7:00 am- wake up and shower.

8:00am- rush to work.

11:15 am- half hour lunch aka gas station coffee and gum.

4:00 pm- home from work.

5:00 pm- painting soon to be new home.

6:30 pm- still painting.

8:00 pm- still painting.

9:00 pm- flan break. :D

9:30 pm- home again and shower.

10:00 pm- return missed phone calls from the day while logging into my online class which just started.

10:41 pm- break because Charlie is just being way too damn cute to not pet.

11:00 pm- criminal minds, green tea, lights out and I’m ready to huff, puff and blow this day away.

ohhh tomorrow should be just as fun. yay.

1.  Fireworks.

2.  People who give good hugs.

3.  Extra hot coffee.

4.  A high five.

5.  Good horoscope days.

6.  Getting a two handed wave.

7.  When friends remember small things that are only mentioned in conversation.

8.  Gerber daisies.

9.  GETTING THE LAST GRAPE POPSICLE. oh, and the joke on the stick.

To say that my mom is not a part of my life would be a lie.  I know this and would never attempt to argue otherwise but it’s the way that she is involved that needs further explanation.  My mom is in every decision I make from here on out, I am actively trying to be the total opposite of the woman who gave birth to me.  I’m saying yes when she would have said no, I’m going left where she would have gone right and I am leaving any place she would of stayed. 

My mother and I have had a rocky relationship for many years with has consisted of short spans of communication followed by much longer spans of total zilch.  The last time we spoke was 3 months ago on my birthday and I hung up in tears not even ten minutes into it; before this phone call we hadn’t spoken in at least 6 months.  

I haven’t been able to summon the courage to call her back since that day.

To go months or even a year at a time without talking to my own mom is a terrible feeling and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone.  Sometimes I’m not sure if I feel more sadness from missing her or whether I’m just bitter at not having a “mom” around.  She is a stranger to me as I am one to her but she doesn’t quite see this.  My mom knows me as the thirteen year old girl who worshiped Nirvana, wore too much eyeliner and whose biggest worry was what to do with a Friday night.  My mom knows very little about the woman I have become and has missed out on some of the hardest most influential times in my life so far. 

I wonder a lot about my mother especially about what she was like at my age. I wonder how she imagined her life turning out; I wonder about her favorite things; I want to know if she ever had fun doing anything and I wonder what her biggest fears were.  I then wonder how she made the decisions in her life that have led her to where she is now.  I wonder so much because I am worried that one day I will wake up and realize I’m not happy, that I will have no idea how to fix it and that because of it the people in my life will suffer. 

Several years ago she moved to a state where she had no family, knew no people and had no life.  I hadn’t lived with her for years before but after she left I learned to separate my mom into two people, one, her as a parent and two, her as a person.  When I think of her as a parent I have a harder time forgiving her for the things she has said and done, I resent her because I feel like she gave up and got away with it and I hate her for not loving me enough to do whatever it took to stay in my life.  When I think of her as a person I feel sorry for her because I don’t believe she ever thought she was good enough for anything she truly wanted, I understand how hard she worked and how little she got out of it and I respect that she’s found the strength to get up every day despite the struggles life has thrown at her.  Thinking of her as only a person allows me to wonder about the reasons behind her decisions rather than judge her for them.  Thinking of her as only a parent I can only hope I will be very different from her. 

I believe with my whole heart that in order to be a good parent you have to be a good person.  I also believe that in order to be a good person it is necessary to find parts of yourself and then embrace/explore all of the good that you have found.  I think my mom has spent too much time focused on being what she thought everyone wanted her to be and not enough time being who she was while doing what she really wanted; two traits she unknowingly passed down to me.    She worries too much, stays stubborn for too long and does too little for herself.  I think these are tendencies that make parenting so hard for her. 

For the most part though, my mom and I don’t have much in common.  We are two very different people and have two very different personalities.  I keep this in mind when I start to worry about becoming her in the worst ways. 

While some of the choices I make aren’t the brightest or the safest, they all allow me to live and experience the situations that are shaping who I am.  My mom has given me the ability to live by showing me what happens when a person doesn’t.  I will always be grateful to her for that, the best lesson she ever taught me and she doesn’t even know it. 

Oh the irony…