During the week, I get 2.25 hours, twice, while she’s at preschool, but that doesn’t take into account the half hour each of walking to and from it.

This weekend is her second sleep over with her Grandma, and by extension, her father – something his mom’s proposed take place once a month. She left at 10:30 yesterday morning, glowing with excitement after I gave her an extra-squishy hug and two extra kisses.

Today, I slept in until 2:30 in the afternoon, essentially negating the sleeplessness that going to bed at or after 4am usually leaves me running dead on my feet with. Today, I’m mild-mooded, even mellow.

Yesterday after they left, after my nerves had returned to full strength from the mild disagreement her dad and I had, and before another disagree ensued over text messaging – because once again, we’re back to that place wherein me not sleeping with him equates to be being the enemy – I got things done.

I, like everyone I know, especially single moms, have a backburner list a million fucking miles long. I started dealing with some of the things on that list. I got some paperwork done that’s been begging for my attention for months; I washed dishes without needing to occupy a child to do so, or concurrently while making dinner; I went Christmas window shopping, sending myself text photos of what, where and the prices of things we would want to buy in the coming month.

I felt like a million dollars, more so than keeping up with the daily to-do list, less like I was merely treading or suffocating under a tide. I felt manic.

I joked over dessert with friends at 11 pm that the medication I’ve been taking to help manage the mania might be failing in that regard, but that it was okay with me, since it was managing the lows. And all win with little fail is about as perfect an existence as I can imagine living.

When I woke up this afternoon, I looked at the clock and cringed, thinking of the hours lost, the lack of productivity. Until I realized that sleep was productive. Until I rolled off of the futon and immediately started cleaning, and then got dressed to go outside.

Once I saw that I had an intrinsic drive to keep going, to shop with laze and enjoy the taste of my eggnog chai latté, not to hurry or become harried with should dos, a new thought occurred to me:

Being relaxed means I get more done, better; being stressed leaves a bad taste on my tongue, regardless of how many check marks are on my list.

I should be sleeping more.

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These guys.

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I thought that November 9th was my due date – that in three days, if I’d had the baby last year and he or she’d been born on its due date like Zoë was, it would have been one. I’ve been preparing myself for nearly two months to feel as if my heart was melting out of my eyelids on November the 9th.

But no, it’s November 25th.

On one hand, it’s a good thing because my sister’s due date is today and selfishly, I really hoped that her first baby wouldn’t have the same birthday as the one that I didn’t get to have would’ve.

Sadly, I think my next appointment with my shrink is on that day. Poor psychoghandi’s gonna be stuck with a locked-up tight, angry, argumentative and weepy emo.

Painfully, this time of year, the space between Halloween – which I wouldn’t be sad to lose out of the calendar – and Christmas – which I hope that every day could be like – is also when The Ex gets older by a year, and when I get to celebrate a birthday and all of my sisters and mom do, too. It’s when I fantasize about the perfect whatever to give Zoë, a best friend, a puppy we spend time with. It’s when glee is shared over Starbucks’ return to eggnog beverages, I might go up to a size 1 and I start thinking about all of the resolutions I could have and my motivation for damning conformity and boycotting resolutions (just like nearly everyone else). It’s when snow flakes fall and The Ex calls me, from where ever, regardless of our current level of hatred and squees “snow!” into the phone, just like I always used to do.

This is the time of year when potential is huge and it’s usually the space between reality, if you know what I mean. It’s fucking magic, November 1st to December 24th.

And now, and forever more, I have a not-baby anniversary during the middle of it.

The thing of it is, maybe getting the date wrong is bad of me – I had to look back through my archives to find the post when I announced it – but…caring, and being sad and being okay with that, with a couple of tears running down my face and a will to hug Zoë and a spine-chilling fear coupled with an intense need for another baby? Might just be a good thing after all.

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But because of how I grew up, how many times I lied to child protective services, or withheld information about the agents and associated staff I worked with during my short modelling career, the fact that nearly every single person who knew me didn’t know what powders I was snorting and cooking up in my early teens and what I was chugging in the late ones, I’ve taken the opposite approach for the past few years.

Now, I rarely, if ever lie. I can’t do it without feeling as though another piece of my soul is being bitten off, you know?

I have my personal policy about not lying to Zoë for that reason, but also because I don’t want her to come to a point in her life where she feels as though she can’t trust me or I didn’t respect her enough to be honest. I don’t want this kid waking up and saying, “You lied to me about A through J, and now, I don’t know if K is true or if you just think I’m too dumb, naive or immature to handle the truth.”

