I have read many posts from people expressing their anger with 2009. It seems it was a year of suck for many people. One week ago i would have said the same thing, but i have been reminiscing and looking back over the past ten days and have decided that many good things happened in 2009 and i am going to quietly shut it's door with gratitude.

Not gratitude that it is over, but thank it for teaching me and allowing me to experience a year in a life with all of it's highs and lows.

2009 was a good year and 2010 will be too.

2009 thank you for:

~ Four great concerts, Wintersleep, The Killers, Kings of Leon and Band of Horses. Four nights that i went out with my closest friend, had a great dinner and a ton of fun.

~ Four healthy, happy, beautiful children.

~ Never spending a night in the hospital - any of us.

~ For my little corner of the internet. We turned a profit without ever taking a single thing for free or compromising our beliefs. - five years worth of my life, dirt and all.

~ Buying a new car, all by myself.

~ Buying a house, all by myself. Single mom and waitress. It will always be one of my proudest, personal, moments.

~ Living this year honestly. I had some great moments of family, adventure, friends and love.

~ All of you. You mean the world to me and have helped me get through some dark and lonely days.

i am so tired of this loneliness

then answer your phone asshole.

i can't. i can't.

i don't know what to say. i'm afraid of what i might say.

he said you're making it hard for him

there is nothing i can do about that. all i can do these days is sleep, work, parent and sit in my bed and participate in this endless void of both heady and lowly banter. i don't have the mental capacity to even begin to address those words, the audacity of them.

you put your angel wing necklace on again

i need it. i feel at the end of my rope. i can't take another single thing.

i still have so many things to deal with before life becomes, even remotely, normal. i don't even know what normal might look like anymore.

i did kick parenting ass today. that was a start. and i took some vitamins. and i bought some decorations.

i am not going to blow this holiday season off. i am going to make it lake house awesome. all cinnamon and pine scented.

the phone is ringing. you want to talk to this person. answer the phone.

i can't.

I am coming back for you, leave the house after supper
meet me at Low Gap, I will come with two horses, one in each
hand, they will be striped with darkness and the shadow
of deep wells.

"The Jesse James Poems" Paulette Jiles

The one thing i fail to learn, year in, year out, is that expectations will get you nothing. Expectations will give you sleepless nights and stomach aches, longing and doubt, disappointment.

My birthday weekend turned out to be full of antibiotics and changes of plans and making do with what was on hand.

The kids and i had a great time together, which at the end of the day when i look in my heart and think of what i truly want - it is special moments and memories with them. We played laser tag and hung out with family. I was a little off because of a nasty infection, but my sister, the doctor, quickly sorted me out. I was a little off because i had expected to see friends and have some time to myself and my dreams. I was a little off.

The kids mirrored my mood, my mood swings. We all swung high to low, glee to anger. It was a challenging weekend. I have to remind myself that holidays are especially difficult for them. We are not together as a nuclear family, we are together as a new family. Post-nuclear.

I have to learn to limit my expectations to what they can handle, what is best for them. Save my dreaming for my time without them.

A little crazy around here right now. One house needing to be packed up and made pretty for the next tenants, one house purchased needing much work and spiffying up. When i say old i mean something more like, nobody has done anything to this house in 50 years except a sloppy coat of paint. Everything needs fixing, or changing, or painting.

One day at a time. One thing at a time. It is the most stressful, yet rewarding thing i have ever done. I have been painting in the day and working in the night. My back is killing me. But, i move in next friday. I just have to make it till then and paint as much as possible before then.

In the meantime, i may only post photos. Like that one up there of my toby ripping nails out of old shingles as they are tossed off the roof.

I have had a great few days. A great few days that have left me on the verge of total exhaustion.

In preparation for taking off for chicago sometime in the next 36 hours i have been working a lot. A LOT. And i will work even more when i get back to make up for missing three shifts at work in the middle of the very busiest time of year. A time when we are NOT allowed to take time off.

Luckily for me i have a co-worker who happens to be one of my very best friends and understand how it is important for me to take off to this crazy conference that i can't afford so that i can feel a little bit more connected to this crazy internet life i have created. We have been planning how we will pull this off since i bought my tickets in january and low and behold the time is now and we worked it out and she is working a crazy week so that i may go and have some fun.

So, back to the good week i have had. I finished work extra early on friday night and headed into town and watched an open air concert, enjoyed some sushi with a cute and good person, had some beers with some other cute and good people and finished the night off with some tequila shooters that i probably should have avoided as i was spotted by a co-worker stumbling along the city streets at two in the morning.

