"Is that the right time? It couldn't be," she said, staring at the jeep time.
"No, you have to subtract six hours,"
"And add twenty minutes," my nine year old chimed in...
"Technically, you add 23 minutes, but we just round the number to the closest ten." I said.
My mother looked at me, one of those 'Where did you come from?' looks. She came by this past weekend.
"I brought you a book on sewing!" I thumbed through the book, hundreds of pages of diagrams and black & white photos, women in aprons they made, classic 50's or 60's. Smocking photos.
"Look! It even shows you how to do the smocking," she says. I study the pages. Algebra. Geometry. Some foreign language for sure.
"I can't read it," I tell her. I marvel that anyone can. That sort of brain is to be envied for sure, when in comparison I fumble. Are you one of those people?
Lap it up like a kitten at a milk puddle, lap it up then sweat it out your pores? Lap it up and sweat it out; like a song that resonates, but for some folks complex processes as well.
I may make no sense this morning. I know, I just wrote a couple days ago. What's up??? I ran three miles yesterday, maybe I took a sudden surge of oxygen to the brain. Maybe I just have all my hens in a row. Or is it chicks in a row. Ducks in a row? A row of something, for sure.
I am all of hen and chicks, kittens and milk this morning. Too sweet. I should've just summarized my wee blog into a poem. I think it might have had kittens and chickens, or lapping milk and smocking silk, or, um, it would just been really really bad. So let's move on.
I saw that someone smashed D's mailbox while driving this morning. Internally I laughed. (Nobody can be kind all the time.) D is my husband's friend, although he hasn't come round to see him lately; Steven didn't pee in a condom for the drug test he was taking. And that's what real friends do, of course. Ha, ha, D, I know about you & your buddy, picking up "crack whores" (his term, not mine) videotaping strung out women, desperate ones doing deperate things, laughing. I know and you don't know I know. I guess you'll have to fix that box or get your porn at mommy's house again. Whoo! I'm terrible. So much for the kittens. Let's move on again.
"We have a hawk," It flies, circling over our yard daily.
"What? Where?" Steven looks around.
"There!" I point up and Steven studies the bird.
"Turkey Vulture," he tells me.
A week later, I point to the hawk again.
"Look!"
"Turkey vulture." Turkey vulture doesn't sound quite as exciting as hawk, though.
No company yet. I guess I'm going to go eat some cereal, run on the treadmill, do some laundry. Thanks for being so cool! Here's to finding inspiration in the little nonsense things of daily life. yt, Kat
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
company
I got up from the table today, finally able to put my book down, finally, because I'd finished it. The last two pages had me crying- crying fat tears, and then I realized that I wasn't home alone. the girls are out of school for MLK day, so I wiped away my tears and decided I'd better tend to them before they ransack the fridge, emptying a new jar of pickles, pack of yogurts, or trying to pour juice into cups, leaving a sticky orange trail as they have before when I was previously a hostage of a good book.
The book was Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Two thumbs and all the other finger and toes up. I stumbled through in the beginning, not used to dark of it, but you know how it is when you get so involved, you just want to get to the outcome...
I'm to have company this week. My father called to wish me happy birthday (two weeks early) he's coming down, he said. What day? I don't know, he said. (LOL, can you tell I've been reading CMcC?) There's the part of me that is anxious about it- I haven't seen him in a couple years, and back then I played host to the large male equivalent of Debbie Downer,
Get me some Ice Water! You call this ice water? I stood peeling mangoes, biting my tongue. I could peel a mango twice as fast, he shouts, and there'd be twice as much mango left!
My mind says, "Then why don't you" but my mouth says nothing.
I know I'm coming across ungrateful, maybe ruthless. I'm venting. There was a time my mother sat in the hospital with me, just born, pleading that my father sign my birth certificate.
He told her it didn't matter, I was a girl, I'd get married anyway. I never lived with this man, and my mother, too afraid too ask for child support, raised me off of Denney's tips. And we were happy, life was good, it was enough.
How could you have such bad judgement? I asked her this week. This guy is coming over, claiming he's my father. I have to cater to him, to be kind. Why did you choose him to be my father?
My mother, in her New Age Reincarnation fashion, says what I knew was coming.
"Why did you choose him to be your father? Because you chose him long before I did."
And my response, easy, same as always,
"I didn't choose him to be my father. I chose you. You to be both my mother and father." because it was enough.
Yikes. Am I getting too deep here?
So I'll be catering to my father one day this week, who knows which one. Not Steve Bell, my imaginary father, but the real deal. The love and lightness in the air will turn stagnant and abrasive, abrasive like cracked heels on satin, and I'll lie awake thinking what I can do better, what I can do that won't be picked apart.
I filled the bird feeders with sunflower seeds, it was all I had, then a little titmouse flew up on the balcony, his beak black like the sunflower shell, making him look like he had a tiny duck bill.
He cocked his little head, as to say, What are you doing in there? Flew away again to a nearby tree, scraping the shell on the bark to crack it open. A redheaded woodpecker on the feeder, doing the same.
