Weblog 29
August 13, 2006~ 10:00am
Made it out of the awful heat, smack in the middle of a 'respite' of sorts. Dipped down into the 50's again last night. How delicious. And I did watch the kiddoes on Thursday evening and they were a joy. Both were still sporting pink eye but no fevers, and were very happy to see their grammy come trudging up the walk, Bill posted at the door crying, "Grandma is here!" Ah...those are moments to relish. I have the pleasure of watching them today as well. Their little gnomish bodies are just the dearest thing in life, and that small for such a short time.
I look at them and try and project what sort of adults they will become, and I wonder if they will have any memory of these afternoons-- evenings-- when life was one big magical puzzle to figure out. As we age the puzzle is still there but much of the magic is replaced by knowledge, and weariness, and anxiety, because the world, alas, does become known, and often adversarial.
And someone somewhere is always wanting to blow things up.
Last night I was struck by reading remarks of a writer who has lived a life of concentrated self-interest, pursuing personal pleasure first and foremost. He was holding forth on how nice it would be to be able to watch as people discover him someday after he's gone: how they will marvel at his work, and what a shame he won't be here to enjoy it.
It makes me sad that even thoughts of death bring immediately to mind the survival of the ego and nothing else. Doubtless he'd been dreaming of contacts from admiring fans whose affections he might 'court'. Married forever though he is- and unhappily, as he's ever-anxious to make resoundingly evident in everything he writes, I am saddened that some of the most talented people never learn to be happy. Their very natures drag them down while clawing at the edges of other lives, seeking always what is out of grasp, yet seeming to sink more and more into themselves. Hell, my own marriage had been unhappy-- and I left it when I realized it was beyond repair.
Had I been a different sort I suppose I could have remained, having affairs and justifying them by marital miseries but that would have been a life of lying. No, the secret of happiness is knowing what is true and following it. Seeking outside the given moral perimeters for pleasure leads to all manner of self destructive patterns mostly hurting those around you. After we're dead, it is the personal that remains, not the supposed written legacy. Our lives are our remains: who we touched, and whether we raised them up or used them to suit our purposes like kleenexes, or headache pills. And writing-- well, writing is pretty dust. It is the merest skin of the fruit.
Nothing more.
August 13, 2006~ 8:15pm
Another 'adventures in baby-sitting' day. LOL...and most enjoyable, I must say. Though the weather did turn a bit warmer-- so I was mopping my brow while crawling on the floor looking under the couch for plastic dinosaurs and matchbox cars. I seem to do that a lot.
Kay is a one year old perpetual motion machine. Lift her up on the lap... she wants down. Once down... she pulls to get up again. She was walking everywhere constantly and throwing balls, hugging baby dolls, trailing a spatter of milk as she lugged around a supposed 'non-spillable' sipper cup. And Bill loved the tent we built on the screened-in porch by hanging light blankets around the sides of the table. I couldn't find a way to make the blankets 'stay' and I said this out loud. Bill answered, "Clips. We need clips." "I know, Bill, but where will I get clips?" "In the kitchen drawer there are lots of clips." And sure enough- there were- those pinchable bag clips for bread and potato chips and such. And a lone clothes pin. Worked like a charm. Want to know something?--ask a 3 year old.
Bill held his urine all afternoon even though I pestered him with, "Do you have to go to the bathroom, Bill?" "No, gram. Not right now." I knew he had the padded waterproof pull-ups on, but I wanted to keep him used to using the bathroom when he needed. Late in the afternoon he burst out, "I HAVE TO TINKLE NOW!"
So he ran to the bathroom, pulled his shorts and pull-ups down, and peed like Seabiscuit after a full day of racing. He very neatly dragged his stool over to the sink, stepped up, then stepped onto the closed lid of the toilet seat and told me, "I have to wash my hands." Good boy, I thought...
When he was through he got down again, and I pulled a towel toward him off the rack.
"Not THAT one! That's a 'butt towel', I need the hand towel." I was laughing so hard, and Bill explained that "people wipe their butts on that big towel. You have to use the little towel."
LOL! So remember: don't use the butt towel. That's the big one.
If you didn't know that, now you do.
August 13, 2006~ 5:00am
Saw the grandkids again last night- our first regular get together since Matt and his family flew off again. It was a pizza night- and without pink eye! Everyone healthy and enjoying a lovely, cooler, sunny evening. Truly delightful.
