Love Letter

Even though I consider myself a skilled word-user, I'm not entirely certain I can express just how much you mean to me. Hopefully, I can get some of it across without sounding like some crazed lunatic who believes we are destined to be together or some ridiculous crap. Ugh. It'll probably ramble a bit more than I'd like, but hopefully it'll make sense in the end.

There's a lot of backstory, which may or may not be interesting to you, but perhaps will help set the stage for why exactly you had such an impact on my life.

When you came into my life, in September of 2012, I was forty-seven. Alone. Sad. Searching for meaning.

I'd been a single mom for about fifteen years, and I'd taken my job seriously. I did everything I could conceive of to make my daughter's life a good one. I wanted her to grow up healthy and happy, someone I could be proud of, someone who could be proud of me, someone who would consider me a friend when the time came.

Though I didn't date, or have any other kind of "dating" relationships (read sexual, lol) during that time, it was more because I wanted to model healthy relationships for my daughter than for any other reason. I didn't go out of my way to find a romantic relationship - I considered finding a new partner pretty low on the priority list - and she had a life full of people who loved me and who loved her. Those were good relationships, ones I wanted her to learn from, to emulate.

My daughter and I had our hardships - money was always tight, I was lonely, I struggled constantly with depression, she was stubborn as hell, something she clearly got from my side of the family. We lost loved ones - a beloved dog, a special cat, a favorite cousin, my mother, and my daughter's best friend. That one was especially tough. Twelve year old girls shouldn't die.

I raised my daughter to think, to stand up for herself, to stand up for other people, to be independent. I also sometimes made things too easy. I went too far the wrong way to ensure she didn't have to suffer the same childhood issues I'd had, and she grew up more than a wee bit spoiled.

I was raised an Air Force brat, and I periodically get itchy feet, figuratively speaking. My solution when she was in school was to move from one apartment to another, always staying in the same school zone. I wanted her to have friends from kindergarten all the way through high school, something I'd never had. It didn't work quite the way I wanted, but it worked.

When she was still a teenager, we moved one more time. She'd just finished her freshman year of high school, gotten involved in dance, which she LOVED, had a gay boyfriend who was a marvelous dance partner and friend, and though she'd never loved school, that year was as close as she came to it. She didn't want to move. I didn't, either, this time, but there were mitigating circumstances.

Though we moved into a situation which was much better for us, that next year was the most difficult she and I had ever had - emotionally, behaviorally, financially - and I thought we weren't going to survive it intact, still loving each other. It was the first time I seriously considered giving up, believed I was a bad mom.

Though she hated the new school, and frankly, I did too, she slowly over the course of that year made friends. She got involved in drama, something she'd enjoyed in middle school, and while she was never truly happy that year, she got better. I got her into counseling again, an on and off thing since she was about four, and we worked at being honest with each other, communicating openly, being loving.

During her junior year, she met a boy. Actually, she'd met him during the prior year, but she'd had a mad crush on someone else, and this guy had only been a friend. That changed. He was charming and goofy and smart, loved my daughter, and was respectful to me, didn't ridicule my brand of weird. His life wasn't perfect, either, but he had a good family, a support system of friends, both peers and mentors, and he and my daughter became serious.

My daughter finally used her "sneak-out" rule - she could ask if she could go out after dark, and I could say no. If she felt like it was important enough to override me, she could, but only if she came and told me she was sneaking out of the house, so I could keep my phone on and come get her if I needed to, no questions asked. She didn't use it often, but she did use it.

She also had sex for the first time. I'd always told her that when it was right for her, she would know better than I would, and I only asked that she use condoms, and tell me when it happened, so that we could talk about it afterward if she wanted. She did wake me up one night, and I asked her if it had been enjoyable, and she said yes, and I said good and asked her if she wanted to talk about it and she said no, and I went back to sleep.

I don't know what kind of parent that makes me sound like, but our system worked for us. She knew there was absolutely NOTHING on Earth she couldn't talk to me about. Nothing was going to turn into judgement or a big screaming match.

Anyway, she and this young man continued to get more serious. He spent a lot of time at our house, and she spent a lot of time with his family, and they got pregnant. On purpose. And I have to tell you, I was livid. Not because she was too young to have a baby, which was true, but because she'd done this when I was already stretching our food stamps to feed one adult and two teenagers, because yes, I was feeding him too. I expressed my anger, and got it all out of the way, then I decided if I was going to be a gramma, I was going to buckle down and be happy about it. Carpe diem, because grandbabies!

My grandson is a wonderful boy - charming and supersmart and caring and strong and a handful and a half. I wouldn't trade him for anything. I absolutely adore babies of all kinds, but the love I have for him is something fiercer, deeper.

