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Akillah Wali's picture

Double the Choices

Posted to House Bloggers by Akillah Wali on Fri, 07/18/2008 - 9:11am

I previously wrote that I would not have the savvy nor the energy to pull off dating two men at once. After posting it, I wondered if I was in fact sure of this. And if this was the definitive answer, why wasn’t it possible for me? Furthermore, shouldn’t we all consider doing it?

Unfortunately, this is sounding dangerously close to that horrible book that outlined the rules that women needed to follow in order to find their perfect mate. 

While I think that book is absolute garbage, there is something to be said for exploring one’s options before making a final decision.

When it comes down to it, I think about all the decisions I’ve made in haste over the years, some of which have been more detrimental than others.

I look back at these and remember how difficult it was and how long it took to reverse the damage done in a fraction of a second. 

Whether it was extra portions that lead to extra trips to the gym, or saying “I do” as opposed to “I think we need to work out some of these issues before we proceed,” the result was always me having to shift gears and try my damndest to get out of the quicksand before being completely enveloped.

I may not yet have the wherewithal, but whenever I should find myself back in the game, I’d going to make sure I am able to pull off a double-header.

Faith Eggers's picture

Can't Stop the Feeling

Posted to House Bloggers by Faith Eggers on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 10:28am

They say the definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Sometimes I wonder if dating is a form of insanity.

Think about it: We date, over and over again – perhaps falling into some form of love (I'm still working on defining the word) – and ultimately, at least thus far, it all falls apart, leaving us feeling empty, broken, despondent, depressed and longing for more.
 
We repeat this process over and over, each time expecting a different result.
 
Each time, we hope that this time it will be different. This time it will work out. This time I've found my prince charming.

My relationship with the new guy is going well, so well in fact that I find myself frightened. So well that I think I may purposely screw it up, just so that I can remain in control.
 
That's the scariest part of a relationship, I think: the feeling that you are out of control. If you fall in love with someone, you give them the power to hurt you.
 
I don't want to be hurt again.

I can't allow myself to be hurt again.

I know this.

I know how far I've come since Levi, and I marvel at it sometimes. I am good now. I am at peace now. I am content now.
 
What I don’t need right now is this giddy, makes-me-want-to-throw-up, happy, butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling.

This waking up next to someone, and reveling in it.
 
These dinners and conversations.
 
This falling in love.

I know he's it, my next big thing. Big heartache or big disappointment or big ... something.
 
It's like I'm on a roller coaster headed for a brick wall, I know I should jump off, but I'm having so much fun that I’ve decided to wait until the absolute last moment.
 
I do not need this right now, but, at the same time, I cannot stop it.

Akillah Wali's picture

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Posted to House Bloggers by Akillah Wali on Fri, 07/11/2008 - 9:54am

Last weekend, I decided to take an impromptu break from reality and travel to the far away land of Philadelphia. I went to visit my friend Jennifer, who has, like me, had the great misfortune of being banished to the suburbs for the summer.

During the course of the weekend, I was reminded of our time together as struggling students. These memories led me to think about the future, and how I am handling the next chapter of my life.

Many of the associates I have made in the last two years have faded away. Most of them, I decided, were dead weight as I was headed into the future.

But that future has not begun to shine are brightly as I had anticipated when I moved to NY to attend school.

At times I wish it was a bit less of a struggle.

Sunday morning Jenn and I decided to go for breakfast, which was more of a task than either of us had anticipated. Apparently, the suburbs of the fifth largest city in the U.S. don’t unroll their sidewalks on Sunday until after 10 am.

Twelve dollars and a very interesting cab ride later, we found ourselves at the other end of the city in a diner that had every character you could imagine. Every possible character you could possibly imagine was a local at this joint, but the cream of the crop was our waitress, who had the two of us in stitches as soon as we sat down. Shortly after assuming our positions at the counter, our waitress caught one of the male patrons being less than subtle with his glances. Her disapproval of his behavior was all over her face. “I just hate the fact that men don’t even feel the need to be subtle about their attraction anymore,” she complained audibly. “A short glance is sexy, but just to ogle is downright tacky – and rude.”

Ah, the staring.

In my trips to the supermarket in upstate New York, I have noticed that men stare – a lot. We’re not talking a quick glance, either.

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What Is Single Parenting?

By Elizabeth Gordineer

Posted to House Bloggers by Editor on Thu, 07/10/2008 - 12:28pm

Single parenting is stress. It is about learning how to juggle and balance your life. It is about learning to expect the unexpected. It is 2 AM trips to the Emergency Room, all alone.

It is explaining to your boss that you can't come in to work, again. It's about scrounging change to buy diapers. It's about driving to the local Family Court (who named it that anyway?) and filling out form after form.

It's about sitting in court houses for hours and hours only to end up with some stupid piece of useless paper.

Single parenting is frustrating. It's about feeling as if you never have one second to yourself. It's never being allowed to shut the bathroom door – ever.

It's never being able to blast loud music in your car with the windows down. It's never having time to talk to, or see, your friends.

It's not having a hair cut in two years.

