Monthly Archives: March 2014

Lucinda’s a writer

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I am Here

I had three projects turned down last week. Three! That is a bad week even for me. Truth is the last three months have been the worst in my career. I had found a wonderful person to work with and everything was on the up and up and then I had to let her go and make myself redundant with no pay or notice when a client sidelined a project I had put months of unpaid work into and helped shape and develop, a project we had started in 2011 before Eva was even born.  Stupid I know.

Shit happens so why am I so irritated by this latest string of rejections. I think I may have finally come to the last straw: the last of a series of annoyances or disappointments that leads one to a final loss of patience, temper, trust or hope.  Definitely hope, trust, yes that too.

Someone said to me yesterday,  “By now you should be used to rejection in your business.” Do we ever get used to rejection or do we finally say fuck this and give up and try something new.

I like to think of my current career, (I can’t call it a job because its not a job at the moment) as a Bad Bad Boyfriend. That boyfriend who never calls you back or when he does treats you like crap and yet there is just something about him that keeps you coming back for more despite your ego which is telling you to run for the lifeboats. I dated a few bad boys a long long time ago, got wise to that and found an amazing husband and father to spend my life with. Why can’t I do that in my career? Perhaps it is time to listen to my ego.

The problem is my ego is confused, as soon as I decide I have had enough, people look at me like I am dumping Jude Law, but Jude Law is a bad bad boyfriend too he just looks pretty to everyone else. But then all of a sudden a silver lining, something good happened – an antidote, a great group of people gave me a great job. It is part time so not the answer to all my problems, but it is a start. It is enough to pull me back from the edge when I have already decided to jump. So I am going to make another film, this time it will probably be my last one, it’s kind of nice knowing that going in. I am sure I will get plenty of questions.

“Why are you giving up?” but the fact is I didn’t give up. I had a vision and at some point, and certainly at three points last week, the world more specifically Bermuda decided they didn’t share that vision and so it is time soon to get that divorce from that bad boyfriend I keep complaining to my friends about.

They don’t say anything really to me when I complain they just look at me with fake pity and a haughty “I told you so” look. Even though they say nothing, I can hear them thinking, “Why did SHE think SHE could be a filmmaker as a career.” Then they offer up a “Why don’t you meet with a recruiter,” as if I haven’t thought about that, or they think but don’t say, “You can always be a waitress.” I was a lousy waitress; I already tried it. It doesn’t solve my problem, which is that my ideas are too ambitious, unrealized and perhaps unrealistic in Bermuda. I could keep complaining to my friends about this problem but they would just look at me as if I was complaining about my weight while eating an entire pizza.

But you know what I am going to do, I am going to do something even worse, I am going to proclaim myself a writer. Forget movies. Forget spending all day cutting the tags out of my demanding toddler’s wardrobe.

My husband played a song for me, which I had never heard before the other night. I have played it every day since. It’s my new theme song a la Ally Mc Beal.

Pearl’s a Singer by Elkie Brooks. I have been singing along to it so much, I started to change the words. I now call it Lucinda’s a Writer.

Lucinda’s a writer

She stands up when she plays the keyboard

In the night time.

Lucinda’s a writer

She writes blogs for the lost and lonely

Her job is entertaining folks

rewriting songs and telling jokes

In the night time

Lucinda’s a writer

And they say that she once was a winner

in a contest

Lucinda’s a writer

And they say that she once made a movie

They played it for a week or so

On the local TV station

It never made it

She wanted to be Betty Davis

But now she sits there watching Shameless

Dreaming of the things she never got to do

All those dreams that never came true

Lucinda’s a writer

She stands up when she plays the keyboard

In the night time

Lucinda’s a writer

She writes blogs for the lost and the lonely

Her job is entertaining folks

Rewriting songs and telling jokes

In the night time

 

Lucinda’s a writer

She stands up when she plays the keyboard

In the night time

Lucinda’s a writer

She writes blogs for the lost and the lonely

Her job’s entertaining folks

Rewriting songs and telling jokes

In the night time…

 

This song was playing on YouTube in the background while I put my life up for sale on emoo and eBay. My husband pulled me away before I put him and Eva up for a Buy It Now deal and took me outside for some fresh air and a fresh perspective.

