Synaptic misfires

Lately, it seems as though my life, as well as the lives of many of those around me, is in a state of confusion and change. I fear that this summer, much like the previous, will be gone and its memories devoid of the joys that a long awaited summer should bring.

I gave last summer to a project at work that completely encompassed my personal and professional life. It feels like I have given this summer the same fate, with the added bonus of total emotional upheaval. However, as I have seen recently, there are many times when, just as your life is seemingly on the brink, you find that every emotion you have given yourself over to is not nearly poignant enough.

There is a moment, right before you tell someone bad news–awful news, hurtful news, news that neither of you want to know or acknowledge. A moment when you both realize the awfulness of the situation, all the while not entirely knowing the consequences. In this moment, you cannot breathe, you cannot move, you are riveted, awaiting the telling. Your body feels as though it is being pinned to the earth with a force you cannot comprehend. Time stops. Noise stops. The earth itself discontinues its arc around the galaxy. And there is silence. Infinite silence. But, despite it all, you have already crossed the threshold of no return. There is no turning back. What has begun must be finished. And you take a breath–a weighted, ragged, breath–and say it. And then your future awaits.

I feel like this pinnacle is where I and many of my closest, dearest, friends are living. On the tip of the knife. Awaiting the fall. Awaiting the answer. Awaiting the relief and the healing process to come.

A very dear friend of mine recently lost the child he and his family were eargerly anticipating at only 15 weeks gestation. I cannot help but remember a recent time when my sister-in-law lost her child at 18 weeks. I can only imagine that my friend is experiencing all of the typical emotions attached to the grieving process as well as many, many more. Emotions related to how, and why, and promises and lives unmet.

I remember watching a child–a tiny, newly formed child, barely given to this world and mostly in-between it–fight for breath as nurses and doctors looked on. The professionals that we rely upon in life-and-death situations, placating, saying “there is no pain” and “they do not know” and “they’re just too small to live”. No breathing tube will fit. No NICU will help. They are just too small. Too perfect for this world. So we must say hello and goodbye.

We get to hold them and fall in love with them. We get to see their faces, their eyes, their fingers and toes. Their suffering is real–despite what those around us try to say–it is apparent that, yes, they are alive, and they are strong, and fighting to be alive. And there is solace in that. A tiny solace that they want to be with us, just as we want to be with them. Little angels given to us to bring hope and a brief glimpse into the world in-between. Thank you. We remember.

I would mention HOW LONG it has been since my last post, and really, I should even apologize for the lack of content around here, but that would just exacerbate the rumor that I happen to procrastinate things. I don’t know where that could have come from. Really. Who spreads such LIES?! I would never have more than one uncompleted post just lying around, waiting for someone to finish up already and publish. No. Not me. And, if there happened to be unpublished posts, they would DEFINITELY not be sitting around for days and days. Or weeks. Nope. Because that’s just sinful. I promise.

Anyway, moving on to the real subject matter of this post. I can kind of imagine making this a recurring feature here. Can’t you picture it now: “things that make Ashley Callahan sick, nauseous, or vomit”? Pretty catchy, no? No. I didn’t really think so either. And, to be honest, there really isn’t much in this world that could make me vomit. I have such an aversion to throwing up that even if my stomach feels horrid and I WISH I COULD get sick, I just can’t. Because puking has to be the most horrid feeling in the entire world. At least to me. Which has its pluses and minuses. On the up side, I really don’t think I could ever pull off the whole bulimic thing. But I just hope that I never have morning sickness. And if you were wondering, NO I am NOT pregnant. My mood swings are 100% natural.

However, there are two things in this world that if I happen to smell or taste, make my stomach turn completely over: artificial grape flavoring and black liquorice.

When I was a kid, I loved grape flavoring. When offered a lollipop or Popsicle, I would often select grape over all the other flavors. This was pretty convenient for me because many of the things designed to be irrefutably palatable for children are grape. Such as cough medicine.

I can understand why manufacturers developed flavored children’s medicine. Being sick is no fun and taking medicine is no fun–unless it’s candy! I used to be a huge fan of Nick-at-Night and I would stay up late watching all of the old sitcoms, such as I Love Lucy, Leave it to Beaver, and Dick Van Dyke. I seem to recall from these shows that “back in the day” everyone thought that liquid medicine tasted awful. It is likely because people, especially children, hated the taste that flavored, syrupy, candied medicine (Vita Veda Vegemin!) was created. But in the present, most people (or at least me) have never had less than four flavors of anything to choose from. Everything from cough drops to aspirin can taste delicious. Which is probably why, when I was a young and impressionable youth, I decided to chug an entire bottle of grape flavored children’s cough syrup.

I won’t elaborate about the consequences, other than I slept a lot and threw up a lot. Ever since this incident, I have been completely repulsed by grape flavored products. Especially the smell. Bleh. My tummy hurts just thinking about it.

I’m not sure how or when black liquorice started making me feel ill. Perhaps it has some connection to the grape cough medicine fiasco because the worst part about black liquorice is the smell. And the taste. And the texture. OK, everything is disgusting. The weird thing is that I like red liquorice. Or at least I used to.

