Reasons to Live

The summertime smell of freshly mowed grass.

The scent of rain blowing in on the wind.

The velvet softness of a baby's scalp.

The hush of the year's first snowfall.

The overjoyed smile of someone you haven't seen in a long time.

Mom's chocolate pie.

An inside joke with someone you love that makes you both laugh out loud every time you say it.

Quiet candle light time when the power's out.

The middle of a good book with a page-turner plot.

Sharing secrets with someone who gets you.

Misty sunrise on a lake in the fall.

Great Blue Herons in flight.

Baby birds just learning to fly but still squeaking for Mom.

Brand new kittens/puppies and great old pets.

A tearjerker movie with a happy ending.

A compliment from a complete stranger.

The way that baby wraps you around his/her finger just by smiling.

Christmas decorations and the smell of pine.


These are things I want to see, smell, hear, feel again in this life. These are reasons to live.
Please add to the list with reckless abandon.

8-13-06 The End

How to start? More importantly, how to stop.

When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is quit digging.

First, I am not in a bad place emotionally...at the moment. I'm actually doing quite well lately. I think we (my family and I) are turning a corner of acceptance. Mom's doing ok. My sister's doing ok. Today is ok. I feel balance returning.

But...

There's always a "but" isn't there?

Back on March 13th I told the story of my best friend and her daughter. The daughter had come to that typical impass of child/adult growing. The one where she rebels against everything in an attempt to become an independent...a grown up. The one where Mom and daughter butt heads in the extreme.
Most every girl goes through this with her Mother at some point. I did anyway.
For those two, it didn't go well. They have since been on the way to recovering.
BUT...

...Tomorrow, August 14th, I will see my best friend for the first time since my father's funeral. I will see her at her daughter's funeral.
Jess's self-pity led to drug use. Drug use took her life Friday night.

I absolutely ache for the pain her mother is about to experience. (shock is the current emotion)
I ache because I know.
I hate that she and I now have this in common.

...Jess has lived a great deal of her life in a state of self-pity. A trait she learned from her mother.
I have been separating myself from them emotionally due to my own situation. For the first time in 12yrs, I stepped away to let them find their own ground.

To admit you were wrong is to declare you are wiser now than before.

I shouldn't have stepped back. I should have jumped in with both feet and forced that kid to love us back. My father would have locked me in a room until I accepted that he was doing it out of love.
Instead, I let her go. We all let her go.
I am wiser now.
Too late again.

Peace and love to all of you. Who is the person you're at odds with that you wish you weren't? Undo that. Undo it today. Be the one to give in first. Just say "I love you." and let it get better. Make it better.
Tomorrow is too late.

PS - My posts will be limited. They've been barely here for a while now anyway.
I feel it is absolutely wrong for me to dump so much negative emotional trauma on a group of kind friends and strangers. That's no way for me to better the world. I cannot justify smudging it in this ugliness. SO - I will post happy, good things when I find them. Don't think I'm not happy if I'm not posting...I just haven't had time is all. I'm working very hard to find peace. When I do, I promise to share it. :)

Love love love to each of you.
Thank you for kindness and tolerance and 10pm moon viewing. ;)

August 7th, 2006

Yes, the song's still playing...and this piccie works just fine with that. :D

Happy Monday...and week...
....until I get back here...HUGS!

Dance if you feel the urge....

For me and Oliviah. :)

Blue Man Group - I Feel Love

Animusic

Wednesday, August 8th, 2005

"Hi Dad. I recorded this show and I want you to see it. I know you're going to love it. It's called Animusic. It's all this computer generated animation set to music. There's one with all these.....well balls. The balls hit cymbals and drums and stings to make the notes. It's so complex though. It's just incredible!
I'll put it on video and bring it down so we can watch it."

Click Here to See Animusic Show

We never got to watch it together.
I can't bring myself to delete it off of Tivo.

It's pretty incredible though, huh?

Troutday

RAINBOW

TROUT


Happy Rainbow Trout-day

7-26-06

7-24-06 ticky tocky

What we were before we aren't now.
What we are now we won't be tomorrow.
The pendulum swings....ticky tocky, ticky tocky.

We could be anything...any minute.
Healed, hurt, hero, hemorraged.
Anything at all...and then something else entirely.

Do not try to follow along. It will only make you dizzy.