Truth be told, I can write movies based anywhere, if I embrace my new career as a writer I can finally eventually divorce myself from Bermuda which will otherwise suck the artistic life out of me if I let it… Bad Boyfriend!

So I am retiring soon but my blog will continue and I will soon say I hail from Nowhere, Oklahoma. Hey it’s artistic license. I am sure all my true fans will understand, that like Bette Davis in All About Eve I am “Maudlin and full of self pity” but I am also “Magnificent.” Even if its only me that thinks so.

Bette Davis scene from All About Eve: ( I tried to put it on youtube but they blocked me)

Bette Davis: “I am being rude now aren’t I, or should I say Ain’t I”

Addison DeWitt: “You are maudlin and full of self pity, You are magnificent.”

Husband: “How about calling it a night”

Bette Davis: “And you pose as a playwright. A situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.”

Husband: “It’s a good thought.”

Bette Davis: “It won’t PLAY.”

– Bette Davis at her best.

BD- AllaboutEve

I was writing this the other day, after dressing Eva up as Tinkerbelle at her request. By the end of the day this is where her wings and wand ended up. I think Eva is feeling my vibe.  She is now a retired fairy.

Tinkerbelle wings

Xx Derelict Mom

 

 

 

 

 

 

Circadian Rhythms

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The first few months of a baby’s life are hardest on her mother. Babies don’t know day from night and every few hours they scream in abandonment and confusion. This behavior hits its peak a few weeks in when the well wishers drop off, the grandparents have gotten over the novelty of a new baby and daddy is back at work. Suddenly its mother and baby alone to face the dark night right when adrenaline burns out and the shopping list is whittled down to two things: coffee and chocolate.

My daughter Eva was born on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the night of the longest darkness. It felt like that too for about two years, night upon night of soothing a crying baby so she didn’t wake the dogs, who would wake Daddy, who would let the dogs outside to wake up the angry extended family on the Spurling acreage. “Hush little baby” does not work, you might as well listen to whatever music you want at 3am it doesn’t matter.

By the time Eva was four weeks old I was convinced I had given birth to a nocturnal monster and that I would never catch a break. Around the same time when she went for her one month weigh in, the real reason for her night wakings, or rather all night screaming was discovered, in fact it was probably apparent to anyone who had not been up all night for over thirty consecutive days. A month after she was born she was barely her birth weight and she looked like a little alien, a big head bulgy eyes and a tiny little body and Spock like ears. So all night while I was munching away on chocolate crying about not being able to sleep, Eva was staying up all night breast feeding, crying away about not being able to get enough to eat. Ahhh the vicious cycle of the Mother-Daughter relationship. The skinnier she got the fatter I got. Life’s unfair! Supplement with formula!

When she was three months old I left her in her own room to sleep, I was convinced she would be heartbroken that her mother had left her, but alas I think she was glad to be rid of me and those huge appendages that barely sustained her in her first few weeks.  I left her to rejoin the boys, Daddy, and Eva’s twin brothers Piccolo and Piglet, after three months they had developed quite a boys club and they had to reluctantly accept me back into their lair.  The next six months or so were amazing, Eva slept from seven pm until seven am, I was in heaven and then right when I thought I had this baby thing down, a toddler arrived and the night wakings returned.

From the age of ten months Eva was awake almost every single night for an hour or two crying. Eva was so sleep deprived she would get sick and the whole vicious circle would perpetuate. My parents were sure I had to be exaggerating about her being up every single night, but at the same time were perplexed by my erratic behavior of driving on the wrong side of the road, quoting the year as 1998, the U.S. president as Nixon, and other early onset signs of dementia easily mistaken for the woes of new motherhood or maybe just anarchy.

It was around this time last year I can remember putting Eva down to bed one Saturday night. She woke up an hour or so later crying and never went back to sleep. After an entire night walking her from room to room, pushing her under the moon in the stroller, singing her hits from the 1980s all the way back to the 1930s, Daddy and I freaked out and took her to the emergency room. At about 9am, 12 hours after she began her tormented screaming she was diagnosed with a sore throat, and mommy and daddy were diagnosed as having a toddler. The doctors gave her a powerful pain killer and she finally found slumber in her car seat as Daddy drove home and Mommy poked him in the shoulder every few minutes so he wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel. I wish I could say this only happened once but that would be a lie.

