or a bolt..

From the Suggestion Box:

2007 ... the final hours

I will admit I am not feeling the urgency to leave 2007 that I felt to leave 2004, 2005 and 2006. I feel generally grateful that for me 2007 passed without explosions, death or dismemberment, that many goals I set at the last new year were actually met. I felt I have repaired the holes in my hull, mended the sails and set the rudder. I can see the breeze on the water and soon it will pull me along into something new. I guess it is hope that I feel fully again. After so long wandering about punch-drunk, it feels rather miraculous.
I am the Fool of the Tarot. Wish me luck. Yoikes and away!

To all of my friends, you know who you are. It was your notes and calls and hugs that brought me back from the edge of the abyss, or at least gave me good reason to find my way. I have on my list for the new year to make a point of reminding you who you are and how very much you are worth to me.

To make manifest

For quite a while now I have been sending out to the universe a call for a new occupation. I have wanted to step back from patient care since the tremors are embarrassing and required me to overcompensate with a show of professional confidence that became exhausting. I have had limited opportunity to expand professionally since the home and children where always my domain in entirety. I don't know how other superwomen did it, but when I tried to I took a nose dive and had to retire back to house motherhood. I embraced what I could, but found that stir craziness bubbling up again. I want to work for the stimulation, socialization and respect. I like to feel that I am valued. I like the feeling that I have economic value. It goes with the apocalyptic leanings I have blogged about before. I need to know I can survive on my own. And last but not least, I hate asking anyone for money. I have come to understand that I am not comfortable being dependant. I also tried really hard to put on the apron and be content with that. But children and the incessant "mommy look!" s that go with it wear me down. I want to speak in big words and long sentences. I try to honor it as the most important job in the world, but ... I guess I just can't take it full time... Isn't it ironic?
So last week the universe answered. A memo went up describing what I had asked for, but the position was full time. Oh no. No way. Not again. But thanks to a life friend and college of mine, I was encouraged to throw my hat in the ring and make my conditions.
And what do you know but they offered me the position and accepted my conditions. In fact I was highly recommended by my managers. They are willing to train and hopefully I can earn a certification. !
As always there is that anxiety. But the lure of learning and growing... and all this during school hours!!!
Of course the reaction in the family is positive with a reserve. No one wants their world to be affected.
Well. We'll see. Because the other thing I have been asking the universe for is for my world to conform now to my direction, as it has been for so many years the other way around.

It's just a bunch of garbage

http://www.storyofstuff.com/index.html

If you are in my email list you got this link. This is the best explanation of what has been bothering me ( as both a participant and a rebel) for a long time. I have had this vague unease about the future and find myself craving to be viable off the grid. Thoughts like, what would it be like if the power went off for a week? Never mind just off. What would I do? What could I eat if the grocery store was closed or say-- blown up? So I have been having these kind of apochalyptic thoughts for years now, and have brushed it off as a form of paranoia or perhaps transference of anxiety from the childhood stories of my mothers hometown
being blown to bits in WW2.

I guess I deep down believe that ,yes, it really can all just go away. It is a possibility. It is the first thing I thought of when 9/11 happened. Wow. It is just a little bit of America, imagine it was a whole city. Not impossible. But maybe and what if have lead me to quiet insanity before.
Now I wonder after seeing this video if it is simply the gut reaction that there is something fundamentally wrong with our culture,and that we cannot continue the present course.I try to avoid advertisement, but it has so diluted any media that it is difficult to see what's going on in the world and not be exposed. What bothers me most is when I don't even conciously hear it anymore. Because when I really listen it is pure insanity. Spin and play on words and images. Marketing to children whose parents are to exhausted from the treadmill they aquiesce just to shut them up. Can't disappoint the children!

So as usual I will have my opinion and then promptly look in my own back yard, or gargbage can and shopping bag, as it were. So maybe I'll pledge in 2008 to not buy anything I won't use for 5 more years, or use up everything I have, or something noble like that... Drat, no more pen and paper splurges. I did realize over the last 10 years I have started and never filled at least as many journals. What made me think I needed a new one? I wonder.

