Category Archives: take a look at me now

Sentimental Journey

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This morn­ing I made an attempt to sleep in. The sun, not being cov­ered by clouds, pierced through my bed­room win­dows. Note to self: Get room dark­en­ing blinds. Stat! I don’t know what that has to do with what I’m about to share, but it needed to be said.

It’s the day before Easter. Now, while I am not par­tic­u­larly reli­gious, read I don’t attend church, the mem­o­ries of East­ers past sneaked up on me. My son hasn’t ever taken much inter­est in col­or­ing eggs nor hunt­ing for them. We are far from tra­di­tional. That is just how we roll. Santa never held much inter­est for him, either.

So, all hol­i­day mem­ory lanes lead back to my Mom. Every Easter would bring a fam­ily bas­ket along with indi­vid­ual bas­kets. Each year I could count on an inflat­able Easter rab­bit with a weighted bot­tom. We didn’t have a lot, but we always had our traditions.

When I pull myself from the past and return to the present, the fact remains that I miss my Mother ter­ri­bly. She died in June 1981. The long­ing for her touch, com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing never diminishes.

I’m so appre­cia­tive of the fond mem­o­ries that rat­tle about in my mind. It is my hope that my son will have good mem­o­ries in spite of us not hav­ing tra­di­tional hol­i­day traditions.

 

474365 10150700798529508 788529507 8906147 1224698514 o 179x300 Sentimental Journey Pic­tured here with my niece on Easter about 26 or 27 years ago. She is now a mother of two!

    I am Woman Hear Me Roar

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    Good gig­gily goo! I’ve been absent from my own blog for so long that I almost for­got it existed. Major changes occurred at work which basi­cally made it impos­si­ble for me to have much free time. Over time pay, which is usu­ally unheard of, was granted given the sit­u­a­tion. Today, Sun­day March 4, is my first day off since Feb­ru­ary 20. Insan­ity, right? Who ever said that which does not kill you makes you stronger may have been a tad off the mark. It didn’t kill me nor can it be declared that this girl is exhausted, but not stronger. It did, how­ever, prove that I am either a) an idiot or b) ded­i­cated to my work­place and asso­ciates. Maybe it is a com­bi­na­tion of both.

    The week behind me brought in a total of 54 hours worked. That is includ­ing an all day meet­ing, but not the amount of hours on the road to get to that meet­ing. Four and a half hours in the car round trip if you’re wondering.

    Any­who, I am not whin­ing. The $$ will be nice (hoping).

    All those hours leads to a tired as hell mom which is why there’s been a lack of writ­ing. My brain drains the sec­ond my key goes into the igni­tion of my car. It would’ve been tremen­dously embar­rass­ing if there had been unex­pected drop by guests. My house is a dis­as­ter. Being that today is my only day off of the week I con­sid­ered doing noth­ing more than slob­bing it in my paja­mas, sip­ping one form of liq­uid elixir or another while bask­ing in cheesy movies on Net­flix stream­ing. Inter­pret that as my own Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000 marathon.

    Instead, my stu­pid body and mind are stuck in over drive and I cleared out the spare bed­room of the piles of bags I’d pre­pared over a year ago to take to Good­will. Seri­ously, I was afraid I would find a car­cass of a way­ward mouse. It looked like a mini hoard­ers episode wait­ing to hap­pen. With Man­cub hav­ing loaded the car with the five bags of dona­tions, we set out with me sans make up. One glance at myself in the rear view mir­ror and it became abun­dantly appar­ent that I slept late com­ple­ments of Benadryl. Scary!

    Since we were out and about we headed to the gro­cery store. I did remem­ber to get dressed. No pjs or slip­per socks were worn. Still, I am grate­ful we didn’t run into any­one I knew. If any such known peo­ple saw me it is likely I wasn’t rec­og­niz­able. Yes, with­out make up I look that dif­fer­ent.