In April of last year I finally lost it and decided I needed professional help. I talked to the Doctor about Eva’s sleep issues and he like everyone else decided we had not sleep trained her efficiently and that she (or I ) was spoiled and sent me to the visiting child psychiatrist when I asked for her to be tested for sleep apnea. My child was barely a year old and she was already seeking help for her mental health. There is no wonder I feel like a Derelict mother.  After filling out countless forms attesting to the fact that I do not beat my child, humiliate or neglect her I was ushered into see the doctor.

“I have come to have my daughter checked for sleep apnea.”

The good doctor pauses, I can tell he is checking my irises to make sure I am not on anything.

“Its just coffee and chocolate, I assure you.”

He ignores me, and looks over my paperwork.

“How old did you say you were? I mean how old is she?”

“I am 36, look 46, Eva is fifteen months but she looks like she is barely a year. Isn’t small stature a sign of sleep apnea?”

Eva is sitting in front of him stacking colored blocks.

“She is not behind in development, I can see.” The doctor says.

“No she is quite advanced and she knows about 20 words.” I proudly declare afraid she will come out with a new one like “asshole,” at the doctor’s office.

“You would be able to tell by now if she had any significant development delays, but it is at this age that emotional issues come into play.”

“Please don’t tell me my infant is depressed or prescribe me Prozac because if you do I might scream in frustration.” I think. “but then he might break out the Lithium.” I worry.

I roll up my sleeves in an effort to look less disheveled. I can see the doctor checking for track marks so I tie my hair back into a bun to look less like a hippie drug user. Damn those Youngblood country genes.

“Why don’t you describe a typical night to me?” he asks still weighing me up wondering if I will start nonchalantly mentioning gin bottles and wild raging domestic disputes that wake the baby.

“Okay. I aim to go to bed at 10 but life and HBO conspire to keep me up until 11pm. Right as I am dropping to sleep at about 1130pm I hear a pitiful cry on the monitor. I ignore it. A few minutes later it increases in volume and intensity, I reach for the video monitor. I flick it on and see two red eyes starring back at me like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead. I close my eyes and hope it will go away, I ignore it. Then the crib starts rattling and the scream reaches a new decibel and I climb out of bed. I run into her room before her scream cracks all the windows of the surrounding houses, and I lift her from her bed. She then hits me over and over again on the head, and does not seem to know who I am. I take her outside to calm her down which sometimes takes quite a while. It could be possession.” I say in all seriousness.

“That sounds like a night terror.”

“Yes its my recurring nightmare, it happens every night.” I say.

“No she is having night terrors not you.” He says.

“And me!” I correct him. “I thought maybe she was just having the dream where you could change in your mother for someone else’s mother like that episode of the Twilight zone.”

“ No, it is a developmental condition, some children get them, other’s don’t. unfortunately you wont be able to do much about it.”

“Really no magic pill?” I say. He looks worried. I can tell he is looking in my purse for pill bottles but all he can see is Cadburys Cream eggs, I had one for breakfast.

“What about her staying up all night when she is sick, that is not a night terror?” I ask.

“Well there is sick and then there is very sick.” He says.

“Why don’t you turn the monitor off.”

I am starting to like this doctor.

On my way out, he hands me a book. “Toddler Taming.”

I look it over and I look him in the eye and say “Thanks.”

“I think you could use the help.” He says like he understands.

“She is very spirited” he looked around his office, every toy, every plaything had been taken apart and redesigned into Eva’s order.

“What about sleep apnea?”

“She doesn’t have sleep apnea.” He said and looked at me with a don’t worry you will survive this look.

“Read the book.” He said.

I haven’t read the book yet, I hate to admit so very derelict of me. However last spring I did start Eva on an alternative health regime of probiotics and vitamins to help restore her health because Derelict Mom is still feeling guilty that all Eva’s problems are somehow related to a lack of breast milk when she was a baby. This winter of her “terrible twos” has been a lot less terrible than the winters preceding it. Although Eva has been sick she has been up a lot less at night, and just when I was thinking wow Eva seems to have grown out of those night terrors, she had another one a couple weeks ago. It was only one night but it served to remind me never to take a night’s uninterrupted sleep for granted. Around the same time I saw an article trending on the internet which gave me pause to worry even more:

“Kid’s Night Terrors Linked to Delusions later in life.”

