The boat

Thanksgiving night. My mom is heading out soon. She has taken a turn for the worse over the last week. I've been with her a lot. This may a be graphic as far as death and dying go, so read ahead if you'd like. She's so tiny now. Thin as a rail, something she might have said, and it's exactly true. I can encircle her upper arm with my hand, thumb to middle finger. She doesn't eat now. Well, actually she had a bit of food yesterday. She had a cup of Dairy Queen vanilla ice cream for lunch(Jay and I stopped and had a lunch of hot fudge sundaes there ourselves and got a cup to go for her) and then for supper she had the filling part of two pieces of pumpkin pie. Her body is tight and stiffening. Hospice is good and the caregivers at The Peaks have been wonderful. A couple nights ago I laid down with her and snuggled her up. I just talked to her about how much we all love her, and how I think it will be like getting on a boat...that I'm here, seeing her off at the dock, and my dad will be there at the other end, waiting for her to arrive and go on to the next adventure. I don't know how it will be but I like to think of it that way. I told her she can go, and to enjoy the boat ride. I love being with her. I still can't imagine not being able to touch her face or her hair, or to hold her hand. She still has the tightest grip ever. She's just holding on for all she's worth. She stays horizontal now mostly. Occasionally, over the last few days, she's looked into my eyes, focused for a few seconds and then her eyes drift up above my head and she focuses again, at something above me. I like to think she's seeing into that other world. Tonight, before I left her, she was in bed and her arms, small and skinny as they are now, were held up in the air in a perfect hug. I said, who are you hugging missy? and she smiled for a brief flash of a second. I walked down the hall to talk to one of the caregivers and when I came back in her room, she still had those arms wrapped around someone. I sat next to her on her bed for a while and put her arms down, one by her side and one around that baby she loves to hold, kissed her, said I love you, and headed home to wait for tomorrow.

Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not
be an even greater one.
--Vladimir Nobokov

Bridges

Here's a picture of my mom with her baby. I took it yesterday. I just think she is beautiful. For a while, when she was on about 14 pills a day, she had that look in her eyes of someone lost. Vague, never focused. Now, off meds, she'll look right into my eyes, so intent and mind-loud. Very serious but quite aware. She does sleep a lot. She's having trouble fighting off infection. She's had c-diff (an intestinal infection) 4 or 5 times since the broken hip. She can't really speak and can't walk. But when she looks me in the eyes I swear she's saying something to me. I like to think she's on a bridge right now, between two worlds, and she's trying to tell me about the next one.

I have a little story.....
When I was seven she took me to the dentist. It was probably 8 am as she always made the first appointment of the day. I had to get two teeth filled (I was a cavity prone kid) and I was a little worried. I was seated in the dental chair, my mom was ushered back out to the waiting room, and the dentist came in. The assistant was getting all the equipment ready and dropped something on the floor. The dentist, Mr X, cussed at that girl. I was mortified and the girl was quiet. He started working on my teeth. He was rough. I think he was mad and tired and who knows what. It hurt! I was a shy, timid child (me?) but finally I involuntarily yelped out an "ouch!". He said, loudly, "Goddamnit shut-up". My mom came flying through that exam room door like a super hero. Hands on her hips, she said, "Do not EVER speak to my daughter that way. She is seven years old! You should be ashamed of yourself, speaking like that to a
child" and she got me out of that chair and we left. I always felt good that she stuck up for me and got me out of there. I felt protected and part of a team.

One more.....
When I was two I got this coat for Christmas. As you can see, I was very happy. I wore it all the time. It had a little muff to go with it that hung around my neck and I could put my tiny hands into to keep warm. It was the softest, wooliest, warmest coat in the world. I loved it so much I used to want to wear it to watch cartoons. One of my best memories is sitting on the living room floor in my coat, watching Loony Toons, my mom ironing clothes behind me while we both watched the Road Runner escape Wiley Coyote and just the both of us laughing away. And I still have that coat.

"Ordinary riches can be stolen: real riches cannot. In your soul are
infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you."
Oscar Wilde, 1891

Stale Pears

Today when I got up, my son, who was already up and watching cartoons, informed me that Archie smells bad...like "stale pears". This initially made me happy because to describe a smelly dog with the words, "stale pears" makes me think someday he will surely be a writer. Then, it made me think eeww-w-w, because Archie walked right up next to me and yes, he did smell like stale pears.....stinky, old, moldy pears. He got a bath today, his first, and now smells like shampoo and Milk Bones...the way a dog should smell.

Writer's Block

The weirdest thing happened. I think I got blog-writer's-block. For over a week I was unable to blog. I thought about it during the day...hmmmmmm, what should I write about today? I carried my camera everywhere thinking I might be graced with an amazing incident or cool experience that I could capture and write about. No deal. Then, weirder still, I started to feel boring. Yes, BORING. As in, I have nothing to say and no way to say it. As in, nothing EVER happens to me (whine....).

