My Goals for 2012

Yeah, I know I’m about a month late. I’ve had the basic ideas down for a while, but I’ve been finding it simultaneously very difficult to articulate and very difficult not to. Which is to say this is the sort of thing that has nagged me to write it, but not given me much inspiration to write it well. I’m gonna write it anyway, ’cause that’s what I do.

First of all, this is the year I didn’t make any resolutions. Resolutions have turned out to be a strangely competitive sport of seeing how far we can push the art of lying to ourselves and still believe whatever candy-coated unicorn poop we’re shoveling. This time of year (well, a month ago, because obviously giving up procrastinating isn’t on my list) we pat each other, and ourselves, on the back for declaring the most noble and ambitious promises we can imagine. Yet, by the time of year this is actually being posted, many of us will have swept those tarnished fantasies behind a mystery bin in the garage. You know the garage that we were going to finally clean out and organize for our long envisioned home gym and/or workshop, or maybe just a parking space. Yeah. So to sum up, that’s what I’m not doing this year; I’m not excavating the garage, I’m not giving up procrastinating and I’m not making any resolutions. That sentence, right there, makes this one of my most honest Januarys, ever, by the way.

So what, do I think I’m perfect now? Nope. Have I finally given up on self-improvement? Nope again. I’ve just stopped believing that the night I stay up late, eating calorie dense finger foods and drinking champagne, magically gives way to the day that I change my entire life. I’m trading in my holiday declarations of change for the daily grind of goals. Goals are about as dull and colorless as dishwater, but they stick around long after the resolutions are gone.

I’ve condensed my basic long-term goals, the ones I’m working on every day until I get there, into a simple phrase: Debt-free Derby Mama with a Degree. It’s pretty simple, and I don’t have to backtrack through my journal to remember what I wanted. Let me break it down into more complicated and verbose terms though. This is what that means to me-

Debt-free

As far as financial goals go, Debt-free is pretty self explanatory. The only reason anyone lives in my zip code is affordable housing, so I don’t mind my mortgage. It’s just that when I was a teenager, I used to like to swim upstream in the creek. When I’d get too tired to swim, I’d grab onto a big rock and rest a bit, then start swimming against the current as soon as I was able. This one time out by Honey Run Bridge, the very big rock I’d grabbed came loose and we rolled together. When we stopped tumbling I had a very large chunk of stone resting on my chest and a lovely view through a few feet of water. My credit card debt feels a lot like that moment. I tried to lean on the credit cards for support when I needed to pay vet bills, or car repair bills, or when we ate out way too much around the time of my son’s surgery. Now it’s like that relationship has flipped and I’m trying to breathe while pinned under water with a minor boulder on my chest. I’d like to fix that. So I’m making an active effort to spend less, and pay off more, until I am debt-free.

Derby

How does a new skater describe roller derby without sounding like an infatuated teeny bopper? I could tell you that I’ve never felt this way about a sport before, that we were meant for each other, that derby just gets me, but you wouldn’t understand. Unless, of course, you’re in love with derby too. Suffice to say, I love derby.

It is, however, a very demanding love affair. Derby requires commitment, strength, stamina and flexibility. My goal is to meet those requirements. This is not a sport for a middle-aged housewife who has let herself go. Well, I guess it is, since that’s who I was when we found each other. That’s just not who I am anymore. My lungs expanded even faster than my quadriceps, once I learned how to skate more than a few feet without planting my rump on the rink. I am already thrilled with the physical vitality I’ve forged in the heat of this sport and I’ve still got a long road to travel towards being the athlete my league deserves. The Roller Derby Workout Challenge 2012 is certainly going to push me further towards that goal, but this is just part of a long journey.