The mirror of the past

All this snow and ice has me housebound. The plow guy was MIA until noon after the storm. I came to fully appreciate how wimpy I have become when walked K2 to a playdate friend up the hill. Gee, this snow is deep. Didn't look so deep from the cozy warm front window... Even the cats recoil from the cold that blasts in the door and and they scurry away with pinched faces.

In this forced holding pattern, I had a rare gift. Hubby has been in one of his mad digital conversion fits. His goal is to convert every tape, slide, film, or other "ancient" media form into a library of digital files for posterity or who ever gets a kick out of it. I have had two reel to reel tapes since forever that my mom gave me. They were labelled cryptically in German with dates of 1960 and 1970.

So on my desk was a bright shiny new CD with mp3 files of ancient history. It took a little fiddling with volume and headphones to fully get it, but suddenly I was hearing my mother's voice. Much thinner, much younger. Then my father's. Talking to the tape which was to be sent to my mother's mother in Germany. They talked of their new town and church, of the friendly people, how things compared with their home. They talked of Kennedy's election over Nixon. I heard my mother giggle with the barely suppressed news that she was pregnant with the child before me, who would die in infancy.

The last segment she spoke to her sister in 1970. She rejoiced in having a rare afternoon to herself without the interruption of children. She was explaining the current stresses of her life- inflation, layoffs, kids turning to drugs. She mentioned each of us and where we were and what we looked like. All of our good qualities she praised. My father's work and the perilous position he was in with waves of layoffs. She was taking college courses to get her teaching certificate and the mother-juggling she had to do to get that all done and all of us taken care of.

Then she said that what she missed the most was talking to her mother. How different it felt to make decisions alone with out her counsel. I heard my own voice in hers. Funny that I just told the sky last night that I missed her. It almost seemed that she was answering, 'I know, I was where you are once. It is the way of things.'

All this almost two hours of non-stop talking was in German and I understood it all as if I were still there lying on the rug of our living room in the house where I began. The language I thought I had forgotten was not even noticeable to me any more.

Our minds are amazing things.

Bippity Boppity BOO !

Once upon a time there was a fairy princess...

I don't know why, but lately I've been getting a big kick out of these old pictures of me. Maybe I'm a little homesick. Maybe I am just envious of the innocence I see.

The gown was a pink flannel nightgown, with silver paper doilies sewn on, and the crown and wand were covered with foil. I thought it was awesome! I guess shoes weren't in the budget...

just a light in the darkness..

For sometime now the living room has been empty. It was painted and all the old furniture moved to for the ultimate makeover. The Christmas fever descended on my youngest the day after Thanksgiving and I found myself dragging three boxes of Christmas decorations down to the empty treeless room. Within an hour it and her face were transformed by the soft glow of hundreds of lights winding in loopy trails all around the floor. She sat in the midst of it, smiling at me--illuminated, luminous. So magical and beautiful.
I am thankful for that face and the wisdom of it. Joy is really a simple thing. Hang around a kid long enough and they'll remind you.

The pox on it

K1 is doing a report on disease in the 17th and 18th century. We were just talking about small pox. It was not long ago in my line of work there were meetings and training and signup sheets for volunteers willing to recieve the first immunizations and participate in the mass vaccinations of population that would follow. We were shown photos, thankfully old ones since small pox has been allegedly erradicated. I thought of my professional exposure and my children. For a moment or two I glimpsed a panic of self preservation that can make the best organization unravel. And then I was again safe in my present. My well fed and healthy present. We are bessed, lucky and spoiled. So when our turn comes, we should not complain.

Sock conspiracy

One closet down, five to go. What is it about spring and fall that make me want to turn everything upside down and rebuild it? I always have the fantasy of finding the mates to all the lost socks. Never happens. I bet as soon as I give up on an orphan and chuck it, the mate turns up and I hold onto it thinking "I've just seen it somewhere". Maybe I should date stamp them or something. Each orphan is allowed 30 days in the sock basket, before it shall be vanquished (I've been watching alot of Charmed lately).

So that is about as profound as I feel like getting today. I am off to the upstairs realm to further rummage, sort and chuck.

The dangers of dinner time

Last night at the dinner table I was accosted by the pigtail gang. It wasn't pretty believe me... I gave them the slip at homework time and made my escape.