Oh well, I'm back, making myself push through the muck that's in my brain, trying to stay right on the edge of boring but not topple in. So, I thought I'd start off with my stomach flu experience. October 30, 1:25 am, I wake up from a wonderfully sound sleep with that feeling of, holy crap I better get to the toilet. After one delightful hurl (sorry), I remembered that I had this prescription for not-vomiting, It's called phenergan. I fumbled around in the make-up drawer, throwing hair ties and lip gloss everywhere, and opened the child proof bottle (score!). Pop one down and, I kid you not, in five minutes I was stellar, all nausea gone, all stomach spasms dissipated.....and so tired I had to crawl to bed. But it works. But man, what a sleep. I was down. I slept until 4:25 pm the next day (Halloween). You may thank me later that there are no pictures on this post :)

Halloween night - totally uneventful as I was still groggy. The usual m.o. is tom and jerry's (the drinks, not the cartoon) as we moms walk the kids around the neighborhood. Instead I had a teeny tiny taste of the infamous drink (thanks Tim) and walked until I could walk no more, acted grouchy toward friends, and went home.

Since then I've gone on an awesome field trip to Jerome with my son's fourth grade class. We camped and looked at old buildings and learned about mining. The kids really loved it but mostly enjoyed visiting the gift shops. And I found a great book called Soiled Doves - Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves. It's really interesting damnit. It's historical! I was going to state next that I'd just like my life to be a series of field trips, but then I realized that it kind of IS a series of field trips.

My own book is at the printer's. I should have a copy by Christmas. Cool. I haven't been writing much poetry. It's kind of like when I was twelve and did a walk-a-thon. Twenty flipping miles. I did it. Got pledges, kept on a walking, drank Gatorade (ewww), finished all twenty miles. I was beat! Never went on another one of those. Done. Been there, done that. I haven't written much since I found out my book would be published. Damn. I will though. I've been collecting titles in my head. Not telling any of them yet. I like to write the poem after I have the title.

Whew! It looks like I've broken through. No pictures (which is a first), but a scant amount of writing spewed (I shouldn't use that word in this post) forth. Of course, a little fun and super eventful times over the next week would certainly help.

I really like this following quote but I cannot for the life of me figure out why it was said by the Dell Crossword.
Success is not permanent. The same is also true of failure.
--Dell Crossword

Good Omens & Scaryness

Archie would like everyone to know that his ear is fixed. It appears that when dogs are teething, one ear may become a bit droopy and when they are done teething, they return to their original position. That is weird. What could cause the ears to be tied to the teething process? There are so many interesting wonderments out there. Also, I found this nest. It was hanging off our ornamental plum tree. It was just hanging by a (literal) thread. I think it was the home of hummingbirds as it's very small and there were hummingbirds flitting about that tree all the time. I'm going to set it in the Christmas tree. My mom used to have one in our tree when I was a kid and supposedly it brought good luck. I'm a proponent of good luck. I eat black eyed peas on New Years Day, put heads up pennies in my shoe, and am constantly on the look out for good omens. Some examples of good omens from the past are; having a hummingbird or butterfly bathe in the water spray from the hose as I water the garden, or seeing a double rainbow that is unbroken. There are also wishes everywhere. Such as, you can make a wish when you take that first bite from a piece of pie, the pointy bite at the front. I'm not sure where I learned that one but it sounds good to me. You can wish on gray horses if you lick your thumb and then stamp your hand. It's endless. I also like black cats and feel good about the number thirteen. The only thing that I would ever see as bad luck is walking under a ladder so I never do that. Speaking of black cats, we carved a pumpkin today. We have two more to do before Wednesday. I find the bright orange insides to be just beautiful, in a gross, slimy way. And the seeds...what's up with that? I always cut out the recipes for roasting them, and they always look so yummy in the pictures, but when I make them they kind of taste like salty, shredded bits of kindling. Jay carved his first all-on-his-own jack-o-lantern. It looks quite traditional and has mean eyebrows and fangs. I've decided that I'd like a nice, small electric saw to carve mine with. I see all these very cool, creatively done pumpkins on the Internet and in magazines as I'm in the check-out line but I can never get past the triangle eyes, triangle nose, and toothy grin. I've decided I must just need more tools.

Here are my picks for good, scary movies....The Devil's Rejects (Rob Zombie film). Of course, Halloween one. Silence of the Lambs. The Shining. Those are all fairly old. Ghost Story. I love scary movies but I can see from my list that I need to peruse the local Blockbuster soon. Now, take this guy. He's one scary ass m.f. (Did I just write that?) That's why I cut off his head. Hehehe. Okay, true confession, tonight when I went outside to take the picture of the pumpkin, I was totally scared standing on my own front porch. I heard spooky noises (coming from decorations I put up) and everything was all dark and there were two frightening ghouls (that I stuffed this afternoon) sitting in lawn chairs. But it was STILL scary! Can't wait till Halloween.

I looked for a scary quote and this was one of the scariest I could find....
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
--George Bush

Green Eggs and Chairs

So, say that you want to make an egg salad sandwich. You put three eggs into a sauce pan, fill it with water and set it on the stove. Turn it to high and let it come to a boil. Turn the heat down, set the timer for 20 minutes. We're fine up to this point. Then, say you go out to the garage where you're building a little workshop because you want to be able to work on painting furniture in the dead of winter so the garage needs to be tightened up. Holy schmoly, you forget about those darn eggs! Well, here's what happens...while you're in the garage, the water totally disappears. Then the eggs explode. Yes. Explode. Across the whole flipping kitchen. I had egg shell five feet from the stove. Egg shrapnel, if you will. Thank god there was no one standing in the kitchen. Of course, had there been someone there, they might have just taken the sauce pan of eggs off the stove and this all could have been avoided. Unfortunately, I cleaned it all up before I thought of taking pictures for my blog.

