How Do You Define Family?

Isobel is checking in today to remind me to quit mooning around worrying about things that can't be immediately changed and start finishing my current book. She wants to know how it ends.

Pap decided to pick up a phone and apologize. I'm sad to say it didn't help. There was no explanation for "why", so there is no resolution to the problem. But this blog isn't about problems. It's about friends, family and those special people that blur the line between those two groups and become "framily".

I'm so lucky, I have Mert, my girl down under, Dark Daddy and Tat, Library Lo, and Clay Guy. People whose homes you could show up at on Christmas Day and not feel like an intruder. People who take your side, even when you're wrong, and then tell you the truth once you've regained some semblance of rationality. People who have no expectations of you and don't get mad when you fail to call them for months at a time, or forget their birthdays. These are the people who'd try to give you a kidney if you needed one. We say any kind of outrageous thing to each other, and never get mad or bored or annoyed with each other. I have an abundance of riches when it comes to framily.

Warning, Never Marry a Creative Person

There is a part of me that feels very sorry for people who marry musicians, artists, writers or comedians. When things are happy - it ends up in their work. When things are sad, yup, right there in their work. For all the world to see, which, if you're the creative person, is the point. It's not enough to just FEEL, we have to EXPRESS. The country group, Rascal Flats, has absolutely summed up my feelings right now. A new song, to replace my tainted love song:

I should be out in that driveway stoping you
Tears should be rolling down my cheek and I
don't know why I'm not falling apart like I usually do
and the thought of losing you's not killing me.
I feel bad....
That I can stand here strong, cold as stone, seems so wrong...
I feel bad, that I don't feel bad.

Can you imagine being married to an artist? You stumble by their latest show and there's your picture painted with arrows through your eye, or a foot protruding from your forehead. If you've married an interior decorator, and you come home to find your entire house has been painted pink... she's probably done with you.

I can let myself be angry over wasted time, sad about just throwing
love away.
I almost wish my heart was breaking, but I can't lie
All I want to do is turn the page.
I feel bad, that I don't feel bad.

There's a lot to resolve, so much to do to make two lives out of one. And I do feel bad, that I don't feel bad. Pap has several fine qualities, unfortunately, the deal breaker is his modus operandi.

I feel bad that I don't feel bitter, alone
I just feel that's it time to move on.

Ranting

This year's 4th of July will be remembered for thunderstorms outside... and in. Poor Ruger is so afraid of thunder and lightening. At the first sign, he runs for cover. I would do the same if there was a desk in this house big enough for me to duck under. Speaking of big... Princess and I lost a combined total of 4 wopping pounds after our first week of pain (3 for her, 1 for me). How much does that suck... 7 days of pain for one lousy pound. Of course that doesn't count the 250 pounds of lieing dead weight that was also shed this week. Speaking of Pap...

In his typical manic depressive, passive aggressive fashion, rather than tell the truth and save his 25 year old marriage, he's checked himself into the hospital. For a blister on his foot. I know, my interior intelligent woman is just shaking her head and mocking me like crazy. Because I'm usually a nice person, I'm sure I will eventually drag up some compassion and make an attempt to understand whatever mental illness it is that makes him unable to admit he's made a mistake. But maybe I won't, because look at where compassion and understanding has got me so far. In the mean time, while I'm feeling bitchy and very mean - I'm using that energy to get some organizing done around this dump. All his little flotsam and jetsam into the trash. His weird trophies and collectables straight into a box and down to the basement.

A male friend once told me that the true difference between men and women is how they treat relationships. He said that men will dither and float, come and go before they actually throw in the towel. When a woman is done. She's done. There's no changing her mind. I agree with him to a point. Men start dithering at the first sign of trouble, and float back when the storm has blown over. Women are done when we say we are, because we've been working on the problems, and know a lost cause when we see one.

If You Don't Know Me By Now

If you don't know me by now, you will never, never know me....

That used to be our song, mine and Pap's. He picked it, way back in the beginning when our marriage was young. We could be across the room from each other, but when this song came on we snapped together like magnets, to slow dance and nuzzle under a disco ball, a harvest moon or around the toys cluttering our living room floor. When little incongruities popped up in our marriage over the years, the words to this song would play through my head and I'd accept his explanations clapping the intelligent woman who shares space in my noggin in gags and chains.

All the things that we've been throughYou should understand me like I understand you Now girl I know the difference between right and wrong I ain't gonna do nothing to break up our happy home

Independence in more than one way this weekend. The details are unimportant, enough to say he was caught red handed and when confronted, still chose to lie. There wasn't even a fight, the entire confrontation took less than half an hour, because there is no hope of resolution when one person refuses to tell the truth. He has lovely eyes, Pap, large, guileless, deep blue pools. When he looked directly at me and lied, it was as if the intelligent woman burst out of her bonds and cranked on a movie of our twenty five years together, the film stuttering and stalling on all those incidents I'd chosen to ignore, despite the fact they'd made no sense at the time.

We've all got our own funny moods,
I've got mine, woman you've got yours too

I'll be the first to admit I'm not easy to live with. I'm an off and on housekeeper, as a writer I need a good bit of alone time, I don't like to cook. I have an exhaustive list of interests, a circle of friends that are only mine and I accept people just the way they are, without conscience thought to color, creed or sexual orientation. I love a good debate as long as everyone plays by the rules. I don't mind confrontation, as long as everyone is honest. I am a devoted mother. As a wife, I am loyal, available and faithful. If that wasn't enough for him, he should have said so.

Just trust in me like I trust in you
As long as we've been together it should be so easy to do

Empty words at this point. If he were to say them to me, I'd slap him. I can't trust a liar. When I talk to my girls about relationships, I tell them to take marriage seriously. Everyone has their quirks and annoyances. But there also must be a line you draw, and clearly enunciate to your mate about what is the deal breaker. Whether its infidelity, home labor or number of children... if there is something that you know you are absolutely unwilling to accept in your marriage, I tell them to talk about it. For me its honesty. If you can't tell me the truth, we have no foundation to build anything else upon. So to Pap, who has been banished from home tonight, I've saved the last two lines of what was once "Our Song":

Just get yourself together or we might as well say goodbye
What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye

Independence Weekend

The newest addition to our family here at the house of perpetual remodeling, Princess' new kitty, Isobel. Wretched little creature, she has no respect for anyone's property and is hopelessly addicted to iced tea. She is as annoying as a cat can be, climbs curtains, knocks all the pens off the desk and torments poor Ruger until he begs to go outside to get away from her. Despite this bad behavior, she has the ability to remind us all not to take life too seriously. To remember to take time to play. An important message for a house full of work-a-holics.
This is the weekend before the 4th of July. A celebratory reminder of our fight for Independence from England. For some years, all holiday's have been an excuse for the retail market to act like they're making their last sale forever. Fireworks, a 4th of July standard, have become so regulated for safety that they've become too expensive for our small town. Home fireworks have been outlawed in my state, but people still smuggle them in and already I can hear the pops and cracks of this illegal contraband. Despite these changes to our American traditions for Independence Day, my frustration with our National leaders, I am still proud to be an American. The 4th of July still reminds me of the tenacity and sheer luck of those that founded and fought for this country.