Weblog 174

June 7, 2009~ 12:15am
If you've visited my other blog, you'll know of my jousting with the local water company here in Pittsburgh. Not a pleasant thing at all. Very frustrating. It's a situation that has given rise to a state of despondency, and I don't know why.....a free-floating thing, but it hangs like wet fog.

Maybe this situation has come to symbolize all the ways the individual is but a cog in a great, unfeeling, unreasoning, rolling MACHINE. I hate that feeling. I hate being faceless and insignificant...hate having no one listen. (Ah.......but listening itself! what a grand thing that is) and tonight my spirits soared simply by seeing my grandchildren Kay and Bill because those two not only listen, they demand stories. LOL!!! From the time I walk up through their front yard-- seeing their dog wagging himself helpless in noodly shimmies, their two bright faces grinning from the door-- and I'm no longer me at all. I become.....THE STORY QUEEN!



Already-told tales at my feet, discarded story lines cast aside, waiting for an old Hans Christian Anderson- imperfectly remembered but added to with zest, improvised with glee -as the two of them wait for stories to begin over pizza, or acted out in the backyard with each of us playing parts.

I don't care how technologically sophisticated this world becomes or how many electronic games and Pixar movies that wash up on the shore, nothing beats a plain old story- either told or read to children, and nothing beats the closeness shared-- with imagination making its own special kind of light.



Tonight the "stories" were running in a "911 Emergency" vein- with Bill becoming every rescue character and Kay and I, the hapless victims of any number of calamities- the sillier the better. Vampires climbing in the window, toes caught in bathtub drains, burglars dangling outside our window, trapped in their own escape ropes, Kay drifting out in a boat- unable to swim, sharks circling-- adrift--



(Kay adding that her dog was also foundering there in the water, both of them helpless.)

"911?" I croak desperately, talking into my hand and standing at their plastic kiddie basketball hoop imagined to be a phone booth.

"Yes, this is 911," Bill answers from his 'base', which is the tree-swing.

"My daughter is drifting out to sea! And there are sharks in the water!!"

Kay interjects from 20 feet away, lying in the grass and feigning helplessness: "My boat dumped me out! Tell him that. And my dog is getting bit!"

I repeat this, a sharper edge of hysteria in my voice. "OK! I'll be right there!" Bill says, slipping out of the swing.

As he approaches Kay, she says. "I'm already drownded." Bill begins to fight off the sharks. "And I'm half ATE" -Kay announces.

LOL!!! No matter what the scenario, Kay always expired before she could be rescued. LOL!! (Yep, that's Kay alright....small 4 year old for whom the glass is always half full.........



...of POISON....ROFL!!) No matter how much drama we mustered, there was none that could outdo her constant dying.

It was a charming night. It lifted my spirits right out of the dumpster, with much laughing at the sillier situations (i.e.-"911? There's a man stuck on my fence, and the dog has pulled his pants down. I'm tired of looking at his BUTT CRACK...." this particular one produced GALES of laughter.) Then Bill motioned me closer. Conspiratorially... "I have something else to say but over there, because it's inappropriate."

Much intrigued, I accompanied him to the fence. "It's this. He's also pooping," Bill said, giggling.

Kids. They're the tonic, alright...fixes one right up. They re-stabilize the world after it's gone cock-eyed...they are the balance. Love 'em, I do!




June 8, 2009~ 6:15pm
Today began the looooooooooong detour into work. Yes.....Pittsburgh is again tearing off a piece of Rt.28 North and making everyone find their way to O'Hara Township by way of Cuba.



That's my house. That's my little blue car on the road at 6:00a.m.....that's the dinosaur small intestine I have to pass through like a dried turd in order to get to my desk, overflowing with charts to bill at the brickhouse up in the corner. OH JOY!!!

This morning, rather than take the prescribed detour, I backtracked my circuitous way home, which takes me through the tangle of Oakland, all the pretty mansions on Fifth Avenue's Millionaire Row from the big steel days.....the prettiest synagogue in the world, The Art's Center, Chatham College....ordinarily a very picturesque route. (But half awake at that ungodly hour and stopping every 30 feet for another stop light, does not sweeten my morning disposition.) This will continue until October (they say) --but *Port Authority's PennDOT's 4 months is another man's life sentence. (*- easy to mistake those two...two faces of the Evil Empire) I do believe the state flower IS the 'orange cone'. Never saw such disruption for so many years in a row around here. Crumbling infrastructure and its maintenance and upkeep is turning me into a BIG CRY BABY



and it's mighty embarrassing, it is. I really wouldn't care... if there would be some let up, but there never is. The tangles go on and on.... I'll stock up on coffee and Rolaids, and I'll be fine, my blue car wending its way, grumping and 'Mother May I-ing' all the 16 miles of my commute (which is probably about 20 now.) Happy Monday, folks! Que sera sera.





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