It's all in my mind

I truly thought I'd be wallowing in depression right now. I thought that I'd be unshowered and unhinged. Sure, I have a playlist made with Beck's Sea Change and Ani Difranco. And I've smoked so many cigarettes on top of my chest cold, it feels like my lungs are bleeding. But I'm not unhappy.

In fact, the opposite is true. I've never lived by myself before. I can shower with the door open. I can wear stripey toe socks and dance around to Jamiroquai. I can watch the AKC Dog Show from beginning to end! Sushi rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner? No problem! And it's sorta nice.

I know it's all new and shiny right now, and eventually, I'll be stir-crazy. But that's ok. Right now I'm feeling good when really I shouldn't. I was blindsided and learned the relationship I thought was perfectly happy was over. And yes, I've written and erased a hundred posts about it. I cried, I whined, I ranted. And it's useless.

It changes nothing. So I have to deal with what's here. What's here is a new life in an old city, and it's all good.

Tomorrow marks the one week anniversary of my being dumped. It's ok, I'm fine, really. I will move back to Milwaukee on Saturday. It'll be the first time I've lived by myself, I'll go back to school. I'll stop crying. It'll be great. Or something.

So, while planning my move and trying to look forward to my future as an independent, single woman, I came up with a sure fire plan to protect my heart.

I can't live without humping, so I'll have to institute the friends-with-benefits relationship with a guy or three. However, I will not let it get any further than that.

I already have two cats. For the next few months, we'll be in a little studio, but I will eventually move to something bigger and better. I once had a dream about a little orange three legged kitty that followed me around Menard's. I'm going to look for him. I will also get another kitty or two.

I plan on turning my apartment into one giant kitty cat jungle gym. My parents are always remodeling, so slabs of wood are easy to come by. I will carpet these slabs of wood, then attach them to the walls in stair-step patterns. I will create ramps and cozy kitty beds, too.

Perhaps, at some point, my f w/ b will decide he wants something more serious. Well, then I shall invite him to dinner. When we walk in, I'll say in my best cat-lady baby talk voice, "Look, baby kitties! Your new daddy is here!!"

Hey, I gotta protect my heart!

My computer booted me last night, so I could not elaborate on my mom being a nutcase. Then I figured her stories were better told as posts of their own.

Let me preface this and any future posts about her by saying I love my mother to death. I'd take a bullet for that woman. We didn't speak for a number of years, and that was probably the most empty I've ever felt. Even though she's looney, selfish, opinionated, manipulative and often deceitful, I would do anything for her.

And now, on with the show.

At the end of last winter, my boyfriend and I went to my folks' for dinner. Mom tells me she has a new hobby and wants to show off some of her things. She takes me in the basement, and tells me that her goal for the spring is to invite as many birds as possible into their yard.

She'd been collecting birdhouses for the past several months, and had amassed quite a few. She has a bookcase in the basement, and three or four shelves were filled with houses. They started out quite normal, regular squared-off, nondescript homes. Then they progressed into whimsical shapes. There was a plaid chicken, more colorful house-shaped ones, and my favorite, a wooden hand. The hand cracks my shit up, and I tell her to bring it upstairs to show the bf.

She becomes very animated talking about her new hobby, and happily tells the boy her plans for the yard. She thrusts the hand out in front of her and declares, "all the birds will be fighting over this one. They'll say STOP! this one is my house!"

At this point, I'm in tears laughing. My boyfriend is sort of stunned. I figure it's a good time to remind him of the conventional wisdom that states a woman ends up like her mother. I tell him if he decides to get out now, I'll understand. I think he thought I was joking.

"But you haven't seen the best one," she exclaims.

They had been renovating their library, and had a lot of leftover wood. She took these scraps to make her own birdhouses.

She takes me into the next room, and there is the most disturbing, hilarious, creative thing I think I've ever seen.

Picture if you will, a big, flat square of wood. Perhaps a foot across. In the center of this, are four birdhouses, back-to-back, side-by-side, like a condominium subdivision. Around the perimeter of the square is a white picket fence. As landscaping, there are little plastic trees, flowers and bushes. There are tiny little bunnies and deer frolicking.

This beautifully frightening creation was to be put on a post and prominently displayed near the fountain they installed that summer.

