The Re-Introduction of Me

In order to get back on the blogging train (woo woo) (did I really just say woo woo?) (this isn't really going exactly as planned) I thought it might be a good idea to reintroduce myself.

But then I considered the fact that most of my 'good ideas' generally turn out to be bad ones and thus...

I decided to reintroduce myself anyways.

My name is Erin, I am older than previously imagined and I have been maintaining this blog, a bastion of sanity and often sole pillar of my sense of community for four years. I started the blog to keep in touch with my extended family and friends instead of constantly emailing them photos and stories about my children and then it became a window to share first my side handmade crocheted gifts business, then my very part time freelance editing and writing, then my more full time freelancing, fiction writing and warehouse of writing samples for my resume.

AND THEN I got my first full time job ever a few months before I turned 30. I work at home as a German to English translator and transcriptionist. It's hard.

I have four children. I share custody of my daughters Rosey, Olive and Maxine Jane with my ex husband.

My son Elijah lives with my partner Jeremiah and myself full time and recently we added a puppy to our family and the children named her Blueberry. 

She pees when she's excited, which is often.

This is me and that puppy who's luckily not peeing on me in the photo:

My oldest daughter Rose is 12. She's sporty and lovely and most of the time she's uptight and more uptight and yes, uptight. She's a perfectionist and easily stressed. I encourage her to drink more water and take deep breaths which stresses her out even more. She also happens to be incredibly kind and empathetic, I find myself in awe of her sweetness on a day to day basis.

Her sister Olive at 9 couldn't be any more different. She's artistic and generally laid back, sometimes too much so and likes to relax, sing, relax, draw, write stories, lay around and not pay attention to anything anybody else is saying ever, especially when it concerns her chores. She's a flighty and wonderful human being.

My seven year old daughter Maxine Jane is as I often call her, 'the love of my life, bane of my existence'. She has always been a sensitive, generally difficult little thing and because of this I've spent most of my life the last seven years caring for her and helping her overcome a lot of her issues. She's now a much more well rounded little girl, happier, healthier and yes, unfortunately still prone to incredibly horrifying fits. Despite or maybe because of all of this I adore her and so would you. 

My baby boy one is four years old and was a wee babe when I started writing this blog. I love that I have this little journal online recounting his existence on this earth. He is a happy, funny and delightful little boy with a creative mind and a quick tongue (albeit sometimes he is impossible to understand, a product of infant hearing loss that is now repairing). He's the joy of my every day.

My life partner Jeremiah is a mercurial and deeply talented man who I absolutely adore. We were teenage sweethearts that broke up and in a fit of madness rekindled our romance years later. Let's just say it was much, much, much better at 26 and 29 than at 16 and 19.

So was reintroducing myself a good thing or a bad thing? I feel so-so about it. And I think I need a nap.

Summertime Blues

Turning 30 didn't work out too well for me. I had usually been of a pretty bright, optimistic and generally rosy disposition until then and that is when a creeping malaise set in to my skull.

Or maybe it began directly after my birthday when my beloved grandmother died? 

Or maybe it began soon after my grandmother died when I went through the most incredibly difficult and heartbreaking (and achingly personal) experience of my whole entire life?

Who knows. All I am sure of is that my energy is sapped from time to time, I wallow in buckets of self pity more often than I ever have and worst of all, I can be bombarded with waves of body drenching sadness that although it is usually easy to overcome still depresses me because of it's blasted existence.

I have a ukulele and before I started making dinner last night I began learning a new song, "I Can't Make You Love Me" originally done by Bonnie Raitt and recently redone by Bon Iver, either way I've always loved that song. And of course it makes me cry. Then I became overwhelmed while making dinner because the puppy and the boy child were directly underfoot in our tiny kitchen and would follow me in and out of the house as I went back and forth to the grill and then back to the kitchen. So I was frustrated, already tender from the dumb song playing and then every time I would pass the game room where Jeremiah was blissfully napping on the way out to the grill, boy and puppy in tow I would get angry.