It begins, “Children who suffer from frequent night terrors and nightmares are more likely to experience hallucinations and delusions later on in life, new research suggests…. They are more likely to report psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and hearing voices at age 12, some go on to be diagnosed with a full psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia in adulthood.”

http://www.livescience.com/43795-nightmares-linked-to-psychosis.html

Yikes, maybe the doctor is holding back the lithium until she’s twelve and he didn’t want to tell me in case I decided I needed it. I guess I will have to wait and see. I preferred what my previous internet searches had turned up, that children who suffer night terrors are just more creative and imaginative. Until she grows up I will have to be content to imagine that she is dreaming about trading in her monster mother for an upscale model maybe even our idol, Bette Davis.

Last Saturday I flipped on the T.V. to enjoy my new obsession, the Lifetime network’s The Haunting series with medium Kim Russo. It was followed by a new show called, The Ghost Inside My Child. It features children, like Eva and their parents who are driven around the bend by night terrors and “delusions” and what is at the bottom of it is that these children are reliving past lives in their dreams.

http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/the-haunting-of

http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/ghost-inside-my-child

My husband could not bring himself to watch “The Ghost Inside my Child” during Saturday night primetime, so he elected to iron shirts instead. But I was now convinced, Eva had to be dreaming about Bette Davis and wishing she could trade me in. Hell I would trade myself in if I could. Although I had lost probably a year’s worth of sleep in the last several years of motherhood, I was not crazy yet.

Back in our reality I knew Eva was stuck with me as her Derelict Mother and that it was time I let Eva have her own dreams, and admit like Bette Davis in All About Eve, that:

“There comes a time when the piano (the Derelict Mother) realizes it has not written the concerto (Baby Eva).”

N.B. I should ask my mother if I had night terrors as a child. She can blame this blog on my unstable mental health.

Xx Derelict Mom

 

Queen of the Gypsies

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I picked up my parents from the airport yesterday; they had been gone about a week for my mother’s eye surgery in Boston. When I rolled up in their Rav 4 station wagon, our modern version of a Romani gypsy caravan I looked at the sidewalk where an extended family of body bags were lined up next to my parents. I sighed, their bag porter had already high tailed it with his tip. We heaved the body bags into the car one by one, and they just about fit. We shut the doors and thanked god for the minor miracle of fitting everything in, which includes my mother and her many accoutrements.  Mom doesn’t travel lightly, neither do I. When we rented an apartment in Montana on a family holiday it looked like my mother had moved in, she brought three pairs of cowboy boots, several stand up mirrors, a jewelry box etc etc. She had to travel back east by land or she would have racked up a world record in excess baggage. For this trip though she was travelling light by her standards, they only came back with a bag for every day of the week they were away, I am surprised the suitcases weren’t labeled: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday like the kids underwear.  My mom was probably out shopping as soon as they wheeled her out of the hospital door, eye patch and all. Shopping is easier when you can’t read the price tags! Derelict GiGi is trying to get into Ripley’s Believe it or not for the most surgeries in one lifetime, in reality she has had more surgeries than Michael Jackson but no where near as much properfol instead she has a Lindo’s green eco bag stuffed full of East End prescribed happy pills.

I have to admit I am exactly the same as my mother, just with a far smaller budget. And when she unzipped one of the body bags out came a box of almond meal, a huge gallon bag of coconut flour, and custom baby probiotics all ordered by me to their Boston apartment and dutifully transported back to Bermuda by the Queen of the Gypsies, my mother. I am grateful; I am her daughter in training. Just looking in my purse I can find twenty ball point pens, gaffer tape, three notebooks, files, a few novels, two cameras, and floss and a few plugs… you know just in case.

My mother’s lecturing me about not ordering so much stuff to the Boston apartment is steeped in irony. My mother might not order things off of amazon, but she buys enough from Lord and Taylor and Talbots to surpass all of my internet shopping exploits. My father might be the all time worst for online shopping sprees; he is always ordering strange antiques and on occasion making me smuggle in an iron dagger from 1500 B.C. in my luggage. When we got pulled by TSA, try to explain that one..”Yes that iron dagger tangled in my thong underwear is my Dad’s antique letter opener.” Hmmmm. I started wondering if travelling around with lots of stuff was genetic.

My parents have even started bringing in tons of specialty foods in their suitcase, which is reminiscent of my mother’s parents who every Christmas would arrive with several suitcases each, and if you sat next to one on the ride home from the airport chances are you would get freezer burn. When we arrived at the house, they would be opened and enormous steaks as big as my arm would be heaved from the suitcase into the deep freeze, along with sausages, orange rolls, and frozen pounds of cookies of several varieties. I’d wonder where their clothes were as that’s the area they would economize on space, and would have about three interchangeable pieces for as many weeks.

 

My mother was becoming more and more like her mother, as I became more and more like my mother.  That said perhaps on some occasions she was far more like her father. Many early morning service callers have mistaken those gruff adenoidal cadences for the man of the house.

“Hello The Spurling Residence.”

“Hello Sir, it’s Bermuda Telephone Company calling.”

“This is not Sir, its Mrs. Spurling!”

“Mr. Spurling if you pass me to the lady of the house I can make an appointment.”

“This is the lady of the house.”

“Mister Spurling I must have caught you on a bad day it sounds like you have a very heavy cold. ”

My mother replies in her best Queen’s English, “It’s Mrs. Jane Spurling speaking at this very moment.”

“I am so sorry Mrs. Spurling it must be a bad line.”

…..

Before doing all this genealogical research I didn’t realize there was such thing as a “Youngblood voice.” It’s deep, gravelly and with a smooth timbre much like my mother’s Aunt Bernice in this video. I wonder if people thought Bernice was a man when she answered the phone. There are some genetic consistencies that just can’t be denied, including my mother’s most definite gypsy like tendencies!

Over to Aunt Bernice:

Like Aunt Bernice, and my mother both my sister and I also register on the lower scale. I’ll never forget one of the most mortifying moments in primary school music class when the music teacher classified us by vocal register. Most of the girls were soprano or mezzo soprano, a few boys were too, then most of the boys were in the middle as tenors, and I am sure you have guessed by now, there was one Barritone Alto, me. I was the smallest girl in the class with the deepest voice. It must have been then I wished to become a boy, little did I know I would only have to wait a few decades to be mistaken for one!

There are many things that are genetic: looks, personality, voice, and well: hair.

When I saw this video below, my first thought was, this is exactly what I would look like if I had a mullet. Scary thought. Mullets I think might be genetic too.  Eva was born with one, and she still has it, see picture below. I tell people it is her genetic adaptation to childhood, which saves mommy from having to cut it or tie it back, but now I am thinking after seeing the video below that it might be a rogue Youngblood gene.  I do hope that Eva has better grammar than our dear relative “which is” Cousin Brenda with the crazy hair. I also still wondering how you can collect careers like cousin Brenda “which is” a nurse, electrologist, interior decorator and chiropractic assistant and still have time to sew, swim and play tennis. You know us Youngbloods, we are prone to exaggeration…and collecting careers, like the gypsies.

Does anyone know what an “electrologist” is? I am guessing it has something to do with sticking a fork into an electrical socket… something this derelict mom must admit my Eva has done under my watch. That’s what happened to the Youngblood hair!

Over to Cousin Brenda:

And here is a picture of Eva “which is” two and has a mullet au natural. Eva who with her Diva nature, and her rogue Youngblood gene is surely destined to take over as Queen of the Gypsies one day from GiGi. She is practicing already, today she went to daycare with two bunnies a Mickey and a Mini Mouse, and she came back with all of those plus one blue dolphin.

Eva to NH

 

Eva and Sadie 2014 072

I remember my grandmother on my mother’s side of course whispering in my ear once at an amusement park when I was about eight, “You see those people over there, they are GYPSIES.” Well Grandma Youngblood, who we called Gawgie, I think we are too! When Eva grows up to tell fortunes, as well as swim, sew, play tennis and be an electrologist, then well I will be absolutely sure.

 

Where do I come from?

