I Didn't Win The Battle....

As I said before there are some big changes going on around here in an effort to simplify my life into a more manageable creation than that kaleidoscope mess that it currently is. After looking at my schedule I have come to the hard realization that I cannot both found my not-for-profit and run my housekeeping business. I have gotten to the point in the not-for-profit where meetings need to be attended, fundraising needs to be started, and some serious work hours need to be put in. This has become more than a full time job people. So how then, if that has become a full time job, am I also able to have a full time job running my housekeeping company?

I can’t.

I can’t make it work. It’s gotten to the point where it has to be one or the other. I sat down and I looked at the pros and cons of each company. The housekeeping business is bringing in money, albeit after taxes and my RIDICULOUS liability insurance payments, it’s not much. Only about $200 a week. I look at the future I have in that business and it scares me. I see my body breaking down, I see the damage done to my insides after years of being covered in chemicals, and like I said, it scares me. My kids only have one parent and I want to be healthy enough to be around for a long time. I also know that on a full schedule I’m not even making our financial ends meet. I’m working myself to the bone, I still can’t provide for my family, and I don’t see it getting any better.

Then I look at the not-for-profit. It’s a project that I believe so deeply in, just thinking about the women that I will be able to help heals my wounds. It makes me feel like my path was worth it. Like everything that I went through wasn’t in vain, but yet paving the way for my purpose in life. It feels right. It feels more right than anything else has ever felt in my entire life. It feels like it is the reason that I was put on this planet, like it is the purpose of my soul’s creation. It feels like the answer to all the times that I screamed up to the sky and asked “Why!?”

Perfect, right? Except that I'm not getting paid to work on the not-for-profit.

I Could Have Been Eaten By A Wolf

If you haven’t noticed by now, weird stuff happens to me. My friends call me a bug light for strange men and strange experiences just follow me. In fact I was telling my friend the other day that I was going to conquer my fear of riding the train and just do it. Her reply? “No way Eden. Knowing you, you would miss your stop, ride all the way to Canada, somehow be the only person to just walk past customs, and then be in a foreign country without a passport and we would have to extradite you out, because weird shit happens to you. Don’t do it.”

I have no argument to that one. None. As I was writing in my other post about how the Rottweiler got right in my friends face at 2:30am and nearly scared us to death, I started thinking about how some of my strangest life experiences have been with animals.

For example, the summer following my husband leaving I worked as a nanny. I had my kids plus the two I was watching, which meant I had four kids, ages 3, 1, 10 months and 8 months. I watched the children at my client’s house in the middle of a very suburban neighborhood. One day at roughly 3pm I had all the kids on the driveway where I was blowing bubbles for them, when all of a sudden out of nowhere this giant buck with its giant buck antlers came running up the driveway, reared up on its back legs, and I swear it started doing crazy ninja moves. It was literally punching the air with its front legs about two feet from my face. Do you know how tall those things are on their back legs? Huge. They are huge. That’s all you need to know. They are huge.

I laughed so hard when I saw this picture. In my case it was a buck that was SIGNIFICANTLY larger than me, antlers and all, but it was pretty much punching exactly like that!

Imagine this punching you. What. The. Hell.

So I have a three year old, three babies, and a giant punching ninja deer on the driveway. What do you do in that situation? You do nothing. It happens so fast that you just stand there with your jaw on the ground while your brain is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Then just as soon as the buck had appeared it was off, running down the street to scare the shit out of someone else. That was immediately followed by me screaming “AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! GET IN THE HOUSE, while grabbing any limb attached to a child that I can get a hold of as I start flinging children towards the garage door. Fun times.

I'm Selling My Body

I was never nurtured into adulthood; I was dragged, kicked, and shoved until I got there. It wasn’t long after I turned 18 that I came home to find my parents putting boxes in my room and essentially telling me “we’re done, get out!” To be honest, I couldn’t fill those boxes fast enough and I did get out so fast I think the only thing you would have seen was the streak that was me fleeing from the hell hole I called home.

But before I moved out for good, I lived in a lot of different places. There were many nights after I just couldn’t take it anymore that I would climb out my bedroom window, completely unbeknownst to my parents, and head to the downtown area less than a mile from my house. There I would sleep under the bridge with the rest of my fellow “unwanteds,” and together we grew up. Street kids form a family unit that is unlike anything you can imagine unless you have lived it. 