I'd forgotten I'd promised Bill my Po doll (the red Teletubbie) who's been stationed on my bed for the last six years or so. When I was watching them on Sunday, I was reading a Teletubbie book to Kay and I told Bill I had the red one. "Can I see it?", he wanted to know. "You can HAVE him, Bill", I told him-- and of course, I forgot I'd said it but he sure didn't. "Maybe tomorrow you'll bring Po over", he said. I laughed and told him I'd bring him next week, when we come back again for pizza.
I remember buying that thing when all the controversy came out about those critters being some sort of subversive sexual inversion indoctrination. Teletubbies were supposed to be hypnotizing our children into accepting 'gay-ness'. LOL! Supposedly Po in particular was the worst culprit, because folks swore when you pressed his tummy he said "faggot, faggot". I had to find out for myself, so I bought one. Po says some soft little thing that COULD be 'faggot, faggot', but Jerry Falwell, it could just as easily have been "baggy, baggy" or "flag it, flag it"- for how garbled that muted little record is in his stomach. The offical verdict is that he's simply a cute, weird doll who says, most predictably, "daddy, daddy".
Maybe THAT'S what got the Christian Right's goat! Every fine upstanding Amerrakin knows a doll is hot-wired to say "Mama" if anything by Gawd at all, or our precious childern'll be on a fast track to hell when daddy dolls (like that evil, PURPLE lil sumabitch) with purses over their swish-ass arms start infiltratin' their minds and harts with that secular claptrap, and that's the gawd's honest truth! (You'd think by now the Angry Right would have all died of heart attacks, but no: they live to preach another day.)
August 17, 2006~ 5:30m
The news all over the wires today- and apparently last night, though I missed it- is that the sad, sad saga of the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey has finally reached its conclusion. Some sick bastard was finally caught while plying his 'teaching/nanny skills' in Taiwan. *(As a side note, I have a tracker on this site and oddly enough, though I've never had even one visitor from Taiwan- today there was a Taiwanese flag beside an ISP number. Weirdness continually warps my world. Gave me the creeps.)
So if you want to know what a real life monster looks like, go have a gander at this miscreant's resume'--makes you really want to take a close, close look at that 'chipper scout leader', the dance lesson teacher, the kindly next door neighbor who always seems to have time for the kids, and no, I'm not trying to make you paranoid-- you should be STEADFASTLY paranoid when it comes to this stuff. Pedophilia only prospers and thrives in ignorance about a topic that makes most people fairly uncomfortable, and of COURSE it's gonna be someone who looks like this asshole here. Who else could approach children but a soft-spoken type who's truly interested in them.......Yah...like sharks love chum.)
Just a reminder here meant very much to chill you: take nothing and NO ONE for granted. Check out the people who are spending time with your kids- or grandkids for that matter- or little nieces and nephews. Ask questions in a roundabout way, not scary or pointed to frighten or embarrass them, but probing open-door questions like, "Is anybody else home when you spend time at__________? What kinds of stuff do you do? Do you have fun there?"--that kind of lead in, just in case the little one really does (and I hope for everyone reading this, the answer is no)- but in case they really do have something to tell you that you should pursue further.
Like most everyone else when this murder happened the day after Christmas in 1996, I immediately thought- "a family member did it." I now realize that was mostly fueled by my own dislike of the wealthy and priviledged -as a group- so it was very easy to point my finger and believe that take on things. About five years ago, I did begin to have my doubts, and felt it just HAD to be an outsider- that the investigation had shamefully neglected every other avenue BUT looking at the family itself, though I never thought they'd actually find the murderer: too much time had passed- too many leads passed up- too much physical evidence at the crime scene had been overlooked.
And Patsey, you poor soul, I hope you can hug that daughter again. I have to think that the stress of constant scrutiny, the despair and horrific loss and excessive hounding by the media with their presumption of guilt, certainly contributed to the recurrence of Mrs. Ramsey's cancer because the immune system and one's life circumstances will either help keep carcinogens from having their way, or open the gate and let 'em in, and that just makes me feel so badly: what a terrible waste. Jon Benet has been the premier child murder of the end of this last century in the same way that little Grace Budd became the hallmark of horror for its beginnings when she was killed and consumed by the pedophile/masochist monster, Albert Fish. History is full of horror stories.
This one just closed its cover and said, "The End"--thank God. That wounded family will never recover anything they've lost except the assurance now that the world does not regard them as murderers.
