shower song

I was taking a shower an hour ago and found myself singing my own rendition of "The Wheels on the Bus."

Join me, won't you?

the voices in my head go round and round
round and round
round and round
the voices in my head go round and round
all day long

the voices in my head go swish swish swish
swish swish swish
swish swish swish
the voices in my head go swish swish swish
all day long

the voices in my head go chatter chatter chatter
chatter chatter chatter
chatter chatter chatter
the voices in my head go chatter chatter chatter
all day long

the voices in my head go wah wah wah
wah wah wah
wah wah wah
the voices in my head go wah wah wah
all day long

the voices in my head go shhh shhh shhh
shhh shhh shhh
shhh shhh shhh
the voices in my head go shhh shhh shhh
all day long

alllll dayyyyy loooooonnnnnggggggg.

In a Down Economy, Customer Service is the killer app

I've been thinking about this, in fits and starts, about how my personal tolerance for poor customer service and appreciation for stellar customer service has changed over the last few years. There isn't a company out there claiming to have anything but a superior, well-trained, talented, at-the-ready support staff. No one says, our product's great but our service sucks. I know of what I write.

But we have changed. Call us consumers (but please don't), call us customers, call us clients. A rose by any other name still has a wallet. And what we expect out of a company is something of an inverse proportion to the amount of change ding-a-linging in our change purses.

What I mean is this: during recent times of plenty--not now, but think back to the good days that came just after the last time when things were just like this--we didn't expect much. We said we did. But we didn't. Not really. Because we had a lot. Most of us, at least more of the U.S. than is now the case, had more money, spent more money, and felt like business and especially the Internet offered limitless opportunities.

And it was in that spirit that we got involved in, and accepted, a lot of crap. It was cool to grab a beta product, to help companies work the kinks out, to just go ahead and fix things yourself. Gee wiz, they're really busy changing the world over there--should I expect them to be there to answer this simple question? I'm lucky to have my hands on this great product. I'm so glad they accepted me as a client! I uttered, and heard, those words more than once.

My how things have changed.

Now, companies like Dell, and they're not alone, are feeling the wrath and repercussion of a public that put up with a lot and didn't mind it. As we have fewer and fewer pennies in our hands, as fewer and fewer of us have jobs at stable companies--or jobs at all--we have become more demanding. Really demanding. Forget about pulling out and taking our business elsewhere--we're pulling it in and not taking our business anywhere. Forget about beta, I want to pay $19.99 for a solid product, or I won't bother getting one at all.

In a time of haves and haves not, we haven't. And we just won't.

It seems to me, then, that the companies staffed and positioned to deliver on the promise of superior customer service--and companies already leveraging customer information and putting it to good use (amazon is one of the few that comes to mind, and earthlink isn't bad either.)--stand the best chance of all of surviving these challenging times, and actually floating to the top in an ocean full of sinkers.

Who am I to say? I'm a customer, a client, and on my worst days a consumer. And I've also repeated the "great service" mantra in my writing with the largest and tiniest companies for 20 years now. Sometimes I've known it to be true. Sometimes I lied. Sometimes I took a guess. But now, when I see a company that delivers on their language around responsiveness to customers, I know it's something special. I grab it in my writing and showcase it. Because I know my own wallet's empty. I know I'm not experimenting anymore on my dime. And I can appreciate and tend to give my business to companies that "get" that.

Just something that crossed my mind today, as I'm working away on a brochure and simultaneously mopping the kitchen floor. Those crazy multi-tasking consumers. Ain't we something!

a bedtime apart

It has been a busy busy week here. So many times I blogged in my head, pushed publish, and sent posts to the back of my brain, where they're lost with thousands of swimming memories. But I wanted to remember to write about the sleeping children.

Jenna's friendship with one of the girls in her dance class has blossomed over the last week. This has involved spending time at each other's houses. I marvel at their neighborhood, not too far from my own, maybe 4 miles, but a world apart. Our houses are similar, same style, same age; our trees are similar, our yards too. But they have the kind of neighborhood built for kids. The kind that bustles with playing children instead of adults worried about work and lawns and shopping. It seems like everyone is always at home and outside on their street. It seems like no one is ever at home or outside on our street. Unless you count the paramedics, who should be pulling up any time now for our alcoholic suicidal neighbor. Anyway, that's for another post. Trauma central.

Back to the children.

Please.

One night last week Jenna's new best friend came to spend the night here. It was supposed to be reversed--Jenna was over there until 10 and was going to try to spend the night, but wanted to come home. So I went over to get her and their sad eyes got to me--please can she come too? PLEASE? Okay, let's switch. You come stay at our house. A good first experience for Jenna.

And so it was, although they were up until 2 a.m., until finally, I completely gave up and let them come sleep with me in our big king-size bed.

There we were. Girl, girl, woman. Jenna in the middle. Me and this beautiful little creature with straight thin blonde hair so unfamiliar to me in every way, like bookends for my daughter. I woke up a lot in the six hours we slept. Kept looking over at this little stranger, curled tight so close to the edge of the bed I kept waiting for a thump. In her sleep she'd roll some, wipe away wisps of hair, smile, pout. All of the things I've seen in my own daughter's dreaming, but never in someone else's child so close, so near, so vulnerable in her sleeping and dream state.

Jenna sat bolt upright at 8:00. I wasn't surprised. She's awoken that way since she was very little. Because she could talk long before she should have been able to, she'd sit straight up in her crib, look to the blinds shining in sunlight, and announce to the world in a voice I can only described as suprise and wonder: "I WAKE UP!" Every morning amazed her that way. She was astounded by the miracle of morning, the concept of waking after sleep.

This morning her friend was right behind her: "We're not tired anymore!" So the two five year olds bounded downstairs and left me to stumble out of bed, still tired, but in an odd way refreshed. As if I absorbed some of their energy while we slept.

My next thought was of Michael Jackson. Yes, a leap. I know. But it occurred to me that maybe, although he's neurotic and likely psychotic, there is truth in what he says of the innocence in sleeping with children. There was something incredibly moving and vulnerable about having these girl children so close, one of them not my own, in such a relaxed and unguarded state as sleep, and something so marvelous about waking and looking at their faces, them looking at one another, and then me. We wake up! It was like that.

I'd like to believe that's all it is for MJ too. That maybe just because he wakes up, a man in a bed with a couple of boys, it's just as genuine and innocent as a women waking up in bed with a couple of girls. And it doesn't matter how many. There could have been five of her little friends piled in that bed and it would have been the same relaxed sleep, the same wonder at waking.

But men don't get that opportunity. Men are immediately suspect. Because this partriarchial culture and heavy western mores say that men don't lie in bed with boys, or even girls. Men need to be men, Alpha Males, and all they should ever think about is sex and work. That men can't be trusted, except to produce and procreate, and that they should never, not ever, be vulnerable. Not for a minute.

Maybe something is wrong with Michael Jackson having children sleep in his bed. I kind of think they would have already hung him if something criminal were going on, since he's been a marked man for a long time in the business. And maybe there is something wrong with the man himself, albeit his particular neuroses are predictable based on childhood.

But maybe something is wrong with us too.

Those were my thoughts, as I made toast and pizza squares and pop tarts for breakfast. As the girls giggled and danced around the living room. And they're still my thoughts today.

stories i've been meaning to tell, part 1.

Jenna's graduation from Pre-K was last week. Right. Already told you. But then there's this.

They're sitting around in their graduation circle during the program, and I notice that one of the boys' brother has joined them there. He's a a year or so older. Striking Arabic profile. Dark hair, carmel skin, and a magnetic personality which he demonstrated by taking every available opportunity to distract his younger brother from his graduation duties. A general cut-up this kid was.

Afterward I asked Jenna if that was her classmate's brother.

I see the look in her eye. The blush. The beaming. "Yes," she says softly.

Oh no, I think. And then I say,

"Well, he is a handsome boy."

She shines the brightest smile I've seen in weeks and blurts out:

"Set up the wedding!!"

And I fall off the bed laughing. I don't mean to. There's no one here with me to help absorb the hilarity--left to my own devices, I crack up silly.

Set up the wedding.

OYE!

Go Anita! Rediff Article on Site Counters and Referrer Logs

Check out Anita Bora's article for Rediff called Hits and Misses, a write up on site counters, referrer logs and and statistics. And not just because she gave me lots of quotes. ;-) Well, okay, partly. But it's also a cool article in its own right, one in which I admit to playing mind games with my stats. What bloggers won't do for fun.

Also interesting was Anita's note on her blog that the bloggers she interviewed responded f-a-s-t to her interview questions. I've found this to be true as well, when I've asked for any kind of information from the community--be it what to feed a baby ferral cat to what women think about blogging. Human response is one of the many processes blogging speeds up--a process that old J journalists could easily leverage if they decide to take up residence in the neighborhood--i.e., join the conversation.

Thanks, Anita!

The Eyes Have It

I couldn't help myself. As I clicked through the images--all from women so far--who took the challenge to upload their eyes, I had to put them all in one place, because hopping from eyes to eyes to eyes felt really powerful to me. So Here: The Web Eyes Project.

First thing's first: I have linked directly to the photos people posted. If this brings too much traffic to your blog, tell me and I'll take your eyes off. It just seemed to me like the easiest way to link to everyone's blogs--directly through their eyes. Just let me know if you want me to remove your eyes--out with them!--no, really. Or, if you want your eyes included, post a picture on a blog and email me the link to the jpeg plus a link to your main blog page.

Enjoy. All I could think was, Wow.

Ain't Nobody Does It Better...

Some memes were born to be remembered forever. Mostly Gary Turner's slow rising memes, which generally puff up over several days, until they turn from a tasty chuckle into a delicious brew-ha-ha.

If you weren't around for the original Enquirer Covers, some are still left here. Gary, bring back the oldies. Too good. I'm still laughing.... Looky Marek! Oh, God, I'm crackin' a rib over here....!!

Seeing you seeing me

bloggers bloggers upload your eyes
show me where tears come from
when you cry.

learning to play

This last two months, with me and Jenna left to our own devices, hasn't been easy. And then, it has been the easiest time I've known in a long time. Because I'm changing. I'm getting to know my daughter. For the first time. There is a lot to write on this, on my inability, until stepping outside of all of my internally constructed walls and relationships, to see her. Really to see her, and to, more than that, let her see me. To play. She has been determined to get me to: to teach me to see her, to get down on the floor with her, to play. To let her in.

So afraid to let her in. I have been so afraid to see her, in seeing her expecting that she would vanish before my eyes, my eyes: see with them, die in them. That's all I have known.

And if you don't die with me, then maybe there is living. Teach me that there is living, a reason, unexpected dips and climbs in season, and that maybe it's enough.

Last night we built a train track on the floor. I was feeling so sick, so exhausted, but I did it. She put her "Cheer Bear" Care Bear under my head: "This'll cheer you up, Mama." I said, "Sweetie, I'm not sad, just so tired." And I watched her, and before long she handed me her recorder to blow through, and soon I was making chuga-chuga CHOO CHOO noises with the recorder as she pulled the train around the track.

And I let myself see her. The pain in seeing her, vulnerable, me vulnerable, how can you stand to love someone so much, and see in her the you, the world, and still dare to touch her vulnerability, to let it touch you, to touch her thigh, her soft skin, wonder at her pores, her sweet brown hairs, as I did last night, and know that it could all be gone, in a flash, and in going, how it would kill your soul, would take you too.

And in loving someone so vulnerable, a child, in knowing she will go one day away from me--has to--in loving like that, with the desparate sorrow I wear around my heart, the loss that was my first life lesson, there is finally, finally, FINALLY, a sweet rejoicing.

I feel with a bone-deep jab of heartache, something else: joy.

I love you my sweet Jenna.

Hunter John Willis

THEN



NOW



So you're wondering, what happened to that little four-week old kitten you found? He's gotten bigger. More spoiled. He's grown into a man cat, as I have yet to get him to the vet for his final shots and neutering. But he's happy.

jenna's breakfast

Hot dog, tater tots, clindimycin rootbeer float.

My breakfast, levaquin and water.

She wins.

giving in

Okay, I've kept this illness on the brink of making me sick for the last two weeks--feeling sickly but not quite sick. When I had to use a fork to scratch my throat last night, I decided to give in and take the antibiotics if I didn't feel better this morning. I don't. So I did. Darn. I was hoping to have a personal first--get better without the antibiotics. But I decided that for me, not to go down hill into asthma hell in 24 hours was itself an accomplishment. My cocktails of cold killers must have been doing something.

Echinacea, goldenseal, zicam, B-vitamins, time-release C's. Almost made it.

The weather here has been astounding the last two days. Magnificent. And after all the rain, the sun amplifies the green of the trees, the grass, ten times over. Even the little rollie pollies who've crawled out from underneath everything damp seem to be happy.

Take a clue from the bugs. That's what I'll try to do.

permission to become......beautiful

This is a post I want to be able to come back to.

Maybe you'll get why. But if not, give me this one. This one is for me. Message to myself: Let yourself.

My mother has been, is, always will be, was born, and has worked hard to remain beautiful. Stunning. At any age, she has surpassed the looks, caught and held the gaze, of her peers, her contemporaries, knew how to be beautiful, knew how to make her beauty work for her. Blonde, slavic, full Czech, in her 20s and thirties she was Mia Farrow breath taking. At 70, she still is.

And there were other parts of her too, the softer parts, no lines, the creams and potions, the vitamin e capsules, pricked with a pin, gel in a tiny porcelin dish on her dresser, for just under the eyes, magnificent in the daylight, my mother. Petite, like a doll, flapper flat and thin, with proper manners and grace I never seemed to learn.

Yes me.

Those are the Dimino genes, she'd say. My curves and blooming and puberty hitting at 11. Me shapely and developing early, me at five already knowing I would have some chest.

I can't tell if, though something has nagged at me this year, if she, maybe unconsciously, fed me, draped me, over did it with me--was that from love, the overabundance of food and toys and undershirts? Or was it something else.

I remember being in the pediatrician's office at 13. Him saying, in his 50-something Italian Macho way, "If you lost 20 pounds, you'd be Miss America." I remember the panic setting in, my mother in the examining room with me. And I can't quite hit on what was swelling inside that panic. Besides myself. I do remember some of the thoughts that came to me, flooded my 13-year-old brain. Things like:

I'm not allowed to do that.

I don't want that kind of attention.

I can't achieve real beauty, slavic beauty. I have the wrong genes.

Why would I want to be a ditzy miss america?

Why wouldn't I?

What do I do?

What should I say when I leave this room, to her?

Why is my face so red?

Just some thoughts. Like those. Rushing and pushing their way from somewhere in my groin up past my forehead, pulsating. Oh God. Why did we have to come here?

So over the years, the decades, the 20 pounds doubled, and doubled. And while I never felt particularly "ugly," I journeyed through my adolescence and early adulthood remaining in my place, the place I had learned to love and receive love, a place where I fit with the side of the family that was my father, whom I missed so, him thick and strong, those Dimino genes. Yes. Okay. I'll keep those. But how far do I have to go to fit that mold. Like Aunt Marge, may she rest in peace, needing a cane to carry her plumpness around? To be a good girl, do I need to be deny my physical beauty? Agree to decide it isn't Beauty? Beauty that is not flapper thin, blonde, petite, or especially attractive from a Magazine-Media point of view? Or from my mother's point of view? I didn't know. Sometimes I still don't know.

I know I can think of myself as genetically challenged.

And I did that. Have done that. Although I found in my husband someone who saw into my beauty, appreciated me, even with my genetic challenges, which he didn't see, which I saw, still--finding that in someone else does not change how you feel about yourself. You take yourself, as they say, with you.

Just this last year, I've set out on a journey that I've chronicled pieces of here--you hear it, don't you--you read it in me, in us, in our love and language, in our agony and breathtaking vulnerability--I know you do. In the end, opening our skin and becoming vulnerable to one another is the only way to get inside. You gotta get in to get out.

So, where is this going? What has moved me this week, to write this?

I think that for the first time in my life, I'm giving myself permission to be beautiful. The way I see beauty. Me. I. The way I see it. I'm learning to see it. And maybe it won't be Magazine georgeous, and maybe it won't be thin, and maybe my beauty will be, more, well, challenging than the norm--to the norm--and maybe it won't be. I don't know. Because I've never, not ever, until this year, looked at myself through my own two eyes.

I'd never seen myself until I came here.

But I am starting to. And being here--finding my voice--that's a big part of why, of how I've come to not fear my own mirror. Put down hers. Stop judging based on genetic code. Start relishing health, start accepting that it's okay to get better. It's okay to live. For me.

For Me.



Me.



ME.

that strawberry tongue

Jenna's still on her medicines for the strep. She's been doing great on them.

Today I checked her throat outside in the daylight. It still looks like crap. Her tonsils are the size of small boulders. Her pediatrician wants her to see an ENT because she snores and has recurrent strep infections. One thing she mentioned is that they would probably want to do a CAT Scan of her adenoids. (i lost all that plumbing long ago for similar reasons.) I'm reluctant to make the appointment. I don't want to hear them tell us anything about CAT scans or surgery.

So I'm starting to pump the anticeptic mouthwash again, echinacea in her water. If anyone knows of kids' vitamins that actually taste good, please leave me a comment. I've done Flinstones, Rugrats, Bubblegum Vitamins. She gags on all of them... I'm also going to start searching online. Maybe there are some simple procedures these days--laser or something? To deal with this kind of thing. You'd think so, something that can shrink tonsills of kids who are unfortunate enough to have big germ trapping ones.

The part of this that concerns me, in addition to the exhaustion of recurrent strep on MY part, because I think in time she'll outgrow this--say when her throat grows big enough to actually FIT those boulders--is that she had some serious sleep apnea this last episode of strep. One night I slept with my head on her back so I could nudge her when she got silent for too long. The doctor said, that's the strep because her throat was swollen, and since she had a bad sinus infection she couldn't breathe through her nose.

But a couple of the doctors asked, "Has she always been a mouth breather?"

That's what they called me at her age. A mouth breather. I remember the term. I remember wondering, uh, what else are you supposed to breathe through? I remember feeling like I was doing something wrong, this breathing thing. What exactly did they want me to do?

In truth, yah, she does breathe a lot through her mouth, but only when she sleeps. I think it's more out of habbit, because of these stinking sinus infections, than anatomy. Call it instinct. That's what I think. BUT THEN, her daddy does have sleep apnea. I know it's a serious thing, something to be watched.

All of this is to say, I'll be googling up a storm on alternative, new, cutting edge, and less dramatic ways of coping with strep, tonsilitis, and the like. I hear they are less hasty to do surgery these days than they were in our day, so maybe there are new, more advanced, techniques to try, and maybe we should just schedule a visit with an ENT to find out what's new and different.

Ideas, thoughts, web finds, atlanta-area specialist recommendations, and coping mechanisms welcome.

economic indicators that matter

Shelley's got a job.

I have clients.

That's all you really need to know, if you've been following our sagas, to get the feeling an economic upturn is in the air.

You heard it here first.

(Shhhh. Don't tell Ginsberg. He'll just rase interest rates. Must get out of debt first.)

He's Taking His Alter to the Altar!

DID you hear?

Finally RageBoy is making an honest man of Chris Locke, and it's about damn time. How long could these two go on, living in sin? Pretending. Splitting. Dissociating. Jeesh!

The time for integration is NOW!

As Billy Idol has been known to sing, ever so sweetly with his drug-induced-stroke-like grin, "It's a nice day for a borderline wedding."

We at the Sessum household couldn't be happier for these two lovebirds. Sure, they've fought over the years. A few bloddied noses. A gun shot wound here and there. But hey, what do you expect from such a passionate pair?

Be sure to check out the boyz gift registry on amazon.com. And give until it hurts.

Last one to the night vision scope is a rotten egg!

13 Things I've Blogged Lately that I Wouldn't Say in a Job Interview

So I'm getting some. Clients. A few. That's good. They're getting to know me, know I'm good at what I do, trying to figure out who *is* this woman and where did she come from.

I say, "If you want to view my portfolio..." or "If you can't remember my number..." just go to sessum.com. That's what I say. I tell them to go there.

Let's see. There's me looking all teenage mosaic-like, George in his locks. There's a click through to our rather demanding five-year-old child. There's plenty of mentions that George is in Europe, which means I'm here doing what-------taking care of our five-year-old child. There's this caption: we live online and it shows. OH yah, there's my portfolio link and testimonials, and of course links to our various blogs.

Blogs where we talk about some, um, unseemly things sometimes.

There's this blog, for example.

Not only is allied linked pretty prominently off sessum.com, the place I'm sending clients, but it's also the primary search result of the 7,000 hits that come up on Google for my name.

I've been thinking a lot lately about blogs as calling cards. About when you're out on your own freelancing, mostly people search you up on google, mostly what they find is: me here. being who I am.

Zoinks!

Is that good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It could. But so far, I'm doing what I do anyway, even though the things I write here wouldn't exactly be what I'd say in an email to a prospective client or in a job interview.

