bloodletting on a sunday afternoon

I fell in love
Down fell the house of cards
Waxed paper rectangles,
Numbers,
Grandparents in my dreams.
They tell me nothing
My ears are full of denial
Impenetrable but for one path that leads inside of me
Walled off
Walk it off
It doesn't work that way.
Tangled sheets in wicker baskets
Whisper lies into the corners of my vision
Lies written in braille
Lies stamped in denial
Lies carved out of ignorance
Lies that would have lain in dust with skeletons
Had I not fallen in love.
Every word! Every stupid word I've written! I let him know me, never dreaming...
There on the cliffs edge,
white knuckles clench his clothing
Blood from my knees flows away, blows away just as easily as the dust that pours down from such heights
He and I
He and I
I silently beseech him
Little children ancient wizards are we
I beseech him
Silence howls from my wounds
He winces but doesn't stagger
The weight of silence
The weight of silence
The weight of silence
The weight of silence...

(edit: moments later I went to YouTube to lighten the mood. It suggested this video.)






I fell in love, strewn over my piles of bones I had hidden away.


Hope is at the bottom. That's the part one must always remember.

"It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you..."

Reading you a lovely story night after night to wrap up on such a strange ending.

Bowties are sexy.

Watch "The Ragtime Gals: "SexyBack" (w/ Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake)" on YouTube

The first time I've ever seen Jimmy Fallon's show was just now. Barbershop quintet? Yes, please. Those suit coats? No, thank you.

digging through trash to avoid drudgery

There's something about grocery shopping that I do not enjoy. It's rather like laundry, in that I enjoy the cupboards and fridge being stocked (or closet and dresser) but I do not enjoy the process of making that happen.

When grocery shopping, I absolutely adore doing it with a friend. One friend in particular often comes with me, but when I'm going it alone I will stall like a mofo.

This morning I am stalling like an aforementioned 'fo. I realized this while reading about Kim Kardashian and how she has adopted J-Lo's fashion stylists. There was a definite moment where I looked at the trash page that I had somehow meandered across the internet to, and thought, "Wow. What the fucking fuck." I don't give a flying fuck about Kim Kardashian. Until about six months ago, I had no idea what was the difference between her and Snookie. (I then saw a picture of her in a bikini on the cover of a magazine in the check out lane, and let us just say she is memorable. Ever since, I think of her as being The Hot One, and because of chatty morning DJ's, I think of Snookie as The UTI One.)

Right now, I'm just sitting here babbling about the way in which I stalled going shopping earlier when I am, in fact, stalling going in to the next store.

*sighs*

Clearly I need to find something joyful about this, because doing something I don't enjoy is bullshit. I'm way smarter than that.

Kishi Bashi

Last weekend I went to go see Kishi Bashi play at the Attucks Theater in Norfolk, VA. It was, in a word, beautiful.

When I got the tickets it had said that he was playing with two bands- Elizabeth & the Catapults, and Tall Tall Trees, so I was baffled when I came in to find one guy, clearly not Kishi Bashi, playing on stage alone. It turned out to be a fellow from Tall Tall Trees, and that dude was jamming the fuck out on his banjo.

Apparently I had missed the first act, as the friend I was going with backed out at the last minuteand I was trying to find someone else to come with. Normally I wouldn't bother, but I was so excited to see him play that I'd bought two tickets the day they went on sale, this, I had an extra ticket. I finally gave it up at Will Call and told the guy that if someone showed up and really wanted to get in, they could just have my extra ticket. Apparently someone used it-  I asked the door guy as I left who said yes indeed, someone used it. That made me feel better.

The show itself was phenomenal, and I spent a few songs just sitting there with tears streaming down my face, refusing to wipe them away until the song ended. It's not that his music is sad, it's brilliant, and it's beautiful.

If there was anything that I needed, it was just that- to bask in the radiance of another person's joie de vivre. And I'll admit this here... if there was a chance to go follow his tour and listen to him play night after night, I would absolutely love to. I couldn't, with a child, but oh boy oh boy, would I love to! Whew!

a garden in the air

Living in a second story apartment will not stop me from having a garden this year, oh no. And through my experience I hope to teach others how to grow their own food, organically. Having land would be lovely, but most urban areas have no such luxuries, and so I want to prove that not only can it be done, but it can be done cheaply, safely, and by nearly anyone- if my gimpy ass can do this, so can most folks.

Since this pic was snapped, my strawberries seem to be coming along well, my raspberries catching up, both long and short carrots are seeded, and cauliflower, small watermelon, and something else I can't recall have also been taken on. My basil keeps having issues with spider mites but a simple wash takes care of that, I just need to stay on it more regularly.