I've been a little remiss in my blog upkeep. One week! Without a blog! I will do my best to not let that happen again. I think it was the garage obsession that threw me off track. With my furniture painting going strong, I realized that with the coming cold weather, I'd have no where to work. I've been painting out doors and the garage was so filled to the brim with STUFF. Not wanting to give up the creative endeavors of late, I had to make some changes. So, I rented a small storage unit to put boxes in so I could set up a small workshop in the garage. Now, after four days of packing the car up, taking stuff to storage, spending hours going through boxes of pictures and cards and paper minutiae, sorting, re-boxing, throwing away, finessing the work bench where I want it, moving the scroll saw, I have a nice little work area. Many of the boxes were full of stuff from my dad and mom so I spent hours pouring over old pictures and letters and bouncing from elated to depressed and back to ecstatic. I was able to get rid of a lot that I hadn't been able to when I packed those boxes three years ago when my dad died so it was a good, purging-yet-keeping-the-meaningful-crap kind of experience. Just not one I'd planned on six days ago.
I am including a couple pictures of my chair, which started out as a bulky trash item in front of someones house and is now a piece of art (to me). I have a quote on it, of course, along the back (Earth's Crammed With Heaven by Elizabeth Barrett Browning), and there is a star hanging off the back rest. It's sturdy and comfy and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it now. I think I recently wrote about having too much stuff and now I'm in the process of making MORE stuff to have too much of. Next I plan on making a small end table and then, since I have a couple child size chairs, I thought I'd do a "time-out" chair (idea courtesy of Ms. K. Lasley, thanks!). Not that I have any small children around the house, aside from my wonderful/stubborn nine year old son, but I certainly could use a time-out chair myself on occasion. In the picture of the chair it's difficult, if not impossible, to see that all the blue is outlined in plum, along with the bottoms of the back rungs/pillars/whatevers. I have, and have had for years, this desire to paint furniture (where does something like that come from?) and I had the very best time sitting in the sun, painting, picking out colors, screwing up, and spilling paint on the driveway. I get immense joy out of the whole of it and it remains still another thing I can do and not get paid for. Wait, wait, I was not going to go there. I still have seven months of opus so I don't get to stress until then.

My mom is still my sweet girl. She's eating a lot of pudding and drinking her cranberry juice. Ahh-h-h, the real reason for my opus. Spending time with my mama. I took Jay up there with me on Sunday and she just held on to his hand. She's got quite the grip. Next time I go up I'm going to take a picture of the your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine lunches. I did taste a bit the other day and it's not too bad. I believe it's possible to puree anything. Not that I'd want to, just that it's possible.

"Keep on sowing your seeds, for you never know which will grow -
perhaps it all will."
Ecclesiastes, 11:6

Stuff Galore

I have too much stuff. Things I just don't know where to put, or what to do with, or if I should just chuck them all. Like my "Best of Show" ribbon. Do people keep these? And where? Do I need to build a glass case? Put it in a scrapbook? What's up?! It was certainly a thrill walking into the County Fair exhibition building and seeing the damn thing on my artwork, but what now? Am I allowed to throw it away? If I do, does it get recycled or tossed in the trash? If I'm not going to keep it, do I even deserve the chance to enter again? And I have these three statuettes that were my dad's. He ordered them because they were in Parade magazine and made by Lenox. He had no interest in ivory two-inch-tall figurines in the shapes of an elephant, a swan, and a dolphin. But I imagine he saw them and thought that Lenox was a good brand so, what the heck. Now, I have them. I don't want them but I'm unsure of what step to take next. I think they might break if I put them in a grocery bag and drop them off at Goodwill. They ARE Lenox, after all. I can't imagine anyone I know wanting them. They WERE my dad's. Keep them, give them away, or dump them? I don't know what to do. And then there's this cool pen that my son got at a birthday party. It has a tiny car in a little cage on the top that I can take out and, by pushing a button on the side of the pen, it will race around the kitchen floor. Jay doesn't want it, I certainly don't need it, but it's so fun. And if I get rid of it, can I throw it away? There's nothing wrong with it, it's not broken. Auuggghhh. This type of thought takes up way too much of my time.
We went camping again last weekend. Chilly, yet beautiful. I'm now a total pop-up tent trailer advocate. Camp food, beautiful view, crackling fire, wilderness AND no sleeping on the ground. The night was really cold, I have to admit, and campy time will soon be over for the year but with a warm sleeping bag it is much more fun than I ever thought it would be. Here's a recipe to make your own tasty breakfast burritos!! Scramble one dozen eggs with one cup shredded cheddar/jack cheese mix. Add a dash of salt, pepper and cumin. Fry up a little bacon. Put egg/cheese mixture on a large flour tortilla, add a slice or two of bacon, then salsa or sour cream if you'd like, roll it up tucking one side in so it doesn't all fall out *learned this from experience* and YUM. Good protein, some carbs, and no plate necessary!
At night, I can sit in that trailer, out of the wind, making hot tea on the mini stove (or shaking up a fine martini) and curl up on a mattress in utter coziness. And I did invest in one of those new fangled dish washers....the Archie Clean-Deluxe.
Regarding the previous blog where I bemoan the horribleness of my hand painted beer bottles, here is the evidence. Not to worry, I have already been working on new techniques. I found that using spray paint was not the way to go, aside from the base coat. So, I'm currently experimenting with better ways to do this.
Plus, I'm really not a great painter so my intricate designs (of circles and stripes, just to name a few of the more complex ones) look messy and not AT ALL art like. And, strangely enough, the paint is actual liquid and it runs down the side of the bottles in places I don't want it to. Although I have found that, most of the time, painting is a very satisfying and calming experience. Sometimes.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
--Albert Einstein

