taking a second look

Two days before the skunk incident (as reported in the entry just below this one), I was sitting outside. I was engaging in what is a newly-established habit for me of smoking at least one cigarette per day mindfully. Some other day I might get around to yakking more about the interesting experiences I've had via my participation in a University of Wisconsin Health Clinics research project on the effects of mindfulness and yoga/relaxation on smoking cessation, but for now, I was seated on the cement front porch at KD's place - mindfully inhaling, making note of which part of my tongue felt what, watching what my hands were doing, yadda.

There are at least three neighborhood indoor/outdoor cats in KD's neighborhood: A tuxedo, a tabby and another one that (coincidentally?) looks a lot like my FartieArtie. While I sat there on KD's porch I noticed the Artemis-looking cat curled up beneath a tree, sleeping soundly in that certain way that only a cat can circularly sleep.

Though I didn't realize this at the time, I must've been looking for some serious distraction - I hoped for something to take my mind away from my less-than-great habit, something new & different to turn my attention TO... hey, why not make pals with the sleeping cat?! YEAH! I called out to the little sleeping circular cat "Kiiiii-tttttyyyy! Wake uuuuuuuup little kittyyyyyyy. Want some petting? I'll pet you if you'll come ooooooo-oover hereeee".

Kitty stayed right where she was. 'She must be a good sleeper', I figured. I called to her again a couple of times, both with similar results. Kitty cared very little for me or for my desire to escape the mindfulness exercise. Kitty stayed very certainly put.

Not one particularly interested in ruining the good rest of another slumbering soul, I left her alone with high hopes of returning my mind to a calm open broad calm space of contemplation and relaxation. Then my mind hopped off its stool and meandered off again, taking me far and away down ghoulish pathways where mean people do terrible things to indoor/outdoor neighboorhood cats and the cats just die out on the curbside, right there where people don't even see them because they think the cat is sleeping. Like... how I think the cat is sleeping right now. And the more I tried to convince myself that I should leave her alone and just let the sleeping cat lie, the more image passed through my brain of the possible tragedies that may have befallen the sweet little critter.

I was way past mindful cigarette smoking at this point - this was life or death and I was out to save a vulnerable cat. I called to her a final time and when again she didn't move, I stepped up off the porch to come closer to her in hopes of learning more (but please god not too much. I don't need it graphic if something bad has happened, really I don't) about why the cat wasn't responding to my calls.

As I rounded the tree it became instantly clear why kitty wasn't waking up.
Kitty, as it were, was actually a big knob of tree root at the base of a curbside tree.

I was talking to the rootball on the back side of a tree.
Great. Super!

I suppose the good news tucked inside all my crazy cat seeingness is that a.) no cats HAVE died recently, including Artie, and b.) it is cheap and harmless fun. I didn't get skunked and other than the slight embarrassment of admitting the way my brain occasionally [read: frequently] misfires, it's all good.

Cats, cats, everywhere cats

I’m not sure what it is lately, but I’ve been seeing cats in strange places.  I’ve been seeing them everywhere.

Maybe the fact that we just celebrated the 16th birthday of our oldest cat along with my son’s 16th birthday (yesterday, in fact) is weighing in somewhere deep inside my subconscious, bringing Artie’s kittenhood to the forefront of my active thinking.  More than those early fuzzball years, when J. would toss Cheerios over the edge of the high chair tray to the tiny purring mouth far below, I watch Artemis make calculated decisions to or not to leap up onto the high places that used to be easy jumps for him and ultimately, I consider the approaching end of his life and what effect that will have in our household.

Two nights ago I sat outside on my front porch in the dark.  The sky was surprisingly bright for all the light pollution in my particular neighborhood, in my particular city.  The air was so cool, so crisp a reminder to me that despite the sweaty summer, autumn is fast approaching.  From the far left and behind a bush, a wayward pumpkin vine, numerous perennials and the three clumps of daylilies that have caught their orangey third wind this season, I peripherally noticed a cat poking its nose around some sunflower plants.  She had a coat similar to our middle cat Puppy, who is a dark coated, and somewhat dimwitted but always loveable Tortie.

“Heeeeereeeee kitty.  C’mere kitty”, I stage whispered across the garden.  I was interested in making a connection – to the cat, not to neighbors I might inadvertently wake by cat calls.  Kitty stopped sniffing around, but she didn’t make any movement indicating she wanted to be friends.  I made soft low clucking noises to her.  What appeared to be her head rose up to sniff the air, but she wouldn’t come closer.  

When my six or seven further attempts at “Here kitty kitty” and clucking to the frightened cat over the next ten minutes didn’t produce any signs of confidence, I decided to move me closer to her.  Bridge the gap, so to speak.   I quietly padded across the strip of sidewalk onto the wet grass and neared the daylilies where she was hiding, then immediately retreated.

Sweet little shy kitty who wasn’t responding to my love calls was, in fact, a skunk.  

I must admit to the whoosh of the adrenaline rush as well as the Homeresque ‘D’oh!’, but I was awfully gratefully for having met the one who was kind enough to give me ample time to get myself out of the way before she had to do what comes naturally when feeling threatened.

little fish in a small pond

"A recent checkup showed [President Bush] is arguably the healthiest Chief Executive ever. His secret? Daily exercise and near total disengagement with reality."
-Jon Stewart

Beautiful sister

Butterflies are free (and, if you give them a lil sugah, they're also easy)

Photo Op

In a strange Six Degrees of Separation kind of way, I was introduced to the art director of a popular local weekly paper at the wedding of yet more friends-of-friends several weeks ago. KD suggested to me that I send the photos I shot at the wedding along to her. My internal response was something along the lines of 'no fucking way. She is Someone; I am Not', though my thoughts rarely include curse words so I may have made that one word up while typing this.

At any rate, I thought more about it, said 'mmm, yeah I suppose I could. It'd be good practice for being polite in the face of ridicule and guffaws. Sure, why not?'. So I sat down with the digital images I'd shot, cropped and cleaned them up a bit, then sent them along, attached to an email that said "Thought you might like to see pictures from the wedding. Please feel free to pass them along to any other folks who might like to see them" She responded with a lovely note that said she thought they were great, she thanked me for sending them to her and added that she'd send them on to The Bride (a photographer by trade). I felt instantly shy, but I was proud of myself for having successfully overcome the negative What are you doing?? Are you nuts?
thoughts long enough to follow through on something that I knew on a gut level would be welcomed and, I reassured myself, the photos weren't THAT horrible.