Plus, you know, there’s factors like a) when you’re always honest with people and they come to expect it from you, they tend to return the gesture, and b) if you spend your moments being upfront about everything, whether good, bad, ugly or completely batshit crazy, people should, in theory, rarely be surprised or confused when something organically you comes about.

Even if it is completely batshit crazy.

I think NBC would call this ‘the more you know’ campaign. I just consider it a respect thing: for you, the people I care about, myself.

However, a tiny offshoot of reasoning also falls within the don’t give a shit spectrum, because to this girl who is just starting to learn how to feel and process things and what expectations might be right and which are often constructed out of isms, everything, every piece of information, is just as equal. (Now you know why they were considering a sociopathic diagnosis for some time when I was younger. Wait, you watch Dexter, right?)

I could tell you that my first sort of boyfriend died of an overdose and it was a little bit my fault and it would be as hard for me to say as explaining my new-found love for baking soda, or tell you about the time that I slept with two guys in the same day, even though I didn’t want to sleep with either of them, or describe my lack of relationship with the mom who was gone for most of my life.

I’m so practiced at what I should be portraying and not what I may have inside, you see, that it’s not the telling that’s the issue, it’s the perception of whether people will like me more or less or judge me monstrous afterward that determines how I tell what.

All of this lead in is to say one simple thing.

I tell you everything, blog reader. Except now, there’s something I’m not.

I’m holding my cards close to my chest, not letting you know if there’s a full house or bupkis for the simple reason that I want to not exploit something. It’s not that new, this unexplainable, and for that, I’m kind of sad because I sure could’ve used the ventilation of energy about it for a while.

But instead, I’m going to keep my damn mouth shut and nourish this secrecy. Because really? This kind of covertness seems a bit unique, inside of me, and not at all wrong, for once.

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For the last couple of months, I’ve been calling her a teenager. Truth is, lots of people, even her pediatrician and a friend of mine that had never met her before have remarked about her moodiness. Add in her recent affinity for slamming doors in my face, draining all of my vodka bottles and filling them with water and shouting “I hate you!” as she stomps away in a huff because I won’t let her get her belly button pierced and you have all of the makings of a truly exceptional mother-daughter relationship.

Not.

She’s always been rather abrupt and transparent in her moodiness – much like I am. And if some thing’s pissing her off, it’s generally certifiable that she will attempt to ruin your motherfucking life until you remedy the situation. This is the real reason I keep the knives out of reach.

Honestly, I’m ill- (yet, maybe best) prepared for when she surpasses three-teen and actually enters tween status or, shudder, the gaping mouth of hell I estimate her early teens will be. I can fantasize all I like about her being Rory and I being Loralei, but it doesn’t mean that we’ll sip coffee together in a run-down diner where I may or may not meet the man of my dreams (and I may or may not be able to accept the fact that he wears a baseball cap backwards. [But may still wanna nail his nephew next to the doughnuts. {ahem}]).

More so, even though it’s all fun and games until her father has an anyeurism for me to joke about her becoming promiscuous and a ball-busting sexual force to be chased after in her early twenties, I don’t really want that for her.

I want her to fall in love, organically. To feel some level of comfort, or at the very least, exhibit the intelligence needed, to come to me when it’s time for the deed to be done so we can discuss her options as far as wrapping up whatever tool may be coming in her direction. I want her to be happy with the choices she makes about lovers and those she loves. I want her to crush hard on boys who she thinks might not give her the time of day, just simply because if she doesn’t become comfortable with the leap, she might never know what it’s like to float when they do like her a really lot back.

Like her mother has.

Kids grow up earlier and faster and by the time I’m arguing against her having a cell phone or a wrist phone or a mind-chip, sexting will be a thing of the past, considered tame. So, I fully expect it to start sooner than I expect it to start.

But not this soon.

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I have this little problem that causes a secondary problem, which begets shame and affects such stigma upon me that sometimes I’m just not comfortable having people over to my home. I can’t believe I’m about to admit this on the Internet, but…

Because I quit drinking coffee eight months ago, I replaced it with tea. Really, horribly, strong enough to put hair on your chest tea. In addition to an oral fixation for liquids is the fact that I am nearly always cold, or avoiding a meal, or sitting at the computer doing absolutely nothing IMing downloading celebrity sex tapes surfing sites to tell me how much more popular your blog is than mine working and in need of some reason to get up to wake my bony ass from its prickly slumber. So, I’m always drinking tea.