    Once home with a trunk load of gro­ceries, it became crys­tal clear the fridge hadn’t been cleaned out since the autumn leaves began falling to the ground. Yes, I am dis­gust­ing and lazy when it comes to cer­tain chores. What was most sur­pris­ing is noth­ing had grown moldy. The sur­prise entrees were nasty, all the same. My fridge is cleared of sci­ence projects. Plus, it isn’t trick­ing us into believ­ing there is some­thing worth eat­ing in there.

    I’d say that for my only day off in a cou­ple of weeks, I didn’t take it too easy. Now I’m going to take it easy. Din­ner can wait a lit­tle longer.

    Soooo there you have it in a nut­shell why this blog has been inactive.

    I’m not the only sin­gle mom in the world who works non-stop at times. There are plenty of us hard work­ing gals out there. Even in 2012 it seems not every­one can appre­ci­ate what role we play in rais­ing the human race. Sad.

    You know who you are and I ded­i­cate these songs to you!

      Mom’s Birthday

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      I am ter­ri­ble with dates. If it wasn’t for mod­ern tech­nol­ogy birth­days, anniver­saries, hol­i­days would be for­got­ten. How­ever, there are cer­tain spe­cial occa­sions that are never shoved into the recesses of my mind. One being today: My mother’s birthday.

      My beau­ti­ful, curly haired, red-headed mom passed away when she was only 5 years older than I am now. With fair cer­tainty, I can say that each of my four older sis­ters have met age 50 with great trep­i­da­tion. My viva­cious mother with the gre­gar­i­ous and infec­tious laugh was taken quickly and too soon by the rav­ages of can­cer. You’d think after wit­ness­ing that at the age of 15 I would’ve taken my own health more seri­ously. Instead, for a long time, I accepted that my fate would be the same. It took me a long time to real­ize that I could fight what I had once assumed to be genet­ics. If you won­der why my verve for being health­ier and wish­ing to help oth­ers take charge of their health, just know that my mother’s death is at the core of my mis­sion. She lived on a steady diet of Pepsi and cig­a­rettes, but always fret­ted over her weight. She defined van­ity. Now you know where I got it, but I also gained a great sense of humil­ity from her. Mary Car­o­line Rapier taught me many amaz­ing lessons in our short 15 years together. Not through preach­ing but lead­ing by example.

      I miss my mother as much today as I did when she last held me in her arms and said “I love you.” The pain is man­age­able and it doesn’t crip­ple me. I spent many years liv­ing in anger toward her pass­ing. Envy for my older sib­lings was enor­mous as they got more time with her than I did. A day doesn’t go by that I do not feel her guid­ing me, rejoic­ing in my accom­plish­ments and embrac­ing me when low times strike. She’s the voice telling me,“you can do this.” I have no doubts that she looks after my beau­ti­ful, amaz­ing son.

      As a mother of EIGHT chil­dren — 3 boys and 5 girls — I can tell you she has had a hand in mak­ing this Earth a bet­ter place. Not to sound boast­ful, but my sib­lings are phe­nom­e­nal peo­ple and have left her legacy on their own children.

      I’d like to share a story my father wrote to honor my mom. Every year, regard­less of lack of money, Christ­mas arrived with joy and presents. This magic touch got the wheels turn­ing in my dad’s head and he sub­mit­ted it to our local news­pa­per, The Daily Jour­nal, where he was a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to their Voice of the Peo­ple column.



      Will the Real Santa Claus Stand Up

      By Harold L. Rapier

      While watch­ing my beloved wife being trans­formed from a lovely bride to a lov­ing mother to a lov­able grand­mother as she went about doing her thing year-after-year and Christmas-after-Christmas, I became increas­ingly sus­pi­cious as to the true gen­der of Santa Claus.  Now, after exten­sive obser­va­tion, inves­ti­ga­tion and con­tem­pla­tion, I believe I can prove beyond a rea­son­able doubt that Jolly Ole Saint Nick is a Grand­mother in disguise.