Some recent quips of mine from this very blog demonstrate the edge I think I'm walking in talking about myself outloud. And yet, although I wouldn't say these things directly to a prospective client or employer, should I care if they read them in this venue--a venue very different from an interview setting? Should I care if they read things like:

"I have this tendency, being pretty smart, of having little to no common sense at times. I tend to do six things fast and almost perfect rather than plan, think, do it once the right way. tomato sauce cans and stuff."

"I have a fucking voice mail in the middle of the road!"

"And that is where survival turns to damage, where screams dream about crackling silence, where cameleon changes are practiced and honed. That is where I lost myself to her mirror."

"I really need to make a lot of money because I'm pretty sure I could do without this whole work-a-day world altogether."

"I am sorry I do not have a penis."

"It's been a while since I've attended an actual in-person, around-the-table meeting. I wonder what people's eyes look like that close up? Do they still blink?"

"Clindimycin smells exactly, and I mean exactly, like cat shit."

"I'm not sure if this is the 16th or 17th time the ambulance has come for our next door neighbor."

"Jenna started throwing up again, fever back up to 103..."

"I still haven't washed off the last throw up yet."

"suppository where it's supposed to be. all is right with the world."

"I shared it with my therapist via email, who I was supposed to see today except that strep intercepted me."

"I say now, more and more, you know what? Fuck off."

Whatever else, this is me. This is my voice home.

It's not exactly the best first impression I could make in all settings. And I'm pretty sure it will turn some people off. But today, when corporate loyalty to employees is at an all time low, I think the biggest risk for bloggers is in *not* being ourselves out here. I don't want to work with anyone who comes to me, to my business, expecting me to be someone I'm not: a color-phobic conservative, for example. I'm not. And maybe it can save a lot of interpersonal hoopla for that to show right up front. Don't care to work for that type. Might as well bill myself as such.

So maybe blogging helps us select clients--and clients select us--based on something more honest, more risky, and ultimately more meaningful than a job interview.

It's one thing to lose a piece of business or a client. It's another thing altogether to lose oneself.

So here I am.

Come and get me.

Pomp and Circumstance

Jenna reads aloud during her Pre-K Montessori Graduation.



Hi Gabie!

Tomato Sauce Can Head

quick notes--been busy and sicky. and you? OH good. that's good to know.

Here's the thing. People who know me really well will tell you that I'll be the death of me yet. Huh? No really. I have this tendency, being pretty smart, of having little to no common sense at times. I tend to do six things fast and almost perfect rather than plan, think, do it once the right way. tomato sauce cans and stuff. that was the day, when I explained to a friend how I nearly killed myself by reaching up with a wooden spoon to knock a 64 oz mother can of all tomato paste off the top cupboard shelf and into my waiting arms. Except it missed. My arms. And it missed my temple by maybe an inch. I was writing headlines in my head: New York Woman Killed By Can of Contadina. Duh. All I had to do was take the time to pull the chair over and climb up to get it. But the spoon was there. And so was I. Next thing I knew kabloooie.

With that in mind, it might not surprise you to learn that I often leave things on the roof of my van. Ask Jenna. Ask George. How many times I've been half way down the street when I hear the crash of another coffee mug hitting the pavement, crash, "Oh mama! Not again!" the five year old says. I think she will never make that mistake. Do as I'd like to do, not as I do.

We've lost lots of mugs that way. One time a bag of prescriptions, which a neighbor found in the street, and because they had our name and address on them, kindly brought them by.

jeesh.

With that in mind, it might also not surprise you, or maybe it will, that on the way home from Jenna's pre-K graduation last night, we'd traveled about 12 miles, sometimes at 45-50 miles an hour, up hill, down hill, and as we rounded the corner off the main drag where we live, I heard the kathunk. kathunk, slap.

"What was that?" Jenna and I said at once.

And then it hit me.

Oh no.

I remembered me outside of her pre-k graduation, I remembered opening my purse, putting her graduation certificate in the car, pulling out my T-Mobile Sidekick, and, are you ready, yes you're right, putting the Sidekick on the roof of the van.

"Oh Jenna! You know my phone? I think I left it on top of the car!"

"Oh mommy!"

Oh dear.

We turned the car around on a side street, and drove back to the intersection where we witnessed the kathunk heard round the world.

I'm scanning the pavement of the main road, the side road, see cups, lids, straws--was it my diet coke or someone else's that landed there from the roof? where, where, where is it!? Is it crushed? And why did Danger make that Sidekick the color of pavement? Didn't they KNOW?

Then I see it. Sitting there. In the road. Oh no. Cars. Oh no. Traffic.

"Jenna, wait here!"

"Do you see it mama?"

"I think I see it."

Nobody behind me, so I park, jump out, dance into the road where I see the little gray square I think is my sidekick. Feeling sick, I edge closer, drivers now looking at me suspiciously.

Right at the edge of the road, right in the path of turning tires, but *just* off to the left, yes. That's it. Oh no--the screen is flipped open. closer. OH NO Its face down. closer. OH NO, I pick it up.

The seam where the unit snaps together is wedged apart, and I instinctively squeeze it together until I hear a snap. I slowly turn it over to look at the display, not wanting to, headed back to the van, can't wait to know, flip, IT'S STILL ON! IT'S NOT SHATTERED! My voicemail is open. I have a voice mail.

I have a fucking voice mail in the middle of the road!

Back in the drivers seat, I'm turning it over this way and that way, left and right, over and under. Looking at all the scuffs and scrapes.

"Is it broken, Mommy?"

"I don't know yet. I don't think so. Not really bad. Beaten up, but I think it's still working."

I call voice mail. The phone works. There's a message. I listen to it. It's a call from a potential client asking if I can come in to meet with them the next day about a project.

And I'm laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I would have never gotten the message if that Sidekick wasn't made to take a licking.

And I mean a LICKING!

You've got mail.

Email's working. It's coming in, little pre-messages scrolling across the top of the display.

Oh thank you thank you--IT'S STILL WORKING! IT'S STILL WORKING!

So, my Sidekick is now officially beat to shit, scraped, scuffed, and not completely joined at the seam anymore. But, more importantly than any of that, it's still working and delivering what I need REALLY REALLY when I need it.

wshew.

I'd like to say my tomato sauce can days are over. I'd like to say I couldn't have easily been run over retreiving the sidekick. Leaving Jenna in her seat, watching in horror as her mom is wiped out by a passing semi. I'd like to say I'll start listening to the little voice in my head that suggests, quite often, "Don't do that. Just don't do that."

I'd really like to.

Maybe I've learned.

Maybe.

maybe i need to post

my blog has been acting kinda flukey. i dunno. i upgraded to blogspot 25. maybe i'm somehow in progress of being migrated here or there or nowhere.

is anyone having trouble getting this blog to come up? I was all yesterday.

okay, off to take jenna to school. we are late. big surprise. medicines have been taken. we're outta here. more later.

i think i'm getting sick.

i had a massage yesterday.

purging.

more later.

step down

You have to understand that my mother does love me.

And I love her.

Everything in between is where we went wrong.

Not everything. That's not right at all.

Because different days I tell myself different stories, and sometimes within the same day I tell my self seven or eight or seventy eight stories. The place of story diversions today, the place where what I think the problem comes to rest, you know, this spot, no that spot, no over there, is the effect my father's death had on us all. That's the place I've hung my hat for a very long time. Today I was thinking about that hat hook again. Most of the day.

And why not. It's a big hook, the death of your parent--her spouse--a large ripe hook on which to hang a hat. Only recently, this year, did it even occur to me to look backward and forward from that hook, to look at the hook closely first, to notice how tarnished the brass was, take the hat off, turn the hat over, look at the brim, the underside, the smooth spots your thumb makes, rubbing cotton to a shine lifting it on and off your head.

And then I look at the wall that holds the hook, not just the scuff mark, but the wall, and then the adjacent door, and what about the light on the ceiling, look at the globe, and that bulb, I didn't see that before, and before long you're inspecting the entire house, room by room, looking for you're not sure what. The last thing you knew you were hanging a hat on the hook. And a voice says:

Don't forget the basement.

That's what I stepped down into this year.

Lots of reasons why. And none. All at once. Why would anyone choose step down? It's not something one chooses to do. Usually. We spend a lifetime looking up, climbing up, that's what we're supposed to do: up is good, down is bad, up is heaven, down is hell, like that.

But what no one ever told me was the secret of stepping down, not until Helene Cixous and her three steps which go not up, but down, because down to, coming to that place and then taking another step still downward, into excruciating pain, into shards of what you thought was so, to watch it all disolve, to marvel at the colors pooling from the slick that was all your life counted on--that's it. That's the place. And you can marvel at it. The magenta, the turqoise, and the deep deep black of it. There is beauty in it. If you live through it.

There's only one direction in the faces that I see
It's upward to the ceiling, where the chamber's said to be
Like the forest fight for sunlight, that takes root in every tree
They are pulled up by the magnet, believing they're free
The carpet crawlers heed their callers:
"We've got to get in to get out
We've got to get in to get out
We've got to get in to get out"
--Genesis

So back to the hat on the hook. I bought a book today called The Loss that Is Forever: The Lifelong Impact of the Early Death of a Mother or Father and how happy was I to see the title of the first chapter, The Language of Loss, and Maxine Harris' immediate leap into language--into a child being, first and foremost, "at a loss for words," when confronted with a shock so earth shattering that aftershocks ripple across the tundra of the psyche evermore.

I'd like to tell you more about the book, but I just got it. I've only started it. But I will tell you. Later.

That's not exactly where I meant to go, to my father; it's habit you know. I meant to go to my mother just now. About how that moment changed her. About how the sudden and unexpected death of her own father just three weeks after my father's was a thunderbolt of damage she never--not really--grieved, she never--not even now--recovered from. How none of that was her fault. How hard she worked to raise the three of us in the aftermath of tragedy.

I wanted to tell you those things. About how she was, you understand, my everything once our world exploded. My life depended on her.

And hers mine. Breath, words, and being. Everything.

And that is where survival turns to damage, where screams dream about crackling silence, where cameleon changes are practiced and honed.

That is where I lost myself to her mirror

And I lost me.

Okay, not lost really.

I've been waiting in the basement all this time.

"You've got to get in to get out."

alabama storm

If I were to wind myself around the willow tree, gone now from the front yard, I would do it one leg at a time, feel the bark dig into my palms, forearms, tiny fragments of damp bark, flakes mostly, tangling in strands of wet hair, holding on for dear life, arms and legs locked there, still.

The thunder is rolling in. I've been waiting for it all night. Rumbling starts off to the west, teases, is that thunder I ask myself, knowing that it could just as easily be me, my head, heart, red fire wanting ahead of the front, low end shaking, windows chattering back.

