I like to get rid of stuff. Recycle, donate, reuse, trash. Once something has lost its purpose, is no longer fully functional, or isn't my taste anymore, it drives me crazy to have it laying around. So my grandma's fantastic round teapot was dismantled and painted blue. She would have loved seeing me adapt it to my taste. I am a daughter of DIYers, restylers, changers.
I married a pack rat, son of pack rats. He will duct tape together anything that is broken and accept its subfunctional state, but he thought it was weird at first that I was spray painting a teapot.
I'm trying to get back to a place where I can appreciate my strange family. Trying to get pregnant and my pregnancy brought to light some ugly situations. Thank god for my therapist, Kelly. Kelly gets that my goal is to have a "functional," if not fully "normal," family. It's just hard to have that when your family is comprised of complete whackjobs, ya know? This member included, no doubt.
At times I am the crazy mother bossing around my extended family, begging them and ordering them to behave, act normal, be nice. At times it crosses the boundary of an orchestrated farce put on for the benefit of a toddler. And if she ever catches on, she'll think I'm the craziest of them all. So I try not to do that too much. SMILE FOR THE CAMERA, ASSHOLES! WE ARE MAKING MEMORIES! THEY WILL LAST A LIFETIME!
However, Kelly tells me that my self-awareness is a good step towards not screwing up my child, so that's in my favor.
Anyway, here's the teapot, before:
during:
and after:
look at the time, it's after midnight. But spray paint therapy works wonders. And look at this little gem awaiting me inside my midnight snack:
It's completely true. I am happiest devising, planning, approaching, and achieving. And surpassing. That's good, too.
I had a lot of practice, trying desperately to deserve and receive my mother's attention and approval. It's not all her fault. She married her high school sweetheart at 19, and a few years later had her perfect son. 3 1/2 years later, a beautiful baby girl. Life must have been heaven. My father had a good, stable job and she stayed home.
When her beautiful daughter was 6, my father decided he wanted a "one more time" baby. That was me. And no one has ever fully forgiven me or my father for my birth. They tried, but the resentment shows through. Why would a mother tell her daughter a million times over the years, "You were born because your father wanted a 'one more time baby,'" and say it like it's a cute joke, with a cold, serious eye at the same time?
Oh, and four years after that, my mother thought maybe it was menopause, but it wasn't. It was my sister, my pet, my baby, my savior, my best friend. So don't feel too badly for me in the family department, because she came to my rescue.
My mother didn't like us to mess with her things. Understandable, and at times, I know I asked too much. I clearly remember asking her to cut off her fingernails so I could glue them to my own like Lee Press-On Nails. One time my baby sister got a knot in her shoelace, and my mother cut it because she knew she had an extra one. My sister was so pissed off she sneaked into my mother's closet and cut each and every single one of her shoelaces before anyone had a chance to repair her own tiny shoe.
But in my heart, I so ached to mess with her things. I wanted to touch and feel what was her. I was mystified by her cavernous purse, by her drawers and her cabinets. She didn't share a whole lot of her feelings with me and I just wanted to get to know her. But she was awfully busy, because while she was birthing and newborning and toddler-momming, her older two decided the best way to get attention was to command it. Fights! Drugs! Running away! Hurrah! And suddenly my baby sister and I were more capable of caring for ourselves than they were.
Please, if you have a couple kids closer in age and it's been a few years and you are kind of old and tired now, and someone suggests that a new baby might be a lark, just don't do it. For her sake, don't do it.
But my own baby is welcome to know me, and my things. Until she's a little older, she's welcome to accompany me to the bathroom and I don't mind that she needs to yell out "Beep! Beep!" and stick her finger in my belly button before I can sit down to pee.
I just go around and put things back in order after I put her to bed. I know it might seem strange, and that I shouldn't allow a toddler to go making a mess of my things, but I'm healing an old hurt. And when she's older I'll explain why, and I'll let her know she can't do that to everybody, or she'll be jailed for pickpocketing.