Thank god for homework.

Everyone has a unique perspective.

Must've done something right!

Yesterday there was no school and after the kids did the homework they had shunned the night before we went to... The Mall. Yes, that beehive of consumerism. I suppose I do the bees an injustice since they are not flying into the hive with little credit cards to buy honey with money(a poet!) they don't have. Well, anyway, you get the picture. I hate the mall because, like tabloid news of Britney Spears, it fascinates and disgusts me at the same time. I feel that inner whinny child awaken in me to scream "I want! I want!". Yet the genes I carry from my immigrant parents are appalled at the prices so brazenly asked for such shoddy goods, and the marketing machine that assumes you believe you are getting a bargain. I think the scariest thing for me is to watch the kids in the mall. The little buyers.

Little K2, with all of 8 years of shopping experience( if you include stroller time), entered Claire's on a mission to buy something with the remains of her birthday money. She circled and circled glittering pink garden of lipgloss eden. Finally I suggested a wallet that I knew she could not resist. Pink metallic pretend-leather with huge gem stones glued on it. I just wanted to get done in the store. I did not intend the lesson that unfolded. K2 was thrilled, she dug out her dollars and we counted pennies. She had barely enough. Then I dropped the bomb. You can buy the wallet, but you will only have a few pennies of all this money left to put in it. Is it worth it? Or would you rather keep the money and find some wallet or ziplock back or altoids tin at home to keep it in? She put the wallet back and marched out of the store, a little frustrated, but unscathed.
Mom -1 Mall- 0

The best was in abercrombie, whose marketing strategy seems to be to confront you with the super-sized bare chested male model that you will neither be or see in real life (not to be confused with reality tv) and then pound your brain with some nondescript dance music until you submit to buying their tissue paper T-shirt for an arm and both legs. I often refuse to walk on that side of the mall, much less go in there, but alas, K1 had several gift cards burning a hole in her purse. K2, bless her, is as sensitive to loud noise as I am, so she walked around with her hands over her ears. Several well outfitted twiggy teens were sifting through the clothing, looking like a scene from Laguna Beach or the Hills. Occasionally you'd see a suburban mom-in-waiting trailing along while her bright faced daughter darted eagerly from rack to rack. Finally K2 and I retreated to the bench outside and let K1 browse.

K1 came out with a very large bag with that naked man on it, and a very small little shirt in it. She did not look satisfied. She complained that the prices where too high, and the people that work there weren't really nice. I asked why and she mimicked quite satisfactorily the huge pec man who complained he'd worked all day and had to go to the gym, and very tan girl who couldn't wait to get done to go home and tan. She used the words "phony", "not real" and "get a life."

I was so proud.

Coming soon...

The splendidly mundane adventures of ..

HARD ROCK MAN

TGI Monday

I'm not sure what happened this weekend. I feel hung over and didn't even drink. Maybe I should have. K1 is better though I took her to the doc for a check over and she has a walking pneumonia, which so explains the lingering fatgue. Another Z pak ought to fix it. I should get me some of that... Any way she is now teaching K2 a cheerleading routine and they are getting along fightening well. Nothing like a little illness to make everyone enjoy each other more. SHHH... (knock on wood)

If everyone goes to school this week, I may regain my balance.

K2 is doing a research project on a rebel and she chose Katharine Hepburn. I went to the library to pull some books for her while she was home sick, and, of course, came home with one or two on the subject that I wanted to read myself. The story begins with her grandparents and describes the suicides of her grand father and uncle, and the precarious position the women where left in financially and socially. The utter dependence on men which drove her grandmother to push KH's mother and aunts into college even though educated women where undesirable. KH's mother fought for women's suffrage and birth control. Her aunt went through medical school and was appalled by the treatment of venereal disease. At a time when there was no treatment yet for gonorrhea or syphilis, women were infected, and hysterectomies performed if they did not die from it. Often the men divorced them for infertility or adultery,using the disease they infected their wife with as proof. When young brides died it was called "honeymoon appendicitis" and routinely covered up, even to the patient. It was a truly appalling time. I read it out loud with my 13 year old daughter next to me, and she was amazed. Study hard, never give up your independence I said, never let that happen again. Was there ever a time, in any cultures history, that women perpetrated such a thing on men? How does this happen?

