Good Night, Good Night, Sweet Baby

As an adolescent, I was moody, intensely emotional, and cynical.

Hell, as an adult, I am moody, intensely emotional and prone to bouts of cynicism.  As an adult I have the benefit of years of experience to back up my cynicism.

There is a family legend, or more accurately, an anecdote that tells of how my father, in his attempt to get baby Andie to sleep, would play me Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez records.

This story is always told with a wink, the punchline being that Dad's choice of baby bedtime music somehow contributed to shaping me into the moody, intensely emotional cynic I am today.

Music and sleep have always been deeply intertwined for me.  Music and life, really, but music has played a part in my dreams since I was a small child and would beg my mom to put a tape in the cassette player while I went to sleep.  My tastes were not exactly typical for a child of the late 80s and early, as my artists of choice ranged from Harry Chapin to Harry Belafonte, with some Stompin' Tom thrown into the mix.

How I ever fell asleep to Harry Belafonte baffles me.

Both my sister and I sang The House at Pooh Corner to our children. It may be the perfect lullaby.

I think that had I had children later, or discovered the Mountain Goats earlier, I would have found myself rocking my babies, singing songs like "International Small Arms Traffic Blues" and "Song for Dennis Brown"; songs with soft, lilting harmonies and lyrics about addiction and love doomed to fail.

Then one day, down the road, I'd tell them about how I sang these tunes to them when they were babies.. and if they were moody, intensely emotional cynics, such as myself, we'd chuckle to ourselves as if to say "Well, I guess we know where THAT came from."

Good old kid-friendly tunes. - SOURCE

Excerpts from my notebook - The ER

Came into the emergency department around 11am.  It's now going on 3:30. I have been poked full of holes by nurses trying fruitlessly to secure an IV. I need fluids.

One attempt, on my right wrist, felt as thought [sic] a red hot wire was inserted into a nerve.  My hand felt tingly and numb for several minutes after.  I screamed out in pain.  I may have said Fuck.  I'm sure I said Christ.

There is zero cellphone reception here.  I stood outside for 10 minutes trying to update {The Well-Travelled One} on what has so far taken place.

My stomach is growling.  A cinnamon bun sits on the table beside me.  I bought it in the lobby minutes before I was told not to eat or drink anything.

My mouth is dry.  I need fluids. I finished my book and now I am bored as hell.

{The Well-Travelled One} got me this notebook for my birthday.  I have been saving it, not wanting to mess it up with grocery lists and price comparisons for ceramic tile like I had done with my cheap Dollar Store red book.

A nurse just came in and hooked me up to an ECG, so now to go with my lovely set of holes and bruises from multiple IV attempts, I also get to wear the badges of medical grade adhesive.

So, I'm basically just writing to pass time until my blood work comes back and they decide what else to do with me.

I'm here because I've had a headache for the last four days, a strange feverish feeling, and the ass-bleeding has ramped up in frequency and volume over the last week.  My doctor's office takes at least three weeks to get an appointment and in three weeks, I could be dead.

I hate this body that keeps failing me at every turn.  Colitis at 18. Colon cancer at 33.  Legs that want to clot up and pool blood at every turn.

Any time conversation turns to "What kind of superpower would you want?" my answer is invariably,

"MUTANT HEALING FACTOR"

Every time.

I really have terrible handwriting.  It's gotten worse as I get older and I type more and the most writing I do is signing my name on my kids' agenda.  This is barely legible, especially since the hospital bed doesn't give a great surface to write on.  I seem to think faster than I write so there are numerous mistakes.

Going to try to sleep for a bit.

Age, Relatively Speaking

Age, like time, moves in a dimension of which we are only subtly aware. A shiver down your spine.

My grandmothers, at 62, were so much older than my mother is at 62.  62, to a child, seems a ridiculously high number of years to live.

They've lived 20 years and more since then.

My mother at 34, was so much older at 34 than I am now.  34 was impossibly grown up.  At 34, my parents, for all appearances to my childhood self, really had their shit together. At 34, I am still not sure I qualify as an adult.

My daughter, at 13, is younger than I was at 13.

Or so it would seem. It may be a generation of coddled youth, or it may be my parental desire to keep her a baby forever.

I only have vague recollections of my great-grandmothers (the two who lived to see my birth), as they died while I was still basically a baby.  My grandmothers have already lived to see at least one great grand-child to adulthood may still live long enough to see the others grow up, too.

To my children, their great-grandmothers will never be a faint, fuzzy outline in a memory formed by a toddler's mind.

(My grandfather's never lived to see their great-grandchildren.  Neither did their mothers.)

Time's passage reminds me of my age. That's about the only thing that does.

My kids think I am old.  I almost have them fooled into thinking I'm a grown up.

It amuses me how gradually the alternative rock stations become oldies stations.

They just kept playing the same songs, twenty years later.

Source

"Tut tut, looks like rain."

Oh, these glorious spring days, when I can sit on my porch and watch the world go by.  I feel utter contentment settle around me as my cheeks warm from the kiss of the sun.  Where I can lazily strum my guitar, pausing to sip a cold drink.

