It’s alive!!

Don’t ask me what spirit moved me, but my Web site is ALIVE!!

Over the last couple of days I’ve been working on developing shannontrenton.com into the central hub of all of my thoughts and things and goings-on. I still have a lot of work to do, but to ease the transition I’ve already exported this lovely blog over there. So look for me where my name flashes on the screen, for new content and old fan favorites. (Maybe I’ll get some fans this way, who knows?)

Seriously, go look – constructive feedback is appreciated!

Shannon

Forgiveness isn’t divine

I meant what I said in my last post – I really am moving on from the drama of my father. (Okay, okay…I’m starting to move on.)

Of course I’m still thinking about it; one forgets these things as easily as one walks into Mordor. During my daily perusal of Dear Wendy, though, I came across a link to a Slate post by Emily Yoffe, the site’s current “Dear Prudence”.

She starts, “What do we owe our tormentors?” What follows is a discussion, with references to several experts and studies as well as anecdotes of famous family issues, about the difficulty in letting go of these kinds of relationships – as well as the danger to the victim of not.

One of the things I haven’t mentioned on here, but have said more than a few times to my mother, is that a big reason I initially held back from sending a “kiss-off” letter was because I couldn’t bear to have it on my conscience if my father suddenly decided to make good on the threats of suicide he’s made for as long as I can remember. I know in my rational mind that he is a troubled and ill and self-centered man, and that regardless of his own justifications the decision to take his life (or not) rests squarely on his shoulders.

However, I have to contend with a strong emotional core. When I went to the police in 2004 and my parents finally separated for good, I struggled for years with feelings of guilt that it was my fault, not his, that our family was torn apart. It didn’t matter that I could see (and was living) the positive changes that night brought to us; inside, I blamed myself for not keeping quiet and wondered if my mother and brother blamed me too. It’s a twisted, vicious cycle, and not one that I want to jump into again.

Yoffe says, that’s okay. “Sometimes the best thing to do is just close the door.” I couldn’t agree more…but I will admit that it’s so nice to see someone else saying it too.

…and moving on.

This is the other half of the post I was going to write Sunday. I just got so wrapped up in my good feelings about being in the house, and looking around to see all of the possibilities, that I decided to put off the other feelings running through my head.

A lot of my time and energy has been taken up lately with thoughts about my father – disappointment, resentment, memories bubbling up to the surface in recognition of a pattern that he refuses to change and I finally refuse to put up with. I wrote him a 14 1/2 page letter, a history of abuses starting when I was 10 and hinting at those that came before. It took me a day and a half, with pauses for actually living my life of course, and as I moved further from the beginning I started once again to question whether it would do any good to even get my thoughts on paper.

I’m moving on now.

I read the letter to Brian, and to my mom and grandma, the latter two of whom have actually encouraged me to send it to him sans edit. At first they were concerned that in my hormonal state I may end up burning a bridge that I’d rather just rope off for construction, but there were a few surprises in that letter that even Grammy didn’t know. Now, she’s standing at my side with a match.

I still won’t send it. What good will it do? I know who I’m dealing with – he will either directly contradict or attempt to rationalize every point I make. It’s not my business, I don’t know how difficult things are for him, I misunderstood him, I caused it. He’s incapable of any interaction in which he isn’t gaslighting someone, so I understand that any expectation of acknowledgement is just as far-fetched as any hope of an apology.

Instead, I blocked his number from my phone. I’m sure he’s already forgotten where I live, and with the support of my family I know that he won’t be able to reach me. Let him wonder, if he will, what I’m doing and how my life is without him. Let him be bitter, or angry, or sorry, but let him be so on his own. After nearly 27 years of giving without receiving, I am denying him the closure that he would continue to deny me.

Turnabout, after all, is fair play.

When I catch myself wondering about him, or thinking about him, or I see his face in our wedding photos on the wall (before I paste Patrick Stewart over them, of course), I will try my best to stop and refocus that energy on all the positive things going on. It’ll take some time…but I’ll find peace without him.

Moving in…

Well, we’re finally here.

Not totally, of course – in the next 12 days before our lease at the apartment is up we still need to drive back down, rescue the few remaining items (lights come in handy), drop a room’s worth of items at Goodwill, and clean the apartment as if we were never there. But that’s for next week.

We had an awesome team to help us with our move. I use “us” lightly; for this round I was “girl in the green shirt” (because the guy who couldn’t remember my name was afraid to call me “pregnant chick” – I guess he’s made an error in that department before!), director of traffic and co-warmer of soups for consumption. To compensate for my own feelings of uselessness during the actual move, I’ve already unpacked more than a dozen boxes and found homes for them – after a nap, of course. Moving (even when someone else is doing the heavy lifting) is hard work.

I’ve been to this house a number of times since the night we got the keys, but having our own belongings in it finally makes it feel like home. The rooms no longer echo, and I’m getting used to the random creaks in the hardwood floor that Brian will undoubtedly try to tackle sometime this spring. I’m comforted by the sight of my own glasses in the china cabinet, the sound of my cats coming up and down the stairs…

Oh, the cats. We brought them over Friday night so they could have some time to get used to their new house. Instead, they cowered in the kitchen until we carried them into the one bedroom where they’d feel most safe, and closed them in for the better part of two days. When we let them out yesterday morning they went into hiding again, and I learned once again that cats are at the bottom of the “listen to Mommy” totem pole. When I finally found Tej, his expression told me “I’ve heard you yelling for the last half hour; I just don’t care.”

I love my cats.

There will be scores of new reflections as we get totally settled, but for the moment I have more boxes to pack – and, after a very long hiatus, groceries to buy!

Home, sweet home.

Now I’m writing just to let you know I’m still alive

Hey dad, I’m writing to you
Not to tell you that I still hate you
Just to ask you how you feel
And how we fell apart
How this fell apart…

When you lay your head down
How do you sleep at night?
Do you even wonder if we’re alright?
But we’re alright

My brother turned me on to Good Charlotte back when The Young and the Hopeless first came out. It’s still in my top 25-ish favorite records of all time, because my music taste defies genre (and, by the standards of many, decent taste). I used to skip over “Emotionless” because it was such a sad-sounding song, but when everything did fall apart in 2004 I turned it on and turned it up – on constant repeat.

Tonight, I’m doing it again.

My dad called me while I was packing Friday night. I let it roll to voicemail, since we have (now less than) two weeks to get everything ready to go. What did he want? To know if I would do his taxes. Only after he told me what I could do for him did he add, a mere afterthought, that he hopes Arthur and I, and “that guy [I’m] married to, what’s his name” (a pathetic joke), are doing alright.

We’re alright…

It’s been a long hard road without you by my side
Why weren’t you there all the nights that we cried
You broke my mother’s heart, you broke your children for life
It’s not okay, but we’re alright
I remember the days you were a hero in my eyes
But those are just a long lost memory of mine
Now I’m writing just to let you know I’m still alive
I’m still alive

I wish I could go back to the time in my life when I didn’t know – or could ignore – the conditions he places on his love. I have to go back a long way…further than even my memory will take me. It seems that his fondest declarations of love came out of a bottle or a jail cell. The rest of the time, I think we were just the little people in his life who just needed more from him than he was willing to give.

When people would ask me who my dad is, I would tell them the story of how he took up a collection at work after he read a letter to the editor in the newspaper about a little girl whose birthday money was stolen from a public restroom, where she left it on the counter. But that man…that man doesn’t jive with the picture of my father I have in my head. A gunshot hole in the wall by the stairs. A pointed finger jabbing into my sternum. Hate in his eyes. Staring down a gun. And now, it’s only ever about what I can do for him.

There’s things I’ll take to my grave, but I’m okay…

I don’t know the man who wears my daddy’s face and speaks with his voice. I ache to have my daddy back, to believe that he really wants to know how I’m doing, that he really cares. More now than ever before, as Brian and I take our first fumbling steps into parenthood, I think that I could really use my daddy. But I don’t think he was ever really there.

And now I mourn at an empty grave, in a quiet spot that exists only in the corners of my mind – like the man I thought my dad was.

And sometimes I forgive
Yeah and this time, I’ll admit
That I miss you, said I miss you…

All I want is to say goodbye.

