Tagged and Cajoled ...

sleep once more perchance ...

2011-06-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions. ~Edgar Cayce

… my dream upon waking this morning, which ironically occurred during a heavy hailstorm (first of three storms of the morning and part of a storm system that continues as I write), had me standing in our dining room, coffee mug in hand, dogs at my feet, when over my shoulder/out patio windows came trucks and heavy machinery which in short order annihilated and clear-cut the woodlands behind, next to, and on up the hill behind our house.

Swoooooooooooooop, gone!

I went out on the deck which, while still attached to the house, was teetering out over this gaping hole in the earth, with water rushing down and all the trees felled and side-lying as the machines drove off, one by one, down the hill and away from the house.

Surveying the obliterated landscape, I paced the deck and then ran to get Mark and Ali in order to show them what happened, to which I woke up & into Mark’s words saying, “It’s 8 o’clock,” since he was my human alarm clock this morning prior to leaving for work/travel.

[dream over!]

I still go by the adage that it’s not so much the symbols in your dreams, though they are important too, so there’s much to be said about the gaping hole, the flowing water, and the side-lying trees, the earth movers and such, but I prefer the approach wherein you’re supposed to recall how the dream made you feel.

And this particular dream made me feel angry and a little afraid.

I love the enclosure-type feel to the back lots and all the trees that are meant to stay there, even though the area has been developed, our house part of this development. Without these trees for cover (in the dream) I was anxious, irritated, on edge, put out and pissed off.

Shortly after the quick feel-through, the dream all but disappeared. By the time I ran my hands through my hair and tried to re-right it's tossled situation, the dream was gone for the most part. I made no mention of it to Mark before he left--really, what person in their right mind tells a man leaving for several days that they dreamt half the house was teetering over a pit of fallen trees and rushing water?!?! Not a good idea, just saying!

Mark left, Alice slept on and my day roared up to meet me. I actually missed my morning coffee and there were no deck meanderings or reflections this morning. I ran off, instead, on an adventure with Mark’s dad, keeping him busy at the hardware store, Menards and breakfast at the coffee shop, while Donna met with the visiting nurses about a new breathing apparatus and the “next steps.”

Middle of the day, I came home, ran Alice to work, worked myself, gently teasing one of the dogs for being nervous about the pending evening storms and the other for not giving a care. Walter hid back to the world) in his kennel, Henry slept nonplus at my feet as I finished my work.

As the last set of storms rolled in, I closed “shop” for the evening. I took the dogs out on the deck one final time to “1 and 2 it” prior to the downpour and noise. This was when I remembered the dream again.

The irony of how it’s wacko-do-weird to dream early a.m. about a clear-cut anything prior to a night of predicted severe storms was not lost on me!

I saw the humor (or terror, depending on how you think about it--mostly humor) in this but did not dwell there. I was lost instead in the lushness of the still muggy world around me, though it was breezing/easing up around the edges, and the trees were moving again rather than glopped into the ground and sky scape.

I relaxed to the pre-dusk melodies of the songbirds, one with the trees for the night, the same performers who will be there drying wing and renewing beak play at pre-dawn.

Sweet!

And I suppose, if I wasn’t so eager to get to bed and enjoy the sounds of this storm, I’d stay up longer and go over the various symbols in this dream (the gaping hole, earthmovers, clear-cutting, rushing waters, teetering decks), and also the various reasons why I felt angry and afraid (anxious, irritated, on edge, put out and pissed off) at the vast open-ness of my surroundings after the earthmovers and workmen made their fast bug-line getaway, but I prefer to sleep once more perchance ...

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you. ~Marsha Norman

the taskmaster police aren't going to come and smash my fingers

2011-06-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths. ~Etty Hillesum

I’ve been doing that a lot today, breathing in and then exhaling, audibly! In my downstairs office, the one that isn’t fully packed, isn’t fully ready to be moved upstairs, that office, there’s a post-it note on my desktop monitor that says, “breathe.”

I haven’t worked downstairs in that office since January. A lot has happened since January, and it’s possible I haven’t breathed since then. This I am just noticing, for many reasons. It’s probably why I got pneumonia, choking down all the snot and tears the month of March, didn’t help either.

This weekend, as I continued my thought processes, heart processes and paperwork regrouping processes for everything that is up and coming, I found myself Sunday night getting ready to do the same old things, “Set the alarm for some unbeatable time,” and then telling myself I’d make it, whether it was enough sleep or not, because that’s what a person is supposed to do, even though I spent the entire weekend working on my plan to regroup, readjust for what’s next and to slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow down.

I made sure to get sufficient rest. Today, I took enormous, almost dizzyingly deep breaths and then exhaled in almost a clownish fashion, making the dogs look at me as if I was a royal nut ball! I continued to click off the logistics and ballistics on my “to do list,” for the short-term, long-term planning I’ve mentioned of late (last two blogs).

Every time I caught myself reprimanding my “self” for not being done with this yet—since you had the whole weekend to do it, and wasn’t that enough time already, you had the whole weekend “off” except that I didn’t and except that I never really do because since forever and an egg shell I’ve been double-booking my time because that’s all I know how to do—well, every time I caught myself doing that, I’d take another one of those delicious deep breaths and then I’d spit that rot across the room!

That record can skid-skip, and jump off the turntable in my head, fall on the floor and shatter, and if it doesn’t break in that way I intend to frisbee it out over the marsh!

That was then, this is now, and the old way doesn’t work any longer.

There’s no wolf at the door any more. I’m not here all alone, I have backup, and have for a while now, I could actually let my guard down instead of always having my dander up and my underwear all curved up in a bundle.

I can use my multi-tasking skills in a multitude of new ways I’ve probably never thought of because I’ve been applying them in a direction that was up and out of my self for many years.

I forgot, almost, the method to all that madness, the possibilities of where this potentially was leading. I saw where it was taking everyone else, but I forgot I was also along on the trip!

Regrouping this weekend, looking at everything that was going on, that was to continue, that was standing still or petering out, and then gathering up what was left and applying some math to the madness of it, the plan started to re-form for the future.

And, you’d think I’d be all grown up by now too, so wise to this theory ... but did you know that you can put shit on the “warmer” for the night?!?!? Who the fuck knew?!?!? I can be that close to finish and let things simmer, and move to the kitchen to prepare my dinner, and pour a glass of chilled wine (can’t remember the last time I had a glass of chilled wine and didn’t feel like pouring the whole bottle over my head in the last three weeks or so).

I’m realizing that it’s OKAY to be this close to the finish line and “table things for the night.” The taskmaster police aren’t going to come and smash my fingers in the fridge door and say, “Anne, you’re not done yet!” That taskmaster all these years has been me, and the bitch of a supervisor needs to ease up!

I can spend the evening with Mark, since he’s home base one more night this week, which is rare, instead of saying, “I’m sorry, I’m going to keep pushing, I’ll leave a post-it note on the mirror and let you know what time I went to bed, and if you should wake me when you leave.” I can actually be present in the moments that count, get another decent night’s sleep.

If I wake up, I can tell myself, "Go back to sleep, it's not time yet, don't you dare start spinning a single thought process!"

I can be better prepared for what’s up and coming for my clients and my workload and what has been changing and reshaping over the last months, family and otherwise.

I can be ready for Alice’s return home midweek and the much to do to get ready for college “stuff and such” that we have mapped out.

I can be less scared and anxious about Roger and Donna and their needs so I may continue to embrace my relationship with them.

I can spend time with my father this summer.

I can have guilt-free art and writing moments, tall order that one! There's always that critic on my shoulder going, "Shouldn't you be doing something productive, Bitch?" But I'm building up the stronger bitch diva on my other shoulder who says, "Whatever twit-bitch, what do you think the last 25 years of concerted efforts was all about?!!?!? Buzz off!"

I can be ready for the little girls and their new summer schedule (saw them for teensy five minutes today and it had been 10 days!!!! since I had last seen them).

I can be ready for Henry and Walter and their continued manners training and doggy walks.

I can be ready to greet Abigale Lal, healthy and full of wellness, see that all is well in her little family, send Alice off to college after a summer bash, go Southwest with Mark and then finally schedule my first of two STUPID THUMB JOINT SURGERIES!
I can quit now, end of the day, and still be ahead of the game tomorrow, because this is not a game … it’s my life, and for that, I need room to breathe, up under my ribs where I’ve been keeping a ball of stress for something like six weeks, okay maybe longer …

Two Ladies You Can't Take Anywhere, and One Young Woman Who's Going Somewhere Special ...

2011-06-05T14:43:00.001-07:00

Last evening, once the sun started to dip a bit, my sister-in-law Tina and I went to a nearby local community park where they were having a seafood festival, every kind of seafood imaginable. As you entered the park you purchased "coins" with which to trade for beverages, and all the seafood and drinks were sold on point/coin system, which I loved because I hate counting out actual money. We each bought 20 coins/points for 20 dollars and proceeded to walk the now breezy park, which was teaming with people. Temps during the day had been upper 80s and muggy, but at past 6pm it was dreamy breezy.

There's a lot of history in this park for the both of us, since my sister-in-law grew up in the town where the park sits, and had spent her childhood there, and some of her teen dating times there with my brother, and they lived their early years in this community as well before buying their dream home/hobby farm more rural. I, myself, lived in this community (neighbor to the community I now live in) when I was a newly divorced single mom attending the local campus and my eldest daughters attended my sister-in-law's home daycare back then, played two of their young years out with their cousin, my nephew Michael, and visited this park, but if you ask them now, they only remember the park in much later teen years on our final return to Wisconsin when we took Alice swimming there.

We, of course, ran into people we knew from neighboring communities and of course Tina knew more people than I did, since she works nearby, and many people knew both Tina and my brother Jamie. Time moved on and stood still, depending on whichever which way we stepped through the park, and is same-same in whichever which way we step of late, and in general, living in the close-knit communities that we do.

It's going to be like that for a long time, or as Tina and I discussed later, maybe it's going to be like that forever missing Jamie. We're going to get through it, and then just keep going through it, all at the same time, all.the.time. That's pretty much the nature of it. That is what we're thinking is the ultimate feeling. The missing him is never going to go away, which is how we are keeping him.

Eventually, Tina and I settled on our seafood choices. I have to say I had no trouble spending all but 4 of my 20 coins, but my favorite choice was some oven-baked cod, which melted in my mouth, and just might have very nearly almost smoothed, soothed and re-noodled my brain pan for good. It was yummy, melt-in-your mouth omega-3 goodness, on a bed of fresh salad greens including spinach! 'Had some scallops with it and some fries.

Tina had shrimp and fries. We downed bottled waters, diet 7-up and later we each, no holds barred, had a cold beer! --which this brings us to the part of the story where you can't take us anywhere, because outdoor events bring with them flimsy plastic cups!

Below is a picture of what happened to Tina's beer at the halfway point ... and as soon as it happened she said, "Oh, great, I can see right now, this is going to end up on your Facebook!" to which I said, "Nope, I'm on hiatus from Fbook, remember, this is my total family and regroup weekend, but I'm pretty sure I can build a blog post around this!" SNAP!...

So after Tina splashed beer on my foot, we meandered a bit more at the seafood romp, met up with her son/my nephew Michael, fed him some fish, urging him to use our "leftover" coins, and then headed back to her place (the place I still call "Jamie and Tina's" and will forever), where we sat outside swatting the few naggy mosquitos and talked.

As we listened to their new, gurgling fish pond, something planned prior to Jamie's death and put in by mom and son now, we discussed the past, the present and the future, including Alice's graduation which was by then less than 12 hours away. Time once again had flown past us AN INSTANT, except I was reminded of one of my favorite sayings (so much so of late), "no such thing as time, only change," and here we were going another merry round again.

It's dizzying. I don't know how we stopped each other from falling in the fish pond because flash-forward and late last night has smeared already into today, and below, is a picture I snapped of Alice several hours ago, when we got to the high school at the appointed time today, an hour prior to graduation startup.

The grads were to go in one set of doors, and parents/guests in another. I snapped this as she waved "ta-ta for now," and it's on her Facebook page with the words, "Goodbye, Mommy! I'm going to go through the other door all by myself while you go sit down! See you on the stage in an hour!"

When we got home and I looked at the pictures and then handed the Bloggie camera over to her so she could upload what she wanted my comment was, "I love that you are standing by a manhole cover. When you were little that would have terrified you to walk over it," and she would have walked around it, but it's also very Alice and Wonderland and Rabbit-Hole-ish so it's really cracking me up now.

I also, at first cranked on myself, for not "zooming" in the picture, but then we both decided that we loved that she's so "far away" from me down the sidewalk because, well that's somehow very, very appropriate.

It's been quite a weekend in so many respects, I have to say.

Alice Jean Anderson - Graduation Day - June 5 - 2011

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got. ~Janis Joplin

no such thing as time, only change

2011-06-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

I am making this mental list today of things to do with the next six months and the next 40 years, the short and long-term. Alice graduates from high school tomorrow, leaves for college this fall. I’ve been toddling kids out my front door and shuffling them off to school for 25 years. The career I have, though it’s morphed over the years, in various exciting ways, I’ve done for the same amount of time. I’m here now where I always thought I would be with the freedom I NEVER THOUGHT I’D EVER HAVE! It worked. I had a family, raised my children and had a career I loved, at the same time! The ME TIME is now here, what the holy fuck?!!?!?! I might piss myself sideways!

And yet there are a few constraints a few loose ends, my own right hand surgery for the arthritis lest my thumb just achy-breaky falls right off! (Oh, and then I can fish, and ride a bike [and use the hand brake again!]), the left hand surgery that will have to follow though not as soon since the right hand is much worse. Even still, I'm postponing this because you can't drive a kid to college, one-handed, nor can you hold a new baby (Sara's), so this winter yet, but soon, the surgery, the time off.

There’s the management of my overflowing client list and what to do with my workload and my me-load (writing, art and other) since I really haven’t settled into this house yet, not really and never (if you really, really look at what’s really “unpacked" specific to my "self."

We have to move Ali out of her room, into her college "stuff and such" mode, we have to unpack the basement, repack it and get it ready for the remodel. There's a rummage sale planned for July, a graduation party in August. My office needs to be moved upstairs in final process, to it's be all/end all space.

There’s the logistics of Mark’s parents and their continued needs, the second job (that really isn’t a job at all) that I adore, but the second chore of it (that isn’t really a chore at all) that their health is failing (his mother especially, my “mother” especially). Her palliative care situation will go hospice care at some point, which will not be my first experience in that realm, but I’m in constant denial about it because I feel like losing my big brother this year I should get a “get out of jail/death of a love one free card” for a while yet.

I like to tease Mark that he and his family aren’t ready for the continued aging of their parents, but I’m not ready for what’s happening to his mom right now, and all the puppies in the world aren’t helping.

I’m trying not to steel my heart while I regroup for what’s next, this six months and how that affects how I see the next 40 years inside my own leftover self.

Staying too strong, you miss important shit, you’ll wish later you hadn’t missed, but some of this is very difficult right now, even for stellar stoic me. I spent March and a good portion of April crying. The latter part of April and all of May, I couldn't work up a tear if you pinched me. I've begun to preface things, in therapy too, as "we can talk about that in a bit but right now I don't want to cry."

I don't have wiper blades the likes of which is needed for the winter slimy sleety mixed rain and frozen shit storm that's up ahead. I can see this going in, this shit that no one can see going in ... yeah, that shit, it's bat shit scary.

I’m trying to spend time with my father in the clever way that we used to when I was a child, the stolen moments when Mommy Dearest wasn’t in the room, and this has brought with it a series of fairy tale moments the last several months that have also brought with them a number of “small notations” in a mental flip memo pad that say “be sure to touch on THAT ONE in therapy.”

I’ll never be a Toys [backwards R] Us Kid, and it irritates me that a person has to pay by the hour just to re-realize that.

What’s the point?

You live, you learn through it? Why do you have to choppity-chop your heart back up, saute it in a pan, cool the contents, prod them with a wooden spoon and then look doe-eyed at your MD/PhD and go, "That's exactly the size of it, only smaller and a bit burnt around the edges, but yes that's it," but I knew that before we threw that shit all over the table in his office and went back through it.

It wasn’t my heart the woodcutter brought back in the box, hello? But Mr. MD/PhD would like to talk about the stuff OUTSIDE THE BOX, of course. It's like he doesn't have cable therapy sessions, only weeks and weeks of boring regular channel sessions and he'd like me to go all cable therapy session on his butt for just one session, just for fun, just so we're not bored. Okay, maybe, so that's on my "to do list."

Oh, and I hate what the math of suicide and death has tried to do with my brothers, the sibling count. There are three of them and thus four of us, or should be. Me, one sister and then three brothers, one older and two younger. However, by high school since they all became GIGANTIC,I ended up being the "little sister" by default, and then in March Jamie killed himself and now?!?!?!

I never did like math. If his being dead somehow makes me the older brother, I guess I’m even sadder, madder and more afraid about this situation than I was before. Not to mention confused and slighlty terrified.

We’ve gone nowhere any such remarkable distance down the grief path. We are not even going in circles. A circle would be an improvement; a maze, even, would be a relief, as if there was some sense to it. We are still in the fucking brambles.

But, I digress, and this morning I woke up because the dogs were barking, and I heard Mark’s voice outside the bedroom window saying, “ WIDGERS!” (His nickname, for them … don’t ask me! He also calls them “The Body Walkers” and “The Sniffers.”)

I woke up thinking, “Ugh! Fuck, Ah!” I just wanted sleep, no alarm, a wake up on my own time without a "50 things to do in the first five minutes list;" it had been a very, very long week and a very, very long last 72 hours.

A few moments later, I walked bleary-eyed out to the open-concept fabulous home we’ve managed for ourselves (with our past histories before us, and much shared history now between us).

Mark came in off the deck, sunshine behind his silly grinning face and cropped curls, and the dogs ran to greet him. I could not help but smile, but didn't.

All I saw was the deck behind him, a sea of green and the empty coffin-size planters (I have and zero-time this last several weeks to attend to the house or gardens).

“How are you this morning,” he teased.

I replied in a pissy growl, “I just would for once like to wake up, in and of myself, without being on someone else’s shit-ass joking schedule.”

He replied, with a perplexing, “Huh, I had to get up and get an early start on things?” (The guy across the street and he were on a mulching deal/schedule this morning/early … I was intending on sleeping till 9:00 or hoped.)

I said, “Yeah, I know, but did you have to come around to the bedroom window and wake me up and get the dogs barking, I just wanted 8 hours of sleep, for once, all in a row on the same night, which is why I’m going to see if I can go get my old apartment back.” (When Alice was in 6th grade, I downsized out of the “big house” since she was the only kid left, and took an apartment, which of course is when you end up “upsizing” right back into the thick of it again.)

Mark said,“I wasn’t trying to get the dogs going to wake you up, I was out there quietly spraying weeds, and I was trying to get them to be quiet, they were sleeping with you but they popped up, and saw me through the screen.”

“Oh,” I sheepishly replied, and tried to unscrew my face, and shove the Craigslist rental ads for country shacks with barely any running water, one light bulb, one power cord and WiFi service, and a tiny fenced yard for the dogs out of my head, “I’m sorry,” and trailed off in my bare feet to find “real clothes” for the day.

I’ve been wearing “real clothes” a lot of late, and “real” shoes and socks for months now, and I’m exhausted!

He said, “I know, you’re thinking about places in the woods again, for just you. Why? Why, when we have such a nice place, look what we’ve accomplished.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s too big, and I don’t feel like cleaning it, and the idea was I could live and work anywhere and now look where I am," as I expanded my arms to try and encompass my beautiful home the whole time looking like a bird shit on my head.

Yeah, I know, what a bitchy ungrateful thing to say, because the thing is, where I am is pretty damn good and I have worked a lifetime to get here, but old stories play in my head that say you can’t depend on anyone but yourself, and everyone is going to leave, die, or piss you off somehow, or worse yet blame you for shit that’s their fault in the first place, or leave you stuck holding a huge bag full of their shit that really stinks and when you finish cleaning it up there will be no thanks and sometimes for shits and extra giggles they shit on you some more, but Mark hasn’t done that, ever, which is why I wear stacks and stacks of engagement rings and can’t bring myself to officially marry him because the dude just won’t quit.

Yeah, that makes sense, plus sometimes I still really, really, really WANT TO LIVE IN ALASKA! I have had that dream since I was seven years old, which is why I hoped they’d develop the internet so I COULD LIVE AND WORK ANYWHERE!

I joked in the garage this past weekend, when I relinquished my relationship with Mark over to his friend Dave for the Harley weekend riding season, that it’s never hard on me because my “preference is to be alone,” and Dave said it was utter bullshit, “that women aren’t really like that,” that I wasn’t like that, that I was too much fun, too much of a “people person,” too much everything, and too interested in too many things, and I begged to differ, over and over and over.

Finally, Mark looked up from whatever cranky case he was working on (truth be told, I don’t know what the fuck they were doing to the bike), and said, “No, Dave, it’s true, that’s the thing about Anne.” [And this “thing about Anne” is one true character map point that is true about me “before” and “after” the stroke, which is nice, because I need those touch points, those things that remain me, unchanged, good or bad. Good or bad, truth be told, I DON’T NEED ANYBODY!]

Anne can take it or leave. That’s the spooky thing about me. I’m perfectly happy all safe and sound up inside myself, my work, my writing, my art and my solitude, but I can also be the “life of the party” even though at the same time I’d rather be “all safe and sound up inside myself, my work, my writing, my art and my solitude.”

I’m a tough nut to crack and even when I’m cracking up, am I really? The “cracking up,” the getting in and getting through is something I save for family and close friends and confidants, and there are those of them who still have to use a nutcracker or a fence post over my head a times to get through.

“Isolating and insulating” is a way that it was once described to me, about me, and I was all like, “Cool, thank you. I had never heard it called that before, thanks.”

And then the person said, “Anne, that’s not meant to be a compliment.”

Oops. Yeah, so I’ll work on that [in my cave, next to that field of wildflowers, now get the fuck out of here and leave me to it!]