Then the combination of sadness, frustration and anger starting boiling around in my head for the rest of the night while I thought over and over again, 'I like my job, it's fulfilling, I adore my children and am proud to care for them, I share custody and it's a wonderful thing, and although I share custody I handle all my daughters' school work, medical needs/insurance and all of their clothes and shoes purchases/cleaning and that's just fine, I am happy to take care of my home and it's occupants, budget our finances and take the blame when absolutely anything goes wrong in the confines of my increasingly burdened responsibilities, but this boat is taking on too much water and if someone doesn't bail me out I will surely go under. Say that ten times fast.

By the end of writing this short and whiny bit on my long neglected blog I have already started to feel better. Maybe this whole process of catharsis via blogging is more important than I had recently assumed.

April 30th, 2004

Although the bar I was working didn't serve alcohol and wasn't housed in a pub the clientele was still as potentially volatile. Teens swarmed me from all sides, blocking me into the bar, yelling out for more pop, more pizza, asking how much could they get for free, requesting this song and that from the DJ in the sound booth behind me.

I listened to them all, waited on them with patience and when the wave finally subsided I stepped up to the booth and looked in, folding my head into the crooks of my arms for a moment of rest. I watched my friend who was in charge of the music for the dances the Teen Center held weekly listening on his own personal earphones to something very different than what was playing for the teens on the dance floor. I watched him for a moment and appreciated the peaceful look he always had when he listened to music. As of late he had looked thinner and I knew him to be anxious and a bit morose. His eyes were dark and always mixed with a sense of unsure and incredibly sure of himself. When he finally met my gaze his eyes did shine a bit mischievously as he slid off his headphones and motioned me closer to him, a smile creeping across his sprite like face, a faint uneven mustache growing around the curve of his lips.

"Lemme guess little girl, they want Mo' Money Mo' Problems and Tha Crossroads?" Smiling wider now he gently pawed at my hand for a moment and asked for a water. He smelled of cigarettes, sweat and faintly of something sour. I was sure that it wasn't necessarily natural to worry about someone older than you, but I still was. I gathered he was unhappy, gathered that he was fighting some demons, gathered that he was tired and sad. I always had the feeling I wanted to wrap my arms around him, hold him close, beg him to tell me what was in his head, but I never felt it was my place. I was just a little girl he knew, I told him my problems and not the other way around.

After the dance was over and we cleaned up in silence, listening to a band he suggested to me that met in between of the two styles of music we enjoyed. We both had walked to work that day and had decided to walk around together towards Main St. and talk and smoke. He listened while I complained and cried about my boyfriend, who wasn't really a boyfriend but rather a menace and he said nothing for a very long time. I thought he was annoyed with my blithering girl talk.

He stopped and looked at me, reached out and rubbed my shoulders with his small soft hands. He was a small man but still taller than me and he looked down into my eyes. How could someone's eyes be so wise and yet so clouded with confusion? He was an enigma to me. He brought me into a generous hug, hugs I had loved so much to get from him and without the slightest sexual force he brushed his lips on mine and then hugged me again. In my ear he said very softly,

"There are good people and bad people in the world. (Your boyfriend) is bad and he will always be, you are good and you will always be. You are a light and my little girl."

He let me go and then just walked on. I stood there for a second disbelieving that somebody had spoken such sweet, kind words to me, like something out of a novel, like the way people talked in my dreams. The unexpected whisperer of truths and wisdoms my friend walked on and I hurried to catch up with him. He took my hand in his and we walked a ways and when we were closer to my house than his, we parted and I went home.

I spent time with him on and off during the years to come, our friendship turning into closer friends and then into not as close acquaintances with the passing of time. After I was a mother and busy and changed we ran into each other and I was so incredibly happy to see him it hurt. We went to the local coffee shop and although I had daughters at home with a sitter waiting for me we talked and talked for two hours.

He told me about his wife who I had known from high school and about how she was pregnant with their first child, his second child. He was excited, rounder, clean and healthy looking, almost buoyant. When we parted again it was with promises of keeping in touch and although we didn't I felt that we would see each other again and looked forward to when we did.

But we didn't. My friend Anthony Lewis Snow died 7 months later unexpectedly, eight years ago today, April 30th, 2004. When he died he was the same age I am now. He was an interesting man, a lovely man, a sensitive man, a rough man, a soft man, sweet, caring, brusque, intense and yet easy to get along with. He was a riddle and an open book and I loved him very much.