Here I am

This is the cover of my book. My book. Silly. My book comes out in a month or so. People, if they desire, can read my poems. In a book. Weird. Okay, I don't want to talk about it. Okay, I'll talk about it. On one hand, I want everyone in the whole world to read my book. And then, I don't want anyone to read it. The "not wanting anyone to read it" is temporary. It's a strange feeling of "now everyone will know who I really am." Aaccckkkk! Oh well, at the same time, I relish that thought. I think, in my early years, :), I was different people with different people. What I've aspired to, in the last ten years, is to be JUST MYSELF with everyone. Authentic living, so to speak. Everybody basically gets the same me. No more being one way with some people and another way with other people. Geez, I hate it when I talk about me. (I have realized, however, that in a blog, that's just what happens...I talk about me occasionally)

Moving on. I went to Vegas last weekend. I LOVE Vegas. Sit me at a Roulette table for 6 hours with fifty bucks and I'm a happy gal. It's a very weird, glitzy, surreal place and I love it. Took my boy, and we met Suzy and her two girls. Three kids, two moms, swimming, nice digs (thank you brother John), and a nanny on Saturday night. We took the kids to see Stomp and made breakfast burritos in the morning to be frugal. Great vacation. And I was happy to get home.

My mom is wonderful. She gets coke floats everyday. She does not have to eat her spinach if she makes a face after one bite. She has these "mom" mannerisms that have resurfaced after the cease in meds. That seroquel has its place but can sure flatten a person out. She still inspires me every day to be alive. She smiles and gives these little laughs. Here's a funny story about her. She came into my bedroom once when I was about eleven. She was not a kidding/jokester type mom. She stood in my doorway and said, "You know those round toothpaste drops that you always leave in the sink? I was reading in Reader's Digest that you can pop them off the porcelain and use them as mints." I just sat there, quite unsure how to react. Really?!, I thought. She just smiled and walked back down the hall, and I thought, "wow, she's kidding. My mom made a joke." I had a totally new and impressive view of my mom after that day.

And finally, on the creativity front; my chair is going well, the drawer is shaping up nicely, I'm writing a poem here and there, and the hats are being knitted. I do have to say, however, that the bottles being painted to bottle the ESB beer that we're brewing came out horrid. (Pictures of all of this will appear shortly). I've only done three so far but they look absolutely stupid. I was looking at them today and thinking -- wow, yuck, bad job. So, I'll just have to start over on THAT project. But I did get a perverse thrill out of knowing that sometimes creativity is just f**ked up.

Funny quote of the day....
"When I die, I want to die like my grandfather--who died peacefully in
his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car."
--Author Unknown

Well,

I am doing creative things today and don't have time to write about it. I'm hand painting bottles to bottle the ESB beer that we're brewing. I'm working on a chair. I'm doing a hat with really weird yarn. I worked on a poem.

The life cycle of a dead tree

It began by dying, the green
of its life draining quietly
from the roots and tips of limbs.
The birds still came but the leaves
stopped renewing in the spring.

It looked harder and tougher
when dead
than when alive but it wasn’t.
Inside the trunk, decay was busy
working.
Budworms gnawed
within and woodpeckers
worked from without
to destroy the bones
of it all, until one day

it fell, whooshing
through the air past the blue
of sky and the soft petals
of clouds. It fell hard,
groaning into the damp
debris left of leaves and stems
and beetle bodies.

The people hidden within
their winter houses, glancing
from their windows, noticed only
the absence of the limb
the lone blue heron sat on
in the summer, the reach of brown
jutting into the moonlight
at night.

In Spring
when children fly from the house
like small birds
the tree became the ship,
the castle, and the dragon to slay
while the discarded branch
became the sword.

In a hundred years, its dust
will feed the clover.

Remember?

Remember about a month ago when I went berry pickin and got a big 'ol Tupperware full of blackberries? Man, that was a fun day. It was still summer, I was with friends and kids and getting scratched to bits by brambles. Well, tonight I made a blackberry pie from the berries I picked that day. And, although it looks to be a whole pie in the picture, I just finished having myself a big slice with a huge glass of milk. Ummmm. Those berries are so sweet and luscious. I am not always the successful pie maker. In fact, more often than not, the inside is thin and the crust is slightly underdone. But this one is yummy! I believe I will be having another piece for breakfast.