Summer promises to be delicious. Hopefully by then I can work out how to keep reseeding and keep a garden going all year round!

friends and family

Knowing of the medical situation happening back in Michigan with my father, and the extent of my upset about it, my best friend came over and brought me flowers, such beautiful flowers.

They are the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see each morning. Bless her beautiful heart.

Memories from boxes

A first date before my eyes peeled open. Ween and Harry Potter should have been a clue, but denial is such a bitch.

Saving the ticket was also a pretty good clue. Aaah, hindsight.

makeup plus beer goggles equals SURPRISE

Somewhat recently, I was discussing how very trixsie makeup is to a male friend of mine. In short, I was telling him that I think make up (and styling one's hair) is the REAL reason one has "beer goggles", or at least it may be the more common reason. Makeup, done correctly, can create miracles. Alas, morning comes and all that miraculousness likely slid off as the night went on. What do you know, the Huffington Post posted proof of the miracles of makeup and more amusingly, it is the before and after makeup pictures of porn stars. The first girl is absolutely gorgeous, so don't be fooled- you're going to see some seriously bedraggled and even downright ill looking chicks be (mostly) done up to look fabulous (when makeup is done to look trashy, I cannot in good conscience call it anything other than trashy). I really enjoyed this photo gallery, and picturing various dudes going home with the "after" picture and then waking up to the "before" picture. My point is not necessarily that you shouldn't sleep with someone you just met (that's your choice) but that if you do, know right now that you're gambling on more than one count. My recommendation: use protection and get lost before the sun comes up.

this broken vessel

A friend of mine has been reading my blog. This is not unusual in and of itself, lots of friends read it. What is unusual is that he's been reading it from start to finish.
*blinks*

That's over ten years worth of writing, and at some stages, quite prolific writing at that.

That last person to read my whole blog asked me to marry him, and so this single minded determination to read it all is both intensely flattering and more than vaguely terrifying. When my husband read it, there was only a few years worth. So this despite to read it all is no small commitment. It's not just volume, but at times, very dark subject matter indeed.

For him, it's been a roller coaster, and he tells me he has to pause now and then because it's too intense, overwhelming to read. This makes me wonder many things about the possibilites of my life as an author.

The thing that is the strangest about it all is his commentary. Yesterday he sent me a message with his quote of the day, and upon hearing it it rang such a bell, I had to ask him what it was from. Later, he responded. He told me the month and year, and it was only then that I realized that he meant THOSE WERE MY WORDS. He was quoting MY writing back to me and I found it incredibly witty.
Well!

Of all the times friends and family have told me I should write a book, this particular remark really hit home. I thought it was snarky and brilliant. My own words. Gosh.

Other than that, it is very surreal to have someone reading but just a decade of my journaling, but the real time tales of my life, plus plenty of back story from before I ever owned a computer or knew how to type. As he put it, he has a god's eye view.

It is intense, personal, humbling, and at times, humiliating. It often forces myself to look at myself through his eyes, and see beauty and strength where I see flaws and fault lines in my character, my morality, abscesses of dysfunction, and, not to put too fine a point on it, cancerous weakness.

I don't really have words to explain how bizarre it feels, but I do have a picture that conveys it all beautifully. In another land, in.another culture, there is a word for this feeling in my heart.

Kintsukuroi.
I am learning to accept my cracks and flaws as something that makes me more beautiful than if I had an easy life, full of wisdom and walking the middle paths.

Instead, I am kintsukuroi- broken and flawed and more beautiful for having repeatedly glued myself together with my own hard earned golden light.

doorbell

Salt water taffy
Sorrow stretched from inside me
Candied flavor tears
Stripped down as I closed the door on one hope I had lit not an hour before
The sun has gone down
No driving through dusk
Just driving back home
Here and gone.
Damn.
From where do these tears flow?
Like my dreams of homes with many rooms I somehow forgot
Somewhere there is my well
Just beyond the current reach of the light of my awareness.
Do I choose to look?
Like the dream rooms, how far could I wander on and on, each step wondering: am I walking into the storyline or merely distracted from it?
In my dreams you stand out,
One extra shimmering line of dimensionality
You are always more present, strong enough that the memory of you follows me through to the waking world
The start of a smile
I am watching your face
As my hands tend my embers
With you...
I blink in surprise
Down at my hands
Ever tending the embers
With you.

fuck the laundry

The smell of you
Warmth, wood, fire,
Sweat and solidarity
Mysteries and magic
The permeability of water

The surprise of the darkened forests depths
Wood smokes, it sizzles and then burns
As do I with thoughts of you, the smell of you
Oh god, the smell of you
I close my eyes and inhale that which is you, right between my eyes, memories ignite

...you...
A wildfire burns in me
and the winds are glorious

a bottle of prevention is worth a cure, period.