People pass by: on bikes, with their dogs.  A mere few weeks ago, snow banks still stood multiple feet high next to driveways, now melted ice flows down the gutters and pools in the corners of my yard.

My neighbour waves a friendly hand, just before he proceeds to turn around and pee on a nearby bush.

*sigh*  

Maybe spring is over-rated, I think to myself, shuddering as I head back inside.

**************************************************

This post is part of the Studio30plus weekly challenge.  This week's prompt is "Kiss of the Sun".  Visit them at www.studio30plus.com

The lesson here is to check your non-perishables.

It was almost imperceptible, at first.  A niggling sound at the back of my head, so faint that I didn't really pick up on it right away.  There I'd be, late at night, reading a book or watching television and I would hear it: a chuckle.

The first couple of times I heard it, I assumed it was part of the program i was watching, kind of like when the phone rings and you jump to grab it, only to find yourself calling "hello? Hello?" into the receiver.  Meanwhile, the phone on the television just keeps on ringing, and now you feel like an idiot.

Other times I would hear it while I showered.  Sometimes it was a chuckle, others a giggle.  Once I swear I heard it, whatever it was, snort.

After some time, the sound of giggling became louder.  It was still muffled, but I became more cognizant of it.  No longer did I write it off as a simple trick of the mind.  The nights I heard the sounds, I would shut off the tv, unplug anything that made even the faintest hum and I would stalk the chuckling sound, trying to walk as quietly as possible in order to track where in the house it came from.

I pulled out my children's long-outgrown toys, removed all the old, dead batteries.  I scoured every corner, cleared every closet but the source of amusement continued to elude me.  

Eventually, I gave up the search.  Maybe my home was haunted, or perhaps I was losing my mind.  I tried throwing myself into new pursuits.  One such pursuit was a complete overhaul of my home.  I mean, why not? I had already torn the place to bits trying to locate the source of the mysterious giggler.

I started in the kitchen.  It had high ceilings and rows of cupboards, painted a bright yellow with tarnished brass doorknobs.  An old linoleum floor stretched out and I got on my hands and knees with a giant scrub brush and scrubbed and waxed until the floor shined, trying to ignore the tittering that seemed to come from nowhere.

Only as I scrubbed, as I wiped down every surface and polished every piece of silverware, the subdued chuckle became louder and more frequent, escalating into hysterics.  It was apparent that the sound was coming from within the kitchen, but where?  Frantically, I circled the kitchen, trying to locate the peals that were becoming more and more high-pitched.  I climbed up onto the countertop and began yanking boxes and cans from the shelves. Tossing them half-hazardly into the middle of the freshly scrubbed floor, I pulled every last item out of the cupboards until, in the furthest reaches of the smallest, highest cupboard, covered in dust and cobwebs, I found it.  The source of my troubles.

I blinked in amazement.

"I don't believe it."

***********************************************************************************

This post was written as part of Studio 30 Plus's weekly challenge.  This week's prompt was really "Canned Laughter" but because my reading comprehension sucks sometimes, I did the wrong prompt.  Visit them at www.studio30plus.com

Forty Dollars

"Momma? I potty..." The little girl's golden blonde curls bounced frantically as she tugged her mothers sleeve.

"Mmhmm?" came the absent reply.  Heavily pregnant and in her early 20s, the child's mother scanned the shelves in the dingy bargain store, searching for the half-price soup that had been promised in that weeks flyer, but there was none to be found.  Sold out already.  What a wasted trip, she thought to herself.  I'll have to get a rain check.

"Momma! I potty! Go potty!!" She yanked her mothers arm again, more vigorously this time, and began jumping up and down in frustration.

"Wha..?" the mother said, snapping out of her reverie. "You.. Oh, jeez.  Okay, sweetie, let's find a bathroom."  Taking her daughters hand, she led the two-and-half year old towards the back of the store where the bathrooms were located.  She silently prayed that there wouldn't be an accident.  They had been in a rush that morning and she had neglected to pack extra pants and pull-ups for the child who was only somewhat potty-trained.  She also hoped that this wasn't a false alarm, borne out of boredom and her child's need for a change of scenery.  Exhausted from the strain of carrying not only her late-second-trimester pregnancy but also a diaper bag (minus the aforementioned diapers) and a heavy winter coat as they had trudged through the snow to the local strip mall, she did not relish the idea of hanging out in a public washroom while her daughter dawdled.

The woman awkwardly pushed her way through the heavy door to the washroom, holding it open as the little girl skipped through the doorway and headed into a stall.  She caught the eye of one of two teenaged girls who stood in front of the mirrors.  It was a weekday, and these two looked, in spite of their psuedo-sophisticated air and heavy eye makeup, like they should probably be in a classroom somewhere, instead of sneaking cigarettes in such a depressing place as a mall bathroom.

Truth be told, the woman was a bit envious.  She craved a cigarette like crazy and had indulged a few times over the last six months, feeling both guilty and relieved every time. It had been a rough winter, after the father walked out, and it seemed to her that the risk imposed to her fetus by the occasional cigarette was mitigated by the need to not break down crying twenty four hours a day.

