Posts (page 2)
Ugh.
I slept until 5:15pm today. I didn't go to bed all that late last night. Maybe about 1 or 2 am.
There were times throughout the day when I would slightly come to and I would just be aware of a crushing headache. Maybe that's why I oversleep. Maybe there is a physical reason. But let me be honest with you -- this has been going on since about 1990. For the past 17 years. At least.
So this is no new mystery to me. For about the first 15 years I didn't think much of it. I barely noticed that I lived a lot less weekend hours than anybody else did because I was sleeping them away. I would get up around 1 or 2 or 3pm. Sometimes later.
I didn't really start to question it until a year or two ago. None of my escapes are working for me anymore: overeating sweet foods, underearning/overspending and now sleep. I never got into drugs and I drank my 20's away but once I hit 30 (and broke up with Ken) I easily put the bottle down. It held no more allure for me.
I have been to doctors, been in therapy (for years), been in program (starting about two years ago with DA: Debtors Anonymous -- which really has helped to change my life!) and nothing seems to change this behavior of mine.
I write this now because I am a little sad I have wasted (yet again) another day. Now it is 10pm and Monday is right on my heels. I'm not sure what I need to do -- the doctors tried different medications and different regimes throughout the years but nothing has had any impact on my severe oversleeping.
I am trying to be in acceptance of it cuz Lord knows I haven't been able to fight it or force it. It sometimes helps to make mid-morning plans on Saturdays and Sundays but when I go to bed the night before I am terrified (yes, terrified) I will not get up in time to make them. I do have a deep fear of this thing I can't seem to control.
So, no answers here. Only questions. And perhaps a bit too much honesty to be publishing on my blog to a new neighborhood of friends who barely know me.
For the past year that Shelley has been my boss I have marveled at her brilliance and tried to force my mind to work the way hers does. I try and I try and I try but my mind does not follow the same path. She is a career girl. From her first day in the department she was already looking at where in the company she wanted to move. Shelley kept asking me where I might want to move but the only thing I had in between my ears was trying to keep the daily tasks I had to perform on my job straight. I had no more energy or brain power to dedicate to anything else.
I have mixed feelings about her leaving. It is a pretty good thing that I will be standing on my own two feet because Shelley can be such a bitch. She actually told me that I would basically crash and burn without her to help me and that she doesn't want to go to the new department worrying about me getting chewed up and spat out by the others in HR. Then don't ...
I finally had to resign myself to the fact that Shelley's (brilliant) brain works the way it does and my brain works (somewhat) the way it does. Just accept it and let it be.
Friday afternoon Shelley and I were in the SVP's office and Shelley offered her 1,564,974th brilliant idea and the SVP looked at me, pointed at Shelley and said, "THAT is the way I want you to think."
Nope, can't be done. I have already tried that on my own. And I am through with beating myself up for what I am not.
My assets are not the kind that Wall Street is interested in. I don't burn up the ladder in Corporate America. I may not rally the troops on to victory. But I am one of the genuinely kindest people you will ever meet. Friday night my friend Hunter told me that, "You are really funny. I don't know if it is that you are getting more comfortable and it is coming out or I am just finally noticing it but you make me laugh. And you have this incredible natural timing."
Jason said, "You're cool. I knew that from the first time I saw you. You were so welcoming ... I felt good right away."
Donna writes, "I love your little cat stories. They are so engaging and full of love. You really need to turn them into a book!" and "Don't forget I love you so much, Tam!"
Guy who backed into my car in parking lot and I didn't notify his insurance. After I got the estimate it was so tiny -- and I had done most of the damage to my bumper already -- I told him to take the money he would have sent to me and take himself and his girlfriend out to a really nice dinner, he said, "You make me want to be a better person."
Christina Kelley, KRTH-AM on air jock, "You make the world a better place. You are who we need more of."
Co-worker at job a while back, "If there is reincarnation and I can come back, I want to come back as one of your cats!"
I'm just a really good kid. I might not be able to come up with great ideas for work, I might not understand how to climb the corporate ladder or how to be thinking of something other than what I am thinking of, I may not be the Goddess Shelley, but I'm pretty special in my own right.
So, no, Ms SVP, I will not be thinking like that. I will be thinking like me -- a kind, gentle, loving, warm, understanding person who's qualities are not that highly rated in America, but in my soul they are tops.
And yet I have trouble writing a few sentences that will be read by precious few. Precious few who will think to themselves, "Wow. I used to try to encourage Tamara to write .... what was I thinking? Didn't she used to have talent?"
Long answer: probably not. I used to think I did though. Writing was used to save me from a physically abusive childhood -- I would author poems and cartoons and short stories and was never short on material. My grandmother lovingly encouraged me -- I would make up stories as we lay in bed on a summer's night and were drifting off to sleep.
I loved the feel of a pen gliding over paper, the nib permanently creating ink-filled impressions on the sheet. Words I was writing, stories I was telling -- to myself.
I want to go back in time to when being a writer was something special. When it took effort to pick up pen and paper and begin to scribble away. It wasn't as easy as having a computer at your fingertips, typing out emails all day long. One had to go out of one's way to secure writing instrument and writing reciplicant (I made up a word -- enjoy it). As I keep reading blog after blog the one thing I have noticed is that each and every one of those authors is entirely capable. The reading is enjoyable, interesting. (Unlike this) (Typical Tamara dig at herself)
I am completely intimidated by all the other bloggers out there. Be they 10, 50 or 20. I love reading what they have written but I am getting tired of writing, "That's great!" I don't know what else to say -- I don't know how else to express my appreciation. I want to be able to push MY writing while I compliment theirs. But I am scared. I don't want to come off as uncool or unhip. I want them to marvel at the wittiness I possess. Or at least I used to posses when Ken Crosby and I were drinking Hollywood under the table in the late '80's.
Among other things, Ken was a great audience -- when he would let me have the stage. That was before we were a couple, when we were just best friends. And he was in awe of me. Before I became his girlfriend and he discovered how easy I was to push around. Then all we did was fight. Our gregarious friendship had not foreshadowed this darkness, this sadness. We limped along for 4 1/2 years before I left him -- and a somewhat magical history -- for good.
My time has passed. And so I bow to the new blood, this invisible competition. It has stifled my voice. It feels like a stranger. Choppy and foreign.
Writing used to be very special to me, it used to be precious. It was my escape before alcohol, before sex, before sleep. I want to fall back into its timelessness and agelessness. I want to exist not in the world but between worlds. In that imagination I lived in as a young girl.
However, one thing is stopping me. And it is every kid with a keyboard, every person with a url.
They are ganging right up on me. And they have no idea. Nor could they care less. I am just one struggling soul in Hollywood trying to recapture her story. Before in final breath it leaves me. Just as alone as when I started.
Monday, May 14th is lil miss coco chanel's sixth birthday! I can hardly believe she is going to be six years old.
Tonight at the pet store I bought a container of fresh catnip, three fur mice and two round nothings-really filled with catnip. One is pink -- very close to her favorite color which is purple.
I once told somebody -- obviously NOT a cat parent -- that Coco's favorite color is purple. They said, "That is because YOUR favorite color is purple."
"No," I corrected them, "it's pink."
Only a non-animal owner would not understand that.
From the second I brought this little sweetie home -- at 6 tiny weeks old -- Coco Chanel took over my entire apartment. She did not need to first be put in a small room, get used to that, then be put in a room a little larger, get used to that .... No! She wanted it all and she wanted it at once!
I am so crazy about this little girl. She loves to be carried around on my back which we call "Boo Boo Express" and there is a little poem of sorts that is spoken while Coco rides, like the magestic queen she is, on top of me. Clawss digging in almost a little too much. That's my fault. I really need to trim them.
Coco has always had a strong, sweet personality. From the first night I had her she would sleep with me holding her against my chest, between my breasts. Hot little kitten body.
Then, one night it happened. She waited until she thought I had fallen asleep and she snuck away from me into the living room to go play with her favorite puffy ball on a spring toy (purple, of course). My little baby was growing up. Yes, I actually cried.
She is the happiest cat I have ever known. I call her my happy little dancer. I have never known a cat so delighted to be in their own skin. She seems to revel at being a feline. I would, too! I'm not really fond of being a human. It has been a tough tough journey. And it's not over yet...
Coco Chanel keeps me alive and connected. She has two brothers, Armani and Max Factor, and only when they play too roughly with her does she complain. Actually, she has taken to spitting and growling at them whenever they get too close and she can smell "Play Time!" on their breath.
She used to crawl into the dishwasher and get between the door (when it was down -- in the open position) and the bottom rack. The pictures I have of her are hilarious. She looks crushed! At first one thinks it is a demised kitty, but then you can see the life and humor in her young eyes.
Man! I love this cat!!
So tomorrow she will be six. It just goes by all too fast. And yet, there are certain things about my life that just seem to drag on in sorrow. But the cats -- it is always the cats -- who allow me to feel some joy. And my happy little dancer, lil miss coco chanel, fills my heart constantly.
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