Before recently, the last time I had eaten red liquorice was when I worked at our local movie theater. On one of my shifts I had been given a rather short break and I was starving. Since I didn’t have time to run across the street to McDonald’s, I bought a bag of red liquorice from the concession stand. And ate the whole bag. Yes, all of it. The tummy ache that I developed shortly afterward was excruciating. That was definitely one of those times when I REALLY, REALLY wanted to throw up. But didn’t. Because that’s nasty. I’ll just leave the other consequence of the digestive process up to your imagination, but it also made me REALLY, REALLY wish I had thrown up.

Apparently, enough time has passed since this incident for me to develop candy amnesia. Because I recently purchased a bag of red liquorice from the grocery store. Which is weird because I really don’t eat a lot of candy. I am also not much of an impulse buyer (at least, until recently. Geeze, what has HAPPENED to me?) but it was right THERE. In the middle of the aisle! And on sale! And I was hungry! And when I got home I stuffed three pieces into my face immediately. And felt sick the rest of the evening. The movie theater incident suddenly came back into my memory and I stuffed the rest of the bag out of sight in the breadbox, hoping that my husband would finish it before my amnesia came back again.

Let’s fast forward a couple of days. For dinner one evening last week we decided to make chili dogs. Before we sat down to eat, I grabbed some bread from the breadbox. This breadbox:

I served a generous portion of chili dogs to both of us and we took a bite of our meal. And as my own chewing slowed I looked across the table to my husband. And saw that we shared identical faces of disgust at the LIQUORICE FLAVORED BREAD that was wrapped around our chili dogs! Apparently, the liquorice that was sharing space with the buns in our breadbox had infused its taste and smell with everything else.

We managed to finish the meal (barely) by getting new, bun-less chili dogs and eating a lot of potato chips. But now I think we both have an aversion to liquorice. And maybe even chili dogs. Perhaps bread, but we’ll have to take it one day at a time now.

I have debated for some time whether or not to write this post. On the one hand, I really don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. On the other, I would like for once to be able to unleash my innermost feelings, perhaps even to those people that I might hurt.

Again, on the one hand, I would like my blog to be place where people find humor, and perhaps solace, in another who has funny escapades similar to themselves. I hate to be a downer. I really don’t want to write all the time about serious issues that make people sad. Because its very hard for me to be sad. But, certain situations, especially those that are related to family holidays, often give me pause and force me to think about the obvious. Today, because it happens to be Father’s Day, I am thinking about the father(s) that I never had.

My mother married three times. Her first husband produced my half-sister, who is ten years (roughly) older than me. In her second marriage, she had me. With her third, she inherited a step-son. To my knowledge, none of these children are in contact with my mother or each other. But perhaps this subject is for a later post.

My mother and father parted ways, to my best guess, when I was 2 or 3 years old. I have heard rumors of infidelity, but I cannot make an accurate statement to that account for either party. It is mostly this lack of communication, this lack of history, that has haunted me as I slowly transform into an adult.

I do know that my father was able to have visitiation, at least every other weekend or so, until I was roughly eight years old. What I remember most was missing him dearly. I remember asking my mother when my father would be picking me up, with an adult’s memory, and wondering why he hadn’t called or when he might.

I remember one instance when I was so distraught that he had not called on his weekend, that my mother called and told him to come get me or else. I was so excited to see him, and obviously, my mother so upset, that by the end of my time with him, my mother threatened to leave me there.

This was always a scary prospect. While I loved him, and missed him, my juvenile mind could not comprehend the situations that he was putting me in. I remember times when I met new women on a regular basis. I remember the house that my father ended up in, a common house, no better than a drug house, in which several young people resided, and my mother supposedly found another woman’s underpants tucked in with the rest of my suitcase’s belongings upon my return.

However, I will also admit that I remember a long time before all of this when he was with a wonderful woman named Kristy. A time which was filled with Barbie and Ken dolls, goldfish named Chloe, and pretend-time when I could be someone, or something, else. Kristy was a wonderful woman who tried to keep in touch with me, even after her relationship with my father had dissolved. She was quite possibly the last pinnacle of true childhood that I can recall.

Shortly after all of this was a blank time. All that I knew was that my father didn’t want to see me. There weren’t many people–even grandmothers, aunts, or uncles–who wanted to interfere. My step-father adopted me, at least legally. I remember that he even threw a large party at my elementary school to try and make the other fifth-grader’s OK with my name change.

I’ll just say that my middle and high-school years were one of turmoil, as most people’s are. My mother was going through some problems that I didn’t completely understand at the time. I do feel like I was relied upon beyond my years for many things. It is just now as an adult that I wonder if my mother did not suffer from an undiagnosed manic-depressive personality disorder, in addition to severe alcoholism and prescription drug abuse. She relied on my step-father to “parent” me. By parenting, I’m referring to picking me up from marching band practices, school trips, and other menial tasks. To be fair, my step-father was always there. He was the only person that I could relay on sometimes. Even when it was beyond what he should have been doing, for personal or habitual reasons (I do also wonder if he shared many, or more, of my mother’s personal problems, namely, alcoholism).