Today is a beautiful day, here inside my heart.

It's sunny. Cold. My poor son got food poisoning and is missing school and I won't lie, it's stressful and a bummer but both of us are also so goddamn relieved to not be dragging ass to school for many days at a time.

My son got a cold, very nasty one. After a week of nursing him back to almost not sickness, I got the cold, which is highly unusual- I rarely EVER get sick. Then I got a text from him saying he had gotten off the bus and vomited on the sidewalk. I thought it was a panic attack. After he jumped up from near sleep on the couch to run and throw up again an hour later, I knew it was no panic attack and started triage on him immediately. Within a few minutes, I'd narrowed it to something he ate, something a friend gave him at lunch.

He now knows that you should never eat a dairy item that someone else hasn't kept properly refrigerated.

Once I was sure he wasn't going to throw up again soon, I had him take six activated charcoal tablets with water. Six hours later, repeat the dose.

If you aren't familiar with activated charcoal, learn about it now. It could just save your life.

He threw up overnight, just a little.

The next day I took him to the doctor, as he still had a high fever (well, he had a fever once the dose of Motrin or Tylenol wore off). What transpired next baffled me. The doctors didn't believe that he had food poisoning. In fact, because it was not coming profusely out both ends of him, they clearly thought I was bananas and clueless. I explained repeatedly that he had thrown it up, and THEN I gave him the activated charcoal. I further explained that there was nothing to come out the other end because he threw it up, and the activated charcoal absorbed the rest. What he was reacting to was simply the amount that had already started circulating his bloodstream before I gave it to him.

The doctor listened to me with a look of, "You delusional idiot," and announced, "This is the flu. Here, we'll do a swab, and the test will come back in a few minutes." The swabbing commenced, the doctor informed me of options to deal with the flu, and I gave him his expression back, "You delusional idiot."

The test came back, the doctor returned to the room and dazedly informed me, "The flu....well, it's negative... I, uh..." I shot my son an arched eyebrow of, "See? Told you so." He smiled conspiratorially at me.




Finally the doctor gave us a 'script for some anti nausea medicine, which is the most useful thing he did, and then looked perplexed again when I asked him for a note for the school. It wasn't till we got outside that I started laughing. My son asked why and I held out the note. It said, "Patient seen for illness."

*deadpan look* No shit, Sherlock.

On the way home, I told my son that he looked better than he had since he threw up, and noted that he had actually started smiling and doing a literal dance in the exam room (when the doctor wasn't in there) as soon as the doctor had seen him and announced it wasn't the flu and that he didn't know what it was. I told my son, "You feel better just knowing that a doctor has seen you and now you know there is nothing terrifying wrong with you, don't you?" He gave me a conflicted look. I said, "It's ok. Look, you don't always know that I know what I'm talking about, and that's ok. My experiences with food poisoning, both mine and other people's that I helped with, were before you were born or so young you wouldn't remember. It's ok that you had doubts. And it's ok that you feel better now. If that's all we gained from going, it was worth that alone." He smiled then, relieved.

After that, he was still eating popsicles crushed up and spoon fed, and eventually more solid foods. The anti nausea meds did help him a lot, mostly for his fear of puking up whatever he ate again. The best part of it all, for me, was how cuddly he became. You know a teenager is sick when he lays his head in your lap and just stays there. He was home for most of the week, and it was days before he even wanted to watch tv, much less get on his laptop. That, for a nearly sixteen year old boy, is mofo ILL.

I'm so glad I could save him the agony of a full blown case of food poisoning. Activated charcoal, people. Get some. You just never know, and you'll be glad you have it, just in case.

you'll be given love
you'll be taken care of
you'll be given love
you have to trust it

maybe not from the sources
you have poured yours
maybe not from the directions
you are staring at

twist your head around
it's all around you
all is full of love
all around you

all is full of love
you just ain't receiving
all is full of love
your phone is off the hook
all is full of love
your doors are all shut
all is full of love!

all is full of love
all is full of love
all is full of love
all is full of love
all is full of love

DIY happiness

You can call me little miss sexually frustrated grumpypants, and I just installed this damn thing, and this damn thing better make with the happiness.

*blinks, sullen*

It seems to work for other women, so I got one. What the hell, right? Worst case scenario, I end up taking a shower.

*sighs*

Now if I could just convince myself that I want to climb in, I could find out. Little miss sexually frustrated grumpypants doesn't wanna do NOTHIN' except throw this here fit, see?

Is it too early to start drinking? I bet a bottle of framboise would go well with that shower....oh my, yes. Hmm.