Crazy, Yes, I’m sure I am. What was I thinking taking 9 credits this semester? That is a full load in graduate school. I don’t know how I am going to do it.

I am taking a creative writing class with a favorite professor. She is getting ready to retire so that is why I stayed in the class– originally I was going to drop it. I couldn’t help myself because I love this professor and she reads all the shit I throw at her. She is the professor who makes us keep a journal, her infamous THWADs (Three Hundred Words A Day)….I write about all the crap going on in my life and she reads it all and comments. I love it!! I usually write a lot more than 300 words too, and this is a class on brevity, ha. Plus she GAVE us the books for the class– free books!!

Luckily this class only meets 1 day a week and it is fairly small– there is only 7 of us! I get lots of attention, which is a little scary but good overall. I like my classmates and most are great writers– a couple are even going through some shit too so I have people to commiserate with.

I am taking an online class with Dr. Thomas Foster who is a bestselling author. He is becoming a favorite professor of mine even though he is a little curmudgeonly. The class is called Writing and Publishing and I am learning all about getting published– becoming a freelance author, magazine analysis, writing query letters and book proposals. Sounds a little boring and it is at times but I really love learning about getting a book published. And I am not talking self-publishing– anyone can do that. I am talking about having someone publish my book. Dr. Foster is showing us all the stuff he prepared to get his books published in the mainstream.

Dr. Foster records short lectures which I like. Makes me feel connected to the class because usually I hate online classes because I do not feel connected. What I hate is I have to post on multiple boards and there is a lot of mundane writing. Grrr.

The last class is a Shakespeare class, Doing Shakespeare, where a group of English majors put on a production of a Shakespeare play. I was so excited to take this class with my most favorite professor of all. It was going to be the only class I took, ha. I thought we would just be putting on a play (performing– yay) and doing some community outreach. The class is not what I expected. We are taking a Shakespeare play– King Lear– and making it modern with connections relevant to issues in Flint. Okay, I thought that would be interesting too. The class is to collaboratively rewrite the play and then perform it if there is time. Gah! So far the collaboration is difficult! And my favorite prof, though still my fave, has disappointed me. It has not been fun so far but things are looking up (knock wood) but I may not be able to perform (boo!).

All this plus taking care of my three nephews with Aspergers (and dealing with the state and care agencies regarding them– UGH!) and trying to hold done a part time job. Not to mention taking care of my husband, who had a heart attack in August; I have had to totally change his diet and I am not even done yet. Add to that my health issues and my roller-coaster riding emotions and yes, I am a little, no, a lot crazy right now.

Love this, it is so true:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page500.html

I have met a lot of those people– heck, a lot of those people exist within me, ha! But definitely not normal, never normal. I love it!

Read this excerpt from another blog:

unnecessarywisdom

The Anti-Step Mom

“I was a child of divorce. Two divorces actually. And I lived in three families: my biological parents, my dad and step-mom, and later, my mom and step-dad. By the time I married my now ex-husband, I was pretty convinced I’d be a great step-mom, having had such a thorough and varied experience living in step-families.

I was therefore shocked to discover I had feelings of true animosity when our new family was first formed. Jealousy, insecurity, ineptitude and competitiveness just to name a few. I was ashamed to have these feelings because I loved my step-daughter very much. Ellie was an angel, just 6 years old, and she adored me. Why was I being so immature?

Forming a step-family requires a lot of emotional maturity. And a lot of emotional growth. There is the ever-present reality that your partner loved someone before you. And he loved her a lot. He married her. And they shared something you never will. That first time down the aisle. That first time getting a positive pregnancy test back. And that first time holding a first baby. A lot of firsts. You can never share that with him and you can never compete with those memories. And there is a constant reminder of that. There is a child.”

From:

http://unnecessarywisdom.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-anti-step-mom/

Certainly interesting BUT not my story, not my journey, and not my problem! 

I get so fucking tired of reading this kind of shit from step-mom blogs and articles. I absolutely hate that these complaints are too often used to characterize the stepmother journey. Granted, the feelings and complaints are a part of SOME stepmothers’ feelings and problems with the role but they hardly tell the story for all us and many of us never have a problem with jealousy, the fact that our man loved someone else before us (or may have loved—the love certainly can be called into question) , etc….Our problem(s) have more to do with people characterizing us as jealous and wicked, that the problems mentioned in the blog were true for all step-moms when they are not, not being accepted as a mother and a part of our step-kids lives when others, such as the step-dad certainly are, and even to do with the birth moms shitty treatment of us, her ex-husband, and her own kids.

I was not jealous of my stepson or his mother. I always recognized my stepson had a place in my husband’s life and that he, as  a child, would often have to take priority. I also realized that I was not my stepson’s mom– he had a mother– and that I could never usurp that role nor did I want to. I did not resent my stepson’s presence in my husband’s life nor the presence of my stepson’s mother in his life, not to mention the fact that my husband (or boyfriend) would have to have contact with her for the sake of the child they shared.