This caused all of my mug collection (I collect big, fat, latté mugs that can hold more tea than an average person should want to drink.) to become frequently rotated; however, since I’m often finishing the last gulp whilst making more, I use the same one. Over and over.

And I conserve spoons, too.

I faced such humiliation every time a friend would stop by and I’d offer them some tea (or water or soy milk, because that’s all we have around these parts.) and serve it up in a supposedly clean mug with 18 rings, despite it only being two years of age. Those. fuckers. would. not. wash. off.

And all of my spoons were starting to look like I’d been experimenting very liberally with the notion of hot knifing, but doing it very very verrrrrrrry wrong. (Please pass the Doritos. Heh. Ever say knife really slowly? Try it. Okay, now fast. Okay, like, 12 times in a row. Hey, what do you think double-amputee stoners do when they wanna get high? Do they, like, learn to hold a joint with their toes? Wouldn’t that burn all of their toe hair off? Fuck, I love the smell of singed hair.)

And thus came Doctor Google’s proclamation that my salvation depended upon my acceptance of the lord Baking Soda as my one true deity.

Suddenly, I have sparkling clean mugs and spoons, I have accepted condiment religion into my life, and I’m looking forward to clean and shiny pastures after my soul passes from this mortal coil.

The teeth whitening was a bonus divine deliverance.

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I go, I get the roots taken care of and I get an hour-long flat ironing that I will indubitably attempt to stretch out for as long as is possible. That’s where the brows come in.

Five weeks is about as long as it takes me to go from hair-matching, smooth and sculpted to blonde, 80s Brooke Shields brows. With unibrow for good measure. I always go to the same place, a block from my apartment, and I drop $25 to get cleaned up and tinted. Today was the visit from hell, leading to the following helpful list to estheticians who might come across this.

1. When I ask for a specific technician, tell me that you’ll do it and you’ll do it well and then try to colour-match my hair to a Redken book so that fear sets in immediately.
2. Ensure that you have me lie down, against a sink. Which was just used and is covered in water. With a comfy towel behind me. That you took off the floor.
3. Apply enough wax to the 1/4″ area above my eyes to take off a 70s bush, become confounded when the hair doesn’t rip off easily. Repeat. Several times.
4. Drip said wax onto my eyes, nose ring and mouth. Then for extra measure, make sure you get some on the back of my head, too.
5. Suggest removing said wax from said nose ring with alcohol.
6. Make sure that you remove the hair in patches, paying absolutely no attention to the natural brow line or really whether you’re removing brow hair or, like, eyelashes.
7. After I tell you that I have really sensitive skin and so need the tint specifically designed for brows, mix up some hair colour, willy-nilly, and attempt to convince me that ammonia-based cream won’t irritate my skin.
8. After it starts burning and I’m feverishly fanning my left eyebrow, try to put some more on my right eyebrow.
9. Suggest that a darkened room might make me more comfortable during the 20 minutes that you suggest the flames of hell sear my eyebrows off.
10. When I again say that I need the authentic stuff, tell me about how your manager says that costs more, so you’re not supposed to use it. Even though you’re dangling it in front of my (now pink and puffy and fucking livid in your direction) eyebrows.
11. Decide with a sigh to give me the good stuff, moving me into the afore-mentioned darkened room.
12. Onto a table where some one’s just had their lady-bits decluttered. And you haven’t changed the cover. Suggest I lie down where unknown vagina just was.
13. As you’re mixing up the good stuff, go to grab a tissue in the darkened room where you can’t see properly, thus knocking over my freshly-procured soy rooibos chai tea latté. On to my coat.
14. Tell me that I don’t have to tip, to cover the cost of my turfed tea and dry cleaning. Since obviously, I was planning to at this point, anyway.
15. Tint me, baby.
16. Remove the tint. Decide it’s too light, even though I say it’s perfect. Tiny me, baby, redux.
17. Remove the tint, which is now way darker than I wanted. Ensure you rub with the franticness of a 14 year old girl in the company of her first boyfriend as she’s trying to put out just enough and his parents could come upstairs at any point.
18. After I tell you that the tea tree oil you’d like to slather my brows with will further inflame my face because I’m highly allergic to it, douse everything above my nose with it, letting me know that it will soothe my skin.
19. Send me off into the world with brow bones that resemble Angelina Jolie’s lips, brows that look like they belong to a scary Sesame Street puppet, and $30 less dollars in my wallet because you’ve apparently raised your prices.
20. Make sure you fucked up so badly in every brow-related spectrum such as tone, shape and symmetry, that I spend the next 45 minutes lying on my daughter’s toddler bed with a compact mirror cleaning up after your professional capabilities.