No, yes, it's thunder, pushing, rolling, close, touching but not here yet, for the fourth time this month my arm hairs tingle just before the rumbling starts, I catch myself inhaling, charged air smells different.

Come then, come on. Finish what you started, crack the sky mosaic, bring down my house.

george, yer email's filled up

check yer mail. love, me

hoover rolling continued

Ann Craig has completed the only second known hoover roll, wheeling by Boulder to attend RageBoy's two-day HTML Coding and Blogging 101 Workshop. He offers the class free to unsuspecting women folk who pass through town on their way to--well--anywhere.

I have checked in by phone, and probably could have blogged the event live if it weren't so incredibly weird.

She was calling him Vernal. He was calling her Himmler. They were talking in thick drawls that I think I recognized as indigenous to the North Georgia Mountains.

Which is funny, considering that all three of us on that phone are actually from, for at least parts of our lives, Rochester, NY, which to any knowing observer would have been obvious based on our maniacal laughter and generalized angst.

I'm not sure what curriculum Mr. Boy uses in his HTML coding class, but word has it there are instructional films, as well as hands-on sessions.

Word has it that Ms. Craig attempted to compensate RB for her class at the HTML University by carrying an empty bookshelf downstairs single-handedly. She has testified that, indeed, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of psychoanalytic books piled high in what most people might call their living rooms. Trying to put some order to the disorder disorder, Ann thought she might move a book or two to the newly-placed bookshelf. Apparently, and just in time, RB threw himself in front of the pristine shelf, yelling "NOOOOOO!" as he hit the ground. When he got to his feet, he ran off to see not this Don, but this Don.

Hoover 2 now having been successfully rolled, the proof is in the shrimp, so to speak.

I told them they needed T-Shirts:

Hers: #1 Hoover Roller
His: #1 Hoover Host

Or, more aptly, "Himmler Rolled a Hoover and All I Got Was This Dumb Shirt."

art imitates life

I have a real appreciation for the way artists weave language into their creations.

the sausage strut from WhiteHouse.org

How in the hell did I miss this?!

eeeyaaa it's late

So I'm up late pressing some CDs of George's mp3s. Try to get him to make a CD of his own music. It's impossible. Spread out across a hundred places, in his studio, on other people's compilations. The cobbler's children have no shoes. Like that. It's nice to have a laptop that burns CDs now. I am no more hostage to the big mysterious monster studio machine. I'll just do it myself. End run the artist, basically. Desparate times call for disparate measures. Isn't that what they say? Now if Jenna just stays well....

She's getting better. Her heart is aching though. She tells me in so many ways ten times a day. I took her to Walmart after school today to eat at the little hamburger shop. I told her she could get one small treat, and she picked little girly makeup kit. You know, the kids' kind with the brightest colors imaginable, all sparkles and bright pinks and blues and the like. I made her promise, ONLY for home. No school. No outside. "Okay mommy!"

She ran upstairs as soon as we got home and put on about six layers. Then came over with her bright lipstick and kissed me on both cheeks. I'm thinking to keep it on for a few days. Her little lip imprints make me weak kneed. She is too sweet.

now to sleep.

applemusicpimp

George said he's going to blog his thoughts on the Apple music service. If he doesn't, I'll blog the email he sent me, which was very good. And then I'll blog his brother's middle name. So do it, Dear. ;-)

What's worse, the cure or the disease?

YIKES!

Someone's Rolling Another Hoover...

NOW, who could that be?

I had to talk about blogging today

But you'll have to go read about it on Stir.

Stir

Don't let me forget to catch up with Tom on this blog. It may take me 60 posts in 29350 minutes to do it, but he's been doing all the thinking and I just stop by and read sometimes. what the heck kind of a collaboration deal is that? And yet, he has been ever so patient. That Tom.

Meanwhile, back at Gonzo Engaged, the font size has grown again in the posts, and shrunk again in the sidebar. That template has a life of its own. I need to skin that sucker one of these days. I love that place though--it wouldn't feel like home if it had a skin that made sense. Marek, where did you go?

more on dissociation

This looks like an interesting site/book.

a regular day

Eight days after the Strep from hell began, we resumed a semi-normal life today. Jenna went to Pre-K for a few hours; I went to a business meeting with some really smart folks doing some really cool things which must remain nameless for now. I used my brain. I drew and doodled and ended up with a pretty good map for a Web site. I ate a half of roast beef sandwich and cookies and drank bottled water and played with brainstorming toys, little finger puppets and these cool new gadgets that attach to pennies and let you build mountains out of molehills, so to speak, which is the purpose of any brainstorm I suppose.

I wore clothes. That was something. I've done that--you know, dress-up clothes--twice since April first. I really didn't realize blazers could get dusty just from hanging in a closet. I spent about two minutes wondering where the dust in a closed closet comes from. I put a bandaid on the second toe on my left foot so the pumps wouldn't hurt this blister I got from running around in clogs lately.

The day was a radical shift from this past week. It has me worn out. You'd think I worked a full day, or worked hard or something. All I did was go somewhere and pay attention to adults. Funny how hard that is once you're out of practice. I really need to make a lot of money because I'm pretty sure I could do without this whole work-a-day world altogether. There was one woman at the meeting, probably a little older than me, maybe not even, who was retired. I said, "Am I retired?" And my long-time pal said, "No, you're on hiatus."

I guess so. There are so many things I want to write about, and even now I haven't had the time. I don't get it. How time moves. There are things I've wanted to resolve--to deal with my mother, at least another baby step, to get back to therapy, to start some kind of daily routine now that I don't have one anymore, officially, but 8 days slipped past and I'm back at square one.

But that's okay. Because the only thing that matters, in the end, is that sweet baby Jenna is feeling better each day, and we're laughing and giggling and IMing with her daddy, and she's about the coolest little thing on two legs.

She was walking around tonight, sashaying really, hips to and fro, saying, "When you and daddy smooshie, you go ooo la la!" I think she meant smoochie. Either way, tee hee!

today's closing thoughts

1) Tylenol P.M. -- Should this stuff be legal? YOWSA!

2) Note to SPAMers -- I am sorry I do not have a penis. Can you understand that? I have no penis. Stop offering to enlarge it for me. Understand your market. You should be offering to grow one for me. A small one. Then upsell me later.

3) Unlimited Long Distance -- The most important telecommunications development since the paper cup and string.

4) Vomit -- It comes in all shapes, colors, odors, and textures. Truly amazing. A lot like baby poop.

5) Pillow Cases -- You can never have too many. It is nothing to go through 40 in seven days with a sick kid.

toodles for real.

Oh yes,

and for anyone who's emailed me lately and I haven't emailed back--please email me again. I haven't been very good about reading them lately. Let alone responding.

I have an actual business meeting with tangible human beings tomorrow (*if* Jenna keeps mending). It's been a while since I've attended an actual in-person, around-the-table meeting. I wonder what people's eyes look like that close up? Do they still blink? I vaguely remember that I used to bring things with me to meetings. I bet I should bring a pen. I wonder what we'll talk about? Do I take the throw-up bowl with me? It's still in the car. hmmm.

Toodles.

wshew

I wish I could just lay back and write. but not tonight. no taking me there, you with me, for the ride, inside out. Too many things undone around here now that the storm is easing. Jenna was her old self today, a little slower but not much. She's turned around on these new meds. Up to many of her old tricks and only took to bed for a couple of hours. Tomorrow we'll try school--she's been out a full week. She wants to go back so badly; at the same time we've had some kind of bonding around here this last week, and she told me today, "Mommy, I think I'm gonna cry when you take me to school. I'll miss you." And I'll miss her too. But in a couple of weeks the school year is over. And then she will miss all her friends. Our Pre-K graduate. Go figure.

I am so relieved she's gotten the right medication that I think I might just fall down dead. Awash in relief. That's what it is. Like a big towel that just absorbs you. It was the first time I ever saw her in a hospital emergency room. We've been fortunate and had good enough timing that she got away with five and a half years without an ER visit. I hope it's our last. For a very long time. Like forever.

The mountain of laundry is so big--can I confess I've done only one load since George went away?--that I think we may just move. Leave the mess, take the meds, and go. Not sure I can ever catch up. I stink at laundry anyway, always mixing in some bright colored single sock with the whites. Just ask George. He doesn't let me near the clothes for fear of another load of gray, or worse.

That's just one of many things that need catching up. I have to get at the little things before I get to write. Writing is a reward these days, a luxury, not a job, not a responsibility. Kind of nice for a change.

Strep Diary: On the Mend

No fever at all today. A whirl of dosing of medicines going on here, and Jenna is on the mend. Thank God.

Some pics of her mending:


Tulips courtesy of AKMA and Margaret

uncharacteristically cool

It's a cool night in Atlanta, as if the clouds and stars made a mistake, drifted in from the north to remind me what May used to be like. It was riding weather today. There's nothing like the first day of a new season in a climate where your finger tips can feel the air change in the instant it switches, something that makes horse and rider a little more alive, knowing the trails will soon change from green to cascades of autumn color, or from barren to barely blossoming spring.

One of those nights.

Jenna's asleep on her Daddy's side of the bed. She has been on my side for six nights. I don't know why--as if she moved in knowing that she was in for one doosey of an illness, maybe trying to combine me and her father into a single nearby comfort source. In our own way, we made it work.

I got four out of the five daily doses of this new medicine down her before bedtime. Not bad considering we started at noon. It could be my imagination--and I know I've said this before--but I'm hopeful this is a turning point for our sweet girl, a new season, a night where crisp air will help her breathe, a familiar side of the bed.

--This post brought to you by Tylenol PM.--

off

i'm just off. didn't have my first cup of coffee til 3:30 today. Ran off to the docs before I had a chance to make any. Jenna was just back up to 102, so it's motrin time again, between clindimycin "rootbeer floats." The clindimycin smells exactly, and I mean exactly, like cat shit. Try to get a kid to take that. Three times a day. And then the Sulfa two times a day. Bubble gum aroma masking liquid old-paper-plate taste. If it helps her, I'll be happily serving up root beer floats full of this stuff.

my sinuses are aching. dangerously close to being out of cigarettes.

hope that this day comes to an early end and stays quiet tonight. please some peace.

The Strep Diary

I knew it wasn't over. She woke up parched after a bad night, fever back up to 101. Instructions were to call the doc if it all started again. They wanted to see her. We went in. She has a double ear infection, sinus infection, and strep now.