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I always felt a little out of place in my family and now most of the time I look out of place too. Sure my dad wears blue jeans but my mother and sister look like they spend most of their time shopping at Saks. In comparison when I walk into a room my mother just shakes her head. I never think twice about what to wear it’s always what is at the top of the drawer but sometimes I make mistakes.  I never seem to notice but I am constantly wearing my clothes inside out, tags and seams out for all the world to see, maybe it’s a new trend. The other thing I have been doing recently is putting on my exercise pants backwards.  I don’t notice, they are spandex anyway, but my mother’s pointer finger makes an appearance at some point during the day,

“You know those slits, go in the back.”

“Oh”

“Go in the bathroom and put your pants back on the right way.”

“No.”

Backwards, forwards, does it really matter? It matters to my mother. Maybe I am adopted.

This morning feeling inspired I put on a “brand new” top. It’s designer. When I went into wake up Eva she said,

“Why are you wearing that?”

“It is Mommy’s new shirt.”

“What happened to the other one?”

“It’s dirty.”

Does she think I only have one shirt? Maybe. I think my mother would like my new top, until she finds out I got it second hand from my dog walker. Someone died and their clothes made a detour by my house, but its designer!

When I went to college we used to shop at Thrift City in New Orleans, I used to get so excited when I found something interesting in the pockets of my “new” clothes even though that meant they probably hadn’t been washed. I used to make up stories about the people who had worn them before, the people who had probably died before having their wardrobe cleared out by a relative. My mother would love to do that to my wardrobe but I am still alive.

My sister and mother give me hand-me-downs now too, as well as my dog walker. I must really look like I need help.  My recent hand me down from my mother was a Longchamp bag, hey its designer! She got fed up with my old purse, which was so grungy it looked like it had barely survived the first two years of a toddler’s life, kind of like the toddler’s mother.

Lets just say I always felt like a bit of a black sheep who shops at thrift stores, who watches movie marathons while my siblings are out running real marathons. I would not be caught dead trying to run 26 miles unless it was on horseback.

Since I was little, I felt intuitively that it was extremely important for me to know how to ride a horse.  In high school I was on the riding team, which was a bit of a joke because technically I was useless, but they kept me on the team because I could get over any jump without falling off.  They gave me all the donation horses to break in because I was the only one who could stay on. I remember my favorite horse, Cinnamon. Don’t be deceived by the name, she used to tear ass around the ring kicking any horse that came near her and when I asked her to canter she would try to buck me off. It was in this struggle that we gained a mutual respect for one another. She was my first bucking bronco and I loved it; it was in my blood.

When I see the word Rodeo I think of Cinnamon and the real rodeos I watched in Montana.

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But when my mother and sister see the word: Rodeo they see this in their mind:

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My point is that I have always been a little bit country despite my upbringing. In college my favorite beer was Schlitz and I never tried more than one Cosmopolitan.

My daughter Eva seems to be cut from the same cloth, or saddle we might say in this situation as since she saw her first horse she has been in love, and she even holds the record for the youngest donkey rider at Docker Park Farm in Lancashire, U.K.  Here she is on a horse at age 18 months.  Her new nickname is Eva “giddiup” Worsick.

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I should not have been surprised then when looking through my grandparents belongings I found a video message from my grandfather’s extended family in the southern U.S. and out west, the same VHS tape from 1985 I talked about in a previous post.  I never remembered seeing this video when it was made, but then again maybe he purposely didn’t share it with us. I always wondered where my country, came from, and here it was on VHS: my answer:

I gave my life to Jesus and thats how I met my husband?

Country Living

I like to Crochet and Dance!

(I will be posting more entertaining clips from this video in future posts.)

After the VHS popped out of the machine I was in total acceptance of my country roots, but I wondered if my mother would accept it, after all she was one generation closer to that side of the family. I was pondering this as she sauntered in from the spa in fresh makeup with her new line of fashion purchases.  I wasn’t too sure she came from that side of the family, until I opened the fridge door and found a bucket of KFC with a tell tale shade of Guerlain Voilette de Madame smudged on a chicken wing. We must be birds of a feather after all.

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NB: My mother finally read my blog last weekend. She says she did not use the word “hell” when she said “Why the hell do you want to be part of the DAR?” so this is hereby a retraction of the word “hell.”

My father who was a witness said she said “hell” with her tone of voice. I wonder what her tone of voice will have to say about today’s blog installment.

I have asked her to become a guest blogger, “Derelict Grandmama.”

Xxx Derelict Mom.