With my recent physical success I can see so clearly why every weight loss resolution I’ve ever made (and believe me I’ve made plenty) has failed. I kept promising myself a new lean body in the old fat life. I didn’t want to, or believed I couldn’t, change the sleep habits, eating habits, exercise habits, et cetera, that were making me fat. Instead I’d push myself for these intense, punishing, bursts of diet and exercise, often losing twenty to thirty pounds. By Easter I would find myself wallowing in failure and Jelly Bellies. Now I want to skate hard (which for me is still pretty bunny slope by comparison) and often. I want to make choices that make me able to skate harder. If I don’t workout between practices, if I don’t eat right, if I don’t sleep enough, it shows. Maybe not to anyone else, but I can feel the difference. Some nights my legs feel like I’m trying to run through cement and others I feel like I wouldn’t trade my skates for Hermes’ winged sandals airmailed special from Mt. Olympus. The more I live like the athlete I want to be, the more my body forms to that expectation. I will look like the life I lead, and that’s a great bonus now that I’m leading a more athletic life.

Mama

It’s who I am, who I’ve been, who I will be. I think my daughter and her father sometimes worry when I go off on my adventures that I’m rejecting my parental role. I’m just trying not to evaporate into it. I love pouring myself into my children, but I can’t do it if I’m a cracked and/or empty vessel. The other goals are how I refill, so I can have more and better things to give to my children, and phooey on anyone who thinks otherwise.

with a Degree

I also started college today, which means I should be reading a microeconomics textbook right now instead of blithering on in my blog. I’m a high school dropout and I’m prone to using that as an excuse to leave the interesting lives to the smart kids. My AA won’t really make me smarter, but it will make me more employable and it’ll take away one more excuse I have for telling myself “I can’t.”

Words in bold, just so my closing paragraph doesn’t blend into my last goal set

I won’t complete these goals this year, and I’ll surely have bigger goals someday after these finish lines are crossed. These are just the markers I have my eyes on for now, the what, the why, and the how of the better life I’m building. I’ll let ya’ll know how it works out.

I have reached a whole new level of geekery, I am writing roller derby poems. Yeah, what else is there to say about that?

Reinventing the Wheel

I am not reinventing the wheel
I am just skating in a circle
counterclockwise as counterculture
finding my own way
Hermes had wings on his sandals
because wheels were not a luxury afforded to the Gods
But in this woman’s sport we know the value
of dangerous curves
the round of our wheels
the round of our track
the round of our bodies
strengthened and toned
reforged in warmups and drills
I am not reinventing the wheel
I am just rediscovering myself

When I moved my blog here, from LiveJournal, I deleted the website I’d built before. It was such a depressing little website filled with the things I wanted to say before I died, the things I needed to say instead of dying. This essay is one of those things. I’m posting it now, just for the sake of having it here, archived. I don’t want to go back to feeling that way, but I don’t want to lose this record either. That’s all.

TV Dads and Red Vines

He was the perfect father in the way that only TV dads get to be. He was Pa, tender enough to cry at his little girls’ heartaches and strong enough to battle hailstorms and dynamite. He was one of the good guys and I wanted so badly to be loved by an honest to goodness good guy.

Instead I was loved by one of the bad guys. He kept telling me it was love anyway. Years later when I told another girl, a neighborhood girl who knew who I was talking about, she looked at me eyes wide and said, “God Crystal, you were molested by Santa Claus.”

That was his public image. Not just grandfatherly, he was a grandfather. His wife was a retired teacher and he was a security guard on the set of that perfect family TV show. He was an upstanding pillar of a man, but kind enough to have candy for all the little girls, candy he’d sneak to us, even if our mothers didn’t allow us to have sweets. The candy was the first secret.

I hate myself for it, but I still love red licorice. It used to be my favorite. He’d buy it just for me. I was barely four, I couldn’t have imagined what those Red Vines would cost me. They were the flavor of so many painful Saturdays. That was the day his wife spent at the beauty parlor and my mother did shopping and housecleaning for an elderly relative. On Saturdays it was just me and Santa Claus. He and I were alone for hours. The candy hardly seemed worth it, but it was the only choice he gave me. I could always choose my candy.

What’s done is done so I tried to enjoy my reward. I would suck the sweetness out of those sticky, red, spiraled straws and try to forget why they were mine. I still do that with candy. I can close my eyes and for a moment nothing exists but sugar, melting, filling my mouth till it puckers. It always feels so good for that moment, but it’s never as easy to swallow. Going down it loses all sweetness, becomes syrupy, like glue. For a moment I can’t breathe. Then I open my eyes and it’s gone. All that’s left is guilt.

