Weblog 40
November 12, 2006~ 8:00pm
If you read my last weblog, you know I'd vowed to give up all online writing- (and as with most pronouncements like that I make) I've completely done a 180 and changed my mind.
What I've found is that first of all, I cannot write totally isolated. I keep on thinking this is possible but it turns out to be howlingly lonely before long-- but I've determined I can (and must) write among those I trust. That is imperative- among those with whom I share ideals and an outlook on the world so that the online experience does not devolve into ugly scraps and angry differences of opinion. I am able to write quite satisfyingly among mature friends who more or less 'get me' in a very basic way, and whose own viewpoint is similar, if not completely congruent.
So the answer has become: small, intimate, and select. I've created such a place. And for a few weeks now it's been just wonderful- and in those weeks, my goodness.....the Democrats have come out of the shadows to kick Republican butt! Ya-HOOOOO!! That's brightened my outlook and allowed me to begin to believe that change is possible-- that anything is possible-- and that we may yet be able to begin a slow and careful pullout of Iraq. That perhaps at last this country will climb down from its ivory-towered isolation and become participants in a multinational world growing smaller all the time- a world seriously seriously opposed to the kind of bully-pulpit imperialism that belongs more to the 19th century than the 21st.
So folks..........I'm back. (And just so the cute little mandarin doesn't feel ousted from the archive page..........and because he represents wisdom and a kind of absurd dignity to me...here he is
in all his sweet, inscrutable splendor. My pal......."Mandarin Pup".
November 14, 2006~ 6:00pm
I must admit, I'm in a funk. One of those places you sink to that are so airless and so complete- (well actually, that was yesterday, but it's one of the reasons I've put nothing up since Sunday)-- anyway-- so dense and airless that you feel you're suffocating with every breath. And what happened to bring this on? Ruminating. Simply that. A knack I have periodically for seeing all the bad stuff all at once. And I mean all.
Dumb little things like not making my bed for days at a time, when I used to make it practically as soon as my feet hit the floor. Rattles and hesitations in my car that with a pinch of rumination with a seven year old vehicle produce a level of high anxiety that I really don't wear well at all.... I mean, I'm a person who loathes worrying. I know it accomplishes nothing, and makes all things much, much worse- but there I was....worrying.. I have no headlamps on the car. Both burned out- both cannot be changed except by the dealer because of the asinine (and I'm sure, planned way) that they have both American measurement screws and metric screws you have to get through to change them...AND......the bolts are 6" LONG! (So of course, not knowing this and attempting to change them, 2 broke off because of the sheer DEPTH of the damn things, combined with 7 years worth of rust.) And if I do the reasonable thing and take my car back to the dealer.....how much you figure that'll run me? Yah.....the bastards.
So I drive in the dark with 2 high beams on. (They still work.) This is probably illegal, is most definitely discourteous, but I'm trying to get through one more winter before I opt for a new vehicle. I don't want one....but the long drive to and from work and the hot, hot summer with no air-conditioning, and the odds telling me (with every rattle and rumble, hitch and hiccup) that 7 years is all you can expect relatively free of major problems- all these things are pushing me toward a major purchase in the spring.
The next thing is flood insurance. Now, I admit I was an absolute imbecile when I bought this crate of a house, but I live in a 'flood plain'- and had my share of 4ft. deep cellar soakings for the first 6 years I lived here. But to make the 'flood insurance'---(i.e.- "will only pay out a cent if my house actually floats off") 'afforable' (and it's necessary for a mortgage)- I had my agent strip it down to a bare minimum. Just up to what I still owe on the mortgage.
Well yesterday I came home to a letter from my second mortgage people, who insist I increase flood insurance or THEY will do it for me and bill me over the next 15 years. God Almighty....with Katrina, we're all taking a bath. The rich can't stay as 'comfortably rich' as they were, the big insurance executives having to pay out all that cold hard cash- and Uncle Sam is mighty angry, what with the war in Iraq costing us so much no matter HOW hard he tries to hide it....it's driven all prices up. My interest rates on credit have each jumped a hundred more a month just to cover the hike. I'm miserably middle class. Much debt, much abhorrent worry, and mad as hell. (Which of course, I've driven inside to produce this 'funk'.)
Bring on the holidays. Hey......just what I need! Don't know what sort of merry gentlemen will be 'resting' this year. Mostly they'll be pacing, fretful, eyes bugging out like the Christmas goose. (Oh yah.....and I'm getting older. Loosing teeth, gaining pounds, joints are tightening up. I need to watch my own version of 'It's A Wonderful Life' to get a grip for this holiday season. Maybe someone just take and dunk my head in the River Lethe. Give me a good soaking, maybe forget a decade or two.....)