I toughened up and gave them what for, demanded this, demanded that, don't close that damn door--I'll watch while you do the mono test, and I'll watch what patients you're going in to see in what order, and I'll stand out here until you come to motherfucking attention in front of us. Salute me you punk ass doctor. Sons of bitches. You want to hear about our week? Let me tell you about the last seven days, okay? I'll tell you about the throw up and the snot and the apnea and the fevers and the screaming and a whole bunch of other things you don't want to hear. MAKE MY KID BETTER, AND GET IT RIGHT, NOW!

They changed medicines. One of the new doses is down the hatch. PLEASE let it work!!!!!!!!!!!!

Going to check on her and then rest. Oh yes, and I'm supposed to have a bid for some work done by tomorrow morning. yeh. great. I'll squeeze that in between wiping her nose and wiping her behind.

My therapist asked me (no, not recently, I still haven't gotten to go), how angry I was, on a scale of 1-10--you know, how much anger did I feel.

Funny, I really can't identify with that emotion when I'm asked about it. If someone asks me how terrified I am, how sick I am, how worried I am, I can calculate that. Simple. But anger?

I told her that I really don't feel very angry. Probably a 2. That I react to trauma by getting anxious, not getting angry.

Well, she'll be happy to know that over the last week, I've gotten in touch with my anger.

Oh yes, I'm really fucking angry. I'm so angry that if I let it rip now, it wouldn't stop.

On a scale of 1-10, I'm about 13 angry.

It's one notch below sick and tired.

Grateful is in there somewhere too.

I just have to go find it.

stay awake, jeneane

I have to stay up for an hour. I need to give Jenna her medicine 24 hours after her shots last night, which means 3 in the morning. So I think, what better thing to do than to catch up on some blogging.

But I'm tired. Really running on empty.

So I'm doing that thing I do when I lean back, close my eyes and write.

Let go, let in, slip down into the place of plaid napkins and orange leisure suits, the place of blue-light basement house parties and disco mirrors. The place where things happen before my sealed eyes. The place where writing finds me.

I can see so much when I let writing come to me, don't force it, don't chase after it, just close my eyes and write what comes. This is where I turn the reins over, submit, admit I am powerless.

Beautiful things always come first, like my father's cemetary in May, the green grass and new leaves marking thousands of graves, I play tricks with my eyes, try to block the headstones and see the green, not the other way around, while under my feet decaying bodies and invisible breath turn into sweet nectar, feeding me, me wringing specks of life out of boxes of bone and dust.

This is what will come if you let it.

Close your eyes, put your fingers on the steering wheel, enjoy the ride.

Round pearl onions float in a bowl of chicken soup, like snowglobes emptied of their fluid and sparkles.

Think of colors and you'll see shadows. Stop thinking altogether and watch the colors come.

You don't have to work so hard. Writing is like that.

The goings and comings of an alcoholic

I lost count a year ago.

I'm not sure if this is the 16th or 17th time the ambulance has come for our next door neighbor. He chooses slow suicide: Vodka. Straight. Over time, he's winning, winning the right to not come back. He works so damn hard not to be here.

It's been two years at least since he started skating on the bottom, the ambulance would come, police, paramedics. A parade of emergency vehicles that over time would come to know our street well. I know the sound now as they round the corner one street over.

They arrive together, then one by one they leave; they try to talk him into going, until it's just him and the ambulance crew left. They talk with him while he has his last smoke. Then he climbs into the back of the ambulance. You'd never know his blood alcohol level was hanging at .3. No staggering. No missing a beat. Only an alcoholic can manage that.

It kept on this way month after month, each time we'd learn that his blood alcohol level was a little higher than the time before. Still, each time he you wouldn't know it by talking to him, looking at him. I remember the afternoon he came out his front door with a garment bag, swung it over his shoulder and hopped into the ambulance like he was catching a taxi ride to the airport.

My heart leaps and falls when they come to take him, me the first one to ever call 911 on his behalf after his frightened 12-year-old daughter clued me in, after a phone call in which he expressed to me his wishes to be left alone to die. I didn't let him. There have been times, in seeing the toll his living takes on his child, parents, ex-wives, that I think maybe I was wrong to call.

After a time of this going and coming, the neighborhood heaves a collective sigh when they come for him. We see him home from work. One day turns into two, then three. We see his parents stop by. We read their expressions. We see them leave without him. We ring the bell in our collective heads: ding ding, round 8.

Last month when the ambulance came for him was unlike any other time: they brought him out on a stretcher. I watched from the window as his head rolled to and fro with the bump bump bump down his front steps. I watched them lift him in. I thought to myself, I wonder if he's coming home this time.

He's tried. You know? It's not that he hasn't tried. He's even done the 90-day rehab stay. Medicines. Unsuccessful attempts at AA. A church group he really seems to connect with.

I ask myself what it is he can't forgive himself for or whom it is he can't forgive.

That, I believe, is at the core of all addiction.

I talked to him a few weeks back, after the stretcher incident. He told me he almost did it this last time, asked if I'd seen him on the stretcher. I said yes. He said that the doctors told his parents that he wasn't expected to live, and if he did, he would most certainly have serious brain damage.

"I was .52 -- you're supposed to be dead long before that," he told me. I knew; I'd done my research on the Internet back in the early days of his goings and comings. I knew that there was no possible way for him to be climbing into the ambulance undaunted at .4. I certainly knew that he shouldn't be standing at the fence after his round with .52.

I said, "Maybe you're just supposed to be here. You know? It's not like you haven't tried. I mean, maybe you're just not supposed to go."

He smiled. "I guess so. I already shouldn't be here."

So tonight was his second stretcher ride. I watched from the window again. I heard the fire truck before it arrived. Saw the lights flashing through Jenna's bedroom blinds.

The house is quiet now. His kitchen, which looks into our living room, has a single light lit, over the sink.

It is thunderstorm still, and I wonder if he's coming home this time.

jenna asleep

No fever tonight. Even with motrin, we haven't achieved this milestone for nearly six days. So I am an optimistic mom at this point! Tomorrow will tell much. Thanks for the good thoughts. More later...

trauma day

The Myth of Sanity

A good book on trauma and dissociation.

Saying Good Bye to Blitz

It was a lifetime ago when my sister got her 8-week old hound-mix puppy Blitz, at least nearly 13 years seems long. I was in my 20s. Yep. That was a lifetime ago. I helped her pick him out from the litter of mutts tucked away behind a neighbor's refrigerator, helped her get him to the vet when at three months old he fell down the stairs and broke his leg. He raised her son, now 21. And it's time for him to go.

Among other things this weekend, Blitz has decided he's tired; his dying has begun in earnest.

Yesterday was not walking. Today not eating, still drinking. Too big at 80 pounds to get along on what I've always called his "little bird legs," my sister is checking into mobile vets this evening to see if one can come to the house to help "BoBo," as Jenna has always called him, on his way. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Maybe tonight. It's not my decision; it's hers. She's getting ready. She's crying. She said he let her know he's tired. And I get to explain to Jenna, sometime very soon, that her good buddy's gone. I hope she's well enough to stop over to my sister's tomorrow. I'd like her to give him a pat or two. For him, and for her.

A year before my sister fell in love with tiny Blitz, I held her 17-year-old dog Mack's head for the vet who came to put him to sleep. She couldn't do it. We all handle death in our own way. We've got a lot of family baggage in that area, as you all know. When my sister went upstairs to start her grieving, I sat with Mack, petting his head, telling him, "Good boy. You're such a good good boy," holding his gaze, eye to eye, then gently laying his head down when it got heavy enough to know it was over, the vet nodding to me. Done.

A piece of the world stops breathing. If you know the sound, you can feel silence rush in 100 times a day.

I've sat with more animals than I care to count as they let go of life. Some with George, some by myself. Sometimes it seems like we've seen too many animals in and out of this world. But I never miss an opportunity to be with them when they go. The least I can do for a fine and loyal friend.

Often afterward, usually sitting in a car or a living room, I think about the moment, the single second where they release life and life releases them. How peaceful euthenasia is. How much better it is than pain, terror, sickness. How when they call it being "put to sleep," it really is just that. Sleep for the last time.

So today, tomorrow, the next day, soon, I hope she calls me. I hope I can help BoBo let go.

Strep Diary - mother's day ralley?

Jenna is doing better than she has been the last few days. Still some fever, but the motrin is working. She's demanding certain foods--tater tots being the current obsession, so we're going out to pick some up, tire out her brain, and then come home to do medicines and HOPEFULLY sleep. Just one night's rest in 5 would be sweet.

Took some pics of her having her lunch in bed. will try to post later. She gave me a beautiful hankie for mother's day that says "A Mother's Love" and is embroidered with flowers. Tears came.

I hope her papa is okay. Haven't heard.

Jenna snuck a mother's day card into the shopping cart at the drug store a couple of weeks ago. I saw her do it but pretended I didn't. I looked the other way when she snuck it up on the counter at the register. Pretended not to notice when she took it out of the bag and ran upstairs to her room with it when we returned home. Too excited to wait, she gave it to me the same night.

Dil from Rugrats is on the front, and the card reads:

----------------------

For my mommy with love

Inside:

I'm glad I'm your boy
because you're the most wonderfulest
mother in the whole UNIVERSE!

Happy Mother's Day!

------------------------------

My sweet boy, she's just the coolest!!!

Strep Diary - Back from Childrens ER

Jenna started throwing up again, fever back up to 103 again, so I packed her off to the ER at Children's Hospital. More on that tomorrow. What a rediculous place. I'm too tired to tell. Anyway, she has a roaring ear infection on top of strep, and the Omnicef has yet to get on top of it all. They gave her a shot of Rocefin (she's allergic to penicillin, so this is a ceflasporin derivative) to try to get us through tomorrow (it lasts 24 hrs). A shot in each leg. My poor baby. We are home. Think healing. Happy mother's day. All I want is for Jenna to be better. And also three solid hours sleep. That's all.

p.s., Where are all the doctors in blogland? Hello, calling Dr. Blogger--I could use some inside advice here...

Strep or something else Diary - 102

Temp is back up. I'm alternating tylenol and motrin every three hours as per doc. it's not the fever as much as it is the dehydration from so many days of fever to worry about. and, why after three doses of omnicef, still so sick. tomorrow is "go day or no day"--fever above 100 = take her in. fever under 100, watch til Monday. What the heck IS this horror? Going on day 5. So very tired. Please hold good thoughts. Off to rest.

Strep Diary - 98.6

could it be? I'm afraid to think it. We haven't seen 98.6 in four days. could it be?

Strep Diary - 103.5

just when you think it's turning, it's not. more motrin. call into the doctor. literally crying. waiting. her teeth chattering. syringes of water between chattering. somewhere in Hamburg, I'm pretty sure George has a high fever. Break it, daddy. We talked (IM) yesterday, was it yesterday?, his lymph nodes were popping out of his neck, throat raw, no word today. Break the fever Papa. Break the fever. please.