7-24-06

I opened my spam e-mail this morning and I found this:

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.-Ralph Waldo Emerson

...and I'm all "c'mere Ralph Waldo Emerson! I'm gonna kick yer arse til you fall and can't rise anymore." Apparently Ralphie-boy hasn't met the women in my family. Luck is not our strong suit lately. That "rising" thing isn't really working for us and the falling thing is getting way redundant. I wonder what made Ralphie so danged optimistic!

Oh wait, positive thoughts....happy thoughts...

Sometime...in the way distant future...my family will be stronger and better because of the bull-pucky we've been through this year. Yes. We will.
Sometime.
In the future.
Way distant.
Fast forward please.

7-24-2006 I've gone a little "Patsy Cline"

"It is not I who is crazy?
It is I who is MAD."
Ren Hoek

I do believe:
I've got toys in the attic.
I've got bats in the belfry.
The lights are on but nobody is home.
My elevator doesn't reach top floor.
I took a trip around the bend.
I'm dipping into the squirrel stash.
I'm nutty as a fruitcake.
I'm mad as a hatter.
I'm not playing with a full deck.
I've got a few screws loose.
I fell completely out of my tree.
I lost all my marbles.
I've started howling at the moon.
I have a straightjacket in every color.

I've cracked, bent, gone spacey, noodled out, twisted off and I am most definitely certifiably insane in the membrane.
I'm tripping billies.
I'm one taco shy of a combo plate.
I'm queer as a football bat.
I have gone all Patsy Cline and I don't think I'm coming back.

Welcome to Wackjob City; population: ME!

Yeah, that might be a little too "happy".

7-24-06 HAPPY!

That's it.
I've had it.
There will be only happy thoughts from now on.
There will be no death. There will be no divorce. There will be no betrayal. There will be no sadness or crying or broken dreams. No more.
ONLY HAPPINESS DAMMIT! ONLY HAPPINESS!!!

Think of it as an experiment. Will happy thoughts actually bring happiness?
I don't know.

7-23-06 Life part two

Is there EVER a time when life is normal, safe, boring, daily, consistent? Is there ever a time without grief? Is there, somehow, joy? Sustained joy? Is there sustained joy???

How often do we have to watch our dreams break and fall away? If the cycle is: hope, dream, lose, again and again, why do we still bother to hope or dream? What bizarre resiliance keeps us wanting to hope all over again?

When we marry, why do we believe in forever? It's rarely real.
When we give birth, why do we believe that love is unconditional. It isn't.
We hope for financial freedom. We plan for vacations. We pretend tomorrow isn't going to be a train wreck....but those trains wreck. They usually always wreck.

I don't understand anything anymore. This is a terrible ride and I want to take everyone I love to Disneyland and heal us all.
Why does it have to keep getting worse??

---Baby, I love you so much. I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am for the things you're suffering right now. I wish I could make it alright again. I wish I could just take all the pain away and make everything all better.
WHY CAN'T I FIX US?

REWIND REWIND REWIND REWIND REWIND REWIND REWIND REWIND

7-23-2006 Life

We fed the kitty. Then the kitty had kitties.
There's a gray one on the left. We're going to keep that one.

We found a neighbor who will keep the momma kitty and one baby and her sister will take two others. All kitties accounted for. :)

That's good.

But...

Someone I love is sad and afraid because she thinks she might lose her marriage....and I don't know if that's true or not. I am sad for her. I want to make her(them) happy again. I hope time will fix this. I don't have a whole lot of faith in time healing things lately.

It's funny. When I was younger, I had all the answers. Now I don't have any.

I think I'll just look forward to a kitty and maybe everything else will work itself out.

7-18-06 Evil Teenagers

See this kid? I met him about 10 yrs into the future. It is not a good thing.

Here's the story as it really happened:

Saturday, July 15th. The hubby's at work and I woke up early. It's the day after payday. My mood is....undecided.
I need some things at Target so I'm showered and dressed early. I head out about 8:30a.m. I do a little shopping. Nothing serious happens. Mood still...undecided.
I come home. It's warm outside but I'm thinking, "I should do something positive. I should put on some jogging clothes and go for a walk." I proceed to do so...except...

I step out on my back porch and I see....a heap of litter right down the hill. Grrrrr. I grab a trash bag and a latex glove from under the sink and I go get the heap of litter. It has been left at the "tee" of the frisbee golf course. Now, I have no beef with frisbee golfers. They're generally nice people. They're not rowdy and they're all pretty friendly.....but my mood is being decided.
I'm ANGRY. Very ANGRY.
There are garbage cans in this park, yet I have picked up 6 cups, a beer bottle and a half empty bag of chips. I think..."I'm not going to put up with this anymore." I take this bag of garbage and I put it SMACK into the frisbee golf goal at the end of the course.
...and a teenaged golfer sees me do it.
He rants some obscenities about "who the hell do I think I am" and I rail back "It's your garbage!!" We begin to curse one another. He puts the bag in the garbage can (because now it's in his way, see?) and I walk off. As I'm walking off he gets in the last word. He screams, "Go home you fat bitch."
I continue to walk away...although I would like very much to dig my fingernails into the skin of his forehead and RIP HIS FACE OFF.

But the problem isn't his. It's mine.
See..."bitch" I understand. "Fat" that screws with my head.
Here's this beautiful specimen of an 18yr old and I realize that I look, to him, like his fatassed mother. (Personally, I'd like to have a talk with his fatassed mother about respect for elders and raising her son with some decency.)

I'm not fat. I'm not buff though.
I'll give that I've taken in 6 months of comfort food but I've only gained 5lbs. And I quit smoking too. I don't think I'm doing so bad. But now I can't look at myself in a mirror without considering what he saw.

Suddenly, I want to be that 105lb teenager that I used to be. I'm afraid to eat. I'm living off of Special K cereal.
I HATE that I let that kid get inside my head. I really should have just smacked him and let that be the end of it.

Worse yet, he'll be back. I'll see him again. He'll see me again.
I suddenly want to join Tae Kwan Do so I can get all buff and then kick his butt.
Where's his mom? I know I could kick her butt.

Ick. This is an UGLY side of me.
Stupid teenager.

Happy Thursday-before-my-day-off. Tomorrow will be better.

7-19-06

Hour Glass in a Time Warp


Ok. So I've been pathetically moody and embarassingly antisocial. Please, please accept my apologies.
I truly do not understand the mood swings. They are from the highest high to the absolute lowest low. I cannot seem to stay in the middle ground. I've tried the anti-mood-swing happy-pills but they don't work either. I still have the swings.

I was told this will come in waves. That has got to be the most true statement ever made...at least for me. I think I'm having undersea earthquakes followed by some serious tsunamis. (and I realize how not funny that is)

Ok. I'm on the upside now and I'm taking Friday off to just chill out. I think I'll go see a movie that day (Johnny Depp) and then just not think for a while. Thanks all for encouraging words and just for sticking around to listen to me whine. (gotta stop that)

Much love to each of you. I do hope you're doing well. I promise to visit the next time that time allows.

Oh...and tomorrow I'll tell you about bad teenagers. Evil, bad teenagers. Woohoo. ;)

7-17-06

"Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all."
-Buddha



I think I hurt them all.
I think I only feel my own pain now.
I think I shut them out.
They couldn't help anyway.
I turned them all against me.
It wasn't entirely on purpose.
It was subconscous mostly - although -
I knew I was doing it.
And a part of me revels in the solitude...
rolls in the emptiness...
It is a self-pitying part of me.

It is my fault.
Why then, can I not feel regret?
Only apathy.
I have lost compassion
even for myself.
I lock the door behind me
and walk away into the darkness.
I don't look back.
I won't.
I think, "they'll forget me in time."
I was only a burden to them.

I could fix this.
I could try.
I don't know how though.
I'm shocked at how no one else
tries.
They just blame and anger.
I don't have the answers...
neither do they apparently.
I wonder, "where is their compassion."
And I realize, there never was.

I am alone of my own doing.
I am alone of their doing.
I am alone.

7-14-06

There it is. The light at the end of the tunnel.
Aaaalll aboard. Next stop...WEEKEND!

HAPPY SHORT, EASY, STRESS-FREE FRIDAY.

(PS Tree, that was another quickie. LOL)

7-13-06

7-11-06 Vinyl

We skipped the light fandango,
turned cart wheels cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of sea sick,
the crowd called out for more.
The moon was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face at first just ghostly
turned a whiter shade of pale.


She said there is no reason
and the truth is plain to see,
that I wandered through my playing cards
would not let her be.
One of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might just have well been closed.

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face at first just ghostly
turned a whiter shade of pale.
~Procol Harum~
1967