"Sunday Morning-You're doing your thing and I...am doing mine"

Yard Sale, Selling CDs & Emmett's Lemonade Stand

There's some remorse after having a yard sale...it's weird. There's some odd sadness that happens when you've gotten rid of things --even if you don't use them anymore. I didn't get rid of the CD with the song in my title, because CDs are extremely hard for me to give up. I didn't sell any. I don't even throw away scratched ones. And mix CDs are the worst. Scratched, caseless CD's without liner notes. Mike is begging me to go through them, but somehow that music relates to my history.

So yesterday we had a yard sale, and weird as it is, the hardest thing for me to let go were Mike's CD's. He had years and years of what most people would consider a great collection. Daniel Johnston, Radiohead, Half Japanese, Luna, (I saved Sigorous) and on and on. Early on, a young indie rock record shop owner who saw my post on craigslist came and bought all the best ones. About 30. Mike sold them for $100 and they were just gone. Mike doesn't care, but for me it's monumental. Like we just aged. Like, he just did something that years down the line he'll say "Yeah, I used to have an awesome CD collection". Like one of the coolest parts of my husband is now in a record store. To Mike, he has them all in his computer and doesn't feel this at all.

Emmett's Lemonade stand didn't work. Called "The Superhero Refill Station", he is way too young to have a Lemonade stand and was asking me to tell every person that "If they wanted Lemonade, he had some". It was very cute, but also embarrassing and it put me in a hard position. I was (obviously) not going to tell people that but I didn't want to let emmett down. We didn't have the kind of cooler with the spicket, so I had to pour every glass (so suddenly it's "My" stand). Additionally, Emmett became reattached to his toys -- the ones he told us we could sell. We let him keep a few. I want Emmett to get into Lemonade stands someday. For Audrey and I, this was a major step in our entereprenural development (I really believe that) and was one of the most fun things we could do on a summer day. In fact, my dad actually made us a real wood lemonade stand with a shelf and a wood banner area at the top. We'd wake up in the summer and just decide to do a Lemonade stand on Marshall Road.


Watching a disturbing show.

Then, Mike and Emmett went to a fair and I opted not to go. This was the right move as I ended up sleeping for 6 hours in the afternoon, waking up, and going back to bed for the night. I forced myself to watch something I would never otherwise watch. An MSNBC report on a case of child molesting.

Anything dealing with harm to children is something that upsets me so deeply, that I avoid it. But last night I decided that I NEED to realize that not all people are good and that I am too trusting. That I AM good and that sort of mindset is something I don't understand. That I need to, as a mother, become a little more wary of people I don't know. So I watched it. The entire thing. And then I watched a show about Maximum Security Inmates. And as hard for me as it was, I am glad I did it. I need to err on my instinct. I need to allow my instincts to be wrong when it comes to people I don't know well. Emmett is the most important thing in my life and protecting him is the only thing in the world that pumps me into extreme pride and furious defense. Seeing that has positioned me in a different way.
The most important job I have is protecting him.

We live in an evil world. It's like, there are two types of people -- good and bad. I have surrounded myself with good people. Not to say the people I know don't have a sinister side, but it's not one that does serious damage to other people. I believe that ruining another person or harming another person physically or emotionally for the long term, is the most terrible thing a person can do.

Feeling happier being married

Having said all that, lately, I've been feeling happy with my marriage and my husband. For so long, I thought we were destined for a life of misery. I'm not sure what happened, but somehow, things are getting a million times better. I've been feeling lately like Mike is my partner. Like I made a really solid choice -- something that's good for me. And that even though I feel squashed by the idea of marriage sometimes, that without Mike, I don't even know who I am anymore. That he IS MY FAMILY. That HE IS part of me. And without him, I'd be lost. I'm a mess and Mike is the binding around my edges. He (literally) keeps me together. To some people, that statement could have a flip side like "But you should be free...you should be unstuffed...what are you missing that's not coming out". But if you really think about the analogy, a stuffed animal coming unstuffed, is a disaster. Stuffing falls out, it gets everywhere --- the toy loses it's shape. It gets old. It rips more. It becomes trash.

It's like I picked a very reliable, very solid used car. I runs well, the air conditioner is ice cold, the seats are leather, the radio has good speakers, there aren't any rips or stains and I got a fair deal. A good deal. And people always remark at what a good deal I got. Instead of realizing that, I've been looking at people with sports cars (often ones that are not reliable, or very used on the inside) and feeling jealous and thinking that I made the wrong choice. When I think about an analogy like this as it relates to my marriage...it all makes sense.

I'm crazy.