Strep Diary - 100.5

Hey, that's lower, huh? Motrin wearing off though. syringe after syringe of gatorade and water. Good news? I HAVE SOME! Got her in the shower, cooled her some, washed her frayed dry hair, even braided through her tears to make sure her head is cooler. You know her hair--it's quite a crown of warmth to have when you're fighting a fever. So she's braided and sleeping now. White spots on the roof of her mouth--not sure if it's the strep or yeast from the antibiotics and lack of resistance due to the strep. Anyone seen strep spots on the roof of the mouth? Am going to look that up. It could be either or. Maybe yogurt later will help.

An hour ago she said, I want lasagna. THAT'S GOOD! When she gets bossy about food, I know that's a good sign.

Will certainly know which way this thing is going to turn by tonight, I hope, as the omnicef will be four doses in by then. Thanks for all the good thoughts.

Happy mother's day, ya'll. ;-)

strep diary

seems to be the only thing i can write about. because being a solo parent through this, this is all there is. no house, no dishes, no animals, no bills, no mail, no phone, no drives, no nothing. just one syringe of gatorade, then water, then a bite of this, then motrin, then water, then gatorade, then a bite of this, then lay back, then rest, then water, then gatorade, then omnicef, then water, let's play a game, see how we can squirt the water into the cup with a plunger, look it splashes us, hee hee, then drink it, just drink it, then laydown, then sit up, then a bite of this, then a squirt of this, then get salt water, then rinse your mouth, then pat til you burb, then lay back then rest, then sit up, then a syringe of water. that's how it goes. that's all there is. my head is on fire.

Strep Diary

what is this thing that has possessed my daughter? She woke up burning in the middle of the night. Motrin. Sleep, and woke up five hours later with 102.5, ON MOTRIN. The roof of her mouth is covered in white spots now, and I suspect we will be off to one or another location today. A resistant form of strep? I'm beginning to wonder. This is day four. Prayers welcome.

Strep Diary: home sweet home

we're back from urgent care. thanks to the patience of a great male nurse who took the time to squirt gatorade down her uncooperative throat one ML at a time (something she wouldn't let me do, mind you), we avoided an IV. It took a very long time, and her fever spiked to 103 while we were there, so I was so glad we went. Her poor little teeth were chattering and shivering, but we got the latest dose of motrin and phenegern suppository in and the temp is down some.

another long night, but at least enough liquid in her to get that precious pee I was looking for.

oye.

Interestingly, the female pregnant doctor was an absolute snot. Brought in two flavor ices (like I hadn't been down THAT road) and walked out, which Jenna flat out refused and which sent her into such chills from just looking at them that I had to cover her in the comforter I brought just to keep her from chattering off the table.

then my "don't you fuck with us" hormone went into high gear and I walked out into the nurse's station and read that hussie doctor the riot act. Never saw her again, thank goodness; instead the patient male nurse sat with us for over an hour, showing Jenna the option: IV versus Gatorade. She's a smart cookie. She opted for the plunger.

We're home. suppository where it's supposed to be. all is right with the world.

more when I have brain cells.

Strep Diary - Still so hot

Pushing liquids the last several hours. Not doing much good because of this darn fever, which doesn't want to budge even with tylenol, even with cold cloths, even with tepid bath, so I'm off to the Urgent Care to get some help with getting this kid rehydrated. Wish us luck. More later.

102.5 - The Strep Diary Continued

I think I could get a little bit more tired. Under dirt, maybe.

Last night was bad, this morning was bad, still not eating or drinking enough I took Jenna back to the pediatrician. Her fever kept rising instead of falling, her stomach hurting more not less. Medicine change. From Zithromax back to Omnicef. Praying. If she can't keep enough liquids down by tonight, it's off to urgent care tonight for IV rehydration. She's close, but the doc gave me today to try to push the liquids at home, and finally more PHENERGEN suppositories to help her little tummy. She's digging the Vernor's Ginger Ale, but with her fever so high, it's constant pushing of sips. One sip at a time. The great milestone will be whether or not she pees by 6.

It comes down to that. Hoping to see pee. A mom's life.

I had to run to only the second business meeting I've had in a month--which of course would fall in the middle of strep week--and was gone an hour while my sister sat with her. While I was gone, her temperature climbed another degree and a half. I found myself listening to the two men in the meeting, nice enough, professional, likable guys, thinking about how they probably didn't have to go home and convince their kid that this suppository, or "possitory" as Jenna now calls it, is really a good thing. And every piece of paper they showed me had her name written on it--or it looked like a prescription--indecipherable doctor's orders--nothing seemed real. But I got through it. I'm hoping it will all make sense in a couple of days.

so tired.

She's sleeping now. I'm off to rest. That's why no more great writing or breakthroughs or anything else, except to relate that what I see, in her sick circled eyes, her two pounds lost in ONE day, is a little tiny girl who needs me, and that's enough to keep me pushing. Even though I feel pretty much like crap myself. sure do.

Keep sending those healing vibes. We sure can use them. Thanks for listening. Hope to be writing about something other than strep very soon.

The end of order

The throwing up has begun again. I bugged the stinking doctor for some phenegren this evening because she's been complaining of feeling sick to her stomach all day, to the tune of having a hard time taking her medicine. What is it with pediatricians these days that makes them so conservative? All I wanted was two more suppositories to make sure the throwing up didn't start again. Call a couple in, Doc, will ya? No, she hasn't thrown up in a while, but she can't stomach anything. Yes, we've done sips of Veronor's Ginger Ale. Yes, cool bath. Yes yes yes. And no, none of that helps you stomach medicine when you have strep. the bacteria lives in your throat. you swallow it. it goes along its merry way. you throw up. HELLO. Conservative-to-a-fault doctors? Are you out there? If you are, bring me a phenegren suppository THIS INSTANT! I still haven't washed off the last throw up yet. I'll be sure to greet you at the door with a smile.

it's shower time.

thank you for accommodating my rant.

disorder and chaos, it's no accident

I've been doing much thinking, talking, and now some writing this past month. And I have arrived at my chosen, at least for now, school of thought on trauma and recovery. I am of the school that believes it doesn't matter, except from a pharmacological perspective (which is only an aid along the way), the label you use. You can it label bi-polar, or borderline, or acute depression, or anxiety, PTSD, or complex trauma, DID, or MPD; you can choose from the eightyeight gazillion labels that insurance companies insist be selected from in the DSM IV.

You can do all of that and dance around a mayberry pole all you like, but it comes down to trauma, it comes down to chaos. Disorder results from chaos, and disorders result from trauma. Something happened to you, maybe even before you were able to speak (enter the silence part), and it was traumatizing. And reinforced as you grew.

Having said that, it is interesting to delve around in the disorders of personalities, the neuroses and psychoses of our age, because they are, if nothing else, flavors. Some are vanilla flavored and some are razor flavored. You see?

More later--I have to go wash the throw up off of me now.

we're getting better!

For the visually inclined

It has something to do with this, which is saved as a PDF, unfortunately, because I don't have a good graphics program right now that will let me move it out of powerpoint into a jpeg. Later for that.

This is the world of trauma damage and recovery according to Jeneane. I shared it with my therapist via email, who I was supposed to see today except that strep intercepted me, and she wrote, "Wow. It looks as though you've been working hard." And so I have.

This is a schema of wounding and release, as related to silence and genuine voice, as experessed by self (or not expressed in the false self's case). I am planning to write more about this, which made me draw it one night last week, soon.

The underlying message is the difference between consuming and beholding. It was during a recent conversation with RageBoy that I stumbled upon the consume/behold difference. A week or so ago when I was so sick, and landing right back in my childhood sick bed which, twisted as it is, is one of my warmest memories (later to realize, during the massage, that it was my father's sickbed I was longing to get back to, if not for anything else but to comfort and be comforted, and maybe to say goodbye), that Uncle Rage said, "Get yourself some flowers when you stop at the pharmacy."

I said, "I don't really like flowers. They bother me."

He said something like, "Huh?"

And I said, "I don't really see the use for flowers."

And he said, "They're important, because they are not something you consume, like cigarettes or food or alcohol. They just sit there and let you look at them."

Then he began talking about himself again, that motherfucking narcissist.

While he told tales of his latest trip to Starbucks, I was left thinking about that consuming thing. And I thought, what word is the opposite of that? What is that THING I don't do so well (or at least not as well as I consume). I said to myself, it's BEHOLD.

The consume versus behold idea was born. It was one of those ah-ha moments that can't be neatly expressed in a post or two--I couldn't email it to George or even tell my therapist about it because it is one of those network/node things. It is an ah-ha among interrelated ah-has. And so I set out to diagram it.

There is a consuming that parallels nicely with addiction. Especially in my life. Probably in yours. It's cigarettes, it's food, it's booze, it's sex, it's gambling, it's any repetitive movement that's sole result is to numb, psychically. Sometimes physically. And it is numbing something. The pain behind it.

Enter narcissistic wounding. Enter the damage side of the diagram. Enter addiction, pain, terror, the trauma side of the equation. Enter the place where some of us come from, bouncing furiously as children around neglectful or abusive or alcoholic or non-existent homes.

The trauma related side, the wound side, of the diagram, is the 'shit happens' side, but it also, if you look closely, is the SHIT CONTINUES TO HAPPEN side.

As in, we do this and we let this be done to us. If we don't make moves to get better. We bounce up and down the left side, mostly DOWN, until we are so unreal we might not even recognize our selves if we HAD selves to recognize.

That is the side that our culture has a vested interest in imprisoning us within. It is related. To consumption. Dig it.

The other side of the diagram--call it the healing side--is how to become free. It is the beholding, the appreciating, not the addictive obsessive. It is the wanting not the needing. You see? You see how I connected that with my previous post!?

I am something else.

(watch that grandiosity, jeneane).

okay.

Proud. To have, at least in my own mind, put SOME (this is a baby step for me) constructs around what happened to me, and how I can get better.

If it resonates with you, let me know.

If you hadn't noticed, blogging made it into the getting better side.

Go figure.

We can all get better.

And it DOES get better than this.

That's why it's called, "Getting Better."

Where need meets want

We all have needs, right?

I mean, all of the books on healing, on trauma--even the good ones--talk about getting your needs met. It is, I think, the passive voice of that phrase that bothers me. The getting your needs met--as in, what, my car is meeting my needs? my rug? my kitchen table? what exactly or who? If we're talking about a job, let's say a job. If we're talking about an other, let's say our lover, spouse, husband, wife, mistress, whomever. I think, in some ways, it's letting us off the hook--that phrase--that "getting our needs met," and if it's not letting us off the hook by encouraging us not to identify the "who," well then, it's letting the who off the hook. And that ain't so cool.