November 16, 2006~ 6:45am
Yesterday was particularly long. A rainy day, poor driving, congested roads, a meeting at work, a stint in the 'veal pen', a long commute back home which took and hour and a half and without stopping to feed the cats, on to my daughter's for 4 hours of babysitting. I feel bad this morning, having written a poem yesterday about how tired I was (and i was)- but goodness, it doesn't begin to cover how nevertheless engaging Bill and little Kay were to watch.
Bill, in typical almost 4 year old style, is quite caught up in what is 'scary' and what is not. Meaning: although he fears a LOT of things, he courts fear like a junkie. lol....
For instance: his favorite game last night was to use my Maglite flashlight (which I keep in my purse) to, as he told me, "investigate the dark!" So we shut all the lights out at his direction, I slid the loop of the Maglite case onto a belt he happily showed me he has-- ("Bill, you could wear this on your belt like a holster if you had a belt". "I HAVE A BELT!" he screamed with joy-- and there it was hanging on a peg in his room.) And then he ordered me to douse all the lights. Kay held onto a piece of his shirt and followed behind him, and I brought up the rear as we checked under every couch, chair, bedclothes and closets for "bad stuff. Scary stuff". I was armed with a pop gun and when Bill declared a dust bunny or a suspicious curve of blanket to be fair game, I shot it. LOL!!
After an hour- (yes, an hour) I told him, "Bill, lets turn the lights on now. If your mommy and daddy come home now and look up at the house they'll be worried because it's all dark." He thought about that and agreed, but he wanted to watch his 'Rescue Heroes' DVD. I tried, I truly did, to get that machine to work, but with 4 different remote controls- a stereo, a VCR, a TV, and a DVD player to contend with- all I managed was to get a "Little Bear" DVD playing with no sound and a backup something playing on the CD player of some kind of rock version of truck and tractor songs.
I was beside myself trying to synchronize things and fix it until Bill told me, "I LIKE IT!"- so that's what we ended up watching and listening to- a rather schizoid entertainment, but he enjoyed it. Mostly what I like was how he came up to me in the dark and fluffed my hair hanging down on both sides of my face and with wonder said, "You look like a witch! And your eyes are-- (here his own grew huge with drama and delight)-- are ALL BLACK!" lol....
of course, when I shoved the Thomas the Train book under the couch cushion because he and Kay were fighting over it, I got, "You're a bad grandma"-- and I did an unbelieveably stupid and childish thing. I said, "OK, Bill. I won't come over here anymore if I'm a bad grandma"- and his jaw dropped a mile.
Where are the damn scissors when you want to cut out your tongue?
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
If you read my last weblog, you know I'd vowed to give up all online writing- (and as with most pronouncements like that I make) I've completely done a 180 and changed my mind.
What I've found is that first of all, I cannot write totally isolated. I keep on thinking this is possible but it turns out to be howlingly lonely before long-- but I've determined I can (and must) write among those I trust. That is imperative- among those with whom I share ideals and an outlook on the world so that the online experience does not devolve into ugly scraps and angry differences of opinion. I am able to write quite satisfyingly among mature friends who more or less 'get me' in a very basic way, and whose own viewpoint is similar, if not completely congruent.
So the answer has become: small, intimate, and select. I've created such a place. And for a few weeks now it's been just wonderful- and in those weeks, my goodness.....the Democrats have come out of the shadows to kick Republican butt! Ya-HOOOOO!! That's brightened my outlook and allowed me to begin to believe that change is possible-- that anything is possible-- and that we may yet be able to begin a slow and careful pullout of Iraq. That perhaps at last this country will climb down from its ivory-towered isolation and become participants in a multinational world growing smaller all the time- a world seriously seriously opposed to the kind of bully-pulpit imperialism that belongs more to the 19th century than the 21st.
So folks..........I'm back. (And just so the cute little mandarin doesn't feel ousted from the archive page..........and because he represents wisdom and a kind of absurd dignity to me...here he is
November 14, 2006~ 6:00pm
I must admit, I'm in a funk. One of those places you sink to that are so airless and so complete- (well actually, that was yesterday, but it's one of the reasons I've put nothing up since Sunday)-- anyway-- so dense and airless that you feel you're suffocating with every breath. And what happened to bring this on? Ruminating. Simply that. A knack I have periodically for seeing all the bad stuff all at once. And I mean all.
Dumb little things like not making my bed for days at a time, when I used to make it practically as soon as my feet hit the floor. Rattles and hesitations in my car that with a pinch of rumination with a seven year old vehicle produce a level of high anxiety that I really don't wear well at all.... I mean, I'm a person who loathes worrying. I know it accomplishes nothing, and makes all things much, much worse- but there I was....worrying.. I have no headlamps on the car. Both burned out- both cannot be changed except by the dealer because of the asinine (and I'm sure, planned way) that they have both American measurement screws and metric screws you have to get through to change them...AND......the bolts are 6" LONG! (So of course, not knowing this and attempting to change them, 2 broke off because of the sheer DEPTH of the damn things, combined with 7 years worth of rust.) And if I do the reasonable thing and take my car back to the dealer.....how much you figure that'll run me? Yah.....the bastards.
