Thursday, May 17, 2012

This is not an Art Blog

This is what I did today. I was going to read the book I got in the mail , but something happened  that upset me, so I decided to do something a little more therapeutic. It didn't turn out exactly how I expected, but I suppose I'll keep it even so.


She's called "Fade."
She's four feet tall, just one foot shorter than me.
I'd like to hang her up in my room, but every time I look at her, she makes me so sad, I just want to cry!
I know you can't see them on this crappy pic, but there are faded angry faces in the blue aura. Actually, you can't really see them even when you're standing right in front of the painting, so that was kind of a FAIL.

Maybe after I read my book, I'll get around to doing some actual writing.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Dream: Come See Me

My mother's call left me worried. "Come see me," she'd pleaded. "I miss you." I scribbled down the new address and checked the map. She was fourteen hours away.

Funny, how we do that- measure trips in hours instead of distance, as if we plan to drive straight through, dismissing the sights. 

That's how my father always did it. The shortest distance between two points, and all that nonsense. He was pissed with me when I was twelve years old. I'd pointed out to him that, factoring in the curvature of the earth and the fact that road builders rarely construct straight paths between cities, the shortest distance between two points might actually be an arc. 

He told me to shutthehellup and let him do the driving. 

Maybe that's why my mother divorced him. 

Or maybe not. She told me once that she was tired of playing Caroline to his Charles. I was astonished that she could ever say such a thing, but it rang true. My father had always pictured himself building a cabin, praising God and living off the land. 

My mom, on the other hand, was more of a Hot Lips Houlihand. I never saw her any other way.

She's been calling out to  me for several nights in a row. Sometimes she's still with my father. Sometimes it's my Poppy or James. Sometimes it's a new man altogether. Never mind that she passed away four and a half years ago. That issue never seems to come up when I see her in my dreams. 

I wonder what she's up to that she should need to call out to me so often. It doesn't matter. I can never reach her. There's always a flood or a fire or maybe the roads wear away into impassable rivers of mud and sludge. I get bogged down in the muck. No matter what vehicle I take, car, boat, bicycle, Radio Flyer, I can't seem to remember until I wake up that I know how to fly...

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Moving Forward

I've managed to avoid the Spring Cleaning Bug by enrolling in classes at the local community college. I figured I would be able to say I'm so busy with my full-time job and night school, I couldn't possibly clean out the garage or the pantry any time this year.

Also, the moth/spider invasion is at its peak, so I'm terrified of the crevices and/or what's lurking in them. I've already killed three wolf spiders and countless moths. If you are from here, you know what I'm talking about. If you are not from here, please don't tell me about your local infestations. It gives me nightmares. (I'm serious, Robbie. Nightmares!)

I'm almost in the clear. Summer is just around the corner, which means it will be far too late to do any useful purging. Spring Cleaning is, by definition, a spring activity, right? I'm willing to wait for it to roll around again before making any concrete decisions about the fate of the old bunk beds and toy boxes I've got stacked out there. Sara's and Lyric's crap is in the way anyhow, so yep. Spring Cleaning 2012 is definitely a bust.

On the excellent side, I'm finally going for that degree in English I've been wanting for so long. There's lots of reading and writing in my future, folks. The opportunities are endless...

Crap. Did that sound a little too upbeat and (gulp) optimistic? There's quite a bit of that running through my veins lately. Before you know it, I'll be planting flowers and smiling at the neighbors...