Then on saturday the kids and i swam in the river which was incredible. Amidst hundreds of tubers we swam up current and floated back down. Magical.

Then! Last night at work my boss/owner of the restaurant called me in the middle of work and thanked me for my hard work and all the extra things i do and told me to take any bottle of wine i wanted. Any bottle. At first i wasn't going to take one because i was so happy just to get the appreciation. But then, any bottle? Really. It took me a whole day to decide and tonight i brought home a lovely italian wine that i have never tried and i put it up on my shelf. I am going to save that wine for the first time i cook dinner in my new home. My own home. I may have dinner with my kids or, hopefully, i will have someone special to share it with.

See you in chicago.

i bought a house today. two weeks ago i bought a car.

this shit is freaking me out.

i'm doing it all by myself.

there is no man there to check and balance with and i'm pretty sure i'm not getting screwed, but rather the opposite, i am rocking this single thing.

I have been thinking about time, the passing of years. I am half way through my life if my genes are any indication. My lifestyle, on the other hand, could put some variables in that equation.

Stress. I try to remain calm. I try to let things happen as they may, repeating over and over in my head "things always work out as they are supposed to." But stress gets the better of me often. Sometimes it's the mornings, getting the kids to school. It's actually more like forcing them to school. Pretty much every day i have one child who refuses to go and i have to physically shove them in the car and then drag them to class. Sometimes it's money. Handing over all my tips to the babysitter, realizing that i've come out even with a gas tank blinking on empty.

Sleep. I love the nights. I love staying up late when the house is silent except for the crackling of the fire. Aimlessly cruising around the internet, curled up in bed reading until i have to close one eye to still see the words. This late night lust leads to lack of sleep and morning struggles. I just can't break the habit. No matter how tired i am in the day i always perk up at night. I think my sleep debt after all the years of child-induced sleep deprivation and the following years of being a night owl is reaching epic proportions.

Food. Although i love food. I love the ritual of cooking for my family. I love dining out. Although i love all those things there are very few days that go by where i actually manage to eat properly, instead i focus my energy on feeding the kids and the customers.

I realize at this midway point in my life i need to take on a healthier attitude about my life, but in so many ways it suits me just fine.

For the past two weeks during counseling i have looked out the window to see a hawk take off from a tree and fly off towards the mountain. The view is stunning - rolling hills and snow capped mountains in the distance. The tree the hawk takes off from stands tall above all the others. When thoughts are swelling in my heart i look out there to gain some composure.

I sit in counseling, my heart pounding loudly in my chest, and my stomach growling loudly and nervously. I sit with my hands in my lap, the fingers of my right hand holding tightly to the skin between my thumb and pointer finger of my left hand. When i feel tears welling up i pinch that skin as hard as i can, trying to create enough pain to distract my mind from the weight in my chest.

Counseling is hard. So hard. I struggle with wanting to shut down, to just walk out, to not show up. Wishing i was that damn hawk flying freely.

Wishing that life was not so damn hard. I don't care who you are or what you have done or suffered - life is hard. It sounds so self-indulgent to say that. But each night as i lay in bed i think "that was a hard day. I wish i could have made it easier. I hope tomorrow will be easier."

I hope that i will make someone laugh, i hope my children will have a good day, i hope i can summon the energy to participate actively in this life, i hope i'm not sad, i hope i'm not lonely, i hope i can have a real conversation, i hope my kids will tell me they love me. I hope.

And i sit in counseling and listen to all the things i need to change in myself or else i will continue to fail. To fail at relationships, to fail at happiness, to fail at life. And i sit there and think i may have failed some people, but i have not failed myself or my children. And i think" how is this helping?" How is this helping me, highlighting the broken.

Over the past week i have noticed ads on television for a new show "Toddlers and Tiaras." Each time the commercial came on a little shiver rolled down my spine and i had to say to myself - do not watch that. I could just picture my mother screaming at the television set. She has a habit of getting very angry with anything on television that goes against her tightly wound morals.

Anyway. I found myself up and alone on tuesday night and what did i watch? Toddlers and tiaras. My first reaction was horror. Little girls! With sprayed on tans and make-up and shaky, shaky hips. And their mothers and fathers! Encouraging, Participating.

I watched the whole show. And then i slapped myself in the face and very possibly kicked my own ass.

Who am i to judge? And more importantly, why would i? These are families who are supportive of each other, spending time together and, seemingly, celebrating each others successes and relishing in the company of family.

I am well aware that the show is nothing more than a glorification/vindication of these families. It's intent to create animosity in the viewer. To make you despise those parents and draw the unspoken correlation back to that little girl who was murdered.