When I was in high school, I learned, shortly after a school-wide program about the subject, that my father had AIDS. I’m not sure that I understood much about the consequences of this discovery at the time except that my relationship with my biological father would be “different”, if I chose to have a relationship with him at all. It was shortly after this that I realized that my father did not, in fact, give his paternity rights up when I was roughly eight years old, but rather was forced by my mother because of his backlog of child-support payments. It was because of money that I did not see my father every other weekend. It was because my father could not, or would not, pay for me to live, and because of my mother’s vindictiveness, that I had not seen my father or known of him until that very awful point.

Afterwards, I came to know that I had an autistic half brother, which to this day, I do not know as well as I should. This is probably the saddest part of all. My father recently has been in the hospital very sick with illnesses related to his overall disease. Of course, I find it very hard to relate and how to discuss this ordeal with him. I pray that one day we will overcome this and I will somehow know how to be the adult in a relationship that I previously only had with a child.

The relationship that I am saddened the most about is with my step-father. Now that I am a woman, I can see his faults and his weaknesses. And I am thankful for the support that he gave me when no one else would have me. Thank you. For you are the closest to a father that I have had. You walked me down the aisle and I have not seen you since. And I am sad. I love you. Happy Father’s Day.

~Ashley

My dear husband’s 27th birthday was on Wednesday and I am just now blogging about it. Now, I understand that a post about my husband and his birthday may not be the most interesting read for anyone other than, well, my husband. And maybe me, on a good day. Even so, I had every intention to post a tender and loving birthday tribute prior to the event for everyone to enjoy. Well… OK, maybe just for my husband to enjoy. And possibly me.

In my mind I had envisioned telling the world what a wonderful, supportive, and all around fantastic man I have and how very deeply I wished for him to have a wonderful birthday. I was certain it would be something memorable that we would both appreciate. Or… at least something he would appreciate. Or be teased mercilessly about by friends, family, and coworkers. But, of course, I can’t be bothered with details like that.

As you can see, however, such a post does not exist (you can breathe a sigh of relief now. Really. It’ll feel good.). If I had thought ahead, I could have written the post on Tuesday and set it up to publish sometime on Wednesday and my plan would have worked. But instead I was busy selecting and buying all of the gifts I had failed to purchase earlier as well as baking and decorating the cake I had neglected to make in advance.

If I had been resourceful, I could have even written the post on Wednesday and published it before he arrived home and my plan would have still at least taken place, albeit, not as well. But sadly, I was scurrying to wrap all of the presents that he would be unwrapping mere minutes after I had finished wrapping them. After I had so painstakingly used one inch long sewing scissors to cut each square of paper. Because all other tools typically used to cut paper, with the exception of a hole punch, had become LOST IN THE GARAGE.

But, neither of these scenarios came to pass. So now, instead of a mushy love tribute, you must endure a post about my husband’s past-tense birthday and how all of my last minute work turned out. Let’s begin, shall we?

TA DA! Yes, that brown blob to the left is a cake. Its made from a super secret Callahan family recipe that was created by a late great-grandmother with magical cake making skills. Because apparently she could make this thing look like a cake instead of a cow patty.

Now that I have shown the world my awesome cake decorating skills, let’s examine my lesser known but equally fantastic gift wrapping abilities. Move over, Martha!

I only have one question–why did everything I bought come in a ROUND package? And does anyone know the proper technique to fold paper around curved packages anyway? And do manufacturers put their products in this type of packaging to drive me insane? OK, that was three questions. Three questions that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I may never be able to sleep again knowing that the world has seen how pitifully I wrap round packages. I can’t go on.

Just kidding! This is one of my favorites because it showcases just how careless, er, resourceful I can be. You see that flap of paper that looks out of place? Let’s just call that technique “patching the hole”.

My husband has the frustrating ability of being able to immediately know what the contents of any given present are. This has led me to become somewhat sneaky with what I buy and how I package things. To the point that I’ve even hidden smaller and otherwise obvious gifts (such as CDs and video games) in overly large boxes that I weighed down with something heavy. And even going to all of that effort, he STILL knew. So, I was understandably excited when this one stumped him.

Oh look–there’s the birthday boy himself! He looks rather regal, no? I heard a rumor that there was some “commentary” about a photo from an earlier post. To avoid such gossip this time and to keep my husband’s dignity intact, I took the liberty of covering the area in question. I’m sure all parties will be satisfied.

I think this set of corn holders and trays were his favorite gift. You can tell what a stingy, um, considerate wife I am to buy my husband such a useful gift. These are actually a replacement set for the ones I bought for his birthday last year. Because my husband loves him some corn.

OK, I kid. This was probably his favorite gift. Even though its technically just a gift card and therefore just the promise of a future gift. That he must select himself.

And no, my procrastination had absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that he received a gift card instead of an actual tool. I blame it entirely on the fact that Sears carries FOUR different kinds of DeWalt heavy duty reciprocating saws. And perhaps because it employs at least five very INQUISITIVE salesmen that all seemed overly curious about the strange lady in high heels doing some late-night shopping for power tools.