My sweet little boy is getting a teensy bit aggressive these days and suddenly I find that I am being bombarded with all sorts of advice that I don't want to accept.

For example, Adrian has started pulling hair. But not any hair, just my hair, and it hurts! He'll yank my hair — hard — and when I shout "Ouch!" he laughs and laughs and laughs. It has been suggested that I pull his hair in retaliation, "show him what it feels like," they say. Ummmm, no thank you.

One of Adrian's other favorite things to do to me is to bite. Again, he'll just come over to me, bite me, and laugh like crazy when I say "Ouch!" And those new teeth are sharp! It has been suggested that I bite him back. "Only way to stop a biter," they say.

And yet another one of his "new tricks" is smacking me. This one doesn't happen as often and usually only when I'm sleeping, but still....

I took him to the doctor last week for a physical. The doctor that we usually see was out, so we had to see the physician's assistant. While we were there he asked me if there had been any changes in his behavior. I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, there has," and told him what I just told you all.

He said that I need to put him in a time-out chair whenever he does any of these things. I explained that I had tried that but that Adrian will just get up; he doesn't understand that he is supposed to stay there — he's only 16 months old. I told him that rather than using the chair, I use the playpen.

Family. That is what holidays have traditionally been about. Father helps children celebrate Mother's Day by purchasing a card or two, flowers, a gift.

Maybe he helps your son and daughter prepare a breakfast complete with your favorite French toast, bacon, and eggs.

Today, moving beyond divorce, holidays have changed. This Mother's Day begins with getting out of bed and feeding the cat and the six little kittens now crying for their kitty food, walking the dog, making my bed, starting another load of endless laundry, and watching the weather channel. I watch the weather channel the way some people listen to the news or radio.

I turn the oven on to broil and I grab some Lenders bagels out of the fridge and split them with my fingers. I place them on my mother's 50-year-old pizza pan and slide the pan into the oven. I wait.

I open the fridge to look for my caffeine fix of sweet tea, and the pitcher is empty of anything except a single swallow. I grab my second choice, the kids' Pepsi. I turn and kick the door shut with my right foot. I pull the bagels out of the oven. I yell, "Breakfast!"

Happy Mother's Day to me.

There is no answer. I yell again, "Breakfast!"

I hear shuffling and laughter.

"Mom!"

"What?" I say. "Breakfast!" My frustration and self pity increasing.

My daughter calls me to her room. I stomp back to the hall muttering to myself about ungrateful children and my life without a spouse and no support, and then I open the bedroom door.

Her eyes wide and sparkling. My son stands beside her barely able to contain his laughter.

They pull their hands out from behind their back. She extends a large pink construction paper creation in front of me with pink paper roses glued to it. She has made a card. It is beautiful. My son has made me three Lego puppies.

Back in December, when I started sharing thoughts here at FWW, my half-way back-on-again fling with Sam was new. We'd been apart for more than a year, sleeping together again for about a month.

I left in October 2006, but I guess in some ways I never totally left. Not for long anyway.

A week after I moved, we went out to dinner and a concert for my birthday. November was Lila's birthday and Thanksgiving. December, Hanukkah and Christmas, then New Year's.

I couldn't handle it. One holiday after another we just kept celebrating together. Apart. I couldn't say no.

I said it was for my kids, but maybe it was more selfish. Maybe it was not wanting them to be angry or upset with ME, or not wanting to miss out on something I gave away in the move.

There were a few months that winter, 2007, I went cold turkey. Saw him only when we transitioned the kids, and worked it so there wasn't time for dinner or small talk. We usually met on the fly and I was all business.

For two months, maybe three, our longest conversation was under three minutes. That was it. I was done. I was ready to file.

Then spring brought more birthdays, and slowly, slowly I went drifting right back in.

By the time my birthday rolled around again, October, we were having sex.

When this blog started, I had no idea so many other women were just as half-in, half-out as me. And I thought Sam and I would be back together by spring.

Now spring is closing in on summer, and one year is closing in on two.

I'm not sure what I'm doing.

But I'm doing the best I can.

Since the divorce (two and a half years ago) and in the last year, I have discovered something quite wonderful. It is that each and everything that we do is important. So, consequently, I am no longer in a rush. Seems I spent 12 years rushing, rushing, rushing to please, to prepare, to arrive on time, to make sure "they" were on time, to get things done. And it nearly killed me.

Today, I take pleasure in the smallest of things. I simply look at the job at hand and begin. I cut linings for my friend's drawers today. I did not over think it. I did not look at all the drawers and think, "Oh, my God, there are so many of them."

She gave me the assignment, and I poured myself into it. I sat in the sun at my "work" station, which was a bench on her deck. I sat on a cooler with wheels, and I had a razor blade and a block of wood, an ink pen and a tape measure to complete my work.

I sat and drank a Smirnoff lemonade thing and began the task at hand. I did not care if there were rolls and rolls of this shelf liner that needed to be measured and cut and that the dimensions had to be 19 ¼ for some and 8 ¾ for others. I spread the material and measured and marked and cut using a quarter round to hold down the liner. I ran my blade as close to the quarter round as I could, paying attention to the fact that I wanted the edges to be smooth and not ragged.

I accomplished my task.

When the kids spill Pepsi or milk. When my dog gets sick and throws upon my floor or when the kitchen pipe under the sink leaks and I have to stop my current task or effort to relax and must stoop, bend, twist, unscrew, wipe, I do it willingly and almost happily.

I am a grateful Samurai, today. A soldier with Krud Kutter and Lysol as my weapons.

Somebody made a comment on one of my blog posts yesterday that said, "Faith, can you please make up your mind...Are you in or out of this whole thing? Get a life and move on or stay in the blog and be miserable."

Of course, this comment was meant to be nasty and hurtful, and of course just like every other comment of its kind, it was signed by a "guest." I have a feeling said "guest" is Levi, or his other ex, or one of his other minions. In any case, that doesn't matter. What got me thinking was the subject line of the comment: "Making me dizzy."

Exactly.

I feel dizzy, all the time. I feel like I've been running in circles for the last year and a half. I feel dizzy with stress, dizzy with anger, dizzy with sadness, and dizzy with disappointment.

I don't want any of this.

I would love for things to be normal, for things to be better. I would be overjoyed if Levi would take responsibility as far as his son is concerned. I would love it if we didn't have to go to court. Hey, maybe then I could even get one of those "lives" you speak of!

And I did run circles around that decision. I actually have quite a few issues with the family court system that make me not want to take any part in it.

To start with, I don't agree with pumping my money into a system that doesn't have my best interest in mind. I feel that they actually hope that people won't do the right thing. Why? Because if we all did the right thing, they wouldn't have jobs. If everyone paid their child support there would be no need for child support enforcement. There would be no need for family court judges, family court lawyers, etc.

Where I live, out in Oregon, it's about an hour to the ocean and not much more to get 7,000 feet up Mt. Hood. It's one of the reasons I always say I'm here, but I don't go either of those places very often.

When I do, it's the drive, the getting there, I love as much as the being there. I love the journey at least as much as the destination. The unexpected.

You wind along miles of mountain road, two lanes, nothing but trees and sky, then around some bend, a viewpoint. There it is, everywhere you've been and some of where you're going, rolling peak by peak, as far as you can see.

There's a point in separation, at least in my separation, like that. Miles of winding and climbing, nothing but work and groceries, cooking meals and wiping butts, then vision.

Around some bend, an unexpected overlook, and I can see everything. It's breathtaking.

The whole road and all the steps behind, spread out in the view.

That woman, way back there at the start of the path, the one holding up her exhausted self with the stroller she's pushing. I see her.

So tired she can barely step, and it's close to dinner time and nothing's cooked and she can't spend one more minute alone with two kids in her tiny apartment. It's dinner time and she's pushing a stroller to the coffee shop. She's crying. Wants to lie down on the sidewalk.

She'll be okay. I want to tell her, but I know now she knew then. She'll be okay.

She'll find the rhythm, start getting the kids to school on time, even enjoy being the only grown-up at dinner.

For all the miles of nothing but trees in sight, she'll come round to this overlook.

Have you ever planted a garden and followed all the garden etiquette and made sure that the soil was fertilized and softened to encourage the growth of the new seed or tiny seedling? Have you pulled your children out from their warm beds to rush barefooted and still in their PJs to see the first tiny tomato bursting forth before all the others?

What is it to grow a garden? To till the soil and fight the rocky ground and force the it to make something grow from next to nothing?

As I came into the spring of my first year away from my crazy ex, I decided that the children and I must grow a garden. I took them to the farmer's co-op and together we selected our tiny plants that would entrust their miniscule lives to us for the next several months.

We chose Big Boys (I'd heard they were very good tomatoes) and Earlies and Tommie Toes (what we called them when I was a child). We picked peppers and cucumbers and squash. I let my children decide.

Caty and Joe became excited and began to pick flowers and leafy green things that would help make our tiny house a home. And...I let them. \No rational evaluation of what would or would not grow. They picked their flowers and their vegetables and together we took our bounty to the check out stand.

And when the total came to well over a hundred dollars, I paid the bill with a smile on my face. We were putting our hands in rich dirt and fingering green leaves of various plants. And it all felt so good.

In Middle Tennessee, the ground is filled with rocks. We sit on top of limestone, I think, and the first few inches of soil usually yield a dead end in the form of hard, impenetrable bedrock.