I hated being bought so cheaply, but there were no higher bids. As I got older I learned words for who I was and the sins I was participating in; adultery, promiscuity, prostitution. I held onto those words even after he’d lost his grip on me. Eventually, I started going with my mom on Saturdays. That’s when he tried to up the ante. He started offering to take me to the set with him. He knew it was my favorite show. He just didn’t know why.

My mother had never married the man who conceived me. The man she did marry worked on the road and was seldom home. He was well intentioned, but he wasn’t a hero. My Dad could never settle anything with his fists. Pa was a genuine good guy and good guys fight the bad guys and the bad guys lose. I loved that show because Pa was my one chance at having a champion of my own. Someone who could promise me that I was good, because they were good too and they knew. There was no maybe with Pa.

I always believed that Pa could save me. The problem was I would have to tell him first. I was too afraid of the car ride there. What if Santa Claus thought we were alone in the car? What if he did something? What if someone saw? Then they’d know that I was all of those awful words. If I knew for sure that I’d meet Pa, and that I’d tell him, then it would be worth it. I had my doubts though; what if he wasn’t there or if I was only allowed to see him from a distance? What if he just didn’t take the time to hear what I had to tell him? I never went.

Years later, when the actor who played Pa died, my heart broke. I knew he would never be there to defend my honor. I’d moved away from the neighborhood; Santa Claus was no longer a threat. It’s just that part of me needed to know that Pa would’ve taken my side, even against his friend. I needed him to show me I was worthy of that. I needed to be as precious as his little girls on the show. Pa is gone now. I’m left with the guilty comfort of my Red Vines.

I have an intermittent habit of submitting to contests. Usually, they offer just enough prize money that I can imagine digging out of my financial hole to somewhere that I can breathe easy again. The entrance fees are low enough that I feel like I can take the risk. Sometimes the entrance fee buys a subscription to the publication.

I am part of the problem, because the only periodicals I read are the ones I subscribed to that way. Especially with poetry, there are more people who want to be published than there are people who want the publications. As far as I know I’ve been working with respectable and legitimate contests, but without the entrance fees they wouldn’t have the funds for the prize pools, let alone for promotion, and most poetry rags are printed at a loss.

So it is, that I was sitting in the recliner, wishing I’d thought to make myself a cup of tea, and playing how-do-you-do with a new consolation-prize subscription. It got me to thinking about TV. My daughter is pushing to watch more commercial television, as a function of her age (11) and of being in public school for the first time this year (after being exclusively homeschooled.) She wants to watch what everyone else watches. If we lived in Sweden, where there is no advertising aimed at children, then this would be a non-issue. We don’t live in Sweden though, and our programs are peppered quite liberally with ads that are aggressively targeted at kids.

Which is why I’ve been giving lots of little speeches lately, about how the show is not the product the network is selling. The show is the bait that brings eager little eyeballs to the screen. We are not the customers, the advertisers are the customers. The viewers are the product that the network sells to its sponsors. The advertisers are buying us as potential consumers.

I can’t keep my children watching PBS Kids forever so I’ve tried to make them savvy, at the risk of slightly jaded. So it is, from that frame of mind, it struck me that as happy as I was to receive another glossy bundle of pretty words, associated with a college press, state grants and the NEA, that I didn’t know for sure what the product was. I hadn’t really meant to subscribe, subscriptions are just a side effect of contest submissions. I wondered if the bylines I was looking at had similarly automatic subscriptions now, too.

It’s a fine line between customer and consumer. Okay, it’s an imaginary line that I made up. In another lifetime, before I had kids, I used to work with developmentally disabled adults. We always called them clients, based on the logic that they (with funds provided by the state and/or their families) paid for the services I was providing. This term was the industry standard at the time, but it was being called into question. Likely, because it was being used not just do describe the individuals we worked with, but as a euphemism for anyone with a developmental disability. ‘Cause, you know what, “client” is a lot easier to say than, “person with developmental disabilities.” So people with fancy degrees, and no hands on experience in the field, had decided that, “client” had developed negative connotations and there was a push to change the term to, “consumer.”