      First, who is it – as soon as Christ­mas is passed – begins all over again, going on count­less sprees, tak­ing in every sale and com­ing home with hoards of pur­chases only to have them mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­pear and never seen again until Christ­mas Eve?

      Sec­ond, who is it in every house­hold her­alds in the new Christ­mas Sea­son by going about in a state of eupho­ria, tire­lessly fill­ing every room with the sights and sounds and smells that are com­mon to this hol­i­day sea­son until it ignites the Christ­mas spirit in every mem­ber of the household?

      Third, Santa is com­monly described as being “small, round, warm, and jolly”.  Now, tell me, how many fathers and grand­fa­thers you know can fit that descrip­tion?  How­ever, it is my con­tention that, if you were to dress the typ­i­cal Grand­mother in a Santa cos­tume with padding, whiskers and all, you would pro­duce a sto­ry­book fac­sim­ile of Jolly Ole Saint Nick every time!

      Fur­ther­more, even though I have no tan­gi­ble proof nev­er­the­less, I believe that the Moth­ers and Grand­moth­ers pur­posely con­trived this Christ­mas Myth to mask their own self­less and undy­ing love for chil­dren, and to set a shin­ing exam­ple for we fathers and grand­fa­thers in hopes that we will endeavor to imi­tate it in the com­ing years.

      Now, if this be so, then we all owe a deep debt of grat­i­tude to that spe­cial woman in our lives who, every year, shares her joy­ful love with us man­i­fested in the image of Santa Claus to make our homes a blessed and happy place each and every Christmas!

      In con­clu­sion, I pray that God has reserved a spe­cial place in His King­dom for His Mis­sion­ar­ies of peace and love: Our Brides, Our Moth­ers, and Grandmothers.

      Merry Christ­mas,
      Harold L. Rapier                

      249161 10150194386989508 788529507 6590467 4940646 n Moms Birthday

      Me with mom at my 8th Grade Grad­u­a­tion — ’79

      246706 10150194389669508 788529507 6590511 391861 n Moms Birthday

      Proof that Christ­mas was a happy time and, as you can see behind me, we weren’t aching for presents. I was 11 or 12 years old here. This also proves why I was mis­taken for a boy on more than a few occasions.

        Happy Anniversary!

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        Had it not been for Facebook’s awe­some “On this Day .…” reminders I never would have real­ized  that one year ago today I cre­ated MARISSOLOGY on Face­book. A ‘like’ page for this blog and all its mus­ings. It didn’t catch on like wild­fire as I’d hoped, but to the 211 of those who clicked “LIKE” and con­tinue to sup­port the endeavor, I say THANK YOU!!! Tell your friends and feel free to com­ment and post your own suc­cesses and faux pas that life con­stantly hands us. My blog is ded­i­cated to liv­ing life and admit­ting when we’ve stum­bled or par­ty­ing like it’s 1999 for the tri­umphs. What I’m say­ing is that it is NOT all about weight loss. I know it seemed for awhile that my jour­ney to lose 100 pounds was all that my brain could spew out. You hung in there, though. You didn’t bail on me when I sounded like a bro­ken record or infomer­cial for Beachbody.

        samp31f361bc407aa509 Happy Anniversary!

          Flutter By

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          On Thurs­day, June 14, I met with friends for din­ner after work. The unique thing about this is that the hus­band of the cou­ple and I hadn’t seen each other since high school. We’d been cross town rivals. How­ever, in the fine arts there seemed to be less ani­mos­ity than that of sports. Through the magic of Face­book, his wife and I have befriended each other. Get­ting together with this cou­ple who had come to town for his high school reunion week­end was, to put it mildly, a pure joy.

          Had this sit­u­a­tion arisen a year or so ago, I can hon­estly say I prob­a­bly would not have fol­lowed through or even enter­tained the idea.

          Shock­ing!