So these are all the things I’m thinking about today, growling, over-tired, premenstrual, and looking at a stack of work paperwork, writing, art, billing, invoices, insurance paperwork, medical files for Ali and myself, college stuff, tax filings, work metrics, healthcare information for the elderly, unopened mail, photos and “save the date” cards for Ali’s end of the summer graduation/going away party, stuff for niece-daughter’s Sara’s baby/baby shower, stuff about the little girls/summer plans, Jamie’s thumb print medallion wishing it was a whole Jamie instead of something I’m supposed to put on a bracelet or a string, calendars, vacation requests, medical leave stuff, trying to get it all situated for the short-term/long-term plan for the next 6-month and the next 40 years (what I kind of promised my girls and what health and heredity well might afford me) because tomorrow is all about Alice as she graduates and I don’t want to be farting around with this bullshit, and the next day is the first day of the second half of the rest of my life.

Be there, or be square.

I’ll be there, though old habits are hard to break, and I’ll be there in my usual stick-up-the-ass, insulated and isolated fashion.

I’ve been up for hours now, and while I remain exhausted, the house is quiet, cool and calm. It is, as stated previously a fine castle. Mark and I have worked hard (prior to meeting each other in various fashions and collectively these past years). We are very, very lucky. The dogs are napping. Mark is out riding. I’m going out to dinner later with my sister-in-law; with or without my brother we force ourselves to do these things.

I’ve worked hard, we’ve worked hard. I woke up crabby, but for now I’m not renting any silly apartments or one-room cabins with singular light bulbs, frayed extension cords and WiFi, but a gal can dream; I’ll just dream, bigger and wider and use plane tickets, train tickets and automobiles and this as home base, doy!

secret concoctions

2011-05-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

LAST NIGHT’S DREAM: I’m in the kitchen at the neighbor’s house preparing some concoction in their sink. I am 13 at clutzy best. I’m in a hurry, I need to get it done and ready and out to the barn to give to a new foal who is hidden there. Mom comes out into their kitchen. She catches me by surprise. She has come to help, she says. I shirk her off, out of my way. She insists on helping. Whatever this secret concoction is, I already have the ingredients, and I’m getting ready to mix them. I don't want to spill. I already know that I intend to pour all the ingredients into a surgical glove,tie it at the wrist and bust a hole in it, once I’ve made my way to the barn, so that the foal can nipple its contents. Mom being there, interfering, is making me afraid I’ll futz the ingredients, run out of time, that we’ll get caught in the neighbor’s kitchen, that I won’t get out to the barn in time. Finally, I’ve got the last of the ingredients in, I tie the knot and race out of the neighbor’s house, down our shared driveway, past their milk house and up into the cattle barn to find the foal. I’m tripping on my feet the entire way, my hair is in my face, and I can her screaming at me that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I keep going. Once in the barn I dig through a huge pile of wet hay and old manure to find the foal. She blinks at me and opens her eyes and mouth wide and waits. Just as I’m ready to pop a hole in one of the fingers of the swollen surgical glove, I realize I’m not sure where the foal is supposed to run once she drinks the special concoction. I hesitate. The foal continues to stare at me.

... the phone ringing, wakes me, pulls me from the dream.

I’m going to be in therapy for the rest of my fucking life!

tidy cat, kitten chow, deli veggie wrap & scott tissue (single roll)

2011-05-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

... the summer of my 35th year, 1997, I came in off the bike path, strapped the bike to the car, drove the swirly, curly back roads towards civilization, passed my house and ventured into town, just past dark, pulled into the 24-hour food mart and began my nightly shopping, for just those things I needed, day’s end. I repeat, for the things “I needed,” just me, the me home alone for a period of time that summer, by myself, for the very first time, with no kids, a mom on the wander, in a 3-bedroom house.

That particular night I ran in for Tidy Cat, Kitten Chow, a roll of toilet paper and a deli-made veggie wrap. I threw all into my cart and hurried through the store, the air conditioning already chilling me, my sweatshirt still damp, my tossed up hair kinking around the edges, cheeks flushed, my legs and arms goose-pimpled and bright white under the store lights, my stomach growling louder than the canned overhead music.

As I rounded past the produce section, and back towards checkout, I ran smack into one of my favorite teachers from senior year high school. Hello?!?!?!? Major crush/Psychology teacher/head of the Environmental Club, Oh my aching sweaty ass, why am I not wearing lip shine, and why don’t I go tanning?!!?!!?!? Could my freakishly horsy legs be any whiter?!?!?!? Can I just die right now?

However, I kept it together through the hellos and how have you beens, and his, “I had no idea you lived in Wisconsin,” let alone smack dab back in the county where I grew up! Yeah, good luck getting out of this one, Little Miss You Were Getting Out of This Area as Soon as You Graduated! Which I did, really, for a while, I really did! I had been places!

I skirted over how I got back here, the one and almost two final divorces, etc. etc. and chose instead to focus on how far I had come, my magnificent three children, my fabulous work-at-home career, my writing, my full life, my biking (at least I looked that part/all athletic and SWEATY!!!!).

The more we talked, the more I realized his catching me up on his continued teaching, successes and family more closely matched his cart, which was full of wholesome goodness, whereas my cart contained the Tidy Cat, the Kitten Chow, the one lone roll of Scott Toilet Tissue and a single-serving Saran-wrapped veggie wrap from the deli!

Success, my aching sweaty ass! Crazy vegetarian cat lady! LOSER!

I’ve seen the man since then as my youngest, and soon-to-be graduated daughter had this man as one of her also favorite teachers this last four years (because it was his mind after all that truly rocked) and she enjoyed his classes and his Academic Decathlon coaching, etc. He was a student teacher when I was a senior, and ironically he’ll be retiring this year as Alice graduates.

It’s doubtful he remembered the night in the grocery store where I looked like the crazy sweaty cat lady. Yet, I still remember it as me hoping he didn’t think I was “pretending to be” the wildly fulfilled, successful mother of three thriving children which is funny because, hello?!!?? That was me, never mind what wasn’t in my shopping cart! We have, in fact, caught up in the recent past when Alice entered high school so at least he knows one of my kids isn't a cat.

Anyways, I thought of all of this again this afternoon as I ran into the local grocery store with my eldest (28, just turned so) to “grab a few items for myself.” Normally, I have her snatch items for me, while I read in the vehicle, but truth be told today I had to take a piss, so I also went into the actual building, shocking I know, but contrary to popular belief, I don't always send my minions in to get my bread and milk!

Carol was shopping for herself and her three kids, my little grand girls (not so little, really, at 9, 8 and 6). I was shopping for myself and—I was shopping for myself, and no one else. Just me, myself and I. Therefore, she had the cart, and I was using only a tiny, teensy portion, a wee corner of the giant mesh contraption.

Alice was at work. Mark is in Iowa. He may, in fact, not be home through the weekend. It's a holiday weekend, and luck of the draw he's on-call for travel. His travels may not bring him close enough to home at week’s end to unpack for the repack. This week-into-the-weekend might find him on the “staying gone" through early next week.

On the per usual of late, and most of this year (the last year, and the one leading up to it) Alice is “home”, but often not, so once we’ve talked schedules for the week, I don’t often shop for her at all when it comes to “provisions.” That’s pretty much the gist of what it’s like having a teenager working their way out of your house into their adulthood.

The dogs don’t need a thing, of course, even though they get shit all the time.

By shopping with Carol today, and grabbing those few things, I will be at a loss tomorrow. How can that be, you might ask. Well, on Thursdays, I take Mark’s parents grocery shopping, our weekly routine. Every Thursday as we peruse the store, his mom will ask me, “Anne, don’t you need anything,” and I’ll shrug, think over my stacked pantry and Lazy Susan cabinets, full freezer compartments, what’s left in the crisper and realize, “Um, no, I’m good to go, not much going on, or going in my stomach of late. Nobody really around next couple of days."

Donna will continue to pick and choose this and that for seven days of menu options at their place to hold them over until our next shopping adventure. In the end, I usually sheepishly grab a small tub of Greek yogurt so I don’t look like a loser butt. When Roger is at the deli he'll order the 8-piece chicken for their Thursday night dinner. When I help them unload their groceries, he'll send me home with a leg, a breast and a thigh. He does this every week so I don't "waste away to nothing," even though two seconds later he also likes to tell me to watch out that my "ass doesn't get as a big as a house."

Times definitely are changing back again, just the like the summer of my 35th year, where I never dirtied any silverware and told the wild story in the aisle of the grocery store about my dreamy-ass life while the man I told it to stared down at my cart which told another story. (CRAZY CAT LADY!)

IN MY CORNER OF ANOTHER PERSON'S CART TONIGHT: Sparkling mineral water, smoked gouda cheese, Greek yogurt, hazelnut rice crackers, corn nuts and a special treat some instant hazelnut and chai Maxwell House International Coffees, plus two magazines I threw in on impulse at the checkout, which I fully intend to read every word and then tear the buggers right up!

My dinner tonight, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m still working and my medications would have interfered, there would be wine in that glass instead of sparkling mineral water … and if it weren’t for the fact that I wanted me some Greek yogurt, because I loves me some Greek yogurt, I wouldn’t even have dirtied a spoon:

Not sure which food groups I hit or missed but I used corn nuts as my vegetable, and then there was Greek honey yogurt, apples, smoked gouda and hazelnut rice crackers washed down with mandarin orange mineral water, oh and I tossed back some little white pills that are supposed to treat what's left of my brain with kindness.

Going on 50 really is looking like the new middle 30s. When I go to the grocery store, I don’t even need a list. I buy and fly on a whim.

p.s. I have placeholders for my 30 days writing/collages, but me thinks I might slam them all together in one post since they are cohesive to a point, even today’s so I’m not actually putting it here.

I’m sure the suspense is killing no one, but it’s keeping me alive and well inside and out.

....

2011-05-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

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2011-05-21T19:54:00.001-07:00

may 21

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2011-05-20T19:01:00.001-07:00

friday, another placeholder, hopefullly can scan and upload on sunday or monday, but of course the world is ending tomorrow ... placeholder for friday may 20th. so many collages, some decent writing, too much work, too much running no time for blogger uploads.

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2011-05-19T12:20:00.001-07:00

thursday .... really need to scannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn ... before the world ends on saturday, but at least am keeping up. may 19th

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2011-05-18T18:25:00.001-07:00

wednesday may 18

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2011-05-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

no time to scan tuesday may 17th

monday's placeholder

2011-05-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

may 16th

stroking out in the dark

2011-05-15T15:53:00.001-07:00

doubling up on the double dare as per my rest o' the weekend plan ... a piece of writing overlaid on a piece of collage, moving toward the continued work on the rest of my stroke/survival story. this poem was written also the summer of my stroke recovery after many attempts at biking to the lake and swimming at sunset, and trying to feel like myself again. part of the reason that i'd swim at sunset was that i'd bike there after working, have to lay in the sun (vitamin D) and rest, would swim till the sun dipped into the lake, then bike home and sleep for 8 solid hours under the electric blanket on high.

i was severely anemic that summer, but didn't know it. i quit biking after the 4th of july. beyond that point, i'd lay in the sun in the back yard after work every day, which i'm sure helped, and the fact that i wasn't exercising any longer didn't hurt either since i couldn't maintain my weight any longer. i was too pooped to do anything else.

i wrote this poem late summer/early fall after i FINALLY went to my family doctor and asked for help (not my strong point), admitted i no longer felt like myself inside or out. this was after a dizzy spell or two, and this is when i found out about the anemia and some other things a person finds out about the aftermath of a stroke, followup and recovery even if they think they're one of the "lucky ones" who made it through without a hitch.

THE WRITING AND THE ART (and this puts me well into this double-dare writing and art-farting every day process!):

the poem also in text since this is an 8 x 10 collage but may not be read-able in this format on scan over:

stroking out in the dark

because of you
i augmented my
lifestyle to half light
and then no light at all
afraid to make a move
or you would find me again,
stop me, dead in my tracks,
paralyzing my movements,
wickedly twisting my words.

i am living,
and yet not,
along the post-traumatic
jaded, off-avenue side streets,
afraid of my own shadow
petrified i'll be chosen
for a repeat performance,
a victim of the statistics,
unable to say my name.

in defiance to you
i fight to regain strength
the ability to face sunlight
with an upturned face,
running as the day streams,
screaming through the locks,
unleashing every dawn,
having rested in the dark,
no more night swimming.

-late summer/early fall '02

blame it on depeche mode

2011-05-14T19:21:00.001-07:00

I fully intend to return to the "Face of Stroke" story and tell the flipside of what I, the survivor, of my story looks like, but it will have to be later in this writing process since building the pre- story took time, and I don’t really have time this weekend to build stories.

I was in fact working on my collage tonight, hurriedly, while Mark was getting his popcorn ready for our Netflix launch. Ironically I was working on much the same theme. Another moleskin (another Mark, my first husband, another time, and another bowl of popcorn). I was working on using a piece of writing and some images (all in one) to save time on the dare (writing and art smoooshed together to save time this weekend and yet still meet the double dare).

The moleskin above is from 1996. The ribbon is tied tight because 1996 was the last year of my second marriage. Marriages are sacred whether they continue or whether they end. What's between those pages, and what didn’t make the cut since pages are small (and time is tight in a marriage), is not for public consumption.

This marriage ended on a summer day at the ten-year point, though we struggled during a long separation and divorce process for another three years, the marriage officially ending, ironically, one day prior to our 13th anniversary.

The marriage ending, public record, yes, the rest no one’s business, and I intend to keep it that way. I will say this, and this is also public record, I'm considered the one who ENDED THE MARRIAGE because alone in counseling (he, a state away), I (on the advice of my heart and my therapist) had to cut bait. A three-year separation is a long time to not have made any progress, emotionally, financially or otherwise. I will also say, these things are never easy, the tying of the ribbon tourniquet, right before they cut off the limb. The phantom pains never go away.

That being said, I’m sure I’ve lived it out, learned it out and written about it in many other ways, including the above poem, which I wrote the summer of ’97, the first summer I ever spent without my three children in the house. Unreal, surreal in all regards. Alice (4)toddler) was in Minneapolis with her father. Carol and Rebekah (14 &13) were old enough at this point, finally, to take a plane ride to Wyoming to visit their dad and his family instead of his long trips here to see him for only a few hours, or a day at a time.

I never entered into either marriage or either stint of parenthood thinking, “Woo-hoo, I hope some day I’ll get a break and a whole summer to myself, so it was an odd bit of time for me,” I have to say. I never planned any of this … such is life.

This poem came about when I realized partway through the summer that there were no dishes in the rack, only glasses, and that I wasn’t using any silverware. I was eating mostly raw vegetables after biking late at night, or the occasional veggie sub, wine and popcorn. Free time, after work was endless, whether this was the beginning or the end of a day, depending on my work schedule.

I didn’t, understand what “free time” was, or how one used it, or what would happen if you got caught having it. I questioned everything I did as if the “what do you do when you are alone, and is this weird?” police were watching me. Like, can a person get arrested if they have wine and popcorn for dinner three nights in a row? What if I sleep in my clothes, on the couch, and wear the same clothes tomorrow, go biking and don’t shower? Who will find out?

As summer progressed, I realized the answer was, no one finds out. My thoughts on that? This is insane? Or was it?!?! I drew the insane line in the sand every morning, and then every morning I crossed it to see what would happen. This included adopting two stray kittens, by summer’s end (to suprise the girls), and a whole lot of other stuff that’s probably in another moleskin with super tight ribbon around it and a padlock, and a tag that says SUPER-SONIC GROWTH.

You live you learn.

By Accident or by Some Strange Anne Design

2011-05-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

In the photos above, one of my favorite moleskins, crammed to full, beyond full to bursting. I grabbed it off the shelf today on a trip downstairs to my office, thinking I'll use it in the coming weeks, in therapy, for the writing prompts and for various other reasons, maybe to squash that first summer fly or to steady an unstable table leg. You just never know.

I grabbed it today, however, to work on a piece that grew from yesterday's piece, which maybe will mutate further into tomorrow's piece, which was the hope of all this 30 days of writing and artwork crapola. So it appears to be working, this habitual bitching and moaning on paper, and then the art stuff and such.

A piece about my stroke and the "before" me versus the "after" me came about yesterday. Because I've been struggling with my version of what I call a migraine and some other head-related head case things this week, it seemed like it might be fairly therapeutic to continue in that vein. It’s also National Stroke Awareness Month, so why not jump on board with that too, right?

The website www.stroke.org has a “Faces of Stroke” campaign going on right now, where stroke victims of all faces and places, shapes, sizes and scenarios tell their stories after pasting up their pictures. It’s a humbling feed. No two stories are alike, but if you read enough of the stories you see the common thread.

You read too many of the stories and it takes you a whole other direction and you might get angry and not want to be part of the group, so you have to be careful. You have to take it, yourself, your own story, a shot glass, and ... just kidding ... okay, maybe I'm not kidding. It's hard facing and telling your own stories sometimes. Some says you can own it, walk it, talk it, be empowered, want to empower others, and the next day you don't want to deal with it, AT ALL, are sick to death that it lives inside of you.

For my part, in case you haven’t already noticed, when it comes to any of my parts, I use sarcasm and some sugar-coating when I tell a story. Same goes for my stroke, but today, I’m adding a picture and I'm trying to keep it serious. This is the Face of [my] Stroke, age just turned 40, no real good reason for it, healthy, not overweight, no high blood pressure, no high cholesterol, no risk factors other than possibly heredity, history of “very iffy headaches and migraine activity since early teens,” head injuries x several, no clotting disorders, heart problems, mostly just luck of the bloody head draw:
(This picture is, in fact, still on our fridge in a magnetic frame, a constant reminder of my/our good luck. It's me and baby Ruth, taken the day I returned home from the hospital. )

I’ve been trying for YEARS to make sense of my own story and my own head (emotionally and physically) since then. I’ve also spent many years DENYING my own story and my own head (emotionally and physically) since then, as the journal entry below proves.

After my stroke, I waited a solid month and then opened my moleskin (a page prior to the one shown below) and attempted (and failed!!!!) to chronologically rebuild the five days of the stroke activities (the day of, the flight-for-life to the hospital, the time in the ICU, on the ward, etc. and my eventual and lucky-duck trip back home to my family, basically unscathed and yet changed forever.)

Up until then, I had just come home, embraced the kids, went right back to work and acted like it was no big deal. I had in fact not even told the people I was working for that I had had a stroke. Since I worked from home that part was easy. Who knew?!?!? Who needed to know?!?!? It was nobody's business! The only people that really knew were my family, my very immediate family, which meant the girls and very few others and a few close friends (very few).

I kept telling everyone that, yes, I was lucky because I had no “residuals,” because I didn’t drag a leg, have a weak arm, drool or require help breathing, swallowing or chewing my food. To the casual onlooker, I was perfectly, dandily fine except for the easy-bruising from the precautionary blood thinners, my incredible-no-matter-the-edibles Twiggy-like weight loss, etc. etc. I was alive and well and lived to tell the sarcastic humorous stories about how I had almost died and orphaned my children.

This is what the Face of Stroke looked like for me by the end of the summer, however:

It had taken its toll. I was melting down and I was melting away. I was not myself. I was literally disappearing, mentally and physically. At 5 feet, 11 inches tall, I weighed ... well, that's something the girls and I don't talk about. It was a scary summer for all of us.

I came home perfectly well, or so we thought, saved, a miracle, but I was not their regular mother. I hadn't come back whole. That transition for me has taken a lot of work, and it's something I still feel a lot of shame, anger and sadness about. I feel like they got robbed, especially Ali since she's the youngest. I feel like she had a different Mom than Carol and Bekah (and Sara) had. Sometimes, I wish they all could have their old mother back the way she was instead of the rebuilt, goofed-ditzed version, the one I have to wake up every morning and wind up like a toy whose gears are still, at best, still a wee bit "off."

My poetry that summer (below) sounds suicidal at best, but it's more the deep sadness over the loss of certain parts of myself that used to be there, but had taken on new form. Every physical and mental thing I loved to do seemed to be taken away from me all at once and sent back with reversed instructions. I was lost in wrappings and trappings and trip wires.

Physically, things like biking, hiking and swimming had to end because of the insane weight loss. Until that was figured out, I had to remain still. I was even losing weight in my sleep. Not biking, that loss, that release, so many things, it got to be a lot and not enough all at once. Imagine a 40-year-old woman shivering under an electric blanket in August, waking up with her stomach growling. I felt like my head and heart were eating me alive.

There was no real rest, and once awake I was easily overwhelmed, depressed or manic, though in stroke vocab they have other words for it, which I might use tomorrow in my happy ending/new beginning story. I, and my stroke face have come quite a long way :)

THE POEMS FROM THAT SUMMER:

prognosis guarded
morning broken
kicked bird
crest-fallen
visibly shaken
vultures watching
death's dance
near complete

Already Drowned
I cry, in want, longing,
craving the freedom,
sans clothes, bare skin,
to run wild the dunes,
diving deep the wake,
but pointless effort,
lying, as I do, forever,
beneath sand and time,
beyond ten feet under,
past all seeing levels,
sub the pebbled flooring,
rocked at very bottom,
far below the water deep,
back stroke no match,
for Earth's thick core,
mottled, impenetrable,
now my strong hold,
tearing hair, loose my scalp,
busting tooth, tying tongue,
breaking bone, splintering nail;
can't swim for the life of me,
no longer is freedom an option ...
... already drowned.

This Side of Thin
Angry bones,
snarled and ropey,
unraveling from the inside-out.

Sharp angles,
puncturing the skin,
skeletal dust motes take flight.

... forgot milk.

TODAY'S COLLAGE PIECE/FIVE OF THIRTY:

Walking for Cover (and really, there are no places to hide from your true self ... fancy that!)

2011-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

OF NOTE: POST FOR May 12-2011 when Blogger was down for Maintenance. Still part of my 30 days/30 pieces of Writing and Artwork). I have not started Kiteley's book, The 3 A.M. Epiphany as of yet, but I also have not pitched it off my back deck into the woods. The book is rather intensive, and not something that I can just open up and randomly choose a prompt, so I intend to start it page one and work it through, perhaps the start of next week, or third week into this.

In it's stead, I found an interesting scrap of writing from 2001, way beginning of December, just two months after 9/11 and very less than six months before my stroke. It's ironic because it also speaks about "the manuscript," and the piece also has a bit of a different "voice" that I have now, something I struggle with now because since the stroke I've always felt that there's a "before" and "after" me. It's something I've only just begun to talk about in my therapy sessions, and it's something I'm quite possibly still very angry about. And, yet, when I read this piece I still heard little snippets of the "me" that I think is still "there."

The other fun part is that "all my girls" are featured in the piece, and Carol was the only one who was adult and moved out of the house at the time, and Ruth was a newborn. Rebekah and Sara were still living at home. Alice was in elementary school. If one also reads very delicately between the lines there is also the essence of a relationship I'm trying on for size but I already know it's ultimately not going to work out. So interesting to see it all captured right there. And also what's captured is my stoic, stubborn solitude-inal isolating nature of my beastliness (so busted! ... the part of "me" that has not changed one bit!).

[photo credit: also 2001- me and mrs. beasley back in the day, when nearly 40 was the new practically 8 years old at best).

THE WRITING:

Random Journaling Crapola from early Decemberish 2001 a.k.a "oh what one can find on a hard drive."

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER?

.....it's fucking cold, hardly past ten degrees.
Pretty much keeps me off the walking path. No good
can come from walking when it's this cold, expanding
the lungs, for what???? to be cryo'd in the process.

I DON'T FUCKING THINK SO! Time to check out gym
membership, exercise within four walls, four different walls, anyways.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT MY WORK?

I can't seem to start the day without finishing off
the previous night's "incoming!" emergency room
trauma notes, whether I'm scheduled to work or not!

Waiting for me at the moment is a 22-year-old woman with
"right upper quadrant pain" ... a very common ailment,
sending millions to the emergency room.

Isn't "right upper quadrant pain" a heartache? Oops, wait, the
heart is leftward or more towards middle, stands
like a fist, pounds like one too.

I know, because I have one ... a heart ... and that same dull ache,
like I swallowed a bolus of food, but forgot to chew it first.

Love the ER, gotta love the ER. It's as if the
trauma notes are mine, all mine!!! and I want the stories
before anyone else gets to them. Greedy me.

My line count mounts to the ceiling. I forget some days I'm
getting paid for listening to all this fun, which
I'm in my "groove" and glad of that.

However, burnout is sure to follow, as is per the usual
in the medical crazy-ass game.

I haven't been this hard-wired into work since September 11th
when freaks bombed the world and half of our staff went
motionless in response, clinging to CNN while medical
their desks because they couldn’t see their TVs.
For my part, I worked endless-endless-endless shifts
until my eyes, ears and brain bled.

I am never in the "red" and never get the
reminder-get-off-your-ass emails from supervisors or
account managers. I couldn't take one of those.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT THE GIRLS?

Ali is still gone for a few days yet. She sounded happy
when last we chatted, slight stressed, questions about home.
Has seen some movies, but not "The Majestic," so we can
see it together when she gets home.

Carol is stressing a bit, living their place, and the
hospital (couldn't pump milk yesterday, very
frustrated) trying to thrive in Milwaukee with
James. I WILL see them tomorrow. They are celebrating
their one-year anniversary today, one year of knowing
each other (can they really “know each other”).

And what has transpired in just this one
year... meeting last year ever so briefly at Xmas,
making a connection, then running their relationship,
long distance (wyoming to Wisconsin), by phone and letter
until April of this past year, then a few dates
proper, but not until Carol turned 18 in May, then
moving in and making Baby Ruth. What was their
hurry to be so grown up so fast? Mom at 19.

Grand Baby Ruth breathes on her own, mostly, but still
sets off the alarms sometimes during feedings. I will get
action shots tomorrow as Mommy Carol is allowed to
pull that baby out of her glass bed whenever she
wishes. The nurses love the princess baby.

Bekah and Sara are just now stirring, time soon to
pack up and get the hell out of Dodge. They are
making toast and peanut butter now. I think that's
the first time anyone has used the kitchen in days.
Last night I froze the rest of the spiraled ham and
some other stuff. Will make soup later. I ate some
fritos and went to bed. The house continues to empty out.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT BOOKS?

I wrote one, a novella. This year I'll write
another, perhaps larger, will go beyond the first person and
stretch my abilities to capture life to the page and
yet allow it to live and breathe there. I'll send
the existing novella packing to whoever wants to look at
it, and force it down the throats of a few others
who think they don't. At this point, it's a game of
chance and postage.

But this afternoon I'm dusting the books I own and
putting them back to their rightly shelved manors,
to mind their manners. There was a method once to my book
madness. I am very nearly there again. The front room/library/office
echoes a bit. When Sara and Beks got home last night,
they were mad at first at the downsizing, and Sara actually
thought I had moved a wall. Maybe I did ... so to speak.

There's another book, duly written, inscribed in my
heart, the story of two people, and I will laboriously
move each chapter of it to disk this week, back it up,
steel copies here and there and everywhere, bury one
in the yard, plant a tree atop it, tape one to my
chest, etc. etc., swallow another whole, insert
another to the back of my skull, my own hard drive.
Beyond that, I don’t’ think it’s going to work.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT POETRY?

I love it to death. I haven't counted lately, maybe
my poetry now numbers beyond 200. I passed 100 a
long while back. A wicked verse is building in my head
right now ... it has the word "hymen" and "cerclage"
in it. I'm not sure yet if it will work out. We'll
see. Right now it's tight to my brain and I'm
trying to work it loose. It's virginal, stubborn, like a
Catholic girl, but I intend to rip it loose and
destroy it to the page, make it bleed.

I know, doesn't make sense, or only to me. But this
year, these words are going to take me somewhere, by
scholarship, by hook or crook, east coast conference
or southwest, mark my words ... or I am nothing but
a sinner against my true self, and that I cannot be.
My soul cries freedom, and someone out there waits to
hear from me, can help, can further my cause. I
have only to find them or want to be found in return.

NOW ... SHALL WE TALK ABOUT ME?

Who am I, I alone, wandering the planet, but not
wandering, not really, because it's too fucking cold
and that leaves me "grounded," but I'm not idle as I
work this delicious bit at the desk, and then ready
a paper trail to go build a fire, then shop
a food order keeping in mind everyone's pending trips
away from home this week. Then I'll go eat dinner
with friends and their kids with real live lasagna,
"Eat Anne EAT!, a real meal, come on!" ...
Okay, I will. "Stay and watch a movie!
Come on, what else do you have to do?"

“Okay,no I don't feel like it, well maybe, not sure ...”
but more than likely I'll go home again, home again,
this dark cold house, sooner rather than later. The
windows will have frosted in my absence and it will be
like unlocking the door to a cave, this my safe
haven.

I am here alone, and perhaps some late night
emergency room notes will keep me busy, pad the
lines/invoicing/pay further for heading into
holiday weeks, then workout, CD supreme/noise,
warm the bed, sleep on my stupid little bone-weary or
lonely?!?! head, miss something, or stubbornly miss nothing
and nobody or body, and try to understand this life
I live so farremoved, moonlight spilling into the room
and lyrics dancing madness in my head, Soma and
melatonin whisking me away to the land of spine realignment.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT TOMORROW?
What’s next.

SHALL WE TALK ABOUT THE NEW YEAR? … (or not ...)

Walking for Cover

Moon glow, nearly full, brimming, spilling over, providing a warm wash this frigid, crisp night, yet mocking me, taunting, the world a double bed.

I walk alone, treading the marshlands yet another twilight hour, bent marsh grass underfoot, felled to side-lying, woven under a thick white blanket.

I feel the urge to jump, bouncing on this straw mattress, tall but small, unbundled, I fall onto the dry grass cot, under the winter sky and rest. (poetry also from dec 2001)

THE FOURTH PIECE OF ART OUT OF THIRTY:

Shoot the Moon!

2011-05-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Day three into the 30 days of writing/art, still determined to solidify this habit, though it was a bit of a struggle today. A migraine had started late last night and hung on with vigor throughout the day, threatening to thwart my efforts at this uphill climb towards truth versus dare me to shut up forever!

I rallied, however, surprised that any potential slips on the old Freudian rug became turn of phrase instead, or mixed themselves up with metaphors. Around and 'round it went and gradually some torn bits of paper got involved. The final collage piece, I dedicated to my daughter as it so OUT-LOUD spoke to a recent personal triumph she’s had, mind over heartfelt matters.

With some cavorting and word sorting, I was able to drag some old words from the depths of 2005 in almost the same subject matter as the art, to compare and contrast and rework for the day’s writing portion of the blog. Overall, not a bad morning’s work for a gal whose head consisted of vinegar and brown paper mulch, I have to say.

So, first the words, then the collage, followed by my plan of attack for the remaining 30 days and beyond.

THE WORDS:

… It’s like trying to kill the beast when I’m feeling so beastly, like the beast is me. I don’t know how to get rid of the “beast” and keep the “ly,” a befitting suffix for far better words like lovely, creatively, joyfully and happily ever-after-ishly.

At times, I feel like the wicked queen because I want some one else’s heart in a box, so I can have mine back, wholly sound.

Everyone should suffer and no one should suffer, but there was suffering. I’ve been pissed off since the very beginning, but that never mattered, and that still hurts, rubs my insides out. I’ve hidden that pain away, but it threatens now, an aching breaking Pandora’s box. If it ever flies open, the knives will fly everywhere. I will bleed from the inside out. Then what?!?!?

But, I can’t think of that just now. ‘Going to do laundry, drive the car, get the groceries, worry about bills and dinner, spend time with the girls, the trusting dog and purring cats, look over my freshly shampooed carpets, make another pot of coffee, look forward to/not through my upcoming work pile/deadlines, sleep again in the pink light of yet another snowfall, wake, watch the moon leave the morning sky, try again tomorrow.

Love my self through this.

THE COLLAGE: (dedicated to my daugther, Alice)

THE PLAN:
For future blogs I'll be using the following book for my writing prompt-ish portions.

The 3A.M. EPIPHANY Uncommon Writing Exercises That Transform Your Fiction By Brian Kiteley

--- I'm not sure if I'm going to do the prompts in order (there are at least 200 of them in the book), or if I'll open the book and choose one daily by random. --And there is always the chance that I'll get up tomorrow, still with a headache, feel really pressured about this 30-day double dare blog crap, throw my lap top, my glue stick and Brian Kiteley's book off the back deck into the woods and call it quits ... I mean, life does have that prognosis is so fucking guarded quality to it. However, it's my ongoing hope that I'll shoot the moon!

The Clean Plate Club ...

2011-05-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

It was a busy day, lots of running and such before I ever got to the desk (dining room table, more actually) art and writing, prior to work today. I managed a cup of coffeE by 1pm. feeling real hunger, and not some uppity feeling, I inhaled the sticky bun in short order, or so I tell myself. Maybe it’s still part of the dare, where I don’t want to feel guilty for throwing more food away. Perhaps I need the proof that I'm getting on with things.

The art got started over the thinking I was doing over the mail I had opened the night before, a thank you note from my niece and a Mother’s Day card from my stepdaughter. Both were "thank you" notes of a sort, and both lovely in their own unique respects. I didn’t “really” collage them inasmuch as I arranged them on the scanner, and then tweaked them in a photo program. I didn’t really want to rip them up just yet, if at all, but I do like how it all turned out.

And, while I thought I might either write something else today, or revamp some other work, I’ve decided to pull another excerpt from “the manuscript” about a little girl trying desperately to get ready for a “Mother Daughter” tea that’s been sprung on her without much notice, and not very tender or helpful notice:

[of note, the child has already anxiously struggled to dress, but is composing herself and “accessorizing.”]

… First off, she surprised me about going. It made my stomach nervous and jumpy with excitement, but when she yelled up the stairs like that in such a mean hurry, it made my belly tight and hard like a rock. It’s hard to get dressed and feel pretty when you’re all stone cold in the stomach and one of your knees is only half skinned back over, but I think I did pretty well.

I wore my plastic Oscar Mayer Wiener ring and an emerald ring from Cracker Jacks. It’s not a real emerald of course, and it’s not a real ring either, just an “adjustable.” I have only one necklace but it’s made of little sugar candies, and not quite good enough for going out. I have never gone to a Mother and Daughter Tea before, but I’m sure that you don’t wear a necklace of spit and candy all on the same string around your neck. …

…This is how I went to the tea, but I couldn’t believe Mummy. She was wearing a blue dress, pantyhose and shoes with pointy heels that looked like they would poke right through the floor! They could put your eye right out if she stepped right on your face. I know a mom is not supposed to do such a thing but those heels made me think of things like that and all the other things she could stick right through if she landed her foot just right. …

COLLAGE TWO OF THE PROPOSED THIRTY:

technically still morning ...

2011-05-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

...or maybe it’s “technically still mourning,” but I digress. I made myself this promise to do the 30 days, 30 pieces of collage artwork and 30 pieces of writing prior to work each morning and so it goes.

I (and the sticky bun) didn’t make it very far, however. I feel like that scene in the movie, “Mommy Dearest” where Joan Crawford screams at Christina to eat a piece of steak or some other rot at dinner one night. Christina refuses the meal. So for several subsequent creepy days on end Joan forces the nanny to put the same plate of food before Christina until it rots.

I have trouble eating when I’m processing my emotions. I’m deathly afraid I’ll misinterpret hunger as something else when the tough really gets tough-ass tough and things are really riled up.

Grief and loss of any kind, when it’s eating away at me, carving away at my skeleton, I hate to miss that feast on my bones. I’d be very pissed off at myself if I mistook a gut-ripping, mournful pain of any sort, thought it a hunger pain and ate a Twinkie instead.

One must honor their gut-ripping raping losses if they're to move forward. (This counts too even if your moving forward, only to move back nine steps to the fridge, say, six weeks later to eat a tub of ice-cream when the feelings resurface as something even uglier ... no one ever said this was easy, hello?!?!?!?)

Losses are necessary. You have to honor them, that's still the given, it's ongoing, gut-fuckity-uppity, hard-ass work.

So I’m going to have to revisit the sticky bun, perhaps tomorrow. Today, I gazed upon it, had my coffee, and if I’m going to be honest I must confess I had said coffee pretty late this morning because I was hiding under the quilts until 10:30-ish after a not-so-restful night.

I did not launch out of bed this morning with a, “Woo-hoo! I can’t wait to get started on my master plan of bloggie attack, my 30 days of renewed passion for life and art and jump started-ness,” because, well, I just don’t feel all that passionate about the deal, which of course is why I had to set myself up for the double-dare in the first place!

That being said, in all brutal honesty, because that is also what this is all about, here’s another revisal of a portion of “the manuscript,” which is also in keeping with today’s theme somewhat when it comes to emotions, and appetites and such, and then I shall end this blog with my collage and get my sorry ass to work for the day.

OF NOTE: I'm not going to be including stuff from my manuscript everyday. I have only promised myself to write/art in the blog everyday so I'll either be revising or showcasing work, and/or using a prompt or?!?!?!? ... just so there's something, a mark, a drop of some kind of INKISH BLOOD:

(This is a charming little ditty about a little girl who had several Prince Charmings but they were all out in the yard one day and no one could save her.)

... The boys were back outside before I ever got my sandwich even halfway started, and then I was out of Kool-Aid. Mummy got mad.

She said, “No seconds!” and put the Kool-Aid back in the fridge. She said I could drink water if I was so smart, instead of trying to use all the Kool-Aid in the house to git rid of my sandwich.

I felt like telling her there wasn’t enough Kool-Aid in the whole house to ever finish that sandwich, but I kept my mouth shut between bites …

…The water made the liver sausage taste like metal, but I ate almost the whole sandwich. It would have been okay except I started to burp and it felt like puke and guts were going to come back up. It made me gag. My tongue tasted greasy and dirty.

Mummy said, “Goddammit …” and that’s how I ended up in my room, flat on my back with that stupid guts and pukey liver sausage floating around in my stomach.

I have to take a nap today. No one else does, but I’m the one in big trouble again. I’m not supposed to get off the bed. I can’t read quietly because my book is all the way over on the dresser. If I go get it, the floor will creak on the ceiling over the living room. Mummy will hear that instead of “As the World Turns” and then I’ll be dead.

I know this. I’m not stupid. If I were a little smarter, though, I would keep my Grimm’s Fairy Tales book under my pillow for the next time. “Goose Girl” always cheers me up, even when she is all miserable and rolling down a hill in a barrel with spikes jammed in it, hurting her on all sides …

A PIECE OF COLLAGE ART (1 OF 30):

[Just Gonna] Do It!

2011-05-08T15:13:00.000-07:00

In honor of Mother’s Day, my first Mother’s Day celebrating such with three now grown children (Alice Jean now 18, Rebekah Lynn 16 and Carol Anne soon to turn 28), I realize there is a child I’ve left behind, and I’m going back for her now.

This child's story has been fully written for a long time. Once written I was very proud of her loud, brave voice and I shared her. People were interested, but hearing that interest I became ashamed and stuffed her in a drawer.

Later, during a move, I packed her away. Her voice became muffled in a box, having only been dug out recently a post-it note clinging to her front cover with the words “do it!” still firmly attached.

Do what!?!?!

Do tell, do see if you have the strength to keep the little Jack, or in this case Jill, out of the box.

Let her live, so to speak.

So, this Mother’s Day, I’ve decided to let her live, this little girl, this story.

I’ve also decided I don’t care how incredibly emotionally challenging things have been lately, I’m going to write EVERY MORNING, and I’m going to do a piece of artwork EVERY MORNING, prior to starting work. Just like the 30 days/30 collages jumpstarts I’ve had to do in the past to break out of slumps, it all goes to show with perseverance it takes 30 days to make (or break) a habit.

Mark, my words (and collages) … and for now an excerpt, from the little Jack (oops, I mean Jill) I just let back out of the box:

This morning I’m drawing pictures on the floor of the machine shed with a stick. I trace careful so I don’t break any of my teardrops. My tears land quietly and then settle right in, caught up in the soft dust. They stay wet and round and whole. Dust scatters as each new drop falls, but none break. They're sprinkled with dirt like butter cookies with powdered sugar from the sifter. I can’t believe something as beautiful as this has come from inside of me.

The child dreamer is alone,
very much alone.
He lives in the world of his own reverie.
In his happy solitudes, the
dreaming child knows the cosmic
reverie which unites us to the world.
-Gaston Bachelard, Reveries Toward Childhood

trying to keep everybody's crappity crap out of my emotional garage

2011-05-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon a close friend invited us out to his house “out in the woods,” which we are very lucky to live in a glacier-honed area of Wisconsin, the Southern sections of the Kettle Moraine forested zone, so “the woods” really are everywhere including in and around our subdivided housing area, but our friend Dave lives in the real woods, along a lake front (less than one-half hour from our house ... yes, lucky!).

Dave lives in an A-frame, has outbuildings, raises hunting dogs, and has a taxidermy shop (and the animals he has preserved are pieces of art, I am telling you, but then I’ll also tell you that I can point out the art in almost all my friends’ lives, even if they can’t see it).

On Dave’s property, there are fire pits, tree houses, outdoor grills of every combination, burning barrels, trampolines, swing sets and targets for practice. There’s a camper, an icehouse, a boat, motorcycles, mini bikes, mowers, etc., everything of the outdoor life, but I digress … let’s get back to the fire pit, the reason for the invite.

The original invite was to come out for the day, stand and jaw by the fire, catch some sun, fight off the wind, and just relax and wait for the meat to be ready. Yesterday’s fare was chicken and pork loin. The sides were beer, wine, sauerkraut, condiments and spicy potato chips.

Though there are picnic tables, benches and plenty of lawn chairs available around the fire pit, we all stood, stomping our feet to stay warm, and moving our jaws to keep the laughter going. The sun was out all day, but the wind was pretty wicked, so none of us really left the fire for very long.

As we all stood their drooling, we did remark that maybe our host had over-estimated the amount of meat he was grilling, and that it was likely too much, but we ate practically all of it, the five adults and two kids of us who were there.

It was super yum. It was everything I personally needed after weeks and weeks of stress (the catch-all word, for all that and more) and, admittedly, not cleaning my plate and further, admittedly, sometimes not even building a plate to begin with.

Prior to leaving we threw some “extras” on the fire, some scrap wood and junk from our garage, which Mark had loaded onto the truck before we left the house, things that we’re not “allowed” to burn within our “village limits." Dave also threw on “extras” from his own vast property, fallen branches, etc.

We continued our gab, picked at the bones of what was left of the chicken, decided if we had room for just one more piece of pork, “the other white meat,” kicked at the dirt, looked at the sky, noted the location of the sun and how bad it sucked that it was either a "school night" or "work night" for the best of us.

As the fire died down, the goodbyes began. As we headed out, I said to Dave, “Thanks for feeding me yummy meat,” and he remarked, “Okay, how come your camera isn’t on video for that remark,” teasing me because I was snapping pictures earlier and cajoling everyone into crazy acts, to no avail. While the day was full of laughs, I caught nothing on video.

I remarked further as Mark and I walked off that I’d likely sleep deep that night, and so of course with that deep sleep, another dream:

In this dream, shortly before the alarm this morning, I’m totally freaked out because a woman I used to do work for while I was employed at Minneapolis Children’s Hospital very, very early in my transcription career (age 25-ish), a psychologist, Gay Rosenthal, PhD, (odd that I’d remember her name, and odd that she’d arrive in my dream) had shown up at the house and she wanted to dump some “junk” off in our garage.

I kept telling her no, that would be stupid seeing how Mark and I had just been to this fabulous cookout the day prior, and while at the cookout we had also thrown some scrap wood and cardboard and stuff onto the fire, getting rid of some clutter in our garage, and so, “No, Gay, that’s not a good idea," plus in the dream of course I remembered her pysch notes were often times very, long and rambling and she wanted the testing sections in table form and they were a GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS, so likely whatever junk she had was going to be quite messy and out of sorts. I so did not want to deal with it.

Either way, she backed her truck up to our garage and was pressing the buttons on the outside key code box trying to open the garage door, even though I ran down into the garage to dry to stop her. Either way she kept making her attempts from the outside and each time the door would rise a bit and then stop, because Dr. Rosenthal also had several ratty feral cats on her truck, and they were trying to run into the garage as well, which would trip the safety on the garage door and it would stop partway up. My attempts to close the door from the inside switch were also causing the door to freeze partway up/down. Very frustrating.

Finally, I got the garage door to close, and then went back through the house and out to the front steps to talk to her. I realize then that I am in my bathrobe, which is weird because this is the first time I could see myself in my dream why the F! I am in my bathrobe for crying out loud! I continue to explain that she is not to bring any ratty-ass shit into our garage and ultimately, she leaves.

End of dream.

And then I woke up and it was Monday, whew, and so far (and it’s well past dark now) nobody has come over in a ratty old truck with feral cats to try and put crappity crap into our garage, so I guess I would call that a good day.

And I need these good days because, for every inch of crap I pull out, decide what I need, get rid of what I don't, I really, really don't need someone filling up all my clean edges with their crap! Only just sayin'.

I also stand on what someone once told me about dreams. It's not so much the symbols in the dream. It's "how you feel" when you wake up, and after this dream, I felt ... well, I felt very, "Well, then, I certainly washed my hands of that matter now, didn't I?" And that felt fantastic!

P.S. Of course no offense to Dr. Rosenthal who had no idea she'd appear in my dream, or this post. While I hated putting the educational testing materials into table format in her very lengthy reports, that's because all transcriptionists hate tables and graphics of any kind especially back in the day of word processors that had no graphics capabilities!

However, the work being done in the Learning and Behavioral Problems Department at Minneapolis Children's Medical Center was fascinating and I loved my job there, and in the other ancillary departments of the hospital, the non-medical work that I was transcribing.

Also, since Dr. Rosenthal appeared in my dream I had to Google her and see what she's up to these days. Yeah, I know if any of you can figure out a way to shut the human brain of for ten seconds so it can take a deep breath, I'd like to hear about this.

--And if you can further imagine, she's the cutest little Jewish American woman you'd ever like to meet, so picture her at barely 5 feet tall, coming to my house (dream or not) in a rickety pickup truck with feral cats, and me standing on my front steps (five feet off the ground above the drive and then also at 5 ft, 11 inches) yelling at her wearing my flowing black Ralph Lauren bathrobe sporting what's left of my black eye and bed hair.

Yes, quite a picture!

Sleeping, Soundly

2011-04-25T21:40:00.000-07:00

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. ~Colette

I realize you have to sleep in order to dream, deep sleep, and I hadn’t really been doing that in the weeks since my brother took his life. I’ve always had odd sleep/wake cycles over the years with kids, work, my brain/stroke, etc, but this time it was different.

With this loss, at first it was the shock and awful feeling of my ribs crushing my heart into my soul. I became immediately anemic. I bled out at the news.

The grief left me shaky as an addict. I needed a “hit” of something, but it wasn’t food, it wasn’t sleep. Nothing filled the vacant spot.

Later the raw gnawed out spot became a comfort. What fell away was all I had left.

Because I wasn’t sleeping meant I could be there for Jamie in the wee hours of the morning, prior to 4:44 a.m., the hour of his passing from “here” to wherever “there” is.

As it turns out, his vehicle traveled the four-lane highway parallel to the headboard of our bed that morning, on the way to the spot where he “did it (with the help of a train), whose whistle I/we all still hear, even when we don’t. Maybe I was even awake as he passed by, literally right over my head, for the last time. Or, maybe I slept on. After all, how was I to know?

All I know is, by the time I got up that morning, I was reading an email he had sent the night before, a quick note from my perfectly fine brother, which made no sense then when someone showed up at the door to tell me he was dead, right before my daughter got there to try to deliver the news, to try to catch me before the actual fall … as if that can be done.

This is why I began not sleeping “on purpose,” or at least making sure to be awake at a certain “window” of time in the wee hours of the morning, surrounding the 4:44 a.m. hour. I had to “be there” for a decent amount of time before, during and after the time that he “did it.” I could not leave him out there alone.

I planned to keep this up indefinitely. It wasn’t at all difficult. Many times, I was still up at that hour, unable to sleep the first week, terribly ill the next weeks with pneumonia and in the latter weeks it simply became the norm until one night the chain broke at 42 days.

Friday morning, April 22, 2011, 4:44 a.m., I was not there. I was sleeping, soundly.

Blame it on exhaustion, or maybe it was after my therapy session the previous day when I left some “things out on the table that we’ll talk about next time” (things totally unrelated to Jamie’s death, and certainly unrelated to my secret talks with him EVERY MORNING AT 4:44 A.M., because I can’t tell my therapist that, he’d think I was C-R-A-Z-Y!!!!!!!!!).

Whatever it was, I came home exhausted, went to bed at 9:45ish and slept 12 hours. When I woke up it was daylight. Jamie was gone, AGAIN! This time, he left without our chitchat session, just like he left us the first time, for the last time, for all time.

My first thought when I woke up. I slept. My next thought, I can’t say, since it’s more feelings than thoughts, a real mixture of emotions, relief and great sadness.

Ironically, I had accomplished this on a Thursday night into a Friday morning. Thursdays into Fridays are always the hardest and I feel like they will be forever. A Thursday into a Friday will never be the same ever again. It’s my way of remembering never to forget.

My brother sent me a perfectly normal email on a Thursday night, and killed himself the following Friday morning. I stayed up with my brother late into every Thursday night except into one Friday morning. I knew it couldn’t go on forever, but I wasn’t ready for it to end.

However, I’ve been sleeping now (and better) since this past Thursday night, though I would be lying if I didn’t tell you when I woke at 4:20 a.m on Saturday morning I was thrilled at the chance for a little time with him, till 4:45 a.m., but went right back to sleep afterward. There will still be those times, now and again by chance. Also, because of the sleeping there was last night, perchance, two dreams ...

DREAM ONE:
… the beginning part of the dream, Tina my brother’s widow (she hates that word, as all widows do)is crying. My brother Kyle and my nephew Michael have brought Jamie's giant toolbox home, but they won't let her look inside it. So I say to her, “Well, then let’s go to the book fair,” and grabbed her arm and we went running down this unfamiliar street, in an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar country.

At some point we’re going down a hilly avenue, two lines have formed, and I’ve lost track of Tina, in the crowd. We are all filing into a brick building, looks like an old school, or library. A woman is saying that we need to form two lines. As the lines are forming, I look behind me to see if I can find Tina, which I realize will be very difficult because she’s so much shorter than I am and we are on a hill.

Glancing back, and up the hill, as people are moving to form the two lines, I see her on the left sided line. I’m in the right line, so I quickly move to the left. As I’m doing so I frantically wave at her hoping that she’ll see me over the tops of all the other people, realize that we’re in the same line and that we’ll enter the building and tour, or go to whatever the book fair is at the same time, and not get separated.

I’m frantic and I keep thinking this is very important because I need to take care of her. She sees me and waves back. I turn around then and enter the building. I realize it will be okay, we’ll enter the building in the same line and come out the other side. I can’t lose her. I need to make sure we stick together.

Once the line gets inside the building, we file down a series of stairwells behind our guide. I’m on the right side of the stairs holding the rail but as I’m walking down the stairs, I notice ascending the stairs past me are a number of children carrying books, talking (though I can’t hear them), laughing, gesturing, shoving each other, etc. They are wearing period dress from an earlier time, wool skirts, sweaters, knickers, caps, long stockings.

I stopped where I’m at and go, “Oh, my gosh, I can see dead people! Can you guys see them? There are children marching up the stairs! Look at them! They must be heading out for the end of the day or recess or something.”

Some guy behind me has a fit and tells me to keep going and the guide lady asks what the hold up is. Someone else tells me to knock it off it’s not funny. I can hardly get moving again because the kids keep filing by me, and they’re looking at me too, smiling. They can see me too.

The people behind me shove me forward and they are still all, “Knock it off, it’s not even funny,” and as we round the next set of stairs the wall to our left has a computerized photo display of children in period dress and all kinds of museum-quality educational stuff "playing” about the building we are in.

I started to explain that I wasn’t f’ing around, that I hadn’t got to the part of the stairs where I could see the photo display screen, that there were actually kids walking past me, but then I woke up.

(tina and i are both 49. she started dating my brother when she was 17. they were married 31 years. i grew up with both of them. we still have more growing to do, without him now. we were all together on easter, but monday, the toolbox thing was pending, and also all of us being together is always helpful, but endings and going home, i know for teeny is hard.)

DREAM TWO:
I’m entering my Aunt Mary’s house. She still lives in a house on a swath of property on the family property where my brother Jamie, Sean and myself were born. My paternal grandfather built the house where we were born. My father grew up in that home. Anyhooooooo … I’m entering her house with a Tupperware container of spaghetti. When I get in her kitchen, it’s very messy and there are containers everywhere. I guess we are there for yet another gathering for my brother. I’m happy to be in Mary’s kitchen for many reasons (which I may write about at some point later on) but I’m alarmed at how messy her kitchen is. (In real life THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.)

The dream flashes very quickly to the end of the gathering, I’m back in her kitchen again, and I need to retrieve my container. The kitchen is even more of a mess and there are even more containers. I’m still very surprised by the mess and surprised at how messy my guts feel in this dream just like they have felt in every gathering we’ve had since Jamie died. I can’t find my container. I start looking everywhere for it and I keep knocking things over, ever the clutzoid. I’m even reaching into gray scummy dishwater among the empty containers, and through containers clean and not yet washed piled all over the counter.

I can hear someone saying, “It’s not there. There either,” like that childhood game, "You're getting hotter, nope now you're cold, getting colder ..." I keep looking.

I slide a picnic cooler out of my way, and look in the fridge and the voice continues, “Why are you looking in there? You didn’t put it in there. What are you doing? What is wrong with you?”

I open the fridge and a bunch of beer bottles on the bottom shelf tip over and clatter about. I try to right them all, but they keep falling back over like bowling pins. The voice continues, “Now look at the mess you’re making. You are so in for it.” and I’m thinking Whatever, quit picking on me! You big poophead!

All of a sudden, something starts spilling out and foaming all over the floor, just as I get all the beer bottles straightened upright.

What the fuck?

I look up on the second shelf of the fridge, and there’s a bottle of Mountain Dew, a bottle!

What?

I haven’t seen a bottle of Mountain Dew since I don’t know when, and the lid is off, so I tip it back up, so the rest of it doesn’t spill out and I slam the fridge shut.

The voice has stopped by now. I grab a kitchen towel, and plunge it in the disgusting gray dishwater and mop up the Mountain Dew mess and think once more how gross Aunt Mary’s house is, and how gross and shitty everything has been since Jamie died. I whip the towel back on the counter and then I shove the picnic cooler back in front of the fridge.

That’s when I remember that I had put my Tupperware container of spaghetti in the picnic cooler when I had gotten there, because there was nowhere else to put it, what with all the other containers, the mess, etc. So I open the cooler, pick up my container, spaghetti still in it, and I turn around where there stand the usual family suspects who would be at these gatherings and I said, “Did you hear him?”

And they were all like, “Who?!?!”

And I said, “Jamie! He was giving me all that shit about the container, and then I spilled that Mountain Dew in the fridge, and then ….”

… and then of course I woke up …

p.s. Jamie, and all my brothers for that matter, Sean and Kyle, drank 4 trillion cans of Mountain Dew since teens just like I drank 9 gazillion cans of Diet Pepsi since I was 14 years old)

(p.s. 2: the above ain’t over till it’s over/and likely it’ll never be over because the dead don’t ever go, they just go deeper, but I likely will blog about other stuff, more and soon … especially now that i’ve made friends with my pillow again, bittersweet as that was)

words to live by ... TWICE

2011-04-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

words to live by ... TWICE

pointed out to me yesterday: "when you talk about your work, you beam. you realize your work leaves you and goes out there, is carried off becomes something else, takes on new shape, keeps on giving and even gives back. it gives you joy, but it also goes beyond that." (seriously, dudes, after he said it, i wrote it down, it sounded that cool).

this same "beaming" was pointed out to me when i talked about my family, my friends, my life partner, our dorky dogs, my writing, my artwork, how i used to feel about biking before my hands fell apart, etc.

i bring this up now because, nearly a month ago, i lost my brother to suicide. for that reason, my family, my friends and i definitely have not been ourselves as we navigate this loss. Grief very much has a person “going through the motions” on autopilot, and who even knows if the lights are on half the time. who even cares? this last month has been a blur.

also, tonight i was supposed to be out with friends, but had to rain-check it. i took some time off recently, and because i’m very much a free lance chick, the work i don’t do in the off time, often times is waiting for me when i return. so i’m swamped this friday night. i’m underwater with work, but that’s the way I like it.

this picking up of speed is good for me, after this loss, which was then followed by a debilitating bout of bronchopneumonia which was then cured by a whirlwind day/night trip lunching and funning with my daughters, nieice and dear friend (because we all need the reminder of things up and coming, life going on, things in their season).

that being said, however, feeling that delicious momentum and (dare i say) joy in being back to work, i also feel guilt.

things are starting to feel back to normal, but there’s always that odd little jolt, like “beaming” in one sense takes the focus off of my grieving. like you can't do one and also do the other. you can't go on and still stay back there holding on to the person you aren't ready to let go of yet. it's been a difficult dance, a very difficult dance.

but, i’m coming to realize there is this fine line you walk when you lose someone in an unreasonable fashion, which makes you also want to manipulate your grieving into awkward hoops you force yourself to jump through; it doesn’t work.

it’s quite possible this is why i’m now talking to this clever person whose clever words i quoted above, because the last thing i want to do is grieve my brother unreasonably.

i’m trying to figure out a way to keep the high beams on, because i (we, all of us) have to see everything twice now because he can’t. he’s not here to share it with us any longer. and he loved us loud, loves us still.

if things got quiet and dark and stayed that way, he’d die all over again, and that would be wrong.

i’m not saying i have this all the way figured out, or even halfway figured out, or even an eighth of the way figured out but i think this is a HUGE part of it. i also think it's the hardest part of it. it's the part that catches me up every second along the way.

this past sunday, three sundays past the funeral, we had a huge family dinner. it wasn't until then that it dawned on me as we drove home that of my four siblings, one of us no longer stood on this earth. my dinner churned as i stared out the dark car window, the world speeding by, car sick at 49.

Monday, i had a fabulous time with my daughters, niece and a dear friend. at the end of the day and night's events my middle daughter said to me, "did you have fun Momma," and i immediately felt nauseated and my eyes filled with tears, as if i'd been "caught" doing someing wrong. she said "don't cry," which is funny because i didn't realize how quickly that sensation had hit me because i was answering her question saying, "yes," yes i had fun. it was a grand day, the kind of day i needed. we had laughed so hard my cheekbones felt like they had splintered.

so i am working on it. there has got to be a way to keep that can of whoop ass open here on earth, to keep the party we all started going, so loud and so warm and full of love that he can still feel it, because if we didn’t that would make him very, very sad. and the last thing we ever want him to feel again is sadness.

right now, this is words on a page, but these are words i’m going to live up to, twice … twice as loud, twice as bright, twice as everything!

*andrew wyeth-wind by the sea (above)

four days into spring ...

2011-03-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

Four days into Spring: Frozen tears clinging to the high branches, set against a sky so blue, so sunshine morning bright I had to squint, my eyes so pinched from lack of sleep, and now-dry tears I wasn’t even sure I was getting the shots right. Heavy wet snow, blanketing the woods, holding all the trees steady, warming my sore heart in the odd way that snow always warms my heart, sun shining on the lot of it all. The sun will help the trees shake off their tears today, the snow will melt, the woods will return to mud and mulch, the crocus will reshape its bowed back, raise its head and bloom. The redwing, the cardinal, the robin and the rest will resume their banter, the crane his whoop-whoop. And at the same time, my grief howls at the moon, stands in bare feet on a hillside, in the mud, pinches toes over twigs and pebbles, as they shoot by in the current of the ice melt, wishes to stop it all, wants to start over, wants winter never to end.

**the deal was i was going to take some time off, two weeks “or so,” and use said time to declutter some physical spaces in our home, and move my office from its makeshift space downstairs to it’s “forever space” upstairs, kind of swapping spaces with my 18-year-old daughter who will be transitioning to college within a 6-month period. we are also prepping for a remodel on that lower level of the house as well. i was also looking forward to restarting my blog, restarting my art, jumpstarting/restarting a lot of stuff about my “self” as i also transitioned into yet another stage of life. as it turns out, and as life has a way of never turning out quite like you plan, i’ll be working on more than just physical spaces during this time. it could get ugly, or could be worse, i might not write another single word. too.early.to.tell.**

quite seriously

2010-07-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

quite seriously

i’ve come to find
my self
quite seriously
refined, don’t you know,
even though, year upon year,
it appeared, as if
i had not really
been paying my self
any realfirm and/orconcerted attention,
at all, and yet …
… here I AMand damn
if i don’t sing out loudand often
all by,
and all about,
MY SELF!

collage art by anne cunningham, words by same, and maybe just a clever way of saying that i walk around the house humming like my grandmother used to do! i have perhaps arrived!

crumbs

2010-06-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

crumbs

with one sweeping motion,
a subtle, yet physical one,
you walk through the house
wiping the slate clean ,
all evidence of inhabitants,
other than yourself,
careening for dear life,
sliding across the floor,
needling the baseboards,
hanging on for lost,
bent and side-lying
in wait for better days
when you are out and about
and we can roam free,
shouting through the locks,
opening up in all the spaces
where you wish we would
cease to lodge ourselves
while your back is turned,
and yet we remain steadfast
awaiting the eventual moment
when you finally realize
your need for other people
is not a weakness.

,,,,,

2010-05-05T19:13:00.001-07:00

,,,,

outside the box, an email transmission in two acts ...

2010-05-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

inbox message: you know i would come home, all you have to do is tell me, and i’ll do it. do you want me to come home, or not? [he said after leaving for the umpteenth time and then emailing from a distant locale, full of regret, ready to buy a ticket home again]

outbox message:

how about …
you own it. answer this question for yourself.
i’ve been living it, owning it, and now not loving it so much, while you keep pondering over your option to buy, me, us, fully.
i’ve become your mega-year test drive.
i’m not trying to be an ass, but STOP ASKING ME AND ASK YOURSELF!
i’m tired of holding the mirror.
i’m getting ready, instead to slam it over one or the other of our scattered heads and just be out of it, out of this, away from it for good, as far away from my heart as possible, my brain good and dead to the notion, somewhere so far beyond hearing and factoring through any more of your bullshit in this place you live inside yourself where you say one thing out loud, and then do another.
just fucking be real.
i don’t care where you do it.
i don’t care if you do it with me.
just fucking be real for once in your life, for you.
that would be enough.
or, if you can’t, then don’t, don’t do it, don’t be real, but keep your un-real-ness away from me.
one unreal and one real don’t make a right.
i’ve said this same thing so many times before, and i’m slamming my fingers on the keyboard trying to tell you again now!
what a waste!
i’m typing my heart out into a plastic box with a flashing cursor mocking me, waiting for me to say words that just don’t sink in beyond this page.
i think i’m going to have to call and have someone take the computer away.
this is ridiculous.
i keep trying, but it’s pointless.
i’m going to bed, to mend my head.
i hope my heart takes the hint and does the same.
least ways, in my sleep, i won’t be tempted to fire off any more responses to you.
responses that are going nowhere.
delete this crap.
this conversation isn’t happening.
you can’t find love in a plastic box with a grayscale screen.
maybe that’s it.
i get it now.
fuck me for being such a slow study.
sue me, but i prefer to live out of the box.

[SEND]

[flashing cursor, flashing, cursor, flashing cursor …]

THE END

Carving Out Time, Defining Self

2010-05-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

"It's a Monday night. Midnight. The house is quiet, my family asleep. The row of sober-faced brick homes leading from my house on a corner is silent now, and the people in them probably asleep. As is most of Detroit by this time, except for me. I spend the hours around midnight back here in my sun room, sipping cool drinks and looking for some light Inner Inspiration, that I might, before my eyes give out, distill a line or two of poetry … from the short story “The Bird Cage” by Paulette Childress White

It is a Monday night! It is nowhere near midnight, but because I’m currently working upstairs on the shared computer in the bedroom, rather than downstairs in my own office space, the bewitching hour is already here.

Mark has an early flight in the morning, and so it wouldn’t be fair of me to leave him snoring on the couch, the remainder of his day, with “Law & Order” reruns playing in the background, the dog asleep at his feet.

I don’t have the benefit of my laptop tonight, either, and the ability to curl up on the couch, sit at the dining room table or go down to my office.

Woe and computer-impaired I am tonight. Both the laptop and the desktop will be back in their places by the weekend, after weeks and weeks of waiting to be rehashed and reloaded and revamped, one having had a blue screen of death and one just acting stupid. It was time for computer house-cleaning. Because Mark does all this for me, it has been computer house-cleaning interruptus at best due to his travel and work schedule.

So that brings me again, back to this room, the bedroom, the shared room in the house. The sleeping, TV gazing, reading room! (Oh, and the other “stuff” too, but that’s privitized.)

No one normally works in here. My working in here for the last several weeks has not been normal! I don’t belong in here in that regard.

That being said, I’m still trying to stick to writing something every day for 30 days until it becomes habit again, instead of habit to push it off to the side after the day is done, and I’m entirely done in.

In a conversation today (and I will find a copy of the story for you Jennifer!) I was reminded of the above quote.

The story “The Bird Cage” spoke loudly to me the first time I read it. I have had “sun rooms” in my life, places of solace at the end of the day, where I could sit and regroup, remember my place in the world, mark a little time, or make a few amends, all before going off or going upstairs to sleep with self or someone.

It’s a lot like that saying, “Don’t ever go to bed angry,” especially angry at your self for not making that time, even in a crowded shared room where all your work and play and writing stuff really doesn’t belong, but in order for you to belong and stay current, you still have to make a demand for that space.

You desperately need that few minutes more!
I had to make that demand tonight. It came out as, “I know, I’m sorry, you have an early flight in the morning, but I’m going to need the bedroom to myself tonight until at least 10:30.” I was going to qualify it with all kinds of things, like gee, look what a great dinner we all had, time to reconnect before you leave again, and ummm, yeah, so, I’d be downstairs if my computers were reinstalled, and no, well, no I don’t need the extra time for work, not really, I need that extra time “after work” for, well, er, um … never mind!

Except I minded, so I didn’t say all that. I didn’t qualify the need after I had quantified what it was that I needed, just a little more time. That is all.

My quantifying, my announcing that I needed “just a little more time” before I’d share the room was all that was necessary. My saying I needed 30 minutes of breathing space, thank you very much.

Unbelieveable that I would want more time in her since this entire Monday (after working all weekend) I’ve been stuck in her most of the day, except a brief errand run, a meal cooked and hurriedly eaten, and then back to work.