"Momma.. Help," the little girl called forlornly from the stall as she struggled with her pants.  Crouching down, the woman tugged the tiny denim pants and underpants down and lifted the little girl onto the toilet.  The girls by the mirror snickered and whispered to each other.  She tried to pay them no mind.  Grunting, she struggled back into a standing position.

"Hi! Hi girls! I potty!" the little girl shouted proudly.  The girls giggled.  

After a few minutes, a faint tinkling noise could be heard, indicating that the bathroom trip had not been for naught.  The little girl carefully lowered herself to the ground and shuffled her way across the bathroom, pants tangled up around the tiny snow boots on her feet.

"Oh.. Oh, honey.  Come here. Let me pull your pants up.  We're going to have to wipe your bum first." Setting the diaper bag that doubled as a purse on the counter, the woman began pulling items out of the bag until she came across an oblong plastic container, filled with hopefully at least one or two wet wipes.  The toilet paper provided looked little better than number 2 sandpaper.

Cleaned and re-pantsed, the mother lifted the little girl up to the counter so she could wash her hands, then set her down and started tossing things back into the bag, before exiting the washroom.  She thought about letting someone know that the mall's "No Smoking" policy was being violated, but it was getting close to lunch time, and then nap time and if these errands took much longer she knew she'd have a very cranky toddler on her hands.  And cranky toddlers make for cranky mommies.

They made their way back to the grocery section of the store, where the mother grabbed a few staples.. Milk, bread, some arrowroot cookies, a couple of boxes of KD.  Money was tight that month, and there was still a few days until payday, she thought, as the cashier rang up her purchases.  In order to stay within budget, she'd have to stick to whatever could be covered by the forty dollars in her wallet.

My wallet.  

Rummaging through the diaper bag, she reached down into the very depths of the bag, feeling around for her small leather wallet.  

"Uhm.. Can you hold this stuff?  I.. Um... Can't seem to find my wallet."  A vision of the bathroom counter flashed through her mind.  "I think I may have left it in the bathroom."  An older, somewhat chubby woman with a slight suggestion of grey in her hair nodded.  The woman grabbed the little girl by the hand and pulled her in the direction of the washroom.  The child whined and resisted, too close to nap time, so the woman picked her up and kept going.  When she burst through the door, there was no one to be found.  Nor was any wallet.  Dejected, she trudged back toward the cash registers.

As she approached, the cashier greeted her with a smile.  She held up a small, black object.  "Is this your wallet? Another customer just brought this to the customer service desk.  She said she found it in the washroom."

Putting her daughter down, the woman sighed with relief.  "Yes, yes.  Thank you.  That is mine."  The cashier handed her the wallet and she opened up to pull out the two twenties and pay for the groceries.  

It was empty.  Tears sprang to the young mother's eyes.  

"Mommy.."  The little girl whined and fidgeted.  

"Is everything okay, ma'am?" 

The woman swallowed hard, trying like hell not to cry in front of the cashier. "Yes.. Erm.. No.  I mean, no.  There was forty dollars in here."

"I'm sorry, ma'am.  There was no money when it was turned in."  The cashier looked at her with sympathy in her eyes. Feeling the sob building in her throat, she mumbled an apology and took the little girl by the hand.  They walked out of the story, leaving the few merger groceries behind.  Outside, the woman sunk down onto a nearby bench and proceeded to let the tears of frustration flow.  

"Mommy?"

"Yes, honey," the woman sniffled.

"Mommy, you sad?"

"Yes, honey.  Mommy sad."

************************************************************************************

This was written as part of the Studio 30 Plus weekly writing challenge.  This week's prompt is "Stolen".  Visit them at www.studio30plus.com

My intentions were good.

I had a plan, when I recieved my diagnosis, that I was going to blog my journey, create an account of everything I was going through.  It's kind of fallen by the wayside, clearly.

Maybe it started with stress cold I came down with a week before the surgery.  All my energy that remained was focused on getting better so that I wouldn't have to reschedule the surgery, because frankly, waiting a month was long enough.

I brought the iPad to the hospital with me, with every intent of documenting the days following, only to discover that the Wi-Fi signal up there on the 14th floor where I recovered was pretty pathetic.  Great hospital otherwise, but man... That was some frustrating.

Since being home I've been in a mind fog from the morphine I'm still having to take to manage the pain of having not only a huge ass incision cut through most of my abdominal muscles, but my internal organs shuffled around as well.  Also, I've not. Been. Doing. Anything.  There was a lot of stuff before the hospital (like, hey! My sewer main backed into my house) and in the hospital but I have the attention span of a fruit fly.

Today I have promised to make a concerted effort to get outside, for the sake of my own sanity, which puts me in the position of having to go out of my comfort zone and ask people to assist me in getting out of my house, since clearly being Morphine McBrainFog means no driving for me.

Hopefully over the couple weeks I will have more energy, motivation and mental stamina to fill in the blanks on everything else that's been happening as of late.

Such Great Heights

Early June.

A half hour into the bush, slapping black flies and wiping away the occasional bead of sweat from my forehead.  The canopy of trees overhead does a half-decent job of filtering most of the sun's heat, keeping the forest floor relatively cool.

