. But he has his sister, Eva - perhaps they keep each other young. If you watch, you will see the tip of Stoner’s tail twitch, right before he goes into a full WWE lock on Eva, who always looks suprised and mightily offended at being handled so.

Havoc’s going has reminded me of an unfortunate truth: I will face this same situation for Stoner and Eva within the next few years. I know cats can live to be 18, but it largely depends on the individual cat. After they hit 14, you’re living on borrowed time. Lydia will be about 5 then, just old enough to understand what death really means. She loves the kitties, I dread that day. We haven’t told her about Havoc, at 3 she’s just not old enough to understand. She was napping when I left and was still napping when I returned from the vet without Havoc. But she’s been talking about her, she likes to list all the people and animals she knows. Just today she was saying “Havoc is mommy’s kitty, Eva is my kitty, Stoner is Tom’s kitty….and Havoc is very very old, we have to be very careful with her.” I’m hoping that she will just forget about Havoc, but my daughter’s memory is very good. Sooner or later, she’s going to ask.

Oh, my poor loving kitty…I’m so glad I was able to hold her and feel her thin, wizened body purr. She was so happy to be held. I miss her, but I’m happy that she’s not in pain. If there is a heaven for kitties, I hope she’s playing in tall spring grass, happy and free.

Today is a day for introspection, something I almost never have time to do anymore. I read the blogs yesterday of Phresh and Daisy, and it got me thinking. Here are two people who genuinely enjoy…something. For Phresh it’s guitars and dive bars and falling in love. For Daisy it’s clean cotton sheets and the caress of a warm breath on her cheek.

For me? Lately I’m not sure anymore. I feel dis-satisfied. Disenfranchised. Dis-something. That is, when I feel much of anything at all. My goal and dream was to own my own business like my father, to be free.

My father isn’t happy. It’s sort of sad really….because the wife he adores (and who adores him) are so disconnected they rarely even speak. He works until midnight most nights while his wife rattles around the empty house like a bean in a tin can. They circle each other in an uneasy orbit, magnetically drawn and dynamically opposed.

Of course I don’t want that. Who would? At least I don’t think I do. And yet, day after day I sit here, taking more clients, struggling to meet another impossible deadline.

I got my period today. Another month of endless days and nights have gone by. Smoochie hugs and smoochie kisses. Days of “Mommy’s busy right now” instead of reading stories, days of staying up too late and getting up too early. Days of relentless keystrokes and unceasing insistent ringing of the phone. Is it worth it? I look around and see nice homes and seemingly wonderful family lives. Days of vacations and leisure, families connected and loving. Is their grass really greener ? Or is it just human nature playing tricks on me like it does on everyone else, making me believe that what I have is never enough?

I started my business so I could be home with my daughter. But does it count if all she sees is Mommy at the computer? She pretends she’s “working” and types on my keyboard. She talks to no one on the phone about “getting that job”. When we ask her to do something she doesn’t want to do, she says “I’m too busy now.” I see myself reflected in her. All my flaws are being coded right into her psyche.

Daisy’s blog is about how wonderful the simple things are. All I have are questions. What do I really enjoy anymore? And when did I get so jaded? It’s not like my life is terrible. My daughter is smart and beautiful and so unexpected it makes my heart ache. My partner is a great guy who puts up with my irritability and keeps me on track. We have accomplished so much in these last few months. Some days it just seems so pointless, always striving for some elusive goal that once reached becomes irrelevant because the next goal looms.

But today….today I’m just tired. And depressed. So maybe this is just a hormonal thing after all. But if it is only that, a scrambling of endorphins and enzymes, then why have all the days blurred together? When my period started, I was shocked. “Already?” I thought.

28 days and nights.
672 hours.
40320 minutes.

They are gone, forever. Into an eternity when a billion years from now someone on a distant planet will see a tiny pinprick in the sky and say, “1.2 billion years ago, a woman on that planet sat at her computer, thinking that life should be something more than endless marching minutes falling off into the abyss.”