Unbelieveable, but believe it. I need this time. I need to split the room’s personality one more time today before it returns to “bedroom.” It’s been “office” all day, and now it’s my “writing space,” for this last 30 minutes … or 40 minutes … I mean, he is snoring, and he really does want to give me that extra ten minutes, he just doesn’t know it!

While I no longer have a house full of babies, and luck of the draw my significant other is far less high-maintenance than any man I’ve ever had a relationship with, I still have to work at times to carve out this me time, this writing time. So it may seem wicked that I’d push it that extra 10 minutes, but it’s also necessary. It is still too easy for me to to push it off and say, “Oh, shit, oh well, I didn’t get to it this morning, this afternoon, tonight, because, because …”

It would be too easy for me tonight to say, “Oh, well, what would it hurt if I didn’t …” and we just both got some sleep, but I know it would hurt all night long into the morning.

I need to remember that my craft is important, that underneath it all, this is who I am in, out, under and through every brutal day of the week. I’m me, the writing me.

It takes practice to remember that. It makes sense some nights to make it known what I need, and to quantify how much of it I need, without having to qualify it with an explaination. Tonight I needed time, and the people who ove me see what that means for me, the writing me.

The writing me is the one who visited with everyone while she cooked dinner, but raced through the dinner, so she could get back in here and close to the “me time.” And the people who love me understand that. For that I am blessed.

When I first read the Childress story, I felt like folding it up and putting it in my hip pocket as a reminder to carve out that time for myself, every day, not just every other, or just whenever, but always in all ways in order to be more true to myself.

Funny, though, I didn’t fold up the story and do that. I took it to heart but I didn’t put it in my hip pocket. Ali was 13 when I first read that story. I know this because digging the quote out of a notebook today, there is also a notation about her on that day.

I read this story four solid years ago and made myself a solid promise and then didn’t keep it.

The story, and it’s meaning to me, didn’t come up again in my mind until today in another conversation with another writer, when I thought, “Gee, she’d love this. She’d totally get this.”

And if I really had the story in my back pocket, she’d get a copy of the story a whole lot faster now, wouldn’t she?

You live, you learn, and you do better! And tonight I did well to carve out my half hour, to use it accordingly and to end things with a post-it note that says, “Find and print multiple copies of that story,” to which I intend to put one in my bra, in my purse in my hip pocket, tape one to the mirror, email one to Jennifer and give one copy to every woman, young, old or otherwise so that they remember to do the same, carve out that time, remind themselves who they really are, at all costs, on a regular (yes daily basis)!

And now the bedroom can turn back to the bedroom again, and I can have sweet I-accomplished-day-3-of 30 dreams!

Thirty days makes a habit, and this one I don’t ever want to break again.

description polecats

2010-05-02T21:22:00.001-07:00

I made myself this promise to write 30 somethings in 30 days … but after a long weekend of working, tonight the only two items I can see scrawled on a notepad (not having to do with my work) are “running versus owning,” and “description polecats.”

I’m not sure what I can do with either of those phrase-y prompts tonight, although the pulsing cursor on the Word screen seems to think otherwise. It’s all huffy and puffy and go to blows with the page why don’t ya! Write something. Anything!

The first notion, “running versus owning,” I know where it comes from (inside me, duh, where all the writing comes from … grin), but I don’t have time tonight to dive back in there and get the rest of it. I’m too interested now in finishing things up here at the desk, all things, and getting some sleep.

And “description polecat.” I wrote that down because the phrases that pop up in the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) boxes on certain websites crack me up. I guess I was intending to keep an ongoing list of the CAPTCHA crap I’m forced to type into those boxes to prove to the computer that I am real, and not a bothead! Every CAPTCHA phrase I’m supposed to retype always make me laugh. The word groupings are insane.

Or, maybe I was going to make a bogus list of my own, of silly two-word phrases that should be used in these boxes whenever someone has to prove themselves real. A fun list of bot-zapping phrases, to keep the creative juices flowing, maybe that’s what I need tonight instead of the longer piece that will likely result when I finally get to the gist of “running versus owning.”

I know there is something more to the “running versus owning” phrase, but the more I look at it tonight, the more it looks like a bot-busting phrase in my half-cursive-half-not handwriting, all twisted and weird. It’s making me realize, when I finally dive in to the piece, it (like all good writing brutally clear and honest) will authenticate me. It will tell me, “You are real, please continue on this, that or the other bloody website of life …”

This is true of all the writing grist, all the shit I half write down, but then never get to, but when I do get to it, boy, oh BOY, AUTHENTICATION IN ALL CAPS … even if the only authentication of it all is that I have written something because that is what writers do after all, they WRITE (when they are not doing laundry, working or wishing they were already in bed, etc.).

Writing prompts are like bot-busting jots, you repeat them and you become real, genuine, more diamond, less rough. Ten times more you, no question about it.

Tonight, however, I’ll have to suffice my writing self and my writing challenge to self (the 30 in 30 days) to a pretend list of bot jots, things that a computer might force me to repeat back to them just to prove that I am a person. Just for shits and giggles, a list of possible CAPTCHA phrases:

toaster chronicles
crockery buttercups
dishonesty hamburger
biscuit chronology
prison blowfish … and goodnight moon.

Really, I mean, it goodnight moon! That wasn’t a bot-buster, that was me saying saying, “Good night moon, hello bed …”

Louder Than Any Crazy Storm

2010-05-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

If a forgotten feeling falls down inside of you, can anyone hear it? Can you? Can I?

If we can’t hear it, is it really there?

Last night, driving home from a wonderful night out, dinner with my daughter Carol and some live music played by very near and dear new friends, a tree that had fallen in my inner forest threatened to re-sprout itself. It was a tattle-tale bitch wad of a tree, with limbs reaching out and a knot-holed throat ready to scream of my previous bloody murder thoughts.

It really caught me at my guard, gave me that “what the hell would make me think about that again” kind of feeling.

The roads were shiny as we drove home from the roadhouse, the fried food, the good music. Carol, my eldest, and I were both tired, happy to be heading home at 8:30 pm, although also a bit humbled by the somewhat early hour for a Friday night, a rare night out.

Rounding, the bend towards her upper duplex in the center of our small town, was a welcome sight. Our sighs filled the cab of the truck, her relief to get home to bed, and my relief to be closer to home and soon off the shiny misleading rain-splattered roads.

We guessed, both of us shooting eyes upwards to the lamp-lit upper windows above the old meat market, whether or not the girls were still up. Her duplex rests up there, in the sky, over this old part of town. Were they torturing their sitter, my youngest daughter, their Aunt Ali? Were they coloring, reading or watching a movie? Who was up, who was down, or maybe they were all asleep.

“It doesn’t look like it rained very hard here,” I said, since that was our biggest worry, going out during storm-warning weather bulletins which had finally reduced themselves to weather watches and then trickled down to nothing to be afraid of.

“I guess not,” Carol answered, “or wait, maybe it did, look at the muddy patch in the drive.”

The mud wash from the driveway was wet and smooth like clay. I steered the truck around this, and pulled on further into the parking lot, to my usual turn-around spot.

As I did this, the truck’s low beams landed on a fallen tree branch, in the limey grey and wet muck of the upper drive.

“Wow,” I said.

“What?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” except that it was, and so I continued with, “It’s just that, well, that tree branch, and this storm. It reminds me of a time when I was little, all of us, and there were storm warnings. Mom for some reason would always go outside to check on things, and leave us inside.”

The truck was in total pause, caught partway through it’s usually Y turn-around maneuver, and I looked towards Carol’s face in the dark.

“Well, this one dark night, Dad wasn’t home,” I ventured, “it was lightening really, really bad, and during one flash, the driveway was empty. During a second flash, a branch appeared in the driveway where it had once been clear. We had all been kneeling on the couch looking out the window and one of us joked that the branch was Mom’s skeleton.”

“Weird,” Carol said.

“I know,” I continued, “because we were really young, like your girls upstairs. I couldn’t have been more than Lili’s age. We had to have been, the four of us, really young. And I remember for a second thinking I wished it was true, but then two seconds later my pajamas felt damp with fear, or maybe it was guilt because what I had wished for was really mean.”

“Grandma was mean.”

“She wasn’t your grandma then,” I offered, and then realized that she didn’t even feel like my mother now.

“I know, but …” Carol attempted.

I finished the Y turnaround and parked near her back door. Maybe I lied, my Y turnarounds, are more X, Y, Z-ish, but in any event, I got her to the door. She exited the truck, stepping out over the flat, but soft mud washout. A silly part of me wanted to tell her to come back and we’d make footprints! Instead, I excited my side of the vehicle, skirting the rain slicked muck, and we ran up her back stairs, into her warm upper duplex. Their home.

We managed to get all the way into the lamp-lit living room before the kids heard us. Lili was already falling asleep under a blanket in a nearby chair. Alice was on the carpet where Ruthie and Scarlet were drawing on white recycled typing paper, print side down, their heads close to their work. Our shadows fell over them.

The room came alive.

We all talked at once about the rain, and if anyone was scared, and the girls asked us what we had for dinner and if we really saw “Cookie” the woman in the band. Without even meeting Cookie they all had been giggly and intrigued by the woman’s name when I told them where I was taking their mother for the evening, to hear “Joey and Cookie” play music.

I passed on a message to the girls that Cookie wanted to be sure that I’d tell them the reason her nickname was “Cookie” was because that’s the only thing they could get her to eat when she was a child. The name stuck, a mother’s love and teasing to get beyond the fuss of a picky eater. Marie.

Alice gathered her things, we all said goodbye and our “see you tomorrows,” since we almost always see each other every day these days. Alice and I ran down the back stairs, out to the running vehicle, leaving my oldest with her three little girls, everyone safe, inside, tucked and solid. No one was scared. There were no cold sweats or guilty fears over strange wishes that are never going to come true, over crazy sad notions.

On the way home, I dropped Alice at a friend’s house, an overnight she was attending in order to work on a school project for the rest of the weekend. I arrived home to find a less than coherent dog, and a snoring Mark on the couch. I readied for bed, slapping a furry hinder lightly and tweaking a fleshy warm elbow, in order to get the dog and my lover to follow me to the bedroom.

There was the jingling of dog tags, as Walter stretches, but not too far since he intended to curl up in the chair in our room immediately. Darkness fell and with it quiet as Mark has this uncanny ability to shut off the lamps and the TV remotes in one full swoop. For my part, I hurry to the bedroom in the fading light, to hit the wall switch, so I don’t trip and fall on shadows in the hall. That’s our routine. It’s how we keep each other safe.

Mark, still getting over influenza, drifted back to sleep in moments. If dogs could snore, Walter would have been through 50 logs by then already.

My sleep last night, however, proved to be wicked in process, disruptive to say the least. The room was humid. Everything hung heavy. I contemplated again whether or not we needed a dehumidifier for muggy, rainy days and nights. The blankets smothered me.

I eventually left the bedroom and slept on the couch, taking comfort in the cooler breezes blowing in off the low-lying marsh areas on that side of the house. The chirpy, chirpy nighttime froggy sounds from the pond at the end of our road finally lulled me to sleep.

In the end, I woke feeling refreshed, which surprised me since my initial trip through La-La Land was slow going, but I somehow had spent most of the night in the Land of Deep, Restorative Sleep. Maybe this particular storm had in fact washed me clean.

Early this morning, I heard from Carol that she and the girls had a version of the “Sound of Music” playing out in her bedroom after we left them last night. All three girls came in and told her they might get scared later, if it stormed again, so maybe they should have a slumber party in Mommy’s room.

It never stormed. She let them say anyway.

The scenario made me grin. I make my coffee, and spy two photos on the fridge, two of my favorite photo [things]. My middle daughter Bekah cuddles with me in one, the year Alice was born. In the second, Bekah stands in our front drive, the day she moved out for job and college. I see these pictures several times a day, every time I’m on that side of the kitchen, alongside the fridge. Sometimes I go there extra, and on purpose, just to look.

As I reached for my sweetener packets along the back counter this morning, a breeze arrived to tickle my forearm. I continued to gaze at the photos and think over the last 12 hours.

I smiled again. I felt as if I might smile, again and again. It shouldn’t but the again-and-again smiling feeling always strikes me as odd, like an “okay, what’s up with that” kind of guilty feeling.

I smiled some more, really tempting the gods who really aren’t watching, really aren’t keeping track.

I was amused at how, in rethinking the previous night, something wicked had came up, but it quickly quieted inside me, unable to fight the noise of what’s really out of ahead of me, and who. These days, though quiet, are louder than any past disturbance could ever be!

Adding milk, stirring my coffee, it became clear to me this morning that the lines are no longer blurred. I understand why I smile, and why it’s okay to smile again and again, and again. No one is going to get caught. No one is going to be hurt. It’s really okay to beam, be happy, content, standing in the place where I choose to live [life to its fullest].

Trees fall in all kinds of forests, and maybe in the dark brambly woods of my mind, during particularly stormy nights, the zombied limbs I thought were buried threatened to return. Perhaps they can and will continue to make strong efforts to come alive and infect my mind, weaken my heart, if I let them.

I won’t let them. I see that now.

The guilt and shame over what I saw or felt that wicked stormy night of my childhood may at times still be palpable and tell-tale, loud and ready to rip up the floorboards. Last night, maybe it was a close call, the storm warning that then fizzled out and came little more than a warning. While I could conjure up the memory, I refused to become again that little girl, cold sweat trickling down the back of her flannel pajamas, guilty over what she wished for, more than anything else in the world.

I had a right to be happy. I have a right to be happy, content, least of all scared.

My world is bigger now, better now. This many years down the line, the beat of my own true heart silences what fell in that forest. That little girl is not gone, but gone deeper. That little girl is me, living out loud, louder than any crazy storm.

*******
['might need some tweaking but in order to do my 30 pieces of writing in 30 days, i had to get it up tonight before midnight. this is a goal i've set for myself. ironically this current 30-day challenge to myself comes after my previous challenge (30 collages in 30 days) and actually contains a collage of those collages.

there were a lot of sticks and stones in those collages, and the resulting piece of art was fitting for this piece.

i'm beginning to think that "challenges to my self" are the way to go, and that sticks and stones will not break my bones, and names will never hurt me. ;) ]

The Passage of Time and Laundry ... There is no such thing as time, only change.

2010-04-30T07:54:00.001-07:00

folding laundry yesterday, i went all CSI all over my now clean duds, methodically folding it as if i was reconstructing some kind of crime scene.

it reminded me of something i had written years back, thoughts on the same, and my constant reminder EVERY TIME I DO THE WASH, all these years and years, what my life is comprised of, once the dirty work is done.

you know the drill, the clothes of a single woman, the clothes of a married woman, the clothes of a married woman with children, the clothes of that same woman now unmarried with children, the clothes of … rinse and repeat, the story has changed multiple times.

the first piece was written in july of 2003 and the second piece, last night definitely a comparing and contrasting look at how things change in eight years of living, loving learning.

07/2003 … the logistics (and quite actually fun!) of finally doing the laundry: the washer is broke and so we trekked to the ‘mat. there were lots and lots of towels and one white terry cloth bathroom (stolen from a hotel last year ... everyone has one of those ... which you feel is so "naughty" but if you check your debit card/hotel receipt, the price of the robe was deducted, plus this was not “officially” stolen, since at checkout i told them i wanted to purchase it), socks, shorts and t-shirts. no clothes under a female size 10 or male 36. somehow, a winter headband was in the mix, which was funny because the current temperature outside was still well over 90. however, we found a nicer laundromat on the other side of town that was cool in contrast to the beastly hot nature of all the machines. it took three washers x 1.25, a liberal amount of soap, bleach and intermittent use of the stain spray on some of our hiking duds. while the new laundromat is slightly more comfortable, temperature-wise, it still sported hard back chairs, limited reading material and was blasting cruddy music. we would have gone broke on the snack machines. instead we trekked to the mcdonald's for healthy fare and refillable fountain drinks, books under our arms, sexton bio and electronics, respectively. for some reason the mcdonalds was playing amazingly good music. a quick break in our air-conditioned/unlimited fountain drink/good music/comfy booths for reading was necessary to put clothes into the dryers x2 at 1.25 a crack ... which afforded us another 50 minutes of reading time. later, folding laundry, we treated it as an anthropological/archeological event seeing what we could discover about ourselves and our habits now that we are a slightly less encumbered couple with all the children gone for the summer, most permanently, the youngest temporarily. we came to the conclusion that terry was the bulk of it, our clothes are that of minimalists we lost some socks and our new stain spray, while dollar-discount, packed the appropriate punch.

versus yesterday (pictured above) now/04/29/2010: there are still three people in the house, but all of us (myself, mark and ali) do our own laundry and so the archeological dig now is “all about me” and my duds, my current life, and so what does it reveal besides the fact that i am no longer a woman’s size 10 and it appears that all my “hiking” is solely done indoors on machines.

LtoRight, i can tell you this, i sleep, better than i have in years. this has taken some doing, some real lifestyle changes, medication tweaks for my brain weirdness, exercise and eating right. judging by the pj pile you can tell it is spring, but nights are still cool because it’s all long johnny or long-sleeved. sitting atop the pj pile are two pairs of arthritis gloves for my sore thumb joints, the one and only reason now where i may occasionally not get the best sleep, but what’s not in the picture (Lidoderm patches and an occasional Vicodin with Tylenol) helps.

Mid-section of the pile … it’s all about my midsection and feeds into why lots of things are better and why i sleep perchance to dream ... workout clothes (yoga pants and hoodies), and to the right of that a sweater, proof that it got cold this week. atop that some of the socks i wore and proof that my favorite brassiere color of late is decidedly red.

far right, proof that i’ve showered and washed my hair several times, eaten dinner and prepared meals because the placemats, the cloth napkins and the kitchen towels always end up in my pile of laundry.

life is settled, methodical, scheduled and less overwhelming. i’ve worked out and i've worked hard. folding laundry remains a calming and revealing thing. this time, all about me, at 48, sleeping relatively well, working out and getting what i need and washing my hair (and any stress away) that i haven’t already cooked away in the kitchen.

Me.

sliva?!?! you mean, salvia? aka why i love my workouts at the gym

2010-04-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

WHY I LOVE MY WORKOUTS, a short play after some exorcising exercise acts

[me, just finishing up, refilling my water bottle, getting rid of my towel, etc. etc.]

JON/DAVE: [in unison and followed by a woman I don’t’ know] Where’s Anne? Anne will know.

ME: Know what?

JON: The stuff you can get at the grocery store?

ME: Okay … [I mean, really, give me a little more to go on!]

JON: Silva?!?!?

ME: For … ?!?!?!?

JON: Pain.

ME: Salvia?!?! [My mind was racing because first I was thinking Silvadene, but that’s from the pharmacy and for burns.]

JON: That’s it! It’s some kind of controlled substance.

ME: It is not! It’s more like a herbal something-or-other.

DAVE: I think I have some of that growing in my yard.

ME: Oh, I see, you guys were trying to come up with a medicinal herb and it’s all “Ask Anne,” or translation “ask a hippy.”

MURIAL: [the woman I did not know until now] This is Anne?!?!! [as in Anne Anne, not to be mistaken with someone who is just another Anne and not “that Anne.”]

[I am introduced to Murial and also her friend Marge, the woman who won first place in the holiday incentive contest …grrrr, yeah, I’m still upset about that, especially since up until today, four months after the contest, I had never seen her in the gym! I will beat up Marge later, now that I know what she looks like, but back to Murial and the controlled substance conversation!]

ME: [me looking perplexed and making a mental note to get the back story from Jon on how come my reputation precedes me since he’s the one who has obviously told Murial who I am, prior to her having ever met me.]

JON: Yeah, Salvia, it supposed to be like marijuana.

DAVE: Maybe I should go sit out in my Salvia and see what happens.

ME: I’m not sure if you smoke it or … [then I hand Jon a flyer off the counter about how there is going to be a community drug collection for old prescriptions in the next week or so.] I dunno, Jon, maybe see if you can get an official name tag of a sort and help with the community drug collection and you could pocket some.

JON: I already save my own old prescriptions and then I take them all at once to see if I can get a buzz.

ME: Do you crush them and snort them, or … ?!?!?

MARGE/MURIAL: [you totally know they want to know how it is that I’m in the know about this, or if I just know about this, I mean, I am “that Anne.”]

DAVE: What’s with all the snorting! Why does everybody have to be snorting!

[Everybody talking at once and saying how they are going to rush home and Google the hell out of the WWeb for anything and everything about Salvia]

CAROLINE: [who has just arrived at the gym]. We had marijuana growing around our silo years ago. Apparently the birds brought it in.

DAVE: Tell that to the police!

CAROLINE: They also said it was not ‘very good stuff.’

ME: Apparently the birds forgot to drop Miracle Grow around the silo too.

[Then one of the fitness staff comes over and takes Caroline’s blood pressure and it’s 158 over something equally as horrible]

CAROLINE: Why on Earth is my blood pressure so high?!?!?!

ALL OF US: You just finally ousted yourself on your previous drug history!

LISA: Better go to confession! [Caroline is devout.]

CAROLINE: I think I better sit here a minute and have my pressure checked again. I’ve never been so high before!

[the end … except it isn’t … because I always go back because I like the endorphins that come from exercising and these priceless “after exercise” conversations!]

SPRING SNOW

2010-03-07T20:15:00.000-08:00

When I'm out in the second hand shops, I love perusing the books. I love buying the books. When I buy the books they come in two categories, Readable Books and Rip-Able books that I later use in artwork, etc. This weekend I found two great Rip-able Books, but also one fabulous book of poetry translations, the poetry that of William Matthews.

I absolutely adore this piece which is the first page I randomly opened to, grabbing the book up off the desk tonight, to take to the bed for a bit of pre-snooze reading. The poem is too-too-TOO perfect for this time of the year.

My little grand girls have been playing in the last snows in our yard during the latter parts of last week, and part of the weekend. The snow indeed stretches from our yard to the next and the next and the next, across several vacant/undeveloped lots. The snow still exists today, though I don't think there is a square inch of it that doesn't hold their tracks, the tracks of the fox, the dogs and the occasional deer. But it is still there.