I was visiting a close friend in Washington D.C. last week when I received an email with the subject line 'Isthmus Photo Assignment'. It was a note from the art director, who wrote that she liked how I had no qualms about getting the angle I was looking for at the wedding and that she liked the end results. There would be a group playing at a local joint [which used to be a cigar bar until the very recent city smoking ban ordinance was passed, but that's a whole 'nother bag of butts and is, perhaps, best left for another entry]. Would I be available to take pictures of them to accompany the upcoming music column?

Given that it was nearly 2:00 a.m. I decided against issuing out a whoop of overexcited delight, mostly to spare my hosts from being forced to sleepily celebrate this unexpected good fortune with me. I worked out a response that I hoped would sound confident, easy, relaxed. 'Don't be overeager about this, you'll look completely desperate', I chided myself.

One email exchange later, I had the details I needed and she had my agreement to shoot Machiavellian Machine, a techno-ambient electronic musical duo. I had a day and a half to go through the shots, weed out the best from the truly sucktastic, then get an acceptable product back to her. With slight concern about the short turnaround time and my general sense of organized chaos, I woke unconscionably early on Tuesday to ensure a rush-free zone because those are the times I tend to pull my cart (uphill) while leaving the horse standing in the stable. Later Tuesday morning, like when regular people are awake, I received a response to the double batch of photos I'd sent along: The photos were great - I'd captured real feeling in the shots. She also asked for my address so she could send me a check for my work and thanked me again for taking on the assignment.

I was tempted to do that whole 'they like me! They really like me!' routine. It didn't matter to me if anyone ever asked me to shoot photos for them ever again, I'd been given the opportunity to experience the process once, and that was swell.

Yesterday I received another email from the art director. It bore the subject line 'Isthmus photo assignment'. I thought for a moment that she'd accidentally resent her original email to me, so I quickly scanned the short email message while simultaneously considering how to respond with an OOPS message - something along the lines of either "I'm so sorry to bother you, but I think I may have received this in error", or "Grab yourself a cup of caffeine sistah, you're sending outdated emails".

But it was a new request - for an upcoming assignment later this week.
Holy wow. I was truly surprised!

Now I have a new dilemna ... I keep thinking I really can't keep using the fairly outdated Fuji Finepix S5000 I bought several years ago and have been using on a near-daily basis ever since. Not when the camera of my dreams is out there, just waiting for me. Or the big girl's little sister, also a camera I wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers. I'm craving a hi-res camera with more functions and lens adaptability. Me want. Me want. Me want. Me will have to wait a little while longer.

Crabby crab crab

Scheduling ourselves has become a very complicated thing as we launch into these days that grant us the earliest whiffs of autumn.

This evening while ripping through a late dinner, KD and I discussed my upcoming school schedule, a trip she's planning that we had hoped we'd both be able to take, the impending arrival of my manchild back to the state after his vacation to visit Dad's side of the family up nort, ya hey dere ... I wondered to myself 'how did we suddenly become so busy?'.

Though we disagree on very little, we don't always agree on what should be the most important thing, my gal and I. I've been through the burning fires of nighttime feedings, the earliest fledgling days of cries and gurgles and stitches to his mouth which came the one day I wasn't watching closely enough and he whacked his face on my bed frame: all these things that have gone into forging my maternal relationship to my kid. I absolutely do not fault her for not having a constant clinging cobweb of parental guilt hanging over her head like the stormcloud-for-one I seem to stand beneath. Rather, I love her all the more for trying so hard to understand my perspective, and moreso - for loving me despite it.


Now that he's nearly 16, maybe I should focus a little more intently on letting my kid go; maybe I should focus on being nearby. Maybe I should remove all the alcohol in the house in preparation for the day he suddenly develops a taste for something throat burningly room temperature. Maybe I should put him in one of those newfangled playpens (sure, call it a Pack n' Play if you want, but c'mon, we both know it's simply a glorified, wordified playpen), complete with the breathable mesh zippered lid to keep him from climbing out. It's for HIS safety, after all. Yeah yeah yeah, the idea that locking him down is primarily to serve his safety, but my contantly worrying mother mind finds the concept consoling.

Needless to say, my main concerns about the upcoming travel plans initially circled like vultures primarily over the kid. He will be starting his junior year in high school which by definition automatically marks him as no babe in the woods, but I worried: what kind of responsible-appearing mother leaves her kid home so she can have a fun birthday cake eating visit with the out-laws? Would I be able to sit with these people I'm still just in the beginning stages of getting to know as Family when the specter of my child's image floats around me, index finger pointed accusingly?

I was surprised at how long it took me to connect various other scheduling issues into the melee of chattering brain monkeys, but a few days ago it occurred to me that I will also be in school in a matter of weeks. When I thought of this it was 3:00 a.m. and I was lying in the dark, in the Baseball-slash-Guest Room at my friend's home in Arlington, Virginia. I didn't have the copy of my class schedule with me and couldn't do a thing about it so, instead, I turned the Discman volume up just a little higher, rolled over to my other side and hoped I'd remember this issue long enough to check the details when I returned home. A-yup, I've got classes on Thursdays and Fridays, both. Shit. I had forgotten that I'd scheduled that digital photo class for Fridays. Shit.

So tonight, between dinner and my house, my favorite gal (ooh, I think I'll call her MFG now, what a nice ring that has!) and I tried to figure out how all these flagrantly unmatched schedules (hers/mine/his/ours) are going to work out together. I don't go along with her to her family gathering... Check. Neither of us are particularly thrilled about my cancellation, but I do feel grateful and I have a sense of relief for having examined my initial guilty hesitations in some depth. What's more, I won't be double-booking my calendar accidentally - or worse, purposefully - in order to try to make everybody happy. Sometimes things just don't work out the way we hope. It happens and, generally speaking, we live to tell about it.

MFG had a long day today, with some unexpected twists and turns that had her feeling crabby, she said. Once we had waded through school calendars and came to realize that I wouldn't be able to travel with her as she/we'd hoped, she got just the tiniest bit crabbier, poor gal.

But she hung in like a trooper - well, not a military trooper because that image is way too formal and involves weapons - just a loving kind trooper who surprises her girlfriend with roses, just because girlfriend arrived home and was missed. That kind of trooper. We waited to claim the long legged baggage that is my child at the bus depot, and once his bus arrived we zipped home. Shortly thereafter Kid drove off with his friend, and MFG & I were left to do some late-night grocery shopping (while the boy was gone I hadn't powershopped like the provider of a male teenage mouth must do on a semi-regular basis; it had to be done).

One of the items on KD's grocery list was canned crab meat. We hemmed and hawed about which of the three varieties of two available brands would be best ...
'are the expensive cans better meat?'
'that one only has eight ounces in the pack, this one is twelve ounces.'

She picked the largest can (you can buy a pound of canned crab meat at the local grocery. who knew?) and we made our way through the aisles as hastily as possible.

When it came time to check out, the clerk swiped the can across the scanner. The can price rang up as $9.50 (give or take a few cents). I asked my gal, 'wasn't that price marked at $8.99 back on the shelf?'. She'd had a long day, she was crabby (and I'd perpetuated the feeling somewhat); this was late night for her -- as much as I wanted to fight in the name of accurate pricing, I also totally understood how ridiculous this could seem to someone who is not-me. Really, who the fuck cares about a 50 cent difference?

The freckle-faced clerk said he'd take over bagging if the bagger dude would go back to doublecheck the shelf price. KD and I chatted away as the clerk scanned and bagged the rest of her items. Bagger Dude returned, mumbling 'Eight ninety nine'.
DING! I did remember that correctly! I can't remember what I'm doing from day to day but hallelujah, I can remember the shelf price on a can of crab meat.

Clerk was about to go back into the register tape to review the scanned price when I noticed a sign next to the ATM swiper machine and quickly interrupted him. "Say, does that mispriced can count in this 'if you are charged incorrectly for an item and you bring it to our attention, the item is free' deal?" He thought for a few seconds and responded that yes, yes indeed it does. He'd forgotten about that program. After all, he said, it's not like the higher-ups at the store like to remind staff to actually catch errors or encourage customers to do the same.

So the $8.99 can of crab meat came to KD totally free, making my previously crabby girlfriend quite smiley indeed. In noticing and standing up for her mispriced can I certainly couldn't have erased her sense of disappointment at my trip cancellation but I hope I was able to adequately communicate that even during our crabbity crab crab times I'll have her back.

Tunes for wing-walking

As much as traveling completely excites my electrons and my sometimes napping restlessness, I'm not terribly fond of the thirteen million others traveling with me.

Strangers, to be more clear, are strange.

I have a thing about sharing my body space with people I've never laid eyes on until the awkward moment we meet while tossing our bags about, grasping for a book or a pillow while shoving the unnecessaries out of our way.

I'm not sure what the fabulous Universe is trying to teach me about men and fear, but I seem to have a peculiar knack for being seated next to (probably otherwise very sweet) nervous single male fliers. The foot-tapping, nail biting, fidgeting praying eyes shut men who would never admit to the fellas at the club to having kissed that golden crucifix dangling from a gold chain (and no longer hiding under their business shirt) while summarily kissing their own asses goodbye, just in case. But there it is, my dumb luck and the Universe's amusing little sense of wry humor.

I don't mind sharing the space that exists between the hair on his arms and the hair on mine, but there seems to be a slightly discourteous attitude that accompanies nervous fliers which causes them to completely forget courtesy in the midst of their unravelling. You see, if they're going to be sharing any part of my body at all, my unspoken rule is that they're going to have to make eye contact with me at least once before we buckle ourselves in for the adventure. And it would behoove them to make the eye contact right off the bat because I WILL have eye contact before we land, dammit. I will talk, I will ask questions, I will counter-wiggle against his shifting nervousness and silently mouthed praying ('oh god, I really wanted to date that woman from the next floor up. Please just let me live and I promise I'll talk to her. Please lord, do not ignore this plea, please let me live and land safely and I'll fuck her in the name of all the saints, if that will please you and get me from here to there and back safely').

Pray all you want, sweetieboy, but until you look me in the eyeballs and exchange one simple pleasantry with me -just one!- I will make your nervewracking trip something out of a Hitchcock film, I swear I will. Try me. Wanna know exactly how many times I can have to get up to use the airplane bathroom in two hours? Keep not looking at me and you'll certainly find out.

Pretend I'm not there, will you? Fine. I hope that wasn't an engine falling out just now, did you hear that noise? Naw, probably not the engine. Maybe just a thingie that is supposed to be underneath one of the wings. See how that works?

Where was I? Oh, yes. Sharing body space. We don't have to exchange personal details, nor will I expect a greeting card from you to let me know you've remembered my birthday. I won't follow you in your dreams, mocking your terror of the friendly skies ...

That's all. Yes, that's it, the whole shebang. I'll pop in the earbuds to my discman and go merrily on my photographic playtime way. Just please very simply admit I exist.

Pardon me, but I have a banana in my ear

EROTICA! - Wet, salty and delicious You are driven
to excite the reader into a literal froth with
your literary talents! You are a connoisseur of
the carnal side of humanity from Kink to
high-speed BJs in the front seat of a speeding
jag! Sex is GOOD. Penthouse and the Internet
after dark are your inspirations!


What Kind of Novel Should I Write?
brought to you by Quizilla

the act of the break

McBeth.

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

-James Earl Jones

... you know you want to.

Lost in the storm

McBeth.

once again, the neighbor children called upon me today to help them rescue the local fauna.

Though the stories all sound slightly different (insert slightly skeptical furrowed brow here), the basic story goes that the nest was found upended underneath a tree, with two other babies already dead. One of the girls said it looked like the mama bird was trying to kill one of these remaining live young, which could have been mama bird trying to *save* the baby by returning it to the nest. The kids apparently tucked these two new hatchlings into a shoe overnight for safekeeping but freaked today when they ran out of bird babysitting ideas. Yanno, like how does one feed something this small with no feathers and no eyes, this thing that cannot even hold its head up on its own. I'd freak too if I was seven years old.

At any rate, we've had some whopper storms - severe storm warnings, tornado warnings, the works - the past few days (followed by killer heat today) and the very nice intake lady at the Humane Society said that they'd been taking in lots of bird babies the past couple of days who had been experiencing the same unfortunate results as did these two wee ones.

Hope

McBeth.

Such a funny intangible thing it is, hope.

Most of us carry some of it around in tiny invisible pockets, buttoned securely to our hearts, always right there in case we need to slip it out to touch it caress it remember it reidentify it.

If you grow crops, it is likely that at least some of your pocketed hopes involve that which you have absolutely no power over - wind and weather. Weeks of unending dryness can rattle your hope like a racking cough. Will these dry days ever end? I hope some rain will fall soon. Dark skies come as a sparkling signal of potential goodness.

I find it a difficult task to remain true to my hope. It is much easier to morph into whatever seems most flexible, most content in the now than to check into my little pocket to remember what it is that I truly hope for.

But every time - EVERY time - I neglect my hopes, they find a mysterious way of creeping into my day to day life. In discontented feelings, in frustration, in my aggressiveness and defensiveness. Every time I deny them, my hopes find a way of demanding acknowledgement.

I'm learning not to say 'no, I don't really have hopes'. Because I really do. They're there. They exist.

Dial A Cliché to the rescue

In those rare occasions during which I am feeling verbally lackluster, unable to put the cartoonish thought bubbles together with real live fiery communicative words, it can become a slightly spirit-lifting (or, perhaps, spirit leveling -depending on how desperately one needs a lifesaving cliche to fit a bill and then how poorly it stands under the scrutiny) test to turn to Dial A Cliché for a tiny palate cleansing taste of inspiration.

Thinking that my cartoon thought bubble neuropathy had something to do with a sprain in my decision-making lobe, I headed directly to the category 'For When You Cannot Make A Decision', wherein lay the golden nugget I'd sought:

If it doesn't come naturally, leave it

OF COURSE! THAT is what I've been missing all this time, leaving things alone! The dirty dishes, the laundry, the vacuuming, the dusting, the dried-up grass cat pukeballs, the kitchen floor crumb-combo-cat hair layer, the stacks of unread mags, the still larger stacks of unopened mail, the clutter, AND my wordlessness -- I should be leaving them alone, untackled, because for heaven's sake none of them feels natural to address.

Only ... um, well that's exactly what I have(n't) been doing for months now. Oh I have with near religious university science department fervor observed them each, collectively, mounting, growing, morphing. But I've done little to nothing about any of them, with the possible exceptions of 'ignore', 'pretend to not see', and quite possibly the additional 'swallow my feelings of revulsion/alarm'.

Obviously, that cliché has gone the way of so many over-hunted, over-eaten delicacies that now line the extinction charts. New cliché; I need a new one.

I'm trying to figure out where my words went; I'm trying to understand why I can't get a solid grip on all the things I can't get a solid grip on. And I'm certain there must be a cliché that will explain the phenonema. Hmm, this category seems to fit: 'When you are trying very hard and not having any success'.
Aaaahh, here it is:

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

How to redefine these glaring omissions of daily personal care and activities?
Well, I might not have opened the mail for going on two months, but nearly ALL the mail previous to that time has seen the sharp side of the letter opener. (hey, this is interesting. Makes me feel tingly.)

Ooh Ooh Ooh - that was good, let's do another! mmm... I may have a contant sludging flow of dirty dishes stagnating near the kitchen sink however I have not resorted to using the antique platter that is stored in the bottom bin of the oven for serving macaroni and cheese, nor have I brought out the Easter egg style Jell-O Jigglers molds to be used in place of the grubby ice cube trays. (wheee! I think I'm liking this! It's so easy!)

Don't stop me now! Three cats' worth of tracked litter, hairballs and barfed-up grassballs is so much better non-managed than, say, six cats' worth. Just think how messy that would be; my floors are positively sparkling in comparison! (I think I need a private moment here - this is a reverential experience I'm having. Do I have a glow? Can you see my Holy Glow?)


I'm positively giddy.
I've turned over a whole new leaf.
I'm a blushing bride.
I'm happy as a schoolgirl.
etc.
etc.
etc.
blahblahblah, yadda yadda.

Nothing like a good cliché to purge the demons. In fact I feel so swell I think I'll just pull over a stack of years-old magazines and put my feet up for a few. Aaahhhhh...

North Carolina roadside wildflowers

I am part canine

McBeth.

I have been scanning old family photographs in hopes of one day being able to provide each of my sibs and other interested kin with a photographic collection of the few pictures we have remaining between us.

This photograph makes me grin each and every time I look at it. To the left, my maternal great-grandfather Clyde. To the right, his brother (whose name currently escapes me. But I do have it written down. Somewhere. Really. I do).

I'm fairly sure my great-grandfather was part bulldog. Cute bulldog, of course, but probably growly and drooly and occasionally (!) ill-tempered.

sweet sarah sighing

I think of her and prepare to weep.

She's right, you know.
A good hour and twelve precise minutes of pre-dawn clarity for whatever that's worth and then, too quickly, the world returns its lusty blustery frustrating gristing wrestling flexing and bending but so slowly ending ways.

4:48 Psychosis

Kane could have written 22:48:00 Psychosis since truly the one hour and twelve exacting minutes of sanity in a day requires the broadest tone-deaf tongueless accuracy one can muster. Details perceived - painfully clear interactions unavoidably read and real - words cannot bind them together faithfully.

The fragility of the ant thorax, no less amazing than ceaseless noiseless REM that fogs in the airport, shutting it and the town, hell, the entire tri-county region directly unavoidably down once Seroquel trickles into the fuel tank.

How do I go?
How do I go?
How do I go?

There was a film crew in Madison today working on the upcoming movie The Last Kiss (due out 2006). Apparently the film is supposed to be set here in town but they're cutting corners in their budget by filming spots and scenes here for building/product placement type stuff then they're leaving us with a flourish for some place in Canada where it's cheaper to continue the rest of the filming.

Ha. I say all this crap as though I'm somehow in the know. Honestly, I had no idea any of this was going on ahead of time, but got to chatting with blanketmates when KD and I arrived at our spread and I learned all these fascinating details. Before the Concert on the Square even began I was itching to leave our space and meander away where there were fewer people per square foot. So I broke away from the growing crowd up on the capital square to find the film crew folks in front of the City County building (on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, for those familiar).

