I'm like our cat

Our family cat's name is Augie. She had been tormented and abused by Kiwi since she was a kitten and is now only sweet to us when she's really hungry or in the middle of the night when she nestles in bed with us. We declawed her when the baby made its presence known and spayed her so she would be free of the instinct to get raped (its never good for a cat).

In spite of all of our preventative measures, she calculates when one of us is going to open the door and she will tear past us into the enticingly tom cat sprayed backyard. She will chase butterflies, smell the corner of our brick where our neighbor's cat Tuxedo likes to piss regularly, and generally pretend that her soft, clawless, flealess, Garfeild-like ass is a wild cat. Then something will spook her and she will be cowering, tail flat on the ground and pawing and mewing at the door for one of us to let her in.

These days I'm feeling very much like our stupid cat. I feel trapped by how domesticated I have become. I was once a wild woman. Free and arrogant and happy with it. I used to suck-it's so clear in retrospect-but I really believed I was amazing and anyone who didn't share my generous vision of myself was simply a douchebag. It was fun. Now I am saddled with two kids, a husband (who I adore and actively WANT) and a cat. There are many many moments when I am utterly in love with my life. Of course they are made sweeter by the many many moments when I am exhausted and covered in a grimy layer of baby food and kiwi's high pitched antics are making me seriously reconsider the kid-farm aka daycare down the road kindly named the 'Kid's Castle'.

However I choose to paint the situation, I am trapped. That sounds negative but I dreamed of this 'trap'. I meticulously built it, wrote songs for it, and prayed for it. So here I am and not surprisingly I regularly get the urge to tear out of this house just like our cat every time someone opens the front door.

And of course, as soon as I do get my breath of fresh air, and let my hair down like a wild woman would, my heart strings start vibrating as soon as I see a baby or a kid or a puppy. I end up grateful to be back at our front door, about to enter my sphere of family smells and love.

My soul is struggling to save itself. It's not as desperate as it sounds-it's a good thing. It's not a bad thing if it loses the battle. To live for ones family is an honorable thing. While I was certainly born to be the mother of these incredible creatures and the lover of the most frustratingly sweet man I've ever known, I owe it to them to maintain the uniqueness of my soul.

So if I have to thrust my son into my husbands chest in order to get that breath of fresh air, I will. I'm not going to work at a menial job just to afford to pay someone else to care for my children, but I will not let myself feel guilty for preserving the woman that my kids will appreciate knowing when they're older.

Like our cat, a short excursion into the wild is sometimes all you need to appreciate the comfort of home. Even if you need to take an excursion every day.

Summer

Today was a long, lazy, and luxurious day. I woke up to my children cooing at each other, in a pile of little boy scented love. My day opened with a conversation with Mel which always engages me (even if what inspired her to call me was the residual nastiness of a past she-devil) and a strong cup of coffee in one of my favorite paisley mugs.

Then I showered and dressed and we piled in Jeepie and lunched at Sonic, which invoked guilt and bliss in me-only bliss in Kiwi. He had a sleeve of Ritz crackers courtesy of Grandma Sharon before we left and after he chugged his milkshake he began gagging and complaining of being ill. My son pukes when he gets too full. It's a healthy version of Bulimia so I don't mind.

After that I laid in bed for a couple of hours while Caelum screeched happily and played with his feet. He soon wore himself out and I nursed him to sleep. The house is now in a quiet late afternoon lull. The air conditioner is the only sound accompanying the clacking of the keyboard.

I really should offer Mark a whole hearted thank you every day for allowing me to float along like this every day. I almost feel guilty about being so happy and enjoying my children so fully. When I look back at how cheated Kiwi was back when I slapped clothes on him and myself every morning, drove half an hour to Beaumont, dumped him off and picked him up nine or so hours later so I could offer him some half assed version of dinner and be lucky to send him to bed with brushed teeth-I feel horrible. It's not the preschool that causes the guilt-that's good for him. It's him having to have endured the early morning 'free play' and after school 'free play' that is really just baby farming and not constructive at all that makes me sad. I rarely made it to pick him up before dark in winter months.

That experience is what keeps me from feeling like a completely self indulgent a-hole when I have a day like this. I know my children are benefiting just as much as I am from this undivided attention. Keenan eats regularly now and bathes every day. He even brushes his teeth after every meal. His drawers are scented with fabric softener and are never empty, and his room is usually clean. I know that millions of mothers out there do all the housework and child-rearing while juggling a full time job. I've done it myself, although the laundry doing and dinner cooking parts of motherhood often suffered. The experience really helps me appreciate this time. I love being busy. I love having a routine. It's just so much easier to do things thoughtfully when not every minute is just an opportunity to get something done. I LOVE being.

