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.

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...

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...

Lucky Me

We are all at a stand-still here on Bell Street. I don't know why I always take this route. I should have taken Western. Bell is always the worst. I often wonder if there's some sort of accident up ahead. Perhaps I've chosen the path directly behind the carnage, and now we are being slowly and clumsily bottle-necked into one slow moving lane.

But that is rarely the case. There is simply too much traffic this time of day. I usually avoid the rush. I go to work at six or seven, not nine. The professional world is still in bed, trying to find the strength to face another day at the office, but I am already hard at work, organizing, packaging, filling counters, checking numbers and yelling at big burly boys with big sharp knives. I have to paint a fake smile on my face and greet those cantankerous customers as if I had invited them myself, but it's cool. They pay me, you know.

Not today. Today I am stuck in traffic with the sun-seeking world, trying to creep my way across town to my regular mechanic. My motor mounts need replacing, and I've been putting it off far too long.
I could tell you about the hell I went through last month with a mechanic who was not my regular guy, but it's really only of interest to me. To you, it would just sound like bitching.

That financial stress on top of my daughter and grandson moving to another state, Matthew being on the runaway list for weeks, Jacob and David jumping individually from one place to the next to the next, the situation at work...other things...

I'm stuck in traffic now. My fingers are wrapped firmly around the steering wheel at TEN &TWO. I am not rubbernecking to see what the problem is. I am not revving my engine to ready myself to change lanes at the first opening. I am simply sitting and waiting for things to move forward.


She's over there in her car with her elegant hand hanging out the driver's side window barely holding onto the cigarette between her perfectly manicured fingers. Her long hair has been pulled into a messy tail. It is bobbing back and forth to the music she hears. She is singing along with all abandon. I can almost read her perfectly painted lips.

Curiosity gets the best of me. I lower my passenger window just enough to identify the song. Taylor Swift. Of course.

For a moment, I wish I was her. I want to be that carefree girl who sings love songs in traffic during the morning rush. I wish I could turn it on, turn it up and croon it out with no regard for the cranky, stressed-out woman in the next car who doesn't particularly favor Taylor Swift.

The movement of my window grabs her attention. She catches me staring. Her face twists into a scowl. She changes immediately into what I can only decribe as a Harpy. She flicks her lit cigarette toward my car and flips me the bird.

I nonchalantly push the power window button. The glass returns to its original position, protecting me from her assault and her bad attitude. I look anywhere but her direction and smile to myself.

How lucky I am not to be anything like her.
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Foolish Anniversaries

I went to my job interview with torn jeans, ratty hair and baby sludge on my shirt. It really couldn't be helped. I'd been inadvertently locked out of the women's shelter and couldn't get a shower in time for the meeting. I was so embarrassed, I almost didn't show up.

Angie didn't want to hire me. I could tell by the look in her eyes. I looked like hell, and I was unsure of my availability. She frowned at my outfit, and clucked her tongue at my application.

I had been sent to her through a friend of a friend to beg for a job. She'd been coerced to give me the interview. She'd made no promises about employment.

I wouldn't have hired me.

I was a mess, emotionally as well as aesthetically.

I lied through my teeth when I told her I had a reliable baby-sitter for the four babies I'd left at my mom's for a half hour just so I could make it to the interview.

She offered me a wage that she knew was far less than what I was worth and evening hours. I tried not to let it bother me that much. I was determined to provide for myself, and I needed a job that had room for growth. I took what I could get and was grateful for it.

She'd hired me as a part-timer, but within two weeks she bumped me up to forty a week. Two months went by before she switched me to daytime hours. A year passed before I started receiving benefits.

Fifteen years have gone by. Angie no longer works for the company, but I still do. I'm in the "big city" now, and as chance would have it, Angie is here, too. I see her every once in a while. We never reminisce. We are both "here and now" girls, and so it is always good to see her here, now.