Remember when I grew those eggplant? They were getting big and then that damn frost came? But I still got four, you nasty old frost. Hehehe. And now...fried eggplant! They were sooo good. Small and tender and, of course, anything is just scrumptious when fried. The garden is history. I still need to blanch some tomatoes this week and I think I can make one more batch of zucchini bread but that's about it. I am so building a greenhouse next year.

Remember when I said I was going to be creative for four hours a day. Not. I'm getting in about two. But I'm trying to be okay with two for awhile. Wait until I show you the chair I'm working on! But I was shooting for four and I just can't do it right now.

I have a some mom stuff. My mom is now under hospice care. They've taken her off all meds and the focus is comfort. They are all so wonderful. She gets to stay at the memory unit where she's been for three years, in a nice room with people who love and care for her. Today I went up for lunch and she had a huge bowl of "your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine" and she ate most of it. She had vanilla pudding for dessert. I took this picture of her today. I LOVE feeding her. I have an insane love for it. I get to just sit, for an hour, and feed her and talk nonsense and mush and comb her hair with my fingers and help her eat. I like all the residents and the caregivers and it feels so good to just be there. The dining room holds about 5 or 6 tables with 2-4 people at each table. She smiles on occasion, (Tangent story here - on the hospice application I had to check all these things, nine of them, that she still could or could not do and the only one I could check "yes" to was - can she still smile? I loved being able to check that one) says a few words and holds my hand tight. This is the cool/weird part...once they take the meds away, she's become more lucid. Feeds herself a little, says more words. Shoots me looks and facial expressions that I remember from years ago. It's nice to have her doing more "mom" behaviors for a little while. And she doesn't have to swallow a dozen pills every day now. Hospice helps with baths and care and medical issues. They are good, caring people who have an amazing attitude about the dying process. My mom has a stellar view of the peaks and when she's lying down in her bed she is usually looking out the window. I asked her the other day if dad comes to see her much and her eyes got all big and she said, very loud and clear, "Oh yes."

This is how I see my life right now metaphorically:
Remember those cakes, the 9" x 13" rectangular ones that, after baking you could poke holes in with a straw. It was from a commercial for Jello brand pudding. Then, you'd make the pudding and pour it on the cake and pudding would seep into those holes. I feel like my life is the cake, and grief is the pudding, and it just kind of seeps in and touches most of the cake. But, even with the grief, my life is still cake.

Look on the bright side.
-Anna Divine
(my mom, who said this an unnerving
amount of times when I was a child,
but meant it, and lived it, and passed it on)

Camping...hmmm

Here is my first entry in the fine arts photography category for the County Fair next year. I love cows. I took this picture on the way back from camping this last weekend and I.....whoa...wait a minute....CAMPING?! It's kind of akin to the dog issue. I am not a camping type person. I have never been a camper. I have never even desired to BE a camper. When I was a kid, we never, as in, not-one-time, went camping. My parents just were not into the backpacking/tent-putting-up/sleep on the ground experience. But nowww, I'm a camper. Okay, I, also, am not in favor of the tent-putting-up/sleep on the ground experience. Plus, because of scary movie residue, I am always scared to death of a huge bowie knife ripping through the canvas while I sleep. So, I bought a tiny pop-up camper. And now, I too can camp.
This does not alleviate the knife through the canvas predicament, but it does get rid of the sleeping-on-the-ground and the putting-up-a-tent. I may still lie awake at night waiting for a homicidal maniac to find the campsite, but at least I'm comfy. And, bonus, there are gadgets. Look at this cooler. Ready to have a bag of ice dumped in and beer inserted. Look at the stove and the sink. Well, the sink is a little iffy. I don't know that I actually want to drink the water that comes out of a hose that's been in there since 1985. But it's clean and pretty. I'll tote my own water thank you very much. But now I have a counter to set the water jug on and a sink to drain it once I've brushed my teeth. Each side of the pop-up folds out into full sized beds, and it has a table with booth seating that also turns into a full bed. And, the whole caboodle folds down into a neat 6'x 8' box on wheels.

I have to admit, it was an impulse buy. Sheesh. But hey, I'm not buying any clothes. It fairly old and it was fairly cheap. Along with the scary, irritating parts of camping, there are also wondrous things. There's the stars at night seen from a grassy meadow. There's the toasty campfire that pops and crackles and keeps you warm when you start to think, What in the hell am I doing outside when it's 34 degrees out?! There are breakfast burritos that taste so much better eaten in the crisp 7:00am air, along with thick, dark, camp coffee....when at home I would never be up that early on a weekend. There's the people and their kids that go along, and it's like being a in a cool little village for the weekend. There's the sound of animals, and weather, and the wind in the trees. And one of the things I love the best, which is not taking a bath for a couple days and getting all dirty and yucky and then Sunday afternoon, getting home and taking a half hour hot yummy shower.
Plus, how could one not get this camper when it has such a cool floor. And finally, it's such a great feeling to wake up in the morning at the campsite alive, and not another story on America's Most Wanted. :P

"Earth's crammed with Heaven."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Chapter 8, Giving

The List

Here is a list. A list of names. I was going through some drawers from my mom's old dresser and found this. I knew immediately what it was. When my mom and dad used to live at Fountain View Village (see post from Aug 19 "Whew") they would have dinner in the dining room every night. My dad made a list of the servers names because he felt it was good to call people by their names. So, at dinner, he would pull out his list and slide it halfway under his plate. When he saw a face, he could match the name from the list to it. He still occasionally got mixed up but as a general rule, he was spot on for getting the names right with his little cheat sheet. Things like that were so important to him. Someday soon I'm going to tell you his story.