Yairi

The guitar my husband purchased on ebay is wonderful. It's a small little guitar but boasts a sound that is complex and mature and very interesting(kind of like me!) . I really love it. The top string buzzes a little-a problem that will soon be fixed by my husband's guitar tech uncle-not that it matters as much to me now that I'm over my teenage power chord phase.

I really enjoying the guitar. It makes me re-live my life through all the dramatic minor chord heavy songs I wrote as a youngster. It also makes me want to write new songs about my life now. As I go through my repertoire of songs I am very aware of how mediocre they are, I know my voice does them no favors, and my simple guitar playing is probably the highlight, but they are precious to me the way old photographs of myself as a teenager with dark lipstick and a bright red bob are. I think I am going to try to swallow my pride one of these days and get my husband to help me record them and polish them enough so that I don't hyperventilate and start blushing so furiously I break out in a sweat every time I try to brave a listen. It really shouldn't be such a big deal to me. He's seen our son emerge from my body in a most unglamorous way. He's heard me butcher songs that other people wrote while I was high on alcohol. He's pretty much experienced the worst I have to offer in our young relationship, I'm just really in love with him and I have a hard time getting over myself. But if I could, a new dimension of communication would open up between us. I really want to share music with him. It's something we have in common, but the threads don't intersect. We keep to our own fabrics. Mostly by my reluctance to share. I guess I don't want him to laugh at me, but like I said earlier, we are way past that. We love each other and I know he won't run screaming if I play him a shitty song. He's a remarkable lead guitar player. Very intuitive, very connected when he plays. But I don't always appreciate him. I used to make my sister's ears bleed and I was never concerned about her opinion. I am going to make music with my husband. I may hide behind the Yairi for a while, but my stupid songs need to be preserved before I forget them and I need his help to make them suck less.

Oil, baby shit, guitars

To make things clear, I did conceive that baby I was yearning for with my husband. I wasn't quite looking for such an immediate manifestation of that desire, but I'm so happy he is here.He is a little Buddha-a calm little Aquarian who always looks surprised or worried due to the eyebrows he inherited from his father. He looks Asian and he has a dimple in the apple of his cheek. His name is Caelum Croix Segura. Caelum is the name of a tiny constellation, Croix is for the honeymoon in St.Croix that he got to attend as a zygote, and Segura is from his father. The night I met Mark as a deeply tanned and flighty nineteen year old he told me his last name meant security-something I craved from the then-boyfriend for whom I burned with a mostly unrequited love. That stuck with me and I'm very pleased to be feeling just that-secure-with the first adult love I've ever experienced. Kiwi treats Caelum like a mildly interesting puppy we took in. Since his birth it feels like he's always been here. The circle is complete.

As I type and my baby naps a hole that men gouged on the ocean floor for the purpose of staying rich is poisoning our ocean. It is day 51 of this hole spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As a mother and a woman growing into a stage of life that is rewarding on a level so much richer than it was before I knew my children, it is hard not to obsess with the fear of what it will mean to them. I just want to document that this is the beginning and I am aware that such disasters are inevitable. I am a member of the human race and I will suffer the consequences of the stupid shit we allow to happen in the name of the almighty dollar. I live here on the Gulf Coast solely because of that dollar and that industry. I am just as guilty as anyone I suppose. Maybe this will wake us up. Maybe good will come of it. I will pray for something positive to come of this. Daily new photos show up of oil soaked pelicans and dead sea turtles and it just makes me feel ashamed. I feel powerless and uninformed and I can't help but want to pull my children closer to me and cherish the comfort of our lives together.

I think Caelum sensed my fear the past couple of days. He's been uncharacteristically fussy and needy. Usually he is content to watch the daily activities of Kiwi and I and only makes a scene when he's hungry or has just experienced one of his daily ass explosions. Maybe he's just pissed that he can't move around yet. His sweet nature has me spoiled. He is sticking to his eating and sleeping routine though, so I am grateful.

My husband has always had a propensity for buying guitars as impulsively as I buy shoes, but I thought the quiet of the past nine months meant he was finally content with our collection. Not so. And that's fine, but I have always preferred to play a guitar and see if it speaks to me before inviting it into my home. My husband got caught up in the emotion and drama of the addicting combination of online shopping and flea market that is ebay. So $500 floated away from our online tally of dollars and into the online tally of someone else. But he works hard and lets me stay home and write and rear the kids and is generally a very sweet husband. I only got mad for a few minutes. I don't know why its so much easier to let money slip out of your hands rather than to spend it in chunks, but it is.

My final thoughts for the day are this: savor the moment and pray for peace so that when the conscious ones cease, you no longer have The Fear.