I hated the term consumer then and I hate it now. A consumer is, by simplest deconstruction of the word, one who consumes. Anybody who plays Scrabble knows that adding -er to random words can create a word meaning one who… well, whatever the verb being modified is. It’s amazing how many times that trick has worked for a better score. Well, I don’t want to consume. I want to create. Any fool locust can consume, after all.

Yet, so much of what I’ve read about publishing poetry is that these little contests are so often a nobody’s only chance at a foot in the door. And I do enjoy reading the subscriptions that have come to me this way, even if I am uncertain about my role in the exchange. I’m not really upset about that transaction. Poetry is just a compulsion of mine. I’ve never viewed it as a profitable skill.

It’s just that as I contemplate my economic future, and my family’s, I wonder what profitable skills I do have. I don’t see a lot of need for me in the workforce. I mean I can see how my family could benefit from my having an income, just not what I have to offer in exchange for one. I look around where I live, and where I’m from, and talk to my kids about the history of those economies; the industries that used to be important and aren’t anymore and I start to worry. If everything we buy is being made somewhere else, have we, as consumers, become this country’s gross national product?

I want to be a writer because when I am very anxious I find myself going over my chore list, “laundry-trash-recycling-compost-catbox-dishes-counters-sinks.” I think it as one long word, spoken quickly, like a panicked incantation against evil. I think it, because I hate doing housework and there is just enough Catholicism etched into my DNA that I somehow believe there is redemption in suffering. If I do my chores, my loathsome chores, then I will be good and being good will protect me.

This habit has become so ingrained that I am convinced it will be with me long after my children are grown and I’ve retired from being a housewife. When I am old and frail, my skin and hair both worn thin and pale, and death tiptoes too close to my bed I shall sit up in the darkness and scream out this chore list to the night. Which will be better than muttering it to cashiers when I’m afraid to tell them they’ve given me less change than they ought.

It is only one of my many character flaws and, just like the rest, I would like to give it away to a work of fiction. Let some other character carry her chores around like a crucifix to ward off imaginary monsters. Let it serve her somehow before her story is over. Maybe she’ll live forever, accidentally discovering that death hates doing dishes even more than she does, and will not take her soul if completing that list is the payment for it.

I couldn’t possibly burden one character with all of my flaws. Let another one tell the same painful, embarrassing stories to one lover after another until she finds the one who knows when to laugh with her and when to let her cry. I gave up that search long ago. Maybe she’ll bang her head against that wall just a few more times than I did and find the loose brick by which she can tear down that entire wall.

I’m not going to go into every quirk that has lost its charm here. It’s just that I’m ready to give away my demons. Like the hitchhiking ghosts at the end of The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, let them wave goodbye as the conveyor belt moves them away from me, with their happy new owners. Taken one at a time I think they might be interesting stories. It’s just that I am not greedy enough to keep them all to myself, so I’m going to be a writer instead.

time flies

I wonder if they’ll be generous enough to wind all of my crushes into one ball, and make me seem less foolish than I’ve been. Though, if they do, how can they convey how brave I have to be to be kissed, to stand my ground and not laugh or deflect or question why? It’s been a victory every time I didn’t ask if mine are the lips they want, or just the lips that are handy. There is always that moment of panic, praying that I didn’t misunderstand, that I’m not leaning into their way. Maybe that wouldn’t make any sense if they don’t write how foolish my heart has been, how many wrong paths it has led me down.

Can it be put into paragraphs how little tolerance I have for mean and petty talk, how it grates me raw so quickly? I am completely unable to separate my own thin skin from the insulted party’s. Aren’t we all just trying our best? Don’t answer that. I have to believe that everyone is as well-intentioned as I am. It’s the only way I can forgive the things I can’t un-know. Maybe they should write instead of how eagerly I embrace the cacophony of children’s chaos. I love the sound of their shrieking giggles, banging against the walls, falling onto the furniture. How can a stranger know to write how much I love the smell of my children’s hair?

This place never feels more like home than when I follow one of my mother’s recipes and the house begins to smell like childhood, not theirs, not yours, just mine. I learned both patience and compassion from my mother, neither came to me naturally. Though I have always had one uncle’s eyes, and I got my stubborn from an aunt. I am through and through a Van Lydegraf. Can they describe my sum without first knowing my parts?