 I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved. -Samuel Butler

I Talk Shit. Literally.

I am a secret keeper. I might not do that great of a job keeping your secrets but I have so many of my own secrets locked away in my little dark head.

I seem outgoing and friendly but really I'm never totally honest with you. I won't really tell you what I feel, just an abstract version of it. I'm not lying to you, I just don't want you to really know what I'm thinking.

Those kind of sad things being said I decided to in an act of catharsis share something with you, my readers (or any of you that are actually left from The Great Blogging Decline of 2012).

My brother Benjamin is tall, lanky and has an effervescent personality. Sometimes he annoys the hell out of me but I mostly and generally adore him. He also is, despite our nine year age difference, pretty much my only friend. He also is a pretty gassy fellow. His burping and farting is legendary as well as is his prolific pooping. It seems like he's always taking a shit, talking about taking a shit, planning on taking a shit.

He often stops at my house for lunch once or twice a week and then poops, gets the boy child all riled up and then leaves. He did this the other day and I had happened to be up at my parents house later in the evening and low and behold there he was on the shitter again. It then dawned on me that the reason I notice his excreting habits and think of them as strange is because I never poop. I have never once in my life considered myself constipated or even irregular but when I Googled both the terms I found I could be considered as such.

To let it be known I only poop once every two or three days. And before I realized that this was potentially unhealthy I was delighted with my disposal system. How wonderful to only have to deal with pooping twice a week! I have been dealing with the shit of four little people for the last 11 years, 22 if you count since my younger siblings have been born. If I pooped every day it might just throw me over the edge of sanity.

I really didn't want to talk about it with anyone because Ben still makes fun of me for the time I came up with the idea that cheese has cow hormones in it and makes me depressed, which I still think is valid. So I took matters into my own hands and started taking the detox colon cleanse set that Jeremiah bought, took two pills and then stopped using because it gave him incredible stomach cramps. So yes, the pills that were giving my partner horrible stomach cramps just seemed like the absolute best option.

Although I didn't have horrible cramping I shit myself silly for two days straight before I got fed up, my asshole got sore as hell and I had taken fifty thousand hot baths. I stopped taking the pills and haven't pooped since.

I may die young and I may be ten pounds heavier because of my slow acting digestive system but for pete's sake it beats taking the time out of my very busy day to take a dump.

I don't have time for you, poo. You stink.

I Serenade Elly with a Halting Version of Love Me Tender

For Christmas I got my darling Olive a ukulele, a tuner and a cutesy ukulele kids book. She didn't touch it once except to take this photo:


So I started messing around on it and voila! I became an uke addict in several weeks. At first it was difficult because although I can read music I have never played any instrument and aside from watching Jeremiah play classical guitar wasn't really sure how you played/strummed etc.

I learned though and loved it.

Now my friend Elly who plays ukulele like nobody's business is sick and I guest uke'd for her 'cause she's got the unholy shingles from hell. Let's all wish her speedy recovery!!!! HOPE YOU FEEL BETTER SWEET ELLY GIRL!

Regardless I posted a video for her and am on her site today.

If you promise not to make fun of me either publicly or privately I will link you. OK? Promise? Uke Me Tender at Buggin Word

Well Check Up's My Ass

I don't like to take our children to the doctor that often because honestly 'well check up' seems like an oxymoron when you're in fact taking the children to a hot bed of illness for essentially no reason.

So I skip lots of check ups and once about every two years, other than in the case of the multiple cases of strep throat and ear infections our children are blessed with every year, I take all four children together to get weighed, measured, vaccinated and eye exam'd <---- I just made that up. So clever.

Regardless I made this maneuver the other day with Rose, 11, Olive, 9, Maxine Jane, 6 and Elijah 4 with a reluctant life partner Jeremiah in tow. Every year I think it's a good idea to get everyone's check up just done and over with and although Jeremiah reminds me of the horrors of the previous years I still do the same thing.

First Max had to change her clothes four times before she felt comfortable enough to go on the short walk to our doctor's office.