So I drive in the dark with 2 high beams on. (They still work.) This is probably illegal, is most definitely discourteous, but I'm trying to get through one more winter before I opt for a new vehicle. I don't want one....but the long drive to and from work and the hot, hot summer with no air-conditioning, and the odds telling me (with every rattle and rumble, hitch and hiccup) that 7 years is all you can expect relatively free of major problems- all these things are pushing me toward a major purchase in the spring.
The next thing is flood insurance. Now, I admit I was an absolute imbecile when I bought this crate of a house, but I live in a 'flood plain'- and had my share of 4ft. deep cellar soakings for the first 6 years I lived here. But to make the 'flood insurance'---(i.e.- "will only pay out a cent if my house actually floats off") 'afforable' (and it's necessary for a mortgage)- I had my agent strip it down to a bare minimum. Just up to what I still owe on the mortgage.
Well yesterday I came home to a letter from my second mortgage people, who insist I increase flood insurance or THEY will do it for me and bill me over the next 15 years. God Almighty....with Katrina, we're all taking a bath. The rich can't stay as 'comfortably rich' as they were, the big insurance executives having to pay out all that cold hard cash- and Uncle Sam is mighty angry, what with the war in Iraq costing us so much no matter HOW hard he tries to hide it....it's driven all prices up. My interest rates on credit have each jumped a hundred more a month just to cover the hike. I'm miserably middle class. Much debt, much abhorrent worry, and mad as hell. (Which of course, I've driven inside to produce this 'funk'.)
Bring on the holidays. Hey......just what I need! Don't know what sort of merry gentlemen will be 'resting' this year. Mostly they'll be pacing, fretful, eyes bugging out like the Christmas goose. (Oh yah.....and I'm getting older. Loosing teeth, gaining pounds, joints are tightening up. I need to watch my own version of 'It's A Wonderful Life' to get a grip for this holiday season. Maybe someone just take and dunk my head in the River Lethe. Give me a good soaking, maybe forget a decade or two.....)
November 16, 2006~ 6:45am
Yesterday was particularly long. A rainy day, poor driving, congested roads, a meeting at work, a stint in the 'veal pen', a long commute back home which took and hour and a half and without stopping to feed the cats, on to my daughter's for 4 hours of babysitting. I feel bad this morning, having written a poem yesterday about how tired I was (and i was)- but goodness, it doesn't begin to cover how nevertheless engaging Bill and little Kay were to watch.
Bill, in typical almost 4 year old style, is quite caught up in what is 'scary' and what is not. Meaning: although he fears a LOT of things, he courts fear like a junkie. lol....
For instance: his favorite game last night was to use my Maglite flashlight (which I keep in my purse) to, as he told me, "investigate the dark!" So we shut all the lights out at his direction, I slid the loop of the Maglite case onto a belt he happily showed me he has-- ("Bill, you could wear this on your belt like a holster if you had a belt". "I HAVE A BELT!" he screamed with joy-- and there it was hanging on a peg in his room.) And then he ordered me to douse all the lights. Kay held onto a piece of his shirt and followed behind him, and I brought up the rear as we checked under every couch, chair, bedclothes and closets for "bad stuff. Scary stuff". I was armed with a pop gun and when Bill declared a dust bunny or a suspicious curve of blanket to be fair game, I shot it. LOL!!
After an hour- (yes, an hour) I told him, "Bill, lets turn the lights on now. If your mommy and daddy come home now and look up at the house they'll be worried because it's all dark." He thought about that and agreed, but he wanted to watch his 'Rescue Heroes' DVD. I tried, I truly did, to get that machine to work, but with 4 different remote controls- a stereo, a VCR, a TV, and a DVD player to contend with- all I managed was to get a "Little Bear" DVD playing with no sound and a backup something playing on the CD player of some kind of rock version of truck and tractor songs.
I was beside myself trying to synchronize things and fix it until Bill told me, "I LIKE IT!"- so that's what we ended up watching and listening to- a rather schizoid entertainment, but he enjoyed it. Mostly what I like was how he came up to me in the dark and fluffed my hair hanging down on both sides of my face and with wonder said, "You look like a witch! And your eyes are-- (here his own grew huge with drama and delight)-- are ALL BLACK!" lol....
of course, when I shoved the Thomas the Train book under the couch cushion because he and Kay were fighting over it, I got, "You're a bad grandma"-- and I did an unbelieveably stupid and childish thing. I said, "OK, Bill. I won't come over here anymore if I'm a bad grandma"- and his jaw dropped a mile.
Where are the damn scissors when you want to cut out your tongue?
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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