I read a thing about the writer's strike, but I haven't noticed it yet. Mostly I only watch the Sundance channel, and everything off of the TiVo list. Better, because a one hour show becomes 35 minutes when you fastforward the commercials. The only downside is that you never know what new movies are coming out.
The writers want more money I guess. They are getting canned because the season won't open in time? Is writing what they love? How does that feel, to do something you love and get paid insane amounts of money for it? I've a feeling for that money, anyone could write a pilot. (Come over. Give me a page length & a week. Hee hee.)
The writers are lucky, they are folks like me and you, in the right place, at the right time. They maybe ordered a sandwich next to someone who knew someone else. Sometimes I watch tv and think the well's run dry. (Not you, Larry David, you're well runneth over!)
I'm not in the right place, at the right time- for that. I'm in the right place for me. And I hear my girls laughing, the little one's face covered with lilac lip gloss. Funny. I mailed out another manuscript.
I showered. I spit in the shower. Is that disgusting? And then, after I spit, I thought about my nephew once saying that if you pee in the shower it will cure athlete's foot. His friend told him that.
I did not pee. But I did wonder if you tell someone that, does it mean you've done it? Did his saying that mean he pees in the shower? But it can't, because that would mean that I, too, am a shower pee-er for writing it down, and I'm not. Because I'd tell ya. :)
I'm going to go put the clothes in the dryer, maybe eat a piece of cheese. The dogs are barking. I hope there's no one here. Deep breath.
I've been missing you all. Love, love, love, love love, kat
The book was Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Two thumbs and all the other finger and toes up. I stumbled through in the beginning, not used to dark of it, but you know how it is when you get so involved, you just want to get to the outcome...
I'm to have company this week. My father called to wish me happy birthday (two weeks early) he's coming down, he said. What day? I don't know, he said. (LOL, can you tell I've been reading CMcC?) There's the part of me that is anxious about it- I haven't seen him in a couple years, and back then I played host to the large male equivalent of Debbie Downer,
Get me some Ice Water! You call this ice water? I stood peeling mangoes, biting my tongue. I could peel a mango twice as fast, he shouts, and there'd be twice as much mango left!
My mind says, "Then why don't you" but my mouth says nothing.
I know I'm coming across ungrateful, maybe ruthless. I'm venting. There was a time my mother sat in the hospital with me, just born, pleading that my father sign my birth certificate.
He told her it didn't matter, I was a girl, I'd get married anyway. I never lived with this man, and my mother, too afraid too ask for child support, raised me off of Denney's tips. And we were happy, life was good, it was enough.
How could you have such bad judgement? I asked her this week. This guy is coming over, claiming he's my father. I have to cater to him, to be kind. Why did you choose him to be my father?
My mother, in her New Age Reincarnation fashion, says what I knew was coming.
"Why did you choose him to be your father? Because you chose him long before I did."
And my response, easy, same as always,
"I didn't choose him to be my father. I chose you. You to be both my mother and father." because it was enough.
Yikes. Am I getting too deep here?
So I'll be catering to my father one day this week, who knows which one. Not Steve Bell, my imaginary father, but the real deal. The love and lightness in the air will turn stagnant and abrasive, abrasive like cracked heels on satin, and I'll lie awake thinking what I can do better, what I can do that won't be picked apart.
I filled the bird feeders with sunflower seeds, it was all I had, then a little titmouse flew up on the balcony, his beak black like the sunflower shell, making him look like he had a tiny duck bill.
He cocked his little head, as to say, What are you doing in there? Flew away again to a nearby tree, scraping the shell on the bark to crack it open. A redheaded woodpecker on the feeder, doing the same.
I read a thing about the writer's strike, but I haven't noticed it yet. Mostly I only watch the Sundance channel, and everything off of the TiVo list. Better, because a one hour show becomes 35 minutes when you fastforward the commercials. The only downside is that you never know what new movies are coming out.
The writers want more money I guess. They are getting canned because the season won't open in time? Is writing what they love? How does that feel, to do something you love and get paid insane amounts of money for it? I've a feeling for that money, anyone could write a pilot. (Come over. Give me a page length & a week. Hee hee.)
The writers are lucky, they are folks like me and you, in the right place, at the right time. They maybe ordered a sandwich next to someone who knew someone else. Sometimes I watch tv and think the well's run dry. (Not you, Larry David, you're well runneth over!)
I'm not in the right place, at the right time- for that. I'm in the right place for me. And I hear my girls laughing, the little one's face covered with lilac lip gloss. Funny. I mailed out another manuscript.
I showered. I spit in the shower. Is that disgusting? And then, after I spit, I thought about my nephew once saying that if you pee in the shower it will cure athlete's foot. His friend told him that.
I did not pee. But I did wonder if you tell someone that, does it mean you've done it? Did his saying that mean he pees in the shower? But it can't, because that would mean that I, too, am a shower pee-er for writing it down, and I'm not. Because I'd tell ya. :)
I'm going to go put the clothes in the dryer, maybe eat a piece of cheese. The dogs are barking. I hope there's no one here. Deep breath.
I've been missing you all. Love, love, love, love love, kat
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