Still there to remind us that this particular season is ending, but has not ended yet. Spring is definitely set to arrive, but I figuratively love this particular piece of poetry and its emotional landscape, but I also LITERALLY LOVE this particular piece of poetry for its mention of the last white stretch of winter.

For all of you out there who would hate me for wishing for a "Winter Snow," you'll realize when reading this piece that the winter snow doesn't have to be falling (although a late last flutter of the white stuff would be cool). It can be enough that it still stretches and yawns and grows lazy at night and sleeps in the yard, its tiny respite from the meltdown. [oh, what am i saying ... i really would like a "winter snow" with snow being the action word!]

Before I go mad and shake the snow globe, I give you instead, this last piece of winter ...

SPRING SNOW by William Matthews

Here comes the powdered milk I drank
as a child, and the money it saved.
Here come the papers I delivered,
the spotted dog in heat that followed me home

and the dogs that followed her.
Here comes a load of white laundry
from basketball practice, and sheets
with their watermarks of semen.

And here comes snow, a language
in which no word is ever repeated,
love is impossible,and remorse ...
Yet childhood doesn't end,

but accumulates, each memory
knit to the next, and the fields
become one field. If to die is to lose
all detail, then death is not

so distinguished, but a profusion
of detail, a last gossip, character
passed wholly into fate and fate
in flecks, like dust, like flour, like snow.

Happy Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T10:21:00.001-08:00

2010-02-08T19:59:00.001-08:00

here we are now, yesterday no more …

there is no such thing as time
and the small change that comes to us
not by pony express
or snail mail across the sands
but real time, real quick
as technology seizes us
with the emailed words
ten years ago, it was
and then some--
as i try to catch
our collective breath,
everything that is and has
become of me,
what might have been
an “us” and yet …
scrawled across the pages
of every journal ever written,
least ways and most ways
by me, by my hand, my pen
my heart …
i can’t find the beginnings,
and want to try and figure out
where we started, but in actual words
i spent little time remembering
when it all began
versus when it ended for sure
until you say, remember …
and i am at a loss
for words.

...

2010-01-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

Utter Loss

2010-01-10T14:44:00.000-08:00

gretel's nightmare

2010-01-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

gretel’s nightmare

if this house of glass
became gingerbread on a whim,
where am i to stand,
hungry within and without,
the rain falling
reducing the wall to
so much mush,
the frosting
once strong mortar, now
lacy thin between my fingers,
to have and to hold
nothing much,
this sickening sweet mess,
the licorice tiles
which once shingled the roof,
i now gather by the handfuls,
their good & plenty sticking
to my molars
reminding me of
what is and what is not
for keeps.

Save a Deer, Ride Your Inner Cowboy

2010-01-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

*Write things down!*
“Statistics show that 75% of what we write down happens.” I read this and some other pretty interesting and resonating “stuff” on beliefnet.com this morning. And I tend to agree wholeheartedly! I keep endless lists, and 75% of what goes on those lists does get accomplished. The 25% that does not get accomplished was either not important enough, or blocked by some feeling (inner critic) that it was not important enough, otherwise it obviously would have been moved up on the list, or kept on the list until it was completed. This can be as simple as “buy eggs” versus “submit this or that piece of writing.” There are some days I don’t think it’s important enough to scramble an egg for myself and/or feed my soul. On those days, I will only accomplish 25% of what I initially set out to do, all because of how I was thinking or feeling that day, and dependent on what I thought or felt was “really important” on that ongoing “to do” list.

I think I make New Year’s Resolutions just like the next guy, whether I write them down, toss them out at a party on the eve, or lament them later in the year as “oh, it was dumb to think or say that again, now wasn’t it?!!??!” Nothing on the list is lame or stupid, if it keeps appearing on the list. If it keeps itself on the list, it’s obviously important to a person’s wellbeing. And a person’s “well being” does flow out and affect others. If you are not “well” at the core, it shows. It colors everything you do and it affects the people around you. Really, check that list, I bet I’m right. The thing you said was “stupid to aim for” is probably the thing you will put right back on the list for the next year, and damn it if you won’t shoot for it again until you get it.

Another thing I read on this same website, “Exercise your ‘want muscle’ … something you would really, really like to achieve for your ‘self.’” When I read that it totally hit a sore spot I’ve been having. I have always WANTED to move a certain resolution up on the list this last many years, but I’m always too shy to do it. I always feel “as if” it would be selfish to do so. But this year it’s going on the list. *Be more selfish. Want things. It’s not illegal.*

And how about this one “when you visualize, your brain ‘practices’ your actions.” *Day dream, night dream … wait make that day practice, night practice!* Seriously, try it! Get up every day and go to bed every night “as if” you are already there!!!! …wherever “there” is for you as far as goals and such. Don’t wake up every morning “not quite there yet” or go to bed every night with that “almost got there today” feeling. Just get up and “be” and act “as if” and pretty soon, you just “are!” It takes real practice to be what you feel would be the “absolute perfect!”

“The difference between a goal and a dream is a deadline.” This has got to be one of my favorites. Deadlines rock! How often do you hear someone say, “I got it in just under the deadline, but I did it!” or, “Oh my aching ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSS, I save everything to the very last minute and somehow it all works out, but I did it!” Seriously, deadlines mean something when you set a goal! Goals and deadlines carry some weight. Dreams are kind of flighty, fluffy and elusive. So another one for me this year is

*Deadline big!* instead of “Dream big.” You will stay up all night and kick ass all day to meet a deadline. Name the last time you did that chasing a dream.

And the ever-popular, “Fake it 'Till You Make it” which I will refer to what I said earlier as *live every day “as if” it totally is the bomb already!*

And as far as the photo … it’s in keeping with “when life gives you lemons, make a batch of vodka lemonades!” And we all know that is what happens sometimes with these “pesky” resolutions. They get trampled and sometimes revamped into an entirely different mixed drink, but they still get done, right?!?!?!?!? The important 75% of things that you write down, or resolve to firmly, will happen in some shape or form, I’m totally betting you!

The horse above, was not initially a horse. It was a "doe a deer, a female deer," who had been drinking at the shoreline at Terre Andre State Park, Lake Michigan. We (a “we” of yester year) had walked very close to it before it “startled” and ran off. We didn’t get a picture, shucky of all darns! But when I looked down in the sand, I saw the deep tracks from where she dug in and ran, fast … disappearing into the dunes. The very concerted, dug-in hoofy marks totally became a horse’s perked ears in my mind, so I drew the same in the sand! I’m no longer a part of the “we” of that day, and the deer itself was fleeting as well. The horse! Years later, damn if I don’t still have the picture! The deer, and the “we” of yesteryear, I couldn’t even tell you what they “really” looked like, but this horse, rocks on!

And we all know I love the adage, "30 days and it's a habit!"

The Snowfall is So Silent/Happy Winter Solstice

2009-12-21T17:01:00.000-08:00

let a joy keep you ...

2009-12-18T19:03:00.001-08:00

something ... (part three of three)

2009-12-17T17:37:00.000-08:00

something ... (part II)

2009-12-16T17:12:00.001-08:00

something ...

2009-12-15T16:41:00.000-08:00

The Art of Timing

2009-12-14T19:31:00.000-08:00

winter lead ...

2009-12-13T17:22:00.001-08:00

easier said than done ...

2009-12-12T16:35:00.001-08:00

... third in a series of sorts ....

Jane Eyre and "what i did on my summer vacation, the summer that rochester was a total jerk off to me!"

2009-12-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

... in the wildwood for weeks and weeks ...

2009-12-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

White Winter Hymnal ...

2009-12-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

... make a wish ...

2009-12-08T19:38:00.001-08:00

balance ...

2009-12-07T17:20:00.001-08:00

freeze, freeze, freeze ...

2009-12-06T19:54:00.000-08:00

Unwarmed ...

2009-12-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

Uprose the merry sphinx ...

2009-12-04T18:17:00.000-08:00

Because No One Ever Said Grieving Was Easy ...

2009-12-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

in the bleak midwinter ...

2009-12-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

my daughter alice sang a rendition of this poem in 2007, her freshman year and the very last time she was able to fit choir into her "electives." there have been no more holiday or other concerts since then, after years and years and years of three girls growing up and singing in our house. the year her choir sang "in the bleak midwinter," i will not lie, i had tears streaming down my face. it is so achingly beautiful, weather read or heard.

i personally hum this melody ALL THE TIME, and a lot lately since it has not snowed yet in my county in wisconsin, and i stress the words "my county" because i have seen snow on the news, been notified by text/phone/email about it falling by my friends and loved ones, and yet I HAVE SEEN NONE IN MY OWN BACKYARD!

today's collage was my last ditch effort at conjuring up some white stuff:

"... i have things in my head ... "

2009-11-30T19:17:00.000-08:00

"... and then my heart with pleasure fills ..."

2009-11-29T16:22:00.000-08:00

...by no means have i stopped collaging, and am still doing one a day and/or completing pieces that i've started, or pieces i've been asked to do for people. today's piece is for our master bathroom and is comprised of a 1960s daffy art print my niece-daughter brought over late last week at the start of the holiday weekend. i paired it with wordsworth and another 60s magazine tear, and there you have it ...

hope you all had a fabulous long weekend in whatever way was meaningful to you.

many thanks ...

2009-11-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

... to all of you here, for being here.

portrait of a fabulous writer

2009-11-24T17:17:00.001-08:00

did this for the writer john kusch ... http://www.johnkusch.com/bliss/index.php

calling this one "breakfast at tiffany's"

2009-11-23T18:12:00.001-08:00

this is a vintage gold cocktail bag i've "tweaked." i really could have done better and photographed it better, including it's opposite side, but i'm sooooooooooooooooooo tired and a few more miles to go before i sleep tonight, so maybe we'll all see this one again, inside and out when it's truly finished:

... a love story ... front and back cover ...

2009-11-22T18:13:00.001-08:00

... of a 3x5 photo album ...

... that is all and to all a good night!

mirror, mirror on the wall ...

2009-11-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

"there's a fine line between love and hate ... scrutiny and adoration"

2009-11-20T11:36:00.001-08:00

this piece involves a lot of closure, that's for sure. it involves some things i may or may not write about more fully ... you just never know with me. and/or maybe i have written about them in an incredibly full-bodied way in the past, but buried in another piece as something else. i, too, am buried in this piece, in the flesh, and yet I FUCKING LIVE!

snips, snails and puppy dog tails ...

2009-11-19T17:00:00.000-08:00

100% Proof!

2009-11-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

Everything Positive. Everything Fun ...

2009-11-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

because everyone loves a good "fairy tale tranformation" and such ...

"grace"

2009-11-16T15:38:00.001-08:00

"grace" is what i wish to call this piece. my torn images, another man's incredible words which also come with music, but for that you can only imagine.

either way, i'm enjoying this time after the 30 days of 30 pieces and this piece marks the piece to the new beginning. you know, where i just get up and do and don't count or keep track.

illusions ... and habits/it takes 30 days to make or break one!

2009-11-15T14:15:00.000-08:00

This would be day 30 of the "do some collage art or altered something every day." You do anything for thirty days and it's a habit, official and a real part of you. This can be good things you do 30 days in a row, or this could be bad things. But if you haul off and do them 30 days solid, hello?!?!?! Habit.

I am now doing art every day.
I am writing every day.
I am working every day (already did that ... but important to fit the other stuff in too).
I am making sure to be healthy inside and out every day.
I'm not afraid to show my feelings every day, and in the last 30 days (inside and outside my art and/or writing) I have put words to a lot of feelings. Finally.
I am sleeping soundly every night.
I wake up and am glad to be alive.

Rinse and repeat ... I'm going for another 30 days, and then another, and then another and ...

once ...

2009-11-14T13:23:00.001-08:00

survive and thrive-ability ...

2009-11-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

today has been nothing like a friday the 13th for me.

it has just been a red letter exceptionally humbling and yet fabulous day.

this morning was my first session with my trainer/exercise specialist at the gym.

i'm not new to the gym setting, but i have not exercised in a gym regularly since my stroke.

i did not stop going to the gym back then because of my stroke, because i am not a cripple! imagine me as richard nixon, shaking my fist and saying, "i am not a crook!"

i stopped going to the gym because around that time i became very anemic and very, very thin ... wispy thin, the kind of thin that can disappear.

while i remained active, still like to bike and "stuff," that too kind of fell to the wayside, most especially when i went back to college and there just wasn't time for it.

i have thought and half thought not to get back into it.

prior to bekah's wedding this summer, i worked a little harder at it and began eating better. when a "kid" is getting married, you realize a. you would like to look at least okay in your MomOfTheBride dress, and b. when it comes to anything with your kids, you want to live forever.

you just can't imagine abandoning them, not even by death, which is inevitable.

in the recent past, i've been more and more into things with regard to preventative medicine and much more "into my head," much more willing to understand that my head will never be the same, much less "bitchy" about the situation, much less stubborn, and much less "noncompliant" when it comes to neuropsych meds.

paired with that i've been at the gym a lot with mark's dad, as his transportation, as his companion, and really all around lucky to have him in my life.

since i was there anyway, i realized, "duh, now is the time to go back to the gym," but with a trainer this time, and really assessing everything, bringing in my old workout sheets from my "old gym" and really talking about myself, inside and out, and how to keep myself fit ... and not having fits.

all that being said, this is the right time. it's amazingly the right time. and my trainer/exercise specialist, kim, is the right person. i bonded with her immediately, just talking to her on days i was there with daddyRoger, and so the sign-up was easy.

and we started this morning.

the two hours were spent mostly talking and going over records, including medical ones, since it's all connected to the hospital through this gym. and yes, we had to talk about the "stupid stroke." and i was feeling proactive and empowered and all that, really not affected by it, which i have sworn to over the last seven years.

this swear is a lie.

i have my "residuals" from the "incident," and i never will be the same again. we talked about that too, and how i have gotten used to it, feel okay about it, i mean, come on that was seven years ago.

so then kim leaves her office and goes out to get the monitor thingy for my stress test portion of the assessment.

not at her desk now, and her chair pushed in, i can see beyond the bookshelf and all the self-help health books that i was gawking at while we chatted. rolled up on the floor wedged between the two bookshelves of really empowering books is a rolled up poster. all i can see on the poster in ALL CAPS is the word "STROKE."

i realize it's "just another one of those" stroke prevention/educational posters, no big deal right?!?!?

guess again.

BIG DEAL. IN ALL CAPS.

i realize, you see, at that moment (seven years after the fact of the thing that didn't "really affect me" all that much) that i'm terribly ANGRY about my stroke.

i'm writing about it now for the first time ever, though i'm sure i've alluded to it a lot. but i'm actually writing about it now, brutally honestly and for real, in a long nonfiction piece i'm calling "following May Sarton around after her stroke," which is based on her memoir "after the stroke."

even so the angry words have not come out yet. i figured they were not there, and/or why bother mentioning it since i'm so far past it, you know?!?!?

except this morning in that room i realized i'm not.

when kim came back in with the montior hookups and stuff, i pointed to the poster and i said out loud, but not in all caps, because no way am i yelling at kim, but i said, "i might have fudged a bit when we talked about the stroke and 'stuff.' i'm very angry. very, very angry."

... and then that moment, FINALLY (YES, IN ALL CAPS) just having finally said it, it started already to fade away ...

"into the woods"

2009-11-12T14:21:00.000-08:00

yesterday was a horrifically long day, and yet i met all my goals and did everything on my "to do" list even though extra crap got shot in around all my carefully planned edges. i even managed to get to bed by ten and slept 8 solid hours. i woke up a 12:35 a.m. this morning in fact, and did the wonder-how-many-hours-of-sleep-i-have-left look at the clock, which you realize i have to first flounder around for my glasses in order to do this.

when i realized i had still 6 hours left to sleep, yes, i wet the bed, AND threw my glasses across the room and out into the forest!

on the late average these last many days, i've been getting six hours of sleep and/or less, and there has not been time to wet the bed.

this morning, i woke very refreshed, though a little humbled by the fact that Mark was going to hang our bed sheets out the window to em-bare-ass me in front of all our neighbors.

still, I HAD 8 HOURS OF SLEEP, so i really didn't give a shat!

also, i thought my collage yesterday, because i had to wait until late in the day to do it, would just say "fuck this shit" and then be all black ... so black that you wouldn't even be able to make out the words "fuck this shit" but you would know they were there, and *you* would probably wet your pants!

instead, it became yet another 8x10 collage in a very cryptic and yet not so cryptic series i'm doing. i made that sound as if i knew i'd suddenly be doing a cryptic/yet not so cryptic series of collages, but again, i never really know what i'm doing until it's done and i'm standing up to my knees in torn paper going, "yeah, i can probably scan and keep this one."

then i shoot it into the pile of how many collages in a row is that already?!?!?!?

well, today i realized that waiting till the end of the day was not really that stressful. i had been doing the collages right away in the morning when i started, but they've become more and more complex. they take me longer to finish now, and i realize i'm thinking about them all day until i get to them, which is not a bad thing. it's like this little "tease" going on in my brain that says, "live through this shitty, long stressful day and you *will* get there!"

so i'm not so sad to report that i did not get to today's piece till nearly 2pm and i've been working on it for one hour and 17 minutes already.

today's piece is part of the series, i did not know was series-ifying right before my torn paper eyes.

below are several poems i wrote, and have included in this note because they appare in this piece so to speak, and also i’ve been writing a lot, and also going back through old work, which is a good thing. ultra-word productive, in out, under and through my “real” day job.

so some words, then:

*Heart-Shaped Box*

I feel like
the proverbial
Wicked Queen
because I would take
a head off the chopping block,
or a heart, proof-positive,
in a gilded box.
Everyone should suffer,
no one should suffer,
but I suffered,
and suffer still.

Truth be told,
I'm not surprised
to find it’s my own heart,
bruised and lying,
in this Pandora's box,
the lid flung to the treetops
and knives flying about.

(the above circa 2002 or so, but never saw the printed light of day until 2007 in any such form, a hidden work, now hidden in this collage as well)

this one below has no title, and no i was not suicidal (hey that kind of rhymed), and i don't really know what i was thinking and/or going to do with this, but it really sounds a lot like ripping paper (probably i wrote it back in the day when i did not set aside time to rip things up ... hmmm)

*untitled*

I’m crying from
the inside out,
my tears
as sharp
as nails
yet I’m
wholly unable
completely unstable
and wonder at best
how to put things
back together again.

this next one circa 2007, i believe on a writing dare with someone i regularly collaborate with and he probably said something like "write something would ya" and so i did ...

*coming clean*

cold
sky spray
pelting skin
stinging insides
found without
treading lightly
walking in the dark.

moonlight
scatters thoughts
shadows melting
one with the soil
footfalls land solid
a stronghold at dawn.

sunshine
replaces the ache
heart pounds in rhythm
hands cold as stones
stretch and claw in need
reaching for the future

(it reminded me of being deep in the woods and clawing the way out and so i guess it's in this piece too)

this next one ... circa maybe even before the year 2000, i've lost track, you know, the words, the paper, the words, the paper ... but i felt it fit this piece too:

*Sentence Lifted*

You go girl.
Chin up.
Face the mirror,
your womanhood,
your worth.
Run like a girl.
Ties that bind you now
are of your own making.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who's the fairest one of all?
The wicked witch is dead.
No more poison apples.
Live out loud.
Unleash your words
on the screen.
Make them scream
for all the times
you kept quiet.

and this one ...

*Easier Said Than Done*

Continue on,
at leveled or disheveled best,
but is it over the next hill,
or do I bypass the obvious
taking to the wood --
taxed lungs and chapped cheeks,
ascending meaning everything,
backing down not an option?
Or, is it better to trip and fall the bogs,
leading to the depths of a black forest,
my hands and face torn by nettles,
teeth clenched in firm resolve
even though I’d like to spit and quit.
I’m not sure which is best, or who decides.
There are no forks in the road,
Mr. Frost, and I can’t see beyond
the end of my nose, the hurt in my heart,
the silence killing my ears,
and all my good sense is lost.

(i mean seriously, "fall the bogs," it's totally in the collage even though i wrote this when!??!?!)

so, all of this is to say, no matter how long the days are getting, and no matter that i'm filling them in on both sides and also managing all the shit around the edges, this *is* the most artistically productive i have ever been in a long time ... and so all i can say about the next day and the next is, "BRING IT ON!"

peace, and art, poetry and some hippy love ... out!

~a

"exercising my demons" because exorcising them is not as much fun

2009-11-11T18:16:00.000-08:00

She Dreams in Color, She Dreams in Red

2009-11-10T21:57:00.000-08:00

Every Woman Enjoys a Little Nakedness ...

2009-11-09T12:20:00.001-08:00

Holy F’ing Batman … this is collage number 24, coming from me, the person who said on October 17th, that they were going to *try* and do a collaged and/or altered something every day of every freaking week to get back to her art.

I did not think I could do it.

As usual, I proved my own damn [distorted sense of] self wrong!

That case in point, I was going to ramble on about what that means for me creatively speaking, but I think I’ll wait till day 30 for that … in keeping with the old adage “30 days it’s a habit.”

Once this is habit again, believe me, I’m going to spout off about it. Once it is habit, it just is … it just is, me, something I will continue to do every day, or die trying. (tiny “woot” here)

Today’s collage is full of art, in and of itself. Off to the right-hand corner you will find something lovely, torn mag article section which features Jasper Johns. It was very Rorschach-ian, and I saw a naked woman in his piece, which became then the mood and the madness for my entire piece.

I HEART Jasper Johns! I loofa his back in a bubble bath, any day. All he has to do is ask, or just look at me, or just keep doing his art!

Ali and I were lucky to see a HUGE, and I mean H-U-G-E Jasper Johns exhibit at the Chicago Institute of Art two years ago. We both fell in love with him on the same day. I know, sounds weird, but totally is not! That was one of the times that Ali said her famous line, “I’m such a Lolita!” and I was jumping all up and down because I was all like, “Yeah, Ali, I guess it would be bad if you lusted after him at 15, so I will just have to keep him for myself.” The fact that I’d share him, because we both love him so … well, that’s a whole other scandalous ballpark, but the point is WE LOVE HIS WORK … TO. DEATH!

So, Ali is in this collage too, lower left-hand corner, though the image may be tweaked beyond recognizing her, but I like to tweak and gel and whatever the collages. She is standing behind one of her favorite pieces from our trip, a see-through piece, and I can see her through my camera. (Fabulous!)