A sad tale about vegetables. Okay, not too sad. We had a FREEZE two nights ago. Darn. Quite a bit of my garden was decimated. Although, most things had been harvested. I still have four eggplant, some tomatoes, a couple turnips and some bell peppers outside but most everything else either froze or had already been picked. Next year I'm building a greenhouse. And I'm going to expand the garden. Whoooaa. It's fall and I'm planing my springtime already. But I'm also living in my fall. Next week the leaves should really be turning. Tonight we're going into the woods for a fire and light-up Frisbee and a glass of wine (root beer for the under 12 crowd). Elk bugle at night and there are deer everywhere. Stars are out like crazy and I'm going to wear a sweater. Yeah, it's fall.

Oh Pooh

This is my latest hat. It has tassels. I'm filling up a sack with hats to take to a shelter or someplace like that. I might keep this one though because I think the tassles really work for me. Here's my take on hats. It's one thing you really want to get new. People put all kinds of crap in their hair, plus, some people have things in their hair that they don't even want in there. So, used clothing is fine (no, I have not bought any other items of clothing), but hats, a new, neverwornbefore one is preferable. Modeling this hat is my Winnie the Pooh. You only know that because there is a WP on his shirt. He doesn't much look like any W the P I've ever seen before. Here's the story on that....

When I was about ten, I wanted a Winnie the Pooh. My mom had some woman from down the block MAKE me one. I didn't want no stinkin home made W the P! I wanted the standard, orange-yellow, plush (not frickin terry cloth) W the P. So, for Christmas, I got this unofficial, FAKE Winnie the Pooh. I was stunned, to say the least, on Christmas morning when I tore off the wrapping paper and found THIS. Silence. I'm afraid I was a little ungrateful. I probably even cried. And now? Now I love this darn W the P. I cannot get rid of it. It kind of serves as, first, my humbling reminder that I should just be thankful for what I get, and second, it's different than all the other W the P. (Why is that okay now and so horrendous when I was a kid?!), and third, my mom had someone make me a W the P. She thought she was doing something special. She was.

Here is a picture of Sally Field at the Emmy's last night. I love awards shows. It was the funniest thing. I took three pictures of her and she has her eyes closed in all of them. For some reason I didn't think it was possible to take a picture of someone on television and have them close their eyes. I speak about the Emmy's now only to say that Rainn Wilson, the guy who plays Dwight on The Office, also played fish boy in the Rob Zombie film, House of a Thousand Corpses (I love scary movies). I adore The Office and it will always make me laugh. Dwight did not win the Emmy, although I was cheering madly for him.

I fed my mom two bowls of strawberry ice cream a couple nights a go. She kept wanting more and more. I think that, once you hit your eighties, no one can ever tell you you've had enough ice cream.

One Moment

I saw my mama tonight. She's back up in her little memory unit apartment, finally out of skilled nursing. She's not doing well, as far as you and I would consider "doing well" but she is warm and clean and nestled in a nice bed. When I went up there tonight around 6:15, she was tucked in and had been given fluids. I went in her room and put my hand on her cheek (she has the softest skin of anyone I've ever met), and she opened her eyes and smiled at me and shrugged her shoulder up to kind of hug my hand with her shoulder and cheek. It was so beautiful. In the smallest gesture there was this unbelievable amount of love and history. I felt like, "wow, she knows me and she loves me." I've been working it out in my head; the whole quality-of-life thing and the the-body-is-merely-our-shell, and the she-needs-to-go-hang-out-with-my-dad-now thing. But in that moment I just wanted to holler, Don't Go! because I wanted to be able to keep that feeling going my entire wild and precious life. Because that mom love is irreplaceable. Instead of hollering, I sat her up, asked one of the nice CNA's for a health shake and a small ice cream, and I fed her. Spent an hour sitting on her bed, hanging out, with my arm around my mom. This picture is from about four years ago. She had been memory sick for a few years but was still very much alert and coherent. But, and I use a literary term here, there was a bit of fore shadowing in her face. What I like is the look in Jay's eyes and how he looks up at her. Here's what I think; I think I've been very lucky in the amount of moments I've had in my life that contained love.

The following quote is called The Cost of Living......

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own
insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable
violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty
to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never
power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand.
To never look away. And never, never, to forget.
--Arundhati Roy

Blech

Here is a picture of the strange tadpole. It's either something completely normal and everyone but me learned about it in fourth grade, or it's severely poisonous and has leached alien blech into my glassware and kitchen. It's about an inch and a half long. Weird.

