mom

she's
actual
size

Whew. You have no idea what coming up with this new design did to me. And yes, I'm aware that the top and bottom bits don't line up exactly on the mark (which is where those little vertical lines come from), but damned if I'm going to spend another two hours to fix it. Can I say it adds character? Ok, it adds character.

I've gotten rid of the sidebar, and added a new section: others, where I list journals and comics and other stuff I do.

I was going to do another meta entry like I did when I last changed my design, but I started it... And got bored. I mean, really. How many times can the same old shit be hashed out? People are mean. Deal with it.

Hi, Mom!

Sometimes I wish I could just give my mom the URL for my journal.

It would make things so easy. I love talking to her, but I prefer to have my thoughts all organized before presenting whatever I want to talk about. So when she casually asks, "So, are you and Dave using any protection?" I can have an answer.

(Yes, yes, I know that the right answer is "We haven't had sex yet," but that seems even more wrong than telling my mom that we use condoms or whatever. I settled for a mumbled "Yes.")

She's a remarkable woman. She burned her bra in the 60s. She raised three kids in the 70s, 80s and 90s. She's been a librarian, a clerk, a secretary, a member of the PTA, and a Girl Scout troop leader. She is an artist. She makes wonderfully intricate cards. She can sew and knit. She makes a damn good lasangna.

There are some things that baffle me. When we have company over, she calls my dad "sir." She places a great deal of importance on how clean her house is. She has a hard time standing up for herself.

But she's always been there for me. She's been a shoulder to cry on during the bad times, and she helped celebrate the good times. She knew how to bandage the scrapes and get the blood stains out of my underwear when I had an accident. She sat me down when I was 12 and gave me a very thorough birth control talk. ("The boys do what?" I had asked.)

She can be annoying. I have never understood her devotion to a spotless house; to me, spotless means "not touched." A home should look lived in, otherwise it's just a house. Clean house and clean kids were her status symbols, and she took great pride in them. But it was my sisters and I who scrubbed the floors and vacuumed the carpets over and over, never fully satisfying our mother. It annoys me when she comes over to my apartment and clucks at the kitchen full of mouldering dishes and the carpet strewn with car hair. In a way, I think I'm unconsciously rebelling against the strict cleanliness that I was brought up in.

But... When she thinks of me leaving for another country, she gets teary-eyed. She will openly cry, hugging me close to her. She will miss me terribly when I leave.

I'm going to miss her, too.

I love you, Mama. Happy Mother's Day.