So, how was your Sunday?

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Today, during the seemingly-right-on-schedule argument with The Ex, his chagrin was targeted toward me for referring to a close family friend, someone I consider to be integral to mine and Zoë’s every day, as family. I get it, his perspective that the people who you have traces of in your veins are family and others are friends and friends are not included automatically in family moments; I just choose to march to a different Glee skit.

I don’t see anything wrong with that, yet I remain aware that had I had a differing upbringing, I might feel in a way aligned with his part-time sentimentalism.

The problem I have with his idealism is that his family, the extended ones, are there for him only specifically when asked and for the most part, incommunicado the rest of the time. He has a relationship with his dad via email and occasional phone calls, refuses to be tied on the phone with his step family, doesn’t call his grandmother unless it’s in relation to his inheritance, didn’t really speak to his brother for all of the past couple of years, can go days without speaking to his mother even though they share a one-bedroom apartment, etc.

Family, to me, isn’t the brood you’re borne into knowing. They’re the ones that you are thicker than thieves with. The ones who will be on the phone with you late into the night, who will drop their life if it means coming to your side, the ones who get excited when it looks like you might be having yet another baby or wedding or boob job. They’re the people who care because they just do, not because a quote attributable to various sources testifies that they should.

My best friends are no less my sisters and brothers than my sisters and brother are, a maternal figure no less a mom than mine, simply because of DNA.

His back was crawling with it’s wrongisms, and he was obviously plagued with what he saw as a slight toward his family, but he didn’t understand my distinction. He doesn’t see the divide he’s helped to create, where there is an us, and a his, and a mine and hers – that Zoë may be the property of three families, simply because they’re such differing factions, all reporting under unique disciplines.

I won’t give up our mine and hers because quite frankly, I’m going to be selfish about it. I won’t remove the entitlement these figures have played out in our lives because we love them, they love us and we’re there for each other, whether that means for purely ventilation moments, to mash about and separate the Play-doh, or to gossip about what happened last week on Grey’s Anatomy and what new Dora DVD is coming out.

I won’t subscribe to his belief that his is also mine and Zoë’s and mine should have more prominence, because quite frankly, I don’t want the kind of family that doesn’t give a shit about me and by extension, us, enough to reach out an arm despite pasts or lack thereof.

I won’t remove his fantasy of ours, because I think he’s holding onto the notion that the three of us, me, him and Zoë, are a family. I think that’s the only illusion that keeps him from sinking.

On second thought, maybe that’s what he needs to hear – that I don’t consider him my family because he’s Zoë’s daddy, not a father, not a husband or a boyfriend or even, most of the time, a friend. He can’t be included in the familial philosophy that I hold so tight to for one simple reason: he fails all of the tests that our true family aces.

It’s all semantics, because I’m never going to tell him that unless it’s within a safe environment, and when it comes to him and his ability to take and hurt and suffer for and in front of others, there’s no such thing as a safe place.

Today, I told him that he needed to start to take on more responsibility, that we should be moving toward a cohesive joint parenting plan, because if she was going to have both of us, she deserved the benefits and drawbacks to both of us equally.

He had nothing to say, of course, because he was still thinking about being insulted and a victim of my words.

I’m just so tired. You know?

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Well, two.

Within the first 15 minutes of my appointment.

I felt like he wasn’t listening to me. I felt that he was trying to force his impressions upon me, that I needed to meet some pre-conceived notion of status-quo or normal. That I needed to make more money in order to be considered successful and that freelance writing was a pipe-dream since according to him, it takes at least 10 years to have any success in it. That I was naive for planning to home school.

When he asked me how the medication’s been, I was honest, stating that it’s kicking ass, but the focus issues are really complicating my life. He dropped the subject, looked for more samples of my little helper and upon finding none, wrote me a new ’scrip.

I brought it back up – the attention stuff – because not-so-ironically, I was focused on it.

He said he figured that it was because I was manic and so, we’d try the meds for a little while longer and then decide whether I should try something different, or add in something for ADD.

I was absofuckinglutely convinced I wasn’t manic.

I mean, I’ve been sleeping. I’m not being self-destructive, even though the ability and notion may have occurred to me. I’m not dieting, or any of the other typical stuff. I feel great. I have energy. Everything is going to work out, finally, it feels like – I’ll be able to work more, and earn more and get my degrees whilst privately schooling Zoë, and hey, I might even get my head screwed on enough to have meaningful relationships with people. It’s more than going to be okay, it’s going to be the best life, ever. And don’t screw with this notion, because I will cut a bitch.

Oh, wait.

Yeah, that’s kind of the definition of manic. Shit.

Score one for psychoghandi.

The other fight started because he asked me how long I planned to be on social assistance for and my back went up immediately, necessitating my over-explanation that I’m not on welfare, I recieve rental assistance, which is something a governmentish office hands out to all low income families, due to the number of social-housing units and subsidized housing options in BC.

It was very important that I make it clear that I wasn’t on welfare.

He kept bringing up that I needed to find a plan to become more successful and to me, it was like he was hammering the point home that I needed to make X in order to be successful in life. All I heard was dollars and cents and that he was judging the ideals that I planned (have always planned) to raise Zoë with – seeking enough and being happy is far more important than having an abundance of stuff and hating what you do to get it.

His statement was that I had to plan for when Zoë went to school and I could work more hours, to which I replied that she wouldn’t be, because I would be home schooling. That started a new shit-storm, with me listing off my reasoning while not-too-gently ticking them off on fingers. (In truth, I kind of hurt my hand.)

He said I was extraordinary. That I was different.

He didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Today, I was complaining (again) about the session to a friend as we expunged on the cost of dental care leading to both of us delaying it, and now needing extremely expensive amounts of dental work done – despite having private insurance. And I agreed that yeah, maybe I needed to make more so that I could, like, afford dental. Mentally, I added, and probably new boobs within a couple of years.

And I brought up the rental assistance argument. And the term welfare. My friend, tactful and unwilling to conflict with most, stated that from the other end of the fence, as someone paying into those kinds government programs with tax dollars and not getting anything back even though she has two kids because her husband is well-employed and makes too much for them to qualify for all but one of the kick-backs I do, she understood his point.

And suddenly, the asshole cloud lifted and it hit me, like, whoa, what he was really trying to say. I’d been so focused on him not listening to me, and trying to tell me that I needed to change. But I wasn’t hearing him.

Yes, I need to work more. Not because it fits a social norm of a healthy, well-adjusted person living within the confines of a stereotypical box – because that funding that I receive, is for people who need it and I should be trying to not need it anymore.

Score two for psychoghandi; and friend with the assist.

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Everyone knows that the more you practice, the better you get.

For instance, the more I sign up for things, the more often I can drop it like it’s hot.

The more I sleep with ex boyfriends, the more often I realize why they’re exes and create an ever-vaster list of must-have-nots, therefore rendering nearly anyone…well, no, really just the two of them or anyone like them, not boyfriend material.

The more I leave my dirty dishes all weekend in the sink, the more I learn about science.

It’s really all win-win, if you think about it. And I? Am a winnah.

Which is probably why I signed up for NaNoWriMo again this year. Because the writing I‘m not doing or getting paid for already isn’t enough, and I’d really like another opportunity to rub my face into the fact that I have literally never finished a damn thing in my life.

I didn’t even finish child birth. There was a fucking vacuum for that.

So.

50000 sure seems like a big number when you’re looking at it in a post you’re not sure if you’ll hit publish or not on. But I mean, how hard can it be? That’s only 1666.6666666 ad ifinitum words to birth from the very womb of my being on a daily basis. When I show up around these parts to whine grace you with my presence talk about being a crazy motherfucker post, you’re typically left with 1300 words in your reader to eyeroll and hit MAAR on. I can totally nail 1666.6666666 ad infinitum every single day.

Even if Californication is on.

But only in November.

But this time? I don’t plan to publish it on here, because as lovely all the feedback was that I got last year, I’d prefer to keep it between me and the stupidest fucking laptop in the world when I quit.

Or get bored.

Also known as cannot cope with the crippling fear of failure, so that it’s just easier to decide to give up.

Kind of like how this guy must feel.

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