I Will Melt Before I Reach the Bottom of the Hill

Just when I think that I getting all together, paranoia strikes deep. I look around me and all I can see is change, change and I am not adapting very well, or at least I don't think I am. I am fearful of what is happening in my world and the world around me. I have never liked to move, new semesters in college, new cars, changes in the seasons, changing lanes on the interstate, changing clothes, changing channels on the TV and just about everything except getting my haircut or getting pregnant.

I never realized how much I absolutely feared change until my son and his family came and spent a week with me. He helped me make a dent in my father's storage bin which creates the greatest anxiety you can imagine. My level goes through the roof. I don't want to change anything so I've decided that when I don't want to get rid of something, I just give it to him and then he decides what to do with it. It works and I am slightly relieved and so thankful that he is here to help me get through another @#$%#*#$#@, Uggghhhh, $%#%$ change!!!!

He decided to defrost my freezer which was great, but then he started to rearrange the freezer in my refrigerator and I just couldn't handle the change for whatever reason. I think that he thought I didn't want him to take any of the stuff in either freezer home. I didn't care. Take it all and the quicker the better.

I just didn't want to have to deal with anymore changes in my life because every where I turn things are changing both good and bad. My life, my family, my body, my business, my friends, my government, my house, my yard, my car, my bills, my hair, my teeth, my voice, my finger nails, my pets, my taste in music, my taste in the foods, my personal preferences about so many things, the list is an on-going process that I face every day. The only thing constant in my life is that God is there and he sees all of this. But I think that he even thinks I just need to buck up.

I am not sure how to deal with all of these changes. I am the snowball rolling down the hill, picking up more and more snow, larger and heavier is my load and scared of the speed at which I'm going. I just can't seem to find a place to just roll into. I am up to my neck in alligators and want to be free. I don't want to roll down the hill anymore. I want to stop!

Am I just having a hard time "transitioning?" I hate that word about as much as "finding closure." Reality is that I am the snowball rolling down the hill so fast that I am melting before I ever reach the bottom of the hill. I don't care if I sound like I am whining. It's real to me. I just hope that when I finally stop rolling that I don't hit a wall and explode, devoid of definition.

There He Was, But Not Enough

Tonight I finally had the courage to clean off my husband's desk and I'm not going to apologize or beat myself up for taking so long. It was the heart of his world and next to mine. 22 months isn't too long to wait to clean a desk!

After he died, I left it alone and then my children went through the drawers and took things that reminded them of their dad. I wanted them to take the desk, but I wanted find a part of him in the desk. I looked through it quickly and then I had to stop. No more desk. It was his world, where he almost lived, clawing his way through life, one hour at a time.

I left it alone for months and I mean alone. Dust settled and the sexy lady-computerized voice on the thermometer died. I guess she grieved harder than I did and her battery just couldn't handle it. I couldn't get her to quit crying out the temperature every night. I expected him to croon an answer her back to her some how, but no way did it happen. So one night, she just died.

I started to cover desk with my stuff and move things around. the dust bunnies reared their ugly heads. That didn't work.

I tried to pretend that it wasn't there and apologize every time someone came into my office by saying that I had just had a death in the family and had just had a yard sale. That worked in my head for a while, but then I guessed that no one believed me.

I tried convincing myself that I just couldn't clean it because it hurt too much, but after a while I realized I was getting more and more frustrated with that son of a bithchin' desk every day. So, I ignored the desk even more. Approach, avoidance. It didn't exist. It was the last great hurdle, or so I thought.

Last Saturday I woke up with thoughts of cleaning it all off and making it mine. It's crazy. I couldn't do it. Every time I got near the desk by chest would start to hurt and I would cry. Every day since then, I have tried to say to myself, you can do it. You have to do it. Now!! Don't delay!! You know it's for your own good!! Just get it over with. You're such a coward!! It's only a desk with a lot of junk all over it, and what's with the junk on the sofa. Just do it. NOW!

On Friday, I thought about that desk every hour and how tomorrow I was going to clean it! Please, near God give me the strength to just do it! I had resurrected the thermometer babe and so she gave her usual five renditions of the outside-inside temperature at 9:06pm and 30 minutes later I got one more report. Goodnight I said, looked at the desk and got really, really mad, like someone had just crapped in the middle of the desk and left it for me to clean up. I swore to myself that tomorrow I would clean. I was exhausted and went to bed, slept for 11 hours and then it was Saturday.

Today, or should I say this afternoon, I started clean off the desk. No mercy! If I wasn't using it, then it was gone, except for the chords and cables and Cds and a few other things that I put in a small plastic bag. There are times in your life when reality hits you between the eyes like nothing before. It's doubly hard when you don't expect it. There he was right in front of me, that little piece of his fingernail that came off right before he sank into the damnable "Coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs" world, as he would have said. I thought he was gone and buried except for the little bag of ashes that I will plan to scatter in Scotland next summer.

There he was, so real. Just one tiny piece of him, just as real as the day I met him. It was if he reached out his hand to me. There he was, but not enough. But I can't go back there....

I cant go back there anymore
You know my keys won't fit the door
You know my thoughts don't fit the man
They never can they never can.

A Thermometer for Every Occasion

I wish that I could have shared him with anyone who needed to be loved because he certainly had enough love to go around for everyone.

No pre-conditions.
No questions asked.
He just loved everyone unconditionally his entire life.

I miss him standing at the door at his old house in North Carolina watching our family leave in our car, just to make sure that we get off safely.

I miss his Little Debbie oatmeal cakes in the cookie jar and how the jar was always full.

I miss watching him read anything, quietly.

I miss being able to lean underneath the hood and ask him a thousand questions about cars and anything while he worked on his car.

I miss ironing and starching his shirts when I was first learning to iron and how he never complained about how stiff they were

I miss him always telling me what the experts said about everything.

I miss watching him crack out and cut up pecans for my mother's pies.

I miss eating peanut butter crackers with him on the stairs and seeing him get all mad at me when he knows that I ate the last piece of pecan pie.

I miss ice cold Pepsi Colas in the bottle, carefully placed in the back of our refrigerator that was the coldest part, and how he kept the new and used bottles in the wooden Pepsi crate on the floor by the dryer.

I miss how quiet he was in the car whenever we went somewhere and how he would always tell my mother how our picnic lunch of fried chicken, potato salad, pecan pie, and cold ice tea in those funky green, Thermos cups couldn't be any better.

I miss how he always stopped at the same place in Tallulah Gorge for the picnic and assured my mother that we get to her mother's by dark.

I miss how he always had change to give me for my bank and how he would cash his checks and leave the money in the envelope on his dresser.

I miss him waking me up to get ready for school in the morning even though I made him late for work most of the time.

I miss seeing him pass the Lord's Supper and how his countenance changed when he was in charge and had to say the prayer.

I miss how he trapped squirrels in cages, released them a mile away and then wondered why he could never get ride of the squirrels in his yard.

I miss how he always cleaned his plate up until the day he died and how he tried up until the end.

I miss his bird feeders and how he always had the biggest robins I have ever seen in his backyard.

I miss how neat and tidy his yard and house were and how he always planted with the Farmer's Almanac.

I miss how he shelled out beans for seeds to plant the next year and how he dried tomato seeds from good tomatoes and started his own seedlings.

I miss how he loved any kind of tool and how he could fix anything.

I miss how he saved every television and radio he ever owned and tried to keep them in working order.

I miss how he snored and how my mother complained about it.

I miss how he would fart and laugh, then apologize and how my mother gave it a name which I will never know what it meant because I knew it would embarrass him if I asked what it meant.

I miss how he would carefully and delicately wind a clock as if it would break like a small child.

I miss his smile when my children were in his arms and how patient he was answering their questions.

I miss drinking tea with him at night or eating a bowl of milk and crackers.

I miss how he spoke about his family and how and where he grew up and telling me how the good Baptist of North Carolina took care of him and the children in the orphanage at Christmas time.

I miss how a neighbor, salesman, the cleaning man, my friends, the preacher, always went home with something whenever you came to our house.

I miss just sitting in the room with him, talking and listening to the same stories over and over again and how consistent they were.

I miss him saying." Well honey, I love you too," whenever I would tell him I loved him.

And, oh how I miss all those thermometers as he had one for every occasion.

Dia linn...daddy..dia linn!

Still Fumbling for Truth

Feel I'm on the verge of some great truth
Were I'm finally in my place
But I'm fumbling still for proof
And it's cluttering my space
Casting shadows on my face
I know I have a strength to move a hill
I can hardly leave my room
So I'll sit perfectly still
And I'll listen for a tune
While my mind is on the moon.

Cause everywhere I seem to be
I am only passing through.
I dream these days about the sea
Always wake up feeling blue
Wishing I could dream of you.

So if I stumble
And if I fall
And if I slit now
And loose it all
And if I can't be all that I could be
Will you, will you wait for me

And wait for me
Please wait for me.

Alexi Murdoch, "Wait"

It's Do or Dance

I have recently discovered the Facebook phenomena and am amazed at just how many friends I now have. Some of my friends have 600+ friends. I haven't taken an average of my 95+ friends, but it seems to be somewhere in the low 100s range. So I guess that I fall on the low end of the Facebook friends popularity graph since I have less than a hundred. I really wonder how anyone person in their early twenties could have 600+ friends and get their accounts hacked into.

I am really into sending the flowers and fish to all my greenie friends. Somehow I feel that I am connected to them and also to the great rain forest of the Amazon and to the whales off the coast of Maui. After all, Facebook sponsors do contribute to someone for all the green space that we create with our continually sending flowers to each. I am content to know that I have made a difference in controlling the deforestation of rain forest all over the world.

I have also learned to avoid politics after one of my "gay" Facebook friends, which I admit I still do understand his choices, decided to tear me a new one after posted on Facebook as to where all the uninsured masses, such as myself, will go for health checkups when Obama or McCain either gives us medical coverage or lets us buy into their Congressional plan. He asked,"If I thought that only the rich should have medical insurance then?" We had previously gone at it before when he reared his ugly head by posting a link to a nasty webpage on his Facebook page that referenced the bowel habits of one of the Apostles in the Mormon church. He later removed it after he said that he hadn't read that far down into the blog. That was a nice thing to do. Well, one of my other Facebook friends read what he and written and tore him a "don't pick on her because you don't know what you're talking about" new one. It really felt good to be defended. I like to pride myself in thinking that I can take care of myself. But to have a Facebook friend swoop down and just take care of things for me was just sublimely grand. I now find myself being completely ambivalent to his concerns and life. I thought that I could care but now I realize how much I really don't care. It's like trying to pay a rabid dog and every time you reach out to pet it, it tries to bite you. It's a really cute and seemingly loving dog but it doesn't seem to want to act like a dog. I'm no fool since I offered to take this dog on a nice walk in the park in the beginning as a peace offering and now I'm the one who is being chased through the park with a crazy ass barking dog at my heels.

I just want to dance and somehow be left alone. It's do or dance time and I find myself wanting to just go away for a while and maybe think of coming back. I have no idea why but it has something to do with the spaces around me and how they confine me, even the page I write on. I think that I define myself on these pages but it's all just words that should have meaning but they don't. The only real meaning in life is that we live and then we die and it's the things that we do in between that have meaning. Don't ever try and take away by family. They're the real meaning between living and dieing.

It's Easy to Be Brave When Times are Easy

I AM SO BRAVE!!

I could survive for 1 minute, 13 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds Pedia

1969 BIG SUR FOLK FESTIVAL - PART THREE - JOAN BAEZ





PART FIVE - 1969
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PART SIX - 1969
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PART EIGHT - 1969 - JOHN SEBASTIAN, JONI MITCHELL
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OBAMA AND HIS PROMISE



HILLARY CLINTON - 2008



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CROSBY STILL NASH AND YOUNG - YOU DON'T HAVE TO CRY