          Maybe it is the result of being burned numer­ous times in my life­time by fair weather friends (not to say I haven’t been one myself), but lit­tle by lit­tle becom­ing a shut in was becom­ing real­ity. Aside from hav­ing to work out­side the home and run­ning nec­es­sary errands, I was happy to con­duct my life from more than arms length of other people.

          The Inter­net afforded me the abil­ity to appear social — demented and sad, but social. What lie beneath the facade was fear of close­ness to peo­ple who were not already within my very tightly woven inner cir­cle. Read: my son and a sib­ling or two and long time friends. When­ever I revealed this fact to an online friend, it sur­prised them. One or two would express a sense of sad­ness for me that I’d allowed my life to take such an avenue. Appar­ently it seemed that I had a lot to offer oth­ers, but mostly it wasn’t fair for me to rob myself and oth­ers the expe­ri­ence of friendship.

          It didn’t hap­pen in the form of light­ning strik­ing or a Bib­li­cal epiphany to make me real­ize that I had noth­ing to gain by being shut off or putting up a front that I hated all peo­ple. Slow pro­gres­sion and encour­age­ment along with invi­ta­tions. Deep down I wanted to be a but­ter­fly of the social vari­ety. Even in early life I hadn’t sur­rounded myself with huge groups of friends. One or two close rela­tion­ships were devel­oped and I merely dealt with being involved with larger groups.

          As a result of being entwined with Beach­body, I have learned that we get in return what we put out in the uni­verse. Con­nect­ing with humans will  only improve my life. Break­ing out of the shell I’d encased myself in was the most dif­fi­cult part. Ignor­ing my fear of rejec­tion is not easy yet I forge through it. What is most remark­able is that I have watched my teen age son embrace per­sonal encoun­ters with­out hes­i­ta­tion. He says hello to peo­ple he may have met a year ago and hasn’t seen since. He will engage with total strangers as if they are best friends from a past life.

          As a par­ent, I have so much to learn from watch­ing my child.

          Sat­ur­day, July 16, 2011, I had to bring my car to the auto shop for a check up. Even talk­ing to the owner of the shop is tricky for me. The pos­si­bil­ity that he won’t remem­ber me from a year ago had been keep­ing me from call­ing to dis­cuss the issues my car was hav­ing. Stu­pid. But I’m not nor­mal. He remem­bered me. Maybe I’m not that for­get­table after all? Who knew I could be cute and social while doing busi­ness? Ha!!

          Once the inspec­tion was com­plete, I made my way to the Sat­ur­day Farmer’s Mar­ket in down­town Kanka­kee. Alone. All by my lone­some. A sur­prise to myself and with­out hes­i­ta­tion I spoke to the ven­dors and approached peo­ple I rec­og­nized. Say­ing hello and being received in a pos­i­tive man­ner gave me such an warm feel­ing. Remem­ber in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at the end when Belle thinks she’s lost Beast to the curse and sud­denly beams of light lift him from the ground and he’s trans­formed? At the risk of sound­ing melo­dra­matic, that is how I felt on this day. What’s most sur­pris­ing is that it all came so nat­u­rally. The sen­sa­tion I felt trick­ling through my body was so for­eign, but wel­come. I think know it’s welcome.

          Usu­ally, when the ques­tion is posed if time travel was pos­si­ble what would I change, I say noth­ing since that isn’t even a pos­si­bil­ity and the present is based on the past. Now, I sor­takinda think that it would be a keen notion to believe how much richer my life might be had I made these real­iza­tions ten years ago. Alas, I can­not. I move for­ward with­out regret and embrace that which is at hand … and flut­ter by like a butterfly.

            Radical toes

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            Once upon a time I treated myself to reg­u­lar man­i­cures and pedi­cures. It was reward for my hard work and dili­gence. Plus, it gave me an hour to unwind and for­get the week’s toil.

            Until yes­ter­day, May 21, 2011, I hadn’t had either for over seven years. It’s not as if I didn’t tend to my hands and feet, but there is NOTHING com­pared to hav­ing some­one else, a pro­fes­sional, take care of cuti­cles and roughness.