Single parenting is frantic. It's leaving your house and realizing that you've got two different shoes on, or worse, you don't have on any shoes at all.

It's rushing through the grocery store at 7 AM, so that you can get in enough hours at work. It's rushing to pick your kid up at daycare so that they don't charge you the one-dollar per minute late fee after 6 PM.

Single parenting is lonely. Single parenting is single. There are times when it feels like there is nobody on Earth who could possibly understand how you feel.

Single parenting is depressing. It's about taking your kid to the park and seeing all of the happy families. It is about seeing a father play with his son and wanting to throw up.

Single parenting is embarrassing. It's about waiting for that dreaded question, "Where's his father?" or, even worse, comments like, "Oh his father must be so proud!"

It's about wishing that people were more sensitive to holidays like Fathers Fay and Mothers Day.

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Bellevue is called "The Birthplace of Nebraska," and there could not be a better place to exemplify the Heartland of America. What is it like to be a divorced woman in this small city, surrounded by farms, churches, a neighboring Air Force Base, a place where folks are friendly, patriotism is abundant, and conservatism reigns.

Sara Muse, 23, knows what it is like to endure a divorce in this conservative part of the country, and she knows what it’s like to do it with a 3-year-old daughter, Rhyanne, in tow.

"I was married for about a year and a half before she was born," Sara says. Her eyes light up when she speaks about Rhyanne, whom she has essentially been raising by herself since her divorce a year ago.

"He sees her a couple of times a month … at my house, not at his. He'll come over for a few hours and then leave. He doesn't take her overnight."

Sara does not fit the stereotypical image of a divorced woman, and a single mother. She’s a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and a semester away from earning her bachelor's degree in marketing management.

She volunteers, and is active in her church. "When I first separated I was 21 with a small child, and I was walking around with no ring on my finger,” she says.

“People will look at you and the child, then your hand and there’s just this, 'How old are you? Did you get pregnant in high school? Did you make a mistake? Did you not play by the rules?'"

She’s also heard people say, “Oh you are so young to already be divorced.”

She says, “Like I’m starting on this path to five or six husbands."

Check back tomorrow for the story of Sara’s marriage

Elaina Goodman's picture

Batteries Not Included

Posted to House Bloggers by Elaina Goodman on Tue, 07/08/2008 - 11:24am

Seven sexless months into my separation from Sam I found that the saying “necessity is the mother of invention” is more than a meaningless cliché. 

I’m at my friend Heidi’s and my daughter Lila is shadowing Heidi’s son, George. Lila adores George, who is 3. So George and Lila jump off chairs and laugh, George in his blond hair, Superman boxers, Buzz Light Year shades and nothing else.

Heidi and I are at the table, steam rising from our teacups. Heidi makes a mean cup of green tea. And she used to sell sex toys.

She was a rep with one of those companies that hosts in-house parties, like Tupperware, but with vibrators and nipple nibbler cream, instead of airtight leftover containers.

Somewhere in her house is this box of lonely, untouched sex toys, and I’m a separated single mom and I haven’t sex in seven months. I lean forward. I need that box.

I’ve been asking for months. Where is that box, girl? And, she’s stumped. She knows she put it somewhere... back of a closet, behind her husband’s guitars... but where?

Didn’t she see those capital letters forming over my head when I spoke: WHERE? (By “where” I was saying “urgent.”)

It was almost time to get Roxie on her way, but I was not leaving empty handed.

“You need to find the box,” I say, and now I say “the box” and we both know what I’m talking about. “I’m going to rip your house apart, girl. Seven Months. It’s been seven months,” I say. “Seriously, I’m going to rip the walls out to find that box.”

She says, “Oh my god, I forgot to tell you. I found it!.”

A pause.

“Oh my god. Seven months. I’m so sorry. That’s so long.”

In the back corner of the closet is a pretty pink case with white polka-dots, filled with black satin bags that are stuffed with vibrators.

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Elaina Goodman's picture

High for Everyone, Higher for Single Moms

Posted to House Bloggers by Elaina Goodman on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 11:48am

I'm thanking the gods I work from home and there are few places my two feet and my bike can't take me. Because every buck I put into my gas tank is food I don't buy at the grocery store.

Gas at the cheapie station is holding at $4.17 this week. Everywhere else in town it's closing in on $4.30.

At that price, one gallon of gas costs more than 70 percent of the federal hourly minimum wage, $5.85. It’s still two-thirds of the new federal minimum wage that takes effect on July 24, and it's more than half the highest state minimum, $8.07, in the State of Washington.

Consider that the lowest paid workers pump almost a whole day's pay into the tank every time they fill it up. Even people making a decent wage, say $20 an hour, are spending an entire morning’s work just to pay for gas.

It's the same all over. In our must-have culture, where most families have to have two incomes in order to survive, people from the top to the middle and on down, everything is being eliminated but the basics.

No one is immune. For single moms, it's getting ugly.

Christina McLaughlin, "KristieMac" wrote about the impact of rising gas prices on her blog for the Houston Chronicle's Chron.com. She posted personal experiences, giving thanks for the good fortune of flexible work and having enough to cover bills, while lamenting economic pressure and the nixed vacation she dreamed of taking with her daughter.