My calves are only just beginning to ache as I struggle to keep up.  I've never been what you would call "built for speed," and I keep my eyes mostly to the ground, watching for stumps and rocks that threaten to trip me up.  

A faint rumble in the distance becomes stronger as we make our way down the trail.  Through a break in the trees I catch glimpses of rushing water.  Stopping, I am given the option of waiting while he makes his way down the steep embankment leading to the river's edge.

I am new to this and eager to prove myself, so I start a careful descent.  The trail is narrow, barely wider than my foot, and I must walk a tight-rope down a slope blanketed in wet leaves and pine needles.

I have stood on balconies, ten stories up and laughed.  I have danced on the glass floor of the CN tower and not even blinked, even engaging in a mock jig hundreds of feet above the city sidewalk, secure in the engineering that had prevented thousands before me from plummeting to their death.

But here on this rock face I do not trust my legs.  i do not trust my feet.  The ground is slippery, the nearby branches too thin and pliable to support my weight and suddenly I am paralyzed.  My feet plant themselves to the ground and I can feel panic rising in my chest.  Tears spring to my eyes and I begin to whimper.  Every attempt to unstick my foot results in a shaking of the knees and the feeling that the ground is melting beneath me. I feel myself tipping and in my minds eye I can see my body, bleeding and broken, on the rocky outcroppings below.  I begin to shake with fear.

From below, soothing words of encouragement begin to break through my cloud of tears.  Hands reach up to steady me.  Clumsily, I lower myself to the muddy ground, feeling moisture seep through the seat of my pants as I manage to skootch my way down the remaining few feet of the rocky ledge by way of my butt, sniffling and making strained, squeaking noises, until I find myself once again on solid, flat ground, wrapped in arms that stroke my hair and whisper reassurances until the panic subsides.

"It's okay.  You're good. You've done well."

**********************************************************************************

This post is in response to Studio30plus weekly writing prompt. This week's prompt is "Falling"

When do they stop running?

I drove home tonight and happened to pass three girls, a mere year or two older than my eldest daughter. They walked slowly, sauntering, almost a careful gait. Arms close to their sides, swinging slightly.

When do little girls become so careful in their stride, so measured?

I think of the past summer and the one previous, when I would let my girls, shiny Toonies in hand, walk to the corner store for candy. They'd run, momentarily untethered by a mother still nervous about negotiating boundaries. They run, they'd skip, on rare occasions they might hold hands, or maybe that's this mothers nostalgia giving these recollections a Norman Rockwell patina.

When do little girls stop running?

My oldest, my blonde beauty, who still at times seems so young, so naive has begun to walk with the lazy, sauntering step of one who is navigating her way between childhood and preadolescence. She lags, without the same excitement of getting where she is going. In a few more years it will be sharp angles, hands on jutted hips, an eye-roll here and there.

My littlest still bounds ahead, still skips as her hair swings from side to side. There is no self-consciousness, just the journey ahead however short it may be, that promises newness.

My oldest still runs, from time to time, but only if no one is looking.

Why do we stop running? Why the importance in seeming unaffected? When do we lose the wonder in the journey, and worry only about arriving in style?

Your vocabulary lesson for the day.

The English language is a complex tapestry of varying rules of grammar, spelling and uses. Individual words can hold multitudes of meanings and evolve over generations. Sometimes those meanings can evolve into ones that are hurtful and silencing. We have control over this and we can keep words from being hurtful by not using them in damaging contexts.

Words mean things.

I can't believe we're still having this conversation but here goes:

When you say something is gay when you really mean stupid, you are equating gay with stupid. It paints gayness as a negative trait, and it's not. Full stop. When you use this, you are insulting and marginalizing an entire group of people. Same with retarded. Hell, even same with lame.

Using the word stupid all the time gets boring, I know. And these can be difficult linguistic habits to break (believe me.. I've stuck my foot in my mouth on more than one occasion... Right Danno?

So for your convenience, here is a handy list of words that can be used in place of stupid that DON'T serve to marginalized entire groups of people for no good reason.

Stupid

Ridiculous
Ludicrous
Lacking common sense
Illogical
Inane
Nonsensical
Foolish
Sophomoric
Absurd
fucked up beyond comprehension
Horrendous
Preposterous
Banal
Vapid
Unimaginative
Unoriginal
Pedestrian
Laughable
Pointless
Puerile

Of course, some of these are better suited to some contexts more than others. This isn't even a comprehensive list. Your Thesaurus has all these and more. I hear they even have em online now.

Yeah. You're welcome.

My readers are helpful. See also:

Insipid
Stupidiotic

Feel free to add suggestions in the comments.

Winter is finally upon us. Whoopitty-doo.

It's a bitter inevitability, these January days. Even December, this year so uncharacteristic in its mildness could not hold them off forever. Waking to the morning when the clear blue skies And sunshine cleverly disguise the mercury's sudden decent.

Wind creeps through the cracks where the door has warped and no longer meets its jamb. Roaring from the bowels of this humble dwelling, the ancient furnace breathes up from the floor and wrestles with the draft, struggling to overpower, but still the chill remains.

Wrapped in blankets I bury my head and breathe deeply, exhaling warm damp mist into my frozen hands. Pulling the blanket ever closer, cocooning myself, wishing I could return in spring when the cracking ice screams from across the bay and the snow banks retreat, dropping a sediment of salt and dirt onto muddy front yards.

Hot coffee and thick stews and ratty woolen sweaters are my weapons against the biting cold and the long stretches of night, while I grasp each precious minute of sunlight and count the days.

The Tip of my Tongue.

When I was growing up in Aurora there was a restaurant down the street from my uncle's place, in a plaza (some may know them as strip-malls) on the Southeast corner of Murray Avenue and Yonge Street, at one point the longest street in the world and the eventual route that would take my family on our short but life-altering pilgrimage from Aurora to our current home on the Georgian Bay.

My memories of this establishment are fuzzy yet curiously vivid as well.  Glaring yellow signage ran the length of the outer end of the building - it was the last unit and faced the traffic of Yonge street.  I recall caricatures of old comedy acts such as Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields gracing either end of the stylized lettering, now blurred in my mind's eye.

It was a fairly large, licensed establishment, specializing in Italian fare - a family restaurant, before we became inundated with proto-family-cookie cutter chain eateries.  Upon entering, one would walk into a sparsley furnished, harshly lit entranceway with a small counter for picking up takeout orders.  In contrast, the main dining room was lush and romantically lit, a sea of dark wood, leather and tiffany lamps.  As a small child I would swing my feet from the huge bench seats of the booths and look around curiously, in my own world, ignoring the chatter of my parents and sister.

What stands out in my memory, clearer than anything is the Pac-Man game.  The PacMan game sat in the entryway, close to but not quite in the dining area.  It was one of those table-top arcade games where two players could sit on either end and play head-to-head games of Pac-Man.  Occasionally I was lucky enough to be given a shiny quarter to play while we waited to be seated, but even when no quarters were available I was content to sit hunched over the bright flat screen and trace my fingers along the plexiglass, following Pac-Man's gluttonous feast.  My little brain, just then learning to read, would watch as the screen flickered and switched from the demo to the menu screen and mouth along as the rival ghosts were introduces.. Inky, Blinky, Pinky and...

and...

What was the last one's name?  I can never remember.

The last time I was there, I was seventeen.  My friends and I had embarked on a road trip to the city for some reason or another and I, being full of ideas, suggested going to Aurora and driving by my old house.  We stopped there for lunch and it was as I remembered it, mostly.  I don't recall now if the game was still there, but the food and the atmosphere was as I remembered.

That was nearly fifteen years ago.  The restaurant has since been shut down, re-named, under new management.  It's funny though, that with all that I can remember of that place, of the details in the decor and the food and how my child-mind perceived eating in a  big, grown-up fancy-pants restaurant with china and cloth napkins and where I was even allowed to order a Shirley Temple and felt very grown-up doing so... well, with all that, to this day I cannot recall it's name.

Funny, that.

UPDATE:  So, I was at work and standing in the bathroom washing my hands and out of nowhere, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Barrel Pizza.

Holding myself accountable.. that's what this is about, right?

So, I haven't done an MFP monday (formerly WWWednesday) post in a while.  Mainly because I figured that after a few weeks of "Gained xxx number of lbs." or "Stayed the same.  I don't want to talk about it." would get old after a while.

The progress has been slow going, to say the least.  Although my ticker says I'm down 2lbs, as of two or three days ago, I was pretty much where I started.  I've just not been tracking gains, only losses.  Once I'm down below my recorded weight, I'll start updating again.  It just got so frustrating seeing that 0 on my ticker.

I had a week that I thought I did well, and stayed the same.  Then I had a pretty good week but fell apart on the weekend and ended up gaining two pounds.  Then I kind of went off the rails and said 'fuck it!' for a few days.  As you may guess, this was pretty easy considering it was halloween and I had all sorts of candy and chips at my disposal.  However I think hormones played into my fluctuations because then I was down 4lbs.. then up 2 and so on..

So now I'm thinking of weighing in tomorrow morning but I know I'm going to be frustrated as fuck if there is no happy change in the numbers. How the hell did I deal with all this the first time around?  I had so much more to lose then, but it seemed to come off much easier, then.

Oh well.

In other news, my NaNoWriMo progress is.. well.. stilted I guess.  I'm up to 2600ish words and at this point I think I'm supposed to be somewhere in five digits.  But every time I sit down to write I find I'd rather write here.  The story I'm writing is semi-autobiographical and through it I'm trying to work out a lot of shit in my head, mainly regarding some past relationships.

I'm getting in the mood to be crafty again, even in spite of the sewing machine disaster of this past weekend.  Through Freecycle I was able to procure some old cuckoo clocks and parts which means lots of GEARS and SPRINGS!! I plan to try and play around with some Steampunk type stuff.. frames and such.

The downside of these clocks is that they smell like they've spent the last 20 years in an unventilated room with someone who insisted on chain-smoking and exhaling directly into the box where they were being stored.  I think I'll be sure to avoid offerings from this user in the future.  Should be pretty easy, his emails were covered in crucifix images and Biblical verses.  I won't miss that.

The girls want me to fix one of them up as an actual clock.  I may try it.  There's one that has the yodelling guys that come out and walk around in a circle and then go back into the clock again.

I tried to take some pictures with my phone, but it's a loaner that I got from Rogers while they fix mine and I'm having trouble figuring out how to send pics.  Oh and the kids broke MY camera.  So y'all may have to just use your imagination on this one.

Little freakin' heathens.

12 bars at closing time.

Source

plink plunk.

I think I'd like to be the world's greatest lady blues guitarist and it occurs to me that maybe I am.  If there are others before me, their names have been lost to history.  Maybe I just need to read more.

There's a pattern here, there's a pattern and a structure only decipherable when the pattern breaks and the sour note stabs, making me curse these befuddled digits.  Thinking of playing until my fingers bleed, but it never happens, not really.

Once I did dip my fingertips into ice water, until the numbness allowed me to go on.

plink plunk.

I need to not be drawn in by the urge to check up on those from my past, through the tempting rabbit hole that is social media, it only creates more questions than it answers.  My ego makes up stories, scenarios that are likely as detached from reality as one can get.

But sometimes it's nice to pretend.  I like to think it's all about me.

Through the looking glass, I wonder if someone pointed out the mistake.  Did they bring it to the surface?  Did it leave a scar, a vicious red x on your psyche?

Did you shake your head, cover your ears?

Ehh.

It's probably not about me, anyway.

I have a song, but I didn't write it.  Someone else's words are all I have to describe my experience.  I've tried to put them as my own but it all comes out a plagiarism, so I am left only to paraphrase.

These words are mine, here.  Put them to what melody you may.

The melody is not mine.

Another Poetic Interlude..

Whilst looking for lined paper for the eldest child, I stumbled across some of my old university assignments, including a chap book of poetry for a creative writing class titled "Does Not Play Well With Others" because I am oh-so-bad-assed, you know.  There were a couple passages I enjoyed.  I'm also considering posting a couple of the essays as blog entries because I really enjoyed writing them, and I still enjoy reading them and I like the idea of getting feedback from those other than the one or two profs that got to mark them.

That all depends if I can find the doc files, because I sure as hell ain't typing out the hard copies.

In the meantime, I'll share a couple of the poems here.  There seemed to be a common thread of disliking structured poetry.

Ours Is Poetic

Ours is not so much a matter of rhyming
More a type of word splatter running
From a mind-spigot, the very timing
Of which is most important, when one most cunning
Forgets about the trying-to-say or
Gives up on wit or random punning

If all academic falsehood is removed
The barest essence of emotion left
There still, is room for a reader to be moved
For emotion lies at the depths,
Lays a foundation for some profound thing
When left unsaid, leaves the soul bereft.

The second one was part of of an assignment to write a poem called a Sestina which has the most effed-up, convoluted structure imaginable.  So like the fourth-grader that does a speech about how much they hate public speaking, I wrote a sestina about how fucking aggravating and pointless sestina-writing is.

Writing the Sestina

I'd say I've written a sestina before
but in all honesty I'd be lying
as I have never attempted a thing
so complicated as this.  I must say
It is really an aerobic feat of mind
to complete.  Really, if i had my way

I would choose to write this another way
and get myself into my warm bed before
I found myself giving a piece of my mind
to whoever came up with this.  Lying
in my bed I could dream of what I'd say
to the creator of this silly thing.

Really now, who comes up with such a thing?
Someone who sits around and thinks of ways
to make complicated methods to say
things that could be put more simply.  Before
I enjoyed poetry, I'm not lying
but writing this makes me lose my mind.

Now I'm not saying I really mind
reading the sestina and other things, 
but I get to feeling like I'm lying. 
Fitting words to metre a certain way
Since it seems the form comes well before
what I am actually trying to say.

Oh but what am I trying to say?
The original idea has slipped my mind.
I had a vague idea.  That was well before
I got wrapped up and tangled in this thing
and my message got lost along the way.
Now exhausted, I find myself lying

on the floor, when I should be lying
in my bed.  For what more could I say
on the subject, considering the way
my eyes are drooping and it seems my mind
is wandering, drifting to other things. 
I should retire, and sleep before

someone finds me lying here.  I don't mind
if perhaps they say I'm mad or something.
I was that way already, long before.

Copyright Andrea Lyn Cole 2006

Sometimes you just gotta. (short fiction)

Standing at the busy intersection a young woman in her mid-twenties watched the light turn red out of the corner of her eye.  When the cars started into the intersection, she did a quick survey to make sure there were no cars in the right-hand-turn lane.  Although the light facing her direction was still red and the pixellated amber hand beckoned her to hold her place, she started out into the intersection, knowing the way was clear.

A little man watched from the corner as she strode confidently into the street with head held high and sucked in his breath.  When the walking man appeared on the traffic signal he dashed across the street to catch up with her.

"Excuse me! Excuse me miss!"  She kept walking, either ignoring him or not realizing she was the miss he was addressing.  Meeting her stride, he tried to get her attention again. This time she turned.

"Why did you do that?"

"I'm sorry?" she asked, puzzled at this odd little man who was attempting to keep up and doing a not-so-good job at it.

"The light.  It hadn't changed.  But you went anyway. Why?  Are you in a hurry?"

She stopped in her tracks. This was a bizarre line of questioning indeed. Shrugging, she replied "Well, the way was clear.  So I decided to go."

The little man furrowed his brow and shook his head.  "No, no," he said, clearly troubled. "The light had not changed.  You can't go if the light hasn't changed.  That's the rules."

She looked at him for a long moment before she replied.  "That light is there for the our protection.  But as people, we are able to make decisions, to gauge risk and to decide, ultimately whether we walk, or we don't walk.  Sometimes it's necessary to break rules, even small ones, to remind us even for a split second of our free will.  Of our agency over our own bodies and minds."

He looked around as he pondered her words, but when he turned again, she was already down the street.

Must I always be 'The Other Woman'?

Avid readers may remember that one year less two days to this very date I had what I originally believed to be a brush with identity theft.  Thankfully the misunderstanding was a result of someone with the same name having a very similar email address to mine.

It seems that some people didn't take a minute to update their contacts list, as today I received the following email from the very same real estate agent who had emailed me almost a year ago today:

How is everything going?  Have you found another rental yet?  If you didn't let me know right away please.
[name redacted]

Excellent customer service, if I was indeed a customer.  I figured it deserved some sort of response.

Hi Maria,

We've spoken previously, almost a year to the day, in fact.  I am not the Andrea whom you seek. You're looking for another Andrea who I will assume has an email address very similar to my own.  I've never lived, owned or rented in the Toronto area, although seeing this kind of customer service, if I was considering a move to the GTA, I might consider using you as a rep.  However, a deep, abiding love for small town life, and a rather inflexible custodial agreement renders the possibility of my relocation as a highly unlikely scenario.  

Have a lovely afternoon.

Best Regards,

The Other Andrea.

 Maybe I've made a new friend.

What did Nicholas Cage Ever Do To You?

The following is a piece of short fiction written for the weekly writing challenge at Studio 30 Plus.  This week's writing prompt is "Las Vegas"

******************************************************

The moon is full this evening.  A faint glow shines through the window, lighting the room enough to create a vague silhouette of a man and a woman, laying back in bed.  An ashtray lay balanced on his chest and he smokes a cigarette.  She's nestled in the crook of his arm and curled up against his chest in what is only partly a gesture of affection.  Truthfully, the smell of the smoke bothers her, and she finds she prefers to breathe in his own scent of post-coital sweat and department store body spray.  She never used to be bothered by it, but after quitting herself, she finds it mildly irritating.  She's considered saying something and sometimes wonders why exactly she doesn't.

Meanwhile, as he pulls a drag from his cigarette and blows it towards the cracked open window, he wonders if it bothers her that he still enjoys the occasional smoke.  Feeling mildly guilty, he thinks about stubbing it out, but reconsiders.  If it bothered her, she'd have said something by now.

Laying in silence, the tiny orange beacon pulses as he finishes his smoke.  Stubbing the tail end in the tiny glass ashtray, he places it on the night table and waves the lingering remains away.  She adjusts her position, and breaks the silence.

"Have you ever seen Leaving Las Vegas?"  She had heard the song playing on the radio earlier that day and  wondered about the connection, if any, between the song and the film.

"Nope, never seen it," he replies sleepily.

"I've heard it's good.  It won awards, you know."
"Ehhh.  I don't really like Nicholas Cage."

Propping herself on her elbows she stares at him, momentarily, as though he's suddenly grown a third head. "What?  Why?"

"Just don't.  He bugs me.  Good night."  With that, he rolls onto his stomach and faces the wall, closing his eyes.

"Hold on a minute!" she exclaims indignantly, flipping on the light.  She's sitting upright now, and he cries out in dismay at the shock of the seemingly blinding light and slams the pillow over his head. "What do you mean, you 'just don't'?  That makes no sense!"

From under the pillow comes his muffled response "I dunno.  Why do I need a reason not to like him?  Can I sleep, please?"

"What about Adaptation?"

He emerges from under the pillow. "What about Adaptation?"

"We watched that.  Didn't you like it?  I thought you said you liked it."
"It was okay, I guess.  I don't remember it much.  Why does it matter to you if I like Nicholas Cage?"
"Well, I just don't get how you can just 'not like' someone.  Do you think he's a bad actor?  Is it because he's not conventionally handsome?"  She's crossing her arms across her chest and looking vaguely annoyed.

Sighing dramatically, he sits up. "I wasn't going to tell you this, but here goes. Once, I was in New York on business.  I was trying to hail a cab.  It was raining that day and all the taxis kept passing me by.  Finally a Yellowcab stopped and I was just about to get in when out of nowhere, Nicholas Cage shoved me aside, into a giant puddle, and took my cab that I had waited 15 minutes in the rain for.  I missed my job interview, and the opportunity of a lifetime.  Ever since then, I have hated Nicholas Cage and everything he stands for."