Fast forward to summer, and my brother and I drop by for a visit. My step-dad is very excited to show off his new pellet gun. He tells us how he's set up targets throughout the yard, and has made it so he can shoot them from their upstairs bedroom window. He and my brother take off to go shoot stuff. My mom walks me around back to check out the yard.

Now, I don't know how to measure land. But they have a lot. They're set back far from the street, and surrounded by trees. It's beautiful property, my mom has quite the green-thumb, and there are gorgeous flowers everywhere. In each tree (dozens? twenty-thirty, I don't know, a bunch) there are 3 or 4 birdhouses. They cut off the branches of a big dead tree, and left the stump behind. The stump goes up about 10 feet, and there are shelves created from where bigger branches were cut off. There is a birdhouse on each "shelf," figure about 6 houses going around. On the front of the stump, she attached a couple more, one shaped like a greenman face, one like a squirrel. Then she crafted a sign saying "Welcome to Birdhouse Village." Also hanging from the trees are baskets filled with colorful yarn for lining nests. She also throws out clumps of animal hair after she brushes the pets, because she heard that makes nice nest lining as well.

It is beautiful, but it's toeing very close to the crazy line.

Recently, my mom called me to meet for lunch. I get to the designated location, and she isn't there. Then, I notice Wildbirds Unlimited next door. Sure enough, there she is, birdhouse in hand, chatting away with the lady working.

"Don't they have such beautiful things here?!" she exclaims.

The woman is explaining to my mom how to attract bluebirds. I think bluebirds. Anyway, you're supposed to put out a dish of mealworms, close to their house, but not terribly so. Everyday, you move the dish a bit closer to where you want the birds to live. Apparently, they get quite used to you feeding them, and will fuss at you if you come outside and their dish is empty. This has my mom very excited, and she can't wait until springtime to try it.

She signed us up for some classes they offer. Informational seminars about native birds, workshops and so on. Yes, US!

"Don't you want to learn how to attract birds?" she asks me.
"Well, not really."
She's taken aback, but soldiers on, "well, it'll still be interesting, don't you think? Plus, it'll be a fun way for us to hang out."

Yay. I can't wait...

I chopped all of my hair off. Well, most of it.
This isn't really all that fascinating, ordinarily, but I've been trying for long, straight, silky beautiful hair forever.

Somehow, my mom knew how to braid my hair when I was a kid. I was a typical little black girl, with multiple braided ponytails and colorful barrettes. I have no idea how an Italian woman learned to do black-girl-hair, and neither does she.

It was a horrible experience for both of us. I got a number of head yanks and smacks with brushes. She told me my hair was so thick and coarse, she hated it. She wished I had straight pretty hair like white people. So did I.

I got my first relaxer when I was 12. It was horrible. My hair was thick and stringy. Then, when I washed it, it was just a frizzy poof.
We would go to all sorts of ghetto-ass shops to get my hair done. Once, a woman burned all my hair off on the sides. My hair started behind my ears, and my scalp was red and raw. I looked as though I had glued SOS pads to my head. (Look like a bunch 'a spidas was having a meetin on my head) A boy I had a crush on told me I had scarecrow hair. That still makes me tear up. Seriously.

My mom then starting perming my hair for me. Which is even worse than it sounds. Really, how good can a perm be that you buy for $4.99 from Walgreen's and do it in your kitchen? People go to school for that shit!

She always got the extra strength stuff, for coarse, resistant hair, and left it in longer than you were supposed to. She melted my hair with a curling iron, all the while assuring me that this time I'd have straight hair like white people. "Straight as spaghetti."

And my dumb ass continued this search for the elusive straight as spaghetti white people hair. I started going to this high end salon in Milwaukee. My stylist told me I didn't even need to straighten my hair. Supposedly, it had a nice texture. But, I'd have to cut all the straight part off and start all over. OHO no! I must have long hair. We started doing this new process from Japan where they used heat along with the chemicals to make your hair super straight. And it did. But it took at least 3 or 4 hours. HOURS!

I'm not really sure what I'm babbling about. This is turning out to be a huge big deal for me. I've done something I swore I'd never do. I'm a slow fucking learner. Why did it take me such a long time to realize my hair looked like shit? I suppose. There are still ladies out there in their 40s with hair-sprayed giant bangs, so I'm not that bad off.

I guess it makes me wonder how much more of me is composed of these weird biases of my mom's? She's a fucking nutcase.