May

I haven't blogged too much lately; honestly I don't feel too well.


I only want the oblivious youthful sense that nothing can ever go wrong.
I want to be fearless
Fearless with the ability to skip and laugh and play
without this feverishness.
My head is a ragged willow &
I have too much of an awareness of my own mortality.
I'm taking a break to get all this crying out of the way.
Then, when I'm ready to laugh again,

I'll come back to you.

Thought Train

I was driving this morning & thinking about stuff. Stupid stuff and some non-stupid.
Like, before I was driving I was pulling hair out of my mouth, and it's because I fix the girls hair with my cup of coffee between my knees, and I guess when I brush, the hairs come off and then I halfway eat them later.
And while I was driving I could see the border collie that lives at that corner from half a mile ahead just waiting to chase a car, and I was the next car, but when I slowed and looked at that border collie, I noticed it was not the usual one, but one with freckles, and it reminded me of a dog I had a million years ago, and clearly I'm unafraid of a run on sentence. The dog grew irritable with age and I gave that dog to my father after my other dog had stitches. My brother took a stray to my fathers house and the dog with freckles took his eye out. He just didn't care too much for dogs.
But it made me think of a million years ago, and how long ago that really feels and how part of me had changed. I used to say that the girl inside you never changes, you only get older and wiser. I guess sometimes you just feel tired, not just physically, but mentally too. My inner girl is tired. There's good and bad in that. The good is that I'm tired of wanting things. I've gotten over ideals or too lofty dreams, and now I'm left only wanting things I know I can attain. Wording it that way may make it seem dismal, but it's actually a relief. Let me reword it.

I know that I can have everything I want and I have simplified the list to make it so.

The bad in tired is that I too often pass up things like Uno marathons or eating inside the Capt'n D's (which the girlies love & believe to be a 'real' restaurant) because delegating what I have to do or remember can become a chore that takes up too much of my mental space. (Do you get that?)
Moving on. We drove to Kentucky, and passed through hundreds of interstate miles, laden with McD's and Arby's with other random crap thrown in. Hotels and crap on every exit. I stared at the Ramada signs and I felt confused. Would it be too much to ask for Ramada to add a franchise Indian restaurant to the side of all their hotels? If they want it to seem more American, they could call it Ramada Grill or something. I marveled at what a great idea I had, wishing that I could just phone it in. Mulligatawny Soup every third exit.
Then I thought about how my mother calls the interstate the freeway, and I like it that she does that. And then, that Toni Price song, Freeway, and how much I loved it.
Maybe I should dig that out & listen to it again. And I thought about how much effort it is to capitalise every single I, but once you capitalise two, you're pretty commited to following through with all of them. And I don't know if capitalise has a S or a Z, but I think you know what I mean.
I thought about how my latest Hayhouse book review is due here but I haven't started the book yet. Today probably.
My phone just made the Facebook buzz, and now i'm thinking about how I wish I could remember to turn off things like Facebook and Poynt on my phone because it sucks the life out of it.
I'm thinking about Google Analytics and how in the past two weeks one third of my blog readers dropped off the radar. Homeschoolers, probably :). (Just kidding!) Most of the people who arrive here through a search are still looking for Toilet Seat Alarms. I love it. I thought about how strange Google analytics is, and how it tells me cities and even countries of readers who stop in. The sheer boredom of blog readers but also the kind gestures of people who will read about hair in your coffee and still come back. Somebody in New York stops in- who are you?
I imagine the person eating a sandwich. Maybe it's a bald guy selling stuff in a cubicle. Maybe it's a mom who also eats hair in her coffee.
I bet you think todays blog is about you, don't you. Don't you? (I'm terrible). Ah, don't fret.
But I have to throw in that a wise guru once said, "Those of you who do not sing, must be playing with your own ding-a-ling." Yikes.
And then I thought about how the songs on the side may be leaving, but it's hard for me to part with them. At the same time, I have to hear the beginning of the first song over and over, and just like you, I have to hit the pause button to reread the blog when I edit it, and maybe that's not a good thing. Poor Chuck Berry.
I thought about how our latest family thing is watching AdventureTime With Finn & Jake (Cartoon Network, Mon 8pm) My husband & kids have adopted this as their new favorite show, and we sit, piled on one couch watching. On an old paisley couch. Even if you don't have kids, the show is pretty brilliant. For a cartoon. I mean, just so simple and dumb, that it's brilliant.

& now I'm just thinking about how that hairy coffee is starting to make me jittery and I need to hit the granola before I start sweating.
Later :)

Light tomorrow with today!

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Don't Fret, You.