This is her waiting in the waiting room with Jeremiah:


Then each child had to be told over and over and over again on the walk, in the waiting room and in the exam room that we had no idea which children were going to get which shots and how many. All I knew is that Rose was missing one required chicken pox vaccination and so as far as I knew she was the only one getting a shot. It took forever for the nurse to weight and measure my lovely giants and then even longer to take a history and ask pertinent growth/milestones/health questions about each child.

Not to mention the excruciatingly long eye exams where Maxine decided she didn't 'want to be tested right now!' and could only read the top line on the chart. She also told the nurse she didn't really know her alphabet (she can read) and that she had to do the symbol part that toddlers do instead. She is a joy.

After all that madness it turns out that all the children are wonderful and exceptional and although Max doesn't know how to tie her shoes and Elijah can't write his name they seem to be doing just fine.

The room seemed so freaking small:


Then the shot tally came. Rose was getting three, Olive two, Elijah four and Maxine not a one. She then began to taunt her siblings and shake her butt at them, "All right now! Shake yo booty, shake yo booty!" in front of the doctor and when we admonished her for this she locked herself in the hall bathroom and screamed for ten minutes.

Our doctor happens to be a very young actually kind of strange yet cool woman (when I say very young I mean my age of course) and she agreed to guard the bathroom so that Max couldn't make a run for it. Then Jeremiah and I split up the remaining three kids and I went in one room with Rose and a nurse while he stayed in the other with Olive and Elijah. It turns out he lucked out because his two were tough as nails without any tears and Rose was a mother fracking mess.

"NO! No. Mom I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. MOM! No! Oh my Gosh! I can't do this, tell them no! I can't." Nothing like a shaking, sobbing, normally tough 11 year old to top off an exceptional doctor's office visit.

I wonder if next year I'll do the smart thing and split the visits up over several days/weeks.

Probably not.

Updates and Surprisingly Enough...A Puppy

You might have read my short fiction piece Ezra that I had submitted to several short fiction contests and which was still in the running when I posted it here on Blogging is for Dorks. If you did you may have been of the opinion of the three editors that sent me lovely and helpful emails about how they felt although I have as one editor put it, 'an incredible and undeniable talent' and that I may be as the other put it, 'wasting my time in such serious and potential shock for shock value content' my work is not ready for publication on their sites and thus not in the running for the contests' prizes. I can roll with that.

You might have also read my whining about my Grandmother's death AGAIN.

But what you don't know is after much more than a year in the making Jeremiah and I have adopted a puppy which our children named Blueberry Bertha (after the aforementioned dead Grandma). I have always said I wanted the perfect puppy and would even pay an arm and a leg to make sure I got the perfect one.

In the end it turns out that was me being an asshole because we all know just like there is no such thing as the perfect baby, there is also no such thing as the perfect puppy.

Because my children are completely and totally dog obsessed we made a list of our favorite dog breeds and then saved them on a search list on Petfinder.com in order to get email updates if any of these breeds came into our area.

And there she was, Blueberry is half Wire Haired Pointing Griffon and half who knows what because the Puppy Mill that was probably breeding Blueberry's purebred mother into an early grave got pissed when she became pregnant with an unknown father's puppies and promptly dumped her at a pound in Ohio, pregnant. This particular pound has had problems with this particular breeder in the past but say there is nothing they can do about it. I have no idea why they would do this but hey, that's how the asshole crumbles. That sounded much better in my head, by the way.

Regardless Blueberry and her siblings showed up on Petfinder and by the time Jeremiah, Elijah and I made the two and half hour drive there Blueberry and her brother (I like to think of him as Huckleberry) were the only two of her litter left. Her mother had also been adopted earlier that week. The women at the shelter told us that all the families that had came in didn't want her or Huckleberry because they were the most wiry of the bunch. Really?

We adopted her right then and there and took her away from that sad, horrible and over crowded place which very much changed my mind about shelters and adopting dogs instead of buying from breeders.

The girls met her on Monday night after coming home from their Dad's house and shit a proverbial brick. They have all been excellent, as has adorable Blueberry who is already well on her way to being house trained and likes to nap on Honorable the giant stuffed lion.

Here she is, revel in her adorableness:




If you are in the Ashtabula Ohio area and want to adopt a very, very nice puppy AKA Huckleberry you can find him here: http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/22334557