While am all about fostering self-esteem and love of the body no matter its image, maybe Ali is tweaked to the point of being the essence of future womanhood in this picture, and then if you look you will see my big fat left eye bucking up right against John’s torn section in the piece, because while I “tweaked” Ali to protect her innocence, I then tore and put myself right next to JJ, so there! (all of this is utter bullshit, because I never really know how these pieces will turn out!)

Anyways, and ironically, after scanning and finishing this piece, I clicked over to the Chicago of Institute Art page just to be curious about what might be there now, special exibit-wise and this is what I read:

October 10-January 2, 2010 – Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Collage.

Yes, I pissed myself.

And I know what I want for Christmas now, and it’s not one or two new front teeth!

I just want to be sure that I get to this exhibit. I want to take all my daughters (surrogate and otherwise), the little girls and 17,000 of my closest friends. I want to make a day of it! I want to run naked through the halls of the art institute and … okay, um, maybe that’s taking it too far. I just want to go there, with the above-mentioned people and have a really good time all over the place!
Here is the exhibit description, the exibit I TOTALLY KNOW I’M going to if I have to crawl there! The write-up:

Collage is commonly thought of as a modern art form, but the act of “playing with pictures” has a long, rich, and surprising history. Sixty years ahead of the avant-garde—and more than a century before Photoshop—aristocratic Victorian women were already experimenting with photocollage. This world-premiere exhibition is the first to comprehensively examine this little-known phenomenon, presenting many eye-opening works that have rarely—and in many cases never—before been displayed or reproduced. See Playing with Pictures at the Art Institute before it travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. It might change the way you look at the Victorian age.

Love it, love it love it!

I’ve long known it’s not a modern form, and there’s a painter they used to say “painted with torn paper” but his name escapes me right now, but that guy (when I read about him in my college art course) I wanted him to be brought back to life so I could make babies with him! So I will get you his name later, because I know he’s in a big fat hard-cover art text and his name is totally highlighted in purple! He totally on my “People I would like to dig up and have babies with” list!

Collage art has been around forever, and is here to stay.

I never knew till I started it myself years ago, that I had been doing it for a lot of years in journals and stuff. And while I did start to do it pretty specifically 5+ years ago, I never completed 24 projects in 24 days, I will tell you that!!! I had a handful of project per year, and a headful that I never started. I knew I loved doing it, but I wasn’t doing it enough! Until now.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this note, and why as I completed collage number 24 today, I was all “Woot?!?!?! What. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! 24 days already! What do you think about that, Self?

And my “self” well she didn’t say a word. She was just beaming and dreaming and scheming about what she might be able to rip up and/or alter next in the name of finding clarity!

Peace and art out!

~a

p.s. I kind of want to dig up Rorschach too, because this one time at band camp when I had a psych test, there was this inkblot that really did look like a buffalo eating an ice-cream cone, and I want to ask him about that one because I don’t think my interpretation merited my getting kicked out of band camp!

critical eye ... have i

2009-11-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

puppies, roosters and bling ...

2009-11-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true, this was a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong week. Even though I built in extra days and stretched out all the hours, and even increased page length for some of my client's stuff and then compressed it all again, so that they could have it all in three milliseconds tops (!!!!!), I somehow did not have any hours in the day left for sleep! I was on the average zzzzzzzzzoning for way less than 6 a night, and we all know that sleep-deprivation can make your brain explode, and I should know this, right?!?!?

So … Last night, as Mark would say, I "shut 'er down!" instead of continuing to, as he would also say, “get ‘er done!” I was in bed and asleep by 11pm ... my goal was 9pm but Mark was watching (trying not to fall asleep during) Travolta and DenzelW in the remake of "The Taking of Pelham 123" and the banter and dialogue in that movie was fab-you-lust ... or worth lusting after, so I finished watching it with him, plus poking him to keep him awake... and then we went to bed!

I got good, solid LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG sleep.

Y' all saw the part where I dreamt that Mark, IN MY DREAMS and lying right next to me had the absolute hairy-assed nerve to make out with someone from our old high school, someone with really big boobs (only in the present tense ... in the bed right next to me no less, while I am sleeping and not even realizing that I'm dreaming about it until I wake up really mad him for some reason!) ... and this someone who shall remain nameless in case she would ever facebook add me, might be a little teeny bit surprised, with all her big boobs and all, why I slap her in the face at our high school reunion next year.

I mean, really seriously, Ms. Big-Boobed-You-Shall-Remain-Nameless, we graduated in '80 and Mark by then was already a grown man/child in the Navy, and if I didn't even know he existed in high school, even though we both went to school with his brother ... what right do you have coming into my sweet dreams and making out with my "old man from the sea" while I'm sleeping! You didn’t know anything about him either, and there you were RIGHT IN MY DREAM! Bitch!

Yeah, still kind of pissed, but I'm working through it.

Also in the dream, I was riding, cruising, and absolutely dream-screaming down country roads and bi-ways on my bike, and at the same time took some fan-ass-tab-u-lust (or to lust after) pictures of some giant black bears with grinning teeth who were chasing after me, but I was brave enough to stop on the downside of every glacier-y hill to get their photos with my phone when they crested the hills behind me, and stopped of course to take a breath and get their picture taken. (whatever, it’s my dream, bears can do that!)

Giant moose were also crossing my bike path, but I didn't get pictures of them. Damn it! This was my dream, and for once I wasn't clumsy and I was biking and taking pictures AT THE SAME TIME (pictures of things behind me, no less) while giant menacing bears were chasing me, and I managed not to even hit the moose! Mooses, the several moose and moose-ettes!?!??!? Math *is* heard, but everyday English … sheeeeeeeeesh!

Anyhoo … This is what I call a good night's sleep, because I dreamt, and when I woke up I even remembered the dream, and was peppy and well-rested enough to really be mad at Mark for kissing Big GaZonga Girl.

The rule on dreams is ... it's not what the symbols, objects or whatever meant, but it's all about how you "felt" when you woke up, and remembered the dream.

Well, like I said, I tore Mark's head off for kissing Nameless Girl, and made a mental note to blacken Nameless girl's adult woman eye next year at a social event.

But mostly, I was really F'ING fan-tab-u-lust (or to lust after) happy! HAPPY, I say.

Okay, one more time ... HAPPY!

If you are into analyzing dreams, I know that certain things showed up because they were on my subconscious tongued tip list when I fell asleep, and during this busy week, I know how they all got there too.

The Bears/Moose: Facebook-related, Wyoming-related, putting pictures up related, where there are some of me and favorite ex husband (1st husband) camping at the top of the Big Horns (’82-ish, no kids yet). We were the only ones in our wilderness arena. No other campers! A moose walked through our camp site, right past me at the fire when I was sizzling dinner. Male moose with rack! This somehow spun out in my brain that if we were the only ones atop the mountain that night, and the animals were that brave, that I'd certainly be eaten by a bear, so I slept in the truck with a pistol and Chris slept in the tent because he was not acting like a freaky scared dork. And I'm the one who wanted to come to Wyoming in the first place (huge back story), was lucky to have arrived alive, thrived and live there, and was the one who was ultra-excited about our camping trip that summer … but I suddenly tripped out over bears .. quit laughing ... I'm still trying to find the photo where, Chris is in a blow-up raft fishing in a serene water scene, and I took the picture from way up above on a ridge, where I still sat with his dad's pistol in my lap, but at a vantage point where I could shoot bears if they came after me or lumbered into the water to kill my husband! [okay, so maybe my brain damage, paranoia and other stuff was always there, even before the stroke ... but the neuro guys are still at the roundtable discussing all this]

The girl from high school ... has everything to do with SCOLIOSIS which I have and which I've been discussing with my exercise/fitness trainer this week. Anyone from my high school that is already on my facebook page, might know now who was kissing Mark in my dream, if they really think back on it, because there was only one girl in our high school who wore a scoliosis brace. My S-curved spine thankfully is milder (although still painful) case than that, but I also was born with a giant stick up my ass, so that my be why I never wore the brace.

Biking ... also discussed at the gym this week, because I HEART it!

Photos ... I take them all the time, enough said.

Clutziness ... that's me in general, and was implied in the dream by the fact that it did not exist in the dream.

THE END … sort of.

THE COLLAGE, like the dream, all about sleep and the messages within relate to the peeps I love and my puppy and is comprised of items I picked up, here and there in the house this morning, pinned to a piece of cork, scanned, and then put the items away. The Saturday clean sweep while walking around with a cup of coffee missing my new personal assistant and housekeeper (and yes she gets paid), Carol.The items regarding the end of my long week, sleep and my favorite puppy and peeps are as follows:

WALTER: One of his two boy pigtail boys that he had on his head when Mark picked him up at the groomer yesterday. Mark took them off, of course, and then to get back at me kissed Name Not Mentioned girl in my dreams, hello!?!?!?!?! There are not two bows in the picture because Mark crammed the other one up my ass and told me to stop putting purple sweaters in the dishwasher (hole other counseling appointment coming up on the calendar now, I’m not kidding!)

BEKAH: The striped moon is a piece of something from her wedding. I miss her. Kyle is sort of a part of that too, but while I tag him in this note, I would never ever tell him that I think that highly of him because he’s a brat!

CAROL: The purple ribbon, is all about her first child support and placement hearing last month, and then another appointment she had right after it, while I was in the car reading with Lili, where someone gave Carol a handful of "purple ribbon[s]" and stick pins, because it was for domestic abuse (mental, physical, sexual and otherwise) recognition. Carol came back to the truck with them and said "How ironic is that, after this morning in court, huh?" And how ironic is this? Carol had a horrifically long week, this week too, and when I came across this ribbon on my dresser this morning, I smiled because by Friday she was flying high again, and sleeping on new sheets! (long story, as are all of mine of late … but her story to tell, but the story is showing!)

ALICE: The button at the bottom with the energetic womanly figure on it. We got it at her "dad's work" last summer the excruciating time "gerald" met her dad. (ali is laughing her ass off right now reading this). And Ali is at her dad’s this weekend, and that’s where she’s laughing about this, and it’s good because we all love her laugh!

SARA ... the button with the owl made from a bottle cap. Because I think of you often and love you to death! You think I mentor you, but this year, especially the last month, and artsy-fartsy and word-wise, watching you thrive has renewed my own motivation and lust for such!

THE LITTLE GIRLS: The "pretty pretty 'sing" multi-natural stone bracelet on the edge, because everyone knows if you are a little girl and you have a really great grandma (which I did too), you love her and all of her pretty pretty 'sings! It's a given and the ongoing gift of womanhood in our family. And it’s all for Ru, Rae and the little Bug!

MARK: The bling bracelet, from last Christmas, wore it several times in the last several weeks, needed to put it back in its box and note it again in my heart. Plus the mental note that for years and years and years, I’ve always deserved really nice things, kindness and regard, and it’s even okay to ask for them up front. Mark is my reminder of that, which is why he probably gets away with kissing other girls in my dreams, sometimes.

THE ROOSTER ... because we collect them, Mark and I, and because it's all dark and purple’d and torn from an Ambien ad (which I did not have to tweak that kind of med for my own sleep train ... woot!) and because Roosters also remind of Scarlet Rae when she asked, "Grandma ... so why do you and Grandpa Mark have all these birds, and the roosters, because …………… it might be kind of creepy!" (We have roosters made out of almost everything you can think of save our own shit, so you can see why she might be kind of freaked out!)

Creepy and Happy are "almost rhymes" ... THE END

Guest collage/my collage/Place Holder ...

2009-11-06T19:42:00.001-08:00

two collages today, and words to go with them, but the words are in a "note" on facebook and i'm too zonked to move here, but need to place-hold and mark time and know that i completed my "collage of the day" and have a great deal of pride in the "guest collage" that my daughter did (below) she rocks in her own right ... more on that tomorrow:

my collage of the day without the words and epiphany that came with it i will also add tomorrow, but here is mine:

All of a Sudden I Could Do Things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-11-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

This is the cover of my newly purchased for a dollar at Walgreens rest o' 2009 and all of 2010 Planner ... the colorful polka-dots are all that is left of the original cover, which in my book means, the planner is now AS IT SHOULD BE! ... except on the inner pages I tried to add 52 more hours to each and every day of the week, extend all weekends to 4 days, which makes a week actually 9 days long counting the additional four days added to the five-day work week, but when I tried to do the math of what that meant for hours in a year x the number of new days to make up that year for the grand yearly totals of extra time, MY HEAD EXPLODED.

You will all forgive me, however, and thank you very much, because I did manage to push the Scan Photo and Upload Blog buttons before my brains spoiled on the floor!

What happens on a run stays on a run!

2009-11-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

This next piece is for my lover-butt significant other. He's been teasing and teasing, about still no really good collages about motorcycles. I came up with this one last night, and the images (believe it or not) are from a vintage McCalls magazine that I've been tearing the heck out of, over and over again, and there are oddly STILL PAGES LEFT! Woot.

I also managed to work in a Honda joke, because we all know "real men ride Harleys," or so I have heard.

--------------And I also managed a quote from "Sons of Anarchy" about "what happens on a ride [staying] on a ride," which tell the character Gemma that (love Katie Sagal!!!) when she found out (as if her own menopause symptoms were NOT ENOUGH!!!) that Clay (Ron Perlman/excellent!!!) ... well, er ... um, he tried to understand her symptoms and "dry" condition, but he got his member sucked on a recent run!

Gemma broke the woman's nose, and had some pretty choice words to say when Clay found out she was in jail.

(Go Gemma/Katie Sagal ... woot!!!! ... yeah, you can tell, I'm hooked on the show and the writing!)

Anyways ... managed to get that in there too and then scanned my collage and tweaked it a bit, and here's the fun part. The photo program I'm using is at Piknic.com, and I'm just flying by the seat of my photo-tweaking ass, because I'm just messing around over there.

There are these great APPLY, UNDO and REDO buttons which are really cool, so if you tweak too far or too much, you can go back and fix and not lose something you liked.

------------And I just noticed last night that you can save a before and after (side by side) view of each tweak too, so DOY!!!! that will make my life easier now.

I didn't know the "collage a day" would take off. I've been collaging for over five years, probably longer if I look back at old journals and realize I was doing a little bit along all the way ... but anyways, I have done some fairly decent larger pieces, and altered some items and done some special orders for people (projects and such).

But ------------ I also kind of let it sit off to the side and rot when I get busy (translation: when I'm probably really stressed or depressed and most need to be doing art!!!).

Recently, I picked it back up again, on a mission, and found that doing one a day has really improved my mood and my method of handling the madness of each and every day.

So last night's piece was frosting on the cake, because the last tweak I did made me actually speak out loud at 1:00 a.m and say, "Holy F! He's going to love this!"

With all my messing around, APPLY, UNDO, REDO ... last night it was CROP, CLICK, a few little tweaks and such in the fun CREATE section at Piknik and yeah, so I was celebrating out loud!

Before I show you the pic, I'll tell you with my he-man, Clay-like (a.k.a. my own big sweetheart and softy) said when I sent him the scan (he travels during the week).

His exact words, when I told him this one, which is 8x10 now, will be blown up and framed poster-size for his growing garage art (NASCAR, Harley and other dumb stuff) and he said:

I could get used to seeing this hanging around ... although, I'd have to say it's not quite rough and tough enough. (or some such rot, trying to say he loved it, but hello?!?!?!??! it's girlie collage art!)

And my response was, well, I can spray beer all over it, but you hate when people waste beer!

And now the piece that made me speak outloud at 1:00 a.m. this morning:

this like many of the others
you may have to click on it to see the larger image. :)

there is no such time, only change ...

2009-11-03T21:43:00.001-08:00

kind of a horrific and quick scan but the gist of it is:

But as she has gorwn, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extraordinary rent you pay as long as you stay. --annie dillard

.... the original is 8x10 and a bit more readable

... day of the dead.

2009-11-02T20:10:00.001-08:00

a note on the collages:
they've obviously taken off on the daily basis, and it's never a struggle or an exercise i feel threatened to complete, otherwise listen to my own self chastise my self to death. that hasn't happened yet. i look ever forward to them. and soon i'm going to have to start compiling them in some kind of scanned book of prints since the actual collage and then some of the tweaking and stuff, they start out as one thing and then turn into something completely different.

today's was a perfect example of that. it's original glue and paper and paint and such and stuff and then some tweaks with the depth and color and they are two different pieces, so that's a fun aspect to it all as well>

thing are never quite as they seem, and yet things are starting to follow kind of a daily theme and then they all pile up with an odd cohesion.

the day:
...today, i'm sort of feeling like a "a whole in the head fred" [egg sandwich] day of the dead head, but this too shall pass.

'twas a busy monday, that's for absolutely sure. busy on all fronts, incoming wounded and patch casualties heading out to continue the fight ... sometimes mondays are like that where i'm working, playing, creating and basically "multi-tasking" my rear-end right off, while simultaneously balancing incoming calls and of course eating more leftover tootsie rolls from halloween than it is even possible to count.

tonight, ali and i laid out a great feast on the glass top table on the deck, under the full moon with our usual bay leaf floating in broth, a cup of tea with ginger, little bowls of sugar and cream, candles and incense sticks.

the air was crisp, the cups and bowls steaming, our cheeks crimson from the cold, and it all feels good.

nothing is ever gone, just gone deeper.

i feel that way about the papers i tear up and destroy to make yet another image, and i feel that way about the people i have lost in this life, those just to the side of things behind that filmy curtain, just out of our reach ...

... it's november ... woot!

2009-11-01T13:47:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween and ... outrun tomorrow!

2009-10-31T16:38:00.000-07:00

... me ... disappering ...

2009-10-30T13:52:00.001-07:00

altered cover page of a vintage teen fiction novel ...

The Flower Bud(weiser) Shop!

2009-10-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

The collage above really doesn't count as a true hands-on, torn paper affair.

I did it all with a photo and a photo create program as a joke because my beloved had posted on my FBook this week, "How come no motorcyle collages."

And so that was pretty much a "double-dog-dare" for me to take a picture of his motorcycle and doctor it a bit.

I did intend to do it entirely freehand, tearing and beating the band with my gluestick, but today was a busy day and so I had to rush it a bit. (TRANSLATION: My future muminlaw got home from the hospital today and I was her escort! Woooooooooooooooooooooooot!)

To save time, to get back at my lover-butt, and to keep with my "collage a day"-ing, before I do any work ... I hauled ass over to piknic photo and doctored this one up in their photo collage program.I took the "Man Cave" and showed it for what it really is, a pretty, pretty flower shop!

I was going to cut and paste a Tampax banner over the original "Bud"weiser car hood, but I didn't want Mark to have an aneursym.

He's traveling, and he lives in fear when he's gone that one of us is going to go out into the Man Cave and wreck something!

Seriously, the man dusts for our prints when he comes back through the electronic garage door!

I am not kidding you one single bit ... and now ... The Flower Bud Shop:

The Color Purple ... and my inner child out for perpetual recess!

2009-10-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

... the morning collages are proving to be as helpful to me, myself and I as Julia Cameron's "morning pages," might be to someone else.

I actually have an old copy of Cameron's book, Morning Pages, and I have tried to work my way through it, various times, throughout the varying years. With good faith in my self, I purchased a copy of her book, The Artist's Way, as well.

I loved her concepts. I loved the quotes, here and there, throughout each book. And, I SWEAR!!!!! I really tried the "morning pages." I attempted another of her exercises, an advisement to take my inner child out on a playdate, but she never wanted to go. She was not comfortable with that much freedom.

My inner child does not know how to play, not really, not without the feeling that the gauntlet will drop, or that she'll get caught. My inner child is a bit of an anxious, guarded mess.

I called my daily pages, "mourning pages," and thought that might help to make them more my own, but even that creative little spin on the dark within did not make the regimented task of writing any easier. It was too much like an assignment, the likes of which I was obviously putting off for ... well, like forever!

Give me an hour to write, and I will write nothing. Tell me I have ten minutes between 50 other things that are popping off, and I'll write a million pages. I'm better under the gun.

My inner child, too, survives under the gun. She may run out and play, but two seconds later she will run for cover again. Believe.you.ME!

So, don't ask me why, but the daily collages work better, and some mornings these are more time-consuming than three longhand pages could ever be, and yet ... I never feel rushed. I never feel as if I should get to the "real work" and stop "goofing off."

As I run through the next day's "to do" list in my head every night, lining up work, errands, family, etc. etc. and the six things that might pop up unexpectedly, my thoughts race less when at the top of my mental list is "the morning collages," and the "come what may" aspect of their daily creation.

I don't spin my mind in circles every night now. Instead I search out the sandman, toot sweet, with visions of paper and gluesticks dancing in my head.

It's been very liberating.

And, it's about time.

I, in fact, feel that I've found a way to take my inner child out on a playdate, each and every day, and she's finally free to do so! She finally plays for however long it takes to become real, and real clear, and then let the games of the day begin!

And this morning, my inner child came rushing in, winded, from a sprint in an autumn field, and she's brought with her (from the inside out) a bushel of wild purple flowers!

ferdinand hodler is the master painter, and i've had this postcard tacked up, here and there, through many a move and groove, and now it lives on and again in this collage. ~A

an invitation ...

2009-10-27T10:00:00.001-07:00

... continuing on with the daily paper tearing and tweaking. seems to be doing me some good. they are my great escape.

Alive is the Opposite of Dead

2009-10-26T11:54:00.001-07:00

What's Your Story?!?!?

2009-10-25T13:49:00.001-07:00

many seasons rendered in dark colors ...

2009-10-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

three collages, newest to oldest (still doing one a day; however, my mommyinlaw has been ill and i've been spending a lot of time with her, and other family and so while i was still doing one every morning, the days have kind of run together when it came time to posting same):

in the following order, i give you ... october 22nd, then october 23rd, and the final one for today, october 24th:

... thought i would write some, but haven't quite put into words how things have been playing out this week. i'm kind of on my perpetual island of misfit toys, which is not (all things considered) a bad place to be, it's just not "textbook."

it's more metaphorical, where everyone says, "oh, like in the rudolph story, where they stop on that island and there they are, the misfits, and yet you love them all the more, for that very reason, their uniqueness, their ... well, their everything!

... and yet ..." it's metaphorical and not a "textbook" case or scenario, and so there are still those lonely times off to the side where the polka-dotted elephant is indeed "the elephant" in the room, and as much as is known and loved ... well ...