Despite how accepted I was by the kids I met under the bridge, there was a distinctive difference between them and myself. Most of them had been subjected to horrors that differed from mine in such a way that theirs exposed them to the world. They watched their drug addicted mothers prostitute themselves and they visited their fathers in jail. They lived on the streets and in homeless shelters until their parents either disappeared completely or they ran away from whatever hellish foster home they were in and landed under the bridge. I on the other hand never experienced any of that because I grew up in almost complete isolation, never learning much outside of the four walls of my home. When I finally started running away from home I was so oblivious as to how the world worked that they took me in and fiercely protected me, knowing that I would never make it out there on my own.

I watched the kids around me fall prey to the ways of the streets. Girls became prostitutes and guys became drug dealers. I watched many fall into their own drug addictions and I unfortunately watched several lose their lives because of it. When you are a street kid, no one tells you that you can be anything. We didn’t sit around saying “I want to become a doctor. I want to become a lawyer.” We sat around hoping we made it to adulthood and beyond that we didn’t dare dream.

My Life Is Completely Unrealistic

When did life get so complicated? Don’t get me wrong, it’s always been complicated, but when did it get so overwhelming? To be honest I’ve had a few rough weeks. Looking back it seems as if ever since the surgery I’ve been struggling with the footing of life. The complications that I had after hemorrhaging in the recovery room took a lot more out of me than I was expecting. Also, while being honest, I didn’t really give myself enough time to recover before I hit the ground running again ten days later. I almost died in the recovery room and even though I knew it was serious at the time, I didn’t know exactly how serious it had been until I went for my follow up appointment a few days ago and the surgeon told me how scared he had gotten. I could have died and yet ten days later I was back in the swing of a very busy life.

A life that I constantly have to be one step ahead of or it will get away from me.  As any person knows, having a full time job is a lot of work.  I have not only my schedule to worry about, but the ever changing schedule of my housekeeping clients. It’s not a hard job intellectually, but cleaning houses is physically exhausting, and the isolation and silence can be a bit maddening.  I literally hit the ground running in the mornings and am on my feet scrubbing away until my workday is over, and often times, I’ll go the whole day without seeing another person. On top of that, not only am I running a cleaning business, but getting my not-for-profit up and running is taking up more time than I could have ever imagined. Meetings, emails, phone calls, and business junk are overwhelming me. It literally has become an entirely separate second career. After those two careers, let’s not forget about the dance classes that I teach. Can anyone say third career? Oh and let’s not forget I am also a full time mother.

Do You Think I Could Wear Giant Metal Bugs On My Nipples?

Last week I went to my post surgical check up at the surgeon's office. The good news is that the doctor said the outside of my nose is totally healed and looks exactly like we both wanted it too. In his words, "girl we nailed it." The bad news was that the inside wasn't as healed as he would have liked it to be at this point and I got a long talking to about how I was supposed to be taking it easy. Instead of being released from his care I now have to go back to see him AGAIN. That's a huge pain for me because I don't drive in the city so I have to bribe my friends to take me. Good thing I have great friends. 

Anyways, while I'm sitting in the surgeon's office I'm reading the only magazine that they had; Vogue. As I'm reading, I'm realizing something. Well actually, confirming something would be a better fit. I don't understand fashion, I just don't get it. The entire magazine was out of my element and with each page I found myself asking "huh?" 

With that being said, I have decided that with my new life, maybe I need a new look. I took a few pictures with my phone of this springs fashion trends and I was hoping you guys could give me a little feedback. What do you guys think of these looks?

I'm not sure what copyright laws are on stuff like this, but all of these pictures came out of this magazine:

I don't know about you, but I was unaware that "sexy" is now a girl with a mustache. They look half dead and HELLO, one has a mustache! Would any of you girls look at this and be like "you know what? I've never really thought about it before, but yea, a mustache might be a good look for me." Anyone? Anyone? Men? Have any of you ever been like "That girl is fine, but she would be out of this world if only she had a mustache?" Any of you? I am apparently totally out of the loop. (I did however throw that mustache party and I have to admit, I made that look good.)

How about this one? Nothing says "I want to buy that!" like a girl who is obviously in pain from the shoes she is wearing. Clearly she can barely even stand up as she is draped over her identical twin and trying not to put full pressure on her painful shoes. You know what else attracts me to this look? I do love a good jacket that doesn't cover most of the parts of me that would get cold. Does anyone know where I can get me one of these totally impractical jackets?

Now this might actually be a good look for me, seeing as how I am pale enough to pull at least that part off, but I'm not sure if I could carry around a dead fox all day. "Hey, do you mind if I put my dead fox on your desk while we have our meeting? I wouldn't want him to get stepped on, he is dry clean only." Of course I'd have to be ok with my boobies showing through my metallic dress, but hey I'm willing to give it some thought.