So, a year into their relationship, they had my grandson. My son-in-law's family were moving back to Florida from Texas, and he wanted to stay here in Texas for his senior year, after which he planned to go into the Air Force, to do something with his life, to provide for his new family, for many reasons. Mr. Potatohead (son-in-law) stayed behind, with one of his family's close friends, and due to financial circumstances beyond my control, we moved one more time.

Before Mr. Potatohead could enlist, he had to either sign away his parental rights or marry my daughter (AF rules). They got married. It was a beautiful day in a local park, and the story of how it happened is boring and entailed a lot of intense discussions with the man who provided it for them. Suffice it to say I did not get to plan any part of my only daughter's wedding, with the exception of her godmother walking her across the bridge aka down the aisle. I might still be a little miffed about that.

This time when we moved, my parents were footing the bill for a year. We moved into an apartment they chose, and we got the bare minimum - no cable, no phone, no extras of any kind. I even had to stop my meds because I could no longer pay for quarterly visits to the doctor. Things got really tight. But worse, Mr and Mrs Potatohead were separated by more than just a couple of miles of walking. It was difficult for all of us, but especially for them - being newly married and not able to live together and experience the pregnancy together sucked.

In the new school system, there was a separate special school for pregnant girls (and other high-dropout-risk kids), where they could work at their own pace and complete their education in a more relaxed environment. This was the first time my daughter actually surprised me in a good way. She finished her entire senior year by the end of October. This woman, my daughter who had always all but hated school, applied herself and managed to finish everything so that when she walked down the halls of that school with their every Friday graduation, in her purple cap and gown, she was accompanied by her newborn son, in his own purple cap and gown. It was an amazing moment for her, and I couldn't have been prouder if she'd been strolling the stage at MIT.

Mr Potatohead got through Basic Training. We went to his graduation at Lackland AFB. He finished Tech School and got his first duty station, in Italy. I didn't know the Air Force sent people OCONUS on their first duty station. Mr Potatohead went first, when Baby Potatohead was ten months old, and several months later, my daughter followed him to Italy, her first move as an Air Force wife.

Once Mr Potatohead had finished high school, he'd moved to our apartment, and after Baby Potatohead was born, he was there, too. So when they all left, I was alone, for the first time in nearly fifteen years, missing my daughter, missing my grandson, missing my son-in-love.

I had no idea what to do with myself. What I'd always considered my life's purpose, raising Mrs Potatohead to happy, healthy adulthood, was accomplished, and I was completely undone by the hole she'd left behind.

I have always struggled with severe depression, and that first year without my daughter left me lower than I could remember ever being. At the same time, I was dealing with packing up that apartment, finding a new place to live, reaching out to people when I could, and hibernating the rest of the time - I'm not good at asking for help. Things got bad; I knew they were bad, though I didn't really understand the extent of my emotional state until I was climbing out of it.

Fast forward (too late, I know) about two years, and I was watching Dollhouse, with Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett. I adored Tahmoh's character in Dollhouse and wanted more of whatever he'd been in. When I looked him up, there was Battlestar Galactica, and I had vague memories of more than one friend telling me I would enjoy it. I think I'd resisted because what I remembered of the original series was pretty campy and cheesy, and not really to my taste.

I watched it anyway, and before the mini-series was over, I was in love. Absolutely head over heels in love with Kara Thrace. I love Karl Agathon, too, don't get me wrong, but Kara Thrace is a once in a lifetime character, and I can never thank you enough for taking that part.

I was on a serious downward spiral, flailing about without the least notion why the hell I was still here on this planet, and not really caring much if I left, so when you came into my life, I was broken and hurting and aimless and lost.

Thanks to BSG, I got out of my head, cared about something so much I went to the internet to find other people who liked BSG, to find fanfiction, to commune with other BSG lovers. I started writing. I've never written fiction in my entire life, unless it was related to school, and had in fact always felt a little envious that everyone else in my family wrote, and my thing was polishing words instead of producing them. Suddenly I was writing stories, sad and funny and sexy and heartbreaking and wonderful stories. And not only were they helping me cope, people sometimes told me they'd needed that reminder at that precise moment. People liked my stories. My mind was blown.

I am never going to ask you to read any of my stuff (oh my fucking gods, no, Katee), though if you ever accidentally do, I hope you find a deep love and respect for Kara Thrace in it.

Like I said, I started writing. It was my shiny new boyfriend, and writing got me through another really rough year without my kid, and I was still alive at the other end. I met some fantastic women, made friends, learned I had something to offer others, something they needed, got better at writing, and in among all that, I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Took me long enough.