I have a hard time understanding how I haven't been written up, reprimanded, fired, or set on fire, not even once, over fifteen years. I am sure some of my co-workers, and maybe a couple of bosses have wanted to stab me at some point. I am loud, rude, bossy, demanding, opinionated...the list goes on.

Of course, I am also a fast learner, good teacher, a good listener, a hard worker, dependable to a fault. I am intelligent, creative and proud. I've enjoyed the company of most of my co-workers as well as my bosses- some more than others. It's never been about the job, for me. It's always been about the people I work with. The job is thankless. The people are priceless.

If they haven't been friends, they've at least been entertaining. Faces and names come and go and come back again, each one bringing something new into my wonderful, ordinary life. Kim gave me confidence; Jay taught me tolerance; Ashley brought me friendship; Sandy gave us toilet paper; Johnny just liked to give me a hard time. That's his way. I've been frustrated more often than not, but that fades away as soon as I punch that time clock. There's no sense in being miserable if I'm not getting paid for it. Life is too short.

I thought I'd work for a year until something better came along, but here I am looking back on fifteen years....

I've been a checker, deli girl, cook, doughnut maker, cake decorator, bread baker. I've worked in the meat market for ten years now, bossing boys around, but I'm not the boss. I've never been a manager, and never wanted to be anything that meant I'd have to sit at a desk for very long or bullshit with anybody wearing a tie. Of all the addictions that run in my family, I got stuck being a workaholic. Go figure.

I'm still waiting for Angie to call me up and say, "April Fools! You didn't get the job after all!" But she never has, and here I am fifteen years later with Medical, Dental and 401k.

The nicest thing about hitting the fifteen year mark is that I now get four weeks every year of paid vacation. When I get back from vacation, people hug me. I'm not sure if this is because they missed me or because they are tired of doing my job in my absence. Either way, more vacations means more hugs. Can't beat that.

I also get to pick an anniversary gift from a special catalogue. I chose a new MP3 player this time around. The old one had just fizzled out. Pretty good timing, if you ask me.
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100 Words: The Boy Who Ate Everything

Listen here, Kid. In two hours you have inhaled one tube of Spongebob Go-gurt, three slices of bacon, two tomato basil cheese sticks, fourteen red grapes and a fruit cup.

You are two.

There is no possible way you could be as hungry as you claim to be.  Stop clutching your belly and howling in that dramatic fashion.

We have fed you. You are full. You need to slow it down, mister, or you are going to have a major tummy ache when you go to bed tonight.

Besides, your mother said she'd murder me if I give you chocolate.

Dream: Treasure

We ran into the trees, eyes forward, as fast as we could carry ourselves. We couldn't hold on to one another for fear it would slow our progress, but I listened for his heavy breathing and his footfalls to be sure he didn't fall too far behind. I listened also for those who chased us to be sure we were getting some distance between us.

Eventually, the angry shouts gave way to the eerie silence of the forest. We slowed ourselves until we were almost tiptoe-ing across the forest floor. The full, bright moon hovered low in the sky, playing sentry to our little scene. Perhaps it was recording facts and memorizing names. Who knows to what higher authority it reports. The Sun, maybe? They meet twice a day at dawn and dusk to compare notes. I wonder what they have to say about us.

We hid from the moon under the thick canopy of trees. Random moonbeams shot down between branches and formed puddles of light against the detritus. Those were the spots we avoided, just in case. We kept to the shadows, slinking between tree trunks until the clouds rolled overhead. A flash of bright lightning was overpowered by the grumbling thunder. The rapid tattoo of raindrops  on the treetops filled our minds like buzzing bees. I covered one ear and pressed the other against his warm chest until all I could hear was his heartbeat.

"What's that?"  he asked, nodding toward the thick dead leaves covering the ground. Something was there, out of place, winking up at us. I brushed the leaves away, dug into the soil and came back with a handful of coins and dollar bills.

"Nothing," I whispered as I let it fall back to the ground. "Only money."

He wiped the residual dirt from my hand, kissed my palm, and held me close. We began to move once again, this time holding on to one another.