Who knows, this scene probably isn't supposed to be v. funny ... Rachel's character says "but..but...Michaelll. MICHAEL!" and she runs off camera.

I know nuffink about filming but after she did the "MICHAEL! MICHAEL!" screaming, and then did it like 8 times more, again and again and again, it sorta started to crack me up. Audibly. And I would have gone to look for Michael if she'd just asked me.

papayas and people

"The magic is inside you. There ain't no crystal ball."
-Dolly Parton

THe Ninja Turtles never had such specialized sofa pillow shells Jordan and Dominick, archival edition circa 1993

Miaowy palm tree trunk detail.

Her baby's momma ain't the regular momma for this baby

On Sunday afternoon a friend phoned KD to relay some potentially exciting new news to me. She and another friend had apparently been discussing the bird picture I shot last week and he (the friend. Keep up with me here, willya?) was fairly sure that my mysterious unidentified oversized tweetering tot was, in fact, a cowbird fledgling much like the one pictured.


Check this out ... According to this article, cowbird mommas are nature's equivalent to a Las Vegas relationship. In, out. Bada-bing, bada-bang. She slips into another bird's nest to drop an egg into the bevvy of adorable pre-birds that the current nest dweller already has her haunches poised to fluff over with her warm belly feathers. Does it have to be a cowbird nest? HELL NO! Does she need much time? NO WAY!

Those critters are smart ... S--M--R--T. Letting someone else raise the babies, fill the flock, breeding bonanzas right and left. Meanwhile, there's a sparrow who could really use a ten week sabbatical or at the very least a Calgon soak, tired to the bone of feeding that supersized and oddly unfamiliar looking child of hers.

I've been scanning through web images of cowbirds, unable so far to make a positive ID on the coloring and pattern of the baby bird from my photo. But while I continue my searching, it sure seems a likely explanation that her baby's momma was a different momma with lots of babies and who knows how many daddies.

(And we think we need soap operas and docu-dramas to provide us our melodramadic fill?)

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature."

-- Helen Keller

fooled you!

McBeth.

you thought it was a pepper plant, didntcha? DINCHA?!

Well HAH!

Ohhhh... it is, it iiisssss.

But instead of that saliva-sucking heat that jalapenos usually produce, these will produce a lighter back-burner sort of heat, a mild simmering delightful addition to our burrito-ey summer fare.

Because as less than fond as I am of HOT-hotness, I am a sucker for growing a peppers with a clever name.

gardening stigmata

McBeth.

I do not like gardening with gloves.

With gloves on I can't feel the plants, I can't feel the dirt, I can't sift out the rocks. Gardening gloves make my hands sweaty and they make me feel slightly claustrophobic in that way that tight turtleneck sweaters make me feel like I can't breathe on the rare occasions I wear them.

Unfortunately, I am now bearing the physical results of no-glove heavy duty gardening.

I did learn one important first aid lesson from this experience that might be worth passing along. You can take my word on this, too: Unless you are in the mood for breath-sucking seeing-stars pain (and you might be because I know sometimes I am) -- When you have a largeish wound in an area with lots of nerve endings that is also a difficult area on which to keep a Band-Aid, do not spray it with that new spray-on bandage sealing stuff they sell at Walgreen's.

Hurts.
Like.
A.
Bitch.

feather flexing

McBeth.

While having my morning coffee and cigarette outside on the front step this morning I heard the chuttered squalling and feather ruffling of a baby bird waiting impatiently to be fed.

To my great surprise it was not a tiny sparrow being fed by the sparrow parent, but rather, a -- starling? Hmm, no it doesn't look at all like a starling but I'm honestly not sure just yet what kind of bird the mammoth-looking baby is (in comparison to the wee sparrow). It was a giganto baby, that's what it was. The rare Giganto bird, ahhhhyessss.

They stayed just long enough for me to grab the AA batteries that had been recharging overnight and get the camera set up for a couple of shots.

(If you can I.D. the baby let me know and I'll add it in here.)

Birds will flex adoptive muscles to care for another's young... who knew?!

a spade and a hoe

McBeth.

I accidentally picked a weed yesterday.

Or maybe my mind knows when I myself need a good weeding and it just sends me out to find one outstandingly tall misdirected and unwelcome plant ready for the picking.

When I weed, all else in inconsequential. I couldn't give a flying fig whose car is coming up the street or whose has just left; I don't hear the sirens and ambulances; the highway noise floats far far away. The background chatter volume is reduced by three clicks in my head. My fingers become outrageously sensitive, feeling for the best direction of tug to pull the entire plant, full roots and all, from the earth.


Again, today, both the internal and external weather look to be perfect for a long quiet uprooting time.

Two year old Charlie is becoming his own man, with definite preferences of habit and style that may well stay with him the rest of his life. Or the toothbrush passion may go away in another year. That's one of the thrills of childhood: so much can go any of a thousand different ways depending on another thousand variety of factors. My sister has learned that his shrill baby-pterodactyl shriek means "While I'm grateful for your offer of assistance, Mother, I'd really prefer to handle this task myself". Same with the military-style index finger wag into her face, accompanied with a sharp "NO MOMMA!". The rough translation is 'lay off, lady or I'll stick this finger up your nostril until it reaches your brain stem'.

One of Charlie's current fascinations is shoes. He loves shoes. If it was legal for a toddler to marry, and then for a toddler to marry an inanimate object, and then for a toddler to marry an inanimate object in the state of Iowa - he'd marry a shoe. Then he'd probably move to Utah where he'd marry multiple shoes and live happily ever after with hundreds of them. Charlie puts shoes onto his small wide feet hundreds of times each day. Daddy's shoes, Mommy's shoes, Charlie's shoes. The shoes down by the garage entrance, the shoes in Mommy and Daddy's closet; any shoe anywhere.

During this past weekend visit we were treated to a Charlie shoe fashion show in which he click-clacked out from Mommy and Daddys' room wearing (first) two black slip-on high-heel sandals belonging to my sister. After a traipse through the kitchen (and c'mon, the kitchen floor is OBVIOUSLY the best place for a shoe fashion show, what with the big tile floor. Carpeted bedroom floors simply won't produce that satisfying *clomp clip clomp* the same way a solid linoleum or wood or tile floor will). After he watched his feet parade through the living area in Momma's black heels he disappeared momentarily, returning shortly after wearing one strappy white dressy high heeled sandal on his left foot. For the number of times I calculated whose shoes were on his feet, I have to surmise that Mommy apparently wears the shoes with the best clackety-clack value. Or maybe it's the open-toed style he prefers because he can see what's going on down there at foot-level.

My sister happened upon these slippers at the Dollar Store recently and figured that they might fit the bill for the combination of Charlie's "I DO MYSELF!" and his shoe passion. Oh, and his aminal adoration. And his growing language capabilities. For a buck, that's quite a deal.

Beeeee. Suessssss.

That's what these are. Charlie's Beeee.Suessssss. And near as I can tell, this is how they work: Slip on. Slip off. Slip on. Watch your toes wiggle in there under the wings. Slip off. Check your toes to see if they have wings attached to them. Slip on. Run through the kitchen to the window to see how fast the Beeee.Suesssss. will carry you. Slip off. Line up a few trucks on the floor. Line up some trucks against your Beeee.Suessssss. Slip on. Move your feet away from the military straight line of trucks to evaluate the situation. Sit down on Aunt Beppie's lap for a picture of your Beeeee.Suesssss. Rinse. Repeat.

sleeping theo

McBeth.

Child rearing myth #1: Labor ends when the baby is born.
--Unknown

Some days it felt as though the forces of the universe were causing instability everywhere, even in her most basic routines.

One day, she felt a change coming.

"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction".

-Pablo Picasso

Little Fly

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear,
and not bothering.
- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

Along the Appalachian Trail

McBeth.

It's not like the far western finger of North Carolina is an ugly part of the U.S.: lush green mountains undulating, peaking high and valleying so low so you'd swear you are riding a colorful slow-motion rollercoaster without a lap belt.

The roadsides near Murphy and Andrews give a sweet little extra icing on the cake with batches of these wildflowers. In fact, throughout Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina similar wildflower projects have been successfully established and are refreshing eye candy.

So this gecko walks into a bar...

McBeth.

Been on vacation and through a whole batch of the United States in the past 15 days.

We had a wonderful time. Went to the Calliope music festival in South Florida, took an absolute touristy boat ride (Never thought I'd know what Rosie O'D.'s backyard looks like) - tried my first sushi and lobster, swam in the ocean, drove and drove and drove, laughed and talked and wondered and slept and ate and learned about one another and the unfamiliar world around us.

Road trips are good for the soul.

Cristin holds her boys Theo and big brother Charlie (2), while cousin Audrey (4) hams from the side. Charlie doesn't seem to quite understand what this new "bay-bee" business is about just yet. Audrey does but she doesn't much care, so long as she has a captive audience to direct.

My new nephew (Theodore Christian - Theo, for short), snuggled in with his Momma

The infinite variety of mothering

Mother's Day is a curious holiday that one can't fully appreciate until one is a mother. At least this was the case for me.

I mean, as a child I did consider it a bit of an Agatha Christie clue collection process to trying to impress my mom with something that would make her love me more: homemade craft projects or playing an excerpt of a piece the school orchestra had been eee-awwwing through on my cello, and sometimes my sibs and I would shovel together a messy breakfast for her on Her Special Day. But without a clear understanding of the rules it seemed more like the continual mystery than the solving.

My mother's Ultimate Gift Request, no matter when or how often she was asked what she'd like, no matter whether it was a birthday or Christmas or any other gift-giving occasion, was simply "I only want well-behaved children". Oh, sure, easy. I'll just steal some other kids and wash 'em up for you. Apparently she never birthed the well-mannered children she so wanted - which made me wonder how much more she needed from me to hit that invisible good enough mark. When I began raising my own child I realized what a ridiculous and slightly mean request she had made of my siblings and me. It's one thing to say 'hey you know what? I love you and I think you're perfect and I don't need anything else. Just spend some time with me today and it'll be the best gift ever' and quite another to say something that leaves a kid with the impression that they're not good enough, never good enough no matter how valiant her herculean childlike efforts.

We kids celebrated Mom anyhow. Every year we'd manage to scoop together babysitting money to buy her a cheesy present or we'd collect and vase some flowers we'd picked from her garden. She always seemed pleased; cried frequently at our efforts. I'm still confused by her tears and cannot shake off the feeling that they were present because we weren't good enough kids; that she didn't get the thing she really really wanted.

It was when I became a mother that I finally felt free enough in the relaxed atmosphere I'd created in my own home that I luxuriated in the pleasure of making it a no-fuss holiday. Yeah, so I'm the momma, woo hoo, whatever. Let's make something yummy together and call it a day. I realize now that my son may have a skewed view (and in the opposite direction of what I learned as a kid) of what such holidays are supposed to look like, according to the way I purposely, loosely, halfway celebrate them in our home. If anything, he'll need to step it up some day if/when he has a significant other and I hope for her that she's clear about her expectations and patient while he learns to live up to them.

On the far back right side of our refrigerator still hangs the crayon drawing that J. drew many years back, when my first long-term -and living together- relationship, with L., was at its peak of homeyness. Two women, raising a small boy ... He drew some flowers and wrote 'I love you both! Happy Mothers Day.'

Whatever my mother did or did not do, she did raise five respectful caring and deeply loving children. Yesterday J., KD and I took my mother out for brunch at a favorite diner. J. also burned a CD for me of music he likes to listen to that he thought I would like. I'd asked if he would make me the CD a couple of weeks ago and had not expected to see results for at least a couple more months, and the gift was a lovely surprise.

J. is already well-behaved; I don't expect I'll ever consider asking that from him. What I hope to have is a kid who loves his life, who loves me including most of my wrinkles and faults and who can blamelessly point out when I'm being a dodo, who is gentle with animals and small children, and who knows when to step up without being asked to do it. He's well on his way.

It's fun! It's easy! It's THE SOCK GAME

Here's how the Charlie Sock Game (tm) goes:

1. (very important) Have your aunt underdress you the very chilly day you wait 2.5 hours for Gramma and your cousin Audrey to show up at the zoo.

2. When you're very tired and your aunt has relegated you to sitting in the stroller for a few minutes of "let's sit down for a bit" time, kick off your shoes.

3. Yank off a sock.
3b. Fling the sock.

4. Yank off the other sock, but hold onto this one.

5. Flap the sock around while your aunt scrambles around to find your shoes. Get a good giggle going at this point.

6. Put the sock you are still holding onto next to your mouth. Make a funny noise into it.

7. Laugh as though this is the most hilarious thing ever done. This will, in turn, get the grownups laughing and they may join in with you on the game.

8. Repeat steps 5-7 for 20 minutes or until nobody can breathe.

I do not make this up.

I'd volunteered to supply the food goodies for this past weekend's neighborhood clean-up. Knowing we'd be having at least 10 UW-Madison football players helping us I thought it best to buy discount and buy the discount food in bulk. After all, happy tummies make happy workers.

My final decision on the soda pop matter: discount groceries choose peculiar names for their beverages.

They submerge so quickly

J. is an amazing person. He is fifteen now, a sophomore in high school. He's usually fairly quiet, which puts people at ease and makes them think he's shy (ha!) -- and then, and then -- he delivers a most delicious whammy when he pops off a ridiculously funny joke or makes a riotiously observant comment. I love that moment. It always comes; I wait for it.

J's current interests rest primarily in music, the internet and cars. Especially the cars. MmmmMMMMmm, cars. He's thinking he'd like to go to a tech institute after high school to learn the fine art of car repair. Lord knows the vehicles need repair and that we need people who can aptly repair them. He's hit a few bumps along the road though. This year the thought occurred to him that he could possibly break something in the process of fixing something else. The idea rattled him to the point that he rethought auto repair as a career choice. But he slowly found his way back to tinkering and seems happiest when hanging out upside down under the hood or beneath the body of a car.

Since the earliest days of his life I've believed that Jordan was (and is) his own person, even (especially) during those times when I'm not sure how to find the connection between his self-ness and mine. In part as a result as the parenting that was done to me, I've made a point of telling myself - aloud, when necessary - that what J does is entirely up to him and I'll be content as long as I know he is happy. I mean, there are limits. Had he shown proclivites for ax murdering, I would have had some issues with his hobbies. But what he decides to train for as a livelihood and the music he chooses to listen to and the clothing he's most comfortable wearing? Small potatoes, baby; such small potatoes.

I figure my job as his mom is to train him to do the stuff he'll need to know how to do when he's away from me, living by himself or setting up a home with someone(s) else: Turning the stove off after he's done cooking to prevent kitchen fires. Keeping baking soda on hand in the event he forgets to turn the stove off. Reading the tags on his clothing to understand the difference between 'gentle wash' and 'don't mix with darks'. Figuring out who to talk to and how to do it when the bill that arrives in the mail is incorrect. Making beds, making jokes, making a home.

My approach has been one of constant awareness and constant thought but I'm generally hands-off. I ask him to help with a few household chores but I don't book his afternoons and evenings with activities. He's a kid, for chrissake. He'll have too many years packed with responsibilities; I don't mind leaving these last few years of his flickering childhood open to the possibilities of what he might want to do with them. Anyway.


Earlier this week I met with J's high school guidance counselor. Because J. is quiet and polite, because he isn't a trouble-maker, because he's not a powerhouse and because he does just fine -- he slips under all the radars. I wanted to meet with Charles, in part, to meet with a real live person; in part, to introduce one of the grown-ups who affects my child's education to MY CHILD. Charles flipped and blipped through several computer screens to review J's previous and current classes. He commented, "Well, the good news is that J. is doing pretty well. His grades aren't bad".

No doy-uh. I knew that.

"Well, yes. That's not a question, he IS doing well. But J. doesn't draw attention to himself - either positive or negative - and I'm concerned that an overworked school system might accidentally let his fall through the cracks. I don't want that to happen."

Charles tried his best to reassure me that J. is in a big transitional time, that J. is feeling his way through his interests and that they may stick or they may change, that J. is doing fine. I tried my best to explain to Charles that even IF J's mechanical interests do not waver, I want both J. and I to fully understand all the classes and opportunities he has available for the 'JUST IN CASE' scenario. For that small iota of a chance that he changes his mind about a career in auto mechanic work, I want him to have the option of attending a four-year college or university without being absolutely overloaded his senior year of high school because c'mon, how suckful would that be to play catch-up?!

Charles, a kind and patient-seeming man, admitted that with his current case load of 350 students he hadn't yet met J.

Three hundred. and fifty.

Charles offered to meet with J. this week, to talk about J's interests, his classes, to give him some face time. It was one of the few things I took away from our meeting that I felt grateful for.

Because in a big system where the finances are being strapped down tighter and tigher, where the nasties seem to take up more time that used to be spread more evenly across their disheveled heads, our children can vanish right before our eyes while we're busy making what we assume will be the rest of their lives materialize.

Whatcha readin'?

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

============
Then my computer tells me it is performing a virus scan, though it has never, to my knowledge, actually found a virus, so this message is pretty much like the 120 on the speedometer dial of a Ford Escort.


from p.124 of The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. by Gene Weingarten. Page 123 did not contain five full sentences.
============
(Thanks to Allison for the idea)

Primal response

McBeth.

Some days it didn't quite feel worth the effort to her to do much but stare back at the shapeless masses on the other side of the glass.

Today's advice:

McBeth.

Always begin with dessert.

If you still have room after the good stuff is in, then try the veggies.

My reject crayon

You are

What Rejected Crayon Are You?

I had the horrifying realization this morning that I have no photographs of my son with his great-grandmother from her 90th birthday party this past weekend.

Grandma has been a life-long reader. She used to read daily devotions every day (EVERY day) at the breakfast table with Grandpa. As a child I was mystified how she must have trained my grumbly Irish grandfather to listen to religious dictates according to the Lutheran church; eventually I settled on the idea that breakfast was probably a good time to get him to set still and he'd probably listen to anything so long as he had a strong cup of coffee, toast, and some thick stick-to-his-ribs oatmeal; if it didn't hold his attention it would at least hold him to his chair. When we would visit them in their yellow house next to the woods we would also sit through the daily devotions, followed by hand holding and a prayer at the end. The process made me want to giggle when I was little; it touches me now.

Sunday I flagged J. down in the dayroom to come kneel next to me, next to Grandma. I (re)introduced Grandma to her first great-grandchild, reminding her of his name and age. I told her about how he's such a good fella and how well he's doing in school. His cheeks pinked up and he laughed nervously as she looked him up and down and back up again wordlessly.

Her eyes settled back down on the shirt he was wearing. "Slacker", she said.

I glanced over at J. and laughed. He was wearing one of my favorite t-shirts which reads "How to be a slacker:" with three squares of stick images across the chest.

1. Don't get a job.
2. Borrow $ from your parents.
3. Join a garage band.

"Yep, that's what it says ... slacker", I chuckled, "do you know what a slacker is?"

"Well", she said and then paused. "I think I do, but I might be wrong about that".

I explained that a slacker is another term for a lazy person, then reassured her that the t-shirt is especially funny to me because J. really isn't one.

"Slacker", she repeated, "It says slacker".

Later that day I was driving J. to his friend's house. We were talking about his great-grandmother and he made noises about having been dressed inappropriately for her party. I couldn't imagine a 15-year old kid thinking a t-shirt and khakis being 'inappropriate' so asked for clarification. He didn't understand her dementia and her in/outness and he'd misunderstood her focus on his t-shirt as though she really did think HE was a slacker. He felt bad about it in that way that he couldn't say it exactly, but I totally understood as soon as I recognized his noises.

I touched his leg, reassuring him that he looked great and that his great-grandma has the same very curious sense of humor that most of the folks in our family have. I promised him that she wasn't the least bit offended and that she loved seeing him - seeing all of us - even if she doesn't remember it for more than a few minutes.

I think I will squirrel his t-shirt away once he's outgrown it so it doesn't accidentally get freecycled or tossed. I love that shirt. And the kid. And I could just kick myself for not having the presence of mind to have snapped a shot of J. and his great-grandmother this weekend.

A bottle of red

McBeth.

I never understood a single word he said but I helped him drink his wine... and he always had some mighty fine wine.

-3 Dog Night

Tiny fall

McBeth.

Digital bleariness suggests pre-dawn
In another room the cat scratches her neck,
distant jingling of tags

No sirens out the window,
no street talk at this hour,
Only her breathing now,
suspended in a sighing loop

from where my left hand snakes
from her soft breast
to the goosebumped flesh of her thigh

How did I get this permission?
Where are my qualifications?
Am I authorized?

She allows me in easily
Unencumbered.
Breathless, delicious, wet,
like a deep green forest
She welcomes me home.

She holds tightly to me,
trusting me with her tenderest pieces
while I guide us to the edge
for early morning freefall.

Grandma's fingers

McBeth.

One of Grandma's things now is to tuck food and small items into neatly-folded tissues, tuck the folded tissues inside her waistband, and surprise the staff later with all sorts of goodies when it's time to put pjs on. Currently an earpiece is missing for one of her hearing aids which likely went the way of the waistband or is tucked away somewhere for safekeeping, hidden so well no one will see it again.

There was a certain amount of controlled yelling one had to do to communicate well to be heard, but on a very intimate level I reminded Grandma today at her 90th birthday party celebration that I always loved the shape of her fingernails and how, as a child, I always hoped I'd have pretty fingernails like hers. And that I hated my next-younger sister for some time because SHE got those lovely fingernail genes and I was, instead, given stumpy sausage fingers with tiny nailbeds.

Grandma laughed.

It helped wash away a small portion of the guilt I've been carrying for a long time, when it became too hard to visit her regularly. When she didn't just confuse my dad's name for my deceased grandfather's name, but when she really just didn't recognize anyone anymore.

The staff at The Carrington will have to hustle to keep up with her tonight: with visitors brings confusion, and that means the door alarms will be shocking them all awake, looking for which way Dorothy went this time. There's a part of her mind that I believe is absolutely clear; a smooth undemented piece of tranquility within her that knows she was married for 60 years, she did own a home with Les and raised four children together. She did drive a car, dammit, and she does deserve to take a long walk out in the fresh air whenever she pleases.

Sufi Wisdom

McBeth.

Tie two birds together.

They will not be able to fly, even though they now have four wings.

this is your brain on sunlight.

You've been warned.

Locus of change (or: Da crane, da crane)

McBeth.

This morning I sat outside on the front steps of my house, trying to carefully yank the crusted muck from the inside corners of my eyes while navigating some complicated early-morning emotions which followed an earlier-morning phone call from one of my sisters.

After my 227th game of PDA Solitaire I slowly contemplated moving indoors... maybe to the bathtub, maybe to a dusty window with a towel and a bottle of Windex, maybe back to the coffee pot for a refill, maybe to a long slow stare down with the broom and dustpan (no, two against one. They'd most definitely win). Maybe I should grab a pen and a notebook to extrapolate the wordless frustration, or find something to physically break -ruin- to help shake loose my tension.

It was while trying to unravel this 'which way do I go?' conundrum when I heard a soft chuffling sound indirectly above me. Not cooing exactly; not squawking, but more of a high baritone or perhaps a very low tenor's throat clearing.

Grus canadensis

Sand Hill Cranes

Likely immature, given the brown color of their bodies (though I have read that even the mature birds, which are blue-gray can also be a brownish-red color due to the waters which they hang out in). The two distinct 'V' formations flew over my head, one containing four birds and the other, six. Marvelous huge creatures these birds are, putting the local geese and ducks to weight (at roughly ten pounds) and height (at five foot stature) shame.

They were too far away (and the two flocks located too close together) to designate who was calling out which way, but I could clearly make out both their 'unison call'', which they vocalize as male/female pairs to reinforce their bond and to threaten other cranes or predators (and which, incidentally, sounds very much to me like nature's own little wind chimes) and their 'guard call', which they vocalize to either warn cranes of danger or to warn away other cranes. Such beautiful noise, those guttural ku-rluuuu-uuing.

This time of year reveals the return of life to the seemingly lifeless rolling hills of end-of-winter Wisconsin. I am no closer to understanding how to settle my heart around a satisfactory solution WRT family issues that aren't mine to solve, but the ka-ro-o-oooing of the migrating cranes placed me slightly closer to center. That helps. It opens me to gratitude. It reminds me that I am in control of very little, that I could consider making more of a concerted effort in letting the world flow over and past me, because the world does that anyway, regardless.