No one knows my daydreams but me, and so much of my life is spent in dreaming them. Maybe that is why there is nothing for a biographer to write. I have not accomplished anything of note. I’m still dancing along the banks of my life, maybe it is time for me to finally dive in.

I'm the girl in the helmet.

Q: How do you find the Canadian in a crowded elevator?
A: Step on everyone’s toes until someone apologizes to you.

That’s when I realized I must be at least part Canadian. I am the girl who will apologize for carelessly allowing my foot to be stuck under yours. I have this horrible sense that I am always in the way and I’m deeply sorry for taking up space.

In my youth, this had the pleasant side effect of making me seem very polite. It’s just that over the years I’ve been shrinking smaller and smaller inside trying to stay out of everybody’s way. If there could be such a disorder as acute and chronic niceness that’s what I had. Then I discovered roller derby.

Don’t get me wrong, my derby sisters are some of the nicest women I know. It’s just that you’re supposed to bump into people. If you’re a blocker you’re supposed to take up space. If you’re a jammer you’re supposed to make your space, by force if necessary. Contrary to media myths we’re not a particularly violent bunch, but it is a full contact sport.

During practice, we play games like sharks and minnows until we are breathless. We fall down, a lot. We fairly well make fools of ourselves and I love every minute of it. Roller derby is fun and that is why it appeals so much to my inner ten-year-old. I think that’s why it’s so easy for me to call such an amazing group of fully grown women “derby girls.” We’re all playing together, really playing.

The thing is my inner ten-year-old is not a bad person, but she’s not so goshdarn nice all the time. I was a rather straightforward person at that age, and not nearly so shy about standing up for myself. There are some really valuable strengths that I surrendered so casually in the name of growing up. Derby is helping me to get them back.

When a girl really slams into me it makes me smile. It often makes me fall tail over teakettle, too. The thing is when she hits me full force she’s saying, “I know you can take it.” I want to live up to that compliment and show off the bruises when I’m done. I’ve got nothing against nice girls, but that’s only one facet of this crystal.

I’m still a mom and a pacifist hippie and all the other things that might seem un-derby about me. This sport has diminished none of that. It’s just that I’m also fierce and feisty and able to stand my ground. I’ve remembered that I don’t have to be nice to another person past the point where it stops me from being good to myself. I needed that. Heaven help me, I need roller derby.

I have never had much to call a faith. Still there are artifacts of my family’s catholicism that seem to stick with me. My favorite part of the mass was always shaking hands with strangers and saying, “peace be with you,” or answering “and also with you.” I liked that.

I shouldn’t have. People terrify me. I experience a breathless anxiety ordering fast food because I’m afraid the guy who asks, “do you want fries with that?” will judge me. When I’m around people I don’t know well, there is this voice inside my head that keeps saying, “don’t be a spaz, don’t be a spaz, don’t be a spaz.” It grows louder and faster with my heartbeat. There’s something about touch, though, that can gently apply the brakes to my mind before it goes careening off of a cliff. As afraid as I am of strangers in general, I found taking their hands and speaking of peace to be transformative.


I like the feel of my grandmother’s rosary beads between my fingers, but I cannot relate to the novena. Tonight I have so much to pray for, but it is not my nature to pray, well, maybe in thanks. I think I’m good at thank you, but I have an awful time with please. 
Still if ever there was a night for please…

Tonight my cousin is in labor with her third child, a planned homebirth. She and I were so close growing up it was often difficult to discern where she ended and I began. Part of me is shaking my fist at the injustice of being so far away from her for something so important.

Tonight my childhood friend is getting a c-section to bring her eighth child into the world. My thoughts keep coming back to her, the baby, the other seven babies and all the complicated relationships tangled up in this moment for them.

Tonight my, somewhat agoraphobic, editor and friend is occupying Oakland. He has seen enough of the worst of people that he’s earned the right to have any phobia that puts a safe buffer around himself. Still it hasn’t blinded him to the good in people or numbed his desire to try to make the world a better place. He’s stepping into harm’s way tonight and continuing to inspire me.