            Ahhhh and a foot massage!

            Typ­i­cally I choose col­ors that are muted for my toes. Seri­ously, with feet like mine I do not want to draw atten­tion to them. The mini-flippers need no help in being noticed. That was until yes­ter­day. Rather than choos­ing clear or nat­ural hues this girl went wild. BLACK! My fin­ger­nails are a deep red-almost pur­ple. But the toot­sies are glit­tery black.

            For the record, I am not a fan of feet. In fact, that was one of the many things the nail tech and I talked about. Addi­tion­ally, I extended my apolo­gies for hav­ing funky, ugly feet. She assured me my feet weren’t the worst she’s worked on nor the ugli­est. I have healthy nail beds!

            Now, I apol­o­gize to those of you who are gacked out by the sight of feet. It is almost as dif­fi­cult for me to post a shot of my toes as it is for me to share a pic­ture of a rear view of my body. Dig it? Just know I feel like a mil­lion bucks for hav­ing dropped $40.00 to receive an hour of pampering.

            After years of stand­ing for up to eight hours a day at work and pound­ing the liv­ing hell out of my feet doing intense Turbo Fire HIIT work­outs and P90X Ply­o­met­rics, it was time to let the dogs out! San­dal, or in my case, flip flop sea­son is here! These poor old feet have been cooped up for too long. Woohoo! I’m let­ting ‘em wig­gle as I delight in their purtification.

             

            black nails 300x180 Radical toes

              “I want to be alone…”

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              In her husky accent Greta Garbo declared, “I want to be alone.” After exten­sive (Wikipedia) research because I had always heard she was mis­quoted, I found this quote which best sums up how I feel when it comes to my time away from work.

              “I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be let alone.’ There is all the dif­fer­ence.

              “You can­not have a vaca­tion with­out peace and you can­not have peace unless left alone.“

              I put in my time 100% at ye olde grind. My pay comes hourly and not salary. Even if I was paid salary that doesn’t take away from the fact that time at home with my son or whomever else I choose to dally is my own. It’s not as if my role is so vital that my deci­sions will make or break a multi-billion dol­lar deal. I don’t need to be needed 24/7 to be assured that I’m appre­ci­ated in the work place. I trust that those who are on the clock will make deci­sions in the moment to get through the day. In the moment choices have to be made whether or not they are what I would have done in the same cir­cum­stance. Hun­dreds of skilled peo­ple are just a phone call away.  Peo­ple who are, at that point in time, being paid for their consult.

              I’m vent­ing. Yes, that is what it is and now I can move on with my day off. What peo­ple don’t under­stand about me is that it takes tremen­dous effort for me to relax. Emp­ty­ing my mind requires just as much effort men­tally as rock climb­ing requires physically.

              When I awaken in the mid­dle of the night because I had 24 ounces of water forty five min­utes before bed­time, going back to sleep is ardu­ous. My mind clicks on to what I need to accom­plish in the day; what con­ver­sa­tions need to be had.

              It is irri­tat­ing to an infi­nite degree.

              With that in mind, yesterday’s glo­ri­ous sun­shine and silly girl lit­er­a­ture helped take me away like the Cal­gon bath of the ‘70s.

              After a spell out­doors, I came back in to get my ear buds so I could fur­ther tune out the world. My son, who appar­ently knows me and my sit­u­a­tion very well, asked, “are you able to relax? Is work leav­ing you alone now?” He’d heard me on the phone ear­lier. He knew by my expres­sion that I had not escaped duty. It wasn’t any­thing imper­a­tive. Surely with a lit­tle patience the ques­tion would have answered itself.

              sunface4 30 180x300 I want to be alone...

              I enjoy com­pany. On my terms. Do I want to be alone?

              No, just leave me alone … unless you’re bring­ing a cheeky movie and margaritas.