I'm an editor, aka a beta reader. I take people's words and make them better. I especially help writers whose first language isn't English to become more comfortable with their words. I seem to have created a niche for German writers. That's fandom, anyway.

I'm also an editor in real life - YA fiction, murder mysteries, LBGT works. I have a small but growing stable of writers who have trusted me with their work, and I'm slowly getting my name out there. I'm not with a big name publishing house. I'm the girl the indie authors can come to, the one they can afford. I LOVE my work, so much that if I could afford to do it for nothing, I truly would.

My first word-love is still writing, though, and Kara Thrace plays a huge part in that. Through her, I've explored birth and death and loss and depression and love and hate and so many other facets of human emotion. She's a fascinating and complex woman, and exploring her, I explore myself. Loving her, I love myself. All those ugly bits from my past found a mirror in Kara Thrace, and if she's lovable despite those "flaws," then so am I. Those old tapes have lost their power over me. I like myself, and that's something I haven't always been able to say.

Kara Thrace had a hard life, and she was one messed up woman, but no matter what, she never stopped loving. Sure, she hid behind sarcasm and cigars and sex and alcohol, but she loved, deeply, even if she pretended she didn't.

I've heard you say in interviews that if you played Kara now, you probably wouldn't be so fearless, that you were young and didn't know any better.

All I can say is, thank you for being fearless, for going ninety to nothing, for putting so much work into Kara Thrace. Because the bottom line is, Kara Thrace saved my life. You saved my life. And I am so fucking grateful for it.

I fell in love with Kara Thrace. And through Kara, I fell in love with you.

Even if you never impacted anyone else's life (which isn't true, anyway), you crashed into mine and pulled me out of some dark place that had almost succeeded in swallowing me whole. I can't truly put into words what you did for me.

But you weren't done.

Last year, my dad and his wife split up. They'd been married nearly forty-two years, since I was eight. They were doing the divorce dance of dividing assets and selling houses and keeping lawyers in expensive cars. My dad and I had been estranged, but he called me, invited me to meet him for lunch, and we had a good talk. He talked about how things had been for him, about falling in love with someone new, about the hold my stepmother had had on all our lives, and we continued to get close again.

He asked me to be his emergency contact at his apartment, asked me to manage the movers, asked me to come take care of him after he had his eye surgery, asked me to be his next-of-kin for medical stuff. We connected again, and had some quality clear-the-air conversations, learned new and surprising things about each other.

Then he started having heart attacks. I was cadging rides in the middle of the night to get to a hospital forty minutes away, terrified every time that he'd die before I could get there, and spending weeks at a time at his place to take care of him when he got out, and even though it was scary as hell, we kept talking. We kept saying the words. We made sure we didn't waste a moment on impatience or negativity.

His final heart attack was on August fifth, a year ago, when he was seventy-two, and though I miss him desperately, I'm beyond thrilled that I got seven fantastic months with him before he went.

Kara Thrace stayed in my head, helping me heal by sharing her many lives with me, and Victoria Moretti showed up, and reminded me family appears in the strangest places, and through those two magnificent women, you helped me through the loss of someone I had just found again, and gave me strength not to break this time.

I have absolutely adored watching you over the last three years. Battlestar Galactica, Longmire, Oculus, even The Last Sentinel (which we will mostly pretend never happened), Haunting in Connecticut, Riddick, cons and interviews and Ask Katee and motorcycle rides with Tricia. Your zest for life, and your unflinchingly raunchy sense of humor, and the obvious love you shower on your friends and family, both two- and four-legged, are not just encouraging, they're life-affirming.

I won't say never change, because hell, we all change. But keep being you, Katee, keep being the woman who makes lives better without really thinking about it. Keep. Being. You. Keep loving hard and living out loud and making the world a better place with your sparkle and shine and your infectious laugh (I LOVE your laugh).

And know, deep inside, there is at least one person on this planet, someone you've never met, who is grateful beyond words for all of who you are, one person who would pick up the phone, day or night, if you ever needed a listening ear yourself. One person who might be the reason you got out of swimming and into acting. The universe works in mysterious ways, right?

Because of my dad falling in love in his sixties, I know that fifty is not too late to find the kind of love I've wanted all of my life.

Because of Victoria Moretti, I'm open to possibilities. My image of who might be out there for me is much more flexible now.

Because of Kara Thrace, I'm ready to fall in love again. Really ready.

Because of you, I have friends I would never have met any other way than through fandom, women who helped keep me afloat during those long months at the hospital and the agonizing weeks after my dad's death.

I don't know what's in store for my next fifty years, but I'm ready for whatever it is, and I have you to thank for it.

I love you.

Thank you.

Whatever....Debbie Downer edition

Been a while. I keep meaning to update, writing the posts in my head, then never actual typing them up. :shrugs:

I'm feeling disconnected - from just about everything. Some of it is the season. I am definitely seasonally affected, and it seems like it gets worse every year. Last year was the first time I had to dig deep into reserves I don't have any more to keep from giving up - and I was discovering writing last year. This year, it's only October. How the hell am I supposed to get through the rest of the year?

My mom's been dead eleven years next month, and last night, I had the first dream I can remember about her. In my dream, she was tall and straight and strong, hair flaming red falling in waves past her shoulders. Happy. Much as she was before she made the conscious or unconscious decision to drink herself to death. What was weird about this dream, though, is that when someone told me they'd seen her, I dismissed it. "No, mom's dead. She died a long time ago." Then I caught sight of her, standing half a football field away in a crowded parking lot, and I was terrified. I ran. Then the dream switched scenes, as dreams do, and I was sitting in front of her, and she was saying, "Yes, it's me," all nonchalant like I see my dead mother back to life and beautiful every day. By the end of the dream, I was deeply resentful of her, and I don't even know why.

There was a con here in Dallas recently, where both Katee Sackhoff and Jamie Bamber appeared. I would have pushed past my crowd-shyness to see the two of them. Hell, I would have worked the thing to see them. I desperately wanted to go, but money was, as always, an issue, and I wasn't able to go.

I did get to spend the weekend with my smut-writing/TV friend instead, but things are different with her new relationship. Do I begrudge her the happiness? A thousand times NO. Do I still wish she had time for me that wasn't divided twenty different ways? Of course. We didn't even get any writing done, and not a whole lot of TV, for that matter. I came back to the house feeling exhausted rather than renewed for the first time ever.

My thirty-year high school reunion is later this month, and I won't be able to go. No way to get there, and no place to stay if I did manage to get there. My car's inspection and registration are both expired, and to pass inspection would take money I don't have or a deeply dishonest inspection station. Without the inspection, no registration. Those new state databases tell the state when your car's not inspected, and they won't give you a registration sticker any more - well, Texas won't. Not that I have the money to pay for it anyway. :sigh:

Thanksgiving's next month. I'd gotten used to going to my friend's house, spending the holiday with her, hosting Airmen for their first real break from Basic Training in weeks, and last year because her husband was home from Iraq, I didn't get to go. Not even sure why. He likes me fine - we get along well most of the time. I haven't even bothered to ask this year, because I when I texted & emailed her about reunion weekend, she never answered, and he's home for good. He's not retired, but for medical reasons, he won't be going back to the middle east.

So, whatever. I'm having a pity party, I guess. I miss my kid. I miss my grandson. I miss San Antonio. I miss my entire family, who aren't speaking to me for their own reasons. And yeah. I miss my mom.

My writing is frakked. Mostly I haven't been able to write, and when I do finish something, I'm not satisfied with it. It's been three weeks, and that, probably more than anything else, is getting me down. The thing I've used to cope for the last year is failing me, and frankly, considering where I am emotionally, that scares me.

On the other hand, things that make me smile:

The other gramma was in Italy to visit the kids, and this was Baby Potatohead getting tired of gramma taking pictures of him. Love the attitude.

Twenty Years Ago

Twenty years ago today, on a Friday night, I was as big as a house, and my father-in-law reminded me of that fact frequently.  It was all in fun on his end, but I hated it every single time he said that out loud.

OK.  I wasn't as big as a house, but I FELT that way.

Mrs. Potatohead was due today, and what did I choose to do?  I went camping.  Uh-huh.  It was the annual Celebration of Summer that my mom put on, and even due any damn minute, I went camping.  In the summer.  In Texas.

I think my mother made sure every pagan medical professional she knew would be on hand just in case I went into labor - we had record attendance that year.  Luckily Mrs Potatohead didn't make her appearance until Tuesday morning, after over twenty-four hours of labor.  But my mom made sure that if her grandchild was going to arrive out at Lake Tawakoni, she was going to arrive in style.

So I camped, and nearly everyone waited on me hand and foot, and I judged a Sun King competition, and my husband ran around the whole place naked as a jaybird and got sunburned in some interesting places.  I have to admit that remembering that gives me warm fuzzies.  He deserved it later.

Moms and other mysterious creatures, part two

Now for my stepmother.  Again a woman I did and do love.  I don't like her much most of the time.

When she got me and my sister, I had been the head of our little family unit.  Even at eight.  I was the one who went to the store for food and milk.  I was the one who bought cigarettes for my mother.  Obviously this was before there were age restrictions on buying cigarettes and alcohol.  I sometimes picked up my little sister from daycare, and sometimes made dinner for the two of us.