It's almost fall (yummy sigh). If I don't become a mutant cyborg after picking up that odd creature (yes, I really did hold it in my hand. eeewwwww), I'll soon be enjoying my favorite time of year. Sweaters, fires, crisp air, leaves turning into yellows and reds. Football, Halloween, plus, big things always happen to me in the fall. Coffee even tastes better in the morning. And I have to finish by saying this about coffee...I love it, but I have stopped grinding my own. Huge simplification of my life. I grind it in the store. It's still fresh and tasty, but there's no grinder on the counter, no ground coffee flying through the air, no clean-up, and the cup is in my hands that much quicker. It's sacrilege to some I suppose, but I'm still drinking rich, awesome coffee with much less work. Oh, p.s....unless someone has committed the grievous sin of grinding flavored coffee in the store grinder, in which case I either buy the already ground, or go to a different store (damnit).

Mostly weird

I have never been a dog person. When I was a kid we had a German short hair hunting dog that was mostly my dad's. She stayed in the back yard except on VERY cold winter nights when he let her sleep in the garage. I now have three dogs. I have no idea how in the hell I got them. But I LOVE them. I find myself petting them for no reason. I pick them up and carry them like babies. I (eewwww) kiss their furry noggins. Archie is this Corgi with a faulty ear. It droops. He's 5 months old. Yes, I bought him at a pet shop (puppymill) because he was on sale. Helen is the deaf/blind girl (who is Archie's platonic girlfriend...they be lovin on each other all the time. Biting each other's ears and stuff...chasing around the yard). Helen is 5 years old and was quite sedentary until the Arch man came into her life. She was a rescue dog that we got about 10 month ago. And Stan is the king. He's the only one allowed to come upstairs...and that's to wake up his boy (Jay) in the morning. He's 3 years old and a bit stuffy. Another pet shop special, on sale, getting old in the tiny cubicle at Petland. He and Arch Stanton (each dog has 50 names) are now, after a month, sleeping next to each other when they're not sinking their teeth into each other's throats or fighting for supreme toy possession. No, I've never been a dog person. I always thought they were stinky and slightly stupid. I liked cats. I still do (wouldn't those three dogs LOVE a kitten?!). I used to pet dogs with just the tips of my fingers, you know, as to not get any dog yuck on me. Arms length dog petter. I must confess, I'm still a bit that way with other people's dogs. But I really love my dogs. I find it interesting when people change TRULY in a way they never thought they would. Every once in a while I check in with myself and yep, sure enough, I do love those dogs.

The following thing is a total embarrassment but I must be honest....I get so flipping happy for celebrities at times. When I found out this weekend (People magazine was in the mail!) that Halle Berry is pregnant, it was like it happened in my own family! After all those bad horrid relationships! After illness and abandonment! And here she is 41! She seems like such a nice girl. I was happy about it the whole darn weekend. Is that weird?

Then, out driving around in the outback, I came upon this tree. It was old and burned out and very tall and it had this cool heart shape in it. I always feel so lucky when I stumble on things like this. And looking at the picture, the heart shape isn't really that apparent, but it was super cool when we saw it. It was next to a really muddy pond where Jay and I found these strange alien tadpoles that have a split tail thing and a shell-type covering. Now they were bizarre. We brought two home and I did think, momentarily, that they might hop out of the jar during the night and overtakeus. Which is weirder...those creatures or that I actually let Jay bring two home? Hmmmmm.

The Farmer's market is still going (until the first weekend of October) and I went there Sunday to pick up tamales. I had plenty of veggies at home but found this succulent plant called a lithops. It looks kind of like a butt. It was so odd I had to get one.

All life is an experiment.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Goal: Have more fun

We found this tiny lizard. He's only about an inch and a half long. Jay said, "can we keep him" and I said, "no, but you can carry him around a bit in a container and then we'll let him go again" so we found a plastic utensil holder and popped him in there with some leaves and dirt. We took him with us to the fairgrounds to pick up our wins and losses and driving back, Jay said, "We shouldn't have taken him. He looks hot and we should have just left him where he was. It's my fault" I told him that of course it's not his fault and that Mr Lizard will be fine and that we'll let him go in ten minutes, but it made me think. I'm glad Jay has that ability to feel for others and to think outside himself. But he was also so serious and guilt ridden. So, as I think in my mind "It's all my fault", and as I head into my second quarter of my one year of opus, I'm making an addendum to the rules/goals, which is to have more fun with Jay. To not be so serious all the time. Feeling solely responsible for this boy, I often, okay, pretty much always, focus on the lesson, the responsibility, the serious aspect of matters. Cripes! I'm going to try and be a little more goofy, a little bit more playful in the realm of Jay. But no, I will not include that in my daily four hours.

Speaking of, it's really hard some days to get four hours of creativity in. It's hard to get one! With all the errands and chores and meetings and blah, blah, blah stuff. I'm not complaining, just noting. I am in my fourth month of OYOO. I've accomplished some things I wanted to. I'm actually being more committed and getting more done than I had envisioned. But I need to push myself a little more. This coming week...one piece of furniture assembled, advance on drawer art, and finish current hat-in-progress. Over the next couple weeks...start taking photos for unnamed and secret future coffee table book, and start painting bottles to hold the unnamed beer I'm getting ready to brew. Goals are good. It helps if I write them down.

I saw the cover of my soon-to-be-released poetry book today. Hehehe. I love it. Can't talk about it yet though. Not till it's in my hands.