She pauses and eyes him, eyebrows raised. "Is that true?"

"Not a word of it.  Can we go to sleep now?"

She whacks him with the pillow. "Ass."  Flopping back onto the bed she gives him evil eye.

"You love it," he says, kissing her on the forehead and flipping off the light.  She sighs and rolls over.

A few moments later, she rolls back over.  "By the way, I hate it when you smoke in bed."

No reply.  He's already sleeping.

When Life Makes Decisions for You

I don't even like chicken wings.

After the demise of our respective marriages, my sister and I shared a house for about two years.  For the first year, she went to school while I took care of our four children while I was on maternity leave.  I was not well suited to daycare, so when my one-year leave was up, my good friend Crystal, who has much more patience for children than I, joined our household as a live-in nanny as it was a hell of a lot easier than shipping four kids of varying ages out to daycare.

After the ex-hub and I split, I immediately got my name on a waiting list for subsidized housing, knowing that it would be difficult at best to raise two children on a convenience store clerk, and later student budget.  We lived in the house for a little under two years, until fate unexpectedly set in.

It was an unusually warm day in April.  I had finished writing my first year Psychology exam that morning and had rushed home to look at an apartment, as my name had finally come to the top of the housing list.  Here, you are allowed to turn down three available units before they drop you back to the bottom of the waiting list.  I had already turned down a place six months previous on account of our obligation to the unspoken 'lease' we had with my parents.

The apartment was lovely... three bedrooms, two bathrooms, well kept building.  But I was unsure about moving to Midland, when I would be going to school in Barrie.  Would it be better, perhaps, to hold out and see if a place became available in Barrie?  The building manager told me I could think it over, as there was one other person looking at the place, but they too were unsure for whatever reasons.

That evening, we sat out on the front porch, debating what to do for dinner that night.  It was a warm, lazy Friday and no one much felt like cooking anything elaborate, but pizza seemed well.. blah.  The suggestion of chicken wings was brought up.  Inwardly I groaned, but being self-aware of my picky eating habits and how they might be unfair to others, I just kind of shrugged and went 'meh, whatever'.

I was downstairs with the smaller children when I heard the sound.  Nicky was on the front porch studying, and Crystal and Steve (my sisters boyfriend at the time) were in the kitchen, along with my oldest nephew.  My Reagan, about 18 months old at the time, had wandered up the stairs. In a house with four adults and three older children, I figured she couldn't get into too much trouble.

It sounded like a splash - a horrific, sickening splash - and my first thought was that my beautiful toddler had pulled the pot of hot oil down on herself.  I paused in sheer terror, waiting for the screaming... there was a scream, but it came from my oldest nephew as he ran out the front door.  I believed the worst.  I heard nothing from Reagan and  it then to me that not only was she horribly burned and disfigured, but that she was dead.  I broke from my paralysis and came up the stairs to the front landing, and heaved a sigh of relief upon seeing her standing at the front door, babbling to herself, completely unharmed.

However, out of the corner of my eye, up the second short flight of stairs, I saw the flames.

I grabbed Reegs and quite literally picked her up and tossed her onto the front lawn, before running back down to the basement to herd the other children out the back door.  I ordered them to go around to the front of the house and wait there.  I ran back into the house and into the kitchen where Crystal stood in front of a giant flaming stock pot of doom, flames licking the ducts over the stove.  She was already on the phone with the fire department.  Steve had grabbed the birdcage and met Nicky outside with the children.

Panicked, I grabbed a box of baking soda, because they say to put baking soda on grease fires to put them out.  This, however, was less a simple grease fire and more an raging inferno at this point.   Like a lunatic, I threw handfuls of baking soda at the flames that were now licking the ceiling.  The soda sizzled as it hit the flames.  Crystal stayed on the line with the fire department as long as possible, but gave up when the portable phone's cradle caught fire.   As cupboard doors began to blacken and ceiling tiles began to curl and drop to the floor, there was nothing left to do.

We ran.

From the street we watched the smoke billow from the windows.  I could hear glass popping as the immense heat shattered mugs, drinking glasses, and windows. The roughly three and a half minutes it took the volunteer department to arrive stretched out like an eternity.  We stood in the road and stared.  And cried.  We called our parents and told them of the fire and we cried some more.

Later, scrounging through the wreckage, I found a lone pink circle amidst the otherwise soot-black carpet where our cat had curled up in the smoke when she couldn't find her way out.  And I cried some more.

Needless to say, I took the apartment.  And I still don't like chicken wings.

************************************************************

This post was written for Studio30Plus weekly writing challenge.  The prompt is "Irony".

Poetic Interlude

An Arms Length

An arm's length is where you keep me
An arm's length could be a mile
Unyielding you hold me, with elbows locked
The space between us constant
Still you hold on without letting go
An arm's length is where you keep me
An arm's length could be a mile
Try to get close but those elbows stay locked
But hold me close, as close as you desire
I broke free from your grip
But what I wouldn't give
to fall into your trap again
floating free I can't feel
the ground below me
Hold tightly but don't hold me
at arm's length.

Copyright Andrea Lyn Cole 2011