Category: Personal

Some light streams in through the cracks between the blinds that cover my sliding balcony door.  The Winco is a 24-hour store, and the soft yellow lights of the parking lot mesmerize me at times.  I like the way the puddles catch the reflections, and send them off at odd angles on their way back up.  I’ve lost a couple hours watching this more than once…with a beer, sitting out on the balcony.  Every once in a while an occassional tire, shopping cart or shoe passes through those puddles and adds even more variables to the equation as I look on from my 2nd story vantage point, roughly 12 feet up and 10 yards out.

It’s 3:25 AM on a random weekday morning as I type this ‘intro’…and I find myself wide awake as usual at this time.  I’ve got work in a few hours, but if I can’t sleep anyway I might as well do something productive with the time.  I enjoy the night…the silence, and the lights off…I even see better this way.

It’s not about a class war. Or Iraq. Or terrorism. It’s not even healthcare or New Orleans or the next Katrina-like disaster. It’s not collapsing bridges or trapped miners. Not abortion or gay marriage, civil rights or liberties. Tax cuts for the rich and what’s left in the treasury going to Halliburton? No, not that either. Predatory lending and sub prime markets crashing? Loss of income? Fear of job loss? Loss of worker safety protections? No no no no no no no….

It’s simply this: Our governmental infrastructure is broken… it’s dysfunctional. Further, the government of the United States of America has turned its back on its citizens. Hey. I have a novel idea. How about stopping those causing the dysfunction? Yeah. Like an intervention called IMPEACHMENT. We must demand Congress does its job and uphold the Constitution. Restore our freedoms and Constitutional rights damn it! Start with, first and foremost, enforcing separation of church and state and creating an earthquake-proof secular government. Then let’s get rid of thought crimes straight away. And torture and spying on US Citizens.

Because really, I’m thinking a government that condones spying on its citizens and dismantling due process as it outsources military, education, medicare et al is a government of men and women not interested in health care or education or the military. They are interested in controlling us and giving all those private contracts to their buddies. Cha Ching. We need our equilibrium back. We need to restore our country by rebuilding our governmental infrastructure. Forget 2008. If we want health care and collapsing bridges repaired, then we have to find people to send to Congress who will start the hard work of restoring the functionality of the United States government.

SURPRISE!!

And just for you, because you are SOooo Special….

One to wish upon…

and an ooey-gooey Yummy one….

We’ve just been waiting on YOU!

The thing I’m continually learning is so simple: I define my life. I stand up or down. I say yes or no. I fight, go along, or give up. It comes down to just me.

The way I see it, this blip in time is mine.  But not for much longer, as I can imagine a time when humans, as we are now, probably won’t exist. The upside is that I’m sure some other type of earthling will evolve. Will they love van Gogh and Bach though? I don’t know.

I like to think these new earthlings will be as awestruck by star dust and sunlight as I…  that they will try to figure out a way to describe the thud and splat of raindrops and the whisper of wind through tall grass… that they’ll fall in love and have their own dance. I’ve stopped being sad that it won’t be mine in a million years from now.

However. That’s then. This is now and I’ve got my dance card. I can’t help it if George Bush is on it.  But fuck him.  

Nine years ago this week  — it seems an eternity ago — I was sleeping next to my husband in my parents’ house on a Texas border island, at the end of the most miserable Christmas I have ever spent.

Seven months earlier, my husband and I had sold our house in Virginia, had sold most of the furniture in it, and had embarked on what I had earnestly hoped would be a new life.  He was a professional whose practice had failed, a functioning alcoholic who refused to acknowledge it, and an abuser whose abuse had emerged on the day we were returning from our honeymoon and had grown in spite and fury, and by leaps and bounds, intermittently, in the two years since.

This apartment is too clean, too sterile.  Like it hasn’t been lived in enough, or at all for that matter…

De reir a cheile a thogtar na caisleain.

It takes time to build castles.

There are definitely some signs of life here, though…and in one case, remnants of a life.  I saved the orange “funeral” placard that was on my front window during the procession that brought my best friend from the wake to his final resting place, a little fenced-in Catholic cemetary in Union County, New Jersey.  Lots of trees, lots of green.  Lots of places to sit and think.  It’s best at night…the stars make no noise.  A respite from the nastiness of the world.

I spent most of my last day in New Jersey there. I sat there, and I thought about…

… Do not stand at my grave and cry-

I am not there… I did not die…

Okay, so we’ll leave there then, man.  We’ll go back to my place again, okay?

Let’s dig much deeper…

About a month ago, I posted these words:

1. You can post 100 links to DocuD in a day

2. You can raise 20,000 dollars for Winter Rabbit in a week.

3. You can help a family get reunited.

4. You can fund a small community project in your home town.

5. You can tell 100 people about reducing their Carbon output this weekend.

6. You can host an Online Blogger’s Symposium with Guest Speakers.

7. You can decide the Veteran’s deserve another voice right now.

Let’s see how we did below the fold:

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Rummaging through ornaments, I pick up three of my favorites. A trio of polar bears, made from a kind of velvet elvis-like material. They all have this innocent hey lady, where’s the hot chocolate and cookies look when really, they’re eyeing the red-lacquered wagon. And they do it every year … ha! One bear climbs in as the other two take up positions pulling and pushing the wiggly little cart across the window sill. It’s a sweet little vignette until the “it’s my turn to ride in the wagon” starts. But we’ve all been there…

The snowmen, generally a more gentlemanly bunch, find a place around a sparkly tree on a quiet sill away from the bears. Greenery gets hung around my fire place (as much make believe as the polar bears and snowmen), and I light candles in its pretend hearth. The collection of Santas, with big bellies and spindly legs, have gathered around the wood-cut fir to admire the fine glass sleigh parked there and piled high with packages. Christmas music is playing and this year, snow surrounds my little place.

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.  ~Erma Bombeck

I like make-believing. I especially like make-believing in Santa because he always has faith in what kids believe, seeing beyond wish-lists and into their innocent hearts. The right jolly old elf doesn’t just leave a doll or stuffed animal, but playmates who never tire of tea parties, building forts in forests, or turning sticks into swords . These rag-tagged companions never object to being dragged along on all the Lewis & Clark-like expeditions kids love to make.

     

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Driving home from work overwhelms me if I let it. I see the hundreds of drivers in their solitary cars, some passengers, few passengers. I realize I, too, am alone in my car on a drive that could be achieved with far less stress and daily environmental angst if a decent light rail or a well-planned bus system existed in the Northwest metropolis I live in. It takes an hour and a half one way and three buses to attempt to public transit it to work from where I live, and a mere fifteen to twenty minutes by car. I have a car to drive, which is either a hybrid or a beater Nissan Sentra, both of which cost way too much of my income in insurance and gas costs with two teenagers at home.

You – you said – what’d you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken down that they… Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars?