Mandajuice

Let us never speak of 2012 again

1. What did you do in 2012 that you’d never done before?
Got medicated.
Got a tattoo.
Ate a chicken I grew from scratch.
Mastered at least three new kinds of orgasm.
Mastered at least six new kinds of pasta sauce.
Made probably 100 new recipes.
Fell asleep while my daughter read out loud to me.
Got dumped.
Got roommates.
Got into a single digit sized pair of jeans.
Mastered the daily practice of cleaning up after a 16-year-old dog.
Became a regular church-goer.
I'm sure there are a million more things, but I actually want to get this list published before the end of the year.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't have the capacity to make resolutions last year, so I guess my only goal was to stay alive and that happened, so WIN! I think I will make resolutions this year, so stay tuned.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My cousin Scott and his beautiful wife Renee had a baby girl named Esme, who I, quite sadly, have not yet held.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
 Fortunately, no.

5. What countries did you visit?
 The People's Republic of Portland.

6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you lacked in 2012?
Presence. Same shit, new year.

7. What dates from 2012 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Well Joel and Alex's birthdays are etched upon my BODY, so that was pretty memorable.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I learned to feel my feelings. A curse I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not being able to make things work with Joel. It's pretty fucking hard to walk away from the love of your life. (Not that I've been able to do so yet.)

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Does mental illness count?

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Wellbutrin, followed closely by Clonazepam.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Samnterry and their daughter Sophie. There's the family you GIT and the family you CHOOSE.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My own.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Food. My garden. Cooking in general. Which is strange considering how much weight I lost this year.

16. What song will always remind you of 2012?
"One and Only" by Adele (At least that's the song I would stay up singing until the wee hours in my kitchen after Joel moved out.)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

• a) happier or sadder? Sadder. Maybe even jaded.

• b) thinner or fatter? Thinner. Skinny like a fox.
• 
c) richer or poorer?  Poorer. You have no idea.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Listening.   

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Talking.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
My Christmas was totally surreal. I woke up in Joel's bed, raced home to play Santa for my children, hung out with Dave for four hours in my kitchen while the kids played with their toys and then spent the following 24-hours with Joel in various stages of undress. I think we were trying to get one another out of our systems and I'm not sure it worked at all (certainly not for me. I've never wanted him more.). I barely heard from my family (no surprise there), but it was one of the best Christmases I've ever had. I got to just... be. I got to love and be loved, accept and be accepted. The only thing missing was My People.

21. Did you fall in love in 2012?
Over and over and over again. Joel and I broke up (again) three days before Christmas and still, I have never loved him more. Or anyone else for that matter.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
What is this "TV" of which you speak?!?

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
No.

24. What was the best book you read?
Did I have time to read? If I did I can't remember what.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Liz Longley. Particularly the song "When You've Got Trouble."

26. What did you want and get?
Myself.   

27. What did you want and not get?
Joel.   

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Love Actually. Nine years running!

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 36. We had a Cinco de Mayo party with all of our peoples. We went through several gallons of tequila.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Financial security.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2012?
Peg Bundy meets blond Robert Palmer girl.

32. What kept you sane?
Ramona. (My magical therapist).

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Booker T. Isn't he a celebrity?

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

Poverty. My own. That of others. What we should do about it.

35. Who did you miss?
My biological family.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Dave. Sure, I was married to him for 12 years, but that was a different guy.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.
As if I've learned a goddamn thing!? If anything, I've learned how very, very little I know about most things.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Singing loud for all to hear

Aside from what I was able to glean early on Friday afternoon, I know very little about the Newtown incident. I know how many people died. I know twenty of them were children. After that I had to make a choice between turning off NPR/the news in general/Facebook/the Internet or being able to breathe.  So most of the information I have has been deduced from those initial Facebook posts and/or Obama's speech on Sunday, which I watched sitting on the floor of Joel's kitchen.

I know the victims were first graders. The same age as Genoa.

Roughly half of the dead children shared names with her classmates.

I can't even think about that without crying and no part of me is able to put myself in those parent's shoes. I'm not sure any of us can or that we even should.

Meanwhile my first grader is jumping rope behind me in our Siberian kitchen. She's teaching herself to jump backwards and cross-wise while singing "Yo Gabba Gabba, I made it out of clay!"

I have the luxury of being annoyed by this. I just made bacon for her brother's chocolate fountain party at school tomorrow and I'm afraid she's going to catch her rope on the pan and burn herself. Which just reminds me how lucky I am that I get to worry about my children.

How lucky am I?!

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say I'm not doing that well.

Given the turn-out lately, I'm also not the only one coping by going to church. I don't think The Bridge has an official membership roster, but if they did, I'd happily sign up, even if I had to login to a fancy machine that spit out my name tag every week. My People (SamnTerry, their daughter Sophie, JoelnLiza) would too. Thanks to the radical enthusiasm of Todd and Angie Fadel, we all spent most of the weekend singing about baby jesus at the top of our lungs. 

And crying. There was a lot of that. It helped almost as much as the singing did.

Then yesterday I almost had a psychotic break because I couldn't find my keys (which I never EVER lose) (because I'm not a real Democrat) (yet). I was rummaging through my pockets and emptying my purse with the kind of deranged fervor you can only muster when the death of 20 first graders is fresh on your mind and you're late to pick up your own.

Anyway, in my search for the missing keys, I came across a note I wrote during last week's sermon. We'd been asked to think about a time when we felt God's presence. I could've just rolled my eyes at the exercise because I don't actually believe in a Capital "G" God, but I found myself writing about the moment the doctor placed Alex's wet, slimy, peeing body on my chest for the first time. In that moment I felt connected to the universe in ways I had previously been unable to fathom. That connection was so deep and so surreal that everything around me suddenly had meaning. Even Beatles songs!

It was the first time I fell in love.

So I guess it's okay to stop beating myself up about being the atheist at church every Sunday because it turns out my "god" is most definitely love and all I have to do to feel it is think about my children.

Which means that no matter how hard I try, I can't stop thinking about the parents of those twenty first-graders. They lost their entire universe on Friday. My universe might require additional visits from my friend Pam (Clonazepam) if I want to avoid living in a constant state of panic, but at least I still have a universe.

If only we were all so lucky.

Old dogs, new tricks

Last night my phone died in the middle of the night - not permanently, although it's certainly headed in that direction now that the off button won't work - and I overslept my alarm. Joel eventually had a nightmare that woke me up and I raced to my therapy session and got there about fifteen minutes late. Fortunately I have the kind of therapist who is wholly unfazed by me, my endless vagina talk OR my lateness, AND who lets me stay to make up the time because SWEET MERCIFUL SHITBALLS WHAT A WEEK.

Self-Reflection is a Bitch!

I'm not sure how to talk about it without violating the secret lovah's pact we still share, but suffice it to say I was talking about JOEL's apartment in my last post, not Dave's. See Example One: the following conversation, which took place when the traffic on the 405 bridge came to a grinding halt just as we were taking the exit to said apartment. In Northwest Portland. Where he has always wanted to live.

HIM: Gee! If I lived in Northwest, I'd be home in three minutes!

ME, racing past the bottleneck, filled with glee: I'm so glad we don't live together anymore! I mean really, REALLY glad. Do you have any regrets about it? Because I don't. (YES, I HAPPEN TO TALK IN RUN-ONS. SHUT UP!)

HIM: Can you do a u-turn here? Do a u-turn! It's the fastest way home!

ME: I mean, I totally get to have my chicken house in the country and also a place in the city. It's pretty rad.

HIM: My only regret is that we didn't do it sooner. What were we thinking?

WHO KNOWS!?!

Of course, plenty of non-Joel-related things happened this week, too:

I played endless hours of "school" with my kids. Genoa is a magnificent reader and Alex has yet to see the principal's office this year. Win!

We bought a Christmas tree in the rain (for only twenty bucks!).

And I made Dave a birthday dinner of hand-rolled, roasted beet, pine nut and basil-stuffed ravioli with olive oil and poppy seeds, a side of blanched kale and some bread salad. Which he loved!

I also baked two pizzas, a batch of peanut butter drops, a bread pudding and (attempted) three Italian Pandoro's for Genoa's class (think Panettone, only shaped like a star and without all those pesky pieces of dried fruit) (think also that my kitchen is too fucking cold and those bastards refused to rise). Tonight I've got a Smitten Kitchen/Martha Stewart graham cracker recipe THROW-DOWN happening in the fridge and a bald man waiting for me to come to bed.

I also started running again, mostly stopped drinking, (long story) and gained five pounds. Quite a week in Mandaland.

It's complicated

I'm beginning to learn my way
around your new kitchen.
How you have one sponge for paint
and another for dishes.

I still love to cook for you,
but it's easiest when I force myself to forget
that it's your apartment, not ours.

Even though my inner Julia likes to think of it
as my second kitchen.
Perhaps the maid's kitchen.
The one without a butter dish (or ziplock bags).
The place I'm keeping the
unused pots and pans that used to sit in
our garage.

The pans that burn
and stick.

Like you do
to me.

Unlike my kitchen,
(the one that used to be ours),
yours has a mirror fit for a ballet studio.

Which is good for checking out my dance moves
and making sure my skirt isn't too short
(it always is),
but best for watching your gravity
shift into mine
when I'm baking pie in my green jeans.

I don't even eat pie.
And you still don't have a trash can,
but that mirror tells me
everything
you've never been able to say.