Tonight my husband is saying goodbye to people he has worked with closely and for many years. Most of his department is being laid off and without any notice to speak of. Today is the first official word they’ll get about the layoffs and their last day of work. I’ve been living with the stress he’s felt leading up to this moment and I share his concern for their futures. How will they pay their bills, take care of their medical needs, or their families?

I’m dizzy thinking about them all. I can’t shake their hands for so many reasons tonight. That doesn’t stop me from thinking over and over again, “peace be with you.”

“Up and down and round we sped,
That dizzy pace soon went to my head,
Now you know why I’m dizzy
And do the things I do
I am askew and you’d be too
If the merry-go-round broke down.”
—Daffy Duck

I’m stressed out. The desk top has been performing poorly, and no wonder since Norton found ten viruses, mostly trojans, on it. I still need to figure out why I seem to be losing 15 GB of disk space overnight when nobody’s using the machine. My house is nagging for me to spend money on its upkeep and repair, almost as loudly as my debt is nagging me to eliminate it somehow. I have yet to hit the sweet spot in my children’s educations and with the constant readjustment I can’t seem to settle into a routine that feels like I’ve hit my stride in anything. I have a dozen loose ends capable of waking me from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, just to ask me what I plan to do about them and when.

This insomnia does not help with my health. I’ve had some kind of infection since May. It doesn’t seem to be affecting anyone else in the house so I don’t think it’s contagious. It’s just that some combination of my sinuses, ears and throat has been infected for months, often with pain, occasionally with fever, always with the uncomfortable swollen lymph nodes in my neck. I’m trying to push through the exhaustion to cook, and eat, healthy meals, to exercise regularly, to take care of myself and to become healthy.

It’s much easier for a healthy person to take care of their health. I’m too tired to eat right, to exercise or to sleep. Yes, it is possible to be too tired to sleep. Somedays I spend so much time trying not to fall asleep that when night falls I can’t surrender. I wake in a panic, as if I’d dozed off behind the wheel of a moving vehicle instead of sprawled across my bed. Which reminds me I really do need to fix the problems with the registration on my SUV and maybe a tune-up would fix the MPG problem. Though with the cost of gas, who can afford a tune-up?

That, in a nutshell is the problem, financially, physically, mentally, maybe even emotionally, I’ve run into such a deficit that I seem to only ever pay the interest and never the principal. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel like I was losing ground. I’m stressed out, so my health suffers, so I don’t have the resources left to take care of myself, so my health suffers, so I don’t have the energy to take care of my problems so I’m stressed out…

The spiral seems so devastatingly downward, but it’s moving outward too. Changing and breaking can feel a lot alike and I know this. I have been here before. Things are not really as bleak as they seem, especially midday when the air-conditioning is busted and it’s summer here in the Mojave Desert. I will fix this. Just not today.

Daffy sings The Merry Go Round Broke Down

I’ve been hesitant to post this. Things have been so civil lately. Do I really need to go there, that dark place? Sometimes I do. I can feel guilty and let it ping about my skull indefinitely, or I can just post it and move on. On August 9th, 1997 I married one of my dearest friends, more in love than I thought was humanly possible. On August 9th, 2011 I wrote a poem.

A Silence Worth a Thousand Words

A Card for That

I never thought the day I said, “I do,”
Would lead to so many nights I don’t
I’ve slept alone too long to miss…
what I almost want, but won’t.
Living like a nun, without the flying hat,
do you think they make a card for that?

You’re sorry that I took offense
You’re sorry I can’t understand
You’re sorry I’m not as strong as you
that I drift when I’m left unmanned
Insulting apologies that leave me flat,
do you think they make a card for that?

Held in place by this great recession,
our kids, and my fear of what I can’t know
You’re waiting for me to get over it
I’m counting the days ’til I can go
Clinging to a truce in domestic combat,
do you think they make a card for that?

I’ve burned the tan line from my finger
and I’ve got one foot out the door
I can’t quite forget the date
but I won’t celebrate it anymore
An eviction notice from your old doormat,
do you think they make a card for that?