What, it's over already???

How typical of holidays. The enormous anticipation. The flurry of frantic preparation-- and then, it's over, done, finito. There's that morning after of decorations around the house. I just put them up, should I take them down already? Seems like a lot of wasted effort. And then there's Christmas... I was in the stores on the Saturday before Halloween and all the costumes were gone and the shelves were stocked with Christmas stuff. Reminds me of one blizzardy March when I lost one of my winter gloves and searched through a department store full of shorts and bathing suits.

K2 went trick or treating, all glittered again, and K1 stayed home with me to watch Charmed and not (!) eat the 5 lbs of candy I got for the trick or treaters that never came (we have a long driveway, but I like to be prepared). At least I'm stocked up for every possible mood swing until April. Somehow the candy always disappears. I think the little gremlins come in at night and eat them because I am always finding the wrappers behind the couch. They sometimes smear some chocolate on K2's cheeks, too, probably hoping I'll blame her.

K1 finally made it through a whole day of school, and I was so happy to hear her back to the chatter box she usually is. Some virus. She is still tired, but at least not to tears anymore.

K2 is standing next to me singing a song from Spirit(the horse movie, not deity) at the top of her lungs, thumbing through a toy catalog with kid-size Cadillac Escalades in it. She points out a big doll house identical to the one she had two or three years ago, which collected dust, then clutter and now resides at the dump. And so the next season begins. When I worked in the hospital a young nurse I trained would sing a happy song when the stress became extreme, just to break the tension. Sort of like the insane giggle but more socially acceptable. That song was jingle bells. It worked.
So as the new season begins, I sing jingle bells -- but for me it has a slightly different meaning...

Is it just me?

I found my thoughts in my morning coffee, just as I expected. They were still squirming enough to bring me to the keyboard, even though I onlyhave 10 minutes before I have to run. I now don't know where to begin. I spent most of my life feeling like I was on the outside looking in, watching sometimes tragedy, sometimes comedy in which things seemed to be so clear to me, but not to the players. Maybe I need medication. Maybe that would help me feel like I belong. But then when I look closer I'm not sure I want to be one of them. Chances are if you are reading this you are one of the more conscious beings on this planet, and you may very well feel the same. What I am seeing now is a species that is rather insane and self destructive. A culture that values growth and expansion but is terrified of death and contraction. In the human body, it is called cancer. Rest is not rest anymore it is an alternate diversion. If you are not doing something, and passive activities like sleeping do not qualify, there is something wrong with you. And if there is something wrong with you, you better fix it quick or something worse will happen. Yikes! What are people doing to themselves?
Are most people handling it, oblivious, or just putting on a brave face?

Some people don't feel pain...

but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I have had some interesting reactions to K1 's mystery disease. Yes, the Mono tests were negative (jumping up and down for joy). A negative on a laboratory report does not necessarily relieve symptoms, however. So there was much consternation about the house and confusion with friends that she was not staying the full day of school. She's droopy, spent most of the last two weeks on the couch, yet the news is supposed to change everything. What is it with the world that we are not allowed to stop? I had more thoughts on that but they ran out of the room when the kids came in. I'll find them in my coffee in the morning.
Ok one kid on my shoulder , the other almost on my lap, I guess I have to stop now and put them to bed... Stay tuned for more adventures from the recovery room....

Photography is phun.

The secrets of the universe lie within....

Taking pictures of nothing in particular with supermacro setting. Its a great camera if I could figure out how to use it(and remember what I figured out the last time).