(Italicized lyrics from “Emotionless”, written by Benji & Joel Madden and performed by Good Charlotte, (c) 2002)

Making our house a home: the kitchen & dining room

We’re 17 days away from moving, and inching ever closer to making our house gorgeous!

Brian deserves a medal. I don’t know who would give it to him, but somebody needs to get on that. He has gone full steam with plastering, sanding, painting, and correcting the imperfections of age to make our house the best it can be. I know that it’s frustrating for him at times – seemingly easy projects take on a life of their own, and every time he turns around he thinks of another item to add to the list – but every hour he spends getting dirty over there is another hour closer to grinning over the finished product.

I’m also so grateful for my in-laws. I helped out with cleaning, stripping wallpaper, and of course picking paint colors (and yes, painting Arthur’s nursery – oh yeah, guys we’re having a boy!), but the tasks at hand now cross the line into “could be unsafe for the pregnant chick” and I’ve been relegated to heading up the packing effort in our apartment. My in-laws have filled the gap, making several day-long visits with food and encouragement, painting and cleaning and running out for extra supplies when what we have just didn’t go far enough. We wouldn’t be where we are today without their help.

My mom, meanwhile, has pitched in on the packing side. It’s nice to have someone there with me who really understands how I work and who isn’t afraid to jump in and start pitching things (not without asking, of course!)

Our progress so far…

The Kitchen

Our kitchen…well, let’s just say an old woman lived there. An old woman who liked old-woman wallpaper patterns. (And wallpaper in general? Yeesh…) Two different patterns competed for “grandma’s house” old-timey charm with only a chair rail to separate them and, well, they were ugly.

Not, however, as ugly as the walls they covered.

Once the outer layer of paper disappeared, we had to contend with old glue and paper remnants; multiple coats of now-peeling paint, and cracks in the wall from settling over the years. Still a work in progress, our kitchen looks many times better than it did the first day…

Mid-paper peel. If you look closely you can see the ugly upper paper on the floor… 

My hard-working MIL cleaning glue off of the lower level of the wall.

Making progress…paper and glue are off of everything except the ceiling!

Almost there! The kitchen nook after 1-2 coats of plaster and hours of work.

Next steps: cover the room with a coat of primer/sealer paint and plaster to even out the places where old paint has peeled, and then new coats of yellow!

The Dining Room

Our dining room is gorgeous. We stripped the carpet out the very first night we had keys, and once we removed the tack strips it was all a matter of paint! (And new blinds – what is it with old people and ugly things?)

We started by painting the ceiling and upper molding a crisp white. Over the last few days, my in-laws have transformed the walls from a boring too-white-to-be-eggshell to…

Geranium, coat 1

Geranium – the finished product!

Next up will be a coat of white on the trim, door to the upstairs, and built-in china cabinet…and a shopping trip for some new blinds. Note: I love the chandelier – vintage and crafted in Italy, its distressed bronze is a chic touch to the room and will be a focal point of the rest of the decor.

I can’t help but be totally excited about all of this – and I can’t wait until the next update (and of course to live there full-time)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making our house a home: the nursery

Since we picked up the keys to our house on December 18, I’ve been focused on one thing: painting the nursery!

There’s a whole lot to be done aesthetically throughout – the house is 72 years old and the previous owner was an elderly woman who understandably wasn’t able to keep up with everything. Cracks have formed in walls due to settling; the upstairs hasn’t been painted in who knows how long; and the kitchen…well, let’s just say that (ugly) wallpaper covers a multitude of sins.

Still, creating a space for our little one is at the top of my “want-to-do” list, and since I’m on limited renovation duty it is the one room in which I can really put my mark rather than just see the results of my choices unfold without me. And last night, we got to do it! (Well. The first coat, anyway.)

I don’t have any “before” pictures – the room was painted “butter”, a yellow so pale that it looked like a dirty institutional white. Brian had to go in and plaster over a crack that ran down an entire corner, and another that went up the wall and around a curve to the ceiling. (You’ll see what I mean in the “after” pictures.) Then, as we’re suiting up to paint on Saturday, he finds another crack that he missed the first time, and still another just a couple of feet away. He’s awesome though, and patched them up in time to go over after work yesterday and get started on our masterpiece.

Here’s where we are now:

Paint: Behr Premium Ultra + Primer, Eggshell Finish
Color: Green Energy
Coats: 1
Feeling: Like Kermit the Frog!
Total time (including taping): ~2 hours for 2 people (it’s a cute little room)

You can see how the wall slopes into the ceiling; because of that, the previous owners had marked off a line mid-curve separating “wall” from “ceiling”. We decided to forgo that option and make the whole room green – I had a moment of panic mid-paint when I thought it would close off the room too much, but I felt a lot better looking at the finished product.

Today we’ll add a second coat to even out the finish, and tomorrow my father-in-law is going to freshen up the white trim. From there, it’s shopping and decoration time!

More updates to follow as we move from room to room. I’m so excited!

Update on the nursery:

Well, we were about a quart shy of completing the second coat last night – basically, everything is finished except for the ceiling, which my mother-in-law is going to cover this morning.

But look at how gorgeous it is!!

 

This room is going to be amazing.

Hello darlin’…it’s been a long time

I’ve been hiding in the blogosphere for a few months now. Well, not actually hiding – I’m just writing more over at my now three-month-old blog, From 0 to Baby.

That’s right – if you didn’t get the memo, we’re expecting! (Expecting what, you say? Well, according to 3 of my readers it could be a cyborg but we’re fairly certain it’s a baby.)

 

Josh certainly isn’t lying – it’s been a busy year. Brian and I:

• got married in June
• decided to buy a house (and got pregnant) in September
• found out I’m pregnant in October
• closed on our house in December and promptly tore the place apart
• are moving in February
• are due in June – two weeks before our first anniversary!

If this isn’t the fast track to adulthood, someone please tell me what is. On the plus side, we can get all of this celebrating out of the way and spend the next few years just living this life that is coming together around us. (And, you know, celebrate with others – we’re all about sharing the wealth here!)

Of course, it does mean that I’m neglecting (again) writing as much as I want to, and really should. It’s a difficult thing to accomplish when your world is a roller coaster and it just came off a major hill and went straight into a covered loop. (Not that this is a problem – I love roller coasters.) Still, I know I need to make the time for it. Even when I don’t have anything substantial to say (like now), it’s just nice to sit in front of the screen and get some of my thoughts out. Writing is, after all, the first part of writing something good.

So hopefully here’s to a shorter hiatus, and if you really want to keep up – I’m always talking about the kid. 🙂

Wil Wheaton Blew Up My Twitter Account (or That’s Show Business)

This is amazing. Fellow BBT and Wil Wheaton fans will enjoy.

Verbatim Gibberish

So, I just wanted to immortalize this on the blog before it disappeared forever from the twittersphere. Friday morning, on a whim, I threw together a quick caption from a behind-the-scenes photo of Wil Wheaton and his wife Anne on the set of Big Bang Theory. If you haven’t seen the episode, it was taken on Wil Wheaton’s front porch (not really his, it’s just a TV set people) shortly after Jim Parsons‘s character Sheldon (spoiler) gets drunk and throws up in the bushes.

Anyway, I thought I was being clever, so I threw it up on the twitters and mentioned @wilw and @AnneWheaton, because I thought they might get a kick out of it.

And I guess he did because he retweeted it. To over two million people. Granted, it is twitter, so half of those are probably spambots, but still THAT’S A LOT OF…

View original post 731 more words

On the Nature of Evil – Quotes of the Day

I subscribe to a Page-A-Day calendar email, so every morning I wake up to a new quote or suggestion for living a happier, less stressful life. This morning’s gem was particularly resonant, so I figured I would share.

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

—Simone Weil

That got me thinking, of course, about other good quotes I’ve seen about the nature of evil. In lieu of yet another examination about evil, I decided instead to present them here without comment.

‘The real thing about evil,’ said the Witch at the doorway, ‘isn’t any of what you said. You figure out one side of it – the human side, say – and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It’s like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.’ (Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

“Evil is a point of view.” (Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire)

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.” (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan)

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil)