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<title>Another Indoor Picnic</title>
<link>http://www.healthdiaries.com/mentalhealth/indoorpicnic/</link>
<description></description>
<copyright>Copyright 2006</copyright>
<lastBuildDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:07:41 -0800</lastBuildDate>
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<title>Sometimes it&apos;s hard...</title>
<description><![CDATA[<p>I don't even know if there is a beginning.  It's just a was.  An is.  My mom is agoraphobic.  The funny thing is...well it was normal.  I mean you don't usually talk about what your parents do when you are growing up unless it's to say - oh my mom is so mean.  She wouldn't let me stay out all night, etc., etc.  I never told my friends that my mom didn't do things cause she was "sick" a lot.  That she kept to her room sometimes for entire days.  That I don't actually remember a vacation with her for a good chunk of years right in the middle of my childhood.</p>

<p>I guess this diary is more to capture moments of memory when they come up.  Things that I saw.  Funny moments.  Angry ones.  It's like I'm always trying to capture the essence of what I grew up with in words but it doesn't often come out the way I want, so I'll try this.  And maybe someone out there will understand a bit about this life and how it feels looking in from the outside.</p>

<p><strong>Indoor Picnic</strong></p>

<p>We settle on the plush pile of brown carpet<br />
And scan the horizon out the basement window<br />
We're surrounded by trees in perpetual autumn<br />
Printed in shades of beige on our couch, loveseat and matching chair.</p>

<p>I can smell pledge and lemony spic and span-the smell of every season<br />
It's even nicer when the snow melts and the windows are left open.<br />
In rushes the tastes of green and grasses<br />
That mingle with our egg salad and pink kool-aid<br />
Helps us eat our carrot sticks and broccoli heads.</p>

<p>On the floor, under folded legs, is the green garbage bag - our picnic blanket substitute<br />
It crackles when we shift, feels cold when we lean before it sticks to our legs.<br />
We don't mind so much - mom's been seven years here,<br />
Don't want to mess things up now and start spilling.</p>

<p>We drink to good health though we know it's hopeless<br />
Left in fields of carpet, we eat marshmallows stabbed on forks and burnt on the stove.<br />
In a way it reminds us of camping and evergreens and sky<br />
Instead of being lost in the land of the housebound.</p>]]></description>
<link>http://www.healthdiaries.com/mentalhealth/indoorpicnic/archives/2004/07/sometimes_its_hard.html</link>
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<pubDate>Thu, 15 Jul 2004 10:07:41 -0800</pubDate>
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