My mom is back in her room in the memory unit. I don't know what else to write about that one right now except that I'm happy she's back there. Mr Lizard is also back, alive and scurrying about, occasionally napping underneath a log in the front flower garden.

The fair, part two

Sometimes it's nice to win. That's all.
It's just nice. It's a little county
fair and it's a silly ribbon, but it feels
good. I won a best of show for my mixed media
art and Jay won a blue ribbon
for his "Nappy time for Stan."







We are full of ourselves and
think we may be artists
and it's made us slightly kinder people,
but probably just for today. And I'm safe
in the knowledge that I never, ever have to ride
on the tilt-a-whirl again.

The fair, part one

You know how when you're really young, life is filled with "first" things. For instance; first bike, first letter you ever got in the mail, first time driving a car, first sushi experience, on and on, almost every day had a first. Today I had a "last." It was my last time riding the tilt-a-whirl. I was at the fair with my boy and we were cruising through the midway. I saw the tilt-a-whirl and, after talking my son into it (oh, come on. It's so fun. I laugh SO hard on this ride), there I was, waist bar across my lap, grinning like a fool, bring it ON! I spent the next 5 minutes, which felt like an hour, thinking, "Don't throw up. Just do not throw up" in-between saying "isn't this fun!?" to Jay. Wah-hoo! My fair mantra...do-not-throw-up do-not-throw-up do-not-throw-up. And to think I used to lean into the tilt to make the car spin faster. ugh. No more tilt-A-whirl. Ever. Done. Move on. Even the Ferris wheel seemed a little edgy. I kept thinking, "I would most definitely die if I fell from this height" and "this fair is only in town for 4 days, I bet they slap these things up in a hurry." Obviously my LIVE NOW theory does not apply to risk taking, extreme sports or county fairs.

After the rides, we hit the games. I love the carnies and yet I'm slightly afraid of them. We played that game where you have a squirt gun and you aim at a small circle with the stream of water, which makes a little monkey climb a tree. The first monkey to the top wins. I had flashbacks at that point because, at one of the same carnivals where I loved the tilt-a-whirl, I also played this same game with my niece, Suzy. When the nice carny said "go", Suzy turned her squirt gun on the nice carny and just doused the guy. We ended up leaving in quite a hurry. Thank god I'd already experienced my favorite, the tilt-a-whirl.

Today, I also became the person carrying around the huge mutant stuffed animal. Yes, it is possible to get that little ring over the neck of the glass milk bottle. And you have to love the inflatable AK-47 assault rifle. Tomorrow - The fair, part two...the awarding of the ribbons.

It's just a melon

The Garden Princess is equally overjoyed and embarrassed. What she assumed was a watermelon is, in fact, a cantaloupe. So, taking in other recent developments, she thought pumpkins were cantaloupes, and cantaloupes were watermelons. Either the Walmart garden crew was terribly remiss when marking their product, or Garden Princess had an extra glass of wine while planting her garden. Hmmm-m-m. Oh whatever. But...the great part is that Garden Princess now gets to see that brown vegetal mesh grow itself around the cantaloupe. Right now it's still mostly green and smooth but around the bottom there's this texture thing going on. A little bit more every day. (At this point I'll stop talking about myself in third person, which is really creepy, with the possible exception of Seinfeld episode #216). And It's only September first (Holy schmoly, it's September first!?). Plenty of time.
I think even this cute little eggplant will have time to get fat and ripe. Garden count as of today (including "picked" and "still growing"); 42 tomatoes, 9 yellow squash (squarsh if you're from Kansas. Go Chiefs!), 11 zucchini, 2 cantaloupe, 4 pumpkins, 2 banana peppers, 14 bell peppers, 7 turnips, 3 carrots, 2 beets, 3 eggplant and 9 okra.

Can I talk about my mother? She's going to go back to the memory unit on Tuesday. That's her real home. Now. It's on the third floor or the same building where she's been in skilled nursing. She's walking with a walker. She still cannot take direction or feed herself. She will never be able to do those things. Okay, she hasn't even done these things for the last year. The broken hip can heal, the other stuff is constant. But the memory unit is good. There are all this wonderful old people with no minds to speak of. I think of it as this alternate universe where these folks just mill about, with some of them back in their twenties, holding babies and getting ready to make pies, some of them in their forties, lives filled with spouses and kids and rotary meetings, and some angry or lost or only able to repeat the same word over and over. But really, they're all lovely grandmas and grandpas who just can't think well enough to still be in a house, crocheting or gardening or watching tv, like they should be. These are the people who might be surrounded by grandkids, and be bickering with the one person they were able to grow old with, if not for the strange little plaques invading the thought paths of the brain. (Was I the one who listed "optimistic" in my profile?) Moving on...

And speaking of pathways and brains, I started an African dance class (counts for 1.5 of my 4 hours, mind you) on Fridays. It is so fun and yet I felt like a total dork. The dance steps are just not that complicated but my brain (my melon) would not get it. First there's the feet, then you add in the arms, and then even your head is supposed to do it's own thing. And I am the absolute anti-exercise girl so there I was misstepping all over the place, arms flailing, out of breath, sweating like a pig. Too bad I don't have a picture of that :P I loved it.