I have two supermodels in my house who are ready at a moments notice for a shoot.

adrift in the sparkling aftermath

This morning the house became suddenly silent. After the door closed the last time, I found my self standing in the glittering rubble of the morning after a costume event. In my right hand was the phone, in my left the vacuum cleaner. I could hear the refrigerator hum, but I could also hear my head pounding. I set both down in the mess and walked away. In the clutter and chaos of my office, where all things of mine are thrown to be dealt with later, my chair was in two peices. The screw knob had fallen off the bottom of the chair months ago and I didn't have the patience to figure out where it came from. Now where did I put it?
Last night, while I was trying to find my elf ears for my costume, K2 sprinkled generous amounts of glitter on her feather puff wand and went around blessing every one in the house with her magic. Then she spun around on my chair until it fell apart. When she saw how displeased I was with all the fairy dust everywhere and my lack of ears, she pleaded that she really didn't DO ANYTHING to the chair.
There is always a point where all the irritation becomes just ridiculous, and that was it for me. I propped the chair back against the wall and sighed. A giggle bubbled up from the madwoman inside of me.
"Lets just go" I said, and we went.
And it was fine, until this morning when it was all still there.
After searching all horizontal surfaces within a four foot radius, I found the knob on the bottom of the chair, screwed into a hole that did nothing. I didn't remember putting it there, but new I had put it somewhere where I wouldn't lose it. I put the chair together, and felt I was now really getting somewhere. I unearthed my laptop from the bills and school reports and, yes, more glitter and booted up and logged on.
So what what I going so write about today? I forgot. I 'm just glad to finally be here.

just a few minutes ago it was yesterday

Today is K2's birthday. Well technically not until 11:47pm tonight. I was a bad mom and had nothing prepared due to K1's velcro like behavior this week. Awkard, as she is only a couple inches shorter than me. I thought they'd be easier to peel off when they got older, but apparently illness reverses that. So anyway, a friend called and I saw an escape for an evening and gleefully told the kids to ask dad what's for supper. Reality kicked in again as I was driving home at 11p. Who knew Price Chopper was open at this time of night and I could put a one woman birthday surprise together! The wonders of civilization never cease to amaze. Of course there was a rather creepy fellow in the frozen foods section. 'Pizza and a movie, huh?' I thought. ' Forgot somebody's birthday?' he thought. You know a huge grocery store is kind of a spooky place in the middle of the night.

Well, we are having chocolate cake for breakfast. Life is good.
Let's see if I can wake up early enough to light the candles....

to blog or not to blog... that is the question.

Ok, I'm on the bandwagon now folks. Maybe this will be a solution to the profound silence my friends sometimes experience from me. I apologize to any feeling neglected. I love you all, but sometimes find it excruciating to make one more conversation. With all the "mommy" 's there is so little replenishing quiet to be found. Just the presence of another two legged life form in the house has my attention prickling. The best time is when it is just me the clocks and the refrigerator hum, with the occasion burst of keyboard tapping, of course. K1 the larger of my two offspring has been home with --what is not yet cofirmed, but looking suspiciously like-- mono. The girl who could drive me and her little sister, aka K2, crazy with her energy is so sadly tired and droopy and able to lie for 20 of 24 hours on the couch or in bed. While hubby is highly skeptical and believes in the old "tough it out" approach. I have personal experience with this kind of fatigue and the guilt inspired by the dismay of the healthy people around you. I told her that I believe her if she says she just can't get up and go to school. She is in tears with that guilt, and says she is sorry to me everyday that she can't get up. Hubby says , albeit after too much wine, that I am creating a monster. I think the worse monster is created by threatening the trust a child has in you to take care of them, and teaching them to doubt and ignore the signals their body is sending them. I want my daughters to listen to their bodies wisdom. K1's is telling her she needs to cucoon for a while.

I am once again impressed by the pressure of the world "that runs on dunkin". Don't stop for god's sake! Don't stop! I can hear the anxiety in the voices of the school office and nurse. The dismay that she is out for so long. From activities to fundrasiers the incoming blizzard threatens to overwhelm and smother. Like junk mail I begin to resent them. It reminds me often of a schizoprenic patient I saw in nursing school. Flight of ideas. Insanity. Chaos pretending to be order.

I may end up on a mountain top one day. Or I may just get better at blowing it all off.

Listen to the voices today, on radio, TV , even in the grocery line or office. Listen to how much fear there is every where. War death disease terrorism recession interest rates bacteria, not to mention wrinkles and clean toilets ( does anyone really believe they can or should bother disinfecting a toilet???) It is amusing when it is not annoying.

But today I will go forth and try to not be afraid of the insanity, not be a vector for the fear, and to be amused as much as I can.

Is there any body out there?( with the Pink Floyd echo)