Damn Straight I'm Gonna Wear It

A couple weeks ago both of my kids got the stomach flu. I’m telling you, there aren’t many things that I rank higher in the “hellish experience” department than being a single working mother of two young children with the stomach flu. Missing work (i.e. a paycheck) so that I can spend my day covered in barf, Lysol, and wading through laundry, just kills me. I am convinced that if I die and come to consciousness wearing no shoes while the road to the gates is paved with jumbled up Lego’s, and vomit is somehow involved, I will instantly know that I am in hell.

With that being said, do you know what I rank as an even higher hellish experience than two kids with the stomach flu? When I get the stomach flu and still have to mother two small children.  After being up round the clock for several days straight, I suddenly found myself near passed out lying on the cold, slate tiled, bathroom floor. Fun times. At one point I remember stumbling to the couch, looking at the clock, and realizing it was only 4pm. I still had to make dinner, give baths, get the kids to bed, and I could barely hold my head up. The next thing I know I’m looking at the clock and its 3am, all the lights in the house are off, I’m still on the couch, and it is very, very quiet. OH MY GOSH ARE MY CHILDREN EVEN STILL HOME??

I run upstairs and there is my boy child, snuggled into his crib with his snuggie and pacifier. There is a chair next to his bed, he is wearing mismatched pajamas, and a swim diaper. I look into my girl child’s room and she is in her bed, night light on, books on the nightstand, and is sleeping peacefully. As I’m trying to wrap my head around what is going on, I start to wander around the house to see if I can jog my memory and remember taking care of them for the evening. Ok, toothbrushes are on the bathroom counter, so teeth were brushed. Did I feed them? I go into the kitchen and dishes are on the table. Ok, it looks like they had waffles, bananas, and applesauce. Why do I not remember doing any of this?? Great, now not only am I dehydrated, vomiting, and feverish, I am also apparently losing my mind. I go back into the girl child’s room and wake her up.

“Baby, did I make dinner?”

She rubs her eyes, looks at me and says “Oh. You’re not dead. We thought you were dead so I made dinner and put him to sleep. I put waffles in the microwave just like you showed me. I pushed a three and an eight and made sure they weren’t too hot for him. I couldn’t lift him into bed so I got him my desk chair and he climbed in. I read him a story and made sure he had all his things for sleeping and we said our prayers. I even turned all the lights off too because I thought you were dead so you didn’t need any lights on.”

Just In Case You Were Starting To Think I Was Normal....

You all know I’m weird, right? I mean at this point in the game, this is a well established fact, am I correct? Well just in case you needed some more proof, here are some totally random and odd facts about me that you never cared to know.

#1. I was once awoken in the middle of the night, in my pitch dark bedroom because something was moving. My brain was going a hundred miles a minute trying to figure out if the moving creature was a robber, one of my children, or did I own a dog that I had forgotten about? Nope, none of those and whatever it was, it was moving very fast. I’m now freaking out so naturally I hide under my sheet, because that’s logical. The monster creature then runs across my bed and at this point I am fully convinced that either a demon is about to suck my soul down to hell or I am about to go head to head with a rabid raccoon. At some point I realize that I’m screaming. In a last ditch attempt to save my life I somehow levitate over to the light switch, flick it on, and come face to face with…….my neighbor's cat. How it got in, I have no idea.

#2. I have an irrational phobia of fish. Like I’ve said before, they don’t blink and that is just not natural. I think it stems from when I was three years old and at my grandparent’s lake house. My teenage boy cousins had gone fishing and were gutting the fish for dinner, and they thought it would be a marvelous idea to tackle me and stick all the fish eyes onto me. Did you know they stick like glue? ((SHUDDER)) I remember running in the house in the middle of a full blown panic attack and all of the adults telling me to “get the eyes out of the house.” I had to sit on the back porch and peel them off one by one while the eyes stared at me. Even now, when I clean my client’s house that has a fish tank in it, I have to fight the urge to drop a hair dryer in the tank.

#3. I still sleep with my baby blanket. Well, not the same one, but they still make the same one and sell it at Sears, so even though I wash it regularly, I replace it every few years because it just seems like the appropriate thing to do. So even though I am a total freak, I’m at least hygienic.

#4.  I sleep with the lights on downstairs so that intruders can’t tell if I’m awake or not, which is kind of an irrelevant fear, seeing as how all of my assaults happened during the hours when most people are awake.

Death, Rescue Me

Did you all know I write poetry? I can't remember if I've shared that on here before. Most of my early work and my first published book, was all poetry. I haven't shared my poetry in a long time because it has become intensely personal, but tonight I guess I'm feeling open.

**Trigger Warning**


I hear the door open and my heart beats faster.

He is home.

Burying my head under the covers, please let him think I'm asleep.

The thumping of my heart beating in sync with every thud of his footsteps coming up the stairs.

The bedroom door opens.

Terror.

Every fiber of my being telling me to run away, yet ever wrestling the internal struggle of my desperate soul against my brain screaming "DON'T FUCKING MOVE."

Keep my eyes shut. Monsters aren't real!

I feel a hand moving up my thigh. Please, just let me die.

Any chance of remaining in my tomb of silent sleep is shattered as I am forcefully rolled to my back.

This is the man that I chose to marry.

I start to sit up, please, not tonight.

"We can do this the hard way, or the easy way, either way, its getting done. I'll let you choose as to how much it hurts."

I sink back down into my soulless coffin, the pillows surrounding me with their suffocating hugs.

A hand wrapped "lovingly" around my throat.

I whimper.

His breathing is labored, as mine becomes strained. Darkness creeping in around the edges.

Please stop!

This is not what I signed up for.

I recite my vows in my head, "till death do us part."

Please death, I'm ready to go.

Rescue me.

Beware Of Frisbee's

Everyone has those stories from their past that they just love to share, don't they? So you have a story that stand out as particularly funny or dramatic, that come up time and time again? Well I do, so I thought that maybe you would like to hear one of my best party stories.

Freshman year of high school I met a guy who would become a very dear friend of mine. We never dated, we couldn't have been more opposite, but we just became great friends. His mom worked at the school, and I would assume that she was the reason our lockers always ended up next to each other and our lunch period was always at the same time. Throughout the four years that we spent together, I would eat breakfast at his house before school, borrow lunch money from him pretty much every single day, and do all the crazy stuff together that high schoolers do, such as trick or treating (was that just us?), and attending school functions. One of my most terrifying high school experiences came with he decided to show me how he could do donuts in the school parking lot with his truck. My head has never come so near to a light pole in my life. In fact, we were so oddly "coupled" up that one day his girlfriend approached him and said "my friends see you carrying Eden's books to class everyday and they think you are dating." He told her that her friends were stupid, she gave him the ultimatum to stop walking me to class or she would break up with him, and he broke up with her. We weren't anything, and yet, we were something.

Sorry, bad quality, I had to take a picture of a picture.

Things That Make You Ask "Why?" Part 4

This week in "things that make you ask why," courtesy of my cell phone, I bring you;

Why would anyone my size want to wear this?? Mr. Attorney Man, are you reading this? Can I wear this next time we go to court? I want to look like the chick from "Legally Blond." It even has a matching purse thingy.... Tempting, veeeeerrrrry tempting.

Why do all these chocolate rabbits look surprised? 

"Ooooo, a carrot!"

"Ooooo, I can't remember what I was going to say!"

"Oooo, a baseball bat!"

"Oooo, look up, ears!"

"Hi. I'm not surprised. I'm just a confident nerd. I know I look good."

I Hope The News Doesn't Find Out That My Shed Burned Down

I’ve had figurative walls up around me for as long as I can remember. In elementary school I was labeled with “selective mutism,” which basically means that a person can physically speak, but mentally, they can’t get themselves to actually do it. For me, I was so completely terrified to say anything that I had literally been rendered silent. I did not say one word in first or second grade. Not one word the entire year to a single soul. In third grade, it was about halfway through the year when I finally said something and I thought the teacher’s eyeballs were going to fall out of her head, her eyes where open so wide with shock.

Why didn’t I speak? Because I knew that my life was different from the other children around me and my child mind could not figure out what was and what wasn't ok to say.When it came down to it, I simply couldn’t differentiate which things was I supposed to be keeping silent and which things I was allowed to talk about, so I just didn’t say a word.

As I got older and people started intervening in my life, I quickly learned what was, and was not, a safe subject to talk about. Contrary to popular belief, telling someone that could “help” me about what was really going on, was not helpful at all, it was actually a torture sentence. They would attempt to intervene and my parents would immediatly assure them that I was just confused, that really, all was well. I would be left getting blamed  for our dirty little family secrets being exposed and whatever mess that I thought I might have been saved from would end up being magnified tenfold and rained down upon me in a horror that I had not even fathomed. Eventually, the silence that blanketed many areas of my life also started to protect my reputation. I wanted to fit in; I didn’t want anyone to know the way that I was actually living. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was weird, so the only way that I could see to fit in, was to keep my mouth shut.