Small comfort, but I'd say for the Ramseys, there's been none at all since December 26th, 1996.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Made it out of the awful heat, smack in the middle of a 'respite' of sorts. Dipped down into the 50's again last night. How delicious. And I did watch the kiddoes on Thursday evening and they were a joy. Both were still sporting pink eye but no fevers, and were very happy to see their grammy come trudging up the walk, Bill posted at the door crying, "Grandma is here!" Ah...those are moments to relish. I have the pleasure of watching them today as well. Their little gnomish bodies are just the dearest thing in life, and that small for such a short time.
I look at them and try and project what sort of adults they will become, and I wonder if they will have any memory of these afternoons-- evenings-- when life was one big magical puzzle to figure out. As we age the puzzle is still there but much of the magic is replaced by knowledge, and weariness, and anxiety, because the world, alas, does become known, and often adversarial.
And someone somewhere is always wanting to blow things up.
Last night I was struck by reading remarks of a writer who has lived a life of concentrated self-interest, pursuing personal pleasure first and foremost. He was holding forth on how nice it would be to be able to watch as people discover him someday after he's gone: how they will marvel at his work, and what a shame he won't be here to enjoy it.
It makes me sad that even thoughts of death bring immediately to mind the survival of the ego and nothing else. Doubtless he'd been dreaming of contacts from admiring fans whose affections he might 'court'. Married forever though he is- and unhappily, as he's ever-anxious to make resoundingly evident in everything he writes, I am saddened that some of the most talented people never learn to be happy. Their very natures drag them down while clawing at the edges of other lives, seeking always what is out of grasp, yet seeming to sink more and more into themselves. Hell, my own marriage had been unhappy-- and I left it when I realized it was beyond repair.
Had I been a different sort I suppose I could have remained, having affairs and justifying them by marital miseries but that would have been a life of lying. No, the secret of happiness is knowing what is true and following it. Seeking outside the given moral perimeters for pleasure leads to all manner of self destructive patterns mostly hurting those around you. After we're dead, it is the personal that remains, not the supposed written legacy. Our lives are our remains: who we touched, and whether we raised them up or used them to suit our purposes like kleenexes, or headache pills. And writing-- well, writing is pretty dust. It is the merest skin of the fruit.
Nothing more.
August 13, 2006~ 8:15pm
Another 'adventures in baby-sitting' day. LOL...and most enjoyable, I must say. Though the weather did turn a bit warmer-- so I was mopping my brow while crawling on the floor looking under the couch for plastic dinosaurs and matchbox cars. I seem to do that a lot.
Kay is a one year old perpetual motion machine. Lift her up on the lap... she wants down. Once down... she pulls to get up again. She was walking everywhere constantly and throwing balls, hugging baby dolls, trailing a spatter of milk as she lugged around a supposed 'non-spillable' sipper cup. And Bill loved the tent we built on the screened-in porch by hanging light blankets around the sides of the table. I couldn't find a way to make the blankets 'stay' and I said this out loud. Bill answered, "Clips. We need clips." "I know, Bill, but where will I get clips?" "In the kitchen drawer there are lots of clips." And sure enough- there were- those pinchable bag clips for bread and potato chips and such. And a lone clothes pin. Worked like a charm. Want to know something?--ask a 3 year old.
Bill held his urine all afternoon even though I pestered him with, "Do you have to go to the bathroom, Bill?" "No, gram. Not right now." I knew he had the padded waterproof pull-ups on, but I wanted to keep him used to using the bathroom when he needed. Late in the afternoon he burst out, "I HAVE TO TINKLE NOW!"
So he ran to the bathroom, pulled his shorts and pull-ups down, and peed like Seabiscuit after a full day of racing. He very neatly dragged his stool over to the sink, stepped up, then stepped onto the closed lid of the toilet seat and told me, "I have to wash my hands." Good boy, I thought...
When he was through he got down again, and I pulled a towel toward him off the rack.
"Not THAT one! That's a 'butt towel', I need the hand towel." I was laughing so hard, and Bill explained that "people wipe their butts on that big towel. You have to use the little towel."
LOL! So remember: don't use the butt towel. That's the big one.
If you didn't know that, now you do.
August 13, 2006~ 5:00am
Saw the grandkids again last night- our first regular get together since Matt and his family flew off again. It was a pizza night- and without pink eye! Everyone healthy and enjoying a lovely, cooler, sunny evening. Truly delightful.
I'd forgotten I'd promised Bill my Po doll (the red Teletubbie) who's been stationed on my bed for the last six years or so. When I was watching them on Sunday, I was reading a Teletubbie book to Kay and I told Bill I had the red one. "Can I see it?", he wanted to know. "You can HAVE him, Bill", I told him-- and of course, I forgot I'd said it but he sure didn't. "Maybe tomorrow you'll bring Po over", he said. I laughed and told him I'd bring him next week, when we come back again for pizza.
I remember buying that thing when all the controversy came out about those critters being some sort of subversive sexual inversion indoctrination. Teletubbies were supposed to be hypnotizing our children into accepting 'gay-ness'. LOL! Supposedly Po in particular was the worst culprit, because folks swore when you pressed his tummy he said "faggot, faggot". I had to find out for myself, so I bought one. Po says some soft little thing that COULD be 'faggot, faggot', but Jerry Falwell, it could just as easily have been "baggy, baggy" or "flag it, flag it"- for how garbled that muted little record is in his stomach. The offical verdict is that he's simply a cute, weird doll who says, most predictably, "daddy, daddy".
Maybe THAT'S what got the Christian Right's goat! Every fine upstanding Amerrakin knows a doll is hot-wired to say "Mama" if anything by Gawd at all, or our precious childern'll be on a fast track to hell when daddy dolls (like that evil, PURPLE lil sumabitch) with purses over their swish-ass arms start infiltratin' their minds and harts with that secular claptrap, and that's the gawd's honest truth! (You'd think by now the Angry Right would have all died of heart attacks, but no: they live to preach another day.)
August 17, 2006~ 5:30m
The news all over the wires today- and apparently last night, though I missed it- is that the sad, sad saga of the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey has finally reached its conclusion. Some sick bastard was finally caught while plying his 'teaching/nanny skills' in Taiwan. *(As a side note, I have a tracker on this site and oddly enough, though I've never had even one visitor from Taiwan- today there was a Taiwanese flag beside an ISP number. Weirdness continually warps my world. Gave me the creeps.)
So if you want to know what a real life monster looks like, go have a gander at this miscreant's resume'--makes you really want to take a close, close look at that 'chipper scout leader', the dance lesson teacher, the kindly next door neighbor who always seems to have time for the kids, and no, I'm not trying to make you paranoid-- you should be STEADFASTLY paranoid when it comes to this stuff. Pedophilia only prospers and thrives in ignorance about a topic that makes most people fairly uncomfortable, and of COURSE it's gonna be someone who looks like this asshole here. Who else could approach children but a soft-spoken type who's truly interested in them.......Yah...like sharks love chum.)
Just a reminder here meant very much to chill you: take nothing and NO ONE for granted. Check out the people who are spending time with your kids- or grandkids for that matter- or little nieces and nephews. Ask questions in a roundabout way, not scary or pointed to frighten or embarrass them, but probing open-door questions like, "Is anybody else home when you spend time at__________? What kinds of stuff do you do? Do you have fun there?"--that kind of lead in, just in case the little one really does (and I hope for everyone reading this, the answer is no)- but in case they really do have something to tell you that you should pursue further.
Like most everyone else when this murder happened the day after Christmas in 1996, I immediately thought- "a family member did it." I now realize that was mostly fueled by my own dislike of the wealthy and priviledged -as a group- so it was very easy to point my finger and believe that take on things. About five years ago, I did begin to have my doubts, and felt it just HAD to be an outsider- that the investigation had shamefully neglected every other avenue BUT looking at the family itself, though I never thought they'd actually find the murderer: too much time had passed- too many leads passed up- too much physical evidence at the crime scene had been overlooked.
And Patsey, you poor soul, I hope you can hug that daughter again. I have to think that the stress of constant scrutiny, the despair and horrific loss and excessive hounding by the media with their presumption of guilt, certainly contributed to the recurrence of Mrs. Ramsey's cancer because the immune system and one's life circumstances will either help keep carcinogens from having their way, or open the gate and let 'em in, and that just makes me feel so badly: what a terrible waste. Jon Benet has been the premier child murder of the end of this last century in the same way that little Grace Budd became the hallmark of horror for its beginnings when she was killed and consumed by the pedophile/masochist monster, Albert Fish. History is full of horror stories.
This one just closed its cover and said, "The End"--thank God. That wounded family will never recover anything they've lost except the assurance now that the world does not regard them as murderers.
Small comfort, but I'd say for the Ramseys, there's been none at all since December 26th, 1996.
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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