Immediately upon integrating us into her household, CC made it known that that behavior was not welcome. I was an eight-year-old girl and she didn't want me parenting or protecting my three-year-old sister.  I think of all the changes she made to my life during that first year, I hated that the most.  I wasn't needed anymore.  I felt superfluous and useless.

I was allowed to call her by her given name for a couple of weeks, until my sister and CC's own daughter began doing it, too, and then she made me call her Mom.  Oh, did I rebel against that, but being the eldest-perfect-child-hero stereotype, that rebellion came out sideways, never head-on.

I was nasty to her.  I disliked her intensely - hated that she had married my father, and hated that she was trying to be my mother when I already had a perfectly good one (not so much from an adult perspective, but it was what it was), hated that because of her, I had been taken from my mother and was no longer allowed to see her.

On the other hand, she had five brothers and five sisters, so I had aunts and uncles galore.  My youngest uncle was twelve, and the next youngest was sixteen.  I simply adored the two of them, to the point of hero-worship, and they put up with me and my sudden constant presence at family gatherings.  In those days, nearly all of the original eleven were still located in and around Denver, so a family dinner on Sunday was a mammoth affair to my previously one-aunt, two cousins mind.  Though CC resented my place in her life, her family accepted me immediately and with open arms.  I am no longer close to many of them (I mean, it's nearly forty years later, after all), but I love them all, without exception.

I was the eldest of the grandchildren.  CC was only 22 at the time, and most of the other originals were not yet married, and none of those who were had children older than two or three.

As fractious as our relationship was, we came to some kind of detente, because she was the only mother I had for seven years.  She fed me, clothed me, taught me how to set a table regardless of who was coming to dinner, enforced manners and proper behavior, let it slide when I'd rather read than go outside, and put up with my bad attitude with questionable grace.

She also regularly beat me, slapped me, berated me verbally and emotionally, and took all her resentments out on my physical and emotional person.  From this distant perspective, I know that she did the best she could with what coping tools she had, but my inner child says it wasn't good enough.

There were moments, though.  When I came home devastated in the sixth grade because I'd gotten my first B, she put her arms around me and let me cry, and made sure I understood that a B was plenty good enough.  Perfectionist me didn't believe her, but not through lack of trying.  When she caught me sneak-reading the Playboys, she didn't berate me, but sat me down at the dinner table, made me look at them from cover to cover and asked me if I had any questions, reassured me that those women in the pictures didn't look that good in real life, that real women had hair on their legs and didn't have to wear makeup to look pretty enough.  When my sixth grade teacher (ah, Mr. McCormack!) spanked me for some transgression, she stormed to the school and made sure he knew that it was NOT acceptable for the school to spank me for any reason whatsoever.  After that, I had to run laps.  I'd rather have been spanked, frankly.  When I got my first period, she was matter-of-fact about showing me how to use the sanitary belt and how to attach the pads to it (yes, I am that old), and calmed me down when I was sure that everybody could smell that I was on my period.

We functioned on an uneven keel until the year my dad had a solitary tour in Korea, and was gone for an entire year.  Our little family had to learn how to function without daddy around, and my relationship with CC changed and was sometimes less antagonistic.  When he came back, we all had to learn to deal with that again.  Anybody who says it's only the active duty member who really sacrifices is full of shit.

Anyway, during what we now call the tween years, particularly while my dad was gone, beatings and threats to send me back to my mother (for some reason, I was terrified of this) were the norm.  Anything that went wrong, I got punished for it.  Any chore that needed to be done, I was assigned to do it.  Basically, anything that made her life easier was my responsibility.

Things happened when I was fourteen, outside the immediate family, and things came to a head with CC the summer I was fifteen, when I was walking from the bathroom to my bedroom, and CC randomly reached up and slapped me as I was walking past her.  I got completely still and silent (people who know me well tend to disappear on the exceedingly rare occasion this happens now), then shoved her into the sliding glass door and very calmly told her, "Don't. Ever. Touch. Me. Again."  She didn't ever beat me again, though she still yelled at me plenty.

I got through high school, nearly always on restriction or grounded from something (or everything), moved out as soon as I turned 18 in the middle of my senior year, and graduated.  Fiddled around, continuing to live a directionless life for a few years, then moved completely away, to another state, and got into therapy as a result of my aunt's inpatient treatment for something.  Learned a lot about myself during those five years, grew up a lot.  Came back to Texas and stayed in Dallas.  Since I left for Missouri in 1987, I've never lived full-time in San Antonio, though I have always considered it home and hope to return there in the very near future.

When I came to Dallas, I met and married my ex-husband, had Mrs. Potatohead ten months later (on our ten monthiversary, as a matter of fact) and CC all of a sudden got nice.  She bought the wedding announcements when we told her we'd gotten married, invited us to visit for the holidays and was generally a much nicer person to be around.  This lasted a while, I guess, but eventually she reverted to form.  She'd badmouth me to my daughter, talked about me to my sisters behind my back.  Again, I was the scapegoat for pretty much everything wrong in her life, though she was nice as pie to my face.  All kinds of lovey-dovey.

When Mrs. Potatohead  was old enough to spend time with my family on her own, CC was always happy to have her visit, creative with activities to keep her occupied, and generous with her time and material things.  We lived in an uneasy peace for years, with her being supportive on the surface, and ugly when I wasn't there to hear it.

CC kept up the surface support, even during some of my most trying emotional times, and I continued to accept this dichotomous behavior from her.  I've made my peace with it, and kinda figure she's given me what she's capable of giving, all things considered.  It's not good enough, but it never will be, and yet, it has to be.  It's all there ever will be.

Three and a half years ago, we had to move out of the house we'd been living in, and she offered to pay for an apartment for a year, if we'd move into the apartment she chose for us (that is, Miss Not-Yet-Potatohead and myself).  We made the move, Miss became Mrs, Mr and Mrs had Baby Potatohead, and Mrs graduated from high school in spite of everything.  My kid is something special.  Anyway, the year of financial support became six months, and with a fifteen-month lease, we struggled to stay in that place and pay all the bills, until Mr Potatohead went into the USAF.  He got out of basic training, started getting paid, and Mrs Potatohead started paying all the bills.  The child had become the parent to some degree, and I'm willing to bet part of her resented it.

During the last part of this, my truck started needing more repairs than it was worth, and I sold it.  We went without a car for quite a while, dependent on others to get us around for anything.  Nearly two years ago now, CC told me that if I could find a car I liked, she would pay for it, with one stipulation.  She was done with me.  I was to stay out of her life for good.

At last, after almost forty years, the gloves came off and she was honest about what she wanted.  I have to recognize the powerful moment for what it was, and I admire her for finally saying what she actually felt instead of catering to the party line that family is family and we should all be happyhappy together.  What a crock that is.

Last year, CC let me know via email that if I wanted to come over, I'd have to find a way to get there (remember I didn't have my car for a year because of that horrid mechanic).  My sister insisted this would be considered an invitation, but I found it less than gracious, and insincere, so I didn't bother making any effort to find a way over there.  I live half an hour away.  If she really wanted me there to any degree whatsoever, someone could have come and got me.

On the other hand, she sent bits and pieces of xmas dinner with said sister when she drove to see me on her way out of town.  I did enjoy the traditional family fare, even a day late and cold.  lol

I'm OK with not seeing her.  However, staying out of her life means that I don't get to see my dad, and I miss him something awful.  He last spoke to me at xmas, the month before she bought me the car I have now.  He sent me an email for my birthday that year, but didn't actually speak to me, and last year, I got nothing at all from him, not even a text message.  I'm trying to get to my happy place with that, but man it is difficult to do.  I'll admit that I had myself a little pity party over my birthday last year.  Staying out of her life also means that I don't get to see the rest of the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas, though Thanksgiving is usually spent with my girlfriend in SA.

As painful as it is to have my dad be out of my life, I prefer this honest-to-herself CC over the previous two-faced one.  If she doesn't like me, she shouldn't have to pretend that she does.  Much as I love her, I don't have to pretend to like her anymore, either.  I can live with that.

None of this should be construed as meaning that I am blameless and perfect.  I so am not.  I, too, am doing the best I can with the coping tools I have.  It's a wonder I'm still sane after all I've been through, as a great man once said.  :D  Actually, I don't think I am sane, but don't tell anybody.

Moms and other mysterious creatures, part one

I loved my mother always.  Sometimes I didn't like her much, though.

My mother and I had a strange relationship.  I lived with her for the first eight years of my life, and from all accounts, I was a happy child, content to be left to my own devices.  Then my dad got custody of us, he was PCSed to Thailand with the USAF, and I didn't see her for another seven years.  By that time, I was deep into the teenage years, and did not feel the need for nor enjoy having another mother figure, particularly not one with strange ideas about how I should behave toward her or in general.  I had things going on in my personal life that were traumatic and that summer was probably not the best timing to rekindle our relationship.

She tried to be a mother to me at first, and that just really didn't gel, so we eventually created a friendship that mostly worked for us.  She shared things with me that she might discuss with another peer, and I talked to her about things, even private things, comfortably, because that mother/daughter vibe just wasn't there for me.  I think she missed that, since I never stopped being her elder daughter in her mind, but I just couldn't make the transition back to being her daughter.

One of the things about her though, was that she talked about me a lot.  She'd praise me to the mountains, to anybody who'd listen, when other people were around.  However, she never made a point to say any of those things privately, and I kind of felt that she was proud of the idea of me, but not necessarily proud of the me that existed right in front of her.  I resented that she only seemed proud of me when there was someone to listen to her saying it.

By the summer I started seeing her again, she was fairly well-known in the local and regional pagan and Wiccan community and many, many people called her Mom.  I have to admit that I also resented the time she seemed to have for everyone but me.  I'll stipulate that it was my perception as a selfish teenager, and probably not the reality, though there were certainly times that I wanted to do something with her and she couldn't because she'd already committed the time elsewhere.  I guess I just thought that if I was going to go to all the trouble to come see her in the summer, she'd be available for me to see.

At some point, I got into therapy and started to grow up, intellectually and emotionally, and began to see my mother's behaviors from a more detached perspective.  This both helped and hurt our relationship, as I was able to see and accept her for what she was as a mother, and at the same time, I saw that she was stuck in a victim mentality.

I grew to hate that she couldn't take responsibility for anything in her life.  In her mind, everything happened TO her.  If something bad happened, she could (and did) always lay the blame on someone else.  Most of us know someone like this, I think.  I sometimes thought myself better than her, because she couldn't or wouldn't rise above this mental place and be her own person, and I had struggled through years of talk therapy to become a better, more emotionally mature me.

In the end, she was pretty determined that she was going to die relatively early, like her mother did, though my grandmother died from breast cancer.  My mother accomplished this through heavy wine consumption and chain-smoking and basically not eating much at all.  At the very end, when she was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, she sent someone back inside the house for her cigarettes.  I always kind of laugh at that.

All of us kids saw her a couple of months before she died, and I was stunned to see how emaciated she looked, though in the pictures of that day, it doesn't show much.  By the time she died, my 5' 10" mother weighed less than eighty pounds, and she looked horrible.

During the last year or two, I struggled mightily with letting go of her and detaching myself from her negativity, because I could just get sucked down into that morass and never climb out, so I didn't spend a whole lot of time with her.  That was what I needed at the time, to keep my sanity, and I don't regret the decision I made to spend as little time with her as humanly possible.

I do miss her, though, these ten years later.  She always had good stories, from her own childhood and from mine.  She loved people and people loved her.  One of the things I tried to do in the wake of her death was to compliment random strangers, as my own strange way of honoring her memory (This was something she did that I always admired and wanted to do).  For an introvert like myself, it was difficult, sometimes to the point of tears, but it made me feel a little more connected to the woman I had adored when she was at her best.

My contribution to yourholidaymom.com

Dear Adopted Holiday Child,

It can be hard to know what to say to someone who doesn't have support from their family over the holidays. My own daughter has been pretty lucky for the most part.  She always knew, because I told her repeatedly, that I didn't care who she loved, as long as they loved her back.  I used to tell her, "Boy, girl, purple alien, whoever," and though it came to be a sort of family in-joke, she knew deep inside that I meant it.  Others of her peer group weren't so lucky, and I saw the negative results of family or friend rejection firsthand more than once.

Maybe you've experienced some of that yourself. I can't erase that memory from your brain, though I wish I could.  Maybe you're feeling some of that rejection from your family or coworkers or people you thought were friends right now. So let me tell you this: You really do have people out here who love you just exactly as you are. You matter, especially to me.  I know what it means to be lonely in a room full of laughing people, and right now, at this very moment, while you're reading this, I am thinking about you and wishing I could make hugs into something tangible I could send through the internet.

One of my favorite childhood traditions, which I continue as often as I can as an adult, is hosting single Airmen at our family dinners at Thanksgiving and Christmas. The guys were usually young, sometimes away from home for the first time, unable to be with their own families. While it's not exactly the same situation, they shared a feeling of loneliness at a time of year when every single thing we hear is about families and sharing and happiness and love and joy, whether we like it or not.

In my own home, as an adult, everyone is welcome as long as you come hungry.  Can you chop celery or fry up some bacon?  Can you sit on the couch and watch TV?  Can you improve on my family's cornbread dressing recipe?  Can you drink soda or set the table or help with the dishes?  Can you debate the relative merits of Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5?  All of those things matter more to me than what you look like or whether you're loving an "acceptable" person. You'd be welcome in my home, as would anyone you'd choose to bring, and if you wanted one, you'd be entitled to a hug when you came in the door.

So remember that.  The inner me sees the you that's inside, with all your trippy little quirks and your hopes for the future, and I love you. I hope that helps make your holidays be merry in a whole new way.