I never had a problem with the fact my husband loved somebody before me– he didn’t know any better, he hadn’t met me yet, LOL. I loved someone before him too. As for being first with all  the other stuff– I have never given a rat’s ass about any of that. The love my husband and I share is a first for us, if you care about such things, and it is unique to us. Anything we do together is always going to be a first for US and special. I loved our wedding and never even thought that he had already had another one. Who cares! I also never even thought about the fact that his son was his first and possibly only biological child and that it all happened with his ex-wife. I just accepted that when I met my husband and figured out that we were going to be together. It was not something that bothered me one bit and I suppose if it had then I would have thought twice about being with him for the long haul. I always think about all the special times we have had and that is enough for me. If I happened to ever conceive a child I feel it would be just as special for him, perhaps even more so, as with his son. I never thought that had anything to do with being first and I truly believe this need to be first is a problem some people have that is not unique to stepmothers but a personality flaw.

Competitiveness and jealous in my stepmother journey have always originated with my stepson’s mother even though she was the one that left my husband and initially wanted the divorce. I never had a problem with competitiveness and jealousy other than being on the receiving end of it and how it all affected my stepson. I did not understand it– could not fathom why. I felt like I was not a threat and did not make any threatening actions or statements in the very beginning. Only later did I realize that no matter what I did, most birth mothers will always see other women in their kids lives as a threat. Sad and totally unnecessary.

My problems also have to do with the fact that my stepson’s mother did not treat my husband well or very fair. In my opinion that woman did everything she could possibly do (and still maintain her image/ego) to fuck up my husband’s and my relationship with HER son. That has always been my biggest problem with this whole stepmother, step-family, divorce thing. I feel with a lot of step-mothers my experience is true and that the problems of step-mothers rest squarely with the birth mom (the ex) and HER problems and insecurities along with the parental alienation that often goes hand and hand with one parent feeling insecure, loss of control, and threatened in some way, no matter if the threat(s) is based in reality or just a product of a birth-mom’s over-protectiveness and/or imagination, ego (sometimes mental illness).

Yay! Young kids are at school and I am going to have a ‘Me Day’….well as much of a me day I can have when you have 4 kids (one is 19 but still…), a husband, 3 pets (dog, cat, bird) and the dishes and laundry are piling up, not to mention that I am taking 3 grad classes this semester.

Whelp, there goes that concept. But I get to stay home and work on the laundry and dishes while I do some homework– YAY! I think I’ll take a nap first though. That will be the ME time…so tired.

A little understanding goes a long way but then again my patience is wearing thin these days. Here is a case where it is sometimes better to receive rather than give, haha.

People do take advantage.

I guess some of us are just more evolved than others…

….as in some us are adults with lots of experience and some are still teenagers (even though legally an adult) and have lots to learn, yet, while some will never grow in certain areas and may never understand.

That is all I am willing to say for now. Ha…

First draft of my haiku. Some are kind of silly but that is okay. You need to have a little fun with writing. 

Haiku

September 2013

 

Hot star-sun glaring,

bleaching birch trees stark

against fine blue sky.

 

Suspended summer.

Air clings, a hot, heavy wrap

stifling skin and breath.

 

Late season sizzle

tinny buzz rises from trees

teasing summer’s end.

 

Eating lunch alone,

I catch a friend studying.

Say hello, walk by.

 

Stray kitty kitty

don’t go out into the road.

Wild out there alone.

 

Horses clip clop past

Ferry horn blasting awake

Mackinac dreams.

 

Tension spent, glowing

afterward, a ghost drifts in

shifting energy.

 

Shifty weather change

hot to cold, stuffing noses.

Michigan weather blows.

 

Tuesday ninety-four,

Fast forward a few days, temps fall.

Friday’s high, forty.

 

New moon star-bathing,

I sit alone, half wishful,

Catch one gliding down.

 

Whispering trees sleep

I bask in nighttime stillness

Half-formed wish meets falling star

 

Moonlit walk, dark town

Clip clop of hooves sound distant,

Crash of waves, buoy clang.

 

Full moon bright, beams shine

painting great lake silver this night,

and cliff folly grey to white.

 

Full moon, lovely walk

down flowered dark streets with ghosts

Spiders web streetlights.

 

Geranium red,

colonial white, foiling

many blues, lake to sky.

 

 

My set of related, story haiku:

 

House cloaked by tall pine

Darkened windows, vacant stare

A woman stands there.

 

Forgotten woman,

Forsaken garden, yearning

for what used to be.

 

Dark windows gaping,

watching, shadowed, searching

seasons for lost blooms.

 

Dusky overgrowth

hiding blooms sleeping below

unseen but still there.

 

One super moon night,

clouds darken tumescent orb

creating shadows.

 

Clouds pass in time.

Full moon rises high,

illuminating all.

 

Shadows banished,

ghost woman now bright white

strains to see.

 

Her ghostly form glows,

As she peers out of blackness,

one silvered rose.

 

My naughty haiku that I actually read in class, ha ha. I was only slightly embarrassed. I knew Jan would pick out that one!

 

Lips skim un-licked head

Tongue tipples velvety cleft

Gorged shaft, hard to resist.