Accepting my fate

I gave up an overnight sitter, New Orleans, and an evening with Ani Difranco so I could stay home. I chose it. It made me feel good. I am changing and my deep seated ideas of what is cool and fun and what I considered 'living' are struggling to catch up and shift with me. Hence my propensity to make lavish plans that involve me leaving my children behind only to discover that that's not at all what I want.

My childless (for now) friend doesn't understand and probably thinks it's neurotic to forfeit such an awesome experience for the seemingly mundane life that I live every day. But as I get older and my love for my children and my husband matures and grows more complex, this life of domesticity and love reveals itself to me as the goal I have been seeking since I was a boy crazy teenager. I am an unlikely and reluctant but nonetheless full blown member of the motherlove club. I am happy and fulfilled in a way that is so simple and pure that its confusing. My life has long been filled with cycles of drama and longing. I'm sure I played a big role in keeping myself caught in the pattern since it became a comfort zone. I'm used to thinking that being lusted after and being full of lust myself was the pinnacle of human emotion. It was a cheap but powerful high. Going out to be seen and get drunk so I have an excuse to lose my inhibitions was often my goal and my son was an obstacle I made a game out of overcoming while trying to avoid any feelings of guilt. Now, having experienced an entire year of not working so I could stay home with Kiwi and move forward with the pregnancy and birth of my second son Caelum, I have found myself in love with being a mother. I still have a strong sense of myself. I still have the desire to look and feel attractive but it's finally and truly only a desire to please myself. I love my husband and I love making myself shiny and polished for him, but I know whether I have full hair and makeup going or look busted and homeless and smell like breast milk and baby shit that he loves me. Maybe I'm finally getting better at being here now because I know that this time in my life-like my son's infancy-is precious and fleeting. I am reveling in it as self indulgently as possible.

I simply don't care about the same things. I'm happy and I'm free (at least for the moment) of any desire for anyone else's approval but my own.

3/3/9

I have created this blog based on inspiration from my friend. She furiously chronicles her thoughts and translates her emotions into lyrical poems and (fittingly) songs. I like the very down-to-basic feel of her blog for it's dear diary properties.
I want a dear diary.
Much too often I am spewing inner-most thoughts and desires and increasingly, obsessions, to my friends. It is appropriate in a way, but the way I have come to depend on them (for fucksake, if I can't get a hold of Melissa I will call my father! -note: melissa and my father have at&t which makes it a free call, which might be behind this addiction) is not.

I so wish I had a cricket again. My inspirational friend was and is a fabulous partner. We would go back and forth for hours about how we feel and why we feel that way and tell each other that we are completely right and justified in our respective positions.
And while it is imperative that you have that select handful of people in your life to guide you through the issues that threaten your sanity, there is something very liberating about a diary.

So, bloggy diary, here it comes.

I am twenty six years old. I have a beautiful three year old son sired by a douchebag who is sweet and mildly cool, but as deep as a puddle. I am in love with my future husband who I have loved since a brief encounter when I was nineteen that spawned a life long infatuation, and five years later the best experience I have ever shared with a human I can do it with.

I whole-heartedly desire to have a baby with him. I have wanted to be at our wedding since we began hanging out. I can still look at him and feel like maaaybe I'm not really good enough for him. I often wonder where couples are supposed to draw the line between completely in love and a teensy bit co-dependent.
I was once best friends with a beautiful human who I have to say I don't have time to be friends with anymore. I think about him and dream about him randomly but I choose to give too much to my man. Its not a painful choice, it's simply what comes naturally for me.
I have a crooked tooth that becomes more of an issue for me as I get older and the cockiness of youth fades slowly and steadily.
-this is fun

I obsess about pretty much everything I want until I have gotten it or obsessed long enough to realize there are better things to obsess about.

And I used to be a very cool chick. My taste in music was impeccable and I was confident enough to play my guitar in front of people and sing even without being hammered. I was adamant and passoionate about my ideas and always vocal about them and stood by them.
I never would have second-guessed my worth against any guys.

I do still try to put my thoughts and my energy into my spirituality. I pay attention to signs like glorious hawks swooping into my field of vision and telling me to calm down and savor my moments. But my obsessions have a nasty habit of knocking my number one goal so high up I forget its there.

I have, out of necessity or complacency, calmed down a lot. I relaxed my judgements and my standards. I am more open minded so that I don't have to fight so much. Especially in this back woods part of Texas. I love the good ole' boys and I love the crawfish boils. I am a mexican girl with a little mexican boy always in tow and I will stand up for that. But I like it here. Good people are good people no matter how thick the accent, how outrageously dyed the football head, or how tight the wranglers.
I'm content to be in the swamp.

So that's about it for now. I'm basically a woman. Just as fucking nuts as the rest of them. Lusting after the same things but feeling guilt about it due to the generation I was born into. I'm a mother and a survivor.
rawr
:-)