Okay. so drop that freight train of thought for a milisecond. Maybe it's the word "need" I'm bothered by. I have been so goddamn needy all of my life until now, all of my life has revolved around needing and letting need block wanting, desiring, but also, the life-and-death nature of pathological need served to fuel a devilish passion and assasin-like aim in me. How powerfully ironic.

Yes, so I am seeing, now--not that it makes a bit of difference to you, except in the way that standing across the street and looking at your own house, then standing on your own side of the road and looking across at the neighbors makes a difference; let's say perspective then--that need blocks want. And that if you can get to a place where you can lessen the reins of life-and-death terror-invoking child-within need, okay maybe that's setting boundaries, I don't know, but if you can get to that place, it feels very much like someone has slipped some very dark sunglasses from your eyes, and the world looks more yellow, really. An intensity of color, you notice, by broadening your fixed focus to include, say, ten feet to either side of you. Or me, more specifically. In other words, it has its good points.

I don't know where I'm going with this, except to say these new hues of what I think just may be mental health are jolting when they come, as are the setbacks when they bust in and say, "HEY! you are so fucking weak," and I say now, more and more, you know what? Fuck off.

What comes with these mini bites of self understanding is a parallel understanding of others which feels almost paranormal. And a love for self and others that feels more genuine and more real.

I think this is healing.

the simple things

talking again, the wind coming back to her, she is not whining, she is talking and giggling, sweet sounds. and a bath. we had one. finally. and she walked to it. I have been carrying her to and from the bathroom all day yesterday, today, carrying her to the doctor, holding her in the doctor's office, carrying her into the grocery store, limp head against my shoulder. And now she is up and walking back and forth. A half hour ago, she walked to the mailbox at the end of the driveway with me, and only asked me to pick her up when we had to cross over the worms and bugs washed up by the storms. she noticed the ick of it. we're turning the corner.

wshew.

Strep Diary - that kind of body tired

i'm that kind of body tired, that ache, that unhealed wound, that bruise, that sore. she hasn't been out of bed, still burning up, doesn't want to drink. the medicine is in, the suppository is up, and I'm just, well, not.

thanks for staying tuned. stay tuned. she has to start drinking. something. little cracked lips. my head is pounding.

we just slept for a while.

bliss, forgetting, forgotten, nothing finding nothing, numbness carved into welcoming flesh.

I am body tired.

Diagnosis: STREP

again. third time in six months. got meds. resting. goodnight.

bad night

Off to the pediatrician.

P.S., North Georgia Neighbors

If a tornado is headed our way, do NOT and I mean DO NOT tell us.

I was hoping not to have it be 11 p.m., me with Tylenol P.M. in me, and Megan Riley visiting

It's 11 p.m. and the throwups have officially begun. It's going to be a loooong night.

I'm guessing virus now. This poor baby. Off to get more supplies for the bedroom.

Thanks for staying glued to your blogs--don't you wish you were h-e-r-e?

I could use help with the laundry.

Make that one now very stinky duvet cover, bath towel, mommy shirt, jenna shirt, and pillow case.

Megan Riley, if I see you next week your ass is grass.

More Stormy Weather

Tornado warnings blowing the minds of our south-side neighbors, more to come through the night, thank you Alabama. Can you make it stop now?

Jenna's still hanging around 101.9 as she finally falls asleep, her head pounding, her telling me how she can hear the rhythm in her ears, boom boom, boom boom, boom boom. Her new booklight was just what I needed to check her throat, which looks great, amazingly, which is why the headache-fever combo is worrying me.

Just talked to the doctor who sounds more tired than I. He said yes, yes do this, do that, you're doing fine, a million things it could be. If she gets worse, the fever goes higher, bring her in during the night; if she's sleeping call in the morning. Try to get dose two of the antibiotics in. Try to make her drink.

I'm going to make a nest on the floor by her twin bed tonight, a comforter-on-carpet night for me, having not seen her quite this needy for me, one eye squints open and it's, "MAMA!"

I want my sweet pea to feel better. I would let you take a finger off my hand tonight if you could make her feel better.

storm brewing

Barometer, 30.05 and falling, Jenna 101.6 and rising.

You say Tornado, I say Tornado

let's call the whole thing off.

More watches today, darkening skies fall to match my mood. Thinking of Megan Riley's Pinapple Chunks. Feeling queasy. Trying to pull a Halley outta my hat. Turn it over and knock the brim. Empty.

WWHD?

I'm reading my post below, and I try to see the day through different eyes. I know Halley well, count her among my blog friends. And one of her most amazing qualities, I think, is the way she looks at life as hers for the taking. So today, with Jenna here crying over her headache, clinging, needing, staggering about, I asked myself, what would Halley do?

If it were Jackson instead of Jenna, Halley would make a tent out of the bed covers and climb in with a flashlight and read Scooby-Doo mysteries, bringing cheese and crackers and a bottle of carbonated flavored water or green Kool-Aid with her. She wouldn't worry about crumbs; she'd take care of that later. They'd climb into imaginary mysterious worlds of vampires and mummies, of intrique and detective work, and just now I can hear Halley yelling, ZOINKS!

If Halley's house were a mess today, she'd invent a cleanup crew with pajama-wearing Jackson, and they'd put on pirate hats and go off on a hunt for burried trash, jumping out from behind walls to surprise one another with an old dixie cup or random dirty sport sock.

For lunch she'd make something out of nothing. Peanut butter club sandwiches, stacked high, alternating flavored jellies, grape then strawberry, and then peanut butter, bread and maybe a few crackers. She'd dance around the lunchtime totem pole and Jackson would hug her waist and laugh.

Naptime would be delicious. She and Jackson would curl back up in Halley's bed, she'd rub his straight dark hair and tell him the story of when she was a little girl, and sick, and how she dreamed herself to far off lands to ride unicorns or great giant kernels of blue popcorn.

For dinner, Halley would order out, then get dressed up for the delivery boy, just to shock him. Maybe she'd put on grannie glasses and a doudy robe and fuzzy slippers, and speak only French when he rang. Or maybe she'd let her flowered Victoria Secret camisole float, just barely, above the button on her pajama top to see if she could catch him gazing. While she was waiting, she'd blog about it, one of those big Halley headlines: Delivery Boy, Ring This Belle.

She and Jackson would slurp up lomein, in a contest, seeing who could slurp the longest noodle the fastest. Jackson would laugh, and Halley would say, "STOP IT! You're going to make a noodle come out of my nose!" And they'd fall off the kitchen chairs giggling.

At bedtime Halley would tuck Jackson in and lay down beside him, sing him a church song to let him know that everything, absoultely everything, will be just fine. And after he drifts off, Halley would call a blog friend and say, "AAAH! Jackson was home sick. We played pirates and picked up trash and told stories, and you should have SEEN the guy who brought our Chinese dinner, this young boy, he was just so CUTE!"

And I'd smile and tell her she's a damn laugh riot, and secretly I would wonder how it is that Halley can turn any day, any ordinary day, horrible day, into an adventure, into a party, into a Halleyday.

Big Chunks of Pineapple

I have heard for the last three days how Megan Riley threw up big chunks of Pineapple right on the line. Fascinated by her classmate's biological demonstration at circle time, Jenna has been discussing this amazing event endlessly with anyone who will listen, which means me and her aunt, for days.

"Megan Riley ate too fast, and she threw up big chunks of Pineapple RIGHT ON THE LINE!"

The line is the circular piece of tape that outlines where the children sit for circle time.

"Too fast. She ate big chunks and she threw them RIGHT UP!"

I ask if Megan was sick, Jenna says no, but then reports that Megan was absent the next two days, and that yes, she was sick. Among other things I think, great. Nothing spreads through a school quicker than "the throwups."

So when Jenna woke up this morning crying from a killer headache, complaining of a sore throat, and asking for "the throw up bowl" I thought of Megan Riley and her big chunks of Pineapple.

I'm off to get the thermometer because she feels hot to the touch. Wondering what will blossom from this: big chunks, strep throat, a quick-fading virus, or another round of week-long sickness. These things I wonder as I get some toast and cool water ready, check the weather to see what flood or tornado might be stopping by today, look at my house in complete and I mean complete disarray. Today was going to be "my day." The day I clean up the house, having gotten the most recent project out the door to my client, the day I get things back in order so that I can just simply r-e-l-a-x.

But Megan Riley and her Pineapples have different ideas.

I admire Halley, who wakes up thinking anything's possible, while over here I wake up and learn nothing's possible. At least not today. At least not for me.

Off to fetch the thermometer.

Who's There?

Jenna is five and therefore loves, yes, knock knock jokes. I hoped the phase wouldn't come, me, no fan of knock knock jokes. Still, I find myself giggling at these:

Knock Knock
Who's there
Sid
Sid Who?
Sid down, you're rockin' the boat!


Knock Knock
Who's there
Luke
Luke who?
Luke out below!


Knock Knock
Who's there
Les
Les who?
Les get outta here!


Knock Knock
Who's there
Wayne
Wayne who?
Wayne wayne go away!

backtrack

In the dream the
sea is frothy salted
wrapped around your waist
mine and
you lift me
take me

How far back
do I trace to see
where it
came from
what part of me
let you in.

We are born eyes open,
what happens.

I am ignoring everyone

I haven't linked in these 30 in 30 attempts. Sometimes I do. This week I've kind of rolled in my welcome mat, or more appropriately, my go out mat. I'm welcoming people in, but I'm not reading many blogs this week. I go through these phases. For two weeks I may read a dozen or so new blogs, add them to my blogroll, follow them daily or even more frequently, become inspired by the writing there, have so much to say thanks to the sparky synapses they ignite.

Then a week or two after, I fall off reading most of them--one or two usually stick with me and our intersections remain permanent. The community grows outward, theirs and mine.

Then comes a week when I don't remember who I read or why I do this. I find myself visiting the three or four blog buddies I started with, revisiting old friends, trying to remind myself that blogging is worth it.

Generally after that comes a few days or more where I roll up my awnings and close my door. I write from inside. I don't care much what's going on out there with you or you or you. I'm glad when you come to visit me. I get pissed when you don't. My hit meter suffers. I go from 150 or 200 readers a day down to 100 or even fewer.

I get a little excited about that downturn, wondering how low can I make it go. What do I have to write that will make no one come? I'm just curious. You know. It's about feel, it's about give and take, it's about soloing and see who sticks with you, lays back so you can have your say, and is still there to come back in when you're done.