Canceled vacation plans, fewer outside-the-home activities, less eating out, and just plan less. One by one every extra is slashed to make way for gas and groceries.

But, what happens when there are no more extras to cut, no more plans to cancel? Me, I'm what happens.

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Elaina Goodman's picture

Not All Single Moms Are Single

Posted to House Bloggers by Elaina Goodman on Tue, 07/01/2008 - 2:48pm

God, how I hate being the single mom on Friday nights. Stuck home with sleeping kids while all the free world plays. I can't leave even for five-minutes to get ice cream from the quickie mart.

Even if I could, 14-hours into being mommy, after making three meals and washing three sets of dishes, after all day wiping butts, and a night of reading stories, my get up and go is gone.

This afternoon my friend Sequoia called. She's spent hours in the back yard watching her Blondie-girl splash around the kiddie pool. It's all you can do in this Portland heat wave.

We have the kind of hot that feels like being stoned. Too hot to think. Too hot to move. Too hot to breath. Way too hot to single parent alone. So you find water and wait it out. If you're solo, you try to find another mother to help get you through.

Sequoia is married, but hour for hour she single-parents more than I do. She does it all week. I'm on 24 hours for half the week, but the other half, I am free, free, free. And for tonight, I’m free.

It's close to dinner time, Sequoia’s husband's out of town, Blondie-girl goes to bed around eight, and then its empty hours ahead. There’s that hollow belly feeling that settles in around sunset.

Roxie and Lila are at the beach with their Gammy and PopPop, so I tell Sequoia, "Yeah, hell yeah, I'll come drink red with you."

Heat blows though my open car windows and Mt. Hood glows pink in the rearview mirror. This is the kind of summer day it was two years ago when I first knew.

Calf-deep in the wading pool at some sun-baked park, Lila in a swimming diaper at my feet and Roxie on the merry-go-round. One eye on each of my babies, and right there I realized the truth of how staying in that marriage would bring more pain than parenting alone.

When Sequoia opens the door her fingers are bare, wedding rings off. I wonder what she's been weighing today.

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Faith Eggers's picture

The Date

Posted to House Bloggers by Faith Eggers on Mon, 06/30/2008 - 9:42am

The date went well. Very well, in fact. He seems to be a nice, honest, sincere, smart, and fun guy. Note that I said, "seems to be," because up until now, I wasn't really sure that such an animal existed. I guess I'm still not too sure.

I will say that if I had met him before the “Levi Fiasco” I would have jumped right into this. I would have gone along with the giddy feeling. I would be gushing to all of my friends.

After Levi, I am much more guarded. Now, I can't really feel around all of the walls that I've put up. It's going to be hard, I think, to trust someone again.

I remember falling in love with Levi, and how much fun it was. How euphoric it all felt. How ready I was for it.

I think about it now, I talk to my friends about it now, and I know I'm not ready to do that again. What is "falling in love," anyway? I guess it’s the "falling" part that scares me. Generally speaking, falls are not good. Generally speaking, one hurts oneself in a fall. I know that I couldn't once again deal with the devastation that comes when you lose someone you love. As a result, I worry that I'll never feel the absolute euphoria of giddy, happy, love again.

So for now, I'm just going to take it easy: remain cautious but also try (and try, and try) to relax and enjoy myself. I'll let you know how it goes.

Elaina Goodman's picture

Working 9 to 5 (and 5 to 9)

Posted to House Bloggers by Elaina Goodman on Thu, 06/26/2008 - 6:34pm

First thing you learn, at least the first thing I learned, about being a single mom: it’s hard, almost impossible. I signed the lease for my new apartment on my 10th wedding anniversary. Let’s just say I’m a deadline-driven kind of girl, and after years of thinking “I can be broke, and alone all by myself,” it hit me, my deadline was 10 years. I had to get out.

That was two years ago. At the time, my daughters were 4 ½ and 21-months, and PBS had just aired a documentary called “P.O.V – Waging a Living.” The film looked at four people, three of them single moms, all working full-time and none making enough to make ends meet.

How’s that for a timely glance into the crystal ball?

One by one their stories debunked the American Dream, which is work hard and you’ll get ahead. One-quarter of the adult workers in this country have dead-end jobs paying less than the federal poverty level for a family of four. That’s 30 million people.

There was the 41-year-old waitress and mother of three young kids who made $2.13 an hour and sometimes paid more than 90 percent of her nightly tips to the babysitter. Yep, right there with you, sister. My gig was working nights in the sports department of a local newspaper, but I didn’t make much. The one night a week I both had the kids and had to work, I paid their sitter a buck an hour more than my hourly wage. Figure in commute time and those shifts cost me $10.

The apartment I picked was small for the price, one bedroom, but it has plenty of green space for the kids to play, and trees to climb. And the selling point, location, was that it was smack in the middle of my three tightest girlfriends’ houses. Five blocks in either direction to two of them.

When you divorce, everyone and their Aunt Nellie tell you to go where you have the strongest support. In other words, make sure you are living in the right village, because it’s going to help you raise your kids.

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