I let my kids ride their bikes without a helmet in the driveway. Children die from not wearing a helmet. If you saw a photo of my child without a helmet will it spark you with anger? Perhaps, if it is a subject that is close to you. You may notice the lack of helmet and strike it up to a bad choice. Will it fill you with rage? I doubt it.

I've been thinking about the show since i watched it. Part of what i try to teach my kids is compassion and understanding of the world around them and to never judge other people for their actions, but to try and understand the reasons behind those actions. To accept the world and all the varied souls in it as dynamic and unique. We don't need to agree or understand everything, but we do need to be compassionate and forgiving.

I just spent the better part of two days reading Twilight. Tristan expressed an interest in reading it so i thought i'd better check it out first to see if it was appropriate for an almost twelve year old. (verdict? Undecided.)

In spite of myself that book sucked me in, back in, to this vortex of my youth. My sullied youth spent with died black hair, black eyeliner and pale, pale skin. I would spend hours hidden away in my room reading and listening to music. Not miserable, not happy. Melancholy. A melancholy fueled by sad songs and books that i lost myself in, completely. A good story sucks me in and alters my perception of reality. I become lost in this nether conscious that is not present and, somehow, not somewhere else. Just floating in the words of a story. Soaking them in and letting them pulse through my body.

My penchant for staying up late started when i was around ten years old. At that time i started having horrible nightmares and developed a deep fear of sleeping. More accurately; sleeping when it was dark. I would force myself to stay up until the sun began to break the night sky. I would read secretly in my closet with a small lamp. Tucked in a ball on the floor, doors closed, blankets tight around me. Over the years my fear of the dark subsided and i began to look forward to the long nights alone in my room with my favourite characters and words as company. My nightmares occurred less often, but were as intense as ever. My reaction to them turned from fear to anxiety. I still wake up mid panic several times a week. All the words and stories i have read over a lifetime crossing wires with my real life in nightmarish tales that leave my sleeping mind terrified.

Reading Twilight reminded me of those feelings. I wandered around work in a daze last night, looking forward to the quiet dark of the house upon my return. Digging right back in to the story and the blissfull state of not here or there.

We had (another) snowstorm last night which resulted in the first day back at school being a snow day. Tristan and i sat around making this video which details my (typical) day from 3-11pm. I promise to lay off the videos soon, just having fun figuring out imovie.

a night at work from jess howard on Vimeo.

2009. Here you are. I thought things would be different by the time you got here. I thought that if i had a whole year without depression things would be a lot more rosy on january 1, 2009.

Well, to be fair, it is january 2nd and the first thirty six hours of 2009 i spent a great majority of working. The last push before the slower months set in. Ironically, on january 1st i made more money than i did on any night in 2008 - a good sign i think.

So 2009, let us start again. This year i want to continue on a positive mental note. I have been off medication for nine months now and have, to be honest, noticed very little difference, save for the anxiety. Anxiety has been a little wacky, but a friend told me to try holy basil and it has helped immensely. (Also, activated charcoal for my anxious tummy) I want to do things to promote a healthy mind/body balance this year.

I have one major personal goal in relation to healthy body and that is to hike the westcoast trail. I plan on doing this in the early fall. I did half (or less) of the trail when i was twelve with the Junior Forest warden troupe i belonged to. I like the idea of the challenge, the danger and the beauty. I'll need to train for a couple months before hand. I might be a little big-headed, but i have great stamina and i think i will be able to do it without begging for mercy at any point. Last september i ran 10 kilometers with the kids one morning without having jogged for years prior.

I have one personal goal with regards to artistic development and that is to finish the book proposal i started last summer AND write the book. At least a first draft. I have an awesome story in my head and i need to get it out.

I have one goal in regards to mental health and that is to eat better, sleep better, drink better. I eat well when i do it, but often skip meals because of time constraints and find myself starving at midnight. I don't sleep well. I have nightmares on a regular basis that cause me to have moderate anxiety in bed. I also still have parker sleeping beside me and he keeps me up for several hours a night. I don't drink enough water during the day and then find myself playing catch up in the evening which results in many trips to the bathroom through the night (back to sleep again.) I have worked on moderation in regards to alcohol consumption, but have been slipping back into bad habits under the stress of marriage 2.0. I need to make some changes there.

In general i don't want to make any huge plans for this year. I still feel like my future is very uncertain and many things still need to be changed in my personal life. I need to communicate my needs and be honest with myself and others about what i really need and want. I have some major goals for my kids, but i think i'll write them out separately.