Theme Park Field Trip :)

After trying over and over to photo my group of kids on this thing, I gave up trying and just started snapping random photos in the chance I'd get it right. Ha- I didn't.

Yesterday was field trip day, and my daughter begged me to come. We need chaperones! You must come. She reminded me of the previous year when I did not. So I spent 11 hours with a gaggle of wee ones at a theme park. Fun :D...really!

There was a bit of a rough start, as buses always make me have to pee, and not going before I left, my coffee tortured me much of the ride there. Worse, the girl behind me was crying from the same ailment. Can you tell the teacher I have to go? she asks me, I can't hold it!

I felt her pain. Literally, I did. Eventually the bus had to stop at a gas station midway and the girl was escorted by the teacher. Another student popped up and said she need to go, but the teacher declined. I decided I would just hang in there too. Getting off would have just been the 'I'm a parent, so I can pee at the gas station even if you can't' thing. (Later, waiting in a long line, I discovered standing on only my left foot lessoned the pee pain, and did my own grown up version of the potty dance. Bend right leg like a flamingo, straighten leg. Bend, repeat).

But I wasn't completely sure I was going to make it. Even in the midst of my pain, I was not oblivious to this time warp of the bus ride. Fifty 11 year olds, one big yellow bus. Singing classic bus songs. Take me out to the ballgame. If you're happy and you know it. I was just waiting for 99 bottles of beer, but you can't win em all. Kids making the signal at passing trucks to honk their horns, laughing when they did. Rich kids & poor ones. Beige kids & brown kids.

The shy ones and the ones that could barely contain their excitement. I'd been here before.

Kids were showing off Silly Bands, or Zany bands, little rubber band bracelets in various colors and shapes. Which ones do you got? they'd say. I traded for this one...

My own daughter was feeling pretty good, two of her silly bands glowed in the dark.

Ha. Off the bus, We had a gaggle of girls, four in our group, then five. Two quiet, two loud, one somewhere in the middle who announced at every ride that 'she was not going to ride that' & at every ride was coerced by the others, then discovered it was no big deal. The kid rode rides they couldn't pay me to- she was a great sport. My own girl, painfully shy and quiet, yet incredibly happy. She feeds off the craziness. I stood outside photo booths packed in like clowns in a mini car. We'd pass other groups in matching tees & they'd start buzzing.

Giant cola icees in souvenir cups, cruddy pizzas and in one instance, a Bucket O' Fries. (It was disgusting, but the kids wolfed it down, bragging about it's salty goodness). Kids emptied their pockets of ketchup packets, and couldn't wait to ride again. & you pair nasty park food and spinny rides, and you get a little puke here and there, but everyone survived. Back on the bus, my daughter crashed, her head on my shoulder the whole way home. This is the life.

I know that public schools are criticized heavily for their inadequacies and testing standards, and too many things to mention. You thow your kid in a random underfunded place full of germy kids, occasionally licey kids for 6 hours a day, 180 days each year. Some parents expect too much. On the other hand, some parents expect too little, opting for homeschool.

Yikes. The homeschooling parents have already heard what I'm about to say, their witty replies on bumper stickers of their minivans, Proud Parent of an Unsocialized Homeschool Kid. But I'm going to go there. (Just for a second)

I'm neither for or against Homeschooling. & in the same instance that one might wish to homeschool their kid, there is a parent doing it in the exact opposite direction. One home may be very Bible or religion based, not wanting their kids taught in a non-Christian environment. Others may just feel they can teach their child better themselves or that public school puts too much pressure on kids. (I don't actually have any friends with kids, any, & I'm just not a social person, so homeschooling would be like cell time for my own wee ones in our case).

But there is a beauty in the fact that your kids are thrust in the midst of other kids that are the opposite of what you are.

As a UU, i'm led to concoct in many ways my own path to God, and my personal path believes that God created all the people dramatically different in outward ways and thoughts in order for us to find the core.

Because maybe it's the same.

God threw us all in a giant public school and said, Learn to Love ALL OF IT.

Kids are still trading bananas for twinkies. & if your kid gets a ball to the head during kickball in the gym? It's still going to be attached, and the maple gym floors still echo the sounds of those kids, oddly thrown together. Gym kickball. God, I love it. & speaking of echoes, I can still hear the random songs of yesterdays bus.

I think that we all have paths we're supposed to travel & certain people we're predestined to connect with. You'll find who you're supposed to. This is where the Social defense of public schools for me loses it's strength. Each life lived holds purpose. There is no wrong way.

Blowing my 'God is Pro Public' school out of the water :).