Yes, I do that.

Freaky kind of.

Somewhere during my solo, when I'm not really here or there, but I'm paying attention mostly to what I'm saying, not what you're saying, but glad that you're still on stage with me, I start to rekindle what I love in this, about this, for this, for you and you and you, my own sound makes me care again because it is informed by all of you, it's not pure, it's hybrid, and I remember that when I hear myself.

That's when the compulsion to reach out regenerates and I move back outside this place to care, talk, scream, link, and add more layers to my own voice, through you.

Coming soon--jeneane lays back and listens. Followed by Jeneane takes it out.

more later

30 in 30 failure. I'll try later if I stay awake.

Could I claim tornado damage?

I have no excuse for the state of this house.

None.

It's hard to believe I ever worked. I can't keep up and I had no work-work to do today. I am, just now, looking at the following, all on the floor of my living room:

empty camera case
empty fold-up computer desk
ball
pillow
gopher--the grabber pickerupper thing
bin of old books
barbie (4)
barbie car,
9 kids books
train track
kids CD player
kids roller coaster toy
etch-a-sketch
3 sneakers
activity pad
puzzle pieces
5 stuffed animals
kids chair
Children's encyclopedia
Microscope
Toy Horse (36 inches high)
Swim mask, child's
basket
six tubes of acrylic paint
dixie cup
scissors

It's a damn good thing a tornado didn't pick this house up--or maybe I should claim it did?

I am slow today

Usually when I try to post 30 in 30 I have this current running through me, an urgency to write. I don't have that right now, and I'm falling WAY behind in my race for 30 in 30. I may have to do 15 in 30 and pick it up later.

take me and leave me

A potential client takes me to lunch on Friday. I'm pretty high at the prospects for work there. Nice client from way back. Easy to work with. Been profitable through the nonsense of the last three years. Needs help pronto. Next 60-90 days will be busy.

So sure am I that I'll be getting gobs of work, that I go out and buy new shoes, jeans, and get my hair cut, lasanted, and styled.

I called yesterday to say, hey, when are we going to start?

Does the phrase "Hurry up and wait" ring any bells?

ugh.

From Jenna

Today the sirens went off and we had to get in the bathrooms at school. Sirens were on, and this was NOT good. We heard the sirens from the bathrooms, so we ducked our heads, put our hands on our heads, criss crossed, and you know what? There were THREE bathrooms and we had to use the boys and girls bathrooms. The boys went in the boys bathroom, the girls went in the girls bathroom, and there was NOT enough room. So the rest of us had to go in the BIG LADIES bathroom!!

There was a thunder storm. It came RIGHT OVER MY SCHOOL! It kept on us for a little while. But it never went away. It'll be here tomorrow, and now it's starting to thunder again.

that's all I'll say for now.

bye everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you drive by

You're likely to see Jenna with a full-face swim mask, bright green, high heel shoes, a cash register in her hand, outside on the stoop checking the weather. Please don't tell anyone.

High Heel Sneakers

Jenna's running around with her high heel dress up shoes on. She just got an opened can of baked beans out of the fridge and is eating them cold. I was so tired today I was laying down when I saw her walking around with a cold hot dog she grabbed from the fridge. With one parent to keep tabs on her just now, she's learning to make due. And I'm learning to let her. Have to save energy for those things that could really come out of no where and hurt her, like tornadoes.

Has anyone seen our cat?

I dunno. He was here before the storm. Maybe he's smart enough to be down the basement as the thunder starts rumbling again.

Tornado Alley

Upstate New York has its fair share of weather. I grew up making human chains to walk to school in the winter, the obligatory child suffocating in snowdrift story scaring us only enough to be sure we put air holes in the igloos we carved out of the piled-high snow on the side of the road. The battle of Man vs Nature is at the core of every resident in Western New York. It makes them special. Their struggle is special. It is as much outward as inward, as much against bitter wind, cold and lake effect snow as against the inner struggles of depression and light deprivation.

Even so, the south is weather of a different flavor. Living in "Tornado Alley" here in northwest Georgia is in fact more traumatic for me than the six-month winters of Buffalo and Rochester. There, your resistance is high for weather. It's a given, a friendly foe, it's coming, nothing to be done, two, three, four, five months of snow, sleet, ice, you just turn up your coat collar and deal with it.

Down here, it's different. Weather surprises you. Weather is something that jumps out from the side of the road out of nowhere, knocking your car from its happy little lane into a guard rail or worse. Weather is sirens. In the last week I think I've heard the tornado sirens three times. Today I had to brave thunder, lightning, tornados, and flooded roads to go fetch Jenna. We made it. But I was left with a homesick feeling for snowstorms and blizzards, which, at home in New York, blanketed entire cities and counties. Which you expected. Which rarely jumped out of nowhere like tornadoes, those boogie men that swirl round and then swoop down out of nowhere to carry you off.

damn

i just wrote a really good post and lost it.

why don't i post as I go?

I only know that when I get fucked with, I come back with a vengence.

So here goes an attempt at 30 posts in 30 minutes.

Lose this, Motherfucker.

allied challenge

The first person who gives me the lyrics to the old and little-known classic "Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time" wins! (what, I don't know, but you win. a big ole link if nothing else). I searched google and came up empty on the lyrics. My dad used to sing it to me. I only remember the words to the first line. Um, that would be the title. Thanks!

Erroll Garner plays it here.

Was a little slower when my dad sang it to me. ;-)

NOTE: Thank you goes to Michael OCC for taking me back, way back, with this rendition. Love ya, Bro. And thanks.

Jeannine, I dream of lilac time
When I return I'll make you mine
For you and I
Our love can never die
Jeannine, I dream of lilac time.

Yes, that's how I remember it.

slice

What I'd like right this minute is to run away. Not just a little away, a lot away. Far away. Away away. That is how it feels, just now, as the night wraps around this house, these walls, bulbs unchanged, not sure which rooms even have light anymore, and don't much care. Light, overrated. So I would run someplace dark, someplace with a sea, a dark sea, the image burned into my core of the sea at night, waves keeping time with my heart.

If everyone who ever loved you wore a disguise, how would you know? You can't know on your mother's knee that her face is not her face, that her eyes aren't looking, not quite, at you. And when another takes your heart, how would you know whose face is whose? You might wonder, but you don't know. You never learned what is is.

When humans are broken, their edges jab one against the other, cutting, not meaning to, not even knowing where your edges end and theirs begin.

Is it love, is it mine, is it us, is it still, is it death, is it pain, is it healing, is it growth, is it joy, is it wonder.

Is it?

been weird

It's been a while since I felt like writing anything. what's up with that? i don't know.

I do know that my palms itch today. And my feet. What the heck is that about? Yesterday too. Not just a little itchy, but MAJOR get a fork from the drawer and itch the shit out of my hands and feet. Back to drinking a lot of water, as that seemed to help with this last bout of bizarre health quirks.

I've heard that itchy palms mean you're going to run into some money.

I could sure use that kind of running into.

If this is true, I'm going to run into a boatload, because the itching is way way intense. Which makes it hard to type, really.

What else is new? Everything. Everything is new. Nothing is old because everything that was old was wrong and everything that is new is completely uncertain, and look at me. Living through it. Sometimes even enjoying the openness of Everything. The letting go of nothing.

I took Jenna to the bookstore yesterday. This was a big thing for me. My instinct when I'm alone with Jenna, i.e., when George is gone, is to keep the two of us pretty much around home, safe, somewhat anchored, to be sure no harm comes to her. My instinct is fierce protectiveness, a measure of which is good, a stifling amount of which is bad. So making this bookstore decision was something of a milestone, a venturing out, a welcoming in of words and pages and people and stimuli.

Her reaction when I said, "Hey, do you want to go to the bookstore?" really brought my tendency toward inertia home to me. She said, "REALLY? Really mama?! THANK YOU!" As if I just told her we were going to Disney. We're talking Barnes and Noble.

Jenna, I'm sorry. But you're five, not 35, and there's still time for me to get better at this motherhood thing, this living thing, and I'm really really trying.

The bookstore was, well, fun. There I said it. It was fun! I picked up Carol Gilligan, and got Jenna a collection of Jack and Annie books, which they read at school, along with a new book light to put by her bed. She is slowly learning to go to sleep without me. Her chosen company for now are books. And I think that is incredibly wonderful. I hear her reading to herself from her bedroom, think how much is opening up to her because she can read, think of all the things I can start to show her in books.

And I feel alive.

Friday Night's Alright

We had "Fun with Hair" Night!!

the body bears the burden

too tired to link to the book of this title. let me say that I had my first massage today--holy fucking fantastic! Wow. I'm so sore. So, I'm supposing if you had the money to go to massage three times a week, you wouldn't really need to exercise at all. If I were a rich man, ladi da da da da da da da da da da dadi da...

But that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part was what happened at the first touch. It was, well, goodness. It's hard to put words around the images that came. Laying face down with my face in soft cotton, on a soft massage bed, those cool cotton sheets i like so well, and she started, and I'm in complete darkness with my head buried, but suddenly I'm watching a movie in techno color.

I see my father in paisley pajamas I forgot he had, white pajamas with a gold/green paisly pattern. I am on his bed with him, and he is at first kind of faded. All there, and not see-through, more like that 20 percent grey shading in the microsoft color palatte, you know?

But then he becomes clearer, finely tuned, adjusted for color, and I flash on so many of his expressions I didn't know I remembered, and now she's digging in deeper into my muscle and by now I'm crying, and she doesn't know this, because it's that kind of silent scream where if it were audible it would be a wail. Eucalyptus oil is opening my sinuses and I feel tears soaking the cotton.

And then I'm dancing with him--my God I didn't remember how we danced, and it is so real, and he is so very much smiling in his crisply ironed pajamas. I have been in his skin for so many years, and he is so happy I'm getting out of it before it's too late. This is what the looks say, to do that. And I love you. I love you.

We hold hands and walk down the stairs together and when we open the front door, the colors of the field across the street are brighter than I remember them being, and my father is in his clothes now, and handsome and strong and not sick at all, and I am healthy and strong and not sick or needing anything, no craving, no cigarette, no needing, just being, and my Aunt Penny, the aunt who has always loved me so, my aunt with MS who relies on her wheel chair, she is with us, standing tall and happy on the front steps with us, and there we are, the three of us, laughing and standing, and now I'm smiling into my cotton towel and she's digging into my shoulders and neck not knowing everything that is going on inside this cotton.

And it is absolutely tremendous.

Tremendous, painful, joyous.

I hear there is a lot going on in the world and in blogland. I've read some things that make me insane. Because they are. Insane that is.

time to read, then rest.