... it's just not always easy.

... but then again ... who wants to be "textbook" or "well-fleshed out scenario" or even "a worse case scenario," you know?!?!?!

and yet ...

and still ...

and just ...

perplexity ...

2009-10-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

Today's collage is on the backside of a trading card from a box of hokey romantic cards called "Love Gestures." This is my altered version of the back side of the card, using torn scraps and the image from another book on "love" (and that was the title/no CAPs) where I found a page on flowers and their meanings within the realm and world of romance:

The reverse side of the card has the unaltered advice:

WRITE IN THE SNOW ... after the first snowfall, write "I love you" in the snow so it can be seen from the window. Draw big red hearts in the snow by adding red food coloring to water and painting it on the snow."

My first thought, RED FOOD COLORING?!?!?!?!

Seriously, red hearts in the white snow, how bloody, blood-blood, would that look. A person looking out, would then glance back in and wonder whether to tell their mate that some crazed-assed stalker-type has written "I love you" in the yard, surrounded by bloody hearts!

I mean, come on! Red works for actual cut-out hearts on construction paper and those little cinnamon things you put on holiday cookies, but sprayed all over a fresh snowfall?!!?!?

Hello?!?!?!?? BLOOD! Not so romantic sprayed all over the snow!

So, had I altered this side of the card, I would have changed the continued advice to "Draw big purple hearts in the snow by mixing red and blue food coloring together and painting it in the snow," but then I freaked that "purple hearts" are meant for those brutally wounded in the course of battle, and realized that this is why people just make snow angels and call it a night!

Love, life, and the rest of it ... it's f'ing complicated, and a box of "Love Gestures," from what I can see so far, is not going to help.

~ 'peace out

Always be kind ..............

2009-10-20T16:38:00.001-07:00

This was my crappy collage of the day. I woke stressed. Was up way too late last night, COULD NOT SLEEP!

So didn't get to my desk or the collage till 11 a.m. and then I probably rushed it, and maybe tweaked it too much or too fast, or whatever, but I intend to work on it more later.

The gist of it was: Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a battle. -Plato ... and the image to the right is paperwhites, a flower/bulb I absolutely adore.

I buy them in the winter and plant them in rocks, or marbles, not dirt, add a wee bit of water, and they grow tall and sprout little white flowers!!!!! all over the house, atop the coffee table, the dining room table or wherever I can find a spot.

Shouldn't happen, but it does ... NO DIRT! It's an absolute thrill I look forward too every mid-winter!

So, there's that:

And then there's this ... something I posted elswhere about how Lili, my four-year-old grand-girl made my day today, and what a day it has been:

*****
facebooking/notes:

I'm telling you, there is something about 4-year-olds!

This kid arrives here every day, practically, at exactly 11:45 and if I'm usually in my office downstairs when she gets here. So once she's in the door with Carol, she whips off her coat and comes in and checks in with news and bits of 4-K weirdness.

Today, I was not downstairs, because I was up late and hadn't even made it to my desk yet. We were also planning to run a series of errands prior to my "starting my day," which of course meant I was upstairs looking for shoes since in my office I'm barefoot, stocking-footed or in slippers, depending on the season or my mood.

So, when Lili came in through the garage this morning, I was at the top of the stairs in the entryway by the front door, putting on my shoes. I witnessed her, for the first time, coming in dropping her backpack, shrugging her coat off and then peeking around the corner into my office preparing to enter and burst with goodness and tales and the letter of the day and we had a birthday treat today and I peed in the sandbox because I didn't want to stop playing and and and ... and then some!

Then I got to see this precious little look that made me want to pick her up, put her in the car and buy her everything in the nearest store. She was doing a double-take, looking back at mom, like, "What?!?!??!! Where the heck is Grandma Princess Annie?!?!?!" ... and that wasn't even the look! It was the look when she saw me at the top of the stairs! She had this lovely, pleased as punch look as if the Tooth Fairy herself was at the top of the stairs!

Then we all went to the nearest department store to buy winter coats, which was our plan, but then a whole bunch of other stuff ended up in my cart for her, her sisters, her mommy and her aunties because hello?!?!?!! Christmas is coming!

And, I'm telling you it pays to pause and enjoy these moments because out on our adventure, we received a call from Mark's sister that Mark's mom has to spend an overnight at the hospital (ON HER BIRTHDAY!!!!!) because she was not feeling well and with all the swine flu going around ... well, that's the way it goes. She was the official start to the fall birthdays, so this sucks butt, and hopefully she is mended by the time the party for all the birthdays takes place here on Saturday.

And that's the way life is ... you have these searing, memory-making, heart-rendering singing moments of bliss and then someone rains on your "other mummy's" birthday parade and you want to beat up the world! This woman should not be sick ON HER BIRTHDAY! She does not believe in pity pots, is always telling everyone to "build a bridge and get over it," and I suspect she may wink and tell someone to "shut their pie hole" today if they try to over-worry over her!

So, that being said, be thankful for what you have ... and I give you now, Lili and the letter puh-puh-puh-P ... for Pig!

Isn't that ironic when it comes to the swuh, swuh swine flu stuff! ... and I think her artwork is ten-times better than mine today.

****The day's end of the story is that my "other mummy" has gallbladder inflammation and maybe slight pneumonia, none of which she really had any symptoms until this morning when she felt icko, and all of which are complicated by the fact that she is on oxygen as per the norm. She is usually never sick, but there is always the back of the mind worry that if she every gets sick it will be harder for her because it compromises her breathing and all that rot.

Tonight she's comfy and has to stay put in the hospital while they put her on antibiotics and such, and tomorrow is another day ...

Take the Giant Leap

2009-10-19T09:58:00.001-07:00

I honestly didn't think I'd stick with this, but when I came down to my desk this morning my brain was all like oh that's right, I've got to do my daily collage, OR.I.WILL.DIE!

So that part felt good, the part where I stopped myself from dying inside.

And this is what I came up with, a little ditty about shoes, and dancing and taking that giant ass leap!

It's done on a bar coaster. And of course there is meaning behind that ... (oh shit, I think I'm giving birth to a fat-ass blog post) ...

Four plus years ago I moved from a small community in Wisconsin to an even smaller community in Wisconsin. I had been in the previous community for something like 13 years, even though when I left Wisconsin in 1980, I SWORE I WOULD NOT BE BACK!

But life has a way of making you double-back, whether you want to or not.

So ... when I moved from the previous smaller community to the community I live in now (which they call "the village of" because it's that small), this was also the community where I went to school from the 4th grade on through graduation.

Holy shit, Batman!

I know you think it's probably not even possible, but while I went to school in this "the village of," I actually lived further out in the back country in "an unincorporated" land. Unincorporated lands are much, much smaller than the nearest "the village of," and so ... Blah, blah, blah.

Anyways ... when I moved to this "the village of" I was making some serious life changes, and when I got to the village (even though it was just one town over) I said to myself, "I should make some friends." (I hadn't really done that in the 13 years that I lived just one town over, other than if it was school or kid-related, so nothing really, really deep ... I just wouldn't f'ing allow it!)

Then I threw up in my mouth a little, with fear and loathing and the idea of "making an effort to make friends." Ewwwwwwwww, ick, I'd rather die!

Then I thought about how you read articles about "making friends" and it tells you to join a club, go to church, attend this or that professional group, take a class ... um, so I did what anyone would do, I walked to the nearest pub ("villages of" have a lot of them!!!!!), and ordered a sandwich and a beer.

Then I stole the bar coaster I was using.

And then, instead of going to band camp, I spent THE ENTIRE SUMMER IN THAT BAR, I AM NOT KIDDING YOU!

I was not working, taking a "why don't I go mental over my health" break, was alone for the summer, and I certainly did meet my (don't make me puke!!!!) goal of meeting a lot of people, and I made some friends.

And I became fairly well known for swiping clean, new bar coasters, which did not keep me from getting into a good college in the fall just to bend my mind a bit further.

But don't even begin to ask me why I suddenly became a bar-coaster-stealing-whore for-bar-coasters hussy of a hoarding coasters whore! (for the coasters! i'm serious, that's all i ever took home from the bar!)

I can't explain it!

Unless ... have you ever really looked at the things?!!?!

The vendors come by ALL THE TIME and drop new ones off, and they are all very cool and artistic and sometimes stupid, but anyways in all different shapes, and pretty soon I had a whole drawer full of them to use at home when I entertained ... and (drum roll please) I HAD MADE SOME FRIENDS!

End of bar coaster story. (and i totally left out the part where I grew very weary, very fast of "beer on tap," spent part of the summer drinking Jack and gradually found Tanqueray ... died and went to heaven, THE END!!!!! of yet another new beginning!)

On to the collage ... it's done on a fairly new coaster for Hacker-Pschorr, the "brewers of real Oktoberfest bier," don't you know.

The poem "New Shoes" is from a vintage book Let's-Read-Together! Poems.

The remaining words and images are ripped from the 2005 issue of W magazine. I love this magazine for it's paper texture and rip-ability, and have since 2005 when I started collaging and altering with a passion and ordered a year's subscription just to have 12 issues to rip apart!

And that, folks, is the living end of my very weird of saying, going to a bar, stealing coasters and finding your signature drink, is a REALLY, REALLY GREAT WAY TO MEET FRIENDS.

And, so far, I see why I had to come back to this "the village of," but that's probably a whole other blog or a freak-ass altered collage, or sumpin!

Or ... I might just go back to bed for the rest of the week. One never knows!

Something or other every day ...

2009-10-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have blog-anxiety, like if I don't post something worthy the bloggy police come and rap you really hard on the knuckles with a #2 pencil.

However, to keep my twisted mind centered, I've decided to do a "collage and/or an altered something" every day. I started yesterday.

I'm sure it will only last two or three days before I go to bed again FOR GOOD! ... but we'll see.

In any event, here was yesterday's collage, a whimsical affair since I mixed two seasons together; the weather has been just that way.

It's done on a piece of cardboard after the last note sheet was torn off ... so it's about 3 x4 inches in real time! It's been scanned and tweaked, and that is not to say that they will all be scanned and then tweaked ... some will post in their original state, and/or before and after the tweak, but this was just to get the party started.

This one, other than that, is basically one media and one magazine for that matter (the April 2009 copy of the woman's magazine "First") and then I Brother-labeled in the ... SNOW!!!!

Today's collage is done on a teeny, tiny piece of corrugated cardboard, just slightly smaller than a debit card, and was also pretty much magazine and paper tears, and once again the Brother label maker hit the scene. I may or may not tweak this one some more and make it into a fridge magnet. We'll see how I stick to this ...

This may end up as a pile of collaged pieces that will then need gel medium to seal them or whatever, I will become overwhelmed and then stab myself in the eye with a glue stick!

You just never know with me, that's all I'm saying ...

Re-Weaving ...

2009-10-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

It has been a rather lengthy last many months (okay, maybe years) but I made a concerted effort this past week (especially as I topped off what I had hoped to be a very organized and better September) to say to EVERYONE, "Excuse me please, let me check if I can fit that in *my* schedule, and I will let *you* know,etc. etc" at my ever and always cheerful convenience ... I then proceeded to check my own shit FIRST, and then get back to people on whether or not I could fit this, that or the blood other into my realm of understanding and well-being.

Yeah, I know, people have been all up in their own stuff already for years, and I’m just now getting with the program since generally I’ve been all "Okay, yeah, yeah, I got it, even though I’m on the fly and will probably die trying, I will get to that too, just never you all mind what other things I might have going on!"

Maybe some of it comes with being a woman, and a mom, and I’m certain a giant portion comes from the fact that I work from home, and have for these many years.

And so it's easily assumed (by some ASS!!!) that I’m "probably not doing anything anyway,” or worse yet the person who calls in the middle of the morning and asks, “Oh, did I wake you, I bet you were sleeping" because, you know, we home office peeps, that's all we do is NOTHING but SLEEP!!!

(quick disclaimer here: if I *was* sleeping it’s because I WAS UP ALL NIGHT WORKING, and so the phones are off, the cell too, and PLEASE DON’T COME OVER AND RING THE DOORBELL AND MAKE THE DOG START BARKING JUST TO MAKE SURE I'M STILL ALIVE, OR I'M GOING TO HAVE TO KILL YOU!) [whole other rant, I am telling you!]

Anyways, what I’m getting to is, if you don’t take time to regroup you will get smothered by the feeling that the whole world is using you for a doormat, and/or they are using your forehead to post their monthly calendars. However, when your feet need wiping (or anything else for that matter … seriously, accidents happen), they won’t be there, and don’t even try to put your dates on their forehead to see how things line up.

Quit with that already!

That would be too easy! I mean really, folks, all three people in a house and the various extended other family members involved don’t all have to get along, because MOM HAS THE MASTER CALENDAR FOR EVERYONE, right?!!?!? … and she can fight her own way out of that giant paper bag, ALL BY HERSELF!

Well, in fall, I regroup. I’ve looked forward to this autumn season, and I’ve marveled and unraveled in its blustery arrival, the entire time looking forward to reweaving myself back together again into something I can use, and into someone I can be sure has her best foot first, before she takes her wallet out, before she crosses the street, and before she lays down her best jacket so the whole world can use it to walk over their newest shit puddle they just made!!

The re-weaving was in full, no-turning-back swing by the start of this week, and I’ve noticed more of its ongoing and lasting effects. And it’s the kind of thing where those close to me (and some who wish they were further away) may love to hate what seems to be my rigid side coming out, compared to my usually soft pushed over form, but gradually things really have started cruising along in a manner where EVERYONE CAN LIVE A LIFE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, and I can almost see straight!

I took some very special time over this last month to say many very special things to family in my house, family out of my house, family trying to get into my house, people pretending to be my family and/or my best friend. Here are a few of the things that did a really good trick, almost instantly:

--“Can you not see, I’M PEEING?!?!?!? Please check with me later?” Sometimes, I will even follow this person down a day later and say, “Really, honestly, what if I was POOPING or something?!?!??!”

or …

--“Do you see the tiny daggers coming out of my eyes, those are the same ones the coroner is going to dig out of your skull, if you DON’T LEAVE MY OFFICE RIGHT THIS MINUTE!”

or..

--“What did you say, Lili?!!?!??!? Yeah, I know the sky is falling, but you said something really cute just now, and your words drip with gummy bears and all things nice, and so I don’t even care what I was just doing, or that a big giant chunk of sky is right now going to crash down on our head, just please really go back to the really cute thing you were saying so I can write it down and take a picture of you while you are saying it! … “ [okay, sometimes when 4Kindergarten Lili comes by in the afternoon, um, well, tell me you could concentrate on your own stuff for even ten minutes once she goes to tell you sumpin!]

Anyways, some of my responses below also worked just as well (except with my above-mentioned propensity to totally latch onto 4-year olds and never let them go again!!!! … and believe me there has been a long line of 4-year-olds in my life, so I know what I’m talking about. It’s the year you must pay full attention, or you MISS SO MUCH!)

But like I said, some of these responses worked as well …

--"I hear you, but I’m not paying attention, so you can continue to rattle off those dates right now if you want, but it would be better if you waited until I was also free at the moment, and then I could actually absorb, give thought and respond to what you are saying.”

Or ...

--"I’m glad you are keen on your schedule, I will get back to you on how mine gels with this just as soon as I have a clear, concise moment for an equitable scheduling discussion."

Okay, really, I haven’t been saying some of the longer, Dr. Philly “let me be clear” with you things, because if you know me at all, I’m more into the more sarcastic ones where I fake horror and scream because you ARE talking to me while I’m peeing, and or pretend I can shoot lawn darts out my nostrils when you interrupt me. Plus one weekend, I flat out lied, stood in front of Mark and said that I “was working all day” on a Saturday and then I didn’t have to go do something stupid with him that I didn’t really want to do. I know, I’m going straight to hell!!!! for “not using my honest words” but I got a total DO NOTHING SATURDAY OUT OF THE DEAL!

S-C-O-R-E!

But the main thing is, I’ve noticed that when I stop to take a breath, these people in my life (those closest to me) they actually start to notice that tiny intake, that itty-bitty pause, and they actually have made it possible for me to now cancel a doctor’s appointment I had next week for a very special “re-capitation” procedure.

Yes, you heard it here first! The day your head flies completely off it’s axis, you can have it sewn back on, but I will not have to go through this. No, Siree, not me! Not this year. Finally some of the old scars can start to heal.

I won’t be the rundown woman coming into the skull neuro-doctor’s office with part of her scalp hanging out of her tote bag, and there won’t be some compassionate nurse behind the counter saying, “Oh, you must be the chicken who has been running around with her head cut off; you poor, poor thing, come and sit down, here is some gin, and we aren't even going to wash it down with soda prior to your procedure, you can have it straight! We'll get you all fixed up just right!"

Nope, this year, after this week, atop 30 days of September and the start to the school year, the fall and winter season and busy, busy times of the year fully upon us, yes … this day, OCTOBER 2ND, I can say …

“I feel perfectly fine, on schedule, and I may even take a nap this afternoon before I go on to what’s been equitably and adequately and fabulously planned for the weekend!"

Do you know where your children are?!?!? [so to speak??!?!?!]

[and you also know that as soon as push “post” on this message all holy hell is going to break loose because i have tempted the gods!]
Now, that nap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Way to Know Life ....

2009-09-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

The way to know life is to love many things ... Van Gogh (on a fridge magnet I found at an art fair today) ...

And I guess for me of late (or considering my last blog entry) the way to know life also includes loving as many things as you hate about yourself, trying to keep some kind of equal measure and balance for criminy sakes!

What is it they say … you can’t know the depth of love unless you also know a little bit about the depth of hate. Otherwise, how are you measuring the depth? What are you comparing it to?!?!?

That being said … Hate, lament and irritation over a lengthy row of a mood or mind frame, can be frustrating. Debilitating, etc. etc.

On the flip side of the same psychobabble coin ... trying to ignore the obvious fact that you ARE in the thick of a lengthy row of a mood or mind frame without lamenting about it and/or becoming irritated can be equally as frustrating. Debilitating, etc. etc.

I’ve been in the midst of a moodiness within the cycle of my overall usual bodacious moodfulness which I should be regularly accustomed to. And yet, I fight it TOOTH.AND.NAIL!!!!

You’d think I’d just get with the program within my self, instead of tiring myself out over the half of it.

I know to expect it, the ongoing storm after what seems like less and less calm.

But my math over this is skewed. I give far more credit to the storm and forget to check the correct number of boxes for the same amount of calm.

There is some equality to it, if I’d only look at it more mathematically.

But like Barbie says, "Math is hard!"

However, as I'm reworking the math of this, I'm finding that bipolarity, by whatever cause, for whatever reason, is far better than being schizophrenic, for one thing?!?!?!

Imagine having to manage all “those people” and all “their moods” and feelings, why don’t I!

I’d far rather be stuck with the ebb and flow of a more predictable inner tide calendar when I think about it that way.

For crying out loud! I should quit crying out loud!

A more predictable tide calendar comes with it the fact that, eventually, the tide will reverse itself, and it’s not too much to hope for, and you don’t even have to ask, because it will turn, and you’ll look up and the moon that was full the last time you remember looking at it will now be a sharp crescent slicing into the night sky.

'Kind of like Zoro’s hash mark, only this one is a crescent, a big giant “C” for “calm!”

And you’ll swear to yourself (just like you always do) that you only looked away for a minute … I mean, wasn’t the moon just full a minute ago?!?!?! Wasn't it a big giant gaping O' of a maw in the sky?!?!?!? … somewhere around the time the skin on my hands split and I grew claws and started yelling inside myself, howling ever deeper, ripping into my core, “NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN! FUCK ME!” … even though I know this shit happens right on somewhat of a “regular schedule.”

Really, seriously, bellyaching is, well, it’s a useless exercise that JUST MAKES YOUR BELLY ACHE!!!

It was true, I really had stopped breathing (again!!!!) in order to start teething on the things I CANNOT CHANGE about what goes on inside my self.

I’m only just saying, and now I’d like to report …

Last night, I saw the crescent moon.

My feet were bare.

My hair was loose.

I was in pj pants and a T-shirt.

Stars dot and dashed at the night's canvas.

The sky was the Midnight (cloudless) Blue of a mega-box of Crayolas (the one with the built-in sharpener ... score!)

I felt less Brick Red anger on the inside.

My cheeks were flushed Carnation.

The deck below my feet was a perfect Burnt Sienna, lovingly hand-honed and polished cedar ... sturdy ground to stand on.

Our dog licked my bare toes.

Mark smoked a cigarette.

We had a conversation, the silly small talk of a weekend, a real weekend.

Our dog licked Mark’s toes.

Our fickle dog went back to my toes.

The crickets sang.

The frogs croaked along.

A doe lay out in the tall grass waiting for us to re-dim the outer lights.

A tiny rabbit played a private game of “Statue” next to the eaves trough.

Our dog kept licking my toes. [animals are safe in our garden/don’t know why they even stop and/or stutter]

We talked about "turning in early" and even though I felt like I had just woken up from a long winter’s nap, I was ready for some real sleep.

I felt my chin to be sure of such things, that there was no sign of such a long harrowing passage of time, where everything stood still in my right of terror.

I found no trace of a Rip Van Winkle-ish beard. [thank gods and goddesses, you know, ‘cause even I have my vain moments and don’t want to be making a 1-800 call to have my chin waxed!]

I had not been inside my nightmare for that long.

I felt my skull and deemed its contents less pumpkin pie filling-ish, it's outer shell less Headless Horseman-like!

I listened for my heart and found a more regular rhythm.

I had made it down the Yellow Fucked up Brick Road, to Oz and I was back again!

In.my.barefeet!

Mark went inside.

I turned to follow, making a “kiss-kissing” my lips so the silly dog would tag along behind.

The little rabbit relaxed.

The doe let out her breath.

And I made a mental note to savor and feel satisfied rather than lamenting over the fact that moods like the moon and the tides, repeat themselves so I better watch out for “the next time.”

There’s something to be said for holding one’s place (and I suppose appreciating it too) no matter what span of time you are going through.

I mean, how ever would it be possible for me to love and really appreciate my “on time” if I didn’t have an equal part of hateful "off time" to appreciate and compare it to?

Without the one, I can’t fully be the other, or something like that.

Something like me.

Me. (how ever "not simple" that is)