Who knows if you're actually even choosing your childs path,

or if the path you choose is the one that they already decided on.

I'm going off the deep end, huh? :D

One more moving target pic for the road :) almost!

Last night Steven walks up to the loft and looks at me.
You must get another chair, he says. You look like one of those little old ladies driving a big truck, the ones that can't see over the steering wheel. Ha. I had a metal folding chair, but it migrated, and now there's the blue meshie lawn chair. A chair is a chair, I'm okay. It serves it's purpose.

Unlike the book ledge on the treadmill.

Today I went to a garden & saw the biggest Allister Stella Gray I've ever seen in my life. Lucky, because I have that one sitting in a pot on the drive, and now I know it needs 10-12 feet. Giddy to see it. Also, I decided against waiting another year for David A.'s Claire Austin. Seriously, three years and still no luck? I have the hole dug already & I give up. I bought Ducher instead. I bet she'll be better. I should be out in the excruciating heat digging holes as we speak. I'm working myself up to it. Wedge of watermelon, then out the door...Soon.
In high school, they gave everyone this test to see what you should go to college for, it was a scan-tron thing and you filled out pages of random questions. When mine came back, it said
Farmer. I had a good laugh, reading about the agricultural college it suggested I apply for.
Now I think maybe the test may have been in the ballpark.
But maybe not. Either way, I just have an affinity with the plants, each as individuals; they have an energy and I think oddly sometimes they are happy to see me; they are like silent friends.
Like you.
but better. ;).

Rose of the Day

Our rose of the day is Acropolis. Meilland (France, 2002)
Not a vintage, but a great find all the same.
Popular in Europe, I ended up with a grafted import from Canada.
If you can find own root, don't settle for anything other.
If not, you can find this one at Hortico Inc.

Argh.
I'm not so sure it's a good day to blog.
because there's this part of me that just wants to let out all
my frustrations, my mental static, and I don't want to be that person.
I want to be the effervescent spirit that rises above
my issues. & I try.
but sometimes there are days when it's just hard to put on my trooper face
(we all have them)
I want to not say aloud what ails me.
There's a perception that if something isn't verbalized,
it may not actually exist.

I guess I'll vent today.

Normally I walk the rose line at the front fence, but the construction workers start early and end late, and I subconsciously feel that they think I stand and pretend to search the rose leaves, while I'm actually watching them. But really I'm looking for worms eating on my new growth, and annoyed at their hammering as it invades my most prized moments of meditative thought.
I'm starting small but I think I'm on a roll now.

So our health insurance sent us a letter saying they are leaving our state and ending our health insurance, and the idea of shopping for health insurance eight months after brain surgery is daunting. Of course, some of you may say that there's always the new Health Reform with that high risk pool, but my state has opted out of that. Personally, I feel fine and don't view myself as high risk, but it's sitting heavily with me.
(My state is actually trying to change it's state constitution in order to opt out of all health reform. "We're the state that wanted slavery," my husband says, "It's the intelligence of that same gene pool- Slavery is Good, Health Reform is Bad. I'm just a few hairs away from moving us to Europe myself," he says. but our doorshop isn't a mobile one.)

This week was my 14th wedding anniversary.
But my Steven had to work a 16 hour day,
that day and every day
so we said we'd just postpone it for awhile.
I know it just is what it is for now.

14 years ago :)

& I just heard the grinch was sent home from the hospital
with hospice.
& i don't exactly know how to process the information.
though I never lived with him a day of my life
I do feel sad for him & confused for me;
and it's one of those moments where you have to forget things
like the time I mailed out Christmas cards the first year I lived on my own,
and he called asking where his was,
but I knew he was a Jehovah's Witness,
& he said, "No, I never was, I just told you that
so I wouldn't have to send you birthday cards or gifts"
& all the other conversations where I ended up crying.
You have to forget that stuff and try to look at what else there is.
I don't know what else there is.

I don't know how to fill in that blank line.
I don't think he did either. That's why he wouldn't sign it.
he left it blank and all these years perhaps I've been trying to
fill in that line.
& no one is perfect.
I have a head full of static from the whole thing.
but I guess we'll be making a drive.

I think I'm done now.
I don't know if it's all better out than in.
I used to think that from whatever place someone is in life
things could only get better.
Today is one of those days I'm hopeful but unsure.

thanks for bearing with my wee blog. :)

Rose of the Day

Cramoisi Superieur :)

A nice china dating back to the early 1800's.
I think she's pretty stunning. dainty little branches dripping with flowers.
She's a great repeater, too. (Note, mine, in photo, is less than 2 year old, starting in a 3" band).