Insomnia Strikes Again!

Well, here it is, 2:15 in the morning and I should be sleeping. I'm not sleeping. Luckily, I don't have work tomorrow. A friend of mine is getting married tomorrow, so I've got the day off. But I do have about a million things to do. My parents are taking care of the baby, so we've got to get him down to my sister's house where they'll pick him up, and then get out to western Mass and get checked into the hotel and get ready for the wedding, which starts at 4:00. And getting prepped for even part of the weekend away from home takes a lot of time these days. I don't know if that's why I can't sleep, or whether it's residual stress from the week, or what. It's maddening though. I don't want to be overtired for the wedding and now it's pretty much guaranteed that I will be. And I think my not wanting to be overtired makes the insomnia worse. Vicious circle.

Zen Master B

I think I've mentioned here before that my son is generally a very laid back child, and that I could learn from his ability to roll with the punches. I was thinking about that today, when it was brutally hot in our house and I was becoming more enraged by the minute when our air conditioning wouldn't work, while he was sunny as could be, giggling just to cheer me up. His approach to life is with gusto and a smile. Granted, this might be largely because he's seven months old, but even as such, he is an exceptionally mellow kid. It's yet another reason I find him to be such a blessing. When I take life too seriously and get myself into a dark place, one of his smiles or giggles can turn it right around for me. I mean, how lucky am I?! Today, I was in such a horrid mood, and he just started giggling and he kept right on giggling until I forgot what I was in a bad mood about in the first place. My little Zen master, showing me that joy can be found in simplicity and that the material world is unimportant as long as we have our inner smile. Or giggle. Whichever.

Yo, I'm just loungin', G...

I think I ripped that line off a Marky Mark song from back in the day, but it just seemed to fit, especially in light of the velour track suit.

So...

I was fourteen and a resident of a Boston suburb in 1990. As such, I loved me some New Kids on the Block. The confluence of events that brought them into my life at that moment was like a perfect storm of hormones and bubble gum music and I really can't remember anything before or since that inspired that sort of frantic excitement in me. The pure thrill that would buzz through me at the merest sighting of them on TV or a snippet of one of their songs on the radio, or a picture in a magazine...it was intoxicating. Don't even get me started on what it was like when my uncle got me an autographed picture of Joey McIntyre (my chosen favorite)...I was delirious.

My friends and I shamelessly stalked these people, along with God knows how many other girls our age. We were known to do ridiculous things like insist upon driving by Joey's house on the way to one friend's asthma doctor. (Yea. We went to the doctor with her just so we could drive by his house.) Once, when we were going to a concert, we set all the clocks in that same friend's apartment ahead an hour so we could leave earlier. People got to their concerts HOURS ahead of time, hoping for a sighting. Also, that friend's mom should probably be canonized, just for what she had to put up with from our 14 year old selves. She was the first adult I swore in front of, when the Pay Per View feed we were enjoying from six inches away momentarily froze in the middle of the introduction to a concert. Yes, you read correctly. The actual concert hadn't even begun yet.

My poor sister was 20 years old and came home from college to a room absolutely COVERED in images of these people in whom she had no interest. I had removed her beloved Jon Bon Jovi in favor of my beloved Joey. She was outraged, clearly. So saturated was she (unwillingly) in these images that she was known, on occasion, to dream of the fellas. Unlike me, however, she did NOT awake devastated that the dreams had ended. Go figure.

My Dad was the most supportive of my fandom. He bought me all the New Kids CD's. He bought me my concert tickets. Once, he even bought me my OWN Pay Per View concert. My Mom was...displeased, to say the least - mainly because I had a date on the night of the concert, so wasn't even home to watch the thing, meaning she and my Dad had to tape it for me. Naturally, after an evening of feigned indifference of all things New Kids, I RAN home and watched the tape, in its entirety, twice.

By the time they released their last album in 1994 (which, of course, my Dad brought home to me the day it was released), I was a senior in high school and had largely moved on musically to the more timely and hip likes of R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. I was curious enough about the album to give it a few listens, hoping to find some of the magic I remembered form four years earlier. But...that album just wasn't all that good, much as it still pains me to say it. That, combined with my 18 year old self consciousness over actually liking a (gasp!) boy band in the mid-nineties was enough to cause me to turn my back on my idols. A sad day, indeed.

Now, here it is in 2008, and the New Kids are reuniting. And I have to admit, it's pretty enjoyable. It's not as heady as it was 18 years ago. It couldn't be. I have more life experience and fewer hormones raging through me. But it's oddly comforting to see them on my TV once again, to remember how much joy they brought me at a pivotal moment in my life, to remember how daydreaming about Joey McIntyre afforded me an escape during some tough times. I'm hardly a 14 year old girl. I'm a wife and a mother. And I'm hardly going to plaster posters on my walls. I have actual art (apologies to Lynn Goldsmith - I do not mean to imply that your lovely book was not actual art). But I will surely go to see them perform, and remember that time Joey TOTALLY looked right at me from the stage of Worcester Centrum, back in 1990.

Tired

I haven't written here in a couple weeks. I've been in kind of a down cycle lately. I've been so exhausted and uninspired. I try to be a positive person, and especially lately, I've been trying to be more positive, but the past couple weeks, I've been struggling with that. I just get flat out exhausted, and I think that makes it more difficult to stay positive. Work has been frustrating too, so that doesn't help. If I have to spend time away from my son, I want it to be at least time well spent, you know? And sometimes, I feel like I'm just swimming against a current in my career. I want to find that thing that I'm meant to do. I know it's out there, just like how I used to want the right person to come along, and then he did. I know that right career path is out there. And I know what it is. I just need to stop hiding and make it happen. I think there is a part of me that is afraid to go for it, because if it doesn't pan out, then what would I dream of, you know? But the thing is, I know it will pan out. I do. I know it with everything in me. There isn't a shred of doubt. It's just like I've been holding myself back...and I don't know why. And then I have phases like I'm in right now when I feel mentally exhausted and my inspiration is all dried up. I've got to find a way to recharge, so I can go out there and get my career going.

Six Months!...and six days...

Last Friday, April 25th, my son turned six months old. My plan was to write a post that day to mark the occasion. But...he had other ideas. We had an errand to run at noontime, so I was getting him ready to go, when...he projectile vomited all over me. LOVELY. It seemed like maybe his lunch just hadn't settled right, so I changed him and got him ready and we headed out. We got to the parking lot of Babies R Us and I put him into his stroller. He then...projectile vomited all over me again. So, instead of running errands and writing blog posts, we went to visit the pediatrician. He had a stomach flu, and recovered pretty quickly. But then I got the stomach flu and didn't recover as quickly. I haven't been that ill in a long while. So, all this to explain why this post is six days late. But happy belated six month birthday, Buddy!

The past six months have been the most amazing I've had. You hear all these amazingly corny things about parenthood and what it's like...but the thing is, it really is everything they say it is. I have always had an abundance of love in my life. I have so many family members and good friends around me. I never felt like there was any shortage of love in my life, especially not since I've known my husband, who has brought even MORE love to my life. But in the last six months, I've experienced a kind of love I didn't even know existed. All those things you read in greeting cards about a heart beating outside your own body and all that...it's all sort of just TRUE. It's pretty effing cool.