Love, Mom Lucy

Definitely worth checking out, particularly if you are not sappy and prone to random weepiness like I am.  :|
YourHolidayMom

Things I never thought I'd hear coming out of my mouth...

I mean, women talk about becoming their mothers.  I really hadn't heard too many talk about becoming their stepmothers.

"What is your major malfunction?" I just said to the cat.

Oh, how I hated it when my stepmother used to say this to me.  She said it often.  I was apparently the stupidest child in whatever state (or  country) we happened to be living in at the time.  At least, according to her.  Actually, I have a genius IQ.  I didn't know it until I was long out of her house.  And, you'd never know it to look at me.  I sure haven't done genius things with my life.

My presence is requested

Apparently, Baby Potatohead has requested his gramma's presence tomorrow (ahem, later today) for some nail trimming.  Mama and Daddy Potatohead are house-sitting and so are not in the next room.

I am far from stupid and therefore I know that the actual translation of this request is, "Mom, I know you told me what you did with his nails, but I wasn't listening, and even if I had been, I wouldn't have known what the hell you were talking about anyway, so would you PLEASE do his nails again?"  Except I added the please for emphasis. She might or might not have actually said please.

Regardless, I miss my Baby Potatohead, and so I shall go trim the nails of His Majesty and thereby get to spend a little time with him.  Maybe I'll also steal a few kisses and some cuddles.

His mama sure doesn't cuddle me anymore.  Brat. :D

Books, books and more books

I have hundreds, no, thousands of books in my home.  Books are among the things I most enjoy and prize and among the things I'm downsizing and decluttering, in an effort to make my post-life cleanup as easy as possible for my daughter and her husband.   Not that I'm going anywhere anytime soon, just that despite eight years, the memory of cleaning out my mother's house after her death is FRESH in my mind.  It was a hideous experience, and one I will not wish on my own kid and grandkid(s).

I have First Editions, autographed books, antique books and "trashy" romance novels.  I have reference books, text books and teacher manuals.  I have self-help books and Dummies books.  And, of course, I have kid books.  My favorite among those is about the squirrel, Miss Suzy  I so loved this book when I was a kid.  I might even not get rid of it.  Baby Potatohead has to get stories read to him sometime, right?

I look around my room, which is where I am right now, and I long for the day when listing books will be as easy as just looking at the book.  Yeah, I know, it seems a little big-brotherish to me, too, but oh, for an easier way to list all these darn things.

For instance, here's one I can see on the dresser.  I have the hardback, of course, because if I really like an author or a subject, I want to get the books that will hold up best under repeated reading, and yes, I do read books more than just once or twice.

I love Anne McCaffrey - all the Pern books, all the Pegasus books, all the Acorna books - and own almost all of them in hardcover.  I did read a romance she read and um, really didn't like that one.  Other than that, if AM wrote it, I've read it and liked it.  I've continued to read stuff she's "written" with her son, Todd, I think, after her death.  The style is not the same, and I've enjoyed them all the same.

I can see two, count 'em, two hardcover editions of Bullfinch's Mythology.  I'm sure one was mine and the other was my mother's.  I probably even have several more around here somewhere.  My mother believed that if a book was worth recommending to students, it was worth having several copies, so she could loan (lend?) it out to them if they couldn't get it themselves.  She was a teacher, by the way.  English teacher by day (she graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school) and other odd, strange and bizarre things by night - astrology, numerology, tarot, world religions, mythology (she favored Egyptian, where I favor Greco-Roman), , magick, etc.

I see two Robert Heinlein hardcovers - Job: A Comedy of Justice and Friday.  Of course, the links don't take you to the hardcover books, probably because no one selling on Amazon has them listed. 

In addition to that, I have an entire box (more than one to be honest, but only one within view), full to overflowing, of paperback romances - the steamy stuff.  I've read a LOT of romance novels, and the older I get, the more I like the ones that have sex in them.  The ones where the two main characters never even kiss during their "courtship" are just not realistic, and in my opinion, they're generally written in a juvenile style. 

Of course, I also have my foot-and-a-half tall stack of library books, because buying books at this point in my life is just not useful.  I mean, what's the point of getting rid of books to declutter when I just buy more that I might not read again for three or four years, or even longer?

So, authors, I read your books.  I don't buy many anymore, and I'm sorry not to contribute to your pocketbook, particularly if I really enjoy your work, but logic and selfishness wins out on this one, I'm afraid.

I'm experimenting with different ways to send my books to new homes.  I use listia, eBay, Amazon, paperbackswap and goodreads right now.  If you know of other places to list used books of different types, please let me know.  It'll take me a while to get them all gone, so I have time to try out different ideas and sites.  I am obviously open to sites that don't involve me getting any actual money in exchange.